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Franco Navarro Mandayo (Santa Fe, Argentina, 24 de octubre de 1990) es un exfutbolista argentino-peruano, MBA en Dirección de Entidades Deportivas por Universidad Europea de Madrid y bachiller de la Universidad de Lima. Jugaba de delantero y actualmente está dedicado a la Gestión de Entidades Deportivas. Tiene , es hijo del exfutbolista y actual entrenador peruano Franco Navarro.
Trayectoria
Inició su proceso formativo en la Academia Tito Drago. Desde el año 2001 hasta el 2003.
Entre los años 2004 y 2007 estuvo en las divisiones menores del Club Deportivo Universidad San Martín de Porres, mostrando una gran capacidad goleadora. En el año 2007, la Universidad San Martín, al tratarse de una joven promesa lo envió a entrenar cuatro meses al Club Deportivo Guadalajara para que realice un intercambio deportivo. Pese al interés y la grata impresión que tuvo Club Deportivo Guadalajara, Navarro no pudo quedarse en el club debido a que por políticas internas, en dicha institución no participan extranjeros.
Luego, en el 2008, pasó a Cienciano, equipo con el que debutó en Primera División con apenas 17 años. Anotó dos goles en su primera estancia en el equipo imperial, dejando una buena imagen en la afición cuzqueña.
En el 2009 fichó por Club Sporting Cristal. A los pocos meses fue cedido en calidad de préstamo al club Total Chalaco por un pedido explícito del director técnico de ese entonces, Antonio Alzamendi. En 2010 regresó a Sporting Cristal, más maduro futbolísticamente. Fue considerado en algunos partidos con el primer equipo. Sin lugar a dudas fue en el Torneo de Promoción y Reserva donde demostró su capacidad goleadora, quedando primero en la tabla de goleadores con 12 tantos (en apenas 16 partidos).
En agosto del mismo año fue cedido a préstamo a Cienciano. En su regreso al Cusco, encontró un equipo que atravesaba una fuerte crisis económica y que se terminaría salvando del descenso en la última fecha. Fue considerado una de las figuras de ese equipo junto al goleador histórico del fútbol peruano, Sergio Ibarra.
En julio de 2011 fue transferido al Club Atlético Independiente, dicha transferencia no dejó dinero a Cienciano ya que el jugador tenía una cláusula de salida en su contrato. En su estadía por Avellaneda el delantero adquirió mayor experiencia y roce internacional, eso despertó interés de algunos clubes. Navarro y su entorno decidieron que la mejor opción para el 2012 era volver al Perú y nada menos que a un grande como Club Alianza Lima.
En 2012 fichó por dos temporadas con el Club Alianza Lima, lamentablemente sufrió una terrible lesión en la rodilla derecha previo al inicio del campeonato, durante el tiempo de rehabilitación Navarro tuvo el apoyo de todos sus compañeros, cuerpo técnico e hinchada.
Su debut con el cuadro blanquiazul, se hizo esperar hasta el 1 de diciembre de 2012 contra el clásico rival, Universitario de Deportes. En dicho partido jugado en Fort Lauderdale, Navarro que debutaba con la camiseta blanquiazul se hizo presente en el marcador, vía el tiro de penal poniendo el 2-0 definitivo a favor de los victorianos.
El año 2014 llega al Deportivo Municipal, logrando el tan ansiado ascenso a la primera división.
Para 2015, Navarro anuncia oficialmente su retiro del fútbol profesional para dedicarse a la industria corporativa, con foco en gestión de entidades deportivas.
Navarro es un profesional egresado de la Universidad de Lima.
Clubes
Palmarés
Campeonatos nacionales
Referencias
Futbolistas del Club Centro Deportivo Municipal
Futbolistas del Club Alianza Lima
Futbolistas del Club Atlético Independiente
Futbolistas del Club Sporting Cristal en los años 2000
Futbolistas del Club Sporting Cristal en los años 2010
Futbolistas del Club Sportivo Cienciano
Futbolistas de Perú
Futbolistas del Total Chalaco Fútbol Club
Futbolistas nacionalizados en Perú
Futbolistas de la ciudad de Santa Fe (Argentina) | {
"redpajama_set_name": "RedPajamaWikipedia"
} | 7,422 |
NEW YORK -- Tim Redding was eager to end the New York Mets' losing streak -- and he wanted to do it fast.
The right-hander pitched splendidly into the eighth inning and New York stopped its six-game slide Saturday with a 3-2 victory over the Washington Nationals.
Working quickly with rookie catcher Josh Thole, Redding threw first-pitch strikes to 19 of his 26 batters in a crisp game that took only 2 hours, 18 minutes.
"There's a couple good football games that started about 25 minutes ago. I told him, Let's keep the pace of this game going,'" Redding said.
Jeff Francoeur and Daniel Murphy supplied the offense for the Mets, who won for the second time in 12 games. They avoided their longest skid since dropping 11 straight Aug. 28 to Sept. 8, 2004, according to STATS LLC.
"That was a nice win," Francoeur said. "We needed that real bad."
Redding (3-6) outpitched left-hander John Lannan, who grew up in nearby Long Beach and tossed complete games against the Mets the previous two times he faced them this season -- including a shutout.
Lannan (9-12) was on his game again, needing just 74 pitches to get through seven efficient innings. But the Mets scored twice in the seventh to snap a 1-all tie, taking advantage of a defensive mistake by rookie Ian Desmond, who was playing his first professional game in the outfield.
Desmond initially broke in on David Wright's liner to right, leaving him helpless when the ball sailed over his head for a leadoff double.
"That's a tough play -- the line drive right at you," Desmond said. "People have been talking about it for years and years, and it is the hardest play. But it should have been caught."
Normally a middle infielder, Desmond had to borrow an outfielder's glove from teammate Justin Maxwell.
"If I had it to do over, I might not send him out there in that inning," Washington manager Jim Riggleman said. "It was a risk. It backfired."
Francoeur followed with his second double of the game, putting New York ahead, and moved to third on Fernando Tatis' fly to right. Francoeur scored his second run of the day on Murphy's RBI grounder, which scooted past first baseman Adam Dunn for a two-base error.
Francoeur is 19 for 40 (.475) in his last 10 games. He's also 10 for 19 with six RBIs in his career against Lannan.
"I feel good. I feel confident," Francoeur said. "I'm a happy-go-lucky guy and I'm trying to keep this clubhouse that way. It's a tough season."
Redding, who yielded only a bunt single through the first six innings, was lifted after Josh Bard's leadoff double in the eighth.
An ugly throwing error by reliever Sean Green cut it to 3-2, but Pedro Feliciano retired Dunn on a grounder with runners at the corners to end the inning.
Francisco Rodriguez worked a perfect ninth for his 32nd save in 38 chances, helped by Luis Castillo's diving play at second base. Desmond struck out to end it.
After losing 1-0 to Philadelphia's Pedro Martinez in his previous start, Redding faced the minimum through 5 2-3 innings before Lannan's walk in the sixth. He improved to 3-0 in his career against the Nationals, the team he pitched for the past two years.
"Those guys are putting runs on the board," Redding said. "I know they've been struggling lately, but you can't take them lightly. They've got some thump."
Redding also singled for his second hit this season. When he came out, he received a warm ovation from the crowd of 37,906 on a beautiful afternoon.
"Good off-speed stuff, hit his spots with his fastball, threw inside. He had it all going," Riggleman said.
Dunn tied it at 1 in the seventh with a single, his 100th RBI.
Francoeur hit a leadoff double in the second, advanced on Tatis' sacrifice and scored on Murphy's single over a drawn-in infield. Lannan had gone 19 innings against the Mets without allowing an earned run dating to a 5-2 loss May 25. | {
"redpajama_set_name": "RedPajamaC4"
} | 9,140 |
package org.onosproject.net.pi.service;
import com.google.common.annotations.Beta;
import org.onosproject.net.DeviceId;
import org.onosproject.net.pi.model.PiPipeconf;
import org.onosproject.net.pi.model.PiPipeconfId;
import java.util.Optional;
/**
* A service to manage the configurations of protocol-independent pipelines.
*/
@Beta
public interface PiPipeconfService {
// TODO: we might want to extend ListenerService to support the broadcasting of PipeconfEvent.
/**
* Registers the given pipeconf.
*
* @param pipeconf a pipeconf
* @throws IllegalStateException if the same pipeconf identifier is already
* registered.
*/
void register(PiPipeconf pipeconf) throws IllegalStateException;
/**
* Unregisters the Pipeconf identified by the given PiPipeconfId.
* Unregistering a Pipeconf removes it from the ONOS controller, thus making
* it un-capable of controlling (e.g installing flow rules) the devices that
* have the pipeconf's P4 program deployed. For now this method DOES NOT
* remove the P4 program from the devices.
*
* @param pipeconfId a pipeconfId
* @throws IllegalStateException if the same pipeconf identifier is already
* registered.
*/
void remove(PiPipeconfId pipeconfId) throws IllegalStateException;
/**
* Returns all pipeconfs registered.
*
* @return a collection of pipeconfs
*/
Iterable<PiPipeconf> getPipeconfs();
/**
* Returns the pipeconf instance associated with the given identifier, if
* present. If not present, it means that no pipeconf with such identifier
* has been registered so far.
*
* @param id a pipeconf identifier
* @return an optional pipeconf
*/
Optional<PiPipeconf> getPipeconf(PiPipeconfId id);
/**
* Signals that the given pipeconf is associated to the given infrastructure
* device. As a result of this method, the pipeconf for the given device can
* be later retrieved using {@link #ofDevice(DeviceId)}
*
* @param pipeconfId a pipeconf identifier
* @param deviceId a device identifier
*/
void bindToDevice(PiPipeconfId pipeconfId, DeviceId deviceId);
/**
* Returns the name of a driver that is equivalent to the base driver of the
* given device plus all the pipeline-specific behaviors exposed by the
* given pipeconf (previously registered using {@link
* #register(PiPipeconf)}). If such driver does not exist, this method
* creates one and registers is with all necessary ONOS subsystems, such
* that the returned name can be used to retrieve the driver instance using
* {@link org.onosproject.net.driver.DriverService#getDriver(String)}.
* <p>
* This method needs to be called on all nodes of the cluster that wants to
* use such merged driver.
* <p>
* Returns null if such merged driver cannot be created.
*
* @param deviceId a device identifier
* @param pipeconfId a pipeconf identifier
* @return driver name or null.
*/
String getMergedDriver(DeviceId deviceId, PiPipeconfId pipeconfId);
/**
* Returns the pipeconf identifier currently associated with the given
* device identifier, if present. If not present, it means no pipeconf has
* been associated with that device so far.
*
* @param deviceId device identifier
* @return an optional pipeconf identifier
*/
Optional<PiPipeconfId> ofDevice(DeviceId deviceId);
}
| {
"redpajama_set_name": "RedPajamaGithub"
} | 9,927 |
\section{Introduction}
Statistical analyses with individuals' data have a significant benefit to our social lives. However, using individuals' data raises a serious concern about privacy, and privacy preservation is therefore increasingly demanding by social communities. For example, the European Commission~(EC) approved a new regulation regarding data protection and privacy, the General Data Protection Regulation~(GDPR), which has been in effect since May 2018. With this regulation, any service provider in the world must follow GDPR when providing services to any individuals in the EU.
Motivated by the privacy concern, many researchers developed statistical analysis methods with a guarantee of {\em Differential privacy}~\citep{Dwork2006}. The differential privacy prevents privacy leakage in the central model in which a trusted central server\footnote{The terms \emph{server} and \emph{aggregator} are used interchangeably throughout paper.} gathers the individuals' data and then publishes some statistical information about the gathered data to an untrusted analysist. One limitation of this model is that it requires a trusted central server that processes a differentially private algorithm.
A notion of {\em local differential privacy}~(LDP) was introduced for preventing privacy leakage to the {\em untrusted} central server. \citet{Warner1965RandomizedBias} firstly introduced it in the context of surveying individuals. Afterward, \citet{Evfimievski2003} provided a definition of local privacy in a general situation. Many researchers proposed some statistical analysis methods with a guarantee of the local differential privacy. For example, methods for mean and median estimation~\citep{Duchi2013LocalRates}, distribution estimation~\citep{Erlingsson2013ccs,Fanti2016popet,Ren2018tifs}, and heavy hitter estimation~\citep{Bassily2015stoc} under the LDP guarantee have been investigated so far.
In this paper, we deal with the {\em minimum finding problem} under the local differential privacy constraint. In this problem, a number of users hold a real value individually, which can be a sensitive value, and an analyst is interested in the minimum among the values. The minimum finding problem is a primitive but fundamental component for statistical analysis. Even under the privacy constraint, the minimum finding is a necessary first step of statistical analyses.
As we describe later, our mechanism employs binary search to find the interval that contains the minimum. Binary search with local differential privacy has been employed in \citet{Gaboardi2019} for the first time as a component of a mechanism to estimate mean with a confidence interval. Naive application of this mechanism enables minimum finding with local differential privacy, whereas a straightforward application of their utility analysis to minimum finding does not necessarily result in consistent estimation. This is because their utility analysis is specifically derived for their main task, mean estimation with a confidence interval. Further analysis with an additional assumption is needed for deriving a locally private mechanism that can consistently estimate the minimum.
Our contributions are listed as follows:
\begin{description}
\item[Hardness in the worst case] We reveal that the minimum finding problem under the local differential privacy constraint is fundamentally difficult in the worst case. We will prove the fact that there is no locally differentially private mechanism that consistently estimates the minimum under the worst case users' data distribution.
\item[LDP mechanism with adaptiveness to $\alpha$-fatness] Instead of considering the worst case, we construct a locally differentially private mechanism that is {\em adaptive to the easiness} of estimation of the minimum, which is determined by the underlying user data distribution. As a measure of easiness, we introduce $\alpha$-fatness which characterizes the fatness of the minimum-side tail of the user data distribution. Here, a smaller $\alpha$ indicates that the tail is fatter. The minimum finding problem becomes apparently easier when the underlying distribution is fat because we can expect that a greater portion of data is concentrated around the minimum if the distribution is fatter. Hence, we can expect that the decreasing rate of the estimation error becomes smaller as $\alpha$ decreases. The definition of $\alpha$-fatness is given as follows:
\begin{definition}[$\alpha$-fatness]\label{def:fatness}
Let $F$ be the cumulative function of the user data distribution supported on $[-1,1]$. For a positive real $\alpha$, the distribution of $F$ is $\alpha$-fat if there exist universal constants $C > 0$ and $\bar{x} \in [-1,1]$ such that for all $x_{\min} < x < \bar{x}$, $F(x) \ge C\paren*{x - x_{\min}}^\alpha$ where $x_{\min} = \inf\cbrace{x \in [-1,1] : F(x) > 0}$ is the minimum under $F$.
\end{definition}
For example, any truncated distribution, such as the truncated normal distribution, satisfies \cref{def:fatness} with $\alpha = 1$. The beta distribution with parameters $\alpha$ and $\beta$ is $\alpha$-fat. For simplicity, we say $F$ is $\alpha$-fat if the $F$'s distribution is $\alpha$-fat.
\item[Utility analyses] We derive adaptive upper bounds on the mean absolute error of the present mechanism as utility analyses and reveal that these bounds are nearly tight. Under the assumption that the server knows a lower bound on $\alpha$, we show that the mean absolute error is $O\paren{\paren{\nicefrac{\ln^3N}{\epsilon^2N}}^{1/2\alpha}}$, where $N$ denotes the number of users, and $\epsilon$ is the privacy parameter. If $\alpha$ is unknown to the server, we show that the mean absolute error is $O\paren{\paren{\nicefrac{\ln^6N}{\epsilon^2N}}^{1/2\alpha}}$. Also, we prove that these upper bounds are nearly tight in the sense that any locally differentially private mechanism incurs $\Omega\paren{\paren{\nicefrac{1}{\epsilon^2N}}^{1/2\alpha}}$ error under the $\alpha$-fatness assumption. The error rates of our mechanism become slower as $\alpha$ increases; this reflects the intuition about the easiness of estimation mentioned before. Note that this decreasing rate can be achieved even though the algorithm can use only imperfect knowledge on $\alpha$ ~(e.g., lower bound on $\alpha$) or no information about $\alpha$.
\item[Empirical evaluation] We conducted some experiments on real and synthetic datasets for evaluating the performance of the proposed mechanism. In the experiment on the synthetic datasets, we firstly confirm the tightness of the theoretical bounds regarding $N$ and $\epsilon$. Furthermore, we demonstrate by the experiment that the present mechanism outperforms a baseline method based on the Laplace mechanism. In the experiment on the real datasets, we evaluate the performance of the proposed mechanism on the MovieLens dataset and a customers' purchase history dataset. As a result, we present that the proposed mechanism succeeds to achieve $\tilde{O}(1/N^{1/2\alpha})$ rate adaptively to $\alpha$, where the notation $\tilde{O}$ ignores the logarithmic factor.
\end{description}
All the missing proofs can be found in the appendix.
\section{Preliminaries}\label{sec:preliminaries}
We introduce the interactive version of the privacy definition given by \citet{Duchi2013LocalRates}. Suppose that an individual has a data on a domain $\dom{X}$. To preserve privacy, the data is converted by a random mechanism $\dom{M}$ before sending the data to the untrusted server, where the domain of the converted value is denoted as $\dom{Z}$. In the interactive setting, a mechanism $\mathcal{M}$ is a probabilistic mapping from $\dom{X}\times\dom{Z}^{*}$ to $\dom{Z}$, where $\dom{Z}^* = \bigcup_{n=1}^\infty\dom{Z}^n$. This means that when the mechanism converts the user's data, it can utilize the sanitized data that have been already revealed to the server. Privacy of the mechanism $\dom{M}$ is defined as follows:
\begin{definition}[Local differential privacy~\citep{Duchi2013LocalRates}]\label{def:local-dp}
A stochastic mechanism $\dom{M}$ is $\epsilon$-locally differentially private if for all $x,x' \in \dom{X}$, all $z \in \dom{Z}^*$, and all $S \in \sigma(\dom{Z})$,
\begin{align}
\p\cbrace*{\dom{M}(x,z) \in S} \le e^\epsilon\p\cbrace*{\dom{M}(x',z) \in S},
\end{align}
where $\sigma(\dom{Z})$ denotes an appropriate $\sigma$-field of $\dom{Z}$.
\end{definition}
The parameter $\epsilon$ determines a level of privacy; that is, smaller $\epsilon$ indicates stronger privacy protection. Roughly speaking, the local differential privacy guarantees that the individual's data cannot be certainly inferred from the privatized data even if an adversary has unbounded computational resources and any prior knowledge.
As a simple implementation of the locally differentially private mechanism, the randomized response proposed by \citet{Warner1965RandomizedBias} is known. This is a mechanism for binary data and outputs binary value. Let $\dom{X}=\dom{Z}=\cbrace{-1,1}$, and let $x$ and $z$ be the individual's data and privatized data by the randomized response, respectively. Then, the randomized response flips the individual's data $x$ with probability $\nicefrac{1}{1+e^\epsilon}$, and thus we have $z = x$ with probability $\nicefrac{e^\epsilon}{1+e^\epsilon}$ and $z = -x$ with probability $\nicefrac{1}{1+e^\epsilon}$. This mechanism ensures $\epsilon$-local differential privacy.
{\bfseries Notations.}
We denote the indicator function as $\ind{x}$ for an predicate $x$. Let $\sign(x) = 1$ if $x \ge 0$, and $\sign(x) = -1$ if $x < 0$. For an event $\event$, we denote its complement as $\event^c$.
\section{Problem Setup}
Suppose there are two stakeholders; {\em users} and {\em aggregator}. There are $N$ users. They have real-valued data $x_i \in [-1,1]$ and want $x_i$ to be private. Let $x_{(1)} \le x_{(2)} \le ... \le x_{(N)}$ be ordered data. We investigate two similar settings regarding users' data generation process.
\newcommand\boldparen[1]{\normalfont({\bfseries #1})}
\begin{description}[format=\boldparen]
\item[Fixed data] The users' data are fixed by some unknown rule.
\item[i.i.d. data] The users' data are drawn i.i.d. from some unknown distribution.
\end{description}
The aggregator in the fixed data setting aims to obtain the minimum among the users' data, whereas he/she in the i.i.d. data setting aims to obtain the minimum within the support of the underlying users' data distribution.
The unknown rule or distribution is described by a non-decreasing function $F:[0,1]\to[-1,1]$. In the fixed data setting, the function $F$ determines the empirical cumulative distribution of the users' data. More precisely, the users' data are determined such that $F(x_{(i)}) = (i-1)/(N-1)$ for all $i=1,...,N$. In the i.i.d. data setting, $F$ is the cumulative distribution function of the unknown user data distribution. In the both settings, the minimum of the users' data is defined as $x_{\min} = \inf\cbrace{x : F(x) > 0}$.
The utility of the estimation is measured by the absolute mean error between the true and estimated values of the minimum. Let $\tilde{x}$ be the estimated value. Then, the absolute mean error is defined as
\begin{align}
\mathrm{Err} = \Mean\bracket*{\abs*{x_{\min} - \tilde{x}}}, \label{eq:err}
\end{align}
where the expectation is taken over randomness of the sanitization mechanism and data generation~(in the i.i.d. data setting). When the users send information regarding $x_i$ to the aggregator, it must be sanitized in the locally differentially private way. Given the privacy parameter $\epsilon > 0$, our goal is to estimate $x_{\min}$ that minimizes the absolute mean error in \cref{eq:err} under the constraint of the $\epsilon$-local differential privacy.
In later discussions, we use $\tilde{F}(x) = \frac{1}{N}\sum_{i=1}^N\ind{x_i \le x}$. We define the quantile function of $F$ and $\tilde{F}$ as $F^*(\gamma) = \inf\cbrace{\tau : F(\tau) \ge \gamma}$ and $\tilde{F}^*(\gamma) = \inf\cbrace{\tau : \tilde{F}(\tau) \ge \gamma}$, respectively.
\section{Algorithm}
\begin{figure}[tbhp]
\begin{minipage}[tbhp]{.48\textwidth}
\begin{algorithm}[H]
\SetKwInOut{Input}{Input}
\Input{Depth $L$}
Initialize $\ell_1 = -1$ and $r_1 = 1$\;
\For{$t = 1$ to $L$}{
$\tau_t = \frac{\ell_t + r_t}{2}$ \;
Each user reports $z_i = \sign(\tau_t - x_i)$ \vspace{3.6em}\label{line:access}\;
The aggregator obtains $z= (z_1,...,z_N)$ \label{line:obtain} \;
Calculate $\Phi(z) = \frac{1}{2N}\sum_{i=1}^Nz_i + \frac{1}{2}$ \vspace{1.4em}\label{line:phi} \;
\If{$\Phi(z) > 0$}{ \label{line:if}
$\ell_{t+1} = \ell_t$ and $r_{t+1} = \tau_t$ \label{line:then}
}\Else{ \label{line:else}
$\ell_{t+1} = \tau_t$ and $r_{t+1} = r_t$ \label{line:else-then}
}
}
\Return{$\tilde{x} = \frac{\ell_{L+1} + r_{L+1}}{2}$}
\caption{Non-private finding minimum}\label{alg:no-private-find-min}
\end{algorithm}
\end{minipage}
\hspace{1em}
\begin{minipage}[tbhp]{.48\textwidth}
\begin{algorithm}[H]
\setcounter{AlgoLine}{0}
\SetKwInOut{Input}{Input}
\Input{Depth $L$ and a threshold $\gamma$}
Initialize $\ell_1 = -1$ and $r_1 = 1$ \;
\For{$t = 1$ to $L$}{
$\tau_t = \frac{\ell_t + r_t}{2}$ \;
Each user reports $z'_i$ obtained by sanitizing $\sign(\tau_t - x_i)$ via randomized response with the privacy parameter $\epsilon/L$ \label{line:private-access} \;
The aggregator obtains $z' = (z'_1,...,z'_N)$ \;
Calculate $\Phi'(z')\!=\!\frac{1}{2N}\frac{e^{\epsilon/L}+1}{e^{\epsilon/L}-1}\sum_{i=1}^Nz'_i + \frac{1}{2}$ \label{line:private-phi} \;
\If{$\Phi'(z') \ge \gamma$}{ \label{line:private-if}
$\ell_{t+1} = \ell_t$ and $r_{t+1} = \tau_t$
}\Else{
$\ell_{t+1} = \tau_t$ and $r_{t+1} = r_t$
}
}
\Return{$\tilde{x} = \frac{\ell_{L+1} + r_{L+1}}{2}$}
\caption{Locally private finding minimum}\label{alg:find-min}
\end{algorithm}
\end{minipage}
\end{figure}
In this section, we derive an algorithm for the locally private finding minimum problem. \cref{alg:no-private-find-min} shows the non-private version of the proposed algorithm. It employs the binary search algorithm to find the interval containing the minimum from $2^L$ distinct intervals obtained by evenly dividing the data domain $[-1,1]$, where $L$ is some positive integer. More precisely, \cref{alg:no-private-find-min} iteratively updates the interval $[\ell_t,r_t]$, where the left-endpoint, midpoint, and right-endpoint of the interval are denoted as $\ell_t$, $\tau_t$, and $r_t$, respectively. In Line 1, \cref{alg:no-private-find-min} initializes the first interval $[\ell_1,r_1]$ as the data domain. Then, for each round $t$, the algorithm halves the interval into $[\ell_t,\tau_t)$ and $[\tau_t,r_t]$ and then chooses either of them that contains the minimum $x_{(1)}$~(in Lines 3-10). After $L$ iterations, the interval becomes the desired one. The algorithm outputs the middle of the interval as the estimated value~(in Line 11). Because the length of the last interval is $2^{-L+1}$ by construction, the error of the estimated value is up to $2^{-L}$.
To identify which $[\ell_t,\tau_t)$ and $[\tau_t,r_t]$ contains the minimum, \cref{alg:no-private-find-min} first asks each user whether or not his/her data is smaller than $\tau_t$~(in Line 4). After that, \cref{alg:no-private-find-min} calculates the empirical cumulative distribution at $\tau_t$, $\tilde{F}(\tau_t)$, based on their responses. In \cref{alg:no-private-find-min}, it is denoted as $\Phi(z)$ in Line 6. Then, $[\ell_t,\tau_t)$ contains the minimum if $\tilde{F}(\tau_t) > 0$, and $[\tau_t,r_t]$ does otherwise.
\cref{alg:find-min} shows the privatized version of \cref{alg:no-private-find-min}. \cref{alg:no-private-find-min} accesses the users' data only through a query that asks whether or not his/her data is smaller than $\tau_t$. We sanitize the query by using the randomized response described in \cref{sec:preliminaries} in Line 4 of \cref{alg:find-min}. Since the randomized response introduces a noise into the query's response, we modify Lines 6 and 7 of \cref{alg:no-private-find-min}. In Line 6, instead of calculating $\Phi(z)$, \cref{alg:find-min} calculates the unbiased estimated value of $\tilde{F}(\tau_t)$, which is denoted as $\Phi'(z')$. Unbiasedness of the estimated value can be confirmed by an elementary calculation. In Line 7, because $\Phi'(z')$ involves error due to sanitization, we introduce a threshold $\gamma$ instead of $0$.
In \cref{alg:find-min}, there are two free parameters; $L$ and $\gamma$. We investigate an appropriate choice of $L$ and $\gamma$ by analyzing the absolute mean error of this algorithm. The results of the analyses are demonstrated in the next section. We remark that due to the binary search strategy in our proposed method, one can easily see that our proposed method can be easily adapted to maximum finding.
\section{Analyses}\label{sec:analysis}
{\bfseries Hardness in the worst case.} We first show that the private finding minimum problem is fundamentally difficult. Indeed, we cannot construct a locally differentially private algorithm that consistently estimates the minimum in the worst case users' data:
\begin{theorem}\label{thm:hard-worst}
Suppose $\epsilon$ is fixed. In the both setting, for any $\epsilon$-locally differentially private mechanism, there exists $F$ such that $\mathrm{Err} = \Omega(1)$ with respect to $N$.
\end{theorem}
From the theorem, we can see that the finding minimum problem cannot be solved with a reasonable utility. In \cref{thm:hard-worst}, we consider a situation where the minimum point is isolated to all the other points; that is, $x_1 = -1$ and $x_i = 1$ for $i=2,...,N$. The worst case distribution is not $\alpha$-fat for any finite $\alpha$.
{\bfseries Adaptive upper bounds and privacy of \cref{alg:find-min}.} Next, assuming $\alpha$-fatness of the user's distribution, we reveal the privacy guarantee and the dependency of the error on $\epsilon$ and $N$ regarding \cref{alg:find-min}.
\begin{theorem}\label{thm:adjusted}
For any choice of $\epsilon$, $L$, and $\gamma$, \cref{alg:find-min} is $\epsilon$-locally differentially private. Moreover, for some $\alpha > 0$, suppose $F$ is $\alpha$-fat. For a sequence $h_N$, let $\gamma = \sqrt{\nicefrac{4e^{\epsilon/L}(1+e^{\epsilon/L})h_N}{(e^{\epsilon/L}-1)^2N}}$. Then, in both of the fixed and i.i.d. data settings, if $\nicefrac{L^2h_N}{\epsilon^2N} = o(1)$, \cref{alg:find-min} incurs an error as
\begin{align}
\mathrm{Err} = O\paren*{\paren*{\nicefrac{L^2h_N}{\epsilon^2N}}^{1/2\alpha} + e^{-h_N} + 2^{-L}}.
\end{align}
\end{theorem}
In \cref{thm:adjusted}, there are two free parameters, $h_N$ and $L$, which should be selected by the aggregator. We obtain $O((L^2h_N/\epsilon^2N)^{1/2\alpha})$ error rate by choosing $h_N$ and $L$ so that the second and third terms in \cref{thm:adjusted} are smaller than the first term.
Let us consider the case where the aggregator has a prior knowledge regarding a lower bound on $\alpha$. In this case, an appropriate choice of $h_N$ and $L$ is shown in the following corollary.
\begin{corollary}\label{cor:known-alpha}
For some $\alpha > 0$, suppose $F$ is $\alpha$-fat. Let $h_N = \nicefrac{\ln(N)}{2\alpha}$ and $L = \Theta(\log_2 N)$ such that $L \ge \log_2(N)/2\alpha$. Then, \cref{alg:find-min} incurs an error as
\begin{align}
\mathrm{Err} = O\paren*{\paren*{\nicefrac{\ln^{3}(N)}{\epsilon^2N}}^{1/2\alpha}}.
\end{align}
\end{corollary}
The next corollary is useful if the aggregator does not have any prior information about $\alpha$. In this case, the decreasing rate of the error is slightly worse than \cref{cor:known-alpha}.
\begin{corollary}\label{cor:unknown-alpha}
For some $\alpha > 0$, suppose $F$ is $\alpha$-fat. Let $h_N = \Theta(\log^2(N))$ and $L = \Theta(\log^2(N))$. Then, \cref{alg:find-min} incurs an error as
\begin{align}
\mathrm{Err} = O\paren*{\paren*{\nicefrac{\ln^{6}(N)}{\epsilon^2N}}^{1/2\alpha}}.
\end{align}
\end{corollary}
As well as the intuition, the decreasing rate becomes faster as $\alpha$ decreases in both settings.
{\bfseries Lower bound for the locally private minimum finding.} For confirming tightness of \cref{cor:known-alpha,cor:unknown-alpha}, we derive a minimax lower bound for the locally private minimum finding.
\begin{theorem}\label{thm:fat-worst}
Fix $\epsilon \in [0,22/35]$, $\alpha$, and $C$. In the i.i.d. data setting, for any $\epsilon$-locally differentially private mechanism, there exists $F$ satisfies \cref{def:fatness} with $\alpha$ and $C$ such that for a increasing sequence of $N$ and a decreasing sequence of $\epsilon$,
\begin{align}
\mathrm{Err} = \Omega\paren*{\paren*{\nicefrac{1}{\epsilon^2N}}^{1/2\alpha}}.
\end{align}
\end{theorem}
As proved in \cref{thm:fat-worst}, any locally private mechanism incurs $\Omega((\nicefrac{1}{\epsilon^2N})^{1/2\alpha})$ error which matches the upper bounds shown in \cref{cor:known-alpha,cor:unknown-alpha} up to log factors. Note that we derive the lower bound in \cref{thm:fat-worst} in a situation where the aggregator knows the fatness parameter $\alpha$. If the aggregator does not know $\alpha$, the minimax error might be greater than the one shown in \cref{thm:fat-worst}.
\section{Experiment}
Here, we present experimental results on synthetic, the MovieLens, and a purchase history datasets to show the accuracy advantage of our proposed method and confirm the correctness of the our theoretical analysis.
\subsection{Synthetic Data}\label{sec:syn}
\begin{figure}[tbhp]
\centering
\includegraphics[width=.32\textwidth]{img/{err-vs-n-fixed-lower-1-1-0.3}.pdf}
\includegraphics[width=.32\textwidth]{img/{err-vs-n-fixed-unknown-1-1-0.3}.pdf}
\includegraphics[width=.32\textwidth]{img/{err-vs-eps-fixed-1-1-0.3}.pdf}
\caption{$\mathrm{Err}$ v.s. $N$~(left and middle) and $\mathrm{Err}$ v.s. $\epsilon$~(right). The left figure depicts the result with {\bfseries Known $\alpha$}, and the middle figure depicts the result with {\bfseries Unknown $\alpha$}. }\label{fig:err-vs-n-eps}
\includegraphics[width=.32\textwidth]{img/{comp-fixed-1-1-1-0.3}.pdf}
\includegraphics[width=.32\textwidth]{img/{comp-fixed-4-1-1-0.3}.pdf}
\caption{Comparison between our methods and the baseline method with $\epsilon=1$~(left) and $\epsilon=4$~(right).}\label{fig:cmp}
\end{figure}
We investigated the error between the real and estimated minimum with synthetic data. The data were generated from a cumulative distribution $F$ according to either of the fixed or i.i.d. data setting. We used the beta distribution to construct $F$. More precisely, let $[x_{\min},x_{\min} + \Delta]$ be the support of the data, and let $X$ be a random variable that follows the beta distribution with parameter $\alpha$ and $\beta$. Then, $F$ is the cumulative distribution of $x_{\min} + \Delta X$. $\Delta$, $a$, and $b$ are varied as combination of $\Delta \in \cbrace{0.3, 0.6, 0.9}$, $\alpha \in \cbrace{0.5, 0.9, 1, 2, 4}$, and $\beta \in \cbrace{1, 2}$. For stabilizing an error caused by discritization, we report the worst case mean absolute error among $x_{\min} \in \cbrace{0\times(2-\Delta)-1, 0.2\times(2-\Delta)-1, ..., 1\times(2-\Delta)-1}$. The mean absolute errors were calculated from average of 1000 runs. We also report the 0.05 and 0.95 quantiles of the errors.
We evaluated two different choices of $L$ and $h_N$ corresponding to \cref{cor:known-alpha,cor:unknown-alpha}:
\begin{description}[format=\boldparen]
\item[Lower $\alpha$] $L = \ceil*{\log_2(N)/2}$ and $h_N = \ln(N)/2$,
\item[Unknown $\alpha$] $L = \ceil*{\log_2^2(N)/2\log_2(1000)}$ and $h_N = \ln^2(N)/2\ln(1000)$.
\end{description}
The lower $\alpha$ case is a suitable parameter choice when the aggregator knows $\alpha \ge 1$, whereas the unknown $\alpha$ case is a suitable parameter choice when the aggregator has no information about $\alpha$.
Here, we only show partial results in the fixed data setting such that $\alpha = 1$, $\beta = 1$, and $\Delta = 0.3$. Note that the beta distribution with $\alpha = \beta = 1$ is in fact the uniform distribution. More experiment results on different configurations can be found in the supplementary material.
{\bfseries Error v.s. $N$}) We first demonstrate that \cref{cor:known-alpha,cor:unknown-alpha} are tight with respect to both $N$. To this end, we evaluated the error of our mechanism corresponding to $N \in \cbrace{2^{10}, 2^{11}, ..., 2^{20}}$.
The left and middle figures in \cref{fig:err-vs-n-eps} show the errors of our proposed mechanism with varied $N$ and $\epsilon=1,4$. We choose $L$ and $h_N$ according to {\bfseries Lower $\alpha$} in the left and {\bfseries Unknown $\alpha$} in the middle, respectively. The blue lines denote the theoretical guidelines from \cref{cor:known-alpha,cor:unknown-alpha}. We can see from \cref{fig:err-vs-n-eps} that the slopes of the errors are almost the same as the slope of the theoretical guideline regardless of choice of $\epsilon$ in both {\bfseries Lower $\alpha$} and {\bfseries Unknown $\alpha$}. This indicates that the decreasing rates with respect to $N$ shown in \cref{cor:known-alpha,cor:unknown-alpha} are tight.
{\bfseries Error v.s. $\epsilon$}) Next, we show tightness of \cref{cor:known-alpha,cor:unknown-alpha} regarding $\epsilon$. To this end, we evaluated the error of our mechanism corresponding to $\epsilon \in \cbrace{2^{-3}, 2^{-2}, ..., 2^6}$.
The right figure in \cref{fig:err-vs-n-eps} shows the errors of our proposed mechanism with varying $\epsilon$ and $N=2^{15},2^{20}$. The yellow line represents the theoretical guideline from \cref{cor:known-alpha,cor:unknown-alpha}. If $\epsilon$ is not large, slopes of the error are almost the same as the slope of the theoretical guideline, where the error is saturated up to $2$ for small $\epsilon$ since the data are supported on $[-1,1]$. We therefore can conclude that the rates in \cref{cor:known-alpha,cor:unknown-alpha} with respect to $\epsilon$ are tight in the range of small $\epsilon$. Looseness in large $\epsilon$ comes from \cref{thm:adjusted}. When deriving \cref{thm:adjusted}, we use a bound $\paren{\nicefrac{e^{\epsilon/L}(1+e^{\epsilon/L})}{(e^{\epsilon/L}-1)^2}}^{1/2\alpha} \le \paren{\nicefrac{2L^2}{\epsilon^2}}^{1/2\alpha}$, which is valid only if $\epsilon$ is sufficiently small. The experimental results reflect this behavior.
In both experiments of error v.s. $N$ and $\epsilon$, the rate looks faster than the theoretical guideline when both $N$ and $\epsilon$ is small. This is acceptable because the big-O notation in \cref{thm:adjusted} indicates that the rate is satisfied only if $\nicefrac{L^2h_N}{\epsilon^2N}$ is sufficiently small.
{\bfseries Comparison with Naive Mechanism}) We also carried out empirical comparison between our proposed method and a baseline solution. Since there is no existing locally private method for finding the minimum, we consider the straightforward Laplace method as a baseline. In particular, each user with $x_i$ reports $\hat{x}_i=x_i+\delta_i$ with $\delta_i \sim \mathcal{L}(0, 2/\epsilon)$, where $\mathcal{L}(\mu, b)$ is the Laplace distribution with mean $\mu$ and scale parameter $b$. The server simply considers the $\min_i \hat{x}_i$ as the estimated minimum. In this experiment, we use $N \in \cbrace{2^{10}, 2^{11}, ..., 2^{20}}$ and $\epsilon \in \cbrace{1, 4}$.
The comparison between our method and the baseline method is shown in \cref{fig:cmp}. We can see from \cref{fig:cmp} that the baseline mechanism suffers from an error larger than $1$ for all $N$. Since the data are supported on $[-1,1]$, the baseline mechanism fails in reasonable estimation. On the other hand, our proposed mechanism achieves significantly smaller error than the baseline method and successes to decrease its error as $N$ increases.
\subsection{MovieLens Data}
\begin{figure}[tbhp]
\centering
\begin{subfigure}{.4\textwidth}
\includegraphics[width=\textwidth]{real/movielens/amin.pdf}
\caption{{\bfseries Task1}}
\end{subfigure}
\begin{subfigure}{.4\textwidth}
\includegraphics[width=\textwidth]{real/movielens/nmin.pdf}
\caption{{\bfseries Task2}}
\end{subfigure}
\caption{Histogram of the MovieLens dataset for each tasks. Note that the horizontal axis of the right figure is log-scale.}
\label{fig:hist}
\end{figure}
\begin{figure}[tb]
\centering
\begin{subfigure}{.35\columnwidth}
\includegraphics[width=\textwidth]{real/movielens/real-n-amin.pdf}
\caption{{\bfseries Task1} $\min$: $\alpha = 7.69$}
\end{subfigure}
\begin{subfigure}{.35\columnwidth}
\includegraphics[width=\textwidth]{real/movielens/real-n-amax.pdf}
\caption{{\bfseries Task1} $\max$: $\alpha = 2.50$}
\end{subfigure}\\
\begin{subfigure}{.35\columnwidth}
\includegraphics[width=\textwidth]{real/movielens/real-n-nmin.pdf}
\caption{{\bfseries Task2} $\min$: $\alpha = 1.31$}
\end{subfigure}
\begin{subfigure}{.35\columnwidth}
\includegraphics[width=\textwidth]{real/movielens/real-n-nmax.pdf}
\caption{{\bfseries Task2} $\max$: $\alpha = 113$}
\end{subfigure}
\caption{$\mathrm{Err}$ v.s. $N$ on the MovieLens dataset. The yellow line denotes a function $N \to C\log^BN/N^A$ where $A$ and $B$ are obtained by the least square method. We show the value of $\alpha = 1/2A$ in the subcaptions. }
\label{fig:real-results}
\end{figure}
We conducted experiments on the MovieLens dataset\footnote{Available at \url{https://grouplens.org/datasets/movielens/latest/}}. We used the full dataset consisting of 27,753,444 ratings for 53,889 movies obtained by 283,228 users. We carried out the following tasks. ({\bfseries Taks1}) the server estimates the minimum and maximum of the users' average rating. The domain of the rating is $[0,5]$. ({\bfseries Task2}) the server estimates the minimum and maximum numbers of the rated movies per user. We can naturally assume that no user exists that evaluate all the movies. We here assumed that the number of the movies rated by a single user was within [0, 53,889/2]. We evaluated the error of our mechanism with varying $N \in \cbrace{2^{14}, ..., 2^{18}}$ by subsampling the dataset, where we use $\epsilon \in \cbrace{1, 4}$. Since $\alpha$, the fatness, of the distributions is unknown, we used the {\bfseries Unknown $\alpha$} parameter setting shown in \cref{sec:syn}. The reported value is an average of 1000 runs. We also report the 0.05 and 0.95 quantiles of the errors.
{\bfseries Results})
The histograms of the dataset for each task are dipicted in \cref{fig:hist}. As shown in \cref{fig:hist}, the left-side tail of the average review distribution is longer than the right-side tail. Regarding the distribution of the number of reviews per user, the right-side tail is extremely long compared to the left-side tail. We, therefore, can expect that in {\bfseries Taks 1}, $\alpha$ of the left-side tail is larger than that of the right-side tail, and in {\bfseries Task 2}, $\alpha$ of the right-side tail is extremely larger than that of the right-side tail.
\cref{fig:real-results} shows the experimental results. We can see from \cref{fig:real-results} that the decreasing rates of the estimation error are changed adaptively to $\alpha$, and the obtained $\alpha$ shown in the subcaptions corresponds to the fatness of the tail.
\subsection{Purchase History Dataset}
\begin{figure}[tb]
\centering
\begin{subfigure}{.35\columnwidth}
\includegraphics[width=\textwidth]{real/age-vs-money/filtered-result_0-10000.pdf}
\caption{{\bfseries Task1}: $\alpha = 3.98$}
\end{subfigure}
\begin{subfigure}{.35\columnwidth}
\includegraphics[width=\textwidth]{real/age-vs-money/filtered-result_40000-50000.pdf}
\caption{{\bfseries Task1}: $\alpha=4.31$}
\end{subfigure}\\
\begin{subfigure}{.35\columnwidth}
\includegraphics[width=\textwidth]{real/age-vs-category/filtered-result_music_software.pdf}
\caption{{\bfseries Task2}: $\alpha=3.60$}
\end{subfigure}
\begin{subfigure}{.35\columnwidth}
\includegraphics[width=\textwidth]{real/age-vs-category/filtered-result_baby_kids_maternity.pdf}
\caption{{\bfseries Task2}: $\alpha=4.79$}
\end{subfigure}
\caption{$\mathrm{Err}$ v.s. $N$ on the purchase history dataset. The dotted line represents a function $N \to C\log^BN/N^A$ where $A$ and $B$ are obtained by the least square method. We show the concrete value of $\alpha = 1/2A$ in the subcaptions. }
\label{fig:yahoo-results}
\end{figure}
We also conducted experiments on a purchase history dataset collected in the shopping service provided by Yahoo Japan Corporation. This dataset consists of user attribute information, such as gender and birthday. Also, the dataset contains histories of purchase orders of users in Dec. 2015. Each order consists of a multiset of items purchased. We carried out the following tasks with this dataset:
\begin{itemize}
\item {\bfseries Task1}: The server estimates the minimum age of users whose total amount of purchase on this month was in some range. The ranges are varied as [\yen 0, \yen 10,000], [\yen 10,000,\yen 20,000], [\yen 20,000,\yen 30,000], [\yen 30,000,\yen 40,000], [\yen 40,000,\yen 50,000], and [\yen 50,000,\yen 60,000].
\item {\bfseries Task2}: The server estimates the minimum age of the users who purchased items in a specific product category.
\end{itemize}
Here, the age is rescaled from $[0,150]$ to $[-1,1]$. The items are categorized into 23 types of products~(e.g. fashion, food, sports), whereas only 19 categories were used so that the number of users who purchased an item in a category is larger than $2^{15}$. We evaluated the error of our mechanism with varying $N \in \cbrace{2^{11}, ..., 2^{15}}$ by subsampling the dataset, where we use $\epsilon \in \cbrace{1, 4}$. Since alpha, the fatness, of the distributions are unknown, we used the {\bfseries Unknown $\alpha$} parameter setting shown in \cref{sec:syn}. The reported value is an average of 1000 runs. We also report the 0.05 and 0.95 quantiles of the errors.
{\bfseries Results})
\cref{fig:yahoo-results} shows the experimental results with the real datasets. The figure only consists of the results for {\bfseries Task 1} with the ranges [\yen 0, \yen 10,000]~(left) and [\yen 40,000, \yen 50,000]~(right), {\bfseries Task 2} with the categories music-software~(left) and baby-kids-maternity~(right). The results with the other settings can be found in the appendix.
We can see from \cref{fig:yahoo-results} that for these task, the estimation error of our proposed mechanism decreases as $N$ increases. Thus, we can expect that our mechanism can be consistently estimate the minimum in the real data. Furthermore, the decreasing rates of the estimation error are changed adaptively to the ranges~(in {\bfseries Task 1}) and categories~(in {\bfseries Task 2}).
\section{Related Work}\label{sec:related}
LDP gains the first real-world application in Google Chrome's extension, RAPPOR~\citep{Erlingsson2013ccs} and thereafter also finds applications on the other problems such as distribution estimation~\citep{Erlingsson2013ccs,Fanti2016popet,Ren2018tifs} and heavy hitter estimation~\citep{Bassily2015stoc} for categorical-valued data. Different from existing works, our proposed method addresses finding the minimum over numeric-valued data. Simply bucketizing numeric-valued data as categorical data introduces the estimation error. Thus, to handle numeric-valued data, more elaborate protocol design and analysis are needed. There are also local differential privacy methods for numeric-valued problems. For example, \citet{Ding2017nips}, \citet{Duchi2013LocalRates}, and \citet{Nguyen2016arxiv} estimate the mean of numeric-valued data under LDP. \citet{Ding2018aaai} studied hypothesis testing to compare population means while preserving privacy. \citet{Kairouz2016jmlr} studied the optimal trade-off between privacy and utility. However, these techniques deal with fundamentally different problems from ours and cannot be extended to the minimum finding problem easily.
Essentially, our proposed method adopts binary search-based strategy, together with randomized response, to find the minimum. \citet{Cyphers2017dsaa} developed \textsf{AnonML} to estimate the median over real-valued data under LDP. This method shares the same spirit with ours, i.e., binary search-based strategy with randomized response. However, the estimation error of their mechanism was not analyzed, for which we cannot set the number of rounds for binary search reasonably.
\citet{Gaboardi2019} dealt with a problem of estimating a mean with a confidence bound from a set of i.i.d. Gaussian samples. When calculating the confidence bound, they utilize a locally private quantile estimation mechanism that is almost the same as the one we propose. An utility analysis of the quantile estimation mechanism was also provided by them; however, their analysis does not necessarily guarantee a small estimation error. This is because that their analysis employs two utility criteria and provides the sample complexity to achieve that \emph{either} of them is small. More precisely, their utility criteria for $p$-quantile estimation are $\abs{\tilde{x} - F^*(p)}$ and $\abs{F(\tilde{x}) - p}$, where $\tilde{x}$ denotes the estimated value. Their utility analysis provides the sample complexity to achieve either of $\abs{\tilde{x} - F^*(p)} \le \tau$ or $\abs{F(\tilde{x}) - p} \le \lambda$. Noting that the former criterion is the absolute error of the $p$-quantile estimation, we can see that their analysis does not guarantee small error of $p$-quantile estimation if $\abs{F(\tilde{x}) - p}$ is small.
Our minimum finding mechanism~(which can be easily adapted to maximum finding) can be employed as a preprocessing for various types of locally differentially private data analysis. For example, we can use our method for locally differentially private itemset mining~\citep{Qin2016ccs, Wang2018sp} over set-valued data. The crucial assumption employed for these methods is that the server knows the maximum number of data items owned by users. The maximum number can be estimated by our mechanism in a local differential privacy manner.
\section{Conclusion}
In this study, we propose a method for finding the minimum of individuals' data values under local differential privacy. We reveal that the absolute error of the proposed mechanism is $O((\nicefrac{\ln^6N}{\epsilon^2N})^{1/2\alpha})$ under the $\alpha$-fatness assumption and it is optimal up to log factors. The mechanism is adaptive to $\alpha$; that is, it can obtain that rate without knowing $\alpha$.
\subsubsection*{Acknowledgments}
This work was partly supported by KAKENHI (Grants-in-Aid for
scientific research) Grant Numbers JP19H04164 and JP18H04099. We would like to express our gratitude to Yahoo Japan Corporation for providing the purchase history dataset.
\bibliographystyle{plainnat}
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<text><![CDATA[<p>Commends Sally Yates for refusing to enforce Executive Order 13769. Among the order's major provisions are restrictions on the entry of immigrants and nonimmigrants from seven countries (Iran, Iraq, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Syria, and Yemen) and additional limitations on refugee admissions to the United States.</p> <p>Declares that the House of Representatives: (1) honors those who faithfully uphold the Constitution by refusing to carry out orders that are contrary to our laws, ideals, and founding document; and (2) recommits to fighting to ensure that all people receive the dignity, respect, and rights guaranteed by the Constitution regardless of gender, sexual orientation, religion, race, ethnicity, or national origin. </p>]]></text>
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Vtelno may refer to:
Mělnické Vtelno, village and municipality in Mělník District, Central Bohemian Region, Czech Republic
Jizerní Vtelno, village and municipality in Mladá Boleslav District, Central Bohemian Region, Czech Republic
Vtelno (Most), former village, now district of the city of Most, Czech Republic, (:cs:Vtelno (Most)) | {
"redpajama_set_name": "RedPajamaWikipedia"
} | 4,661 |
using HttpException = Saklient.Errors.HttpException;
namespace Saklient.Errors
{
/// <summary>HTTPエラー。Precondition Failed.
/// </summary>
public class HttpPreconditionFailedException : HttpException
{
/// <summary>
/// <param name="status" />
/// <param name="code" />
/// <param name="message" />
/// </summary>
public HttpPreconditionFailedException(long status, string code=null, string message="") : base(status, code, message == null || message == "" ? "HTTPエラー。Precondition Failed." : message)
{
/*!base!*/;
}
}
}
| {
"redpajama_set_name": "RedPajamaGithub"
} | 4,808 |
<!doctype html>
<!--
motor2d
Copyright (C) 2015 Florian Kesseler
This project is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it
under the terms of the MIT license. See LICENSE.md for details.
-->
<html lang="en-us">
<head>
<meta charset="utf-8">
<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=utf-8">
<title>Motor2D - Löve2D for the Web</title>
<style>
#motor_output {
display: table;
text-align: center;
margin-left: auto;
margin-right: auto;
position: absolute;
width: 100%;
}
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<body>
<div id="motor_output"></div>
<script>
motor = {mem: 1024*1024*128};
</script>
<script type="text/javascript" src="motor2dloader.js"></script>
</body>
</html>
| {
"redpajama_set_name": "RedPajamaGithub"
} | 8,336 |
Q: Update-heavy table in MySQL after profiling my server I found out that updating a datetime-column of a row in a table takes about 5ms, since I do this about 150 times per second, it is a major performance issue. The column is not indexed and the storage engine is InnoDB. The table just has 500 entries and the update looks like this (userId is the primary key):
UPDATE users SET lastactive = CURRENT_TIMESTAMP WHERE userId = 23;
I tried to solve it the following ways:
*
*I tried to use the storage engine MEMORY since the data is not so important. I was planning to batch write its contents to the users table every 1 minute. Seems like MEMORY storage engine also takes 5ms for one update.
*I tried to use MyISAM. Still 5ms per update.
*I tried to batch the update queries. still 5ms per query.
Why do updates seem to take 5ms generally? Is there a way to do faster updates is MySQL? I need something like a HashMap in Java. Doesnt even need to be 100% durable, since I can sync it with the user table periodically and if data is lost occasionally, I dont care.
How would you solve that problem? By the way I use a MySQL instance on Google Cloud Compute with replication active.
| {
"redpajama_set_name": "RedPajamaStackExchange"
} | 2,227 |
Q: Re-enable wifi hardware What I did was this:
nmcli con delete uuid <uuid>
where uuid of wlo1 was specified. This disabled the wireless network hardware.
The command sudo lshw -class network outputs:
*-network DISABLED
description: Wireless interface
product: RTL8723BE PCIe Wireless Network Adapter
vendor: Realtek Semiconductor Co., Ltd.
physical id: 0
bus info: pci@0000:03:00.0
logical name: wlo1
version: 00
serial: 74:df:bf:85:45:03
width: 64 bits
clock: 33MHz
capabilities: pm msi pciexpress bus_master cap_list ethernet physical wireless
configuration: broadcast=yes driver=rtl8723be driverversion=4.13.0-37-generic firmware=N/A latency=0 link=no multicast=yes wireless=IEEE 802.11
resources: irq:17 ioport:3000(size=256) memory:b1100000-b1103fff
This shows that network is disabled. How do I enable it?
A: I suggest that you re-enable the wireless with the terminal command:
sudo ip link set wlo1 up
You should be all set.
| {
"redpajama_set_name": "RedPajamaStackExchange"
} | 3,044 |
{"url":"http:\/\/d2l.ai\/chapter_computer-vision\/rcnn.html","text":"9.8. Region-based CNNs (R-CNNs)\u00b6\n\nRegion-based convolutional neural networks or regions with CNN features (R-CNNs) are a pioneering approach that applies deep models to object detection[1]. In this section, we will discuss R-CNNs and a series of improvements made to them: Fast R-CNN[3], Faster R-CNN[4], and Mask R-CNN[5]. Due to space limitations, we will confine our discussion to the designs of these models.\n\n9.8.1. R-CNNs\u00b6\n\nR-CNN models first select several proposed regions from an image (for example, anchor boxes are one type of selection method) and then label their categories and bounding boxes (e.g., offsets). Then, they use a CNN to perform forward computation to extract features from each proposed area. Afterwards, we use the features of each proposed region to predict their categories and bounding boxes. Figure 9.5 shows an R-CNN model.\n\nSpecifically, R-CNNs are composed of four main parts:\n\n1. Selective search is performed on the input image to select multiple high-quality proposed regions[2]. These proposed regions are generally selected on multiple scales and have different shapes and sizes. The category and ground-truth bounding box of each proposed region is labeled.\n2. A pre-trained CNN is selected and placed, in truncated form, before the output layer. It transforms each proposed region into the input dimensions required by the network and uses forward computation to output the features extracted from the proposed regions.\n3. The features and labeled category of each proposed region are combined as an example to train multiple support vector machines for object classification. Here, each support vector machine is used to determine whether an example belongs to a certain category.\n4. The features and labeled bounding box of each proposed region are combined as an example to train a linear regression model for ground-truth bounding box prediction.\n\nAlthough R-CNN models use pre-trained CNNs to effectively extract image features, the main downside is the slow speed. As you can imagine, we can select thousands of proposed regions from a single image, requiring thousands of forward computations from the CNN to perform object detection. This massive computing load means that R-CNNs are not widely used in actual applications.\n\n9.8.2. Fast R-CNN\u00b6\n\nThe main performance bottleneck of an R-CNN model is the need to independently extract features for each proposed region. As these regions have a high degree of overlap, independent feature extraction results in a high volume of repetitive computations. Fast R-CNN improves on the R-CNN by only performing CNN forward computation on the image as a whole.\n\nFigure 9.6 shows a Fast R-CNN model. It\u2019s primary computation steps are described below:\n\n1. Compared to an R-CNN model, a Fast R-CNN model uses the entire image as the CNN input for feature extraction, rather than each proposed region. Moreover, this network is generally trained to update the model parameters. As the input is an entire image, the CNN output shape is $$1 \\times c \\times h_1 \\times w_1$$.\n2. Assuming selective search generates $$n$$ proposed regions, their different shapes indicate regions of interests (RoIs) of different shapes on the CNN output. Features of the same shapes must be extracted from these RoIs (here we assume that the height is $$h_2$$ and the width is $$w_2$$). Fast R-CNN introduces RoI pooling, which uses the CNN output and RoIs as input to output a concatenation of the features extracted from each proposed region with the shape $$n \\times c \\times h_2 \\times w_2$$.\n3. A fully connected layer is used to transform the output shape to $$n \\times d$$, where $$d$$ is determined by the model design.\n4. During category prediction, the shape of the fully connected layer output is again transformed to $$n \\times q$$ and we use software regression ($$q$$ is the number of categories). During bounding box prediction, the shape of the fully connected layer output is again transformed to $$n \\times 4$$. This means that we predict the category and bounding box for each proposed region.\n\nThe RoI pooling layer in Fast R-CNN is somewhat different from the pooling layers we have discussed before. In a normal pooling layer, we set the pooling window, padding, and stride to control the output shape. In an RoI pooling layer, we can directly specify the output shape of each region, such as specifying the height and width of each region as $$h_2,w_2$$. Assuming that the height and width of the RoI window are $$h$$ and $$w$$, this window is divided into a grid of sub-windows with the shape $$h_2 \\times w_2$$. The size of each sub-window is about $$(h\/h_2) \\times (w\/w_2)$$. The sub-window height and width must always be integers and the largest element is used as the output for a given sub-window. This allows the RoI pooling layer to extract features of the same shape from RoIs of different shapes.\n\nIn Figure 9.7, we select an $$3\\times 3$$ region as an RoI of the $$4 \\times 4$$ input. For this RoI, we use a $$2\\times 2$$ RoI pooling layer to obtain a single $$2\\times 2$$ output. When we divide the region into four sub-windows, they respectively contain the elements 0, 1, 4, and 5 (5 is the largest); 2 and 6 (6 is the largest); 8 and 9 (9 is the largest); and 10.\n\nWe use the ROIPooling function to demonstrate the RoI pooling layer computation. Assume that the CNN extracts the feature X with both a height and width of 4 and only a single channel.\n\nIn [1]:\n\nfrom mxnet import nd\n\nX = nd.arange(16).reshape((1, 1, 4, 4))\nX\n\nOut[1]:\n\n\n[[[[ 0. 1. 2. 3.]\n[ 4. 5. 6. 7.]\n[ 8. 9. 10. 11.]\n[12. 13. 14. 15.]]]]\n<NDArray 1x1x4x4 @cpu(0)>\n\n\nAssume that the height and width of the image are both 40 pixels and that selective search generates two proposed regions on the image. Each region is expressed as five elements: the region\u2019s object category and the $$x,y$$ coordinates of its upper-left and bottom-right corners.\n\nIn [2]:\n\nrois = nd.array([[0, 0, 0, 20, 20], [0, 0, 10, 30, 30]])\n\n\nBecause the height and width of X are $$1\/10$$ of the height and width of the image, the coordinates of the two proposed regions are multiplied by 0.1 according to the spatial_scale, and then the RoIs are labeled on X as X[:,:,0:3,0:3] and X[:,:,1:4,0:4], respectively. Finally, we divide the two RoIs into a sub-window grid and extract features with a height and width of 2.\n\nIn [3]:\n\nnd.ROIPooling(X, rois, pooled_size=(2, 2), spatial_scale=0.1)\n\nOut[3]:\n\n\n[[[[ 5. 6.]\n[ 9. 10.]]]\n\n[[[ 9. 11.]\n[13. 15.]]]]\n<NDArray 2x1x2x2 @cpu(0)>\n\n\n9.8.3. Faster R-CNN\u00b6\n\nIn order to obtain precise object detection results, Fast R-CNN generally requires that many proposed regions be generated in selective search. Faster R-CNN replaces selective search with a region proposal network. This reduces the number of proposed regions generated, while ensuring precise object detection.\n\nFigure 9.8 shows a Faster R-CNN model. Compared to Fast R-CNN, Faster R-CNN only changes the method for generating proposed regions from selective search to region proposal network. The other parts of the model remain unchanged. The detailed region proposal network computation process is described below:\n\n1. We use a $$3\\times 3$$ convolutional layer with a padding of 1 to transform the CNN output and set the number of output channels to $$c$$. This way, each element in the feature map the CNN extracts from the image is a new feature with a length of $$c$$.\n2. We use each element in the feature map as a center to generate multiple anchor boxes of different sizes and aspect ratios and then label them.\n3. We use the features of the elements of length $$c$$ at the center on the anchor boxes to predict the binary category (object or background) and bounding box for their respective anchor boxes.\n4. Then, we use non-maximum suppression to remove similar bounding box results that correspond to category predictions of \u201cobject\u201d. Finally, we output the predicted bounding boxes as the proposed regions required by the RoI pooling layer.\n\nIt is worth noting that, as a part of the Faster R-CNN model, the region proposal network is trained together with the rest of the model. In addition, the Faster R-CNN object functions include the category and bounding box predictions in object detection, as well as the binary category and bounding box predictions for the anchor boxes in the region proposal network. Finally, the region proposal network can learn how to generate high-quality proposed regions, which reduces the number of proposed regions while maintaining the precision of object detection.\n\nIf training data is labeled with the pixel-level positions of each object in an image, a Mask R-CNN model can effectively use these detailed labels to further improve the precision of object detection.\n\nAs shown in 9.9, Mask R-CNN is a modification to the Faster R-CNN model. Mask R-CNN models replace the RoI pooling layer with an RoI alignment layer. This allows the use of bilinear interpolation to retain spatial information on feature maps, making Mask R-CNN better suited for pixel-level predictions. The RoI alignment layer outputs feature maps of the same shape for all RoIs. This not only predicts the categories and bounding boxes of RoIs, but allows us to use an additional fully convolutional network to predict the pixel-level positions of objects. We will describe how to use fully convolutional networks to predict pixel-level semantics in images later in this chapter.\n\n9.8.5. Summary\u00b6\n\n\u2022 An R-CNN model selects several proposed regions and uses a CNN to perform forward computation and extract the features from each proposed region. It then uses these features to predict the categories and bounding boxes of proposed regions.\n\u2022 Fast R-CNN improves on the R-CNN by only performing CNN forward computation on the image as a whole. It introduces an RoI pooling layer to extract features of the same shape from RoIs of different shapes.\n\u2022 Faster R-CNN replaces the selective search used in Fast R-CNN with a region proposal network. This reduces the number of proposed regions generated, while ensuring precise object detection.\n\u2022 Mask R-CNN uses the same basic structure as Faster R-CNN, but adds a fully convolution layer to help locate objects at the pixel level and further improve the precision of object detection.\n\n9.8.6. Problems\u00b6\n\n\u2022 Study the implementation of each model in the GluonCV toolkit related to this section[6].\n\n9.8.7. References\u00b6\n\n[1] Girshick, R., Donahue, J., Darrell, T., & Malik, J. (2014). Rich feature hierarchies for accurate object detection and semantic segmentation. In Proceedings of the IEEE conference on computer vision and pattern recognition (pp.\u00a0580-587).\n\n[2] Uijlings, J. R., Van De Sande, K. E., Gevers, T., & Smeulders, A. W. (2013). Selective search for object recognition. International journal of computer vision, 104(2), 154-171.\n\n[3] Girshick, R. (2015). Fast r-cnn. arXiv preprint arXiv:1504.08083.\n\n[4] Ren, S., He, K., Girshick, R., & Sun, J. (2015). Faster r-cnn: Towards real-time object detection with region proposal networks. In Advances in neural information processing systems (pp.\u00a091-99).\n\n[5] He, K., Gkioxari, G., Doll\u00e1r, P., & Girshick, R. (2017, October). Mask r-cnn. In Computer Vision (ICCV), 2017 IEEE International Conference on (pp.\u00a02980-2988). IEEE.\n\n[6] GluonCV Toolkit. https:\/\/gluon-cv.mxnet.io\/","date":"2019-01-20 05:04:00","metadata":"{\"extraction_info\": {\"found_math\": true, \"script_math_tex\": 0, \"script_math_asciimath\": 0, \"math_annotations\": 0, \"math_alttext\": 0, \"mathml\": 0, \"mathjax_tag\": 0, \"mathjax_inline_tex\": 0, \"mathjax_display_tex\": 1, \"mathjax_asciimath\": 1, \"img_math\": 0, \"codecogs_latex\": 0, \"wp_latex\": 0, \"mimetex.cgi\": 0, \"\/images\/math\/codecogs\": 0, \"mathtex.cgi\": 0, \"katex\": 0, \"math-container\": 0, \"wp-katex-eq\": 0, \"align\": 0, \"equation\": 0, \"x-ck12\": 0, \"texerror\": 0, \"math_score\": 0.5470908880233765, \"perplexity\": 1526.5758924275337}, \"config\": {\"markdown_headings\": false, \"markdown_code\": true, \"boilerplate_config\": {\"ratio_threshold\": 0.18, \"absolute_threshold\": 10, \"end_threshold\": 15, \"enable\": true}, \"remove_buttons\": true, \"remove_image_figures\": true, \"remove_link_clusters\": true, \"table_config\": {\"min_rows\": 2, \"min_cols\": 3, \"format\": \"plain\"}, \"remove_chinese\": true, \"remove_edit_buttons\": true, \"extract_latex\": true}, \"warc_path\": \"s3:\/\/commoncrawl\/crawl-data\/CC-MAIN-2019-04\/segments\/1547583700012.70\/warc\/CC-MAIN-20190120042010-20190120064010-00571.warc.gz\"}"} | null | null |
# Praise for _Chesapeake_
"The sweep is magnificent... the story dramatic. The Bay itself, with its rich wildlife, its mystery, and its vulnerability, is most vividly evoked."
— _Publishers Weekly_
"Another sure-fire blockbuster."
— _US_
"Michener's finest book... it is superbly humanized history."
— _Library Journal_
"James Michener has written one of those rare novels that is enthusiastically passed from friend to friend."
— _Associated Press_
"This marvelous panorama of history seen in the lives of symbolic people of the ages is a review of the conflicts, horrors and violence that accompanied the building of our nation.... An emotionally and intellectually appealing book."
— _Atlanta Journal and Constitution_
"The perfect book."
— _Cosmopolitan_
2003 Random House Trade Paperback Edition
Copyright © 1978 by Random House, Inc.
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. Published in the United States by Random House Trade Paperbacks, an imprint of The Random House Publishing Group, a division of Random House, Inc., New York, and simultaneously in Canada by Random House of Canada Limited, Toronto.
RANDOM HOUSE TRADE PAPERBACKS and colophon are trademarks of Random House, Inc.
This work was originally published in hardcover by Random House, Inc., in 1978.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available.
eISBN: 978-0-307-43079-3
Random House website address: www.atrandom.com
v3.1
# _Contents_
_Cover_
_Title Page_
_Copyright_
Map
_Voyage One: 1583_
The River
_Voyage Two: 1608_
The Island
_Voyage Three: 1636_
The Marsh
_Voyage Four: 1661_
The Cliff
_Voyage Five: 1701_
Rosalind's Revenge
_Voyage Six: 1773_
Three Patriots
_Voyage Seven: 1811_
The Duel
_Voyage Eight: 1822_
Widow's Walk
_Voyage Nine: 1832_
The Slave-Breaker
_Voyage Ten: 1837_
The Railroad
_Voyage Eleven: 1886_
The Watermen
_Voyage Twelve: 1938_
Ordeal by Fire
_Voyage Thirteen: 1976_
Refuge
_Voyage Fourteen: 1978_
_Dedication_
_Acknowledgments_
_Other Books by This Author_
_About the Author_
This book is a novel, and to construe it as anything else would be an error. The characters are imaginary; the Steeds, Turlocks, Paxmores, Caters and Caveneys were invented by the author and were based on no real persons. The principal locales—Devon Island, Peace Cliff, the Turlock marshes and the town of Patamoke—are so completely imaginary that they have been located on land that does not even exist. The Refuge is on a creek that does not exist, and in south-central Africa there is no Xanga River or community of people with that name.
Details of the Choptank River are, however, correct insofar as possible, and there has been no invention here. English settlement of the Choptank came somewhat later than depicted, but it did occur at a spot only twenty-three miles to the north.
# _Voyage One: 1583_
FOR SOME TIME NOW THEY HAD BEEN SUSPICIOUS of him. Spies had monitored his movements, reporting to the priests, and in the tribal councils his advice against going to war with those beyond the bend had been ignored. Even more predictive, the family of the girl he had chosen to replace his dead wife had refused to accept the three lengths of roanoke he had offered as her purchase price.
Reluctantly he was coming to the conclusion that he must leave this tribe which had done everything but outlaw him publicly. As a child he had watched what happened to men declared outcasts, and he had no desire to experience what they had suffered: the isolation, the scorn, the bitter loneliness.
So now, as he fished along the great river or hunted in the meadows or merely sat in contemplation, always alone, he felt he must go. But how? And where?
The trouble had started that day when he voiced his apprehension over a raid proposed by the high chief. For more than a year now relations with tribes beyond the northern bend had been amicable, and during this interval the river had known prosperity, with more than normal trade passing north and south. But the Susquehannocks of the middle section had never in Pentaquod's life been easy in times of peace; they felt intuitively that they should be on the warpath, proving their manhood. So it was within tradition for the high chief to devise justifications for sending his warriors forth: if they triumphed, their victory would redound on him; and if they lost, he would claim that he was merely protecting the boundaries of the tribe.
Pentaquod had argued, 'Those of the northern bend have respected their promises. They have not stolen our beaver nor trespassed on our gardens. To fight them now, with no reason, would be infamous, and our warriors would go into battle knowing that the gods could not be with them.'
His logic was rejected not only by the council of chiefs but also by the common warriors, who felt that for a Susquehannock to pass more than a year in peace would be disgraceful. If their great river had proved an excellent place to live, it must be because their tribe had always fought to protect it, and an old warrior predicted, 'Pentaquod, when the day comes that we are afraid to fight, we lose the river.'
He persisted in talking against a meaningless war, and since any who spoke for peace in the lands along this river would always be charged with treason, his opponents started the rumor that he had been contaminated by the enemy and served as their spokesman. It was recalled that his wife had died young, which increased the likelihood that the gods rejected his arguments.
To charge him with cowardice was confusing, for he was one of the tallest Susquehannocks in a generation, and they were a tribe of giants. Towering above young men his age, he looked with steady gaze from his great, broad face, darker in color than normal, sure sign of a warrior. This contradiction perplexed children who listened to the accusations against him, and they began to mimic his diffident walk as he moved alone about the edges of the village; soon they would be taunting him openly.
It was one of these children who drove him to his decision. The little boy had been aping him behind his back, causing much merriment among onlookers, when Pentaquod suddenly turned and seized him, demanding to know why he was behaving so, and the child blurted out, 'My father says the council is meeting to punish you.' And when Pentaquod looked about the village he realized that the elders were missing, and he knew that the boy was speaking truth.
It took him only a few moments to reach that decision. The council would not act hastily; it never did. There would have to be long speeches, condemning him, but if this child's father had actually used the word _punish_ , a much more serious penalty than outlawing might be in store. His enemies had grown so outspoken that some might even demand death; if they convinced themselves that he was indeed a spy for the northern tribes, this would be logical.
So without returning to his wigwam, where his mother and father would be sitting in the sun, and without any attempt to recover his weapons, for this would excite those designated to watch him, he moved quietly away from the long building in which the council was meeting and toward the bank of the river. He did not, however, approach the canoes, for he knew that this would evoke alarm. Instead he kept his back to them as if watching the village, but from time to time he turned his head to follow the flight of some bird and in this manner was able to estimate the situation on the river.
The war canoe had everything in readiness for instant departure, but it was built of oak and was far too cumbersome for one man to handle. The plan he had in mind could succeed only if he could utilize a canoe light enough for him to portage, and one such stood close at hand; it looked trim and handsome, but he had helped build it and knew its limitations: it had never won a race. Others were tempting, but he rejected them as either too slow or too heavy.
There was, however, one small, swift canoe which he had helped build for one of the hunting chiefs; it had been made of rare white pine from the north, and once during construction, when the fires burning away the insides grew too strong, he had lifted the canoe by himself and plunged it into the river, where the fires were quenched. The chief to whom it belonged had painted it yellow; its sides were stout and it had been fitted with oaken struts. It had been well pointed at the bow and had done well in races. Best of all, it was always armed for hunting and fishing, and so perched beside the river that one man, with a sturdy shove, could launch it.
'The yellow,' he muttered to himself, and left the river area and returned to the heart of the village, walking casually toward the council hall, where he observed with satisfaction that the spies assigned to guard him were withdrawing so as to watch him more stealthily. This was essential to his plan, for he could not outfight them; they were four and valiant, but he could outrun them, for he was swift.
So when he had teased them into moving as far from the river as practical, he turned suddenly and leaped with deerlike speed back toward the river. When he reached the bank he did not rush immediately to the canoe of his choice; instead he dashed along to the war canoe, taking all the paddles. Next he jumped to any lesser canoe showing paddles, and collected them too. Only then did he turn to his target.
With a cry that echoed through the village, he tossed the armful of paddles into the yellow canoe, gave its stern a mighty shove, then chased it into the muddy waters of the river, climbed aboard and started paddling vigorously downriver.
In spite of the fact that his life depended upon the alacrity of his escape, he could not refrain from looking back at his village. There were the wigwams built low to the ground; there was the home in which his parents would just now be hearing the news of his wild action; and there was the long wigwam from which the high chiefs were already running to man the war canoe in which they must overtake the criminal. He could not take his eyes off the old men as they came to the river and saw that they were powerless to pursue him. His last view of his community showed a village in uproar, with stately chiefs running back and forth waving their arms and, he suspected, shouting at their underlings. He burst into laughter.
But now he was alone on the river, and to survive he must exercise every skill he had mastered in his twenty-five years. He would have to pass two Susquehannock villages to the south, and since they were subservient to his, he had to suppose that they would intercept him and hold him for questioning. Furthermore, the men from his tribe would shortly find other paddles with which to activate their canoes, and pursuit would be inevitable. Indeed, he suspected that already runners had been sent overland to alert the southern allies, so that his chances of final escape were not great.
But he was not without tactics of his own, and as soon as his stout strokes brought him near the first village, he chose a daring gambit. The runners can't have reached here yet, he reasoned, so I have one chance. He paddled boldly up to the shore, bellowing in a loud and agitated voice, 'Friends! Have you seen a man and a woman go by in a canoe?'
They came to the foreshore of the western bank to call back, 'We saw no one.'
'My wife!' Pentaquod shouted, and the people began to laugh, because around the world there is nothing funnier than a wronged husband trying to recapture his runaway wife.
'Which way did they go?' he bawled.
'Into the cornfield!' they taunted, and for as long as he remained in sight, paddling desperately downriver, they stood on the shore, laughing at the grotesque figure he made, a husband paddling to overtake his wife and her lover.
It was dusk when he approached the second village, on the eastern bank this time, and he doubted that he could work the same stratagem again, for the runners would have offered rewards for his capture. This time he slipped among the trees on the western shore and waited till deep night had fallen. He knew that on this day the half-moon would not illuminate the river till near midnight, but he also knew that after the moon did rise well in the heavens, no passage of the river would be possible.
So when the village fires had subsided and the watchmen had been placed, he allowed his canoe to drift down the western bank, ever so slowly, ever so silently, moving within the deep protection of the trees that lined the shore. When the canoe reached a position directly opposite the sleeping village, the spot at which detection would be most likely, he scarcely breathed, and to his relief his passage made no sound, alerted no watchman. At dawn he was paddling furiously down the middle of the river, taking advantage of whatever current was then moving.
When the summer sun rose and he began to feel its oppressive heat, he wisely pulled into the mouth of a stream debouching from the west, and there, under the protection of overhanging trees, he slept most of the day. At dusk he was back on the river, hungry and with tired muscles, but he paddled incessantly with those deep, rhythmic strokes which kept the canoe moving purposefully forward.
It was toward morning of the third night, when he had had only two small fish to eat in three days, that he came to those falls which his people called Conowingo, and here he faced the test which would determine the success of his escape. When he approached the white and leaping water he intended to drag his canoe ashore and portage it a long distance downhill, but as he paddled away from the middle of the river to the safety of the shore, he spotted a course of unbroken, swiftly moving water which twisted and curved over rocks, and in the flash of a paddle he elected to trust his fortunes in the river rather than on the shore.
He did so for a good reason: If I portage my canoe, the others may catch up. But if I go down this water, none will dare follow, and I shall be days ahead of them.
As if conducting a ritual, he threw overboard all but two of the paddles he had been carrying, dropping them into the swift waters one by one, to track their passage through the falls. 'They follow the dark smooth water!' he cried. Then he lashed to the struts all hunting gear and one of his remaining paddles, against the chance that the one he was using might be swept away, and with the reassuring knowledge that he risked no more in going forward than he would in turning back, he drove his canoe into the turbulence.
'Hi-ya! Hi-ya!' he shouted as he felt the waters take command, pulling the canoe forward with frightening speed.
It was a stormy ride, with rocks visible on either side and white water piling into the log. His paddle, even when he used it with unaccustomed strength, accomplished little except to keep him preoccupied. At several points he felt sure that he must lose his canoe, and perhaps his life, too, but in the end the sturdy log bounced and chafed its way through the perilous rocks and the roaring water.
When the passage was concluded he was exhausted, and that day slept soundly under the trees. Cool water came down a rivulet, and when he rose he drank copiously. Also, he found a field of strawberries on which he gorged, and with the gear he had saved he caught two more small fish. Reassured in mind and replenished in sinew, he resumed his night paddling down the great river, and next morning decided not to sleep through the day, for ahead lay the vast body of water which he had heard of as a child and which was now his target.
'It lies to the south,' the old seer of his village had said, 'the river of rivers in which the fish of fish abound. To paddle down it would take even the god of rivers many days, and its shores are cut with a hundred places to hide. On this river of rivers a storm lasts for nine days, and fish are so big, one can feed a village. But it is beautiful. It is so beautiful that if you are good and make your arrows straight and tend the yams, you may one day see it. I have never seen it, but it's down there and maybe you will be the fortunate one.'
And there it was, the Chesapeake! In Pentaquod's language the name meant: _the great river in which fish with hard shell coverings abound_ , and each village along the Susquehanna possessed precious lengths of roanoke made from these white shells gathered from the Chesapeake. With enough roanoke a man could purchase even a chieftain's daughter.
The Chesapeake! The name was familiar to all children, for on this great water strange things occurred. This was the magical place where the waters became even wider than those of the Susquehanna, where storms of enormous magnitude churned up waves of frightening power. This was the river of rivers, where the fish wore precious shells.
Pentaquod leaned forward with his paddle across his knees, content to allow his yellow canoe to drift quietly into the bay, and with each length that the log moved forward, he saw some new revelation: the immensity of this water, the way the fish jumped as if they were eager to be caught and tasted, the constant movement of birds back and forth, the majestic trees lining the shore, and over all, the arching sky more blue than any he had seen before.
For the whole day he drifted south in wonder, now close to one shore, now venturing out into the terrifying yet consoling middle. It was even bigger than the old seer had been able to convey; it was more beautiful than a lifetime along an inland river would have intimated. From the moment he saw this magnificent body of water he lost all regret at having left his village on the river, for he had exchanged that collection of wattled wigwams for a greater majesty.
He spent two days on the bay, enchanted each hour with some new brilliance: he loved the movement of the fish and the feeding of the birds, the way the sun rose enormous and red from the waters, or went to sleep in flashes of gold.
'Oh, what a universe!' he cried when his joy was greatest. To express this thought he used a Susquehannock word meaning: _all that is seen on earth and unseen in the heavens_ , and he never doubted that this word had been invented so that a man like him could describe this new world which he had been allowed to enter.
It had been his intention from the first moment he fled his village to find this legendary bay and take shelter in some likely haven on its western shore, for in his youth the shells his people had treasured had been brought to them by a stalwart tribe of people called the Potomacs, and he remembered that they lived along some river to the west. They were a warlike tribe, and in the years when they did not come in peace to trade, they came in war canoes to ravage. He would seek to join these Potomacs, reasoning that since he was much taller than most men and broader of shoulder, he would be welcomed.
But now as he drifted down this peaceful body of water, so different from the constricted river he had known, so infinitely grander, he realized that he had no desire to join those warlike Potomacs, among whom he would be forced to serve as warrior. He was surfeited with fighting and with the old men who encouraged it. He wanted refuge in some tribe more placid than the ones he had known along the Susquehanna, more peaceful than the shell-trading Potomacs. So he refrained from paddling to the western shore.
As a child he had been told that along the eastern shore of the bay lived other tribes of lesser breed who accomplished nothing in arms; they were not even brave enough to venture north in trade. Occasionally bands of Susquehannocks had penetrated south to fight them, finding them ridiculously easy to subdue.
'It's hardly fair to call them enemies,' a warrior from beyond the bend had reported to Pentaquod's village. 'They have few arrows and small canoes. Not many surplus shells for making roanoke, and no desirable women. Believe me, they aren't Potomacs. Those Potomacs know how to fight.'
Each disparagement of the eastern tribes that Pentaquod could now remember made them more attractive. If they were unlike the Susquehannocks, that was good; if they differed from the Potomacs, that was better. And now, as if to exemplify this judgment, there appeared on the eastern shore the opening of a broad and congenial river, guarded by a low island burdened with magnificent trees. The river was spacious, inviting, peaceful and glowing with birds.
And so, in the middle of the Chesapeake, Pentaquod, the Susquehannock who was tired of war, turned his log canoe not to the turbulent western shore, as he had intended, but to the quieter eastern shore, and that simple choice made all the difference.
# _The River_
WHEN PENTAQUOD STEERED TOWARD THE EASTERN river he was confronted by the tree-covered island he had seen from a distance, for it dominated the entrance. Poised between two headlands, one reaching down from the north, the other up from the south, it served as a welcoming sentinel and seemed to proclaim: All who enter this river find joy.
The island was low-lying, but its stately trees rose so high and so unevenly that they created an impression of elevation. Oak, maple, sweetgum, chestnut, birch, towering pines and iridescent holly grew so thickly that the earth itself could scarcely be seen, and it was these trees which protected Pentaquod after he dragged his canoe ashore and collapsed from lack of food and sleep.
When he awoke he became aware of one of earth's most pleasing sensations: he was lying on a bed of pine needles, soft and aromatic, and when he looked upward he could not see the sky, for the pines grew so straight and tall that their branches formed a canopy which sunlight could not penetrate. The covering gave him confidence, and before he resumed his sleep he muttered, 'This is a good place, this place of trees.'
He was awakened by a sound he could not immediately identify. It was warlike and terrifying, coming at him from a spot directly overhead. It echoed ominously: ' _Kraannk, kraannk, kraannk!_ '
In fear he leaped to his feet, but as he stood there under the tall trees, preparing to defend himself, he burst into laughter at his foolishness, for when he listened to the cry again, he remembered where he had heard it. ' _Kraannk, kraannk!_ ' It was Fishing-long-legs, one of the most ingratiating birds of the rivers and marshlands.
There it stood, knee-deep in water: tall, thin, awkward, many hands high, with extremely long legs and rumpled white head. Its most prominent feature was a long yellowish bill, which it kept pointed downward at the water. Infrequently, when Pentaquod was young, this voracious fisherman had visited the Susquehanna to feed, wading tiptoe among the reeds, and often Pentaquod, while playing, had tried to imitate its movements.
Now Pentaquod stood silent, watching the bird with affection as it stalked slowly, clumsily along the muddy shore, and out into the water until its bony knees were submerged. Then, with a dart of its long neck so swift that Pentaquod could not follow, it speared its sharp beak into the water and caught a fish. Raising its head, it tossed the fish in the air, catching it as it descended. With a gulp, it swallowed the fish, and Pentaquod could see the progress of the meal as it slowly passed down the extended gullet. For some time he stayed in the shadows, watching as the bird caught fish after fish. He must have made some sound, for the bird turned suddenly toward him, ran a few ungainly steps along the shore, then rose in slow, extended, lovely flight. ' _Kraannk, kraannk!_ ' it cried as it passed overhead.
Knowing that there would be ample food, if he could but catch it, Pentaquod pulled his canoe farther inland, hiding it among the oaks and maples which lined the shore, for he knew that he must explore this island quickly. And as he moved among the trees and came to a meadow, he heard the comforting cry so familiar in his days along the great river: 'Bob-white! Bob-white!' Now the call came from his left, then from a clump of grass to his right and sometimes from a spot almost under his feet, but always it was as clear and distinct as if an uncle who could whistle had been standing at his side. 'Bob-white!' It was the call of the quail, that sly bird with the brown-and-white head. Of all the birds that flew, this was the best eating, and if this island held a multitude, Pentaquod could not only survive on his fish but eat like a chieftain with his quail.
With extreme caution he started inland, noticing everything, aware that his life might depend upon the carefulness of his observation. With every step he found only reassurance and never a sign of danger: nut trees laden with midsummer shells not yet ripe; droppings of rabbits, and the signs that foxes lived here, and the location of brambled berry bushes, and the woody nests of eagles, and the honeysuckle twisting among the lower branches of the cedar trees.
It was an island rich in signs and promises. On such an island a man with intelligence could live well, if he worked many hours each day, but in spite of its favorable omens Pentaquod was not ready to commit himself to it, for he could not tell whether it was populated by other people, or what its temperament might be in a storm.
He kept probing, and satisfied himself that it was more extensive west to east than it was north to south. A deep bay cutting in from the east almost met a stream in the south, nearly severing the island; the eastern portion of this division was markedly richer than the western. He walked beneath majestic oaks until he reached the eastern tip, and there he stood, dumbfounded, for wherever he looked he saw a grand expanse of water forming itself into bays and creeks and coves and even small rivers for as far as he could see. And along the shores of these varied waters rose land of the most inviting nature: at times broad fields, at other times gently rising land covered with trees even taller than those on the island, and everywhere the impression of opulence, and quietness, and gentle living.
It was the most congenial place he had ever seen. He judged that in a storm this sleeping body of water might have the capacity for considerable turbulence, and he was certain that before he could possess any part of this wonderland he would have to contend with its present owners, who might be just as cantankerous as the Susquehannocks, but of one thing he was certain: along this splendid river he wished to spend the rest of his life.
He had no sooner come to this decision than a snorting kind of sound attracted his attention, and he turned to look behind him, among the trees, and there stood a huge-eyed doe with two brown-speckled fawns. The three deer halted in rigid attention, staring at this stranger. Then the inquisitive doe cocked her head, and this almost undetectable action released the fawns, and they began to move cautiously toward Pentaquod, little deer on unsteady legs exploring their new world.
When they had moved quite close to Pentaquod their suspicious mother gave a cough, and the babies leaped sideways, ran in distracted circles, then stopped. Seeing that nothing harmful had happened, they moved back toward Pentaquod, lifting their spindly legs in delightful awkwardness, probing with their great eyes.
'Heh!' Pentaquod whispered. The fawns stared at him, and one moved closer.
'Heh!' The foremost fawn cocked its little head, waited, then resumed its approach. When it had come so close that Pentaquod could have reached out and touched it, the doe gave a warning snort, leaped aside, raised her white tail and darted back into the woods. The trailing fawn did likewise, but the one closest to Pentaquod became confused, or stubborn, and did not follow the others to safety. It simply stood there, staring at this stranger, and after a moment the mother returned in a series of fine leaps, swept past the inquisitive fawn and lured it into the trees.
Fish and quail and deer! Pentaquod thought. And if one finds seed, maize and probably pumpkins. Turkeys too, if I guess right. And not many people, judging so far. This is the right place.
He returned to his canoe, caught some fish for supper, made a small fire and with a large handful of blackberries to accent the smoking fish, fed well. He slept well, too, except that long before dawn he heard in the sky overhead the cry he would always associate with his first exploration of this river: ' _Kraannk, kraannk!_ ' It was Fishing-long-legs coming back to patrol the shore.
In the days that followed, Pentaquod explored every corner of the island and concluded that whereas others might know of it, they certainly did not think enough of it to build their homes here, for he could find no sign of habitation. And so far as he could ascertain, not even the meadows that appeared at curious intervals among the trees had ever grown corn or squash, and on none of the headlands facing the island could he detect any indication of either homes or cultivated fields.
This did not disturb him. If land as congenial as this existed upriver, there would be no reason for people to settle near the mouth; it would be much safer inland. Storms coming off the bay would be diminished and distances across water shortened. Perhaps the land would be richer, too, and there might be other advantages which he could not envisage. But on one point he was satisfied: life here would be good.
For the time being he quit his speculations, accepting the boon he had been granted. He built himself a small, well-hidden wigwam inland from the northern shore, using bent saplings for the frame and abundant river grasses for the roof. He found it so easy to catch fish that he did not even have to go after them in his canoe: the large brown-speckled ones with the blunt snouts swam up to him determined to be caught, and whereas he had been unable yet to trap any of the numerous bob-whites, he had shot one deer, which would feed him for some time. A fox strolled by one afternoon, and one night a skunk made things odorous.
He rather liked the smell of skunk, if it didn't come too close. It reminded him of the woods which he had trailed as a boy, of cold autumn nights, and the snugness of winter. It was the smell of nature, heavy and pervasive: it assured him that life in all its complexity was thriving. He had rarely seen a skunk, and he saw none now, but he was pleased that they shared the island with him.
It was his friend Fishing-long-legs who introduced him to one of the strangest experiences of the eastern shore. The blue-feathered bird with the long beak had flown in one evening with its accustomed croaking cry and was now probing the shallow waters along the shore, ignoring the man to whom it had become accustomed. Suddenly it shot its fierce bill deep into the water and came up with a struggling something Pentaquod had not seen before.
It was larger than a man's hand, seemed to have numerous legs that squirmed in the fading sunlight and was brown-green in color. The bird was obviously pleased with its catch, for it threw it in the air, severed it with one snap of its beak, gulped down one half, allowing the other to fall into the water. The swallowed portion was so big and with so many protruding legs that it required time and effort to maneuver it down the long gullet, but once this was accomplished, the bird retrieved and ate the other half. Having enjoyed a feast of this kind, it did not bother with mere fish. With a short run it rose in the air, uttered its mournful croaking and soared away.
Pentaquod went to where the fish had feasted, searching for clues. There were none. The bird had eaten everything. Next day he went there with his fishing line, but caught nothing. However, some days later he watched as Fishing-long-legs caught another of these morsels, enjoying it even more than before, and Pentaquod crept close to see if he could determine what it was that the bird was eating. He discovered nothing he had not seen before: bigger than a man's hand, many legs, brown-green in color, so soft that it could easily be bitten in half.
He was determined to solve this mystery, and the first clue came one day while he walked along the southern shore of his island: washed up on the beach and obviously dead lay a creature much like the one the bird had been catching. It was the right size; it had many feet, or what passed for feet; and it was brown-green, with touches of blue underneath. But there the similarity stopped, for this dead animal was encased in a shell so hard that no bird could eat it. Also, its two front legs had formidable jaws with serrated, heavy teeth which could, if the animal were alive, inflict substantial harm.
How could the bird cut this shell in half? Pentaquod asked himself, and then, an even more perplexing question: And how could he swallow it if he did? He tapped the hard substance and knew there was no possible way for that bird to swallow that shell.
For ten days he tried to catch one of these strange creatures on his line and failed, and yet twice in that period he saw Fishing-long-legs catch one, cut it in half and force the food down its long neck. In frustration, he realized that this was a mystery he was not destined to solve.
He did, however, discover two facts about his home that disturbed him. The more he explored the two deep cuts which came close to bisecting the island, the more he realized that some day the two arms must meet, cutting the island in half, and if this could be done, why might there not evolve other cuts to fragment it further?
His second discovery came as the consequence of a sudden and devastating storm. The midpoint of summer had passed and life on the island had been a growing joy; this was really an almost ideal place to live, and he supposed that later on, when he had traveled upriver to establish contact with whatever tribes occupied the area, he would become a member of their unit. But for the time being he was content with his solitary paradise.
It had been a hot day, with heavy moist air, and in the late afternoon a bank of towering clouds gathered in the southwest, on the opposite side of the bay. With a swiftness that he had never witnessed in the north this congregation of blackness started rushing eastward, and even though the sun remained shining over Pentaquod's head, it was obvious that a storm of some magnitude must soon break.
Still the sun shone; still the sky remained clear. Deer moved deeper into the forest and shore birds retreated to their nests, although the only sign of danger was that galloping cloud bank approaching the bay.
Pentaquod watched its arrival. It struck the distant western shore with enormous fury, turning what had been placid water into turbulent, crested waves leaping and tossing white spume into the air. The clouds moved so swiftly that they required only moments to cross the bay, their progress marked by the wildly leaping waves.
With the storm came an immense amount of rain, falling in sheets slanting eastward. For it to speed over the last portion of the bay took only a fragment of time, and then the storm was striking Pentaquod, descending on him in a fury he had not witnessed before. Great jagged flashes of lightning tore through the sky, followed almost instantly by shattering claps of thunder; there was no echo, for the world was drowned in rain. Winds of extraordinary power ripped along the surface of the bay, lashing it into waves of pounding force.
But Pentaquod was not afraid of the storm, and next morning, when it had passed and he surveyed his island, he did not find the damage excessive. He had seen storms before, rather violent ones which swept down the river valley of his home, and although this one had been swifter and more thunderous, it was merely an exaggeration of what he had long known. The trees knocked down were larger than any he had seen go down in the north, and that was about it. If storms on the island were no worse than this, he could abide them.
What was it, then, that disturbed him, causing him to wonder about his new home? After his cursory inspection of the island, and after satisfying himself that his yellow canoe had survived, he behaved like any prudent husbandman and started checking the general situation, desiring to see if any animals had been killed or streams diverted, and as he came to a spot on the northwestern tip of the island, he noticed that the storm, and more particularly the pounding waves, had carried away a substantial portion of the shore. Tall pines and oaks which had marked this point had been undercut and now lay sprawled in the water side by side, like the bodies of dead warriors after battle.
Wherever he went along the western shore he saw this same loss of land. The tragedy of the storm was not that it had knocked down a few trees, for more would grow, and not that it had killed a few fish, for others would breed, but that it had eaten away a substantial edge of the island, and this was a permanent loss. Pentaquod, looking at the destruction, decided that he would abandon this island, congenial though it was, and look farther inland.
Accordingly, he crossed the now-calm river, paddling until he reached the base of a tall cliff which had attracted him from that first day on which he had surveyed the river. It lay due east of the island, and formed a headland with deep water west and north. It guarded the entrance to a fine small creek, but it was the sheer southern exposure which gave the cliff its dignity; taller than five men and topped with oaks and locusts, its sandy composition was so light that it shone for great distances, forming a beacon at the edge of the river. Pentaquod, seeing the crumbling nature of its face, suspected that it, too, might be falling from the action of waves, but when he brought his canoe to its base he was gratified to see that it had not been touched by the recent storm; he judged that it was never menaced because its placement kept it clear of eroding currents.
There was no sensible way to land at the base of the cliff: where would one beach a canoe or hide it? How would one climb to the plateau above? At the eastern end of the cliff's river face there was low land, and it was most inviting, but it was exposed, and Pentaquod avoided it. Paddling into the small creek, he inspected the forbidding slope of the northern face and rejected it, too, but some distance up the creek he found low land, safe and well-wooded, with a score of likely anchorages. Choosing one, he pulled his canoe far inland, hiding it beneath a cluster of maples, and began the stiff climb to the top of the headland.
What a memorable place he discovered: a small plot of flat, open land near the edge of the cliff surrounded by tall and stately oaks and pines. In every direction save east he could see extensively, and his eyes leaped from one spectacular view to another: to the north a bewildering maze of headlands and bays, each its own exemplification of beauty; to the south a new definition of vast loneliness, for there lay the marshes, refuges for innumerable birds and fish and small animals; the noble view lay to the west where the island glowed in sunlight, with the blue waters of the bay beyond. From this headland Pentaquod could see across the bay to the mysterious lands where the Potomacs ruled, but if he looked downward instead of out, he saw on all sides his river, peaceful and reassuring.
On this headland, speculating as to what prudent steps he must take next, Pentaquod spent some of the quietest weeks of his life. The loneliness of the first days of his flight had now vanished, and he was at ease with his decision to quit the Susquehannocks. The spaciousness of his surroundings infected him, and he began to think in slower, less frantic terms. The natural fear that he might be unable to survive in a strange world dissolved, and he discovered in himself a courage much more profound than that required to flee downriver past strange villages; this was a mature courage capable of sustaining him in a confrontation with an entire world. Sometimes he would sit beneath the oak tree under whose protection he had built his small wigwam and simply survey his universe: the fascinating arms of water to the north, the vast marshes to the south, the western shore of the bay where the warlike tribes paraded, and he would think: This is the favored land. This is the richness.
One morning as he worked on his canoe down by the creek he heard a sound which caused him to catch his breath with joy: ' _Kraannk, kraannk!_ ' It was one of the ugliest sounds in nature, as awkward and ungainly as the creature that uttered it, but to Pentaquod it meant the return of a friend, and he rushed to the water's edge to welcome Fishing-long-legs as that inelegant bird landed in a crash and a clutter, throwing mud and water as it dug its feet in to stop.
'Bird! Bird!' he called joyously as the fisher landed. His cry startled the bird, who ran a few additional steps and took off again, flapping its huge blue wings and soaring slowly, spaciously into the sky. 'Come back!' Pentaquod pleaded, but it was gone.
He stayed by the small stream all that day, irritated with himself for having frightened the bird, and toward dusk he was rewarded with another utterance of that sweet, raucous cry. ' _Kraannk, kraannk!_ ' the long-legged creature shouted as it wheeled in for a new try at the fishing grounds. This time Pentaquod did not speak; in fact, he remained quite motionless so that the feeding bird would not be aware of him, and after a while it came probing close to where he stood.
Suddenly the bird looked up, saw him and at the same time saw in the waters below the choicest morsel in the bay. With a swift dart of its beak the small head dived, caught its prey and raised its head exultantly, throwing the catch in the air, then snapping it in two.
'What is that bird eating?' Pentaquod cried aloud petulantly as he watched one of the many-footed halves disappear down its gullet. Ignoring the man, the bird reached into the waters to retrieve the second half, and this, too, it sent down its very long neck. Pentaquod could watch the progress of the mysterious meal, eaten with such relish, and determined to catch a fish for himself.
Unfortunately, he had no concept of what he was trying to catch and so did not succeed. He did, however, find scores of trees with ripening nuts and new kinds of berries and different succulent fish in the river and haunts of deer that seemed so plentiful that no man need ever go hungry.
But now, as autumn approached with an occasional cold day warning of winter, he began to ponder seriously the matter of establishing contact with whatever tribes inhabited this area. All he knew of them were the legends of his youth: Below us at the end of our river is a larger river, much larger. On the west are the Potomacs, mighty in battle, but on the east there is no one of consequence.
If they live on rivers like this, Pentaquod thought, they are of consequence. Then he reflected on what this meant; they were certainly not of any importance to the Susquehannocks, for they had neither trade goods to be envied nor war canoes to fear. No doubt the Potomacs, who had both, had the same low opinion of the easterners. But what did the easterners think of themselves? What did Pentaquod, living gently as an easterner, think of himself? _It is so much easier here_.
He was now convinced that somewhere along this bountiful river tribes were living, and it seemed obligatory that he find them before winter, so with some reluctance he decided to abandon this highly satisfactory home on the cliff and move closer to where his future partners must be hiding. Accordingly, he mended rough spots on his canoe, dragged it into the creek, climbed in and started paddling eastward until he came to a huge, sprawling marsh whose tall grasses rose a uniform fifteen hands above the water.
At the sound of his paddle hundreds of birds arose, and he judged that fish must be plentiful, too. As he moved along the marsh he found it a warm, soggy, gently swaying place, stretching endlessly and writhing with new forms of life. When he had traversed a long segment he found to his satisfaction that a small, well-concealed creek led into the middle of the rushes: An excellent place for protection. And when he had penetrated the wandering cove, invisible from the main body of the river, he found its northern shore composed of fast land well-wooded and of good quality.
A wigwam here would be protected by the marsh, he reasoned, and when it was constructed he felt a sense of security which he had not known before: Even if I find no others, I can live here.
But on the third night, when he was congratulating himself as the fire burned low, he heard a buzzing, and knew, from his childhood days, that mosquitoes had moved in. But never before had he experienced any like these: they came in phalanxes and attacked with the vigor of hunting dogs. One alone could do more damage than twenty along the Susquehanna, and they drove him nearly mad with their incessant onslaughts. In fact, they stung him so furiously that he had to plunge into the creek to drown them, but when he emerged their brothers were waiting.
In the aching dawn, when he surveyed his lumpy arms and felt the sting-spots on his face, he wondered if he could remain in such a place, but on subsequent nights he discovered that if he kept a smudge-fire going, and closed down all the openings of his wigwam, and smeared his face with rancid fish grease, and hid every inch of his body beneath cloth or grass, he could survive. It wasn't pleasant, and he sweated like an animal, but he did survive, and it occurred to him that when the Great Power, Manitou, finished laying down this river, perfect in all details, He had added the mosquito to remind man that no paradise comes free: there are always mosquitoes. And bigger ones than these could not exist.
During the day he fished and hunted, noting where the beaver were and the bear; also, he tentatively probed inland, seeking any signs of human occupation, but he found none. Fishing-long-legs came to visit almost daily, and little green herons and brilliant cardinals and kingfishers from their muddy nests, and hundreds of quail making the autumn afternoons ring with their whistling cries. This was a much more compact world than either the island or the cliff; its horizon was limited to the distance a stone could be tossed, but it was snug and secure, and one afternoon Pentaquod decided: If I must live alone, this won't be so bad... especially when cold drives away the mosquitoes.
And then one morning, while he was still abed on his paillasse of pine needles, he heard a wild cacophony, a rumble which seemed to move the earth yet came from the sky, and he rushed out to see descending toward his marsh a veritable cloud of huge birds, all of them crying in loud voices, ' _Onk-or, onk-or!_ ' And in that first moment of seeing the geese he comprehended them totally: jet-black head and neck, snow-white under-chin, beautiful cream body with brown top, black tail, raucous, lovable, fat and constantly shouting to each other, ' _Onk-or!_ '
He had hoped that these powerful birds would land on his waters, but they flew past, arguing loudly, and then more came, and more, and more; they were so numerous he had no system of numbers to count them. But finally one especially noisy group of about seventy wheeled in the air, flew low over his head and landed with riotous splashing in his marsh or with grinding feet upon his land. Close at hand they seemed too big to be called birds; they were more like flying bear cubs loaded with edible meat.
The arrival of this bountiful food was so mysterious that he became afraid. As a boy he had watched when ducks stopped by the Susquehannock; they stayed only for a few days before flying on, and he assumed that these huge creatures would do the same. Each morning he expected them to leave, and each night they remained, foraging in the fields and marshes along the river, always crying, ' _Onk-or!_ ' Every eight or nine days he trapped one and gorged himself on the tasty meat, afraid that this might be his last feast, but always the great birds stayed.
They were with him through the autumn; on some days when they flew off at dawn to feed on new fields, their wings would darken the sky, their honking cries would deafen. Once at the edge of the marsh Pentaquod tried to estimate how thick the cloud was as the birds flew overhead, and he supposed that at each spot as many as three hundred were flying—one above the other until the sun could not be seen.
And in the afternoon when the birds returned they would congregate on the north bank of the river, so that the sun, moving through the southern sky, could warm them, and the muddy banks would be black with birds from the shoreline to where the trees started. Again Pentaquod tried to count how many rows of birds lined the shore at a given spot: starting at the water's edge there would be more than fifty, one after the other, reaching back to the first trees.
It was a richness he could not comprehend. These great noisy birds were infinite. At first he thought that he should kill several, smoke their meat and feed off them through the winter. But what if the birds stayed on, standing there on the shore in endless rows, waiting to be taken? There would be no need to conserve. One would simply catch them, one after another, as need commanded.
And the birds did stay, as rich a food resource as the great bay provided, for along with the larger birds came a bewildering variety of smaller ducks of the kind that Pentaquod had seen once or twice in sparing numbers along his native river. Here they came in waves, shy small creatures unbelievably tasty when caught and cooked.
Once, when many big and little birds settled along the edges of his marsh, Pentaquod sat with his hands over his face in prayer. The birds, preparing for sleep, were making a violent chatter, and he listened to the noise as if it had been sweet music: Great Power, thank You for sending them to feed us through the winter...
And as soon as he had uttered the word _us_ he realized how lonely he was, how bereft. And next morning he determined to quit this haven among the marshes and find the people who had to be living somewhere along this fortunate river.
He had paddled only a short distance to the east when he spied a small bay opening into the northern shore. It looked as if it might hide a village, though how one could have existed so close at hand without his noticing was confusing; when he probed into the bay he saw that it opened into several smaller arms, and at the head of one he found what he had been seeking: the remnants of a village.
Pilings had been driven into the shore and to them canoes had once been attached; there were also platforms on which oval wigwams of some size had once stood. The foreshore had been cleared as well as two fields in back, and as he explored the area gingerly, without getting out of his canoe, he found that all along the edges of the bay were other signs of occupation. Returning to the larger site, he beached his canoe, tied it to one of the pilings and walked ashore.
He stayed for many days, gratified to see that the large noisy geese came to the bay at night, and in this time he was able to explore enough of the countryside east of the abandoned town to know that he had come at last upon the occupied portion of the river. Where the people were now he could not say, but all signs indicated that they must have been there recently and moved away of their own volition. There was no indication of battle, and with the food available, there could have been no cause for starvation. Indeed, as he stood on the remnants of the village, he could not know that even though he had already discovered the deer and the abundant fish and now the large birds, he had failed to find the two sources of food supply for which this region would be famous.
The apparent abandonment was the more perplexing in that when Pentaquod inspected the site closely he became convinced of its suitability. It had fresh water, protection, a convenient relationship with the river, many tall trees and a hinterland suitable for either hunting or the cultivation of corn. There was, however, one ominous feature he could not explain, and in the end he reasoned that this might represent the sinister force which had caused the evacuation.
But what was it? A pile, large at the base and almost as high as a man's head, of a kind of shell he had not seen before: somewhat smaller than a hand and much thinner, composed of a hard gray substance on the outside, a shimmering white on the inside. It had no smell, a solidity that mystified him, and one sharp edge. This led him to believe that perhaps the pile had been assembled for use in war; the individual shells might be thrown at the enemy, but when he tried hurling them at a tree, the edges were so sharp he cut his forefinger and concluded that the pile was merely one more mystery of the new river.
And then one afternoon as he sat idly in the deserted village he heard a subdued but persistent noise coming from the east, and at first he thought it must be some animal, but it was so varied and purposeful that he knew it had to be associated with people: A war party victorious and inattentive.
But then the noise grew much louder, with sounds that could be made only by children, and incredulously he muttered, 'It can't be a whole village... making such noise as it approaches a dangerous spot.' A band of Susquehannocks moving through the forest would have made so little sound that even the most attentive enemy scouts would not hear. Noisy behavior like this was unbelievable.
He was so bewildered that he moved out to intercept the strangers, darting carefully from one tree to the next as he had been taught. When he was safely located so that he could watch both the forest and the river, he waited while the approaching noises increased.
And then he saw a sight which was even stranger than the sound. Down the trail, ignoring possible danger, came the happy, carefree population of the empty village. Women straggled along; children shouted raucously; and all were led by a white-haired old man wearing upon his chest a disk of polished copper signifying that he was the werowance. Never before had Pentaquod seen a tribe so poorly led, so pathetically disciplined. Nor had he ever seen people so small.
'They're all children!' he whispered. 'They can't be grown people!' But they were, and this discovery determined what he would do, but even as he reached this decision he was alarmed at its daring: when the frolicking tribe was almost upon him he leaped boldly onto the path, holding up his right hand. The old werowance stopped as commanded; those behind kept coming on; some children screamed; and the warriors knew not what to do. In the confusion Pentaquod cried in a loud voice, 'I am Pentaquod, the Susquehannock!'
The werowance did not hear well, and the little that did come through he did not comprehend. Turning to those behind, he asked what the frightening stranger had said, but they had not understood either. 'Where's Scar-chin?' the trembling werowance pleaded, and when that emaciated warrior was located, his chin cleft years before by the tomahawk of a Susquehannock, he was pushed forward to ask in the tongue Pentaquod had used, 'Are you a Susquehannock?'
Pentaquod nodded, and the interpreter reported this intelligence to the werowance, who said, 'Ask if he means war.'
'Do you come seeking war?'
'No.' An audible sigh of relief came from the entire band, but then the werowance frowned and said, 'Tell him we have nothing to trade,' and when this was interpreted, Pentaquod said, 'I, too, have nothing.' Again there came the sigh of relief, after which the werowance asked in some perplexity, 'Then why is he here?' and when this was spoken in Susquehannock, Pentaquod replied simply, 'I am a fugitive. I come seeking refuge.'
When this startling information was circulated, the little people uttered whispers of compassion and said that perhaps he might wish to stay with them, for they needed men, and he was greater than any they had known. They jabbered that once or twice in each generation gangs of Susquehannocks, tall like him, had strayed onto this river, always to plunder or take slaves. Scar-chin had been captured on such a raid and had lived among the warlike northerners for seven years, an adventure of which he never ceased talking, and now he was assigned to walk with the newcomer as the tribe returned to their riverside home for the winter.
'Yes, it's ours,' he said. 'We call it Patamoke. I'm sure the name has a meaning, but I forget what it is. Yes, we leave it every summer to live in the woods close to the great water.'
'The great water is over there,' Pentaquod corrected, pointing toward the bay.
'There is a greater over there,' Scar-chin explained, pointing east. Such information Pentaquod did not believe, but he thought it best not to argue with this excitable little man.
Pentaquod led them to the rude wigwam he had constructed, and the children in the party ran to it, using it as part of a game, laughing at the inept way the sides fitted against the roof. Some of the women gathered about the sleeping place, too, ridiculing its unfamiliar patterns, unaware of rudeness in such behavior, and when Pentaquod moved to protect his few belongings from the children, the women sided with him and called to the boys and girls to leave the stranger's things alone. Then they smiled up at the tall man, their eyes sparkling.
The returning villagers had lingered only briefly, for the werowance now spoke to them in soft tones, whereupon the character of the motley crowd changed abruptly and they scurried back to their home. The warriors went into the woods and began cutting trees, while the women and children attended to the smoothing out of the stone platforms on which the winter's lodgings would be built. When these things were done, the entire tribe moved to the shore and began picking the grasses from which the sides of the wigwams would be woven. Pentaquod was impressed with the orderly way in which the tribe worked; they appeared to be much better builders than the Susquehannocks.
When the preliminary tasks were finished, and the materials laid in strategic spots so that building could progress on the morrow, they rested, and Pentaquod had a chance to talk in more detail with Scar-chin, who told him of his long captivity among the Susquehannocks, and of how much he admired that warrior tribe, and of how the Susquehannock women had made fun of him for being so small and skinny.
'What is your tribe called?' Pentaquod asked.
'We are one small part of the Nanticokes. The great werowances live to the south. We have only a lesser werowance, as you've seen.'
'Have you a name?'
Scar-chin shrugged his shoulders, as if the mystery of names was reserved for shamans or those who cast medicine. He did, however, venture the information that frequently the powerful Nanticokes to the south invaded the village to steal whatever the local people had acquired.
'Are they so much braver?'
'No, more of them.'
'Do you fight back? In battle?'
Scar-chin laughed. 'We're not Susquehannocks. When the Nanticokes come, we run into the woods. We leave enough behind so they won't want to pursue us, and when they've taken what they want, they leave, and then we come back.'
Such behavior was so extraordinary that Pentaquod could think of no sensible comment. He sat tapping his fingers together, and as he did so he spied the pile of white shells. 'Don't you use them against the Nanticokes?'
'Use what?'
'Those... well, those shells?'
'Those!' Scar-chin stared at the shells, then broke into laughter. He summoned a group of tribesmen and shared the hilarious joke with them—'He thinks we throw them at the Nanticokes!' And all his listeners began to laugh, and some of the children started skimming the white shells into the river.
Pentaquod, taking no offense asked, 'What are they?'
'You don't know?' Scar-chin asked in amazement. From one of the teasing children he took a shell, held it at chest level and imitated a man eating from it, whereupon one of the women ran to the shore, dived into the cold water, and within a few moments reappeared, holding in her hand a dripping object constructed of two of the shells bound together.
Running to Pentaquod, her hair dripping about her shoulders, she extended her two hands, presenting him with the river-born object. He took it, was impressed by its roughness and heaviness. 'What is it?' he asked Scar-chin.
'He doesn't know what it is!' the interpreter shouted, pleased with his new-found importance as the only one in the town who could speak with this Susquehannock.
'He doesn't know what it is!' the children echoed gleefully, and everyone watched as the tall man from the north wrestled with the connected shells.
Finally the young woman who had brought him the present took it back, reached for a sharp-pointed stick and deftly split open the shell. One half she threw away. The other she handed gravely to Pentaquod, indicating that he should eat.
Trained on venison and rabbit and fish, he looked at the strange object in his hand. In no way could he relate it to food such as he had known: it was watery, and slippery, and had no bones, and there was no sensible way to attack it.
The girl solved his problem. Taking the laden shell from his nervous hand, she lifted it to his lips, told him to open his mouth, and with a delicate twist of her fingers popped the food in. For an instant he was aware of a fine, salty taste and a pleasing sensation. Then the food, whatever it was, disappeared, leaving on his face a most bewildered look. With an easy throwing motion, the girl tossed the empty shell onto the mound.
'We call them kawshek,' Scar-chin explained. 'More sleeping in the river than you could count. All winter we feed on kawshek.'
Pentaquod contemplated this: in addition to the abundance of food he had discovered by himself, there was this additional supply hidden in the river. It was inconceivable, and as he sat perplexed, trying to unravel the mystery of oysters, he thought of his friend Fishing-long-legs, and he queried Scar-chin. 'What is it he catches on the bottom, cuts in two and swallows with such difficulty?'
'Fish.'
'I know fish. This is no fish. Shaped like a hand, with many legs.'
As soon as Pentaquod uttered these words a benign smile spread over the scarred face of his interpreter, who said nothing. Obviously he was recalling moments of past happiness, after which he summoned the girl who had caught the oysters. 'He doesn't know crabs, either,' he whispered.
The girl smiled and with her right hand gave an imitation of a crab wriggling its many feet. Then a look of compassion filled her eyes; to be ignorant of the oyster was amusing, but to be unacquainted with the crab was pathetic.
'What is crab?' Pentaquod asked, and Scar-chin replied, 'When Manitou, the Great Power, finished populating the river with everything our village required—pine trees for canoes, deer to feed us in summer, geese and oysters for winter—He saw that we were grateful and well disposed. So in His grace He created one thing more, to stand as a token of His eternal concern. He made the crab and hid him in our salty waters.'
Women in the crowd asked what he had said so far, then prompted him to add details that interested them: 'A crab provides little food, so he is not easy to eat. But the little he does offer is the best food under the sky. To eat crab you must work, which makes you appreciate him more. He is the blessing, the remembrance. And no man or woman ever ate enough.'
Pentaquod listened with growing respect as Scar-chin reported on this delicacy, and when the oration ended he asked tentatively, 'Could I taste some?'
'They come only in summer.'
'Didn't you dry any?'
This question, when interpreted, brought laughter, which ended when the girl moved forward to indicate that the meat of the crab was so delicate it had to be eaten immediately; her fine fingers danced as she portrayed this.
Again Pentaquod fell to rumination, confused by this barrage of strange information. 'But if the crab has the hard shell that I found on the island...' He hesitated as the girl nodded, then knocked her knuckles together to prove how hard the shell was.
'Aha!' Pentaquod demanded, grabbing her by the wrist. 'If the shell is so hard, how is it that Fishing-long-legs can cut it in half with his beak?'
When Scar-chin explained that the Susquehannock used that name for the great blue heron, and that he was referring to the manner in which the heron caught crabs, tossed them in the air and cut them in half, the girl's expression became even more compassionate.
'It's the soft crab,' she explained.
'The what?'
'In the summer we catch crabs that have no shell...'
This was totally incomprehensible, and Pentaquod shook his head, but the girl continued, 'They have no shell, and we roast them over the fire, and they are the best.'
Pentaquod could make absolutely nothing of this, and he was about to drop the whole discussion when a boy of about nine summers moved beside the girl and by a series of swift gestures of hand-to-mouth indicated that he himself could eat four or five of the no-shell crabs. This seemed preposterous and Pentaquod turned away, but the daring boy tugged on his arm and repeated the pantomime: he could indeed eat five no-shells.
When the crowd dispersed to arrange ramshackle sleeping quarters for the night, Pentaquod retreated from the shore to his own wigwam, but before he fell asleep he found Scar-chin standing in the rude doorway. 'Stay with us,' the little man said. Pentaquod made no reply. 'The werowance is old now, and sad.' No comment. 'The girl who caught the oyster for you, she is his granddaughter, and whenever he sees her it causes pain.' This was impenetrable, but the little man continued, 'Her father, the werowance's son who should be in command now, died of the fever and the girl reminds him of this loss.'
Pentaquod saw no reason to respond to any of this, so in the darkness the little interpreter remained in the doorway, content to watch the shadowy form of the tall Susquehannock who had made this day so memorable. At last, when night surrounded the village, the former slave of the Susquehannocks slipped away.
In the ensuing weeks the villagers rebuilt their wigwams and instructed Pentaquod in their language, a much simpler one than his. In all ways this tribe lived on a less complicated level than the Susquehannocks: their werowance had little power and their possessions were fewer. Their medicine man was not so formidable as the mysterious shamans of the north, and for him to try to enforce decisions of life and death would have been laughable; he was a good-luck charm and nothing more.
The little old werowance was named Orapak; he was past sixty and must soon die, but was allowed to retain his office because there was none to challenge him. He was a wise old man, and gentle too, and for many years he had kept his tribe out of serious trouble. 'When the Nanticokes come north to fight us, we flee farther north,' he explained. 'And when the Susquehannocks come south to fight us, we flee to the south.'
'Doesn't that take you into Nanticoke country?'
'No, because when we flee south, we go into the marshes, and the Nanticokes wouldn't dare follow us.' He hesitated. 'Mosquitoes, you know.'
'I know. Last summer I lived in the marsh.'
'Brave man,' the werowance said. Then he asked, 'Why did you think we leave our village each summer?'
'What good do mosquitoes do?' Pentaquod asked, whereupon the old man raised his eyes to heaven and replied, 'On that first day Scar-chin here told you of how Manitou gave this river everything, and then one thing more, the crab. Well, when that was done He said, "Now I will keep men from becoming arrogant," and He threw in the mosquito.'
'Why?'
'To remind us that He can do anything He pleases, and we have to like it.'
Pentaquod decided that now was the time to raise the question of his membership in the tribe. 'The river is excellent. I enjoyed it when I lived here alone.'
The werowance studied this declaration, then blew out his cheeks, signifying that he appreciated the gravity of what had been said. The Susquehannock was pointing out that he had acquired possession of the place after the villagers had deserted it. He was intimating ownership, even though many warriors were available to contest it. Orapak realized how powerful this stranger was; quite likely he could defeat any of the warriors who up to now had defeated nobody. Warily he said, 'It would be good if you stayed with us,' adding hastily, 'in the wigwam that's already yours.'
'I would like that,' Pentaquod replied, and no more was said about his citizenship. He continued to occupy his wigwam, which women showed him how to finish properly, and he began paying court to Navitan, the werowance's granddaughter. At seventeen she had been eyeing some of the young warriors during the summer encampment, but nothing much had happened and she now showed herself receptive to the moves the tall Susquehannock was making.
They were married before the first snow. The old women were delighted that their Navitan had caught herself such a daring man, and the shaman who performed the ceremony gave it as his opinion that Manitou Himself had sent Pentaquod to protect this village.
In the division of labor common to tribes along the Chesapeake, Pentaquod specialized in cutting tall trees, shaping them and burning out their interior so that canoes could be built. He also became the expert in hunting geese, those remarkable fowl that he had known simply as big birds: from oak and pine he carved eighteen rude likenesses of the geese, coloring them with earthen paints discovered by the tribe, and these he placed at strategic spots related to wind and shore, luring the birds so close that he rarely missed with his strong bow. But the killing of a goose always bothered him; for although he loved the taste of the roasted flesh, he did not like to see the stately birds destroyed.
It was at the end of winter when the sad night came. Navitan had been scraping the reef for oysters when she saw a flock of geese in a cornfield acting strangely. The males were running at one another, and the yearlings were restless, gathering twigs as if to build nests they knew they did not need. Uneasy chatter murmured through the flock, when suddenly an old gander, much heavier than the rest, ran awkwardly a few steps, flapped his great wings and soared into the air.
In an instant that whole field of geese flew aloft, circled a few times, then set out resolutely for the north. From other fields which Navitan could not see, other flocks rose into the air, and soon the sky was dark with great black-and-gray geese flying north. 'Oh!' she cried, alerting the village. 'They're leaving!'
No one required to be told who was leaving. The geese, those notable birds on whom the tribe had feasted for generation after generation, were quitting the river. In nine days there would not be a goose visible anywhere, and to see them flying north, to hear them honking as they repaired to the distant ice-bound fields on which they would raise their young, was a moment of such sadness that many of the older men and women wept, for the great geese had been their calendars and the counting of their years.
Now the werowance appeared, white and stiff-legged, with his face to the sky, and after he had cast his blessing on the geese, the shaman uttered the timeless prayer:
'Great Power, You who watch over us and establish the seasons, guard the geese as they leave us. Watch over them as they fly to distant areas. Find them grain for their long flight and keep them from storms. They are our need, our protection from hunger, our sentinels at night, our companions through the winter, our source of food and warmth, our tenants on the land, our watchmen in the sky, the guardians of our streams, the chatterers at the coming and going. Great Power, protect them while they are gone from us, and in due season bring them back to this river, which is their home and ours.'
No child made a sound, for this was the most sacred moment of the year. If the mysteries were not properly cast, the geese might fail to return, and the winter when that occurred would be terrible indeed.
Some moons after the geese had gone, crabs moved in to take their place as the principal source of food, and now Pentaquod discovered what the villagers meant when they claimed that Manitou, the Great Power, looked after them especially. It was a day in late spring when Navitan led him to her canoe, handing him a basketful of fish heads and bear gristle to tote along. The concoction smelled offensive, but Navitan assured him this was what the crabs preferred, and he wondered how the loose and almost rotting stuff could be attached to the curved hooks used in fishing.
To his surprise, his wife had no hooks. 'What kind of fishing is this?' he asked, and she smiled without offering an explanation. But once he had paddled her to the spot she had selected, she produced long strands of twisted fiber and deer gut, and to these she tied fish heads and chunks of gristly bear meat, throwing the lines aft.
Pentaquod looked for the telltale signs which indicated that a fish had bitten the lure, but there was no such movement and he concluded that Navitan was not going to catch any crabs, but after a while, when there was no visible reason for her doing so, she began to pull in one of her lines with her left hand, holding in her right a long pole to which was attached a loosely woven wicker basket. As the line slowly left the water, Pentaquod saw that the first fish head was about to appear, but what he did not see was that attached to it was a crab, cutting at the meat with his powerful claws and oblivious of the fact that it was being pulled almost out of the water.
When the crab was visible to Navitan, she deftly swept her basket into the water and under the startled crab, lifting it as it tried to fall away, and plopping it, all legs wiggling and claws snapping, into the canoe.
Pentaquod was stunned by the performance, and when his wife continued to haul in her line, catching crab after crab, he realized that here was a brand of fishing totally unlike any in which he had ever participated. 'Why don't they swim away from the bait?' he asked. 'Can't they see you're going to catch them?'
'They like us to eat them,' Navitan said. 'Manitou sends them to us for that purpose.'
Pentaquod gingerly touched one and found the shell extremely hard, but he could not examine it closely, for the fierce claws snapped at him. He was even more perplexed when Navitan carried her two dozen crabs to camp and pitched them into a pot of boiling water, for within moments they turned bright red. She then instructed him in how to pick meat from the carcasses, and when she had a clay bowl filled she told him to stop, for she knew that picking crab was a tedious and demanding job: a dozen crabs produced only a handful of meat.
But when she took this meat, as her mother had taught her, and mixed it with herbs and vegetables and corn meal, and formed it into small cakes and fried them in sizzling bear fat, she produced one of the finest dishes this river would ever know. 'Cakes of crab,' she called them, and Pentaquod found them subtle and delicious.
'There is better,' Navitan assured him, and when he doubted, she told him to wait until the crabs began to shed, and one day she brought him four that had newly cast their shells, and these she fried directly in hot bear grease, without first boiling or picking them.
'Do I eat legs and all?' Pentaquod asked, and she goaded him into trying them; when he had finished the four he declared them succulent beyond belief.
'Now you are one of us,' Navitan said.
While Pentaquod was initiating himself into such pleasant customs he made a discovery which disturbed him: he found that what Scar-chin had reported was true. This tribe never defended itself from enemies, and when the Susquehannocks intruded from the north, or the Nanticokes from the south, no attempt was made to protect the village. The villagers seemed not to care what happened; they mounted no sentries, sent no patrols to check the frontiers, engaged in no self-defense maneuvers. He was not surprised, therefore, when children ran in one morning to report, 'Here come the Nanticokes again!'
No one panicked. Everyone placed essential goods in deerskin pouches, hid supplies of food in the nearby forest, and fled. The werowance marched at the front of his people, as gallantly as if heading for battle, and took them deep into the fragmented, river-cut area northwest of their village. They had learned from frequent experience that the Nanticokes were reluctant to follow them into that chopped-up area, so they marched with a certain confidence that after a decent interval, during which the invaders would steal everything left behind and then retreat singing victory songs, they could return to their homes and resume life as it had been.
Pentaquod was staggered by this attitude. When the children first reported the invasion he had wanted to storm out to engage the enemy, teach them a lesson and drive them back to the southern regions, but the old werowance would have none of this, nor did any of his people wish to face the sturdier men from the south.
'What do we lose, doing it this way?' one of the women asked Pentaquod as they fled to the land of the broken rivers.
'We lose my wigwam,' he said in some anger.
'A wigwam we can build in a day. The dried fish? Who cares. The salted duck they won't find. We stowed it among the oaks.'
When the tribe had hidden for seven days, it was deemed likely that the Nanticokes had done their damage and retreated, but to confirm this, scouts had to be sent back to ensure that they had really gone. No volunteers offered to do the spying, so Pentaquod, speaking for Scar-chin, said, 'We'll go.' The interpreter, who had been captured once, wanted nothing to do with such a venture, but Pentaquod insisted, and since going in the company of this brave Susquehannock would lend distinction to the little man, he reluctantly agreed.
No spy in the long history of the region ever moved with more circumspection than Scar-chin as he entered the territory occupied by the invaders. Indeed, he was so painfully careful not to snap a twig that Pentaquod realized the little fellow's crafty plan: he would move so slowly that the Nanticokes would have two extra days to clear out. When he and Pentaquod did finally reach the village site, the enemy would be practically back in their own villages.
But Pentaquod would have none of this, and was determined to press forward to see what kind of people the Nanticokes were. But he was simply unable to budge his fellow spy; no amount of scorn, no appeal to Scar-chin's manhood prevailed. The little man refused to move forward ahead of the prudent schedule he had set himself, and in the end he attached himself to a locust tree and could not be budged, so Pentaquod moved alone to the river.
From a vantage point he observed the tag end of the Nanticokes as they rummaged one last time through the captured village, collecting final souvenirs of their raid. While the main body rambled east along the river, chanting a victory song which told of how they had subdued the fiercely resisting village, four laggards remained behind, wrestling with some captured article too big for them to handle. Pentaquod, watching them with amusement, could not resist making an arrogant gesture, even though he knew it was foolish and risky.
Leaping from behind a tree, he uttered his wildest war cry, brandished his spear and lunged at the four startled Nanticokes. They were terrified by this apparition, five hands taller than they and much broader of shoulder, and they fled. But one kept his senses long enough to shout to those ahead, 'The Susquehannocks!' and terror ensued.
The entire foraging party fell into panic, abandoning whatever they had stolen, and with great clatter stormed and thrashed their way in undignified retreat. So definitive were the sounds of defeat that even Scar-chin was lured from his hiding place in time to see his friend Pentaquod brandishing his spear and chasing an entire Nanticoke army through the woods. It had never occurred to Scar-chin that one resolute man might be the equal of four surprised Nanticokes or forty frightened ones, but when he saw the retreating feathers of the southern braves he realized that he had witnessed a miracle, and he began fashioning the ballad that would immortalize the victory of Pentaquod:
'Fearless he strode among the robbers,
Strong he faced the innumerable enemy,
Thoughtless of danger he engaged them,
Throwing the bodies up and over,
Smashing the heads and twisting the legs
Till the exhausted foe screamed and trembled,
Beseeching mercy, kissing his hands in fear...
It was an epic, a portrait in the most exalted woodland tradition, and as Pentaquod casually surveyed the trivial damage done his village and his wigwam, he listened with amusement to the chant. It reminded him of the war songs he had heard as a boy, when the Susquehannocks returned from their forays against the tribes to the south; those songs had depicted events of unbelievable heroism, and he had believed them:
Now the bravest of the brave Susquehannocks,
Cherodah and Mataloak and Wissikan and Nantiquod
Creep through the forest, spy out the fortress
And leap with violent bravery upon the foe...
And it now dawned upon Pentaquod that the village his ancestors had attacked with such bravery was this village; the enemies they had subdued were ones they had never faced, for the foe had been hiding in faraway marshes. There had been no battle save in the minds of ancient poets who knew that when braves march forth to battle, it is obligatory that there be victory songs.
And yet, even though he knew the fraudulence of such behavior, when the villagers timidly returned and saw to their delight that this time their goods had not been carried off, they began to chant Scar-chin's composition and to believe it. With appealing modesty Pentaquod stood silent, allowing Scar-chin to lead the applause. If the village had been saved, Pentaquod reasoned, it was because of my actions, and I will accept the credit. It was that night when the older men began thinking of him as a possible werowance.
But when word next reached the tribe that Susquehannocks were moving south, even though Pentaquod assured the villagers that he knew certain tricks which might fend them off—provided he could find nine brave men who would not run away—the old werowance brusquely countermanded his proposal. 'The only sensible thing to do is run into the marshes. We have been doing this for many years, and in all that time we have enjoyed a good life, with plenty of food and enough marsh grass to weave again the sides of our burned wigwams. Let the enemy have his triumph, if he needs it. Our security is in the marshes.'
The strange aspect of this policy was that it in no way diminished the self-respect of the villagers, and it certainly did not diminish Pentaquod; he had proved his valor against the Nanticokes, and Scar-chin had composed the epic. Pentaquod was a true hero, and he did not have to repeat his heroics endlessly to retain his reputation. As he fled with the others into the safety of the southern marshes, every man believed that if Pentaquod had wanted to oppose the Susquehannocks, he could have done so. Instead he preferred safeguarding his pregnant wife, and this, deemed the villagers, was much more sensible.
As they crossed the river, and hid their canoes, and straggled through the rushes that lined the southern shore, Pentaquod heard two tribal tales that fascinated him, and he kept asking the older men numerous questions: 'You say that to the east, where you go in summer, there is a river much greater than the ones I know?' 'The water is much saltier?' 'The birds are different and no man has ever seen the opposite shore?' 'And it is there, all the time, and a canoe cannot cross it?' 'What do you mean, waves coming to the shore so high they knock down a man?'
He was so excited by their descriptions, and so willing to believe because all agreed, that he wanted to set out immediately to see this marvelous thing, but the werowance said, 'We will be going there in the summer, to escape the mosquitoes.' So he waited.
The other story was incredible, much weightier than the tale of the big river, for it contained disturbing implications. He first caught rumor of it from Scar-chin, who said casually, 'Maybe when the Great Canoe returns, it will chastise the Susquehannocks.'
'What Great Canoe?'
'The one that came many winters ago.'
'It came where?'
'Near the island.'
'How big was it?'
'I didn't see it, but Orapak did, and so did Ponasque.'
He had gone immediately to Ponasque, a very old man now, to ask directly, 'Did you see the Great Canoe?'
'I did,' the old man said as they huddled in the marshes.
'How big was it?'
'Twenty canoes, forty, piled one on the other. It rose high in the air.'
'How many paddlers?'
'None.'
This was the most ominous statement Pentaquod had ever heard, a Great Canoe moving without paddles. He contemplated this for some time, then asked the old man, 'You saw this thing, yourself, not some great story recited at night?'
'I saw it, beyond the island.'
'What did you think of it?'
The old man's eyes grew misty as he recalled that stupendous day when his world changed. 'We were very afraid. All of us, even Orapak. We could not explain what we had seen, but we had seen it. The fear has never left us, but as the years pass we have managed to forget.' He indicated that he was not happy to have a stranger to the tribe revive those distant fears and he would say no more.
By prudent questioning, Pentaquod satisfied himself that all members of the tribe believed that the Great Canoe had indeed come to the mouth of the river, that it was huge in size, that it moved without paddles. One old woman added to the story: 'It was white on top, brown at the bottom.'
Pentaquod carried the disquieting news with him as they penetrated deeper into the swamp, and when they reached relatively solid ground on which they could camp, he went to the werowance and asked bluntly, 'What did you think, Orapak, when you saw the Great Canoe?'
The old man sucked in his breath, then sat down beneath an oak. He reflected on what he should reply to this penetrating question, knowing that it cut to the heart of his tribe's existence, then said slowly, 'I cannot come into the marshes again. I find it too exhausting and know that my time for death is at hand. You must be the next werowance.'
'I did not ask about that, Orapak.'
'But this is the significant answer to what you did ask.'
Of this Pentaquod could make no sense, but the old leader continued, 'When we gathered on the shore that day to see the Great Canoe as it moved slowly north, all of us saw the same thing. You are probably aware of that from the questions you've been asking.'
Pentaquod nodded. He was convinced that this tribal memory was no mere chant composed by some imaginative ancestor like Scar-chin. Satisfied on this point, the old man went on, 'When the others had seen the Canoe, and assured themselves that it was real, they returned home, but my grandfather, the werowance then, took my father and me along the shore, and we were hiding in the forest when the Canoe came close, and we saw that it contained men much like us and yet much different.'
'How?'
'Their skins were white. Their bodies were of some different substance, for the sun glistened when it struck.'
That was all the old man knew, and since none of the others had told him of these startling facts, he realized that this was privileged knowledge, to be possessed only by the succession of werowances. In sharing this sacred knowledge of the glistening bodies, Orapak was passing along to Pentaquod the burden of leadership. He did not need to warn that no mention must be made of what the Great Canoe actually contained, for it was clear that one day it must return, bringing the enigma of men with white skins and bodies that reflected sunlight.
'They will come back, won't they?' Pentaquod asked.
'They will.'
'When?'
'Every day of my life I have risen from my bed with one question: Is this the day they will return? Now that burden is yours. You will never place your head upon the sleeping reeds without wondering: Will they come tomorrow?'
They buried the canny old werowance, a craven who had lost his village a score of times but never a man in battle, deep in the swamps away from the river he had loved. From his tired, worn body they removed the copper disk symbolic of leadership, proffering it to Pentaquod, but he refused, for such disks of authority were not part of the Susquehannock ritual. Instead he planted three tall turkey feathers in his hair, so that he towered even more conspicuously over his little charges, and Scarchin recited his epic of how the new werowance had once defeated the Nanticokes single-handed. And so this tribe became the next in that strange procession of nations who choose as their leader someone who is not even a member of their tribe.
The first test of Pentaquod's leadership came when the Nanticokes marched north on their traditional raid. The women assumed that the tribe would flee north in the accustomed manner, but some of the younger warriors, infected by Scar-chin's epic, believed they should stand and fight. 'With Pentaquod to plan the battle,' they argued, 'we could repel the invaders and end our annual shame.'
The idea was tempting to Pentaquod the man, but in his capacity as werowance, on whom the safety of the tribe depended, he had to think more cautiously. He could not casually sacrifice any men, for his was a trivial group, small and frightened and inconsequential. A sore defeat might demoralize them, leaving no base for continued existence. Furthermore, he had achieved his memorable victory over the four Nanticoke warriors by surprise, and he was not at all sure this could be repeated. He told the young warriors, 'Let us scout the Nanticokes to see how they approach this time.'
So he and two of the most excitable young fighters crept into the woods, went far upstream and swam across the river onto alien land. There they hid until the noisy Nanticokes came into sight, and as Pentaquod had suspected, this time they did not move without sentinels and forerunners. There would be no surprising this expedition, for it was prepared.
The enthusiasm of the young warriors dampened. In some consternation they scurried back to inform the others, 'They are marching as a well-prepared army. We had better go the rivers.' And with a very willing Pentaquod in the lead, they fled.
When they returned to their village, it was Pentaquod who surveyed the damage; it was not great but it was humiliating, and he vowed: They will not do this again.
That summer he did not allow his people to abandon their land because of the mosquitoes. 'We will stay here and fortify it. We will lay subtle traps along the approaches, and all men will learn some skill at arms. Anyone who complains of the mosquitoes will get no crab meat.'
It was a trying summer. The mosquitoes were terrible; at dusk hundreds would land on any exposed arm or face, and people stayed close to smudge pots when the sun went down. They smeared themselves with bear grease, slept with blankets about their heads and rose weary from the sticky heat which had kept them sweating through the darkness. But they were inspired by the vision held before them by their tall young werowance: 'When the Nanticokes come this year, what a surprise they will get at this tree!' By testing his young men repeatedly, he satisfied himself that they would stand firm and execute their surprise.
He used every military idea developed by the Susquehannocks and invented others appropriate to the situation, and when the mosquitoes disappeared in early autumn they left behind a village prepared to defend itself.
The young men actually hungered for the Nanticokes to arrive, but some untoward event in the south delayed the customary expedition, and the fledgling warriors chafed. Pentaquod, knowing that he must keep their enthusiasm high, divided his tribe into portions, one marching against the other, and thus they perfected their strategies. And then one cool day at the start of winter, when geese lined the river, scouts ran in with the long-awaited news: 'The Nanticokes are coming.'
The southerners came with their accustomed noise and self-assurance, with only casual scouts in the forefront; following Pentaquod's surprising assault on them, they had been attentive to details, but now they were, as he had predicted to his troops, careless once more. They came through the woods like revelers; they forded the river like people swimming for pleasure; they straggled down the right bank of the river as if attending a celebration.
And then they came to Pentaquod's carefully disposed troops. From behind trees arrows were launched, and men appeared with spears, while ahead the ground gave way, projecting the forward troops into pits, and strange sounds echoed through the forest, and even women appeared, beating sticks. Confusion and pain captured the Nanticokes, and in the end all they could do was flee, leaving behind more than twenty prisoners. Never had they known such a debacle.
The little villagers, finding themselves with an unprecedented victory and also a score of captives, did not know what to do with either. Unaccustomed to war other than the retreats it caused, they had no concept of what one did with prisoners, and when Pentaquod explained that in the north his Susquehannocks followed three courses of action, they listened attentively. 'The wounded we kill. The strong we turn into slaves. The swift we send back to their people with insulting messages.'
The villagers nodded approval of these suggestions, completely unaware of what they entailed, but their werowance continued, 'However, we wounded no one, so there are none to kill.' Most of them saw the common sense of this judgment, and indeed applauded it because they had no taste for killing. 'We do not need slaves, because there is no work for them to do, and if we made work, we would also have to make meals for them.' This, too, was irrefutable. 'And I do not think we ought to send insulting messages to the Nanticokes. We want them for our friends, not our enemies.'
To some, this was a surprising verdict. Many, especially those who had not participated in the battle, desired to humiliate their enemy and had devised clever ways for doing so; they were disgusted that Pentaquod should preach conciliation, but he received support from a strange quarter.
Two young warriors who had stood behind the first tree where the traps were sprung confessed that they had been terrified, and that if even one thing had gone wrong, they would have been surrounded and killed. 'It is much better for the Nanticokes to come as friends,' they reasoned. 'Let us feast the prisoners and talk with them and send them south with our respect.'
As soon as the words were spoken Pentaquod cried, 'Let us do just that!' and his counsel prevailed, and the feast was held with goose and deer and yams and baked fish and pumpkin sweetened with the juice of cornstalks, and tobacco was smoked in long pipes which passed from hand to hand. One of the Nanticokes of good family said at the conclusion, 'We will inform our people that we are no longer enemies,' and the sun rose before the new friends parted.
This dramatic change of affairs created a feeling of profound excitement in the village, and talk became heady. 'Never again will we desert our village to the Nanticokes. We have proved that we can fight better than those fools. One of these days we'll march south to their villages, and they'll see what a change has occurred.'
Pentaquod took no notice of this bombast; he recognized it as the boastfulness which Susquehannock warriors had engaged in when he was a boy, but when he heard his people tell one another that the entire system of the world was altered by their victory, he became worried. And when they boasted that next time the Susquehannocks marched down from the north there would be war, he called a halt.
'The Susquehannocks are not Nanticokes,' he warned. 'Not one of our tricks would fool them, because they are Susquehannock tricks, and they use them against their enemies.' He harangued them for an extended period, and then a happy metaphor came to him. Lowering his voice and leaning forward to face his enthusiastic warriors, he told them, 'Among the Susquehannocks, I was a small man.' His height was so great as he said this, his torso so much broader than theirs, that they could only gasp.
'What shall we do when they come again?' they asked, subdued.
'We shall cross the river, hide our canoes and go into the swamps,' he said, and into the swamps he led them.
In the decade that followed—1586–1595 by western calendar—Pentaquod became the best werowance his people had ever known. He was a tall, courageous, kindly man serving among a small, frightened people. When his tribe went east to the Great Waters, he led the way and carried his share of the burdens, and on the rare occasions when they had to flee into the southern marshes, his ability to absorb such ignominy without losing good spirits inspired them.
They no longer had to hide in the northern rivers, because he had arranged lasting peace with the Nanticokes, and the two tribes now traded instead of fighting: dried deer meat to the Nanticokes, bright shells for roanoke to the villagers. There were even exchanges of visits, which were salutary, for the returning villagers boasted with perverse pride, 'Our mosquitoes are twice as fierce as theirs.'
Pentaquod and Navitan had a son to inherit the title, and then another, and all things prospered. He led his people east to the supreme river and watched as its salty waves came higher than his head to thunder upon the shore in shattering power. As he stood transfixed one day an illumination came to him: If the Great Canoe we await is able to move across this river of such tremendous power, it must be of vast size and the men who steer it must be even greater than the Susquehannocks. And he looked upon the ocean with dismay and wonderment.
There were other mysteries. At far-spread intervals on some starless night a child would cry, 'The light is there!' and in the forest across the river would come a single glimmer, and move about as if controlled by demons, and come to rest, glowing ominously through the dark passage of night. In the village parents hushed their children, and no one spoke of it. Through the long darkness the little people remained at water's edge, staring obsessively, wondering who or what could be moving on the southern shore, but there was never a satisfactory explanation, merely that flickering light emanating from some unknown source. Toward dawn it would vanish and not reappear for many years.
A greater mystery concerned the bay. It lay only a short distance to the west, but rarely did a villager see it and never did they venture upon it. In all their generations of living beside water, they had not discovered the sail, nor the fact that men could move across rivers and bays without paddling; to them the bay was alien. Its abundance offish and crabs and oysters was proscribed, and all they knew of this great river of rivers was that it was the route by which the fierce Potomacs attacked. They were content to leave this splendid body of water to their enemies, and never did they know the grandeur of sunset on broad waters or the rising of a sudden storm.
It was believed by the villagers that on those nights when portentous affairs impended, Fishing-long-legs would come to the river as the stars were beginning to fade, uttering mournful _kraannks_ to warn of imminent wonders. Then the people would huddle in the darkness, listening with terror to the sounds that echoed from the trees bending over the water.
On one such night in 1596, when distant nations were preparing to invade the bay, blue herons flew in great numbers from the swamps, scattering over the landscape before dawn to search the estuaries for swift-moving fish. Their cries filled the night, but if they distressed those men and women of evil conscience and with something to fear, they caused no apprehension in Pentaquod, because he knew that they had flocked to signal the birth of his third child, and before sunrise he heard the reassuring cry.
'A girl!' the midwife reported as she ran from the birthing hut.
'I am content,' Pentaquod replied gravely, but he was far more than that. He had always wanted a daughter who would comfort him when he retired from war, and at last he had one. As soon as it was respectable for him to visit the birthing hut, he stooped low, passed beneath the pine boughs and chains of acorns to take the hands of his wife. 'I am content,' he said and he was permitted to see the new child, so small that it was hard to believe she was his offspring. Holding his two forefingers apart, he indicated to his happy wife how really minute this child was, not at all like her two brothers at that age. He laughed, then lifted the tiny thing and held it against his cheek.
'Her name shall be Tciblento,' he said, and she became the most precious thing in his life, the joy of his later years. He taught her the lore of the river: where the geese clustered, and how to watch beavers at work, and the right striplings to cut for a wigwam, and how to burn out the heart of a tree in order to make a canoe. She learned to dive for oysters and fish for crabs, and with his urging she became an excellent cook.
But it was the grace of her movements that delighted him; she was as deft in dodging among trees as a fawn. The soft color of her skin was like a deer's, too, and she was never more beautiful than when she appeared suddenly from behind some tree as they were working in the forest—unexpected, bright of eye, quick of gesture.
Once as he worked among the trees, seeking pines from which canoes could be burned, he found her sleeping on a bed of needles, her hair thrown carelessly across her breast. Tears came into his eyes and he whispered, 'Tciblento, Tciblento, why were you born into the days of change?' He could foresee that in her lifetime the Great Canoe would return, imposing fearful difficulties as she endeavored to adjust to the new world it would bring. As he watched, a blue heron landed, uttering its mournful _kraannk_ , and without waking she twisted an end of hair.
Herons did not cry at random; they sent warnings. And he remembered that on the night of her birth the Choptanks had been warned.
It must be understood that this small tribe did not refer to itself as the Choptanks; that name would come much later and from strangers. No congregation so inconsequential would presume to appropriate a name. It was proper for others to do so, like the powerful Susquehannocks ( _from the smooth-flowing stream_ ) or the crafty Nanticokes ( _those who ply the tidewaters_ ) or the brutal Potomacs who ruled across the bay ( _those who live where the goods are brought in_ ). But Pentaquod's little group of inept fishermen referred to themselves as We, or Us, or, sometimes, The People. By the world they would be remembered as Choptanks.
Nor did they call their river by that name; indeed, they had no concept of it as an entity, with a distant beginning and a termination in the bay. They were content to know their little stretch of it and would have been astonished to learn that they commanded an entire water system which would one day be known by their name.
Nameless little people living upon a nameless river, they were destined to endow their somnolent region with one of the world's most tantalizing titles: Choptank. The word must have had a meaning at some point; if so, it has been forgotten. A very old woman once said that it meant _where the water flows back strongly_ , but she could explain nothing.
Pentaquod's two sons were now developing into responsible young adults, and Tciblento was an eight-year-old marvel, not so tall as her brothers but much quicker in mastering the lessons her father taught. She had begun to wear her long black hair in braids and had a saucy way of cocking her head when listening to elders. Her father delighted in his children, and it was partly because of wanting to be with them more that he summoned the tribe for his farewell oration:
'Your food supplies have never been more secure, and your village is no longer ravaged by Nanticokes. Never has your river known a happier time, with crabs for all in the summer and beaver pelts in winter to keep you warm. I have served with you long enough. The time is at hand when you must select one of your own people as werowance.'
Uneasiness followed this announcement, for the little people realized that without his towering guidance they might revert to the old days of fear and flight. The Nanticokes would learn that he was no longer leading the tribe and might conclude that continuing the peace was not in their interest, but the tall Susquehannock was insistent. Then he gave his reasons:
'Whenever, in the old days, we fled to the northern rivers I watched one spot where two waters meet, and I have always wanted to live there with Navitan and the children. When I first came to your river I lived on the island where Fishing-long-legs instructed me, and then on the cliff where I saw how beautiful this land can be, and in the marsh where Onk-or the goose came to see me, and then in this mysterious village where no people lived. I am a man who likes to live apart, and I feel a deep urge to build my wigwam between the two waters.'
'Who will be our werowance?' they asked, and he told them that they should select a young man who could serve them for two generations, and when they protested that they had never chosen their leader before, he allowed his eyes to wander over the frightened crowd. They came to rest on Matapank, who had stood beside him in battle, and when the villagers realized that Pentaquod had indicated his choice, they shouted, 'Matapank!' and were gratified.
Pentaquod believed that once he announced his decision to leave, he should do so in a hurry, for if he lingered, he would detract from the importance of the new werowance. Accordingly, he gave Matapank an intensive series of instructions, until that somber day when he joined him in a canoe and paddled downriver past the island to the margin of the bay. There, as the canoe drifted idly, he handed over the hidden burden of leadership. 'You've heard of the time when the Great Canoe came into these waters.' The new werowance nodded. 'What you haven't heard is that when it moved along the shore Orapak, who was a boy then, and his grandfather, who was the werowance, crept behind trees and spied upon the people in the canoe.'
Matapank pursed his lips; he knew the traditions of his tribe, but of such an adventure he had not heard. 'What did they see?'
'The people in the canoe had fair skins, not like us, and they had different bodies.'
'In what way?'
'They glistened. When the sun struck their bodies, they glistened.' Pentaquod allowed this information to sink in, then added, 'And the Great Canoe moved without paddlers.'
This was frightening. Values beyond comprehension were involved, and the young leader could make nothing of them. Then Pentaquod added his last intelligence: 'One day that canoe will return, and we shall be dealing with people entirely different... white skins... glistening bodies.'
Matapank had been eager to take on the responsibilities of leadership, but these new factors evoked apprehension. 'When they come, will you help me?'
'They may not come in my lifetime,' Pentaquod said.
'I think they will,' the young man replied.
'Why?'
'Long ago I dreamed that I would be the werowance. It happened. And at the same time I dreamed that others came to the river, neither Nanticokes nor Susquehannocks. And they will come.'
Pentaquod liked this response. The leader of a tribe should be one who has visions of the future, who can adjust his thinking to developments which he knows to be inevitable. In his case he had known from the start that peace with the Nanticokes was possible, and his every act as werowance had led in that direction. He had also known that his pitiful little tribe could never defeat the Susquehannocks, and he had kept them from making that fatal effort.
'You are ready to lead,' he told Matapank as they allowed the canoe to drift, and when they reached shore he handed the new leader a cherished talisman, which he had kept hidden for this moment: the copper disk long worn by the werowance of this tribe. Then he promised, 'If the strange ones return while I am alive, I will help.'
That day he and his family left the village. Putting aside his three turkey feathers, he led his family to a pair of sturdy canoes, one burned from oak, one from pine, and together they paddled west past the marshes and around the white cliffs into a beautiful small river. When they had penetrated for some distance, they came to a secondary stream leading inland, and when they had gone up this short way it bifurcated, forming within its arms the small peninsula he had noticed long ago.
Tree-covered, it projected south, to be warmed by the sun in winter. There were no marshes in which mosquitoes could breed, but enough deep salt water to produce oysters and crabs. In the forest there would be deer, and on all the waters geese. It was as fine a setting as the Choptank provided, a refuge with visible security and never-ending beauty. From the point on which Pentaquod and his sons erected their three wigwams the family could look down a broad perspective of the stream to the river and the distant pine trees lining the invisible Choptank.
Here Pentaquod spent the two happiest years of his life, 1605 and 1606 in the western calendar. He was older now and slightly stooped; his great broad face was deeply etched from years of leadership, and his hair was white. But he felt young, for his oldest son had left the refuge one summer's day to paddle back to the village, and when he returned he brought with him the sister of Matapank, the werowance, and soon Pentaquod had a grandson, longer and sturdier than the usual Choptank baby. 'He's to be a fine hunter!' Pentaquod predicted, and before the child could crawl the grandfather was making arrows for him.
But in the next year a canoe came rushing up the creek, and even before it reached land the breathless paddlers shouted in a mixture of confusion and fear, 'Pentaquod! The Great Canoe has come!'
He was forty-nine that year of 1607, a man who had earned repose, but when this long-anticipated information reverberated through the forest, he did what he had always known he must eventually do: he put on his turkey feathers, told his family to pack and ordered them to follow as soon as possible. Almost eagerly, like a young buck bursting into a new meadow, his antlers ready, he jumped into the messengers' canoe and headed back to the village. It was as if he had consciously retired from leadership two years before in order to husband his strength and purify his understandings for the profound tests that lay ahead; he was prepared.
But as the canoe left the small stream to enter the river which would take him to his new responsibilities, he looked back with sorrow and longing at the peninsula which he had transformed. He would not see it again, and he knew this, for with the arrival of the Great Canoe not only would his paradise be lost, but that of all the Choptanks.
# _Voyage Two: 1608_
ON A COLD, BLUSTERY DAY IN MID-DECEMBER 1606 Captain John Smith, a short, choleric, opinionated little man with a beard and a fiery temper, assembled seven daring gentlemen on a dock in the Blackwall section of London and addressed them in crisp terms: 'I have brought you to inspect the vessels in which we shall conquer Virginia.' And he showed them the three small ships that would carry them to the New World, calling off their names: ' _Susan Constant_ , one hundred tons. _Godspeed_ , forty tons. The little pinnace _Discovery_ , twenty tons. And down here, at the end, the object of our meeting this day.'
And he showed them, riding on the Thames at the foot of the dock, a small double-ended, single-masted open shallop twenty-three feet long with eight ominous oars. 'You, Edmund Steed, jump in,' Smith commanded, and a fair young man of twenty-five, dressed in the clothes of a scholar, obeyed. Soon all seven were aboard manning their oars while Captain Smith, barely five feet tall, stood approvingly on the dock, watching the little craft adjust to the weight.
'Sturdy vessel!' he cried, snapping his words as if issuing a command. Then, drawing himself to maximum height, he saluted the boat.
He was twenty-six that winter—difficult, vain, unbearably ambitious. He had, by his account, already survived dangers that would have destroyed an ordinary man: mercenary in the most brutal years of the German wars, heroic defender of Christianity when the Muhammadans invaded Hungary, captured slave immured in a Turkish dungeon, foot-traveler to Muscovy and Madrid. And now he surveyed his fleet on the eve of his finest adventure: the establishment of a new colony, the subjugation of a new world.
'We're off!' he shouted as he jumped into the shallop. Grabbing the eighth oar, he began rowing with an energy that shamed the others, and soon they were moving briskly down the Thames. When they passed the three larger ships Smith yelled, 'Mister Steed, have you handled sail?'
'That I have not, sir,' the scholar replied, at which Smith bellowed, 'Then stand clear as Mister Momford runs it up.' And a gentleman who had knowledge of boats manipulated the sheets so that a fore-and-aft sail climbed the mast. With it in place, the shallop moved so smartly that rowing was no longer required.
'Ship the oars!' Smith ordered, but since the gentlemen were unfamiliar with this command, confusion resulted. 'Bring in the oars!' Smith roared, and they were shipped, as he had wanted.
When the brief trip was completed, with the shallop safely in dock, Smith surprised his crew by ordering them to haul the little craft ashore, after which he handed Steed and Momford buckets of paint and brushes, instructing them to number every board used in construction of the boat. 'Each is to have its proper number, at four different spots, indicating its relation to every other board that touches it.'
When this curious task was completed he summoned carpenters, who dismantled the boat, knocking out nails and wooden wedges until only piles of timber lay on the dock. These he ordered tied in lots and carried aboard the _Susan Constant_ , where they were stowed below decks, and when all was secure, Smith led Steed to the edge of the hold in which they could see the bundled spars.
'An idea of mine,' he said. 'Conceived while imprisoned in a Turkish harem,' and once more he saluted the boat which would play so crucial a role in establishing the Virginia Colony.
Because of his arrogance and vile temper, Captain Smith fared poorly in Jamestown. Thrown in jail for attempted mutiny, captured by Indians, near death at the hands of Powhatan, and actually led to the gibbet to be hanged for insubordination, he was saved by a last-minute revelation. Cocksure and prescient, he survived travail, gave the colony the iron leadership it required, and found time to pursue his major preoccupation: the exploration of the Chesapeake. 'This is a noble sea,' he told his men at night, after the day's work ended. 'Calm and hospitable, majestic in size. Its potential cannot be imagined.'
He had already mounted two preliminary explorations and was encouraged by what he had found: broad rivers, innumerable harbors, a plenitude of fish and crabs, and meadows yearning to be cultivated. But his two preconceived targets had eluded him: he had not found a passage to India, he had not uncovered the gold and silver which were known to exist somewhere along the shores of the Chesapeake.
'Infuriating,' he growled one July day in 1608. 'Three years ago I heard the facts for myself. The leaders of the expedition were busy securing permissions in London, so a noble lord and I attended a play, very little substance and I was about to leave, for I do not waste my time idly. But destiny tugged my sleeve and kept me... for a purpose. An actor in this play strode to the edge of the stage and orated directly at me, none other. He spoke of Virginia and told me what I should find here. Silver more common than copper. Kitchen pans and bedroom pots made of pure gold. Rubies and diamonds in the streets. Children gathering pearls along the streams. The riches are here, if only we can find them.'
On Saturday, August 9, he outlined his plan: 'The gold lies, I am convinced, in towns hidden along the eastern shore of the bay, and there we shall explore most carefully. The passage to India probably starts from the northern tip, so after we have found our gold we shall probe north to identify the passage, then return to Jamestown with our profit.'
The men agreed that this was prudent strategy, and on Sunday all sixteen—seven gentlemen, eight sailors and Captain Smith—attended church, where long prayers were uttered, and on the morning of August 11 he marched his crew to the banks of the James, where he addressed them in solemn tones: 'We shall be gone thirty days, and at the end you will wish it had been ninety.' He then ordered his fifteen hands into the reassembled shallop, directed them to take up their oars, and stood like Alexander the Great in the bow of the boat, looking for new horizons.
Among the gentleman rowers Edmund Steed, who had not participated in Smith's two earlier explorations, had been selected for a particular purpose. Smith had not been entirely pleased with the narrative reports of his first journeys; they had been geographically accurate but had paid insufficient attention to his moral and heroic qualities. This time he was determined that his accomplishments be presented with proper flourishes.
Steed came from an ancient Devon family and was a graduate of Oxford. He wrote well, was familiar with classical allusions and showed a proper respect for the captain. Both on the _Susan Constant_ and ashore at Jamestown he attracted attention, and Smith now assured him, 'I seek only an accurate account of what occurs during our exploration. Strict attention to where we sail and special detail when we move ashore.' He paused as Mister Momford prepared to break out the sail, then added confidentially, 'And it would be prudent if you paid attention to the words and heroic deeds of the commander.'
Steed understood. He had always been properly attentive whenever Smith entertained his companions with reports of his adventures in Hungary... his painful months undergoing Turkish tortures... his romantic escapes in Muscovy... his daring in Spain. Steed sometimes marveled that a man only a year older than himself should have experienced so much, and he might have been tempted to brand the little warrior a liar except for the fact that Smith always spoke with an inherent veracity. His tales sounded true, and he quickly convinced the impartial listener that he had really been to the places whose names rolled off his tongue, for he gave the temperature, and how the city lay in relation to its river, and what his captors wore and which specific weapons were carried by the enemies he had slain in hand-to-hand combat.
Steed's belief in his commander stemmed from an incident which had occurred during the long voyage from England, when Smith told in one brief afternoon of wild adventure in four different lands, ending with Spain, and Steed had thought: I'll wager he never touched foot in Spain, the braggart. But then the little captain, as if alerted to the fact that an unbeliever lurked among his hearers, closed with a remarkable evocation:
'And of all the cities I was to see in my travels, the one I remember most fondly is the dusty town that lies at the mouth of the great river leading to Sevilla in Spain. Sanlúcar de Barrameda is its name, and it holds the left bank of Wady-al-Quivir, as they call it. It's a small and sun-baked town, with many grazing fields nearby and vast swamps filled with birds. It's favorably regarded by sailors for the delicious pale wine its vintners make, for there is a square near the center of Sanlúcar where the wine-men sell their goods, accompanied by a salty little fish they call the anchoovy. I tasted the fish but not the wine.'
The words rang like a bell at dusk, and Steed abandoned any doubts he may have had. Smith might not have been prisoner in a Turkish harem, and he probably did not kill three adversaries during a horseback tournament with lances, but that he had visited a dusty Spanish town at the mouth of a river, no one could deny.
As Jamestown disappeared behind a bend, Steed took careful note of the shallop lest he omit significant details: no decking, no refuge from storms, barrels of bread already turning sour, a batch of dried meats, some with worms, and a large supply of fishing lines. 'There'll be plenty of fish,' Smith assured the rowers, and when Mister Momford got the frayed sail aloft, Steed took note that it had been mended twice. Such deficiencies he intended to report, for their existence would make the captain's ultimate discovery of gold and the passage even more impressive.
If the gentlemen and the sailors felt any apprehension about exploring with such inadequate gear, their captain did not. His buoyancy was remarkable, and when the shallop responded nicely to the wind he cried, 'Fairly launched! It's to be a famous journey!' Steed wrote down these remarks and others on the folded sheets he carried in a canvas bag, and that night he transcribed them into a proper journal, which Captain Smith reached for as soon as it was completed.
He did not like what he saw. He did not like it at all. The geographical facts were accurate enough, but he was chagrined that he should have misjudged Steed's talents by such a margin, and with the forthrightness which characterized him, he broached the subject. 'Mister Steed, at the beginning of our historic journey you have me saying, "We shall be gone thirty days, and at the end you will wish it had been ninety." That's a poor speech for the launching of a great adventure.'
'It's what you said, sir.'
'I know. But our time onshore was brief. You must take that into consideration.' And he grabbed the pen from his scribe and sat for some time beneath the swaying lantern, composing a more appropriate opening address:
As the day was far advanced and time precious, Captain Smith gathered his sturdy crew beside the shallop and told them, 'Men, we set forth this day on a journey of exploration which will dazzle the courts of Europe. In Virginia we shall find gold and silver. It may be we shall uncover the hidden passage to the treasures of India and China. We shall garner the aromatic spices of the islands. We shall penetrate to where no Englishmen have gone before, and we shall return with jewels and rare cloths to gladden the heart of any monarch. We make this voyage to further the Glory of God, to carry His Word to lands which know it not, and to bring everlasting greatness to our beloved King James, late of Scotland but now of all Britain.
With a flourish Captain Smith shoved the paper back to his scribe, who held it near the lantern, his blond features betraying the astonishment he felt as he read the captain's corrections.
'You never said those things, Captain.'
'I was thinking them,' Smith snapped. 'Had there been time, I'd have said them.'
Steed was about to protest when he looked into the shadows and saw the bearded face of his little commander. It was like iron edged with oak, and he realized that Smith would have made just such a speech had the occasion permitted, and he sensed that it was not what a soldier said, but what he intended, which provided motivation. John Smith lived intimately with possibilities that other men could not even imagine, and in his dreaming he forced them to become reality. Edmund Steed and Thomas Momford might be in a leaky shallop with poor food and no protection, exploring a land-locked bay; Smith was already through the northwest passage and far into the Pacific, riding a caravel.
On the seventh day of the journey Steed caught a glimpse of the real John Smith and of the island that would command his own attention for the rest of his life. They had been picking their way fruitlessly up the eastern shore, dropping into one disappointing river after another, making desultory contact with Indians who had never seen iron, let alone gold or silver, and Steed had written:
Wicomico and Nanticoke, we explored these rivers for miles, trusting to find some city of richness where the chamber pots were made of gold, but we found instead only the meanest Indian villages populated by savages with knowledge of nothing. Our heroic captain never lost heart and distinguished himself by trading cleverly for potatoes and lengths of roanoke to be used against the tribes near Jamestown. It was while conducting such trades with the Nanticokes that he cleverly learned of a river next north called the Choptank, whose capital city called Patamoke is known to have much gold.
So the shallop sailed north with its cadre of excited explorers, and when a great broad river was sighted, Smith cried, 'This is our Choptank! Here is Patamoke, city of gold!' But as the little boat breasted the southern headland protecting the river, Edmund Steed saw his island: delicate in outline, secured within the river, perfected by a crown of trees. 'Captain Smith,' he called, 'have you ever seen a fairer island?' and the little warrior studied the land from several angles and said, 'Too low for a fort.'
It required about four hours for the slow-moving shallop to approach and pass the island, and during all that time Steed leaned on one of the sheer strakes and stared. He saw numerous indentations at which they could have landed, had Captain Smith been so inclined, and trees of noble height and even a small river leading into the heart of the island. When he spotted a large meadow crying for cattle, he thought: This is the best of England transported across the sea. I shall name it Devon.
That evening the shallop anchored well into the Choptank, under the protection of a white cliff, and while one assignment of men tried to catch fish for supper a party of Indians appeared in two canoes, announcing in sign language that their werowance desired the leader of the strangers to accompany them to their capital city, where they would be welcomed. Night fell as the Englishmen debated whether or not their captain should risk such a journey, and many opinions were offered, for the invitation posed difficult problems, as Steed reported:
In the darkness we could not see the waiting Indians nor have any indication of their intentions, but they could see us, for our mast was outlined against the sky. Thomas Momford pointed out that Captain Smith had twice been lured into traps like this and had, indeed, been captive of Powhatan, leading chief on the western shore. This remembrance encouraged Captain Smith to relate that occurrence. 'Powhatan ordered two blocks of stone to be brought in, and I was stretched across them, and a brave stood above me with his warclub ready to strike out my brains, when a miracle took place and I was saved.'
Steed had heard this story five times now; he was convinced that Smith thought the affair had happened that way, but he was far from sure it had. And then, toward dawn, Smith made his decision:
He told us simply, 'I must go to the City of Patamoke, for it is there we shall find the gold.' No argument would dissuade him, and when light broke he nominated Chirurgeon Ragnall and Edmund Steed to accompany him. As we climbed into the waiting canoe Thomas Momford cried, 'Take care, Captain!' and Smith replied, 'A captain must never fear to meet a captain.'
The short trip from the cliff to the city was one of intense excitement, for Captain Smith could smell gold, and in his anticipation he told Steed, 'If they meet us in great procession, I will go first and you march behind with Ragnall in proper form to impress them with our military bearing.' Steed took notes of what happened:
After passing a huge marsh filled with birds and waving brushes, we approached our long-desired goal, the City of Patamoke, headquarters of the powerful Choptanks who control this river, and our hearts beat fast. Captain Smith, always protecting himself from unexpected attack, leaned forward in the canoe to catch a first sight of the settlement, and when he saw only a circle of wigwams, a mound of oyster shells and nothing more he looked at his companions blankly.
Ashore we faced a new confusion. We identified the werowance immediately, because of the copper disk he wore upon his chest. His name was Matapank, and he impressed us little, for since he lacked both dignity and authority, he was reluctant to make decisions. He was accompanied, however, by a gigantic white-haired Indian wearing three turkey feathers in his hair, and this man, whose name was Pintakood, appeared to be the real werowance.
No gold, no silver, no pearls, no rubies, no emeralds. Even the copper of the disk had been traded for. The Indians were small and lacking in dignity, except the one man Pintakood, whose daughter of some twelve years stayed with him, as handsome as he.
Captain Smith, sorely disappointed with this pitiful village, felt that he must at least go through the motions of an exploration, so he produced from his canvas bag an assortment of attractive items: glass beads from Venice, an iron hatchet, eighteen lengths of highly colored cloth, and for the werowance a final present which captivated all the Indians.
It was a small ivory object, hinged at one side with a metal lid, which, when raised, disclosed a polished glass, covering something unbelievable: a needle, thin and delicate, resting on a pivot so that no matter how the ivory case was turned, this dancing needle found its way back to one constant position.
What could this be? The young werowance took it in his hands, moved it in circles and watched as the needle danced home to its assigned position. He was bewildered.
Those about him were more impressed by the fact that they could see the needle—clearly they could see it—but the invisible glass prevented them from touching it, and this, too, was a miracle. The lesser Choptanks wanted to pass the gift from hand to hand, but the werowance would not surrender it.
Then Smith spoke. Knowing not a word of their language, he used a minimum of gestures to indicate the sky, the darkness of night and the stars which formed the Dipper in the constellation Ursa Major. His gestures were incomprehensible to the young werowance, but the giant with the turkey feathers studied closely, then suddenly reached for a stick and drew in the dust the seven stars of the Big Dipper.
'Yes!' Smith shouted, pointing to the heavens. And with his forefinger he indicated how the constellation pointed to the North Star, but this was unnecessary, for the giant already knew. With his own gestures he indicated that the needle sought north, and Smith nodded.
A feast was held at noon, with bear meat and cakes of crab, after which Captain Smith dispatched Chirurgeon Ragnall back to the shallop with news that all was well; he and Steed would spend the night with the werowance. Ragnall protested that the captain might be falling into yet another trap, but Smith ignored him, and that night, as the summer stars appeared, Steed sat with the daughter of the tall man with the turkey feathers. Her name, he deduced after she had pronounced it for him numerous times, was something like Tsiblinti, and she fed him an exciting mixture of corn and beans which she called succotash, if he had the word right.
When they returned to the shallop he faced the exacting task of describing this adventure. He wanted to be accurate and to report the placid quality of this Indian village, yet he knew that he must also display Captain Smith in heroic posture, and this was difficult. When the commander read the narrative he could not hide his displeasure.
'You want to name the island Devon? And so it shall be, but would it not be wiser to show in the record that this was my decision, not yours?'
'I merely proposed it, sir. Confirmation is left to you.'
'Confirmed, but I would prefer the record to show that the suggestion came from me, too.'
'It will be noted.'
Then Smith frowned and pointed to the real trouble. 'You spend too few words on our departure. You must recall, for you were involved, what a risky business we undertook. It is no mean task for three men to go unarmed into the heart of hostile Indian territory.'
Steed was about to say that he had never seen people less hostile, Indian or not, but he deemed it wiser to keep his silence. Passing the pages over to the captain, he held the lantern so that Smith could edit them, and after a while he was handed this:
We were now entering the most considerable river on the eastern shore, the river of the Choptanks, at whose mouth stands a most beautiful low island with fair meadows and goodly tall trees. We saw fresh waters running through the woods and all men were ravished at the sight thereof. It minded us of the fair lands of Devon and Captain Smith named the island in their honor. After we had passed this island and proceeded a goodly distance up the Choptank we were accosted by a group of fierce and hostile Indians, and the Captain appreciated at once that our safety depended upon how we dealt with these savages, who could have killed our little band supposing they had wished. He therefore adopted the bold stratagem of demanding that they lead him to their werowance, who was indicated to be at some remove in the capital city of Patamoke. Several men protested the danger of such a journey on his part, pointing out that the savages would outnumber us hundreds to one and could kill us without risk. But Captain Smith Was determined to meet the werowance and to conclude a treaty with him for the food we needed, so he assembled his men and told them, 'The wise Machiavel in his instruction to princes has properly said that men, iron, money and bread be the necessities of war, but of these four the first two be of most importance, because men and iron can find money and bread, but bread and money never find men and iron.'
Thereafter he stepped boldly forth with Chirurgeon Ragnall and Mister Steed as companions, and cried to the Indians, 'Take me to Patamoke!' We climbed into the enemy's canoe and went to meet the werowance of the Choptanks. He was a confusing man named Matapank, of little consequence, but in devious manner he masked the real leader, one Pintakood, no brighter than he. The pair were much disposed to harm us, but Captain Smith spoke to them with signs and gave them a compass encased in ivory, which much amused them, especially that they could see the needle through the glass but not touch it. They were incapable of understanding what this strange device was, but our Captain explained to them what the heavens were and the roundness of the earth, and how the planets danced and the sun did chase the night around the world continually.
When Steed read this dumbfounding report he did not know where to begin. It was all true, and at the same time totally false. He skipped the part about the naming of Devon Island; Captain Smith commanded, and until he confirmed a name, it had not been given. He was also willing to ignore Smith's claims that the Indians had been hostile; to one so often the victim of Indian guile they might have seemed so. And he was even content to have the giant warrior with the three turkey feathers appear stupid, because the others were. He thought, with some accuracy: Smith hated the clever Choptank because the Indian was so very tall and he so very short. He wanted him to be stupid.
But it did gall the Oxford student to have Smith quoting Machiavelli to inspire his men. 'I heard no Machiavel,' he said cautiously.
'The Indians were pressing, and I had not the time.'
Steed made no response, and Smith continued, 'If a captain leads his men into strange waters against a strange enemy, it is wise for him to think of Machiavel.' At this, Steed stared at the bottom boards, barely discernible in the darkness, but Smith was not content with acquiescence; he required positive acceptance. With a firm thumb he raised the younger man's face until stars gleamed upon it and their eyes were level. 'Tell me, Mister Steed, why would I have got into the canoe almost alone, and ventured into the enemy camp? Men and iron obtain food. It is never the other way around.'
In the dark night the two men glared at each other, with Steed determined to resist the blandishments of his captain. Smith, sensing this, lifted the young man's head higher and said, 'I insist that you make one more change in the part I have not yet improved.'
'Is this a command?'
'It is. In your account of our departure with the Indians, I want you to write that you volunteered, most gallantly.'
'But you commanded me to go.'
'If I had not, you would have volunteered, because you, like me, are a man of iron.'
Steed made no reply, and Smith moved forward in the shallop, but soon he was back with another emendation. 'Mister Steed, at the moment when I meet the Indian with the turkey feathers, must you emphasize the fact that he is so tall and I so short?' This time Steed said, 'My description was ungracious, and I will gladly change it.'
Still Smith was not through. Much later he awakened Steed with this suggestion: 'I think you should add that Captain Smith was so struck by the giant size of the Indian general that he felt sure the man could not be a Choptank but was probably a Susquehannock.'
Steed could not get back to sleep, and while the shallop rode easily on the waters of Choptank River he alternated between looking at the silhouette of the island he had named—soft and gentle in the night—and the dozing figure of his commander. Smith was an enigma, willing to make any alteration in the personal record of the trip, yet insanely determined to be accurate whenever geography was involved. At the entrance to every river he took repeated bearings. Constantly he consulted his compass, asking others to check him. He never entered into the log the height of a tree or the distance to shore without finding confirmation in the estimates of others, and with mapping he was meticulous. If he described the dress of a Choptank, he did so accurately.
He was restless in his sleep, and toward dawn came back to tell Steed, 'I think you can write that we shall not find gold or silver. That dream was vain.' He spoke these words with such obvious sorrow that Steed shared his heartache, but with the breaking of the sun the little commander was all energy as he shouted to the men, 'Well, to the westward passage.' And he sped the shallop north to his next disappointment.
He was a severe leader. One evening, as he assembled his company at the mouth of the Susquehanna, he whispered to Steed, 'I want you to write with special care what I do and say this night.' He then ordered the gentlemen to stand in one group, the sailors in another, and from the latter he commanded Robert Small to stand forth. When the man had done so he said harshly, 'Lift your right arm,' and when the arm was aloft, Smith stood on the fallen trunk of a tree and with a large goblet poured down the man's arm a large draft of cold water. 'Refill the goblet,' he told Steed, and when this was done he ordered the sailor to raise his left arm, whereupon he emptied the water down that sleeve.
'Tell the assembly what you did to warrant this punishment,' Smith snapped.
'I used an oath, sir.'
'You spoke God's name in anger?'
'I did, sir. I had caught a large fish and he escaped.'
'Return to ranks, Small.' The little captain then wheeled to address the entire company. 'If I demand that you conduct yourselves carefully, I have done the same. I have never drunk spirits, nor diced, nor gamed, nor smoked, nor uttered an oath, nor dallied with women, nor in any way diminished myself. I am a soldier, and I hold myself always to be one. If you sail with me, you do not dice or drink or utter oaths.'
That night, when the writing had been completed to Smith's satisfaction, he asked Steed, 'Do you propose becoming a soldier, too?'
'I have not the stomach for it, sir.'
'Some don't. What do you intend?'
'Devon Island is much in my mind. I think to settle there when this trip is done.'
'You have no patent. No permission.'
'It would be well, Captain, if the men at Jamestown thought less about patents and permissions.'
To a military man this was an unpalatable doctrine. A soldier identified his king or general, then served him; patents and proper orders and permissions were the lifeblood of the profession. But he could not expect Steed to understand; in this young scholar there was something devious, something hidden that Smith had not yet probed, and he was not surprised at the stated plans.
The passage to India was not found. The upper end of the bay petered out in a succession of flats and marshes on which the shallop repeatedly grounded, and on the fifth time that sailors swam out with the anchor so that the boat could be kedged, Captain Smith snapped, 'Mister Steed, tonight you can write that the passage does not exist... not for us.' Never again would he speak of that lost dream.
The exploration ended curiously. As the shallop drifted homeward down the western shore, Steed kept a fishing line astern, and of a sudden it was taken by a fish so large that he could not pull it in, and as he played the creature, Captain Smith reached into the water to help and was struck furiously in the wrist by the tail of a massive stingray.
Brushing the fish away, he looked at his arm and watched it begin to swell. Within moments it became immense—larger than his thigh—and the fingers began to turn purple. The pain was intense, so hurtful that he had to bite upon a piece of wood, and at the end of ninety minutes, when the arm grew darker in color and the pain unbearable, the little captain said to Steed and the surgeon, 'I am about to die. Dig me a grave from which I can see the bay.' And a group of sailors dug a grave and Smith marched to it, sitting himself at one end with his feet dangling inside.
As he sat there, saying nothing, contemplating the end of his adventures, the pain began to subside and the dreadful purple coloring left his arm, and when it became apparent that he would not die, nor lose the arm, he recovered his spirits and asked, 'Did we land the fish?'
'We did,' Steed said.
'Good. I will eat it for my supper.' It was fried and he ate it.
In the closing hours of this disappointing voyage Steed had to acknowledge that he had developed a positive affection for his captain. Smith stood a good four inches shorter than he and weighed fifteen pounds less, but he was pure energy, pure dedication to soldiering, and if he constructed entries to make himself seem braver than he had been, this was not ordinary falsification, because if events had demanded heroism, he would have provided it. Steed thought: Smith's trouble is with words. He demands that they convey what might have been.
The last river they visited was the York, and even though the weary sailors were approaching home, they complained bitterly of the food, the rain from which they had no protection, the insects. 'Thunderation!' Smith exploded. 'I could build a new Jerusalem on this bay if only I could find seventeen men unafraid of mosquitoes.'
Disconsolately he walked with Steed along the riverbank until they were hot and weary; then he fell onto a pile of drying leaves and confessed the failure of his grand designs. 'I sought brocaded cloths and found Indians wearing matted bark. I sought gold and was rewarded with marshy weeds. This bay has riches, but I was not destined to find them.'
As he spoke his hand restlessly stroked the leaves upon which he sat—tobacco, brought down the York by Indians for shipment to London. In years to come, bundles and bales and whole shiploads of this weed would move down the rivers of Virginia and Maryland, producing more gold and brocade than even Captain Smith had dreamed of.
# _The Island_
TO UNDERSTAND HOW EDMUND STEED, GENTLEMAN, happened to accompany Captain John Smith on his exploration of the Chesapeake in 1608, it is necessary to go back more than a hundred years.
As the fifteenth century ended, every soul in England was Catholic, which was understandable, since there were no other Christian religions in existence at that time and it was debated whether the few Jews in the realm had souls. King Henry VII, having wrested his throne from the infamous Richard III, ruled with the blessing of the Pope, to whom he willingly accorded both spiritual and temporal allegiance. After years of disturbance the country was at peace, the great monasteries housed clerics of power, and good Englishmen were content to be good Catholics. Martin Luther, who would later challenge this happy somnolence, was then fifteen years old and studying with enthusiasm to be a Catholic priest.
Englishmen had been happy, therefore, when in 1489 King Henry announced the formal engagement of his three-year-old son Arthur to the four-year-old Catherine of Spain, daughter of Ferdinand and Isabella, the most Catholic of majesties. This promised union of insignificant England with powerful Spain was a joyous occasion promising many benefits to the smaller island kingdom.
Twelve years later, when Catherine actually landed in England, she was seen to be a kindly, quiet, well-bred princess who promised to bring love and loyalty to the throne. Young Arthur was enchanted by his first sight of her, and married her gladly in October 1501, with representatives of the Pope lending official approval to this happy union of two Catholic kingdoms. It was an auspicious start to the new century.
Unfortunately, Arthur, heir to the throne of England, proved sickly, and in March 1502 he died. His widow, to the disappointment of all, was not pregnant.
This left King Henry VII with a nice dynastic problem: if he allowed Princess Catherine to escape England and return to Spain, he would forfeit whatever advantages might have accrued to a Spanish wedding; but there was no practical excuse for keeping her as a kind of hostage in London to ensure the good behavior of the Spanish monarchs.
Clever advisors, of which England seemed always to have an abundant supply, pointed out that the king had one justifiable way of preventing Catherine from slipping back to Spain: 'Marry her to dead Arthur's brother.' It was a capital idea, except that Henry, the brother, was only eleven years old, six years younger than his proposed bride.
And besides, no sooner had this diplomatic marriage been proposed than thoughtful clerics dismissed it, for it was contrary to church law. Thundered one divine, 'Leviticus twenty, verse twenty-one clarifies the matter for all time,' and he quoted the monitory verse in his own rude translation into English:
'No man shall marry his brother's widow. It is forbidden. To do so shames his brother's good name, and the couple shall remain childless.'
Nations had found through sad experience that family life could not be secure if brothers felt free to steal each other's wives. Royalty in particular had learned that younger brothers must understand from the start that they would not profit from the deaths of their older brothers. For the Widow Catherine to marry the brother of her dead husband would be immoral, illegal and contrary to church custom.
But the dynastic pressures continued. King Henry was an old man now, all of forty-five, and never in the best of health. He must take any steps necessary to secure the future of his hard-won crown, and the surest way to accomplish this would be to preserve and reinforce the alliance with Spain. Catherine must be kept in England.
So he sought out lesser divines who had not hastily committed themselves when the marriage had first been proposed, and sure enough, when these scholars searched the Bible they uncovered that fortunate passage at Deuteronomy 25:5 which contradicted Leviticus and not only permitted a man to marry his brother's widow, but actually commanded him to do so.
'If two brothers dwell together and one of them shall die childless, the widow of the dead man must not marry a stranger. Her dead husband's brother shall take her as his wife, and have children by her, and perform all the duties of a husband.'
There could hardly be a more concise instruction than that, or one which covered England's dynastic problem better, and when King Henry heard this injunction read aloud he clapped his hands and ordered an engagement to be arranged for his eleven-year-old son.
The king did not live long enough to see his heir happily married; he died on April 21, 1509, and out of respect for his memory—for he had been a sturdy king—young Henry, against his own best judgment, went ahead with his marriage to a woman six years his elder. The wedding took place a few weeks after the old king's burial and had happy consequences, except in the matter of providing an heir to the throne. Catherine was fertile enough, and seemed to be constantly pregnant: she bore child after child—boys among them—but they all died. One sickly daughter, Mary, did survive, but it was not a daughter that Henry sought.
In 1533 King Henry belatedly convinced himself that his marriage to this aging Spanish paragon had from the start been illegal and immoral. In the end he returned to Leviticus, abandoning Deuteronomy. With increasing rage he stormed among the Catholic clergy, demanding that they find scholars who would support him in his contention that Catherine had never been properly married to him and was therefore technically divorced. He found such scholars, of course, but not of high standing, and the Pope in Rome refused to acquiesce in their findings on various sensible grounds: that whereas the marriage might have been initially suspect, it had been performed; it had been consummated, as the child Mary proved; and it had endured for nearly a quarter of a century. Divorce was denied.
Now, King Henry was as staunch a Catholic as the kings of Europe provided; eleven years earlier he had written with his own hand and circulated widely a pamphlet refuting the renegade Martin Luther and reconfirming the leadership of the Pope. In gratitude for this advocacy, the Pope had officially proclaimed Henry 'Defender of the Faith,' a cherished title which all future sovereigns of England would hold. Since Henry had proved himself a veritable right hand of the Pope, he could not easily reject the pontiff because of one unpalatable decision; moreover, Henry honestly accepted the doctrines of the church and would have been appalled if anyone had accused him of lacking in enthusiasm for Catholicism. The upshot was that Henry could not divorce Catherine, which meant that he could not marry the toothsome young court attendant on whom his fancy had fallen, Mistress Anne Boleyn.
What to do? One cynic in London whispered, 'The Pope's bull has tied up the King's balls,' and later, when the issue had been resolved, this witticism would be remembered. The charge against this jokester would first be _lèse-majesté_ , later blasphemy, and finally treason, for which he would be strangled in the Tower. For one clever phrase he died.
Now the rumor began to circulate that Anne Boleyn was pregnant, with what everyone hoped would be a son, so a speedy resolution of the conflict with the Pope became imperative, lest the future king be born a bastard. The impasse was resolved rather cleverly: King Henry stated that whereas England and all Englishmen remained as Catholic as ever, acknowledging as before the Pope's spiritual supremacy, they rejected his temporal leadership. Henceforth there would be a Catholic church in various parts of Europe presided over by the Pope, and there would be another in England, equally Catholic but governed in all managerial matters by King Henry.
In a blaze of religious fervor he divorced Catherine the Spaniard and married Anne the lusty English girl. This caused such turmoil throughout Europe that he was goaded into proving he really was head of the local church, and he did this by a most practical maneuver. It occurred to him one night as he lay with Anne Boleyn that the Pope controlled more than one third the land of England; cathedrals, monasteries, churches, nunneries all owned vast estates and the peasants who worked them. With one simple edict Henry expropriated all those holdings, closed down the monasteries, denuded the cathedrals of their lands and, as he said, 'kicked the monks and friars and nuns into the village streets, forcing them to earn an honest living.' Then in his canny way he devised the most brilliant stratagem of all: he did not keep the new possessions for himself, nor did he deliver them to powerful dukes and earls who might later combine against him; he handed them instead to those stalwart men of the middle class who had supported him in his fight against the Pope. In this way he converted one third of England into his bounden supporters, and it was during this transfer that the ancestors of Edmund Steed entered the picture.
In the County of Devon, southeast of London, in the little town of Bishop's Nympton, halfway between Dartmoor and Exmoor, there had lived for several hundred years a distinguished and stubborn local family named Steed. They had been farmers of some wealth; the fathers had served as justices of the peace and the sons had gone off to Oxford. Both sons and daughters had married conservatively, and no scandal had ever touched the family, which, if it had produced no barons or earls, did produce a steady supply of men on whom the kings could rely.
Such a man was Devon Steed, forty-nine years old when his king, Henry, sought to divorce the Spanish queen. When the debate was most acrimonious, the king sought support from rural gentlemen of good reputation, and Cardinal Wolsey himself, the one who constantly connived to become Pope, asked Steed to rally assistance in his district.
Such a request posed a serious moral problem for Steed: he was a devout Catholic, he loved the Pope, he tithed, he led his family to the local chapel every Wednesday and Sunday, and he personally provided the priest's living. To side with a king against the Pope in an argument over the two contrasting verses in the Bible was a most grievous responsibility, and for some weeks he refrained, wrestling with his conscience over that passage in Leviticus which specifically forbade the kind of marriage Henry had been forced into with Catherine.
Could it be that the Pope was ignoring the Bible? Devon Steed would never concede that. But was it not possible that King Henry was right in claiming that he had had no legitimate male children because the curse of God was upon him, due to his incestuous marriage? Did not Leviticus warn that such a marriage would have no children?
For some days he stood on this precarious ledge, inclining now toward the Pope, now toward Henry. The dilemma was resolved ingeniously: Cardinal Wolsey sent a personal emissary, young Hugh Latimer, related to the Steeds and godfather of Devon's son Latimer, all the way to Bishop's Nympton with an argument that could not be refuted: 'Cousin Steed, are you not aware that our king has already fathered no less than six sons, illegitimately of course, but sons nevertheless. The barrenness cannot be his fault. You know Henry Fitzroy, he who was made Duke of Richmond at the age of six. He's Henry's son, and so are five others of less degree. If he can shed himself of the Spanish clod and marry lively young Anne, we'll have a future king, and England will be protected.' Latimer, an austere man, winked and added, 'You know, I suppose, that Mistress Anne is heavy with child right now, a son the midwives assure us, so we must act promptly.'
Satisfied as to the facts, Devon Steed led the western counties in their support of the divorce; he backed the king against the Pope. He neither solicited nor expected anything in return for having obeyed his conscience, but when the dissolution of the monasteries took place, and great estates were distributed to loyal supporters, especially those of the middle class like the Steeds, Hugh Latimer saw to it that his Cousin Devon was placed on the list of eligibles.
When agents came to inquire which of the eight hundred monasteries he would prefer, he replied in some innocence, 'Glastonbury. It's nearby and I've always admired the buildings Richard Bere erected there when he was abbot.'
The agent coughed and said, 'Glastonbury's so big it's been reserved.'
'I am sorry,' Steed apologized. 'What did the king have in mind for me?'
'He rather likes to have the new recipients move out of their established localities. Conflicting loyalties, you know. There's a splendid monastery at Queen's Wenlock over in Berks.'
'I know it!' Steed said with enthusiasm. He had stopped there once on his way to Oxford and remembered the place with affection: low towers, a modest cloister, innumerable chimneys, and four noble Gothic arches enclosing the gates at which the poor assembled to receive their charity. 'Fifteen hundred acres accompany the monastery buildings,' the agent said, 'and two villages populated with sturdy farmers. You will own the entire as Sir Devon Steed.'
He assumed the knighthood in 1537 as Sir Devon; he had five Christian names and none of them was Devon. That was a nickname given him at Oxford, and it had become accepted; now as Sir Devon he moved his family to his new estate. The first thing he did upon arrival at the old monastery, built in 1387 by Good Queen Anne of Bohemia, wife of King Richard II, was to hold prayers in the former chapel, and as he knelt on those ancient and sacred stones he reconfirmed his abiding faith in Catholicism and the spiritual supremacy of the Pope.
Nothing changed much, actually. England remained Catholic. King Henry, vastly disappointed when Anne Boleyn gave him another daughter and no son, shortly thereafter had her head chopped off, and again Sir Devon supported him, as did his counterparts in the other 799 expropriated monasteries: they called Boleyn 'the Whore of the Howards,' and were glad to see her disposed of.
Ugly gossip circulated when certain court circles, always scheming to protect the line of inheritance to the throne, proposed that little Princess Mary, daughter of Henry's first wife Catherine, be married to the Duke of Richmond, her own half brother. Those who broached the subject to Steed argued, 'Don't you see? This would unite all strands which might have a just claim. The position of the couple would be impregnable, and when they produced a son he would be king in every sense of the word.'
'If they produced a son,' Steed snapped, 'he would have two heads.'
Fortunately, King Henry, always a moral man, was revolted at the idea of his daughter's marrying her illegitimate half brother, and he rejected it. When he heard that Sir Devon Steed at Queen's Wenlock had rejected the proposal on the same grounds, he felt additional warmth for the new knight and added to his acreage.
As long as King Henry lived, Sir Devon experienced no religious pangs. Both he and the king remained devout Catholics, and when the latter ordered two heretical Lutherans burned at the stake, Sir Devon applauded. 'We want no schismatics here,' he told his son Latimer.
He died three months after his king, thus escaping the chaos into which England fell when the boy, Edward VI, reigned briefly. Sir Latimer Steed, who inherited the title and the considerable estate which went with it, was even more devotedly attached to Catholicism and the Pope than his father had been, and he was appalled at the crass manner in which the young king's advisors sought to convert England into a Protestant country. Sir Latimer fulminated against it, and he allowed to all who visited the former monastery that 'the honest men of England will never embrace the heresies of Geneva.' He was much relieved when Edward, always sickly, as if God had cursed his father for having had six wives and beheading two of them, died.
Now Mary, thirty-seven years old and tested in the furnace of Tudor wrangling, assassination and piety, approached the throne, determined to put everything right. It was a glorious day for good Catholics like Sir Latimer when she accepted the crown, and it was not long before the heretical leaders who had tried to lure England away from Rome paid the penalty for their treason. One after another went to the stake, and Sir Latimer, praying in the chapel which his father had stolen from the church, gave his benediction to the fires—'It's the only way to keep England pure.'
The first sign he received that things were going strangely came on October 19, 1555, when his son Fairleigh rushed in from London with shocking news: 'Hugh Latimer was burned at the stake.'
It was unbelievable. The Steeds had known the Latimers for more than a hundred years, and they had watched with shared pride as young Hugh progressed up the various rungs of the church. When Cardinal Wolsey missed being elected Pope, it had not been too much to hope that Latimer might succeed, and now he had perished at the stake. What dreadful miscalculation had caused such injustice?
It could not be said of young Fairleigh that he was a devout Catholic; he was much more. He loved the church; as a child playing in the vast rooms of the former monastery, now circumspectly called the grange, he gained a vision of what a sovereign church should be, and at Oxford he had led the young men who set bonfires at the accession of Queen Mary, for in her cleansing arrival he saw the salvation of the church. He understood that harsh steps must be taken before England could be brought back into its proper channels, and he applauded her force of character.
'She had to destroy him, Father,' he explained. 'Hugh Latimer preached the most pernicious doctrine, and if he had gone unchecked, he would have seduced England into Protestantism. He was no better then Calvin.'
And so the son led the father through the troubled but glorious days of Queen Mary's reign. When Mary took King Philip of Spain as her husband, young Fairleigh explained everything and quieted his father's fears that this might mean a Spanish ascendancy. 'Not ever! Spain and England will become united under the leadership of the Pope. There will be an end to fratricidal strife, and together Spain and England will put down the heresy in Germany and the Low Countries.'
They were heady days, these days of reconstruction, and Queen's Wenlock was often filled with Oxford students arguing about the characteristics of the England that was to come. Certain fanatics had proposed that the stolen monasteries be returned to the church, but Queen Mary, depending upon the solid families that now occupied them, would have none of that. Sir Latimer applauded her decision, as did the Oxford students, most of whom came from families that had profited from the expropriation.
And then Mary died. The throne passed to her half sister, Elizabeth the Protestant, the bastard daughter of Anne Boleyn, that Whore of the Howards. Sir Latimer, reflecting on the disaster, told Fairleigh, 'That line is bad altogether. It was no accident that the two queens Henry had to behead were both Howards. Full cousins they were, and whores both of them.' He paused to look at the ancient rafters of his knightly hall, and said, 'So now we have as queen the illegitimate daughter of a whore. Times will be bad, Fairleigh, and we shall all have to know where we stand.'
For good Catholics the times were worse than he had foreseen: the saintly Pope, Pius V, issued a bull which excommunicated Elizabeth as a heretic and advised the Catholics of England that they no longer owed her allegiance. She retaliated by condemning to death anyone who circulated the bull on English soil.
The battle was joined; step by step, harsh measures were promulgated against these devout people like young Fairleigh Steed who loved both the church of Rome and the land of England. Any Catholic caught attending a Mass: £ 70 fine, a horrendous sum in those days. Any Catholic who refused to attend Protestant church: £ 20 fine each year levied against each member of the family, young or old. Any English man or woman who endeavored to convert good Protestants into Catholics: death by hanging. And any believers, such as the Steeds, who attempted to cling to the religion they had always followed: endless harassment, persecution and the risk of death if they harbored a secret priest.
Queen Elizabeth could never comprehend the obstinate behavior of people like the Steeds. Her new religion preserved almost all the characteristics of the old: the Mass, transubstantiation, the high altar, baptism, rigorous attention to confession, nothing but fish to be eaten on Wednesday, and a celibate clergy dressed in customary vestments. It was Elizabeth's belief that a non-contentious person could worship according to the new ritual and never be aware that it was not Catholic. Furthermore, she outlawed with extreme severity any manifestations of Calvinistic Protestantism, and gleefully executed those Lutherans who sought to promulgate the pernicious teachings of Geneva.
All that Elizabeth demanded of her subjects was that they forswear Rome and acknowledge her as governor of the church as it functioned in England. The harsh law of 1581 explained all in its title: _To Retain the Queen Majesty's Subjects in Due Obedience_. Spiritual obedience to a human sovereign the Steeds refused to concede. They became surreptitious Catholics, secret adherents to the ancient faith, daring protectors of itinerant priests who labored in peril to keep that faith alive.
Queen's Wenlock, once one of the notable smaller monasteries of England, became in the 1570s a center of the Catholic missionary spirit. Old Sir Latimer said that he would be damned before he would permit a Whore of the Howards to advise him in spiritual matters. Lady Steed cautioned him to mind his tongue lest he be hanged, and reminded him that it was not one of the Whores of the Howards who was doing this to England but the illegitimate daughter of one of the whores.
It was young Fairleigh, now twenty-five and down from Oxford, who felt the pressure of the age most keenly. He revered the old ways and believed that he could adhere to them without being treasonous to the new queen, even though he despised her. He was both a Catholic and an Englishman, and it ought to be possible to be a faithful, loyal citizen of both worlds. As to the preposterous charge of the Protestants that to be a Catholic meant automatically that one was eager to take up arms for the Pope and against England, he had never heard such nonsense. There were more than 160,000 practicing Catholics in England and only a handful of traitors among them.
But things kept happening that weakened his position. Fanatics with no knowledge of England were captured while trying to engineer a Spanish invasion to put King Philip back on the throne he had once shared with Mary. Other fools, seeking to inspire an uprising in favor of that other Mary, the Catholic Queen of Scots, were caught with letters on their persons spelling out details. Crazed people, torn apart by religious conflicts they could not comprehend, tried to assassinate the queen, as madmen in all countries endeavor to kill their appointed leaders.
All this led to suspicion and hatred; good Englishmen who should have known better came to believe without question that the Pope intended to invade their land with Spanish help and reconvert them to old-style Catholicism. It was against this prejudice that the Steeds now had to operate.
They bore unwavering testimony, all members of the family, that being a Catholic did not entail heresy. Even the slightest invitation that might look suspicious, they not only rejected but spoke against. The one forbidden thing they would not surrender was correspondence with the courageous priests.
'These priests, ordained of God, are our spiritual guides,' Sir Latimer proclaimed to any who would hear. The old bumbler was becoming a most stalwart man; in the ordinary course of events that had prevailed in England for centuries he would have been the village squire, dispensing a hit-or-miss kind of justice, refusing to sentence even the worst criminal to death, and husbanding his estates so that each generation should be a few acres better off than the preceding. It was by the accident of King Henry's divorce that he had inherited a knighthood, and although he was pleased with the buildings and estates which accompanied it, he was not really at ease in his minor castle. He would have been much more comfortable tending the hogs back in Devon. Certainly he was in no way prepared to enter religious debate. All he knew was that the Steeds had always obeyed the Pope and they intended to keep on doing so.
It was understandable, therefore, that when devout English priests, ordained at the émigré English seminary at Douai across the Channel in the Spanish Netherlands, were filtered surreptitiously into England to protect the faith, they should carry with them unwritten instructions to seek out the Steeds at Queen's Wenlock, and this they did. By Elizabethan definition such priests were treasonous—they sought not the salvation of souls but the fomenting of revolution—and anyone who harbored them did so at risk of life. The Steeds took that risk.
It would be dusk when the wandering priests converged at some agreed-upon meeting spot in the countryside west of London. They would maintain a furtiveness lest the paid spies of Walsingham and Burleigh, who circulated about the countryside, detect them. As night fell they would move swiftly to the four vaulted doors of the old monastery and knock rapidly. A light would shine. One door would creak open a few inches. The priests would announce themselves, pronounce the password given them by Catholics in London, and enter swiftly as the door clanged shut.
Inside, Sir Latimer would pour the drinks and ask what was happening at Douai. The translation of the Bible into English acceptable to Catholics was proceeding. New priests were being ordained regularly, and those with fortitude were being spirited into England. Four of the most recent arrivals had already been hanged, but other would-be martyrs were on the way.
And what of the new Pope? The young priests said that he was about to take a step which would assist them mightily in their work. He would announce that the bull of his predecessor commanding all good Catholics to oppose Queen Elizabeth would be placed in some kind of suspension so that Catholics could obey the queen in all things temporal.
'Damned clever of the Pope!' Sir Latimer cried. 'That absolves us of heresy.'
'It does indeed,' the priests agreed.
But courts subservient to the queen saw the papal move as subterfuge, and the hanging of priests continued.
In the summer of 1580 there came to the grange a fugitive priest so luminous that he seemed to carry with him visible proof of his sanctity and his coming martyrdom. He was Edmund Campion, forty years old that summer, one of the brightest students Oxford had ever known, a distinguished scholar at the Catholic seminary in Douai, and one of the most skilled argumentators among the Jesuits at Rome. He was a philosopher, a historian, an author of pamphlets and a superb theologian. Among his friends, Protestants and Catholics alike, he was known as the marvel of his age, and fourteen years earlier Queen Elizabeth herself, enchanted by an oration he delivered before her when she visited Oxford, had said, 'For this young man, unlimited preferment waits.'
He had chosen instead the thorny road of missionary priest, and on the day when he slipped ashore at Dover he knew that his fame was such that he must be spotted by Walsingham's spies and burned as a martyr. Secure in this knowledge and satisfied with his fate, he moved courageously through the countryside, holding prayer meetings and ignoring the likelihood that Protestant informers were tracking him.
He arrived at Queen's Wenlock one Friday and told Sir Latimer, of whom he had heard valorous reports, that he wished to conduct Mass for Catholics in the area, and these were hastily assembled, each man and woman knowing that death would be the consequence of betrayal. When they streamed into the grange, this saving remnant of an older faith, they found awaiting them tough old Sir Latimer, bushy eyebrows in a furrow, and the serene face of Edmund Campion.
He chose as his text a passage from St. Paul's journeys and compared the work Paul had done with what the fugitive priests were doing. 'Pagan Rome sought Paul no less avidly than Protestant Walsingham seeks me. In the end, Paul triumphed, and so shall we.' His preaching consisted of simple yet powerful examples of what the furtive graduates of Douai had accomplished in keeping alive in England the sacred flames of Catholicism. 'The glory of our Church is their martyrdom. The fires of their burned bodies inflame our holy spirit.'
He spoke like one possessed, but he did not rant, nor did he ever point to himself as an exemplar. He simply reported what Catholics were attaining in these decisive times. When he finished he performed the ceremony of the Mass, blessing the wine and sanctifying the wafers which had been prepared for this holy feast. As he placed on each tongue the body of Christ he said, 'Peace shall be with us.'
Perhaps it was the tragic events that happened later which led persons who attended this Mass to claim in years to come that it had been a holy moment, but all so testified: 'The future stood revealed, and about the blessed head of Edmund Campion we saw the halo of martyrdom.' In any case, Father Campion left Queen's Wenlock in a state of exaltation, as if his days of testing were already at hand.
Sir Latimer and his son Fairleigh accompanied Campion to his next preaching, at a grange near Faringdon, in Bucks, and from there to Oxford itself, where young Steed introduced the daring priest to numerous undergraduates committed to Catholicism. With these young minds he discussed the future of the church in England and the nature of individual vocation. After his final Mass he intended heading for Norfolk, where the heavy incidence of Catholics would render him relatively safe, but at the last minute he was prevailed upon to return to Faringdon to preach again to large numbers of the faithful who had not been privileged to hear him on his earlier visit to Queen's Wenlock.
Acceding to the supplications so urgently pressed upon him, he retraced his steps to Sir Latimer's home, where Protestant spies awaited. It was they who had engineered the clamant invitation and it was they who conducted him a prisoner back to London and a cell in the Tower.
He was lodged in Little Ease, the famous crib too low for standing, too cramped for sleeping, and there he was held in crouching solitary confinement without adequate food for four days. He was then racked three separate times until his joints spread apart, and in his extremity he confirmed what Burleigh and Walsingham already knew, that he had been protected by Sir Latimer Steed of the grange at Queen's Wenlock.
The old knight was promptly arrested and thrown like his priest into Little Ease, from which he emerged a shattered man, bumbling and speaking in fragmentary sentences. But as his body deteriorated, his spiritual force increased, and no matter what the hideous jailers and the rack-masters did to him, he bore one simple testimony: that he was loyal to England and faithful to his Church. The interrogators screamed at him, charged him with ingratitude, reminded him that he was a creature of whatever king or queen possessed the throne at the moment, and thus obligated to swear fealty to whichever form of religion that monarch professed.
Such an idea was repugnant, and he rejected it scornfully, so in late November 1581 he and Father Campion were dragged into Westminster Hall, in whose fine and lofty chambers the leaders of law and clergy met to pass judgment on treasonous heretics. Fairleigh Steed was allowed to attend the trial, along with many Protestants who cheered every point scored against the convicts.
The trial was a sham. No witness could be found to prove that Father Campion had ever preached treason, whereas eleven came forward to testify that he had specifically told everyone at the grange that their civil duty was to pay respect to Elizabeth and her laws. As for Sir Latimer, the whole testimony of his life was that of loyalty to the crown. Fairleigh, listening as closely as he could to all that was said, could not imagine any verdict but innocent, and he sat in numbed horror when the judges, responsible and decent men of the realm, read out their sentence:
'You must go to the place from whence you came, there to remain until you shall be drawn through the open City of London upon hurdles to the place of execution, and there be hanged. But you shall be let down while still alive, and your privy parts shall be cut off, and your entrails taken out and burnt in your sight, and then your bodies shall be divided into four parts to be disposed of at Her Gracious Majesty's pleasure. And God have mercy on your souls.'
Ten days later the sentence was carried out in meticulous detail, and Fairleigh Steed forced himself to watch as his father and this sainted priest were jerked about horribly, cut down, butchered and forced to watch as their bodies were torn apart. Neither the old man nor the young uttered a cry, and Fairleigh was convinced that when their spirits departed they entered heaven to take their place in the bosom of Abraham.
A week later Sir Fairleigh's wife gave birth to a son, whom a new priest from Douai christened Edmund.
Sir Latimer Steed's head was stuck on a pike and exhibited for nine weeks at Tyburn, during which time his family at Queen's Wenlock tried to formulate a plan for continued existence. Curiously, in view of the savage death meted out to the old knight, the family's lands were not confiscated; Sir Latimer's descendants suffered no attainder, because the monarchs of England generally allowed the treason of a parent to end there, in hopes that the children might learn from their elders' mistakes, and reform.
The Steeds made two decisions: they would in all things be loyal to England, and they would continue to hear Mass. Young Edmund spent the first six years of his life being indoctrinated into these twin principles; when he thought of his father he visualized a quiet gentleman who tended the affairs of his huge holdings and then prayed resolutely with whatever priest happened to pass by, for he was determined to hold on to his Catholic heritage. Edmund patterned himself after his father, and throughout England in these quiet years from 1581 through 1587 this type of sensible truce prevailed.
But in 1588 King Philip of Spain, seeking to regain the English throne he had once occupied as Mary's husband, blasted all reasonable hopes held by families like the Steeds. He sent his conquering Armada up the Channel to invade England, destroy Protestantism and forcibly lead the captured land back to Rome. Stupid Englishmen, especially those who had lived abroad in exile, made stupid statements about the restoration of the Pope, and within the island other misguided idiots believed that as soon as Spanish troops set foot on English soil, Catholics of the realm would rise up to greet them and aid in the subjugation of their homeland.
From that summer day on which Drake and Hawkins and Howard routed the Spanish galleons off Plymouth and sent them to their graves in storms off the Hebrides, the fate of ordinary Catholics like the Steeds was sealed. The general populace knew them to be treasonous, the whole lot of them, and it was further believed that only a miracle had enabled the English to defend themselves against papal invasion and the restoration of the burnings which Queen Mary had sponsored during her brief and bloody reign.
The ostracism fell most heavily on young Edmund. At school he was a child who kept apart, and at Oxford one to be avoided. He could never hold public office; nor serve as a justice of the peace, like his forebears; nor testify in certain kinds of trials; nor marry into the good families; nor serve as an officer in either navy or army. He had to pay special taxes, and worst of all, was held in contempt by the countryside. The hearing of Mass became more difficult, for in the wake of the Armada fugitive priests were hunted down with extra severity. As the sixteenth century closed, a young Catholic could exist in England, but that was about all.
But in 1602, as Edmund reached his majority, Queen Elizabeth sickened, and in 1603 she died—bald, bewigged and uglier than sin. As prayers were being said for the salvation of her grand and murderous soul, Sir Fairleigh Steed assembled his family in the great hall at Queen's Wenlock, where a fugitive priest read a Mass for the departed queen, asking the Steed family to forgive her for the wrongs she had done them. When all in the room had pledged allegiance to their new king, James VI of Scotland and I of England, a fervent prayer was uttered by Sir Fairleigh, asking that God make the new monarch more understanding than the old.
Nothing changed. Catholics continued to be excluded from government, and one of Edmund's professors told him, 'You should have been a don at Oxford, were you not a Catholic.' It was in this confusion that Edmund came down from the university with an immoral proposal which shocked his father: 'I'm going to embrace the new faith.' Sir Fairleigh gasped, whereupon Edmund added, 'Publicly. If this nation continues to place infirmities upon Catholics, I deem it permissible for me to deceive the nation. When I return to Oxford, I shall take the Oath of Conformity. From that day forth I shall be a public Protestant.'
'And inwardly?'
'As good a Catholic as ever. When you hold Mass, I shall attend.'
'Edmund, you undertake a grievous task.'
'I have no desire to have my guts torn out.'
'No man does, but sometimes it happens.'
'It won't happen to me. I'll play their filthy game.'
'Young men often think,' Sir Fairleigh said, 'that they can play any game, if only they keep their hearts pure.'
'I intend trying,' Edmund said, and on the first anniversary of King James' ascension he rode to Oxford and in public ceremony announced that he was forswearing Catholicism, affirming that he no longer owed any spiritual allegiance to either Pope or priests. He allowed a chaplain to administer the Oath of Conformity, and from that moment became an ostensible Protestant, to the delight of friends who had always wished him well. In fact, his conversion gave so much pleasure that he was offered preferments as an inducement to other Catholics to follow suit, and his professors reopened discussion of a post at the university.
In this manner Edmund Steed was lured back into the mainstream of English life. He worked for the government in London and was invited by his associates to their places in the country, where he met old gentlemen who in their youth had known Sir Devon, and one such man in Bucks told Edmund frankly that he hoped the time would come when Steed would join their family, seeing they had such a plethora of daughters.
But whenever he returned to the handsome old grange at Queen's Wenlock, and the doors were closed, and night fell, and the fugitive priests from Douai materialized, he resumed his Catholic identity, trembling when the sacred host touched his tongue.
It was during such a visit, when the Mass had been especially significant, that he took his father out into the timeless orchards which had been planted personally by Good Queen Anne in 1387, and there under the gnarled trees told him, 'Father, the burden is too great. I can't dissemble. My soul is being torn apart.'
'I supposed it would be,' the wise old man said. 'What do you propose?'
'A company's being formed to establish a new settlement in America. I shall subscribe.'
'I understand,' Sir Fairleigh said. He did not press him on how he would survive in a distant land without the consoling reassurances of this grange and these memories, for he was certain that Edmund had weighed his losses. What was important was that his son get back on solid footing, the kind the Steeds had always preferred. 'I suppose you'll quit the Protestant masquerade?'
'As soon as possible.'
'Why not now?'
'Because I must first get to America. The company won't welcome Catholics.'
'Don't delay too long, Edmund. Dissembling corrodes.'
'I intend placing myself in a position where it's no longer necessary.'
The old knight did not want to see his youngest son quit England, and especially he did not want him to end his association with the grange, for the strength of the Steeds had always been their reliance on the land: the furrows and the hunting and the birth of lambs. He knew how desperately Edmund would long for these pastures and orchards when he pined in a savage land, but if leaving would help clarify his soul, he must leave.
'I won't see you again, Father.'
'You sail so soon?'
'Within the month, they say.'
They neither embraced nor shook hands; excessive display was not the way of the Steeds, but when he said farewell in the vaulted doorway built so many years ago, the old man shivered. 'These have not been good years for Catholics,' he said. 'Of late I've been seeing Sir Latimer's head on that pike. That's the end of all of us, I'm afraid.' They looked at each other and parted.
Few of mankind's memorable adventures started more poorly than the English settlement of Virginia. During the last days of December 1606 the company to which Edmund Steed had subscribed piled 105 courageous emigrants onto the three small ships and set sail for the New World, expecting to make landfall within five weeks.
Off the coast, but still in sight of England, they were becalmed for six agonizing weeks. The wind would not rise and there was nothing the infuriated captains could do; ominously, the leaders of the expedition watched the would-be settlers consume much of the food intended to see them through the first months of the experiment. It was not until May 14 that the ships unloaded at a swampy island in the James River, grandiloquently named Jamestown, as if it were an operating city.
Lack of food, miasmal land, confusion in leadership, hostility from Indians and rampaging epidemics beset the newcomers, so that when the dreadful summer ended, only thirty-eight of the original group still lived. That these could survive the winter seemed doubtful.
The behavior of the Indians who populated the western shore of the Chesapeake bewildered the settlers: for six weeks the redskins would be amiable, bringing to the stockade food which saved the lives of the remnant; for the next six weeks they would kill any settler who stepped outside. It was difficult for the Englishmen to accept such irrational behavior, and most came to fear and hate the Indian.
Edmund Steed did neither. His contact with red men led him to believe that they were much like other humans, capable of trust and desirable as neighbors. He felt at ease traveling amongst them, so that when Captain Smith launched his serious exploration of the Chesapeake, seeking the gold and silver known to exist there, it was natural for Steed to participate, and his contacts with the peaceful Indians of the eastern shore confirmed his attitudes.
But in November 1608 he accompanied Smith on an expedition up the James River which had horrifying results. It was an exploration to ascertain what kind of land lay beyond the confluence of the Chickahominy, and after the little band left their canoes, Steed marched at the rear with the carpenter George Landon, and his easy experiences with the Choptanks lulled him into carelessness. Farther and farther the two stragglers fell behind, and when they were totally detached, a band of howling savages overwhelmed them. A hideous orgy followed, with warriors jabbing pointed sticks at their faces, stopping just short of the eyes. Then, as Steed would later report:
The women of the tribe descended upon us, pushed the braves their brothers away, and lashed us to stakes set into the ground. With much dancing and glee they attended to Landon first, using sharp oyster shells to cut off all his fingers, one knuckle at a time. While he was screaming so loud that he drowned out the exulting cries of the women, they knelt down and sawed away his toes in the same protracted manner. This done, they started at his scalp, and moving slowly downward, ripped off his living skin. While he was still alive they piled brush about his stake and set it afire. When their dancing ended they came at me with their shells, but Captain Smith and his men had doubled back to find us and came upon the scene in time to save me.
Later, a group of heavily laden supply ships arrived from London under the leadership of Captain John Ratcliffe, who had served as captain aboard the tiny pinnace _Discovery_ during the original voyage of 1607 and who had later held the presidency of the council. Since he was well informed on affairs in Virginia, he was sent with a body of soldiers to negotiate with Chief Powhatan for more land, but that insidious Indian lured the Englishmen with promises, set upon them nefariously and slew most. They kept Ratcliffe, Steed and one other alive for special tortures, and once again the Oxford student was rescued to report the horrible incident:
With our dead lying about us, we were tied naked to stakes, before which hot fires were set, and when we were toasted near to death women attacked poor Ratcliffe and with shells scraped away all the flesh on his left arm up to the shoulder, tossing the bits into the fire. They did the same with his right arm and then his right leg, whereupon he died.
When such evidence was endlessly repeated, Edmund Steed lost all trust in Indians. He came to see them as crafty, cruel, lazy and uncivilized, and it was a prudent white man who anticipated their perfidy. Now when trading parties ascended the James to deal with Powhatan, Steed remained apart, between two soldiers, ready to discharge his musket straight at the heart of any savage who threatened a treacherous move.
As his faith in Indians diminished, his trust in Captain Smith grew. He saw him as the only savior of the colony, a man of petty foibles and ramrod rectitude. When the little captain announced that he must quit the colony to ensure a more faithful chain of supplies from London, swearing vociferously that he was not abandoning the settlers but would return, Steed foresaw that once safe in England he would become caught up in a hundred fascinating schemes involving dukes and foreign princes and wars in Muscovy.
'I shall not see you again, Captain,' Steed said mournfully as Smith stood on the dock, surrounded by packets of arrows he was taking back to England for display.
'You'll survive. Remember, you're one of the men of iron.'
'I meant... you'll not return.'
'Me! This bay is blood to me. It courses through my veins.' He said much more, and in the end drew himself to maximum height, saluted the little colony he had kept alive, and was seen no more in Virginia.
On the day he sailed down the river, the testing time began, those starving weeks and months of autumn 1609 and winter 1610. When Smith left, the expanding colony contained 507 members; six terrible months later only 61 remained. Of this foodless, heatless catastrophe Steed reported to the managers in London:
All who might lead are dead. The doctor and the carpenters and all who worked to keep the town functioning, they are dead. Even as I write the room is cluttered with bodies, for we no longer have any to bury them. We have neither a bean nor a biscuit, and I shudder to inform you that some, beyond the point of desperation, have taken to digging up the bodies of those already dead and endeavouring to eat them, and from doing this, some have gone mad and cast themselves into the river and died. And if we who are able to move seek to leave the fort to find food, the lurking Indians slay us.
It was a time of such gnawing horror that those few who survived sought ever after to erase it from their memory, and yet it was the foundation of fact on which the great colony of Virginia was erected.
On May 23, 1610, when the spring breezes made starvation even more monstrous, a man who had crawled to the river to die set up a howling, and when Steed went to him he saw that the man was pointing downstream where two rescue ships hove into view, and when they moved to shore Steed saw that their names were _Patience_ and _Deliverance_.
It was during the following spring, in 1611, when the colony was stabilized, that Steed decided to quit Jamestown and start a new life on that hospitable island he had scouted with Captain Smith three summers earlier. During all the trials which beset him in Virginia, he had kept alive his vision of that island with the tall trees and abundant fish, and even when it seemed that the Indian women must hack him to pieces, or that starvation would evaporate him before the day ended, he could visualize that island and imagine himself living quietly there.
He could even recall the Indians he and Captain Smith had met along the river, especially the giant chief, and he wanted desperately to believe that they were different from the mercurial and untrustworthy tribes under Powhatan. He had no evidence to support this hope, but he had seen those gentle Choptank Indians, and it was not unreasonable to hope that they were different.
The driving force which impelled him to leave Jamestown was one which his ancestors would have understood: Sir Devon with his simplistic sense of right and wrong; bumbling, stumbling Sir Latimer willing to be torn apart for his faith; hesitant Sir Fairleigh trying to be both a good Catholic and a loyal Englishman—they would have comprehended when he said, 'I am strangled with duplicity. I must live where I can stand forth as an honest Catholic.'
Jamestown was far too preoccupied with mere survival to worry much about the forms of religion; it was not flamboyantly anti-Catholic, but that was because the leaders of the settlement could not imagine that any of their flock were Catholic. With them it was always 'Good Queen Bess for whom Virginia was named' and 'Faithful King James, a reliable man even though his mother was that Catholic whore, Mary of Scotland.' It was known, of course, that Steed's grandfather, Sir Latimer, had been drawn and quartered for his treasonous adherence to Rome, but it was also known that young Steed had abjured that poisonous faith; besides, on various occasions he had proved his valor, and that counted.
Edmund Steed could have continued his masquerade as a false Protestant, and his offspring, when he had them, could certainly have been counted among the first families of Virginia, but the tricky doubleness of his position—Protestant by day, Catholic by night—was more than he could sustain. He was indeed sick of dissembling and determined to put an end to it. For a Catholic, there was no future in the Virginia settlement, so he would go elsewhere.
He was not forthright in offering his reasons for moving to the eastern shore. 'I want to go where the oystering is better,' he said lamely. 'Trade with the Indians who live across the bay could be profitable to Virginia.' One after another he paraded his spurious reasons, and in the end the governors of the colony granted him permission—'It will be to our advantage to have an outpost firmly located on the eastern shore.'
So in May 1611 he rose each day before dawn to hack out the planks required for the boat he had in mind. Samuel Dwight, a ship's carpenter on one of the rescue ships, gave Steed some rule-of-thumb advice.
'For these shallow waters make her flat-bottomed. Also, it's easier for them as doesn't know to build a keel. One mast is all a man alone can handle, and it a short one. Pointed bow for probing, transom stern for stability. And leeboards to hold her into the wind.'
'What are leeboards?' Steed inquired.
'When you've finished putting her together, I'll instruct you.'
It took Steed four weeks, with spasmodic help from Mr. Dwight, to build his small craft. It was only fifteen feet long, but it was sturdy, and if the uneven finishing of the planks allowed water to flow in at a rate that would soon sink her, stout caulking would cure that. It was launched on the last day of June, and when it swayed on the placid waters of the James, Steed asked his carpenter, 'What type of boat is it?' and the newcomer replied, 'Bateau,' and he demonstrated how the leeboards must be attached.
They were two stout oval slabs of wood, fastened outboard at amid-ships by pivots, one to the starboard, the other to port. By convenient ropes they could be lowered into the water or lifted out, and their purpose was to counteract the normal sideways drift of a boat under sail. They were, in short, a clever, practical substitute for a fixed keel, and they worked. Like two misplaced fins of a fish, they dominated the appearance of the bateau, but Carpenter Dwight said of them approvingly, 'You'll find them valuable in the bay. Remember, when the wind is pushing you sideways on the starboard tack, put down your port leeboard. And when it pushes you from port, put down your starboard.' Steed said he thought he could manage the low, heavy bateau.
Into it he piled the goods he had collected from those unfortunates who had died during the starving time, with special attention to axes, knives, gunpowder and nails. He left Jamestown with one barrel of dried foods, an extra pair of heavy trousers and three woolen shirts. He had no medicine, no small tools, no needles for sewing, and only two knives, three forks, four spoons and a pair of guns. Yet he had not the slightest doubt that he could occupy his island, and tame it, and make it an industrious part of the empire. On June 12, 1611, he set forth, and because there was no wind, he rowed all that day down the James. His fancy leeboards were of no use, but his hands were well blistered.
However, on June 13 a tidy breeze came down the James and into it he hoisted his sail. Since the wind came from directly behind, he still had no use for his leeboards, but on the third day, as he approached the bay itself, a brisk wind swept down from the northwest, and he put his bateau on a port tack so that it would head up the bay, against the wind, and now he dropped his starboard leeboard and felt it catch the water and brace him against sideward drifting.
'Carpenter Dwight knew what he was doing!' he exulted as the wind drove him forward, and all that day he lay at ease admiring the bateau he had built.
Now the waters of the bay became familiar and he was able to tick off the rivers of the western shore—York, Rappahannock, Potomac—and when he reached the Patuxent he knew it was time to start swinging eastward to strike the entrance to the Choptank and the island he sought.
It was the longest day of the year when he approached the western end of the island, and he decided not to go ashore that night, because he could not foretell what mood the once-peaceful Choptank Indians might be in. Of one thing he was certain: he would rather be here than anywhere else in the world. This would be his empire; here he would live according to the principles of his fathers. When long-delayed night closed in, and the outlines of the island became increasingly dim, so that in the end it existed only in his mind, he uttered a prayer: 'Divine Leader Who has brought me here, permit me safe conduct onto my island and allow me to live here in Thy ways.'
He could not sleep. All night he sat in his bateau staring in the direction of land, and toward four, when dawn began to brighten and his island rose from the mists like a sanctuary preserved, he shouted joyously and steered his boat around the north shore and into that safe creek he had noted three years before. As he sailed its deep clear waters and saw the massive trees lining the banks like courtiers arranged to welcome a returning king, he nodded gravely and announced, 'This is the island of Devon, proprietary of the Steeds, and so it shall remain forever.'
He anchored at the head of the creek and waded ashore. After scouting the area for likely spots, he found a rise containing only a few trees, with open space enough to build a hut from which he would be able to watch the river and his boat. With the good luck that comes to countrymen who have a feeling for land, he had stumbled upon the choicest spot for building, and as the days progressed and he cleared the brush, he was satisfied that he had chosen well.
He worked from dawn till dusk, day after day, catching fish and crabs for his food and spotting the berry patches and nut trees for future use. Deer came to watch. Raccoons were plentiful and three blue herons patrolled his shore, catching so many fish that he felt certain he could do the same.
With all this food, he reflected, why did we starve in Jamestown? But as soon as he posed the question he knew the answer: Because the Virginia Indians were hostile and would not allow us to hunt or fish. And he wondered how long his muskets and bullets would defend him if the Choptank Indians turned hostile.
With so much work to do, he could not brood upon this possibility, but he did refrain from wasting ammunition. With his ax he went to the woods and began chopping down the small trees he would need for his hut, and when the outline was formed, he cut branches and wove them between the poles, as he had seen Indians do, but the result was rough and rain entered almost unimpeded. But then he brought rushes from the river and tangled them among the branches, and when he compacted them, like a woman tightening threads upon a loom, he had a satisfactory wall.
He was then free to explore his island, and found it a fascinating place. Utilizing various tricks of measurement, he calculated that it ran about two and a quarter miles east and west, one and a half north and south, for a total of something more than two thousand acres. It was cut nearly in the middle by the intruding river and a deep bay leading up from the south, and the two halves were sufficiently different to accommodate two varied styles of husbandry: sheep to the west, corn to the east. He had no premonition of what the real treasure of this land was going to be.
He had occupied his island for more than four weeks without seeing any Indians, or signs of any. No canoes had appeared on the river, nor had any fires been set. He tried to recall how far to the east he and Captain Smith had gone before they encountered the village of Patamoke, but his memory was vague.
Where can the Indians be? he thought one morning as he surveyed the empty river; he could not know they had moved eastward to escape mosquitoes.
And then toward the end of September, while he felled trees on the eastern point of the island, he saw three canoes edging gingerly out from the white cliffs opposite. They were not war canoes, so they could not have come seeking war; they seemed, in fact, timorous, for when they reached a spot about a half mile from the island they stopped. There they stayed all day, making no further gesture, even though they must have seen Steed. Finally they retired.
They repeated this for two days, and on the third Steed made signals and lured them closer, and when they were less than a hundred yards from shore, so that their faces were becoming distinct, a short thin man shouted in a language Steed could not understand. The canoes milled about, guided by what must have been conflicting suggestions, and on the spur of the moment Steed dropped his ax, walked to the edge of the water and held up his hands, empty.
The canoes moved closer, until the faces became so individualized that he could see one of the men had a cleft chin. No one spoke. Steed continued to hold his hands open and pointed to the emptiness behind him, indicating that he was alone. The Indians stared at him stolidly, remained in position for perhaps half an hour, then smartly withdrew, paddling upstream to their village.
On the fourth day this procedure was repeated, and Steed suspected that the man with the cleft chin wanted to come ashore but was restrained by the men in his canoe.
On the fifth day Steed kept about his work, watching the canoes out of the corner of his eye, but again no moves were taken by the Indians, and well before dusk they retired. He judged that on the morrow something definite would happen, and he prepared his axes and his guns. That evening, as the sun left the sky and a darkness deeper than usual enveloped the island, he recalled the scenes of torture he had witnessed, and the destructive fighting on the western shore, and he prayed: 'God, let my Indians come in peace.'
He could not sleep. His hut seemed unbearably close and he left it to sit on a log, staring into the darkness and wondering what he might be forced to do in the coming day, and when the pale streaks of early dawn lighted the east he decided that he would stay in his hut, like a proper chief, and wait for the Indians to come to him. Day brightened and nothing happened. Forenoon brought buzzing insects and an inquisitive deer, but no visitors. High noon arrived, bringing with it a stillness that quieted even the rustling of the tallest trees, and then when the sun had begun its descent he saw four canoes come into his river, and in the lead position in the lead canoe sat the immensely tall Indian with the three turkey feathers, whom he and Captain Smith had met.
As the canoes approached his undefended bateau his heart beat with hammers; if the Indians wished, they could sink the boat and leave him powerless. They passed it by and came to the rock landing he had fashioned. The man with the cleft chin jumped out first, and led the way for the chief, who seemed even larger as he came on this crucial visit.
When the giant was about to reach the hut, Steed rose, extended both hands, palms up to prove that they were empty. The Indian studied them, extended his own, and looked for a place to sit. Steed beckoned him inside, and for more than an hour they talked. Neither knew a word of the other's speech, but they spoke of deer, which were plentiful, and of oysters, which were good when dried, and of the woven wall Steed had built. The Indian considered it commendable and showed his followers that he could not penetrate its close weaving with his finger. They were unusually interested in his tools, and he showed them the axes with their sharp edges. He took down one of his guns and laboriously explained its loading and preparation. Having done this, he led the tall Indian outside and waited till some doves flew by; taking extra precautions and holding his breath so as to steady the gun, he fired. A dove fell not far from the chief, who sent the man with the cleft chin to fetch it.
'How did such a thing happen?' he asked in pantomime, and Steed explained. But remarkable as the gun was, it was the bateau that tantalized the giant chief and he asked if he might inspect it. The visit had proceeded so amicably that Steed was ready to believe that these Indians were exactly as they had been before: they were not infected by the wars of the Potomacs. So he took the tall chief to where the bateau was moored, and four of the Indians climbed aboard. They wanted to know how the sail, which lay in the bottom of the boat, operated, and what the oval leeboards were; they were perplexed by the length of the oars, but always they came back to the sail. Then began a mysterious operation, repeated many times: the chief touched the sail, then touched Steed's face, and the Englishman could make nothing of the gestures. But finally it dawned upon him that what the Indian was comparing was the whiteness of the sail and the face.
'Yes,' Steed said. 'A sail is always white.' And he hauled it up the mast and showed the Indians how to lift the anchor, and when a breeze came the boat and its five passengers moved down the creek.
Seeing their chieftain being spirited away alarmed the Indians on shore and they launched a great clatter, which the chief silenced with a gesture. He then studied the sail's whiteness, and Steed saw that he was weeping from some deep and powerful remembrance.
When Steed was satisfied that friendly relations were possible, he indicated that he wanted to pay the tribe for the land he was occupying, so a formal procession was arranged—the bateau carrying Steed and the tall chieftain, followed by the four canoes—and it went upriver to the village of Patamoke, where the young werowance was informed of all that had occurred on the island. A deed was drawn up, dated 10 October 1611, and signed by Steed, who showed the werowance how to make his mark. The tall chief did likewise, as did the little fellow with the cleft chin. When this was completed he handed the werowance one ax, one hatchet, such cloth as he could spare and seven nails. He had traded a fair portion of his worldly wealth for an island the Indians not only did not need, but had never used.
And when the paper was folded, and the long clay pipes were smoked, he did more. By sign language he promised them that when trade was established he would give them additional gifts, and he insisted upon this because the pact had brought him slightly more than four thousand acres, half on the island, half on the facing shore, and some of it the choicest land along the river. By this treaty, his immediate problems of existence were also relieved, for he received an unlimited supply of vegetables, and he could sleep at night untroubled.
But what galvanized his imagination was something he saw as he was about to leave: in the corner of the long house lay a bundle of beaver pelts, and when he asked where they had come from, the werowance pointed generally to the south, indicating that in the marshy lands across the river there was an endless supply of beaver.
Then Steed knew what he must do: he must convince the Indians to bring him many pelts against future trading privileges; he would deliver the furs to Jamestown, where ships from England would barter for them. The result would be a constant flow of axes, cloth, guns and nails, with a generous profit to him on all transactions. His ancestors in England, dating back to the thirteenth century, would have been mortified to think that Steed was about to engage in trade—that was forbidden a gentleman—but Edmund rationalized that none of them had tried to settle virgin acreage. He would make himself the best trader in the colony.
But like Captain Smith on the banks of the York, he failed to spot the commodity which would form the true basis of his wealth. As he stowed the beaver pelts in his bateau he did not notice that in an opposite corner of the long house the werowance had another treasure, a pile of the best tobacco leaves. The English gentlemen who emigrated to the New World did not learn rapidly; they were amazingly delinquent in acquiring the skills that mattered, like fertilizing corn with dead fish or living off oysters when meat was unavailable, but when they did finally learn something, they clung to it desperately and made it better: Edmund Steed had learned how to accumulate beaver pelts.
But there was one question the Choptanks did not answer for him, the one that would perplex every European settlement in the New World: where would the men who fought the wilderness find women? Each nation solved this vital problem according to its traditions. In Canada the French forerunners were already taking Indian brides. In Mexico to the south, where a flourishing civilization had developed, Spaniards had adopted two solutions: some married Aztecs, some sent home for childhood acquaintances. In Brazil the Portuguese, finding jungle Indians incompatible, chose black women who had been imported as slaves from Africa. And in Virginia the stiff-lipped Englishmen did nothing until such time as shiploads of properly assembled London women could be delivered by artful ships' captains, who sold the ladies off for payment of their passage money, plus an undisclosed profit.
Edmund Steed, now thirty-two, would never have thought of taking into his hut an Indian girl. An English gentleman married an English gentlewoman, preferably of one's own county and religion, and if none came along, the gentleman might wait till he was thirty-five or even forty. Steed thought that when he delivered his beaver pelts to Jamestown it would be about time to consider buying a bride, but until then he was content to live alone.
Not really content, not really alone. The tall chief, having observed his loneliness, waited for a day when he and Steed bargained in broken words for a pile of pelts, and when a trade was concluded and the lesser Indians had left, he uttered a low call. From behind reeds at the end of the wigwam a seventeen-year-old girl appeared, wearing soft brown deerskin and cockleshells in her hair. Steed recognized her as the child he had seen on that first trip to the Choptank, and he even recalled her name, Tciblento, although at their first meeting he had misspelled it.
'She is to accompany you to the island,' the white-haired chief said. 'She has been saved for this moment.'
The beautiful girl kept her gaze downcast and would not look at her father's guest, but her eagerness to visit the island was apparent. Steed blushed and rejected the offer with prolonged attention to protocol: he was honored; she was lovely; the chief's friendship meant everything. And something in the way he spoke conveyed to the waiting girl the fact that he was rejecting her, and her slim shoulders drooped like the petals of a flower left in the sun.
Her father would not accept this decision; in agitated words he explained that his two sons were married to Choptank maidens, but that he had always hoped Tciblento might mate with a Susquehannock worthy of her. But this had not happened. He ended with his eyes close to Steed's, pleading with him to accept this child, and when the Oxford man indicated by manner, if not by words, that never could he marry an Indian, the old man said, 'I bided my time and trusted that when the Great Canoe came...'
'What is the Great Canoe?' Steed asked.
'It came a long time ago, and we knew it would return. We waited.' He formed a sail with his fingers.
'You mean our ship?'
'Yes, we knew you were coming.' He would say no more, but he did persist in the matter of his daughter. 'She is a good girl. She cooks, traps beaver, knows where the oysters and crabs are.'
Steed was embarrassed. For a chief to be peddling his daughter was undignified, and for an Englishman to accept would be repugnant. Firmly he said, 'No. She cannot come.' The girl did not weep or run away; she stared at Steed with her great dark eyes as if to say, 'Sir, what an error you make.'
Pentaquod, his self-respect shattered by what was happening, felt that he must show the Englishman the character of a Susquehannock warrior. Summoning the man with the cleft chin, he ordered him to designate two Choptank men to accompany Steed back to the island and there to make their homes, helping him in all things. Each of the men brought a woman and built a wigwam, so that Devon was properly settled.
But this was no solution for Steed—he still lacked a wife, and when the time approached in 1614 for him to load his bateau with beaver pelts and return to Jamestown, he felt a growing sense of excitement. He thought: One of the ships coming to trade would surely bring a cargo of women. Perhaps he would find one whose passage money he could pay. But a moment's reflection warned him that if any women had arrived, they would have been picked off by the local settlers; his chances of finding a wife would not be good. He therefore drafted a letter to his father, not even knowing if Sir Fairleigh was still alive:
Dearest Father,
I am settled into a resplendent island, rich in all things, and I am on my way to building an estate of which you would be proud. But I am surrounded only by savages and I most urgently need a wife. Will you enquire of your friends in Berks whether there be a woman of Catholic upbringing and good family who knows her letters who would consent to join me in this enterprise? And if so, please arrange her passage to Jamestown, where I will reimburse the captain of the ship she takes.
Edmund
Folding the letter neatly, he tucked it among the beaver pelts, cast off the bateau, and with his two Indian braves as crew set out for Jamestown.
It was a long and peaceful sail, during which he was able for the first time to savor the Chesapeake and see it for the glorious body of water it was, without the pressure of exploration or flight. He lay back with the tiller tucked under one knee, his only obligation being to advise the Indians when he wished to come about; they loved this operation when the boom swung, and the sail filled from the opposite quarter, and the leeboards were shifted. It was a game which never palled, this trick of sailing into the wind, making it do what you commanded. Sometimes they asked Steed to allow them to supervise the maneuver, and one of them would take the tiller, and watch the wind and the sail, and cry in a loud voice, 'Prepare to come about! Hard alee!' and the other would swing the boom and work the lines. Then both would smile.
So long as the course remained down the Chesapeake, Steed felt no unusual emotion, but once the boat breasted the headland of the James and started tacking upriver, he became tense, for here some of the great days of his life had been spent: his defense of Captain Smith when the mob had wanted to hang him; his escape from the murderous Indians who had flayed his partner; his magical survival of the starving time, when eighteen of his closest associates had perished; and most memorable of all, the sense of having helped launch a little colony in a new land.
It wasn't so small a colony now; large ships were arriving from England with all the trading goods the early colonists had longed for, and where once there had been only men protecting themselves within a stockade, there were now women joining them to build families which occupied separate homes.
As his bateau pulled up to the wharf, now a sturdy affair projecting well into the river, Steed was captivated by the sight of the women; he had seen no Englishwomen for many years and had almost forgotten the grace with which they moved, the fall of their heavy skirts and the way they tied bits of cloth about their throats. They were like magic to him, a reminder of all he had surrendered in fleeing to his island, and he was filled with that hungriness which would determine all he would do on this trip.
There was a ship in the river, the _Victorious_ out of Bristol, and its captain, Henry Hackett, was excited when he saw the bundles of beaver pelts. 'I'll take all of them you bring, Steed,' he growled. 'And what's that aft, sassafras root? I'll take all of it, too.' It was much prized for distillations and the making of infusions to lower fevers. But Hackett's chief delight were the two small tubs in which Steed had stored his salted sturgeon eggs.
'Caviar!' the captain shouted. 'I'd take twenty tubs. Fish eggs is in great demand in London. They turn rancid quick but they're worth the risk.'
In return for this strange collection of goods, Captain Hackett offered Steed a choice of axes, saws, nails, dried beans, salted pork, a compass, folds of writing paper, ink and a dozen books bound in leather. He chose only after the most careful calculations, as he had done when a boy being offered lollies at the grange, and when he was through, the captain said, 'You should have been here to choose two weeks ago.'
'What extra had you then?'
'Brides.'
'Women? English women?'
'And a few Dutch. With your credit you could have bought yourself a beauty.'
'Will you be bringing more?'
'That I will.'
'Will you deliver my letter, then, to my father?' He rummaged among the beaver pelts and produced the carefully composed message, and when he handed it to the captain he explained, 'I'm asking my father to pick me out a bride and send her here in your ship.'
'You pay her passage, I'll deliver her to the gates of hell.'
'I'll pay in stacks of pelts,' Steed said in quivering excitement. 'When will you return?'
'November, likely, if we get passable winds.'
'I hope you do,' Steed said fervently. 'I do hope the winds are good.'
When trading was completed, and the bateau loaded, he invited his two Indian helpers to climb aboard the English ship and see for themselves how mighty it was. In slow, grave movements the two little Choptanks went from item to item of the ship's goods, never touching, never speaking, but when they came to the remnants of brightly colored cloth, their greed became uncontrollable, and each man grabbed an armful.
'Halloo!' a sailor protested. 'You can't just walk off with that there.' In sign language he explained that they must bring him something in trade, and in signs they indicated they had nothing. 'Then get something,' he said, and they rushed to the railing and looked down at Steed, crying in Choptank, 'Master, we must have the cloth!' When he asked why, they said, 'As presents for our wives,' and without reflection he tossed them one of his axes, and they carried it to the sailors, who gave them the cloth they desired. And as they climbed down into the bateau, happy and chattering, with gifts in their arms, Steed realized that among all the goods he had purchased, there was not one intended for a woman, and he was desolate.
To the surprise of the Indians he did not weigh anchor. Reluctant to depart, he went ashore, to sup at the home of a man he had befriended during the starving time; this man had purchased a wife three years before from one of the earlier shiploads, and now had two children and a third on the way. Steed could not keep from staring, for he thought this woman the most wonderful he had ever seen. She moved and smiled with such grace. Back in England she would not have been considered even pretty; his mother had been a true beauty and he knew the difference, but this woman had a primitive grandeur which no mere prettiness could equal. She was, he thought, much like a statue he had seen at Oxford, solid and clean and perfectly fitted to its surroundings, and although the topic had not been introduced, he blurted out, 'Have any of the women who came in the ship with you become widows?'
She did not laugh. 'No,' she said evenly, 'we were all married within two days, and we are married still.'
No more was said, and soon a stern-faced bailiff came to the house to advise Steed that sailors on the English ship had given one of his Indians whiskey and the fellow had become obstreperous. Steed hurried away to find the Indian, red-faced, sweating and out of control. He had insisted upon leaping into the river to touch the sides of the ship, and twice he had been hauled out practically dead, but was determined to try again.
'Asquas!' Steed shouted. 'Lie down!'
The little swimmer looked at Steed with unsteady eyes, recognized him as in command, and collapsed in the bottom of the bateau, where he lay motionless through the long night. Steed, aware that he should quit Jamestown the next day, remained aboard but could not sleep. He stood most of the night at the sheer strakes, staring at the rude collection of huts which represented the civilized world. He could visualize himself returning to it again and again. 'Oh God!' he cried suddenly. 'I wish it was November.'
In the morning he reported to the governors of Jamestown, advising them that he was returning to his island. He gave them a full account of the Indian tribes in that region, and of the trading goods that he would be delivering on future trips. They inquired of him the difference between the western shore of the Chesapeake and the eastern, and he replied, 'In all respects the western is more vigorous. Your Indians are warlike and your land excitable, your rivers are significant and your trees taller. One day Jamestown will be a new Jerusalem, and Virginia a nation of its own. On the eastern shore things are more subdued. There is neither war nor excitement and we will never have a Jerusalem there, nor a London neither. Our Indians are small and avoid war. We have no great riches, and our mosquitoes are twice the size of yours and three times more ferocious.' He hesitated, then added, 'On your western shore drums beat, but on the eastern shore we hear only the echoes.' About this time the custom arose of referring to the Eastern Shore with capital letters, as if it were a special place; this tribute was never paid the western shore.
As he left the building in which the magistrates had interrogated him, he heard a commotion at the far end of the village and suspected that his Choptanks might be drunk again, but the noise came from a striking, well-developed blond young woman who was engaging in a public brawl with her husband, much older than she.
He was endeavoring to quieten her, but she kept shouting, 'I'll not stay!' And she pushed him away. In her determination to escape whatever threat he posed, she ran down the dusty path that served as the village street, flouncing her petticoats and generating a tumult.
When she neared the council building at whose door Steed was standing, she turned back to address the populace: 'He drags me miles upriver to a filthy stable surrounded by murderous Indians. I'll none of it.'
In lusty cries she appealed to the crowd for support, but a woman in a red kerchief, herself lately arrived from England, shouted back like a fishwife, 'Go back, you slut. Be a decent wife.'
'I'll not go back,' she screamed, pushing her husband away. 'He lied to me. No farm. No boat of his own. Nothing but Indians.'
The woman with the kerchief cried, 'It's no heaven for none of us. But it's better than what you knew.'
'It's not!' the angry wife screamed. 'In London, I lived in a proper house, not a grassy hut.'
'You lived in jail,' the other replied, and a fight might have ensued except that the runaway noticed Steed in the doorway, watching her with curious intensity. Since he appeared to be headed for the bateau riding at the dock, she seized upon him.
'Are you Steed, from the island?' she asked boldly.
'I am.'
'And that's your boat, isn't it?'
'It is.'
'Oh, take me with you,' she begged. 'Take me!' and she clung to him with such a show of anguish that he could not shake her loose, even though her husband was coming forward to claim her.
'Come home, Meg,' her husband pleaded. He made a pathetic figure, a short, squarish countryman who must have worked hard in some rural English county and harder here in Virginia. He wore thick, patched homespun trousers, a rough wool shirt and shoes that some inept cobbler had hacked from a stretch of cowhide. He was in his thirties, the type of rural worker Steed had long known and liked.
'I'm Simon Janney,' he said. 'She's mine and you must give her back.'
'Of course I must,' Steed said. 'By no device is she mine. And she is yours.'
'I'm not!' the woman shouted, moving in front of Steed to confront the man Edmund had assumed to be her husband. 'We're not married yet, nor ever shall be.'
'She's not your wife?' Steed asked, poking his head around from behind her bobbing curls.
'I paid for her passage,' Janney said.
'And he took me to his pigsty. He can have his money back.'
'How?' the woman in the red kerchief demanded.
In desperation the fugitive left Steed, threw her arms wide in a beseeching gesture and asked the crowd, 'Will no one pay my passage?'
A shocked silence greeted this extraordinary proposal, then Steed said, 'I will.'
He was standing close to Simon Janney when he said this and he heard the countryman gasp. 'You mustn't, Mr. Steed. She's to be my wife.' He spoke stolidly, as if trying to protect a valuable ewe.
'Never!' she shouted.
'Friend Steed,' the other woman bellowed, 'don't meddle with that one. Maria from the ship can tell you about her.'
The blonde whipped about to confront her accuser, and the swift movement of her ample body conveyed an excitement Steed had not experienced before; she was like some powerful goddess turning to protect herself. 'Bring Maria here,' she said with menacing softness, 'and I'll attend her.' She reached for Steed's hand, drawing him close to her, and he, feeling for the first time the sexually powerful body of a woman pressing against his, clasped her hand. And by that action he committed himself.
'Friend Janney,' he said persuasively, 'let her go. She'll never be yours.'
'She must,' the stubborn little farmer said. His square red face, unshaved for three days, betrayed the torment he was feeling, and Steed felt sorry for him. But then Janney mumbled like a peasant, 'I paid for her.'
'I'll repay you, and more. I need a wife on my island.'
This simple statement of need echoed through the crowd, and all who had waited for the bride ships understood, but his confession had its greatest effect on the woman. Dropping his hand, she gently slipped her arm about his waist, and he felt dizzy and stammered, 'We'll be married this day.'
'Oh no!' she cried, withdrawing her arm. 'I'm to see the island first. No more pigsties for me.'
'Don't meddle with her, Steed!' warned the other woman again.
'I can't pay you now,' Steed explained to Janney, 'but when I next bring my goods, you shall be paid first.'
'He paid seven pounds,' the blonde said.
'Then I shall give him eight.'
'But she's to be my wife,' Janney repeated. He was like a stunted oak damaged by careless plows but still deeply rooted in earth.
'She will never be,' Steed said, and he led Meg Shipton to his bateau.
The couple arrived at Devon in June 1614, he thirty-two years old, she twenty-five. At the moment of disembarking he had never yet kissed any woman but his mother; he had been too busy defining his relationship to God in England and to Indians in Virginia; but she had been at the job of kissing men for some fourteen years, and during this crossing of the bay she had developed a deep curiosity as to what it might be like when she finally plopped Mister Steed into bed.
She was delayed, however, when he required her to survey the land to which he was bringing her: the flourishing fields, the trees, the birds. 'Are there Indians?' she asked apprehensively, and he pointed to the two who were tying the bateau to shore.
'And their wives will be here to help you,' he assured her, pointing to the smaller wigwams near his own. 'They're gentle folk,' he began expansively. Then suddenly he lost his bravado and clutched her hands. 'My home's a pigsty too. I need you, Meg.'
She squeezed his fingers. He was so courteous that she could believe what the others had said in Jamestown: that he was from Oxford, dismissed by his noble family because of some petty quarrel. He had been very brave during the starving time, they told her, and had twice escaped murder by the Indians. But there was some mystery about him, else why would he seek an island? Looking at his eagerness to please and sensing his gentleness, she almost fell in love with him, but instinct warned her against such folly. First she must inspect this island, and determine what he intended doing with it, and whether he had the funds to open new fields and build a real house. She acknowledged an obligation to repay him for her passage money, but she would do this in her own practiced way. Indeed, she was eager to begin.
But when they reached his wigwam, a shabby affair of saplings and woven grass, she was prevented from entering by the arrival of the two Indian wives bringing baskets of vegetables and wriggling crabs. They proposed instructing her in how to cook Indian dishes, an art in which she had no interest whatever, and after several hours were wasted in domestic trivialities she snapped, 'Let's clear them out and jump into bed.'
The words intimidated Steed, for he had been conjuring up a much different approach to their first bedding, one which contained copious samples of the poetry he had acquired at Oxford, but since most of it was in Latin, it could hardly have been of much practical use. The Indians were dismissed and now the potential husband and wife were alone.
'It's a fearful place, this,' she said, poking her finger at the grassy wall, 'but it's no pigsty.' Deftly she slipped out of her clothes, and then, seeing that he had made no move to do likewise, said chidingly, 'Come, get on with it,' and she pulled him onto the straw bedding; from long practice she knew how to handle such a lover.
But when morning came she leaped from the rude bed in terror. 'Good God, what's that?'
It was the blue heron uttering his hideous yet reassuring cry. 'The Indians call him Fishing-long-legs,' he whispered, laughing gently at her fright. His night with her had been an experience of great joy, and he reached for one of her long, handsome legs to pull her down beside him again.
'We've work to do,' she reprimanded, and the next sixteen months were a revelation. Meg Shipton, raised in squalid London quarters, took to the island as if she had been reared on farms. She sweated to help plow the fields on which the wealth of this enterprise depended and grew greasy-black from tending the fires that burned away the bark of tall trees that had to be cleared from new fields. She grew skillful in collecting crabs and oysters, and came to enjoy the two Indian women who taught her tricks like making hominy: 'Mistress, you place corn in hot water mixed with wood ashes. The lye eats away the yellow covering, leaving only the white insides. So delicious fried in venison drippings.'
And yet, for all her voluntary work and the eagerness with which she helped Steed build a real house, she was somehow reserved in her relations with him; they had wild delights beneath the covers, but he sensed that she held him in some kind of contempt. They talked freely, but she always seemed to be laughing at him, and he gained the impression that she was being compatible only because she owed him a debt. Often he caught her looking at him quizzically, and he tried to determine in what way he had failed her, but whenever he came close to touching upon this subject, she drew back and smiled at him indulgently. But in spite of her obvious reserve about him, she never disciplined him in bed: he had agreed to buy her and she was his.
At the end of the first year Meg informed Steed that she was pregnant, and this galvanized him into insisting on various kinds of action: 'We've got to cross the bay. You can't have a baby till you're married.' She replied, 'It looks as if that's what I'm doing.' And she was doing it rather well, too, with the help of advice she was receiving from the women Pentaquod had sent from the village.
It was now that Steed began a frenzy of building, not a house and not a barn. For some days Meg couldn't decipher what it was, but then Chief Pentaquod appeared on the island with four helpers who cut and planked oak trees while Steed served as architect. Finally the building was done, a solid, low structure with a rude signboard over the door on which Steed had printed:
Surely the Lord lives in this place. This is none other than the house of God. This is the gateway to heaven. Genesis XXVIII.
When Meg asked what this signified, Steed took her inside and placed her on one of the benches Pentaquod had made. 'These are solemn times,' he said. 'The birth of a baby. The start of a new family.'
'The baby's no problem,' she said, slapping her expanding belly.
Steed ignored the jest. Grasping her reverently by both hands, he announced solemnly, 'I'm a Catholic. This is to be our chapel.'
Meg stared at him, then burst into laughter. 'A bloody Papist!' Shoving his hands away, she rose from the bench and moved to the door, where she broke into uncontrolled giggles, not mocking him or his chapel, but rather, ridiculing herself.
'A Papist!' she repeated. Then she came back to him, kissed him on the forehead and said, 'It's jolly. And what a surprise those farts in Jamestown will get when they hear about it.' Her words offended Steed, and he drew back, but she continued her lively laughter. 'I think it's wonderful, Edmund. And you've got yourself a fine chapel.' But then she broke into laughter again, unable to control herself. 'Meg Shipton, wedded to a Papist!' She left the chapel, still chuckling, and refused to set foot in it again.
She was having trouble with Pentaquod, too. Never having known a father, she had at first found this white-haired old man reassuring. She liked his stately mannerisms and his stories of how the Indians had lived before the white man came: 'Turtles! Two or three times a year one would swim into our river. Delicious.' He owned a gun now, which he fired ceremoniously once a month, hitting nothing, and a heavy ax which he wielded with startling power, felling the trees used in building the chapel. And when he found an oak of proper size, he directed Steed and the two Indian helpers in burning out the center and making a canoe so massive that it required four men to handle it. 'For the baby,' he told Meg.
She wanted to like this old chief but suspected that he did not approve of her. As Steed's woman she merited his deference and he protected her as he would any pregnant woman, but consistently he rejected her rather blatant efforts to win him as a friend, and in the end she told Steed petulantly, 'Get him out of here,' and Pentaquod was sent back to the village.
With the Indian gone, she became surprisingly tender, conceding one day, 'It's been rather good here, Steed. When you take your beaver pelts to Jamestown, you might as well pay Janney his eight pounds... if you think I'm still worth it.'
'You are!' he cried enthusiastically.
'Maybe I'll even go with you... get married proper.'
The child was born on March 3, 1616, the first white infant on the Eastern Shore, a robust boy in whom the Indian women took delight. Meg allowed them to tend him pretty much as they wished, laughing heartily when they tossed him into the salty creek to see if he would float. 'Good sign when a boy floats,' they assured her. 'With a girl it don't matter.' His first playthings were a deer's antler and a bear's claw; his first attempted sound was the _kraannk_ of the heron.
In August, Edmund Steed packed his bateau with cords of trade goods and lashed the new canoe astern to house the overflow. When the last pail of caviar was stowed, Steed called to Meg, 'We're ready for the sail.' On the first day in Jamestown he would pay for her, and on the second make her his wife. As she came down the path to the wharf, wearing a dress made from cloth woven on the island, carrying the baby easily on her hip, she was fair and buxom and laughing, and Steed knew a greater happiness than he had ever before experienced: this strange, secretive, passionate woman he had stumbled upon was a treasure, precisely the kind required to build an empire.
And then, just as they were about to leave, a pinnace sailed into the mouth of the creek, dropped its canvas and moved slowly to the wharf. In the bow stood a determined Simon Janney, impatient to leap ashore, and Steed had to assume that he had come to fight for Meg, whose passage money had not yet been repaid and who was theoretically still his property.
In the moment before the pinnace landed, Steed had to decide what he would do, the extent of his love for Meg. His two years with her had satisfied him that not in all Virginia could he find a better wife; there could be no equal to the way she had worked in the fields, no mother happier with her son, and even if she did frequently refuse Steed entrance to her inner thoughts, she had been exciting and satisfying. Meg Shipton was worth holding on to, and he would fight Janney to keep her.
As soon as the pinnace touched, the sturdy little farmer leaped ashore and rushed right at Steed, who resolutely presented his fists. No blows fell, because when the countryman reached Steed he extended his arms and cried, 'Steed, great news!'
Steed dropped his hands and asked, 'What?'
'I can take Meg home. You owe me nothing.'
'Meg has a child,' Steed said, pointing to where the handsome woman stood with the baby.
'No matter!' Janney cried in great excitement. 'She...'
He never finished the sentence, for at the rear of the pinnace appeared a woman, dressed in a cape which in spite of the August heat she held close to her throat. She was tall, slender, dark of hair and with hands that were extremely white. She moved hesitantly, picking her way over bundles cluttering the deck, and with the help of sailors climbed carefully onto the wharf, where she adjusted her cape. But once ashore, all hesitancy vanished. Walking firmly, she came up the wharf, passed the two men and went directly to where Meg stood with the baby.
'You must be Meg,' she said softly, extending a long, thin hand. 'And this I presume is your daughter.'
'Son,' Meg said suspiciously.
'You can go back to Jamestown, Meg,' the visitor said. 'I'm the new mistress of the island.'
'She is!' Janney cried happily. 'Your father sent her, Steed.'
Now the tall woman turned slowly to face the man whose invitation had brought her to this remote island, and she came to him with the same resolution she had shown in tackling Meg. Extending her hand once more, she said, 'Edmund Steed, I bring you greetings from your father. I am Martha Keene of High Wycombe in Bucks.'
Steed could manage nothing, not even a stammering welcome, but Simon Janney moved forward, ready to handle any eventuality—except the strange one that now developed. 'She's a fine woman, Edmund,' he said rapidly. 'Everyone on shipboard respected her.'
'Mr. Janney has my boxes in the pinnace,' the newcomer said, and when they were handed ashore, lending finality to her arrival, Janney said, 'Now Meg can come home with me.'
'That I will never do,' Meg said. With exaggerated gestures she handed the baby to Martha Keene, saying, 'You can have the little bastard, and the big one too.' She looked at Steed and sniffed. 'They're both yours, Mistress Keene. I've been ready to get out of here for some time.'
'Meg!' Steed cried.
'Boat's loaded. Let's be off!' And she flounced toward the shore, with Simon Janney attempting to stop her, to grab her, to do anything to get her into his pinnace.
'I'm to take you back,' he pleaded softly. 'The fees are paid.'
She had had enough. Planting her feet resolutely on the wharf, her arms akimbo, she surveyed Janney and Steed contemptuously and cried, 'Damn you both. You paid this and you paid that and you offered to buy. I'm not for sale. I came here and worked my hands red to build this island. I'd have done the same for you, Janney, if you'd given me a decent house. But now all talk of buying and selling is ended. Shove your fees up your arse and to hell with both of you.'
Steed was too shocked to make a response, but Janney asked in a whisper, 'Where will you go, Meg?'
'To Jamestown. To someone who appreciates a wife for what she is.' To Steed's surprise, she reserved her greatest bitterness for him. Regarding him scornfully, she railed, 'Trap your beavers and build your chapels and be damned to you.'
Steed gasped. He had never suspected she harbored such bitterness, and in the fire of her rejection she seemed even more desirable than when she had passively accepted him because of her gratitude for his offering her a refuge.
It was Martha Keene who best comprehended what was happening. With the stateliness inherent in a large family accustomed to English county living, she pursued Meg down the wharf, holding the baby, and asked quietly, 'Are you in good mind... to leave your child?'
'Take the Papist bastard and be damned. He'll amount to nothing, and if I should feel need of another, I can catch one.'
Mistress Keene offered a response that would be long remembered in the Choptank: she took Meg's hand, brought it to her lips and kissed it. 'You will have better days,' she said quietly. 'And thank you for the child. What's his name?'
'Ralph,' Meg said, and to everyone's surprise she climbed down not into Janney's pinnace nor into Steed's bateau but into the stout oak canoe. 'This is my boat,' she said grandly. 'We're off to Jamestown.'
No appeal from Janney could dislodge her from her perch among the beaver pelts, and Steed, shocked by her disclosures, made no effort to lure her into his bateau. From her canoe Meg fired a parting shot. To Mistress Keene she shouted, 'You'll be insisting upon a proper marriage, I should think. Join me and we'll find a priest somewheres.'
It had been Martha Keene's intention to sail back with Steed for a ceremony, but Meg's insulting behavior forestalled this. Taking Steed far from the wharf, but keeping the baby in her arms, she confided, 'Your father chose me because I'm Catholic. My family has suffered as deeply as yours, and to me the faith is precious.' She spoke crisply and with authority, as if she had read books and in them learned of Sir Latimer's martyrdom. She was only twenty-two that summer, but aged in wisdom. 'Your father foresaw difficulties and so did mine. They agreed that if they arose, I might wait with you on the island until such time as a priest arrived.'
'It could be years.'
'I know.'
'And you will be my wife till the priest comes?'
'I will.'
He led her to the log chapel, where, after pausing to read the inscription from Genesis, she knelt to give thanks for her safe arrival. When she rose, Steed took her by the hands and said, 'You must understand. I could not have built this island, nor this chapel—'
'Without Meg,' she interrupted. 'I do understand, but now it's we who live here.'
She kissed him, then smiled as she heard Meg bellowing from her canoe, ordering the boats to sail for Jamestown. She accompanied Steed to the wharf, watched as he boarded the bateau and hoisted sail. She stood there firm-chinned, holding the baby as the three craft stood out for the Choptank.
Three weeks later, when Steed's bateau headed back into Devon Creek, he experienced a welter of confusions. His trading trip to Jamestown had been an unprecedented success—he was returning not only with more trade goods than he had expected but also with several Spanish coins, since he had not been required to pay Simon Janney eight pounds for Meg Shipton. But mixed with his elation was uneasiness over the fact that when his boat landed at Devon he would be alone with the stranger who was now his wife.
He knew nothing of her except that she had been chosen by his father, that she came from the neighboring county of Bucks and that she was Catholic. In the brief moments he had spoken with her she had seemed quite austere, but she may have felt the same about him; in her favor she had adjusted with remarkable ease to the extraordinary behavior of Meg Shipton and had accepted the baby without apparent qualms. One further thing: at least three fellow passengers from Captain Hackett's _Victorious_ had sought Steed out to assure him that in Martha Keene he was catching himself a wonderful woman: 'She was most helpful on seasick days, and she a lady.'
Asquas and the other Indians had seen the Devon bateau approaching, and they were waiting on the wharf as it lowered its sails, but Martha Keene was not, so as the boat maneuvered into position one of the women went to fetch her. This was not necessary; Martha was tardy only because she had been attending the baby; now, carrying it as if she were a madonna, she came from the hut to greet her returning husband.
Steed would never forget this moment. He had been directing the Indians how to unload and bore in his arms a heavy bundle of cloth, its tag ends blowing in the breeze, when he saw her picking her way carefully down the path and onto the wharf. She moved with studied grace, as if entering a church, and carried the child as if it were her own. Her pale face was rimmed by a black cloth tied about her head, but her eyes and lips joined in a smile of welcome that seemed to Steed the warmest human expression he had ever seen.
Dropping the bundled cloth, he leaped ashore and ran to her, embracing her and kissing her in front of the startled Indians. 'I am so glad you're here,' he mumbled.
'This is my home,' she said.
But Steed would always be a special kind of Catholic, a poetic traditionalist: five thousand years of Celtic poetry onto which had been grafted a thousand years of Saxon prudence. He could never rest easily with Martha Keene until they had been married ritually, and when in December he discussed it with her, he found that she, too, was experiencing a heavy burden of sin. They tried to ease their conscience by embellishing the chapel, the first such Catholic structure in Virginia, with a rude crucifix which he carved and a purple cloth which she wove and stained, as if this would impart sanction. But as the new year dawned, she asked abruptly, 'Would the werowance marry us... in his fashion?'
That very day they sailed upstream to Patamoke, and as soon as Pentaquod saw the new woman, so austere and formal, he said in Choptank, 'Steed, this one is much better.'
'We want the werowance to marry us.'
'You never bothered before.'
'I was afraid she'd run away.'
'I, too,' the old chief said, and as he spoke his eyes wandered to Tciblento, who had been listening to the conversation, and he wondered why it was that this man had been unable to find in his daughter the wife he needed. A most perplexing matter, for in his first glimpse of Meg Shipton he had known that Steed must not marry her; she was swift and darting like the black duck and no man could catch her. The new one would be strong and stable, like Onk-or the goose, a good wife but lacking in fire. And all the time there stood Tciblento, the finest woman this river had produced, or ever would produce, and he had found no way to convince Steed of this truth. It was indeed perplexing, as if the Englishman had a film over his eyes which prevented him from seeing the excellence of an Indian.
Nevertheless, Pentaquod arranged a stately wedding, beneath tall oak trees inland from the river, and all members of the tribe assembled in tribute to a man they had grown to trust. The shaman chanted blessings and midwives predicted that the union would be fruitful. Crabs and fish and beaver pelts were laid before the gods, who, properly propitiated, could be trusted to give their protection to this marriage. Four children from the tribe brought flowers for Mistress Keene to stand upon and four boys handed Steed a long pipe and an arrow tipped with eagle feathers.
Then Pentaquod spoke in words that Martha could not understand. He referred to himself and Steed as two strangers who had come to this tribe, and who had found happiness and good lives along this river. He pointed out that both he and Steed had taken alien women to be their brides and that often such things worked well, as had been proved in his case. He then said that when a man goes to a new place, and takes a new bride, he associates himself forever with the fortunes of that place, and is obligated to defend it in war and guide it in peace. Steed had proved that he was the good neighbor. The Indians working on Devon Island had assured him that Steed's wife would be a good neighbor, too, and he blessed them both for coming to this river.
Steed had tears in his eyes when the old man finished, and so did Tciblento, who appreciated with terrible intensity the appropriateness of what her father had said. While the werowance was conducting the ceremony she had tried, desperately she tried, to keep her dark eyes away from Steed, but in the end she could not. Looking at him with a longing that consumed her, she asked that question which has no answer: Why? Why?
When the bateau delivered the couple back to the island, Martha said, 'The little Indian girl with the braids... the one with the dark eyes... she's in love with you, Edmund.'
'Tciblento? She's Pentaquod's daughter.'
'Why didn't you marry her... to begin with?'
'An Indian!'
Martha never mentioned the matter again, but later, when Tciblento offered to visit the island to help instruct her in Indian ways, she politely refused, and sometimes whole months would pass without the Steeds' seeing Tciblento, but one day in 1619 Pentaquod himself came to Devon to inform the settlers that his daughter was to be married, and he would be pleased if they would attend the ceremony. They did, and Martha saw that the Indian girl, now twenty-three and beautiful in her dress of deerskin adorned with beaver and porcupine quills, stood close to tears throughout the ritual. It was Martha's judgment that the young brave she was marrying amounted to little and she doubted that he would ever inherit the title of werowance.
In these years the Steeds paid Pentaquod and the Choptanks substantial sums for any new land they occupied. They now owned 2,160 acres on Devon Island, the exact extent having been calculated by Martha, with the aid of careful measurements made by her husband. Only a few were under cultivation, but they also had title to another 2,488 acres on the mainland. None of this had yet been cleared; it was Steed's intention to burn down the trees as soon as he had trained enough Indians to tend the fields, from which he would send increasing boatloads of corn to Jamestown.
It was in 1626 that Steed's fortunes took a radical turn, after which the clearing of additional acres became an urgent necessity. In December of that year he had guided his bateau back to Jamestown with a heavy cargo of corn, beaver, sassafras and caviar, and as he was unloading onto a two-masted ship from London, he found that a crude river boat from somewhere up the James was unloading on the opposite side of the trader. It was Simon Janney, and the cargo he was hefting about with the aid of ropes was new to Steed.
'What are those great bales?' he asked.
'The stinking weed,' Janney replied.
'Tobacco? Is there profit in tobacco?'
'The surest,' Janney said.
'Where's your farm?'
'Far upstream.'
A silence, then, 'Is Meg with you?'
'Never.'
More silence, then, 'What happened to her?'
Janney did not care to answer this. 'If you have cleared land, Steed, you should consider tobacco. Difficult to grow but easy to sell.'
'I spend my acres on corn.'
'Switch to tobacco, You'll never regret.'
'And where's Meg?'
Janney kicked at one of the bales, then confessed, 'Two hours after she climbed out of her canoe at Jamestown she met a man looking for a wife. Before nightfall he had paid me her transit money and as soon as proper he married her. She lives in one of the new houses on the riverbank.'
Steed saw her once. She carried a parasol and wore a large straw hat edged with gold ribbon, her blond hair peeking out provocatively to glisten in the sun. She walked with a light step and seemed to be smiling to herself, even before she spotted her former husband, as Steed insisted upon calling himself. When she saw that it was Steed of Devon beside the road, she nodded gravely, smiled slightly, as if unable to control her inward laughter, and passed on. Her husband, men at the wharf told Steed, was a man of growing importance in the colony.
But it was Simon Janney who made the lasting impression during this 1626 trip, for when both Steed's boat and his own were unloaded he led the islander to a tavern, where they talked seriously for a long time. 'If you have good land at the ready, Edmund, you should plant tobacco instantly. I have more seed than I need, and I'd be prepared to bring it to Devon to get you started, providing you'd share profits with me.'
'You said difficult to grow. How difficult?'
'Many pitfalls. You must watch the land it doesn't grow musty. Nor get too much heat. And it's best if you have a shed for drying, but even if you do, you must turn the leaves.'
They spent that night discussing the cultivation of this delicate plant, and toward morning Janney convinced Steed to take the gamble. 'I'd not bother you, Steed, if I had land of my own available, but the Indians are fractious. My wife and I have not been able to clear—'
'What wife?'
'Captain Hackett brought her over. One hundred and thirty-seven of them. All disposed of within two days. Mine's scrawny but she can work.'
Mrs. Janney had been a serving girl in London, made pregnant by the master, who fell sobbing in his wife's arms with the lament: 'She tempted me, that one.' She had been hauled into court by the clergy and condemned for a harlot; when her child was stillborn everyone involved deemed it best that she be sent to Virginia, so her mistress paid her passage with Captain Hackett.
He, of course, conveniently forgot that her passage had been paid and offered her for sale upon arrival, a gaunt, gawky thing, meriting her husband's description of _scrawny_. She had excited no bidding in the early stages of the auction, for she was certainly not a prime prospect, but this did not deter Hackett. 'Someone's bound to want you,' he kept assuring her. 'Women are at a premium... any women.' And even when she and two other ungainly scarecrows stood alone at the end of the line, the captain was still confident that he would uncover some ill-favored planter who would need her.
Simon Janney was that man. Once bitterly disappointed in this game, he haggled with Hackett over price, and when a bargain was reached he took her west. This time he encountered no problem in holding his woman; for her, he represented a final haven.
Steed remained longer in Jamestown than he had intended, because Janney insisted that he sail far up the James to inspect the tobacco fields, and when they landed at the rickety wharf and he saw the foul conditions in which Janney lived, he appreciated Meg's decision to run away.
'This is Bess,' Janney said as Steed entered his hovel. He saw an emaciated woman in a torn dress. Her teeth were bad and her hair unkempt. But when she and her husband took him out to inspect their fields he found all things neat and trimmed, and he understood their strategy: fields first. 'These are handsome acres, Simon,' he said. 'Do they yield good tobacco?'
'They do. And if I could trust the Indians to help, I'd clear those beyond the trees.'
'Help may be a long time coming,' Steed said, thinking of how peaceful the Choptanks were and how dangerous the Potomacs.
'There's talk of bringing in more blacks from Africa,' Janney said. 'But even then us little planters would be at the far end of the barrel. We'd see none of them.'
'You must have help to clear this country,' Steed agreed. He then watched as Janney unriddled the mysteries of growing tobacco, the cultivation of the fields, the processing of the leaf. Steed had never smoked tobacco and was most doubtful that the fad would be permanent, but when he was told of the earnings Janney had made on his small fields, his cupidity was aroused. 'Could I do the same on my big ones?' he asked.
'Better! I studied your fields when I went to fetch Meg.' This mournful recollection slowed his enthusiasm, so on a more subdued level he argued, 'Steed, with your fields and your Indians you could treble what I earn.'
They reached an agreement whereby Janney would collect as much tobacco seed as possible, then follow Steed to Devon, where he would show the Indians how to grow what he called 'the stinking weed.' When he arrived, Steed and his wife talked Pentaquod into lending them six additional Choptanks to till the fields and tend the delicate plants. They also built along the shore a pair of long sheds for drying the leaf, and Janney taught them how to construct oaken hogsheads. A substantial industry developed on Devon, and when the crop was harvested and cured, the great hogsheads were rolled down to the wharf where Captain Hackett docked his _Victorious_.
Custom already required that Virginians, as colonists, send their precious tobacco only to the mother country, and only in English ships. This meant that Captain Hackett and his storm-racked _Victorious_ exercised a monopoly which paid the colonists meagerly and the factors in London well. Even so, when shiploads of trade goods began pouring back into Devon, delighting the Indians along the Choptank, Steed realized that he was on his way to building a fortune.
He was goaded to even greater profits by Janney, who pointed out that since Steed could use Indians, he really must develop the copious lands he owned on the north bank. So in 1631 Steed assembled a work force of himself, Janney and seven new Indians to clear massive fields across the channel, the agreement being as before: Janney would return to Jamestown once the fields were prepared and come back with tobacco seed, sharing in whatever profits were realized.
All through the winter and spring, fires smoked the sky as Indians knelt about the trunks of towering oaks and loblolly pine, girdling them and forcing them to die. On fields where the trunks had been earlier burned, ropes were attached to upper branches, now dead, and the forest sentinels were pulled down. Then Steed and Janney would wait for a rainy day, when danger of fire spreading out of control was at a minimum, and on such days they would light vast conflagrations to burn away the fallen trees, for which they could devise no use. For weeks the sky over the Choptank would be black with smoke and the men even blacker with soot.
'We're making our fortunes!' Janney exulted. 'And when we've finished here, we'll transport these Indians across the bay and burn off some new forests I've spotted along the Rappahannock.'
'Would you leave your farm on the James?'
'For me it's been an unfortunate river.'
'Why not come here? Take up land along the Choptank?'
'Oh no!' Janney said without hesitation. 'The center of life will always be over there.' And no argument could persuade him to quit the western shore, where the great fortunes would be gathered, the lasting reputations forged.
Captain John Smith had become a garrulous old man who bored his London cronies with rambling tales of Hungary and Virginia. It was not until many years after his flight from the colony and the death of the Indian princess Pocahontas that he revealed that when Chief Powhatan had spared him from the chopping block, it was only because the lovely princess had thrown herself across his, Smith's, prostrate body. 'She loved me,' he confided, 'desperately she loved me.'
'Then why did she marry Rolfe and not you?' asked a man who had known Pocahontas when she visited the English court.
'Marry!' Smith snorted. 'An English captain dally with an Indian maid? Let alone marry her! That's for lesser men like young Rolfe.'
He was dismayed when travelers from Virginia informed him that Edmund Steed, with whom he had served at Jamestown, had finally disclosed his true colors and stood forth as a Catholic. 'A Papist?' he repeated several times, shaking his head incredulously.
Then his mind cleared and he remembered his adventures with this gallant young man. 'He came close to death, that one. They were cutting the flesh off poor Ratcliffe, inch by inch, and the poor fellow died. No regrets from me. He'd voted at Nevis to have me hanged, but I stormed back in time to save young Steed.' It hadn't happened that way. Smith had been long gone before Ratcliffe died.
'I was with him in the sickness, too. Steed, that is, not Ratcliffe. In one tent seven of us dead with the flux, except that I fought back. Steed shared his last food with me.'
There had been other adventures, but Smith could not recall them now. 'I remember I had to correct his writing. Careless about details. And I must confess I was always suspicious of him. Devious, I called him once. Not clear, like a decent Englishman. A Papist, eh? I knew he was hiding something.'
In succeeding months Smith spoke often of Steed and cited his subversive Catholicism as an example of why King Charles should not confer favors on the Catholic Lords Baltimore. 'The idea of granting them a colony in Virginia! Shameful! Papists will take over the continent. Devious, they are. Steed's grandfather, you know, had to be hanged and quartered by Good Queen Bess. All devious.'
Before the year was out he was dead, lamenting the dark changes engineered by the two kings, James and Charles. One of his last judgments was that things had been much better handled by Elizabeth.
Pentaquod had foreseen that when the white man came to the Choptank, all traditions of Indian life would be in jeopardy, and he had willingly come out of retirement to help his tribe make the transition. What he had not foreseen were the curious ways in which the impact would manifest itself.
He had not expected any white man to be as congenial as the one who settled on Devon Island, nor to have in common with him those problems encountered by all men: trouble with women, the constant fight for food, difficulty in rearing children, safeguarding whatever gains had been made. On three different occasions Indian messengers from across the bay had come to the Choptanks, hoping to lead them in rebellion against the whites: on a specified day Pentaquod would murder all of them on Devon, then storm across the bay to slaughter and burn along the James and the Rappahannock. Each time he had replied, 'Steed is a friend more to be trusted than most of our own.' Not only had he refused to kill Steed, he had sent extra Choptanks to guard the island against Potomac efforts. So when hideous massacres scarred the western shore, nothing happened on the eastern. Relationships with Steed were better than could have been expected.
On the other hand, he had been mortally hurt when the quiet Englishman rejected Tciblento; Pentaquod had known why and he suspected that his daughter did, too. Indians were inferior, and any contact between the races must be kept to the level of work and trade. The old man was appalled at the eagerness with which his people grabbed for whatever geegaws white traders dangled before them. Here was the danger, Pentaquod saw: that the values of his people might be destroyed. For the present they were content to keep on fishing and hunting beaver and digging sassafras and tending their corn, but the day would come when the old pursuits would be abandoned, and on that day the Choptanks would begin to diminish.
He was meticulous in not interfering with the prerogatives of the young werowance. He had come back to serve as senior counsel, and in spite of great pressures to resume the leadership, he restricted himself to that role. He did so from deep conviction: the younger men must learn how to work with whites if they hoped to bring their people through these perilous times. Therefore, when Captain Smith first appeared at Patamoke, Pentaquod had kept to the background so that the werowance might have experience in estimating the newcomers' intentions, and in all dealings with Steed, Pentaquod effaced himself. When the deeds to Devon Island had to be signed, it was the werowance who made the first mark.
The old man did retain his three turkey feathers, and as he moved among the Choptanks they knew that he was their leader, and it was to him that they looked whenever crisis neared. Now they came to him, perplexed.
'Each day new fires rage,' they protested. 'They consume all the trees between the rivers where we used to hide.'
So Pentaquod got into his canoe and paddled downriver to talk with Steed. 'Is it necessary to burn the ancient trees?'
'It is.'
'With such desolation?' And he pointed to deer fleeing the flames and a bewildered beaver clinging to his lodge as fire approached.
'We must have more fields for tobacco,' Steed explained.
'We grow all the tobacco we can smoke,' Pentaquod said, pointing to the trivial clearings in which the women of his tribe had cultivated the weed.
'Enough for you, but not enough for London.'
'Must we burn our forests for London?' the old man asked.
Steed found it difficult to clarify the intricacies of transocean trading, to explain that it was not only obligatory but morally imperative to burn forests in Virginia so that tobacco might be burned in London. Pentaquod could not understand.
Three times he returned to protest this abuse of the Choptank forests, and on the last visit Simon Janney grew impatient. Knowing no Choptank words, he would not allow the old man to waste precious time. Shoving him aside, he growled, 'Be gone, old man! We've work to do.'
Pentaquod returned to his canoe, defeated. Heavily he plied his paddle, and when he reached the village he informed the werowance that soon something must be done to halt these hungry fires. The two leaders talked a long time, neither willing to face up to the inevitable: fight or flee. And when a silent impasse had been reached, two young members of the tribe ran in with harsh news: 'Pentaquod! They have set fires which will burn your refuge!'
Together the two leaders paddled down past the marsh and up the small river to the forked creek where Pentaquod once lived, and as they approached they saw vast fires creeping in from many sides, erasing the field Navitan had cultivated for yams, burning away the spot where Tciblento had been born, destroying the trees in which his sons had kept their bear cubs. As the two Indians watched, the crackling grew stronger, until it seemed as if the creek itself might boil, and then all was gone: the trees, the small wharf, the memories of Tciblento playing by the house. Transfixed, Pentaquod refused to believe that men would destroy everything for tobacco leaves, but they had.
'We must go back,' Pentaquod told the werowance, and that night they made their decision: it was impossible to live side-by-side with the white man, so messengers bearing firm orders were dispatched in secrecy, and next morning when Steed and Janney prepared to set new fires they found no Indians to help them. Steed assumed that they must have slept the night at Devon with their friends, but when he sailed his small boat home he found that not only were the field crew missing, but the island Indians as well, including their wives. 'Canoes came for them last night,' Martha reported. 'Took everything with them. I doubt they'll be coming back.'
'Impossible! Where'd they go?'
'To their village, I judge.'
Without waiting to collect Janney, he sailed as speedily as he could to Patamoke, and there his Indians were, sitting disconsolately before the long hut. 'What are you doing here?' he demanded, but none would speak. When he repeated his question, one of the wives gestured toward the door of the hut. 'Did they make you leave us?' Steed shouted.
His loud voice alerted the werowance, who appeared at the doorway, hesitant and unwilling to face the white man. In a moment Pentaquod appeared, leaning on the shoulder of Tciblento. Together the three Indians approached Steed, and on the face of each showed the respect they held for this honest Englishman. It was a moment that would never be forgotten by any participant, for this was the day when parting became inevitable.
'What are you doing to me?' Steed asked the werowance.
The young man remained silent. Pentaquod nudged him, but still he was afraid to speak. It was the old man who responded: 'What have you done to us? Burned our pines. Cut down our tallest oaks. Driven deer from their homes and beaver from their lodges. Singed the feathers of birds and torn down the places where our children played. Steed, you have destroyed the paradise we shared with you.'
Steed fell back before this torrent of accusation, then said persuasively, 'Pentaquod, dear and trusted friend, you do not understand. If we burn the fields, we grow more tobacco. If we grow more tobacco, Captain Hackett's ship will come more often. And when it does, you and your people can have guns for hunting.'
'Before you came we earned our meat without guns.'
'But you can have mirrors, too, and compasses like the one Captain Smith gave you. Remember?'
'I have always known where north was,' the old man said.
Then, in tones of bitter sadness, he informed Steed that henceforth no Choptanks would work for him, and no pleas from the Englishman reversed this harsh decision. In the midst of the great sweep to clear the fields, Steed's entire labor force was retracted; not even one woman was permitted to help Martha and her three children. When Janney learned of the decision he proposed that they sail to Jamestown, conscript an army and burn the village unless the Indians returned to work, but Steed ridiculed such folly.
Instead he and Janney stayed overnight at Patamoke, and in the morning sought a formal consultation with the werowance and Pentaquod. It was granted, and once more the white-haired old man appeared leaning upon his beautiful daughter. The realization that old ties were about to be shattered saddened the former leader, and he spoke gently to his friend. 'What is it, Steed?'
'Pentaquod, ally of many years, why do you harm us?'
'There is no way that you and we can share this river.'
'But we can! Your children and mine play together, speak the same tongue, love the same animals.'
'No, Steed. In all things we grow apart. The time for separation is upon us.'
'No need. When Captain Hackett's ship comes you can have all the things we have.'
'We do not want your things. They bring us only trouble.'
When this was translated for Janney he wanted Steed to tell the old fool that if the Indians refused to work, they'd find out what real trouble was—even war. Such words Steed refused to translate, but Tciblento had learned enough English to advise her father as to what the other Englishman had said.
'War?' Pentaquod repeated. 'You speak of war? Do you know what happened across the bay when war came? Countless dead and hatred forever. Have you subdued the Potomacs or driven the Piscataways from your rivers, Janney? Steed and I have striven to see that such war does not scar our friendship, nor will it while I live.'
Steed ignored this line of argument and did not translate for Janney, who sat glaring at the old man. What Steed focused on was labor. 'Pentaquod, if you send your men to work for us, we'll pay them... well.'
'And what will they buy with the roanoke?'
'What they wish.' And he spread his hands to indicate the largesse of Europe.
Pentaquod brushed aside this irrelevant logic and reminded Steed: 'When you and your wife needed our help to build a home on your island, we worked for you. And when you wanted to clear fields to grow food, we helped again. I even told my people to instruct you in all skills you needed. Did not my own daughter Tciblento offer to instruct your wives?'
Steed looked at the Indian girl, dressed in deerskin ornamented with fringes of mink and a necklace of beaver teeth, and for the first time realized what an amazingly beautiful woman she had become. His vision was cleared, perhaps, by the realization that after this fateful day there would be no more meetings. He became aware that he was blushing and that his eyes held on to hers for a shameful period, but he was incapable of looking away. Then he shook his head as if to awaken, and conceded, 'Tciblento was most helpful.'
Sadly the old man announced, 'Steed, on this day we leave our village. You will see us no more.'
'No!' Steed pleaded.
'During many moons I have told my people that you and we could share the river, but I was wrong. You will always want to burn more, destroy more. We shall leave you to your fires.'
Janney asked, 'What's he threatening now?'
'They're leaving,' Steed said.
'Good!' Janney said with sudden approval. 'Help them along. Kick them out.'
'What do you mean?' Steed asked, but before the tough little countryman could explain, Pentaquod took Steed aside to ask a question which had perplexed him for years. 'Dear friend,' he said, 'many summers ago when the Great Canoe came into the bay, our people watched it carefully. They saw the white sails, but they also saw that the men had skins that glistened. What was this, Steed?'
The Englishman pondered the question but could find no reasonable explanation, so Pentaquod repeated the problem, indicating himself on the deck of the ancient ship, with sun glinting from his body. 'Oh!' Steed exclaimed. 'It must have been a Spanish ship. Armor!' And he explained how a man encased in armor would glisten in sunlight, and then Pentaquod broached the matter that truly disturbed him. 'In later days, when I am gone, the Choptanks will return to this village. Will you watch over Tciblento?'
Steed did not reply. Tears so filled the old man's eyes that no further words were necessary. They embraced, returned to the long hut, and separated for the last time. Tciblento stood on the riverbank as they started their sail homeward, a radiant woman, not waving goodbye, not tearful, just standing there in fading light aware that never again in this life would she see the fair Englishman.
When the bateau reached the marsh Janney said excitedly, 'We're lucky to be rid of the lazy swine.'
'But what are we going to do for help?'
'Ships bring many an indentured lad to Jamestown.'
'Can we afford them?'
'Secret is, buy them cheap, work them to the bone. And when their seven years are up, kiss them goodbye.' He sucked on a tooth, then added, 'But better times are coming. They've begun to bring whole shiploads of slaves from Africa. Captain Hackett offers them for sale.'
'Same question. Can we afford them?'
'Look, Steed. You can't afford not to have them. You buy a slave once, he's yours for life. He and his children. Best bargain ever offered.'
But it was not as simple as Janney had proposed. Slaves did not arrive by shipload, and those that did straggle in as part of a cargo were kept in Virginia; they were too valuable to be wasted on uncertain fields across the bay. So as the Indians departed, their place was taken by white men from the dregs of London, but the bulk of the work was done by Steed and his wife. Theirs was the only plantation on the Eastern Shore, a daring, lonely outpost where the proprietors worked fifteen and sixteen hours a day, the unremitting toil always required if a home or a nation was to be built.
Steed personally supervised each step in raising tobacco, from hoarding the precious seed—ten thousand did not fill a teaspoon—to topping the young plants, an operation which prevented useless leaves from proliferating high on the stalk and ensured a few big rich leaves at workable height; it had to be performed during the hottest days of July and August, when heat shimmered on still waters. Then Steed moved among his plants, nipping off tops by catching them between his right thumbnail and forefinger; in time his right hand grew larger and stronger than his left, his right thumbnail huge and dark and thick.
One morning at breakfast Martha Keene—she would not adopt the name Steed before she was properly married—noticed the discoloration on Edmund's thumb and surprised him by leaning across the table and kissing it—'The badge of our real nobility.'
At that time in distant England, Edmund's older brother held the baronetcy and was known as Sir Philip Steed, but in the New World a new nobility was being born, of which the Steeds of Devon would be one of the founding families.
When Martha Keene had volunteered to emigrate to Virginia, she performed an act of courage oft repeated, rarely appreciated; but when she moved on to the isolation of Dover Island, it was sheer heroism.
How did she survive? Precariously. There was no doctor and only the slightest medication: calomel for indigestion, sassafras tea for fever. Constipation was a constant fear, for it could lead to more serious ills, so every family had its favorite purge; the ague was also a torment. Teeth were a special problem, and each locality owned one pair of forceps, worn and rusty, for the yanking away of rotting molars, plus some strong-armed man with good eyesight who did the job; two men held the patient by the shoulders, another lay across his knees, and the forceps would go to work, twisting and pulling until something shattered.
Mothers watched with anguish as their children contracted an endless chain of diseases, sitting awake through fevered nights and grieving as the little ones were buried beneath loblolly pines. However, if the children survived this deadly assault, they developed an immunity that was striking; often they would live from eighteen through forty-eight with scarce an illness, rocklike people who could resist cold and hunger and poor nutrition, but by then they were elders and at fifty they were usually dead. Women especially died young, and it was not unusual for one husband to bury two wives before he left a young widow to survive him for twenty years.
The house to which Martha came had been much improved by its former occupant, the lively Meg Shipton, but it was still little more than a primitive hut. It was superbly sited: as you left the Chesapeake your shallop moved due east through the channel north of the island, then turned south to enter the broad estuary leading to Devon Creek. A mile up that deep body of water brought you to a wharf projecting out from the northern shore, and above the wharf, on a small plateau of fine level land overlooking vast distances, stood the house. It had been built in stages, first a shack, then a separate kitchen located to the east so that the sun reached it at dawn, then a second floor with bedrooms fearfully cold in winter, and finally some connected sheds and storage areas.
Meager furniture slapped together from local wood, sparse utensils carved from oak, a few knives and forks with spoons of wood, those were the things Martha had to work with. She had one iron kettle, suspended by a hook over an open fire, and a kind of iron-and-clay oven in which she performed miracles. A low fire was kept burning day and night, fueled by immense piles of wood outside the door. The place had few blankets but many animal skins, which in some ways were better, for they showed little soiling, and no sheets. Clothing was precious, a man's trousers lasting for twelve or fifteen years of constant use, a woman's dress surviving innumerable alterations and additions. Adornments were few, and those which a husband did bring were rarely worn though deeply cherished.
The house had two peculiarities, one which infuriated Martha, one which provided foolish contentment. Since there was little glass in Jamestown and none in Devon, the Steeds had covered their windows with oiled paper, itself a precious commodity, and a score of times Martha, contemplating windows which allowed light but not vision, would catch herself complaining, 'I do wish we had glass that someone could see through,' and each time a ship left their wharf for Bristol she begged, 'Can't they bring back some Holland glass?' What pleased her were the heavy pewter dishes; they had a solid quality, and to see them piled neatly in their pine cupboard was an experience she treasured. 'I value them more than silver,' she told her husband, and as she washed them, she exulted: They are mine.
Labor was specialized, for with the arrival of slaves at Jamestown it became practical for plantation managers there to cultivate particular skills among them. Slave women who could sew were taken indoors; men who could make shoes were valued; and especially treasured were those blacks who could convert oak trees into staves, and staves into hogsheads for shipping tobacco. Poor Steed, without access to slaves, had to master all the mechanical arts himself, then teach them to new servants as they reached Devon. It was a thankless task; he would spend two years instructing some clumsy lad how to shape a barrel, then enjoy only four years of profitable work from the young man, because the seventh year was largely wasted: the servant spent most of that time trying to locate land of his own on which to start a farm. Steed became the master teacher of the Eastern Shore, and Devon the university through which the Choptank would be civilized.
A peculiar feature of life on Devon was that money did not exist. Sometimes the Steeds would go three years without seeing a coin, and when they did, it was apt to be of either Spanish or French origin. English pounds and shillings were incredibly scarce, a planned design on the part of the government in London and the king's officers in the colonies. 'As long as we control the flow of coins,' they reasoned, 'we shall be in command.' So the plantations were strangled for lack of exchange; no Steed boy ever had a penny to spend, for there were no pennies, no place to spend them and nothing to spend them on.
In self-defense the colonists invented their own specie: roanoke was universally accepted; tobacco could be legally used to pay any debt; and taxes were specifically levied in hogsheads of the weed. The total wealth of the Steeds, which was becoming impressive, was represented in tobacco, either in the fields, or in the drying sheds, or in hogsheads awaiting shipment, or in transit across the Atlantic, or in some warehouse in London. Slips of paper, often tattered, represented their savings.
They looked to London for everything good. How precious a packet of needles was, how Martha grieved if she lost even one. Nails were like gold; one servant did nothing all year long but carve wooden nails, becoming so skillful that his fine products were exchanged widely throughout Virginia. Books came from London, and cloth, and utensils, and furniture, and every other thing that made a remote island tolerable. The Steeds still loved England, and when cross-ocean ships came into the creek the entire family crowded the wharf to find what good things had arrived from home, and often the letters brought tears, not from loss but from terrible homesickness.
The wharf was interesting. To it and from it moved the lifeblood of the plantation, and its survival became a paramount concern. Tall cedar trees were sought, heavy at the base, tapering as they rose. These were cut, trimmed and hauled to the water's edge. There heavy crossbars six feet long were nailed and lashed to a pole, whose thin end was then driven as far into the mud as the strength of two men determined. Then two additional men swung from the ends of the crossbar and worried the cedar pole into the river bottom. Finally, when it was well settled, two other men climbed a stand and with heavy blows of sledge hammers drove the piling home. It was to twenty-six such pilings that the wharf was attached, and it became so solid that even large ships could tie up to it with security.
Learning was a constant concern. Martha taught the three boys arithmetic and Latin, knowing that no young man could be considered educated unless proficient in that splendid tongue. Edmund felt it his responsibility to teach them history and Greek, but sometimes, after working so hard in the fields, he would fall asleep as the lessons progressed, and Ralph would nudge him and he would mumble, 'Get on with your Greek. Do you want to be savages?' Each morning at five Edmund prepared himself for the day by reading books he had brought from Oxford—Thuycidides and Josephus in Greek, Seneca and Cicero in Latin—and from these authors, along with Plutarch, whom he loved, he gained insight as to how men and nations should behave.
Finally there was the chapel, that unpretentious building with the wooden crucifix. Here the Steeds met for prayer and the reaffirmation of their faith. They believed that God supervised their lives and marked it in their favor when they were kind to servants; but whenever the family left this place of prayer Martha lingered at the door, looked back at the altar and thought: One day I shall be married here.
The problem of Steed's religion no longer troubled the leaders of Virginia; he was known to be a difficult type, adhering to the faith for which his grandfather had been hanged, and certain books containing woodcuts of Sir Latimer being quartered for being a treasonous Papist circulated in the colony, but most Virginians seemed quite content to have him off to one side, across the bay and out of sight. Trouble arose in late 1633 when his son Ralph, now seventeen, felt that it was time to marry and start his own farm in the fields opposite Devon. Accordingly, he sailed down the Chesapeake, put into Jamestown, and asked permission to marry the daughter of a Virginia planter; relatives pointed out that the boy was Papist, son of an avowed Catholic father and a mother specially imported from England, but others argued, and with right, that young Ralph was hardly the son of the Catholic wife but of Meg Shipton, who was as fine a Protestant as the colony provided, she being the wife of the leading factor in the region. That left Ralph only half Catholic, but that was enough to prevent a marriage.
The boy was desolated by this rebuff and retired to Devon in such low spirits that his father and mother halted what they had been doing to counsel with him. 'Our family adheres to the one true faith,' Edmund said. 'My grandfather died for it. My father suffered grave disqualifications. And I fled preferment in England so that I could raise my own chapel in Virginia. This is a heritage so precious that the loss of any girl, no matter how—'
'Penny's not any girl,' the boy countered.
'She's lovely,' Martha conceded, 'and now she's engaged to another, and what can be done about it but forget her and go back to work?'
'I'll never forget her,' Ralph said.
'Nor should you,' Edmund said quickly, adding when his wife scowled, 'I mean in the sense of remembering her as a fine young lady. But she's gone, Ralph, and you've discovered what it means to be Catholic.'
The boy must have been tempted to shout, 'I don't want to be Catholic!' but instead he folded his hands in his lap and lowered his head. 'I always intended being a good Catholic,' he said. 'I think I should like to be a priest.'
'Now, Ralph!' his mother began, but Edmund halted whatever protest she was about to make: 'Have you a sincere calling?' He proposed that they go to the chapel, and when they were inside, with bluebottles buzzing against the thick glass imported from Holland, he asked his son if he had ever heard of the Blessed Edmund Campion, and for some hours he spoke of that luminous spirit. He recalled the folklore of the subterranean Catholic movement in England, and especially of how he himself had for a brief period denied the church until that moment when he wakened near strangled with remorse. It was under such circumstances that he had decided to come to a new world where he could practice his love of God in the ways God Himself had decreed.
Ralph's parents were dedicated to the belief that only one church could represent the will of God, and for proof they cited those solemn words which sealed the matter for sensible people. Taking down the heavy Bible that Edmund had imported from England, the new one translated by the scholars of King James, they opened it to the page on which Jesus Himself launched the one true religion:
And I say also unto thee, That thou art Peter, and upon this rock I will build my church; and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it.
And I will give unto thee the keys of the kingdom of heaven: and whatsoever thou shalt bind on earth shall be bound in heaven: and whatsoever thou shalt loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven.
'It was this truth that sustained our family,' Edmund said, 'just as it sustained Campion and will sustain you.' He told Ralph that if he was experiencing a true call to the church, no summons could be more profound, and that if he wanted to become a priest, he must dedicate his life now to that high purpose.
'How?' the boy asked.
'In Virginia it's impossible,' Steed said, excited by the possibility that the Steeds of Devon might produce a priest. 'What we'll do, Ralph, is ship you to London with Captain Hackett, and from there you must make your way to Rome and the seminary for Englishmen.' In an ecstasy he grasped his son's hands and suggested that all kneel and pray. 'You are treading in the path of martyrs.'
The plan proved impractical. Captain Hackett, disoriented by the huge profits to be made in the slave trade, announced on his next arrival at Jamestown, when Ralph was there to take passage, that he would probably never go back to England. 'I'm heading straight for Luanda.'
'Where's that?' Edmund asked, impatient to get his son to Rome.
'Portugal. A shipping point in Africa.'
This made no sense, and Steed demanded an explanation, so Hackett spelled out the facts: 'Luanda's a miserable town owned by Portugal in Africa. Arabians collect slaves in the jungle and drive them in chains to Luanda for easy shipment. We load the _Victorious_ there and you have slaves here.'
But as it turned out, it was not so simple as that. He did sail directly to Luanda, and he did cram untold numbers of blacks into the fetid holds of his ship, but three days out, or perhaps four, the ship foundered and was lost, along with Hackett and all the slaves chained to the bulwarks.
The two Steeds returned to Devon, where Martha consoled them. She insisted that if God had prevented their contract with Captain Hackett, it must have been for a specific purpose, but she had barely said these words when a pinnace put into Devon Creek with startling news that would transform the history of the Steeds. The pinnace came not from Jamestown but from a point across the bay near the entrance to the Potomac River, and it carried, of all things, a Catholic priest named Father Whitson. The intelligence he brought could scarcely be comprehended.
'This island is no longer a part of Virginia,' he said, his own excitement and joy jumbling his words. 'The king has ordained that a Catholic colony be established in his New World. You now belong to the Palatinate of Maryland.'
These developments were so radical that he required many minutes to unravel them. He spoke of George Calvert, Lord Baltimore, who had converted to Catholicism late in life but who had been allowed to serve King James as counselor. He had tried to establish an earlier colony in far New England, but it had perished of cold, and now King Charles, whom many suspected of being a secret Catholic, had granted him a new domain north of Virginia to be named after Queen Mary.
Father Whitson had a score of other revelations to share, but before he could do so, Edmund Steed said, 'Father, could we repair to our chapel to hear Mass?'
'Chapel?'
Steed led the way to the rough building, and when Father Whitson saw it he could not speak. Kneeling before the quotation from Genesis, he said a prayer; he had been tested in the fires of Douai and Rome and had survived the mortal dangers of the surreptitious Mass in England, but this visible proof of persistent faith confounded him. When he rose he whispered, 'Even in the wilderness.'
After he had spread a cloth upon the altar and taken the ritual implements from their canvas bag he started the ceremony, and Edmund felt his throat choke as the noble Latin words—the same as at any Mass throughout the world—were repeated once more and in such God-granted surroundings. Then came the sweet mysteries of the blood and body, and as the wafer touched his tongue Edmund knew that he had returned to the arms of his church. Father Whitson, looking into the faces of this kneeling family, felt a depth of emotion he had rarely experienced, even at those midnight Masses in the granges of rural England, but there was more.
As he was about to pack his gear Martha Keene genuflected before him and whispered, 'Father, you must baptize our children,' and when this was done, she said, 'Now please marry us.'
'Are you not wed?' he asked, looking at the three sons.
'No,' she said simply, not wishing to disturb him with any report of their Indian marriage.
He asked them to kneel and opened his missal to the ceremony which binds Catholics, but when he saw the words and the three sons he realized how inadequate an ordinary ritual would be in this frontier of the human spirit. 'Heavenly Father,' he prayed, 'let us join on earth what You have already joined in heaven.' And he told them, 'You are married.'
The next months held many perplexities for the Steeds. They had supposed, when word of a Catholic Maryland was announced, that the colonies would experience the kind of wrenching terror that had swept England whenever a change in the national religion occurred, and Edmund at least looked forward with some relish to evening scores with certain hard-headed Protestants who had caused him trouble. But the sons of Lord Baltimore, who had inherited the palatinate when their father died prematurely, were not burners or executioners. After his initial swing through the new colony, Father Whitson returned to lay down the law. First he handed the Steeds a printed document:
Catholics in the Palatinate are warned under the severest strictures from the Proprietor that they must not conduct Masses in public nor to the offense of any other religionists. No Catholic is to speak ill of anyone adhering to another religion nor to act in any way objectionable. There are to be no parades or public demonstrations, or gaudy churches or anything else that may offend. Priests are not to go about in ostentatious manner, nor are they to participate in the business of government. There is to be amity throughout the Palatinate and men of all religions are welcomed, so long as they confess to the Being of God, the Immortality of his Son, Jesus Christ, and the sanctity of the Holy Spirit.
'Those are the rules,' Father Whitson said, 'and they are to be obeyed, or the penalties will be severe.'
'Is the proprietor ashamed of being Catholic?' Ralph asked.
'He seeks a peaceable palatinate,' the priest said. 'And the conversion of Indians to the true faith.'
'We have no contact with our Choptanks,' Edmund said.
'Have many Catholics come to the other side of the bay?' Ralph asked.
'Scores. And each new ship brings others.'
'Then the judges and tax men and teachers will all be Catholic?'
'No. We shall not make the mistakes that New England has made. Maryland will not be a theocracy.'
Ralph did not know this new word, but he judged that it boded ill for his religion. 'What's the advantage?' he asked.
'Peace,' Father Whitson replied, and this was not an illusory goal, even though the lavish praise sometimes bestowed upon the palatinate for its tolerance was not always warranted. Maryland did honestly encourage peace with its Indians, and as a consequence suffered fewer wars than other colonies (but in a fit of desperation the government did arouse a crusade to annihilate the Nanticokes); and it surely proclaimed religious freedom in its noble Act of Religious Toleration (except that Jews and other heretics who denied the Trinity could be executed).
It took a long time for the Steeds to comprehend the philosophical structure of this new concept of colonization; they wanted a Catholic cross in the center of every settlement and a priest holding the gavel in all meetings, and it was difficult for them to believe that any system less root-and-branch than that could survive. The Catholics had won title to a new colony in America; let them enjoy it. But Father Whitson, keeping a stern eye on the Eastern Shore, decreed otherwise, and cathedrals were not built.
But on one point the Steeds and their priest agreed. Virginia was an enemy to be held at bay, and if gunfire was needed to accomplish this, they had the guns.
The trouble started this way. The royal grant establishing Virginia was one of the most generous and preposterous in history; it gave the tiny group of men climbing ashore at Jamestown domain over all lands between the Atlantic Ocean and the Pacific in an expanding wedge which encompassed almost everything north of Florida on the south—including half of Texas and all of California—and everything south of a line running from New York to a point far to the north of Alaska. In rough, Virginia was awarded nine tenths of what would later become the United States, plus a goodly share of Canada, and men like Captain John Smith intended that they keep what had been granted them. Certainly they would not permit a small island on the Eastern Shore to defect to Maryland, and the idea that a renegade like Edmund Steed, a Catholic to boot, should be conspiring to take Devon Island into the palatinate was repugnant.
The leaders at Jamestown sent an armed pinnace to capture Devon; a governor was aboard to assume political control, but he never landed. Edmund Steed, his wife Martha and their three sons lined the creek as the boat tried to make its way inland and killed two sailors. The _soi-disant_ governor shouted that this was mutiny, whereupon young Ralph cried back, 'It's not. It's rebellion.' When one of the Steeds shot at the governor, the pinnace retreated.
War threatened, and reinforcements were dispatched from the western settlements of Maryland, but a sensible statesman in Virginia saw the folly of such action and met with good response when he proposed to the Maryland officials that the problems be adjudicated. Steed was sent for, and he crossed the bay expecting to be commended for his stubborn defense of the Palatinate, but was instead reprimanded. 'We wanted no killing,' Lord Baltimore's people said. 'We're sending a commission to Jamestown to solve this matter.'
'I'd be glad to go,' Steed said contritely.
'We certainly don't want you... or your kind. The proprietor in London has specifically enjoined us to send no one of Catholic faith lest it prove an irritation.'
'Damn!' Steed exploded. 'Is it a crime to be Catholic? Is it a crime to defend a Catholic colony?'
'Dear friend,' the man conducting the negotiations replied, 'it's never been a crime to be a Catholic...' and he proceeded with sanctimonious jabber about the new condition of things, and Steed thought: He cannot remember when it was a crime, but we Steeds can.
Even Father Whitson rebuked him for having opened fire upon the official vessel of the Virginia colony. 'Damn me!' Steed exploded. 'What would you have me do? Surrender my island to those pirates?'
'We would have got it back through negotiations,' the priest assured him.
'Never! You don't know those damned Virginians.' And from that moment the Steeds never referred to their neighbors down the bay without the descriptive and appropriate adjective _damned_. A man from Maryland had to watch his crab pots, or the damned Virginians would steal his catch; he had to guard his fishing grounds or they would be stripped; his oysters were under constant danger of theft; and every inch of soil was greedily sought after and plotted against by the Virginians. A Catholic like Steed, who presumed to match his bright tobacco with that of the York and the Rappahannock, had better be extra attentive, or the damned Virginians would steal him blind, and maybe burn his fields, or divert his ships.
If it was healthy to have an enemy, the Steeds had one.
In 1637, when Ralph was twenty-one, Father Whitson devised a way for him to start his studies in Rome. A trading ship had put into St. Mary's City and young Ralph was put aboard with a harsh memorandum from his father:
On the voyage to Boston you must communicate your plans with no one from Virginia, or on some dark night they may toss you overboard, first because you're a Catholic, second because you defeated their attempt to steal our island. Now on the voyage from Boston to London you must remain silent, because the Puritans of that town would like nothing better than to feed you to the fish. They are your natural enemies. But it is on the voyage from London to Rome that you must be especially circumspect, because any descendant of Queen Elizabeth would find joy in destroying you.
When Father Whitson read this admonition, he told the young scholar, 'Utilize your time aboard ship in debate with others more learned than yourself, so that you may discover the temper of your mind.'
'Will they throw me overboard?'
'Would they dare?'
And so the first of the Steed boys was gone. In rapid succession the other two left, one for London to study law, one for Paris to make himself a doctor. It was significant in these early days of both Virginia and Maryland that children of the larger plantations often knew Europe better than they knew their own homelands; ships were constantly tying up at the family wharf and departing a few days later for London; obliging captains were glad to look after young scholars during the crossing and to introduce them to lawyers and doctors on the other side. After some years abroad, the young people returned to the bays and rivers with boxes of books and memories of theaters and singing and ministerial exhortations. The three Steed boys would receive superior educations.
They were in Europe when a messenger posted across the bay in a shallop with news that changed much in Maryland: 'From London the proprietor has sent instructions that all free landowners of the palatinate are to assemble in St. Mary's City to approve such laws as Lord Baltimore has drafted.' Steed pointed out that with new indentured servants arriving from London he was not in a position to leave Devon, but the messenger informed him that the invitation was not an option: 'You will be there, Mr. Steed, on January 25 of the coming year.'
'For how many days?' Edmund asked with some apprehension, for without his sons at hand Martha might have difficulty running the plantation.
'For as many days as it takes to vote your approval,' the messenger said, and without attending to courtesies he was off to the other shore.
No member of the first four generations of Steeds in Maryland would ever travel anywhere except by boat: there were no roads. Two plantations might be a quarter of a mile apart by river but forty miles distant by land, assuming that the dense undergrowth could be penetrated. The early settlers were like fish; away from water they perished.
So Edmund Steed appointed two servants to polish up the handsome two-masted ketch he had recently purchased from a builder on the James, packed his best suit and ruff, and set out with razor and comb for the capital. It was a pleasant sail to St. Mary's City; down the Choptank, across the bay, down past the Patuxent, around Point Lookout and up the St. Mary's River to a well-protected anchorage where a score of wooden buildings had already appeared and where another score were building. It was going to be a beautiful little town on an equally beautiful little river, with only one drawback: it was perilously close to Virginia—just across the Potomac, to be exact—and could be assaulted at any time the Virginians chose to wipe it out. Under such circumstances it would not be the capital for long; the final center would develop far to the north, out of reach of Virginia militia.
Some distance inland from the river rose a palisaded fort, inside which stood the long rough buildings where one of the focal assemblies of colonial history would convene. Leonard Calvert, brother to the absentee proprietor—who had to remain in London fighting persistent enemies who kept trying to steal Maryland from the Catholics—was of the opinion that the great charter granted by King Charles meant what it said: 'The Proprietor will propose such laws as he sees fit, and an Assembly of freeholders will pass on their applicability.' Leonard, a sensible man who had often been rebuked by his lordly brother for being too lenient, proposed to lay before the citizens for their approval a draft of laws which the Calverts thought proper for the governance of their distant property.
The ordinary men who made up the assembly—factors and shipowners and farmers, but no priests—judged that even though the charter gave all prerogatives to the distant proprietor, they were in a better position to determine what was needed in Maryland. 'We will write the laws, and the proprietor will judge as to their efficacy.'
'It's to be the other way around,' Leonard Calvert pointed out. 'We propose and you dispose.'
'You have it backwards,' the stubborn assemblymen said, and a struggle with profound implications ensued. Lord Baltimore, in London, was one of the wisest and most conscientious of the colonial proprietors, and he saw danger in allowing a rabble to draft and execute laws; that was the responsibility of men with wealth and position. To the owner of a colony went the power to rule. Baltimore was never a despot, but neither was he a fool.
On the other hand, Edmund Steed, who by virtue of his early settlement at Devon was clearly the oldest Marylander in existence and one of the most devoted, saw that in a new world, new ways were essential. 'We must govern ourselves as far as occasion permits, and on the day we surrender our right to formulate laws for lands we know so well, we surrender our right to be free.'
'Do you oppose the Lord Proprietor?' he was asked.
'On all other points I submit to his superior judgment. He has erected this palatinate and made it a refuge. I bow before him, and before his brother, the lieutenant governor. But on the fundamental question of who should frame laws for a free palatinate, I bow to no one.'
'Not even the king?'
This was a fearsome question to put in that winter of 1638. For anyone to counter the will of the king, or even question it, was to run the risk of being charged with treason, and there were many in Virginia who waited to bring that charge against the Marylanders. But for a Catholic whose very life had been elevated by the acts of Good King Charles, to question would be ingratitude, the worst sin a gentleman could commit. Edmund Steed, aware of the difficult position in which he stood, replied, 'The king will quickly see that Marylanders are entitled to all the privileges of free men in England.'
'And if he doesn't?'
Steed would not be badgered into sponsoring treason. Ignoring the question, he began his patient work with the other delegates, reasoning with them night after night. Always he insisted that if they surrendered on this basic point, they would lose everything—'We are to be free men in a free society.' Others, watching his stubborn defense of their liberties, came to regard him as their leader.
Steed of Devon, they called him, and through the critical last five days of January he held his forces together, and into February and March and on into the hottest days of July. He was everywhere, pleading with his farmers and factors to stand fast: 'If we can last through August, we shall have won.'
The role of revolutionary leader was not one he had aspired to. Indeed, he was by nature pusillanimous. As a young man he had denied his Catholicism to avoid confrontation; in his early days at Jamestown he had participated in none of the cabals; he had fled to Devon to escape the embroilments of Jamestown; and he had shown little heroism in trying to hold on to Meg Shipton. His life had been quiet and withdrawn; he had not even allowed Simon Janney to discuss war with the Chop-tanks, yet here he was, Steed of Devon, stalwart defender of the Maryland conscience. From constant study of the classics he had become a classic man.
In London, Lord Baltimore refused to concede, and in the palatinate his brother Leonard was equally stubborn, so on a blistering hot day in August the test of strength occurred. In the rude building tormented by flies the speaker put the question: 'How many believe that the laws sent us by Lord Baltimore, and approved by his deputy, Leonard Calvert, our beloved lieutenant governor, must be approved by this assembly?' Calvert voted yes, and so did the secretary of the palatinate, who announced in a powerful voice, 'And I have in my hand the proxies of fourteen others.'
The speaker then asked for the votes of those who rejected Lord Baltimore's laws, preferring ones framed by themselves. 'How say you, Steed of Devon?'
Edmund rose, bowed respectfully to Lord Calvert, then looked at the men who had stood by him through the painful months. 'I say that our laws should be drafted here, by the people of Maryland.' Thirty-six others voted in favor of local rule. Maryland would be a self-governing colony.
There was no celebration that night; the victorious citizens did not feel that they had humbled a tyrant, for Lord Baltimore had never been one. They had merely established a principle, after nearly seven months of debate, and each man who went to his boat next day knew that he had done a good thing.
Edmund Steed, fifty-seven years old that hot summer, was tired when his men brought up his new ketch, and he fell back on pillows as the trip across the bay got under way. He had argued too long to find any triumph in his victory; he had seen too intimately the struggle that had taken place between two good principles. Each side had right and wrong, with his only slightly the stronger.
We have won freedom, he brooded, but if we abuse it, or vote for cheap personal advantage, it won't be worth having. We are familiar with the abuses of kings, but because what we now attempt is new, we can't foresee its abuses. They'll come.
He wished that his sons could be with him now, to discuss these great questions which had so exercised him during the fetid months in the capital. How good the clean air of the Choptank would be at the end of such labors. When the headlands guarding his island appeared and the ketch sailed between them, he felt as if he were entering the gates of a paradise few men would ever know: the broad river, the birds, the infinite life beneath the waves, the good fields and the worship of God.
As the ketch passed the western end of his island he noticed that recent storms had eaten away vast chunks of land; trees were falling into the bay at regular intervals and the fields on which tobacco should have been growing were collapsing in brown aggregations of mud.
'As soon as I reach home,' he muttered, 'I must attend to those banks.'
The commission was not executed, for as the ketch entered Devon Creek he experienced an overwhelming tiredness and fell back upon the cushions. One of the servants, noticing his collapse, hurried to him in time to hear a final injunction: 'Have them say Mass.'
# _Voyage Three: 1636_
HOW LIKE AN ANIMAL HE LOOKS, THE JUDGE thought as he studied the prisoner in the dock. Not bold like a lion, nor graceful like a deer or a decent horse, but sly and mean and shifty. He's an animal, that's for certain, but what kind?
As the judge asked himself this question the prisoner's attention was directed not to the devastating evidence being marshaled against him, but on a fly which he had been trying to catch. Suddenly, with animal-like swiftness, he closed his hand and trapped it. Then he bent over to pull off the wings, one at a time. When the mutilated fly tried to escape, his tormentor reached out a thick, spatulate thumb, holding it over the fly for some moments, moving it about as the insect twisted. Then, grinning, he dropped his thumb heavily and crushed the fly. Only then did he look up at the judge.
'A ferret!' the judge whispered to himself. 'Damn me, he's a true ferret.' And in certain respects the judge was correct, for the prisoner had the pointed face of that crafty animal, the stunted ears, the long sharp nose. Pockmarked and with shifty eyes, he was repulsive, and the shock of uncombed blanched hair only added to his beastly appearance. When he grinned, his dark teeth looked pointed.
The judge adjusted his wig and scowled: A true animal, that one. Then he listened as the damaging record unfolded: three chickens stolen from the Widow Starling, lashes and two months in jail; silver-headed cane stolen from John Coolidge, Esquire, lashes and six months in jail; and now three loaves of bread stolen from baker Ford. His long experience on the London bench had taught him that persistent thieves rarely reformed and that the sooner they were permanently removed from society the better.
'It's a gallows offense, Timothy Turlock,' he growled, staring at the indifferent thief, 'and you shall be hanged.'
But before such a sentence was actually passed, the prisoner's mother, a short, wheezing woman of many troubles, arose and pleaded that her counselor, the Reverend Barstowe, be heard in extenuation. That angular clergyman rose and bowed deferentially; he had known young Turlock from birth and had an even lower opinion of him than the judge, but he did consider hanging too grave a punishment for mere theft, and he moved to the bench, where he whispered urgently to the judge.
'Well,' the judge finally announced to the waiting court. He sniffed three times, adjusted his snuff, and showed obvious self-satisfaction with the felicitous way in which he was expressing himself. 'You should be hanged, Timothy Turlock, but Reverend Barstowe has offered an ingenious proposal.'
He stared down at the prisoner, who gave no sign of being interested in any proposals, ingenious or not. He was twenty-eight, master of no trade, never employed steadily, a confirmed dependent on his hardworking mother, who had not taught him to stand straight or pay proper deference to his superiors, in addition to which he had pimples.
'Reverend Barstowe has a brother,' the judge said, 'captain of a ship plying to our colonies in Virginia.' Timothy stared at the ceiling; he had never heard of Virginia. 'And Captain Barstowe has out of the goodness of his heart volunteered to carry you to Virginia... for indenture to some planter there.' The prisoner showed no emotion.
'Turlock!' the judge thundered. 'Come to attention. Do you know what an indenture is?' He did not. He heard his mother on the bench behind him crying forlornly at the prospect of losing her son, so he assumed it must be some frightening punishment.
'It means,' the judge explained, 'that you will owe the gentleman in Virginia who buys your indenture seven years of just and fair labor.'
This sounded ominous to Turlock, and he could understand why his mother was weeping. 'After which,' the judge continued, 'you will be a free man.' He paused dramatically. 'A free man, Turlock, with all the rights and privileges accorded to free men.'
The word _free_ galvanized the prisoner. He was not to spend more months in jail. He was not to be hanged. He was to be free, so that any punishment involved—the indenture the judge kept talking about—was irrelevant. 'Do you understand the terms?' He nodded vigorously. 'Seven years of honest labor.' He agreed heartily. 'And during those years, to learn a trade?' Oh yes. 'And instant death if you ever set foot in England again?' Indeed.
His mother, hearing the official words of her son's life banishment, broke into fresh tears, which irritated her son. He wanted this irritation to end, but there was more. Captain Barstowe was summoned, and he came forward like a mighty tyrant in some Asian country. He was accustomed to acquiring indentures in the London courts and was well acquainted with ways to make them yield a profit.
His calculating eye appraised young Turlock in an instant: Lazy, stupid, ill-bred, rebellious, a born troublemaker, probably eats like a pig. Well, seven years in the tobacco fields of Virginia will cure him. The captain estimated that he could sell this one for upwards of twenty pounds, for he was of workable age.
The judge addressed the captain. 'Do you promise this court to convey this prisoner to Virginia, at no cost to the crown?'
'Uh-huh.'
'Do you promise never to sue the crown for this prisoner's passage money?'
'Uh-huh.'
'And do you understand that you must recover your cost by sale of this prisoner's indenture to whatever gentleman in Virginia will have him?'
'Uh-huh.'
Normally at this point, in what had become a routine procedure in the English courts, the judge should have closed the hearing and ordered the papers of indenture drawn, but on this occasion the judge was perplexed, and he asked the sturdy captain, 'Do you really think you can find a buyer for this one?'
'In Virginia,' the captain said from long experience, 'they'll take anything.' So the indenture was drawn.
Captain Barstowe had been perceptive in his estimate of young Turlock, except that the young criminal proved even worse than expected. The ship had not been four days into the Atlantic before crew members came to Barstowe protesting that Turlock had stolen from them, and when his bag was searched, it was found to contain a staggering assortment of knives, caps and scrimshaw. There was only one solution: Timothy Turlock was lashed to the mast to receive ten stripes, but at the first blow he howled so piteously, and whimpered with such soul-searing anguish, that Captain Barstowe's judgment was addled. It was the custom in all English quarters for any man given the lash to bear at least the first six blows with gritted teeth, and some took a dozen in silence to prove their manhood; none on board could recall a grown man carrying on like Turlock, and after eight stripes accompanied by unbroken howling, Barstowe growled, 'Cut him down.'
Turlock whimpered all that day, but had a glorious revenge. Hiding in a corner of the galley, where he sought to steal a pair of sharp knives, he found himself next to a tureen of soup intended for the officers. Glancing quickly about to assure his safety, he ripped open his drawers, pissed in the soup, then took up a position near the mess, where he could watch with deep satisfaction as the captain dined.
When Barstowe's ship sailed into Jamestown in late 1636, he unloaded tableware and kegs of nails first, then paraded his seven indentures onto the wharf, offering them for sale at the various tobacco docks. Two women servants were gobbled up quickly, as were the two strongest-looking young men, but the captain found trouble disposing of his last three.
One man was suspiciously old, but was finally got rid of at a bargain price to a planter who required a clerk to keep track of his shipments to London. The second was so pitifully lame in his left leg that he would be of small service in the fields, but when he proved that he could write, a group bought his contract, intending to use him as schoolmaster to the children of three plantations.
That left vacant-faced Timothy Turlock, and on his sale depended the profit for this voyage. Captain Barstowe spoke well of his scrawny thief, emphasizing his youth, his amiability and the obvious fact that he was bright, of fine character and eager to learn. He found no takers. Canny plantation owners had learned to spot troublemakers in the flotsam sent out by the courts of London, and they would have none of this gallows bait. It looked as if Barstowe might have to give him away, but he had heard of a planter on a marshy estuary far west on the James who worked such miserable land that few ships ever called to offer him their servants. It was doubtful if he would long survive, but he did represent a last resort, and it was to his rickety wharf that Barstowe sailed.
'You're to be attentive,' he growled at Turlock, 'and mind your manners. This is your last chance.'
'Uh-huh,' Timothy grunted, staring with contempt at the wretched spot to which he was being taken. Not even in the worst of London had he seen a house so dilapidated, a setting so forbidding. To the door came a woman so scrawny that it seemed she must drop of mortal illness, but she looked strong and was keen-eyed. 'Ship's in!' she called to someone inside, and soon she was joined by a squat, heavyset, rough-mannered countryman who strode down to the wharf extending his blunt hand. 'Simon Janney's the name,' he said.
The bartering was painful. Janney, an extremely penurious man, set the tone by whining, 'I'd like an extra hand, but my wife's sick, my niggers eat me blind and the Indians...' He shook his head, then grudgingly admitted, 'I'll take him off your hands... if the price is low.'
'Now wait a minute, Janney. This man is prime.'
'If he was, you wouldn't be this far upriver.'
'He'll give you seven years' pure profit.'
'Seven years of trouble. But I must have someone.'
'You'll take him, then? Fifty?'
'Pounds? I haven't fifty pence.'
'What then?'
'That stack of tobacco leaves.'
The sale would have been concluded except that Mrs. Janney straggled down to the ship, studied the proposed hand and with a knowing trick pulled up his shirt to expose his back. There the lash marks stood, blue and purple. With a long finger she traced one and said, 'A bad one, this.'
As soon as the telltale marks were disclosed, Janney lowered the price he was offering, to which Barstowe objected vigorously, assuring the farmer that in Timothy Turlock he was getting a lad who could be depended upon to—His pitch was interrupted when Mrs. Janney exposed the last marks again, saying to Barstowe, 'Criminals like this shouldn't be sold at all,' but to her husband she whispered, 'Take him. He shows spirit.' She remembered her own crossing and the fact that she, too, had been last in her lot to find a taker.
So the sale was concluded: Timothy Turlock to the Janneys at a bargain price; half the stack of tobacco leaves to Captain Barstowe, who would peddle it in London for twice what the Janneys calculated.
The first job Turlock performed in the New World was binding those leaves which represented his purchase. His next was rebuilding the wharf, up to his knees in mud, after which he worked fourteen hours a day helping clear fields. Then he dredged a channel to drain a meadow, fenced the meadow and built a barn to house the cattle that grazed in the meadow.
By this time he was down to one hundred and nine pounds and looked exactly like a ferret, for the Janneys fed him no better than they ate themselves, and it became apparent to Turlock that this plantation held little promise. His term had six years, nine months to run, and he could visualize it as only an extended period of starvation and slavery. That was another irritation! Janney had acquired two slaves, but since he could profit from them only so long as they were healthy, they received better treatment than Turlock, who twice heard Janney tell his wife, 'Don't risk Toby on that. Send Turlock.'
And yet, he caught occasional insights that made him think Simon Janney had a certain affection for him. Once on a trip down the James they anchored off a great plantation with lawn running down to the river, and the master said, 'Tim, I've seen land on the Rappahannock twice as good as this. If we can get our present farm going, one day we'll own a better place than this.'
Turlock looked at his employer with a vacant grin, as if he could not visualize the dream that enthralled Janney, and this angered the countryman, who said in a burst of honesty and persuasion, 'Turlock, you could become a fine workman and some day own your own land.'
'You... feed... us... more,' Timothy said resentfully. The little thief lived almost at the subhuman level, and certainly at the subverbal. He never spoke in complete sentences and rarely used a word of more than one syllable. What he intended by this austere collection of four words was _If you feed us better food, I could work a great deal harder_ , but to voice a subordinate clause beginning with _if_ was quite beyond his capacity, and comparisons like _harder_ and _better_ were refinements of thought he could not master. He existed in a world of meaningful looks and mumbled monosyllables.
Janney, of course, had developed the ability to translate his grunts into workable if not sensible communication, and now said with a certain respect for Turlock's ability to work, 'Stay with us, Tim, after your term's over. We'll own the Rappahannock.'
Turlock did not even bother to grunt at this remote philosophical proposal, but at the end of that year Janney showed him something physical which excited his cupidity. For some weeks they had been collecting tobacco seed from various plantations, and now Janney announced that he and Turlock would take it across the bay to lands which, he said, 'we own over there.'
'Where?'
Janney could not be bothered to explain, but he assigned Timothy to the task of helping the slaves build a shallop for the plantation. It turned out to be a sorry affair, more holes than boards, but if Turlock bailed constantly, it did stay afloat. The first long trip was up the bay to Devon Island, where Janney had come to help burn off more acreage for tobacco, and what Turlock saw there was a revelation: a decent house, a wife who kept it neat and who educated her sons, a Papist chapel of their own, and other appurtenances which bespoke wealth. What disturbed Turlock, wide-eyed at the luxury, were hints he overheard indicating that his master, Janney, had almost as much wealth as Edmund Steed. Why... live... pig? he asked himself. Why... seven years... pig?
The idea gnawed at him, and when Steed said, 'Tomorrow we'll cross the channel and go to work,' he was resentful at having to quit this lovely spot. But when he entered the fields to the north, set down amidst beautiful rivers with unexpected vistas and grand variations, he gaped. Each field he moved to seemed more desirable than the preceding, with deep water at its edges, tall trees rimming its boundaries, and a multiplicity of wildlife. This monosyllabic criminal from the fens of London became the first white man to appreciate the glory of what lay hidden among the backwaters north of the Choptank: the dozen rivers, the score of creeks, the hundred hidden coves.
'God damn James River!' he cried as he viewed this paradise. 'My land.'
As the leaky shallop pursued its tedious way back home Turlock brooded upon the miserable situation in which he was trapped; the devastating impact of the Eastern Shore on his mind was not its beauty, which enthralled him, but the fact that it existed _now_ , that a man of courage could enjoy it _now_. This realization would gnaw at him for a year, and back home he caused more and more trouble.
One August day in 1638, when Janney insisted that he work past sunset, he first grumbled, then refused. 'I can drag you into court,' Janney threatened, 'and make you work.' Then he assigned him a task too dangerous for his blacks, and Turlock revolted.
'Do you resist?' Janney asked.
'Uh-huh.'
'Get down there and chain that stump.'
'How?' Pimply-face snarled, and when Janney bent down to show him, Turlock grabbed a spade and bashed his master's skull. Then, satisfying himself that the fallen man was not dead, he kicked him twice on the point of the chin to keep him unconscious, then went whistling toward where the shallop was moored. On the way he stole a gun and all the tools he would need, tossed them into the boat, then ran to the house. After giving Mrs. Janney a lively kiss, he stole her scissors, her needles, two of her husband's shirts and three fishlines with hooks.
'Goodbye,' he mumbled, chucking her under the chin as he left for the river.
He calculated that even if Janney revived sooner than expected, he would not be able to make his way on foot to any plantation in time for the owners to accomplish much, and with the shallop gone, pursuit on the river itself would be impossible. For one solid day at least he had clear sailing.
What he did not take into account was the iron will of the Janneys; if they had survived Indian raids, they could survive servant rebellion. Mrs. Janney, when she saw the shallop disappear, ran about the plantation until she found her husband, lying prone in the mud, his face caked in blood. Screaming for Toby to come to her assistance, she dragged him home, bathed him, placed him in bed, and then set out on foot to the nearest plantation. She arrived at her neighbors well past dark, and informed them, 'Our servant tried to kill the master.'
From one plantation to the next, word spread that revolt had started. Like a fire burning wildly across dried evergreens, this dreaded message went; this was the consequence that all masters feared, the rebellion of either their servants or their slaves. When they caught Turlock they would kill him.
Timothy, assured that much must be happening at the plantation, kept his eyes to the rear, and when he saw various boats scurrying about guessed that an expedition was forming to apprehend him. Quickly he steered into one of the small estuaries that fed the James, unstepped the mast, and grinned contentedly as search parties swept by.
At dark he raised the mast and slipped silently downriver a dozen miles, then hid as dawn approached—and in this manner, reached the mouth of the James, where he put into operation a clever plan. Satisfying himself that the final plantation possessed a substantial sloop with a stout sail, he steered his shallop two miles back toward Jamestown, built a small raft, tied to it his hoard of tools, then crashed the stolen boat on a shoal, made his way through the shallow water and poled his raft downstream to the waiting sloop, which he appropriated. By dawn he was well into the Chesapeake.
His strategy worked. Searchers on the James spotted the wrecked craft and assumed that he had drowned. It was not till late afternoon that anyone missed the sloop, and by then he was well gone. All that was left to the frustrated plantation owners was to seek out a Jamestown justice, who signed a warrant for his apprehension, dead or alive. As he handed the document to Mrs. Janney he said, 'Bring him back and I'll hang him.'
Alone on the broad Chesapeake, his mast unstepped to prevent detection, Timothy Turlock paddled and pondered his situation. If he went back to England—hanging. If he went back to Jamestown—hanging. If he put into any Virginia river—chains and more hanging.
And then he saw, rising through the mists, the first faint outlines of the Eastern Shore, and he could visualize the cool rivers and peaceful coves he had known when burning fields for the Steeds, and this sanctuary became his target. It would be a new land, far from Virginia and mean-spirited masters. But could he survive alone? As he kept the sloop headed east he pondered this, and for the first time in his life tried to discipline into complete sentences the vagrant thoughts which hitherto had raced helter-skelter through his vacant mind.
_Stop... Devon... see... Steeds?_ He judged not; Edmund Steed had looked like the kind of man who might be a magistrate, obligated to send him back. _Indians... here... like Indians... there?_ He suspected the Choptanks might prove peaceful, else how could Steed live so easily? _What to eat?_ On his earlier trip he had seen ducks and geese and the Steed servants had found oysters. _Where sleep?_ Any kind of shack would equal what Janney provided, and from observing how Indians built their wigwams, he felt sure he could do as well. _Can... I... live?_ This was the powerful question, and even though he summoned all his intellect to weigh the variables, he could reach no sensible answer. The effort pained him, quite exhausted his capacities, and he dropped these difficult thought processes. Instead he looked at the land ahead and grinned. _No chance... back there_. He was committed to the Eastern Shore.
To escape detection by any English ship putting into the Potomac, he unstepped his mast during daylight hours and lay in the bottom of the sloop, but once he reached the Eastern Shore, he moved northward at a steady clip, seeing numerous enticing bays. He became ravenously hungry, but his cunning warned him against landing here: too close to the James.
Later, when he felt that he was safely north, he beached his boat, hiding it among rushes, and foraged for what berries he could find. Using as bait the head of a fish he caught, he lured crabs; when toasted over a small fire they sustained him. At dusk he would come out of hiding and sail through the night, and in this cautious way approached the Choptank.
He did not venture directly into the channel south of the island, but lay to for several days, scouting the place. He saw smoke rise from the hidden house and movement of servants along the shore, and to his surprise the masts of two different boats, a bateau and a ketch. He supposed the latter must be an official craft come from Virginia to arrest him, so extra precautions were advisable.
He waited till one dark midnight when no lights showed on Devon, then slipped silently along the southern bank of the Choptank until he was well upriver. Then, in waning darkness, he darted across the river and hid along the northern shore, and as dawn approached he saw in the shadowy darkness something which gave him much assurance: a low marshland covering many acres, backed up by what was obviously fast land, for it was lined by towering trees standing dark against the sky. A night bird sang briefly and the broad river lay in unruffled stillness.
_Home_ , the tired little thief thought, and carefully he edged his sloop along the rim of the marsh, not knowing how to penetrate it for the protection he needed. Then, at the eastern extremity, he located a commodious creek, not broad enough to invite inspection from searchers but wide enough to provide safe passage for someone wanting to hide. Lowering his mast to aid concealment, he paddled his boat softly into this passageway between the marsh on the south and solid ground on the north.
When he was far inland and secure from danger, he dropped anchor and stowed his paddle in the bow. He then fell asleep as the fading stars winked their careless approval. Toward noon he awoke with a curious sensation: he felt as if someone were staring at him. Rubbing his grimy eyes, he looked up, and there on the bank to which he had moored stood four Indian braves.
'Run... no... more,' he muttered. Rising on his knees, he grinned at the warriors and extended his open palms. 'See,' he said hopefully, 'no... gun.'
# The Marsh
FOR TIMOTHY TURLOCK TO FLEE ALONE INTO THE Choptank marshes was an act of madness. In England he had not been a countryman, and in Virginia he had been so busy fighting the Janneys that he had not mastered the skills of rural life. Only one thing enabled him to survive: he had developed a passionate love of land and rivers, and intuitively sensed the steps he must take in order to live with them.
Accordingly, when the wandering braves found him at the edge of the marsh, he knew that he must throw himself into their hands, be as docile as possible and learn from them the tricks he would need. There was no Indian village of Patamoke on which he could rely; that site was a mournful echo populated by no one. The braves who had discovered Turlock had been on a casual hunting foray; for some days they remained with the runty Englishman, rather pleased that he was no larger than they.
From them he learned how to weave marsh grass into the walls of his hut and how to catch the few remaining crabs of autumn. Geese had not yet arrived from the north, so he could not trap them, but he did learn the rudiments of tracking deer.
They could not converse with him, of course, but his habit of talking in single words accompanied by grimaces and gestures prepared him admirably for speaking with Indians, who often did the same, so that by the close of the second day he had accumulated a vocabulary of a few words with which he would conduct most of his later intercourse with the Choptanks: _kawshek_ for _oyster; tahquah for crab; attque for deer; nataque for beaver;_ and the word which was going to prove most terrifying, _poopponu_ for _winter_.
By the time the four braves had departed, they had provided him with an intensive course in survival which sufficed during the clement weather of September and October. Indeed, when the great geese did arrive, assuring him of food, he felt such confidence that he began preparing small fields for gardens, even though he had no seed or any comprehension of what to do if any fell into his hands.
But in late November, when the first really cold weather blew across the Choptank, he was appalled at its severity, and then began his dreadful testing, as cruel in its way as the starving time which had tested the first Virginians. He had no blankets, but there were pine boughs, and when these were properly interlaced he could creep under them and at least escape the gale. He also deduced that goose feathers, if they could be compressed into some kind of container, might provide warmth, and after many infuriating failures he discovered a way to make a small blanket from one of the shirts he had stolen from Janney. When tied ingeniously and stuffed with feathers, it was comforting. After a week he reasoned that he must throw out the big feathers with tough quills and use only the down; this conserved heat, so that on some nights he actually perspired.
Then came the snow. The Choptank was far enough north for the river to freeze once or twice each winter, and so situated that snow was frequent. He would fall asleep at dusk, his shirt-blanket about him, and during the night would become aware of an overwhelming silence: no sound of any kind, no birds, no boughs bending, no fall of any foot. And then he would hear that softest of all noises, the almost imperceptible touch of falling snow, striking pine needles and drifting slowly to earth, where it would cover his untitled gardens and smother his hut.
In the morning he would peer from his doorway and see only white, even the river's ice would be covered, and he would know that on this day he would be hungry and cold and bitterly alone.
The winter of 1638-1639 was unusually severe, and Turlock suffered through five snowfalls that depleted his pemmican and made it impossible for him to catch either fish or geese. When the sixth storm swept across the Choptank he was near dead, and when the river thawed he surrendered. He would sail down to Devon Island and give himself up to whatever charges the authorities in Virginia might want to bring against him.
Dolefully he stepped his mast, unfurled his stolen sail and left his sanctuary. Once in the Choptank with the island visible, he felt a sense of resignation; at least on Devon he would find food and warmth, and it might be months before the Steeds could deliver him to Jamestown. His spirits did not brighten, but did focus on the fact that during a postponement covering some months a clever fellow like himself might be able to think of something.
It was remarkable that Turlock had been hiding in the marshes for nearly half a year without those on Devon learning of his existence; after all, the two locations were only ten miles apart, but it must be remembered that the Indians had left Steed's employ, and the servants who had taken their places were not allowed to penetrate the back country. Therefore, when one of them noticed a strange boat putting into Devon Creek, considerable furor swept the settlement.
'Master Steed!' one cried as he ran toward the house. 'Boat! Boat!'
The master was absent in one of the fields, but from the trim door of the house a tall woman with a black shawl about her shoulders appeared, studied the snowy fields, then saw the boat. She was in her forties, with whitening hair and a skin still pallid. She moved as if the island belonged to her, as it did, and after satisfying herself that only one passenger occupied the boat, she sent messengers scurrying about the plantation.
As the sloop tied up to the wharf she saw an emaciated white man climb ashore. Walking unsteadily, he followed the footpath to the house, but had come only a short distance when he collapsed.
'Help him,' she told the servant at her side, and Turlock was dragged into the house, where Mrs. Steed could almost see the warmth penetrate his near-frozen bones.
'Who are you?' she asked when he had sipped some pork broth.
'Turlock.'
'Oh! You're the one who worked here with Simon Janney?'
'Same.'
Delicately she avoided disclosing that she also knew he was the one who had bashed Janney's head with a spade and stolen his boat.
'Janney... live?' Turlock asked.
'He did,' she said evenly, 'no thanks to you.'
'He... was... bad.'
She did not believe this. Both Janney and his wife had testified that neither had ever struck their fractious servant and that both had seen to it that he ate as well as they. Turlock had been presented to the court as an ingrate who—
'Master Steed is coming!' one of the men cried, and Turlock rose, expecting to meet Edmund Steed, with whom he had worked. Instead, a fine-looking young man of twenty-two entered, his cheeks red from frost, his hair tousled.
'This is my son Henry,' Mrs. Steed said. 'He interrupted his law studies in London when my husband died.'
Turlock knew he ought to say something about the death, but graciousness was not his specialty. 'Bad,' he grunted.
'You worked with my father when I was away?' young Steed asked.
'Uh-huh.'
There was an awkward pause, during which Turlock stared insolently at the glass window, the first he had seen in the New World. It ended when Mrs. Steed explained, 'We've discussed his attack on Janney.'
'A wonder you didn't kill him,' Steed said accusingly.
'No... good.'
'He was your legal master.'
'Liked... slaves... better.'
It was remarkable how quickly one became accustomed to Turlock's truncated conversation; when he provided brief verbal clues the educated mind leaped to fill the interstices, as if he were primal and restricted to the barest essential thoughts. The Steeds understood him readily.
Henry was about to lecture him when Mrs. Steed interceded; she said gently that what this repugnant little fellow needed was not moralizing but warm food, and she took him into the kitchen where pots were simmering and fed him. Then she led him to an empty bed, and he fell asleep under real covers.
When she returned to her remonstrating son she silenced him with an instruction she had received from her grandmother in High Wycombe: 'Look after the other man's belly and your own conscience.' She said, 'If a man comes to your door plainly starving, Henry, don't preach, feed him.'
'We've got to turn him over to the authorities.'
'Do we?'
The suggestion was so startling to young Henry, trained in law, that he began to expostulate, but his mother, thinking of the sleeping man, cautioned, 'Keep your voice down, son.'
And then she examined with him the ancient theory of sanctuary, whereby a man running from justice might run so adeptly that ultimately he entered into the place of refuge from which he could not be extracted. 'Men didn't devise that concept for nothing,' she said.
'There's no escape from justice,' Henry said.
'There is... if you reach sanctuary.'
This idea was repulsive and he began to argue forcefully, but his mother made two points: 'Henry, your father and I were often the objects of the law's persecution, but thank God, we found refuge.' And more telling, 'Just because you studied law, don't set yourself up as a little tyrant.'
Her son was prepared to accept this rebuke because of the extraordinary moral power his mother had demonstrated in the last months of her husband's life. While he was absent fighting for freedom in the Assembly, she had minded the plantation and kept the slaves productive. Her sons were unable to help, for they were in Europe and were still there when Edmund died.
Then she had faced real trouble: Simon Janney showed up with shadowy claims to all fields north of the island, said he could prove that he had worked them and had shipped their tobacco to Bristol under his name. She knew the history of the fields and knew his claim was fraudulent, but it required great and solitary effort for her to repel him. When the boys returned from Europe they were able to reoccupy the plantation only because their mother had been resolute.
'Simon Janney is a mean-hearted man,' she told her son.
'Do you think he whipped—What name did he give?'
'Turlock? I doubt it. Janney was never interested in revenge, only money.'
'Shall I surrender Turlock to Jamestown?'
'I think not,' she said, but in deference to her son's position as inheritor of the island she added, 'What do you think we should do?'
For five days Mrs. Steed and her son discussed the moral problems represented by Timothy Turlock's presence in their home, and that sly fellow knew what subject kept the pair engaged. Consequently, when the weather cleared and it looked as if spring would soon reach the river, he slipped away, after first ransacking Mrs. Steed's room to find some spools of thread which he needed. He also took her pins, some nails, a small hammer and a blanket, stowing them securely under the bench of his stolen sloop.
He was well down the creek before the servants noticed his departure, and the hue they raised surprised neither of the Steeds, 'Let him go,' Martha said. 'He carries with him his own punishment.'
'But he inflicts it on others,' her son said, 'never upon himself.'
Turlock spent that splendid autumn of 1639 in fortifying himself against whatever the winters of the future might bring. Using all the bits of cloth he could assemble, he made a facing for his stolen blanket; when the resulting pouch was carefully stuffed with goose down he would have a comforter as good as any in Maryland. He raised his bed, filling the space beneath with heavy goose feathers, and built a double wall inside the house, cramming empty spaces with more feathers. He added a new roof, thick with pine branches, and dug pits in which to store food, and drains to lead water and melting ice away from his hut. At the creek he built a wharf, following the pattern he had learned when doing this job for the Janneys, and even though he had no helper to drive the cedar pilings home, he so worried them and pounded them with a club that the points sank well into the mud.
But most of all this little man, barely a hundred pounds and sadly unfitted for outdoor life, mastered the forest, noting all things that occurred therein. He built trails and along them constructed traps of such ingenuity that he always had food; he cleared an area beneath the towering pines and moved his hut so that they might provide coolness in summer and protection against the snows of winter.
In these early days he saw the marsh merely as a surface thing, a mysterious hiding place in which water and land competed. Within it he found isolated islands firm enough to be tilled, and beside them swamps which would engulf the careless walker. At times he would perch on some hummock to watch the blue heron fishing, and he was delighted when the tall bird snatched a fish and sent it struggling down its gullet. He often saw foxes creeping through the grass, slyly watching for quail or rabbit, and at times large eagles would swoop down to grasp some prey he could not identify.
But the secret of the marsh, the aspect which captivated his imagination, was the fact that he could sail his sloop into it, unstep the mast and hide it so effectively that none could detect it from the river. Or he himself could dart along his camouflaged paths and lose himself just as effectively. Once when Indians came to barter he proved this. Running adroitly among the rushes, he called, 'Find me!' and they could not. When he emerged, grinning with his black teeth, they wanted to see how he had escaped, and when they saw, they marveled.
The Indians presented a problem. When he had learned more of their language, they warned him that they owned the marsh and the land he occupied and that if he wanted it he must buy it as Steed had done. When he objected, they took him far to the east where the werowance lived, and Matapank verified the Choptank claim. Turlock argued with them for some days and in the end had to concede that the land was theirs; to protect himself he said that he would buy it. Obtaining a well-tanned deerskin, he drew on it an outline of his property, showing the oblong marsh and the triangle of fast land, and he asked the leading Choptanks to make their marks; Matapank made his, and the little man with the cleft chin, and then the feeble white-haired giant and his daughter, Tciblento, the stately mother of two sons. When all had signed, Turlock made his mark.
But when the map was completed he realized that it represented no real authority, since it bore only unidentified marks and he had no way to indicate who had signed what. So it occurred to him that what he must do was carry the entire group of negotiators to Devon Island, where the Steeds could write the names and verify them. Matapank understood, and agreed to go; the man with the cleft chin was eager to go, white-haired and quick like a ferret; the giant would not leave his quarters, but Tciblento showed a surprising desire to visit Devon. So canoes were readied, but before they departed the white-haired old man halted proceedings to ask, 'And what does this stranger give us for signing his document?'
There was much discussion, during which the Indians proposed various items they needed. Turlock listened attentively, accepting some, rejecting others: 'I... get... that.' 'I... think... I... get... that.' And so on. At last an agreement was reached, and the convoy set forth.
It was a delightful trip down the river, with never a sign of human occupation on either bank, just the ospreys and the herons, with here and there a family of ducks that had lingered instead of flying north. When the canoes passed Turlock's marsh everyone commented approvingly, and finally Devon Island loomed ahead. Now Tciblento grew nervous, and when the canoes actually entered Devon Creek, she leaned forward to catch sight of the house and did not take her eyes from it while the canoes neared the wharf. Finally, servants saw the approaching procession and shouted to the master, and after a while young Henry Steed came down the pebbled path, and Tciblento fell back, said nothing, but kept her fingers to her mouth.
The signing was conducted on the table in the Steed kitchen, with Henry writing in the five names, adding a date, and asking his mother to testify to the accuracy and then his brother, after which he signed himself. In time the deerskin would be registered at St. Mary's City, but only after Turlock had cleverly altered the line showing the northern boundary, a trick which added another two hundred acres.
Then came the matter of payment. Leading the Indians apart from the Steeds, Turlock assured them that after the second full moon they could come to his marsh and he would deliver to them the specified number of axes, guns and other implements. Matapank and the little fellow with the cleft chin agreed, but Tciblento asked, 'Why not hand them to us now?' and he replied, 'Now... don't... have.'
So the Indians returned home empty-handed, but after the first full moon had waned Turlock went to work. At night he sailed his sloop to a cove on the far side of Devon, hid it among low-bending trees, and for three nights in a row crept inland to reconnoiter the Steed plantation. Then, in one busy night, he took axes from positions at which they would not be quickly missed; his guns he stole right from the quarters of those sleeping servants charged with hunting game; he filched three wheels, a hammer, a crowbar, two hoes, and when he had picked up several choice items for his own use, he crept back to his sloop and moved silently upriver to his marsh.
As he was about to unload his booty and carry it to his hut, it occurred to him that it might be more prudent to sequester it in the marsh. So with extreme care to leave no footprints, he picked and dodged his way into the heart of the swampiest section, where on a platform of sticks he cached his goods. Then he tiptoed out by a different course and sat innocently in his hut when an angry Henry Steed and three men came up the creek to search his place.
'Mr. Steed!' he pleaded, grinning at the plantation owner. 'What... I... do... stolen... axes? Have... my... own.' The servants verified the fact that Turlock's axes had never been Steed property, nor the guns nor the hoe.
'He's hidden mine somewhere,' Steed insisted, and his men searched the woods, but could find no sign of earth that had been disturbed. Steed directed them into the marsh, but when they tried to penetrate that wilderness they sank to their middles and he had to call them back.
'Think... Indians... took,' Turlock suggested, but the Choptanks lived too far away to be investigated, so Steed had to return to the island. As the ketch departed he warned Turlock, 'I know you're the thief. We'll catch you.'
He never did, but once Turlock had delivered his purchase goods to the Indians, he stayed clear of the plantation, having guessed that Steed would post sentries to apprehend him if he attempted new forays. The marsh and the fast land were legally his, four hundred acres of the former, nearly eight hundred of the latter, and he was determined that nothing, neither winter blizzards nor summer mosquitoes, would ever dispossess him.
When Turlock had occupied his marsh for well over a year he became aware that an occasional hunter or vagrant from the western shore had begun to camp at the abandoned Indian site of Patamoke and that a rude landing had been established inside the protective harbor. The Steeds at the mouth of the river did not seem to object; indeed, they profited from the accidental trade that came to their supply house on Devon, and no Choptanks were in the area to protest.
But the types of men who squatted on the ruins of the old village were so violent that trouble was inescapable; from their bloody experiences with Indians along the James they had learned to hate red men and were unable to distinguish the inoffensive Choptanks from the savages who had burned and slaughtered at Jamestown. Immediate war was declared against all Indians, and when a casual group of five Choptank braves wandered onto the ancient hunting grounds to the north of Patamoke, they were fired upon, and two were slain, including the husband of Tciblento.
A cry of anguish burst from the Choptank settlement when the three survivors stumbled back with reports of what had happened. Matapank, the werowance, was thrown into confusion by the tragedy; he realized that the unavoidable confrontation was at hand, but he had no concept of what he should do. Without a plan he assembled three counselors to accompany him on a visit to talk with the white men about the injustice they had done, but when this peace mission approached, the white gunners fired on them and Matapank was killed.
Now the burden that Pentaquod had sought to escape fell heavily upon him. The body of Tciblento's husband had not been recovered, so that funeral rites could not be conducted, and the beautiful woman was left without the consolation that might have come from a proper burial and the assurance of a secure life for her husband in the hereafter. She sat mourning with her sons, and nothing her old father could do assuaged her grief; her husband had been the first to fall in the warfare that she had known to be inevitable.
Pentaquod was further disoriented by the meaningless death of Matapank, to whom the mantle of leadership had been given almost a quarter of a century earlier; he had never been a strong werowance, but he had held the tribe together and should have attained old age as its respected leader. Now he was gone and the only force that could give these drifting little people the encouragement they required was Pentaquod, who was in his eighty-first year and eager for the grave. When the Choptanks came to him, begging his counsel, he not only retained his three turkey feathers, but in order to give his people courage he also agreed to wear, for the first time, the copper disk designating a werowance. Assisted always by Tciblento, he made the decisions required to give his adopted people courage.
In five canoes he and his wisest braves went down the Choptank to reconnoiter. They kept away from the camp, where the hunters were carrousing, and put into the marsh, where Turlock, a man they had learned to trust, kept himself aloof. Pentaquod, sitting in the fugitive's rude hut with Tciblento at his side, asked, 'Turlock, what do the white men want?'
'The river.'
'Why do they kill us?'
'You're Indians.'
'Must we quit this river and live as slaves under the Nanticokes?'
'They be killed too.'
'Must it be war? The war we have always sought to avoid?'
They talked for two days, with Tciblento acting as her father's memory, and then the whole entourage, including Turlock, proceeded downriver to Devon Island, where they consulted with the Steeds. Young Henry was of the opinion that the Choptank was permanently lost and that the Indians must move far to the east, to avoid trouble, but Turlock said that he had gone on two journeys in that direction, clean to the ocean, and had found white men gaining footholds there, too. At this doleful news Pentaquod asked what his little tribe could do, and Henry suggested that they move south and make common cause with the Nanticokes.
'And lose our freedom?' the old man asked.
'The Indians on the western shore have learned...' Henry began, but he did not finish, for what they learned was too painful to report: that wherever white settlers came, the Indian must abdicate.
At this gloomy point Mrs. Steed thought it desirable to introduce some less lugubrious topic, and she remembered how Tciblento had once been in love with Edmund Steed and had married instead one of the Choptank braves. 'How is your husband?' she asked brightly.
'The hunters killed him.'
'Oh, my God!' Mrs. Steed cried, as if Tciblento had volunteered proof of what the men had been discussing, and she felt such compassion for the Indian woman that she embraced her, resting for a moment on her shoulder.
'You shall stay with us through the winter,' she said softly.
'I must help my father.'
'He shall stay, too, in one of our houses.'
'These are the days when all are needed,' Pentaquod said, and when this was translated, Mrs. Steed reached up and kissed the old man. 'At least let your daughter stay,' she said, but Pentaquod took Tciblento by the hand and said querulously, 'There was a day long ago when I wanted her to leave, but now she is needed,' and silently the Indians went to their canoes as if preparing for a funeral journey.
In the three winter months of 1641 Timothy Turlock passed back and forth between Devon and the Choptank camp, bearing messages and trying to devise some kind of amicable arrangement whereby the Indians could survive in their small corner of forest, but the hunters were intractable; they intended driving out every Choptank and had already fired the opening salvos of warfare with the Nanticokes to the south.
In his discussions, Turlock met increasingly with Pentaquod, whose tear-dimmed eyes saw only the dissolution of his people. The old man was an infinitely greater philosopher than Turlock, who could barely grapple with an abstract idea, but they shared a love for the land that enabled them to communicate. Pentaquod tried to convince the ferret-faced little Englishman that it would prove as difficult for him to hold on to his land as it would be for the Choptanks to keep theirs.
'No hunters in my marsh,' Turlock boasted, using his hand to indicate the musket he would use to repel them.
'They aren't the enemy,' Pentaquod corrected.
'Who?'
'Steed.'
'No,' Turlock said firmly. 'Steed... peace.'
'Not warfare,' Pentaquod said. 'No guns. But he will always want more land. His barns will always be hungry. He will grab clear to the ocean, and you and I and all of us, even the hunters, will be consumed.'
During these fearful days Pentaquod brooded about the future of his tribe, but something immediate was happening which caused him deep personal concern. He had observed that Turlock lingered in the Choptank camp not so much to consult with him as to be near Tciblento, and one morning the appalling thought came to him: Great Spirit! He intends to marry her!
It was a pitiful mismatch: she was a head taller, beautiful where he was grotesque, poetic by nature whereas he could barely voice a complete thought, and forty-four while he was only thirty-two. What seemed strangest of all, the couple had practically no common vocabulary. How could they converse? How could there be any companionship?
And yet Pentaquod understood what impulses might be driving his daughter to this unlikely suitor. She stood at the parting of days, her husband slain, her tribe in disarray, her permanent home burned, the future a gray and dismal blank. It was not illogical for her to move with the strangers and make with them what life she could, but the necessity for such a decision was tragic.
Oh, Tciblento, he said to himself one morning, that you have missed a Susquehannock deserving of you, and the Steed that you should have married, and the worthy warriors that should have come... His shoulders trembled and tears filled his weakened eyes: How fearful that you should be driven to thinking of this pitiful man. Tciblento! You are the daughter of kings!
The wedding was a shocking affair, a travesty of ancient tradition: one morning the little Englishman mumbled, 'Time... go... marsh,' and this urge Pentaquod understood, for no man should remain long absent from his land. As the afternoon sun started dipping toward the west, Turlock merely left the wigwam and drifted casually toward his boat, indicating that Tciblento was free to accompany him, if she wished. Without saying farewell to her father, she silently fell in behind the little trapper and without ceremony of any kind entered the sloop. Her departure went unnoticed in the village; there was no celebration befitting the marriage of a princess, no beating of drums, no prayer by the shaman. This tribe was disorganized; the pressure from the Chesapeake was too pervasive.
Old Pentaquod, realizing that he would not see his daughter again, summoned her two sons, and holding them by the hand, even though they were grown now, walked to the shore and called after the departing sloop, 'Tciblento! What shall we do with your boys?'
But she was gone, gone from her tribe forever, and the boys would somehow be absorbed, and they would wander bewildered with the rest of the Choptanks, and in the end they would be hunted like deer and slain, and the needles of the pine would cover them.
_Oh, Tciblento!_ The old man wept, and when the geese departed from the river his spirit followed.
A basic characteristic of the Eastern Shore was that significant events which happened elsewhere excited wild reverberations throughout the peninsula, but nothing which happened on the shore ever influenced history outside. This was demonstrated in January 1648 when a ship from Bristol put into Devon with a small group of indentured servants, a huge supply of trading goods for the Steed warehouse and a Catholic priest freshly ordained in Rome.
Ralph Steed, thirty-two, had done well in his studies and should have taken pride in being the first citizen of Maryland to achieve holy orders, but when he descended the gangplank it was obvious that he was disturbed. Grave of manner, his blond hair agitated by the wind, he kissed his mother soberly, greeted his two brothers, and said, 'Let us repair to the chapel.'
There he led a brief Mass attended by two sailors, after which he closed the doors and met solemnly with his family. 'Events of profound gravity are sweeping London,' he confided. 'King Charles is being hounded by Protestants, and a hideous person named Cromwell is threatening to capture the throne and have himself proclaimed king.'
'Are they going mad?' his mother asked.
'They are. And the consequences can be awful. Parliament is trying to revoke the Maryland charter. There's talk of sending the most dreadful commissioners here to wipe out Catholicism. We're in danger.'
He had only fragmentary information; aboard ship he had been treated with hostility by those who supported the Protestant Parliament in its fight with the king, and he had not been told some of the most disturbing news, but now the captain and the sailors were confiding everything to the Protestant stragglers who had come down from the camp to trade.
'Yes, sir,' the captain told them, 'there's fighting up and down England. A madman named Rupert is supporting the king, but General Cromwell is putting armies in the field to defend honest men. If Cromwell wins, the days of the Papist in Maryland will be numbered.'
Some of the sailors, rabid Parliament men, wanted to organize a kind of Protestant militia for the Choptank, to defend the new liberties being achieved in England, but their captain squelched this. 'The fight will be won in England,' he predicted, 'and that will determine what happens here.'
He was not correct in his prophecy. The planters of Virginia and Maryland were now and always would be staunchly royalist; they positively loved the king, any king, and the closer Parliament came to victory in England, the more fiercely did they defend Charles along the Chesapeake. To them the crown was a symbol of permanence, of the England they remembered, and Cromwell's insolence infuriated them—'How dare he move against the king!' And they circulated petitions attesting to their support.
But Father Steed, a solid scholar as well as a devout Catholic, perceived that a revolution of some magnitude was under way and knew that it must ultimately involve everyone in Maryland, not only the planters. 'We are king's people,' he told his family, 'and Catholics, and both attributes will place us under pressure. We must be prepared to defend ourselves.'
So Devon Island became a bastion guarding the Choptank. The three Steed brothers owned seventeen muskets but were hesitant to arm the servants, who were all Protestants, as were the hunters at the camp. All settlements in Virginia, of course, were vigorously anti-Catholic and could be expected to mount some kind of invasion. Indeed, the only hope of the Steeds was that stable citizens in Maryland-across-the-Bay would rally to the king's cause and maintain a rough stability until Englishmen in London subdued the Protestant threat and hanged Cromwell.
Ralph was the organizing genius. Staying in the background and allowing his younger brother Henry to assume visible control, he crossed the bay and quietly inspirited Catholics, assuring them that the present troubles were an aberration that must be resisted. He said further, 'We must not panic. It is inconceivable that Maryland, which allows religious liberty to all, should ever strike blows against the Catholics, who provided that liberty.'
But one night, as he was preaching thus, a Catholic housewife told him that renegades had broken into her home and burned her crucifix, and Ralph had shuddered with a premonition that the evils which he had been saying were inconceivable were already real. When he returned from his priestly duties he found that Henry had received news from England, and it was all bad.
'The Scots have sold King Charles to the Protestants for pittance. Prince Rupert has been driven from the land and is a pirate in the Azores. Commissioners of the vilest sort are being sent to subdue the colonies, and there has been rioting against Catholics.'
The Steed brothers might have acted imprudently except for the pacifying influence of their mother. Martha was fifty-four that year, white-haired, thin, but composed as always. She had survived many vicissitudes on this remote island and did not propose to surrender now to either panic or despair. Her Catholic family was destined to come under severe pressure; indeed, she had often wondered why this had not happened earlier, and she believed there was a non-hysterical way of combatting it. She told Ralph, 'Become invisible. You form too tempting a target.' She advised Henry to ease off on his trading lest he arouse the cupidity of the hunters at Patamoke. She also suggested that overtures be made to Turlock to see if he and Tciblento might move onto the island and man guns if violence occurred, and it was in pursuit of this proposal that Henry Steed, the fastidious manager of Devon, climbed into his bateau and had his servants sail him to the marsh.
What he found revolted him. At the head of the little creek which separated the marsh from fast land, there was a hut of the meanest sort, occupied by Turlock, his Indian woman and twin half-breeds that had been mysteriously born to them; Henry had supposed Tciblento to be far past childbearing age, but there the scrawny children were, playing on the earthen floor. Turlock, the master of this hovel, was in sad condition, emaciated, pimply-faced, ragged and with two teeth missing in front. To visualize him as a colleague was repugnant, but Henry had always respected his mother's counsel and began negotiations.
'Mother thinks it might be best if you moved onto Devon... with your wife... and children, of course.'
'How else?'
'We'd move out two of the servants. You could have a rather fine cabin.' He looked distastefully at the hovel.
'Trouble?' Turlock asked, chewing on a weed.
At first Henry was inclined to dissemble, but he suspected that Turlock might somehow have heard rumors from Jamestown, so he spoke openly. 'They've deposed the king.'
'What's... that... mean?'
'Got rid of him.'
'Good.'
'Real trouble may reach Maryland.'
'Uh-huh.'
'If you would help us, Turlock, we'd have the warrants for your arrest vacated.'
'Nobody... arrest... me.'
'One day they'll come for you. Trying to kill Janney. And they'll hang you.'
'Never... find... me.'
'Turlock, I'm offering you a sensible plan for restoring your citizenship. Come with me.'
The fugitive studied young Steed carefully, and instinctively drew the two boys beside him. 'Tcib, come here,' and he placed her behind him. 'Protestants fight Papist?'
'Yes.'
'I'm Protestant.'
'I know you are, Turlock. But you've seen Father Ralph, the good work he does.'
'Ralph is good.'
'So's my mother.'
'She was good.'
'She still is.'
'You're Catholic, Steed. I don't help you.'
Steed sat down on the only piece of furniture, a three-legged stool. He had not anticipated such a rebuff, but he needed this ugly fellow on his side and was prepared to humiliate himself by begging. 'Turlock, what happens in the next months will determine what happens on this river. Do you want to lose your land? Spend the rest of your life in jail? Or be hanged by the neck?'
'Protestants win, never touch me.'
'Dear friend,' Steed said hurriedly, 'you're exactly the kind of criminal these Puritans will hang! Believe me, Turlock, if you want to preserve your home here in the marshes, come with me and help my mother.'
Accidentally Henry had stumbled upon the two symbols that held meaning for the fugitive: his marshland and the kindness of Mrs. Steed. Grudgingly, and with the sorest doubts that he would be right in siding with a Catholic, he loaded the sloop he had stolen seven years earlier and took his family to Devon, where, as Henry had promised, they were housed in a well-built cabin. There he and the three Steed boys awaited the conflagration that was sweeping the western shore.
It reached the Choptank in a curious way. A twenty-six-year-old servant on the York River fell into an argument with his master, who lost his temper and whipped him severely. The man was so humiliated by this unwarranted punishment that he set fire to his master's house and fled; warrants had been issued for his arrest on the grounds that no matter what a master did to a servant, the latter must acquiesce, so, fearing that he might be hanged, the servant fled Virginia and found refuge at the camp on the Choptank.
There he inflamed four renegades with lurid reports of general revolution in Virginia, with Protestants burning Catholic homes, until one of the hunters cried, 'There's a whole Papist chapel on Devon Island, priest and all!' And canoes with five wild men set off down the river; the battle that Father Ralph had feared was ignited.
It was a grisly affair, and during the gunfire Timothy Turlock suspected that he was fighting on the wrong side. Still, his musket kept the marauders away from the Steed house, but since he had placed himself at the eastern windows, where the landing party would first assault, he was not able to protect the western end of the house, where the chapel stood. Father Ralph had taken his position at the altar, and when incendiarists approached with brands, he discharged his musket, accomplishing nothing.
Two stout hunters bashed in the doors and overwhelmed him. They certainly would have killed him, for they were infuriated by the sight of his priestly garb, except that Mrs. Steed screamed for help, and Turlock came rushing up, but not before the chapel had been set ablaze. As it burned, the invaders cheered and sought to cap their victory by destroying the Papist house as well, but resolute shooting by Turlock and his companions drove the rabble back, and at dawn, with the chapel smoking, the victors withdrew to their boats.
Father Ralph, bruised and shaken by the assault, gathered his family for prayers of deliverance, but Timothy Turlock and Tciblento did not attend. The fugitive had assembled his family and was now loading the two boys into his sloop; when Henry, stifling his pride, ran down to thank him for his help, he said merely, 'To hell with Catholics,' and returned to his marsh.
The effect of this battle on Father Ralph was crushing. The loss of the chapel in which he had prayed as a child was a heavy blow, but his mother reminded him that Lord Baltimore had counseled his Catholics against public displays of their religion lest they attract opposition, and she judged that the chapel had been ostentatious. What embittered him was the fact that Maryland, the colony in which Catholic proprietors had offered religious freedom to all, should be the scene of persecution of Catholics. But he was not sure of his position; at the height of the fracas in which his life had nearly been lost, he had heard his Protestant enemies shouting, 'This is for the thirty thousand you dirty Papists killed in Ulster.'
In Rome he had heard whispers that the Catholics of northern Ireland, sorely beset by Protestant tyranny, had revolted and slain many thousands of their oppressors. 'Is it to go on forever?' he asked his brothers. 'This fratricide?' For weeks he brooded about it, then decided that he must go to Jamestown to confront the terrorists who had sent this poison across the bay.
His brother Paul accompanied him to secure the quashing of the warrant against Timothy Turlock, and when they reached Jamestown they were told that each of their missions could be handled best by Councilman Matthew Maynard, so they marched to his home, where that portly gentleman caught his breath when they announced their names. He was further surprised to find that a Catholic priest in clerical garb had dared walk the streets of this town.
'Come in,' he said without enthusiasm. 'I think my wife would be interested in meeting you.' He said these words maliciously and dispatched a slave to summon Mrs. Maynard. Before either young man could state his mission, the counselor's wife appeared, a striking blonde in her late fifties wearing an impressive dress that must have come from London; it was not garish or blatantly expensive, but it was made of fine cloth and fitted well.
'I am sure you will be pleased to meet these young men,' the counselor said. 'This is Father Ralph Steed of Devon, and this his brother, Dr. Paul Steed.'
Mrs. Maynard betrayed no emotion other than the taking of a deep breath. Adjusting the heavy cloth of her dress, she addressed Ralph. 'I am most pleased to see you in Jamestown after all these years. I am Meg Shipton.'
It was Ralph who blushed. In fact, he trembled and would have sat had there been a chair at hand. He could say nothing, and Paul, who had never been allowed to hear of Meg, was left bewildered by his brother's extraordinary behavior. 'I am Paul Steed,' he said, half extending his hand to the mistress of the house. When she made no effort to take it, he added lamely, 'I've come to see your husband about a pardon for Timothy Turlock.'
'And who might he be?' she asked distantly.
'A very brave man who saved Ralph's life.'
'He saved your life?' She said the words almost sarcastically as she studied the priest. 'I am sure you feel indebted.' And with that, she swept out of the room.
'And now what can I do for you?' Maynard asked solicitously and with just the degree of unction necessary to make his question offensive.
'I ask that you vacate the charges against Timothy Turlock,' Paul said. 'He's reformed and lives a decent life.'
'What, might I ask, are the charges against him?'
'I'm not certain. Didn't Father say it was something to do with Simon Janney?' Paul looked at his brother, who was still in a state of shock.
'We have no Simon Janney,' Maynard said coldly.
'There were charges of some kind.'
'When?'
'When would it have been, Ralph?' Receiving no help from his brother, Paul stumbled on. 'Nine, ten years ago.'
'Time vacated them,' Maynard said austerely, and he dismissed Paul. 'Now what is it you seek, Father Steed, if that's the appropriate address?'
During the crossing from Devon, Ralph had composed an impassioned plea that Virginia stop sending agitators to the Choptank, a prayer that the freedom his family had always extended to others be extended to them, but the unnerving experience with Meg Shipton had disarmed him and he could find no words for her pompous and distasteful husband. 'I, too, speak for Turlock,' he mumbled.
'Noted,' Maynard said. After an embarrassing pause he said more unctuously than before, 'I had thought you might be wanting to issue a complaint about the burning of your chapel, but since that was a private affair, and on territory claimed by Maryland, however unjustly, I would find scant reason for listening.' He rose, indicating that the Steeds should leave, and without ever having presented their cases coherently, the young men were on the street.
Ralph was so confused by his meeting with the Maynards that he was useless to his brother. He moved in a daze, and when Paul proposed that they find something to eat, he could not respond intelligently; they returned to their ketch, where the servants were preparing chicken, and Paul ate while his brother stared at the river. Finally, after sending the men away, Paul asked harshly, 'Ralph, what's the matter?'
'That woman... Mrs. Maynard.'
'She treated you poorly, but what of that?'
'She's my mother.'
Now it was Paul's turn to fall silent. He gaped at his brother as if Ralph had profaned some precious icon, and found no words to express his astonishment. 'Yes,' the priest continued, 'Meg Shipton. I often wondered...'
Paul could not comprehend the vast human complication uncovered by this chance meeting, and when his brother tried to explain—the selling of wives, the abandonments, the lonely years on Devon, the escapes, the courage of their mother and the steadfastness of their father—he threw up his hands. It was monstrous, and the longer he thought about its complexities the angrier he became. As a doctor, he was familiar with specific situations and had learned to counteract them as best he could; behavior like Mrs. Maynard's was insufferable and he would not tolerate it.
Leaving Ralph still dazed in the ketch, he stormed back to the counselor's house and demanded to see husband and wife. 'I want a signed release for Timothy Turlock,' he shouted at Maynard. 'And I want you to talk with my brother like a decent Christian,' he told Mrs. Maynard.
'Young man—'
'And if you refuse, I shall inform everyone in Jamestown and all Virginia.'
The Maynards were uncertain as to what this ultimatum covered, the release or the visitation, and the counselor tried to utter some witticism, but Paul reached swiftly out and grabbed his wrist. 'You have one minute, sir, to send for my brother down there on the boat. One minute.'
Mr. Maynard now awoke to the fact that he had on his hands a dangerous type, and he dispatched a slave to fetch the priest. In the interval he wrote out a statement releasing Timothy Turlock from his indenture and excusing him for misconduct against his master. Then Ralph appeared, disheveled and looking like no priest.
'Mrs. Maynard,' Paul said, 'this is your son Ralph.'
'I am pleased to see you back from Rome,' she said icily.
It was a miserable scene, with no one prepared to make a sensible comment, and after several futile attempts to reconcile mother and son, Paul became enraged. 'God damn you both...'
'You could have your tongue branded for blasphemy,' Maynard warned.
'Damn you both!' he repeated, and the brothers left.
On the long, bewildering days of the sail back to Devon, Ralph sat slumped in the ketch, saying nothing, staring at the dark waters. After several useless attempts to console him, Paul left him alone, but on the night before reaching the island, when sleep was fitful, he thought he heard a click and rushed aft to find Ralph preparing to blow out his brains.
'Ralph,' he cried in terror, for what the young priest proposed was a fearful sin against humanity and the Holy Ghost: a suicide. Wresting the pistol from him, Paul slammed him backward, slapped his face and cursed him.
Ralph said nothing, seemed hardly to have known what happened, but the pistol was hidden from him. And when the ketch landed, and the brothers went ashore, they moved like old men with secrets too wretched to share. They could not tell their mother of the indecent scene with Meg Shipton, for that would pain her, nor could they share the incident with Henry, for he, too, had never been told of Ralph's parentage. All they could do was show the document freeing Turlock, and when Henry suggested that they deliver it to the marshes as proof of their willingness to help the fugitive, they could show no interest in either Turlock or his reprieve.
It was now that Father Steed entered upon the great years of his ministry to the Eastern Shore, traveling alone to the most dangerous parts of the peninsula, living fearlessly with Indians and renegades, performing marriages and christenings in the most unlikely spots, and at rare intervals consecrating some hidden room in a sprawling house to serve as chapel. There would never be many Catholics on the Eastern Shore, that was the religion of towns across the bay, but the ones who did brave the wilderness revered Father Steed as their conscience and their hope.
The lines in his face deepened. He grew careless of dress. And when it was proposed that because of his piety he move to St. Mary's City to serve the notable families there, he begged to be excused. 'I am at home in the back rivers,' he said—and it was along these rivers he traveled.
What was there about a marsh which gave it the power to enthrall a man? When Timothy Turlock received proof that he would not be hauled back to Jamestown for hanging and that his tenure of the marsh was secure, he experienced a resurgence of spirit that no one acquainted with his thieving ways would have credited.
'Tcib!' he shouted as the Steed ketch departed. 'We're safe.' Dancing a jig, he grabbed his sons, one under each arm, and ran down to where the marsh began. Pointing with his unshaven chin at the reeds and the twisted channels, he cried, 'Never lose it!'
In his appreciation of the marsh Turlock had advanced somewhat from the early days when he had seen it merely as a hiding place for animals as well as himself. Now he saw it as an empire, a reservoir of considerable richness populated by larger animals and tastier fish. He did not bother to differentiate the rushes and the various kinds of minute inedible crabs, nor did he have the knowledge to comprehend how the contrasting segments of life fitted together, each supporting the other; that complicated awareness would not come in his century. But what he could understand was that the marsh constituted a kind of outlaw state from which he could thumb his nose at the Steeds and any others who sought to enslave him in their ordered ways.
Once safe within its boundaries he was emperor. He had built himself a small rowboat, no more leakproof than the shallop he had helped build for Janney, and with his toes in the water that seeped through the cracks, he loved to creep down the hidden waterways that cut the marsh into principalities; as he progressed from one hummock to the next he watched the larger forms of life.
Deer were common, and he refrained from gunning them within the marsh, as if he recognized the right of animals to find sanctuary as well as he; his deer he shot inland among the trees. He grew familiar with muskrats, too, and watched where they built their conical lodges.
He was especially fond of the gaudy-colored turtle; it was not good for eating like the terrapin he caught whenever possible, and perhaps it was this uselessness that earned the slow-footed animal a particular place in his affection, for he often suspected that he, too, was good for nothing. He liked the songs of the frogs and laughed when his boys argued that the noises they uttered must be coming from some heavy bird.
'Frogs,' he told them, and not until he had trapped some and shown them how the moist creatures made their provocative sound would the boys believe. He felt a special identification with the osprey that swept in to filch fish the way he crept to steal; this was a fine bird, fiery and resolute, and sometimes when he saw it darting over the tips of the marsh grass he felt that he would like to be such a bird.
'Oh!' he cried to the boys. 'Watch him dive!' And he was gratified whenever the osprey flew off with a struggling fish.
The lesser life which kept the marsh viable he rarely saw, and its relation to the grasses he did not understand. Snails and jellyfish were none of his concern, but there was one creature that never failed to ignite his imagination: the great goose that came in October to fill the sky and command the streams. This was the symbol of the marsh's grandeur, the promise of its bounty.
As the days of summer shortened he would tell his boys, 'Some day now,' and each morning he would test the wind, and he could guess within two days of when the great birds would come sailing in, their raucous voices filling the air with protest as they argued where to land, and when they finally agreed upon his marsh he would run out as if to embrace them, for they shared this sanctuary with him, and like the deer, they were safe from his gun so long as they stayed here.
Once, caught up with emotion at the return of the birds, he flung his arms skyward as they wheeled in. 'Where were you?' he cried, but it was the boys who heard him, not the geese, and he was embarrassed that they should have seen him making such a fool of himself. He ducked into his leaky boat and rowed furiously into the remote waterways where cat-o'-nine-tails flourished, and there he found the new arrivals feeding and watched them through the chilly day.
In these years, and far into the future, the entire Chesapeake watershed contained only two established villages, and even these provided services more governmental than economic. Jamestown served as the capital of Virginia, St. Mary's City as the capital of Maryland, but as soon as more sensible locations were found—Williamsburg and Annapolis—the original villages practically vanished, proving that they had served no commercial function.
On the Eastern Shore the condition was even more pronounced, and there would be no town or village until the close of the century; even famous settlements like Oxford, Cambridge and Easton would not come till late, and this was understandable, for it was only at the ends of the innumerable peninsulas that pioneers settled. Since the farmers who occupied these headlands were largely self-sufficient, they felt no need for a trading center, nor could they have reached one by road if it had existed, for it was impossible to link the various peninsulas by trails, which would have had to traverse swamps, deep woods and broad creeks. Each family lived to itself.
But wherever men accumulate, towns begin mysteriously to form, and as early as 1650 the first tentative seeds of a community along the Choptank were being sown. Hunters and other drifters continued to prize the facilities they found at the ruins of the Indian village of Patamoke, where the splendid harbor provided access to the bay and protection from storms. Sometimes the site would be occupied four years in a row, then lie vacant for three. In some years only one casual hunter would stop by in early November, hunting geese, but it was known along the Eastern Shore as a place where anyone in extremity could probably find bread or a few ounces of gunpowder.
The Steeds watched carefully what happened at the old Indian site, for as good merchants they suspected that trade might one day develop there, and they intended to control it. Twice Henry Steed sailed into the harbor to ascertain whether the time was ripe for opening some kind of trading post, and it was clear to him that persons taking up residence on the peninsulas would find it easier to sail to some central point than to come all the way to Devon Island.
'For the present there aren't enough people to justify a post,' he told his brothers, 'but soon there will be.' What he did instead of opening a store proved his acuity: 'Paul, you must cross the bay and talk with the governor.' And when the talks were concluded, the Steeds had patents giving them title to the harbor and all the spacious lands surrounding it.
'Now,' Henry told the family, 'if anything does develop, we'll be in an excellent position.'
But no matter how extensive the Steed holdings became, Mrs. Steed could not rest easy. In 1638 she had repelled Simon Janney's claim against the northern fields, but she had not legally disposed of it, and now she warned her sons, 'Settle with Janney before he learns that we are prospering.' So once again Henry and Paul sailed the ketch to Jamestown, taking with them a remarkable cargo. Cash money was still murderously scarce, and none could recall when actual coins had circulated along the Choptank, for the good reason that Henry Steed had hidden every one that came his way. Secretly he had accumulated a hoard of Spanish and French pieces, plus a few shillings, and it was these he intended using as bait with Janney.
When they reached Jamestown they learned that the tough little countryman still occupied his mean farm upriver, so they steered their ketch to his wharf, but it was in such sad condition that they feared tying up to it. Anchoring in the stream, they rowed ashore and went to the hovel in which Janney, his toothless wife and their malnourished daughter lived. When Henry saw their condition he thought: The mention of hard coinage will speed this negotiation. But Janney proved an astute trader.
'I ought to know the fields, seein' they're mine.'
'I believe they're held in my father's name.'
'Use makes title.'
'There may be something to what you say.'
'Especially if I have it in writin'.'
'You do?' Henry asked cautiously.
'Letters,' Janney said, looking to his wife for confirmation.
'Letters prove nothing,' Henry said. 'You know I read law.'
'Then you'll know what a contract is,' Janney said.
For about an hour they parried in this manner, until Paul grew restless. 'I don't believe Mr. Janney has any proof,' he said peremptorily.
'But Henry believes. Don't you, Henry?'
'I would judge that you have some shadowy claim,' Henry conceded. 'Difficult to prove, but perhaps strong enough to cause us embarrassment in court.'
'Especially in a Virginia court.'
'I propose we discharge that claim. Now.'
'With what?' Janney asked.
'With money. With a substantial number of coins.'
He had stressed the fact of coins in order to impress Janney with the possibility of his getting hold of real money, but he was not prepared for Janney's next step. The canny farmer consulted visually with his wife and daughter; they nodded; he loosened a board in the floor and produced from beneath it a large clay pot, from which he poured onto the wooden table a hoard of European coinage more than twice as large as the one Henry Steed had accumulated. As he fingered the coins, lovingly and with pride, he said, 'We're planning to buy a place on the Rappahannock. Have been for some years. Now, if you're serious about clearing up your title, and you should be...' He allowed his coins to clink.
'How much do you want?' Henry asked coldly.
'The matter comes down to my signing your papers, don't it?'
'In part.'
'I'll sign and my wife will make her mark and my daughter Jennifer will sign. You'll be forever clear of us'—he hesitated, and no one breathed—'if you add substantially to our coins.'
Without hesitation Henry Steed took his purse by one bottom corner, turned it upside down and allowed all its contents to pour onto the table. 'I think that's substantial.'
'I think so too,' Janney said, and the quitclaim was signed.
On the trip home Paul said admiringly, 'That was daring,' and Henry said, 'Not if you knew I kept half our coins sewed along the waist of my trousers.' Then he became reflective. 'The important thing is that our patents are now without blemish, and, Paul, we must keep them that way. No mortgages, no loans, and above all, dear brother, no borrowing from Fithian. Promise me that you will never order from London one item you can't pay for. Marcus Fithian's the most honest man I know. I trust him with every leaf of our tobacco, and he gives me honest count, but for the love of God, never fall into his debt.'
He had met Fithian at the Inns of Court; the Englishman was one year older and many years wiser. The descendant of a family that had always specialized in financing trade, his ancestors had known the Fuggers and the Medici and had rarely been worsted by either. The young men had met in 1636, and for five months young Fithian had pumped Henry for knowledge of the colonies; he was pleased to hear that Henry had stopped in Boston on his way to London and had observed for himself the prosperity of that town, but Henry kept repeating, 'The true fortunes are to be made along the rivers of Virginia.' To test this thesis, Fithian had made a tedious journey in a tobacco ship to the York and the Potomac and had seen at once the chances for an industrial association that would profit both the remote planter in the colonies and the factor in London.
He was never avaricious, but four great plantations had already fallen into his hands because their undisciplined owners ordered more from London than they could pay for with the tobacco they shipped from Virginia. Fithian did nothing criminal, or even suspicious; he merely filled orders and kept meticulous balances, and when the former pushed the latter into debits, he foreclosed. He never tried to run a plantation himself; he knew he was unqualified for that exacting task: 'I wouldn't know the value of a single slave, nor a field of unripe weed.'
What he did, once he gained title, was send an underling to the colonies to seek out the best farmer available and sell him the land at great discount, trusting to keep that man's accounts for the next fifty years. It was in furtherance of this design that in 1651 he wrote to his friend Henry Steed:
My cousin Lennox spent three weeks on your rivers and advises me that the farmer Simon Janney is hard-working, trustworthy and exceptionally well informed on tobacco. Do you concur? I have lately come into possession of a large plantation on the left bank of the Rappahannock which Lennox assures me is capable of cultivation, should it pass into the hands of the right owner. I have in mind to sell it to Janney at a price well below the market in hopes he can establish himself. Please instruct me by the captain of this ship. Can he pay a reasonable sum? Will he pay? Can he make land yield a profit?
To each of these questions Steed returned a strong affirmative, telling Paul as he did so, 'Where land is concerned, Simon Janney is almost as trustworthy as a Steed,' and he felt sure that the Rappahannock plantation was passing into excellent hands.
But repeatedly he returned to his basic thesis, which he preached to his mother and his brothers: 'Never borrow a farthing from London.' In all other respects they trusted their unseen partner: he sent them the desired cloth from Flanders, or crystal from Bohemia, or books from London. He arranged for their travel, kept their credits in the proper banks, and consistently knew more about their affairs than they. He was the absent partner at their feasts, the most trusted member of their acquaintances. They worked and ate on a river on the Eastern Shore, but spiritually they lived in London, thanks to the responsibility and integrity of Marcus Fithian.
There were other problems which could not be avoided. The Nanticoke Indians had behaved circumspectly when the first white men invaded their ancient territories, and had withdrawn, allowing the invaders a free hand in picking up the lesser sites along the southern rivers, and there had been no battles. But when additional invaders kept crossing the bay and pushing farther and farther up the rivers to appropriate really fine hunting lands, the pressure became unbearable.
Seven minor skirmishes marred relations in these years, and there would have been more if the Nanticokes had succeeded in persuading the Choptanks to join them. On various occasions emissaries were sent north proposing that the Choptanks fall upon Patamoke and eliminate it, but the peaceful little Choptanks refused—'We are not a warlike people. With our whites we are at peace.' And no arguments could goad them into attacking.
This earned the Choptanks no merit with the whites; an Indian was an Indian, and when a real battle erupted in Nanticoke territory, white settlers along the Choptank assumed that they must be the next targets; in anticipation they began firing at whatever Indians they spotted. In this they were encouraged by the harsh edict promulgated by the government:
Notice to all citizens. The Nanticoke Indians have been declared the enemies of this Palatinate and as such are to be proceeded against by all persons in all ways.
As a result of this invitation to violence, a desultory warfare developed in which the whites repulsed any Indian who sought to establish contact with any settlement; the bewildered Choptanks would come downriver to ensure peace, and before they could land, guns would blaze at them, and they would retreat in confusion. On one such occasion the oldest son of Tciblento—a full-blooded Indian—was killed, and when runners went to Turlock's hut to inform her of this, she greeted them indifferently.
'Hatsawap was shot by white men.'
'What had he done?'
'Nothing. He came to talk peace.'
She did not react to this sad news, simply sat in her rags rocking back and forth on her haunches.
'Tciblento,' the runners said, 'you must talk with the white men. We are not at war with them.'
'But they are at war with us,' she said. They talked for a long time, recalling better days, and when Turlock came in from hunting in the marsh, dark and dirty, and wanted to know why the Choptanks were there, one of them said, 'Tciblento's son was killed by a white gunner.'
'They'll all be killed,' he said, and Tciblento nodded. She cooked a raccoon for them and they left.
The forest warfare did not diminish, for the Nanticokes did not propose to allow white men to dispossess them. They became skilled in ambushes and made life upriver difficult, so that in December 1652 the government issued the famous draconian orders which led to their elimination as a fighting force:
The Nanticokes and their allies constitute a peril to this Colony and they must be disciplined. Declare war on them with every strength you have. Vanquish, destroy, plunder, kill or take prisoner. Do all these things to all or any of the said Indians you chance to meet. Put them to death or capture them alive at your pleasure. There must be no truce.
Now the hunters who clustered at Patamoke had their days of glory. They would hide behind trees that commanded well-known trails, and whenever an Indian appeared, man or woman, they would blaze away. The forests ran red with the blood of Indians, and fire consumed villages which had known no war.
The carnage was especially heavy among the confused Choptanks, who had given not a single cause for such bloodshed. In the entire history of the Choptank nation, no Indian had ever killed a white man or ever would, yet now they were hunted like squirrels. Tciblento's second Indian son, tall Ponasque, wise like his grandfather, and a companion climbed into their canoe and came downriver to plead for sanity, but as they passed the point east of Patamoke, three hunters spotted them. Taking careful aim at the young men, who could not take evasive action or protect themselves in any way, they began firing.
The first salvo fell short, and the leader of the hunters cried, 'Higher!' So they aimed higher, and now they shot over the canoe. 'Lower, just a bit!' And on the third fusillade pellets struck the Indian in the forward position and he fell sideways.
Two of the hunters cheered, but the leader warned, 'It's a trick! Hit him again!' So the hunters kept firing until Ponasque fell, too, and the canoe became so riddled that it sank with the dead bodies.
Now one of the lesser chieftains crept through the woods to plead with Turlock, and after he had informed Tciblento of her other son's death, and she had sat impassive as before, the Indian turned to Turlock and asked, 'What must we do?'
'Stay covered. I keep Tcib.'
'We'll starve.'
'Maybe... Tcib... too.'
'How long will this hunting last?'
'Year. Then... tired.'
'Turlock, let us go to the town and prove our peacefulness.'
'They... shoot you. Me, too.'
'You know their ways, Turlock. What can we do?'
'Nothing.'
And he was right. In those terrible years of elimination nothing that the Choptanks could have done would have convinced the white men that they were different. The pressure for land had begun, and this placed Indians athwart the ambitions and destinies of the newcomers, and no kind of truce could ever be engineered.
The little Indians moved through the forest in search of deer, but it was they who became the targets. Children would go out to play—no discipline could prevent them from doing so—and they became the goal in a deadly game. White hunters cheered as lustily when they gunned down a boy of seven as they did when they eliminated a woman of seventy, and always the perimeter was pushed back, back until the remnants huddled in their huts the way Tciblento huddled in hers.
In 1660, when Timothy Turlock was fifty-two, he received word which made the later years of his life more congenial than the earlier ones had been. Life in the marshes was never easy; true, there was always food, but if he needed even the smallest tool, he found it almost impossible to acquire the goods required for barter. Coins he never saw; over a period of nine years he never touched money except for the time he stole a pot containing a hidden shilling. So through the years he had stolen an amazing assortment of things. Whenever he approached a plantation his hawklike eyes roved as he identified items he might want to appropriate on some later visit, and a magistrate once said of him, 'If Tim Turlock were on his way to the gallows, his beady eyes would be locating things to steal on the way back.'
Miraculously, he kept his little family alive by subterfuges which required more work than if he had taken an honest job, and then his luck changed! The Indian wars, never of a magnitude equal to those on the western shore, were nevertheless nagging affairs, and hunters spent so much time shooting Indians that they overlooked the real menace that came creeping down from the north: wolves invaded the peninsula and a bounty was offered for their extermination.
For every wolf killed the county commissioners will give rations of powder and pellet plus one hundred pounds of tobacco. Proof of killing shall be the right-front paw and the right jowl of the dead beast.
With an incentive like this, Turlock could swing all his powers into action, and he ranged the forests north and south, dealing destruction to the savage predators. He became so adept at tracking the large beasts, and so lethal in dealing with them, that admiring citizens who felt their cattle safer with him around said, 'Turlock succeeds where others don't because he lives like a wolf and thinks like one.'
What they were not aware of was that canny Timothy Turlock had convened a strategy session with his twin sons at which they had devised a naughty plan to subvert the new law to their advantage. 'Stooby fine in woods,' the admiring father had said in opening the meeting, and he was correct. Stooby, so-called because a hunter in Patamoke had said, 'That boy looks downright stupid,' had become at thirteen a master woodsman; he had inherited his father's natural cunning and his grandfather Pentaquod's inclination toward forest lore. He loved the deep quiet of this land, the way animals moved across it and the flight of birds as they searched for seeds. He was a much better hunter than his father and often detected the presence of wolves while Timothy was still fooling with his musket.
'Must be quiet,' Timothy would say like a miniature field marshal, but Stooby would merely point to where he had already located the wolf, and when they fired, it would be his gun that killed the predator.
'Stooby stay woods,' Turlock said. 'Charley watch town.'
The boys could not fathom his scheme, but when his beady eyes narrowed to slits and his grin disclosed the blackened teeth, they knew that good ideas were brewing. 'Charley, find where wolves bury.'
And then Charley understood! With a grin as malevolent as his father's he said, 'Night, I dig up paws... jowls.' And when he said this, the three Turlocks chortled, for they knew they had uncovered a gateway to endless riches: Tim and Stooby would kill wolves and deliver the emblems for bounty, and as soon as they were buried, Charley would come at midnight to dig them up, and they could be handed to the officials over and over... once the earth was blown away from their previous burials. The Turlocks were going to acquire a lot of tobacco.
On one trip north the hunting was poor; not even Stooby could locate wolves, and so the pair went farther afield than ever, a development that did not worry them, because they lived off the land and slept wherever dusk found them: a few pine branches, a fire in a hollow, and in the morning a dash of cold water in the face. But at one awakening Stooby warned his father, 'Beyond there, houses maybe.' He spoke in a curious amalgam of Choptank, gestures and short English words, but he never had difficulty in making himself intelligible; the hunters who had labeled him stupid had confused reticence with ignorance.
When they had progressed several miles without finding wolves, they did come upon a group of houses built by Swedes twenty years earlier, when that nation was endeavoring to secure a foothold in the New World. The Turlocks, naturally suspicious, scouted the settlement for some hours and satisfied themselves that ordinary men and women appeared to be following ordinary tasks, so toward noon they broke out of the forest, crossed land which had been lately plowed, and started shouting hellos.
Numerous people ran from the houses, and soon the Turlocks were surrounded by sturdy farmers and their wives talking a language Turlock had never heard before. Finally a lad was found who had sailed on an English ship, a blond boy about Stooby's age with a quick tongue, and he was most eager to talk.
'We're Dutch. From New Netherlands. And we've just knocked hell out of the Swedes.'
'What are Swedes?'
When this was interpreted the farmers chuckled, and one man pushed forward a strong-limbed young woman with the fairest blond hair Timothy had ever seen. 'She's a Swede,' the boy said, and bearded, filthy Turlock grinned at her.
They stayed at the Dutch settlement for six days, wearing the boy interpreter out with their questions, and for some reason which young Stooby could not analyze, his father consistently reported the condition of Patamoke to be better than it was and his place much superior to the hut in which they actually lived, but when the time came for departure, the boy discovered what the plot had been. In the woods, awaiting them on the path back to the Choptank, stood Birgitta, the Swedish girl, and by expressive signs she indicated that whereas life for a servant girl in the Swedish settlement had been hard, under the Dutch it had been hell. As the trio disappeared in the woods, she turned for one last look at her prison, made an indecent gesture and delivered what Stooby took to be a chain of Swedish curses.
They moved fast lest the Dutch try to recover their property, and for two days they exhausted themselves, so that when night came they simply collapsed, but on the third day they judged themselves to be free from capture, and they moved in stately fashion, with Stooby scouting for wolves and his father not caring much whether he found any or not. That night Timothy suggested that Stooby build his own sleeping quarters, then, carefully waiting until the boy had done so, he chose a spot far removed for the pine-boughed lean- to in which he and Birgitta would sleep.
The distance was not great enough; through the night Stooby heard strange sounds and riotous laughter, and jumbled words in Choptank and Swedish, and when day broke, the trio dawdled through the woods. For the second time in his life Tim Turlock had won the affections of a woman without actually wooing her and without knowing a dozen words of her language. He was able to do this because he existed on a primitive level in a primitive society where actions were more significant than words; his animal capabilities manifested themselves in a score of unspoken signals, and two women had been willing to gamble their lives on his ability to survive.
On the trip south he and the Swedish girl became robust companions; they had great fun together, day and night, and despite the difference in their ages, for she was not much older than his sons, it became apparent to Stooby that they intended staying together. He was not surprised, therefore, at what happened when they reached the marsh. His father went boldly to the hut, banged on the door, and shouted, 'Tcib, get out.'
The tall Indian woman, neat and disciplined even in rags, came bewildered to the door, saw the fair Swedish girl, and understood. It took her less than ten minutes to gather her pitiful belongings, and with no discernible recrimination she departed. She was no longer needed; she no longer had a home.
Charley elected to go with her, and when she started to walk through the woods he cried, 'No! That canoe is ours,' and he threatened to beat his father's brains out if any objection was made. Defiantly he paddled his mother down the creek to Patamoke, where she would shift from hunter to hunter.
Stooby never hesitated; he would stay with his father and hunt wolves, and on those increasingly frequent days when Turlock preferred to remain at home in dalliance with Birgitta, he hunted alone and did rather better than when his father impeded him. But now there was no Charley to dig up the emblems for resale, so Turlock himself had to go out at night and slink about the dumps, retrieving paws and jowls.
It is easy to reconstruct the history of Timothy Turlock during these years because his name appears with such troubled frequency in contemporary court records. The London judge's opinion that Turlock was a ferret, scurrying about just beyond the vision of man, was validated in these years. The marsh-dweller was now in his fifties, small, quick, sly, dirty of dress and habit, a frequenter of swamps, an invader of proper locations. That he should so often have been charged with stealing minor objects was not surprising, for Turlock was incapable of passing a usable object without appropriating it, but that he should also have won the affection of Tciblento and Birgitta was a mystery. One might have thought that this repulsive little man with the missing teeth would be last in any process of amatory selection; perhaps his sly insistence accounted for the mystery, or the fact that he openly lusted after women and allowed them to see it. In any event, he was a rebuke to proper Christians and a constant thorn in the side of the court.
He was, as the records prove, frequently fined and often whipped, but the latter punishment was a heavier trial to the community than to Turlock, for at the moment he was led from jail toward the post he began to utter such lamentations and shrieks of pain as to make a most unsavory spectacle, and since the judges knew that the whipping would have no effect on him, they were reluctant to sentence the community to such travail.
'We should have hanged him at the first session,' one of the commissioners said, following a miserable trial in which he stood accused of shooting a townsman who had tracked a deer into his marsh. But others felt that his existence was justified because he did kill an extraordinary number of wolves—'Like a carrion buzzard, he helps clear away the refuse of this town.'
So Turlock went his way, a curious little man who had already sired six bastards: two by Tciblento, one by Birgitta, and three by various indentured girls who had been publicly whipped for their transgressions. These six were the beginnings of that tremendous horde of Turlocks who would populate the Eastern Shore, each inheriting important characteristics from Timothy: they would love the land; they would want to live close to the water; they would develop companionship with birds and fish and animals; through the sixth generation none would be able to read or sign a name, and all would abhor such regularities as paying taxes and getting married.
And yet sometimes even that happened. Turlock had the brazen effrontery to go into Patamoke court and claim that he had purchased Birgitta's indenture from the Dutch, and when both she and Stooby confirmed this, the magistrates had to issue papers proving that he owned her services for seven years, but when she became pregnant they decreed that ownership did not include bedroom services. He was fined five hundred pounds of tobacco—which he obtained by selling one wolf's head five times—and Birgitta was publicly whipped.
She was not actually whipped; whimpering and sobbing, Turlock came into court volunteering to marry her if the lashes were forsworn, and reluctantly the judges allowed the wedding to take place. It was a strange affair: Charley and Stooby attended, as did their half sister Flora and the anomalous Tciblento, who sat through the ceremony looking at the floor.
She was living a strange life, sixty-eight years old, tall and dignified as ever, but obviously fallen upon evil days. No more the softly tanned deerskin dress or the edging of mink, no more the necklace of silvery white shells. She lived with strangers beyond the fringes of the harbor; her only consistent friend was Charley, a resentful, difficult boy who hated white men but strove to be like them. He was often in court.
One day when his mother was tending a shack for two hunters, he went into the forest for deer, and as he was returning, dressed in various rags such as dispossessed Choptanks wore, one of the very hunters with whom his mother lived shot at him, thinking him to be an Indian. The bullet went through his left shoulder but did not knock him down; stanching the blood with a dirty rag, he walked home, but fainted as he reached the shack. Tciblento tended him without tears. The hunter justified himself—'He looked like an Indian,' an excuse to which she made no response.
During these years she did not often see Stooby; he stayed with his father, probing the marshes and becoming the final authority on life along the water. He had already built himself one log canoe and was in the process of burning another; he spent more time on the river than on the shore, for although he had to live in the forest to shoot deer for food and wolves for profit, he lived on the water because he loved it. Sometimes he was absent for days, exploring the rivers running to the north, and if his father had been the first white man to appreciate the general wonder of this area, Stooby became the first, Indian or white, to know specific places, the marvelous points of land poking out like fingers into the gray water, the sleeping coves that hid behind them.
At twenty-three Stooby had committed himself to the river and the bay; they formed his empire, and on their broad bosoms he would always be at home. He lived by the tides, and the rising of the full moon, and the coming and going of water birds. He knew where oysters clung to sandy bars for protection and how crabs moved up and down the bay. In his mind he charted every spit, the convoluted entrance to every creek. He rigged his own sails and knew when to drop them in a storm, and he had such a sensitive feeling for boats that he could tell the instant one began to slip sideways or approach a hidden sandbar. He was a waterman, the first of his breed, a fish without gills, a marsh bird without pinfeathers.
An unusual man named James Lamb figured in many of Timothy Turlock's arrests. Forty-one years old when he appeared on the deck of a ship out of Bristol, he had crossed England on foot to escape detention in London and had reached the New World as a free man who had voluntarily fled a comfortable home because of an enlightenment which had altered his life. He had heard an itinerant preacher, one George Fox, a Quaker, explain the simple characteristics of a new faith, and he had been persuaded.
He was a gentle man, and his wife Prudence was even less pretentious than he. At the wharf in Jamestown they had purchased the indenture of a serving girl named Nancy, a child who had given them endless trouble through her propensity for allowing likable young men, and some neither likable nor young, to creep into her bed. The girl was haled into court, humiliated, whipped at the public post and warned by the commissioners that she might even be jailed, but she persisted in her lusty ways. A normal mistress would have disowned her, but Prudence Lamb could not. 'She is our charge,' she told her husband, and no matter what the ebullient child did, Mrs. Lamb protected her, paid her fines so that she could escape whippings, and assured her husband that Nancy would one day come to her senses, but when the young lady admitted Timothy Turlock into her bedroom for the second time, the Lambs judged that enough was enough.
'Thee cannot speak to him ever again,' Mrs. Lamb warned, and Nancy blubbered, 'There's no one else to talk with,' and the Lambs felt that it was their duty to find the girl some kind of companionship, and one day Mr. Lamb suggested Stooby Turlock as a proper companion, and Nancy whined, 'All he's interested in is turtles,' and as if she were a prophet, not six days later Stooby appeared at the Lamb home with a delicious diamondback terrapin, a gift, he said, because the Lambs had not taken his father to court for stealing a handcart.
Birgitta, bound to Turlock by servitude and marriage, looked on these irregular matters with the amused detachment of some ancient Norse goddess perplexed by the curious behavior of refractory earthlings. Her husband was repulsive and nothing would change him, but she could hope that one of these days he would be shot accidentally or hanged on purpose; then she would be free to make her own way in this burgeoning New World. She was certainly happier along the Choptank than she had ever been as a prisoner of the Dutch, and was developing a positive love for her lively daughter and her strange stepson Stooby. She understood the boy, and encouraged him in his pursuit of marsh and river. Sensing this, he invited her one day to accompany him on one of his explorations to the north, and without hesitation she grabbed Flora and climbed into the log canoe, spending three days in those exquisite streams which branched out from the right bank of the river.
'You have a paradise,' she told Stooby, and he nodded; he could not verbalize his feeling for these waters, but sometimes when he rounded a point and saw ahead of him an entire creek reaching far inland, his breath caught as if he were seeing a trusted friend after a long absence, and he loved his fair-haired stepmother for her understanding.
The people who understood the Turlocks best were the Steeds. Henry knew Timothy to be an incorrigible: thief, adulterer, liar, deceptor, vagrant and a dozen other characterizations, each repugnant to a proper household. He tolerated him because his mother, Martha Steed, insisted that he do so, but that did not prevent him from bringing charges against the offensive little cutpurse, and it sometimes seemed that Henry had to attend court monthly to testify. Consistently he won damages from the wastrel, and consistently Turlock paid in tobacco so rank, so filled with weeds that it had to be classified as trash. In no way could it be shipped to England for serious sale; to do so would be to destroy the good name of Steed.
Paul Steed, the doctor, saw a different aspect of the Turlocks, a functional one, as it were, for he was called upon to minister to babies sired by Timothy and to treat the various tragedies encountered by his wives and sons. One day he walked up the path from Devon wharf with heavy steps and head so bowed that his mother had to ask, 'Paul, what is it?'
'Tciblento's dying.'
'What of?'
'Some man thrashed her with a club.'
'Oh, my God!'
'But she was already dying... of us.'
'Paul, what do you mean?'
'She's the last of the real Choptanks, Mother. There was never any hope...'
Mrs. Steed proposed that Tciblento be brought to the island, where she could be properly cared for, but Paul said, 'No use. She can't live a week.'
'That week must at least be decent,' Mrs. Steed insisted, and she ordered the servants to prepare the ketch so that she herself could fetch the dying woman, but when she and Paul reached the hut they found Tciblento too weak to move. She had been, as Paul reported, in the process of dying when a drunken hunter for whom she was keeping house attacked her with an oaken club, breaking her jaw.
She lay on a paillasse of pine needles, gasping for breath, her face knocked awry but the grandeur of her dark eyes undimmed. When she saw Mrs. Steed, and recalled the handsome Englishman she had once loved and always, tears came into her eyes. She was too weak to turn her face away, but she was so ashamed that Mrs. Steed should see her secret, she closed her eyes and sobbed inwardly.
'Tciblento,' Mrs. Steed said, 'we're going to take you home with us.' The stricken woman summoned strength to shake her head no. She would stay here, in the low estate to which she had brought herself.
'Shall we send for Turlock?' Again the dying woman said no.
'Stooby? Wouldn't you like to see Stooby?' Tciblento nodded, so Charley was sent to fetch his brother, but the young waterman was absent on a probing of the coves, and Charley returned not with him but with Timothy.
Mrs. Steed would have preferred to bar the door to this reprobate, but Paul said, 'Oh, come in,' and Turlock came slouching to the low bed.
'Hello, Tcib,' he said. She looked up at him but could say nothing. Turning to the doctor, he asked, 'Will she...'
'No.'
'Well, Tcib, goodbye,' he said, and he was off.
She did not betray any sorrow in seeing him disappear for the last time. All things were disappearing, had been doing so for decades, and he was one of the least to be regretted.
There was a commotion now, for two officials were dragging into the hut the man who had clubbed her. He was an ugly fellow no better than Turlock, and when he stood before the dying woman he had so often abused he whimpered, 'Tell them I didn't do it, Tcibby,' and she looked at him and then at his arresters and told the latter that it had not been he. One of the men, knowing better, grabbed the cudgel and started belaboring him, inflicting real damage, but Paul interceded. 'Let him go,' he said, wresting away the club, and now the man whimpered for real cause and disappeared into the forest.
It was obvious that Tciblento could not survive the night, so Paul suggested that his mother sail back to the island in daylight, but she refused—'I cannot allow her to die alone.' And she stayed by the bed through the long afternoon, and when the sun set in the western bay she was still there, talking with the silent woman. 'There were good days on this river, Tciblento. I remember when you were married. You had Indian children, didn't you?' And the nothingness in Tciblento's eyes showed that she had died.
No muffled drums marked her passage. No handmaidens chanted of Pentaquod, who had saved their tribe, nor of the deeds of her sons, who had accomplished nothing. Her people were dispersed over wide areas, with no werowance to remind them of tribal ways. Many lay unburied in the strange places where they had fallen, and now she too, lay dead, in a hovel at the edge of a river her father had once ruled.
# _Voyage Four: 1661_
FOR SOME TIME NOW THE COMMUNITY HAD BEEN suspicious of him. His master had confided to the governor that 'Edward Paxmore, whose indenture I purchased seven years ago, has taken to wandering about the colony without my permission, robbing me of labor justly mine.' As a result, spies watched his movements, reporting any unusual behavior to the committee of ministers, and the family from which he hoped to buy a piece of land for his carpentry shop when his indenture ended refused to sell.
Informers told the governor, 'He has traveled from Dover to Salisbury to Rowley to Ipswich and has been contentious in arguing with passers-by about the works of God.' Therefore, when Paxmore returned to Boston and reappeared at the house of his master, the sheriff was waiting to haul him off to court.
At the hearing, his master whined, 'Edward is a good carpenter who builds well. But in this final year with me he has taken to arguing about the works of God. He has cheated me of his labors, and I am sorely done.'
'What remedy?'
'Please, your honor, extend his indenture for another ten months. It's only fair.'
The governor, a thin, arduous man, was little concerned with financial restitution to masters; such cases were common and could be handled by ordinary judges. But this ominous phrase, 'arguing about the works of God,' disturbed him mightily, for it was clearly blasphemous and smacked of Quakerism. Within recent years the governor had ordered the hanging of three Quakers and had personally attended their executions. He had no intention of allowing this pernicious heresy to gain a foothold in Massachusetts, for it was an abomination.
The governor had a firm mind in all things, but he was perplexed by the man who stood before him, this tall, thin workman in homespun jacket too short at the wrists, in pants too skimpy at the ankles. He was awkward-looking, yet all had testified that he was an excellent carpenter. It was the Adam's apple and the eyes that troubled: the former jumped about like those in witches; the latter carried that intense fire which marked those who believe they have seen God. Such men were dangerous, yet this carpenter had such a gentle manner, was so deferential to the court and so respectful of his master that he could not be a common criminal. Deep matters were involved, and they must be gone into.
'Edward Paxmore, I fear you may have fallen into evil ways. I hand you back to the sheriff for presentation in court on Monday next for proper interrogation.' Having said this, he stared balefully at Paxmore and stalked from the room.
The trial should have been of little consequence, for Paxmore, thirty-two years old and with an excellent reputation for hard work, would normally have been rebuked for wandering and depriving his rightful master of his labor. The judge would add an additional six months to the indenture—never as many as the master claimed—and when these had been discharged, the carpenter would become a free man and a valued addition to the citizenry of Massachusetts.
But Paxmore's trial was to be different, for when the court convened on Monday morning Judge Goddard, a tall, heavy man who spoke in ponderous sentences, had the grim but satisfying task of putting final touches to the case of Thomas Kenworthy, confessed Quaker and recusant. On three earlier occasions Judge Goddard had ordered Kenworthy to be whipped and banished from Massachusetts, and thrice the Quaker had crept back into the colony.
Paxmore and his master were already seated in court when the sheriff brought Kenworthy in. The Quaker was a man of forty, thin, dark of face, with deep-set eyes and the manner of a fanatic who looked piercingly at people. His hands were bound and he seemed reluctant to step before the judge; the sheriff had to push him along, but when at last he was in place he stared defiantly at the judge and asked in a strong voice, 'Wherefore does thee judge me?'
And Goddard thundered, 'We have a law.'
'It is thy law and not God's.'
'Silence that man!'
'I will not be silenced, for God has ordered me to speak.'
'Stifle that blasphemy!' the judge roared, and the sheriff clapped his hand over the prisoner's mouth.
When silence once more prevailed in the small white room Judge Goddard resumed control of the case, placing his large hands on the table and looking with contempt at Kenworthy. 'Three times I have ordered you whipped, and three times you have continued your heresy. Do you learn nothing?'
'I have learned that God does not need governors or judges or ministers to speak to His people.'
'Sheriff, remove that man's shirt.'
The sheriff, a tall, lean man who betrayed a sense of satisfaction with his job, untied the prisoner's hands and ripped away the woolen shirt. Paxmore gasped. The man's back was a network of small round scars, but not like any he had seen before. These formed little cups across the man's back, and Paxmore would never forget the strange remark of the man at his elbow: 'You could hide a pea in each of them.'
Judge Goddard said, 'Are you aware, Thomas Kenworthy, of how your back looks?'
'I feel it each night before I go to sleep. It is the badge of my devotion to God.'
'Apparently you are of such a contumacious character that ordinary whippings have no effect on you. My order that you quit this colony has been ignored, three times. You have not only persisted in your Quaker heresy, but you have made so bold as to preach to others, infecting them, and there is no humility in you.'
'There is love of God in me,' Kenworthy said.
'Nor respect, neither,' the judge continued. 'In your three other trials you refused, did you not, to remove your hat in the presence of the governor and his court?'
'I did, and if I could have my hat now, I would wear it, for Jesus Christ so commanded.' His eyes fell on the hat Paxmore had worn into court, and in a sudden break-away from the sheriff he seized the hat and placed it defiantly on his head. The sheriff started to fight for possession of the hat, but Judge Goddard rebuked him, 'Let the criminal wear his hat, if it will help him hear my sentence,' then lowered his voice and said, more slowly, 'Thomas Kenworthy, it is my duty to pass sentence upon you.'
'God has already done so, and thy words are nothing.'
'You speak falsehood,' the judge thundered, allowing his voice to rise.
'I speak the instructions of God, and they are never false.'
'Do you then nominate yourself a minister, that you comprehend the teachings of God?'
'Each man is minister, yes, and each woman too.' Kenworthy turned to face the spectators, and because he stood nearest Edward Paxmore he pointed a long finger at him and said, 'This prisoner haled before the court is also a minister. He speaks directly to God, and God speaks to him.'
'Silence him again,' the judge shouted, and once more Kenworthy's hands were tied and his mouth covered.
Paxmore, trembling from the effect of having been twice involved in this trial, watched with fascination as the judge painstakingly arranged the papers on his table, obviously seeking to compose himself lest anger make him appear foolish. Taking a deep breath, he leaned forward to address the Quaker in measured phrases:
'The Colony of Massachusetts has been most lenient with you, Thomas Kenworthy. It has received your heresy and done its best to make you see the falsity of your ways. Three times it has allowed you to wander about our towns and villages, spewing your blasphemy. And you have shown no contrition. Therefore, the sentence of this court is that you shall be lashed to a great cannon and whipped thirty times, after which you shall be taken to the public square and hanged.'
The cruel sentence had no effect on Thomas Kenworthy, for he was already living in a kind of ecstasy in which whippings and gibbets were no longer of much concern, but it had a devastating effect on Edward Paxmore, who leaped to his feet and shouted at the judge, 'If you're going to hang him, why whip him first?'
The question was so explosive, and so obviously germane, that Judge Goddard imprudently allowed himself to be trapped into answering. 'To punish him,' he said spontaneously.
'Is not death punishment?' Paxmore cried.
'Not enough,' the judge responded. And then, realizing what he had done—that he had spoken like a fool—he bellowed, 'Lock that man up.' And he stormed from the small white room.
The sheriff took his two prisoners to the jail, a dank room below the level of the public streets, and there directed the blacksmith to apply one set of leg irons to the two men. When this difficult and untidy job was completed, and the two men were lashed together as one, the smith and the sheriff departed, leaving the condemned Quaker and the carpenter in semi-darkness.
Then began the dialogue of salvation. Thomas Kenworthy, one of the first Quaker preachers in America, a graduate of Oxford and a man versed in both Greek and Latin, interpreted the simple revolution in theology that had taken place in England less than twenty years before: 'George Fox is not a holy man, not a priest in any sense of that word, no different from thee and me.'
'Why do you use _thee?_ '
'It was the way Jesus spoke to His friends.'
Kenworthy explained how Fox, this unpretentious Englishman, had come to see that many of the manifestations of religion were vain trappings and that the ritual was unnecessary: 'Thee does not require priests or blessings or ministers' sermons or benedictions or the laying on of hands. God speaks directly to the human heart, and the blessings of Jesus Christ are available to every man and woman.'
Paxmore noticed that Kenworthy never said _man_ in the religious sense without adding _woman_ , and the Quaker told him, 'When I was whipped in Virginia, one woman hung beside me at the tail of the cart, and she was braver than I could ever be. The cords hurt me, but they tore the woman apart, and she refused to whimper.'
'Does it hurt, the lashings?'
'In Virginia, I wept and cursed, but in Ipswich, God came to me and asked, "If my Son could bear His crucifixion, cannot thee endure a mere whipping?" '
Paxmore asked if he could touch the scars, and Kenworthy said no. 'It would make them too important. The dignity of my back lies in my heart, where I have forgiven the whipmen of Virginia and Massachusetts. They were like the Roman soldiers, doing their duty.'
He was describing to Paxmore the other tenets of the Quakers—equality of women, refusal to bear arms, tithing, no hymns or outward manifestations in worship, no priests, no ministers and, above all, the direct relationship of God and man—when the carpenter exclaimed, 'Thomas, I left Boston and wandered through the countryside because I was searching. Is this the revelation I was seeking?'
'It is no revelation, no mystery, and thee did not have to leave Boston to entertain it. It is the simple discovery that each man is his own pathway to God.'
Long after nightfall a jailer brought food to the prisoners, but neither could eat. Leg bound to leg, they wanted to talk about the spiritual revolution of which Quakerism was only a minor manifestation. 'There will be many others like me,' Kenworthy predicted. 'There will have to be, because God approaches people in different ways.'
'Is the governor right in his religion?'
'Of course he is. For him, what he says and what he believes in are altogether right.'
'Then why does he condemn— What was the word he used?'
'Quakers,' the Oxford man said. 'Our enemies accuse us of quaking in the presence of God, and we do.'
'Why does he condemn you to death?'
'Because he is afraid.'
'Is that why the judge ordered you to be whipped... and hanged?'
'It is. When he saw my scarred back in court, scars he put there, and realized how little effect they had had upon me—Edward, the last time in Roxbury, I did not even feel the cords...' In a sweep of spiritual insight he lost his line of thought, and his awareness of jail, and any sense of pressure from the leg irons. He tried to rise, then tried to kneel in prayer. Defeated in each effort, he sat on the bench and folded his hands over his heart, saying, 'If thee had not told me that thee had left Boston to go a-searching, I would not presume to tell thee what I am about to say, for I am putting a heavy burden on thee, Edward. But God has summoned thee.'
'I believe He has,' Paxmore said, and the two men talked through the night.
On Friday morning the blacksmith came in to cut the leg clamps, separating them, and while doing so, advised Kenworthy that he was to hang this day. From his leg the clamp was removed entirely, but on Paxmore's the iron cuff was allowed to remain and a seven-foot chain was attached to it. 'All prisoners must watch the hanging,' the smith explained, 'and with this chain the sheriff can hold you so that you don't run away.'
When the two prisoners were left alone in their cell Paxmore supposed that Kenworthy would want to pray, but the Oxford man was in such a state of exaltation that he did not need prayer to prepare him for the death that waited: 'We are children of God, and reunion with Him can never be painful. I go with additional peace in my heart because I know that thee has taken up the burden I leave behind.'
'Could we pray?' Paxmore asked.
'If you feel the need.'
'I have not the understanding you have—' He corrected himself, and for the first time used the Quaker expression: 'The understanding thee has.'
'Thee has, Edward. That is, the capacity for it. All men and women do. What is required is the unfolding of truth. And that will come.'
They knelt and Paxmore began a tortured prayer, but Kenworthy placed his hand on the carpenter's arm and said, 'The words are not necessary. God hears thee,' and the two men prayed in silence.
They were in this position when the jailers came. They were stocky men with powerful arms and seemed to enjoy their work, for they attacked it with a kind of easy joviality. 'Time's come,' the heavier of the two men announced, taking Kenworthy by the upper arm. The other grabbed Paxmore's chain and told him, 'The sheriff's handling you, special.' The two Quakers were separated for the last time, but not before Paxmore had a chance to cry, 'I will be on the scaffold with thee, Thomas,' to which Kenworthy replied, 'All Boston will be.'
Paxmore and three other prisoners—two men and a woman who had questioned some small detail of Puritanism—were led to the hanging ground, where a large crowd of watchers waited with varying kinds of delight. Some were fascinated by the gibbet from which a man would soon hang, others by the monstrous cannon to whose wheel the heretic would be lashed. Eight men of the town had already volunteered to pull the cannon and were busy attaching ropes to the carnage. But all experienced a heightened sense of existence, because their church was about to cleanse itself.
Paxmore, standing with the other prisoners who were constantly jeered at by the townspeople, looked in vain for Kenworthy; he was being held back until the colony officials put in their appearance, and now from the white church, where they had been praying, came the governor and Judge Goddard, dressed in black, followed by the town fathers, grim-lipped and ready.
'Bring forth the prisoner!' the governor shouted. It was clear that he intended to supervise personally the death of this obnoxious dissenter. When Kenworthy was produced, the governor went to him, thrust his face forward and demanded, 'Are you satisfied now that we have the power to silence you?'
'My voice will be stronger tomorrow than it ever was,' Kenworthy replied.
'To the cannon!' the governor cried, and the sheriff dropped the chain that held Paxmore and summoned three helpers, who came forward to grab the Oxford man and lash him, legs and arms far separated, to the iron wheel of the cannon, face inward.
'Jailer,' the governor commanded, 'thirty lashes, well laid on.'
The heavier of the two jailers stepped forward, and the town clerk handed him a length of wood to which had been fastened nine heavy cords of the kind used for guiding a light sail. Into each had been tied three stout knots, and as the jailer approached the cannon he snapped the whip expertly, close to the ear of the prostrate prisoner.
'That one don't count,' he said, and the crowd laughed.
'One!' the clerk intoned impassively, and the nine cords cut into the scarred back of the Quaker.
'Two!' the clerk counted, then 'Three!' and 'Four!'
'Make him cry out,' a woman in the crowd shouted, but Kenworthy uttered no sound.
'Seven' and 'Eight' passed with still no sound from the wheel, so the governor said, 'Pull the cannon forward,' and the men on the ropes strained until the wheel moved into a new position, exposing different parts of Kenworthy's body to the lash.
'Lay on, lay on!' the governor cried, and when the next strokes still failed to elicit any cry of pain from the prisoner, the governor stepped forward angrily and took the lash from the hands of the first jailer, handing it to the second. 'Lay on! Destroy that man!'
The second jailer, eager for an opportunity to display the kind of service he was ready to give his colony and his church, raised on his toes and brought the lashes down with savage force, causing Kenworthy's whole body to shudder. At the fifteenth stroke the body went limp, and as the enthusiastic jailer was about to apply the lash again, Edward Paxmore shouted, 'He's fainted. Stop! Stop!'
'Who cried out?' the governor demanded, and Judge Goddard, who had been watching Paxmore, replied, 'That one,' and the governor stopped to mark the culprit. 'We'll take care of him later,' he said. Then he cried, 'Men, move the cannon,' and the great wheel revolved.
By the twenty-fifth lash Thomas Kenworthy was nearly dead, but now the governor directed that the whip be turned over to a new aspirant eager to show how well he could strike, and pieces of flesh flicked off the bloody mass.
'Give it to him!' a woman called as the clerk finished his litany: 'Twenty-nine, thirty and done.'
'Water in his face,' the sheriff ordered, and after this was done, the limp body was cut down.
'To the gibbet,' the governor said, and he led the way to the hanging spot.
The water and the walk revived the prisoner, and after he was dragged aloft to the platform from which he would be dropped, he said in a voice which could be heard at some distance, 'Thee will be ashamed of this day's work.'
A minister who had watched the whipping ran to the scaffold and cried in fierce, condemnatory accents, 'Heretic, separatist! God has shown us the true religion and you traduce it. You have a right to die.'
'Hangman, to your task,' the governor said, and a black bag was placed over Kenworthy's head. As the radiant face disappeared, Paxmore whispered, 'Oh, God! He is not as old as I.'
The rope was lowered over the black mask, and the knot was located at the base of the neck. 'Let him die!' cried the woman who had shouted before, and the trap door was sprung.
On Monday, when Edward Paxmore, his left leg still in chains, stood before Judge Goddard, he did not present a pleasing sight. His wrists and ankles still protruded from tight homespun; his Adam's apple still bobbed like the cork on a fisherman's line; his eyes were still accusatory; but now his beard was scraggly, for he had not been allowed to shave, and he looked the perfect criminal. Without amenities the judge attacked. 'Well, Brother Paxmore, you had a chance to see what we do with heretics. Are you now willing to take an oath of allegiance to our religion and then leave Massachusetts forever?'
The proposal was so contradictory, so unlike the crystal-pure logic of Thomas Kenworthy—to swear allegiance to a religion and then to leave it—that Paxmore had to speak. 'Thy reasoning makes no sense,' he said.
'What's this _thy_. Are you already infected?'
'To the extent that thy mouthings seem confused and the work of the devil, not the words of God.'
The tall judge fell back in his chair. Not even Kenworthy had spoken to him in terms of such contempt, and for a moment he was discomposed. But his fury revived and he shouted at Paxmore, 'Are you, then, a Quaker?'
'I believe in a personal God, who speaks to me as he did to Thomas Kenworthy.'
'Thomas Kenworthy was lashed at the wheel and he is dead.'
'He lives in every heart that saw him die.'
'Hearts have no eyes. They cannot see.'
'And soon the people who watched Kenworthy die will grow sick of your beatings and hangings, and anathema will be on your name.'
'You know I can order you whipped?'
'And other judges like you ordered Jesus whipped.'
This was so blasphemous, an attack on both the colony and its church, that Goddard would hear no more. 'Drag him away, Sheriff,' and the burly sheriff took the judge at his word. Jerking mightily on the iron chain, he brought Paxmore to the floor, then dragged him feetfirst from the court. Before the hour was out Judge Goddard had penned this sentence:
To the Constables of Dover, Roxbury, Rowley and Ipswich:
You and every one of you are required in His Majesty's Name to receive into your custody Edward Paxmore, vagabond carpenter and suspected Quaker, and you are to convey him from town to town at the tail of a cart, and you and each of you are to whip him out of town with ten stripes well laid on, and this is to be done in accordance with the stated Law of Vagabond Quakers. And the constable of Ipswich is to see that Edward Paxmore is delivered over the border of Massachusetts and into the Colony of Rhode Island, where heretics abide. Dated, 17th March, 1661.
When the horrid terms of punishment were read to Paxmore in his cell, he fell to his knees and asked the spirit of Thomas Kenworthy to give him courage, but when the first lashes fell at Dover he found that he had no power of resistance, and when the twenty-seven knots cut into his flesh he cried aloud. At the tenth stroke he was a quivering idiot, and when the cold water, heavily salted, was thrown across his back he screamed and fainted.
He would never forget the terrible journey from Dover to Roxbury, struggling along at the tail of the cart. His body ached; flies nibbled at his wounds; his face became cloaked with dust; and during the entire passage villagers scorned him, and asked him if now he would repent and accept the true God.
When he reached Roxbury he was allowed three days' rest. The constable said, 'Just time enough for the scars to heal, so that I can whip them open again.' He thought of this statement a long time and wondered why people so attached to God should take such positive delight in crucifying a man who had precisely the same love for God, but with a different manner of expressing it. He even understood the punishment, for he had observed that all people allied to a church seek to protect it, but he would never understand the pleasure the Puritans took in the infliction of punishment.
The whipping at Roxbury was even more severe, for the constable studiously moved from side to side so as to cover his entire back with deep wounds. As the cart left town the driver called back, 'That was a good one, wasn't it. Our constable ties a double knot. You won't forget him soon.'
Paxmore, thinking himself close to death from the pain and the insects that gnawed upon him, reached Ipswich unable to move his legs; the cart dragged him into town. For five days he lay in a stupor, for the doctor gave it as his opinion that ten more lashes now would kill him, and when he recovered enough to understand what was happening, he heard from three different individuals that the whipping in this town was to be special, and everyone who spoke of it obviously relished the prospect.
Not only would Paxmore be whipped—and word had sped through the town that he might well die of his lashes—but a female Quaker had also been apprehended, and she was to be lashed too. Her name, Paxmore heard, was Ruth Brinton, and she had already been exiled from Virginia because of her brazen adherence to the Quaker heresy, and she had been whipped in Roxbury.
'Women we give only six lashes,' the jailer explained with a sense of real compassion. 'They can't stand much more, but they say this one is a vixen. She kept preaching while they beat her, and in Roxbury to silence her they had to beat her across the mouth.'
From Virginia! Could it be that this Quaker woman was the one of whom Kenworthy had spoken, a calm, determined, God-sent woman who exuded sanctity and gave men courage? He tried to interrogate the jailer, but the man only repeated that this one was a vixen, and that when she was whipped, the good people of Ipswich would see something.
This so agitated Paxmore that he demanded to see the local judge, and when that worthy man appeared in the cell, Paxmore said, 'To whip a woman is indecent and against the will of God.'
'We have a law,' the judge said.
'It cannot be the law of God.'
'Who are you to determine what God wills?'
'He speaks to me.'
The judge put his two hands before his face as if to ward off evil. 'It's a good thing, Paxmore, that you're leaving Massachusetts. We have no place for evil men like you.'
The carpenter, seeing that it would be no use to argue further with this righteous man, bowed his head and said, 'Allow me to take her lashes.'
'But the sentence has been written.'
'In the mercy of God, allow me to take her lashes.'
'That would accomplish nothing. After here she has six more in Duxbury.'
'Oh, dearest Father!'
'Are you appealing to God against God's law? We have a sentence on this woman, in writing.'
'Thee had better go,' Paxmore said, 'and hide thyself in a deep well, for God will surely seek thee out.'
These prophetic words disturbed the judge, and he said in a voice of reasoning, 'Paxmore, it would be fatal to give you six more lashes. The doctor told us you might not even survive the ten that are due you. Sleep in peace before tomorrow, and quit Massachusetts. You do not belong among the godly.'
When Edward Paxmore and Ruth Brinton were tethered to the same cart, they formed an incongruous pair—he tall and awkward, she small and delicately proportioned. But when the sheriff stripped them both to the waist, with watchers ogling in delight, their common heritage became obvious: each back was flayed and marked with indented scars. There was no man or woman.
Of course she drew the greater comment, for when the Puritans surged forward to see at close quarters a half-naked woman, with the great welts already marking her back, they shouted their satisfaction, and one cried, 'She won't forget Ipswich!'
Twice Paxmore tried to speak to the woman tied beside him, and twice the local judge ordered the constable to silence him, as if words passed between the two proscribed Quakers might contaminate the theocratic town. But on the third try he succeeded. 'Is thee the woman from Virginia that Thomas Kenworthy—' The constable struck Paxmore brutally across the mouth and shouted, 'Silence, infidel.' But the woman nodded, and through bloody lips Paxmore said, 'He was hanged,' and she replied, 'So shall we all be,' and the whippings began.
It was not customary for women to be lashed in Ipswich, so the crowd was large and appreciative. They watched approvingly as the nine cords cut into her back on the first three lashes, and then a whisper of suppressed excitement swept through the crowd as the fourth lash fell.
'She's bleeding in front!' a woman in the crowd shouted, and the spectators pressed forward to see for themselves where the tips of the lashes had laid open the breasts.
'Good blow, Robert,' a man called. 'Hit her again!'
'Oh,' the beaten woman moaned as the last two blows fell.
'Well struck, Robert. Now the man.'
Paxmore would not remember his punishment at Ipswich. The first blow pulled his face sideways, and all he could see was the Quaker woman beside him, a small, dark-haired woman limp and faint, with blood dripping from her breasts. That night they were parted, he to exile in Rhode Island, she to her final installment in Duxbury.
The subsequent history of Edward Paxmore in Massachusetts seems a grotesque nightmare. After his final whipping in Ipswich, the constable led him to the border of Massachusetts, and in the cold weeks of late March 1661, stole every piece of clothing he had and shoved him naked into Rhode Island. The citizens of the first village he came to were accustomed to receive such exiles from the theocracy to the north, and quickly dressed him in clothes too small. He was given a set of carpenter's tools and within four weeks was back in Massachusetts, a gangling carpenter preaching the Quaker doctrine and keeping himself in jeopardy.
Records show that he was arrested in Ipswich in 1662 and lashed through four towns before he was expelled once more into Rhode Island. The records do not show this, but again he arrived completely naked.
He returned to Massachusetts in 1663 and was again whipped through three towns and exiled, naked. In January 1664 he was back, his shoulders a mass of crisscrossing scars, his voice deepened and impassioned in the work of conversion. This time he was apprehended in Boston and taken before Judge Goddard, who was appalled at his appearance: he was emaciated from meals missed while fleeing; borrowed clothes many sizes too small hung curiously from shoulders which sagged as if borne down by unseen burdens; his eyes no longer flamed; and his deportment was much altered. He was not deferential to authority, he sought argument, and his colloquy with Judge Goddard, recorded both by officers of the colony and by crypto-Quakers eaves-dropping at the court, was vigorous:
GODDARD: Why have you come back, when you have already received an even hundred lashes? Is your back so stout it can withstand everything?
PAXMORE: Why does thee persist in persecutions? Is thy heart so black it is impervious to a sense of guilt?
GODDARD: Why would guilt be upon me?
PAXMORE: Because thee acts in defiance of God's law and the king's.
GODDARD: Are you presuming to claim that the just law of the king is bad?
PAXMORE: I do so claim, but I am not required to, for the law itself states that it is bad.
GODDARD: Do you know that you speak treason? As well as heresy?
PAXMORE: If I speak against the king, I speak treason, this I confess, but the king himself will declare thy law void, because it is against his intentions and is bad.
GODDARD: Do you think that the King of England will alter a law because some fractious Quaker asks him to?
PAXMORE: No, because the reasoning of a just God asks him to, and he will obey.
GODDARD: You truly believe that the great law of Massachusetts will be changed to suit you.
PAXMORE: Not to suit me. To suit the everlasting laws of God.
GODDARD: You presume to interpret the wishes of God. What college in England did you attend? Did you study theology at Harvard? If so, what bishop ordained you to interpret God's law?
PAXMORE: I studied at night, in the cell of thy prison, and my teacher was Thomas Kenworthy, whom thee murdered.
(Everyone who attended this trial, Puritans and Quakers alike, remarked that when Edward Paxmore made this statement a pronounced change came over Judge Goddard. He dropped his sarcasm and lost his self-assurance. He also lowered his voice, leaned forward more, and engaged the prisoner in debate on a new level.)
GODDARD: You know that I do not want to order you whipped again.
PAXMORE: I am sure thee doesn't, good Judge, for the terror of Kenworthy's death rests on thy conscience.
GODDARD: Then why don't you remove your hat, as a sign of respect for this court?
PAXMORE: Jesus instructed us to remain covered.
GODDARD: If I send you in peace to Rhode Island, will you stay there?
PAXMORE: I must go where God sends me.
GODDARD: Thomas Paxmore, don't you realize that you're making it very difficult for the Massachusetts Colony to deal with you? Won't you leave us in peace?
PAXMORE: I bring peace.
GODDARD: A strange kind of peace. We have a good colony here, a good religion that suits us perfectly. All we ask is that you leave us alone, and all you do is preach treason and sedition and heresy.
PAXMORE: I come back to thy court, Judge Goddard, because I am instructed of the Lord.
GODDARD: What constructive message could you possibly bring?
PAXMORE: That thy sin of tenth March 1661 can be expiated. (At this strange statement the judge shuffled his papers.)
GODDARD: I did not sentence you on that date. Nor Thomas Kenworthy, neither.
PAXMORE: Thee sentenced the Quaker woman Ruth Brinton to be whipped through Boston and Ipswich and Duxbury. A woman... to be lashed naked. (There was a long pause.)
GODDARD: We must defend ourselves. Sedition and heresy eat at the roots of our society. Our colony and our church must defend themselves.
PAXMORE: The burden of that defense sits most heavily on thee, good Judge. I see in thy face the marks of sin. I shall pray for thee.
GODDARD: You leave me no escape, Edward Paxmore. I sentence you to be lashed to the wheel of the great cannon and to be whipped forty times, and then to be taken down and hanged.
PAXMORE: I forgive thee, good Judge. Thee bears a heavy burden.
The carpenter was dragged away to the cell in which his conversion had taken place, and he would have been hanged except that an unprecedented event took place. Late on the Wednesday night before the Friday hanging, Judge Goddard, tall and lonely, sought out the sheriff and directed that officer to open the cell door and then to lock it securely after the judge had entered to talk with the condemned man.
'Edward Paxmore,' the stern judge began, 'I cannot have your blood on my hands.'
'Good Judge, thee should have no blood on thy hands.'
'But suppose a citizen gives secrets to the French and by this act delivers the colony to the enemy?
'That would be treason.'
'Or if a tax collector murders a merchant to take his wife?'
'He has committed an offense against God's law.'
'Do you not confess that your treason is as great? A destruction of the church God has ordained for Massachusetts?'
'Does thee truly believe that God has personally ordained thy harsh and horrid church, so devoid of love?'
'I do. God is a stern taskmaster, as you have learned.'
'God is love, and if He does condemn the tax collector for murdering the merchant and hangs him, He does so in a forgiving mood, just as He forgave King David for a similar crime.'
'Paxmore, I cannot see you die. If I commit an illegal act, will you swear by the God you love not to reveal it?'
This offer presented Paxmore with a double difficulty: as a Quaker, he was forbidden to swear—that is, to use God's existence as security for what he, a mortal, was affirming; and as a Christian, he did not want to be the cause of another man's committing an unlawful act. But he felt deep sympathy for the travail Judge Goddard was undergoing, so he said quietly, 'I am forbidden to swear, good Judge, but I know thy torment, and I will affirm.'
'I accept.'
'I do so affirm.'
'And as to the illegality, the act is mine alone, Paxmore, and does not require your participation.'
'So be it.'
The judge summoned the jailer and caused the cell door to be unlocked. He then surprised that official by leading Paxmore from the cell and into a waiting carriage. Before the judge climbed aboard, he handed the jailer a handful of coins and swore him to secrecy. With that, the carriage headed for the harbor.
'You are to go to Maryland,' the judge said. 'There they are more tolerant.'
'Is not Maryland a part of Virginia? There they whip Quakers, too.'
'The two have broken apart,' the judge said, 'or so I am told.'
'There will be work in Maryland,' Paxmore said. But then he gripped the judge's hand. 'I am not fleeing death, for I am not afraid. Thee is sending me away.'
'I am,' the judge agreed, and after a pause he confided, 'The death of Thomas Kenworthy strangles me at night. Not the hanging, for he was a heretic and deserved hanging. But the whipping prior... the wheels of that great cannon...'
'Yet you sentenced me to that same cannon. Forty lashes... I would not have lived.'
'I did it because...' Goddard could find no logical explanation; perhaps he had done it to curry favor with the mob, more likely to justify the action he was about to take.
In the era when Massachusetts backed Parliament, and Maryland the king, it was not easy to travel from one to the other. Few ships sailed, for neither place produced goods required by the other and there were no roads, or carriages to ride upon them. On the other hand, it was easy to reach London, for it was the center of government, of manufacturers and learning; large ships, some surprisingly swift, crossed back and forth constantly and inexpensively, and many captains formed the habit of stopping en route at the fairest of the Caribbean Islands.
In 1664 Barbados was a lively metropolitan center, with ships from many nations in its harbor and fine stores along its waterfront. Books could be obtained and choice stuffs from France and Spain. Here legal papers could be cleared as easily as in London, and there were schools which the children of the American colonists could attend.
'I'm placing you aboard a ship to Barbados,' Judge Goddard said. 'From there you can easily get to Maryland.' The judge gave the captain money for passage, then handed Paxmore a purse, and while the carpenter tucked the money into his belt, the driver of the carriage rummaged in the boot of his vehicle to produce Paxmore's saws and adzes.
'It's better this way,' Goddard said. 'If you ever reappear in Massachusetts, I shall hang you before nightfall.'
'Why?'
'Because you are a threat to the tranquillity of our colony.'
'I would that I could rock it from its base.'
'I know. There will be others like you, but we shall prevail. Now go.' Paxmore took his tools, bowed gravely to the judge who had saved his life, and climbed aboard the Barbados boat. At dawn the captain lifted anchor and the long, pleasant journey to the island paradise was under way.
In Barbados, Paxmore was kept in his cabin until inquiries had been made ashore, and after a while a bustling ship's chandler named Samuel Spence came aboard demanding in a stern voice, 'Where is this Edward Paxmore?' and when the carpenter was produced, Spence embraced him, crying, 'I am one of thy persuasion.'
'A Quaker? Is it possible?'
'In Barbados anything is possible,' and he led the bewildered carpenter down onto the quay and into a world Paxmore could not have imagined. There was a richness here that Boston had never known, and a freedom of spirit that was remarkable.
'Are not Quakers beaten here?' Paxmore asked.
Spence laughed and said, 'Who would bother? There's money to be made and work to be done, and each man prays as he will.'
'Thee meets in public?'
'Of a certainty.'
'Could we go to the meeting place?'
'On Sunday, yes. At least thirty will be there.'
'I mean now.'
'It would be to no purpose, Friend Edward. Is thee a good carpenter?'
'I do good work.'
'I can believe it. Thy tools are in excellent condition. We need a carpenter, and the wages are generous.'
'Wages?' In his entire life up to now, and he was thirty-five years old that year, he had never worked for wages, always as an indentured servant.
Spence moved him from ship to ship, mending spars, shaving away doors that had stuck and building cupboards in new spots. Within days Paxmore had three offers of permanent positions, and he had not yet seen the meeting house, but on Sunday, Spence took him to a shed attached to the home of a prosperous merchant, and there the Quakers of Barbados showed Paxmore for the first time what worship in the new style consisted of.
Four plain chairs were set against one wall, and on them sat three older men and a woman, all wearing hats. In the body of the shed benches were lined, with a rope down the middle indicating that men were to sit on one side, women on the other. The rest of the shed was severely plain, with no adornment of any kind, and as the meeting got under way the benches filled, and the Quakers kept their hands folded in their laps, looking straight ahead.
No one spoke. This was the holy time of which Thomas Kenworthy had told him, the time when the spirit of God descended and occupied both the meeting place and the hearts of those gathered therein.
Forty minutes passed, and in the solemn silence Edward Paxmore reflected on the curious destiny that had brought him here and would soon cause him to move on. His physical being cried out for him to stay here, in comfort and convenience, with an assured job and new friends who wanted him to stay, but the inner voice of which Kenworthy had spoken urged him to Maryland and the duties awaiting him there.
Eighty minutes passed, and still the Quakers sat in silence. Then one of the men on the facing chairs rose and said in a high voice, 'We have amongst us this day a friend from Massachusetts. How goes it there?'
For more than a minute Paxmore was unable to realize that he was being called upon to speak in a Quaker meeting, and he did not know what to do. He sat dumbly, whereupon the man with the high voice rose again and said, 'Friend Edward, thee would deprive us of needful knowledge. I pray thee, speak.'
So Paxmore rose and looked at the four silent figures on the facing chairs. He wanted to tell them what life in Massachusetts was like for a Quaker, to share with them the whippings, and the loneliness, and the exile of spirit. But in the churches of New England he had heard enough of ranting and of self-appointed men who had the answer for everything. He would never speak like that, nor raise his voice and shout God's thunder. He was done with ranting.
'In Massachusetts we do not meet like this,' he said quietly. 'There is a law, written down, which determines that Quakers are heretical and treasonous, and when caught they are tied to the tailgate of carts and dragged from village to village and whipped as they go.' He dropped his voice and added, 'Women and men alike, stripped naked to the waist and whipped.'
He stood silent, trying to control his emotions so that his voice would not rise, and no one in the shed made a sound. Finally he coughed ever so slightly and concluded, 'A meeting like this, in peace, sitting with Friends, is beyond the imagination of Quakers in Massachusetts, who sit in jail with their feet bound by chains. This is not only the First Day of the week. It is the First Day of my new life.'
No one else spoke, but when the meeting broke, the Quakers of Barbados clustered about Paxmore to ask if he had knowledge of this or that Quaker who had passed through the island on the way to Boston, and he was able to recite a doleful litany: 'He was hanged. She was tied to the great cannon and whipped. He is preaching in the fields near Ipswich, but I fear for him.'
And then an older man took him by the arm, and when they were apart, said, 'Thank thee, Friend Edward, for thy spiritual message, which heartened us. But did thee have to say, in public meeting, the word _naked?_ ' Paxmore said, 'I think it was necessary,' and the old Quaker said, 'Perhaps so, but to speak of a woman naked & even though it was not of her doing &' He was not at all sure.
On Monday, Paxmore became involved with a task that made little impression on him at the time but which would later exert an indelible influence on his life. An English ship put into Barbados carrying as passenger the captain of another vessel, and this man hurried to Spence's chandlery complaining that while approaching the neighboring island of St. Lucia he had been attacked by pirates. With ample muskets and fixed guns his crew had been able to hold off the pirates and even to inflict substantial damages.
'If no harm to thy ship, what's the problem?' Spence asked.
'During the fight, while the crew was occupied, our cargo of slaves revolted and ripped chains from the moorings.'
'They can be fixed.'
'But when we unloaded them they tore up the barracoon.'
'That's serious,' Spence said gravely. 'Can't have slaves rioting.' And he arranged for Paxmore and two other carpenters to return with the captain to St. Lucia to repair the ship and the barracoon.
It was a pleasant sail over the beautiful green-blue waters of the Caribbean, and Paxmore was in a happy frame of mind when the ship approached Marigot Bay, where the damaged vessel rested. He was not prepared for the beauty that awaited him: the entrance to the bay was scarcely visible from the open sea, but once attained, it spread before Paxmore's eyes a wonderland of green mountains, tropical valleys and blue water. It was one of the finest small harbors in the world, a place of enchantment, and here the wounded vessel waited.
It required only two days for the carpenters to repair the damage done by the pirates and the rioting slaves; then everyone moved ashore to mend the barracoon. This was a high-walled enclosure in which slaves from all ships putting into Marigot were deposited prior to reshipment to either Brazil or the English colonies of North America. Useless ones, or those who looked as if they might not survive passage to America, were jammed into whatever ship passed and sold in Haiti for six or eight months' service before they died.
The present cargo of slaves, having engineered a partially successful mutiny during the pirate attack, had gone on to rip away the top planking of the barracoon and showed promise of destroying the rest, if allowed. 'I don't want to shoot them,' the captain explained, 'but we can't let them break loose.'
'The whole should be reinforced,' Paxmore said, and the semi-pirates who operated Marigot agreed, so for three more days the carpenters worked, and during this time Paxmore had many opportunities to observe the extraordinary natural beauty of this place; its combination of steep hills and deep water entranced him, and he thought: Some day when Maryland is finished I would like to live here.
The barracoon, on the other hand, made little impression on him, and the slaves imprisoned within, none at all. In Boston he had had no chance to observe blacks. Occasional families had owned slaves, but in a city they were much like indentured servants and were treated in the same way. Now he saw several hundred crowded together and guarded by muskets, and his only thought was: They look sturdy, all of them.
To him black slaves were merely an extension of the indenture system of which he had been a part. In London, prior to sailing to the New World, he and his fellows had been sequestered in barracoons, and on landing in Boston he had been auctioned off. He had been a slave of sorts, and his slavery had been an avenue to a better life. The only difference between him eleven years ago and these blacks now was that their indenture was for life, and could be discharged by no passage of years, no amount of faithful servitude.
He could not comprehend the implications of this difference, because to him the idea of a perpetual indenture made common sense, for the black would enjoy a fixed position, a known security and a permanent master with whom he could establish a workable relationship. Paxmore could not, as he hammered the final boards of the barracoon into position, anchoring them with chains, perceive the dreadful moral problem that would arise if the permanent indenture of these blacks were extended to their children, and their children's Children to all generations. That was slavery of a kind he could not envisage for himself.
But he felt no necessity to give the problem serious thought, and when the barracoon was mended he had three fine days to enjoy Marigot Bay before returning to Barbados, and he spent them well, imprinting on his mind the peculiarities of the tropics. But on the evening of the third day an English trading ship rushed into the bay with alarming news: 'Pirates are loose again. They raided Port Royal and were seen heading south.' So all slaves in the barracoon were hastily loaded into the trader and sails were raised for Maryland. It was on this ship that Paxmore embarked.
Once the slaves had been deposited in Jamestown, the ship proceeded to Devon with crates of furniture, and here he walked down the gang-plank, wide-eyed, to inspect his new surroundings. He was met by a handsome gray-haired man nearing fifty, who extended his hand and a most cordial invitation: 'I'm Henry Steed, and if you're looking for work, I surely need a carpenter.'
'I was sent to the Quakers of the Choptank.'
'Hard people to work for. You'll do better here.'
'I am a Quaker.'
'In Maryland, no significance. I pay well, Mr&.'
'Paxmore.' He liked the concept of an employer's offering to hire a workman before asking his name. 'I would like to work for thee, but I am obligated to seek out the Quakers first.'
'And so you should, if promised.' And then, to Paxmore's surprise, Mr. Steed arranged for one of his own boats to forward Paxmore up the river to the spot where the Steeds had recently opened a large warehouse. 'It's called Patamoke Landing,' Steed explained. 'Few houses but much activity.'
'I am surprised thee would offer thy boat to a stranger,' Paxmore said.
'We are hungry for settlers. Quakers seem as good as any.'
When the bateau entered the harbor, Edward Paxmore saw a sight which put his wandering heart at rest: a secure haven from storms, a rude log hut serving as a tavern, two houses, a score of boats come in from neighboring headlands. Someone rang a bell, and people gathered from unexpected places.
'Are there any women among the newcomers?' two young men asked.
'Only a carpenter,' one of Steed's boatmen called back, and the young men departed.
'Mr. Carpenter! Mr. Carpenter!' an excited man shouted. 'My name's Pool.'
Bidding for Paxmore's services began before he landed, for others called out their names, advising him that he was needed, but he gave no sign of recognition, and when he finally stepped ashore, clutching his saw and axes, he said, 'I seek James Lamb.'
From a group of men standing beside the Steed warehouse, a man stepped forward and extended his hand. 'I am James Lamb and I welcome thee to Patamoke Landing.' He added that he had no need for a carpenter but that his fellow Quaker, Robert Pool, did.
A child, hearing this statement, called, 'Robert Pool, thee is wanted,' and a tall, serious man hurried up.
'I'm Pool, the man who hailed thee.'
For some intuitive reason Paxmore believed that he must keep close to James Lamb, and he told Pool, 'I have already spoken with Friend Lamb,' and Lamb understood the newcomer's hesitancy, for he told Pool, 'I shall be taking our friend to my house,' and then he asked, 'What is thy name?'
'Edward Paxmore.'
'The man from Boston?'
'Yes.'
'Oh &' Lamb said the word gravely, then quietly moved among the crowd, informing them that this was Paxmore of Boston, and a collection of Quakers formed a circle about the carpenter, asking questions that indicated both their familiarity with his history in Massachusetts and the deference in which they held him.
'How did thee hear of the whippings?' he asked simply.
'Two months ago a ship reached us from Boston,' Lamb said almost reverently, 'and it carried a Quaker woman who had suffered much in Massachusetts.'
'Ruth Brinton?' Paxmore asked.
'Yes,' Lamb said.
Paxmore surveyed the crowd more intently, then asked, 'Did she die?' And Lamb replied, 'No, she is at my house & sorely ill.'
The entire group of Quakers went immediately to the rough-wood house of James Lamb, and as they approached the low-slung door Lamb called, 'Prudence! Come here!'
From the doorway appeared a thin, handsome woman of forty, dressed in handwoven heavy cloth and a tight bonnet. She kept her hands folded over her waist and asked, 'What's thee want?' And then she appreciated how large the crowd was. 'What is it, James?'
'This is Edward Paxmore, from Boston.'
Prudence Lamb dropped her hands and stared at the carpenter. Tears came into her eyes, and she fell to her knees and bowed her head. 'Thee is a man of heroic resolve,' she said. 'Ruth Brinton has told us.'
And James Lamb helped his wife to her feet, and they went into the small house, and there lying on a bed was Ruth Brinton, small, frail and near death from her final course of beatings in Massachusetts. And when she saw the carpenter who had volunteered to take her lashes onto himself, she dissolved in tears, and from that moment her mending started.
# The Cliff
ALL QUAKERS WHO LIVED NEAR THE LITTLE SETTLEMENT at Patamoke were so pleased when Edward Paxmore married Ruth Brinton, and so in debt to them spiritually for having fought the battles of Quakerism in Virginia and Massachusetts, they banded together to give the couple a homesite. A small fund was collected and a piece of land chosen near the harbor, but when the deed was about to be transferred, James Lamb interrupted with the information that he owned, beyond the marshes inhabited by the Turlocks, a headland he had always intended occupying as one of the finest spots on the river, and he would be pleased to yield this to the Paxmores.
The committee got into boats and sailed down the Choptank past the marshes and to that cliff-protected headland which Pentaquod, eighty-one years earlier, had chosen for his first home on the mainland. It was still a stunning location, with incomparable vistas in three directions and a warm sense of security among the tall pines and solid oaks. On this headland one seemed part of a vast panorama of bays and rivers and inlets and at the same time an intimate part of a small protected world.
'I do like this,' Paxmore said, but before he would make any commitment he deferred to his wife. 'What does thee think, Ruth?'
'Where will thy work be?' she asked, paying respect to the basic Quaker tenet that in this world men and women must work. After obedience to God, faithful performance of one's job is what counts.
'I would carpenter for the settlers, but we would have our permanent home here—that is, if thee should want to live in a remote...'
'Oh, I should!' she cried with an enthusiasm she could not suppress. She had seen too much of civil strife, and the prospect of living now on a promontory which overlooked the world was irresistible. Here they would build a home matched to the winds, on a plateau protected by cliffs. It was she who gave the place its name: 'Peace Cliff we shall call it.' And along the river it became a symbol of stability, the headland on which the Quakers lived.
They spent three days, with the assistance of friends, building an Indian wigwam at the far edge of the cliff, and as soon as they were alone Ruth Brinton began the rebuilding of her husband.
'Why does thee wear clothes which look too small?' and he replied, 'I like my wrists to be free so I can work with my hands.'
'But thee doesn't work with thy feet. Why wear such short trousers?' and he explained, 'A carpenter has to find his timber in many places and I want my ankles to be free.'
'Thee could still look a little neater,' she complained, but he kissed her and said, 'Thee's the neat one, little hummingbird,' and whenever he saw her, trim and delicate in her simple gray clothes, he felt a surge of love, and in time she surrendered; her husband was an ungainly carpenter who would never look neat, himself, but who had a positive passion for producing neat work.
In the autumn of 1664, in a burst of joyful energy, he demonstrated just how fine a carpenter he was: he built two edifices which would earn him a place in Maryland history, and a third object whose impact would vitalize the Eastern Shore. The first building was his own home; with the help of four Indians and two Quaker youths whose parents sent them to aid the newcomers, he cut and joined timber for a modest, two-room house. 'It would be pretentious and displeasing to God if we built larger,' he told Ruth Brinton, and she agreed. They used few nails and nothing imported from England, but built so carefully that their little Quaker house would survive for centuries. Secure on its headland and visible for miles along the river, it became the sturdiest of the Choptank homes.
The second building was more important, and since it was larger, it required the services not only of the four Indians and two youths but also of adult Quakers in the community. In Patamoke, James Lamb had acquired another piece of property which he was willing to cede to the Quakers generally if on it they would build a meeting house. This plain sect avoided the word _church_ as smacking too much of architecture rather than purpose; Quakers built meeting houses, and the one Edward Paxmore designed for Patamoke, and built as a testimony of his appreciation for the haven they had provided him, was a masterpiece. In time it would become America's oldest surviving house of worship in continuous use, and each year of its existence it would be increasingly appreciated as a work of art.
It was set among trees, a marvelous start for any building. Once the land had been allocated, Paxmore spent three weeks analyzing it before he allowed his associates to chop down a single tree, and even then he adjusted his plans to the trees and not the other way around. He wanted a long lane leading to the door of the meeting house, and although it required some ingenuity to fit this lane among his trees, he finally succeeded, so that the entrance to the land became a kind of invitation to prayer.
Thus oriented, Paxmore felt at ease, and in an open space laid out a rectangular building with its central doorway in the middle of the long axis. It was a one-story building with a high roof and over the central doorway a rise in the roof, which produced a fine sense of symmetry. The windows were austerely placed so as to carry out the feeling of extended dignity, but it was the inside that captivated all who assembled here.
Directly opposite the door, and running for some distance left and right, rose a small platform reached by a flight of three spacious steps which ran the entire length. On this platform stood six of the simplest oaken chairs, each with curving arms; these were the chairs in which the elders of the meeting would sit, facing the worshippers. Those who occupied these chairs—on some Sundays only two, at other times six—would serve as the ministers and priests of this congregation. Unordained, and often self-nominated, they gave the meeting continuity and substance.
The body of the meeting house consisted of long rows of handsomely proportioned benches with a rigorous aisle down the middle: men sat to the right upon entering, women to the left, but there were many boys and girls in their late teens who mastered the trick of sitting partially sideways so that they could see and be seen across the aisle.
When finished, with all Quakers in the district having participated in the work, Patamoke Meeting, as the place was called, gave proof of what could be accomplished even in a wilderness if a simple workman who had mastered his tools was encouraged to follow his intuitive sense of proportion. He would not be able to construct a Gothic cathedral, which had come at the end of centuries of experimentation and accumulated wisdom in Europe, nor a great Catholic church like those now a-building in Italy, where the same kind of knowledge was available, but he would be quite competent to build a smallish house of worship which seemed to be a part of the forest and a logical outgrowth of the river, and such a building, if it were perfect in each detail and inwardly harmonized, would acquire its own cathedral-like beauty.
'It looks solid,' James Lamb said when it was finished, and on the first Sunday, which the Quakers called First Day, Paxmore occupied by general assent one of the six chairs. Next to him sat the oldest woman in the meeting, and then by quiet acclamation it was indicated that Ruth Brinton Paxmore, as she would be forever known, should sit on the facing bench, too, for she had given greater testimony than any other to the qualities of this new religion. It was these three who conducted the first worship in the plain new building, and for the entire hour and forty minutes no one spoke; all were content merely to savor this home in the wilderness.
The third bit of building that Paxmore engaged in during this hectic year set the pattern for the remainder of his life. It was experimental, beset with failures and wonderfully rewarding. Construction of the home and the meeting house had presented no problems; after all, in England he had progressed far in his trade and had mastered most of the tricks required for putting up a building that would not fall down, but he had never built a boat, and without a skilled ship's carpenter at hand to instruct him, there was little likelihood that he would stumble upon the many devices necessary in such intricate construction. But since he and Ruth intended to live the rest of their lives on the water, it behooved him to learn.
During that first autumn James Lamb had loaned him a small sloop, which he was free to use as long as he wished, but he knew that he was depriving Lamb of his property, and this galled. So as soon as the house was finished he told Ruth, 'I think I must build us a boat.'
'Does thee know how?'
'No. But I will learn.'
He sought as his teachers the Indians who had worked on the meeting house, and on various evenings he accompanied them as they searched his woods for the proper oak. He pointed out a splendid tree, and when they rejected it he wanted to know why. 'How would we get it to the river?' they asked in sign language, and he had to concede that there was no way so mighty a tree could be moved in one piece.
But along the northern boundary of his land, facing not the river but the small creek feeding into it, he did locate a satisfactory specimen which could be dropped in such a position that when burned and shaped, it could be rolled into the water, but the Indians cautioned him against this tree: 'Better choose pine.' And when he asked why, they said, 'Lighter wood. Easier to cut.' But he proceeded with the tree he had selected, explaining, 'I build with oak.'
What a universe of backbreaking work he took upon himself. On the third night Edward limped home and collapsed, keeping his hands over his mouth and blowing into them in an effort to reduce the callus-fevers that consumed them.
'What's wrong?' Ruth asked.
'Has thee ever tried to fell an oak?'
Ruth Brinton was an austere woman of fierce and burning rectitude; she walked with God and understood His plans for people. She had a dozen virtues, but the recognition of day-by-day humor was not one of them. 'Why would I want to fell an oak?' she demanded.
'I was only—'
'If I wanted an oak tree, I would go to those men whose job it is to fell them.'
'Ruth, I was merely—'
'But if the work is difficult and thee feels that I could help, I'd be glad to go with thee tomorrow—'
'Ruth! My hands are blistered. Has thee any bear fat?'
'Oh! Thee wants bear fat. Why didn't thee say so?'
When the tree finally fell, Paxmore understood better why the Indians had followed a system requiring several years to fell a tree: girdle it, burn it, allow the sap to stop running, burn it more, push it over. 'I haven't the time,' he explained to Ruth, but she had her mind fixed on more important matters.
'I've been thinking about the bear grease,' she said. 'I could fix thee a poultice which thee could carry, and during thy work thee could apply a little grease now and then.'
'The ax handle would slip.'
'Get one that doesn't,' she said, and some days later she handed him a carefully sewn bag containing a wad of cloth impregnated with bear grease.
By this time the Indians had removed the branches and were indicating how the ends of the massive trunk should be cut away to permit the molding of the front and rear ends of the canoe. This time Paxmore followed their advice and used fire instead of brute power, and when the twenty-two-foot segment rested beside the creek, he helped the Indians strip off the bark, disclosing a golden object so handsome that it already seemed half-canoe.
By flattening the side that remained on top, he achieved the rude outlines of what he sought, and then, while his Indians set fires to burn away the insides, he proceeded to that difficult task which he must master if he wished to become a boatbuilder: at each end of the log he began to hack away with an adze the unnecessary portions of wood. Working with extreme care, and never cutting away even a fragment until he was satisfied that its departure would enhance the curve of the canoe, he learned how the bow and stern of a boat should evolve naturally from the flow of the wood until each became suited to life in water. This technical skill he could master because he was a good house carpenter, but the intellectual trick the Indians showed him when the nearly finished canoe was rolled over, he could never have deduced himself, and it was this unexpected discovery which enabled him to become a master shipbuilder.
When the great hollowed-out log lay top down at the edge of the water, one of the Indians took a straight piece of timber and with an oyster shell drew a line down the length of the canoe two inches off dead center. Then, using the same implements, he drew a parallel line two inches to the other side of center, and when this was done he and his friends began to scrape away small fragments of oak along the outer edges of this four-inch center area, and after many hours of patient work, and the smoothing down of unwanted wood, they left a slightly raised backbone for the canoe, and Paxmore saw that this would always be the lifeline of the craft. It would give direction and stability; it would keep the canoe from drifting sideways when blown by wind; and it would serve as protection to the rest of the bottom when the canoe was hauled ashore.
In his personal life Edward Paxmore had discovered that a man lived best when he maintained some central belief upon which he could hang all action and to which he could refer all difficult moral problems; he was then vertebrate, with a backbone to sustain him, and he had observed that men and women who failed to develop this central belief wandered and made hideously wrong decisions because in time of crisis they had nothing to which they could refer instantaneously. He had found his backbone in obedience to God, in the simplest form possible and with the most direct access.
He now discovered that a boat also must have a backbone, a central structure of the greatest possible strength that ran the length of the craft without deviation and upon which all the rest depended. During the remainder of his life he would never construct a ship without a backbone of oak; upon this central and immutable fact he would build.
The canoe, with its two masts, was such a success that settlers along the river offered to buy it, but as he told Ruth, 'I haven't the strength to keep chopping down oak trees, nor the time to burn them out inch by inch.'
'Thee would if thee used the bear grease I gave thee,' she said.
What he could do, he saw, was encourage others to cut down oaks and pines and fashion planks from them, which he would then assemble into small boats. But no sooner had he jumped optimistically into this new field than he discovered that building a boat with planks was a task infinitely more difficult than hollowing a log; problems arose which were almost impossible for an ordinary housebuilder to solve. This was the enigma: lay out on a flat piece of ground a backbone of the length desired. To it attach ribs which form more or less the outline of the finished boat. So far so good. But now cut planks which can be attached to those ribs to form a watertight body which at the same time flows softly forward and back to form the bow and stern of the craft. It sounds easy; it is cruelly difficult to do. And when by chance and the blessing of a patient God you master the trick of cutting those planks, how do you secure them fore and aft to the bow and stempost?
Many residents along the river complimented Paxmore on his canoe, but he realized that the merit was not his; the inherent nature of an oak tree had determined the general form the canoe would take. In building his first craft he couldn't have gone wrong, because the oak wouldn't let him. But in building a small boat, his planks of sawn timber would have no inherent form. He would need a clear concept of what he wished to accomplish, and he had none. So when his first rude boat was finished, no one stepped forward to bid on the monstrous thing; indeed, it barely stayed afloat, and when the sails were raised, it proved unmanageable. The only thing in its favor was the stalwart backbone; the subsidiary parts that determine quality were a mess.
He knew it. 'Look at that thing I call a boat,' he said to Ruth as it lay tied up to their wharf. 'A child could do better.'
'Dearest,' she said with that fearful simplicity which would enrage so many, 'when it comes to building a boat, thee is a child.'
So he determined to start over again as if he were indeed a child learning a totally new skill, and he studied his mistakes, seeing how he had asked wooden planks to perform jobs for which they were not fitted, but always he came back to the great fundamental: lay a solid backbone and see that everything relates properly to it.
He began with a much less pretentious craft, shorter and narrower in the beam, and spent all his time not on the flashy midsection, but on the bow and stern, agonizing over how he could bring all this planking to a finely shaped point, and when he finished he had a boat which didn't look especially attractive, for it had crudities innumerable, but which did sail. This time a man wanted to buy it.
'I'm going to build three more,' he told Ruth, 'and the last one I'm going to name the _Ruth Brinton_. That one will be very good.' And when the last caulking was hammered home he invited Ruth for a celebratory sail, but as they reached the center of the Choptank he said impulsively, 'We'll stop at Devon.' She protested, 'Not in this dress.' She made him return to Peace Cliff and wait till she had donned her best gray cloth and the little Quaker hat that accompanied it; but now when she sat beside her gangling husband he seemed so out of place that she said, 'Thee must dress also. It is the Steeds we're seeing,' and she would not allow him to untie the boat until he had changed.
They looked so proper as they sailed up Devon Creek, he tall and uncomfortable in the new suit she had woven, she prim and tidy with her hands folded, that servants alerted the Steeds, who brought their families to the wharf. 'What a fine boat!' Henry said, and he indicated that Paul should jump down to see if the fittings were as solid as they appeared. When Paul nodded, Henry said, 'Alice, why don't you take Mrs. Paxmore up to the house for tea. We're going for a sail.'
They went down the creek and out into the Choptank and finally the bay itself, with Paxmore tending sail and looking formal in his new suit and flat Quaker hat. When he brought the boat back, with Henry at the tiller, the Steeds were satisfied that this Quaker carpenter had mastered the art of building boats.
'I think we'd better have a drink,' Henry said as they climbed out of the _Ruth Brinton_.
'I don't drink,' Paxmore said.
'Not even tea?'
The carpenter laughed, and when they joined the ladies there was no talk of boats, because Mrs. Steed grabbed hold of Paxmore and told him excitedly, 'It's all arranged! You're to stay here for three days with this wonderful woman'—and she indicated Ruth—'and build me a special cupboard... here... for these.'
And she pointed to a nearby mantle on which stood, in orderly arrangement, a set of handsome pewter dishes, cups, knives and spoons. 'These are the _lares_ and _penates_ of the Steeds,' she said.
Paxmore's blank look indicated that he didn't know what she was talking about, but before she could explain, Ruth Brinton cut in with, 'Their household gods. It's a Roman phrase.'
Now Paxmore looked quizzically at his wife, as if the pagan gods to whom she had referred were blasphemous, but Ruth smiled primly and said, 'It's all right. Just means they're precious to the Steeds.'
He relaxed and asked Mrs. Steed, 'What kind of closet had thee in mind?'
'Here in the corner. Covered with this piece of glass we've just received from Holland.'
'That could be quite handsome,' he said as he studied the corner and the fine length of glass. 'Thee would want about six shelves?'
'We'll have to judge that as we proceed,' she said. Then, handing each of the Paxmores a piece of pewter, she confided, 'Grandmother Steed loved this. Once a year for as long as she lived she would serve a meal of deliverance. No glass or china, only the precious old pewter pieces. She did it to remind us of how they had lived in the difficult days.'
Paxmore, feeling the heavy ware, thought that a cupboard to conserve such pieces would be most sensible. 'I'll do it,' he told Mrs. Steed.
In the days that followed he and Ruth had their first opportunity to see a Catholic family at close quarters. Many aspects surprised the Quakers: the voluble prayers before meals instead of the solemn quiet of a Quaker family, the substitute for the Mass in which all members participated, the different Bible, and the perilous approach to paganism in their talk of saints and holy objects. They were particularly impressed by the tales of Father Ralph and his obvious sanctity.
'I think I would like Ralph,' Ruth said, and Paul replied, 'He never has much to do with women. He'd find you quite disturbing.'
'Why?' Ruth asked.
'Your outspokenness. Your willingness to participate in everything.'
'That's the Quaker way,' she said, and Paul replied, 'I know, and that's what Ralph would find disturbing. In his church women don't...' He found no way to finish his sentence, but Ruth, unwilling ever to let a challenge pass said, 'In ours they do.'
The Steed brothers found it easier to talk with Edward Paxmore, and one day while the women were admiring the distinguished manner in which the finished cabinet displayed the pewter, they took the carpenter aside and Henry, after coughing twice, said, 'Edward, I think you're ready to build us a ship.'
Paxmore never replied to any invitation in a hurry, and while the brothers waited he calculated how many hours it might take him to build a replica of the _Ruth Brinton_. 'I believe I could build thee a boat like the _Ruth Brinton_ —'
'We don't mean a boat, we mean a ship.'
Paxmore was amazed at the proposal. 'You mean... a great ship... to cross the bay?'
'To cross the Atlantic,' Henry said, and once the words were out he became a persuasive visionary. 'Paxmore, if we owned a ship, we could send our tobacco directly to market and save enormous sums on rentals. We could return with goods for the stores at prices you wouldn't believe.'
'But I've never—'
'We've watched your progress in your last four sailing boats. You've come a far way, Paxmore.'
'That first was a bad job, wasn't it?'
'And we're convinced you're ready to build us a ship for London.'
'I've never built a ship,' Paxmore said quietly. 'I've never learned.'
'A man learns how by building it.'
What Paxmore said next proved that he was a true and cautious Quaker: 'Would thee risk thy own money in such a venture?'
'We would,' the brothers agreed.
Paxmore sat silent for a long time, then rose soberly and returned to the room where the ladies were. Walking directly to his wife, he took her by the hand and said, 'Ruth, we're going home... to build a great ship.'
Edward Paxmore was driven into an extended period of moral confusion through no act of his own; it was Samuel Spence's fault. That Barbados ship chandler never forgot that when his helper Paxmore sailed precipitately for Maryland because of looming pirate threats, he departed without having collected the wages due him, so in late 1666 Spence posted a letter, which, when it reached Peace Cliff, would cause the trouble.
In the meantime the lanky carpenter was adhering to the tradition of shipbuilders in early America. He did not establish an arbitrary yard and say, 'Here I will build my ship.' Instead he looked for a concentration of tall trees and there set up his works. The spot he selected was on the creek, close to where he had built his log canoe; it contained one of the most promising oaks he had ever seen, a giant in the sky, plus a substantial supply of pines. So one morning after praying for guidance and good health he started to fell the oak upon which his ship would depend.
With sweating toil he and his Indians swung their axes, and when at last the massive tree dropped close to the creek as planned, he stepped off the fifty-two feet he had decided upon for the backbone; but when he saw how vast a distance this was, he pressed his aching hands against his chest and thought: I can never build a ship of that size. But he was committed and knew that he would succeed only if he proceeded one careful step at a time. Accordingly, he began to chop away the branches, some as large as ordinary trees, and when the massive log lay exposed he studied it for two long days, trying to visualize the finished backbone that he would chop from it and the various ways in which the great body of the ship would relate to it.
With each crucial analysis he realized how ignorant he was, and on the morning of the third day, when he should have begun chipping away unwanted wood, he was paralyzed by self-depreciation. This task was too immense for a house carpenter. But as he sat upon the felled oak, he happened to see riding in the creek his original log canoe, and he asked the Indians to help him haul it ashore. Turning it upside down on the grass, he sat all morning studying the lines, and the subtle manner in which straight expanses of wood merged with round, and how various segments combined to form bow and sternposts, and from this most ancient of shapes, dating back ten thousand years or more, he began to appreciate what could be done and what must be done.
Halting all work except the felling of pine trees, he took a piece of pine and started to whittle a model of the large ship he wished to build, and on this task he spent the better part of two weeks, shaping here and retouching there until he had a miniature craft entirely pleasing to the eye.
But still he lacked confidence, so he had his Indians put the upturned canoe back into the water and in it he sailed to Devon to show the Steeds what he had in mind. As prudent men looking to the future, they had but one suggestion: 'If you make the ship broader at the midsection, it will be able to carry more goods.'
'The bulk would make it sail slower,' Paxmore pointed out.
'We have endless time,' Henry said, and Paxmore attached to the sides of his model thin strips of additional wood, which enabled him to carve a fatter form. When this was completed Henry Steed took a pen and lettered on the stern the name the ship would carry: _Martha Keene, Devon_.
'When the whole is done,' he told Paxmore, 'I'd like to have that model.'
'Thee shall,' the carpenter said, but on the sail back to his informal boatyard he had a beneficial insight: If I cut the model in half, lengthwise, I'll have not only a plan for the outside of the ship, but one for the inside, too. So when he reached the waiting oak he wedged the model into an informal vise and took down his saw, but when he started to make his cut he saw that to do it properly he must rip the backbone into halves, and this he was powerless to do.
Throwing down the saw, he thought, I could never split a backbone, and he pondered an escape, and gradually he uncovered a satisfactory compromise: I'll not touch the backbone. I'll saw alongside it, and this he did, producing not the true half-model required, but a workable approximation, and whenever he used this guide his fingers felt the unviolated backbone, and he was gratified.
Now he started his men hacking away at the oak, and as they worked he made a decision that would save hours of complex labor: The back of the ship will not be pointed. It will be flat.
He then moved to the other end, and here he faced problems of the most acute and perplexing nature: how to hook upon the fore end of the backbone the front end of the ship, which required a rising curve. While the Indians worked squaring away the long reach of the spine, he concentrated on this problem, and saw that if he could shape the forward end of the log into an upward curve, however slight, he would start with an advantage. So quickly he redirected the cutting so that the forward end would achieve the maximum upward sweep. He was not able to gain much, but when the backbone was finally finished, it did curve upward, and on this advantage he would erect the crucial forward thrust of his ship.
But with each success new problems evolved and now he must determine the precise manner in which the bow of his ship, the cutting edge which would breast the waves, would be put together. He had not the slightest instruction as to how this could be accomplished. He was a house carpenter, but like any prudent man he could sit down and apply what he knew about houses to ships, and the crucial fact he clung to was that an open rectangle could never be stable, because sufficient pressure at any one of the corners would collapse it, whereas a diagonal, if hammered securely into position, would permit enormous pressures to be exerted on the corners without collapse; the resulting triangles might break apart, or the wood might shatter, but they were stable.
Abstractly, the problem was simple: crisscross the interior of the ship with diagonals and no storm would ever be able to collapse its sides; of course, no cargo or passengers could be loaded either, because the interior would be consumed with diagonals.
So the problem really became this: how to achieve the rigidity of the diagonal without using ones which would prohibit the loading of cargo? Like most important difficulties, it was easily stated, laboriously solved.
He was at an impasse. How he wished that some great ship from London would sail into Devon so that he might inspect it. None came. One page of a book from London would explain everything, but he had no such books. Bitterly he recalled his tedious days aboard the ships that had carried him from London to Boston to Barbados to Marigot Bay to Devon: I spent all that time on ships and saw nothing.
That was not entirely correct. He had seen a great deal about decking a ship and building bulwarks and finishing off the gunwales, but like an artist who rides a horse a hundred times, and never comprehends it until he tries to draw it, or like a novelist who has witnessed a human situation repeatedly but has not really understood it until forced to state in cold words what happened, he had lived in the heart of ships but had not seen them.
Ironically, during his confusion, the solution lay all about him... on the ground. As he paced at the forward end of his log, eyes fastened on the waiting curve, he happened to stumble, and when he looked down to see what had tripped him, he saw the massive roots of the oak sweeping sideways from the stump of the severed trunk. He stopped, studied the curious joint made by root and trunk, then knelt and began feverishly scraping away the earth, and when he finished he had laid bare one of the most powerful joints in nature, the flexed kneelike structure that is formed where a heavy root branches out from a main trunk, and as it lay exposed Paxmore realized that he had found the solution to his problem: instead of bracing his exposed bow with cumbersome diagonals, he would build into it this massive joint which contained its own bracing.
But when he turned to his Indians, about to ask them to help him dig out this knee, he found that they had gone; they were tired of building ships and would work no more. For him to continue without them would be impossible, so in profound anxiety he launched his log canoe by himself and sailed to Devon to ask the Steeds what he must do. When he reached there he found them occupied at the wharf, for a ship from Barbados had recently dropped anchor in Jamestown, and the Steed sloop had brought across the bay Samuel Spence's extraordinary letter and a cargo which Paxmore could not have anticipated:
I have been haunted by the debt I owe thee in payment of the good work thee did for me, especially the rebuilding of that ship at Marigot Bay, and I have constantly wondered how to repay thee. Coins we have none, and our correspondents in London are in worse shape than we. They cannot hope to pay my bills, for the plague last year and the fire this have decimated them, and I had concluded that my debt to thee would have to stand undischarged, when a singular chain of circumstances put me in a position to aid thee.
A gentleman of this island owed a debt to one of the London firms who owed me, and we agreed that he should simplify things and pay me, but he had no money neither. He did, however, possess an interest in a slave ship due to arrive from Luanda, and when it put in to our port, he delivered to me a portion of his slaves.
I am making bold to send thee nine of these Negroes in discharge of my debt in hopes that thee will consider this fair exchange. Quakers who have passed through here advise us that thee has married Ruth Brinton, that stalwart spirit, and we send thee both our love.
The slaves had not yet been unloaded, and when Paxmore went to the sloop he found them huddled forward, and he wondered why, in the safety of harbor, they still clung together, but when he jumped down into the boat he saw that they had been chained to prevent disturbance during the passage across the bay. He stood for a moment scrutinizing these strangers: he saw their black forms, their promising muscles, the way in which the women held themselves proudly, even in chains.
'Cut them loose and I'll take them to Peace Cliff,' he called to Henry Steed, but Steed, who had often overheard Jamestown planters gossiping about their slaves, said cautiously, 'Safer to keep them bound till they're off the water,' and he directed his captain to sail the sloop to the cliff. There the blacks were marched onto the wharf, still in chains: six strong men, three women of childbearing age, all wearing iron collars. The Eastern Shore had received its first cargo of slaves, the lawful property of Quakers.
'All prime,' the captain said as he threw the chains back into the sloop.
'We can use them,' Paxmore said. The women he led to the house, where Ruth Brinton was on the floor, nailing together an extra table for her kitchen. She was astonished to see the blacks and asked, 'What are these?'
'They're ours.'
'In what way?'
'Samuel Spence, in Barbados, sent them in discharge of his debt to me.'
'And what are we to do with them?'
'They belong to us. They're our slaves.'
Ruth Brinton rose, wiped her hands, and studied the women. She could remember when she was that age, burdened with perplexities, and thought: How much greater theirs must be. To her husband she said, 'It would be quite improper for us to hold slaves. It would be against the will of God.'
And then began the great debate which would ultimately invade every legislature, every church and every home. Edward Paxmore cited three facts, the first two of which were economic and therefore of little persuasion where Ruth Brinton was concerned: 'Spence owed me the money and had the right to pay it in his way. Also, the slaves arrive just when we need them most. God must have sent them to help us finish the ship.'
His wife looked at him, aghast that he would offer such irrelevancies, but his third citation was moral, and not at all irrelevant: 'When I was an indentured servant in Massachusetts it was the custom for preachers to sermonize once each quarter on the duties of servant to master. How well I recall those thundering admonitions!' And he began to recite, as he remembered them, those compelling passages in which God specifically ordained and supported a system of slavery:
'Servants, obey in all things your masters, not with eye-service only but in fear of God.
Servants, be obedient to them that are your masters with fear and trembling.
Servants are to please their masters in all things, not answering again.
Let all servants who are under the yoke count their masters as worthy of all honor.'
Ruth Brinton was appalled as she heard this recital; she could not believe that he was taking such teaching seriously. It was as if she were seeing for the first time the whole profile of her husband—and it was ugly.
'Edward,' she said with iron force in her soft words, 'does thee not realize that the whole teaching of Jesus is opposed to the slavery of one man to another?'
'I only know what the Bible says, and it says over and over that some men are to be slaves, and are bound to obey their masters.' Before his wife could interrupt he said, 'Now, the Bible also says that masters must be just, and that they must look after the welfare of the slave. The ministers in Boston used to emphasize that, too. In fairness to them I must say they always warned the masters to be gentle.' Then, in recollection of those distant sermons, he added, 'But I do recall that they warned us servants more sternly than they warned our masters.'
He would be a good master. He stopped all work on the ship so that stout cottages could be built for his slaves. He suggested to Ruth Brinton that she take the women into the house to do the heavy work, but she refused. She did, however, train one of them to look after her baby; the others grew vegetables and tended tobacco.
The men, tall and straight, proved excellent helpers at the ship, Abiram and Dibo showing such skill in ripping out planks that Paxmore established a sawyers' pit for them: huge pine logs were rolled into position atop a deep pit, in which Dibo stood day after day. Abiram, the stronger of the two, perched on the log, holding a long two-handled saw whose teeth he kept biting into a straight line along the pine. At the shout of an African word, Dibo in the pit would jump in the air, wrap himself about the saw's handle and exert all his weight in pulling downward. This descent of the saw made the cut; Dibo then pulled it loose, shouted another word, and Abiram would haul the heavy saw back into position. In this way, these two men hacked out the planks from which the ship would be constructed.
But when the time came to fit the timbers to the keel, and thus form the skeleton of the ship, Paxmore ran out of roots with which to brace his work. He searched the cliff area for oak roots formed into right angles, but found none; he did uncover a few of pine, but quickly learned that these lacked the requisite strength, and he was wandering far from his own lands when he came upon Stooby Turlock hunting wolves. He reported to his wife on this first meeting:
'He seemed a visitor from another world, a grown man of twenty-six with the ignorance of a four-year-old. However, when I indicated that I was searching for special tree roots, he understood at once and led me to at least nine oaks containing splendid specimens. He displayed such unusual knowledge of trees, that I invited him to work with me, but this word frightened him.'
When Paxmore required additional roots to frame out the ship, he looked for Stooby but did not find him. Learning that the young man lived in the marsh with his disreputable father, he sailed there one afternoon, failed to find the entrance, and was beating about the edges when a musket shot rattled past the canoe. Rising from the rushes like an apparition, Timothy Turlock shouted, 'Who that?'
'I'm looking for Stooby.'
Turlock spat in the water, then indicated where the entrance to his creek lay, and when Paxmore drew up to the rickety wharf the old man was waiting. 'Can I see Stooby?' the carpenter asked.
'Not here.'
'Why didn't you tell me—'
'You can wait.' He helped Paxmore from the canoe, then led him to a filthy shack in which a heavyset blonde was lounging. She made no effort to greet him, so he sat on a log which had been propped on tripod legs, and as he waited there he became aware that in one corner of the hut a young girl was standing.
'It's Nancy from James Lamb's!' he cried, rather pleased to find someone he knew. 'What's thee doing here?'
'She run away,' Turlock said. Paxmore could not know that this was the child with whom old Turlock had frequently been found in bed. He assumed that she had escaped for the usual reasons given by servants and slaves.
'James Lamb is a kind master,' he argued, and no one refuted him.
Stooby did not appear, and after a prolonged wait which grew more and more unpleasant, for the hut and its occupants were loathsome, Paxmore announced that he must get back to the cliff. 'Mr. Turlock, will thee please tell thy son I need more roots?'
'I may,' and the visit ended, but three days later Stooby came to the shipyard with word that he had located more than two dozen excellent specimens and that if Paxmore would assign three slaves to do the digging, he would deliver them to the site. It was in this offhanded way that Stooby began working for Paxmore, never on a regular basis, for he refused to be tied to any job; he simply responded whenever Paxmore needed special timbers or roots.
'He's really stupid,' Paxmore told his wife, 'and yet he isn't.' What he failed to discover was that whenever Stooby delivered wood, he studied with ratlike eyes every new step taken in building this ship. In the end, Stooby would know as much about building ships as Paxmore, and he would have taken one more giant stride toward becoming the complete waterman: he would know not only the waters but the ships that sailed them.
The most remarkable aspect of Edward Paxmore's shipbuilding was his collection of tools. Whatever he needed, he had to fashion for himself, and at the end of two years he owned an amazing collection of implements. He had, of course, his saws and adzes, those sovereign tools of the boatbuilder; Paul Steed, watching him carve a plank with delicate precision, told his brother, 'Paxmore could write his name with an adze.'
He made clamps for holding small items, gouges for tearing away unwanted wood, augurs for boring holes, and the most intricate saws. Since nails were precious beyond gold—all colonial construction depended upon what could be imported from England—he learned to carve small pieces of oak into nail-like forms; when they were hammered or screwed into position and water applied, they swelled and held disparate parts together almost as well as metal nails.
But always he lacked the essential tool without which the workman can never attain true mastery: he did not know the names of any of the parts he was building, and without the name he was artistically incomplete. It was not by accident that doctors and lawyers and butchers invented specific but secret names for the things they did; to possess the name was to know the secret. With correct names one entered into a new world of proficiency, became the member of an arcane brotherhood, a sharer of mysteries, and in the end a performer of merit. Without the names one remained a humbler or, in the case of boatbuilding, a mere house carpenter.
Paxmore would always remember the July morning on which a two-masted Bristol tobacco trader put into Devon, and the joy with which he scrambled through all parts of the ship, asking the ship's carpenter what the various parts were. It was then that he began to unravel the mystery of names.
' _Trunnels_ we calls 'em,' the man said of the tree nails Paxmore had been carving, and as trunnels they acquired added value, for this meant that they were part of an ancient heritage.
'It ain't _backbone_. It's _keel_. And the plank we attach on top for tying into is _keelson_.' But the word which pleased him most was the one the Englishman used for the bent roots upon which the stability of the ship depended. 'Them's _knees_ , and you best cut 'em from hackmatack. Better'n oak.'
The measurements of a cut board were the _scantlings_ , the squared-off rear was the _transom_ , the piece of timber used to extend the bowsprit a _jib boom_ , and the splice of timbers a _scarph_. But what astonished him was the fact that _floor_ meant not an extended flat area, as in a house, but the small, rugged timber jammed up against the keel, on which the inner bottom of the ship was framed.
On this visit Paxmore picked up a hundred words, and with each, a new insight to his task, but none of his new knowledge disturbed him so much as what he discovered about the mast. For his ship he had trimmed a very tall pine tree into a perfect cylinder, and had erected it in an arbitrary manner at an arbitrary spot. Now he learned that he had done everything wrong.
'No! No!' the English carpenter admonished. 'Never a rounded base! Because if it's rounded at the bottom, how are you going to wedge it fast where it stands in its step upon the keelson? And if it's rounded where it passes through the deck, how can you caulk it to prevent leaks?'
He took Paxmore to the lowest section of his ship and showed him how the shipbuilders of the world stepped their masts. 'At the bottom, keep the tree a square. Then it can be set into this box, and knees can be thrown against it, and it can be wedged along straight lines, and no wind can move it.'
What a difference between a real mast and the one Paxmore had devised! The true one stood firm, wedged powerfully on all sides, four-square with the keel. His wobbled because its circular base provided no secure line for wedging.
'Now, at this height, as she approaches the hole through the deck, trim her to the octagonal,' and the Englishman showed what a handsome job the Bristol shipbuilders had done in modulating a square base into an octagonal riser; the eye could scarcely see where the shift had been made, and as the mast passed through the deck, a vital transit, it provided eight solid sides which could be wedged and waterproofed. Paxmore's was a leaky mess.
'It's only when we get up here,' the Bristol man said as they stood on deck, 'that you allow the octagon to become a circle,' and again the shift from one geometrical form to the other had been achieved with a lovely delicacy. 'You know why we want 'em round above deck?'
'No.'
'She don't fight the wind. And another thing, if your mast is truly seated and properly wedged, it'll stand of itself. The weight of the wind on the sail will push her down into the step and hold her there. Paxmore, don't let anyone guy your mast so tight it sings like a harp. The shrouds should be loose, always loose. They're not there to wrench the mast into position, only to give it help if a gale strikes.' And he led Paxmore to each of the shrouds protecting the mast and demonstrated how loose they were, bearing no pressure in times of calm but available in time of sudden stress.
And then he said something which quite staggered the novice. ' 'Course you placed your mast properly?'
'I centered it on the backbone... the keel... I mean the keelson.'
' 'Course. But I mean fore and aft.'
'I put it...' The vague look that came into Paxmore's eyes betrayed the fact that he knew nothing of sail capacity, or balance, or the moment of forces acting upon a ship under way, or the intricate problem of placing a mast so that winds upon the sail did not lift the bow or depress it or cause it to yaw.
'You know nothing of placing masts, do you?' the Bristol man asked.
'No.'
'Well, caulk her strong and pray she floats. Improvements come with experience.'
In December 1668 a pinnace crossed the bay, bringing to Devon Island a visitor who gladdened the hearts of everyone. He was Father Ralph Steed, fifty-two years old and gray from his labors throughout Maryland. He rested on the wharf to survey the impressive changes made at Devon since his prior visit: the substantial wharf, the broad paths leading to the constantly growing wooden house, the glassed-in windows, the second chimney bespeaking the added rooms, and above all, the sense of serene accomplishment. In his youth this had been a precarious foothold in the wilderness; now it was becoming the seat of country gentlefolk.
'I am especially pleased to see that you have got hold of some slaves,' he told his brothers. 'Properly utilized, they can be of great assistance to a plantation, and contact with their white masters does much to save their souls.'
It was a privilege to renew acquaintance with his brothers, and he was astounded by the fecundity of their wives: Henry had two sons and a daughter, Paul three boys and two girls, and this third generation already contained eleven grandchildren, not counting the many infants who had died. But the gem of the collection was a blond boy of seven, roguish and unfairly handsome, who took an immediate liking to his great-uncle and bowed with exaggerated politeness as he said, 'We are glad to see you in Devon again, Uncle Ralph.'
'That's Fitzhugh,' Henry said proudly, 'my grandson.'
'He'll be counselor-of-state, with his winning ways,' the priest said, holding the child by the hand as he told the brothers, 'It's remarkable and a thing pleasing to God that our family has always been able to find Catholic girls to marry.' But as he said this he winced and had to drop Fitzhugh's hand.
'Your hip?'
'Fell from a horse. It's nothing.' He made no complaints about his harsh life, but he did lodge one protest, and that most sternly. 'You haven't rebuilt the chapel!'
'It was too conspicuous,' Henry said, shrugging his shoulders in self-justification.
'I was conspicuous on every river,' Ralph chided, and no more was said about the chapel. But as soon as he reached the house with its handsome new porch he asked that the family be convened for the reading of a Mass, and when the brood was collected and he had greeted each new acquaintance, he offered a family celebration. Afterward he pointed to the corner cupboard containing the pewter and told his brothers, 'I like that. We had stern days and it's good to remember them.'
He was voracious in his desire for details regarding the operation of the plantation, and told Henry, 'It's a shame the Eastern Shore cannot grow sweet-scented leaf like Virginia. The Oronoco you grow over here always brings less in London.'
'It does well in France,' Henry said. 'They seem to like our heartier flavor.'
'I've brought with me some seeds of a tougher strain of sweet-scented. We should see if it will prosper in our soil.'
'It won't. We've tried all possible strains, and it's perverse. Sweet-scented, like beautiful ladies, grows only in Virginia. Oronoco, like real men, grows in Maryland.'
Father Steed also wanted to know how negotiations with Fithian were progressing, and Paul said, 'I visited him in London last year. He's older now and his sons are handling our affairs. Admirably, too.'
'He took possession of two plantations along the James last year,' the priest said. 'There was ugly talk, and I feared for our relations with him.'
'That's always been the story of the Virginia planters,' Paul said defensively. 'They earn a thousand pounds with their sweet-scented and order eleven hundred pounds' worth of goods. If they do this long enough, Fithian owns their land.'
'Are we in debt to him?'
'The other way around. We keep a cash balance in our favor.'
'How is that possible?'
'We've opened a warehouse at Patamoke Landing. People up and down the river come there to trade with us.' And he called for a bateau to take Ralph to the growing settlement. 'The long low building is ours,' he said as the boat entered the harbor. 'And that place by the wharf is a tavern. Only three houses so far, but I've deeded thirty acres to Lord Baltimore for the settling of a town, and he's promised to issue an ordinance appointing Oxford and Patamoke Landing ports of entry for ships in general trade.'
'Any industry?'
'None yet, but I've been contemplating giving that land over there to Edward Paxmore for a boatyard.'
'You've spoken of him several times,' the priest said. 'Who is he?'
'One of the best carpenters in England. Came to settle on our river. He's a Quaker.'
'He is?' the priest said. 'Oh, I should like to meet him. Wherever I go I hear of this new sect. Most contradictory reports. I'd like to meet one face-to-face.'
'That's easy. His boatyard is on the way home. He's building a ship for us, you know.'
'A real ship?'
'Wait till you see!' And on the way back the bateau diverted to the creek on whose banks Paxmore was completing his assignment.
'It's enormous!' the priest said as he looked up at the huge construction. 'How will you get it into the water?'
'From the stern we'll run ropes around pulleys attached to those oak trees,' Paxmore explained. 'Then we'll get all the men available, and while they pull in this direction, we'll knock out those timbers and the ship will edge forward in that direction... to the water.'
'And if it doesn't?'
'It must.'
Father Steed spent more than an hour inspecting the work, and he could not hide his wonder over the fact that his brothers were building a ship that could sail to London, but when he voiced this surprise, Henry quickly corrected him, 'It's not us. It's Paxmore.'
'I like that man,' Ralph said. 'Couldn't we meet with him?'
Henry took this question to the carpenter, who said, 'I couldn't leave now. I sleep here to be certain...'
'I meant, when the job permits,' Father Steed said quickly.
'Yes,' Paxmore said. 'I'm sure Ruth Brinton would want to talk with thee.'
'And who is she?' the priest asked.
'My wife.'
'Oh?' Ralph hesitated. 'It wouldn't really be necessary...'
'She talks much better than me.'
'I'm sure she does,' Ralph said, 'but I wanted to talk with you about Quakers.'
'It's about Quakers that she talks best,' Paxmore said, and it was arranged that when work permitted, he would sail with Ruth Brinton for a few days at Devon.
It was a visit which created a powerful impression on two families. The multiple Steeds had known Paxmore as a workman of high quality, while the Quakers had thought of the Steeds as business people on whom fortune had smiled; they were roused by Father Steed's stories of the repression experienced by his family, and when he spoke of the fire that had destroyed the chapel, Paxmore said impulsively, 'I could rebuild it. I've already built a Quaker meeting house.'
'What makes you a Quaker?' the priest asked.
Paxmore deferred to his wife, and the long dialogue was joined. It took place in the formal sitting room, with Father Steed, a wise, battle-worn, fat old man sprawled in an easy chair, representing the world's oldest Christian religion, and Ruth Brinton, a prim, bonneted woman in gray, perched on the forward edge of a straight-backed chair her husband had built, representing the newest. During parts of the conversation Henry Steed and Paxmore were present, but they did not interrupt, for they perceived that here were two theologians of high purpose comparing experiences after lifetimes spent in religious speculation.
QUAKER: You ask how I became what I am. When I was eighteen I heard George Fox preach, and he vouchsafed such an illumination that all distress vanished. His simplicity overcame me.
CATHOLIC: The world entertains many visionaries. Our church provides two or three a year, right down the centuries. And each has some one good idea, which prudent men should listen to. But rarely more than one. And that one can be fitted into the structure of the church. What was so special about George Fox?
QUAKER: His simplicity stripped away the unnecessary accretions of centuries.
CATHOLIC: Such as?
QUAKER: Thee asks. I would prefer not to embarrass thee, but thee did ask.
CATHOLIC: Because I feel a need to know. What unnecessaries?
QUAKER: Since God maintains direct accessibility with every human life and offers instant and uncomplicated guidance, the intervention of priests and ministers is unnecessary. The intercession of saints is not required. Musical chanting and pretentious prayers fulfill no need. God is not attracted by incense or ostentation or robes or colorful garments or hierarchies.
CATHOLIC: You pretty well abolish my church.
QUAKER: Oh, no! There are many in the world, perhaps a majority, who require forms and feel easier with rituals, and if this is the manner in which they approach God, then forms and rituals are essential, and thee would be delinquent if thee deprived them of that avenue to God.
CATHOLIC: But you feel there are others, perhaps a fortunate few, maybe the more intellectual.
QUAKER: There is no up nor down. In human beings there are differences which cause them to choose different paths.
CATHOLIC: But what is your path? Which parts of the Bible do you accept?
QUAKER: All of it. Every sacred word. And especially the teachings of Jesus Christ in the New Testament.
CATHOLIC: Do you then reject the old?
QUAKER: No, but we do not belabor it.
CATHOLIC: How specifically do you utilize it?
QUAKER: Thee touches a delicate point, Father Steed. There have been some among us and there are now... (Here Mrs. Paxmore hesitated, then spoke quickly with a certain confidentiality.) Indeed, my husband Edward is one of them who focus so strongly on the words of Jesus that they diminish the importance of the Old Testament—as if one could accept the New without comprehending the Old.
CATHOLIC: Would not this be serious error?
QUAKER: The same the Jews commit when they accept only the Old and ignore the New, as if one did not flow inevitably from the other.
CATHOLIC: And you?
QUAKER: Thy family asked Edward to build a shrine for thy pewter heritage, lest children born in ease forget. The Old Testament is a moral heritage upon which every word of the New is built. The New can never be understood except in reference to the Old.
CATHOLIC: Do you Quakers accept the divinity of Jesus?
QUAKER: Without question.
CATHOLIC: Do you acknowledge the Virgin Birth?
QUAKER: I have never heard it refuted.
CATHOLIC: But do you accept it... in your heart?
QUAKER: I do not ponder such miracles. There is too much work at hand, crying to be done.
CATHOLIC: You reject faith as the core of Christianity?
QUAKER: I base my life on James two-seventeen: 'Faith, if it hath not works, is dead, being alone.' I want faith, and I pray for its guidance, but the ultimate test for me is what the Christian does about it.
CATHOLIC: For example?
QUAKER: I can speak only for myself.
CATHOLIC: I'm interrogating a Quaker, not the Quaker abstraction.
QUAKER: I believe that jails as we have them now are a mortal sin against God. And I believe they must be changed for the better.
CATHOLIC: Is that single belief an adequate cause for initiating a new religion?
QUAKER: It is on such tendentious points that the soul of a revitalized religion rests.
CATHOLIC: And you would throw overboard the grand assembly of saints in order to reform a prison?
QUAKER: I would.
CATHOLIC: You would be making a poor bargain.
QUAKER: I would be directing my religion to the correction of a great evil, and God would approve.
CATHOLIC: What is this _thee_ and _thou_?
QUAKER: It is the manner in which Jesus spoke.
CATHOLIC: And this hat on the head, even in church?
QUAKER: Jesus directed men not to uncover their heads in deference to any authority.
CATHOLIC: And this business of affirming in court rather than swearing?
QUAKER: Jesus directed us at many different places not to use God as reference for our actions. We attest on our integrity, and do not take refuge in His.
CATHOLIC: Is it true that your men will refuse to take arms in defense of our colony?
QUAKER: War is an abomination, and must be seen as such. This will be our greatest testimony. Does thee understand, Neighbor Steed, that for us it is not enough to believe that war is wrong—to have faith that it's wrong—we must also act.
CATHOLIC: Are there other areas in which you feel impelled to act?
QUAKER: There are. (It was obvious to the listeners that here Ruth Brinton wanted to cite a specific, but that some delicacy restrained her.)
CATHOLIC: What was it you wished to say?
QUAKER: Is thee inviting me to speak?
CATHOLIC: I am indeed.
QUAKER: I am convinced that one day all churches will see the immorality of slavery and will condemn it.
CATHOLIC: Slavery? Why, slavery's condoned in the Bible. Throughout the Bible. Old and New. Surely, Mrs. Paxmore, you don't reject biblical teaching?
QUAKER: I reject biblical interpretation which gives one man control over the life and destiny of another.
CATHOLIC: I'm really quite... You mean that all biblical teaching about the duties of the slave to his master...
QUAKER: It will be seen one day as terrible error which has been superseded.
CATHOLIC: Do you mean to say that my brothers are sinful because they hold slaves?
QUAKER: I do.
CATHOLIC: So you see, Henry and Paul, you're sinners. But, Mrs. Paxmore, doesn't your husband hold slaves?
QUAKER: He does.
CATHOLIC: And is he also a sinner?
QUAKER: He is. (At this point Edward Paxmore left the room, followed by the Steed brothers.)
CATHOLIC: Let me understand what you're saying, Mrs. Paxmore. You believe that on some day to come, the religious leaders of this world are going to convene and state that what the Bible has condoned since the days of Abraham, that what Jesus Himself approved of and against which He never spoke... You believe that our leaders are going to tell the world, 'It is all wrong?'
QUAKER: I expect to spend my life, Neighbor Steed, trying to convince my religion that slavery is wrong.
CATHOLIC: Aha! Then even your religion doesn't condemn it?
QUAKER: Not now.
CATHOLIC: And you would presume, one frail human being and a woman at that, to negate all the teaching of the churches and the Bible and human codes? How can you be so arrogant?
QUAKER: Because God speaks to me as directly as he does to your Pope. And if I see that slavery is a dreadful wrong, it may simply be that God has spoken to me first. I am the weak vessel He has chosen, and I can do no other than obey. (This topic was returned to numerous times during the three days, and many ramifications were introduced, but in the end Father Steed stood confirmed in his belief that God had ordained a society in which some were inescapably intended to be slaves, enhancing the general welfare, while Ruth Brinton remained equally convinced that slavery was inhuman and must one day be eradicated. At the conclusion of one intense exchange, Father Steed raised an interesting question.)
CATHOLIC: I know you said that you accept the New Testament, but do you accept all of it?
QUAKER: I do.
CATHOLIC: How about First Corinthians fourteen-thirty-five?
QUAKER: I don't know that verse.
CATHOLIC: 'It is a shame for women to speak in the church.'
QUAKER: We Quakers do not hold much with Saint Paul.
catholic: But was he not speaking for Jesus?
QUAKER: It is quite possible to love Jesus but to wonder about Paul.
CATHOLIC: If I understand what you said the other day, in your church women can serve as priests.
QUAKER: We have no priests.
CATHOLIC: I correct myself. Women like you serve as religious leaders?
QUAKER: We lead no one, but we do speak in meeting.
CATHOLIC: Is not that contrary to the teachings of Jesus?
QUAKER: To the teaching of Paul, and I reject Paul.
CATHOLIC: You think it proper for women to speak in church?
QUAKER: I do. And further, I think it most improper that thy great religion places women in such an inferior position.
CATHOLIC: Never! We revere Mary. We revere women as the foundation of the home.
QUAKER: But thee accords them no place in the church. Men priests speak to men, never women to women, or to men either. Does thee consider us incompetent?
CATHOLIC: No, but as I said before, all places in this world are ordained. Some are kings and they rule. Some are slaves and they serve. Some are women and they enjoy their special role, an honored one which does not include speaking in church.
QUAKER: Thy church could use Mary as a symbol of salvation, a repairing of the damage done to women.
CATHOLIC: Mrs. Paxmore, you seem prepared to give instructions to everyone. Slavery, women, prisons—what next?
QUAKER: As James said, faith without works is nothing. For the rest of my life I propose to work.
CATHOLIC: Do not underestimate the power of faith. Have you ever ministered to a dying man and seen the light come into his eyes when he hears from your lips that he is being embraced by the arms of his faith? Have you seen parents glow when they realize that their newborn is now baptized into their inalienable faith?
QUAKER: I believe in faith as a saving spirit, and the moments you speak of are sacred.
CATHOLIC: And don't take arrogant pride in your silence. There must be singing too. In every part of the Bible men and women go forth with drums and psalteries. And I think there must be ritual, the same Holy Mass said in the same language in all corners of the universe. It binds us together.
QUAKER: I have often thought that if I were not a Quaker... I thought this especially in Massachusetts where the religion was so dark and cruel. Once I looked up at the sheriff about to lash me and I could see no sign of God in that man's face. If I were not a Quaker, I think I would be a Catholic.
CATHOLIC: You reject Paul. But you accept Jesus?
QUAKER: I do. I do.
CATHOLIC: Then you must know that He ordained our church. He told Peter that he, Peter, was the progenitor, and that Peter's church would be the one and only church of Christ. What say you to that?
QUAKER: I say that forms change.
CATHOLIC: But never the one unchangeable truth, the one unchangeable church. (At this point Ruth Brinton shrugged her shoulders, a most impolitic response to what Father Steed had intended as a benediction, but when he saw her gesture he laughed.) My Massachusetts was Virginia. I was hounded out of Virginia.
QUAKER: I was shipped out... at the tail of a cart.
CATHOLIC: Could we pray? All of us? Bring in the children, too, and fetch Paxmore.
When the Paxmores returned to Peace Cliff, Ruth Brinton warned her husband, 'Edward, we must get rid of thy slaves.'
'They're on the edge of showing a profit.'
'Profit? Dear Edward, what profits a man if he gain the world and lose his own soul?'
'But the slaves are my property. The whole success of the boatyard depends—'
'Then quit the boatyard.'
'You mean, give up everything we've worked for? Ruth, these men are just beginning to master their trade. They'll prove invaluable.'
'Every day thee holds those people in slavery, thee endangers thy soul. Edward, get rid of them, now!'
'Others have begun buying slaves, seeing how well ours work. James Lamb—'
'We are not governed by what others do. We set our standards, and we are against slavery.'
'Thee may be, but I'm not. I worked for other men and found nothing wrong. Now other men work for me, and I feed them better than I was fed.'
Ruth Brinton became so angry that she shook her obstinate husband and cried, 'Doesn't thee see that this ownership is contaminating thy soul?'
'It's not contaminating Lamb's soul, nor Fry's, nor Hull's.'
She looked at her husband in disbelief and said no more, but that week she compiled a few notes to set her thoughts in order, and on First Day, at the Patamoke meeting house built by her husband, she delivered her historic address, the first anti-slavery message spoken in any church in America, but even these remembered words cannot convey the cold passion she used in uttering them:
'I see a day when the members of any Christian church will be ashamed to hold another man or woman in bondage. They will know without being told that so long as they keep one slave in their possession they are acting outside the will of God...
'I see a day when every member of this meeting will voluntarily award freedom to any slave within his or her possession. There will be no talk of selling them to gain a small profit, nor any talk of manumission after death. The freedom will be granted now, and totally, and without reservation, and on the day this is done every master will tell his wife, "On this day we did a good thing."
'I see a day when every black human being along this river is taught to read the Bible, and write his or her name, when families are held together and children are educated, and every man works for an honest wage. And this river will be a happier place when that day of freedom comes.
'God has sent us Quakers to Patamoke Meeting to give testimony on this fundamental point, and it may take years or decades or even centuries before we are competent to discharge our duties as leaders in this field, but the duty will always be here, silently, deeply, gnawing in our breasts, and the day will come when we shall ask in horror, "How could our ancestors have held other men in bondage?"
'I charge you now, "Go home from this place and set your slaves free." I command you in God's name, "Set them free and hire them for a wage." I call upon you, "Stop using black men and women to earn a profit. Start embracing them as brothers and sisters in God, endowed with every right you have..."
'We are a little gathering, a few people among many, but let us show the way to all.'
On Thursday following her homily Patamoke Meeting held its annual session for the governance of those Quakers who lived along the Choptank, and Ruth Brinton Paxmore's suggestion that slavery be condemned was put before the members in four proposals. Votes were never taken in Quaker assemblies; what was sought was the general 'sense of the meeting,' and discussion continued until this was uncovered and agreed upon. On this occasion consensus was quickly reached on Ruth Brinton's four concerns: 'That the Bible condemns slavery.' Not so, because too many passages in Holy Writ condone it. 'That no man or woman can be a good Quaker and hold slaves.' Not so, because too many fine Quaker families do just that. 'That those Quakers who do own slaves must set them free immediately.' Not so, because the Bible states specifically that men are entitled to ownership of their property. 'That Patamoke Meeting should speak out against slavery.' Not so, because it is not the business of any religion to reverse principles long established and accepted by good men and women everywhere.
When Ruth Brinton was thus rebuffed, her husband expected her to rage; she did not. As the other Quakers left the meeting house she nodded primly to each, and if occasion permitted, said a few gentle words. But when she reached home she assembled the black women who had been working for her and told them, 'From now on, thee works for wages. Each week I shall enter on this page the amount I owe thee, and on the day not far distant when all blacks are set free, I shall hand thee thy wages.' And that afternoon she began to teach them to read.
For some years England had been at war with Holland, a fact borne home to Marylanders when a Dutch fleet had sailed boldly into the Chesapeake, ravaging tobacco plantations and setting fire to shipping. When an attack was launched against Devon, Birgitta Turlock was certain that the Dutch had come to claim her as a runaway, but a group of colonial ships hastily assembled in Virginia, took after the Dutch, and they retreated.
To protect the valuable tobacco plantations from such depredation, London dispatched a forty-six-gun frigate to stand guard at the lower end of the Chesapeake, but the gallant Dutch, best seamen in the world at this time, sailed boldly back, captured the watch ship, and raided Devon once more.
These were troubled times, with strange alarms at sea, so there was little surprise one Sunday morning when a lone ship entered the Choptank, anchored in Patamoke harbor and set its entire crew on the wharf: a large-framed, grizzled Englishman, obviously the captain, and a young, alert Frenchman who could have been first mate. But there was surprise when they announced themselves as Quakers seeking the Patamoke meeting house, which they entered in time to hear Ruth Brinton deliver her arguments against slavery.
When prayer ended, they talked freely with the local Quakers. 'I joined thy faith in London when I heard George Fox preach. His logic would convert any man. My name is Griscom. This is my companion, Henri Bonfleur of Paris.'
The younger man said charmingly, 'There are many Quakers in France, thee knows,' pronouncing the first word as _zere_ and the third as _men-ny_. He told Ruth Brinton that her message was inspired and must soon become general doctrine.
Then Griscom said, 'I'm looking for Paxmore, the shipbuilder,' and Ruth Brinton said, 'He's my husband,' and she summoned him. 'Our ship needs some repairs,' Griscom said, and Paxmore replied, 'We can't discuss that on First Day.' So on Monday he and the two visitors surveyed the repairs needed by the docked ship and decided that it would have to be sailed down the Choptank and up the creek to where the _Martha Keene_ was about to be launched.
When they saw the stout ship that Paxmore was about to finish, they expressed their admiration: 'Better than most they build in London.' Without preliminaries they offered to buy it, but Paxmore dismissed such ideas, pointing out that it had always been intended for the Steeds. 'Ah yes!' Bonfleur said, 'we've heard of that great family.'
Griscom changed the subject by saying, 'If thee can rush our repairs, Paxmore, we're prepared to pay in coins.' Such an offer had never been made before, and the Quaker wondered if these strangers owned any coins, but Griscom settled that. From a pouch tied to his belt he produced an exciting jingle, then gave Paxmore a handful of Spanish dolares. 'Could we have the ship in two weeks?' he asked.
'That might be impossible. We have to launch this one first, and take it on runs... to see where it leaks.'
'Thy work won't leak,' Griscom replied with icy irritation. It was Bonfleur who suggested brightly that the delay might be profitable: it would allow them to explore the possibility of picking up cargo from an area of which they had heard so many fine reports.
'All our tobacco sails to Europe in ships already scheduled,' Paxmore pointed out. 'And in this one... when it's launched.'
The visiting Quakers ingratiated themselves with the local people, attending each First Day meeting and listening with careful attention if members spoke. They helped launch the new ship, suggesting useful tricks whereby the eighty-seven-ton craft could be eased into the water. During the first run out into the bay, they served as crew, working the sheets and watching with approval as the lateen mainsail took the wind. It was Griscom who suggested that a square mainsail might be better, and it was he who rigged it when the ship returned.
The new Quakers charmed everyone but Ruth Brinton, and this was curious, because it was on her that they spent their most obvious energies. They praised her talks in meeting and her cooking at Peace Cliff, but the more they tried to gain her approval, the more she resisted. 'No one seems to ask,' she whispered to her husband one night as the strangers slept on blankets in the kitchen, 'but where are their sailors? Surely they didn't sail that big ship of theirs alone.'
So next morning she asked Griscom, 'Where is thy crew?' and he explained, 'We knew repairs would take time. We hired the men out as husbandmen. At the York River.'
'Which plantation?' she asked, and without hesitation Griscom replied, 'Ashford.'
That night she whispered, 'Edward, they don't look like Quakers,' and her husband, chuckling, said, 'Are we so few that we must all look alike?' But at next meeting she kept her gaze on the strangers and reported, 'Edward, those men were not meditating.'
Her husband decided to ignore such speculation and directed all his attention to speeding up work on the strangers' ship, but the more he urged his slaves to hurry, the less inclined the new Quakers were to leave. They kept talking about the _Martha Keene_ , which had departed on an exploratory voyage to Barbados under the command of Earl Steed, son of Henry and well versed in trade and ships.
On his return young Steed had much to discuss with Paxmore; as with even the most professional new ship, many minor things required correction, but because this was the first naval venture of a house carpenter, fundamental errors of some gravity had shown up, so it became imperative that Paxmore accompany Captain Steed on his next trial voyage, and rarely has a man taken a sadder sail.
The _Martha Keene_ was sturdy; its keel was strong; and it was honestly built. But it could hardly be called a ship. From bowsprit to rudder nothing was right: the former had been incorrectly joined to withstand vertical pressures, the latter was improperly hung if maximum movement was desired. The tiller was not long enough; the boom was too loosely attached; the cleats were not properly positioned; and as anticipated, the mast leaked.
Paxmore took patient note of every complaint and added some of his own; when the list seemed complete he said quietly, 'Only sensible thing is to start over.'
'You mean... a new ship?'
'This one can never be mended.' He hesitated. 'It was built by a man who knew nothing.' Then he added firmly, 'But now I know.'
'No,' said Steed reflectively, 'this ship can be cured.'
'Never the mast.'
'Even that,' Steed assured him, and when they returned he worked as diligently as Paxmore to salvage his family's investment: a new jib boom was affixed to the bowsprit and joined properly; loose caulking was gouged out and hammered home correctly; additional knees were introduced; and all items on deck were so located as to provide easy access without hampering movement. Paxmore even proposed cutting a new pine from which a properly graded mast could be adzed, but this extravagance Steed would not permit: 'It will float.'
But when Paxmore saw his handiwork on the Choptank, he wanted to look away with shame, for it was a botch. Dumpy, heavy in the bow, slow to respond and with a creaking mast, it should not have been called a ship. A thing corrected was a thing weakened, and he wanted to rip it apart, board by board, and redo it properly. But even as it lay there, listing to port, he could see that within its misshapen body there lurked the concept of a true ship, and given another chance, he would bring that concept to reality. When the _Martha Keene_ set forth on its next trial Henry Steed assured its builder, 'When it returns, make a few additional changes, and we'll take ownership,' but Paxmore gritted his teeth as he saw her lumber away from the wharf and muttered, 'I hope she sinks.'
If the colonies were impeded by lack of coinage, they were nearly destroyed by a lack of salt. Along the entire eastern coast there had been found no substantial salt deposits, and imports from the various mines of Europe were either prohibitive or unavailable. Every kitchen in Maryland suffered from this lack, and children could be seen dipping their hands into the bay in hopes of satisfying their hunger for this essential item. Men and women would sometimes dream of tasting a truly salted dish; their bodies suffered strange rashes; perspiration became acid and biting, much worse than the sting of mosquitoes.
Almost every infant industry at one time or another felt the need for salt, and because none was available, occupations that should have prospered never got started or withered. Henry Steed wrote to Fithians:
We perish for lack of salt. Never has the bay produced a better catch of fish. Barrels of the best shad stand on our wharf. But because we have no salt, we cannot lay them aside for winter, and in February we shall go hungry when we could have dined like kings. Tears came into my eyes when I ordered my slaves to throw fish already caught back into the bay and to seek no more.
When our fine new ship the _Martha Keene_ crosses the Atlantic, could you find me a cargo of salt from the Polish mines? Regardless of cost? And will you please send documents explaining how best to evaporate salt from sea water?
When the instructions arrived, Henry Steed saw that here at last was an occupation ideally suited for the Turlocks. It required no great capital, little ingenuity and not much work. But when he went to the marsh, he uncovered a situation which he could not fully understand. Timothy Turlock, old and filthy and with no teeth at all, was in command of a hut as disordered as he. In one corner the blowzy Swedish girl Birgitta sat, apparently drunk. Her seven-year-old daughter Flora could have been a beautiful child had her hair been combed and her face visible; as it was, she seemed a sly little animal with all of her father's worst characteristics. It was the presence of a third female, James Lamb's servant girl Nancy, that disturbed Steed; she should have been at work, and here she was, a saucy little slattern idling her time with the Turlocks. The only inhabitant who seemed even remotely responsible was Stooby; since Steed had last seen him the young man had suffered a savage case of smallpox and was deeply marked.
'I want you to start a salt bed,' Steed began.
'What?' The grunt came from Timothy and indicated his suspicion of anything a Steed might propose.
'A flat place into which you lead salt water. It's covered to keep out new rain, and after most of the water has evaporated, you boil the rest and we have salt.'
'Who wants salt?'
'Everybody.'
'I don't.'
'But can't you see? This would help us all, and you'd be able to sell it for whatever you need.'
'No needs.'
'But the others? Our fish industry. We have to have salt.'
'You make it.'
'No, Timothy. Our land is too high. Your land, here beside the marsh, it's just right.'
'You use our land.'
'No, we need someone to watch it constantly. Timothy, this would be so much easier than hunting wolves.'
'We like hunting.' He appealed to Stooby, who nodded.
'Stooby,' Steed pleaded. 'Can't you explain to your father that he's getting old. He can't go into the woods—'
'Better'n me,' Stooby said, sitting on his haunches as if that ended the conversation.
So Steed turned reluctantly to Nancy, asking her to convince the Turlocks that they should man the salt works, and she understood. In a semi-literate jargon she argued with them, explaining how easy the work would be and how rewarding the results. She made no headway with Timothy, but she did force Stooby to listen, and after a while he began to appreciate the possibilities.
'What?' he asked stolidly, implying by this single word his willingness to listen to the plan.
Steed, delighted that he had at last penetrated the indifference of this clan, took them all to the shore, where he sketched, in conformance to his instructions from London, a salt bed, in which water would be led from the Choptank onto a flat area for preliminary evaporation, then into successive beds for concentration, the last one being covered by a shed, beneath which the boiling would occur.
'Who pays?' Timothy wanted to know.
'I'll build the shed,' Steed said, so during the latter half of 1669 the Turlocks went into the salt business.
It was an aggravating affair. Water at the Turlock marsh contained only fourteen parts of salt per thousand, whereas at the mouth of the bay it contained twenty-nine, which meant that trying to make salt at the marsh was more than twice as difficult as it would have been in southern Virginia. The marsh also got more than its share of rain, so that constant additions of fresh water were diluting the process; and the raininess meant fewer hours of strong sunlight. And when in the last flat, under the shed, a pitiful amount of salt was finally made, it was not of a good coarse grain but was filled with sand.
'Hell with salt,' Turlock growled, and it was now that the trouble with Stooby began; it concerned Nancy.
When she fled from the Lambs she could, of course, have been apprehended by the court, and a magistrate wanted to do this, but Prudence Lamb said compassionately, 'It is better that she work out her own destiny.'
'With Timothy Turlock? She's been whipped twice for lying with him.'
'We have been able to do little for her,' Prudence said.
'But she owes you—what is it?—three years.'
'She owes us little.'
'You sign no warrant?'
'None. Perhaps God intended her for the marsh.'
But if Nancy had enjoyed some months of freedom in the cluttered hut, they had not been without conflict. Her original target had been Timothy; he was the only human being with whom she had ever felt much identification. When she was with him they laughed a lot, and once, when wolf hunting was good, he had even paid a fine to prevent her from being whipped.
But what she did not know was that Timothy already had a wife of sorts, the big Swedish girl whom he had indentured legally, and it was she who had title to the hut. Her child Flora was there, too, and things might have become difficult had Birgitta not been of ample heart. She saw no reason why Nancy should not move in, and if Turlock wanted to lie with her now and then, it was all right with Birgitta, for she had never intended staying permanently with this odious little man. She had been his mate for eight years but had always looked for a practical way of escaping; the presence of this gangling girl was of little consequence.
The trouble came from Stooby. He had always liked Birgitta; she had never treated him as an idiot and had sometimes tried to tell him of Sweden and the early days at the colony where they found her. He could not understand the nature of foreign countries but knew that the Dutch had been harsh masters and that Birgitta had fled them with enthusiasm. He was therefore irritated that his father should now be treating Birgitta unjustly, taking this new woman into the hut, and after watching the affair in silence for some time, his resentment rose until at last he confronted his father.
'You send her!'
'Nance?'
'Birgitta unhappy.'
'Who cares?'
'Unfair.'
'You shut!'
'Birgitta—'
'You shut!' The toothless old man grabbed for his musket and began clubbing Stooby with it, but the noise alarmed the women, who began shouting.
'Fool,' was all Timothy would say; his son said nothing, but that afternoon he disappeared.
He was walking disconsolately in the forest when Griscom and Bonfleur came upon him, and the Englishman cried with some excitement, 'It's the idiot!' And they took him to their ship, where they needed someone to clear away the mess created by Paxmore's black carpenters.
Stooby worked for the strangers during the time his father was trying fitfully to make salt, and the more he saw of the ship, the more suspicious he became of these men. From his long years in the woods he had learned to note and evaluate everything: the way moss grew, the color of toads, the inclination of pine trees, the roots of the larch. It was this skill that he now applied to the visiting ship, and at the end of a month he knew so much about the strangers that they would have been appalled. 'The idiot,' they called him, not realizing that in Stooby Turlock they had brought a natural genius into the heart of their project.
These were the small things he saw: flecks of dried blood where someone had been wounded; stains on the bulwark suggesting that large stores of powder had been kept there; nail holes where structures had once been attached; marks on the bottom deck where barrels had stood; shreds of rope where hammocks had been suspended, many of them; numerous repairs prior to the ones being made by Paxmore, indicating that the ship had suffered, at one time or another, much destruction; and the frequent utterance of one word he could not understand: Marigot.
But it was not the ship or the strangers that agitated him. It was his recollection of Nancy, and one afternoon when the strangers were not present he set forth in his canoe and returned to the marsh. Tying the canoe carefully to the rickety wharf, against the chance that he might have to escape in a hurry, he walked purposefully to the hut, kicked the door open and announced that he had come for Nancy.
She was seated in a corner, half dressed, playing a string game with Flora, and she looked up without concern. 'Hello, Stoob,' she said. He ignored her and walked to where his father lay on the floor, watching two bugs as they wrestled with a dead fly.
'Nancy is mine,' Stooby said.
'Go away.'
'You listen. Nancy is—'
Like a coiled snake, Timothy sprang from the floor, grabbed the musket with which he had once before repulsed his son and began smashing him about the head.
'No!' Stooby cried in a powerful, throaty bellow. 'No more!'
With violent blows he crashed his father back onto the floor, but Timothy had been in many fights, and using the musket to pull himself erect, he came at his son with every intention of killing him.
No more words were uttered, only suppressed grunts. The musket flashed out, catching Stooby in the jaw and drawing blood. Then the boy lunged at his father, caught him by the rag used as a shirt and drew him backward. As Timothy struggled to maintain his footing, his son brought his two hands up sharply, caught the gun and jammed it up against his father's chin, collapsing the old man's face.
But Timothy was not finished. Summoning his considerable strength, he swung the musket in a wild circle, hit nothing, bounced it off a broken wall and brought it to rest with a mighty bang against his own ankle. Suddenly he began to wail, as he had always done when being whipped, and his lamentations became torrential. Screaming and shouting, he lunged at his son, who calmly knocked away the musket and struck the old man on the chin with such force that he fell backward over a chair, banging his head on the floor and knocking himself unconscious.
Ignoring the inert body, Stooby went to the corner where Nancy sat and took her by the hand. 'You're mine,' he said, but as they were leaving the hut Birgitta said, 'No need to leave,' and with a sweep of her hand she indicated that they could have one of the curtained corners, and there they went while little Flora peeked to watch their love-making.
These long days when Edward Paxmore was finishing his corrections on the _Martha Keene_ and repairing the mysterious vessel brought to his yards by Griscom and Bonfleur were difficult ones for his wife. Ruth Brinton, left alone at Peace Cliff, felt driven of God to do what almost no white person in the colonies had so far done: determine what kind of relationship ought to exist between the master and the slave. With all her suasion she had tried to get her husband to grant full freedom to the slaves he had inherited by accident, but he had kept insisting that they were his property, lawfully obtained, and that so long as he treated them humanely, as the Bible directed, he could not be at fault. Always he told his wife, 'I was a servant, I obeyed my master, and from him learned an infinite amount.'
'But thee was not a slave,' she argued. 'Thy term was definite.' He could not see where this made much difference because, as he pointed out, 'I would have been happy to prolong my indenture.'
'But always with the chance of terminating it, at thy request.'
'What difference?' he asked.
At Patamoke Meeting she encountered the same defeats. On four successive First Days she had ranted, and one member had warned Edward, 'Let not thy wife become a common scold.' She was infuriated, that was the only word, that the Quakers, who were so attentive to miscarriage of right, should be so obtuse on this great moral issue.
As for the other churches, what could one expect of them? They served the masters and preached whatever doctrine the plantations required. Even that noble soul Father Steed, who had done so much good in Maryland, was blind on this fatal topic. 'God appoints each man to his proper level,' he said piously, 'and like the slave, mine has been a lowly one, ministering to the wilderness. Mrs. Paxmore, I have gone months upon months without accomplishing one good thing. My life...' Often, for no apparent reason, he broke into tears, and she was not surprised when his younger brother came rushing to the cliff one day with the news that Ralph was near death.
'He says he would prefer more than anything else to talk with you.'
'I will come,' she said, thinking: If I were dying, he would surely come to me.
They had sailed to Devon, but when they reached the creek the wind was against them, so Paul ordered his slaves to row, and as they did, the great black muscles of their arms gleaming beneath the sweat, she could not see them straining; she could see only the three black women who worked for her and an anguish almost unbearable beset her, for she realized that she knew no more of her women than she did of these four strangers. Oh, she knew their names—Mary, Obdie, Sara—and roughly their ages; she was thirty-six and supposed that each of them was younger. Vaguely she knew that Mary was married to one of the men who worked for her husband, but she did not know which, and both Obdie and Sara had children, but under what arrangements she could not guess.
Dearest God, she thought as she sat in the bow of the sloop looking aft, we bring human beings to live amongst us and know nothing of them. Never once had she heard a Steed or any other owner say of his slaves, 'I told Amy and Obadiah to fetch it.' Always they said, 'I sent my slaves to fetch it,' as if they existed without names or personalities. Now, as Henry Steed hurried from the plantation house to help dock the boat, she looked not at him but into the faces of the four men who had rowed, and they were visages in a dream, without skeletal bones to lend reality, or blood to keep them warm, or any other substantial quality other than their age and their ability to work. These men are prime, she thought as she gazed into their faces, and that is all we care to know about them, but they are also human beings, and if we allow them to live among us without acknowledging that fact, we are breeding tragedy.
'Ralph is in sad condition,' Henry said, tears showing in his eyes. 'Be not too argumentative.'
'It is for argument that he summoned me,' she said. Primly, her neck clothed in gray, a Quaker bonnet on her head, her skirts lifted to escape the dust, she walked from the wharf to the house and up the stairs to the added room in which the priest lay. 'They tell me thee is poorly,' she said.
'I'm a small boat headed for the slip,' he said.
They talked for more than an hour, speaking of every contentious difference that lay between them, and at last she said, 'I am sorry, Father Ralph, that no Catholic prelate is available to talk with thee.'
He tried to blow his nose but was too weak. 'May I borrow your speech?' he asked, and when she nodded, he said, 'Thee is a priest.'
'I am a poor woman so tortured with sin that I fear I may not survive the night,' she said.
'Of what?'
'Of slavery. I am torn to shreds.'
'No need,' he whispered. 'No need. God saves the sparrow. He tends the slave.'
'I cannot leave it to God,' she said, her stern face dissolving in tears. 'Dear Priest, shrive my soul.'
'We've shared a river...' His voice trailed off. 'My brothers... call them...'
She hurried to summon the Steeds, and soon the small room was filled with brothers and wives and great-nieces. When he saw them—the offspring of Edmund Steed, the faithful Catholic—he wanted to console them but could not form the words. Now Fitzhugh, ever more striking with his golden hair, moved to the bedside and grasped the old man's hand. 'Don't die,' he pleaded while his elders expressed their shock at his forwardness.
'Come back, Fitz!' Henry ordered, but the priest held the child's hand, and with this expression of love for his distinguished family, died.
For Ruth Brinton the next days were both a torment and a consolation. She turned to the cliff and began the task of discovering who these blacks were that shared the land with her. To her surprise she learned that Mary was thirty-nine, five years older than she had supposed. 'How does thee keep so young?'
'I work.'
'Is thy husband kind?'
'Best man God ever made.' Tears came into large black eyes.
'Does he love your baby?'
'He sing for her.'
Obdie had been taken from a village by a river, and her uncle had connived at her sale to Arab traders. 'He bad. He have seven wives.'
She had caused much trouble in the house and despised being told what to do. She said she was twenty-one, but there were serious discrepancies in her narrative: men in Barbados, men from Devon Island, a child born at Peace Cliff—it became quite complicated. Ruth Brinton tried to engage her in serious conversation, but Obdie suspected her of trying to establish some base from which new duties could be assigned, and she pretended not to understand. There wasn't much anyone could do with Obdie.
It was Sara who caused the confusion. She said she was about twenty-six and that so far she had had four children, two girls and two boys.
'Do you miss them?'
'Long time ago.'
'Do you believe in God?'
'Hmmmm.'
'Do you want to be free?'
Here Sara looked deeply into the eyes of her mistress and said nothing. A veil seemed to come across her pupils, as if she ran the risk of betrayal if her true thoughts were known. It was not an act of insolence, nor one of antagonism; it was just that subjects were being raised which could never be discussed honestly between white master and black slave, and it was dreadfully unfair of the white to raise them.
'Thee is the one who could learn, Sara.'
'Hmmmm.'
'Does thee want to read?'
'Yes.'
'Why?'
Again the veil fell across the eyes, and this time Ruth Brinton interpreted it as hatred. 'Oh, Sara, thee must not hate us for what we do.' There was no response.
Some days later Ruth Brinton went to the boatyard to see for herself what work their male slaves were doing. The visit irritated her husband, who was working on Griscom's ship, for he saw it as an interruption. He watched as his wife went to the sawyers' pit, and he observed with increased exasperation that she was staying there for the better part of an hour, just staring at the two men sawing planks from the heart of an oak log.
That night she said, 'Do Abiram and Dibo haul the saw every day?'
'It's what they're good at.'
'But the one down in the pit? Does he work there all summer?'
'Ruth! We sell the planks they cut—'
'Sell? Thee means we don't even need them for ourselves?'
'Where does our tobacco come from? We sell the planks.'
She said no more, for it was obvious that she was infuriating her husband. But on First Day she felt compelled of the Lord to speak in meeting. There was restlessness as she rose, and one woman went so far as to whisper, 'Would that she might hold her tongue.' But this Ruth could never do:
'I am lost in a dark alley of my own construction, and I simply cannot see the light. I am ashamed that my meeting has refused to assess the danger of the course we are on, and I think it most unchristian for us to dismiss as of no consequence the issues before us. I pray God for direction. I am a soul lost in sin and I pray for guidance.'
So many members of the meeting protested to Paxmore that when he and his wife reached Peace Cliff that evening he spoke to her with considerable harshness. 'Thee must stop dragging slavery into our prayers. The issue has been settled.'
'It has only just begun!'
'Ruth, the Bible has spoken. Our meeting has spoken. Thee heard what Father Steed said before he died. Does thee place thyself above all these?'
'I do.'
'Vain and arrogant woman.'
'No, Edward,' she said softly. 'I am beset with anxiety and I am trying to find the light.'
By common consent they halted conversation on this fruitless topic. These two, who had suffered so much for a common faith, loved each other with a slow, burning fire that would never be extinguished; their four self-reliant children were proof. Edward realized that he would never have loved Ruth so deeply if she had been less stubborn in her beliefs, less willing to endure punishment for them. And she could not forget that this quiet, ungainly carpenter had stubbornly returned to Massachusetts in face of promised death to testify to that same belief. As for his willingness to bear her stripes that day in Ipswich, she did not think of that now, for their love had moved to new levels.
At such moments of domestic conflict it was Edward's habit to quit debate and walk onto the porch, where he would stand for many minutes, contemplating the serenity of his river; it provided a calm greater than any he had known before; whenever he saw the marsh and the quiet trees he forgot his quarreling. On this night a dying moon rose in the east, throwing a silvery light over that placid stretch of water from the cliff to Devon, making it a peaceful lake of incredible beauty. 'This cliff was saved for Quakers,' he said. Then he returned to the kitchen to kiss his wife.
Ruth Brinton had discharged her irritation in a different way: she had hurried to her stove and begun cooking frantically, knocking pans and kettles awry, then chiding herself. Between peeling and baking she would think of what they had been arguing about, and she would smile, for she appreciated the fact that truth was revealed to human beings in different ways and at different times. She herself had been allowed, by God perhaps, to witness the future of whites and blacks on this river, and this clear vision impelled her to speak in meeting. If Edward did not see the dangers, if he remained confused over property rights and outmoded biblical quotations and the prosperity of his family at the expense of slave labor, she must be tolerant until such time as he, and other Quakers, saw what she saw.
She cooked a fine meal. They talked of the strangers' ship. He told her of how Stooby had quit working for the Englishman to live with Nancy and of how his twin brother Charley had come aboard. And they went to bed. But toward three in the morning, when herons begin to call, she was seized by a terrible shaking and sat upright in bed gasping for breath.
'Edward!' she cried in panic.
He wakened slowly and was appalled by what confronted him: his wife, her gown awry, trembling as if shaken by some storm. In a harsh voice she cried, 'I am strangled by sin.'
When many different people through many different generations experience common alarms, it is to be expected that in moments of extremity they will utter cries which are echoes of what has been said before. Ruth Brinton's confession of sin was phrased almost exactly in words used earlier by Edmund Steed at the conclusion of his unsuccessful attempt to deny his Catholicism: he strangled in sin and saved himself only by public disclosure and exile to Virginia. She cried, 'This day we must set our slaves free.'
'What is thee saying?'
'That before sunset we must divest ourselves of all slaves. It is the will of God.'
He tried to quieten her, intending to reason with her later, but she would not be consoled. 'We shall set our slaves free,' was all she would say.
Realizing that from this night there would be no retreat, he attempted several evasions. 'Let me draft a will which manumits them on my death.' No, such delay would be mere avoidance of the basic problem. 'Then let me hire them out to others—men of good deportment who will treat them well.' No, such hiring would not remove the blemish from us. 'Then let me sell them. I'll see Steed before noon. He needs help.' No, because that would be thrusting on others the sin resulting from one's own action.
But when he explained in the careful terms of husbandry that there was no conceivable way in which he could operate his business if he simply gave the slaves away, she stopped arguing and listened, and she saw that her imperative demands were placing on him a burden of moral and economic action for which he was simply unprepared. Tenderly she kissed him and said, 'Edward, I have forever known that thee will do right. By sunset this night there will be no slaves at Peace Cliff, nor ever again.'
'What I'll do—'
'Don't tell me. I can bear no more knowledge.' And she fell asleep.
Early next morning he set in motion his practical solution: he herded the slaves and their children onto a small boat and ferried them to Devon, where the Steeds said they would be delighted to purchase them. 'We daren't call it a purchase,' Paxmore warned, 'or Ruth Brinton would terminate the agreement.'
'There's other ways,' Steed said, and what he arranged was this: from London, Fithians would send Edward a crate of shipbuilding tools and Ruth Brinton a crate of theological works. 'And to make the sale more attractive, Edward, I'll cede you that good land east of Patamoke for a permanent boatyard.' Paul Steed promised to find such white servants and hired-out slaves as might be required in building the additional ships, and in this manner the Quaker Edward Paxmore divested himself of his slaves, turning a nice profit and acquiring a boatyard. On the morrow, when the _Martha Keene_ was handed over to the Steeds, Paxmore would move his business to Patamoke.
There was an interruption, and surprisingly, it did not come from Ruth Brinton; she was satisfied that with the banishment of slaves from Peace Cliff she had accomplished as much as she could reasonably hope for in 1670. Later on, she assured herself, all people will awaken to the problem, and then perhaps even Edward will quit side-stepping moral issues.
The interruption involved violence. Men came running to the Steed warehouse, crying, 'Pirates have stolen the _Martha Keene!_ ' And others shouted, 'They've slain our sailors!'
When men from the warehouse ran to the shore they saw their ship, sails high, heading down the Choptank toward the bay, while on the wharf lay the bodies of three dead sailors.
In the next frenzied hours the people of Patamoke made a series of shocking discoveries. Jack Griscom and Henri Bonfleur had for some years been pirates; operating under various names, they had swept the Caribbean, chasing down Spanish vessels heading home from Panama, but accepting any accidental English traders who sailed into their path.
That much was learned from Stooby Turlock, who had watched and listened. When the citizens demanded angrily, 'Why didn't you warn us?' he replied, 'Nobody asked.' The day was spent piecing together information about the pirates: they had no crew working ashore in Virginia; they had probably escaped into the Choptank at the end of some long and bloody chase; from the moment they saw the _Martha Keene_ they had intended stealing her; and they were doubtless headed back to the Spanish Main for further depredations. Other shocks came as individuals catalogued their losses.
Edward Paxmore's ship had been stolen. On the eve of turning it over to the Steeds it had disappeared; two years of toil had come to naught.
Henry Steed came, distraught, to report that as the pirates were leaving the Choptank they stopped off at Devon and persuaded all slaves working on the island to join them in a break for freedom. 'When Abijah and Amos tried to persuade our slaves to stay with us, Griscom killed them both. All of yours fled, Paxmore.'
The wildest complaint came from Timothy Turlock, who rushed up the river in a canoe, shouting monosyllables that could scarcely be deciphered. Stooby did the translating and informed the listeners that the pirates had persuaded Charley to go aboard to help with the sails and had taken Birgitta as well.
'Did they kidnap her?' a woman asked.
'No!' Timothy blurted. 'She go!'
He wanted her back, and it was his noisy lamentation that goaded the others into action. Edward Paxmore said, 'We must get that ship.'
'How?' someone asked.
'Sail after her. Take her.'
'In what?'
'In their ship. It's smaller, but I fixed it well.'
Henry Steed was determined to recover his slaves, for they formed the backbone of his enterprise; indeed, they represented the profit of his plantation, and to lose them would be disastrous.
But the firm reasoning was done by young Earl Steed, intended captain of the ship that had been stolen: 'If we can put together a crew of sixteen, and assemble enough muskets, we can handle their ship better than they can manage ours, and we'll overtake them.'
'Where?'
This posed a problem. The pirates would have a day's head start, and the faster ship, but they would have only themselves, Charley Turlock and the Steed slaves to handle it. A resolute crew might overtake them. However, the pirates had a hundred possible destinations and the likelihood of locating them was not great.
Now Stooby spoke. Pockmarked, emaciated, poorly clad, he was an unlikely young man to battle pirates, but he had often been insulted by them and they had stolen a woman who had been kind to him. 'I listened. Often they said Marigot.'
'Marigot Bay!' Paxmore exclaimed.
'Where's that?' Earl Steed asked.
'Of course!' Paxmore said. 'That's where pirates raided the barracoons. It must have been Griscom and the Frenchman who bore down on us when I was there.'
He told them where Marigot was and outlined a plan whereby the Choptank men might slip in and retake the _Martha Keene_. Earl Steed, listening intently, judged that retaliation might succeed. 'Can we enlist sixteen?'
There was Steed himself, and Tim Turlock thirsting for revenge, and Edward Paxmore determined to recover his property. Henry Steed wanted to join them, but his son said, 'You're too old,' and Henry asked, 'But what about Timothy Turlock?' and young Steed said, 'That one has no age.'
Stooby insisted upon coming and produced three muskets for the arsenal. Twelve others volunteered, including a notable squirrel hunter with two muskets. Captain Steed told them, 'We must collect all available powder.'
'Why?' Paxmore asked.
'If we cannot recover your ship, I do not propose leaving it for them to gloat over.'
On the long sail to Marigot Bay, Captain Steed, twenty-nine years old, displayed a resolution which those who had known his father and his two uncles would never have suspected he had. He was not gentle like Father Ralph, nor fastidious like Uncle Paul, nor slightly pompous like his father; he was a new breed. To him, England was a respected family memory; he had been educated there, but it was not the _summum bonum_. For Earl Steed, destiny resided in Maryland, and if the mother country was too pusillanimous to protect her colonies from pirates, he would undertake the job.
Over his crew of fifteen he exercised the most rigorous control, impressing upon them the fact that the pirates had already killed five people in this one escape. He appointed Stooby cook, Paxmore the permanent lookout. He put Tim Turlock in charge of the kegs of powder and the muskets, while he himself managed the tiller and the set of the sails and charted the course to be followed.
The voyage had a strange impact on Paxmore, for now he had an opportunity to watch under sailing conditions how a well-built ship adjusted to the sea. The craft had originally been built in the Spanish Netherlands by Dutch carpenters who knew their jobs; it was now more than seventy years old, patched and repatched until the ancestral planks could scarcely be identified, but its lines had been so sweet, its joinery so right that it was still as sturdy as some rotund factor in his Amsterdam counting house.
When he was not on duty Paxmore studied the operation of the sails and confirmed the thesis of his Bristol instructor: the shrouds steadying the mast did not have to be pulled tight like the strings on a harp; they functioned best when slight strain or none was upon them. He also studied the action of the rudder and learned that it must not fight the sea but ride through it, giving direction, and at the conclusion of this inspection he marveled at how different a ship at sea was from one in a dock. All parts work together. You can hear them speaking.
Whenever he found a scrap of paper he sketched the manner in which a real ship was put together, and this information would become the foundation of his boatyard. He suspected that in the seventy years since this old wanderer was laid down, many improvements must have been devised in London or Boston, but these he would acquire later; what he had in this Dutch treasure was a bible of shipbuilding, and for an artist, which Paxmore was becoming, there could be no stronger foundation.
But now the island of St. Lucia loomed, and the time for study was past. It was Captain Steed's plan to lie leeward of the French island of Martinique to assure himself that no other piratical ships were moving in the Caribbean, and then to sail as swiftly and boldly as possible to Marigot, hoping to find the _Martha Keene_ riding there, but when this plan was put into effect it yielded nothing, for Steed had sailed his craft too well: it had arrived two weeks before the pirates. The bay was empty.
He spent the time devising tactics that would give him an advantage when the pirates did arrive. He had to assume they would approach from the direction of Jamaica and Haiti, so he stationed his ship in a small bay which allowed it to be hidden while observing the entrance to Marigot. He then sent Stooby and Paxmore overland to scout the terrain at Marigot, and from the low mountains that rim that splendid harbor Paxmore looked down on the barracoon he had rebuilt, and the wattled homes where the pirates lived when ashore, and the desultory guards they mounted. He was pleased to see that the routine was careless, but it was Stooby who noticed the protected cove where small pursuit boats were tied. Without uttering a word, he indicated how someone must cut those boats adrift, and he spent a long time plotting paths to that spot.
When Paxmore returned with news that Marigot was sleeping peacefully in the sun and that the barracoons were empty, indicating that no trading ships were scheduled, Captain Steed said, 'All is in readiness for Griscom. He must come soon.' And on the morning at about the ninth hour, the _Martha Keene_ hove into view, rolling easily on broad swells as it moved toward anchorage. Deftly it negotiated the entrance to Marigot, disappearing behind the headlands like a beautiful woman entering a night room. Stooby, watching from his mountain, waited until the pirates had rowed themselves ashore. He noted every man that went: Griscom loud and licentious, Bonfleur grabbing the waist of a woman not seen before, six white sailors, but no sign of Charley, nor of Birgitta, nor of any blacks. He carried this perplexing news to his captain.
It was Steed's firm decision that they must strike that night—'The pirates will be ashore, and if I know Griscom he'll be drunk.' He appealed to Stooby for guidance, and that cadaverous, pockmarked waterman said, 'Maybe Charley. Maybe two more.'
'Why won't the others come back?'
'Drunk.' Earl Steed, like the older men in his family, had considered Stooby Turlock an imbecile, and yet he was now prepared to rely on him, for the strange fellow had an animal cunning that produced startling results. Stooby looked at the world, digested what he saw, and reached conclusions. Now he told Steed of the cover where the pursuit boats lay—'I cut loose.'
Then Steed explained his tactics: 'At dusk we'll row this big ship down to Marigot. Stooby, you and Tom go overland to cut the boats adrift, then swim out and we'll pick you up in the rowboat. Squirrel Hunter, you're in charge of the rowboat. Paxmore and I will lead the boarding party. And when we get aboard, raise the anchor. Or cut the chain if necessary, and if this wind holds, we'll maneuver the _Martha Keene_ out of the harbor, slap some sailors on her, and be off with both ships to Maryland.'
'And if there is a numerous guard aboard?' Paxmore asked.
'We cut their throats,' Steed said matter-of-factly, and when he saw Paxmore wince, he added, 'Remember, they've killed five of ours already. They'll kill all of us if we give them a chance.'
'And if they resist?' Paxmore asked.
'Stooby and I will fire on deck. Squirrel Shooter from the rowboat.'
'The shore will hear.'
'They'll find no boats. Stooby takes care of that.'
'And if the wind fails? And we can't move the ship?'
Captain Steed pointed to the barrel of powder resting in the rowboat. 'We burn her to the water's edge.'
'Agreed,' Paxmore said. Then, quietly, he said, 'I would not like to carry a knife or a musket.' When Steed assented, Paxmore said, 'But if we must burn the ship, let me light the fires.'
Steed nodded and said, 'Stooby, off to get those boats,' and the waterman was gone.
The others waited aboard ship till the agreed-upon hour, then launched the rowboat and held it close astern while Steed, Paxmore and Squirrel Hunter climbed down. Using small paddles instead of oars, they penetrated Marigot Bay, listened to the revelry ashore, and waited apprehensively until they saw, in the gloom, Stooby and his mate swimming toward them like a pair of beavers.
Steed was alarmed by what Stooby reported: 'Quiet, so we swim to ship. Almost empty.' One accidental glance by a watchman would have spotted the swimmers and ruined the expedition; what Steed did not consider was that no watchman would have spotted Stooby Turlock, who could slip through water without leaving wakes or splashes.
The five rowed silently to the offshore side of the _Martha Keene_ , and when Paxmore held his hand out to prevent them from bumping, he could almost identify which plank he was touching and when it had been attached to the ribs. He patted the dark ship as if it were a pet.
It had been planned that at this point Captain Steed would take over, making crucial decisions as to whether a boarding should be attempted, but to his astonishment Stooby Turlock started talking in a loud voice, using a mixture of Choptank Indian and broken English that no one could have understood but his twin brother Charley, who ran to the side of the pirate ship, peered down into the darkness, and began calling back. The brothers spoke freely for half a minute, during which Paxmore was paralyzed with fright, after which Stooby cried almost loud enough to be heard onshore, 'Nobody here but Charley!' And he was up the side of the ship.
He was followed by Steed and Paxmore, and after a moment by the swimmer who had helped Stooby. Each was greeted by Charley's bear hugs and indecipherable gruntings, and after a delay the invaders attacked the problem of getting the ship under way and out of the harbor.
It proved impossible. The anchor could not be sprung loose. The sails were down and stowed. The invaders had not enough power to row the lumbering craft. And lights were beginning to show onshore.
'Ho, Charley!' came Griscom's deep voice. No response from the huddled raiders. 'Charley, you idiot! Who's there?'
Squirrel Hunter, who had been left guarding the rowboat on the offshore side, had pulled himself around the stern end of the _Martha Keene_ , and now with the most careful and deliberate movements took aim at the pirate holding the lantern. With one shot he killed Griscom, and hell erupted. There were shouts and screams and running, and little Bonfieur had the good sense to stay hidden behind a tree, for when Squirrel Hunter grabbed his second musket, he picked off another pirate.
'We've got to burn the ship!' Steed cried, and Paxmore hauled up the keg of powder, but Stooby was already working with his brother, and deep in the bowels of the oaken ship—so strong, so ugly—they had spread powder from the pirate's store and without instruction had touched it off. A powerful flame surged out of the hatchways, with the twins appearing in its midst, slapping at their burning hair and chortling gleefully.
'Set fire!' Steed shouted to Paxmore, but there was no need. Stooby's blaze swept across the deck, reached Paxmore's keg and ignited an enormous fire.
'Out of the lights!' Steed shouted as gunfire started from the shore. Running to where he had left the rowboat, he started to climb down, but the boat was not there.
'Where in hell is the boat?' he bellowed.
'Here!' Stooby cried from the flaming darkness, and there it was, on the wrong side, in full target, with Squirrel Hunter and the two Turlocks gunning down pirates as if they were Choptank ducks.
'God damn it, bring that boat over here,' Steed roared, but Edward Paxmore warned him, 'No need to swear. This ship will sail no more.'
Captain Steed would never forget the return voyage from Marigot Bay. As he explained later to his father:
'The Turlocks stayed together like the witches in _Macbeth_ , stirring an evil brew, and every six or seven minutes all three would roar with laughter and punch one another and roll about the deck and giggle with delight. And what, pray tell me, was the cause of their glee?
'Griscom and Bonfleur had proved to be monsters. They beat Charley and put burning tapers in his ears and made him dance while they drank, but every so often as we sailed Charley would remember how the squirrel hunter had shot Griscom dead and he would fall backward like Griscom and the three would roar with satisfaction.
'The pirates had stopped at Jamaica, where Griscom traded Birgitta to another pirate, and whenever Charley told of how in her farewell she approached the gangplank leading to the wharf at Port Royal and slapped Bonfleur in the face and pushed Griscom so that he fell backward, Timothy Turlock would bellow with delight, and slap his sons and roll on the deck, demanding that Charley repeat the story of her leaving.
'They stopped at Haiti, too, and when Charley reported what happened there, all the Turlocks chortled, because Griscom had talked our slaves into leaving with him by promising them freedom on his island... no work... good food... women... drink. Abijah and Amos knew that this was impossible, and they tried... Well, as you know, the pirates killed them. So at Haiti the slaves reached their paradise, and all were sold into that hell, and none will live a year. In this conclusion the Turlocks found great amusement.
'But it was to Charley that we owe our good fortune on this trip, because he had heard the pirates plotting to capture a salt ship out of Sal Tortuga, and I had not known that salt was mined there, so we changed course and bought a shipload of the precious stuff, knowing that in Maryland it would be our fortune.'
Concerning Edward Paxmore's behavior, Steed could offer only sketchy reports: 'The first three days of our return trip he prayed for absolution, and when I asked why, he said, "I resorted to violence," and I reminded him, "But we took your ship from them," and he replied, "Yes, and I reveled when Griscom was shot, and for that I am ashamed." '
But after three days of moral confusion, Paxmore's countenance cleared and he began to put in order his marine drawings and fill the vacancies until he had as complete a manual of shipbuilding as could have been collected in America at that time. When this was done he fell into a positive euphoria, and one night, hungry for someone to talk with, he pestered Captain Steed on the quarterdeck: 'I know now that when a man finishes some important task, like writing a book, when the last word is written he wants to start over and do the job right.' Steed looked at the stars.
'When the _Martha Keene_ caught fire and we watched the flames consume it, I was filled with satisfaction, even though it was my loss.'
'You'll cover all losses with our sale of salt.'
'It was my ship. I had toiled over it, dreamed upon it. My blood was in it, and when we launched it I had prayed it would float. But when it sank I was exultant, because I could start over and build a real ship.'
Captain Steed told his father, 'And there he stayed all night, striking his leg with his fist and muttering over and over, "A real ship, a real ship." When I went below for soup he was still there, moving his arms as if designing spars and curves.'
He was there when the captain returned to the deck, but he was not noticed, for a strange affair was taking place at the edge of the hold containing the salt. Timothy Turlock, recalling the hours of fruitless work he had spent trying to evaporate salt on the Choptank, was elated to think that on Sal Tortuga it could be mined like sand, and in the sheer joy of knowing that he would not have to work again, he was pissing into the hold.
'Get away from there!' Steed shouted. 'Charley, get that damned fool back from that salt.'
'Pop!' Charley grunted, adding words that were unintelligible. When his father refused to listen, Charley pushed him away. He stumbled, backed against the railing and fell overboard.
'Turn the ship!' Captain Steed shouted, but there was no way to do so. 'Get that boat in the water,' but it could not be lowered. Impassively, the ship moved on.
Steed ran to the railing and tried to throw the gasping old man a line, but it fell far short. The distance lengthened and the old man's arms grew feeble. When he realized that no turn could be made, no boat lowered, he began to laugh, and the last thing those on deck heard was his high, insane cackle as the wake pulled him under.
It was difficult for Ruth Brinton Paxmore to get the expedition into focus. When she sat with the Steeds before the pewter cupboard and listened to the celebrating, she simply could not understand how a voyage could be considered a success when it had ended in total failure, but Captain Steed was obviously pleased, her husband was euphoric, and even the Turlock boys seemed satisfied. It was mysterious.
'Thee still insists the expedition was a success?' she asked primly.
'We do,' Captain Steed said, gratified at the profit from his salt.
'But thee didn't get thy slaves back?'
'No, they were sold in Haiti.'
'And Turlock didn't get his wife back?'
'No, she was traded in Jamaica.'
'And Edward didn't get his ship back?'
'No, it was burned at Marigot.'
'And the Turlock boys didn't even get their father back?'
'No, he drowned in the Chesapeake.'
'And thee calls that success?'
She looked at the participants: Steed was placid and benign with his profits; the squirrel hunter basked in the glory of having killed Griscom and two others with only three shots; the twins were content with some mysterious inner gratification; and the eyes of her own husband were afire with victory. It passed belief, and she concluded that there was something in the world of men that enabled them to define _victory_ in terms that no woman would ever understand. She thought she had better say no more.
But that night, when she was safely home at Peace Cliff with her husband, she was awakened by the terrible reality of the crime she had committed. In her righteousness she had driven Edward's slaves from the security and justice of her home; they had been passed along to Steed for money, and from Devon they had joyfully fled with the pirates, seeking freedom. In Haiti they had been sold back into the world's cruelest enslavement. There, in the most awful jungles of America, they would toil under the lash, and remember their childhoods in Africa, and their decent days with the Paxmores, and within a year they would be dead.
'Oh God, forgive us our sins!' she mumbled as the quivering began. She saw Mary straining in the Haitian fields, that good woman and her family perishing from exhaustion. 'You should be here with me,' she whimpered; even in slavery it would be better to work for people one could love, awaiting the day when wrongs were righted. 'Your death is charged against my soul,' she whispered.
Obdie would die in Haiti, and Abiram and Dibo, and Sara, too. 'Oh, Sara!' she cried in the night. 'We need you.' Her death was lamentable, for she had learned to fight back. In her stubborn way she had conducted a secret life which no white would ever penetrate; she had been difficult and at times even ugly, but on this hideous night Ruth Brinton acknowledged that if she were a slave, she would behave like Sara. 'I would never stop fighting,' she said.
Her restlessness caused Edward to turn in his sleep, and desperately she wanted to talk with him, but she knew that on this night of reunion it would be unfair to throw her guilt on him, so she tiptoed away, wrapped herself in a coat and moved through the silent rooms in which black women had once talked with her. She went to where her own children lay, but when she looked down on them she could see only the black infants she had sent to their death: the children of Mary and Obdie. And she left the room of sleepers.
In the kitchen she opened her accounts book to the page on which she had entered the wages owing them; slowly the sums had grown against the day of freedom. The debts had not been paid and could never be.
In desolation of spirit she went onto the porch, seeking consolation from the river; but on this night the Choptank offered none. A considerable wind had begun to sweep in from the bay, agitating the river and throwing whitecaps. A dying moon hung in the east, casting gray light upon the marshes where geese huddled and on the tips of tall trees waiting to become ships. She looked west toward Devon, but it was hidden in the spray thrown by turbulent waves, and no birds flew.
'The Choptank knows,' she whispered. 'It feels the gathering terror.'
When the sun rose on the stormy scene, Edward found her shivering there, contemplating the spiritual disasters which the good people of this river would always bring down upon themselves.
# _Voyage Five: 1701_
ON SEPTEMBER 14, 1701, ROSALIND JANNEY SET forth on one of the saddest journeys a woman can take. She was leaving her respected home, her family of distinguished ancestry, her two sisters with whom she had lived in harmony, and the dogs and horses that loved her. Such deprivation would have been adequate cause for lamentation, but in this instance she was also surrendering one of the loveliest plantations in Tidewater Virginia, with its own wharves and shipyard on the Rappahannock, and heading for some primitive wilderness in Maryland across the bay, and that was true misery.
But she was determined to make this sad journey in what her family would describe as good spirits. She had been born twenty-six years ago, an ugly child—'And that's a curse when it's a girl,' said her mammy—but in spite of her forbidding looks, her lively father had insisted upon naming her after one of Shakespeare's most beautiful and witty women. 'Fair Rosalind,' he called her, especially when guests were present, and all who heard this doting description had to be aware of its inappropriateness.
As a child, Rosalind burned inwardly at this teasing, for no matter what jokes her father made, no matter what passages he read from the play in which the real Rosalind appeared, she knew that her face was too large, and too red, and too filled with protruding teeth. When she reached the age of twelve and could read Shakespeare for herself in the heavy book Fithians had sent, she found the play ridiculous.
'Imagine,' she told her mother, 'wandering through a forest in boy's clothes, and talking for hours with a young man who'd fallen in love with you when he saw you as a girl, and he never suspects it's you.'
'You could dress in boy's clothes,' her mother said, 'and no one would notice.'
Smiling, she observed, 'But the real Rosalind was beautiful.'
'You'll be beautiful, too, when everything falls into place.'
Her younger sisters, who had grown into handsome young ladies, often repeated this promise: 'When you're older, Roz, everything will fall into place.'
This did not happen. She grew tall, but though she had no lack of appetite, her figure remained distressingly thin. She suffered the ignominy of watching suitors come in their shallops down the Rappahannock, but always for her sisters. When it became evident that the younger girls must make their matches now, while they were in full bloom, as it were, she graciously stepped aside, telling her parents, 'I think Missy should marry the Lee boy. He seems a proper match.' And she also urged the marriage of Letty to the Cowperthwaite lad.
Last year, at twenty-five, she had been aimless, a tall, awkward young woman, participant in no social life and left increasingly alone. She had turned to reading, and one afternoon when summer insects buzzed along the shores of the river, she took sardonic refuge in the play which had caused so much of her misfortune. 'What rubbish!' she sniffed as Orlando laid out the ludicrous plot. But then she came upon that scene in which Rosalind and her cousin discuss the fate of women, and it seemed as if Shakespeare had intended specifically for her every word these two intelligent creatures spoke:
CELIA: | Let us sit and mock the good housewife Fortune from her wheel, that her gifts may henceforth be bestow'd equally.
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ROSALIND: | I would we could do so; for her benefits are mightily misplac'd; and the bountiful Blind Woman doth most mistake in her gifts to women.
CELIA: | 'Tis true; for those that she makes fair, she scarce makes honest; and those she makes honest, she makes very ill-favourd'ly.
That's it! Rosalind Janney thought. Beautiful women are stupid, and the brilliant ones ugly. Well, I'm ugly and that entitles me to be brilliant. So I'll be damned brilliant.
From that moment her life changed. She saw no suitors, for she grew increasingly gaunt and mannish, but she did see how a plantation should be run. She mastered the art of raising sweet-scented tobacco, curing it in long, low sheds, packing it in hogsheads and loading it aboard the ocean-crossing ships that tied up at her father's wharves. She became adept in estimating whether the plantation tobacco would bring more at London or at Bristol, where ships from Virginia rarely put in. And to everyone's surprise, she became quite canny in the management of slaves, knowing when to buy or sell, and how best to utilize the hands assigned to various tasks. After a year of intense study she transformed herself into a proficient manager, never harsh or overweening but keenly aware of all that happened within her domain.
Her father, watching her single-minded concentration, understood the substitution she was making—the manager instead of the mistress—and it distressed him that a daughter of his should be forced into such an unproductive alley. He began to take special interest in her and to talk with her more than he had ever done with her sisters.
'Stop worrying, Fair Rosalind. It's my job to see you catch yourself a husband.'
'I've surrendered that longing.'
'Never! You're too precious a melon to lie wasting on the vine.'
She abhorred the image but said nothing that might displease her father; she did become embarrassed when she discovered that he had been discussing her with young men of the region, offering them a considerable portion of his holdings, including even a stretch of river-front, if they would marry his eldest daughter. There were no takers, for even with six hundred acres plus a mooring on the Rappahannock, this ungainly girl was no catch, and she knew it.
She was therefore irritated when her father continued to press the subject. 'Fair Rosalind, you'll be married sooner than you ever dreamed.'
'What tricks are you dreaming of now?'
He did not reply. Instead he drew his forbidding daughter to him, pulling her into the shade of the spacious house he had built for his daughters and their mates. 'Sweet little Roz,' he whispered, half chidingly, 'did you think I'd allow the granddaughter of a Cavalier who rode with Prince Rupert...'
Rosalind's determination to live with reality meant that even her enthusiastic father's legends must be subjected to rational inspection. 'Our old goat never rode with Rupert, and in no possible way could he consider himself a Cavalier.'
'Your grandfather...'
'Was in charge of horses at an inn, and very daringly he gave Prince Rupert six of the best.'
'And on one of those six he rode off gloriously to fight with the prince at Marston Moor.'
'The dear bumbler never got close to Marston Moor, fortunately for us, because he was undoubtedly drunk... at least I never saw him sober.'
'If I say he was at Marston Moor, and if I say it often enough, he was.'
Like many families in Tidewater Virginia, the Janneys had decided that their glorious ancestor, Chilton Janney, had been a Cavalier dashing across England with Rupert in that unfortunate prince's futile attempt to defend King Charles I in his brawl with Cromwell's Roundheads. Almost no member of Rupert's cavalry emigrated to Virginia after the decapitation of Charles, but many tidewater families, like the Janneys of the Rappahannock, claimed that they had done so. Their hearts were with Rupert even if their ancestors were not. They were entitled, by extension, to call themselves Cavaliers, for they firmly believed that if they had resided in England at that time, they would certainly have ridden with the prince, had he chanced their way. At any rate, they considered themselves Cavaliers and they behaved as such, and that's what mattered.
'I certainly don't intend to allow the granddaughter of a Cavalier to wither on the vine,' Thomas Janney said.
Rosalind, who had never been more deeply engaged in the business of living, thought: If anyone's withering on a vine, it's Letty. She reads nothing, is interested in nothing, and when she speaks it's sheer folly. Yet she's supposed to be luxuriating on the vine because she has a husband, and I'm withering because I don't. Aloud she said, 'For a woman of intelligence, this is an upside-down world.'
'What'd'ya mean?'
She had not intended to say what came out next, but she felt she must puncture her father's vanities. 'Why is it, Father, that when we discuss our family you always speak as if we began with Chilton Janney coming to the Rappahannock in the 1650s? Why don't you mention Simon Janney, who started us off on the James in 1610?'
It was traditional among the Janneys of the Rappahannock never to mention Simon, who had lived so miserably among the swamps of the James, and certainly not his wife Bess, a convicted fornicatress purchased from a ship captain. Secretly they were aware that aspects of Simon's history existed in court records—his acquisition of land, his purchase of slaves, his argument over the ownership of fields along the Choptank, and the manner in which he purchased from Fithians the great estate on the Rappahannock—but they preferred to think that these matters would remain hidden. However, against the possibility of discovery, they had manufactured for Toothless Bess an acceptable lineage: she was now 'Elizabeth Avery, daughter of a prosperous rural family in Hants.'
'We don't speak of those Janneys,' her father said stiffly, but it was known that when Simon and his scrawny wife assumed control of the present plantation, they brought with them their emaciated daughter Rebecca. She was there when Chilton Janney fled Cromwell's soldiers; he was her cousin, son of Simon's brother, who tended stables at an inn north of London, and he was a bright fellow, for he saw quickly that the prudent thing for him to do was marry this graceless girl with the three thousand acres.
He proved a first-rate husband, and after he began to feed his wife regularly, she rounded out into a respectable woman. They had four children, among them Rosalind's expansive father, and now on plantations up and down the Rappahannock there were Janneys, offspring of the Cavalier.
'Father,' she said as he left for the wharf, 'you're a rogue. Don't go peddling me through the countryside.'
Her admonition was futile; a week later when a tobacco ship arrived from London he announced to the entire family, 'Glorious day! We've found a husband for Fair Rosalind!'
Cheers greeted this longed-for news and Rosalind's sisters left their places to kiss her. 'Now our families can all live together,' Letty cried, but her father dampened this enthusiasm by saying, 'Roz won't be living here. She'll be across the bay... in Maryland.'
The Janneys gasped. Maryland! To exile the daughter of a Cavalier family to Maryland was a sentence only slightly less formidable than death, because Maryland was almost as deplorable as Massachusetts. In fact, the news was so depressing that no one could think of a sensible comment.
With studied care Thomas Janney spelled out the terms of the deal he had arranged: 'He's a distinguished gentleman whose ancestors reached the James River forty years before ours reached the Rappahannock, which makes him gentry. He owns two thousand acres... an entire island... plus another four thousand on a fine river... slaves, his own harbor, acres of tobacco...' His voice trailed off in a way to suggest that the bad news would follow.
'How old is he?' Missy asked.
'He's been married before.'
'Did he push his wife into the harbor?' Letty asked.
'She died in childbirth.'
'You haven't told us how old,' Letty pressed.
'He's got a splendid start in life... a substantial plantation... He's forty.'
Another long silence, during which Janney could see his daughters calculating how old the proposed bridegroom was in relation to their father. 'He sounds ancient.'
'He is a husband,' Janney said, emphasizing the second word.
Now Rosalind spoke. 'Have you met him?'
'How would I meet him. He's over in Maryland.'
'How did you hear of him?'
'Fithians. I wrote to Fithians in London.'
'Oh, my God,' Rosalind exploded, 'now you're peddling me through the streets of London!'
'Watch your blasphemy! It don't become a lady.'
'I'm no lady. I'm a woman outraged because her father has been hawking her like a shipload of tobacco.'
'We've been trying to find you a husband,' Janney said stiffly, and when he appealed to other members of the family, the young people nodded; they, too, had been making offers up and down the tidewater.
'How much did you authorize Fithians to pay... if someone would take me?' Rosalind asked icily.
'Fithians assures me that your future husband requires no dowry!'
Rosalind arranged her knife and fork in a precise pattern, then asked, 'One thing's important. Is he of good repute?'
'He is. Fithians have done business with his family much longer than ours. They reminded me...' His voice trailed to a whisper. 'His family had dealings with... Old Simon.'
'Shouldn't you tell me his name? If I'm to be married to him.'
'There is one thing more, Roz. He's Papist.' And before any of the family could protest, he added, 'But he's promised that you won't have to convert.'
'Generous,' Rosalind said bleakly, and then her father passed along a letter forwarded by Fithians in which the bridegroom had put his promise in writing:
I, Fitzhugh Steed, do hereby promise that my wife Rosalind will never be pressed to convert to Catholicism. My pledge and bond,
Fitzhugh Steed
'He's a Steed!' Missy cried joyously, and each of the young people recalled friends who had connections with this distinguished family. Almost every Catholic home along the great rivers of Virginia had sent children to marry the Steeds, and Letty cried, 'Oh, you lucky girl!' But Rosalind looked straight ahead, for she had not intended marrying a man of forty.
So on a September day in 1701 Rosalind Janney left her lovely home and walked soberly down to the family wharf, holding fast to the hands of her weeping sisters. At the final stretch of lawn she looked with apprehension toward the pinnace which had been packed the day before with those personal things she was carrying to her new home, but in its place stood a lovely snow, its three masts yellow, its trim red, its body brown and its water line a shimmering blue. On its stern, lettered in gold, stood the name _Fair Rosalind_. It was a magnificent gift, large enough to sail to London; she would descend upon her new home in grandeur.
Her sisters kissed her farewell; her brothers-in-law did too, with a sense of relief. Her father clasped her and said, 'Always remember, you're a Janney of Virginia. Your grandfather rode with Prince Rupert. Be proud. Be a good wife. And teach your children that they come of good blood. They're Cavaliers.'
She watched her kind family standing on the wharf until they became distant figures in a twilight fairy tale. When they vanished she studied each house, each tree along this river she loved so much, and then the river vanished, and finally Virginia itself, lost in mists, and she began to weep.
Now they were on the bay, that grand, forbidding body of water, and she sensed that her life was being wrenched in half: the sweetness of the past was irrecoverable, the humiliation of the present inescapable. To leave Virginia for the wilds of Maryland! The gentility of the Rappahannock for God knows what savage river! And the sweet English chapel for the Romish Mass! Dear God, in neither Virginia nor England can a Papist hold office, and here I am marrying one! Was ever a young woman forced into a worse marriage?
To her unlistening slaves she cried, 'It's awful for a woman to be put up for sale.' It was this last word which turned her attention to them: How would these sailing the snow find passage back to Virginia? And she asked the white captain, 'How will the sailors get home?'
'They belong to the ship,' the captain said, and it was only then that Rosalind realized that her father had given her not only this handsome new ship, but also the twelve slaves needed to man it. She had expected to take her three sewing women. But the men as well! This was the dowry of a princess.
Next morning, like a good manager, she concentrated on the sailing of her snow; if this was to be her ship, she needed to know its secrets, and that was not easy, for this was a most unusual craft. It had a standard foremast, square-rigged of course, and a mainmast also square, and with such sails she was familiar. But immediately behind the mainmast, and almost touching it at points, rose a curious third mast from which hung fore-and-aft sails, and as soon as she understood the benefits arising from this unique combination, she knew that few ships afloat could outmaneuver hers.
She was in good spirits when her snow pulled into the lee of Devon Island, breasted the eastern headland and turned west to find the creek. As it progressed slowly inland she had a chance to inspect her new home: a giant oak, a lawn as fair as any in Virginia, a rambling wooden house that bespoke decades of exciting living, and on the wharf a handsome man of forty, fair-haired, relaxed in manner, and from the way he carried himself, probably vain and self-indulgent. Beside him stood a petite young girl, and it was she who first offered greetings. Curtsying prettily, she extended her hand and said, 'I'm Evelyn, your new daughter.' The man smiled and reached out to help. 'Hullo,' he said. 'I'm Hugh Steed.'
Rosalind, looking at the handsome pair, knew how plain she must appear to them; she felt that they were part of the conspiracy, the beautiful people allied against the ugly, but she would be perpetually grateful that if they were disappointed, they had the breeding not to show it. She tried to smile. 'I'm Rosalind Janney.'
But when she stepped onto the wharf and stood beside these resplendent people, she experienced the full shame of being an unprepossessing bride. She felt faint and wondered if she could carry this thing through, this marriage arranged by Fithians across the ocean, but then she gritted her teeth, allowed Fitzhugh Steed to kiss her, and thought sardonically: Courage, lass. You're the granddaughter of a Cavalier who rode with Rupert at Marston Moor.
# Rosalind's Revenge
WHEN ROSALIND JANNEY WALKED FROM THE wharf on Devon Island toward the plantation house and saw its random form, with afterthought additions sprawling across the rise, she had the strange feeling that she had been ferried up the bay to bring order into this household, and that without her it would not be achieved. The Steed house needed pulling together, and so did its inhabitants. Gathering her skirt in her left hand, she marched to the task.
Fitzhugh, punctilious in his attentions and gracious in trying to make his proposed wife feel as if she were indeed mistress of the island, led her onto the wooden porch, paused so that she could look back upon the creek and its activity, and said grandly, 'It's all to be yours. It cries out for your attention.'
At this show of generosity she wanted to grasp his hand, but the presence of slaves lugging bundles restrained her. Instead she smiled, showing the firm white teeth that always looked so big. 'Governing a plantation is a monstrous job. You seem to have done well without me.'
He chuckled and told his daughter, 'Show your new mother to her quarters,' and he was gone, his lace-touched coat bobbing in the sunlight.
Evelyn Steed was even more gracious than her father. She was a pert little princess, bubbling with self-assurance and positively eager to help this newcomer establish herself properly. Taking Rosalind by the hand, she led her through dark hallways to a spacious bedroom overlooking the creek, and then, when it might have been time for her to drop Rosalind's hand, she caught the other one and squeezed it tightly. 'We've needed you so much,' she cried impulsively. 'We're all so glad you've come.'
'You're a surprise,' Rosalind said with catching breath, touched by the girl's sincerity. 'I wasn't aware your father had so lovely a daughter.'
'And Mark? Did they hide him from you, too?'
'Who's Mark? Your brother?'
'Older than me and at St. Omer's.'
'Where's that?'
'In France. All Catholic boys study at St. Omer's. If their fathers have ships. Or access to them.'
'I like the way you use the word _access_ , Evelyn. You sound as if you'd had good schooling.'
'Father loves to use big words. Says a gentleman should speak precisely.' With this, she pirouetted about the room, then stopped suddenly and once again grasped Rosalind's hands. 'It's been most awfully lonesome here—with Mother gone, Mark in France...'
'Your mother...'
'Died. Seems years ago.' Again she pirouetted lightly. 'And Father's been fully as lonely as I.' She came to rest directly opposite Rosalind and asked, 'How old are you?'
'Not old enough to be your mother, not too old to be your sister.'
'I like riddles! Let me guess.' She circled Rosalind, surveying her from all sides. 'You're twenty-seven.'
'One year too much.'
'That's a jolly age. But isn't it rather late to be married?' Without waiting for an answer, she asked, 'Were you married before?' And again without waiting: 'You see, Father's already eager to marry me off, and he's been writing to the Claxtons across the bay. Do you know them? In Annapolis?'
'How can I answer if you ask so swiftly?' And Rosalind pulled the excitable girl onto the bed beside her, and there they sat with their feet dangling, grappling with importunate questions.
'My marriage has come late, Evelyn, because I was ill-favored. My younger sisters were as pretty as you, and they married near your age. I've not been married before. And how would I possibly know any Claxtons in Annapolis when I'm from Virginia, which is a long way distant.' But then she became aware that she was speaking crisply and even with a certain irritation, so she softened her voice and asked, 'Is he a pleasing young man?'
'Never saw him. Never saw any Claxton. It's all being done with letters.'
'As in my case,' Rosalind said.
'You, too?' The girl's curls flashed in the air as she swung about to look at Rosalind and laugh. 'So you're a letter bride!'
'By way of London.'
'What do you mean?'
'Your father inquired of Fithians if they had a bride and they wrote—'
'You're Fithians too?' Evelyn cried gleefully, and she danced about the room, making mock introductions: 'Miss Fithian, meet Miss Fithian!' But her laughter died abruptly as she said softly, 'Maybe it's permissible to be a letter bride when you're twenty-six. At my age I'd like at least to see him.'
'So you shall!' Rosalind said impulsively, remembering her own reactions to a similar situation.
'Don't give in,' the girl pleaded. 'Please don't give in.'
'Now just a moment, Evelyn. We're not forming a team against your father.'
'He's a darling...' She hesitated. 'What am I to call you? Mother? Or what?'
'You're to call me Rosalind. I'm Rosalind Janney, soon to be Steed.'
The new snow was dispatched to Annapolis to fetch a priest, and on the fourth day of Rosalind's stay at Devon she was tended by Evelyn, who helped dress her for the wedding. 'I confess I'm most nervous, Evelyn. I've no concept of what a Catholic ceremony is.'
'Me neither,' the girl said. She was unusually flushed, more excited really than her mother-to-be, and it was not long before Rosalind learned why.
'Father Darnley's from Annapolis. I'm sure he'll be able to tell me about Regis.'
'Who?'
'Regis Claxton. The boy I'm to marry some day.'
'Do ask,' Rosalind said, 'and if you feel any embarrassment, I will.'
'No fear! I want to talk with him.'
So Rosalind was dressed by Evelyn and her own three black maids, and although her size prevented them from making her the traditional delicate bride, the laces they attached to her and the flowers they placed in her arms did create a sense of festivity, and she did not feel apologetic when she left her bedroom and walked to where Fitzhugh and the priest waited.
The ceremony surprised her; it was almost indistinguishable from her sisters' in the Church of England, and Father Darnley, a big, relaxed man, did everything reasonable to make her feel at ease. When the prayers ended she asked to speak with him and Fitzhugh alone. 'Our children shall be reared as Catholics. And I will want to attend Mass with my husband, but I think it best that I do not convert.'
'There'll be no pressure from me,' Steed assured her.
'Nor from me,' Father Darnley echoed. He had lived in Maryland too long to retain the missionary zeal of his youth and in recent years had seen too much of the fatal struggle between Catholic and Protestant to believe that the old days of Catholic domination would ever return.
'Do you realize,' he asked, as he folded his ceremonial garments, 'that when our capital was moved from St. Mary's City to Annapolis, guards were posted at the central square forbidding any Catholic to walk on the street facing the new buildings... lest we profane them?'
'Can that be true?' Steed asked.
'It's still true,' Darnley affirmed, whereupon both he and Steed broke into laughter.
'My footfall endangers the state!' Steed shook his head, then warned his new wife, 'You see the infamous circle you're joining.'
'My sisters kissed me goodbye as if I were quitting the known world.'
'In a sense you were,' the priest said. 'But you'll find solace living here in Maryland—with the Steeds and their promise of greatness, and the Catholics and their promise of immortality.' He hesitated just long enough to convey the impression that what he had said was jest. 'I'm famished. We must all eat... and I wouldn't be offended if we also drank.'
Rosalind arranged it so that Father Darnley sat next to Evelyn, and during the festivities, managed by eleven blacks, she kept an eye on her new daughter and saw with satisfaction that a lively conversation was under way. Toward the end of the banquet she moved to the other side of the priest and asked, 'What have you been able to tell her of the Claxtons?'
'A splendid Catholic family, well regarded in Annapolis.'
'And Regis?'
'A fine Catholic' He said this with falling inflection, as if that were all he could say of the young man or all he wished to say.
'But not an exciting prospect for a husband?' Rosalind asked bluntly.
'Exciting? No. Trustworthy? Yes.'
'I see,' Rosalind said, and from the manner in which Darnley turned from her to attack his persimmon pudding she knew that he would confide no more. In his human alphabet young Claxton rated zed.
Now the day ended. Slaves carted away the remnants of the feast and fires were lit in the black quarter, where women, coming in from the fields, were offered pieces of the wedding cake. On Devon Creek the first wild geese of autumn convened noisily and the first really cold breeze swept in from the bay. The priest sat alone in the inglenook, and in her bedroom Evelyn let down her hair and contemplated the unhappy news she had heard that day regarding her intended husband.
In the bridal bedroom Fitzhugh Steed, forty years old, experienced a kind of relief. From the moment his first wife had died, a supremely silly child unequal to the task of living on an island and rearing two children, he had known that he must remarry: the plantation had grown too large and too diverse to be easily handled, and if he wanted it to prosper, he must pay full attention to it rather than to the distracting problems of a household.
Many families in both Maryland and Virginia had wanted to align themselves with the Steeds of Devon, and various marriages had been proposed, but he wanted no more fatuous brides; one was enough for a lifetime. He required someone exactly like Rosalind: older, of good family, and safely past the age of romantic folly. He needed someone to oversee Evelyn's getting married and Mark's introduction to the management of the plantation. As for himself, he had worked out various arrangements, which were proving satisfactory, and sought no additional entanglements from a new wife, but he also recognized that if he did remarry, he would have to honor certain implied obligations, especially those relating to the bed, and he proposed doing so, even though he felt more propelled by duty than by passion.
Therefore, while Rosalind undressed behind a screen he quickly slipped out of his marriage suit and jumped into bed, where he awaited her. When she carried her candle to the nightstand, her dark hair flowing over her shoulders, she looked almost presentable, and from his pillow he cried, 'Roz! You're downright beautiful!' And he reached out his hand. She would never forget that gesture; she often wondered what force of character had been required for him to make it, but she was grateful that he had done so.
'I want to be a good wife,' she said as she blew out the flickering light.
'You're going to be the best,' he assured her, pulling her into the bed.
On the wintry afternoon of New Year's Day, March 25, 1702, Rosalind informed her apathetic husband that she was pregnant, and in the following September she gave birth to a son, Samuel. Often, in later years, she would wonder what miracle had allowed her to have children by her strange and diffident husband; actually, she would have three, two boys and a girl, and each pregnancy would seem an accident, the result of a performance which had no meaning and certainly no spiritual significance. She once summarized her position: If Fitzhugh owned a valuable cow, he would feel responsible for getting her bred to a good bull. He feels the same about me. But then she frowned: 'I'm worthy of better than this'—and she vowed that she would always manifest that worthiness.
After the birth of her first child, Rosalind annoyed her husband by insisting that she be allowed to inspect all the Steed holdings. At first Fitzhugh supposed that this meant the barns and fields on Devon Island, and he was annoyed when she told him one morning, 'Today I should like to see the warehouse at the landing.' When she surveyed the settlement now known in official documents as Ye Greate Towne of Patamoke she was impressed, for although it was little more than a village, it had a bustling quality. The tavern at the waterfront was commodious; the Steed warehouse was imposing; the Paxmore Boatyard quite filled the eastern end; and a bright new courthouse complete with whipping post, stocks, pillory and ducking stool was being built. The town contained only one street running parallel to the harbor, and it was broken by a large square left open but surrounded by posts set in earth.
'That's our slave mart,' Fitzhugh said proudly. 'We do an honest business there.' But Rosalind thought: Compared with the way we managed our plantation on the Rappahannock, you do no business at all. But that will change.
Her energies were directed to Devon Island, and the more she saw of the slipshod way in which the various Steeds discharged their responsibilities, the more astonished she became that it survived. There was little orderliness and less logic; the six thousand acres were planted helter-skelter, and the eighteen white servants and thirty-five slaves were assigned arbitrarily to tasks which might or might not prove productive. The two ocean ships rarely left either Devon or Bristol with full cargoes, and no one assumed responsibility for their thrifty utilization. It was rule by hazard, and the fact that Devon continued to exist was due more to its magnitude than to its husbandry.
Rosalind proposed to change this. She started first with the house itself, a rambling affair which had grown to unmanageable dimensions. Summoning the Paxmore brothers from their boatyard in Patamoke, she asked their advice as to what might reasonably be done to bring coherence to the place, and she kept close to them as they studied the situation. They warned her that they were reluctant to take on new assignments, for the building of large ships and small boats occupied their whole attention. The older brother, who did all the talking, said, 'But we're indebted to the Steeds for our business and we feel obligated. Let's see what can be done.'
They were not excited by the possibilities; too many of the accidental excrescences would have to be torn down, but at one point she heard the older brother say, 'It's a shame there isn't a strong central structure. Then we could telescope.' She asked what this meant, and he said, 'Come with us to the cliff, and we'll explain.'
So for the first time she sailed across the river to Peace Cliff and walked up the oyster-shell path to the unpretentious, restful house that stood on the headland, and as soon as she saw it she understood what the brothers meant when they said _telescope_. The humble house built by Edward Paxmore in 1664 was still sturdy, but after his death the growing families of his four children merited additional space, so a larger block of four rooms had been added, with a higher roof line. And when the boatyard prospered, a real house had been added, with an even higher roof line.
The result was a house tall and solid to the left as one approached it, joined by a lesser middle section, which was joined by a noticeably smaller third. The three buildings resembled a collapsible telescope. 'A giant could shove them all together,' Rosalind said approvingly as she studied the design. 'It's neat, efficient, pleasing to the eye, and perfect for this cliff.'
She was even more impressed by the simple manner in which the three parts functioned, and when she finished examining the last tidy room she asked, 'Could you do the same for me?'
'No,' Paxmore replied. 'Thee can build this way only if the first house is solid and uncluttered.'
'Is ours quite hopeless?'
'Not at all! Thee has a superb location...'
'I know the location's good. What about the house?'
'It can never enjoy this simple line,' he said. 'But it can acquire its own charm.'
'How?'
'Tear down the ugly parts.'
It was as simple as that. To achieve a fine house it was essential that the ugly parts not be amended, but torn down completely. This Rosalind was willing to do, but always as she worked with the slaves as they ripped away excrescences, she kept in mind that solemn purity of the Quaker house, and when the time came to start rebuilding she asked the Paxmore brothers if she might return to the cliff to refresh her memory of what she was after.
It was on this second visit that she met Ruth Brinton Paxmore, now a woman of sixty-nine. 'This is our mother,' the younger Paxmore son said, and from the first moment Rosalind liked this prim old lady dressed in the austere gray of the Quakers.
They had talked for less than ten minutes when Ruth Brinton interrupted the pleasantries. 'Has thee any plans at Devon for the manumission of thy slaves?'
'The what?'
'When does thee plan to give thy slaves freedom?'
The question was so startling, covering as it did a subject which had never been discussed in Rosalind's hearing, that she was unable to respond, but her confusion was alleviated by the older son, who explained, in obvious embarrassment, 'Mother's always asking people about slavery. Thee mustn't mind.'
'But thee must mind,' the old woman retorted. 'This is a question we must all face.' She spoke with such sincerity, with such obvious fire of conscience, that Rosalind said abruptly to the brothers, 'Go about your business. Your mother and I wish to talk.'
They spoke for two hours, discussing first the trivialities of the kitchen and next the profundities of the church. 'I had the blessed fortune of knowing thy husband's great-uncle, Father Ralph. We often talked of Catholicism and he almost persuaded me that if I were not a Quaker, I ought to be a Catholic. I think thee would be wise to rear thy children as Catholics. It's the Steed tradition. My children have married Quakers, fortunately, but I'd not be distraught if it had been otherwise.'
'How many children did you have?' Rosalind corrected herself: 'Do you have?'
'Two boys, who run the boatyard. A daughter, and then very late in life another daughter. Their husbands work in the yard, too.'
'How fortunate!'
In these two hours Rosalind learned more about the Steeds than she ever had in conversation with her own husband: the rare quality of Father Ralph; the fastidiousness of Henry, who had built the family fortunes; and the curious behavior of his son, Captain Earl, who had fought pirates, and established the shipping contacts, and lived as much in England as in Maryland. 'He loved the sea and should not have been required to supervise a plantation. It began its downhill course under Captain Earl.'
'He must have died young.'
'As a plantation manager he died young. Almost at the start. But as a sea captain he must have reached fifty.'
'Then what happened?'
'The scourge of our seas. Pirates. Two of them crept into this river.'
'Yes. Evelyn told me of them. She said they were Quakers.'
The old lady laughed, and Rosalind was surprised at the vigor of her responses. 'Quakers, indeed! They were fraudulent in all things and stole from everyone. Captain Earl pursued them and killed the Englishman Griscom. The Frenchman Bonfleur escaped and went on to be the intolerable fiend he still is. Year after year he sought revenge, and then one day he caught thy father's ship off Barbados... What I mean, Captain Earl was thy husband's father. He captured it, the ship, that is, killed three of the passengers and sent three back to inform Maryland that Earl Steed had been tortured for two days, then thrown to the sharks.'
'My God!' Rosalind sought for a handkerchief, which she held to her mouth. 'My husband never told me...'
'Thee would be well advised, Rosalind, not to use the name of the Lord in vain. This is not Virginia, and thee could find thyself in trouble.'
'Was there no reprisal?'
'Four vessels built by my sons have been taken by pirates. They ravage at will.'
'You speak as if they should be punished... even hanged. I thought that Quakers...'
'We seek peace. But we also protect ourselves against mad dogs. I've always felt that when thy father killed that monster Griscom, he could well have slain Bonfleur too.'
'Isn't this a remarkable confession, Mrs. Paxmore?'
'It's extremely difficult, Rosalind, to reconcile belief with human passion.' She hesitated, frowned, and fell silent.
'What example were you about to give?'
'Is thee competent to hear?'
'I am.'
'I'm sixty-nine...'
'And that excuses your frankness?'
'I think so.'
'Then tell me the unpleasantness.'
'It's not unpleasant, Rosalind. It's the kind of problem by which God tests us.'
'For example.'
'I think thee must assume responsibility for thy husband's other children.'
Without altering the even tone of her voice, Rosalind asked, 'Where are they now?'
'In the marsh,' Ruth Brinton replied. 'In the swamps of human despair.'
'What marsh?'
'The Turlock marsh—the one around the bend of the Choptank.'
And she proceeded to instruct Rosalind in a subject which had never been alluded to at Devon. 'A prisoner named Turlock escaped to the marsh many years ago, before Edward and I reached here.'
'What did he do there?'
'He bred. With any woman he could lay hands on he bred an assembly of infamous children—halfwits, criminals, devious young people... and some worthy of salvation.'
'Why should I become involved with these children?'
'Because...' She hesitated, then said quickly on a new tack, 'Old Turlock found a Swedish woman somewhere, and she had a slattern daughter named Flora, and Flora had a slattern named Nelly, and it's this Nelly...'
'Where did my husband meet her?' Rosalind asked quietly.
'In the marsh.' The old woman spoke with no condemnation. 'He's not to blame, Rosalind. As thee undoubtedly knows, his wife was a poor thing, able to perform only one job, the production of two handsome children. Evelyn's fine, as thee knows, but Mark is a champion. So their father drifted to the marsh, and that's where his three children are.'
'Was this long ago?'
'It's now. One's a mere babe.'
For some inexplicable reason, Ruth Brinton was able to divulge a fact like this without appearing to be scandal-mongering; perhaps it was because she offered witness with such unfaltering integrity. At any rate, she informed Rosalind of the prolonged liaison and of the children that had resulted. It was these children and not the behavior of the parents which concerned the old moralist.
'Nelly Turlock's not qualified to rear them. With her they'll become marsh deer.'
'What's she like?'
'Beautiful, of course.'
'Did she ever live at Devon?'
'Heavens, no! Fitzhugh would no more think of allowing her on the place... It's as if she were one of his slaves. He might lie with her, but he certainly would never...'
'You've given me much to think of,' Rosalind said.
'Thee will live a long time on this river,' the old woman said, 'and encounter many obligations. Thy husband. His children. Thy own. Life consists of sending everything forward. Everything.'
'I came to see your house,' Rosalind said as she bade the old Quaker goodbye, 'but what I saw was my own.'
On the sail back to Devon she tried to evaluate what she had learned, seeking to formulate some kind of rational response: Evelyn Steed was an admirable child worthy of deepest love, and Mark, whom she still had not met, promised to be her equal; Fitzhugh was revealing himself to be exactly as represented, a self-indulgent, moderately capable man content to simulate the management of either a plantation or a marriage; her own child gave promise of being intelligent, and on him, plus the others that might follow, she would have to rely. She could see nothing to be gained by confronting Fitzhugh with her knowledge of his conduct, nor was she distraught by this uncovering of his behavior. On plantations in Virginia owners often became embroiled with pretty, nubile slaves, and prudent wives had learned that ignoring the problem was the sanest way to handle it, and the most efficacious; the infatuation rarely lasted long enough to become publicly embarrassing, and if children did result, they could either be masked in the general plantation population or quietly sold off farther south.
She would survive Nelly Turlock, except for one ugly word used by Mrs. Paxmore. Rosalind had asked whether Fitzhugh's relationship with the Turlock girl had occurred long ago, and Ruth Brinton had replied, 'It's now.' She thought: If it's continuing, with me in the house as his wife... And she began to construct an edifice of moral outrage, augmented by her sudden recollection that Mrs. Paxmore had said that one of the marsh children was a mere baby: It must have been conceived while I was living with him! Her fury started to mount, but soon she burst into robust laughter. Damn my stupidity! I argue myself into believing it's nothing more serious than bedding down with a slave... what happened in the past was no responsibility of mine. But because it's happening in the present, I'm outraged. I shall ignore it equally.
And it was with these thoughts that she began her long retreat from Fitzhugh Steed. If he preferred to frolic in the marsh rather than live seriously at the plantation, and if he needed the transient beauty of this wild creature rather than the stately assurance of an educated wife, so much the worse for him. She began building those sturdy defenses with which women protect themselves from the debacles of the bedroom. Henceforth her focus would be on gardens.
The launching of her famous garden was delayed, for as she began to stake out its paths she chanced to look up, and there stood her daughter Evelyn, now seventeen and blooming like the lovely flowers of autumn. 'How awful!' Rosalind cried impulsively, rising to embrace her daughter. 'I'm worrying about a garden and ignoring the most precious blossom of them all.' She kissed Evelyn, and at table that night told Fitzhugh, 'Tomorrow we start to find a husband for this girl.' And he replied, 'No worry. I've sent across the bay to fetch the Claxton boy.'
But when the Steed slaves reached Annapolis with the invitation, the young man told them, 'I'd not like to cross the Chesapeake till the weather settles,' and they returned without the Claxtons.
When this heroic response was repeated at table, Evelyn blushed; she had sailed the Choptank in all weathers. Rosalind said angrily, 'Good heavens! If I were a young man about to meet my love for the first time...' She paused to calculate what she might do, then added slowly, 'I do believe I'd head into the heart of a hurricane.'
'I think you would,' Fitzhugh agreed. 'But Regis will arrive in good time, and our chick will be married.' Two weeks later, when the bay was calm, a boat arrived from Annapolis bringing not Claxton but Father Darnley, who informed the Steeds that 'young Regis and his mother will be crossing any day now.'
'A sorry situation,' Rosalind grumbled. 'The priest appearing before the prospective bridegroom.' But Fitzhugh reminded her, 'The Claxtons are an important family and must be treated with respect.'
'Why in damnation does a boy have to be brought to his wedding by his mother?' No one responded, for Evelyn was mortified and Fitzhugh was irritated by his wife's outspokenness, and Father Darnley, who served the Claxtons as their priest, deemed it prudent to convey nothing of his thoughts on the matter.
'Very good soup,' he said, and when Rosalind tried to catch his eye, hoping to enroll him in her cause, he stared at his plate. But when the meal ended he could not escape, for as he headed for his evening prayers in the inglenook, she grasped him by the hand and muttered, 'Father, this wedding must not take place.' Still he said nothing.
So when the bay was calm, like a pond protected by woods, the Claxtons came over, but their meeting with the Steeds was not congenial. Mrs. Claxton, from an upstart family with ample lands, led her chinless son Regis up the path from the Devon wharf and shoved him in position to be greeted by his intended bride. He simpered in embarrassment and mistook Rosalind, his future mother-in-law, for Evelyn; the vast discrepancies in their beauty seemed not to register, and when his mother corrected him he simpered again.
Could such a one come seriously to court my daughter? Rosalind thought, and she began the maneuvers which were intended to send this ungracious pair home empty-handed. 'Do come in,' she said expansively. 'This is my husband, Fitzhugh, and I'm sure you know from Fithians' letters that this must be Evelyn.' She lavished praise upon the Claxtons, assuring them that their fame had circulated throughout the Eastern Shore. 'You're known as one of the really great families of Maryland, and we're honored that you've come to visit us. Father Darnley told us of your piety, too.'
Evelyn, of course, saw that her mother was teasing the Claxtons into fatuous reactions, and they complied. 'We're really not one of the principal families. The Dashiells own a much larger plantation.'
Rosalind paid special attention to the young man, showering him with ironic flattery, against which he could not defend himself. At one point she said, 'Father Darnley told us you're an outstanding huntsman,' and he replied, 'One day I shot three rabbits,' and she said, 'Remarkable!'
That first afternoon had been painful enough, but as the visit progressed, things deteriorated. Mrs. Claxton showed herself to be a ninny, and her son seemed determined to prove that he had inherited her salient qualities. Even Evelyn, once so hopeful that Regis might be the one to lead her to a new life across the bay, surrendered such dreams and confided to her mother, 'He is really impossible.'
But during supper on the evening before the wedding was to take place, Fitzhugh coughed impressively and said, 'Mrs. Claxton, I think you and your son should prepare to drink a toast.'
'To what?' the giddy visitor asked.
'To tomorrow. When Father Darnley marries Regis and Evelyn.'
This blunt announcement, which the Steed women had not been invited to discuss, caused a flurry, and Regis had the good grace to get up and move to Evelyn's side, where he took her hand and kissed her awkwardly.
Rosalind noticed that when this happened, the girl flinched, so that night in Evelyn's room she said harshly, 'You cannot allow this wrongful thing to proceed.'
'I am powerless to stop it.'
Rosalind shook her. 'You are never entitled to use that excuse. Any human being with strong character can oppose wrong.'
'I'm seventeen!' Evelyn wailed. 'And Father worked hard to arrange this marriage.'
Rosalind broke into ridiculing laughter. 'Dearest child, age is nothing. Your father's vanity is nothing. All that matters is that you build the best life possible. That you become the best human being possible. With Regis Claxton you'll have no possibilities. The wastage will be appalling.'
'But I might never marry. Here there are no Catholics.'
'There were no Catholics for your father, either, and he took me. Believe me, Evelyn, you're a special girl. You have a particular beauty. Men will seek you out, and there's no law which says they have to be Catholics.'
'He was the only one Fithians could find.'
'Fithians! God damn Fithians.'
The force with which Rosalind uttered these words startled the girl, and she turned to ask her mother directly, 'Has it been so bad?'
'Not as you think,' Rosalind replied. 'Your father's been most kind, Evelyn, as you've had opportunity to witness. But the system! This writing of letters of application to Fithians in London! This stupid arranging of lives according to external patterns...' Rosalind began to stalk about the room, a towering figure of rebellion.
'Is it Nelly Turlock?' Evelyn asked.
Rosalind stopped abruptly and stood at some distance from the bed, her arms akimbo. She had never spoken of Nelly to her daughter, for she had not been sure that the girl knew of her father's misbehavior, but now the subject had been broached. 'Who bothers a moment about Nelly Turlock? Your father's found a certain comfort in the marshes, and I'm unconcerned.' She paused. 'Have you seen the children?'
'They're adorable. The loveliest white hair. I suppose you've heard what they're saying about Nelly?'
'I've heard all the dismal stories, Evelyn, and they impress me little. When you marry there'll be the big house where you live with your husband, and there'll be the little house where he lives with one of the slaves or one of the Turlocks and the two need never meet.'
'I doubt that Regis would take one of the slaves.'
'That's what's wrong with him,' Rosalind said. 'In fact, everything's wrong with him, and I plead with you not to marry him.'
'He's my best chance,' the girl cried in true anguish, stuffing her face into her pillow.
Now Rosalind took the sobbing Evelyn into her arms. 'We're talking of a human life. Yours. You'll live many more years, and they must account for something. You must be a woman of character.'
It was clear that these words meant nothing to the bewildered girl, so Rosalind shook her, making her attend. 'Two images flood my mind, and I want them to flood yours, too. The first concerns my sisters, Missy and Letty. They were lovely girls, much like you, and they had untold possibilities, but they scurried into meaningless marriages, with meaningless young men, and now they lead meaningless lives. I could weep with pity when I think of them. The other image involves a woman you know, Mrs. Paxmore.'
'The old woman who rants about slavery?'
'No. The old woman who has never feared to testify concerning life. As a consequence, she has a beautiful home, fine children and better grandchildren. And most important of all, a beautiful soul. Be like her, don't be like my sisters.'
At last Rosalind had said something that Evelyn could comprehend. 'Are you trying to become like Mrs. Paxmore?' she asked.
Rosalind considered this. Never before had she expressed her intentions openly, for she had known no one with whom she could talk sensibly, but now she recognized the relevance of Evelyn's question. 'Yes,' she said slowly, 'I suppose I do want to be like her.' Then her voice became harsh. 'And tomorrow you can judge whether I have succeeded.'
When Evelyn tried to probe the meaning of this threat, Rosalind bent down and kissed her. 'You are infinitely precious to me, and I cannot stand idle and watch you waste your talents on a dunderhead. Indeed, I cannot.'
At breakfast next morning she warned her husband that this foolish marriage must not go forward, but he ignored her protests on the grounds that to halt things now would be embarrassing. She tried to point out that a moment's trivial embarrassment was less significant than a lifetime of wastage, but he had already summoned the priest and the servants. The Claxtons came down late, hoping to make a grand entrance, but when Rosalind saw them she could not stifle her laughter. 'Fitzhugh,' she whispered, 'you can't go ahead with this.'
'Everyone's here,' he said brightly, stepping forward to greet Mrs. Claxton.
But when he led the two young people into position before Father Darnley, Rosalind cried in a loud voice, 'Stop this farce!'
'What...' Mrs. Claxton made a strangling sound and looked as if she might faint.
'Get them out of here!' Rosalind ordered. 'Out, I said! All of you, out!'
The slaves responded first, retreating through an open door. The white indentures followed, shoved along by Rosalind, who then faced the bewildered Claxtons. With her arms bent at the elbow, as if her fists were eager to strike, she said quietly, 'The farce is ended. Take yourselves home across the bay.' And she did not let up until her visitors were on the porch with their bags beside them.
'This is infamous!' Mrs. Claxton protested as Fitzhugh attempted to console her, but Rosalind would permit no conciliation.
'You are to go home,' she said sternly. 'This has been a dreadful mistake, and I have behaved poorly. But you must leave.' And she stood in the doorway as if guarding it lest they try to return to the house. Tall and resolute, she glowered at them like some clear-seeing goddess, and after a while they crept to their sloop, whose bow headed toward Annapolis.
Fitzhugh was outraged by his wife's behavior and might have tried to chastise her, except that Father Darnley was watching, doing his best to appear dissociated from this scandal; but as the priest went to the sloop, which would take him, too, back to Annapolis, Rosalind involved him in her strategy. 'Sweet Father, you know what happened. Now find us a bridegroom for this girl.' He affected not to hear, so she placed herself before him and said, 'Tell the young men that I shall settle upon her a great share of my own dowry. But for the love of God, do something to save this soul.'
When the sloops were gone and the Steeds were left to absorb the reverberating shocks Rosalind had generated, Fitzhugh started to fulminate, believing that to be his duty as man-of-the-house, but his attempts were so ludicrous that Rosalind ignored him. Clasping his daughter—really her daughter—she whispered, 'On this day we did a good thing. Fifty years from now, gentle flower, you'll look back and laugh, and bless me, for I have saved your life.'
In February 1703, when annual storms swept the Chesapeake, a small boat put into Devon Creek bearing a solitary traveler, a young man, his hair tousled by wind and rain. Finding no one at the wharf, he pulled his homespun jacket about his damp shoulders and started toward the house.
Belatedly an indentured servant spotted him and started shouting, 'Stranger coming to our landing!' And down the servant came to warn the young man that this was Steed property.
'I know,' the young fellow said, plowing straight ahead. 'Father Darnley sent me.'
From the doorway Rosalind Steed heard these words and rushed out into the rain to greet the stranger. 'We are so glad to meet you,' she said in great excitement, clutching the young man's arm and leading him to the porch. She watched admiringly as he stamped his feet and swung his arms to brush away the rain.
'Name's Thomas Yates, James River. Father Darnley told me you have a—'
Rosalind interrupted, for she saw no need to mask her delight. 'Evelyn!' she cried triumphantly. 'A young man's come to see you... through the storm.'
Now she was free to tend her garden. Her daughter was married. Her son was doing well at the college in France. And her husband had resumed his routine of some days on Devon, some in the marsh. Even the warehouse in Patamoke was flourishing.
She made it clear to the workmen that she did not wish a formal garden in the English style, like the ones she had known along the Rappahannock. She respected geometrical patterns and understood why they were favored by ladies whose fingers never touched soil; through a change of seasons and alternating blooms such gardens could be attractive, but she loved to work the soil, and to see large results, and this produced her basic strategy: My principal flowers will be trees. Because when you plant trees, you're entitled to believe you'll live forever.
So first she studied what trees were already in place, and fortunately, scattered in the space between the wharf and the house stood maples and elms of magnitude, and these she trimmed and cultivated to serve as cornerstones of her planting. Her pride was a white oak of majestic proportion: thirty feet at the base, nearly eighty feet tall and more than one hundred and forty feet in the spread of its mighty branches. It provided enough shade to protect an entire lawn; it had already been sovereign when Captain John Smith named the island, and to it the other trees related.
The lawn contained no red maples, so her opening operation in the fall of 1703 was to transplant three such trees, two of which promptly died. 'You can't move trees of that size and expect them to live,' her husband warned her, but she moved three more, just as large, and these lived. In spring they were harbingers, in autumn the glory of the landing, visible from all parts of the creek as one approached by boat.
Upon this solid foundation she composed the rest of her stupendous garden: dogwood for spring, mountain laurel for summer and huge plantings of pyracantha for autumn, at which time the dogwoods would reappear with clusters of red berries.
'No tulips, no hollyhocks,' she said. 'And for heaven's sake, no box. I want nothing that has to be coddled.' She avoided also the peony, the tall magnolia, the phlox and hawthorn. But she was not averse to decoration, for when her large plantings were in position she said, 'Now for the jewels,' and in two dozen practical places she planted holly trees—two male, twenty-two female—expecting bright berries of the latter to provide glow at sunset. And when the hollies were started—some to grow forty feet tall—she added her final touch, the extravagant gesture which would make this stretch of lawn her timeless portrait: in seven open areas where the sun could strike she planted clumps of daylilies, knowing that when they proliferated the areas would be laden with tawny-colored flowers of great vitality and brilliance. July at Devon Island would be unforgettable; the daylilies would see to that.
In 1704 and 1705 her gigantic gardens were sprawling disappointments, for the transplanted maples were husbanding their strength and the daylilies had not begun to multiply—fifty would eventually result from one original—while the rudely transplanted dogwood seemed half dead. Small gardens with small flowers can be transformed in a matter of months; gardens focusing on trees require years. But by 1706 all parts seemed to merge: the oak dominated, its indented leaves bright in the sun, and the maples lent color. But it was the procession of the seasons that gratified: the shimmering white dogwoods of spring; the undisciplined daylilies of early summer; and in the autumn the exuberance of the pyracantha, that noblest of shrubs; and the turning colors of trees set against the permanent green of the enduring pines.
Her garden was a triumph, as durable and generous as she, but sometimes she felt that it displayed its greatest glory in midwinter, when bitter winds swept in from the northwest and snow covered all, with only the pines showing color: now the dogwood slept, and the hidden roots of the daylilies, and the visible buds of the laurel. Even the oak was barren, but then as she walked among the bare limbs she would catch sight of the hollies, those fine and stubborn trees to which the birds of winter came, seeking red berries, and her heart would leap and she would cry: 'When the last berries are gone, spring begins and all this starts again.' And she would run in the snow and visualize the beautiful gardens of summer, with the laurel as pale and lovely as any iris.
The garden of her personal life was not flourishing. Her husband now offered no excuses for his frequent absences, and she had to suppose that he was spending them at the marsh. She had never seen Nelly, but chance comments from infrequent visitors kept reminding her that the girl was beautiful and lively—'She boasts an excellent figure, and why she isn't married is a mystery.' The best explanation came from an acidulous woman whose husband managed the Steed offices in Patamoke: 'She's a Turlock, and they rarely wed.'
Rosalind had made cautious inquiries as to Nelly's children and learned that they were rollicking rascals, with their grandmother's Swedish blond hair and blue eyes—'Which is a wonder, seeing that they're mostly Turlock.'
'What do you mean?' Rosalind asked.
The conveyor of this information was a woman who envied the Steeds and now pondered how best to wound the mistress of the island. Biting her lower lip in study, she started to speak, then hesitated, then babbled on, 'You know, of course, that Flora Turlock, that's Nelly's mother... Have you ever seen her, Rosalind?'
Mrs. Steed shook her head, and the woman said, 'Of course not, how would you? _You_ don't go to the marsh.'
Rosalind smiled, offered more tea and asked, 'What were you trying to say?'
'It's rather ugly, but it's true. Nelly's mother was Flora. Her father was Charley.'
'Charley who?'
'Charley Turlock—Flora's brother.' The woman held her teacup to her lips, then added, 'Her brother. She had a baby by her brother.'
Without considering what she was saying, Rosalind replied, 'I read somewhere that the Pharaohs of Egypt married their sisters.'
'Are you defending such behavior?'
'Not at all. I'm merely saying...' She left the sentence unfinished, for it occurred to her that no words would satisfy this woman, and that whatever was said would circulate viciously throughout the community.
'You know, of course,' the woman continued, 'that Flora was publicly whipped for her sin?'
'There seems to be a great deal of women being whipped in Patamoke.'
'But...'
'And I wonder if it does any good.'
'Mrs. Steed...'
'And that damnable ducking stool. They reserve it for women, too, and I suppose that if I weren't the wife of Fitzhugh, I'd be lashed to it and ducked in the Choptank.'
This was heresy, and the visitor assessed it as such; by the shocked look on her face she betrayed her plan to report widely what Mrs. Steed had said, but Rosalind was not finished. 'I really don't care whether you repeat what I just said or not. The whipping of women and the ducking stool are the hideous acts of frightened men, and I am sick of them.'
Four days later Fitzhugh returned from Patamoke, distraught. 'In town the talk concerned your challenge to the authorities.'
'You mean what I said in defense of Flora Turlock?' She paused, then added, 'Nelly's mother. Your Nelly's mother.'
This name had never before been spoken in Fitzhugh's presence, and he was incensed at what he considered his wife's lack of good breeding. 'Wives don't speak of such things. You be careful what you say about whippings... and the ducking stool.'
'Are you threatening me, Fitzhugh? You must know that's idle.'
'I'm reminding you that the magistrates can sentence you, if they wish.'
'They'll not wish,' she said brightly. 'They'd be loath to humiliate you.'
'And what do you mean by that?'
'That so long as you live I can say what I wish.' Staring at him as if he were a stranger, she added, 'You're no longer my husband, Fitzhugh, but you are my protector. And under your protection I shall do as I please, and it pleases me to warn you that the punishments you men mete out to women are barbarous and must be stopped.'
'When you speak like that, Rosalind, you are very unwomanly. For you deal with things that should not concern a lady.'
Fitzhugh was wrong in thinking that because his wife was ungainly she was unfeminine. No lady on the Choptank awaited the arrival of the next fashion doll more eagerly than she, for whenever she learned that a ship was scheduled to arrive from London, she contrived to be first aboard to catch the precious prize.
Since it would have been impractical for the London fashion houses to publish books showing their creations, and since the newspapers and magazines which reached the colonies were deficient in illustrations, it had become the custom for merchants to construct articulated dolls, fourteen inches high, and dress them in exact replicas of the latest mode. Sandaled and bewigged, these enchanting little figures were boxed and shipped abroad, so that women in the remotest backwaters could know the proper length of hem.
In May 1706 the snow _Fair Rosalind_ made a scurried trip from London and put into Devon with one of the most tantalizing dolls ever to have crossed the Atlantic. It showed a trim little lady wearing a pale-blue coif adorned with six tiny rows of lace and a dress that caught the breath because of its innovation. Over a gold-brocaded stomacher hung a noble sacque made of heavy bombazine. Rosalind had seen sacques before and liked their normal flowing lines, but this was different, because just below the hips it flared outward at least eighteen inches on each side.
'How do they do it?' she asked her fascinated sewing slaves as they fingered the cloth, trying to detect how they must cut it to duplicate the model. Deftly they lifted the layers, and what they uncovered evoked gasps of admiration, for the heavy fabric rested upon four hoops made of delicate, bent wood.
'How wonderful!' one of the slaves cried, dropping the skirt, raising it, dropping it again.
'We can make!' another said enthusiastically, following one of the seams with her finger.
But Rosalind had developed a sure sense of what to wear and what to avoid, and she disappointed the slaves by saying, 'Not for me. Those hoops would make me look even bigger.' The women sighed as she cut the hoops away with her little scissors, but they had to agree that when the heavy sacque was allowed to fall free, it looked better for a tall woman.
'That's to be it,' she said, and before the doll had been in America two hours, its lines were being reproduced not in heavy bombazine but in soft dimity, and when the new dress was finished, and the lace cap made, and the slippers covered in red, she presided at her table with added assurance, for she knew she was dressed as well as the most fashionable women of London.
Thoughts of England reminded her of Mark, and she became impatient for his return. She knew him only as the initiator of letters from Europe, but his manner of writing was so distinct, and his wit so apparent, that he was becoming a real person whom she knew she would like:
I am informed through my skill at reading letters upside down as they rest on other people's desks that Fithians have arranged for Tom Yates to assume control of eleven thousand acres on the James. They've warned him that he may be overstretching himself, and I wonder too, but at the foot of their copy of the letter the senior Fithian wrote: 'This young lad seems a good sort. I think we shall be safe in extending him credit.' What gave me assurance was that in their last order, Tom and Evelyn asked for three crates of books.
She was therefore delighted when, in January 1707, Mark tested his luck once more by slipping a letter home with the captain of the swift-darting snow _Fair Rosalind_. When accepting the letter the captain warned, 'It'll take God's luck for us to sneak our way past the devils.' But he had escaped the pirates, and when his gaily painted snow tied up at Patamoke, there was much admiration for his daring, and Fitzhugh showed Mark's letter through the town and said, 'The boy's coming home on the October convoy.' And townspeople replied, 'Pray God the ships get through.'
It seems incredible, but in these years the Chesapeake shivered under a state of siege; more than a hundred pirate ships—English from Jamaica, French from Martinique—clustered at Cape Henry, waiting to pounce on any merchant ship from Virginia or Maryland foolhardy enough to risk running the blockade. And if the frightened merchantmen remained huddled at their wharves, the pirates ventured arrogantly into the bay, ravaging any plantations on exposed headlands. Many an English family on the James River, or the York or Rappahannock, experienced the terror of seeing French pirates sail boldly to their wharf, storm ashore and plunder the plantation. Silverware, tobacco and slaves were taken, and sometimes the home was burned. Farmers were slain and valuable ships were stolen from their moorings.
It was an age of terror—when a pirate might sail a ship with forty guns and a crew of two hundred, and nothing on the Chesapeake could withstand their assault. Nor was the British navy of much help; it was engaged in that wild and futile War of the Spanish Succession; its ships were needed to support the Duke of Marlborough as he fought in Flanders against the French, and none were available to confront the pirates of the Caribbean. Any English ship leaving either London or Annapolis ran the risk of almost certain capture, and if resistance was offered, it was likely that all passengers would be either shot or hanged.
The distraught colonists, whose existence depended upon commerce with London, devised a strategy that was furiously expensive but also effective: English ships would cross the Atlantic only in giant convoys, one leaving London in October, another departing the Chesapeake in May. During the remainder of the year no ship would venture forth, except swift blockade runners like the _Fair Rosalind_. These took enormous risks, trusting upon their speed to outrun the waiting pirates; if they succeeded, their profits were exorbitant.
Mark Steed left England in the October convoy. His ship, a two-masted brig built years ago by the Paxmore brothers, was owned by his family, but he sought no special privilege; he was an ordinary passenger making a dangerous transit. As his ship sailed down the Thames he became aware that seven others seemed to be moving in concert, and their presence lent assurance; but as they left the Thames and entered the Channel he realized that the convoy was not to be a mere eight ships. Some fifty waited in the roads, and all turned gracefully to the south, dotting the Channel with their sails.
'Magnificent,' Mark said to a gentleman returning to Annapolis.
'We've still to pass the coast of France,' the gentleman warned, and as the convoy stood off the cliffs of Dover, with the menacing shores of France quite visible, young Steed was gratified to see two English warships move up to give protection. 'With them on our flank,' the gentleman said, 'the French will never dare.'
The impressive convoy now turned westward for the run down the Channel, but winds failed and the sixty ships idled on the glassy sea, almost touching one another as they drifted. Sailors were assigned to guard the rails, so that if two ships appeared near collision, they could push them apart with little apparent energy. Night fell, and slim lights showed from distant portholes.
'Ahoy!' the watchmen cried whenever some ship moved too close, and if the cry was repeated, sailors ran to the railing to push the invader away, and all seemed like an assembly of toys set adrift in a basin by children.
But when the wind rose, and the convoy could move on toward Plymouth at the end of the Channel, Mark gasped at what awaited. There, in the roads where the Spanish Armada had been defeated by Drake and Hawkins, stood no less than a hundred and sixty ships, their sails aloft, their captains waiting for the signal.
'I never knew there were so many ships!' Mark cried to his fellow passengers. And then, to cap his astonishment, a squadron of nine warships left Plymouth and moved into position at strategic points about the vast convoy.
A gun fired, its echoes muffled by the thousand sails. A blue pennant ran up the commodore's halyard, and each of the warships responded with a gun salute. 'Look smart!' the captain of Steed's brig shouted, and his vessel, along with the more than two hundred and twenty others, turned with the wind and set out for the New World.
It was an unforgettable passage, an assembly of riches, a convocation of daring spirits. At no time could Mark look from the railing of the brig and see less than fifty sails scattered upon the horizon, and at night he could see the same number of lights, except when fog settled over the Atlantic. Then, in the gloom, the commodore's ship would fire its gun at intervals, and the heavy air, bearing down upon the waves, would deaden the sound. Sometimes it seemed as if the gun had exploded only a field away, and then Steed would clasp his hands about his chest in the cold November air and experience a sense of well-being that he had never known before.
'We've passed the French coast,' he muttered to himself, but now came the greater risk.
It was customary for the annual convoy to sail not directly to the Chesapeake, for that route was impossibly stormy, but to head for the calmer waters of Barbados, where regrouping was possible, and from there to proceed north past the pirate strongholds and on to the Chesapeake. The disadvantage of this route was that its final stages traversed waters infested by pirates. However, with the warships constantly circling the huge fleet, it was sometimes possible to make the transit while losing only a few ships.
'But the strictest discipline must be observed,' said the young ensign dispatched from the commodore's brigantine. 'If there is any straggler, he will be lost.' At Barbados he issued printed instructions and said that signals would be changed for this part of the voyage: 'Two guns and red pennant mean that the faster ships must luff and wallow in the wind until the slower catch up. If any ship, and yours looks to be a fast one, passes the commodore's, it will be sunk. Understood?'
The captain nodded, so the young man continued, 'We enter dangerous waters. Keep a constant lookout. We know that Carpaux is on the prowl and so is Jean Vidal. What's worse, we have information that Bonfleur now has three swift ships under his command. Look smart.'
Carpaux had often invaded the Chesapeake, and Vidal was fierce, a young firebrand out of Martinique known to burn ships and cast away passengers, but it was Bonfleur who had become the constant terror. He was an old man now, sixty-four, and the survivor of numberless attempts to catch him. He was the scourge of the Caribbean, the burner of Panama, the destroyer of Belize. He had fought for so long and so viciously that no English tactic could surprise him, and for the past forty years he had preyed upon the Chesapeake, invading the rivers and setting the plantations aflame.
He had often sailed in concert with Stede Bonnet and L'Ollonais, smaller in stature than either, more brutal than both. Once he had gone into Cartagena alone, with only thirty-seven men, and had captured the entire city, divesting it of a fortune and slaying more than a hundred. In 1705 he and the two other ships that often sailed with him cut out eleven merchantmen from the October convoy, burning them all and killing scores.
The French offered him sanctuary at Martinique, because they hoped he might inflict great damage on the English, but just as often he captured French ships and put them to the sword, or Spanish, or Dutch. He was without morals, or pity, or remorse, a vicious old man who had seen a score of pirates hanged by the various authorities; his war against all civilized nations was endless. In the late days of December 1708 he commanded ninety-one guns and seven hundred men, and he had boasted that he would 'cut the English convoy to ribbons.'
The commodore had other plans. He intended shepherding his huge collection of sail past Point Comfort and into the relative safety of the Chesapeake, and to accomplish this he must tighten his formation so that his warships could act in concert if an attack came. Accordingly, he flashed his signals, but when the two hundred and twenty ships moved closer, minor collisions, and some not so minor, became inevitable. The winds would change and ships would have to tack, and as they did so they would climb slowly upon the backs of smaller ships, and spars would shatter and sails would be lost.
Then the commodore would signal: 'Faster ships luff!' and those like the one Mark Steed rode would turn with the wind, and hoist a staysail and ride sideways to the waves, rolling like pith balls in a shallow saucer, hour upon hour, and all except the most practiced hands would become sick from the pitching motion, but the convoy held.
Off the northern coast of Haiti, where the wind was brisk, the pirates decided to attack: Carpaux down from the Carolinas, with Vidal and Bonfleur out from refitting in Martinique, descended upon the stragglers, eleven pirate ships with two thousand fighting men and more than two hundred cannon. And they might have succeeded had not the commodore anticipated their bold action. Swinging his own ship about to confront the pirates, he signaled all warships to follow and invited any merchantmen with heavy guns to move on his flank. Steed's ship was one of the latter, and it sped at the two pirate vessels commanded by Carpaux.
It was a short, violent engagement. The huge pirate guns ripped into many of the lumbering merchantmen, but destroyed none. The commodore's flotilla ran directly at the pirates, scattering them and sinking one of the craft attached to Jean Vidal. The big merchant ships with heavy armament fired resolutely at the swifter pirates and in time drove most of them off, but Henri Bonfleur, victor in many such battles, knew that no convoy was safe if it could be scattered, and with great heroism directed his three ships to cut directly into the heart of the vast collection.
He sailed through it like an avenging spirit, spitting fire and threatening the very existence of this massive assembly. But when he came to the brig in which Steed rode, he found that captain not turning to flee but bearing directly down upon him. It was obvious that the two must crash, but Steed's captain refused to waver. On and on his bowsprit came.
'Prepare to crash!' the mate shouted, and Steed braced himself as the forward part of his ship raked the pirate, knocking men down and tearing away much of the rigging.
'Prepare to repulse boardings!' the mate cried, and Steed grabbed a pin, brandishing it as if it had a chance to repel a pirate's pistol. Some of Bonfleur's men did try to board, hideous creatures with beards and knives, but the English sailors repelled them as the two vessels ground and scraped their way free.
At this moment young Mark Steed caught full sight of the pirate captain: a smallish man with a beard flecked in gray, a heavy sweater about his neck, two pistols dangling useless at his knees, words screaming from his ugly lips. He was so repulsive that Steed felt driven by some avenging force to hurl his belaying pin, but his aim was bad and it clattered harmlessly to the deck. As the two vessels ripped apart, leaving the pirate ship sorely damaged, Bonfleur glared momentarily at his opponent, then ignored him in the business of saving his ship.
This proved impossible, for two of the commodore's vessels bore down on the wounded pirate ship and began peppering it with such heavy gunfire that it was plainly doomed. But not Bonfleur. One of his subaltern ships, aware of the master's peril, swung boldly in a circle that brought it along the lee side of Bonfleur's sinking vessel, and as it swept past, pirates reached out and grabbed Bonfleur, pulling him to safety.
'Convoy reform,' signaled the commodore, and as night fell, it reassembled, deck close to deck, while warships prowled the edges.
The pirates had been driven off. The merchantmen turned north, and before the new year they sailed into the Chesapeake. As the vast congregation moved up the bay, cohorts dropped off for the James, and the York, and the Rappahannock, and the Potomac, and wherever they touched shore people came from many miles to receive that year's mail from England and a joyous sight of friends they had not seen for six or seven years. Guns were fired, and far up the rivers planters told their friends, 'The convoy's here!'
On the third day of passage up the bay, Steed's ship left the dwindling assembly and turned toward the Choptank. Slaves on watch at the western end of the island lit fires. Other slaves, observing them, set their stacks of wood ablaze, and before long someone at the plantation was firing a cannon, so that people in the big house could run to the north shore and watch their ship as it came home, safe from perils, safe from pirates.
Triumphantly the brig breasted the eastern approaches and entered the creek, where ropes were thrown ashore so that slaves could haul the vessel homeward, and from the deck Mark Steed, twenty-seven and skilled in religion from France and law from England, looked out to greet his new mother.
She saw him then as she would always remember him: a young man, young in appearance, young in bravery and cleanliness of spirit. 'Here comes the salvation of the Steeds,' she murmured as he approached.
He was that. Where his father was indolent, he was concentrated, and where his uncles had confused concepts for running a plantation, he adhered to a few basic principles. When he tried to explain them to the older Steeds he quickly realized that they had no comprehension of what he was trying to do; the one who understood was Rosalind.
'In all things we must be self-sufficient,' he told her, and she knew he was right. 'Never again must we buy just slaves... men and women who can do nothing special. I want every indentured servant and slave on this plantation to be an expert, and if we can't train them, we'll sell them off and buy others already trained.'
The Steeds now had twenty-seven while workers and sixty-eight blacks, whom they divided among three work camps: one for the gardeners and the men who worked the ships; one at the west end of Devon for the tobacco fields; and one on the mainland growing nothing but tobacco. There was a fourth gang consisting of four blacks who could be assigned anywhere; they worked perpetually at burning down trees so that new land might be brought into cultivation after the greedy tobacco plants had consumed the richness of existing fields.
These were the specialists that Mark and Rosalind developed: weavers to make the huge amounts of cloth needed each year by the Steeds and the other slaves; lacemakers for the finer cloth; tailors; tanners, shoemakers; barbers; cabinetmakers; sailors; caulkers; timber men to bring huge trees to the pits; sawyers; carpenters; foundry men; ropemakers; fishermen; coopers; and most important of all, skilled handymen who could be relied on to fix almost anything. After all, the Steeds were running what amounted to a small town, and it was Mark's responsibility to see that it functioned.
He was surprised when his new mother insisted upon one other specialization: 'I should like to have two slaves skilled in making bricks.'
'Whatever for?'
'I shall be needing bricks.' So Mark, laughing at his indulgence, sent across the bay to St. Mary's City, where building had stopped with the loss of the capital, and bought two slaves well versed in brickmaking. It was a good investment, for these two found clay deposits with enough trees nearby to furnish charcoal, and before long a steady supply of light-red brick was forthcoming.
Mark wondered what his mother intended doing with them; some she used to build a moss-grown terrace adjacent to the house, and others were laid in pleasant walks among the flourishing trees. But such diversions utilized only a small portion of the product; the rest was carefully stored until the pile became impressive.
'Shall we put the men to other work?' Mark asked.
'Never.'
'But what shall you do with the bricks... thousands of them?'
'They shall be very useful, Mark.' And the piles grew.
No aspect of the Steed operations failed to interest her. When she discovered that her family's ships were often laid up because worms had eaten out the bottoms, she consulted with the Paxmores, who told her, 'Against the shipworm we can do nothing. It flourishes in these waters and eats wood the way thee eats hominy.'
'Can't we paint something on the wood to protect it?'
'Tar and pitch help,' they said, and forthwith she put teams of mainland slaves at work cutting pine trees and rendering pitch and turpentine to treat the bottoms. This was effective, but only so long as the tar held the pitch close to the treated wood; a very heavy application might last four months.
'Is there some way we can hide the wood?' she asked the Steed captains, and they said that copper sheathing helped but that it was prohibitively expensive. She imported large sheets on the next October convoy, and when they were hammered onto the bottom of the largest ship, the hungry worms were rebuffed. But as her captains had warned, this was too expensive for the colonies. Lead sheathing might work, but there was no lead.
Grim-lipped, as if the shipworms had declared war on her personally, she started afresh to study them. Teredos they were called, two-inch whitish creatures with shell-like noses that could bore through oak. When she crept beneath a hauled ship to inspect their work, she saw that they had perforated planks, boring in all directions until the wood was pocketed and ready to fall apart. No wood was safe from their attack, only copper or lead could stop them.
But then two accidental bits of information came her way. One of her captains said, 'They're always worse in July and August. That's why it's a clever trick to send the eastbound convoy out of these waters in May. The worm can't get at them during the summer.' Equally helpful was the comment by the older Paxmore: 'We don't suffer from the worm as much as others, because our boatyard is upstream, in fresher water.'
From these clues she devised the strategy that saved the Steed ships: 'Mark, come June, I want our captains to move their ships far up the Choptank. They're to stop there during July and August—and you watch, we'll not have a worm.'
The captains grumbled at such preposterous instructions from a woman, but they complied, and to their amazement they learned that Rosalind was right: in fresh water new teredos did not breed, and old ones already attached to the bottoms died and fell away. By this clever shift in anchoring, the Steeds saved many pounds formerly spent on refitting, and their ships sailed faster because the wood was clean.
Mark tended all financial matters, spending much time at the family warehouse in Patamoke casting up accounts. He was there when Nelly Turlock appeared one morning to select numerous swatches of cloth; she thrust the door open with a flourish of her right arm and strode to the middle of the room as if she were part owner. She was a striking woman, the same age as Mark but much more worldly, for when she realized that this new young man was the son of her protector she made a special effort to attract his favorable attention and refused to be waited upon by servants.
'I need three yards of fearnought for Charlie's hunting pants,' she said with a gentle smile, as if laughing inwardly at some joke she understood but Mark did not. As he rolled out the rough double-thick woolen which could withstand thorns, he tried to watch her undetected, but she caught his eye and smiled again.
'And some of this Irish frize.' She dropped her voice and added by way of explanation, 'That's for my winter coat. The kersey is for me too.' While he measured off these fabrics she rummaged among his goods and came up with a heavy bolt of Osnaburg, good for making stout skirts against the cold weather.
'How many lengths do I need?' she asked sweetly, holding one end against her shoulder.
'Take ample,' Mark advised, but the slave who customarily attended the cloth interrupted, 'She take half again. For shoulders.' And Mark said, 'I think he's right,' and he smiled at her as he cut the goods.
She ordered much more, but when he had summed the numbers, she made no offer to pay. 'Put it in the book of Mr. Steed,' she said, and with an arrogant reach of her left forefinger she riffled through the pages to identify the one on which the accounts of Fitzhugh Steed were kept. When Mark entered the latest purchases he saw that the total debt was considerable, and it occurred to him—judging solely by what she had bought this day—that she was feeding and clothing the entire Turlock establishment.
He did not feel competent to discuss this matter with his father, but he did go to Rosalind—'It's nothing better than stealing, what that woman's doing.' And this opened the problem of Fitzhugh's deportment.
Rosalind said, 'Mark, it's quite simple, really, and I make no protest. Not even about the thefts.'
'But he's behaving like such an ass.' When Rosalind objected to this harsh evaluation, Mark continued, 'I can understand his philandering while Mother was alive. Things were really rather dreadful. And after her death, there need be no restraint. But now he has a wife—a perfectly fine wife...' He shook his head in disgust and walked toward the window.
'Mark, listen. He fell into bad habits bit by bit. And bit by bit it's corroded him. I suppose you know he and Nelly have three children.'
'Children! My God!' This intelligence so disturbed him that he paced the room, then stopped before his mother to say bitterly, 'They're my brothers and sisters... in a manner of speaking.' This image amused him and he broke into nervous laughter. 'This is really quite silly, isn't it?'
'Yes. It's what any woman must live through... as best she can. That is, when she's not pretty—I mean, when she's ugly.'
'Mother!' The cry was an honest protest, and the confusion on Mark's face proved this. His new mother was only six years older than himself, and this spare differential caused perplexity, but she was many years wiser, and her judgments often disclosed a profundity which surprised him. The simple fact was that he liked her. She possessed all the attributes he had wanted to find in his father, and none of the debilitating weaknesses which made the elder Steed such a pathetic figure.
'Every year you'll become more beautiful,' he said. 'And Father won't be here to see.'
'He'll outlive both of us,' she predicted.
'I didn't mean that.'
When Mark sailed back to Patamoke to enlarge the warehouse, he hoped that Nelly Turlock would not sashay in, demanding dividends for her family. But she continued to appear, insolent, provocative and infuriatingly self-assured. She seemed to have a nose capable of seeking out any item imported from London and an appetite so voracious that a good portion of every new shipment seemed destined for her. One afternoon Mark calculated that Nelly Turlock consumed slightly more than twice as much Steed income as Rosalind, but when he presented these figures to his mother, she pointed out, 'There are more Turlocks in the marsh than Steeds on the island.'
This was not exactly true. Henry and Paul, sons of the original Edmund who had settled at Jamestown in 1607, had produced eight children between them—Mark's grandfather, Captain Earl Steed, was one of them—and these children had not been tardy in begetting offspring of their own, so that Devon Island housed many Steeds in the plantation hall and an equal number in smaller satellite cottages. In fact, the island was becoming so cluttered that Rosalind decided something must be done. Her husband humphed and garrumphed in his normal fatuous manner and said, 'Any Steed can live on this island as long as he wants to,' but Rosalind paid little attention. Instead she appealed to Mark, and her reasons for wanting to depopulate the burdened island were so cogent that he gave enthusiastic support.
So this second wife, this outsider from Virginia, assembled the clan in the room with the pewter dishes and spread out her plan: 'The big house will remain here...' (Some of the Steeds would later recall that when she said this she hesitated, as if uncertain about the continuity of the house.) 'And the young people of the next generation who will be managing the estates can remain here. By that I mean Mark... and his wife, when he takes one. We'll keep the Heron Cottage for members of the family, and Holly Hall, but the other cottages we'll convert to slave quarters.'
This produced noisy comment, but she was obdurate. 'Those little houses must go. They're hovels.' When family protest subsided she said, 'Mark and I have been exploring our lands. On the north bank of the Choptank are many excellent sites. Each family should choose the one it prefers. Six hundred acres of cleared land will accompany every house you build.'
Now the argument became vigorous, with a dozen Steeds rejecting the plan, but Rosalind plowed on. 'I've found one location superior to all others, and it seems to me that two or even three families could move there with gratification. Indeed, it seems finer than the island. With proper husbandry it could become a paradise.'
The undercurrents of protest quieted. The Steeds were not happy with Rosalind's dominance in matters so vital to the family, but they knew that she was no fool, and if she was stating that one of the mainland sites was more appealing than the island, they would listen. 'Sail to the western end of Turlock's marsh and enter Dividing Creek. Go beyond the cove and on the western bank you'll find a deep entrance to a splendid creek. Proceed up it for half a mile and you'll come to a fork. It's the land between the arms of that fork I'm recommending. They tell me an Indian chieftain used to live there, and it's named in the deed our family bought from Janney as the Refuge.' With these words she launched a treasure hunt, for numerous Steeds sent their sloops up Dividing Creek to evaluate the majestic triangle once occupied by Pentaquod of the Choptanks.
It was incredible how this choice fragment of land, denuded of every primeval tree by the clearing fires of 1631, had revitalized itself. For eight years the fields had produced moderately good Oronoco, but tobacco depleted minerals so swiftly that in the end the Steeds found it more profitable to abandon the peninsula and burn trees in other locations so that new fields still rich in nutrients could be developed.
On the abandoned fields birds had dropped seeds unharmed by passage through their bowels, and these had become cedars that grew like weeds. In time a few oak and hickory seeds took root, and with every autumn wind some loblolly blew in. Then holly berries arrived, brought by birds, and by the end of fifty years the land was once more as magnificent as in those far-off days when Pentaquod first identified it as his home; the giant oaks four hundred years old were gone, of course, and the monstrous old loblollies, but only an eye long accustomed to forests would have marked their absence, for the land was recovered: fire and overcultivation and the deprivation of minerals and leaching and every kind of abuse had failed to destroy this splendid soil. All that was required to renew it was the quiet passage of seventy years, during which it had lain dormant, restructuring itself.
How beautiful it was when the young people of this fifth generation of American Steeds came to rediscover it: deer abounded and beaver; geese and ducks vied for a place to rest; the last bears and wolves in the area made it their home; and in the small marshes at the heads of the embracing streams a thousand different kinds of life proliferated. Once again it was a paradise with vistas of enchantment, and as each night ended, with the sun struggling to break loose in the east, blue herons would fly back to their ancient home, probing the muddy bottoms of the creeks and crying in the darkness when they found succulence.
On the occasions when Fitzhugh stayed at Devon, life on the island could be most pleasant. He was a congenial man who loved his children and who savored the routines of plantation living; he was excited whenever a new shipment of slaves arrived from Haiti or when one of the family ships set forth with its hogsheads of Oronoco for London. He was especially delighted when, on those happy days which occurred once or twice a year, some incoming ship brought letters from Europe; then he would arrange them carefully on the big table in the kitchen, and without opening them, try to guess who had written and with what information.
He was courteous with his wife and insisted that all others who came into contact with her be the same. In a kind of banter he called her 'Mistress Roz' and seemed pleased with her management of the plantation. At least, he never interfered or tried to countermand her orders, but his acquiescence was tinged with condescension, as if her duties were some unimportant game in which he had no interest.
Since they no longer slept together, his attitude toward her was that of an indulgent uncle, and this she had to accept if she wanted to enjoy any kind of life at all on Devon. So she did accept, without complaint, realizing that he treated her thus because he knew himself to be incompetent. She made the hard decisions because all his life he had inclined toward the easy ones, and in doing so, had dissipated whatever character he might have had.
Rosalind, for her part, treated her husband with deference and catered to his vanities. He was the master; the children were to respect him; and when the yearly issues of the _Tatler_ arrived, he of course got to read them first. Invariably she addressed him by his full name, Fitzhugh, and saw to it that the children spoke of him as Father. She paid exaggerated attention to his opinions and often seconded them enthusiastically in front of the children, while intending to ignore them as soon as he was gone.
Fitzhugh had never experienced any kind of love for his wife; to him she was a big, awkward woman with a voice two levels too strong, and he would have been astounded to discover that she possessed all the emotions of a pretty young thing of seventeen. She, in the first months of their marriage, had truly loved this flashy, careless fellow and had been ecstatic in her first pregnancy, and even when she had fully discovered his incapacities, she still had tried to retain her love for him; but now she reacted to him pretty much as she might to a big and lively puppy: he was fun to have around the house but hardly of any consequence.
On those disappointing terms the Steeds existed. But their lives were not tragic. Indeed, an uninformed spectator might have judged the Steed household to be one of constant merriment, for Rosalind saw to it that spirits were kept high. In this she was abetted by her husband, for he delighted in playing games with his children and teasing them into one preposterous situation or another. With little help from his first wife, he had reared two fine offspring in Mark and Evelyn, and now he was doing the same with the three children of his later years. He taught them word games, and the locations of strange countries and the characters of mythology, and he never gave them anything or shared ideas with them before making them engage in his game of Many Questions.
'I have brought something special from the store. Many questions.'
'Is it made of paper?'
'No.'
'Can I chew it?'
'You'd be sick if you did.'
Sometimes he would fend them off for half an hour, always sharpening their wits, then catching them in his arms when they solved his riddles.
He also ensured that the big house contained ample supplies of food, assigning two slaves to the job of hunting game. In the course of a week the Steeds might eat venison, lamb, muskrat, duck, turkey and occasionally pork. But the dish he relished above all others was shad, backed with onions and savory. When it was served, the children protested at the bones, but he muzzled them with the assurance that 'shad makes the brain grow, because if you're not smart enough to miss the bones, you're not smart enough to eat it.'
He, not Rosalind, tended to supervise the kitchen, and he taught the three slaves who worked there his preferences in baking breads and making calf's-foot jelly. He was especially attentive to the ways in which they served the two permanent staples, oysters and crab, and allowed to his visitors that nowhere in Maryland could one find better crab cakes than at Devon.
For him no banquet deserved the name unless in addition to the six meats and seven vegetables and eight desserts, it contained either platefuls of oysters or dishes of crisp crab cakes; and usually, when the table was completely set, he would lean back and in his hearty way tell any guests, 'When Mistress Roz came across the bay to marry me, her family in Virginia accompanied her to the boat, weeping. "You're going to Maryland! You'll starve!" And here she is, starving.'
Fitzhugh also took charge of the wine cellar, and saw to it that it contained bottles of Burgundy, a cask of port and a tun of Madeira, and when neighboring plantations ran short of either of the last two, he generously supplied them until the next ships arrived with replenishments. He supervised his slaves in the making of cider, which his family consumed in copious amounts, but he alone prepared the three drinks for which Devon became noted. Syllabub was served at most meals: 'One part milk, one part cream; one part ale, flavored with lemon and lime, topped with cinnamon bark.' Possets were drunk before retiring, for they were conducive to sleep and good digestion, but persicot was reserved for festive occasions. Kept in cruets, a golden amber in color, it was served after the dessert to leave a pleasant tingling in the mouth. Of it Fitzhugh said, 'For six weeks I warn the slaves to set aside every peach and apricot pit, and cherry, too, and when I have enough I cut each one in four parts, and steep them in French brandy with cloves and cinnamon. After three months I add some sugar water, and the longer this stands, the better it becomes.'
Rosalind tended the more mundane matters, particularly the medical care of all who pertained to the plantation; on some mornings the little house behind the mansion became an infirmary, with three Steeds, four other white planters and a dozen slaves in line for her ministrations. From long experience with plantation life, she had assembled those remedies best calculated to cure the ills that accompanied the cultivation of tobacco on remote fields: ipecac to induce vomiting, laxative salts for opposite effect, oil of juniper for the chest, spirits of saffron to control spasms, and glyster for burns.
Her sovereign specific was hot linseed oil, applied liberally and covered with cloths; this subdued congestions. She also used tartar emetic with great frequency to cure what she called distress, and in a small bottle which she alone controlled, she kept laudanum to use when amputations or tooth extractions were necessary.
For the Steed plantations, unlike some across the bay, were centers of work. Any of the Steed boys approaching manhood had learned how to tend fields, and make casks, and cure Oronoco, and figure profits. At some point or other, most had worked in the family warehouse at Patamoke, and many had sailed as ordinary seamen to Bristol. The scorn in which many English gentlemen held trade was no part of the Steed tradition; their family had prospered not primarily from tobacco but from the myriad activities associated with it, and in some years when Oronoco sold for little in either Bristol or London, the Steeds continued to make a satisfactory income from their barrels, their beaver pelts, their ships and, above all, their warehouse. It was difficult for anyone to live along the Choptank without paying tribute in some form or other to the Steeds.
It was a good life, but sometimes when Rosalind looked at her florid husband playing with the children, she could not escape thinking: If only he had the capacity to know that an ugly woman can also be a loving human being! At such times she would harbor deep resentment that God had not made her beautiful, but when her hurt was deepest she would swear grimly: I'll not surrender. I'll not sink to his level. Ugly or not, I'll be the best person I can.
Among the visitors to the Patamoke warehouse was a petite, solemn Quaker girl of eighteen. Dressed in prim gray, with a bonnet whose strings fell untied about her shoulders, she had that clarity of skin which makes any woman beautiful; in her case her small features were so harmoniously balanced and pleasing that whenever she entered the store Mark Steed, if he happened to be there that day, would remark upon the difference between her and the rambunctious Turlock woman. He also compared her with his mother, and from something his mother had read him from Shakespeare, thought: Since she's pretty, she's probably stupid.
To test this he tried on several occasions to engage her in conversation, but failed. She had come to the store for specific items required by the shipbuilders and was not to be diverted. In the bright fabrics from Paris she could express no interest, and neither she nor any of the other Paxmores needed the lace of Bruges or the copperware of Ghent. She seemed almost retarded, a gray shadow appearing mysteriously at the town wharf in a shallop sailed by her brother, saying nothing, never smiling, never responding to gallantries.
Once at home he remarked upon her strange behavior, and Rosalind asked bluntly, 'When are you getting married, Mark?' and he replied, 'When I left London, I had a kind of arrangement with Louise Fithian.'
'London? I'd have thought you'd want a local wife.'
'Louise is a dear, really she is.' And he expounded on her qualities with an enthusiasm which pleased his mother.
'Have you a silhouette?'
He did. It had been cut by a Frenchman skilled in using small scissors, and showed a standard profile, a standard pouting beauty. 'She seems quite attractive,' Rosalind said with no enthusiasm. Then, returning the silhouette, she mused, 'I wonder if it's a good idea to import a wife from London. I do wonder.'
'The sainted Edmund imported Martha by mail. Never saw her before she stepped on his wharf.'
'She was a fugitive. Driven from home. By her religion.'
'That's another problem. There are no Catholic girls on the Choptank.'
'The Fithian girl can't be Catholic.'
'No. But I know her.'
'You also know the Paxmore girl.'
'The little gray one?'
'Not so gray, Mark.'
And she insisted that he accompany her to Peace Cliff, and when he had tied their sloop at the Paxmore wharf and climbed the low hill to the telescope house, she led him not to young Amanda, who watched with keen interest, but to old Ruth Brinton, who was raging.
'How terrible!' she stormed. 'In the square facing the courthouse.'
'What happened?' Rosalind asked.
'To sell human beings under official sanction.'
'Mrs. Paxmore,' Rosalind interrupted. 'It's always been done and it's done humanely. Now stop ranting.'
'But yesterday they sold a mother north, a father south, and a nine-year-old daughter upriver.'
'We do not do that on the island,' Rosalind said quietly.
'We all do it, my dear friend, if one does.'
'No!' Rosalind protested. 'Each family lives by its own standards, and no Steed has ever abused a slave. We need them and we love them.'
'But if a human family can be dragged onto a dock at the very door of the house of justice...' The old woman began to tremble, whereupon Amanda moved to quieten her. Speaking defensively she said, 'On this point Grandmother is never satisfied.'
'Nor ever will be,' the old woman snapped.
'The meeting has rebuked her many times,' Amanda said. 'But on she goes. A voice in the wilderness.' She said this with such simplicity that she resembled some Hebrew maiden in the Old Testament.
'I wanted you to meet my son Mark,' Rosalind said.
'I've heard he's a fine lad,' Ruth Brinton said.
'Where would you have heard that?'
'Amanda told me. She sees him when she goes to fetch nails.'
Rosalind noticed that the little Quaker girl did not blush, she looked straight ahead without apologies; but Mark blushed profusely, and Rosalind thought: He should. It's a very human reaction and it differentiates him from his father.
On the sail back to Devon, Rosalind said nothing, but once she had her son alone in the house she said firmly, 'I wanted you to see a real woman,' and she told him briefly of Ruth Brinton's travail in Massachusetts and of the exemplary life she had lived in Patamoke, serving as the conscience of both the Quaker and the general community.
'You don't fool me, talking about old Mrs. Paxmore. You wanted me to see Amanda... in her home.'
'I did indeed. I wanted you to see what a home of integrity could be.'
'I'd be afraid of touching a Quaker. That Amanda could be a fierce woman in a household. Did you see how she took command when you were badgering the old woman?'
'I wasn't badgering her. It's just that on slavery—'
'You were badgering her. And you're doing the same to me.' He decided to have no more to do with the Paxmore girl, and now when she entered the warehouse he found excuses to avoid her. She was a prim, difficult and, in some undefinable way, repelling young woman, and he was afraid of her.
His problem of finding a wife was handled in an unusual way. On the October convoy Fithians sent Rosalind a disturbing letter:
This may be highly improper, for you are no longer involved in Virginia affairs, but we deem it prudent to warn you in severest confidence that the financial safety of the Janney plantation on the Rappahannock is in jeopardy. The yield of their fields has diminished and the quality of their sweet-scented has fallen. In each convoy they send us poorer tobacco and larger orders for more expensive goods. Stating it frankly, they are on the verge of bankruptcy, and no one in Virginia seems to be aware.
We have watched with admiration the manner in which you and Mark have cultivated your Maryland plantation, making it one of the best. Your diversification of interests has accounted for much of your success, and we notice that you rarely order anything which does not contribute to the further success of your operations. Could you and Mark not go down the bay and initiate the same program for your sisters and their husbands? Twice in the past we have had to repossess what is now the Janney plantation and we do not wish to do so again in the near future. Louise Fithian sends her regards to Mark and wishes him well in this venture.
So the slaves were ordered to ready the _Fair Rosalind_ , and on it Rosalind and Mark made the long sail to the Rappahannock. The degree of business deterioration they found, and the inability of the Janney sons-in-law to rectify it, were not the memorable aspects of this trip; Rosalind's remorseless disparagement of her younger sisters was.
Missy and Letty were now in their early thirties, each the mother of children and each as vacuous as a woman could be. They affected ignorance of all plantation matters, and when Rosalind spoke harshly of the looming catastrophe, the best they could do was whimper. They never appeared in their kitchens, leaving such matters to their slaves; knew nothing of family expenditures, and considered the Janney ships as mere conveyors of merchandise from London to their drawing rooms. What had to leave the plantation for London did not concern them.
The appalling part, to both Rosalind and Mark, was that they were rearing their attractive daughters for the same kind of life: rise at ten; eat heavily at noon; do a little sewing, but never on any garment of practical use; sleep through the afternoon; visit; chatter; change clothes; overeat at night; drink a little sherry while the men drank port; and never, never enter a shed in which tobacco was being cured.
It was Mark who detected the awful penalty exacted by this system. 'The wastage of the wives can't be prevented. It's the destruction of the men that's so painful. If your sisters tell me one more time, "Rosalind can manage such affairs, she was the clever one," I'm going to strike someone. Either one of them could have been as clever as you, Rosalind. They could have been, I know it, and they've wasted their lives, and their husbands' lives and now the plantation.'
'You're not entirely correct,' Rosalind said. 'For a woman to become as fine... No, I mean that for a woman to achieve her capabilities, she must have an example. She cannot discover truth by herself.'
'What example had you?'
'William Shakespeare.'
'What does that mean?'
'It means that I was an ugly child—had no young men pursuing me—and in God's grimness I could do nothing but read. I read all of that heavy book you see on the table near the window, and I warrant it hasn't been opened since I left.'
'I couldn't understand Shakespeare,' Mark said honestly.
'Nor could I... the first two times. Character consists of what you do on the third and fourth tries.'
'I want to get out of here, Rosalind. There's nothing we can do for these doomed people.'
'Now we face the third and fourth try,' his mother said, and they spent two agonizing months trying to reorient the Janney plantation. Mark worked with the sons-in-law, both older than himself, showing them how they must supervise their distant fields and balance their funds: 'Order from Fithians only those things that will enable you to create new wealth on the land you already have. Either you produce more wealth here or you perish.'
Rosalind was much harsher. Without betraying Fithians' confidences, she forced her sisters and their husbands to construct a four-year accounting and showed them the awful downward drift of their fortunes: 'No more clothes from Europe, only the raw cloth. You can learn to sew. No more expensive trips. Your children can learn in Virginia what they require. Three slaves in the house. All the others at productive work.'
'What work?' Letty simpered.
'Damn it! God damn this foolishness! You ask what work? And your accounts show that you buy shoes, you buy barrels, you buy jackets, you buy furniture that Fithians import from Flanders. Stop it! Stop all this idiotic buying and make the things yourselves.'
'I can't make furniture,' Letty said.
'Then teach your slaves to do it.'
'How?'
'There are books. If you'd been importing books...'
'That's for you to say. You were always the clever one.'
In disgust Rosalind turned her back on her lovely sisters; they were beyond salvation. But their husbands still had a chance—'If you work diligently for five years, you may salvage this place. If you don't, it will go bankrupt, and on one of the convoys Fithians will send you not great packages of lace and silk but a manager to supervise the sale to someone better qualified.'
Tears filled her eyes as she left her childhood home, that lovely, quiet place where the lawns stretched forever, but this sentimental farewell did not dampen her fury, and when the Steed sloop was well down the Rappahannock she sat with Mark and talked boldly. 'When this boat reaches Devon, I shall get off at the headland and walk the rest of the way.'
'Why?'
'Because it's going to carry you to Peace Cliff. And it's there you will disembark. And you will walk up that hill and ask Richard Paxmore for the hand of his daughter Amanda.'
'But...'
'Mark, you've seen the alternative. If strong men like you don't marry the finest women available, what will happen to humanity?'
'She's not Catholic.'
'I have no comment. I simply have no comment because that's not a relevant statement.'
'But Quakers...' He paused. 'Look at the old woman. She's all fire.'
'I'm all fire. When I'm seventy the people of the Choptank will hate me. Because I will never stop being as strong as I can. I will not tolerate surrender, and I will not stand by and watch the best of the Steeds, their one great hope, make foolish errors. Louise Fithian just died. Now get yourself a real wife.'
Amanda was not surprised when Mark Steed came to her door proposing marriage, and later when Rosalind arrived to arrange details, the prim little girl confided, 'I realized these things take time.' In her strong-willed way she announced one decision which took her family by surprise: 'Mark's Catholic, so we'll be married by a priest.' And it was the Paxmores' sloop, not the Steeds', which sailed to Annapolis to fetch Father Darnley.
In these momentous affairs Fitzhugh Steed took no part. Regarding the troubles at the Janney plantation he said, 'They're your family, Roz. Straighten 'em out.' And when his son announced that he was marrying the Paxmore girl, he said, 'One woman's about as good as another. I never suffered from marryin' a Protestant.'
He had grown careless in speech, affecting the dialect used by local watermen. Days would pass without his being seen at Devon, and Rosalind became accustomed to watching him climb into a bateau alone and head down the creek toward the marsh. He never spoke of the Turlock girl, and surprisingly, Rosalind had not yet seen her. With Mark spending increased time with his new wife, there was little opportunity for him to tend the growing warehouse in Patamoke, and thus Rosalind's source of information on her husband's mistress evaporated.
It was a strange world she occupied: wife to a man she scarcely knew and whose bed she no longer shared, organizer of a vast plantation belonging to others. Now, with her stepchildren launched into lives of their own, her entire emotional life concentrated on her three children. Samuel, aged eight, showed signs of becoming another Mark; he was intelligent, quick to respond and lively, but he already had his father's inclination toward irresponsible gallantry, so that Rosalind often wondered if he would ever establish a solid base to his life.
Pierre, almost two years younger, named for a friend her husband had relied upon while at St. Omer's, was quieter, a stalwart little fellow with reddish hair. He seemed to love animals and the quiet places in the wooded garden his mother had created, and he had a passion for speaking French with his father. Rosalind never felt that she knew Pierre, for he had a stubborn character and withheld confidences, but what she saw of him she liked. 'He'd make a good Quaker,' she said of him once when he had obstinately refused to obey.
Rachel was fun, a laughing little girl of five who gave every indication of becoming a giddy woman, like her aunts at the Janney plantation. She flirted with her father, on the rare occasions she saw him, and was fiendishly skilled in manipulating her older brothers. She seemed much above average in intelligence and delighted in using words more complicated than she could understand. 'Pierre is apprehensive,' she once said, intending to say that he was being difficult. Whenever Rosalind caught the child playacting or abusing her privileges, she thought: When she grows up she'll acquire common sense. Rosalind put great store in common sense and prayed that all her children would achieve it.
The affection she displayed for them sometimes surprised those who visited Devon, for it was common belief that intelligence forestalled love; this reasoning prompted many in Patamoke to justify Fitzhugh's dalliance with the Turlock girl—'He must have a very cold bedroom at home, with that one.' Yet here were three delightful children belying that assumption, for they were the offspring of Rosalind's passion, not his.
She was, indeed, the best mother that either the Janneys or the Steeds had so far produced, a loving, careful, understanding woman who had a clear vision of what her children might become. She taught them their numbers and insisted that they read at a level constantly higher than apparent capacity. She badgered her husband about finding a tutor for the family, pointing out that if a satisfactory one were imported from England, all the Steed children on the mainland could move to the island and learn their Latin, but Fitzhugh growled, 'You worked like hell to get 'em off the island, now you propose bringin' the kids back.' And he refused to find a tutor.
She felt uncertain of her capacity to teach her sons beyond the rudiments, and as she was casting about for alternatives, she heard of the Jesuit mission recently established at Bohemia, an isolated manor at the northern fringe of the Eastern Shore. It had been located in this unlikely position so as to avoid attention from crusading Protestants who had a penchant for burning Catholic buildings and abusing Jesuits whom they suspected of trying to lead Maryland back into Catholicism. She knew she should look into the situation at Bohemia, but put off doing anything about it.
And then one cold December morning in 1710 she wakened to find the island covered with snow. She was at her window looking out upon the heavy fall as it accented the bright berries of the holly and set in bold relief the stark branches of the oak, when she saw her three children, well bundled by their slaves, explode from the front door and run helter-skelter through the drifts. She was amused at first, and watched with interest as they disappeared toward the wharf, only to come charging back. Rachel protested tearfully that her brothers had struck her with snowballs; but when they stopped to comfort her, she ground her mittens into their faces, smearing them with snow she had kept hidden behind her back.
And in that childish play, with the red sun of late December shining on their faces, they warned Rosalind that the time had come when she must move them away from Devon and out into the mainstream of mathematics and Shakespeare and the Catholic philosophers. The boys were only eight and seven, but already the years were wasting.
As soon as the snow stopped falling, she ordered the slaves to prepare the sloop, and on the first bright day when the winds abated she packed her sons into warm clothing and placed them aboard. It was indicative of her determination that she did not bother to consult Fitzhugh on this drastic decision, but even if she had wanted to she could not have done so, for he was in the marshes.
They sailed north past the latitude of Annapolis, and then past the mouth of the beautiful Chester River, and on to the Elk, which led them to the Bohemia River, up which they sailed as far as possible before reverting to oars. The persons they asked regarding the Jesuit settlement viewed them with alarm and would reveal nothing, but at last the sloop tied up at a wharf beyond which it could not proceed, and here a woman grudgingly conceded, 'The Papists is yonder,' and she indicated a pitifully small footpath leading into the forest.
Two slaves walked ahead, brushing the snow from the low-hanging branches, and two others followed, carrying the small possessions of the boys. In the middle strode Rosalind, her skirts tied above her knees with cords, her hands clutching Samuel and Pierre. In this manner the Steeds approached the Jesuits.
One priest was in attendance, and he was supervising a holding of more than eight hundred acres, a few in tillage, most in unexplored woodland. The mission church was small and wooden; the rectory in which the priest and his helpers lived was little more than a windblown shack.
'We have no school here,' the priest apologized.
'I did not expect one,' Rosalind said.
'What can we do with your sons?'
'You can teach them to work... to read Latin... to become fine young men.'
She was so persuasive, and she offered so heartily to pay the Jesuits for their trouble, that the priest could not arbitrarily refuse her. He invited her party of seven to stay with him that night; the slaves could sleep in corners of the mission, the Steeds on the floor before the hearth. As the short day ended, and the fire threw shadows on the glazed-paper windows, they talked of Maryland and the Steeds: 'I've heard of your family. Didn't your husband attend seminary in France?'
'He's not the seminary kind,' she said gently, pulling her long limbs tightly to her to conserve warmth. 'But he did study in France, and so did my son Mark... at St. Omer's.'
The priest looked askance at this; her age belied a son old enough to have graduated from St. Omer's. 'My stepson,' she explained. 'He married a Quaker girl. And I'm not Catholic, either.'
'But you would bring your sons here...?'
'Father. I do not want my sons to be barbarians. It's as simple as that.'
'I suppose it is,' the priest replied, and he began reciting the reasons why it would be both impractical and impossible for them to remain at the mission: no place for them, inadequate food, no schoolbooks, no teachers, no stability in the wilderness. He went on and on, and when he was finished, Rosalind said, 'Good, I'll leave them with you and be gone in the morning.'
It was merciful that she forced the Jesuits to keep her sons, because on the return trip, when her sloop was about to enter the Choptank, the slave who was steering suddenly screamed, 'Pirate ships!' And dead ahead, bearing down on them at a distance of about two miles, came two Caribbean ships lined with portholes bearing guns and decks crowded with marauders. They had chosen the winter to invade the bay, gambling that no English warships would be on station, and now, with their monstrous advantage in guns, they were free to ravage as they willed.
Rosalind, hastening to the bow of her sloop, made a rapid calculation born of years upon the bay: 'The wind favors us. We can scuttle into the river ahead of them.' And without further hesitation she directed the captain to trim sails and bring the swift-moving sloop onto a breath-taking course that would speed her into the Choptank.
As they approached the island they screamed and flashed signals, hoping to warn the Steed hands of the impending danger, but they were not seen or heard. So they sped up the river, looking constantly behind and seeing at last, with sickening fear, the two pirate ships nosing their way into the channel. The four slaves, who had learned that pirates relished capturing blacks as easily transferrable property for sale in Haiti, were more apprehensive than Rosalind, and when the mainland cut off the wind, they rowed vigorously, hoping to maintain their distance from the looming ships.
To forestall the sloop, the lead pirate ship fired a salvo, the heavy iron balls splashing into the waves not far from where Rosalind stood directing the flight. The reverberations echoed through the wintry air, and now those on the island were made aware of the danger pressing down upon them.
For several minutes, while the great ships came closer, nothing happened. And then Rosalind saw with relief that someone onshore was launching a longboat, manned by ten slaves, and when it sped toward the sloop, Rosalind saw that Mark Steed was in the bow, shouting directions to the rowers. In less than ten minutes, Rosalind calculated, the fresh rowers would be aboard the sloop and escape would be possible.
But now the pirates fired a single round, coming perilously close to Mark's longboat, throwing water over him, obscuring him for a moment, and Rosalind screamed, 'No!' But when the splash died, she saw that Mark was still in command, and she fell on one of the benches as if it had been her life that had been saved.
The reinforcements enabled the sloop to maintain distance from the pirates and reach an improvised landing short of the creek. There Rosalind and Mark scrambled ashore, with Mark shouting, 'Leave the boats! Save yourselves!' And he waited till all fourteen slaves had vanished in the woods. He was standing there as the pirates sailed ominously by, taking their time to effect a comfortable landing, for they knew they could not be opposed.
Rosalind and Mark hurried by forest paths to the cleared tobacco fields and across to the plantation house, shouting commands to all they met: 'Pirates! Come to the big house!'
When they reached that vulnerable fortress Rosalind quietly asked for her daughter, and when Rachel was produced, golden-haired and sleepy from her nap, Rosalind embraced her and said, 'You must be brave now,' and she asked where Fitzhugh was, and the child said, 'He hasn't been here since you went away.'
She told Mark to fetch Amanda, and when the little Quaker wife waddled forward, heavy with child, Rosalind said, 'You must hide in the far root cellar. Pirates do dreadful things to young women, even in your condition.'
She then asked if any other Steeds were on the island, and was gratified to find that none were; they would escape this day's travail and be ready to rebuild. 'If pirates come,' she said grimly, 'they also go. Our task is to keep them from destroying everything.'
Now the hulking ships were in the creek, arrogantly threading their way into waters that would have proved forbiddingly dangerous if English warships had been in pursuit. The island had no defenses, and when the lead ship drew close to the wharf it loosed a volley which tore through the upper rooms of the wooden house, shattering everything.
'Oh God!' Rosalind cried from her position on the porch. 'This is going to be worse...'
Now the first pirates were storming ashore, lean men with beards and flashing swords. Ten came and then forty and then a hundred, scattering through the trees, tearing all things apart. The slaves they did not harm, herding them in great batches toward the ships, but the slave houses they set afire.
Then they came toward the big house, eighty or ninety of them, hungry for spoils, dedicated to destruction. They approached viciously, hoping that someone would try to oppose them, for they had the wild courage of those who know that the enemy is unarmed. One caught a brand from a flaming slave hut and ran toward the house.
'No!' Rosalind screamed. She did not mean that the pirate should not enflame the house; she meant that Mark should not try to oppose him. But he moved to intercept the incendiarist, brandishing a pistol, and when the pirate kept coming, with the torch before his grizzled head, Mark took aim, fired and killed him.
Frenzy erupted. Other pirates, seeing their comrade fall with blood spurting from his forehead, became avenging monsters. Four leaped upon Mark, stabbing and shooting long after he was dead. Another, rushing like a maniac toward the house, swung his rifle in a great arc, catching little Rachel above the ear and demolishing her skull. This one then turned on Rosalind, striking her many times with the butt of his gun and knocking her senseless.
When she awoke she was propped against a tree; slaves had imperiled their own lives by dragging her to safety. As her eyes focused she saw the Steed plantation in flames: the big house, the slave quarters, the little houses in which the lesser Steeds had been invited to live; even the wharf. And on the porch of the gutted building from which all items of value had been stolen, she could see the shattered body of her daughter committed to the flames.
Only when the ravishment was complete did the captain of the pirates come ashore. Rosalind watched with cold hatred as he strode arrogantly among the trees she had planted. She would never forget him, a small, wizened old man walking with mincing steps and smirking at the destruction his men had wreaked. He came to where she lay and ordered his men to haul her upright. Then, walking about her as if he were in a slave mart, he said, 'I'm Henri Bonfleur. I've met your family before.' Viciously he struck her across the face, then said quietly to his men, 'Turn her loose. She's too ugly to bother with.' He placed his right foot in her stomach and pushed her backward. As she lay on the withered grass he looked down at her and said, 'Don't send ships this time to Marigot.' He was about to pass on to inspect the booty, but instead he turned and kicked her again and again. 'Your men killed Griscom. Now see the fire!' Contorted with hatred, he passed on, and when an underling asked, 'Shall we kill her?' he snarled, 'No, let her live to enjoy this day.'
Bitterly Rosalind watched as the pirate ships triumphantly withdrew. Then slowly, painfully she pulled herself up and walked with faltering steps to where the few remaining slaves were hidden. She directed them in digging two graves in the family cemetery beyond the oak, and there she buried the children on which her hopes had rested: Mark, who was not of her body but who was of her mind and her character, and little Rachel, whose naughty spirit might have enabled her to become an inheritor. As the earth fell upon their uncoffined bodies, she almost strangled with grief, and in that fearful moment swore that she would be revenged: 'Pirates, run where you will, we'll find you!' All her actions became subservient to this consuming hatred: pirates must be driven from the sea and hanged. It was intolerable that they should be able to invade private homes with impunity, and if the government in London could not protect this bay, she would.
She summoned the two ships owned by the Steeds and had them refitted with banks of concealed cannon. She increased the number of sailors per ship and had them trained in repelling boarders. Guns and cutlasses were ordered by the barrelful and in the late summer of 1711 her stratagems bore fruit. One of the ships was accosted by a swift-moving pirate brigantine whose fore-and-aft sails allowed her to maneuver in light winds. What the pirate did not know was that the Steed captain sought to be overtaken, for when the brigantine was close at hand he revealed the bank of heavy guns whose fire tore away the superstructure of the pirate ship.
The pirates were not seriously dismayed by this, for their basic tactic was to grapple merchant ships, board them, and subdue the crew in hand-to-hand combat; but this time it was the merchant sailors who did the boarding, and with their cutlasses and pistols, killed many of the pirates. Nineteen they chained belowdecks, hauling them and their ship back to Devon.
'You must turn them over to the authorities,' Steed warned, but Rosalind said, 'On this island you're the authority.' He asked her what she meant by this, and she snapped, 'You're a justice. Pass sentence.' When he refused, she directed that the pirates be removed to Patamoke, where she demanded that the courts sentence these murderers to death, and when this was done she watched the building of the gallows at the wharf, and she was waiting there when the pirates were led forth.
To each of the nineteen she said, as he passed by, 'If you see Bonfleur in hell, report what happened.'
These hangings created a scandal. On the one hand, they were illegal, for pirates were the responsibility of the province and all agreed that Mrs. Steed should have forwarded them to Annapolis. But on the other hand, pirates had ravaged the Steed plantation and had slain two of Mrs. Steed's children, not to mention abducting more than twenty of her slaves, and her revenge was obviously pleasing to the general populace. Furthermore, it showed what a determined woman could do. She became a heroine, but when broadsides were published detailing the victory of her ship and the hanging of her pirates, she was not satisfied. She ordered thousands of these sheets for distribution in all Caribbean ports. She wanted Bonfleur and Carpaux and Vidal to know specifically who it was that had hanged their fellows. She challenged them with the knowledge that she would not rest until they, too, were hanged.
Her stern example goaded the authorities into assembling a small fleet of privateers commissioned to destroy, once and for all, the pirate nests throughout the Caribbean, and when volunteers were called for, she offered the Steed vessels. She told her captains, 'No more casual tobacco trips to London. We'll fight in the Caribbean till the last devil is hanged.'
Her husband protested, 'What will happen to our crops?'
'They'll rot,' she said curtly. 'They certainly won't be ferried to London in our ships.' And when he complained of this wastage, she said contemptuously, 'If you had any manliness, Fitzhugh, you'd be serving on one of the ships.'
'Me?'
'Yes! Have you no sense of justice? Do you allow a fiend to burn your home and kill two of your children and make no counter? Do you want me to captain one of the ships? By God, I'll sail that sea till I catch him by the neck.'
'Catch who?'
'The pirate. Any pirate. The great inhuman pirate that terrifies us, and comes up our bay to burn and slaughter.'
'You must learn—'
'I've already learned. I've learned what a weak, sick thing you are. I've stomached your behavior in the marsh. I've forgiven you for not being here when the place was burned. And I can even understand why you did not particularly grieve when your children were slain. But sheer cowardice I cannot tolerate.'
'But, Rosalind—'
'Do you get aboard that ship? Or do I?'
She was two inches taller than her husband, a few pounds lighter, but the difference in character was immeasurable. She saw the world as a unit, all parts interrelating, and for a boy of promise not to know Latin was exactly as grave an omission as for a father not to be concerned about the totality of his family. She had never made much of courage or the customary manifestations of manliness, no more than she had thought much of the so-called womanly virtues; there was no great advantage, she thought, in being able to coquette or bake a crumpet, but there was an immortal advantage in being a decent woman or a proper man.
I don't want revenge to even things out, she told herself after her husband had reluctantly departed, but I do want it to tidy up the world. Piracy cannot be tolerated.
Hoping that the new American measures might bring the intolerable situation on the Chesapeake under control, she turned her attention to Devon. She did not want ostentatious gravestones for Mark and Rachel, but she did want reminders of the imperishable love she had felt for these two excellent children; she would never see better and their loss would never be far from her thoughts. Their graves lay beside the oak, and sometimes she would go there and reflect upon her insufferable loss, but her tears were few, for she was not one to weep easily. On occasion she would think of the fine black women who had worked in her kitchen and done her sewing, and she would ponder their fate: raped and ravaged by the pirates and sold in Haiti. Then the cruelty of the world would overwhelm her, and she would drop her head and think of nothing, and after a long while she would sigh and return to her tasks.
Principally she must rebuild the house, and whenever she placed a pencil on paper she felt the loss of Mark. How she wished that he were there to help; he would know the measurements and the cost of brass. She sometimes speculated on why she had such an affection for this lad; he was not her son nor of her blood; perhaps it was because he represented all men, all husbands, all generals and captains, and the world would be far better if more were like him.
With no children of her own at hand, she lavished her attention on Amanda Paxmore Steed, as she was invariably referred to in the community, and as the time approached for her delivery, Rosalind speeded the rebuilding of her house so that a special room for children might be available. In fact, she became so oppressive in her attentions that the Quaker girl said one day, 'Rosalind, I'm going back to Peace Cliff.'
'But you're a Steed.'
'No. I'm a human being. And thee is stifling me.'
'What a preposterous—'
'Rosalind, I'm doing this so that I can have a fine, normal son. And after he's safely born and truly started, we'll come back. Of course we'll come back.'
The firm set of her jaw warned Rosalind that she had better concur, and quickly, or she would lose a grandson. 'An excellent idea,' she said. 'You'll be out of the way while the builders are busy.'
She did not employ an architect. And she was further hampered by the loss of the trained slaves stolen by the pirates, but through judicious purchases in Virginia she did acquire some fine masons, bricklayers and carpenters, and these she gave instructions as to how her house was to be built: 'It's to occupy the same site as before, but it's never to be cluttered.'
She drew plans for every façade, every room, and when the ground was cleared and the sawn timbers were drying in the sun, she announced her basic decision: 'We'll build of brick.'
'We don't have enough for a whole house.'
'We'll fire them.' And she doubled the brick crew, and the staff cutting trees for the charcoal, and in time she collected a substantial pile of reddish bricks to augment those she had been saving during the preceding decade.
But when the foundations were in and the first two courses of bricks laid, she did not like the result: 'There's something wrong. They don't look the way they should.' Deep in her mind she had a memory, from somewhere along the Rappahannock, of what a brick wall should be, and hers fell short.
Was it the color? Or the thickness of the oyster-shell mortar? Or the depth of the indentations between the courses? She could not tell, so she sailed to Patamoke and inquired of everyone she met, and finally a newcomer from Holland said he felt sure he knew what the matter was, and he sailed back to Devon and inspected the wall: 'It's simple. You're not even using the English bond.'
'What?'
He showed her how the bricks in her courses had been laid always with the long face outward, which resulted in monotony and lack of sturdiness: 'You must follow either the English bond or the Flemish.' And he demonstrated how, in the former, one course was composed only of bricks laid lengthwise, while the course above and below used bricks with only their ends showing. This alternation was most pleasing, and Rosalind said, 'That's what we want. Simple, we'll tear out that second course and relay it end out.'
'But the Flemish bond is even better,' the Dutchman said, and he showed her a simple yet charming way of alternating in every row a long brick with an end one, so that the wall became not only extra sturdy but also pleasing to the eye.
'I like that!' she cried, but before she could give her slaves instructions, the Dutchman said, 'What's best is when you use light-colored local bricks for the long stretchers and blackish Holland-type bricks for the short headers.'
Two days were wasted while he searched the Choptank for some of the darker bricks, but when he located a few they produced a pattern so pleasing that Rosalind agreed she must have such a house. It took her more than two years to assemble the dark bricks she needed, but when enough had been collected she was prepared to go ahead with her house.
Construction was interrupted by an event which set cannon reverberating around the bay. The flotilla of privateers assembled by Virginia and Maryland planters had up to now accomplished little; there had been desultory forays against the pirates but no engagements of significance. Invasions of the Chesapeake had been halted, but on the high seas the pirates still burned and murdered with impunity. And then, in November of 1713, five American vessels converged on four pirate ships lurking near Martinique, and after a running fight, drove them into Marigot Bay. There a furious hand-to-hand fight ensued, with all the pirate ships being destroyed. Ninety buccaneers were hauled in chains to Williamsburg, and when they were sorted out for hanging on the docks of London, it was found that one old man masquerading as a deck hand was actually Henri Bonfleur, now sixty-nine, toothless and steeped in cruelty.
It was Fitzhugh Steed who brought the exciting news to Devon. He was accompanied by a lieutenant who bore testimony to his courage in the fighting, and when this pair walked slowly up from the wharf to the improvised wooden shack in which Rosalind lived alone, they were taken aback by the ardor with which she greeted them. Embracing her husband joyously, she cried, 'Is Bonfleur really in chains?'
'We saw him selected for London,' Fitzhugh replied, sinking into a chair.
Clenching her hands and striding about the room, oblivious of the presence of the lieutenant, she muttered, 'God has delivered him to us.' Then she came to her husband and said, 'We must leave for Williamsburg at once.'
'Why?'
'To get Bonfleur.'
'For what?'
'To hang him.' Before her husband could protest, she added, 'He's to be hanged from a gibbet I will erect on those ashes,' and she pointed toward the vanished porch where Mark and Rachel had been slain.
'That's past now,' Fitzhugh said from his chair.
'It's just beginning!' she stormed as she moved about the room. 'We'll catch them all, and hang them all.'
She could not be dissuaded from her determination to see Bonfleur executed at the scene of his infamy, but Fitzhugh refused to accompany her to Virginia. 'You're mad. Where's your womanly self-respect?' She replied that she was acting as an outraged mother, 'The mother of your children, by the way.'
At Williamsburg the English authorities in charge of the warfare against piracy were aghast at her proposal that Bonfleur be surrendered to her, but after they had watched her in court, stern as hammered iron, they had to concede that it had been her determination alone which had driven this cruel pirate from the seas. And when they listened to her recite the devastation he had visited upon Devon, they knew it would be appropriate if he were hanged there—'But not on the island itself, for that would be interpreted as private vengeance. Publicly at Patamoke, with drums beating.'
'Thank you,' she said quietly, with no sign of triumph. But as she stalked from the courtroom like an avenging Greek goddess, one of the judges whispered, 'That one carries a heart of brass. Thank God she's not stalking me.'
In the days when Bonfleur was being processed for his trip up the bay, she had free time, and it occurred to her that Williamsburg stood not far from the James River, where Tom and Evelyn Yates had their plantation, so on the spur of the moment—in the way she did most things— she sailed to the Yates home to see her daughter Evelyn. And when she saw how this family had attained order and prosperity and three fine children, she was overcome with emotion and tears appeared upon her cheeks as they sat in the wintry sunshine.
'What is it, Mother?' Evelyn cried, fearing that the journey to Virginia and the excitement of the trial had impaired Rosalind's health.
'This is what life should be,' her mother replied. 'A woman and her children. Not the pursuit of pirates.'
Evelyn broke into relieved laughter. 'You fraud! Always you will be pursuing some enemy. Remember that day you drove the Claxtons away?' She kissed her mother and added, 'Said you were saving my life. Well, you did.'
Rosalind recalled that day and sighed. 'I was so ugly in my hardness. But so right.' With a broad sweep of her arm she indicated the Yates children and the growing prosperity of the land: 'This paradise of action compared to Regis Claxton and his puny fears.' She wiped her eyes and said, 'But I was also right when I declared war upon Bonfleur. And now I must go home and hang him.'
She insisted that the wizened pirate be brought up the bay chained in the hold of her snow, but when that trim little craft came into the channel north of Devon she directed the Englishmen to produce him on deck so that he could review the scenes of his earlier triumphs. 'There you landed, Bonfleur, and those jagged walls are the ones you burned. That tall oak marks the grave of my children. And ahead is Patamoke, which you also ravaged, years ago, and this marsh we're passing is where you stole the Swedish girl. Can you even remember her?'
Bonfleur, holding his chains, glared at his tormentor. 'I remember that winter's night when my men wanted to kill you and I stopped them. Sad mistake.' She sent him below, and when he was brought forth at Patamoke she stood by the gibbet in December cold, never averting her gaze from his cruel face. When he was truly hanged, his lashed feet dangling in the night, she said, 'Now we go after the others.'
When she sailed back to Devon she found that Fitzhugh had left. He had taken all his clothes and guns to the marsh, from which he refused to return. It created a scandal, and had it not been for his exalted former position, he would probably have been publicly whipped. Father Darnley was brought over from Annapolis to reason with him, but when the priest sat in the little marsh hut, Steed told him, 'I'll never go back. This one'—and he indicated Nelly Turlock—'doesn't read books or pepper me with questions.'
When Father Darnley returned to Devon he told Rosalind, 'We can still hope he'll change his mind and resume his responsibilities.'
'Not him,' she said firmly. 'He's a sad weak man lacking in character. Quite unable to accept responsibilities.'
'He fought the pirates.'
'Only because I goaded him.'
'Have you, perhaps, goaded him too much?'
'No, it's like two people on a dark road with only one lantern. One forges ahead and does the work. The other refuses to keep up.'
'But if he can't keep up? If he needs our help?'
'He doesn't care to keep up. He never cared for his home, nor his wife, nor his ships, nor anything.' She realized the harshness of her assessment and added, 'I am not abandoning him, Father. Long ago he abandoned himself. He's even abandoned the church. I am now the Catholic. He's...' She waved her long hands expressively, signifying emptiness.
A few weeks later Father Darnley was ferried back; Fitzhugh had died. He had been hunting with his marsh children when he stopped abruptly, wiped perspiration from his eyes, and told his oldest boy, 'I think the time has come to lie down.' The Turlocks were prepared to bury him in the woods, but Rosalind recovered the body for interment beyond the oak. At graveside she did her best to present the image of a grieving widow, but her thoughts were harsh: You'd be entering the good years of your life, if you'd allowed me to be a partner. And as Father Darnley spoke well of the dead profligate, sanctimoniously citing a fictitious record at St. Omer's and his reputed bravery in fighting pirates, Rosalind became preoccupied with the jagged outline of her new house: From here you can't determine whether it's being built or being torn down. It's caught in a moment of time, indecipherable. But I can tell you, the family's being built. The boys at Bohemia will see to that.
With two of her children, Mark and Rachel, dead and with the other three absent from Devon—Evelyn down the bay, Sam and Pierre still with the Jesuits at Bohemia—Rosalind's restless energy and her need to give love had to find new channels, and one April day in 1714 as she was leaving the warehouse in Patamoke she was led by accident to that spot across from the courthouse and the slave auction where the whipping post stood close to the stocks. There, to the delight of threescore witnesses, a girl of eighteen was being lashed with strokes from the cat-o'-nine-tails. Her back was already bloodied when Rosalind reached the scene, and at the eighth stroke she had fainted, but the crowd urged the jailer to proceed in the manner the judges had decreed: 'Well laid on.'
'What did she do?' Rosalind asked, looking compassionately at the bleeding figure, nude to the waist, as it hung limp from the crossbars.
'Tom Broadnax's serving girl.'
'But what did she do?' Rosalind recognized the name of a leading citizen, but this did not help in determining his servant's crime.
'Had a bastard child of her body.'
'What?' At thirty-nine Rosalind had become impatient with indirection. She demanded to know what crime this girl had committed that would justify such savage punishment.
'It's what they say in court. _Bastard child of her body_.' And it was this arcane terminology that set her investigating.
She went to the courthouse, where records of proceedings and punishments, neatly written by the clerk, were kept in a large folio, but when she asked to see the book she was told that was impossible. Drawing herself up to her considerable height, she thundered at the small man tending the book, 'Nothing's impossible. I demand to see that book.' And she wrested it from him, taking it to the window so she could inspect its heavily ruled pages.
What she saw regarding the case of Betsy, Thomas Broadnax's serving girl, disgusted her: 'It's a novel. A French novel in four chapters.' She was correct, for the relevant entries read:
26 March 1714. Today being the first day after the New Year, Thomas Broadnax did complain to the court that his indentured girl Betsy has become increasingly obstinate and loath to obey, and he beseeches the court to warn her that she must give faithful service throughout the New Year.
28 March 1714. Thomas Broadnax did present to the court testimony against his indentured servant girl Betsy that without being married she was about to bear a bastard child of her body.
29 March 1714. Thomas Broadnax did appear in the court with testimony that his serving girl Betsy has borne a bastard child of her body. The court sentenced said Betsy to be whipped with eighteen lashes, well laid on, same to be applied when she was recovered from her delivery.
3 April 1714. Thomas Broadnax did appear in court with information that the child borne of his indentured servant girl Betsy is a girl. The court assigns said bastard child to the care of Thomas Broadnax, to work for him till the age of twenty-one, he to supply her with food, lodging and dress.
It was a series of decisions which could have been matched in any Eastern Shore courthouse during these years, and Rosalind appreciated this; the customs may have been barbaric but they were generally approved. What made this case abhorrent was that following each of the four entries came the signatures of the justices, led by the name of the presiding judge: Thomas Broadnax. He had been displeased with his serving girl; he had brought charges against her in his own court; he had sentenced her to a public whipping; and he had assigned to himself the infant's unpaid services for twenty-one years.
'What horrible questions flood the mind!' Rosalind muttered as she returned the record to the apprehensive clerk, and for days she could not dispel either the image of Betsy hanging to the crossbar or her imaginings as to how she had got there. Having no other pressing concerns, she stayed in Patamoke, trying to find Betsy and talk with her, but that unfortunate girl was locked up in the Broadnax home, trying vainly to wash the salt from her wounds. So Rosalind sought out the judge and found him in his fields, a burly man dressed in black and dignity: 'She was a faithless girl and merited her punishment.'
'But she still works for you?'
'Her indenture has three years to run.'
'Are you not afraid that she will poison you? For the terrible things you've done to her?'
'Poison? Mind your tongue, Mistress Steed.'
'Yes,' she said boldly, 'if you had treated me that way, I would seek revenge.'
'Yes, you're a great one for revenge. Do you know what they call that pompous house you're building? Rosalind's Revenge. You were irritated that your husband...' His voice trailed off, allowing the insinuation to cut.
'Broadnax, you're a fool. What's worse, you're a sanctimonious fool.' It was these words which brought Rosalind Steed into the Patamoke court, and as in the case of Betsy, her accuser, adverse witness and dispenser of justice was Judge Thomas Broadnax:
17 April 1714. Thomas Broadnax did testify to the court that Rosalind Steed did, in the affairs of the indentured serving girl Betsy, who had to be whipped for her foul misbehavior, call said T.B. a fool and averred she might poison him. Said R.S. to pay a fine of three hundred pounds of tobo to said Broadnax.
The sentence was signed by Thomas Broadnax, Chief Judge.
Rosalind took the certificate for her tobacco personally to the judge's home, and when the door was opened for its delivery, Betsy stood there to receive it. The girl had been made aware of Mrs. Steed's intercession on her behalf, and now burst into tears, which Rosalind halted brusquely. 'Let me see your back,' she said.
'Oh, he would kill me if he came in.'
'Nonsense! He's at the courthouse.'
'His wife is worse.'
'Does she starve you?'
'She does. And whips me, too.'
'But you did have the baby?'
'I did. Precious little else to do in this house.'
'The father?'
Betsy looked away. She would not speak, nor would she uncover her back, but with an unexpected move, Rosalind caught her and pulled up her blouse. There the horrid marks remained, deep and livid. For some moments Rosalind stared at them, and against her will tears came into her eyes. She was ashamed of herself, and mumbled some excuse as she dropped the blouse.
'Who's there?' came a harsh voice from a nearby room, and quickly Betsy straightened her clothes and replied, 'Delivery of the tobacco paper.'
'What are you saying?' came the stern voice, and soon Mrs. Broadnax, an unforgiving woman of fifty, stormed into the hallway about to abuse her servant when she saw Mrs. Steed. 'I'm surprised you'd come here, poisoner and all.'
'I've brought the fine, as your husband directed.'
'Leave it and go. We're not impressed with your kind.' And four days later Rosalind discovered how vengeful the Broadnaxes could be, for she was back home at Devon when a shallop sailed up to the wharf bearing a solitary man whom she had not previously met but of whom she had heard occasionally.
He was thin and straight from much living in the woods. He walked with quiet grace, as if he commanded the trees through which he moved. His face was deeply pocked and his hair was white, revealing the seventy-three years which his bearing belied. He spoke with difficulty, as if words—any words—were alien to him, and occasionally he introduced Indian phrases which Rosalind had not heard before.
'Stooby,' he said, assuming that she would know him to be a Turlock.
'Turlock?'
'Mmmm.' To any of her questions, he replied in a grunt, indicating affirmation or denial, and after a few minutes with him it was easy to determine which.
'I am very pleased to see you, Stooby. My son Mark told me many good things—'
He brushed aside her graciousness, for his message was imperative: 'They whipping Nelly.'
'Who's Nelly?' she asked impulsively, then pressed her right hand over her mouth to correct her stupidity.
'Steed's girl. Broadnax whipping her.'
'What for?'
'Three children. Your three children.'
And slowly the horror of the visit became clear: Judge Broadnax, infuriated by the insolent manner in which Rosalind Steed had responded to her penalty, and enraged by his wife's account of how the tobacco fine had been delivered, had decided to strike back. He had come into court and personally charged Nelly Turlock with 'having borne three bastards of her body,' and had sentenced her to ten lashes, well laid on.
'When does it take place?'
'Three days.' And then Stooby said something which revealed that even he could see the insane vengeance in this act: 'Many years nothing. Your man dies—whipping.'
'Yes. Broadnax would never have dared while my husband was alive. Nor Mark, either. They'd have shot him.' Then, for a reason she could not have explained, she asked, 'Was Charley...' She did not know how to phrase her question. 'Were Charley Turlock and Flora Turlock Nellie's parents?'
'Mmmm,' Stooby said. 'Little house. We all live...'
'Did you think it wrong, Stooby?'
'Little house...' He said this with such finality that it was apparent he did not wish to explore further the strange behavior of his brother: the hut in the marsh had been small, and in it strange pairings had occurred. But then his reserve broke and he clutched Rosalind's hand. 'Whipping, you stop.'
'I shall if God gives me strength.' And all that day, after Stooby had gone, she devised stratagems to halt this miscarriage of justice, but she was powerless and knew it. Then, while there was still only an hour and a half of daylight, she thought of a way to shame the town into stopping this senseless beating of women.
Calling her six strongest slaves, she ordered them to prepare her fastest sloop, and when her head sailor protested, 'It'll be dark,' she overrode him. 'We're only going to the cliff,' she said, and off they set with a fair wind pushing them at six knots.
Waiting impatiently for the journey to end, and counting the fading light as if it were coins falling into a jar, she wondered if she had ever seen this river more benevolent: spring touched the trees along the shore, and the breeze threw tips of waves, white in the sunset. In the distance a fishing boat made for Patamoke, and as the day died the last geese of the year settled in coves to rest before their long flight north. She thought: How peaceful this river, and how wrong some of the things we do on its banks.
Her calculation as to time proved correct, for she reached Peace Cliff well before dark and was able to direct the slaves to find quarters at the logging camp farther up the creek. She climbed up to the gray-brown telescope house, where, as she had hoped, Ruth Brinton Paxmore sat in the gloaming, watching the river she loved so much—'I saw thee coming and made little wagers as to when thee would arrive.'
'I come on most serious business.' And she outlined the deplorable thing that was to happen two days hence at Patamoke.
'Thomas Broadnax thinks he is Nebuchadnezzar,' Ruth Brinton said.
'But it's so hideously wrong, Mrs. Paxmore. Year after year these men assemble and dole out whippings to women who could not have babies without their connivance. But never are the men punished. Good God, my husband stalked this river with impunity, and never a hand was laid on him, but the minute he dies these awful justices grab for the woman and sentence her to be whipped. Why? Why?'
'Thee has come to the right person to ask,' the frail old woman said, rocking back and forth in the gray light that seemed a part of her gray costume.
'What do you mean?'
'I was whipped out of Virginia. I was whipped through Massachusetts at the tail of a cart.'
'You—Ruth Brinton? You?'
The old lady rose, went to the window, where glimmers of light still rested, and opened her blouse, disclosing the welts that neither time nor the dimming of memory would heal.
'Oh, dear God!' Rosalind whispered. She stood transfixed, the awfulness of such whippings somehow intensified by this evidence on the body of a very old woman. She then saw with excruciating clarity that men ordered only young women to be stripped, as if the sexuality of the act were impossible if the victims were older—like their mothers or grandmothers. The punishment was therefore not merely a whipping; it was an act of lust, a purging of heated thoughts.
And in that revelation she discovered how it could be halted. Her proposal was daring and fraught with much danger, but that it would be effective she had no doubt: 'Ruth Brinton, on Thursday when they whip Nelly, you and I will stand forth and bare our backs too, and insist that they whip us, as well, for we share in her guilt.' This was so strange a statement that she added, 'On behalf of the town we share.'
'I'm eighty-one.'
'It is testimony that is needed.' By some happy chance Rosalind had hit upon the one word that had the power to activate the fighter in the old woman: _testimony_. A human being, to live a meaningful life, was required to bear testimony; in prayer, in the husbandry of the home, in the conduct of public life, a man or woman must at critical moments testify publicly as to fundamental beliefs. Ruth Brinton had always done so, which was why she was regarded throughout the Eastern Shore as a Quaker saint, difficult at times, stubborn always, but a testament to man's striving for a saner life.
'I'll help,' she said. That night the two women shared the same bedroom, and before they fell asleep Ruth Brinton confided, 'I shall do this, Rosalind, because it was thee who saved Amanda's life when the pirates came. Thee offered thine to save her, and there is no greater love.'
They spent the next morning, Wednesday, in prayer, and at noon, with the most serene equanimity, they went down to the Paxmore wharf and climbed into Rosalind's sloop. Ruth Brinton's sons were at work in the boatyard in Patamoke, so there was no one to prevent the old lady from leaving, and it was with a kind of spiritual exaltation that they sailed out into the Choptank, past the Turlock marshes and into the town harbor. As they tied up they chanced to see Judge Broadnax, stout and severe, but he refused to acknowledge them; on four different occasions he had been forced to fine the Paxmore brothers for refusing military service, which caused him to have an even lower opinion of Quakers than of Steeds.
They slept that night at the Patamoke home of the Steed who was running the warehouse, and on Thursday morning they had prominent places at the whipping post, mingling with those excited citizens who had come to see the Turlock woman finally punished. The sheriff promenaded as if he were the hero of the occasion, snapping his nine-tails and looking toward the door of the jail from which the criminal would be hauled.
At ten o'clock the door opened and Nelly Turlock appeared in a brown shift which could easily be stripped away. Faint with terror, she was led slowly to the whipping post, and as she passed, some in the crowd cheered and some muttered curses; as long as Fitzhugh Steed had protected her she had been insolent, but now revenge had come.
Rosalind had not seen her before this moment; she seemed quite beautiful, but slatternly, and so dazed she did not seem to recognize who was taunting her in the crowd, nor who was suffering with her.
Now came the time to bind her to the stake, and when this was done the sheriff reached up and pulled away her shift, leaving her naked to the waist, but before he could apply the first of his ten lashes an extraordinary thing happened. Mrs. Steed left the crowd, walked boldly to the whipping post and pulled down her blouse, standing half naked beside the sentenced girl. And while gasps of outrage were still echoing, old Ruth Brinton Paxmore stepped beside her, repeating the performance. When her withered back was disclosed, cries of disgust issued from the crowd.
'Take them away!'
'Profanation!'
The display of the three half-naked women had precisely the effect that Rosalind intended. One was young and wanton and deserved whipping, but the other two were different: Rosalind was a lady, she was tall, her breasts were large and not seductive; and as for Ruth Brinton, she was a great-grandmother, horribly out of place in such a scene. The time when men would have enjoyed seeing her whipped was long past: her breasts had withered; she was disgusting, a travesty.
'Take them away!' a woman shouted. 'Obscene!'
Then Rosalind spoke, not covering her breasts with her hands but standing clear: 'I am as guilty as she. You must whip me, too.'
And old Ruth Brinton added, 'This whipping of women must stop.'
But now Judge Broadnax appeared, quivering with rage because of an interruption he had not sanctioned. 'What happens here?'
'Two others demand to be whipped.'
'Then whip them!' But he had delivered his verdict before seeing who the voluntary victims were, and when he saw Rosalind and Ruth Brinton standing beside the post, naked to the waist, he was shocked. 'Cover them and take them away!' he thundered, and when this was done he ordered that the lashes begin, but with every fall of the cat, Rosalind and Ruth Brinton screamed in anguish, as if the knotted cords had fallen on their backs, and their cries echoed, and after that morning there was no more whipping of women in Patamoke.
The incident had one unexpected consequence. Stooby Turlock sailed back to Devon to talk with Mrs. Steed, but this time he came attended by others; as he walked up the gravel path to the half-finished house he brought with him three blond children between the ages of seventeen and ten. They were clean, and obviously under severe instructions to behave themselves, and when Rosalind appeared, Stooby said, 'I bring his children.'
Gravely Rosalind shook hands with each of the stiff, suspicious young people, then inquired, 'You say...'
'Fitz's.'
She asked their names, then suggested that they walk in the yard, and when they were gone she asked, 'Why did you bring them here?'
'Nelly gone. Never come back.'
'She ran away?'
'Mmmm.'
Rosalind coughed and groped for her handkerchief. Little wonder that a woman who had been so humiliated should want to quit the river. 'I would have stayed and fought them,' she told Stooby when she had wiped her nose. 'I would have strangled Broadnax in his own—'
Stooby put his hands over his ears. 'Don't say. Next they whip you.'
'You don't have to listen, Stooby, but Thomas Broadnax walks in danger. Now, what about these children?'
'No mother. No father. They stay here.'
And with this simple declaration, Stooby Turlock posed a moral problem for Rosalind Steed: what to do with the bastard children of her dead husband? The whole testimony of her life dictated that she assume responsibility for these three, and the vanishing of her own children was an added persuasion. But she also had a sense of harsh reality and knew that these children had been born in the marsh, of the marsh. Their father was a weak man, lacking in character, and their mother was worse. In these children there was not good blood. They promised small likelihood of achievement; intuitively she sensed that with them she could accomplish nothing.
She had come to believe that the human stock populating this world was wondrously uneven. When she goaded her son into marrying Amanda Paxmore, there was not even a remote chance that the little Quaker girl would turn out badly; she came from solid stock, with the personal fire of old Ruth Brinton in her veins and the irreducible integrity of Edward Paxmore. She trusted that her sons at Bohemia would grow into stalwart men upon whom Devon could depend. But the children of her silly sisters across the bay—what timid and fragile things they would be!
The three Turlocks now wandering in the yard came from damaged sources, and she was convinced that no matter how much love and force she applied to them, she and they would end in heartbreak. They belonged to the marsh, and to move them elsewhere would be cruelty.
'Take them back, Stooby,' she said.
'I seventy-three,' he said. 'Soon I die. The children?'
'They'll find a way.'
'Please, Mrs. Steed. Your children, not mine.'
'No,' she said firmly. She would not try to share the reasoning behind her decision, nor would she retreat from it, but when Stooby pointed out that he had not the wherewithal to rear the children, she promised, 'I'll pay for everything.' And when she saw him leading the children back to the sloop, his shoulders sagging and his white hair shining in the sun, she was satisfied that whereas he must be disappointed now, he would in the long run see that she was right.
She kept her word. She followed what was happening in the marsh and saw to it that Stooby had the funds needed to raise the abandoned children, but when she heard that he had given them the name Steed, she sent word that this was not wise, and thereafter they were lost among the Turlocks.
Stooby did not die soon, as he had feared. Because of his sturdy life in the woods, and his lean competence in caring for himself, he lived on and on, giving Nelly's children the love they needed and an introduction to swamp life. By the time the boys had left their teens, they were accomplished watermen, and because they had acquired Stooby's intense interest in birds and river things, they became the principal suppliers of soft crabs and oysters, roasting ducks and turtles for soup.
Rosalind, watching their sensible progress, thought: I was so correct in not taking them from their natural home. That day they were like waves which had ventured far inland, making a mark they could never again achieve. Now they've receded to their tidal level, and there they prosper.
Her own sons prospered too. In December of 1718 they returned from Bohemia polished young scholars, for the Jesuits had taught them Latin, Greek, Italian and French, and they were as familiar with Thucydides and Cicero as they were with the Douai Version of the Bible. They knew little of hunting geese or trapping beaver, but they understood the niceties of St. Thomas Aquinas and were, as the letter from the Jesuits said, 'ready for the rigors of St. Omer's.'
Rosalind agreed that they must continue their studies in France—'Where in today's world could a young man find better instruction?' But the thought of sending them across the Atlantic on the May convoy struck terror in her heart, for these were the years when the most hideous pirate of all ravaged the Chesapeake. After the mass hangings of 1713 there had been a diminution of piracy, but in 1716 a dark meteor had blazed across the Caribbean, Edward Teach, a man of horrible cruelties known as Blackbeard. In Jamaica he had roared, 'Warn that Bitch of Devon we'll be along to revenge the good men she hanged.'
Twice he had ventured into the bay but had kept to the Virginia shore, wreaking enormous devastation, and at each burned plantation he told some victim, 'Tell the Bitch of Devon we haven't forgotten her.'
Rosalind's response had been instantaneous. She had offered the English navy her five ships, and the financial returns from three convoys had been sacrificed while her captains prowled the Caribbean, searching for Blackbeard. That canny criminal, trained as a British privateer in the War of the Spanish Succession, eluded them, and then in late 1718 word reached Virginia that he had holed up in a North Carolina inlet. Volunteers were called for, and Rosalind sent her ships, but no word had filtered back to the bay.
'You can't sail to France,' she told her sons, 'as long as Blackbeard roams. He's sworn to kill you, and me as well, and we must wait.'
In the interim she held the boys close to her. They were the descendants of men who had resisted pirates, and if she had asked them to sail against Blackbeard, they would have done so, but she was satisfied to keep them at Devon. Samuel was almost seventeen, still outgoing and occasionally fractious; Pierre evaluated problems more sagaciously and remained more cautious in his responses, but she was pleased to see that each respected the other and consciously made concessions in order to sustain the bond. They formed a strong pair, and Rosalind thought: They'll be able to run Devon once they get back from France.
While everyone waited for news from Carolina, she instructed her sons regarding the plantation: 'Don't ever make our garden pretty. And when you marry, promise me you'll never allow your wives to plant these lovely paths with box. It smells and is the mark of those who have never really loved gardens. They make a game of box, mazes with it, and waste their gardeners' time keeping it trimmed.'
Pierre asked what plants she did respect, and without hesitation she replied, 'Pyracantha. It's gangling and sturdy and most handsomely colored.' Sam said, 'You're describing yourself,' and she confessed to the similarity.
They were together when the geese prepared for their long flight north, and although she was moved by their departure, the boys were not, and this frightened her. 'You must live close to nature. Books and priests are not life. The coming and going of the crabs down there in the river... that's life.'
She led them to all parts of the plantation, pointing out the characteristics of the soil, the life history of the various plants she was endeavoring to grow, and always she managed to pass the marsh which stood at the head of the creek, reaching messily inland with its incredible burden of complicated life. She was there one day when herons came, their long awkward legs projected in front as they landed on the shallow water. 'Those are the birds I love... so patient... so permanent.' Her sons began to see their patrimony through her eyes, and to appreciate the heavy responsibility they must assume on their return from St. Omer's.
'And while you're looking at the plants and birds,' she told them, 'keep an eye free for the girls. Which ones would fit in with an island? Which would be solid companions? And good mothers like Amanda? Try them all but pick the winner.'
And then, when it seemed that the May convoy would not dare to sail, the _Fair Rosalind_ rushed north from Carolina with news that caused citizens to drop to their knees in the middle of the road and give thanks: 'Blackbeard is dead!' Rosalind Steed's ships, supported by others from the colonial navy, had pocketed the pirate in a cove where Lieutenant Robert Maynard had engaged him in hand-to-hand combat and slain him with a cutlass. The pirate's severed head, which had uttered so many threats against the Bitch of Devon, took its last ride stuck to the end of a Steed bowsprit.
When the news reached Patamoke, guns were fired and Rosalind ordered all members of the Steed family to attend the public prayers held on the wharf, and there she stood, solemnly holding the hands of her sons, as the minister cried in exultation, 'The long siege has ended! Tonight we sleep in peace! No town on the Chesapeake has done more to vanquish pirates than ours, and standing amongst us is a woman who never faltered in that fight.'
On the peaceful sail back to Devon, Rosalind told her sons, 'If you ever engage in a notable enterprise, and you will, see it to the finish.' Sam asked, 'Is that why the Refuge Steeds call you Rosalind Revenge?' But before she could respond, Pierre said, 'I shall think of you as Rosalind Steadfast,' and she replied, 'That I like better,' and she thought: I do not want my sons to think of me as always fighting against men—their father, Bonfleur, Blackbeard, Judge Broadnax. I could have been friends or partners with any of them. If they had let me. If they had been decent human beings.
In May, when the great convoy finally assembled—two hundred and thirty ships this year—she had no hesitation in placing her sons aboard, for she was satisfied that when their studies were completed they would return to assume their responsibilities as the new Steeds of Devon.
With her sons gone, she was totally alone. There was the house to complete, but that scarcely engaged all her energies. What she needed was life, the growing of children as well as the prospering of trees, so in humbleness of spirit she asked her slaves to ready the small shallop, and when a calm day arrived she got into it by herself and sailed across to Peace Cliff, where she walked unannounced up the low hill to the telescope house. There she sought Amanda and made peace—'I need you at Devon. And I think Beth needs the island.'
Her granddaughter was a lively child of eight, with amber braids peeking out from beneath her Quaker bonnet. When she curtsied and shook hands, Rosalind thought: This one's bound to be a notable woman. She's just the age to profit from the relaxation of a Catholic home after all this Quaker severity. But Amanda was thinking: Rosalind's the most honest and courageous woman I know, but she is dominating. We'd not be on Devon a week before she'd want us both to become Catholics.
So she said no. 'I respect thy intentions, but I sense that things will be much safer if Beth stays here. This is her destined life, and Devon could only be a distraction.' She would permit no extended discussion, and in the end Rosalind had to go back down the hill, get into her shallop and sail home alone.
As she crossed the Choptank, with the gentlest of winds pushing her along, she reflected on the irony of recent events: Stooby wanted to give me Fitzhugh's three children, but I refused them on the proper grounds that they could never fit into Devon patterns, and I was right. Now I seek my husband's granddaughter, and Amanda refuses on grounds which I suspect are equally right, that she wouldn't fit into the Devon pattern. Well, I have my sons, and they're the best of the lot... bred true... offspring of Cavaliers.
It was possible that her preoccupation with children sprang not from love, for which she had always possessed an enormous capacity, but from a necessity to feel herself involved in the ongoing processes of life, and it was a happy accident that just as her family existence became most empty, an event occurred which propelled her into the heart of Choptank affairs.
At the home of Judge Thomas Broadnax, husband and wife combined to terrorize the little bastard girl consigned to their permanent care. They had given her the name of Penelope, shortened to Penny, and had made of her the most abused and menial kind of serf. They provided barely enough clothes to keep her warm and only such food as she required to stay alive. Together they believed that their harshness was ordained by God as punishment for the child's having been born out of wedlock, and that when they chastised her, they were doing His work.
For any infraction of the intricate laws they laid down, she was beaten. If she dared to protest, she was chained to the wall of a dark closet, and beaten afresh when released. Her arms bore permanent scars, and if any older person made an unexpected move toward her, she cringed. Judge Broadnax always explained to her, in heavy legal terms, why it was proper for him to beat her until the blood flowed and why it grieved him to do so, but it was Mrs. Broadnax who terrified her. The judge's wife could be a demon, striking and scratching and screaming until the child trembled whenever she had to approach her with a heavy tray of food, which Mrs. Broadnax gorged while the hungry child stood attentive at her elbow.
One day, when the persecutions became unbearable, the little girl ran away from the Broadnax home, fleeing aimlessly to any refuge that might preserve her from the judge's fury. By accident she stumbled into the Paxmores' boatyard, but when the older brother saw her, and realized that she had run away from the Broadnax home, he became quite frightened, for the harboring of a runaway indentured servant was a principal crime, and he would have none of it. Brusquely he shoved the child away, knowing that if he kept her, he would be subjected to the judge's wrath.
Bewildered, the little girl wandered down the road until she came to the Steed warehouse, and there Rosalind happened to be inspecting some fearnought in which to clothe her slaves, and when she saw the battered child, and the scars along her arms, she impulsively caught her up and kissed her and told her, 'You've nothing to fear. Cardo, give this child something to eat.'
It was only when Penny was stuffing herself on cheese that Rosalind discovered who she was. 'Judge Broadnax! He beat you like this?' She had barely established the facts of his brutality when Mrs. Broadnax stormed into the warehouse, demanding to know whether her runaway servant answering to the name of Penny had been seen...
'There you are, ungrateful child!'
But as she reached to recover the little criminal Mrs. Steed interposed: 'You'll not touch this child.'
'She belongs to me. She's a disobedient hussy.'
'Do not touch her.'
Mrs. Broadnax, not catching the ominous quiet in Rosalind's voice, imprudently came at Penny, intending to twist and pinch her arm as she led her away. Instead she was confronted by the powerful form of Rosalind Steed, who with one substantial shove sent her sprawling backward among the barrels, over which she stumbled, landing flat on the floor.
'Don't touch her,' Rosalind repeated in a voice of terrible power, 'for if you try again, I shall kill you.'
It was a fearful statement, heard by several, and these witnesses could also testify that after having said this, Mrs. Steed gathered the child into her arms and carried her to the town wharf, where they went aboard the Steed sloop, despite the fact that Mrs. Broadnax warned her in a loud voice which she must have heard, 'If you harbor that child, you'll rot in jail.'
The warrants were sworn, and the constable's boat sailed out to Devon with them. Satisfying himself that the child Penny was indeed on the island, he mournfully came back—'It's shameful to arrest a woman like Mrs. Steed. But she's done wrong and I suppose she must pay.'
The trial was a sensation, long remembered in Maryland records. Judge Thomas Broadnax presided, seeing nothing wrong in acting as adjudicator in a controversy involving his wife, and he was properly grave in manner. He allowed the prosecutor to develop the contentious history of this difficult Steed woman—her outbursts against authority, her specific threat to kill the judge's wife, and especially her disgraceful behavior in disrobing at the public whipping of the Turlock woman, a known whore. As each new bit of evidence unfolded, with the various Steeds in the audience crimson with embarrassment, the judge became more pontifical and serenely compassionate: 'Do you mean to say that a gentlewoman like Mrs. Steed uttered such profanity?' He shook his head in sad disbelief.
But he was miscalculating his adversary. During the first day Rosalind sat silent as the hurtful evidence piled against her. She realized that she was being tried not for kidnapping an indentured servant but for an accumulation of petty offenses against the male community: that she was a Protestant who more or less adhered to the Catholic faith; that she had defended the Turlock woman; that she had sometimes driven hard bargains in the purchase of land; that she had sent her sons to Bohemia and then to St. Omer's; and most of all, that she had been an outspoken woman when she should have been silent. Curiously, not less than six witnesses testified to the fact that she was building an outrageous house; that seemed a real sin.
At the close of that first day it was apparent that Judge Broadnax would be justified in sentencing her to jail or at least to the ducking stool, but when the second day began, the climate changed. With remorseless force Rosalind produced witnesses willing at last to testify against their infamous judge: he had beaten the child senseless during a dinner; he had forced her to work shoeless in the snow; he had provided one dress, and one only, which she had to wash on Saturday nights and wear still damp to church on Sunday. On and on the cruel testimony came, as if the community wanted to purge itself of secret connivance. On several occasions Judge Broadnax tried to halt the testimony, but his companion justices, tired of domination and seeing a chance to rid themselves of his obstinacy, overruled him.
One of the most telling witnesses was Amanda Paxmore Steed, who took the stand to describe in quiet detail the condition of the little girl when Mrs. Steed invited her to Devon to see for herself. Amanda, a small woman in demure gray, created such a powerful impression, and was so relentless in her description of the bruises and the scars, that women in the audience began to cry.
Judge Broadnax interrupted to point out that the Bible instructed masters to chastise their servants if they misbehaved, and he might have carried the day, for Maryland society in 1720 allowed little sympathy for runaway servants; by custom they were thrashed and returned to their masters with the duration of their indenture lengthened. Any who connived in their delinquency were sent to jail. 'We are here to preserve the sanctity of contracts,' Judge Broadnax reminded the jury. 'What would your farms and businesses be worth if the servants you honestly acquired were allowed to roam free? Tell me that, if you please.'
At this critical moment, when the trial hung in the balance, as if justice were truly blind, Rosalind introduced three witnesses it had taken her much trouble to find. They had known Broadnax's servant girl Betsy, mother of the bastard Penny, and on five separate occasions she had confided to them certain facts about Penny.
'Judge Broadnax,' Rosalind asked quietly, but with a menace and contempt she took no pains to hide, 'do you really want these women to testify?'
'You bring liars into the court,' Broadnax thundered. 'It's to no purpose, but if they want to make fools of themselves... and of you, Mrs. Steed...' He shrugged his shoulders, and the first woman, a servant of no repute, took the stand.
'Betsy told me that it was the judge who came into her bed.'
The next woman, of no better reputation, testified, 'Betsy told me the judge had his way with her.'
And the next woman said the same, and then Penny herself was put on the stand, to say in a weak, small voice, 'Before my mother died she told me the judge was my father.'
When Rosalind's turn came she admitted all charges against her: in anger she had said that the judge ought to be poisoned, and in greater anger she had struck Mrs. Broadnax and threatened to kill her—'But I did so because there was evil amongst us.'
'How did you know that?' one of the subsidiary justices asked.
'I knew when I read the record. And you should have known when you allowed the record to be written.'
'What record?'
'Of this court.' And she recited, as best she could, the hideous record of a judge who had testified against his own servant's pregnancy, had caused her to be whipped, had taken her child into a lifetime of servitude and had then abused that child most cruelly. 'In beating the child, Judge Broadnax was punishing himself for his own sin. In abusing this little girl, Mrs. Broadnax sought revenge against her husband. There is ugliness here and guilt, but not mine.' The decision of the justices can be read in Patamoke records to this day:
11 November 1720. In that Rosalind Steed of Devon has been found guilty of making violent threats against Thomas Broadnax of this town and his wife Julia, and because of her constant harranguing, she is sentenced to three submersions on the ducking stool.
Thomas Broadnax, Presiding
Alloway Dickinson, Justice Quorum
Samuel Lever, Justice
The Choptank was cold that day. A wind blew in from the west, throwing small whitecaps and warning boats to stay ashore. The air was somewhat warmer at the inner harbor, where the long-beamed ducking stool was located, but the water was icy. A huge crowd gathered at the shore to watch the Steed woman receive her punishment, but there was no elation among the watchers. There was general agreement that the justices had acted properly: Penny had run away and had to be returned as an admonition to other servants; Mrs. Steed had harbored her and that was clearly a crime; and she had been an abusive woman, throwing her tongue into places it wasn't needed. But her crime had been trivial in comparison with Judge Broadnax's, and he was not only unpunished but he had the little girl back to abuse as he wished for the next twelve years. There was something badly askew in Patamoke, and the citizens knew it.
So Rosalind marched to the ducking stool in silence, chin high, still opposing Broadnax in all things. She remained arrogant as they strapped her into the chair, and refused to close her eyes at the final moment. Instead she took a deep breath and stared at Thomas Broadnax with a hatred that almost inflamed the November air. And then the chair ducked toward the dark water.
What happened next became the subject of endless repetition and delighted discussion. It was the custom when ducking a difficult woman who had irritated the men of town to hold her under water until her lungs nearly collapsed; it was a terrible punishment, accented by strangling and mocking voices. But on this day, by previous arrangement among the townspeople, the stool went in and out of the water so swiftly, and the act was repeated with such dispatch that, as one woman said approvingly, 'She scarce got wet.'
When the men swung the stool inboard and unleashed their victim, the crowd cheered, and women ran forward to embrace her, and Judge Broadnax thundered, 'That wasn't a ducking! The order of the court said clearly—'
But the people had left him. They were with Rosalind, congratulating her and kissing her, while he stood by the harbor—alone.
It was the custom on the Eastern Shore to give the homes of leading citizens names, and some were of such wry charm that they would persist as long as the land endured: a contentious man finds peace at last in a remote farmhouse and christens it the Ending of Controversie; a parcel of land is conveyed under debatable circumstances and the home built on it is named Crooked Intention; not far from Devon Island a man builds his dream home and names it the Cross of Gold, but he does so in French, Croix d'Or, and before long it becomes Crosiadore; and along the Choptank three contiguous farms summarize the colonial experience: Bell's Folly, Bell's Persistence, Bell's Triumph.
It was understandable, therefore, that the name given in derision to the brick mansion on Devon Island should become permanent: _Rosalind's Revenge_. At night, in taverns, some would argue that it stemmed from the builder's remorseless pursuit of the French pirate Bonfleur. Others remembered that the words were first uttered when Fitzhugh Steed quit the island to live openly with the Turlock girl. But most believed, or wanted to believe, that it represented Mrs. Steed's triumph over the cruel judge, Thomas Broadnax: 'He had the power to order her ducked, but she went in and out like a mallard and lived to see him flee the town in disgrace. We started to laugh at him and his bitch wife, and this they could not endure. Rosalind had her revenge.'
It was a strange house, totally wrong and out of balance. The Flemish bond, instead of producing a beautiful façade, looked heavy and lacking in grace. But perhaps the fault lay in the basic design, for which Rosalind was to blame. Various observers, including the Paxmore brothers, had pointed out that what she was building was nothing better than an unadorned cube: 'Each of the four sides is a square of identical size. This is monotonous and adds no beauty.' One of the brothers reminded her of the traditional Choptank wisdom: 'At first, a wee bit house for you and the wife. When babies start coming, a little larger. And when money comes, you add a real house. That way, each part lends beauty to the rest.'
She had ignored the criticisms and for nine years had obstinately pursued her plan of erecting a perfect cube on the foundations of the original Steed home. But when observers saw the mistake she was making with the two chimneys, they had to protest. One of her ship captains, who had seen the fine homes of England, pointed out, 'To give balance, the chimneys must stand at the two ends of the house, not side-by-side along the rear.' He took paper and drew a sketch of what he had in mind, and it was superior to what she was doing. 'At least,' he pleaded, 'if you won't put the chimneys in their proper place, put some windows in the side walls. Create a pleasing balance.'
She ignored his recommendations, and in 1721, ten years after she started, she had her cube completed. Only one aspect was satisfactory: the front façade did have a classical balance, with a central doorway of austere cleanliness, flanked on each side by a pair of well-proportioned windows. On the second floor appeared five windows, smaller than those below but centered exactly, the middle one positioned over the doorway. Somehow these ten nicely related openings, framed in white against the Flemish bond, gave the cube stability and quiet elegance—without them the house would have been a total disaster; with them it was merely a failure.
Ruth Brinton Paxmore gave her last testimony one cold First Day in November 1721. She was eighty-eight years old, but able to walk unaided from the town wharf to the meeting house and with firm step to ascend to the waiting chair on the facing bench. She wore gray as usual, and a small bonnet with the strings loose over her shoulders, a custom she had borrowed from her granddaughter Amanda.
Her appearance evoked mixed emotions among the Quakers of Patamoke: she was the leading voice on the Eastern Shore, a woman of demonstrated sanctity, but she was also a bore. In spite of admonitions and incessant defeats, she persisted in dragging slavery into almost every private conversation or public statement. The Patamoke Meeting had repeatedly rejected her suggestion that the ownership of slaves disqualify a Quaker from membership in the society. The Yearly Meeting of the Eastern Shore had done the same, as had the larger general meetings in Annapolis and Philadelphia. The Quakers were eager to point out that a slaveholder must treat his slaves well, as the Bible directed, and they developed a further doctrine which irritated many non-Quakers: the just ownership of slaves must see to their Christian salvation and to their education. But for the radical reforms Ruth Brinton wanted to initiate, there was no support, and she was deemed a nuisance. 'She's our hair shirt,' many said, and when she rose to speak, they squirmed:
'The facts are few and stubborn. Slavery in all its manifestations must be eradicated. It is not profitable to the farmer nor fair to the slave. Every aspect of society is impeded by its existence, and if we on the Eastern Shore persist in this extravagance while other sections rely upon free labor, we must slide backward.
'For a long lifetime I have listened attentively to arguments thrown against me and I find substance in none. The Quaker program must be simple and straightforward. While the African is still a slave, educate him. As soon as possible, manumit him. If that is impractical, at thy death set him free in thy will. And within a decade state so that all can hear, "No man or woman who owns slaves can be a Quaker." '
Primly, as if indifferent to the reception of her revealed message, she resumed her seat, and two days later died.
Her death had unanticipated consequences for Rosalind. Four days after the burial in the little graveyard behind the meeting house, Amanda arrived at Devon bringing Beth with her. The bright little girl was now ten and ready for solid instruction in the books which had made Rosalind so firm of character. 'We want to live with thee,' Amanda said in the reserved and precise manner of her grandmother, 'and Beth and I both deem it timely to employ a tutor.'
'We'll buy one,' Rosalind said abruptly, and she took Amanda and the child to Annapolis, where numerous young men more or less qualified as teachers were offering their indentures for sale. 'We'll buy the best,' Rosalind said, 'and he can set up a school for all the Steeds,' and this she did. The young man was a gem, a graduate of Cambridge in England and a practicing Catholic. Philip Knollys was the kind of brash young fellow who knew nothing in depth but everything at a level which enabled him to expostulate with bounding confidence. He was only slightly brighter than Beth, but he did know how to keep boys and girls free of riot, and as soon as he established his noisy, effective school for the seventeen Steed children, Rosalind told her cousins from the Refuge, 'Here's a young man we must keep.'
These were happy years for Rosalind. She positively cherished Amanda as one of the most sensible young women she had ever known, and with her took an almost malicious pleasure in being a renegade Protestant who loved the complexity of Catholicism. Beth, of course, was enchanted by Knollys and under his tutelage was inclining toward Catholicism; when her uncles returned from St. Omer's they found her well advanced in Catholic doctrine.
'It's a shame girls can't be educated,' Pierre complained to his mother. 'Our little Beth is quicker of mind that we were.'
Little Beth had her own plans for further education; as soon as she reached seventeen she informed her mother and grandmother that she intended marrying the tutor. He was summoned, and stood facing Rosalind and Amanda with charming arrogance; he was all of twenty-nine and with one year to run on his indenture, and Rosalind asked, 'Is it proper for a man still a servant to seek the hand of a young woman he is obligated to teach?'
Before he could respond, Beth interrupted, 'Thee is asking three separate questions. How can he possibly answer in one swoop?'
'What three questions?'
Like a little lawyer, her chin jutting toward the bench, she replied, 'First, is it proper? Anything in good conscience is proper. Second, does he have a moral obligation to me as his student? He has, and he has discharged it. Third, does his being a servant disqualify him? It does. But that can be quickly remedied.'
'How?' Rosalind asked contentiously.
'Terminate his indenture. Now.'
Amanda agreed, and when that was done the little girl rushed to Knollys' arms and embarrassed him with kisses.
The wedding was held under the oak, with Father Darnley, an old man now, officiating in half-drunken jollity. Amanda was shocked, for Quaker weddings were solemn, but since Father Darnley had married her many years ago, she was willing to grant him indulgence.
Now Rosalind had time to proceed with the building of her home, and when a new tutor was purchased to take over the Steed school, Mr. Knollys was free to help. He had a considerable knowledge of geometry and carpentering and gladly assumed control of the slaves assembled for the final effort. As the months passed, and Rosalind revealed her intentions, Knollys caught her infectious enthusiasm and assured everyone in Patamoke, 'It's to be the finest home on the Eastern Shore.'
Those who had laughed at her stumpy original cube with its misplaced chimneys and unsatisfactory end walls could see at last what she had always intended. Using it as the solid center of her construction, she built at some distance east and west two slightly smaller cubes, each containing two rooms downstairs, two up, but with much lower roof lines than the main building. When they were finished they looked as peculiar as the central cube: squat, heavy buildings without any pleasing adornment except the rigorous arrangement of their front façades, where four windows somewhat smaller than those in the main house gave balance.
When asked what the two strange appendages were, Rosalind replied, 'Rooms for the children we're all going to have.' And the children did come, so that the new tutor was kept busy instructing a seemingly endless supply of Steeds, while Rosalind continued medicating them. To her emergency supplies she had added ginseng drops, most effective in treating the flux, and Venice treacle for childhood coughs. A woman in Patamoke had introduced her to burnt hartshorn, a bitter substance which produced good results when used to combat congestions, and it was now possible to get steady supplies of turmeric from London, and this was certain to cure weaknesses of blood. But the medicine which made life among the mosquitoes bearable was the new one called simply 'the bark.' It was that, the bark of some magic tree, extremely bitter, which attacked all fevers and ate them up.
'A child can be prostrated with fever, shaking as if a dog worried him, and five applications of the bark puts him on his feet again,' Rosalind told the Steeds at the Refuge, and when they followed her advice, they found that their summers were twice as comfortable as they had been previously. The bark was a miracle, and on Devon Island only Mrs. Steed was allowed to dispense it, which she always did with a promise: 'Enjoy its bitterness. It's going to fight on your behalf.'
And then, in 1729, she disclosed the final plan for her home. Using a huge pile of bricks assembled over the past two years, and goading Knollys' slaves to extra efforts, she made various bold moves. At the original cube she tore out large segments of the two end walls, and at each of the flanking buildings she did the same. It looked as if she were determined to wreck the very buildings she had worked so long to construct, but when all was prepared, she put the slaves to the exciting task of erecting two low, compact passageways, each with three windows, which bound everything together. These new additions were not large enough to be considered houses, but they were built with such solidity that they were obviously parts of the whole. When challenged as to what they were, Rosalind said, 'On sunny days I shall sit in these warm, comfortable rooms and sew.' These were the lovely connectives that bound the cubes together into one magnificent home.
When the rubble was cleared, and the lawns raked, and low shrubs put in place to hide the scars of building, Rosalind's Revenge stood revealed, and no part of the beautifully balanced five-part structure was more ideally suited to its purpose than the original cube which had evoked such cynical merriment. Now it was clear why she had placed her chimneys at the rear: the passageways could not have been added if the chimneys had been at the end walls. And it was also manifest why the end walls had been left so bleak: she had always intended that they be pierced for the passageways.
How stately the great house was, with five separate roof lines, with twenty-four matched windows in a façade that moved forward in the center, slightly back at each end, and well back at the passages. Especially satisfying was the manner in which the house fitted the trees, which she had planted well before the building was begun, so that when a visitor arrived at the wharf and looked northward, he saw a stretch of lawn not too spacious, a collection of trees not too numerous, a house not too ornate, so that he was tempted to exclaim, 'How well-proportioned it all is.'
What the visitor could not see was that in a corner of the main room Rosalind had caused a cupboard to be built, and here she preserved the pewter dishes rescued when the pirates burned the preceding house. A few of the pieces had been somewhat melted by the flames, but all were serviceable, and each March, as the old year ended, she liked to assemble all Steeds for a banquet of gratitude that the year had passed without disaster. Then she would allow the children to eat off the pewter plates, and feel the dense hand of history, and she would tell them, 'You can never foresee how a house or a human being is going to turn out till the work is completed.'
And when the Refuge Steeds had departed in their boats, she gathered her own family to instruct the children in their heritage and told them of how Edmund Steed had come to America with a courageous Catholic heart to build this plantation, and of how his wife Martha Keene had fled England to share the wilderness with him, and then she told them of King Charles, whose head had been chopped off, and this part the children loved for its gruesomeness as she described the falling of the ax. Then, with just the right mixture of high adventure and travesty, she told them who Prince Rupert was, and of how he had galloped back and forth across England to save his king, and then she asked, 'And who do you suppose rode with him?'
'Chilton Janney!' the children cried.
'Yes, your great-great-grandfather. He was a Cavalier and he rode with Rupert at Martson Moor.'
And then one of the children would say, 'But you always said he was dead drunk.'
'I never saw him sober,' Rosalind would confess.
'And he wasn't a real Cavalier,' another child would say, and she would reply, 'In his heart he was.'
At various places in this chronicle certain phrases have been used relative to the Choptank which might lead one to think it a peaceful stream: 'She got into her shallop and sailed to Peace Cliff or 'They sailed idly down the river past the marsh.' And for twenty-nine days out of thirty these descriptions were apt and these actions possible. The Choptank was a splendid body of water; indeed, that spacious area between Devon Island on the west and Patamoke to the east was practically a lake, and on pleasant days an experienced sailor like Rosalind Steed could traverse it with impunity.
It was on such a day in October 1732 that she left Rosalind's Revenge, walked down to the wharf and asked the slaves to prepare her shallop—'I'm sailing to Patamoke.' One of the older slaves said, 'Better tomorrow. Clouds over the bay.' She rejected this advice—'We always have clouds somewhere.'
As she sailed down the placid creek she came upon a cove black with geese, home from the north, and she thought how beautiful they were, but then a solitary heron came to the edge of a small marsh to fish for crabs, and she thought: I always wanted to be a stately goose but was destined to be an awkward heron. Well, the goose comes back now and then with a show of glory, but the heron stays forever.
The river was incredibly beautiful as she entered it for the easy run to Patamoke; the banks were lined with oak and maple turning myriad shades of red, and above them, on the cliff, stood the gray loveliness of the Paxmores' telescope house, so different from the manor she had built, so perfect in its Quaker dignity, and she thought: A remote corner like this, and within a few miles, we have two of the most handsome houses in America. Her eyes lingered on the gray house and she could visualize old Ruth Brinton moving about the plain kitchen, and tough-minded little Amanda learning her lessons of integrity.
But as she passed the cliff and headed for the marsh the sky darkened and from the bay came winds of force. And then, within the space of minutes, a storm of tremendous fury engulfed her little world. Rain came down in slanting sheets; the wind roared to forty miles an hour, then fifty; whitecaps as huge as those thrown up by the ocean ripped across the river; and her shallop was tossed and tortured.
Within the first half-minute she had the sail down and the shallop running with the wind: I'll let it push me ashore... anywhere. I'll get drenched walking to land, but no matter. She was following standard procedure for the Choptank; since the entire Eastern Shore was alluvial, a sailor never had to fear putting his craft upon the rocks, for there were none. When trouble threatened, the waterman allowed his boat to move toward shore till it scraped bottom, then he got out and walked through the waves to safety.
But on this October day the waves would not permit this escape; they tossed the shallop until Rosalind had to relinquish the rudder and cling to the sheerstrake to avoid being washed overboard, and when in this position she saw a succession of really monstrous waves coming at her, she realized what peril she was in.
We'll see it through, she said to herself, bracing for the shock of the first wave, and by strength alone she clung to the violently pitching boat.
When the last of the big waves roared by she gasped: That was a near thing, very near. And she began to take deep breaths, watching in dismay as her mast crumpled, dragging the boom into the water. There was still a good chance that she could ground the boat and struggle ashore, so she returned to the rudder stick, endeavoring to restore the shallop to a reasonable course, and she might have succeeded had not a mighty gust swept in from the bay, throwing the entire river in confusion. Waves moving in one direction were tormented by new ones raised by the howling wind; the shallop rose on one heading, twisted in midair, turned and tumbled violently.
Rosalind was thrown clear, but she still fought to reach shore, which she had every chance of attaining, except for the broken mast which struck her from the rear, tangling her feet in its swirling lines, dragging her down and down.
Turlock children, surveying their marsh after the storm, spotted the wrecked shallop and yelled to their elders, 'Boat ashore!' And when all the family ran into the marsh prepared to steal any movable parts, they found Mrs. Steed half buried in the sand, her hands engaged in the shrouds she had been fighting when she died.
# _Voyage Six: 1773_
ONE OF THE MOST IMPORTANT JOURNEYS EVER undertaken along the Chesapeake was also one of the shortest. It covered less than twelve miles, but when its ugly mission was completed, a revolution had been launched.
The Lords Proprietor of Maryland had always enjoyed the right of advowson, a feudal privilege which they sometimes discharged in ways that could not be fathomed. All citizens of the colony conceded that the lords had the right to appoint their own clergyman to any Church of England vacancy which occurred, but no one could comprehend how even an absentee owner who lived in London without ever having seen Maryland could have appointed to the rural church at Wrentham a man so totally devoid of religious conviction as Jonathan Wilcok.
This monster arrived at the rich living located a few miles north of the headwaters of Dividing Creek one November day in 1770, two hundred and eighty pounds of blackmail, simony and self-indulgence. The blackmail accounted for his having obtained this enviable sinecure: he had caught young Lord Baltimore in a situation which was not only compromising but also downright perilous unless secrecy were maintained, and When he pointed this out to the profligate he also suggested, 'If you were to give me the living at Wrentham north of the Choptank, I'd be no threat to your safety.'
The simony consisted of his selling at maximum profit to himself all services of the church. He would not marry, christen or bury without substantial fees, which had to be paid in choice tobacco, and he also abused his position by driving the hardest possible bargains in acquiring real estate for his private use. There was no transaction so venal that he would not resort to it, if only it showed promise of gain.
But it was his self-indulgence which put him in bad odor with his parishioners. Possessed of an appointment from which no force on earth could remove him—neither the Bishop of London who despised him, nor Lord Baltimore, who feared him, and certainly not his flock, who had no rights at all except to pay his handsome salary and keep silent—he was free to behave as he wished. This included getting mildly drunk seven nights a week, siring two bastard children, maintaining a foul-mouthed wife and a mistress, and propelling his vast and sweaty bulk into any problem whose resolution might yield him an advantage.
It was loathsome that the Church of England should suffer from the misbehavior of Jonathan Wilcok, but traditions of the time absolved him, and if the scandals he generated did damage the church, they did not obliterate the splendid work done by other devoted clergymen whose appointments had been similarly made. The Rector of Wrentham and his brethren represented the Established Church of Maryland; their existence was approved by king and Parliament and their conduct was beyond reproof. On balance, they performed acceptably, in the proportion of seven worthy ministers to three rectors of Wrentham.
At dawn on a cold day in January 1773 this clergyman, now well over three hundred pounds in weight, rose early, bundled himself in swaths of homespun, over which he slipped a clerical garb with stiff collar and white tie, studied himself admiringly, and said to his adoring wife, 'Today we bring some order into this community.' Then he informed his four slaves that he would be sailing to Patamoke for the court session due to convene at noon. 'Imperative I be there. The future of the Choptank is at stake.'
So the slaves readied two horses and brought out the rude palanquin which hung suspended between them. Then they informed the rector, "All's ready, Master,' and he waddled to where his contraption waited.
It would have been quite impossible for him to walk on his own from the church to the head of Dividing Creek, a distance of three miles, but he was able to negotiate the few steps to the palanquin. However, when he got there he was incapable of climbing in, for the thing swayed and refused to stay steady. So one of the slaves stood between the two horses, quieting them and the palanquin; two took the rector by his arms and moved him backward while the fourth remained in front, pushing on his huge belly.
'Now!' the men cried, and with remarkable skill they engineered their master into his conveyance. Grunting and sweating even on this cold morning, the rector cried, 'Forward!' and one of the slaves walked ahead, leading the two horses, while two others pushed from behind; the fourth man was supposed to jump into any emergency to ensure that the fat man did not fall out.
In this manner the pilgrimage reached the stream where the episcopal barge waited, and there new complexities arose, for the mammoth clergyman now had to be eased out of his palanquin, walked across a slippery wharf and let down into the boat. Finally this was accomplished, to the accompaniment of directions shouted by everyone, and as soon as the rector landed safely in the barge he made himself at ease, lay back on seven pillows and roared, 'On to Patamoke.'
When he arrived at that thriving commercial center, children and idlers passed the word, 'Here comes the Rector of Wrentham!' and all ran to the wharf to enjoy once more the extraordinary manner in which he would be brought ashore. It required the services of six men: from the barge the four slaves pushed and grunted while on the shore two others threw down a rope, which was passed around the fat man's back and under his armpits, each of the men retaining one end. Then, as the men on shore counted, 'One, two, three!' everyone exerted maximum force and grandly the rector rose from the barge as if on wings and slid ashore.
Again, as soon as his feet found security on the wharf, he became composed and grandiose, the traditional figure of a benevolent clergyman. Throwing his coat about him, he nodded graciously to the towns-people and walked with ponderous dignity toward the courthouse, his porcine face wreathed in condescending smiles. As he entered that low stone building he noted with pleasure that all was in readiness: the bench was occupied by justices well disposed to his cause; the three culprits were waiting to receive their just punishments.
The defendants were an unlikely trio, with nothing but their common guilt to form a bond between them. Even in dress they were distinct. Simon Steed, aged forty-three, was a tall, austere, thin-shouldered man who treated the court, the spectators and his fellow criminals with equal disdain. His clothes followed the French style, a taste he had developed at St. Omer's. His wig was powdered; his stock was starched; his shirt had fourteen buttons and was touched with lace; his blue velvet coat came almost to his knees; and his pants ended just below, marked by small silvery buckles. At his wrists a fringe of gray lace protruded, lending an air of elegance when he moved his arms. He was a gentleman, the wealthiest man in the community, and to see him standing in the dock like a common criminal was exciting to the townspeople, but from the deference they paid him it was obvious that their sympathies lay with him and not with his accuser.
Beside him stood a man just turned forty, distinguished by the fact that he wore a broad-brimmed flattish hat which he refused to remove even when nudged by the court attendant. This was Levin Paxmore, one of the principal supports of Patamoke Meeting and head of the Paxmore Boatyard, whose workmen were putting in doubled hours during these years of stress. He was a somber man, dressed in a long gray coat marked by nine frogs, with no lace at the wrists and no silver buckles on the shoes, but he, too, displayed a kind of elegance, for the cloth of his coat and pantaloons was of the best. He was obviously offended at being summoned to court and refused to acknowledge the gestures of good will thrown his way.
The third man had often stood before this bar. Thin, quick of movement, rascally of eye, he captained a miserable old sloop that traded the Chesapeake. He came from the marsh and was dressed accordingly: improvised shoes made of animal hide; no stockings; baggy pants held about the waist by a tattered rope; heavy woolen shirt but no coat; no hat; and a dark beard. He was Teach Turlock, and even his name was an offense to this community, for a rapscallion father had named him after the pirate Blackbeard, 'a man who knew what he was up to.' Forty-one years ago, when the prisoner had been named, Blackbeard was still a fearsome memory, for he had ravaged the oceans, and two gentlemen had gone into court to force old Turlock to give his son a proper name, and the court had so ordered: on the record his name showed as Jeremiah Turlock, but universally he was known as Teach, which even his enemies had to admit was proper, for he displayed most of the enduring qualities of that pirate.
The social and moral principles of the three defendants were as varied as their clothing. Simon Steed was an avowed supporter of the king; he had little patience with those agitators in Massachusetts and Virginia who were uttering treason, and he hoped devoutly that ill-intentioned men in both America and England might soon be brought to their senses. Levin Paxmore held aloof from political discussion; he felt that God ordained governments and that men had no right even to comment, let alone protest. It was Teach Turlock who represented the new spirit abroad in the colonies; he was a potential revolutionist, not from principle but from an ugly desire to get even with those stationed above him. When men talked in whispers about rebellion, he fingered his gun.
Only the intrusion of some alien force as powerful as the Rector of Wrentham could have enlisted these three unlikely companions in a common cause, and now that gigantic, puffing servant of the church wheezed his way to the front of the court, gingerly lowered himself into a broad chair and signaled to the justices that the trial should begin.
The tax collector testified first. 'Time out of mind, all good citizens of this district have delivered to me before the last day of December thirty pounds of choice tobacco to be handed over to the Rector of Wrentham as his salary for maintaining the Established Church in our district.'
'Has this always been the law of this colony?' the presiding judge asked.
'Your father's day and mine. Your honors handed me the tobacco, as honest Christians should.'
And the three judges nodded self-righteously.
'Has anyone failed to pay?' the presiding judge asked.
'These three.'
'You're the tax collector. Why didn't you take action?'
The tax collector blushed uneasily, looked down at his feet, then said in a high, whining voice, 'The other rector told me, "Leave them alone, damned Papists and Quakers. God will punish them." But our new rector'—and here he looked approvingly at the fat man—'he intends to straighten things out.'
'How?' the judge asked.
'Each of these three must pay ten years of tithes. Our rector insists upon it as his due.'
'And you asked these men for their tobacco?'
'I did.'
'And did Simon Steed refuse to deliver his three hundred pounds?'
'He did. Said he was Catholic and refused to pay.'
'Did Levin Paxmore fail to deliver?'
'He did. Said he was Quaker.'
'And did Teach Turlock also refuse?'
'He did.'
'And did you ask each of these men on three separate occasions, as required by law, to pay their assessments?'
'I did.'
'And did each refuse three times?'
'They did.'
The constable testified that as soon as the tax collector notified him of the delinquencies he personally did his best to collect the three hundred pounds, but had been rebuffed. 'Mr. Steed, if it please the court, was grandly indifferent... refused to notice me... told one of his men, "Get that fellow off my property." Friend Paxmore, the one with the hat on his head, behaved quite different. I've had to arrest him before for not serving with the militia, and when he saw me coming he asked in a low voice, "What does thee want this time?" and when I told him "Three hundred pounds for the chapel," he said, "Thee knows I can't pay that." '
'And what did you say?'
'I said, "Thee knows it's off to jaily-baily." '
The audience laughed, and even Paxmore allowed a faint smile to relax his lips.
'Did Turlock offer to pay?' the judge asked.
'He offered to shoot me.' This, too, occasioned laughter, but the constable added, 'He had no gun and I judged it was only a manner of speaking.'
'But he did offer to shoot you?'
'In words, yes.'
Now came the time for the rector to testify. Ponderously he struggled out of his chair, adjusted the white stock beneath his pendulous throat and said in precise, educated manner, 'Time out of mind it has been the revered custom in this colony for every man, woman and child above the age of sixteen to help pay the rector's salary. This provides funds for the poor, maintains the church buildings for worship, and gives proof that all citizens pertain to the church and volunteer to protect it. If even one person refuses to pay, the entire structure of our Christian faith is put in jeopardy, and this the courts have always recognized. These three men have persistently denied the right of the church to collect its just fee, and I demand that they be fined ten times thirty pounds and sentenced to jail for their contumely.'
'You've heard the charges,' the judge said. 'Turlock, have you aught to say?'
The waterman shrugged.
'Friend Paxmore, can you offer any justification?'
The tall Quaker shook his head.
The judge then asked Steed, but before the planter could respond, the rector objected. 'Your honor, it would be wise, I think, not to allow this man to speak in open court. He was educated in France, where he imbibed the pernicious and debilitating doctrines of atheism. He has imported the books of Voltaire and Montesquieu and has loaned them to any who could read French. He has even gone so far as to find a copy of _Candide_ done into English, and this, too, he has disseminated. Whatever he chooses to say will be seditious and irrelevant.'
But the justices agreed that Steed be allowed to speak, and in the quiet, forceful manner he had developed for dealing with all problems, he proceeded to interrogate the rector. 'Do you hold that even Catholics and Quakers must pay the yearly tithe?'
'I do.'
'Even when tobacco is so hard to come by?' Before the rector could respond, Steed asked, 'Where would Teach Turlock get tobacco?'
'Others do.'
'You haven't answered my question. Where?'
'I am not concerned with the household problems of Teach Turlock.' And by the distasteful look he threw at the waterman he indicated that he had never been interested in Teach's moral problems, either.
'In a time when tobacco can scarcely be found, all other branches of government have agreed to accept their assessments in flax... or corn... You alone insist on tobacco. Why?'
'Because the Lords Baltimore entered into a solemn covenant with God to give Him thirty pounds of choice tobacco per head per year.'
Steed walked to where a farmer and his wife sat. Standing beside them, he asked the rector, 'Did you accept from this man part of his farm in payment of his assessment?'
'He offered it.'
'How many acres?'
'Sixty-seven.'
'Do you now own, in your name, not the church's, a total of three hundred and seventy acres of the best Choptank farmland?'
'The rector of any parish has the right to live in a comfortable house and farm his land.'
'Three hundred and seventy acres' worth?'
'It's land that has come to me honorably.'
'Did you propose last year that I cede you fifty-three acres west of Dividing Creek?'
'You owed it to me.'
'And how large will your holdings be at the end of this year?'
The rector appealed to the court, and the justices agreed that this was inflammatory, whereupon Steed started a new tack. 'What charities have you paid for in the last twelve months?'
'If anyone had come to me—'
'Didn't Peter Willis come to you?'
'He was notorious. To have given him aid—'
'Whom did you aid?' Steed's fastidious use of the word _whom_ irritated the clergyman, who railed, 'Whom? Whom? And whom are you to question me in this way?'
Very quietly Steed said, 'I merely wanted to know what charities.'
The fat clergyman appealed again to the court, and again they sustained him. 'Mr. Steed, the Rector of Wrentham is not on trial. You are.'
'I apologize,' Steed said humbly. 'But I must ask one more question, which is perhaps even more intrusive than the preceding.'
'Watch your deportment,' the presiding judge warned.
'Rector Wilcok, these are difficult years. Strange voices are being raised in the land—'
'He speaks sedition!' the rector warned.
'The time may soon be at hand when England will need every champion—'
'He speaks French sedition!'
'Do you not think it might be prudent if, in such difficult times, when you already own so much property—'
'Sedition! Sedition! I will not listen to such questioning.'
The justices agreed. 'Mr. Steed, you have far exceeded the proprieties. You have raised questions of the most pernicious tendency and have sought to bring into the quiet precincts of this court the passions which excite the multitudes outside. You must sit down.'
'Those passions, sir—'
'Constable, sit him down.'
That officer was not required; Steed bowed to the justices, bowed to the rector, and with a grace that could only be called exquisite, wheeled and bowed to the farm couple whose lands had been stolen from them. Then he returned to his chair with the other prisoners, where Levin Paxmore clasped his hand.
'The prisoners will rise,' the presiding judge intoned, and when they were before him he said gravely, 'Especially in these troublous times is it necessary that the traditions on which our colony is based be observed with extra diligence. Time out of mind good men have paid part of their increase to the church which protects and guides them. Now more than ever we need that protection and guidance, and for anyone, Catholic or Quaker, to deny that obligation is a shocking breach of citizenship. Simon Steed and Levin Paxmore, you are each ordered to deliver to the church at Wrentham three hundred pounds of tobacco well and truly casked.'
The dissidents nodded.
'And as for you, Teach Turlock...' At this portentous opening, the disheveled waterman turned to the spectators and grinned, as if to say, 'It's me they're talking of.' The judge continued, 'You have no tobacco, nor any means of acquiring any. You have no personal goods worth the taking, but you do have a deficit of three hundred pounds, so this court orders that you cede to the Rector of Wrentham eighty acres of the fast land you hold north of the marsh.'
The grin vanished. The scrawny waterman looked in dismay at the bank of justices, appealing silently this terrible verdict: they were wresting from him land which he cherished, which his ancestors had acquired from Indians and protected with their lives against wolves and mosquitoes and tax collectors and Steeds who had wanted to plant it in tobacco. A strangled cry rose from his throat. Throwing himself toward the bench, he cried, 'No!' The constable pulled him away, but in doing so, thrust him in the direction of the rector, who was at the moment hauling his ponderous bulk out of his chair.
Without considering the wrongful thing he was doing, Turlock leaped at the fat man and started beating him about the face. The court became an uproar, and after the constable and two farmers had quieted the fiery waterman, the presiding judge said balefully, 'In jail, six weeks.' And the waterman was dragged away.
When the court was cleared of spectators, the justices accompanied the rector to the wharf, where with the aid of six men he was loaded back onto his barge. The presiding judge walked along the shore, throwing obsequious farewells to the clergyman, but his two companions stood soberly on the quay and one said, 'Next year, believe me, I will no longer enforce the claims of that pious wretch.'
'It's the law.'
'Then the law must be changed.'
'Such thoughts are dangerous, Edward,' and the second judge looked to see if anyone had heard the treason.
'These are dangerous times. I'm an Englishman, born, bred and consecrated, but recently I've begun to fear that London...'
'Be reasonable. Teach Turlock deserved jail... for a score of reasons.'
'But not to have his land taken.'
'What does he care for land?'
'Did you see him when Arthur delivered the sentence? And Steed and Paxmore? They're good men.'
'They're dissidents. The time is coming when all must pull together.'
The judge who spoke first looked toward the main street of Patamoke, then indicated that his companion must look, too. What they saw was Simon Steed and Levin Paxmore walking arm and arm, deep in conversation. 'Do you realize,' the first judge asked, 'that here this day we've performed a miracle?'
'A strange word, _miracle_.'
'Yes, we justices have made it inevitable that three men as unrelated as Steed, Paxmore and Turlock will unite on common ground. I warn you, we'll see the day when those three and others like them will strip the fat Rector of Wrentham of all his lands, and after that they'll—'
'Edward! I pray, don't finish that sentence.' The second judge put his hands over his ears to blot out his associate's final judgment.
'Ideas will be set in motion which all the justices in this county will be powerless to halt.'
# Three Patriots
THE TWO JUSTICES WERE WRONG IF THEY ASSUMED that Steed and Paxmore were talking treason. They were discussing commerce, and when they reached the boatyard Paxmore invited his co-defendant into the plain wood-walled office from which he conducted his business.
'What makes thee think that vessels will be at a premium?' Paxmore asked as they sat on chairs he had carved from oak.
'The hatred I saw in Turlock's eyes... when the justices took his land.'
'The Turlocks are always savage.'
'But this was different. This was a declaration of war, and frankly, Levin, I'm afraid.'
'Of what? Turlock's powerless...'
'Of the spirit. There's an ugly spirit abroad, Levin, and sooner or later it will engulf us all.'
'And that's why thee wants vessels? Against days of riot?'
'Exactly. I think the day will come when people like you and me who want to maintain ties with England will be pushed to the wall by the canaille.'
'Thee has the advantage of me. I didn't study in France.'
'The mad dogs... the Turlocks. Soon they'll be shouting that the colonies should break away from England. England will resist, as she should. And I'm afraid there might even be war.' He hesitated, looked nervously at the floor and whispered, 'If war does come, we shall need ships.'
Paxmore, seeking to ignore the awful freight of those words, took refuge in nautical pedantry. 'Friend Steed, thee uses terms carelessly. A _ship_ is a very large vessel with three masts or more. Nations own ships. Businessmen own _brigs_ and _sloops_.'
Steed, also eager to avoid talk of war, asked, 'Which should I build?'
'Neither. Thee wants a _schooner_. Able to move about with speed.' And each man sucked in his breath, for each knew that a commission had been offered and accepted, and this was no trivial matter, for if Steed was prepared to pay for a schooner, he must allocate to it a substantial portion of his wealth, and if Paxmore undertook to build it, he must put aside the lesser projects on which his normal income depended.
So the two men sat silent, contemplating the obligations they were about to assume, and finally Steed spoke. Moving briskly to the desk, he jabbed it with his forefinger. 'Speed, Levin. Above all else, we must have speed.'
Now it was Paxmore's turn to act decisively, and for him this was an intense process. Without rising, he began to twitch his body, turning his shoulders and edging his elbows back and forth in a performance that might have seemed grotesque to someone unfamiliar with what he was doing. Years before, Steed had told men at the store, 'When Levin Paxmore thinks of a schooner, he becomes that schooner.' And now the canny builder wrestled with those problems which had agitated the most ancient shipwrights. Finally, at the end of his contortions, he said, 'Thee can have speed, but thee can't have speed and maximum cargo. I can pull the lines out this way'—and he indicated the length of the intended vessel—'but that means I must squeeze her in here, just where you'd want to stow the hogsheads.'
'Forget the hogsheads. This schooner will be hauling compressed cargo of treble value.'
'We should keep the freeboard low, but the masts must be extra tall. We'll need a spread of canvas.'
'I'll want a very stout superstructure.'
'That'll decrease speed.'
'But I must have it. For the cannon.'
At this word Paxmore placed both hands on his desk. 'I can't agree to put cannon aboard one of my vessels, Simon.'
'I wouldn't ask you to. But you build stoutly, so that when you're through I can place the cannon.'
'I could not agree—'
'You leave the spaces—four of them.'
'But that would make it top-heavy,' Paxmore warned, and as soon as he spoke these words he realized that Steed had tricked him into connivance on a military matter, and he drew back. 'I am not building some great ship of war,' he warned, and quickly Steed assented, 'Never! Ours is to be a small schooner of peace.'
For two days the men planned the vessel that was to become the hallmark of the Paxmore yards: sleek, swift, maximum canvas, minimum beam, sharply formed bottom, lively tiller, fantastically protruding bowsprit. It was to be a schooner defined by a businessman, executed by a poet, and at every critical point each man made his decisions in reference to a view of the future that he had constructed after the most careful analysis of what he saw happening in the colonies.
Simon Steed saw that hotheads like Teach Turlock were going to nudge the colonies closer and closer to a confrontation with the mother country and that agitations of vast dimension were going to disrupt trade and the normal use of oceans. This probability influenced him in two ways. He knew that in time of turmoil adventurous traders prospered, for they were willing to buy and sell when others were immobilized by anxiety. And he was also spurred to daring ventures by remembrance of his grandmother's stubborn fight against pirates; like her, he believed that the seas must be kept free. He was therefore willing to take risks and was prepared to pay not only for the vessel he and Paxmore were planning, but for three others in swift succession, for he saw that with a fleet of four he could trade in these troubled times with sharp advantage. But that he would do so under the British flag, now and forever, he had not the slightest doubt.
Levin Paxmore, in his forty years at Patamoke, had built many oceangoing vessels, but they had been stodgy affairs: snows with ridiculous paired masts, and brigs with stumpy ones. He had always known that better craft lay waiting to be built among the oaks and pines of his forests, and sometimes when he had seen a large British ship putting into the harbor outside his boatyard, her lines trim and her three masts justly proportioned, he had felt pangs of artistic regret: I could build better than that, if anyone would buy. Now he had his customer, a man with insights at least as profound as his own, and he was eager to start. He would do so as a Quaker pacifist who abhorred war, and it never occurred to him that cooperating with Steed would lead him step by step to compromise those convictions.
So these two men of good intention launched their project believing that they could pursue it without surrendering past allegiances. Dimensions of their schooner had not been agreed upon, but at the close of that second day they proposed that on the morrow they would lay out the specific measurements; however, shortly after dawn two slaves sailed to the ramp at the boatyard with the exciting news that a trading vessel had put into Devon from London, bringing Guy Fithian and his wife on an inspection tour.
'Were they made welcome?'
'Master Isham's wife, she said come in.'
Simon Steed had never married and at forty-three had no interest in doing so; he ran the family business, read speculative books sent over from Paris, and allowed his younger brother Isham and his wife to supervise the social life of the Steed empire. If Isham had extended the courtesies, there was no need to quit the exciting business of laying out a great schooner, so Simon told his slaves, 'Sail back and assure Fithian I'll be there by nightfall.'
'No, Master. He say come now.' And one of the slaves handed Steed a brief note from his brother advising him that grave news had arrived from London. His presence was mandatory.
So Steed told Paxmore, 'We have two hours to do the work of two days. What size shall our new craft be?'
The two men, in shirt sleeves even though the January day was brisk, began to step off the proposed dimensions. 'I'll want her longer than before,' Paxmore said. 'I've been thinking that we must go to eighty-four feet and some inches.' And he drove two pegs to indicate that considerable distance.
'Longer, rather than shorter,' Steed said, and he moved the pegs slightly.
'Narrow in the beam, something under twenty-one feet,' and again Paxmore drove his pegs.
'I like that,' Steed said. 'Gives just enough room to swivel the cannon.'
The Quaker ignored talk of ordnance, but standing in the middle of the design, he said, 'I think we must go to a depth of eight or nine feet in the hold. Of course, Steed, you won't be able to navigate in the shallow waters of the bay.'
'We keep to the channel... to the ocean. Make her bottom as sharp as you need.'
'I calculate she'll come in at a hundred and sixty tons.'
For the remaining two hours the men reviewed all aspects of their decision, and when they were satisfied that they had reached a sensible compromise on many conflicting demands, Paxmore called one of his nephews and said, 'Martin, that large oak we've been saving. Start it into a keel,' and before Steed left the boatyard the reassuring sounds of an adze were echoing.
On the brisk and pleasant sail back to Devon he tried to guess what kind of information might have caused his brother to send that imperative note: Since it came from Fithians, it must have originated in London. And since there's no longer war with France, it must concern the colonies. Something about politics. Then he frowned. Could it possibly be business? Surely, Parliament can't have passed legislation damaging to our trade.
He was convinced that London would not be so foolish, and his reasoning was original: The one staff the king must lean upon is the support of men like Paxmore and me. Only we can hold the rabble in restraint. And at this thought he flinched, for the sloop was passing Turlock's marsh, and he visualized that hot-eyed radical wasting in jail, planning vengeance, and this encouraged him to summarize ideas which had been brewing for some months: Society must be a compromise between new, untested men like Turlock, who want to destroy old patterns, and old, tried men like Paxmore and me, who tend to cling too long to the patterns we're trying to protect.
He speculated on this for some minutes, and true to habit, whenever he dealt with large concepts such as _society, mankind_ and _change_ he began to think in French, and this was the fatal canker in his character: by every external sign he was fitted to be an English gentleman, except that he had learned to read French books, and these had corrupted him.
He was enormously captivated by Montesquieu and had spent one summer evaluating the Frenchman's challenging theory that the governance of man is best served by dividing authority into three insulated compartments: executive, legislative, judicial. It had never occurred to him that those were the functions of government, but under Montesquieu's exquisite tutelage he saw that this was the case.
But as soon as he reached this conclusion, he drew back from its logical consequences: The best way to attain this balance is by following the English system. A just king, a stalwart Parliament, a wise group of judges. It was contradictory: in all his practical applications he was an Englishman; in all his basic attitudes toward goodness of life he was a Frenchman. And now he turned practical: It would be a tragic day if our colonies ever felt tempted to break away from England, and when his boat touched the Steed wharf he bounded up the path, hungry to discover what kind of crisis had brought Guy Fithian across the Atlantic.
People inside Rosalind's Revenge heard him coming and hurried to the door to meet him, and there for the first time he saw Jane Fithian, many years younger than himself, gay and blond and lovely on the arm of her capable husband. She was so compelling in a light-blue dress of India cloth with its bodice of delicately applied lace, that she seemed to float toward him, extending her hand and saying in a soft voice, 'Hullo, I'm Jane Fithian.'
'Welcome to Devon, Mrs. Fithian.'
'Oh, no!' She laughed merrily. 'I'm his sister, not his wife.'
At these words he blushed so deeply that everyone watching, even the slaves, knew that he was excited by this elfin English girl, and as soon as he found himself alone with Guy he asked, 'Why did you bring her?' and Fithian replied with no embarrassment, 'Because it's high time you were married, Simon.' The words, and the intention behind them, were so bold that Steed blushed again and was about to protest when Fithian said, 'What really brings me is disaster... twofold.' And he proceeded to spell out the worsening situations which had made an ocean crossing imperative.
'The fall in tobacco prices means that many of the great plantations with which we've done business... well, they're bankrupt. And if we continue to extend them credit, we'll be bankrupt too.'
'We're solid,' Steed said defensively.
'Would to God all the American plantations were in your condition. You and Isham know how to work, how to keep things in balance.' He shook his head gravely. 'Simon, would you have any interest in taking over Janney's—that big plantation on the Rappahannock?'
Without a moment's reflection Simon said, 'No.'
'Isn't it somehow related to your family?'
'Vaguely. But of no interest to us. Is that why you came?'
'Janney's is only one of a score. Do you realize that factors like us own most of Virginia? I represent a consortium. Six London factors, and we're being asked to absorb American debts amounting to millions. You call these places Maryland and Virginia. They're really Fithians and Goodenoughs.' In great agitation he moved about the room, shaking his head and saying, 'We own the damned plantations, and we don't want to. Simon, at least come with me to see what can be done about Janney's. You owe me that.'
Again Steed protested that for an Eastern Shore man to fiddle with a plantation in Virginia was insanity, but Fithian stopped him short. 'Like it or not, Simon, we're all caught up in insanity.' And the gravity with which this trusted old friend uttered these words forced Steed to listen.
'You feel safe because you run your plantation and stores prudently. Well, government in London seems determined to drive you out of business. Yes, you as well as the lazy Janneys.'
'What now?'
'Tea. They're going to cut your throat with tea. And if that succeeds, then step by step everything else.'
'Why tea?'
'Because the East India Company—'
'I know. I know. One of the poorest-run companies in the world. But it has that government monopoly.'
'And it's going to exercise it. The trick is this. If you American traders want to buy tea in London, you'll pay a heavy tax. The India Company won't. You'll not be able to compete. The company will land its tea on your docks and undersell you.'
When the intricacies and injustices of this device became clear, Steed slumped in his chair, pressed his hands to his forehead and said, 'It looks to me as if Parliament is determined to crush the very people in the colonies upon whom England must depend.' And with obvious frustration he reviewed the succession of acts already discriminating against the merchants of Maryland: the restrictions in trade, the unjustified taxes, the advantages awarded London monopolists at the expense of colonial businessmen, the preposterous shipping laws, the arrogance of the tax collectors.
'Have you set forth to destroy your friends?' he exploded.
'I think we have,' Fithian said, and with this he lowered his voice, and the conversation left mercantile affairs in which he and Steed were threatened with heavy losses, and entered upon those questions which touch the soul. 'What England should do right now, Simon—before summer—is say to the colonies with smiling good will, "Go your way, children. Grow strong and later on share your munificence with us." '
Steed said nothing. The idea was so radical, so contrary to his own conclusions, that he could barely digest it. So Fithian continued, 'If we do that, we shall bind you to us forever. You'll bank in London, and buy your goods there, and send your sons to Oxford. Believe me, a union like that could be a powerful force in this world.'
'Do many think like you?' Steed asked.
'You would be sick to hear the idiots. They can't visualize any future different from the past. I argue the future of Atlantic trade and they hear nothing. This fellow Burke argues the legal position and they don't hear him either.'
'Is no concession possible?'
'They'd all be possible if men were sensible. We'll make the trivial ones. But the substantial ones that could remake the world? Impossible.'
'So we planters will be driven back and back?'
'Yes. Because you're visible.'
'It would be fearfully wrong if Parliament continued to abuse us merchants. We're your link to sanity. We're loyal to a man. We love England, but we'll not be endlessly abused.'
And so the discussion continued, the Englishman advocating separation, the colonial renewing his allegiance. It ended when Fithian said abruptly, 'Enough of this. You must come with me to Janney's.'
'I've warned you. I won't touch it.'
'But for your own sake, you must see the problem. Besides, I want to show Jane the Virginia shore.'
'Is she going?'
'Of course. I want her to know you. I want her to marry you.'
'You shock me.'
'She's my baby sister. A precious, wonderful child. And we've been affiliated with the colonies for so many generations, I thought it time we made the bonds closer.'
'I'm Catholic'
'We have an ample supply of Protestants in the other branches of the family.' He tapped Steed on the chest. 'All of us need new blood, new ideas. And you need a wife.' Steed started to protest, but Fithian stopped him. 'I sit in London and read letters from all over the world, and after a few years I build an image of the writers. And the image I have of you, Simon, is of a stolid, honest, unexciting calculator who is sometimes deeply moved by contemporary happenings, but dry of heart. Don't miss life because you contemplated it only from a distance.'
The sail to the Rappahannock was a peaceful winter idyll: geese flew overhead in vast congregations and the sky was a lambent gray; occasionally some ship bound for Baltimore would appear through the soft haze, its nine sails barely filled, and after a while it would pass on. The weather was brisk, and each morning Jane Fithian's cheeks were a bright English red, and she would apologize, 'I'm sure I must look a perfect milkmaid.'
She was a witty girl, well able to participate in the learned discussions her brother conducted. 'I think the king should send two armies to the colonies, one to march from New York north and the other from New York south. Then we'll see what headstrong rebels are capable of.' She said such things to tease Simon, who was twenty-one years her senior, but she did not succeed.
'Your armies, my dear Miss Fithian, would never reach either Boston or Philadelphia. We're not children, you know.'
'You're barbarians, that's what you are, and if we stopped our ships for even six months you'd perish... for lack of food... and ideas.'
'And if we stopped our ships for six months, Fithians would crumple... for lack of money.'
'We'd be sillies, each of us, to act so stupidly,' she admitted, 'and I'm sure we won't.'
But when they reached the Janney plantation and she saw its sad condition, she was deeply agitated. 'They seem such fools, all of them. Oh, Guy, if only we could stay here a year or two to straighten them out!' Her brother pointed out that the fault lay not only with the unfortunate Janneys but with the policy-makers in London. 'I'm to blame, too, for extending them credit.'
Only Simon remained untouched by the swift fall in the Janney fortunes. 'They've always been inept, and now fate in the form of ten-percent interest has overtaken them.'
It was his opinion that Fithians should foreclose, take control of the vast lands, and sell them cheaply to some better managers.
'We can't do that,' the Englishman protested. 'Because if we forced Janney's into bankruptcy, we'd have to follow with at least nineteen others. What would be the result? Panic in Virginia. And Fithians with more plantations than it could supervise.'
'What shall you do?' Steed asked.
Guy Fithian, spiritual and legal representative of many English businessmen, lowered his head, rubbed his chin and said, 'Pray. That's what we'll do, pray.'
'For what?'
'Well, my first prayer has been that I could find someone like you to manage Janney's. And the nineteen others. To tide us over the period before the war starts.' At the mention of war, Simon winced. 'And next I'd pray that after the war the free colonies will honor their debts.'
'Don't speak as if war were inevitable,' Steed said.
'It is,' Fithian said quietly.
And after they had inspected a batch of plantations tottering on abysses which the owners barely comprehended, Jane asked her brother, 'Can't we do something?'
'As I said before, we can pray.'
'So the war I spoke of in jest is to be a reality?'
'I think so,' her brother said.
The visits to the grand plantations were like a dream: slowly the sloop would climb the rivers; slaves would be waiting at the wharves to catch the lines; ahead would stretch the impeccable lawn; off to one side would stand the slave quarters; and in the midst of all would rise the mortgaged mansion, sometimes with columns gleaming in the wintry sun. The reception was invariably generous, with fine drinks and small talk of London, but in the eyes of the owners there would be a quiet terror in the presence of this factor who owned the place.
Guy Fithian was not a destroyer; he was there to see if some reign of reason could be installed to save both the ostensible owners and himself, but there was never a rational plan. 'The slaves have to be fed, Mr. Fithian. Tobacco is sure to recover. We don't know how to raise corn or wheat. There's been some talk of growing apples, but only for cider. And each month our debts seem to grow heavier.'
Yet it was these good people, so sorely abused by London, who most enthusiastically supported England and the king. 'There will never be rebellion here. In Richmond and Williamsburg there has been talk. Jefferson isn't reliable and Patrick Henry is a born troublemaker of no substance whatever. No, sir, Virginia stands fast with the king.'
'That's more than I would do,' Fithian told Steed as they prepared for the sail back to Devon. Steed did not respond, and Fithian, in an abrupt change of subject, asked, 'And what of Jane?'
'In these uncertain times...'
'That's when you must get your personal affairs in order. Do you intend marrying her?'
'Good heavens!'
'Simon, for the past six weeks we've been visiting people unable to make decisions. Don't become like them in your old age.'
The mention of age was unfortunate; it gave Simon an excuse. 'After all, I'm forty-three and she's only twenty-two. I'm old enough—'
'A splendid excuse,' Guy snapped. 'And I can think of a dozen others. And none apply.'
'Why not?' Simon asked almost petulantly; he did not like being ridiculed.
'Because we live in an age of tension. Everything's uncertain, and at such times wise men attend to basics... like marriage.'
Steed said, 'I'll think about it on the sail home.' And when the island loomed far to the east, hiding in river mists, Guy called him to the rear of the sloop and asked, 'What's the decision?' and Steed said hesitantly, 'I might as well,' and Guy shouted, 'Jane, come here!' and when she joined them, red-cheeked and lively, her brother said, 'Simon wants to marry you,' and she kissed Steed and poked him in the ribs and said, 'You didn't have to propose. I was going to do it when we reached the island.'
Steed was relieved that a major decision had been reached so painlessly; the more he had seen of Jane in the Virginia mansions the more he had grown to love her. She was a crisp, enticing young woman, with a strong mind and a lively interest in the Fithian enterprises. He was sure that she could have married a younger man—several in Virginia had seemed eager to propose—and was flattered that she had chosen him. 'You could have brought order into any of those plantations,' he told her as they walked up the path from the wharf. 'I want you to manage this one.' But in obedience to some deep sense of propriety she said, 'I didn't come to manage. I came to love.'
But beyond such practical considerations, which were English in nature, Steed also felt drawn to Jane sexually, and was neither reluctant nor embarrassed to express this longing, a fact he attributed to his French inheritance. Jane became increasingly desirable when they went to bed in the large square room once occupied in bitter loneliness by Rosalind Janney Steed, and one night when low flames spiraled in the bedroom fireplace she said, 'You thought your life had ended, didn't you, Simon? But it was just preparing to begin,' and she laughed.
While Simon Steed had been absent in Virginia, conducting his reticent courtship, Teach Turlock fumed in jail, and to every prisoner who shared his cell he spoke veiled treason—'Maybe we got to drive the fat rector out of Maryland. This land stealing.' He suggested that judges were thieves, too, and whenever any Englishman was mentioned, even the king, he spoke harshly.
Some of his fellow prisoners, aware of the way his thoughts were tending, tried to mollify him by arguing against his excesses, but he rejected their counsel. 'The time is comin'...' he said, and told those close to him that when he got out of jail, Englishmen had better watch out.
The jailer got a taste of his hardening attitude when papers were delivered for Turlock to sign; they transferred title to eighty acres to the Rector of Wrentham, but when Teach understood this he refused to make his mark—'No rector takes my land.'
'But the court says you must sign,' the jailer said patiently as the clerk nodded.
'To hell with the court.'
The two officials gasped, for such language was not used in Patamoke. The law in such cases was precise: for speaking disrespectfully of any court, imprisonment; for a second offense, branding the tongue with a flaming iron; for a third offense, hanging.
'Say nothing of his blasphemy to the justices,' the jailer pleaded when he and the clerk were alone. 'He's a crazy man who loves his land.'
But of course the justices had to be told that Turlock had refused to sign, and they became angry. Two appeared in prison to warn him of the jeopardy in which he was placing himself, but he sat grim-lipped and dirty, his hands tucked beneath his bottom lest he be tempted to take the quill. 'We can prolong your sentence. Or take your sloop,' they warned.
But he was obdurate, and neither cajolery nor threats induced him to accept the pen, so the justices retired, and shortly thereafter he was informed that his sentence had been doubled; he must remain in jail till April.
He began to laugh at the justices, at the rector and at himself. He realized that things had gone sadly wrong and there wasn't much he could do about it. At this point he could have been saved from rebellion; a single conciliatory gesture would have mollified him. Instead his wife visited the jail with news that the surveyors had marked off the eighty acres—'Not swampy land toward the creek. Best land. With the big trees.'
Surprisingly, he did not rage or become abusive. After his wife left he merely sat on his stool, benumbed, churning inwardly, so that one of the prisoners said, 'When they take a piece of his land they take a piece of his guts.' When two justices appeared, accompanied by the constable, bearing documents for him to sign, he allowed them to pinion him, and hold his right arm, and force his fingers to draw the sprawling X's which took away his land. But later, when the justices reviewed all that had happened, they remembered that during the enforced signing Turlock had studied with animal fierceness the two documents—'He couldn't read but he was memorizing how the papers looked.'
On April 6, 1773, he was released and on April 7 the rectory at Wrentham was ransacked. At first the fat clergyman could not ascertain what had been stolen, for his candlesticks and silverware seemed to be intact, and it was several days before he realized that his title to the eighty acres at the marsh was missing; when he was satisfied that this was the case, he summoned his slaves and directed them to get him to Patamoke as expeditiously as possible. Huffing and puffing, he informed the justices that Turlock's title had been stolen, and when the justices said, 'We'll have the clerk draw you a copy,' they found that theirs was gone too.
'It was Turlock!' the clerk remembered. 'He was here the day after he was released from jail. Asked to see the deed he had signed.'
'You know he couldn't read.'
'I forgot. I was called away...' His voice trailed off as he tried to recall that day, and then he understood the trick that had been played on him. 'It was Mrs. Turlock! She came to the other door. Asked if her husband was here.'
'And you didn't ascertain whether the deed was returned to the files?'
'Who steals deeds?'
Obviously Turlock did, so the justices ordered duplicates to be drawn, but when the constable went to the marshes to inform Teach that the court had fined him twenty additional acres for burglary, and that these must be added to the rector's holding, he flew into a rage so violent that any prospect of getting him to mark the transfer was futile. 'I was lucky to escape with my life,' the constable reported, so the justices took it upon themselves to sign the deed, and Turlock was cheated of another portion of his land.
In fury he retreated to his sloop, black and near the end of her days: her back was hogged; her sails were torn; her bottom was riddled with worm; but Turlock had learned to sail her with surprising skill and had even taken her to Barbados for contraband rum and to Sal Tortuga for salt.
The sloop merited a crew of ten, but often she sailed with only two, for Turlock could stay awake for days on end, or mostly awake, keeping his old wreck afloat. On his present trip he carried a crew of eighteen, for he had in mind much more than a smuggling trip to Barbados. At night he slipped out of the marsh, down past Devon and into the broad reaches of the Chesapeake, where he proposed to stay for some time.
A vessel of quite different character was following the same plan. Lieutenant Copperdam, of His Majesty's Royal Navy, had for some months been dominating the Massachusetts coast and had apprehended various American craft attempting to evade customs. It was his habit to board the vessel, confiscate its contraband, and send the sailors off to London in chains. This high-handed behavior had so infuriated the citizens of Massachusetts that Copperdam had decided to test his fortune in the Chesapeake.
The first colonial vessel he spied was a broken-down, hog-backed sloop limping along with every sign of running contraband. At first Copperdam considered letting her pass, for in that condition it could not be carrying much, but since there was nothing else on the horizon, he moved in for an easy capture.
However, as he closed in on the derelict, its sides opened suddenly and six cannon flashed out. Fire was withheld, and Copperdam saw to his astonishment that the enemy intended boarding and fighting hand-to-hand. Too late he tried to pull away, but in doing so, ran aground, whereupon the shallow-drafted sloop came close and put its men aboard.
And then a miracle happened! Instead of capturing the English vessel and arresting its crew, the invaders merely ransacked it for anything of value and sailed boisterously out into the Atlantic. Lieutenant Copperdam, in reporting his humiliating experience to the English authorities in New York, said, 'It was like wrestling a porcupine barehanded. They said she carried a crew of only eighteen. Seemed more like eight hundred.' When they asked about her captain, he said, 'Bearded, barefooted, filthy, and never said a word.'
And as he was reporting, another English ship came into New York with a similar tale. 'A black sloop which seemed about to sink hailed us, emptied our hold and sailed away.'
'Was the captain barefooted, heavy beard?'
'The same.'
When this description circulated about the Chesapeake, knowing sailors realized that Teach Turlock had declared private war against the English, and they speculated on how soon that war would become general. Plantation owners, appalled at the possibility of an open breach with England, growled, 'What's the damn fool done? Issue his own letters of marque and reprisal? He ought to be hanged.' But one dark night the black sloop came creeping into the Choptank, and before dawn the local watermen had taken off her booty, stepped her masts and hidden her within the marsh. Turlock was their champion.
As the year 1773 drew to a close, Levin Paxmore worked fourteen and fifteen hours a day. The transom of the building vessel had already been carved and painted— _Whisper_ — and the keelson had been fastened to the keel. The two huge masts had been shaped—square to octagon to circle—and the steps into which they would ultimately be fitted had been carpentered. But the planking was far behind schedule. The reason was an old one: cutting pine boards to the right thickness, shaping them to the intricate flow of the schooner's silhouette, and matching a larboard plank to one already cut for the starboard were both time-consuming and difficult. There was a limit to what sawyers could do in a day, and a ship of this size expended timber at a rate of something like six times that of the smaller boats Paxmore had been accustomed to build.
And yet, every new scrap of information which filtered in to Patamoke confirmed Steed's original conviction that the job must be finished quickly. As Paxmore told his wife, 'The omens are frightening. Yesterday an English warship came all the way to Patamoke. Pestering me to learn if it was one of ours that had assaulted Lieutenant Copperdam! Wanting to know why I was building the _Whisper_. Taking notes on everything.'
'What does thee think will happen?' Ellen asked.
'My mind is blank. I work from day to day.' He paused, then added, 'The only thing I'm sure of is that when I finish this one, another will be needed.' Again he hesitated. 'What I've done is, send my men into the forest. They've cut three more keels and six more masts, and now I'm looking beyond those to the others that must follow.'
'Does thee see war?'
Paxmore looked about the kitchen to assure himself that none of the children were listening, then said, 'I see confusion.'
'Then why are so many vessels needed?'
'I don't know. But in times of confusion...'
'Levin, it's often in such times that the good work of the Lord is done.'
'No!' he cried, leaving his chair and walking about the room, waving his hands as if to prevent her from saying what he knew she was determined to say. 'I cannot wrestle with thy concerns this night.'
'Levin, the time is at hand. God projects us into difficult times so that we may bear His testimony.'
She spoke with such sweet persistence, and with such logic, that he surrendered. Falling into a chair beside her, he asked, 'What now?'
'Last year in Patamoke Meeting the motion failed by only thirteen voices. At the Baltimore Yearly Meeting it failed by less than a hundred. It's an obligation that God puts upon us to see this thing finished.'
'I won't propose it.'
'Levin, I've proposed it three times. People expect me to. But if thee rises this time, it will be fresh... a new voice... thy support alone will convince half the opponents.'
'Ellen, I'm too tired. I work all day at the yard, all night at my plans, Arguing with thee puts a knot in my stomach.'
'But, Levin, the time has come. A great drum beats out the schedule and we must move forward...'
'Thee sounds quite militaristic.'
She ignored this, and said, 'When Ruth Brinton demanded that Edward Paxmore manumit his slaves, he protested that doing so would ruin his business. It had the opposite effect. When Thomas Slavin set his free, his neighbors predicted he would go bankrupt. Now he owns twice the land.'
'I cannot prescribe for others.'
'That's what testimony is,' Ellen said with profound conviction. 'I do not testify in order to shame my neighbors. I testify because God will allow me to do no other. It is wrong for Quakers to own slaves. It is wrong to keep Negroes in ignorance. It is wrong to separate families. It is wrong to buy and sell human beings. And if thee refuses to lead this movement, then thee condones wrong.'
'I will not do thy work in meeting,' he said, and when Ellen continued pestering him he stomped from the house and sought refuge at the boatyard, where he could grapple with problems that had a specific solution. He remained there for several hours, inspecting with approval the massive schooner that was taking final shape, and as he saw her looming from the shadows, he projected her into the water, two masts erect, and it occurred to him that if speed was the principal requirement, it could be assured by quitting the rigorous custom of rigging every schooner with large triangular fore-and-aft sails and substituting a much more subtle design: Gaff-rig the fore-and-afts so that the top of each mast becomes available for a pair of square-rigged sails, and add another jib forward. With such a mix... With a dowel he sketched on the floor such a rigging, and it looked fine, but when he imagined himself in the bowels of a schooner so rigged, he began to sense limitations.
So he adjusted his ghostly sails, shifting them to unseen spars: I want this schooner to be able to maneuver in whatever wind, and for that there's nothing beats the square sail. They can halt a ship in midflight. Or even back it up. But I also want to sail close to the wind, and for that we must have bigger fore-and-afts. On and on he went, investigating in the abstract the properties of sail, but the more rationally he thought, the tighter became the knot in his stomach, until at last he shivered in the night, so oppressive were the problems besetting him.
Suddenly he cried aloud, 'I will not testify in meeting,' but even as he uttered these evasive words he had to acknowledge that Ellen's harassment about slavery was not the cause of his moral confusion. That sprang, curiously enough, from his speculations about rigging, and it was a perplexity that could plague only a Quaker: Speed and maneuverability! No man would require both if he were merely importing goods from London. He'd have that double need only if he intended using his vessel in war. What I'm building is a ship of war.
Overcome by this realization, he fell on his knees, clasped his hands and began to pray: I'm not building ships of war. I'm not building platforms for cannon. Almighty God, I'm a poor man trying to live with my neighbors in accordance with Thy law. Exert Thy full power to keep us at peace. He prayed for a long time, asking guidance as to what he must do with this schooner, and the three others coming in its train. He would not build for war, and yet every improvement he had made on the _Whisper_ made her more war-worthy.
He was on his knees when the door to the big shed opened, admitting a man who seemed to be carrying an armful of tools. Had he been headed the other way, Paxmore would have suspected him of stealing them, but obviously he was bringing them back—and this was perplexing. Maintaining silence, Paxmore watched as the man drew closer, and saw to his surprise that it was Gideon Hull, one of his best workmen and a Quaker to be trusted; he was indeed carrying a heavy armload of shipbuilding tools.
'What's thee doing, Gideon?' he asked in a quiet voice.
The workman dropped the tools, whipped around in dismay and saw Paxmore kneeling in the shadows. Neither man spoke, so Paxmore began picking up the tools. 'What were they for, Gideon?'
'I was bringing them back.'
'I would have loaned them, if thee had asked.'
'Not for my need, Levin.'
'Whose then?'
Hull stood mute. He knew that if he said one word, the whole story would unravel, and this he did not want, for it involved others. But Levin Paxmore, like his wife, was persistent, and after many questions, Hull was worn down. 'It's Teach Turlock. He's back in the marsh with a cannonball through his side. We slipped out to help him mend it.'
'We?'
'Leeds and Mott.'
Paxmore was shocked. Three of his best men involved in aid to an outlaw! Realizing the legal dangers involved in such criminal behavior, he was about to berate Hull when it occurred to him that he was at least as guilty and perhaps more so: In this yard we're building ships for war. Our acts are treasonous, and helping a pirate mend his sloop is the least of our wrongdoings.
Now Hull was bragging. 'Everyone knows it was Turlock who did in Copperdam. He's already sold two cargoes of captured goods in Baltimore.'
'How did he get a cannonball through his strakes?'
Hull refused to divulge additional details, and Paxmore judged it best not to press the point. 'Did thee patch him?'
'He's headed for the Chesapeake right now,' Hull said with grim satisfaction. 'I'll stow these.' And without further comment he replaced the valuable tools, bowed to Paxmore and left the shed.
Paxmore remained till dawn, deeply agitated by Hull's action, and then he saw the three great oak trees waiting to be hewn into keels, and he recalled the dictum of his forebears: A Paxmore ship keeps an unsullied keel. The vessels he had built had all contained such keels, heavy and true and unpenetrated, and this had accounted for the fact that they had not become hog-backed or old before their years.
But the keel of his personal life was far from steady; his ship was generating a high degree of sway. On the slavery issue, he knew that his wife was right and that the time had come for Quakers to announce forthrightly that the ownership of slaves disqualified a man or woman from membership in the society, but he also knew that one man could do only so much, and his job was building schooners against the impending crisis. But in doing this he tacitly approved the warfare which he saw as both deplorable and inescapable. Patriots tended to be irresponsible people like Teach Turlock; they sought to inflame the populace to acts that would be regretted. Honest men like Steed and Levin Paxmore avoided such excesses, and he prayed they always would.
But on this night he had discovered how easily one could be tricked into aiding rebellion, and he was confused. He ended his long vigil with one more prayer: Almighty God, keep these colonies on an even keel.
The precarious balance was shattered during the balmy spring of 1774. Guy Fithian, with the best intentions and a desire for commercial gain, sent his brother-in-law Simon this enthusiastic letter:
Light at last in the darkness! As I told you when we visited Virginia, I have been distressed by the action of Parliament in granting a tea monopoly to the East India Company. Things were managed poorly by the Company and to the disadvantage of honest traders like ourselves. I am glad to report that I have found a way to circumvent the Company's monopoly, so that you will now be able to sell tea in your part of Maryland with a tax much lower than before and with considerable profit to both you and me. I have therefore taken the liberty of loading your old snow _Fair Rosalind_ with three thousand, two hundred pounds of the choicest leaf. Since your snow is not a fast ship, it will doubtless arrive after these letters, but I am sure you will have no trouble in disposing of her cargo at these attractive prices.
Steed did not anticipate any trouble in the sale of his unordered cargo: Fithians would send leaves of first-rate quality; it was eagerly wanted by his customers; and as London pointed out, under the new system it actually cost less than tea imported from Holland or France. But in the interval before its arrival he began to encounter difficulties at home.
Jane Steed was proving to be even more delightful a wife than he had anticipated; she was a fascinating companion, a delightful hostess. Whatever dress fell into her hands she improved, and her three slaves seemed to enjoy sewing her old clothes into new patterns, or tricking them out with bits of lace and satin. She was also innovative in kitchen affairs, dressing duck and venison in rich new ways, and finding delicious uses for hominy. She made good gravies and used nuts and fruits to advantage. Devon had never known better meals than the ones she supervised, and when visitors from Europe spent a month or so at Rosalind's Revenge they always complimented the Steeds on the excellence of their table. 'Simon's the one to thank,' Jane said modestly. 'He lived in France, you know, and learned the secrets of good cooking.' This was an amusing deception; Simon shared the honest American attitude toward food—'Have plenty and cook it till it's black.'
In the early days of their acquaintance Jane had sometimes ridiculed her future husband's colonial pretentions at learning; after she had lived with him for a while she found that he actually did read five languages: English, French, German, Latin and Greek. His library did include the best available books in each of those languages, and all had been studied. His knowledge was extraordinary and she was pleased to see that it had not made him a radical; in all judgments he was conservative, and when she spoke forcefully in defense of England, he supported her.
But Jane had become increasingly distressed by one fact which had not impressed itself upon her during the brief days of their courtship: Simon was in trade. He had stores in Patamoke, Edentown, Oxford and St. Michaels. He and his brothers had actually worked in these stores, serving the general public, and nephews of the family now served in them, mastering the skills which had kept the family prosperous for more than a century and a half.
Not only did the Steeds have stores, but they also offered for general sale the handiwork of their slaves. The Steed Negroes made barrels, as blacks did on all plantations, but when they had made enough for the family's use, they went on making them, and young Steed managers went about the Chesapeake peddling them. They sold lumber, too, and extra cloth woven by the Devon slaves. What was even more demeaning, on two different occasions Simon had loaded one of his ships to the gun-wales, sailed her to Martinique and sold her 'cargo-and-bottom' to an enterprising Frenchman who in one swoop gained possession of some hogsheads of tobacco, some naval stores much needed in the islands, and a sound Paxmore-built ship. On the first of these unusual deals Steed had gained a thousand pounds, paid in Spanish coins, and on the second, a thousand five.
Jane found such dealings distasteful. Gentlemen did not engage in trade; they left the running of shops and the haggling over prices of individual items to folk of lesser category. In fact, a true gentleman rarely carried money on his person and never discussed it with others. The actual handling of money—the passing of coins from one person to another—was contaminating, and she found it abhorrent that her husband was engaged in this dirty business.
'Fithians does nothing else,' Simon protested one day.
'Ah, but we do it in general, never the specific.'
'I don't see the difference,' Steed said.
'You would if you'd been educated in England. Trade is repulsive. Gentlemen restrict themselves to the management of great businesses.'
On this point she was obdurate, and Steed discovered that to the English gentry the retail sale of a single item was gauche, while the wholesale movement of a thousand such items was acceptable. 'It comes down to one simple question,' his wife said. 'Do you meanly bow and scrape to everyone who has a shilling, or do you handle your business affairs like a gentleman... with yearly accounting in a dignified manner?'
'Is that what your brother does?' Simon asked.
'Of course. I doubt if he's ever handled money in his life. There are books and yearly accountings and it's all settled by clerks who write letters.'
Steed laughed. 'When we were in Virginia, didn't you see that those fine people were in danger of losing their plantations because they knew nothing of business? And that we Steeds have saved ours because we did? We know how to run stores, and work slaves to a profit. Every one of my nephews knows how to make a barrel, as I did at their age.'
'Don't you feel'—she groped for a word—'dirty? Doesn't this store-keeping make you feel degraded?'
'Not when it keeps us solvent. And able to buy the books we want.'
If, as Jane charged, she was 'besmirched by the dirty fingers of trade,' she had to admit that the trade was not parochial. To be sure, the family fortunes rested upon the Eastern Shore emporiums and collateral manufacturing operations, but the levels of profit were determined by exports to Europe: tobacco, naval stores and timber to England; fish, flour and meat to other countries. It was not unusual for a merchant ship to arrive in the Chesapeake with commercial documents from as many as fifty different European cities inquiring about shipments of Steed materials. In Great Britain the letters might have come from towns like Oxford, Cambridge, Edinburgh; in Spain, from cities such as Barcelona, Cadiz, Seville; in Portugal, from Lisbon or the salt town St. Ubes; in Belgium, from Ghent, Ostend, Ypres; in Holland, from Amsterdam, Utrecht, Haarlem; and in France, because of Simon's study there, from any of thirty-four cities like Bergerac, Dunkirk, Metz, Besançon and, especially, Nantes. To work on Devon Island in 1774 was to be in contact with the most sophisticated centers of Europe.
But in the spring of that year one commercial event superseded all others: the arrival at the mouth of the Chesapeake of the creaking, waterlogged old snow _Fair Rosalind_ , laden with packets of tea which had evaded the normal tax in London. All that was required to make this transaction legal was the payment of a small token tax designated by Parliament to act as proof that the colonies were still subservient to it. In Boston in the preceding autumn there had been minor trouble over this petty tax, and one consignment of tea had actually been thrown into the harbor, but those tempers had subsided and Marylanders loyal to the king trusted that there would be no trouble in their colony.
In fact, the responsible planters to whom Steed spoke welcomed the arrival of this cheap tea. The justices expressed strong pro-British sentiments and told him, 'High time the mother country exerted her authority. You did a good job, Steed, bringing in this tea.'
The Paxmores were disturbed. They loved their tea, and since they drank nothing stronger, had felt deprived when denied it. But like Quakers in general, they brooded about potential consequences of even the most transparent act, and this tax on tea was far more complicated than that. 'I want the tea,' Levin Paxmore said, 'but to be forced to pay a tax about which I was not consulted goes against the grain of my republican principles.' He concluded that he should pay the tax, drink the tea and tremble over what might happen next. 'I know what Steed will do. I know what we will do. But who can predict what the Turlocks might do?'
Who, indeed? Since that fateful day in 1765 when Parliament arbitrarily imposed a Stamp Act requiring a trivial fee on commercial and legal paper, newspapers and almanacs, Teach Turlock and Marylanders like him had sensed intuitively that Britain was trying to place its collar upon the colonists, and he resisted like an untamed dog. He had never used one of the items taxed—how could he, being illiterate?—but he had known danger when it appeared—'It ain't right.' He had continued to resist each subsequent act of Parliament which infringed his freedom, for he saw with primitive logic that if London succeeded with the tea, it would transfer its strategy to other areas until all rights were strangled.
Teach could not have expressed even one of his conclusions in a reasoned sentence, but his crafty, analytic mind recognized tyranny in whatever subtle form it took. 'The rector, the king alike. He steals my land. He steals my taxes. Together they steal my freedom.'
He represented the thinking of most colonists, and now when he sailed his black schooner boldly into the Choptank they applauded, for he was their spiritual champion even though his lack of education prevented him from being their spokesman. He trailed the _Fair Rosalind_ right to her berth at Patamoke; he did not enter the inner harbor, but anchored in the Choptank, where he could watch the celebration on shore as the tea-ship docked, delivered its papers to the authorities, and welcomed aboard the English tax collector, who inspected the tea, calculated its value and submitted a bill to Simon Steed as the consignee. Only when the tax was paid, and the submission to England legalized, did Turlock row ashore.
His arrival caused a commotion, for his daring behavior at sea had elevated him to the rank of hero, but he did not look the part. He was forty-two years old, extremely thin, bearded, barefooted, dressed in two rough garments which fitted him poorly, and quite dirty from months at sea. He wore no belt, but the rope that held up his trousers also held two pistols, and when he slouched along, these moved awkwardly, banging against his raw hipbones. He wore no hat, but since he was taller than most men, his shaggy head was prominent, bespeaking a rough kind of leadership.
'Where's Steed?' he asked as soon as he reached the customs office.
'He went to his store.'
Moving with the easy rhythms of a man who had slipped through marshes and along forest trails, he walked toward the Steed emporium with three of his sailors trailing behind, but when he reached the store he told his men to wait as he went inside. Steed was not visible. 'Where is he?' Turlock asked, and the young Steed nephew who was managing the place indicated a room in the rear.
'Hullo, Simon.'
'Turlock! Aren't you brave, coming into port?'
'The tea.'
'What about it?'
'You paid the tax?'
'As required.'
'Don't sell it.'
'But it's paid for. People want it.'
'Simon, don't sell it.'
They talked in this manner for some time: a plea from Turlock not to sell, a reply from Steed that it was a normal business transaction. They got nowhere, so Turlock shrugged his shoulders and left, but when Steed employees sought to unload the tea and take it to the family warehouse, Turlock's sailors prevented them. There was a scuffle, nothing much, and the young Steed manager ran to the wharf, calling upon _Fair Rosalind_ 's crew to drive off the troublemakers, but when the crew moved forward to help unload the tea, the gaunt figure of Teach Turlock interposed.
'Don't touch,' he said quietly. He made no move toward his guns. He merely stood barefooted at the wharf-end of the gangplank and advised the Steed sailors to drop their bundles of tea and withdraw. They did.
All that day Turlock stood guard, and at dusk a rowboat from the black sloop came ashore with nine more of his sailors, who positioned themselves about the gangplank.
The next two days saw increased tension. The justices came to the wharf and warned Turlock that he must not interfere with the unloading of a cargo properly paid for and properly taxed, but the resolute captain merely said, 'No tea.' There were no army units stationed in Patamoke, and the constable's single deputy could in no way oppose the will of these brigands, but if the general public could be mobilized, the freebooters could be disciplined and the tea could be landed.
So the justices appealed to the people of Patamoke—and a strange thing happened. The people listened respectfully, weighed what the learned men had to say—and concluded that they were wrong and Turlock was right. One man reminded the crowd, 'They took his land and he takes their tea.'
'We're not talking about land,' the justices complained. 'We're talking about tea.'
Now Turlock spoke. 'No tea. No tax. Soon we lose everything.' The parliamentary complexities were beyond the understanding of common people, but they grasped the danger in this insidious tax, and the attempts of the justices to enlist them in opposition to Turlock failed.
He did not gloat at their defeat. Instead he walked quietly to the Steed store and there initiated a discussion which was to determine the subsequent behavior of all who lived along the Choptank. Neither Steed nor Turlock allowed the argument to become heated, and such threats as were made were couched in the subdued terms used by two long-time adversaries striving to reach a sensible solution to their impasse.
'The tea will be landed,' Steed warned. 'Soldiers will be sent from Annapolis.'
'They'll find no tea.'
'Why not?'
'We talk today. We talk tomorrow. Tomorrow night we burn your snow.'
'That's destruction!'
'It's old. Seventy years. All patches.'
'You'd burn the _Rosalind?_ '
'Simon, it's war. In Barbados, men from Massachusetts told me.'
'England will crush us. Teach, if you burn my snow, England will drive you from the seas.'
For the first time in their discussions Turlock smiled, a grimy, hairy, self-confident smile. Four times now he had gone up against the English in naval actions, and while it was true that on three of those occasions they had forced him to run, he was confident that when a hundred privateers like himself were at sea, there would be no chance of eliminating them all. He did not try to rebut Steed's arguments; he smiled.
And in that quiet arrogance he conveyed a message to the merchant that no words could have achieved. Steed said, 'You think war is inevitable?' 'Mmmm.' 'You think we can win?' 'Mmmm.' 'You think the seas can be kept open?' 'Mmmm.' 'You think Boston is going to stand firm?' 'Mmmm.'
Again and again these two men, who had operated together only as co-defendants in the tithe case, reviewed the situation, and after two hours had passed, Steed said, 'I'd like to bring Paxmore in,' and Turlock nodded. So the Quaker was sent for, and he appeared, gray and cautious.
'Turlock thinks there's bound to be war,' Steed said.
Anxiety showed in Paxmore's face, and he said, 'Oh, I hope not.'
'You afraid?' Turlock growled.
'Yes, because England will destroy us.'
'But what if we don't have actual war?' Steed asked. 'Just irritations. Can we keep the sea lanes open?'
Now Paxmore was obligated to speak as a proud shipbuilder. 'The _Whisper_ will not be taken. Her speed will astonish.'
'When will she be ready?'
'Three weeks.'
'And you'll start on the others?'
'I already have.' And with this admission Paxmore knew that he had committed himself to war. He wiped his forehead.
The three men sat in the small office, and no one spoke. Flies buzzed and Turlock followed their flight from window to door to ceiling, waiting for the frightened leaders to make sensible comment. Finally Steed asked, 'Paxmore, if war does come, can we win?'
'No.'
'But you seem resigned to have it come?'
'England'll win, but she'll learn that she must treat us better.'
'Exactly how I feel,' Steed cried. 'We'll have war. Turlock will see to that. But there's no chance we can win. We might gain some minor concessions.'
'We'll win,' Turlock said with great force.
'How?' the other two asked.
'By holding on. Tomorrow night we start. We burn, the _Rosalind_.'
'You what?' Paxmore cried.
Turlock rose to his full height and looked serenely at his two frightened neighbors. 'When we stood in court we knew this would happen. Build your schooners, Levin. Simon, you arm them. This is war. Tomorrow night it reaches Patamoke.' He turned and left.
Paxmore, shaken by the possibility that the snow might be intentionally burned, asked, 'Did he mean it?'
'He did. It's a symbolic act, and I shall make no move to stop it.' He allowed time for this to register, then said, 'And neither shall you, Levin. We sail to Peace Cliff... now... to look for spars.' And to protect himself, he announced to various persons in the store that he and Paxmore were headed for the woods in back of Peace Cliff, to look for tall trees. They were on the porch of the telescope house, watching night shadows fall across the river, when the sky behind them brightened, with flickers of reddish light darting upward from the eastern horizon. Paxmore bowed his head in silent prayer, but Steed watched the flickering shoots until they died.
'We've started something of magnitude,' he said, but Paxmore, terrified at the consequences, remained silent.
It was characteristic of the Steeds of Devon that once they settled upon a course, they maintained it until a conclusion was reached, and in the agitated weeks following the burning of the tea, Simon hardened his thinking about the threat of war. 'I shall always remain loyal to the king,' he told his wife.
'I should hope so,' she said, as if there were no alternative.
'But if Parliament persists in transgressing our natural rights...'
'What natural rights do colonials have?'
'You sound like the member of Parliament who said, "In London the thinking head, in America the working hands and feet." '
'Of course! The purpose of a colony is to provide wealth to the homeland, and I think it shameful the way you allowed a filthy pirate to burn your tea.' She had no words strong enough to condemn his supine surrender.
'The people refused the tea.'
'They'd have taken it if you'd shown any fight.' She railed at the pusillanimity of the authorities and said that three English soldiers in uniform could have stopped the whole affair. 'What's more,' she added, 'I think that Turlock told you about the burning in advance. So that you and that sickly Paxmore could scuttle out.'
Ignoring this clever deduction, he said, 'My real irritation stems from the fact that the colonies are not being used properly. The only possible justification for England's owning a colony in a new land is to experiment here with methods that can't be introduced in the home country.'
'You do talk the greatest nonsense, Simon.'
'I want to keep Maryland a part of England, but only if we retain the right to our unique development.'
'Maryland develops as England develops, and that's that. Your job is to serve the king.'
An opportunity to serve arose in the summer of 1774, when a committee of eleven leading citizens of Patamoke and surrounding territories convened to discuss events occurring at scattered points throughout the colonies. Two of the members had some time earlier volunteered to serve as local reporters to the Maryland Committee of Correspondence, whose job it was to maintain contact with committees of like intention in other regions. Inflammatory documents from Boston had been forwarded to South Carolina, and the correspondents in that state reported how they, too, had resisted the importation of tea.
In July the Patamoke committee sent a deputation to Devon to discuss the possibility of Steed's chairing a meeting that would review the situation in the colonies and draft a statement of local intention. Two boats sailed into the creek, and when the somber men came up the brick-lined path to the big house, Jane Steed was stiffly courteous. In times past she had entertained these men on happier occasions and knew them by name, but now she could guess at their purpose and it repelled her. 'Come in, gentlemen,' she said with obvious reserve. 'Place your hats on the table. My husband will join you shortly.'
The men were pleased at another chance to see the leading mansion of their district and commented idly on the fine decorations. Jane stayed with them briefly, then excused herself, for she wanted no part in this seditious gathering, but when her husband appeared, he got right to the heart of the matter. 'I'm sure you haven't come so far on trivial affairs.'
'We have not,' the leader said, and he asked the two correspondents to outline the present condition of the colonies.
'In Massachusetts, endless problems with the governor. In South Carolina, near-rebellion. In New York, confusion. And in Virginia...' Here one of the writers paused, dropped his pompous style and said, 'Gentlemen, we can thank God for Virginia. That colony has notable patriots.'
'What are they doing?'
'Writing. Arguing. Defending all of us with their cogency.'
'Who?'
'Jefferson...'
'I have little regard for him,' Steed said.
'Madison, Wythe.'
'Has Byrd spoken?'
'He has not. He seems afraid.'
'That bodes ill. The Byrds are the best of the lot.'
'And the most timorous.'
'So what do you propose for the Eastern Shore?'
'For the entire shore, nothing. For Patamoke, everything.'
And these quiet, conservative businessmen, most of them self-taught, expressed their fears and hopes. Events were deteriorating. As in New York, all was confusion. The colonies were like a rudderless ship wallowing in the troughs, and it was incumbent upon men of good will to state their positions. This the men of Patamoke were prepared to do.
'We shall convene a meeting in the courthouse, Thursday instant,' one of the merchants said. 'We think you should preside, Simon, and that we should state our determinations.'
'This is a grave matter,' Steed said. 'If we sign and publish a document that...'
'We run risks,' the spokesman said.
'But,' one of the correspondents interrupted, 'by Thursday night we could have our resolutions flying to all the colonies. Men in New Hampshire would know where we stand, and in Georgia, too.'
Steed thought: He wants to dispatch letters because his job is to dispatch letters. Aloud he said, 'We will be placing our necks on the chopping block, you know that.'
The chairman caught the significance of Steed's use of _we_ and _our_. 'Then you will be with us?'
'I will.'
'Thank God. We did not want to move without you.'
But when the eleven patriots had gone, fortified perhaps by Steed's acceptance but frightened for sure by his mention of the chopping block, Jane demanded to know what had taken place, and when Simon told her, she was furious. 'What are you doing, you pitiful little tradesmen? Are you challenging the king?'
'I hadn't thought of it that way,' Steed said quietly.
'You'd better! A gang of foolish, untraveled boors and clods from Patamoke are going to tell the King of England what to do? Is that what you propose?'
'I hadn't expressed it that way.'
'How do you express treason?'
Simon pondered this question for some moments, then said, 'I'd rather imagined that a group of men on the scene wanted to advise Parliament of certain facts which might otherwise be overlooked.'
'What presumption!' Jane cried. 'You! You are going to advise Parliament!'
'If I lived in England, I would be in Parliament. There is no one in Parliament, Jane, who even approaches my knowledge of Maryland.'
'That's sheer vanity, Simon.'
'Let me express it another way. Every one of those eleven men who met here knows more about what to do in Maryland than any member of Parliament.'
'John Digges! He collects muskrat skins!'
'And he knows muskrats, and how to tan them, and sell them, and what's good for others like himself.'
'Simon, if you presume to meet with those men and send insulting resolutions to the king, I would expect soldiers to come here and arrest you and maybe hang you.'
'I run the risk of just that,' Steed said, but no amount of railing altered his decision.
On Thursday morning he asked two slaves to sail him to Patamoke, where he landed at noon. After reporting at the store to satisfy himself that no tea was on the shelves, he repaired to the boatyard, where Paxmore had the _Whisper_ almost ready to launch; it was a handsome vessel, and the thin lines of caulking along the bottom formed beautiful patterns. But when Steed asked if Paxmore proposed to join the meeting at the courthouse, the latter said firmly, 'No. Thee is heading for waters in which I cannot follow.'
'I'd like to have your signature,' Steed said.
'My wife wanted me to attend, too, but I'm not one for signing petitions. I don't know where all this is going to lead.'
'You heard Turlock. It leads to war. And war leads to nothing. But we're on a course that cannot be altered.'
Paxmore repeated that he would not participate in the meeting, but he surprised Steed by showing him three keels chopped out of oak and a pile of spars waiting along the edge of the shed. On the day the _Whisper_ was launched, a new schooner would be started.
Fourteen men convened. Steed did not speak; he sat severely alone on the dais, and when the clerk started to take down what the various speakers said, he shook his head firmly and the writing stopped; he explained that he wanted no permanent record of who made which proposals, lest at some future date it be used nefariously.
The assembly was as ridiculous as Jane had predicted: a group of partially educated farmers and petty tradesmen presuming to advise a king, but they wrestled with explosive ideas, and the simple truths they elucidated would form one of America's significant summaries of grievances. When the speeches ended, Steed rose and reminded the committee, 'We are here to asseverate our allegiance to the king, and to seek his understanding cooperation. I will not sign unless we include an affirmation of loyalty.' All agreed, and when this was provided, the document was read:
'Alarmed at the present situation in America, and distressed by the incessant encroachments upon our liberties, we are determined not only to complain but likewise to exert our utmost endeavours to prevent the enforcement of such encroachments as deprive us of our cherished birthright as Englishmen. Motivated by the warmest zeal and loyalty to our Most Gracious Sovereign, we are determined calmly and steadily to act in concert with our fellow subjects in the colonies to pursue every legal and constitutional measure to prevent the loss or impairment of our liberties; and to promote an ever closer union and harmony with the mother country, on which the preservation of both must finally depend.'
Thirteen men walked forward, one by one, to sign, and then the pen was handed to the chairman, who signed boldly in the place reserved for him, Steed of Devon, and before the sun had set, the two energetic correspondents were on the way to Annapolis with the document which they labeled _The Patamoke Determination_.
In the early months of 1775 Teach Turlock's private war against England came to an abrupt halt. He lost his sloop.
He was drifting lazily back from Barbados with a legal cargo of sugar, salt and slaves when he was hailed by an English customs frigate whose captain wished to conduct a routine search. Since Turlock carried no contraband, he should have submitted, but he was so antagonistic to authority that he resisted. When the English captain ran out his guns, Turlock fled.
In a decent vessel the waterman would have escaped, for he was much the better sailor, but his old, hog-backed sloop was in sad shape and was quickly overtaken, but with dusk approaching, there was still a likelihood that Turlock would escape, so the frigate began firing, and one heavy ball struck Turlock's mainmast, shattering much of it and leaving the topsails flapping in the wind.
This enabled the English captain to close, but instead of finding a chastened merchantman waiting to be boarded, he found a little battleship preparing for hand-to-hand combat. 'Put down those guns!' the English captain called as the ships were about to touch, but before he could repeat the cry, shots were being exchanged and a full-scale naval engagement was under way.
The English won. Three of Turlock's sailors were killed, and when the rest had been herded aboard the frigate, the old black pirate sloop was set ablaze and Turlock, in captivity, had to watch it sink into the Atlantic, while his crew was chained for transport to London.
'Piracy, mutiny, firing on His Majesty's ship,' intoned the captain. 'You'll be hanged, every one.'
But as the frigate entered the North Atlantic it was overtaken by a speedy privateer out of Boston, and now a second battle ensued, with the English losing. The American prisoners were unchained, and after the English vessel had been stripped, it was turned over to Turlock and his gang, who now had a fine London frigate in place of their hog-backed sloop, and with it they captured an English trader making for Plymouth.
But when they sailed victoriously into the Chesapeake they were met by a Virginia patrol boat; it led them to Jamestown, where their prize was confiscated by the government. They were shipped back to Patamoke, where Turlock announced, 'Fought two battles. Lost two ships. Wound up flat on my ass.'
For several weeks he tried to find a vessel, but although he was a hero to the mob, he was a pirate to the gentry, and it was they who were the owners. So he retired to the marsh, and was hunting squirrels one day when he happened to look across the waving grass and saw, returning from a surreptitious voyage to Jamaica, the finest schooner he had ever seen, Mr. Steed's _Whisper_ , long and slim and heavy with sail. It sped by the marsh, seeming to float above the waters, and as it disappeared toward Patamoke, Turlock said, 'That's my next command.'
His campaign started that day. When Simon Steed came down to the wharf to inspect his schooner, there was Teach Turlock, bowing properly and saying, 'Fine schooner, sir. If you let me take her out... profits... profits.'
The idea was so preposterous that Steed ignored it, but when the _Whisper_ was empty, there was Turlock suggesting, 'They'd never catch me in this.'
Steed did not propose to risk his heavy investment on a barefoot rogue, but one day when he visited his Patamoke store Turlock presented him with a substantial reason: 'Soon we have war—real war—and do you think he can captain the _Whisper_?' And with his thumb he pointed toward Captain Allworthy.
The question had perplexed Steed. Allworthy was a substantial man and a good sailor, but he was hardly right to command an important vessel if war threatened. He would not be valiant in running blockades, and so the first seed was sown.
It germinated some days later when the _Whisper_ began loading spars to be sold in France, for as Steed watched on the wharf, Turlock sidled up to him and said quietly, 'Let me sail to France. Learn the waters. Then give Captain Allworthy the new one Paxmore's building.'
The idea was so sensible that Steed hesitated for a moment and looked into Turlock's eyes. What he saw was a dedication so powerful that on the spur of the moment he capitulated. 'All right. Get aboard as second mate. See what you can learn.'
When the _Whisper_ sailed down the Choptank toward the bay, Teach Turlock was aboard, bearded and barefooted, feeling her sway, sensing her power and her problems. As they passed Devon Island he saluted and muttered, 'Simon Steed, you're goin' to be proud of what this schooner does,' and at night he would lie in his hammock, tracing her lines from memory, recalling how each rope passed through the blocks and where it was secured. And he could feel each of her movements and how she took the various waves.
Most interesting was his relationship to Captain Allworthy, of whom he had spoken so poorly. He paid the man great respect, following him when possible and listening to all he had to say, for he realized that this man knew the sea. For generations, dating far back before the first words of the Bible were composed, certain men like Allworthy had attained through study and experience a sense of what a wooden ship could do. This knowledge, transmitted from one generation to the next—Phoenician to Greek to Gaul to Anglo-Saxon to the herring fisherman off Newfoundland—constituted the lore of the sea, and when its customs were observed, the ships came through; when they were not, the ships landed on rocks. And no captain in that unbroken succession could have explained what exactly he knew. On this voyage, Teach Turlock joined the procession.
When the _Whisper_ came home to Patamoke, he stood by the wheel, his heart racing with excitement, for he saw that Paxmore had launched the next schooner; its masts were already in place. He said nothing, but watched like a marsh eagle as Captain Allworthy went down the plank to report to Mr. Steed, and he held his breath as the owner came aboard.
'Well, Mr. Turlock, are you ready?'
'I am.'
'The _Whisper_ 's yours.'
'You'll hear good reports of her,' Turlock said.
But later, when he sailed a small boat out to Devon Island to discuss strategies, he ran into trouble, for Jane Fithian was disgusted that her family was placing a major schooner in the care of such a man. 'Look at him! Can't read or write! Barely speaks two words together. He's the worst sort of American.'
When Simon tried to explain why Turlock was precisely the kind of man needed in these uncertain times, she said indignantly, 'Can you imagine him arriving in London and meeting with the captain of a proper English ship? Laughable.'
'In the years ahead, Jane, my captains won't be going to London.'
'Are you speaking more treason?'
'I'm facing facts. Teach Turlock is the man we need.'
'Then may God have mercy upon us.'
'And on England.'
He said this with such depth of feeling that even she could see that he had reached a great fork in some imaginary road he had been traveling, and for a moment she wanted to share his experience; instead she said, 'To throw Turlock into the Atlantic with an armed schooner is like throwing a lighted bomb into the bedclothes of King George.'
And the more he reflected on this remark, the more apt it seemed. But even he was not prepared for some of the things his unpredictable captain was capable of, because when the time came for sailing, Steed went aboard for a last-minute inspection, and what he saw pleased him. The sailors were content to work for a local hero like Turlock, and under his direction they had trimmed the _Whisper_ excellently. The hogsheads were lashed with extra care, and all was shipshape, but as Steed was about to depart, satisfied that at least the traditional amenities were in order, he spied in a corner of the captain's room a red-headed boy who could have been no more than seven.
'Who's that?'
'Matt.'
'Who's he?'
'My son.'
'He's not sailing with you?'
'Got to learn sometime,' and he told the boy, 'Take Mr. Steed to the gangplank,' and the little fellow moved down the passageways with an expertness that showed he had already memorized his portion of the _Whisper_.
The fact that Jane Steed argued with her husband about colonial behavior toward England did not mean that their married life was either tense or unpleasant. She loved her pompous husband and considered his attempts at being an English gentleman amusing. He was generous and kind-hearted, and he indulged her in the petty expenditures which gave her so much pleasure. From the first she had wanted a slave who could sew in the French manner, so he had bought her one in Annapolis. When she heard that an actual theater had been erected in that city, she wanted to cross the bay to see for herself, and he took her. And when she protested if anyone called her an American or a Marylander, insisting that she was English, he agreed: 'Jane's from London. A Fithian, our factors.' And whenever he said this, she seemed to glow and feel better, for she always thought of herself as an English gentlewoman.
For his part, he loved her more than he had when they first traveled together in Virginia. Her smile was so genuine, and it irradiated her face so totally that it kept him enchanted. She was kind, and laughing; any room she entered was illuminated, and it pleased him to see the way men inadvertently followed her with their admiring eyes. Under her care, Rosalind's Revenge became the outstanding house on the Eastern Shore insofar as generous hospitality was concerned, and when she became visibly pregnant both she and Simon moved with stately pride, and his love for her increased.
'When I think of the years we might have been married,' he said ruefully one day, and she answered, 'There was no possibility that we could have been wed a day earlier. I wasn't ready.'
When he asked her how it was that a girl so charming had been free to come to America, 'I mean, why weren't you married already?' she said, 'From the time I was a little girl Guy told me that my fate was to come to America and marry you. He used to bring your letters home and let me read them... tobacco and pig iron... I became an expert on the Maryland plantation.' She smoothed the apron over her protruding stomach and said, 'He also told me you were rich and kind.' She reached up and drew her thumbnail down his chin. 'And he said that in France you had acquired perfect manners. He made you sound irresistible. So I waited.'
'You saved my life,' he said simply, and she accepted this, for she could see the change that had come over him since her arrival. She knew that prior to her visit his life had been trapped in an iron routine: each day he had risen, read in the classics, written his letters to Europe, break-fasted, and gone about the business of managing a great plantation. He had assumed that this was his permanent destiny and that if he conserved the wealth of the plantation, it would pass into the hands of his nephews, who would live much as he was living.
Jane's arrival had revolutionized that staid routine. She had driven him to new occupations, such as boating for pleasure and having neighboring plantation couples in for six or seven days. Also, the orders being carried to London by the Steed captains were much different now, and when the fine furniture arrived the interior of Rosalind's Revenge became as elegant as the exterior.
'You launched a revolution,' he told her affectionately one morning in February, but instead of acknowledging his compliment as she usually did, she startled him by saying abruptly, 'Don't use that word around me. These damned colonies want nothing but revolution.'
Eager to assure her, he said that whereas Maryland might kick up its heels, it would never break away from the king. 'We might have arguments,' he said quietly. 'And maybe even an exchange of fire. But we'll always honor our loyalty to the king.' She rejected this, claiming that everything the colonials were doing implied disloyalty to the king, but he reminded her that in _The Patamoke Determination_ it was he who had insisted on the sentences reaffirming loyalty.
'Words!' she said, and the force with which she spoke made him realize that she had for some time been brooding about the actions of the colonies. Some days later Simon was handed an unsealed letter for transmission to London. It was addressed to Guy Fithian, and since it was a family custom for both Jane and Simon to add postscripts to each other's letters to Guy, he casually unfolded the paper and was shocked by its contents:
Life here becomes almost unbearable. The average Marylander is a peasant with no appreciation of manners and no desire to acquire any. Conversation is so boring I could scream. No politics, no fashion, no gossip, no comment on the life of a city. I crossed the bay to see what they call their theater. Sheridan, and not one person on stage could act and the violins were out of tune.
I haven't had a decent piece of beef in two years, and if anyone gives me oysters again, I shall throw them in his face. Horrible food. But I could bear this if the citizens were civil, but all the whispers are of war against England and of ships clashing at sea. Simon, good man that he is, assures me that this pitiful country of his will always remain loyal to our beloved King; but why the King should want it is beyond me. I say cut it loose and be damned.
Guy, tell me why it is that we English were able to subdue the Scottish rebels in '15 and '45 and the French in '63, and now permit these ridiculous colonials with no fleet, no army, no cities and no leadership to give us trouble? Why doesn't the King send a troop as he did with Scotland and knock these silly people about the ears? I warn you, if these rebellious fools, and you should see the idiot Simon has put in command on one of his ships, if they take steps against the King I shall jump on the first English ship that touches here and come home till the idiots are disciplined. I am having a baby soon and will bring it, too.
Soberly, his jaw quivering, he carried the letter to his desk, lit a taper, melted the wax and sealed it, without adding the customary postscript. He placed it with the substantial pile of correspondence intended for Europe, leaving it on top so that Jane could satisfy herself that it had been posted. He said nothing to her about its contents, but he did become trebly attendant, listening to her complaints about their neighbors and responding to each of her small demands.
When word reached the Chesapeake of how conditions in Massachusetts had deteriorated after Lexington, with rebels continuing to fire upon the king's men, Jane fell into a despondency from which Simon could not lure her. She began ranting openly against the drabness of Maryland life: 'No breeding, no sense of station. And those damnable month-long visits by plantation boors. And what I simply cannot abide a day longer, the monotony of the greasy cooking.'
Steed deemed it wise not to remind her that only a month previous she had been praising Maryland cooking. Instead he did his best to placate her, but nothing offset the fact that insolent colonials had fired upon the king's troops. Her impressions were intensified when Captain Turlock sailed into Patamoke with triumphant news about the _Whisper_. In a moment of thoughtlessness Simon invited him to Devon, where his crude manners and peasant gloating infuriated Jane. Turlock said, 'This schooner can do anything! Fore-and-aft sails, close to wind. Big ones upstairs, before the wind like a hawk.' Enthusiastically he reported on a close brush with an English frigate and on how the _Whisper_ had shown her heels.
'Did you fire on the king's ship?' Jane asked.
'Didn't need to.' Turlock recalled the encounter and grinned, his broken teeth showing through his beard. 'Matt stood aft, laughing at the Englishmen as we pulled away.'
'Who's Matt?' Jane asked.
'My son.'
'How old is he?'
'Soon to be eight.'
Jane gave a little shudder and left the room.
'I think you'd better get back to the _Whisper_ ,' Steed said, and in some confusion the lanky captain left. He had expected dinner, but at the wharf he assured Simon, 'I'm ready to sail any time,' and they stood beside the vessel and talked over plans.
'Always the same problems,' Steed said, one foot on the gunwale. 'No salt. No money.'
'In Jamaica they say the Portuguese port St. Ubes has plenty of salt.'
'Our ships have never sailed there. Too close to England.'
'I'd like to try St. Ubes. Big cargo, big profit.'
'You willing to risk it?'
'With _Whisper_ , yes.' So it was agreed that Turlock would try a risky passage to a new port whose salt mines were reputed to be the best after the ones in Poland and Austria.
When Steed said that his perpetual problem was money, he did not mean that the Devon plantations were in financial straits; they were building two more Atlantic schooners and the manufactures were doing well. The problem was: the rich men of the English government refused to coin sufficient currency to enable the colonies to function. For a century tobacco had been utilized as coinage, but with the dreadful slumps in recent years, it no longer served as currency; instead business was conducted with the aid of an incredible mélange of paper documents and European coins. Letters of credit from one merchant to another were circulated like pound notes, and none were more highly sought than those of John Hancock, Robert Morris and Simon Steed. But these were scarcely adequate to meet the needs of a burgeoning commerce, so every colonist had to contrive one trick or another to get his hands on real money.
'Were you able to acquire any coins?' Steed asked.
'That's what I really came for,' Turlock said, and he took Steed to a bench beside the creek, and there, when they were alone, he confided, 'We took a merchantman. Spanish. Look.' And carefully he unwrapped a large cloth packet which had been secreted in his coat. Loosening the ends, he spread a hoard of gold coins in the sunlight.
'You have big-joes!' Steed said excitedly, for it had been some time since he had seen these splendid gold coins of Portugal; they had been minted in 1723 during the reign of King João and bore his bewigged portrait and name in Latin, Ioannes, from which the American name derived. A whole coin, heavy and worth about thirty dollars, was called popularly a big-joe; when sawed in half, which was usually the case, it was a half-joe.
'And these,' Turlock said proudly, sifting the pile to show the Spanish doubloons, the English sovereigns and the mass of livres tournois, the smaller French coin which circulated the world as a standard.
'It was a worthy trip,' Steed said, and as he retied the packet, returning it to his captain for deposit at headquarters in Patamoke, he reflected on how strange it was that the capture of a merchant ship should be celebrated on Devon: What our family used to condemn as piracy we now praise as patriotism.
The long voyage that Captain Turlock started in late 1775 was notable for a chaotic chain of events: the vast profits earned on Portuguese salt, the running fight with the English frigate _Chancery_ , the two months in a Lisbon jail for lack of proper papers, the capture of a rich merchantman heading home from Peru, the start of Matt's education.
His teacher was the second mate, a Choptank man named Mr. Semmes who had been taught to read by the fat Rector of Wrentham. When Captain Turlock learned that his mate had studied with the rector, there was salty discussion of that churchman's habits and Mr. Semmes said, 'He taught me to read, hoping to acquire thereby a servant for nothing. When I said I was going to sea, he sought to have me arrested as a deserting bondsman.'
'Did you punch him in the nose?'
'No.'
'Pity.'
Mr. Semmes had a fine sense of the sea, and one day as young Matt was lugging him his breakfast he caught the boy's arm and asked, 'Do you intend being a captain?' and Matt said, 'I do,' and Mr. Semmes said, 'Then you must learn to read and write,' and the boy said, 'Cap'm doesn't read or write,' and Captain Turlock knocked the lad down and growled as he got up, 'I'd be a better captain if I did.'
So the lessons began. On a flat board Mr. Semmes drew the alphabet and the numbers, and for three days Matt memorized them. Within a brief time he was writing not only his own name but also those of the crew; he would lie on a hatch cover and write down the name of every sailor who passed, and before long he knew the spelling of each.
But what fascinated him was the ship's log, for he realized that it recorded facts much more important than names. 'The life of the ship is written here,' Mr. Semmes said as he made his entries, and Matt tried to be present whenever the observations were recorded: 'Course East-north-east. Day calm. All canvas.' And to understand better what the words meant, he mastered the compass and could box it as well as any sailor, rattling off the hundred and twenty-eight points as if playing a game. 'Listen, Mr. Semmes, I'm going to do the Second Quarter.' And he would stand at attention and recite in a monotone, 'East, East one-quarter south, East one-half south, East three-quarters south, East by south. And now the hard one! East-south-east three-quarters east.' And as he completed each quarter, Mr. Semmes would applaud.
The day came when Captain Turlock shot the noonday sun, then walked to where the ship's log was kept, and instead of barking his data to Mr. Semmes he gave them to Matt and watched with glowing eye as his red-headed son wrote in large childish letters: 'Latitude 39° 10´ North. Longitude 29° 15´ West approx.' Teach entered his positions in this form because with the aid of a good sextant captured from a Spanish merchantman he could be sure of his latitude, but lacking a reliable clock, he had to guess his longitude.
But when he saw the entry completed, as well as Mr. Semmes could have done, he had to turn away lest he betray his emotion, for Matt was the first in his lineage going back five thousand years who could write, and his arrival at learning seemed much like the arrival of the colonies at nationhood: prospects unlimited lay ahead.
In the spring of 1776 it became apparent that the contentious lawyers of Massachusetts and the philosophical patriots of Virginia were determined to take the thirteen colonies out of the British Empire, and nothing that the more prudent loyalists of Pennsylvania and Maryland might caution was listened to. Echoes of meetings occurring in Philadelphia, in which men as stable as the Marylander Charles Carroll were actually discussing revolution, filtered down to the Eastern Shore, but they were not credited, for most of the citizens in towns like Patamoke or on plantations like Devon wanted to remain attached to England. They saw every reason for doing so; they calculated each advantage.
Levin Paxmore was typical. As a Quaker he had lived to see his religion accepted without serious restraint; true, he had to pay a fine for not drilling with the militia, and he still had to contribute thirty pounds of tobacco each year to the Church of England, but he viewed these only as irritating impositions. He was free to pray as he wished, to marry whom he liked, to speak his mind in meeting, and to rear his children in his faith, and these were freedoms to be cherished. His business also prospered under English rule; for the past nineteen years he had risen every morning with more work to do than he could complete, and while he often had to wait for payment because no money circulated, he was never defrauded. Right now, things were better than they had been in many years; he had finished two schooners for Simon Steed, and had two more under way, with additional inquiries from officials in Philadelphia. For some time he had known that gunfire with the English was inescapable, but he still trusted that it would be brief and without damaging consequences. But now he began hearing rumors of actual separation, and some of his more apprehensive neighbors were talking about returning to the homeland, England, if the troubles worsened. When two Quakers from the meeting approached him with a sensible plan for repatriation, he assembled his family in that spare room at Peace Cliff in which Ruth Brinton Paxmore had laid down the principles by which her brood would live. 'I believe we should stay with the land,' he said. 'Our task is to bring God's commonwealth into being here.'
'Even if Maryland separates from England?' Ellen asked.
'There will be no separation,' he said firmly. 'I expect trouble, perhaps serious trouble, but we will always be English.' And by holding up his left hand, as if to silence further comment, he forestalled his wife's question as to why, if they were to be English, he was building ships intended for use against the English.
For Simon Steed such decisions were more difficult. His whole being was tied to Europe; his business interests focused in England, for which he felt the warmest ties. In London, Fithians held his wealth; in Berkshire, his forefathers had defended the faith; and while his own education had been in France, it was to England that he looked for fundamental leadership. Up and down the Atlantic coast thousands of men like him were casting up their spiritual accounts and deciding to remain loyal to the king. In Simon's case the impetus to do so was greater, because he was married to an English girl who desperately wanted to go home.
Steed was distressed that she retained her animosity toward the colonies; she now abhorred the Eastern Shore and what she termed its provincialism. Her husband's repeated assertion that from here she could keep in touch with the entire world did not satisfy her. The Americans she saw were boors, and were threatening to become traitors as well. The horrible Captain Turlock who brought his big-joes to their counting-house never confessed what English ships he had robbed to get them, and to think of those miserable idiots that she had seen in Virginia presuming to govern a new nation was absurd, the height of folly.
The birth of her daughter had not been easy, and the infant was proving difficult. Jane was convinced that it was Choptank water that irritated the baby, and she grew to loathe the ugly name of that river which surrounded her on all sides. 'Thames, Avon, Derwent, those are real rivers. Who ever heard of a river whose water was always salt?'
'At Edentown it's fresh,' her husband pleaded.
'And who ever heard of mosquitoes on the Thames?' she fumed. 'Simon, I warn you, if those fools in Philadelphia utter one word against the king, I'm going home.'
In July the shocking word reached her that men in Philadelphia, including Charles Carroll and Samuel Chase of Maryland, had not only declared their independence of England but had also dared to put in writing the insulting list of charges against the king. 'The impudence!' she stormed. 'Those pretentious upstarts!' When her rage subsided she said coldly, 'You watch, Simon. We'll punish you the same way we did the Scots.' And from the moment news of the Declaration reached her, she directed all her energy to preparations for flight. She refused to remain in this rebellious colony and relished the prospect of English warships coming up the Chesapeake to discipline it.
Teach Turlock did not hear of the formal Declaration until late August, but this did not signify, for he had been conducting his private war for more than a year now. In January he had been so bold as to venture into the Thames on the gamble that the _Whisper_ had not yet been identified as a privateer, and he had been right, but trade with the colonies was so depressed that he was unable to pick up any profitable shipments and had left England with empty holds. When he reached St. Ubes he found that merchant ships had loaded all available salt, and it became apparent that the profits for this voyage would be limited to what he might steal from French or Spanish merchantmen.
He met none, so the _Whisper_ drifted back and forth across the Caribbean, but when it put into Martinique on the chance of picking up even the most trivial cargo, French captains advised him that the thirteen colonies had become the United States of America and were engaged in open warfare against the mother country.
'United!' Turlock snorted, remembering Maryland's constant feuding with Virginia. 'We'll never be united.' Then his chin firmed, making his beard bristle, and he told the French with joy, 'Now it's real war!' And he stormed back to his schooner.
North of Barbados he captured and sank a small English trader, setting her crew adrift in lifeboats. He then cruised northeast to intercept any English ships bound for Martinique or Guadaloupe, and here he caught another small English trader, again setting her crew adrift in sight of land.
His third capture occurred almost in the shadow of Caracas; it was a Spanish ship well laden, and after it was robbed, it was set loose. And his fourth interception was a substantial English merchantman heading out of Panama for Jamaica. That night young Matt Turlock wrote in the log the words that glorified the privateer: 'For each gun, one ship.' The _Whisper_ carried four cannon, and with them it had captured four prizes. No privateer could do better.
In triumph Turlock sailed home to the Chesapeake, and his feats were trumpeted from shore to shore. He had a small casket of big-joes and livres tournois, but when he spread them on the desk at the counting-house, his employer came with perplexing news: 'Captain, the Council of Safety at Annapolis has requisitioned the _Whisper_. You're to carry the families back to England.'
'Which families?'
As Steed tried to explain, his voice choked and he turned away to compose himself, but when he turned back to talk with his captain, his face flushed and he hurried from the countinghouse.
'What's happened?' Turlock asked the man who came to count the coins.
'Families loyal to the king are being taken back to England.'
'Steed going?'
'No, but his wife is... and the baby.'
Turlock could not fathom this. In his world a man told a wife what to do, and she did it unless she wanted a beating from the broad side of a shovel. For a wife to leave her husband for another country and to take a child along was unprecedented. 'Not right,' he muttered as the coins were removed.
But it happened. The _Whisper_ sailed to Baltimore, where two families came aboard; one woman knelt down and kissed the deck, crying, 'It's a blessing to be on an English ship,' but then she saw Captain Turlock and asked tearfully, 'Is he taking us to England?'
At Annapolis nine families joined, and from the tidewater plantations another six; at Patamoke two groups were taken on, with slaves carrying vast amounts of luggage. As the trim schooner moved down the Choptank, a barge moved out from Devon Island containing Jane Fithian Steed, her infant daughter and her husband. A rope ladder was lowered from the _Whisper_ , but before Mrs. Steed could climb up, her husband caught her by the arm and said, 'I'll join you in England. For the present I must tend the plantation.' But she said sternly, 'You'll never come to England, and I'll never see Maryland again.'
'But what...' Before he could frame his question she was clambering aboard the rescue ship, and when she reached the deck her husband lifted their baby in the air and passed it along to sailors leaning down to take it. Slaves tossed up the luggage and the _Whisper_ moved on, leaving the barge drifting in midstream.
But the passenger list was not complete. As the _Whisper_ headed for the bay, a speedy sloop appeared from the direction of Patamoke, firing a small gun to attract attention, and when it drew alongside, passengers saw that the fat Rector of Wrentham was appealing to be taken aboard—'I want no more of these foul colonies. I'm an Englishman.' And ropes were lowered so that twelve men could haul him up, after which some nineteen boxes and parcels followed.
Only when he was securely on board, with no possibility of retreat, did he discover that the owner of the schooner in which he was fleeing was Simon Steed and her captain Teach Turlock, whom he had defrauded. He hastened below, and was seen no more on deck.
On the voyage to London young Matt was given the job of caring for the Steed baby, and he quit bringing food and tea to the mess and carried milk and crackers to the child, for whom he acted as nurse and watchman. There were women who could have performed these tasks, but some were stricken with seasickness and others were busy caring for Mrs. Steed, who collapsed in the captain's cabin as soon as the _Whisper_ cleared the Chesapeake, and none could have cared for the baby better than Matt.
He fed her, carried her about the deck and kept her amused with little games. She was less than a year old, and when she wanted to crawl toward the bulkheads, he watched her carefully. While she slept in her basket he felt free to pursue his studies with Mr. Semmes, but he had pretty well exhausted what the mate knew, and he now found a gentleman from Annapolis who was returning to a Sussex home he had left fifty years earlier, and this man delighted in teaching him advanced figuring and verb forms.
On most days, however, Matt and the baby stayed in the bow, riding it up and down as the long swells of the summer Atlantic slid past. These were days he would treasure, when whole new fields of knowledge were opening up, when he had some appreciation of the mournful tragedy which had overtaken these good families, and when he tended the Steed baby, who rarely cried and seemed to enjoy being with him.
But what Matt would remember most was something that occurred not on deck but below. One morning as he was watching over Penny Steed he noticed that his father was nowhere to be seen, and after a while Mr. Semmes came forward to ask in a low voice, 'Will Master Turlock accompany me?' and Matt went belowdecks, where he heard gurgling sounds.
They came from the cabin occupied by the Rector of Wrentham, and when he went inside he found the fat clergyman in a furious sweat, with his father standing over him. A paper prepared by Mr. Semmes lay on a table before the unhappy man, and Captain Turlock was saying, 'Sign it or I'll throw you to the sharks.'
'I won't give up my rightful land,' the fat cleric whimpered.
A sharp blow to the back of his head provoked new groans, and the rector cried, 'You're killing me!' and Turlock said, 'The only escape is to sign.' With his left hand he thrust the quill at Wilcok and growled, 'Sign it, or feed the sharks.'
'I'll sign!' And with the quill he fixed his signature to this paper:
Aboard the
_Whisper_ 10 August 1776
Of my own free will and without constraint from anyone, I do hereby confess that I obtained from Captain Teach Turlock of Patamoke 100 acres of his best land through fraud, deceit, malversation and theft, and that I return to the said captain the entirety.
Jonathan Wilcok
Rector of Wrentham
Witness: John Semmes
Matthew Turlock
When the company left the cabin and climbed the ladder to the deck, Captain Turlock took his son to the wheel and showed him a box in which the ship's papers were kept. 'This one we guard with our life,' he told his son.
For Levin Paxmore the years 1776–1777 were a disaster. Under goading from Simon Steed he finished four copies of the _Whisper_ , but learned with dismay that three of them had been quickly captured by the English and converted into British men-of-war to prey upon the colonists' shipping. The fourth, the schooner _Good Hope_ , was sent into the Atlantic with an untrained crew of Choptank farmers and was promptly sunk, causing sharp-tongued Ellen Paxmore to tell her husband, 'I warned thee not to build ships of war. Thee has sent forth a covey, and all have been lost.'
'Not Turlock's,' he said, at which she reminded him caustically, 'But that was not built as a ship of war.'
She pestered him to cease his support of this futile fighting; on all sides the British were victorious, and she interpreted the quick loss of the Paxmore schooners as proof that God looked unfavorably on the rebellion. She predicted that it would soon collapse.
But her husband worked on. 'It's my job,' he said as he laid down the keel for his sixth schooner, already named by Isham Steed the _Victory_.
'Does thee foresee victory?' Paxmore asked as the transom was carved.
'Not in battle. But I think we shall prove our points to the king and enjoy many more freedoms when this is ended.'
In these early years of the rebellion Simon Steed faced tantalizing decisions. In order to pay for the war, both the government of Maryland and the Continental Congress issued paper money; patriots were exhorted to turn in their metal coinage and accept these promissory notes, and many did. Crusty men with only a few shillings in hard currency would troop to the customs house and trade their good money for bad and were applauded for their patriotism.
'Shall we surrender our metal?' Isham asked one afternoon when pressures to do so had been exerted by justices and Annapolis officials.
'Not yet,' Simon said stubbornly, resisting all arguments. As he told Isham, 'This paper money's worth nothing. We'll hold on to our coins and watch the paper collapse.'
And he was right. Within months the paper was depreciated, first $1.50 in paper to $1 in coins, then $2.50 and soon $10 paper to $1 real. When this level was reached, and patriotic pressures continued, Isham asked, 'Couldn't we buy some now?' but Simon merely glared at him, then predicted, 'We'll see the paper sell at thirty to one,' and before the year was out it stood at forty.
'Now?' Isham asked, but again Simon shook his head, but one day he did come into the office showing excitement. 'The paper has fallen, eighty to one. Now's the time to buy.'
'But won't it collapse altogether?' Isham asked. 'Five hundred to one?'
'No,' Simon explained. 'Maryland's a proud state. We'll redeem our paper. Buy as much as you can get.' And at eighty to one the Steeds began to turn in their solid currency, and Simon was correct. Maryland was proud, and she did redeem her paper at forty to one, which meant that Simon had doubled the family fortune. That he had done so at the expense of sentimental patriots did not concern him, for, as he said, 'the management of money is a skill and must be practiced as such.'
For Captain Turlock the early years of the revolution were a kaleidoscope: a tropical dawn off Panama waiting for an English merchantman; a quick run to New York with provisions; long, easy trips to St. Ubes for salt; a foray into the English Channel in pursuit of an English sloop, a visit to Nantes for the hardware and cordage sorely needed at Baltimore.
The _Whisper_ became known as 'the schooner with the red-headed boy,' for several captains reported that when the American freebooters stormed aboard they were accompanied by a young lad who kept goading them. 'He wears a woolen cap pulled over his ears and speaks in a voice unusually deep for a child his age. At first I thought him to be a dwarf, but when he marched up to me and said, "Captain, you are taken," I found him to be a child. Remarkable.'
Captain Turlock had only a vague understanding of how the war was progressing; he knew that General Washington was pinned down somewhere in the north and that the Americans seemed to lose more battles than they won, but when a captured English sailor said defiantly, 'When this war's done, traitors like you and Ben Franklin will be hanged,' he asked, 'What ship does Captain Franklin sail?'
To the surprise of his crew, the war taught him caution. Not for him the gallant foray into enemy ports, or the futile contest against superior strength. The _Whisper_ had speed and maneuverability, and these could be used best in hit-and-run tactics; he was not afraid to run and was perfecting at sea the same strategy that American generals were adopting on land: the sudden thrust, the quick retreat, the waiting, the cautious move.
For in any planning he had to bear in mind that whereas the _Whisper_ could depend upon her speed to escape from the average English ship, three duplicates with identical capacity had been captured by the enemy and now flew English colors. His constant fear was that some day in the Caribbean the three other Paxmore schooners would converge and hunt him down. That explained his caution and why he sometimes returned to the Chesapeake empty, and sometimes even with expensive damages that had to be corrected.
And then early in 1777, when prospects were most bleak, Mr. Steed had an opportunity to observe at firsthand the skill of his barefoot captain.
A Lieutenant Cadwallader had come south from New York with an urgent message from General Washington, whose prospects for holding out against the English were fading: 'The general feels certain we can't survive another year unless France joins us. And with substantial assistance, mind you. Steed, you must go to France.'
'I thought Franklin was there.'
'He is. Doing excellent work in Paris. But the business leaders—the solid men in ports like Nantes—they're convinced we've no chance of winning.'
'I'd not be effective,' Steed said, thinking of his own uncertainty about the war.
'But you could talk to them. You must go.'
'I'll try.' And after Cadwallader had moved on to the southern ports, Steed thought: How ironic. The English Protestants of Philadelphia and New York always sneered at us Catholic boys who went to school at St. Omer's—'Why not attend a true college like Oxford?' But now it's the Frenchman who becomes essential. He had no stomach for this mission and no hope that it would succeed. He believed the colonies to be doomed and wondered only what kind of peace England would grant. But he had a high sense of duty, and since he had been handed this ticklish job, he would do his best.
It was easy for Cadwallader to say, 'Go to France,' but it was not easy for Captain Turlock to get there, for when the _Whisper_ reached the exit to the Chesapeake she found waiting a cluster of English guard boats, each with two heavy guns—'Seven of 'em,' young Matt called from his position forward.
'I see 'em,' his father replied.
'What do we do?' Steed asked.
'We wait.'
'For what?'
'The precious moment,' Turlock said, and they waited.
For five tedious days the _Whisper_ sailed slowly back and forth inside the protection of the headlands, while the British vessels held to the open sea. On two occasions American privateers arrived from the east, spotted the British guard boats and retreated to try other ports along the coast, but the _Whisper_ could not employ that stratagem. She was trapped in the Chesapeake, and until her captain devised some trick for escape, she had to stay trapped.
During this grating delay Simon Steed conducted himself like the patient negotiator General Washington had assumed him to be. He was forty-seven years old, stiff, erect, proper, deeply wounded by the flight of his wife and desolate over the absence of his daughter. He never complained. At the start of the voyage he had told his captain that speed was essential, and he assumed that Turlock appreciated this. It was now the waterman's responsibility to break through the blockade, and no one aboard the _Whisper_ knew better than he how to accomplish this.
'What we're waitin' for, Mr. Steed, is a stout wind from the west, risin' at two in the mornin'.'
'What will that prove?'
'You'll see.'
And on the seventh day, at dusk, Captain Turlock met with Mr. Semmes as the sun sank over Virginia, and they studied the clouds, and Turlock said, 'Tonight, I think.' They went to the owner and said, 'Maybe tonight. It'll be risky.'
'Cannon fire?'
'Much,' Turlock said, and as darkness fell he alerted his gunners, who moved extra balls into place and additional bags of powder. At midnight Steed could see no alteration in the wind, but at one o'clock, with a waning moon showing in the east, he felt a slight agitation moving across the calm waters of the bay, and then a scattered gustiness, followed by dead calm. He supposed that the long-awaited night wind had died down, but Captain Turlock, long familiar with the Chesapeake, moved among his men to say, 'Before dawn. We'll be in the middle of them.'
What he was counting on was that if the wind rose sharply, as he was certain it must, it would strike the Chesapeake thirty or forty minutes before it reached the Atlantic; indeed, in the darkness the British would not even know it was on its way unless they were more weather-wise than he, and without visible indications, that would be unlikely. In that half-hour of superior wind, he proposed to have his schooner at top speed, bearing directly down on the middle of the blockade. If he collided with some enemy vessel, the fight would occur there, with always a possibility of escape. What he hoped was that the _Whisper_ could snake her way through the congregated ships and kick her heels in the broad Atlantic.
At quarter to two the wind rose substantially and Turlock told his men, 'At four it'll be near gale. We go.'
All practical sail was raised, that is, the three jibs forward, the two fore-and-afts and the two lower square sails. The two peak squares would be held in reserve until the last minute, when top speed would be needed; raising them in the strong wind that seemed about to break would prove dangerous, and Turlock did not want to run that risk until the moment of flight. Then he would risk everything.
At half past three he stood just west of the entrance to the bay, hiding as it were among the low Virginia hills, but now he swung the _Whisper_ directly east, and as she picked up speed in the pale, moonlit darkness he cried, 'Mr. Semmes, all sail!' and young Matt hauled on the lines as the square topsails rose majestically into canvas-snapping position.
'Man the guns!' Turlock cried, and with his ship as ready as it would ever be, he sped eastward toward the open ocean.
It was four-twenty that morning before the British blockaders became aware that a major schooner was bearing down upon them. Bugles blew and orders were shouted, but with their mainsails down, the watching boats could not respond quickly, and there was confusion. On came the American vessel, nine sails aloft in the heavy wind, her deck awash, her bow cutting the choppy waves.
'Fire!' the English captains bellowed, and cannon roared—to no effect.
'Hold fire!' Turlock cried. His job was not to sink or damage blockade boats, all he wanted was to avoid them; and this he did with matchless skill until that moment when the captain of the seventh English boat, seeing in the pale light that this daring fool was about to escape, ordered his helmsman to put about and throw his ship directly into the path of the escaping schooner.
'Cap'm!' Matthew screamed.
There was nothing Captain Turlock could do but forge ahead, hoping that his superior weight and expanse of filled sail would inflict greater damage than he received. 'Stand to crash!' he shouted, and Simon Steed, owner of this fine ship, winced.
But at the last moment, when the bowsprit of the _Whisper_ was practically jabbing at the larboard flank of the English vessel, Turlock spun the wheel as violently as he could to starboard, an action which in the open sea would surely have capsized the schooner, considering the huge spread of sail she was carrying in this wind. But now, as he had calculated, his swift schooner crashed sideways into the smaller English vessel, larboard to larboard, and there was a crunching of timber as the blockader held the _Whisper_ erect. The impact was so sudden, and of such brief duration, that the _Whisper_ seemed to bounce away, largely undamaged.
Now Captain Turlock spun the wheel again, this time to larboard, and as his ship scraped clear of the sorely wounded enemy, with the wind almost abeam and strong enough to throw the _Whisper_ down, the bow turned majestically; the pressure on the sails abated, the ship righted itself, and Turlock told Mr. Semmes to fetch his son. When Matt appeared, flushed with victory, his father said, 'At the start of the fight I thought, "My son's a damned fool." '
'Why?'
'Standin' in the bow like a stupid figurehead. But when it came time to hoist the sails, there you were, workin' the ropes.' Matt smiled. 'And when the cannonballs came crashin' through, you didn't hide.' Captain Turlock reached down and rumpled his son's red hair. 'You're goin' to be a sailor.'
Toward the end of the voyage Steed suffered one bad day. He was casually inspecting a chart showing the entrance to the Loire River, on which Nantes stood, when it occurred to him that at that moment he was only a short sail south of England, and he began to see the pleasant images that name evoked: his English wife, his daughter, the honest men at Fithians, the serenity. He thought how startled Captain Turlock would be if he said, 'Let's sail north two days and we'll be in England.' And he thought: When the war's over I may move to England. Jane would be happy there, and Isham could run the plantation.
And as soon as he formulated these thoughts it became clear that he was visualizing not the total victory that Lieutenant Cadwallader had spoken of, the kind that General Washington apparently wanted, but a kind of negotiated truce, from which the relationships that existed before the war could be reestablished: That's what I want. The colonies and England back together, but on a better footing. And then he acknowledged why he wanted it: Because we can't defeat England. We're destined to live with her. And I wish this damned war would end. He looked north and muttered, 'England, England!'
In the meantime he was obligated to wheedle from France as much help as possible, so that the colonists could win some battles and appear at the bargaining table in good posture. I'll do my job, he promised himself, unaware that even at this critical moment he still called his new nation _the colonies_. He was destined to be a poor ambassador.
He was standing there, aloof and overwhelmed with loneliness, when young Matt Turlock left his lookout position and came to talk with him. 'We'll soon be sighting France,' the boy said. Steed ignored the comment, so Matt asked directly, 'Didn't you live in France?'
'I did.'
The red-headed boy was not abashed by this cool reception. 'Up there's England,' he said. The lonely figure made no response, so Matt continued, 'They'd like to know where we are. They'd like to capture this ship.' Again no response, so the boy babbled on, 'I sailed to England once, Mr. Steed.' Silence—except for the cry of a seagull. 'Remember, I took Mrs. Steed and Penny to London.'
At the mention of his daughter's name, Steed lost his indifference. 'Did she sail well?' he asked.
'She stayed in a basket forward. I guarded her.'
'You did? No one told me that.'
'Yes, Mrs. Steed kept to her cabin, sickly I think. But Penny and I stayed forward day after day. She loved the sea.'
'And you cared for her!' Steed shook his head, then fumbled in his pocket, producing at last a bright half-joe. 'I should like to give you this for your trouble,' he said, handing Matt the coin. The boy offered no mock protestation; he knew the value of a Portuguese joe and pocketed it with a big 'Thank you, Mr. Steed.'
'Where did she stay?' Steed asked.
'The basket stood here. I brought it out every morning.'
And for the rest of that day Simon Steed remained in the fore part of the ship, looking first to the north toward England, then to the deck where the basket had rested.
They entered the Loire at St. Nazaire, where a rude fort pretended to guard the integrity of the river, but it was doubtful if the guns so proudly visible could deliver much weight. A French pilot came aboard to help them negotiate the beautiful river, but he added to Steed's pessimism by reporting, 'We give the colonies little chance. It's ships that will prevail, and England has them.'
When they reached the wharf at Nantes they found that French merchants were vigorously excited about the caviar he was bringing but contemptuous of his principal mission. 'We see no hope for the Americans. Actually, Steed, we think you'd be better off remaining with England.'
'Then why do you fight to protect your independence? War after war, and always against England.'
'We're a nation. With an army. With ships. Your destiny is colonial.'
Wherever he went in Nantes it was the same. Every French merchant hoped that something evil would befall the English, and if the colonies chanced to be the agency for the disaster, fine. Steed heard many expressions of brotherhood and good will, followed by hard-headed calculations that England must win the war. When he dined with the Montaudoins, dictators of the Loire economy, their nephew, who had known Steed as a student, had copious praise for the southern colonies: 'Gracious land, splendid people. We're so happy to have you with us, Simon.'
'Will you report your enthusiasm to Paris?' Steed asked bluntly.
'Socially, of course. Politically? I'm afraid, dear fellow, you haven't a chance.'
Dutifully he went to each of the firms with which he had done business—the Baillys, the Brisard du Marthres, the Pucet Fils—and from each he heard the same story: 'The colonies cannot win. Accept the best peace available and get on with it.'
He took the long overland journey to Lorient, a port in which the more adventurous firms maintained headquarters, but they, too, were doubtful: 'We French are practical. If there was any chance you could maintain your independence of the English, we'd back you ten thousand percent. There is no chance.'
The firm of Berard, with which Steed had conducted much business, organized a formal dinner honoring Steed, not as a political negotiator but as a valued customer, and when the important gentlemen of the area were assembled, a Monsieur Coutelux summarized their attitudes:
'We have followed with extreme attention events in the colonies and have noted with approbation your determination, starting in 1774, to free yourselves of commercial domination by London. Your resistance to the various taxes, your insistence that you be free to ship tobacco direct to France instead of through Bristol, your strong inclination toward a French style of self-government—all this encourages us. You are on the right track, Steed. But when you challenge English military might, especially her naval superiority, you are being downright foolish, and you must not expect us to support you in your folly.
'Understand, Steed, we're as opposed to England as ever. We merely wait the proper moment to give her the _coup de grâce_. It may come in Spain, or Italy, or some unknown place like India, but somewhere, somehow we're destined to rule Europe and she's destined to a minor role. But the timely spot cannot be the colonies. You haven't the manpower, the army, the manufacturing or the navy. Your best chance, and I tell you this from the bottom of my heart, is to go home, make peace with London, and await the day when France gives England the mortal thrust. Then, and only then, will you be free.'
Disheartened, Steed returned to Nantes, went aboard the _Whisper_ and consulted with his crew. 'I must stay in France until help is assured. But you're free to roam. Captain Turlock, are you willing to risk another run through the blockade?'
'Always.'
'Your luck may run out.'
'I've tricks I ain't used yet.'
So it was arranged, on credit, that Captain Turlock should load the _Whisper_ with cloth, brass fittings, salt, ships' compasses and all the compact manufactured goods for which the starved colonies yearned, hurry home and return to pick up Steed. So on a bright day Turlock sailed down the Loire and out into the Atlantic.
When he was gone, Steed began his serious work. Patiently he returned to each merchant, explaining in colloquial French why the colonies deserved help in their resistance to England. 'I know we've been fighting them since 1775, with no results. But we're still in the field, and we're getting stronger. Believe me, dear friend, we're getting stronger.' When they laughed, he asked, 'Then why did you entrust your cargo with my captain? Because you know he'll penetrate the blockade. In seven months he'll be back for another shipment. You know that.'
He returned to Lorient, went down the coast to La Rochelle, and the more he talked the less he accomplished. He was, perhaps, too French to argue well the cause of the colonies; he could not convey the thundering actuality of the Blue Ridge farmer or a Massachusetts weaver. And then, when his fortunes were at their lowest, he was rescued by a fellow American who spoke the vernacular.
Benjamin Franklin, chief advocate in France for the colonies, came down to Nantes to meet with the leaders of that city and Lorient and La Rochelle. The Montaudoins placed at his disposal a small château, in which he held court, and there Steed met him.
He was well past seventy, bald, paunchy, squint-eyed, and as lively as a chestnut on a griddle. He affected a costume that was aggressively American, including a coonskin hat and a gnarled cherry-wood cane. He spoke abominable French with a vigor that made his pronouncements sound fresh and challenging. At the big dinners he gave he rejected sentimentality and never spoke of America's valiant struggle; he appealed always to the fundamental interests of France, and the more mundane he made them the better.
'We're doing your dirty work, and all we seek is tangible support. We seek the privilege of trading freely with your port cities, with profits for you. We want to establish in the New World a counterbalance to the Old, and this will be of advantage primarily to you.'
He was an amazing man. He had brought down from Paris a mysterious woman introduced merely as Madame de Segonzac; her identity and her relationship to Franklin were not explained, but Franklin paid her deference and relied on her to persuade his guests. He also delighted in walking through the streets of Nantes and visiting those shopkeepers who had imported for the occasion the remarkable mementos then flooding Paris: teacups with Franklin's portrait set in porcelain; snuffboxes decorated with enameled coonskin caps; silken pillows with embroidered portraits; and broadsides containing his bespectacled countenance and quotations from _Poor Richard_. It was these homely, pragmatic aphorisms which endeared this uncouth American to the French; in his barbarous way he spoke their language. But nothing he accomplished in Nantes surpassed his performance one afternoon when he was strolling along a crowded street near the wharf. There an enterprising merchant from Corsica had imported three of the large china chamber pots containing on their sides portraits of Franklin, and on their insides glazed representations of the coonskin cap. Hundreds had been sold throughout France, but these were the first in Nantes, and when Franklin saw them he stopped, spoke to the Corsican, and watched approvingly as one of the pots was placed in the middle of the street. Then, as sailors guffawed, he showed them what he would look like sitting on his own crockery. There was much cheering, and within two days the story had reached most of the western ports.
In his large meetings he never seemed serious, but he always was. He conveyed only one message: The United States shall prevail. And before he had been on the seacoast a week he began convincing those sturdy merchants that it was in their interest to back the fledgling country, not because the United States was relying upon philosophical principles derived from France, and not because there was an inherent brotherhood between the two countries, but because by doing so, the French could gig the English and at the same time earn a batch of livres tournois.
For two months Franklin and Steed worked together, and after Turlock had brought the _Whisper_ back to Nantes and the time came for parting, the older man said, 'Simon, your help has been invaluable.'
Steed, aware that he had supported Franklin only half-heartedly, since he did not believe in an ultimate American victory, mumbled, 'I accomplished nothing. It was you they wanted to hear.'
'I was the clown, attracting their attention. It was imperative that you be there to represent the other side of our effort.' He laughed, then chucked Steed under the chin as if he were a boy. 'You were the respectable element, and believe me, Steed, the French businessman hungers for respectability. They never deal with banks that are on the verge.'
Then he became serious. With a firm hand he pulled Steed around until they were facing. 'When we started our work you didn't believe we could win. I could see it. Do you believe now?'
'I'm confused. It seems to me we should stay with England.'
Franklin did not protest. 'Let's go to your schooner,' he suggested, and when they sat in Captain Turlock's cabin he said forcefully, 'Simon, we're destined to win. I know our armies are in retreat everywhere and we've no navy. But the great sweep of human desire fights on our side, and we cannot be defeated.' He pointed out the cabin door and said, 'Look at him. The new American.' And there stood Captain Turlock, barefooted, grimy from working on his ship, clothed in near rags, but ready to storm his way into Bristol port if asked. 'Why did you choose him for your captain?' Franklin asked.
'Because he knows... he knows what a ship can do.'
'General Washington chose you to come here because you know. You know what a plantation can do. Now open your eyes, son, and see what a collection of men like you and Captain Turlock can accomplish.' He rose in a state of euphoria and orated as if he were trying to persuade the merchants of Nantes: 'We can remake the world. Simon, we're going to win.' And from that moment in Nantes harbor, Simon Steed never doubted; he cast aside his cautious love for England, his romantic longing for the old securities, and leaped into the full tide of the revolution.
As a result of what he and Franklin achieved in the next week, the solid business community of the French coast awakened to the probability that the United States might indeed win their war of attrition and become a major commercial center. Opposition to French involvement in what had hitherto been regarded as merely another idealistic uprising diminished, and the way was paved for the vigorous participation of that remarkable trio of French military geniuses who would join Lafayette in helping the United States maintain its independence: Rochambeau, Bougainville and, above all, De Grasse.
When the time came for Steed to sail back to Devon, Franklin confided, 'I've written to the Congress suggesting that you be named agent for the southern states.'
'For what?'
'For the acquisition of supplies.'
'I don't understand.'
'Ships. Men like Captain Turlock. Scatter them over the face of the ocean. Bring in muskets and powder and chain and cloth for uniforms. Steed, an army survives on things... like chickens and brass cannon. Get those things.'
Simon Steed was the kind of man to whom such a specific suggestion was a command, and on the spur of the moment he asked Franklin, 'What should I take back now?' and he was astonished at the reply: 'Nothing. Leave Nantes with empty holds.'
'Such a waste...'
'Speed to St. Eustatius.'
'That tiny island?'
'Tiny but powerful. It's owned by the Dutch, and we've been assembling there a body of munitions you'd not believe.'
'What do we use for money?'
'Credit. Your credit.'
'Seems very risky.'
'We're engaged in a risk so grave it terrifies me. Your risk comes at St. Eustatius.'
So they parted, each man engaged in a gamble of staggering dimension: to fail meant ruin and death at the hangman's trap; to win meant the establishment of a nation founded on new principles whose possibilities were only dimly understood. In the hostile port of Nantes, where no man believed America could survive, Simon Steed had convinced himself of those new principles, and to them he was willing to dedicate his fortune and his life.
'We'll sail tonight,' he told Captain Turlock.
'Empty?'
'Yes. To St. Eustatius.'
'Never been there,' Turlock said, but he was ready to go.
That any mariner could find St. Eustatius was a miracle, but a greater miracle awaited him when he did find it. For it was one of the smallest islands on earth, a volcanic, rocky pinpoint lost in a cluster of islands north of Guadeloupe. Captain Turlock, seeking it through a bank of clouds, had almost decided it did not exist, when his son cried, 'Cap'm, land to starboard,' and there, emerging from the sea like a mysterious sentinel, rose the jagged shores of St. Eustatius.
As the _Whisper_ maneuvered to enter the minute harbor Simon Steed was overwhelmed by what he saw: a shoreline crowded with great warehouses; so much cordage and cotton that bales were left standing uncovered; no police, no soldiers, no naval guns protecting the place; and in the cramped waters between the headlands not less than sixty vessels. He found out that five or six heavily laden ships put into port daily bringing goods from Europe and Africa, while an equal number left carrying those goods to the embattled American colonies. As one British admiral, furious at the insolence of the place, complained, 'It's the richest small island that ever was on earth.'
It existed in a fairy-tale atmosphere; it was owned by the Dutch, who were at war with nobody, but the goods coming to it were dispatched by merchants of all nations: Russia, Sweden, Portugal and, especially, France and England. This last was particularly aggravating to the British: English chandlers who refused to supply English warships in Plymouth surreptitiously consigned their best goods to St. Eustatius, where they were sold to American vessels fighting England. Also, many a stout merchantman sailing from London with papers for Italy or Greece changed course dramatically south of the Channel and hied off to St. Eustatius, where profits were trebled.
Captain Turlock could not tie up to any dock; thirty vessels were ahead of him. But from his anchorage he rowed ashore to purchase the materials of war needed along the Chesapeake: the strongest English cordage, double-thick French brassware, muskets from Austria and salt from Poland. He bought wisely, from a score of different merchants speaking many different languages, and when the bills were totaled he had Mr. Steed issue letters of credit. With the _Whisper_ loaded as heavily as its timbers would allow, he hoisted anchor and set out for America, having no idea of how he would penetrate the English blockade or what port he would put in to if he succeeded.
It was a bright, sunny run before the wind, but it ended abruptly, for a major English squadron patrolled the Chesapeake and not even a canny dissembler like Turlock could slip through. He sailed north toward Boston, but was intercepted by an American frigate, a pitiful affair with untrained crew and few guns, whose captain cried on speaking-trumpet, 'Turn back! You can't get into Boston.' So the _Whisper_ and its priceless cargo drifted south, hoping to land somewhere in the Carolinas, but they, too, were rimmed by English warships, and at a meeting of desperation Turlock told his owner, 'Mr. Steed, the best we can do is beach her somewhere in the Delaware Counties. Carry the goods overland.' Mr. Semmes agreed that no other strategy was practical, so Steed had to approve. 'But you'll lose twenty percent in pilferage,' he said. To which Turlock answered, 'You'll add forty percent to the price.'
So the _Whisper_ moved cautiously north, well out to sea where the Chesapeake squadron would not detect her, and when the latitude of Lewes on the Delaware coast was reached, she turned abruptly west and sped toward shore. There, at the mouth of a small stream, she dropped anchor, boats were lowered and unloading began. Before the first cargo was got ashore men from the Delaware Counties appeared and parties were organized to portage these crucial military supplies across the peninsula to the eastern shores of the Chesapeake, from which they would be ferried to Baltimore.
'You will be paid,' Steed promised the Delaware men.
'Pay or no, we'll get to Baltimore.' They were men who had been fighting the English for three long years; victory seemed farther away than ever but surrender was a word they did not use.
When the schooner was emptied, Steed told his captain, 'Go back to St. Eustatius. Make as many voyages as possible.' And thus the golden ferry between the Dutch entrepôt and the colonies began. In the years that followed, whenever a cargo slipped through the English blockade, Simon Steed took control. He recorded each item, awarded it the highest value possible, turned it over to the fledgling government, and allocated to himself a handler's fee of thirty percent above the inflated cost of the goods. If the war dragged on, and if Captain Turlock continued his daring escapades, the Steeds would be millionaires, and not in dollars, in pounds sterling.
But in late 1777 events took a bad turn; daring English sea captains converted the Chesapeake into an English lake. They sailed boldly to the head of the bay, landed an enormous army there and marched on Philadelphia, hoping to cut the colonies in half, knock out those in the north, then the remainder in the south.
Word reached the Choptank that a massive battle had been fought along the banks of a stream called Brandywine, and that Philadelphia had fallen, and that General Washington had escaped annihilation only by retreating to the environs of an iron mill called Valley Forge. That he could recover sufficiently to oppose the English was doubtful; the collapse of the revolution was at hand.
A squadron of English ships sailed boldly into the Choptank, anchored off Patamoke and bombarded the town. When no opposition appeared, landing parties came ashore and a lieutenant trim in gold and blue announced, 'We have come to burn that infamous nest of sedition, the Paxmore Boatyard,' and with flaming torches his men set fire to the wooden sheds and retired.
There was on the ways at this time the nearly completed _Victory;_ her spars were not yet in place and there was some minor caulking to be done, but she was almost a schooner and was desperately needed. So when the flames were hottest, and it seemed that this precious vessel must go to ashes, Levin Paxmore, his dark hair outlined by the fire, rushed into his doomed boatyard and began chopping away the struts that held the _Victory_ on the ways, trusting that once it was set free, it would slide down the railway and launch itself into the harbor, where any flames attacking it could be quenched.
When it became apparent what Paxmore intended, men of the town gathered to cheer him on, unmindful of the final salvos fired by the retreating English ships, but none volunteered actually to move in among the flames to help chop away the struts, for the heat was too fierce.
Ellen Paxmore, infuriated by the bombardment and alerted by the fires brightening her sky, had come to the boatyard and had quickly understood what her husband was attempting. She, too, was appalled at the thought of this fine schooner's being burned, and when no one else would help Levin, she grabbed an ax and disappeared into the flames, but she had chosen a spot which no one could have conquered; the fire was raging and she had to withdraw.
A slave named Pompey—a name awarded in ridicule by some plantation scholar trained in the classics—watched Mrs. Paxmore's valiant attempt, and now quenched with his bare hands the sparks that threatened her gray dress. After he had done this he grabbed her ax and dashed into the flames, where he chopped away two of the struts.
'It's moving!' the crowd roared, and slowly the _Victory_ crept down the ways, gathered speed and splashed into the harbor.
Now men were more than willing to leap into small boats and crowd the prematurely launched vessel, splashing water upon the flickering flames and securing the hull to shore. Levin Paxmore, assured that his new schooner was safe, even though his boatyard was in ashes, walked painfully home, expecting to have his burns immediately cared for. Instead he was confronted by the most profound discussion of his life, for his wife awaited him, her own burns unattended:
ELLEN: Did thee notice, Levin? The only man brave enough to help was the slave Pompey?
LEVIN: I didn't see.
ELLEN: Thee never sees. Pompey sprang into the fire. Pompey helped me fight the flames eating at my dress. Pompey chopped away the struts. Does this mean nothing?
LEVIN: It means we saved the _Victory_.
ELLEN: It means he is a man, a good man. Can thee not see the terrible wrong in holding such a man to slavery?
LEVIN: My hands ache.
ELLEN: My heart aches. Levin, I cannot abide another day in this condition. These colonies are fighting for freedom. Men like Simon Steed perform miracles in the name of freedom, but they ignore the gravest problem of all. Right on their home doorsteps.
LEVIN: Pompey's a good slave. When he's rented to me I treat him justly.
ELLEN: By what right has thee been ordained to treat justly or unjustly? Is thee a God because thee is white?
LEVIN: What does thee want me to do?
ELLEN (lowering her voice and taking her husband by his burned hands): Come First Day, I want thee to rise and propose that henceforth no Quaker who owns a slave can remain a member of our meeting.
LEVIN: Thee has tried that gambit a dozen times.
ELLEN: But thee has not, and thy word will carry substantial weight.
LEVIN: I am busy building schooners. Steed has said, extravagantly I suppose, that they are helping to ensure freedom.
ELLEN: A greater war than that on the Chesapeake is being fought.
LEVIN: What does that mean?
ELLEN: Surely these colonies will have their freedom, one way or another. England or a confederation, what does it signify, really? But the freedom of men...
LEVIN: That, too, will follow... in due course.
ELLEN: It will not! (Here her voice rose again.) More than a hundred years ago in this town Ruth Brinton Paxmore begged the Quakers to set their slaves free. Nothing happened. Fifty years ago thy grandmother made the same plea, with the same results. Fifty years from now my granddaughter will throw the same words into the wilderness unless we take—
LEVIN: Slavery will die out of its own weight, thee knows that.
ELLEN: I know it will persist forever unless good people fight it. Levin, on First Day thee must testify.
LEVIN: I cannot inject myself into an argument which does not concern—
ELLEN: Levin! This day a black man saved me, leaped among the flames like a salamander. Would thee leave him there in the fire?
LEVIN: I cannot follow when thee engages in hyperbole.
ELLEN: And I can no longer rest in this house so long as even one member abides slavery. Levin, I must make my bed elsewhere.
LEVIN (dropping his head onto the bare table): I have lost my yard, my tools. And my hands are burning with fire. I need help, Ellen.
ELLEN: And thee will lose thy immortal soul if thee turns thy back on Pompey. He, too, needs help.
LEVIN (leaping to his feet): What does thee demand?
ELLEN: Thy testimony... in public... come First Day. (Silence, then in a gentle voice.) Levin, thee has been preparing for this day. I've seen thee watching the black people of this town. The time has come. I think the fire served as a signal... to the future.
LEVIN: Can thee put some bear grease on my hands? They burn. Terribly they burn.
ELLEN (applying the grease): This means that thee will speak?
LEVIN: I have not wanted to. In these affairs God moves slowly. But Pompey is a decent man. Thee says it was he who chopped away the restraining poles?
ELLEN: He did. But he does not warrant thy support because of his acts. He warrants it because of his existence.
LEVIN: I suppose it's time. I'll testify for thee.
ELLEN: Not for me and not for Pompey because he helped. For the great future of this nation—the future that Ruth Brinton saw.
So on a First Day in late 1777 Patamoke Meeting was startled to find itself in the midst of a debate that would tear the church apart. The members had come to the ancient meeting house expecting that words of consolation might be offered to Levin Paxmore over the loss of his boatyard or prayers celebrating the town's deliverance from the English. Instead, after nine brief minutes of silence, Levin Paxmore rose, his hands bandaged, his hair singed:
'The Bible says that sometimes we see through a glass darkly. For me it required a great fire which destroyed my handiwork, but in those flames there moved a figure comparable to Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego. It was the slave Pompey, owned by a member of this meeting who hires him out to others. I did not see what Pompey accomplished, but I am told he was most valiant and it was to him that the merit goes for saving the schooner.
'In the days since the fire I have been asking myself how it could be that a slave with nothing to gain and all to lose should throw himself into my fire, to save my schooner? And the only answer that makes any reason is that Pompey is a man exactly like me. He breathes like me, and eats, and works, and sleeps when he is tired. How do I know? Because I saw him by the wharf yesterday, and his hands were bandaged like mine. The fire burns him as it burns me. [Here he held his bandaged hands aloft, and many began to feel uneasy.]
'Therefore, today I reverse everything I have previously argued in this meeting. Slaves must be set free. In the name of God and Jesus Christ they must be set free, and no man dare call himself a Quaker and a slaveholder, too.'
The meeting broke up in consternation. Levin Paxmore was its most prosperous member, and also one of its sagest. Those opposed to change had always counted on him to support them: 'Let us move slowly. Let us study this for the next Yearly Meeting.' And now he had broken the covenant and called bluntly for immediate manumission on pain of expulsion.
At the Quarterly Meeting in December 1777 the Quakers of the Choptank became the first important religious group in the south to outlaw slavery among its members. In spite of Levin Paxmore's unflinching leadership, the issue was bitterly fought and it required two days for the clerk to ascertain the sense of the membership; even then seven obdurate men stormed from the hall vowing to surrender Quakerism rather than their slaves.
It had required more than a hundred years for this most liberal of the southern Christian sects to decide that human slavery was inconsistent with Christian principles; the more conservative sects would require an additional century.
When the decision was announced, Levin Paxmore touched his scarred hands and told his wife, 'The burning has stopped,' and she knew why.
For those Americans who lived within the benediction of the Chesapeake, the culminating crisis of the revolution occurred in 1781. Indeed, the future of America and perhaps of the world then stood in peril, for it seemed that the attempt at self-rule must be crushed, and with it the hopes of millions in Europe for a better pattern of life.
In that year the English army, consolidated at last under a succession of daring generals, began to chew the south apart. Victory upon victory crushed General Washington's lieutenants in Georgia and South Carolina, and it became clear that a few colonial farmers, no matter how brave, were no match for hundreds of well-trained English regulars supported by large guns.
And when General Cornwallis began ravaging Virginia, and Admiral Rodney assembled a fleet of battleships in the Caribbean, ready to invade the Chesapeake, it seemed obvious that the rebellion was doomed. New York lay in English hands; Philadelphia was neutralized; Boston and Newport were powerless to send support, and no major port along the Atlantic was open to American vessels, even if any had succeeded in penetrating the blockade.
Men had begun to talk openly of defeat and started calculating among themselves what kind of terms they might be able to wheedle from the victorious English. Even General Washington had faltered in his dogged optimism, sending Steed of Devon a letter which summarized the times:
Where pray God is the French fleet that you and Franklin assured me would spring to our defense? Without their aid and without it soon, I fear we are doomed. My men mutiny. More deserters leave camp than recruits arrive. They have no food, no guns, no uniforms to sustain their dignity, and above all, no pay. Only the iron will of our junior officers holds this army together, and there is little hope that they can sustain this miracle throughout the balance of this year.
Friend Steed, we must have immediate help from France. Have you any practical way of rushing this message to Paris? If so, depart at once and tell them the whole fortune of the war hangs in the balance, which must dip against us if our impoverishment continues. We need arms and food and cloth and money and particularly a French navy to offset the strangulation that threatens. I implore you, Steed, do something.
There was nothing he could do. He could send no imploring letters to Nantes, for no mail could penetrate the blockade. He could not try to slip across to France himself, for Captain Turlock was absent in the Caribbean. And he could not even board his family sloop and sail to Virginia to help fight Cornwallis, because English patrol boats dominated the bay. Powerless, he had to stay on Devon, watching the disaster; he was not even aware of the greater disaster that had overtaken his two schooners at St. Eustatius.
Captain Turlock, in the _Whisper_ , had been highly pleased with Simon Steed's nephew, Norman, as skipper of the new _Victory_. He was venturesome yet obedient to signals, daring yet prudent in protecting his ship. 'He'll make a fine captain,' Turlock told his son as they watched the young man.
Together they had made three runs to St. Eustatius, transporting enormous cargoes, which Simon Steed sold at profit to the hungry armies of General Washington. They were now beginning a fourth sally, and if they could somehow smuggle the two schooners into Boston or Savannah, they stood to make a fortuné. So as they drifted easily southward through the Virgin Islands, keeping watch for any English prowlers, Captain Turlock invited his colleague aboard the _Whisper_ for a final consultation. 'The trick this time, get in and out as fast as possible.'
'Always before we've taken time.'
'Something warns me things are different,' Turlock said.
'How?' the younger man asked.
'England is getting ready for the kill. Too much movement.'
'I saw nothing coming down.'
'Me neither,' Turlock grunted. 'But things are changed. In fast. Out fast.'
Norman Steed could not comprehend how a man could see nothing and be told nothing and yet sense that somehow the world had changed. He paid his respects to Captain Turlock and rowed back to the _Victory_ , but when the two schooners passed St. Maarten, that strange island half French, half Dutch, he saw that Captain Turlock had launched a boat, which came scudding across with an imperative: 'At St. Eustatius the _Whisper_ is to enter first. Keep a close watch.'
But when they approached the golden isle nothing had changed. There were the forested masts, the bustling porters, the reassuring Dutch flag drooping heavily in the still air. Indeed, there was so little breeze that when Captain Steed's _Victory_ reached the entrance in good condition for an easy turn to starboard, the vessel made that turn, which put her into the harbor some distance ahead of the _Whisper_. But as the sleek new schooner moved to anchor, for there was still no room at any of the wharves, a shattering gunfire broke out, the mast of the _Victory_ was carried away, and her young captain lay dead with two musket balls through his chest.
It was Captain Turlock's intention to storm into the harbor and revenge this craven act, but no sooner had he broken out his four guns than Mr. Semmes cried, 'Captain! Those ships are all English!'
And that was true. Admiral Rodney, commander of the Caribbean squadron, had at last grown choleric over the insolence of the Dutch in maintaining this treasonous entrepôt, and with a squadron large enough to blow the island out of the sea, had captured it. Then, craftily, he kept the Dutch flag flying, luring freebooters like young Norman Steed into the range of his guns. St. Eustatius was no longer golden; it was lead and iron.
In a rage, Teach Turlock turned the _Whisper_ away, leaving young Steed dead, the _Victory_ lost and her Choptank crew headed for the Old Mill prison at Plymouth. Numbed with fury at having been so tricked, he stormed through the Caribbean, tackling any English vessel he came upon. On one glorious cruise, years before, he had taken one prize for each of his four guns, the best a freebooter could hope for. Now he took two for each gun, and the booty in the bowels of his schooner became enormous... and a tantalizing misery.
For he could land it nowhere. The principal reason why he had been free to rampage through the myriad islands was that England had moved her major battleships northwestward to encase the colonies in a rim of iron. The strangulation that General Washington had feared was under way, and there was no device by which Teach Turlock could land his captured booty.
And then, one day in late August as he languished off the Carolinas, hoping to find some refuge, he overtook a small fishing boat containing American watermen, and they gave him tremendous news: 'The French have come!'
They told of General Lafayette, that conceited but brave man, who had marched into Virginia, restoring order and maneuvering so brilliantly that he had General Cornwallis cooped on the York Peninsula. They spoke of a powerful effort, through all the colonies, to reinforce Lafayette and bring the war to a conclusion. And then they reported the most electrifying news of all: 'They say a French fleet has arrived to clear the Chesapeake!'
'That means we can get home!' Turlock cried, and within five minutes he was clearing his decks for a swift dash north.
How beautiful the _Whisper_ was as she sped toward Cape Hatteras, wind to larboard, her bow cutting into the waves, her decks aslant, and young Matt forward peering for sight of Cape Henry. Gulls followed, wheeling and dipping, and sun glistened on the lines. It was good to be heading home in time of trouble, to stand with one's own kind against the enemy.
Off Hatteras they intercepted another boat, and its occupants confirmed the incredible: 'French ships guarding the bay! You'll have easy entrance!'
Now that the shoals of Hatteras were safely passed, Captain Turlock piled on more sail, so that the _Whisper_ leaped through the waters, making the speed that Levin Paxmore had predicted, but as the rich voyage neared completion Turlock knew that it was not one of triumph, for he had lost his sister ship, and he damned the English, hoping that the French would smash them.
Then came the cry—forward—from young Matt: 'Cap'm! Battleships! All English!'
And there, moving majestically toward the entrance to the Chesapeake came four great ships of the line: _Royal Oak_ , 74 guns; _London_ , 90 guns; _Invincible_ , 74 guns; _Intrepid_ , 64 guns. With grand indifferent motion they rolled in the swells, indomitable, relentless. They saw the _Whisper_ but ignored her; they knew they could not catch her in the open sea. Their job was to crush the French intruder; that done, annoying craft like the _Whisper_ could be easily handled. She would be driven from the seas.
But now Matt cried again: 'Cap'm! More!' And seven more gigantic ships loomed from the horizon, the most powerful ships of the English navy.
'Cap'm! More coming!' And eight more towering vessels, terrifying to the sailors on the small _Whisper_ , hove into sight: _Monarch, Centaur, Montagu, Ajax_. They came like platforms of death, monstrous engines of war rolling in the sea like whales impervious to the small fish surrounding them. When the line had passed, Captain Turlock asked Mr. Semmes to make an entry in the log:
4 September 1781. At dusk well east of Cape Henry we were passed by nineteen great ships of the English line, heading for the Chesapeake. May God in His mercy strengthen the French, for tomorrow we live or die with their ships.
The French could not have been in a weaker position to engage the English squadron. Some days earlier Admiral de Grasse had arrived at the mouth of the Chesapeake with a squadron of twenty-four ships, but imprudently he had anchored his flotilla inside the headlands; worse, he had given liberty to almost half his crew, who were now foraging the shores of the bay for food and water. Still worse, since none of his ships were copper-sheathed like the English, they were perishing from the worms. And worst of all, his position allowed him no room in which to maneuver. He was trapped, and when scouting boats rushed in with news that Admiral Rodney was bearing down with the entire Caribbean squadron, he realized his peril.
If De Grasse had been a prudent man, he might have surrendered then and there, for the enemy had every advantage except one: the British ships were sleek-bottomed and free of worm; their crews were complete and battle-hardened; they had the advantage of the wind and ocean space in which to maneuver; and they had guns of shattering power manned by the best seamen in the world. The only disadvantage the English suffered was that Admiral Rodney, a tested leader in battle, was not aboard the ships; his place had been taken by an indecisive gentleman of little battle experience named Gatch.
The accident which caused this substitution was one of those misadventures which occur from time to time, as if to prove that human history can never be an exact science: the English government had sent to the Caribbean their best admiral, Rodney, and a plethora of their best ships. Victory over De Grasse was ensured. But when Rodney captured St. Eustatius he became so bedazzled by the riches there and so mortally tempted by a chance to steal some four million pounds for himself, that he dallied among the warehouses and wasted time among the overflowing shops, and in the end even requisitioned a small squadron of the best battleships to convoy him back to London in style. His absence, and especially the absence of the diverted ships, gave the trapped French squadron one slim chance of escape.
Captain Turlock, of course, did not know of Rodney's absence, and when dawn broke on the morning of September fifth he shuddered. Watching from a safe distance to the east, 'like a gnat watching eagles, he said, he saw the great ships of the English line form like an arrow and move toward the mouth of the bay, where the trapped French ships could be destroyed one at a time. 'It's to be a massacre,' he told Mr. Semmes, and to his son he said, 'When you become a captain, never let yourself be caught at the mouth of a bay.' Then, remembering his disaster at St. Eustatius, he added, 'Nor at the mouth of a harbor, either.'
'Look, Cap'm!' Matt cried, and in the distance, barely visible, came the first of the French warships.
'My God!' Mr. Semmes cried. 'They're going to run it!'
There they came, a line of vessels with almost no chance of escaping, with no room for subtle maneuvering or the arts of war, just forging blindly ahead, out of their trap and trusting for a chance to reach the open sea: _Languedoc_ , 80 guns; _Saint Esprit_ , 80 guns; _Marseillais_ , 74 guns.
'Look!' Matt shouted, and there came the most powerful ship afloat, the gigantic _Ville de Paris_ , 110 guns.
'They're going to make it!' Mr. Semmes cried, slapping Captain Turlock on the back, but the captain said nothing. For more than an hour he just stood there, staring at this incredible scene of twenty-four disadvantaged French warships turning the tide of battle by an act of supreme courage. When the last of the line stood free, away from the confines of the bay and ready to form a battle line, he turned to Mr. Semmes and said, 'We saw it. No one will believe us, but we saw it.' Like a deer breaking loose from dogs, De Grasse had leaped his barriers and gained space.
Belatedly the English admiral responded. His prey had sprung the coop, but there were tested maneuvers for countering the move. 'Wear all ships!' he signaled, and the men aboard the _Whisper_ gazed in grudging admiration at the manner in which the heavy English battleships responded. At one moment they were headed directly into the mouth of the Chesapeake, a minute later they were jibing, and four minutes after that they had turned inside their own wake to head in precisely the opposite direction, taking a course which must produce a collision with the French ships, unless the latter bore away.
By this maneuver the English regained their advantage. They had the wind off their larboard quarter; their heavy guns bore down upon the French; they retained the choice of movement. 'Watch!' Captain Turlock whispered to his son. 'You'll never see this again.'
Majestically, ponderously the two lines of ships drew together; at top speed they moved at less than three miles an hour, but their weight was so formidable that Matt could almost hear the crunching of spars.
Each line was about five miles long. At the rear they were four miles apart, which meant that these ships would not close fast enough to participate in the battle. But the lead ships moved ever closer... four hundred yards apart... two hundred... a hundred... and finally close enough for pistol shots.
'When are they going to fire?' Matt asked.
'Soon enough,' his father said, and of a sudden a massive burst of flame exploded from the English ships, and cannonballs ricocheted with fearful effect across the French decks. The battle for the future of America had begun.
Matt would never forget the impact of that first English salvo. Wooden cannonballs had been used in hopes they would throw jagged splinters through the bodies of French sailors, and that is what happened. Before the smoke had cleared, the decks of the French ships were red, and young sailors sped about with buckets of sand to help the gunners maintain their footing, but before the latter could prepare their guns, a second volley of wooden balls exploded, adding to the devastation.
'Why don't they fire back?' Matt cried in frustration.
'They fight different,' his father explained. 'Watch the English spars.' And when Matt did, he saw that whereas the French gunners accomplished little in disrupting the decks of their enemy, they were beginning to knock down his masts and sails.
'Who's winning?' Matt cried.
'No one knows,' his father replied, and for two agonizing hours under a dying summer sun the guns roared, and the implacable ships moved ever closer; even pistols reverberated. The lead ships of the English line created unimaginable devastation on the French decks, already undermanned, and for a while it seemed that the French must crumble. But toward dark the terrible efficiency of their gunfire began to take its toll. Down came the soaring English masts, down fluttered the gallant sails. One English ship after another began to limp, and then to falter, and finally to fall away.
It was a curious fact that in this culminating struggle of the revolution, this engagement foreseen by Washington as the one which would determine everything, not a single American participated. Gunners from Marseille and Bordeaux took part and young officers from Kent and Sussex, but no Americans. There were no sailors from Nantucket, nor sharpshooters from New Hampshire, nor sloops nor frigates from Boston. The fate of America was being determined by Frenchmen engaged in mortal collision with Englishmen.
When the day ended, neither fleet had won. No colors were struck. No ship was sunk. Of course, the English admirals decided to burn the _Terrible_ , sorely damaged, but later this was held to be a craven act. Captain Turlock, who was close enough to see the _Terrible_ while she lay wallowing, gave it as his opinion that 'six watermen from the Choptank could have sailed that ship to the Channel and captured four prizes on the way.' But she was burned.
This engagement was one of the decisive battles of history, for when it terminated, with the French line of battle still impregnable, the English had to withdraw, leaving the Chesapeake open to the French fleet. Rochambeau was now able to bring thousands of French soldiers south for the final thrust against Cornwallis; the iron blockade of the Atlantic ports was broken.
It became a battle without a name, a triumph without a celebration. It accomplished nothing but the freedom of America, the establishment of a new system of government against which all others would eventually compare themselves, and a revision of the theory of empire. The only American in a position to perceive these consequences as they happened was a barefooted waterman from the Choptank who watched on the morning of September 6,1781, as the great ships of the English line turned slowly north in retreat.
'Now we can go home,' he told Mr. Semmes. 'They won't be back.'
Among the French soldiers unloaded by Admiral de Grasse's fleet was a young colonel bearing the illustrious name of Vauban, a collateral descendant of that Marshal Vauban who in 1705 had laid down the rules for siege warfare. Young Vauban had come to America to embellish his reputation, and was overjoyed to discover that General Cornwallis had retreated into a fortified position from which he could be expelled only by a protracted siege. Throwing himself upon General Washington, he proclaimed, 'Mon General, I shall show you how to subdue this Englishman!' And before permission was granted, this energetic young man had put together a makeshift team whose bible would be _Rule of Siege_ , a handbook compiled by himself on the principles of the great Vauban and printed in Paris. As soon as he saw where Cornwallis had holed up, he knew what had to be done.
'General Washington, it's all really very simple. A classic siege.'
On his own recognizance he crossed the Chesapeake to enlist the aid of Simon Steed. 'I need an interpreter so that I can talk with the men, and you speak French. I need a hundred more workmen who can also fire rifles, and I have been told that your Choptank men are the best.'
As to the former request, Steed pointed out that he was fifty-one years old and scarcely the man for hand-to-hand combat, to which young Vauban said airily, 'My great-great-grandfather conducted major sieges when he was seventy. All you have to do is talk and find me a hundred men.'
For enlistment of the sharpshooters, Steed sought the help of Captain Turlock, who said, 'Hell, we got a hundred Turlocks who love to fight.' Actually, when he loaded the _Whisper_ with men and ammunition, there were eleven Turlocks aboard, a collection of scoundrels so mangy that Colonel Vauban said, 'You're bringing me rats.' When Steed translated this, Turlock said, 'Muskrats. Wait'll you see them dig.'
From all parts of the Eastern Shore similar contingents set out for Yorktown, and when Vauban assembled them he said in flowery exuberance, 'Men, we're about to show America what a siege is.'
He wore a white-and-gold uniform which he studiously protected from smears, so that the ragged and often shoeless watermen scorned him, but when they had finished digging the trenches he devised, they found to their surprise that approaches to the English fortifications had been so cleverly planned, they could move with impunity, for the English marksmen could never get a good shot at them.
It became apparent to Simon Steed that General Cornwallis was doomed; the French soldiers, who dominated the action, had only to march in and take the place, and in staff meetings with General Washington he said so. This infuriated Colonel Vauban. 'Gentlemen! We must conduct the siege properly,' and out came the handbook explaining how a gentleman behaved in the final stages of a siege. 'We must show force,' he said, 'and then we must breach the wall.'
'We don't have to breach the wall,' one of Washington's aides protested. 'We can starve them out.'
'Starve!' Vaugan exploded. 'Gentlemen, this is a siege!' And he proceeded to position his watermen outside the walls of the English fort and lead them in a manual of arms which he had devised. The men were bearded, filthy, ragged and insolent, but they went through the motions on the grounds that 'this one knows something.' When English marksmen on the parapets began firing at the ragtag colonials, Vauban ignored them haughtily and continued his drill. At the conclusion he said, 'Now they know our strength. They're cringing.'
He told the committee of generals that according to the rules, they must now expect certain developments: 'General Cornwallis is obligated to try a sortie. Tonight.'
'That would be suicidal!' a rough-shirted American general protested.
'But he must!' Vauban said. And leafing through his manual, he found the passage regulating the deportment of the commander being besieged:
'The honor of arms requires that the officer besieged make at least one honest effort to break through the lines of the besieging enemy and to inflict as much damage on the siege installations as practical. To avoid such sorties is to surrender any claim to honor.'
'But we'll shoot his ass off,' the American said.
'That's no concern of his!' Vauban said, aghast. 'It's a matter of honor.'
'Honor hell, he's whipped.'
Such a statement was outside the pale, and Vauban ignored it. 'The second obligation is ours. We must attempt to breach the fortifications. I shall start in the morning.'
'We don't need any breach,' the Americans argued, and they were right. With the Chesapeake under the control of Admiral de Grasse's ships, Cornwallis was doomed. Within a week he must surrender, and breaching the fortifications was a senseless exercise, but again Vauban produced his _Rule of Siege:_
'For the attacking general to refrain from breaching the fortifications, or at least attempting to do so, is to disclose a deficiency in honor. To win the siege with any show of dignity, he must assault the walls.'
That night, as Vauban had predicted, General Cornwallis mounted a sortie. His men marched straight into American fire, and they kept coming until they reached a battery of cannon, which they spiked. They then marched back inside their walls, and the siege continued. By noon the next day the cannon were back in operation, and only eleven Englishmen and four colonials were dead.
To Vauban's disgust, the breaching of the fortifications was not necessary. He had his men primed for it, all eleven Turlocks ready with charges of powder, and the clever trenches dug, but before the men could swing into operation, General Cornwallis surrendered. Now came Vauban's finest hour.
The question arose as to how the English should turn over their fort and their guns to the victors, and fiery debate ensued, at the center of which stood Colonel Vauban, aided by his interpreter, Simon Steed. General Cornwallis demanded full military honors, including the traditional right of marching his men, flags unfurled and muskets ashoulder, out through the fortifications while the English band played some American tune to show respect for the valor of those who had forced surrender.
'No! No!' Vauban protested, and with Steed supporting him in a mélange of French and English, he whipped out his book and turned to one of the profound passages:
'At the end of the siege, if it be successful, the defeated general is entitled to march his men through the walls, their flags proudly unfurled, their arms in position, and it is traditional for the band of the defeated side to play, as the men march, some military tune treasured by the victors, as testimony to the valor of the assault.'
The English at the meeting jumped on this as justification for just what General Cornwallis was demanding, but now Vauban asked Steed to read the rest of that passage:
'But this tradition is honored only if the defeated army can march through the walls using a breach which they forced the attacking army to make. If the surrender takes place while the walls remain unbreached, this can only mean that the defenders showed a lack of determination in defending their position, and they surrender all claim to honors. They march unarmed, with flags furled. Their band is not allowed to play a tune of the victors, for they have proved themselves deficient in military honor.'
After hearing these harsh words, one of the English generals leaped forward and struck the book from Steed's hands. 'There was no deficiency of honor, sir.'
But Colonel Vauban interceded. Going to the Englishman, he said, 'I tried my best to breach the walls for you. But they wouldn't help.' He indicated the Americans. 'And your Cornwallis was too quick with the white flag. One more day and I would have made the breach.' He kissed the general and retired, his eyes filled with tears, but he would not allow the English to come through the undemolished gates with military honors. Their guns were stacked, their flags were furled, and their band had to play one of their own tunes, _The World Turned Upside Down_.
But the English generals had their revenge. That night they refused to dine, as the honors of war demanded, with the American victors. 'The Americans didn't defeat us. The French did.' They dined with Rocham-beau and his staff, but as they drank wine afterward Colonel Vauban said, 'The barefoot men I brought across the bay are a sad lot. Filled with lice, and not one of them could read. But they had their own kind of virtue. I doubt that free America will be a pleasant place. But it will develop its own virtue.'
Victory should have brought Simon Steed honors and rewards. It didn't.
In Nantes he had served the colonies well, and in smuggling needed supplies he had been most ingenious, sacrificing four of his ships in doing so. Also, he had brought more than a hundred men to the final siege, where he had served with General Washington, and when offices were being handed out at the end of the war he felt entitled to one in which he could at least recoup the costs of his four schooners. He got nothing.
There were too many rumors that he had profited outrageously from the war; his speculation in the various paper issues was known and in some quarters grudgingly admired, for consistently he had guessed right, doubling his investments whenever he did so. But his dealing in soldiers' scrip was another matter, for here he was making profit on the heroism of others.
Actually, the charge was unfair, as the case of Wilmer Turlock proved. He had fought through the first five years of the war, always complaining but always present. He had also volunteered for the final siege at York-town and for his services had received a printed promise from the Continental Congress that at some future date he would receive $480. The trouble began when he told his Uncle Teach, 'I need the money now.'
'They ain't payin' it now.'
'How'm I goin' to get it?'
'There's men buyin' the notes on speculation,' the captain said.
'Who?'
'Sam Deats, upriver.'
Turlock had gone to Deats, a miserable man, who snarled, 'I'm payin' one for eight.'
'What's that mean?'
'For your four-eighty I give you sixty.'
'That's robbery!'
'I didn't ask you to come here. I'm takin' the risk, not you.'
'But Congress will pay.'
'Then wait for Congress and don't bother me.' And when Wilmer went to other speculators, he found them offering one for ten.
It was then that his uncle suggested, 'Go to Devon. Simon Steed's a difficult man but he's honest,' and the young soldier sailed down to the island, where Mr. Steed drew up a paper on which Wilmer made his mark:
On January 19, 1785, I approached Simon Steed, begging him to accept my Warrant of Pay. Mr. Steed advised me three times to hold on to it, assuring me that Congress would pay, but when I said I had to have my money now, he warned me that he could pay me only one in six. I told him others were paying only one in eight or one in ten, so he took my Warrant for $480 and handed me $80, which I willingly accepted.
Steed had a pile of such receipts and they proved that he had invariably advised the young soldiers to hold on to their scrip, and then paid better than the going price. But in the end one fact stood out: because he had hard money when the soldiers had none, he had been able to buy their scrip for one sixth its value. And when Congress redeemed the scrip at par, as he always predicted it would, he earned six hundred-percent interest for what amounted to a loan of fourteen months.
But even this tight-fisted action would not have been disqualifying; throughout Maryland and the other new states many financiers had profited in this manner, but Simon's case was tainted by his larger dealings with the government itself. In 1777 in the city of Nantes, Benjamin Franklin had proposed that Simon serve as purchasing agent for the fledgling government, and commissions had been issued appointing him to this post.
All agreed that Steed had performed ably, smuggling in necessary supplies in his various ships. Indeed, his _Whisper_ had become legendary for her feats in slipping into and out of St. Eustatius; her contribution was heroic, and without the sinews of battle she delivered to Baltimore and Boston, the course of the war might have been altered.
But now it was being divulged that whenever one of Steed's schooners put in at St. Eustatius, this kind of transaction took place: Two bales of prime cordage from the Low Countries, purchased at £ Sterling 50. Same sold at Baltimore for £ Sterling 120. Commission to Simon Steed for procuring and handling same, 33 1/3% or £ Sterling 40. Thus, on one shipment of cordage costing 50, Steed made a final profit of 110. True, he took risks with the _Whisper_ and he did have to pay the captain and crew, but even with those deductions, his profit had been stupendous.
When calculations were completed, Congress found that this unassuming Eastern Shore gentleman had milked the government of more than four hundred thousand pounds sterling, and his name became anathema: 'Richer than Simon Steed.' 'Patriotism for sale at six cents on the dollar.' Any hope that he might have had for preferment in the new government vanished.
He retired to Devon, living alone in the great house, spending his afternoons wandering aimlessly in the spacious wooded garden designed by his Grandmother Rosalind. The oak grew nobler with each passing decade and in autumn the pyracantha flamed. The hollies were substantial trees now, the females laden with red berries, the males stern and aloof like their master. And in the early summer when the burnt gold of daylilies flooded the banks, Simon believed that no spot in Maryland could be more handsome.
At such times, when nature was so benevolent, he thought of his missing wife and daughter; his loneliness did not make him bitter, for he understood why Jane Fithian had found rural America so distasteful, but he did sometimes indulge himself in wry amusement: She scorned us. Used to ask how louts like Washington and Jefferson could presume to negotiate with a king. We negotiated.
He missed Penny. Each year during the long war—nine of them, from 1775 through '83—he had managed somehow to deliver into England letters of credit upon which his wife and daughter could draw, and all that he received in return had been one silhouette showing a child of five wearing pigtails. He had sent it to Annapolis to be encased in gold, and now it hung on a chain near his bed.
Often since the end of war he had contemplated quitting Maryland altogether and going to England to live with his family, or perhaps taking them to France, but after consulting by mail with Guy Fithian he rejected that plan, because the factor wrote:
I can serve you best by frankness. My sister is not entirely herself, despite the fact that we have given her the best care that England can provide. She slips into such furious tirades against the traitors in America that seeing you again would be disastrous. Penny thrives and gives no evidence of following her mother into partial but heartbreaking insanity. She loves you for the money you send each year.
When he reflected on this painful situation he sometimes thought that he had been taxed too heavily for his patriotism: he had lost his wife, his daughter, his nephew, his fleet and his honor.
How lonely he became, holding more than two hundred thousand pounds sterling and only God knew how many livres tournois and Spanish doubloons and Portuguese big-joes. Two or three times a year he would entertain at Rosalind's Revenge, and then boats from all over the Chesapeake would congregate in Devon Creek, and slaves would carry portmanteaus to the big rooms and the two wings would be filled, and forty would sit down to dinner in that splendid dining hall erected by Rosalind Janney Steed, and Simon would preside, listening to the small talk but not engaging in it.
Early on the morning of Wednesday, April 15, 1789, a gentleman in uniform named Major Lee hurried down to the dock at Mount Vernon in Virginia, where two rowers were waiting to ferry him across the Potomac River.
As soon as they deposited him on the Maryland shore he ran to where two other men in military uniform were waiting with fresh horses. Major Lee vaulted into his saddle and set off in a gallop for Annapolis. At every inn or crossroads church where people might be gathered, he called out the exciting news, 'General Washington's to be our President.' Invariably, cheers rose from the listeners, and as he dashed on, Lee could see the Marylanders scattering to inform their neighbors of the good news, indeed, the only news that would have made any sense on that historic day. Who but Washington had the measure of acceptance and skill required to launch the new Constitution?
At the state house in Annapolis, Major Lee discovered, to his pique, that news of the election had already been disseminated, but he was pleased to observe the cheering crowds who came out to greet him as a messenger who had actually seen Washington at Mount Vernon.
'He'll stop by here tomorrow on his way to the capital,' Lee assured his listeners. 'He begins his reign as soon as he takes the oath in New York.'
But Major Lee had not ridden from Mount Vernon in order to converse with the politicians of Annapolis. After congratulating them on the way in which their representatives had helped select the new President, he spurred his horse to the dock, where a pinnace manned by four sailors waited. Jumping in, he directed the men, 'Down to Devon Island. Quick.'
The sailors raised small sails on the two short masts, then sprang a jib forward, but the wind was chancy and even after they had cleared the mole guarding the harbor they made only fitful progress, and nightfall found them drifting aimlessly on the broad expanse of the Chesapeake. Stars appeared occasionally, dim and distant above the flapping canvas, but no wind rose to help them make the crossing.
At four in the morning Major Lee asked the captain of the pinnace, 'Shall we row?' and the captain studied the situation, looking into the darkness in all directions.
Before committing his men to the ugly chore, he asked, 'Will we be sailing north immediately?'
'We spend only a few hours at Devon. Then north.'
'Then I won't ask the men to row out of the calm. The wind will rise.'
'But when?' Lee asked in the darkness.
'It will rise,' the officer assured him.
So Lee fretted through the long night, and at five-thirty, when light was beginning to show in the east, he fell asleep. When he woke, the day was about him and a brisk wind pushed in from the northwest. The captain of the pinnace did not say, 'I told you so.' He was satisfied that his men had escaped the job of rowing that heavy boat out of the doldrums.
It was eight in the morning when the pinnace sighted Devon, and as soon as it entered the creek slaves hailed its arrival, shouting, 'Master! Master!' but imparting no specific news. When the pinnace worked its way up to the Steed wharf some thirty persons waited to greet the major, who ignored them, pushed his way through, and ran up to Simon Steed, embracing him. 'General Washington sends his regards. He's to be our new President!'
A cheer rose from whites and blacks at this reassuring news, and Steed nodded gravely, as if the cheers had been intended for him. To the crowd he said, 'How could we have chosen any other?' and they all cheered again.
Major Lee brought heady news: 'The general is crossing from Annapolis to Chestertown and hopes to converse with you there before he proceeds to New York and his new duties.'
As these words were said, Steed felt a glow of renewed confidence; doubtless the new President had decided upon some position of significance for his Eastern Shore deputy. And as the crowd milled about Major Lee, seeking added information, Steed withdrew, as if in a trance, speculating on what his responsibility might be: I've worked with ships all my life and could handle the navy. Or I'd be adequate in some post dealing with commerce or the nation's money.
His reverie was broken when Lee tugged on his arm. 'The general wants Paxmore and Turlock, too.'
This diluted sharply the intimacy of the meeting, and Steed asked in some dismay, 'Shall we be going in your boat?' and Lee further dampened the excitement by saying, 'No, I'm to pick up some others on the way,' and Steed thought to himself: It's not to be a meeting. It's a convention.
'I'll ready my sloop at once,' he told Lee, who reminded him, 'Be sure to fetch Paxmore and Turlock.'
Simon broke out a small boat and sailed directly to Peace Cliff, where he informed Paxmore of the meeting, and together they sailed to the marshes. At first they had difficulty finding the entrance to the myriad streams that segmented the marsh, but Paxmore remembered certain landmarks that led to Turlock Creek, which they penetrated cautiously, as if trying to avoid an ambuscade. Through the years men along the Eastern Shore had learned to approach this place with care.
'Halloo!' one of Steed's sailors called. There was no response.
'Call again,' Steed ordered, but the slave was reluctant to do anything that might anger those hiding in the marsh. 'Give the call!' Steed commanded.
'Halloo!' the slave trumpeted, and the echo had barely died when a shot rang out. The men in the boat could hear the pellets rip through the dried grass.
'Stop where you are!' a ghostly voice warned.
'Captain Turlock!' Steed called back. 'It's me. Steed.'
A second shot ripped through the grass and this angered Steed. 'Damn it, man! President Washington wants to meet you. In Chestertown.'
From the marsh a disembodied voice called, 'Cap'm Turlock, he ain't here.'
'Where is he?' Steed called into the emptiness.
'On the porch.' And from the grass appeared a lanky youth of nineteen, carrying a musket, a marsh dog at his heel. He wore few clothes, no shoes, no hat. He was a surly waterman, but when he saw Steed his begrimed face broke into a broad smile and he said, 'I knowed you at Yorktown.'
'Did you fight there?'
'Didn't fight. Wore my ass off diggin' trenches.'
'Where's Teach?' Steed asked, and the young man led the way through devious trails to the cabin.
There, barefooted, dressed in patched homespun, scratching his beard, sat the man who had terrorized the Caribbean. 'Mr. Steed, it's good to see you!'
'President Washington wants us to visit with him in Chestertown.'
'When?'
'Tonight.'
'We better get movin',' and the grizzled captain left the porch, spent a few minutes inside the cabin, and reappeared in a passable costume: baggy homespun trousers, heavy shirt woven from flax and cotton, shoes made from muskrat skins and a coonskin hat.
He showed the Steed slaves a shortcut through the marsh, and within an hour the three men were aboard the sloop, heading northwest for Knapps Narrows, where Steed announced the news to the people of Bay Hundred. Once in the Chesapeake, they sped north for the difficult passage at Kent Narrows, proposing to reach Chestertown at about the same time that Washington would be landing for his overnight stop.
But bad luck overtook them in the lee of Kent Island; the brisk wind was masked by trees, and a whole afternoon was idled away, with Steed growing more and more impatient. 'Can't you move this boat?'
'The men could try rowing.'
'Then get them to rowing.' But this accomplished little, and the day ended with the Choptank men wasting their time at the mouth of the Chester River, while the new President celebrated with friends in Chestertown.
At dawn the next morning Steed was beside himself with frustration. 'Can we get horses?' he asked his captain.
'No horses, no roads.'
'Well, damn this wind.'
It was ten in the morning before the trio reached Chestertown, and as Steed had feared, Washington had left at dawn for Warwick, the next stopping place on the way to New York. Steed asked the innkeeper if three horses could be found, and the man replied, 'Washington's men took 'em all.'
'Find some!' Steed commanded.
'Who's to pay?'
'I'll pay.'
'And who are you?'
'Simon Steed of Devon.'
The innkeeper nodded and said, 'In that case the farmers may have something.'
'Get them here.'
So the innkeeper sent two of his helpers to round up some horses, but the owners came with them, demanding payment in full for the unlikely beasts. They were not for hire. 'I'll buy them,' Steed said, but Levin Paxmore would not allow this. 'Thee is charging outrageous prices,' he remonstrated as the two farmers stared at him. 'Mr. Steed requires these horses to overtake General Washington... for a most important meeting.'
One of the farmers pointed at Teach Turlock and grinned. 'He's goin' to see Washington?'
'He is,' Paxmore said quietly. 'He was a notable fighter in the late war.'
'What's 'is name?'
'Teach Turlock.'
The farmers gaped, then began shouting to bystanders, 'Hey, this is Teach Turlock!' And they grabbed the captain's hand, shouting excitedly, 'You damned near burned up this bay with the _Whisper_. Captain Turlock, you were a mighty man.'
And one of the farmers said, 'If you want to rent horses, Turlock, you can sure rent 'em from us,' and the three Choptank men set off in pursuit of their President. At Georgetown they crossed the Sassafras River, galloped north to Cecilton, then followed a mean and dusty road into Warwick, where crowds of farming people clustered at the crossroads.
'Where's the general?' Steed asked.
'He's stopping at the Heath place.'
'I saw him ride in,' a woman said reverently, and children shouted, 'He's sleepin' in that house.'
In the road, his arms crossed, stood Major Lee, protecting the farmhouse in which his general slept. When Steed rode up, the major indicated that he must dismount and leave his horse behind. 'We missed you,' he said.
'Damned wind.'
'Yes, it started to die just as we cleared the Narrows.'
'Slept standing up, cursing the wind,' Steed explained.'
'The general will be pleased you came. He asked for you repeatedly.' At this gratifying news Steed beamed, but what Lee said next deflated him. 'The general yearns for a good card game, and when he rises he'll be eager to play. Catch some sleep on the bench, Steed. He may want to play all night.'
This kind of visit was not what Simon had envisaged. Indeed, through the long windless night he had rehearsed the topics he wished to discuss with the new President, and cardplaying was not one of them. But he was determined to accomplish two goals on this trip: to present himself in the best possible light, and to nail down some assurances as to how the Eastern Shore was to be governed.
Accordingly, he did not accept the bench offered by the major; instead he carried his canvas bag out to the wash house, where he soaped down, combed, touched himself with perfume and donned fresh clothes. When he was finished he presented the fine figure of a fifty-nine-year-old patriot eager to serve in whatever capacity the new President might determine.
Washington did not arise till about six-thirty in the evening, at which time Major Lee informed him that the Choptank men had arrived. Without attending to his dress, Washington hurried from his sleeping quarters, saw Steed standing at attention and acknowledged him briefly, then spotted Levin Paxmore, the shipbuilder, and hurried to him. Grasping his fire-scarred hands, Washington said, 'What sturdy ships you build.'
'Four of them ended fighting for the English.'
'Ah, but the _Whisper_ that fought for us helped determine the battle. Keep your hat, Friend Paxmore. You've earned the privilege.'
He then spotted Captain Turlock and stood before him admiringly, hands on hips, unable to speak. Finally he grasped the waterman by the shoulders, pressed them vigorously and said, 'I confess a special fondness for brave men,' and he began to recite some of the adventures Turlock had experienced. 'They almost trapped you at St. Eustatius, didn't they?'
'They did get my sister ship. That was a sore defeat.'
'We've all had them,' Washington said. 'You should be an admiral, sir.'
'I can't read or write,' Turlock replied.
Washington laughed and asked, 'What do you plan to do now?'
'A little fishin',' Turlock said, and Washington guffawed.
'Major Lee!' he called in a resounding voice. 'Take note of this man, and note him well. The only one in America who doesn't seek an appointment.' He laughed again, then bowed deeply, adding, 'You were most helpful, Captain.'
Then he returned to Colonel Steed, saying heartily, 'Damned glad you overtook us, Steed. I am most hungry for some cards.' And he led the way to a small room which Major Lee had arranged for this night. It contained a table, six chairs, two lamps on high stands and three spittoons. Two planters from the Warwick area had been waiting since five and were eager for the game to start. A Colonel Witherspoon who was riding with Washington took a chair, but when the general and Steed sat down, there remained one empty space.
'I do like six to a game,' Washington said. 'Friend Paxmore, would you take a hand?'
'I would not,' the Quaker said.
'How about Major Lee?' Steed asked.
'I will not allow him to lose any further,' Washington said.
Colonel Witherspoon pointed at Captain Turlock. 'Do you play?'
'Some.'
'Sit down,' and Turlock took the sixth chair. When the first hand was dealt he looked at his cards and muttered, 'Jesus Christ!' Washington stopped arranging his cards and stared at the swamp man, and Colonel Witherspoon said reprovingly, 'We don't use oaths, Captain Turlock.'
'You would if you saw these cards,' Turlock replied, and Washington smiled.
After the third hand the general said graciously, 'Steed, I am gratified to an extent I cannot express that you have seen fit to visit with us. One of my first tasks in New York will be to ask the Congress to recompense you for your lost ships.'
'I would be grateful,' Steed said, and then he waited, knowing that this was the moment in which the new President ought to say something about an assignment in the forthcoming government, but nothing was said, and Turlock ruptured the spell by grunting, 'Your deal, General.'
As midnight approached, Major Lee led Levin Paxmore out of the house and onto the roadway, where they talked for some hours, while the locals sat along the road, watching the house where their beloved hero was meeting in high consultation with the leaders of the region. 'Gad, how I'd love to be in that game,' Lee confessed.
'Thee likes cards so much?'
'I'm a fanatic, but I seem always to lose, and the general's forbidden me to play.' They walked along the dark road for some minutes, then Lee said, 'Of course, he always loses too. But he says the difference is he can afford it.'
'Does he play so much?'
'Before the war, almost every night. He kept an account book of each night's play, and it shows that he lost heavily. During the war I never saw him play but once. During the cold days at Valley Forge. And of course he lost. He'll lose tonight, you can be sure of that, and I'll enter it in the book. _Chestertown, lost three pounds, sixteen shillings, nine pence_.'
'This is Warwick.'
'They all seem the same. We approach the towns. The people storm out. They drown him with adulation. This land has never seen a hero like Washington, nor will again.'
'Is he so fine?' Paxmore asked.
'You saw him. Six feet four. He towers above ordinary men.'
'I mean morally.'
'He puzzles me,' Lee confessed. 'He places his whole destiny in the hands of God, serves Him with devotion. But like a soldier, not a puling clergyman.' In the darkness Major Lee permitted silence to indicate his confusion.
'Will he make a good President?'
'The finest. No man could prove his equal. He stands alone, a monument to integrity.' Another pause and then, 'But there are contradictions. You know, of course, that he gained enormous approval by his refusal to accept any salary as general of the colonial armies. That's right, never accepted a shilling of pay. Said over and over that a patriot should serve his country in time of danger and pay no heed to the cost.'
'That was admirable,' Paxmore said, but he did not point out that in the dark days of the war he had built three ships for the Continental navy, in addition to those for Steed, and that since the revolutionaries had had no funds, he had borne most of the cost himself. Also, his boatyard had been burned and his best workmen conscripted into the army.
Even had he enjoyed cards, he would not have dared to play this night, for the war had left him largely impoverished; but to learn that General Washington had also served without pay was heartening. But then Major Lee added, 'What Washington did was refuse a salary but demand an expense account. I helped him make it out, and he listed everything—his son's expenses, wine for the mess, a carriage for himself and four more carriages for his friends, rations, guns, braid for his jackets, axes for the woods. Thinking back on those accounts, they were extraordinary.'
'I could make out such an account for my shipyard,' Paxmore said, 'and would do so, if asked.'
'Yes,' Lee conceded. 'Each item submitted was an honest figure. But whether some of them should have been submitted remains dubious. All I know is that when there was talk of Washington's becoming President, he again volunteered to serve without pay—just expenses. And the committee told him with some firmness, "Oh no, sir! This time you must accept a salary!" They told me later, "No new nation could survive another of his damned expense accounts." '
They now turned and walked back down the road past the house where the players were intent on their cards. They could see General Washington studying with some disgust a hand which Captain Turlock had just dealt, and Paxmore asked, 'Is he capable of governing? I mean, soldiers are sometimes both obstinate and deficient in knowledge.'
'He's not read much,' Lee confided. 'I rarely see him with a book. He's certainly no Adams or Jefferson, but maybe they read too much.'
Up and down the silent road they walked, touching upon all aspects of the new position that Washington was moving into: the military appointments, the finances, the judgeships, the building up of a merchant navy, the admission of new states carved out of the western lands, the entire gamut of government—while the general continued playing cards.
'I never knew my father,' Lee confided toward two in the morning. 'So perhaps my good opinion of the general is weighted in his favor. But I've served with him since I was a boy in 1774, and no finer man ever walked on the soil of this continent. He may not prove to be a capable President, but he'll be a just one. And he'll provide a symbol, stronger and brighter every year.'
He reflected on this, and after they had passed the cardplayers again he said, 'At the meetings related to the revolution we had many fine orators, and I heard most of them. I never heard a finer intellect than that stubby little lawyer from Philadelphia, James Wilson. Ben Franklin could make a point, too, and John Adams could be devastating. But the best speech I ever heard was given by George Washington, who never said much.
'It was in 1774, I think, when the British were bombarding Boston and we in the south didn't know how to respond. That day the oratory contained much fire and more confusion, but when everything seemed to be lost in chaos, Washington—I think he was only a colonel then...' He hesitated. 'Virginia militia, it must have been.
'Anyway, when it seemed that we must allow Boston to fight alone, this man stood up and spoke one sentence. Just one sentence, and when he sat down the whole history of the colonies was changed.'
'What did he say?'
' "Gentlemen, I will raise one thousand men, outfit and pay them at my own expense, and march myself at their head for the relief of Boston." '
Paxmore said, 'I think I need sleep. I shall be going inside.'
Major Lee said, 'I'll keep guard out here.'
When Paxmore entered the gaming room it was half after three and Teach Turlock had only a few shillings on the table. 'If you president as well as you play cards,' he said admiringly to Washington, 'this country will be all right.'
Turlock lost that hand and decided to quit the game. 'Come on, Friend Paxmore,' he said, 'we'll catch some sleep.' And he lay down on the floor outside the door while the Quaker made his way to a back room where a dozen men were stretched out.
Now came the part that General Washington enjoyed most. It was four in the morning, deadly quiet in all parts of the night except in this room where the candles flickered. The game was down to just four players, one of the local landowners having dropped out, and each surviving player knew the established peculiarities of the others. Simon Steed played an absolutely straightforward game, no bluff. Colonel Witherspoon played for every advantage, studied each card, each adversary with minute attention and won more than his share of hands. The planter was a good player, willing to take extraordinary risks if he detected even a slight edge in his favor. And General Washington was proving himself to be what he always had been: a cautious, stubborn defender of his shillings, a niggardly man when it came to betting, a daring man when he saw a chance to win a big pot, but so transparent in his positions that he was destined always to lose if the game continued long enough.
'Your majesty,' Steed said at five in the morning, 'I think I have the better of you.'
'I do not take kindly to that appellation,' Washington replied, holding his losing cards close to his sweaty shirt.
'Sire, this country yearns for royal trappings,' Steed insisted.
'I prefer mister.'
'The people will not permit it. Believe me, Sire, we Americans may have thrown out one set of royalty, but we are most hungry to adopt another... a better, that is. And you're that better.'
Washington tapped his chin with his cards. 'Others have said what you say, Steed, and there's much common sense in what you advise. It may well be that in the end we shall have to have a royalty. But in this game you must not address a man as Sire when you intend to cut his throat. What cards are you hiding against me, Steed of Devon?'
The game broke up at a quarter to six. Major Lee, hearing the commotion, came to the door of the room to announce, 'The horses are ready, sir.'
'We'd better be on our way to Wilmington,' Washington replied. 'Shall we take thirty minutes to wash up, Witherspoon?'
'Did you lose again?' Lee asked impishly.
'You can mark me down in the book,' Washington replied, 'as having lost two pounds, twelve and three.'
'Warwick has proved costly,' Lee said.
'It was worth it to meet once more my comrade in arms at Yorktown,' Washington said, throwing his long right arm about Steed's shoulder, and with that, he retired to the washhouse. There would be no confidential talk of government position, but Washington was not an unfeeling man and when he returned from his toilet and saw the bleak look on Steed's face, he went to him, took him by the hand and said bluntly, 'My dear friend, I would give an arm to have you at my side.' He paused. 'But the scandals. Impossible. Impossible.' And he marched to the horses.
But before he reached them he was stopped by Teach Turlock, who produced from a filthy bag a paper which he had cherished since 1776; it was the Rector of Wrentham's cession of Turlock's hundred acres. 'Please, General Washington, restore my land.'
The President studied the paper, asked Turlock and Steed a few questions, then called for Major Lee to bring him a quill. Sitting on a bench at the door to the farmhouse he added this endorsement to the precious document:
To my old comrade in arms, Governor John Eager Howard
Rarely have I seen a document so shot through with fraud and force and forgery as this, but rarely have I heard supporting evidence from reliable witnesses as solid as that which bulwarks this claim. I pray you, lend good ear to the supplication of the Patriot, Teach Turlock, that his lands be restored.
Geo. Washington
In the roadway a throng of hundreds waited to applaud their hero, and in his red-and-blue riding coat he made a handsome figure, bowing gravely right and left. Major Lee provided a small stool to help him mount, and when he sat astride his large chestnut, he looked more noble than ever.
'Great wishes, Sire,' Steed called, tears beginning to form.
'We shall face difficult tasks, all of us,' Washington said as he rode off, attended by cheers that would not cease till he reached New York.
The three Choptank men, without having consulted one another, mounted their horses and followed for some miles as if drawn by a powerful magnet. When the time came to turn back, Major Lee rode up to bid them farewell. To Steed he said, 'The general asked me to say that you will have access to him as long as you both shall live. He prizes you as one of the true servants of this nation.'
But to Levin Paxmore he whispered, as their horses moved in the early sunlight, 'I spoke perhaps too freely under the stars. You'll keep what I said confidential?'
'I shall honor thy request,' Paxmore said, whereupon Lee pressed into the Quaker's hand a personal communication from Washington. Paxmore waited to open it until he had returned to his desk at the boatyard. Then carefully he unfolded the paper, spread it smoothly, and read:
Friend Paxmore
You must submit at your earliest convenience a true accounting of the costs you incurred in building ships for our cause, less whatever funds were advanced you by the Congress. And I shall do my best to see that you are paid in full, because all free men stand in your debt.
Geo. Washington
That day Levin Paxmore compiled an honest account of every shilling he had spent on the revolution, including the replacement of his sheds and a wage for his wife, and when President Washington signed the authorizing bill, Paxmore was paid in full, and it was this military money that formed the foundation of the Paxmore fortune.
# _Voyage Seven: 1811_
WINTER ALONG THE EASTERN SHORE WAS USUALLY clement. An occasional freezing of some salt-free river, or a desultory fall of snow which soon melted, indicated that winter was at hand, but because of the modifying effects of both the Atlantic and the Chesapeake, temperatures never dropped very low.
But in January 1811 there came a sudden snowfall of some inches, and farmers along the shore stayed indoors until it passed. Thomas Applegarth, twenty-seven years old, unmarried, tenant on a farm near Patamoke owned by the Steeds, used these days of enforced idleness to study a book lent him by Elizabeth Paxmore, for whom he sometimes did odd jobs. It was a geography of the eastern states, and what impressed him was the manner in which the mountains of Pennsylvania drifted in a marked direction from northeast to southwest. Even the dullest mind would have deduced, from this new map, that some extraordinary force had determined the lay of these mountains, but what that might have been, Applegarth had not enough training to detect.
Yet as he studied the map he vaguely recalled something he had read recently about events that had occurred long ago in Europe, but what precisely they were he could not remember. And then, toward dusk, as it came time for him to tend the cattle, he put down his book, went out and walked along a frozen path to the barn, and as he did so he came upon a small accumulation of ice under a tree, and suddenly the whole mystery of the Pennsylvania mountains and the formation of the Chesapeake became clear to him, as if someone had struck a monstrous match in a darkened valley: Ice! That's what it was that scarred the mountains of Europe. And that's what dug out our valleys in America!
He could not grasp what an ice age was, nor the vastness of the sheet that had at one time lain over Pennsylvania, but he saw clearly one fact: that the ice sheet must have contained within it an enormous quantity of water, and when the ice finally melted, that water must have formed a gigantic river, parent to the present Susquehanna. And that river, nothing else, had reamed out the Chesapeake Bay and deposited the silt which had become, in time, the Eastern Shore.
His concept was so grand, and its parts fell together so neatly, that as he milked the cows in the shadows thrown by his lantern he existed in a kind of glory. 'That's how it must have happened,' he whispered to himself. 'The world up north was imprisoned under a mantle of ice, and when it melted, it scarred the mountains and filled the valleys with tremendous rivers.'
The idea so preoccupied him that on the first clear day he drove down to Peace Cliff to return Mrs. Paxmore's book and ask her whether she believed it was possible for America to have experienced an age of ice.
'A what?' she asked.
'I read that northern Europe—well, this was long ago—it had ice on it.'
'I suppose Russia has ice every year,' she said.
'No, this book said that the entire land had ice hundreds of feet thick... all over it.'
'Nothing could have lived,' she protested.
'That's exactly it,' Applegarth said. 'The ice had to be very thick to gouge out the valleys.'
'To what?'
'Have you ever looked at the mountains of Pennsylvania?' he asked.
'I've never been to Pennsylvania.'
'I mean a map.'
'I've never seen a map of Pennsylvania.'
'There's one here in your book.'
'There is?' It irritated the Quaker woman to think that there could be either maps or ideas with which she was not familiar, and she took the book from Applegarth rather rudely and thumbed through it. 'Why, so there is,' she said, and she studied the map with care.
'See how the mountains all run in the same direction?' the farmer said.
'What's that signify?'
'They were gouged out by a heavy layer of ice moving southwest.'
The idea was so novel that Mrs. Paxmore had nothing in her past reflection by which to judge it, but she was one of those Quaker women to whom all knowledge was important, so she stood firmly on her left foot, with her right cocked at an angle, and considered the remarkable thesis that her odd-job man was proposing, and the more she pondered his words, the more inherently reasonable they became. 'It could have happened that way,' she said.
'And if it did,' Applegarth continued, 'then the whole valley of the Susquehanna, as we know it today... Well, it must have been a stupendous river. A hundred times bigger than we see it.'
With a solid finger he outlined on the map the principal features of his theory, coming at last to the Chesapeake itself. 'Our bay must have been the mouth of that immense river. What do you think of that?'
In the weeks that followed, and during the long winter nights, Thomas Applegarth and Elizabeth Paxmore studied whatever they could find about ice ages and mountains; they found little. Speculation about the formation of earth features had only just begun in the United States; the fascinating revelations which were being evolved in Europe could not have been known in Patamoke, but one day Mrs. Paxmore did turn up an interesting piece of information.
A professor of moral philosophy at Yale University had been dabbling in scientific matters. And he came up with the interesting concept that a river like the Hudson in New York could best be understood as 'a drowned river valley.' The phrase captivated Mrs. Paxmore and she discussed it with her husband.
'Isn't that a splendid imagination? A river valley which has been drowned, inundated by the sea!'
'Sounds to me like a sad misuse of words,' her husband said. 'A pig can drown. Or a little boy who falls out of his canoe. Because they stop breathing and are drowned. But how could a river drown? Tell me that.'
'It doesn't drown,' she replied. 'It is drowned.'
George Paxmore leaned back to consider this foray into logic. Then, with a brusque wave of his hand, he dismissed the Yale professor, the Hudson River and the Chesapeake. 'No educated man would condone such grammar.'
But when Mrs. Paxmore brought her new theory to her odd-job man, he visualized its application immediately. 'It's what happened!' he said excitedly. 'In the later years, when the ice had mostly melted, the river would begin to lose its force, and the ocean would creep in, and the river mouth would be drowned under the weight of salt water.' It was a concept so intellectually beautiful, and so respondent to observable facts, that it seemed the clincher to previous speculations. He now saw the Susquehanna system in grand design, the remnant of a river which had once drained a major portion of an ice-laden continent, a majestic river which in the end had seen itself overcome by the ever-encroaching sea. He resolved to look into this matter further, when spring came.
Mrs. Paxmore, whose geography book had launched these speculations, pursued her own investigations, looking into all the books she could find and talking rather obsessively to those members of the community better informed than she. She was surprised one evening when her husband pushed back from the table and said, 'Thee may have been right, Elizabeth. I've been studying our bay... Well, I've been endeavoring to reconcile what I see with that interesting thesis thee propounded some weeks back. And the more I contemplate, the more I have to conclude that thee has hit upon something.'
He outlined the steps of this thinking: that if the ancient river had indeed been drowned, the resulting bay would be determined partly by the river and partly by the ocean, rather than entirely by the latter. This would mean that there ought to be an orderly progression from entirely fresh water at the mouth of the Susquehanna, where it debouched into the bay, to entirely salt water at the spot where the bay debouched into the sea. 'And that's what I find,' he concluded. 'Most interesting.'
'Thomas Applegarth has been talking about making an expedition to the headwaters of the Susquehanna,' she said. 'I think we ought to help him.'
'We could give him time off. Find some other handyman.'
'I mean with money.'
George Paxmore formed his hands into a little cathedral and contemplated them for some time. Money wasn't wasted on the Eastern Shore, least of all by a Quaker. His wife was making a serious proposal, but it was sensible. Knowledge must always be pursued. 'I think we could let him have twenty-five dollars,' he said.
'Does thee want to tell him?'
'I think thee should. It's been thee who has encouraged him.'
Elizabeth decided that they should both inform their handyman that their family would like to support his scientific investigations to the extent of twenty-five dollars. He was unprepared for this bonanza and for some moments could not respond. Then he said, 'I have fifteen of my own, and I can save at least twenty more by the end of February. I'd like to see the upper river before the snow has melted.'
So on the first of March, 1811, Thomas Applegarth, a farmer of Patamoke on the Eastern Shore, took off in a small sloop and headed for the present mouth of the Susquehanna River. The winds were not propitious, and he required three days to reach Havre de Grace. There he deposited his boat with the owner of a shipyard, and with sixty-three dollars in his pocket, started his exploration of the river.
For fifty cents he employed a man with a canoe to take him as far north as the turbulent rapids at Conowingo. At this point he allowed the canoeist to return home, while he struck out on foot along the left bank of the river, that is, the one to the east. Frequently he was forced to leave the river, for the going was too rough, and on some nights he slept quite a few miles inland from the banks.
But whenever he was able to walk alongside the river itself, or plunge into its icy waters for a cleansing bath, he felt himself to be in some mysterious way purified and closer to the secrets of the past. At the infrequent ferries he would ask to help the rowers, spending whole days moving from shore to shore, so that by the time he reached the first important ferry at Columbia he was a practiced riverman.
But it was not until he had hiked past Harrisburg and got into the mountainous section of Pennsylvania that he began to see the evidences he sought. It was clear to him that in times past this mighty river had been ten or fifteen times as wide as it now was; proof existed in the flat, smooth benchlands stretching east and west from its banks. Surely they had once been the bed of that mighty, long-vanished stream which had carried away the waters of the melting ice. Each day was a revelation, a proof.
When he reached Sunbury, 215 miles from Patamoke, he faced a difficult decision, for north of that settlement were two Susquehanna Rivers. One would take him west to Williamsport, the other east to Wilkes-Barre, and no one whom he consulted could tell him definitely which was the senior river. To his amazement, no settler in Sunbury had explored to the headwaters of either.
'Which throws the bigger body of water?' he asked.
'Come a flood, either does right smart,' the most knowledgeable man replied.
'If you were going to the headwaters, which branch would you take?'
'I ain't goin'.'
'But which would you guess?'
'It don't concern me.'
He located a woman who said, 'In times of freshet, the east branch seems to bring down the biggest trees—liken as if it had come the longest distance.'
'Or it came through the most wooded land.'
'I was takin' that into my calculations,' she said.
Since this was the only substantial evidence he had uncovered, he said, 'That sounds sensible. I'll go east.'
So on the last day of March, Applegarth started the long, difficult journey to Wilkes-Barre, and from there, north to the Indian settlement at Tunkhannock. The going was extremely rough; no boats were able to move upstream, and for long distances there was no road beside the river. For three days he struggled through uncut forests, determined to stay with the river, but in the end he had to abandon this resolve and move onto established roads, regardless of how far adrift they led him.
He felt as if he were exploring virgin land, and sometimes when he had been distant from the river for several days, he would come upon it rushing southward, and he would cry aloud with joy at having discovered an old friend: 'There you are! Beautiful river, holder of secrets!'
He would take off his coat and shoes and step into the waters, and sometimes they would feel so enticing that he would plunge in, forgetful of his clothes, then march along the riverbank until his pants and shirt dried on him. Occasionally he would ride with some farmer going to market; more often he walked alone, for days on end, always probing farther toward the source of his river.
On the long and winding stretch from Tunkhannock to Towanda, a distance of nearly forty miles as he wandered, he met no one, at times splashing his way right up the margins of the river in lieu of roads. He ate sparingly, an end of bread and some cheese, and lost seven pounds doing so. It was in this time of loneliness that he conceived his plan for putting on paper his reflections about the Susquehanna and its relation to the body of water he loved so strongly, the Chesapeake. He would spend whole days formulating a single passage, trying to make it sound important, like the reading he had done that winter. He sensed that there was a proper way to report an expedition: he must never claim too much; he must present his conclusions tentatively, so that others who came later could refute him if the facts they discovered were better than his. He was especially aware that he was dealing with conjecture, and he sensed that responsible men identify conjecture and differentiate it from fact.
Kicking at the river, and splashing its cool water over himself even to his hair, he cried to the forest, 'I am searching for the soul of this river,' and he covered the last miles in Pennsylvania as if enveloped in a kind of glory, the splendor a man sometimes experiences when he is engaged in seeking for a source.
He was some miles into New York before he met anyone who could give him advice, and this man had no idea as to where the little stream known as the Susquehanna might begin. 'Somebody who hunts deer might know,' a farmer told him, and the man's wife suggested Old Grizzer. Applegarth found him on a shabby farm, a man in his late sixties with no teeth and no hair on his head but a massive lot over his face.
'By God, sonny! I've always wanted to know where that danged stream began myself. For two dollars I'll take you as far as I know, and for two more dollars we'll go plumb to the beginning, even if'n it's up in Canady.'
So they set out on a twenty-eight-mile journey, an old man who knew the terrain and a young man who knew the river. They went along cornfields which had not yet been plowed for spring planting and through woods which only the deer and crazy coots like Old Grizzer had penetrated. And always the Susquehanna was tantalizingly ahead of them, growing narrower until it was no more than a creek, but persisting in a fiendish determination to survive.
'By God, sonny, this is a damn stubborn trickle,' the old man said. And on the fourth day he said, 'Sonny, I made a bad bargain. This damned river has no beginnin' and I'm tuckered out.' But when it dawned on him that he must hand back the two dollars he had collected as guide, he found new resolve. 'I'll go a little farther. There's simply got to be a spring up here somewheres.'
So they continued for another day, until they found what might in an emergency have been considered a spring. 'Would you call that the source?' the old man asked.
'I might,' Applegarth said, 'except for that stream leading into it.'
'Goddamn,' the old man said. 'I was hopin' you wouldn't see it.'
'I'd like to follow it a little farther,' Applegarth said.
'You do that, sonny. As for me, I'm announcin' here and now that this is where the Susquehanny begins. Right here.'
'You wait. We'll go back together.'
So the old man made himself comfortable beside the bogus source while young Applegarth strode north, following the trickle of water. He slept that night under an oak tree, and before noon on the next day, May 4, 1811, he came to the ultimate source of the river. It was a kind of meadow in which nothing happened: no cattle, no mysteriously gushing water, merely the slow accumulation of moisture from many unseen and unimportant sources, the gathering of dew, so to speak, the beginning, the unspectacular congregation of nothingness, the origin of purpose.
Bright sunlight fell on the meadow, and where the moisture stood, sharp rays were reflected back until the whole area seemed golden, and hallowed, as if here life itself were beginning. Thomas Applegarth, looking at this moist and pregnant land, thought: This is how everything begins—the mountains, the oceans, life itself. A slow accumulation—the gathering together of meaning.
There is no need to remember the name Thomas Applegarth. Neither he nor any of his descendants figure in this story again. He was merely one of a thousand Americans of his time who were trying to fathom the significance of things: the explorers, the machinists, the agriculturists, the boatbuilders, the men and women who were starting universities, the newspaper editors, the ministers. They had one thing in common: somewhere, somehow, they had learned to read, and the demands of frontier life had encouraged them to think. From this yeasty combination would spring all the developments that would make America great, all the inventions and the radical new ways of doing things and the germinal ideas which would remake the world.
(Of course, this encouragement of creativity never applied to blacks. They were seldom allowed to read, or pursue mathematics, or discharge their inventive skills. The social loss incurred by our nation because of this arbitrary deprivation would be incalculable.)
In 1976, when a congregation of Bicentennial scholars sought to assess the contribution of that little band of unknown philosophers like Thomas Applegarth, they wrote:
A minor classic is that book which occasions little notice when published, and no stir among the buying public. It appears in one small edition, or maybe two if members of the author's family buy a few extra copies, and it dies a quick and natural death. But as the decades pass we find that everyone in the world who ought to have read this book has done so. It enjoys a subterranean life, as it were, kept alive by scholars and affectionate laymen of all nations. They whisper to one another, 'You ought to read this little book by So-and-so. It's a gem.' And after a hundred years we find that more people have read this little book by So-and-so than have read the popular success which was such a sensation in its day. What is more important, the people who do read the little book will be those who do the work of the world: who educate the young, or make national decisions, or endeavor to reach generalizations of their own.
A perfect example of the minor classic is Thomas Applegarth's _To the Ice Age_ , published in an edition of three hundred copies at Patamoke in 1813. Applegarth had no formal education, so far as we can ascertain. He was taught to read by Elizabeth Paxmore, a Quaker lady living near Patamoke. It was she who awakened his interest in scientific matters.
At the age of twenty-seven this Maryland farmer set out with some sixty dollars to explore the Susquehanna River, with a view to proving to his own satisfaction whether northern Pennsylvania could at one time have existed under a sheet of ice. His general observations were extraordinary for his age. He seems to have anticipated theories far in advance of his time and to have foreseen quite accurately what later exploration would prove. His specific conclusions, of course, have long since been superseded, a development which he predicted in a remarkable passage on the nature of discovery:
The speculative mind of man moves forward in great revolutions, like a point on the rim of a turning wheel, and if now the point is forward, it cannot remain so for long because the wheel, and the cart which it carries, must move ahead, and as they do so the point on the rim moves backward. This oscillating movement whose temporary position we can rarely discern, is what we call the process of civilization.
What Applegarth did do which has never been superseded was to view the Susquehanna riverine system, past and present, as an ecological whole. In this day this word had not been invented, but he invented the concept, and no team of contemporary engineers and environmentalists has ever had a clearer picture of the Susquehanna and its interrelationships. He has been an inspiration to generations of American scientists, and no one who has followed his sixty-dollar exploration to that final day when he stood at the veritable headwaters of the Susquehanna can forget his description of that moment:
I stood in that meadow with the sun reflecting back from the isolated drops of water and realized that for a river like the Susquehanna there could be no beginning. It was simply there, the indefinable river, now broad, now narrow, in this age turbulent, in that asleep, becoming a formidable stream and then a spacious bay and then the ocean itself, an unbroken chain with all parts so interrelated that it will exist forever, even during the next age of ice.
# The Duel
IN THE WAR OF 1812 AMERICAN FORCES WON EXHILARATING victories on the open ocean, in Canada, on Lake Erie and at New Orleans, but on the Chesapeake Bay they were nearly annihilated. A group of brave and cunning British sea captains roamed the bay, making it an English lake populated at times by as many as a thousand ships, small and great, eager to 'discipline the Americans and teach Jonathan his manners.'
Among the more impetuous leaders of the British effort in 1813 was a young man of twenty-eight, totally contemptuous of the former colonials and determined to avenge their victory over his father at the Battle of the Chesapeake in 1781. He was Sir Trevor Gatch, son, grandson and great-grandson of admirals.
His promotions had been meteoric, as might be expected of a young man with such a heritage. At the age of eleven he had gone to sea in his father's flagship. At fifteen he was a full-fledged lieutenant in command of a patrol boat, and at nineteen was awarded the rank of captain, an august one in the British navy. He was a slight man, not much over five feet three and considerably under nine stone. He had watery blond hair, somewhat feminine features and a high-pitched voice, but despite his trivial appearance, he had acquired by virtue of a ramrod posture and love of command a formidable military presence. He had a passion for discipline and his inclination to flog was notorious, but men were proud to serve with him because he was known to be a lucky captain whose bag of tricks rescued ships that would otherwise have been lost. His men said of him, 'I'd sail to hell with Clever Trevor,' and his promotion to admiral was assured.
His fiery temperament could best be explained by family tradition. The Gatches had come originally from Cornwall, 'the peninsula that wishes it were the sea,' and generations had sailed from Plymouth, attracting the favorable attention of kings. In the late 1500s Queen Elizabeth had wanted to establish in northern Ireland a congregation of families loyal to her Protestant cause, and first among her choice were the contentious Gatches. Secure in an Irish castle, honored by King James I with a baronetcy which would subsequently produce two lords, the Gatches had continued at sea, fighting in support of Marlborough off Flanders, at the capture of Jamaica and against Admiral de Grasse at the Battle of the Chesapeake.
In 1805 it had been expected that Sir Trevor would serve beside Nelson at Trafalgar, and he did, a twenty-year-old captain in charge of a ship-of-the-line with seventy-two guns. When his foremast and spars were shot away, he responded by grappling his ship to a wounded French battleship and pounding it to pieces from a range of inches. Now he was in the Chesapeake, thirsting for the sight of any American vessel, determined to be an admiral and a lord.
In late August 1813 he was anchored near what had once been James-town, Virginia, when a spy slipped across the bay with intelligence which caused him to leap in the air with excitement: 'The _Whisper_ was badly damaged in its last running battle and is now at the Paxmore Boatyard in Patamoke, seeking repairs.'
'The _Whisper!_ ' Gatch cried when he gained control of his enthusiasm. 'We'll find her and destroy her.'
Urging his rowers, he sped in his longboat to the admiral's flagship and there sought permission to raid the Choptank, destroy the _Whisper_ and hang her captain. The British command, having kept watch on this swift schooner for two generations, gave enthusiastic consent, and the admiral, fresh from having burned plantations throughout the tidewater, added his benediction: 'God speed you, Gatch, and have the band play when he dances on air.'
So Captain Gatch in the _Dartmoor_ , eight guns, accompanied by seven small craft, set out to chastise the Americans and sink the _Whisper_.
The spy who had informed the British of the _Whisper_ 's plight left tracks as he set out to cross the bay, and a clever waterman from the Wicomico River south of Patamoke deduced what he was about, and this second man came north to alert the Americans along the Choptank: 'The British fleet is being informed that the _Whisper_ is in the boatyard.'
This worrisome information was of vital importance to two quite different men. Captain Matthew Turlock, owner of the _Whisper_ , was a red-headed, red-bearded waterman of grizzled appearance and conduct. Forty-five years old, he had been fighting at sea since the age of seven, and with the passage of those years had developed a conviction that the principal responsibility of a sea captain was to save his ship; cargo, profit, schedules, even the lives of his men were subsidiary to the great command: 'Save your ship.' And he had done so under difficult circumstances and in varied weather. He had seen many ships lost, but never one under his command. Now, trapped on shore for overhauling, the _Whisper_ was in peril, and he intended saving her.
The other American troubled by the news was George Paxmore, the young Quaker now in charge of his family's boatyard, for he realized that if the British sailed into the Choptank and found the _Whisper_ on blocks in his shed, they would burn both it and the yard; as a boy he had often heard the story of how in 1781, two years before his birth, a British raiding party had come into the river and set aflame the Paxmore yards, and he did not wish a repetition.
So as soon as the loyal spy delivered his news, these two men sprang into action. 'First, we must get her off the ways,' Paxmore said. He was a spare young man, serious of purpose and extremely energetic. With a huge mallet he crept among the timbers, knocking away the lesser supports, then climbed into the sides of the slipway, directing the removal of the principal props.
Captain Turlock, meanwhile, had assembled his crew and had them ready to improvise a jury rig which would get the _Whisper_ moving through the water, even though her masts and spars were not yet in position. When the men were instructed, he joined Paxmore in knocking her free and watched with satisfaction as she slid into the harbor. As soon as she struck water, he directed twenty-eight of his men in two longboats to start rowing, and slowly they edged the beautiful hull out into the Choptank, where low, slapdash masts were erected, enabling the heavy schooner to move toward the marshes.
Now came the stratagem on which the success of this venture would depend. While the _Whisper_ slowly made her way downstream, George Paxmore led twoscore men into the woods, where their axes bit into the stout trunks of the loblollies. Satisfied that they would fell enough green trees, Paxmore hurried back to the boatyard, where he conscripted another two dozen men to haul sawed timbers to a rude warehouse standing some two hundred yards upriver from the main building. As soon as the lumber arrived, and ladders were provided, Paxmore jumped into a small sloop and sailed out into the river.
Up and down he went, following with careful eye the work of the two crews. Late in the afternoon the first group of men began arriving at the yard with their felled loblollies, and these they nailed against the face of the main shed, masking it and forming in its place a mock forest: It doesn't look real to me. We're going to need twice as many trees.
He then sailed closer to the warehouse, whose front was being made to look like a boat shed: That timber will fool nobody. Much too fresh.
So he sailed back into the harbor and all that night supervised the chopping down of additional trees, the smearing of watery paint upon the new boatyard, and when at dawn he went back onto the Choptank he was satisfied that he had done as good a job as possible: It may fool them. It may not. There's nothing more I can do.
But then he thought of something positively vital: Back to shore! Quick! Quick! And when the sloop reached the wharf he leaped ashore and ran to the real boatyard, shouting to the tree cutters, 'Go back and fetch any dried branches.' To the carpenters he cried, 'Help me with the turpentine,' and they were sweating like pigs in the hot August sun when sentinels cried, 'They're coming up the river.'
The British bombardment of Patamoke on August 24, 1813, was a savage affair. Captain Gatch had intended landing just below the town and investing it on foot, so that he could lay waste the infamous place at leisure, but a squadron of watermen who had been hunting rabbits all their lives—including some thirty Turlocks from the marshes—set up such a resolute fire that Sir Trevor had to confess, 'Damn me, they fight like Napoleon's best.' And to his dismay he had to stand well out in the river and bombard the place with long guns, because the riflemen on shore were beginning to pick off his sailors.
'Set fire to the whole town!' he shouted in his high voice, and flaming shot was directed at the principal buildings. This set no spectacular fires, so he directed his men to turn all their efforts to the boatyard, where he thought the _Whisper_ lay, and when red-hot cannonballs were thrown into that sprawling structure, a fire of great intensity erupted and the British sailors cheered, and Captain Gatch cried, 'Damn me, we've got 'em this time.' It was his opinion that the incendiaries had struck the turpentine and oil supplies being used to repair the _Whisper_.
As the tumbling flames rose and twisted in the air, destroying the shed and all within, Sir Trevor stood very erect and smiled grimly. To his aide he said, 'My father was humiliated at the Battle of the Chesapeake. And a generation of our lads have tried to pin down the _Whisper_ , but now, by gad, she's done for.' And at noon he ordered his flotilla to sail back down the Choptank, keeping well off the points, where the local militia was still troublesome.
'Shall we fire some farewell shots at the town?' the aide asked.
'That we shall!' Sir Trevor replied, and nineteen heavy shots were lobbed into the town, creating havoc while the British sailors cheered their victory.
But as they withdrew, the spy who had brought them here, knowing the tricky manners of Choptank people and especially the Turlocks, kept his eye fixed on the marsh, and while Captain Gatch was sharing a bottle of rum with his gunners, this man cried, 'Captain, there's the _Whisper!_ ' and Gatch choked.
It was the _Whisper_ , hidden among the marsh grasses where no Englishman would have spied her. But now, at two in the afternoon, Sir Trevor stood face to face with the ghost of the schooner he had sunk a few hours earlier.
'Man all guns!' he commanded, and the entire flotilla drew up in a line close to the marsh, for there was now no headland from which the militia could operate, and slowly the heavy cannon were wheeled into position.
The first salvo struck home, and planks were ripped from the decking. The next hit the port side of the anchored schooner in the area known as 'between sea and sky,' and the damage was tremendous.
On the fifth salvo an outlook shouted, 'She's taking water. Heavy list to port.'
And then, as the smaller English guns began to tear apart the stricken _Whisper_ , the lookout cried, 'There's a man aboard. Red hair, red beard.' And the gunfire centered on this big, dodging figure, and finally a cannonball struck him in the left arm, pinning it against a bulkhead, and the outlook could see blood spurting, and he cried, 'He's hit, sir. He's down.' And when Captain Gatch took the glass, he saw the schooner listing to port, the shattered wood, the smear of blood, and on the deck a severed hand.
'He's dead,' he announced to the crew, and forthwith he directed boats to be lowered and men to row ashore and burn the _Whisper_ , that it should never torment the seas again. And the fires were set, and the shattered mast and the severed hand were consumed, and vengeance was had for all the sins this sleek schooner had committed.
Next morning, as the victorious British squadron navigated the channel north of Devon Island, the spy said, 'That's where the Steeds live. They owned the _Whisper_ ,' and Captain Gatch cried, 'It's a far distance, but another prize to any man who hits it.' So the guns were fired and great cannonballs were lofted toward the house, but only two reached it. At the end of an arching flight, they lodged in the bricks at the top of the second story, near the roof, where they remained imbedded, having accomplished nothing.
The British bombardment of Patamoke affected three local citizens in contrasting ways. Paul Steed, grandson of Isham and great-nephew of Simon, now headed the vast plantation system, assisted by various older cousins of the Refuge Steeds, and at twenty-two he was young enough to have enjoyed the cannonading of Rosalind's Revenge. Indeed, during the barrage he had danced gleefully as the balls passed overhead, missing their target, and when two did finally hit, doing no real damage, he shouted in triumph, 'They're powerless! Look at them scuttle away.' And he had grabbed a musket and run to the northern shore, firing ineffectively at the flotilla. The pellets from his gun fell a good mile short of the English vessels, but later he would boast to the community, 'We repelled them.'
Paul was the first male Steed who had failed to obtain at least part of his schooling in Europe, usually at the great Catholic seat St. Omer's, but he had been educated more or less effectively at the new college at Princeton in New Jersey, where large numbers of southern gentlemen were now being trained. The strong Presbyterian bias of the college had had a deleterious effect upon the pure strain of Catholicism which the Steeds had hitherto cultivated, and young Paul's character had suffered thereby. He was not sure what he believed in; he lacked conviction on the simple basics and his vacillations expressed themselves in his reluctance to marry or assume real responsibility for the management of the plantation.
In fact, the Steeds of Devon were in danger of becoming just another tidewater family in grand decline, and Paul showed no capacity to reverse this doleful trend. The problem was an intellectual one; Paul and his generation were the first to miss the easy transport back and forth to Europe; family ships no longer left family wharves for regular and relatively quick passages to England and France; children could no longer simply run down to the waterside for a visit to London, and this lack of civilizing impact was damaging the fiber of the young. It was not that Europe offered a superior culture, or an education more subtle than what a bright lad could acquire at Yale or William and Mary; what Europe provided was the challenge of different ideas expressed in different languages by men reared in different traditions, and Paul Steed was a prime example of the damage done when these broad new ideas were no longer a part of a young man's education. From now on, the great families of the Chesapeake would become parochial.
But the young master had spirit. When the British were safely out of sight he brought ladders and inspected the two cannonballs lodged in the northern wall of his home, and when he saw that they were well wedged in among the bricks, he summoned slaves to plaster in the broken spaces so that the balls might be permanently housed where they had struck, and it became a ritual whenever guests stopped by the Revenge for Paul to take them upstairs to his bedroom and there show them the half-projecting missiles of the British raid.
'That devil Gatch was trying to kill me in bed,' he would say laughingly, 'but Clever Trevor miscalculated and fired too high. Three feet lower and the cannonballs would have come crashing through that window and killed me as I slept.' He never revealed that the had made this room his only after the attack.
George Paxmore was elated that the British had spent their gunfire on his deceptive warehouse, which burned with little loss, and none on his camouflaged boatyard, which survived untouched. In fact, he was so gratified that he paid each man who had cut trees or timbered the warehouse a bonus of one week's pay. 'Thee performed a miracle,' he told them. 'Without thy fine effort, Paxmore's would have been finished.'
But he also suffered a psychological defeat, because the _Dartmoor_ , which had done this damage to Patamoke and burned the _Whisper_ , was a Paxmore product. His grandfather, Levin Paxmore, the famous designer, had built it back in the 1770s, and on it had lavished his most attentive care; it was the last of the well-regarded _Whisper_ class that had performed so ably.
It had been christened the _Victory_ and had stumbled into a trap laid by Admiral Rodney at St. Eustatius. Captain Norman Steed had been killed by musket fire and the _Victory_ had been captured. Rechristened the _Dartmoor_ and fitted with six powerful guns, it had enjoyed years of distinction as a member of the British fleet and had helped defeat the French at Trafalgar.
For some years now it had been Captain Gatch's preferred vessel, for in it he could move with startling speed, rushing at larger ships and subduing them before they had a chance to maneuver their powerful guns to repel him. The _Dartmoor_ was by no means deficient in gunfire; recently Captain Gatch had mounted two additional heavy guns forward, making eight in all, and he had spent weeks training his gunners how best to use their weapons.
So during the hours the flotilla had stood off Patamoke, pumping in devastation, Paxmore was confused: he was embittered to see Captain Gatch trying to burn down his boatyard, but at the same time he appreciated the opportunity to study the _Dartmoor_ professionally, and he had to concede that many of the alterations Gatch had introduced had strengthened the ship: He's raised the timbered sides to give his gunners added protection. And moved his cannon to lend added weight forward. That keeps his bow down. Provides the gunners a more stable platform. But then his practiced eye spotted the danger: I do believe he's made her ride too low in the bow. He must watch. Finally he made a curious concession: In battle she must be formidable. Hesitation. But of course she wasn't built for battle.
He had argued himself into the corner that bedevils everyone charged with planning a ship or making a decision: each improvement carries with it the seed of its own self-destruction; a vital balance has been altered and the consequences cannot be foreseen. Yet change is essential, inescapable; the burden of the thinking man is to calculate the probable good against the possible bad and to decide whether the change will be worth the risk. Captain Gatch had gambled that weight forward would provide him with better gunnery, and the accuracy of his recent fire confirmed that decision.
At the height of the blaze and the screaming, George Paxmore concluded: I have in mind a vessel that will treble the _Whisper_ 's advantages but increase her risks only slightly. And he began to pray audibly that Captain Gatch's outlooks would miss the camouflaged boatyard, for he was eager to start construction, and when the flotilla withdrew he was not ashamed to fall on his knees and give thanks for his deliverance.
Then rumors began to flood Patamoke: 'The _Whisper_ was detected.' 'The spy ferreted her out as she hid among rushes.' 'Gunfire at shore range destroyed her.' 'In the end she was put to the torch.'
When Paxmore heard this he became so agitated that his wife asked, 'George, what's the matter? We've saved the yard,' and he replied, 'They sank the _Whisper_.'
'No!' she cried, running out to survey the river as if it might contain contrary evidence, but it was gray and unconcerned.
Then workmen came to confirm the report. 'Captain Turlock's killed and burned with his ship.' And there was lamenting, for all men who have worked a ship and known her qualities come to love her, and her untimely death is deplored. They began to recount her exploits, and Elizabeth Paxmore served the first of that year's cider, and George Paxmore blew his nose and bit his lip and said, 'Matthew Turlock was the best waterman this river ever produced,' and they began to reminisce about him.
But Matthew Turlock did not die in the burning of his ship. When his left hand was blown away, he was sickened by the pain and the sight of his own blood and came close to fainting. Perhaps this was his salvation, for as he lay on the deck, trying to stanch the flow, he became invisible to the British sharpshooters.
When he saw that the _Whisper_ could not be saved, he crawled to the landward side and dropped off into the marsh, still trying to wrap his shirttail about his wound, and when the shore party came to burn the vessel, he was hiding in the grasses. Later he staggered to fast ground, where two Turlock boys watching the fire discovered him. Others were summoned to drag him to safety, but he would not leave the shore, remaining there as his splendid schooner burned to the waterline.
The _Whisper!_ Proudest vessel in America's resistance to the king, the wandering command of his father, his own home from the age of seven, the scourge of corsair, the insolent taunter of English admirals, the swift, sleek progenitor. How pitiful to see her dying in the shallows of a marsh, gunned down without the power to respond. Salt tears wetted his beard and he fell unconscious, which allowed his kinsmen to carry him to safety.
Rachel Turlock, seventy-seven years old and leader of the clan, took one look at the bleeding stump and said, 'Hot shovel.' No doctor was close enough for summoning, and the wound was bleeding too profusely to be stanched by ordinary means. 'Hot shovel,' Rachel repeated, and a fire was spurred and a spade laid on till the iron was red-hot. Then five Turlock men held Matthew pinned to the earthen floor of the hut while Rachel supervised one of her grandsons as he took the spade from the embers, spit on it to test its incandescence, then applied it with great and pressing force against the jagged stump. Matthew, feeling the pain course through his body, fainted again, and when he revived saw that his stump had been smeared with bear grease and swathed in dirty cloths.
And as he felt the dull pain surging through his arm, a Turlock from Patamoke ran in with the harshest news of all: 'When they fired the last salvo they hit your home.'
'Was Merry hurt?'
'Killed.'
And in the fury of knowing that his wife, too, was lost, as well as his ship and his left hand, Matt Turlock swore to get revenge, and the duel began.
When the stump had hardened, Matt kept it wrapped in canvas, knocking it against tables and chairs now and then to toughen it, and after a while the scar became like bone and he judged that the time had come.
He went to the box in which he kept his treasure: the deed to his land, the quitclaim signed by the Rector of Wrentham and President Washington, the bag of European coins, all silver. It was this silver that he took to a craftsman in Patamoke with the instruction 'Melt 'em down,' and when enough silver quivered in the pot he explained the device he wanted.
'Make me a heavy cup—it's got to be heavy—to fit over this stump. Leave two holes for rawhide thongs... tied at my elbow.' When the cup was cast, he found it to be exactly what he wanted, but he had further requirements: 'On each of the compass points a star, on the flat side an eagle.' So with heavy hammers the workman fashioned four stars on the cuff, then added a handsome eagle on the flat side covering the end of the stump. When the rawhide thongs were attached at the holes, and tied above the elbow, he found himself equipped with a heavy weighted metal cup which could be lethal in a fight.
'Silverfist,' the sailors of Patamoke called him, but they did nothing to challenge him to use his heavy left arm. Matthew was forty-five when he lost his ship, a tall, rugged, red-bearded waterman with deep-set eyes hidden by shaggy red eyebrows. He had sailed the Chesapeake since birth; indeed, he had gone alone upon it at the age of four, and he intended to continue. What he needed now was a ship.
When he stopped at the office of George Paxmore he found the Quaker builder eager to replace the _Whisper_. Indeed, the young man was so distressed by the burning of his family's masterpiece that he seemed willing to proceed without a specific commission. But not quite. After he brought his enthusiasm under control he asked, 'Has thee money to pay for the it?' And he was relieved when Turlock said, 'Enough.'
Paxmore did not want to hear any specifications from the captain; his only desire was to build a ship which would excel, but as he grudgingly divulged his plans he did occasionally stop to ask, 'Does thee understand what I'm after?'
Surprisingly, Turlock was content to let him have his way, for he had learned from his father that the _Whisper_ 's applauded merit lay one fourth in what Turlock did with her, and three fourths in what Levin Paxmore had built into her. 'All I want,' he told young Paxmore, 'is the best your family ever built.'
'That's what thee'll get, but the cost will not be slight,' and he produced a paper on which he had figured to the last trunnel. 'It totals $2,863.47.'
'What dimensions?' Turlock asked.
'Eighty-two feet nine inches length, twenty-three feet six inches breadth. Draws ten-six in the bow, fourteen-eight in the stern.'
'Good. I do not want it bow-heavy.'
'Nor I,' said Paxmore. Then he waited for a confirmation, but instead of speaking, Matt Turlock drew from his waist a canvas bag laden with silver coins and began to count, pushing them into piles with his silver-tipped left hand. When the sum amounted to a thousand dollars American, he said, 'Build it. I have the balance.' And he disappeared.
In early 1814, when it was finished, Paxmore said, 'This one will sail in any breeze, but with a quartering wind she'll clip along,' from which his men called her their clipper, and it was this name that Paxmore painted on her transom. But when Turlock saw it he said firmly, 'I name my own ship,' and it was repainted the _Ariel_ : 'The spirit of the sea. This one lives close to the heart of oceans.'
He recruited a knowing crew of thirty-four and told them one cold January day, 'We'll try her on the Choptank,' but when he had her moving, he nosed her into the Chesapeake, then edged her down the eastern margin of the bay far from the dozing British ships of war, and when she reached Cape Henry he startled the men by sailing into the broad Atlantic, shouting, 'Look at how she takes the waves!'
It was three months before he returned to the bay, bringing with him a crew hardened for war. He brought no booty; the _Ariel_ had captured two small English merchantmen but had got little from them, just enough to feed the crew. At Patamoke he asked Paxmore to make a few alterations, picked up a commission from Paul Steed, and set forth again on his quest.
He was moving briskly down the bay when the lookout called, 'Two British craft three points off starboard,' and when Matt took the glass his breath caught in his throat, for he saw that the lead ship was the _Dartmoor_ , flagship of his mortal enemy, Captain Gatch. 'He has eight guns to our two,' he cried to his men. 'And maybe two or three more on the little ship trailing aft. But we can do it.'
Allowing his sailors no time to calculate what this enormous advantage might mean to Gatch, Matt gave one swift glance at his chart and satisfied himself that the battle could be confined to that broad stretch of bay between the York River on the west and Cape Charles on the east, and he was pleased that he would not have to worry about British support ships rushing in from the James River, for its mouth lay well to the south. Fate had given him room, a brisk wind off the western shore and a trusted crew. He asked no more.
Crisply he told his men, 'We'll cut that one out and sink her,' and he indicated the trailing sloop with the four guns. Having given this brief command, he swung the _Ariel_ onto a starboard tack that would carry him between the two British vessels, and well aft of the more dangerous one in the lead. He calculated that he would dispose of the sloop before Captain Gatch in the _Dartmoor_ could swing about and bring his guns to bear.
Now the _Ariel_ leaped through the water, her low decks awash, her tall masts straining under the weight of sail, and so expertly did the clipper move that Turlock succeeded in the first part of his plan: his two guns punished the lesser vessel and stopped her in the water, whereupon he swung about and bore down upon her. Nine Choptank men swarmed aboard, scuffled, killed when necessary and set the ship ablaze.
There was no way to recover them without stopping dead in the water and allowing the _Dartmoor_ to fire at will, so Turlock waved to his men and watched approvingly as they launched rowboats. They were out of the fight.
When Captain Gatch swung the _Dartmoor_ about, intending to run down the impudent American ship, he saw with amazement that it was captained by a man he thought he had killed long since—'Good God! It's Turlock!' Spotting immediately that Turlock had only two guns while the _Dartmoor_ carried eight, he shouted, 'That's the new thing they call the clipper. We sink her now!'
Every advantage lay with Gatch. By swinging north he had acquired the weather gauge; he had eight well-trained gunners and an eager crew who believed in his invincibility. What was more important, at the bombardment of Patamoke he had outsmarted Turlock and felt confident he could do so again. He could not lose and told his men so.
Before Turlock could untangle himself from his engagement with the first British vessel Captain Gatch bore down on him from the north, sails tightly controlled and the four port guns exactly trained. The pass was a masterpiece of seamanship, and Gatch's gunners, secure on their steady platform, devastated the _Ariel_ 's decks; they did not, however, damage either mast, so that Turlock had an opportunity to head eastward and prepare himself for the next assault. With some dismay he noted that neither of his gunners had even fired at the British ship during the first sally. He did not propose to have this happen again; he would choose the time and condition of the next contact.
Accordingly, he danced about in the eastern portion of the bay, keeping careful eye on the _Dartmoor_ but also watching with satisfaction as the British sloop burned to the waterline: You've lost half your command, Gatch. Now the other half.
As he waited for an opportunity that would permit him to keep the _Dartmoor_ to port, he ordered his gunners to swing their swivels to that side and warned, 'This time we must hurt them.' To his sailors he said, 'We'll give them full musket fire.'
Obedient to his plan, the _Ariel_ moved with great speed on a starboard tack, almost throwing itself across the path of Gatch's schooner, and as it passed, it delivered a withering fire from all kinds of weapons. One cannonball glanced off the foremast, causing some of the forward canvas to lose wind; muskets ripped across the deck. It had been a notable exchange and no American sailors had been lost.
At this point it would have been prudent for Turlock to retire; he had hurt his enemy, and there was no reasonable hope that in a prolonged battle his lightly armed clipper could continue to rake the heavier _Dartmoor_. But Turlock was not thinking prudently; he was so bent upon revenge that safe escape was no part of his plan. 'Shall we finish them off?' he cried to his men, and they shouted their assent. So he altered course, moved down along the west coast of the bay and proposed to come at the _Dartmoor_ on a rushing port tack, with a quartering wind.
But Gatch discerned the plan and conceded that for the moment, with his foremast scarred, he had the slower vessel, so he prepared to pass starboard-to-starboard and to rake the insolent American foe with a hail of fire not to be forgotten. Turlock's men quickly understood the tactic and realized that all depended upon their successful passage of this fiery deluge. They wheeled their two guns into maximum position and lined the starboard bulwark with muskets of every description. This would be a test of wills.
It was a test of captains, too. Gatch had the advantage of fire superiority; Turlock had the wind, the speed, the taste of partial victory. And each had the support of his crew, the English knowing that Clever Trevor was a lucky leader, the Americans relying as they had always done on the courage of Silverfist.
How beautiful the two Paxmore schooners were as they maneuvered through the Chesapeake, the old _Dartmoor_ as fine as the bay had produced, the new _Ariel_ a sprite foretelling a future when clippers of this design would command the seas from China to Murmansk. They sped across the bay like those bugs of summer which dance upon the water, their miraculous feet never breaking the surface. Their masts were raked, their lines severely clean; they leaped forward as if eager for a test of strength, and during one fearful moment Gatch thought: My God? Does he intend to ram? He judged the American capable of any folly.
But at the last moment Matt Turlock veered to bring his starboard across the path of the _Dartmoor_ , and the firing began. The American gunners were good, and they were resolute, killing two English sailors; but the heavy guns of the _Dartmoor_ were terrifying, and they ripped the _Ariel_.
Wood shattered. Men were thrown helter-skelter. The clipper seemed to shiver, and a yard came crashing down. This time the English fire had been irresistible, and the fragile _Ariel_ was doomed.
That is, she would have been doomed if Turlock had been stupid enough to wait for a third test of arms. He was not. A quick survey satisfied him that she had been sorely damaged and that on any further runs her advantages of speed and maneuverability would be lost. Without hesitation he fled.
'Now we have her!' Gatch shouted as his men cheered. And he prepared to chase the wounded _Ariel_ to her hiding place in the Choptank and destroy her as he had done her predecessor.
But it was not Captain Turlock's intention to hide anywhere. Without reflecting on where or how he would refit, he limped toward the entrance to the bay, trusting as his father would have done forty years earlier that somewhere in that great ocean the _Ariel_ would find refuge. Wounded, her spars in disarray, her decks cluttered with debris, the ship crept out into the open ocean, where not even a swift _Dartmoor_ could catch her and where she could heal herself.
'She'll sink out there,' Sir Trevor prophesied as he watched her go, but he did not believe his own prediction; he suspected that somehow Matt Turlock would mend that sleek clipper and that somewhere on the oceans of the world the two vessels would meet again. Nevertheless, when he reported the battle to the Admiralty he claimed a victory. 'True, we lost one small sloop of no consequence, but the _Ariel_ we punished, and this is important, for the Americans had begun to place great store in their new clipper. We drove her from the seas.' He now had two victories over Captain Turlock and no defeats, and when his men rejoined Admiral Cockburn's fleet for the attack on Washington, they boasted, 'Clever Trevor knows how to handle Americans. He smashes 'em.'
Of all the places in the Atlantic to which Matt Turlock might have gone to mend his ship, he chose the least likely. He sailed to St. Eustatius, that insignificant Dutch island in the north Caribbean. No longer was it an entrepôt of swarming wealth; one of the peace treaties that periodically swept Europe had returned the island to the Dutch and it was once more what it had been down the centuries: a sleepy, unimportant little harbor with two or three shops that did a pitiful business. Of course, along the shore there still stood those immense warehouses which for a few exciting years in the 1770s had housed the wealth of the world, but now they were empty and mice gnawed their timbers.
The few artisans on hand were glad to find work and in a desultory way repaired the _Ariel_ , so that by the end of three weeks she was as stout as ever, but what to do with her became a problem. She could not sail back to the Chesapeake, for in mid-1814 that body of water became so infested with British battleships that no American craft could move, and that condition would prevail for more than a year. Other logical ports were blockaded, so the tedious business began of drifting back and forth across the ocean, hoping for profitable trade.
Captain Turlock made one successful run from the French island of Martinique to the Spanish port of Veracruz in Mexico, and there he loaded timber intended for Halifax, but a British gunboat had identified him as American and driven him from shore. He disposed of the untrimmed logs far across the sea in Portugal, but was able to find no cargo there destined for any port that he could enter. With a swift clipper and a crew of thirty-four to feed, he was being driven from the seas.
So one day as he was drifting aimlessly across the Atlantic he recalled his final trip in the _Whisper:_ he had deposited a cargo of meat at Havana and was about to quit the port when a ship chandler rowed out to advise him that three slaves were waiting to be smuggled to Virginia, and that a substantial freight charge would be paid if he delivered them. He did so, and the money had added substantially to his profit, so now he began casually inquiring about the slave trade, and learned the basic principles: 'Fill your ship with any kind of trading goods, run to Africa, pick the slaves out of the barracoons, ferry them to Brazil, take rum and sugar to any commercial port—and repeat the process.'
Blockaded by the British from honest trading, he was tempted by the easy money to be made in Africa but was restrained from sailing there by his awareness of the law. Since 1792 American ship captains had been forbidden to import slaves into the new nation and were indicted for piracy if they tried. In 1808 all importation, regardless of what nation owned the vessel, was outlawed, and Maryland, with her own surplus of slaves, even forbade their purchase from neighboring states like Virginia.
And yet the trade continued. Daring captains could snatch enormous profits by sneaking to Africa, unloading their cargoes in Cuba or Brazil, or even smuggling prime hands to secret landing spots in the swamps of Georgia. It was this nefarious trade that Matt Turlock decided to enter.
'Not permanently,' he assured his mate, Mr. Goodbarn, as they headed for Africa. 'Just a trip now and then till peace returns.' And when they reached the Portuguese harbor of Luanda in Angola he explained to the local factors, 'I'm not a slaver. Just this one trip to Brazil,' and a Senhor Gonçalves said, 'Good! I have two hundred and sixteen awaiting passage.'
But when Gonçalves inspected the bare structure of the _Ariel_ 's holds, he laughed. 'If you propose to carry slaves, you've got to have proper pens.' He hired a team of Portuguese carpenters familiar with this procedure, and they swarmed into the bowels of the ship, installing massive barricades, and one afternoon, as the sound of hammers reverberated through the ship, Turlock had a premonition: They're nailing down my destiny. He realized that once his ship was fitted for the slave trade, the impetus to continue would become irresistible: You don't refurbish your entire hold for one trip. But regardless of the money involved, he swore: Once this war ends, out come those partitions. We go back to honest cargo.
When the job was done, Senhor Gonçalves invited him below to approve what the carpenters had achieved, and he was shaken by the gloomy massiveness of the bulwarks, the cramped space allotted to the slaves. Where the foremast came through the deck to seat itself in the keelson, a stout wall had been built. Where the mainmast came through, a vertical grating had been erected, and a short distance aft of that, another wall terminated the holding area. But what astonished Turlock was that between the bottom of the hold and the deck, a whole new floor had been laid, and the heights of the ceilings were unbelievable—'In the lower hold it's got to be less than four feet.' ('Just under,' Gonçalves said.) And here in the upper it can't be more than four-eight.' ('Four-ten,' Gonçalves said proudly, showing Matt that a man could more or less stand erect if he kept his belly bent.)
'What you have,' he continued, 'is four compartments. Two above, two below. Room for four hundred sixty slaves in all. You throw the most powerful ones, the troublemakers, down there. The others you keep up here.'
Turlock felt strangled, as if he had constructed a jail for himself; he was aghast at what these carpenters had done to his ship. He wanted to quit the slave trade right there, but Senhor Gonçalves said reassuringly, 'Captain, they had to make two layers so you could load more slaves. That's where the profit is. And they had to make them solid. You must remember that for a hundred and fifteen days strong black men will stand cursing behind those bars, trying every trick to break them down and mutiny your ship. In this trade we've learned one thing. If they do break loose—and sooner or later they'll break even these bars—the only thing to do is shoot them... fast.'
When the slaves were herded onto his ship, and thrown below into the four compartments, Turlock suffered additional revulsion, thinking that no proud waterman from the Choptank would accept such indignity; within the first minutes there would be riot. But these aren't watermen, he rationalized, and when the hatches were battened down and the holds sealed except for small openings into which food and water would be delivered, he raised anchor and set sail for the Brazilian port of Belém, some distance east of the Amazon. When he landed there in January 1815 the Portuguese plantation owners were delighted to get the slaves and assured him that his profits would be prodigious, but as often happened in such cases, payment was delayed, and he was forced to lay over.
The more he saw of this steaming tropical town and its relationship to the Amazon, the more he liked it. He began to frequent a tavern called Infierno—its door was guarded by two devils carved in ebony, and they seemed to wink at him when he entered, as if they were a foretaste of what slavers could expect in afterlife—and there he heard fantastic stories about the Amazon: 'Thirty percent of all the water that enters the oceans of the world comes from here. Sixty miles out at sea the water is still fresh. Throw down your buckets and drink. No man has ever gone to the end of the river. It has birds and animals that would stupefy you.'
He was listening to such a monologue when an English sailor made an unbelievable statement: 'Our men marched to Washington, burned the city and captured the whole American government. The United States is no more.' When Turlock shouted his disbelief, the sailor said, 'Ships like yours will be driven from the sea. They're hanging captains like you... right now.'
Even after he had collected his money, Turlock sat day after day in the Infierno, seeking information. He could not believe that a nation so promising could have collapsed, but before he departed on his third voyage to Africa a French officer arrived at Belém with confirming news: 'You Americans must learn never to challenge England without our help. Now you've lost everything.'
For the first time in his life Turlock was bewildered. He needed the easy money provided by the slave trade, but he also needed information about home. He felt that if America had succumbed to the British he ought to be on hand to aid the new system, whatever it was to be. He knew that the wounded country would need practiced men and sturdy ships to develop its commercial interests.
So in spite of attractive commissions from Brazilian slave dealers, he sailed not to Africa but to the Chesapeake. He arrived there in April 1815, to find no English warships on patrol, no impediment at the capes. Gingerly he sailed into the bay, hailing the first ship he saw. He and the other captain spoke each other.
'Defeated? Hell, no! We drove the redcoats back to London.'
'I was told that Washington was burned.'
'It was, and not a thing was lost. We'll build it better than before.'
'England is not ruling us?'
'Nor ever will.'
The ships passed. Turlock stood by the railing, the speaking-trumpet in his right hand, his silver fist hammering rhythmically at the wood.
When he reached Patamoke he found that he was regarded as a hero, the man who had kept the American flag aloft. He did not tell his neighbors of his second defeat by Captain Gatch nor of his ignominy as a slaver. He was so relieved that America was still free that he accepted the plaudits.
In triumph he became a moody man, as effective at forty-seven as he would ever be. But he had no wife, no home, really, no job; and he could never erase from his mind those drifting months on the Atlantic when he had not even a port he could claim his own. He thought: I'll stop at Patamoke for a while—give the _Ariel_ a good mending. Then something'll turn up.
In the meantime there was considerable excitement on Devon Island, and he found himself sailing down there more and more.
As soon as the war ended, Penelope Steed Grimes had informed her London circle that she was taking her pretty daughter Susan to Maryland, in the Americas, to be married. For some years she had been in communication with her distant family, the Steeds of Devon, and had known of her father's death. Simon Steed had been well regarded by Fithians, her London family, for he had been generous in supporting her. When she married Captain Grimes, Simon had sent five thousand pounds, a tremendous sum which had helped her husband buy a colonelcy in a good regiment. He had died fighting Napoleon, but by then Simon was dead, too.
Her correspondent at Devon had been Isham Steed, her grandfather's brother, a delightful old man who had visited London in 1794 to attend Penelope's wedding to Captain Grimes; he had enchanted the community as a witty, well-educated gentleman who could laugh at American pretensions. He liked Penelope and through the years had kept her informed about the Steed half of her heritage.
He had written, proposing that young Susan come to America and marry his grandson Paul. At first the idea had seemed preposterous to Penelope. 'They're cousins, in a manner of speaking. And Paul's gone to some silly school in America where he's learned nothing, I'm sure.' She rambled on, as she often did, but in the end began to take seriously her great-uncle's suggestion.
Fithians assured her that the Steeds were one of the soundest families in America, and that if rumor could be trusted, Simon had doubled his fortune in the rebellion. The family was stable, as witness Uncle Isham, and now that peace had settled over the area, life in Maryland could be quite acceptable. A portrait painter had shipped to London a likeness of young Paul, and when everything was added up, a Steed-Grimes marriage seemed practical, despite the consanguinity.
So in the summer of 1816 Penelope Grimes, lively widow of forty-one, took passage on one of the Steed ships accompanied by her daughter Susan, aged twenty, and after a crossing as placid as the good relations now existing between England and America, the ship dropped anchor at Devon. Susan, standing at the rail, saw with delight that Rosalind's Revenge was as handsome a plantation home as she had been promised. 'It's protected by a hundred trees! It's a splendid place!' Her musical voice carried over the water, and as she came toward him, Paul was even more charmed by her dainty style, the beauty of her features.
Days of exploration and enchantment followed, with Penelope as pleased as her daughter by the unexpected suavity of Devon. 'Really, it could be transplanted right into rural England and no one could detect the difference. Susan, we've come to a little paradise.'
Both women were fascinated by the idea of literally owning servants who could be told what to do without fear of their departing in a huff. But even so, when old Isham and young Paul appeared one day leading a shy black girl of thirteen, neither of the English visitors was quite prepared when faced with the actuality of slavery.
Shoving the little girl forward, barefoot and dressed only in a slip, Paul said, with obvious pride, 'She's yours, Susan. Name's Eden.'
'Eden what?'
'Just Eden. Slaves don't have names,' and Isham added, 'She sews beautifully. And she's young enough to train in the ways you desire.' Eden, her smooth and beautifully composed features betraying no sign of understanding, stood silent as the Grimes women inspected her.
'She's a gem!' Penny said, but her daughter was confused as to what one did with a slave. 'How do I...'
'You own her. She sleeps outside your door,' Paul explained. 'She does whatever you wish. Because she belongs to you.' Turning to the black girl, he said abruptly, 'Back to the kitchen,' and the girl vanished.
'Paul!' Susan said when the girl was gone. 'What a sweet gift! And the glorious parties you've been having.'
'There's to be more,' he assured her, and that night Susan met for the first time some of the Steed captains. Among them was Matthew Turlock, not at present working for the Steeds but a figure of some importance in the community.
'This is our local hero,' Paul said with a faint touch of amusement. 'He fought the British.'
'I'm sure he fought well,' Penelope said as she took his right hand. 'I'm told some of your seamen were quite heroic.'
'Yes,' Susan burbled. 'My cousin's married to Sir Trevor Gatch and he told us...'
At the mention of Gatch's name Captain Turlock stiffened. 'He was a formidable enemy,' he said. 'He's the one who fired the cannon at this house.'
'This house?' Penelope said in disbelief. 'Did the war reach here?'
'It did,' Turlock said.
'You must see what your friend Sir Trevor did to us,' Paul cried, his voice rising rather higher than he had intended, and with a lamp he led the way upstairs to his room, where the two cannonballs were lodged in the wall near his bed. 'Had Captain Gatch lowered his sights three feet, I'd have been killed.'
'Oh, look at those dreadful things,' Susan cried. 'Coming right into the room. Could I see them?'
She looked about for a chair to stand on, but then turned abruptly to Captain Turlock and said, 'Lift me up. I must see them,' and before anyone could protest, she had placed herself in front of the bearded waterman and drawn his arms about her. With a heave he projected her toward the ceiling, holding her aloft without difficulty, and as she traced the outline of the iron balls she cried, 'Oh, Paul! You could indeed have been killed.'
When Captain Turlock put her down he turned to Mrs. Grimes and apologized. 'I would not have presumed...'
'It's nothing,' Penelope said. 'Susan does as she wishes, and no harm.'
'We're mightily pleased that she's to live among us,' he said gallantly, and he was so polite, so rough and authentic, that Mrs. Grimes began to take an interest in him; all during that first dinner she talked principally to him, learning of his years at sea and of the adventures to which Paul had alluded. On their third dinner together she asked some really personal questions, but she was hardly prepared for the astonishing fact he revealed: 'I've never forgotten you, Mrs. Grimes. When you left Devon for your exile in London...'
'I hardly call it an exile, Captain.'
'You quit your home. That's exile.'
'I found a new home. That's good sense. But when did you and I ever meet?'
'When you left for London, you sailed on my father's ship. And I sailed too. And it was my job to care for you.' He paused, recalling those exciting days when he and America were fledglings and everything was new. 'I kept you in a basket, forward, and fed you and took you to the women when you cried.' He said this so simply, and with such remembered affection, that Mrs. Grimes was moved. 'We called you Penny then. I was eight.'
'And so much would happen to us both,' she said impulsively. 'How did you lose your hand?'
'Captain Gatch shot it off. The day he laid those eggs in the wall upstairs.'
She laughed at his expression, then asked, 'So you've been fighting the English all your life?'
'Not viciously,' he said. 'It was long drawn out... year after year we...'
'But you hate Captain Gatch viciously, don't you?'
'I do. That war never ends.'
He took her about the bay, pointing out the plantations on Dividing Creek owned by the other branches of the Steed family, and then sailed her to Patamoke, where he showed her his clipper, the _Ariel_ , on blocks at the Paxmore Boatyard. 'Look at those clean lines. They move through the sea the way a heron moves through air.'
'And what's a heron?'
He started to explain when George Paxmore, tall and grave of mien, his flat hat perched on his head, came from the boatyard with a problem that obviously was serious. 'I must talk with thee, Matthew.'
'When I've finished showing Mrs. Grimes the river,' Turlock said. 'Her daughter's to be the new mistress at Devon.'
'Fortunate girl,' Paxmore said, not removing his hat or extending his hand. 'You'll come back?'
'I will.'
'What's a heron?' Penelope asked again when the solemn Quaker had left.
'Have you never seen a marsh?'
'No, but I've been told you live in one. I should very much like to see it.'
So on the sail back to Devon he detoured at Turlock's Creek and led the sloop into those narrow and exciting waters where the sparta grass grew eight feet high, creating a world of mystery, and as they sailed silently in this wonderland a heron flew past, legs dangling far behind the tail feathers, and Matthew said, 'There he goes, the great fisherman. Our Indians called him Fishing-long-legs.'
'Did you have Indians... in the old days?'
'We have Indians now... in the new days.'
'What do you mean?'
'I'm part Indian. Three times members of my family—far back, of course.'
'You're part Indian!' She was fascinated by this exotic information and intended advising her daughter of it as soon as she got back to Devon, but before this could happen, there was a detour.
'I used to live up there,' Matthew said, indicating the log cabin which Turlocks had occupied for two centuries.
'I'd love to see it. Can we walk?'
'If you don't prize your shoes.'
'I don't!' And she was out of the sloop before he was, running up the path to the rambling house in the woods.
A Turlock woman of indeterminable character appeared as the voices drew close to her cabin, and two children kept behind her skirts. 'Oh, it's you, Matt,' she said. 'What brings you here?'
'This is Mrs. Grimes. Her daughter is marrying Paul Steed.'
'Lucky girl.'
'Mrs. Grimes, this is one of my cousins, name of Bertha.'
Penelope tried to say something gracious, but the impact of the cabin and its occupants was too powerful. This was America, the America cartooned by British wits, and it repelled her. 'I think we'd better go back.'
'You wanna see inside?' Bertha asked, kicking open the door.
'No, thank you. They're expecting us.' And she retreated.
This incident should have prepared Turlock for what happened. At Mrs. Grimes' insistence he had stayed at Devon three days, during which he had an opportunity to watch both Penelope and her daughter more carefully. Young Susan was still an unformed child; with a good husband she might become a strong woman; with an essentially weak man like Paul Steed she would probably relax and become quite ordinary. But at twenty she was beautiful and alert. He wished her well.
Penelope was a mature woman endowed with that easy charm which comes from living on four thousand pounds a year. Her hair was neat; her teeth were good; her skin was not ravaged; and she was semi-educated. Above all, she was responsive, eager for new adventures in this new world. If some of it, like the Turlock cabin, repelled her, she could still see the merit of life along the Choptank and understand the forces that had framed the various Steed captains. None was more impressive than Matthew Turlock, and by various actions she let him know she thought so.
Therefore, at the conclusion of the third day the captain went to his room, washed carefully, inspected his nails and presented himself to Mrs. Grimes. He spoke simply. 'I've been thinking that you might consider remaining in America... might even have thought of... Well, the _Ariel_ does belong to me... I've been careful with my money...'
Mrs. Grimes broke into a nervous but not disrespectful laugh. 'Is this a proposal, Captain Turlock?'
'It is.'
As a lady of breeding she tried to restrain her nervous laugh, but it broke through as an insulting giggle. 'Me? Live in Maryland? For the rest of my life?' She controlled herself, then placed her hand on his arm, saying, almost in a whisper, 'I'm a Londoner, Captain.' Then she added something which under more relaxed circumstances she never would have said: 'Can you picture me in a cabin? With Bertha?'
'I do not live in a cabin now,' he said gravely, keeping his silver fist behind him, lest that, too, offend.
'Dear Captain Turlock,' she began, but then the nervous giggle returned. She felt ashamed, tried twice to compose herself, then rose and kissed him on the cheek. 'It's quite impossible... Indians... in London...' With a flutter of her hand she indicated that he should go, and with a deep bow he did.
As soon as he left she informed the Steeds that she would be sailing for London immediately. 'I've behaved poorly, and I'm ashamed of myself.'
'Did that Turlock embarrass you?' Paul Steed asked menacingly, as if he might conceivably run after the captain and thrash him.
'No. He paid me the honor of proposing.'
'Proposing?' When the household was informed of this gaucherie the laughter was general, except for Susan, who said, 'I'd love to have him for my daddy. That great silver fist hammering on the table, laying down the law.'
'He's a waterman,' Paul said, and the packing began, but before Mrs. Grimes could sail, old Isham Steed died, and after his funeral, when his papers were inspected lest promissory notes of value be overlooked, Paul came upon a copy of his letter to President Jefferson, and when this was circulated within the family, Mrs. Grimes gained a better picture of the Indians her daughter's new family had known in previous centuries:
Devon Island, Mind.
13 July 1803
Dear Mr. President,
Immediately upon receipt of your request that I send you a report on the Choptank tribe I assembled an impromptu commission consisting of the best informed citizens of this area to inquire into the matters you raised. None of us is an expert, and none speaks the Indian language, but we and our forebears have lived with this tribe for generations, so although our information is not scientifically precise, it is the best available. With that apologia I proceed.
At this date we know of only one Choptank Indian surviving on this planet. She is Mrs. Molly Muskrat, aged 85 or thereabouts, infirm of body but tantalizingly clear of mind. She lives on 16 acres of moderately good land on the left bank of the Choptank River across from our capital city of Patamoke. She is, so far as we can ascertain, a full-blooded Choptank, the daughter of a well known workman in these parts and the descendant of chiefly families. She has most of her teeth, a remarkably full head of hair, and a lively interest in things. She was delighted to talk with us, for she is aware that she is the last of her people. Her age is of course uncertain, but events which she saw personally occurred about 80 years ago, so we are not hesitant to give her age as about 85.
Legend puts the apex of Choptank society in the first decade of the 17th Century, when the tribe numbered some 260 souls, 140 living in a village on the site of the present-day Patamoke, and 120 farther upriver close to where Denton now stands. They were inferior in number, power and importance to the southerly Nanticokes, and sharply so to the tribes on the western shore of the bay.
A persistent tradition among the Choptanks claimed that the great man in their history was one Pentaquod, a mythical figure supposed to have reached them from the north. Mrs. Muskrat believes him to have been a Susquehannock, but this seems unlikely, for Captain Smith encountered a real werowance named Pintakood, and doubtless she has the two names confused.
They were a peaceful tribe and never warred against the whites. Indeed, the highlight of their tribal history came in 1698 when the Maryland government accused them of having killed a white farmer in an argument over a cow. Although it was later proved without question that the affray had involved Nanticokes, not Choptanks, a tribal council was held and the werowance of that day told his people, 'It is obligatory that someone offer himself as the perpetrator of this crime and allow himself to be hanged, so that the rest of us can have peace.' Two young men stepped forward, got in their canoes, paddled down river and surrendered themselves voluntarily to be hanged.
They adjusted poorly to civilization. Originally possessing some of the finest land in Maryland, they were constantly pushed back until our ancestors had to confine them in pitiful enclaves, where they lingered. A man named Turlock, whose voluminous family had infusions of Choptank blood at three different periods in history, summarizes the local understanding of what white men did to this tribe: 'We married some, we shot some, the rest we starved.'
Inch by inch they lost their lands, for they never comprehended what leases or mortgages or sales implied, and when they were located near their river, an ugly situation developed. White men told them to fence their fields the way decent farmers always did, but when the Indians complied, other farmers would knock down the fences so their cattle could graze, and then sometimes the infuriated Indians would shoot the invading cow, and endless difficulties would ensue. There was no possibility that white men and Indians could live side by side.
They were not killed off in war, for there was never a Choptank war. They simply lost their desire to live. Their families grew smaller. Men married later and later, for they had no hunting grounds. And in the end only a few old women survived. They seemed to adjust better than the men. And now there is only Mrs. Muskrat.
Reflecting on the vicissitudes that have overtaken her people, she told us, 'No matter how poor the land you gave us, there was always someone who wanted it.' She showed us seven different offers to buy her 16 acres, but said, 'I won't sell. I shall die on the banks of my river.'
In our appendix we give a list of all the Choptank words that Mrs. Muskrat could recall, plus some that have entered into our English language. She told us that the word _Choptank_ meant _where the water flows back strongly_ , but she could explain nothing, and I would point out that while there is a tide at Patamoke, it is not a considerable one. We have no other guess as to the etymology.
And now without being familiar or presuming upon our friendship, I must confess, Tom, that all of us who studied law with you under George Wythe while at William and Mary are proud of your accomplishments, and if fate decrees you serve a second term as our President, an eventuality which seems probable, we are certain that you will discharge your duties then as capably as you do now.
Your debating partner,
Isham Steed
_Postscriptum_. I purchased from Amsterdam the telescope you recommended and have had hours of enjoyment exploring the heavens, as you predicted I would.
If Matt Turlock was disgruntled when he sailed away from Penelope Grimes, her nervous laughter rankling in his memory, he was enraged when he left George Paxmore. He had sailed directly to the boatyard to inspect repairs to the _Ariel_ , but found the clipper back in the water without having been touched.
'What's wrong?' he asked gruffly.
'Everything,' Paxmore said, and when he showed no signs of further explanation, Matt grabbed him harshly and asked, 'Where's the carpenters?'
'They're not working. They won't be working.'
'And why not?'
'Because they went below, Matt. We all went below.'
'And what happened below?'
Paxmore called one of his workmen, a Quaker mechanic of noted skill and piety. 'Tell Captain Turlock what thee saw, Lippincott.'
'I saw the cramped hold of a slave ship,' Lippincott said. He stared defiantly at the red-headed captain and walked away.
'Matthew, thee's become a slaver.' Before Turlock could respond, Paxmore said with deep resentment, 'Thee took the finest clipper I ever built...'
'And what are we going to do about it?' Turlock asked as if issuing a challenge.
'I have this proposal, Matthew. If thee will allow my men to board thy clipper and tear out those slave quarters, we'll do the work for nothing and then make the other repairs. If thee refuses to quit the slave trade, we'll never touch our vessel again, even if she were sinking of the worm.'
Twice rejected in as many days was too much for Turlock. Shoving Paxmore aside, he growled, 'I'll have her mended by carpenters of courage—who know what the world is and how damned difficult it is to find a cargo and an open port.'
But Paxmore would not be so easily repulsed. Returning to where Turlock stood glowering at the _Ariel_ , he said quietly, 'Matthew, I would to pray with thee. And so would Elizabeth. Come to our home.'
'I need no prayers. I need a carpenter.'
'We all need prayers.'
'Get away from here, Paxmore. You make me sick.'
'Then I shall do the praying.'
'Don't bother to pray for me. I need it no more.'
'I shall not pray for thee. I shall pray for myself. I shall ask for forgiveness for having built the clipper. You have defiled... it's no longer a vessel of mine.' Gravely he looked at the beautiful clipper, the epitome of his family's tradition, and with an awkward movement of his left hand, erased it from the harbor. It was contaminated and would never again enter the Paxmore yards.
With a slave ship that ran the risk of daily capture, Matt Turlock furtively sailed the Atlantic, trying to devise a way of slipping into St. Eustatius for a much-needed overhaul. When he finally reached there he had to supervise the work, and did much of it himself, but when he and the Dutch carpenters were through, the _Ariel_ was in maximum condition, with a third gun carriage on deck and strengthened bulwarks below, each with riveted iron rings for the secure fastening of chains.
When the job was completed he told the Dutch chandler, 'With this we'll make a hundred trips to Africa.'
'Lucky if you finish one. The British battleships have begun their patrol.'
'Idiots! They'll never halt the trade. Not while Brazil and America are hungry for slaves.'
'They've made four, five captures already. A Captain Gatch brought one—'
'Who?'
'Captain Gatch... _Dartmoor_... eight guns.'
'He came here?'
'He captured a Spanish slaver, brought her here to mend the damage his guns had done. Too deep. We could do nothing.' He said _ve coot do nossing_ , and Turlock smiled. 'So Gatch sailed her out there and burned her.'
'He's in these waters?'
'He is. And he'll hang you even if your hold is empty... if you're a slaver, that is.'
'Will he be coming back to St. Eustatius?'
'They cover the entire ocean.'
When Turlock sailed, he lingered in the vicinity, praying that Sir Trevor would return with some capture, but he did not. So Matt ran to Luanda, ducked in close to shore and swiftly loaded two hundred slaves to be smuggled into Georgia, and on his next trip, more than three hundred for Havana.
It was in this port that he met Spratley, a small, gap-toothed, foul-smelling, foul-talking British sailor from the dregs of London. He had jumped ship in Haiti and with extraordinary conniving had made his way to Cuba. Matt was standing in a waterfront tavern when he sidled up, tugged at the sleeve covering the silver fist and whispered, 'You're Captain Turlock, yes?'
'I am,' Matt said, looking down at the unsavory stranger.
'I'd like to sail with you.'
'I need no one.'
'You need me.'
Matt drew back, studied the unlikely applicant and laughed. 'You'd ruin any ship you touched.'
The sailor returned the laugh, then mumbled, 'That's what Captain Gatch said.'
'Sir Trevor Gatch?'
'Clever Trevor. You seek him. I seek him.'
'How do you know I seek him?'
'Everyone knows.'
'And you?'
'I want to kill him. I want to hold his head under a bucket of slime and watch his eyes as he gags for breath.'
'Because he whipped you,' Turlock said, making no effort to hide his contempt. 'What's your name?'
'Spratley.'
'Well, Spratley'—and he grabbed the man by his shirt, dragging him close—'I'd whip you too, for a no-good. Now get away.'
But Spratley had seen how Captain Turlock reacted at the name of his enemy, and he was certain that he had found his next employer. 'I know what you don't know, Captain.'
'What?'
'I know where Captain Gatch is.'
'You do?'
'Captain, I'm dyin' for a drink.' And as they sat in the cantina, Spratley told of his experiences with Gatch. 'He looks trim and proper ashore, or in battle. All erect and that. But on the long reaches he's a demon. Want to see my back?'
'I told you I'd have flogged you,' Turlock repeated. He had learned from long experience never to credit tales of brutality at sea; the narrators were invariably scoundrels who had deserved punishment, afloat or ashore. But when Spratley told of how Captain Gatch had led the shore party that had impressed him on the streets of London, and of how Gatch had refused to pay his men on the principle of 'Keep the pay and keep the man,' and of the ranting tirades Sir Trevor was accustomed to deliver, Turlock's appetite was whetted, and against his own best judgment he signed the sniveler.
He held him in contempt, yet repeatedly on the return voyage from Cuba to Luanda he sought him out, eager to hear any rumors concerning the man he had sworn to defeat, and as Spratley talked—'If we grapple, let me board first. I want to sink my knife into that one'—Turlock saw that this little wharf rat was as deeply committed as he.
Actually, the little Englishman proved to be a good sailor; he understood his duties and performed them well. He was a gunner, too, and pleaded with Turlock to let him man the third gun—'I want to shoot his eyes out.'
'You said you wanted to lead the boarding party.'
'I want to kill him,' Spratley said, and he was so convincing that Turlock broke his rule, and began to sympathize with him, and asked to see the scarred back the little fellow had been so eager to show, and when the crisscrossed welts were visible, Turlock almost retched.
'What happened?' he asked.
'Ten strokes one day. Twenty another. Then a hundred.'
'No man could survive a hundred.'
'That's what the mate said, but Clever Trevor shouted, "I'll cure him or I'll kill him." '
'Cure you of what?'
A strange look came into Spratley's eyes and he said, in what seemed to be honest bewilderment, 'I don't know. He was in one of his moods.' He thought about this, then added, 'At nineteen strokes the mate stopped it.'
Turlock nodded. 'No man could...'
'He's at the Bight of Benin.'
'Why didn't you tell me sooner?'
'Sooner, you wouldn't have believed me.'
'How long will he be there?'
'That's his station. A year at the Bight. Then back to England.'
'Does he roam?'
'Greatly. I escaped in Haiti. For seven weeks we chased an American ship.' Then he added a fragment which clinched his veracity. 'You know he despises Americans. Ungrateful rebels, he calls you.'
'Did he ever mention me?'
Spratley laughed. 'Said he'd beaten you twice and would do so twice again, if he didn't kill you first.' The little fellow laughed again. 'That's when I started watching for you. They told me of your silver fist—that you don't kill easy.'
But as the _Ariel_ approached the coast of Africa, Captain Turlock had a most disturbing nightmare. He wasn't really asleep, just dozing in his hammock, when a nebulous thought swept across his mind: Spratley had been deposited in Havana by Clever Trevor, and everything which happened subsequently had been an intended hoax. He was being tricked into entering the Bight of Benin, where Gatch would have a flotilla waiting, a hundred guns to three.
So without reflection he rushed forward to where Spratley was sleeping, knocked him from his hammock and began hammering him with his silver fist. When the bewildered seaman tore free he cried, 'Captain! Captain!' and Turlock came to his senses.
But this did not help Spratley, for Turlock grasped the back of his neck and began hammering his face against the bulkhead until Mr. Goodbarn ran down to see what was happening. 'Leave us alone,' Turlock shouted, and in the darkness of the fo'c'sle he accused the Englishman, 'Gatch put you ashore, didn't he? He rehearsed you in all you've said, didn't he?' He laid Spratley's duplicity before him, but the man was bewildered, unable to grasp the accusation.
Nevertheless, Turlock had to believe that the nightmare had come as a warning, and he refused to sail north to Benin; he anchored boldly at Luanda, defying any British patrol boats that might be on station to suppress the slave traffic. And just as boldly he went ashore, dickering with the Portuguese for the slaves they had collected from the interior. And when he had accumulated some five hundred at a good price, he personally supervised their loading and raised anchor for a speedy run to Havana. He knew he should have thrown Spratley onto the beach, but he kept him, and the more he listened to the tales of Gatch's insanity, the more satisfied he became that Spratley was no more nor less than what he had said from the beginning: a London alley rat impressed into the naval service and abused there till the moment of desertion. That he thirsted for revenge on his cruel captain, there could be no doubt.
So from Havana, Turlock sailed not for Luanda but for Benin, and since Belém lay on the direct route, he stopped there to take on an additional supply of powder and ball, for with the third gun he now carried, the usual supply might soon be depleted in battle. Spratley was enthusiastic about the idea of more ammunition and told the men how he proposed to use it: 'One! Down go Sir Trevor's sails. Two! Down goes Sir Trevor's mast. Three! Down goes Sir Trevor.'
To obtain ammunition, Turlock had to anchor some distance from the harbor, away from normal traffic, and one steaming afternoon when he was satisfied that his men could handle the loading, he rowed ashore to renew acquaintance with the Infierno, whose ebony devils winked at him as if he were their brother. He winked back, and then, according to his custom, studied the sky before going inside—'Storm could be rising. We'll stay here some days until it passes.' And he was sitting relaxed with a mug of spiced beer when a mild commotion occurred at the door; he heard loud voices and a scuffle and looked up to see that Captain Sir Trevor Gatch had entered, accompanied by five of his officers. For a brief moment he considered flight, before the Englishman could see him, but as soon as he contemplated this action he rejected it. Seating himself firmly in his chair, he placed his silver fist on the table where it could not be missed.
The officers swaggered in, looked insolently about but did not identify him as Matt Turlock, but as they seated themselves one young man did ascertain that the lone drinker was probably an American, and told his mates in a loud voice, 'Wherever one goes, Americans.'
Captain Gatch had his back turned and could not see Turlock, but when they were served he asked superciliously, 'Did you say, Compton, that we share this place with Americans?'
'I did, sir.'
'Unfortunate.' Turlock ignored the remark, but soon Gatch returned to the subject. 'One would have thought that Americans would stay clear of the seas, after the drubbing we gave them.' Still no response, so he added, 'Especially since we captured two American slavers last week and sent them home for hanging.'
The officers laughed and this encouraged their captain, who said, in a voice so loud and squeaky-high that no one could ignore it, 'Slavers and grubby merchants, that's what they are.'
'Who are?' Matt asked quietly.
Gatch tightened, his military composure manifesting itself in his straightened shoulders. More quietly now he said, 'The Americans are. They're good for absolutely nothing but—'
He did not finish his sentence, because Turlock interrupted sharply, 'You, sir, are a damned fool.'
Gatch leaped up, whirled about, and found himself facing Captain Turlock. He showed no surprise, nor did he retreat. He looked at the red beard, then down at the silver fist. He realized that his group overpowered Turlock, six to one, and that some kind of magnanimity was called for, but he also hated this man and could not control himself. 'I take it, Captain Turlock, you're out to seek a third thrashing.'
With a great swing of his left arm, Turlock brought his weighted stump about, catching Sir Trevor a blow on the shoulder which glanced upward, striking the top of his head and knocking him down. Four of the officers leaped at Turlock and might have killed him, except that Captain Gatch, from his fallen position, restrained them. 'Let him go, the boor. We don't want him. We want his filthy slaving clipper.'
The young officers dropped their hold on Turlock, allowing him to return to his table for his cap. When he had paid his bill he backed slowly toward the door as Captain Gatch announced to the bar's patrons, 'Tonight we drive one more slaver from the Atlantic.' Then Turlock slammed the door and dashed toward the wharf, leaping into his rowboat and pulling furiously. Against the darkening sky he could see the six Englishmen running toward the _Dartmoor_ , hidden around a bend in the opposite direction.
His arms wearied, but as he pulled the boat through the water he began shouting, ' _Ariel!_ Up sails! Up anchor! We go!'
'We can't go!' a voice called back. 'Steve Turlock's ashore with a party of three.'
Rowing faster than he had ever done before, Matt bellowed, 'We sail without them!' And as soon as the rowboat banged against the side of the _Ariel_ he supervised the attaching of lines, and sailors hauled the boat aboard, with him in it. Leaping onto the deck, he shouted, 'Get her under way! Out to sea!'
Mr. Goodbarn, a cautious man, ran up to ask, 'What's happening, sir?'
'Gatch! The _Dartmoor_ 's hiding upstream.'
Mr. Goodbarn choked, then pointed out, 'Sir, we aren't forced to leave port. The Brazilian government won't allow Gatch to attack us so long as we stay inside.'
'I want him outside,' Turlock said as the ship began to move.
'Halloo, _Ariel!_ ' came voices from the shore, and Turlock bellowed back, 'Swim!' and Steve Turlock leaped into the bay, followed by his companions.
'Our papers haven't been cleared,' Mr. Goodbarn warned.
'To hell with papers.' And gradually the _Ariel_ caught the late-afternoon breeze and began moving more swiftly, and a Brazilian guard boat sailed out to protest the departure, but its attention was distracted by the fact that the English ship of war was also leaving without proper clearance.
The _Ariel_ had a slight start, which it improved when the shore was left behind, but the _Dartmoor_ , hoping to increase speed as the winds strengthened, did not propose to allow her enemy clear sailing. In the fading daylight a salvo of well-aimed shots tried to knock down the _Ariel's_ rigging, but fell short. Before the gunners could reload for a second try, the _Ariel_ had moved out of range and during the long night she stayed ahead.
At dawn the two vessels retained their relative positions, because no matter how swiftly the _Ariel_ sailed, the rising wind enabled the _Dartmoor_ to keep pace, and a worried Mr. Goodbarn told his captain, 'Sir, they're keeping up.'
'That's what I intend.'
'But in this heavy wind they may overtake us.'
'I want them to,' Turlock said, and Mr. Goodbarn, whose neck would also be stretched if the _Ariel_ was captured, looked back at the menacing _Dartmoor_ and shivered.
'Break out the topsails, Mr. Goodbarn,' Turlock said.
'Sir, the wind is rising.'
'That's what we want,' and Turlock watched approvingly as the two square sails climbed to the tops of their masts. 'Now we'll see if he's a sailor.'
It was a dark overcast day, with a heavy breeze from the shore, and for nine hours the two ships pounded eastward, decks awash and the wind beginning to howl. At dusk they remained separated, and through the long night Captain Turlock kept all sails aloft, even though the _Ariel_ was listing perilously to starboard. Twice Mr. Goodbarn asked if he wanted to lower the topsails and twice he asked, 'Has Sir Trevor lowered his?'
In the darkness the _Ariel_ began to shudder from the impact of tall canvas and rough seas, and some of the sailors expressed apprehension: 'He's drivin' us to the bottom of the sea.'
'He knows what he's doin',' one of the Choptank men replied, but as he spoke the schooner took a sickening drop to starboard, twisted in the trough between the waves and roared upward with a sudden wrench to port. 'Jesus!' the Choptank man said.
The only sailor who actually relished the chase was Spratley, who remained at his gun as if action were imminent, staring back in the darkness to catch sight of the _Dartmoor_. When dawn broke under scudding clouds, and the sun appeared for a brief moment, throwing the pursuers into golden relief, he shouted, 'We still have 'em!' as if he were a fisherman teasing an important catch closer to the rowboat so that a net could be dropped. When Captain Turlock passed, inspecting the deck, Spratley winked at him and said, 'This day we'll take him,' and Matt nodded.
All that day the chase continued, and whenever it looked as if the _Ariel_ might spring clear, through the excellent management of its sails, Turlock dropped off the wind a point or two, enabling the _Dartmoor_ to catch up. One of the sailors complained, 'Damn it, we should be half a day ahead of them,' but Spratley corrected him, 'We don't want to be ahead. We're sucking that bastard into the jaws of hell.' And he stayed by his gun.
During the third night Captain Turlock had to catch some sleep, so he turned the _Ariel_ over to Mr. Goodbarn, telling him, 'I think you know what to do,' and the mate nodded. At dawn the _Dartmoor_ had moved closer, and when Turlock saw this he was pleased. All that day he sailed through the growing storm in such a way as to keep the British schooner in a position from which she might want to use her guns, but since he did not lower his sails, Captain Gatch could not lower his, either.
At noon Captain Turlock studied the _Dartmoor_ through his glass and asked Mr. Goodbarn, 'Has she moved her cannon forward?'
'Two of them. The rest are fixed.'
'But they are forward?'
'They are, sir.'
'Good. Does she seem a mite heavy in the bow?'
'She always has been, since the British captured her.'
'You can see it, too?'
'She's heavy, sir.'
'I thought so. Gatch is a fool.' And he ordered Spratley's movable gun to be shifted far aft. Then he swung his clipper slightly so that it made maximum speed.
A ship, like a human being, moves best when it is slightly athwart the wind, when it has to keep its sails tight and attend its course. Ships, like men, do poorly when the wind is directly behind, pushing them sloppily on their way so that no care is required in steering or in the management of sails; the wind seems favorable, for it blows in the direction one is heading, but actually it is destructive because it induces a relaxation in tension and skill. What is needed is a wind slightly opposed to the ship, for then tension can be maintained, and juices can flow and ideas can germinate, for ships, like men, respond to challenge.
At three that afternoon Captain Turlock, ignoring the signs of fierce wind about to sweep the South Atlantic, had his maximum sails aloft, his course laid so that the wind came at them from two points forward of the starboard quarter. He maintained a port tack, for like every other ship that sailed, the _Ariel_ performed slightly better on one tack than the other, and her greatest speed came on the port. From his long acquaintance with the _Whisper_ , he suspected that the _Dartmoor_ sailed best on her port tack, too. So the two ships were now in a posture of maximum performance.
The duel began. No gun was fired, because Captain Turlock kept tantalizingly just out of range, but from the manner in which he sailed, it must have seemed on the _Dartmoor_ that he was about to fall behind, so that the eight heavy guns could riddle him. At any rate, the _Dartmoor_ maintained pursuit, and as Captain Turlock watched her plow into the growing waves, bow down, he told Mr. Goodbarn, 'Before sundown.'
At four the wind started to blow in gusts so strong that the mate said, with some urgency, 'We've got to lower the topsails.'
'They stay,' Turlock said.
'You're placing our ship in great danger, sir.'
'And his,' Turlock said.
At five the sky began to darken and by five-thirty it was as foul a day as the _Ariel_ had seen. Spratley, convinced that the two ships must close before dark, had ordered his helper to bring six more cannonballs on deck, and the two other gunners had done the same, but when Turlock saw this he was aghast. 'All extra cannonballs to the bottom of the hold! And everything else of weight!' For the next fifteen minutes the crew stowed everything movable belowdeck, with Captain Turlock yelling into the hold, 'Place it all aft! Everything aft!' And as the men did this, he told Mr. Goodbarn, 'We'll stay stern-heavy. Let him have the bow.'
It wasn't enough. Turlock, testing the deck with his feet, sensed that his ship was in peril, so he shouted, 'Spratley's gun! Overboard!'
'Oh, sir?' the little Englishman protested, but Mr. Goodbarn and his men edged the heavy gun to the rail and pushed it over. As it sank unused, Spratley groaned.
Just before darkness set in with that incredible speed it shows in the tropics—daylight one moment, night the next—the sun broke out beneath the cloud cover and illuminated the _Dartmoor_ as if she were a golden ship painted upon a porcelain plate used by a queen, her spars, her sails, her decks aglistening. Only for a moment did the light prevail; then, as it began to fade and great winds roared across the ocean, the lovely schooner began to bury her heavy nose in a towering wave, digging deeper and deeper, until she had buried herself completely.
Not a cap floated on the dark Atlantic. The sun vanished. The gold was gone.
From the _Ariel_ rose a spontaneous shout, then individual cries of victory, and Spratley danced about the remaining cannon, crying to the captain, 'Down he goes!' But Turlock, agitated beyond control, swept his left arm in a violent circle, knocking the gunner to the deck. 'You weren't fit to tie his shoe.'
Spratley was not to be denied his victory. Leaping to his feet and ignoring the captain, he set a match to one of the guns, and a cannonball shot out across the turbulent waves, skipped once and sank to join the _Dartmoor_ in the vast, dark caverns of the sea.
'You may drop the canvas, Mr. Goodbarn,' Turlock said. 'This night we'll ride a gale.'
# _Voyage Eight: 1822_
IN THE REMOTE WASTES OF NORTHERN CANADA, where man was rarely seen except when lost and about to perish, a family of great geese, in the late summer of 1822, made their home on a forlorn stretch of Arctic moorland. Mother, father, six fledglings: because of a freak of nature they had come to a moment of terrifying danger.
The two adult birds, splendid heavy creatures weighing close to fourteen pounds and with wings normally capable of carrying them five thousand miles in flight, could not get off the ground. At a time when they had to feed and protect their offspring, they were powerless to fly. This was no accident, nor the result of any unfortunate experience with wolves; like all their breed they lost their heavy wing feathers every summer and remained earthbound for about six weeks, during which they could only hide from their enemies and walk ineffectively over the moorland, waiting for their feathers to return. It was for this reason that they had laid their eggs in such a remote spot, for during their moulting period they were almost defenseless.
Onk-or, the father in this family, strutted about the bushes seeking seeds, while his mate stayed near the nest to tend the fledglings, whose appetites were insatiable. Occasionally when Onk-or brought food to the younglings, his mate would run long distances as if pleased to escape the drudgery of her brood, but on this day when she reached the top of a grassy mound she ran faster, flapped the wings she had not used for six weeks and flew back toward her nest, uttering loud cries as she did so.
Onk-or looked up, saw the flight and sensed that within a day or two he would be soaring too; always her feathers grew back faster than his. As she flew past he spoke to her.
Maintaining a medium altitude, she headed north to where an arm of the sea intruded, and there she landed on water, splashing it ahead of her when her feet slammed down to act as brakes. Other geese landed to eat the seeds floating on the waves, and after weeks of loneliness she enjoyed their companionship, but before long she rose on the water, flapped her long wings slowly, gathered speed amidst great splashing, then soared into the air, heading back to her nest. From long habit, she landed short of where her fledglings lay, moved about unconcernedly to deceive any foxes that might be watching, then collected bits of food, which she carried to her children. As soon as she appeared, Onk-or walked away, still unable to fly, to gather more food.
He and his mate were handsome birds, large and sleek. Both they and their children had long necks feathered in jet-black, with a broad snowy white bib under the chin and reaching to the ears. When their wings were folded, as they were most of the time, the heavy body was compact and beautifully proportioned, and they walked with dignity, not waddling from side to side like ducks. Their heads were finely proportioned, with bills pointed but not grotesquely long, and the lines of their bodies, where feathers of differing shades of gray joined, were pleasing. Indeed, their subdued coloring was so appropriate to the Arctic moorland that an observer, had there been one, could have come close to their nest without noticing them.
On this day there was an observer, an Arctic fox who had not eaten for some time and was beginning to feel the urge of hunger. When from a distance he spotted the rough nest on the ground, with the six fledglings tumbling about and obviously not prepared to fly, he took no precipitate action, for he had learned respect for the sharp beaks and powerful wings of full-grown geese like Onk-or.
Instead he retreated and ran in large circles far from the nest, until he roused another fox to make the hunt with him. Together they returned quietly across the tundra, moving from the security of one tussock to the next, scouting the terrain ahead and developing the strategy they would use to pick off these young geese.
During the brightest part of the day they lay in wait, for long ago they had learned that it was easier to attack at night, when they would be less conspicuous against the Arctic grass. Of course, during the nesting season of the geese there was no real night; the sun stayed in the heavens permanently, scudding low in the north but never disappearing. Instead of blackness, which would last interminably during the winter, there came only a diffused grayness in the middle hours, a ghostly penumbra, with geese, young and old, half asleep. That was the time to attack.
So as the sun drifted lower in the west, on a long, sliding trajectory that would never dip below the horizon, and as the bright glare of summer faded to an exquisite gray matching the feathers of the geese, the two foxes moved slowly toward the nest where the six fledglings hid beneath the capacious wings of their mother. Onk-or, the foxes noted, lay some distance away with his head under his left wing.
It was the plan of the foxes that the strongest of the pair would attack Onk-or from such a direction that the big male goose would be lured even farther from the nest, and as the fight progressed, the other fox would dart in, engage the female briefly, and while she was awkwardly trying to defend herself, grab one of the young geese and speed away. In the confusion the first fox might very well be able to grab a second fledgling for himself. If not, they would share the one they did get.
When the foxes had attained a strategic position, the first made a lunge at Onk-or, attacking from the side on which he had tucked his head, on the logical supposition that if the great goose were not instantly alert, the fox might be lucky and grab him by the throat, ending that part of the fight then and there. But as soon as the fox accelerated his pace, knocking aside grasses, Onk-or was awake and aware of what was happening. He did not try evasive action or do anything unusual to protect his neck; instead he pivoted on his left leg, swung his moulted wing in a small circle and with its bony edge knocked his adversary flat.
Onk-or knew that the fox would try to lure him away from the nest, so instead of following up on his first blow, he retreated toward the low pile of sticks and grass that constituted his nest, making sharp clicking sounds to alert his family. His mate, aware that the family was being attacked, drew the fledglings under her wings and studied the ominous grayness.
She did not have long to wait. As the first fox lunged at Onk-or again, the second swept in to attack the nest itself. She had only one flashing moment to ascertain from which direction the attack was coming, but she judged accurately, rose, spread her wings and pivoted to meet the fox. As he leaped at her, she struck him across the face with her powerful beak, stunning him momentarily.
He soon recovered to make a second attack. This time she was prepared, and a harsh swipe of her wing edge sent him sprawling, but this terrified her, for instinct warned her that he may cunningly have seemed to fall so as to distract her. If she struck at him now, he would slyly dart behind her and grab one of the fledglings. So as the fox fell, she wheeled on her right foot, placing herself and her extended wings between him and the nest. As for the rear, she had to depend upon Onk-or to protect that from the other fox.
This he was doing. In the half-light he fought the clever fox, fending him off with vicious stabs of his beak, knocking him down with his powerful wing thrusts and filling the Arctic air with short cries of rage and challenge. The fox, who had never been confident that he could subdue a grown male goose, began to lose any hope that he could even hold his own against this infuriated bird. Furthermore, he saw that his partner had accomplished nothing at the nest and was, indeed, absorbing an equal thrashing.
Hoping in vain that the two geese would make some fatal mistake, the two foxes battled on for a while, recognized the futility of their attack and withdrew, making short, chattering noises to one another as they did.
When daylight came the two parent geese knew how necessary it was that their six children proceed with the business of flying. So on this day Onk-or did not leave the nest to forage for his family; he stayed by the odd collection of twigs and grasses and nudged his children out onto the moorland, watching them as they clumsily tried their wings.
They were an ungainly lot, stumbling and falling and vainly beating their long wings, but gradually attaining the mastery which would enable them to fly south to the waters of Maryland. Two of the young birds actually hoisted themselves into the air, staying aloft for short distances, then landing with maximum awkwardness and joy.
A third, watching the success of her siblings, flapped her wings clumsily, ran across the rocky ground and with great effort got herself into the air, but as soon as she did so, Onk-or felt a rush of terror, for he saw something she did not.
Too late! The gosling, unable to maintain flight, fluttered heavily to the ground, landing precisely where the two foxes had been waiting for such a misadventure. But as they started for the fallen bird, Onk-or, with supreme effort, flapped his wings not yet ready for flight, rose in the air and endeavored to smash down at the foxes. His wings were not equal to the task, and he, too, fell, but before the dust was gone from his eyes he was on his feet, charging at the two foxes. Insolently, the first fox grabbed the gosling, killing it with one savage snap of the jaws, and sped away. The second fox ran in circles, tantalizing Onk-or, then disappeared to join his partner in their feast.
What did this family of seven think as they reassembled? Onk-or and his mate were unusual in the animal kingdom in that they mated for life. They were as tightly married as any human couple in Patamoke; each cared desperately what happened to the other, and Onk-or would unhesitatingly sacrifice his life to protect that of his mate. Four times they had flown together down from the Arctic to the Eastern Shore, and four times back. Together they had located safe resting spots up and down eastern Canada and in all the seaboard states of America. Aloft, they communicated instinctively, each knowing what the other intended, and on the ground, either when nesting in the Arctic or feeding along the Choptank, each always felt responsible for the safety of the other.
In this habit of permanent marriage they were like few other birds, certainly not like the lesser ducks who mated at will, staying close to each other only so long as their ducklings needed protection. It was a curiosity peculiar to the great geese. Beavers also married for life—perhaps because they had to live together during their winters in lodges frozen over—but few other animals. Onk-or was married to his mate, eternally.
His first response, therefore, as the foxes disappeared with one of his daughters, was an intuitive checking to assure himself that his mate was safe. Satisfied on this crucial point, his attention shifted to his five remaining children. They must learn to fly—now—and not stumble into traps set by enemies.
His mate, who had remained on the ground during the loss of the fledgling, had not been able to ascertain what was happening with the foxes, for the incident had occurred behind a cluster of tussocks, and for one dreadful moment she had feared that it might be he the foxes had taken. She was relieved when she saw him stumbling back, for he was half her life, the gallant, fearless bird on whom she must depend.
But she also possessed a most powerful urge to protect her offspring; she would surrender her own life to achieve this, and now the first of them had been stolen. She did not grieve, as she would have done had Onk-or been killed, but she did feel a dreadful sense of loss, and like her mate, determined that the other five must quickly learn to fly. In the days to come she would be a ruthless teacher.
As for the goslings, each knew that a fox had stolen the missing child. Each knew that tragedy, from which their parents tried to protect them, had struck, and the nascent urges which had caused them to attempt flight were intensified. They had never made the long pilgrimage to the feeding grounds of Maryland, but intuitively they knew that such grounds must be somewhere and they should ready themselves for the incredible migration. They were determined to master their wings; they were determined to protect themselves from foxes.
Of course, these birds were too young to have selected partners, nor had they associated with other geese. But even at this early stage they were aware of the difference between the sexes, so that the three young males were looking for something quite different from what the two remaining females were awaiting, and as other families of geese flew overhead, each fledgling could differentiate the children in that tentative flock. They knew. At seven weeks it was incredible what these young geese knew, and if by some ill chance both their parents should be killed, leaving them orphaned in the Arctic, they would know how to fly to Maryland and find the Choptank cove that had been designated as their home. All they needed for maturity was the strengthening of their wings and the selection of a mate from the other fledglings born that year. They were a doughty breed, one of the great birds of the world, and they behaved so.
In mid-September, as in each year of their lives, Onk-or and his mate felt irresistible urgings. They watched the sky and were particularly responsive to the shortening of the day. They noticed with satisfaction that their five children were large and powerful birds, with notable wing spans and sustaining accumulations of fat; they were ready for any flight. They also noticed the browning of the grasses and the ripening of certain seeds, signs unmistakable that departure was imminent.
At all the nests in the Arctic this restlessness developed and birds bickered with one another. Males would suddenly rise in the sky and fly long distances for no apparent reason, returning later to land in clouds of dust. No meetings were held; there was no visible assembling of families. But one day, for mysterious reasons which could not be explained, huge flocks of birds rose into the sky, milled about and then formed into companies heading south.
This southward migration was one of the marvels of nature: hundreds, thousands, millions of these huge geese forming into perfect V-shaped squadrons flying at different altitudes and at different times of day, but all heading out of Canada down one of the four principal fly ways leading to varied corners of America. Some flew at 29,000 feet above the ground, others as low as 3,000, but all sought escape from the freezing moorlands of the Arctic, heading for clement feeding grounds like those in Maryland. For long spells they would fly in silence, but most often they maintained noisy communication, arguing, protesting, exulting; at night especially they uttered cries which echoed forever in the memories of men who heard them drifting down through the frosty air of autumn: _'Onk-or, onk-or!'_
The wedge in which Onk-or and his family started south this year consisted of eighty-nine birds, but it did not stay together permanently as a cohesive unit. Sometimes other groups would meld with it, until the flying formation contained several hundred birds; at other times segments would break away to fly with some other unit. But in general the wedge held together.
The geese flew at a speed of about forty-five miles an hour, which meant that if they stayed aloft for an entire day, they could cover a thousand miles. But they required rest, and through the centuries during which they had followed the same route south and north they had learned of various ponds and lakes and riverbanks which afforded them secure places to rest and forage. There were lakes in upper Quebec and small streams leading into the St. Lawrence. In Maine there were hundreds of options and suitable spots in western Massachusetts and throughout New York, and the older geese like Onk-or knew them all.
On some days, near noon when the autumn sun was high, the geese would descend abruptly and alight on a lake which their ancestors had been utilizing for a thousand years. The trees along the shore would have changed, and new generations of fish would occupy the waters, but the seeds would be the same kind, and the succulent grasses. Here the birds would rest for six or seven hours, and then as dusk approached, the leaders would utter signals and the flock would scud across the surface of the lake, wheel into the air and fly aloft. There they would form themselves automatically into a long V, with some old, sage bird like Onk-or in the lead, and through the night they would fly south.
Maine, New Hampshire, Massachusetts, Connecticut, New York, Pennsylvania! The states would lie sleeping below, only a few dim lamps betraying their existence, and overhead the geese would go, crying in the night, _'Onk-or, onk-or,'_ and occasionally, at the edge of some village or on some farm a door would open and light would flood the area for a while, and parents would hold their children and peer into the dark sky, listening to the immortal passing of the geese. And once in a great while, on such a night, when the moon was full, the children would actually see the flying wedge pass between them and the moon, and hear the geese as they flew, and this matter they would speak of for the rest of their lives.
No goose, not even a powerful one like Onk-or, could fly at the head of the wedge for long periods. The buffeting of the wind as the point of the V broke a path through the air turbulence was too punishing. The best a practiced bird could do was about forty minutes, during which time he absorbed a considerable thrashing. After his allotted time in the lead position, the exhausted goose would drop to the back of one of the arms of the wedge, where the weaker birds had been assembled, and there, with the air well broken ahead of him, he would coast along in the wake of the others, recovering his strength until it came his time again to assume the lead. Male and female alike accepted this responsibility, and when the day's flight ended, they were content to rest. On especially favorable lakes with copious feed they might stay for a week.
During the first days of October the geese were usually somewhere in New York or Pennsylvania, and happy to be there. The sun was warm and the lakes congenial, but as the northwest winds began to blow, bringing frost at night, the older birds grew restive. They did not relish a sudden freeze, which would present problems, and they vaguely knew that the waning of the sun required them to be farther south in some region of security.
But they waited until the day came when the air was firmly frosted, and then they rose to form their final V. No matter where the lake had been upon which they were resting, the geese in the eastern flyway vectored in to the Susquehanna River, and when they saw its broad and twisting silhouette, they felt safe. This was their immemorial guide, and they followed it with assurance, breaking at last onto the Chesapeake, the most considerable body of water they would see during their migration. It shimmered in the autumn sun and spoke of home. Its thousand estuaries and coves promised them food and refuge for the long winter, and they joyed to see it.
As soon as the Chesapeake was reached, congregations of geese began to break off, satisfied that they had arrived at their appointed locations. Four thousand would land at Havre de Grace, twenty thousand at the Sassafras. The Chester River would lure more than a hundred thousand and the Miles the same. Enormous concentrations would elect Tred Avon, but the most conspicuous aggregation would wait for the Choptank, more than a quarter of a million birds, and they would fill every field and estuary.
For more than five thousand years Onk-or's lineal antecedents had favored a marsh on the north bank of the Choptank. It was spacious, well-grassed with many plants producing seeds, and multiple channels providing safe hiding places. It was convenient both to fields, so that the geese could forage for seeds, and to the river, so that they could land and take off easily. It was an ideal wintering home in every respect but one: it was owned by the Turlocks, the most inveterate hunters of Maryland, each member of the family born with an insatiable appetite for goose.
'I can eat it roasted, or chopped with onions and peppers, or sliced thin with mushrooms,' Lafe Turlock was telling the men at the store. 'You can keep the other months of the year, just give me November with a fat goose comin' onto the stove three times a week.'
Lafe had acquired from his father and his father before him the secrets of hunting geese. 'Canniest birds in the world. They have a sixth sense, a seventh and an eighth. I've seen one smart old gander haunts my place lead his flock right into my blind, spot my gun, stop dead in the air, turn his whole congregation around on a sixpence, without me gettin' a shot.' He kicked the stove and volunteered his summary of the situation: 'A roast goose tastes so good because it's so danged hard to shoot.'
'Why's that?' a younger hunter asked.
Lafe turned to look at the questioner, studied him contemptuously as an interloper, then explained, 'I'll tell you what, sonny, I know your farm down the river. Fine farm for huntin' geese. Maybe a hundred thousand fly past in the course of a week, maybe two hundred thousand. But that ain't doin' you no good, because unless you can tease just one of those geese to drop down within gunshot of where you stand, you ain't never gonna kill a goose. They fly over there'—he flailed his long arms—'or over here, or down there, a hundred thousand geese in sight...' He startled the young man by leaping from his chair and banging his fist against the wall. 'But never one goddamned goose where you want him. It's frustratin'.'
He sat down, cleared his throat and spoke like a lawyer presenting a difficult case. 'So what you got to do, sonny, is pick yourself a likely spot where they might land, and build yourself a blind—'
'I done that.'
Lafe ignored the interruption. 'And hide it in branches that look live, and all round it put wooden decoys whittled into at least eight different positions to look real, and then learn to yell goose cries that would fool the smartest goose ever lived. And if you don't do all these things, sonny, you ain't never gonna taste goose, because they gonna fly past you, night and day.'
The attractive thing about Lafe was his unquenchable enthusiasm. Each October, like now, he was convinced that this year he would outsmart the geese, and he was not afraid to make his predictions public at the store. 'This year, gentlemen, you all eat goose. I'm gonna shoot so many, your fingers'll grow warts pluckin' 'em.'
'That's what you said last year,' an uncharitable waterman grunted.
'But this year I got me a plan.' And with a finger dipped in molasses he started to outline his strategy. 'You know my blind out in the river.'
'I stood there often enough, gettin' nothin',' one of the men said.
'And you know this blind at that pond in the western end of the marsh.'
'I waited there for days and all I got was a wet ass,' the same man said.
'And that's what you'll get in that blind this year, too. Because I'm settin' them two up just like always, decoys and all. I want that smart old leader to see them and lead his ladies away.'
'To where?' the skeptic asked.
Lafe grinned and a deep satisfaction wreathed his face. 'Now for my plan. Over here, at the edge of this cornfield where everythin' looks so innicent, I plant me a third blind with the best decoys me or my pappy ever carved.' And with a dripping finger he allowed the molasses to form his new blind.
'I don't think it'll work,' the cynic said.
'I'm gonna get me so many geese...'
'Like last year. How many you get last year, speak honest.'
'I got me nine geese...' In six months he had shot nine geese, but this year, with his new tactics, he was sure to get scores.
So when Onk-or brought his wedge of eighty-nine back to the Choptank marshes, dangerous innovations awaited. Of course, on his first pass over Turlock land he spotted the traditional blind in the river and the ill-concealed one at the pond; generations of his family had been avoiding those inept seductions. He also saw the same old decoys piled on the bank, the boats waiting to take the hunters into the river and the dogs waiting near the boats. It was familiar and it was home.
Giving a signal, he dropped in a tight, crisp circle, keeping his left wing almost stationary, then landed with a fine splashing on an opening in the center of the marsh. He showed his five children how to dispose themselves, then pushed his way through the marsh grass to see for himself what feed there might be in the fields. His mate came along, and within a few minutes they had satisfied themselves that this was going to be a good winter. On their way back to the marsh they studied the cabin. No changes there; same wash behind the kitchen.
As the geese settled in to enjoy the marshes, the young birds heard for the first time the reverberation of gunfire, and Onk-or had to spend much time alerting them to the special dangers that accompanied these rich feeding grounds. He and the other ganders taught the newcomers how to spot the flash of metal, or hear the cracking of a twig under a gunner's boot. And no group must ever feed without posting at least three sentinels, whose job it was to keep their necks erect so that their ears and eyes could scout all approaches.
Eternal vigilance was the key to survival, and no birds ever became more skilled in protecting themselves. Smaller birds, like doves, which presented difficult targets for a hunter, could often trust to luck that an undetected human would miss when he fired at them, but the great goose presented such an attractive target either head-on or broadside that a gunner had the advantage, if he were allowed to creep within range. The trick for the geese was to move out of range whenever men approached, and Onk-or drilled his flock assiduously in this tactic, for any goose who frequented the Turlock marshes was threatened by some of the most determined hunters on the Eastern Shore.
By mid-December it was clear that the geese had outsmarted Lafe Turlock once again; none had landed at the blind in the river and only a few stragglers had landed at the pond. By the end of the first week Onk-or had spotted the cornfield trick, and Lafe had been able to shoot only three geese.
'Them damn honkers must of got eyeglasses in Canada,' he told the men at the store.
'You was gonna feed us all this winter,' one of the men reminded him.
'I will, too. What I got to do is make a few changes in my plan.'
He assembled his five sons, plus four other crack shots, and told them, 'We are gonna get ourselves so many geese, you'll have grease on your faces all winter. We do it this way.'
An hour before dawn he rowed his youngest son out to the river blind, before which they strung a dozen decoys haphazardly. He told his boy, 'I want for the geese to see you. Make 'em move on.'
Another son he placed at the pond, with the same careless arrangement and the same instructions. 'Of course, son, if you get a good shot at a goose, take it. But we ain't relyin' on you.'
At the cornfield he posted yet a third son, expecting him to be seen. The six other men he took on a long walk through loblolly, ending at a cove where he said the canny geese would have to land. 'The trick is to think like a goose. They'll leave the cornfield, fly in a half-circle, see the decoys beyond the pine trees and come down here.'
When they came down, they were going to land in the middle of a fusillade from the four fastest guns, followed immediately by a second round from the three slower guns, during which time the first four would load again to pick off the cripples, by which time the slow guns could reload to do any cleaning up.
'This is guaranteed to get honkers,' Lafe promised, 'if'n that damned big bird don't catch on.'
The geese were slow this morning in going to their feeding stations. There was fractiousness among the younger birds, but the elders did not protest, for mating time was approaching and there were many second-year geese who had not yet selected their partners, so that confusion was inescapable. But toward six-thirty Onk-or and another old gander began making the moves that would get the flock started. Restlessness ceased and eighty-odd birds began moving into positions from which they could take to the air.
Onk-or led the flight, and within moments the flock had formed into two loose Vs which wheeled and dipped in unison. They headed for the river south of the marsh, and Onk-or saw that some hunter was still trying vainly to lure geese into the old blind located there. The big birds landed well upstream, fed for a while on grasses, then took off for better forage. They flew to the pond, where there was futile gunfire, and then toward the cornfield, where Onk-or quickly spotted the lone gunner stationed there. He swung away from the corn, flew left, and saw some geese feeding in a stream lined by pine trees. Since the geese already down proved that the area was safe, he would land his flock there.
The geese came in low, wings extended, feet ready for braking, but just as Onk-or prepared to land, he detected movement among the pine trees lining the shore, and with a brilliant twist to the north he swung out of range, uttering loud cries of warning as he did so. He escaped, and those immediately behind made their turns, too, but many of the trailing geese did not react in time; they flew directly into the waiting guns and furious blasts of fire knocked them down.
Seven geese were killed, including two of Onk-or's children. It was a disaster, and he had been responsible. It must not happen again.
At the store Lafe basked in his victory. 'To catch a honker you got to think like a honker,' he told his listeners, but his glory was short-lived, because for the rest of the season he got no geese from his own marshes, and only two when he led an expedition farther upstream.
'I never seen honkers so cagey,' he snarled. 'I'm goin' to hire me them trolls from Amos Todkill.' So in January 1823 he sailed up to Patamoke to dicker with Todkill, who specialized in combing the marshes for wounded young geese, which he domesticated, using them as living lures to bring wild geese directly into the muzzles of waiting guns.
Todkill said he'd allow Turlock to rent fifteen of his tame geese, three days for a dollar and a half. 'Pretty steep,' Lafe complained.
'But you know they're foolproof. "Never-fails," we call 'em.'
Todkill tied their legs, tossed them into his boat and sailed back to the marsh. 'I want me fifteen or sixteen reliable guns,' he announced at the store. 'I laid out real money for them damned trolls, and I expect some honkers in return.'
He enlisted a veritable battery, whose members he stationed at strategic spots so that the crossfire from the muzzle-loaders would be impenetrable. He then spread four dozen of his most lifelike wooden decoys, after which he released Todkill's fifteen live ones. 'As pretty a sight as a honker ever seen, and as deadly,' he said approvingly when all was in position.
Then he and the sixteen other hunters waited. Nothing happened. Occasional geese from the marshes flew past, ignoring the trolls, who cackled to lure them down. Once or twice substantial flocks, headed by the old gander, came tantalizingly close, then veered away as if in obedience to a signal, and the three days passed without one good shot at a honker.
Onk-or from the first had spotted the bizarre assembly of wooden decoys and live trolls, and it was not long before he discerned the guns hiding among the rushes. He not only kept his own geese from the lethal area; he also alerted others, so that Lafe and his artillery could not possibly get themselves the geese he had promised.
At the store one of the hunters said, 'Them trolls fooled me, and they fooled Lafe, but they sure as hell didn't fool that old gander.'
'What they did,' Lafe said, 'was waste my dollar-fifty. It was only through the help of prayer that I kept from stranglin' them birds before I gave 'em back to Todkill.'
The men laughed. The idea of Lafe Turlock's hurting a goose, except to shoot it, was preposterous. He loved the big birds, fed them cracked corn when snow covered the ground, rescued cripples the end of the season and turned them over to Todkill. Once, after a big revival meeting, he said, 'The life of man is divided into two seasons: "Geese is here. Geese ain't here." ' So when the men joshed him over his costly failure, they were surprised that he did not fight back.
He remained silent for a good reason: he was ready to shift into phase three of his grand design. Assembling his sons in early March, he told them, 'Turlocks eat geese because we're smarter'n geese. And a danged sight smarter'n them dummies at the store, because I know somethin' that would rile 'em, if'n they had brains to understand.'
His sons waited. He looked out the door at the March sky and confided, 'I been trampin' through the woods, and I think I found me the spot where they does their courtin'.' He was referring to those few geese who had either been wounded by ineffective gunfire or seduced by the clemency of the Choptank; they would not be flying north with the others, but would remain behind, raising their Maryland-born families in marshes to the south. And when they mated, they would be vulnerable, for as Lafe explained to his sons, 'Geese is just like men. When their minds get fixed on ass, caution goes out the window, and come next week we're gonna knock down enough careless geese to feed us through July.'
It was in the deepest nature of a Turlock to be sanguine where hunting and fishing were concerned: the oysters were down there but they could be tonged; the crabs might be hiding but they could be caught. 'How we gonna do it, Pop?'
'Strategy,' Lafe said.
Onk-or, too, was thinking strategy. He must get his flock through the frenzy of this season without loss, and to accomplish this he must keep them away from the mating grounds, for he had learned that when young geese gawked at their contemporaries in the mating dance, they grew inattentive, and their elders were no better, for they, too, stood about cackling and enjoying the proceedings, unmindful of lurking guns.
So for both Lafe and Onk-or the last days of winter became critical, for the man had to find the mating ground, and the goose had to keep his family away from it. Nine days went by without a loss to the Turlock guns.
'No fear,' Lafe assured his boys. 'Honkers has got to mate, and when they do, we come into our own.'
He had anticipated, almost better than the young geese, where those who did not fly north would conduct their courtships, and there, along a grassy field deep in the woods, he placed himself and his sons, each with three muskets. The young geese, responding to their own inner urgings, were drawn to this spot, and there they began their dances.
Two males would focus upon one female, who would stand aside, shyly preening herself, as if she held a mirror. She would keep her eyes on the ground, pretending to ignore events which would determine how she would live for the remainder of her life.
The males meanwhile grew more and more active, snapping at each other and hissing, advancing and retreating and putting on a great show of fury. Finally one would actually attack the other, flailing with wings extended six or seven feet, and crashing heavy blows upon the head and shoulders of the other. Now the fight became real, with each heavy bird attempting to grab the other's head in its powerful beak.
According to some intricate scoring system, it would become apparent to both contestants, to the rest of the flock and especially to the waiting female that one of the fighting birds had triumphed. The other would retreat, and then would come the most moving part of the dance.
The victorious male would approach the waiting female with mincing steps, swaying from side to side, and as he drew near he would extend his neck to the fullest and gently wave it back and forth, close to the chosen one, and she would extend hers, and they would intertwine, rarely touching, and they would stand thus, weaving and twisting their necks in one of the most delicate and graceful manifestations in nature.
As the dance approached its climax, the young geese of Onk-or's group started instinctively toward the mating ground, and although Onk-or and his mate moved frantically to intercept them, they bumbled their way into the open area.
'Now!' Turlock signaled, and the guns blazed. Before the startled geese could take to the air, the six Turlocks dropped their guns, grabbed others and blazed away, dropped them and reached for their back-ups. Geese fell in startling numbers, and by the time Onk-or could get his flock into the air, enough lay dead to stock the icehouse.
When they reassembled in the marsh Onk-or discovered that one of his sons was dead, and he was about to lament when he found to his terror that his wife was missing, too. He had seen geese falter and fall into the grass offshore, and he knew intuitively that the men would now be combing that margin to find the cripples.
Without hesitation he left his flock and sped back to the mating ground. His arrival disconcerted the men who, as he had expected, were searching for wounded birds. Flying directly over their heads, he landed in the area at which he had seen the geese falling, and there he found his mate, sorely crippled in the left wing. It was impossible for her to fly, and within minutes the dogs and men would find her.
Urging her with heavy pushes of his bill, he shoved her through ill-defined waterways, heading her always toward the safety of the deeper marshes. When she faltered, he pecked at her feathers, never allowing her to stop.
They had progressed about two hundred yards when a mongrel yellow dog with an especially good nose came upon their scent and realized that he had a cripple somewhere in the bushes ahead. Silently he made his way ever closer to the wounded goose, until, with a final leap, he was upon her.
What he did not anticipate was that she was accompanied by a full-grown gander determined to protect her. Suddenly, from the water near the cripple, Onk-or rose up, whipped his heavy beak about and slashed at the dog. The startled animal withdrew in shock, then perceived the situation and lunged at the gander.
A deadly, splashing fight ensued, with the dog having every advantage. But Onk-or marshaled all his powers; he was fighting not only to protect himself but also to save his crippled mate, and deep in the tangled marsh he attacked the dog with a confusing flash of wing and thrust of beak. The dog retreated.
'There's a cripple in there!' Turlock shouted to his sons. 'Tiger's got hisse'f a cripple.'
But the dog appeared with nothing except a bleeding cut on the head. 'Hey! Tiger's been hit by a honker. Get in there and find that cripple.'
Three boys and their dogs splashed into the marsh, but by this time Onk-or had guided his damaged mate to safety. They hid among the rushes as the men splashed noisily, while the mongrels, not eager to encounter whatever had struck Tiger, made little attempt to find them.
A week later, when the crippled wing had mended, Onk-or herded his geese together and they started their mandatory flight to the Arctic: Pennsylvania, Connecticut, Maine, and then the frozen moorlands of Canada. One night as they flew over a small town in central New York they made a great honking, and citizens came out to follow their mysterious passage. Among them was a boy of eight. He stared at the shadowy forms and listened to their distant conversation. As a consequence of this one experience he would become attached to birds, would study all things about them, and in his adult life would paint them and write about them and take the first steps in providing sanctuaries for them, and all because on one moonlit night he heard the geese pass overhead.
# Widow's Walk
ROSALIND'S REVENGE DID NOT HAVE A TRUE widow's walk. That agreeable architectural device had flourished mainly in New England, where the family of a sailing man was accustomed to erect on the roof of its home a square, fenced platform from which the wife could look down the bay to spot the arrival of her husband's vessel, coming home after years of whaling in the South Pacific. The name _widow's walk_ derived from romantic tales of those loyal women who continued to keep watch for a ship that had long since gone to the bottom of some coral sea.
But the big plantation house of the Steeds did have an improvised widow's walk. In 1791, when Isham Steed followed the advice of his college mate Tom Jefferson and bought himself an Amsterdam telescope, he wanted to erect it in a place from which he could follow the stars, so he cut a hole through the roof and built there a platform, fencing it with low pickets and making it a pleasant spot from which to view not only the heavens but also the sailing ships moving up and down the bay.
During one unseasonably warm day at the end of March in 1823 Susan Grimes Steed went up to this fenced area and fell languidly into the wicker chair she kept there. For nearly a quarter of an hour she stared at the bay, hoping to spot some tall ship coming home to Baltimore, but her attention was distracted when she heard a rustling in the air above her. Looking up, she saw that great numbers of geese were assembling in elongated Vs; from all the coves and corners of the Choptank they rose in preparation for their long flight to Canada.
Knowing that this time the geese were truly leaving and would not be seen again till the cool days of autumn, she rose from her chair and pressed her hands against the picket fence. 'Oh God! That I were flying with you!' She lifted her right hand and waved the distant birds on their way, watching them until they became invisible at the horizon.
She sank back onto her chair and gazed blankly at the bay. No boats were discernible; no ships came in from Spain; only the vast expanse of water, unruffled clear to the western shore, stretched before her, and the ennui which had possessed her for some months increased.
But then, at the southern extremity of the water visible from the roof, she saw what might be a ship—at least, it was a moving speck, and she kept her small telescope focused on it for a long half-hour.
It could be a fishing boat, she mused, eager to find any mental exercise to occupy her mind. No, it's a ship. It's a ship with three masts. And at the word _masts_ , the obsessive sexual fantasies returned.
She interpreted the ship as a man coming up the bay to lie with her, to wrestle with her furiously, to tear her clothes away and chase her through the woods of Devon. As the images continued, her lips became dry, and when the homecoming ship stood opposite the island, its sails set for Baltimore, she rose from the chair and stood by the fence, her eyes fixed on the tall masts, her body aching with desire.
I wish I were on that ship, she lamented, and as it drew away, its masts gray against the sun, she imagined herself in the captain's cabin, and he naked and hungry for her.
This is sickness! she thought, shaking her head violently. She drew her tossed curls across her eyes, as if to shut out the dreaded visions, but they still persisted, and she leaned heavily against the fence, allowing its points to jab her hands.
She remained in this position until the ship vanished, taking with it her phallic imagery. Only then did she climb down the ladder and walk slowly to her bedroom, where she lay on the silken coverlet, staring at the two cannonballs imbedded in the wall: If only they had come lower to strike him in his bed...
But she was horrified at the thought that she could wish her husband dead, and she threw her arms across her face and cried aloud, 'What a wretched woman I have become.'
'Did you call, ma'am?' Eden asked from the door.
'No. Go away.' The black girl disappeared, and she was left with her fantasies.
They stemmed from her savage disappointment in her husband. She now saw Paul Steed as a dilettante, a waster of himself and of everything with which he came into contact; always he stood in demeaning contrast to her, for she had inherited her Grandfather Simon's highly organized directness of purpose. When she first appeared at Devon she may have seemed a giddy girl, but she had never intended remaining that way. She suspected that this alteration had surprised and in a sense disappointed her husband, for shortly after their marriage he had told her, 'When we first met at the wharf you were a beautiful, innocent child. Let's not allow the years to change us.' But she had changed, and he had not.
And yet, she had to confess that in the early days of their marriage he had been almost exciting. He obviously loved her and had her pregnant almost immediately. Initially they had enjoyed their large bed, but quickly it had become a site for routine performances on his part, if not hers. Two other pregnancies had followed—how, she sometimes wondered—and by the end of the fifth year, the marriage was routine, and flat, and terribly dull.
She had become aware of his moral weakness when he began spoiling the children through lack of force, and weakening the family's business through lack of attention. She had tried to be a good mother, disciplining the children when he would not, but this led them to look exclusively to her for guidance: Paul should be talking with them. Damn it, we have three of the finest children in Maryland and he ignores them. There was a son six, a daughter four and a rambunctious son of two, and each seemed bright beyond expectations; already she had taught Mark, the oldest, to read and cipher, and the girl was aping him with surprising ease.
'We ought to be a happy family,' she muttered one day. 'The ingredients are in place.' But Paul engaged so small a portion of her interests and capacities that she felt unused, as if she were a reservoir of great potential but with no outlets. He was a silly man, and she often wondered what the professors at Princeton could have taught him, if they had bothered with him at all. His ideas were fragmentary; his goals wandering; his beliefs evanescent. He commanded little respect among the Steeds and had little chance of keeping the plantation system under control.
She was nearing thirty, at what should have been the threshold of her mature life, and the prospect of living it with a man who wasted his talents terrified her. It was not that she found herself ill-at-ease away from London, as her mother had done. She liked Maryland, and on the eve of her departure from England, all members of her family had warned her that she must not follow in the footsteps of the unfortunate Jane Fithian Steed. Old Carstairs Fithian told her, 'Your grandmother was my sister, and both Guy and I tried to prepare her for the colonies. Warned her that she must make the concessions, not her husband. She must not expect London and she must not expect her hard-working husband to be a Paris dandy. Your grandmother was a headstrong girl, fought America at every turn, and in the end surrendered control of her mind. If you marry young Steed, you must make adjustments to his standards.'
None needed to be made, at least in the fields which had caused Grandmother Jane to destroy herself; Susan loved the freedom of Maryland, the varied types of people she met along the Choptank, the new kinds of food, the fun of visiting Annapolis. Especially she liked the bay and the wild life that abounded along its edges; Devon Island still contained more than a score of deer, and when geese occupied the river they enchanted her: A group of old gossips chattering in the sunlight.
Her malaise was not based on selfishness, or petty indulgence. She was a good hostess, and when plantation neighbors came to stay for a week or two, she made them feel they were conferring an honor on her by their presence; she saw to it that their children were entertained, and that the slaves took them for donkey rides to the end of the island or on boating trips out into the bay. Under her management there was much happiness at Rosalind's Revenge; she was an excellent chatelaine and had she been fifty-five or sixty, there would have been no problem. Unfortunately, she was twenty-nine.
In February that year she had slipped into a destructive habit. While lying in bed one night, fretful over her husband's inattention, she happened to stick her left foot out from under the covers, as if she meant to leave the bed, and the sense of freedom generated by this simple act amazed her: If I wanted to, I could put out my other foot and forsake this place.
So she adopted the habit of sleeping with one foot free. One morning Eden came upon her dozing thus and reprimanded her, 'Ma'am, you catch cold,' but she offered no explanation, and Eden noticed that she continued to keep one foot uncovered.
The cannonballs presented a problem, too. From various bits picked up from the slaves, it was obvious that Paul had not been sleeping in this room at the time of the early-morning bombardment, and that when he ran to the shore, brandishing his musket, Captain Gatch's flotilla had long since gone. Yet there the two balls remained in the wall, cemented in place for the neighbors to admire, a celebration of his heroism.
She remembered the first time she had inspected them. 'Is there a chair I might stand on?' she had asked, but before anyone could answer, she had turned, and Captain Turlock had lifted her, and she had felt the silver fist pressing against her leg—
I've got to stop this! But her mind was unable to comply.
With the geese gone, the days lengthened and the bay warmed. Now she went to the roof almost daily, relaxing in the wicker chair like a sea captain, using her telescope to follow the ships moving north and south, and trying vainly to detect what was happening on the western shore. She could see the outline of trees and on clear days could even identify specific buildings, but the people occupying them remained invisible, two or three degrees too small to be distinguished.
'Come forth, damn you!' she sometimes cried, as if the farmers were maliciously hiding from her. Then she would lean back and stare at the sky—birdless, cloudless, infinitely remote—and she would think: I'm as invisible to them up there as the people across the bay are to me.
But whenever she began feeling overwhelmed by self-pity she would rush down from the roof and start to work in her garden, that vast semi-wild space with the trees and the flowering shrubs, After the first summer in 1816, when the amber daylilies had exploded all over the lawn, she had patiently worked to confine them to limited areas, digging out the wanderers and rimming the desirable clusters with pebbled borders.
This was hard work and would normally have been turned over to slaves, but she loved flowers, especially the robust daylilies, and on some days she worked till dusk, weeding and digging and replacing pebbles. She did not try to prettify the place. Old Rosalind Janney Steed had left written instructions for all the women who might follow her as mistress of this garden:
I pray you, no roses, no mazes, no formal footpaths, no marble statues from Italy, and, for the love of God, no box.
But trees died, and unless their departure was anticipated and others planted to take their place when they were gone, a forested garden would, over the course of two or three generations, fall apart. Susan was determined that when she left hers, it would be good for another fifty years.
She was there, one day, working on the borders, when she noticed a large cavity in one of the cedars that lined the outer limits of the garden, and when she dug her little rake into it, she saw that it was doomed. So she walked into the woods north of the house, looking for small trees which she might use to replace the dying one, and she had gone some distance toward the north shore of the island when she saw in the channel something that both delighted and distressed her: it was the clipper _Ariel_ , coming home at last. She was delighted that she would be able to talk with Captain Turlock again; she was distressed that she had not been on the roof to celebrate its arrival in the bay, for it was this ship that she had been awaiting since the breaking up of the ice.
She did not wave at the clipper, nor did she step out from among the pines; she merely stood in the shadows and watched every aspect of the returning ship, trying to imagine what seas it had sailed, with what cargo, and into what distant ports where English was unknown.
She remained there for more than an hour, moving ever closer to the shore so that she could see around the trees and follow the progress of the stately clipper—past Peace Cliff, past the Turlock marshes where the geese had stayed, and on toward Patamoke. One thing she had seen gave her comfort: the _Ariel_ was dirt-smeared and would have to remain in port some weeks for cleaning.
Captain Turlock had sailed back to Devon for two reasons: he wanted to know whether Paul Steed had accumulated any tobacco for shipment to France, where the Steed ships did not usually go; and he wanted to renew his acquaintance with Mrs. Steed. On his last visit, eight months ago, he had been flattered by her attention. It had been more than casual, of that he was convinced; and often during the long reaches across the Atlantic, or when lying to off Africa, a haunting couplet drummed through his head, forcing him to recall the provocative manner in which she had looked at him, as if inviting him to approach her:
Many a glance too has been sent
From out the eye, love's firmament...
He was tormented by the images aroused by those glances, and usually closed off his reverie by castigating himself: You're fifty-five years old. She's a child. But the thought persisted that she represented his last hope for a woman who could gratify this special hunger. He was most eager to see her again.
So when his sloop tied up at the wharf, he leaped ashore with more than customary spirit, and although he hurried to the office from which Paul managed the plantation, his attention was focused mainly on the garden in hopes that Susan might be working there. She was not visible, and this disturbed him, for she must have known that he was coming.
And then, just as he was about to enter Paul's office, he chanced to look upward, and there on the roof, behind the picket fence, Susan, in a gray-blue dress and a shawl about her hair, her hands fixed upon the low fence, was staring down at him. She gave no sign of recognition, simply stood there, leaning over and watching him. He, too, made no sign, for he could not tell who else might be looking, but before he entered the office he did scratch at his nose reflectively, using his silver fist.
Paul had no consignments for Paris. 'Wheat sells there no better than in England, but I'll tell you what I could use, Captain Turlock. Twenty casks of salt.'
'I'll bring it on the next voyage.'
'When will that be?'
'We'll leave next week.'
'You leaving so soon?'
'Patch up the _Ariel_ and off we go.'
'I hope we'll see something of you before you sail.'
'That would be most pleasant.'
'And you'll break bread with us today, of course?'
'I should like to.'
Paul finished some papers, then led the way to the front porch, where Tiberius, an elderly slave dressed in livery, opened the doors for the two men. 'Is Mrs. Steed in?' Paul asked, and the servant replied, 'She's on the roof.'
'Damn the roof. Send Eden to fetch her,' and shortly thereafter Susan came down the stairs, her shawl gone, her eyes ablaze.
'Here's Captain Turlock back home again,' Paul said, and she said, looking at Turlock, 'I trust you had a good voyage.'
They dined not in the big room but in one of the connecting ways built by Rosalind Steed more than a century past. It served the exact purpose she had planned; the sun came in upon a small table to which three chairs adjusted nicely, and those occupying the chairs could look out and see the garden trees so close they seemed to be at hand.
'I do love eating here,' Susan said as four slaves brought the food, and then she said no more, for the men began to talk, and Captain Turlock told of his new adventures, and after he had spoken of a dozen places, none of which she would ever see, she did ask one question. 'Didn't you say when we first met, years ago, that you were engaged in a kind of duel with Captain Gatch, who was married to one of my cousins? You never did tell me what happened?'
Turlock coughed slightly, adjusted himself in his chair and said, 'We fought each other for years. And in the end nobody won.'
'But I heard he had died... at sea.'
'He died gallantly, Mrs. Steed. Trying to do what could not be done.'
'How do you mean?'
'He tried to make his schooner sail faster than she could.'
'What an odd way to die. Did you hear that, Paul?'
'His schooner sank,' Paul snapped. 'That's the way I heard it years ago.' He reflected on this for a moment, then added, 'Took his whole crew down with him.'
'Was that part of the duel?' Susan asked.
Turlock coughed uneasily. 'It was his character, ma'am. He had to do what he did.'
A slave came to advise Mr. Paul that he was needed at the office, so he excused himself, but Susan and the captain remained in the sunlit passageway, and she spoke with great caution, for she did not want to betray the depth of her concern, but at the same time she wanted him to know that the concern was there. She said, 'A man from Patamoke who sailed on the _Ariel_ told me that you had engaged Captain Gatch in a running battle, somewhere here, and that he had defeated you in much blood.'
'He did.'
'But in the end...'
'I survived.'
'And he didn't. Was it because you were more clever than he... braver?'
'It was a duel, ma'am.'
'I wish I had been on that ship.'
'We don't allow women, ma'am.'
'I mean his. When he was chasing you. And you lured him on.'
'What are you saying?'
Susan laughed nervously. 'Captain Turlock, I do know all about the opening battle. He outgunned you, and you ran away.'
Turlock broke into a broad grin. 'That I did.'
'But you waited for him in Brazil...' She was not sure what she wanted to say next, but then a flood of words came upon her. 'When you told us those inconsequential things about the Amazon—the birds, the bigness, you were really trying to impress me... not about the Amazon, about the battle.'
'Why would I do that?' he asked evenly.
'Because you know that I...' She looked at him steadily, but then a movement on the lawn distracted her, and she said lightly, 'Look! Paul has to go to the other shore.' And they sat side by side, looking across the garden as Paul went down to the wharf. After the sloop moved off, a slave ran to the house and spoke with old Tiberius, who came to inform his mistress: 'Master, he got to go to the wharf distant.'
'The table can be cleared,' she said quietly, and when the room was silent she thought for a long time as to what she must say next. 'Do you remember how we first met?'
'On the porch, wasn't it? With your mother.'
'I mean, when we became aware of each other.'
'I have no clear recollection...'
'You do. I know you do. You remember it as vividly as I do...' She hesitated, and it was he who answered, 'It was the cannonballs. You wanted to see them, and I lifted you... and from that moment you have never left my arms.'
'I should like to see them again,' she said softly, and taking him by the hand, she led him from the passageway and into the empty hall and up the stairs to her bedroom, and there she drew his arms about her and raised on tiptoe and said, 'You'll have to lift me.'
His arms closed, and as he raised her in the air she pressed against him ever more tightly, then threw her arms about his rumpled head and whispered, 'Don't let me go, Matt,' and when he lowered her, they fell, intertwined, toward the bed.
It was unfortunate that the slave girl Eden could not have remained ignorant of what had happened in the room, but late in the afternoon, at her accustomed time for turning down the beds, she blundered in to find them naked. With no embarrassment she nodded gravely to her mistress, turned and left.
In the weeks that followed, when Captain Matt came to Devon on amusingly improbable excuses, or Mrs. Steed sailed to Patamoke ostensibly to shop and stay overnight with friends, Eden realized how ardent their affair had become. And she supposed that Mr. Steed must know what his wife was doing.
All during the month of June, Paul feigned ignorance, conducting his life in his usual fashion, but when Captain Turlock insolently dispatched the _Ariel_ to Africa under the command of First Mate Goodbarn—so that he might remain free to dally on shore—Paul could no longer keep up the pretense. He became moody and was remiss in meeting his business obligations; those slaves who had to approach him for instructions, he dismissed snappishly. He refused to confront either Susan or the captain directly; he allowed his bitterness to fester, and this made him increasingly difficult.
He manifested this in a way no one could have predicted, he least of all. The Steeds had always been known throughout the Eastern Shore for the benevolent manner in which they treated their slaves; indeed, this had long been a family doctrine: 'Devon slaves eat well and wear warm clothing.' They were not often punished and never whipped. This tradition was honored even by the remote Steeds at the Refuge, for if anyone there abused his slaves, he was summoned to Rosalind's Revenge and warned, 'Steeds don't do that, and if you persist, you'll have to leave the Choptank.'
But now Paul Steed, the master of Devon and exponent of the family, took to striking Eden for fancied misbehavior. His fury against her was heightened every time Susan was not at home; he would demand an explanation from Eden, and when she merely hung her head, sulking and silent, he would lose control of himself, and would beat her about the head until her violent sobbing brought him to his senses. But one morning, when Susan was again absent from his bed, he summoned Eden, and when she persisted in her silence, he became so enraged that he produced for the first time a heavy strap, with which he lashed her furiously.
'Master, I don't know what she do!'
'You do, you hussy!' And he continued to beat her, begging for the truth yet fearing to hear it.
From that day he played the game of wanting to know where his wife was and what she was doing, and he kept beating and questioning Eden, always terrified that she would tell him. Eden was twenty years old, as delicate of feature and clear of skin as when Grandfather Isham had presented her to Susan as a family gift. She had not yet borne children, a suspicious fact, but she had mastered the intricacies of plantation life better than any of the other slaves. She could sew handsomely and tend a room and look after the children when their nursing slave was busy. She had made herself a valuable adjunct to the big house, like a piece of comfortable furniture, and for Paul Steed to whip her was a humiliation.
But there was nothing she could do. She was Steed property, for life, and if he was displeased with her, society allowed him to thrash her until she collapsed in a heap.
Her plight was intensified by the fact that she knew what her mistress was doing, and approved. When Paul struck her, she could take inner consolation from the fact that his wife was cuckolding him, and that the other slaves knew it. When he fell into a fury and lashed her with extra harshness, she could grit her teeth and think: He knows why he does this. And she abetted her mistress in the connivances, and came to look upon Captain Matt as a hero for bringing excitement and love into Rosalind's Revenge.
Ultimately Susan had to find out what was happening to her maid; one day she saw Eden wincing as she lifted a portmanteau filled with clothes for a week-long stay in Patamoke, and she asked, 'What is it, Eden?' and when the girl said nothing, Susan lowered her smock and saw the welts. 'My God! What's happened?' And the disgraceful story unfolded. Then she became bitterly angry at her husband and upbraided him instantly: 'Whatever got into you, to strike my girl?'
He offered no sensible reply, but said something about her insolence, and neither of them elected to state the actual cause, although each knew clearly what it was.
But Susan was a woman of spirit; she took Eden to Patamoke and sold her to a planter who would treat her decently, but as soon as Paul heard of this he caught up with them, shouting at the new owner that he had no right to buy his slave, that she belonged to Devon, and he demanded her back. When the man stuttered, 'But I paid four hundred...' Paul slapped the money into his hand—and Eden became his property.
On the sail back to Devon he kept telling Eden that he had never meant to harm her, that he actually liked her and considered her one of his best servants. He promised not to pester her again about Mrs. Steed's whereabouts, and he made other resolves, all tending to prove that he would henceforth be a considerate master. But she had been at Devon only a few days before he came raging into the big room upstairs, again demanding to know where Susan was, and When Eden remained silent, he began whipping her with a strap, and she would not cry out, until the strap fell from his hand and he whimpered, 'Eden, I do not mean to hurt you. But where is my wife?' And when she looked at him, without sneering, without contempt, only with sadness, he tried to make amends, but she winced as blood trickled down the middle of her back, and he saw this and took her in his arms and whispered, 'I didn't mean to hurt you. I didn't mean...' And he fell with her onto the bed, and tore away her clothes and wiped her bruised back and consoled her and stayed with her there, day after day.
Now it was summer. Cardinals flashed among the trees and blue herons tiptoed sedately where the geese had once congregated so noisily. Slaves trapped soft-shell crabs with gratifying frequency, and insects droned in the afternoon sun. Mosquitoes became a major problem, but Paul had devised a canvas sack into which men and women alike could thrust their feet, shoes on, and then draw it tight about the waist. With this protection, only the hands and face needed personal attention, and two slaves were stationed in rooms where people met, waving fans to keep the fierce insects away.
Susan enjoyed the fanciful stories about mosquitoes. Mr. Landis from the Miles River told of overhearing two that had carried off one of his calves and were about to eat it. The first said, 'Let's drag it down to the Choptank and eat it on the beach,' but the second said, 'No! Down there the big ones would take it away from us.'
In July the weather became brutally hot. Whole days would elapse without a breeze and ships would sit becalmed in the bay, their captains cursing for a zephyr. When the ships did move, they left wakes that remained visible for miles as waves moved out from the bow. Over the river settled a shimmering haze, and few birds were willing to brave the intense heat that reflected from it. Sometimes, just before sunset, osprey could be seen patrolling the glassy river, searching for fish.
The loblollies stood motionless, hours passing without a needle dipping, and human life appeared to be in suspension too. Tiberius, keeping watch at the door, dozed in his chair, not wishing to speculate on where his mistress might be this time; he liked Susan and had known the generous manner in which she treated the slaves. He had watched her being kind to Eden and attentive to the black children when they fell ill. As for Eden herself, he had always considered her a choice human being, better fitted than most of the slaves to protect herself, and if she had chosen her present course to escape the beatings that were being inflicted upon her, he was not going to protest. Sometimes, when she stayed for protracted periods in the big bedroom with the master, he wished that she had remained in the fields, living a more normal life of husband and children, but in no way could he blame her.
'Girl got only so many chances,' he told her once when he carried food to the big room and found her alone. 'Best she take 'em.' When their paths crossed, as they did more infrequently now, he treated her with respect.
Matt and Susan spent the long summer in a dream world of content. They were most often in his small house in Patamoke, and on her first night there Susan asked, 'Captain Gatch really did bombard this house, didn't he? Is it true that one of the cannonballs killed your wife?'
'Who told you that?'
'Eden.'
'Five struck. You can still see where they ripped away the wall.'
'You didn't feel it necessary to keep them plastered in place? To demonstrate how brave you were?'
'Forget him, Susan.'
During the hottest days of August they reveled in a passion which seemed inexhaustible; after their wild wrestling matches, and their sleep, Susan would pester him by drawing one thumbnail across his forehead, onto his nose and down upon his upper lip. 'Waken up, Matthew. Day's awasting.'
One afternoon he looked at her in drowsy disbelief. 'Did your mother ever tell you... This sounds ridiculous, but I proposed marriage to her.'
Susan squealed with delight and belabored his chest with her fists. 'You horrible old man! You went to bed with my mother?'
'God, no! You can't imagine how proper we were.'
'Did she ever come here? Like this?'
'You're a naughty girl. I wanted to marry your mother. She was quite handsome, you know.' He began to chuckle. 'Did anyone tell you that I tended her when she was a baby?' Then the wonder of having Penny Steed's daughter in bed with him became overwhelming, and he had no more to say.
Susan guessed what thoughts were going through his mind. 'You were saved for me. My mother did the scouting, like an Indian. Dear God, I wish we were both just beginning—with a whole life ahead of us.'
If they were unrestrained in their love-making, they endeavored to preserve at least a show of decency in the community. They behaved circumspectly, never flaunted their affair in public, and gave the townspeople an opportunity to ignore it if they wished. Indeed, Susan looked more like a devout housewife than a mistress, and after five or six days of self-indulgence in the Patamoke house, she would discreetly slip back to Devon, where she resumed her role of dutiful mother.
Paul's public spectacle when buying Eden back was the only incident so far which had created anything close to a public scandal, and it had been quickly superseded by Matt's dignified deportment. It was a curious affair, and for the present it remained within manageable limits. As one knowing Patamoke housewife predicted, 'Summer will end, and the _Ariel_ will return, and Captain Matt will sail, and that'll be the end of it.'
The burden of the two misalliances fell most heavily on Paul. Never a man of outstanding character, he now revealed himself as exceedingly weak. There were rumors that he was conducting an extended affair with his wife's black maid, and people were mildly amused. But the business health of the plantation began to decline, and what small attention he paid to Devon consisted of storming into the office, ranting at the help and making silly decisions. The young Steeds from the Refuge who were doing most of the work had begun whispering among themselves as to the possibility that he might have to be replaced. 'He's not only tearing his plantation apart. He's beginning to affect ours, too.'
His most difficult problem, of course, was with Eden. In bed she could be wildly exciting; out of bed she was an aggravating enigma, and he often felt that as she moved about the room, tidying up the wardrobe in which Susan's dresses were kept, she was laughing at him. Once when Susan had been absent for five days, an immense gloom settled over him, and he began to shout at Eden, 'My wife belongs here—not you,' and he raised his hand to strike her. But this time she insolently grasped his wrist and said, 'No more, Master,' and she stared him down, and slowly his arm dropped to his side. In other ways, too, she asserted herself, demanding prerogatives, but in her physical relations with him she was impeccable. 'You want to stay longer, honey? All right, we stay, and pretty soon you sleep again.'
When he wakened she would be sitting on the edge of the bed, her hands folded in her lap. He noticed that never did she presume to wear any of Susan's clothes, even though he invited her to do so. 'That dress comes from Paris. Try it on, Eden.'
'No, that's Missy's.'
'It would fit you, almost.'
'Go back to sleep.' He spent much of this hot spell sleeping, but occasionally he would engage in a burst of reading: John Locke and Alexander Pope and David Hume. Then he would talk of great plans for a new theory of plantation management, but soon he would be asleep again. He admired Pope and tried reading passages to Eden, choosing those isolated lines which compressed so much of English commonplace morality:
'For fools rush in where angels fear to tread...'
'Hope springs eternal in the human breast...'
'A little learning is a dangerous thing...'
'The proper study of mankind is man...'
Eden would listen attentively, but whether she caught any of the poet's intended meaning Paul could not say; she was a good audience, and if Tiberius came to the door with a pitcher of lemonade, she cautioned him to leave it quickly, without interrupting.
But one afternoon in August, when the heat was almost unbearable, Paul was reading aloud from Pope when he came upon a quatrain which he started boldly, stumbled over, and finished in confusion:
'Vice is a monster of so frightful mien,
As to be hated needs but to be seen;
Yet seen too oft, familiar with her face,
We first endure, then pity, then embrace.'
He dropped the book, looked at Eden as if he were seeing her for the first time, and suffered a visible revulsion. 'Get out of here! Damn you, leave this room!' And he grabbed the strap, intending to belabor her about the back and face, but again she resisted. Slowly, showing fierce contempt, she retreated toward the door, opened it quietly and withdrew into the hall, while all the slaves working in the house could hear the master's cries of rage: 'Don't you ever come back here, you whore!' He pursued her down the hall, lashing at her with the strap in such a way as to be sure to miss. When she reached the main stairs used by the white folk she descended slowly, and Tiberius cried loud enough for the master to hear, 'Don't you come down them stairs, Sassy.' And he pretended to slap her, pushing her into the back part of the house.
That night she was back in the big room, smiling at the cannonballs as her master wept and begged forgiveness.
As happened so often in Patamoke, it was the Quakers who brought a touch of common sense to the ridiculous goings-on along the river. One morning, at the close of summer, George Paxmore knocked on the door of Captain Turlock's home and said, 'Matthew, my wife and I want to talk with thee.'
'Talk ahead,' Turlock snapped, holding the door so that his visitor could not peer inside.
'At our house. Elizabeth's waiting.'
'I don't believe I care to speak with Elizabeth. She talks and never listens.'
'As a friend, I beseech thee to come with me,' and he took Turlock by the arm and led him away.
The walk to the Paxmore house near the boatyard was an awkward one. Neither man wished to say anything substantial where full attention could not be paid, so Paxmore contented himself with observing that the ships heading for Baltimore seemed far more numerous than previously, and he gave it as his opinion that this new port had driven Annapolis out of business. 'And Patamoke, too. We won't see ships like yours coming here much in the future.'
'As long as I sail her you will.'
When they passed the _Ariel_ , home from Africa, Paxmore asked, 'Why did thee allow Mr. Goodbarn...' But this was coming too close to the agenda and he did not finish his sentence.
When they reached Paxmore's town house, a small white affair near the harbor, George deferred to the older man; after all, Captain Turlock was fifteen years his senior. 'Please enter. We're happy to have you as our guest.'
Elizabeth Paxmore, all in gray, still had the fair complexion of her youth, unsullied by powders or rouges; she was an attractive woman of thirty-nine, and Turlock found himself thinking: Damn, if I wasn't mixed up with the other one, she'd be most acceptable. He bowed and took the chair she offered, noticing that their home was austere yet relaxing, with just enough chairs carved by the master, just enough decorations embroidered by the mistress.
GEORGE: We want to beg thee once more, Matthew, to quit thy abominable trade.
MATT: What trade?
GEORGE: Slavery. Thy ship trades nothing else.
MATT: I've just been plaguing Paul Steed to give me a shipment of wheat.
GEORGE: We know how thee trades a little wheat for a great many slaves. We know of thy stops in Africa and Brazil.
MATT: What business—
ELIZABETH: We're neighbors, Matthew. What thee does affects us, too.
MATT: It shouldn't.
ELIZABETH: It's inescapable. Thee is my brother. Thee sails my ship. Thee brings thy slaves into my shadow.
MATT: I'd say you were sticking your nose into my affairs.
ELIZABETH: I am indeed. If thee won't care for thy immortal soul, I must.
MATT: And I suppose God directs you to do this?
ELIZABETH: He does, Matthew. He directs thee, too, but thee doesn't listen.
MATT: How can you be so goddamned certain—
GEORGE: If thee has a poor argument, Matthew, thee doesn't strengthen it with profanity.
MATT: Excuse me, ma'am.
ELIZABETH: Would thee like some tea?
MATT: That I would.
GEORGE: Slavery is a terrible wrong. It does hideous things to people, maladjusts them. (At this, Matt Turlock looked down at his hands, thinking of what Susan had told him about her husband's strange behavior.)
ELIZABETH: We cannot speak with thee logically, Matthew, unless thee acknowledges that slavery is this great evil. Thee sees that, doesn't thee?'
MATT: I see that fields need people to work them, and the best hands ever invented for that task are the niggers of Africa. God would not have allowed—
ELIZABETH: He works mysteriously. I sometimes think He has allowed this present generation to exist so as to prepare us.
GEORGE: Thy trade is corrupting thee, Matthew. Thee isn't the man for whom I built the _Ariel_. Time has corroded—
MATT: It corrodes all of us. You as well as Mrs. Paxmore.
GEORGE: We have striven to adhere to the principles of humanity.
MATT: As you define them. Tell me this, do you really believe that you will live to see the day when slavery is outlawed in Maryland?
GEORGE: It's been outlawed on the high seas. Sooner or later the British patrol will capture thee, and hang thee.
MATT: They'll never. And you'll never see the end of slavery.
ELIZABETH (adjusting in her chair to signal that she was changing the subject): When George says that thy profession corrodes, he refers to thy regrettable behavior with the Steeds.
MATT: That has no relationship—
ELIZABETH: It does. A human life is all of a part. What thee does in Africa determines what thee will do in Patamoke.
MATT: I think you're being damned fools.
GEORGE: We see a human soul destroying itself. Our anguish is no less than thine.
MATT: I feel no anguish, not in Africa nor in Patamoke.
GEORGE: Thee does, Matthew, because I feel the agitation, and I am thy brother. Elizabeth and I love thee. We love thy strength and willingness. We ask thee as friends and associates to quit this evil. Be done with it all. Get back to the sea. Burn the _Ariel_ for its contamination. I'll build thee a new ship, a better. Matthew...
ELIZABETH: Will thee pray with us?
MATT: Pray when I'm gone.
ELIZABETH: When will thee be gone?
MATT: In about one minute.
ELIZABETH: I mean from Patamoke.
MATT: That's my affair.
ELIZABETH: It's not at all. Can't thee see what thee's doing to the Steeds?
MATT: I did not ask—
ELIZABETH: But thee can't consciously goad two human beings into destroying themselves. Matthew, we're talking about two immortal souls.
MATT: You take care of your soul, Mrs. Paxmore. I'll take care of mine.
ELIZABETH: I shall pray that God sends thee light. I shall pray.
MATT: You know what I think, Mrs. Paxmore? I think you're a goddamned busybody. You pray for yourself, and let me alone.
He stomped from the trim house, disgusted with its occupants, but on his way to his home, where Susan waited, he reflected on his family's long acquaintance with the Paxmores, and on the stories he had heard about the Quakers, and it occurred to him that Quaker men were cursed with some of the sharpest-tongued busybodies God ever put on earth. From rumors about town, he understood that they even got up in church and spoke their minds, but as far as he was concerned, these women represented only austerity, preaching and sanctimoniousness. But it was strange—generation after generation these quiet women with their demure bearing and fearless intelligence seemed to make the lasting wives. Their husbands appeared to love them as much at seventy as they had at seventeen: I wonder if there's something to the way they're brought up? Always speaking their minds and taking part in things? Compared to the Steed women, or the Turlocks, these Quaker wives seemed to function at full capacity till God struck them dead.
Any incipient compassion Turlock may have held for the Quakers vanished that afternoon when a deplorable scene took place at the harbor. While he was away from town visiting the widow of a Turlock who had died at sea, George Paxmore chanced to meet Mrs. Steed coming from a shop, and the evangelical mood possessed him so strongly that he accosted her. 'Susan, would thee do me the honor of a brief visit?'
'I do not care to go to your house,' she said sharply, 'in view of what you've said about Captain Turlock.'
'I did not invite thee to my house. To my clipper.'
This so surprised her that she half assented, but when she reached the harbor and from the rowboat saw that he was headed for the _Ariel_ , she refused to get in. 'That's not yours. It's Captain Turlock's.'
'I built it,' Paxmore said, and he took her arm and persuaded her to join him. On the short trip to the _Ariel_ he said nothing, but when the sailor on duty asked his mission, he said, 'To inspect my clipper,' and he handed Susan up the ladder.
He allowed her only a brief moment on deck, during which she admired the neatness of the vessel; then he led her to the hatch and asked for a ladder. When the sailor brought it, he adjusted it so that Susan could climb down, and when she stood on the 'tween deck he joined her.
It took her some moments to adjust to the darkness; then, as her eyes began to pierce the gloom, she heard Paxmore say, 'In this compartment forward of the mast, where you can't even stand up, one hundred and sixty slaves.'
'No!' Vaguely she had known that Matt was a slaver, just as she knew vaguely that during the Revolution he had seen great battles, but one fact was as nebulous as the other. To her he was merely Matt Turlock who sailed the oceans; slavery at sea was no more a reality than slavery at Devon Island. She could not have told Paxmore, at this moment, how the Steed slaves lived; they existed and formed no part of her consciousness.
'And aft of the mainmast, eighty more.'
'My God!'
'Yes, only by calling on the mercy of God can we comprehend what this ship means.' And he forced her to lie on her stomach and peer down into the lower hold. 'Forward, a hundred and twenty men. Aft, another hundred.' She started to rise, but he held her down. 'Look at the headroom in which a woman with child must try to stand.'
She was about to respond when she heard a roaring voice from aloft: 'What in hell are you doing down there?'
Calmly George Paxmore replied, 'I am showing your lady how you earn your livelihood.'
With a towering oath Matt Turlock leaped into the hold, grabbed Paxmore by the neck and rushed him toward the ladder. 'Out! You preachifying rogue!' And after he had shoved the unresisting Quaker onto the deck he sped up after him and pushed him toward the gangway. 'Off this ship forever.'
'It's mine too, Matthew.'
This was said with such self-righteousness that Turlock quite lost his head and launched a violent kick at the departing boatbuilder. He missed, and Paxmore said, 'God condemns thee and thy slave ship.' And he rowed ashore.
Two sailors helped Susan climb out of the hold, and Turlock expected her to be shaken by what she had seen, but instead she was obviously flushed with erotic excitement.
'I've always wanted to visit the _Ariel_ ,' she said. 'It's a powerful experience.' And she allowed him to lead her to his cabin, and she could not feast enough on the charts, the carved ivory, the gimbaled bed. This was the essence of Matt Turlock.
'Paxmore did me a favor, showing me belowdecks.' She sat on his bed and studied him as if for the first time.
'He said this morning I was destroying you.'
'No! You're creating me. Matt, it was seven years ago that you lifted me up to see the cannonballs. Every day since then I could feel the pressure of your arms because you held me longer then necessary. You held me because you wanted me... and I've always wanted you.'
On that first afternoon in the big bed at Rosalind's Revenge he had asked her, 'Shall I untie the thongs and take off the fist?' and she had protested, 'No! I want to feel it across my body... everywhere.' Since then, whenever they began to make love she kissed the silver eagle as a kind of salute; it became the symbol of their passion.
Now she kissed it again and whispered, 'Poor Paxmore, he must have thought that showing me the slave quarters would kill my love for you. I love you even more for your dangerous life. Now I know why you require a silver fist.'
Later, when they were resting in the gimbaled bed, there came a loud clattering on deck, and before she could slip into her clothes the door to Matt's cabin burst open, revealing her husband, finally enraged to the point of madness. He had an ax and was screaming threats of murder.
There was a wild scramble, and shouting that could be heard onshore. She would never be able to sort out precisely what happened; she did remember Matt's throwing himself across the bed and knocking away the weapon Paul carried. In the end, Matt, with only a towel about him, grabbed Paul and tossed him into the harbor, and most of the townspeople were on the wharf by the time he swam ashore. A woman who had watched the scene from a rowboat summarized it: 'Both of 'em was naked.' The scandal was now public property.
When the young Steeds working in the Devon office heard of this disgraceful exhibition—even slaves were joking about it—they knew that they must act. Instructing one of the blacks to inform Paul of their departure, they marched soberly down to the wharf, climbed aboard a sloop and set out for the Refuge. As they sailed past Peace Cliff they rehearsed what they must say, and by the time they reached the marsh and entered Dividing Creek they were prepared.
Gravely they stopped at each of the Refuge plantations, advising one senior or another that he must come immediately to Herbert Steed's big house, and there they unfolded the shameful story.
'Before I tell you what happened yesterday in Patamoke, I suppose you know that Paul's flown apart... as if struck by a bomb.'
'I don't know,' Herbert Steed replied somewhat stuffily. He was a rotund, pompous man who sniffed before each sentence.
'He's taken to beating Eden, that's his wife's maid, with a heavy strap.'
'Striking a slave!'
'And after he beats her, he lies with her.'
'You haven't told the women?' Herbert gasped.
'Everyone knows. You must be aware that Aunt Susan is practically living with Captain Turlock.'
This rumor had reached the Refuge, and Herbert Steed already knew what he thought about that: 'Swamp trash.'
'Yesterday things reached a climax. After practically condoning the affair for these months, Paul storms into Patamoke, tries to murder Turlock, and ends being thrown into the harbor.'
To everyone's surprise, Herbert broke into laughter. 'Paul Steed thinking he could commit a murder. He couldn't swat a fly. I'm surprised the maid—what's her name?—allows him to beat her.'
'She doesn't any longer. One of the slaves told me she grabbed his wrist and said, "No more," and he was afraid to continue.'
Now the young men resumed the serious discussion. 'The scandal we could absorb. But Paul's destroying the Devon plantations. And before long his pathetic decisions will begin to affect yours, too.'
'How do you mean?' Herbert asked sharply; where money was involved, he was involved.
'Take the stores. No one's really supervising them. Clerks wander in at nine o'clock. Last month I visited all four—fly-ridden, filthy, didn't look like Steed property at all.'
The other nephew broke in: 'Are you aware that the field-clearing gang hasn't burned an acre this year? No one's hammering at them.'
'Enough!' Herbert said. And he underwent a remarkable transformation: his shoulders squared; his eyes focused sharply; and his mouth set grimly. He was fifty-three years old and for some time had believed that he had retired from daily responsibilities, but the possibility that the Steed plantations might collapse galvanized him. Briskly he rose from his chair and announced, 'I'm taking charge of the Devon plantations—now.'
He had allowed no discussion from his cousins. Packing a few things in a canvas bag, he went to the sloop and was about to depart with his nephews when a prudent thought occurred: 'Timothy, run back and fetch us three good guns.' And when these arrived they set sail for Devon.
Late that afternoon Paul Steed rose from his bed, left Eden and drifted aimlessly down to the office, where to his surprise he found the man they called Uncle Herbert, a pompous, seemingly futile type, installed in his chair. 'What're you doing here?' he asked with trembling authority.
'I've come to run things,' Herbert said.
'What things?'
'Paul, go back to your whore. And don't you ever again allow Captain Turlock to set foot on Devon Island.'
'Are you commanding me?'
'Paul, get out of here. You are no longer in charge.' Instinctively the two younger Steeds moved to positions behind their uncle, and the trio presented such a formidable wall of opposition that Paul could summon no strength to combat it.
'You'll not succeed...' he began to bluster, but Herbert Steed left his desk, walked quietly to the former master and escorted him to the door. 'Go back to the girl, Paul. That's to be your life from here on.'
Ejected from his office, he stumbled toward the Revenge, passing through a garden of remarkable beauty without seeing it. He entertained the vain hope that when he met Eden she would somehow inspire him to oppose this capture of his prerogatives, but when Tiberius opened the outer door, uttering his usual gracious words, 'Do come in, Master Paul,' he kicked it shut and stomped away.
He walked not to the wharf, where he was no longer welcome, but westward toward those wheat fields which had always been the most productive; generations ago the Steeds had learned that to produce tobacco, a field required years of rest now and then, or the alteration of crops rich in nitrogen, and these fields had been kept vital. As he wandered through them he felt pride that he had kept them still viable: Maybe the best fields in Maryland.
But when he reached the western end of the island he was astonished to discover that the fields seemed much shorter than they had been when he was a boy, but this was so improbable that he wondered if he were remembering properly. Shouting for the overseer, he was able to rouse no one, so he went to the edge of the land, kicking at the soil and inspecting the line where the waters of the bay touched the island, and as he was doing this he saw one of the slaves fishing. The man supposed the master had come to spy on him and started running, lest he be punished, but Paul cried, 'Stop, Stop!' and when the man ignored his shouts, Paul set out after him, but the slave was speedy in retreat, and Paul could not catch him.
So he resumed his solitary wandering and came upon that stand of pine in which he and his cousins had camped as children, listening to the thunder of the bay as the stars appeared: My God! So many trees have gone! And below him, in the waters of the Chesapeake, lay rotting pines.
Again he shouted for the overseer, and this time an older slave appeared. 'Yassah, what you need, Mastah?'
'This shore? Is it falling away?'
'Yassah, every year, more 'n more.'
'Those trees. There used to be a little forest, didn't there?'
'Yassah. I was boy, trees out to there.' And he indicated a spot so far distant in the bay that Paul gasped.
'Don't you do anything about it?'
'Nosah, nothin' you can do.'
Paul dismissed the slave and continued his walk, witnessing always the encroachment of the bay, and it seemed that in his brief lifetime a valuable portion of the island had disappeared: I must do something about it. I must talk to the people who look after these fields.
When he returned to headquarters he found considerable excitement. Captain Turlock had sailed a small boat down the Choptank, bringing Mrs. Steed to her home, but Herbert Steed had forestalled him at the landing, refusing him permission to come ashore. There had been a scuffle; the two younger Steeds had supported their uncle; and Turlock had struck one of them with his silver fist, throwing him into the creek before marching solemnly up the path to the big house, arriving there just as Paul returned from his western explorations.
'Good afternoon, Paul,' Turlock said.
The confused events of these past days were too much for Steed—his demotion, the falling away of the land, and now this arrogance—and he lashed out stupidly. 'Damn you, I'll thrash you...'
'You'll what?' Turlock asked.
Steed made another lunge at him, then flailed his arms helplessly. The captain pushed him away twice, and when this did not halt the ridiculous attack, swung his left arm almost gently and with his silver fist pushed, rather than knocked, Paul to his knees. He was about to help the fallen man rise when he heard an ominous command from behind: 'Stand where you are, Turlock.'
Still offering Paul help, he turned his head to see Herbert Steed standing on the gravel path, flanked by two nephews, one dripping, and all with guns. 'What in hell?'
'Off the property,' Herbert Steed said quietly.
'Put those guns down,' Turlock snapped, turning his attention from Paul and allowing him to fall backward. 'What do you think you're doing?'
'I know what I'm doing, Turlock. I'm counting to five, and if you're still on that porch, I'm going to blow your guts out. Boys, get ready to fire.'
And he began to count: 'One, two, three—'
'Steed!' Turlock bellowed. 'You're acting like a—'
Very calmly Herbert interrupted his count. 'Do you think any jury would convict us? After that?' And with a look of sickening disgust he pointed with his gun at Susan. 'Four. Aim at his guts, boys.'
Before Herbert could utter the command to fire, Captain Turlock backed off the porch, looked contemptuously at the fallen husband and started slowly down the graveled path. He had gone only a few steps when Susan uttered a cry and started after him, but the three Refuge Steeds interposed with their guns. 'You stay!' Herbert commanded. 'The circus is over.'
And he barred the way. When Turlock reached his sloop he got in and slowly moved it toward the creek, but three days later he was back, bringing with him the casks of salt Paul Steed had ordered. Herbert appeared at the wharf with the purchase money, but Turlock ignored him, allowing Mr. Goodbarn to handle that negotiation. 'I'm going to the big house,' Turlock said.
'No, you're not,' Herbert Steed replied quietly.
'I guess I am,' Turlock said, and three of his sailors produced muskets to neutralize the men in the headquarters building. While they stood guard, Matt Turlock walked gravely up the path, noting the last daylilies as they withered on their brown-green stalks. At the door he knocked politely and informed Tiberius that he had come to pay his respects to Mrs. Steed.
Up to this moment Susan had been unaware of his arrival, but as his voice echoed through the hallway, she rushed from her upstairs room and ran down the flight of stairs, throwing herself into his arms. Her husband followed.
After embracing Susan, Turlock half pushed her away. 'I'm sailing for Africa. It'll be years before I return.'
'Oh no!' she cried, clinging to him again.
'I must. We've hit the end of the road here, all of us.'
'Matt, no!' She grasped his arms, begging him not to go, but he was resolute. To Paul he said, 'I'm sorry. I hope that in the future things will be better for all of us.'
Paul made no response, but Susan refused to accept this as the end of summer, the end of all she had so desperately dreamed of. 'You can't go, Matt,' she pleaded. Then an alluring idea came to her. 'I'll go with you. Eden! Pack the bags!' And she broke away from the two men and dashed upstairs, calling for her maid.
'I must stop her,' Matt said, and he bounded up the stairs after her, overtaking her in the bedroom as she began to pull down boxes and bring out her dresses. Eden, standing in a corner, watched the hullabaloo, slim and silent and unsmiling.
'Susan!' Matt said harshly. 'It's over. There's no way you can board my ship.'
'But I...'
'Unthinkable.' He brought her away from her frantic packing and held her by the shoulders. Ignoring Eden, he said tenderly, 'Susan, you've been the most precious thing in my life.'
'I must stay with you,' she whispered. 'There's nothing in life, Matt. Nothing. These last three days...' She shivered.
'We begin over again, all of us.'
'There can be no more beginning.'
'You could help Paul regain control of the—'
'Him?' The withering scorn bespoke more than the end of summer, but Matt was obdurate. He started for the door, but she uttered such a pitiful cry that he had to stop. Then she threw herself at him, whimpering, 'Matt, lift me up as you did that first day.' Clutching his hand, she dragged him toward the bed and waited for him to put his arms about her as he had done so long ago.
Slowly he lifted her until her shoulders were on a level with the imbedded cannonballs. 'Hold me long, as you did then,' she pleaded, but he began to lower her. Frantically she clutched at him, failed to stop him, and found herself slipping down. Her feet were again on the floor; her life was over.
She made no protest as he left, but did listen as he said to Eden, 'Look after her. She's worth loving.'
With heavy step he stalked down the stairs, bowed to Paul Steed, and returned to his sloop. 'Back to the _Ariel_ ,' he told Mr. Goodbarn. 'We sail in the morning.' The sailors dropped their guns as Matt saluted the three Steeds watching from the office doorway.
The _Ariel_ left Patamoke the next day at dawn, heading for London-Luanda-Belém. She had assembled commissions which would keep her at sea for four years, and as she sailed slowly down the river Captain Turlock looked for what he suspected might be the last time at the familiar sights, the beacons that had guided his life. Abeam lay the Paxmore yards where his clipper had been devised; how grieved he was that his association with these honest Quaker builders had been ruptured; no one tended to the welfare of ships as they did.
There was the family swamp; Cousin Lafe would be tracking deer through the tall grasses; herons would be fishing in the shallows. And on the rise stood Peace Cliff, that noble, quiet haven so different from the gaudy show of Devon. He remembered when George Paxmore's mother had invited him to that telescope house and given him a book to take on his journeys during the war. 'Thee doesn't have to attend school to learn. A ship can be a school, too. But if thee doesn't learn, thee dies young.'
He had decided not to look back at Rosalind's Revenge, lest it haunt his dreams, but when Devon Island lay to port his eyes were lured to that stately house, and he saw what he feared he might see. On the widow's walk, her blue dress standing out in the breeze, stood Susan, her face not discernible from this distance but her handsome figure unmistakable. For as long as the _Ariel_ remained in contact with the island, Captain Turlock stared at that solitary figure. He would never know another like her; she had been the capstone of his desire, a woman of exceptional passion and love. Inadvertently he looked away for a moment in the direction of his cabin: God, how I wish she was waiting in there.
Shaking his head at the impossibility, he looked once more toward Devon—and she had disappeared! Disappointed, he shrugged his shoulders. I shouldn't have thought she'd go down before we passed from sight.
She hadn't. Learning that the _Ariel_ would leave Patamoke at dawn, she had slept fitfully, her left foot free of the light coverlet, always prepared to flee that horrid bed. At dawn she had risen and called for Eden to bring her the blue dress that Captain Turlock had commended at their first serious meeting. Eden, passing easily from maid to mistress to maid, sought out the fragile dress and helped Susan into it, then combed her hair and wove blue ribbons in, knowing that Mrs. Steed was preparing for a farewell rite.
Susan could eat no breakfast, and when the day was bright she went up to the roof, and sat there in the hot September sun looking eastward up the Choptank toward Patamoke. Lashed to the wicker chair, lest it blow away, was her small telescope in its waterproofed bag. Removing the glass, she studied the river; no bigger than a dot on a piece of paper was the _Ariel_ when she first identified it. Then it expanded, with real sails and visible bulwarks. Now she could lay the telescope aside and watch the beautiful clipper, five sails aloft, as it breasted the island. She could not with her naked eye particularize among the moving figures, but with her telescope she saw Captain Turlock, the sun glistening now and then from his left hand. What a compelling man he was, that shock of red hair, the beard, the massive fist; he had told her during her last impassioned stay at his house in Patamoke that he was beginning to feel an older man: 'When I was young I could have romped with you four days running, with no interruption for food.'
As he moved down the straits she remembered every word of encouragement he had ever spoken to her: 'You're like an inexhaustible spring at the edge of a desert.'
And there he went. The _Ariel_ was leaving the strait now and entering the bay, but still some moving forms remained visible. 'Oh God! Don't take him away!' she cried aloud.
'He is away!' a voice said behind her, and she turned to face her husband.
With a wild brush of his hand, Paul Steed swept the telescope out of her grasp and watched as it tumbled noisily down the sloping roof, clattering at last to the ground.
'You whore!' he said. 'Crying your heart out for such a man.' He pointed toward the departing slaver and said scornfully, 'A great hero! A man who peddles human flesh.'
Humiliated by his sneering and outraged by the destruction of her telescope, she whipped about and lunged at him with no clear understanding of what she hoped to accomplish; she wanted vaguely to hurt him, to erase that sneering. Paul saw her make this motion, and whereas he had been afraid to confront either Matt Turlock or Uncle Herbert, he was willing to fight Susan. With a harsh blow of his two hands clasped, he knocked her toward the fence, where she toppled for a moment, lost her balance and started falling from the roof.
Fortunately, her right foot caught in the pickets, and this saved her. But when Paul saw her dangling there, her foot wedged, her head down toward the edge, he lost what little sense he had and yanked the foot loose. Holding it, he cried, 'Go to Captain Turlock!' and with a thrust he shoved her down the sloping roof, watching as she disappeared over the edge. Her screams began as she disappeared from sight and ended in a piercing shriek as she struck the ground.
Paul, not fully aware of the hideous thing he had done, listened to her fall and then, with an impetuous cry, leaped after her. He did not clear the fence. His toe caught; he stumbled, slammed down hard on the slates of the sloping roof, tumbled for some feet, then pitched over the edge and down to the ground.
It is not easy to kill a human being. A would-be murderer stabs his target six times and fails to strike a vital organ. A crazed woman, run amok, shoots a man three times at point-blank range and punctures him in different places but with little damage. The two Steeds, tumbling from their widow's walk, had caught momentarily on rainspouts edging the roof, and then fallen heavily into flower beds.
Herbert Steed, hearing the commotion shortly after reporting for work, ran out from his office and called to his nephews, 'What are those damned fools doing now?'
Then Tiberius came running from the porch, shouting, 'Sir, sir, they done suicide.'
This brought all the slaves running, and by the time Uncle Herbert and his nephews reached the scene, Eden was cradling Mrs. Steed in her arms and saying softly, 'You not goin' to die. You not meant to die yet.'
When the situation was unraveled, and it became obvious that neither Paul nor Susan was fatally injured, the problem arose as to what should be done with them. Herbert Steed summed it up when he said, 'That damned fool never did anything right. Now he leaves it to us to see they walk again.' And he supervised carrying them up to the big bedroom, where a slave woman cared for them till a doctor could be fetched. When he arrived, by sloop from Patamoke, he found that she had set the bones and washed the cuts with warm soapy water.
'Not much more I can do,' he said, but he did inform Uncle Herbert that he need not worry about Paul. 'His hip'll mend. Leg'll be a bit short, but no harm. The one to watch is Mrs. Steed. Seems to have a badly twisted spine.'
His prognoses were correct. Paul did heal, but with a short left leg and a permanent crick in the neck that caused him to look at life sideways. Susan, however, was left an invalid; critical bones in her back were permanently affected, and although she could manage a few steps about her room, she was quite incapable of sustained movement.
Uncle Herbert, to the surprise of his family, had developed a willingness to make large decisions on everything. 'That pair can't possibly bring up their children. I'm sending the two oldest to that school Mrs. Paxmore runs at Peace Cliff.' When Susan protested, he said sternly, 'Quakers are a sorry lot, but they know how to teach. Your Mark seems to have a brain, and she'll cultivate it, God help the lad.'
Susan was not demanding, but she did require constant attention, and Eden provided it; indeed, she cared for Paul too, and as the pair grew more crotchety, she grew more understanding. She still had no husband, no children; she adopted the crippled Steeds as her family and treated both with equal compassion. Paul could become quite ugly, making preposterous demands, but she ignored him for the weak, sad thing she knew him to be, and when he pestered her, she lightly dismissed him and went about her chores.
Her affection centered on Susan, whom she dressed with care and tended with the forgiving love a mother bestows upon a sickly child. It was she who insisted that Susan return to the roof. 'If'n it pleasures you, the way it used to, you oughta go. We can carry you.'
'I don't want my wife on that roof... ever again,' Paul blustered, but Eden told him, 'Hush.' She summoned two slaves to carry the crippled woman to the widow's walk, and there she rested during three seasons of the year, and even in winter when soft days came she sat in the wicker chair, using a new telescope Uncle Herbert had bought her, watching the tall ships as they passed up and down the bay.
And on certain days, when strength returned, she would draw herself upright, and grasp the pickets, and follow the ships intently. Then the phallic symbolism of the masts would possess her, as it had long ago, and she would scour the southern portion of the bay and cry, 'Bring him back!'
She was in this mood one October day in 1825, her eyes fixed on the south, when she heard a distant rustling over her shoulder, and without changing the direction of her sight she whispered, 'They're returning. The geese are here again.' And she stood there, looking to the empty south, as the first flock flew overhead, their noisy cackling announcing with joy the fact that they were home.
# _Voyage Nine: 1832_
BY THE END OF THE THIRD DECADE OF THE NINETEENTH century the black nations bordering the Gulf of Guinea in western Africa were a highly sophisticated group. The Ibo, Benin, Yoruba and Fanti had come to understand the tragedy of slavery and were able to take imaginative measures to protect their people from it. The old days when ruthless gangs could swoop down upon an unsuspecting village to carry off its best young men and women were largely gone.
But since the trade remained highly profitable, there continued to be daring slave-collectors willing to run the risk of capture by British patrols assigned to stamp them out, and these predators were now forced to trap their blacks in remote villages far south of the Congo, where native leaders were often ignorant and susceptible to subornation. Here companies of cruel businessmen prowled the jungles, forcing their way far upstream to the headwaters of little-known rivers to track their prey.
One knowing trader, Abu Hassan by name, followed a complicated route to catch his slaves. He entered the Congo River where it debouched into the Atlantic, far south of the Gulf of Guinea. Ignoring the bordering lands, for they were held by the Kongo peoples, as sophisticated as the Ibo or Yoruba to the north, he traveled three hundred and sixty miles up the Congo to where an enormous river came in from the south, the Kasai, but he took no slaves here, either, for these lands were held by the clever Kuba. However, after paddling three hundred and fifty miles up the Kasai, he came upon a gigantic river called the Sankuru, but even here he did not try to capture slaves, for this river was guarded by the Luba nation. But after traveling five hundred miles up the Sankuru, he found his target, the Xanga River, enormous in breadth and length, but so remote that no captain of a slaving ship had ever heard of it. Along the upper reaches of the Xanga many small villages clustered, their people unaware of slave markets.
It was to these villages that Abu Hassan came in the spring of 1832. He was a tall, sad man, wearied by forty-seven years of difficult and dangerous African trading. He dressed in Arab robes, covered by a glowing white burnoose, and he was always the gentleman, cleansing his hands after any unpleasantness. He spoke many languages—Arabic, French, English and, especially, Portuguese and the various Congo dialects—and was able to conclude business deals with either a Xanga chieftain or a Boston slaver. He had been born on the opposite side of Africa, in an Arab settlement north of Mozambique, and had worked at first in transporting slaves down to the Indian Ocean for shipment to Arabia, where the demand was constant, but when the catching of blacks became increasingly difficult he had been drawn deeper and deeper into the heart of the continent, until the day he discovered that it would be simpler and more profitable to march his slaves west to the Portuguese seaport of Luanda, where ships intended for Cuba, Brazil and the United States clustered.
In 1832, as he slowly made his way up the rivers in canoes containing an amalgam of cheap trading goods, he did not know that he was heading into confrontation with a gifted young Xanga named Cudjo, who lived in a village close to where that river flowed into the larger Sankuru. Cudjo was in trouble.
For some time his own people had been suspicious of him. Spies had watched his movements, reporting anything unusual to the village headman, and in the tribal councils his advice had been ignored. Even more alarming, the family of the girl Luta, whom he had chosen to be his wife, suddenly refused him permission to buy her.
He was being driven to the conclusion that he might have to quit this tribe which had done everything but proscribe him publicly, for he had often watched what happened to men declared outcasts and was determined to escape the penalties they had suffered.
Despite his perilous position, he had no desire to leave this lovely river along whose banks his ancestors had been so happy. Vaguely he knew that the Xanga ran into larger rivers and they into still larger; to live in his village was to see the quiet traffic of a continent and to be in touch with a multitude of tribes north and south.
And in addition to the river, there were the associations in the village. His forefathers as far back as memory recorded had been primal figures, strong in war and voluble in peace. They had governed their portion of the river, dispensing justice to their people and assuring adequate food supplies. In the normal course of affairs he would take their place and become the dispenser of government.
The trouble which had mysteriously arisen to threaten him started not with opposition in his own village but from quite another quarter. In the old days Arab traders had come up the Xanga in leisurely fashion, stopping perhaps for a score of days to exchange goods and gossip, but recently a new type of trader had appeared, the man named Abu Hassan, for example. He arrived with canoes, talked secretly with the headman, traded in a jiffy and was gone. He also introduced unfamiliar goods: rifles and beverages and cloth of a different make. He was arrogant and gave commands, and those porters who enlisted to help him get his goods to market did not return to their villages.
Cudjo had taken a quick dislike to Abu Hassan; the older traders had accepted whatever the villagers offered for barter, but this new breed stated in strident terms what they required, and the black people felt obligated to provide it. Cudjo tried to persuade his people that they must oppose such domination, but he was only twenty-four years old and the sager heads would not listen. He sometimes wondered why they were so insistent upon defending Hassan when his total effect was so negative, and he persisted in his opposition.
Indeed, he made himself something of a nuisance, a troublemaker who would not long be tolerated, and some months ago, when Abu Hassan came up the Sankuru with his canoes, Cudjo had been prepared to oppose him when the trading commenced, but to his surprise the Arab did not stop. He continued right up toward the headwaters of the Xanga, pausing only long enough to confer quietly with the three headmen and give them presents.
'He will trade with us on the way back,' the village leaders explained, and the convoy passed on.
'We should not trade with him,' Cudjo protested, and the elders looked at each other knowingly.
It was now that he became aware of plots against him. The tribal leaders began to meet surreptitiously, refusing to admit him to their discussions, and he was particularly disturbed when Akko, a young man no older than himself, was accorded preference.
This Akko was a shifty manipulator, more given to clever tricks than to hard work, and Cudjo knew that the tribe would find itself in difficulty if it followed advice from this man. But Akko was adroit in managing things to his advantage, and it became clear throughout the village that the elders had determined to elevate him into a position of leadership that should more properly have gone to Cudjo.
Now, when word came that Abu Hassan was coming down the Xanga with his men, Cudjo saw that the decision had been made: Akko was put in charge of assembling the village's goods for trading, a position of trust, while Cudjo was isolated from any important task. He had to sit in bitter idleness as Akko collected the ivory, the feathers, the partially cured leather and the powdered horn of the rhinoceros, so valuable in trade to the east: it enabled old men to marry young girls.
In his idleness Cudjo decided upon a curious stratagem. He would on his own recognizance journey up to the headwaters of the Xanga to ascertain what trade goods Abu was demanding this time, and he would then come back and alert his tribesmen as to what items were of particular value, so that they might have on hand substantial supplies of these preferred goods when the Arabs arrived. This would prove his willingness to serve, even though Akko had been promoted over him.
He was a powerful young man, able to paddle his river craft up the Xanga or run for long spells after he had beached his boat and started overland. He had strong legs, a very thick neck and shoulders more solid than most. If the contest between him and Akko had come down to fighting or wrestling, he would have won easily.
So he found no difficulty in ascending the river, and on the sixth day hid his canoe and walked through the deep forest, peering through leafy protection to observe what was happening in the village where the Arabs traded. There stood the huts, the piles of ivory, and the striped tents from which the traders conducted their business and in which they slept at night.
The first thing he noticed was the unusually large number of Arabs accompanying the expedition. In the old days, when some wandering tradesman reached the village, he brought at most one assistant, relying upon black porters to carry out the elephant tusks. Even Abu Hassan, on his two earlier trips, had brought only two white helpers; this time he had nine. Cudjo peered around to see what enormous mound of trade goods justified such a company, but he could detect nothing.
The second inexplicable thing was a substantial fire that was burning near one of the tents, in front of which sat two white men, their faces smeared as if they were playing at being black. Of this strange behavior he could make nothing.
Because of his uncertainty over what was happening, he slept that night in the woods, and when he wakened before dawn he saw to his surprise that the fire had been allowed to die down. As he watched, the Arabs came out of the striped tents to start the fire again. This was indeed mystifying; in his village fires were tended at night to keep animals away, and allowed to die at daybreak.
When the sun rose, two events took place in rapid order, and the peaceful world he had known was shattered. From the south, where there were only the poorest villages with little to trade, came a doleful line of twenty-two black marchers, each bound to the other by chains and bands of iron about the neck. They moved in silence, guarded by three new Arabs bearing long guns and whips.
When this file approached the village, a signal was sounded, and the black headmen, assisted by their cronies, blocked off escape routes and designated various strong young men and women to be pinioned. While Cudjo watched in horror, the black leaders turned these young people over to the Arabs, who drove them to the tent where the fire had been burning. There two Arabs, assisted by black helpers, fastened iron collars about the necks of the captives and linked them together by chains, which were then hammered shut.
One young black, apparently as strong as Cudjo, perceived that when the elders nominated him it meant trouble, so he broke loose and would have run to the forest, except that Abu Hassan himself raised his gun, aimed it with great precision and shot the man dead. A young woman began to scream, and as long as that was all she did the Arabs ignored her, but when she tried to run to the body of her dead companion, Abu Hassan swung the butt of his rifle in a fierce circle and knocked her unconscious. An iron collar and chain were fastened to her as she lay in the dust.
Nineteen of the finest young people of the village were so collected and chained. The black headman also offered to sell six others, but they were not strong and the Arabs rejected them. One of these, a woman with child, tried to stay with her enchained husband, and when she became difficult, Abu Hassan shot her.
The chain binding the nineteenth prisoner was now welded to the dragging chain of the twenty-two brought north from the impoverished villages, and a procession containing forty-one future slaves started its long march west to Luanda, the Portuguese port on the Atlantic Ocean where cargoes of slaves would be collected in the barracoons until enough had been gathered to fill a ship headed for Cuba.
Cudjo, watching as the Arabs in charge of the enchained slaves lashed their charges to get them started right, trembled with rage. The best young people of the river were being taken, and they had been designated for this fate by their own leaders, who were now rewarded for their duplicity with a trivial collection of beads and cloth and iron axes. Abu Hassan had brought his nine assistants not to trade but to forge iron collars and to drive long lines of slaves into the barracoons. When the procession was gone, Abu Hassan and his helpers loaded their canoes and prepared to descend upon Cudjo's village.
To forestall them, he departed swiftly and sped through the jungle on foot, hoping to reach his sequestered boat before the Arabs progressed to that point, for if they got started down the river first, he would not be able to pass them and alert his village. Therefore he ran until his lungs were on fire.
He reached the river in good time, broke loose his hidden boat and started paddling furiously. Never before had he been so aware of the Xanga, its bending trees and darting birds. It was a river to cherish, and all who lived along it were now in peril.
Without rest he kept his powerful shoulders working until at last he rounded the bend which protected his village. Some children saw him approaching, paddling as if fiends were at his back, and they shouted that Cudjo was returning. This produced an unexpected result: the old men of the council hurried to the shore, suspicious of what message he might be bringing. And when his boat neared the landing, it was they who moved in to surround him.
'Abu Hassan!' he cried, but before he could speak further he caught a glimpse of some man, Akko it must have been, sneaking up behind him. As he turned to meet this adversary, the man brought a heavy club down upon his head and he lost consciousness.
When he awakened he found himself gagged and bound by a heavy iron collar from which a chain led to a tree. He was guarded by an Arab with a gun, and there was no way he could communicate with his villagers; if he tried to scream, the gag muffled his voice; if he tried to escape the Arab, the iron collar choked him. But he must in some way arouse the young men and women to the peril about to engulf them.
Before he could devise any tactic, he had to watch in horror as the village leaders assembled the people, while the Arabs, including even the one who had been guarding him, took up positions with their guns ready. He tried to shout a warning, but he could make no noise. He turned his attention to the chain where it was twined about the tree, but even he could not break it loose.
Helpless, he saw the village elders begin to nominate the young people they were willing to sell: this stout lad, that promising girl, the young man who had stolen the cow, anyone the village wished to get rid of. Then he gasped. The old men designated Luta, the girl he had tried to purchase for his wife. She screamed, but Abu Hassan clubbed her into silence.
At this point Cudjo managed to work the gag out of his mouth, and with great brassy voice, shouted, 'Resist them! Don't accept the chains!'
Abu Hassan, hearing the dangerous alarm, directed one of his men to silence the black, but when the Arab approached, Cudjo summoned extra-human powers and shattered his chain at the tree. Swinging the loose end about his head, he rushed at the man and felled him. He then raged toward the doomed prisoners, trying to rouse them to revolt, but before he could take more than a few steps, Abu Hassan raised his gun to shoot him. This proved unnecessary, because Akko, for the second time, clubbed Cudjo and he fell to his knees, and quickly his dangling chain was welded to that of a man he had known since childhood. Together they would make the long march to the sea.
Twenty-three men and women comprised the convoy, but the smiths had prepared twenty-seven collars, and to march with a partial complement, utilizing guards, would be a waste. So when the column was formed and about to start west, Abu Hassan brushed aside the village elders whom he had paid for their help, and pointed to three likely young men and one healthy-looking woman.
'Add them to the chain,' he ordered, and the guards grabbed the four and pinioned them until iron collars could be clapped about their necks. The first to be trussed was Akko.
'Not him!' one of the faithless chiefs called. 'He's my son!'
'Take him,' Hassan ordered, and the welding was completed. But when the old man saw his son in chains, destined for a land no one could comprehend except that it was far away, he began to wail, and grab Hassan, and make a nuisance of himself.
Hassan shoved him away, but now the parents of the other three unexpected captives began to mount a confused demonstration, and there was such noise that Hassan lost his temper and made an extraordinary decision.
'Take them all to Luanda.'
'The entire village?' one of the blacksmiths asked.
'Everybody!'
'It's six hundred miles. They can't possibly live.'
'Some will.'
So the entire village was whipped into line behind the chained young people. One hundred and nineteen infants and elders started an impossible trek through the Congo jungles toward a goal most of them would never reach. Up front, two armed Arab guards. Beside the chained prisoners, two others with guns ready. Then the mass of villagers guarded by Abu Hassan himself, with two guards straggling at the rear, ready to gun down anyone attempting to flee. The two remaining Arabs had gone down the Xanga toward the Congo with canoe loads of ivory and rhinoceros horn.
It was a preposterous march, a petulant act of vengeance not uncommon in these waning days of the slave trade. In 1832 every step in the vile business was cynical, ruthless and illegal. Black leaders sold their followers for baubles; Arabs chanting the Koran organized the marches; Christians intent on saving souls managed the barracoons; renegade captains transported the slaves in proscribed ships; and in Cuba pariah dealers risked buying them on the chance that they could be smuggled into the southern states, where importation of new slaves was forbidden.
Of course, the kidnapping of blacks out of Africa had long been outlawed, by the United States in 1792, by Great Britain in 1807, by France in 1815, but such restriction merely made the rewards for contraband extra tempting; plantation owners in the Caribbean, Brazil and the southern states continued to offer extravagant bids for prime hands, and recreant captains could always be found willing to run the blockade.
It was on his segment of the massive gamble that Abu Hassan was now engaged. He had set out from the Xanga with twenty-seven prime blacks in chains and one hundred and nineteen as an undifferentiated mass. He hoped to get at least twenty-two of the chained slaves to Luanda and not less than thirty of the others. If he could do that, he could show a fine profit, what with the earlier shipments he had dispatched from villages farther south. In fact, if he ran into no unusual difficulties, he stood a chance to fill an entire ship with his slaves alone, in which case he could dicker with the captain for a maximum price.
He was not concerned, therefore, when the older villagers began to die off. As a matter of expediency, he was even willing to abandon those who must soon die, so as the line of marchers forded one river after another, it became smaller and tighter. It was a good march, one of his best, for he had not yet lost a single black in chains, and they were the ones on which his basic profit would depend.
For the blacks so chained, the march was a hideous experience. For more than forty days in heat and rain each man would march and sleep and evacuate his bowels attached to two others; for a young woman chained between two men the journey was almost unbearable, but on the procession went.
Cudjo, chained somewhere near the middle, bore the long trek better than most, but it became apparent to the guards that in spite of his chains he endeavored constantly to maneuver himself so that he could kill Akko, the unfortunate who had twice betrayed him. Akko appealed to the guards for protection. They would have preferred shooting Cudjo, but he was too valuable a property, so they contented themselves with lashing him, or beating him in the face with their gun butts whenever he made a move toward his enemy.
Forestalled in that direction, he was equally powerless to aid Luta, who was chained to Akko, for any move in her direction was interpreted by both Akko and the guards as an attack on him. Once one of the Arabs smashed a gun into Cudjo's instep, and it seemed for a while that Abu Hassan might have to shoot him because he fell so lame that he could not keep up. But he summoned new reserves and dragged his painful foot along.
His mother and father died almost together on the thirtieth day. Abu Hassan, looking at the wasted bodies, was not unhappy to see them fall. Fifty-one had died off, leaving only the strongest, and it seemed likely that he would be reaching Luanda with far more than the mere thirty extras he had calculated.
But on the fortieth day heavy rains struck, and fevers from the swamps caused severe loss of life. Two of the women in chains died and twelve of the others, so that Hassan's potential profits were slashed. This enraged him, and when the chains on the two dead women had to be removed, he abused the blacksmith so severely that the poor man simply ripped the collars off, lacerating the corpses horribly. The file moved on.
On June 10, the fifty-ninth day, Abu Hassan led his company into the outskirts of Luanda, the thriving Portuguese city perched on the edge of the Atlantic Ocean. Leaving his charges in an improvised encampment near the city, he went alone into Luanda to arrange for the orderly sale of his blacks. He discovered to his irritation that no slavers were in harbor at the moment, because two British warships were patrolling the seas to keep away any captains who might be thinking of a quick and profitable dash to the slave ports of the Caribbean. His only alternative would be to throw his slaves into one of the barracoons run by the Jesuits near the shore, so he tried to discover which of the huge pens contained his earlier shipments from Xanga, and at last found them.
'Good passage for us,' his guards reported. Since they had started from the villages farthest south, where rivers feeding into the Congo system were shallower, they had not suffered heavy losses; also, they were herding only younger blacks in prime condition, so that their survival rate ought to have been superior.
'Less than ten percent loss,' they said, congratulating themselves.
'Come out and pick up the new arrivals,' Hassan directed, so the guards accompanied him to the temporary encampment, where with long-practiced eyes they evaluated the huddled blacks.
'The twenty-five in chains look good,' they told Hassan. 'These forty-one others? Not worth much.'
'They'll help fill the ship,' Hassan said defensively.
'They won't last long in Cuba,' the slavers said professionally. 'Not many of them will be smuggled into America.'
'They'll help fill the ship,' Hassan repeated.
'Shall we strike off the chains?' one of the guards asked.
'No. It could be many weeks before a ship puts in,' Hassan warned. 'The damned British.'
He was right in his guess that the British would keep his slaves penned up, but he would have been outraged had he known why. There was in the complement of priests running the barracoons a young Portuguese of peasant stock; he was called Father João and he suffered from an incurable affliction: he took Jesus seriously. What he witnessed of the slave trade sickened him, and at great risk he had devised a system of signals to alert the British cruisers whenever the barracoons were filled, or whenever some especially daring slave ship was about to make a sortie into shore for a quick load of slaves.
On the evening of the day when the first chain of Xanga slaves arrived, Father João had placed in the branches of a tree a white cloth, whereupon a lookout on the cruiser _Bristol_ reported to his commander, 'Sir, slaves have reached the barracoons.' No international commission had designated the _Bristol_ to be the watchdog of the seas; an inflamed public opinion had demanded that the trade be halted, and this the captain was prepared to do.
For two weeks his heavily armed ship patrolled the coastline of Portuguese Angola, enforcing respect from the captains of several fast ships which lurked beyond the horizon. If the _Bristol_ challenged them to stand by for inspection, they did so, knowing that if their holds did not actually contain slaves, the watchman could do nothing. The slave ship might contain rings for fastening chains, and a 'tween deck for stowing blacks, from which even an idiot could deduce its business, but if it contained no actual slaves in bondage, it committed no offense, and while the English officers might look with scorn at the Americans operating the ship, they were powerless to do more.
The blockade continued, with the British grim-lipped, the Americans cursing, the Arab businessmen desperate over the costs of feeding their slaves, and the blacks in the barracoons trying in vain to protect themselves. Since those great pens had no roofs, when rain came, as it often did from clouds scudding in from the Atlantic, they could only huddle together and wait for it to stop. When it did, the sun beat down with tropical ferocity, and now Abu Hassan began to fret, for not only did some of the older villagers begin to die, but his prime stock in chains began to fall sick.
On no one did the degradation of the barracoon fall more heavily than on Luta. For more than thirteen weeks she had been chained between two young men only slightly older than herself; all her bodily functions were available for their inspection and theirs to hers. Beatings she did not have to fear; occasionally the Arab guards could bear no longer the tedium and the complaining, and they would go temporarily beserk, striking out at anyone, but intelligent slaves learned how to draw back from such short-lived assaults.
But against the terrible indignity of being close-chained in a waiting pen, Luta had no defense. She might have died from sheer surrender of spirit had not Cudjo watched her from his distance, lending her encouragement and strength. Sometimes he would shout across the chains to her, words of fire and assurance, until one of the guards poked him with a musket, warning him to be silent. Then, during the long rains, he would simply watch her, and gradually she let him know that she was now determined to survive this awful experience, and he shouted for all to hear that he loved her.
Six weeks had now elapsed since the various chains of slaves from the Xanga had been thrown into the barracoons, and Abu Hassan was beginning to suffer from the cost of maintaining his property. He was faced with a difficult dilemma: feed them less and save coins, or continue to feed them so that they would look better at the auction in Cuba. He rejected each alternative, retreating to a stratagem he had used once before: he sold the entire contents of his barracoon to the Jesuit fathers who owned it. 'Let them take the risks,' he told his assistants.
So the Arabs quit themselves of the Xanga slaves, pocketed a fair profit, and went to the bazaars to collect trade goods for the subornation of other tribes south of the Congo. Abu Hassan knew of nineteen other rivers feeding into the Sankuru, each with a cluster of pitiful small tribes whose elderly leaders might be tricked into selling their best young people into the slave trade.
'We'll be back,' he assured the Jesuits. He could foresee the lucrative trade continuing indefinitely into the future; the British might try to interrupt it, for reasons he could not fathom, but there would always be daring ship captains willing to take the risks attendant upon enormous profits. 'I just wish one of them had hurried up,' he said ruefully as he led his team out of Luanda. 'We'd be leaving with bags of gold.'
The Jesuits to whom he had sold his consignment did not wish to be in the slave trade; it was just that they owned the barracoons and had found that quite often it was to everyone's advantage for them to step in as middlemen, pay the Arab slavers a reasonable fee, and themselves assume the risk of feeding the blacks and eventually delivering them to some ship captain for a small but comfortable profit.
It was not this profit that the Jesuits sought; while they had the savages in their charge they Christianized them, and this was commendable because it meant that any blacks who might die on the long passage to Cuba would do so in the arms of Christ. Their souls would be saved.
So now the beatings stopped and kindly young clerics raised on farms in Portugal visited the barracoons daily, explaining in mangled African phrases how Jesus watched over everyone, even those in chains, and how in a later and better life the slaves would meet Him personally and see for themselves His radiant generosity. Cudjo braced himself against the earnest young Portuguese, but Luta started talking with Father João, and the honest compassion that glowed in his eyes made his words consoling; when she pieced together all that Father João promised, it made sense, for she had always believed that there must be some god who ordained the movement of the stars and of people and even of the animals in the forest. And that this god or collection of gods should have sent a special son as intermediary was not difficult to accept. That this son should have been born of a virgin posed no insurmountable problem for her; in recent weeks, chained to her two companions, she had often wished that she could be incorporeal.
So intently did she listen to the young priest that Father João reported enthusiastically to his superiors, 'We are making many converts in the barracoon. The girl who calls herself Luta is ready to embrace the true religion.'
So in the late afternoon of a day which had seen both storms and blazing heat, two older Jesuits appeared in the barracoon, stepping gingerly among the lazing bodies until they reached the spot where Luta stood in chains. Moving her two companions aside as far as their chains would permit, the priests addressed her and asked if she was prepared to accept Christ as her preceptor. When she nodded, they expressed true joy of spirit and told her that Jesus would now take her into His personal charge, and that she would know life everlasting. Her trials on earth she would be able to bear because of the paradise that would follow hereafter; in her new home she would find God's love and attention.
They then blessed her and asked her to kneel, which she did with difficulty, since her chain-companions had to kneel with her. This in turn caused the slaves attached to those two to kneel, until at last all the surviving blacks of this chain were on their knees while the girl Luta was taken into the church. Cudjo, who had to get down with the rest, would have objected if the recipient of this grace had been anyone but Luta; he felt that if she needed this assurance, he would do nothing to distress her.
'You are now a child of God, the beloved of Jesus,' the older priest intoned, and after he left, the twenty-five slaves got up off their knees and the two men chained to Luta looked at her with special interest to see if the blessings of the priests had in any way affected her. They could detect only the quiet resignation she had always manifested.
A curious change now came over the blacks in the barracoon: they had grown so satiated with the mindless routine of storm and sun, they began hoping that the thing the priests called a ship might come to Luanda. No one in the pens could imagine what new terrors this ship might bring, but they sought it. Cudjo was actually hungry for change.
At dawn on the second day of August a ship of much different character arrived off Luanda. It was low and sleek. Its sails were rigged in the hermaphrodite manner—four very large jibs attached to the long bow-sprit, four square sails at the foremast, two fore-and-aft at the main—which meant that it could exact the maximum advantage from any wind. The main thing, however, was the impression it created of meaning business; the slave dealers on shore told each other, 'Now something will happen.'
By eight o'clock that morning a small boat let down from the ship, darted into a cove and deposited on shore an older man, stooped of shoulder and slow of gait, but his arrival reassured the slavers. 'This one means to buy,' they said as he walked purposefully along the shore.
'Hello,' he said as he came to the square, 'I'm Goodbarn, from the _Ariel_ , Captain Turlock.'
'We recognized you,' the chief agent said.
The visitor fell into a rattan chair and asked for a drink. He seemed tired and much aged since they last saw him, so they were not surprised when he said, 'This is our last trip. We're going to load maximum and strike for a big profit.'
'The barracoons are filled.'
'We want no old, no sick.'
'For you, Mr. Goodbarn, we have hundreds of strong young niggers.'
'We're going to load four hundred and sixty belowdecks. And we'll risk fifty-seven topside. Those must be in chains so we can bolt them down.'
'Large shipment,' the agent said.
'We intend to retire rich.'
'How old is Silverfist?'
'Well past sixty, but you'd never know it.'
'When do you propose loading?'
'Today.'
'That would be impossible.'
'You said they were waiting.'
'Yes, but we couldn't get the red chair set up in time.'
'To hell with the red chair,' Goodbarn said. He was tired and even more eager than his captain to be done with this last gamble.
'Without the red chair, there will be no departure of slaves from this port, I can tell you that.'
'When can we do it?'
'Tomorrow, but what plans have you for slipping into shore?'
Goodbarn took a long drink of warm beer, held it in his mouth and looked out toward the bay. 'We came here in 1814 to refit the _Ariel_ for slaving... for that one trip. Eighteen years later we're still slaving, telling ourselves this is the last trip.' He looked about cautiously and indicated that he wished to speak alone with the agent. 'You asked what our plans are? Captain Turlock reasons that some spy on shore is flashing signals to the British patrol. Don't laugh. Nothing else explains the promptness of their reaction whenever we attempt a landing.'
'Quite impossible,' the agent said. 'The Portuguese officials—'
'So what we're going to do is pay a Spanish captain to make a false run some miles up the coast. The _Bristol_ will follow and we'll sweep in.'
'The English commander's too clever for that trap.'
'It won't be a trap. Because today you will march three hundred slaves north to where the Spaniard might land. And if the _Bristol_ refuses to follow, the Spaniard loads his slaves, sells them in Havana and splits with us. However, my good friend, we'll make this so real that the _Bristol_ will have to sail north.'
'Who pays for marching the slaves... in case the _Bristol_ trails them?'
'I do. We have a great risk in this voyage, a great chance of profit. Captain Turlock is always ready to pay money to make money.' And he poured onto the table a small pile of silver coins.
When the dealer hefted them, counted them and considered the complicated offer being made he nodded, then called to the others, 'We can move the red chair out tomorrow. The _Ariel_ will load five hundred and seventeen at nine o'clock.'
At noon three hundred other slaves started marching north to serve as decoy; at one Father João spotted them and flashed a signal to the British; at two the _Bristol_ sailed north.
In the barracoons the slaves from which the _Ariel_ would select her cargo were carefully readied for shipment. Each received a bucketful of fetid water in the face, another in the middle of the back. Additional buckets were left standing in the center for those who wished to cleanse themselves further; Cudjo and Luta did so. While they were washing, priests brought in extra tubs of food, something that had never happened before, and Cudjo whispered, 'They want us to look clean and healthy. Tomorrow we'll be sold.' That night the slaves went to sleep knowing that in the morning something of significance must happen.
At dawn they were marched out of the barracoons and down to the wharf, where Cudjo saw for the first time a burly red-bearded old man with a silver knob for his left hand; and the imperial way the man stood, shoulders stooped but eyes flashing, indicated that he was master. When Cudjo observed the manner in which other whites deferred to him, he whispered to the slaves on his chain, 'Watch out for that one.'
Now the old man moved with precision down the long files of unshackled blacks, accepting some, rejecting others: 'Yes, yes, yes, not that one.' From the assured manner in which he made his decisions, Cudjo guessed that he had often engaged in this process.
When he had approved some four hundred blacks, he turned briskly to those in chains, but before he started down the line he called to another elderly man in a black suit—'Goodbarn,' Cudjo heard him say—and together they inspected the sturdy slaves. They accepted most, but when the big man came to the slave next to Cudjo, a big fellow who had been ailing since he reached the barracoon, he saw at once that this one was not a good risk, and he indicated that he must be removed from the chain, but Goodbarn, if that was his name, explained why this could not be done, and the big man shrugged his shoulders.
He now came to Cudjo, and for some inexplicable reason grabbed him by the chin, stared into his dark eyes and said something to his associate. He obviously did not like what he saw in Cudjo's face, and again asked if both Cudjo and the ailing slave could be cut loose, but Goodbarn said no. With his hand still at Cudjo's chin he growled some warning and thrust the slave back.
When he finished checking the chained slaves, he ordered Mr. Goodbarn to assemble all he had approved; he marched with them, nodding his head and saying short words to Goodbarn. Then he withdrew a short distance, surveyed the mob and nodded. The purchase was agreed upon.
Now the spiritual part of the long voyage from the Xanga villages began. The five hundred and seventeen chosen slaves were herded into a small area, where they stood with their backs to the sea facing a handsome red chair which had been placed on bales of merchandise, forming a kind of rude open-air cathedral. To it came a procession of priests making way for a tall and somber man dressed in red. When he had been assisted onto the platform containing the chair, he raised his hands and the crowd fell silent.
'You are about to start a journey to an unknown land,' he said in Portuguese. 'But wherever your fate takes you, God will be watching over you, for you are His children. He will guide and comfort you.' He continued for some minutes, while Mr. Goodbarn fumed, always looking at the ocean. The bishop was of the opinion that the blacks were actually lucky to be making this journey, for they would be moving into areas where God prevailed, and there they would learn of His boundless charity.
But now came the significant part of the exercise, the symbolic moment which justified the establishment of the barracoon and its more or less humane management. The bishop extended his arms to their widest and cried, 'In the name of Jesus Christ, I baptize you into the Holy Christian Church. If perchance you should die on the journey you are about to undertake, you will be received into heaven and sit upon the right hand of God.'
When he had finished making the sign of the cross, seven priests hurried through the massed slaves, anointing them with holy water and assuring them of life eternal. When this was completed, the bishop gave the entire assemblage his blessing, wished the ship's crew a safe passage, and climbed down off the bales of cotton. As soon as he was gone, Mr. Goodbarn shouted, 'Now get these black bastards on board. Quick!'
The slaves were turned about, to face the ocean, and for the first time they saw the ship that would carry them to the blessings of which the bishop had spoken, but they were permitted to inspect it for only a moment, because members of the ship's crew began thumping them in the back and shouting, 'Move on! Move on!'
They ran a gauntlet of sailors and slavers, all urging them toward the ship, up whose gangplank they were rushed. On deck stood Captain Turlock, his red beard flecked with gray, his silver fist shining in the hot sun. With sure eye he studied the slaves to check whether sickly substitutes had been inserted, and with a heavy swipe of his metaled hand he moved the unchained slaves toward the hold.
There Mr. Goodbarn supervised their allocation to one of the four compartments, taking pains to ensure that powerful men and possible troublemakers were sent to the lowest hold. Belowdecks a Mr. Jenkins supervised the welding of such chains as had come below, and when these men were finished with their tasks, four hundred and sixty slaves were stowed in quarters that might have accommodated sixty men in reasonable decency. The grating at the mainmast was bolted shut. The passageway between the two levels was locked. The white men climbed out on a ladder, which they drew up behind them. And the hatch leading to the deck was bolted from the outside. In gloom, and seasickness, and filth the blacks would sail.
Meanwhile, on deck, Captain Turlock was trying to do something he had never done before: find space for fifty-seven men and women, most of them in chains. These he bolted to the bulwarks, port and starboard. The others he ordered to huddle forward, with a guard instructed to shoot them if they gave trouble.
'It's our last trip,' he told Goodbarn. 'See it goes well.'
It started poorly. Father João's false signal had sent the _Bristol_ on a wild chase to the north, but as soon as the priest realized he had been tricked and that the _Ariel_ had slipped into shore, he boldly unfurled a large sheet, which alerted the _Bristol_ to the invasion. Now it came rushing south, determined to intercept the slaver before it could get out to sea.
' _Bristol_ coming!' Captain Turlock's lookout cried.
'All hands!' Turlock shouted, and no other orders were necessary, for each American sailor knew that he must get this clipper out of Luanda or risk years in a London jail.
With astonishing speed the crew had the _Ariel_ ready, and while Portuguese wharfmen, eager to keep slavers coming to their port, threw off the lines, Mr. Goodbarn supervised trimming 'the slaver's delight,' as the hermaphrodite rigging was called. 'If'n a morfidite can't get you goin' in light airs, nothin' can.'
The _Bristol_ , already under way, would enjoy an advantage, especially with her formidable guns, but the _Ariel_ did not propose to allow her within range, and in the early stages of the contest nullified the _Bristol_ 's running start by catching an offshore breeze which carried her well out to sea. Father João, watching the two ships, prayed the breeze would drop so that the slaver might be taken. But his prayer was not answered. The breeze maintained and Captain Turlock cleared the harbor.
'Raise the topsails,' he told Mr. Goodbarn, and when they were aloft, the ship leaped forward, but it had to keep to a course which brought it close to the _Bristol_ , which had swung its guns into position.
Among the slaves bolted to the deck topside were Cudjo and Luta, and the former, always alert to what happened about him, deduced that the disciplined behavior of the American crew meant that they faced some kind of danger, so he pulled himself erect, as far as his chain would allow, and peered over the gunwale. 'Oh!' he gasped, for there, not far away, he saw a much larger ship, its sails rounded with wind.
Till this day he had never seen a ship, so he could not understand its characteristics, but he knew intuitively that this other vessel was the cause of the apprehension he saw in the faces of his captors. For only a brief moment was he able to study the relative position of the two ships, for Captain Turlock bellowed, 'Mr. Jenkins, get that big one down!' And Jenkins clubbed Cudjo with a belaying pin. But after he fell to the deck Cudjo was able to shout to the other blacks, 'That one is trying to capture this one!'
Slaves in both gangs scrambled to their feet to see what Cudjo meant, and this concerted movement of the blacks terrified the white sailors, for they had been taught from their first day aboard the _Ariel:_ 'The thing to fear is not storms or British cruisers, but a rebellion. Stamp it out before it gets started.'
'Mr. Jenkins,' Mr. Goodbarn shouted, 'knock those slaves down!'
With belaying pins the sailors swept along the gunwales, knocking the slaves away, then belaboring them as they lay on the deck. The white men had no reluctance to break heads, for they knew that a certain number of deaths could be expected, and they might have killed Cudjo except that Captain Turlock shouted, 'Mr. Jenkins! Back to the lines.'
The savage beating silenced the blacks, but Cudjo continued to watch the British ship as the _Ariel_ rolled in the open sea, disclosing a brief glimpse now and then, and he was delighted to see the other ship moving closer. But now puzzling things began to happen. A series of clever maneuvers by the man with the silver fist began to move his ship away from the pursuer. A gun, much bigger than any ever used by Abu Hassan, was fired and a bullet of immense size, judging from the sound it made, whistled through the ropes overhead.
One of the slaves chained directly to Luta looked over the gunwale and saw what was happening. 'They're firing a big gun at us!' he shouted.
'Get him down!' the captain shouted.
Deprived of their lookout, the cowering blacks could no longer follow the action, and their desire to know became so great that Cudjo defiantly stood erect—in time to see the British ship give up the chase. It fired two cannon at the fleeing _Ariel_ , but the shots fell harmlessly into the ocean, and the American sailors broke into a cheer.
Cudjo knew that the chase was over. He knew that this red-bearded man had unusual powers. Above all, he knew that any chance for escape was lost.
Once the _Ariel_ cleared Africa and the lurking menace of the British cruisers, the daily routine was established. Each dawn some sailor threw several buckets of salt water over the chained blacks. About an hour later buckets of swill were placed where the slaves could feed themselves. Toward noon the covers leading to the fetid hatches were removed and a work party consisting of unchained slaves from the forward contingent was sent below to collect the bodies of any who had died during the preceding twenty-four hours. These were thrown into a rope basket, which was hauled aloft and emptied over the side of the ship; on several occasions young men and women chained aft would spot the corpses of their parents.
At dusk the swill buckets were again brought out, but the constant motion of the ship was so sickening to the slaves that most of them, including Cudjo, became violently ill at each sight of food. They vomited and excreted and then lay in the filth until the morning bucket of water sluiced at least some of it away. Cudjo, growing constantly thinner, wondered what the conditions below must be. He found only two clues: at noon, when the hatch covers were removed, the heated stench was so awful that the white sailors kept wet rags about their noses, and once when the slaves forward went down to drag out the corpses, they passed Cudjo and he asked, 'What's it like?' and an old man said, 'Let them kill you up here.'
Sick as he was, Cudjo followed with intense interest everything that happened on deck. He began to appreciate Captain Turlock's capacities, and how he varied the set of his sails. He understood the duties of the helmsman and even learned the English words used to direct his actions: 'Steady on' when the ship's wake showed indecision, or 'Hard starboard' when the great boom was to be swung to the other side in order to catch the breeze more efficiently. He was able to determine the relative importance of the sailors, and who it was that took command when the captain slept. He learned the bells and spent many fruitless hours trying to determine what was in the black box before the tiller that the captain and the helmsman studied so attentively. It did not yet occur to him that this had to do with direction, for he always knew where north was except when fog settled upon the ocean, but he did notice that the white men consulted this box much more frequently at those times when he himself was disoriented, and from this observation he reached one conclusion: the black box had something to do with preventing the ship from becoming lost. Abu Hassan had once brought to the Xanga villages a trading product that had stupefied and delighted them: a magnet with a collection of iron filings. Only once had Cudjo been allowed to work the magnet before the filings were lost, but its mystery had stayed with him. He now concluded that in the secret box there must be a magnet which pulled the ship in the right direction.
But as he became familiar with the operation of the ship, he also became obsessed with what must be happening belowdecks, and once when the covers were removed so that six corpses could be hauled out, he strained at his chains, hoping to catch at least a glimpse of the horror he knew existed, but he could see nothing. However, his act did not go undetected, for Captain Turlock saw what he was doing and ordered Mr. Jenkins to strike him down.
As he lay unconscious on the deck, Turlock stood above him and said to the trembling slaves, 'You want to see what's going on below. Damn me, you'll see, right now.'
He ordered the forward hatch opened and had his men throw all the unchained blacks below. If their friends caught them, fine. If they broke their backs, to hell with them. He then commanded his carpenter to unbolt the chains holding the two groups aft, and when this was done he ordered his men to throw those blacks below; the two men chained to Cudjo were responsible for dragging him along.
He awoke in the bowels of the ship. Darkness and horror reigned, and when a storm arose, the shapeless mass of arms and legs and torsos rolled back and forth. The free-moving older slaves from the forward part of the deck found what space they could in the area, which was so cramped that standing erect was impossible; they had to lie flat day after day.
The chained slaves faced a more difficult problem. Since they had to move as a unit, all they could do was crouch miserably in corners vacated by the numerous dead, but during the first night below, Cudjo was able to move close to Luta, and for the only time since their capture they had a chance to talk.
'I wanted to come down here,' he told her.
'Why?'
'Because I know how to sail this ship.'
'What good?'
'Because we shall take this ship away from them and sail home.'
'How?' She pointed to the stifling hold filled with emaciated shadows.
'We will take this ship!' he repeated stubbornly, and during the long, sick night he moved among the others in this upper hold, whispering to them. One told him a remarkable thing: 'In the hold below, which is worse, a man from another village, he calls himself Rutak, has been saying the same thing.' The informant led him to a gap in the planking; Cudjo lay prone, his chains forcing the men nearest him to lie down with him, and he whispered, 'Is Rutak there?' and after a while a heavy voice replied, 'I am Rutak.'
They talked for nearly half an hour, and in the upper hold at least six slaves could hear what Cudjo was saying, while in the lower the same number could overhear Rutak, so that before the night was over, all the blacks were aware that Cudjo and Rutak intended something.
Among those in Cudjo's chain gang who could not help but hear what was being said was Akko, the young man whose trickery had been responsible for Cudjo's capture. As the son of a village leader, he had always known preferment, so that the experiences as a chained slave on the march from the Congo, and the indignity of the barracoon, and now the horror of this ship had a deeper effect on him than on most of the others. He was shattered; his deepest sensitivities were profaned and he was prepared to avenge them.
Shifting his chains, and dragging his two arm-companions with him, he approached Cudjo and said in the dark, 'I will help you take the ship.'
This offer, so unexpected, presented a difficult dilemma. Two months ago Cudjo had wanted to kill this man; now the arrival of worse agonies had obliterated from Cudjo's mind any thought of mere revenge for personal wrong. But could he trust a man who had betrayed him? In the darkness he could not see Akko or estimate his sincerity, but he did know from his own case that the events of slavery were so compelling as to force a change in any man or woman. He jerked his chains and took Akko by the hands. 'We will need you,' he said.
At noon on the next day, when the hatches were opened, the bright sunlight illuminated the upper hold in which Cudjo and his companions huddled. The space was four feet ten inches high, with no ventilation. One corner was set aside as a latrine, but the urine filtered through onto the heads of the blacks below. Any who died within a twenty-four-hour period were piled in another corner. When the hatch to the lower hold was opened, Cudjo saw that it was sheer hell. He shuddered. Every detail was worse.
And then Captain Turlock, who was always watching, chanced to look into the hold and saw to his horror that the chained slaves thrown down yesterday had not been bolted fast. 'They've been free to roam the whole damned ship!' he screamed, and the carpenter was summoned.
'Fetch the smith and go down there and bolt those niggers down!' he cried, and even when these two specialists, protected by four ordinary sailors with belaying pins, were at their tasks, he continued to rant: 'You let those niggers who have seen everything up here congregate freely down there—who knows what might happen?'
He looked down to see how the work was progressing and saw staring up at him the big warning face of Cudjo, his mortal enemy. 'No!' he cried. 'Don't put him in the upper hold with the others who were on deck. Put him and his gang below, and stretch them out tight.'
So Cudjo, Luta and Akko were thrown even lower into the innards of the ship they had determined to capture, and the blacksmith attached the loose ends of their chain to rings that were the maximum distance apart. Now this batch of slaves would not be able to scratch away lice, or rub their eyes, or feed themselves, or tend to their bodies in any way. The rings of the chain were hammered shut. The cover to the lower hatch was closed. The cover to the upper hatch was restored to place, and a solemn darkness prevailed.
In this darkness Cudjo, Akko and Rutak conspired. The latter was a powerful man who had already devised a way whereby he might be able to break his chains loose from the bulkhead, and when, with the help of all the free-moving men in the hold, he did so, he showed Cudjo and Akko how to break theirs, too. It then became necessary for the three men to detach themselves from the others, but to break the chain itself proved impossible. They therefore decided that in their escape attempt they would transform their impediment into an advantage. They would utilize the two chains as a weapon, and they trained their two groups, always stooping, never able to stand, in intricate maneuvers which would be supported by the free-moving slaves.
When their plan was perfected, Cudjo and Rutak huddled for hours with their lips close to the ceiling boards, instructing the men and women above them.
On the day they had designated for their noontime attempt, a heavy storm arose and sickness belowdecks became epidemic; even Cudjo and Rutak were retching. They were able to vomit nothing because they had eaten so little, and they decided to surrender any thought of going ahead with their plan.
It was Akko, the thin, wiry little man who resented confinement profoundly, who persisted. 'The whites will be as sick as we are,' he argued. 'They'll be inattentive. This day was delivered to us by the gods.' He reasoned so persuasively that Cudjo and the others slowly saw that a storm was the best possible time for their attempt. Accordingly, Cudjo and his men edged open the hatch leading from their hold, whereupon his chain gang and Rutak's climbed silently into the upper hold. There four sturdy men had organized their part of the operation.
As they waited in the pitching darkness they formed a strange army: four hundred and seventy-nine unarmed blacks, the strongest impeded by chains, proposing to overwhelm four canny officers and thirty-two sailors armed with guns, knives and belaying pins. The slaves knew that many of them would have to die if this ship was to be taken, but they were certain that many of their captors would die, too.
Removal of the dead was delayed on this day because of the storm, and it was not till well past two that Captain Turlock ordered his men to open the hatches. Since there were now no slaves on deck to serve as corpse collectors, it had become the custom for two sailors to descend in the rope basket that would later be used to haul out the dead. Once below, the sailors were also expected to check the security of the slaves, going into each of the holds. Because of the stench, this duty was not appreciated.
On this stormy day two grumbling sailors descended in the basket, inspected the upper hold and found that the two chain gangs had escaped from below. They were unable to report this alarming knowledge because as they started to open their mouths, huge hands engulfed their faces and they were strangled.
With remarkable self-discipline, Rutak and his men climbed silently into the basket, marked the time it had always taken to collect the corpses, then signaled in the accustomed manner for the men on deck to winch the basket out. At the precise moment that Rutak's team cleared the hold, but before anyone on deck could sound an alarm, Cudjo and his gang grabbed the bottom ropes of the basket and swung themselves on deck. In less than ten seconds the two groups of chain-bound blacks surged over the deck.
Victory would be impossible unless they used their chains effectively, and this they did. Sweeping in curved arcs toward the sailors, they entwined them, decapitating some, wounding others and allowing them to fall to the deck, where they were strangled by the unchained blacks.
Most skillful of the leaders was Akko, who had an innate sense of what the chains could accomplish; he and Luta killed three sailors. It was also Akko who first saw Captain Turlock rushing onto the stormy deck, pistol in hand. He saw Silverfist coolly survey the scene to decide where he was needed most; huge Rutak was running berserk, but Turlock apparently judged that others could handle him. Then he spotted Cudjo, the man he had feared from the start, and he knew that he must kill this one or lose his ship.
'Cudjo!' Akko shouted as the captain pointed his pistol, and when Cudjo did not hear, he and Luta swarmed over the redhead from behind.
Entangling him in their chains, they tried to strangle him, but failed. He fell heavily to the deck, shouting, 'Mr. Goodbarn! Help!' But the mate had already been slain.
So Akko, Luta and Turlock rolled on the deck, and with his flailing pistol and silver fist he held them off. Struggling to regain his footing, he lurched to one knee, pointed his pistol straight into the chest of Akko and discharged it. Then, with his silver knob, he began to beat Luta in the face, gradually crushing it to a hideous pulp.
Shoving their bodies aside, he started down the deck to rally his men, and he might have succeeded had not Cudjo turned to see the death of Luta. With a great cry he dragged his chain-mates with him, and they leaped upon Turlock, bearing him down. Cudjo jammed his knees into the captain's chest, applying pressure until he heard bones crack.
This should have killed him, but with a tremendous burst of energy he kicked Cudjo away, regained his feet and started swinging his left arm in lethal arcs, but as he started down the deck to rally his men, a sudden gush of blood burst from his mouth. Pressing the back of his right hand against it, he saw that it could not be stanched. 'Mr. Goodbarn,' he called with weakened voice, 'don't let them take the ship!'
But now Cudjo came at him again, assisted by his mates, and Turlock waited till he was close in. Then he lashed out at him with his silver fist, clubbing him over the head with his pistol, but Cudjo bore in, screaming a victory cry. Enmeshing him in the chains, he knocked him down and strangled him.
He was beating Turlock's bloody head against the decking when Rutak bellowed, 'Cudjo! Mind the ship!'
It had been agreed from the first hour of the conspiracy that Cudjo would capture the helm, but the death of Luta and his revenge upon Turlock had diverted him. As he shook his head, endeavoring to orient himself, the helmsman discharged his musket almost in the face of a slave attached to Cudjo's chain, but that black man, with an extraordinary intensity of purpose, continued his forward motion and swept the helmsman into his chained arms, bearing him to the deck and dying on his chest. The helmsman tried to break loose, but three unchained women fell upon him and tore his throat.
The sight of this violence cleared Cudjo's brain and he leaped, as well as his chains would permit, to take command of the helm.
Now all the blacks were out of the hold, and they simply overmassed the sailors. The carpenter, who had nailed them to the bulkheads, had his head torn off; the blacksmith, who had cut away the chains of those who died so that they could be pitched overboard, was now wrapped in chains of his own, weighted with whatever iron could be found, and tossed screaming into the sea.
It was Rutak who stopped the killing, and ordered, 'Throw all the white men into the hold. Half on the bottom, half on top.' He then directed that the dead sailors be tossed into the stormy sea, and this was done, except that when four blacks grabbed Captain Turlock by hands and feet, Cudjo halted them. 'He was brave,' he said, and he looked into the glaring eyes of the dead man and placed his two hands under his back. Gently the tired old body was dropped into the Atlantic, an ocean it had fought for so many years. The silver fist, so valuable it could have ransomed many of the slaves, went useless to the depths.
Now came the sadness of bidding farewell to the forty-eight slaves who had given their lives for freedom. Each survivor had known at least one of the dead as a friend, but none experienced the confusion and anguish that Cudjo did when Akko and Luta were cut loose from the chains in which they had lived side by side for one hundred and sixty-four days. The dead man had been the cause of grief, the wise plotter, the heroic warrior at the climax. The dead woman... she would forever be the echo of that peaceful village along the Xanga. He looked away as their bodies were consigned to rest in an ocean they had never known.
He left the burial scene and returned to the helm, determined to get this ship somehow to safety. In the dark hold he had assured the slaves that if they captured the ship, he would know how to sail it.
He knew. As the storm worsened he ordered even the reefed sails to be taken down, and when his black crew could not immediately comprehend his orders, he left the tiller and showed them. The steering of the ship he turned over to the man from the upper deck who had led him, on that first fateful night, to Rutak in the deck below.
When the ship steadied, and when Rutak and his enterprising assistants had explored all quarters, experimenting with the compact and varied foods found below, Cudjo turned his attention to the mysterious box which he knew he must master if this adventure was to succeed. He could make nothing of it. Around the black face within the protecting arc appeared figures in white, but they were a mystery. A long needle rested in the middle of the mysterious thing, and it moved.
Cudjo concluded that there must be some relationship between the motion within this black box and the wind, or perhaps the sails, or the sway of the ship, and it was not until the next night, when the storm had cleared and the stars came out in unaccustomed brilliance, that he was able to solve the riddle. He allowed Rutak to steer for some unknown destination, one sail set, while he attended to the black box, and late on this starry night, when every hypothesis had proved faulty, for the movement coincided with no phenomenon that he could detect, he happened to look up at the stars with which he had been so familiar in the jungle, and when he located that faithful star by which men traveled at night, he suddenly realized that it controlled the dancing needle, so that no matter where the needle seemed to point, it maintained a constant direction.
What to do with this knowledge he could not decide, because he had no concept of the world or where on this great ocean he wished to go.
Rutak and the other freed men and women now came to him to discuss this very question: Where are we to go? He was powerless to answer them, and their combined speculations provided no answer.
They knew that Arabs were their mortal enemies, lurking and tricking to drive them into slavery. They knew that persons who spoke what was Portuguese were also their enemies, eager to sell them into slave ships. The priests confused them; some had helped and even stayed in the barracoon when they took sick, but others had been responsible for their going aboard the ship; the chief in red who had hurled so many final words at them and then dashed them with water, they could not fathom at all. The one thing they were certain of was what Cudjo reported: there was on this ocean at least one ship which had intended to befriend them. Their job was to find that ship.
So they kept to the arbitrary course which Cudjo had set that first starry night; they would sail north, always north, and as the weeks passed they became efficient in raising sails and reefing them. They deciphered what an anchor was and how to use it, and they dragged up from the holds three sailors to instruct them in ropes. These sailors, each a veteran of five or six slave crossings, were surprised at the order the blacks were able to maintain; they had been taught that slaves were animals.
But the sailors would not help the blacks navigate their prize. They deduced that since the weather was growing colder they must be heading north, but since they never saw the stars they could not guess how far. They also judged that only those crewmen jailed belowdecks survived, which meant that the mutineers had killed at least nineteen Americans. They went below, determined to recapture the ship and hang every damned nigger, but Rutak, having masterminded a piracy of his own, did not intend to encourage another. Accordingly, he ordered forty blacks, men and women alike, to bunk belowdecks to monitor the holds, and these suspicious watchmen, having escaped from the horror which the whites had maintained in those cramped quarters, were determined that there be no repetition.
It was late in October 1832 that the Baltimore clipper _Ariel_ , well out from the coast of Morocco, was hailed by the French corvette _Bordeaux_. The captain of the ship being overtaken did not, of course, know what it meant to be hailed by a warship and was at a loss as to how he must respond. He judged the best thing to do was to keep plowing ahead and avoid a collision.
In the end the corvette did four things in rapid succession: it fired a shot across the bow of the _Ariel;_ it fired another shot; it then closed and shouted instruction in both French and English; and finally it launched two rowboats containing twenty sailors heavily armed, and when they boarded the strange ship they shouted back in French, 'It's manned by blacks! They speak no civilized language!'
When officers came aboard, it took them only a few minutes to realize that they were on a ship which had suffered mutiny; belowdecks they uncovered the seventeen prisoners, and a tale of horror began to unfold.
'We were sailing peacefully westward.'
'Where to?'
'Cuba.'
'A hold full of slaves?'
'Well, yes.'
'Acquired where?'
'Arab slavers had marched them into Luanda.'
'I think you sent shore parties into Africa to capture them.'
'Oh no, sir! On my honor. The Portuguese sold them to us. You know, the bishop on the red chair who blesses them before we take them aboard.'
'How many?'
'Five hundred and seventeen.'
'Good God! We find only four hundred and thirty-one.'
'You know niggers. They do die fearfully.' The spokesman saw that when this was interpreted, it created an unfavorable impression, so he quickly added, 'And don't forget, many were killed in the mutiny.'
Yes, a major ship had been taken on the high seas, and all its officers slain. This was a matter of the gravest import; its ramifications could be evaluated only by a court of law. So the captain of the _Bordeaux_ placed a cadre of men aboard the _Ariel_ to trail along until both ships could reach a French port, but only two days' progress had been made when the British cruiser _Bristol_ hove into sight, identified the _Ariel_ as a slave ship the British had been trying for many years to arrest, and demanded of the French that she be turned over to them.
An international incident threatened, but the two captains who had faced each other in distant wars realized that this was an impasse which must be handled by compromise, and a sensible one was worked out over port and pudding in the _Bristol:_ the French had captured the ship and it was clearly their prize, and if the court dealing with mutiny awarded it to them, the sleek clipper would become part of the French war fleet. The mutinous slaves, who had murdered not less than nineteen American seamen, including four officers, would be turned over to the British, who had a traditional interest in suppressing the slave trade and who could be trusted to handle this complicated case intelligently. The seventeen American survivors would, of course, be set free by the French, but they would be retained by the English as witnesses in the trial of the rebellious slaves, and later as defendants themselves against the charge of slaving.
The _Ariel_ did enter the French navy, where her high degree of speed and austerity of design captivated all who served in her. The infamous 'tween-deck was removed, and the main deck was raised slightly to accommodate eight carronades. She sailed the Atlantic for years, often on station to interdict the slave trade, and in due course made a return journey to the very town in which she had been built.
The slaves were returned to their chains and transported by the _Bristol_ to Plymouth, where on June 13, 1833, an extraordinary court delivered an extraordinary verdict:
It is established that the clipper _Ariel_ of American registry had been engaging in the slave trade for many years, at considerable profit to her owners and crew. Otherwise, in this incident the ship was well handled and in the best traditions of the sea. No evidence was presented to us proving either undue cruelty or sustained severity. The crew, from Captain Matthew Turlock down to the messboy, was responsible.
On or about August 1, 1832, the _Ariel_ arrived off Luanda, Portuguese Africa, for the obvious purpose of collecting a shipment of slaves from the barracoons in that city. These slaves, an incredible five hundred and seventeen in number, had been collected among the villages strung along the Xanga River, one of the minor tributaries of the Sankuru, itself a tributary of the Congo. They were the property of the Arab slaver Abu Hassan, whose activities have been reported earlier in the British courts.
The _Ariel_ loaded its forbidden cargo despite efforts by His Majesty's cruiser _Bristol_ to prevent such slaving, and then made its escape under the _Bristol_ 's guns and in full knowledge of its illegal behavior. On September 22 the slaves imprisoned in the hold mutinied and took the ship. More than a month later, on October 24, it was captured by the French corvette _Bordeaux_ , a remarkable fact being that its sails were properly set and it was being handled in shipshape manner. This court declares said clipper _Ariel_ forfeit and congratulates the _Bordeaux_ for having taken possession.
Now as to the individuals involved. We find the seventeen surviving American sailors guilty-by-participation in the crime of slaving. Had the voyage proved successful, they admit they stood to share the money gained by the sale of their slaves in Cuba. Each and severally are sentenced to two years in jail.
The slaves present a more difficult problem. There will be many in this nation and elsewhere who will feel that their attempt to escape from bondage was commendable, but the solemn fact is that in doing so they engaged in an act of mutiny on the high seas, they stole a ship which had been duly registered, and they murdered four officers and fifteen men. Can the seafaring nations of the world condone behavior which strikes at the very heart of naval tradition? This court thinks not.
Because of his leading role in the mutiny, the slave known as Rutak shall be hanged. The slave known as Coboto shall be hanged. The slave known as Betana shall be hanged... [and so on, through a list of nineteen slaves.]
The slave known as Cudjo, who appears to have played a major role in the mutiny, also played a major role in saving the ship. He and all others shall be transported to Havana, and delivered to their rightful owners.
This harsh decision raised, as might have been expected, an outcry in both England and France, but the objections came from only a limited number of critics. In the former country the year 1832 was one of vigorous political reform, always opposed by the grand Duke of Wellington, and also one in which the anti-slavery movement gained the momentum which would within the year prohibit the ownership of slaves throughout the British Empire. The citizenry was so preoccupied with doing good for blacks in general that it had no energy left to protect the rights of specific blacks.
In France, the nation was bending every effort to digest the peculiar behavior of their new king, Louis Philippe; nominated by the radicals because he was a revolutionary, he quickly became the darling of the conservatives because he had always been at heart a reactionary. Alternately confused and elated, the citizens of France could not care what happened to a gang of slaves, especially since their aborted action enabled France to gain a fine warship.
On June 15, 1833, Cudjo and four hundred and eleven other blacks were marched out of Plymouth jail and loaded onto a British ship bound for Cuba, where in a large shed at dockside they were put up for sale.
Word had circulated, of course, that these were the mutineers who had murdered the crew of the _Ariel_ , so an ugly fascination attended their sale, and more buyers than usual pressed in upon the auctioneer, but they had come to gawk, not bid. Plantation owners were loath to bring onto their land slaves known to cause trouble, and speculators feared that none could be smuggled into America, where an uprising of slaves led by the preacher Nat Turner had ended in the slaughter of fifty-five Virginians. American slaveholders were terrified.
At the sale, Brazilian traders bought the lot except for six of the strongest young men. After the most careful inspection, these were picked off by a thin American who wore a white linen suit buttoned almost to the chin. He sucked constantly upon a silver toothpick and spoke softly in the manner of a gentleman: 'Name's T.T. Arbigost, Savannah, Georgia, and I pay cash.' When the auctioneer asked, after the sale, why he had purchased the six men who promised to be most difficult, Arbigost said, 'I have ways of training them. What I figure is, I can smuggle them into Georgia, then slip them into the market, one at a time... different parts of the country... nobody need ever know they were mutineers.' He paid over his money, marched his six slaves, including Cudjo, to his sloop, dragged them belowdecks and ordered his carpenter to secure them. This man was a powerful fellow from the interior of Georgia who hoped one day to run his own plantation and had specific theories about handling blacks. With the aid of four stout sailors he spread-eagled Cudjo on the lowest deck of the ship, where the headroom was only eighteen inches. He ordered his men to strap down each ankle, extending the legs as far as possible. He did the same with Cudjo's wrists. Then, about his neck he fastened a heavy iron collar from which led two small chains. These he bolted to the deck. And when the powerful slave was thus secured, the carpenter began to kick him, cursing the while and daring him to try mutiny aboard this ship. And he continued doing this until Cudjo fainted. With a farewell series of kicks, the carpenter growled to the remaining five, whom he pinioned in similar fashion, 'Now let's see you mutiny.'
It was in this posture that Cudjo, twenty-five years old, slipped into America.
# The Slave—Breaker
MOST NATIONS HAVE AT ONE TIME OR OTHER BOTH condoned and practiced slavery. Greece and Rome founded their societies on it. India and Japan handled this state of affairs by creating untouchable classes which continue to this day. Arabia clung to formal slavery longer than most, while black countries like Ethiopia and Burundi were notorious. In the New World each colonial power devised a system precisely suited to its peculiar needs and in conformance with its national customs.
The most practical was that in Brazil. Since Portuguese women were discouraged by their Catholic faith from emigrating to a savage new country, Portuguese men found their wives in the slave population, and a curious, strong and viable society developed. Slaves were slaves and were treated as such until they produced beautiful daughters; then suddenly they became the parents of the bride. At fourteen the master's son was given his own slave, the prettiest black woman of eighteen on the plantation, and it became her pleasurable task to introduce the lad into an essential meaning of slavery.
The most reasonable system was the English. Since many of the best young men had to find their destiny in a life overseas, it became traditional for many of the best young women to follow them; although marriage with slaves was unthinkable, reasonably decent treatment was obligatory, and it was not surprising that England became the first great power to outlaw slavery at home and discipline it abroad.
The French were perhaps the best administrators of their slave system; it was a cross between the total assimilation of Brazil and the rigid exclusionism of England, and resulted in a kind of amiable non-rigid society in Guadaloupe and Martinique, where a family of some distinction might have a cousin married to a former slave. In fact, there were persistent rumors that Joséphine de Beauharnais, the exquisite Martinique girl who married Napoleon to become empress of France, had slave blood in her distant background. The lot of the French slave was by no means pleasant, and there were insurrections in these islands too, but they were handled with compromise and concession.
The most stolid, unrelieved system was that of the Dutch. They treated their slaves no worse than others, but they did so with such relentless pressure and lack of grace that slave rebellions in their colonies became frequent. To be a slave on a Dutch island was to live without hope; day after relentless day the sugar mills revolved, grinding the blacks into sullen submission until they could bear no more. Then the fiery insurrection, the savage reprisals, and the continued grinding of the mill.
The Spanish were an anomaly. In Mexico and Peru their primary slaves were Indians, whom they baptized and annihilated. Blacks fared comparatively well in some of the Spanish possessions, where they often served as teachers, minor administrators and family friends. In the Spanish islands their life in the sugar fields was horrible and brief. Many who had known servitude in islands like Cuba thanked their forgotten gods when fate moved them to the United States.
By all standards, and in the opinion of all, the one island which represented human slavery at its absolute nadir was Haiti. Here, under a remote French administration, accountable to no one, a band of cruel exploiters accepted those fractious slaves whom no one else could handle, worked them sixteen hours a day like animals, fed them little, beat them constantly, and buried them after four or five years. For a slave to be assigned to Haiti was a sentence of lingering death.
American slavery covered such a vast area that no generalizations could be easily made. In the northern tobacco states with temperate climates, like Virginia, it duplicated the best aspects of the English pattern; in the more remote lower states, like Mississippi and Louisiana with their steaming sugar and indigo fields, the worst features of the Dutch and Haitian systems flourished. And the cotton states, like Georgia and Alabama, offered some of the best, some of the worst.
Maryland was in a category by itself. Indeed, it encompassed two categories: the western shore, whose plantations were much modified by anti-slavery pressures from Pennsylvania; and the Eastern Shore, which remained insulated from outside pressures and resembled a fiefdom of the Carolinas. In 1833 the apex of Eastern Shore slavery occurred on the vast Steed holdings.
There were four major plantations: the great one on Devon Island, with its satellite operations north of the Choptank, and the three fine establishments at the Refuge, with their outlying fields reaching to the Miles River. Together they covered a vast extent of land, well over thirty thousand acres, which were worked by six hundred and ninety-three slaves. And these slaves, who soon would total more than eight hundred, were kept under control by eighteen white men.
No one could ever see all the Steed slaves. Some worked in fields so remote they rarely encountered a white overseer. Others tended the various stores. The fortunate ones, insofar as food and clothing were concerned, worked in the four mansions. Others specialized in trades requiring the most sophisticated skills; they stayed in hidden shops all their lives. But most worked the plantation crops: wheat, corn, vegetables, a little tobacco. They hoed and weeded and harvested, and they did this till they died.
They lived, for the most part, in collections of rude, dirt-floored wooden cabins whose boards did not fit and through which the winds of winter swept. They were allowed some wood to burn, but not much. They were given some food to eat, but never much. They were medicined when they fell ill, but only by the overseer or his wife. And they were given clothes, one reasonably good outfit for special occasions, one fitting of work clothes for all other days of the year. They had no church, no hospital and, above all, no school.
The first slaves had reached Devon Island in 1670; it was now one hundred and sixty-three years later and almost nothing had changed. If those first blacks could come back and walk up from the wharf some Tuesday night, by Wednesday morning they would find themselves fitting easily into the system. Actually, no slaves direct from Africa had reached Devon in more than eighty years; new arrivals had been born in America, often on plantations noted for their success in breeding blacks.
At Devon their lives were governed by overseers; on remote plantations a Steed slave might spend three years clearing new fields and breaking them in without ever having actually seen a member of the Steed family. Overseers were usually German or Scot; they had a pragmatic approach to life, and the Lutheran religion of the former and the Calvinism of the latter prepared them to believe that sinners should be punished. Thus they were always ready to chastise the tardy slave and keep the field hands working; also, they tended to be honest.
On the island itself in the year 1833 the overseer was a Mr. Beasley, a Scotsman with an impeccable reputation for strictness and fairness. He knew each of his slaves by name and tried to assign them tasks for which they were preeminently suited. In his early days on a Virginia plantation he had often whipped slaves, because the master there demanded it; but after he fell under the influence of the Steeds, he never struck a slave again. He did, however, demand instant compliance, and if a slave proved refractory, Mr. Beasley recommended sale to some other plantation. He also liked to see his slaves attending the prayer meetings he conducted—'The word of God is soothing to a troubled spirit.'
Some of the distant plantations had known overseers of quite a different stripe; some were true horrors, lashing and beating and knocking down; but when verified reports of their savage behavior reached Mr. Beasley, he dismissed them on the spot, so that the Steeds were justified in boasting, as they did repeatedly, 'Our slaves are the best treated in Maryland. They're not beaten and they're not abused.'
The pitiful fact about slavery as it existed on the Steed plantation was its banality. On white and black alike the heavy encumbrances of custom pulled everyone down to a mournful level in which the most extraordinary situations were accepted as inevitable. An unbroken chain of black men and women was purchased for the plantation or bred there, and they existed through the centuries without family names, or recorded histories, or education, or variation, or hope. The male field hands formed an interminable succession of Toms, Jims, Joes; at the big house classical names were preferred, for these gave a kind of distinction to social life: Pompey, Caesar, Hannibal, Napoleon, Brutus. Women in remote fields often bore names that were rarely spoken by their white overseers: Pansy, Petty, Prissy, Pammy, Puss. Generation after generation they were judged to be alike: treated alike... dressed alike... ignored alike... and buried alike.
The whites who supervised this system also became alike in their ways. Most wives were kind and condescending, but also careful to ensure that a new crop of seamstresses was growing up in the slave quarters. The plantation owners were aloof but considerate; they would be shamed if anyone circulated reports that they were treating their slaves poorly: 'We endeavor to be good masters, and we discharge any overseer who touches a slave.' The fact that at Devon the master himself had gone mad for a spell and had actually whipped his slave girl Eden was referred to only obliquely: 'We ran into a small problem but corrected it.' The real burden under which the white masters lived was psychological: they came to believe that they were inherently superior and that they were ordained to hold in their hands the destinies of those less fortunate.
The white Steed overseers occupied a curious position, half slave, half free. In a hundred years no overseer had ever eaten a meal at a Steed table, nor had any ever sat in the presence of a Steed without having been invited. It would have been unthinkable for Mr. Beasley to break either of these customs.
Along the Choptank there were five levels of social life, and the members of each understood their place. First came the Steeds and similar planters; infinitely below them came the slaves. In town there were the merchants and artisans such as the Paxmores, referred to by the slave-holders as 'those poor unfortunates.' In the country lived the solid farmers on whom the society depended; and everywhere there appeared the unspeakable white trash, like the Turlocks, often referred to as 'Oh, them.'
One aspect of slavery baffled explanation: along the Choptank only one family in eight owned slaves, yet all believed that their existence depended upon the continuance of slavery. It was as if the Steeds had used witchcraft to persuade the slaveless farmers to defend a system which benefited not them but the rich, and when George Paxmore tried to argue that the economic life of the river would be enhanced if black men were set free to work for wages, he was considered an irresponsible fool, not only by the Steeds, who owned slaves, but especially by the Turlocks, who owned none and whose relatively low position was caused primarily by the region's insistence upon slave labor.
'All I need to know about niggers,' Lafe said when the mutiny aboard the _Ariel_ became known in Patamoke, 'is that they murdered my cousin Matt. One of 'em looks at me with a crooked eye, he dies.'
The Steed system of slavery was a gentle one, and it bore satisfying fruit. It was seen at its best at Christmastime; then, by long tradition, the slaves received one week of holiday, and Mr. Beasley saw to it that in each of the communities hogs were barbecued over a pit fire, with dozens of chickens roasting on the side. At the big house candies and pies were made. Hundreds of loaves of bread were baked, and the Steed women took care that every slave got his new set of work clothes; boys who had reached eighteen during the year were given their first suit of good clothes and girls of that age were given two dresses.
Mr. Beasley, strict teetotaler though he was, allowed bottles and even kegs of whiskey to be brought onto the grounds, and festivities were endless: cockfights, races, wrestling matches, sewing bees, baking competitions and all sorts of games for children. Each plantation had at least one man who could fiddle, and sometimes he played for nine hours at a stretch. Often the white folk from the big houses would come to watch the dancing; chairs would be brought out and the owners would sit approvingly as their slaves enjoyed themselves.
No work was done during this festive period, only the inescapable routines like milking cows and gathering eggs and carrying out the chamberpots from the big house. It was a joyous time, and fifty years later blacks in some far part of the nation would remember plantation life: 'If'n no Christmas, I think I'da died.'
The Steeds enjoyed the holiday almost more than their slaves; it enhanced the illusion that they were good masters. The gaiety in the dark faces proved that life in the shanties could be tolerable, and the obvious delight when the new clothes and the extra food were distributed proved that on these plantations at least, the slaves loved their masters.
There was only one ominous cloud: Elizabeth Paxmore, the Quaker lady, had been caught teaching black children how to read and write. She did not, of course, admit them to the informal school she conducted for plantation whites at Peace Cliff, but she did welcome them to the shed in back of the telescope house, even though this flouted local custom. What was worse, she had allowed two older blacks to slip into her classes and was teaching them how to read the Bible, and each of these students belonged to the Steeds.
When word of this criminal behavior reached Uncle Herbert, who now supervised the entire Steed operation, he was aghast. He asked his nephews if he was correct in assuming that slaves had never been taught to read the Bible, and they assured him he was. He then summoned Mr. Beasley, who stood with hat in hand to receive his instructions: 'You've got to go and reason with that difficult woman. We can't afford a scandal... God knows we've sent our own children to her. But we do want a stop to this pernicious business.'
So Mr. Beasley got into his sloop and sailed over to Peace Cliff. Bowing politely, he said, 'Mrs. Paxmore, I come on unpleasant business.'
'Thee always does,' she said crisply, but with a touch of dry humor. She was now forty-nine years old, trim and erect as an elm tree, and almost as pretty. Her features had attained a lovely calm, as if conforming to the gray dresses she wore, and her manner had softened. She was disarming, a woman of middle age who had the alertness of a girl. Smiling warmly, she invited Mr. Beasley in, sat him down and faced him in a straight-backed chair. 'Now tell me thy problem.'
'Ma'am, it's about those two slaves you're teachin' to read the Bible.'
'Is it wrong to teach another human being to read the Bible?'
'Mrs. Paxmore, you don't seem to understand that since the trouble with Nat Turner over in Virginia... Things aren't the same, and this meddling with slaves has got to stop.'
Elizabeth Paxmore folded her hands in her lap and said firmly, 'It will not stop.'
Mr. Beasley ignored this challenge and pleaded, 'You've also got to quit teaching our nigger children.'
Mrs. Paxmore started to respond, but the overseer said hurriedly, as if he had memorized his arguments, 'All the states agree that slaves must not read the Bible. They center on certain verses and it disturbs them. The proper thing is for a white minister to explain the Bible... or the master of the plantation.'
'Don't they center on certain verses?'
'But they give a balanced view. That God ordered the world. That some were intended to be slaves.'
'And that the slave must obey the master?'
'Of course. The Bible says that specifically.'
Mrs. Paxmore looked at the overseer compassionately and asked, 'Does thee think that I will stop disseminating the word of God?'
'You'd better. The word of God must be taught only by those capable of explaining its true meaning.'
They had reached an impasse. Mr. Beasley had nothing more to say. Politely he excused himself, placed his hat on his head and walked down to his sloop. At first Mrs. Paxmore felt that she had bested him, but in the end he triumphed, for she never saw any of her students again, men or boys. She waited for them to appear in the shed behind the house, but they never came. One day in Patamoke she stopped a Steed slave to ask where her students were, and the woman was too frightened to reply, there on the street where she could be seen by the Steed personnel at the store, but with a movement of her eyes she indicated that she would meet Mrs. Paxmore later, behind a wall.
'They was sold south.'
This phrase represented the ultimate terror among slaves—the sugar plantations of Louisiana, the cotton fields of Mississippi—and Mrs. Paxmore, suddenly weak, leaned against the wall, her hands over her eyes. The two young men so hopeful, the children just beginning to learn their letters...
'They was all sold south.'
It was into this society that Cudjo came in mid-December 1833, and his arrival created a sensation, for he was the first native from Africa that anyone then living at Devon had ever seen.
He reached the Choptank illegally. After Mr. Beasley expelled the two Bible-learners, he hurried them to Baltimore, along with four children separated from their parents, intending to sell the lot south. But as he approached the auction hall he was intercepted by a slave dealer from Savannah who introduced himself as 'T.T. Arbigost, with a most interesting proposition.' Mr. Beasley did not like such men or their connivings, but Arbigost whispered, 'Why pay the auctioneer an unnecessary commision?'
'What did you have in mind?'
'Sell your slaves to me, privately.'
'You won't offer as much.' Mr. Beasley had good reason to be suspicious of Georgia traders, and Mr. Arbigost, with his white linen suit and silver toothpick dangling from the corner of his mouth, seemed especially suspicious. But he offered an attractive barter: 'Now, I know that the niggers you want to dispose of are troublemakers. I can see that. But I'll take them off your hands in a way that you'll come out ahead. For the two men, I'll give you one of the finest prime niggers you ever saw, docile, good at machines. And for the four children, I'll give you my two women.'
'That hardly seems—'
'Plus four hundred dollars.'
It was a trade, and after Mr. Arbigost shifted his silver toothpick, he confided, 'Tell you the truth, Mr. Beasley, I'd put the two wenches at work in the fields. Proved themselves a little sassy in the big house.'
'You have the same kind of trouble with your buck?'
'No, sir!' He moved close to the overseer and dropped his voice to a whisper. 'I personally smuggled him in. Right off a ship from Africa.'
Mr. Beasley had never worked a slave direct from Africa, and asked, 'Is that an advantage?'
'Yes, yes!' Mr. Arbigost cried enthusiastically. 'Means he hasn't learned the ways that get niggers into trouble.'
Enticed by the prospect of dealing with a new kind of slave, Mr. Beasley inspected the man being offered. Looked to be about twenty-five, sturdy, good teeth, huge biceps. His face had that placid gaze of complete resignation which overseers preferred. 'Shall I chain him to the boat?'
'Chain him, Mr. Beasley? Do you expect a fine boy like that to mutiny? Look, he's as gentle as a lamb.' Mr. Arbigost poked Cudjo in the ribs, and he was gentle.
The three slaves were led to the wharf, and the long, easy sail to Devon began. Cudjo would remember every detail: the bigness of Baltimore harbor, the multitude of ships resting there, the spaciousness of the bay, the beauty of the Eastern Shore as it rose gently on the horizon, the calm of Devon Island. He also studied the four half-naked slaves operating the boat, and thought: I sailed a ship larger than this. But he noticed that the men seemed at ease, and their backs were not striped like his.
Upon delivery at Devon he was assigned to one of the outlying plantations from which the two men who had been caught learning to read had come, and there, far from the clement eye of the Steeds, he was placed under the supervision of a Mr. Starch, fiercest of the overseers. All incoming slaves served their apprenticeships with Starch, who had a knack for breaking them into the Steed system. When he first saw Cudjo and his impressive physique, he assumed that here was a man who might prove difficult, but during his weeks in Georgia the big Xanga had mastered the strategy for being a slave.
He obeyed. Grasping situations more quickly than most, he studied to determine what pleased an irascible overseer, and he provided it. He did so for a powerful reason: he was determined to learn. His thirty-three days in command of the _Ariel_ had taught him a lifetime of lessons; that he could operate a complex machine, that he could handle people, that he must learn to read, that he must learn to figure, that his life would be meaningless unless he learned somehow to be free. Most of all, he had acquired that inner confidence which can make a man infinitely more powerful than the accidents of birth would normally permit. No amount of temporary abuse was going to divert him from his twin goals of learning and attaining freedom.
Slavery he did not understand, except the fundamental truth that blacks were slaves and whites were not and that whatever the latter said was correct. Even during his brief stay at Savannah he had watched with amazement as white men gave blacks the most faulty and ineffective instruction for doing a job; even the stupidest black could see that it wouldn't work, but even the wisest black could not correct the white master. 'Yassah! Yassah!' was the first English word Cudjo had learned, and he used it constantly without feeling any sense of debasement. If 'Yassah' was the password to existence, so be it.
Whites and blacks alike were fascinated by this stranger from Africa, the former hoping to find proof that blacks were born savage and rescued only by slavery, the latter trying to discover something about their origins. He disappointed both groups, for he was not savage, nor was he interested in Africa; his problem was America. During his apprenticeship in Georgia he had picked up enough English to communicate, and as soon as he was settled in as one of Mr. Starch's field hands he began asking questions: 'Who d'big boss?' 'Where he live?' 'Anybody here can read?'
When this last question was asked, the other slaves showed fear. They explained that Cudjo's predecessors had been caught reading and had been sold south. With a hundred stories they impressed on him that the worst thing in the world that could happen to a slave was to be sold south, and after he had listened to a plethora of such tales he said, 'I been south.' And he indicated that there were many things worse.
Whenever he saw a scrap of writing he studied it, hungrily, trying to decipher its mystery. His first solid instruction came when barrels were packed with goods for London. Then a slave from the cooperage appeared with an iron stencil and a pile of wood shavings. Lighting a small fire, this man threw on heavy timbers until he had a fine blaze, into which he thrust the iron stencil. When it was red-hot, he pressed it against the head of the barrel, allowing it to sizzle until the notation was deeply burned: DEVON PLNT FITHIANS LONDON 280 LB.
He memorized the rubric, unable to decode even one fact it represented. Nevertheless, he could reproduce it, letter for letter, which he did in the sand when no one was looking. Then, from something Mr. Starch said, he deduced that this barrel was intended for London, and he felt a strange sensation of triumph, for he had been in London. That much he knew.
He also heard the overseer from another plantation say, 'I wonder, Starch, if that far barrel contains a full two-eighty pounds,' and Mr. Starch had gone to it, tapped on the figures and said, 'When we brand it two-eighty, we mean two-eighty.' Cudjo looked quickly away, but as soon as the men left, he hurried to the cask, studied the marks that Mr. Starch had struck, and learned that 280 was said two-eighty. In the next few days he wrote these symbols in the dust many times and pronounced them. They were the opening wedge.
When the next barrel was filled, and the lid was about to be hammered down, he stood by the barrel and asked, so that Mr. Starch could hear, 'This one got two-eighty?'
Without thinking, the overseer responded, 'It better.' Then he stopped, looked at Cudjo and shook his head. But he remembered him.
The sense of power that came with knowing that this barrel was headed for London and that it contained two-eighty was so exciting that Cudjo looked for other writing to decipher; there was none. So he began to inquire as to how the two banished slaves had learned, and slowly he discovered that a white woman named Mrs. Paxmore had taught them. Quickly he dropped all questioning, lest some clever slave deduce his plans, but in an entirely different part of the field he asked in subtle ways who this Mrs. Paxmore was, and he was told.
One day in early December 1834 he slipped away from work, ran down to the bank of Dividing Creek, swam across and ran along the eastern edge of the creek until he came to Peace Cliff. Without hesitation he ran up the hill, reached the back door, banged on it and waited.
A woman appeared, middle-aged, thin, dressed severely in gray. The thing he would always remember was that she was neither surprised nor frightened, as if accustomed to the arrival of disobedient slaves. 'Yes?'
'I learn read?'
'Of course.'
Carefully closing her kitchen door, she led him to the shed in which she had given earlier instruction and placed him on a chair. 'Which plantation do you come from?' This was too difficult, so she asked, 'Who d'big boss?'
'Mastah Starch.'
She leaned back, made a little temple of her fingers and said quietly, 'Does thee know the words _sold south?_ '
'I been south.'
She bowed her head, and when she raised it Cudjo could see tears in her eyes. 'Thee still wants to learn?'
He nodded, and without further comment she took down a hornbook—a shingle into which the alphabet had been burned—but before she could say anything, he wrote with his finger the words branded on the tobacco casks. She could not follow him; fetching a pencil and paper, she said, 'Write.'
For the first time in his life Cudjo put words on paper: DEVON PLNT FITHIANS LONDON 280 LB. She smiled. She could guess with what effort this illiterate slave had memorized those letters, and she was about to explain them when he stopped her and pointed to 280. 'Two-eighty,' he said, and she congratulated him.
She then went to each group of letters, and he exulted when he discovered which of the symbols signified London. He repeated the name several times, looked at her and laughed. 'I been London.' She thought this unlikely and assumed that he was confusing the name with some locality in the south. Carefully she explained what London was and where, and he cried, 'I been London,' and with a few words and gestures he convinced her that he had indeed been in this great city which she had never seen, but when she asked how he had got there, some inner caution warned him that no one must ever know, and he feigned an inability to comprehend her question.
She shrugged her shoulders and proceeded with the lesson, pointing to the five Ns, and demonstrating that this symbol had the same sound in each of the four words in which it appeared. Cudjo repeated the instruction, and on the second repetition a light actually broke across his face, irradiating the room. That was the secret! All these symbols carried their own sound, and reading was nothing but the decipherment of those sounds.
All that afternoon he and Mrs. Paxmore went over the letters of the rubric from the barrels until he had mastered each. Intuitively she knew that it was more important to do this than to start with the alphabet, for Cudjo himself had brought her this problem; it stemmed from his life, so its solution would have treble meaning.
When day ended she returned to the hornbook and made the sounds of the letters, and he already knew letters like the D in Devon and F in Fithians, but when she got to L he was confused. In LONDON it had been pronounced the way she said it now, but in LB it had the sound of P. He repeated the sound: 'Pound. Pound.'
She stopped, looked at the rubric and realized that there was no simple way in which she could explain what an arbitrary abbreviation was. 'You see...' She retreated to the word PLNT and explained that this was merely a short way of writing _plantation_ , and this he understood readily. But then there was the problem of LB meaning _pound_.
'Learn the letters,' she said, thrusting the hornbook at him, and before he left she asked him to read the alphabet, and he got twenty-one of the letters right. He was, she told her husband that night, one of the brightest human beings she had ever tried to teach.
Now it was Christmas, and the slaves had their week of holiday. While others gorged on roast pig and drank their whiskey, Cudjo stole away to Peace Cliff, spending hours on the lessons Mrs. Paxmore set. He met Mr. Paxmore and their handsome young son Bartley, and was invited to have Christmas dinner at their table. It was a sober affair, with silences he could not understand, but there was a spiritual warmth and the food was plentiful. Bartley was especially attentive, a boy of fifteen eager to know about the world.
'Thee was in the south?'
'I been.'
'What was it like?'
'Work, no food, Mastah whip.'
'Is it better here?'
'Yes.'
'Will thee get married some day?'
This was beyond Cudjo's understanding, and he looked down at his plate, the first he had ever seen. 'Get him some more turkey,' Mrs. Paxmore said, and as soon as the meal was over, Cudjo wanted to go back to the learning shed.
'Bartley will take thee,' she said, and the boy proved as capable a teacher as his mother. His pleasure was to have Cudjo recite the alphabet as fast as possible; they had races, and it became apparent that Cudjo had mastered every letter, every sound, but when they reached the numerals he was confused.
Bartley was good at arithmetic and had often helped his father calculate tonnages at the boatyard, so he was able to explain it, and if Cudjo had been noteworthy in his ability to learn letters, at figures he excelled. In three intensive days, during which he saw little of Mrs. Paxmore, he mastered the principles of simple figuring.
'He's quite remarkable,' Bartley told his parents as the black man hurried back to the plantation at the end of the holidays.
It was remarkable, too, that Cudjo could continue learning when he had so few materials to work with; he knew every grain that marked the hornbook. He could write in his sleep the message burned onto the back: 'Pack my box with five dozen liquor jugs.' Mrs. Paxmore had informed him that this sentence was unusual in that it contained every letter of the alphabet; he recited it to himself at all hours, seeing the twenty-six letters pop up in order.
But he required something more substantial, and in March of 1835 Mrs. Paxmore said, at one of their infrequent meetings, for Mr. Starch had become suspicious of his new hand and was keeping closer watch, 'Thee can return the alphabet now. Thee's ready for a book.' And she handed him a small, poorly printed volume called _The Industrious Boy's Vade Mecum_.
Cudjo held the book in his two hands, stared down at it, read the title almost accurately, then raised it to his face and pressed it tightly against his cheek. 'I gonna know every word.' And he pointed to _Industrious_ and Mrs. Paxmore explained that he was industrious in that he studied and learned so well. He then pointed to _Vade Mecum_ and she started to explain that this was Latin, but she realized from teaching children that this was supererogatory; all he needed to know was the meaning. 'It means _go with me_. It's your helper.' But when he opened the book it fell to a page containing mathematical problems, many of which Bartley had already taught him, and he began to rattle off the answers at a speed that Mrs. Paxmore could not have matched.
'A miracle has happened in that shed,' she told her husband that night. Then she smiled at her son and said, 'Thee is a better teacher than I,' and she burst into tears. 'Imagine, preaching to people that Negroes can't learn.' She sat quite still for some time, then started tapping the table nervously with one finger. 'I shall never understand,' she said.
It was the book that became Cudjo's undoing. It was so small that he could hide it in his trousers, not in the pocket, since his pants had none, but along the flat of his left rump, held there by a string passed between the middle pages. He was able to share his secret with no one, for he knew that if it were discovered that he could read, he would be sold south, so he looked at the book only when he could find a few minutes alone.
The book had been written for boys nine and ten years old and told of selected heroes upon whom the boys should pattern themselves: Robert Bruce and the spider; Roland and the last battle; George Washington at Valley Forge. The level of difficulty was exactly right for Cudjo, but his quick mind soon absorbed the moral messages and he yearned to talk with someone about Robert Bruce, and why he was fighting. There was no one. So he memorized the selections, finding great pleasure in the simple poems which adorned the text:
Brave Robert sat within his cell
And watched the spider spinning well,
Until he heard the battle call.
He won the day, so must we all.
But one November morning when the barrels were being rolled down to the plantation wharf, Mr. Starch heard Cudjo reading off the consignment brand: 'Devon Plantation. For Fithians in London. Two hundred eighty pounds.' He leaped from his horse and grabbed Cudjo. 'Where did you learn to read?'
'I no read, Mastah.'
'You just read that marking.'
'I heard you speak it, Mastah.'
'You're a liar. You stand here.' And he rode among the slaves, asking questions, then came back roaring, 'You've been seein' Mrs. Paxmore.'
'No, Mastah.'
'You damned liar!' And he leaned over in his saddle and began whipping Cudjo across the shoulders. Cudjo naturally drew back, placing himself out of reach, and this enraged the overseer. Leaping from his horse, he lunged at the slave, ordering him to take off his shirt to receive the lashes he deserved. Cudjo delayed, so Mr. Starch ripped away the shirt, and in doing so, disclosed the end of string protruding from the top of the pants.
'What's that?' he bellowed, and with a powerful yank on the trousers, he tore them down and the hidden book fell to the ground.
'Damn you!' he thundered, and he whipped Cudjo till his arm tired. Throwing the slave into the plantation sloop, he sailed to Devon Island to report the infraction to Mr. Beasley, but Uncle Herbert intercepted him at the wharf. 'What brings you here?' he asked.
'Caught this slave readin'. He's been to Paxmore's.'
'Oh dear!' Steed sighed. 'We really must do something about those damned Quakers.'
'Where's Beasley?' Starch asked.
'Retired. And if you handle yourself well, you can take his place.' Uncle Herbert paused portentously, then added, 'And perhaps mine, too, in due course.'
Starch, inspired by this intimation, said brusquely, 'First thing we do is whip this one into shape.'
'Sell him south. I want no nigger on my place that can read.'
'I'd say yes,' Mr. Starch said hesitantly. 'But...'
'But what?'
'He's awful good at fixin' machines. Has a true talent.'
'What do you propose?
'He's worth savin', Mr. Steed. He really is.' Mr. Starch coughed, then said, 'What I say is, rent him out to Cline for a year.'
Uncle Herbert made a temple of his fingers and bit the steeple. To send a slave to Herman Cline was a fearful decision, to be made only in the worst cases. 'We Steeds try to keep clear of men like Cline.'
'But he cures niggers.'
'You think he can cure this one?' Before Mr. Starch could respond, Herbert added, 'I despise niggers who can read.'
'Cline will put an end to that, believe me.' So Starch sailed south to fetch him.
Cline lived on the Little Choptank River, south of Devon. There he and his wife occupied a stretch of low, wet land, half field, half swamp. On the scantiest of savings he had managed to buy at bargain prices four slaves whom no one else could handle, and by terrifying them with whip and fist, had converted them into acceptable workmen. They had drained some of the swamps, creating a fairly productive farm, and his success with these renegades conferred on him a title which meant money: Cline the Slave-Breaker. Planters in the region came to believe that for $150 Herman Cline could break the spirit of even the most difficult slave and transform him into a docile servant.
He appeared one morning at the wharf, forty-seven years old, not overly tall or powerful. As he slouched up the path to the office, in his battered hat, ragged shoes, torn pants and loose homespun shirt, he carried a large wad of tobacco in his left cheek and a carved club in his right hand. It was unusual in that it terminated in a six-foot raw-hide whip, tipped at the end. He held the club loosely, so that the rawhide draped twice in graceful loops; when he spoke he pointed the club at the listener, making the lash sway in the air. He was unshaved, unwashed and underfed, but his eyes moved with such quickness, taking in all aspects of a situation, that he created an impression of extraordinary energy and limitless will power.
'I'm here,' he said.
Uncle Herbert found him so distasteful that he made no attempt to welcome him, but this did not disturb the slave-breaker. He had business to do and wished to finish it. 'Same terms as before. I get to work your boy one year. You pay me fifty dollars when I bring him back. Five months later, if'n he's cured, you owe me the other hundred.' Steed nodded, and Cline shifted his plug of tobacco, looking for somewhere to spit. Steed indicated the door, and when this was attended to, Cline added, tapping his left hand with the head of the club, 'And if'n he ain't broken when I hand him back, you keep the hundred.'
Uncle Herbert wished to be no part of this ugly transaction, so Mr. Starch said, 'Agreed, Cline. But this time you've got a tough one on your hands.'
'Them's the kind I like.' He grinned in anticipation of the challenge, then added, 'You agree like before. If I have to kill him to cure him, no fault of mine.'
'That risk we take,' Starch said, and when Cudjo was dragged forth, Cline took one look at him and realized that this was going to be a difficult year. He said nothing; simply marched the big Xanga to the wharf, indicated that he was to get into the sloop, and got in after him. But before casting loose, he suddenly swung his club and began belaboring Cudjo over the head, knocking him down with the first blow and continuing to thrash him as he lay in the boat, striking particularly at his face.
Mr. Steed and Mr. Starch, on the wharf, were startled by the violence of the attack, but the latter said, 'That's the way he always begins.'
'It's rather horrible,' Herbert Steed said, but his overseer nudged him. 'Look behind. It's good for our niggers to be reminded of what can happen.'
And there on the grass behind the wharf stood seven or eight slaves from the big house, watching everything but saying nothing. Mr. Starch, spotting the girl Eden, went to her and grabbed her by the arm. 'Don't you be so sassy to Mr. Paul, or you gonna spend a year with Mr. Cline.'
She did not try to escape his grasp, nor did she respond in any way to his threat. She merely looked at the retreating boat as it headed south for the Little Choptank.
Herman Cline was a good farmer. Taking nine hundred acres of lowland that no one else wanted, he had patiently cut off the trees from one high spot after another, constructing by this method a series of scattered fields. By careful husbandry and incessant toil he had coaxed these fields into producing substantial crops, and if he could accomplish as much in the next twenty years as he had in the past twenty, he would one day have a farm capable of yielding real income.
His help consisted of his wife, his two horselike daughters, the four slaves he had purchased and five other slaves who had been sent to him for discipline. These nine blacks lived in a small shedlike building with no window, no wooden floor, no furniture of any kind except a row of nails on which to hang their clothes. There was no fireplace, no utensils for cooking; their food was delivered in a bucket, from which they ate with their hands.
On the Cline farm there was no Sunday. Half an hour before dawn on three hundred and sixty-five days a year, including Christmas, Mrs. Cline beat a length of iron, warning the slaves to be ready for work in thirty minutes. They toiled till sunset, with ten minutes' rest at noon, and after dark each was responsible for certain additional tasks, such as chopping wood or cleaning the pigpens. The four slaves Mr. Cline owned were expected to work like this for the remainder of their lives.
The five other slaves were treated with additional harshness. Every morning of the year Mr. Cline recited some arbitrary excuse for thrashing at least one of them: 'The pigs wasn't cleaned properly.' On the third morning it was Cudjo's turn: 'I caught you lookin' at my daughter. When she passes, you look at the ground.' With his rawhide lash he beat Cudjo twenty times, then asked, 'What you gonna do when my daughter passes?'
'Look down,' Cudjo said.
'You say _Mastah_ when you speak to me,' and he lashed him ten more times.
For food the slaves got a bucket of cornmeal mush, day after day after day. Every third day each got a strip of cured pork, which he hung on the nail assigned to him, gnawing from it at a rate to preserve something till the next strip appeared.
The morning beatings were only the beginning. All day long Mr. Cline prowled his fields, descending upon his workmen at odd moments, or at odd bends in the road, leaping at them for their sloth and thrashing them till they bled. They must work every minute, and care for every item on the farm as carefully as if it were their own. Mr. Cline had one custom often seen among slaveholders: he would take a long rest in the afternoon, then an hour before quitting time he would appear lively and fresh. Scratching himself, he would leap into the middle of whatever job was under way, and would work like a demon for twenty minutes, till the sweat poured down his face. Then he would stop and say, 'That's the way a real man works, damn you.' And he would select some slave who had lagged and would lash him ten or twelve times, shouting at him, 'I've shown you how to work, now, damn you, do it.'
Christmas showed the Cline system at its worst. The nine slaves would know that elsewhere along the Choptank other slaves were enjoying a week of festivity, but his worked every day. On Christmas Day, half an hour before dawn, as usual, the iron gong would ring, the slaves would emerge from their earthen-floored cabin, and they would be led to some particularly odious task. At high noon Mrs. Cline would ring the gong again, and her husband would come to the slaves and say, 'Well, you've done no work at all, but today's Christmas.' When they reached their miserable shed they would find a bucketful of mush and on a greasy piece of paper one roasted chicken.
When Cudjo saw this on Christmas afternoon he had to control himself from bursting into bitter laughter. 'At Devon plantations we has whole hogs and piles o' chicken!' He was so outraged that he refused to fight for a fragment of this treat. He ate his mush and watched the other eight slaves tearing at the small bird.
Mr. Cline did not hand out new clothing at Christmas, either. Each of his nine slaves had one costume, and that was all. He wore it every day, until it hung from his frame in tatters. Then Mr. Cline would scream, 'You smell like an ox. Why don't you care for your things!' and he would thrash the offender with the cowhide, and grudgingly throw the new clothes at him.
The seasons along the Little Choptank were horrendous. In summer the mosquitoes were so numerous that hundreds would settle between elbow and wrist, all biting at the same time. In winter a fierce wind blew in from the bay and swept down on the unprotected shed in which the nine slaves huddled. It came through cracks in the walls like a string of needles, punishing the skin. When the temperature was two degrees below zero the slaves slept on the floor, each with a single thin blanket. They worked barefoot in the fields; the soles of their feet had cracks a quarter of an inch wide and the same deep.
Why did nine powerful black men allow Herman Cline, who weighed less than any one of them, to mistreat them so brutally? The question can be answered only within a larger context. From Africa about eleven million slaves were exported, and more than half found cruel masters; the reasons for their submission are complex and terrifying. Primarily, they could be kept under control because they never functioned as a unit of eleven million human beings; they were parceled out, a few at a time, a hundred here, threescore there. And after they had been hidden away, all agencies of society conspired to keep them in bondage.
The white men of Patamoke stood ready and even eager to thrash any black who opposed a master. The laws of Maryland approved such discipline, and the sheriffs helped enforce it. Each minister in slave territory intoned the ancient lessons from the Bible: ' "And that servant which knew his master's will and did not do it shall be beaten with many stripes." Those are the words of Jesus Himself.' White men lounging at the stores, women chatting at their sewing circles, children studying at school, and especially judges protecting the law, all supported the system and united to warn slaves that they must obey.
Such reasoning still fails to explain why the specific nine black men in the frozen hut tolerated Cline's brutality. His four personal slaves had served under other masters only slightly less cruel, and they felt certain that if they were shifted to any similar farm, they would be treated much the same. So they endured. The five plantation slaves hired out for discipline were mortally shaken by Cline's savagery, but they knew their sentences were finite; if they could survive this terrible year, they could hope for a better life in the future. So they, too, endured. But the basic reason why Cline could walk alone among his powerful blacks was that except for Cudjo, all had been indoctrinated since birth with one fundamental fact: if they gave him trouble, he had the right to kill them.
There were laws denying this, of course. They were proudly displayed in all slave states, and Maryland's code was one of the most humane: no slave could be abused; he had to receive proper food, clothing and shelter; none could be mutilated; and if a slave was killed, the perpetrator was held responsible. On the large public plantations the slave codes were generally respected, but since everyone acknowledged that Mr. Cline's farm was a kind of correctional institution, the code did not apply there.
Proof of this came one April morning in 1836, when Cudjo's term with the slave-breaker was nearly half completed. A difficult black man from a plantation on the Miles River, who had been sent south for disciplining, was so badgered by Mrs. Cline, who had ordered him to sweep the yard where the chickens ran, that he finally had to say, 'But, Missy, I done clean it.'
'Don't you sass me!' she screamed, and grabbing a heavy stick, she began thrashing him, and the noise was so great that Mr. Cline came running up, and his wife cried, 'He threatened me!' And her husband bellowed, 'I'll learn you to strike a white woman.' He ran indoors for his leather whip, and he rained such a series of blows on the slave that the man, desperate, leaped into the water of the Little Choptank, whereupon Mr. Cline roared, 'Tryin' to escape, eh?' And he fetched his musket, took aim and blew the man's head apart.
There had to be an inquest. A judge and a sheriff from Patamoke studied the facts, heard from Mrs. Cline herself that the slave had threatened her, and quickly reached a verdict which the clerk did not even bother to record: 'Mr. Cline did only what had to be done.'
In the following days he vented his wrath especially on Cudjo, for he sensed that whereas he had terrorized the big Xanga, he had not really broken him; the Steeds had many plantations, and if he did a good job on Cudjo, he could expect repeat business. So he watched Cudjo constantly, thrashing him without reason, depriving him of his share of food and assigning him the most onerous tasks. One June night toward eleven, when Cudjo had been working since five that morning with only ten minutes' rest at noon, Mr. Cline caught him nodding at the special task of washing down the farm boat, and he leaped upon him with the cowhide, thrashing him for his indolence. Cudjo finally fell to his knees, unable to bear any more, and as he lay in the mud by the wharf, Mr. Cline said, 'Now maybe you'll tend to what I say.' And Cudjo was left to crawl back to the shed, sleep on the bare earth and be ready for work in the early dawn.
What was the effect of eleven months of such treatment? Each morning Cudjo rose with the determination that he would compose in his mind before noon a dozen sentences, using as many difficult letters as possible. And this he did: 'The lamb see the fox and jump quick to the stove.'
In the afternoon he reviewed the histories of Robert Bruce, Roland and George Washington, inventing incidents which happened to them while they were slaves: 'Roland say to Mastah, "Horse run down there." '
And after grabbing from the swill bucket such mush as he could, and gnawing on his end of bacon—which no other slave ever touched, not because they feared punishment but because this was a decency all had agreed upon—he did sums in his head, adding lengthy columns.
And one September night, as he lay on the cold earth, he imagined that it was shifting under him and that he was again on the rolling ship. He recalled those splendid days with Rutak when they were meeting and solving so many strange problems, and the old sense of competency returned and he consoled himself with the idea that he was an able man, and he said aloud, 'This gonna end. I gonna be free once more.'
He had barely uttered these words when an intractable slave new to the Cline farm told him in the darkness, 'Place to run, ever you get a chance, Pennsylvania.'
He had heard this name before. Among all slaves in the south this was the sacred word, for if you got to Pennsylvania, which lay to the north, there was hope. Cudjo told the newcomer of Mrs. Paxmore, and the man assured him, 'In Pennsylvania many peoples like her.'
'How you know?'
'I been there.'
'How come you here now?'
'White men capture me. Sell me back.'
To this awful news Cudjo had nothing to say. To be free and then to be betrayed must be the worst experience of all, but he began to whisper to himself, as thousands of slaves did in the night, 'Pennsylvania.' He tried writing it in the dust, when no one was looking, and he got most of the letters right. Freedom lay to the north. You reached Pennsylvania by escaping north.
Whenever he said the word he had difficulty getting to sleep, no matter how exhausted he might be, for he kept thinking of those days when he was captain of a ship; then, too, escape lay to the north, and sometimes he would rise from his earthen pallet and look at the north star and feel it luring him on.
In November 1836 Mr. Cline loaded Cudjo in his boat and sailed north to Devon, where he marched him, obviously subdued, up to the office. 'Mr. Steed, I bring you a corrected nigger.'
'Did he prove difficult?'
'One of the worst. Surly.'
'But you broke him?'
'I did.' He stood uneasily in the presence of gentry and waited for Mr. Steed to broach the subject of money, but Uncle Herbert took perverse pleasure in discomfiting this white trash. He pretended to go back to his papers, then looked up as if surprised to see Cline still standing there.
'What was it you wanted?'
'The money. Mr. Starch said...'
'Oh, of course! But Mr. Starch isn't here at the moment.'
Cline saw this as an attempt to evade a just obligation, rather than the teasing it was, and his face darkened, his hands tightening as they did when he faced a difficult slave, but before he could engage in any stupid act, Mr. Steed called, 'Mr. Starch!' and while he waited for the head overseer to report, he smiled condescendingly at Cline.
When Starch arrived, Steed asked, 'What arrangements did we make for paying Cline?'
'Fifty now. A hundred later if the nigger's broken.'
The slave-breaker sighed and relaxed his fists. Contemptuously Mr. Steed counted out fifty dollars and with a ruler shoved the money at Cline, who gathered it up, nodded and started back to his boat.
'Horrible type,' Uncle Herbert said as he disappeared.
'But necessary,' Mr. Starch said. Then, remembering that he had not asked Cline one important question, he ran to the door and called, 'Cline, in your opinion, what's the nigger good for?' and the man called back, 'Fixin' things.'
A year before, Mr. Starch had discovered Cudjo's mechanical ability and was now pleased to have Cline confirm that judgment. 'We can use him on the far plantation,' he told Uncle Herbert. 'We need mechanics there.' But this plan was frustrated by an intrusion that neither man could have anticipated.
Paul Steed, increasingly aware of his uncle's advancing years and waning energy and realizing that he must himself soon resume management of the vast holdings, had begun to take interest in various decisions. So when Eden said that morning, 'I hear they brought that man Cudjo back. They say he good at fixin' things,' he limped down to the office and asked, 'Have we a slave here called Cudjo?'
Uncle Henry, surprised at Paul's appearance, said yes, there was such a man, adding, 'But Starch is taking him across the river.'
'No,' Paul said crisply. 'I shall need him at the forge.' And when the slave was removed from Starch's sloop, Paul led him to a small dark building well to the west of the mansion where a very old slave called Hannibal operated a smithy, sharpening scythes, mending wheels and shoeing horses. In one corner stood a forge, square and solid and close to the earth; it was activated by a great bellows made from two cowhides and fed from a pile of charcoal stacked in another corner. It was a tight, unified place, blazingly hot in summer, protected in winter, and Cudjo quickly mastered the intricacies of working iron. One day as he hammered on the iron rim for a wheel he looked up to see in the doorway to the smithy a handsome woman, older than himself, smiling.
'My name Eden,' she said. When he made no response, she said, 'You can read. Mrs. Paxmore tell me.' And from her skirt she produced a book, which she offered him.
It terrified him. A book no different from this had sentenced him to a year in hell; he had barely escaped with his life. But she held it out, a gift from her and Mrs. Paxmore, and with trembling hands he took it, and after a long moment he brought it to his cheek and held it there, and hot tears ran across its binding.
'What book is it?' she asked.
He spelled out the letters: _Lessons from Plutarch_. With great pain he handed it back. 'No,' he said.
'Cudjo, you can have it. Mastah say all right.'
'Mastah Herbert?'
'No, Mastah Paul.' And she said, 'He want to see you—now,' and she led him to the big house, which he had never before been allowed to approach, and at the entrance Tiberius, an old man now but still impressive in his blue-and-gold uniform, told him, 'Son, yo' keeps yo' hands at yo' sides, and yo' doan' bump into nothin'.' He brought Cudjo through the door and into the stately grandeur of the hall. 'This way,' he said, leading the two slaves into the gracious western corridor built generations earlier by Rosalind Janney Steed.
At the entrance to a beautifully proportioned room, with sunlight streaming in through lace curtains, the old doorman announced, 'Mastah Paul, Missy Susan! I has the hona' to present yo' two slaves, Eden and Cudjo.' Bowing grandly, he retired.
In the room sat two thin, proper-looking people. On the table at the master's elbow lay a stack of books; the table at which Miss Susan rested in her ponderous chair held a tea service. 'Mastah Paul,' Eden said, 'this here Cudjo. He be the one can read.' Her forebears had lived on Devon Island for more than one hundred and fifty years and in that time had evolved the charming speech patterns used by slaves and poor-white farmers, with its truncations, its special words, its simplified verb forms and musical cadences. It was an imaginative speech, and Cudjo had acquired the rudiments.
'Come in, Cudjo.' The frail man held his head to one side; with a pale hand he indicated where Cudjo should stand. 'I'm your master, Cudjo. From now on you're to do as I say.'
'Yes, Mastah.'
'Is it true what Eden tells me? You can read?'
It was a moment of anguish. Before, when a white man discovered that he could read, he had been sent to Mr. Cline for a year. If he confessed now, he might be sent back, with little chance that he could survive, for Cline would have lost his fee. He stood dumb.
The small man in the chair took the book from Eden and pressed it upon his slave. 'Read the title,' he said, pointing to the letters.
To be able to read was a gift almost as precious as freedom itself, and desperately Cudjo wanted to exhibit his knowledge, but he was so terrified of Mr. Cline that he could not move his lips.
'It be all right,' Eden said, and proudly Cudjo read ' _Lessons from Plutarch_.' He pronounced the last syllable to rhyme with _starch_ , and Paul corrected him.
Susan asked from her chair, 'Do you know who Plutarch was?' and only then did Cudjo see that she was crippled, for she moved in her chair with difficulty and seemed unable to use her legs.
'No, ma'am.'
'Are you a good workman?' And before he could reply, she added, 'I mean with tools... machinery?'
'Yes, ma'am.'
'I want you to build me a chair...' And she explained her long-cherished dream: a chair which she could propel about the room' with her own hands and which would assist her in standing whenever she felt strong enough, and she had barely finished her instructions when Cudjo fell on his knees, peered under the chair and began making suggestions as to how her desires could be fulfilled.
'My God, Paul,' she said with enthusiasm, 'he's the first to understand what I've been trying to say.' Then she laughed and said teasingly, as if she loved her husband, 'No, Paul. Don't posture. You didn't understand, either.'
Paul blushed, then said to Eden, 'You told me the truth. This man is skilled.' And to Cudjo he said, 'You may have the book. My wife will give you others if you can build her chair.'
But on the way back to the forge books were forgotten. Eden, speaking rapidly and with tremendous force, said in low, guarded words, 'Cudjo, I know 'bout you.'
He became afraid, supposing that somehow she had learned of his part in the mutiny. No. She was speaking of how he had managed to survive Cline. 'Slaves sends the word. You very pigheaded.'
He said nothing. Then, to his surprise, he felt her taking his hand and pressing it to hers. 'Cudjo, you, me, we's gonna run away.'
He looked straight ahead, for these were hanging words when spoken by the wrong person. She had seemed so familiar with the big house that she could well be a spy, the kind that betrayed those blacks who sought escape. But she kept talking in that low, imperative voice. 'You look hard on everythin' in the big house. Learn everythin'. You, me, we gonna run to Pennsylvania.'
The word exploded through the afternoon shadows. Pennsylvania! How many times had he whispered that magic name!
Now she said hurriedly, 'We neva' rest, Cudjo. We got to be free. I has money saved... pistol... knife. Never I come back here.' She spoke with a fury that he had never before heard from a woman; she was like great Rutak in the mutiny, a force of irresistible moral power. She was prepared to kill—herself or others. She was a wild animal in her determination to be no longer caged.
'I been waitin' for you, Cudjo. I see Cline 'most kill you in the boat. I watch and tell myself, "If'n he come back alive, he be the one." ' She fell silent, and began to tremble with the fire of her long-suppressed resolution to be free. Then she clasped his hand tighter and whispered, 'I needs one body to help me... to look... to tell me when.' She hesitated. 'You is the one, Cudjo.'
Now he was able to speak. 'I knows Cline's farm. Look my back. I afraid.' He was not fearful of flight or of punishment if he failed; what he did fear was admitting into his confidence any other human being. He could trust no one, for he could hear deep within his memory that slave talking in the night at Cline's farm: 'White men capture me. Sell me back.' There was only one power in the world that he could trust, and that was himself.
So he rejected Eden's proposal, turned her away coldly. With fury she threw the Plutarch to the ground and ridiculed him as he scrambled to recover it. 'What for you learn to read? What good it do you, you ain't a free man?'
The first meeting ended dismally, but next evening, as Cudjo washed up after his work at the forge, Eden came again to the door and said boldly, 'Hannibal, you ever go fishin' yonda?'
'Sometimes.'
'Go fishin',' and when the old man was gone she came to Cudjo and pulled him down to the straw on which he slept and began kissing him and fumbling with his clothes, and when for the first time in his tortured life he experienced the mystery of what a woman could be, she pulled his hands across her naked back so that he could feel her scars, and quietly she asked, 'You think on'y you's been whipped?' As his hands lingered there, she resumed her litany: 'We gonna go north. Mastah Paul try to stop us, Mastah Starch try, we gonna kill 'em.'
So the plans were laid, and when Hannibal straggled back from the creek with no fish, he looked down upon the lovers and said, 'That's nice. Miss Eden, ever'one been axin' when you gonna ketch yo'se'f a man. I mighty pleased this night. I mighty pleased.'
Paul and Susan Steed were also pleased when their pretty slave began frequenting the forge in which the new hand, Cudjo, slept. They had often speculated as to why this fine woman had never married; at thirty four she was even prettier than she had been as a young girl. Her reserved, stately bearing excited admiration whenever she appeared at a dinner party to attend Miss Susan.
Everyone remarked on how gentle she was with her crippled mistress, and how she volunteered to do whatever would make Susan's life easier, and they were amused at how Eden handled Paul Steed. With the passage of years he had lost his querulousness and now accepted the consequences of his extraordinary behavior on the roof. His left leg was shorter than his right, but with the aid of a built-up shoe he walked with only a slight limp, and although his neck did incline sharply toward the right, as if to give his body a compensating balance, it did not prevent him from doing what he loved most: reading the shelves of great books he had acquired at Princeton. Thucydides, Plato, Montesquieu, Rousseau, Locke, Adam Smith, Plutarch—he had become as familiar with their thoughts as if they had lived down the Choptank a few miles and met with him on sunny afternoons.
He had a poor opinion of divines as writers and held the typical collection of sermons to be trash; he enjoyed a good sermon, but since there was no functioning Catholic church close to Devon, he could not indulge that preference very often. The Steed family did, of course, do as it had done through the centuries: invite clergymen to stay at the island and instruct the family in the teachings of Catholicism—and one summer Paul quite astounded the more conservative Steeds by prevailing upon an itinerant Methodist rabble-rouser to spend five days at Devon, preaching to the slaves by day and debating with the Steeds at night. It was an instructive experience, and when the man, a gaunt fellow from Virginia, departed he took with him one hundred dollars contributed by Paul.
The crippled Steed had become, in short, a southern gentleman of the best type: he did no work; he read incessantly; he spent much time contemplating the problems of the South; and he was increasingly infuriated by the basic unfairness of the North-South relationship: 'The criminals at the North make us sell our wheat and cotton to Europe at cheap prices, but will not permit us to buy our manufactures cheaply from England. No they pass a high tariff, keep out cheap European products and force us to buy from Massachusetts and New York at extremely high prices. Northerners are strangling us, and if they continue, they will place the Union in jeopardy.'
Susan had become a lovely English cameo, a quiet little lady perched in her chair, bestowing on all a calm sweetness. She paid much attention to her dress, wanting always to look her prettiest, and in this she was abetted by Eden, who said, 'Git yo'se'f six new dresses from Bal'more.' And if Susan would not order them, Eden did.
It was this freedom of action that got the slave girl into trouble. One morning when she came back to the big house after having spent the night with Cudjo, Susan reprimanded her, slyly, 'Make him marry you, Eden. Girls always regret it if they allow the men to take advantage.' And she felt so warmly toward her slave that she said, 'Eden, take those two dresses we got from London. Let out the seams and wear them yourself.'
'You mean it, ma'am?'
'Yes, I do. You've been so kind, and maybe when Cudjo sees you in a new dress it'll open his eyes.'
So Eden took the expensive dresses, lowered the hems and fitted them to her own handsome figure. Unfortunately, when she first wore the ecru, whose exquisite pale-brown color complemented her own, the first person she met was Mr. Starch, who was beginning to feel his power as future manager of the Steed plantations.
None of the Devon Island slaves liked him; they considered him better suited to handling one of the remote plantations where his ugly manners would remain hidden, and they also feared the changes he might initiate. He was aware of this disaffection and was determined to stamp it out in these final days of his apprenticeship, so now when sassy Eden came down the graveled walk in her new finery he supposed that she had somehow stolen it from her mistress. 'She's an insolent one,' he muttered as she walked past. He stopped his own work to watch her sashaying over to the forge, and her self-confidence so infuriated him that he took an oath: First thing I do is get rid of that one.
On the first of April 1837 Herman Cline returned to collect his final hundred dollars for breaking Cudjo, and when he entered the office, Uncle Herbert kept him standing, whip under arm, then looked up and asked, 'Yes?'
'I've come for my hundred.' Uncle Herbert said nothing, so Cline asked anxiously, 'You found him proper broke, I trust?'
'Yes, yes.'
'Then I can have my money?'
'Of course you can,' and Steed counted out the money and once again shoved it forward with a ruler, as if offering it in person might make him partner to Cline in the dirty business. The slave-breaker counted the money, which irritated Steed, then stood uneasily at the desk, showing no intention of departing.
'What is it?' Steed asked, obviously irritated.
Cline shifted his weight awkwardly, then said slowly, 'I got me a peculiar problem.'
Uncle Herbert's attitude changed dramatically. Leaning forward almost with eagerness, he said, 'Perhaps I can help.' It was the type of response Steeds had been making since their plantations began; from Edmund on down they had invariably been concerned about problems along the Choptank, and as Uncle Herbert grew older, his interest in these timeless difficulties increased. He supposed that Cline wanted advice as to how best to develop a farm which was mostly marshland, and he had many ideas on the subject. 'I'd like to hear your problem, Cline.'
'Well... it's thisaway. I got me four bucks, difficult niggers nobody else could handle. Bought 'em cheap and whipped 'em into slaves of real value.'
'Everyone knows you can do that. What's the problem?'
'Well... it just occurred to me and the missus the other day that we're wastin' half the value of them niggers.'
Herbert Steed thought he saw what was coming next, and he decided to cut that approach quickly. 'No, we wouldn't want to rent them, Cline. They work for you, but I doubt if they'd work for us.'
'Wait a minute, sir. Wait a minute. That wasn't my idea at all. What I was wonderin', you got any young nigger women you want to sell? Ones givin' you trouble. I need me some breeders.'
'What was that?' a voice asked from behind the slave-breaker.
'Oh, Mr. Starch! I come for my money.'
'You earned it. Cudjo's quite tractable these days, thanks to you.'
'He stayed to inquire,' Uncle Herbert said, 'if we had any young females we might sell him... as breeders.'
'I was wonderin' when you'd come to that,' Starch said. 'Otherwise you're wastin' your bucks.'
'Jist what the missus and me figured. You got any troublemakers you wanta shed?'
'No...' Mr. Starch hesitated. Then the picture of sassy Eden in her stolen dress flashed across his eyes and he said slowly, 'But you might come back the first of June. Maybe we could do business then.'
When Cline departed, Uncle Herbert asked, 'What'd you have in mind?' and Starch said that on the far plantation at Broad Creek he had a hussy that was giving trouble, and that here on Devon he had been thinking for some time that this girl Eden ought to be cleared out.
Herbert Steed snapped his fingers. 'My own conclusion. That nigger is getting more and more uppity.' He drummed on his desk, then asked, 'What brought her to your attention?'
'As I was comin' along the walk I see her sashayin' past in a dress I know she stole from Miss Susan.'
'Send for her.'
Slaves were dispatched to fetch Eden, and they found her at the forge, interfering with the work of Hannibal and Cudjo. 'Where'd you get that dress?' Herbert asked severely as she entered the office.
'Miss Susan, she give it to me.'
'She never!' Starch broke in. 'You stole it.'
Ignoring Starch completely, and looking squarely at Uncle Herbert, Eden said with great firmness, 'I not steal nothin'. You knows that.'
Pulling her around to face him, Starch bellowed, 'Don't you ever speak in that tone. Now get out of here, and get out of that dress.'
When she was gone, Uncle Herbert said, 'You're right, that sassy item goes down the bay to Cline's. He'll cure her.'
But Eden did not go to her quarters and take off the dress. Instead she appealed to Miss Susan, and soon a slave came knocking at the office door with an imperative message: 'Miss Susan, she wants to see you gen'lmen.' And when they reached the mansion this frail lady told them sharply, 'I gave the dresses to Eden, and she's to keep them.'
So on the way back to the office, Starch said glumly, 'She'll never let us sell Eden to Cline,' but Uncle Herbert said softly, 'She doesn't own Eden any longer. She sold her to get her away from Paul, and he bought her back. She's Paul's slave, not Susan's.' At this news, Starch chuckled. And it was agreed that they would rush Eden to Cline's before Paul could intervene.
Cudjo, unaware of what had happened, was directing his full attention to Miss Susan's chair. He made the wheels so large that they would pass over bumps easily, then rimmed them in oak. The axle he hammered out of his best iron, finishing the ends in fine squares on which the wheels would fit. He caned the back of the chair and double-caned the bottom, but his ingenuity showed itself in the way he devised a lever which, when pushed forward, would tilt the chair so that Miss Susan could get out of it in a standing position. It was quite inventive, and as it neared completion, numerous visitors were brought to the forge to inspect it.
Herbert Steed said, 'It was worth paying Cline his hundred and fifty to save this nigger. He's earned it back with this one chair.' Later Mr. Starch told his employer, 'Only thing I don't like about Cudjo, he's messin' around with Eden. We better move her out even faster.'
'Cline's due back about the first of June.'
But Starch, eager to shed this possible troublemaker before he assumed control of the plantation, quietly dispatched a sloop to the Little Choptank, advising the slave-breaker that if he were to appear about, say, the first week in May, he could pick himself up a couple, three good breeders, cheap.
By the middle of April the magic chair was finished, and on the fifteenth it was presented to Miss Susan in the sunny room in the west wing. Cudjo wheeled it in proudly, its many coats of varnish shimmering in the sun. Gently he lifted the crippled mistress, placing her on the carefully prepared seat. 'It be mighty strong, but 'most sof' as a kitt'n.'
She adjusted her weight and felt how comfortable everything was. 'Fo' movin' the chair, this wheel,' and he showed her how to guide it up and down the pleasant passageway connecting the west wing to the center section. She had longed for such a chair and moved it with agility, her face beaming. 'You be pretty good, Miss Susan. But now de bes' part.'
He pushed the chair to the window, from which the garden was visible, and explained the mystery: 'Grab hoi' on this handle, push down, and the chair lif' you to yo' feet.' As the chair moved upward, bringing her to a standing position, a look of astonishment came over her face, but she said nothing, merely took Cudjo's hands to indicate that he must repeat his instructions, and again she stood.
'Now let me try,' she whispered, and he returned her to the table at which she had sat immobile during the fourteen years of her infirmity. Gingerly she turned the big wheels, advancing herself to the window. Braking the chair, she leaned down on the lever and felt the chair ease her forward. Reaching for the sill, she stood erect, then stepped the short distance to the window, from which she looked out at the garden in which she had worked so assiduously. No one spoke. Tears came to her eyes, and finally she turned to her husband. 'I should have had this chair a dozen years ago.' And she thanked Cudjo and told Eden, 'Tell Mammy in the kitchen to serve something special at the forge tonight,' and there was dancing when the two roast chickens arrived.
But in the morning a slave who had been absent for some days crept to the forge with frightening information. 'I been sail down Cline's farm, Little Choptank.' Instinctively, Cudjo shuddered at mention of that hell. The man continued, 'Eden, they done sold you to Mr. Cline.'
'What?' Cudjo cried.
'Yas'm. Cline, he tell me to say thet he comin' one week to fetch her.'
As soon as the informant was gone, Cudjo told Eden what he had never shared before. He described the harsh reality of the Cline farm: the mean shed in which she would sleep; the horrible Cline women, each one worse than the other; the leather strap; the gruesome food; the years with no rest even at Christmas. 'A man cain't hardly live one year that way. You gonna kill yorese'f before you take it.' His lips closed, for he dared not speak as he visualized the alternative: she would be goaded to some terrible act for which she would be hanged at some mournful crossroads.
'Eden,' he said quietly, 'you cain't go.' And the plotting began.
Applying finishing touches to the chair became a valid excuse for Cudjo to appear at the big house, and during one trip, while Paul and Susan went upstairs to nap in the bedroom with the two cannonballs, Eden led Cudjo not to the sunroom where he usually worked, but to the little-used east wing where, in a small curtained room, she had long ago found an empty cupboard in which to secrete her cache against the day of her escape; it contained a pistol, a saber, knives, a rope, and a surprisingly large collection of coins in a small canvas bag.
Cudjo was terrified. 'Eden, Mr. Cline if'n he fin' a slave wid jes' the blade of a knife, he beat him fo' three days till he cain't walk or lif' his arm. You be killed fo' sure fo' this.'
'If'n a body try to stop me, I gonna kill 'em. Mastah Paul come at me, he gonna be dead.'
'Eden, doan' say that. Mastah Paul, he be good to us.'
'He good now. But how long?' And she slipped his hand under her blouse so that he could feel the familiar welts across her back. 'Who you think done that?'
Incredulously, Cudjo asked, 'Mastah Paul?'
'Long time ago.'
'Eden, ever'body know niggers at Devon doan' git whipped.'
'I got whipped,' she said simply, and she convinced him that if anyone, even Miss Susan, tried to hold her in bondage any longer, that person was going to be slain.
'But Miss Susan yore frien'. She give you the dress you wearin'.'
'Nobody my frien'. You talk like this, even you ain't my frien'.
The plan they devised was to wait for the good weather in May, when it would be warm enough to sleep in the fields. They would keep to the eastern side of the bay, for they had heard that it was easier to slip past Wilmington than Baltimore, and with luck they could be in Pennsylvania within two weeks. Once there, they had no doubt that they could earn a good living, for Eden knew how to tend a home and Cudjo could work at almost anything.
They calculated that Mr. Cline would come to fetch Eden on the first of May, since plantation business was often conducted on such days, so during the final week of April they set a firm date for their flight. 'Five days we go,' Eden said, and from this decision there would be no turning back.
On the morning of the fourth day, as Cudjo distractedly worked at the forge, old Hannibal moved close and whispered, 'I spec' you headin' no'th first night you is able.' Cudjo kept hammering at a shoe, and the old man said, 'I spec' you takin' Miss Eden wid you.' Again no comment, so the old man started to withdraw, but stopped and said, 'You got my prayers, son. You doin' right.'
One cruel aspect of the flight was that neither Eden nor Cudjo could ask a single human being exactly where Pennsylvania was, or what to expect if they got there. Every slave could narrate a dozen pitiful stories of attempts betrayed by supposed friends: 'Field hands git together, gonna speak up to the overseer, hopin' to make things mo' better, but a house girl warn the mastah they plottin'. He sell 'em all.' Or the case of Ol'Jesse: 'He cain't stand no mo', he headin' no'th. Got all things fixed, but this young buck he mad at Jesse, he tell the overseer, and Jesse, he dead from the beatin'.'
Those seeking freedom were exposed—by accident, by hateful revenge, by their own incompetence. To move from southern Maryland to the border of Pennsylvania was an act requiring supreme courage and maximum strength; to escape all the way from Alabama or Louisiana called for a determination which could hardly be described. Furthermore, for a male and female to make the attempt together demanded not only courage but also an incredible amount of luck.
Eden was five years older than Cudjo, and major decisions were left to her, but she was impressed by Cudjo's innate power; she did not yet know that he had taken over a full-rigged ship and sailed it successfully for more than a month, but from various hints she had picked up, she judged that in his previous life he had been a man of great courage. To him fell the job of ensuring that the minor details were cared for: the file, the bag for food, the two walking staves.
By sunset on April 28 every precaution had been taken, and the two slaves ate supper together at the forge. Old Hannibal ate with them, and toward the end of the simple meal tears came into his eyes, and Cudjo forced him to go out and look for more charcoal lest Eden guess that he had penetrated their secret. He came back with an armful of coal, his emotions under control.
And then, with no introduction whatever, Hannibal blurted out, 'Pennsylvania be ten days no'th.' No one spoke. Poking at the fire, he added, 'I hea' say, "Doan' go tuh Wilmington." Headin' west, they be alota' Quakers.'
Again there was silence, and after a long while Eden leaned over, kissed Cudjo goodnight and walked slowly to the big house, knowing that by this time tomorrow night they would have stolen a skiff, piloted themselves far up the Tred Avon River and found a hiding spot near Easton. As she turned to look at the garden and the peaceful scene at the wharf, she swore to herself: Nothin' gonna stop us. Not dogs, not death. When she sauntered into the house she saw that Miss Susan was already upstairs and that Mr. Paul was reading, as usual, in his study.
When he heard her come in he looked up from his books and asked, 'That you, Eden?' Then he turned his crooked neck and glanced at her in a strange way; it was as if this night were fourteen years ago and he was preparing once more to thrash her with the strap. But it wasn't exactly that kind of look, either. It frightened her, and she ran up to her room thankful that after tomorrow she would never again see this twisted little man.
On the final morning Cudjo and Eden went about their affairs with a special innocence. They forced themselves to speak naturally, but their voices were so low that on several occasions Miss Susan had to tell Eden to speak up. The noon meal passed without incident, and so did the afternoon naps, but toward five Cudjo ran to the big house, quaking. 'What you want, Cudjo?' Tiberius asked, protecting his door.
'Got to see Eden.'
'She wid Miss Susan ove' in th' east wing tryin' yo' chair.'
This was the worst possible news, for that was where the escape material was hidden. Not knowing what he might have to do, he hurried into the east corridor, and as he entered the room saw Miss Susan steering right for the cupboard containing the gun and the knives. 'Miss Susan!' he blurted out. 'I got tuh talk wid Eden.'
'Come right ahead,' she said, almost with gaiety, and showed him how competent she was becoming by wheeling about and leaving the room. As soon as she was gone, Cudjo whispered in an ashen voice, 'Mr. Cline, he come afo' time tuh git you.' They looked out one of the small windows and saw a sloop at the wharf and the slave-breaker walking up to consult with Uncle Herbert and Mr. Starch.
Eden did not falter, nor did she utter a cry. She merely grasped Cudjo by the arm and whispered, 'They nevah gonna take me.'
'Let me think,' Cudjo said. 'You hush. I got tuh think.' She could almost see the host of ideas running through his mind, and for the first time realized that he had other capacities beyond his ability to master machines. 'Ain't nobody gonna touch that pistol, 'cause maybe they search us. Ain't nobody gonna run away, 'cause we has got to follow a plan.' His right fist trembled as he banged out the alternatives. Then, as he stared at the menacing sloop, he thought he saw a solution. 'Eden, sun gonna go down pretty soon. Cline, he not gonna sail back tonight. He be sleepin' here wid Starch. You an' me we jes' settle down. Darkness comes, we wait one hour. Then we steals the boat and gits goin'.'
Ignoring his counsel against any suspicious act, Eden went to the cupboard and took one of the knives. 'We try your plan, Cudjo. But if'n it doan' work, ain't nobody gonna take me.'
Breathing deeply to control his apprehension, Cudjo kissed her and went back to the forge. He was right. Mr. Cline had completed the purchase of Eden and the two fractious girls, but since it was growing dark, he was invited to spend the night with Mr. Starch; the fugitives had their reprieve. But just before sunset Mr. Cline told Uncle Herbert, 'I'd like to satisfy myself that this here Eden is still of breeding age. I don't want to take home somethin' that's too old to be of service.' So Uncle Herbert dispatched two slaves to the big house with orders to fetch Eden.
But when the messengers reached the mansion they were halted by Tiberius. 'Yo' stan' back. Mastah Paul just send a man to fetch Cudjo, an' I ain't movin' from here till he git back.'
When Cudjo learned that he must go to the big house, he started to tremble, not that he feared for himself, but he could almost see the sanguinary events that might soon take place. That he would support Eden to the hanging tree, he had not the slightest doubt. Secreting a sharpened file in his pant leg, he walked quietly to the mansion.
There old Tiberius was grumbling to the slaves who had been sent to fetch Eden. 'What take you so long, Cudjo? You in trouble! You git in here!' And he led the way to the sunroom. Pushing open the door, he shoved Cudjo inside.
There sat Mr. Paul and Miss Susan, and near them was Eden, and when Cudjo stole a glance at her, she gently touched her bodice, indicating that her knife was ready. He allowed the fingers of his right hand to rest on the sharpened file; she nodded, waiting for the signal.
None came. Clearing his voice, Paul Steed said softly, 'My wife and I are so glad to see you.' With a gesture of his right hand he added, 'You may sit down.' Cudjo hesitated; he had rarely sat on a chair, and never on one covered in brocade. Paul laughed and said, 'Sit down. It won't bite.' So the two slaves sat on silk.
'My wife and I have been thinking about you,' Paul said quietly. 'We've never known anyone kinder than Eden.' He nodded toward her. 'And last week Miss Susan proposed...'
'What I proposed...' she started to say, then abrupty turned and wheeled herself about the room, braked the chair and ejected herself into an upright position before Cudjo. From this standing position she said, 'We propose, Cudjo, to manumit Eden. And you we shall allow to buy your freedom.'
_Freedom_. The word sounded like thunder in his ears, yet it had been said so gently by the very people they were prepared to kill. In deep confusion Cudjo looked at Eden, but she sat with her hands folded in her lap, her eyes cast down.
'It'll work this way,' Paul said in his slow, scholarly manner. 'We manumit Eden with this paper, which we shall both sign tonight. She is freed, in grateful appreciation of the extraordinary services she has provided my wife.'
'I free?' Eden asked quietly.
'You are free.' He coughed, for what he had to say next was both painful and embarrassing. 'We both owe you a great deal, Eden. In a dark period of our lives—'
'What Mr. Steed is trying to say,' his wife broke in, 'is that we want to repay you for your loving kindness.' Before Eden could speak, she added, 'Of course, I very much want you to stay on and help me. I still need you, even with Cudjo's new chair.'
Paul had control of himself again, and said, matter-of-factly, 'We'll pay you a small salary, which we'll hold for you. And when it reaches three hundred dollars, you can buy Cudjo's freedom.'
'I already got twenty dollars,' Eden said.
'You have twenty dollars?' Paul gasped.
'Yes. Since I born I save every penny.' She made a gesture with her hands, as if catching something. ' "Here, Eden, for holding the horse." '
'My advice would be, hold on to those dollars. You'll need them when Cudjo sets up for himself.'
'What you mean?' Eden asked.
'When he's free you'll go to Patamoke, likely, and he'll work in the boatyard, likely. Or maybe as his own carpenter.'
'When I be free?' Eden asked in a firm, unexcited voice.
'You are free now,' Paul said. 'Cudjo will be free shortly... when you've earned his price.'
And having said this, he produced a document of manumission which he and his wife had agreed upon, but before they could sign it, there came a loud fracas at the door, and Uncle Herbert accompanied by Mr. Starch entered the house and demanded of Tiberius where the girl Eden was. Voices were raised, and soon Herbert came bursting into the sunroom, with Mr. Starch close behind. 'There you are!' Herbert cried with some petulance. 'Why didn't you respond when the slaves came?'
Paul and Susan were dismayed at this intrusion, and the former said, 'Really, Uncle Herbert, my wife and I were having—'
'We're not interested in you or your wife,' Herbert said insolently. 'What we want is that girl.'
'For what purpose?' Paul asked, twisting his head with difficulty to look at him.
'Mr. Cline wants to inspect her. To see if he thinks she can breed.'
'What?' Susan asked from her chair.
'She's been sold to Cline. Leaves in the morning.'
'You dare not sell my slave.'
'Mrs. Steed, this girl isn't your property any longer. Hasn't been for years. She's owned by Mr. Steed, and I've decided to sell her.'
Before Susan could protest this astonishing information, Paul said quietly, 'There was no consultation with me.'
'Of course not,' Uncle Herbert said condescendingly. 'Mr. Starch and I never bother you with details. We run the place and do what we think's best.'
Paul stood up, and suddenly his shoulders squared and his voice firmed. Looking his uncle directly in the eye, he said, 'Uncle Herbert, you and Mr. Starch no longer run the plantation. Your responsibility ends as of this night.'
'But, Paul, I've been showing Mr. Starch how to handle things when I—'
'When you what?'
'When I retire. I'm sixty-seven, you know.'
'And you have just retired.' Moving briskly, he went up to his uncle and grasped both his hands. 'You were of great help, Uncle Herbert, in the days of my confusion. Devon would have collapsed without you. But now the confusion is ended, and so is your tenure. You must leave the island tomorrow.'
'But Mr. Starch requires—'
'He requires nothing. Do you think I'd place Devon in hands like his? Mr. Starch, you have left my employment. I'm sure Mr. Herbert will find a place for you on one of the Refuge plantations.'
'But, Mr. Paul—' Starch began in a whining voice.
'I've no need of you, Mr. Starch, nor of anyone like you.'
'Who's to run the plantation... and the stores?' Uncle Herbert asked, a fat, pompous old man undergoing an intense deflation.
'Me,' Paul said. 'With my wife's help.'
'Your wife?' As if drawn by magnets, Herbert and Starch looked at the fragile figure in the chair, but as they did, she set the brake, activated the lever, and to their astonishment rose to an upright position and without assistance walked to them.
'Yes,' she said, 'we've ignored this magnificent plantation for too long.'
Uncle Herbert started to comment, but his words gagged in his throat. Finally his eye fell on Eden. 'Well, the sale of that one's been concluded. Mr. Starch, keep her under guard tonight.'
But when the overseer moved toward the slave girl, Paul cried, 'Stand back, damn you. Starch, I said you'd left my employ.'
'What're you going to do about the girl?' Uncle Herbert asked.
'We're about to manumit her,' Paul said, and with slow, patient force Susan walked to the desk.
'But we've already sold her! Paul, this girl is a troublemaker.'
'I know she is not,' Paul said quietly
And then Herbert lost his control. 'Better than anyone you know her—and you should damned well be ashamed of yourself.'
'I am,' Paul said. 'I have been for fourteen years.' Susan took his hand and said, 'And now we shall sign the paper. Uncle Herbert, since you were technically in charge of Devon when this document was drawn up three days ago, I should think it wise to have you witness it.'
And she asked Eden to wheel the chair closer, and she sat down, obviously fatigued, took the pen and signed away their property rights in the slave girl. Paul dipped the quill in the ink and signed. Then he motioned to Uncle Herbert, who huffed and hawed until Paul said quite sharply, 'We want your signature, Herbert. Your last official act on Devon.' And when the gray-faced man reluctantly signed, Paul said, 'You look very tired. I should have relieved you of this tedious burden three years ago.'
Mr. Starch, who was outraged by everything that had happened, could be silent no longer. 'To behave like this in front of two slaves... By God, sir, it's indecent.' And he stomped from the room.
'He's right,' Herbert said, looking with disgust at Eden and Cudjo. Then, turning his back on them, he stood facing Paul and Susan. 'I did my best to save your plantation.'
'You were needed,' Paul said. 'But now Devon requires a new kind of leadership.'
'And you think you're prepared to provide it?'
'I do. With Susan's help.'
Scornfully, Herbert turned to her. 'He certainly gave you good leadership, didn't he? Headfirst down the roof.'
'The years pass,' Susan said quietly. 'Passion is spent and wisdom prevails. We're going to make Devon even a greater plantation.'
'Not with him at the head,' Herbert snapped, and with disgust at the weaknesses of his family, he stomped from the room.
After he slammed the door, there was an awkward silence. Paul knew that he should never have spoken thus to a white man in the presence of slaves, but it had been done, and Eden, understanding his thoughts, began tidying the room, as if this had been an ordinary day. 'Cudjo, neaten them books.' And as the two slaves moved about, Paul said, 'Tomorrow our work begins.'
And Eden said, 'Tomorrow could we be takin' my paper an' carryin' it to the courthouse? An' it be wrote in the book?'
'Oh yes!' Mrs. Steed cried. 'I'll sail with you.' When her husband looked up in surprise, she said, 'I feel so much better, Paul. And I want to see these people married. I insist that Eden start her new life correctly.'
Paul nodded, and when Eden glanced at him she saw that in his eyes there was that same enigmatic look she had seen the night previous, when he had so frightened her. And she realized that it could never be deciphered: he had beat her, and loved her, and set her free.
She would not thank him for his generosity. Arranging the final pillow, she stalked from the room, but Cudjo went to each of his benefactors, bowing his great torso and saying, 'We thanks you.'
They slept at the forge that night, bewildered, torn apart by a confusion of emotions they barely understood. Toward dawn Cudjo asked, 'Afore we sails to Patamoke, mebbe I goes to cubboard. Git shed o' the pistol an' knives.'
But Eden had a different vision: 'Never. Some day we gonna need 'em.'
# _Voyage Ten: 1837_
IT WAS A TRIP THAT BARTLEY PAXMORE WOULD remember for the rest of his life. By 1837 roads of a rough, inadequate nature linked together the small towns scattered across the Eastern Shore; it was now possible, though hardly comfortable, to drive a wagon from Patamoke to the county seat at Easton.
But those isolated homes that stood at the remote ends of peninsulas were still accessible mainly by boat. Of course, rude trails led up the middle of each peninsula, but it was difficult for a horse to negotiate them. From the Paxmore house at Peace Cliff to Patamoke was an easy seven-mile sail; using tortuous land trails, the distance was a rugged thirteen miles.
So when young Paxmore, eighteen years old and self-reliant, decided to leave Peace Cliff to visit a settlement at the headwaters of the Miles River, he naturally elected to go by the small sloop-rigged boat his family owned. He told no one of his plans or his departure. He simply went down to the dock at dawn one Thursday morning and set forth.
It was not until dinner—that is, the midday meal—that he was missed. Younger children were sent running to the dock, and they returned with the expected news. ' _Emerald_ 's gone!' they shouted, and when the meal resumed they asked many questions as to where Bartley might have taken it. His gray-haired parents stared straight ahead, refusing comment, but toward the end of dinner George Paxmore could contain himself no longer. Slapping his big right hand on the table so that the dishes jumped, he cried, 'I will be danged!' and hurriedly left the table lest he explode with laughter.
Elizabeth Paxmore tried to quieten the children, who burst forth with a dozen questions. Amy, the youngest girl, was of the opinion that he had gone to Oxford to buy hogs, at which suggestion her mother smiled. But she would not tell the children where, in her opinion, their brother had gone.
He was, at that moment, breasting Blackwalnut Point at the southern tip of Tilghman Island, setting his jib and mainsail for the long run to the north. He lolled in the rear of the boat, tiller tucked under his left arm, the lines to the sails lashed close to his right hand. The wind was coming so briskly off the port quarter that he was able to keep the _Emerald_ well on course. And there he sat through the long afternoon.
From Peace Cliff to the head of Miles River was a distance of forty-seven miles, and he would not be able to cover this before nightfall, because the course, like all on the Eastern Shore, required many different headings, and for a considerable distance he would sail due south in order to make north. What might happen to his wind in that stretch, no one could predict, but it would certainly be a combination of reach-and-beat for the last twenty miles.
He was not concerned about the necessity of spending the night in his boat. He would merely move inshore, tie the bow to some projecting tree and catch what sleep he could. He was not hungry now, nor would he be at sunset, for his mind was so agitated that to think of food would have been repugnant.
He had seen Rachel Starbuck only once, at the Yearly Meeting of Quakers held in the revered old meeting house called Third Haven in Easton. The Paxmore clan had not tried to reach the meeting by cart; they had piled into the sloop, left the Choptank at Oxford and made their way up the glorious Third Haven Creek and into Papermill Pond, where they tied up to the dock belonging to Mordecai Swain. They walked to the meeting house and as they entered, Bartley groaned. The perplexed Quakers were still debating the problems of slavery, for the outlying meetings were well behind Patamoke in grappling with them, and families like the Paxmores had to be patient while the others caught up. But Bartley was astonished to hear Swain arguing from the front bench that Quakers must do nothing to alienate the great plantation owners who still held slaves in bondage:
'In the long run, dear friends, and it is the long run we must bear in mind, we shall never succeed in abolishing slavery unless we have the open-hearted cooperation of those good Christians who now own slaves. We have convinced ourselves. Now we must convince them, and we shall not do so by proclaiming the destruction of their property rights.'
In uttering the phrase _property rights_ Swain had unthinkingly adopted the vocabulary of those who defended slavery—'This slave is my lawful property and you cannot deprive me of his labor'—and the meeting rebuked him. Three different speakers chided him for falling into error, after which he rose again, speaking in a soft, conciliatory voice:
'It is precisely because slavery is protected by law as an inviolate property right that we face difficult problems when dealing with it. All sensible men, North and South, agree that it is immoral. But it is also legal, and it is this legal justification which ensures its persistence. To combat it, we must use only legal means. And that requires convincing slaveholders that society in general has changed, that what is legal should now become illegal. It is a matter, I insist, of persuasion.'
Before Swain could retake his seat a man Bartley had never seen before leaped to his feet with un-Quaker force and launched into a vigorous plea that the meeting commit itself to a course exactly opposite to what Mordecai had proposed. He proposed that Quakers urge slaves to run away from their masters and then assist them in fleeing to freedom in Pennsylvania. Bartley could feel a stir of excitement sweep Third Haven as the man spoke, and he whispered to his father, 'Who is he?'
'Very strong-minded man from Miles River. Name of Starbuck.'
And then, as Bartley looked more closely at the impassioned speaker, he saw, sitting in the row opposite, in the women's section, a young girl of exceeding beauty. She had wide, dark eyes and light-brown hair, and was wearing a gray dress with a white collar and a blue-and-yellow bonnet. She and her mother were gazing so steadily and with such pride at the speaker that Bartley guessed they were his family; he could not take his eyes away from the Starbuck girl.
She was younger than he, he supposed, but her face showed unusual maturity and great firmness of character. As she listened to her father speak she leaned forward as if to urge him on, but Bartley saw that her mother, almost as pretty as she, placed a restraining hand on her elbow, pulling her back into a more ladylike posture.
He heard no more of the debate. No matter, he thought. It would continue in dull repetition for the next twenty years. He could see only the Starbuck girl, and if he listened intently he fancied that he could hear her breathing. She was the most compelling human being he had ever seen, and he was dizzy from watching her.
At the noon break he surprised himself by walking boldly up to her and asking, 'Is thee Speaker Starbuck's girl?'
'I am.'
'I'm Bartley Paxmore. From Patamoke Meeting.'
'I know,' she said, and the fact that this incandescent girl had taken the trouble to find out who he was quite immobilized him. He stood there in the sunlight, on the meeting-house steps, and could think of nothing to say.
'Would thee like to take lunch with us?' she asked, and when he fumbled for some kind of answer which would indicate that he had no packed lunch of his own, she said quietly, 'We always bring more than enough,' so he joined them.
It was a feast. The Starbucks had five children, two of them married, and after introductions had been made Bartley had to say, in acute embarrassment, 'No one told me thy name.'
'Rachel,' she said.
It was of Rachel he now thought on his long run to the north. From that day three months ago she had filled his mind; indeed, he could think of nothing else but her superb figure in the gray dress, moving among the trees at Third Haven, her pretty face tucked in under the blue-and-yellow bonnet. Memory of her captivated him, and he could see her in the waves as they sped by his boat; he could feel the pull of her smile in the lines leading to the sails. He had never before heard a name so totally appropriate, so euphonious as Rachel Starbuck.
He spent that summer's night moored to a fallen tree on the shore opposite St. Michaels, and since he could not sleep, he watched the vagrant lights of the little fishing village, the comings and goings of men with lanterns, and he thought: Soon I shall have a home of my own, and I shall go to the barn at night to fetch the eggs for Rachel. And the image was so felicitous that he broke into song:
'She's the bonniest lass in the field.
I'm the ruggedest man in the fight.
To me those lips their kisses will yield.
The robins sing, "She is thine tonight." '
He chuckled: Father would berate me if he heard me singing such military words. And then the moving lights across the broad river began to vanish, and all were asleep except him, and his heart beat like a hundred hammers, because ere this new day ended he would be docking his boat at the home of Rachel Starbuck.
He reached the farm at eleven in the morning, and the two younger Starbucks spotted him as soon as he pulled his boat toward shore. 'It's Paxmore!' they shouted, and their cries brought their sister to the door, and when she saw who had come, she knew at once what his mission was. Without pressing down her apron, or in any way prettifying herself, she walked down the path to meet him, holding out her hand to bid him welcome.
He was faint with emotion and could scarcely voice his words. 'Is thy father home?' he asked abruptly.
'He is,' she said.
Without saying another word, Bartley Paxmore strode to the farmhouse, entered and sought out Micah Starbuck. In the Quaker tradition, he addressed the older man by his first name. 'Micah, I have come to ask for thy daughter.'
The abolitionist put his fingers together and drew his mouth in as if to whistle. 'Well,' he said to Paxmore's surprise, 'she's got to go sometime. What does thee say, Chick?'
Rachel reached out and took Bartley's hand. 'I think I'm ready.'
'We'll give notice to the meeting on Sunday,' Starbuck said, and it was as simple as that. When Prudence Starbuck came down from work she had been doing upstairs, she was informed of her daughter's engagement. 'We've heard thee's a fine young man, Bartley,' she said.
'Thank thee, Prudence,' he replied. Things that he had dreamed of with such ardor were happening so fast, he became quite dizzy and did not know what to do next.
'And now thee may kiss her,' Micah said, and Bartley trembled and leaned forward awkwardly and kissed Rachel on the cheek.
'Thee'll do better later on.' Micah laughed, and Bartley felt his knees begin to buckle and he asked, 'May I sit down?'
No matter what happened in the ensuing years, Bartley Paxmore would remember that at the age of eighteen he had been so in love with Rachel Starbuck that when he touched her with his lips he almost fainted. He had come forty-seven miles unannounced to claim her, drawn as if by a score of magnets, and the fire of that day would never burn down to gray ash.
Next day the Starbucks arranged to have the announcement of the engagement read at two successive meetings, with the marriage to take place as soon thereafter as possible. This meant that Bartley had best stay at the farm during these eleven or twelve days, and what happened accidentally on the sixth day changed his life.
The family was at supper, some hours before dusk, when Micah heard an unusual commotion near the hen coops, and when he sent his youngest son to investigate, the boy returned and stood stiffly in the doorway, his feet planted together, his hands at his side as if reporting significant news to a king or a general.
'Another black man. Hiding in the rushes.'
No one spoke, but all rose quietly to watch as Micah left the room. After a brief absence he returned and said simply, 'Thee knows what to do.'
Supper was forgotten as each member of the family moved quietly and purposefully into action. Prudence, the mother, swept all the food on the plates into a bowl, which she handed to Rachel. 'He'll be starved,' she said, and Rachel left. Mrs. Starbuck and her other daughter moved about the room, arranging things to create an impression of casualness; from past experience they knew that on this night their home would be harshly inspected. When she was satisfied that things were right, she stood before Bartley and said almost sternly, 'It now depends on thee.'
'What am I to do?'
'Control thyself. Thee may have to endure strange insults, Bartley. Is thee strong?'
'I'll try.'
'Trying isn't good enough,' and she instructed Rachel, 'Watch over him.'
After some time Micah returned to the house. 'He's been beaten horribly.' When his wife asked if she should poultice him, he said, 'No, he can live with what he has. We're taking him to the other woods.'
What this meant Bartley did not know, but what happened next astonished him. Starbuck took his youngest son, a boy of ten, and said, 'Thee will stay with him, Comly. And at dawn thee'll lead him by the back roads to Pidcock's farm on Wye Island.'
'Yes, sir,' the boy said, and went upstairs, returning with a sweater, which he tucked under his arm, for it was not yet cold.
'Thee,' Starbuck cried peremptorily to his intended son-in-law, 'grab a spade and bury those disgraceful rags. Spread cow manure over the spot to hide the scent.'
In this accidental manner Bartley Paxmore found himself involved for the first time in abetting the flight of a runaway slave. At Peace Cliff his family had been philosophically committed to exterminating slavery in general; the Starbucks were willing to risk their lives to aid an individual black man. Actually, he caught only the briefest glimpse of the slave who caused this commitment. Starbuck had ripped away the man's rags and was about to hand him a pair of sturdy pants and a woolen shirt, but now the slave stood naked in the twilight, a powerful man not much over twenty, his sides and back cut with lashes. They looked at each other for only a moment, face-to-face in shadows, and then Starbuck told his ten-year old, 'Guide him to the far woods.' And the child said, 'I'll take him up the middle of the stream, to throw the scent in case they bring dogs.' And the slave was gone.
Now the Starbucks gathered in the kitchen to wait. They sat in prim silence, and Bartley thought: This is another Quaker meeting. But soon they heard the sheriff shouting and footsteps running toward the house. The slave-trackers kicked open the door and began crying, 'Where's the nigger?'
Three snarling dogs entered on a leash, and Bartley was distressed to see that they were in charge of a Patamoke man who would know him, old Lafe Turlock from the swamps, gap-toothed, lean and hungry for the reward he would get if he caught the runaway. He hunted slaves because he hated them, ever since one had slain his cousin Matt during the mutiny of the _Ariel_ , and he boasted, 'I got me the best nigger-huntin' dogs on the Eastern Shore. Give my dogs a shoe or a shirt, and they'll track a runaway to Canada.' Instinctively Bartley moved behind Rachel to prevent Lafe from spotting him.
The sheriff said, 'We know goddamned well, Starbuck, that you help niggers run to Pennsylvania. But this time we aim to get our man back. He belongs to this fine gentleman here. Paid four hundred dollars for that buck, and he's entitled to recover.'
The owner stepped forward, a wiry man in worn and ragged clothes, carrying in his left hand a bull whip, the rawhide folded twice and dangling easily at his knee. His teeth were black from chewing tobacco and his slouch hat drooped low about his eyes. 'I'm Herman Cline, Little Choptank, and you, goddamn you, yo're hidin' my nigger.'
'Describe him,' the sheriff said.
Looking directly at Starbuck, Cline said, 'Answers to the name of Joe. Big man with scars on his back.'
'There would be scars,' Prudence said quietly.
The three men turned toward Mrs. Starbuck, their eyes flashing the hatred they felt for such an intruder, and Herman Cline asked, 'Where you got him hidden?'
'I've seen no slave,' Prudence said.
'You swear to that?' the sheriff asked.
'I will.'
The sheriff laughed. ''Course you will. Because they kept the nigger out with the chickens.'
'Let's get goin',' Lafe said, pulling his dogs into position. So in the fading light the slave-trackers inspected the chicken yard and the barn and the fields, looking assiduously for telltale signs. At one point the dogs passed directly over the spot where the clothes lay deeply buried, but they detected nothing.
Suddenly the sheriff whipped about, caught Bartley by the arm and shouted, 'Who in the hell are you? Some northern agitator?'
Micah started to explain, 'He's come to marry my daughter—' but Lafe Turlock broke in, 'I know that one. He's a Paxmore. Very bad lot.'
'Another goddamned Quaker!' the sheriff growled, shaking Bartley as if he were a recalcitrant child. 'Where is he?'
'Who?' Bartley asked, trying to break free.
'Don't you wrastle with me!' the sheriff bellowed. 'I'm the law!' and he struck Bartley across the face.
This was too much. Bartley formed a fist and would have smashed it in the sheriff's face, but Micah had foreseen this possibility and caught the young man's arm to restrain him. 'Lucky for you, son,' the sheriff said menacingly. 'You touch me just once, I gun you down. Now where you got that nigger?'
'Mr. Starbuck,' Cline said in his whining voice, 'we're reasonable men. We know my nigger is on your property. I seen him swim across the Little Choptank, and Lafe here seen him row across the Big Choptank in a stolen boat.'
'That's right,' Lafe said. 'My dogs picked up his scent and led us right to your doorstep, Mr. Starbuck. You got that nigger, and we know it.'
'That runaway belongs to Mr. Cline,' the sheriff said. 'And I have me a court order directin' you or any other loyal citizen to help me recover Mr. Cline's property. If you choose to disobey the laws of this land—'
'What is thee doing?' Micah shouted. And Bartley turned to see that Lafe Turlock was about to throw a lighted brand into the barn.
'You hand over that nigger,' he threatened, 'or up goes the barn.'
The sight of flame, and the possibility that a barn of good timbers might be burned, outraged young Paxmore. With a leap he broke away from the sheriff and threw himself upon Turlock, carrying him to the ground, where he pinned his arms, knocking away the brand. This so angered the sheriff that he jerked at his belt to free his gun, but Micah prevented this drastic action.
'There is no slave on this property,' he said calmly.
'Like your old woman, you'd swear to anything,' the sheriff said, almost pleased, in a way, that Micah had stopped him from using the gun; he did not want to kill young white men.
'I think he's in the woods over there,' Lafe said, dusting himself off and recovering his dogs.
'Why don't your goddamned dogs find him?' Cline cried in a burst of petulance.
'Because they prob'ly led the nigger up the stream. To kill the scent.'
'Then get your damned dogs in the stream to find it again when he climbs out,' Cline groused. Turlock ignored the stupid suggestion; never had he worked on a slave chase with a more unpleasant man. Normally a hunt was more like a festival, with drinks and eats and each man urging the others on, and all encouraging the dogs. But Cline—he was a mean one.
It was now dark, and the slave-trackers were frustrated. 'Let's go back to Patamoke,' one of the men suggested, but the sheriff would not quit. 'Ever'one into the kitchen,' he ordered, and when the Starbucks were seated, he said, 'Goddamnit, we know that nigger is here somewheres. I personally seen him run onto your property, Starbuck, like he knowed that if he could reach here, he was safe. By the time it took us to reach here, you hid him. And by God we're gonna find him.'
And they proceded to ransack the place, turning out every chest. Once the sheriff grabbed the smallest Starbuck girl, screaming at her, 'You took food out to him, didn't you?'
'No,' she said. 'He wasn't ever here.'
In the end the men had to admit defeat, but the sheriff warned Micah, 'I'm gonna keep an eye on you. Because I know you help niggers escape north. And that's against the law—the law of Maryland, the law of the United States and the law of common decency.'
Herman Cline looked at Mr. Starbuck with pleading eyes, and when he realized that this would accomplish nothing, he turned on Lafe and sneered, 'You and your damned dogs.' He had paid Turlock ten dollars—without recovering his slave.
As the trio departed, the sheriff took Paxmore by the arm. 'Son, you was near killed this night. You're marryin' into a bad lot. One of these days I'll be throwin' you in jail.'
The marriage took place on Monday afternoon following the second Sunday. Quakers from many farms assembled at Third Haven, women to the left, men to the right. There were two rows of facing benches; on the upper sat two elderly men and two women of about the same age. They were not related. The men wore their hats. On the lower row sat Bartley Paxmore, bachelor of Peace Cliff, age eighteen, with his hat on, and Rachel Starbuck, spinster of Miles River, age sixteen, wearing a blue-and-yellow bonnet.
For the first twenty minutes of the ceremony no one spoke. Some flies, trapped in the meeting house, buzzed lazily but gave no offense. Outside, the birds of summer chattered, but at such a distance that they could hardly be heard, and they, too, gave no offense. Men and women looked straight ahead, recalling other marriages in which they had participated, but no one moved.
Finally Bartley Paxmore rose and intoned those fateful words which send a tingle up the spine of any Quaker: 'In the presence of God and these our friends assembled, I, Bartley Paxmore, take thee, Rachel Starbuck, to be my wife...' There was more, arranged as each particular meeting determined. On this day Paxmore said, 'For better or worse, for richer or poorer, in sickness and in health, until death do us part.' Trembling, he sat down.
After a long pause Rachel rose and said clearly, 'In the presence of God and these our friends assembled, I, Rachel, take thee, Bartley...' Her promises were somewhat different, and when they were made she sat down.
After a protracted silence the young couple rose and Paxmore placed a gold ring on her finger and kissed her. Then they sat, and again there was silence.
Twenty minutes passed, and then one of the old women on the facing bench rose and said in firm voice:
'Marriage is a holy sacrament ordained by God and precious in His sight. But it is also the union of two lively young bodies, and if we forget that, we lose the mission of God. Rachel and Bartley, find joy in each other. Have children. Have laughter in thy home. Love each other increasingly, for when the ardor of youth is gone, the remembrance of great love will continue and make all the years of thy life glorious. In this meeting house today are many old couples whose lives have been made bearable and fruitful because of the passion they have known each for the other, and it will be so with thee when thee looks back fifty years from this day.'
She sat down, and no one gave any sign of either approval or disapproval of her remarkable words. They were her summary of what a marriage consisted of, and she had felt led by God to share them with this beginning couple. After silence had maintained for some minutes a very old man, much older than the woman who had spoken, rose and said in a high clear voice:
'Prudent men in all nations and all religions have found it improper for a married couple to spend more than twenty percentum of their family income on rent. Never take out a mortgage for any cause except the purchase of a farm, and never pay more than five percentum for the mortgage. And never, never sign the note of a friend. For sixty years I have watched men sign for their friends and always it ends in disaster. The note is lost, the friend is lost, the money is lost, and only grief remains. Rachel, never let thy husband sign a note for a friend. If the other party needs the money and merits it, give it to him. But don't sign his note.'
When the old man sat down a neighbor whispered to him, and after a moment's reflection the old fellow rose again to add this postscript: 'It would also be permissible to take out a mortgage to buy a town property but only if it were essential to a business, and never for more than five percentum.' When silence was restored, the meeting sat immobile until a younger woman with a wavering voice rose to say, 'When thee has children, for that is the purpose of a marriage, be certain that they are taught to know Jesus. It is a fearful thing to rear children who know not the Christian faith.' That was her complete speech, and there would be no more.
Finally the two old men on the topmost bench rose and shook hands. Then all the Quakers shook hands with their neighbors, and each moved forward to sign the marriage document, which would be deposited in the place of record in Easton. When the signing ended, Bartley Paxmore had been duly married to Rachel Starbuck.
# The Railroad
BY THE MIDDLE YEARS OF THE 1840S CITIZENS LIVING along the Choptank had separated into two well-defined groups epitomized by the two leading families of the region. Paul and Susan Steed had become the acknowledged champions of those wealthy plantation owners who were convinced that Maryland must follow the guidance of the Carolinas and Georgia, even if this meant dissolving the Union, while George and Elizabeth Paxmore were spokesmen for that great body of middle-class farmers and businessmen who felt that the Union was something unique and precious which must be preserved. In financial and intellectual power the Steed faction predominated; in stub-born moral force the Paxmore group would prove important.
Most of the time the Steed-Paxmore paths diverged, the former attending to their plantations, the latter to the building of ships; but at unpredictable times their interests converged, and then there was trouble.
In these years Devon became one of the best-regarded plantations in America. Three reasons accounted for this. First, Paul Steed gave it statesmanlike management, seeking out the best overseers in Maryland and Virginia and paying them well. He himself now owned nearly nine hundred slaves and used them to maximum advantage. There were no beatings, no savagery; after he discovered how Mr. Cline operated his correctional farm on the Little Choptank, no more Devon slaves went there. His wise decisions helped his plantation to prosper; he alternated crops, kept his ships busy and extended the number and range of his stores. His years of quiet study had enabled him to become an expert, and he was often seen limping about the remotest corners of his mainland plantations, pushing his twisted neck into all sorts of problems, which he took delight in solving.
Second, on a trip across the bay in 1842 he chanced to see the operation of the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad, and was so enchanted by the prospect of linking the nation together by rails that for no reason at all other than scientific curiosity he rode the train to Harpers Ferry and back. That experience convinced him that the only hope for the peninsula of which the Eastern Shore was a part lay in binding its three segments together by means of an extensive rail system.
From the earliest days of the nation anyone with an intelligence equal to that of sparrows had realized that the peninsula ought logically to be united as one state, but historical accident had decreed that one portion be assigned to Maryland, whose citizens despised the Eastern Shore and considered it a backwater; one portion to the so-called State of Delaware, which never could find any reasonable justification for its existence; and the final portion to Virginia, which allowed its extreme southern fragment of the Eastern Shore to become the most pitiful orphan in America.
All who lived in this tripartite travesty kept hoping that in the forthcoming year the three sections would be united to form a viable state with its own interests, history, traditions and prospects. Year after year it failed to happen. Paul campaigned in Congress for the sensible realignment and everyone he approached agreed that the change should be made, but nothing was done, for, as Senator Clay told him one afternoon, 'My dear Steed, the most permanent thing in this world is a temporary arrangement.'
But now, with the possibility of a rail system running the length of the peninsula and connecting with the North at Philadelphia and the South via Norfolk, the Eastern Shore had a bright future, and the organizer and marshal of that future would be Paul Steed. It was in pursuit of this grand design that he and Susan began to invite the leaders of the nation to visit with them at Devon. The Steed sloop would cross the bay, sail down to the mouth of the Potomac, then up to Washington, where it would wait to carry famous senators and congressmen to Rosalind's Revenge for a week or ten days' entertainment. While the visitors philosophized, Paul would bring in leaders from the Choptank to talk persuasively with them.
The locals cited every reason that a logical man could devise as to why the three fragmented parts should be united, and they accomplished nothing except the pleasure of meeting great men and listening to them talk. How often in those pregnant years did the senators speak for two minutes on the problem of uniting the Eastern Shore, and then orate for five hours on the insoluble problems of slavery!
Third, it was in this field of burgeoning interest in slavery that Steed did most to bring favorable attention to Devon. He began innocently: a long, analytic letter to Fithians in London explaining that whereas it might be appropriate for England to abolish slavery, it would be suicide for the American South to do so. Noel Fithian replied with a scholarly analysis of certain weaknesses in his friend's reasoning, and Paul sent back a rebuttal.
Later he corresponded with gentlemen in Massachusetts, Ohio, Louisiana and, especially, South Carolina. His letters were so beautifully composed and so instinct with logic and high argument that they circulated among friends of the recipients, and chance readers from different parts of the country wrote Paul suggesting that he compile his letters and offer them as the statement of a southern realist, but it was not until Senator Calhoun of South Carolina wrote, that Steed became actively interested. With his customary perspicacity, the great defender of states' rights and slavery told Paul:
I have rarely come upon a group of letters which so succinctly states the moral position of the South. You are cogent and unswerving in your defense of our position, and it would be salutary if you could collect the other letters I hear you have written and present them in compact form so that those at the North who wish to understand our reasoning can find it handsomely expressed.
In 1847 Paul issued his collection of twenty letters, _Reflections of a Maryland Planter_ , which evoked such enthusiastic praise in the South and such rebuttal at the North that many readers wanted to know how a parochial planter like Steed, stuck away in one of the most remote corners of the nation, could have mastered so much learning. The explanation was simple.
In the dark years of his soul's retreat, when all along the Choptank he was ridiculed for his relations with the slave girl Eden and his reluctance to intervene in his wife's scandalous behavior, he found consolation in the work of three authors who had molded his education. Jean Jacques Rousseau reminded him anew of the honorable condition in which men might live if they attended to the basic lessons of the soil. From Rousseau he derived his passionate love of human freedom and his determination to protect it in both the South and the North. Plato reminded him of those noble propositions upon which any orderly society must be founded. But he learned most from the novels of Sir Walter Scott.
Like many southern gentlemen, he found in Scott's works a defense of those principles upon which the nobility of southern life was based: the brave laird of good intention, the chaste woman who inspires him and whom he protects, the loyal serf whose willing work enables the laird to monitor the land, and the allegiance of all to the ideals of an unselfish chivalry. On one memorable afternoon in 1841, as he sat in the lace-curtained room reading _The Heart of Midlothian_ , he rose to his feet and took an oath: Here on this island I can be a new Guy Mannering, a local Quentin Durward.
From that solemn moment he dedicated himself to achieving Plato's good society, Rousseau's freedom and Walter Scott's chivalry. It was inevitable that his letters should epitomize these beliefs, and in his first epistle to Noel Fithian, when he addressed himself to the most difficult topics that were troubling the nation, he was not afraid to spell out his personal convictions:
... The Negro is genetically inferior, requires a master, has many fine qualities when properly guided, and cannot exist outside of some slave system.
... Contrary to what certain mal-intentioned people are saying, slavery is an economic asset, for it enables landowners to keep in cultivation acreage which could not otherwise be utilized. No white man could possibly work outdoors in areas like the Carolinas, Alabama and Louisiana.
... It is entirely possible for a system of slavery in the South to coexist with a system of free labor at the north, providing always that the north does not continue to insist upon low prices for our southern raw materials and high prices for its manufactured goods.
... It is also possible for slavery to exist side-by-side with a system of gradual manumission of slaves, for this has been tried with great success. The logical goal would be to train Negroes in the trades so that they could work anywhere in America. It will probably require about two hundred years for them to achieve the necessary level of education.
... It is essential to the orderly working of the system that those Negroes who run away from their lawful masters be returned to them, regardless of where in the United States they flee. The right of property is sacred and must be honored by federal as well as local law.
... There has been talk of secession from the Union, but this will occur only if those at the north persist in enforcing high tariffs, in encouraging abolition, and in giving refuge to runaway slaves. If these antagonisms can be halted, the two sections can co-exist profitably and enjoy a limitless future.
In his twenty letters, Paul invariably referred to the South, capitalized, and its unhappy persecution by those 'at the north,' not capitalized, as if the former were a spiritual entity and the latter a chance combination of miscellaneous agencies. But he never ridiculed the northern position and in Letter VIII actually stated it rather better than some of its own apologists. The letter which gained widest circulation, however, was XIII, in which he dealt head-on with the charge of southern cruelty to the slave. This was reprinted a thousand times in southern newspapers, and served as the focus for a thousand rebuttals in northern ones. A particular paragraph became famous:
There has been brutality, but never on the plantations of my family or my friends. There has been inattention to the requirements of food and clothing and protection from the elements, but not on any plantation I know. And there has been unconscionable whipping of refractory slaves, but the planter guilty of such offense is scorned by his equals, avoided by his associates, and haunted by his own conscience. His lot is ostracism among his own kind and scorn from the general public. The only way he can redeem himself is to give long and continued evidence that he has quit his evil behavior, for if he were to continue after having been rebuked, he would be outlawed by the body of gentlemen.
In a later section of the same letter he did admit that unspeakable types such as Mr. Cline existed, and that on their farms ugly incidents had sometimes taken place, but he dismissed their brutality with a phrase that gave scant consolation to the Negroes who suffered under their lash: 'They dare not associate with gentlemen.' He implied that this was punishment enough; but he also added that every southern state had strict slave codes, 'which all but the most depraved observe,' and he cited Maryland's to prove that under its benevolent protection a slave might have to work hard, but he was well fed, warmly clothed, comfortably housed and defended against abuse.
By accident, the other letter which achieved considerable notice outside the book was XIX, which he had composed in a fit of some irritation. The slave Frederick Douglass, who had been born on a plantation just off the Choptank, and who had served at various sites adjacent to the Steed holdings, had escaped north and been adopted by the more unsavory elements of the abolition movement. In 1845 he published a scurrilous book purporting to give a true account of slavery in the Choptank district, and through it he had achieved a certain notoriety as a speaker in northern churches. The South was both vexed and damaged by this book, for Douglass wrote compellingly; it was believed in Patamoke that some white man must have written the book for him. So in a letter to a friend in Ohio, Paul Steed demolished the pretentions of this rabble-rouser. He savaged him on four counts, which he outlined at the beginning of his letter:
_First_ , you must not believe that his writing proves that blacks can achieve a high level of mental ability, for he is mostly white, as he himself confesses: 'My father was a white man. The opinion was that my master was my father.' Obviously any intellectual powers he may demonstrate derive from his white parentage.
_Second_ , he is an imposter, for he has always sailed under assumed names, first calling himself Bailey, then Stanley, then Johnson and next Douglass. What name can we expect him to steal next? 'The real Mr. Johnson had been reading _The Lady of the Lake_ and suggested that my name be Douglass. From that time until now I have been called Frederick Douglass.'
_Third_ , he is an atheist, so that no evidence he offers of mistreatment need be accepted. Who has ever uttered more horrible profanation than this: 'The religion of the South is a mere covering for the most horrid crimes, a justifier of the most appalling brutality, a sanctifier of the most hateful frauds, and a dark shelter under which the darkest, foulest, grossest and most infernal deeds of slaveholders find the strongest protection.' Is this not the Anti-Christ speaking?
_Fourth_ , he is a self-confessed forger: 'The week before our intended start to freedom I wrote several protections for each of us.' What he means is that he forged five passes to deceive the authorities and signed them with the honorable name of William Hambleton of St. Michaels, misspelling the name in his ignorance.
The lasting value of Steed's letters lay in his discussions of management and economics. These occurred in no specific letter but infused them all; he displayed himself to be the best type of plantation owner—informed and desirous of operating his large holdings at a profit to everyone. In a dozen unplanned ways he disclosed his determination to provide his slaves with decent living arrangements and a carefully regulated share of the good things that resulted from his management. Each slave received more clothes than on other plantations, more food. He was especially attentive to the sanctity of family life and abolished the old custom, adhered to by Uncle Herbert, of selling a refractory husband south without regard for the wife and children kept behind. He explained his reasoning:
A healthy slave represents both a substantial investment and a good opportunity to turn a profit, but the investment is destroyed and the profit lost if the slave is in any way incapacitated by ill treatment, and by this I mean not only physical abuse but also the mental wounding that can occur through separation of families or inattention to the slave children. If the dictates of humanity do not protect the slave, the principles of prudent husbandry should.
The letter that was most difficult for northern analysts to digest was XX, for in it Steed explained to Noel Fithian his theory that freedom in the United States depended upon the continuance of slavery. He cited some fifteen cogent arguments, drawing upon the experience of Greece, Rome and early America. He was convinced that free men could flourish only if supported by a slave class and argued that it was not the freedom of the white gentleman that he was defending, but the welfare of the slave. Never did he waiver in this conviction; never did he admit the slightest concession which might disprove his thesis. One of his citations gained wide circulation:
The freedom enjoyed by citizens of the United States, to the envy of the known world, was engineered primarily by gentlemen of the South who owned slaves. Of the men who wrote the Declaration of Independence, those who made the greatest contribution were slaveowners. Of those who framed our Constitution the majority of true intellects came from the South. Of the twelve Presidents who have guided our nation to its present level of enviable success, nine have been slaveholders and their leadership has been the sanest and the most appreciated by the nation at large.
He argued that it was only the gentleman, set free from mundane matters by the hard work of his slaves, who could properly assess the movements of society and separate good from bad. He said it was the wives of those concerned gentlemen who inclined society toward the higher values:
It has been the women of the South who have kept aflame the beacons of our nation: charity, gallantry, compassion, grace, and all the other amenities. They could do this because they were set free—by the existence of family slaves—to attend to matters of greater moment than washing and cleaning. It is not the women at the north who have established norms for our national behavior, for they have been preoccupied with petty matters. It is our gracious ladies of the South who have set the patterns.
And again he returned to his basic theme that it was the existence of slavery that enabled black men and women to be free:
So what we find is that the black woman of the South is more free to pursue her true interests of motherhood and family care than the so-called free woman at the north who works in some mill under conditions that prevent her from enjoying life. True freedom is found in a disciplined society in which each participant has a place and knows what that place is.
He saw himself as the 1847 inheritor of Pericles of Athens, and Marcus Aurelius of Rome, and George, Washington of Virginia, and he endeavored to hold himself to the austere standards set by those men. 'Their freedom to move in the world,' he often said, 'was based upon the existence of slaves who performed the lower categories of work.' But he was not insensitive to the nagging question of the abolitionists: 'Must the slave live his entire life without hope?' He addressed himself to this matter toward the end of Letter XX:
You will remember, Noel, the fine slave girl Eden who attended you when last you visited us. She was in all ways a superior person, and the loving care she lavished on Susan after our accident was the principal reason my wife survived. We set Eden free, and paid her a salary which she could accumulate for the purchase of her husband, that fine Xanga mechanic you commented upon at the forge. They now reside in our village of Patamoke, where the husband has built a good business as carpenter and general fixer. Eden, it may interest you to know, voluntarily offered to continue her work at Devon and nurse Miss Susan, who under her care can now walk with a proficiency you would not believe. I venture to suggest that both Eden and her husband are happier here in Maryland than they could possibly have been in Africa.
In fact, Paul Steed convinced himself that he protected the freedom of all men, especially the freedom of the slaves under his control. 'I serve as their master for their own good,' he reasoned, and he was so forceful in propagating this theory that everyone along the Choptank came to believe that 'our slaves are happier under our benevolent care than they would be if they were set free.' Everyone believed this, that is, except the slaves themselves and workingmen like George Paxmore.
Paul Steed had long been aware that he must one day have trouble with the Paxmores over the question of slavery, and in late 1847 he was visited by Thomas Cater, the postmaster at Patamoke. Mr. Cater sailed down to Devon, wearing his dark suit and a darker frown, to place before Mr. Steed evidence that the Quakers at Peace Cliff were receiving seditious mail. 'I wouldn't have believed it, sir, had I not seen it with my own eyes,' and he threw on the desk a heavy envelope that had been sent from the North with a copy of the _New York Tribune_ , a provocative journal dedicated to stirring up trouble.
'There it is,' Mr. Cater said gingerly.
Steed would not touch it, for Maryland law explicitly forbade the circulation of any material 'calculated to stir discontent among our colored,' and men had been sent to jail for ten years for the offense. At first the law had applied only to inflammatory rags like _The Liberator_ , but now it covered even reasonable papers that questioned in any way the morality and economics of slavery.
'What shall I do with it?' Mr. Cater asked.
'The law says you're to burn it.'
'Each time it arrives?'
'You have no obligation to encourage black uprisings.'
Mr. Cater, not wanting to take the offending journal back to Patamoke, asked Mr. Steed if he could have a match, and when this was provided he went onto the lawn, knelt down and set the newspaper afire. When only black ashes remained he returned to the house. 'I'll take note of everything they receive and keep you informed.'
Steed's concern over Paxmore's possible treason was put aside when word reached Devon that Senator Clay had at last found a date on which he could cross the bay to discuss the proposed railroad. Extraordinary preparations were made for his comfort, for he was an old man now and travel would be difficult; he was not really a senator any longer, but he retained the title and had such power that if he approved an Eastern Shore railroad, his former colleagues in the Senate would probably support it. So the big guest bedroom in the west wing was readied with flowers; slaves were drilled in how to attend the famous Kentuckian; invitations were dispatched to important citizens in the area; and Susan Steed wheeled her chair into distant parts of the mansion, attending to those small details which accounted for the social distinction of the Steeds.
It was midafternoon when the sloop arrived with the senator, and when he stepped ashore, a tall, thin, distinguished man of seventy-one, with handsome flowing hair and wide, expressive mouth, he brought a dignity which bespoke his years of service to the nation. Characteristically, he paused at the wharf, surveyed the plantation, making a quick assessment of its management, and started up the graveled path, his step firm and even eager.
'You keep a fine establishment,' he said approvingly to Paul, who had to hurry on his shortened leg to keep up. 'I miss my farm in Kentucky—the animals especially. I like good husbandry. It marks a good mind.'
When he approached the mansion, old Tiberius stepped forth in his blue uniform and white gloves, bowing from the waist. 'Yo' is welcome to Rosalind's Revenge,'
'What revenge did she take?' Clay asked, stopping on the porch to study the plantation from this perspective.
'Several,' Paul explained. 'She hanged the pirate Henri Bonfleur.'
'I've heard of him,' Clay said, admiring the manner in which the garden led down to the creek.
'And it was her ship that captured Blackbeard. Cut his head off, you know. She was a terror.'
'And did she build this beautiful house?'
'She did.'
'Used the Flemish bond, I see.' Nothing escaped this great man's eye. When he saw Susan Steed approaching him in her wheelchair he became all grace, and hurried forward to assist her as she projected herself upward. 'How excellent of you to invite me to your shore,' he said, not grandly but with the intense warmth of a Kentucky farmer who liked to see well-stocked plantations.
'We've invited some of our leaders to meet with you,' Steed said. 'Their boats will be arriving.'
'That pleases me.'
'Would you like to repair the damages of the trip?' Steed asked.
'No. I travel well. But I would like to hear your statement of the matters which bring me here,' and he made his way instinctively to the sunroom, where the late-afternoon light filtered through the lace curtains, making the room warm and hospitable. There, in a comfortable chair, he drank two whiskeys, then asked, 'And what of this railroad?'
Steed had prepared a map showing the Eastern Shore, and whenever he looked at it his anger rose. 'Sir, it should be obvious to anyone that this peninsula ought to be one governmental unit.'
'I tried in vain,' Clay said, chuckling at the obstinacy he had met when sponsoring a bill to bring the three parts of the peninsula into one state. 'But have you ever tried to tell one sovereign state anything? Let alone three.' He shook his head, then studied the map. 'What have you in mind?'
'Simply this.' And with bold strokes Paul outlined what he thought should happen: 'Let the federal government authorize one solid railroad line from Wilmington due south to the tip of Cape Charles. That will unite the whole peninsula to Norfolk across the bay. Then let individual towns build spurs into that major line. And up here, a ferry that will run to Baltimore.'
'Steed, you make enormous good sense, as always. But you overlook one salient fact. The metropolis of this region is destined to be Baltimore, and since wheat has supplanted tobacco as your major crop, Baltimore's whole preoccupation will be with the West, not the South. When we complete a great railroad to Chicago, the westward pull will be irresistible. Look to Baltimore, not Norfolk.' He was eager to expand on this, but guests began arriving, solid businessmen from various parts of the Choptank, and Clay greeted each with courtly deference, listening carefully as Steed explained who they were.
After a substantial dinner, with three kinds of wine, Mrs. Steed wheeled her chair away from the table and said, 'Ladies, I think we should leave the gentlemen to their cigars,' and off she led them.
'Mr. Steed's been telling me about his hopes—your hopes, that is—for a railroad,' Clay said with an inflection which implied that he supported the idea.
'Yes!' various voices cried, and when the map was fetched, each man explained what he and his group were willing to contribute to the grand design.
'Surely, there would be no way for the rails to cross the Choptank,' Clay said.
'Quite right, sir,' a merchant from Dorchester County agreed. 'What we plan is to bring this spur to Patamoke, and end it there. Terminal. On our south bank we build due east and hook on to the main line.'
'Of course, Senator Clay,' a Patamoke man interrupted, 'there'd be a ferry across the Choptank. Is now, for that matter,' and he indicated where the little ferry ran.
'It seems a splendid concept,' Clay said.
'You'll help us?'
'I shall indeed.'
This commitment delighted the Eastern Shore men, because the word of Henry Clay was like bars of gold in a safe built on rock. He was a politician who got things done, the expediter, the slaveholder who understood the North, the one man who saw the nation as a whole.
But the Choptank men wanted to be sure that Clay would be in a position to deliver on his promise. 'Is it true that the Kentucky legislature will send you back to the Senate?'
The bluntness of this question, touching as it did on the delicate matter of his uncertain future, must have embarrassed Clay, but he did not show it. Turning to his questioner, he said softly, 'From the time I first served in the Kentucky legislature, sir, I have always been at the call of my country. And even though I am now an old man, if Kentucky wishes to summon me to duty, I shall respond.' And then he added, 'If I am returned to the Senate, I shall support your railroad. But I want not only your relatively short spurs. I want a whole network of rails, binding this nation together. I want an end to North and South, West and East. Most particularly, I want an end to our bitter rivalry over slavery.'
Railroads were not mentioned again. 'You good men of Maryland stand at the border between the rivalries. Some like Steed are southern planters. I imagine that most of you have no slaves.' He asked for a show of hands, and two thirds of the men indicated that they held none.
'So you men at the margin, tell me what we must do to bind this nation together.' He leaned forward, an old man, really a very old man, for he was worn out with fighting, and pointed to each man in turn, seeking advice.
The responses were varied; some men wanted slaveowners to be given the right to carry their slaves into all the new territories opening in the West; some wanted the tariffs imposed by New England congressmen to be lowered; two men suggested that a timetable be set at the end of which all slaves should be set free, say a hundred years from now. And all agreed that the differences currently existing between North and South be dampened.
Now Clay began close questioning. 'Let us suppose that a slave runs away from this plantation.'
'It does happen,' Paul conceded, leaning forward to catch Clay's handling of this ticklish problem.
'Let us suppose further that Mr. Steed's slave gets as far as Boston.'
'Some go to Canada,' one slaveowner said quickly.
'Should Mr. Steed be encouraged—nay, should he be legally permitted—to go to Boston and recover his slave?'
It was unanimously agreed that he had that right; even the two men who thought that at some distant date all slaves should be set free agreed that under current law Steed had the right to recover his property. 'But now,' Clay said, 'we come to the sandy part. When Mr. Steed arrives in Boston, is he allowed to enlist the help of the United States marshals stationed there? Or the local police? Or the services of any chance bystander?'
To each of these questions, unanimous affirmatives were given, but before the senator could respond, one of the more liberal men added a word of caution: 'I'd like to reconsider my answer on that last question. About enlisting the aid of bystanders. Wouldn't that be provocative? I mean, the acts would be visible... in public?'
Clay leaned back as the men hammered out their reactions to this hypothetical case, and he was impressed that in the end all agreed that the return of a man's lawful property was obligatory. Three times Clay proposed illustrative cases with slight variations and three times the men of Choptank affirmed their early decision: a man's property was inviolate, and if it ran away, the entire force of society should be mustered for its return.
Now the doors to the dining room swung open and old Tiberius appeared. 'Gen'lmen, de ladies is comin' back.' And he stood aside as Susan wheeled herself into the room, a wrenlike little woman with unextinguishable charm. Within a few minutes she established the fact that she knew as much about this problem of sectionalism as any of the men, except the senator, but custom had dictated that she retire from the serious part of the conversation.
The company slept that night in the mansion, and at breakfast Senator Clay resumed his interrogation of the gentlemen. All morning he talked with them, and at the noonday meal, and all afternoon. An hour before dusk he said that he would like to inspect the plantation, and he walked about two miles, checking everything. At one point he told Steed, who limped along beside him, 'One of the best things I've done in my life was import good cattle from England. Nothing strengthens a nation more than a solid agriculture.' He approved of Steed's management and surprised him by saying, 'I've studied your _Reflections_ , Steed, and am pleased to see that you practice what you preach.'
That night Clay was ready for another three-hour session, but the railroad was mentioned only once. 'Tell me, gentlemen, when we do build this road, will it drag your sympathies south toward Norfolk or north toward Philadelphia or west toward Baltimore and Chicago?'
'We'll always be southerners, sir,' Steed said.
Clay started to respond, but Tiberius was throwing open the doors and in came the ladies. On this night Susan said, 'You know, Senator, that I'm an Englishwoman.'
Clay rose and bowed. 'Your country sends us brave generals and beautiful women.'
'And I sometimes think that this rivalry between South and North is folly.'
'I think so too, ma'am, like the difference between Ireland and England.'
'Ah, but they're two different countries.'
'And we must strive to see that South and North do not become two different nations.'
'That we must!' one of the businessmen cried.
Clay reached for the silver bell resting at Paul Steed's elbow and rang it. When Tiberius appeared, he asked, 'Good Tiberius, could you bring glasses for the ladies?' When this was done, and the wine had been passed, Clay proposed a toast. 'I have rarely talked with more sensible citizens than those gathered here tonight.' He hesitated. 'Are you a citizen, Mrs. Steed?'
'For many years,' she said.
'Ladies and gentlemen, to the Union!'
They drank in silence, all in the room looking over the rims of their glasses at this extraordinary man who had made himself a symbol of all those forces which were striving to hold the nation together: Clay the Compromiser, Clay the man who came to listen.
In the morning, as he walked slowly down to the wharf, he told Steed, 'Getting your railroad will not be easy. Our first priority is to finish the rails to Chicago.'
'Then?'
'I can look only one year ahead, Steed. I'm always terrified by the next twelve months.'
The Paxmores, of course, were never invited to social affairs at Rosalind's Revenge, and this was understandable, for their attitude toward slavery was so at variance with that of the planters, neither side would have felt comfortable. The slaveowners, being gentlemen, would hesitate to irritate the Quakers by reciting the problems encountered in trying to manage slaves economically, whereas the Quakers, not being gentlemen, would have no reluctance in heckling the slave people about the moral inconsistencies in the system.
'It's almost as if they reject the established law of the land,' Paul complained, and Susan replied, 'They feed their prejudices on that foul literature sent down from Boston and New York. They simply refuse to accept the testimony of their own eyes.'
'Such as what?'
'Such as the way nine hundred slaves live with us in harmony.'
She had identified the tragic difference that separated the two families: the Steeds pointed to their well-run plantation and believed that it compensated for horror camps like Herman Cline's, while the Paxmores pointed to one horror camp on the Little Choptank and judged it to counterbalance the hundreds of well-run plantations. There was not much meeting of minds.
The difficulty Paul Steed had foreseen arose after the Paxmores had purchased a subscription to _The Liberator_ and demanded that Mr. Cater deliver it to them, something he was forbidden to do. Therefore, whenever the steamboat from Baltimore arrived with editions of either the _New York Tribune_ or _The Liberator_ , he had burned them—'No sedition in Patamoke.'
When George Paxmore satisfied himself that United States mail was being destroyed, he protested, but Cater warned him, 'Friend Paxmore, you don't seem to realize I'm acting in your defense. Suppose I hand you the papers? And advise the sheriff? Off you go to jail.'
The Paxmores lodged a protest in Annapolis, and were advised: 'Postmaster Cater is obeying the law.' They wrote to the Postmaster General in Washington, who tossed their complaint to an underling, who answered: 'Those at the North can insist that we carry their mail to the South, and this we do, but it is understandable if southern postmasters burn it in conformance to local law.'
This reply so outraged the Paxmores that they sought final arbitrament from that unflagging champion of New England rectitude, John Quincy Adams, once President of the Union, now its principal defender in Congress. He had been looking for just such a case to exploit, and dispatched an investigator, a gentleman from Illinois, to verify the Paxmores' charges. The marshal, an anti-slavery man, returned to Washington with proof that the postmaster had been burning United States mail.
A scandal might have resulted, because Adams, a cantankerous, mutton-chopped old warrior of eighty-one, was determined to fight such impropriety. This was not necessary. A compromise was arranged whereby Postmaster Cater was removed from his job at Patamoke and offered a much better one by the patriots of South Carolina, where he continued to burn any mail he considered seditious.
His departure had a strange aftermath. When Cudjo gained his freedom, he moved into Patamoke and started a business of his own. He was a carpenter, a mechanic, a boatbuilder, a fixer, a gardener, an extra hand on boats tonging oysters. He was offered a permanent job at Paxmore's boatyard, but he had such an insatiable desire for freedom that he wanted to be his own boss, even though that meant occasional periods of slack employment.
Since Eden continued to work at Rosalind's Revenge, so as to be close to crippled Susan, a curious household developed. For about two weeks of every month Eden lived with Cudjo in the shack in Patamoke, helping to raise their two sons; then she would board one of the Steed boats and go back to Devon for a couple of weeks, and it was during one of these trips that Paul Steed told her, 'Eden, now that you and Cudjo are free, you've got to take a last name.' This was a reasonable suggestion in that the possession of such a name was one of the marks of a freed black, but neither Eden nor Cudjo had ever had a name.
'I got no idea,' Eden said.
At the moment she spoke Paul happened to be looking at a letter and was irritated to think that the Paxmores had been able to embarrass a postmaster who had been doing such a good job. Then the idea came to him: 'Eden, Mr. Cater was moved south. His name is needed no more.'
So Cudjo and Eden became the Caters, and whenever the Steeds mentioned the name, it reminded them of their antagonism to the Paxmores.
Paul Steed tried three times to lure Daniel Webster to Devon, and to do so was important, for in the fight for the railroad, support from the great New Englander was essential. He was the most powerful man in the Senate and commanded the most faithful following among the leaders of industry.
He was too busy with governmental matters to make the long journey from Washington, even though it was understood that Steed would send the plantation boat to fetch him. And then one day, unannounced, a Mr. Walgrave from New Hampshire appeared at the island with exciting news: 'If you could see your way clear to invite to the meeting these gentlemen...' And he handed Paul a list of names representing the most prosperous businessmen of the Eastern Shore, Delaware and Baltimore.
'I would be proud to invite such men,' Steed said. 'But would they come?' And Mr. Walgrave, a small fussy man who spoke in whispers, said, 'I think they might be interested in talking directly with the senator. I think you'll find them receptive.'
'If you feel so certain,' Paul said in some perplexity, 'why doesn't Senator Webster himself...'
'Oh no!' Walgrave whispered. 'That would be highly improper. But if the invitation came from you...'
'I'll certainly try,' Paul said. 'This railroad...'
'Oh!' the New Hampshire man said, 'you'll find the senator most interested in railroads. Yes, indeed.'
So the invitations went out, and almost every man who received one replied that he would indeed like a chance to visit with the great senator. Arrangements were made to sleep the visitors in all parts of the mansion, in the office and even in two overseers' cottages freshened up for the occasion. Guests began arriving two days before the scheduled conference, and maps were placed at convenient places for study of the intended routes. There was much talk about a spur that would tie into a ferry to Baltimore, the men from that city insisting that trade be siphoned there rather than north to Philadelphia, and concessions were quickly agreed upon.
On the day prior to the meeting, Mr. Walgrave appeared, all blandness and confidential whispers. He assured each man that Daniel Webster was crossing the bay to see him personally, because the senator had such high regard for that man's business judgment, and he spent the evening germinating enthusiasm for the arrival of the great man.
At breakfast he outlined, in his soft voice, what the procedure of the day must be, and at ten, when the boat came up the creek, he was at the wharf leading the cheering party. 'Hip, hip, hooray!' he cried, encouraging the slaves waiting to catch the ropes to join in.
When the steamboat tied up, Mr. Walgrave was first aboard, and after deckhands had moved ashore with the luggage, he cried—whispering no longer—'Here comes Senator Webster!' And from the cabin stepped a burly man with a huge, balding head, piercing eyes and dark cavities below his cheekbones. His mouth turned down in a perpetual sneer, and like an emperor he strode to the gangway, descended to the wharf and moved forward briskly to shake hands with his host.
'My good friend Steed,' he cried to a man he had never before met, 'how fine of you to meet our little boat.' He shook hands solemnly, passed along to each of the welcoming committee, stood for a moment enraptured by the prospect, and said in a deep rumbling voice that seemed to echo among the trees, 'Gentlemen, I am eager to talk railroads.'
In the session before lunch he was overpowering, not because of his voice, which he kept low, and not because of his massive form, which he moved little, but solely because he was a man of compelling intellect. A planter from across the Choptank would start almost humbly to explain the advantages of having a railroad...
'Mr. Stallworthy, you need not hesitate with me. I have no constituent in Massachusetts whose business does not profit because of the railroad. I believe that every American industry...' His syllables rolled out magnificently, carrying with them a sense of conviction which heartened his listeners.
And he mastered data. If someone spoke of Baltimore's vested interest in the Eastern Shore, Daniel Webster had the figures supporting this claim, and he became a more clever advocate than the Baltimorean. He was a businessman himself, ingrained in the processes of buying and selling. But in the session after the noonday meal he displayed the other aspect of his policy: 'It is essential, I believe, that we construct every possible railroad line running north and south, for these are the sinews that will bind our nation together.'
When he began to expatiate upon the problems of the Union, he spoke like a god, and Steed reflected on the fact that he was so persuasive in his personal commitments, whereas Henry Clay had been so aloof and intellectual. 'We need them both,' he muttered to himself as Webster forged ahead, brushing aside difficulties which Steed knew could not be so easily disposed of.
But he was at his greatest during the evening meal. Sitting at Susan's right, he discoursed on his vision of a more powerful Union, stretching to all parts of the continent, provisioned by the southern states, supplied with manufactures by the northern, and provided with raw materials by the western. In the midst of his flowery oration he dropped his napkin, placed his two hands on the table and said in a resonant voice, 'Gentlemen of the South, I am here to learn from you what it is you desire from that Union.'
Old Tiberius appeared to lead the ladies to their coffee, but Webster interrupted, 'I believe the ladies should stay,' and he personally superintended the placement of Susan's chair.
The discussion was far-ranging. He had not come, like Henry Clay, to listen, but rather to catch fleeting images of problems, which he would grasp, rephrase and make a permanent part of his arsenal. No slaveowner proposed any action but that Daniel Webster understood his dilemmas, sympathized with them and gave assurance that he would do his best to alleviate them. When the probing question that Henry Clay had raised—What is to be done about the fugitive slave?—was brought up by Steed, Webster brushed it aside in four forceful words: 'Return him, of course.' How, and under what circumstances and with what effect upon federal law-enforcing agencies did not concern him.
He retired early, quitting the room like a spent tornado, his massive head bowed as if overcome by the burdens of office. At the door he turned, smiled at Susan and looked every man in the eye. 'Gentlemen, and beautiful ladies, tonight your railroad is much closer to Patamoke than it has ever been.'
When he was gone, leaving a conspicuous void, the party started to break up, but Mr. Walgrave signaled imperiously to Paul that Tiberius ought to lead the wives to their coffee. When the doors to the dining room were closed and cigars were lit, Mr. Walgrave from the head of the table said in his whispery voice, 'Gentlemen, now we get down to business.'
'What do you have in mind?' a merchant from Patamoke asked.
'Senator Webster, gentlemen. That's what I have in mind.' And he proceeded to make a speech which astounded everyone in the room except one of the men from Baltimore. Steed observed that this gentleman kept puffing on his cigar and looking disdainfully at the ceiling, and Paul got the impression that he had heard it all before:
'Gentlemen, let's not mince words. You know and I know that Daniel Webster is the one man in the United States Senate who represents our interests. Now, don't tell me that he's a high-tariff man and therefore can't represent the interests of you southerners. He alone has kept the tariff within reasonable limits. But more important, he has supported every good piece of business legislation that has come before Congress in the thirty-eight years he has been serving you.'
One guest pointed out that he had served Massachusetts, not Maryland, that indeed he had been an enemy of the principal laws that might have helped planters. Of such a claim Mr. Walgrave was contemptuous:
'Unworthy, sir, unworthy. Senator Webster may have had to vote, as a good New Englander, against one or another of your bills, but has he not consistently voted for the business interest? Are you each not better off because he has been your watchdog in the Senate, striking down those bills which served only to excite the rabble at the expense of the businessman?'
He went around the room, one man at a time, and proved that Webster had done his duty, for he queried each man on particular mercantile bills which Webster had sponsored to aid that man's business. Each had to confess that Daniel Webster had been the guardian of plantation owners as well as factory owners. Then he came to the point:
'So I am here tonight, gentlemen, to enlist your support for this man who has supported you so staunchly. I am about to collect pledges from you to enable Daniel Webster to pay off a few of his personal debts, so that he can continue in the Senate as your champion. I want each of you to ask yourself, "What has this great man's effort in the Senate been worth to me?" and I want you to contribute accordingly.'
One of the planters from north of Patamoke asked, 'How much did you have in mind?' and without hesitating a second, Mr. Walgrave whispered, 'Five hundred thousand dollars.' This evoked gasps, so he added quickly, 'Gentlemen, as you know, Senator Webster lives expensively. He has farms, relatives. He entertains much in Boston and New York. And when you come to Washington, you'll wine and dine with him. His expenses are large because his heart is large.'
Temporarily the meeting broke up into small groups, in which discussion was vigorous, and Mr. Walgrave made no attempt to interrupt this necessary process of opinion-formation, as he termed it; he had conducted numerous such meetings in all parts of the nation and had found that he never got really big pledges unless the local businessmen were given ample time for arguing among themselves. And it was big contributions he wanted.
'Are you asking us for the whole half million?' a planter asked.
'Heavens no!' Walgrave said. 'Understanding supporters from all over the nation are making their contributions.'
'Isn't such a collection forbidden by the Constitution?' a lawyer from Patamoke asked.
'It certainly is!' Mr. Walgrave agreed instantly. He had learned that this was the way to handle this difficult question, which always arose during these fund-gathering sessions.
'Then why are you asking us...'
'My dear friend, if you contribute—well, let us say, two thousand dollars tonight and expect Senator Webster to vote yea or nay on some bill that interests you, that would be bribery, subornation of the Senate, and it would certainly be punishable at law. But Senator Webster does not, nor has he ever, engaged in bribery, or the sale of his vote. All I promise you tonight is that if you see fit to support this great man, and keep him in office...'
'He has nobody running against him.'
'Thank God for that. No, he's not up for reelection, and if he were, no one in Massachusetts could defeat him.'
'Then why does he need...'
'Sir, he serves us all as Senator. He represents the entire nation. His living expenses...'
'They must be pretty high, to need half a million.'
'They are,' Mr. Walgrave snapped, and then he dropped back to his whispery voice. 'They are because he must work extra hard to protect men of property. Gentlemen, you support Daniel Webster or you throw your fortunes to the wolves.'
Now was the moment to whip these potential contributors into an orderly session. Speeding about the table, he placed before each man a carefully printed slip of paper on which to write the amount of money he was willing to contribute, and Webster had been so impressive, so comprehending of their problems, that each man but one signed a pledge. Paul Steed gave three thousand dollars.
'You haven't signed,' Mr. Walgrave said to the man who had been staring at the ceiling.
'No,' the man responded. 'I gave three years ago, in Pittsburgh... remember?'
'No, I do not remember,' Mr. Walgrave said with a certain asperity.
'That night you were collecting from the iron and steel men... four hundred thousand that time.'
Mr. Walgrave took note of the man. Under no circumstances would he ever be invited to another social evening with Daniel Webster.
For Eden Cater the 1840s were a time of perplexity. She was a freed woman with a good husband, two fine sons and a compassionate mistress who needed her. Miss Susan, with the aid of various devices built for her by Cudjo Cater, moved rather well about the mansion, and as she grew older, she grew more kind and understanding: 'I'm English, you know. Our ladies are supposed to acquire a certain grace.' She spoke often of the Fithian women in London, and of the quaint ways in which they had supervised her childhood: 'We had nannies, you know, and they always spoke French to us and slipped us novels to read. "So zat you will know how to make love... when ze time comes." '
She always added, as Eden listened to her monologues, 'But then, of course, I'm half American, too. And American women who live on islands are supposed to acquire a certain courage.' On some days she even went out into the garden, where she would sit in her wheelchair and watch as the slaves edged the walks. She was a gentle mistress, and the slaves treated her indulgently: 'Yes, ma'am. Yeeeessss, ma'am.' But they kept the garden pretty much as they wanted it, with the looming pyracantha reaching out for any passer-by and the tawny daylilies in place behind the iron rims in which their beds were now enclosed to prevent wandering.
Paul and Susan had added numerous hollies to the pattern, and these ingratiating trees, red in autumn, green in winter, gave the lawn a new touch. Indeed, Paul had perfected a holly which threw enormous clusters of bright red berries and was selling rooted plants to his neighbors under the name of Susan Fithian. Places all up and down the Choptank were burgeoning with Susan Fithians—'A hearty tree. They'll stand any adversity.'
Eden was not really needed at the mansion; two younger slaves had been trained to tend Miss Susan, but whenever she left for Patamoke to spend time with her family, she was missed. 'She's so understanding,' Miss Susan told the other girls. 'Sometimes behaves as if this were her house, not mine.' Upon reflecting on this phenomenon, she added, 'That's understandable. She was born on this island. Started living in the mansion the same year I did.'
Eden was drawn to Patamoke not only because of her family, but also because she sensed that movements were afoot which must soon engulf her and Cudjo. She loved to sit on the bench before their cabin in the evening and exchange ideas with him, for she developed her understandings at the mansion, he at the boatyard.
Their conversation followed strange patterns, for she had learned gentleman's English at Rosalind's Revenge, while he had picked his up from the fields and Cline's shed, intermixed with readings from Plutarch. Their pronunciation varied, too, with Eden speaking a soft, drawling tongue, while Cudjo's was crisper and more barbarous. Each pronounced the repetitive short words—the, these, they, them, that, then, there—with the hard _d_ sound, and they used other interesting variations and contractions, but the important fact was they conversed on a high level of interest and taught their sons to do the same.
Suppose that Cudjo wanted to say _Why don't they just wait? He has the time_. It was likely to come out _Howc'm dey doan' jes' bide? He hab de time_. It might be truncated, but it was neither illiterate nor humorous.
On one trip home, Eden told her husband, 'When them great senators an' whatnots comes to Revenge they talks about railroads for ten minutes an' slavery for ten hours. Cudjo, they hopelessly confused.'
'What you think?'
'All the good white men, like Mr. Steed an' this Clay an' Webster, they wants to do the right thing. You can hear that in they voices. But they doan' know nothin', Cudjo. Fact is, I think they knows less than you an' me.'
'The others?'
'Most of the big owners—along the Choptank—they plain stupid. They think nothin' ever gonna change.' She repeated her ideas to her sons, then returned to Cudjo. 'At the bottom of the heap you got Lafe Turlock an' Herman Cline. Slave-trackers. Cudjo, you best watch out for 'em. They gonna try kill us... some day.'
'Why us? We ain't done nothin'.'
'Because we're free. They hates all black folk, but us free ones they hates the most.'
Cudjo asked how she assessed the Paxmores, and she said, 'They tryin', Cudjo, but they all mixed up.'
'They sure help me.'
'But they think they can change things by bein' nice. Miss Elizabeth, Mr. George, they doan' want to harm nobody. Turlock and Cline, they want to harm ever'body.'
'But Mr. Bartley an' Miss Rachel, they somethin'. You remember that night the slave come to our door?'
How well she remembered! It had been a watershed night for the Caters. This slave had swum across the Choptank, an amazing feat, and had come dripping to their door. Cudjo, aware that he might be sold back into slavery if caught helping a runaway, wanted to turn him away, but Eden laid down the law. 'I often think what happen, we have to run away that night Miss Susan sign my paper. I can see the dogs... us in the swamp... no friends.' She had pulled the slave into their cabin and said, 'Cudjo, ain't never no slave come to this door an' failin' to find help.'
'This here Bartley,' Cudjo resumed, 'maybe he doan' want to fight, but he ain't afeert of nothin'. Me an' the slave is runnin' north. Lafe Turlock an' his dogs on our trail. Lafe, he shoot at me. Bartley, he step out from behind a tree. They wrassle. Lafe sic his dogs on Bartley. Rachel, she come out an' bust the dogs with her oar. Ever'body arrested but me an' the slave. We gits to Pennsylvania. Bartley, he gits two weeks in jail.'
'Yes,' Eden said reflectively, 'on the little things they strong. But come the big ones, they gonna be like all the rest.'
'Never old Mrs. Paxmore. She teach me to read. Ever'body warn her, "You teach nigger to read, you in trouble." But she teach me.'
Eden refused to comment on this special woman, the quiet one who had dared so much. But as for the other whites, they were stumbling in darkness toward a conflict that Eden saw as inevitable—''Cause when I listens at the mansion, Cudjo, all I hear is that even the senators, they doan' know what comin' down the road.' But Eden knew.
The final weeks of 1849 were a shambles. The Senate, led by Daniel Webster and Henry Clay, recently returned to it by the legislature of Kentucky, was preparing a vast compromise acceptable to South, North and West which would abolish sectional rivalries, the threat of secession and the possibility of war. Rarely had two great leaders toiled toward a more desirable end.
But the House of Representatives was in disarray. Through fifty-eight agonizing ballots extending over weeks it had been unable to elect a Speaker, its members snarling each at the other like alley dogs. And no solution was in sight. The cause, of course, was slavery, as it would be through the next decade. The House, being less philosophical than the Senate, simply could not reconcile its sectional differences, and the futile debate droned on.
During this impasse one of the greatest intellects our Senate was to produce sent word to Paul Steed that since he had long wanted to meet the writer of the _Reflections_ , he was prepared to cross the bay, even though his health was not the best, and on a sunny day in late December the Baltimore steamer drew up at the wharf and discharged one of the majestic figures of American history.
There was certainly nothing majestic about his appearance. He came from his cabin slowly, leaning on the arms of two sailors. He wore a long black cloak with an extra shepherd's flap about the shoulders; the fact that he wore no hat allowed his huge mane of white hair to stand out in many directions, but it was his sunken face and burning eyes that created the most lasting impression, for they formed a kind of death mask.
'My God!' Paul muttered as he came down the gangplank. 'He's dying!'
This was John C. Calhoun, United States Senator from South Carolina, incandescent defender of the South. He was five years younger than Henry Clay but looked ninety-five years older. Yet as soon as he was satisfied that his feet were on firm ground, he moved forward eagerly to grasp Paul's hand.
'My dear Steed,' he said in low, guarded tones, as if he knew he must husband what little strength he had, 'I am pleased to meet a man I have admired so much.' As they walked to the mansion, followed by the plantation owners who had come to honor this champion of their cause, he paused from time to time, catching his breath, and in these intervals he allowed the slaveowners to congratulate him on his various stands in the Senate. Steed was touched to observe the love in which they held him.
It was nearly noontime when the assembly reached the mansion, but Calhoun wanted to start right in with meetings, so the men gathered in the main room while the women refreshed themselves. The men were barely seated when Calhoun startled Paul by saying abruptly:
'Steed, I want you to drop this nonsense about railroads. They're a northern invention calculated to woo the South away from her ancient virtues. You run a railroad down this peninsula, you turn good southern soil into northern shanties. The future of the South lies with agriculture and a stabilized slave economy.'
He said not another word about railroads, and before Steed could challenge this dismissal, the gaunt old man surveyed the assembled planters as if checking for loyalty. Then, satisfied that he spoke with friends, he stated his philosophy:
'We of the South face a grave crisis in the forthcoming session of Congress. Clay and Webster are plotting, I feel sure, to bring forth some monstrous omnibus bill which will give the North everything and the South nothing. We shall be stripped of our God-given rights. We shall be excluded from the territories. Texas will be cut in half solely because it's a slave state. There's talk of forbidding the sale of slaves in Washington. Demeaning to the nation's capital, they claim. On all fronts we're in retreat.'
When the slaveowners asked what they must do, he looked at each man with his flashing, deep-set eyes, then asked whether they were determined to protect their rights. In unison they replied, 'We are,' and he spread forth his program of defense:
'We must insist upon the right of taking our slaves with us into all the territories. We must keep Texas of maximum size. We must not surrender on Washington, for it is our capital, too. And above all, we must demand of Congress that it pass a fugitive slave law with teeth. If one of your slaves, or mine, runs away to the North, the full power of the federal government must be brought to bear upon that slave, and he must be returned to his rightful owner.'
Admiring discussion of this strategy ensued, with one planter after another lauding Calhoun for his clear vision, but he brushed aside the encomiums, shifted in his chair, and proceeded to the main body of his thought:
'I take my stand not as a southerner but as a man concerned with the destiny of my country. We're different from other nations. We're a minority, and the day will come when the other nations of the world will combine against us, simply because we are a minority dedicated to freedom while they rely on cruel oppression of their peoples. In those days a great philosophical debate will develop as to how the rights of a minority can be preserved against the overwhelming pressures of a majority. The United States will stand alone, gentlemen, and it will then confront the problem that we confront today. How can a righteous minority protect itself against the thoughtless tyranny of the majority?'
He spent a glowing half-hour developing this theme, that what the South faced in 1849, the entire nation would face in 1949. He was dazzling in the brilliance of his arguments, his marshaling of classical antecedents. He was the fiery protector of liberty, the man who saw the future almost as a revelation. Then he spread his trembling hands on the arms of his chair and said, 'There, gentlemen, is the problem on which we are engaged.'
Old Tiberius appeared at the door with news that dinner was spread, and the men trooped in to try the terrapin, the oysters and the venison. It was a relaxed, gracious meal in which politics arose only when one of the wives told the senator of the unfortunate affair with Postmaster Cater. 'All he was doing was protecting us from the filth spewed out from New York and Boston.'
'Did the good man find a job elsewhere?' Calhoun asked.
'Yes, in South Carolina.'
'We have always been the last refuge of free men,' Calhoun said.
The talks continued through the afternoon and all the next day. Calhoun let his listeners know that he felt the United States to be at a point of peril; there was a real possibility that the South might have to sever the Union because the North refused to respect its rights. And as he talked every man who listened realized that here was a senator who was wrestling in the closing days of his life with the most profound problems; he was a man who lived in a world different from theirs, in which facts impinged on concepts and concepts on the structure of national life. He lived at a degree of intensity that none of them could equal, and one planter from Dorchester County said, as he guided his sloop back across the Choptank, 'He's like a volcano that's been shooting fire so long, it's split its sides.'
When the guests were gone, Paul supposed that the tired old man would want to spend a couple of days in rest, but that was not Calhoun's style. 'Steed, you brought me only southerners, men and women already converted to our side. I'd like to meet some of your northern apologists. I need to know what they're thinking.'
'You mean now?'
'I mean this afternoon. When I return to Washington, if the House can ever organize, I enter a great debate on the future of this nation. I'd like to know what the ones on the other side are saying.'
'The only...' A daring idea flashed into Paul's mind. 'Senator, we have a family of Quakers just across...'
'Fetch them. I've never talked with Quakers.'
So a boat was dispatched to Peace Cliff, and at two that afternoon it returned with four Paxmores: George the boatbuilder; Elizabeth the quiet spokeswoman; young Bartley, afire with ideas; and Rachel, daughter of the avowed abolitionist Starbuck. They seemed very prim as they marched up the gravel path to the house they had not visited in many years, the women in gray and bonneted, the men in black with flat hats perched above their austere faces, but all four walked with an eagerness that pleased Calhoun. 'They look like early Christians in Rome, marching to the lions.' He laughed, then added, 'Well, today I'm their lion.'
In his thank-you letter to Steed, Calhoun would write: 'I have rarely met a woman who impressed me so favorably as your Elizabeth Paxmore. At first she seemed prudish and severe, but when I listened to her gentle explanations, so forcefully yet intelligently expressed, I found myself wishing that she were on our side. You said you rarely see this family. If you see Elizabeth, give her my regards.'
The session was memorable in that it occupied itself with only the most vibrant differences between the sections, as if all participants agreed that the afternoon was too precious to waste in trivialities:
CALHOUN: I think we can start best by agreeing that the Negro is an inferior human being, destined to serve the white man in a secondary capacity.
ELIZABETH: That I refuse to concede. I teach Negroes. Yes, against the law. But I do teach them, and I assure thee, Senator, they learn as rapidly as thy son.
CALHOUN: It grieves me to think that you put yourself outside the law, Mrs. Paxmore, as if you knew better than Congress.
RACHEL: On this we do know best.
CALHOUN: So young, so self-assured?
RACHEL: Tormented, Mr. Calhoun. I seem to know nothing these days except the inevitability of conflict.
CALHOUN: How old are you, ma'am?
RACHEL: Twenty-eight.
CALHOUN: You should be tending your babies. Now if, as I insist, the Negro is inferior, then the best process ever devised for handling him is slavery. It provides his freedom.
BARTLEY: How can a sane man think that?
CALHOUN: Because the finest minds since the beginning of time have thought it. Jesus Christ, Plato, George Washington. Slavery was devised by ancient wisdom and has never been improved upon.
BARTLEY: Is thee satisfied with the way it operates in South Carolina?
CALHOUN: It's the salvation of South Carolina, the basis of all our progress.
ELIZABETH: Does thee teach thy slaves to read the Bible?
CALHOUN: The slave requires no learning. The Bible must be interpreted for him. Is that not right, Steed?
ELIZABETH: Before Paul answers, I think I should warn thee that I know how he interprets the Bible when he reads to his slaves. 'Slaves, obey thy masters.'
CALHOUN: That's what the Bible says.
RACHEL: But it says so much more.
CALHOUN: And the unbridled teaching of that _more_ will only unsettle the slaves, confuse them. We have learned, over the past two centuries, how best to handle Negroes. They're children, delightful children when they're not misled by some half-educated preacher like Nat Turner.
ELIZABETH: They are men and women, just as capable of comprehending the Bible as thee or I.
CALHOUN: There you are in error. I can look forward to the day, one hundred years from now, say 1949, when some kind of freedom may have been won by the Negro, but I assure you, Mrs. Paxmore, that on that day toward which you look, the Negro will not be free in his own mind. He will live not off the charity of the plantation but off the charity of the government. He will never be able to govern himself, or save money, or regulate his life. He will huddle in your cities and receive his charity, and be the slave he has always been.
ELIZABETH: Senator, he will be attending Harvard and Princeton, with thy grandchildren, and there will be scarce, if any, distinction between them.
CALHOUN: No black man will ever master enough knowledge to enter Yale, which I attended.
RACHEL: What about Frederick Douglass. Has thee read his book?
CALHOUN: Steed here has settled Douglass. Proved his book was written by white men.
RACHEL: Sir, does thee always ignore evidence that goes against thy prejudices?
CALHOUN (speaking to George): Do Quaker husbands... I've never met Quakers, before, you know. Do you always allow your women to carry the debate?
GEORGE: It's very difficult to halt them, sir. Especially when they're right.
CALHOUN: Do you agree with these women?
GEORGE: Totally.
CALHOUN: Then I fear we're in for dangerous times. Over the last two days I spoke with the plantation owners of this region. They agree with me heartily. Don't you see the conflict you're sponsoring? I was taught that Quakers love peace.
ELIZABETH: We do, and are constantly drawn away from it. By slavery.
CALHOUN: You know, of course, that in some states you could go to jail for teaching Negroes. Steed, you must be aware of that. (Before any of the Paxmores could respond, he abruptly changed the subject.) Have any of you read Mr. Steed's fine book on this subject?
RACHEL: We all have. Out of respect for a distinguished neighbor.
CALHOUN: And how did his impressive logic affect you?
RACHEL: As the mutterings of a good-hearted, totally confused gentleman who will not know what happened when the hurricane strikes.
CALHOUN: Are you four abolitionists?
RACHEL: I am. The others—
CALHOUN: Please, young lady! Let them speak for themselves.
ELIZABETH: We do not categorize ourselves.
CALHOUN: But it was you who received through the mails the seditious literature.
ELIZABETH: Senator, freedom is not sedition.
CALHOUN: It is when it deprives Steed of his rightful property.
ELIZABETH: Paul Steed cannot own human beings.
CALHOUN: The law says he can. Congress says he can.
RACHEL: Then the law must be blown aside, the way winds of autumn blow the leaves away. Once they were green, and once they served a useful purpose, but now it's winter and they've fallen.
CALHOUN: Instruct me. If Congress passes a law with strong teeth, requiring citizens in all parts of the nation—I mean Boston and Philadelphia and Chicago... These citizens must by law return all runaway slaves to their rightful owners.
RACHEL: My God!
CALHOUN: You're not averse to taking the name of the Lord in vain.
RACHEL: Is thee contemplating such a law?
CALHOUN: It will be registered before this time next year. And what will you Paxmores do about it? I need to know.
GEORGE: We will resist it with every fiber in our bodies. I say that as a resident of Patamoke. Thee can imagine what it will be like in cities like Boston. The entire—
CALHOUN: Even if it's the law of the land?
GEORGE: If thee passes such a law, Senator, it dies of its own weight that afternoon.
CALHOUN: It will carry jail sentences for those who interfere.
GEORGE: Build very large jails, Senator.
CALHOUN: I understand this might shock certain... well, Quakers like yourselves. But with the passage of time?
GEORGE: Every day will intensify the resistance. I assure thee, Senator, thee cannot enforce such a law.
CALHOUN: Then you foresee what I see? The possibility of war between the sections?
RACHEL: We do.
CALHOUN: But I thought that Quakers...
ELIZABETH: Like thee, Senator. We live in confusion. We know of thy intense patriotism in 1812. And of thy strong Union sympathies in the years that followed. Thee was a different man, then.
CALHOUN: The intransigence of the North forced me to alter.
ELIZABETH: It must have been at terrible philosophical expense. (Calhoun shrugged his shoulders.)
GEORGE: It's been the same with us. Our family has invariably preached peace. But we had to go to war against the pirates. We had to build ships to fight the English in 1777. Our ships went back to war in 1814. And now we face an ever more terrifying possibility. It's not easy to be a Quaker, and I suppose it isn't easy to be a senator.
CALHOUN: You'll make no concessions?
RACHEL: None.
CALHOUN: You, young man. You haven't said much.
BARTLEY: I'm looking ahead. There isn't much I'd want to say. (He indicated that under these circumstances, with Paul Steed listening, he had better remain silent.)
CALHOUN: By this you want me to understand that you've already begun clandestine operations—the spiriting away of slaves belonging to other people.
BARTLEY: If a runaway comes to my door, I shall always assist him.
CALHOUN (to Elizabeth): Surely, if you follow the principles you've stated, you would not encourage runaways... or aid them?
ELIZABETH: My religion would not allow me to steal another man's property. But I would educate the slave so that he can gain his own freedom.
CALHOUN: I'm glad to hear someone who defends property.
RACHEL: Does thee really believe, Senator, that thee can perpetually hold millions of Negroes in chattel bondage?
CALHOUN: It's the law of nature, ma'am, and the law of this Union.
RACHEL: Then war is inescapable.
CALHOUN: Do you, the youngest person here, take it upon yourself to declare war?
RACHEL: No, sir. Thee did that.
CALHOUN: What do you mean?
RACHEL: When thee said that slavery was immutable.
CALHOUN: It is, my dear young lady. It's the law of God, the law of any reasonable man. The Negro must be kept, he must be guided, he must have his food and clothing provided by someone.
ELIZABETH: I can name one Negro right now who would be worthy of sitting with thee in the United States Senate.
CALHOUN: No such Negro exists or ever will. Tell me, Mr. Paxmore, how do you see the next decade developing?
GEORGE: I heard at my boatyard in Patamoke that when Daniel Webster was here...
CALHOUN: Did he visit you, Steed?
GEORGE: He's supposed to have said, in answer to a direct question, that he would support a fugitive slave law with real teeth. He said that. Daniel Webster.
CALHOUN: For once he showed good sense.
GEORGE: When I heard this I concluded that there would be such a law, and that it would result in warfare between the sections.
CALHOUN: Do you think the southern states will secede?
GEORGE: Everything thee has said today leads to secession.
CALHOUN: What could the South do, Mr. Paxmore, to alleviate the pressures that seem to be driving all of us in that direction?
RACHEL (whose intrusion irritated the Senator): Offer a plan for the assured liberation of all slaves. Not immediately, perhaps, but certain.
CALHOUN: I take it you read _The Liberator_.
RACHEL: When the postmaster allows me to have a copy.
CALHOUN: Which is not often, I pray. So you want us to surrender our property? Throw away the fruit of our labors? Steed here has nine hundred slaves, which he has paid for in the sweat of his brow. All of them to go?
RACHEL: There can be no lasting peace until they do.
CALHOUN: And go to what? To freedom as you and I know it? Never. If they ever do go, which God forbid, it will be to a new definition of slavery—deprivation, ignorance, charity in some new form. (Here he paused. Then he addressed Elizabeth.) If you know so much about the wrestlings of the Quaker conscience with the problem of war, then you must also know how assiduous a minority must always be in defending its rights. By and large, the people of this nation have not liked Quakers. Their pacifism in 1812 when we were striving to protect this Union irritated me considerably. But you have persisted because you knew that a prudent minority must defend itself against the tyranny of a majority. Isn't that right?
GEORGE: We have endeavored to exist without irritating others. That may have been our strength.
CALHOUN: Precisely. The South is a minority striving to defend its rights. Because we have controlled the Senate, we've been able to do so. And I can see a time coming when the United States will be a minority among nations, and on that day it will use every device that the South uses now to protect its rights to existence. I fight for the future, Mr. Paxmore. I have a vision which—
RACHEL: Does it include perpetual slavery for the black man?
CALHOUN: The Negro will always be in slavery. I prefer the southern version to that which those at the North will impose.
They ate an early evening meal, listened to the bitter winds blowing in from the Chesapeake, and went to bed. In the morning everyone assembled at the wharf as John Calhoun departed for the Senate, and the great battles which loomed there, and his impending death. As the dark coat and the bushy head disappeared into the cabin, Rachel Starbuck Paxmore said, 'One of the finest this nation has produced, and wrong in everything.'
No authoritative copy of the odious legislation reached Patamoke until the first week in October 1850, but when it arrived by packet from Baltimore for posting at the courthouse, everyone could see what Daniel Webster had done. George Paxmore, at the boatyard, refused comment until he had a chance to discuss the new law with his wife. At noon he left his desk in charge of his workmen, most of whom favored the bill, and sailed home to Peace Cliff, where he assembled his family in the kitchen.
'They've passed something even worse than we had imagined,' he reported, taking out the notebook on which he had scribbled the main features of the bill.
'Is it law?' Rachel asked.
'The law of the nation. Any slaveholder can go anywhere in the United States and recover whatever black man or woman he claims to be a runaway.'
'Even to cities like Boston?'
'Everywhere. States, territories, District of Columbia. Or land not yet a territory. All he has to do is state that the Negro is his, and his claim is established. The black man cannot testify on his own behalf. He cannot summon other witnesses.'
'What can he do?'
'He can listen attentively as the judge delivers the sentence returning him to slavery. Even manumitted men and women can be dragged back. Every United States marshal is charged with enforcing the law. And a new horror has been introduced. Every citizen must, on pain of going to jail, assist the marshal in capturing the runaway, or arresting the freedman, if the marshal orders him.'
'Such a law is unthinkable,' Elizabeth said, shaking her head in disbelief as she sat by the stove, hands folded.
'It's obviously not unthinkable,' her husband said with unusual anger. 'They've passed it. But we can make it unworkable.'
'George! We must not be hasty,' Elizabeth said. 'We must pray for counsel.'
'What did thee have in mind?' Bartley asked his father.
'We shall oppose it,' Rachel interrupted. 'With every power we command, we shall oppose it.'
'That we shall,' George said, his white hair quivering as his body tensed.
'I think we should pray,' Elizabeth said, and for some minutes they sat in silence, after which she said, 'I must exact a promise from each of thee. There will be no violence. We cannot solve this problem with violence.'
'But if a slave runs to our door, surely thee will help him escape?' Rachel asked.
'I will not deprive another man of his lawful property.'
'But will thee step aside while Bartley and I...'
To this, Elizabeth agreed, and their home became a haven for the oppressed. Even in the Deep South word was passed: 'You get Choptank, high white bank, Paxmores.' If the slave could reach here, Bartley and Rachel would somehow spirit him to the Starbucks, where young Comly would lead him north to Pennsylvania.
The attitudes of the five Quakers involved in this escape route varied. Elizabeth, the tireless woman who had been fighting slavery for half a century, believed that moral suasion was sufficient; she would teach slaves at considerable risk to herself; she would feed them at her expense; she would clothe them with shirts she had sewn; and she would medicine them and bind their wounds. But she would not encourage them to quit their masters, for that was deprivation of a legal right. She remained what she had always been: the quiet, traditional Quakeress, the teacher, friend and comforter, but no more.
George Paxmore would always contribute money; he would hide fugitives; and on occasion he would himself guide them to the Starbucks'. But he abhorred violence and would not even stay overnight with the robust Starbucks, who did not.
Bartley Paxmore, at thirty-one, was the new-style Quaker, engaged actively in fighting slavery and willing to take great risks with either his own life or that of fugitives. He was excessively daring and had pieced together an escape route right up the peninsula through the heart of the Refuge plantations. He had already made seven trips to the Starbucks' and supposed that he would be making more, but like his father, he eschewed violence and would not go armed.
His wife Rachel was quite different. Like all the Starbucks, she saw slavery as the ultimate abomination and would make no concessions. If a slaveowner were to overtake her while she was leading slaves north, she would kill him; consequently, Bartley never allowed her to slip into dangerous situations. She was the goader, the encourager, the unfailing enemy of the slave-catcher, and it was often her unalloyed courage which gave escapees heart to try the last ten miles to the border.
Comly Starbuck not only refused to reject violence, he expected it, and was always prepared to fight his way clear if slave-catchers moved in. He was a sturdy young man, larger and stronger than Bartley, and dedicated to quite different ends: 'When the South secedes, as it will, there must be a vast uprising of the slaves. Then we will tie this evil into knots.' He expected one day to enlist in a northern army.
The principal opponents of the liberationists fell into three groups. There were the big plantation owners whose wealth was tied up in Negroes and who could always be counted upon to finance a chase. They were not brutal men, but they were deeply perplexed as to why a gang of northern agitators should be so bent upon depriving them of their lawful property. They wanted peace with the North, wanted trade to continue and multiply. The more prudent saw that as the United States stretched westward, the non-slave states must one day outnumber the slave by a large margin, and when that time came they wanted their inherited rights to be respected. On every subject except slavery they were reasonable men; like Paul Steed, their spokesman, they believed that for all men to be free, black men had to accept slavery.
At the bottom of the pro-slavery men were the professional trackers like Lafe Turlock with his dogs and Herman Cline with his rawhide. They hated blacks. There were not many like these two, but every town on the Eastern Shore provided its quota. One of the easiest recreations to organize along the salty rivers was a nigger chase.
In between stood the majority, a group difficult to decipher. They were white; they owned little land or other forms of wealth; few had slaves, and then only one or two. But they had been convinced by southern philosophers that their welfare depended upon the perpetuation of slavery, and they took it unkindly when folks at the North spoke ill of their peculiar institution. They were motivated not by a fear of slaves but by their dislike of freed blacks, whom they saw as shiftless, undisciplined and profligate. One farmer spoke for all when he said, 'With a slave who knows his place I got no quarrel, but I cannot abide a freed nigger who can read. He means trouble.'
This middle group was shocked when people actually living in the South, like the Paxmores, spoke against slavery and rejoiced when blacks escaped. These people did not hire themselves out as slave-catchers, but if a chase developed, they joined, and when the slave was treed and the dogs were barking, they derived as much enjoyment as when a raccoon was trapped. But if anyone suggested that the Eastern Shore might have to quit the Union in defense of slavery, these men and women grew reflective and said, 'We stand with Daniel Webster. The Union must be preserved.'
In the 1850s, following the passage of the Fugitive Slave Act under the sponsorship of Senators Clay and Webster—Calhoun felt it was not stringent enough—a subtle, undeclared war erupted between the slaveowners and the enemies of the peculiar institution. It was fought incessantly; a slave would run away from some plantation in South Dorchester, make his way to the Choptank, know from secret instructions where the Paxmores lived, and at dead of night cross the broad river, go ashore at the foot of the white cliffs showing gray in the moonlight, and climb to the kitchen door.
In later years white men and women would often ask incredulously: Why did the blacks accept slavery? In the decade from 1851 to the end of 1860, some two thousand made their way up the Eastern Shore, fighting against incalculable odds, trying to beat their way to freedom. An old woman in her seventies would say some morning. 'I gonna die free.' And off she would go. Children would be told in awesome tones, 'You make one sound, we all gonna be killed.' They died in swamps; they drowned in rivers; they were hanged from trees; they were burned at stakes. But on they came, and some stopped briefly at the Paxmores'.
For the second time in history a Turlock was learning to read. Young Jake, eleven years old, was getting up each morning, washing his face at the bench behind the cabin at the edge of town, and trooping off to school. The existence of this academy, and especially the presence of its remarkable teacher, was one of those accidents which alter the face of history—not big history, like wars and elections, but the little history of a town like Patamoke or a river like the Choptank.
Paul Steed had become more and more a man of powerful character, and despite the infuriating indifference of the federal government, he persisted in believing that a railroad could be built down the spine of the peninsula, but he wondered how, when the work began, the construction companies would find enough skilled labor to build the tracks. Slaves with mules could do the grading, but it would require a lot more than slaves to do the actual building.
His problem was solved when the Baltimore newspapers began running stories about the famine in Ireland and of the forced exodus from that starving land. One night in his study he told Susan, 'Damn! We could sail to Ireland and pick up a thousand men!' He became so excited by the prospect that he could not sleep. After they retired, she heard him roaming up and down all night, talking to himself.
In the morning he boarded one of his ships loading wheat, ordered the captain to be ready to sail at noon, regardless of cargo, and by nightfall was at the mouth of the Chesapeake, having left behind orders that huts be erected in Patamoke to receive the immigrants he would import.
When he landed at Cork he saw a sight which would haunt him for the rest of his days: lines of families near death from starvation waiting hopelessly for food, or transportation to anywhere. 'They'd sail to the ports of hell,' the English dockmaster told Steed.
'I could find places for three hundred men.'
'Must take families.'
'I didn't want women and children.'
'Nobody does, but if you leave them behind, they die.'
So Paul stood at the foot of the gangplank and watched as seventy-seven families came past him, glassy-eyed and with an appalling number of emaciated children. He tried to choose families with grown sons, but the dockmaster did not allow much selection, and in the end Steed had a conglomerate mix of some men who might possibly build a railroad and many dependents who might possibly survive on what their fathers were able to earn.
'Home fast!' Steed told his captain, and when the ship had weighed anchor he started his duties as head feeder of the starving. He worked in the kitchens twelve and fifteen hours a day, helping to prepare food and devising ways of doling it out in proper portions so that no one gorged himself to death. His limp and his twisted neck became the Irishmen's symbol of salvation, and when Sunday came, he organized prayer services for the three hundred and seven Catholics he was importing to his homeland.
There was no priest aboard, and Steed was reluctant to lead devotions, but he did find a glib-tongued spindle of a man named Michael Caveny to whom praying was as natural as cursing:
'Almighty God, who sent His plague to Egypt and His famine among the Hebrews, so that the earth trembled with punishment, we know that Thou didst also send the years of plenty so that Thy people flourished. By Thy grace are we embarked upon this holy vessel which will carry us to paradise undreamed of where food is plentiful and where our children can romp in green pastures without fear of want.'
On and on he prayed, a mellifluous outpouring of imagery and biblical fragments, so filled with hope that Steed could hear sobs from every part of the crowded deck. At the peroration, in which God and babies and lambs and feasts of thanksgiving intermingled, Paul found himself wiping his eyes, and that day released double portions of food.
Michael Caveny—his name had originally been Cavanaugh, but centuries of abbreviation had shortened it to its present musical form—was an uncommon man. At thirty-nine, with three children, he had known the torment of hunger but never despair. He had done things to feed his children which in later years he would erase from memory, not wishing to saddle his family with such images, and he had forced them to survive in conditions which had exterminated scores of his neighbors.
He was a lyrical man to whom the slightest manifestation of nature became justification for protracted prose poems: 'Look at the fish flying through the air! God sends them aloft with a song, and the Devil pulls them back into his hot frying pan.' The more Steed saw of this man the more he liked him, and by the time the ship reached Patamoke, Michael Caveny had been designated foreman of the railroad crew.
This proved an empty honor, for there was no railroad. The nation was too preoccupied with building really important lines to the West to allocate any funds for an inconsequential line down the Delmarva Peninsula, as it had been aptly named from the first syllables of the three states which shared it. The railroad did not reach Chicago until 1853, and it had to probe south, too, for despite the apprehension of Senator Calhoun that it might bring northern heresy with it, merchants of the South insisted that they, too, have iron tracks on which to move their goods. So once again the Eastern Shore was ignored. But this was not all loss, for in the resulting isolation, it was able to confirm and deepen its unique patterns of life.
The decision not to build left Paul Steed with his horde of unemployed Irish Catholics crowded into a block of hovels along the northern edge of town. They had no priest, no occupation, no savings, and only such clothing as the plantation owners in the area could provide, but within weeks it was astonishing how many of them found jobs. Eleven left town to become overseers; they became famous for two characteristics: they kept an eye out for the prettiest slave girls, and periodically they went on titanic drunks, but they were basically good men, and when they were fired from one plantation they quickly found jobs on another—'McFee swears he'll stay sober this time, and I think we ought to give him a chance.'
Paul Steed, of course, offered Michael Caveny a good job at Devon, but to his surprise, the doughty little Irishman refused. 'I have a feeling, Mr. Steed, that St. Matthew himself would be honored to work for you, but my place is in town, with my people. We've to build a church and find ourselves a priest, and I've the little ones to think about.'
'You've already done wonders with them.'
'Ah, truer words were never spoken, Mr. Steed, but now I'm pondering their education. Patamoke school needs a teacher and I'm of a mind to apply.' Steed warned him that local Methodists might be reluctant to hire a Catholic, but Caveny said sweetly, 'True as the word of God, but I'm sure you'll be giving me a fine recommendation.' And that was how young Jake Turlock awoke one morning with orders to report to Teacher Caveny.
'If'n them Papist kids kin learn to read,' his Grandfather Lafe said, 'so kin you.'
The instruction which Jake would remember longest came not in reading but in geography. Mr. Caveny had acquired fifteen copies of a splendid little book called _A Modern Geography_ , published in New York City in 1835. It had been compiled by a Professor Olney, M.A., and it summarized the latest information on the world, with engaging woodcuts illustrating how a tiger eats a man in India or malamutes haul sledges in Siberia.
The most valuable contribution appeared on the last page of each section, in a paragraph captioned _Character_ , for here, in a few solid words, Professor Olney told the students what they might expect of the inhabitants of each country. Professor Olney, himself of British extraction, reminded the students of what their ancestors had been like:
_English:_ Intelligent, brave, industrious and enterprising.
_Scots:_ Temperate, industrious, hardy and enterprising. Distinguished for their general education and morality.
_Welsh:_ Passionate, honest, brave and hospitable.
Jake recognized that these favorable terms described the people he knew in Patamoke, and when he recited the descriptions to his grandfather, 'Lafe growled, 'That professor knows what he's talkin' about.' However, when Olney had to deal with non-British peoples, especially those with Catholic backgrounds, he was more severe:
_Irish:_ Quick of apprehension, active, brave and hospitable. But passionate, ignorant, vain and superstitious.
_Spanish:_ Temperate, grave, polite and faithful to their word. But ignorant, proud, superstitious and revengeful.
_Italians:_ Affable and polite. Excel in music, painting and sculpture. But effeminate, superstitious, slavish and revengeful.
Jake saw nothing in these descriptions to complain of. Certainly, the Irish living on the north edge of town were passionate, ignorant and hospitable, but Mr. Caveny took a different view. 'I want each boy to take his pen and line out the words after _Irish_ , because the writer knew very little of his subject. Write in "Witty, devout, generous to a fault, quick of mind, faithful to the death. But violent-tempered, especially when mistreated by the English." ' For the Italians and the Spaniards, no corrections were needed. But it was when Olney reached the lesser breeds that he really unloosed his venom:
_Arabs:_ Ignorant, savage and barbarous. Those on the coast are _pirates;_ those in the interior are _robbers_.
_Persians:_ Polite, gay, polished and hospitable. But indolent, vain, avaricious and treacherous.
_Hindoos:_ Indolent, spiritless and superstitious. Mild and servile to superiors, haughty and cruel to inferiors.
_Siberians:_ Ignorant, filthy and barbarous.
Mr. Caveny required his students to memorize these perceptive summaries, and in each examination he would pose some question like this: 'Compare an Englishman with a Siberian.' And Jake would respond, 'Englishmen are brave, intelligent, industrious and generous, but Siberians are ignorant, filthy and barbarous.' He had never seen a Siberian, of course, but he felt certain that he would recognize one if he ever got to Siberia. They rode in sledges pulled by dogs.
In his book Professor Olney did not characterize Negroes who lived in America, but of those who remained in Africa he said succinctly, 'An ignorant, filthy and stupid people.' Mr. Caveny said, 'While that description is certainly true of Africa, it would be desirable for us to construct our own description of the Negroes here in Patamoke,' and on his blackboard he wrote down those words which the boys contributed as describing the blacks they knew; henceforth in any examination when Caveny asked his students, 'What is the character of the Negro?' Jake and the others were expected to frame their answers from this description:
_Negroes:_ Lazy, superstitious, revengeful, stupid, irresponsible. Apt to run away, but they love to sing.
For as long as Mr. Caveny's pupils lived they would think of the British Turlocks as brave, honest, hospitable, industrious, temperate, hardy and enterprising, and the black Caters as beyond redemption, except for their ability to sing.
The town of Patamoke had now assumed its final shape. Everything centered on the harbor, which provided not only a good anchorage for ships but also a focus for all life within the town, now composed of 1,836 citizens. Businesses lined the north rim of the harbor. On the street behind this thoroughfare stood three impressive governmental buildings—the courthouse, the jail and, in between, the new slave market, a spacious area covered with a roof but not walled in along the sides.
Along the eastern edge of the harbor stood the rambling buildings of the Paxmore Boatyard, and to the west, as so often happened in American towns, gathered the better residential homes; the combination of a grand view of the river and the clean breezes from the south made this area desirable, and here the white owners of the town lived. In between were the small houses of the artisans, the mariners, the retired farmers and the boardinghouse keepers.
These major dispositions had been agreed upon more than a century ago; what made Patamoke of 1855 different was that two new vital elements had been added. To the north, beyond the business district, the Irish families clustered, and they had had either the gall or the gumption to build for themselves a rather large Catholic church, in which services were conducted by a flamboyant priest from Dublin. As several townsmen observed, 'In the old days Catholics were gentlemen who dined with candlelight on Devon Island. Now they're real people, and very noisy.' The Steeds viewed this new development not with outright distaste, but with a large degree of bewilderment. None of the family was easy with the brash young priest, for he preached a Catholicism quite strange to those whose forebears hobnobbed with the Lords Baltimore.
The other innovation stood on a marshy point east of the boatyard, where a collection of cabins and shanties had grown up. It was called Frog's Neck and was occupied principally by freed blacks, with a few lean-tos for the slaves who were hired out by the day to businesses in Patamoke. Sometimes a man or woman would work away from the home plantation for two or three years at a time, never seeing a salary, which was paid directly to the owner. However, if an enlightened owner like Paul Steed rented out one of the Devon slaves, he saw to it that the slave received part of his wage, and several had earned enough in this way to purchase their freedom. There was formal contact between the black area and the boatyard, some with the business section, quite a lot with the residential area in which many of the slaves worked, but absolutely none with the Irish district.
There was, of course, a final area, but it was not delineated. Its inhabitants lived where they could, some with the Irish, some in shacks within the business district and some with the blacks. These were the poor white trash. There were forty-one Turlocks scattered about Patamoke and no one could unscramble the relationships that existed among them.
It was a good town, and during those very years when extreme passions excited the rest of the nation it flourished in peace. A pragmatic harmony infused the place, accountable in major part to the exemplary behavior of its two principal citizens. Paul Steed ran a good plantation at Devon and a better store in Patamoke; he gave employment to many of the Irish and good prices to all. He was firm in his support of slavery as a principle and of the Whig Party as the salvation of the country, but most of all he was a force for balance. When in town over the weekends he attended Mass, sitting alone in the second row of benches, an austere, proper little man with his head cocked to one side as if he were weighing what the priest said.
The other leader, George Paxmore, was an old man now, straight and white-haired at seventy-two. He no longer worked at the boatyard on a daily basis, but he did come in from Peace Cliff now and then to satisfy himself that the building of ships was progressing in an orderly manner. At the yard he tended to employ blacks rather than Irishmen, but he had helped the latter substantially in building their church and he subscribed generously to any collections they made for their many charities. He deplored their drinking, envied their lightness of heart. It was he who arranged for Michael Caveny to become town constable, and never regretted this act, for Caveny proved himself to be a rough-and-ready character who preferred to talk a man into proper behavior rather than use a gun—'Sure, a man like you who beats his wife should grow a larger beard, Mr. Simpson, for how dare he look at his face in a mirror?'
The settled relationships of this little town were shattered one hot afternoon when T.T. Arbigost, in his white linen suit and silver toothpick, drifted into the harbor aboard a dirty steamer from Baltimore, unloading seventeen slaves, whom he stowed in the pens at the market. This done, he brushed himself off, looked contemptuously at the miserable ship he had left, and dispatched information to Devon Island that he had acquired a fine lot of primes from the plantations of southern Maryland.
Since the Steed plantations could always use more hands, Paul sailed to Patamoke prepared to buy the lot, but when he inspected them they appeared to be in such excellent condition that he could not fathom why Arbigost had brought them here rather than to the more profitable markets in Louisiana.
'Well, yes,' the unctuous dealer agreed, rocking back and forth in his chair at the market. 'That's the penetrating kind of question I'd ask if I came upon fine specimens like this.' With his riding crop he pointed casually at the blacks standing in the pens.
'No doubt they've proved intractable,' Steed suggested.
'There you're wrong!' Arbigost said with an ingratiating smile. 'Would I risk a trip across the bay in that...' With his toothpick he indicated the ship.
'What's your secret?'
'Money, Mr. Steed. Plain, ordinary money.'
'You'd get more in Louisiana.'
'And lose it on the cost of the trip. Mr. Steed, wherever I went in Baltimore they told me, "Steed of Devon, he needs slaves." You're well known, sir.'
Paul wanted to make the purchase, but when he inspected the men he could not accept the testimony standing before him. 'These are intractable men that you've smuggled in from Georgia.'
'Mr. Steed!' the wily dealer protested, and cleverly he evaded the matter of provenance, concentrating on the question of tractability, and it was what he finally said in pursuit of this strategy that inflamed Patamoke. 'Have I ever in my life sold you a recalcitrant nigger?' He paused dramatically to allow Steed time to acknowledge his exemplary behavior, then revealed an additional bit of evidence in his favor. 'Remember when I sold your Mr. Beasley that fine Xanga who answered to the name of Cudjo and was so good at machinery? Mr. Beasley had identical doubts about the Xanga, but I assured him then, as I assure you now, that Cudjo was broken... that he would prove to be a good slave.' He smiled, poked Paul on the wrist with his toothpick, and added, 'What I didn't tell Mr. Beasley then, because there was no need for him to know, was that it was this very Cudjo who led that famous mutiny aboard the _Ariel_. Remember?'
'The _Ariel?_ '
Mr. Arbigost nodded. 'Bloody affair. Entire ship taken.'
Steed sat heavily upon the block from which the slaves would be auctioned if he did not buy them at private treaty. 'That ship was built here. The dead captain was from this town.' It was incredible! Cudjo Cater had led that mutiny, and Paul Steed had set him free.
'But didn't he turn out to be an excellent slave?' Mr. Arbigost wheedled. 'And I promise you, Steed, these men will prove the same, because on my farm we have ways of training slaves.'
Paul wanted to run away from this insidious man in his prim, high-buttoned suit, but he needed slaves, and now Mr. Arbigost shifted his silver toothpick to the corner of his mouth and made a striking offer: 'We could haggle over individual men—up this, down that—but as gentlemen that would be unsavory. For a flat twenty-one hundred dollars each they're yours.'
After the slaves had been marked for shipment to the far plantations, Steed warned Arbigost that it would be prudent if nothing was said about Cudjo and the _Ariel_.
'I've already told the men handling the slaves.'
'Then we're in for trouble,' Steed said, and he decided not to return to Devon but to sleep in Patamoke. He was at the house adjoining the store when Lafe Turlock, accompanied by his five sons, grown men now, stormed up to the door, demanding to see him.
Lafe was an old man, bent of shoulder and slack of jaw, but he had the marsh fire. 'Steed, they tell me it was yore nigger Cudjo that took the _Ariel_.'
'So Mr. Arbigost reports.'
'We're gonna hang him. He killed my cousin Matt.'
'Why are you telling me?'
'Because we want you to come along. Hold back the constable.'
'I think Mr. Caveny will do his duty.'
'We think so, too, and we don't want no trouble.'
'Aren't you threatening to cause a good deal of trouble?'
'All we're gonna do is hang a nigger. We ain't gonna rile up the community.'
'I should think that would rile the community considerably.'
'Not when we tell 'em what he done.'
Paul retreated into his house and asked the Turlocks to join him. Going into the kitchen, he whispered to his serving girl to run and tell Mr. Paxmore and Cudjo Cater what was afoot. Then he returned to talk with the Turlocks. He accomplished nothing. Lafe insisted that he would personally tie the rope about Cudjo's neck, and the boys urged him on.
So the meeting broke up, with Steed refusing to join the lynching party. When he last saw the gang of six they were fanning out across the community to assemble their mob.
Paul thought for some minutes as to what he must do, and in the end decided to seek Mr. Caveny. The constable had been alerted to the Turlock uprising and instantly recognized that here was the first test of his power in this town. To him the _Ariel_ was merely another ship, the mutiny a trivial incident far less significant than the starvation he had seen in Ireland. He calculated that most of the citizens of Patamoke would feel the same way and that he would be allowed a relatively free hand in dealing with this rambunctious family.
But when Mr. Steed arrived, obviously frightened, the planter's anxiety infected the constable. Then Mr. Paxmore walked in, tall and quiet. 'We want no riots,' he said. 'Mr. Caveny, is thee prepared to defuse this mob?'
'It's only six,' Caveny said.
'There will be more,' Paxmore said. 'We'd better go out to Frog's Neck.'
So the three men walked slowly and without visible agitation through the streets from the jail to the marshy point, and there they found that all the blacks had fled except Eden and Cudjo Cater.
'We stayin',' Eden said as the three white men approached.
'Thee must show no weapons,' Mr. Paxmore warned.
'We stayin',' the black woman said, and it appeared from her manner that she was well armed. Cudjo said nothing, just stood by the door of his cabin.
'Were you aboard the _Ariel_?' Steed asked.
'I be.'
'Oh, my God!' Steed shook his head. This was going to be a bad night.
Then the Turlocks appeared, and it seemed as if half the town sided with this wild family. But as they came nearer, Paul saw something which enraged him even more. Marching in front, side by side with Lafe Turlock, was Mr. Arbigost, who obviously felt that the disciplining of blacks anywhere, anytime, was his concern.
'Arbigost!' Steed shouted. 'What in hell...'
'We want that nigger,' Lafe roared, but Mr. Steed ignored him. 'Arbigost! What are you doing with these men?'
And now the heat of the evening was diverted from Turlock to the stranger in the white suit, and a brief, impassioned dialogue took place, during which tempers had a chance to subside.
'Gentlemen!' Mr. Caveny said when the first exchange ended. 'Sure, it would be a shame to spoil a summer's evenin' like this. I'm proposin' we all go back to town and have free drinks on Mr. Steed.'
'I want that nigger.'
'Lafe,' Mr. Steed said. 'That was a long time ago. Cudjo has proved himself—'
'I'm gonna hang that nigger, what he done to my cousin Matt.'
It was the utterance of this great name that terminated the riot, for when it was spoken, all turned to stare at Paul Steed, and many in the crowd recalled his shame. Captain Matt, that big, brawling redhead who had once tossed Steed into the harbor.
Steed, well able to guess what the would-be rioters were thinking, took Lafe by the arm, turned him around and said quietly, 'Why don't we all go to the store for a drink?'
When the mob receded, Eden went back into the cabin, took the knife from her bosom, the revolver from her dress, and with no display of emotion, placed them on the table. When Cudjo saw them he was terrified by what might have happened, and he sought to sweep them away, but Eden covered them with her arms.
It was in March 1857, when it seemed to everyone in America that the compromise worked out by Henry Clay and Daniel Webster before they died was going to save the nation—everyone, that is, except the bull-headed abolitionists, who would accept nothing less than the shattering of the Union—that Chief Justice Roger Brooke Taney, a Maryland man, read a decision in the Supreme Court which destroyed the shaky edifice behind which the conciliators had been working. In simple, incontrovertible terms the learned Chief Justice, one of the strongest men ever to serve on the court, spelled out the future.
The case, like all those which make significant law, was muddled. This slave Scott, had been born in a slave state, carried into a free one, then carried into a territory where slavery was prohibited, back into a state where it was permitted, and finally into Massachusetts, where slaves were automatically free. What was his status? The court could logically have decided almost anything.
Chief Justice Taney and his associates found an easy, if evasive, escape; they announced that since Dred Scott was black, he was not a citizen of the United States and had no right to defend himself in a federal court. His status reverted to what it had been three decades earlier. He was born a slave and must remain so through life.
If Taney had let the matter drop there, he would merely have deprived one Negro of his freedom, but the old fire-eater had been at the heart of political strife all his eighty years, and it was against his character to hide. He decided to grapple with the most explosive issue of his age. He would settle once and for all this pernicious problem of slavery. Backed by Justices who themselves owned slaves, as his family always had, the old man threw into his basic decision a group of obiter dicta which startled the nation: no arm of government anywhere within the United States could deprive an owner of his lawful property; the Missouri Compromise was void; Congress could not prevent slavery in the territories; and individual states were powerless to set black men free.
When the decision reached the Choptank the plantation owners were delighted; all that they had ever wanted from the federal government they now had, and it seemed to men like Paul Steed that divisive argument must cease. At the Steed stores throughout the region he posted copies of the decision and told his overseers, 'Now we can fight the runaway problem with a real weapon. Explain to your slaves that even if they do happen to escape for a few days, they must eventually be returned. The problem is settled for all time and we can go forward with our work.'
The middle group of citizens was pleased with the decision; it would end strife. The Irish were unconcerned. And freed Negroes, such as Eden and Cudjo Cater, realized that they must walk very carefully indeed, for at any moment someone might claim them as slaves, produce spurious documents in court and whisk them away to some cotton plantation. Eden checked her manumission papers, but she checked her guns and knives more carefully.
It was the Paxmores who were shattered by this extraordinary decision, and when they received a copy they came upon that amazing passage in which Chief Justice Taney wrote:
Slaves have for more than a century been regarded as beings of an inferior order, so far inferior that they had no rights which the white man was bound to respect.
When George Paxmore heard these awful words, he bowed his white head and could think of no way to contradict them. Twice he started to speak, but it was useless. If the highest court in the nation judged that a black man possessed no rights which a white man had to respect, there was no hope for this country. It must subside into barbarism.
Rachel Starbuck Paxmore led the fight against the Dred Scott Decision. Wherever she went she preached against its inhumanity. She rose in meeting and harangued those Quakers who had assumed that with the earlier compromise, some kind of peace had been attained. She argued with customers in Steed's store. She wrote letters. She quoted Taney's pernicious words as proof that the Union must soon be dissolved—'We cannot abide such theories. Men and women of good conscience must rise up and shatter them.'
And the sad aspect of her crusade was that Chief Justice Taney never said those words. He merely quoted them as opinions of a former generation, but when this correction was pointed out to Rachel, she snorted: 'He may not have said them, but he wrote his decision in consonance with them.'
In October of that year she found her chance to rebut the Dred Scott Decision. She was seated at home, on Peace Cliff, with her husband and the older Paxmores. They had been reading together some writings of Horace Greeley, from New York, and George Paxmore was finding cause for hope in his reports. 'Greeley thinks there's a subsidence of passion.' And Elizabeth said quietly, 'I should certainly hope so.'
Rachel was about to turn down the lamps and lead the group to bed when a knock came at the door. Without speaking, she returned the lamp she was carrying to its table, carefully turned up the wick, then told the others, 'We have work to do.'
When she boldly opened the door, she found such work as the Paxmores had never faced before. There stood nine huge black men, looming in the darkness. 'We is from Cline's,' the spokesman said, and when Elizabeth saw his lacerated and bleeding back she gave a weak cry and fainted.
'I di'n mean to scare her,' the wounded black started to say, but Rachel took him by the arm and motioned him into the house. With her elbow she indicated that George should tend his prostrate wife; then she led the other eight massive slaves into the kitchen. They filled the room and looked with dismay at the fallen woman; she was old and frail, but when she was revived she steadied herself at the table and with a weak hand turned the first black around so that she could inspect his scarred back.
'Dear God,' she whispered. 'We must get these men to freedom.' All her life she had been opposed to abetting runaways; her religious principles told her that slavery could be eradicated by slow persuasion. She had been willing to teach and encourage and help; now, at her first sight of a truly beaten slave, she moved to new understandings.
'We not stand no more,' the lead-slave said.
'Thee didn't kill him?' George asked cautiously.
'No matter,' Elizabeth said sharply, and with that, she began moving about the kitchen, preparing food. As the slaves gorged themselves, she hurried upstairs to gather together the clothes Rachel had been collecting for such an emergency.
'We goin' north,' one of the slaves said.
'Of course you are,' Rachel said, 'but how?' Nine big men! How could they slip past the guards who prowled the highways?
It was Bartley who came up with the plan, and he did so with such quiet authority that he convinced everyone it would work. 'Clearly, we can't sneak so many past the watchers. And we can't risk holding them here and slipping them through one at a time. So what we'll do is this. Rachel, get thy brother Comly and hurry to Philadelphia to arrange for our arrival. George, slip into town and have Parrish print up an announcement for an auction. Patamoke slave market. Describe these nine men and Eden Cater.'
'Why Eden?' his father asked.
'Because I'm going to drive these men north as my property. Openly. Purchased at public auction, as the bill of sale will say. I'm taking them to my plantation on the Sassafras, and if a woman is moving with us, it will look more natural.'
'Thee will have to leave tonight,' Rachel warned. 'Cline will be after thee.'
'Mr. Cline, he think we cross de bay,' the lead-slave said. 'Cline follow our tracks, he in Virginia.'
This false lead gave Bartley's stratagem a frail chance. Before dawn Rachel was on her way to the Starbucks' and George was sailing to Patamoke to get the printing done. Bartley said that he would bed the slaves down in the woods behind the house, but his mother would not allow him to remove the wounded man before she had poulticed his bleeding back. The big man lay on the floor and she knelt to cleanse the wounds, a white-haired old lady of seventy-three morally outraged by the fundamental savagery of a system she had thought she understood.
In Patamoke her husband found the Quaker printer John Parrish and confided the family's plan. Working feverishly, Parrish set type for a public auction presumed to have been held in this town four days ago. He used a woodcut of a male slave resting on a hoe. The seller was T.T. Arbigost of Georgia, and among the slaves was an older female answering to the name of Bessie, and she was described in some detail.
While this handbill was being printed, and a bill of sale filled out, George moved quietly to the Cater cabin, knocked politely and waited for Cudjo to open the door a crack. 'Cline's slaves have run away.'
Cudjo said nothing, but the powerful muscles in his neck tightened. He listened as Paxmore explained his son's proposal, then said enthusiastically, 'Eden come home tonight, we both go.'
'No. Bartley fears that would be too conspicuous. Someone would notice thy absence. Thee must be here when Cline comes through, two or three days from now.'
Again Cudjo said nothing, but Paxmore could see his hands clenching. 'Dear friend, thee must not touch Mr. Cline. Our task is to get his slaves to Pennsylvania.'
'You want Eden come to Peace Cliff?'
'Immediately.'
'She be there. Them slaves, they reach Pennsylvania.'
So the expedition was readied. Rachel was on her way to Philadelphia. Elizabeth turned over the money she had been saving for garden seeds, and Bartley stayed with the slaves, coaching them as to how they must repeat 'Yassah' to anyone who questioned them. Then Eden arrived.
She had sailed her own skiff down the river, dressed like the maid in the broadside. She was tense, and eager to be on the way; when she looked into the faces of the escapees she assured them, 'We gonna reach Pennsylvania,' but her manner was so aggressive that Bartley would not accept her as a member of his group until Elizabeth had searched her, taking away the pistol from her dress and the knife strapped to her leg.
'There must be no violence,' Bartley warned the slaves. 'We shall be protected by the grace of God.' But Elizabeth, standing at the door to the kitchen as the slaves filed past, told each one, 'Don't let them capture thee.'
The chain of slaves, bound together by a lust for freedom, marched silently to the river, where Bartley had anchored a large ketch, and in this they sailed quietly up the Choptank, keeping to shore farthest from Patamoke. When they were well upstream he beached the ketch and told the men, 'Now starts the dangerous part.'
It was a perilous journey, one white man, nine black, and one slave woman. They walked single file, hoping to avoid towns and inquiries. Toward noon on the first day, when they were safely past Easton, they were stopped by a farmer who asked where they were headed, and Bartley replied, 'Sassafras,' and the farmer said, 'I hope you got some niggers there you can trust,' and Bartley said, 'Tom and Nero's real good hands.'
They slept in fields, but as the peninsula narrowed they could not avoid towns, so after the most minute coaching, Bartley led his file right down the middle of a community, turning now and then to inspect his blacks as if he owned them.
'Where you headin'?' a law officer asked.
Since they were now north of the Sassafras, Bartley answered, 'Head of Elk. Got a lot of plowin' to do.'
The officer studied the slaves and asked, 'You got papers for these niggers?'
'Sure have,' and while the blacks stood at rigid attention, trying not to show their fear, Bartley produced the documents John Parrish had forged.
'Good-lookin' wench,' the officer said.
'She can cook, too,' Bartley said.
'We see a lot of runaways up here. Keep your eyes peeled with this lot.' Gratuitously he gave the last slave in line a vicious whack with his club, and for a moment Bartley feared the whole deception might fall apart, but the slave grabbed a lock of hair at his forehead, bowed several times and mumbled, 'Yassah. Yassah.'
Now came the nerve-racking part. They were north of Head of Elk, not far from the Pennsylvania border, but it was precisely here that mercenary slave-trackers patrolled the roads, expecting to catch fugitives grown careless in that last burst for freedom, and as Bartley had anticipated, some of the men wanted to break away, each making the final attempt on his own.
He argued against this, warning the slaves that if they dispersed, they would lose the advantage of all he had done. To his surprise, his most ardent supporter was Eden, who told the men, 'Doan' be stupid. You is five miles from freedom. Keep brave.'
But one slave named Pandy refused to share the corporate risk. He predicted that so large a group would be spotted. He would make the last push by himself, and off he went.
Bartley was uncertain what he would do if challenged in these last few miles, and he was therefore dismayed when he saw coming at him on horses three men who were obviously slave-trackers. 'What you doin' with all them slaves?' the leader demanded.
'Takin' them to my place at Risin' Sun.'
'Why you this far east?'
'Bought 'em in Patamoke. Much cheaper than Baltimore.'
'That's right,' one of the men said.
'You got any papers provin' they're yourn?'
'All in order,' Bartley said. He was trembling, for he knew that these eight slaves did not intend being taken prisoner, and he feared Eden's violent action if any attempt were made. He scuffed dirt with his toe as the men read the sale documents, feigning indifference. _God, would this moment never pass?_
'They don't look like Georgia niggers to me. They look like ordinary Maryland field hands.'
'They been broken,' Bartley said, and he raised the shirt of the slave who had been most recently beaten. The slave-trackers, seeing the welts, realized that here was a difficult nigger. The leader, with a powerful kick of his boot, knocked the slave into the dust, while the other two riders showed signs of wanting to snatch the whole file. If the fallen slavé had made the slightest response to the kick, there would have been a general battle, with lives lost, but the fallen man groveled there, and the riders passed on.
When they were gone, Bartley cried, 'As fast as possible. North to the line.' And they had made much progress when to the rear they heard the clatter of hoofs; the trackers were bearing down upon them.
'We knowed you was escapin'!' they shouted as they reached the last slave in line.
Now it was Eden who took command. With a wild leap she threw herself upon the lead rider, knocking him to the ground. He fell in an awkward position, which allowed her to grab a stone and drop it on his head. When she looked up, she saw that the Cline slaves had pulled the other two riders off their horses, too, and before Bartley could intervene, the three men were trussed.
'Take their horses,' Eden said, but Bartley warned the slaves most passionately that if they moved the horses into Pennsylvania, they would be hanged.
'Stealing horses is a terrible crime,' he said, and Eden began to laugh, but Bartley continued, 'They will never let you go. Men will track you to France to punish a horse thief.'
'Take 'em in the woods,' Eden told the slaves, and the three trackers were hauled away. Eden would not allow Bartley to follow, and he waited in agony until the men reappeared. He would not, however, allow the horses to be taken.
'Turn them loose,' he insisted, and when this was done, everyone started running toward the border, but they were stopped by a harrowing sight. Toward them came two slave-trackers lashing a black man with a rope around his neck and his hands tied behind his back. It was Pandy, whom Mr. Cline had been abusing for seven years. He had been within a mile of freedom when he stumbled into just the kind of trap Bartley and Eden had foreseen.
Now he passed his mates, his eyes down. He had betrayed himself, but he would not betray them. 'What you got there?' Bartley asked casually.
'Goddamn runaway. Means fifty bucks apiece for us.'
'He looks a mean one.'
'Where you headin'?'
'Risin' Sun.'
'Not too far, but watch them niggers. They do like to run.'
'I got me two guards,' Bartley said.
'Guards!' The men laughed. 'You cain't trust no nigger.'
They passed on, back to the farm of Herman Cline.
For the last mile none of the slaves spoke, and Bartley saw that most had tears in their eyes, but when they were well into Pennsylvania one of the men began to sing:
'Sweet Jesus, guard him.
Sweet Jesus, save our brother.
Sweet Jesus, let us die in sleep.
Sweet Jesus, take us home.'
In Philadelphia the abolitionists who spent their time and money rescuing slaves were agog. The telegraph from authorities in Wilmington had brought news of a criminal escape: a white man and a black woman had led eight male slaves to freedom by overpowering three slave-catchers near the Pennsylvania border and tying them upside down from a large oak tree, where they were not found until their horses returned to the stable, alerting search parties. Everyone in the North was awaiting disclosure of who the escapees were.
Bartley had foreseen just such a commotion, and as soon as he set the eight men on the path to Kennett Square, where Quakers would be waiting to absorb them into the established system, he and Eden crept west to the little village of Nottingham. There they threw themselves upon the trustworthiness of a Quaker family named Hicks, whom they had to take into their confidence—'It would be fatal if thee noised abroad how we forged the documents. Mrs. Cater and I need new clothes, new documents and enough money to get us both home through Baltimore.' Papers were forged and tickets purchased for a gentleman returning to Richmond with his wife's maid. And the two conspirators went south.
Now Rachel and her brother took over. They were a resolute pair, and when the slaves arrived in Philadelphia they quickly dispersed them to various hiding places so that no one could deduce that these were the men who had so humiliated the trackers. Rachel, always anticipating trouble, floated one story that the eight slaves had reached Lancaster and another that they were already in New York, where she had arranged for abolitionists to hold a supposed party at which the eight were to be exhibited.
But she had underestimated the enemy, for as she walked down Market Street after having made arrangements to ship three of the men to Boston, she saw to her horror that Lafe Turlock and Herman Cline were coming toward her, with two policemen in tow. Turning quickly, she pressed herself against a shop window and watched as they passed from sight. That night she read in the paper their advertisement:
RUNAWAY
Eight Prime Slaves Four Marked with Scars Back and Face
One hundred dollars reward for every one returned to Herman Cline of Little Choptank, Maryland, who can be reached at Mrs. Demson's Boarding House on Arch Street.
Under the law, every citizen of Pennsylvania was obligated to assist Herman Cline in recovering his slaves. Some informant had alerted him to the fact that despite the false leads spread by Rachel, the fugitives had reached Philadelphia and were in hiding there. Federal marshals were already searching rooming houses, and a pro-slavery group of southerners residing in the city had augmented the reward being offered by Cline. It could only be a matter of days before the runaways were apprehended, and men were already speaking of the fact that they must first be returned to northern Maryland for punishment due them for having strung up the trackers.
But the abolitionists were not powerless, especially with Rachel Paxmore goading them on. What they did was to find a Quaker printer not only willing but positively eager to help them. He printed large handbills, four hundred of them, proclaiming the arrival in Philadelphia of the notorious slavers, Lafe Turlock—with a graphic description—and Herman Cline, one of the cruelest masters in the state of Maryland. The poster showed woodblock caricatures of the odious pair and ended with this admonition:
Every citizen is warned to be on watch for these monsters, these body-snatchers. Wherever they go on the street, shout warnings of their passage. Wherever they stop to eat, advise everyone within hearing of their identity. Mark where they sleep and let us know. And if they even approach a black citizen, shout and call for help, because these men will snatch freed Negroes if they cannot find their former slaves.
These handbills were distributed to every inn, every dining place, tacked onto poles and pasted on storefronts. Every leader of the abolitionist movement received four copies, which were to be displayed in prominent places.
Rachel and her brother Comly later told their mother what had happened in the ensuing days. 'We knew where they slept, at Mrs. Demson's, so when they appeared on the street, we had packs of young people standing there, who surrounded them, shouting, "Slavers! Slavers!" Wherever they stopped to eat, we stood near their table and stared at them. If they wanted an ale, they could have one only if every person at the inn knew who they were, and many men would spit on the floor and refuse to drink while they were in the place. We made them anathema.'
Lafe Turlock and Herman Cline! They withstood the torments for three days, then quit the city. They thought at first of trying to find their slaves in New York, but one of the abolitionists shouted at them while they were dining, 'Don't think you can escape us! We've warned the committees in Lancaster and New York.'
So in the end they had to take passage back to Baltimore. As their boat pulled away from the city, Cline looked at the skyline and almost wept. 'Just think, Lafe! I work my heart out in those swamps. I get a decent start in life. And then my property runs away. Nine prime slaves. More than twenty thousand dollars. My goddamn niggers are hidin' in that city, somewheres.'
Lafe said, 'It was them signs. They riled the people against us.'
'A man's whole savings wiped out. Damn, it seems unfair.'
But the reward for the eight slaves still stood, and Rachel was aware that numerous adventurers lusted for this money. 'What can we do?' she asked members of the Philadelphia rescue committee.
'There is only one sure thing,' a wise old Quaker gentleman assured her. 'Thee must get them to Canada.'
'But I thought Boston...'
'They are not safe even there. A black man can find safety nowhere in this country. He must go to Canada.'
So Rachel Paxmore and her brother arranged to spirit the eight slaves out of the country. It took time and money and courage. An improvised path had evolved without conscious direction: 'There's a doctor in Doylestown, and then you go to Scranton, and beyond New York the safe spot is the home of Frederick Douglass in Rochester.'
Rachel stayed with the men all the way to the Canadian border, and only when they were safely across did she permit the tension which had gripped her for three weeks to show itself. She sat on a fallen tree and wept, her shoulders quivering with the anguish that assailed her. 'Sister,' said Comly as he sat on the log beside her, 'it's ended. They're safe.'
But she said, 'How despicable. That men in the United States who seek freedom must flee to Canada to find it.'
The flight of nine slaves from Herman Cline's farm on the Little Choptank so angered the other owners in the region that they convened at Devon Island to consider what steps they might take to prevent similar losses of their capital.
'Cline lost twenty thousand dollars in one night,' a planter from St. Michaels said. 'A repetition could wipe us little fellows out.'
'Has any serious thought been given to driving the Paxmores from this territory?' asked a burly man who had been forced to chase two of his slaves all the way to the Pennsylvania border before retrieving them. 'Things have been a lot better along the Miles River since David Baker...' He left it there, not wanting openly to suggest that the Paxmores be gunned down.
'What we might do,' one of the the Refuge Steeds suggested, 'is use religion. Remind the slaves of their moral obligations to us.'
This proposal met with general approbation, and many of the planters turned to Paul Steed. One asked, 'Paul, couldn't you give a series of sermons? I'd sure love to have you come to my place and talk to my hands.'
Others seconded this suggestion, but Steed demurred. 'I don't speak well in public. The audience stares at my crooked neck and doesn't listen to what I say.'
'Some truth to that,' the man from St. Michaels agreed. 'But the idea of church services is still good.'
And then someone remembered a tall, thin, fire-eating Methodist-Protestant minister from across the bay; he'd had outstanding success with revivals and delivered what was regarded as 'the best nigger sermon in the business.'
'Are you thinking of Reverend Buford?' Paul asked, and when the planters said that was the man, Paul said, 'I know him. He stayed with us here at Devon.'
'He's not Catholic,' a planter said.
'I wanted to argue religion with him. He's powerful.'
It was agreed that two Choptank men would cross the bay to enlist the aid of Reverend Buford, and when they saw him at the little town of Hopewell on the James River they were reassured that he was the man they wanted. Tall, funereal, with a mop of black hair and a stupendous Adam's apple that punctuated his simplest remarks, making them seem more vivid than they were, he was, as they had remembered, a fiery man. 'What we want,' they told him, 'is your best nigger sermon.'
He was reluctant to leave Virginia, where he found much work to do, but when he heard that the invitation came from Paul Steed, he said with some eagerness, 'I'll come. Most intelligent Catholic I ever met.'
'Well, he needs you, and so do we all!'
'Nigger trouble?'
'Nine of Herman Cline's prime hands run off. Eight was traced to Philadelphia.'
'They were recovered?'
'Nope. Abolitionists up there run him and Lafe Turlock out of town. Slaves vanished into thin air. Lost twenty thousand dollars in one night.'
'I've heard of Cline,' Buford said. 'Some of our people send their slaves to him, and I have no intention of crossing the bay to aid a monster. Probably deserved to lose his slaves, all of them.'
'Reverend, it isn't Cline we're worried about. It's us. Decent men like Paul Steed are in danger of losing their entire investments. We need help. Pacification.'
'We all need it,' Buford said with surprising anxiety. 'Who can tell where the passions of this day are going to lead? I pray every night for guidance.'
'And we pray for your guidance,' one of the planters said. 'Come over with us and help quieten things.'
'If you thought it would do any good, I'd be willing to give my _Theft of Self_ sermon.'
'That's the very one we want. I heard you give that at Somers Cove three years ago. Very powerful.'
Reverend Buford started delivering _Theft of Self_ at the smaller plantations east of Patamoke, intending to build expectations as he moved always closer to the main centers of population. The format was invariable. In the late afternoon, when the day's work was pretty well concluded, all slaves were assembled in some tree-lined open space. Buford insisted that every white person on the plantation be in attendance, seated in the shade and dressed in their Sunday clothes. He started his preaching from a rostrum, but as his enthusiasm grew, he moved about quite freely, using wild gestures and imploring tones.
His message was simple and effective. He did not dodge the issue that had brought him to the Eastern Shore:
'I know and you know that the other week nine slaves ran away from their master, trying to find what they called freedom in the cities of the North. I suppose there could even be some of you standing before me now who have had such thoughts. I confess that even I might have them, were I one of you. But what does God say about such behavior?'
With tremendous force he lined out the teaching of the Bible on slavery. God ordained it; Jesus approved of it; St. Paul said it was one of the gateways to heaven. He was especially strong when he reached the matter of punishment, for some slaves were beginning to ask why it was, if God was all-merciful, that He encouraged beatings? Like all preachers who gave nigger sermons, he lingered over Proverbs 29:19, which stated specifically that a slave 'will not be corrected by words, for though he understand he will not answer.'
And he developed the further thesis that when a master struck a slave, he was doing the work of God Himself: 'God directs the master to punish you with stripes when you do not obey.' He also spent much time on that curious passage at First Peter 2:18, beloved of southern preachers. This little book was one of the most trivial in the Bible, yet chance passages from it condemned a race.
'What does the Bible tell you? That you must obey your masters, and not only your good masters, but especially your bad ones, because when you submit to their punishment, you build up gold in heaven. And the Bible says, furthermore, that if you are punished unjustly when you have done no wrong, and I know this sometimes happens, causing great animosities, you must submit with a glad heart, because God sees and makes allowances for you in heaven. That is the law of the Bible.'
All their lives the slaves had heard about Proverbs and Peter, and now even though Reverend Buford glossed them with his special rhetoric, they grew restless. Some stared at the violent movement of his Adam's apple and whispered, 'He gonna choke hisse'f!' and others began to fidget. Buford knew how to handle this; he had two additional arrows in his quiver, and when he shot these at the slaves, they listened, for the first contained a definite threat:
'You look at Mr. Sanford sitting there and you think, "He has it easy!" But you don't know that Mr. Sanford has obligations at the bank, and he must gather up the money, a dollar at a time, working hard to do so, and pay that money to the banker, or he will lose this plantation. The banker will come down here and take it away and sell every one of you to Louisiana or Mississippi.'
He recited other heavy obligations of the white folk sitting in the shade; this one had examinations to pass at Princeton, that one had to care for the sick, and he, Reverend Buford, was obligated to the fine people who ran his church. The world was crammed with duties, and some of the lightest were those borne by slaves.
It was his second arrow that gave Buford his peculiar force in pacifying slaves, and it was from this that his famous sermon took its name:
'At dinner today Mr. Sanford told me that he had never had a finer bunch of slaves than you. "They work hard," he told me. "They mind the crops. They wouldn't steal a single one of my chickens." Yes, that's what Mr. Sanford told me. He said that you were the most honest slaves in Maryland, but then he added something which shocked me. He said that some of you had been thinking of running away. And what is running away, really? Tell me, what is it? It is theft of self. Yes, you steal yourself and take it away from the rightful owner, and God considers that a sin. In fact, it's a worse sin than stealing a chicken or a cow or a boat, because the value of what you have stolen is so much greater. Mr. Sanford owns you. You belong to him. You are his property, and if you run away, you are stealing yourself from him. And this is a terrible sin. If you commit this sin, you will roast in hell.'
At this point Reverend Buford liked to spend about fifteen minutes describing hell. It was filled primarily with black folk who had sinned against their masters; there was an occasional white man who had murdered his wife, but never anyone like Herman Cline, who had murdered two of his slaves. It was a horrendous place, much worse than any slave camp, and it could be avoided by one simple tactic: obedience. Then the preacher came to his peroration, and it became evident why he insisted upon the attendance of the white masters:
'Look at your master sitting there, this kind man surrounded by his good family. He spent long years working and saving and in the end he had enough money to buy you. So that you could live here along this beautiful river rather than in a swamp. Look at his beautiful wife, who comes out at night to your cabins to bring you medicine. And those fine children that you helped to bring up, so that you would have good masters in the years to come. These are the good people who own you. Now, do you want to injure them by stealing yourself, and hiding yourself up North where they cannot find you? Do you want to deprive Mr. Sanford of property he bought and paid for? Do you want to go against the word of God, the commands of Jesus Christ, and make those fine people lose their plantation?'
He preferred at this point for the owners to start weeping, for then some of the older slaves would weep, too, and this gave him an opportunity for a ringing conclusion, with the white folk in tears, the slaves shouting, 'Amen! Amen!' and all ending in a rededication to duty.
It was a fine thing to hear Reverend Buford speak; he delivered his _Theft of Self_ sermon at eight major plantations, ending at Devon Island, where Paul Steed entertained him in the big house prior to his performance.
'You've matured since we last met,' Steed said.
'You've become quite a manager,' Buford responded. 'Last time it was all books. This time all work.'
'What do you hear in Virginia?' Steed asked.
Buford was no fool. He circulated in the best circles and kept his ears open. 'We find ourselves resisting agitators from both ends.'
'What do you mean?'
'The abolitionists pressure us from the North to free our slaves, and the secessionists from South Carolina pressure us to leave the Union.'
'What will you do?'
'Virginia? We'll make up our own minds.'
'To do what?'
For the first time during his foray to the Eastern Shore, Reverend Buford was at a loss for words. He leaned back in his chair, looked out at the lovely gardens, and after a long hesitation, replied, 'If men like you and me can keep things calmed down just a little longer, we'll stabilize this agitation. We'll strike a balance between North and South. Then we can proceed in an orderly—'
'Slavery?' Steed broke in.
'In a hundred years it will fall of its own weight.'
'Have you read Hinton Helper?'
'Yes, and I've read your retort.'
'Which do you prefer?'
Again the gaunt reverend fell silent, finally mustering courage to say, 'Helper. We'll all be better off when slavery ends.'
'I have close to a million dollars tied up in my slaves.'
' _Tied up_ is the right phrase.'
'Then why do you continue to give your sermons?'
'Because we must all fight for time, Mr. Steed. We must keep things on an even balance, and believe me, having several million former slaves running free across the countryside will not maintain that balance.'
'Answer me directly. Are the Quakers right? Should I free my slaves now.'
'Absolutely not.'
'When?'
'In about forty years. Your son Mark seems a steady young man. He'll want to free them, of that I'm sure.'
'And my million dollars?'
'Have you ever really had it? I preach often at Janney's big plantation on the Rappahannock—'
'Some of my forebears were Janneys.'
'I think I heard that. Well, they're supposed to have a million dollars, too. And they have difficulty finding a few coins to pay me. They're rich, but they're poor. And history has a way, from time to time, of shaking the apple tree, and the weak fruit falls off and the owner sees that he never had very many apples to begin with. Not really.'
'Here you shall be paid,' Steed said, producing a handfull of bills. 'I find talking with you most refreshing. I can't understand how you can preach the way you do.'
'I'm an old man in an old tradition.'
'You're barely sixty!'
'I go back to a different century. And I dread the one that's coming.'
His sermon on Devon Island was by far the best of his tour, but it differed from the others because Paul and Susan Steed consented to sit in the shade only if he promised not to refer to them in any way. He therefore had to renounce his heroics and attend to his logic, and he made a stirring case for slavery as an orderly method of fulfilling God's intentions. At Steed's request he also stressed the duties of the master to the servant, quoting biblical verses he usually overlooked, but his peroration had the same fire as before, and when he ended, his listeners were in tears and some were shouting, and as he left the podium many blacks clustered around to tell him that he certainly knew how to preach. But as he moved toward the wharf, where a boat waited to deliver him to Virginia, he was accosted by two white people whom he had not noticed during his sermon. Somehow they had slipped into the edges of the crowd.
'I'm Bartley Paxmore,' the man said, extending his hand. 'This is my wife Rachel.'
'I've heard of you two,' Buford said guardedly.
'How could thee distort the word of God so callously?' Bartley asked.
'Good friends,' Buford said without losing his temper, 'we all need time, you as well as I. Are you prepared to bring down the holocaust?'
'I would be ashamed to delay it on thy terms,' Rachel said.
'Then it will not be delayed,' Buford said. 'You'll see to that.' And he was so eager to escape the tangled passions of the Eastern Shore that he actually ran to his boat and jumped in.
When Elizabeth Paxmore, in her sickbed, heard Bartley's report of Reverend Buford's _Theft of Self_ , she asked for her Bible and spent a long time leafing through it, sidetracked constantly by coming upon some passage she had memorized in her youth.
At last she cried, loud enough for everyone in the room to hear, 'I've found it!' And when her family gathered, even the grandchildren, who would remember this event well into the next century, she asked, 'Why do they persist in censoring the one verse in the Bible that seems most relevant?' And she read from Deuteronomy 23:15:
'Thou shalt not deliver unto his master the servant which is escaped from his master unto thee:... thou shalt not oppress him.'
She said that she wished her family to continue abetting the runaways, even if it took them away from Peace Cliff during what all knew was her last illness. 'I will be able to fend,' she assured them.
In 1859 two contradictory events provoked Paul Steed into sitting down and evaluating the economic base on which the Devon plantations rested. The first was the excitement aroused throughout America by the forceful book of a North Carolinian, Hinton Helper, who had the temerity to title it _The Impending Crisis_ , as if slavery were in desperate trouble. In this uncompromising work Helper, a southerner with sound credentials, argued that the South must always suffer in competition with the North if it persisted in using slave rather than free labor. He marshaled statistics tending to prove that plantation owners would gain if they freed all their slaves, then hired the men back.
In Maryland the book caused a mighty stir, for these were the years men were choosing sides, and northern propagandists cited Helper to prove their claim that border states would be wise to stay with the Union. Legislation was passed making it a crime to circulate either Helper or _Uncle Tom's Cabin_ , and when the freed black who lived next to Cudjo Cater was caught reading a copy of the latter, he was sentenced to ten years in jail.
Many southerners wrote to Steed, reminding him that since his _Letters_ had made him a champion of the slaveowners, he was obligated to rebut Helper; the petitioners argued: 'We know that Helper has used erroneous facts to bolster his fallacious conclusions, and it's your job to set the record straight.'
He would have preferred to avoid the fight, but a second event intervened, and this forced him to do precisely what his correspondents wanted: undertake to weigh dispassionately the pros and cons of the slave system. What happened was: Southern agriculture had suffered badly in the prolonged depression of the 1840s, and many plantations had neared collapse; it was this period that provided Helper with his statistics, and they certainly did prove that slavery was a burden; but starting in 1851 a veritable boom had developed, and in years like 1854 and 1856, southern producers of tobacco, cotton, sugar, rice and indigo reaped fortunes.
Now the value of slaves increased; when Paul found it advisable to rent a few from neighbors, he discovered to his amazement that he must pay up to one dollar a day for their services, and provide food, clothing and medical supplies as well. During harvest the price jumped to a dollar-fifty, and he began to wonder whether returns from his crop warranted such outgo:
So I retired to my study and with all available figures before me tried soberly to calculate what the experience of the Steed plantations had been in bad years as well as good. I owned, at the beginning of 1857, a total of 914 slaves, distributed by age, sex and worth as follows:
Any slaveowner will quickly see that my figures are conservative, and I have kept them so on purpose. In this analysis I wish to offer the lowest possible value for my slaves and highest possible maintenance costs, for if under such circumstances they still produce a profit for the plantations, then slavery will have been demonstrated to be economically feasible. Therefore I should like to append a few notes to the above table:
_Infants_. Obviously they are of considerable value, and to quote them as zero is ridiculous, but infants die, they become crippled, they prove themselves useless in other ways, so it is prudent to carry them on the plantation books at no proven value.
_Children_. Healthy children are bringing much higher prices these past few years than shown, especially those in the later ages. Were I so inclined, I could sell the Steed children south at prices considerably in advance of these, but at Steed's we do not sell off our children.
_Prime_. Figures at Patamoke sales have been consistently higher than these, as proved by the rental prices in the past few years. If an owner in Alabama can rent out a prime hand for up to $400 a year, and if the slave has forty good years, his actual value could be astronomical.
_Older_. These figures may be high. I could not sell our older slaves south for such prices, because they would not last long in the rice and sugar fields, but for what one might call domesticated service in a city like Baltimore, they could fetch even higher prices than I show.
_Ancients_. Every slaveowner will remember older Negroes who served handsomely into their eighties. Our plantation has a doorman who answers to the name of Tiberius who is one of the adornments of the island. Departing guests invariably praise him for his courtly style, and when visitors return to their homes their letters usually include some reference to Tiberius. If slaves have been well treated in their prime, they provide years of appreciated service in their seventies, but on the auction block they would bring nothing, so I list them at that.
_Artisans_. I do not include in my analysis any classification for the highly skilled mechanics who can contribute so much to the successful operation of a plantation. At Steeds we have perhaps two dozen men who would bring more than $3,500 each if offered for sale, and three or four who would fetch twice that. The plantation manager is slothful if he does not ensure the constant development of such hands within his slave force, for to purchase them on the open market is expensive when not impossible.
So the value of the Steed slaves is over nine hundred thousand dollars, using the most conservative figures, and something like one and a quarter million with top evaluations. But what does this figure really mean? Could I go out tomorrow and realize nine hundred thousand dollars from the sale of my slaves? Certainly not. To place so many on the auction block at Patamoke would destroy all values; what I really have in my slaves is not a million dollars, but the opportunity to earn from their labor a return of about thirteen percent per year.
Warfare uses a concept of value which covers this situation, _the fleet in being_. Such a fleet is not actually at sea, and it is not fully armed or manned, and no one knows its exact condition, but in all his planning the enemy must take it into account, because the ships do exist and they might at any time coalesce into a real fleet. As they stand scattered and wounded they are not a fleet, but they are a fleet in being. My 914 slaves are wealth in being, and it often occurs to me that they own me rather than that I own them, for as I have shown, I cannot sell them. Indeed, it is possible that the Steed family will never realize the nine hundred thousand dollars existing in these slaves; all we can do is work them well and earn a good yearly profit from that work. Thirteen percent of nine hundred thousand dollars is a yearly income of $117,000. Now I confess that rarely do we accomplish that goal, but we do well.
He then went on to cite his expenses—about $122 a year per slave, for he fed and clothed better than average—the loss through accidents and many other factors. In the end he proved that by the most careful husbandry, which included giving his slaves at least as much attention as he gave his hogs, it was possible to utilize them more profitably than hired labor. He refuted each of Hinton Helper's main arguments, and added a clincher:
I would concede to Mr. Helper that if a plantation owner were going to be lazy, or indifferent, or cruel to his slaves, or inattentive to every small and irritating item of management, he might do better hiring his help rather than owning it. But the true southern gentleman accepts not only the possibility of making a just profit but also the obligation to create on his plantation a harmonious style of life, in which each man and woman has duties to perform and rewards to enjoy. He likes to have his slaves living near him, to observe their families growing and to share in their recreations. He takes pride in the fact that they take pride in whom they work for; often he hears his slaves boast to Negroes from other plantations, 'This is the best place to work.' I direct my plantation to seek that approval, and I produce a good profit for everyone while doing so.
Without reservation, I would throw open the Steed plantations for comparison with the labor-mills at the north. My slaves live freely in the open air, eat good food, are warm in winter, and are cared for by my doctors. In every respect their lot is superior to that of the so-called free labor at the north, which rises before daylight, works in horrible conditions, and goes home after sunset to a foul bed. When unprejudiced men compare the two systems, they must conclude that ours is better.
By May of 1860 the United States was in such confusion that European nations began to speculate on when a war would start and which side they ought to back. Both London and Paris received ominous reports from their envoys, the French ambassador having written:
The presidential election this autumn cannot escape chaos. There may be as many as five contending parties, for the Democrats are in pitiful disarray and will not be able to agree on any one man. Expect them to present two candidates, one North, one South and to lose the election thereby. The Whigs have become the Constitutional Unionists and have no possibility of winning. But the Republicans are also split and may also have to offer two candidates, so that 1860 may well go down in history as the year in which nobody won.
Because of a constellation of contradictory reasons, most European nations sided with the South and actively hoped it would win. England perceived the northern states as being the real inheritors of the original colonies, and any animosities held over from 1776 and 1812 were vented on them. Also, British industrialists relied heavily on southern cotton, and goaded their government into openly supporting these states. Austria backed the South because it was viewed as being the home of gentlemen and fine horses. And France was strongly pro-southern because this region was civilized, whereas the North was not. Russia and Germany vaguely wanted to teach the upstart nation a lesson.
When Europe decided that war was inevitable, it became necessary to form some estimate of the South's chances of winning, and in late May the French government dispatched one of its lesser naval vessels on a casual tour of seven southern ports, chosen rather skillfully to reveal a wide scattering of opinion. Remembering the amiable relations France had once enjoyed with the Steed family, whose sons had attended St. Omer's, officers directed the little ship to end its voyage at the port of Patamoke, where the local gentry were to be entertained and queried.
The ship was the _Ariel_ , captured from the slaving fleet in 1832 and refashioned into a corvette of eight guns. She was an old ship now, but her timbers were so solid and her keel so unblemished that ambitious men liked to serve aboard her, and her captains, usually younger men, often found quick promotion. Her present commander, Captain de Villiers, did not know the Chesapeake, but his great-uncle had served under De Grasse; the name kept recurring in family records.
His arrival at Patamoke was not announced. Paul Steed was pushing his wife's chair on a promenade through the north garden when the _Ariel_ passed up Devon channel, and although both the Steeds had once been involved with this ship, they did not recognize her as she passed. The French Ministry of Marine had raised her bulwarks to accommodate the guns and had replaced the old hermaphrodite rigging with full brig dress.
But when the vessel approached Peace Cliff, old George Paxmore, who had built her, studied her with his glass, as he did all ships of size coming upriver, and cried to his son, 'Bartley, I do believe it's the _Ariel_. Look what they've done to her!' Bartley joined his father on the porch as the elegant ship sailed past; he had not been born when she was launched in 1814, but family conversation had acquainted him with her history, and he could now appreciate the compact design and the flow of wood and sail which had made the ship memorable.
It was not until the _Ariel_ had berthed that she created her real impact, for her name proclaimed her saga, and citizens from all parts of town streamed down to see this legendary vessel. A score of Turlocks came; their family had once owned the _Ariel_. And young men whose fathers had worked upon her came down to study her lines. As they watched, a very old man, crotchety and pushing people aside, moved to the edge of the wharf.
It was Lafe Turlock, seventy-seven years old and long retired from chasing runaways. He had sold his dogs and given his tracking boots to his grandson, but when he saw the _Ariel_ his eyes beamed. 'She was my cousin's ship. Finest sea captain this river ever produced. Killed by niggers I won't name.'
Through the long afternoon and into the evening the townspeople gaped at the beautiful little ship, recalling her escapades. They watched admiringly as young Captain de Villiers came ashore to pay his respects and dispatch a boat to convey his greetings to the Steeds. He sought the Paxmores, too, but the young men who ran the boatyard warned him, 'Steeds and Paxmores do not meet at social affairs,' and since this was precisely the kind of subtlety that Captain de Villiers wanted to investigate, he said graciously, 'Oh, I intended inviting your distinguished uncle to the ship, not to Devon.'
'He would be delighted to come,' the young man said.
'And you. And your wives.'
So it was agreed. On the first evening the ship's officers would be taken to Devon for a gala party with the leading planters. On the second evening the Paxmores and their friends would be entertained aboard the ship that old George had built. And on the final evening the Steeds and a few choice friends of similar persuasion would attend a farewell party aboard ship. By that time Captain de Villiers would have a sense of loyalties along the Choptank.
During each afternoon the ship was opened to the general public, and a host of Turlocks trooped over the deck that their cousin Matt had once ruled. They relived his exploits and listened, jaws agape, as Lafe pointed out where the gallant redhead had fallen—'The niggers was so dumb they didn't even cut off his silver fist.'
There was one family that did not board the ship. Cudjo Cater and his children stayed onshore, for as Eden explained, 'They sure ain't gonna want to see us on that ship.' Cudjo took his sons to a point along the shore from which they could see the spars, and as they stood there he told them of his adventures.
'You was tied down?' they asked.
'Chained an' bolted,' Cudjo said.
'You mean the roof only this high?'
'Lower. Put your hand lower.'
'Nobody cain't live that low.'
'We did,' Cudjo said.
'An' then you come up stairs.'
'On deck. Rutak, he lead the way. Don't never forget his name. Bravest man I ever knowed. You here on earth because of Rutak.'
The boys saw the people of Patamoke streaming aboard, and said wistfully, 'Wish we could go.'
'No way you go aboard that ship,' Cudjo said, and he took the boys to Eden. 'I want them in the house,' he said. 'Ever'body just keep quiet ain't nothin' gonna happen.'
The gala at Devon was one that the families would talk about for years. The French officers were resplendent in their gold uniforms and glistening swords; Paul and Susan were fastidious as hosts, conversing with the visitors in French, then translating for their Choptank guests. Susan was so exhilarated that she dispensed entirely with her wheelchair, walking proudly to her place at the head of the table, assisted only by her husband's arm. Old Tiberius, past eighty now, officiated with an elegance that few French major-domos could have equaled, and extravagant toasts were proposed to the grandeur of France.
'Maryland is of the South?' Captain de Villiers inquired.
'All who matter.'
'And if—well, if trouble comes?'
'Every man in this room... Ask my son Mark. He runs the plantations now.'
Mark Steed was forty-three, as handsome in his subdued way as the attractive captain was in his. 'We'd follow the lead of South Carolina, all of us.'
When the others nodded, De Villiers pointed out, 'Yes, but you're men of substance. What of the general populace?'
Paul Steed, with his traditional capacity to ignore the middle majority—those stubborn Methodists who had warned that they would abide with the Union—promised the captain, 'In all Patamoke, ninety-five percent would rush to fight with the South—for freedom.'
The talk was good, and one course followed another, passed on silver trays by slaves wearing white gloves. At one point Captain de Villiers asked, 'If I were obligated to advise my uncle in the Ministry, how could I explain the superior strength of the South?'
'The gallantry of its men,' Paul Steed replied. 'You are dining with gentlemen, Captain, and these men abide by their word. If they go to war against the North, it will be to the death.'
The captain raised his glass for the final toast: 'To the gentlemen of the South!'
His dinner with the Paxmores was less congenial. Once old George had explained how the ship had been built, and had taken the officers into the hold to show them the devices he had used to avoid cutting into the keel, there were no light topics to discuss. Captain de Villiers had the distinct impression that Quakers, whom he had never encountered before, paid little attention to light topics. Indeed, the evening dragged, until he cleared his throat and asked, 'If things deteriorate... I mean, if war comes—'
Rachel Starbuck Paxmore, now a prim and lovely woman in her forties, interrupted, 'We would support the North, unflinchingly.'
'But the generality?'
'I believe that more than half would join us. The good Methodists love our Union.'
'At Devon, I was told otherwise.'
'At Devon, dreams prevail. Do not be misled by dreams.'
'But the business leaders, even those without slaves, they agreed.'
'That's why a war would be so terrible. Dreams fighting against reality.'
'If war should break out, could the North force the South to remain in the Union?'
'We pray it will not come to that,' Bartley said.
'And so do we all,' De Villiers responded. He was relieved when the evening ended, but as the determined Paxmores walked to the gangway, and he saw the trimness with which they carried their austere bodies, he felt that he might have had good conversation with these people if he had chanced to strike the proper notes: But with men who don't drink and women who don't flirt, what can one do?
At the railing he asked, 'You'll be back tomorrow?' and Rachel replied, 'No, but it was gracious of thee to ask.'
The third night posed a difficult problem for the Steeds. It was one thing for them to invite the French officers to Devon for festivities; it was quite another to sail into Patamoke and publicly board the vessel which had once been so intricately intertwined with their lives. Susan's notorious love affair had culminated there; from the decks of the _Ariel_ , Paul had been tossed into the harbor with most of the populace of Patamoke looking on.
With the delicacy that had governed their lives since the accident on the widow's walk, Paul refrained from raising the question as to whether it would be proper to attend the final dinner, but Susan felt no such restraint. 'Paul, I'd love to see that ship again.'
'Would it be proper?'
'Paul!' Placing her hand gently on his arm, she laughed. 'We've been highly proper these last thirty-seven years and I doubt if there's a person in Patamoke... No,' she said defiantly, 'I don't give a damn if everyone in Patamoke remembers us and the _Ariel!_ I want to see that ship.'
So toward noon of the last day they packed their finest clothes in valises and boarded the Steed sloop, and yard by yard as the little boat moved down the creek and into the river, Paul could see his wife's animation increasing. She was like a schoolgirl slipping away to her first assignation. 'Paul! I'm sure it's right for us to be going. It was a ship that meant much to us, and I'm an old woman now and I desire to tie down the past.'
She was a finely tuned person, Paul thought, resilient, lively, a cherished companion. Their passage up the river was an epithalamium, a restatement of the abiding love that had marked the later years of their lives, and when the _Ariel_ became visible, each was able to view what had happened on it as an incident, important but by no means overwhelming.
The state dinner did not begin well. The wind died and mosquitoes attacked ferociously, but Captain de Villiers had come prepared. As soon as the planter guests were aboard, he ordered the crew to hoist anchor and move the _Ariel_ out into the middle of the river, where the number of insects dropped sharply. Then he announced, 'Good news, ladies. Our French chemists have perfected a miracle. They call it _essence de citronelle_. You will love the smell of its oranges and lemons, but the mosquitoes won't.' And he directed his staff to spray the area where the guests would sit, and the evening became a gallant affair, the last of its kind these planters would know for many years. The ladies were beautiful, and behaved as if their slaves would be tending them forever; the men spoke well of their adversaries at the North and told De Villiers, 'We must all pray that common sense prevails.' And the moon shone on the Choptank in full-rimmed splendor.
But the man who gained most from this last evening was not seen by either the guests or the crew. He was standing onshore, in the darkness provided by a tree, watching the ship he had known so well. When he had first marched to it in chains, the gangplank had been on that side. He had spent his learning days chained to the bulwark on this side. His first pen belowdecks must have been back there. The second, where he plotted with Rutak, had been below that.
There was the hold from which he had stormed with Luta... When he thought of her, always in chains until her dead body was cut loose, he could think no more. Only his eyes continued the memory. Over that railing he had thrown her into the sea. He had to sit down. His head sank so low he could no longer see the ship.
After a long time he looked aft, to the tiller he had mastered and the compass whose secrets he had unraveled. How tremendous those days had been, sailing north. He rose to his feet in great excitement and imagined the sails being raised at his command: Rutak! The ropes! And up the topmost sails had gone, and he had sailed that ship.
Transfixed by the beauty of his vessel, he stayed in the shadows, tending it until the anchor was raised. He watched as it made its way back to the wharf, and he named each guest who departed down the gangway. Then the night fell silent, except for the half-hours when the bells sounded. How well he knew them! In the darkest hours, chained to the bottom of the ship, he had followed the bells; their stately rhythm had governed his life.
Midnight struck, and two and four, and the ship lay sleeping at the wharf. He watched as the summer sun began to rise, back up the Choptank, throwing its rays deeper and deeper into the river. Voices drifted softly across the water, and soon townspeople began to gather along the shore to watch their ship depart.
Lafe Turlock came to remind his myriad grandchildren that once this ship had belonged to them, and the anchor was raised for the last time, and Captain de Villiers appeared on deck, and slowly the beautiful corvette entered the river and sailed away. But the man who had once really owned this ship, by right of capture, remained in the shadows, watching till the tips of the masts vanished from sight.
Captain de Villiers left Patamoke with the opinions of everyone who would be involved in the forthcoming struggle—except the slaves and the freed blacks. It had never occurred to him that he might have sought their judgment, too.
When the dinner guests disembarked, two remained behind. Captain de Villiers insisted that Paul and Susan Steed spend the night in his cabin. 'I will deposit you on Devon Island, then head for France.' So these two went once more to that cabin which had been the scene of their scandal.
'It seems so long ago,' Susan said as the door closed. 'But our lives have not been wasted.'
Paul could think of no appropriate response, but he was so restless that he did not yet wish to retire. 'I was so proud when you said you wouldn't need the chair tonight.'
'I would not want to come aboard this ship...' Her voice trailed off.
'I thought the conversation on these two nights... No wonder my ancestors preferred France.'
'You're just anti-British, Paul. Always have been.'
'There's something in the way a Frenchman wears a uniform...'
Susan sank down upon the bed she had once known so well and stared at the cabin door. 'The terror this ship has known.' She reflected on this, then said, 'It just occurred to me, Paul. I didn't see Cudjo or Eden on the wharf.'
'Probably didn't even know it was in the harbor.'
'Do you suppose he really did capture it? And kill...'
'Somebody did.'
'Would a gang of uneducated black slaves be able...'
'They sailed it, didn't they?'
'I suppose you were aware that Captain de Villiers was probing us?'
'His government wants to know. A hundred years ago France made all the difference on the Chesapeake. It may do so again.' He thought about this for some moments, then added, 'I think we planters got our points across.'
'He spoke as if war were inevitable.'
'I think it can be avoided. If only we could muzzle agitators like the Paxmores.'
'I wonder what they told him? You know, he saw them separately, last night.'
'From something he dropped, I judge they bored him to death. They don't drink, you know.'
Susan could not sleep, and in the darkest part of the night she walked by herself to the door, opened it slightly and looked out toward the spot where one of the men said that Captain Matt had been overpowered. She wanted very much to go out and touch the planking, but she was dressed only in her shift and deemed it best not to startle the night watch.
'What you doing, Sue?'
'Paul, as soon as they drop us at Devon tomorrow I want your help on one thing. Have Eden and the boys take me up to the roof. I want to see this ship go down the bay.'
'That's reasonable,' Paul said, and Susan came back to bed and they fell asleep.
In the morning they sent a boy to fetch Eden; she could ride back to the island with them. She boarded the ship with pride, surveying everything so that she could later report to her husband, and when the French captain bade farewell to the Steeds at Devon, she marked his behavior. He noticed this and gallantly helped her onto the wharf, but in an instant she was gone. Her mistress had given firm orders during the passage: 'As soon as we touch land I want you to instruct the boys to carry me to the roof.'
She was there when the _Ariel_ passed down the channel and into the bay. It was not the ship of old; she could not decipher what changes had been made in the sails, but it was still a vessel that ventured upon the great oceans, and its slow passage down the bay excited her as nothing had done in years.
'What grace,' she said. But as it disappeared behind a distant headland a powerful new ship came north on its way to Baltimore, and she was transfixed by its majesty. It was one of the four-masted clippers used in the China trade. It had been built in New Bedford, and carried twice as much sail as any ship ever built on the Choptank.
'Look at it!' she gasped as it moved resolutely up the bay, and when Eden wanted her to leave the roof, she insisted upon staying. 'Look at this tremendous ship, Eden!' They stood side by side for nearly an hour, and as they watched, the breeze fell, whereupon the sailors hoisted what Choptank people knew as 'the light airs,' those ballooning stunsails attached to the ends of the spars; when they were added to the full complement already aloft, they gave the ship an appearance of being decorated with lace, floating in an indiscernible wind.
'It's so lovely,' Susan said. 'And so very big.'
'They builds 'em up North,' Eden said.
The four-master disappeared too, and Susan said, 'You may call the boys now,' and when, exhausted, she was tucked into the big bed, Eden feared that she might never rise from it again, and tears welled in her eyes.
'What is it, Eden?' the frail old lady asked. When no answer came, she said, 'To see a ship like that... Two ships like that... It's enough for a lifetime.'
When South Carolina proved its willingness to fight the North by bombarding the federal positions at Fort Sumter in Charleston Harbor, a thrill swept the plantations of the Eastern Shore and responsible men assumed that Maryland would quickly join the rebellion in defense of freedom. As Paul Steed told the other planters, 'The governor's from a town not far from Little Choptank. His heart's in the right place.' So Patamoke waited for the declaration of war.
It did not come. The slave-owning counties realized that their destiny lay with the South, but the greater bulk of Maryland lay close to Pennsylvania and had been corrupted by northern sentiment. Then, too, since the capital at Washington was completely surrounded by Virginia and Maryland, it was imperative to the northern cause that Maryland at least remain in the Union; incredible pressures were exerted, especially by the new President, Lincoln, and it looked as if the state would be torn apart.
This did not happen. Through vacillations, which Paul Steed watched with dismay, Maryland inclined first this way, then that, and in the end wound up on the northern side.
That is, the official posture was with the North, and a regiment from the Eastern Shore even fought in blue, 'to their everlasting disgrace,' Steed said, but honest plantation owners and their supporters sided with the South, as did the marsh folk. For emotionally, Maryland was a southern state, always had been; its traditions, sympathies and economic interests lay south.
Therefore, when northern regiments were formed, partisans of the South retaliated by surreptitiously shipping volunteers into Virginia, where they proudly enlisted in the southern armies, and it was on a mission of this sort that Colonel Rupert Janney started out from the Rappahannock to consult with his distant cousin, Paul Steed, up the bay.
He sailed furtively, on his own vessel of one hundred and ten tons, because federal gunboats had already begun to patrol the Chesapeake, and it was assumed that many of the major battles in the forthcoming war would be fought there. With his map cocked on his knee, he directed his captain how to find the Choptank and negotiate the channel into Devon Creek. As soon as the gangplank was down, he leaped ashore in full uniform, crying, 'Where's Steed?'
Colonel Janney was a handsome man, some forty-five years old, slim, clean-shaven, gracious of manner. 'I'm really in the cavalry, Paul. Like my forebears before me. I was named, you know, after Prince Rupert, your ancestor and mine. He never wavered and I'm sure you won't, either.'
Janney was an intense man, inspirited by the looming battles. 'I'm serving with a man named Jeb Stuart, the Prince Rupert of our day. He knows horses, Paul. And tactics. We shall cut the Yankees to ribbons and be off before they know we were there.'
It was difficult to keep Colonel Janney pinned down to one topic; he had read Steed's book of letters and his important pamphlet on the economics of slave ownership. 'I've been proud to call you cousin. You see things so clearly. Imagine a renegade like Helper arguing that slaves are a financial detriment, when you and I know that our plantations... Is it true that you own nearly a thousand slaves? Incredible.' He paced the large dining room, then asked abruptly, 'What'll you do now... this big house and all... Susan gone?'
'My son Mark...'
'He's the one I came to see.'
'You want to take Mark with you?' Paul asked the question without betraying the emotion it caused.
'He's the type we seek. If gentlemen don't lead, the rabble won't follow.'
'I'm sure Mark will want to aid the cause of freedom.'
'Exactly. Paul, what you said in your book... That was a damned good book, Paul. Summed things up rather neatly, I thought. You and I are fighting for human freedom. It's all in the balance—the good life, the decent management... When can I see Mark?'
'He'll be in the office.'
'He wasn't when I landed.'
'Probably checking the slave row.'
'You've got to watch 'em.' He strode about the room, then came to rest with his second important question: 'How many effectives you think I can take back with me?'
'You mean from this region?'
'Exactly. I hear you have some great riflemen over here. I want 'em all.' He spoke with such enthusiasm and had such energy that Paul wondered how he could have allowed his plantation to remain in a state of disrepair.
'I should judge that most of the watermen would want to join you. They're excellent with guns and they love battles.'
'Will you help me enlist them?'
'Anything for the cause.'
'Good. Jeb Stuart's goin' to need horses.'
'He'll have a hundred from me. Send me the papers.'
'Paul, I knew as I came up the bay... When can we enlist the men?'
'Today.'
'Damn it, Paul, if you were younger and...' He looked at his cousin's twisted neck. 'What happened?'
'Fell off a roof.'
'Jesus Christ! You mendin' your own roof? What you got slaves for?' He looked at the neck and the shortened leg. 'Wonder you weren't killed.'
'My leg caught on the spout.'
'We'll put that down as a miracle.' When Mark returned to the office, Janney bombarded him with reasons why he should join the southern cavalry, but Mark cut him short: 'I've already joined the infantry.'
'What?' his father asked.
'Yes, I've written to Beauregard in Richmond. I'm to be a major, and I'd like to cross the bay with you, sir.'
'First we've to enlist the troops.' So the three gentlemen sailed to Patamoke, where Colonel Janney harangued a rousing assembly at the wharf: 'Men, the freedom of this nation depends on you. The decency we have known is being challenged by forces of repression. I invite you to join me in our crusade to protect the rights of honest men.'
Sixty-seven men, a fourth of them Turlocks, volunteered, and as they were making their marks on the enlistment rolls, Janney saw Bartley Paxmore and two Starbuck boys looking on. 'They're fine young men,' he said to Paul. 'Why aren't they joining us?'
'They're Quakers,' Steed explained.
'Hmmm!' Janney snorted. 'Won't fight for us and afraid to fight against us. A sad lot.'
When the enlistees were marched aboard, and all was prepared for the dangerous run to Richmond, Colonel Janney faced the captain of the ship, saluted and cried, 'Move down the river. We hazard the crossing in darkness.' He then went to the railing, a handsome man in pearl-gray uniform with a bright red sash about his waist, and saluted Paul, who saluted back. He then strode to the bow of the ship, where he stood erect, the wind in his black hair, memorizing each maneuver against the day when he might, for some unforeseen reason, have to take a Confederate ship down a river. He almost glowed in the afternoon sun, an efficient, daring officer eager to get back on his horse and ride north.
Like every man aboard that ship, he was convinced that he was engaged upon a sacred mission to defend human liberty. Of the sixty-eight men who left the Choptank, counting Mark Steed, only two owned slaves, but all were persuaded that only by enforcing slavery permanently could the freedom of the nation be preserved.
From the wharf Paul cried to his son, 'Take care, Mark. We'll need you when this is over.'
On September 22, 1862, President Lincoln publicly proclaimed a course of action he had decided upon earlier: all slaves within the states at war against the Union were to be free on January 1, 1863. 'Thank God!' Paul Steed cried when he heard this doleful news. 'At least the idiot had sense enough not to touch ours.' He was right. Lincoln, who had a personal aversion to blacks and feared they could never be absorbed into a white society, wanted to see them settled somewhere out of the country. He had prudently refrained from liberating those living in important border states like Kentucky and Maryland, whose governments sided with the North; only slaves in states like Alabama and Louisiana were freed. In his relief, Paul wrote to his son, then campaigning along the Mississippi:
By his intemperate action he runs the risk of alienating the European powers, and throwing them into the war on our side, for they will see emancipation as an excitation to servile rebellion. Will Austria want black freedom in America to ignite fires of resistance in her vast holdings? I assure you, Mark, that Lincoln has made a fearful mistake, but thank God he did not touch the Devon slaves. He had too much sense for that.
The proclamation, which had no force and did not free one slave, did have the power to depress slave prices in border states. Plantation owners along the Choptank asked themselves, 'If he has the power to free slaves in the Carolinas, why not in Maryland?' And within one month the value of a prime slave dropped from a high of $2,300 to a low of $900. By the end of December it was $600. In this brief space the Steeds lost seventy percent of their negotiable wealth.
In June the blow fell which the Maryland planters had feared. A scruffy Union vessel put into Patamoke, and a major from Connecticut, wearing a dirty blue uniform, began enlisting slaves into the northern army. He made a show of seeking permission from the owners and handing them certificates guaranteeing a later reimbursement of $300 per slave, but few believed such promises would be honored.
The invitation to flee servitude and fight against the South was irresistible. Nearly two hundred Steed slaves asked Paul's permission to enlist, and he was powerless to refuse. But only the strongest were accepted, and when these were marched aboard ship, even those who had been rejected cheered, as if this expeditionary force were destined to win freedom for all blacks.
Paul Steed, watching in dismay as his slaves sailed away, found some solace by comparing this dirty ship, this scruffy major and these black recruits with the Confederate enlistment program conducted earlier at this wharf: That major's a disgrace. Colonel Janney wouldn't allow him near his horse. And as for the Negroes who wanted to be soldiers—one Turlock could gun down the lot.
Cudjo Cater, hearing the commotion, left his cabin, and with Eden and his two sons trailing behind, reported to the recruiting officer, 'I can work a ship.'
'Grandpop, you're too old,' the northerner said.
'I can work machines.'
'Grandpop, take a look at the kind of boys we want,' and when Cudjo continued pestering him, he pointed to rejectees half the old man's age. 'Now go back to your master.'
'I'm free.'
This meant nothing to the recruiter, but then he spied Cudjo's two sons. 'Now there's the type we want. You want to fight for freedom?' he asked the boys.
Eden pushed them forward. 'They good fighters,' she said.
So the two Cater boys were taken, but when the day ended, there was Cudjo, still trying to enlist. This amused the recruiter, who whistled for the major. 'This man says he's got to come with us.'
The Connecticut man came to the recruiting area, inspected Cudjo's teeth and snapped, 'Hell, this man must be over fifty.'
'I can work machines.'
'We don't need mechanics, old fellow. We need men who can march. Now go back to your master.'
As the ship sailed, Cudjo looked at the willing young men lining the railings and wondered how many of them would be able to march six hundred miles with chains about their necks... and still have strength to capture their ship.
With the strongest male slaves gone and only the rejected and the women left to work his vast plantations, Paul made an effort to keep alive the spirit of Devon. Each night he allowed old Tiberius, now approaching ninety, to lead him into the dining room in which he had so often entertained. Alone at the head of the table, he would sit erect as two elderly servants in white gloves brought him his meal. Invariably he would look at the chair in which John C. Calhoun had once sat; it stood apart, protected by a betasseled cord of gold.
How sardonic it was, Paul thought, that the three greatest men he had known—Clay, Webster, Calhoun—had each sought the presidency, and been rebuffed: Always we elected men of lesser quality. Dolefully he counted off the grim procession of incompetents who had occupied the White House during these years of crisis: Van Buren, with no character; General Harrison, with no ability; John Tyler, God forbid; Polk, who allowed everything to slip away; General Taylor, lacking any capacity for leadership; the unspeakable Millard Fillmore; Franklin Pierce, who was laughable; James Buchanan, who could have averted this war; and now Abraham Lincoln, traitor to all the principles he once professed.
He recalled fondly the moral greatness of Clay, the grandeur of Daniel Webster, the intellectual superiority of Calhoun, and shook his head: Why must we always reject the best?
And then, when his spirits were at their lowest, the southern armies launched a chain of victories, culminating at Chancellorsville, down the bay, and his hopes revived. General Lee, through sheer brilliance, was defeating superior northern armies, and Mark Steed wrote from one battlefield:
It confirmed our belief that any company of fifty southern men can outfight any Yankee contingent three times that large, and it gave us vital encouragement to invade the north and put an end to this war. Then we shall know our old freedoms, and you and I shall rebuild the plantations.
In late June of that year excitement on the Choptank grew, for word filtered back that southern armies were involved in a stupendous march north in an effort to create a pincers which would curl back to engulf Philadelphia, Baltimore and Washington itself. The end of the war seemed at hand.
Now Paul climbed to the widow's walk where his wife had once kept vigil, and fixed his gaze northward, across the bay, toward those unseen battlefields just beyond the horizon, where, as he told his planter friends, 'Our destiny is being hammered out.' It was tantalizing; events of supreme significance were under way, but he could hear only echoes, as if the Eastern Shore were not allowed a vital role.
In the first days of July a hush fell over the bay. Mosquitoes swarmed and slave women fished for crabs. Rumors crept in that a mighty battle was engaged at Gettysburg, a few miles north of the Maryland border.
And then the blows fell: 'Pickett led his men where no men could go, and they almost made it...' 'Lee almost made it, but he's in retreat...' 'Lee says we can hang on, but any chance of invading the North is lost...' 'In the Shenandoah they are burning...' 'Major Mark Steed died a hero's death...'
Paul continued to frequent the widow's walk. He would stand at the railing and survey his domain, thousands of acres beyond the range of vision. But most of the slaves were gone; Susan was gone; Mark would not be back; the railroad was still unbuilt.
During the first cold days of November 1864 Lafe Turlock sat in his cabin near the marsh and heard the geese conversing. 'I'm gonna get me so many of them geese,' he promised his great-grandsons, 'that you gonna have grease all over yore face.'
He was eighty-one years old and as thin as the upper trunk of a loblolly. His old passions were gone: he had no dogs; he no longer went out at night to watch fires as they consumed houses; he fished little and had nothing to do with tonging oysters. But when the geese came back each autumn, his juices flowed, and he oiled his guns.
With most of the good hunters absent on Virginia battlefields, the goose population had risen from the normal eight hundred thousand to nearly a million, but it was still as difficult as ever to lure a particular flight over the spot where you were hiding. He told the boys who clustered about him in goose season, 'The old ones tell the young, and you ain't gonna ketch yorese'f a goose lessen yo're smarter'n I think you are.'
What he would have enjoyed would be to go out with his sons, but most of them had died off, or his grandsons, but they were dying in Virginia. 'How many you calculate we lost?' he asked the men at the store. 'I count nineteen Turlocks dead. Christ A'mighty, the geese is runnin' wild.'
He was not certain he could rely on the young boys; they could barely heft their guns. Still, they could fill spots in the blinds and maybe luck something. He had them out before dawn; in goose season school was unimportant. And when the geese looked as if they might be coming in, he disciplined them sternly: 'You cain't hit no goose at a hundred yards. You got to lure him down.' With ancient skill he blew upon his whistle, and the geese were tempted. They came in low, and when they were in dead-sure range he shouted at the boys, 'Now!'
It was a bad year, but the Turlocks would eat.
# _Voyage Eleven: 1886_
THE WORST STORMS TO HIT THE CHESAPEAKE ARE the hurricanes which generate in the southeast, over the Atlantic Ocean. There they twist and turn, building power and lifting from the waves enormous quantities of water that they carry north in turbulent clouds.
They first hit Cape Charles, at the southern end of the Eastern Shore, then explode ferociously over the waters of the bay, driving crabbers and oystermen to shore. Their winds, often reaching a fierce ninety miles an hour, whip the shallow waters of the Chesapeake into waves so violent that any small boat runs a good risk of being capsized.
In late August of 1886 such a hurricane collected its force just south of Norfolk, but instead of devastating the bay, it leapfrogged far to the north, depositing in the Susquehanna Valley an incredible fall of rain. In less than a day, nineteen inches fell on certain parts of Pennsylvania, and all things were flooded, even into New York State. Harrisburg felt the lash as its waterfront homes were submerged; Sunbury was inundated; poor Wilkes-Barre watched the dark waters engulf its jetties; and even Towanda, far to the north, was swamped by raging floods from streams that a day earlier had been mere trickles.
From a thousand such rivulets the great flood accumulated, and as it crested on its way south to the Chesapeake, it buried small towns and endangered large cities. On it came, a devastating onslaught of angry water, twisting and probing into every depression. Past Harrisburg it swept, and Columbia, and over small villages near the border of Pennsylvania. Finally, in northern Maryland, it exploded with destructive fury into the body of the Chesapeake, raising the headwaters of that considerable bay four and five feet.
For three days the storm continued, producing strange and arbitrary results. Norfolk was by-passed completely: merely a heavy rain. Crisfield had no problems: a slow rain of no significance. Devon Island and Patamoke were barely touched: their biggest problem was that they had no sun during three days. But the great bay itself was nearly destroyed: it came close to being drowned by the floods cascading down from the north. It lay strangling in its own water.
To understand what was happening, one must visualize the bay as carefully structured in three distinct dimensions. From north to south the waters of the bay were meticulously graduated according to their salt content, and any alteration of this salinity was fraught with peril. At Havre de Grace, where the Susquehanna debouched into the bay, there should have been in autumn three parts of salt per thousand; there was none. On the oyster beds near Devon Island there ought to have been fifteen parts per thousand to keep the shellfish healthy; there were two. And at the crabbing beds farther south the crustaceans were accustomed to nineteen parts; they had to contend with less than six. All living things in the bay were imperiled, for the great flood had altered the bases of their existence. The protection provided by salt water was being denied them, and if relief did not come quickly, millions upon millions of bay creatures were going to die.
Prompt restoration of the traditional north-south relationship was essential, but the bay was also divided into a bottom and a top. The lowest area contained deep, cold, very salt water, often deficient in oxygen, moving in from the Atlantic Ocean, bringing many life-sustaining components. Deep down, it tended to move in a northerly direction, and its presence was essential for the health of the bay. On top rested the less salt, less heavy, warmer water replenished by the sun and containing a good oxygen content. It tended to move in a southward direction, sliding along on the top of the cold water. It carried with it many of the lesser forms of marine life on which the crabs and fish lived, and it deposited the nutrients which the oysters lower down required.
But these two vast layers of water should not be considered unrelated, like sheets of mutually exclusive steel moving in opposite directions, each independent of the other. Convection currents, generated by the sun, could at any given point draw the cold layer up and force the warm layer down. A strong surface wind might encourage such an interchange; the passing churning propeller of a large ship could augment the normal pressures that from below and above were constantly working on the two layers, causing them to mix.
But in general the water down deep was colder and saltier and slower; the water near the surface was warmer and less salty and more filled with oxygen. There was another difference: the water on the surface moved freely, even capriciously, over the entire surface of the bay; but the deep water held close to the invisible channel cut some hundred thousand years ago by the prehistoric Susquehanna as it drained away the waters of the first ice age. At the bottom of the Chesapeake, running its entire length and reaching well out into the Atlantic, this primeval riverbed existed, sixty feet deeper than the shallow waters surrounding it, but as clearly defined as when first reamed out by tumbling boulders.
Any sharp dislocation of the upper and lower levels of the bay would have disastrous consequences, for over the millennia marine life had learned to accommodate to the conditions as they existed, and there were many creatures living in the upper layer of warm, light water who could not survive if the cold, heavy water of the bottom suddenly engulfed them.
There was a final division, this one between the western half of the bay and the eastern. The former was fed by five substantial rivers—Patuxent, Potomac, Rappahannock, York, James—some of which drained large inland areas reaching westward to the Blue Ridge Mountains. The huge flow of fresh water contributed by these rivers made the western half of the bay much less saline than the eastern, more silty, more filled with accidental non-marine vegetation, and in general more active.
The so-called rivers of the Eastern Shore did not deserve that name. They were not rivers in the customary sense: they drained no large upland areas; they had no great length; they had no fall; they did not collect fresh water from large drainage areas; they were tidal for most of their reach; and they were notably salty for much of their distance and brackish the rest. They were really tidal inlets— _estuaries_ was the proper name—probing arms of the bay, which curled inland, creating flats and marshes.
Since they deposited only a fraction of the water produced by the western rivers, the eastern half of the bay had to be saltier, more torpid, more given to marshes, and much more productive of those small saltwater plants that sustained marine life. Also, another natural phenomenon contributed to the saltiness of the eastern half; the whirling motion of the earth applied a constant force that pushed the heavier water to the east, so that if a scientist drew isohalines—lines connecting all points west to east that had identical percentages of salt water—they would tilt conspicuously from southwest up to northeast. This meant that a line drawn due west from Devon Island, with its fifteen parts of salt per thousand, would find water much less salty in the middle of the bay and notably less so on the western shore. In fact, to find water on the western shore with a salinity equal to Devon's, one would have to drop twenty-five miles south.
Watermen skilled in reading the variations of the Chesapeake kept in mind that there were really three distinct segments: the moderately deep riverine western part; the very deep central channel followed by the steamers, which represented the course of the prehistoric and now drowned Susquehanna; and the exciting estuaries of the eastern portion, where plankton and menhaden and crabs and oysters abounded.
An Episcopal clergyman in Patamoke with time on his hands and a fine Princeton education behind him, carried this analysis to its logical conclusion:
We have three dimensions. North-south, west-east, top-bottom. If we divide each of these into ten gradations, o through 9, we can construct a numbering system which will locate precisely where we are in this diverse body of water. The northernmost, westernmost, shallowest point at that spot would be o-o-o. The southernmost, easternmost, deepest point at that spot would be 9-9-9. Thus we really have one thousand distinct Chesapeakes. Devon Island, which is a focus for us, would be less than halfway down the bay from north to south and would be classified as 4. It stands not quite at the extreme eastern edge, so gets an 8. The bar where the oysters grow is at the bottom, which gives a 9. Therefore, the position in which we are interested is 4–8–9.
What happened in 1886 at Chesapeake Bay Number 4–8–9? The magnitude of this storm broke all existing records not by trivial percentages but by huge multipliers. For example, the greatest previous discharge of fresh water at the mouth of the Susquehanna had been something like 400,000 cubic feet per second, and that represented a devastating flood. Now the disgorgement was more than three times as great, an unheard of 1,210,000. This produced a volume of non-salt water so prodigious that it shifted the isohalines seventy-two miles southward, which meant that the waters about Devon Island had become practically salt-free.
When the storm broke, there existed on a small subterranean shelf at the western edge of Devon Island—point 4–8–9 by the clergyman's calculation—a congregation of oysters which had fastened themselves securely to the solid bottom. Here some of the largest and tastiest oysters of the bay had produced their generations, while the minute spat drifted back and forth with the slow currents until they fastened to the bottom to develop the shells in which they would grow during the years of their existence.
Along this shelf, well known to watermen from Patamoke but kept by them as a secret, oysters had thrived during all the generations watermen had tonged the bay; no matter how many bushels of large oysters were lifted from this location, others replaced them. This was the shelf that could be depended upon.
In its original stages the flood from the Susquehanna did not affect these oysters. True, the salinity of all the water dropped, but at the depth at which they lived the loss did not, in these first days, imperil them. But there was another aspect of the flood which did. The Susquehanna, as it swept down from New York, picked up an astonishing burden of fine silt; for example, a house along the riverbank in Harrisburg might be inundated for only seven hours, but when the owners returned they would find in their second-floor bedrooms six inches of silt. How could it possibly have got there? Well, each cubic centimeter of seeping brown water carried its burden of almost invisible dust lifted from the farms of New York and Pennsylvania, and it was this dust, suspended in water, that was left behind.
The silt that fell in the bedroom of a butcher in Harrisburg could, when it dried, be swept away, but the silt which fell on a bed of oysters could not.
Down it came, silently, insidiously and very slowly. In four days more silt fell than in the previous sixty years. The entire Choptank as far east as Patamoke was chocolate-colored from the turbulent mud, but as soon as the waters began to calm themselves, their burden of silt was released and it fell persistently and inescapably onto the oysters.
At first it was no more than a film such as the propellers of the evening ferry might have deposited on any night. Such an amount caused no problem and might even bring with it plankton to feed the oysters. But this thin film was followed by a perceptible thickness, and then by more, until the oysters became agitated within their heavy shells. The spat, of course, were long since strangled. A whole oncoming generation of oysters had been suffocated.
Still the fine silt drifted down, an interminable rain of desolation. The bottom of the Choptank was covered with the gray-brown deposit; whole grains were so minute that the resulting mud seemed more like cement, except that it did not harden; it merely smothered everything on which it fell, pressing down with fingers so delicate, its weight could not be felt until the moment it had occupied every space with a subtle force more terrible than a tower of stone.
The oysters could have withstood a similar intrusion of sand; then the particles would have been so coarse that water could continue to circulate and plankton be obtained. Submersion of even a month was tolerable, for in time the sand would wash away, leaving the shellfish no worse for their experience. But the flood-swept silt was another matter, and on the tenth day after the flood, when the brown waters bore their heaviest burden of mud, even the mature oysters on the Devon shelf began to die. No lively water was reaching them, no plankton. They were entombed in a dreadful cascade of silt and they could not propel themselves either to a new location or to a new level. Secured to their shelf, they had to rely on passing tides that would wash the silt away. But none came.
On the twelfth day the waters of the Chesapeake reached their maximum muddiness; silt from midland Pennsylvania was coming down now, in a final burst of destruction, and when it reached the relatively calm waters of the Choptank, it broke loose from its carrying waters and filtered slowly down to the bed of the river. This was the final blow. The oysters were already submerged under two inches of silt; now three more piled on, and one by one the infinitely rich beds of Devon Island were covered by an impenetrable mud. The oysters perished in their shells.
In time, say a year and a half, the currents of the Choptank would eat away the mud and once more reveal the shelf upon which untold generations of new oysters would flourish. The shells of the dead oysters would be there, gnarled and craggy and inviting to the young spat that would be looking for a ledge to grab hold of. The spat would find a home; the nourishing plankton would drift by; the oyster beds of Devon Island would exist once more, but for the meantime they were obliterated in the silt of the great storm.
Another resident of the Chesapeake was also intensely affected by the hurricane of 1886, but he was better able to cope with the disaster, for he could move, and by taking precautions, adjust to altered circumstances. He was Jimmy, the time-honored Chesapeake name for the male blue crab, that delicious crustacean upon which so much of the wealth of the bay depended.
While the storm still lay off Norfolk, gathering speed and water, Jimmy, resting in the grassy waters at the edge of Turlock Marsh, perceived that a radical change in the atmosphere was about to occur. And it would probably arrive at the worst possible moment for him. How could he know these two facts? He was exceedingly sensitive to changes in atmospheric pressure or to any other factors which affected the waters of the bay. If a storm of unusual force was developing, he would be made aware by the sharp drop in barometric pressure and would prepare to take those protective measures which had rescued him in the past. Also, he knew intuitively when he must climb painfully out of his old shell, which was made of inert matter that could not grow in size as he grew. He had to discard it and prepare himself for the construction of a new shell better fitted to his increased body size. The time for such a moult was at hand.
When the storm broke, and no great body of water fell on the Choptank, Jimmy felt no signals that a crisis was at hand, so he prepared to shed his old shell, an intricate process which might consume as long as four hours of painful wrestling and contortion. But before the moult could begin, he became aware of a frightening change in the bay. The water level was rising. The salinity was diminishing. And when these two phenomena continued, and indeed accelerated, he became uncomfortable.
During any moult, which might take place three or four times a year as he increased in size, he preferred some secure place like the Turlock Marsh, but if it was going to be flooded with fresh water, it could prove a deathtrap rather than a refuge, so he began swimming strongly out toward the deep center of the bay.
A mature crab like Jimmy could swim at a speed of nearly a mile an hour, so he felt safe, but as he cleared Devon Island and was hit by the rush of saltless water, he felt driven to swim with frenetic energy to protect himself. He would not drop dead in the first flush of fresh water, and he could adjust to surprising variations in salinity for brief periods; but to exist in the way for which his body had been constructed, he needed water with a proper salt content.
But moving into the deeper water meant that he would lose the protection of the marsh for his critical moulting. He would have to go through this complex maneuvering out in the bay, where he would be largely defenseless. But he had no other option.
The silt posed no insurmountable problem. It obscured his vision, to be sure, but it did not settle on him or pin him to the bottom, as it did the oysters. He could flip his many legs and swim clear, so that he was not yet in danger at this stage of the flood, but he did sense that he had to swim down toward the ocean to find the salinity necessary to his survival.
These matters assumed little importance in view of the crucial one at hand. Swimming easily to the bottom of the bay, he found a sandy area, a place he would never have considered for a moult in normal times, and there began his gyrations. First he had to break the seal along the edge of his present shell, and he did this by contracting and expanding his body, forcing water through his system and building up a considerable hydraulic pressure that slowly forced the shell apart, not conspicuously, but far enough for the difficult part of the moult to proceed.
Now he began the slow and almost agonizing business of withdrawing his boneless legs from their protective coverings and manipulating them so that they protruded from the slight opening. With wrenching movements he dislodged the main portion of his body, thrusting it toward the opening, which now widened under pressure from the legs. He had no skeleton, of course, so that he could contort and compress his body into whatever shape was most effective, but he did continue to generate hydraulic pressures through various parts of his body so that the shell was forced apart.
Three hours and twenty minutes after he started this bizarre procedure, he swam free of the old shell and was now adrift in the deep waters of the bay, totally without protection. He had no bony structure in any part of his body, no covering thicker than the sheerest tissue paper, no capacity for self-defense except a much-slowed ability to swim. Any fish that chanced to come his way could gobble him at a gulp; if he had been in shallower water, any bird could have taken him. In these fateful hours all he could do was hide.
And yet, even at his most defenseless moment his new armor was beginning to form. Eighty minutes after the moult he would have a paper-thin covering. After three hours he would have the beginning of a solid shell. And in five hours he would be a hard-shelled crab once more, and would remain that way until his next moult.
But as he waited deep in the bay for his new life, the results of the storm continued to make themselves felt, and now the water was so lacking in salt that he felt he must move south. He swam forcefully and with undiverted purpose, keeping to the eastern edge of the bay where the nutritive grasses produced the best plankton, and after a day he sensed the balance of the water to be more nearly normal.
He was not given time to luxuriate in this new-found security of proper water and a solid shell, for urgings of a primordial character were assaulting him, and he forgot his own preoccupations in order to swim among the grasses, looking for sooks which had been by-passed in the earlier mating periods. These overlooked females, on their way south to spend the winter near the entrance of the bay, where fertile sooks traditionally prepared to lay their eggs, sent out frantic signals to whatever males might be in the vicinity, for this was the final period in which they could be fertilized.
Jimmy, probing the marshes, detected such signals and swam with extraordinary energy into the weeds, from which a grateful sook came rushing at him. As soon as she saw that she had succeeded in attracting a male, she became tenderly passive and allowed him to turn her about with his claws and mount her from behind, forming with his many legs a kind of basket in which he would cradle her for the next three days.
This was her time to moult, and Jimmy gave her a protection he had not enjoyed. Covering her completely, he could fend off any fishes that might attack or beat away any birds. Turtles, too, could be avoided and otters that loved to feed on shell-less crabs. For three days he would defend her, holding her gently as she went through her own difficult gyrations of moulting.
When she succeeded in escaping from her old shell, she allowed Jimmy to cast it aside with his feet. She was now completely defenseless, a creature without a skeleton or any bony structure, and at this moment it became possible for the two crabs, he with a shell and she without, to engage in sex, an act which required six or seven hours.
When it was completed he continued to cradle her gently for two days, until her new shell was formed. Only when he felt it secure beneath him did he release her, and then the two crabs separated, she to swim to the lower end of the bay to develop her fertilized eggs, he to the northerly areas to spend the winter in the deeps.
But in 1886 it was not to be as simple as that, for when the Susquehanna broke its banks, flooding the land on either side of the river for a distance of miles, a vicious problem developed: the flood waters upset privies, flushed out septic pools and cleaned out manure dumps, throwing into the swiftly moving waters of the river an incredible accumulation of sewage. In each town that the river inundated on its rampage south, it reamed out the sewage ponds until at the end, when it emptied into the Chesapeake, it was nothing but one mighty cloaca carrying with it enough poisons to contaminate the entire bay.
The effect was worsened by the fact that in the big cities the river picked up huge quantities of industrial waste, especially the newly developed oils, which spread the poisons over the entire surface of the bay. Rarely had the Chesapeake been called upon to absorb such a concentration of lethal agents. It failed.
From the mouth of the river to the mouth of the bay the entire body of water became infected with a dozen new poisons. Those fortunate oysters which managed to escape the silt did not escape the fatal germs, and that October all who ate the few oysters that were caught ran the risk of death, and many died. The bluefish were contaminated and typhoid spread where they were eaten. The crabs were sorely hit, their delicate flesh acting as veritable blotting paper to absorb the germs. In New York and Baltimore families that ate them died.
The fishing industry in the Chesapeake was prostrated, and two years would pass before fresh waters from the Susquehanna and the Rappahannock and the James would flush out the bay and make it once more habitable for oysters and crabs.
Jimmy, seeking refuge at the bottom of the bay, and his impregnated mate, heading south to breed her young, had conducted their mating in an eddy of water heavily infected by the sewage of this vast cesspool, and they, too, died.
# The Watermen
THE GOLDEN AGE OF THE EASTERN SHORE CAME in that four-decade span from 1880 to 1920 when the rest of the nation allowed the marshy counties to sleep undisturbed. True, in these years the world experienced panics and wars, and revolutions and contested elections, but these had almost no impact on the somnolent estuaries and secluded coves. Roads now connected the important towns situated at the heads of rivers, but they were narrow and dusty, and it took wagons days to cover what a speedy boat could negotiate in an hour. When roads paved with white oyster shells did arrive, at the end of this happy age, they were usually one car-width only and formed not a reasonable means of transportation but a lively invitation to suicide.
There was, of course, excitement, but it rarely arrived from the outside world. A black male servant was accused of assaulting a white woman, and a lynching party composed mainly of Turlocks and Cavenys broke down the jail to string the accused from an oak tree, but Judge Hathaway Steed proposed to have no such blot on his jurisdiction; armed only with a family pistol, he confronted the mob and ordered it to disperse. The terrified black man was then transported to a neighboring county, where he was properly hanged.
The Eastern Shore baseball league, composed of six natural rivals, including Easton, Crisfield, Chestertown and Patamoke, flourished and became notorious for having produced Home Run Baker, who would hit in one year the unheard-of total of twelve round-trippers. A luxurious ferryboat left Baltimore every Saturday and Sunday at seven-thirty in the morning to transport day-trippers to a slip at Claiborne, where the throngs would leave the ship and crowd into the cars of the Baltimore, Chesapeake and Atlantic Railroad for a two-hour race across the peninsula to Ocean City on the Atlantic. At four forty-five in the afternoon the railroad cars would refill, the train would chug its way back to Claiborne, passengers would reboard the ferry and arrive back at Baltimore at ten-thirty at night—all for one dollar and fifty cents.
One of the adventures which caused most excitement came in 1887 when a ship commanded by Captain Thomas Lightfoot, a troublemaker if there ever was one, docked at Patamoke with its cargo of ice sawed from the fresh-water ponds of Labrador. When the sawdust had been washed away, and the blue-green cakes were stored in icehouses along the riverfront, Captain Lightfoot produced an object which was to cause as much long-lasting trouble as the golden apple that Paris was required to award to the most beautiful goddess.
'I've somethin' extra for you,' Lightfoot announced as he directed one of his black stevedores to fetch the item from below. 'Before it appears I wish to inform you that it is for sale, ten dollars cash.'
A moment later the stevedore appeared on deck leading by a leash one of the most handsome dogs ever seen in Maryland. He was jet-black, sturdy in his front quarters, sleek and powerful in his hind, with a face so intelligent that it seemed he might speak at any moment. His movements were quick, his dark eyes following every development nearby, yet his disposition appeared so equable that he seemed always about to smile.
'He's called a Labrador,' Lightfoot said. 'Finest huntin' dog ever developed.'
'He's what?' Jake Turlock snapped.
'Best huntin' dog known.'
'Can't touch a Chesapeake retriever,' Turlock said, referring to the husky red dog bred especially for bay purposes.
'This dog,' said Lightfoot, 'will take your Chesapeake and teach him his ABC's.'
'That dog ain't worth a damn,' Turlock said. 'Too stocky up front.'
But there was something about this new animal that captivated Tim Caveny, whose red Chesapeake had just died without ever fulfilling the promise he had shown as a pup—'Fine in the water and persistent in trackin' downed birds, but not too bright. Downright stupid, if you ask me.' This new black dog displayed a visible intelligence which gave every sign of further development, and Caveny announced, 'I'd like to see him.'
Captain Lightfoot, suspecting that in Caveny he had found his pigeon, turned the Labrador loose, and with an almost psychic understanding that his future lay with this Irishman, the dog ran to Caveny, leaned against his leg and nuzzled his hand.
It was an omen. Tim's heart was lost, and he said, 'I'll take him.'
'Mr. Caveny, you just bought the best Labrador ever bred.' With grandiloquent gestures he turned the animal over to his new owner, and the dog, sensing that he had found a permanent master, stayed close to Tim, and licked his hand and rubbed against him and looked up with dark eyes overflowing with affection.
Tim paid the ten dollars, then reached down and patted his new hunting companion. 'Come on, Lucifer,' he said.
'That's a hell of a name for a dog,' Turlock growled.
'He's black, ain't he?'
'If he's black, call him Nigger.'
'He's Old Testament black,' Tim said. And to Captain Lightfoot's surprise, he recited, ' "How art thou fallen from heaven, O Lucifer, son of the morning!" ' Turning his back on the others he stooped over the dog, roughed his head and said in a low voice, 'You'll be up in the morning, Lucifer, early, early.'
Lightfoot then startled the crowd by producing three other dogs of this new breed, one male and two females, and these, too, he sold to the hunters of Patamoke, assuring each purchaser, 'They can smell ducks, and they've never been known to lose a cripple.'
'To me they look like horse manure,' Jake Turlock said.
'They what?' Caveny demanded.
'I said,' Turlock repeated, 'that your black dog looks like a horse turd.'
Slowly Tim handed the leash he had been holding to a bystander. Then, with a mighty swipe, he knocked Turlock to the wet and salty boards of the wharf. The waterman stumbled in trying to regain his feet, and while he was off balance Caveny saw a chance to deliver an uppercut which almost knocked him into the water. Never one to allow a fallen foe an even chance, Caveny leaped across the planking and kicked the waterman in his left armpit, lifting him well into the air, but this was a mistake, because when Turlock landed, his hand fell upon some lumber stacked for loading onto Captain Lightfoot's ship, and after he had quickly tested three or four clubs he found one to his liking, and with it delivered such a blow to the Irishman's head that the new owner of the Labrador staggered back, tried to control his disorganized feet, and fell into the Choptank.
In this way the feud between Tim Caveny, owner of a black Labrador, and Jake Turlock, owner of a red Chesapeake, began.
The first test of the two dogs came in the autumn of 1888 at the dove shoot on the farm of old Lyman Steed, who had spent his long life running one of the Refuge plantations and had now retired to a stretch of land near Patamoke.
Nineteen first-class hunters of the area convened at regular intervals during the dove season to shoot this most interesting of the small game birds: gentlemen like Lyman Steed, middle-class shopkeepers and rough watermen like Jake Turlock and Tim Caveny. For a dove shoot was one of the most republican forms of sport so far devised. Here a man's worth was determined by two criteria: the way he fired his gun and how he managed his dog.
Each hunter was allowed to bring one dog to the shoot, and the animal had to be well trained, because the birds came charging in at low altitude, swerved and dodged in unbelievable confusion and, on the lucky occasions when they were hit, fell maliciously in unpredictable spots. If there was a swamp nearby, as on the Steed farm, the doves would fall there. If there were brambles, the dying doves seemed to seek them out, and the only practical way for the hunter to retrieve his dove, if he hit one, was to have a dog trained to leap forward when he saw a dove fall from the sky and find it no matter where it dropped. The dog must also lift the fallen bird gently in its teeth, carry it without bruising it against thorns, and drop it at the feet of his master. A dove hunt was more a test of dog than of master.
Jake Turlock had a well-trained beast, a large, surly red-haired Chesapeake, specially bred to work the icy waters of the bay in fall and winter. These dogs were unusual in that they grew a double matting of hair and produced an extra supply of oil to lubricate it. They could swim all day, loved to dive into the water for a fallen goose and were particularly skilled in breaking their way through ice. Like most of this breed, Jake's Chesapeake had a vile temper and would allow himself to be worked only by his master. Every other gunner in the field was his enemy and their dogs were beneath his contempt, but he was kept obedient by Jake's stern cry: 'Hey-You, heel!'
His name was Hey-You. Jake had started calling him that when he first arrived at the Turlock shack, a fractious, bounding pup giving no evidence that he could ever be trained. In fact, Jake had thought so little of him that he delayed giving him a proper name. 'Hey-You! Get the dove!' The pup would look quizzical, wait, consider whether he wanted to obey or not, then leap off when Jake kicked him.
So during his useless youth he was plain 'Hey-You, into the water for the goose!' But at the age of three, after many kicks and buffetings, he suddenly developed into a marvelous hunting dog, a raider like his master, a rough-and-tumble, uncivilized beast who seemed made for the Chesapeake. 'Hey-You! Go way down and fetch the dove.' So when this red-haired dog swaggered onto the dove field this October day, he was recognized as one of the best ever trained in the Patamoke area.
Lucifer, Tim Caveny's Labrador, was an unknown quantity, for he had never before participated in a dove shoot; furthermore, he had been trained in a manner quite different from Hey-You. 'My children were raised with love,' the Irishman said, 'and my dog is trained the same way.' From the moment Lucifer came down off Captain Lightfoot's ice ship, he had known nothing but love.
His glossy coat was kept nourished by a daily supply of fat from the Caveny table, and his nails were trimmed. In return he gave the Caveny family his complete affection. 'I believe that dog would lay down his life for me,' Mrs. Caveny told her neighbors, for when she fed him he always looked up at her with his great black eyes and rubbed against her hand. A peddler came to the door one day, unexpectedly and in a frightening manner; Lucifer's hackles rose, and he leaned forward tensely, waiting for a sign. Startled at seeing the man, Mrs. Caveny emitted a short gasp, whereupon Lucifer shot like a thunderbolt for the man's throat.
'Down, Lucifer!' she cried, and he stopped almost in midair.
But whether he could discipline himself to retrieve doves was another matter. Jake Turlock predicted widely, 'The stupid Irishman has spoiled his dog, if'n he was any good to begin with.' Other hunters who had trained their beasts more in the Turlock tradition agreed, adding, 'He ain't gonna get much out of that what-you-call-it—Labrador.'
But Caveny persisted, talking to Lucifer in sweet Irish phrases, trying to convince the dumb animal that great success awaited him on the dove field. 'Luke, you and me will get more doves than this town ever seen. Luke, when I say, "Fetch the dove!" you're to go direct to the spot you think it fell. Then run out in wide and wider circles.' Whether the dog would do this was uncertain, but Tim had tried with all his guile to get the animal in a frame of mind conducive to success. Now, as he led him to Lyman Steed's farm, he prayed that his lessons had been in the right direction, but when he turned the last corner and saw the other eighteen men with their Chesapeakes awaiting him, eager to see what he had accomplished with this strange animal, his heart fluttered and he felt dizzy.
Pulling gently on the rope attached to the dog's collar, he brought him back, kneeled beside him and whispered in his lilting brogue, 'Lucifer, you and me is on trial. They're all watchin' us.' He stroked the dog's glistening neck and said, 'At my heel constantly, little fellow. You don't move till I fire. And when I do, Luke, for the love of a merciful God, find that dove. Soft mouth, Luke, soft mouth and drop him at my toes, like you did with the rag dolls.'
As if he knew what his master was saying, Luke turned and looked at Tim impatiently, as if to say, 'I know my job. I'm a Labrador.'
The field contained about twenty acres and had recently been harvested, so that it provided a large, flat, completely open area, but it was surrounded by a marsh on one side, a large blackberry bramble on another, and a grove of loblollies covering a thicket of underbrush on a third. The doves would sweep in over the loblollies, drop low, hear gunfire and veer back toward the brambles. Placement of gunners was an art reserved for Judge Hathaway Steed, who hunted in an expensive Harris tweed imported from London.
The judge had been a hunter all his life, raised Chesapeakes and sold them to his friends. He had acquired a much better intuition concerning doves than he had of the law, and he now proposed to place his eighteen subordinates strategically, about sixty yards apart and in a pattern which pretty well covered the perimeter of the field. Toward the end of his assignments he came to Tim Caveny. 'You there, with the what-you-call-it dog.'
'Labrador,' Caveny said, tipping his hat respectfully, as his father had done in the old country when the laird spoke.
'Since we can't be sure a dog like that can hunt...'
'He can hunt.'
The judge ignored this. 'Take that corner,' he said, and Tim wanted to complain that doves rarely came to that corner, but since he was on trial he kept his mouth shut, but he was most unhappy when he saw Jake Turlock receive one of the best positions.
Then everyone stopped talking, for down the road edging the field came a carriage driven by a black man. On the seat beside him sat a very old gentleman with a shotgun across his knees. This was Lyman Steed, owner of the field. He was eighty-seven years old and so frail that a stranger would have wondered how he could lift a gun, let alone shoot it. Behind him, eyes and ears alert, rode a large red Chesapeake.
The carriage came to a halt close to where Hathaway Steed was allocating the spots, and the black driver descended, unfolded a canvas chair and lifted the old man down into it. 'Where do we sit today?' Steed asked in a high, quavering voice.
'Take him over by the big tree,' Hathaway said, and the black man carried the chair and its contents to the spot indicated. There he scraped the ground with his foot, making a level platform, and on it he placed the owner of the farm and one of the best shots in this meet. 'We's ready,' the black man cried, and the judge gave his last instructions: 'If you see a dove that the men near you don't, call "Mark!" Keep your dogs under control. And if the dove flies low, absolutely no shooting in the direction of the man left or right.'
The men took their positions. It was half after one in the afternoon. The sun was high and warm; insects droned. The dogs were restless, but each stayed close to his master, and the men wondered whether there would be any doves, because on some days they failed to show.
But not today. From the woods came six doves, flying low in their wonderfully staggered pattern, now in this direction, now swooping in that. Jake Turlock, taken by surprise, fired and hit nothing. 'Mark!' he shouted at the top of his voice. Tim Caveny fired and hit nothing. 'Mark!' he bellowed. In swift, darting patterns the doves dived and swirled and twisted, and three other hunters fired at them, to no avail, but as the birds tried to leave the field old Lyman Steed had his gun waiting. With a splendid shot he hit his target, and his big Chesapeake leaped out before the bird hit the ground and retrieved it before the dove could even flutter. Bearing it proudly in his mouth, but not touching its flesh with his teeth, he trotted back, head high, to his master and laid the bird at the old man's feet.
'That's how it's done,' Tim Caveny whispered to his Labrador.
There was a long wait and the hunters began to wonder if they would see any more doves, but Hathaway Steed, walking the rounds to police the action, assured each man as he passed, 'We're going to see flocks.'
He was right. At about two-thirty they started coming in. 'Mark!' one hunter shouted as they passed him before he could fire. Jake Turlock was waiting and knocked one down, whereupon Hey-You leaped out into the open field, pounced on the fallen bird and brought it proudly back. Jake looked at Tim, but the Irishman kept his eyes on the sky. He did whisper to Lucifer, 'Any dog can retrieve in an open field. Wait till one falls in the brambles.'
On the next flight Tim got no chance to shoot, but Turlock did, and this time he hit a bird that had come over the field, heard the shooting and doubled back. This dove fell into brambles. 'Fetch the dove!' Jake told his Chesapeake, but the bushes were too thick. That bird was lost.
But now another dove flew into Tim's range, and when he fired, this one also fell into brambles. 'Fetch the dove!' Tim said calmly, his heart aching for a good retrieve.
Lucifer plunged directly for the fallen bird but could not penetrate the thick and thorny briars. Unlike Turlock's Chesapeake, he did not quit, for he heard his master calling softly, 'Circle, Luke! Circle!' And he ran in wide circles until he found a back path to the brambles. But again he was stopped, and again his master cried, 'Circle, Luke!' And this time he found an entrance which allowed him to roam freely, but with so much ranging he had lost an accurate guide to the fallen bird. Still he heard his master's voice imploring, 'Circle, Luke!' and he knew that this meant he still had a chance.
So in the depth of the bramble patch, but below the reach of the thorns, he ran and scrambled and clawed and finally came upon Caveny's bird. He gave a quiet _yup_ , and when Tim heard this his heart expanded. Lucifer had passed his first big test, but on the way out of the patch the dog smelled another fallen bird, Turlock's, and he brought this one too.
When he laid the two doves at Tim's feet, the Irishman wanted to kneel and kiss his rough black head, but he knew that all the hunters in his area were watching, so in a manly way he patted the dog, then prepared for his moment of triumph.
It was a custom in dove shooting that if a hunter downed a bird which his dog could not retrieve and another man's dog did fetch it, the second hunter was obligated to deliver the dove to the man who had downed it. It was a nice tradition, for it allowed the second man to make a show of carrying the dove to its rightful owner while all the other hunters observed his act of sportsmanship. Implied in the gesture was the challenge: 'My dog can retrieve and yours can't.'
Proudly Tim Caveny walked the hundred-odd yards to where Jake Turlock was standing. Lucifer started to follow, but Tim cried sharply, 'Stay!' and the dog obeyed. The other hunters took note of this, then watched as Tim gravely delivered the bird, but at this moment another hunter shouted, 'Mark!' and a whole covey flew over.
Automatically Jake and Tim fired, and two birds fell. Jake's Hey-You was on the spot, of course, and proudly ran out to recover the dove his master had knocked down, but Lucifer was far distant from where his master had shot, yet he was so obedient to the earlier command, 'Stay,' that he did not move. But when Tim yelled, 'Fetch the dove,' he leaped off his spot, rushed directly to the fallen bird, and carried it not to where Tim was standing, but back to his assigned location.
The hunter next to Tim on the down side of the field called, 'You got yourself a dog, Tim.'
When Caveny returned to his location and saw the dove neatly laid beside his pouch, he desperately wanted to smother the dark beast with his affection; instead he said merely, 'Good dog, Luke.'
'Mark!' came the call and up went the guns.
The day was a triumph. Luke hunted in marshland as well as he had in brambles. He proved he had a soft mouth. He circled well in woods, and on the open field he was superb. And with it all he displayed the bland, sweet disposition of the Labradors and the Cavenys.
It was the tradition on these dove shoots for one member at the end of the day to provide refreshments. At quarter to five, religiously, the hunting ceased. The dogs were put back on leashes, and if the owners had come by wagon, were stowed in back while their masters ate cold duck and drank Baltimore beer. Turlock and Caveny, having come on foot, tied their dogs to trees, and as they did so the former muttered, 'Doves ain't nothin', Caveny. It's what a dog does in ice that counts.'
'Lucifer will handle ice,' Tim said confidently.
'On the bay proper, my Chesapeake is gonna eat 'im up. Out there they got waves.'
'Your Labrador looks like a breed to be proud of,' old Lyman Steed said as the black servant carried him into position to share the duck.
'Possibilities,' Judge Hathaway Steed said. 'But we won't know till we see him after geese.'
Each man complimented Tim on what he had accomplished with this strange dog, but each also predicted, 'Probably won't be much on the bay. Hair's not thick enough.'
Tim did not argue, but when he got Lucifer home he hugged him and gave him chicken livers, and whispered, 'Lucifer, geese is just doves, grown bigger. You'll love the water, cold or not.' During the whole dove season, during which this fine black dog excelled, Tim repeated his assurances: 'You're gonna do the same with geese.'
The test came in November. As the four men and their dogs holed up in a blind at the Turlock marshes, Jake reminded them, 'Geese ain't so plentiful now. Can't afford any mistakes, man or dog.' He was right. Once the Choptank and its sister rivers had been home for a million geese; now the population had diminished to less than four hundred thousand, and bagging them became more difficult. Jake, a master of the goose call, tried from dawn till ten in the morning to lure the big birds down, but failed. The hunters had a meager lunch, and toward dusk, when it seemed that the day was a failure, nine geese wheeled in, lowered the pitch of their wings, spread their feet and came right at the blind. Guns blazed, and before the smoke had cleared, Jake's Chesapeake had leaped out of the blind and with powerful swimming motions had retrieved the goose that his master had appeared to kill. Lucifer went into the water, too, but many seconds after Hey-You, and he was both splashy and noisy in making his retrieve of Tim's goose.
'Sure doesn't like cold water,' Jake said contemptuously.
'Neither did yours, when he started,' Tim said.
'A Chesapeake is born lovin' water, colder the better.'
It became obvious to the hunters, after eight mornings in the blind, that while Tim Caveny's new dog was exceptional with doves on warm days, he left much to be desired as a real hunter in the only form of the sport that mattered—goose on water. He displayed a discernible reluctance to plunge into cold waves, and they began to wonder whether he would go into ice at all.
Talk at the store centered on his deficiencies: 'This here Labrador is too soft. Can't hold a candle to a Chesapeake for hard work when it matters. You ask me, I think Caveny bought hisse'f a loser.' Some hunters told him this to his face.
Tim listened and said nothing. In his lifetime he had had four major dogs, all of them Chesapeakes, and he understood the breed almost as well as Jake Turlock did, but he had never owned a dog with the charm of Lucifer, the warmth, the love, and that meant something—'I come home, the room's bigger when that dog's in it.'
'Point is,' the men argued, 'a huntin' dog oughtn't to be in a room in the first place. His job is outside.'
'You don't know Lucifer. Besides, he's sired the best lot of pups in the region. This breed is bound to catch on.'
The Patamoke hunters were a suspicious clan. The most important thing in their lives, more important than wife or church or political party, was the totality of the hunting season: 'You got to have the right gun, the right mates, the right spot, the right eye for the target and, above all, the right dog. And frankly, I doubt the Labrador.' The pups did not sell.
Tim had faith. He talked with Lucifer constantly, encouraging him to leap more quickly into the cold water. He showed what ice was like, and how the dog must break it with his forepaws to make a path for himself to the downed goose. Using every training trick the Choptank had ever heard of, he tried to bring this handsome dog along step by step.
He failed. In January, when real ice formed along the edges of the river, the men went hunting along the banks of the bay itself, and when Jake Turlock knocked down a beautiful goose, it fell on ice about two hundred yards from the blind—'Hey-You, get the bird!'
And the big Chesapeake showed what a marvelous breed he was by leaping into the free water, swimming swiftly to the edge of the ice, then breaking a way for himself right to the goose. Clutching the big bird proudly in his jaws, he plunged back into the icy water, pushed aside the frozen chunks and returned to the blind, entering it with a mighty, water-spraying leap.
'That's what I call a dog,' Jake said proudly, and the men agreed.
Lucifer did not perform so well. He retrieved his goose all right, but hesitantly and almost with protest. He didn't want to leap into the water in the first place; he was not adept at breaking ice; and when he returned to the blind, he ran along the ice for as long as possible before going back into the freezing water.
'He did get the goose,' Jake admitted condescendingly, and for the rest of that long day on the Chesapeake the two dogs performed in this way, with Hey-You doing as well as a water dog could and Lucifer just getting by.
Tim never spoke a harsh word. Lucifer was his dog, a splendid, loving, responsive animal, and if he didn't like cold water, that was a matter between him and his master. And toward dusk the dog found an opportunity to repay Tim's confidence. Jake had shot a big goose, which had fallen into a brambled sort of marsh from which Hey-You could not extract it. The dog tried, swam most valiantly in various directions, but achieved nothing.
In the meantime Lucifer remained in the blind, trembling with eagerness, and Tim realized that his Labrador knew where that goose was. After Hey-You had returned with nothing, Tim said softly, 'Luke, there's a bird out there. Show them how to get it.'
Like a flash the black dog leaped into the water, splashed his way through the semi-ice into the rushy area—and found nothing. 'Luke!' Tim bellowed. 'Circle. Circle!' So the dog ran and splashed and swam in noisy circles and still found nothing, but he would not quit, for his master kept pleading, 'Luke, circle!'
And then he found the goose, grabbed it in his gentle mouth and swam proudly back to the blind. As he was about to place the goose at Tim's feet, the Irishman said quietly, 'No!' And the dog was so attentive to his master that he froze, wanting to know what he had done wrong.
'Over there,' Tim said, and Luke took the goose to Jake, placing it at his feet.
The feud between the two watermen continued. The men at the store fired it with unkind comments about Lucifer's deficiencies, but once or twice Caveny caught a hint that their animosity was weakening, for at some unexpected moment a man would see in Tim's dog a quality which made him catch his breath. Outwardly every hunter would growl, 'I want my dog to be rough and able to stand the weather and ready to leap at anyone attackin' me,' but inwardly he would also want the dog to love him. And the way in which Lucifer stayed close to Tim, anxious to detect every nuance in the Irishman's mood, tantalized the men at the store. All they would grant openly was, 'Maybe Tim's got somethin' in that black dog.' But Jake Turlock would not admit even that. 'What he's got is a good lap dog, and that's about it. As for me, I'm interested solely in huntin'.'
Aside from this disagreement over dogs, and a fistfight now and then, the two watermen maintained a warm friendship. They hunted together, fished together and worked the oyster beds in season. But it was the big gun that cemented their partnership, giving it substance and allowing it to blossom.
In these decades when the Eastern Shore flourished, the city of Baltimore also flourished. Some discriminating critics considered it the best city in America, combining the new wealth of the North with the old gentility of the South. The city offered additional rewards: a host of German settlers who gave it intellectual distinction; numerous Italians who gave it warmth. But for most observers, its true excellence derived from the manner in which its hotels and restaurants maintained a tradition of savory cooking: southern dishes, northern meats, Italian spices and German beer.
In 1888 the noblest hotel of them all had opened, the Rennert, eight stories high, with an additional three stories to provide a dome at one end, a lofty belvedere at the other. It was a grand hostelry which boasted, 'Our cooks are Negro. Our waiters wear white gloves.' From the day of its opening, it became noted for the luxuriance of its cuisine: 'Eighteen kinds of game. Fourteen ways to serve oysters. And the best wild duck in America.' To dine at the Rennert was to share the finest the Chesapeake could provide.
Jake Turlock and Tim Caveny had never seen the new hotel, but it was to play a major role in their lives. Its black chefs demanded the freshest oysters, and these were delivered daily during the season by Choptank watermen who packed their catch in burlap bags, speeding them across the bay by special boat. When the boat was loaded with oysters, its principal cargo, the captain could usually find space on deck for a few last-minute barrels crammed with ducks: mallards, redheads, canvas-backs and, the juciest of all, the black. It was in the providing of these ducks for the Rennert that Jake and Tim began to acquire a little extra money, which they saved for the larger project they had in mind.
One night at the store, after arguing about the comparative merits of their dogs, Jake said, 'I know me a man's got a long gun he might want to dispose of.'
Caveny was excited. 'If you can get the gun, I can get me a couple of skiffs.'
Turlock replied, 'Suppose we get the gun and the skiffs, I know me a captain who'll ferry our ducks to the Rennert. Top dollar.'
Caveny completed the self-mesmerization by adding, 'We put aside enough money, we can get Paxmore to build us our own boat. Then we're in business.'
So the feuding pair sailed upriver to the landing of a farm owned by an old man named Greef Twombly, and there they propositioned him: 'You ain't gonna have much more use for your long gun, Greef. We aim to buy it.'
'What you gonna use for money?' the toothless old fellow asked.
'We're gonna give you ten dollars cash, which Tim Caveny has in his pocket right now, and another forty when we start collectin' ducks.'
'Barrel of that gun was made from special forged iron. My grandfather bought it from London, sixty-two years ago.'
'It's been used.'
'More valuable now than when he got it home.'
'We'll give you sixty.'
'Sixty-five and I'll think about it.'
'Sixty-five it is, and we get possession now.'
Twombly rocked back and forth, considering aspects of the deal, then led them to one of the proudest guns ever to sweep the ice at midnight. It was a monstrous affair, eleven feet six inches long, about a hundred and ten pounds in weight, with a massive stock that could not possibly fit into a man's shoulder, which was good, because if anyone tried to hold this cannon when it fired, the recoil would tear his arm away.
'You ever fire one of these?' the old man asked.
'No, but I've heard,' Turlock said.
'Hearin' ain't enough, son. You charge it with three quarters of a pound of black powder in here, no less, or she won't carry. Then you pour in a pound and a half of Number Six shot, plus one fistful. You tamp her down with greasy wadding, like this, and you're ready. Trigger's kept real tight so you can't explode the charge by accident, because if you did, it would rip the side off'n a house.'
The two watermen admired the huge barrel, the sturdy fittings and the massive oak stock; as they inspected their purchase the old man said, 'You know how to fit her into a skiff?'
'I've seen,' Turlock said.
But Twombly wanted to be sure these new men understood the full complexity of this powerful gun, so he asked them to carry it to the landing, where he had a fourteen-foot skiff with extremely pointed bow and almost no deadrise, chocks occupying what normally would have been the main seat and a curious burlap contraption built into the stern area.
Deftly the old hunter let himself down into the skiff, kneeling in the stern. He then produced a double-ended paddle like the ones Eskimos used, and also two extremely short-handled single paddles. Adjusting his weight and testing the double paddle, he told Jake, 'You can hand her down.'
When the two watermen struggled with the preposterous weight of the gun, the old man said, 'It ain't for boys.' He accepted the gun into the skiff, dropped its barrel between the chocks, flipped a wooden lock, which secured it, then fitted the heavy butt into a socket made of burlap bagging filled with pine needles.
'What you do,' Twombly said, 'is use your big paddle to ease you into position, but when you come close to the ducks you stow it and take out your two hand paddles, like this.' And with the two paddles that looked like whisk brooms, he silently moved the skiff about.
'When you get her into position, you lie on your belly, keep the hand paddles close by and sight along the barrel of the gun. You don't point the gun; you point the skiff. And when you get seventy, eighty ducks in range, you put a lot of pressure on this trigger and—'
The gun exploded with a power that seemed to tear a hole in the sky. The kickback came close to ripping out the stern of the skiff, but the pine needles absorbed it, while a veritable cloud of black smoke curled upward.
'First time I ever shot that gun in daylight,' the old man said. 'It's a killer.'
'You'll sell?'
'You're Lafe Turlock's grandson, ain't you?'
'I am.'
'I had a high regard for Lafe. He could track niggers with the best. Gun's yourn.'
'You'll get your fifty-five,' Jake promised.
'I better,' the old man said ominously.
Caveny produced the two skiffs he had promised, and their mode of operation became standardized: as dusk approached, Jake would inspect his skiff to be sure he had enough pine needles in the burlap to absorb the recoil; he also cleaned the huge gun, prepared his powder, checked his supply of shot; Tim in the meantime was preparing his own skiff and feeding the two dogs.
Hey-You ate like a pig, gulping down whatever Caveny produced, but Lucifer was more finicky; there were certain things, like chicken guts, he would not eat. But the two animals had learned to exist together, each with his own bowl, growling with menace if the other approached. They had never engaged in a real fight; Hey-You would probably have killed Lucifer had one been joined, but they did nip at each other and a kind of respectful discipline was maintained.
Whenever they saw Jake oiling the gun, they became tense, would not sleep and spied on every action of their masters. As soon as it became clear that there was to be duck hunting, they bounded with joy and kept close to the skiff in which Caveny would take them onto the water.
Duck hunting with a big gun was an exacting science best performed in the coldest part of winter with no moon, for then the watermen enjoyed various advantages: they could cover the major part of their journey by sliding their skiffs across the ice; when they reached areas of open water they would find the ducks clustered in great rafts; and the lack of moonlight enabled them to move close without being seen. The tactic required utmost silence; even the crunch of a shoe on frost would spook the ducks. The dogs especially had to remain silent, perched in Caveny's skiff, peering into the night.
When the two skiffs reached open water, about one o'clock in the morning with the temperature at twelve degrees, Tim kept a close watch on the necks of his two dogs; almost always the first indication he had that ducks were in the vicinity came when the hackles rose on Hey-You. He was so attuned to the bay that one night Tim conceded graciously, 'Jake, your dog can see ducks at a hundred yards in pitch-black,' and Turlock replied, 'That's why he's a huntin' dog, not a lap dog... like some I know.'
When the ducks were located, vast collections huddling in the cold, Turlock took command. Easing his skiff into the icy water, he adjusted his double-ended paddle, stayed on his knees to keep the center of gravity low, and edged toward the restive fowl. Sometimes it took him an hour to cover a quarter of a mile; he kept the barrel of his gun smeared with lamp black to prevent its reflecting such light as there might be, and in cold darkness he inched forward.
Now he discarded his two-handed paddle and lay flat on his belly, his cheek alongside the stock of the great gun, his hands working the short paddles. It was a time of tension, for the slightest swerve or noise would alert the ducks and they would be off.
Slowly, slowly he began to point the nose of the skiff at the heart of the congregation, and when he had satisfied himself that the muzzle of the gun was pointed in the right direction, he brought his short paddles in and took a series of deep breaths. Then, with his cheek close to the stock but not touching it, and his right hand at the trigger, he extended his forefinger, grasped the heavy trigger—and waited. Slowly the skiff would drift and steady, and when everything was in line, he pulled the trigger.
He was never prepared for the magnitude of the explosion that ripped through the night. It was monstrous, like the fire of a cannon, but in the brief flash it produced he could always see ducks being blown out of the water as if a hundred expert gunners had fired at them.
Now Caveny became the focus. Paddling furiously, he sped his skiff through the dark water, his two dogs quivering with desire to leap into the waves to retrieve the ducks. But he wanted to bring them much closer to where the birds lay, and to do so he enforced a stern discipline. 'No! No!'—that was all he said, but the two dogs obeyed, standing on their hind feet, their forepaws resting on the deadrise like twin figureheads, one red, one black.
'Fetch!' he shouted, and the dogs leaped into the water and began their task of hauling the ducks to the two skiffs, Hey-You always going to Turlock's and Lucifer to Caveny's.
Since Tim's job was to man his shotgun and knock down cripples, he was often too busy to bother with his dog, so the Labrador had perfected a tactic whereby he paddled extra hard with his hind legs, reared out of the water and tossed his ducks into the skiff.
In this way the two watermen, with one explosion of their big gun, sometimes got themselves as many as sixty canvasbacks, ten or twelve blacks and a score of others. On rare occasions they would be able to fire twice in one night, and then their profit was amazing.
As soon as the two skiffs reached Patamoke, the watermen packed their catch in ventilated barrels, which they lined up on the wharf. There they purchased from other night gunners enough additional ducks to make full barrels, which they handed over to the captain of the boat running oysters to the Rennert, and at the end of each month they received from the hotel a check for their services.
Night after night Jake and Tim lurked at the edge of the ice, waiting for the ducks to raft up so that the gun could be fired, and as the barrels filled with canvasbacks and mallards, so their pockets filled with dollars, and they began to think seriously about acquiring a real boat in which they could branch out.
'There's a man on Deal Island, got hisse'f a new kind of boat,' Turlock said one morning as they were packing their ducks.
'What's special?'
'Claims it's the best type ever built for the Chesapeake. Made especially for drudgin'.'
Time out of mind, watermen of the Chesapeake had used two words with unique pronunciation. There was no such thing as an oyster, never had been. It was an arster, and to call it anything else was profanation. And a man did not dredge for arsters, he drudged them. Jake and Tim proposed to become arster drudgers, and the boat they had in mind was ideal for their purpose.
It put in to Patamoke one day, and Turlock ran to the Paxmore Boatyard and asked Gerrit Paxmore to join him in inspecting it. 'This is quite remarkable,' the Quaker said. And he began to analyze what the Deal Island men had done.
'Very shallow draft, so it can go anywhere on the flats. Single mast far forward, but look how it's raked! Gives them a triangular sail. More room on deck. Also allows the tip of the mast to hang over the hold, so that they can drop a line and haul cargo out. Enormous boom to give them drudging power. Very low freeboard, so they won't have to hoist the arsters too far, and it looks like it could sleep six.'
But then his practiced eye saw something he definitely did not like. 'She has no protruding keel, which accounts for her shallow draft, but she does have a retractable centerboard. I don't like that, not at all.'
'She has to have,' Turlock said. 'To counterbalance the sail.'
'I know, but to insert a centerboard, you've got to penetrate the keel.'
'What's the fault in that?'
'At Paxmore's we never touch the keel.' He looked at an old boat tied to the wharf, its backbone hogged. 'Our boats don't do that.'
He would not discuss the new craft any further, but returned to his yard; Turlock, however, asked the captain if he could serve on the next oystering, and the Deal Island man said, 'Come aboard,' so Jake dredged for six days, and when he came ashore he told Caveny, 'That's the finest boat's ever been built. It helps you work.'
So they went back to Paxmore, and Tim listened as his partner extolled the new craft. 'Mr. Paxmore, that boat helps you drudge. You can feel that huge boom bendin' to the job.'
But Paxmore was adamant. 'I would never feel comfortable, building a boat whose keel had been half-severed.'
'Suppose you don't feel comfortable? How about us? We're buyin' the boat.'
'I build by my own principles,' Paxmore said. 'If someone else can use my boat when she's built, good. If not, I'm ready to wait till the proper buyer comes along.'
Jake stepped back, looked at the self-satisfied Quaker and said, 'You'll go out of business in six months.'
'We're in our third century,' Paxmore said, and he would not discuss boatbuilding any further.
As a matter of fact, the question almost became academic one wintry February night when the two watermen had crept out to a spacious lagoon in the ice; there must have been three thousand ducks rafted there beneath a frozen late-rising moon. Caveny became aware of how cold it was when Lucifer left his spot on the gunwale and huddled in the bottom of the skiff. Hey-You turned twice to look at his cowardly companion, then moved to the middle of the bow as if obliged to do the work of two.
Jake, seeing this tremendous target before him—more ducks in one spot than they had ever found before—decided that he would use not a pound and a half of shot but almost twice that much. 'I'll rip a tunnel through the universe of ducks.' But to propel such a heavy load he required an extra-heavy charge, so into the monstrous gun he poured more than a pound of black powder. He also rammed home a double wadding. 'This is gonna be a shot to remember. Rennert's will owe us enough money to pay for our boat.'
Cautiously he moved his lethal skiff into position, waited, took a deep breath and pulled the trigger.
' _Whoooom!_ ' The gun produced a flash that could have been seen for miles and a bang that reverberated across the bay. The tremendous load of shot slaughtered more than a hundred and ten ducks and seven geese. It also burst out the back of Jake's skiff, knocked him unconscious and threw him a good twenty yards aft into the dark and icy waters.
The next minutes were a nightmare. Caveny, having seen his partner fly through the air during the brief flash of the explosion, started immediately to paddle in the direction of where the body might fall, but the two dogs, trained during their entire lives to retrieve fallen birds, found themselves involved with the greatest fall of ducks they had ever encountered, and they refused to bother with a missing man.
'Goddamnit!' Caveny yelled. 'Leave them ducks alone and find Jake.'
But the dogs knew better. Back and forth they swam on their joyous mission, gathering ducks at a rate they had never imagined in their twitching dreams.
'Jake! Where in hell are you?'
In the icy darkness he could find no way of locating the drowning man; all he knew was the general direction of Jake's flight, and now, in some desperation, he began sweeping the area—with almost no chance of finding his mate.
But then Lucifer swam noisily to the skiff, almost reprimanding Tim for having moved it away from the fallen ducks, and after he had thrown two ducks into the skiff, he swam casually a few yards, grabbed the unconscious and sinking Turlock by an arm, hauled him to the skiff, and returned quickly to the remaining ducks.
When Tim finally succeeded in dragging Jake aboard, he could think of nothing better to do than to slap the unconscious man's face with his icy glove, and after a few minutes Jake revived. Bleary-eyed, he tried to determine where he was, and when at last he perceived that he was in Caveny's skiff and not his own, he bellowed, 'What have you done with the gun?'
'I been savin' you!' Tim yelled back, distraught by this whole affair and by the mangled ducks that kept piling into his skiff.
'To hell with me. Save the gun!'
So now the two watermen began paddling furiously and with no plan, trying to locate the other skiff, and after much fruitless effort Jake had the brains to shout, 'Hey-You! Where are you?'
And from a direction they could not have anticipated, a dog barked, and when they paddled there they found a sorely damaged skiff almost sinking from the weight of its big gun and the many ducks Hey-You had fetched.
On the doleful yet triumphant return to Patamoke, Tim Caveny could not help pointing out that it had been his Labrador who had saved Turlock's life, but Jake growled through the ice festooning his chin, 'Granted, but it was Hey-You that saved the gun, and that's what's important.'
The partners now had enough money for a serious down payment on an oyster dredger, but before they made a contract with any boatbuilder, Jake wanted Tim to sail aboard one of the Deal Island innovations, so they shipped with a mean-spirited gentleman from that island, and Tim came home convinced that no boat but one of that type would satisfy him.
But he had also learned that the best boats on the bay were those built by Paxmore's, always had been, and he was not willing to settle for second-best. He therefore launched a campaign to convince his partner that they must do business with the Quaker, no matter what his idiosyncrasies. 'Let him build the boat however he wants. He'll do it right.'
Jake was obdurate. 'The three boats I seen are just what we want. I won't have no details sacrificed to any square-headed Quaker thinks he can improve the breed.'
For a week the two watermen could not even agree to take their big gun out for ducks, and no barrels were shipped to the Rennert. Then Tim counted their savings, concluded that it was safe to go ahead, and reluctantly agreed that since Paxmore refused to make what they wanted, they must give their commission to some other builder. Tim was not happy with this decision but was prepared to go ahead with it. And then one morning, as they argued as to which of the alternative builders they would employ, a boy came with news that Mr. Paxmore wanted to see them.
It was a strange but very Choptank trio that convened. Gerrit Paxmore was the youngest of the three—–stiff, wearing black shoes, heavy black trousers and waistcoat. He suffered from a forbidding countenance that rarely broke into a smile, and he spoke precisely, as if recording every word against some possible future challenge, at which time he would be prepared not only to explain it but to fulfill it. Patrons soon discovered that to do business with Paxmore was not easy, but it was reassuring.
Jake Turlock had his family's leanness, height and sour visage. He wore run-over shoes, baggy trousers, torn shirt and smashed hat, items which he rarely changed. He could read and write, having been well taught by the first Caveny from Ireland, but he posed as an illiterate. He hated Negroes and Catholics but found himself consistently thrown in with them, and much to his surprise, liked the individuals with whom he worked. He was, for example, convinced that Tim Caveny, as a Papist, was an insidious type, but he had never discovered any other man with whom it was so comforting to work. Tim had forced him to save money; had saved his life when the big gun blew out the back of the skiff; and up to now had proved reliable in emergencies. But Jake felt certain that when a real crunch came, Caveny would be found wanting.
Tim was much like his father, old Michael, the schoolteacher of indomitable optimism. He was inclined to be pudgy, lazy and preposterous. He loved his church and his family; but he loved even more the concept of sticking everlastingly to the job at hand. He was, in his own way, as much a puritan as Gerrit Paxmore, which was why these two men understood each other. Tim was invariably willing to bet his money that _his_ nigger would outfight the other, that _his_ dog would retrieve more doves, that _his_ boat would outsail any other on the bay. He existed in a world of perpetual challenge, in which he constantly faced men who were bigger than he or had more money. But since he was Irish, a reliable margin of good luck hung over him like an aura. He strove for the best, and the best sometimes happened.
It was he who opened the conversation that morning. 'Mr. Paxmore, we've decided—'
'We've decided nothin', Turlock interrupted.
'Perhaps I can assist thee,' Paxmore said gently. 'I've consulted with my men, and we want to try our hands at one of these new boats. What does thee call them?'
'Skipjack,' Turlock said.
'After the fish that skips over the water,' Tim interposed. 'And it does, Mr. Paxmore. This boat skims.'
'So we've decided, here at Paxmore's...' He coughed, placed his hands on the desk as if confessing all, and said, 'We'll build thy boat.'
'Centerboard in position?' Turlock asked.
'Of course.'
'How much?' Caveny asked.
'We think we can do it...' With almost a visible shudder he looked at the two supplicants, who could not possibly have the money required, then said in a whisper, 'We could do it for twelve hundred dollars.'
As soon as the words were uttered, Tim Caveny slapped down a bundle of bills. 'We can pay five hundred and forty dollars on deposit.'
This was more than twice what Paxmore had expected, and with an astonishment he could not control he asked, 'Where did thee acquire so much?' and Caveny said, like a fellow industrialist, 'We've been savin' it.'
Jake Turlock hated to surrender cash. 'Would it be cheaper, Mr. Paxmore, if me and Tim was to provide you with your timber?'
'It would indeed!'
'How much cheaper?'
'Thee would include keel, mast, boom?'
'You give us the length. We have the trees.'
Paxmore studied a paper which betrayed the fact that he wanted to build this boat no matter what the profit: he had a complete sketch of an improved skipjack, waiting to be transformed into a sleek bay craft. 'Mast, at least sixty-five feet tall, two feet in diameter at the thirty-foot mark, to allow for trimming.'
'I have my eye on just the tree,' Jake said.
'Boom fifty-three feet.'
'That's awful long for a boom. Longer than the boat itself.'
'That's the design. Bowsprit a good twenty-two feet.'
'She's gonna be very top-heavy, with those dimensions,' Turlock said.
'She'll be ballasted,' Paxmore assured him, but he had not yet said how much reduction he would allow if Turlock cut the timber from the woods behind his marsh.
'The savin's?' Jake asked.
'Thee will save three hundred and fifty dollars.'
'Tim,' the waterman said, 'get us some axes.'
The work the two men did in the ensuing weeks was awesome, for not only did they chop down oaks and loblollies during the day; they also took their long gun out each night, because only by constantly supplying the Rennert with barrels of ducks could they discharge the remaining debt on the skipjack. In addition to all this, Tim Caveny, in any spare moments, was constructing something that was about to shock the bay.
He worked in secret with his oldest boy, hammering at pipes, spending hours at a forge in town. The only indication Jake caught that his partner was up to something came one dawn when he helped lift mallards and canvasbacks from Tim's skiff. 'What you doin' with them extra struts?'
'I got me an idea,' the Irishman said, but he confided nothing.
And then one night as the watermen went down to their skiffs, Caveny revealed his masterpiece. From the front of his boat protruded not one but seven guns, each with a barrel two inches in diameter. They fanned out like the tail of a turkey gobbler, coming together where the triggers would normally be. There were no triggers. 'That's my invention. What we do is load the seven guns—powder, pellets and tampin', all in order.'
'How you gonna fire 'em? Jake asked.
'Ah ha! See this little iron trough?'
Jake had seen it, and had wondered what purpose it served; he could not have anticipated the insane proposal that Tim now made.
'The trough fits in here, just below the powder entrances to the seven guns. We fill it with powder all the way acrost. At this end, we light it. Whoosh! It fires each of the seven guns in order, and we kill so many ducks we're gonna need two extra skiffs.'
'It'll backfire and scorch you to death,' Jake predicted.
'It ain't yet.'
'You mean you fired this battery?'
'Three times. And tonight we fire it at the biggest mess o' ducks we can find.'
They paddled down the center of the Choptank, seeking a strong field of ice across which they could push their arsenal. North of Devon Island, where the rivers penetrating inland clustered, they found some, pulled their skiffs onto it and started the long, patient movement inland. Hey-You and Lucifer, each in his own skiff, made no noise, and when the hunters reached open water, everyone remained quiet for about half an hour, adjusting eyes to the darkness and allowing whatever birds lurked ahead to quieten.
Hey-You's hackles rose, and Tim whispered, 'It's a congregation!'
'We'll move together,' Jake proposed.
'But I'm to shoot first,' Tim said.
'Damned right. I'll be there to catch you when it blows you apart.'
The plan was for Tim to ignite his powder trough and, at the explosion of the first gun, for Jake to fire his monster. They calculated that Tim's seven guns backed up by Jake's would fire so nearly simultaneously that a curtain of lead would be thrown across the bay; few fowl would escape.
Each man eased himself into his skiff, instructed his dog where to sit, and started to work the small hand paddles. One could barely see the other, but an occasional hand signal indicated the preferred course, and slowly they approached the resting ducks. There were so many that Tim could not even estimate their number; all he knew was that they presented a worthy target.
As the time for lighting his powder train approached he muttered a brief prayer: 'Dearest God who protects watermen, don't let nothin' spook 'em.'
The ducks slept. The two skiffs moved silently into position. The dogs sat with every muscle tensed. And the men lay prone, their faces close to their guns. There was no moon, no snow.
Gently, but with his hands trembling, Tim Caveny spread the calculated amount of powder along his iron trough, checked it to be sure it nestled properly under the orifices of his seven guns, then lit the right-hand end. With a powerful flash, the powder leaped from gun to gun, and as the first one exploded, Jake Turlock fired his monster.
From the point of view of massacring ducks, the timing had been exquisite, for the powder had ignited three of Tim's guns before Jake could fire his. This meant that at the first flash, hundreds of ducks had risen into the air, only to be knocked down by Jake's great gun, then punished by the last four guns in Tim's arsenal.
Never before had there been such carnage on the Chesapeake. In fact, the two dogs brought so many ducks to the skiffs that they showed signs of sinking; the watermen ferried dead birds to the ice shelf, stashed them and returned to fetch others. The dogs were exhausted.
Next morning, when the count was made, the partners had sixty-nine canvasbacks, thirty-two mallards, thirty blacks, twenty-nine teal and thirteen geese that they could ship to Baltimore. In addition, they had twenty-two pintails which they would sell for a few pennies each to the Negroes living in Frog's Neck, and a score of mergansers, which no one would eat because they fed on fish. Tim's imaginative arsenal, so dangerous to use, so lethal when used, had proved its merit, so the two watermen continued to fell trees by day and fire their cannon at night. Whatever money they obtained from Baltimore, they turned over to Paxmore.
As winter ended and the ducks flew north, Gerrit Paxmore finished building his first skipjack, and when it was launched he told the two watermen, 'This boat will sail better than any in the bay.' Turlock and Caveny were prepared to believe this, but they were taken aback when the Quaker added, 'I've kept thy money in our office. I'm prepared to hand it back, because thee doesn't have to take this boat... if thee doesn't wish.'
'Why wouldn't we?' Turlock asked angrily.
'Because,' Paxmore said quietly, 'I've done something with the center-board.'
The three men went aboard and climbed down into the hold where they could inspect the bottom of the boat, and there Turlock and Caveny saw the damnedest thing their eyes had ever met. Instead of placing the centerboard in the middle of the keel—cutting a slim hole fourteen feet long right through the heart of the oak, then building around it what boatmen called the trunk to keep out the water—Paxmore had left the keel untouched, as the tradition of his family required, but had cut a hole parallel to it, thus offsetting the centerboard some eight inches to star-board.
'You goddamned fool!' Turlock shouted. 'This boat's off center. It'll never...'
'Friend,' Paxmore said gently, 'thee has no need to swear. Thy deposit is waiting.'
'But goddamnit, I asked you plain and simple about the centerboard. And you told me in your own words... Didn't he, Tim?'
'He sure as hell did. Why, this damned thing—it's a cripple.'
'Please, gentlemen. Speak less roughly. Thy money—'
'To hell with our money! We want our boat.'
'Thee is not obligated...'
It was dark in the bowels of the skipjack and the three men seemed like angry ghosts. The centerboard was sadly awry; indeed, to call it a center anything was ridiculous. The whole balance of the boat was destroyed, and Caveny could visualize it sailing crabwise down the bay. Tears came into his eyes, and he showed Paxmore his hands, blistered for months. 'We chopped every goddamned timber in this boat. And what do we get?'
'A —– washtub,' Turlock said, using the foulest word he could conjure.
It was this ultimate obscenity that awakened Paxmore to the fact that he was in real trouble. He had assumed that by merely offering the men their money, he would be relieved of difficulties with his unusual craft; certainly he could peddle it to someone else, perhaps at a minor loss, and with the funds thus received, pay the two watermen for their work in felling trees.
'No!' Turlock said grimly. 'We want our boat and we want it now. You take that goddamned centerboard out of there and you put it in here, where it belongs.'
'That I will not do,' Paxmore said, and as he spoke his right hand fell protectively upon the unblemished keel, and only then did Tim Caveny realize that this unpleasant Quaker loved the new craft as much as he and Jake did.
'What we might do,' Tim suggested, 'is take her for a trial.' Turlock did not want to do this, lest he like the results, but Paxmore encouraged the idea. However, Tim had an additional idea: 'Suppose we do accept it, damaged though it is? How much reduction in cost?'
'Not one penny,' Paxmore said. 'This is the finest boat on the bay, and if truth were told, thee should pay me an extra two hundred.'
'You are a son-of-a-bitch,' Turlock growled, and as he climbed out of the hold he said, 'I want to be let off this boat. I want nothin' to do with a goddamned washtub.'
'Let's give it a trial,' Tim pleaded, and he began to haul the mainsail, and every pulley, every rope worked so perfectly that he said, 'They're right. A sail like this does raise easier.'
They raised the jib, too, and then they swung the gigantic boom, two feet longer than the boat that supported it, and they could feel the power of the canvas overhead. There was a good breeze, and Caveny and Paxmore moved the skipjack into the middle of the Choptank—Turlock wouldn't touch sail or wheel—and she began to lay over to starboard, and the water broke white, and seagulls followed the new craft, and after a long while Turlock muscled his way aft and shoved Caveny away from the wheel.
Paxmore sat on the hatch covering, saying nothing. He could feel his boat responding to the waves and could visualize just how she accommodated to the wind. When Turlock called from the wheel, 'I think she needs more ballast forward,' Paxmore said, 'I think so, too.'
They christened her the _Jessie T_ , after Jake's mother, and before she took her first trip oystering, the conventions governing skipjacks were installed: 'No color of blue ever to board this boat. No red brick ever to be used as ballast. No walnuts to be eaten. No hatch cover ever to be placed on deck upside down.' And because of the extremely low railing and the massiveness of the boom, larger by far than that on any other type of vessel sailing the Chesapeake: 'Above all, when you work on deck, mind the boom!'
The _Jessie T_ was worked by a crew of six: Captain Jake Turlock, in command of the craft and responsible for her safety; First Mate Tim Caveny, who took care of the money; three Turlocks, who manned the dredges in which the oysters were caught; and the most important member, the cook. From the day the boat was planned to the moment when the three Turlocks were hired, there had been only one candidate for cook: a remarkable black man renowned along the Choptank.
He was Big Jimbo, an unusually tall Negro, son of the slaves Cudjo and Eden Cater. From his father he had learned to read and from his mother to carry himself with fierce pride. He was a gentle man, given to humor, and because of his rare ability with a ship's stove he knew that he was as good as the captain and better than the crew.
He resolved one possible difficulty the instant he came aboard. On a skipjack the three crewmen slept forward in cramped quarters. The captain, cook and mate—in that order—divided the three good bunks aft among themselves, and it had become traditional for the captain to choose the extra-long bunk to the starboard, the cook to take the next best one to port, with the mate getting the somewhat less convenient bunk across the back of the cabin; but on the _Jessie T_ things worked out a little differently: one of the Turlocks who should have slept forward was a close cousin of Jake's and he announced that he would sleep aft, because he was sure the nigger wouldn't mind berthing in the smaller quarters.
So when Big Jimbo came aboard he found his bunk taken. Without even a second's hesitation, he politely lifted the gear out, placed it on deck and said, 'Cain't no man cook if'n he sleeps forward.'
He had made a mistake, and a serious one. The gear he had thrown out of the aft cabin was not the intruder's, but Tim Caveny's, the co-owner of the skipjack. When the Turlock lad had decided to move aft, Tim had seen a chance to promote himself into a better bunk, so he had preempted the cook's and had diverted Jake's cousin into the shorter aft bunk. When Tim saw his gear being thrown on deck, he started to raise hell, but Big Jimbo said softly, 'Mister Tim, if'n that's yours, I do apologize,' and he was more than polite in returning it to the cabin, where he placed it not in the bunk that Tim had chosen, but in the aft one.
'I sort of thought I'd sleep here,' the Irishman said tentatively, pointing to the cook's longer bunk.
'Cook sleeps here,' Big Jimbo said, and he used his words so sweetly that even the displaced owner was charmed. And then, before any ill feeling could develop, Jimbo assembled the crew on deck and said, 'I brung me some milk and some cream, so we gonna have the world's best arster stew. You want she-stew or he-stew?'
'You cain't tell a she arster from a he,' one of the Turlocks said.
'I ain't talkin' about the arsters. I'se talkin' about the eaters.' He smiled benignly at the watermen and asked, 'What's it to be, she or he?'
'What's the difference,' one of the men asked.
'That ain't for you to ask.'
'We'll take he.'
'Best choice you ever made,' Jimbo said, and he disappeared down the hatch leading to his wood stove.
A she-stew was the traditional one served throughout the Chesapeake: eight oysters per man, boiled ever so slightly in their own liquor, then in milk and thickened with flour, flavored with a bit of celery, salt and pepper. It was a great opening course but somewhat feeble for working-men.
A he-stew was something quite different, and Big Jimbo mumbled to himself as he prepared his version, 'First we takes a mess of bacon and fries it crisp.' As he did this he smelled the aroma and satisfied himself that Steed's had sold him the best. As it sizzled he chopped eight large onions and two hefty stalks of celery, holding them back till the bacon was done. Deftly he whisked the bacon out and put it aside, tossing the vegetables into the hot oil to sauté. Soon he withdrew them, too, placing them with the bacon. Then he tossed the forty-eight oysters into the pan, browning them just a little to implant a flavor, then quickly he poured in the liquor from the oysters and allowed them to cook until their gills wrinkled.
Other ship's cooks followed the recipe this far, but now Big Jimbo did the two things that made his he-stew unforgettable. From a precious package purchased from the McCormick Spice Company on the dock in Baltimore he produced first a canister of tapioca powder. 'Best thing ever invented for cooks' in his opinion. Taking a surprisingly small pinch of the whitish powder, he tossed it into the milk, which was about to simmer, and in a few minutes the moisture and the heat had expanded the finely ground tapioca powder into a very large translucent, gelatinous mass. When he was satisfied with the progress he poured the oysters into the milk, tossed in the vegetables, then crumbled the bacon between his fingers, throwing it on top.
The sturdy dish was almost ready, but not quite. From the McCormick package he brought out a packet of saffron, which he dusted over the stew, giving it a golden richness, augmented by the half-pound of butter he threw in at the last moment. This melted as he brought the concoction to the table, so that when the men dug in, they found before them one of the richest, tastiest stews a marine cook had ever devised.
'Do we eat this good every day?' Caveny asked, and Big Jimbo replied, 'You brings me the materials, I brings you the dishes.'
Dredging oysters was hard work, as events during the winter of 1892 proved. The season was divided into two halves, October to Christmas, when the oysters were plentiful, and January to the end of March, when they were more difficult to find. Since the _Jessie T_ had an all-Patamoke crew, it returned to that port each Saturday night, bringing huge catches of oysters for sale to the local packing plants, and because those who sailed the skipjack were devoutly religious—even the profane Turlocks—they did not sneak out of port late on Sunday afternoon, as some did, but waited till Monday morning, an act of devotion for which they expected God to lead them to the better beds.
Captain Jake had enjoyed Christmas and was sleeping soundly this first Monday after the New Year, but at three o'clock in the morning his daughter Nancy shook him by the shoulder and whispered, 'Daddy! Time to sail.' He muttered a protest, then sat bolt upright. 'What time?' he asked, and she replied, clutching her nightgown about her throat, 'Three.'
He leaped from bed, climbed into five layers of protective clothing, then went into the next room, where he kissed his two other children as they slept. His wife was already in the kitchen brewing a pot of coffee and pouring out a quart of milk for him to take to the boat. She also had some strips of bacon and a handful of onions to be delivered to Big Jimbo for that day's stew.
Through the dark streets of Patamoke, Captain Jake headed for the wharf, and as he approached the swaying masts of the oyster fleet, he saw converging on the waterfront a score of men dressed like himself, each bringing some item of special food. They moved like shadows in the frosty air, grunting hellos as they met, and when Jake reached the _Jessie T_ he was pleased to see that Big Jimbo was already aboard, with a fire well started.
'Brung you some milk,' he said, half throwing his parcel onto the swaying table. The cook grunted some acknowledgment, then reached for a bucket of choice oysters that had been set aside for this occasion. Placing a well-worn glove on his left hand, he began shucking the oysters, tossing the meat into one pan while pouring as much of the liquor as possible into another. 'Things look good,' Captain Jake said as he deposited his gear and went on deck.
Mate Caveny was prompt, and while he and the captain cleared the deck, the three Turlock crewmen came aboard, stowing their gear forward in the mean quarters. 'Cast off!' Jake called, and when his lines were clear and his two sails aloft, his skipjack began its slow, steady movement out to the center of the river, then westward toward the bay. Three hours later the sun would begin to rise, but for the present they would be in darkness.
It was very cold on deck. A brisk wind swept in from the bay, coming as usual out of the northwest, bitter cold from Canada. Captain Jake stayed at the wheel, standing before it and moving it with his left hand behind his back. The Turlocks patrolled the deck, while Caveny stayed below helping the cook.
Past Peace Cliff they went and into the channel north of Devon Island. Blackwalnut Point appeared in the dim light, while ahead lay the great bay, its waters ruffled by the heavy wind. It was cold, dark and wet as the tips of waves broke off to become whipping spray that cut the face.
But now Big Jimbo rang his bell, and all but the youngest Turlock moved below; he watched the wheel, standing in front of it, as the captain had done.
In the cramped cabin below, Big Jimbo had prepared one of his best he-stews, and when crackers were broken over the bottom of their bowls and the rich mixture poured in, the men's faces glowed. But as in most skipjacks, no one moved a spoon until the cook had taken his place at the small table and reached out his large black hands to grasp those of Captain Turlock and Mate Caveny, whose free hands sought those of the two crewmen. The circle thus having been completed, the five watermen bowed their heads while Captain Turlock uttered the Protestant grace:
'God is great. God is good.
And we thank Him for our food.
By His hand we all are fed.
Thank Thee, Lord, for daily bread.'
When he finished, all the men said 'Amen,' but they did not relax their hands, for it was now Tim Caveny's responsibility to intone the Catholic grace:
'Bless us, O Lord, for these Thy gifts which we are about to receive from Thy bounty, through Christ our Lord, Amen.'
Again the men said 'Amen,' but still they kept their hands together, for in addition to the two formal graces, it was the custom aboard the _Jessie T_ for Caveny to add a personal prayer, and in his rich Irish accent he now asked God for special attention:
'We have observed Thy day with prayers and have sought Thy blessing upon our families. Now we ask that Thee guide this boat to where the arsters sleep awaiting our coming. Lord, make the harvest a rich one. St. Peter, guardian of fishermen, protect us. St. Patrick, who crossed the sea, watch over this boat. St. Andrew, who fished the Sea of Galilee, guide us to our catch.'
'Amen,' the watermen whispered, and spoons dipped into the golden-flecked stew.
They needed prayers, for their work was both hard and dangerous. When Captain Jake felt that the _Jessie T_ was properly positioned over the invisible beds, he ordered Caveny and the three Turlocks to drop the two dredges, one port, one starboard, and when these iron-pronged collectors had bounced over the bottom long enough, he tested the wires holding them, calculating whether the load was adequate, and when he was satisfied, he ordered the dredges hauled aboard.
Now the muscle-work began. Port and starboard stood two winches, powered by hand, and around the drum of each, the wire leading to its dredge was wound. Then the men, two to a winch, began turning the heavy iron handles, and as the drums revolved, the lines holding the submerged dredges were hauled aboard. Danger came when the iron prongs of the dredge caught in rock, reversing the handle and knocking out men's teeth or breaking their arms. Few watermen ever worked the oyster bars without suffering some damage from reversing handles; one of the younger Turlocks carried a broad scar across his forehead—'I like to died from bleedin'. Lessen I had a head like rock, I be dead.'
When the dredges finally climbed aboard, dripping with mud and weed, their cargo was dumped on deck, except when the load was simply too dirty to work; then the men engaged in a maneuver that almost jerked their arms from their sockets. Alternately lowering the dredge into the sea a few feet, and yanking it back, they sloshed the great net up and down until the mud washed free. Only then were they allowed to bring it aboard with its load of oysters and shells.
Quickly the dredges were emptied onto the deck, then thrown back for another catch. As soon as they were back in the water, the watermen knelt on the deck to begin the sorting, and with deft hands well scarred by the sharp edges of oysters, they picked through the mass of dead shell and weed, isolating the living oysters which represented their catch. Their fingers seemed to dance through the debris, knowing instinctively whenever they touched a good oyster; with curious skill they retrieved each one, tossing it backward toward the unseen piles that mounted as the day's dredging progressed.
It was a custom aboard the skipjacks for each of the four men sorting the catch to throw his oysters into the corner of the boat behind him; this distributed the weight of the catch evenly across the deck of the boat, fore and aft, port and starboard. When the long day ended—dawn till dusk, six days a week—the _Jessie T_ was usually piled high with oysters, yet riding evenly in the water because of the planned way they had been stowed.
Toward the end of each day Captain Jake, who did none of the sorting, began to look for a boat flying a bushel basket high from its mast. This was the buy-boat, and there was usually one in the vicinity. When it came alongside, the men aboard the _Jessie T_ had to work double-fast. Into the iron measuring bucket dropped onto their deck by a boom from the buy-boat they shoveled their catch, and each time the iron bucket rose in the air and returned to the buy-boat, depositing the oysters into its hold, Tim Caveny at the railing would cry 'Tally one!' then 'Tally two!—and so on until the fifth bucket, when he would shout 'Mark one!' Then he would begin again with 'Tally one!'
At dusk he would report to his crew, 'Twenty-two and three.' This meant twenty-two marks plus three tallies, or one hundred and thirteen bushels. And each man would then calculate what that day's work had brought.
The _Jessie T_ worked on shares. The skipjack itself received one third, divided evenly between the two owners, Jake and Tim, but they had to pay for the food, the cordage, the dredges. The captain received a third, which again he had to split with Caveny, who could just as easily have served as leader. And the four crewmen split the remaining third among them, except that Big Jimbo was recognized as such a superior cook that he received a little extra from everyone.
His position was anomalous. The four Turlocks hated Negroes and never hesitated in voicing their disgust. 'Goddamned spades killed my cousin Captain Matt—one of them gets out of line with me, he's dead.' They often made this threat in the presence of Big Jimbo, indicating they knew damned well he was descended from the murderer; but the cook himself was prized as a friend, as a most willing helper on deck and as the best galley-man in the fleet. 'When you sail _Jessie T_ , man, you eat. Our nigger can outcook your nigger ever' time.'
The extraordinary contribution of Big Jimbo was demonstrated one gray February morning when the men were at breakfast, with the youngest Turlock at the wheel. The skipjack was heeling to starboard, so that the dishes on the crowded table were sliding, and Captain Jake called up through the cabin door, 'All okay up there?'
'All's fine!' the man at the wheel shouted back, but soon thereafter he cried in some alarm, 'Cap'm! Very dark clouds!' And then immediately, 'I need help!'
Captain Jake started for the ladder, but Ned Turlock, one of the three crewmen, beat him to it. With a hearty bound, the young man leaped up the four steps and made the deck just in time to be struck in the face by the flying boom, which had been swept across the deck by a change in the storm's direction. Ned was knocked into the turbulent water and was soon far aft of the skipjack without a lifebelt, but Captain Jake, taking command of the wheel, swung the boat about while everyone worked the sails in an effort to bring it under control.
As soon as the skipjack steadied and was on a course that might bring her near the thrashing waterman, who was struggling to stay alive, Big Jimbo tied a rope about his waist, then asked Tim Caveny to fashion a kind of harness, with smaller ropes lashing him about the shoulders and holding him to the main rope. When this was tested, the big cook checked to be sure that the loose end of the rope was secured to a mooring cleat, and then, without hesitation, plunged into the deep, icy waters. His arms thrashed wildly as he tried to stabilize himself, and one of the Turlocks cried, 'Hell, he cain't swim neither,' and Captain Jake growled, 'Niggers cain't never swim. Watch him with the hook.'
Big Jimbo, kicking his feet and flailing his arms, moved closer to the drowning man, but the force of the waves and the irresistible movement of the skipjack prevented him from making the rescue, and it seemed that Ned Turlock must drown. But on deck Captain Jake was willing to take great risks, so in the midst of the furious squall, he brought his boat around, almost capsizing it, and headed on a tack that would intercept his cousin in the water.
With a giant embrace, Big Jimbo caught the exhausted man, clutched him to his bosom and pressed water from his lungs as the men aboard the _Jessie T_ pulled on the rope to drag the two men aboard. At supper that night, after the oysters had been sold and the profits calculated, the six watermen joined hands as Caveny poured out their thanks:
'Almighty God, Thou didst send the storm much like the one that swamped the fishermen on Galilee, and in Thy wisdom Thou didst sweep our sailor Ned from us. But just as Thou didst rescue Jonah after forty days and forty nights in the belly of the whale, so didst Thou urge our nigger Big Jimbo to dive into the rolling waters to save Ned. St. Patrick, patron saint of fishermen, we thank thee for thy intervention. Greater love hath no man.'
When the prayer ended, everyone had objections: 'The forty days and forty nights were Noah and the ark, not Jonah.'
'They were both a long time,' Caveny said. 'I thought Ned was gone.'
'Last week you said St. Peter was our patron saint.'
'A fisherman needs all the help he can get,' Caveny said.
'You should of finished the last bit.' And Captain Jake misquoted, ' "Greater love hath no man than this, that he lay down his life for his brother." '
'I didn't forget. I just thought Ned might take it unkindly, bein' told he was brother to a nigger.'
With the near-drowning of Ned Turlock, the suspicion that the _Jessie T_ might be a bad-luck boat gained so much credence that Captain Jake found it difficult to enroll a crew. One cynic at the store reminded the men, 'Like I told you, that skipjack was doomed from the start. Its centerboard is out of whack. Side-assed, you might say.'
And one of the Turlock boys who sailed in it confided, 'Thing you really got to watch is Captain Jake. In the fall, when arsters is plentiful, he pays his crew a salary. Come winter, when they ain't so many arsters, he smiles at you like an angel and says, "Boys, better we work on shares this time." I ain't sailin' with him no more.'
When an Eastern Shore skipjack found itself unable to enroll a crew, it was traditional for the captain to make the big decision, which Captain Jake now did: 'Caveny, we sail to Baltimore.'
With only Ned and Big Jimbo to help, they headed across the bay, past Lazaretto Light, past Fort McHenry, where the star-spangled banner had flown that troubled night, and into one of the finest small anchorages in the world, Baltimore's inner harbor. Its merit was threefold: it lay right in the heart of the city; it was surrounded by hotels and stores and warehouses immediately at hand; and it was so protected by their tall buildings that no storm could imperil a ship docked there. Also, it was a joy for any ship's cook to enter this harbor, because on the waterfront stood the huge McCormick Spice Company, its odors permeating the area, its shelves crammed with condiments the cooks sought.
As the _Jessie T_ approached her wharf in the corner formed by Light Street, where the white steamers docked, and Pratt Street, where the skipjacks tied up and the saloons clustered, Captain Jake warned his companions to be especially alert. 'We may have to pull out of here in a hurry,' he said. 'Jimbo, you guard the boat while Tim and me goes ashore to tend to our business.'
'Cap'm,' the big cook said, 'I watch the boat, but first I got to get me some spices,' and as soon as the _Jessie T_ made fast, Big Jimbo was off to McCormick's, returning with a small, precious package which he stowed below.
Now Turlock and Caveny started toward the row of saloons, and as they swaggered ashore, Jimbo called out, 'Good luck, Cap'm. I be wait-in'.'
There was one saloon, the Drunken Penguin, at which captains needing crew often had success, so it was natural that the two watermen should head there. 'What a fine sign!' Caveny exclaimed as he saw for the first time the besotted penguin leering at him. Turlock, ignoring the art criticism, banged into the swinging doors with his shoulder, and smashed his way into the darkened bar, standing for a moment to survey the familiar scene. When he moved to a table at the rear, two young men who recognized him as an Eastern Shore skipper quietly rose and slipped out a side door.
He and Caveny had a beer, then a plate of food from the free lunch. 'Many people droppin' by?' Jake asked the bartender.
'Nope,' the barman said, wiping a glass much longer than required. 'They's mostly at the other places.'
'They'll be comin' in,' Jake said as he attacked his food. 'Tim, fetch me another pickled egg.'
There was no action that first afternoon, and Caveny suggested they explore some other bars, but Jake refused. 'In other years I've found what I wanted here. We'll find it this time, too.'
Toward dusk laborers from sites nearby dropped in for their evening beer, and Caveny said, 'Reminds me of those great opening lines of Grey's _Energy:_
'Homeward at the close of day
The weary workmen come.
Tired with their honest toil
And all lit up with rum.'
Midnight approached and nothing happened. 'I told you they was at the other bars,' the barman said.
'I heard you,' Jake grunted, and that night he and Tim slept sitting at their table. Dawn broke, and along Light Street came carriages with passengers for the early steamers, and soon Pratt Street was alive with draymen. The heavy business of Baltimore was under way.
At about nine o'clock in the morning the two watermen were wide awake, and Tim suggested, 'I ain't never seen Hotel Rennert. Let's see where our arsters goes.' So the two watermen walked a dozen blocks in the clean, brisk air, crossed a park and stood on the Belgian blocks that surfaced all the streets near the great hostelry. 'Magnificence brought down from heaven to earth,' Caveny said. When Turlock made no reply, the Irishman pointed to the towering façade and the beribboned doorman. 'It's an honor to provide arsters to such an establishment.' Again there was no response, so Tim plucked at his captain's sleeve. 'Jake, I think St. Peter, patron of us sailors, would look upon it kindly if we had a beer at the Rennert, seein' as how we help keep it in business.'
'St. Peter might look kindly, but that flunky wouldn't,' Jake said, pointing to his rough clothes and Tim's unshaven face.
'There's always welcome to an honest workman,' Caveny replied, and he strode up to the doorman and said, 'My good man, Captain Turlock and I provide the arsters used in your establishment. Would you extend the courtesy of allowin' us to enjoy a beer?' Before the surprised functionary could respond, Caveny said grandly, 'At our expense, of course.'
'Are you indeed oystermen?' the doorman asked.
'That we are,' Caveny replied, 'best of the bay. Which is why Rennert buys from us.'
'Gentlemen, the oyster bar is through that door. I feel sure you will be welcomed.'
Gingerly Jake Turlock entered the mahogany-lined room. There was the glistening bar of which he had heard, the black man shucking in the corner, the chalked board proclaiming the many varieties of oysters available, and three men in business suits having an early snack. It was a handsome room, ideal for the purpose to which it was dedicated.
'My good man,' Caveny said to the barman in charge, 'my mate and I catch the arsters you sell here.'
'Is that true?' the bartender said.
'As true as I stand before you like the honest fisherman I am.'
'And would you be wantin' to sample the oysters you've caught?'
'God forbid that we should come all the way to Baltimore to eat arsters. What we want is a cold beer.'
'And that you shall have,' the barman said. 'Compliments of the Rennert.'
'We can pay,' Caveny said.
'I'm sure you can, but we rarely see our oystermen, and this beer is on the house.'
Caveny sipped his beer as if he were a gentleman, making various observations on the quality of the hotel. As he placed his glass on the bar, depositing it gently with ten fingers embracing it, he asked, 'Would you be offended, sir, if we tipped rather more handsomely than is the custom?'
'From sailors like yourselves...'
'Watermen,' Caveny corrected, and onto the bar he tossed a sum of coins which would have covered not only the two beers but also a generous tip. 'This is a grand hotel,' he told Turlock as they returned to the street, but Jake merely said, 'Back to the Drunken Penguin. You never know when they'll straggle in.'
The first prospect arrived at two that afternoon, an Englishman about twenty-four years old, seedy, bleary-eyed, underfed. He had just enough money to purchase a beer, which entitled him to gorge on the free lunch.
Turlock, watching his ravenous appetite, nodded to Caveny, who moved to the bar. 'From the fair city of Dublin, I'm sure.'
'London,' the Englishman said.
'None finer in the world, I always say. Would you be offended if I suggested another beer?'
The young man was not disposed to argue about such an invitation, but when the drink was paid for, and the glass stood empty on the bar, he discovered the heavy cost of this courtesy, for suddenly he was grabbed from behind by the strong arms of a man he could not see, and his generous friend Timothy Caveny was bashing him in the face. He fainted, and when he revived, found himself bound hand and foot in the cabin of a strange boat, with a very large black man standing guard and threatening to knife him if he made one move.
Jake and Tim returned to the Drunken Penguin, resumed their seats at the back table and waited. After dark a young man came into the bar, loudly announced he was from Boston, waiting for his ship to arrive from New Orleans; he lounged awhile, had a desultory beer and picked at the spiced beets, licking his fingers as he finished. He was a sturdy young fellow, and Caveny doubted that he could be easily subdued, so as the Bostonian looked aimlessly about the bar, Tim approached the bartender to make a whispered offer. It was accepted, and when Tim took his place at the young man's elbow to propose a drink in honor of the great port of Boston, where Tim had served in many different ships, the glass was ready.
The Bostonian took one sip, looked at the bubbles, then placed the glass on the bar. 'Drink up!' Tim said brightly, gulping down a large portion of his own drink.
'I'd like a pickled beet,' the young sailor said.
'Best food in the world with beer,' Caveny said as he passed the glass bowl along.
The sailor ate two beets, took three gulps of his beer and fell flat on the floor. 'Grab his feet!' Captain Turlock ordered, and watchers at the bar, who had seen this operation before, stepped reverently back as Jake and Tim lugged their second hand to the _Jessie T_.
When a crew had been conscripted in this way, a captain was afraid to put into port over weekends lest his men desert. He stayed out on the Chesapeake during the whole fall season, loading oysters onto the buy-boats, picking up fresh food from them when necessary and watching his shanghaied men every minute to prevent their escape.
'Don't feel sorry for yourselves,' Captain Turlock told the two men. 'You get paid just like everyone else. By Christmas you'll be rich.'
The impressed seamen had to work like slaves. They threw the dredges into the water; they pulled them up; they sloshed them when there was mud; they stayed on their knees hours and days at a time picking through the haul; and when the buy-boat came, it was they who shoveled the oysters into the metal buckets.
Oystermen had a hundred clever tricks for hoodwinking shanghaied helpers: 'Well, you see, the earnin's I've been quotin' ain't clear profit. You've got to pay for the clothes we provide, the gloves, and so forth.' They also had to pay for their food. Also deducted were fees for mending the dredges, the cost of new ropes.
Captain Turlock favored a simpler method: 'You men are gettin' richer by the day.'
'When can we go ashore?' the Englishman asked.
'You mean, when can you leave our boat?'
'In a manner of speaking, yes.'
'At Christmas,' Turlock promised, and Caveny added, 'On that holy day all men yearn to be with their families.'
During the third week of December, when ice formed on fingers, the two impressed seamen came to the aft cabin and demanded to speak with Turlock. 'We want your promise that we'll be off this boat by Christmas.'
'You have my solemn promise,' Turlock said. And then, to make the deal binding, he added, 'Mr. Caveny will swear to that, won't you, Tim?'
'As sure as the moon rises over Lake Killarney,' Caveny assured him, 'you'll be off this boat by Christmas.'
Two days before that holiday, when the last buy-boat had loaded itself with oysters, Captain Turlock convened his crew in the galley and said brightly, 'Jimbo, if one of the lads could fetch you some milk at Deal Island, could you make us a mess of he-stew?'
'I likes to,' the big cook said, and Turlock studied the two shanghaied crewmen. 'You go,' he said to the Bostonian. Then, as if changing his mind for some deep philosophical reason, he said to the smaller man, 'Better you take the pail. I want to talk wages with this one.' So the Englishman grabbed the pail and went on deck.
Caveny, Jimbo and Ned Turlock followed him up to maneuver the _Jessie T_ into the dock at Deal Island, so that the Englishman could step ashore to find his milk. While this was under way, Captain Turlock engaged the Boston man in serious conversation. 'Where will you be headin' with the pay we're givin' you?'
'Home. I've a family waiting.'
'They'll be proud of the money you're bringin' 'em.' The young man smiled bitterly, and Turlock said reassuringly, 'You mustn't feel angry. This is the way of the sea. You've learned about arsters and you've saved some money.'
Such moralizing was repugnant, in view of Turlock's harsh commands on this cruise, and the Bostonian rose in some anger to go above, but the captain detained him by holding on to his arm. 'Sit down, young fellow. We've taken a lot of arsters this trip and you'll be takin' a lot of money to Boston.' He added other sanctimonious truisms, at the end of which the young man said, 'Captain Turlock, you're a fraud. You're an evil man, and you know it.' In disgust he moved toward the ladder, but this time Turlock interposed himself physically, saying, 'I cannot allow you to depart in bitterness... before we've discussed your wages.' And the talk continued.
On deck the others understood why their captain was keeping the Bostonian below, for when the Englishman started ashore with his pail, Caveny yelled, 'The house at the far end,' and as the young man started off toward the little fishing village, the Irishman gave a signal, and Ned Turlock at the wheel swung the skipjack away from the dock and back into the bay.
'Hey!' the young man shouted as he saw his boat, and his wages, pull away. 'Wait for me!'
There was no waiting. Relentlessly the oyster boat left the island and the young man standing with his empty pail. He was beached, 'paid off with sand,' as the watermen said of this common practice, and if he was lucky, he could straggle back to Baltimore at the end of two or three weeks, without recourse or any chance of ever recovering his wages for long months of work. Tim Caveny, watching him standing by the shore, said to his two companions, 'I told him he'd be ashore by Christmas.'
When the _Jessie T_ was well out from the dock, so that the abandoned man could no longer be seen, Captain Turlock bellowed from below, 'Mr. Caveny, come down here and pay this man!'
When Caveny appeared in the galley, Turlock said forthrightly, 'This man has honest grievances, which he's expressed openly. Calculate every penny we owe him and pay him in full. I want him to remember us with kindness.' And he went on deck, where he took the wheel.
With all the Irish charm at his command, Caveny reached for his account books, spread them on the table and assured the Bostonian, 'You've worked hard and you've earned every penny,' but as he was about to start handing over the cash, there was a wild clatter on deck. Noises that could be not be deciphered shattered the air and from them came Captain Turlock's agonized cry: 'On deck. All hands.'
The young sailor from Boston leaped automatically up the companionway, not noticing that the paymaster remained stolidly at the table. Bursting through the cabin door and leaping forward to help in whatever emergency had struck, he arrived on deck just in time to see the massive boom sweeping down on him at a speed that was incredible. With a great cry he thrust his hands before his face, failed to break the blow and screamed as the thundering boom pitched him wildly into the muddy waves.
Now the four Patamoke men lined the railing of their skipjack and shouted instructions: 'You can make it to shore. Just walk. Put your feet down and walk.'
They were distressed when he flopped and flailed, too terrified by his sudden immersion to control himself. 'Just walk ashore!' Captain Turlock bellowed. 'It's not deep!'
At last the young fellow understood what the men on the disappearing boat were trying to say. Stumbling and cursing, he gained his footing, found the water no deeper than his armpits and started the long, cold march to Deal Island.
'It's a Christmas he'll never forget,' Tim Caveny said as the sailor struggled to safety. There were now only four to share this season's riches, and when they gathered for their evening meal, two days before Christmas, they joined hands and listened attentively as Tim Caveny prayed:
'Merciful and all-seein' God who protects those who go upon the waves, we are poor fishermen who do the best we can. We go forth in our little boat so that others can eat. We toil in blizzards so that others can bide at home. We thank Thee that Thou hast brought us safely through this long and dangerous cruise, and we ask Thy continued blessing on our wives and children.'
Oyster dredging had ended for 1892; this night the buy-boats would rest in Baltimore. Tenderly the _Jessie T_ came about, steadied her sails and headed home. The watermen would always remember that Christmas as one of the best in their lives, for the weather was crisp, with a bright sun during the day and a helpful mistiness in the moonless nights. They had a lot of hunting to catch up with, because guarding their shanghaied crew had prevented them from enjoying their guns during the prime months of November and December; they went out every night.
It was during the sail back home one morning that Tim Caveny cleverly put his finger on the considerable danger they might run if Captain Jake proceeded with his plan for restarting the _Jessie T_ , now that the Englishman and the Bostonian had departed. Turlock had mentioned the problem to Big Jimbo, who said, 'You ain't got no trouble, Cap'm. I knows two men likes to drudge.' But when the cook returned with the would-be crew, Tim saw that each was very big and very black.
Without bothering to take his partner aside, he asked, 'Jake, you think it smart to hire 'em both?'
'They look strong.'
'But it would I, make three white, three black. And you know how niggers like to plot against white folk.'
Jake studied the three black men, and although their faces were placid, he could easily visualize them launching a mutiny. Turning to Big Jimbo, he asked abruptly, 'Weren't it your daddy that murdered my grandfather's brother?'
'Maybe it was your grandfather stole my daddy as a slave,' the cook replied evenly.
'Tim's right,' Turlock snapped. 'We'll take one. Catch us another white man in Baltimore.'
So on the first day of dredging, the _Jessie T_ was not on station. She was delivering a load of ducks to the Hotel Rennert in Baltimore, and after this was accomplished, Turlock and Caveny returned to the Drunken Penguin to inspect what the waterfront had to offer. They had not long to wait, for into the bar came a giant German wearing one of those gray sweaters with a double-folded neck and pants so thick they looked as though they could withstand a hurricane. He was obviously hungry, for he wolfed down three pickled eggs before the bartender could pour his beer, and while he was gulping a sandwich, Captain Turlock struck him on the head with a bottle. When he collapsed in the sawdust, Caveny ran into the street and whistled for Big Jimbo to come drag him out.
He was still unconscious when the _Jessie T_ sailed, but when the skipjack cleared the Lazaretto, Jake summoned the Turlock boy from his position forward and said, 'Take the wheel. This one may be trouble when he wakens.'
With Tim's help he spread the unconscious German on the deck, then grabbed a belaying pin and advised Caveny to do the same. When they had secure positions from which they could defend themselves, Turlock called for the black sailor to throw a bucket of water over the German's face, but just as the young fellow was about to do so, Jake prudently called for Big Jimbo. 'Better stand here with us. This one could be mean.' So the cook joined the circle, and the water was thrown.
The fallen sailor shook his head and gradually awoke to the fact that he was aboard a moving ship. When he sat up, wiping the salty water from his face, he stared at the circle of faces, two white, two black. Assuming that Turlock was the captain of this craft, he asked in heavy accents, 'Where'm I going?'
'Arsterin',' Jake replied.
The German was obviously disposed to fight, but he saw the belaying pins and reconsidered. 'How long?' he asked.
'Three months. And when we pay you off, we bring you back to Baltimore.'
The German remained sitting, and after he had pressed the water out of his sweater he said, 'Otto Pflaum, Hamburg.'
'Glad to have you, Otto. Coffee's on.'
He was a splendid addition to the crew, a man of powerful energy and surprising dexterity in sorting what the dredges hauled up from the bottom. Knowing nothing of the bay's traditions, he did not think it unusual when the _Jessie T_ remained on station, week after week; he enjoyed it when the buy-boats visited to pick up the catch, for this meant that for the next few days the food would be superior, and he had a ravenous appetite.
'You let him, he stay at table twenty-four hours each day,' Big Jimbo said admiringly.
'Only decent thing on this boat, the cook,' Pflaum said.
In the winter of 1893 the crew of the _Jessie T_ came to appreciate how lucky they were to have found big Otto Pflaum, for once more they were confronted by their ancient enemy: boatmen from Virginia creeping in to encroach on Maryland waters, even though a compact between the two states clearly reserved those oyster beds for Eastern Shore watermen.
The Virginia men had three advantages: since their state was larger, they were more numerous; their boats were much bigger than the skipjacks; and for a curious reason no one could justify, they were allowed to use fueled engines while Marylanders were restricted to sail. Their swift, piratical craft could strip an oyster bank in an afternoon.
Naturally, the Choptank men tried to hold the invaders away, but the Virginians were able sailors and knew how to muscle the smaller skipjacks aside. They also carried rifles, and since they were not afraid to use them, gunfire was common; two Patamoke men had already been killed.
At first there had been no retaliation from the skipjacks, but the past year, after several blatant attacks, some of the Choptank boats had gone armed, and sporadic firing had broken out. In spite of the fact that Patamoke boats sailed under a constant threat of open warfare, Captain Turlock had been reluctant to arm the _Jessie T_.
'Our job is drudgin' arsters, not fightin' Virginians,' he told the men at the store.
'What you gonna do, they come at you with guns?'
'Stay clear.'
One of the captains said, 'Strange to hear you say that, Jake. Wasn't your kinfolk them as fought ever'body on the bay?'
'Yes, and we're mighty proud of what they done, pirates and British and all.'
'Then why don't you arm yourse'f?'
'Because a skipjack ain't no man-o'-war.'
So the _Jessie T_ remained unarmed, and Jake's strategy worked, for he moved onto the beds early each Monday, and after prayers hauled his dredges back on deck with huge catches. When the Virginia boats began to encroach, and he satisfied himself that they were armed, he withdrew, content to work the smaller beds inside the Choptank. But his retreat merely emboldened the invaders, and before long they were brazenly aprowl at the mouth of that river.
The Virginians were led by a daring boat whose arrogance was infuriating. It was a large bateau named the _Sinbad_ , distinguishable for two features. For its figurehead it carried a large carved roc, the legendary bird with great talons; and the entire boat was painted blue, a color forbidden to skipjacks. The _Sinbad_ was formidable.
This winter she challenged the _Jessie T_ , almost running her down on a sweep across the beds. 'Stand clear, idiot!' the Virginia captain bellowed as he bore down.
'Run into him!' Ned Turlock shouted to his uncle, but the _Sinbad_ was much too heavy for such tactics, and prudently the _Jessie T_ retreated.
This encouraged the other Virginia dredgers; with impunity they paraded over the Maryland beds, scraping them clean with their powered boats. It was a sad experience for the Choptank men, made worse by the fact that Virginia buy-boats moved in arrogantly to collect the stolen oysters for sale in Norfolk.
Something had to be done. One evening four Patamoke skipjacks assembled at one of the beds to discuss strategies that might restrain the Virginians, and one captain who had a safe crew, in that none had been shanghaied, said that since he was going ashore, he would telegraph the governor of Maryland, requesting armed force to repulse the Virginian invaders. But when Pflaum heard the conversation he demanded loudly, 'They go ashore. Why we have to stay out?' and one of the captains, aware of Pflaum's status, quickly explained, 'Because your boat gets the biggest oysters.' Later the _Jessie T_ crewmen laughed at the big German as he stood alone in the bow, trying to unravel this curious explanation.
The telegram achieved nothing, so the skipjacks that had put into Patamoke for the weekend acquired rifles, which they were prepared to use, and for two days Captain Jake was content to allow the other Patamoke skipjacks to patrol the Choptank while he sailed unarmed, but when the Virginians detected this strategy, they came right at the _Jessie T_ and muscled her off the good beds.
Otto Pflaum had had enough. Storming into the cabin at dusk, he shouted, 'You, damned Turlock. You don't go into Patamoke, you afraid I jump ship. You don't buy us rifles, you afraid of _Sinbad_. By God, I no sitting duck, let them others fire at me, bang-bang. I want a gun!'
He got one. Next afternoon when the _Jessie T_ tied up to a Baltimore buy-boat, Captain Jake asked if it had any extra guns for sale, and five were procured, so that on the following morning when the blue-hulled _Sinbad_ bore down with her engine at top speed, it found Otto Pflaum standing forward and shooting at them with a repeating rifle.
'He hit them!' Ned Turlock shouted as the surprised Virginians scattered about the deck.
For the next few days oystering was pleasant, and as they sailed back and forth across the beds, Captain Jake had time to reflect on the excellent job the Paxmores had done with the _Jessie T:_ She has her centerboard off to one side, but she sails better'n any boat on the bay. He remembered telling Caveny, 'No man in his right mind would build a boat with the mainmast so far forward, but it works. And do you know why? Because it's raked so far aft.' It was a curious mast: it not only rose from the innards of the boat at a severe angle, so that it appeared almost to be leaning backward, but its top bent forward, producing an arc which seemed certain to break it. The mast thus fought against itself, leaning backward but curving forward, and it was this tension that made it so powerful; from it hung one of the largest sails ever used on a small boat, and because of the mast's design, the sail rode up and down with ease. It's a beautiful boat, Jake thought. Damned shame it can't just mind its business and drudge arsters.
But under the leadership of the enraged _Sinbad_ , the Virginians had mounted a concerted effort to drive the Marylanders away from their own beds, and any skipjack that volunteered to challenge them received rough treatment. Gunfire became commonplace, and Captain Jake was always inclined to retreat, to protect his boat, but Otto Pflaum and young Ned Turlock would not allow the _Jessie T_ to be taken off station.
It became a target for the _Sinbad_. 'Move back, you bastards!' the captain of that vessel would bellow as he brought his engine to full speed.
'Don't alter course!' Pflaum would shout back, and the _Jessie T_ held fast as Pflaum and Ned Turlock stayed in the bow, blazing away at the invader.
Nothing was accomplished, but one night as the crew assembled for prayers, Ned Turlock said, 'Uncle Jake, when you got yourself this German, you got somethin' good.'
The camaraderie of the cabin was a strange affair, as Ned pointed out one night, 'Never thought I'd serve with two niggers, and both of 'em real good at arsterin'.' He was seated between the cook and the black sailor, eating from a common pot. 'Where'd you learn to sail?' he asked the younger man.
'Big Jimbo, he teached me.'
'He ain't got no boat.'
'He brung me to the _Jessie T_. When you was duck huntin'.'
'You ain't never been on water, prior?'
'Nope.'
'Danged, you learn fast. You watch, Jake, these goddamned niggers gonna take over the world.'
'You sailed, prior?' Caveny asked the German.
'Many ships,' Pflaum replied.
'You jump ship in Baltimore?'
'Want to see America.'
'This is the best part,' Ned broke in.
'And you're earnin' good money doin' it,' Captain Turlock said. All the men engaged in this conversation would later remember that whenever Jake stressed wages, Otto Pflaum listened intently, keeping his hands clasped over his belly, saying nothing.
'He was special attentive,' Ned Turlock would report at the store.
He was attentive, too, when the _Sinbad_ swept back into action, for when the Virginia guns blazed, and a bullet struck Ned, knocking him perilously close to the railing, Pflaum stuck out a massive paw, dragging him to safety. Then, using his own gun and Ned's, he launched a fusillade at the Virginia boat.
'I think he got one of them!' Caveny cried, for in the heat of battle Otto performed heroically.
It therefore posed a grave moral problem when the time approached to throw him overboard. In whispered consultations Caveny said, 'We got to remember he saved Ned's life, more or less.'
'That's got nothin' to do with it,' Captain Turlock growled. 'Cruise is endin'. We got to get rid of him.'
Caveny brought Ned into the discussion, expecting him to vote for keeping Pflaum aboard and paying him honestly, but the young man was a true Turlock, and said, 'Overboard. We need his share.'
So it was agreed that during the first week in April, as the cruise ended, Ned would take the wheel, Caveny would keep the German in the cabin talking wages while Captain Turlock and Big Jimbo waited on deck with belaying pins in case anything went wrong when the boom swept Otto overboard.
It was a gray day, with the wind blowing, as it did so often, from the northwest. The bay threw muddy spray, and the dredges were stowed port and starboard, having crawled across the bottom for three unbroken months. Everyone was tired and even the buy-boats had retreated to their summer anchorages. The long voyage was over and the oystermen were heading home to divide their spoils.
Tim Caveny was in the cabin, his books spread on the table, explaining to Pflaum how the money would be divided. 'We had a good season, thanks much to you, Otto. We handle the money like this. One third to the boat, which is only proper. One third to the captain. One third to you, and young Turlock and the two niggers, with ever'body throwin' in somethin' extra for the cook.'
'That's fair. Best cook I ever sailed with.'
'I'm now going to pay you in full—'
'All hands!' Captain Turlock shouted as a tremendous clatter echoed on deck.
Later Caveny confessed, 'It could of been my fault. You see, I knew the call was comin', so I didn't react. In a flash Otto saw I had no intention of goin' on deck, even though there was supposed to be an emergency. So he give me a look I'll never forget, hitched up his pants, pushed his right hand into his belt and went slowly up the ladder. You know what happened when he reached the deck.'
What happened was that Otto knew the boom would swing in upon him; he was ready when it came, grabbed it with his left arm, swung far out over the bay as it swept past, and with his right hand produced a pistol, which he aimed at Captain Turlock's head.
'One of the most devious tricks I ever saw,' Turlock said later, for as the boom rode out to starboard, Otto Pflaum slowly made his way forward along it till he reached the mast. With great caution he lowered himself onto the deck, walking slowly aft toward the cabin. He kept his pistol aimed at Captain Turlock's head, and when he drew even with Jake he said, 'I stay in cabin. Alone. You take this boat to harbor. Quick.'
With calculated steps, feeling his way as he went, he backed to the cabin door, opened it, shouted down the hatchway, 'Caveny, you got two seconds to get out or I kill you!' He waited for the terrified Irishman to scramble onto the deck, then descended slowly into the cabin, locking it behind him.
For a day and a half the five men on deck went without food or water. They sailed the _Jessie T_ as rapidly as possible back to Patamoke, angry and cursing at the duplicity of this German who had pirated their boat, and when they docked at the wharf, and Caveny had been allowed back into the cabin to pay Pflaum his wages, the big German crawled up the ladder, pistol in hand, and made his way slowly to the side of the skipjack. Without a farewell of any kind, he gingerly stepped backward off the boat, still pointing his gun at Turlock's head, and made his way to a waterside bar.
'How I catch a ship to Baltimore?' he asked the girl waiting tables.
' _Queen of Sheba_ ,' the girl explained. 'When she comes down from Denton.'
She was exceptionally pretty, a girl of nineteen who prided herself on her appearance. 'What's your name?' Pflaum asked, flushed with his share of the oystering wages.
'Nancy Turlock. My father owns that skipjack.'
'He's a fine man,' Pflaum said. And for two days he remained at the bar, waiting for the _Queen of Sheba_ , telling extraordinary yarns to Captain Turlock's daughter.
On the final afternoon as Otto Pflaum purchased his ticket to Baltimore, with Nancy Turlock at his side in the yellow cape he had bought her, he noticed a commotion on the roadway leading to the wharf, and went with Nancy to see what was happening.
It was an amazing sight. A teamster, his cart loaded with casks, stood in the middle of the road near the heads of his two horses, while an elderly woman dressed all in gray and wearing a peculiar style of cap berated him so vigorously that Pflaum thought she might actually strike him with her furled umbrella. It was bizarre. The drayman cowered before her onslaught, even though he weighed twice what she did. The horses whinnied at the excitement. Children gathered in clusters to enjoy the scene. And the frail old lady moved about with a vigor that would have been surprising in a young man.
'What is this?' Pflaum asked, bewildered by the confusion.
'Just Rachel,' the Turlock girl said.
'Rachel who?'
'Rachel Paxmore. She taught me to read. In the old days she made speeches about freeing slaves. We think she's nutty, but no one tries to stop her.'
Slaves having been freed, she had taken to reprimanding teamsters caught abusing their animals.
Whatever slight reputation the _Jessie T_ might have earned by her good oystering was destroyed when Otto Pflaum loud-mouthed it in the Patamoke bars that Captain Turlock had tried to drown him and that he, Pflaum, had been forced to capture the skipjack and hold it against five opponents for more than a day.
'Jake botched it,' the other watermen said, and again none would sail with him.
Normally, Turlock and Caveny would have gone to Baltimore to shanghai a crew, but they were afraid that Pflaum might be lurking there, so they swallowed their pride and permitted Big Jimbo to sign up another of his blacks. Thus the _Jessie T_ became the first Patamoke boat to have three whites and three blacks; it was a cohesive crew, for Big Jimbo disciplined his recruits, warning them, 'You do right, they gonna be lots of black watermen. You mess around, no niggers never gonna see inside of a skipjack.'
But any pleasure Captain Jake might have found in his crew was dissipated when he brought the _Jessie T_ into port one Saturday in late December to learn that his daughter Nancy had run away to Baltimore. 'I grew suspicious,' Mrs. Turlock said, 'when she started ironing her clothes. Then I noticed that whenever the _Queen of Sheba_ came to the wharf she asked a lot of questions. So I kept a close watch on her, but last Tuesday she fooled me by ridin' up to Trappe and takin' the packet there. She's gone, Jake, and do you know who with?'
'Lew?' Jake asked. Turlock girls had a habit of running off with Turlock men.
'Would to God it was. It's that Otto Pflaum.'
'God A'mighty!' Jake cried, and he was all for sailing immediately to Baltimore to recover his girl, and Tim Caveny encouraged him, but they were prevented from leaving by shocking news that reached them. Two skipjack captains had sailed into Patamoke with the superstructures of their boats chopped up. 'We was drudgin' proper in our waters off'n Oxford when the Virginians swept in. _Sinbad_ leadin'. They like to shot us clean outa the water.'
'You mean, they came into our river?'
'That's where they came.'
'Anybody hit?'
'Two of my crew in hospital.'
'What are we gonna do?' the embittered skippers asked.
'Do? We're gonna drive them right out of the Choptank.'
On Monday morning the _Jessie T_ sailed out of Patamoke with a grim crew. All six men were armed, and Big Jimbo assured Captain Jake that his two black sailors were first-class squirrel hunters. If there was to be battle, the skipjack was ready.
But it was hardly prepared for what the Virginians did. Four of their power-driven boats lay off the point of Tilghman Island, and as the _Jessie T_ moved down the Choptank, these adversaries, led by the _Sinbad_ , moved in upon her, judging that if they could knock Jake Turlock out of the river, they would have little trouble with the rest of the fleet.
It was a most uneven fight. Captain Jake stayed at the wheel, while his five crewmen, including Big Jimbo, stationed themselves along the rail. The Patamoke men fought well, and some of their fire pestered the Virginians, but the invading boats were too swift, their gunfire too concentrated.
On one pass, bullets ripped into the stern of the _Jessie T_ , and Captain Turlock would have been killed had he not dropped ignominiously to the deck. Infuriated, he bellowed for Ned to take the wheel, while he crouched behind one of the dredges to fire at the _Sinbad_.
At this moment one of the Virginia boats swept in from the port side and rained a blizzard of bullets at the skipjack. Jake, kneeling behind the dredge, saw one of Big Jimbo's men spin in the air, lose his rifle overboard and fall in a pool of blood.
'Christ A'mighty!' Jake cried, forgetting his own safety and rushing forward, but as he did so, sailors from the blue _Sinbad_ fired at the wheel, thinking to gun down the captain. Instead they hit Ned Turlock, who stumbled to one knee, clutched at the wheel, sent the skipjack turning in a circle, and died.
It was a terrible defeat, and there was nothing Captain Jake could do to retaliate. He had to watch impotently as the Virginia Squadron raced on, seeking other skipjacks that might want to contest its presence. None did.
As the _Jessie T_ started her mournful retreat to Patamoke, the four survivors gathered in the cabin for prayers, and Caveny thumbed through his Bible for that passage taught him by an old sailor with whom he had first served on the Chesapeake:
' "The fishers also shall mourn, and all they that cast angle into the brooks shall lament, and they that spread nets upon the waters shall languish."
'Almighty God, what have we done to deserve Thy wrath? What can we do to regain Thy love? Blessed St. Andrew, patron of fishermen, accept into thy care the souls of Ned and Nathan, good watermen of this river. Blessed St. Patrick, dry the tears of their women, and protect us.'
The _Jessie T_ would have to find a new crew, and gloom was deep upon the Choptank as its watermen studied what they must do to repel the invasion from Virginia.
Jake Turlock was gray with rage. He showed the fury that had sustained his forebears in their dogged fights against pirates and British warships, for not only had he been forced to witness the murder of his two crewmen, but he had also seen the insolent Virginians invade his own river. He took a violent oath to be revenged, and with his whole being engrossed in trying to come up with a plan, he forgot his dog, paid no attention to the geese inhabiting his marsh and even allowed his long gun to go unattended.
But it was crafty little Tim Caveny who devised the tactic whereby they could punish the _Sinbad_ , and it was so bizarre and daring that when Jake heard it, his jaw dropped. 'You think we could handle it?'
'Positive,' Tim said, his eyes dancing with joy as he visualized the surprise he had fashioned for the Virginians. 'But since they operate with four powerboats, we better find five or six Choptank crews willing to work with us.'
When Turlock approached the other skipjack men, he found them hungering for a final showdown. 'And that's what it's gonna be,' Jake assured them. 'They can have their engines. What me and Tim's got cooked up is better'n engines.'
But as New Year's Day approached, with the start of the winter dredging, Turlock had to face up to the fact that the _Jessie T_ suffered from one deficiency. 'Tim, we got to have up front a man with no nerves.'
The two watermen fell silent as each reviewed the strategy, and finally Jake said hesitantly, 'What we really need—'
'Don't tell me,' Caveny broke in. 'Otto Pflaum.'
'The same. And damnit, I'm gonna swallow my pride and go fetch him.'
They crossed to Baltimore, going straight to the Drunken Penguin, where they elbowed their way in. Big Jimbo, of course, could not accompany them inside, but he did wait in the shadows nearby, in case things got out of hand. They were seated innocently at their customary rear table, drinking beer like two ordinary Eastern Shore watermen, when Otto Pflaum appeared. He still wore his extra-thick pants, his heavy sweater with the double roll at the neck, and he looked formidable. As soon as he saw the Choptank men he assumed that they had come to take his girl away, so he did the prudent thing. Without taking his eyes off his enemies, he grabbed a bottle, smashed the end on a table, kept it pointed outward from his right hand, and advanced. Then, with his left hand, he broke the end off another bottle. Thus armed, he approached, whereupon Caveny asked in a voice of gentle Irish reasoning, 'Otto, dear friend, don't you trust us?'
The big German said nothing. He moved closer, placing himself in a position from which he could jab a jagged bottle into each face. Then he stopped, keeping the bottles close to the eyes of the men who had tried to kill him.
'Otto, sit down and talk with us,' Caveny pleaded.
'You want to hire me again?'
'Yes!' the Irishman said eagerly.
'Same wages as before? A swingin' boom?'
'Otto, you misunderstood...' Caveny was eager to explain that a failure in communication had been responsible, but the German pointed the broken bottle at him and growled, 'Shut up.'
'We need your help,' Turlock said.
'Doin' what?'
'Sit down. Put the bottles away.' Jake spoke with such authority that the big sailor obeyed. 'How's Nancy?' Turlock asked.
'She's pregnant.'
'You married yet?'
'Maybe later.'
'Otto, we need your help. You got to sail with us again.'
'Plenty sailors, why me?'
'The Virginians. They're drivin' us from the bay.'
Turlock had said the only words that could have excited this giant. Pflaum had seen the arrogant _Sinbad_ and had fought against her, so he relished the prospect of renewed combat.
'This time, no boom?'
'There was none last time,' Caveny said gravely. 'A sudden wind.'
'This time, pay before I leave Baltimore.'
'Wait a minute!' Caveny exploded. To make such a demand was tantamount to an accusation against the integrity of the _Jessie T_ , but Pflaum was adamant: 'We give the money to Nancy. But she gets it before we sail.'
This was agreed, and on the last day of the old year the _Jessie T_ returned to Patamoke for the unusual fitting out that Jake and Tim had contrived.
When Otto Pflaum saw the magnitude of the big gun that Jake proposed for the bow he was staggered. 'That's a cannon!' Jake said nothing, merely pointed to the small cannonballs intended for the gun, and before Pflaum could comment, he showed him three more long guns, several kegs of black powder and larger kegs of lead pellets.
'What you tryin' to do, destroy the _Sinbad?_ '
'Exactly,' Jake said grimly. He then invited Tim Caveny to show Otto the real surprise, for onto the skipjack the Irishman had lugged three of his deadly spray guns, each with a battery of seven barrels and a capacity of many pounds of shot. Otto was captivated by the ingenious manner in which Caveny intended igniting his guns, and cried, 'You must let me fire one,' and Caveny said, 'Our plan is for you to fire two.' But Jake interposed, 'No, we'd better save Otto for the two big guns forward.'
'Do I aim at the cabin?'
'At the waterline. I'm gonna sink her.'
So Jake spent the first two days of January training his accomplices; practice rounds were fired far up Broad Creek so no one could spy, and when he was satisfied that his men could handle their arsenal, he headed for the Choptank.
The guns were kept under tarpaulin, so that the _Jessie T_ looked like merely one more Maryland skipjack trying to earn an honest living. The plan was for two relatively unarmed boats from Patamoke to move in the van in a casual approach to the oyster beds that were in contention, and to allow the _Sinbad_ to drive them away. Then, when the Virginia vessel came at the _Jessie T_ to complete the sweep, it would be Jake's responsibility to bring his boat as close as possible to the enemy, keeping the blue _Sinbad_ to port, for the guns were concentrated on that side.
This would be a risky maneuver, because the _Sinbad_ sailors had proved they would not hesitate to gun down the opposition, but Captain Turlock had anticipated the most dangerous moment: 'You men at the guns stay low. It'll be hard to hit you. I'll stay at the wheel and take my chances.' He had improved the risk by building about the wheel an armored semicircle behind which he could crouch; his head would not be protected, but as he said, 'If they're good enough to hit me in the head from their shiftin' boat, they deserve to win.' It was a confident crew of eight—four white, four black—that entered the bay and headed south.
Two days passed without incident, except that the _Jessie T_ caught so many oysters it was an embarrassment. 'We cain't side up to a buy-boat, or they'd see the guns and the extry two men. On the other hand, if we pile them arsters right, they'll form us a fort.' So the deck was rearranged to permit the gunners to hide behind their catch.
On the third day the ominous blue _Sinbad_ entered the Choptank, prowled the edges of the Patamoke fleet, then made a direct run at the two lures set up by Captain Turlock. As expected, the Virginia boat drove the smaller skipjacks off, then came directly at the _Jessie T_. 'Thank God!' Turlock called to his men. 'We pass her to port.'
The hidden gunners kept low. Jake hunkered down behind his iron battlement, and the two boats closed.
The first fire came from the _Sinbad_. When its crew saw that the _Jessie T_ was not going to back off, their captain cried, 'Give them another whiff.' Shots ricocheted about the deck, ending in piles of oysters. The fusillade accomplished nothing except to anger the Choptank men and make them more eager to discharge their battery.
'Not yet!' Jake called, and his men stood firm while the _Sinbad_ grew careless and moved much closer than she should have. 'Wait! Wait!' Jake called again, kneeling behind his armor plating as bullets whined by him.
As he hid, he caught the eye of Otto Pflaum, finger on the great gun once owned by the master-hunter Greef Twombly. He saw with satisfaction that Pflaum was not only ready with this gun, but prepared to leap to its lethal brother propped against the bulwark.
'Now!' Jake shouted, and from the entire port side of the skipjack a blaze of powder exploded, sending a devastating rain of lead across the deck of the _Sinbad_ and punishing her at the water line. Those Virginians who were not knocked down were so confounded that they could not regroup before Tim Caveny fired at them with another of his seven-gun monsters, while Otto Pflaum leaped to a second long gun and aimed it right at the gaping hole opened by his first.
The _Sinbad_ , mortally wounded, started to roll on its port side and its crew began leaping into the water and shouting for help.
'Let 'em all drowned,' Turlock snapped, and with grand indifference the _Jessie T_ , her centerboard side-assed, as her detractors charged, withdrew from the battle.
It was a triumphal return such as few naval centers have witnessed, for the victorious vessel came to the dock laden with oysters, and as Tim Caveny called out details of the battle, Otto Pflaum counted the iron buckets as buyers on dock hauled them ashore: 'Tally three! Tally four! Mark one!'
At the close he informed his fellow crewmen, 'Damn near record. Thirty-nine and three!' But the _Jessie T_ had earned more that day than one hundred and ninety-eight bushels of oysters. It had won the right to say that the riches of the Choptank would be harvested in a responsible manner.
The victory of the Choptank men led to a series of events that no one could have imagined.
The fact that Captain Turlock was now able to berth each weekend at Patamoke allowed him and Caveny to go duck hunting, with such good results that the two watermen accumulated surplus income in the Steed bank.
Since Jake Turlock had grown sick and tired of hearing the men at the store downgrade his boat—he loathed especially their contemptuous description 'the side-assed skipjack'—he decided to get rid of her and buy the partnership a real boat with its centerboard where it ought to be. When he approached Gerrit Paxmore with this proposal he found the Quaker willing to listen. 'I've been pondering this matter, Jacob, and have concluded that I've been obstinate in refusing to build in the new manner. There is a difference between an ocean-going schooner, whose keel must be kept inviolate, and a skipjack destined for bay use only, where the strain is not so great. I'd like a chance to build thee one to thy design.'
When the contract between Paxmore and the Turlock-Caveny partnership was drawn—'a first-class skipjack with centerboard trunk through the keel, $2,815'—Gerrit Paxmore asked the owners of the _Jessie T_ what they intended doing with their present skipjack, and Turlock said, 'I suppose we'll find a buyer somewheres, even if she is side-assed,' and Paxmore replied, 'I think I can take it off thy hands,' and Caveny asked, 'You got a buyer?' and Paxmore said, 'I think so,' but he would not divulge who it was.
So the new skipjack was built, superior in every way to the _Jessie T_ , and when it had been launched and given a couple of trial runs out into the bay, Jake and Tim concluded that they had bought themselves a masterpiece, and the former said with some relief, 'Now we can hire a white crew. You, me, three Turlocks and Big Jimbo in the galley.'
'Them niggers wasn't so bad,' Caveny recalled.
'Yes, but a white crew's better. Less likelihood of mutiny.'
'The niggers fought well.'
'Yes, but a white crew's better.' Jake paused, then added, ' 'Course, I'd not want to sail without Jimbo. Best cook this bay ever produced.'
But when he went to Frog's Neck to advise Jimbo that the new skipjack would be sailing on Monday, he found to his dismay that the big cook would not be assuming his old place.
'Why not?' Jake thundered.
'Because...' The tall black was too embarrassed to explain, and Turlock heckled him, charging cowardice because of the gunfight, a lack of loyalty to his crew mates, and ingratitude. Big Jimbo listened impassively, then said in a soft voice, 'Cap'm Jake, I'm takin' out my own skipjack.'
'You're what?'
'Mr. Paxmore done sold me the _Jessie T_.'
The information staggered the waterman, and he stepped back, shaking his head as if to discharge evil invaders. 'You buyin' my boat?'
'Yes, sir. From the day I could walk my daddy tol' me, "Git yourse'f a boat." He had his own ship... for a while... as you know.'
'What ship did Cudjo ever have?' Turlock asked in disgust, and Big Jimbo thought it best not to pursue the topic. What he did say was this: 'He tol' me, time and again, "When a man got his own boat, he free. His onliest prison the horizon." '
'Hell, Jimbo, you don't know enough to captain a skipjack.'
'I been watchin', Cap'm Jake. I been watchin' you, and you one o' the best.'
'You goddamn nigger!' Jake exploded, but the words denoted wonder rather than contempt. He burst into laughter, slapped his flank and said, 'All the time you was on deck, doin' extry work to help the men, you was watchin' ever'thing I was doin'. Damn, I knowed you niggers was always plottin'.' In the old camaraderie of the cabin, where these two men had worked together, and eaten and slept, Jake Turlock punched his cook in the back and wished him well.
'But you got to change her name,' Jake said.
Big Jimbo had anticipated him. When he and Captain Jake went to the Paxmore Boatyard to inspect the refitted _Jessie T_ they found the old name painted out, and in its place a crisp new board with the simple letters _Eden_.
'Where you get that name?' Jake asked, admiring the condition of his old boat. 'That's a Bible name, ain't it?'
'My mother's name,' Jimbo said.
'That's nice,' Jake said. 'I named her after my mother. Now you niggers name her after yours. That's real nice.
'She give me the money to buy it.'
'I thought she was dead.'
'Long ago. But she always collectin' money... fifty years. First she gonna buy her freedom, and the Steeds give it to her. Then she gonna buy Cudjo's freedom, and he earned it hisse'f. Then she gonna buy her brother's freedom, and Emancipation come along. So she give me the money and say, "Jimbo, some day you buy yourse'f a boat and be truly free." '
In October 1895 the skipjack _Eden_ out of Patamoke made its first sortie on the oyster beds. It was known throughout the fleet as 'the side-assed skipjack with the nigger crew,' but it was in no way impeded, for Captain Jimbo had to be recognized as a first-class waterman. There was, of course, much banter when the other captains gathered at the store: ' _Eden_ like to went broke last summer. Cap'm Jimbo tooken her up the Choptank to fetch a load o' watermelons to the market in Baltimore, but when he got there the crew had et ever' goddamned melon.'
There was no laughter, however, when the black crew began to unload huge quantities of oysters into the buy-boats. And the bay might have been outraged in the fall of 1897, but not really surprised, when Randy Turlock, a distant nephew of Captain Jake's, showed up as a member of the _Eden_ 's crew, which now consisted of five blacks and one white.
'Why would a decent, God-fearin' white man consent to serve with a nigger?' the men at the store raged at the young waterman.
'Because he knows how to find arsters,' young Turlock said, and in the 1899 season Big Jimbo's crew was four blacks and two whites, and thus it remained as the new century dawned.
Onshore, relations between whites and blacks did not duplicate what prevailed in the skipjacks. When oyster dredging, a waterman was judged solely on his performance; if he said he was a cook, it was presumed that he could cook; and a deck hand was expected to muscle the dredges. A man won his place by exhibiting skills, and his color did not signify.
But when he stepped ashore the black oysterman could not join the circle at the store, nor send his children to the white man's school, nor pray in a white church. For seven months he had eaten shoulder to shoulder with his white crew mates, but onshore it would have been unthinkable for him to dine with his betters. He had to be circumspect in what he said, how he walked the pavements and even how he looked at white people, lest they take offense and start rumors.
The permanent relationship between the two races was underlined at the start of the century when a gang of venal Democratic politicians in Annapolis proposed an amendment to the Maryland constitution, revoking the right of blacks to vote. This was done for the most corrupt of reasons—perpetuation of thieving officeholders—but behind the most honorable and persuasive façade. The gang did not offer the amendment under its own besmirched name; it employed the services of the dean of the law school at the university, a handsome man with a mellifluous three-barreled name, John Prentiss Pope, and he devised a simple formula for perpetually denying the ballot: 'Any Maryland resident is entitled to vote if he or his ancestors were eligible to do so on January 1, 1869, or if he can read and interpret a passage of the Maryland constitution.' It was especially effective in that it avoided the necessity of stating openly that it was anti-Negro.
'What we intend doin',' the Democrats explained when they visited Patamoke, 'is end this silly business of niggers traipsin' to the polls like decent people. You know and I know they ain't never been a nigger qualified to vote, nor ever will be.'
The campaign became virulent. Newspapers, churches, schools and congregations at country crossroads united in an inflamed crusade to restore Maryland to its pristine honor: 'We gonna end this farce of niggers pretendin' they got the brains to comprehend politics. End nigger votin' and reinstate honest government.'
Not many blacks voted, actually, and some who did accepted money, but the basic argument against them was they supported the Republican party because Abraham Lincoln had belonged to it, and he had freed the slaves. Endlessly the Democrats had tried to lure black voters into their party, but had failed; now the blacks would vote no more. The unfolding campaign indicated that the amendment would carry, for Democratic orators stormed the countryside, proclaiming, 'If a respected professor like John Prentiss Pope says niggers shouldn't vote, you know what your duty is on Election Day.'
The Steeds favored the amendment because they remembered John C. Calhoun, spiritual leader of their family; he had claimed that the governing of free men should be restricted to those with education, moral principle and ownership of wealth. 'I am not against the black man,' Judge Steed said at one public meeting held in the Patamoke Methodist Church, 'but I do not want him casting his ballot on issues which concern only white men.'
The Turlocks were savagely supportive of the proposed restrictions and campaigned up and down the river for its passage: 'Niggers killed our cousin Matt. They're slaves at heart and better be kept that way.' Even the family members who had shipped with Big Jimbo aboard the _Jessie T_ or served under him on the _Eden_ were vehement in their pronouncement that no black had the intelligence to vote; their experiences to the contrary aboard a skipjack were ignored, and the men ranted, 'They're animals. They got no rights.' Only Jake Turlock suffered confusion on this matter; he knew that Big Jimbo was the most capable man ever to serve on the _Jessie T_ , more reliable even than Tim Caveny, but whenever he was tempted to concede this, he recalled the description of blacks that he had memorized so well in school, and he could see the words inflamed in his copybook:
_Niggers:_ Lazy, superstitious, revengeful, stupid and irresponsible. Love to sing.
No black who had ever served with him had been lazy, but in his mind all blacks were. No blacks had been as superstitious as a skipjack captain who would allow no blue, no bricks, no women, no walnuts, no hold cover wrong side up. No blacks had been so vengeful as the German Otto Pflaum, and as for stupidity and irresponsibility, these words could never remotely be applied to Big Jimbo or the black watermen he enlisted, yet Jake believed that all blacks were flawed by those weaknesses, because in his childhood he had been so taught. One night after a hectic meeting at which he had spoken in defense of the amendment, he said to Caveny, 'Come to think of it, Tim, I never heard a nigger sing aboard our skipjack, but it's well known they love to sing.' 'They're a bad lot,' Caveny replied. 'Cain't never tell what they're up to.'
The Cavenys, now a growing clan along the river, had always been disturbed by the presence of blacks in their community. 'We didn't have no niggers in Ireland. Wouldn't tolerate 'em if they tried to move in. They ain't Catholic. They don't really believe in God. Ain't no reason in the world why they should vote like ordinary men.' The entire Caveny brood intended to vote for the amendment and could imagine no reason for doing otherwise.
The other residents along the Choptank were almost universally opposed to black franchise, and this illustrated a singular change that was modifying Eastern Shore history: during the Civil War well over half the Choptank men who had served did so in the Union army, but now when their descendants looked back upon that war they claimed that well over ninety-five percent had fought with the Confederacy. The reasons behind this self-deception were simple: 'No man could have pride in havin' fought for the North, side by side with niggers. My pappy was strictly South.' Patamoke families were proud if an ancestor had marched with Lee or ridden with Jeb Stuart, ashamed if he had served with Grant, and it became common for families to lie about past affiliations.
Because of this selective memory, the Eastern Shore converted itself into one of the staunchest southern areas, and people were apt to say, 'Our ancestors had slaves and fought to keep 'em. Emancipation was the worst evil ever to hit this land.' It was these belated southerners, egged on by plantation families whose ancestors had honestly sided with the South, who now united to keep blacks from their schools and churches; they joined in mobs to discipline them when they became fractious; and gleefully they combined to adopt this amendment which would rescind the right to vote. Indeed, it seemed as if this might be the first step in a return to the good, rational days of the past, when blacks knew their place and when life on the Eastern Shore was placid and orderly—'We end this votin' nonsense for niggers, we can restore some peace and quiet in this community.'
The only people who opposed the new law were the Paxmores and a few dissidents like them, and even these would have been muted by the unanimity of the community had it not been for a formidable school-teacher. Miss Emily Paxmore was one of those tall, gangly women of indefinite age who seemed destined from birth to be spinsters; she might have taught music, or served as clerk in some uncle's store, or concentrated her efforts on whatever church she attended, but in her case she found a place in the schoolroom, where she taught with a persistence that amazed both the parents and their children.
She was a large woman who favored severe clothes, a hairdo drawn taut, and a frown which repelled parents on first acquaintance, then softened as she spoke about the educability of their children. When she first heard of the proposed legislation, she supposed that the reporter was teasing her because of her known sympathy with blacks, and she made a frivolous response: 'To even consider such a law would be like turning the calendar back two hundred years.'
This unfortunate remark became a rallying cry for the advocates of the amendment, who declared, 'That's exactly what we want. The way things were two hundred years ago, before the niggers fouled them up.'
When Miss Paxmore realized that the sponsors of the bill were serious, she directed her formidable energy to resisting them. She rose in meeting to enlist the support of her fellow Quakers, but found a surprising number sympathetic to the bill, supporting the theory that Negroes were not capable of understanding issues.
She convened public meetings, but made the serious mistake of inviting northern ministers and politicians to address them, for this tactic lost more votes than it gained—'We don't need northerners comin' down here to instruct us on how to vote.'
She moved about the town, relentlessly buttonholing anyone who would listen, but she accomplished nothing. In despair she traveled across the bay to Baltimore for consultation with opponents of the bill, and there found only gloom. 'The situation is this, Miss Emily. All the Eastern Shore favors the legislation. All the southern counties, loyal to the Confederacy, will vote for it. The far western areas, where a sense of freedom has always maintained, will support the Negro's right to vote, and so will much of Baltimore. But if you add our votes and theirs, they've got to win.'
Maryland became a test case for black rights; orators from many southern states came north to excite voters against the dangers of black franchise, and sabers rattled as ancient battles were recalled. Each week it became increasingly apparent that the amendment was going to be adopted and that in Maryland, at least, blacks would revert to the conditions they had occupied during their centuries of slavery.
Emily Paxmore returned to Patamoke a defeated woman, and men at the store chuckled as she picked her grim way back to her home near the school. And then, four weeks before the plebiscite was to take place, she had an idea, and without conferring with anyone, she boarded the _Queen of Sheba_ and sped to Baltimore. Breathlessly she told the men and women running the campaign against the amendment, 'It's quite simple. We can defeat this fraud by a tactic that will prove irresistible.'
'What could possibly turn the tide?'
'This. From today on we never mention the word Negro. Instead we hammer at the fact that this amendment will deprive Germans, Italians, Jews and even Irishmen of their right to vote. We'll make them fight our battle for us.'
'But the amendment doesn't say that,' a gentleman versed in law objected.
Miss Paxmore tensed. 'Few Germans or Italians or Russian Jews were eligible to vote on January 1, 1869. Think of that!'
'But we all know that the law is not to be applied against them.'
'I don't know it,' she said primly. 'And I'm going to shout from every housetop that this is a plot to disfranchise immigrants.'
'Wouldn't that be dishonest?'
Miss Paxmore folded her hands, considered the accusation, and replied, 'If I am telling a lie, the other side will be able to refute it... six weeks after the election.'
She was on the street twenty hours a day, a tall, furious woman dressed in gray, asking her impudent question in the German district and the Italian: 'Does thee think it proper for good people who pay their taxes to be denied the vote?' She wrote advertisements that appeared in the papers, challenged legislators of German and Italian extraction to open their eyes to the danger threatening their families, and spent her evenings in Baltimore's Third Ward, haranguing Russian Jews: 'They are plotting to rob thee of thy rights. Thee must fight this law.'
Advocates of the amendment were appalled by the fire-storm this gangling schoolteacher was igniting, and they dispatched John Prentiss Pope to assure all immigrants that his amendment would be applied judiciously. Party hacks circulated through the wards, whispering that 'our amendment won't never be used against your people. It's meant only for _them_.' And they would wink.
But Emily Paxmore had an answer for that. 'They come like the snake in paradise and whisper, "We promise we won't use the new law against thee." But I can assure thee that they have plans right now to disfranchise every Jew, every German and every Italian. Once this amendment passes, thy vote is lost forever.'
This accusation was almost criminal; obviously no such plans existed, nor had they even been suggested when the measure was first proposed. 'Oh, we might want to use it some day against those damned Jews in the Third Ward. Cut them down to size. But never against the Germans.' Supporters became frantic when Miss Paxmore circulated charges that the proposed new law would be applied immediately to eliminate the Irish vote.
'This damned woman is destroyin' us with her lies!' one Democratic leader thundered, and he assembled a group of six to confront her in the small hotel from which she worked. When she met them in the lounge, six pillars of ward politics, she found them geared for battle. 'If you repeat those lies against us, we'll take you to court. Throw you in jail.'
'What lies?' she asked simply, her hands folded in her lap.
'That the Germans will be disfranchised.'
'Won't they be? The law is most explicit as thee has written it.'
'But it's not intended for Germans.'
'Who is it intended for?'
'Them.'
'Is thee afraid to speak their name? Does thee mean the Jews?'
'Now damnit, Miss Paxmore, there's not a word in our amendment that works against the Jews.'
'My dear friends, every word could be applied to Jews who immigrated here from Poland, or the Baltic, or Rumania.'
'But we're not going to use it against them. We promise you...'
Coldly she recited the terms of the proposed law; it could easily be applied to Jews and Catholics without good education and especially to Hungarians and Lithuanians and most particularly to Poles and Italians. Concluding her citation, she said, 'It's a cruel law, gentlemen, and thee should be ashamed of thyselves.'
They were not ashamed. 'Miss Paxmore, you know damned well how this amendment will be used. If a nigger tries to vote, we give him the constitution, and I'm the judge and I say, "You didn't pass." If a German reads it, I say, "You pass." '
'For such duplicity thee should be doubly ashamed. How can the black man ever—'
'Goddamnit!' a burly political leader exploded. 'We're gonna throw you in jail for libel and perjury and defamation of character.'
Emily Paxmore was not intimidated. Looking at each of the men, she asked, 'What character?'
Another leader waved his copy of the amendment and said almost plaintively, 'It's unfair, Miss Paxmore, for you to lie about our intentions. You know in your heart we would never use this bill against good people... only niggers.'
Emily Paxmore grabbed the paper from his hand and placed it over her bosom. 'This amendment, if it passes, will one day be applied against persons like me. But I see from thy expressions that it's going to be defeated, and for that I thank God, because it's a criminal effort.'
She was right. When the ballots were counted, Choptank voters had supported the amendment overwhelmingly, as had the rest of the Eastern Shore. Those southern areas on the mainland where slaves had been common also voted to deprive the blacks of their rights, but in the remainder of the state the plebiscite was determined on the principle that Miss Paxmore had enunciated: 'Do you want to disfranchise immigrants?' Blacks were never mentioned, and from the western counties where Germans had settled came a heavy vote against the amendment; in polyglot Baltimore it was overwhelmed. The proposal lost. Blacks could continue to vote.
When Emily Paxmore came home, she never spoke of her frenetic campaign. She returned to her teaching, producing young scholars whose lives would stabilize the Eastern Shore, but one afternoon when her brother Gerrit visited her, she responded openly to his interrogations. 'I did lie, Gerrit, and I'm sorely troubled by it. They had no plan to disfranchise Germans or Jews. And I did make the accusation too late for them to combat it.'
'Why did thee do it?'
'Because each soul on this earth faces one Armageddon. When all the forces are arranged pro and con. Now comes the one great battle, and if thee runs away or fails to fight with vigor, they life is forever diminished.'
'Thee sounds mighty military, for a Quaker.'
'Armageddon is even more compelling when it's a battle of the spirit. This law was wrong, Gerrit, and I stumbled upon the only way to destroy it. I'm ashamed of the tactics I used, but if the same situation were to occur again...' Her voice drifted away. She took out her handkerchief and pressed it to her nose. Blinking her eyes several times, she said brightly, 'But it won't occur again. Armageddon comes once, and we'd better not back off.'
In August 1906, when the two watermen were in their grizzled sixties, Caveny came running to the store with exciting news: 'Jake, I think we got us a contract to haul watermelons from Greef Twombly's place to Baltimore.' This was important, for oystermen spent their summer months scrounging for commissions that would keep their skipjacks busy; the shallow-drafted boats carried too little free-board to qualify them for entering the ocean, or they might have run lumber from the West Indies, as many schooners did. Also, the boom was so extended that in a good gale, when the starboard was underwater, the tip of the boom tended to cut into the waves, too, and that was disastrous.
So the watermen prayed for a cargo of farm produce to Baltimore and a load of fertilizer back, or coal to Norfolk, or pig iron from the blast furnaces north of Baltimore. Best of all was a load of watermelons from far up some river, for then, with a crew of three—Turlock, Caveny and a black cook—the skipjack could earn real money, passing back and forth across the oyster beds it had worked during the winter.
At the start of this unexpected bonanza Jake was in such a good mood that as the lines were about to be loosened, he impetuously called for his dog to come aboard, and when the Chesapeake leaped across the open water to scramble aboard, Caveny asked, 'What goes?' and Jake said, 'I got a hankerin' to take my dog along.' Before the sentence was finished, Caveny had leaped ashore and was bellowing, 'Nero! Come here!' And his voice was so penetrating that almost at once his Labrador dashed up, prepared for whatever adventure was afoot.
It was a pleasant cruise. The skipjack sailed slowly up to the far end of the Choptank to Old Man Twombly's farm, where they found Greef and the watermelons waiting. His first cry from the rickety wharf concerned the gun: 'How's the big one doin'?' And before he threw a line, Jake yelled back, 'We're gettin' about seventy-seven ducks a go,' and Greef replied with some contempt, 'You ain't usin' enough shot.'
While the loading took place, the skipjack's black cook caught himself a mess of crabs from the stern and fried up some crisp crab cakes. Greef brought down some cold beer and sat on deck with the watermen and their dogs, remembering old storms. Greef made the men a proposition: 'Five years ago I planted me a line of peach trees, just to see. They're producin' major-like, and I want to risk a hundred baskets stowed on deck. You sell 'em, you keep half the cash.' But when the peaches were aboard and the skipjack was ready for sailing, the old man took Jake aside and whispered, 'With that gun, you load her right, you tamp her right, you ought to catch ninety ducks on the average.'
The passage across the bay was aromatic with the smell of peaches, and when the cargo reached the Long Dock, the A-rabs were waiting with their pushcarts, pleased to receive fresh melons but positively delighted with the unexpected peaches.
With their windfall profits, the two watermen trekked to the Rennert for a duck dinner, then visited Otto Pflaum and his wife, loaded up with fertilizer and sailed for home. As they quit the harbor they chanced to find themselves at the center of a triangle formed by three luxurious bay steamers, now lighted with electricity, and they admired the scintillating elegance of these fine vessels as they set out to penetrate the rivers which fed the bay.
'Look at 'em go!' Jake cried as the vessels went their individual ways, their orchestras sending soft music over the water.
'Classic ships,' Caveny said, and for most of an hour the Choptank men regarded the ships almost enviously.
The oystermen could not have imagined that these large ships would one day disappear entirely from this bay, as the Paxmore schooners had vanished and the Paxmore clippers. The classic ship that night was not the gaudy steamer but the quiet little skipjack, the boat conceived on the Chesapeake, tailored to its demands and adapted in every part to its conditions. It would endure after everything on the bay that night had gone to rust, for it was generic, born of the salt flats and heavy dredging, while the brightly lighted steamers were commercial innovations useful for the moment but bearing little relation to the timeless bay.
'They disappear mighty fast,' Caveny said as the lights merged with the waves.
Now the watermen were alone on the bay, and before long the low profile of the Eastern Shore began to rise in the moonlight, a unique configuration of marshland and wandering estuaries. 'We really have the land of pleasant livin',' Turlock mused as his skipjack drifted in the night airs, but when they approached Devon Island he fixed his gaze at the western end of the island, where a multitude of trees lay wallowing in the tide.
'I never noticed that before,' he said. 'That island's gonna wash clean away, one of these storms.'
The watermen inspected the erosion, and Caveny said, 'I read in a book that all our land on the Eastern Shore is alluvial...'
'What's that?' Turlock asked suspiciously.
'Land thrown here by the Susquehanna, when it was fifty times as big. You know what I think, Jake? I think long after we're dead there ain't gonna be no Eastern Shore. The land we know will wash into the ocean.'
'How soon?' Jake asked.
'Ten thousand years.'
Neither man spoke. They were sailing over oyster beds for which they had fought, beds whose icy catch had numbed their hands and cut their fingers, bringing blood to their frozen mittens. Beyond that spit, barely visible in the night, the _Laura Turner_ had capsized, six men lost. Over there the _Wilmer Dodge_ had foundered, six men gone. Around the next headland, where ducks rafted in winter, the _Jessie T_ had driven off the invaders from Virginia.
Softly the skipjack entered the Choptank. Jake's Chesapeake still patrolled the bow, ready to repel invaders, but Caveny's Labrador lay prone on the deck, his head close to Tim's ankle, his dark eyes staring up at the Irishman with boundless love.
# _Voyage Twelve: 1938_
A BASIC TENET OF QUAKERISM WAS THAT IF A MAN or woman tended the divine fire that burned within each human breast, one could establish direct relationship to God without the intercession of priest or rabbi. Songs and shouted prayers were not necessary to attract God's attention, for He dwelt within and could be summoned by a whisper.
Nevertheless it became a custom in all meetings for certain devout souls to be recognized as possessing special devotion, and they became known as ministers. In the traditional sense of this word they had no right to it, for they did not attend seminary, nor were the hands of some bishop placed upon them, bestowing a divine gift, the legitimacy of which extended back to Jesus Christ. In all other religions, the priest thus legally ordained could expect to be supported economically by his parishioners, and to do their spiritual work for them.
In the Quaker faith the minister had no legitimacy other than his or her own behavior, and no fixed income other than what he or she could earn by hard work. A Quaker acted like a minister, then became one.
During the Great Depression of the 1930s the Quakers of Maryland, Delaware and Pennsylvania discovered that they had in their midst another in that majestic line of Quaker preachers. Woolman Paxmore, then in his fifties, was a tall, gaunt, prophetic man with an unusually large Adam's apple that jutted forward as if he had two noses. He had spent his life as a farmer, but his commitment to God was so overpowering that even while young he began traveling to various towns, and wherever he appeared at First Day worship the congregation let him know that they would be disappointed if he did not speak.
He had been aptly named after one of the first Quaker ministers born in America. John Woolman had been an inspired man, a humble New Jersey tailor who from the age of seven had known himself to be called by God. Each year his simple rustic life gave further evidence of his exceptional faith: he ministered to the poor, elevated the status of blacks in his part of New Jersey, traveled up the Susquehanna to check on the government's treatment of Indians, and went on his own meager funds to England to study conditions there, always evidencing a simple belief in the goodness of God.
His namesake, Woolman Paxmore, led much the same kind of life. He, too, ministered to the poor, finding homes for no less than thirty orphaned children. He had gone to states like Oklahoma and Montana to see what could be done to help the Indians. And in his fifty-sixth year his thoughts turned to Berlin, the capital of Nazi Germany.
He was working in the field one day, harvesting corn on the north bank of the Choptank, when a powerful, straightforward thought occurred to him: Jesus Christ was a Jew, a real Jewish rabbi with a long nose, and no living man ever accomplished more on this earth. For Adolf Hitler to persecute the spiritual descendants of Jesus is wrong. It is all wrong.
That week he began preaching this simple message: to discriminate in any way against the Jew is to deny the heritage of Jesus Christ. He took his message to the rural meetings of Pennsylvania and down into New Jersey, where John Woolman had preached, and to all the meetings in Delaware. He drove a small Chevrolet, and on Saturday afternoons Quakers in out-of-the way places would see him coming, a tall, ungainly man, hunched over the wheel of his car, peering sideways as he moved slowly into town, looking for some address which he remembered imperfectly.
He would stop the Chevrolet anywhere, leave the motor running and walk about the streets, importuning strangers, 'Could thee perhaps tell me where Louis Cadwallader lives? There's no such person in this town? Could it be Thomas Biddle?'
When he found the person he sought he was greeted with warmth, and other Quakers in the neighborhood were summoned to an informal supper. Some of his finest preaching was accomplished in these quiet Saturday nights when Quakers met over a cold ham dinner to hear the reflections of their distinguished minister. Such gatherings often ended with slabs of apple pie and glasses of milk, and the rural folk would listen intently as Paxmore brought his discussion to an end: 'I believe that if three or four of us went to Herr Hitler and pointed out to him the grievousness of his behavior, he would understand. I think God would show us a way to rescue those tortured people, and bring them out of Germany as He once brought their ancestors out of Egypt.'
'Does thee think Herr Hitler would listen?'
'He has not succeeded in gaining control of Germany by being a stupid man. And wise men listen. He will listen to us if we approach with simple testimony.'
He became obsessed with the idea of going to Germany and talking directly with Hitler, and as he moved about the eastern states he convinced two other Quakers of the practicality of his plan: a merchant in Pittsburgh said he was prepared to go, and a renowned schoolmaster from a small town in North Carolina said he had an inner conviction that Hitler would listen. So in October 1938 these three elderly Quakers assembled in Philadelphia and discussed plans for their visit to Berlin.
Woolman Paxmore, as the acknowledged preacher, laid the spiritual groundwork: 'We shall tell him in plain words, but without rancor, that what he is doing is wrong, that it can in no way aid Germany, and that it must be an affront to the Christians of the world.'
It was the Pittsburgh merchant who assumed responsibility for the logistics of the trip: 'Well-minded Friends in Philadelphia have contributed generously. We'll go to New York this Friday and sail on the _Queen Mary_ to Southampton. British Friends will meet us there and we'll spend three days in London. We proceed to Harwich and cross the Channel. In Berlin a group of German Friends will house us, and we have already applied for a meeting with Herr Hitler.'
And so they set out, three tall Quakers with no credentials other than their simple faith. The third day of their ocean trip was a Sunday, and the schoolteacher proposed that they hold a Quaker meeting in one of the cabins, but Woolman Paxmore protested, 'It seems ostentatious for us...'
'How ostentatious, if we meet in private?'
'Because there is a formal meeting in the salon,' Paxmore replied, 'and we should support it.'
The three Old Testament figures, dressed in black, added grace and color to the services conducted by an Episcopalian minister from Boston, but were surprised when at the end of prayers the clergyman said, 'We are honored this morning by having within our congregation one of the distinguished religious leaders of America, Woolman Paxmore, the Quaker preacher from Maryland, and I for one would consider it an honor if he and his two companions would hold a Quaker service for us this afternoon.'
This proposal met with enthusiastic support. At the Sunday meal many of the first-class passengers came down to the tourist class in which the three Quakers were traveling to urge that Paxmore conduct the services. 'We've never attended a Quaker meeting,' the passengers said. 'It would be a rare privilege.'
So in the late afternoon a group of some sixty people assembled in the salon which had been used for the morning services. Three chairs had been arranged at the front of the room, and it had been supposed that Woolman Paxmore would occupy the middle chair, as a place of honor, but it was his custom always to award that chair to whatever man or woman had assumed the responsibility for the housekeeping details of the meeting, and now he insisted that the Pittsburgh merchant take it, for he had provided funds for the trip.
For ten minutes the three men sat silent. After twenty minutes there was still no sound, and visitors who had never participated in a Quaker meeting grew uneasy. They did not shift or shuffle, but it was plain that they expected something to happen. There was no singing, no collection, no prayer, no sermon. Thirty minutes elapsed, and forty. Then the Episcopalian clergyman rose and said briefly, 'Brother Paxmore, we do hope you will feel called upon to speak with us. We have heard that your messages are inspiring.'
This was very un-Quakerish and it caught Paxmore by surprise; he had been overawed by the responsibility he had assumed, that of serving as the conscience of Christianity, and had felt that it would be intemperate of him to speak at such a hallowed moment. The journey was engaged; the obligation had been assumed; there could be no turning back; words were no longer needed.
But he was a true Quaker, a man of total simplicity, and whereas he had felt it improper to speak, it was not intemperate of the Boston clergyman to point out that the assembled group had hoped to hear what a Quaker preacher might be like. His personal inclination was not to speak, but if others demanded that he do so, he would.
Nodding gravely to the clergyman, he rose, but the ship was moving through vast and easy swells and was unsteady, so he grabbed at the chair and stood behind it. Tall, black-suited, gray of head, angular of face and bony-handed, he stood in the swaying salon and said, 'Women and men must meet the challenge of whatever specific time they have been chosen to fill, and the inescapable challenge of our time is the treatment Herr Hitler is according the Jews of Germany.' He predicted that if Hitler were allowed to mistreat the German Jews, he would soon extend such acts to the Jews of Austria, Poland and France. 'And then he will turn his attention to other non-conformists, like the Seventh Day Adventists and the Quakers. And pretty soon the malignancy will encompass thee, and thee, and thee.' With these words he pointed his massive right hand at specific members of the congregation, and three passengers with German backgrounds, who felt that Hitler had done much to restore the dignity of Germany, rose in anger and left the salon.
Woolman Paxmore did not even notice. He was in the process of developing an idea which he knew to be just and inspired by God, so he continued, 'But if men of good will were to go to Hitler and remind him of the fact that Jews and Jesus are descendants from a common stock, this infernal slippage into barbarism might be halted.'
He then proceeded to expound the concept that had become a fixation with him: 'Thee must acknowledge that Jesus Christ was Himself a Jew. Living in Palestine under the hot sun, he was probably darker than many American Negroes. And his features could not have been the sweetly simple ones of our religious calendars. He was a Jew, and he doubtless looked much as thy tailor or doctor or professor looks today. If Jews have large noses, he had one. If they are swarthy, he was swarthy. If they talk with their hands, he did so too. During much of his life Jesus Christ was a Jewish rabbi, and if we forget this, we forget the nature of Christianity.'
At this two more passengers departed. Ignoring them, Paxmore concluded, 'We believe that if these simple truths can be pointed out to Herr Hitler, he will have to concede them.' He did not spell out what good might thus be accomplished, but his logic had been so forceful that when, at the close of the hour, the meeting ended, various listeners crowded about him to ask what proposals he intended making, if he did meet Hitler.
'Very simple,' he explained. 'We shall beseech him to turn the Jews loose, let them emigrate.'
'To where?' a businessman asked.
'Where?' Paxmore asked in astonishment. 'Any country would be glad to receive them.'
'Do you think that?' the businessman pressed.
'Of course. Wouldn't thee welcome the arrival of such a group? Educated men and women? Children with fine schooling? There's no limit to what they might accomplish in America. And I'm certain that France and England will feel the same.'
Out of politeness the businessman did not comment, but he did look at his wife and shake his head. 'These religious nuts,' he whispered to her as they left the salon. 'We have them with us always.'
'But it was interesting,' his wife replied.
'Fascinating,' he agreed. 'I like their idea of talking directly with God. I've always thought you didn't need all the priests.' He paused for a moment, then said, 'I suppose that if you do talk directly with God, you could get hung up on the Jewish thing. Jesus may have started as a rabbi, but he was smart enough to quit.'
Another passenger stopped to talk with Paxmore. This man was a Jew, a merchant from Baltimore, and he asked, 'Let's suppose for the moment that you can get to Hitler, and let's suppose he listens, and then let's suppose that he is willing to make some gesture. What are you prepared to offer him?'
'We'll take all the Jews he doesn't want and settle them in some other country,' he repeated patiently.
'Do you really believe the other countries will accept them?'
'It would be inhuman to do otherwise.'
To this the man from Baltimore made no comment. Instead he changed the subject dramatically. 'Have you given any thought, Reverend Paxmore...'
'I'm not a reverend,' Paxmore corrected.
'In my book you are. Have you given any thought to the possibility that Hitler might offer to release the Jews—some of the Jews, that is—providing the outside world puts up a certain sum of money?'
'That would be blackmail!'
'Precisely. And you must be prepared to meet it.'
Woolman Paxmore fell silent. It was difficult for him to believe that the leader of any state would resort to blackmail, and after some contemplation of this evil possibility he summoned his two colleagues. 'This gentleman has raised a most disconcerting point. Will thee explain it to my friends?'
As the other passengers left the salon the three Quakers sat down with the Jew from Baltimore, and he explained in cruel, harsh terms the blackmail he expected Hitler to propose.
'Thee speaks of him as a monster,' Paxmore objected.
'He is. Reverend Paxmore, I think it a certainty that if you good men do not rescue the Jews of Germany, they will all be executed... hanged... shot.'
'That's infamous!' Paxmore protested. He rose in great agitation. 'Thee speaks as if we were dealing with a madman.'
'You are,' the man from Baltimore said. 'And what are you prepared to offer him?'
The thought was alien to anything that Paxmore had contemplated. Offer him? They were coming to offer him the truth, a glimpse of God's eternal message of justice and salvation.
'Dear friends,' the Jew said at the conclusion of their abortive discussion, 'he will ask you for money.'
'Where would we get money?' the schoolteacher asked.
'I could sell Peace Cliff,' Paxmore said simply, with no doubt in his mind that saving human lives was more important than holding on to his ancestral home beside the Choptank.
'Dear friends,' the Jew said, 'Hitler will want far more money than you could ever raise. But if he does demand it, remember that I and my acquaintances stand ready to collect whatever ransom he demands.' He shook hands with the three Quakers, giving each a business card.
When the missioners reached Berlin they were greeted with contempt by German officials and with amused condescension at the American embassy. 'You've come to persuade Herr Hitler to treat the Jews more kindly?' one young secretary from Virginia asked.
'We have,' Paxmore replied. 'I trust thee will do everything possible to speed our mission?'
'Look, our ambassador can't even get in to see him. Small chance for you.'
'We'll wait,' Paxmore said.
They stayed in Berlin, trying to make contact with the few Quakers who lived in that city, but the German Friends were not eager to expose themselves as associates of the three strange men from America. One family, however, had English roots—a daughter had married a Quaker from London—and they discounted possible danger. They came to the hotel where the Americans were staying and met openly with them.
'We are the Klippsteins,' the father said stiffly.
'The name sounds Jewish,' Paxmore said.
'Way back.'
'Are you at a disadvantage?'
Herr Klippstein considered this question a moment, then relaxed his stiffness and broke into a smile. 'We are condemned three ways,' he said, indicating to his family that they should sit. 'We were Jewish. We are Quaker. And we have always been liberals.'
'Condemned is a harsh word,' Paxmore objected.
Now Klippstein's levity vanished. 'Within two years we will all be dead... if you do not help us.'
'Dead! That's impossible. We're dealing with human beings.'
'You mean _they're_ human beings? Or _we're_ human beings?'
'Herr Paxmore,' Frau Klippstein interrupted. 'This is no ordinary problem.' She spoke English haltingly; her sentence came out, 'Ziss iss not ord-i-nar-y prrroblim.' She said that each day the restrictions grew harsher.
'That's what we've come to talk with Herr Hitler about,' Paxmore explained. 'To convince him that he must release the Jews...'
Herr Klippstein laughed. 'No possibility,' he said.
'But the foreign ambassadors? Don't they take action?'
'Most of them approve of Hitler. They believe he is good for Germany. Because most of them despise Jews... and Quakers... and liberals of any sort.'
'Certainly not the American ambassador.'
'I don't know him. I do know some of his staff. They would help no one who was not rich and well educated and socially important. They're as bad as the English.'
'The English embassy won't help?'
'Herr Paxmore!' Klippstein went on to advise the Americans to go back home. No one in authority would see them, of that he was convinced.
But in the middle of the fourth week a uniformed messenger appeared at the hotel to inform them that at two o'clock that afternoon Hermann Göring would see them. This news did not surprise Woolman Paxmore, who had always believed that he and his two associates would ultimately see Hitler and convince him that he must release the Jews. 'We'll see Göring today and he'll probably arrange for us to see Hitler tomorrow,' Paxmore told his companions.
A Rolls-Royce called for them at half past one, and they were driven through magnificent streets to a palace where hordes of uniformed personnel protected the dignity of the Third Reich. Paxmore was impressed. 'Aren't they handsome-looking young men?' he said to the schoolmaster from North Carolina.
The three Quakers were ushered into an enormous room decorated with colorful maps that were works of art rather than accurate depictions. They showed the consolidation of the German empire, with heavy Gothic lettering that made them doubly impressive. At the far end of the room—twice the length of the biggest room any of them had ever seen before—stood a white desk covered with small golden ornaments. The schoolteacher whispered, as they approached it, 'Looks very unfunctional.'
The three were brought to a position some ten feet short of the desk and told to wait. Paxmore noticed that they were standing on a white carpet, and reflected on how difficult it must be to keep such a thing clean.
After a fifteen-minute wait, during which the three tall men talked quietly among themselves, while six uniformed guards looked at the ceiling, a door opened and an enormous man dressed in white and gold strode into the room, followed by a most beautiful blond woman in a riding habit.
An interpreter leaped to position between the two and said, 'This is General Göring and Madame Göring.' Then the general began to speak, in deep, reassuring syllables. 'The general says that he has always known of the Quakers. They have in Germany a splendid reputation for fairness and honesty. He knows of the good work your people have done throughout the world, without ever taking sides or embarrassing local governments. He welcomes you with open arms to Germany.'
Woolman Paxmore thought it obligatory to acknowledge these generous words, but Göring stormed ahead. 'General Göring says that he brought his wife along because as a Swedish lady, which she is, she, too, has heard of the Quakers and wanted to see some.'
'You have Quakers in Germany,' Paxmore said. The interpreter thought it wisest not to repeat this, and Göring continued, 'So because of your fine reputation, the Third Reich will always be most eager to cooperate with you in any practical way.'
'We have several suggestions—' Paxmore began.
'Gentlemen,' Göring interrupted in English, 'let's be seated.' He led them to a corner of the great room to a table where tea had been arranged. The interpreter said, 'The general knows you are not English, but perhaps... some tea...'
'Please do!' Frau Göring said in English.
'I doubt if there are many Quakers in Sweden,' Paxmore said.
'I've not met them, if they're there,' Frau Göring said in perfect English. She was a charming woman and offered each of the Quakers tea and small sandwiches.
'We don't come as Quakers,' Paxmore said.
'But that's what you are?' The interpreter's voice rose. 'That's why the general consented to see you.'
'Of course we're Quakers,' Paxmore conceded, indicating the other two men. 'But we come as Christians, General Göring, to beg you to allow the Jews to leave Germany.'
The huge man chortled, then spoke rapidly in German, which the interpreter summarized sporadically. The upshot was the Jews of Germany were completely free to depart at any time, to take with them all their possessions, to settle in any nation that would accept them. 'But no nation wants them,' Göring concluded.
Woolman Paxmore coughed. Taking a sip of tea, he controlled himself, then said quietly, 'Our evidence is that almost no Jews are allowed to leave Germany, and only then if they pay considerable amounts of money to do so.'
Göring did not flinch. He said, 'Of course we expect to be indemnified for the free education we've given them. Truly, Herr Paxmore, you wouldn't expect us to let these able and brilliant Jews depart without some kind of compensation? To take their skills, which we gave them in our free schools, to serve our enemies?'
'You have no enemies,' Paxmore said.
At this, Göring exploded. Reaching out, he slapped Paxmore resoundingly on the knee and said, 'You peace-loving Quakers! You see nothing. We're surrounded by enemies, ravenous enemies...'
The interpreter could not handle the word _ravenous_ and fumbled with it until Frau Göring interrupted. 'Ravenous enemies, Herr Paxmore. And they are ravenous.'
'They could be converted into friends,' Paxmore said quietly. 'And the way to achieve this is to make a gesture toward the Jews.'
'We intend to make gestures toward the Jews,' Göring said, laughing at his joke.
'And if it is reasonable for your government to demand...' He stopped. The only word he could think of was _ransom_ , ransom money for the Jews, but he knew he ought not to use that word.
'Ransom money,' the North Carolina schoolmaster blurted out.
The interpreter fumbled with the word, trying to soften it, but Frau Göring broke in again. 'It's not a ransom, Herr Paxmore. It's rather a repayment for the free education they've received.'
'That was the expression I was searching for,' Paxmore said honestly. 'And if it is such payment that is preventing the emigration of your Jews, I can promise you that the required funds will be forthcoming.'
General Göring asked that this information be interpreted again, and after he had satisfied himself that he understood what the Quakers were proposing, he asked Paxmore bluntly, 'You are prepared to put up the money?'
'Yes.'
'How much?'
This stumped Paxmore, who had never discussed such matters seriously with anyone. 'A million dollars,' he said, amazed at himself for having mouthed such a figure.
'A million!' Göring repeated. 'A million... hummmmm.'
The meeting broke up. 'You are to stay close to your hotel,' the interpreter said. The man was a Prussian, educated in military schools, and everything he said carried an ominous reverberation.
Two days later a pair of black military cars drove to a rear entrance to the hotel and the three visitors were told to pack small overnight bags. 'I will inspect them,' the same interpreter said, and he went to their room as they packed, watching carefully as each item was placed in its bag. He then led them quickly down a back stairs and into the cars. They were driven to an airfield where a small plane with only four passenger seats waited. The interpreter came along, saying nothing until they were well airborne; then he said crisply, 'You are going to meet der Führer... at Berchtesgaden... and when you are brought into his presence you are to stand at attention, your hands at your sides, and say nothing. Do you understand, nothing.'
Woolman Paxmore wanted to respond to such a ridiculous instruction, but the merchant from Pittsburgh nudged him, so he said nothing. But when the interpreter wasn't looking, he shrugged his shoulders so that the schoolmaster could see. That man raised his eyebrows and smiled.
They landed at an airfield near a lake and were ushered immediately into a Rolls-Royce, which started a steep climb up a road of exquisite beauty. 'We are going to the Eagle's Aerie,' the interpreter said with the proper amount of awe, and after a long ascent through forested trails the car broke through to a view of staggering grandeur.
'My goodness!' Paxmore said. 'Anyone would like to live up here.' The mountains, the vast expanse of forest, the limitless plains of Germany below, how different they were from the small, flat fields of the Eastern Shore! 'This doesn't look much like the Choptank,' he said to no one.
'This way,' the interpreter said, leading them into a salon even bigger than Göring's. They had not yet adjusted to it when they were surprised by General Göring himself, who entered from a far door wearing a Bavarian knee-length hunting costume and heavily ribbed lederhosen. Taking huge strides, he came to greet the three Quakers, saying in English, 'Gentlemen! So soon we meet again!' He actually embraced Paxmore, slapping him vigorously on the back. In German he said, 'Der Führer was captivated by your idea, gentlemen. He wants your specific comments.'
And before the Quakers could respond to this, Herr Hitler appeared, a smallish man with very black hair, wearing a simple brown uniform lacking in either medals or pretension. When the two German leaders stood side by side, they seemed like typical huntsmen, their intelligent faces beaming with excitement.
And now Hitler spoke, in a rather high, thin voice, and the interpreter took over. 'Is what General Göring tells me still true? You can collect one million dollars to pay for the Jews' education?'
'Yes,' Paxmore said firmly. At that moment he had not the slightest idea as to where he could collect a million dollars, but his life had been spent in making commitments which were to be discharged later, and in doing so, had found that for a worthy cause God somehow found ways to fulfill the most demanding pledge. 'We will get the money.'
'Then I think we can let you have your Jews,' Hitler said. 'We've calculated the cost of their education. In your dollars... What was it, Hermann?'
'Five thousand dollars a Jew,' Göring said.
Paxmore was not good at arithmetic and he stumbled for an answer as to how many Jews one million dollars would rescue. 'Two hundred,' said the schoolmaster.
'Outrageous!' Paxmore protested. 'Herr Hitler—'
'Silence!' the interpreter shouted.
Paxmore ignored him and moved close to the dictator. 'It ought to be fifty thousand, at least. Compassion would dictate at least that many.'
The interpreter refused to translate this audacious demand, but Hitler saw the effect his proposal had made on the Quakers; indeed, in naming it he had suspected that it would be unacceptable. Now he calmed the interpreter and instructed him to ask, 'What number did you have in mind?'
'Fifty thousand,' Paxmore said firmly.
'I doubt if we have that many who would want to leave,' Hitler said.
'Thee would gain great credit, Herr Hitler,' Paxmore said in his voice of quiet reasoning, 'if thee made a gesture of such dimension.'
And the fact that this unkempt, gangling man would use persuasion and an appeal to self-esteem impressed the dictator. On the spur of the moment he snapped, 'Forty thousand,' and with that, he marched from the room.
'You've struck a great bargain.' Göring beamed. 'As you have seen for yourself, Der Führer is a man of deep compassion. Tell the world this. Report it to the world.' With a salute, which seemed totally out of place, he waddled off after his leader.
In this way Woolman Paxmore and his two tall friends bought the lives of forty thousand Jews. They gathered the million dollars from diverse sources, solely on the strength of their reputations and the assurance that they would do what they said they would do.
And for the rest of his life Paxmore would meet men and women with heavy accents who would seek him out to tell him, 'You saved my life. My group was the last to escape from Germany. The rest are all dead, in the ovens.' And they would try to kiss his hands, but he would pull away.
The affair of the German Jews gave Woolman Paxmore no sense whatever of accomplishment, and he better than anyone else knew that in this affair his hands were not for kissing, for when he and his two friends had collected the money and arranged for the rescue of the forty thousand, he could find no country that would admit them, and he spent nearly half a year traveling from capital to capital begging the various governments to accept these people saved from extinction. In the end he failed, both with his own government and all others, so that of the forty thousand who were entitled to escape, having been paid for, only twenty-five thousand did reach safety, because the others were acceptable nowhere.
# Ordeal by Fire
IN 1938 A STRIKING BOOK WAS PUBLISHED IN PATAMOKE. Its merit did not lie in its literary style, which stressed cuteness and a blizzard of exclamation points. Nor was it memorable for any philosophical revelations, because it consisted of unrelated little episodes chosen at random and arranged without regard to chronology.
It was called _A True History of Patamoke_ and had been composed, or perhaps assembled, by Judge Hathaway Steed's older son Lawton. Since the development of the town was seen through the romantic experiences of the tobacco-raising families, there was much material on haunted rooms, beautiful young wives and Cavaliers. To read the book gave the impression that one could understand the history of the Choptank only if one visited seventeenth-century plantations.
What made the book outstanding was an amazing accomplishment: it recorded three hundred years of history without once mentioning the blacks who had shared that history and played a major role in it. There were whole chapters about pretty Steed women, and the reforms essayed by dissident Paxmores; there were even condescending paragraphs about the Turlocks, especially those of a piratical turn, but about the slaves who enabled the system to function, there was absolutely nothing.
To take only one example. The Caters had made themselves a powerful force in Patamoke history: Cudjo's rise exemplified an era; Eden had led fourteen escape missions into Pennsylvania; Captain Jimbo sailed his skipjack through two generations of watermen, becoming known as the premier skipper in the fleet—but the family was not even mentioned. It would not be correct, however, to claim that the name Cater was ignored in the history; on page 118 appeared this paragraph:
In 1847 the postmaster Thomas Cater found himself in trouble with local fanatics who sought to import through federal mails copies of seditious literature, which he lawfully sequestered!! The agitators protested so vehemently and continuously that in 1849 this good man was forced out of his position, but Patamoke residents of a more sober mind were gratified to learn that he had received a much better position in South Carolina, where he joined the Confederate forces, rising to the rank of major!!!
Ignoring the Caters might have been justified on the ground that no one black family dominated, but Steed also ignored the black Methodist ministers who had served this community so constructively, often stabilizing it through turbulent decades when they were lucky to receive one hundred dollars a year in salary. He overlooked, too, the small businessmen, the workers who staffed the oyster canneries, the blacks who served as foremen in the tomato plants, and the men who loaned money, serving as crisis banks to keep the community functioning.
Of the black schools that tried to educate the children of former slaves, there was not a word, nor any record of the baseball teams that could usually defeat the white. There was no account of the late-summer rallies, when the nights were filled with music, nor of the powerful black evangelists who could make hellfire sizzle at the edge of the pine grove.
In obedience to the national custom, the black experience was erased, not because it was unimportant, but because in the mind of a man like Lawton Steed it had never existed, and visitors from other parts of the nation who read this book pleasantly after their crab-cake dinners at Patamoke House could be excused if they left with the impression that the Choptank had been explored, settled and developed by far-seeing white men who did all the work, after which a gang of blacks mysteriously appeared out of nowhere, with no history, no traditions, no significance and no rights. In 1938, when the _True History_ was published, Patamoke contained 6,842 citizens, of whom 1,984 were black. Twenty-nine percent of the population, in the thinking of civic leaders, did not exist.
The _Patamoke Bugle_ reflected this tradition; months would pass without a single mention of the black community, and if notice was taken, it was invariably an amusing account of some disaster at the African Methodist Episcopal Church or a hilarious report of a gambling riot. It was forbidden ever to use the honorifics Mr., Mrs. or Miss when referring to a black, and except for reporting court cases, their social life was ignored.
The blacks lived behind the boatyard east of town, severely restricted to that area in which occasional freed slaves had taken residence since 1700. In the intervening years Frog's Neck had altered little: houses were still small, often without windows; some were painted when employers gave leftover pails of paint to men and women who had served faithfully; and there was a truncated baseball diamond on which black players perfected their skills. But it was a world apart, with its own church, school and customs. It had no doctor, no dentist, but it did have a black policeman who exhibited incredible tact in maintaining a semblance of order.
If the _True History_ contained nothing about blacks, its attitude toward them was intimated in two paragraphs, which gained favorable comment from the locals:
So for several happy decades beginning around 1790 the Eastern Shore enjoyed a stable society marked by graciousness, stability, patriotism and order!! It was possible to maintain these noble traditions of England because everyone possessed honest and untainted English blood. Our great plantations set the style for the lesser orders to follow. Each man knew his proper place and the obligations that went with it.
This lovely ideal was shattered by two disastrous events! The Emancipation Proclamation and the influx of peasants from Ireland and Jews from the less desirable countries of Europe!! Like locusts they destroyed a graciousness of life they could not comprehend, introducing abominations like labor agitation, income taxes, women's suffrage, Communism, Bolshevism and the New Deal!!!
In 1938 Patamoke was a closed little world, with its own customs, shibboleths and strengths, but in it blacks could achieve a life that was marginally satisfactory if they devised strategies of survival. To do so was difficult, for they were required to suppress ordinary human emotions in order to escape notice in a white environment. On no one did the problems of survival fall with heavier force than on Jeb Cater, a thin, medium-sized man of forty-two who occupied a two-room shack in the Neck.
This year Jeb had special problems. Not only was his employment more precarious than usual, but his wife was pregnant, so that the money she would normally have earned was missing. During the final months of the year Jeb worked fourteen and eighteen hours a day at any available jobs, and even then could scarcely keep his family of four alive—'What we gonna do, our son arrives, on'y God knows.'
He already had two daughters, Helen, aged nine and almost old enough to work steadily, and Luta Mae, aged seven, who was so troublesome that it seemed she might never hold a steady job, and it was his conceit, nurtured during the long hours of his toil, that his next child must be a son. His wife Julia chided him on this: 'You takes what you gets an' you likes it.'
Julia had grown up in Frog's Neck and had known Jeb all her life; they were the same age and had started courting at fifteen. She had been a large girl, with a strong mind, and once she settled on Jeb as her probable mate, she did everything to prevent his escape. He had wanted to try his luck at some job in Baltimore, but she had prevailed upon him to stay at home. During the last days of World War I he had talked of running away to the army, but she had stopped this abruptly by threatening to elope with his older brother.
She ran her only real risk when this brother left town, found a job somewhere and returned with good money, inviting Jeb to join him. 'Your brother ain't gonna amount to nothin', money or no money,' she had argued, trying to hold her man, and when Jeb reminded her that only a year ago she had threatened to marry the brother she was now condemning, she sniffed, 'Me marry that no-good. Jeb, you fool easy.'
This was a good description of her husband: he fooled easy. He believed that tomorrow would be better, that he would find a permanent job with a decent wage, that the girls would study in school, and that his next child would be a boy. He also believed in the ultimate goodness of the United States and had been ready to fight the Kaiser to defend it. He had inherited from his predecessor Cudjo Cater that solid will power that enables men and nations to survive, and from Eden Cater the personal courage to keep trying. He was, in many respects, the finest black man in Patamoke, but in spite of this, he could never find steady work.
In winter months he labored aboard a white man's skipjack dredging oysters. In the summer he ran a trotline, trying to catch crabs. He was a master of neither profession and earned little, but it was in the two in-between seasons that his family felt the pinch of real poverty. In spring he helped the skipjack captain haul timber to Baltimore, and in autumn he lugged his tools into the surrounding woods to split firewood. For a cord of pine he earned twenty-five cents, for a cord of oak, fifty.
Regardless of what he did, he came home exhausted, for he worked hours that no white man would have tolerated, and always at the most demanding tasks. If the skipjack loaded timber, it was Jeb who carried it aboard at the river ports and unloaded it in Baltimore. His hands were calloused, his back slightly bent, but on and on he worked, a machine that was employed at slight cost and would be discarded at the first sign of slowing down.
Despite his unstinting labor, he would still have been unable to support his family had not Julia worked as hard as he. She never complained, for she was gratified at having captured Jeb, and this was understandable, because not only did the black community respect him as a leader, but he was also the best husband in Frog's Neck. At home he had a placid disposition, and in public a willingness to share his meager funds with any family facing trouble, and Reverend Douglass said of him, 'I preach charity according to the Bible, but it's Jeb who demonstrates what the word means.' He was a good father, too, spending much time with his daughters, and if young Luta Mae was proving fractious, it was not because her parents ignored her; they loved her deeply and did their best to quieten her rages when she felt herself abused by white folks.
'Luta Mae,' her father told her repeatedly, 'you ain't got to fight the white folks. You got to side-step 'em.' It was Jeb's belief that if a black person minded his ways, he would run into very little trouble with whites.
'Turlocks hate us colored,' he warned his daughters, 'so the smart thing, stay shed of 'em. Cavenys too. Just you stay clear, like me, an' you find no trouble.'
Repeatedly he assured his family that the bad old days when Turlocks and Cavenys could rage through the countryside were gone: 'Ain't been a lynchin' along the Choptank in twenty years, and they ain't gonna be if'n you side-step 'em.' The Turlocks and Cavenys recognized Jeb's qualities by observing many times, 'He's a good nigger. Knows his place.'
Jeb realized that the heaviest burden in the family fell on Julia. She held three jobs. In winter she shucked oysters at the Steed sheds, working the midnight shift so that gallon cans of fresh seafood could be shipped out at dawn. In summer she was invaluable at the crab-picking company, and in autumn she worked double shifts at the Steed tomato cannery, peeling by hand the extra-fancy size for cold-packs.
In addition to this, she did sewing for several white families and stood as one of the great pillars of the African Methodist Episcopal Church. She was Reverend Douglass' principal support and also one of the lead sopranos in his choir. She was positively convinced that God took a personal interest in her church and her family, and although she was well aware from stories handed down from the time of Cudjo and Eden that Christianity had often been used as a prison for blacks, she also knew that God had not only arranged for Emancipation by sending Abraham Lincoln to earth, but had also given blacks their A.M.E. Church as proof of His concern.
From Monday morning at midnight till Saturday afternoon at six Julia Cater worked as few people in the world were required to work, but as Sunday approached, and the wooden church waited for her to decorate it with whatever flowers the season provided, she knew that God Himself waited to participate in her thanksgiving that another week had passed without major disasters.
Lesser disasters were with her constantly: 'Ain't no more crabs comin' in, Jeb. Nex' week the las'.'
'Maybe Mrs. Goldsborough, she want some sewin' done.'
'Tomato peelin' start late this year. Meanwhiles we got to eat.'
From anxiety to anxiety the Cater family moved from year to year, but in late 1938, with Julia unable to work at the cannery until her child was born, and with Jeb earning almost nothing on the skipjack, a major crisis developed, and at last, desperate, the husband and wife decided to seek advice from Reverend Douglass.
'We ain't got a penny, and no food in the house,' Julia told the minister. Jeb sat, silent, looking down at his work-worn hands.
Reverend Douglass leaned back in his chair, saddened as always by the story heard so often in Frog's Neck. But this time he felt overcome by it, for these were the Caters, who had labored so faithfully to keep their family together, who despite their pitiful, hard-earned income had always contributed to his salary, had even whitewashed their shack to preserve an appearance of decency and dignity.
He could see them now, entering his church, Jeb a few steps in front in a clean suit, then Julia, prepared to sing her praises to God, and the two girls, pretty and spruced up for the Sabbath. They were the backbone of his congregation—and now they were starving.
Reverend Douglass mulled over the possible ways he could help the Caters. He knew that in the Steed stores or at the Paxmore Boatyard there were no jobs for additional blacks; each establishment had its quota who swept and lugged and cleaned and muscled things about, but those jobs were treasured from one generation to the next, even though the pay was minimal. Sometimes in cases of extreme indigence the black community coalesced like corpuscles about the wound and somehow the patient was saved. But in these harsh days the families had scarcely enough for their own, and the reverend knew it would be useless to ask for help from them. The only thing left was the traditional Patamoke recourse: the Caters could go to either the Steeds or the Paxmores and plead for help.
But when he suggested it to the Caters, Julia said, 'We's proud,' and then, unable to bear the thought of begging, she went on, 'Maybe they get me some sewing, and Jeb could fix barns. Or the girls could help at the cannery.' And still Jeb said nothing.
Finally Reverend Douglass said, 'I'll go to the Steeds and ask for help.'
'Better the Paxmores,' Julia said, and it required rigid self-discipline to prevent tears.
Reverend Douglass left the Neck and drove out to Peace Cliff to talk with Woolman Paxmore, just home from Berlin, where he had helped save twenty-five thousand Jews, and the kindly Quaker said, 'John, I simply have no money left.'
'Mr. Paxmore, this worthy family is in deep trouble.'
'John, I'm powerless.'
'But the woman's about to have another baby. We can't let her go hungry.' Reverend Douglass, realizing that no white family could comprehend the perpetual crisis in which blacks lived, cried with heartbreaking force, 'These good people are starving!'
Woolman Paxmore pressed his hands against his eyes, and because he was a minister, snatches of biblical phrases tumbled through his head. He thought of Jesus aiding the poor and admonishing his followers to care for the downtrodden, and it grieved him that whereas he had been able to help the Jews in Berlin, he could not do the same for the blacks here in Patamoke. Painfully he dropped his hands and looked at Reverend Douglass, whom he accepted as a messenger from God. 'Obviously, we must do something,' he said quietly. 'But what?'
And then he remembered a canning jar in which his wife stored small coins against some day of great need, and he left the room to find that jar, but as he rummaged about, his wife heard him and asked, 'What is it, Woolman?' and he said, 'The Caters. Those good, dear people.' And she said nothing as he took her coins.
The meeting at which the two ministers rescued the Caters occurred on Friday. Next day the _Patamoke Bugle_ carried the latest in its series of hilarious make-believe anecdotes from the black community:
Reverend Rastus Smiley of the Riptank A.M.E. Church appeared in the law offices of Judge Buford seeking aid. 'Jedge, I'se got to have yore help. I'se been accused unjustly, and if'n you doan' pertecks me, I'se gine ter jail.'
'What are you accused of, Rastus?'
'White folks claims I done stole two hogs, three turkeys, and four chickens.'
'And you're willing to swear you're innocent?'
'On de Bible, Jedge Buford.'
'I always feel obliged to defend a gentleman of the cloth, but Rastus, you never have any money. What are you prepared to give me for my services?'
'One hog, one turkey and two chickens.'
Amos Turlock was in a bitter mood. Rocking back and forth in his shack north of the marsh, he brooded upon the sad condition into which his life had fallen. He was only twenty-nine, a tall, lanky waterman who shaved only on Sundays; one of his incisors had recently broken and other front teeth threatened to follow. Sucking on the empty space, he gazed dispassionately at his weatherbeaten wife as she plodded about the kitchen, preparing his greasy breakfast. 'I jes' cain't believe it,' he said more to himself than to her. 'Goddamnit, he's my own brother-in-law and he hadn't oughta behave thisaway.'
'Ain't he more your cousin?' his wife snarled. 'Din' his pappy marry your aunt?'
'Point I'm tryin' to make, if a body would listen, Hugo Pflaum ain't got no right atall.'
He rocked on, contemplating the inequities of life, and he had many to protest. For one brief spell at the turn of the century his branch of the Turlocks had been smiled upon—'We had the brick house in town. Gran'daddy Jake had his own skipjack.'
'Yesterday you claimed Sam Turlock was your gran'daddy.'
'He was, goddamnit, on my mother's side...' He stopped in disgust. It was impossible to conduct a serious conversation with this woman, one of the Turlocks from upriver, but after a dull silence he resumed his litany. 'Yep, we had our own skipjack, and you know what, Cass, I think that son-of-a-bitch Caveny stoled it from us. Yes, sir, you ask me, he flashed some papers in court, but I think he forged 'em, and the judge let it slip by.'
He rocked in silence, shaking his head over paradises lost: the brick house had been sheriffed out at a forced sale; the skipjack was now operated by Cavenys alone; his children could barely read; and were it not for the marsh and the game it provided, the family would barely be able to exist, even with public charity. And now the final indignity! His own cousin, Hugo Pflaum, had announced in the _Patamoke Bugle_ that he intended to confiscate every long gun on the Choptank, and at the store had specifically boasted, 'If I don't do nothin' else, I'm gonna get my hands on The Twombly.'
'Goddamnit!' Amos cried, rising from his chair. 'We been warned. Cass, get the children in here. I want to talk with ever'body, serious.'
Whenever he stood up and spoke in that tone, she knew he meant it, so she stopped frying the eggs and shouted from the door, 'Kipper, Betsy, Ben, fetch Nellie and come in here.' Four separate protests greeted this cry, and she yelled, 'I meant what I said. Your pop wants to talk to you.'
Four bedraggled children came in from the muddy yard, and if old Captain Jake could have seen them—he the master of his own skipjack and dominant waterman of the Choptank—he would have been appalled at how swiftly his family had descended, and he would have been perplexed as to the reasons. For one thing, he had married his full cousin, so that each inherent weakness in the Turlock strain had been magnified. And he had scoffed when Miss Paxmore warned him that his children were not learning to read. Furthermore, while Tim Caveny had hoarded every penny, like the penurious Papist he was, Jake had squandered his on family ventures of no merit. He had not lived to watch the sad transfer of the skipjack to sly Timothy, but in his last days he had often suspected that this might happen.
Why did a family rise and fall and sometimes rise again? Luck played an enormous part. For example, if Jake Turlock had lived as long as Tim Caveny, he might have held his sprawling family together, and saved both the brick house and the boat, but he had drowned one bitter night when a super blast from the long gun caused him to lose his balance and capsize his skiff.
But a family rises or falls primarily because of the way it marshals its genetic inheritance and puts it to constructive use. No family along the Choptank had a more vigorous life force than the Turlocks; they were not handsome like the Steeds, nor clever like the Cavenys, nor powerfully built like the two generations of Pflaums, nor intellectually solid like the Paxmores, but they possessed a wonderful capacity for survival. They were lean, spare, simple and clean of mind, with strong eyes and teeth, had they cared for them. And all members of the family possessed an animal cunning that protected them. With their genetic gifts they should have owned the river, and Turlocks like Captain Matt of the slave trade and Captain Jake of the oyster dredging had done so.
Amos could have owned it, too, for he had inherited every innate capacity his forebears had possessed, but fatal inbreeding had encouraged family weaknesses to multiply, while its virtues receded. He had wanted to repurchase the house in town when the price was reasonable, but he never got around to it, and now they wanted eleven hundred dollars. He had intended to buy back his family's share in the skipjack, and he could have done so, for Caveny offered it, but now a skipjack was selling for six thousand and there was no possibility of repurchase. He had also talked of sending his children seriously to school, but at their first protests had allowed them to swarm in the marsh.
Now they stood before him, four marsh rats as disorganized and hopeless as he. 'Serious business, and I want you to listen. None of you, and this includes you too, Cass, is ever to mention The Twombly. You don't know nothin' about it. You don't know where I keep it. You don't even know whether I still have it or not. And goddamnit, you are never to let anyone know that I use it.' He stared balefully at each of his children, then at his wife. 'Because if you blab, even once, Hugo Pflaum is gonna come here and take The Twombly away, and that means you and me ain't gonna eat no more duck.'
In 1918 the government of Maryland had outlawed possession of long guns, for it could be proved that these lethal weapons were slaughtering ducks at a rate which prevented replacement. A census had been conducted, and the location of every gun specified; they were known by name—Cheseldine, Reverdy, Old Blaster, Morgan—usually referring to the family which first owned them, for no matter how many hands a gun passed through, it was always referred respectfully back to its original owner.
The 1918 census had shown seventeen long guns on the Choptank, and diligent pressures from Maryland's game wardens, primarily Hugo Pflaum, had reduced the number to four. The Herman Cline, once owned by the slave-breaker on the Little Choptank, had been confiscated, and the Bell, a beauty from Denton. The Cripton family had gone to great lengths to protect their monstrous gun, Cripton, even threatening to murder Pflaum if he persisted in his attempts to impound it, but in the end he had tracked it down to a corncrib.
Amos Turlock ominously remembered the photograph which the _Bugle_ had displayed of the capture. There was Hugo Pflaum, a stubby man with broad shoulders and no neck, holding in his right hand Cripton, twelve feet tall, with its barrel reflecting sunlight. His left hand grasped Abel Cripton, hat pulled down over his face to avoid the shame of having lost a gun which had been in his family for over a hundred years.
Turlock had cut the picture from the paper and tacked it to the kitchen wall, where it still hung in tatters; when he was drunk he liked to spit at it, for Hugo Pflaum, with his bull neck, was his enemy, and The Twombly was in peril so long as he operated.
The Twombly, oldest and best of the Choptank arsenal, had taken its name, of course, from old Greef Twombly upriver, whose ancestors had imported it from England in 1827. Its barrel was still as clean as when it left its London foundry; its oak stock had been replaced four times but was still as thick as a man's thigh. Hugo Pflaum, studying his census of the guns he was supposed to capture, said of The Twombly, 'It's been used on this river for a hundred and eleven years. I figure it's been fired on an average of three times a week, twenty-five weeks a year. That's over eight thousand shots. Now, if they kill even fifty ducks with each shot, and that's low, why, it means that this gun has removed about four hundred thousand ducks from circulation, and it's got to stop.'
Hugo's estimates were conservative; when a voracious old man like Greef Twombly owned a gun as good as this one, he didn't restrict its use to three nights a week, and when it passed into the hands of a confirmed waterman like Jake Turlock, he didn't average a mere fifty birds a shot. A more accurate count would be that this famous old gun had slaughtered nearly two million ducks and geese, and this helped explain why the bird population had declined so severely in recent decades.
'Hell,' Amos complained at the store, 'last year me and Abel Cripton, we sat in our goose blind at the marsh for two straight weeks—and how many geese you suppose flew over? Not twenty.'
He was right. Where the Choptank region had once entertained more than a million geese each year, now fewer than twenty thousand appeared, and these kept to the marshes south of the river. The depopulation was incredible, and many gentlemen who had paid substantial sums for their English and Austrian shotguns rarely found an excuse to use them for anything but doves. The geese were gone; the ducks were going, and it was Hugo Pflaum's job to see that reasonable hunting procedures encouraged their return.
This was the meaning of Amos Turlock's lecture to his family: 'I don't give a damn for them fancy foreigners who come in here to steal our ducks with their expensive guns. They miss, they ain't gonna starve. But if we don't get our ducks regular, you and me, we ain't gonna eat.'
The oldest boy, Ben, knew where the gun was hidden, but even before Warden Pflaum began to apply pressure, he had deduced, with shrewd Turlock wisdom, that the day must come when someone would try to take The Twombly away, and he had never spoken of it to anyone. What was more remarkable, he had begun marking Pflaum's movements. He and the other children knew the warden as Uncle Hugo and often stopped by his farm, where Mrs. Pflaum, their Aunt Becky, could be counted upon to provide them with German cookies. They enjoyed listening to Hugo tell tales of Germany, where his father had lived in the country before running away to sea.
'In Germany,' Uncle Hugo explained, 'they keep the forests as clean as the park before the courthouse. My father said a custodian would be shot if his woods looked like the ones around here. A park, that's what a German woods is. And when you grow up you should make the woods in back of your place a park.'
Ben said, 'We like it the way it is. So do the deer.'
'You must tell your father he can't shoot those deer any more.'
Ben said nothing, but intuitively he knew that this husky, amiable man with no neck was his family's enemy, and he watched how and where he went.
One night in October 1938 Ben whispered to his father, 'Hugo's up to Denton, lookin' for the gun that's supposed to be there.'
'Good,' Amos said, and when night fell he and Ben hurried along a footpath that led into the heart of the marsh, then ducked off to one side, doubled back, moved along a path that was barely discernible and came finally upon a wooden structure not two feet high and absolutely invisible from any distance. It rested on poles, to keep salt water away, and had a lid, which Amos lifted quietly. Inside, in a nest of greased burlap, lay The Twombly, its barrel wiped clean, its heavy stock solid and new. Almost reverently Amos hefted it, carried it in his arms and headed for the waiting skiffs, but as he climbed easily into his, placing the gun in position, he heard a noise, grew tense, then laughed.
'Come on, Rusty,' he said, and his red Chesapeake leaped into the boy's skiff and they were off.
On January 1, 1939, Julia Cater gave birth to a boy, who was taken to the A.M.E. Church in Frog's Neck and christened Hiram, a biblical name meaning 'most noble,' and on the way home from church Jeb Cater was stopped by the captain of a successful skipjack. 'Jeb, we goin' out and we stayin' out. You want to cook?'
It had happened just as he predicted: 'Things is gonna be tough for the rest of this year, Julia, but come 1939 they gonna fall in place.'
He was not happy about leaving home for a protracted absence right after the birth of his son, and his apprehensions were doubled when Julia took a job shucking oysters—'Don't you think you oughta stay with the boy?' His wife ridiculed this—'We got a chance to earn some money, we takin' it.' She would work the midnight shift, hurry home and supervise the girls as they dressed for school, then tend the baby and have him ready for Helen to watch over while she slept.
The girls, of course, attended the black school held in a crumbling building at the far end of the Neck. It contained twenty-two desks for forty-seven students, so the teacher had to exercise some ingenuity in keeping her pupils juggled between sitting and standing classroom periods. She taught seven grades, and when a black child left her care that child usually had all the education it would get. There was one broken blackboard, but months would pass with no chalk. There was no ink, but ingenious boys collected berries from which a pale stain was extracted. Pencils were precious and some students would spend whole weeks without one, but what most irritated little Luta Mae was the fact that she was now in Grade Three without ever having had a book. The school had books, outmoded editions handed down from white schools in the neighborhood, but they were so few that only certain students could obtain one, and so far the luck of the draw had worked against her.
'Harry he gets one and Norma Ellen she gets one,' she complained to her mother, 'but I never gets one.'
'Maybe next year, in Grade Four, you'll be lucky,' Julia said. She refused to believe that the teacher was discriminating against her daughter, and when Luta Mae said harsh things, Julia reprimanded her, 'You wait till your daddy gets home in March...'
At the end of the oyster season Jeb Cater came home, tired from his hard work but well nourished because he had been the cook. His broad face beamed with pleasure as he gave Julia his wages, but any thought of disciplining Luta Mae vanished when he saw his son. 'That boy growin' like a weed! He gonna be the best.'
For hours at a time he played with Hiram, not throwing him in the air as some fathers did, for the boy was too precious for such rough treatment, but talking to him as if he understood. 'Hiram, you gonna go to school. You gonna learn to go out into the world. Come time you gonna enlist in the army. Who knows, you might be a general in France.'
There were no aspirations too lofty for this child, and Jeb's heart expanded with hope when he saw how well formed the child's body was, how bright his eyes, but after his exultation he found that a son altered his life in disturbing ways.
During the years when he had only daughters he could ignore the handicaps under which all blacks existed, but with a son he was constantly reminded of the discriminations, for whereas he had been required from birth to adjust to them and had grown inured to injustice, it galled him to realize that his son was doomed to an endless repetition of such unfairness. These were the specifics he began to list, not commenting upon them even to his wife, but marking them in his mind:
... It was customary, in Patamoke, for a black to step aside on the town pavements when a superior white person passed, even going into the gutter if necessary.
... It was traditional for a workman like Jeb to touch his cap when a white man approached and to lift it completely off the head for a white woman. The white thus deferred to could pass on without acknowledging in any way the black man's courtesy.
... There were no black doctors in the region, no dentists. A black could get minimum medical care from white doctors, especially in the case of communicable diseases which might spread to the white community, but the system was a bad one, lacking confidence on both sides.
... Few blacks ever assembled in a building that was painted. The church, the school, the corner store, the homes were gray and rotting.
... Streets on which whites lived were paved; those for blacks were dusty and rutted.
... All things pertaining to blacks were diminished. The school had only seven grades instead of twelve. The school year consisted of only one hundred and ten days instead of one hundred and sixty-six. Five blocks of black homes had one streetlight instead of ten. And the playground for children in the Neck was a small back lot instead of a ten-acre field with a full-scale baseball diamond.
... Almost every really desirable aspect of Patamoke life was proscribed to blacks. They were not welcomed in the library, nor in the big stone churches, nor in the motion-picture theater (except in a high and dirty balcony), nor in the courthouse, nor in the new school, nor in the recreation areas, nor in the public meetings, nor in the better law offices. If they were seen at night walking along the better streets, they were questioned, and at the ball park they had to sit in the unshaded bleachers, in a section severely roped off.
... What infuriated the two Cater girls was that when they had saved their pennies and marched proudly to the Gold and Blue Ice Cream Parlor, the man behind the counter took their money, treated them courteously and gave them at least as generous a scoop as he gave white children. But once the cone was in their hands, they had to leave the parlor, walking past the lovely iron tables where white children sat, and if they so much as nibbled at the dripping ice cream while they were inside the store, the owner would chide them gently, 'No, no. You mustn't eat the cone in here. Only outside.' So the girls would carry their cones grimly to the door, quit the premises and eat on the street. Luta Mae, eight years old, resented this expulsion. It wasn't the fact that she had to eat outside that embittered her—'It's them tables, Mom. All white and lacy-like with the clean glass tops and the kids sittin' there.' For some years her dream of paradise was a cloudy space filled with endless iron tables, all painted white, at which angels sat in easy relaxation, not eating ice cream necessarily, 'Just sittin' there at the clean tables.'
... Jeb's major irritation was one he could explain to no one, but it was so real it gnawed at him when other far more important deprivations went unchallenged. Each summer a crescendo of excitement was orchestrated by a smallish white man who arrived in town from Baltimore, Mr. Evans. He went first to the _Bugle_ , whereupon florid stories began to appear on the front page: 'Show Boat to Offer Six Sure Hits.' Then he employed two black boys to help him poster the town: 'Show Boat. Two Weeks. Solid Hits.' Finally he made a deal with Steed's whereby he could plaster one side of their store with really large full-color announcements of the stars and the plays they would be presenting: _Stella Dallas, Romeo and Juliet, Up in Mabel's Room, Red Stockings_ and _Uncle Tom's Cabin_. Seats were scaled from a dollar down to fifteen cents for children at matinées.
Excitement rose in the week prior to the arrival of the boat, for then the _Bugle_ told of the fabulous successes the various actors had enjoyed in Europe and New York, and at Steed's a desk was set up inside the door where seats for specific performances could be reserved. It was then that the blacks in Frog's Neck began to lay their plans; they could not reserve seats, of course, for they were restricted to a hot and narrow balcony, but they could express their preferences: 'Gentlemen from Baltimore say us colored gonna like this here _Skidding_. Very funny little boy, make you laugh.'
The two favorites among the residents of the Neck were _Stella Dallas_ and _Old Time Minstrels_ , and each year Jeb Cater bought tickets for the latter. 'I likes that there play about the girl, she break a man's heart, but I prefers the minstrels.' He did not try to explain why he liked the night of minstrelsy, but it had nothing to do with the fact that blacks were portrayed, nor that the humor was broad and easily understood. What pleased him was that the white manager, realizing that his all-white cast lacked certain proficiencies, always hired Will Nesbitt, a local black, to play the bones and do the shuffle.
The bones were four time-hardened cow-ribs, about seven inches long, one pair for the right hand, another for the left. When properly wedged between the thumb and fingers they could be rattled like castanets, and a good performer could beat out amazing rhythms with this musical instrument. Will Nesbitt could beat a real tattoo, and it was this bold and basic rhythm that established the quality of a good minstrel show.
So on two nights during the show-boat stay, the blacks of Patamoke could watch their own man perform. Nesbitt had no lines to speak, no role in the broad comedy, but he was part of the show, and when he was invited to step forward and do the coon shuffle, ridiculing the feckless behavior of black workmen, it was a moment of joy. Black athletes could not perform with whites, nor black singers in a white choir, nor black spellers against children their age from white schools, but on the show boat Will Nesbitt could do the shuffle, and that was something.
Why, then, was Jeb Cater infuriated by the show boat? Because it contained only a few seats for blacks, and those far from the stage and smelly. They could not be reserved; to be assured of one meant that some member of the family must stand in line for hours, and even then, white men from the big houses were free to barge in ahead to purchase seats for their black help.
If there was one function throughout the year to which the blacks of Patamoke should have been invited on equal terms, it was the show boat, especially to its nights of _Old Time Minstrels_ , but it was precisely these that were handled most callously. Even so, in the summer of 1939, Jeb Cater was prepared once again to go through the misery of trying to land two tickets for the minstrelsy.
Early Monday morning of the third week in July whistles started blowing on the Choptank, and a puffing little tug appeared in the channel, hauling behind it a monstrous old barge on which a theater had been erected. The whole appearance of the two boats evoked nostalgia and romance: the little tug straining against the cables; the captain tooting his whistle; the lovely dip of the line as it fell beneath the water; the blunt nose of the scow; the small, vigorous band on deck, hammering out strong tunes; the waving of the cast as they recognized old friends; and the bright colors of the theater itself, red and gold in the sunrise.
With what care the tug brought its heavy burden into the harbor, stopping its forward motion lest it crash into the wharf, then nudging it cautiously into position. Lines fore and aft! Lines binding it to the posts! Lines bringing it close so that gangways could be lowered! And then the gangplanks, one amidships for white patrons, another aft for blacks.
The management, on its nineteenth visit to Patamoke, was clever enough not to offer the minstrelsy during the first days. These were reserved for the new comedy _Skidding_ , the old favorite _Stella Dallas_ and the risqué farce _Up in Mabel's Room_.
On the first night of _Old Time Minstrels_ Jeb got in line too late to find a seat, but on the second he sent Luta Mae to stand for him while he went crabbing, and it was his intention to hurry home, sell his catch, wait for Julia to finish work at the cannery and then take her to the show, but she surprised him by announcing firmly, 'Don't want to see no more pretendin'. You wants to go, you takes Helen.' To his surprise, she also refused—'Too many peoples.'
So at dusk he went to the wharf and found Luta Mae fairly close to the ticket window, not the big one where the real seats were being sold, but the little one in the rear for blacks. Standing beside her, he moved along with his black neighbors, put forty cents on the lip of the window and got his two tickets, twenty-five cents for himself, fifteen cents for Luta Mae. Gingerly they climbed the steep stairs, entered the little balcony, said hello to their friends, then awaited the lowering of the lights.
It was magical! Worth all the waiting and the conniving and the humiliation. 'Ain't this somethin', Luta Mae?'
'Look at them uniforms!'
The band consisted of four members who played a staggering variety of instruments and played them well. When they reached the finale to the _William Tell Overture_ they were so versatile they sounded like a company of forty, and then the curtains parted, and there was the familiar half-moon of black-faced performers, with a most handsome white gentleman in the center asking his unctuous questions:
'Mr. Bones, do I understand that you took after your good friend, Rastus Johnson, with a razor?'
'Dat's a fact, Mr. Interlocutor.'
'And what, if I may be so bold as to ask, was the reason?'
'He done sneak into mah house and steal mah wife's nightgown.'
'Come now, Mr. Bones, you don't chase a man with a razor merely because he stole your wife's nightgown.'
'Yeah, but she was in it.'
A minstrel show consisted of two halves: the first featured the circle, with the interlocutor exchanging jokes with his two end men, Mr. Bones and Mr. Sambo. It was in this part that various actors did their specialties, and shortly before intermission the time came for Will Nesbitt to appear. 'Now you watch this, Luta Mae. This the good part.'
Nesbitt was a tall, thin black man with practically no hips, and when he came jigging on stage, rattling out a rhythm with his bones, the black gallery roared. Luta Mae was entranced by the clicking and the lovely intricacy of his steps as Nesbitt performed in near-darkness, with a beam of light chasing him about the stage. 'It's wonderful!' she cried, clasping her father's arm.
'He the real thing,' Jeb whispered.
But when the second half started—a playlet with the cast in white face—Luta Mae could not make the adjustment. 'Where all the colored, Daddy?'
'Them was the colored,' Jeb explained.
'Why they white?'
'They're actors,' Jeb whispered, but before he could give a better answer the highlight of the show approached. It consisted of a lone white dancer, very capable, who came on stage in white tails and top hat to sing _Me and My Shadow_ , and as he danced, Will Nesbitt, all in black, appeared behind him, imitating every step like a real shadow, and for some minutes the two artists dueled in the shimmering light to the words and music of one of America's most effective songs, with the white dancer executing difficult steps and the black equaling them.
Now stagehands moved a short flight of stairs into position, and as he danced nimbly up them, the white man sang that effective passage about his loneliness as he climbed the stairs at midnight, to find only an empty room.
Up after him came his black shadow, and on the relatively small top stair the two men engaged in a competition, until at the end Will Nesbitt let go in a furious improvisation, which the white man watched in admiration, finally wiping his brow and asking the audience, 'Ain't he somethin'?' The balcony exploded with cheers, in which the white audience joined, for Will Nesbitt with his flying feet was something to see.
The concluding number was a resumption of the circle, with some of the actors in black face, some in white, and Will Nesbitt the only real black, off to one end rattling his bones and doing a reprise of his shuffle.
'Are the men in the circle real colored?' Luta Mae asked.
'No.'
'But the man who beat the other man in the dance, he is?'
'He sure is.'
The girl pondered this, then asked, 'If the real colored is the best, why they use make-believe for the others?'
Jeb had no explanation.
On the Eastern Shore, aviation played an emotional role, not an economic one. When Charles Lindbergh soloed across the Atlantic back in May 1927, the area had gone wild with enthusiasm, for it seemed as if the Chesapeake had leapfrogged from the age of the sailboat into the age of air, leaving the railroad and the automobile to other parts of the United States. Roads were still bad, someone having invented a one-lane disaster paved with oyster shells that crumbled under the weight of a car. But the airplane!
Jefferson Steed revised his Great-Grandfather Paul's enthusiastic belief that the Eastern Shore would be saved by the railroad. 'I can foresee,' Jefferson sonorously proclaimed at the Fourth of July celebration, 'the day when our peninsula is united by swift-flying airplanes that link us to all parts of this great nation.' He lost a bundle sponsoring a commuter airline that failed five weeks after it started.
The air age would have its greatest impact on two persons: Isaac Paxmore, the boatbuilder, and John Turlock from the cabin in back of the marshes.
In 1938 Paxmore, watching a barnstorming plane fly up the bay, said to his sons and nephews, 'If we've built boats all these years, we can certainly build a flying boat.' He was sixty years old when he uttered these words, but the principle of flight so enchanted him that he began forthwith to draw the plans for an airplane made of highly finished light wood, powered by the best engine he could buy from experts in the field and pulled through the air by a laminated propeller which he would personally construct.
His cautious sons considered him irrational, but his nephew Pusey, son of the preacher Woolman Paxmore and a well-disciplined young man who had excelled at Harvard Law, saw possibilities in the flying boat and encouraged his uncle. 'I think we ought to try. There's bound to be a big market in the Navy for airplanes that can land on water, and I had a classmate at Harvard whose father makes airplane engines. Place called Scanderville.'
'Where's that?'
'Pennsylvania.'
'Is that where the prison is?'
'The same. His factory's a branch of Lycoming, and they build a good engine.'
So in 1939 young Pusey Paxmore donned his best blue suit and reported to the factory in Scanderville, where he purchased two Lycomings, which he brought home by truck. A handsome seaplane waited to receive them, its pontoons ruggedly attached, its surfaces sanded to a glossy finish by workmen long accustomed to building fine boats.
'This is the start of a whole new adventure,' Isaac said. 'This broad river was made for seaplanes.'
When the time came to test-fly the contraption, and the tanks had been filled with gasoline, an aviator from Washington crossed the bay in his own powerboat, studied the seaplane and pronounced it at least as good as any being made elsewhere. 'It seems to have the proper lines. Now we'll see.'
He asked if Isaac wanted to accompany him, but the old Quaker said, 'Pusey wishes to go. He supervised buying the engines.'
'He got good ones. Hop in.'
So Pusey Paxmore, a conservative Quaker dressed in a three-button suit, jumped into the second seat and held his breath as his uncle's invention gathered speed on the Choptank, threw a monstrous wake, then raised onto the step, rode on it for a few moments, finally breaking free of the water and sailing into the air.
The lasting impact of this flight did not, however, concern either Isaac Paxmore or his nephew Pusey. The trial run was without incident, the test pilot pronouncing the craft airworthy; he predicted great things for the Paxmore seaplane and expected to see it adopted by both the commercial and military fleet. Neither of these prognostications came to pass because the Paxmores lacked both the funds and the determination to proceed in aviation; their prototype remained a dazzling toy, much enjoyed along the river until its engines rusted away during World War II.
But on his third trial run, the pilot from Washington invited any local who might want to try aviation to accompany him, and to everyone's surprise Amos Turlock's younger brother, John, stepped forward. He was then an aimless young man of twenty-seven who had tried his hand at various employments and failed in all. He liked hunting and oystering and that was about it.
But he was adventurous and he wanted to see what flying was like, so when volunteers were called for he stepped vigorously forward and was selected. Fastening the belt so that he would not fall out, he grinned somewhat stupidly at the hangers-on who chided him, waved to a girl he had been courting, and kept his head cocked so as not to miss anything.
The next half-hour was a religious experience, so profound that it altered his life—'With me everythin' dates from 1939. Before, nothin' happened except the time I trapped a skunk. After, my eyes were opened.'
What happened was that he saw for the first time the Eastern Shore of Maryland; indeed, he may have been the first human being ever to have seen it properly. 'What I mean, I was up there in the sky, lookin' down on land I thought I knew, but it was all so different I couldn't believe my eyes. I just gawked and gawked, and then I had this clear vision, like I was in a dream, and I shouted out loud for all the heavens to hear, "Jesus Christ! We got a paradise and we don't know it." '
What he saw below him was that enchanting mixture of broad estuaries, nestling coves and long fingerlike peninsulas providing a shoreline hundreds of miles in length, a magical blend of land and water equaled nowhere else in the United States. 'Lissen, you know-it-alls,' he told the men at the store, 'you could drive these roads a lifetime and never know what the real Eastern Shore is like. You could sail it till the canvas rots without appreciatin' what you have. Only when you're up there in the sky, like I was, can you see how the parts lock together.' Once when he spoke thus, he leaped from his bench, threw his hat in the air and cried, 'Me and the wild geese! We're the only ones that know.'
But John Turlock had more than mere enthusiasm; he had seen not only the beauty of the shore, but also its possibilities, and one evening after he had extolled its splendor to the skeptics at the store, he sat in the cabin with his brother Amos and began scribbling on a piece of paper. After a while he shoved his work across the table. 'How you like that, Amos?'
J. Ruthven Turlock
_Your Real Estate Counselor_
_Patamoke, Maryland_
_Paradise for Sale_
'Your name ain't Ruthven,' Amos growled.
'Sounds better. People will notice.'
'What people?'
'Rich people.'
'What'll you do with rich people, John?'
'Name's Ruthven. What I got in mind is those rivers I saw from the air. Peachblossom, Tred Avon, Miles, Wye. Amos, there's enough empty land borderin' those rivers to keep a real estate man with imagination busy for the rest of his life.'
'It's there, but who's gonna buy it?'
'Millionaires. They're gonna grow tired of cities. They'll want places like those for their kids and their yachts.'
'Insane,' Amos said.
'Tomorrow morning you and me are goin' in town, and I'm gonna rent me an office. Stay with me and in ten years we'll both be millionaires.'
'You're _crazy!_ Rich people with yachts buyin' this marshy land?' Amos Turlock was too canny to be lured into a sure money-loser like that.
The abortive adventure into aviation had produced a secondary impact on another young man from the Choptank, for when the trial flights ended, the pilot had told Isaac Paxmore, 'You got yourself a great plane. Thing to do, sell it to the Navy.'
'How do we do that?' the cautious Quaker asked.
'Send one of your boys to the Navy Department in Washington. Lobby the admirals.'
'I don't think my sons...'
'That kid in the blue suit. He was real smart about seaplanes.' 'My brother's son.' A happy idea broke. 'He's a lawyer. Solid young man. We could send him.'
It was in this way that Pusey Paxmore, Harvard Law 1938, reached Washington. His father's excellent reputation for work done in Germany, and his own wide acquaintance among the young lawyers then flooding the administrative agencies, assured his success, and very quickly he discovered that whereas he could not sell his uncle's seaplane, he could sell himself.
The first person to suspect that Hiram Cater was suffering from mastoiditis was the woman who served as midwife for Frog's Neck. Full-fledged doctors, of course, were not really available to the blacks, primarily because the doctors were white and did not relish having blacks traipsing into their offices where white patients might see them, but also because the fees charged were so high.
'This here boy got infection of the ear,' the midwife said during the second day of the child's howling.
'Cain't see no pus,' Julia said when she returned from her work bobbing crabs.
'It don't show like a ordinary boil. Down deep.'
'What do we do?' Julia asked, moving her big body wearily about the kitchen after the long day at the crab cannery.
"Mostly they uses hot oil,' the midwife said, and the two women prepared an unction, but they could not judge a proper temperature, and when they poured it into Hiram's ear, the baby screamed.
Jeb was attempting to sleep after his own long day at the crab lines, and the crying brought him angrily into the kitchen. 'What you doin' to that boy?'
'We fixin' his ear,' his wife explained.
'Sound like you're tearin' it off,' Jeb said, taking the boy into his arms.
Either the hot oil was working, bringing pain before relief, or it had missed the deep infection altogether, but whatever the situation, Hiram's screaming increased. Jeb, unable to bear it, and racked by his own pain at his son's suffering, carried the boy out into the yard and held him gently against him as he walked up and down, but when the howling went on, unabated, he shouted, 'I'm takin' this boy to the hospital.'
Through the dusty paths of the Neck he carried his crying baby, and onto the paved streets of the white section. Three times blacks stopped him to ask what he was doing, and to each he said, 'My boy's dyin' of pain. Goin' to the hospital.'
Patamoke Hospital was a rambling two-story red-brick affair which had grown by increments through the decades to serve a fairly large surrounding community. It was staffed by dedicated local doctors and nurses with a southern concern for the welfare of their neighbors, and although the medical system was not well prepared to care for blacks, when one was sick enough to require hospitalization, the system grudgingly moved into operation even if the patient was too poor to pay. The problem was: how did the black patient get into the hospital?
Jeb Cater, for example, carried his child through the imposing white columns of what was obviously the entrance, but there he was stopped by a nurse who said, 'In back. In back.'
She did not explain where in back the colored entrance was, and the building was composed of so many ells and alleys that Jeb could not easily find it. A black drayman hauling away soiled linen directed him, but when he reached the small door where the garbage was collected, he found it locked. The drayman left his truck to help Jeb attract attention, and after a while the door was opened. As soon as he gained entrance, good and reassuring things began to happen.
'This child has an ear infection,' a white nurse said, holding Hiram as carefully as if he were her own son. 'What treatment have you been giving?'
Jeb did not understand the question and hesitated; the nurse categorized him as another ignorant nigger and asked gently, 'Have you given him any medicine?'
'They puts in hot oil.'
She looked at the ear and said, 'Probably didn't do any damage. The doctor's got to look at this.'
'I wants the bes' doctor,' Jeb said, and a few questions satisfied the nurse that whereas this black father could pay something, he could certainly not pay a proper bill, so she made the necessary notes on the entrance card. Then she used the telephone to summon a young doctor, who used a tightly wrapped cotton swab to test the baby's ear.
'Mastoiditis,' he said.
'Is that bad?' Jeb asked.
'Could be. If we don't tend it.' And with care and understanding, the young doctor explained that Hiram was suffering from an inflammation and possibly an abscess of the inner ear. There were ways to reduce the infection short of surgery, provided it had not penetrated bone, but if it had, an operation might be necessary. His words were so simple and comforting that Jeb was filled with emotion and sought to thank him, but this the young man would not allow—'We're here to cure your boy. We'll do everything possible.' He said nothing about fees or modes of payment; he simply took the child in his arms and left the room.
It was what happened next that made this day inerasable. When the doctor left the reception room for blacks he did not, of course, walk up the stairs to the second floor, where the expensive rooms were, or even to the ground floor, where white charity cases were handled. Instead he walked down a flight of stairs to the boiler room, and beyond it to a small, cramped section whose ceiling was crisscrossed with pipes and whose illumination came from one unshielded light bulb dangling from a wire. The place had no windows.
It was here that Hiram was placed in a crib. When the doctor left, assuring Jeb that nurses would be there soon to care for the child, the father sat by the crib and looked at the accommodations, and as he did so he became aware that along the wall small cots held blacks requiring serious medical attention, and the meanness of the room, the confined anger it contained possessed him, and the longer he waited, the deeper his anger became.
It was forty minutes before the nurse appeared, and each of those minutes impressed on him anew the wrongness of this place. He did not want a sunny room high in a tower for his son; he knew he lacked the money to pay for such accommodation; but he did want decency: All my life I work for whatever wages white man give me. He decide my pay. If'n I ain't got money to pay for a good room, that his decision. This cellar ain't right.
The furnace providing hot water to the hospital came on and a low rumble filled the room, and then a flood of unnecessary heat, which clung to the cots, since no ventilation carried it away. After a while a black nurse appeared—she wasn't really a nurse, of course, because black girls were not allowed to enroll in local training courses—and she lifted Hiram gently, advising Jeb, 'You stay here, you likes. We be back with good news real soon.'
So he remained in the ward, talking with the bedridden, and each sick man or woman was so grateful at being in the hospital that none complained. And after a long time the nurse returned with Hiram, informing Jeb, 'We's gonna keep him four, five days. He gonna be all right.'
Jeb wanted to thank someone, press someone's hand in gratitude, but there was no one; he wandered aimlessly up the stairs, looked about the reception room and went home.
Four of the doctors who administered Patamoke Hospital were outraged by such treatment of black patients; they had been educated in America's best medical facilities—Jefferson in Philadelphia, Massachusetts General—and they knew that what they were doing was barbarous, but they were impotent. When it was proposed that blacks be moved into the general wards, the whites of Patamoke raised such a fury that the orderly operation of the hospital was jeopardized.
'Any sensible man knows,' Amos Turlock raged at the store, 'that nigger blood is contaminated. Infected with cholera and suchlike.'
The young doctor who had treated Hiram Cater with such affectionate attention once tried to explain that blood was blood, but Amos was too smart to be taken in by such spuriousness. 'You put nigger blood with white, it coagulates.'
The young doctor asked how it was that throughout the history of the Eastern Shore white blood and white genes had infused successfully with black, as the most cursory glance at the variations in color within the black community at the Neck would prove—
'Don't come at me with arguments like that!' Turlock bellowed. 'What happens is, the white blood is destroyed. Cholera and all that.'
Amos Turlock was deathly afraid of cholera, and he and others like him did not propose having it introduced into Patamoke Hospital. 'They handle it just right like it is. No need to change. Keep the niggers in the cellar. And sterilize everything three times before it comes back upstairs.'
It was December, but Hugo Pflaum was sweating with excitement. Deep in the basement of Patamoke Courthouse he fidgeted in his swivel chair and looked with pride and chagrin at the row of fifteen photographs hanging in black frames against his wall. 'There they are,' he muttered nervously, 'fifteen guns they said could never be captured, and Father and I brought 'em all in.'
They formed a gallery of which any game warden could be proud, fifteen long guns that had terrorized the Choptank: 'Cheseldine, we found it hiding beneath a pigsty back in 1922. Reverdy, my father ran up and wrestled its owner in 1924.' At the next photograph Hugo paused with real affection, for it showed the first gun he had captured by himself. 'Took it along the Little Choptank. Herman Cline, once owned by the famous slave-breaker.'
But then his face darkened, for he had come to the two empty spaces reserved for Gun Sixteen and Gun Seventeen, and he could hear the acid voices of the men at the store chiding him, and not in jest: 'Hugo, you're mighty enterprisin' when it comes to confiscatin' other people's guns, but the men have begun to notice that you don't touch the guns operated by your own fambly.' 'Yes, Hugo, how come your brother-in-law Caveny, he's allowed to keep his gun? And Brother-in-law Turlock feels free to fire The Twombly when he wants.'
Amos Turlock's gun was always referred to in this way, as if the honorific _The_ proclaimed its noble heritage, oldest long gun in Maryland. Hugo realized that his reputation for integrity depended upon his bringing in that gun, and he complained to his wife, 'My own relatives are making me look like an ass, Becky, and it's got to stop. You march over to your brother Amos and your sister Nora and warn them that I got to lift their guns.'
He had spoken with such wounded dignity that she had gone to Amos, who had dismissed her with a snarl. 'He comes at me, Beck, he's gonna be delivered at your doorstep on a slab, feet first, and that ain't idle chatter.' So she had warned Hugo, 'Stay clear of Amos, he's mean.'
She had better luck in arguing with her sister Nora Caveny. 'You got to help us capture the big gun, Nora. The old days are gone, and it would be a dreadful thing if your boy Patrick was arrested.' The warning had been effective, and now Hugo waited in his office for the information which had been secretly promised; within the week he would have the Caveny in his possession!
Here came his informant, Nora Caveny, his sister-in-law and mother of that fine lad who was studying at St. Joseph's College in Philadelphia. She was trembling. 'I slipped into the courthouse as if I was payin' me taxes,' she said, out of breath. 'I would be mortified if anyone saw me.'
'You're doin' the right thing, Nora. Not only is the gun confiscated by law, but you've seen yourself how it near blinded your husband and how one like it killed old Jake.'
'It's a monstrous weapon, Hugo, and has no place in the hands of a young man intended for the priesthood.'
'How's he doin'?'
'Honors, and after Christmas vacation he enters St. Charles Borromeo.'
'In Rome?'
'Not likely. Philadelphia. But if he does well there, he might make it to Rome.'
'You must be proud.'
'All mothers should have such sons.' She lowered her voice. 'And I intend protectin' mine.'
'Where does he have the gun?'
'I'm not allowed to know. Before my husband went to jail he took Patrick aside and showed him where the precious thing was hidden. You'd think it was gold. Some of the Turlock men upriver know where it is and I think they use it at times. But no women are told.'
'You think Patrick's planning to use it tonight?'
'I'm sure of it, Hugo. I heard him talkin' with Jimmy Turlock, and you know him. All he thinks about is trappin' muskrats and huntin' ducks.'
'Where will they be goin'?'
'That I don't know. There's no ice, and Jimmy owns no marshland.'
'Wish I had a better clue than that.'
'The only other thing I know...' She hesitated, wondering if what she was about to say carried any significance. 'I heard him tell Jimmy to leave his Chesapeake behind. They wouldn't be in heavy water.'
'That's important,' Hugo said. 'Means they're not headin' for the bay. That cuts my responsibilities in half.'
'One thing,' Nora said as she studied the rogues' gallery. 'You promised there'd be no photograph in the paper.'
'I did, Nora.'
'Him intendin' for the priesthood, it wouldn't be proper.'
'There'll be a photograph, of course. Has to be, to show the others they can't use that kind no more. But I'll take it with just me and the gun. It'll hang over there.' When it was properly in place, there would be only one vacancy, reserved for The Twombly, and as Hugo prepared to slip home for a long nap prior to his night's work, he felt gratified that a photograph of the Caveny would soon be in place, but he feared that the seventeenth spot might remain vacant for a long time.
The waning of the Depression brought Julia Cater a perplexing dilemma: because she was recognized as a reliable housekeeper, white families invited her to work for them, and had she done so, she might have earned somewhat more than she did in the various canneries. The Steeds could have used her in their town house and the Paxmores who managed the boatyard asked her several times to work at their home. Even the Cavenys who had the line of trucks wanted her, but always she refused.
Two good reasons kept her at her burdensome tasks: she found solid joy in working with other black women and singing with them through the long, hot hours at the steam tables; and she was the best hand along the Choptank at bobbing crabs.
Watermen like her husband brought their crabbing boats to the wharf by noon, and when the live animals were hauled ashore in baskets, Julia's manager would be on hand to buy several barrels of the biggest crabs for the special process he had invented. It was always with a sense of pride that he delivered the big crabs to Julia's table—'We got some beauties again!' And he would have his men throw the live and kicking animals into the vats of boiling water.
When Julia lifted them out with her net they were a beautiful red, and it was on these fine specimens that she went to work. Deftly she pulled away the bony carapace, the swimmers and the apron. After scooping out the entrails, she placed the crab with its delicate meat in a kettle of boiling crabapple vinegar, and after the crabs were well infused with this tangy flavor, she took from a carefully guarded closet a small folded packet of spices, which she had concocted from powders bought by the manager at McCormick's in Baltimore. Only Julia knew the proportions for this mixture; other houses tried to capture the lucrative business of bobbing crabs, but theirs never matched the ones Julia made.
After the mysterious packet was emptied into the boiling vinegar, the crabs remained in the brew only a short time, so that a fresh, tantalizing flavor would be imparted rather than a drenching superabundance. Then the crabs were lifted out and set on racks to drain, after which Julia took each one individually, inspected it, adding lumpy claws to replace any that may have been lost in fighting and wrapping the whole in parchment.
The end product was a bobbed crab, much sought after in Baltimore and New York saloons. The customer paid seventy-five cents for this tidbit, which he could eat either cold as it came from its parchment or grilled with a little butter and pepper. Either way, the spicy, delicious meat was one of the finest delicacies of the Eastern Shore, and Julia Cater, better than any other worker in the canneries, knew how to make it.
She was a culinary expert, one of the best in America, and for her efforts was paid eighty cents a day for a ten-hour day.
With this money, plus the funds her husband added, she kept her family together. The girls were growing older now, and thank God they were responsible. Helen, approaching eleven, was already talking about finding her own job in a cannery, and nine-year-old Luta Mae, although rather forward in protesting injustices, nevertheless, was willing to run errands for white folks and pocket the pennies they offered. What reassured Julia was the girls' sense of duty; their father was usually absent on some skipjack and their mother was gone the greater part of each day, so that if the sisters had any tendency toward delinquency, they would have had easy opportunity to go wrong. Instead, they minded the home, tended their brother, progressed in school and sang in church.
The singing was important. 'If'n a colored girl cain't sing,' Julia often said, 'she dries up her soul.'
At the crab cannery, and while working on tomatoes, Julia sang. In the kitchen with her daughters she sang. And in church on Sundays and Wednesdays she poured out the love she felt for God and His miraculous world. Her voice was strong, like her body, and often when she sang she allowed her head to fall backward, as if she desired her song to go straight upward. Closing her eyes, she would clench her hands before her and sing her praises.
Had her wages been doubled at the Steeds', she would not have wanted to work in silence, one lone black woman moving through hushed rooms. The way to clean a room was to move at it slowly with your two daughters, each with a cloth, each with her own contribution to the singing. The only decent way to bob a crab was in the presence of a score of women, their voices rising in song, their bodies swaying to the music, breathing with it, passing the long hours of toil to its rhythms and reassurances.
And it was not all work music, by any means. Sometimes toward the end of a season, when Julia realized that her man would be coming home one of these days and that Hiram with the scar at his ear all mended would run forth to greet his father, Julia would burst into song whether there was anyone to join her or not.
In the spring of 1940 the Steeds belatedly came to grips with the problem of their vanishing island. Jefferson Steed, the congressman who now occupied Rosalind's Revenge, awakened to the fact that not only were the western fields in critical danger, but the mansion itself ran some risk of being undermined and toppled. Frantic steps were taken to shore up the western banks, where erosion was rampant, but no sooner had bulk-heads been installed at great cost than diverted currents began eating away at the northern shoreline, and the southern, too.
The spectacular storms that occasionally swept the Chesapeake usually generated in the Atlantic, south of the bay, and when they roared inland they deposited a lot of water; there was always some flooding but never any real damage to the shoreline. It was the less conspicuous storms that did the damage, the persistent ones that came without fanfare from the northwest, blowing for days and even weeks at a time, creating substantial waves to nibble away at the northwestern tips of the islands and peninsulas.
The Eastern Shore consisted of a vast, flat alluvial deposit sent down by glaciers as they melted at the ends of the various ice ages. The highest point in the Patamoke area was Peace Cliff, and within a radius of twenty miles from the town a searcher would find not a single rock, and barely a pebble. Everything was sandy clay. Of course, into it had been mixed vegetable matter, oyster shells and fine gravel brought down by the Susquehanna, but in effect, Devon Island, as representative of the whole, was cruelly vulnerable to the pounding waves.
They did their damage not by breaking upon the face of the shore, thundering it to shreds; they broke some distance out, then rolled in at surface level, gradually undercutting the bank at water line. At times the cut would extend two or even three feet under what appeared to be a solid extension of land with tall trees upon it, but it was doomed, for its base had been hollowed out.
Then, when some storm of unusual force swept in, the huge block of sandy soil, plus its burden of trees and grassy banks, would shudder, tremble for a moment, and slowly collapse into the bay. At Devon Island this remorseless erosion had been continuing in its silent, steady way since long before the day Captain John Smith first mapped the place in 1608. Much of the island had already disappeared, and heroic steps were required if the remainder was to be saved.
'What we'll do,' Jefferson Steed said, 'is throw bulkheading of a sturdier type about the entire northwest sector.' His foreman pointed out that this would be exceedingly costly, but Steed said, 'We've been selling off the mainland plantations at a good profit, and anyway, if we don't pin the shoreline down, we're going to lose the mansion.'
So an engineer was called in, and he spent more than a hundred thousand dollars to protect the island; but his wooden wall had scarcely been completed when a stubborn four-day nor'wester hammered at it. 'Thank God, it's standing,' Steed said as he and the engineer surveyed their work, and he was correct; the pilings had been so deeply driven and so clevery tied together with planking that the new bulkheads resisted the storm.
'But look over here,' the engineer said with dismay.
And what Jefferson Steed saw took all the assurance out of him. For the storm, powerless to knock down the bulkheading, had simply cut around behind it, forming a deep channel between the wooden wall and the island, and the current thus created was so swift that it eroded the sandy soil almost as effectively as the waves had done, but from a different direction. At many places it was impossible to step from the remaining soil onto the bulkhead, so wide had the channel become.
'What in hell can we do?' Steed asked.
'We could try to enclose the entire island in one unbroken wall,' the engineer replied.
'At what cost?'
After some silent calculation the man said, 'Two million dollars.'
'Good God!' And for the first time Steed faced the possibility that his family might actually lose this island. 'The whole damned thing could go... the Revenge... everything.'
Numbly he walked to the northern shore and pointed to a new type of erosion beginning there. 'Looks as if new currents were butting at us, all the time.'
'They are,' the engineer said.
This fatalistic remark angered Steed, and he demanded, 'Well, what are you going to do about it?'
'Nothing,' the engineer said.
'You mean... all we did last year was fruitless? This year, too?'
'Seems so. But I assure you, Mr. Steed, it could not have been anticipated.'
'That's what we hire engineers for. Damn it, we've wasted a fortune. What's going to happen?'
Carefully the engineer studied the northern bank, shaking his head dolefully when he realized the awful rate at which it was slipping back into the bay. With Steed he got into a small powerboat to circumnavigate the island, and it was apparent that even the small wake thrown by this boat imperiled the shoreline, for its waves cut at the vital line where the impacted sand met water.
'You can imagine the damage done by the wake of a big vessel,' he told Steed. Each foot of shoreline was under attack; each year the island would grow smaller as its borrowed sand slipped back into the bay.
'What's it all mean?' Steed asked.
'It means that Devon was doomed from the day it was created. The entire Eastern Shore was, if we accept the evidence.'
They were now at the southeastern corner of the island, the spot from which the roof line of Rosalind's Revenge was most compelling; just enough of the house itself was visible to give the structure substance, but the feature that caught the eye was the widow's walk, that rectangular superstructure with the low balustrade. That this should go down with the crumbling island was unacceptable, and Steed shook his head.
Twice he tried to speak, but his throat filled and words fell back. Afraid that tears might come to his eyes, he reached for his handkerchief and mumbled, 'Excuse me, please,' and the engineer had the decency to look away.
The separation of races which had always marked the Eastern Shore continued unabated into the 1940s and long thereafter, and the loss to the community of what might have been accomplished by joint effort was staggering. Choirs would have been sweeter, taxes could have been kept lower if black incomes had been allowed to rise, baseball teams would have been more capable if black players had been accepted, and in almost every enterprise the results could have been more productive if black energies had been enlisted.
But tradition demanded that the two communities exist side by side in a kind of armed truce, with all the arms in possession of the whites. Enforcers of the policy fell into two groups: at the apex of society the Steeds and their fellow planters—'We took the name _planter_ in the good old days when our slaves raised tobacco, now we grow mainly tomatoes, but we hold on to the name'—believed that blacks were suited only for labor and that society prospered when they were held to it; at the base of the pyramid the Turlocks and Cavenys defined and enforced the working rules.
'Niggers is meant for Frog's Neck,' Amos Turlock said many times. 'Let 'em come out in the mornin' to work in the canneries, but let 'em by God get back home, come nightfall.'
The Turlocks were not altogether idiotic in their enforcement. 'Best thing this town ever did was hire that nigger cop. One of the finest men in this town. He sees to it that when the niggers cut somebody up, it's their own kind.' They also felt that the blacks should have a school. 'Not a real school. Ain't no black in this world fit for college, but they got a right to an education. Six, seven grades. They got to learn how to read.'
So the races lived in their separate vacuums except for those rare and hallowed nights when someone organized a rally. This event usually occurred in summer. Hand-lettered signs would appear in the window at Steed's, and on posts along the waterfront:
MONSTER RALLY
A. M. E. CHURCH GROUNDS
SATURDAY NIGHT
In the black community no signs were necessary, for everyone knew that upon the success of this rally depended the amount of good work their church could do in the coming season. It was to the white community that the signs were addressed, especially the Turlocks and Cavenys, for if they paid their admissions in sizable numbers, the affair was bound to be a success; the Steeds and Paxmores would contribute whether they came or not, but it was more fun if the Neck was filled with Turlocks, for as Jeb Cater said, 'They knows how to enjoy theirselves.'
On Saturday, July 20,1940, the big rally of the summer was to be held; on Thursday and Friday all families related to the A.M.E. Church attended their customary tasks. Jeb Cater was responsible for roping off a substantial portion of the Neck, which could be entered only upon payment of an admission. The Will Nesbitt Band practiced unaccustomed numbers because a rumor had circulated that Father Caveny, fresh from his ordination, might attend. Other men gathered chairs, swept the grounds and strung lights.
The women of the black community, after long hours in the canneries, were busy cutting chickens for frying, and chopping okra to be boiled with tomatoes and onions, and baking the goodies which white children liked so much. To Julia Cater's small home black watermen brought baskets of crabs and celery and onions and bags of flour, for by tradition she was in charge of making the reigning treat of any rally—the crab cakes.
Congressman Steed said of her cookery, 'I've attended rallies and political meetings up and down the Eastern Shore, and I calculate I've eaten at least two hundred crab cakes a year for forty years. That's eight thousand cakes, and year by year I've graded 'em on a scale of ten. Most public restaurants are serving trash that rates no higher than two-point-zero. A shred of crab meat, a loaf of bread, deep-fried in rancid fat and doused with catsup. What a travesty! Now, my Aunt Betsy made a crab cake that rated eight-point-seven. Gobs of lump, all back fin, delicately sautéed. Never had enough.
'But for real Eastern Shore crab cake, you've got to go to Julia Cater over in Frog's Neck. You see a poster announcin' a rally where she's doin' the crab cakes, you owe it to yourself to go, just for her master-pieces. Score? Nine-point-seven, highest ever awarded.' When someone asked why, if Julia's cakes were so fine, he rated then only nine-seven, he explained, 'The perfect crab cake would have just a touch of onion. Julia refuses.'
Once a newspaper in Baltimore had carried a front-page picture of Congressman Steed bending over a stove while Julia Cater demonstrated how to make her specialty. 'What she does,' the story said, 'is use the finest crab meat, just a smidgin of chopped celery, well-beaten eggs to hold the meat together and bread crumbs dried in the sun to give the cake substance. A touch of pepper, a touch of salt and something from a brown paper bag which she refuses to identify, and _voilà!_ Crab cakes Eastern Shore, and this reporter never had better.'
On Thursday and Friday the three Cater women worked till their fingers were numb, picking crabs. Other women volunteered to help, but Julia felt that this was her opportunity to serve the Lord with what she did best, and all through the night she and her daughters deftly picked at the crabs and sang. 'Crab meat so good,' Helen explained, 'crab, he don't want to give it up.' The work was both tedious and difficult, a constant picking for the elusive lumps of meat that distinguished the best cakes. 'I seen crab cakes,' Julia said, 'they was a disgrace. All dark meat in tiny shreds, I wouldn't put 'em in a pan, let alone eat 'em.'
By Saturday morning the Cater women had buckets of pale-white crab meat sitting under cheesecloth cover in the cool of the house. During the heat of the day they slept, and at five in the afternoon they began their labors, and as the golden-brown cakes began to come from the fire, round like small tomatoes and lumpy where the good crab meat showed beneath the breading, they were pleased.
At dusk two black men took their positions at the improvised gateway leading to the rally grounds, and as people came down the road from town, these men collected forty cents from grownups, twenty cents from children, and from time to time when some white man who had favored the rallies through the years made an appearance, the older of the two collectors would take him aside, toward a clump of bushes, and there would present him with a bottle of whiskey and invite him to take a swig.
'We appreciate your comin',' the douanier would whisper, and often he would drink with the white man, sharing the same bottle.
One man who never missed a rally was Amos Turlock—'Best damned cookin' in the county, and them niggers know how to sing.' For his modest admission, Amos was offered a gluttonous supply of food: fried chicken, cantaloupe, tomato-and-onion salad, numerous pies, tables of sandwiches and, of course, the crab cakes.
Visitors gorged themselves from five till sunset, then Will Nesbitt and his nine-piece band played loud and bouncy music. During this part of the rally Nesbitt's men stuck to music they had been playing at such affairs for a decade, waiting until Father Caveny appeared for their special numbers.
At intervals the choir sang, led by Reverend Douglass, who had a good voice. These men and women offered mainly religious music, running through a ritual of hymns often unfamiliar to the white guests, but sooner or later strong voices like Julia Cater's would slip into the popular spirituals, and sometimes the whole crowd would join in the singing, and at such moments of fusion any thought of white or black would vanish.
It was about nine o'clock when word sped through the crowd that Father Caveny was coming, and he knew what was expected of him, for he brought with him a small black box, which perplexed the whites in the audience but delighted the blacks. He passed easily through the crowd, a fair-haired young man of twenty-six, dressed in clerical garb, the local lad who had done well in college and even better in the seminary. Patamoke was proud of young Patrick Caveny, but it was also bewildered by his unpredictable behavior.
Nodding to the Steeds and his other white parishioners as if he were on a promenade in his church, he circulated for a while among the blacks, then allowed himself to be edged toward the bandstand. People started to applaud, and Will Nesbitt came down to invite him to join the band. This brought cheers, and after smiling easily to the crowd, and asking for one more bite of crab cake, he unlocked the black box.
Inside lay an unassembled clarinet in four pieces, and slowly, with Irish dramatics, he took them out and carefully fitted them together: bell, body, mouthpiece, reed. After testing the assembly, he asked one of Nesbitt's men to sound a note, which he sought to match. Satisfied with the condition of his instrument, he nodded to Nesbitt, and the band picked out the seven lovely notes of a song the blacks loved, 'Bye, Bye, Blackbird,' and when they sounded, the audience cheered.
Father Caveny did not play during the first part of this admirable song, but when the music reached what was called the bridge, or, as some termed it, the break, the band stopped and on his clarinet he played the lonesome wail of a black man trapped in the north and yearning to return home.
Then the band joined in, and ten minutes later the rally at the A.M.E. became a riot.
The Steeds and other proper Catholics were embarrassed by the gyrations of their priest, and the congressman's aunt said, 'If you ask me, he's getting much too close to the niggers in all respects,' and one of her generation said, 'Shameful, for a man of the cloth to be playing a clarinet the way he did in high school.'
But when the rally was over, and Reverend Douglass had counted the dimes and quarters on which his church must exist for the coming season, and when the pots were cleared and the ropes taken down, it was Jeb Cater who summed up the evening: 'Quakers like Woolman Paxmore, the finest man in town, they loves black people in big doses—like all the blacks in Alabama or Georgia—but Father Caveny, he loves us one by one... just as we are... here in Frog's Neck.'
On February 22,1941, Amos Turlock's photograph appeared on the front page of the _Patamoke Bugle_ , but not in the form that Hugo Pflaum had planned. He wanted grizzly Amos standing on one side, The Twombly in the middle, and himself on the other side, the clever game warden who had confiscated the last and most famous of the long guns.
No, it was quite a different kind of portrait. Unshaven Amos stood with an ordinary shotgun in one hand and a dead goose in another; the caption read:
_Local Hunter Bags Goose
in Family Marsh_
The story went on to tell of how Amos had prowled the marshes for five months, hoping to get one good shot at his elusive target, and several hunters were quoted in praise of his determination:
'If any Patamoke man was destined to get a goose this year,' said Francis X. Caveny, himself a gunner of note, 'it would have to be Amos Turlock, for he knows more about the habits of this bird than any other local resident.'
There was additional material recalling the years when quite a few geese used to visit the Choptank, and Amos was congratulated editorially for reminding Patamokeans of those good old days:
To Amos Turlock and to men like him, we say Bravo! And even though we might be fatuous, we would like to voice the hope that one day the multitudes of geese that once inhabited our region will return. Certainly we applaud the efforts of good sportsmen like Amos Turlock who strive so diligently to help us keep the ducks we still have. Hang your goose high, Amos, and eat it in good health!
No black in Patamoke could exist through a period as short as six days without being reminded of the distorted society in which he lived. This was brought home to the Caters on the afternoon of the day when they heard the exciting news that Amos Turlock had actually shot a goose.
What happened on this particular afternoon was that Julia was fortunate enough to get an appointment with the traveling black dentist who had come down from Baltimore. For some time she had been having serious trouble with her teeth, and since dental care was totally beyond the reach of local black families—white dentists would not treat them and there were no black practitioners—she had watched her teeth deteriorate when she knew that with proper attention they might be saved.
'Bad case here,' the overscheduled visitor said. 'Only thing I can see, have them all out.'
'But, Doctor—'
'They could have been saved. Maybe they still could be if I could see you once a week for six months. Impossible. Better have them all out.'
'But—'
'Lady, we have no time to argue. I can pull them for you, take an impression, and mail you a set of real fine teeth from Baltimore. Forty dollars and you have no more trouble.'
'But—'
'Lady, make up your mind. I don't get back this way again this year.'
'Could I come back?'
'Look, if you don't have the forty dollars now, I'll take a deposit and trust you for the rest. Reverend Douglass told me—'
'It's not money!' she interrupted sternly, and then all the fight went out of her. The years of trying to hold her family together, of trying not to get too fat the way some black women did, the anxiety over her teeth and the recent behavior of Luta Mae and the education of her son. It was too much, too much. The remorseless, never-ending struggle was too much.
Resigned, she lay back in the chair, but when the first whiffs of gas reached her nostrils she instinctively fought against them. 'I ain't gonna faint!'
'Now, now,' the dentist said, softly stroking her hand.
Really, it was much less painful than she had anticipated, and the dentist laughed when he helped her from the chair. 'If the teeth don't fit, I'll tell you what. I'll wear them myself.'
But when she reached the street, and felt the vast emptiness in her mouth, she could not hold back the tears. 'Dear Jesus, I won't never be able to sing no more.'
If anyone had sought to compose an honest history of Patamoke, he or she would probably have felt obliged to include a passage on the spiritual experience of the region, and a curious problem would have presented itself, because it would have been difficult to identify any of the presumed leaders as the man or woman who had done most to inspirit the area.
For example, a traditionalist might want to nominate William Penn, the stately Quaker from Philadelphia; he came to Patamoke in the late 1600s, bowing pompously to the locals and offering evidence of his spirituality, but it would be difficult to enshrine him, for to the average Marylander, Penn was a conniving, thieving, lying rascal who had done his darnedest to steal the northern part of the colony into Pennsylvania, and succeeded. Paul Steed, in writing of that period, said:
The worst enemy Maryland ever had was William Penn, that sanctimonious Quaker and self-styled religious pontificater. Had my forebears not been on their guard, Penn would have stolen the fairest portion of our colony, all the way down to Devon Island. He came to Patamoke once, ostensibly to pray with his local religionists but obviously to spy out what parts to steal next. A more devious man never appeared on the Choptank.
Animosity toward Penn's memory was kept alive by two unfortunate incidents: in 1765, when Charles Mason and Jeremiah Dixon surveyed the line allocating land between Maryland and Pennsylvania, they started from a point not far from the Choptank, and it was soon rumored that Pennsylvanians had suborned them to draw a line favorable to Penn's people; and in 1931, when a professor at Penn State College wrote a book explaining that the Chesapeake Bay should never have been so named since it was merely the extended mouth of the Susquehanna River, the _Patamoke Bugle_ thundered: 'First they steal our land and now they want to steal our bay. We say, "To hell with Pennsylvania and its thieving ways." '
A more acceptable case could be made for Francis Asbury, that inspired English clergyman of limited education but unlimited devotion to the precepts of John Wesley who came to Maryland in the 1770s. A man of indefatigable will, he traveled each year more than five thousand miles, laboring to establish in the nation about to be born the new religion of Methodism. His harsh style was particularly effective on the Eastern Shore, which he traipsed from end to end, shouting hellfire and providing the simple citizens with a brand of religion much more appealing than the stately proprieties of Episcopalianism, a rich man's faith, or Catholicism, which had become severely formalized. Asbury stopped at Patamoke three times, creating a frenzy among the watermen with his revelations of heaven and hell, and it was principally because of his enthusiasm that the Choptank became in effect a Methodist river. Of one visit he wrote in his diary:
I arrived at Patamoke, a fair town on a fair river, on fire to save the souls of these rude men who fished the bay as the followers of Jesus fished the Galilee, but the first man I fell in with was one Turlock, who annoyed the patrons of our tavern by his noisy eating, his loud drinking, his smoking and his riotous behavior. He appeared as forgetful of eternity as if he had been at the most secure distance from its brink. The reprobate had the effrontery to tell me in a loud voice that his father had lived to be I09 and had never used spectacles.
Having been greeted by a man so steeped in sin, I was eager to get about the business of saving this place, but I found that Satan had arrived before me, diverting the good people of Patamoke with a play, which they attended noisily and with apparent delight. I was sore distressed.
George Fox, the founder of Quakerism, visited Patamoke in 1672, but he made no lasting impression, and the saintly Father Ralph Steed had endeavored to establish Catholicism in the most remote corners of the region at about the same time, but his influence had been felt more on the western shore. Ruth Brinton Paxmore, in that same period, had been a powerful force for good, but her personality was so abrasive that she could not be considered symbolic of the region. Woolman Paxmore, as we have seen, was a more gentle type, but he exercised his influence principally in other parts of the eastern seaboard and was not thought much of at home.
No, the man who gave the Eastern Shore its most profound spiritual lift was Jefferson Steed, and what he did was stop planting tomatoes.
In the late 1940s he perceived that those portions of the vast Steed land holdings which had for the past half century been devoted to tomato growing were shortly going to show a loss. The huge tomato canneries scattered along the banks of Eastern Shore rivers were outmoded; much better factories were being installed in New Jersey and the West. Also, the ground had been worn out by constant assaults from the tomato plants, notoriously hungry for minerals, and poor soil meant weak plants susceptible to infestations of insects. Even more important, with labor rushing away from farms and to war plants and new projects like the proposed Bay Bridge, it was no longer economical to raise tomatoes, so on a day fateful in the history of the Eastern Shore, Jefferson Steed told his foremen, 'No more tomatoes.' When they protested that the great iron-roofed canneries, looming out of the marshes along the estuaries, could be put to no alternate use, he replied, 'Let 'em rust to hell. They've served their day.' And a way of life vanished.
'What will we grow?' the foremen wanted to know.
'Corn,' Steed said.
The men, all practiced farmers, could not believe what they were hearing. They had always grown modest amounts of corn for their dairy herds, but if they added acreage that had formerly grown tomatoes, new markets would have to be found. 'Where will we sell the stuff?' Steed replied, 'Eastern Shore people love horses. And what's left over, that's my headache.'
So at considerable risk of financial disaster, Congressman Steed planted his tomato fields with a hybrid corn developed by agronomists at the University of Maryland, and it grew well. But the remarkable yields he achieved came not from this good seed but from the daring decision he made when planting: 'From the time the first Englishmen raised corn in Maryland we've planted it three feet apart in rows widely separated. Always thought it had to be that way. But if you ask me, it was only so that horses could move between the rows to cultivate. With these new chemicals we don't have to plant that way.' And boldly he had seeded his corn so tightly that even a man had difficulty passing between the stalks.
It worked. And in the fall when black field hands swept down the compacted rows, piling the ears in stacks three times as large as predicted, Steed knew he had a good thing.
'Now all I have to do is find a market,' he told his manager, and by questioning fellow congressmen he uncovered patrons eager to buy his surplus at the low prices he was able to offer, and soon other farmers along the Eastern Shore were converting from tomatoes to corn; in the late summer the far fields were burdened with stalks eight and ten feet high, laden with heavy ears. Steed's gamble was one of the shrewdest ever made in Maryland agriculture, and farmers who might have lost their land had they stayed with tomatoes became moderately rich on corn.
But a lucky stroke in rural economics would not qualify a man for sanctification; what Steed did next, in the late 1950s, was to pension off his field hands and purchase a squadron of gigantic automatic corn harvesters, which saved him a great deal of money and allowed him to harvest his fields speedily on Monday and his neighbors' on Tuesday. The harvester meant that large-scale agriculture was now possible, for gang-plows prepared the fields in spring, huge multiple disks worked it in late April, harrows with enormous teeth kept the land clean, and metal dinosaurs crawled over the fields in autumn, harvesting the corn.
Where did the spiritual significance in such an operation lie? The black field hands had harvested corn slowly but with almost perfect efficiency; the mechanical pickers swept rudely down the rows, leaving in their trail about three percent of the corn missed. It fell as broken ears, or grains knocked off, or stalks left at the end of rows too tightly packed against the hedges for the machine to reach, or one or two rows left standing down the middle, not worth the driver's turning his huge machine around for.
Steed and his managers were not slothful; they realized they were losing corn, but when they calculated what they would have to spend to garner the stray bits, they found that it was cheaper to leave it. 'Let's admit that the loss in harvesting by machine is three percent. But even when you add to that the depreciation and the gasoline, the machine harvester is a bargain. So we'll forget the fallen grains.'
It was one of the happiest decisions a Steed ever made regarding his land, for when the bright yellow grains lay on the ground in autumn, reflecting back the paling rays of the sun, geese flying overhead began to see them. At first a few stopped on their way to customary wintering grounds in North Carolina, and a thrill shot up and down the spine of the Eastern Shore—'Geese comin' back! Henry seen at least forty at the far end of his field.'
Housewives going to market would suddenly stop to stare at something their grandmothers had spoken of but which they had never seen. 'I was turnin' the corner off Glebe Road, and there in the field stood—well, it must of been a hundred fat geese feedin' on the Childress farm.'
One autumn at least forty thousand geese came to fields along the Choptank, and legends of the time when nearly a million came were revived, and fifty Turlocks began to grease their guns.
By I960 two hundred thousand geese were spending their winters along the endless streams feeding into the Choptank, and in the years ahead the population would reach the levels Captain John Smith had observed in I608. Rafts would form east of Patamoke, ten thousand geese drowsing on the water, and something would alert those at the edge, and they would rise, and all would follow, and then the scouts would satisfy themselves that the danger was not real, and they would settle once again upon the river, and all the rest would follow; it was like a magic carpet somewhere east of Baghdad, rising and drifting and falling back.
At the store, huntsmen summed up the consequences: 'Elmer's carvin' decoys again. They's five Turlocks advertisin' their services as guides. That black man at the garage is offerin' to pick feathers off'n a goose for twenty-five cents, and Martin Caveny rented his waterfront to a dude from Pittsburgh for nine hundred dollars.'
But always when the hunters explored this fascinating subject of how the return had vitalized the Eastern Shore—'Ever' damned motel room rented for the season'—the moment would come when they would fall silent from the wonder of it all, then some old man would shake his head and say, 'Beats all, the geese came back.' And again no one spoke, for the old man had summarized the best thing that had happened to the Shore in a hundred years.
When Hiram Cater was seven years old his serious education began, not in spelling or arithmetic but in the brutal tactics of survival in a white world. His mother, who could remember lynchings along the Choptank when black men who may or may not have been guilty of something were summarily hanged, was his principal instructor: 'Your job to stay alive. Keep away from notice. Doan' do nothin' to attract attention. If a Turlock or a Caveny come your way, you step aside. Doan' never challenge a white man.'
At the slightest indication that young Hiram was developing a temper, she warned him, 'All right you hit Oscar. He black. But doan never hit a white child, because his papa gonna make big trouble.'
And she was especially careful to admonish her son about speaking to white girls: 'They doan' exist. They ain't there. You doan' go to school with them, you doan' go to church with them, and in town you keeps strictly away.' As she watched her son, she was gratified that the two halves of Patamoke were separated; with luck, he need never come into contact with a white girl.
Her doctrine was: 'It doan' exist.' Anything that irritated or denigrated was to be cast out of mind, and no insolence from whites was sufficient cause to retreat from this basic strategy. If Hiram had no books in school, forget it. If when he did get his hands on a book, it was in tatters from long use in white schools, ignore it. If the school had no glass in its windows, keep your mouth shut, because nothing can be done about that. The most automatic human responses were to be muzzled, kept down in one's stomach. The one response to humiliation was a grin, a step aside, a descent into the gutter so that the white woman could pass, a repression.
'That's how it gonna be all your life,' Julia Cater told her son, and she was preaching old black wisdom, for through the generations that was how black women enabled their sons to survive so that they could grow into black men.
Hiram's natural protests, uttered from the day this indoctrination began, received scant support from his father. 'You do like your mama say, you stay alive.' On the skipjacks, Jeb had mastered the trick of getting along with white crewmen. 'I does the job better, and when trouble starts I keeps my eyes down.' As a consequence, he was known favorably as a good nigger, and after a while he found little resentment in playing this role. 'Man got to stay alive. Man got to have a job. You listen to your mama, Hiram, you gonna be a smart man some day, maybe have your own skipjack.'
The effect on Hiram of this constant repression of natural instincts was minimal, for he found within the black community adequate outlets for his boisterous spirits. If he wanted to fight, Oscar was at hand, slightly larger, slightly better with his fists. If he wanted to play rough games, many boys his size frequented the school grounds and at times their contests became almost violent. By no means did his mother's preaching make him into a subdued child, nor one afraid of social conflict. Instead this walling him off from the white community forced him to become an even stronger personality within the black.
Like his father, he had a rugged medium build. His skin was darker than that of many with whom he played, bespeaking an unmixed ancestry reaching back to Africa, but of that continent and Cudjo Cater's adventures there, he knew nothing. He was a child of the Choptank, without heritage, or language, or knowledge of social custom, and it was likely that this condition would maintain for the rest of his life, as it had for his father.
One preachment of his mother exerted a profound influence: 'You brush your teeth, you ain't gonna lose 'em the way I done los' mine.' Cleaning his teeth twice a day became a solemn ritual which he observed through choice and not because his mother forced him. As a result, he noticed that his teeth were whiter than those of his playmates and much brighter than those of white children, who were allowed unlimited quantities of candy.
He was allowed almost nothing. His sister Luta Mae saved their pennies and on festive days would lead him to the Blue and Gold Ice Cream Parlor, where they would agonize over which of nine flavors to choose for their cones; he thought of these days as the best in his life and felt none of his sister's resentment that when the cones were bought they could not be eaten at the lacy iron tables. He wanted to be out on the street, where the cool touch of the cream on his lips contrasted with the hot breeze from the river.
When Luta Mae was twelve, a big bright girl with energies and imaginings far surpassing those of her older sister, she told Hiram extraordinary stories—of how she flew one day with Charles Lindbergh all through the sky, and of how she had once owned a Chevrolet and driven it over the oyster-shell roads, and of how she had met this older boy Charley and of their going through the countryside and doing everything they damned well pleased. One's mind was dusted out when one talked long with Luta Mae, for her enthusiasms flourished and carried her to perimeters far beyond the Choptank.
When she was thirteen she confided to Hiram that she would refuse to end her education when the black school terminated at the end of the seventh grade. 'I am going to Salisbury. I am going to the black high school and get all A's. And then I am going to college.' She had fallen under the spell of a Miss Canby, who taught in the Patamoke black school, and from her had learned to speak white man's English, with no contractions or gutter slang. She affected ladylike pronunciations, too: _skoo-well_ for _school_ and _Feb-ru-ar-y_ , with all letters vocalized in a manner few college professors could equal. She was reading Langston Hughes and the life of Frederick Douglass, who had grown up nearby. And always she seemed to be dragging Hiram along behind her, as if it was his education that mattered; but when their mother heard of this, she became agitated.
'Doan' you listen to Luta Mae,' Julia warned. 'She got special problems.'
And then, suddenly, the Eastern Shore was gripped by an excitement that preempted even Julia's cautionary preachments. World War II had come and gone, scarcely touching the Shore; no munitions plants sprouted, nor any big military installations. Life hardly changed in spite of the convolutions at Berlin and Hiroshima; the only excitement came when a U-boat crept close to the Virginia Capes and sank some freighters. It was believed that the real mission of the submarine was the bombardment of Patamoke and the destruction of the Paxmore Boatyard, and when cynics said, 'Not likely they'd bother,' older men reminded them, 'That's what they said before the British bombed us in the War of 1812.'
The war had passed without invasion of the Choptank, and things were back in their somnolent grooves when the Maryland legislature, composed principally of men from the western shore, passed a bill authorizing the construction of a mighty bridge right across Chesapeake Bay. Imaginations were inflamed by the possibilities: 'Is it feasible for man to construct a bridge five miles long across a major arm of the Atlantic Ocean? It is and we shall do it.'
The announced justification of the bridge was that it would provide an alternate route between Washington and New York, but the real purpose was to enable Monday-to-Friday bureaucrats in Washington and Baltimore to get more speedily to their summer resorts along the Atlantic Ocean, and this meant that the sleepy fields of the Eastern Shore, so long protected from outside influences, would be converted into snarling highways for pleasure seekers. Where gracious living had prevailed, gas stations and quick-food counters would clutter the landscape.
Almost unanimously the Eastern Shore opposed this bridge, and heated meetings were held at which local patriots explained that the bridge would really be paid for by watermen who did not want it and by farmers whose ancient holdings would be contaminated by it. Screamed the _Bugle:_
This is confiscation of the most brutal sort. Against our permission and with our own funds, our way of life is being despoiled. Where we once had a few-score automobiles on our lovely back roads, we will now have thousands. Our most precious corners will be invaded by any boob from Baltimore who has a second-hand car. Noise, contamination, rowdyism and the influx of strangers who do not comprehend our values will be the consequence. No greater disaster than this damnable bridge has ever faced our land of peaceful living, and we oppose it with all our energy.
The timeless proposal that the Eastern Shore detach itself from Maryland to form a new state was revived, and agitated meetings were held in Delaware and Virginia to speed the plan, but as always, it came to naught; Maryland did not want the Eastern Shore, did not understand it or care to pay for its upkeep, but it was determined that it not become part of any other state. So a bridge was authorized that nobody on the Eastern Shore desired in order to destroy a way of life that everyone wished to preserve; and rich northerners who had bought estates along the rivers bewailed its arrival the way rich southerners had once lamented the departure of slavery.
One group of people along the eastern rivers was delighted with the prospect of a bridge, but they kept their counsel and waited. They were the blacks who saw in the building of the bridge a chance for employment that had otherwise eluded them—'Now we gonna get jobs. They gonna need a lot of men to build that bridge.' Will Nesbitt quietly told his band members that night clubs would be needed to entertain the workmen, and he proposed playing in them. Reverend Douglass looked into the possibility of finding jobs for most of his unemployed parishioners and came back from engineering headquarters in Baltimore excited about the prospects.
'Jeb,' he told Cater, 'I'll give you a recommendation as one of the best workmen in this area. You're older and more responsible, and I'm sure you'll land a good job.'
So Jeb surrendered his position on the skipjack, informed his family that from now on he was a bridge builder, and rode with Will Nesbitt to the construction center at the eastern end of the bridge. While the band leader negotiated for a possible location in which to play, he reported to the hiring office, where lines of men waited for employment, and he saw with growing reassurance that many were being hired. The chalked sign said that drivers, dozers, office help and field bosses were needed, plus other specialties which he could not decipher, like sand-hogs.
A lot of jobs were being distributed, but not to blacks. When he reached the office a brisk young man asked, 'You work on a bridge before?' When he said no, the young man said, 'Sorry, nothing.'
At that moment of his rejection, two buses drew up, one from Boston, one from New York, and Jeb saw that the construction company was importing white men from distant cities rather than employing blacks who lived near the site. And the men had come not just for specialized jobs he could not perform; he lingered and heard them given the precise kind of work that he could have done: drivers, shovel men, watchmen, tool cleaners.
Will Nesbitt had no better luck. Roadhouses were being opened, but they were importing white talent, and when the two black men drove back home they carried a bitterness which was hard to mask. Nesbitt said, 'I seen them buses bringin' in the white men. Seems like from birth they just doan' want us. They doan' let us go to school, then they tells us, "You ain't been to school." '
Jeb restrained his anger, as he had disciplined himself to do, but the more Will talked of the discriminations they faced in all acts of life, the sadder he became, because he saw this perpetual unfairness saddled onto his son and then onto his son's son, through the generations. He did not, however, report the incident of the buses to his family, but Will Nesbitt spoke of it throughout the Neck, and on Thursday night Luta Mae came storming home, slamming herself about as she did when suffering outrage.
'I was informed,' she said with schoolmarm prissiness, 'that no blacks were being employed at the bridge.'
Jeb said nothing, but Luta Mae persisted. 'Was I informed correctly?'
'Well...'
'Goddamnit!' the girl cried.
'Luta Mae! Doan' you ever blaspheme in this house.' It was Julia speaking.
'Mother,' Luta Mae cried, whipping about and pushing Julia back, 'you keep your Bible-mouthing to yourself. We're talking about vileness.' And Julia watched, amazed, as her daughter argued with her father like some embittered man.
'Tell me the truth, Father. Did they send buses to bring in ordinary workmen?'
'Yes, yes. That's what they done.'
'And those white men took jobs that you could have filled?'
'That's what they done.'
'Goddamnit!' the girl cried with a savagery her parents had never seen before. 'That bridge should be burned to the ground.'
'It ain't built yet,' her father protested, but she brushed him aside and was seen no more that night, nor on Friday or Saturday. On Monday the papers carried a story that the hiring offices at the eastern end of the bridge had been consumed by fire. Officials believed that it must have been started by a cigarette thrown carelessly into a wastebasket.
When Jeb and Julia heard of the fire, and saw Luta Mae returning home with smugness etched beneath her dark eyes, they could guess what had happened but were afraid to voice their fears, for what their daughter had done led to prison. But Will Nesbitt stopped by the shack and said knowingly, 'Damned hiring office burned. A good thing.' He waited for Jeb to respond, but Jeb was too smart to say anything. When the bandleader left, Jeb fell onto his knees, bent his head and began to pray, and before he had started his supplication Julia was beside him, praying that their family might safely negotiate the threatening years.
The return of geese to the Eastern Shore brought two men into confrontation. Amos Turlock believed that the huge birds had come back to him personally, and since his ancestors had hunted geese on the Choptank for more than three hundred years, he proposed to continue. Furthermore, he intended using the long gun which had blazed across these waters since 1827, and when the geese began to invade his marsh, as they had in his grandfather's day, he figured it was time to check on The Twombly, hidden like the infant Moses in rushes.
Hugo Pflaum, the game warden responsible for the Choptank, began receiving indications that his brother-in-law Amos might be on the prowl. One resident reported having heard a tremendous blast at midnight 'like the echo of Confederate cannon at Chancellorsville,' and another had seen mysterious lights toward two in the morning, moving slowly up and down the river. Backwoods families began having goose with greater regularity than their legal huntsmen could have provided, and there were telltale traces of fresh corn on fields which geese had picked clean two months before. Worst of all, whenever Amos appeared at the store, he was smiling.
The law prohibiting his behavior was explicit, and he was breaking it in seven respects: he was using a long gun absolutely outlawed since 1918; he was using a night light which blinded the geese, something no decent gunner had done in the past hundred years; he was shooting at night, strictly forbidden; he was baiting his marsh and the field back of his cabin with great quantities of ripened corn; he was hunting out of season; he had no license; and he was selling dead geese commercially. But he committed all these crimes with such innocent deception that Pflaum could never catch him.
'The average crook,' Hugo reported to his superiors in Annapolis, 'lurks furtively, leaves a blazing trail that anyone could follow, and makes a score of mistakes. I've captured all the great guns but Turlock's. I've arrested twenty-three farmers baiting their fields, and I doubt if there are three night-lights operating in the entire area. But this damned Amos Turlock, he does everything, every night, and I cannot catch him.'
'The stories coming out of Patamoke, Hugo, are damaging your reputation,' the regional manager said. 'You want extra men?'
_'That I could use.'_
So two extra wardens were dispatched to Patamoke, dressed flashily like ordinary dudes out of Philadelphia, and they approached Amos with an interesting proposition that he act as their guide for some goose hunting.
'It's out of season!' he snapped.
'We know that. But in Chestertown they assured us—'
'In Chestertown they don't know a goose from a duck.' He dismissed them, then ran to the store to warn his cronies. 'Two new wardens in town.'
'How'd you know?'
'They walked like wardens.'
So he laid low, and after two weeks the strangers returned to Baltimore, assuring the head office that they had thrown the fear of God into Amos Turlock. That night with one mighty blow The Twombly slew sixty-nine geese, and Turlocks eight miles upriver feasted.
The explosion of the gun was clearly heard in several homes facing Devon Island. 'Sounded like maybe an airplane busting apart in the sky. We ran out, but it was all dark. Then we saw this light in Broad Creek and my husband got his field glasses, but by then the light had vanished.'
When Hugo returned to his office in the basement of the courthouse he studied his maps and concluded that Amos had shifted his operations away from his own creek and out into the spacious reaches of the major rivers. 'Well,' he muttered to himself, 'that means he's got to travel some distance with his cannon. That gives me a chance.'
Early one morning he slipped downriver in his powerboat to inspect the setting in which he would lay his traps, but on the return trip he spotted something which disturbed him almost as much as the reemergence of The Twombly. On the sloping field leading down from the Turlock cabin hundreds upon hundreds of wild geese were feeding, their fat bodies moving in the wintry sun, their long black necks extending now and then to watch for any trespassers. They had apparently been there a long time and gave every indication that they intended remaining; Amos had certainly baited this field with shelled corn.
Cautiously Hugo beached his boat, climbed ashore and moved toward the field. As he did, the goose sentinels spotted him, satisfied themselves that he had no gun, and quietly herded the flock to another part of the field. They maintained a distance of about forty yards; if the warden stopped, they stopped. If he moved, they gave him space, and this allowed him to inspect the field.
Not a grain of corn was visible; the geese were eating grass. If the field had been baited, it had been done with such exquisite timing that by two hours after sunrise every grain was gone.
But just as he was about to leave in disgust, Hugo decided to move to where the geese now clustered, eating furiously, and as before, when he made a motion toward that area, the stately geese retreated just far enough to keep out of range. Again he found no corn, but he did find something almost as interesting: on a bramble in the middle of the area in which the geese had been feeding most avidly he spied two heavy threads used in weaving canvas.
'Damn!' he growled, his thick neck jammed down into his collar as he stared at the signals: At midnight he rolls a hunk of canvas out here, covers it with corn, attracts a thousand geese, then rolls it up before dawn and leaves no sign. Except these. Carefully he lifted the strands of cloth from the bramble and decided that each night for the next week he would inspect these fields for corn spread out on canvas, which left no telltale marks.
'Hey!' a harsh voice called as he placed the evidence in his wallet.
It was Amos Turlock, with two of his sons. 'What you doin' on my land?'
'Inspecting the clever way you bait your geese.'
'No baitin' here.'
'The canvas, Amos. That's an old trick and it'll put you in jail.'
'What jury...' He allowed the sentence to hang, and Pflaum backed off. What jury, indeed, would indict a Choptank Turlock on the evidence of two strands of canvas webbing? In fact, what jury of men from the store would indict him if he marched along the wharf with The Twombly and sixty dead geese? Half the jury would expect to get one of the geese when they delivered their verdict: 'Innocent.'
Hugo realized that since Turlock had been alerted, it would make no sense to try to catch him at the baiting game, but if the wily old fellow could be tricked into using his gun, then Pflaum could confiscate it on sight without the necessity of a jury trial. So he allowed Amos to think that his focus was on canvas baiting; indeed, he came out two nights in a row to let the Turlocks know he was watching their fields, but what he was really watching was the cabin for some sign of where the family kept their long gun. He detected not a single clue.
On St. Patrick's Day, after drinking several beers with young Martin Caveny, and nodding to Hugo Pflaum as he prepared to drive his eighteen-year-old Ford back to the cabin, Amos Turlock took a long nap, from about seven in the evening till midnight. He then rose, looked for his son Ben and his Chesapeake Rusty and led them into the marsh. The dog had long since learned to make no sound as they approached the area where the gun was hidden, but when he saw it safely loaded into the skiff that Amos used, he leaped joyously for the sturdier skiff in which Ben would ride to pick up the dead geese. He was so intent on helping his masters on another hunt that he failed to notice the faint scent of a stranger, a man in a rowboat lurking off the end of the marsh.
The three craft moved silently out into the Choptank, drifted westward for some time, the two skiffs oblivious of the trailing boat, which kept at a safe distance. At about three in the morning, when the crescent moon had set, the skiffs rounded a point not far from Peace Cliff, where the Quaker boatbuilders lived, and there on the bosom of the river waited a raft of some thousand geese chatting quietly in the night. The skiffs separated, the one with the dog lagging behind to wait for the explosion.
The major skiff, the one with the gun, eased its way toward the raft, making more noise than old Jake Turlock would ever have made. Now the justification for this carelessness became evident: Amos Turlock flicked a switch and a huge headlight set in a triangular, mirrored box flashed on, illuminating the masses of geese and freezing them into position. The light came at them so suddenly and with such reflected force that they were powerless to move. Aiming the skiff right at the heart of the motionless geese, Amos took a deep breath, kept his body away from the recoil of his monstrous weapon and pulled the trigger.
Only when the two skiffs were loaded with the seventy-seven geese and Rusty was back aboard, did Hugo Pflaum reveal himself. He had them now. At night. Long gun. Light. Seventy-seven birds. Out of season. He could put these two in jail for life, but when he moved in to make the arrest he found his cousin Amos Turlock pointing a large shotgun right at his chest.
'Hugo, you ain't seen nothin'. You wasn't out here tonight.'
With considerable courage Pflaum pointed his flashlight at the gun he was so determined to capture. There it was, resting insolently in its chock, its heavy butt jammed into the burlap bag of pine needles, the ancient slayer of waterfowl, the perpetrator of outrage. But protecting it was his brother-in-law Amos with a shotgun and a snarling Chesapeake.
'Hugo, be a bright fellow and head home. Me and Ben won't humiliate you. We won't say a word at the store.'
Pflaum took a deep breath and rested on his oars, keeping his flashlight focused on The Twombly. He was almost close enough to touch it. Damnation, he did want to drag that gun into custody, to be photographed with it, to terminate its scandalous life on this river. But he heard Amos Turlock's soft, persuasive voice: 'Make believe you never seen it, Hugo. Go on home.'
With a regret that would burn for the rest of his life, the game warden dimmed his flashlight, cranked his outboard and started the noisy trip back to Patamoke.
The quality of any human life is determined by the differential experiences which impinge upon it. For example, J. Ruthven Turlock's entire history past the age of twenty-seven had been altered by the accident of that seaplane ride; without it he might never have appreciated the grandeur of his native land and gone wandering after something better; with it he found a key to life.
The same seaplane exerted a contrasting influence upon Pusey Paxmore. Without his subsequent involvement as a lobbyist in Washington he would probably have been satisfied with a moderate success in providing legal services to the Steeds and those wealthy newcomers lured into the area by J. Ruthven; with it he became a fixture in the nation's capital, valued for his Harvard excellence, respected for his Quaker character.
In 1958, when Hiram Cater reached the age of nineteen, Will Nesbitt, leader of the band and always rich in propositions that might help his friends, brought an interesting one to the senior Caters: 'Sign at the post office claims a Marine Corps recruiter gonna be visitin' Salisbury armory Wednesday and Thursday.'
'What that mean to us?' Jeb asked.
'It mean your son Hiram ought to haul hisse'f to the armory and enlist.'
'What chance he got?' Jeb asked in some bitterness. His son had graduated from high school in Salisbury and for two years had been bouncing from one pitiful job to another. 'On'y steady job a colored boy can get, mowin' lawns, May till September.'
'My friend,' the musician said expansively, 'I was told for sure, they gonna take a handful of coloreds. Sposin' they can find some well qualified.'
'Ain't none better qualified than Hiram,' Julia said, and she was right. Her son was quiet, well behaved, quick to learn and trustworthy. She often told her neighbors, 'If'n that boy be lucky enough to be born white, ain't no job in town he couldn't get. And maybe a scholarship to college as well.' But when she pondered what the black college south of Salisbury had done to Luta Mae, she doubted the value of an education. 'We send her there a fine, respectable girl. She come out a radical, livin' some-wheres up in New York, rantin' about burnin' down the world.'
Jeb ignored his wife's lamentation and asked Nesbitt, 'You feel sure Hiram can make it?' He wanted neither his son nor his family to undergo unnecessary mortification, and if what he feared was true—that the invitation to blacks was merely a display of tolerance to be ignored if any promising young Negroes actually applied—he felt that his son should avoid such humiliation. 'Jeb,' Nesbitt said, 'all I know, when we played for a dance in Salisbury, I met a young fellow that they accepted.'
'You mean a colored?'
'Black as you and Hiram.'
'College boy, maybe?'
'Salisbury High School.'
'I doan' believe it.'
'Damn, man! I asked.'
This was Monday, and for two nights the Caters, none of them, could sleep. For Hiram to be a marine, with a uniform and self-respect and regular pay, was really too much to hope for, but the prospect was so dazzling that they had to hope. On Wednesday morning, when Will Nesbitt arrived to drive the boy to the recruiting office, Julia counseled him, 'Be relaxed. Before you go in the door, say to yourself, "I got all A's and B's and I was star catcher." ' Jeb wanted to give advice, but he was too excited to make sense, and when Nesbitt asked if he wanted to ride along, he cried, 'Good Lord, no!' And all that day he stayed in the shack, not actually praying, but thinking strong thoughts.
At seven that night he sensed what the result had been, for three blocks from the shack Will Nesbitt started blowing the horn and shouting, and when the three Caters ran to the fence, there sat Hiram looking straight ahead and trying not to betray his feelings. He was a marine.
'God A'mighty!' Nesbitt told the Neck, 'they said they didn't get anybody as good as Hiram once a month. I showed them the papers, told about his record and his respectable family—I didn't mention Luta Mae—and they grabbed him like he was made of silver.'
In the days that followed, girls came by the shack to admire the hero, and when the time came for him to report in Baltimore for his uniform and passage money to boot camp, his departure became a matter for wide celebration. Reverend Douglass, older now and no longer hoping for an important pulpit in Wilmington, came to the house to advise Hiram against certain pitfalls. 'You will be representing a whole community. You are more than just Hiram Cater. If you do well, other young boys may be able to follow in your steps.'
He did well. He had been in camp only a few days when the sergeants saw that in Hiram they had one of those powerful young men who were pliable not through weakness but because they relied upon a strong family inheritance. The young recruit absorbed abuse in drill, dismissed it, and reported next morning prepared for more. His long training in accepting orders from whites without surrendering his inner convictions made him an ideal marine, and no one in his class did better than he.
At a speed which bewildered him, he was sent to Korea, not with a formed unit but to a replacement depot, a repple depple he explained to his parents, and from there he was sent to a front-line company guarding a sector along the thirty-eighth parallel. There he discovered something that changed his life: in Asia the Koreans, he found, were much like blacks in America. They were second-class citizens, scorned by both the Chinese and the Japanese, who dismissed them as uncivilized, lacking in education and inclined toward criminal behavior. But the Koreans, as he saw them in action, bided their time, accepted insults, and in the end proved more reliable and clever than either the Chinese or the Japanese.
'Least, they survived for two thousand years,' he told black marines with whom he bunked. 'Damn, they look like us!'
He was right. The big, square Korean face, especially if it lacked a pronounced Mongolian fold about the eye, resembled the light-faced black. In personality, too, the similarity was pronounced, for the Korean was patient, long-suffering, explosive at the final outrage and terribly durable.
Corporal Cater went to the camp library to seek books about the Koreans and was entranced by the resolute manner in which this small nation, crushed between two behemoths, had survived. He then sought everything the librarian could find that gave an adverse report on the Koreans, and as he read Japanese critics, or Chinese, he often chuckled:
The Korean is lazy, shiftless and untrustworthy, with a strong tendency toward criminal behavior. When young he does not do well in school, when old he cannot be relied upon to do steady work. He seems incapable of self-government and is probably happiest when some strong power occupies his land. If carefully and constantly supervised he can sometimes work productively, but it is best to restrict him to simple tasks.
And yet the Koreans had established and defended a tough little nation, beating back both the Chinese and the Japanese. In some centuries they had triumphed, in others they had gone under temporarily, but always they had struggled, and the condemnations cited against them were proofs of their durability.
'Damn, I like these people!' Hiram told his fellow marines, and he began catching rides into the village of Dok Sing, not to guzzle beer like the Army dogfaces, but to meet the people, and when a girl tending counter in a dry-goods store indicated that she might consider going to a base movie with him, he could hardly wait to walk her home for her parents' consent.
'This house is better than mine,' he told the girl, and she translated for her parents. It was the beginning of a fine relationship; Nak Lee was much like Luta Mae, a proud girl who could speak of politics and religion and the threat from the north, and as they talked she consistently wanted to bring her parents into the conversation, translating rapidly in two languages and sometimes explaining a subtle point in Japanese.
The older Lees made it clear that their daughter would never be permitted to marry an American, and certainly not a Japanese, and when this point was discussed, Hiram discovered the intense pride these Koreans had in their race, their willingness to combat the world in defense of their land, and he thought how different they were from his own parents, who had devised only a strategy for mean survival.
Nak Lee was obviously fond of her black American; she saw that he was superior to the other black marines and to most of the white ones, too, and she enjoyed accompanying him to dances. When she kissed him the first time, he heard his parents' thundering admonitions that he must never touch a white woman, or he might be slain, and damned if that very night a white Army man didn't try to make trouble over the fact that a nigger was dating a Korean girl!
It might have come to blows had not Nak Lee said quietly, 'Hey, Joe. Why you don't go back to the Ku Klux Klan?' The Army man was so startled that he stepped back, and the incident ended.
'You were very brave,' Hiram said as they kissed goodnight.
'We learned that against the Japanese,' Nak Lee said. And apparently she had been doing some reading too, for suddenly she took Hiram by two hands, and standing face to face, asked him, 'When you niggers start to fight back?'
On the morning of June 11, 1958, young Christopher Pflaum, aged thirteen, was about to encounter a major experience, although he could scarcely have suspected it. He was on his way to school with a certain lightness of heart, for this was the final day of the year, with a lazy vacation looming ahead, and Miss Paxmore—there seemed always to be a Miss Paxmore teaching somewhere—had promised her children that on closing day they would have no formal studies, which meant that lively boys like Chris approached the classroom in a state of euphoria.
'Hey, Chris!' one of the Steed boys whispered. 'Can you get your father's boat?' He thought he could, so three other boys wanted to know if they could join him on the Choptank for some rockfish. He thought this might be possible.
'If I may interrupt your consultations,' Miss Paxmore said, 'what I have in mind for today is a special treat. All year I've been assigning famous poems to be memorized. "Not a drum was heard, not a funeral note..." Some of you did well on that. "The breaking waves dashed high on a stern and rockbound coast." How did you like that?'
The boys around Chris groaned, and Miss Paxmore said, 'Years from now you'll recall those poems and be glad you learned them.' The boys groaned again, and Miss Paxmore smiled. 'Today you lazy fellows can sit back and let the words I read flow over you, because you don't have to memorize them. But if you listen carefully you may hear something important, for this poem is about the Choptank.'
Chris Pflaum sat up. 'It's not called the Choptank, of course,' Miss Paxmore continued. He slumped back in his seat. 'Nevertheless, it's about our river, believe me.' And she spoke with such conviction that even the boys who had been watching flies settle on the windowpanes looked casually at her. She held a smallish book in her hands and leaned forward over the desk as she opened it. 'Sidney Lanier was writing for us, but he named his poem after a part of the country he knew best—south of here, the marshes of Glynn.'
Chris Pflaum came to attention again; he loved marshes but had never imagined that anyone could write poetry about them. And then as Miss Paxmore read a poem she had loved ever since her days as a student at Earlham, he began to hear phrases which cut like sharp knives into the very heart of his existence:
'O braided dusks of the oak and woven shades of the vine,
While the riotous noon-day sun of June-day long did shine.
Ye held me fast in your heart and I held you fast in mine...
'... how ample, the marsh and the sea and the sky!
A league and a league of marsh-grass, waist-high, broad in the blade,
Green, and all of a height...
'Ye marshes, how candid and simple and nothing-withholding and free
Ye publish yourselves to the sky and offer yourselves to the sea!'
The poet, through Miss Paxmore's dignified reading, was uttering thoughts and conjuring images which young Chris himself had often attempted to verbalize. From his father he had caught something of the mystery of the river and how, at arbitrary intervals, it and the shore became one in marshland that was neither river nor shore. With his Turlock cousins he had penetrated the deepest of the Choptank marshes and had begun, in his simple way, to codify their secrets. He knew where the deer slept and the turtle hid. He saw duck feathers betraying where the birds nested and the minute tracks of the vole as it picked its way through insect-laden grasses.
But now he was hearing his deepest feelings externalized by a poet who had written about a marsh Chris would never see; yet it was his marsh and the man was uttering the most secret thoughts of the boy. It was remarkable, and he bent forward with great intensity to catch other fleeting images. He was certainly not prepared for what happened, a veritable explosion of ideas so potent that they tore his little world apart, allowing him to catch a glimpse of a total universe so splendid that a lifetime of study would never exhaust it. He was shown nothing less than the soul of the marsh, and he would never again be the same; from this moment on he would share the world's intricate grandeur:
'As the marsh-hen secretly builds on the watery sod,
Behold I will build me a nest in the greatness of God:
I will fly in the greatness of God as the marsh-hen flies
In the freedom that fills all the space 'twixt the marsh and the skies:
By so many roots as the marsh-grass sends in the sod
I will heartily lay me ahold on the greatness of God:
Oh, like to the greatness of God is the greatness within
The range of the marshes, the liberal marshes of Glynn.'
The theological implications of the poem escaped him, and he did not dedicate his life to either God or His greatness; he had before him the hell-raising years of education, and his initiation into the rough waterman's world of Amos Turlock and Martin Caveny, but he did learn, once and for all time, that a marsh, or a creek, or a river, or a great bay was a handiwork of nature so magnificent that it must not ever be abused.
Miss Paxmore's reading produced one aftermath that would have startled her. When Chris Pflaum reached home that afternoon he found his father cleaning his gun prior to patrolling the back streams to keep hunters obedient to the law, and he surprised the bull-necked warden by going to him impulsively and stammering, 'Pop... I like what you do.'
'What do I do?'
Chris would never be able to blurt out, 'Protect the marshes as God created them.' Instead he mumbled, 'Huntin'... and all that.'
In 1959 the Steed family was still divided into two branches: the Devon Steeds, who lived on what was left of the island; and the Refuge Steeds, who occupied a much more congenial series of estates on the mainland. The original strain had grown quite thin; after Judge Hathaway and Congressman Jefferson the Devon connection was quite barren, and after Lyman Steed the Refuge line was almost as bad. The family as a unit still owned the stores; their land was leaping ahead in value; and if the tomato canneries had proved a dead loss, the cornfields were replacing them. The prosaic condition of the once-dominant family could be summarized in one significant fact: no one was angry at them.
The Paxmores were equally quiescent. Woolman, their last luminary, was dead, and a set of routine artisans managed the boatyard from which daring schooners and swift skipjacks had once come; it was building motorboats from plans drafted in Boston. The moral fights in which these Quakers had once participated were settled now, and there was little vitality in their religion as they espoused it.
The Turlocks survived. During the Depression entire families of the clan had suffered years with no employment, but they had eaten off the land, and as long as the men could lay their hands on shotgun shells, theirs or other people's, they got their share of deer and ducks. The old hatreds against authority, and the Steeds, and the blacks had pretty well subsided, and through constant intermarriage with the Cavenys, even their bias against Catholics had diminished. A dozen Turlock men would experience three dozen different jobs over a four-year period, and some even became police officers, for brief periods. Their family genius was to produce beautiful girls now and then who married into new families like the Pflaums and a constant supply of thin, mean men who could fire a rifle with precision.
The Cavenys had become the backbone of the river towns. They were the policemen, the sheriffs, the minor court attendants, the wholesale merchants just below the Steeds, and the schoolteachers. With Father Patrick Caveny as titular head of the family, they prospered, both spiritually and socially. Real Catholics like the Steeds found this clarinet-playing priest a little hard to take, but he was so energetic and so easily wounded by defections from the faith that they supported him generously. It could be said with some accuracy that the Catholic church was one institution in Patamoke that was prospering, and as it grew, its acceptance among Protestants increased, mainly because of Father Patrick's common sense.
But it was the Caters who had made the most significant advances. Indeed, they were now almost a part of the establishment, for Julia Cater held three good jobs and sang in the choir of the A.M.E. Church; Jeb Cater had four jobs; and their daughter Helen had three. True, their second daughter, Luta Mae, was again in jail, in Boston, because of the street demonstration she had led of Harvard, Wellesley and M.I.T. undergraduates, but son Hiram had been made a sergeant in the Marines and was sending money home. The house carried no mortgage. The family had a Ford ten years old, which Jeb kept in good condition, and from time to time Will Nesbitt dropped by to play the banjo and ask how Hiram was doing.
Only one ominous note disturbed the Choptank as the 1950s drew to a close. Three families had produced children of extraordinary merit, and each of the three young people had felt it necessary to build their lives outside the local area; in the old days they would have made their contributions at home.
Owen Steed was the last of the Devon line, and he had really never lived on the Choptank after the age of twelve. He had then gone off to Lawrenceville, an excellent school that prepared for Princeton, and after graduation from college had gone west to become an officer in an oil company in Tulsa. Had he returned to Devon he might have led the family enterprises into bold new fields, for he proved to be a good administrator, rising to the presidency of his company in Oklahoma.
Pusey Paxmore had come home at first, but involvement with the family seaplane diverted him to Washington, and once he experienced the enticements of that city, he either could not or would not leave it. He had now held four different jobs of some distinction, and at each swearing-in the _Bugle_ had run photographs showing him with either President Eisenhower or Vice-President Nixon. He always looked the same: the Harvard Law School graduate in the vested three-button dark suit. Had he stayed at home he might have taken the place of Woolman Paxmore as spiritual leader of the Quakers, for he had a strong theological predisposition, but now his life was cast in another mold and any possibility of preacherhood within the Quaker religion was lost. President Eisenhower once called him 'The conscience of the White House,' and he certainly looked the part, the cautious lawyer who hewed to the straight line which Paxmores had always followed when they laid down their keels.
Luta Mae Cater had also fled Patamoke to find her destiny, but her departure was somewhat more frenetic than that of her older male neighbors. One summer's day she had marched into the Blue and Gold Ice Cream Parlor, ordered her loganberry cone, and sat boldly down at one of the iron tables to consume it.
'You can't eat there, miss,' the proprietor said.
'And why not?' she demanded belligerently.
'Because we don't serve colored in here.'
'You just sold me this cone.'
'That's for buyin', not for eatin'.'
'Starting today, it's for eating, too.'
'Miss, I will give you fifteen seconds to leave that table.'
Insolently, a large dark girl with rumpled hair who sought a fight, she remained at the table, slowly nibbling away at the cone. The owner kept an eye on his watch, and when the fifteen seconds was up, grabbed a whistle that he had bought for just such a day and blew it madly. It made a hellish sound, and within two minutes a pair of white officers, who had also been briefed on how to handle such criminal acts, came quietly into the ice cream parlor and said respectfully, 'Miss, you can't eat in here.'
'Why not?' she snarled, as if daring them to strike her.
'Custom,' one of the officers said.
'Not no more,' Luta Mae said in her street language. 'We ain't gonna give this honky our money and eat outside.'
'Miss,' the officer said with quiet persuasion, 'we don't want trouble, do we?'
'I sure as hell do,' Luta Mae said, and this was used against her at the trial, where it was proved that she had resisted arrest, used harsh language against the proprietor and tried to bite the hand of the second officer who tugged at her arms.
'Aren't you ashamed?' the judge asked, 'to bring dishonor upon your fine father and mother, who this town respects as if they were white?'
Remorse was not what Luta Mae proposed to show that day, and when she abused the judge he dropped his attempts to conciliate her and gave her thirty days in jail. The charge was interesting: 'She did willfully disturb the peace.' The judge pointed out that over the centuries certain accepted rules had been fashioned for the happy relations between whites and blacks; these were understood, and when they were observed, the two races existed side by side in harmony.
'Ain't gonna be no more harmony,' she said as the two sheriffs dragged her away.
Jeb and Julia had been profoundly disturbed by this incident. As members of the black establishment, respected even more by whites than by fellow blacks, they deplored their daughter's behavior. They knew what a rash thing she had done, the terrible risk she had taken that her actions might stir the sleeping Turlocks and Cavenys. Her deportment before the judge merited a jail sentence, and they felt no resentment against the court.
But they were terribly against the judge's stated doctrine that ancient rules devised to keep blacks in a subservient position had somehow acquired moral sanction, forever preventing their amendment. They knew that Luta Mae was right, that it was no longer acceptable to give a white merchant money and accept fifth-class treatment in return. They knew that the old rules of Patamoke were about to be broken. But they did not want to get involved.
'Bes' thing can happen,' Jeb told Julia when they reached their cabin, 'Luta Mae serve her term and get out of here.'
'I think so too,' Julia said. 'Change gonna come, but doan' let it be on her shoulders.'
'Hiram, if'n he was here, he would of calmed her. Ain't nothin' I can do with that girl. She headstrong.'
'She's right,' Julia said stubbornly. 'But change ain't gonna happen as fast as she want. Like you say, Jeb. Bes' she get out of here.'
Luta Mae felt the same way, and when the judge released her ten days early, she kissed her mother goodbye and headed north.
When this disturbing element left town, Patamoke settled down to one of the finest years it had known since the peaceful 1890s. People had jobs. The oyster catch was far above average and crabs were plentiful, even the valuable soft shells. In October the geese returned in such numbers that any farmer who had waterfront to rent made a small fortune, and Christmas along the Choptank was like the gentlest week in September. In this way the somnolent 1950s drew to a close.
There was one man in Patamoke who rejoiced when the new bridge spanning the Chesapeake was opened. J. Ruthven Turlock had long realized that hordes of people from Baltimore and Washington, not to mention Pittsburgh and Harrisburg, would flood into the Eastern Shore on sightseeing expeditions—'And we will have the opportunity of catching our share of them as clients.' He enlarged his offices and ordered seven more signs for the highway.
But his genius manifested itself in a gesture which astounded the people of Patamoke. He conceived this plan one morning when visiting the Turlock cabin to pick up two geese his brother Amos had shot the night before; for such gifts Ruthven took care of Amos' paper work and whatever legal matters might arise. He was about to depart with the plucked geese hidden behind the spare tire in his trunk, when he chanced to see in a very favorable light the three hundred and ninety-eight acres of the Turlock marsh, and it occurred to him that he could convert this useless land to a constructive purpose that would make Amos and the family rich.
'What we could do,' he explained as he stood with the Turlocks at the door of their cabin, 'is palisade that whole front edge, throw some earth along the flanks and then announce that we're running a sanitary fill.'
'What would that accomplish?' Amos asked.
'Why, dump trucks from miles around would wheel in here, fill in the land behind the palisades, and before you could say Bob's-your-uncle, we have us four hundred acres of choice waterfront land. We call it Patamoke Gardens and we sell it to rich dudes from Chicago and Cleveland for so much money you'd never believe it.'
'Could we do that?' Amos asked.
'We sure could.'
'But won't it cost money to palisade?'
'I know ways of getting money,' Ruthven said, so a deal was arranged whereby he would fill in the marsh, subdivide it into two hundred lots and create the attractive new town of Patamoke Gardens. The beauty of his plan was that it was totally practical. He knew where to borrow the money at four percent; he knew builders eager to participate in such a gamble; and he knew scores of well-to-do doctors and dentists who were interested in either waterfront homes or real estate investments. Before the town planners of Patamoke could say Bob's-your-uncle, the plan was unleashed, the marsh was palisaded, and the waving grass in which deer and ducks and red-winged blackbirds had luxuriated was buried in waste so that new homesites could be formed.
When the project was well under way, Christopher Pflaum, home from college, heard of its magnitude and drove out to the cabin to see what his Uncle Ruthven was up to, and when he stood on the edge of what had once been a marsh, dodging the trucks as they hauled in garbage to fill the area, he was aghast. Looking about for someone in charge, he was frustrated; everything was happening automatically. The pile driver was finishing the last of the palisading as if it had a brain of its own: haul the weight up, center it, drop it on the head of the wooden piling, and close off another yard of marshland. The dump trucks rumbled in, backed up, raised their beds and automatically strewed the junk into hollows that would soon be filled. Other trucks hauled in earth to cover the garbage, and slowly, inevitably Patamoke Gardens took shape.
There was no one on the site to whom he could protest; the marsh was being erased and building lots were being created, with no one at the controls, no one evaluating the tremendous decisions being reached. He jumped into his car and sped back to town, where he banged his way into the Turlock Agency, demanding of his uncle, 'What in hell are you doing?'
'Creating taxable wealth,' Ruthven said, and with the aid of handsomely lettered maps and diagrams he showed young Chris how this operation was going to provide two hundred choice lots, which would house two hundred families, who for the rest of this century would spend on an average of eight thousand dollars... 'You add it up, Chris. This is the best thing ever happened to the Choptank. A new settlement. Strictly class.'
Only forty docks would be allowed to jut into the water, but there would be a marina partway up the creek at which everyone else could house a boat comfortably. 'School? We use the one already in existence... out beyond the cabin.' He put his arm about his nephew's shoulder. 'The beauty part is that all this land back here, it goes up in value too. That piece your father owns. Treble in one year. Your father wants to sell it for a handsome profit, I know a man from Baltimore...'
Numbed, Chris returned to the marsh; only a shred now remained, but he knelt in it and allowed the grass to twist through his fingers. This marsh had nurtured his Turlock ancestors for three centuries, and some of them would have died rather than surrender a blade of it. They had fought and endured and protected, and now in a flash it was gone.
'Jesus!' he cried, slapping at the grass, and based on his studies at the university, began to calculate what the building of this resort for outside doctors and dentists was costing in natural terms: Fifty deer lived here most of the year. Five hundred muskrats. Sixty otter. Thirty mink. Two hundred nutria. Two thousand geese, four thousand ducks, and so many birds you couldn't count them. Sixty turtles, five thousand crabs, a universe of oysters, rockfish and blue and enough perch to sink a skipjack.
He became quite angry, and splashed his feet in the water that oozed up from the dying marsh: And the worst loss is the stuff we can't see. The water grasses that feed the crabs, the tiny crabs that feed the fish, and the plankton that feeds us all. Gone! The whole shebang gone.
'Hey, you! Watch out!' A truckdriver, hauling in refuse from an abandoned tomato cannery—lengths of twisted steel and rusted corrugations—backed his vehicle close to where Chris had been standing, and mechanically the huge truck bed rose in the air, dropped its rear gate and threw its burden over the strangling grasses.
'Oh Jesus!' young Pflaum cried as the truck drove off to make way for another. 'What a bad bargain we made here.'
Despite Hiram Cater's enlightening experiences in the Marine Corps, his father might have succeeded in keeping the boy socially passive except for a genetic accident over which there was no control: Hiram was one of those fortunate men who take women seriously. This meant that his life gained an added dimension; unlike the moon, he did not move through the dark night with one hemisphere forever blank, for his association with women brightened it.
In Korea little Nak Lee had begun the dangerous task of educating him; she made him aware that he was as good as any white man, yet afraid of his own capacities. Now two women from his own family, one long in the grave, one in jail, rose to complete his education.
The first step occurred in 1965, when Reverend Jackson, the new minister, was cleaning out the attic of the A.M.E. manse, a pitiful shack, and came upon a document compiled by a black clergyman who had served Patamoke in the 1870s. This young cleric, overwhelmed by subterranean yarns about runaway slaves of previous generations, had listened with jaw agape as old men instructed him, and realized that he was hearing the epic of a race, which if not written down, might be forever lost. His interest began to center on an old black woman named Eden Cater, then in her seventies; her name surfaced in various accounts related by the old men, and in time he went to see her.
She lived in the Cater shack at the end of Frog's Neck, and she spoke with such fierce comprehension of what slavery meant and of how her Underground Railway had functioned that he knew immediately that it was her story he wanted to record. 'Miss Eden, you must write down your memories, so's your grandchildren can understand.' And when she replied, as he supposed she would, 'I cain't write,' he said, 'You tell me and I'll write.'
Two notebooks were filled with Eden's reconstructions of her expeditions into Pennsylvania, and on facing pages, wherever possible, the minister had written: 'This part of Eden's story was confirmed by John Goldsborough, now living in New Bedford, Massachusetts.' More than two thirds of her claimed exploits were thus substantiated, occasionally by white witnesses. Of course, when the escapes had been participated in by Bartley and Rachel Paxmore, those Quakers were available for detailed confirmation.
What evolved was a concise account, written in seminary English, of the dangers encountered by slaves who sought freedom and of the courage exhibited both by those who fled and those who helped them. When the narrative was completed, over a period of several months, the black minister gave it a title, _Fourteen Journeys North_ , and noted Eden Cater as author. And it was this manuscript which Reverend Jackson handed to Eden's great-great-grandson one morning in July 1965.
Hiram carried the notebooks to a bench at the tip of the Neck, where he started to leaf through them casually, much less interested in the narrative than Reverend Jackson had supposed he might be. Hiram had often heard of Eden Cater, but all he actually knew about her was that she had intended buying her husband's freedom but had ended up providing money to buy a skipjack. She was remote, a slave ancestor whose history had been lost.
Therefore, the young marine could find no bond of association tying this shadowy woman to himself or to his problems. The situation today was so different that Eden could not possibly comprehend it, even if she were living through it, and for her to have any relevance was improbable. But toward the front of the second notebook he chanced upon two paragraphs that recalled his own boot training:
We were now within six miles of Pennsylvania, and the freedom for which these fifteen had longed while working in the swamps of South Carolina was at hand and they began to grow careless, believing themselves to be shed of slavery. But I warned them that the greatest danger always arose in the last dash for the border, because there the enemy would concentrate his greatest power. To reach our goal we must use guile and not force, and I coached them how to do this.
But as we were picking our way toward that land where others would be waiting to help us, two slave-catchers left the road and came through the fields, suspecting that we might have taken that route, and when it seemed that they must discover us, three strong men behind me vowed, 'If they find us, we got to kill them,' and I knew that no persuasion of mine would stay them. So I had our people lie flat in the grass, and the slave-catchers passed us by, and after a proper wait I gave the signal and we all ran for the border, but I could not restrain them from shouting as they ran.
Hiram kept a forefinger in the old booklet to mind his place, and as he stared out across the Choptank it became not merely the brown river he had always known but a dividing line between the Deep South, where slavery had flourished, and the modified slaveholding area from which escape had been possible, and the role played by Eden and her husband became clear: They were a lighthouse in the night. That lousy little cabin. If slaves could reach there, they were on their way.
He returned to the book, and in spite of the fact that this was a hot morning, with a strong sun blazing out of a cloudless sky, he kept reading, dipping into the manuscript at casual places, and generated a rage that would never be quenched. These were flesh-and-blood slaves risking their lives for freedom, and at one point he slammed the frail pages shut: Don't never tell me again that blacks submitted like tamed animals. These bastards fought every inch of the way.
Because of his desire to comprehend the relationship between whites and blacks, he was most interested in her assessments of the white men and women with whom she worked:
The three whites from Patamoke on whom we could rely were Quakers, but each operated in a different way. Comly Starbuck frightened me, for he would venture anything. His sister, Rachel Starbuck Paxmore, had a warmth that touched every human being with whom she worked and a quiet courage which sometimes startled me. Bartley Paxmore, her husband, was like an oak tree, so reliable that we built our lives around him.
But the white man I remember in my prayers and hope to see again in heaven was a modest farmer who lived near Bohemia. His name was Adam Ford, and since he was not a Quaker, he was under no compulsion to help us. He had no funds, no horses to spare and little surplus food. He offered only himself, but he offered all, for he was a widower and his children were gone. No matter when we crept up to his farm, or in what condition, he was ready to help, regardless of risk. I have watched him by candlelight as he washed the wounds of our children or carried water for old men. Twice the authorities in Wilmington threw him into jail for helping runaway slaves and once the sheriff took away what few belongings he had as a fine for aiding us, but he persevered. May God look kindly upon the soul of Adam Ford.
And just as Hiram was beginning to tire of this praise of white participants, Eden added the paragraph he sought:
But on six of the fourteen escapes no white men or women helped. It was black freedmen like Cudjo Cater who took the risk. It was strong-minded slaves like Nundo who bore the heaviest burden. Even when we did travel with the noble Quakers we followed two different roads. If they were caught, they were fined or placed in jail for a few months. If we were caught, we were hauled back to slavery, or hanged.
When Hiram finished reading this narrative he found himself with an understanding of the Choptank that would never dim: his ancestors had been slaves along this river and had endured tragedies he had not imagined. Eden Cater, especially, had combated the system, placing her life in jeopardy fourteen times, and in his veins ran her daring blood.
When he returned the booklets to Reverend Jackson he said, 'This ought to be in print. For everyone to read.'
'That's why I gave you the books. To get your opinion.'
'What could we do?'
'There's a history professor at Johns Hopkins. Says he thinks he could get a subvention...'
'What's that?'
'One of the big foundations would give him money... Hiram, many people in this country are eager to see the true stories of slavery unfold.'
'This should be one of the first.'
'I'm glad you feel so. Reinforces what I thought.'
So Hiram and Reverend Jackson drove to Baltimore to meet with the professor, a white man who said enthusiastically, 'I've approached the people in New York and I'm sure we can get the funds. What I have in mind is to publish Eden Cater's account, with full historical notes, tying her time and experience in with that of Frederick Douglass, who lived in the same area at about the same time.'
Hiram drew back. The black experience of his ancestors would be used to further the career of a white professor who looked at Eden's record not as a life-and-blood account of slavery but merely as a means of publishing a book. He was about to ask for return of the booklets when the professor said, 'I'm particularly desirous that the book be edited by some black scholar. After all, Mr. Cater, it is a black odyssey and I think we have in our department just the man you would want.'
A Professor Simmons was sent for, and as soon as Hiram saw his exaggerated Afro hairdo, he was satisfied. He was further assured when he learned that the young man was an activist, with a strong undergraduate degree from Howard University and a doctorate from Yale. Since he had grown up in one of the heavily black counties on Maryland's western shore, he could imagine the slave structure in which Eden and Cudjo Cater had lived.
The three blacks and the white senior professor had an exciting lunch, at the end of which the white professor called New York to advise the foundation secretary that all matters were settled: 'Professor Simmons will do the editing along the lines we suggested, and I'm pleased to assure you that Eden Cater's principal male descendant will cooperate.' A long pause followed, after which the professor slammed down the receiver and cried, 'We've got the money!'
Eden Cater's story would be told, _Fourteen Journeys North;_ the long silence about black life on the Choptank would be broken; and henceforth it would be impossible for anyone to write a history of the river without taking into account the contribution of blacks.
But Eden Cater's triumph was fragmentary, so far as her descendant Hiram was concerned, for as he left the luncheon he felt himself torn away from the celebration, and he excused himself. 'Reverend Jackson, I won't be going back to Patamoke with you.'
'Why not?'
'I think I'd better go north... for a few days.'
'To Scanderville?' This was a daring question to which the minister did not expect a reply, but he did want to discuss the matter with Hiram if that was indeed his destination. The ex-marine said nothing, turned on his heel in military fashion and strode off.
But Reverend Jackson would not permit him to leave in this fashion. Running after him, he overtook him at the edge of the campus and said forcefully, 'Hiram, you're in an emotional state. The things Eden Cater reported. Don't rush off to Scanderville to find a lot of stupid conclusions.'
'Who's stupid?' Hiram demanded.
'Your sister Luta Mae. She is on the wrong—'
'Don't you say nothin' about Luta Mae.' The polished speech he had acquired in the Marine Corps vanished and he reverted to the double negatives of his childhood.
'Luta Mae is engaged in a private war that will end only in disaster. Don't become involved.'
'Luta Mae, she the same as Eden.'
'For the love of God, no! Don't be deceived by glib similarities.'
But Hiram stormed off, went to the edge of Baltimore and started hitchhiking north into Pennsylvania, and as one white traveler after another passed him by, the angrier he became. Finally a black salesman carried him as far as Harrisburg, where a white trucker, a brusque, heavy man in his fifties, invited him into his cab for the run to Scanderville.
'You got a friend in the prison there?' the trucker asked.
'My sister.'
'What she do?'
'Civil disobedience. Federal case.'
'Placards and stuff like that?'
'Yep.'
'I don't blame her. If I was black... How long she in for?'
'Two years. That is, two-to-six. She told the judge to go to hell. In open court.'
'She one of those with the big hairdos?'
'She goes the whole route.'
When they pulled up at a diner in Sunbury, the trucker said, 'Have supper on me,' and as they ate he said, 'You know, son, people like your sister... them god-awful hairdos... those loud-mouths... They make enemies they don't need to make.'
'Why did you pick me up?' Hiram asked. 'And offer to buy me supper? You got a guilty feeling, maybe?'
'I got a son in Vietnam. I got great respect for soldiers and I could see you'd been in service... the way you stood.'
'I was in the Marines.'
'I ain't surprised. And you came out willing to fight the world?'
'More or less.'
'Son, don't fight with me. Tell your sister to lay off, too. It ain't necessary, and it won't win you a goddamned thing. Play it cool and you'll get everything you want.'
The driver went out of his way to drop Hiram at the prison, then flashed the thumbs-up sign and cried, 'I'm on your side, buddy.' And for a moment, as Hiram watched the truck move down the highway, its red and green lights flashing in the darkness like beacons hailing a different day, he entertained a brief hope that the rough-and-ready accommodation proposed by the trucker might be possible, and he spent that night fashioning procedures which might lead to a juster America.
But in the morning, in the waiting room of the jail, he was electrified when he saw Luta Mae come slouching toward him, her sturdy body covered by prison garb, her insolence intended to infuriate her guards, and he surrendered any thought of conciliation. It was social warfare, and Luta Mae was in the vanguard.
She was implacable. From behind the wire mesh that separated them she growled, 'Hiram, it got to be all burned down.'
'You mean the old ways?'
'I mean everything. It all got to change.' She now preferred to use black speech, and she exaggerated its illiteracies.
He started to tell her about Eden Cater's book on slaves escaping north, but she interrupted. 'Why you tellin' me 'bout her?'
And he explained that he saw his sister as the inheritor of the fearless old slave woman. Luta Mae, with her flaming hairdo and her uncompromising manner was the Eden Cater of this generation, and as he watched the guard lead her back to her cell, her challenge echoed in his mind: 'It got to be all burned down.'
It was in the spring of 1965 that J. Ruthven Turlock had his final inspiration about the development at Patamoke Gardens. 'I was driving home from selling a lot to a doctor from Binghamton when it occurred to me that most of our buyers were elderly people... coming here to retire... comfort-filled final years. It was then I hit on the perfect name. Sunset Acres.'
Of course, when Ruthven implemented his design, the old Turlock cabin occupied by his brother Amos had to go—'It's an eyesore. You've made a bundle off the marsh, Amos, you can afford something decent.'
So this ancient center of incest, illiteracy, prejudice, lawbreaking, coon hunting and good living was burned off so that in its place could be wheeled a spanking new mobile home built in Sheboygan. Ruthven paid for the white picket fence that quarantined it from the more pretentious homes of Sunset Acres, but it was Amos who purchased the cement statuary that adorned the small lawn: Santa Claus with eight reindeer nicely disposed across the grass, a purple flamingo, a polar bear on his hind legs and a brown doe with two adorable gray fawns. When Chris Pflaum saw his uncle's concrete menagerie he had to compare it with the real birds and animals that once graced the site.
Chris was having his problems with the former marsh. At the community college he attended, his instructor in American Lit 107 was a bright young man from Brandeis University with a commitment to the best in American writing, and the concise manner in which he disposed of old myths that cluttered his pupils' minds impressed young Chris:
'There is no reason why any sane person should read Margaret Mitchell's _Gone With the Wind_. It is one of the worst books ever written by an American, shoddy, meretricious and without any redeeming social value.'
When Chris read the book, some years back, he had suspected that Miss Mitchell's depiction of blacks had been criminally unfair and her portrayal of whites sentimental and highly prejudiced; he was pleased to find his instructor confirming his youthful doubts. But in his next lecture the young man from Brandeis tore into all American poetry prior to Lowell—Robert Lowell, he explained—and his special scorn was reserved for Sidney Lanier:
'A sentimental, soggy, drum-beat rimester, representing all that was wrong with southern thinking of his time, he has become the litmus paper of American literature. If you like Lanier, you cannot like poetry.'
This time Chris was disposed to argue. 'I thought _The Marshes of Glynn_ was rather good... the part about the bigness and the sky.'
The young scholar looked compassionately at Pflaum and said, 'I'm delighted to know that you studied Lanier. Not many bother, these days. How old were you at the time? Yes, about thirteen? Well, Pflaum, "Little Miss Muffit" is ideally suited to the four-year-old and Felicia Hemans is just right for the nine-year-old. Sidney Lanier is the poet par excellence for the thirteen-year-old mentality, but now we're all growing up, aren't we?'
He then proceeded to demonstrate everything that was wrong with this long, painfully obvious old poem: its forced rhymes, its rhythms broken to order, the preposterous variations in line length and, above all, its religious sentimentality.
'Aren't some of the images good?' Chris asked.
'Yes, but they're terribly belabored. Take the marsh-hen building her nest in the greatness of God. Line after line, repetition after repetition. A real poet would have disposed of that goddamn bird in four well-chosen words.'
Chris would not let go. 'But wasn't Lanier way ahead of his time in dealing with an ecological problem?'
Now the young man from Brandeis could show some excitement. 'Indeed he was, Pflaum, and that's the only merit of this old war-horse. If Lanier had said simply, "Marshes are worth preserving," he'd have said it all.'
But it wouldn't have had the ring, Chris thought, and I'd never have remembered it the way I remember the real lines.
When he returned home he went to the public library and found that during the past four months thirty-one residents of a town that didn't read much had checked out _Gone With the Wind_ and when he asked about it, the librarian said, 'We have to keep three copies. Local women like to make believe their ancestors lived on plantations.' And when he went out to Sunset Acres and stood where the Turlock marsh had once stretched, he could hear the rhythms of Lanier's poem, those words which had given his life its direction.
As he stood there, pondering these contradictions, he watched a pair of cardinals coming back to what had once been their home. They flew erratically, here and there, looking for vanished succulence, and Chris thought: Taking them both into consideration, they must be the handsomest pair of birds in any country. Sometimes I think the male is the most beautiful, that flaming scarlet. But at other times it's the female. Those muted colors, so perfect in combination. I wish I could put in words what I feel about those birds.
And then a tardy wedge of geese flew north, and as he watched their flight his world fell into place: I want to go to Canada... to see where the geese breed. If you live on the Choptank, you know only half the bird... October to March. Who wants to know half of anything? To the disappearing birds he cried aloud, 'I'm going to see the other half in Canada.'
The idea of this trip had been germinating for some time, in fact, ever since his English instructor had said in class, 'You may not know it, but your region has produced one masterpiece of American writing. Thomas Applegarth's _To the Ice Age_. I suggest you read it if you want to comprehend where you live.' The little book had been a revelation, and from it Chris deduced that every burgeoning mind ought to make some pilgrimage. His would be to the nesting place of the geese.
But his eyes kept coming back to the vanished marsh and his mind to the vanished poem, and he thought: So he takes away Lanier and gives me Applegarth. Fair trade, perhaps.
After Hiram Cater left his sister in Scanderville Prison he spent two years drifting through the major cities of the North, seeking viable solutions to the problem of blacks in American life, and in sharp discussions with young men and women from Harvard and the University of Chicago he could offer specific illustrations which summarized black experience much better than their philosophizing:
'My mom and pop have worked fourteen hours a day, six days a week for more than fifty years. Everybody says, "Best people in the community, white or black." And what's their reward? A two-room shack built in the 1840s which became a three-room shack in the 1940s. From birth to death they've been short-changed.'
In certain parts of the North conditions were slightly more promising, but in general, throughout the nation he found the cruel inequities of Frog's Neck endlessly repeated, and he spent most of his hours trying to construct some sensible explanation of why the United States seemed so determined to ignore and waste the human potential of so large a portion of its population. His experience in the Marines convinced him that he was positively as capable as any white man of comparable background, yet society was determined to prevent him from demonstrating his skills.
He listened attentively to the endless debates regarding basic policy—'Shall we become spineless subservients like Booker T. Washington or leaders of the street rebellion?'—and he did not know where he stood. He could not erase his memory of the truckdriver who had argued that gradualism was the sensible path, nor could he forget Luta Mae's strident call to battle. The debates were fruitless, but he did make up his mind on one major aspect of black life, and for a public discussion on Boston television he prepared these notes:
Moynihan and others argue that black family life is destructive because so many children are reared with no father in the home. When I first heard this argument I thought it stupid, because I grew up in a family that had a father, and a very good one. But of the fourteen men who I meet with, eleven had no father at home. Bad consequences, etc.
However, when you look at the great nations of the world, the majors divide into two groups. In Germany, Japan, England and the United States the father is boss. Who ever heard on television of a 'kindly German mother.' To hell with Mom, Pop's boss and everyone knows it. These four societies are therefore harsh, militaristic, violent, cruel.
But look at Italy with its 'Mama mia!' and Jews with their 'typical Jewish mother, have a little more chicken soup.' It is not by accident that these societies are gentle, intellectual, artistic, philosophical and anti-militaristic. Mother influence predominates, the kids are humane, society also.
I can't speak about Africa, but if the blacks of America ever establish a nation, it will be like Italy or a Jewish country. Music, dance, theater, art, high philosophy will predominate. The blacks I know who grew up with mothers only are gentle people. Sometimes they have to riot in frustration, but they are basically good people, dedicated to music and dance and theater.
Close with a few words about my own mother. Spirit of the home. We had a father, but he might as well have been absent. Tell about oystering. Long absences. It was the mother... And no goddamned apologies about the black family.
His remarks were applauded, and after the cameras were turned off, the white moderator said, 'Cater, you ought to get a college degree,' but when he looked casually into the possibilities, he feared the barriers were too complex, and in frustration he came near to adopting Luta Mae's battle cry: 'It got to be all burned down.' But he had been so well received by white radicals, and by the white television people, that he clung to the hope that society could be modified peacefully. With such perplexities he returned to Patamoke, a handsome, well-disciplined marine, twenty-eight years old and as capable as any young man the Choptank had recently produced.
His parents were delighted to see him, for Luta Mae was once more in jail, this time in Michigan, and they had feared that he might fall into her revolutionary ways. 'How tall he is!' Julia cried, trying to restrain herself from embracing the self-conscious young man who stood before her, his dark skin glistening.
'You pretty much a real marine,' his father said admiringly. 'I bet you seen some adventures in Korea.' But Hiram thought: How old they've become. Seventy-one, their lives worn out with working, and he judged that he had been correct in citing them as epitomes of the black problem.
His two years of wandering had not improved his chances for employment, for he had mastered no trade nor improved his education in any specific field. His learning had consisted of long night sessions arguing radical philosophies, and weekend retreats with Black Muslims, listening to their theories. He had returned home prepared for only one job: to agitate the minds of blacks younger than he and to direct them in the analysis of their community.
In spite of his desire not to upset his parents, who had made their adjustment to the system, he could not refrain from raising questions which disturbed them. 'Pop, let's suppose you been slothful all your life. You'd be about as well off as you are now. Do you realize how you've been cheated? Not even a television after all these years of labor. Mom, I never knew a day you didn't work.'
When old Will Nesbitt, the bandleader, came by one night to warn them that their son was attracting unfavorable attention from the town authorities, Jeb and Julia nodded. 'From us, too.'
They asked Will what he thought they should do about Hiram, and the old man said, 'Get him out of here. Trouble is, he's growed faster than Patamoke.'
For a brief spell they dreamed that he would land a good position with Steed's or the boatyard, but neither of those establishments needed a philosophical young black who might have been contaminated by his unexplained residence in the North, and townspeople supposed that he would hang around for a while, then drift away, as his criminal sister Luta Mae had done.
But in the summer of 1967 Hiram Cater was still on hand, spending a few pennies now and then—no one could say where he acquired them—and arguing at night with other young blacks, also without jobs and no prospects of any. Patamoke now had two black policemen, and their reports on Hiram were ominous: 'Born troublemaker, probably in cahoots with his sister in Michigan.'
That guess was wrong. All the Caters were dismayed that Luta Mae had now been in jail four times, and despite the fact that they knew her to be one of the finest girls in Maryland, they were ashamed that she had so fallen athwart the law. It had not yet occurred to them that it was the system that was wrong, not Luta Mae, and in their familial shame they tried to forget her, even though her flaming words continued to reverberate in Hiram's consciousness.
He might have negotiated this long summer without incident had not Reverend Jackson and Will Nesbitt arranged for an August rally to replenish church funds. Signs went up in the Steed store, rope was found for cordoning off Frog's Neck, and Julia Cater began preparing for the crab cakes she would offer to the church she loved so well. It was these crab cakes that got Hiram into trouble.
On a hot, mosquito-ridden Friday afternoon he watched as his mother and Helen slaved in their kitchen so that the congregation could earn a few pennies, and the procedure seemed so ridiculous and unrewarding that he asked, 'Why you breakin' your backs for such foolishness?'
Old Julia, bent and heavy, explained, 'Because we likes to do God's will.'
'You sell a dollar crab cake to them whites for twenty-five cents, you call that God's will?'
'Many a time, Hiram, you wouldn't be alive 'ceptin' the church gave us the money.'
'I will not accept life on those terms,' he stormed. He would not remain in the kitchen, watching his mother pay such painful allegiance to outworn customs, and he stomped out of the house. Next night, when the rally flourished, with rich white families tiptoeing past the kiosks on their yearly condescension to the blacks of Frog's Neck, his fury rose.
At nine o'clock Will Nesbitt's creaking band uttered some ruffles, whereupon an avuncular Father Caveny produced his clarinet for a rendering of 'Bye Bye, Blackbird.' When the audience cheered not the music but the fact of the priest's having put in an appearance, Hiram muttered to a lanky young black named LeRoy, 'How contemptible!' When LeRoy asked what he meant, Hiram said harshly, 'The condescending priest. Selling our good crab cakes for pennies. And most of all, them lousy whites slidin' down here to see how us niggers live.'
Very softly LeRoy whispered, 'Why don't we run the whole lot out of here?'
The words were like the detonation of a dynamite cap, for without comprehending how he reached the top of a table, Hiram Cater found himself facing the crowd and shouting, 'Get out of here! The party's over!'
His mother, proudly selling her cakes, was one of the first to see her frenzied son, and from his behavior during the past week she knew that he was in some kind of torment. 'Hiram, no!' she cried, but her voice was weak and late.
The two black policemen had been watching Hiram and now moved briskly to drag him from the table, lest he wreck the rally, but before they could grab his knees, LeRoy and three other solemn-faced blacks blocked their way, and LeRoy shouted, 'Kick 'em out, Hiram!'
'We don't want your charity,' Hiram bellowed. 'Take your pennies and go home.'
Up to this point his commotion had produced no effect upon the rally, for only a few patrons had heard him, but one of the policemen, irritated and perhaps frightened by the actions of LeRoy and his gang, began blowing a whistle, and this penetrating, mournful sound produced confusion. Whites began running away from what they feared might be a riot, and as they left the scene Hiram remained atop his table, staring at the ancient, weather-worn school which the white authorities had utilized for half a century as an instrument of oppression and denied opportunity. All Hiram could see was the bleakness of this place, the abbreviated sessions, the ill-prepared teachers and the crowded classrooms in which he had rarely owned a book.
With no plan, no preparatory thought, he cried, 'That damned school!' And before the words died, LeRoy took them up, shouting belligerently, 'We ought to burn the damned thing down!' Hiram, hearing Luta Mae's words, and knowing from his own patient analysis that they would accomplish little, started to warn LeRoy, but the gang was already on its way to the schoolhouse, where fires were lit and wild cries uttered as dry timbers flamed upward in the night.
The effect was intoxicating, and many blacks rushed blazing fagots to ignite other buildings, but when LeRoy himself and two others took their brands to the old A.M.E. Church, Hiram leaped from the table and tried to intercept them. 'Not that! We need it!'
Someone knocked him down, and when he got to his feet he saw his mother and father among those trying vainly to quench the fire. They were powerless and had to withdraw, watching from a distance as the church they loved trembled in the scarlet glow and came crashing down.
Houses were burned, and the corner store which extended credit, and the police substation from which the two black cops operated.
In the hot night the flames roared upward, producing a wild excitement, and irresponsible children began throwing timbers already flaming, and it appeared that all of Frog's Neck might be destroyed.
The town fire engines clanged down the narrow road to the Neck, but rioting blacks held them off, so after two frustrated attempts the firemen departed with the threat: 'We'll let the whole damned place go up.' One of the first of the abandoned spots to go was the Cater cabin, built by the freedman Cudjo long before the Civil War. In one mighty gasp the raging fire consumed what might have become a black shrine, for it contained the room in which Eden Cater had recited _Fourteen Journeys North_. Hiram, watching the cabin disappear, muttered, 'Eden would understand.'
The burning of Patamoke was a curious affair, for the enraged blacks did not throw the torch at a single building occupied by whites; their fury was directed only at the intolerable conditions in which they were forced to live. They burned not because they wanted revenge on whites, but because they hoped that if they destroyed Frog's Neck, something better might take its place. In pursuit of this dream they were willing to sacrifice their homes, their church and their historical heritage.
But as the fire blazed, catching a pine tree now and then and flaming far into the sky, the wind carried sparks westward, and by ugly chance they fell upon the roof of the Paxmore Boatyard, lodging on the shingles and setting the desiccated old structure ablaze.
Now the firemen were free to operate their engines, for no blacks opposed them, but the boatyard was so inflammable, its boards soaked with a century of turpentine and oil, that salvage was impossible. Vast walls of flame swept along the sheds to burst through ceilings and explode roof coverings. Fire companies roared in from a dozen towns, the awed firemen whispering as they raced down country lanes, 'The niggers is burnin' Patamoke.'
Along the Choptank it had always been feared, since the arrival of slaves in 1667, that some night the niggers would rise in rebellion and set fire to white establishments, and now it was happening. Threescore of Turlocks congregated in terror to watch the burning, and untold Cavenys, and when the visiting fire companies were assembled, powerless to fight the blaze, grim Amos Turlock moved among them, issuing guns and one simple command: 'If the niggers try to burn the rest of the town, kill 'em.'
One citizen viewed the fire with numb horror. He was Pusey Paxmore, home from his duties in Washington, and he watched white-faced as his family business crumbled in smoking ash. From time to time he would try to speak, but his mouth would hang open, his eyes riveted on the desolation.
'Mr. Paxmore!' the mayor cried, running up in a night robe. 'We've got to get the National Guard here. You know the right people in Annapolis.' Pusey was unable to respond, and the mayor pleaded, 'Get the troops here, Pusey, or this whole town is gonna go up.'
Paxmore mumbled a name and the mayor ran off, but now a team of firemen grabbed Pusey by the arms and dragged him backward, just in time to escape the last wall as it came crashing with new bursts of flame.
All Pusey Paxmore could see was the death of an enterprise dating back to the 1660s. This boatyard had survived Indian raids, pirate attacks, the force of the British fleet in 1813, even assaults by Confederate freebooters in 1864. Now it was lost, a whole way of life destroyed in one foul night by neighbors. He could not believe that the blacks of Patamoke, to whom his family had been so considerate, could have done this evil thing.
'They did it,' a policeman assured him.
'Who?'
'Our black policemen say it was started by Hiram Cater. Brother to that girl in jail.'
'Arrest him!' And he raged off to telephone friends in the F.B.I.
Hiram was not arrested that night, for as soon as he saw that the fire had spread to the boatyard, he knew he must quit this town, and as he ran to find some car he might commandeer for a swift run to Pennsylvania, he was joined by LeRoy, who gloated over what he had accomplished.
'You shouldn't have burned the church,' Hiram said as they ran.
'It all had to go,' LeRoy replied.
'But not the boatyard. You can burn black homes and get away with it. But when you burn a white man's business...'
LeRoy spotted a Buick he thought he could start, and as he finagled with the wires, Hiram looked back on the blaze. 'We are in big trouble,' he said.
# _Voyage Thirteen: 1976_
ON JULY 2, 1976, AMANDA PAXMORE SET FORTH TO recover a husband who had brought contumely upon himself, his wife, his children and his nation, and that was a burden which might have destroyed a lesser person.
She was equal to the task and never once did she try to avoid it. When news reached Peace Cliff that she could send someone, she controlled herself, coughed slightly and told the government prosecutor who had left Washington for the small town in Pennsylvania, 'Three tomorrow afternoon? I'll be there.'
'You're coming? Yourself?' he had asked.
'Who better?'
Replacing the phone, she had gone to the yard to call Martin Caveny, brother to the priest, who was mowing the grass so the place would look presentable on the Fourth. 'I'll need the motorboat. Seven tomorrow morning. To Annapolis.'
'Can I bring Amos Turlock?' Caveny asked quickly, for he liked to share excursions with his crony. 'Since we'll be crossing the bay, that is.'
'Isn't he rather old for such work?'
'With Amos it's never work.'
'Bring him along. He'll be a companion while you wait for me in Annapolis.'
When she reached the door to the house she looked back to see Caveny scurrying to put away the lawn mower, then rushing off to find his playfellow. She judged accurately that on the morrow, while she drove the rented car to Scanderville, they would be getting merrily drunk in some Annapolis bar.
'God bless them,' she said in a sudden wave of compassion. 'The sots.'
As soon as Caveny disposed of the mower, he jumped into his shattered Chevy and roared into Sunset Acres, yelling at each filling station, 'You seen Amos?' No one knew where the vagrant was, but finally a black boy said, 'He down at the river, fishin'.' And when Caveny ran out to the edge of the river, there was Amos, propped against a tussock, his hat well over his face.
'Amos!' Caveny shouted. 'We're goin' to Annapolis.'
Turlock half rolled sideways, propped himself on his arm and said, 'Now that's good news. Who's takin' us?'
'We got Mrs. Paxmore's motor launch.'
Amos looked at his accustomed partner suspiciously. 'How come she let you have it?'
'Because she's goin' along.'
'What's she to do in Annapolis?'
'I wondered myself. She told me, "You two can wait at the dock. We'll sail back at six." You know what I think?'
Amos rose from his hassock and reeled in his line. 'What's cookin'?' he asked gravely.
'I calculate that while you and me is at the dock, she'll be hirin' a car and drivin' to Scanderville.'
'Ain't been nothin' on television.'
'I'll bet that's what it is.'
The two men climbed into the Chevy and hurried back to Sunset Acres, stopping at the trailer which Amos now occupied with a woman who had deserted her husband in Crisfield. 'Midge,' he bellowed, 'you hear anything on the TV about Scanderville?'
'I ain't heard nothin'.'
Almost admiringly, Amos told Caveny, 'And she watches the tube all day.'
'Even so, that's my bet,' the Irishman said. 'Let's have some beer.' When the cans were opened, the partners sat on the trailer porch gazing at the statuary that crowded the lawn, and whenever a neighbor came by, Amos would shout, 'You hear any news about Scanderville?' No one had.
'If that's her target,' Caveny said, 'ain't no woman in Maryland could handle it better.'
'You like her, don't you?' Turlock asked as he pitched his beer can into the ditch beyond the picket fence.
'She's strong.'
'Don't she yell at you a lot?' Amos hated to be yelled at by people who hired him. 'They yell at me once, I'm off,' he said.
'She has her ways, but you don't have to listen,' Caveny said. 'But I'll tell you this, Amos, whenever my kids or the missus gets sick, it's Mrs. Paxmore who takes over.'
'Seems to me,' Amos said after getting another can of beer, 'that if she'd taken care of her husband a little bit, instead of your kids, ever'thing would of been better.'
Caveny pondered this, twisting his beer can in his palms and blowing into the triangular opening. Finally he said, 'On that I got no opinion. In a hunnerd years I'll never understand what happened to Pusey Paxmore.'
Turlock took a long swig on his beer, then placed the can judiciously on the bench beside him. 'Only person who does understand is Richard Nixon, and he ain't tellin'.'
'You're goddamn right he ain't. Would you, livin' like a king out there in San Clementime?'
Amos swilled deep and allowed as how it probably would remain a mystery. 'At least to me.'
In the morning the two men had the motorboat waiting at Peace Cliff when Amanda Paxmore came down the long walk in a summer dress, carrying two heavy sweaters, which she asked the men to stow. Caveny, noticing that she had brought two, looked knowingly at Amos, as if to say, 'I win the bet.'
'Shove off,' she said, and the men pushed the boat away from the dock. When the motor caught, Martin Caveny called out, 'I'm headin' due west to clear the point, then straight to Annapolis.'
She nodded, and thought how perverse it was that this day promised to be one of the most serene the bay had known in years. There to the right lay Oxford dreaming sleepily on the Tred Avon. Four early cars of tourists were riding the little ferry across to Bellevue, with at least a dozen children gaping and yelling directions to their parents.
When the ferry passed out of sight Amanda looked to the south, where the fragments of Devon Island could still be seen. There were the chimneys and the eastern walls of Rosalind's Revenge, fighting to stay erect, as if the indomitable will of that great woman still fortified them.
What a sad sight, Amanda said to herself. Almost an omen for a day like this. A ruin... The word came uneasily to her lips, but she repeated it: A ruin...
Caveny seeing her lips move, asked, 'What's that?'
'I was looking at the old house,' she replied.
'You won't be lookin' long,' he said.
They reached Annapolis at nine-thirty and pulled into the dock of a private marina, where two young men waited with a rented car and papers for Mrs. Paxmore to sign. As soon as she had done so, they handed her the keys and sped off in a second car, which they had brought with them.
'What'd I tell you?' Caveny asked. Turlock shrugged his shoulders. 'No big deal. She rented a car.'
'I should be back about six,' she told the men.
Caveny almost had to bite his tongue to keep from asking if she was headed for Scanderville. He refrained, nodded politely and said, 'We'll watch things for you.'
Mrs. Paxmore had not expected him to say this, and the charming way he did, as if he were a loyal retainer, disarmed her. Her voice caught and she almost burst into tears. Ripping open her purse, she produced a ten-dollar bill and jammed it into Caveny's hand. 'Have yourself a good time. Get some crabs and beer.' She grasped Turlock's hands and said, 'Enjoy yourselves. Damnit, if we enjoyed ourselves more...' She hurried to the car, wiped her eyes and drove north.
She found Route 2, which took her to Route 695, the superhighway circumnavigating Baltimore. From it she exited onto Route 83, which carried her into Pennsylvania, and when she was well north of Harrisburg she turned west for the small town of Scanderville, where the federal penitentiary stood.
It was a new type of prison, minimum security it was called, and it possessed no towering stone ramparts or twists of barbed wire. The main building looked much like the office of a prosperous motel, built in semi-Colonial style with white pillars, and there were green lawns. But it was a prison, nevertheless, and to it had been sent many of the distinguished and well-educated men who had participated, one way or another, in the great scandal of Watergate. All had originally been sentenced to three- or four-year terms, but because some had cooperated with government prosecutors, these had been diminished to six or eight months.
Pusey Paxmore, a minor figure in this attempt to subvert the government of the United States, was not one whose term had been shortened. He had refused to reveal the names of others, had refused to plead ignorance of what he had done, or to beg for mercy in any way. At both the Watergate hearings and his trial he had been a stubborn defender of the President.
Before the television cameras of the nation he had said, 'Unless you were in Washington in the summer of 1970 you cannot comprehend the dangers this nation faced.'
'Were they sufficient,' a young lawyer had asked, 'to warrant your breaking the basic laws of our land?'
'They were,' he had replied.
'You are testifying under oath that you knew what you were doing, and that you judged the temper of the times to justify those illegal, immoral and criminal acts?'
'You have asked two questions.'
'Then, please,' the young government lawyer said with extreme politeness, 'answer them one at a time.'
'I intend to. First you ask if I judged that the situation at the time was crucial. With rioting in the streets. With publications openly announcing the destruction of our system. With planned destruction of public institutions. Yes, the situation could have been fatal to our form of society and particularly to our form of government. Second, you ask if what I did was done with the knowledge that it was illegal and immoral... and some other word which I forget.'
'Criminal,' the young lawyer said helpfully.
'Yes, criminal. None of my acts were criminal.'
'Your assessment of your behavior is in sharp contrast to the way every well-intentioned man and woman in this nation sees it. They judge your acts to have been illegal, immoral and criminal.'
'That's the judgment now,' Paxmore had replied stubbornly.
'You suggest there will be a later judgment.'
'I certainly do.'
His refusal to bend had earned him a sentence of two years at Scanderville, and he had served it. Now he was being set free.
Some miles east of Scanderville, Amanda was flagged down by a mounted policeman, and before she could protest that she had been doing less than fifty—which was true, for she was apprehensive about entering the penitentiary town—he asked politely, 'Are you Mrs. Paxmore?'
'I am.'
'I've been sent to intercept you. There's press in town, and they might ask questions.'
'I would expect them to,' she said.
'Don't you want me to slip you in through the back?'
'Sooner or later I'll have to come out through the front.'
He felt rebuffed. 'That's your headache,' he said.
'It is indeed,' she said, throwing the car into gear and driving into the town.
As soon as her presence became known, a group of seven newsmen, some with cameras, descended upon her, pressing her to answer a veritable barrage of unassociated questions. In her neat summer dress, with her hair pulled back Quaker-fashion, she stood beside her car in the hot sun and responded briefly to every interrogation:
...'I have no feelings about President Nixon. I voted for George McGovern.'
...'My husband was honored when asked to serve at the White House. He respected the President, and from what I hear, did an excellent job.'
...'No, my husband did not ask that I drive up here today. Nobody asked me. Whom better could I have sent?'
...'Remorse? Every day of my life I experience remorse over something. Have you ever taken a faithful old dog to a veterinary to be put to death? That remorse lives with you for the rest of your life.'
...'Our nation has survived a score of disasters. If we elect Jimmy Carter this autumn, we'll have survived Watergate.'
...'I was never easy in the Nixon White House, but my husband worked for him and considered him one of the ablest administrators he knew.'
...'Naturally, I have often thought of President Nixon sitting free in San Clemente while my husband sat in this prison, and only because he did what Nixon directed. But long ago I learned that life does not dispense justice, and I do not expect it. I have absolutely no hard feelings, as you phrase it, against President Nixon.'
...'Yes, my husband is a Quaker, as I am. Yes, Nixon was a Quaker and so was Herbert Hoover. I think the lesson to be drawn is, "Don't send Quakers to Washington." '
...'I left home at seven this morning, crossed the Chesapeake Bay in a small boat, and will cross back tonight.'
...'Of course we intend to live where we live now. The Paxmores have lived there since 1664. The house was burned once and fired on three other times. Today is merely one more incident in a long, long history.'
...'You ask if I am as hard as my replies might indicate. No sensible answer can be given to that question. We live in an age when it is not customary for people to speak their minds. In an age when it is not usual for a man like my husband to refuse to crybaby and plead for mercy for wrongs he did not do. You call it hardness. You ought to get out in the countryside and find out how many hard people there are in this nation. People who give straightforward answers to devious questions. Now I must go in and fetch my husband.'
The motorcycle policeman who had wanted to smuggle Mrs. Paxmore in through the back door said to an associate, 'That cookie don't need no help from us,' and his friend replied, 'I wish Mabel could of heard her. She's always warnin' me not to speak up when Lieutenant Grabert is throwin' his weight around.' But the first man said, 'She'd be a tough one to be married to,' and the second said, 'I wish Mabel was a little tougher. She's like livin' with a panful of cookie dough.'
# Refuge
WHENEVER A NEWCOMER SETTLED ON THE EASTERN Shore he was obligated to declare himself on three vital points: Are you Protestant or Catholic? Republican or Democrat? And do you favor Chesapeake retrievers or Labradors? The way in which he answered these questions determined his status in society.
He was free to answer as he wished, for Catholics and Democrats were tolerated, and a stranger could build a satisfactory life regardless of his classification. Of course, the political question did present some difficulties, because definitions on the Eastern Shore were somewhat arbitrary and many a newcomer found himself confused when arguing with a local Democrat whose social opinions were far to the right of Genghis Khan.
For example, Jefferson Steed, who had served two terms in Congress, was universally known as 'that radical,' and questions about the Russian revolution or the spread of communism were customarily referred to him on the grounds that 'Jeff would know about that, him bein' so radical.'
Steed was against labor unions, against women's rights, in favor of child labor, strongly opposed to integration of schools, against ministers who brought politics into their sermons, vigorously opposed to the federal income tax and distrustful of any foreign alliance. He believed in a powerful army, the supremacy of the white race and the omnipotence of J. Edgar Hoover. Yet the community classified him as radical because in November 1944 he had voted for a fourth term for Franklin Roosevelt on the theory that 'you shouldn't change horses in midstream.'
One confused emigrant from the biting winters of Minnesota said, 'I love the Eastern Shore, its seventeenth-century architecture, eighteenth-century charm and nineteenth-century congressman.' Steed considered this a compliment.
As to the dogs, those city northerners who had always dreamed of a snarling beast protecting their rural demesnes, or who wanted to pursue honest hunting, chose the Chesapeake, while those who believed that a dog should be part of the family, a kind of perpetual five-year-old, forever young, forever loving, preferred the Labrador. Each encountered many neighbors of similar persuasion.
When the newcomer arrived he found an immediate friend in Washburn Turlock, head of the prestigious firm of realtors who seemed to control most of the good locations. Once inside the Turlock office, with its Colonial furniture, North Carolina hooked rugs and subdued light illuminating transparencies of beautiful waterfront homes, the prospective buyer was lost. His surrender became complete when Washburn himself appeared, all blandishment in his three-button vested suit, to nail down the deal.
'Prices are high,' he confessed, 'but where in America can you find comparable values? Our water, our sunsets? Crabs and oysters in your own stretch of river?' Land which Steeds and Turlocks had bought for ten cents an acre now sold at $55,600 for a two-acre plot, and such land had no road, no well, no house, no convenience, no virtue of any kind except one: it faced water.
In August 1976, when the real estate season was about to begin, Washburn Turlock convened his sales staff for a pep talk which would set the future course for his agency. As his fourteen salesmen finished their coffee, he startled them by distributing without comment his new advertising brochure. It was a shocker. From the cover leered a cartoon resemblance of Washburn dressed as a buccaneer, with sword, tricorn hat and pistol. Bold lettering proclaimed TURLOCK THE PIRATE, A MAN YOU CAN TRUST.
When the gasps had subsided, he informed his people that from here on, this was to be the sales pitch of the Turlock agency, and he directed their attention to the first inside page, which contained a brief, well-written account of selected Turlocks who had occupied Eastern Shore lands for more than three centuries:
The original Timothy was no Virginia Cavalier. He appears to have been a petty thief who served his first years as a bonded servant, euphemism for slave.
This was too much for one of the women, who asked in a rather gray voice, 'Washburn, do you think that wise?'
'Read on,' he told her.
Much was made of General Washington's lauding of Teach Turlock, who was presented as a pirate devoting his energies to patriotic causes, while Matt Turlock was offered as a hero of the War of 1812. It was an exciting brochure, modern, witty, directed precisely to the kinds of clients the Turlock agency hoped to attract. But it was what Washburn said in his sales pitch that morning that set the pattern for the new era:
#x2018;The old days are gone, and if any of you are indissolubly linked to them, get out now. For new days are upon us. What are the characteristics, you ask. Well, I'll tell you.
#x2018;This agency no longer has any interest in properties selling for less than a hundred and fifty thousand dollars. Now, I know that some cheap clients will find their way to us. Can't escape them. But you can take a client only once to a ninety-thousand property. If he wants it, all right. If he doesn't make up his mind on that trip, drop him. Let someone else make that sale. We're not interested.
#x2018;The reason I say this is simple. Who buys the cheap property, the place at ninety thousand? Some young couple. They keep it for forty years, and what good does that do us? One commission and that's the end. But who buys the real property? The one for half a million? Some retired geezer in his late sixties. Lives in it five years and finds it too big to handle. Turns it back to us to sell. My father told me, "You get yourself four good properties at half a million each, you'll find one of them coming back on the market every year. You just keep selling those four year after year, you got yourself a good living."
#x2018;We are after the client who thinks of a quarter of a million as nothing... chicken feed. We are going to wine him and dine him and three years later sell him a new place for half a million. What we're really after is the million-dollar sale. On our lists right now we have eleven properties at more than a million each. Get out and sell them.
#x2018;The secret of such salesmanship is to think like a millionaire. What would you like? Who would you like to do business with? That's the reason for this new brochure... this new attack. Four billboards go up this week with the pirate theme. Why? Because a rich man is himself a pirate. That's why he's rich. He'll want to do business with me. He'll see me as a kindred spirit. You watch, this campaign will prove a gold mine.
#x2018;But the second part is also important. Turlock, a man you can trust. We emphasize that in everything we do. A client hands us a deposit, then changes his mind. We are happier to refund his money than we were to take it. He'll remember and come back. A young couple comes in here with forty thousand dollars. You bring them to me, and I'll explain that right now we don't happen to have anything in that price range. I give them coffee. I take them by the arm and lead them across the street to Gibbons, who does handle cheapies. I give them a brochure and ask them to let me know what they find. And later, when they have two hundred thousand to spend, they'll come back to us.
'When you get hold of a real client, provide what he expects—the history, the charm, the security, the gracious living. I was appalled when I found that Henry here had allowed that old shack on the Fortness place to be torn down. Henry! Didn't you realize you had a gold mine in that shack? Have the owner spend two thousand dollars propping it up, then tell the clients, "These were the slave quarters." Don't you know that every man who comes down here from up North wants to imagine himself as the master of a great plantation... cracking the whip... overseeing the cotton. A good slave quarters on a piece of land increases the price by fifty thou.'
His intuitions were correct, and Turlock the Pirate became not only the most prosperous agency on the shore, but also the most talked about. Its agents wore conservative suits, drove black cars, spoke in low voices about Rembrandt Peale's having lived in this house, or Francis Asbury's having stayed in that one during his famous revival. The firm concentrated upon those houses located on the best rivers, and Washburn instructed his agents:
'When clients ask you what the best locations are—how the various rivers rank socially, that is—you must tell them the story of the American military expert who went to Berlin to find out about the relative ranks in the German forces. An aide to the Kaiser explained, "First there's God. No, first there's God and the Kaiser. Then the cavalry officer. Then the cavalry officer's horse. Then absolutely nothing for a long, long way. And then the infantry officer."
'On the Eastern Shore there's the Tred Avon and its tributaries, Peachblossom and Trippe. Then there's nothing for a long, long way. Then there's Broad Creek but certainly not Harris. Then again there's nothing for a long way. Then we have the Miles and the Wye and the north bank of the Choptank. After that, there's absolutely nothing.
'If someone should ask about land south of the Choptank, you're to say, "It's rather attractive... if you like mosquitoes." But never take your car over that bridge. Turlock people are not seen on the other side.'
Washburn was in his office one September morning when what he judged to be an almost ideal client appeared. He was in his middle sixties, distinguished in appearance, had a gray mustache and was conservative in dress. He drove a Buick station wagon stylishly weatherbeaten, probably a '74. He moved as if he knew what he was about, and when his wife appeared, she wore expensive low shoes and soft tweeds. They both looked like hunters, but they had no dog.
'Hullo,' the visitor said deferentially to the girl at the reception desk.
'I'm Owen Steed.'
'Of the local Steeds?'
'Way back.'
Washburn came out of his office, smiled graciously at his receptionist and asked, 'Could I intrude, please?'
'This is Owen Steed,' she said.
'I thought I heard that name. I'm Washburn Turlock.'
'We've seen your signs. My wife said she thought...'
'I do a little genealogy,' Mrs. Steed said quietly. 'Weren't the Steeds and the Turlocks...'
'Intimately,' Turlock said. 'When my ancestors were pirates, yours were being ducked in the river for being witches. Unsavory lot, I'm afraid.'
'Ah, yes,' Mrs. Steed said. 'Rosalind's Revenge. Is it by chance still occupied...'
'A ruin,' Turlock replied, and without allowing the visitors to sit down, he suggested that he drive them to the wharf at Peace Cliff, where he was sure the Paxmores...
'Paxmore?' Mr. Steed asked.
'Yes, they're an old family. Quakers.'
'I'd rather not impose...'
'They wouldn't care, I'm sure.' He reached for the phone to see if he could utilize the Paxmore dock for a short trip to Devon Island, but Mr. Steed thrust his hand out so imperatively to prevent the call that Turlock dropped the idea. 'We'll go to a wharf closer in,' he suggested, and Mr. Steed quickly assented, 'That would be better.'
Washburn Turlock had discovered that in selling really large properties, there was no substitute for taking his clients to them by boat, and he maintained three or four powerboats at spots convenient for exploring the Tred Avon and what he termed 'the better rivers.' There was something about seeing the Eastern Shore from the water that was ravishing; it destroyed inhibitions and opened pocketbooks. In proposing to show the Steeds their ancestral home, he intended to assault their memories and soften them up for the real sale he intended making later, but since this subsequent property stood on water, he observed a fundamental rule of the Turlock agency: 'Never show an important property at low tide. The client may be shocked at how shallow our water is.' So he stole a furtive glance at a special German wristwatch he wore; it showed not time but the condition of the tide—was it high or low? What he saw satisfied him; the tide was coming in. 'We're off to see one of the great mansions of the Eastern Shore,' he cried.
On the short trip across the Choptank he found that Owen Steed had gone to Princeton, like so many of his uncles, and from there had entered the oil business, in Tulsa, where he had risen to the rank of president of Western Oil. He had retired, apparently with what Washburn always referred to as a bundle, and was now seeking to renew his acquaintance with his past. He was a prime prospect for one of the million-dollar establishments.
'Did you grow up at Devon?' Turlock asked as the boat entered the creek.
'I was born there, but I grew up with the Refuge Steeds.'
No information could have excited Washburn more. He had on his list a plantation of two hundred acres at the Refuge that would excite any potential buyer, but would be irresistible to a returning Steed.
The visit to Rosalind's Revenge had precisely the effect Turlock sought. As the visitors landed at the crumbling wharf he said, 'From here the Steed ships sailed to England,' and as they climbed the disintegrating path he said, 'Some of these trees go back two hundred years.' At the mansion, its roof almost gone, he pointed out the two cannonballs lodged in the moldering wall and the great room in which Webster and Calhoun had dined. He was meticulous in his orchestration, allowing some grandeur to sink in but not enough to induce melancholy.
'Couldn't this be restored?' Mr. Steed asked.
'Of course,' Turlock said promptly. 'Except that the island's disintegrating.'
He showed them how the persistent northwest storms had eroded Devon to the point that many of the slave buildings had fallen into the bay, and the visitors were satisfied that any chance of salvaging the famous old mansion had vanished decades ago. Mrs. Steed started to utter regrets about the loss, but Turlock quickly diverted her to happier possibilities. 'While we have the boat,' he said in an offhand way, 'why don't we look at a little piece of land that's come on the market recently? One of the old Steed places. The Refuge.'
As they passed beneath Peace Cliff he observed Mr. Steed looking with some interest at the telescope house, then quickly looking away, but he attached no significance to the incident. Mrs. Steed, however, wanted to talk about the house, and Turlock told her that it represented the best seventeenth-century style. 'One of our architectural glories. That and the Patamoke meeting house.'
He was about to comment on the telescope construction, knowing that prospective clients enjoyed information about architecture, when he saw Mr. Steed staring back at the Paxmore house. Immediately he changed his tone, observing brightly, 'Now we're heading for Steed Creek.' He paused, tried to estimate the degree of interest these two had in a real purchase, then added, 'The creek invites you to look around... as a former resident.' Mrs. Steed smiled.
Then the boat slowed, and Turlock adeptly turned it so that his passengers could catch a glimpse of the peninsula on which the Chop-tank chieftain Pentaquod had built his refuge in 1605. A lawn of more than an acre swept down from a substantial house surrounded by oaks and loblollies; a solid wharf jutted out from the shore, inviting someone to tie his boat; small white buildings stood to one side; and all about the place reigned a quietness that calmed the spirit.
The silence was broken not by the chugging of the motor, which Turlock had prudently killed, but by a loud raucous cry from one of the streamlets that defined the peninsula. It was a kind of cry that Mrs. Steed had never heard before, and as she looked about in some consternation, she saw above her a gray-blue bird with a long projecting beak and very long trailing legs.
' _Kraannk, kraannk!_ ' it called. Then, seeing the boat, it veered away, to land a short distance up the creek.
'What is it?' she asked, and Turlock told her, 'Great blue heron. You'll have scores of them here.' It was a bold tactic, this speaking as if the client already owned the place, but sometimes it worked.
'We'll take it,' Mr. Steed said.
Washburn was not prepared for this and he started to say, 'But we haven't mentioned—'
Mr. Steed interrupted him, 'We'll take it.'
'But the price...'
'You can haggle with Mrs. Steed, and I warn you, she's damned good at haggling.'
Mrs. Steed said nothing. The peninsula was so magnificent, so infinitely better than she had imagined the Eastern Shore could be when contemplated from Oklahoma, that she felt no need to comment. Instead she leaned over and kissed her husband. Owen Steed had come home.
The Steeds never doubted that they had picked up a bargain. For $810,000 they acquired not only the Refuge itself, two hundred and ten choice acres with 9,015 feet of waterfront and all the buildings pertaining to the old plantation, but also two adjacent farms providing an additional three hundred acres of cornfields and woodland. 'The beauty of the cornfields,' Washburn Turlock explained shortly after they moved in, 'is that when they're harvested you can leave generous amounts of corn, which ensures geese unlimited. You can have three different sets of blinds—in the water, on the shore and in pits throughout your fields. Mr. Steed, you can entertain half of Oklahoma, come next November.'
'That's hardly what I had in mind,' Steed replied.
'You could lease them out and earn back your taxes.'
'That won't be necessary.'
'What I mean, with the exposures you have, the geese are going to flock here. You could pick up six, seven thousand dollars a year for hunting permissions.'
Ethel Steed interrupted by wanting to know where she could find someone to drive four pilings into the creek bed, and her husband asked, 'Whatever for?' and she said cryptically, 'You'd never believe what the men at the store told me,' and when the pilings were driven she wanted to know where she could locate an ironworker to forge her some shallow steel baskets. This was too much, and Steed demanded to know what foolishness she was up to, and she teased, 'Wait till spring comes, and you'll see something striking... if the men at the store weren't pulling my leg.'
It was a long wait. December 1976 was fearfully cold, and even men in their eighties could recall no similar season when every expanse of water, from the merest creek to the great bay itself, froze solid. Winds howled down out of Canada with such heavy burdens of freezing air that thermometers dropped to historic lows, and the weather station at the mouth of the Choptank announced that this was the coldest winter ever recorded. Not even the remembered freezes of the 1670s surpassed this brutal year.
It was a trying time for the Steeds; Owen had promised his wife respite from the thundering winters of Oklahoma—'You'll find the Eastern Shore a gentle place... a little frost now and then.' This became their theme during the protracted freeze. Mrs. Steed would rise, see the unbroken snow, the creeks frozen so solid that trucks could cross them, and she would say, 'A little frost now and then.'
The long weeks of subfreezing weather—the whole month of January with the thermometer rarely above thirty-two—did not inconvenience the Steeds insofar as their own comfort was concerned. Their new home was snug; the fireplaces worked; the Turlock boy who cut wood from the forest kept a comforting stack beside the door; and it was rather fun to test oneself against the bitter cold. They walked together, bundled in ski suits, to all corners of their estate, and found delight in picking their way across frozen streams or pushing through marsh grass that crackled when they touched it. It was a challenging winter but one warm in associations, and they discovered that what they had hoped for back in Oklahoma was happening: they were growing closer to each other. They talked more; they watched television less; and certainly they spent more time together both indoors and out.
The difficult part of the winter came with the birds. One morning Ethel Steed rose to look out her window at the familiar scene of snow and ice and saw to her horror that a whole congregation of ducks had gathered on the left fork of the creek, trying futilely to break the ice so that they could feed.
'Owen! Look at this!' He joined her and saw that these creatures were famished. For six weeks they had been cut off from grasses at the bottom of creeks and rivers; they had been able to dive for nothing; their feeding places were frozen solid.
The Steeds put in urgent phone calls to their neighbors, and the advice they got was concise and harsh: 'Mr. Steed, thousands of birds are perishing. Worst place of all is the creeks around your home. What to do? Feed them, damnit. Buy all the corn you can afford and scatter it along the edges of the ice.'
Without waiting for breakfast, they jumped into their station wagon, maneuvered it carefully down frozen roads and hurried out into the country east of Patamoke. They stopped at a dozen different farms, begging for corn, and when they had purchased a load which tested the springs of their Buick, they directed other farmers to the Refuge, buying from them as much corn as they could deliver.
They hurried home with their cargo, broke open the bags and began scattering the corn broadcast along the ice, and before they were half through with their work, great flocks of ducks and geese moved in, sometimes to within six feet of where they worked, and it was clear that the birds were starving.
For three days the Steeds bought corn, spending more than a thousand dollars, but when they saw how desperately the fowl needed it, how hungrily they waited for the Steeds to appear, they felt more than rewarded. Never before had they seen waterfowl at such close quarters, and when a flock of seventeen white swans flew in, emaciated and near death, Mrs. Steed broke into tears.
Her husband halted this in a hurry. 'Let's get the axes and break a hole in the ice. Those birds are dying for water.'
So in their fashionable hunting togs they worked until heavy sweat poured from their bodies, trying to hack an open space in ice two feet thick, and then Owen had an idea: 'I remember a Currier and Ives print in which they sawed the ice.' He fetched a long saw, and after making a hole in the ice, widened it out to an opening about ten feet on the side. Before he was done, more than three hundred birds had flown in to compete for the water.
For two days the Steeds did little but stay at the hole, watching the splendid birds as they ate and bathed. 'They'll explode!' Ethel Steed said, but the birds continued to gorge themselves. Then she began trying to identify them; with the aid of color plates she was able to spot the green-headed mallard and the copper-headed canvasback, but that was about all. There were at least twelve other breeds which her husband could rattle off: 'Black, gadwall, redhead, teal, scaup...' Once he had hunted ducks with a powerful gun and good eye; now he was content to feed them.
It was while endeavoring to explain the difference between a buffle-head and a baldpate that he had his bright idea. Running to the house, he telephoned Annapolis and after some delay got Admiral Stainback. 'Spunky, this is Owen Steed. Tulsa. Yes, good to hear you, too. Spunky, can you hire me a helicopter? I know you can't get hold of a Navy one. But there must be...'
The admiral, a crisp Oklahoma man who had done much business with Steed's company, wanted to know why his old friend should need a helicopter, and when Owen explained that it was a mission of mercy, saving a hundred thousand geese, he said, 'Hell, that would justify one of our choppers!' And he asked for specific landing instructions.
Within an hour a Navy helicopter landed at the Refuge, within fifteen feet of the barn, and was loaded with bags of corn. Admiral Stainback sat in back with Ethel, while Owen rode co-pilot to do the navigating. With graceful ease the chopper lifted into the air, tilted to starboard and swept at low altitude up one river after another, while the passengers in back ripped open bags of corn, scattering the golden kernels across the frozen rivers.
It was a trip that dazzled the Steeds: each pond of water, no matter how small, reflected from its icy surface the shimmering rays of the sun; each cove was a frozen diadem. Marvelously attractive were the thin strands of rivulets which in summer would go undetected; in frozen splendor they shone like veins of silver. The relationship of water to land was sharply defined; the mystery of the Eastern Shore lay revealed, this wedding of snow-covered land and bejeweled rivers.
Even when the bags were empty and their muscles tired, the Steeds did not want the flight to end, for they were seeing a wilderness of beauty that might never be repeated. Generations could pass before the shore would again be frozen as it was this day, so when Admiral Stainback asked on the intercom, 'Shall we head back now?' Owen said into his microphone, 'I'd like to see how the Choptank develops,' and Stainback said, 'Said and done. Pilot, fly to the headwaters.'
With lovely, falling, sideways motion the helicopter dipped low toward the mouth of the frozen river, then turned east and flew slowly up the river that Steeds had occupied for so long. There was the mansion, half eaten away by summer storms, its widow's walk collapsed. There was Peace Cliff and the red roofs of Sunset Acres, where the marsh had been. Here were the gaping, rusted girders of what had been the Paxmore Boatyard, and beyond it the new red-brick homes in Frog's Neck, replacing the burned-out wooden shacks. But it was east of Patamoke that the Choptank became most memorable, for here vast marshes spread along the shore, marked now and then by rotting piers to which the ancient steamboats had come, all white and silver and shot with romance; now the pilings were eaten to the waterline and silt filled the harbors where women in bombazine had once waited for their lovers returning from Baltimore. How noisy it had been then; how silent now.
There were the long stretches of river totally unoccupied, looking much as they had in 1700, and up toward the end the vast, rusting sheds at Denton where huge riverboats had once brought their cargos of guano from Peru. Beyond lay the flat fields of Delaware in which the river rose, and beyond them the vast Atlantic Ocean, whose waters salted the Chesapeake and all its estuaries.
As they flew at a few hundred feet above this frozen wonderland, Ethel saw from time to time some hole broken in the ice by mysterious forces; often the opening was no larger than a tennis court, but about it clustered thousands of birds, desperate for water, and often, at a distance from the opening, lay swans and geese and ducks whose feet had frozen to the ice, holding them prisoner till they died.
'We can go home now,' Owen said from his front seat, and like a homing pigeon the helicopter twirled, found its heading and crossed frozen fields to the Refuge.
There was one aspect of that fearful winter to which the Steeds would never refer; it was too painful.
One morning as Owen was shaving he heard the mournful cry of the heron—' _Kraannk, kraannk!_ '—and he looked out to see two gaunt birds, whose habits he had studied with loving attention, land on the ice and walk in long awkward steps to those spots at which they had so often fed, hoping to find them free of ice, that they might fish.
Desperately they pecked at the unyielding surface. Then, with mounting terror, for they were starving, they hammered at the ice with their feet, a kind of death-dance. Accomplishing nothing, they pecked again, their long necks driving sharp bills with a force which would have broken normal ice. But this was different, and the poor birds moved from spot to spot, frustrated.
'Darling!' Steed called to Ethel in the bedroom. 'We've got to do something for the herons.'
'Are they back?'
'They were. Trying to find open water.'
'Why don't they eat the corn? Or go where the ducks are?'
The water at the big opening was too deep for them to fish; corn was a food they did not eat. What they required was some wading place in which they could feed in their accustomed manner, and across the entire Eastern Shore there were no such places.
The Steeds would make one. All morning they sweated at the onerous job of breaking ice along the shore, and by noon they had laid open a considerable waterway. They were eating a late lunch when they heard the familiar and now-loved cry, and they ran to the window to watch their friends feed.
But in those few minutes ice had formed again and the birds found nothing. In panic they tested all their feeding places, and all were barren.
'What will they do?' Mrs. Steed cried, tears in her eyes.
Owen, studying the birds with his glasses, saw how emaciated they were, but had not the courage to inform his wife of their certain doom. The herons, stepping along like ballerinas grown old, tried one last time to penetrate the ice, looked down in bewilderment and flew off to their frozen roosts. They were seen no more.
During the first five months of residence at the Refuge, Owen Steed followed one invariable rule. Whenever he left the plantation in his car, he turned right, even though an excellent road ran to the left toward various places he would normally have wished to visit. But that road also led past the Paxmore place, and he was not yet ready for such an excursion. But in February he relaxed, and one morning told his wife, 'I think it's about time I saw Pusey,' and she replied, 'I was wondering how long you could delay.'
He dressed carefully, as if for hunting, heavy shoes, rough tweed jacket, canvaslike trousers, a hound's-tooth cap. He wanted to appear casual, with no touch of the business administrator, but when he looked at himself in the hall mirror he felt disgusted: Totally fake. And he returned to his dressing room for khaki pants, plaid shirt and corduroy jacket: At least I look honest. He winced at the inappropriateness of this word.
He was not pleased with himself as he drove to the end of his drive, turned slowly left and headed for Peace Cliff. He had not seen Pusey Paxmore since that day in August 1972 when the prim Quaker had visited Tulsa. Who could forget that day—more than four years ago, almost five centuries away in moral significance? When he saw the plain entrance to the Paxmore lands, and the road leading up to the telescope house, he wanted to pass on, but realized that to do so would be craven: With no enthusiasm he turned into the lane, noticed favorably the crape myrtle trees which would be lovely in July, and parked by the front door.
After he knocked, it was some moments before anyone answered. Then he heard shuffling footsteps, a twisting of the old lock on the door and a creaking hinge. What happened next surprised him, for when the door finally opened he found neither Pusey nor his wife. Instead, a slatternly woman who seemed quite out of place in the neat telescope house growled, 'So you've come to take over?' And before he could respond, she slipped past him, jumped into a ramshackle pickup and spun her tires in the gravel.
'Who are you?' Steed shouted.
'Lily Turlock. You'll find him upstairs.' And she was gone.
When he turned back to the house he heard a fumbling at the door. 'Who's out there?' a tremulous voice inquired. Then plaintively: 'Oh, it's you, Owen. I wondered when you'd come. Do step in.'
The door opened slowly, as if the man inside had no spare strength, and then Steed saw the trembling figure. He was aghast. In the old days Pusey Paxmore had been a proper Quaker, erect, bright of eye and modest of manner; his principal characteristic had been his reserve and the heightened intellectuality he brought to any discussion. But now, his hair completely white and his cheeks sunken, he seemed almost a derelict. To compare this wasted figure with its trim predecessor was most painful. Steed, realizing that some greeting had to be offered, said quickly, 'How you doing, Pusey?'
'One adjusts.'
'I'm retired, too. Bought the Refuge.'
'So I heard. Come in.' Paxmore led the way into a living room whose large windows overlooked the Choptank; they had been a renovation in the 1960s when Pusey was earning considerable sums in government. 'I often wonder if we did right in breaking through the old walls,' he said querulously. 'One doesn't want to disturb old buildings, but one doesn't want to live cooped up, either.'
This was a most unfortunate metaphor, and each man backed away from it.
'Tell me, Owen, how was life in Oklahoma?' Pusey asked, quietly changing the subject.
'One thing, Pusey. You became an ardent football fan or you withered. I helped the university to three national championships.'
'What do you mean? You helped?'
'Scholarships. I gave scholarships to brutish young men who could neither read nor write. Did you happen to follow the case of the young fellow from Texas? They cooked his high-school grades.'
'What do you mean _cooked?_ '
'Gave him A's when he earned F's. So he'd be eligible for my scholarship.'
'You were always generous,' Paxmore said, and this was so appallingly inappropriate that Steed thought: Jesus Christ, you can't say a word that doesn't have triple meanings. He was sorry he had come.
With an effort to get the conversation onto a less volatile track, he stood by the window and asked, 'Have you watched our island sinking back into the bay?'
'I have indeed! I went over there the other day and calculated that according to old maps... Did you know that Captain John Smith drew the first chart of Devon? He did, and since his day the land has been receding at a pretty constant rate.' Pusey had been good at mathematics and liked such problems. 'I figure the island has lost about thirty-five feet a year. Erosion coming at it from all sides. Sad.'
The two men looked at the faint outline of the island and a mournful silence prevailed, broken when Steed tried a new approach. 'How're your boys doing, Pusey?'
'Not well. They tried Harvard, but it must have been very difficult for them...'
'They didn't scuttle out?'
'As a matter of fact, they did. They'll find their sea legs. They're basically good boys.'
'Hardly boys.'
'I think of them as such. How are your children?'
'Clara's in Paris, I think. She did the Torremolinos bit.'
'Your son?'
'I'm worried about Logan. Divorced. Knocking around Boston, of all places. Damnit, Pusey! Why has this generation... You take my wife—one of the finest women Oklahoma ever produced. You'd think that with a mother like her the children...' Pause. 'We haven't seen either of them in three years.'
'We don't see ours much, either, although when I was in Scanderville, I'd have been satisfied for them to keep away. They came, though, that I must say.'
'Was it bad up there?'
'Jail is always bad. On some it has a worse effect than on others. At my age...'
This was the moment when Steed should have spoken openly of the tragedy that had overtaken them in their ardent support of the President, but in cowardly fashion he shied away. Instead of broaching the subject he had come to discuss, he said lamely, 'You must come over and meet Ethel. She's a fine person, breath of fresh air.'
'We could use that on the Eastern Shore.'
'We'll get together. One of these days I'll give you a call.'
'That'll be nice,' Paxmore said, and he walked his old friend to the car, watching as he drove down the lane between the myrtle trees.
When Steed reached home his wife said, 'You didn't stay very long,' and he said, 'We engaged in a few pleasantries,' and she raged, 'Owen, you didn't go all the way there to say nothing!'
He tried several times to explain, then fell into a chair and mumbled, 'I can be a real shit.'
'Yes, you can!' she cried. 'Owen, get out of that chair right now. We're going to the Paxmores'...'
'Ethel! I can't. We'll find the right time.'
'The right time was six months ago. Now, damnit, you get cracking, and I mean it.'
She thundered her way to the door, kicked it open and waited for her husband to follow.
When he walked to the left side of the car she pushed him aside and said, 'I'll drive. You might not get there.' And she roared down the driveway, scattering pebbles, and without slackening her speed went up the Paxmore hill, where Amanda was parking her car after a marketing trip to Patamoke.
'I'm Ethel Steed,' she said, extending her hand. 'We've come to apologize.'
With steel-like composure Amanda said, 'Not to me, to Pusey.'
'I mean to Pusey. He was a heroic man, Mrs. Paxmore, and we are most tardy.'
'It's difficult,' Amanda said. She led the way back into the house, called for her husband, and stood waiting with the Steeds until Pusey appeared, head down and shoulders bent. Steed's performance earlier in the day had distressed him, and he had been brooding in his room.
'Pusey,' his wife began, 'the Steeds have come back.'
'I haven't met Mrs. Steed,' he said, assuming that the evasions of the morning were to be repeated. They were not.
'We've come to apologize,' Ethel said, and she approached with hands extended. 'You were heroic,' she said, grasping him by his frail white fingers.
'I think we should sit down,' he said, going to a chair by the window, and there the four sat, quietly, without displayed emotion, as they reviewed in painful detail their misbehaviors.
'You bore the brunt for all of us,' Ethel said, 'and Owen should have been here six months ago to tell you how much we honor your sacrifices.'
'Rewards and punishment fall unevenly,' Paxmore said, and with this breaking of the dam he began the therapy of exploration, speaking without interruption, unleashing a veritable flood of memories and assessments:
'I was honored, any man would be, to have been taken into the White House, and at such a high level. To be close to power is not a trivial thing, and to influence both legislation and executive operations for good is something that any reasonable man could aspire to. During the first term I am not being immodest when I say that I accomplished much. Take the water legislation, the study of Arab rights, the increased contributions for widowed mothers. I felt that I was continuing the work of Woolman Paxmore and Ruth Brinton. It was Christianity in action, and I am still proud of the things I attempted.
'But I was not an ordinary political agent in Washington. I was set apart. For I had seen my family's business go up in smoke during the civil riots. I had seen the hatred in the streets. I had lived close to real revolution. Better than anyone in the White House, I understood how close to disaster we were in 1969 and 1970.
'So when the '72 election approached, I saw it as my duty to reelect Mr. Nixon, to give him a chance to save this nation. I had seen the fires. I had tasted the revolution, and I was determined that it should not spread. When I talked with you in Tulsa in the summer of 1972, with the possibility staring us in the face that George McGovern might be President, with bombings and disruptions threatening from all sides, the danger was very clear and very present. Nothing less than the safety of our nation was at stake.
'I was most relieved, Owen, when you assured me that you would contrive some way to pass us two hundred thousand dollars of your corporate funds. This would enable me to support good men in New York and California and Texas, three states we thought we must win. Don't forget, it was reasonable for you to give the money, too, because your way of life was imperiled. All good principles were being corroded and only our victory could stay the drift.
'If there was one terrible error in the Watergate fiasco, it was that Mr. Nixon never found a platform from which he could state the true condition of this country in 1969 through 1972. We tottered on the brink of anarchy, and if we had not held fast, we would have lost this nation. You told me that day, Owen, that your own two children were making bombs, and devastating the university, and preaching rebellion. It was everywhere, and it was my conviction that if we had lost the election in November '72, revolution would have been upon us.
'Well, I did what I could to stem it. I collected the money. I arranged for its laundering in Mexico. And I lied to save my country's destiny. I have no regrets, except a foolish one. At the hearing they treated me like a sad old clown, made me laughable as the eyes of the nation looked on. Sam Dash, head of the interrogators, didn't even bother to question me. Turned the job over to a young fellow just out of law school. It was his big moment, and he played me like a trout. So I allowed myself to look the bumbling idiot, the serf loyal to his knight. And do you know why? Because then I didn't have to tell the whole truth. I was able to protect my President and my friends.'
He stopped. This last sentence brought the monologue into the present, and Ethel Steed looked meaningfully at her husband, who said, 'Pusey, those of us in debt to you will never forget the burden you bore.'
'Mr. Nixon forgot,' Amanda Paxmore said. 'All the time Pusey was in jail, not one word of condolence. Not to him, not to me.'
'We didn't do it for praise,' her husband said, his jaw tightening as it had before the television cameras. 'We did it because the nation was threatened.'
'And I appreciate it, Pusey.' Steed wanted to let his apology go at that, not through any meanness of spirit but because the memory of that dreadful summer when John Dean was testifying was too anguishing to relive. It was Ethel who conveyed the real apology, and like Paxmore, she spoke without pause:
'We sat paralyzed before the television, wondering when the vast bubble of make-believe would shatter, leaving us in headlines across the country. Greasy Thumb Polewicz brought no laughter in our family, because the money he lugged about in that paper bag came from us. When they traced the funds to Mexico City, it was our money they were talking about. And when we heard that you were going on the stand, Pusey, we shuddered. Because you knew the facts.
'On the night before you were to testify, Owen and I tried to make a brave face of it by going to the country club, as if we weren't living on the edge of a volcano. It was rather pleasant, as I recall. Mr. Nixon had a lot of support in Tulsa. I don't believe there could have been a single person there that night who had voted for McGovern, so we were among friends. I suppose that's what got to us, for we realized that if next day you told where the money had come from, illegal corporate funds from us, these very people would have to act shocked and fire Owen, and he might well have gone to jail. Suddenly—'
Owen Steed was not in the habit of allowing his wife to make excuses for his misconduct, and now he felt obligated to interrupt her narration regarding that summer of 1973:
'What happened was simple. I fainted. The realization that my world was collapsing and that I might go to jail overwhelmed me, and I fainted. Not flat on the floor. Just my head in my plate. Mayonnaise in my hair. Waiters explaining to the other tables that I had choked.
'Pusey, when you were on that stand we died with you. But damnit, even as we died we kept praying, "I hope he doesn't talk." And you didn't.'
No one spoke. The men looked out at the Choptank, and after a while Pusey surprised the Steeds by lapsing into the Quaker speech. 'Would thee like something to drink?'
'That's a charming phrase,' Ethel said.
'As I withdraw from the battle...' He did not like this imagery and changed it. 'I'm an old man now. I grow closer to my origins.'
'I came back for the same reason,' Owen said. 'To be closer to my origins... and because I was fired.'
'You were fired?'
'Well, eased out. I was so shaken by Watergate, I couldn't focus on the job. Six or seven members of the board had to know I gave you the money. Hell, they arranged it. And they knew that if you testified openly, I'd be the one they'd throw to the wolves. I wasn't happy with them and they weren't happy with me. So they paid me off and kicked me out.'
'But with thy name intact,' Amanda Paxmore said, not acidly but with a directness which could not be misconstrued.
Pusey did not wait for Steed to defend himself. 'No sensible man expects even-handed justice. But can thee guess what gives me my severest punishment?' He seemed driven to castigate himself. 'To sit in this room day after day and realize how far I strayed from what I was. Did thee ever know my father, Woolman Paxmore? A living saint. He used to tell us children in his wonderfully simple manner, "Thee has only one obligation to society, to bear witness." He warned me that before my life ended I would face every moral dilemma the Bible speaks of. And I did.'
Owen started to interrupt, but the flood continued. 'I wonder if young men attending their ethics classes in university realize that in later life every abstraction they discuss will become a reality. I was called upon to face every dilemma... save murder. And the other night as I was reviewing the White House days I even began wondering about that.'
He pondered this ugly possibility, then said with a half-chuckle, 'But the big lesson of my life I didn't learn in college or from my father. It came in high school from my Aunt Emily, the one who fought against the disfranchisement of the blacks. She was an old woman when I knew her, old and funny, and we paid her no attention. But she insisted on memorization, and the passage I speak of came in a play I've never seen. I doubt if anyone ever sees it, _King Henry the Eighth_. Cardinal Wolsey...' He stopped abruptly. 'Didn't thy family have dealings with Wolsey?'
'We did. Toadied to him while he was in power, turned against him when he was not.'
'Wolsey is departing, on his way to exile and perhaps to the scaffold, and as he leaves his White House, where he had exercised such power, he reflects:
'Had I but serv'd my God with half the zeal
I serv'd my king, He would not in mine age
Have left me naked to mine enemies.'
'Do you feel abandoned by the President?' Ethel Steed asked.
'We were all abandoned,' Pusey said, and suddenly the terrible weight of those years descended upon him, and it was more than he could bear. His shoulders sagged, his chin trembled and he became a very old man, although he was only sixty-four. He must have been aware of the dramatic alteration, for he apologized. 'I grow tired so quickly. Thee must excuse me.'
He started to leave the room, then turned to tell his guests, 'We lads from the Eastern Shore, we do poorly when we venture into the world. Much better we stay in our retreats and listen to the echoes coming across the bay.'
Because the good citizens of Patamoke, black and white, were determined that the burning of Frog's Neck not be used as an excuse for hardening racial animosities, and because Father Patrick was able to defuse his Turlock and Caveny relatives, life along the Choptank returned to normal much more rapidly than pessimists might have predicted. The National Guard was on duty for a few weeks, and some crosses were burned, but everyone was so tired of fire that passions subsided.
Hiram Cater was tracked down by the F.B.I. and sentenced to jail, but citizens from varied backgrounds petitioned the judge for leniency, so his sentence was not excessive. A new road was built around Frog's Neck and immediately dubbed the Congo Bypass, but black boys started playing on the football teams of Patamoke High, and after victories blacks and whites congregated in the Blue and Gold Ice Cream Parlor for celebrations.
But the tensions were not formally relaxed until early March of 1977, when the rowdy skipjack captains from Deal Island rolled into town with a proclamation that struck at the honor of the Choptank; blacks and whites rallied to defend their river, and old animosities were forgotten.
What the Deal Island men said was that they were the champions of the Eastern Shore and ready to prove it in a grand challenge race. To insult the Patamokes they added, 'Since you need every advantage to keep up with us, we'll hold the race in your backyard, Choptank River, first week in October.'
The Patamokes pledged themselves to enter seven skipjacks, five with white captains, two with black, but with the crews mixed three and three. The old craft were cleaned up and sailors began practicing the maneuvers required for victory, but the people organizing the race were unhappy over one deficiency.
'It would look better... by that we mean that the papers and television... Hell, you got to have the _Eden_ in there. Oldest surviving skipjack, and all that.'
The Patamoke captains agreed that it would be a fine idea to have the side-assed skipjack participate in the race, but she had not sailed for some years and it was generally assumed that her days were done. When the experts went out to survey her, tied up behind the ruins of the Paxmore Boatyard, they confessed that she was not much.
But when Owen Steed heard of the problem, he said abruptly, 'I'll provide the funds to restore her. That is, if you can get Pusey Paxmore to supervise repairs.' The committee hastened to Peace Cliff, where Pusey told them firmly that he was too old and no longer knew enough, but he did direct them to a nephew who had once built a skipjack, and this Paxmore joined the effort.
When the refurbished boat stood on blocks beside the harbor, her mast raked and glistening in new spar finish, the question arose as to her crew. She was the property of the Cater family; a stoop-shouldered man named Absalom held title and he owned a fine reputation at oystering, bold in defending his location against competition.
But when Steed and the committee went to Absalom they found him a testy man, steeped in bitterness over the jailing of Hiram Cater. 'Ain't takin' her out.'
'But Captain Boggs at Deal Island...'
'To hell with him.' Absalom Cater was the rugged new-type black who would tolerate no affront to his personal dignity.
'Mr. Cater, we'd really like to have you—'
'Name's Absalom.'
'Goddamnit!' Steed snapped in oil-field anger. 'I spent thirty years in Oklahoma disciplining myself to call you sons-of-bitches Mister. Now you snarl at me for doing so. What do you want to be called? Negro, black, colored—you name it.'
Absalom laughed. 'My problem is to discipline myself to stop callin' you white-asses Mister. Now what in hell do you want, Steed?'
'I want you to assemble a crew that will win this race. We're providing you with a damned good boat.'
'There's a boy shucks arsters at Tilghman Island. He knows how to sail with me. And Curtis from Honga. That's three blacks. You pick three whites.'
This was an insolent challenge, and it excited the imagination of the white watermen. 'Turlocks used to own the _Eden_ , so we'll ask Amos.'
'He's almost seventy.'
'He can cook. And in a fight he's very mean.'
'Cavenys always worked this skipjack, so we'll invite Martin. And the Pflaum family. Hugo's stupendous in water.'
It was a menacing crew that assembled to give the _Eden_ her trials, and a Baltimore reporter wrote: 'They resemble pirates about to loot a burning plantation.' Lanky Amos Turlock had only a few teeth; Martin Caveny, round and sly, looked like some henchman guarding a castle keep; and Hugo Pflaum, past seventy, still had the thick, squashed neck of his Rhineland ancestors. The three blacks at least looked like sailors: Captain Absalom big and dangerous, his two helpers lean and ready for a brawl.
With such a crew the _Eden_ caught the fancy of newspaper and television people; incidents in her history were resurrected: built in 1891; captained by that Jake Turlock who defeated the Virginians in the Battle of the Bay; captured single-handed by Otto Pflaum from five armed watermen; the boat of Big Jimbo Cater, first and best of the black captains. 'Besides which,' wrote the proud reporter from the _Bugle_ , 'she is the only side-assed skipjack in history, but she is given slight chance in the race because she cannot perform well on the starboard tack.'
The reporter had it backward. Every ship, every boat that moves under sail goes better on one tack than the other. Some mysterious combination of forces resulting from the interrelationship of mast, boom, keel and curvature makes one boat perform best on the starboard tack while another of almost identical design excels on the port. Like twins who share identities but who develop differentiated skills, the skipjacks varied, and Captain Absalom knew that his advantage lay when the wind blew from the starboard side, for then the offset centerboard cooperated with the tilted keel to produce maximum speed.
'I think we got her tuned just right,' he assured Mr. Steed.
Once when the black-white crew was practicing on the Chesapeake, Amos Turlock, coming up from the galley, spotted a chance to pick up some easy money. An expensive yacht had gone aground on the unmarked mud flats that rested just under the surface of the water where the western end of Devon Island had once stood. It was a perilous spot, which had not yet been properly buoyed, and the yacht's crew could be forgiven for going aground there.
'Halloo!' Turlock shouted. 'You need help?'
'We need a tow,' came the cry.
'We haven't the power to get you off'n there.'
'Could you get us a tugboat? We've radioed the Coast Guard, but they have nothing.'
'I can get you off,' Turlock called as the _Eden_ closed.
'Watch out!' the yacht captain cried. 'You'll ground.'
'We draw two feet, centerboard up.'
'That's a hell of an advantage.'
'In these waters, yes. Mister, I can get you off without scarrin' the paint. Fifty dollars.'
'Jump to it.'
'It's a deal?' Turlock asked suspiciously. When the yachtsman assented, Amos yelled, 'Caveny, break out the lines. You know what to do.'
The yacht had gone aground because its construction required a massive keel reaching eight feet below water line, and it was this bulbous steel projection which had imbedded itself in mud. No possible tow from the _Eden_ would break this loose, and the people on the yacht could not imagine what the motley crew on the skipjack had in mind.
It was simple. Caveny climbed into the _Eden's_ rowboat, brought one end of a long rope with him, pulled himself onto the deck of the yacht, where he immediately clawed his way as high up the mast as he could go. There he fastened the rope securely to the spreader and signaled to Turlock back on the _Eden_ that all was ready.
Slowly the skipjack moved away from the yacht, and as it did so, the line tightened, but there was no possibility that the frail craft could break the heavy yacht free, and the grounded sailors shouted, 'Careful! You'll part the line!'
It was never Turlock's intention to exert much pulling power; what he wanted to do was maintain pressure until the line high on the mast pulled the yacht over on its port side. 'Watch out, stupid!' one of the yachtsmen shouted as the boat began to list. 'You'll capsize us!'
But Turlock maintained his gentle pulling, and slowly the yacht came down until its mast was almost parallel to the water; then the miracle on which he relied began to eventuate. What had been a massive yacht with an eight-foot keel was being converted into a bizarre craft with less than three inches of wood below the water line, and the huge bulbous keel stuck at an angle in the mud. The buoyancy of the new boat was so great that it began to suck the keel loose.
'Keep that line fast!' Turlock called, and everyone watched as the mast came down to touch the water, but as soon as it did, the yacht broke free, and with only a modest wind in her sails, the skipjack was able to pull the heavier craft out into deep water. Quickly she righted herself, and the yachtsmen cheered.
When it came time for the captain to hand over the fifty dollars, one of his crew complained, 'A lot of money for six minutes' work, and Turlock said, 'Five dollars for doin', forty-five for knowin'.'
Manifestations of nature along the Choptank exerted a therapeutic effect upon those humans who participated in them, and no example could be more typical than what occurred in late March 1977 after the prolonged winter. For while the Steeds were mourning the loss of their herons, an even more congenial bird was preparing to visit them.
If, as many assume, the last glacier to extend southward into regions drained by the Susquehanna collected its ice about seventy thousand years ago and finally dissolved some eleven thousand years back, the basic character of the Chesapeake must have taken form around 9000 B.C.
As soon as forests and fish appeared, osprey began to inhabit the area, and each year in the last days of winter they returned to the Choptank—that is, the males arrived. Large fishing hawks with white underpainting and jet-black joints in the sharply recurved wings, these handsome males were notable for their ability to hover, spot fish at great distances and dive for them with claws extended.
But each year on the day of their arrival after a long flight from the Amazon, the males were so exhausted that they did not fish, no matter how hungry, for a driving instinct compelled them to search for nesting sites, which they explored like any house-hunting husband. In 1977 those travel-weary males who elected the streams at the Refuge found much of their work done for them, because Martin Caveny, under the direction of Ethel Steed, had constructed four basketlike platforms from braided steel and had set them on tall pilings well out into the water.
'Watch what happens on St. Patrick's Day,' Caveny said with confidence. 'On that day, year after year, ospreys come back to this neck.'
'Preposterous!'
'The patron birds of Ireland,' he said reverently. 'St. Paddy's Day, they'll be here.'
In the week before the males arrived he instructed Ethel in how to spread on her lawn bits of cloth and dead branches from which the males would construct their nests, then said, 'You may not believe this, Mrs. Steed, but twelve days later, on March 29, the females will come flying in to inspect the nests.'
'Birds don't live by the calendar,' she protested.
'Other parts of the Choptank, they arrive at other times. But on your land, St. Patrick's Day.' And on the evening of March 16, when they surveyed the preparations, he assured her, 'If I was an osprey, here's where I'd come.'
She told her husband that night, 'I think Martin Caveny's teasing me,' but even so, next morning she was up early, just in case, and before the sun approached its zenith she heard from the sky a series of _cherk-cherks_ , a whispery communication coming across the water, and she looked in its direction, to see lofty hawks hovering, darting, sweeping down with claws extended in a braking position, and within a few minutes of the birds' arrival, a handsome male was inspecting the first of her constructions, and before long three others had come to the creek; by nightfall much of the signaling cloth had disappeared from the shore.
Various attributes made Ethel Steed's braided platforms attractive to the opsrey: they were solidly constructed, set in water that promised to provide fish, and far enough from land to ensure protection from predators. And in recent years they had an added merit: farmers in the area were forbidden to use DDT, a splendid insecticide which unfortunately prevented birds who ingested it from depositing enough calcium in their eggshells to permit their young to hatch. In 1965 it had seemed that this noble bird must vanish from the earth; in 1977, thanks to concerned people like Ethel Steed, the birds seemed likely to survive.
'Do you believe me?' Caveny asked on the evening of the twenty-eighth, when the males had completed their nests in good form. 'Tomorrow morning the ladies arrive, and then we'll see something.'
This time she trusted the enthusiastic Irishman, and on the morning of the twenty-ninth, as they had for some ten thousand years, the female ospreys came back to the Refuge, and then began one of the spectacular sights of nature, for the males rose to meet them, and as they paired off they swept and darted and pirouetted through the sky, wing tip to wing tip, crying and reveling in the sun and the assurance of a summer's home, where the new generation would be born.
'Owen!' Mrs. Steed called as the osprey couples wheeled through the air. 'You must see this!' And he came from the house to stand with his wife as the wild courtship flight continued, now low above the water, now high in the heavens, and after a while one of the males led his partner to the nest closest to where the Steeds were standing, and as she inspected his work he flew up and down the creek until he spotted a small fish. Diving swiftly, he caught it, rose well into the heavens, then flew to his nest, where, standing on tiptoes, he fed the delicacy to his mate.
The watching humans joined hands, and Ethel said, 'We need nature for what it teaches us.'
'Or what it reminds us of,' Owen said.
In the days that followed, the females began to nest, and now the males had to fish with doubled tenacity.
When young Christopher Pflaum scandalized the citizens of Patamoke by establishing his home south of the Choptank—something no member of a major family had ever done—the men at the store had an easy explanation for his outrageous behavior: 'Think back! His grandmother was a Turlock. So was his mom, and with blood like that, you never know what to expect.' One village philosopher added, 'Come to think of it, them Turlocks always loved marshes. It was blood speakin', that's what it was.'
The reason was simpler and more beautiful. One dark night in 1967, as the lieutenant in charge of a bedraggled outfit struggling through the jungles of Vietnam, he had experienced a revelation. In Korea some years before, Hiram Cater had found the meaning of the Choptank; now Chris Pflaum was about to make his discovery in Vietnam, and that is the risk and reward which comes from sending generations of intelligent young men to duty in alien lands: when they return they see their homeland clearly.
Chris had already spent seven months in futile jungle fighting, and his unit had been so constantly engaged in destruction and pillage that he was sick of war, but he was even more sick of the manner in which some patrol mates complained of every aspect of their lives. Like his grandfather, Otto, and his rugged father, Hugo, he believed that men must tolerate what is unavoidable but strive to better it, yet he had to listen as the men bitched: the food, the gooks, the officers, the climate, the crud, the lack of ammunition, the absence of air cover, the failure of the corporal to locate a supply of fresh socks. The breaking point came when a soldier from New Hampshire slapped his arm and whined, 'These damned mosquitoes are killin' me.'
'Hell,' Chris snapped, 'they're gnats. Back home we got mosquitoes as big as pigeons.'
'You what?'
A brawl ensued, and when it ended, with no victors, Chris sat by himself in the growing darkness and tried honestly to evaluate his life: Happiest I've ever been was when I explored the marshes along the Choptank. And without further reflection, he wrote a letter to the only real estate dealer he knew, Washburn Turlock of Patamoke:
I have two thousand, eight hundred dollars saved and would be willing to obligate myself for double that amount on a mortgage. What I want you to do is go south of the Choptank and buy me the biggest area of marshland available. I don't want two acres or twenty. I want at least four hundred, but some of it can be fast land. I want a house in which a wife and kids can live, and I want some waterfront. This is a firm commission, and I am sending my check herewith. Don't bother to mail me complicated details. Just get me the land with lots of marsh.
Early next morning he posted the letter, and when it was gone he experienced such soaring euphoria that he knew he had done right; he had made his commitment to a way of life, to a specific quality of land and water and deer and muskrats. With each passing day in the jungle he was increasingly satisfied with his decision, and much sooner than he had expected, Washburn Turlock reported:
Our office rarely handles property south of the Choptank, because the mosquitoes there are unbearable, but your instructions were so explicit and your father so firm in his belief that you knew what you were doing, that I felt obligated to explore the area on your behalf, especially since you are in service protecting our country. You will be pleased with what I found. On the attached map you will see that I have marked along the Little Choptank a stretch of land comprising an excellent blend of 160 acres of marshland and 50 acres of fast which can be cultivated if you desire. It contains a house, a barn, some outbuildings once used as slave quarters, and a magnificent stretch of riverfront with a dock leading to deep water. This is what is known as the Herman Cline place; he settled here before the Civil War and played a minor role in local history. It's all yours for the unbelievable price of $7,600 and I have already arranged a mortgage. You own it.
When the leave plane neared McGuire Air Force Base in 1968, Chris began to sweat, and on the speedy drive down to the Delmarva Peninsula his excitement grew. His wife reported, 'I haven't seen the land yet, but Mr. Turlock says it's exactly what you wanted.'
Chris stopped in Patamoke only long enough to embrace his mother, then sped over the bridge to the south shore. He drove west down one of the fingers reaching out toward the bay, then along a narrow road and finally down a long lane. 'These must be our loblollies,' he said as the stately trees closed in, and then before him stood the old Cline house, and the rotting slave quarters, and the solid pier stretching out into the Little Choptank, and all things were twice as appealing as he had imagined. But the best part lay off to the west, where the little estuary joined the bay, for there stood the marsh from which Herman Cline's rented slaves had chopped out fast land. It waited as it had in the time of Captain John Smith, unspoiled, trembling in the wind, crowded with living things and restless from the motion of the invading water. It seemed endless, many times larger than he had hoped for, and he could visualize himself leading his children into its heart and disclosing to them its secrets. He tried to speak, but his mind was filled with the drumbeat of the discredited poem:
Look how the grace of the sea doth go
About and about through the intricate channels that flow
Here and there,
Everywhere,
Till his waters have flooded the uttermost creeks and the
low-lying lanes,
And the marsh is meshed with a million veins...
In this twelve-month period four men—two old, two young—came back to the Choptank, impelled by sharply different motives. Pusey Paxmore had crept home to die at the end of a shattered life. Owen Steed had prudently fled Oklahoma with sufficient funds to repurchase his family plantation. And Chris Pflaum had retired from the Army as a bemedaled major, with a research job at the Chesapeake Center for the Study of Estuaries and a waiting home deep in the Choptank marshes.
Hiram Cater was difficult to categorize; the warden had granted him a compassionate leave so that he might attend the funeral of his parents. Jeb and Julia had been born in the same year, had struggled through decades of poverty enforced by their society, and had survived to see two of their children in federal penitentiaries. Often in their last years, as they sat in their antiseptic new brick cubicle, they castigated themselves for failures they could not explain, not realizing that it was Patamoke that had failed, not they. In 1977 they died within three days of each other, and their son Hiram was allowed home to bury them. At the grave he stood silent, and as soon as the brief ceremony ended he returned to prison, knowing that he could never again live in Patamoke.
Major Pflaum was different from the other three, for he returned with honor and a burgeoning desire to accomplish something; during his military service he had been assigned to many duty stations on four different continents and knew that few places on earth compared in physical beauty and spiritual ease with the Chesapeake.
But as he started his research at the estuarine center he found himself engaged in a furious running debate with his father, Hugo Pflaum, who had spent fifty-one years defending the rivers and the bay. He resented it when his son proclaimed, 'Nobody around here seems to give a damn about the future of this region.'
'In your omniscience,' Hugo growled, 'have you bothered to look at what we've accomplished? The laws that prevent men like Uncle Ruthven from palisading marshes and covering them with concrete? Our regulations protecting wetlands so that ducks will find something to eat? And the way we've confiscated those murderous long guns?'
'Uncle Amos's, too?'
'We'll get it, one of these days.'
'But the land, Pop. It's going to hell.'
'You talk like an idiot,' Hugo said. 'Our Eastern Shore's one of the best places left on earth.'
'Pop! Will you get in a car with me and take a look?'
'I sure will.' The old warden bristled, and he joined his son in a pickup for a survey of the roads leading out of Patamoke.
'Now all I want,' Chris said, 'is for you to look at the grassy shoulders... and the ditches.' And when Hugo did, he understood what his son was complaining about, for the roads were littered with empty beer cans and soda bottles. It seemed as if the law required each resident of Maryland to drink three cans of something every day and toss the proof along the highway.
Glumly the old man conceded, 'This is pretty bad, Chris.'
His son slammed on the brakes and said, 'I got a proposition for you, Pop. Let's walk a quarter of a mile, out and back. Just count the cans and bottles.' As they moved slowly down the road they counted eighty-seven. Crossing over and walking back to the pickup, they found another seventy-two. 'So on an average quarter mile of rural road we have a hundred fifty-nine—more than six hundred a mile. Schlitz, Miller, Budweiser, Michelob. The heraldry of modern America.'
'I think you stacked the deck on me,' Hugo objected. 'This is a lovers' lane and you know how young people like to mess up everything.' But when they found a lovely back road it, too, had its quota of empties, the aluminum cans and the bottles good for a thousand years.
Grudgingly Hugo said, 'It really is pretty bad, Chris,' and when his son launched a campaign in the _Bugle_ to clean up the roadsides, he contributed a sharp article arguing that men and women who had done such a good job of saving ducks and geese ought also to stop desecrating their landscape. His letter drew scorn, but Chris's pressure goaded the authorities to appoint a commission to study the matter. Within a few weeks it reported:
Two proposals have been made, that the government add five cents to the cost of every bottle or can to pay for clean-up service, or that disposable containers be outlawed. We reject the former because handling the deposit and the empties would place too great a burden on the merchant, and we reject the latter because Norman Turlock has spent a great deal of money building his canning factory for beer and soft drinks and to change the rules on him now would be unfair.
This problem, which is not nearly so grave as certain agitators would want us to believe, can best be handled by having parents teach their children that cans and bottles should not be thrown in public places. With a little attention, this minor irritation can be solved without governmental action.
Young persons, and some older too, expressed their displeasure at the Pflaum interference by initiating an interesting ritual: they accumulated empty beer cans in the backs of their cars and tossed them in large numbers into the Pflaum ditches. Some mornings on his way to work Chris would find two dozen beer cans at the end of his lane, but he realized that within a few weeks the animosity would be dissipated. What did disturb him was that wherever he looked in this marvelous bay region, the desecration was the same. It was this casual plundering of the landscape that infuriated him, this supine acceptance of despoliation. The government was powerless to protect the environment, because its citizens had become accustomed to drinking beverages from throw-away bottles and cans; Norman Turlock, having invested money in a process that deformed the landscape, was to be protected to infinity, and any system of picking up the refuse or preventing its deposit in the first place was forbidden because it would inconvenience someone.
'Hell!' he said one day as he drove along a road south of the Choptank. 'One fine morning we'll awaken to find the land smothered in beer cans.' But when he tried to reopen the question in the columns of the _Bugle_ , he was told by the editor, 'No one's interested in that nonsense any more.'
It was Hugo who tried to temper his bitterness. 'Chris, you got to keep things in perspective. The beer cans are a disgrace, but there's a whole paradise here that's unsullied.' And he cranked up the boat he used to patrol the oyster beds. 'I want you to see for yourself how much we have left.' Mile after mile of the lesser rivers displayed banks carefully tended and expansive lawns free of contamination, but even so, Hugo said, 'You can't appreciate how well we've protected the Eastern Shore till you see the western.' So they roared out into the Chesapeake, crossing over to the rivers south of Annapolis, and there young Chris had a chance to see how lack of zoning and policing had encouraged this shoreline to become a marine slum. It was appalling, one little house after another crowded up against its neighbor, one wharf after another falling into disrepair. The shoreline was eroding and no attention was paid it; most developments had been haphazard and decrepit from the day of building.
'That's really something to worry about,' the older Pflaum said as they began their return trip. 'That's a lot more serious than beer cans.'
When they reached the broad mouth of the Choptank, Hugo steered toward that loveliest of the eastern rivers, the Tred Avon: a broad, quiet estuary, a group of exquisite tributaries and innumerable coves, each with its own superb view. The boat slowed as the Pflaums studied the shoreline, one well-preserved home after another, not ostentatious but most attractive, hiding among tall trees.
'You've heard what Turlock the Pirate tells his customers from up North? "If you don't live on the Tred Avon, you're camping out. And if you live south of the Choptank, you'll never be invited to the good parties." '
Chris, who preferred the wilderness of the Little Choptank, wanted to defend his choice, but Hugo raised both hands. 'Please, your mother and I are trying to hide your shame from the neighbors.'
The pre-race meeting of skipjack crews was held at the Patamoke Club, and the mood was established by Captain Boggs, a towering black from Deal Island, known to his men as the Black Bastard: 'The _Nelly Benson_ observes on'y one rule. "Stand back, you sons-of-bitches." '
Another Deal Islander said, 'This here is a race of workin' boats. Each skipjack to carry two dredges, a pushboat aft on davits, two anchors and full gear.'
One of the Patamoke men suggested a triangular course, but the Deal Islanders protested, 'We're racin' in your water. We state the rules. If the southerly wind holds, a run up the river, turn and beat back.'
That was it, a clean-cut rugged race of up-and-back with no furbelows or fancy diagrams. When this was agreed, the drinking began and some of the crews did not get to bed till dawn. Owen Steed, who by now was totally immersed in the race, got his men home reasonably early and felt that the _Eden_ had a good chance, unless Captain Boggs got an early edge, in which case he would be tough to beat.
Prizes for the race were not exorbitant: $75 to every boat that lined up for the start, and an additional $50 to each one that finished. The _Bugle_ awarded a silver cup plus first prize of $100, second of $50 and third of $25, but most of the crews put together purses for wagers against boats of their class. The Deal Island men were especially eager to gamble, and Captain Boggs' _Nelly Benson_ would go to the line with some $400 placed against various other boats.
The commodore for the race was a surprise, and a pleasant one. By acclamation, the watermen wanted Pusey Paxmore to serve as starter; in the old days he had been a man aloof, working at the White House and rather withdrawn from river life, but now that he had served time in jail he was more like them, and they insisted that since his family had built the oldest boats in the competition, the _Eden_ and two others, his presence was obligatory. He had wanted to decline, but the Steeds would not permit it.
Since the race occurred in October, just before the start of the oystering season, the twenty-three skipjacks were in prime condition: all had been hauled out to have their bottoms painted, and all had been cleaned up on deck, their dredges neatly stacked, their lines coiled. Mr. Steed had purchased a complete new dress for the _Eden:_ for halyards dacron rigging because of its inflexible strength; for docking lines and anchor cable nylon because it did yield. He had gone to Henry Brown down at the tip of Deal Island for new sails and he had specified canvas rather than dacron because the stitching in the latter chafed too easily. In its eighty-six years the _Eden_ had rarely looked better.
The race was to start at the edge of the mud flats west of Devon Island, run up to Patamoke Light, turn it and tack back to a line between Devon and the mainland. A skipjack race started in a peculiar way: the boats jockeyed till they were in a straight line, then dropped anchors and lowered sails, waiting for the gun that would spring them loose.
It was a tense moment, for the honor of every settlement on the shore was at stake—the rough watermen of Deal Island against the dudes of the Choptank. Each boat had a crew of six experts, plus seven or eight casual hands to man the lines. The _Eden_ had five extra Turlocks and two Caters, each with his own job to do. Little Sam Cater, aged nine, would perch as far aft as possible and stare at the water, prepared to utter his warning cry, 'Mud! Mud!'
'You can fire, Pusey,' one of the judges said, and what ensued made devotees of regular racing shudder. On each of the anchored skipjacks four men began hauling in the anchor while a team of two pulled heavily on the halyards that raised the huge mainsail. Since the crews worked at uneven speeds, some boats got under way quicker than others, which meant that they were free to cut across the path of the slow starters, impeding them further. But sometimes the early boats miscalculated, and the slow starters generated enough speed to ram their opponents and delay them. When this happened, crews from both boats cursed and threw things and tried to cut rigging.
One of the judges, a gentleman from a Long Island yacht club, said as the big boats slammed into one another, 'This isn't racing. This is marine suicide.' And when Pusey Paxmore said, with some relief, 'We got them off to a good start,' the visitor replied, 'Start? Good God, they're all disqualified.'
The first leg was a long run eastward with the wind directly aft, and Captain Boggs depended upon this to give him an early advantage; indeed, it looked as if he might outdistance the field, but the _Eden_ and the old _H.M. Willing_ from Tilghman lagged only a short distance behind. The latter was a memorable boat; it had been sunk twice, refitted three times: 'Cain't be more than seven percent of the original timbers left. All rebuilt, but she's still the _H.M. Willing_ , because it ain't the timbers that determines a boat, it's the spirit.'
'We're in good shape,' Captain Cater assured his crew, 'because in ten minutes we swing onto a starboard run, and then we fly.'
He was right. Halfway to Patamoke the skipjacks had to veer to the southeast, which meant that the strong wind would blow from the starboard quarter, the exact advantage the _Eden_ needed. How she leaped forward! Her great boom swung out to port; her bow cut deep; she heeled well over and rode on the chine.
'Stand back, you Black Bastard!' Captain Absalom shouted as his boat passed the _Nelly Benson_ and headed for the turn at Patamoke Light.
A real yachtsman who had twice raced to Bermuda watched the turn in frozen amazement; when the _Eden_ negotiated it this gentleman said to people near him, 'Why that man broke six rules! Doesn't anybody say anything?' A waterman who heard the question replied, 'They better not.'
When the turn was completed, it was traditional for the cook to break out a spread and for the first mate to open the portable refrigerators for beer. From here on, the race became a little looser, for emptied beer cans refilled with water began flying through the air, and men with long poles tried drunkenly to impede their competitors.
The food aboard the _Eden_ was excellent: ham hocks and lima beans, _krees_ , as the watermen pronounced the biting watercress, biscuits and honey with large slabs of yellow cheese. But as each plate was wiped clean, its owner began staring toward the cook's shack, and in due time Amos Turlock appeared with a wide grin, to announce, 'Gentlemen, we got pie-melon pie!' and the crew cheered. When he brought the first pies on deck he said, 'We got lemon on the sour side, vanilla on the sweet, and Sam gets first choice.' He carried two pies, brown-crusted and rich, aft to where the boy watched for mud, and the lad said, 'I takes lemon,' and a large chunk was cut.
A pie-melon was a kind of gourd raised along the edges of cornfields, and when properly peeled and stewed, it produced one of the world's great pies, succulent, tasty, chewy when burned a bit and unusually receptive to other flavors; the proportion was usually three lemon to two vanilla, and today that tradition held, but as the men ate, little Sam shouted, 'Mud! Mud!' and this meant that the centerboard had touched bottom. This did not imperil the skipjack, but if the drag continued, its racing speed would be impeded, so two men jumped to the pendant of the centerboard and raised it until the lad cried, 'No mud! No mud!' and this meant that the _Eden_ was making maximum speed, and that its centerboard rode as deep as practical to ensure adequate protection against lateral drift.
It was now apparent that the race would be decided on the two final tacks, and although the _Nelly Benson_ had picked up a slight lead on the port tack, the boats must soon switch to starboard, and there the advantage would move to the _Eden_. 'We're in strong position!' Captain Absalom cried encouragingly, but as he prepared to jibe, Captain Boggs ordered seven of his crewmen aft to launch a barrage of water-filled beer cans at the wheel of the _Eden_ , and Captain Cater had to step back to avoid being maimed. In that moment the _Eden_ lost headway; the sails flapped; and whatever advantage the Patamoke boat might have gained was dissipated.
But the _Eden_ was not powerless. As soon as Absalom regained the wheel, he shipped his skipjack onto a course that would allow its bowsprit to rake the stern of the enemy, and when his tactic became evident the Deal Islanders cursed and threw more beer cans, but Absalom hunkered down, swung his wheel and watched with satisfaction as his long bowsprit swept the _Nelly Benson_ , cutting a halyard and forcing the crew to quit their bombardment and try to put together a jury rig that would enable them to finish the race. They did this with such promptness that they entered the final tack only a few yards behind the _Eden_ and well ahead of the others.
Captain Boggs now showed why his men called him the Black Bastard. Raising his sails to maximum height, keeping his keel as close to the wind as possible, he started to overtake the _Eden_ , and when it appeared that he would succeed, he swung his bow sharply so that the bowsprit could sweep the stern of the Patamoke boat.
'Fend off, back there!' Captain Absalom shouted, but it was too late. The _Nelly Benson_ crunched on, her bowsprit raking the _Eden_ , and by some hellish luck it banged into a gasoline can carried in accordance with the rule that each boat must be in working dress. The can bumped along the deck, emptying some of its contents before it bounced overboard. The volatile liquid spread rapidly, with one long finger rushing into the galley where Amos Turlock was cleaning up.
A great flame filled the galley and flashed along the deck. Amos, finding himself ablaze, had the presence of mind to run topside and leap into the river. Hugo Pflaum, suspecting that his ancient enemy could not swim, as most watermen could not, grabbed a rope and jumped in after him, and so spontaneous was Pflaum's action that he was able to reach the struggling cook and hold him fast as men on deck pulled the heavy pair back to the _Eden_.
All hands turned to fighting fire, except Captain Absalom, who kept to the wheel, hoping that the starboard tack would allow his boat to pull ahead, but when confusion was its greatest, the boy aft began to shout, 'Mud!' and Absalom bellowed, 'Man the centerboard,' but there was none to hear, so he indicated that the boy should quit his post and try to haul up the dragging board.
A centerboard is a huge affair, often made of oak and a task for two grown men, so the boy accomplished nothing. 'Take the wheel!' Absalom shouted and the boy ran aft to steer the skipjack, while his father ran to the rope attached to the aft end of the centerboard and tugged on it mightily. It rose a few inches and the dragging ceased.
With the fire under control, the Patamoke crew turned to the job of bringing their damaged boat to the finish line. They had lost their lead, but they kept in mind that this was a starboard tack. With burned hands and sooty faces they began to cheer and throw beer cans and trim their sails, but they were impeded by a situation which had never before developed in a skipjack race: the intense heat of the gasoline fire had melted some of the dacron lines into blobs of expensive goo. But Patamoke men were ingenious, and the crew found ways to improvise substitutes and to pass their shortened lines through sheaves and thus keep their boat moving.
It was to be a photo finish, with the _Nelly Benson_ slightly ahead, the _Eden_ closing vigorously. Crews of the trailing skipjacks began to cheer and big Hugo Pflaum with two of the black crewmen stood forward to repel any new assaults.
'We can make it!' Amos Turlock bellowed, throwing beer cans like mad at Captain Boggs. But the Deal Island men knew how to handle their boat, and while the _Eden_ crew was working on their sails they heard the cannon. The race was over and they were forty seconds from the line. The cup, the money, the honor—all were lost. The deck was scarred with flame, their fingers burned with gasoline.
'Damn,' Absalom growled as the _Eden_ crossed.
'We almost made it,' his son said.
'Ain't nothin' in the world pays off on near-'ems 'ceptin horseshoes.'
'It was fun,' the boy said.
'Fun!' his father exploded. 'Goddamnit, we lost!'
That night, when the crews assembled to celebrate and collect their awards, Absalom had the graciousness to approach Captain Boggs, shake his hand and admit, 'You won fair and square.' Those standing nearby cheered and the Deal Islander said modestly, 'God was on our side. Ninety-nine times out of a hunnerd we wouldn't of hit that gasoline can.' And Absalom conceded, 'That's how the dice rolls.'
Mr. Steed, elated by the showing of the _Eden_ and pleased to have been accepted into Choptank life so quickly, delivered the final judgment on the race: 'All things considered, we gained a moral victory.'
The Steeds had hoped that when Pusey Paxmore served as commodore the excitement would lure him out of the exile to which he had condemned himself. 'He came from this peninsula,' Owen told his wife, 'and returning to it should cure him.' When she replied that this was a curious doctrine, he said, 'It wasn't chance that the sovereign remedy, penicillin, was found in the earth. The Antaeus factor. When you're in trouble, scramble back to earth. Why do you think I scurried here when I was fired?'
Paxmore would not allow the cure to work for him. He believed that his humiliation in Washington barred him from normal life, and he continued to isolate himself, brooding over the misadventures which had brought him to this low estate.
This was regrettable, for he was now sixty-four and should have been entering that congenial stage of life when the orderly routine of the seasons, acting like a magnet, pulled him along from one anticipation to the next, whether his intellectual interests did so or not. In September on the Eastern Shore a man should be cleaning his guns and putting his dogs through performance trials. In October he should be out hunting doves, convening with friends, also retired, and comparing his Labrador to their Chesapeakes. Before November he hauls his boat out of the water, drains her fuel system and covers her with canvas. In the middle of that month he turns to the serious business of hunting geese. In late December he may ignore Christmas but not the ducks coming onto his property. In January he tends his loblollies, or marks his holly trees for pruning, and in March he spends a lot of time preparing his boat for the water, going to Annapolis for marine hardware and mending his crab pots. In June, when the first crabs come along, he ices his beer and sits on his screened porch, cracking the boiled claws and waiting for the perch to fry on the brazier. In July he runs his power mower, pushing his lawn back year by year until the day he shouts to his wife, 'We're going to sell this damned place and move into an apartment. Too much lawn to mow.' But in August, when the sun blazes down and a southwest breeze comes up the bay, cooling those on the eastern shores of the creeks but not on the western, he tells her, 'Best thing we ever did was find this southwest exposure. The Lathams over there on the wrong side are broiling.'
Thus the force of the earth, revolving in its passage through space, ought to carry an older man along, from year to year, making such honors as he may have earned seem even more delectable because of his reunion with primal agencies. Pusey Paxmore missed this experience; he remained oblivious of those changing faces of nature which had been the preoccupation of his family since their arrival on the cliff in 1664: the behavior of the Chesapeake, the altering salinity of the Choptank, the arrival and departure of the geese and, especially, the constant search for straight loblollies and oak knees. It was shameful to think that this man, whose blood ran with the tides, should have become so indifferent to his universe.
The Steeds, afraid that his rejection of his native earth might destroy him, did what they could to tempt him out of his closet, but the most they accomplished was a chain of October afternoons at Peace Cliff which he attended in a shabby sweater and frayed slippers. As he talked, certain themes began to unfold:
PAXMORE: Those of us who fought against the dissolution of this nation in the late 1960s did the right thing. We were in real peril, and enemies who abuse Nixon forget this.
STEED: I was thinking the other day about the songs of that period. The ones my children played incessantly. Did you ever listen to those songs, Pusey? The excitation to rebellion? The enticement to drugs. The glib assurance that all the old values had dissolved in the acid of recent truth? Especially the encouragement of war between the generations? I should think that as the Beatles grow older, they'd stand with signs about their necks in Trafalgar Square as penance for having corrupted a decade of young people.
PAXMORE: I keep thinking about the White House. Some very bright people there realized what was happening and they did their best to stem the rot. But their efforts were preempted by the so-called realists who were preoccupied with the 1972 election. The profoundest motives were perverted for the basest goals.
STEED: Would you concede that there had been a conspiracy?
PAXMORE: To do what?
STEED: To take over the government. What I mean, to subvert our form of government and ensure not only the election of Nixon but of Agnew in 1976 and then Haldeman in 1984. Was there such a conspiracy?
PAXMORE: No. What happened was, a group of California adventurers without political apprenticeship saw a chance to bend things their way. When they saw how easy it was to manipulate the system... Look, Owen, thee gave me two hundred thousand without even asking what it was for. It didn't come out at the hearings or the trial, but I myself collected over eight million dollars, and not one donor ever asked me what I intended doing with it. 'Honest Pusey Paxmore, the Maryland Quaker.' It was so easy, Owen, that the California mob slowly awakened to the fact that they had a stupefying opportunity. Plan? No. Opportunity? Yes.
STEED: How do you explain the corruption, the near-treason?
PAXMORE: Men without character slip from one position to the next. And never comprehend the awful downward course they're on.
STEED: Couldn't Nixon have stopped it?
PAXMORE: Woodrow Wilson could have. Or Teddy Roosevelt. And does thee know why? Because they had accumulated through years of apprenticeship a theory of government. A theory of democracy, if thee will. And they would have detected the rot the minute it started.
STEED: Why didn't the Californians?
PAXMORE: For a simple reason. They were deficient in education. They'd gone to those chrome-and-mirror schools where procedures are taught, not principles. I doubt if any one of them had ever contemplated a real moral problem, in the abstract where character is formed.
STEED: You did?
PAXMORE: Yes, and when the revelations began to unwind, long before John Dean, I knew what was wrong, and how very wrong it was.
STEED: Why didn't you quit, then?
PAXMORE: Because I stood so close to power, to the greatest power in the world, the presidency. It obliterated judgments. I knew, but I was powerless to react because I was poisoned by power.
STEED: What did you know?
PAXMORE: I knew that men like thee, across this country, had given our collectors more than seventy million dollars of unaccounted funds to keep the ball game going along lines thee preferred. I knew that this money was being laundered in Mexico, using channels established years before by Las Vegas gamblers. I knew that White House staffers were using Internal Revenue and the F.B.I. to punish leaders of the Democratic party. We'll teach those bastards to keep their noses clean, was the way they expressed it. I knew that high officials were ordering the bugging of their assistants' private phone calls. And I knew that everyone was lying to everyone else, in order to win an election, and to keep on winning them till the end of this century.
STEED: You don't call that a conspiracy?
PAXMORE: No, because it was not planned in advance from any intellectual base. We all just slipped downward, from one greasy step to the next. It was opportunism, Owen, a failure of moral intelligence.
STEED: Did Nixon know?
PAXMORE: Let me answer that most carefully. Of my own cognizance I never saw Richard Nixon do a single wrong thing. I was very close to him, in money matters, and I can avow that he never knew how the seventy million was collected, or how it was laundered, or how it was spent. He never once told me, 'Pusey, drop by Owen Steed's office. He owes us some favors.' So far as I know, he was clean. So when he went on television that night with the stack of transcripts and looked the American people in the eye, assuring them he was innocent, I believed him.
STEED: Did you begin to doubt when you read the transcripts?
PAXMORE: I was shocked by the sloppiness of thought in the world's most powerful office. They were incapable of keeping an idea in focus for three minutes. Instead of intelligence, we had rambling associations. The obscene language that bothered so many? I brushed it off as would-be manliness until I reached that dreadful description of me...
STEED: How did you react to the final disclosures? When he admitted his involvement?
PAXMORE: The only thing I could think of was his earlier performances, when he stared right at the television cameras and denied the existence of such evidence, and I wondered how any man could have the brazenness to do that—to stand there, knowing that the tapes were downstairs and that at least eight other persons knew what was on them. I've never been able to get that in focus.
STEED: Did you realize then that you would go to jail?
PAXMORE: Certainly. My world had collapsed, and not one of the men who had given me orders would extend a hand to help. So I braced myself and told Amanda, 'I'll take my share of the blame and say no more about it.'
STEED: You weren't tempted to drag men like me down with you? You could have, you know.
PAXMORE: Quite a few. A man doesn't collect eight million illegal dollars without knowing who gave them, and how.
STEED: Why didn't you?
PAXMORE: Because, having done everything possible to disgrace my family, I was determined that the least I could do was take my punishment and not whimper.
STEED: You ever waver?
PAXMORE: Yes. When the tapes were played at my trial, and I was forced to listen again to what the inner circle really thought of me: 'Tell that fucking Bible-spouting asshole to get the money and shut up.' These were words, Owen, that no Paxmore had ever dared use, even to his most inept workmen... Three centuries of Paxmores never used such words. But the leaders of the country felt free to use them against me. And why? Because I dared to raise questions of propriety.
STEED: You did?
PAXMORE: Of course! A dozen times I warned against lawbreaking.
STEED: Why didn't you quit? Throw the job in their faces?
PAXMORE: Because I refused to believe that criminal behavior could emanate from the White House. And vanity. I enjoyed being close to sources of power and wanted to remain there.
(At this point, one cold afternoon, he fell silent; obviously he was reconstructing the painful steps of his descent into Avernus, and Steed asked no more questions. Instead he launched upon his own reflective monologue.)
STEED: You could say the same about me. I was flattered that day a high official came to Tulsa and whispered, 'Steed, if you want to be a high-roller in the next administration... I mean, if you want real clout... say, our protection against the biggies in your business, you better give evidence of your support. You better give it early and you better give it big.' He took me by the arm, exactly the way the football captain had handled me during my freshman year at the university when he wanted me to join his fraternity, and he said, 'Steed, the committee—and these are people who're going to run this nation for the rest of this century—we put you down for three hundred thousand.' I told him I didn't begin to have that much, and he said in an even lower voice, 'But you can put your hands on it,' and when I said, 'But that would be corporate money,' he put his hand over my mouth and whispered, 'I'm going to assume you never said that. How you get the money is your affair, but I will tell you this. Whoever we select for Attorney General will be in our pocket, and you'll get no flap from him.' So, as you know, I devised a way to channel not the full three hundred thousand, but two hundred, and do you know why? Because I wanted to be a high-roller, throw my weight around when the unions got too tough, tell my secretary, 'Get me Washington, right now.' But beyond that...
(Steed paused to watch the return of geese from a foraging expedition, and as they wheeled over the Choptank he told Paxmore, 'You and me, we're going to get our share of those fellows.' He was disappointed when his withdrawn friend showed no excitement, and after a while he resumed.)
STEED: When Watergate broke I accepted it as minor, third-class, and assumed that no one would have bothered with the Democratic offices unless those goons were up to something illegal, which they usually are. When the President disclaimed any knowledge of the affair, I dropped it. Never occurred to me that my two hundred thousand could be involved, because I had never once thought of it as illegal. I was merely striving to save the good life of my nation and to keep its direction in proper hands. I listened to some of the Dean testimony, and when he couldn't even recall what hotel he'd been in, I classed him as a phony and dismissed his yarn as a concoction. And when the President came on television to proclaim his innocence, I thought that ended the affair. It should have, but the American press hates anyone who's successful. Reporters who didn't belong to fraternities in college or play football can't understand how a man with guts and brains can make thirty million dollars. They're inherent anarchists, and that's as clear as a bolt of lightning in August. They were out to destroy Nixon, and they did. But I was like you.
PAXMORE: How?
STEED: I could not believe it when the tapes proved that Nixon had been lying. It was inconceivable that a man could stand before those cameras, knowing that he had a time bomb ticking away at his heart, and utter the lies he did.
PAXMORE: What kept me believing was a silly article I read. Written by his older daughter, exculpating him from everything. It seemed so fresh and honest. So sincere.
STEED: My suspicions began when I heard the first tapes, the clean ones, and listened to those revelations of how these men conducted the business of this nation. The low quality of the thought. The inability to hold on to any subject consecutively. The frowzy language. The big enchilada. Pusey, I assure you, if a meeting I was conducting at Western Oil had ever proceeded in such a sloppy manner, with my staff unable to keep to the main topic, I'd have fired the bunch.
PAXMORE: Thee falls into a common error, Owen. Thee expects a President to be presidential twenty-four hours a day. Thee must grant him license to be a human being, to speak from time to time like ordinary men, with all their vulgarities.
STEED: But in a presidential crisis I expect him to be presidential. And tell me this, Pusey. Didn't you ever have lawyers at those meetings?
PAXMORE: What does thee mean?
STEED: When we discussed something important, or even close to a moral problem, we always had at least one lawyer present. And after a while he might interrupt and say, 'But you can't do that. That's illegal.'
PAXMORE: Thee can't say no to a President. (Here he lost interest in the post-mortem, but after watching the geese for a while, he resumed.) Yesterday I was reading _The True History of Patamoke_ and it says that in the old days men like Clay, Calhoun and Webster visited your family mansion. How would they have reacted to Watergate?
STEED: My Great-Grandfather Paul, who did the little book on slavery, defended it, if you remember. He left a group of memoranda on these men, and from them I conclude that if Daniel Webster had ever been elected President, he would probably have behaved exactly like Nixon, not because he was corrupt, but because he was so respectful of money and so personally vain. Henry Clay? Not a chance. He had a super-refined sense of honor which would have kept him honest in a nest of thieves. Calhoun? (Here the reverence in which the Steeds had always held this great man manifested itself.) It would have been unthinkable for him to behave poorly. He might have burned the nation down but he would never have stolen it.
PAXMORE: That's about my conclusion, Owen. Any man of flawed character would have stumbled into the Nixon errors.
STEED: But of one thing I can assure you. No one of those men, running the White House, would have tolerated the disgraceful thought processes displayed in the tapes. They'd have called the meeting to order sharply and reminded their associates, 'Let's get on with the main business.' Pusey, do you think the main business of your gang was installing a dictatorship?
PAXMORE: Thee must remember, Owen, how they characterized me. 'That Bible-quoting asshole.' I was never allowed to see their inner purposes. My job was to collect money, launder it, feed it into unknown hands. My job was to collect personal dishonor. (His voice trailed off, and Steed supposed that tears were choking him, but they were not. He was looking down at the Choptank, along whose banks the earlier Paxmores had gained so much honor in facing the routine tasks that arise on any river—the building of ships, the speaking in meeting, the teaching of others, the defending of the laws. He was dry and worn-out because of his faithlessness to those principles.)
STEED: We'll go hunting next month.
There was no answer.
The fact that Hugo Pflaum saved the life of Amos Turlock during the fire aboard the _Eden_ did not mean that the stubborn old warden relaxed his determination to capture The Twombly. In semi-retirement, the thick-necked German reported to his office only three mornings a week, but whenever he saw the empty space on his wall of pictures, he resolved anew to find that gun.
His superiors in Annapolis were neither amused nor patient. 'For thirty-nine years you've been telling us, "I'll find that gun any day now." Where in hell is it?'
'We think it's hidden close to where the old marsh used to be. And we know he's using it because on some mornings when he comes to town we can smell powder on his clothes.'
'Sign out a warrant and search his trailer.'
'I been through that trailer four times when he was out. Found nothing.'
It was decided that since Amos used the gun as many as nine or ten times each season, he must keep it hidden somewhere close to the trailer, and Pflaum was directed to hold the place under surveillance, but this raised more difficulties than it solved, for the Turlock establishment had certain extraordinary features. From the enthusiastic potteries in North Carolina, Amos had enlarged his collection of lawn statuary to twenty-one major items, and casual passers-by were usually on hand to admire the art collection. Older people liked the white cement replica of an Italian marble; it showed a naked girl scrunched over from the waist, her hands in position to hide those parts deemed most vulnerable. But children preferred Santa Claus and his eight reindeer.
When Pflaum initiated his regular spying, things were complicated by the fact that Amos had imported an ensemble of eight fairly large pieces which gladdened his heart: Snow White accompanied by seven dwarfs, each carved with maximum cuteness. When trailed across the lawn, the sculptures captivated the public, and the local policeman said approvingly, 'Sort of rounds things out. More grass to trim by hand, but also more fun for ever'body.'
Hugo, seeing the eight additions for the first time, said, 'Place looks even junkier than when it was a shack,' and this was true, for in the old days the cabin, weathered and dilapidated though it was, had shared the dignity of the surrounding woods. But this chrome trailer with its little picket fence and lawn sculptures had been offensive at birth and got worse as it grew older.
What Pflaum particularly disliked was the stiff manner in which Amos had placed the three dwarfs Smiley, Bashful and Grumpy. 'He's got them lined up as if they were soldiers. The others, he at least has them strung out.' He was so offended by the awful aesthetic of this lawn, and so irritated by his failure to find the gun, that one morning he pushed open the low gate guarding the path to the trailer, then jumped back as a hidden spring triggered a set of automobile horns which sounded _Do ye ken John Peel?_
Alerted, Amos Turlock came to the Dutch door and opened the top half. 'Do you like the tune, Hugo? Me bein' a hunter and all that?'
The klaxon greeting had been the last straw, so without extending the amenities Hugo said, 'Amos, I want you to turn in the gun.'
'What gun?'
'The Twombly. I know you have it hidden, and I know you love it. But the time's come, Amos. I want it.'
'I haven't had my hands on that gun—'
'You fired it four nights ago.'
'How would you know?'
'Up and down the river, Turlocks eating geese.'
'We're good hunters, Hugo, all of us.'
'You are good, and you don't need that old cannon any longer.'
'Where could I hide a gun twelve feet long?' With a generous gesture he invited the warden to inspect the trailer, and even shouted, 'Midge, have we got a gun in there?'
'We sure have,' his toothless paramour called back, and forthwith she produced a shotgun. Amos laughed, and Pflaum said, 'I should of let you drown.' Then his irritation got the better of him, and he said, 'Those seven dwarfs look like hell,' and with that judgment he stomped off the premises.
Five nights later, when there was a strong frost in the air and no moon to betray the midnight hunter, Amos summoned Rafe, the grandson in whom he had most confidence. 'We ain't obliged to get ourselves some geese, because we ain't finished the ones we got last time, but a man oughta keep his hand in. We're goin' gunnin'.'
At eleven he and Rafe left the trailer, walked out into the yard, bent down and cautiously pulled on two rings hidden in the grass on which the three dwarfs stood: Smiley, Bashful, Grumpy. Slowly the dwarfs rose in the air, falling backward from a grave twelve feet long. It was a scene from a Dracula movie—even the hinge creaked—except that when the grave was opened, it revealed not a vampire but The Twombly.
With loving care Amos lifted it, stared at the moonless sky and told Rafe, 'Fetch the dog,' and as the Chesapeake bounded out of the trailer, Amos lowered the lid, checked the three dwarfs and led the way through the woods to where the skiffs lay hidden.
It was a perfect night for goose hunting, cold but not blustery, starry but with no moon. When they reached the spot where La Trappe River joined the Choptank they detected large numbers of fowl rafting at the proper distance, and as Amos primed his massive gun and checked the seating of its stock against the bags of pine needles, he whispered to his grandson, 'Best thing a man can do in this world is hunt, or fish, or go arsterin'. God put all these things down here for us to enjoy, but He hid 'em so's only a resolute man can catch 'em. It's our manly duty to try.'
As he sighted along the polished barrel of The Twombly, he saw the glimmer of Orion and he showed the boy how that constellation stalked through the heavens, a mighty hunter seeking game. 'It ain't by chance he comes out in winter. Stands up there to protect us... and the gun.' Softly he touched the brass cannon, and then asked, 'How old are you, Rafe?'
'Ten.'
'God A'mighty, boy, this here gun is fifteen times older'n you are. Think of it, fifteen different boys your age coulda' cared for this gun, and now it's your responsibility.'
The red Chesapeake, sensing the geese ahead, was growing restless; Amos hadn't even taken out the short paddles, and the dog feared something might spook those geese. He made soft noises to indicate his displeasure at the sloppy methods being pursued this night, but Amos growled at him to keep silent. He wanted to talk with the boy.
'Man's got only three obligations, really. Feed his fambly. Train his dog. Take care of his gun. You do them jobs properly, you ain't got no worries about such things as mortgages and cancer and the tax collector. You take care of the gun, God takes care of the mortgage.'
'Won't the law...'
'The law takes this gun away from us, Rafe, when it's smart enough to find it. I been guardin' this gun for fifty years. You're good for another fifty.'
'But Hugo Pflaum was practically standin' on it that other mornin'.'
'That's why us Turlocks will always have this gun.'
'Why?'
'Because we're smart, all of us, and game wardens is stupid, all of 'em.'
The dog whimpered, eager to get on with the hunt, but he was astonished at what happened. Amos Turlock was climbing gingerly out of the skiff that carried The Twombly and inviting his grandson to take his place with the short paddles.
'Time you learned, son,' he said when the delicate transfer was completed.
'You want me...'
'Two things to remember. Aim the skiff, not the gun. And for Christ's merry sake, stay clear of the stock, because it kicks like hell.' With a gentle and loving push he launched the skiff toward the rafted geese, then reached for his dog's head. Pulling the Chesapeake to him, he clutched him nervously as the boy disappeared into the darkness. The dog, sensing that this was an unusual night, stayed close to his master and waited for the great explosion that would project him into the water in search of geese.
It was a long wait, but neither the man nor the dog grew restless; Amos could remember nights when it had taken him an hour of working with short paddles before he had been satisfied with his position, and Rafe had been trained to be meticulous. In the blind, Amos remembered admiringly, Rafe had been the boy with guts to wait.
At last he began to tremble, hoping desperately that his grandson would handle the skiff properly, and the great gun, and the traditions of this river. 'It's a baptism,' he whispered to the tense animal, and the fingers of his right hand twined in the dog's hair so tightly that the Chesapeake whimpered and withdrew, going to his accustomed place in the bow, where he could stand with forefeet on the gunwales, peering into the darkness.
'Blessed God,' the old man prayed, 'let him do it right... so he gets the taste.'
Forty minutes passed, and Orion, failing as ever to catch his prey, roamed the heavens. But when the tension in Amos's skiff became intolerable, the night sky exploded, and geese cried, and the dog was gone.
Seven different homes called Hugo Pflaum's office next morning to report illegal gunning on the Choptank. 'I know they were out there, Mr. Pflaum, because two dead geese drifted to my shore. Besides, I was lookin' at the Late-Late Show and remarked to my wife, 'That gunfire wasn't on TV." '
The reports were so circumstantial that Pflaum climbed into his pickup and roared out to the Turlock trailer, but as he had anticipated, Amos was absent. Distributing geese up and down the river, he supposed. Midge was gone too, doing her shopping at the Steed store in Sunset Acres. Only a boy, not more than eleven, stood at the corner of the lawn, watching suspiciously as the big, hulking warden moved among the seven dwarfs.
'Who are you, son?'
'Rafe.'
'You can't be Amos's son?'
'Grandson.'
'You wouldn't know where your grandfather is?' No response. 'You wouldn't know where he was last night?' No flicker in the pale-blue eyes.
Hugo was perplexed by the Turlocks, even though his mother and his wife came from that clan; always they seemed stupid, but always in a crisis they mustered just enough brains to outsmart their betters. Look at this boy! Blond hair almost in his eyes, cut in back with the aid of a bowl, vacant stare, heavy woolen pants held up by torn suspenders, didn't even seem to know that Pflaum was a relative of sorts and the game warden. Perhaps, Hugo thought in a misbegotten moment, I can trick this lad.
'Your gran'daddy out huntin' last night?'
'What?' The boy refused to leave his position at the corner of the lawn.
'Does he ever hunt with that big gun?'
'What?'
'Where's he keep it, Rafe?'
'Keep what?' the boy asked, a kind of stupid glaze over his face.
'You tell your father—'
'My father's in Baltimore.'
'I mean your grandfather,' Pflaum snapped.
'Tell him what?' the boy asked.
'That I was here.'
'Who are you?'
'You know damned well who I am. I'm Hugo Pflaum, your uncle more or less. You tell him I was here.'
'I'll tell him. Hugo Pflaum.'
With disgust, the game warden kicked at the sod, gingerly retraced his steps through the garden sculpture and drove back to town.
When he was gone, and well gone, with the pickup far around the bend, Rafe Turlock slumped against the trailer and would have fallen except that he caught hold of a coping. Keeping himself more or less erect, he began to vomit, not once or twice but seven times, until his stomach was empty and his body racked.
Midge found him there, still retching, and thought he might have whooping cough, for the boy would give no explanation for his spasms. She insisted that he go to bed, and he lay there with wet packs on his forehead, waiting for his grandfather's return.
Amos was absent for a long time distributing geese, but when he reached the kitchen and heard the rambling report of his grandson's seizure, he could guess what had caused it. Slipping into the sickroom, he asked, 'Hugo Pflaum here?'
'Yep. He was standin' right on the gun, askin' his questions.'
'About last night?'
'And the gun.'
'And what did you tell him?'
'Nothin', but when he kicked at one of the rings I almost vomited.'
'Midge says you did. All over the place.'
'That was after.'
Amos did not pat his grandson on the head, or congratulate him in any way. The boy had done only what was required, but he did want to let Rafe know that he was pleased, so he whistled for the Chesapeake, and to the dog's surprise, the door was opened and he was invited into the trailer. Quickly he sought out his young master, and realizing that the boy was ill, stayed by his bed, licking his limp fingers.
Amos, closing the door on the room, offered no explanation to Midge. He walked out onto the lawn to survey his twenty-one sets of sculpture: the deer were lined up behind Santa, the purple flamingo spread its concrete wings toward Sunset Acres, and the seven dwarfs trailed along behind their mistress in seven distinct styles of cuteness. Looking to where the three stood in line, Amos could visualize the great gun nesting at their feet.
'Safe for another fifty years,' he said.
One crisp November morning Owen Steed awoke to the sound of birds squabbling at the feeder outside his window, and he was so enchanted by their vitality that without dressing he went onto the lawn, where he could see the creeks from which the osprey had migrated. Standing reverently amidst a beauty he had discovered nowhere else on earth, he reflected that no one had successfully described the quiet splendor of the Eastern Shore. He was sixty-six that morning and aware that he could enjoy these estuaries for only a limited number of years, but he was grateful that misadventures in Oklahoma had forced him to come back to the drowsy glories of his youth.
When he returned to his bedroom he heard Ethel washing, and called, 'They refer to this as the land of pleasant living, but that's mere hedonism.'
'What are you talking about, Owen?'
'The lasting values of this place. Bright mornings like this. Cool nights.'
'They were cool last winter.'
'I'm trying to be serious. About a land worth preserving.' He hesitated. 'Are you joining me at the meeting?'
'What meeting?' And before he could reply, she cried enthusiastically, 'That chap from Annapolis. Going to advise us as to how we can end the plague of beer cans.' Indeed she was attending.
But as they entered the meeting hall Chris Pflaum dampened their enthusiasm. 'You're not going to like what he says. He's quite gloomy.' He certainly was, a tall angular man in his late fifties, worn down by bureaucratic haggling:
'I'm Dr. Paul Adamson, here to warn you that you're deluding yourselves if you think that reasoning or citing horrible examples will mend our defaced landscape. Seven states have conducted referenda within the past three years, and the voters have delivered a strong, clear message: "We like our clutter. We insist on the right to pitch our beer bottles wherever we damned well wish."
'It is counterproductive to argue that our citizens ought not to exhibit such destructive traits. Our problem is to uncover why they are so loyal to the empty beer can and why they insist upon using it to decorate our highways. Three disturbing factors operate. First, drinking from a can, whether it contains beer or soda pop, is a machismo thing, and in an age when we repress one machismo manifestation after another—old-style courtships, use of guns, certain speech patterns—young men are finding the beer can a last refuge. It is socially desirable to guzzle, and peer domination insists that when the can is emptied, it be thrown with arrogance wherever it will be most conspicuous.
'Second, in a period when the government restricts our actions in scores of new ways, and when it yearly sends out intrusive tax forms which not one person can understand, it is inevitable that the vigorous person must find some way to express his resentment, and what better way than with an empty beer bottle?
'Third, and this is much uglier than the first two reasons and also less susceptible to control, littering a lawn with empties is a form of social aggression used especially by those groups who feel they are disadvantaged by society. Do the responsible citizens of the community want to keep the ditches clear? The young rebel is opposed to everything the responsibles try to protect, and tossing empties into the very spots they cherish is satisfying revenge.
'Thus we have three powerful reasons urging us to deface the land, and almost none driving us to protect it. Good friends, you and I are engaged in a losing battle.'
Comments on this doleful litany were spirited. 'Can't we pass laws requiring deposits on cans and bottles?' Adamson replied that such plans had been rejected sharply by most voters on the grounds that they were an imposition on their freedom. 'Can't we appoint county officials with trucks to pick up the awful garbage?' Adamson pointed out eleven instances in which communities had rejected such proposals as unwarranted expense, the argument being that it penalized those who did not drink beer. 'Can we simply outlaw the damned things as socially destructive? We'd outlaw a plague of locusts quick enough.' Adamson did not have to go far afield for his answer to this; he referred to the commission's decision that since Norman Turlock had invested so much money in his canning plant, it would be unfair to him to change the rules now.
'What can we do?' Ethel Steed asked in some desperation.
'Nothing,' Adamson replied. 'I'm head of the agency that's supposed to prevent the plundering of Maryland's natural beauty, and there's not a damned thing I can do.' He paused to let this fact sink in, then added, 'There is, however, one thing you might try.' Everyone leaned forward, for the desire to end this nuisance was vigorous. 'Buy yourself a basket, and three days a week go out like me and pick the damned things up.'
The meeting ended on such a hopeless note that the Steeds did not want to go home, and they were relieved when Chris Pflaum suggested that they wait in the lobby and join Dr. Adamson for lunch. They found him in a reflective mood, wanting to talk about the problems of the Chesapeake. 'I was raised in Chestertown. Went to Washington College there. Didn't learn much calculus but I sure learned how to man a schooner. I lived on the bay in the good years, 1936 to the beginning of 1942. No bridge crossing the bay. No oil deposits on your hull. Crabs everywhere. The best oysters in America. And what I remember most fondly, you could jump overboard at any spot in the bay and swim. No jellyfish. It was then that my intense love for the bay was born.'
But he did not want to stress the old days at the expense of the present. 'This is still the world's most enchanting inland water. Chap in my office who loves to sail calculated that if a man owned a boat which drew less than four feet, he could cruise the Chesapeake for a thousand successive days, and drop anchor each night in a different cove.'
'Sounds improbable,' Steed said.
'Let's take the Tred Avon,' Adamson suggested, and from memory he rattled off eighteen contributory creeks. 'Now, let's take just one of them, Plaindealing, and recall only the coves we can name. Twelve of them. You could spend six months on the Tred Avon and each night anchor in some cove of heavenly beauty. And remember, we have forty rivers as good as the Tred Avon. My friend was conservative. There must be eight thousand coves along this bay—all of them in peril.'
He spoke of the dreadful burden humanity was throwing upon this inland sea: effluvia from the sewer systems, poisons from the plants, industrial waste from the entire Susquehanna Valley, the garbage of the small-boat fleet, the awful pressure of human beings, each year more insistent, less disciplined, more wasteful, less attentive.
'Ecologists in Germany and Japan and Russia are working on the theory that it is man himself who is the contaminant. Not his manufacturing plants, nor his chemicals, nor his oil spills. They're the conspicuous disasters, but the permanent one is the accumulation of men and women in great quantities and large clusters. Even if they do no single thing disastrous, it is they who create the great disaster. By their numbers alone shall ye know them.'
He dilated on this for nearly half an hour, developing the theme first enunciated by German scholars analyzing India. 'They found that numbers alone are determinant. Around the world, wherever six thousand people congregate they justify a city. Six thousand people merit having a shoemaker, and a barber, and a man who specializes in baking pastries, and a sewage engineer, however primitive. The outside specialist has no right to ask, "What is the justification for this city?" It is its own justification.
'Well, the same kind of limit probably operates negatively. If you have clustering on the shores of any body of water a large enough population, that water will be destroyed. You watch the Mediterranean two hundred years from now.'
A woman at the lunch made the obvious remark that she wasn't going to be on the Chesapeake two hundred years from now, and she doubted very much that any of the others would be there, either, to which Adamson replied, with no impatience, 'The individual witness disappears, yes, but the collective intelligence persists. Two hundred years from now, in 2177, someone like me, with every one of my apprehensions, will be lunching in Patamoke and weighing the future of the Chesapeake. We have to ensure that the bay still exists for him to worry about.'
'We were pessimistic over the possibility of controlling empty beer cans,' Steed said. 'How about the bay itself?'
'The numbers terrify me, Mr. Steed. All of central Pennsylvania contaminates our bay. Baltimore, Washington, Roanoke. Millions upon millions of people, all throwing their problems into the bay. How can it possibly survive?'
'We said that about the goose, forty years ago. Now look at the population.'
'Yes!' Adamson cried, his eyes brightening with that enthusiasm he had acquired as a boy. 'The hopeful factor is what we've discovered in various countries. Any body of water with a strong flow, no matter how contaminated, can flush itself out—renew itself completely—in three years. If it's protected. If it's allowed to regenerate in its own slow, sweet way.'
'Even Lake Erie?' a woman asked.
'Of course! Three years of total policing... no new contamination coming in from Huron... average rainfall. Even Lake Erie could cleanse itself. Now there would be some stubborn deposits on the bottom, but in time even they would be degraded and washed away. The Chesapeake Bay is like a beautiful woman. There's no humiliation from which she cannot recover.'
The room in which the ecologists were having their lunch overlooked the Choptank, and from this vantage point no one could have deduced that the river had altered much in the past three hundred and seventy years of the white man's occupancy: the width was the same; the color was still a chocolate-brown; the tides ebbed and flowed without creating much disturbance; and the geese were back. Land which had begun to perish under the weight of tomatoes was prospering when planted with corn—thousands upon thousands of acres—and out beyond Devon Island, what was left of it, the bay rested in the wintry sunlight.
'It's in dreadful shape now,' Adamson said. 'I suppose you know we had to close down three more creeks. Oysters all contaminated. Hepatitis factories, our doctors call them. You eat a plate of six, you're in bed for half a year. The bay's become a cesspool—a dumping ground for Baltimore... and the others. But it could be restored.'
He rose and walked nervously about the room, looking now at the Choptank, now at the forests of loblolly on the far shore. 'Our gamble has to be this. That at some point in the next two hundred years there will be a group of people like us able to convince society to give the bay three years of rest. It will revive. Oysters will be edible again. Fish will return. Grass will grow in the creeks and the ducks will be back, too. Millions of them.'
He was so excited by the endless possibilities of rejuvenation that his mind raced on. 'Of course, when the ducks return, the geese may leave. Then we'll change again and they'll come back. The entire bay can be revived, every one of its eight thousand coves...' He hesitated. His face grew somber. 'Unless, of course, we have so contaminated the oceans that they can no longer send fresh tides and fish into the bay.' He shrugged his shoulders. 'Mankind was destined to live on the edge of perpetual disaster. We are mankind because we survive. We do it in a half-assed way, but we do it. I suppose before the year ends we'll even see some blue heron wading back. Their struggle has lasted for eleven thousand years. Ours is just beginning.'
Not only were Commissioner Adamson's hesitant predictions depressing, but wherever the Steeds drove that afternoon they saw the necklace of empties littering the roadside to remind them that they were powerless to do anything about this relatively small contamination. Owen became so irritated that he could not sleep and thought of heading downstream to Peace Cliff to talk with Pusey Paxmore about the rise and fall of men's fortunes, but he felt that this would be an imposition.
Till well past midnight he listened to Beethoven's later quartets, and before dawn left the house to watch the geese feeding in the creek. As soon as the sun was up, he telephoned Chris Pflaum on the Little Choptank to ask if he could drop by. 'Nothing of importance. Yesterday depressed the hell out of me, and I thought you might like to run down to the old ferry at Whitehaven, see how they lived in the old days.' He was delighted when Pflaum said, 'Great idea. I'd like to visit the marshes.'
Without waking Ethel, he left the house, counted the empty cans on the quarter-mile stretch he used as his barometer, and crossed to the southern shore of the Choptank. He drove slowly westward, pausing to pay his respects at the house in which Governor Hicks had lived prior to the Civil War: Remarkable man. Slaveowner. Slave supporter to the death. Goes to Annapolis and by force of his courage alone holds Maryland in the Union. Dies in disgrace. Along the Choptank they spat on his grave. A lot like Pusey. He shook his head and muttered, 'That poor son-of-a-bitch,' but whether he meant the governor who had left the Choptank to find disgrace in Annapolis or the Quaker who had found his in the White House he could not have said.
Nor would he have admitted why he wanted to visit Chris Pflaum's residence; true, the Steeds had had some vague association with the old Herman Cline plantation now occupied by Pflaum, but no one was proud of it. And some interesting new houses were being built along the Little Choptank, but they held no fascination for a man who already owned his family plantation.
What Steed really wanted to see was how young Pflaum was living; he'd heard rumors and wished to satisfy himself as to their accuracy. He was rather relieved, therefore, to find that Chris was living alone in the rambling old house; his wife had left him—'Said she could stand either the mosquitoes or the loneliness, but not both.'
'You getting a divorce?'
'She is. Says she wants nothing from me. Ten years on the Little Choptank gave her memories enough for a lifetime.' The young naturalist spoke without rancor and suggested that Steed leave his Cadillac and travel in Pflaum's pickup. 'That's the proper way to cross the ferry.'
Each man was delighted with the trip south; it took them along the banks of those lesser rivers which wound through vast marshes where the true values of the Eastern Shore were being preserved. They drifted down to Deal Island and invited Captain Boggs for a drink. He showed them a shortcut to Whitehaven, where the ferry across the Wicomico could be reached.
'This is unbelievable,' Steed said in spiritual relaxation as he slumped back to watch a rural scene which had changed little in two hundred years. 'Only visible difference is those new chicken sheds producing birds for Frank Perdue.' On the incredibly ancient roads one expected to meet oxen dragging timbers for Her Majesty's ships—Elizabeth I, that is—and at the end of the road, where it dipped toward a small, muddy river, the ferry waited. It was on the wrong side, of course, but by pulling a rope the signal was raised, a grumpy black man moved aboard his rickety craft, the sidewheels engaged a cable, and slowly the little ferry came to fetch the pickup.
It was a crossing into another century; upstream stood the gaunt and rusting remnants of what had once been the proudest tomato cannery in the Steed chain; how many black men and women, recently in bondage, had toiled here in the 1870s; how many promising Steed lads had worked here to learn the business. The crossing required only a few minutes, but it was so restful, so far removed from the problems of today, that Steed was drawn back into the lost centuries when the Steeds governed, and he was tempted into a most baronial action.
Grasping Chris by the arm, he said almost imploringly, 'Don't remarry until you meet my daughter.'
'Sir?'
'I mean it. Damnit all, Ethel and I have this enormous place. The Steeds have always had plantations like it. My son's lost. Quite hopeless. But my daughter's worth saving. Chris, don't remarry till I get her home.'
'Mr. Steed, I don't even know her name.'
'Son, we're talking about the centuries, not a few lousy mixed-up years. Name's Clara. Have you any idea what Pusey Paxmore's gone through?'
The conversation was drowned out by a truck that began blowing its horn, not on the bank to which the ferry was heading but from the one it had left. 'Damn,' the black operator growled, 'you'd think just once they could fit together.' He looked ominously at Steed as if he had been at fault, and in some confusion the trip across the Wicomico ended, with Owen Steed staring at the ruined cannery and Chris Pflaum sadly bewildered.
'Let me put it simply,' Steed said as they headed back toward Herman Cline's plantation. 'My daughter Clara's a little younger than you. For three years she's been on one hell of a toboggan...' He fumbled, then said, 'You haven't done so damned well yourself. But the point is, Chris, you see land the way I do. You're authentic. I want you to marry Clara and take over our place when I die.'
'Mr. Steed, one day in the jungles of Vietnam, I discovered what was significant in my life. Marshes. Living with nature. And if I wouldn't give up marshes for Vera, whom I loved very much, I sure as hell won't give them up for a girl I've never met... and her fifty acres of mowed lawn.'
'You don't have to, damnit! You live in the marshes half the year, in a real house the other half.'
Chris drew back from the wheel, a husky young fellow who had already made the big decisions of his life, and as he studied the oilman he saw him as properly dressed, neatly trimmed and without a basic commitment in his body. 'You don't understand, Mr. Steed. North of the Choptank is for millionaires; south is for men.'
'That's bloody arrogant.'
'And true. I need the earth. I love the older ways down here. When I'm working in the marshes along the Little Choptank my soul expands. If I lived in a manicured place like yours, I'd die.'
He was stunned by Steed's response. 'Son, I want you to check with Washburn Turlock. Ask him about the time he showed me the Refuge from a boat. One minute he said, "It's got about two hundred acres," and within five seconds I said, "I'll buy it." I needed that land as much as you needed your marsh. Only difference between you and me is you're more primitive. If you're smart, you'll be at Patamoke Airport when Clara flies home from Paris. I think she's as hungry to get back to the land as either of us.'
Turlocks survived because they adjusted to their environment. From the moment Amos discovered what those newfangled tape recorders could do, he was satisfied that his goose problems were solved.
He had always been supreme with the goose call, luring birds when others failed, but even at his expert lips that stubby instrument was chancy, and on some days he accomplished nothing. So he drove across the bridge to De Soto Road in Baltimore, where radio shops proliferated, and there bought himself a pair of powerful loudspeakers and a rugged tape recorder built in Sweden.
When he reached home Midge bellowed from the kitchen, 'What in hell you gonna do with that crap?'
His intention was to record the calls of female geese as they came in heat, then to broadcast the calls to hordes of males as they flew overhead. 'We master this machine, Rafe, we'll have enough geese to stock every Turlock kitchen along the Choptank.'
He mastered it so well that hunters from distant counties assembled to observe his miracle. As the wildlife reporter for the _Baltimore Sun_ explained: 'Forty minutes before sunrise Amos Turlock and his men move quietly to their blinds and hide themselves beneath pine branches. As dawn approaches and the big geese begin to fly, Amos turns on his Tandberg and through the sky float the sounds of a female goose signaling to the gentlemen aloft. The males, delighted to hear the mating call, wheel in the air and descend swiftly into the muzzles of the Turlock guns.'
Amos enjoyed his monopoly for only one season, then others began to copy it; but it was the legislature that delivered the deathblow. To it came game wardens like the Pflaums, complaining that the Turlocks were destroying the balance of nature: 'Give them three more years and we'll have the old days back. Not a goose along the Choptank.' The lawmakers, most of them hunters, responded with a tough edict—you can read it in the Maryland Statutes, Turlock's Law they call it: 'No hunter may seduce male geese by means of electronic devices.' And the tape recorders were confiscated.
But a Turlock never quits, and in September of 1977, just before hunting season began, Amos came up with the ultimate stratagem: he rented five cows.
When he fenced them in right beside the creek where geese assembled, he attracted more birds into his field than anyone on the Choptank had ever done before, and Chris Pflaum asked his father, 'What's the old man up to?'
'I don't know,' Hugo said, 'but we better find out.'
Together they drove out to Turlock's spread, and what they saw astounded them. There were the five cows. There were the geese. And on the ground lay more yellow grains of corn than the average outlaw would dare to scatter in four seasons. Whenever Turlock wanted a goose, two hundred would be waiting as they gorged on his illegal corn.
But was it illegal? As Amos explained to the judge, 'All I do is feed my cows extra generous.' By this he meant that he gorged them on whole corn sixteen, eighteen hours a day. His rented cows ate so much that a large percentage passed through their system untouched by stomach acids, and there it lay on the ground, an enticement to geese for miles around.
'I can't find this man guilty,' the judge said. 'He didn't scatter the corn. The cows did.' And when the season ended, with the Turlock iceboxes crammed, old Amos returned his rented cows.
For some time it had been understood that Owen Steed intended luring Pusey Paxmore from his exile in the telescope house; the tactic would be a morning's goose hunt over the cornfields at the Refuge, so on a brisk November morning, before the sun had even hinted that it would rise, he drove out to Peace Cliff and found Pusey and his wife waiting in the darkness.
'He insists on taking Brutus,' Amanda said as she held a black Labrador by his collar.
'Wouldn't have it any other way,' Steed said as he roughed the dog's head. 'In you go!' The dog leaped into the rear of the pickup, stiffened as Steed's Chesapeake snarled, then relaxed in the companionship of a good hunt.
The two men drove down the lane in darkness and back to the Refuge, where they parked the car and started walking in the faint haze of dawn. Soon they were in the middle of an extensive field, apparently barren but actually rich in stray kernels of corn skipped by the harvesting machines.
They were headed for a strange construction, a giant-sized coffin of wood, let down into the earth in such a way that a large flat lid, camouflaged with branches, could be pulled shut after they and their dogs had climbed in. Once secure inside the coffin, and hidden by branches, the men could stand erect and look out through long narrow slits parallel to the earth. Here they would wait for sunrise and the flight of geese.
It was a long wait. The area contained many geese, more than half a million if one considered all the estuaries and coves, but few were interested in the cornfield at the Refuge. Occasional groups of six or seven would veer in from the creek, stay far from the gunners, then fly on. Eight o'clock came, cold and windy, with never a goose. Ten o'clock and no geese. At eleven a bright sun burned off the haze, making what hunters called 'a blue-bird day,' and any hope of bagging a goose during the middle hours was lost; the hunters climbed out of their casket, replaced the lid and tramped back to the pickup, with the dogs almost as disappointed as they.
At the Refuge, Ethel Steed had two roasted ducks waiting, with beef bones for the dogs, and the midday hours passed almost somnolently. Ethel earnestly wanted to ask Pusey lingering questions about Watergate, but when she saw how relaxed he was she restrained herself, and the time was spent in the most casual conversation, each participant speaking gingerly, as if afraid to agitate painful nerve ends.
'I would like to add one comment to the talks we've had,' Pusey volunteered as he dressed for the field. 'Isn't it clear that either Eisenhower or Kennedy would have cleaned up that mess in one afternoon? Go on television, manfully confess error, fire everyone involved and promise never again to allow such a lapse. The American people would have accepted that.'
Ethel smiled mischievously and asked, 'When you speak of Kennedy's eagerness to make a clean breast of everything, I presume you're referring to Teddy at Chappaquiddick?' When she saw that her frivolity startled Paxmore, she threw her arm about his shoulder and said jokingly, 'You see, Pusey, Democrats can suffer paralysis of will as well as Republicans.'
'Sky's nicely overcast,' Owen interrupted, 'and about three-thirty the geese will start coming in. Let's go back for an hour.'
But Pusey, who had enjoyed this day, said hopefully, 'I'd like to stay two or three hours. They come flocking in at dusk.'
'You're right,' Owen said. 'But remember, I have to meet the airplane at five. Clara's flying in from Paris.'
'How fortunate thee is!' Paxmore said with obvious enthusiasm. 'Reuniting a family! Forget the geese. Take me home and be on thy way.'
'No. Those hours in the box were great, and I want you to try the new blind we've built in the creek.' And he was so insistent that they try at least an hour over the water that Pusey went to the phone and called his wife. 'Thee isn't to worry, dear. We shot nothing this morning but we're going to try the creek for an hour or so. Brutus won't let me come home till we get something.' He was about to hang up, when he added rapidly, 'Amanda, guess what! Clara Steed's flying home this afternoon. From Paris.' After he replaced the phone he told the Steeds, 'Amanda says how lucky thee is. We haven't seen our boys in ages.' This comment on families encouraged him to make his final observation on Watergate: 'In Georgia this afternoon many families must be boasting about their sons in Washington. Six years from now some of them may be in jail.'
The two men took their dogs to a spot near the confluence of the creeks, a place where Pentaquod had hunted nearly four hundred years ago. Out in the water, pilings had been sunk to support the kind of rude river house so often depicted when the _National Geographic_ dealt with Malaysia or Borneo. Approach was made by small boat, into which the dogs leaped with enthusiasm and from which they sprang into the house. The two men climbed up after them, and the hunt resumed.
Steed had been right; with the sun blotted out, geese began to fly in search of one last meal, and before an hour had passed, one flight of nine came straight at the blind, and each man knocked one down. 'Get 'em!' Steed called to the dogs, but the admonition was unnecessary, for at the first flutter of a downward wing, the animals sprang into the water, swimming with abandon toward the fallen birds, and each retrieved perfectly, splashing back into the blind with the geese.
'We'd better call it a day,' Steed suggested, but Paxmore was so pleased with the hunting, and the performance of his dog, that he proposed they stay till dusk, and Steed had to remind him of the incoming plane.
'How thoughtless!' Paxmore cried. 'Of course thee must go. But I'd like to stay. Thee can pick me up when thee gets back.'
'I'll do better. I'll walk to the house, leave the pickup here for you. Drive home when you like.'
For the first time since his release from Scanderville Prison, Pusey Paxmore was alone, totally alone. Occasionally during the past months Amanda had driven into Patamoke without him, but because she knew how perilous his memories were, she had always notified someone that Pusey was by himself. Mysteriously, friends would drop by to talk of shipbuilding days, or Washburn Turlock would drive up the lane with clients who wanted to see a telescope house. He was never allowed to be alone.
In many ways it was a relief to be there in the blind, without prying questions or consoling assurances. This was the Chesapeake, timeless source of Paxmore vitality. It was to this creek that the first boatbuilders had come, seeking their oaks and the twisted knees from which their craft were built. A flock of geese flew overhead, but he did not bother to point his gun. Brutus, seeing the birds pass unmolested, began to whimper and tug at his master's sleeve.
Pusey paid no attention because he was again mouthing the platitudes which had recently sustained him: In 1969 America was in peril... Revolutionaries were burning our cities... The money I collected was for a good cause.
Even the sound of a flock of geese passing overhead did not break this rosary of shabby beads. The birds were too distant for a shot, but Brutus saw his master's inattention and grew uneasy; when five headed straight for the blind without awakening a response, he barked.
Paxmore did not hear, for he had reached a crisis in his self-examination: Perhaps I really was as pitiful as I appeared. When he attempted an excuse, he found himself trapped at the end of a long corridor from which there was no escape, so with cruel honesty he muttered the truth, 'I began service at the White House possessing the staunchest American virtues, and I sacrificed every one to expediency. Woolman Paxmore and Aunt Emily provided me with the strongest moral armor. Piece by piece I tossed it aside. And to what exalted purpose?'
The inescapable answer came harshly: To perpetuate in power men eager to destroy the bases of this nation.
He could not avoid assessing himself: They judged me to be of such trivial value that they could find no reason to defend me. Was their horrible summary correct? _That fucking Bible-spouting asshole_. Oh, Jesus! What have I done?
His disintegration was so complete that nothing could save him—not his faith, nor the love of his friends, nor even the cool waters of the Chesapeake. His horrible mistake had been to abandon the land which had nurtured him; men are not obligated to cling forever to the piece of land that bore them, but they had better pay attention to the principles they derived from it. To end one's life as Pusey Paxmore was finishing his was to end on a garbage heap.
End one's life! Was this the ignoble end, here in a goose blind on a cold afternoon?
There were reasons to think that an end to it all might be desirable: the shame that could not be erased; the jail sentence so justified in law; the rejection by those he had served; above all, the humiliation he had brought his family. These were punishments so terrible that mere death would be a release.
But there were also good reasons to reject the idea: the unfaltering love of his wife... He need enumerate no more. To his mind came the words of a hymn he had so often sung at Harvard:
The shadow of a mighty rock
Within a weary land.
No description could more perfectly summarize the character of his wife; she had warned him against Washington, had notified him of the dangers he faced in a White House lacking moral fiber, and had never said I told you so: If I had listened to her, it wouldn't have happened.
But this very acknowledgment of her strength excused him from basing his decision on what its effects might be on her: She'll survive. She isn't the shadow of a rock. She is the rock. And he dismissed her from his calculations.
It was the end of the day, the end of November, that tenuous and dangerous month. It was the end of a life spent in wrong directions and he could find no justification for its continuance.
Lowering his shotgun from the edge of the blind, where geese flew past with impunity, he wedged its stock on the floor between his booted feet. Bringing the muzzle up under his chin, he reached down with his right forefinger, located the trigger—and with neither regret nor hesitation, pulled it.
# _Voyage Fourteen: 1978_
THE WORST STORMS TO STRIKE THE CHESAPEAKE are the hurricanes which generate in the Caribbean and seem to reach the bay about every twenty years. But there are also lesser storms which roar in from the Atlantic bearing vast quantities of water and winds of crushing power.
Such storms appear yearly, sweeping ashore at Norfolk in huge waves that engulf inattentive watermen. Within a space of five minutes a wind of more than eighty miles an hour will blow in, capable of capsizing even the largest craft. In 1977 one such storm destroyed a skipjack—six men drowned; a crabber—four lost; a rowboat out of Patamoke—two dead.
In November 1977 one of these storms roiled about the Atlantic for some days, hovering just south of Norfolk, and apprehensive watermen offered predictions as to whether it would ride high into Pennsylvania, inundating the valleys again, or remain low so that the Chesapeake would catch the brunt.
'Looks to stay aloft,' said Martin Caveny, brother to the priest.
'And if it does,' his friend Amos Turlock predicted, 'the bay gets flushed out again.'
'The bay recovers. Them crabs and arsters knows how to pertect themselves.'
'Did Mrs. Paxmore want us to supervise everything? I mean the barge and all?
'She did,' Caveny said.
'You think the storm'll hold off till we get to Patamoke and back?'
Before volunteering an answer that might later be used against him, Caveny studied the heavy black sky. Moving his position so that he could see the jagged remnants of Devon Island, he watched the manner in which forerunners of the impending storm teased at the ruins of Rosalind's Revenge. 'Won't reach here before dusk.'
'We'll chance it,' Turlock said. 'Boats was Pusey's fambly business, and we wouldn't be buryin' him today if he'd stuck with 'em.'
'She'll insist on a boat,' Caveny said, 'barrin' a hurricane.'
'And a hurricane is what we'll be gettin',' Turlock said. 'Around midnight.' Hearing a noise, he turned to see the widow leave the telescope house. 'Here she comes, stern as ever.'
'Who has a better right? Television reviewing everything? Pictures of Scanderville and all that?'
'She don't give a damn about such stuff.'
'Everybody gives a damn. Wouldn't you?'
'I wouldn't of been in jail. Us Turlocks don't never overreach our position.'
'You think Pusey did?'
'If he'd of stayed home,' Turlock said, 'he wouldn't of landed in jail.'
Mrs. Paxmore came up to the watermen and studied the horizon. 'Do we get a howler?'
'We do,' Turlock said.
'How soon?'
'Not before sunset,' Amos said. 'In his opinion, that is.'
She turned to Caveny. 'Can we make it to Patamoke? I'm not worried about getting back.'
'I promise you we'll get there,' Caveny said. 'After the funeral we'll discuss about makin' it home.'
'Sounds sensible. We'll bring the coffin down at ten.'
She was about to leave when Caveny stopped her. 'Would you like us to wear black?'
Thinking that she was helping them to avoid embarrassment in case they had no black clothes, she said, 'I think not. A burial is an incident in living...'
'We have black suits, you know.'
'Oh! I would like it so much if thee wore black. It would be'—she found no satisfactory adjective and ended—'appropriate.'
At nine-thirty she called to the two men, now in their best, 'We'll bring the casket,' and they joined the two Paxmore boys, who had come home for the funeral. As they carried the casket to the barge the young men asked casually, 'Catches been good this year?'
'Never enough,' Turlock said.
'Is the Kepone from Virginia ruining the bay?'
'Ever'thing Virginia does ruins the bay,' Turlock said, reviving ancestral animosities.
'All your folks buried at Patamoke?' Caveny asked.
'They are.'
'Shame about your father.'
'It was. A damned shame, and nothing could have prevented it.'
'You think Nixon threw him to the wolves?'
'No, like all of us, we throw ourselves. But the wolves are waiting.'
When the casket was secure in the bottom of the barge, folding canvas chairs were provided for Mrs. Paxmore and the wives of the two sons. Turlock started the engine, and the long last voyage to the Quaker burying ground was begun, but as the barge drew away from the dock, three others fell in behind, and in the last one Amanda saw four members of the Cater family: Captain Absalom, his wife, a daughter and, to everyone's surprise, his cousin Hiram, dark and silent after his years in prison. The blacks said nothing, made no sign of recognition, simply clung to the cortege. It was an oral tradition in their family, revered like a passage from the Bible, that in hard times the Paxmores could be relied upon, and not even the fact that dead Pusey Paxmore had set the F.B.I. on Hiram's trail was enough to keep that young man from the funeral. When the barge reached Patamoke, he and Absalom stepped forward to help carry the casket to the graveyard; they would allow no taxi or truck to do that work.
Remarks at the grave would have been brief, in the Quaker manner, except that Father Patrick, an old man now, appeared unexpectedly to offer a short prayer which became a long one: 'He was never a Catholic, but he proved himself a friend to all who were. One of his ancestors built this meeting house, but Pusey gave us the money to rebuild our church. Blood will tell, and many's the time I was able to find help at his house when I could get but little among my own worshippers.' On and on he went, reviewing Pusey's life and uttering those relevant truths which others had been afraid to speak because of the tragic nature of his suicide.
'He was not only a generous man,' Father Caveny concluded, 'but a gallant one. When the nation needed him, he served. When his commander required a cover, he provided it. Little good it did him, little help he got from those he supported. We bury our friend Pusey with love and remembrance. No man or woman standing by this grave was ever poorer for what he did. Let those who loved him be the ones to place him in his final resting place.'
With that, he defiantly grabbed a shovel, even though he knew his own church looked sternly upon suicide, and tossed a meed of earth onto the coffin. With studied care he passed the spade along to Hiram Cater, to Martin Caveny, to Amos Turlock and, finally, to the Paxmore boys. So Pusey was buried among sea captains who had sailed to London and Barbados, among those unpretentious heroes who had resisted King George, and with the forgotten farmers and merchants who had made the Eastern Shore a place of dignity.
Following the funeral, a small reception was held at the home of a Quaker family. There the Paxmores and the watermen discussed whether a boat trip back to Peace Cliff was feasible, and it became apparent that Mrs. Paxmore hoped to return by boat, even if a risk was involved—'Pusey loved this river.'
Her sons were dubious. 'This is bound to be a real storm, Mother. Thee shouldn't risk it.'
'Thee may be right. Take the girls back in the car. As for me, if Amos and Martin are willing...'
'He said the storm won't hit till dusk,' Turlock said. 'I'm game.' When Caveny said the same, the trio hurried to the barge, revved the motor and started home.
It was a sad and stately return. Waves were heavy and it took some minutes to clear the harbor and enter the river itself. But it was also a memorable voyage, for the skies were dark as if nature were lamenting the death of a son. The Turlock marshes were gone, of course, buried under a blanket of concrete, but in the woods behind, tall trees tested their crowns against the wind; small boats hurried to shore; geese moved in careful patterns.
During the final leg to Peace Cliff the waves became substantial, dousing the passengers, but when Mrs. Paxmore turned to wipe her face she discovered that the barge was not alone; trailing it came the smaller boat of the Cater family, on guard to see the Paxmores safely home before making the long run back to Patamoke.
It was late afternoon when Amos Turlock pulled the barge up to the Paxmore wharf, and when Amanda Paxmore was safely ashore, he said something which betrayed the anxiety he had felt during the last fifteen minutes of the trip: 'Caveny, let's hide this boat inland as far as we can get. This storm's risin' fast.'
'Is it to be a hurricane?' Amanda asked as she stamped her feet to squeeze out the water.
'Could be,' Turlock said briefly.
'Then we must bring the Caters in, too.' And she went to the end of the wharf, shouting and waving to the black people in their small boat, but they were determined to make it back to Patamoke; when they tried to enter the Choptank, however, great waves rolled toward them and it was futile to persist. Turning quickly, they scuttled back to the wharf, where Mrs. Paxmore helped them come ashore.
'This will be a blower,' Captain Absalom said, and he was right. Discharging no lightning or thunder, the clouds dropped so low they seemed to touch the waves they had created, and night fell a good hour earlier than normal, with enormous sheets of rain slanting down.
The five Paxmores, the two watermen and the four blacks gathered together in the front room at Peace Cliff, but it was so exposed to the fury of the storm that the large windows began to leak, and everyone had to find refuge in the kitchen; this provided little reassurance, for the lights went out, and in darkness the huddling figures could hear the wind ripping away the shutters, sending them crashing through the night.
'In the old days,' Amanda said, 'we'd have interpreted this as God's anger over the death of a great man. Tonight all we can say is what Mr. Caveny just said, "This is one hell of a storm." '
Through the bleak November night it continued, and toward four in the morning, when it reached a howling climax, one of the young wives, a Southern Baptist from Alabama, asked plaintively, 'Would if be all right if I prayed?' and Amanda said, 'I've been praying for some time.' This reminded the Baptist girl that Quakers prayed silently, and she asked, 'I mean... a real prayer... out loud?'
'Betsy,' Amanda said, 'we'll all pray with thee,' and she anticipated some tremendous religious statement, but the girl merely knelt beside her chair and in flickering candlelight said, 'Dear God, protect the men caught on the bay.'
'I'll say Amen to that,' Martin Caveny said, crossing himself.
'And so will I,' added one of the Paxmore boys.
At dawn the storm abated, and in full light they all went out to survey the wreckage and find what consolation they could: the barge thrown thirty feet into a field (but not smashed); the dock quite swept away (but the pilings still firmly in place); two of the large windows smashed (but they were insured); a substantial chunk of shoreline eaten away (but it could be rebuilt behind palisades); and many stately trees knocked so flat that no salvage was possible.
'We'd best see what's happened elsewhere,' one of the boys suggested, so Amos Turlock loaded a truck with ropes, crowbars, shovels and field glasses and led an expedition to Caveny's home, which had been roughed up but not destroyed. At the Turlock trailer he was aghast at the damage; of his twenty-one major statues, seven had been crushed by falling branches, but he found easement when he saw that the three dwarfs guarding the sunken gun remained at their post.
The truck could not enter Patamoke, trees barred the way, so they doubled back to Peace Cliff, where, from a height, they could survey the mouth of the Choptank and see the various boats driven inland by the storm. They were starting to inspect the opposite shore when Amos Turlock, using his binoculars, uttered a loud cry: 'Look at Devon!'
Everyone turned toward the island that guarded the river, and Caveny said, 'I don't see anything wrong.' He grabbed the glasses, stared westward and said in a low voice, 'Jee—sus!'
One of the Paxmore wives also looked toward the ruins she had sketched only two days ago. Saying nothing, she passed the binoculars to her husband.
He looked for a moment, lowered the glasses to check with his naked eye and said, 'It's gone. It's all gone.'
'What's gone?' his brother asked. And then, without need of assistance, he studied the turbulent waters and stood transfixed by what the storm had done.
The island had vanished. Above the crashing waves, where splendid fields had once prospered, there was nothing. On the spot where the finest mansion on the Eastern Shore had offered its stately silhouette, nothing was visible. The final storm which overtakes all existence had struck; that relentless relentless erosion which wears down even mountains had completed its work. Devon Island and all that pertained to it was gone.
Incessant waves which eleven thousand years ago had delivered detritus to this spot, causing an island to be born, had come back to retrieve their loan. The soil they took would be moved to some other spot along the Chesapeake, there to be utilized in some new fashion for perhaps a thousand years, after which the waves would borrow it again, using and reusing until that predictable day when the great world-ocean would sweep in to reclaim this entire peninsula, where for a few centuries life had been so pleasant.
_To
Mari Michener
who cared for the geese,
the herons, the ospreys and
the cardinals_
# _Acknowledgments_
I first sailed upon the Chesapeake in 1927 and was a frequent passenger thereafter. From my earliest days on the bay I considered writing about it, but always postponed beginning until such time as I could live along its shores for some extended period. This opportunity came in 1975, when I lived near a small but historic fishing village for two years. During that time I met and worked with the many learned people whose ideas infuse this novel, and I should like here to give them the thanks they so richly earned.
_The Chesapeake Bay:_ Walter Robinson of Swarthmore first took me boating and instilled in me his love of the area. Judge William O'Donnell of Phoenixville allowed me to crew his _Prince of Donegal_ scores of times, and Larry Therien helped me to explore. Pearce Coady took me on his _Cleopatra's Barge_ to parts of the bay.
_The Choptank River:_ Lawrence McCormick and Richard Springs took me on small-boat excursions to the headwaters of the river. Edward J. Piszek arranged for helicopter explorations at low level. Judge O'Donnell sailed me to all parts of the river, as did Joseph A. Robinson.
_Skipjacks:_ Three captains helped enormously. G.S. Pope, now retired, told me of the old days. Josef Liener instructed me as we sailed the _Rosie Parks_ , and Eddie Farley took me out for long hours of oyster dredging on his _Stanley Norman_. I was also allowed to inspect various old boats as they stood on blocks.
_Oysters:_ George Krantz of the University of Maryland's Center for Estuarine Studies shared with me his research findings, and Robert Inglis kept me informed as to his progress in growing oysters in the creek which formed his front yard. Levin Harrison told me casually of the rough old days.
_Geese:_ Ron Vavra, twin brother of the man who provided the photographs for my book _Iberia_ , introduced me to the basic research on the Canada goose, and dozens of hunters helped me understand its habits. William H. Julian, Manager of the Blackwater National Wild Life Refuge, showed me his 60,000 geese and was unfailingly helpful.
_Herons and ospreys:_ After I had done a good deal of field work on these enchanting water birds, I had the good luck to meet up with Jan Reese, a leading expert on both species, and he gave me advanced instruction on aspects I had not contemplated.
_Big guns:_ Dr. Harry Walsh, the principal authority, showed me his collection, talked of the old days, and helped me to understand the functioning and mystique of these one-man cannons.
_Trees:_ Stark McLaughlin, Project Forester, State of Maryland, gave much useful advice concerning various aspects of tree growth and culture.
_Choptank life:_ Captain Bill Benson, of the nation's oldest ferry route, provided invaluable reminiscences. Ambassador Philip Crowe was most helpful in telling of recent developments. And Alyce Stocklin, a friend of many years, was hilarious as a constant commentator. H. Robins Hollyday was generous both with his time and his store of old photographs, and Peter Black was helpful in diverse ways.
_Black history:_ Dickson Preston generously shared with me his remarkable discoveries relating to Frederick Douglass; these lend authority to my treatment of slavery in the area. He also read the complete manuscript and made valuable suggestions on historical details. My friend Dorothy Pittman convened some of her black neighbors to talk with me, particularly James Thomas and LeRoy Nichols. Judge William B. Yates provided sober and ecumenical reflections on the days of trouble.
Although for dramatic reasons the action of this novel takes place on the northern shore of the Choptank, much of my most effective research was conducted on the south bank, for which I have a special affection, and I am deeply indebted to the experts of that region. Bayly Orem, of a distinguished Dorchester family, met me on a dove shoot and took it upon himself to introduce me to his neighbors who might prove helpful:
_Boat building:_ James Richardson, famous for his reconstructions of historic boats, was constantly instructive, as were his sons-in-law, Tom Howell and James D. Brighton.
_Turkling:_ State Senator Frederick C. Malkus, the region's premier turtle trapper, took me turkling, as that sport is called.
_Gigging:_ Richard Drescher, one of Maryland's principal athletes, took me night frogging in the marshes of south Dorchester.
_Little Choptank:_ Dale Price allowed me to inspect his place on the Little Choptank, the site occupied by Herman Cline's slave farm prior to the Civil War.
_Indians:_ Judge William B. Yates told me of the Choptank Indians and other matters.
_Marshland:_ Elmer Mowbray allowed me to accompany him on explorations of his privately owned marsh. He is an expert on estuarine life, and I am indebted to him.
_Fishing:_ David Orem and Jay Alban taught me about fishing and the intricacies of nature in the bay area.
_Research:_ Everyone at the Chesapeake Bay Maritime Museum, St. Michaels, was most helpful; the director, R.J. Holt, was especially so. The library in Easton, Maryland, has a distinguished collection of research materials; its director Elizabeth Carroll saw to it that I had assistance, and Mary Starin, custodian of the Maryland Room, was indefatigable in finding books, as she is with all who work in the library. Robert H. Burgess, of the Mariners' Museum in Norfolk, helped with both his books and his counsel.
_Studies:_ Details of early activity were checked against _Tobacco Coast. A Maritime History of the Chesapeake Bay in the Colonial Period_ by Arthur Pierce Middleton. The nature of commercial life on an Eastern Shore plantation during the Revolutionary War came from various sources, the most revealing being _In Pursuit of Profit_ by Edward C. Papenfuse, which deals with a group of commercial families on the western shore. The significance of the naval battle fought at the mouth of the Chesapeake in September 1781 is not sufficiently appreciated. My account is based on recent research, particularly _Decision at the Chesapeake_ by Harold A. Larrabee, which deserves wide attention from those interested in this period. But my constant assistants were the citizens of the Choptank area. Scores of them talked with me at social gatherings or during investigative meetings held during one of the coldest winters the Eastern Shore has ever experienced and one of the hottest summers. They were provocative, perceptive, amusing... and often hopeful that I would quit my project and go elsewhere, lest my writing awaken the rest of the world as to what a sequestered paradise they were enjoying on the Eastern Shore.
#
ALSO BY JAMES A. MICHENER
_Tales of the South Pacific
The Fires of Spring
Return to Paradise
The Voice of Asia
The Bridges at Toko-Ri
Sayonara
The Floating World
The Bridge at Andau
Hawaii
Report of the County Chairman
Caravans
The Source
Iberia
Presidential Lottery
The Quality of Life
Kent State: What Happened and Why
The Drifters
A Michener Miscellany: 1950-1970
Centennial
Sports in America
The Covenant
Space
Poland
Texas
Legacy
Alaska
Journey
Caribbean
The Eagle and the Raven
Pilgrimage
The Novel
The World Is My Home: A Memoir
James A. Michener's Writer's Handbook
Mexico
Creatures of the Kingdom
My Lost Mexico
Literary Reflections
Recessional
Miracle in Seville
This Noble Land: My Vision for America_
with A. Grove Day
_Rascals in Paradise_
with John Kings
_Six Days in Havana_
#
JAMES A. MICHENER, one of the world's most popular writers, is the author of the Pulitzer Prize-winning _Tales of the South Pacific_ , the bestselling novels _Hawaii, Texas, Caravans, The Covenant_ , and _Alaska_ , and the memoir _The World Is My Home_. Michener served on the advisory council to NASA and the International Broadcast Board, which oversees the Voice of America. Among dozens of awards and honors, he received America's highest civilian award, The Presidential Medal of Freedom, in 1977, and an award from the President's Committee on the Arts and Humanities in 1983 for his commitment to art in America. Michener died in 1997 at the age of ninety.
| {
"redpajama_set_name": "RedPajamaBook"
} | 5,623 |
\section{Introduction}
The objects in the solar neighborhood with high peculiar velocities
can always be placed into one of two categories: the disk-origin or
non-disk origin. The normal, young, disk stars in the solar neighborhood
share the same circular motion with the Sun, and have small velocity
residuals in a Gaussian distribution with a standard deviation
of 10-16 km~s$^{-1}$ \citep[and references therein]{gie86}.
The disk-origin high velocity stars are the objects whose peculiar
velocities are far beyond the velocity dispersion of normal disk stars.
They are often called runaway stars because the high peculiar velocities of
these stars are thought to be caused by two possible mechanisms:
1) supernova explosion in a binary system \citep{zwi57,bla61}; or 2)
strong gravitational interaction in a multiple star system that often occurs
in a dynamically chaotic, young, dense stellar cluster environment
\citep{pov67,leo88,gab08}. Previous studies
of runaway stars show that both mechanisms generate runaway
objects, but an early systematic survey by \citet{gie86} suggests that the
second mechanism is dominant. On the other hand, most of the non-disk-origin,
high velocity objects in the solar neighborhood are thought to belong to the old
halo population. The halo stars have high peculiar velocities because
they do not follow the circular motion of the normal disk stars but move
in their own very diverse orbits. Because of the significant difference
in the ages of high velocity stars associated with these two origins,
the runaway, disk origin is generally assumed for young objects like
high velocity B stars. However, in this paper, we discuss the unusual
case of a nearby, high velocity B-star, HD~69686, and we argue that
it may have been born far from the Galactic disk.
We are currently making a spectroscopic survey of field B stars to
study the evolution of stellar rotation. One of our targets,
HD~69686, was selected because it is fairly
bright ($V\sim7.1$) and is classified as a B8 star in the SAO star catalog.
In this paper, we present what we have learned about HD~69686.
At the time of writing, the target's listing in the SIMBAD
database includes only very basic astrometry and photometry data
and no published references. After measuring radial velocities
of our program stars, HD~69686 was immediately singled out by having
the largest radial velocity, 148 km~s$^{-1}$, among our sample B stars.
Only after this, we noticed that this star also has quite a large proper
motion ($\mu_\alpha \cos \delta = -86.17\pm0.67$ mas~yr$^{-1}$,
$\mu_\delta = 7.21\pm0.42$ mas~yr$^{-1}$, from the newly released
{\it Hipparcos} re-measurements by \citealt{van07}). Thus, HD~69686
is a previously unknown high velocity B star. How old is this star now?
Is it a runaway star? Where did it come from? Is it a binary system?
These are the kind of questions that we want to answer.
In the next section, we briefly describe the instrumental setup and how
we obtained the final spectra of HD~69686. In \S3, we
present the details of the procedure we used to determine the key parameters, such
as the space velocity, the effective temperature, gravity, and age
of the star. In \S4, we use a modern Galactic potential model to reconstruct
the full trajectory of HD~69686 that helps us to locate its birthplace and leads
us to suggest that HD~69686 might not be a runaway star as we thought previously.
In the final section, we provide additional evidence implying that HD~69686 may
been born in the Galactic halo.
\section{Observation}
The spectra of HD~69686 were obtained on the 2.1-m telescope
at KPNO using the Goldcam spectrograph (with a $3072\times1024$
CCD detector, T3KC) on 2008 November 17 and 18.
The spectrograph grating (G47, 831 lines mm$^{-1}$) was
used in second order with a CuSO$_4$ blocking filter,
and this arrangement provided spectrum
coverage of about 900\AA\ around the central wavelength of 4400\AA.
The slit width was set at $1\farcs3$, leading to a resolving
power $R\sim 2400$ (FWHM$\sim$1.83 \AA, measured in the comparison spectra).
The integration time for HD~69686 was 55~s yielding
spectra with S/N $\sim$ 280 in
the continuum regions. During the entire
observing run, we took comparison (HeNeAr lamp) exposures
for each of our program stars, including HD~69686, to
ensure accurate wavelength calibration of the spectra.
The accuracy of wavelength calibration is estimated to be around
6 km~s$^{-1}$ in velocity space by checking the wavelength fitting
residuals of the comparison spectra and by comparing multi-night
spectra of all our program stars that are not spectroscopic
binaries. We obtained the final reduced spectra by going through
the standard IRAF\footnote{http://iraf.noao.edu/} CCD image reduction
(subtracted the bias level, divided the flat images, removed cosmic
rays, and fixed the bad pixels/columns) and the long-slit stellar
spectrum extraction procedures (traced and binned the spectrum,
calibrated wavelength).
\section{Stellar Parameters}
The procedure to determine the physical parameters of HD~69686
is similar to that used in our previous studies of cluster
B stars \citep{hua06a,hua06b}. The $V \sin i$ value was derived
by fitting synthetic model profiles of \ion{He}{1}
$\lambda 4471$ and \ion{Mg}{2} $\lambda 4481$, using realistic
physical models of rotating stars (considering Roche geometry
and gravity darkening). The details of this step are
described in \citet{hua06a}. The best fit of \ion{He}{1} $\lambda 4471$
is illustrated in Figure~1. With $V \sin i$ at hand, we
then determined both the effective temperature ($T_{\rm eff}$) and
gravity ($\log g$) of the star by fitting the H$\gamma$
profile (see details in \citealt{hua06b}). The best fit of
the H$\gamma$ profile is shown in Figure~2. By shifting the best fit
profiles in wavelength to match the observations we also obtained
an accurate radial velocity of each night's spectrum. The radial
velocities were transformed into the heliocentric frame by removing
the orbital motion of the Earth (using the RVCORRECT function in IRAF),
and these velocities are given in Table~1.
We do not see any significant change in the radial velocity between
the two nights that is larger than the errors (6 km~s$^{-1}$). Even
if HD~69686 were a long period, spectroscopic binary system, any
orbital velocity variations will be small compared to its radial velocity.
Thus, we adopted the mean of the radial velocities in Table~1 as the
systemic radial velocity of HD~69686 for later analysis (Table~2).
For a rotating star such as HD~69686, the derived gravity ($\log g$)
represents an average of gravity over its visible hemisphere. It may
not be a good indicator of evolutionary status of the star because
the effective gravity on the equatorial region is lowered by
centrifugal force induced by stellar rotation. Instead, we use
the gravity at the poles of the star ($\log g_{\rm polar}$) to
estimate the age of the star since the $\log g_{\rm polar}$ value is
not significantly influenced by rotation. The method to estimate $\log g_{\rm polar}$
is described in \citet{hua06b} and has been applied to many of
our studies on the evolution of B stars \citep{hua08,mcs08}. Based on
our model simulation results \citep{hua06b}, except for those extreme
cases where the stars spin at or very close to the breakup velocity,
the estimations of $\log g_{\rm polar}$ are quite accurate
(the statistical errors are 0.03 dex or less).
\placefigure{fig1}
\placefigure{fig2}
\placetable{tab1}
We need one additional step to correct $T_{\rm eff}$ and $\log g$
derived from the H$\gamma$ fit. We noticed that we had to use a
model with much higher temperature (16200K) to fit the \ion{He}{1}
$\lambda 4471$ line while our H$\gamma$ line fit suggests that the effective
temperature of HD~69686 should be around 14500K. This discrepancy
implies that HD~69686 is a helium strong star. When we use
models with solar abundances (H:He$=$0.9:0.1) to synthesize
the H$\gamma$ profile and to fit the observed spectrum of a He-peculiar star,
we get systematic errors in the derived parameters ($T_{\rm eff}$ and $\log g$).
The systematic errors can be corrected using the results given by \citet{hua08}
who used the same technique to determine
the photospheric parameters. The correction procedure was done in an
iterative manner. We first determine the He abundance using
the derived $T_{\rm eff}$ and $\log g$ values, then correct
$T_{\rm eff}$ and $\log g$ based on the He abundance according
to Table~3 of \citet{hua08}. We then determine the He
abundance again with the updated $T_{\rm eff}$ and $\log g$ values,
and repeat the steps until convergence is reached. At the end,
we obtained the final corrected $T_{\rm eff}$ and $\log g$ (listed
in Table~2) for HD~69686, with abundances typical of a He-strong star,
with a number ratio of H:He$=(0.82\pm 0.04):(0.18\mp 0.04)$.
The best available parallax and proper motion data of HD~69686 come from
the {\it Hipparcos} catalogue \citep{van07}. However, the parallax
measurement, $2.35\pm0.58$ mas (1$\sigma$ range: 341$\sim$565 pcs), is
still too uncertain to provide us with an accurate tangential velocity
for tracing the star's trajectory in space.
We have to find an alternative method to obtain a reliable
distance of the star. Our method is described as follows:
1) by comparing the derived $T_{\rm eff}$ and $\log g_{\rm polar}$
of HD~69686 with evolutionary tracks of stellar
models \citep{sch92}, we can estimate its stellar mass; 2) we then
can calculate the stellar radius from the mass and $\log g_{\rm polar}$;
3) from the radius and surface temperature, we can calculate the true
luminosity of the star (we considered a distorted shape of
a rotating star in this step, see details below);
4) with the true luminosity and the $V$ magnitude of the star, we can
derive the distance for assumed values of extinction and bolometric correction.
The $B-V$ color index from the {\it Hipparcos/Tycho}
catalogue\footnote{http://archive.ast.cam.ac.uk/hipp/hipparcos.html}
(ESA 1997) is $-$0.15$\pm$0.01 which is basically no different from
the zero-reddening color of a star with temperature of 14,800~K. Thus,
we can safely set $A_V=0$ in the last step. The bolometric correction data we
used here are from \citet{bal94}. Finally, we estimated the age of the star from
its mass and polar gravity by comparing with the non-rotating theoretical
models by \citet{sch92}. The whole procedure was also repeated with other denser
model grids by \citet{lej01},\citet{dem04}, and \citet{mar08}, and we found
no noticeable difference in the derived parameters between these
model grids. All the derived parameters are listed in Table~2.
\placefigure{fig3}
\placetable{tab2}
\citet{heg00,mey00} and, more recently, \citet{eks08} (EKS models,
hereafter) have predicted that, due to rotationally induced mixing, fast
rotating stars may evolve on MS tracks quite differently from non-rotating
stars. Fresh hydrogen can be brought down to the core due to rotationally
induced mixing and make rotating stars have a longer MS lifetime.
To investigate the difference in ages between rotating and non-rotating
stars, we calculated the ages of the rotating models with various spin rates
at a fixed evolutionary status (at $\log g_{\rm polar} = 4.04$). We choose the
3 $M_\odot$ model (the rotating model with mass closest to HD 69686) from EKS
models. The result is given in Table~3. As expected, fast rotating
stars are evolving more slowly than slow- or non-rotating stars with the
same mass in term of surface gravity at poles. As shown in Table~3, a very
fast rotating star with $\Omega/\Omega_{\rm crit}=0.9$ probably takes
20\% more time than a non-rotating star to reach $\log g_{\rm polar} = 4.04$.
\placetable{tab3}
It is worthwhile noting that HD~69686 is a rotating star with a
moderate $V \sin i$ value ($=141$ km~s$^{-1}$). Because of
the centrifugal force on its surface, the projected disk
of HD~69686 on the sky is not perfectly round, and the projected
angular area is expected to be slightly larger than $\pi R_{\rm polar}^2/D^2$
($D$ is the distance) by a factor $f$, which depends on the
inclination angle $i$. Because
we do not know the exact value of the inclination angle, we
can only estimate it by averaging all possible values of $i$.
The range of $i$ is between $\arcsin(V \sin i /V_{\rm crit})$
and $\pi/2$, where $V_{\rm crit}$ is the breakup velocity of
the star ($V_{\rm crit}=411$ km~s$^{-1}$ for HD~69686). We
found the statistical mean of the acceptable
inclination range is $i = 60^\circ$. If we assume that
HD~69686 (with $M=4.42 M_\odot$, $\log g_{\rm polar}=4.04$,
and, therefore, $R_{\rm polar}=3.32 R_\odot$)
has an inclination of $i=60^\circ$, then
we obtain $R_{\rm eq}=3.51 R_\odot$ and $f=1.07$ from calculations
based on simple Roche geometry. With estimates in hand for the
effective temperature and gravity, we can compare the observed
and model spectral energy distributions (SED) of the star
to determine its angular size, and then use our estimate of
its physical size to derive a second determination of distance.
In Figure~3, we plot the optical/IR flux points that are converted
from the $B$, $V$, $I_C$, and $JHK_S$ magnitudes of the star and from
the UV data from the ESRO TD$-1$ satellite \citep{tho78}. The fit between
the calculated SED ($A_V=0$) and photometry data is very good, and
the normalization factor yields an equivalent, limb darkened angular
diameter of $0.085 \pm 0.004$ mas. Using the projection factor $f$
and polar radius given above, we arrive at a distance
of $377 \pm 16$ pc, which is fully consistent with the
spectroscopic distance derived earlier.
We also apply our H$\gamma$ fit method to a set of realistic models of HD 69686
to investigate more closely the difference between the statistically estimated
$\log g_{\rm polar}$ and the true values of $\log g_{\rm polar}$ for models
at various inclination angles. The model star has a mass of 4.42 $M_\odot$.
At different inclination angles, we synthesize the H$\gamma$ profiles by
considering Roche geometry (controled by both rotational and gravitational
potential on the surface) and the gravity darkening
effect ($T_{\rm local} \propto g_{\rm eff}^{0.25}$). We adjust $T_{\rm polar}$
and $R_{\rm polar}$ of the model stars for each inclination angle so that
the measured values ($T_{\rm msr}$ and $\log g_{\rm msr}$ from H$\gamma$ fit)
always equal the values given in Table~2. All results
are given in Table~4, where we can see that the range of $\log g_{\rm polar}$,
$4.04\pm 0.04$, covers all inclination angles from $i=90^\circ$ down to
$i=30^\circ$. Below $i=30^\circ$ (i.e., $V_{\rm eq} > 282$ km~s$^{-1}$),
the model star spins close to the critical speed (around $i=20^\circ$).
Because of low probability that the star rotates with higher $V_{\rm eq}$ ($> 280$ km~s$^{-1}$)
\citep{hua06a} and because the corresponding inclination range is narrow
($20^\circ < i < 30^\circ$), the chance of HD 69686 spinning at a low inclination
angle and having a higher
$\log g_{\rm polar}$ beyond the range of $4.04\pm 0.04$ is low. Even if HD 69686
does spin at a low inclination angle, its age would be older than that its polar
gravity implies because it rotates much faster than at a high inclination angle
(see Table~3). In this numerical simulation, we have
also checked the projected area of the models on sky. We found that the
projected area of the models at all investigated inclination angles are
basically same (different within $\pm1$\%). As the inclination angle goes
lower, the $f$ factor gets bigger. Meanwhile the model star rotates faster
and faster (increasing $V_{\rm eq}$). In order to keep the measured
$\log g$ constant, we have to lower the polar radius, $R_{\rm polar}$.
Thus, the net effect is that the projected area on the sky, $\pi R_{\rm polar}^2/D^2$
multiplied by $f$, stays almost unchanged. In other words, it is safe to derive
the distance using the projected area at one inclination angle.
\placetable{tab4}
It should be noted that, as we were deriving the surface $\log g$
of HD 69686 from H$\gamma$ profile fit, we did not consider possible
systematic errors in the synthesized profiles. Our synthesis code
took the specific intensity profile data generated by
SYNSPEC43\footnote{http://nova.astro.umd.edu/Synspec43/synspec.html}, which
is using the VCS theory \citep{vid73}. If the systematic error causes
an underestimation of surface gravity, $\log g$, by 0.1 dex or more,
HD 69686 might be younger than we estimate above, and could be
born on the Galactic plane (see section 4).
Many previous studies \citep{tob81,saf97,mag01,ram01a,lyn04,mar04} have pointed
out that some old evolved objects in the halo, lying on a post-horizontal
branch (PHB) or a post-asymptotic giant branch (PAGB), could have similar
atmospheric parameters (temperature and gravity) as young massive OB stars
of population I. Could HD~69686 be an old PHB or PAGB halo object with
the same $T_{\rm eff}$ and $\log g$ values listed in Table~2? One
key difference between the old blue halo objects and the young OB disk
stars is that the former have much lower mass ($<$ 1$M_\odot$). If
HD~69686 had a mass lower than $1 M_\odot$, then for its observed
gravity, it would have a small radius and a distance of less than 180~pc,
which would yield a parallax more than 5$\sigma$ higher than the Hipparcos
parallax ($2.35\pm0.58$ mas). Thus, we are confident that HD~69686 is a
young, massive, main sequence B star instead of an old blue halo star with
similar atmospheric parameters.
\section{Tracing Backward to the Birthplace}
Now we have very accurate information that we list in Table~2
about the position and the space velocity of HD~69686
(resolved into three orthogonal components relative to the Sun:
the radial velocity $V_r$ and the tangential velocity in
the directions of increasing right ascension $V_{\rm RA}$
and declination $V_{\rm Dec}$ for epoch J2000).
With help of a properly selected Galactic potential model, we should
be able to follow the motion of HD~69686 backward to its birthplace.
Among the many Galactic models available in literature, we decided to
choose the axisymmetric model proposed by \citet{deh98b} (their model 2,
DB2 here after). Their model mass distribution was constructed to meet
the constraints imposed by all the high quality kinematical data that
were available at that time. The gravitational acceleration is related
to the potential by $\overrightarrow{a}(R,z)=-\nabla \Phi(R,z)$. We
obtained both the potential and the acceleration data of the model in
a format of 3D grids in space (0.1 kpc per step in $R$ and 0.01 kpc
per step in $z$), and we made a bilinear-interpolation in this grid to
determine the acceleration at each time step.
The star's true space velocity in the Galactic potential field
is its velocity relative to the Local Standard
of Rest (LSR, hereafter), ($U$,$V$,$W$), plus the Galactic circular velocity
of LSR, (0, $V_{\rm circ}(R_0)$,0).
Here $R_0$ ($=8$ kpc) is the Sun's distance to the Galactic center \citep{rei93},
and $V_{\rm circ}(R_0)=$217 km~s$^{-1}$ is the circular velocity of DB2
at $R_0$ (very close to the IAU recommended value, 220 km~s$^{-1}$).
In order to trace the star's motion back in time,
we use the reversed space velocity of HD~69686,
$-$($U$,$V+V_{\rm circ}(R_0)$,$W$) as the initial velocity. The initial
location of HD~69686 in the Galaxy is determined from its location relative
to the Sun and the Galactic location of the Sun, 8 kpc away from the Galactic
center \citep{rei93} and 8 pc above the Galactic plane \citep{hol97}. We calculated
$\overrightarrow{a}(R,z)$ first, and then moved the star a very small step
assuming $\overrightarrow{a}(R,z)$ stays constant during this small move.
We updated the star's velocity and acceleration at the end of each step. Repeating
this calculation until reaching the estimated age of the star (actually
reaching to the zero age of the star because we move back in time),
the integration follows the star back to its birthplace. The numerical
errors of this integration depend on the size of each small step. We
found that a step of 2 kyr is a good choice which results in only a very
small difference ($<$ 1 pc) from the integrated positions using a
smaller step (1 kyr) over 80 Myr.
\placefigure{fig4}
The reconstructed trajectory of HD~69686
is plotted in Figure~4 as a thick solid line. The dotted lines are
those tracks that result by changing by 1~$\sigma$ the space velocity
component $V_{\rm RA}$ (with the dominant velocity error, $1 \sigma=8$ km~s$^{-1}$).
Because of the very large peculiar velocity of HD~69686, it has a non-circular
orbital motion (the circular orbit of the Sun in the $X-Y$
plane is plotted as a dashed line in Fig.~4 for comparison). Currently,
HD~69686 is quickly passing through the solar neighborhood and moving
away from the Galactic center ($U=-191$ km~s$^{-1}$). When we first derived
$U$, we suspected that this star might come from the very inner part of
the Galaxy. After the full trajectory was reconstructed, we realized
that HD~69686 has traveled a very long distance across the Galaxy before
reaching its current location (see the top panel of Fig.~4).
The birthplace of HD~69686 is located in the outer part of the Galaxy
(about 12 kpc from the Galactic center, 4 kpc further out than the Sun).
At its birth (73 Myr ago), HD~69686 was more than 10~kpc away from the
Sun (compared to its current distance of 380~pc). About 26.6 Myr ago,
HD~69686 reached its minimum distance from the Galactic center
($\approx 4.4$ kpc).
\citet{mar06} studied more than 60 high Galactic latitude B stars and he suggested
that all the young population I B stars in his sample are likely ejected from the
Galactic plane. \citet{mag01} and \citet{ram01b} found very similar results
in their investigations of high-latitude blue objects.
If the cause of the high peculiar velocity of
HD~69686 is similar to other runaway OB stars, then its birthplace is expected
to be in or very close to the Galactic plane because star formation activities
are very rare at places far from the plane. However, our calculated
trajectory suggests that HD~69686 is an exception. In the lower panel of Figure~4,
HD~69686's projected trajectory on the $X-Z$ plane clearly shows that it was
located well below the Galactic plane ($z \sim -1.8$ kpc) 73 Myr ago.
Today HD~69686 (only 150 pc above the Galactic plane) is on its way plunging
into the Galactic plane ($W=-57$ km~s$^{-1}$). Moving backward in time,
it reached the highest position of its trajectory (860 pc above the
Galactic plane) 19.5 Myr ago, and crossed the plane around
37 Myr ago, thanks to the stronger gravitational force in the $z$ direction
in the inner part of the Galaxy. However, further back in time,
HD~69686 was below the Galactic plane and further away from the
Galactic center, and, therefore, it experienced a weaker $z$-force.
The $z$-force was so weak that the star's trajectory began
73 Myr ago at a position well below the plane ($z \sim -1.8$ kpc)
and with a velocity approaching the plane
($W=+22$ km~s$^{-1}$). The errors in the velocity components and
the age estimation of HD~69686 are not large enough to make the range
of its possible birthplace extend to the Galactic plane.
\placefigure{fig4}
\section{Discussion}
The reconstructed trajectory of HD~69686 implies that HD~69686
might be born in a location with a particularly low density (1.8 kpc
below the Galactic plane and 12 kpc away from the Galactic center),
where star formation activity is expected to be very rare. Of course,
we assume here that HD~69686 is a single-star system.
Though our two consecutive night observations do not display any variation
in radial velocity above the noise level, we can not completely
rule out that HD~69686 is a binary system with a longer
period ($>10$ days). The mass-transfer events that often occur
in close binary systems could totally invalidate our age estimation
based on single-star evolutionary tracks. If HD~69686 is in a binary
system and was ejected from the Galactic plane due to the supernova (SN)
explosion of its companion, the explosion occured most likely about
37 Myr ago when HD 69686 was crossing the Galactic plane. The coordinates
of the crossing position are $(x,y,z)=(2919,-4477,0)$ pc, and the space
velocity of HD~69686 at that moment is
$(V_{\rm x},V_{\rm y},V_{\rm z})=(-326.2, -24.4, 84)$ km~s$^{-1}$
while the Galactic circular velocity at that location is
$(-181.8, -118.5, 0)$ km~s$^{-1}$ (using DB2). Then we can calculate
HD 69686's peculiar velocity (i.e.\ ejection velocity) at that location,
which is 192 km~s$^{-1}$. \citet{nel99} investigated the relation
between the ejection velocity, the mass loss during the SN explosion,
and the current binary period. For HD 69686 with a long period ($> 10$ days)
and a very high ejection velocity (192 km~s$^{-1}$), the equation (7)
in \citet{nel99} suggests a very large SN mass loss ($> 10 M_\odot$),
which is large for a binary containing a late B-type star. Although the over-solar abundance
of helium on HD 69686's surface could be a result of past mass
transfer in a close binary, it is not the only explanation because
helium peculiar (both rich and poor) stars are quite common among young
late B (single) stars \citep{hua06b}. Also, as described in following
paragraphs, we found evidence indicating that HD 69686 seems to belong
to a co-moving cluster that naturally explains its high peculiar
velocity. All of these arguments suggest that HD 69686 does not
belong to a binary system, and we can estimate
its age using single star evolutionary tracks.
Much effort has been invested in searching for young
massive stars forming in situ in the halo \citep{zel97,lyn02,lyn04,mar04,
mar06}. Most of the blue halo objects examined in these studies are
either ejected disk stars or old evolved stars (PHB or PAGB).
Only a few stars are possible candidates of massive
star formation in the halo. \citet[and references therein]{del08}
summarized the observational evidence of star formation far from
the Galactic plane. One possible mechanism that can trigger star
formation at such an unusual place is a collision between high velocity
clouds (HVC) and/or Galactic accretion fragments (or tidal streams).
\citet{dys83} proposed that early-type star formation can be triggered
by ``cloudlet-cloudlet collisions occurring every $10^8$ yr'' in
any particular high Galactic latitude cloud, and the formation rate
could be $10^3$ early-type stars every $10^8$ yr in the halo.
Later, \citet{chr97} suggested that the collisions between cloudlets
within HVCs may occur less frequently than previously thought, and they
derive a much lower star formation rate from the observational data.
More recently, another mechanism of star formation in the halo was
proposed by \citet{del08}, i.e., that the tidal force of a passing
massive cluster (such as a globular cluster) can trigger star formation
in high Galactic latitude clouds. Though the proposed mechanisms
are different, they all suggest a common scenario that a group of
stars should be formed together in situ in the halo. If this indeed
is the case for HD~69686, we expect to see a group of stars that share
the same space velocity with and have the same age of HD~69686.
Finding such co-moving stars would provide strong evidence to support
their formation in situ in the halo.
Because HD~69686 has traveled a very long distance in 73 Myr, it is
expected that the co-forming stars, if they exist, would spread into a much
larger space around the current position of HD~69686 due to the velocity
dispersion in the original cluster. A dispersion of 10 km~s$^{-1}$ in
original space velocity would cause the co-forming group spread into
a volume of 750$^3$ pc$^3$, i.e., spread all over
the sky as seen from the Sun. To make the search viable,
we limit our search range to the vicinity of the trajectory of HD~69686.
Thus, our search will detect only a very small fraction of any co-moving
stars whose space velocities are similar to that of HD~69686.
\placetable{tab5}
\placefigure{fig5}
To carry out this kind of search, we first need the projected trajectory
of HD~69686 on the sky as a baseline. Any co-moving objects
are expected to be on or around this baseline and to have similar proper
motions and radial velocities to the values of the nearest point on the
trajectory. We calculated the projected positions of HD~69686's trajectory
on the sky every 0.05 Myr between 0.5 Myr in the past and 0.5 Myr in the
future. The results are given in Table~5 and plotted in Figure~5. We
used the Catalogue of Stars with High-Proper Motions
(V2)\footnote{http://cdsarc.u-strasbg.fr/viz-bin/Cat?I/306A}
by \citet{iva08} to search for similar high proper motion stars.
The search region (about 2 degrees around the trajectory) is
indicated as a shadowed area in Figure~5. We found a total of 26 stars
(including HD~69686) from roughly 2000 high proper motion stars
($> 40$ mas~yr$^{-1}$) in the search region. Their proper motions (in both RA and
Dec directions) have differences of 15 mas~yr$^{-1}$ or less from the
reference points on the trajectory of HD~69686. All 25 stars other
than HD~69686 are plotted in Figure~5 as open or filled circles with their proper
motions indicated by line segments.
Note that the proper motions illustrated in Figure~5 are not
aligned with the projected trajectory (HD~69686 seems to move away from
its own trajectory). The trajectory of HD~69686 in space (Fig.~4)
is a curve in the Galactic potential field that differs from circular
motion. In order to find the co-moving stars that move on a similar
trajectory, we need to project the whole trajectory on the current sky.
This means that both the past and future parts of the trajectory
of HD~69686 have to be projected on the present sky. However,
HD~69686's proper motion is related to projected positions on the
sky at different moments, i.e., the past-time positions on the
past-time sky and the future positions on the future sky. This
is different from their position in the present sky (the solid
line in Fig.~5) because of the Sun's orbital motion in the Galaxy.
As the Sun (and Earth) is moving at $\sim$220 km~s$^{-1}$ around the
Galactic center, the projected trajectory of HD~69686 (the solid line)
will move downward (and slightly to the left) in Figure~5 (in the reverse
direction of the solar circular motion, which is approximately parallel
to Galactic latitude). Thus, although HD~69686 seems to move away from
its projected trajectory on the sky, it actually stays on the trajectory
because the projected trajectory is moving downward at the same time.
\placefigure{fig6}
\placetable{tab6}
Having similar proper motions does not necessarily imply that
these stars belong to a co-moving group. Some foreground and
background high proper motion stars can be mixed in. We can
further sift these foreground/background stars out using the
color-magnitude diagram (CMD) of the expected co-moving group.
All members in the HD~69686 co-moving group are expected to have
the same age ($\sim$73 Myr) and a distance around 380 pc (because
we limit our search region in the vicinity of the trajectory whose
distance is given in the last column of Table~5). A 70 Myr
isochrone (for solar metallicity $Z=0.02$ and $\log$ Age $=7.84$)
extracted from evolutionary models by \citet{lej01} is plotted
in Figure~6 assuming a distance of 380 pc and $A_V=0$.
The $JHK_s$ magnitudes of all 26 stars were obtained from the 2MASS
catalogue \citep{skr06} and were transformed into the system of
\citet{bes88} using formulae\footnote{www.astro.caltech.edu/$^\sim$jmc/2mass/v3/transformations/}, $(J-K)_{\rm BB}=[(J-K)_{\rm 2M}+0.018]/0.983$ and
$K_{\rm BB}=(K_s)_{\rm 2m}-0.001(J-K)_{\rm BB}+0.039$.
From Figure~6, we can easily tell those foreground/background
stars which fall far above or below the isochrone on the CMD.
This step helped us to discard 13 out of 25 stars (the 13 deleted
objects are plotted as open circles in Fig.~5 and Fig.~6). The remaining
12 stars plus HD 69686 are the final candidates of the high velocity
co-moving group (plotted as filled circles in Fig.~5 and Fig.~6).
The key parameters of the final candidates are listed in
Table~6. However, we cannot be sure that
all these 12 stars co-move with HD~69686 because
we do not have the radial velocity data for them yet. New
spectroscopic observations of these stars are planned in the
near future. If some of the 12 stars are confirmed to co-move
with HD~69686 by the follow up observation in the future, then
we can rule out a runaway origin for HD~69686
because the mechanisms of generating runaways
cannot account for the ejection of a group of stars in a common direction.
Instead, the existence of a co-moving group would support the idea that
the massive star formed in situ in the halo
(most likely in a HVC or Galactic merger fragment) with other
stars 73 Myr ago.
The trajectory of HD~69686 covers a large range in all dimensions of
the Galactic potential field ($4\sim 12$ kpc in $R$, $-1.8\sim +0.9$ kpc in $z$,
and almost $180^\circ$ of Galactic azimuth). Its shape
may depend on the selection of different Galactic models. We did calculate
the trajectory using different models \citep{pac90,all91} and found
similar results with trivial differences that are too small
to change our analysis results. All the models used in our calculations
assume a similar circular velocity at a distance to Galactic center of
8~kpc ($\sim 220$ km s$^{-1}$). We note that some observations
\citep{miy98, men00, uem00, sha09, rei09} suggest that the circular
motion of the solar neighborhood is faster than 220 km s$^{-1}$
by 30$\sim$40 km s$^{-1}$. Although it will be very interesting to see
how much the trajectory of HD~69686 would change in a Galactic model
characterized by a larger rotation speed at the solar circle, it is
beyond the scope of the present paper.
\acknowledgments
We thank our referee, Dr Philip Dufton, very much for his careful
reading and constructive comments on our paper.
We thank Dianne Harmer and the KPNO staff for their assistance
in making these observations successful. This material is
based upon work supported by the National Science Foundation
under Grant No.~AST-0606861. WJH thanks Dr.\ George Wallerstein and
the Kenilworth Fund of the New York Community Trust for partial financial
support of this study. MVM is grateful for support from Lehigh University.
This publication makes use of data products from the Two Micron
All Sky Survey, which is a joint project of the University of
Massachusetts and IPAC/Caltech, funded by NASA and NSF.
\clearpage
| {
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"redpajama_set_name": "RedPajamaC4"
} | 2,335 |
{"url":"https:\/\/www.justinphu.dev\/blog\/composability-of-data","text":"Code Monkey\nPublished on\n\n# Composability of Data\n\nAuthors\n\nIt was only 6 months ago I dove head first into the world of crypto and blockchains. I'm a little allergic to money so I wasn't particularly interested in DeFi but crypto was slated to be \"the new web\" so I had to see what all the noise was about.\n\nI jumped into the crypto space to explore what does this technology enable other than financial use-cases. The one thing that I came out with was blockchain enables composability of data.\n\nThis post explains what on earth is composability of data and why I think it's incredibly powerful.\n\n# Power of composability\n\nSoftware is amazing. You can write a library to compress an image, compute the roots of a function, send a packet to another computer, etc and re-use the same functionality over and over again. You can use the same library in different contexes. I may be sending a packet to another computer for a messaging app or sending weather data. The same library can be written once and reused endlessly. This is composability and one of the great powers of software.\n\nWhat makes software more incredible is a lot of these libraries are open source. That means, if you need some functionality, you can just take it from someone else. You can leverage other peoples work and build on top of it. If you've ever done web development you'll know that every piece of functionality under the sun is just one yarn add away.\n\nThis set of open source software drives innovation. When you have a new idea, you don't have to build everything from scratch. Pick the are you're going to innovate in and just leverage other peoples work for the rest.\n\n# Composing on Compute\n\nThis idea of composability is so powerful there are entire industry built of it such as Software as a Service. This allows you not only to take someone else's code but now they run it and scale it for you. A classic example is database software. Even if the software is open source, running a database is hard work. You need to worry about consistency, low latency, reliability, etc. Instead, you can now pay for a service which focuses entirely on writing the software and deploying it whilst you can build the features that matter.\n\nThis is what I call composing on compute. You take packages and re-use the code that's there. You have people host database software and re-use the code that's there.\n\nHowever, composing on compute can only take you so far. If today all of Facebook's code was open-source you couldn't build another Facebook. Even if you managed to run all the data centers you'll still be missing a secret ingredient. The problem is not the compute being available but rather the data. With compute being democratized through open source, the data has been the most valuable piece. The data moat is what many companies strive to achieve.\n\n# Difficulty with Composing over Data\n\nThe difficulty with composing over data is unlike code, you need to have one source of truth.\n\nWith code, I can simply fork the code and modify it to my liking. If I want different parameters for my database, I can run a slightly tweaked version of the code.\n\nWith data, it is not unidirectional. You do not simply read the data like you just run the code 1 . You need to also write the data. If the data becomes forked, which instance you write back to is difficult.\n\nTake the example of a cycling tracking application. We want to compose over the cycling data. Thus, we share the data underneath and have different clients or views over the data. Now one of the clients wants to track swimming data as well. They can't simply fork the database or else they won't get the shared running data. Instead, they need to get agreement from whoever is storing the data that they should also store swimming data. This is tricky! If the person storing the data does not want to add swimming data you're out of luck!\n\nAn example where data was open was the older twitter APIs. It had an open feed of data which different people built clients from. Until it didn't. Twitter closed down its APIs to focus on its own app.\n\nThe key difference between composing over compute versus composing over data is the data can only have one source of truth.\n\nThis leads to difficulties managing and controlling the data.\n\n# Blockchain and Composable Data\n\nThe main problem above is the data is owned by a single entity which is the typical web2 way. They control how the data evolves and who gets access to it. No one wants to build on top of composed data due to the fear it will simply be cut off. But what if the data was owned by... the user.\n\nThe user can store their own their own swimming data so the developers don't have to fear the data being taken away. All the different clients can use the data.\n\nThe question then lies, how does the data evolve? There still needs to be consistency with the data. However, we can also do this in a decentralized way like we do with protocols. The developers can together determine how the data evolves.\n\nNow with blockchain, we can use cryptography to indicate which individual owns which data. Note the data itself doesn't need to lie on the blockchain, simply who owns which data. The standard being developed for this \"pointer\" is decentralized identifiers.\n\nA decentralized computer has given us the technology to bring the data back to being owned by the individuals. This in return enables the potential for composing over data.\n\n# Why do we care?\n\nJust like composability over compute helped the software industry innovate, composability over data will do the same. Instead of building a social media platform from scratch, you can bring in the social data stream that already exists. Instead of building your game entirely from scratch, you can bring equipment designed by other developers. This saves repetitive work.\n\nFrom software as a service to state as a service. From open software to open state.\n\nAll of this powers the speed that we can innovate.\n\n# Downsides\n\nOf course, there are a gigantic amount of downsides. This is a moonshot.\n\nThe biggest downside to a composable data is iteration speed. This is the same issue that plagues protocol development. There needs to be consistent agreement across many players. Organizations cannot freely migrate the data, add new data etc.\n\n# Summary\n\nComposability of data feels like a natural progression. Re-using building blocks is one of the key reasons why software accelerates so quickly. If we can re-use data like we re-use compute we may be in another wave of innovation. It is certainly difficult, but I'm optimistic that this is where we're heading!\n\n# Appendix\n\n## Compelling use cases of composable data\n\nNote: these use-cases I just wrote without much thought. Some of them (read: most of them) are dumb. I thought I might as well share :)\n\n### Removing duplication of efforts\n\n\"I login to a new application and my preferences (frequency of notifications, dark mode, emails off) and my information (name, DOB, location) are all provided within a click of a button.\"\n\n### Decentralized Social Media\n\nLayer different algorithms or views on top of a common data set. Don't rebuild the world of follower lists, posts etc.\n\n### \"Filter the Internet\"\n\n\"I am working on a crypto paper so I switch into the \"crypto\" mode. This filters all my twitter by only people tagged with \"crypto\" and news websites show me relevant crypto news\"\n\n\u2022 Existing behavior - current platforms. Creating multiple google accounts for different recommendations.\n\n\"I am switching from social mode to work mode. My notifications on every application automatically changes. Every app provides my 'work' list at the highest priority.\"\n\n\"I have a list of people I trust that are able to notify me from any platform. I go to my notification from my mentor to check out this article on a social platform I've never been to before. I jump into the platform and see the article posted, my feed is automatically propagated based on my universal follower list.\"\n\n### Work\n\n\"I can enter gated channels for experienced developers to quickly get help. These are high signal channels that are permissionless to show but I need to verify my credentials that I'm a senior dev.\"\n\n\"Gated job search. Filter people more effectively (instead of just company). Get reach-outs only by only high quality recruiters via gating.\"\n\n## Incentives\n\nThe incentives for this model are unclear. That said, the incentives for open source software wasn't entirely clear either.\n\nIf I had to guess it would be a state as a service model. It allows you to easily read, write, and replicate the user storage. Thus, the data is still free and open, but to use it effectively you want to go through one of these providers\n\n## Footnotes\n\n1. With code you sometimes write back the data. This is like merging your forked code back into the main repository. However, this is much less frequent than writing back data.","date":"2023-03-28 23:29:45","metadata":"{\"extraction_info\": {\"found_math\": true, \"script_math_tex\": 0, \"script_math_asciimath\": 0, \"math_annotations\": 0, \"math_alttext\": 0, \"mathml\": 0, \"mathjax_tag\": 0, \"mathjax_inline_tex\": 0, \"mathjax_display_tex\": 0, \"mathjax_asciimath\": 1, \"img_math\": 0, \"codecogs_latex\": 0, \"wp_latex\": 0, \"mimetex.cgi\": 0, \"\/images\/math\/codecogs\": 0, \"mathtex.cgi\": 0, \"katex\": 0, \"math-container\": 0, \"wp-katex-eq\": 0, \"align\": 0, \"equation\": 0, \"x-ck12\": 0, \"texerror\": 0, \"math_score\": 0.18446442484855652, \"perplexity\": 1535.560365629715}, \"config\": {\"markdown_headings\": true, \"markdown_code\": true, \"boilerplate_config\": {\"ratio_threshold\": 0.18, \"absolute_threshold\": 10, \"end_threshold\": 15, \"enable\": true}, \"remove_buttons\": true, \"remove_image_figures\": true, \"remove_link_clusters\": true, \"table_config\": {\"min_rows\": 2, \"min_cols\": 3, \"format\": \"plain\"}, \"remove_chinese\": true, \"remove_edit_buttons\": true, \"extract_latex\": true}, \"warc_path\": \"s3:\/\/commoncrawl\/crawl-data\/CC-MAIN-2023-14\/segments\/1679296948900.50\/warc\/CC-MAIN-20230328232645-20230329022645-00032.warc.gz\"}"} | null | null |
**PRESIDENTIAL AMBITION**
**HOW THE PRESIDENTS
GAINED POWER,
KEPT POWER,
AND GOT THINGS DONE**
**RICHARD SHENKMAN**
_For BillyMac_
# Contents
Cover
Title Page
Dedication
Introduction
Prelude
1. In the Garden of Eden
2. The Birth of the Two-Party System
3. The Revolution in the Suffrage
4. Manifest Destiny
5. The Story of Franklin Pierce
6. The Slavery Crisis
7. The Story of Abraham Lincoln
8. The Birth of Industrial Capitalism
9. The Birth of Machine Politics
10. The Story of Chester A. Arthur
11. The Arrival of the Immigrants
12. The Media
13. World Power: I
14. World Power: II
15. World Power: III
16. FDR: The Great Depression
17. FDR: World War II
18. The Cold War
Conclusion
Notes
Index
Acknowledgments
Also by Richard Shenkman
Table of Presidents
About the Publisher
Copyright
# Introduction
The thing that the presidents have needed most to succeed was luck—plain, ordinary, dumb luck.
_The luck of birth_... to have been born white, male, and Protestant; to have been born rich or socially advantaged; to have been born or raised in a state vital to the success of their party.*
_And the luck of history_... to have simply been one of those fortunate few who happen to find themselves in the right place at the right time. Men like William Henry Harrison, a superannuated veteran of the War of 1812, who won the Whig nomination in 1840 simply because the Whigs were in need of a war hero and war heroes were in short supply† Or Millard Fillmore, who became president only because Zachary Taylor suddenly collapsed and died after gorging on a bowl of cherries and cream. Or Chester Arthur, who became president only because James Garfield had the misfortune to be assassinated.*
But luck doesn't explain all. While one had to be lucky, lucky in so many many ways, sometimes ghoulishly lucky as both Fillmore and Arthur were, one also had to be something besides lucky: ambitious, ferociously ambitious.
Because of what journalism has become in the last generation as a result of Vietnam and Watergate and the kinds of questions journalists now ask—penetrating questions about power and the abuse of power—we are well informed about the ambitions of the presidents in our time and the steps they took in the pursuit of their ambitions. But we remain on the whole ignorant of the ambitions of previous presidents. This has led to the widely held inference that they must have lacked ambition, that they were fundamentally different from our presidents. It is as if they stand on one side of an imaginary line in the past and our presidents on the other. On their side, from the time of Dwight Eisenhower back, are all the presidents who were normal human beings, some great, some not, but basically normal: men who were driven but not too driven, men who worked hard to succeed, but not too hard, and not at any cost. On the other side, our side, from John Kennedy forward, are all the abnormal human beings who became president, none great, who seem to have been insanely driven. So driven they were willing to do almost anything to succeed.
There is in actuality no clear line dividing the presidents into the ambitious and the unambitious, no clear line dividing our times from previous times. The line is in our minds, dividing us from our own history. And it is the result of inadvertent ignorance. Because our knowledge of past presidents is thin—thin in comparison with our knowledge of presidents today—we have fallen for the myth that presidents today are somehow morally inferior to presidents in the past, which in turn has bred a discouraging disillusionment. The little secret of American history is that they were all ambitious, all powerfully driven to advance themselves, their parties, and their social agendas. It isn't the moral character of the presidents that has changed. They remained about as moral as ever. It is politics that has changed. And as it changed, becoming more complicated, their behavior changed.*
Ambitious as they all were, however, they were not simply men of ambition and nothing but. They were more than that. They could not help but be more. Among their immediate forebears and mentors were people of extraordinary idealism.
Between the time of Washington and Lincoln there were sixteen presidents. Each of them had either a mother or a father (or both) who was deeply religious, deeply moral. Both John Adams and John Quincy Adams had grandparents who were ministers. Jackson's mother hoped _he_ would become a minister. Polk's mother was the great-grandniece of John Knox, the founder of Scottish Presbyterianism. Most of the presidents either selflessly volunteered to serve in the Revolution or had a parent or grandparent who had.
Between the Civil War and World War II fifteen men served as president of the United States. Each of them also had at least one extremely religious parent or mentor. Chester Arthur, Grover Cleveland, and Woodrow Wilson were the children of ministers. Rutherford B. Hayes, James Garfield, William McKinley, and Wilson were raised to be ministers. Teddy Roosevelt's father devoted most of his adult life to philanthropy. Franklin Roosevelt's favorite teacher in prep school preached the gospel of service.
Since World War II nearly every president has been deeply influenced by an idealist. Truman and Eisenhower had deeply religious mothers. Johnson's father was a wild-eyed, impractical populist. Nixon's father was a socialist, his mother a devout Quaker. Carter's mother devoted herself to selfless causes; as an old woman she joined the Peace Corps. Reagan's father was a relentless foe of bigotry; when an innkeeper bragged about never letting in Jews, Jack Reagan stormed off and slept the night in his car.
But as they grew older, the presidents came to the conclusion that idealism alone was insufficient. Some, indeed, came to hold it almost in contempt. For idealism by itself couldn't get a single building built or save a single life. To make things happen one had to have power. To be able to control things one had to have power. To _be_ somebody one had to have power. So they devoted themselves to the obtaining of power.
_Preparing to marry, they made every effort to marry into power._
George Washington, out searching for a wife, married the richest woman in Virginia. James Buchanan went after the daughter of one of the richest men in the United States. Abraham Lincoln married one of Springfield's few aristocrats. James Garfield married the daughter of the founder of the college where he was a teacher. William McKinley married the daughter of the local newspaper publisher. William Howard Taft married the daughter of the richest banker in town. Franklin Roosevelt married Teddy Roosevelt's niece. John Kennedy married a beautiful aristocrat. Lyndon Johnson courted the daughters of three of the richest men in his part of Texas.
In fact most presidents married up—or married someone who could do their career some good. Not one president married beneath him. If, like Warren Harding and Franklin Roosevelt, a president happened to fall in love with someone who _was_ beneath him, the woman was kept on the side as a mistress.
_Coming of age, nearly all tried to obtain power fast. In a nation of young men in a hurry, they often seemed to have been the young men in the greatest hurry of all._
George Washington became a major in the Virginia militia at age twenty-one. And he and Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, and James Monroe became colonial legislators by the time they were twenty-five. Monroe was a U.S. senator at thirty-two and an international diplomat at thirty-six. John Quincy Adams was a diplomat at twenty-seven. Andrew Jackson was a lawyer at twenty, a congressman at twenty-seven, and a U.S. senator at thirty. Martin Van Buren was a lawyer at twenty-one and a state legislator at thirty. William Henry Harrison was a delegate to Congress at twenty-six and a territorial governor at twenty-seven. John Tyler ran for the state legislature at twenty-one, Franklin Pierce at twenty-five, James Buchanan and Abe Lincoln at twenty-three, and Andrew Johnson at twenty-seven.
James Garfield was the president of a college at twenty-six. Teddy Roosevelt ran for the state legislature at twenty-four and for mayor of New York City at twenty-eight. William Howard Taft was a judge at thirty. Warren Harding was the editor and publisher of his own newspaper at nineteen. Herbert Hoover was a self-made millionaire by age thirty. Franklin Roosevelt was a state senator at twenty-eight, an assistant secretary of the navy at thirty-one, and the vice presidential candidate of the Democratic Party at thirty-eight. John Kennedy's first book was published just after he graduated from college, and he was a congressman by thirty and a senator by thirty-six. Lyndon Johnson was the director of the National Youth Administration in Texas at twenty-seven and a congressman at twenty-nine. Richard Nixon was a senator at thirty-seven and vice president of the United States at thirty-nine. Bill Clinton ran for Congress at twenty-eight and was elected state attorney general at thirty-one and governor at thirty-two.
_And once they got a taste for power, they wanted more, running hard and running often to acquire more._
Most spent their whole lives—running. First for some lowly office. Then for something a little higher. And then a lot higher. For senator. For governor. For vice president. And then—might they dare it?—for president.
Once they decided on the presidency they often spent years going after it, some running three and four times until finally they won it.
Nothing, it seems, could stop them from running. They ran after they'd been shot at, after they had actually taken a shot, after their wives had come down with dread diseases, after their wives had died, after they themselves had contracted dread diseases—cancer, Bright's, Addison's—and nearly died. They ran after they had come down with a succession of painful, debilitating conditions—diarrhea, chronic coughs, abscesses, rheumatism, and depression. And they ran even after they had suffered heart attacks and strokes.
More tellingly yet, they ran after their wives begged them not to, as Rachel Jackson begged her husband, Andrew (Rachel on living in the White House: "I had rather be a doorkeeper in the house of God than to live in that palace at Washington"); as Margaret Taylor begged _her_ husband, Zachary (when Taylor marched off to do battle in the Mexican War, Margaret is said to have prayed for his defeat; if he won she knew he was likely to be made president).*
They ran even when they _themselves_ doubted that they were qualified to run. Andrew Jackson, told that he was being considered for the presidency, insisted (at first, anyway) that he was unfit for the office. He knew how to command an army of men—but be president? Zachary Taylor just laughed when told _he_ was being considered for the presidency. Warren Harding confessed repeatedly that he was simply too dumb to be president. And yet they all ran.
And having run and won, most felt compelled to run yet again. In the whole history of the United States just a handful of elected presidents declined to run for a second full term.*
The fact was, if they survived their first term they felt almost destined to run for a second. So they ran. And they ran again even though the presidency for most was a grind—a terribly difficult, terribly burdensome grind, requiring such great sacrifices and long hours that presidents on average lived shorter lives than their contemporaries.†
William Howard Taft hated being president. Even so, he ran again. So did those often listed as failures: John Quincy Adams, John Tyler, Millard Fillmore, Franklin Pierce, Andrew Johnson, U. S. Grant, Herbert Hoover, and Jimmy Carter.‡
And some presidents felt compelled to run and run and run. Martin Van Buren, after losing his bid for reelection in 1840, ran again in 1844 and then _again_ in 1848. Millard Fillmore, after failing to win his own party's nomination in 1852, ran again as the candidate of the Know-Nothings four years later. U. S. Grant, after serving two full terms, retired and went to Europe, and then, feeling refreshed, came back and tried to win a third. Grover Cleveland ran once and won, ran a second time and lost, and then ran a third time and won again. Teddy Roosevelt ran three times, once against the very man he had personally picked as his successor. Woodrow Wilson plotted to serve a third term even as he struggled to recover from a paralyzing stroke that left his wife wondering whether he would be able to finish his second. Franklin Roosevelt, of course, ran four times, the last time on the eve of his own death.
The presidency did not simply come to them. They had to go after it. Once they caught the presidential bug, they went after it relentlessly. In their world, the world of power, being president was _the_ great prize, worthy of every sacrifice.
Only a few seemed to have made the presidency their lifelong quest. For most it simply was too far out of reach early on in their careers even to think of joining the chase. But once circumstances arose that made winning the office conceivable—once, that is, they had achieved national prominence either on the battlefield, in the Congress, or in the state house—they found that to be true to themselves, to be true to their ravenous desire to win, to be true to their great desire for power, they _had_ to be president. As Lincoln confessed, "No man knows, when that presidential grub gets gnawing at him, just how deep it will get until he has tried it."
Understanding their need to be president is difficult because ambitiousness itself is difficult. Difficult to document, difficult to define, difficult to isolate from other motives. And presidents often had the most complicated mixture of motives of all. So complicated that they themselves often could not be sure why they did what they did—why they ran for president, why they ran for re-election. Was it because they felt a compelling desire to dominate others? Was it because when they were little their mama whispered in their ear that it was their destiny? Was it because they were basically insecure and needed to prove themselves? Was it because they wanted to help the poor, increase defense spending, or cut the budget? Was it because they felt a sense of duty to their friends, their parties, or history? Or some interesting mixture of these?
It is impossible to generalize. Each man seems to have reached the decision to run for his own peculiar set of reasons, in part psychological, in part political, in part cynical, in part idealistic.*
Ambitiousness did not in itself guarantee success, and it certainly did not ensure greatness, but it was more than _an_ essential component in winning and wielding power—it was _the_ essential component. More important than brains, looks, or personality; more vital, even, than ideas, breadth of vision, or moral character. For these alone were never nearly enough. One could possess these qualities in varying degrees, and sometimes lack one or another entirely, and still succeed. But one could never succeed without a strong dose of ambition.
Ambition was essential because the path to power was always hard. In each generation there weren't just one or two people who possessed the qualifications and the desire to become president. There were dozens and dozens: governors, senators, military heroes, each one as anxious as the next to triumph. To win against these competitors one had to be able to draw on a deep reservoir of ambition.†
Even the great military heroes needed to be deeply ambitious, for even they faced great competition. U. S. Grant, after winning the Civil War, found that although he had the Republican Party machine behind him, even _he_ had to fight to win. Out of nearly six million votes cast, he won by just three hundred thousand. Dwight Eisenhower probably could have won the nomination of either the Democrats or the Republicans; there is evidence that at one point he believed he might receive both parties' backing. But even Ike had to struggle to win; at the time of the Republican convention in 1952 it was still unclear that he would be able to defeat Sen. Robert Taft for the nomination.
And winning, while deeply satisfying, was not the end of the battle. For after they won they had to continue fighting, for only by fighting the Congress, the bureaucracy, the Supreme Court, and the media could they maintain their control and get things done. And usually fighting to keep power was as difficult as fighting to gain it.
Twenty-eight presidents came into office with a majority in Congress.* Over the course of their terms only _twelve_ held on to their majority. Since the birth of the modern two-party system in the 1830s, the president's party has almost always lost seats in the off-year elections.
As difficult as keeping control of the Congress was keeping control of the bureaucracy. And this fight, though hidden from public view, needed to be won as well. In 1952 Harry Truman, contemplating an Eisenhower victory in the fall elections, predicted to a friend that one of the things Eisenhower would find the hardest to deal with would be the bureaucracy. "He'll sit there," Truman mused, "and he'll say, 'Do this! Do that!' _And nothing will happen._ Poor Ike—it won't be a bit like the Army. He'll find it very frustrating."
Of all their fights, the one to control the Supreme Court was often the most frustrating. For the Court remained beyond their immediate control. Even FDR found that for years and years he could not stop the Court from declaring key parts of the New Deal unconstitutional. Even when a president finally had the opportunity to name his own justices to the Court, he could never be sure they would vote the way he wanted. Once on the bench justices did as they pleased, as, for instance, Earl Warren and William Brennan did, much to the chagrin of President Eisenhower, who'd appointed both. Years after he left office, Eisenhower commented that his worst mistake as president was putting Warren on the Court.
And every day of their presidency they had to fight the media. And they had to fight it even if, like FDR, they basically liked reporters and happened to like those assigned to the White House. For only by fighting—and fighting hard—could they keep control of the nation's agenda. Put up a weak fight and the media would take control—and that could be politically fatal.
Hard as they fought to keep power, all presidents quickly learned that they could never fight hard enough to do all that they wanted to do, all that they felt they _had_ to do. And that was for a simple though seldom admitted fact: They could not control events—could not control history.
History was always full of unfortunate surprises. Shattering events that fundamentally altered the world, upending presidents' plans, forcing those who would devote themselves to domestic politics to focus instead on foreign policy, and vice versa. For Woodrow Wilson it was World War I, which put an end to the New Freedom. For Franklin Roosevelt it was the rise of Adolf Hitler, which ultimately led to the demise of the New Deal. For Lyndon Johnson it was the war in Vietnam, which put an end to the Great Society.
From outside looking in it often appeared that presidents were all-powerful. But that was not the view from the inside. As their letters, diaries, and confessions to friends made clear, they themselves often felt powerless—and were. Not totally powerless and not equally powerless in all areas—in foreign policy, especially, presidents often found that they could exercise real power, as Truman did in dropping the atomic bomb on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, instantly ending World War II—but powerless nonetheless and in confounding ways—as Bill Clinton discovered. Beginning in 1997 he often found that his voice—that of the president of the United States of America—was being drowned out by the voice of Paula Corbin Jones, a California suburban housewife. On days when _he_ wanted to make news, _she_ was.
It was Lincoln who famously remarked, "I claim not to have controlled events, but confess plainly that events have controlled me." But every president could well have made the same observation. As Harry Truman stated once, "Being a President is like riding a tiger. A man has to keep on riding or be swallowed."
Capable presidents—truly extraordinary presidents—learned to shape events to a certain extent even as their presidency was being shaped by them, but in the end, despite all their efforts, it was luck that they often needed to be successful—plain, ordinary, dumb luck.
And often they were not lucky.
The worse their luck, the more events spun out of their control, the more they found themselves in fights with their party, the opposition, the Congress, the bureaucracy, the courts, and the media—in hard, tough fights—the more they had to draw on that deep well of ambition of theirs to keep up their spirits and to continue fighting. For often the only thing they had going for them in these many battles—and especially in their struggle with history— _was_ their ambition, that great, overarching desire to prevail.
Along the way, as they gained more and more power, they learned a harsh fact about it: Power has its price, and the price isn't cheap. To win great power and wield it required taking any of a number of morally questionable measures: exploiting their family, scrounging for contributions, exploiting religion and race, reinventing themselves, misrepresenting themselves, stealing votes, knocking off their enemies, tolerating corruption, concealing malfeasance, lying, and even playing politics with national security. The more desperate they became, the lower they stooped.
It was a measure of their ambition that they were willing to pay the price, to do almost anything required to achieve power.
Two of the country's most honorable presidents—two of those with the most character—were Dwight Eisenhower and George Bush. Even _they_ were willing to do almost anything. As Ike demonstrated in 1952 by selling out his own running mate, Nixon, at the time of the controversy over Nixon's "slush fund": _Well, I'm not sure if Dick should or should not remain on the ticket, that's up to him really._ * As Bush demonstrated in 1992 by resorting to name-calling and smears when the polls indicated that Bill Clinton was likely to defeat him: _Bill Clinton, president of the United States? That bozo? Who went off to Moscow at the height of the Vietnam War, for reasons he refuses to explain? No way._
But great as the price of power was, they paid it, hopeful that in the end they would be able to redeem themselves by the good works they did once they obtained power.
Two great forces have shaped the story of American politics: history and ambition. Understanding both is therefore essential to understanding the United States and politics.
Understanding the great forces of history is essential, for it is these forces that have given shape to the direction of politics. Thus each of them is addressed in a separate chapter. In this way the reader will be able to see the new conditions presidents faced—conditions that increasingly complicated the way leaders gained power, kept it, and got things done.
But because the story of American politics is not merely about the great forces of history but also about the human beings who reacted to those forces, I also include the personal stories that illuminate the way they reacted, drawing attention to the forces of ambition that shaped their response. By telling the story of their struggle for power in detail, sometimes week by week, sometimes hour by hour, following them through their crises as _they_ went through them, unaware of the outcome, it is possible to gain a sense of the depth of their drive.
I have chosen not to tell each president's story in detail. To do so would be tedious and in any case unnecessary. For their stories are, in so many ways, remarkably alike. In deciding finally which ones to dwell on, I chose those that seemed to illustrate most dramatically the interplay of history and ambition. I deliberately passed quickly over the best-known stories. And I focused mainly on firsts (the first time a president lied, the first time one stole votes, the first time one played dirty tricks) as a means of further limiting the number of stories that needed to be told.
Those stories that seemed worth telling in depth, I devoted a whole chapter to. Of these, Lincoln's is the longest. For obvious reasons he seemed to warrant extended treatment.
It is easy to ridicule the presidents' ambition and all that they did in its name—and many writers have. I have chosen not to. What I wanted to show is how the presidents felt as they zealously drove toward their goals—how _they_ felt, not how we feel about them. I found that the more time I spent with them—the more time I saw things as they saw them and as they saw themselves—the more impressed I was, even as their ambition drove them to commit appalling acts.
What is often remarkable is not that the presidents went as far as they did to gain power and to keep it, but that, given the pressures, they did not go farther. It is a testament to the character of the great majority of them that they recognized that there were limits beyond which they should not go—limits that distinguish our leaders and our history from so many others.
Expecting the presidents to have resisted entirely the impulse to engage in morally dubious behavior is both unrealistic and dangerous—unrealistic because it does not take into account the way power is actually won and wielded in a modern democracy. Dangerous because it can yield all too easily to disillusionment and cynicism once the actual behavior of the presidents is revealed. The fact is that presidents almost always behaved the way they did not because they were morally corrupt but because circumstances gave them little room to behave differently and still succeed.*
The historical record demonstrates amply that circumstances forced all of the presidents to bend, weave, compromise, and stoop. With one exception.
The exception was George Washington. He didn't make inflated promises, cut deals, or tell lies to get elected or to get things done. In part that was because Washington was special, the Father of His Country. But it was also because the country then wasn't the complicated place it was to become.
*In Virginia after the Revolution, when Virginia was the most politically powerful state in the Union; in Ohio after the Civil War, when Ohio was becoming powerful as the country moved west; and in New York at any time, for New York was always powerful. Virginia claims seven residents, Ohio seven, New York five. Just five presidents, it's estimated, were born in log cabins. See Edward Pessen, _The Log Cabin Myth (1984)._
†Harrison, better known as Tippecanoe, was supposed to be the Whigs' answer to Democrat Andrew Jackson.
*Neither Fillmore nor Arthur was ever considered presidential material. Fillmore had been an obscure congressman and failed gubernatorial candidate. Arthur had been a discredited political boss. Both had found themselves, somewhat to their surprise, in the vice presidency because of the fortuitous circumstances of birth: both were from New York.
*As a corrective to the myth, this book focuses on the behavior of the presidents on the far side of the line.
*The list of First Ladies who objected when their husbands began pursuing either the presidency or the vice presidency is long. It includes, in addition to Rachel Jackson and Margaret Taylor: Louisa Adams (wife of John Quincy Adams), Jane Pierce, Florence Harding, Eleanor Roosevelt, Bess Truman, Lady Bird Johnson, and Pat Nixon.
*Namely: James Polk, Rutherford B. Hayes, Calvin Coolidge, Harry Truman, and Lyndon Johnson. And each of them had solid reasons for not running. When Polk and Hayes were nominated, they had promised not to run for reelection as a means of attracting the support of their rivals, who hoped to keep open the possibility that they would be picked four years later. Coolidge, Truman, and Johnson had all served longer than the customary four years, having filled out the remaining terms of their predecessors. Coolidge anyway was both demoralized and in failing health. His son had died while playing tennis on the White House courts; subsequently Coolidge suffered a heart attack. Johnson, tired as a result of the Vietnam War, feared he might not win renomination; the week before he announced his withdrawal from the race he received notice that he would lose the upcoming Wisconsin primary.
†After Wilson, many worried about ending up as he had, paralyzed and incompetent. As Lyndon Johnson told a friend in 1964, "I don't want to be in this place like Wilson."
‡Lumping Adams and Carter with the others may be unfair. The latest Schlesinger poll on presidential greatness ranks Adams as average, Carter as average/below average. Arthur Schlesinger, Jr., "The Ultimate Approval Rating," New York Times Magazine (Dec. 15, 1996), pp. 48-49.
*In any case, plumbing the reasons they wanted to be president is the job of biographers. This book is concerned with showing the lengths to which they were willing to go to become president.
†In seventeen elections the winning candidate did not obtain even 50 percent of the popular vote. In 1800 the switch of just a couple of hundred votes in New York would have shifted the state's electoral votes to John Adams, giving him the election over Thomas Jefferson. In 1880 James Garfield won by just ten thousand votes out of more than eight million. In 1884 Grover Cleveland won by just twenty-nine thousand out of more than nine million. In 1960 John Kennedy won by little more than one hundred thousand votes out of nearly seventy million. Two elections (1800 and 1824) had to be settled by the House of Representatives because no candidate received a majority of the electoral votes. The winner in 1876 was picked by a special electoral commission. In three contests (1824, 1876, 1888) the winner received fewer popular votes than his opponent.
*My list excludes Washington, Monroe, and William Henry Harrison for obvious reasons: Though Washington and the Federalists who controlled Congress during his presidency were often in agreement, Washington cannot properly be said to have been a Federalist (he expressly denied being a member of any party). Monroe served during the so-called Era of Good Feelings, when the party system was in disarray. Harrison served just one month before dying.
*Nixon, of course, remained on the ticket; after delivering the Checkers speech he was an asset again. See Garry Wills, _Nixon Agonistes_ (1970), p. 113. But Eisenhower was to sell out Nixon a second time, in 1960, when Ike declined until the very end of the campaign to give Nixon an enthusiastic endorsement. (When asked by a reporter early in the campaign if he could name a single administration policy to which Nixon had contributed, Ike had said, "Give me a week and I might think of one.") Nixon never forgave him. In _Six Crises,_ the book he wrote following his defeat in 1960, Nixon noted that Eisenhower was one of the most ruthless men he'd ever known. Twenty-five years later he was still fuming. He told Monica Crowley, his assistant in his last years, that Eisenhower "was so protective of himself politically sometimes that he didn't stand up for the people who had served him loyally." "Are you referring to 1960?" Crowley asked. "Well, yes, but it wasn't just me. There were others. Eisenhower tried to protect himself, but often at the expense of screwing those closest to him." Crowley, Nixon Off the Record (1996), p. 16.
*While all that the presidents did was interesting and worthy of study, I have chosen generally to focus on behavior that was dubious or unacceptable by the standards prevailing in their day. It seemed to me unfair and arrogant to judge them by our standards. Thus, I ignore Franklin Roosevelt's decision to lock up Japanese-Americans in concentration camps during the Second World War. Though this action appears utterly reprehensible to us today, it was widely accepted by Americans at the time.
# Prelude
Things _were_ different at the beginning. To understand how different—and we should if we are ever going to be able to comprehend the changes that were to make governing and politics so complicated—it may be helpful to see just what life was like then, before things got so complicated.
So: what _was_ life like then? Or, more precisely, what was governing like then?
As they do today, politicians faced great problems. In the 1780s the government under the Articles of Confederation had failed so miserably to provide financial stability that the farmers in Massachusetts revolted. An army had to be dispatched to put down their rebellion. When Washington took office the economy was in shambles: the currency inflated and worthless, credit in short supply.
So there were very real, very frightening problems.
But great as their problems may have been the times were very different. For life was far far simpler.... The country was smaller—there were after all just thirteen states.... The population was smaller—there were in all of America in 1790 just four million people, the great majority of whom were white Anglo-Saxon Protestants.... The federal government's functions were limited.
And governing was relatively easier.
To begin with, the pace of life was slow, so officials had plenty of time to think things through. Where news cycles today are counted in hours, forcing officials to react with lightning speed to events, back then the cycles lasted months. News that happened in New York might take two or three months to reach the interior of Georgia. When Congress, sitting in New York, officially announced that George Washington had been elected president of the United States the news took two weeks to reach Washington at his home in Mount Vernon. And whereas today presidents have to contend with the prattling tongues of the three thousand national reporters assigned to cover them, in Washington's day there were... none. In the whole country there were hardly any journalists at all. And there were hardly any daily newspapers—just eight actually. Because of the dearth of newspapers Washington was able to set the public's agenda with relative ease. Until Hamilton and Jefferson started feuding, leading to their famous newspaper war, what Washington decided was news _was_ news. He controlled the news agenda.
Washington did have to worry about his image, especially after Jeffersonian partisans began openly taking him on. But he never had to worry too much. There simply weren't any other national figures with the clout to challenge his control. At the beginning of his presidency there weren't any other truly national figures period. Only Washington was known by all, north and south, east and west. And even Washington wasn't known as presidents are today. Prior to the invention of photography and the tape machine Americans didn't know what their presidents looked like or how they sounded. (One day while on a journey into the back country Washington was approached by a farmer. _Who are you?_ the farmer asked. _George Washington,_ the president answered. _Well, I'll be,_ the man responded.)
The government Washington headed was modest. The army at the time numbered barely over five hundred men, about the size of the police force needed today to protect Des Moines, Iowa. And there was, as yet, no navy. (The navy would be established in 1798, thanks to the efforts of John Adams. It would consist of fewer than half a dozen ships.)
The bureaucracy was almost nonexistent. No Commerce Department. No Interior Department. No Agriculture Department. Not much of anything really. There wasn't even a Justice Department; the attorney general had so little to do he wasn't even given an office and for decades wasn't required to live in or near the capital.
What few departments there were—State, War, Treasury, and the Post Office—hardly seemed like departments as we would understand them. If, say, you happened in at the State Department, chances were you would find about half a dozen people at work—at the War Department, even fewer. Only the Treasury Department would look like a fully functioning government bureaucracy. Go there and you'd find about a hundred and fifty people. The biggest department was the Post Office, but of course its employees were spread across the country. In all there were barely a thousand people on the federal payroll.
There was, of course, no White House staff because there was as yet no White House. Washington in fact made due with just a single assistant: a secretary.
Washington would complain bitterly that the presidency was killing his health and in his first year in office he nearly died from a bout of pneumonia. "My late change," he complained, "from [physically] active scenes, to which I had been accustomed and in which the mind has been agreeably amused, to the one of [physical] inactivity which I now lead and where the thoughts are continually on the stretch, has been the cause of more illness and severe attacks of my Constitution within the last twelve months than I had undergone in thirty years preceding put together." But much of his workload consisted of tedious paperwork: signing commissions, payrolls, and purchase orders—the kind of work future presidents would barely deign to do. (He did not have to review his departments' budgets. There were none. For decades the departments simply spent what Congress appropriated. If the money ran out they asked for more.)
The government was small under Washington because the government in the early years didn't do much and wasn't expected to. Washington twice during his administration felt so confident the government could get along without him that he left for months at a time to travel the country to see and be seen. (A chief goal of his trips was to give the federal government a human face.) During those months he remained largely out of touch with government affairs, leaving any decisions that had to be made up to the cabinet.
The fact is, heavy as his responsibilities were, and there's no denying they were heavy, the job simply required less time than it subsequently would. During the summers Washington was able to leave the capital for July and August to relax at Mount Vernon. John Adams during his presidency would leave so often to go home to Massachusetts that some people joked that he had abdicated. One year, when his wife, Abigail, fell ill, he would stay home with her for seven long months. The government was so easy to run in the early 1800s that even during the War of 1812 James Madison would return home for the summer to Montpelier to rest. There really was no reason to stay; almost everybody deserted the swamp-infested capital as soon as the weather turned warm.
Not only was the president's workload lighter, so was his cabinet's—and it would remain lighter for decades. James Monroe, inaugurated in March 1817, was able to get by without a secretary of state until September. The secretary of war didn't arrive until October. During Monroe's eight years in office there constantly were vacancies in the major cabinet posts. At these times the president simply had one of his remaining secretaries cover two departments simultaneously. In the 1840s James Polk would be able to run the government almost single-handedly. In the summer when the cabinet secretaries left to escape Washington's humid weather Polk would stay behind and run their departments for them. He would personally answer the mail, fill out forms, sign commissions, and issue purchase orders.
Nothing better symbolizes the vastly simpler state of things in Washington's day than his own accessibility. While he insisted on standing on a little platform when greeting guests at public levees, anybody could come and meet him as long as they were dressed well. At the beginning he even kept an open door day and night. When that proved a little too burdensome—"From the time I had done breakfast and thence till dinner and afterwards till bedtime," he complained, "I could not get relieved from the ceremony of one visit before I had to attend another"—he limited the public to two open meetings a week. On those occasions, Tuesdays between three and four and Fridays in the evening, people crowded the mansion for a chance to see him.
Personally fearless, Washington never traveled with a guard. Anybody could come up to speak with him while he was out and about. On the mornings when he went horseback riding, which was almost every day—when the capital was in New York he would often start his day by riding completely around Manhattan Island—he often rode alone. If a friend came along, Jefferson perhaps, it would be just the two of them out and about, just the president and the secretary of state taking a nice little ride. More shocking still, even his house on Broadway went unguarded. If someone wanted to knock off the president there was nobody assigned to stop them. But, of course, the thought had not yet occurred to anybody that they might want to knock him off. Kill a president? Why for heaven's sake? (And not for a long time would the thought occur to anybody. The White House would remain unguarded until the Civil War. Presidents wouldn't begin receiving full-time secret service protection until 1901, after McKinley was assassinated.)*
So life _was_ simpler. And politics _was_ simpler. Washington didn't even need to campaign. The office was given to him.
And because things were simpler governing was simpler. Not simple. Simpler.
*7The first president to be seriously attacked was Jackson, on January 30, 1835. Visiting the Capitol one day to attend a state funeral for a congressman from South Carolina, Jackson was accosted by a madman armed with two pistols. Both misfired. The gunman, a deranged Englishman who believed he was an heir to the British throne, was apprehended and committed to an insane asylum. Marquis James, _The Life of Andrew Jackson_ (1938), vol. 2, pp. 390-91.
# 1. In the Garden of Eden
How George Washington, alone among the presidents, was able to gain power and get things done without compromising himself or his principles
There was a touching scene at the outset of his presidency that was almost too good to be true. When Charles Thomson, the secretary of the Congress, arrived at Mount Vernon to tell Washington he had been elected president, the two men withdrew to the main room of the house and delivered little speeches to each other. Thomson told Washington that the Congress was delighted he had agreed "to sacrifice domestic ease and private enjoyments to preserve the happiness of your country." Washington responded that he had accepted in deference to the public's desires. He couldn't promise to be a great president, he added, but "I can promise... to accomplish that which can be done by honest zeal." It was almost comically stilted, like one of those scenes out of a 1930s Frank Capra movie in which Jimmy Stewart stands up and delivers a sincere and selfless sermon on patriotism. But it happened. And Washington came off looking exceptionally decent.
He hadn't always seemed so decent.
As a young man there was a certain crassness about him that was almost palpable. Though he was a born aristocrat he was very much a man on the make. Land was everything in Washington's youth, the symbol of wealth and prestige, and he had set out to acquire as much of it as he could. Through inheritance he had received Mount Vernon and about two thousand acres. But that hadn't come nearly close to satisfying his appetite. He didn't want just a lot of land. He wanted more land than anybody else. Which was, apparently, the prime factor in his decision to court Martha. She was, even though youthful, neither particularly pretty nor particularly socially adept. And Washington didn't love her (not at first anyway); as he admitted in a letter at the time of his engagement, he was actually in love with Sally Fairfax, his best friend's wife. "You have drawn me," he wrote Sally, "into an honest confession of a simple Fact." But keep it a secret: "The world has no business to know the object of my Love, declared in this manner to you, when I want to conceal it."
But Martha was not without her attractions. One of the richest widows in North America, she possessed thousands of acres of land. Under the laws then in effect, her land became his upon marriage, instantly turning Washington into one of the richest men in America. Through Martha he received a hundred slaves, another six thousand acres, and enough money to buy thousands and thousands of acres more.
Not even all that was enough to satisfy him. In 1767, eight years after his marriage, he made a grab for land expressly set aside for the Indians. It happened to be illegal under laws promulgated by the Crown. Washington didn't care. He told his surveyor "to keep this whole matter a profound secret." If anybody asked the surveyor what he was up to, Washington instructed, the surveyor was to lie. Over the next few years he was to acquire another twenty thousand acres from the British government in return for his service as a colonel in the Virginia militia. He wasn't really entitled to the land; in fact when he had signed up the government had made it clear that the property was supposed to go to soldiers, not officers. But Washington had dextrously arranged for the officers to receive land, too. As the leader of his regiment, Washington had the responsibility of deciding who received which parcels (two hundred thousand acres of land were to be handed out). Washington saw to it that he received the best, "the cream of the Country," as he subsequently boasted.
But then the Revolution had come. It changed Washington as it did many of the leading figures in the colonies. Suddenly Washington, the "inveterate land grabber," as historian John Clark called him, became Washington, the enlightened revolutionary. Acquiring land was no longer enough. Being rich was no longer enough. Believing himself to be in a position to affect history, Washington lifted his sights and became something no one had any right to expect he would. Now, instead of acquiring land, he would seek to acquire what people in the eighteenth century called fame.
In our time fame has taken on a pejorative meaning. But in his day fame was far more sublime. To be famous was to be immortal. It was believed at the time that there were many ways to gain fame. But the most honorable way of all, it was felt, was to found a commonwealth. Thus did Washington, as fired by ambition as ever, decide to dedicate himself to the patriot cause, inspiring his fellow Americans as no one else did.
He didn't prove to be a brilliant general. In fact, he never won any major battles. But he kept the army together during awful times, and by strength of character was able to command the people's respect. At the end of the war he was held in such high esteem that he might very well have been able to crown himself king—as a lot of people wanted. But Washington refused, wouldn't even consider the subject. All he wanted to do was return to Mount Vernon. When friends in the army demanded that he make himself dictator after Congress refused to pay the soldiers their back wages, he looked upon the proposal with sheer horror.
When the war finally ended and the British evacuated the country Washington, like Cincinnatus, his Roman hero, laid down his sword and went back to his plow. It was his intention to remain at his plow for the remainder of his life. But events intervened: The Confederation collapsed, the Constitution was adopted, and Washington was drafted for president.
The kind of trust Washington inspired is difficult for us to comprehend because no figure today is comparable. Nobody since Washington has been comparable to Washington. He is sui generis. It is not just that he led the country through the Revolution and then at the end willingly surrendered his sword and returned home to his plow. It is not even that he was the Father of His Country, and a country can have just one father. It is that Washington, singly among our presidents, did not want to be president. In his case, and his case alone, the office actually did seek the man. Not only did he not lift a finger to be made president. He actually preferred _not_ to be president. He accepted in the end only because he had no choice. If he failed to accept the presidency there was a good chance that the Republic he had worked so hard to bring about would collapse. All others after him would try to claim that they, too, had no choice, that duty required them to run; for to admit ambition for the office was to prove oneself instantly unworthy of it. But only he really was motivated solely by duty. For what need did he have of the presidency? He already was the Father of His Country. All the presidency could do was possibly put that reputation at risk.
It could be argued, of course, that he agreed to run for president because he feared that that achievement was in jeopardy; if the commonwealth collapsed, his efforts would have been for naught. He would be the founder of nothing. Thus, it could be said, he ran for the same reason all the others would run afterward—because he was ambitious for fame. And yet—there would seem to be a vast difference between someone who eagerly seeks an office and one who, as it were, has had it thrust upon him, as the presidency was indeed thrust upon Washington.
The chief object his first term was to put the country's financial house in order. The federal government was loaded down with debt. The states were loaded down with debt. And the people were hostile to taxes. Raise taxes, and the people might rebel. Try to ignore the debt, as both state and national governments had been doing for years, and the government would appear weak. Appear weak, and the states would begin to go their own separate ways, and rich people would become alarmed at the instability. Washington himself didn't have any idea how to solve the problem; he wasn't very bright, and he knew nothing about economics. But he was terrific at spotting talent, and long ago he had spotted Alexander Hamilton. Hamilton, put in as secretary of the treasury, would know how to fix things.
It was a brilliant choice. Hamilton was a genius at economics as he was at almost everything he put his mind to. And he quickly came up with a brilliant plan. He would have the federal government assume the states' debts, thereby helping cement the Union together. And he would establish a national bank to help provide the government with money to pay off the debts. Because the bank would be backed by the government, rich people would lend the bank money; as creditors they would then have a stake in the survival of both the bank and the government.
Having come up with its program, the administration still had to sell it to Congress. And that was exceptionally difficult. Difficult because it was a complicated plan and in order to work, all of its various features had to be kept intact; remove one in the course of bargaining and the whole edifice would collapse: Eliminate the bank, and the government couldn't pay its debts. Refuse to assume the states' debts, and the government would lose the ability to command the support of the states. And yet every feature was controversial. Strict constructionists argued that the Constitution did not give the government the right to establish a bank. States that had worked hard to pay off their debts didn't want the states that hadn't to get a free ride. Further complicating the matter was that most of the states that _had_ paid off their debts were located in the South, the others in the North, which exposed a sharp cleavage between the sections—a cleavage everybody had feared and wanted to hide. If there was one thing that could tear the country asunder, it was sectionalism.
Washington worried—and did nothing. It was his belief that he shouldn't become involved in political controversies, even controversies that threatened the very foundation of his government. He felt he had to remain aloof. Get involved in the nitty-gritty of politics, and he would begin to look like a politician. And if he looked like a politician the country would no longer rally around him as a symbol of national unity. He would be tainted. Undoubtedly he could win in Congress this time and at countless other times if he put his prestige on the line, but with each victory he would make more enemies, thereby diminishing his stature as a statesman.
Washington could afford to remain above the fray because the other members of the administration, particularly Hamilton and Secretary of State Jefferson, were willing to become deeply engaged in politics. It was Jefferson who dreamed up the compromise that brought the North and South together by creatively joining the debt issue to a second one that also divided the sections: the location of the country's capital. New York wanted the capital to remain where it was, in New York City. Pennsylvania wanted it moved to Philadelphia. Virginia wanted it moved to the Potomac. Jefferson's ingenious solution, worked out one night at dinner with Hamilton, was to give the South the capital in exchange for its support of the federal assumption of state debts, the measure the North wanted. To mollify Pennsylvania, the capital would be moved to Philadelphia for ten years.
The wisdom of Washington's decision to remain aloof from politics became clear when the financial plan suddenly became enmeshed in scandal, the first scandal in the history of the United States government.
What happened was that the plan to pay off the government's debts made a few people very, very rich.
Much of the money the federal government owed in 1790—more than forty-two million dollars in all—was owed to average people of modest means, including thousands of Revolutionary War veterans whose IOUs had never been redeemed by the government under the old Articles of Confederation. The war certificates they held had fallen dramatically in value, most fetching just fifteen or twenty cents on the dollar in the open market. By any standard of justice the veterans should have been the ones to benefit from Hamilton's plan, under which the certificates would be paid off at par; after all, the securities they held had literally been purchased with the blood of patriots—their blood. But the veterans by and large weren't the ones who were to receive the benefit: Rank speculators were.
Just as the debt bill was about to be passed, speculators in New York, Philadelphia, and Boston raced to the countryside in advance of the news and bought up the long-devalued Revolutionary War certificates owned by the veterans. A few congressmen even got into the act, hiring ships to send agents deep into the remote areas of the country. Before the veterans figured out what was happening, the speculators had managed to scoop up the bulk of the once worthless but now valuable certificates.
Hamilton, who never cared for money—he was nearly bankrupt when he was killed in a duel with Aaron Burr—wasn't personally implicated in the speculation. But he didn't mind it, either. Eminently practical, he reasoned that the speculation, involving some of the nation's most important bankers and merchants, would help win them over to the support of the federal government. And anyway he believed that he couldn't have prevented what happened. It would have been a bureaucratic nightmare, he alleged, to try and find the original certificate holders.
Perhaps it would have been, though it's been suggested he easily could have avoided the trouble simply by drawing up in advance a list of the people who were owed money. Of greater concern was the effect the scandal had on the administration. Of course, the administration was pilloried, as any administration today would be. But Washington himself escaped largely unscathed, Hamilton bearing the brunt of the criticism. In part that was simply because Washington was such a towering figure that no one wanted to risk taking him on. But mostly it was because of the manner in which he had conducted himself. After approving in secret the broad outlines of the financial plan, he had left its fate up to the cabinet and Congress, neither publicly endorsing it nor lobbying for it. On just a single occasion did he even express his opinion; it was in a letter to a politician—that was as far as he was willing to involve himself in anything as sordid as politics.*
A president taking so passive a role today on so important a piece of legislation is unimaginable. But Washington could because nobody expected him to be involved in politics—nobody even wanted him to be. He hadn't been elected because he was a politician but precisely because he wasn't one. If he'd done anything more than he did, he would have risked damaging the very thing that sustained his authority, his image as a man above the fray.
Washington was no mere figurehead. As Henry Graff has pungently observed, he actually called the shots in the government. It was he who picked the cabinet, of course. He who decided to back Hamilton's financial plan. He who decided, without consulting Jefferson, whom he would send to France and England to represent us. He who decided where the White House would be built.
It was Washington who decided he would not consult with the Senate personally about treaties, a decision that had a profound influence on the presidency. The Founding Fathers had anticipated that the president would use the Senate as a kind of parliamentary sounding board for executive decisions, giving the legislators vast influence over the operation of the government. But Washington had found it impossible to consult with the Senate. He had personally gone to the legislature to brief the body about a treaty being negotiated with the Creek Indians. But things had immediately gone sour. First he had had to sit through two readings of the proposed treaty because the noise outside made it difficult to hear the first reading. Then he had had to face questions about the treaty, an arrangement he found objectionable. Finally, Sen. William Maclay had moved that the Senate should submit the treaty to a committee for additional study. That had so angered Washington that he stood up and stamped out of the chamber, complaining, "This defeats the very purpose of my coming here!" He was to return to the Senate once more, but never again after that, setting the presidency on a decisively different course than anybody had expected.
In another precedent-setting matter, it was Washington who decided that the president should have the right to fire employees of the federal government without having to ask the Congress for permission. Had he not insisted on this right, the presidency would have become wholly subject to the will of the legislature. (A bill giving Congress this right came to a tie vote in the Senate; Vice President John Adams broke the tie by voting against the measure.)
And finally, it was Washington who made the decision that Congress is entitled to see any and all executive documents, even those that might prove embarrassing, a hugely important precedent.
But while Washington was in overall charge, it was Hamilton and Jefferson who did most of the interesting work. It was they who wheeled and dealed and made things happen. In a way it was almost as if there were two administrations, the apolitical administration, headed by Washington, and the political administration, led by Hamilton and Jefferson.
As long as Jefferson and Hamilton worked together, the line between the two administrations, the apolitical and the political, remained firm and clear. But when Jefferson and Hamilton split—Jefferson reaching the opinion that Hamilton wanted to set up some kind of military dictatorship, and Hamilton becoming convinced that Jefferson was out to sabotage him in Congress—Washington found himself increasingly drawn into the political maelstrom. Somebody had to decide ultimately who was to prevail, and that somebody had to be Washington. As might be expected, he resisted taking sides and pleaded with both Jefferson and Hamilton to stop attacking each other. But by then the attacks had become so personal that they almost couldn't.
Hamilton had gone so far in his battle with Jefferson that he had helped set up a newspaper to carry his arguments to the public. Jefferson, in response, had then set up a newspaper of his own to serve as a vehicle for _his_ arguments. Each then used their position in the government to help finance their own side's organ. Hamilton gave his newspaper hugely lucrative contracts to print Treasury Department documents. Jefferson arranged to hire his newspaper editor as a translator in the State Department, then made sure the man had so little work to do that he could spend most of his time writing editorials against Hamilton.
Fortunately, just as the battle heated up between Jefferson and Hamilton an event intervened that helped Washington avoid having to choose between them. It was the election of 1792. Both were so eager for Washington to run again that they (temporarily) agreed to set aside their differences for the good of the country, leaving Washington free to remain apolitical. This sounds strange to our ears. Elections in our day incline presidents to be more political, not less. But that's because presidents in our day want to be reelected. Washington didn't.
Washington hadn't wanted to run the second time any more than he had the first. Four years and out; that was the plan. He'd even had Madison write up a farewell address. But that was before the panic. In quick succession two bubbles had burst. First there had been the problem with the BUS—the Bank of the United States. Everything at first had gone as expected—better than expected. Bank stock had gone on sale the year before on July 4—that was a good ploy!—and sold out in an hour. Eight million dollars in stock. _In an hour!_ Now things didn't look so good, however. Speculators had stepped in and driven up the price of scrip that could be exchanged for bank stock. Then, after they'd made their bundle, they'd gotten out of the market and scrip prices had plummeted. Scrip that had sold for $325 fell to $160, then to $100, then to $50. Hundreds of people had been wiped out. Hundreds of _rich_ people! The financial system was tottering—the very system that Washington had lent his prestige to create.
And then a second bubble had burst. This one was even worse, affecting the entire economy. It had begun when a group led by Robert Livingston had cornered the gold and silver markets in New York. That, in turn, had forced the banks, short of hard specie, to call in their loans. And that had led to the collapse of thousands of businesses dependent on easy credit. By the spring of 1792, the year of the second presidential election, the economy was in tatters.
An additional factor putting pressure on Washington to run for reelection was the looming division of the country into two warring factions, one led by Jefferson, the other by Hamilton. Atty. Gen. Edmund Randolph was so concerned that he warned Washington that the country was on the verge of civil war.
Washington resisted making a decision about running until the very last possible moment—a shrewd move. By delaying he forced Hamilton and Jefferson to hold off on their attacks, neither wanting to alienate him and risk his not running. (Both wanted him to run for the sake of the country; they realized that without Washington the country might implode.) Finally, a month before the electoral college was due to vote, Washington let it be known that he would be available for reelection.
In the spring of 1793 Washington settled in to begin his second term. It would not, however, be as productive as his first. History was against him this time. The conditions that seemed to operate in his favor the first time around—the absence of parties, the isolation of the country from foreign conflicts, the goodwill of Jefferson and Hamilton—seemed to reverse themselves. Jefferson lasted another year in office, then left, and after a time helped form the Democratic-Republican Party.* Hamilton quit a year after Jefferson to take control of the Federalists. Worst of all, the United States was drawn into conflicts with the world's two leading powers, France and Great Britain, and these conflicts in turn divided the country. Jeffersonians took the side of France, which was then in the throes of revolution. Federalists took Britain's side. Washington persisted in standing above it all, but fewer and fewer people appreciated his stance. Federalists felt he naturally should have taken their side and resented it when he didn't; Republicans felt that was precisely what he had done. In the press Washington was vilified, "in such exaggerated and indecent terms," he complained, "as could scarcely be applied to a Nero, a notorious defaulter, or even a common pickpocket."
From the first Washington disapproved of the changes taking place in the country. He especially disapproved of the birth of the inchoate party system. Parties were bad, in his opinion. In his Farewell Address he was to warn against them. For what was a party anyway? It was a formal institution whose chief purpose seemed to be to divide the country. Washington wasn't alone in his distrust of parties. Virtually all the founders felt the same. Even Hamilton and Jefferson had originally inveighed against parties. But under the pressure of events they had come to a new opinion. Washington, however, hadn't. The stronger the parties became, the more discontented he became. And yet there was nothing he could do about them. That he knew for sure, considering that it was his own two trusted lieutenants, Hamilton and Jefferson, who had taken the lead in creating them. If _they_ could be drawn into the party system, then other Americans would be, too.
History did indeed seem to be against him. But unlike so many of his successors, Washington did not react by being devious. He may have been desperate to stop the rise of parties, but he was never so desperate that he was willing to sell out his principles to do so. He would stand like a wall against parties, even if in the end he had to stand alone, which he very nearly did. The difference between Washington and his successors was not that he was strong and they were weak. Many of the men who came to sit in his place were equally as strong—Jackson, Lincoln, the Roosevelts—these men were as strong as men anywhere have ever been. The difference was that Washington could afford to stand against history, and they could not. Indeed, the more he leaned against history the stronger he became. Americans expected Washington to do the right thing as he saw it, even if they disagreed with him. His power derived from their sense that in the end he would always do what he thought best, not what he thought was expedient. And that was true of none of his successors. They became weaker when they stood against change. Only he became stronger. Of course, it was sometimes difficult for people caught up in the battles of the day to admit that Washington in following his own star was doing what he should. Often they were too angry at the moment to see it. When, for instance, Washington decided to accept the Jay Treaty, which settled our differences with Great Britain on terms largely favorable to Britain, the country went wild, burning both Jay and Washington in effigy. Jefferson, who knew Washington so well, condemned him bitterly. But by the time his term was up Americans had already begun to return to their earlier opinion. When he died he was nearly universally praised as the hero who was "first in war, first in peace, first in the hearts of his countrymen."
He was not just the first person to be president. He was for all intents and purposes the inventor of the presidency. Nobody knew what a president was when the framers created the office. The framers themselves didn't know. But they knew what Washington was, and he was what they had in mind. Only because they were confident that he would be the first president were they willing to make the position as powerful as they did. The president is the commander in chief because Washington was the framers' idea of a commander in chief. They gave him primary responsibility in foreign affairs because they were confident he knew how to conduct foreign affairs. The presidency, in short, is what it is largely because of George Washington. All the extensions of presidential power that were to come later would have been impossible without him.
All the presidents since Washington have lived in his shadow. It was he who gave them—and us—our idea of a president. He was the model. Politicians pretend they are unambitious for the office because he was unambitious for it. They pretend to be apolitical because he was apolitical. All politicians in the eighteenth century paid lip service to the ideals Washington came to symbolize, but it was because he actually seemed to live up to them that his successors often appeared to be so inferior. In a way, he is his successors' great curse. For every president is judged by how he compares with Washington, and yet none ever truly can. Washington gained power by denying he wanted it; the denial proved he was worthy of it. But who after him could gain power by sincerely denying he wanted it? No one. Unlike Washington, they would not be given the power, they would have to compete for it. Every generation there would be dozens of people competing for the office that just a handful of them could have. Washington not only didn't have to compete, there was no one to compete with. He was the only national figure whom all Americans, north and south, east and west, knew and trusted. Each region had its heroes; the nation had just one.
Because of Washington, Americans would lean toward military heroes; such men seemed above politics. These were to include Andrew Jackson, William Henry Harrison, Zachary Taylor, Franklin Pierce, U. S. Grant, Rutherford B. Hayes, Teddy Roosevelt, Dwight Eisenhower, and John Kennedy.* But not one of these military heroes was in the favorable position that Washington was. Each one of them had to campaign for the office.
Politics _was_ simpler then. People hadn't thought of killing a president yet. They hadn't thought of lots of things yet. It wouldn't occur to Washington, for instance, to exploit his family to win election to the presidency—he had it won without trying and anyway, what would his family have to do with his running for office? And how could they possibly be of help to him? Martha help George? How, pray tell? By giving her opinions, perhaps? But nobody would think of asking Martha for her opinion about anything. Nor would anyone think to ask her to tell about her marriage as a way of humanizing her husband. That would strike people as utterly ridiculous. So limited was her role that nobody even thought to give her a title after Washington was elected. She was, simply, Lady Washington. (Julia Tyler, wife of John Tyler, would be the first presidential spouse to have a title. She insisted on being called "Lovely Lady Presidentress." Aptly, she went around town in an imported Italian carriage pulled by six white Arabian horses. The first spouse to be referred to as "First Lady" was Dolley Madison, on the occasion of her death in 1849. For some reason, perhaps its attractive simplicity, the title stuck.
Nor, for that matter, would it occur to Washington to scrounge for contributions, reinvent himself, steal votes, or do any of the other things candidates do nowadays to win election. Again, he didn't have to. He had the election won without trying. And anyway, he wouldn't have had to scrounge for donations because presidents as yet didn't run campaigns, and therefore didn't need donations. And even if they did campaign, there wouldn't be much to spend their campaign funds on. All the money in the world couldn't buy a spot on radio or TV because radio and TV as yet didn't exist. Money couldn't even be used to send out photos of the smiling candidate: Photography didn't exist.
Reinvent himself? If being the Father of His Country couldn't get him reelected, what could?
Steal votes? How? While he might have cut deals with the members of Congress or other political bigwigs there weren't any political machines yet in existence capable of wholesale vote stealing. Nor would it be clear whom the votes would be stolen from. "The people" didn't vote for president. "The people" by and large didn't vote at all. Blacks didn't vote, women didn't vote, adult males lacking property didn't vote.
Exploit race? Why? Whites then didn't fear blacks; most blacks were firmly shackled in slavery. They weren't marching for rights, demanding to be freed, or openly threatening the social order.
Exploit religion? Nearly all Americans were Protestants. The great tides of immigration that were to sweep millions of Catholics and Jews into America hadn't yet arrived. The Catholic wave wouldn't begin for another half century. The Jews wouldn't arrive in meaningful numbers for nearly a full century.
Once in office President Washington _would_ feel many of the same pressures presidents do today to succeed. Like them he had to deal with forces outside his control, such as the rise of the party system. But unlike them, he gained power by holding to a straight line, not by bending, weaving, or ducking. He succeeded not by doing, but simply by being. Besides, he was relatively lucky. He got through eight years in office without a war, and therefore was never tempted to lie about how well one may have been going. Nor did he have to worry about patronage. He had hardly any jobs to give out, and anyway he didn't have a political party dependent on patronage to keep its supporters content. There was corruption, to be sure; Hamilton's number two man at the Treasury was caught using inside information to make a killing in the bond market. Hamilton himself was accused of corruption by the Jeffersonians. To clear himself of the charge that he had consorted with a known speculator he had to admit that his actual crime was consorting with the man's wife, Mrs. Reynolds.* But would Washington need to cover up these scandals? Hardly. Being Washington, he could take the hits, no matter how hard. He had a lock on the presidency. As long as he himself remained clean, any number of scandals could swirl beneath him and hardly soil his shoes. And Washington of course would remain clean. Although he was always pressed for cash—who wasn't back then in cash-poor America?—and he had to borrow money to be able to attend his own inauguration, he was one of the richest men in the entire country. And rich men don't need to steal.†
Exploiting their family, exploiting religion and race, covering up corruption—all that lay in the dismal distant future.
Washington died in 1799. With him died the founders' hope that the presidency would be above politics. It couldn't be. Only Washington could be above politics—above ambition—and there was only one Washington. After Washington would come the politicians.
*Americans then did not make the assumption that the president automatically would support a measure backed by a cabinet secretary, especially the secretary of the treasury. By law the treasury secretary reported to Congress, not to the president! Washington happened, of course, to support almost all of Hamilton's plans, but not all. He specifically objected to Hamilton's proposal to subsidize business and told Jefferson he would veto any measure that included such a subsidy. (None was ever passed.)
*Variously known as either the Democratic-Republican Party or, simply, the Republican Party. Eventually this Republican Party would evolve into the modern Democratic Party. The Republican Party of today can be traced back to the Whigs, a party that developed in the late 1820s.
*Candidates who couldn't truthfully be described as war heroes were, if possible, packaged as military veterans. These included: James Garfield, Chester Arthur, William McKinley, Harry Truman, Richard Nixon, Gerald Ford, Jimmy Carter, and George Bush. (Both Lyndon Johnson and Ronald Reagan claimed to be military veterans, but weren't in the common sense view of the matter. LBJ flew one mission under fire as a Congressional observer of operations in the Pacific, then spent most of the rest of the war in Washington; Reagan made movies for the army but never left Hollywood during the war.)
*Hamilton had owned up to the affair at a private meeting with Republican James Monroe, in an attempt to stop the Republicans from casting doubts on his integrity as a public official. The gesture was in vain. Monroe promptly leaked the story of Hamilton's adultery to James Callender, one of Jefferson's favorite journalists. This would prove to be ironic. A few years later, after Callender and Jefferson had had a falling out, Callender would expose the rumor of Jefferson's affair with Sally Hemings.
†In agrarian America hardly anybody had cash. The economy ran on credit and barter.
# 2. The Birth of the Two-Party System
How John Adams played politics with foreign policy as a means of keeping power and Thomas Jefferson's supporters bargained for the presidency as a means of gaining power
The United States that elected John Adams was as simple as the United States that elected George Washington, with one difference: Adams's United States was neatly divided into two parties. And that changed everything. For eight years Americans had lived with the myth that theirs was not a system based on parties because Washington had been above parties. But with Adams's election the myth was shattered. Adams was a party man pure and simple.
Adams hadn't wanted to be a party man. Like Washington he had wanted to stand above it all. But he couldn't. He wasn't Washington. And anyway, the world had changed. There would be a party system whether he liked it or not. The country was changing, and nothing and nobody could stop it—not even the president of the United States. Adams would either have to accommodate the change or be run over by it. A president could not ignore the party system if he hoped to accomplish something; the only way to get legislation through Congress would be by working with the party in power. Ambitious to succeed, Adams chose accommodation. _He_ would play politics.
Unlike Washington, Adams was very bright—brilliant, actually. In his spare time he would read the classics—in Latin and Greek. But he was an easy man to dislike. He was vain, quick to rage, and cursed with a streak of bold independence. In 1768, already a critic of the British, he turned down a position with the Crown as an attorney with the Court of Admiralty because he felt that he was being bought off. On the eve of the Revolution, at substantial cost to his reputation in the patriot community, he volunteered to defend the redcoats indicted for murder in connection with the Boston Massacre because he felt that they were entitled to legal representation.
At the time of the Constitutional Convention, he worked up in a matter of months a two-thousand-page tome on the history of self-government that proved utterly indispensable. But he continued to remain controversial, Jeffersonians detesting him for his relentless Anglophilia. When the first Congress met, Adams, presiding over the Senate in his role as vice president, had been obsessed with the subject of titles, especially the title to be used to address the president. Washington himself simply preferred to be called "President Washington." Adams, imbued with English ideas formed during his service as the American minister to Great Britain, preferred more involved nomenclature: "His Highness the President of the United States and Protector of the Rights of the Same." The Senate went along, but the House would not. It would be, simply, "President Washington." (Adams, it was decided, would be addressed as "Vice President Adams." But behind his back his enemies would call him "His Rotundity"—in view of his fat waist.)
In 1796 he ran against Jefferson for president, fully expecting to win. "I am Heir apparent you know," he wrote his wife, Abigail. As the election approached, Federalists lined up behind Adams for president and Gen. Charles Cotesworth Pinckney for vice president. But then an impediment was encountered. Secretly Alexander Hamilton began maneuvering to make Pinckney president and Adams vice president again. (Hamilton figured Pinckney would be easier to control.) Adams was crushed. He wrote Abigail that while he thought he had "firmness of mind enough to bear it like a man," he would, if passed over, "groan like Achilles, and roll from side to side abed sometimes, at the ignorance, folly, injustice and ingratitude of the world."
He fought for the office with great passion but honestly. Although his supporters played mean—Federalists claiming that Jefferson was an atheist, destroyer of religion, and a Francophile—Adams himself refused to join in the attacks. He didn't even campaign. (Nor did Jefferson; not until the 1830s would a presidential candidate take to the hustings.)
He won, of course, but he still seemed to believe that people were ungrateful—they had merely elected him president. They hadn't said that they liked him. And anyway, they were tardy in electing him president now. After all, he felt, he should have been elected president in 1789 instead of Washington. What had Washington known of government? He was nothing more than a soldier.
His first two years he tried to govern like Washington, acting as though he were indifferent to politics, with the president operating in one world and rank politicians in another. _When_ France, then in a life-and-death struggle with Great Britain, began raiding American ships, eventually confiscating more than three hundred vessels in retaliation for our support of Great Britain, Adams resisted the demands of the politicians in his own party to make war on the French, though he had every reason to feel that the French were out to get him. During the election of 1796 the French minister to the United States, Pierre Adet, had openly supported Jefferson for president over Adams. Adet had even gone on the road to help rally Jefferson's supporters. But Adams felt that the United States could not afford to take France on, and he was right to think so. We didn't even have a navy yet. Instead of war Adams chose diplomacy, dispatching three diplomats to Europe to meet with Talleyrand, the French foreign minister, to negotiate a peace settlement.
It was a great act of courage—a Washingtonian act, Adams behaving as Americans expected their presidents should. But Adams was not Washington. He lacked Washington's charisma—lacked Washington's balanced judgment, lacked Washington's name. Because he lacked these, he found it difficult—and then, in 1798, impossible—to govern apolitically. In that year events careened out of his control.
The French, instead of seizing the diplomatic initiative as a way out of a messy situation, made things worse by refusing even to give the American diplomats an official audience. Three French agents—whom the Americans immediately dubbed X, Y, and Z, to conceal their identities—revealed that Talleyrand would not deign to open negotiations unless he was paid a bribe of a quarter of a million dollars. That pushed Adams over the edge. Until then he had been willing to put up with the French tribulations in order to avoid war. But war began to seem unavoidable.
It was at this delicate point in the history of the country that Adams chose to do what Washington had strenuously avoided doing for eight long years: He politicized foreign policy. Instead of working with the Jeffersonians to create a united front against France, he played a dirty trick on them. He virtually begged them to demand to see the diplomatic correspondence that laid out in detail the French demands for a bribe in what was to become known as the XYZ Affair. Aware of what was in the correspondence, Adams knew that the papers' release would instantly lead to public revulsion against France. But he let the Jeffersonians think otherwise. The trap laid, they fell into it. When Adams, at the insistence of the Jeffersonians, sent the papers over to the Senate, they were completely humiliated. In a flash the country could see that they were wrong and Adams was right. The Senate immediately voted to arm American merchantmen and to beef up national defense.
But it was a costly victory. In his zeal to sabotage his enemies and win public support for a tough policy against France, Adams had made the loyal opposition look disloyal, associating Jeffersonians in the public mind with France at a time when France was becoming identified as public enemy number one. In effect, what he did was to make Jeffersonians seem unpatriotic. Perhaps at the time Adams didn't see where that might lead. American politics was still inchoate; no one yet really understood its patterns. No one yet realized what happens to the civil rights of minorities when Americans get caught in the grip of patriotic fury. Red scares and Communist witch hunts lay far in the future. But if Adams did not at first see what dark forces he had unleashed, he did not have long to wait. Within weeks it was evident. As soon as the public had absorbed what had happened people began to demand that the Jeffersonians be punished in some way. What happened next was not too great a surprise. As war fever mounted, the people demanded that the _government_ punish the Jeffersonians. Four months later, in July 1798, the Congress, dominated by Federalists—altogether eager to deal their enemies a crippling blow before the elections that fall—passed the Alien and Sedition Acts, which gave government officials the right to lock up anybody who criticized them.
Adams promptly signed the measures, forever changing history. After that there never again was any real hope that the American presidency could live up to the standards set by Washington. Adams laid that dream out dead on the ground as effectively as if he had used his fists to score a bloody knockout blow. Ever after, presidents would be seen to be operating in the very same world as other elected officials. Where before there had been two worlds, there now was to be just one. In the opinion of most Americans—then as well as now—the wrong one had triumphed. Americans didn't want presidents playing politics (they didn't even want _ordinary_ politicians playing politics). But the world that triumphed was the one that had to. A president had to dirty his hands in the grimy world that was. He couldn't wash it away.
It didn't matter that just fourteen Americans would actually be punished under the Sedition Act, or that Adams himself was to be personally involved in only two of the cases. Nor did it matter that he hadn't lobbied for the legislation or even given his approval in advance. He signed it. And that put him officially on record in favor of laws expressly designed to punish his political enemies by tossing them in jail.
It was ludicrous legislation in a supposedly free country—as was almost instantly and comically to be revealed. After Congress adjourned, Adams left Philadelphia to journey home to Quincy. Along the way he happened to stop in Newark, New Jersey, where local Federalists gave a parade in his honor. A citizen by the name of Luther Baldwin, standing by a tavern, heard a customer remark as Adams went by, "There goes the President and they are firing at his ass." Baldwin, a Jeffersonian, retorted, "I don't care if they fire through his ass!" For that remark he was promptly arrested, charged with violating the Sedition Act, and put behind bars. Other cases were more serious. A U.S. represenative, Matthew Lyon, was prosecuted and sent to jail for four months.
In school, when students are taught about the Alien and Sedition Acts, the emphasis is almost always put on the latter. But the Alien Acts were equally reprehensible—and potentially more damaging to the prospects of the Republicans. The Sedition Act was like a blunt knife against their party, frustrating criticism of the government but not really preventing it. In contrast, the Alien Acts were like a sharp knife pointed directly at the party's heart. For what the Alien Acts did was restrict the parly's ability to enlist new voters. In one swift stroke they extended the term of residency required to become a citizen from a brief five years to an onerous fourteen. The restriction applied to all immigrants, but that hardly hurt the Federalists: New immigrants by and large weren't becoming Federalists, they were becoming Jeffersonians. And now those immigrants, tens of thousands of them, would have to wait years and years longer before they could vote. One group of immigrants in particular would be deprived of the vote for many years: the twenty thousand white French immigrants who had recently arrived from the Caribbean island of Saint Domingue, then in the midst of the slave revolt led by Toussaint L'Ouverture, virtually all of whom were expected to join the Jeffersonians.
Jeffersonians took the Alien and Sedition Acts seriously, so seriously that in response they began contemplating the abolition of the experiment in federal government. Jefferson and Madison refused to go that far, but they, too, were alarmed. Out of their concern they developed in secrecy what came to be known as the Virginia and Kentucky Resolutions, which introduced the radical idea of nullification: If the Congress and the president approved legislation that the states believed was unconstitutional—as Jefferson and Madison believed the Alien and Sedition Acts to be—then the states had the right to declare such legislation null and void within their borders. Through deft political maneuvering, Jeffersonian agents were able to persuade the state legislatures of both Virginia and Kentucky to approve the resolutions. Ever after, Jeffersonians would pair two dates as turning points in the history of freedom: 1776 and 1798. In '76 a blow had been leveled against British tyranny, in '98 against federal tyranny. "Remember '98," they would say.
That fall the Federalists ran a vicious campaign in the off-year election for Congress, exploiting the passions Adams had raised in the imbroglio with France to tar their opponents as traitors. Some may actually have believed what they were saying. Most clearly did not. They'd have said anything to win: Winning seemed vital.
While the Federalists then controlled all three branches of the federal government, there was every indication that their control was slipping, that they were becoming identified with extreme conservatives—the moneyed elite—while Republicans were proving adept at winning over the young, the poor, and the working class. In the last election Adams had beaten Jefferson by just three electoral votes. As likely as not the next time round Jefferson would beat Adams, who no longer could bask in Washington's glow. The Federalists could survive the defeat of Adams, but they might not survive the loss of Congress. And that was just what they were beginning to worry might happen. While they held a commanding majority in the Senate—twenty Federalists to twelve Democratic-Republicans—in the House of Representatives their majority was much smaller, fifty-eight to forty-eight. A shift of just six votes and the Jeffersonians would control the House. The more Federalists dwelt on that number six, the more depressed they became. _Just six_ _votes!_ It had haunted them from the moment the election results had come in two years earlier.
Winning by demagoguery was embarrassing, but Federalists found themselves unable to resist the temptation. Running against France and the Jeffersonians was a lot more exciting and profitable than running against Jeffersonians alone. By bringing France into the campaign, the Federalists could make people forget what they didn't like about the Federalists. In effect, they could use the crisis with France to continue discrediting their opposition.
By the time the campaign was in full swing, actual war broke out, armed American merchantmen firing on armed French merchantmen. This raised passions even further, giving the Federalists ever greater opportunities to reap political benefits. The hotter the war turned, the better their prospects.
There was nothing unique in the Federalists' strategy to use war to score political points. Throughout American history many politicians would do the same. But the Federalists were unique in one respect: They were the first to do it—and the first to figure out how.
There were some Federalists, to be sure, who objected to the party's machinations, who held true to the ideals of the Republic as symbolized by George Washington. But then the election returns came in. The Federalists triumphed. In the House, which the Federalists had worried about losing, they won a stupendous victory, winning sixty-four seats—twenty-two seats more than the opposition. After that the politicians agreed that playing politics with national security was essential.
Luckily for Adams, the war (which was undeclared) went well. Talleyrand, impressed by American resolve and eager to focus on the fight with Great Britain, signaled that he was prepared to open negotiations without payment of a bribe, and an agreement to end the war was reached. A grateful nation sang Adams's praises—and then, as so often happens in American politics, abruptly changed its tune. In 1800, when Adams ran for reelection, the voters threw him and the Federalists in Congress out of power, voting in the Jeffersonians. In a way the peace settlement that had been Adams's triumph was also his undoing. By settling the war with France he took foreign policy issues, where he had an advantage, off the table. That gave the voters time to refocus on domestic issues, where Federalists were weakest. As war fever had abated Jeffersonians had even discovered that they were able to rally public opinion against the Alien and Sedition Acts. And that was a reminder of a basic lesson: In politics victory is ephemeral.
Before he left office Adams pulled off one last political trick. In the waning weeks of the lame-duck Congress—the Federalist-dominated Congress—the party passed a sweeping reorganization of the federal judiciary, doubling the number of circuit courts and creating twenty-three new federal judgeships. Adams promptly signed the legislation and then nominated Federalists to fill each of the newly created positions. As his administration wound down, he labored feverishly to have his nominees approved by the Senate before the Republicans took over. On his last day in office he was still filling out their commissions, giving rise to the criticism that he had created "Midnight Judges." His apologists later derided the term as a Jeffersonian myth. But on his last evening as president, Adams, his boxes packed, was still signing away. At five the next morning he slipped out of Washington unnoticed and went home to Massachusetts, not caring to see his longtime opponent installed as his successor. Not many were sad to see him go.
When the Jeffersonians came to power they repealed the Alien and Sedition Acts. The Virginia and Kentucky Resolutions, in consequence, became moot, no court ever ruling on their constitutionality. But nobody could repeal history. The change John Adams had wrought in the presidency was permanent.
Adams is usually remembered, when he is remembered at all, for the amazing dynasty he started. For generations, defying the odds, Adamses prevailed in both politics and academe. After Abigail and John came John Quincy Adams, himself a president; then Charles Francis Adams, congressman, minister to England, biographer, and historian; and finally Henry Adams, the dyspeptic author of _The Education of Henry Adams_ , who, out of family pique, wrote a scathing history of the Jefferson and Madison administrations. But John Adams's effect on the presidency, though forgotten, was decisive—so decisive that he can be said to have reinvented the office.
Until 1798, however misguided Presidents Washington and Adams had seemed, it was assumed that they were simply misguided; they were almost never accused of acting out of base political motives. After '98, presidents would find it almost impossible to escape the criticism that their actions were often politically motivated. The change was owing to Adams's handling of things: Everyone knew that _his_ actions had in fact been political. And once the genie had gotten out of the bottle, there was no way to put it back inside. Fewer than ten years had passed since Washington had been elected. But a hundred years might as well have elapsed, so great was the effect of the change in the office.
There was an irony in the fact that it was Adams who was the agent of change—of _this_ change—for if anybody had wanted to operate above politics, it was John Adams. But a force beyond Adams's control—beyond, really, anybody's control—was taking over. However much presidents might wish to ignore politics, as many would profess they did, they would find that they actually could not, now that the two-party system was taking hold. Not even the most iron-willed of men could—not Jackson, not Lincoln, not either of the Roosevelts. If they wished success, wished to survive in office and to control events, then they had to play the game—and play it better than their enemies. That, too, was a lesson of the Adams administration.
While it was clear that Adams had lost the election, it was unclear who won it. Not unclear in some metaphorical way, but in a very real, very practical way. Jefferson supposedly was the winner; he after all was his party's choice as president. But when the electoral votes were counted it suddenly became evident that Aaron Burr, the party's vice presidential candidate, might in fact become president in what would amount to a stolen election.
The presidency once again was embroiled in politics.
Through a quirk in the election laws then in effect, presidential and vice presidential candidates did not run together as they do now on a joint ticket. Instead all of the candidates, whether intending to seek the presidency or the vice presidency, ran for president. The person who received the most votes took the top position, while the person receiving the next most became vice president. The system had worked well initially because the candidates had run as individuals. But the system was unworkable once the candidates began to run as representatives of a party. For then the candidates for president and vice president of the winning party would receive the same number of electoral votes, and that would result in a tie in the electoral college. The obvious solution was to amend the election laws to allow electors to note which candidate they wanted for president and which for vice president. But that wasn't a simple thing to do. The election rules were embedded in the Constitution itself; to change the procedure the Constitution would have to be changed. Instead, therefore, the parties had settled on a simple expedient measure. To avoid a tie they made arrangements with several of their own electors to vote for someone other than the party's designated vice presidential candidate, which would leave the presidential candidate a few votes ahead.
Nothing could be simpler, really. All the party had to do was contact a couple of its electors, as both parties had done in 1796. And contacting a couple was just to be on the safe side. In reality just one elector had to be contacted—for the presidential candidate had to receive just one more vote than the vice presidential candidate to win. _Just one more vote!_
And yet somehow this simple thing that needed to be done was not done. In the hubbub of the election nobody bothered to make the necessary arrangements, though Jefferson himself had asked party leaders to be sure to take care of this single, extremely important, detail. When the electoral ballots were counted Thomas Jefferson and Aaron Burr both received exactly the same number: seventy-three. (Adams received sixty-five.)
If there had been any doubt that the Constitution needed to be amended there was no doubt any longer. But that would have to take place in the future.* In the here and now, the House of Representatives, under the procedures outlined in the Constitution, would pick the next president. And that created a genuine political crisis. For Jefferson to win, Burr would have to tell his friends in the House to vote for Jefferson for president. But when the time came to do so, he refused. A rabidly ambitious man, he hungered for the presidency and was willing to do anything, it seemed, to obtain it. The Republicans had selected him for the vice presidency in part because he was ambitious. Sharp, smart, and powerful, and powerful in particular in New York (which was critical; the Republicans needed New York to win), in the 1790s he had even managed to outmaneuver Alexander Hamilton and take control of the local government in Manhattan. But not until now did party leaders realize quite how ambitious he was. When the House met in February to choose the next president Burr secretly connived with the Federalists to make himself president instead of Jefferson. There is no evidence that Burr himself ever actually lobbied any of the members. But then, he didn't have to. All he had to do was have his friends do the lobbying. They would do his dirty work.
The Federalists held the key to the election, for they were in control of the House. Although they'd lost their majority in the recent election, it was not the newly elected Republican Congress that would decide the presidential contest, it was the old lame-duck Federalist Congress. Because they held the balance of power, the Federalists could, if they had been brazen enough, even have made Adams president again. Actually, there was some talk of them doing so. But that would have amounted to felony theft—an outright stolen election—and not even the most manipulative Federalist politicians thought they could get away with that. But because Burr had put himself into play in the presidential contest they thought they would be able to justify _his_ election. And they much preferred Burr to Jefferson. In part that was because they simply loathed the Virginian, but it was also because they hoped to be able to strike a bargain with Burr: They would make him president and in exchange he had to promise not to fire Federalists on the government payroll and to retain the Hamiltonian system of finance. (The Federalists seemed to have had no hope of striking such a bargain with Jefferson; he expressly refused to negotiate.)
With the presidency up for sale, the House began voting. The first vote took place on Wednesday, February 11, 1801, just after Congress had formally opened the ballots of the electoral college. Jefferson received the votes of eight states, Burr six, with two dividing. Since there were sixteen states in the Union, Jefferson needed nine to win a majority.* Getting that majority would prove difficult. That afternoon more ballots were taken, each time with the same result. So there were more ballots, one after another, on into the night. Members sent home for blankets and pillows. And still there was the same result. At sunrise on Thursday, after twenty-seven ballots, they finally took a break. That afternoon they voted again, on Friday two more times, and on Saturday three more times. By then they had been at it four days and gone through thirty-three ballots—with no winner. But they would need to take just three more ballots. For that evening Federalist James Bayard, the sole representative from Delaware, announced that he was switching to Jefferson. On Tuesday, on the thirty-sixth ballot, Jefferson was finally elected president. "Thus has ended," commented Republican Albert Gallatin, "the most wicked absurd attempt ever tried by the Federalists," which was a little unfair. It hadn't been the Federalists alone who were responsible for the mess. Aaron Burr was, too.
Why had Bayard switched? While Jefferson had refused to bargain for the presidency, his supporters had decided they had to. Under the pressure of events they promised Bayard that Jefferson would retain both the Hamiltonian system _and_ Federalist officeholders—all that the Federalists had hoped to gain by supporting Burr. Hamilton, ironically, played a decisive role in the drama. He came out in favor of Jefferson. It was not because of a new-found love of his old enemy. It was because he feared Burr and only hated Jefferson.
It had not been Jefferson who had made the ultimate partisan deal, trading the presidency for some promises. It was his supporters. But that didn't really matter. The deal had been struck in his name. And Jefferson would be honor-bound to deliver on the promises his supporters had made. There would, therefore, be no dismantling of the Hamiltonian financial system. And there would be no wholesale removals of Federalist employees from the public payroll.
Jefferson actually had had no intention of destroying the Hamiltonian edifice. But he certainly had expected to replace Federalist bureaucrats. For the only way Jeffersonians could hope to build up their party quickly was by offering key supporters jobs. As long as Federalists held those jobs, the Federalists benefited instead of Republicans. Jefferson before long was to complain bitterly about his inability to rid the government of the Federalist holdovers: "How are vacancies to be obtained? Those by death are few, by resignation none." But he never in fact did get rid of them. At the end of his two terms some two-thirds remained in office.*
The presidency had in fact been sold. And it had been sold for the reason that it _had_ to be. For by then the politicians had become desperate. The Jeffersonians had tried to win by appealing to reason and patriotism and that had gotten them dozens of ballots and no winner. So they had decided to win any way they could. In the end the man who should have won, won. But victory had come at the cost of principle.
Washington's election in 1789 seemed farther away than ever.*
A single great force was driving politicians to take actions they otherwise wouldn't have dared to take, and that force was, simply, the emergence of a full-blown two-party system. That same force would now lead Jefferson to do things as president he would have preferred not to do.
Just two weeks after the tumult in the House, it seemed that everything was back to normal, back to the way it had been before the election, before politics had become so intensely partisan. It was Jefferson who brought about the change. At his inaugural he famously announced, "We are all federalists, we are all republicans." They were just eight little words, but already presidents were so powerful that eight little words could affect the country's whole outlook on politics. They were so powerful that they were to become an emblem of nonpartisanship through the ages. In the 1970s scholar Kenneth Stampp, speaking to a group of hundreds of historians at a contentious conference on slavery at the University of Mississippi, would try to quiet things down by beginning, "We are all federalists, we are all republicans." The audience, immediately grasping Stampp's reference, hooted in delight.
The funny thing was that Jefferson did not mean to be apolitical. He was only pretending to be apolitical.† To _be_ apolitical would mean governing as Washington had, and Jefferson had no intention of trying to be another Washington. In fact, he was to be the first avowedly political president in American history. Adams had been political in his actions but had not admitted he was being political. Jefferson was political and admitted it. In the whole history of the presidency few presidents have been more political. The longer he remained in office the more political he became. Indeed, one of his chief goals as president was political. It was to bury the Federalist Party forever. Jefferson despised the Federalists, doubting they should even be considered a legitimate group. Republicans were legitimate; they represented the voice of the people. Federalists represented special interests: bankers, merchants, businessmen. In Jefferson's view what was good for the Republican Party was good for the country. The best thing that could happen to the Federalist Party was for it to expire.
That it was Thomas Jefferson who first institutionalized party politics in the office of the presidency is something of a paradox. For no one was more reluctant to play the politician than he. His battles with Hamilton in the Washington administration had so worn him down that he had retreated to Monticello to take up the life of a virtual hermit. He even stopped reading newspapers for a time. He returned to politics in 1796 only at the insistence of his friends, who feared that the "monocrats" were taking over. By 1800, fearful of the direction in which the Federalists were taking the country and alarmed by their attempt to use the government to silence their critics, he had become passionate about running for president and had even orchestrated a nationwide campaign to elect Republican majorities in the state legislatures to help bring about his own election. But Jefferson remained in many ways a paradox. It was almost as if he thrived on contradiction (as many creative people do). A slaveholder, he believed that "all men are created equal." A true believer in agrarianism, he started a nailery at Monticello that presaged the beginning of the Industrial Revolution in northern Virginia. An opponent of government debt, he ran up personal debts in the hundreds of thousands of dollars, bankrupting his estate. A lover of simplicity, he added so many stories and rooms to the main house at Monticello that the building took twenty-five years to finish.
Some of the compromises he made were so small as to be almost attractive. When some urban workers complained about an essay he had written years before in which he criticized "the mobs of the great cities who add just so much to the support of pure government, as sores to the strength of the human body," he temporized. "I had in mind," he sheepishly wrote, "the manufacturers [manual workers] of the old country," not the fine, upstanding workers found in American cities. Other compromises were less attractive. But they were always necessary—or seemed so at the time.
One of the first in this class was his order concerning the deposit of government funds. Whenever possible, he instructed his treasury secretary, government funds should be deposited in banks favorable to the administration.
Another was his decision to ignore a scandal involving his postmaster general, Gideon Granger, who had become caught up in the most fantastic swindle in American history: the Yazoo land fraud. In this one deal, named for a river, Georgia agreed to sell speculators thirty-five million state-owned acres out west at a cut-rate price, one and a half cents an acre. In return for their largess the legislators demanded a boodle in kickbacks: stock in the four companies that bought the land, out-and-out cash payments, and in many cases, title to some of the land itself. The sale of the land was completed in 1795, but a new legislature elected in Georgia after the scandal was exposed rescinded the deal, leaving investors in the companies in the lurch. After years of controversy the investors eventually petitioned Congress to make them whole on the grounds that they had been illegally deprived of their property. Granger joined the petitioners in their action, but then, according to John Randolph, went a step further, resorting to bribery to try to get Congress to act.
Because the allegations came from Randolph, a Jefferson friend turned foe, Jefferson had every reason to believe that they had been manufactured. But he also had a duty as president to find out if they actually had been. This he refused to do, and the reason was politics. Granger was the only New Englander in the cabinet at the time, and Jefferson didn't want to do anything to undermine him; Jefferson's support was weakest in New England. Investigate Granger, and New Englanders would be sure to rise up in anger. So Jefferson let him remain.
Jefferson was very good on civil liberties. One of his first acts after taking office was to order the release of people imprisoned for violating the Alien and Sedition Acts. But Jefferson didn't like press criticism, it turned out, any better than Adams or Washington had. It hurt to be called incompetent, ambitious, and atheistic, and it was troubling that so much of the press coverage of the administration, at least the coverage provided by the Federalist papers, was plainly untrue. It especially hurt to find himself depicted as a fornicator, as journalist James Callender was claiming. And it was extraordinarily painful to have it said that the person with whom he was fornicating was his very own slave, Sally Hemings. But for a good long while Jefferson simply put up with the situation.
Finally, understandably perhaps, he blew. After years and years of abuse, he decided secretly to encourage state prosecutors to crack down on the presses owned by his enemies in Pennsylvania, a indent of opposition to the administration. "I have," he wrote the Republican governor of the state, "long thought that a few prosecutions of the most prominent offenders would have a wholesome effect in restoring integrity of the presses." At the time press freedom was not understood to mean the same thing it means today; in Jefferson's day most Americans believed the press had the right to print only what was true. It wasn't until later that the First Amendment was construed to give the press the right to print virtually anything. (And not until the _Sullivan_ decision in 1964 did the courts recognize the press's right to make erroneous statements about public officials; and not even _Sullivan_ shields journalists from libel suits if their reporting is found to have been malicious or reckless.) But that it was Jefferson who aggressively (and secretly) connived to take on the press was out of character. It was Jefferson after all who had said, "Were it left to me to decide whether we should have a government without newspapers, or newspapers without a government, I should not hesitate to prefer the latter." But then that was before he was president. Things looked different once he was.
There is no telling how far Jefferson might have been willing to carry his secret campaign against the press, because before long it came to a sudden and dramatic end. At yet another trial of yet another editor on the charge of seditious libel, this time at the federal level, the defense decided to take the offense. As the case against the editor went to trial his supporters quietly let it be known that they had evidence against Jefferson that they planned to release if the prosecution moved forward. In effect, what they were trying to do was blackmail the president of the United States. Jefferson was incensed, but he did not want the public to know what the blackmailers promised to reveal: that as a young man he had, as he put it, "offered love to a handsome lady." At the time he was a bachelor, but the lady in question was his neighbor's wife, Mrs. John Walker, whom Jefferson was supposed to be looking after while Mr. Walker was away. The affair actually had never been consummated. Mrs. Walker, loyal to her husband, had refused Jefferson's offer. But Jefferson ever after felt extremely guilty about the affair. And the last thing he wanted was to see it written up in the papers. Beside the personal fallout, there would be the political embarrassment. So when he found out what the defense had on him, he told the prosecutor to drop the case.
Jefferson liked to pretend that he was always straightforward, though in practice he often wasn't. But he was commendably straightforward in dealing with one of the great issues of his administration, the Louisiana Purchase. Louisiana had been a source of great trouble for the United States for years. France had owned it originally, then lost it to Spain after the Seven Years' War (known in the United States as the French and Indian War), then won it back after Napoleon came to power. And that had made Americans hugely uneasy. Americans didn't much care about most of Louisiana. At the time they felt they had more room than they knew what to do with. But they didn't approve of the swapping of the territory by European powers. It brought European conflicts too close to home. And they especially didn't approve of European control of the Mississippi Delta. It was the delta they cared about, not the rest of Louisiana. For it was the delta, New Orleans in particular, through which the commerce of the western states passed after traveling down the Mississippi. Thus it became a great object of American diplomacy to try to secure New Orleans. To the European powers it was an insignificant place. In 1800 there were barely seven thousand people living there, most living in wooden shacks. Americans, therefore, were hopeful.
Napoleon at first seemed uninterested in a deal, even though the Americans offered a princely sum: ten million dollars, an amount about equal to the entire annual budget of the United States.* But then one day, completely out of the blue, Talleyrand, the French foreign minister, who for months had given the American minister handling the negotiations little encouragement, asked, "What will you give for the whole?" Taken aback, the American said the United States didn't want the whole thing, just New Orleans, and for several days insisted that was all the United States wanted. Talleyrand practically had to force Louisiana on the diplomat. Eventually a deal was struck, and in 1803 for fifteen million dollars we got New Orleans and everything north to the Canadian border and west as far as... well, nobody could be sure how far west, but as far west as anybody had ever traveled. (The western border came to be set in the Rocky Mountains.)
It was one of the great bargains of all time and a better bargain than anybody had a right to expect. Napoleon had agreed to sell only because he had lost his foothold in Saint Domingue after the slave revolt led by Toussaint L'Ouverture; without Saint Domingue there was no hope for a French empire in the New World. But there was one difficulty, and it was a great one for Jefferson. The Constitution nowhere expressly authorized either Congress or the president to make purchases of foreign territory. And Jefferson had repeatedly vowed as president to read the Constitution literally. One of the chief reasons for his break with Hamilton in the 1790s had been Hamilton's insistence that the Constitution be interpreted loosely.
But the fact was the Louisiana Purchase was too good a bargain to be passed up. Jefferson knew it, and so did everyone in the country. In his message to Congress requesting the approval of the Louisiana treaty Jefferson did, to be sure, sidestep the constitutional questions. But he did not lie about them, did not make up some elaborate sophistical argument to befuddle the issue and rationalize his conduct. He simply did not need to. As he explained to Sen. John Breckenridge, he and the members of Congress must simply "throw themselves on the country for doing unauthorized, what we know they would have done for themselves had they been in a situation to do it."
The truth is that Jefferson acted as forthrightly as he did because he knew that he could. But it was a unique moment. Never again would a president be able to make a grab for vast territory in the knowledge that his actions would be approved wholeheartedly by the general public. In the future every acquisition would be fought over fiercely. And in each of those fights presidents would lie.* It was the price the country would have to pay for western expansion.
That Jefferson was willing to resort to subterfuge when he needed to to gain what he wanted in foreign affairs is abundantly clear. He even contemplated the use of bribery. The issue of bribery came up in connection with the effort to secure Spanish Florida, which for years had proved to be a source of terrible trouble to southern slaveholders. Indians and fugitive slaves used Florida as a haven from which to launch daring raids against the slave owners. Jefferson, a slave owner himself, was sympathetic and vowed to put a stop to the depredations. But when he went to Congress with a plan for action, he lied. He told Congress and the public that he expected to be able to resolve the situation through the use of military force. But his real intention was to offer the French a two-million-dollar bribe to put pressure on Spain to relinquish the area. (Spain was then virtually under French control.) Jefferson lied for the same reason other presidents were to lie when they made a grab for land: He had to. No president could admit that he wanted to pay a bribe to acquire territory. That was what Europeans did. We were supposed to behave better.
Jefferson could be like that—practical—when he had to be, and in office he had to be quite often; it was the only way to keep power and to get things done. A sign of just how far he had come from the idealistic days of his youth when he had dreamed of a life studying botany, law, and architecture, a life of the mind, was how he handled the selection of his second vice president when he ran for reelection in 1804. It might have been thought, after the disastrous experience he'd had the first time, when the Republicans picked Burr, that he might want to see to it that this time they got someone who had been better vetted, someone who at least would be a worthy holder of the office. The last time, after all, they had gotten themselves a traitor. They owed it to the country, if not to themselves, to find somebody this time who would do the office proud. But when the time came to choose, they did not make their choice on the basis of competence or rectitude. They made it on the same basis on which they had made their choice of Burr four years earlier: for its political effect. Jefferson went along.
That was how the party got stuck with George Clinton.
George Clinton had very little going for him in 1804. He was old, sixty-five at the time. He had no interest in national legislation. He did not even want to move to Washington. And he had a past. In 1792, when he had run for reelection as governor of New York, he had lost fair and square. But because he controlled the political machinery in the state he had managed to rig the results and get himself reelected. He did this by getting the election commissioner to disqualify the votes cast by constituents in three counties. The pretext for doing so was flimsy; in one case the ballots were tossed out because they had been delivered to the election commission by a person appointed by a county sheriff and not by the sheriff himself. But the real reason was political. Clinton's support was weak in the three counties; eliminating their votes was vital for victory.
There was only one thing in Clinton's favor, only one thing that made him an attractive candidate for vice president of the United States on the Republican ticket—and that was his place of residence. He was from New York. And New York was critical to the election. The only way the Republicans could win was by taking New York. They had taken Burr because he had been from New York. And now they took Clinton because he was.
After the party caucus settled on Clinton, John Quincy Adams commented that "a worse choice could hardly have been made." And he was right. In office Clinton proved to be a disaster. Not, to be sure, quite the disaster that Burr had been. But bad enough. Too old by then to be effective, he took hardly any interest in his post as president of the Senate, his only constitutionally mandated responsibility, often declining even to show up for meetings. For long stretches he remained at home in New York. Even when he did happen to stir himself and visit the Senate, he made a mess of things, at one point creating three committees to do the work of one. While in the presiding officer's chair he frequently forgot points of order and miscounted votes.
(Shockingly, in 1808 Clinton would be renominated by the Republicans, this time to serve with James Madison. Madison quickly regretted the selection. Clinton began openly criticizing the president and in 1811 used his power to break a tie vote on a bill to recharter the Bank of the United States, voting no, against the administration. He died soon after, the first vice president to die in office.)
America was still a simple place when Jefferson left office after eight years, but it wasn't as naive a place as it had been under Washington. Adams had played politics with national security. Jeffersonians had bargained for the presidency, and Jefferson himself had used the power of the government to go after his enemies. He had also tolerated corruption and compromised his principles.
Both Adams and Jefferson were strong men. But neither could stand up to the forces that were quickly transforming the small agrarian Republic into a thriving little empire. The Adams presidency had been twisted and turned by the force of European war and the birth of the two-party system. Jefferson, in turn, had had to make adjustments as the two-party system began to mature.
*The Twelfth Amendment provided for the necessary change. It was passed in 1804, in time for the next election.
*The Constitution prescribed that each state had one vote, and a majority of the states was necessary for victory.
*Jefferson, it should be noted, made one exception to his promise not to fire Federalists wholesale. He decided he had every right to remove Federalists appointed to office after the election results were made known in December-and did.
*Burr would remain a source of terrible trouble. While still vice president he would run against Hamilton's handpicked candidate for governor of New York and lose. Exasperated, he would challenge Hamilton to a duel and kill him. Insane with ambition Burr then would conspire with the head of the army, General James Wilkinson, to stage a coup against Jefferson, in hopes of establishing a new country to be carved out of the southwestern United States. At the last minute Wilkinson would expose the plot and tum Burr in to the authorities, leading to the trial of the former vice president of the United States on charges he had attempted to make war on the United States. Never before or since would there be a trial to match and Americans followed the proceedings avidly. But the result would disappoint. Because the prosecutors could only prove that Burr had raised an army and not that he had planned to use it to make war against the government, he was acquitted. Subsequently he would be indicted by several states but before he could be tried again he escaped to England.
†Significantly, in the handwritten copy of his inaugural address the words "federalists" and "republicans" were written in lowercase; that spoke volumes. All Americans were federalists. All Americans were republicans; the Constitution established a federal system based on republican principles. Jefferson expressly did not say and did not mean "We are all Federalists, we are all Republicans," though the official printed draft of the speech contained the capitalized spellings.
*The money was also to be used to cover the purchase of West Florida.
*Except in the case of Alaska, Seward's Folly.
# 3. The Revolution in the Suffrage
How three presidents in a row tried to gain power by unprecedented means: John Quincy Adams by personally bargaining for the presidency, Andrew Jackson by countenancing personal attacks on his opponents, and William Henry Harrison by reinventing himself
* * *
_During the presidencies of James Madison and James Monroe the country keeps changing. Madison and Monroe, in turn, have to change with it to remain in control._
_Madison, against his every wish, decides to lead a divided country into war against the British._
_During the war Federalists foolishly let themselves become identified with radical antiwar extremists in New England, some of whom demand that the region secede from the Union. As a result, the Federalists, already weak, become thoroughly discredited, leading to the collapse of the two-party system._
_When Monroe takes office after the war he discovers that without a party behind him he cannot control Congress. In response he begins to strike innumerable bargains with individual members in an ambitious attempt to curry their favor. Inevitably, he finds that to keep their support he must overlook their transgressions, turning a blind eye on corruption and malfeasance._
_But important as these changes are in making politics more complicated, they are as nothing compared to what follows: the revolutionary expansion of the suffrage._
_As the curtain rises on this next act of American history, John Quincy Adams and Andrew Jackson are fighting fiercely for the presidency. It is 1824._
* * *
He was, as even his own supporters had to admit, the least likely of candidates. Andrew Jackson, candidate for the presidency of the United States? It was almost laughable. This was, after all, a time of great statesmen: of John C. Calhoun, of John Quincy Adams, of Daniel Webster, of Henry Clay. These were the men to watch, these were the go-getters, the best of the best, the kind of men America had turned to in the past and would undoubtedly turn to in the future. For these were the men who ran things currently. Calhoun was Monroe's secretary of war. Adams was secretary of state. Webster was chairman of the House Judiciary Committee. Clay was Speaker of the House of Representatives. And these were just some of the men with the right kind of résumés who were ambitious to be president. There were others, equally capable, like William Crawford, who had served as secretary of the treasury and secretary of war.
Jackson, to be sure, had achieved national prominence. In the War of 1812 he had thrilled the country with his victory over the British at New Orleans (British casualties: 2,000; American: 71). In the Seminole War he had seized Florida, whipped both the Spanish and the Indians, and put to death two British subjects accused of inciting the Indians. But he wasn't any kind of a statesman. In fact, he was downright unstatesmanlike in almost every conceivable way. At the time of the Seminole War the Monroe cabinet had all but unanimously condemned his behavior, saying he had far exceeded his orders. He had been given authority to put an end to Indian depredations, not to take over Florida. Besides, he had hardly any knowledge of political philosophy or political science. Though he had served briefly in both the House and the Senate, he had distinguished himself in neither office. As a young congressman he had embarrassingly suggested that George Washington should possibly be impeached for authorizing John Jay to negotiate the Jay treaty without first obtaining the advice and consent of the Senate, a "[d]aring infringement of constitutional rights." Surely a man such as Jackson would not have a prayer of becoming president.
At any earlier time he would not have. Jackson as president in 1800, 1804, 1808, 1812, 1816 or even 1820 _was_ inconceivable. But 1824 was different. And it was different because politics was different. The old order had become discredited. Jackson, the outsider, the renegade, was the beneficiary.
In 1824 that was not, however, immediately apparent. His candidacy had come about because an old friend, John Overton, who owned a bank in Nashville, was hoping to use Jackson's popularity to undermine the governor of Tennessee, who was trying to establish a rival bank in the state. Overton never imagined that Jackson's candidacy would go anywhere. Jackson himself had been astonished by his political popularity. Although he was an exceedingly ambitious person—born poor, he had become an outstanding general and a rich businessman, rich enough that by the 1820s he owned much of what was to become downtown Memphis—he had never had an ambition to be president. In 1821, in response to suggestions that he run for president, he had said, "Do they think I am such a damn fool! No sir; I know what I am fit for. I can command a body of men in a rough way: but I am not fit to be president." Of course, he changed his mind.
Two developments accounted for the change in Jackson's political prospects, one inevitable, the other an accident of history. The accident was the Panic of 1819. The American economy had been growing stupendously, growing so fast and so powerfully that people had come to expect it would keep on growing. Nobody had yet heard of the business cycle. Then, suddenly, as a result of overspeculation, it stopped growing and started slipping into decline. It was a terrible time for people. Credit, which had been easier to get than ever before, became exceedingly tight. In Kentucky alone forty banks closed. The price of goods collapsed. Tobacco that had been going for twelve dollars a bale now went for four. The price of cotton fell from thirty-three cents a pound to eighteen. The price of rice fell by half. All regions of the country were affected, even Philadelphia, which had been more prosperous than in its entire history. The Philadelphia Society for the Promotion of National Industry was so worried by the "calamitous situation of our agriculture, manufactures, trade, and commerce," that it demanded that the president convene a special session of Congress to increase the tariff to protect American jobs.
The net effect of the panic was to shatter people's confidence. Suddenly, it seemed, the people who ran things, the bright people who had set up the system of paper money and banks, didn't really know what they were doing despite their fancy explanations and complicated machinations. Under the circumstances logic dictated that these people should be replaced in power by people who did know what they were doing, people like Jackson, who were successful and who were proven leaders, but who weren't part of the existing political establishment and didn't share the establishment's enthusiasm for paper money and banks.
The other development, an inevitable one, was people power. The founders hadn't wanted the people to have power. They had in fact designed the government to run with very little interference from the people. Of the three branches just one was to be subject to popular will, the legislature, and at that just one half of the legislature, the House of Representatives; senators were elected by the state legislatures. All that had been part of a deliberate plan to keep power in the hands of an elite that would rule in the name of the people but not be controlled by them. Washington, Adams, Jefferson—all had been part of that elite establishment. And then that elite establishment had begun—slowly, to be sure—to lose its grip on power.
The loss of the elite's control could be seen most obviously in the change in the election of presidential electors. In 1800 just five states permitted the people to select electors directly, the rest leaving the power in the hands of the state legislatures. By 1816 ten states did. By 1824 nineteen did (out of a total of twenty-four). By 1832 all but one state did.* While that change was taking place, another, of equal moment, was also having an effect. Restrictions on voting were being dropped. In 1800 in almost every state the suffrage had been restricted to white adult males with property. Now in almost every state all white adult males were allowed to vote, with or without property. Almost immediately the newly enfranchised began taking advantage of their newfound power. In 1824 three hundred thousand turned out to vote for president. In 1828 1.1 million. In 1832 1.2 million. In 1836 1.5 million. In 1840 2.4 million. It wasn't exactly a revolution. The change took place over twenty years. But it was a real change. In 1824 just a quarter of the eligible voters voted. By 1840 more than three-quarters did.
Jackson slowly began to recognize that—given the way things were changing—a man such as he might actually have a shot at the presidency. But one thing stood in his way: King Caucus. And it was a very very big thing. For King Caucus virtually monopolized the power to pick the presidential ticket. King Caucus was in actuality nothing more than a congressional caucus composed of members of the Democratic-Republican party, who met every four years to endorse a candidate for president. But because the parties at this time didn't hold national conventions as they do today to pick the presidential ticket, King Caucus functioned as a kind of party nominating convention. If King Caucus liked you, you got to be the party's presidential nominee. If it didn't like you, well—you wouldn't, and there was nothing you could do about it.
As long as King Caucus remained powerful, the reforms that were taking place, while beneficial, could never reach their full potential, could never truly transform the politics of the country. For with King Caucus the people were left out of the presidential selection process. While more and more people could vote, and they could vote directly for electors, they couldn't decide the name of the person on the ballot. In effect, then, the elite continued to pick the president, the same old elite that always had. If anything, and everybody could see this, the old elite really had more power than it had had years ago.
In the 1790s the elite had been divided into two parties, the Federalists and the Democratic-Republicans, which gave the voters a choice between two slates of candidates. But as the years had gone by the Federalists had become less and less of a factor in politics. In the War of 1812 they became completely marginalized. While most Americans were enthusiastically behind the war effort, Federalists by and large opposed the war and in doing so killed their party. In 1816 they didn't even bother putting up a presidential candidate. By 1820 the United States for all intents and purposes was a one-party nation. Monroe, up for reelection, ran unopposed and nearly won the unanimous vote of the electoral college. (Just one elector voted against him.) Under these circumstances King Caucus truly was king. Whoever the caucus picked became president. The only votes that really counted, therefore, were those cast by the little elite who got to vote in the caucus.
Andrew Jackson hated King Caucus, not just because it was undemocratic, not even primarily because it was undemocratic, but because it was an obstacle in his path. That made the fight personal. For Jackson fights were always personal. In the War of 1812 it wasn't the United States Army versus the British, it was Andrew Jackson versus the British. During the Seminole War it was Andrew Jackson versus the Indians. It was always Andrew Jackson versus somebody. (In a few years it would be Andrew Jackson versus the Bank of the United States. The bank "is trying to kill me," Jackson would say at the time, "but _I will kill it.")_
Now it was Andrew Jackson versus King Caucus. And that made the fight, for Jackson, a no-holds-barred, fight-to-the-finish kind of fight. And that was just the kind of fight Andrew Jackson loved. He was, more than anything else, a born fighter. There never was a time in his life when he wasn't fighting somebody. His body was a testament to that. On his forehead was a scar left by a British soldier with whom he got into a brawl during the Revolution, when he was just a boy. Next to his left lung was a bullet he took during a duel in 1806. In his left arm was a second bullet he took during a bar fight with the Benton brothers (Thomas Hart and Jesse) in 1813. Some of his friends thought that one reason Jackson was so feisty was because he was so full of holes; certainly his wounds put him in a great deal of pain. The bullet next to his lung continually caused him to cough up blood. The bullet in his arm continually abscessed; as president he finally would have to have it removed in an exceedingly painful operation conducted without anesthesia.
But he was ornery even before he'd been shot up. It was just part of his nature. Once when he and another white man on their way home from Natchez, Mississippi, were taking a group of twenty-six slaves into Indian territory, a posse of twenty armed men looking for runaways had stopped them at the border. _Got a passport?_ Jackson was asked. _No,_ said Jackson, _and I don't need one. My American face is my passport._ Given the situation, it would have behooved Jackson to act nice. After all, he was outnumbered, twenty to two. But that wasn't Jackson's way. When the posse leader demanded that Jackson leave his slaves with them, he exploded in rage. _Leave my slaves? Hell I will._ He then went back to his slaves, who were still on the Mississippi side, removed their chains, and armed them with guns. Then he marched them like an army across the border. Needless to say the posse let this oddest of little armies pass by unmolested. As soon as his little group was out of danger Jackson collected the weapons and put the slaves back in chains. _They_ weren't about to challenge Andy Jackson either.
Jackson knew that King Caucus would never select him to be president, and when it met, it didn't. Instead it picked William Crawford, Monroe's treasury secretary, who was considered part of the old-boy network. Crawford, however, was a terrible choice. Just recently he had suffered a stroke that left him half paralyzed, partially blind, and unable to work or even to speak. If ever there was a chance to defeat the caucus, it was now. The stroke was a secret outside Washington, but once the country learned of his condition the caucus's selection of Crawford would undoubtedly be seen as an astonishing act of arrogance, almost as if the members believed that they could foist anybody they wanted on the people.* And it gave Jackson a great issue. Naturally he made the most of it, pillorying Crawford and the caucus as antidemocratic.
The caucus's selection of Crawford was almost an act of political suicide. But it wasn't just Jackson who saw opportunity in Crawford's choice. So did his rivals Henry Clay and John Quincy Adams turning the election into a four-way contest as all joined the fray.
King Caucus _was_ in its death throes. Its selection of Crawford was evidence of that. Moreover, the meeting had been poorly attended. In the past nearly the entire contingent of Republicans in Congress had participated. This year just 66 out of 231 had. Proof that it had finally outlived its usefulness, that it was finally irrelevant, came with the results of the November election. Crawford came in third, behind Jackson and Adams. Clay came in fourth. The king—King Caucus—was dead.
Jackson, although he won more electoral and popular votes than anybody else, was not made president however. Because so many candidates had competed he failed to receive a majority of the electoral votes. That meant that the House of Representatives would once again have the responsibility of choosing the winner. And that, in turn, meant that the old elite would have the chance, again, to pick the president of the United States. Under the rules prescribed in the Twelfth Amendment, the House had to pick from the top three candidates: Jackson, Adams, and Crawford. Crawford's hopes quickly faded, leaving the contest between Jackson and Adams. On February 9, 1825, the House picked Adams.
It was later said, by those who took a narrow view of the matter, that Adams had been elected by pure chance. The election in the end had come down to the vote of New York, and the vote of New York had come down to a single representative, Stephen Van Rensselaer, a doddering and weak-willed old man who at different times had promised _both_ Adams and Jackson supporters that he would vote with them. When the time came for him actually to cast his vote, he'd closed his eyes and bowed his head in prayer. When he finally raised his head he happened to catch a glimpse of an Adams ballot lying on the floor beneath his seat. Believing this to be a sign from God, he promptly voted for Adams. "In this way," recalled Martin Van Buren, "it was that Mr. Adams was made President."
In truth the matter was far more complicated. Adams won because over the preceding weeks, through winks and nods, he'd struck a series of bargains with various key politicians to win them over to his side. He got Maryland's vote by vowing to keep old Federalists on the federal payroll. He helped win Missouri by pledging to keep its congressman's brother on the federal bench, even though the judge had killed a colleague in a duel. He gained Webster's support by hinting he'd consider appointing Webster minister to Great Britain in the future. And, most famously, at a secret meeting with Henry Clay, Adams left the impression that he'd appoint Clay secretary of state.
Of all the deals this was the most vital. Clay, as Speaker of the House, was hugely influential. With Clay's help victory was assured. Afterward it was said that Adams never actually made any specific promises to Clay, nor Clay to Adams. But they didn't need to do anything so crude as to say _you do this and I'll do that._ In the parlance of the day, they merely had to reach "an understanding." And this they did. Clay delivered the states of Kentucky and Ohio. Adams was elected president. A few weeks after, Adams appointed Clay secretary of state.
Adams always insisted that there was no bargain between him and Clay. Maybe he even believed it. He almost had to. Adams had a very strong sense of tradition, a very strong sense of family, and both family and tradition were against bargaining for the presidency. The son of John Adams didn't seek office, it sought him. "If my country wants my services," Adams had confided a few years earlier, "she must ask for them." When his friends pointed out that "the others are not so scrupulous" and that he had to make an effort to win the office because "you won't be on an equal footing with them," Adams had insisted firmly, "That's not my fault. My business is to serve the public to the best of my abilities in the station assigned to me, and not to intrigue for further advancement. I have never, by the most distant hint to anyone, expressed a wish for any public office, and I shall not begin to ask for that which of all others ought to be most freely and spontaneously bestowed."
Of course Adams very much did want to be president, even if he felt he couldn't admit it; having his father be president made it that much more important for _him_ to be president, too. Indeed, his parents groomed him for the White House, expected him to be president. But he sincerely detested the idea of bargaining for the office.
That a man with such beliefs in the end found he had no choice _but_ to bagain was a cruel turn of events. It was especially cruel because Adams prided himself on his superiority to Jackson, and Jackson—Jackson the Barbarian, as he was known in Adams's circles—had _not_ stooped to bargaining. It was as if the world had been turned upside down. The man who wouldn't have been expected to bargain, had; the man who would be expected to, hadn't. Looked at strictly in terms of the two individuals involved the situation _was_ totally mystifying. But if one took into account their different circumstances, it was entirely understandable.
The difference between them wasn't their age. Both happened by chance to have been born in exactly the same year, 1767, just a few months apart. It wasn't even that one was a born aristocrat and the other wasn't. Both by this time were on an even footing financially and even in a way socially. While Jackson certainly didn't rank as high in eastern circles as Adams, in western circles he was considered to be at the height of the social pyramid. Jackson was in fact a member of the country's elite. He lived on a huge plantation. He was friends with the best-bred people. Easterners when they met him for the first time were always surprised. From the stories that made the rounds they half expected to find a tomahawk-carrying savage, "but little advanced in civilization over the Indians with whom he made war," as one of them put it. Instead they encountered a true gentleman.
The real difference between them, when you dug deep enough, was that Adams was a man of the past, Jackson a man of the future. For Adams to win he had to fight the future—hold it off, in effect. For he lacked popular appeal. He read books, knew the classics, was well educated (went to Harvard), knew several foreign languages, was well traveled; in short, he was everything that the average person wasn't at a time when the average person was beginning to become politically powerful. Jackson, in contrast, _was_ the future. He did have popular appeal. Unlike Adams he seemed like a regular fellow, _one of us_ , not _one of them._ He wasn't well educated, hadn't traveled, hadn't even gone to college, didn't know how to spell—and didn't even care. He was quoted as saying, though no one knows if he actually did, that he never thought much of a man who could only think of one way to spell a word.
Jackson by no means had a lock on the presidency. But under the new circumstances, the new politics, the emergence of a nascent popular democracy, Adams clearly was more seriously disadvantaged. The only way he could become president was by cheating. And Adams very much wanted to be president, expected to be president. He was so desperate that at one point he even considered asking Jackson to become his vice president. His friends were aghast; Adams's response was that the "vice-presidency was a station in which the General could harm no one and in which he would need to quarrel with no one."
The election of 1824 was historically important not because of who was elected, but because of how he was elected. It was the old way. The same way Jefferson had been elected in 1800. A bunch of politicians sitting in Washington had connived and cut deals and finally settled on a winner. But it was the last time things would be done this way. The country was changing again, and as a result politics was changing. The control the politicians had exercised for decades over the presidential election process was slipping. From now on they would have to take the people into account—and that made things messier. The elite no longer would rule with quite the same degree of power as they had until then. The brightest lights of the political firmament couldn't sit in a room and among themselves decide what was right for the country as they had for so many years. They had had their day and their day was over.
It was, of course, an inevitable development the way things were going, with the demise of King Caucus and the reform of the election laws. But because the elite had overreached, because they had not just cut deals as they had in 1800 but had actually bluntly thwarted the people's will, depriving them of the candidate they obviously favored—Jackson, after all, had won more popular and electoral votes than any of the other candidates (Jackson: 153,544 votes; Adams: 108,740)—the new age of democracy was ushered in a lot more quickly than it otherwise would have been.
The power in the country was shifting. For a generation, since the Constitution was drafted, power had been moving centripetally, toward Washington, away from the states, away from the people, which was kind of curious (curious because the Constitution today is thought of as a democratic instrument and yet it initially took power away from the people). Now it would move centrifugally, away from Washington and back toward the states, back toward the people.
The day of the old elite was not over because they had performed badly. Actually they had governed admirably, providing the country with an exceptional succession of leaders: Washington, Adams, Jefferson, Madison, Monroe—these were all truly exceptional men. Even John Quincy Adams, the last of the men chosen the old way, was exceptional.
Under their leadership the country had largely flowered. The institutions of popular government had been firmly planted. And politics, by and large, had attracted a mostly honest class of officials and employees. While some were greedy, like the politicians who had swindled the Revolutionary veterans out of their government bonds, and some were dastardly, like the traitors who had taken part in the Burr conspiracy, most were dedicated public servants. In all the history of the country there never would be another time so largely scandal-free. Not until the War of 1812 was there a noticeable rise in government corruption, and that was because of the War of 1812. As was to happen during nearly all our conflicts, the mass acquisition of military supplies and expensive armaments provided opportunities for corruption that some found irresistible. In a typical case after the war, the government agents responsible for disbursing pensions to army veterans received payments in hard specie, then paid out the claims in devalued paper currency, and pocketed the difference.
Of all the old-style presidents, there was only one whose integrity was questionable: Monroe. Always hard-pressed financially, he accepted a five-thousand-dollar loan from fur trader John Jacob Astor and subsequently rewarded Astor with a change in government policy that proved to be of immense help to Astor's business. After Monroe left the White House he billed the government for tens of thousands of dollars in false claims stemming from his years of service as a diplomat. One claim involved the ten-thousand-dollar loss he'd suffered on the sale of his house in Paris. Although he had no right to expect the government to reimburse him for the loss, he insisted he was owed not just the ten thousand dollars but the interest he would have earned on the money had it been paid to him at the time of the sale. That amounted to another twenty thousand dollars. On the eve of his death in 1831 Congress, without looking deeply into the merits of the claims, paid him off.
That the old-style presidents had been honest mattered a great deal. Americans always demanded honesty in their presidents, and at the beginning valued honesty more than almost anything else. Being honest and being apolitical seemed the same thing. But honesty was not enough in the new climate in which politicians were operating. Talent and experience were not enough. Good policies were not enough. A government _for_ the people was not enough. Now the government had to be _of_ the people. And that meant the president had to be of the people.
Adams, of course, was not. He was an elitist. And that was crippling given the change in politics and the unseemly way he had come to power. And all of that doomed his presidency. Adams, aware that his legitimacy as a leader was in question, and perhaps feeling guilty over the dubious means he had employed to gain office, tried to govern like a Washington, to be president of all the people, to operate above the battle, to be truly nonpartisan. He appointed a nonpartisan cabinet and kept in office the people appointed by his predecessors, refusing to clean out his enemies even when his enemies used their position in the government to undermine his authority and power. But it was no use. The times had changed. The people no longer wanted a Washington, no longer wanted a man who stood apart from them, as Washington had. Washington was an anachronism now. Washington had gained power by doing what was right regardless of popular opinion. Adams, attempting the same, lost power.
Americans did not admit that the Washington model was irrelevant. But it was, and Adams was the proof. That he was the wrong man for the presidency in the 1820s was obvious from the moment he took office. In part the problem was that he happened to believe in big government and big projects—a national university, a naval academy, an astronomical observatory, national highways and canals—at a time when the people were growing suspicious of big government. Mostly, though, it was his very mood, his outlook. He held the public in contempt. Worse, he virtually admitted it. In his very first message to Congress, after outlining his controversial program of public improvements, he insisted that the government not be "palsied by the will of our constituents." The statement had shocked. Not even Hamilton had been so bold.
If he hadn't come to power with the Clay cloud over his head, it's possible he might have done a little better. But with the people against him, and he against the people, he could do nothing. Not even the old elitists in Congress stood by him. They had created him. He was their monster, in effect. But they wanted nothing to do with him. Clearly one wasn't going to improve one's political position by siding with John Quincy Adams.
His father, faced with a changing polity, had changed with it, in an attempt to remain influential, to remain in control. But the son did not. There would be no deal making, no accommodating, no politicking. The result was that the son became irrelevant. Ambitious as he had been to gain power, he was not ambitious enough, or ambitious in the right way, to use it to get anything done. In four years in office he managed to persuade Congress to pass just a single one of his visionary initiatives, a bill to fund a diplomatic mission to the Congress of Panama, a Latin American forum created to resolve regional conflicts. And not even this minor achievement could be said to have been in any way a success. Congress took so long in approving the measure that by the time the funding came through the conference was over.
History was on Jackson's side as it had not been on Adams's. But Jackson was not the kind of man to leave things to chance. There was a fight to be won. Adams and the politicians had stolen the election of 1824. Jackson would see to it that he won the next one, won it so big that no one would dare try to deprive him of victory. Whenever he was asked about the loss, his eyes would grow hot with anger and he would repeat what he told everybody, that the people had had the election stolen from them. But that wasn't what drove him. This was personal. _Andrew Jackson_ had had the election stolen from him. And that was intolerable.
The Jackson strategy was not to try new ways to win. He wouldn't give speeches, wouldn't campaign, wouldn't make promises. But whatever candidates had done in the past to win, he would do more of. Lots more. He wouldn't break tradition so much as stretch it. Instead of leaving presidential politicking to the final year before the election, as candidates had been accustomed to do, Jackson would politick for all four years. He would write letters. He would meet with constituents. He would meet with politicians. Nobody would doubt that Andrew Jackson was running for president again. From the moment of his loss until the day he won he would spend virtually all his waking hours working to be elected president. Running would be, for him, as it had been for no other person before him, a full-time job.
When it was suggested that it might be worthwhile to have a newspaper to control, as Jefferson had had, Jackson agreed, but went a step further. He personally put up the money needed to buy the paper: three thousand dollars. When Martin Van Buren, by now a fervid Jackson loyalist, began pressuring Jackson to create a political party as Jefferson had, Jackson agreed and then went on to do what Jefferson never did. He actually began seeing to it that his supporters built Jackson political machines across the country. Of all the changes, the rebirth of the two-party system was easily the most dramatic and the most important of his contributions. In 1824 there had been just a single party in the country, the old Republican Party. All four candidates for president—Adams, Crawford, Clay, and Jackson—had run as Republicans. In 1828, directly as a result of Jackson's efforts, there would be two parties: the National Republicans and the Democrats.
The outcome of the election of 1828 was never seriously in doubt. Of course Jackson would win. And aside from his winning, it is seldom remembered. But one thing happened during the campaign that was significant. It was the first election in which a candidate's wife became an issue. Until then elections had mostly been about real issues, about whether the defense budget should be increased, about the threat of war, about hard, substantive things—things that mattered. Even the smear campaigns against John Adams and Thomas Jefferson had mostly been about real things. It mattered if Adams really was a monocrat who had sought to make himself king. It mattered if Jefferson really was a Francophile. Just once had sex been dragged into presidential politics: Jefferson had been accused of having had an affair with Sally Hemings. And on that one occasion sex had remained an issue of minor concern to the electorate. In the election of 1828 sex became a chief issue. Not _the_ issue, by any means—more newspaper ink was spilled over the charge that Clay and Adams had struck a corrupt bargain than over sex—but sex loomed large.
Of Adams it was said that he had had premarital relations with his wife, that she was illegitimate, and that when he had served as minister to Russia he had pimped for Czar Alexander I. Of Jackson, that his mother had been a whore, that he was the son of a lascivious mulatto named Jack (hence "Jack's son"), that he had seduced his wife, Rachel, wrecking her marriage to another man, and then lived with her in sin.
Rachel had in fact been married when she and Jackson met. But she and her husband were no longer living together, he had filed for divorce, and both she and Jackson believed that the divorce had gone through. It had not, but they didn't realize it. When, two years later, they found out that the divorce hadn't actually been final when they married, they promptly got married again.
Given that the candidates were Adams and Jackson, two of the most straitlaced gentlemen to sit in the White House, it was an astonishing development, an awful sign, a portent of things to come. And it was inevitable. Once the people became part of the political equation, the politicians had to figure out ways to reach them, ways to get their adrenaline pumping, to motivate them, and to get them to the polls. The corrupt bargain was an important issue, but people hanging over the backyard fence couldn't gossip about it as they could about sex. Sex was special—a real motivator. Besides, sex was easy to understand.
Adams never personally approved of the attacks on Jackson, but his supporters were responsible for starting the whole sex smear campaign and Adams never tried to stop it. He never even chided those of his friends who carried on the attacks, though they carried them on in the _Daily National Journal_ , a paper he controlled through its editor, a paper that lived off the big federal printing contracts he made sure it received, a paper everybody in Washington regarded as _his_ paper. He wasn't the one making the attacks. But because they were appearing in the _Daily National Journal_ , it was as if he were. And that, too, was an astonishing development.
For nearly four years John Quincy Adams had taken the high road, had tried to be like George Washington. Now, suddenly, faced again with an election, he reverted to the old Adams, the Adams of 1824 and 1825, the Adams who did everything to win, even at the cost of principle. In fact, if anything, Adams's behavior was even more egregious this time. Cutting a deal was one thing; it was what politicians at all times have always done. Attacking an opponent because of his sex life was another; that had never been done, not on the scale it was being done now, at least. It was almost as if Adams was more desperate to win this time around than the last. And in a sense, he was. The last time he had merely wanted to be elected president. This time he wanted to get back his honor. And the only way he could do that was by winning more popular votes than Jackson. That would in a way wash away the smell from the last election. It would say to the world, in effect, that it had not just been the politicians who thought Adams should be president, but the people. It would legitimize the Adams presidency.
Jackson was appalled and angered by the attacks. He opposed this kind of politics. But Jackson was also tough, tremendously tough, and he believed in the justice of the Old Testament, an eye for an eye. So when Adams's supporters persisted in smearing him, he allowed as how his supporters had a right to smear Adams. "Should the administration continue their systematic course of slander," he wrote Duff Green, the editor of _his_ newspaper, "it will be well now and then to throw a fire brand into their camp by the statement of a few facts." "Female character," he went on, "should never be introduced or touched by my friends, unless a continuation of attacks should be made against Mrs. J." Jackson felt bad about the attacks on his wife because no husband wants to see his wife's name dragged through the mud. But he felt especially bad about the attacks on Rachel because she didn't like politics, didn't want him running for president, and didn't really want him to win.
Every time he left the Hermitage, their plantation home in Nashville, to go to Washington on political business, there'd be a scene, Rachel hysterical. Jackson tried his best to protect her from the harsh side of election politics, keeping her in in the dark about the attacks being made against her, and for the most part was successful. Which was good because Rachel had a weak heart and collapsed under pressure. If she ever found out what had been said about her—well, Jackson tried not to think about it. Then in December, just after he won the election, she did find out about it. Tired after a walk around Nashville while doing some shopping, she happened to stop for a rest at the office of one of Jackson's friends. There, by accident, she came across a pamphlet containing the worst of the vicious smears. Rachel, always weak, and especially weak at the moment because of the recent death of her adopted Indian son, suffered a complete breakdown, right there in the office. A few weeks later she died.
Jackson was inconsolable. At her funeral he thundered, "I can and do forgive all my enemies. But those vile wretches who have slandered her must look to God for mercy." The simple truth was that Jackson himself was to blame, in part, for her death. If he hadn't run she'd be alive. But the simple truth was also misleading. She really died not because Jackson ran, but because of what happened to candidates who ran for president in the new environment created by people power. Now that the people were directly involved in the political process, the candidate's family was open to political abuse. And this was new.
In the past a candidate's family had been almost irrelevant. Of all the president's wives thus far, only one had achieved any political visibility, Dolley Madison, and that was simply because she was such a powerful presence (and her husband was such a weak one). But now, suddenly, a president's family was to be highly visible. And that greatly complicated matters, for it meant that now when a man decided he wanted to be president, he had to take into account the toll a race would take on his family.
Of course, politics had always taken its toll on families. The pressure, the long absences, the long hours, all that had always been a part of politics and all that had been tough on the families involved. But now the ordeal they would have to go through would be far, far worse. This was a fundamental change. It meant that the moment a man decided to run for president he was putting his family at risk. A man who ran now was deciding, in effect, to put his ambition ahead of his family's welfare, not because he was any more ambitious than candidates in the past or less sensitive, but simply because politics had changed. It was a sad development and, in Jackson's case, an ironic one. The very thing that was responsible for his accession to the White House—people power—was also, indirectly, the thing that caused him to suffer his greatest loss, the death of his dearly beloved wife, Rachel.
On March 4, 1829, Jackson was sworn into office as the seventh president of the United States. That night thousands of people—thousands of average people, people with dirty fingers and dirty boots—crowded inside the White House, the first time such people had been permitted inside the mansion. So many came that Jackson, tiring, had to escape through a window, the party continuing without him until four in the morning.
The next day the place would look as if it had been struck by a tornado—the furniture torn, the plates broken, the rugs soiled—everything in tumult.
In a way it _had_ been struck by a tornado—the Jackson tornado.
A Jackson presidency was guaranteed to be different from any other because Jackson was different. He would dare to do things other presidents wouldn't have dreamed of doing. When he discovered that the wives of some members of the cabinet were refusing to socialize with the wife of the secretary of war, John Eaton, a fellow Tennessean and his very good friend, because Eaton's wife, Peggy, had a checkered past—it was rumored that she'd slept with the visitors to the inn where she worked before marrying Eaton—he called a cabinet meeting to hear the charges against her. Satisfied that she had been wrongly accused—as had Rachel—he demanded that the cabinet wives give Mrs. Eaton the respect they gave one another. When they continued to snub her he grew irate and finally decided to demand the resignations of the entire cabinet so he could make a fresh start.
Jackson was to go through cabinets the way other presidents go through suits of clothes. In his eight years in office he went through four secretaries of state, five secretaries of the treasury, three secretaries of war and three of the navy, two postmasters general, and three attorneys general. He even drove his vice president, John C. Calhoun, to resign.
Calhoun and Jackson were almost destined to have a falling-out, in part because they were such strong personalities, in part because Calhoun was so rabidly ambitious. What triggered the resignation was Calhoun's insistence on blackballing Peggy Eaton. But what may have been an additional factor was Jackson's discovery that in 1818 Calhoun, then secretary of war, had opined in secret discussions held by the cabinet that Jackson had exceeded his authority in the Seminole War. That helped finish Calhoun in Jackson's eyes. Once Calhoun realized that he was finished, realized that Jackson would never help him achieve his goal of becoming president, he turned against Jackson and threw himself into the arms of the nullifiers of South Carolina, whom the president was battling over the Tariff of 1828, the so-called Tariff of Abominations.
The big battle of the administration wasn't over Peggy Eaton or John C. Calhoun, however, but over the Bank of the United States. This was a quintessentially Jackson controversy. Most of his own cabinet was against his decision to declare war on the bank. But Jackson decided a war was what he wanted; the bank symbolized corrupt power, loans going to the institution's political friends, such as Webster, who weren't required to pay them back. So he went to war and he won—just up and broke the bank. Despite all its power. Despite its deep roots in the American economy. What Jackson wanted Jackson got.
It was people power that made his presidency possible and people power that saw him through the succession of crises he created. With the people behind him, a president could do almost anything, even almost control history. Jackson was so confident he had the people behind him that he felt he could even dare to name his own successor and install him in office. His idea was to put Van Buren in as his second vice president and then, after the election, resign and let Van Buren become president. It was a crazy idea, and Van Buren had the sense to scotch it. But it showed just how supremely confident Jackson was that the people would back him up. Because Jackson had the people behind him, he rarely felt desperate even in the midst of crisis. Being confident, he almost never felt it necessary to stoop to unprincipled means to achieve his objectives.
But he wasn't perfect. One of his chief goals was to build up the Democratic Party, and the only way he could do that was by giving his supporters jobs in the government. That required taking jobs away from current officeholders—experienced officeholders, whose only crime was that they weren't Jacksonians—and giving them to inexperienced workers, many of whom were nothing more than party hacks. Jackson gave the practice a fancy name. "Rotation in office," he called it. Which sounded good. The way he explained it, it _was_ good. Workers would be rotated in and out of office to keep the government in touch with the people, to close the gap between the governed and the governing. Very democratic! But the purpose was plainly political: to use the government to help build up the party—his party. Jackson couldn't see anything wrong with that. And since the extent of his rotations was relatively small—only twenty percent of federal workers were replaced during his two terms—there really wasn't much wrong with it. And anyway, he hadn't invented the spoils system. It was as old as the Republic. But over time, as the political parties grew and the government grew, the spoils system would become totally corrupt. The Jackson machine wasn't corrupt, it was just a machine. The corruption of machine politics, the padding of payrolls with the totally incompetent, the forced collection of kickbacks from government workers to the party, all that would come later.
Jackson in fact had been determined to run a government free of corruption. One of his claims against Adams was that the government had become bloated and venal and needed to be cleaned out. His claim was an exaggeration. When he finally took over after Adams, his minions, expecting to find wide evidence of corruption, scoured the bureaucracy for proof but came up with little. The irony was that it would be a Jackson appointee, Samuel Swartwout, collector of the Port of New York, who was to prove to be truly venal on a grand scale, becoming the first person in American history to swindle the government out of a million dollars. But he was the exception. The Jackson government on the whole was run honestly, though Jackson ignored warnings about Swartwout.
He had no choice really but to be a spoilsman. If he was going to succeed in the age of people power, he had to have a party. It was the party that gave him his power, the party that let him accomplish all that he wished to in the name of the people. It was through the party that he communicated with the people and through the party that they communicated with him. And to keep the party content he had to be able to give party workers jobs. Putting party workers on the government payroll wasn't, therefore, a luxury, an indulgence. It was a necessity—the only way to keep this new democratic instrument vital and percolating—the only way to keep control.
Because Jackson had been so popular, more hugely popular than any other figure of his generation, so popular he had been able to mold events to his liking, and so powerful a presence that he seemed larger than life, a force of nature almost, the tremendous effect of people power on politics—its tremendous negative effect—had been largely overlooked while he was in office. What people noticed more than anything was Andrew Jackson. Jackson the dragon slayer. Jackson the war hero. And most of all, Jackson the man who caused a titanic shift in power. Before Jackson the great power of the federal government resided in Congress. Now it resided in the presidency. That was a remarkable development. It turned the Constitution on its head—at least the Constitution as the founders had understood it.
The Congress still was powerful. With men in it like Thomas Hart Benton, Henry Clay, and Daniel Webster, it could hardly be otherwise. But Congress no longer spoke for the people. Congress represented the special interests. Webster represented the Bank of the United States, which kept him on retainer. Clay represented the bank and the emerging class of go-getter businessmen, people who wanted to build roads and canals. Benton represented the West. Only the president spoke for the people as a whole. And that made the presidency superpowerful. For the people were the source of power now, the mother lode of power. And Jackson owned the mine, lock, stock, and barrel. Congress could pass legislation, but if he didn't like it, he'd unpass it, through the use of the veto. Nearly all the presidents had employed the veto, but they had done so rarely and only on the grounds that the legislation was, in their eyes, unconstitutional. Jackson vetoed legislation simply because he didn't like it. And he vetoed and vetoed and vetoed again, more times than all previous presidents combined.
"King Andrew," his enemies called him. The president who felt he could do as he pleased. A cartoon captured the essence of the image. It showed Jackson standing by a throne, a royal scepter in one hand, a copy of his veto message in the other. The caption read: "Born to Command."
If Jackson's presence overwhelmed, obscuring the developments that were taking place in the culture because of people power, it would be telling who was to come after Jackson. The choice would say much about what politics had become. It would have to be a party man, of course, either a Democrat like Jackson or a Whig like Henry Clay.* But who?
The Whigs were so unpopular that they couldn't choose. Not one of their candidates, not even Henry Clay, was deemed attractive enough to win in a head-to-head contest with a Democrat riding on Jackson's coattails. So the Whigs put up four candidates, each one strong in a particular region of the country. The inability to settle on a single choice was not in itself indicative of the changing state of politics in the country. But the strategy behind the selection of the four candidates was. The hope was that by putting up four candidates the Whigs could throw the election into the House of Representatives, and then possibly wheel and deal themselves into the White House.
This was as sure a sign as any that the new politics would inspire manipulation and deceit. In the past a candidate would have been too embarrassed to try such a stunt. It would reflect badly on his reputation. But candidates didn't represent just themselves anymore. They represented parties. And parties didn't worry about their reputations too much. Parties were organizations, and what organizations cared about was winning. Now that politics was to be dominated by parties it would become much more ruthless. For much more was at stake. If a candidate lost it was more now than just he and his family who suffered. It was the whole organization behind him. It was all the people who worked hard to bring his election about. All the people who hoped to gain by his victory. The Whig strategy was the first real indication of this.
The Democrats' choice was Martin Van Buren. The Little Magician, the Sly Fox of Kinderhook.* The most political of all the extremely political leaders then operating in American politics. _Question_ : Why does Martin Van Buren's bread always land butter-side up when it falls to the ground? _Answer_ : Because Van Buren always butters both sides at once.
Nobody could point to a single incident that was especially damning, one that put him in a special category. It was that there was an accumulation of incidents. Like the time he had arranged for Federalist Henry Fellows to be kicked out of the New York General Assembly because some of the ballots in Fellows's close election had been marked "Hen. Fellows," not "Henry Fellows." (With Fellows out, Van Buren's forces were able to take control, giving them the power to name the next speaker.) Or like the time he switched from firm opposition to the Erie Canal to firm support after Gov. De Witt Clinton, the builder of the canal, won reelection in a landslide. Or when he agreed to nominate Clinton to yet another term as governor and then, at the end of his address, suddenly came out in favor of somebody else whom Van Buren believed would be more popular. And those were just the stories that trailed him from his days as a state politician.
After he became a national figure there were more stories. More decisions that seemed to be driven by pure politics and pure ambition: his decision to accept Jackson's offer to become secretary of state just weeks after he had taken office as the governor of New York. His offer to resign from the cabinet to become the minister to Great Britain just as the controversies over the bank and the tariff were breaking, saving him from having to commit himself on the issues. It had been considered a testament to his political skills that he and Jackson had even become friends because in the 1824 election Van Buren had been the leader of the Crawford forces, the very forces that were thwarting Jackson's elevation to the presidency. But his switch to Jackson hadn't been a surprise. Jackson was obviously going to be president so of course Van Buren switched.
Naturally the Democrats would have preferred to have had another Jackson at the helm. But every generation there is only one Jackson. So they had to turn instead to a politician, a politician's politician, somebody who, although he wasn't a hero and wasn't personally popular, could by wheeling and dealing gain control of the process. Once party politics had become predominant Van Buren's rise was almost inevitable. He wasn't just good at party politics. He'd invented it. It was Van Buren who single-handedly had revived party politics in New York after the Era of Good Feelings and then, afterward, helped nurture the development of a two-party system throughout the country. More to the point, Van Buren wasn't just on good terms with the party bosses. He himself _was_ a party boss.
Keeping control of the system had been easy for Jackson. For Van Buren it would be hard. Jackson was so popular he rarely had to make fundamental compromises; in fact about the only compromise he made was to invigorate and justify the spoils system. He could do just about as he pleased, as the opposition Whigs charged. Van Buren would have to make compromise after compromise.
His most serious compromise of all was his selection of a vice president. It was a very, very important choice. Who was picked could very well determine the outcome of the election, could decide whether Jackson's victory had been a fluke of personality or the triumph of a party. Jackson made it clear that he wanted Richard Johnson of Kentucky, a longtime Jackson supporter, who also had the advantage that he was not William C. Rives. Rives was the choice of the Virginia wing of the party and for that reason alone was unacceptable to Jackson, who long ago had decided to make sure that the party remained anchored to the West. It was a vital concern to Jackson. Virginia to him represented the old elite. Until he came along the country had been dominated by the politicians in Virginia and New York, and one of his aims was to see to it that they did not resume their domination after he left the scene. Van Buren had spent a lifetime actually trying to cement the relationship between Virginia and New York. Even had a name for it: the Richmond-Albany axis. But Van Buren couldn't defy Jackson. He owed his nomination to Jackson. So he caved.
Picking Johnson was not, as it happened, a bad political move. It made strategic political sense. He was a popular figure, popular in the West, where he was known as a winning Indian fighter (he claimed to have killed Tecumseh), popular in the Northeast, where he had a good reputation among workingmen grateful for his twenty-year campaign to end the imprisonment of debtors. But while choosing Johnson may have been good politics, it was also an indubitably appalling choice, worse even than the selections made in the past for vice president, worse than the selection of Aaron Burr, worse than George Clinton. For in both of those cases the party hadn't known in advance just how bad these men actually were. About Richard Johnson they knew.
It wasn't just that people doubted that he actually had killed Tecumseh. Westerners were known for their tall tales. Nor that he ran a tavern. It was that there was always about Johnson an unsavory smell. As a politician he was utterly dishonest. His whole family seemed dishonest. During the Monroe administration, his brother had been given a contract to explore the Yellowstone. He had gotten a hundred thousand dollars for it. A gigantic sum. But after delaying more than a year, when he finally got under way, he cried that he needed more money. Secretary of War Calhoun hadn't wanted to give him any more. A hundred thousand dollars had seemed quite enough. But Monroe overruled him, personally authorizing another eighty-five thousand. Monroe was never any good with money, his own or the government's, and the money he spent on the Yellowstone expedition was a huge waste. The expedition never got around to doing much exploring and never even made it to the headwaters of the Yellowstone, its primary goal. But Monroe had kept the spigot open because Johnson happened to be the chairman of the House Military Affairs Committee. It should have made for a big juicy scandal. But because Johnson was powerful people left him alone. The only one who might have blown the whistle on him was Jackson, who in the 1820s campaigned against government corruption, but because Johnson had been an early Jackson supporter he managed to escape criticism.
The real complaint about Johnson, anyway, wasn't political, it was personal. His love life was a shambles, a series of affairs with black mistresses who bore him several illegitimate children. That, given the times, was dismaying enough, but Johnson also had earned a notorious reputation for mistreating his mistresses. When one ran away with an Indian, Johnson, furious, had had her captured and sold into slavery.
But the decision to choose Johnson wasn't about morality. It was about pleasing Jackson and about winning. The irony is that Johnson, after all, did not really help the ticket and may have even hurt it a bit. Virginians, distraught over Johnson's personal life and angry that he had been selected over Rives, refused to give Johnson their support, depriving him of an electoral majority. That, under the Constitution, threw the election of the vice president into the Senate, the only time in our history that that was to happen. The Senate duly approved Johnson by a narrow vote. In office he proved to be as appalling as the Democrats had had every right to expect. He continued seeing his mistresses and when he grew bored with public life he retreated to his tavern. There on summer nights, dressed in country clothes, the vice president of the United States could be found serving up food and ale alongside his employees.
Van Buren came into office under terrible circumstances. Not only was he not Andrew Jackson, which people unfairly held against him. The economy was against him, too. Within weeks of his inauguration, the country succumbed to a panic that lasted his entire term. Van Buren was stymied, desperate, and utterly incapable of fixing things.
The sad fact was nobody knew how to fix things. When the economy collapsed the prevailing wisdom was that the government could and should do nothing. And not for nearly a hundred years would people think differently. Worse, the politicians hadn't yet even figured out how to instill hope in the people in the midst of trouble. As people lost hope, Van Buren did, too; without the people he'd lose the next election.
The fact is he'd barely achieved the White House the last time, when the economy was going well. Out of nearly a million and a half votes he'd won by just twenty-five thousand. And he'd only won by getting people to think that a vote for him was a vote for Jackson. How many times could the Little Magician pull off that trick? Jackson in effect had been run for president four times: in 1824, 1828, 1832, and 1836. Could they run him yet again? Run him symbolically a _fifth_ time? It was a politician's trick to get people to think they were voting for one man when another was on the ballot. A trick that would be tried over and over again in American politics, now that the people had the vote. For the people could be swayed by emotion. Van Buren, the trickster's trickster, was anxious to try it again, for he was very, very desperate.
Out of his desperation he came up with a wild plan. As Jackson was the party's chief drawing card, he would have Jackson return to New Orleans in 1840, on the eve of the presidential election, to celebrate the twenty-fifth anniversary of the Battle of New Orleans, the great battle of the century, the victory that made Jackson a national hero. That would help revive the loyalty of Jacksonians and perhaps revive Van Buren's sagging fortunes as well. By getting Jackson back into the news people would be thinking about him when they voted.
Jackson was old now and deathly sick, suffering from hemorrhages and daily diarrhea. Just getting to New Orleans would be an ordeal. He'd have to travel over rough roads for four days, then take a steamer down the Mississippi through dangerous ice-clogged waters in chilly winter weather. Then he'd have to put himself through endless days of ceremonial events, all of which could prove fatally taxing. And then, at the end, he'd have to retrace his trip back home. It would be a terrible struggle. Van Buren was asking Jackson to put his life at risk for the sake of the election. Old Hickory, however, promptly agreed. He was, he wrote Van Buren, "determined to go through or fail in the struggle."
Jackson went and survived. But Van Buren wasn't the only one willing to play tricks on the public in an attempt to win the election. So were the Whigs. And they had a better trick to play. Instead of running a standin for a hero as the Democrats were doing, they would run a hero himself: William Henry Harrison. The other great hero of the War of 1812, the man who won the Battle of the Thames in 1813, the man who defeated the British in the Northwest and in defeating them defeated the Indians there as well, the man who made the Northwest safe for the white man.* The Whigs did not settle on Harrison because they thought he would make a great president. If anything they expected he would be a rather mediocre one. So mediocre that the plan was to let him be president in name only. The people who really would be in charge would be the people who deserved to be president: Clay and Webster. Clay would run things from the Senate, Webster from the cabinet. Harrison wasn't even to have the final say on issues of importance; the cabinet would decide, by majority vote. Clay, who had already made two runs for the White House, in 1824 and 1832, had wanted to make another, but the party bosses had turned him down. Clay was a loser, they felt. And they were tired of losing.
When in December 1839, at the Whigs' first national convention, the bosses settled on Harrison, no one was surprised. Harrison would be the Whigs' answer to Old Hickory. Hell, he even had a nickname like Old Hickory: Tippecanoe, which he had earned in 1811 in a grisly battle with the Shawnee near Tippecanoe Creek (in present-day Indiana).
Unlike Jackson, Harrison did not seem to hold any firm views about government. Nobody at the convention knew what he believed. Harrison himself didn't seem to know what Harrison believed. But nobody cared. He wasn't chosen because of his views. He was chosen because he could win. In fact, the convention managers were happy nobody knew where he stood on the issues. It would make him a better candidate. A candidate with strong views alienated people, as Clay had. The campaign wouldn't be about issues at all. It would be about a personality, a celebrity. The party wouldn't even publish a platform. A platform could alienate people, even if it were written in the most general way.
John Tyler, the candidate the Whigs settled on for vice president, did hold strong views. He was a firm believer in states' rights, which happened to be what most Democrats believed in. Whigs, by and large, believed in an activist, centralized federal government: high tariffs, subsidies to business, the Bank of the United States. But because Tyler would be running for vice president his views wouldn't matter. Nobody would pay any attention to them. Anyway, he wasn't put on the ticket because of his views but because he was expected to help the party in the South (and because, curiously enough, he had been a Clay supporter).
It was that kind of convention. Cynical. In which nothing counted but winning. And it would be that kind of campaign.
The year 1840 was the year politics in America would change for good. The year people power, in all its glory and all its insidiousness, would triumph. Van Buren, sensing defeat but unable to think creatively, unable to respond anew, conducted himself during the election the way Jackson, and Jackson's predecessors, had. He stayed away from the limelight, refused to campaign, and ran on the issues, spending his days and nights writing long letters in which he outlined his positions on all the important topics of the day, as if nothing had changed in American politics. Van Buren, as much as any other single individual, had helped change politics, but now, in 1840, when yet more change was needed, he seemed incapable of further change. Harrison and the Whigs, in contrast, seemed to be eager to change, eager to break tradition, eager to break old taboos.
One of the things they did was, simply, to make campaigns fun. The Democrats had experimented a little with this, beginning the practice of campaign parades. The Whigs took things to the next level. They made up slogans (Tippecanoe and Tyler, too!). They made up songs and jingles ("Van, Van is a used up man"). And on a whim that would do Madison Avenue proud, they got up a big old ball of paper and rolled it from Kentucky to Baltimore, all the while chanting, "What has caused this great commotion, motion/Our Country through?/It is the ball a rolling on,/For Tippecanoe and Tyler, too." What the Whigs were doing wasn't uplifting, but it was exciting. And people responded. It was theater, of course, but politics _is_ theater. And it was perfectly in tune with the theme the Whigs came up with, the need for change. And this was a theme that really resonated with people. The Democrats after all had been in power for twelve long years. People were tired of them. Tired (a little) of Jackson, even. Tired (a lot) of bad times. Ready to try something new.
It was a very people-oriented campaign. Very democratic. There was just one problem. Harrison wasn't a man of the people as Jackson was. Unlike Jackson, who could honestly claim to have been born poor, Harrison was a rich fellow who came from rich folk. His great-great-great-grandfather had been one of the largest landowners in Virginia. His great-great-grandfather had served in the Virginia House of Burgesses. His great-grandfather had been speaker of the House of Burgesses. His grandfather had been a colonel in the colonial militia. His father had been a signer of the Declaration of Independence, speaker of the Virginia House of Delegates, and the governor of Virginia. In short he was, by anybody's definition, one of the elite. He even married rich. His wife's father had been chief justice of the New Jersey Supreme Court.
The Whigs were very much in danger of being severely hampered by their man's aristocratic past when a Van Buren newspaper came to their rescue shortly after Harrison's nomination. Anxious to prove that he was an empty shell of a man, the paper played up a damning quote from one of Clay's disappointed supporters, who supposedly had said that Harrison would no doubt be delighted to give up the presidency for a two-thousand-dollar pension and a log cabin on the banks of the Ohio. The Democrats thought it was a great jab and made the most of it. But their little plan backfired. The Whigs loved the image of their guy sitting on the front porch of a log cabin, having a drink out of a barrel. It was perfect. Just exactly the kind of image the people would find appealing. Overnight the log cabin became the symbol of the Whig Party and the campaign. Whenever the Whigs held a rally they'd drag out a little log cabin as a reminder of their party's humble candidate. Log cabin mania swept the country. Things got so out of hand that at one point Daniel Webster felt compelled to apologize for not having been born in a log cabin (though, he immediately added, his siblings had been).
Harrison himself hadn't been born in a log cabin either. He'd been born in a two-story palatial brick mansion on the banks of the James River. Currently he lived in a sixteen-room mansion in Ohio. The only log cabin he ever had anything to do with was the little log cabin his Ohio mansion had been built around years before. But truth didn't count for anything in a campaign anymore. It was all just theater. Image. Slogans. Whatever the public would buy. Politics would never be the same.
The Democrats struck back hard with the only weapon they had: an accusation with just enough truth in it to hurt, that Harrison was old. Too old. A washup. Feeble. The fact was Harrison _was_ old. Sixty-seven, the oldest man who had ever run for president, and a full decade older than Van Buren. And he was, by 1840, something of a has-been, his glory days long ago behind him. It had been nearly thirty years, after all, since he had triumphed at the Battle of the Thames. Ancient history for most Americans, many of whom weren't even alive then. At the time he'd been a big shot, so big that his superior, an ambitious social climber who hoped to become president, had sabotaged Harrison's career, fearful that Harrison would eclipse him. Harrison, in response, had resigned from the service. Afterward he'd served in a variety of posts, as the governor of the territory of Indiana, as a congresman, senator, and diplomat.
In 1836 he had been selected by the Whigs as one of their four regional candidates for president. But nothing he'd done after the Thames had won him much attention; in Congress he'd worked on the unexciting issue of army pensions. And most recently he had served as clerk of the court of common pleas in Hamilton County, Ohio, where he now lived. Not exactly an impressive landing from which to jump into the presidential waters.
Nothing could be done about his unimpressive record. He was what he was. But there _was_ a way he could disprove the charge that he was too old to be president, that he was feeble. He could go out among the people and give speeches, make appearances, let himself be seen and heard. Harrison wasn't comfortable with the idea of personal campaigning. It rubbed against the bedrock principle laid down by George Washington, that the office should seek the man, not the man the office, a principle still quite full of life. Even Jackson had been against personal campaigning. Told that he could win the presidency in 1828 if he made a tour of the New England states Jackson had sworn he never would. "If I was to travel to Boston where I have been invited that would insure my election—But I would feel degraded the balance of my life." Harrison turned out to be a little less stubborn than Jackson. In June he hit the road for a three-week tour. In September he campaigned for the whole month. Only one candidate for president had ever done anything like it before: Harrison in 1836.
Of course he wasn't supposed to say anything. That would undermine one of the campaign's key strategies. "Let him... say nothing—promise nothing," Nicholas Biddle, the former head of the Bank of the United States, had advised. "Let the use of pen and ink be wholly forbidden as if he were a mad poet in Bedlam." So Harrison went out and campaigned, hours on end, day after day, and said—virtually nothing. He even tried to have it both ways, to campaign at the same time that he denounced campaigning, just in case anybody was tempted to accuse him of office seeking. "I am not with you today, Fellow Citizens, in accordance with my own sense of propriety," he told a crowd at Chillicothe, Ohio. "Much more consonant would it be with my feelings to remain at the domestic fireside.... Indeed I sometimes fear that upon me will fall the responsibility of establishing a dangerous precedent." But, really, what choice did he have? "Appearing among [his] fellow citizens" was the _"only way_ to disprove" the charge that he was superannuated. "You must have already perceived that I am _not_ Caged, and that I am _not_ the old man on crutches... they accuse me of being."
Van Buren's only hope had been that he could persuade the people that a vote for him was really a vote for Jackson. But what he found out was that the people no longer were susceptible to that particular ploy. A vote for Van Buren in 1840 was just a vote for Van Buren. And in 1840 there weren't enough votes for Van Buren to elect him president. Harrison won in a landslide, by nearly 150,000 votes. His electoral college victory was even more stunning: 234 to 60.
It was a short-lived victory. At his inauguration Harrison caught a cold and a month later died. Tyler, the man whose views nobody had paid any attention to, became president and abruptly reversed the administration's course, adopting a states' rights program, leading to the resignation of nearly the entire Whig cabinet and an attempt to impeach him.
But the lesson the politicians learned from their experience was not that they should be more careful about who they selected as vice president. They would go on picking vice presidents strictly on the basis of their political appeal, whether the candidate was qualified or not, whether he held similar views to the man at the top of the ticket. For all that they could focus on was winning, not governing. As Hamilton had said in the _Federalist_ , man by nature seizes on the immediate, often losing sight of his own true interests. The lesson, they learned, was that to win, a party had to be willing to manipulate popular opinion anyway it could—by songs, celebrity, razzle-dazzle—whatever.
Thus 1840 had been a watershed year. The year the politicians finally came to grips with people power. The year they finally gave in to it. Jackson, a creature of people power, had been able to achieve his aims without fundamentally compromising himself because of his enormous popular appeal. But he was virtually alone. All the other pols, unsure of their power, unsure the people would back them, weaved, bobbed, and caved. It had been a frightening time for politicians. Frightening because it was all so new. Adams had been so frightened he betrayed himself, resorting to corrupt bargaining to win because he lacked the means to win honestly. Eventually, however, they had figured it out, seen what worked and what didn't, and learned how to regain control. In the process they transformed American politics. The election season lengthened considerably. Campaigns grew rowdier and coarser. Party bosses assumed a place at the indent of events. Compromising became endemic. Trickery became common.
Of all the many changes that took place, one stood out. Never before 1840 had a candidate put up for the presidency been run the way Harrison was. Never again would one be run any other way. After Harrison they would all be packaged, the only difference being how.
Packaging candidates was a direct result of people power. To reach the people the politicians learned they had to give them what they wanted. Give them a hero if that's what they wanted. Give them a man like themselves, a log cabin kind of candidate, if that's what they wanted. That it was unlikely that a candidate could ever be found who actually fit all the people's wants was found to be unimportant. For the politicians learned that image counted more than reality, and they could control image. Could remake virtually any candidate into the kind of man the people wanted.
It was an awesome power. It was inevitable that it would be abused.
*The one holdout was South Carolina, which was controlled by an oligarchy led by Calhoun. Not until after the Civil War did South Carolina reform its election laws to permit voters to select presidential electors directly.
*In fact, the members simply hadn't realized how ill Crawford was when they voted. New York political boss Martin Van Buren had falsely led them to believe that Crawford had staged a full recovery. Van Buren's push for Crawford was part of a long-term strategy designed to create a new national party based on an alliance between New York and Virginia (Crawford, a Georgian, was enthusiastically backed by Virginians). Van Buren felt he could only win the trust of Virginia if he stood by Crawford no matter what. See Donald B. Cole, Martin Van Buren and the American Political System (1984), pp. 126-41.
*The opponents of Jackson, the old National Republicans, had taken the name Whig as a shrewd way of reminding people of Jackson's kingly pretensions; it was the Whigs in England who had rallied in opposition to Charles II.
*15Van Buren was from Kinderhook, New York, sometimes referred to as Old Kinderhook, or OK for short, which some believe was, somehow or other, the linguistic root of the expression "okay."
*Both Harrison and Richard Johnson made their name in the Battle of the Thames. Their dueling claims became a subtheme in the election of 1840. Harrison boasted of defeating Tecumseh in the battle, Johnson of killing him. (Johnson again ran as Van Buren's vice president. But he was so unpopular among Democrats that the party refused to endorse him officially.)
# 4. Manifest Destiny
How James K. Polk lied the country into a war with Mexico in order to achieve his—and the public's—ambition to expand westward
America by midcentury was a vastly different place than it had been fifty years before. In 1800 barely five million called themselves Americans. By 1850 nearly twenty-five million did, almost five times as many. In 1800 Americans had mostly lived on the east coast. By 1850 they had begun spreading out over the entire continent. The very borders of the country had expanded immensely. In 1800 the country covered fewer than a million square miles. By 1850 nearly three times as much. So much land was acquired so quickly that, for a time, a new state came into the union every year. In 1816 Indiana, in 1817 Mississippi, in 1818 Illinois, in 1819 Alabama, in 1820 Maine, in 1821 Missouri—and on and on. In 1800 there had been just sixteen states. By the end of 1850 there were thirty-one, nearly double.
Acquiring much of the new land Americans were now living on was easy. In 1803 Jefferson had gotten the Louisiana Territory for fifteen million. In 1819 Monroe had obtained Florida for about five million. Even gaining Texas had been easy: Texans had done all the fighting. All the United States had had to do was annex the place.
Acquiring the rest of the land, however, had been hard. Britain had claimed Oregon. Mexico had possessed California and the Southwest. And neither had wanted to surrender their claims.
And then, in 1844, James Knox Polk was elected president.
James Knox _Who_? was the question most Americans asked themselves when they awoke to find Polk president. For he had seemingly come from out of nowhere to capture the presidency. Until the Democratic convention, it had been assumed that the Democrats would pick Van Buren again and the Whigs Henry Clay.* But then Van Buren had committed political suicide, coming out against the annexation of Texas, saying it would stir up sectional tensions, and make Northerners fear the South was becoming too powerful. And that had killed him in the South, of course. Leaderless, the Democrats had turned to Polk, a Jackson protégé. And Polk had gone on to beat Clay. It had been a close race. The switch of just thirty-five thousand votes would have made Clay president. But Clay had made an awful run, the worst of his career, and one of the worst in American presidential history. He just couldn't shut up. Every day it seemed he had a new announcement to make, and with every announcement he alienated more and more voters. His statements about the tariff were comically incoherent, each one contradicting the last one. Polk, shrewder, had remained quiet, breaking his silence just once to issue an ambiguous statement of his own on the tariff, a typically wishy-washy thing that let Northerners think he was sympathetic to their concerns (for protection) and let Southerners feel he was sympathetic to theirs (for free trade).
That Polk had won really should have surprised no one. As a young man he'd been a real comer. A man dedicated to politics. A man who had no interests outside of politics. At twenty-eight he'd got himself elected to the Tennessee state legislature. At thirty to a safe seat in Congress. At thirty-four to Speaker of the United States House of Representatives. Then, when it appeared the Democrats were going to lose control of the House, he went home and ran for governor. This was a gutsy move. Tennessee, despite being Jackson territory, was overwhelmingly Whig. To give up a safe seat in Congress to run for governor was, therefore, a huge gamble. But Polk had taken it. And then he had run the most sensational race any candidate in Tennessee ever had.
In a first for Tennessee, he decided to visit dozens and dozens of villages and crossroads all across the state, to bring the campaign to the people directly, so he could be seen by tens of thousands of voters. It had been a terrible ordeal. He'd had to travel by horseback. Some two thousand miles by horseback. So many miles he wore out his horse and had to get another. And at every stop, after traveling for hours, he'd had to get up and give a speech, a long speech, some lasting two or three hours. Several times he gave speeches lasting four hours. Once he gave a speech during a driving rainstorm. He continued the speech even after the platform he was standing on collapsed beneath him. And he did all this for four straight months, taking just a single day off to rest. For a man in good health it was an incredibly arduous schedule. For Polk, whose health was always precarious—he suffered from gallstones and diarrhea—it was a killing schedule. But in the end it turned out to have been necessary: He won by fewer than twenty-five hundred votes.
Until then Polk had lived a charmed life. Everything he'd wanted, he'd gotten. But then he entered into an awful dark period, where nothing seemed to go right. When he ran for reelection two years later, he lost. Then he ran for the vice presidential nomination. And lost. Then he ran again for governor. And lost. On the eve of the Democratic convention in '44 he was all but dead politically. In worse shape than Nixon was to be when _he_ made what was said to be the miracle comeback of American politics in 1968. (Nixon had lost only one race for governor.) But through grit and determination—and luck—Polk finally had triumphed, becoming at age fifty the youngest president ever.
Polk had willed himself back from the dead, but there was no guarantee he could will himself Oregon, the Southwest, and California, which he very much wanted. Great Britain and Mexico stood in his way. And they could not be controlled. In time they might be persuaded to give up their claims, for Americans were steadily moving into the area. But that could take years and years, and Polk didn't _have_ years and years. Because he had promised to serve just a single term in return for the nomination, he had just four years. Desperate, he decided he had to take an extreme measure. Do what no previous president had ever dared to do—lie brazenly to the American people. (Jefferson, too, had lied—in a bid for Florida—but his lie was as nothing compared to the ones Polk was to tell.)
To gain Oregon he told a whopping lie. Said that the United States was entitled to all of it. Every last inch. Which was flatly untrue. Britain and the United States had equal claims to the territory. In recognition of this the two countries for ten years had shared ownership of the area. Polk knew it was untrue and didn't even want all of Oregon. He was willing to settle for the part below the forty-ninth parallel. But to put pressure on Britain he felt compelled to demand it all, even if in the process he had to lie to the American public about his true aims and the justice of the American demand. Predictably, Britain caved. Polk felt vindicated.
To gain the Southwest and Mexico he had to tell another whopping lie. Actually, a series of whopping lies. Lies that would involve the country in war.
In his first year in office he didn't tell any lies about Mexico. Preoccupied with filling patronage jobs—as a Democrat following a Whig he had lots of jobs to fill—he barely had time even to think about Mexico. But he did send an emissary to offer twenty-five million dollars for the land.
Twenty-five million wasn't a bad price for land that the Mexicans might eventually have to give up for nothing. But Mexico wasn't in the mood to sell. Wasn't even in the mood to receive Polk's emissary. That left Polk with just one option if he was to achieve his objective. And that was to go to war.
The trouble with the war option was that it wouldn't be unanimously popular. Far from it, in fact. Polk couldn't even be sure Congress would let him make war, the House being in the control of the Whigs. Thus, he had to contrive circumstances in such a way as to give the country no choice but to go to war. And that is precisely what he proceeded to do.
As a first step he sent a small regiment under the command of Zachary Taylor deep into territory south of Texas that had long been claimed by Mexico. Then he waited for the force to be attacked so that he could say to the public that Mexico had been the aggressor. But the Mexican army never attacked. After waiting as long as he could bear Polk finally convened a cabinet meeting on May 9, 1846, and announced that he was prepared to go to the country with a demand for war based on two grievances: that Mexico had snubbed our emissary and that it had refused to settle three million dollars in claims filed by Americans for the loss of life and property resulting from skirmishes along the border. But then, coincidentally, just after the meeting with the cabinet, Polk got the news for which he had been waiting: Two weeks earlier Taylor's troops finally _had_ been attacked, some had been wounded and killed.
Polk turned out to be a very, very good liar. At first he even had the Whigs fooled. The first lie concerned where the attack took place. This was critical. If it took place on Mexican soil, the Americans would appear to be in the wrong. If on American soil, then the Mexicans would. Polk correctly identified the spot where the incident occurred as near Matamoras, on the Rio Grande. But he mischaracterized the place. He said it was plainly on American soil. This was a flat-out lie. The American border was more than a hundred miles to the north on the Nueces River. While some Texans did indeed claim that the border properly extended to the Rio Grande, there was little evidence in support of their assertion except the fact that Americans had begun settling there. But that didn't make the land American. In any case, the most Polk could accurately maintain was that the land was claimed by both the United States and Mexico. But he wasn't about to sully his war message with inconvenient details that might raise questions about his intentions. The Whigs would immediately seize on such details. So he ignored them.
The second lie, growing out of the first, was his insistence that he had not wanted war. War had come, he said, "notwithstanding all our efforts to avoid it." Of course, this was utterly untrue. After Mexico refused to sell us its land, the administration had settled on a policy of war and pursued it relentlessly. And war had come.
The third lie he told was about our war aims. What he said he wanted was justice. What in fact he wanted, of course, was their land: the Southwest and California—about half of Mexico. But Polk didn't want to admit this. Not to the public, which would have to pay for the war. Not to the soldiers, who would have to die in it. Not to the Congress, which would have to declare it. For that, too, would undermine his case, give the Whigs something to argue about. And Polk didn't want to argue. He wanted to fight. The war would be nearly a year old before Polk finally alluded, and then obliquely, to the government's goal of acquiring land.
What Polk had going for him for awhile was, simply, tradition. Because no president had ever lied to the people, not brazenly like this anyway, the people and the Congress believed they were being told the truth. For all the changes that had taken place in politics—the tricks, the compromises, the image making—presidents were still believed, still trusted. It was the essence of the republican compact. Trust. A simple, childlike thing, but without trust, self-government seemed impossible. In foreign affairs especially trust was key. For the president was the only one in the government with access to all of the available information. Eventually information would become more widely available, as Congress reviewed the documents and as news from around the country slowly filtered in to Washington. But in those critical first days and weeks the president was in complete control of information. And as such was in complete control of the situation. Not for months would the Whigs finally begin to question the war, question what Polk had told them. By then they could hardly stop it. Once the boys were in the field the politicians back home had to support them fully. An important distinction could be made between support for the men in arms and support for the war and the Whigs tried very much to make it. But they could not order the army to be pulled back. That power was Polk's. And they certainly could not cut off funds to the war. That would leave the boys at risk. Which meant, drearily, that the Whigs could really do nothing at all. The lying had worked.
Though his enemies began calling him Polk the Mendacious, Polk wasn't by nature a liar, wasn't personally dishonest. It was just that in politics honesty was becoming less important. When politics was about individuals, honesty counted for a great deal. But the individual was becoming less and less significant. And as a result, values like honesty, values that human beings cherished in their relations with one another, values that were associated above all with the individual, became less and less significant. Much as presidents didn't want to admit it, they were fast becoming part of a vast machine. And a machine, an organization, didn't have values as such. It had goals. As the head of a party and the head of a government Polk was responsible for seeing to it that those goals were attained. If personal values like honesty and decency could be maintained during the pursuit of those goals, fine. If not, they would have to be dispensed with. For what was honesty next to the acquisition of California and the Southwest?
Under the circumstances a Polk could persuade himself that he had a duty to lie, a duty to see to it that the country expanded westward, and that next to that duty a few lies were as nothing. In this case, however, it wasn't in fact true that it _was_ necessary to lie. The land was becoming Americanized anyway. After the gold rush of '49 California certainly would have become American. But Polk couldn't know that for sure, no one could. No one can ever be sure how history will come out in the end. Sometimes you have to give it a nudge. If, like Polk, you are ambitious, you may be anxious to give it a giant shove. Just to be sure things happen the way you want, just to be sure you remain in control of events.
Presidents do not like to lie willy-nilly. As much as anybody they are aware of the high cost of lying in a republic. But when the reward for lying was something as grand as the acquisition of nearly one and a half million square miles of territory, lying seemed of small consequence.
Once a president could believe that it was his duty to lie, he could believe a lot of things. Moral lines that once had appeared clear now could appear fuzzy. Formerly, for instance, it was pretty clear that a president's first responsibility was to the country and only afterward to his party. But as the party became an intrinsic part of government, this line blurred. A president could no longer pretend that he was above party, could no longer think, as George Washington had, that parties were bad. Parties were essential to democracy. As such, a president could convince himself that by helping his party he was helping democracy (and thereby helping the country). It wouldn't really be true. But a president could think it was, especially in wartime, if the party out of power happened to be opposed to the war that the president and his party were behind.
Polk's every inclination was to be a fierce partisan, so fierce that he even let friends use government funds to help establish a new party newspaper, an outrageous abuse. He owed everything to the party and to party leaders like Jackson. But for Jackson, his career would have been over after the Whigs finished him off in his two failed races for governor. Thus, it was no surprise really that when the war began he turned to his own party ranks to fill out the leadership positions that became available in the army. Generalships, brigadier generalships, and such. Congress created some thirty positions of high rank. Polk, to the horror of the Whigs, put Democrats in nearly every one (among them Franklin Pierce, the Democratic Party boss of New Hampshire), politicizing, as no one before him ever had, the nation's army.
He had just one frustration. And it was like a burr under his skin. While he could name Democrats to the positions opened up by Congress, the army remained under the command of two regular army officers: Winfield Scott and Zachary Taylor. And neither of them were Democrats. Worse, Scott was an avid Whig. That meant, irony of ironies, that the Whigs would benefit from Polk's war. For when the war was won (as surely it would be; there was never any doubt that the United States would triumph), Scott would be in a natural position to run for president. Americans liked to run war heroes as presidents. First there had been Washington. Then, Jackson. Then, Harrison. Scott would be next.
Polk was very angry about the possibility of his creating a hero for the Whigs. It was as if he would be betraying his own party. Determined to avoid this, he early on decided to give Taylor, whose party sympathies were unknown, a larger role in the war than Scott. Then, to his consternation, Taylor was revealed to be a Whig, too, and just as he was beginning to win on the battlefield. More fearful now of Taylor than Scott, Polk reversed course and turned over the main body of the army to Scott, leav Taylor with just five thousand men. Inadvertently this _made_ Taylor. For soon after Taylor, though outnumbered four to one, managed to stage a smashing victory over the Mexican army at Buena Vista. Overnight he became a national sensation and the obvious Whig choice for president at the next election. Polk, disconsolate, tried to outmaneuver the Whigs, asking Congress to create a new rank, that of lieutenant general, which he planned to fill with Democrat Thomas Hart Benton. The position would make Benton the highest ranking officer in the army, giving him a shot at hero status. But the Congress refused. Benton remained in the Senate. Taylor went on to win the Whig nomination for president. On inauguration day in 1849, Polk stood and watched as Taylor was sworn in as his successor.
The politicization of foreign policy was an old story in American politics, going back as far as the John Adams administration. And once the secretary of state's job began to be seen as a stepping stone to the presidency—Jefferson, Madison, Monroe, J. Q. Adams, and Van Buren had all served in the position—foreign policy had become intimately tied up with presidential politics. Of all the offices in the cabinet it was, although it had the least to do with daily politics, the most political.
Polk, ironically, had tried to take the cabinet out of politics, including the State Department, so that the administration wouldn't be sidetracked by political backbiting and so that he would be the only one with a political agenda. To that end he had demanded that each cabinet officer promise in writing not to make a run for the presidency in 1848. But James Buchanan, his choice for secretary of state, refused to sign. "I do not know that I shall ever desire to be a candidate for the Presidency," Buchanan insincerely claimed, but "I cannot proclaim to the world that in no contingency shall I be a candidate for the Presidency in 1848." Polk let him into the cabinet anyway. Buchanan was needed to secure Pennsylvania's support in Congress (Buchanan was from Pennsylvania).
Polk's lies had been new, as had been his politicization of the army. New and disturbing. But also inevitable. The more complicated the country became, the higher the stakes became. A small country could afford to have an honest president. A large and growing country often couldn't. Government was too important now to be hampered by a faithful adherence to the genteel standards of the eighteenth century. Sometimes now presidents would feel compelled to lie. Lie, and they could keep control of events. Tell the truth, and... well, sometimes things would work out, but sometimes they wouldn't.
Polk was followed by Zachary Taylor and Millard Fillmore, neither of whom was very memorable as president. Taylor died in office before he had a chance to leave a mark. Fillmore, his successor, was an inconsequential New York politician who lacked national clout; his chief contribution was to agree to the Compromise of 1850, which had been worked out by others, notably Stephen Douglas and Clay, and which Taylor had blocked.
Then came Franklin Pierce. Pierce was remarkable not for who he was or what he accomplished, for he achieved very little. But he was interesting as a representative of a new type, the politician for whom politics was everything.
Politics in the past, while demanding, had not been all-consuming. Often a politician for state office, for instance, could secure victory simply by providing free booze on election day to a couple of hundred voters. But as people power had expanded, the demands on politicians had become greater and greater. Constituents now had to be attended to. Political parades had to be organized. Even a politician's evenings were now taken up with politics. For it was often only in the evenings that voters could be reached at home or at their fraternal lodges. The party, with its thousands of worker bees, was helpful in keeping voters apprised of political developments, easing the politician's need to meet with each and every constituent on a regular basis. But keeping the party going—keeping the worker bees happy—was a monumental task in itself, exacting awful personal sacrifices.
It was not, ironically, the politicians themselves who suffered the most from the new obsessiveness required for success in politics. It was their families. The families of politicians had always suffered. Now they suffered more.
Franklin Pierce's suffered most.
*Whig Party leaders still feared that Clay was a loser, but after the imbroglio over Tyler they needed a solid party man around whom to rally.
# 5. The Story of Franklin Pierce
How a minor politician managed, through hard work, to make himself president at his family's expense
* * *
_Franklin Pierces presidency is utterly inconsequential and barely worth noticing. But as a type Pierce the man is both representative and interesting, for he is among the first politicians to have to choose between his family and politics._
He accomplished very little in his lifetime. Even his own (sympathetic) biographer admits that not a single achievement can be credited to his administration. At the end of his single term in the White House hardly anyone in the country desired him to run for a second. During the Civil War he let it be known that he objected to the course of Abraham Lincoln and as a result became a pariah. For nearly a hundred years after his death not even his home state of New Hampshire cared to erect a monument to his memory, even though he was the only president the state ever produced. Today many Americans have never even heard of him.
But Franklin Pierce _was_ likable—and always had been.
Shortly after Pierce was nominated for president in 1852 he received a touching letter from a barely literate woman with whom he had played as a child. One day, it seems, when he was a boy he had "meet with a little misfortune by falling into the River." Franklin, hoping he could keep the incident secret from his parents, had apparently then gotten the woman's mother to dry out his clothes and iron them. It seems her mother would have agreed to do almost anything for the young man: "My mother said you was so agreeable in conversation that day she almost fell in love with you."
Among Pierce's qualities—his intelligence, his eloquence, his quickness—the most impressive was his ability to make people fall in love with him. By itself, of course, this ability might not have led to great prominence. But it was married to a burning political ambition he inherited from his father, Benjamin Pierce, a Revolutionary War hero who rose to become governor of New Hampshire. Building on his father's connections, Franklin enjoyed political success at an astonishingly early age. At twenty-four, just a few years out of college and training to be a lawyer, he was elected chairman of the town meeting in Hillsborough, New Hampshire, his hometown. At twenty-five, at a younger age than almost anybody else in state history, he was elected to a seat in the Great and General Court (the state legislature). At twenty-six, at a younger age than _anyone_ else in state history, he was elected speaker of the court. At twenty-eight, at a younger age than almost anybody in American history, he was elected to Congress. "Frank Pierce," the local newspaper declared, "is the most popular man of his age." And so he seemed.
Popular but not entirely happy. The man whom everybody loved couldn't find a woman whom _he_ loved romantically—or who loved _him_ romantically. Following each election victory, after celebrating with friends and family, he would go home at night to an empty room. As the years went by, he grew more and more pessimistic that he would ever go home to a wife.
He might actually not have but for Jane Appleton. The year he ran for Congress she fell in love with him and he with her.
Both came of prominent families. But they were prominent in different fields. The Pierces were leaders in politics, the Appletons in the intellectual world and in business; Jane's father had been the president of Bowdoin College, where Pierce had earned his degree. Other Appletons had helped found the state's textile industry. Being prominent in different fields didn't matter nearly as much as the fact that they were prominent at all; in a small state like New Hampshire the leaders all knew one another. But Franklin and Jane were different not just in background, but as types—while he was outgoing and socially adept, she was shy and retiring; while he was largely indifferent to religion, she was openly devout; while he liked to drink, she was a teetotaler—and _these_ differences mattered.
One difference mattered more than all the rest: He loved politics. She loathed politics.
In 1834, both twenty-eight, they married. They remained married some thirty years.
It was hell from the beginning. Jane hadn't simply married a man. She had married a politician. What that meant was to become clear to her from the very first day of their marriage. Any ordinary couple after their wedding would have taken a honeymoon. The day after _their_ wedding, on Wednesday November 19, 1834, Jane and Franklin boarded a train to head for Washington, D.C., so that Franklin could begin his work as a U.S. representative. Three days later, on Saturday, they arrived in the capital. That left them one day to themselves, Sunday. Come Monday, Franklin had to go to work.
Their first home was a Washington boardinghouse filled with strangers. Jane, uneasy in a new city, remained cooped up in their small room most days. A woman of her time, she had wanted to set up house. But as Franklin Pierce's wife, a politician's wife, she could not. At night instead of serving her husband a hot meal at home before a cozy fire, she would descend with him to the main floor to eat dinner at a big wooden table along with the other guests of the boardinghouse, whom Jane, out of necessity, began calling "her family." Sometimes the Pierces would be asked to have dinner with government leaders. Jane usually objected. "We have an invitation to dinner to Gov [Lewis] Cass'* on Wednesday," she noted in a letter home, "which is accepted notwithstanding my predilections." Her main pleasure, she confessed, was a daily trip to church, and some days she couldn't even enjoy that; it would be too cold or windy to venture out. "I am disappointed," she wrote on one such occasion, "in my wish of going to church which is a deprivation to which I hope I shall not often be subjected." But, "these high winds are common here, and exceedingly disagreeable."
Somehow they muddled through, Jane coping as best as she could. But the following year, when Pierce came back to the capital, he came back alone.
They both thought it would be better if Jane stayed in Hillsborough while he was in Washington. Not only because she didn't like Washington, but because she was pregnant. But difficult as their life in the capital had been when they were together, it was worse being separated. In January 1836, while Pierce was in Washington helping a constituent win a pension, his wife was at home giving birth to their first child. A few days later, the infant died. Pierce was still in Washington. Jane was alone. In her grief she began to hate politics more than ever.
Both of them felt the loss of their infant greatly, and felt the gulf that was widening between them greatly, too. Franklin began to drink more than he should, a lot more, so much that behind his back some people were beginning to whisper, _Frank Pierce is a drunk._ In a society of heavy drinkers—Americans then drank more heavily than almost anybody else—Pierce was one of the heaviest drinkers of all.
Jane, for her part, began to show signs of physical frailty and emotional turmoil. The summer after the loss of their baby she came down with an unspecified illness—probably tuberculosis—and sank into a deep depression. A doctor, adopting a conventional remedy, applied leeches to her veins to suck out the "bad blood." (Afterward he claimed it had worked.)
While the doctor was nursing Jane back to health, her husband, again in Washington, was nursing his political career. Her treatments lasted all summer. All summer Pierce remained in Washington.
Pierce wanted his marriage to work, wanted Jane to be happy. But he wanted a successful political career more. Blinded by his ambition, he focused on his career to the neglect of his family. His wife, ill and melancholy, simply went along, suffering largely in silence. Their marriage, in consequence, began to grow brittle.
As their troubles worsened, so did Jane's health. The periods when she was healthy always seemed shorter than those when she was ill. As time passed, the short periods when she was in good health grew even shorter.
The following winter, when Pierce again had to return to Washington, Jane went with him. Almost immediately she came down with a bad cold—a sure indication, it was now becoming obvious, of discontent. She spent most of the winter in bed. Friends commented that she was "wanting in cheerfulness."
Jane's pain was the greatest, but she was not alone in having to suffer for the sake of Pierce's ambition. So did other members of his family. His sister Harriet became gravely ill that winter; Pierce, engrossed in his political duties, declined to leave Washington to go to her aid. Nor did he leave even when word came that his father, suffering a devastating stroke, had fallen ill. Pierce was too busy building his political career.
It was a career that happened to be soaring. As he had once dazzled New Hampshire, he now dazzled Washington. In the winter of 1837, the New Hampshire legislature, impressed by his increasing reputation, elected him to the U.S. Senate. On March 4, just before Martin Van Buren gave his inaugural address, Pierce was sworn into office. At thirty-two he was the youngest member of the Senate.
The Pierces spent their third wedding anniversary at home in New Hampshire. But in December, Franklin returned to Washington to attend his first session as a senator. His wife went with him. Once again she fell ill.
Until now she had suffered quietly, but she was to do so no longer. Three years of life with Franklin, three years of almost unrelenting illness and melancholy, had taken their toll. Although stoical by nature, she found she had to tell someone that she didn't much care for her husband's astonishing political career, and in the spring of 1838 she finally did. "Oh," she confided to a friend, "how I wish he was out of political life!" She did not say that his leaving would be better for _her,_ though obviously it would be. She insisted it would be better for _him._ She was alarmed, she wrote, that he had become involved, if only tangentially, in a duel involving a congressman.* But she may also have been worried about his drinking. Ever more loudly now could be heard the gossip, _Frank Pierce is a drunk._
Their marriage, already cracking, now apparently began to come apart. Although they had two children in quick succession—Frank Robert in 1839 and Bennie in 1841—Mrs. Pierce went beyond complaining to her friends about his political career. She now complained directly to him. Finally, in the spring of 1841, around the time Bennie was born, she demanded that he resign from the Senate. He agreed, promising to give up a career in politics forever. But he refused to go quickly. For nearly a year he held off making the announcement. Then, in February 1842, at thirty-seven, he finally left, one year before the end of his six-year term.
Jane Pierce was hopeful now that she finally would have a normal life. And for five months she did. For five months Pierce devoted himself to the family and the law. For five months he did not make a single speech. For five months he barely took notice of politics. And for five months, at her insistence, he even stopped drinking. Never had she been happier. For once they had a real home.
Those five months were, however, to be the only five months during their entire marriage when Pierce would be out of the public spotlight. For no sooner did summer arrive than he jumped back in front of it. While he had promised to give up a political career, he had not promised to give up politics altogether. That June he was elected head of the New Hampshire State Democratic Party. This post at least kept him home. But as a party boss Pierce was to become involved daily in back-room machinations to an extent he had never had to before. Evenings, during the months when the annual town meetings were held or the legislature was in session, Pierce would be completely consumed by political work. Involved as he had been before in politics, there now came long stretches during which he seemed even more so. In early 1843 he spent two weeks traveling around the state giving speeches. The following year, after again being elected party chairman, he made even more speeches. A year later he was elected chairman yet again. Once again he devoted himself to speechmaking and politicking.
In the summer of 1845 Pierce, after three terms as party chairman, tired of the work and breaking under the strain, declined to run for a fourth. No sooner had he quit, however, than another opportunity arose. In early fall the governor offered him the chance to return to the Senate to fill out the unexpired term of Levi Woodbury, who'd resigned to take a seat on the U.S. Supreme Court. Pierce, however, refused. A short while later President Polk offered to make him attorney general. Pierce again refused. Because of the promise he had made to his wife, he could not make politics his career.
Fortunately, he had a new ambition—to join the war against Mexico. And his wife hadn't made him promise to forgo military service.
Pierces had a history of military prowess and an attraction to war. When the British fired on the colonial patriots on Lexington Green in 1775, marking the outbreak of the American Revolution, eighteen-year-old Benjamin Pierce—then busy plowing a field—had instantly "stepped between the cattle, dropped the chains from the plough, and without any further ceremony, shouldered my uncle's fowling piece, swung the bullet-pouch and powder-horn and hastened to the place where the first blood had been spilled." A short time later Benjamin fought in the Battle of Bunker Hill.
Pierces loved military glory. Jane, an Appleton, did not. Appletons devoted themselves fervently to education, business, and religion—especially religion. Her own father was said to have died of starvation after undertaking a religious fast. But Jane was not the one deciding whether to go to war or not. Franklin was. Franklin, who grew up listening to his father tell war stories and yearned to have stories of his own to tell.
If Jane had been asked, it's plain she would have objected to Franklin's joining the fight—he was forty-two years old, after all, and had a family to support, a family that needed him now more than ever. Just three years earlier little Frank Robert had died after a bout of typhus fever, leaving Jane with just one last child, Bennie—but she _wasn't_ asked. For a full year Pierce angled to get himself into the war as an officer. And for a full year he kept his wife in the dark about his efforts. He continued to keep her in the dark even after he was offered a commission as an infantry colonel.
In February 1847 he was told that he would probably be given command of a brigade with the rank of brigadier general—and then was given it. Even _then_ he did not tell his wife what he was up to.
She alone, it would appear, was the only one he didn't tell. His correspondence at this time was full of his plans. People all over the country knew that he expected to get into the war at any moment: friends, congressmen, War Department bureaucrats. They all knew; only Jane didn't. "My purpose is fixed," he wrote Rep. Edmund Burke in February 1847 of his decision to join the war, "although I have not yet broached the subject with my wife."
In May, after accepting a commission as a brigadier general, he left for the front, following a two-month delay owing to the difficulty of raising a brigade in New England, where the war was unpopular.* Jane, devastated by his decision to join the war, slipped into a profound depression and had to be put in the care of a friend.
Pierce still loved his wife; in a touching letter he expressed what undoubtedly were his sincere feelings: "I can not trust myself to talk of this departure," he wrote. "My heart is with my own dear wife and boy, and will be wherever duty may lead my steps."
But he loved glory more.
Because the short war was nearly over by the time Pierce reached the front, he had little time in which to achieve glory. On the eve of what appeared to be the last major engagement of the war, his contingent briefly came under enemy fire, causing his horse to rear. Pierce was thrown and knocked unconscious. When he awoke he discovered that his knee had been badly damaged. The next day Gen. Winfield Scott relieved Pierce of his command. Pierce immediately appealed the order. "For God's sake, General," he pleaded. "This is the last great battle and I must lead the brigade." Scott relented.
The next day the Battle of Churubusco commenced. Pierce at last had a crack at gaining the military glory he craved. Unfortunately, just as the battle got under way, he injured his knee again and fell off his horse. He was left on the field (at his own insistence), and the battle raged around him. At battle's end Pierce was alive. His men forever after remembered him for his bravery. Shortly afterward the war ended.
Pierce returned to New Hampshire in time for the beginning of the presidential election of 1848. But it was not Brig. Gen. Franklin Pierce who emerged as a contender that year, but another general from the war, Zachary Taylor.
At this point the odds that Franklin Pierce would ever be considered a serious contender for the presidency appeared remote—as even Pierce himself apparently realized. When a friend tried to advance his name in the presidential sweepstakes, Pierce made no effort to help. The boomlet died.
But even had he had a chance at winning the nomination, Pierce could not go after it. He could not even run for governor of his home state, although at this point, as a war veteran, he certainly could have been elected. For he was still bound by _that_ promise—the promise he had made to his wife six years earlier—the promise that had forced him to resign from the Senate in 1842 and that had subsequently forced him to decline appointment to the Senate in 1845, the same promise that had stopped him from accepting President Polk's invitation to become attorney general: the promise to forgo a career in politics.
The story of Franklin Pierce in these years is the story of a man at war with himself: a born politician who could not be a politician. Every day, it sometimes seemed, he was being importuned to run for office. Pierce himself yearned to run. And yet he could not—because of the promise.
He was not just a born politician but the son of one. Like many sons, he had wanted to follow in his father's footsteps. Benjamin Pierce had become one of the most beloved figures in New Hampshire history, serving as governor not once but twice, in a state that usually preferred to rotate its governors in and out of office after serving a single term. But Franklin Pierce would never have an opportunity to match his father's popularity in New Hampshire—because of the promise.
If only he could take back the promise—but he could not. Jane wouldn't let him. She had made him make it, and she was determined to make him keep it.
He had already kept it for seven years. For three more years he continued to keep it.
Devoting most of his time to the law, Pierce for the next three years operated largely behind the scenes in New Hampshire politics. He didn't even run for party chairman.
Although he held no formal position in the party, he remained, of course, a powerful figure. His biographer believes that Pierce may have been more powerful at this period of his life, because of the prestige earned during his service in the war, than at any time previously. Evidence of his power is abundant. At one point Pierce actually wrested the Democratic nomination for governor away from one candidate, whom he believed was flirting with the Free-Soilers, and gave it to another.*
But if Pierce was powerful enough to make someone else governor, he could not make himself governor. And all because of that promise.
For ten years he kept that promise despite having all manner of reasons for breaking it. And then the eleventh year came. And that year he found it more difficult than ever to keep it.
Levi Woodbury had died.
The eleventh year, 1852, was a presidential election year. No New Englander had had a chance of becoming president for years. The last one who had, John Quincy Adams, had been elected in 1825, and he had won only because the election had gone to the House of Representatives; Andrew Jackson had won more popular and electoral votes. Thus, the last New Englander to win the presidency through the egular election process was actually _John_ Adams, who had won in 1796—and he was the only one who ever had.
But in 1852 a New Englander seemed almost destined to win the Democratic Party's nomination. The most serious threat to the party that year was presented by the Free-Soilers, who were attracting huge numbers of Northern Democrats. To win, the Democrats had to find a way to keep these Northerners from defecting. That eliminated the nomination of a Southerner, for any Southerner, whether proslavery or not, would almost certainly drive Northern antislavery supporters away. A Westerner might be able to retain the Northern support, but the party had nominated a Westerner at the last election—Lewis Cass—and he had lost. The Middle States might plausibly provide a winning candidate, but since Free-Soilers were strongest in New England, it made the most sense to nominate a New Englander.
On the eve of the election one New Englander above all others seemed to have a lock on the nomination: Levi Woodbury, a former New Hampshire senator who had been appointed to the U.S. Supreme Court. But then Woodbury died.
Rarely before had there been such a golden opportunity for a New Englander to become president. Never again, perhaps, in Pierce's lifetime, would there be another such opportunity. If he was to become president of the United States it would probably be in 1852—or never.
If there were any doubts that this was his year, the state Democratic convention held in January was to erase them. Just a week into the new year, the party endorsed Pierce as its favorite son for the national convention to be held in Baltimore six months later. That action immediately put Pierce's name into play. From then on he would be one of the politicians who would always be named when lists—the long lists—of possible presidential candidates were drawn up. But his was not an impossible dream. Of the five presidents elected in the past twenty-five years, three had been war heroes: Andrew Jackson, William Henry Harrison, and Zachary Taylor. Almost certainly the next president would be a war hero, too. And Pierce, in his own limited way, qualified.
For a time Pierce put off making a decision. After the state convention he actually issued a statement that seemed to indicate he did not want to be president. The use of his name "before the Democratic National Convention at Baltimore," he wrote, "would be utterly repugnant to [my] tastes and wishes." But nobody took his protestation too seriously. All candidates for the presidency claimed that they didn't want to be president—that, it was widely recognized, was the only way to _become_ president.
Still Pierce had to decide—and he could not. Each choice had its merits. Stay out of the race, and he could remain true to his wife and to his promise. Stay out, and he could avoid the horrific strains that inevitably would accompany a race for the presidency. New Hampshire politics had proved too great a strain when he was party chairman, and he had quit; national politics undoubtedly would pose even a greater strain. Stay out, and his wife would probably retain the fragile grasp on good health she had been able to maintain during the last couple of years.
All these factors added up to a powerful argument against running. But compelling as the argument against running was, the argument for running seemed even more so. Run, and Pierce could at last return to the career he loved best—and was best at. Run, and he could show the world—and himself—what Pierces were made of. Run, and he could satisfy the deep longing he felt for political recognition and success.
As winter turned to spring Pierce finally made up his mind. He _would_ run. His ten-year absence from elective politics was at an end. Early in April, using the coded language presidential candidates then employed, he told his friends, who had been pressuring him to run, that _they_ should decide "what is my duty and what may be the best interest of the party." As _they_ had already declared that he should run, Pierce's statement was tantamount to an open declaration.
The promise that had sabotaged his Senate career and stopped him from running for governor and accepting the offer to become attorney general—the promise that had haunted him for ten long years—would not now stop him from running for president. The promise he had kept all those years he now was prepared to break.
What of Jane, to whom he had made the promise? What did she think of his decision?
Jane didn't express an opinion because Pierce didn't tell her about it. As earlier he had concealed from her his decision to fight in the Mexican War, he now concealed his decision to run for president of the United States. Once again he told friends and politicians what he was up to. Once again he declined to tell his own wife.
Over the next two months Pierce was busy almost daily promoting his candidacy. Although he left the actual maneuvering required to advance his cause up to his friends—it was their job to confer with key constituencies in other parts of the country, to make political overtures to disaffected groups, to puff up Pierce in the press—to keep the effort going Pierce himself had to stay in constant touch, writing letters almost daily and occasionally even arranging to meet supporters. In April there was one such meeting, in May three; on one of these occasions he traveled to Boston to visit with delegates from Massachusetts and Maine.
It was, of political necessity, a stealth campaign. As a minor politician with little national recognition, Pierce had no hope of competing with the major contenders and didn't want to try. It was in his interest not to appear to be a serious candidate at this early date. By remaining in the background he could escape the brutal punches the main candidates—James Buchanan, Stephen Douglas, and Lewis Cass—were throwing at one another. With a little luck, they might bloody one another so badly the Democrats would have to turn to somebody like Pierce as a compromise choice. (And Pierce was the only New Englander of the bunch.)
By mid-May, his managers reported, the strategy seemed to be working. "His name is familiarly talked of by the members as the man upon whom all could unite," one of them wrote. "[And] he has not been thrust forward in a manner to obtain the enmity of the friends of other candidates or any clique of the party." Some of the managers had worried that the campaign was being conducted so quietly that the convention delegates wouldn't consider Pierce visible enough to warrant the nomination. But while that might have been the case two months earlier, when the campaign got under way, it no longer was. "I am now satisfied," the manager wrote, that "he must be in the minds of all."
His candidacy _was_ in the minds of all—all, that is, except Jane, his wife. She still knew nothing.
Jane knew, of course, that people were talking him up for president. It was in all the local papers. One day a friend, running into her, even jokingly addressed her as the "future Presidentess." But Jane believed it was just talk. Her husband had assured her that he didn't want the nomination—and told her he was making no efforts to secure it.
That, of course, was a lie. But Jane didn't know it.
Jane and Franklin were at home in New Hampshire when the Democratic National Convention was gaveled to order on Tuesday, June 1, to nominate a presidential candidate for the election of 1852. Tuesday and Wednesday the delegates fussed over the rules, approving one that required the winning candidate to have a two-thirds majority—a rule that this year almost guaranteed a deadlocked convention. On Thursday the balloting began. On the first ballot Cass was first, then Buchanan, then Douglas. On succeeding votes Cass initially maintained his edge, but as the day proceeded he slipped back and Buchanan pulled ahead. But Buchanan, like Cass, couldn't seem to win a two-thirds majority. After seventeen ballots the frustrated delegates finally went home for the day.
On Friday there were sixteen more ballots. The day began with Buchanan ahead, Douglas gaining, and Cass nearly extinct. Then Douglas took the lead. But he, too, was unable to command a two-thirds majority. As the day wore on, Cass's candidacy suddenly revived. At the end of Friday he remained in the lead. Perhaps he would win the Democratic nomination in 1852 as he had in 1848.
Pierce, still in New Hampshire, was following the news at the local telegraph office in Concord. His name hadn't even come up in the balloting, but he was optimistic. Just as his managers had predicted, the convention was deadlocking. The longer the deadlock lasted, the greater his chance of winning. If the delegates didn't reach a decision soon, they would grow weary of voting and turn to a fresh face—his, he hoped.
On Friday afternoon, as Cass's forces were staging a comeback, Franklin and Jane traveled to Boston for the weekend. On Saturday morning, the convention still deadlocked, they went for a drive in Cambridge. Jane was relaxed; Franklin pretended to be.
Shortly after they left, things at the convention suddenly took a dramatic new turn. On the thirty-fifth ballot, Virginia, egged on by Pierce's managers, who had persuaded the state's delegates that Pierce was a friend of the South—as good a friend as they were likely to find in the North—nominated Pierce for president. That didn't immediately start a stampede in his direction. But over the next few hours Pierce came to seem more and more inevitable: As a Northerner who had supported the Wilmot Proviso, which would outlaw the introduction of slavery into the territories newly acquired from Mexico, he could help keep the antislavery Democrats loyal to the party; as a war hero—of sorts—he could attract general support; as a firm believer in the Compromise of 1850 he could hold the South.* Supporters in the other camps moaned that Pierce wasn't sufficiently well known, but ballot after ballot he slowly gained strength. Just before the forty-ninth ballot took place, a delegate from North Carolina and a Pierce supporter stood up to give the kind of stem-winding speech for which the convention had been yearning. Minutes later the delegates, bone weary after five days of talking and voting, nominated Pierce as their candidate to be the fourteenth president of the United States.
Just what Pierce had hoped might happen had happened. But he didn't yet know: He and Jane were still out on their morning drive.
And then at noon, as they were leisurely taking their carriage through the woods outside Cambridge, a rider on a horse suddenly appeared, making straight for them at a furious pace. It was a Colonel Barnes. _Sir, there's news,_ said Barnes. _The Democrats have nominated you for president!_
Pierce smiled broadly and shouted with joy in delight. Jane nearly fainted.
His dream was her nightmare. That weekend, her nerves fraying, she plunged into depression. A few days later she received a note from son Bennie, who echoed her own concerns. "I hope he won't be elected," the eleven-year-old wrote, "for I should not like to be at Washington." "And," he added, "I know you would not be either."
Andrew Jackson's wife, Rachel, had prayed that her husband would not be elected president. Zachary Taylor's wife, Peggy, had prayed that hers wouldn't. Now Pierce's wife prayed that _hers_ wouldn't.
There was never really any chance that Pierce would lose. He had strength in every section of the country; the Whig candidate, Mexican War hero Gen. Winfield Scott, because of the growing weakness of the Whig Party, had little strength anywhere. Within four years the Whig Party would disappear, to be replaced by the Republican Party. A third candidate, nominated by the Free-Soilers, barely attracted any votes. In November, Pierce triumphed handily, winning 254 electoral votes to Scott's 42.
Nor was there ever really any chance that Jane would suddenly approve of her husband's political career. Her hatred of politics ran bone deep. No matter what he said or did now, he and she were destined to be at odds—and she was destined to turn melancholy. Nothing that had happened since his nomination had changed her feeling of gloom. While she tried hard to be cheerful, she wasn't and couldn't pretend to be. Life was all politics now, politics, politics, nothing but politics, damn politics. And she hated politics.
Little in Jane's life had gone as she had wished. Her first child had died in infancy. Her second, Frank Robert, had died at age four. All she had now was Bennie, dear little Bennie, her one source of joy.
And then one day in early January, as she and Franklin and Bennie were riding a train out of Boston, their car suddenly derailed, tumbling down a hill. She and the president-elect survived without injury. But Bennie, right before her eyes, flew through the air and became mangled in the train's wreckage. He died instantly.
There had never really been any chance that Jane would be happy as First Lady—but there had been a chance that she would at least be able to endure as she had endured her many other troubles. But after Bennie's death there was no chance of this at all. Merely retaining her sanity would be difficult.
Deeply religious, she soon found a way to take some comfort from Bennie's death. God, she came to believe, had taken Bennie away so that her husband could focus on his duties as president without distraction.
On this thin thread—this fragile thread—hung her hopes of remaining sane. And then this thread, already pulled taut, was to be stretched to the breaking point—and then beyond.
On March 2, just two days before Pierce was to be sworn in as president, Jane had a chance meeting in Baltimore with a cousin, Charles Atherton, the senator-elect from New Hampshire. At this meeting Jane discovered the secret her husband had kept from her for the past year. Not only had he wanted to be president, he had actively worked to become president.
Pierce had tried to keep the truth from his wife for one full year. And for one full year he had. Now, almost literally on the eve of his inauguration, she had found out the truth: The past year had been a lie. The office hadn't sought Franklin, he had sought the office. When he had said he was surprised to be nominated, he wasn't surprised at all. Behind her back he had been scheming to be elected president.
Most important, perhaps, he had broken his promise.
As she began to absorb this vital news, Jane, whose grip on reality had grown weak since the death of her last son, began to slip into a world of her own. First she had lost Bennie. Now she had lost her trust in Franklin. It was all too much. Never again would she be able to function as she had before. The truth was, she would barely be able to function at all.
On March 4 Franklin Pierce was inaugurated as the fourteenth president of the United States. His wife, ill, angry, and incoherent, refused to attend. Not until the end of the month did she finally agree to move into the White House.
By custom she was now First Lady, although the title would not come into use for another four months. But Jane was always to remain indifferent to the duties of a president's wife. A pitiably shy woman by nature, she had never had much of an interest in socializing. Now, her shyness accentuated by the tragedies that had befallen her, she walled herself off from the outside world, choosing to remain secluded during the four years of her husband's presidency in the family living quarters on the second floor of the White House. During the first two years she joined her husband in public on just one occasion: New Year's Day, 1855. Thereafter she appeared only occasionally. In her absence an aunt took over most of the traditional duties of the First Lady, aided on occasion by Varina Davis, wife of Secretary of War Jefferson Davis.
Since Frank Robert had died Jane had lived her life for Bennie. With Bennie dead, she seems to have had no interest in the living at all. Bennie and only Bennie seemed of interest to her. As the years went by she became obsessed with his memory, idly passing her days in loving communion with his dead spirit, repeatedly twisting a locket of his hair in her fingers or writing him long, loving letters—long, pathetic letters. Several times she even held seances in the White House in an attempt to get in touch with him.* Bitter and disillusioned, she came to blame Bennie's death on her husband, apparently concluding that God had taken away Bennie to punish Franklin for his lies.
What of Franklin, the man she no longer trusted?
He no longer trusted himself. Guilty about the lies he had told, devastated by Bennie's death, and unnerved by Jane's retreat into unreality, he became a shriveled presence in Washington, unable to exercise leadership. To an extent never seen in Washington before or since, his cabinet ran the government; Pierce came to be seen as largely inconsequential.
The presidency has been known to break several men. Pierce arrived in office already broken. Not long after he began his term there once again could be heard—whether with good reason or not, it is difficult to say—the old whisper, _Franklin Pierce is a drunk._
A likable man from youth, Pierce remained likable throughout his presidency. Likable, he aroused little hatred. If anything, because of the tragic death of little Bennie, Americans seemed to feel real warmth for him. Few presidents had ever seemed so human, so vulnerable.
But as the country's troubles over slavery began to accumulate and grow more intense—these were the years, after all, when Kansas began to bleed, as pro-and antislavery factions came to blows—Pierce came to be regarded as a man who was ill suited for the high office to which he had been elected. As the slavery crisis grew worse, Americans looked forward to the day when Pierce would leave.
So, too, did Jane.
Pierce—over Jane's objections—made a pathetic attempt to win a second term, but was, of course, unsuccessful.
No one in the United States was happier at that than his wife. At last they would be through with politics. Not because he wanted to be through with it, but because the politicians and the people were through with him.
*Cass, a native of New Hampshire, had been a hero in the War of 1812. Later he was appointed governor of the Territory of Michigan. He was by this time serving as secretary of war under Andrew Jackson.
*Pierce had helped prepare the instructions that would guide the duelists; the duel ended in the death of his friend and fellow Bowdoin classmate, Maine representative Jonathan Cilley, Whig editor of accepting bribes from the Bank of the United States.
*From the start the war had been most popular in the South and the West. New Englanders were suspicious that it had been foisted on the country by slaveholders eager to expand the "peculiar institution" westward.
*21The Free-Soil Party, organized in 1848, opposed the extension of slavery. Its platform declared bluntly, "[N]o more slave states and no more slave territories."
*The Compromise of 1850 provided for the admission of California as a free state and abolished the slave trade in Washington, D.C., but Southerners enthusiastically backed the deal because it required Northerners to return fugitive slaves.
*In mid-nineteenth-century America, seances were becoming popular. Mary Todd Lincoln was to hold at least one, maybe more, in the White House when she was First Lady. Like Mrs. Pierce, Mrs. Lincoln lost several children.
# 6. The Slavery Crisis
How the fight over slavery divided the country and vastly complicated politics, forcing a desperate James Buchanan to countenance extraordinary measures to retain control, including meddling in the affairs of the Supreme Court and allegedly using bribery to affect the course of legislation in Congress
Nobody had expected much of Pierce. But James Buchanan was different. Buchanan had credentials, classic presidential credentials. He'd been a congressman, senator, minister to England, and secretary of state. He was the kind of man Americans used to elect president before people power, before they began turning to splashy war heroes or mere vote getters. His very bearing was presidential. A man obviously accustomed to responsibility and power.
True, he was old by the time of his election in 1856, sixty-five, but that was held to be an asset. The United States needed somebody old at the helm, somebody who knew their way around Washington and politics. For the country was unraveling. The fight over slavery, which Jefferson had referred to in 1820 at the time of the Missouri Compromise as the fire bell in the night, had finally begun to ring.
To hold the country together in the face of such complex forces was, to be sure, a vastly ambitious undertaking. But then, James Buchanan had always been vastly ambitious.
He had been born dirt poor, in a log cabin in rural Pennsylvania, his mother an impoverished American country girl, his father an orphaned Irish immigrant sent by his relatives to America to live with an uncle. But Buchanan was the kind of young man with a knack for getting ahead and he quickly pulled himself out of poverty, even managing to get himself into college. Arriving in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, as a young man determined to become a lawyer, he apprenticed himself to one of the leading attorneys in town and in no time at all, through hard work, became one. "I determined that if severe application would make me a good lawyer," he was to recall, "I should not fail in this particular; and I can say, with truth, that I have never known a harder student than I was at that period of my life. I studied law and nothing but law." In the evenings—"almost every evening"—he took lonely walks along the edge of town so that he could practice speaking, since a lawyer needed to know how to speak extemporaneously.
Buchanan loved Pennsylvania and wanted to remain there; his father had insisted he should remain there. But so eager was he for advancement that one day he decided to move to Kentucky in the hope that opportunities there would be bigger. He quickly returned, however; expecting to find little competition in Kentucky, he discovered to his astonishment that the competition there was even greater. "Why, sir, they were giants," he remarked after recalling his encounters with the likes of Henry Clay and others, "and I was only a pigmy. Next day I packed my trunk and came back to Lancaster—that was big enough for me. Kentucky was too big."
At age twenty-one he was admitted to the bar. By age twenty-two he became a partner of Lancaster's chief clerk and was appointed a prosecutor in nearby Lebanon County. And then, at age twenty-three, Buchanan ran for a seat in the state house of representatives.
Shortly after he announced for the legislature, the British burned down the Capitol. Buchanan immediately volunteered to join a citizens' militia to try to force the British out. It appears he volunteered merely as a means to win election. Within two weeks he was back in Lancaster. The war went on without him.
He insisted in his campaign speeches that he was running because he believed in Federalist principles and wanted to see them enacted into law. But his real reason for running, he confided to his father, was that he wanted to improve his legal practice; as a legislator he could attract better clients.*
Buchanan ran a hard race and in the end, despite his youth, won. The following year, still in need of clients, he ran again—and won again. But that was his last race for the state legislature, for by then he had become an established presence in the legal community. While he continued to show an interest in politics, he devoted most of his time to building his practice. Then, a few years later, he finally began to look around for a wife.
Whom a person marries says a lot about a person. Whom James Buchanan chose to marry said a lot about him. But then Buchanan always chose well.
In all of Lancaster when Buchanan arrived there was just one Yale graduate his age, Amos Ellmaker. Buchanan had managed to join his circle, eventually becoming his best friend.
In all of Lancaster there was just one son of a rich governor Buchanan's age, a young man by the name of Molton Rogers. Buchanan had succeeded in becoming his friend, too.
And in all of Lancaster there were just a handful of rich families with rich daughters available for marrying. Molton Rogers was to marry one of them. And in 1819, at age twenty-eight, Buchanan announced that he was to marry another, her cousin Ann Coleman.
Rogers's girlfriend was the daughter of Cyrus Jacobs, a Pennsylvania ironmaster, one of the innovative breed of Americans responsible for the birth of the Industrial Revolution. Buchanan's girlfriend was the daughter of Robert Coleman, an Irish immigrant, who was also in the iron business. Cyrus Jacobs was rich, reputedly one of the richest men in Pennsylvania. Robert Coleman was even richer—one of the richest men in the United States. In reference books he's identified as one of the country's first millionaires. When Buchanan would be invited to the Coleman mansion, he always had to ask which one. There were half a dozen, named after the ironworks on which the family fortune was based: Elizabeth Furnace Mansion, Speedwell Forge Mansion, Hopewell Furnace Mansion, among others.
Old man Coleman himself had become rich by marrying into the family of one of the richest ironmasters in his day. Now Buchanan was to become rich by marrying into the family of one of the richest ironmasters in _his_ day.
History, it seemed, was repeating itself—seemed, but perhaps wasn't. For no sooner had Buchanan announced his engagement to Ann Coleman than it suddenly appeared to be in jeopardy, undermined by a devastating whispering campaign. Behind his back people began to say that James Buchanan was marrying Ann solely for her money.
Almost anybody who pursued Ann would have been followed by the same rumor. Other young men had chased after her, and _they_ had been followed by it. So it was not damning that the rumor followed Buchanan. But what was damning was that in Buchanan's case people in society circles believed that it was true.
Buchanan simply struck many as a man who was almost too eager to make it; they got the sense he would do _anything_ to make it. As the news of his engagement spread they became sure of it. And as they did, their comments turned nasty. There was, to begin with, the matter of his birth in a log cabin. _A log cabin!_ Of course, others had been born in log cabins, too, but they had the sense not to go after the richest girl in town. _Who does James Buchanan think he is, anyway?_ And what about those parents of his? _His mother was so pretentious she named her second son George Washington, for heaven's sake!_ And his father— _Why, he's a sharp trader, honest but conniving._ Buchanan himself said that his "father was a man of practical judgment"; wasn't Buchanan "practical," too? _Bet James Buchanan thinks marrying that Coleman girl is "practical."_
But if Buchanan's intention in going after Ann was to get his hands on her fortune, he was to learn it would not be easy.
Old man Coleman, then seventy-one years old, was protective of his daughter Ann and skeptical of the motives of all the young men who courted her. Soon it wasn't just the neighbors who were saying that James Buchanan was after her for her money, Coleman himself was. And once he became suspicious, it was just a matter of time before Ann became suspicious as well. And soon she did.
Buchanan himself seemed to give her a reason. In the months leading up to their engagement in June, he had tended to her every need, visiting her often. But almost immediately after the engagement he found he didn't have time for her. In July, it seemed, he had to travel home to see his family in Mercersburg. In August he suddenly announced that he would be going to Bedford Springs for several weeks to vacation. Beginning in September and extending through October, November, and into December, he was deeply involved in a complicated legal case that required him to make frequent trips to Philadelphia.
Ann naturally became distraught. Perhaps he was just after her for her money. Buchanan kept explaining that he simply didn't have spare time because of the pressing nature of his big legal case, in which many of Lancaster's most prominent citizens had an interest. But Ann wasn't so sure. After all, he continued to be active in politics; in November he had even attended several meetings called to debate the Missouri Compromise. To be sure, the Missouri Compromise was important, but so, in Ann's view at least, was his impending marriage to her.
Buchanan in his own self-interest should have resumed courting Ann in the manner she desired. It is one of the big mysteries of his life that he did not.
In early December, no longer able to stand his neglect, Ann sent Buchanan a note to complain. A friend, recounting Ann's reproach, wrote that she felt "Mr. Buchanan did not treat her with that affection that she expected from the man she would marry." Consequently she had begun to conclude that "it was not regard for her that was his object, but her riches."
Faced with this insult to his honor Buchanan reacted passively—and entirely uncharacteristically. On the many previous occasions in his life when he had felt mistreated or misunderstood, Buchanan typically had fought passionately to defend himself. It was one of his most noteworthy traits. As a seventeen-year-old, for instance, he had been kicked out of college for disruptive behavior. But, convinced that he had been wronged—his grades after all were better than anybody else's, and his behavior had been no worse, he believed—he had appealed on his own to the president of the board of trustees to be reinstated (and was). Subsequently, on account of his record of disruptiveness, school officials had denied him the right to deliver an honors address at graduation even though the leading honor society had unanimously chosen him to give it. ("I have scarcely ever been so much mortified at any occurrence of my life as at this disappointment," he was to recall years later.) Once again he appealed their decision and once again he got it reversed. And passionate as he had been as a teenager, he was even more passionate as a young man. In the legislature he gave a speech one day that inadvertently alienated many of his warmest supporters, raising concerns that he was a wild-eyed radical. Buchanan, in response, protested loudly that he'd been misunderstood. Then he gave another, deeply conservative speech, just to make _sure_ he wasn't misunderstood.
But on this, the occasion of his latest contretemps—and undoubtedly the most important of his life to date—he mysteriously declined to assert himself. Instead of showering Ann with affection and love, he merely wrote her a short, cold note insisting that he wanted her, not her money.
Their relationship continued as it had before despite Ann's reservations, but given her feelings almost any incident might lead her to end it. Shortly there was one. Returning from Philadelphia on yet another of his business trips, Buchanan briefly stopped to visit a friend, William Jenkins. Jenkins wasn't home but his wife was, accompanied by a "pretty and charming young lady." Nothing of consequence happened, but when Ann heard that Buchanan, who claimed not to have time for _her,_ had spent an afternoon in the company of this "pretty and charming young lady," she became disconsolate and then enraged. Shortly thereafter she wrote him a hasty note breaking off their engagement. He received it at the courthouse. Witnesses said that his face turned pale as he read it.
Buchanan may have wanted to try to change her mind, but he was never to get the chance.
After breaking off the engagement Ann became wretched, utterly miserable. Alarmed, her mother persuaded her to go to Philadelphia to visit her sister, hopeful that the change of scenery would get her mind off her failed romance. But moody as she had been in Lancaster, in Philadelphia she grew moodier still, quickly slipping into a profound depression. Doctors and friends didn't know what to do with her. Her behavior baffled them. One minute she might be chatting happily as if nothing were wrong, appearing to be, in the words of a judge who happened to visit, "in the vigor of health." The next she could be ranting incoherently, "attacked with strong hysterical convulsions."
Shortly after midnight on Thursday, December 9, just six days after arriving in Philadelphia, Ann Coleman suddenly died. The doctor called to the house said it was "the first instance he ever knew of hysteria producing death." To this day no one knows what the cause of death was. Possibly she killed herself.
Buchanan heard the news early Thursday, morning—and immediately sank into a morbid depression of his own. In a note to Ann's father he confided, "I may sustain the shock of her death, but I feel that happiness has fled me forever." In the coming days he was so overcome by grief that he could barely communicate. Trying to write an obituary for Ann, he found he could not and turned the task over to a friend.
In his note to her father Buchanan indicated that "she, as well as I, have been much abused." And he added: "God forgive the authors of it." But if Buchanan felt abused, the Colemans—and the Colemans' many friends—felt that it was they and Ann who had been abused, not he. Little as they had cared for him before, then he had merely been a social-climbing parvenu after Ann's money. Now he came to seem something more sinister—in the words of one harsh observer, "her Murderer."
Her father returned Buchanan's note unread. When the funeral was held Buchanan did not attend. He was not invited.
Broken in spirit, bereaved by Ann's death, Buchanan returned home for Christmas to his family in Mercersburg. The weeks he spent at home were among the worst in his life, so terrible he refused ever to speak about them.
In January he was back at his law office in Lancaster. At the beginning of February, when the Lancaster court reopened after the holiday recess, Buchanan could be found roaming the hallways, buttonholing clients and hobnobbing with community leaders just as he had before. He was obviously hurting, but not hurting so much as to neglect business.
Buchanan, who had put so much of himself into his business, could not afford to neglect it. What else did he have? At age twenty-eight he was alone, and it appeared now that he was to remain alone.
As he contemplated his prospects, however, he could see that they were not what they once had been. The legal practice he had been building up for years depended on his friendly relations with the Lancaster establishment. And it appeared that he had seriously damaged his standing with the establishment—or at least with that segment of the establishment associated with the Colemans. As the days went by he discovered that he was seeing fewer and fewer of the clients he had signed up through the Colemans' influence. Now instead of knocking on his door for help, they knocked on someone else's. All he had worked for seemed in jeopardy. "It is now thought," a friend wrote, "that this affair will lessen his consequence in Lancaster as he is the whole conversation in town."
For many years he had known nothing but success, the steady onward and upward success of a man on the make. Now he was slipping backward, a man on the make who was not making it. His close friends—his close friends outside the Coleman circle—stood by him during these days of anguish. But Buchanan realized having these friends was not enough. He needed new friends, new influential friends to replace the ones he had lost, and he needed them quickly if he was to survive the Coleman tragedy and scandal.
Slowly he began finding them. The Colemans, while powerful, had enemies. And as it sank in that Buchanan was now an enemy of the Colemans, _their_ enemies became his friends. But no matter how many new friends he seemed to pick up, he never seemed able to pick up enough. As February turned into March and March into April, Buchanan became desperate to find new friends.
It was at this point that Buchanan showed just how ambitious a man he truly was. In early April 1820, just four months after Ann's death, he announced that he was running for a seat in Congress. By running for Congress he could find new friends. "I saw," he admitted years later, "that through a political following I could secure the friends I then needed." As once he had run for a seat in the state legislature to improve his legal career, now he would run for the national legislature to do the very same thing.
A Federalist at the time, Buchanan had the great fortune to be running in a district favorable to Federalists. After locking up the nomination, he sailed to victory.*
Buchanan became a popular representative and remained in Congress ten years. During all that time he occasionally dated, but he never married.
Why did he never marry?
Two explanations have been offered over the years to account for his behavior. One— _his_ explanation—was that he simply was never able to recover from Ann's death ("I feel that happiness has fled me forever"). The other, advanced recently by some writers, was that he was homosexually inclined and uninterested in marriage—which, if true, would account for much that is mysterious about his engagement: his uncharacteristic passivity, the empty excuses he made for not seeing Ann, his inability to offer evidence of his love when she demanded it and needed it. Though it was obviously in his financial interest to make every effort possible to save the relationship no matter how he felt about his own sexuality, he may have been so confused about his sexual identity that he was unable to press ahead with his plans to marry. In effect, he may have been at war with himself, one very powerful force pushing him toward Ann, another pushing him away, leaving him, pathetically, in a desperate state of ambivalence.
The evidence for his homosexuality is weak but intriguing. His closest relationship in life seems to have been with William King, the Alabama senator with whom he roomed in the capital, whom some cruelly referred to on occasion as "Miss Nancy."
It was not unusual for members of Congress to room together, but Buchanan's arrangement with King apparently was. President Polk's law partner, Tennessee representative Aaron Brown, referred to Buchanan and King as a couple, "Mr. Buchanan _& his wife_." At the time Brown made this observation, however, Polk and King were competing for the vice presidential nomination of the Democratic Party in 1844; there had even been talk that King and Buchanan might run as a team. Thus, it is clearly possible that Brown, as a friend of Polk's, may simply have been indulging in political rhetoric. Politics seems to have been very much on Brown's mind. In the same letter Brown speculated that King might be better off running for vice president on his own, unshackled to Buchanan; a "newspaper puff which you doubtless noticed, excited hopes that by getting a _divorce_ she [King] might set up again in the world to some tolerable advantage.... _Aunt Fancy_ [King] may now be seen every day, triged _[sic]_ out in her best clothes and smirking about in hopes of securing better terms than with her former companion."
Buchanan repeatedly over the years pushed the Democratic Party to select King as its vice presidential nominee. But whether anything should be read into this is doubtful. On each of the three occasions when Buchanan behind the scenes fanned the candidacy of his erstwhile roommate—in the elections of 1840, 1844, and 1852—it was in Buchanan's political interest that King be chosen. Since King had no presidential aspirations of his own, his selection as vice president would help deprive other candidates who did of a national forum. And, of course, it was Buchanan's hope to have as few rivals as possible to compete with in the presidential sweepstakes.
Nothing in Buchanan's correspondence indicates he was a homosexual. But in King's papers there exists a tantalizing hint that _he_ was. In a letter to Buchanan, written after King was appointed minister to France, King confessed: "I am selfish enough to hope you will not be able to procure an associate who will cause you to feel no regret at our separation." And then, he added: "For myself, I shall feel lonely in the midst of Paris, for here I shall have no Friend with whom I can commune as with my own thoughts." On another occasion King reflected that the United States might be better represented in Paris "by someone who has more the spirit of a man."
In 1852 William King was elected vice president of the United States—the only bachelor vice president there ever was.
In 1856 James Buchanan was elected president of the United States—the only bachelor president there ever was.
James Buchanan made winning the presidency his life's work. He ran for president four times, putting himself forward as a candidate in every election from 1844 to 1856. Each time he lost he couldn't believe it. He was sure that he was better than the fellows who had won. And it ate at him, turning him bitter and hard. By the time he finally assumed the office he was very hard, ruthless almost. And, of course, as always, very, very practical. Given what was happening to the country these were not inconsiderable qualities. They seemed to be just the qualities a president needed to deal with the burgeoning slavery crisis. But Buchanan was to discover that toughness wasn't enough. To do what had to be done to save the Union he needed raw power. And he lacked power.
Slavery had been bedeviling American politicians from the beginning. But always before the politicians had been able to compromise their way out of danger and division. In 1776 Jefferson had agreed to drop from the Declaration of Independence language suggesting that the slave trade was immoral. In 1820 Henry Clay had successfully brokered the Missouri Compromise, the deal that prohibited slavery from the northern part of the Louisiana Territory. In 1850 Clay and Douglas working together had successfully arranged for the admission of California as a free state, even though its admission upset the traditional balance of power in the Senate between the free and the slave states.* Then in 1854 there had been the crisis over Kansas and Nebraska. And that had changed everything. For there didn't seem to be a way out of the crisis that left anybody happy. Not even Stephen Douglas was happy. And it had been Douglas, in a way, who was responsible for the mess.
Douglas was a very proud, very determined man, the senior senator from Illinois, and in the 1850s the greatest orator in the Democratic Party. By everybody's estimate an able and wily politician, he was almost certainly a presidential prospect. Douglas hadn't wanted to step on the hornet's nest of sectional politics. All he had wanted was to get a railroad built westward through Illinois and the Nebraska Territory. But nothing was simple in the supercharged atmosphere of sectional politics in the 1850s. Douglas couldn't get his railroad unless he first got a government established in Nebraska. And he couldn't get a government there unless he got Congress's approval. And he couldn't get Congress's approval unless he got the support of the South. And he couldn't get the support of the South unless he agreed to the repeal of the Missouri Compromise (which prohibited slavery in the Nebraska Territory), and which had become for the South one of the many symbols of federal oppression.
In 1854 Douglas finally succeeded in obtaining a bill that created a government in the Nebraska Territory (actually two territories, Kansas and Nebraska). But the passage of the Kansas-Nebraska Act alarmed the North. Instead of slavery being outlawed under the Missouri Compromise, it would be left to a vote of the people. For Northerners the Missouri Compromise was sacred; repealing it was unthinkable, and they considered the Kansas-Nebraska Act a repeal. And now _they_ felt oppressed. Douglas tried to reassure Northerners that because the people of the two territories would have the final say in deciding whether to have slavery or not, slavery would be banned because they would surely vote not to have it. As he also pointed out, he was doing nothing more in Kansas and Nebraska than he and Clay had done in California, where the question of slavery had also been left up to a vote of the people, a practice known as popular sovereignty. But Northerners remained unconvinced. More to the point, as far as Douglas was concerned, so did many of his own constituents.
The year of the presidential election, in 1856, the conflict turned bloody in Kansas as pro- and antislavery forces battled for control of the territory. First proslavery agitators sacked the town of Lawrence, a haven of antislavery Northerners. Then, three days later, in retaliation, fanatical abolitionist John Brown swooped down on a community of Southerners in Potawatomie and slaughtered five farmers.
The very same week, a thousand miles away, in an uncanny parallel development, the fight in the U.S. Senate over Kansas and slavery also turned violent. Massachusetts senator Charles Sumner, an abolitionist, was seated at his desk in the Senate when he was suddenly attacked by a proslavery congressman. Using a gutta percha cane, the congressman repeatedly struck Sumner about the head and shoulders so many times and with such force that the senator was unable to push himself away from his desk to defend himself, leading to his incapacitation for years. (The attack, of course, was indefensible. It was not, however, without provocation. Sumner had recently given a fiery speech in which he denounced "the barbarism of slavery," which aroused Southerners everywhere.)
By this time the entire country was aroused—and dividing into two camps, splitting families, churches, parties. The Methodists split into Northern and Southern factions. The Whigs destroyed themselves, not even fielding a candidate for president in the election of 1856. Only one major institution was left by then which crossed the sectional divide, drawing support from both Northerners and Southerners, the Democratic Party, and it was so riven by strife that some feared it would go the way of the Whigs. (The Republican Party, which replaced the Whigs, was wholly based in the North.)
The main question preoccupying people was not whether slavery should or should not exist. Most Americans were willing to let the thing remain where it was; over time, it was felt, slavery would slowly peter out. The issue was whether it should be extended into the new territories the country had recently acquired. Northerners, by and large, felt it shouldn't; Southerners, by and large, felt it should.
Complicating matters was the fact that the whole dispute had become symbolical, imbuing every little controversy with apocalyptic significance. In the South a victory by the North was considered evidence that the federal government wanted to abolish slavery. In the North a victory by the South was considered proof of the existence of a slave-state conspiracy. Southerners especially felt put upon, and in their defensiveness began tightly clutching the "peculiar institution" as they had never clutched it before. Where once they had regarded it simply as a necessary evil, they now began calling it a positive good. The more people argued, the harder it became for the politicians to practice the art of compromise.
Things were now so out of control that hotheads in the South were demanding that Southerners secede from the Union and hotheads in the North were responding that they should.
From the beginning Buchanan knew he was in a new world, this world in which Americans were settling their differences violently, in which the old parties were collapsing, in which compromise was proving feeble. And he decided that with a new world came new rules. To save the Union, to keep things together, he would have to do things no president before ever had. If Northerners and Southerners couldn't work out their differences peaceably and rationally then he, as president, would have to find a way to work things out for them. To take the contentious issues out of politics altogether.
It was an extreme idea. And it was antithetical to the principles of self-government. Americans were supposed to possess enough good sense to be able to reach settlements themselves. But they hadn't been able to with regard to slavery. And Buchanan didn't want to wait to see if they could. Wait, and things might spin completely out of control. So, as he was putting together his government in the months before his inauguration, he hatched a secret plan to end the crisis over slavery by getting the Supreme Court to intervene. If the Court came out with a ruling saying that the Missouri Compromise was unconstitutional, then all the squabbling about the compromise would suddenly become moot. Those Northerners who had been using the repeal to keep the pot of sectional politics boiling would discover that the fire under the pot had gone out.
To be sure, there was more to the conflict than just the controversy over the Missouri Compromise, but it was Douglas's bill to repeal the compromise that had turned the fire up under the controversy, giving the fanatics on both sides an issue susceptible to extreme emotionalism. It so happened that the Court had a case at hand in which such a ruling could plausibly be made, as Buchanan well knew. It was the case of Dred Scott, a slave who had used the federal courts to sue for his freedom on the ground that he had lived for a time in the area covered by the Missouri Compromise where slavery was excluded.
Presidents aren't supposed to meddle in the internal proceedings of any court, and especially not in those of the Supreme Court. If found out, a president who did very possibly could face impeachment charges. But Buchanan didn't care. _Something_ had to be done. So in February, just a few weeks prior to his inauguration, he wrote a couple of his friends on the Court, explaining his views and asking for action. By luck the Court was already planning to do the very thing Buchanan wanted. While the majority initially had decided to make a narrow ruling denying Dred Scott the right to sue in federal court on the grounds that he was a Negro and as such wasn't a full citizen of the United States—Negroes, Chief Justice Roger Taney would write, "had no rights which the white man was bound to respect"—they had learned that two justices on the minority side planned to include a defense of the Missouri Compromise. Angry, the majority had decided to declare the compromise unconstitutional on the grounds that it infringed the property rights of slaveholders.
Buchanan was very smart and very shrewd and thought that he was being smart and shrewd in asking the Court to intervene in the Missouri Compromise controversy. But it was a fool's dream to think that a Supreme Court opinion could defuse the crisis over slavery. Things had _already_ gone too far for that. When, two days after Buchanan's inauguration, the Court issued its opinion in Dred Scott, there was a firestorm of criticism. In this new world not even the Supreme Court, powerful as it was, was powerful enough to restore calm. Buchanan had miscalculated. The crisis would not simply go away. Kansas would remain to fester. Politics, instead of growing more civilized, would grow less and less so.
Even if slavery had not been an issue in the 1850s, the country would have been difficult to govern. For it was changing rapidly, at a ferocious, befuddling pace. As a people Americans were used to change. The population had been doubling every twenty-three years on average since the Revolution. But change as it was now happening was of a scale not even Americans could wholly grasp. Most fundamentally of all, perhaps, the transportation system was in the process of being revolutionized. In 1840 there had been fewer than three thousand miles of railroad track in the entire country. By 1850 there were more than twelve thousand, making it easier and easier for farmers to get their products to market. Farmers more than anybody experienced change the most. Inside two decades the wooden plow had been replaced by the iron plow, and the iron plow in turn had been replaced by the steel plow. These improvements along with the invention of the McCormick reaper had radically altered the lives of those who worked the fields.
Because of these changes and because of the great spurts in population growth, farm production rose dramatically. In the space of barely two generations (1823 to 1861) sugarcane production rose from 20,000 to 270,000 tons. Between 1850 and 1860 cotton production more than doubled. And as the railroad pushed west so, too, did farm production. In 1840 it was South Carolina that made cotton king, growing more cotton than any other state. In 1860 Texas had overtaken South Carolina in cotton production. Wheat and corn farming also moved west. In 1840 most wheat was grown in New York, Pennsylvania, and Ohio, by 1860 in Illinois, Indiana, and Wisconsin. In 1840 most corn came from Kentucky, Tennessee, and Virginia, by 1860 from Illinois, Ohio, Missouri, and Indiana.
Just behind these economic changes in importance were the changes in American demography. In 1820, 72 percent of the American people made their living from agriculture. By 1860 just 40 percent did. As Richard Hofstadter observed, the United States was born in the country and moved to the city. In 1820 there was just one city with more than a hundred thousand people. By 1860 there were half a dozen. Much of the increase was due to the great unprecedented growth in immigration. The magic year was 1842, the first year immigration broke a hundred thousand. Just five years later, in the wake of the Irish potato famine, it broke two hundred thousand, in 1850 three hundred thousand, in 1854 four hundred thousand.
The United States was still an overwhelmingly white, overwhelmingly English-rooted country. Not until the end of the century would immigrants arrive in such numbers as to shift the balance substantially. But already immigrants were having a profound effect on politics. Almost everywhere they settled politics became rougher, tougher, and dirtier. Before the arrival of the first great wave of immigrants, vote stealing had been a rare occurrence in American politics. Beginning in the 1850s, as the political parties realized the ease with which they could manipulate immigrants, it became almost common in places.
The election of 1856 was important, apart from the issue of slavery, because it was the first in which there was massive vote fraud. Virtually all the fraud took place on the Democrats' side, Buchanan's side (the immigrants mostly voted Democratic). As it happened, Buchanan didn't need stolen votes; he won by nearly half a million. But neither he nor his managers knew going into the campaign that victory would come so easily. While the opposition was divided between Republican John C. Frémont and Know-Nothing* Millard Fillmore, nobody knew how well they would run. Neither party had ever run a national race before, and neither of their candidates had ever run for the presidency. It was all new territory—confusing territory.
In the circumstances Buchanan wouldn't have been human if he hadn't been tempted to tolerate vote stealing on his behalf. It was, after all, his fourth try at the office and certainly his last. Lose this chance and there'd never be another. And vote stealing was a distinct possibility. Because immigrants wanted to be naturalized, and because the Democratic machine controlled the naturalization bureaucracy in some of the biggest cities, Democrats figured out that they could control thousands of votes. Naturalize the immigrants, throw in some cash as a bonus, and they'd vote as they were told.
Buchanan, devious by nature and desperate to win, desperate to control politics in a situation that was otherwise out of control, gave in to temptation. The chief agent behind the vote fraud was John Forney, an old Buchanan friend, who was headquartered in Philadelphia, and who was to help win Pennsylvania. Forney was later to have an unseemly falling out with Buchanan, but at this time the two were very close, keeping constantly in touch through the mail. At one point Forney all but admitted in one of his letters to Buchanan what he was up to, boasting, "We have naturalized a vast mass of men.... The Opposition are appalled. They cry fraud. Our most experienced men say _all is well."_ Buchanan, no naïf, certainly understood what was happening but did nothing to stop it.
After the election, prosecutors investigating the Philadelphia naturalization bureau uncovered widespread evidence of abuse. At trial a clerk admitted he helped print up 2,700 phony forms for the Democrats to use to naturalize immigrants illegally. Others testified that immigrant voters were given bribes to vote Democratic.
All of this cost lots of money, more than several hundred thousand dollars, it's estimated. Where did the money come from? Quite a bit apparently came from Wall Street, which was just emerging as a financial powerhouse. Some came from federal officeholders, who were required to kick back about 3 percent of their salaries to the Democratic Party. And some came from military suppliers for the navy.
Several years later it was revealed that Buchanan himself had authorized George Plitt, a friend, to lean on suppliers in exchange for campaign donations. In one case a supplier of live oak (a particularly durable hardwood), W. C. N. Swift of New Bedford, Massachusetts, was pressured into giving $16,000. After Buchanan was elected, navy officials rigged a bid on live oak in such a way that Swift and only Swift was guaranteed to win it. Other money may have come from Democrat Isaac Fowler, the head of the New York City post office. As was subsequently revealed, over a period of years he stole more than $160,000 from the post office. He himself was broke. Most of the money, it was surmised, went into the coffers of the Democratic Party.
Buchanan, always astute, made sure to conceal his involvement in the various schemes concocted to put him in the White House. During the campaign the cover-up held, encouraging Buchanan to think that he had successfully controlled the process, successfully manipulated the electoral system as no candidate before ever had. It was almost as if the great changes sweeping the country had been an advantage. But for the breakup of the Whigs, the rise in immigration, and the sudden availability of abundant new sources of campaign cash, Buchanan might never have been able to make it to the White House. But the promise of control was to prove illusory. The forces at work in the country were simply too great, too unwieldy, to be reined in. In the end they would bring down Buchanan, and shortly afterward, nearly succeed in breaking apart the Union.
The year 1856 had been a good one for James Buchanan. The next, 1857, would prove to be one of the worst years any president ever had. It was slavery that made it a terrible year, and it was slavery in Kansas in particular that made it so. What was at issue was, simply, whether Kansas would come into the Union as a free or a slave state. Buchanan early on privately told the governor of the territory that the choice should be left up to the people of Kansas. On this, he said, "I am willing to stand or fall. It is the principle... at the foundation of all popular government." But during the summer Buchanan, facing great pressure, changed his mind. The pressure came from the South and in particular from four states in the South: South Carolina, Alabama, Georgia, and Mississippi. Let Kansas come in free, these four states hinted, and they would vote to secede from the Union. At this point it was just a threat, but it was a threat any president had to take seriously.
Given the political realities, Buchanan had to take it _very_ seriously. For his political base was in the South. It was the wily Louisianan John Slidell who had manipulated the Democratic convention into nominating Buchanan. And it was the South that gave him his margin of victory. Buchanan had carried every Southern state except Maryland, which had gone for the Know-Nothings. The three most powerful figures in his cabinet were Southerners: Secretary of the Treasury Howell Cobb, Secretary of the Interior Jacob Thompson, and Attorney General Jeremiah Black. Alienate the South, and Buchanan might as well resign.
An incident at the dawn of his administration had indicated just how dependent he felt himself to be on Southern power. He had wanted to install his good friend John Forney—who had helped deliver Pennsylvania and who had orchestrated the wonderfully efficient vote fraud in Philadelphia—as the editor of the administration paper, the _Union._ But the Southerners had objected and Buchanan had caved. "Sir," Forney had complained, "you have surrendered me." "I have been compelled to do so," Buchanan had responded.
There was a lot of talk that Buchanan had caved simply because he was weak. Not weak politically, but morally, spinelessly weak. And there seemed to be something to this contention. A lot of people thought so, even his Southern friends on whom he so depended. On one occasion Howell Cobb was supposed to have remarked contemptuously, when asked about the opposition to a particular piece of legislation he favored, "Oh, it's nothing much; only Buck is opposing the administration," as if Cobb were the administration and Buchanan merely a figurehead.
Actually Buchanan wasn't morally weak, as many thought, but politically weak. Like other presidents he was discovering that events can push a leader to do what he doesn't want to do, to do what he knows he should not do, but cannot in the end help doing. A really politically strong president, a Jackson, could confront events and try to mold them, but Buchanan was not a Jackson. He lacked Jackson's power. Dealt a weak hand, Buchanan, time and again, would have to cave in to Southern pressure.
There is no doubt, if a fair vote had been held, that Kansas would have opted to become a free state. It's estimated that fewer than two thousand voters favored slavery and that ten thousand or more opposed it. But a fair vote could not be held in Kansas in 1857. Things had gotten that far out of whack. Several votes were held to decide the question. But on each occasion the process was utterly corrupt. At the October election, proslavery forces engaged in massive fraud, pumping up their numbers dramatically through wholesale manipulation of the ballots. In one county alone, McGee, which is located on the southern border of the state, more than twelve hundred voters were reported to have cast proslavery ballots even though there weren't twenty bona fide voters in the entire district. It was subsequently revealed that the names of many of the voters on the rolls had been signed in the same handwriting.
In December the voters were told that they were being given the chance to vote on a proslavery constitution drafted by a proslavery convention held in the fall in Lecompton. But the vote was rigged. The way things were arranged, Kansans would have slavery whether they voted yes or no. Vote yes, and slavery would be permitted as it was throughout the South. Vote no, and no new slaves would be admitted to the state, but the masters with slaves already there would be allowed to keep them. There were only about two hundred slaves in all of Kansas at the time, but antislavery residents believed, quite reasonably, that they should have the choice not to have any. And besides, they didn't like the fact that the constitution had been written by proslavery forces. Thus, when the vote was held the antislavery majority boycotted the election. In early January, in response to a public outcry, yet another election was held, and this time it offered a fair choice. A simple up or down vote on the Lecompton constitution. But even this election was marred, proslavery forces refusing to participate, which discredited the results, a lopsided rejection of Lecompton, by a vote of 10,226 to 162.
The January vote, flawed as it was, demonstrated amply that Kansans did not want slavery. But in February Buchanan, pressed by his Southern supporters, recommended to Congress that Kansas be admitted as a slave state under the rejected Lecompton constitution. It was a galling decision, the kind a king in medieval England might have lost his head over. But Buchanan thought he could get Congress, where he had Democratic majorities in both houses, to go along.
It was a serious miscalculation, the worst in his long career. And it cost him dearly, damaging his reputation and losing him old friends. The remarkable thing is Buchanan didn't seem to care what happened to him. Fast running out of options, he felt that the course he took was the only one he could. He simply had to accommodate the Southerners again. And he had to do so no matter what the cost. Fail and the Union would break up. So Buchanan wouldn't let himself allow for failure. He would fight as he had never fought before, fighting as if to the death, fighting as no president ever had.
Buchanan had already proved on several occasions that he felt entitled to break rules when they got in his way, as he had to engineer his election. But now he acted as if there were no rules at all, or none anyway that he was bound to respect. It was as if his credo had become _Anything to win, but above all, win._
It was at the very start that Buchanan signaled his willingness to do anything to win. Douglas had come to the White House in December to register his opposition to Lecompton. The two had once been friends but now, it was to become apparent, they would be enemies. Douglas told the president that Lecompton was wrong, morally wrong, and that he, the senator who had championed popular sovereignty, would have to make a fight of it, even if that risked splitting the Democratic Party apart, even if it meant breaking with the administration. Buchanan listened quietly, then announced, calmly but determinedly, that if Douglas insisted on attacking Lecompton he would be crushed, ruined, destroyed. Douglas wasn't used to being talked to this way, wasn't used to being threatened, and he instantly turned red-hot angry, telling Buchanan that he would oppose Lecompton. Then he stormed out of the White House. Thus began a fight to the finish between the two titans of the Democratic Party, one a president of the United States, the other a man who very much wanted to be, and who, in 1860, would indeed run for president.
That the fight was going to turn ugly was inevitable, not only because both sides were determined to win, but because the fight was in the family. It wasn't a battle between Republicans and Democrats; the Republicans would oppose Lecompton and nothing could be done about that. It was a battle between Democrats. And that was to make it especially bloody. For there was plenty that a Democratic president could do to a Democratic member of the legislature who opposed him.
As a baby step he could stop inviting the legislator to social functions held at the White House. And that was promptly done, which was not insignificant. Legislators like to be able to boast about their intimacy with the president. Less so in those days than now, because presidents in those days lacked the power and majesty they have today. (Pierce had been distraught to learn on the night of his inauguration that he had to make his own bed when he went to sleep; nobody had bothered to do it for him.) But the loss of White House social privileges was something.
Of far more importance to a legislator was patronage, the lifeblood of a party politician. And federal patronage then was almost totally controlled by the president. Of the 26,274 civilian jobs then in existence in the federal government, 25,713 were directly controlled by the chief executive. And he could fill them with almost anybody he wanted. Almost anybody—for there was as yet no civil service. That gave him enormous leverage with politicians. Presidents were to complain it was a terrible ordeal being in charge of so many jobs; Polk said he worked on almost nothing but the patronage his first nine months in office. And they frequently moaned that for every person they hired they alienated ten whom they didn't. But none volunteered to give up the responsibility for it was the source of great, overwhelming power; the one in ten who _was_ hired usually did everything he could to keep the administration in power. Jackson had used the patronage to build up the Democratic Party. Tyler had used it to try to take over the Whig Party. And now Buchanan would try to use it to get legislation passed.
Use of the patronage in this way was not revolutionary. Jackson had used the patronage in a limited way to win the bank war. But Buchanan was to go much farther than Jackson ever had, much farther than any other president had ever dreamed of going. As the fight wore on, he dismissed dozens and dozens of federal employees to punish the legislators who had sponsored them. Some employees had been friends for years. But Buchanan didn't stop to worry overmuch about this. They would go because they had to go. And that was that ("I have been compelled to do so").
It was Douglas he was after most, of course. And it was Douglas he decided to make an example of. Douglas was especially vulnerable at the time because he was up for reelection in 1858 and facing a tough opponent, Abraham Lincoln. To keep the Democratic Party unified in Illinois in the face of Lincoln's strong challenge, he needed to control the federal patronage. But he could not. Buchanan controlled it.
Buchanan exercised his control like a tyrant, taking cruel pleasure in his humiliation of Douglas. Buchanan's most egregious act was to replace the Douglas man in charge of the Chicago post office with Isaac Cook, an enemy of Douglas's who had held the job before. Cook was a known swindler who had boldly attempted to pass off a phony land title on the federal government to pay off an old debt. The attorney general under Pierce had caught Cook red-handed and insisted on cash payment. But Buchanan's attorney general accepted the title! Chicagoans were appalled and predicted that Cook would again try to swindle the government. Unsurprisingly, he did, stealing thousands of dollars from registered mail. Still, Buchanan refused to remove him.
It was all unprecedented and it was terribly destructive, self-destructive, for it did terrible damage to the Democratic Party, weakening its value as a national institution, and leading ultimately, in 1860, to its division into Northern and Southern factions, one to be headed by Douglas, the other by a Southerner, John Breckenridge, Buchanan's vice president. It was a tragedy for the country, a tragedy for Buchanan.
In the end Buchanan was unable to win the approval of Lecompton. The Senate approved, the House refused. A compromise measure was then quickly adopted to, in effect, start all over, requiring Kansans to vote yet again on Lecompton. To encourage them to vote yes the Congress offered the people a bribe. Approve Lecompton, and the new state would be given five million acres of public land for free. In August the people of Kansas went to the polls. By an overwhelming majority they voted against Lecompton.
But at least the Southerners had not seceded. As long as Kansas wasn't admitted to the Union as a free state there was still hope they wouldn't.
Terrible as his first two years as president had been, Buchanan's last two were worse. In the fall elections the one Democrat he wanted defeated, Stephen Douglas, won. And a raft of Democrats he wanted to win, lost, costing the party control of the House. The Republican victory in the House gave Buchanan's critics the opportunity to use the full power of Congress against him and they proceeded to do so almost immediately. Already the Republicans had uncovered evidence of corruption in the administration that had proved embarrassing. Representative John Sherman, intelligent and honest, had uncovered the cozy deals struck with the military suppliers who'd contributed to the Buchanan campaign in 1856. But what was to come out now was shocking and outrageous and it was forever to stain the Buchanan name.
Republican representative John Covode was not, in 1860, a well-known figure, either nationally or even in his own state of Pennsylvania. But he was disturbed by what he had been hearing about the Buchanan administration, particularly a claim that Buchanan had attempted to bribe two members of Congress in the vote on Lecompton, and when he could bear sitting on the sidelines no longer he decided to do something about it: to open a formal, detailed, investigation of the president of the United States.
Covode had not planned on a career in politics. A poor boy who had made good despite a lack of formal schooling, he had accumulated a fortune as a mill owner and railroad investor. But he had done such a good job as a justice of the peace, in which he had earned the nickname "Honest John," that he had been propelled forward politically as many successful businessmen have in American history, serving first in the Pennsylvania state legislature and then in the U.S. House of Representatives. He was not lacking in partisan fervor. He deeply believed in the Republican Party and was a member of the Republican Executive Congressional Committee, which was responsible for electing Republicans to Congress. But he was driven in 1860 by what appears to have been a simple honest zeal for the truth. He was, in short, that most dangerous kind of person to people in power, a man on a mission, and a man Buchanan was soon to despise.
The Covode Investigation Committee held its hearings in secret. But as with all congressional hearings there were leaks, and these quickly became the subject of one sensational news story after another. The lead-off witness was Cornelius Wendell, an erstwhile friend of Buchanan's and for years the editor of the administration's party newspaper, who had made hundreds of thousands of dollars off the government as the printer of official documents. He revealed that over the past four years he had diverted more than a hundred thousand dollars into the coffers of the Democratic Party. Some of the money, he said, had gone to the Know-Nothings in 1856 in Pennsylvania and New Jersey to draw votes away from the Republicans. Other substantial amounts, he testified, had been used to help prop up the party's newspapers. Buchanan himself, he said, had personally picked out the papers that were to receive subsidies.
The involvement of the government's printer in political activity was an old story, going back as far as the Washington administration, when Hamilton had awarded government printing contracts to his pet newspaper. Somebody, after all, had to print government documents. Might as well be a political friend. Polk had even arranged to have a friend buy a newspaper for the Democratic Party with funds advanced by the government itself, which were to be paid back out of the money earned on the contract. But nobody outside the government had quite realized until Wendell came along how profitable the contracts had become and that they had become a rich source of campaign boodle.
That was new and shocking. But what really alarmed Americans was another of Wendell's allegations, that at Buchanan's instigation he had spent between thirty and forty thousand dollars to bribe members of Congress to vote in favor of Lecompton. Cynical as Americans were becoming about politics—and they were becoming more and more cynical the more they learned—they had discounted the accusations of bribery that had prompted Covode to convene his hearings. Bribery seemed totally outside the American political experience—and was. Never before had there ever been any evidence of a president resorting to bribery to influence the outcome of a congressional debate; only Fillmore had ever been accused of bribery and he had subsequently been cleared.
Buchanan adamantly denied the charge, and for a time Americans thought it might not be true. After all the hearings had been held in secret. Nothing seemed official. What they knew they knew from leaks published in the partisan press. But then the committee published the results of its investigation in a fat book, more than eight hundred pages long, and that seemed to settle the matter. For the book was filled with so much detail, so many facts, as to be very convincing, despite a lame attempt by Democrats to discredit it.
According to the report: some congressmen had accepted payments directly; some had made Wendell deposit the money in fictitious accounts; one had demanded—and gotten—a gigantic sum, some fifteen thousand dollars. Democrats contended that the money had been used to pass a private patent bill, not Lecompton, but the one person who could have proved that refused to testify. Wendell himself subsequently denied that Buchanan had anything to do with the effort, contradicting his own statements that Buchanan had, but that was after Wendell had been subjected to extreme pressure.
Anyway, it wasn't just Wendell who was saying that money had been used for bribes. John Forney, Buchanan's old friend from Philadelphia, who had been denied the editorship of the administration paper and gone on to take over another, testified that he had been offered an eighty-thousand-dollar printing contract if he came out in favor of Lecompton. The bribe had been offered by Jeremiah Black, Buchanan's attorney general. "You can get all that post-office printing," Forney said he was told, "if you will write an editorial as long as your hand."
Of course, both Forney and Wendell might be lying. Both had had a falling out with the administration and neither of their accusations was verifiable. But the Covode report included one other sensational finding that _was_ provably trustworthy and because _it_ was, everything else seemed trustworthy, too.
Publicly Buchanan had always maintained that the December 1857 vote on Lecompton, in which the people had had no real choice on slavery (no choice because they'd have slavery whether they voted yes or no), had been legitimate. It was, after all, the vote on which he had hung his entire proposal to admit Kansas as a slave state. But the committee in April produced a letter in Buchanan's own handwriting that proved he privately believed, contrary to what he had publicly been saying, that Kansans should have the right to vote slavery up or down, as they did in that second January vote, a vote he deliberately ignored because of the South's objections. In effect, the committee had caught Buchanan red-handed. And people reasoned that if Buchanan, under pressure from the South, could defend a vote he really didn't believe in then he was totally untrustworthy, the kind of man who probably could countenance the bribery of legislators and newspaper editors. In June the House of Representatives voted to censure Buchanan.
Buchanan had gone into the fight over Lecompton promising to ruin anybody who crossed him. But he himself had been ruined. He left the presidency a broken man. By then the secession movement had become unstoppable. What Buchanan had feared would happen, was happening, the South breaking away from the Union. Buchanan believed secession was illegal, unconstitutional. But he also believed that under the Constitution he lacked the power to do anything about it. After Lincoln's election, the states prepared to leave. Buchanan watched and did nothing.
Certainly his constitutional scruples hobbled him. But even if he had decided he legally could take military action to keep the states from seceding he probably could not have stopped them. With the Republicans hounding him in Congress and the country sharply divided, he could not have called out the army on his own authority. His political base had been in the South; to call out the army he would have needed a base in the North. All he really possessed in the end was his willingness to connive to achieve his ends, and conniving wasn't nearly enough.
Because Buchanan had been a bachelor, he had installed his niece Harriet as his White House social director. Harriet was a vivacious young woman who was an immediate hit in Washington, but she wasn't always popular with Buchanan himself. One of their big disputes was over dancing. Buchanan had banned dancing from the White House; Harriet wanted the ban lifted. Another dispute had to do with the mail, _her_ mail. An inveterate busybody, the president enjoyed reading his niece's mail, even private letters she exchanged with her best friend. Harriet naturally had taken exception to Buchanan's interference. Eventually she found a way to write her best friend in secret: She sent her mail out via the kitchen steward's empty tub of butter.
Events had gotten beyond Buchanan's control. So in the end had even his young niece Harriet.
Buchanan, one of the weakest presidents in American history, was followed by Lincoln, one of the strongest. But they were not as different as they appeared. Though Lincoln was far more honest, he, too, was a scrappy, conniving, wire-pulling politician. And like Buchanan, he was also very, very ambitious.
*His father, initially opposed to his running, came to agree he should after learning of Buchanan's real purpose.
*Ironically, the Federalists also ran Ann's brother, Edward Coleman, for office, as a candidate for the state senate.
*Since 1796 the Senate had been evenly divided. For each slave state that was admitted, a free one was. As of 1850 there were fifteen free and fifteen slave states. California was, thus, the sixteenth free state.
*The Know-Nothings believed in stopping immigration, to keep the United States for native Americans (that is, for white Anglo-Saxon Protestants). Committed to secrecy, members were instructed-when asked questions-to say that they knew nothing.
# 7. The Story of Abraham Lincoln
How a boy who started out with nothing became the shrewdest politician of his generation, successfully restoring the Union by assuming powers no president before had ever dreamed of using
In the early 1830s New Salem, Illinois, where Lincoln lived as a young man, had but one chance of becoming something. One very small chance. So small a chance that the community's great optimism about the future was almost laughable. For its one chance rested on the hope that the village could become a port of call for steamships traveling on the narrow Sangamon River. And as yet only one steamship had ever passed by New Salem on the Sangamon, let alone the dozens of ships that would have to pass by for the village to benefit. And all indications were that dozens of ships would not be passing by. For there were only three months—March, April, and May—when the river was passable at all. Before March the river was too full of ice to permit safe ship travel; after May it was too low. Of course, theoretically enough ships might pass by during those three short months to make New Salem prosperous, but after that first ship came through, it became increasingly apparent that no others were going to follow. And no other ships did. For the river as it then existed was difficult to navigate. The one steamship that had gone through had gotten stuck on a dam built at a New Salem mill; Lincoln, a hired hand on the ship, had had to work for hours to get it unstuck. Moreover, improving the river for ship travel would take money, and no one had any.
As the limited future of New Salem became more and more evident, its population, which had been climbing quickly, soon stopped climbing. Then it began to decline. And shortly this village, which had been founded in 1829 with fervent hope, was out of hope. In 1839, it died. Everyone moved out.
New Salem had not become anything, but at least it had had a slim chance. Abraham Lincoln in the early 1830s seemed to have hardly any chance at all. He had nothing. He was nothing. And it seemed likely he always would have nothing and be nothing.
Like New Salem, though, he too was full of optimism. His, too, was also almost laughable. Neither his father, his mother, nor his stepmother had ever amounted to anything. Nor had his grandparents. Nor had anybody in the Lincoln line except for an uncle—his father's oldest brother—who, because he was the oldest, had inherited just enough money to get a satisfactory start in life, a satisfactory enough start that he was able to break out of the poverty that was so common for Lincolns. But he was the only one. And he wasn't around when Abraham was growing up, so Abraham did not benefit from his uncle's good fortune.
Lincoln's father, orphaned at age six, and unable under the law to inherit anything, had had to make his own way in the world without help. Like many in frontier America, he tried hard, but never seemed able to succeed. Several times as Lincoln was growing up his father uprooted the family to make a fresh start, moving the clan from Kentucky to Indiana to Illinois. Each time the family's troubles, already terrible, grew worse. Shortly after they moved to Indiana Lincoln's mother died, plunging the family into chaos. Then they moved to Illinois, and every member of the family came down with "the ague"—malaria. Their first winter there was one of the worst in the history of Illinois, ever remembered as the winter of the "deep snow." First the blizzards came, then the freezing rain, then the howling winds. The temperature remained so cold so long—twelve below zero for nine weeks—that the farm animals, the horses and the cows, froze where they stood—froze and died. Even the deer died.
Many people on the frontier lived with hardship as Lincoln had, and took pride in surviving. Lincoln did not. In his frontier roots he felt not pride, but shame. Shame because his people were poor and undistinguished. Shame because his people were ill-educated—his mother couldn't even write her own name—and shame, above all, because his people had not only a history of poverty and ignorance but also a history of immorality. His mother's sister, his aunt, had had an illegitimate child, Dennis Hanks, who lived for a time with the Lincolns. And Lincoln's own mother, Nancy Hanks, had been an illegitimate child. His whole life Lincoln refused to talk about her. It would be too simple to say he despised her. He despised no one. And anyway, he seemed to think that his own gifts, which seemed absent in any other Lincolns, could be traced to the man who had fathered her out of wedlock: a well-to-do Virginia planter.
Lincoln thus was eager to escape his family, but for a long time he could not because they needed his help. As was the custom of the time, his father even hired him out to earn cash. As was also the custom, when the young man returned from work, his father pocketed every cent Lincoln had earned.
And then finally the day came when Lincoln was able to light out on his own, ending up in New Salem. Twenty-two years old, he was free, hopeful—and terribly disadvantaged. For not only was his family poor, he was poor. And not only was his family ignorant, he was ignorant. He had spent only a few winters in school. His biographers estimate that in all he had no more than a year's formal education. Lincoln himself recalled that he had learned only "to read, write and cipher."
Lincoln, of course, hoped, as many young men did, to be able to improve himself. And like others, he hoped to improve himself quickly. But unlike others, he had, at age twenty-two, a plan.
New Salem was not a place where the average young man could hope to improve his position very quickly, even if he had a plan. If he was lucky, he might after a few years as a farmhand accumulate enough money to buy a little property and build a cabin. If he was really ambitious, he might dream of starting his own farm. But the movement up and ahead, though usually steady, was usually slow. To become a success a person had to wait, and then, often, wait some more.
And Lincoln was not the waiting kind. Waiting was what his father had done, and it had gotten him nowhere. That was the trouble with waiting: There was no guarantee that it would bring success.
Lincoln at twenty-two was skilled in only one area, unfortunately, farm work. And the waiting was longest for farmers. Only after years of toil could a farmer become successful. And sometimes, after years of work, success didn't come. A man might work and work and work, work and wait until his hands became gnarled and old, and in the end still have nothing. One bad winter could bring ruin. And, likely as not, there would be bad winters, winters like the one the Lincolns faced when they first arrived in Illinois. And bad summers, too, summers when the rain never came, summers when the crops died and shriveled.
Besides Lincoln hated farm work. Hated it even though he was good at it, so good that he became famous for his farm work. His wood chopping especially was legendary. "My how he could chop," a friend remembered. "His ax would flash and bite into a sugar tree or sycamore, down it would come. If you heard him felling trees in a clearing, you would say there were three men at work, the way the trees fell." And it wasn't just chopping wood that he was good at. He was also good at cornhusking. Recalled another friend: "He was the best hand at husking corn on the stalk I ever saw." But Lincoln wasn't interested in chopping wood or husking corn. Wasn't interested even though that was what a young man with his background ordinarily would be interested in. And not only would be interested in but would _have_ to be interested in, because there was no other thing for which he was suited. While there was plenty of opportunity on the frontier, it was difficult to take advantage of that opportunity if you didn't have an education, and Abraham Lincoln did not have an education. Nor did he have any of the other advantages that might make up for a lack of education: connections, money, or power. He truly was a person without advantages. As he himself later said, he was at the time he entered New Salem a "friendless, uneducated, penniless boy."
America was the land of opportunity, but for a boy like Lincoln the opportunities were thin.
Unless, that is, the boy had brains—brains and an ambitious plan. Lincoln had both. With luck, the plan would help him leap to success, help him go from being a nobody to being a somebody.
Just how ambitious he was no one guessed when he first arrived in New Salem at age twenty-two. To those who first met him he seemed to have no ambition at all. In those days, as in ours, a man was often judged by how he dressed. Lincoln dressed badly. A fifteen-year-old at the time noted that he wore "a ragged coat, an old drooping hat, and a pair of tattered jean pants, the half of one leg which was then off... [and] a coarse pair of gaping shoes."
But if Lincoln at first did not strike people as ambitious, he soon enough showed them he was. On March 15, 1832, little more than six months after arriving in New Salem, he made a startling announcement in the pages of the local newspaper, the _Sangamo Journal._ He was running for a seat in the state legislature.
He was, by then, all of twenty-three years old.
Six months before, when he had moved to New Salem, no one had known who Abraham Lincoln was. He had been so unknown that he had had to fight Jack Armstrong, the local bully and leader of the Clary Grove Boys, to prove himself. (He had trounced Armstrong in a wrestling match. They quickly had become friends.)
And now he was running for office.
What was remarkable about this, his first campaign for office, was not how he ran. He ran the way candidates always ran. He issued a platform, gave speeches, and traveled around the district to meet the voters. No, there was nothing extraordinary about the way he ran, but that he ran at all.
And that he ran for this particular office. Other young men interested in politics are also known to have run for office. A few even ran at his young age. But when they ran at that age they ran for local office, to fill an opening as an election clerk or as a constable. Lincoln in his very first drive ran for a seat in the state legislature.
To run for any lesser office would have meant waiting longer for success. And Lincoln did not want to wait.
Lincoln knew that his decision to run would no doubt shock people. He tried to explain it: "Every man is said to have his peculiar ambition," he said in his announcement:
Whether it be true or not, I can say for me that I have no other so great as that of being truly esteemed by my fellow men, by rendering myself worthy of their esteem. How far I shall succeed in gratifying this ambition, is yet to be developed. I am young and unknown to many of you. I was born and have ever remained in the most humble walks of life. I have no wealthy or popular relations to recommend me. My case is thrown exclusively upon the independent voters of this county, and if elected they will have conferred a favor upon me, for which I shall be unremitting in my labors to compensate.
Years later, after he had become a success, some young men in his party complained that "older men" were keeping them down. How, they wanted to know, could they make their mark as he had made his? "You must not wait to be brought forward by the older men," he told them. They had to rely on no one but themselves. "Do you suppose that I should ever have come to notice if I had waited to be hunted up and pushed forward by the older men," he asked. The answer was obvious. He had done it all himself. No one else was pushing Abraham Lincoln at age twenty-three to run for the state legislature but Abraham Lincoln.
The odds, unfortunately, were against him. Not only was he uneducated. Not only was he poor. Not only was he young. He was also new to the community. Those voters he had been able to meet in the six months since he had moved to New Salem he had befriended. But he had not been able to meet many voters. There were fewer than twenty-five families in New Salem. To win one of the four seats from his district, he would have to get to know hundreds and hundreds of families. And he would have to get to know them quickly: There were just five short months until the election.
And then, as brief a time as he had to get to know all those people, he suddenly had even a briefer time. In April, just a few weeks after he entered the race, war broke out with the Indians, and Lincoln signed up for duty. It was a minor war—the Black Hawk War—and Lincoln never saw any action; afterward he would joke that his greatest fight had been with the mosquitoes. But by the time he got back from the war in July there were, instead of just a few months to campaign, just a few weeks.
A few weeks to put the past behind him, a few weeks to make his mark in the community and become somebody, a few weeks to begin putting real distance between himself and his hated frontier roots, a few weeks to end the waiting. A few short, frustrating weeks.
And he didn't even have anyone to help him. No wife to aid in spreading the word, no party leaders to give him advice, no friends to pass out handbills (his friends were busy working). Lincoln didn't even have a horse to ride. His horse had been stolen in the final days of the war.
All he had was himself.
In future campaigns he would be his own greatest weapon, for he was a genius at politics. But the Lincoln who would one day bedazzle the voters, winning them over with his logic and anecdotes and jokes, was not the Lincoln who faced them in the election of 1832. The Lincoln the voters saw that year was, one of them was to remember, "a very tall and gawky and rough looking fellow." His pantaloons didn't even "meet his shoes by six inches." Lincoln himself was well aware of his inadequacies. In his March announcement he had referred to himself as a "youth." "Considering the great degree of modesty which should always attend youth," he had admitted after a lengthy dissertation on the necessity of internal improvements, education, and lower interest rates, "it is probable I have already been more presuming than becomes me."
And yet even then, even at age twenty-three, he showed promise. For even then he possessed his ability to communicate. Not the ability he was to show later, of course, but ability nonetheless. The very same person who noted that Lincoln's pantaloons were six inches too short also noted that "he made a sensible speech." And even though his speechmaking was to improve, "the manner of Mr. Lincoln's speeches then was very much the same as his speeches in after life.... In the election of 1832 he made a very considerable impression upon me as well as upon other people."
He had eighteen days to make "sensible" speeches—the eighteen days between his return from the war and the date of the election. And they proved to be not enough days. When the election finally came on August 6, Abraham Lincoln lost, ending for now his use of politics as a way out of poverty and obscurity.
But he had not lost badly. There had been thirteen candidates in the race. The top four had won election to the legislature. Lincoln had come in eighth.
And in the New Salem precinct— _his_ precinct, where people knew him best—he had won in a landslide. Of the 300 votes that were cast, he had received 277, feeding his appetite to be "truly esteemed of my fellow men."
But it was just a taste. And Lincoln, his appetite whetted, wanted more. Some poor boys on the make spend their lives hungering after money. Others after power. Still others after position. Lincoln shared with these boys, poor boys like himself, the desire for money, power, and position. But above all at this time he craved the approval of the crowd. The election showed that he had the approval of his New Salem neighbors, but their approval was not enough. He needed more, needed to get the approval of his neighbors' neighbors, needed to get the approval of the people who had voted against him. To get their approval he would have to run again.
So he did.
But this time he was to see to it that he had a real chance of winning. The last time he had let the Indian war get in his way, which kept him away from the voters until the final weeks of the campaign. This time he would do everything to win.
Everything meant everything: studying the law, becoming a presence on the local political scene, even, oddly, becoming a postmaster.
He had considered becoming a blacksmith and actually became a surveyor. But his great professional ambition was to become a lawyer; lawyers seemed to run things. Over the next two years, even though he had no legal training, Lincoln began to argue cases before the local justice of the peace. He even drew up legal documents: a mortgage for William Green, a deed for Jesse and Christiana Baker, a bond for David Rutledge (brother of Ann, with whom Lincoln was supposed to be in love).
To increase his visibility in the community he began to attend political functions, taking on burdensome and unrewarding political tasks. In early 1834 he even agreed to be the secretary at a political meeting called to nominate a candidate for governor.
To further increase his visibility he became the New Salem postmaster. What Lincoln realized was that the postmaster was in a particularly advantageous position for a politician. The job would give him access to the local newspapers, allow him to become friends with a wide variety of voters, and give him the power to help people; if they could not afford to receive their mail (at the time the recipient of mail instead of the sender paid its cost), he could use his official frank to let it through for free. Using the frank in this way was not legal, but Lincoln seems not to have worried about that. He frequently used his frank to help people, even though each time he did so he risked a ten-dollar fine. (He never got caught.)
Lincoln later described the postmaster job as insignificant, but getting it was a coup. Jobs in the post office then—and for many decades after—were handed out to party loyalists as a reward for service. Lincoln as a loyal party worker could expect to receive a place in the post office—but only if his party was in power. And his party was not in power. There were two political parties then in existence: the party of Henry Clay, which would evolve into the Whig Party, and the party of Andrew Jackson, which became the Democratic Party. And Lincoln was firmly aligned with Clay, and Clay had not won the presidential election in 1832. Jackson had. And Jackson men believed in using the power of patronage to fill federal offices with members from their own ranks. Fortunately for Lincoln, the Democrats were willing to allow him to have the job of postmaster in New Salem, probably because it was not a terribly lucrative job and no Democrat seems to have vied for it. But obviously an important consideration was that Lincoln, despite his affiliation with the Whigs, was acceptable to the Democrats.
This was not because Lincoln was a likable fellow, though he was. It was because he had shrewdly decided it was in his interest at this time to be acceptable to everybody. Reviewing the election results from his first race, he had concluded that what was important was not engaging in partisan wrangling, tempting as that was, but becoming better and better known. Where he was known best—in New Salem—he had run best.
Avoiding the wrangling had been difficult as Lincoln had become more and more political. But throughout 1833 he had avoided it. And the next year he continued to avoid it even as his political work, already heavy, grew heavier still. And then came the next campaign, in the spring of 1834. And even then he avoided it. The last time out he had issued a long three-point platform; almost laughably long, it took up several pages and included more than seventeen hundred words—longer than President Jackson's recent inaugural address. This time there would be no platform at all, nothing to indicate where he stood on the issues, nothing to indicate how his approach to politics differed from the Democrats'. The last time, even though he had had little opportunity to make speeches because of the short period during which he was able to campaign, he had given a lot of speeches. This time, even though he had months and months and months to give speeches, he gave hardly any at all. Instead of giving speeches he went out and shook hands. Once, he came upon a large group of field workers taking in wheat. Lincoln, rather than give a speech, pitched in to help. He got their support.
He got nearly everybody's support. Even the Democrats agreed to support him. He did not give up his Whig ideas. But he kept them to himself.
And this time he won.
Once again thirteen candidates ran, but Lincoln, who had come in eighth before, now came in second, giving him one of the four seats to which Sangamon County was entitled.
He was twenty-five years old.
Twenty-five years old and broke, more broke now than when he had first moved to New Salem. He had been debt-free then. Now he was burdened with debts. On impulse he had bought a half interest in a New Salem country store, paying for the investment with a promissory note. At the time it had seemed like a smart move; owning a store would give him respect and a steady income. But it would prove to give him neither. He and his partner, an alcoholic who regularly got drunk, were terrible businessmen. In the hole to begin with, they soon got in deeper. The longer they stayed in business the more they lost. And then his partner died, leaving Lincoln to pay not only his own half of the debt load, but his partner's as well. The sum came to more than one thousand dollars. Lincoln referred to it as his "national debt."
To get out of debt Lincoln had taken up surveying, teaching himself the rudiments of the profession the same way he had begun teaching himself the law: by borrowing books and studying them until he knew them by heart. But not even becoming a surveyor could help make much of a dent in his debts. Lincoln, poor when he got to New Salem, was remaining poor, so poor he could not even afford a permanent home. He would live a few weeks with one family, then a few weeks with another. Sometimes he would stay a few months. There were about twenty-five families living in the village then. Lincoln was to live with many of them, renting a back room or just a bed.
The legislature was scheduled to meet in December. Nine days before the session began, the Sangamon County sheriff paid Lincoln a visit. A man who was owed $211 wanted to be paid. _Could Lincoln pay? No._ The sheriff would then have to confiscate his property: his saddle, bridle, and surveying instruments—even his horse.
Lincoln would show up at the first session of the legislature broke, but he would not look broke. Before he arrived he borrowed some money from a friend to buy a new suit—his first suit. It cost a whopping sixty dollars.
What Lincoln did after he arrived is revealing. He drove himself relentlessly. Just four days into the session, he introduced his first bill. Within a week he wrote another bill for a fellow legislator. Soon this self-taught man, who had never taken a single law class or even worked a day in a law office, this man who had not yet received a license to practice law, was writing laws for other legislators who either couldn't write as well as he or who lacked his discipline. Like other members Lincoln was appointed to a permanent committee. Like others, too, he was appointed to special committees. But he was appointed to twelve special committees, more than almost anybody else. And when a report had to be written about the state's contingent fund, a complicated report requiring a deep knowledge of the state's finances, Lincoln, whose own finances were shockingly pitiful, was picked to write it. At the end of the session he was paid $258 for his services. It was more money than he had ever earned.
He was still just twenty-five years old, but it was difficult for people to remember that. He seemed much older. The following December, at twenty-six, he was appointed chairman of a committee.
And then it was time for the next election.
In the last election it had been to Lincoln's advantage not to be too political; despite temptation, he had avoided being political. In this one, just two years later in 1836, it was to his advantage to be highly political. The political parties, formerly inchoate, now suddenly loomed powerful, forcing politicians with an eye on the future to curry the favor of party leaders. And because this was a presidential election, national issues surfaced that added an element of passion to the local political debate.
And now he who had formerly abjured rank partisanship gave himself over to it. He blamed the Democrats for all that was wrong in the country, denounced a critic as "a liar and a scoundrel" (promising "to give his proboscis a good wringing"), and engaged in a raw and ugly debate with a prominent lawyer who had switched his political allegiance to the Democrats after receiving a profitable federal job. "The gentleman commenced... by saying that this young man will have to be taken down," Lincoln remarked in rebuttal. "I am not so young in years as I am in the tricks and trades of a politician." Then, referring to his adversary's recent purchase of a lightning rod, Lincoln sneered that he "would rather die now, than, like the gentleman, change my politics and simultaneous with the change receive an office worth $3,000 per year, and then have to erect a lightning-rod over my house to protect a guilty conscience from an offended God."
Of the four candidates to win election from Sangamon County the last time, Lincoln had come in second. This time he came in first. People liked him.
And he was going places. Just a few months before, he had finally received a license to practice law. A few months later he was registered as an attorney with the Illinois Supreme Court. A few weeks after that he moved from New Salem, which by then was well on its path of decline, to Springfield, where he joined the law office of John Todd Stuart, one of the leaders of the Whig Party. (Stuart had recently run for Congress but lost; he would run again in 1838, against Stephen Douglas, and win.)
Both inside and outside the legislature Lincoln was becoming a powerful figure, but especially inside. Although he still struck many as odd looking, and in repose appeared listless, once he began speaking his face became animated and interesting. And at this session, as his confidence grew, he began speaking more and more often. The newspapers even began printing his statements from the floor.
But it was not for his speaking that he was best known. It was for his work behind the scenes. Two proposals dominated the legislature that session: first, the plan to use state funds to finance a colossal ten-million-dollar internal improvements project, including the construction of railroads, canals, and roadways; and second, a scheme to move the state capital from Vandalia, which was located in the southern part of the state, where the population had remained stagnant, to Springfield, which was located in the middle, near where the population was booming. Lincoln was a leader in both causes. Both won the support of the legislature.
In the next session Vandalia's representatives made a desperate attempt to sabotage the Springfield move. Lincoln singlehandedly derailed the effort.
As Robert Caro has pointed out, practical politicians, when they talk with one another, commonly refer to "easy votes" and "hard votes." Lincoln's votes to support internal improvements and the move to Springfield were "easy votes," easy because, while they were controversial in some parts of the state, they were not controversial in his: The internal improvements would directly benefit his county, as would the move to Springfield, which was located in his county. Voting in their favor thus seemingly posed no threat to Lincoln's career.
Almost all the votes Lincoln cast in the state legislature fell into this same category. One, however, clearly did not: a vote on a measure to approve of slavery in the Southern states. For Lincoln it was a "hard vote," hard because his constituents were in favor of the measure and he was against it. If he voted his conscience, as he wanted to, he could wreck the career he had been working so hard to build up. Years might go by before he was forgiven—if he was ever forgiven.
The people of Illinois were not themselves in favor of slavery. Their own constitution outlawed it. But they were content to let it remain where it already existed. Content not because they were indifferent to the immorality of slavery—though some were; at the time most of the people who lived in Illinois came from the South and lived in the southern half of the state—but because they could not envision how the country could handle the freeing of millions of black slaves. Where would they go? While many white Americans had long hoped that freed blacks could be shipped back to Africa—a hope Lincoln himself was to share—there was no expectation that they would be. That left open the possibility that emancipated blacks would roam freely over the country, settling wherever they chose—perhaps even in Illinois.
And that prospect frightened and appalled the great majority of the white people of Illinois.
The prospect that blacks might freely roam the country also frightened and appalled white Southern slaveholders, of course. But they had a more immediate fear than that their slaves might someday be given their freedom. They lived in fear that their slaves might try to make themselves free _now._ In 1831 Nat Turner had tried to lead the slaves of Virginia in a violent and bloody rebellion. Might not others try to do the same? Soon there were rumors that others were. For two years, from 1835 to 1837, white Louisianans read in their newspapers that their slaves were secretly plotting to rebel and kill their masters. The reports were not true, but whites in Louisiana and all over the South believed that they were. Frightened as whites had been after Nat Turner's revolt, they now grew even more so.
There were many reasons for the slaves to revolt, the most obvious being, of course, that they were not free. But because slaveholders had told themselves for years that their slaves were happy, they felt compelled to find another cause for their slaves' discontent and they did: the birth of abolitionism, which conveniently coincided with the reports and rumors of mass slave uprisings. The more white Southerners thought about abolitionism, the more they became convinced that it was the root cause of the perils facing the "peculiar institution." Had not William Lloyd Garrison, the abolitionist editor of the _Liberator_ (he who had defiantly declared: "I am in earnest—I will not equivocate—I will not excuse—I will not retreat a single inch—and I will be heard") begun publishing his newspaper the very same year as Turner's revolt? He had.
As the cries of the abolitionists began to be heard in the 1830s, whites in the South tried to smother the sounds before they grew louder. They tried to persuade Congress automatically to table petitions seeking the abolition of slavery. They enacted laws to restrict the shipping of abolitionist literature through the mails. They drove home-grown abolitionists out of the region. When those measures proved inadequate, they went further. In an effort to choke off abolitionism at its source—in the North—they began enlisting the state legislatures in the North in their cause. Many Northern legislatures—including that of Illinois—quickly joined, passing resolutions in defense of slavery.
Illinois's resolutions were among the most extreme. They declared that under the Constitution, Southerners had a "sacred" right to own slaves, a right the federal government was powerless to abridge. The resolutions went on to declare that slavery could not legally be abolished in Washington, D.C., as the abolitionists were demanding, and charged that abolitionism was a menace to the Union.
The Founding Fathers—though embarrassed by slavery—had considered the institution a necessary evil. These resolutions made slavery seem almost like a positive good (an argument Southerners themselves were to advance in the 1850s as the institution came under renewed attack).
Seventy-seven legislators voted in favor of the resolutions, six against. Lincoln was one of the six.
He would later say that he hated slavery, hated it as much as the abolitionists did, and that he had always hated it. As a young man traveling down the Mississippi he had been horrified at the sight of slaves chained together like animals. His conscience, therefore, required him to vote against the resolutions, even if doing so put his career at risk.
But he did not intend that it should. There had to be a way to keep both his conscience and his seat. Blessed with a powerful mind, he figured out how: It was pure political genius.
In a statement he and a fellow legislator issued at the end of the session, he agreed with the legislature that slavery was legally protected in the states where it then existed. He also agreed that abolitionism was destructive, which protected him from the ruinous charge that _he_ was an abolitionist, that _he_ wanted the federal government to abolish slavery immediately. But unlike the legislature, he held that "the institution of slavery is founded on both injustice and bad policy," and argued that the federal government could abolish it in the city of Washington, D.C., with the consent of the citizens there.
There was at the time a feeling that one could take just two positions on the issue of slavery: either for it or against it. Lincoln showed that there was a third. His was not a novel position, however. The Founding Fathers had shared it, believing that slavery was evil and that it should be allowed to remain in existence for the time being in the expectation that, like a noxious weed, it could be left to die on its own instead of being pulled out. But in the heated politics of the 1830s most Illinois politicians, frightened by the rhetoric of the abolitionists and unwilling to risk being identified with them, rushed unthinkingly to the proslavery position.
Lincoln undoubtedly ached to strike a blow against slavery, ached to join the abolitionists in fighting it. If he had not been a politician, he very well may have. Slavery deeply offended him. If slavery is not a sin, he would subsequently intone, nothing is. But he was a politician. So when he tackled the issue of slavery, he tackled it carefully.
It was wise that he did so. The politics of slavery, already explosive, were to become in 1837, the year of Lincoln's statement, more explosive still. There were many explosions around the country in 1837. Illinois was where the worst one took place.
It happened in Alton, a small town on the Illinois side of the Mississippi River, deep in the southern half of the state—the southern and conservative half. There in July, Elijah Lovejoy, an antislavery publisher, began producing articles in his newspaper in support of abolitionism. It was just words he wrote. But given the combustibility of those words, he may as well have been using dynamite. In August a mob of Southerners destroyed his printing press, dumping it in the Mississippi. Subsequently friends helped him obtain another press. In September the new printing press was destroyed and dumped in the river. Again he obtained another press. And in November that one, too, was destroyed. In the course of this attack the mob fired on Lovejoy and several of his supporters. Lovejoy was killed.
There were many ways a politician could exercise leadership in this crisis—if he had power. Lincoln did not yet have power. He could not command the army to put down the mobs that were upsetting the peace. He could not convene a conference where proslavery and antislavery adversaries could try to work out their differences. And not for a long, long time would he have power. So he did what politicians without power and without resources have done throughout history when they were eager to try to affect things and make a name for themselves: He gave a speech. It was in January 1838, just a little more than two months after Lovejoy's death.
The speech was delivered before Springfield's Young Men's Lyceum, a local cultural institution, and because it was delivered there Lincoln made sure he sounded statesmanlike. Following in the tradition of the great statesmen of the era—Webster, Clay, and Calhoun—he adopted a noble stance. The speech was filled with references to liberty and justice and character. Eager to strike a patriotic note, he frequently cited the Founding Fathers and even managed to work in references to both the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution. He did all this so successfully that his speech could almost have been mistaken for one by Webster, Clay, or Calhoun—at least the main part could have.
The main part of the address was concerned with the outbreak of violence. Alluding to the Lovejoy incident among others, Lincoln denounced the "vicious portion" of the population which "gathered in bands of hundreds and thousands" to "burn churches, ravage and rob provision stores, throw printing presses into rivers, shoot editors, and hang and burn obnoxious persons at pleasure, and with impunity," warning that if they were not stopped "this Government cannot last." He then argued that the only way to make sure the government did last would be to instill in "every American, every lover of liberty" a "reverence for the laws": "Let every man remember that to violate the law, is to trample on the blood of his father."
The second part of the address, however, was pure Lincoln.
Compelling as the recent events of violence were, in this second part Lincoln could not resist addressing another subject, one more immediate to him even than the fatal riot that recently had rocked nearby Alton: ambition. His stated reason for bringing up the topic was his belief that the country faced a grave threat from the rise of "men of ambition and talents" whose goal in life would be to aspire for something "beyond a seat in Congress, a gubernatorial or a presidential chair." As he put it somewhat hysterically:
What! Think you these places would satisfy an Alexander, a Caesar, or a Napoleon? Never! Towering genius disdains a beaten path. It seeks regions hitherto unexplored. It sees no distinction in adding story to story, upon the monuments of fame, erected to the memory of others. It denies that it is glory enough to serve under any chief. It scorns to tread in the footsteps of any predecessor, however illustrious. It thirsts and burns for distinction; and, if possible, it will have it, whether at the expense of emancipating slaves, or enslaving freemen.
Ambition was not at the time a subject on most people's minds. Violence was. But it was evidently a subject on Lincoln's mind, and his real reason for bringing it up would appear to be that he was obsessed by it. He was still very young, just twenty-eight: a young man full of ambition—and evidently uneasy with it. In the speech he asked: "Is it unreasonable... to expect, that some man possessed of the loftiest genius, coupled with ambition sufficient to push it to its utmost stretch, will at some time, spring up among us?" And that this man would, like a Caesar, subvert our liberties? It was not unreasonable at all. "Distinction will be his paramount object; and although he would as willingly, perhaps more so, acquire it by doing good as harm; yet, that opportunity being past, and nothing left to be done in the way of building it up, he would set boldly to the task of pulling down."
Was Lincoln thinking of himself? There is no way of knowing if he was. But what is known is that he was very much concerned at this time with the theme of ambitiousness. To his one close friend, his only close friend in life, Joshua Speed, he had confessed on a recent occasion that he was ferociously ambitious, driven by the desire to link his "name with something that would redound to the interest" of his fellow men. Thus far, he had conceded, he had not fulfilled his ambition, having "done nothing to make any human being remember" that he had lived. But he remained hopeful.
Understanding Lincoln's ambition is essential to understanding Lincoln. But it was not a subject on which he himself was open. Although he was a prodigious writer—his collected works run to ten stout volumes numbering thousands of pages—only a few of those pages include the admission that he was ambitious, so very few that the same passages get quoted over and over and over again by historians eager to come to grips with his relentless struggle to improve himself and his position. His law partner for two decades, William Herndon, complained that Lincoln was the most "shut-mouthed" man who ever lived. This is also quoted over and over again by historians in explanation of the dearth of revealing quotes from Lincoln. And Herndon was not the only person to believe that Lincoln was "shut-mouthed." So did many of the others who came into contact with him. Leonard Swett, who rode with Lincoln on the circuit for eleven years, remarked that Lincoln "always told enough of his plans and purposes to induce the belief that he had communicated all; yet he reserved enough to have communicated nothing." David Davis, a political confidant for years, related that Lincoln "was the most reticent, secretive man I ever saw or expect to see." Lincoln himself admitted: "I am rather inclined to silence."
His ambitiousness then is not to be found in his words for he spoke few words on the subject. It is to be found instead in his deeds. And they speak loudly. Barely out of his teens, and with no education, he ran for the state legislature. Then he became a surveyor. After that he taught himself the law and became a lawyer. And, of course, he continued running for the state legislature.
In 1838 he ran for a fourth time—ran and won, of course. As he had in the last election, he won more votes than any of the other candidates in his district. What he had once wanted most—to be "truly esteemed by my fellow men"—he was finally getting.
And still it was not enough.
Lincoln, who had succeeded in winning the approval of his county's voters, now was to try to win the approval of fellow legislators. When the legislature met he immediately announced his intention to run for speaker of the house.
He could not win. The Democrats outnumbered the Whigs. And he did not win. But if he could not be speaker, he could still try to become a party leader. And he became one: the Whig floor leader.
He was twenty-nine years old: still broke, still deficient in his education—but profoundly ambitious, and slowly but surely, becoming more and more successful. As Herndon was to say years later, "His ambition was a little engine that knew no rest."
And like the good solid engine it was, it kept pumping and pumping and pumping.
And then Lincoln, who for years had been more and more successful, suddenly sensed success eluding him.
It was 1840, another election year. Again Lincoln wanted to run for the state legislature. Again he announced that he was a candidate. But this time there were chilling indications that the party he wanted to lead did not want _him._ He told friends he thought he might not even be nominated. As he gave the matter greater thought, he finally began to conclude it was likely he would not be nominated. He did not think his "prospects individually are very flattering, for I think it is probable I shall not be permitted to be a candidate."
The reason he felt this way is unclear. But it was probably because of his strong identification with the colossal internal improvements project he had helped get passed. In the years since it had proved a disastrous mistake. Hugely expensive, it had almost forced the state into bankruptcy. (A year later the state, dead broke, found it could not pay off its bondholders. After great delays, the bondholders finally received fifteen cents on the dollar.) And even though the people had been united behind the program, and both parties had supported it, and his party had made the passage of the project its chief legislative goal, Lincoln as the house Whig party leader was blamed when things went badly.
Despite his fear that he would not receive a nomination, he did. And he was grateful. But it was for a seat in the lower house, the same seat he had held since he was twenty-five, six years earlier. There had been an opening for a seat in the higher house. Lincoln had been passed over for it. A friend with no legislative experience at all had been selected to run for that post.
What had once seemed such a promising political career now suddenly seemed a little less promising. And there didn't seem an obvious way to turn things around. He had no hope of a state appointment, no hope of a federal appointment. Although he was an executive member of the Whig central committee, the state committee that ran the party, it was not his ambition to be a party boss. Perhaps, it began to occur to him, it was entirely possible that he would never amount to much in politics, that all he would be he already was: a member of the minority party of the lower house of the state legislature of Illinois.
His one hope that he would amount to something more rested on his renown as an above-average speaker. His speaking ability, already impressive at age twenty-three when he first ran, had steadily become more and more impressive. Even voters who disliked him for his stand on internal improvements liked to come hear him speak. He was fun to listen to. Unlike many other stump speakers he did not put on airs, and he knew how to connect to folks. He used jokes and anecdotes to make his points as well as logic and facts.
Lincoln was sure it was his speaking ability alone that had persuaded the Whigs to renominate him to the state legislature. "The fact is," he wrote his law partner John Stuart, by now a congressman, "the [rural] country delegates made the nominations as they pleased; and they pleased to make them all from the country, except [Edward] Baker & me, whom they supposed necessary to make stump speeches."
Winning over audiences had always been important to Lincoln. But it had never been as important as it was now. His career seemingly depended on his ability to connect with his audiences. It would do Lincoln little good, however, to keep connecting with audiences in Sangamon County. He had gone as far as a politician could go in Sangamon without being named to either Congress or the state senate, and he had not been named to either of those posts and likely would not be, not at the present anyway. But it could do him a great deal of good to begin giving speeches in the rest of the state. Fortunately, this was a presidential election year. And the Whigs in the rest of the state needed strong speakers. When they began asking him to come and speak, he readily accepted.
The Whigs had not had any luck electing a president. Andrew Jackson had beaten them twice (before they had adopted the name Whigs and were still known as National Republicans) and then his hand-picked candidate, Martin Van Buren, had beat them, too. But in 1840 the Whigs, borrowing from the Democrats' victory book, had found their own Andrew Jackson to rally around, the aging William Henry Harrison.
Harrison was an appalling presidential prospect. Lincoln, ever the loyal party politician, supported him enthusiastically. In the summer, when the crusade to elect Harrison began in earnest, Lincoln, shrewdly exploiting the opportunity to make a statewide reputation, traveled as he had never traveled before. "He stumped all the middle and lower part of the state," a friend remarked in awe, "traveling from the Wabash to the Mississippi in the hot month of August, shaking with the ague one day, and addressing the people the next." And he continued to campaign into the fall, even though doing so took him away from his law practice.
He not only traveled more this election, he campaigned more, giving more speeches than he ever had before. And as he campaigned he began giving different speeches than he ever had. Previously in campaigns he had refrained from demagoguery. In his speech to the Young Men's Lyceum in Springfield he had insisted that emotion had no place in politics. "Reason," he had declared, "cold, calculating, unimpassioned reason, must furnish all the materials for our future defense and support." But now, impelled by ambition to make a bigger name for himself—and scared that it was only his ability to connect with audiences that could help him win a bigger name—he embraced emotion.
Of all the emotional appeals a politician can make in the United States, one always has been guaranteed to provoke a powerful audience reaction: the invocation of race prejudice. Such an appeal was especially powerful at this time, given the raw tensions aroused by the debate over abolitionism. And this was just the appeal Lincoln now made. In debates with Stephen A. Douglas, then a rising star of the Democratic Party, Lincoln denounced Van Buren for having once voted to give blacks the right to vote in New York State. In an early debate Douglas retorted that Van Buren had not in fact done so. But at a dramatic moment Lincoln subsequently produced a letter from Van Buren admitting that he had. A furious Douglas spluttered at him in rage.
There were some parts of the state, the northern parts, where the exploitation of race prejudice, though possibly effective, would not be advisable; the north was being settled by New Englanders who generally shared a more benevolent attitude toward blacks. But Lincoln was not speaking to audiences in the northern parts. He was speaking in the southern parts to audiences largely made up of Americans who (like him) had migrated from the South. And there racism played well.
Lincoln did not dwell on the subject of race. And no one at the time seems to have felt he was exploiting it. Had Douglas not reacted so strongly to Lincoln's introduction of the Van Buren letter, creating a dramatic incident for people to talk about, it is possible that no one would have taken any notice of Lincoln's remarks on race at all. In most of his speeches he concerned himself simply with standard economic Whig doctrines: the importance of state banks and internal improvements. But Lincoln rarely did anything in politics unthinkingly. Evidently he included the racist appeals because he felt he had to. He had to connect, had to win over his audiences as he never had to before. If he did not, he might not have the future he hoped to have.
Eight years earlier he had taken a courageous stand on slavery. And in the future he would continue to do so whenever he could. But on the issue of racism he was unwilling to take a courageous stand. Racism, Lincoln believed, was well-founded as slavery was not. Like most Americans at the time he shared the belief that blacks were inferior. So now, when opportunities arose to curry the favor of audiences by appealing to peoples' racism, Lincoln exploited them for political gain.
And then the returns came in.
And instead of coming in first in Sangamon County as he had the last two times, he came in fifth, barely holding on to his seat. It is difficult to say why he had lost ground. It may have been because of his association with the internal improvements boondoggle. Or it may have simply been that he had spent so much time in the southern part of the state campaigning for Harrison that he had not done enough campaigning for himself. But he _had_ lost ground.
And his efforts on behalf of Harrison had not helped him gain ground. For his efforts, while prodigious, had not been sufficient. Harrison lost Illinois. (Of course he won the presidency.) And his loss in Illinois reflected on those who had tried to help him win—tried and not succeeded, although it was also well known that Illinois leaned heavily Democratic; no Whig candidate for president would ever win Illinois.
By any standard Lincoln's political future was in some jeopardy, even though he had done well as a speaker. Feeling insecure, he made a damaging political mistake, the worst so far in his career. It came in November, just after the election, when he attended a special session called by the governor to save the state from bankruptcy.
Under the law, state-chartered banks, which were run by Whigs, had been allowed to use paper money instead of silver or gold to pay off their debts because of the current weak economic climate; the internal improvements projects had overburdened the state with debt just when a panic had struck, resulting in a devastating depression in Illinois. The law was scheduled to expire at the end of the current legislative session. But the Whigs had come up with an ingenious plan to extend the law: They would simply not allow the legislative session to end. They would keep the legislature in special session until the regular session began in December.
That was the plan, anyway—the Whig plan. The Democrats had another. They would adjourn the house before the beginning of the regular session. The Whigs, aware of this, stayed away from the legislature to prevent the quorum needed for adjourning. But to make sure a quorum wasn't simply declared in their absence without the taking of the ayes and nays—as it could be under the rules—they kept two Whigs on the floor at all times to demand a vote on any quorum call. (The Democrats lacked enough votes to make a quorum on their own.)
Lincoln was one of several Whigs on the floor one day when the Democrats declared a quorum was present. According to the Whig plan he promptly called for a vote, but then realized that enough Whigs were present to make a quorum. He and another Whig tried to make it out the door, but could not; it was blocked by a burly sergeant at arms.
At this point Lincoln might simply have remained and accepted defeat. But he panicked. He and a fellow Whig jumped out the second-story window.
For this act—a useless act since he had already been counted as voting, giving the Democrats the quorum they wanted—Lincoln became a laughingstock. "By his extraordinary performance on this occasion," one of the state's leading newspapers commented, "Mr. Lincoln will doubtless become... famous. We learn that a resolution will probably be introduced into the House this week to inquire into the expedience of raising the State House one story higher, in order to set in the third story so as to prevent members from jumping out of windows!"
These were troubled times for Lincoln. And they were about to become more troubled. He had been scheduled after the election to marry Mary Todd, a Kentucky belle who came from an aristocratic family. But on the eve of the ceremony he broke off the engagement and slipped into a profound depression, brought on by questions of self-worth and his readiness for marriage. Always insecure about his background, he was now more insecure than ever. Friends worried that he might be suicidal. There were rumors that he'd gone crazy. He stayed in bed for an entire week. "I am now the most miserable man living," he lamented. "If what I feel were equally distributed to the whole human family, there would not be one cheerful face on the earth. Whether I shall ever be better I can not tell; I awfully forebode I shall not. To remain as I am is impossible; I must die or be better."
He was to get better, of course. Two years later, having slowly regained his self-confidence, he finally married Mary Todd. But getting better had cost him time, precious time for a man in a hurry as Lincoln was. And now he had not only himself to care for, but a family. As ambitious as he had been before, he now became even more so.
He did not again run for the state legislature. Instead in 1843 he set his sights higher, on a seat in Congress.* "If you should hear anyone say that Lincoln don't want to go to Congress," Lincoln wrote a friend, "I wish you... would tell him... he is mistaken. The truth is, I would like to go very much."
As a Whig, Lincoln had, fortunately, an advantage. Whigs dominated the seventh district, where he lived. Winning the party nomination would be tantamount to winning the general election. But first, of course, he would have to win the nomination, and winning wouldn't be easy. Two other deserving Whigs also wanted the nomination: Edward Baker and John Hardin. And both of them seemed to be in a better position to secure it. Baker, a state senator, was a practiced orator known for a crowd-pleasing gimmick. At stump speeches he would bring along a trained eagle. When he came to the part in his speech where he denounced the Democrats, the eagle would suddenly lower its head and drop its wings. When he began speaking about the glorious future Americans could have under the Whigs, the eagle would magically raise its head and majestically spread its wings, letting out a dramatic scream. Hardin was less impressive as an orator, but perhaps an even tougher opponent. A college graduate, he was extremely well connected; his father had been a U.S. senator from Kentucky.
Lincoln, too, was a tough opponent, despite his obvious failings as a state legislative leader. A self-taught lawyer, he spoke well and he had lots of friends. But enough friends?
There were two stages in the nominating process. First there were individual county conventions, then a district-wide convention. At the convention held by Sangamon County—Lincoln's county—the contest came down to Lincoln and Baker. Here, if anywhere, Lincoln should have been able to win since he had many friends here. It was here in Sangamon County that he had first begun running for office at age twenty-three, here that he had run up his impressive first-place finishes in two state legislative races.
But he did not win. Baker did, Baker who had campaigned with an eagle. To compound Lincoln's troubles, the Sangamon County Whigs then picked him to serve as a delegate for Baker to the district convention. Lincoln, the dutiful Whig, complied, but he complained to a friend that he was " 'fixed' a good deal like a fellow who is made a groomsman to the man what has cut him out, and is marrying his own dear 'gal.' "
Unable to win his own county's support Lincoln immediately began trying to win the support of nearby Menard County. At the least, with its support he could be a player at the district convention. At best, he might even emerge with the nomination—if the Baker and Hardin forces deadlocked.
There was just a small chance that Lincoln would walk away with the nomination, but it was a chance he was willing to take. For it might be his only chance to win for years and years. The seventh district was the most solidly Whig district in the state. Whoever won the nomination that year would probably be elected to Congress not just that term but the term afterward and the term after that and the term after that. The current holder of the office, Lincoln's onetime law partner John Stuart, had won two terms in a row and could easily have won a third; only his desire to retire had stopped him from running and winning a third time. Whoever took Stuart's seat could, therefore, expect to remain in Congress for years. If Lincoln did not win this time, he could be out of the running for many, many years. Lincoln, who hated to wait, might have to wait and wait and then, like his father, wait some more—wait and perhaps never savor the political success he so very much wanted.
Lincoln was still quite young: thirty-four. After waiting five or even ten years he would still be relatively young. But he would no longer be the Wunderkind of Whig politics in Illinois that he had been. Already he was being outdistanced by men who were younger. (Hardin was thirty-three, and Baker thirty-four.) And as the years went by there would be more and more young men yearning to outdistance him.
As he expected, Lincoln won the support of Menard County, putting him in the unique and uncomfortable position of being a delegate for Baker from Sangamon County and a candidate himself from Menard. But for him to win the nomination Baker and Hardin would have to deadlock, and it quickly became apparent that they would not. Hardin clearly had the edge. And he would probably win. And even if he did not win for some reason, then Baker would. The one thing that was clear was that Lincoln would not.
Lincoln had planned. His plan had gone awry. But now as he contemplated the bleak situation in which he found himself, he came up with a new plan, a brilliant plan that addressed the chief danger to his career: the real possibility that whoever won the election this year would keep winning elections for years and years, blocking his own advancement for years and years.
Previously it had been the custom among the Whigs in Illinois (as in most other parts of the country) to let a candidate who was a proven winner keep on winning, election after election, even at the risk that he might become so entrenched that he grew deaf to the people's concerns. Lincoln now was to challenge that custom. If, he reasoned, he could persuade the Whigs in Illinois to reject on philosophical grounds the automatic reelection of incumbents—as some Democrats had in a few other states—then it might not matter who was elected this time. For at the next election the Whigs would insist on someone else.
The district convention in 1843 was held in Pekin, Illinois. It was there that Lincoln put his new plan into effect. Taking advantage of the split in the convention between the Hardin and Baker forces, Lincoln proposed that Hardin, Baker—and he himself—take turns as the party's nominee. Hardin could run this time around, then Baker in 1844, then Lincoln in 1846. (Lincoln could plausibly put himself in the line of succession because of his victory in Menard County, but of course he was farther back in the line than either Hardin or Baker.) After some debate the convention accepted the Pekin Agreement, as it came to be called, on the grounds that "turn about is fair play."
Lincoln, who hated waiting, would now have to wait some more. But unlike the farmer who has to wait and wait and then, perhaps, discover that his waiting was in vain, Lincoln's wait would not be in vain. Through a deft political maneuver he had succeeded in winning a mortal lock on the nomination in 1846, guaranteeing him relief from uncertainty, a kind of relief seldom known by an American politician. All he had to do was wait.
Hardin, as expected, went on to win the election in 1843. Baker, in turn, went on to win in 1844. Then came Lincoln's turn.
If ever there was a sure thing in Illinois politics, it would seem to have been Lincoln's nomination to run for Congress in 1846. The two candidates who would have had the best chance of defeating Lincoln had both agreed at Pekin that they would not try. And nobody else seemed to want to either. The Pekin Agreement, of course, did not legally bind any future convention; the Whigs could decide on impulse to nominate somebody else. Politics often is driven by impulse. But there was no indication the Whigs wanted to nominate somebody else. Lincoln could relax.
But, being Lincoln, he could not relax—and he did not. Beginning in the fall of 1845, nearly a full year before the election, he carefully began lining up support for his own nomination. There were five Whig newspapers in the district; he won the support of four of them. As he rode the legal circuit he stopped in at the homes of important Whig leaders, gathering their endorsements. And then, even though both Baker and Hardin had approved the Pekin Agreement, Lincoln went to each of them directly to find out if they intended to honor it. Baker, the incumbent, expressed the hope that he could remain in Congress. (Lincoln felt that Baker was popular enough so that he probably could remain if he wished.) But Baker agreed that he had an obligation to step aside and promised he would. Then there was Hardin.
Hardin did not say that he would be a candidate for Congress. But neither did he say he would not be. Lincoln drew the conclusion that Hardin would be. And soon there was an indication Lincoln was right. A paper under Hardin's influence suddenly began touting Lincoln as the next Whig candidate for governor. This was a devious ploy. Lincoln did not want to run for governor, and there was no chance in any case that he could be elected. The purpose of floating his name for the office was simply to try to derail his congressional candidacy. If enough people talked him up for governor, he would have trouble pressing his campaign for Congress.
In January, Hardin openly announced his candidacy for Congress. But by then it was too late. While Hardin had dithered, Lincoln had accumulated wide support—accumulated it and then kept quiet about it. Keeping quiet was essential. His silence meant that Hardin was in the dark about the extent of his efforts while there was still time to undermine them. In February Hardin withdrew. In May, Lincoln was nominated. Finally he would have his seat in Congress, the seat he had worked to get for four long years.
Then, just ten days after he won the nomination, the United States went to war with Mexico.
And that seat he had wanted so much, the seat that seemed so valuable as a symbol of glory and success, suddenly seemed less so. Now it began to appear that the way to make a name for oneself was not by winning a seat in Congress but by getting a place in the war effort. Soon the most ambitious men in Whig Illinois politics, the very men Lincoln had been competing with for years—Hardin and Baker—joined the army to fight in the war. Baker's decision to join was especially noteworthy. To join he had to resign the very seat in Congress that Lincoln was now nominated to fill.
Lincoln could have joined Hardin and Baker on the battlefield, but he seems never to have given it any thought. His place was in politics. Nothing would get in the way of his dream of political glory, not even war.
Especially not war. Lincoln despised war, despised killing. And he especially seems to have despised this war, believing it to have been provoked by President Polk's decision to send Zachary Taylor's army into territory long claimed by Mexico.
When exactly Lincoln reached this bold conclusion is not known. But he clearly entertained reservations about the war from the outset—entertained them and kept silent about them.* During the election campaign, which coincided with the first four months of the conflict—the four months when battle fever was at its peak—Lincoln declined to say anything against the war: not a single word.
As careful as he was to conceal his real views in public, he was even more so in private. And he was more careful because he had to be. In public settings nobody questioned Lincoln closely about his views, never put him in the dock and cross-examined him. After fifteen years in public life he was considered to be so well known that he did not need to be cross-examined. Voters felt that they knew who he was and what he stood for. But in private there was one person who routinely _did_ put him in the dock and cross-examine him: his own law partner, William Herndon. And Herndon was an enthusiastic backer of the war. Lincoln had to be extra careful when talking with him about his views if he was to keep his private reservations truly private. ("He was the most reticent, secretive man I ever saw or expect to see.")
Lincoln had evidently made two decisions during the campaign, both of them highly significant for what they say about him and his ambitions. His first decision was that he would stay in the race rather than volunteer to fight in the war. His second was that he would decline to express any doubts about the war. Neither the war nor his incipient opposition to it would get in the way of his drive for a seat in Congress.
Once in the distant past he had let a war—the Black Hawk War— get in the way of his plans. This time he would not.
Lincoln, all agreed, was an extraordinarily honest man, unusually honest for a politician. In his years in the state legislature he had built up such an unassailable reputation for honesty that even Democrats trusted him. "Honest Abe," he was called—by both Whigs and Democrats alike. Never once in his career, even at the height of the controversy over his role in the passage of those budget-breaking internal improvements projects, had his critics doubted his honesty. But on the occasion of his election to Congress, the most important election in his career thus far, and one he had looked forward to for four long years, he seems to have been less than honest with the voters about his views on the most important issue facing them, a matter literally of life and death: the Mexican War.
His opponent, Democrat Peter Cartwright, an itinerant preacher, never suspected that Lincoln might have been a closet opponent of the war. Nor did anyone else. During the four months of the campaign Lincoln had to defend himself against many charges, some extremely damaging and all of them untrue—that he was an infidel, that he approved of drunkenness, that he socialized exclusively with the rich—but never once did he have to defend himself against the charge that he opposed the war, which would have been the most damaging of all and the one charge that was true.
In August, Abraham Lincoln, who had settled in New Salem nearly fifteen years earlier, a "friendless, uneducated, penniless boy," became Illinois congressman Abraham Lincoln. He won by a huge majority, 6,340 to 4,829, a bigger majority than either Hardin or Baker had received.
Being a congressman was what Abraham Lincoln had always wanted to be. And for a year and a half it appeared that he was happy being one, although he did admit to his friend Joshua Speed that his election had "not pleased me as much I expected." But then the thirtieth Congress, to which he had been elected, finally met at the end of 1847. And as soon as it did, Lincoln began using his position as a U.S. representative to help him go on to something else.
As a first step he decided to try to raise his political profile.
On December 22, just two weeks after being seated, he issued an audacious and cavalier challenge to President Polk, demanding to know exactly on what spot of American soil American blood had been shed in the battle that began the Mexican War. (Polk had insisted that the Mexicans had started the war, "shedding the blood of our citizens on our own soil.") In a paper that came to be known as the "Spot Resolutions," Lincoln asked: Was American blood shed or not shed on territory wrested from Spain by Mexico during its revolution? Was it or was it not shed on soil inhabited by Mexicans in a settlement that "had existed ever since long before the Texas revolution"? And then in his final two queries, he asked:
Seventh: Whether our citizens, whose blood was shed, as in his messages declared, were, or were not, at that time, armed officers, and soldiers, sent into that settlement, by the military order of the President through the Secretary of War—and
Eighth: Whether the military force of the United States, including those citizens, was, or was not, so sent into that settlement, after Genl. Taylor had, more than once, intimated to the War Department that, in his opinion, no such movement was necessary to the defence or protection of Texas.
And then, two weeks later, he took the floor of the House of Representatives to follow up his "Spot Resolutions" with a dramatic speech in which he scathingly denounced the Polk administration for getting the country into the war, flatly declaring that the conflict was both unnecessary and unconstitutional. Going further than he had in his resolutions, in which he had suggested that American blood _might_ not have been shed on American soil, he now pointedly charged that it _had_ not been. In a devastating conclusion, he criticized President Polk for failing to say when the war might be over. (The war had by then gone on for twenty months; at the outset Polk had implied that it would not last even four.) "He is a bewildered, confounded, and miserably perplexed man," Lincoln declared. "God grant he may be able to show, there is not something about his conscience, more painful than all his mental perplexity!"
His friends were appalled. However the war had started, however long it had gone on, it was now nearly over. And however great the cost in blood and treasure, it seemed certain to extend the country's borders to the Pacific. And whatever one thought of President Polk's handling of the war, the people were for it.
To his political friends, that was the main thing Lincoln should have kept in mind and evidently had not: The people were for it—Illinois people—his people. And because they were for it, he should have been politically savvy enough to know not to oppose them—not on such a matter as this, a matter of war. If, however, he felt compelled by his conscience to oppose them, he should have done so quietly. Instead he had issued a series of searing resolutions challenging the president's right to go to war. And then (in his friends' eyes) he had compounded his error by giving that fiery speech in Congress in which he had charged that Polk had lied the country into war. In Morgan County, Illinois, a citizens' meeting openly rebelled at Lincoln's leadership, charging that he had "acted in direct contradiction to the wishes of his constituents of the whole state as well as of this district." Soon there were other meetings, and at these, too, Lincoln was denounced.
To no one was Lincoln's behavior more puzzling than to his own law partner back in Springfield, William Herndon, who had sat across a desk from him for years, and in particular, for the past year and half since the war broke out, and during that year and a half had learned nothing of Lincoln's true views. To Herndon, Lincoln's actions were incomprehensible. _What was he thinking? What of the reaction of his constituents? What of his future?_ "If you had been in my place, you would have voted just as I did," Lincoln wrote in reply. "Would you have voted what you felt you knew to be a lie? I know you would not." (Of course, Lincoln had done more than vote; he had issued his "Spot Resolutions" and then had gone on to give a major speech.) "Would you have gone out of the House—skulked the vote? I expect not. If you had skulked one vote, you would have had to skulk many more, before the end of the session." (Herndon had not suggested Lincoln skulk the vote, but had implied Lincoln might have been wiser to vote and say nothing.) "[Illinois representative William] Richardson's resolutions [in favor of the war]... make the direct question of the justice of the war; so that no man can be silent if he would. You are compelled to speak; and your only alternative is to tell the truth or tell a lie." (Lincoln had not only voted against Richardson's resolutions, he had devised the "Spot Resolutions" as a bold counterpoint to them.)
To his friends the Lincoln now on view was a new Abraham Lincoln, a Lincoln who did not seem to care for the political consequences of his actions, a Lincoln who after just a few weeks in Washington seemed to have lost touch with his home constituency and his own political interests—a Lincoln they plainly did not understand.
Previously Lincoln had almost always done everything he could to stay close to public opinion. When the people were in favor of the internal improvements projects, he favored the projects. When the people turned against internal improvements because the state could not afford them, Lincoln, though he took his time, joined them in their opposition. (The delay was on account of a natural unwillingness to admit that his previous position had been a mistake.) When he campaigned in 1840 against the election of Martin Van Buren, he embraced a blatantly racist appeal to try to win over the support of his Southern-born audiences.
On one important issue and only on that issue—slavery—had he taken a position obviously at variance with that of his constituents. At the height of the hysteria over abolitionism, he had dared to vote against a proslavery resolution that denounced abolitionism. But even then he had been careful not to alienate his supporters. During the debate he had kept silent about his views, refusing to be drawn into a public defense of his stand, leaving his vote as the only record of his dissent. And then, at the end of the session, to inoculate himself against the charge that he was an abolitionist sympathizer, he had submitted a carefully worded denunciation of abolitionism.
As they reviewed the statements he had made about the war since entering Congress, his friends came to conclude that by his actions he had virtually forfeited a future in Illinois politics. And that seemed downright odd. For the Lincoln they knew—the Lincoln who had run for the state legislature at age twenty-three and then kept on running—had always done everything possible to ensure he had a future. ("His ambition was a little engine that knew no rest.")
Lincoln's friends were right, of course: He no longer did appear to have much of a future in Illinois politics. But that was not because he had sabotaged his future by his conduct in Congress. His future as an Illinois politician had been in doubt from the moment he was elected to the House. For at that precise moment he had achieved about all he seemingly ever could hope to achieve as a Whig in Illinois. Whigs were in the minority there and were seemingly destined to remain in the minority for many years to come. All he could probably ever be in Illinois, he already was: a congressman.
In the foreseeable future he could not hope to be elected governor. No Whig had ever been elected governor (and none ever would be).
Nor could he have much hope of being elected to the U.S. Senate. No Illinois Whig had ever been elected to the U.S. Senate either (and none ever would be).
In his fifteen years in politics he had held nearly every position a Whig in Illinois could hold—election clerk, party official, member of the state house of representatives, Whig leader in the house of representatives, and finally U.S. representative—and now he had no place else to go in politics, not if he meant to continue going up the political ladder. The only rung he had not grabbed that other Whigs had—state senator—he had succeeded in climbing past. Running for a seat in the state senate now would mean reversing course and taking a step down the ladder. And of course he could not go back to the state house of representatives; after Congress that would mean descending even lower.
Harshest of all realities, he could not even remain where he was, in Congress. The clever maneuvering that had put him in Congress—the arranging of the celebrated Pekin Agreement, by which the party had settled on a policy of rotation in office—now was to keep him from holding onto the office. The great stone wheel of rotation that had put Hardin in office and then turned him out, and had subsequently put Baker in office and then turned him out, had now put Lincoln in office and would turn him out, too. Both Baker and Hardin had felt the rough edges of that wheel pressed heavily against their backs—and had had second thoughts; Hardin had tried to run again, Baker had wanted to. Now Lincoln felt the weight of the wheel—and he had second thoughts, too. But it would roll over him as it had rolled over them, crushing his dreams as it kept on rolling. He had promised to serve just a single term; now he would have to keep his promise. ("Turn about is fair play.") The only way he could run for reelection was if nobody else volunteered to run against him. Then he could stay in Congress without anyone accusing him of inconsistency.
That would never happen, of course. There would always be someone who wanted to run. More than likely there would be many. But one day as he sat in Washington, D.C., contemplating his future, Lincoln, who long ago had committed himself to "cold, calculating, unimpassioned reason," surrendered for a moment to a dreamy thought. "If," he wrote his law partner, William Herndon, "it should so happen that nobody else wishes to be elected, I could not refuse the people the right of sending me again." But he could run only if no one else did. ("To enter myself as a competitor of others, or to authorize any one so to enter me, is what my word and honor forbid.") And of course others _would_ run. And he knew it—even if on this one occasion he indulged the fantasy that maybe, just perhaps, others would not.
The principle of rotation did not, of course, preclude his running and winning again after a two-year hiatus. And after two years in, he could drop out again, then come back in again, then drop out again—in a never-ending cycle. But this way was risky. Even if by some political miracle he managed to be reelected repeatedly in this cyclical manner, he could never hope to become a powerful figure in Congress. To become a power in Congress one had to put in years and years of service. And no matter how many times he ran and won in alternate elections he could never serve enough time to achieve equality with those who ran and won every election.
His friends had been mistaken, then, in thinking that Lincoln had changed. He had not changed. He was the same ambitious man he had always been, ambitious and prudent. But his circumstances had changed—and as they changed, so had his behavior. Realizing that he had no place in Illinois politics, he instead had tried to use his genius at speechmaking to find a place in national politics by becoming a leader in Congress. He had not deliberately tried to write off his Whig friends back home; he was in fact disturbed when they felt he had. But he had been willing to risk alienating them in order to advance his reputation on the national stage.
His attempt to win a place in national politics by attacking the Polk administration did not, however, succeed. Polk, of course, paid no attention to the attack at all; the ranting of a first-term Whig congressman from the Democratic state of Illinois—and the _only_ Whig congressman from Illinois—could safely be ignored. Polk may never even have heard of Lincoln's jabs: The newspapers barely covered them. Fellow Whigs in Congress heard, but they, too, ignored them. Lincoln's argument, while controversial in Illinois—the local papers had begun referring to him as "Spotty Lincoln"—was common in Washington. For months Whig leader Henry Clay had been taking the very same line in speeches around the country. (Lincoln himself had apparently heard one of these speeches in Lexington, Kentucky, in November during a visit to Mary Todd's relatives.) And Abraham Lincoln was no Henry Clay—not yet.
Lincoln may possibly have won more national attention giving a prowar speech than an antiwar speech. Not many national Whigs were giving prowar speeches then. But delivering such a speech would have helped him only in Illinois. It would not have helped him with the Whigs in Washington, where Whigs held a slim majority in the House of Representatives and were daily doing battle with the Democratic administration of James K. Polk. And it was the Washington Whigs whose help he badly needed. Besides, he sincerely opposed the war; as an honest politician he could not in good conscience vigorously support it even if doing so might be helpful to his career.
Speechmaking happened to be one of Lincoln's great strengths. But by February there was no longer an excuse for delivering speeches against the war: By then the war was over.
Once Lincoln realized that he could not use the war to advance his career, he gave up making controversial speeches and concentrated instead on politics—presidential politics. But small as his chance had been of making a name for himself as a national speaker, his chance of becoming a player in the presidential sweepstakes was smaller yet. At least as a speaker he could use his gift for language to attract attention—that awesome gift he had first used as a young man of twenty-three and that he had continued using throughout his career in politics, much to his vast benefit. As a budding presidential kingmaker he had almost nothing to offer. There were 115 Whigs in the House of Representatives in 1848. Of them all, Lincoln was in nearly the worst position to help the national Whigs win the presidency. Outside Illinois nobody had ever heard of him. Inside Illinois people had heard of him, but as a result of his opposition to the war they now disapproved of him. Earning their enmity had always been the risk Lincoln had run in taking an active antiwar line; now he was discovering just how substantial a risk it was.
Even if he had retained their support, his usefulness to the national Whigs would have been limited. A kingmaker has to be able to deliver votes—enough votes to help contribute to electoral victory—and Lincoln could not. Illinois had never yet voted for a Whig presidential candidate and probably never would (and never did).
Being a Whig from Illinois always seemed to be a hindrance to Lincoln's plans. Because he was an Illinois Whig he had had to give up any immediate hope of ever being elected governor or U.S. senator. Now because he was an Illinois Whig he had to give up hope of being a kingmaker.
But if he could not be a kingmaker, he could still help pick the next king. And if he did, then _that_ might lead to something else for him.
Every week that went by made the necessity of finding something else more and more paramount. When he was elected he'd had thirty-one months—the time between his election to the thirtieth Congress in August 1846 and the end of that Congress in March 1849—to come up with something else. Now he had just twelve months to find another political post to satisfy his ever-growing ambitions. Twelve months to reach even higher than he already had for something—something not even he could as yet name, but something. If something did not come along, he would have to return to Illinois to resume his career as a lawyer. Lincoln told friends that he looked forward to practicing law again, and because he had by now become quite successful as a lawyer, there was much to look forward to. But still he was not quite ready to give up politics. It was in his blood—and had been nearly his whole adult life.
Several candidates vied for the Whig nomination for president in 1848, but two quickly became the front-runners: Henry Clay, the old party warhorse, and Zachary Taylor, the Mexican War hero. Clay by any standard would have made the better president (though Clay by now was old, over seventy). Taylor knew nothing about politics; he'd never even voted for president. But if Clay was the better man for the office, Taylor made the better candidate—and every Whig knew it. The Whigs had only won the presidency once, when they ran Gen. William Henry Harrison. Their only chance of winning again in 1848 was to run Gen. Zachary Taylor. Taylor would be the practical choice. With him at the helm the Whigs would be protected from the charge that their opposition to the war was unpatriotic.
In February, just as the war was ending, Lincoln, whose personal hero was Henry Clay, came out in favor of General Taylor—and immediately busied himself in the Taylor campaign.
With the passage of every week he became more and more involved in the campaign, so involved that he began to complain to his wife, Mary Todd, that he lacked the time to attend to her and do all that he had to. Eventually she went home to Springfield.
Lincoln's work as a congressman was work enough for two men. A member of two committees, he was continually attending hearings, studying documents, and making speeches about committee business. One day found him making a report about a Mr. H. M. Barney, whose post office had been destroyed by fire. (Lincoln was a member of the post office committee.) Another day found him giving a speech concerning "military bounty lands." (He was also a member of the Committee on Expenditures in the War Department.) On still another day he took the floor to make a speech concerning the admission of Wisconsin to the Union.
But busy as he was attending to official business, he was never too busy to pursue his political work. And the political work could be grueling, so difficult Lincoln was to refer to it as "sweating blood." It included making contacts with the Taylor campaign, corresponding with Illinois politicians about Taylor's prospects, and at least once writing the draft of a speech for Taylor.
In early June, Lincoln left the capital for the first time since his arrival six months before. It was to attend the Whig National Convention in Philadelphia. By then the race had broadened to four candidates: Zachary Taylor, Henry Clay, Daniel Webster, and Gen. Winfield Scott. Fortunately for Lincoln the convention settled on Taylor, the man he had backed.
Lincoln was by now devoting a great part of his day to Taylor's campaign. But no matter how much time he put in on his political work, he always felt he hadn't put in enough. And he was right. There usually wasn't enough time to do all that he wanted to. "Excuse this short letter," he wrote to Herndon. "I have so many to write, that I can not devote much time to any one." And even when he had the time, he felt he still wasn't doing enough—not if his work in the campaign was somehow to lead to something else. And he was right about that, too. And as he realized he was unable to do enough, he became frustrated—frustrated and desperate. As Taylor's chances of winning began to seem brighter and brighter, Lincoln became more frustrated with his inability to make a major contribution—and more desperate. In letters home to rally support for Taylor he began to sound almost hysterical. When the "sanguine men here, set down all the states as certain for Taylor" they always leave out Illinois. "Can not something be done, even in Illinois?" Ten days later he wrote of attending a Whig caucus: "The whole field of the Nation was scanned, and all is high hope and confidence." But then he had received Herndon's letter saying that the Whigs had made "no gains" in Illinois. It was, Lincoln wrote, "heart-sickening." He then recommended that Herndon "gather up all the shrewd wild boys around town, whether just of age, or little under age," and form a Rough and Ready Club. (Taylor was known as Old Rough and Ready.) "Let every one play the part he can play best—some speak, some sing, and all [holler]." And then: "Don't fail to do this."
By the late spring there were, instead of twelve months for Lincoln to find something to do after Congress, just nine. Just nine short months either to make a name for himself in the East or return home to Illinois, an ex-congressman who had gone as far in politics as he probably ever would.
He had tried speechmaking—and speechmaking hadn't worked to lift him from obscurity. And then he had tried playing at presidential politics. And that hadn't worked either. So now he tried doing both simultaneously. When the Whigs in Congress formed an executive committee to drum up support for Taylor around the country, Lincoln joined. When the Washington, D.C., Rough and Ready Club held a meeting to celebrate Taylor, Lincoln gave a speech. One day he took the time to write Horace Greeley, the editor of the leading _Whig_ newspaper in the country. Another day he corresponded with Thaddeus Stevens, the political boss (and future congressman) of western Pennsylvania. In late July he gave a conspicuously partisan one-hour speech on the floor of the House in defense of General Taylor's selection as the Whig candidate for president.
And then, instead of there being nine months to prove himself, there were just six. Six months to do what he had not been able to do in the past six—or the six before that, or the six before that, or the six before _that._
And now, in case there had been any doubt of the necessity of winning a national reputation if he were to remain in politics, there came news from home that was to erase those doubts completely. Stephen Logan, who had been nominated by the Whigs to fill the seat Lincoln would be vacating, lost the congressional election, which in Illinois was held in August. It remains unclear to this day why Logan lost. And it was unclear at the time. Some, with reason, laid the blame on Logan himself; arrogant, irascible, and inarticulate, he made a terrible candidate. But others, including Herndon, blamed Lincoln, "Spotty Lincoln," who, against the wishes of his constituents, had made one controversial statement after another against the Mexican War. Lincoln denied responsibility for Logan's loss, but he knew that there would be many people now who said he was responsible. So even had he wanted to continue as a local politician, he knew almost certainly that he could not.
Now he would _have_ to do well nationally—or abandon politics.
Pressed, as perhaps he had not felt pressed since his calamitous jump out of the statehouse window, Lincoln adopted a strategy that was new, risky—and audacious. Once again it involved speechmaking. But this time instead of making one, two, or maybe three speeches in the course of a month as he had been doing the past six months, he would make ten of them and he would make them virtually back to back, ten speeches in eleven days. And not just little stump speeches, but lengthy, formal full-blown addresses, lasting upwards of an hour and a half.
Politicians today often deliver more speeches over the same period of time. But the speeches rarely last as long, and in any case they are usually written by someone else. Lincoln was to write all of his speeches himself. And although the speeches would sound the same themes, each one had to be tailored to fit a particular audience. Furthermore, unlike politicians today, he would not have the assistance of a public address system to help carry his voice to the furthermost reaches of the crowd. To make himself heard, especially at the bigger events, he would virtually have to shout his lines, shout them until he was nearly hoarse, and he would have to do this day in and day out, for eleven days in all (with one day off for the Sabbath).
Lincoln had delivered numerous long speeches on similarly tight campaign schedules before, most notably in the 1840 presidential race. But every one of these speeches he had delivered in Illinois, in front of crowds composed of people very much like him. This time he would not return to Illinois to speak, or even to the states around Illinois—Indiana or Kentucky—which he knew so well from having lived there as a youth and where his accent and country ways would seem familiar to his audiences. Instead he was to give his speeches in Massachusetts, where his accent and country ways almost certainly would put off audiences. (Biographer Stephen Oates reports that Lincoln his whole life pronounced "sot" for "sat," "thar" for "there," "kin" for "can," and "heerd" for "heard.")
Where precisely in Massachusetts he chose to give his speeches is even more suggestive of his audaciousness. He would go not only to the small towns of Massachusetts, backwoods towns like New Bedford, Taunton, and Worcester, where he could expect to find friendly, easygoing crowds, but also to the state's most urbane places, intellectual havens like Cambridge and Boston, where the crowds could be expected to be demanding, used as they were to great speakers like Daniel Webster, Charles Sumner, and William Seward.
The first of his ten speeches he delivered on Tuesday, September 12, in Worcester, on the eve of the meeting of the Whig State Convention. In substance it was decidedly unremarkable, and included an utterly conventional defense of General Taylor's fitness for the presidency. To the constantly reiterated charge that Taylor, for instance, lacked principles, Lincoln responded that "Gen. Taylor consents to be the candidate, and to assist the people to do what they think to be their duty, and think to be best in their natural affairs, but because he don't want to tell what we ought to do, he is accused of having no principles."
On every single issue Lincoln stuck to the Whig Party line. On this, his first national speaking tour, he had to. His political future now depended on the willingness of the national Whigs to reward him with something. He well knew they would do so only if he seemed safe. He had been willing to give offense to his Whig friends back home in Illinois because they no longer held his political future in their hands. But these national Whigs did in theirs.
Age thirty-nine now, Lincoln, to remain on the political fast-track, could not afford to alienate the national party as he had alienated many in the Illinois state party. But neither could he afford to deliver speeches that were humdrum. If he was to have any chance of attracting attention, he would somehow have to shine.
Now.
Desperate to shine, Lincoln gambled. Scared that he was fast running out of time to make his mark, and unable under the circumstances to say anything controversial to make an impression, he decided to resist the compelling temptation to be staid and proper on this, his first foray into the refined "part of the country where, in the opinion of the people of his section, everybody was supposed to be instructed and wise." Instead, he would just be himself—gangly, humble, unprepossessing—and utterly, recklessly, and primitively passionate. Even his critics had to agree he was passionate. "It was reviving to hear a man speak as if he believed what he was saying," the _Bristol County Democrat_ reported, "and had a grain or two of feeling mixed up with it." The paper did not think that Lincoln made a logical argument, "but then he was more unscrupulous, more facetious" than some other speakers, "and with his sneers he mixed up a good deal of humor. His awkward gesticulations, the ludicrous management of his voice and the comical expression of his countenance, all conspired to make his hearers laugh at the mere anticipation of the joke before it appeared."
At each stop on his tour Lincoln put on display the same Lincoln the folks back home saw. When he reached Boston, perhaps the most literate city in the country, he found the courage to show even the people there his down-home side. The _Boston Atlas_ , in a favorable review, noted that Lincoln had helped make his points through the use of "keen satire," a reference to his uncommon talent for mimicry, which he had developed to a high degree during his years as a frontier speaker trying to connect with unlettered audiences.
It was not just the _Boston Atlas_ that was impressed, so were all of the papers that covered his speeches. The _Boston Daily Advertiser_ called the speech in Worcester "masterly and convincing." The _Daily Journal_ remarked that the speech in Lowell "was replete with good sense, sound reasoning, and irresistible argument, and spoken with that perfect command of manner and matter which so eminently distinguishes the Western orators."
Lincoln had hoped he would do well on this tour, and he did. And it was essential he did. Instead of there being six months left for him to find something, now there were just five.
In November, General Taylor became President-elect Taylor—and that was essential, too. Lincoln's political hopes had rested on Taylor's election and the expectation that _that_ might lead to something.
But what? For the past twenty-seven months Lincoln had not been sure what that something might be. And he still wasn't. But if his political work was to lead to something, it would have to lead to something quickly. Now instead of there being five months left to his congressional term, there were little more than three.
Lincoln spent those last three months or so doing what he hated doing most—waiting. His only significant official act during all that time was the submission of a bill "to abolish slavery in the District of Columbia, by consent of the free white people of said District, and with compensation to owners." (The bill went nowhere.)
Lincoln was not the only Whig from Illinois who hoped for something from the incoming Taylor administration. One Walter Davis of Springfield wanted something, too—maybe a position as a postmaster?—and asked Lincoln, the sole Whig in Congress from Illinois, to help him get it. Edward Baker, Lincoln's old rival for Congress, wanted something, too—a cabinet post perhaps. So did many others. In reply Lincoln sounded hopeful. "If the distribution of the offices should fall into my hands," he wrote one of them, "you should have something, and I now say as much, but can say no more."
Lincoln was still hopeful in February. And he remained hopeful, even as the months left to his term as a congressman dwindled to weeks and then finally to days.
The Thirtieth Congress came to a close in the wee hours of Sunday, March 4. Lincoln stayed in his seat until the very end, which came at seven in the morning. The following day he joined thousands as Zachary Taylor was sworn in as the twelfth president of the United States. That evening he attended the inaugural ball, partying until three or four in the morning. Long after his friends finally went home, however, he continued wandering the streets of Washington—in search of his hat, his signature black top hat, which he'd lost. (He apparently never found it.)
Finally he was a congressman no more—and still he was hopeful. But over the next six months he was to become bitterly disappointed. After nearly "sweating blood" to help General Taylor get elected, he had to confess to supplicants that he lacked influence with the administration: "Not one man recommended by me has yet been appointed to any thing, little or big, except a few who had no opposition."
Not only could he not help others find a job, he could not find himself one—at least not one that was suitable.
The one post that the administration offered—federal land commissioner—Lincoln declined as it was wanted by several Whigs in Illinois whom Lincoln felt he had to accommodate. "There is nothing about me which would authorize me to think of a first class office," he wrote his old friend Joshua Speed, "and a second class one would not compensate me for being snarled at by others who would want it for themselves."
The land commissioner job was to remain open for months, however, as the result of endless feuding between the candidates. When it appeared likely it was finally to be given to a Chicago Whig whom he detested, Lincoln decided to go for it himself; competitive as always, the chance to defeat a rival gave direction to his ambitiousness. For weeks he did all he could to attract wide support, corresponding with Whigs across the country for backing. To clinch the job he even returned to Washington, traveling by train and stagecoach, in a mad-dash effort to beat his rival to the city.
But for Lincoln, having finally decided what he wanted to do, the opportunity to do it did not materialize. The land commissioner post he could have had on a platter months before went instead to his rival, who had received the endorsement of Daniel Webster. Upon hearing the news, according to one touching account, Lincoln stole off to his hotel, went up to his room, threw himself on his bed, and lay there for more than an hour.
In the fall, long after he had returned to Springfield, the administration finally offered him another position, but it was comically beneath him: the secretaryship of the governor of Oregon. Lincoln's friends howled in protest about the meagerness of the offer, prompting the administration to proffer Lincoln the post of governor. But by now Lincoln was demoralized, and he declined it; it was, anyway, not a position which would do him much good politically. Oregon then was the remotest place in the entire United States, the last place a man of ambition would want to go.
His political career seemingly over after seventeen years, Lincoln took up the full-time practice of the law.
For the next five years Abraham Lincoln could be found most days either in an Illinois courtroom or in his law office off Springfield's lively main square. As once he had worked at politics, he now worked at the law. As he was to put it later, "From 1849 to 1854, both inclusive, [I] practiced law more assiduously than ever before."
In elective politics he had gone about as far as a Whig could in Illinois. Now as a lawyer he was to go about as far as a lawyer could, becoming in the space of those five brief years one of the leading attorneys in the entire state. These were good years for Lincoln and he was happy. By 1854 he was earning thousands of dollars a year; once he pocketed a five thousand dollar fee on a single case. As his reputation spread he became more than the country lawyer he had started out as, eventually representing many of the most powerful corporations in the country. As his ambition grew he increasingly began arguing cases before the state supreme court. Soon he was arguing more cases there than anybody else.
During those five years Lincoln so devoted himself to the law that he almost forgot about politics. But he could not forget about it completely. And when the sectional conflict broke out anew in 1854 over Stephen Douglas's Kansas-Nebraska Act, Lincoln's passion for politics sprang back to life, arousing him, he was to recall, "as he had never been before."
Lincoln was still a Whig and being a Whig in Illinois was still a handicap. But not for long. Douglas's decision to back the repeal of the Missouri Compromise as part of a deal to build a railroad through the Nebraska Territory was so controversial that it began to undermine the hegemony of the Democratic Party. In twelve short months it began to cripple the party in Illinois. Lincoln, who had left Illinois politics after it became clear to him that as a Whig he had no future, made the decision to return, hopeful he finally did have a future again.
And then the repeal of the Missouri Compromise, which was crippling the Democratic Party, killed the Whig Party outright, hopelessly dividing it into pro- and antislavery factions. In its place there arose, briefly, a new antislavery Whig Party known as the Anti-Nebraska Whigs. It in turn was quickly replaced by an entirely new organization, the Republican Party, a loose coalition of businessmen, anti-slaveryites, Know-Nothings, and immigrants.
In this new political environment. Lincoln, first as an antiNebraska Whig, and then as a Republican, was able to thrive as he had never been able to before. For the Republicans' base was broader than the Whigs' had been, giving the Republicans a chance to become the majority party in Illinois.
Only one office interested him: a seat in the U.S. Senate, the next rung on the ladder he had begun climbing twenty-two years earlier. Twice he ran for the Senate and twice he lost, the first time to a fellow Anti-Nebraska Whig, and then to Democrat Stephen Douglas.* But with each loss his popularity, instead of waning, increased, as more and more people nationwide began to see in him the leader they were looking for.
Unable to grab the rung on the ladder he wanted—a Senate seat—Lincoln made an audacious grab for the rung beyond.
In 1860, two months before the Republican presidential nominating convention, Lincoln, who rarely admitted his ambition, confessed, "[T]he taste is in my mouth a little." At the convention he who had not been able to win a Senate seat succeeded in defeating well-known senators and governors to win the party's presidential nomination. A few months later, again facing candidates who were better known than he was, he again was victorious.
To win the nomination he had carefully orchestrated a behind-the-scenes campaign against his rivals, pointing out their deficiencies, explaining why one could win here but not there, while another could win there but not here. Each time he made sure to leave the impression that he alone could win all places vital to the party's election.
To win the election he had to refrain from making statements that could possibly alienate any of the groups that made up the Republican Party's unwieldy coalition of businessmen, abolitionists, and Know-Nothings. He did. When asked on one occasion to denounce the Know-Nothings, he refused.
From a position of no political power in 1855 he had succeeded in moving in five short years to a position of supreme political power. On March 4, 1861, at noon, just two weeks and six days past his fifty-second birthday, he was sworn in as the sixteenth president of the United States. ("His ambition was a little engine that knew no rest.")
Lincoln came into the presidency in very much a weak condition, receiving just 40 percent of the popular vote, with the Republicans in both houses in the minority.* But the secession of the South put him in an extraordinarily strong position, immediately reversing his fortunes. For one thing, the secession left the Republicans in control of both houses, an exceptional turn of events given the results of the election just a few months before, in which everything had been left muddy, with power divided geographically between Northerners and Southerners, and politically, between Democrats, Republicans, Know-Nothings, and others. Now the situation would be far clearer and far easier to control.
For another, the crisis, though terribly complicated, gave Lincoln a rich opportunity, a chance to take decisive dramatic action. While Americans had hardly had time to come to know Lincoln, they had instinctively turned to him for guidance once Fort Sumter was fired on. (Lincoln was careful to arrange things so that the South fired the first shot; it put the United States in the superior moral position.) As every president ever after was to discover, in a genuine crisis Americans willingly surrender power to the president, allowing him to do much that they otherwise would not. Buchanan probably would not have known what to do with the power if he had had it. Lincoln did.
In the four months after his inauguration he made it clear that he would use force, if necessary, to keep the Union together, and on his own authority increased the army by twenty-two thousand, the navy by eighteen thousand, and called for a draft of an additional forty thousand. No president before had ever dared act so boldly, but Lincoln was able to because the people were behind him. So sure was he of public support that he actually suspended the writ of habeas corpus, leading to the prompt arrest of over ten thousand rabid Southern sympathizers, which is said to have helped keep the border states in the Union.* It was, to be sure, an unprecedented grab for power, but because Lincoln did it so openly, hiding nothing, and making sure that the arrests were, as much as possible, made in public, people by and large sustained him in his actions. He deliberately delayed the convening of Congress for four months to give him time to do what he thought necessary to save the Union. But he afterward sought retroactive approval for his actions and Congress gave it to him.
Unlike Buchanan Lincoln hadn't acted sneakily or underhandedly. And as long as events went his way he wouldn't have to. But, of course, events did not go his way. What had been expected to be a short, romantic war—at the First Battle of Bull Run at the end of July 1861 women in hoopskirts had ridden down from Washington in their carriages to watch—quickly had turned into a grim, long, unending and almost unbearable slaughter, the likes of which no one on earth had ever seen, some battles ending in the death or mutilation of tens of thousands. At Gettsyburg, hailed as a Northern victory, there would be twenty-five thousand Union casualties. Eventually in consequence there would be draft riots and bread riots. Lincoln was to remain remarkably calm in the face of this evidence of social dissent, but as the war went on and on and on, he became increasingly desperate.
A measure of his desperation was the issuance of the Emancipation Proclamation in January 1863. Lincoln, of course, wished to free the slaves; about that there was never any question. But he had declined to do so as long as he did out of fear of the effect on the border states, where slavery was still regarded positively by many whites. Finally, however, he had felt he had no choice but to act. If he didn't, he feared, England, seeing no moral difference between the North and the South, and hurting because of its inability to obtain Southern cotton, would agree to Southern demands for official recognition of the Confederacy. He did not, in any event, agree to free all the slaves. To keep the border states, he freed only those slaves who lived in the South over whom he had no de facto control. The eight hundred thousand or so slaves remaining in the border states were to continue in slavery. It was an artful compromise, but it _was_ a compromise, a "sophistical contrivance wherewith we are industriously plied and belabored," as Lincoln once remarked in another context, a contrivance that left Americans "groping for the middle ground between the right and the wrong." But Lincoln was in no position to offer anything more in 1863. Events were against him.
Lincoln was, by 1864, so divisive a figure that he could not even count on his own reelection. In fact, days before the balloting was to take place he was sure he would not win. Pressed, he behaved very much as other presidents had and would when their reelection prospects were threatened. He compromised, cajoled, and caved. Weak among Democrats in the border states, he decided to encourage the nomination of Democrat Andrew Johnson of Tennessee as his running mate, though Johnson was in no sense qualified for the position. Fearful that Grant might suddenly materialize as a possible opponent, he declined to bring him east as commander in charge of the army until he had received assurances Grant had no intention of running. "No man knows, when that presidential grub gets gnawing at him, just how deep it will get until he has tried it," he recalled afterward. "And I didn't know but what there was one gnawing at Grant." Told by the governors of half a dozen states that there was a fair chance he would lose the election unless he gave tens of thousands of soldiers furloughs to go home and vote, he ordered his generals to send the boys home. Short of campaign cash, he allowed his campaign manager to require all federal employees to kick back 3 percent of their salaries for his reelection drive. He won with 55 percent of the popular vote.
No president had ever exercised more power over the country. Jackson, derided as a dictator by his critics, hadn't even come close. No one had. And yet even Lincoln felt that he was at the mercy of events. As he plaintively explained in 1864, "I claim not to have controlled events, but confess plainly that events have controlled me."*
The means he resorted to to try to gain control were extraordinary. Suspension of the writ of habeas corpus. The waging of all-out war. The delay, for political purposes, in putting Grant in charge of the army. But it was not for these things that he would be remembered, of course. It was for ending slavery and winning the war, both of which he finally was able to achieve, though not nearly as quickly as he wanted and at far greater cost.
Of all the presidents he was forgiven for his transgressions. As was widely recognized after his death, when he was turned into a mythological hero, most of the extreme measures he undertook were helpful in advancing the country's fortunes, not just his own. It was recognized that the only way to wage the war and win it was by going outside the normal bounds of presidential conduct.
Other presidents would bend the rules and be called to account. But not Lincoln. He alone was recognized as having had cause.
Many worried about the precedent he had set, that his presidency would mark a turning point, that ever after presidents would feel free to exercise power as he had, that the country, in the process of freeing the slaves, had saddled on itself a tyrannical, power-mongering, power-crazed presidency. But after four years of Lincoln, four long years of a president doing damn near what he wanted, what the people got was a weaker presidency, weaker in some ways than it had ever been before. And for the next half century, until the arrival of William McKinley (though Grover Cleveland breathed some life into it), it was to remain weak. The power that Lincoln had concentrated in the presidency would shift to the Congress. While the people loved Lincoln, they were not eager for another.
*The election for Congress was held in Illinois in 1843 instead of 1842, as would normally have been the case, because of a delay in reporting the census. The next election, reverting to tradition, was held in 1844.
*In a speech he was to give as a congressman on January 12, 1848, Lincoln alluded to the existence of early reservations about the war. Accused by Democrats of having concealed his reservations, he defensively remarked: "When the war began, it was my opinion that all those who, because of knowing too little, or because of knowing too much, could not conscientiously approve the conduct of the President, in the beginning of it, should, nevertheless, as good citizens and patriots, remain silent on that point, at least till the war should be ended. Some leading Democrats, including ExPresident Van Buren, have taken this same view, as I understand them; and I adhered to it, and acted upon it, until since I took my seat here; and I think I should still adhere to it, were it not that the President and his friends will not allow it to be so." To deflect criticism of his patriotism Lincoln, like other National Whigs, continued to vote supplies for the troops in the field while continuing to deny they should be in the field. See Roy Basler, ed., The Collected Works of Abraham Lincoln (1953-55), vol. 1, p. 432.
*Stephen Douglas was one of those men who also ran at a young age. Like Lincoln, he ran for the state legislature at age twenty-three (but he won). He, too, was very, very ambitious. It was almost inevitable that he and Lincoln would come to clash later in life. Lincoln was probably more popular than Douglas, but senators then were chosen by state legislatures. And in the state elections of 1858 the Democrats were able to win control of the legislature because of gerrymandering, leading to Douglas's victory, even though Republicans won more votes.
*The vote in the presidential election was split four ways, between Lincoln, Stephen Douglas (representing Northern Democrats), John Breckenridge (representing Southern Democrats), and John Bell (candidate of the Constitutional Union Party).
*These were the states along the Mason-Dixon Line, such as Kentucky, which could easily have gone either way in the Civil War; they remained loyal to the Union because of Lincoln's deft maneuvering.
*Elsewhere in the same letter in which he made this statement he made another, equally trenchant: "[M]y oath to preserve the constitution to the best of my ability, imposed upon me the duty of preserving, by every indispensable means, that government-that nation-of which that constitution was the organic law. Was it possible to lose the nation, and yet preserve the constitution? By general law life and limb must be protected; yet often a limb must be amputated to save a life; but a life is never wisely given to save a limb. I felt that measures, otherwise unconstitutional, might become lawful, by becoming indispensable to the preservation of the constitution, through the preservation of the nation. Right or wrong, I assumed this ground, and now avow it." Basier, Collected Works of Abraham Lincoln, vol. 7, pp. 81-82.
# 8. The Birth of Industrial Capitalism
How the Industrial Revolution led to the creation of vast wealth and vast opportunities for the greedy, forcing U. S. Grant to tolerate corruption as a means of hanging on to power
It was an accident that Andrew Johnson followed Lincoln, for it was long supposed that it would be Grant who succeeded him. Grant, who had routed the Confederates at Vicksburg. Grant, who had whipped Robert E. Lee. Grant, who seemed to be all that an American hero should be. Grant, the silent, a little gruff, a little primitive hero who dressed in a slovenly way and enjoyed chomping on a wilted cigar. Ulysses Simpson Grant, a child of poverty who had pulled himself up by his bootstraps, overcoming drunkenness and repeated failure to become the nation's commanding general, and now, finally, in 1869, its president.
He knew nothing of government, nothing of finances, nothing of world affairs. And he seemed to have no interest in learning. Beginning his day around ten in the morning, he would quit by five. Probably no president ever worked less. Nonetheless he was very ambitious.
He showed his ambition in a way no president before him ever had—or had ever had to—by his willingness to endure repeated scandals and the way he chose to endure them. Through his two terms Grant would come under relentless attack for his friends' greed and perfidiousness, prompting people to wonder how he managed to survive. To be able to go on day after day despite the headlines, despite the investigations, despite the betrayals of friends. Astonishing.
Grant learned that there was only one way to go on. And that was to ignore a lot of the corruption—to tolerate it, to live with it. Living with it wasn't easy. For people would always wonder if the reason he let the corruption go on was because he himself was corrupt. But as Grant learned, there was no way to root it all out. There was simply too much of it. And too many people were implicated, people who were powerful, people he was close to, people he needed. So he did what he could, forcing out those who had committed the most egregious crimes, and then he looked the other way.
Grant's administration would, of all of the administrations in American history, be the most corrupt. But from his day forward many presidents would learn as he did that they, too, had to be willing to put up with corruption. It was often the price of power. For corruption would become endemic now that the country was in the throes of industrial capitalism and the opportunities for illegal wealth became extravagantly abundant.
Before the war, certainly before the 1850s, Americans had never had much money. George Washington, though wealthy, had had to borrow money to finance the trip to his own inauguration. Two generations later John Tyler, also wealthy, had had to sell a slave to finance the trip to _his_ inauguration (as vice president). The country had been so cash-poor that in the 1830s Nicholas Biddle, head of the Bank of the United States, had had to go begging in Holland for emergency funds when the bank's reserves ran low. Lincoln's career as a politician had nearly been killed because of the inability of the state of Illinois to float ten million dollars in bonds for internal improvements. Twenty years later the country was still short of capital. When the great railroads began to be built in the 1850s American bankers had to turn to Europe for the financing.
The war changed all that. After the war money seemed to be everywhere. Money in amounts that before the war nobody had ever even dreamed of. In 1860 the federal government had collected just $56 million from taxes, tariffs, and land sales. In 1865, the last year of the war, it collected $333 million. A year later, $558 million. And it wasn't just the government that was accumulating giant pools of cash. So was private business. In 1860 the insurance industry had earned a grand total of $6 million. In 1865 it earned $25 million; in 1866, $40 million; and by 1870, more than $100 million. Because the war had been extremely costly, the government had had to go deeply into debt, in 1865 selling $2.2 _billion_ in bonds (in 1860, by comparison, it had sold just $64 _million)._ That, in turn, had led to the development of Wall Street as a major center of wealth and power. And _that_ had led, virtually overnight, to the creation of a whole new industry of financiers, speculators, and brokers. And as the economy grew, so did the take-home pay of the daily worker. In 1860 the average laborer earned $1.60 a day; by 1866, $2.60.
With the abundance of money came a new danger: temptation.
Americans had, to be sure, always been susceptible to corruption. Every president had had to confront allegations of fraud, of unscrupulousness—of greed. Washington had had to face the fact that speculators had swindled millions of dollars out of unsuspecting Revolutionary War veterans. Jefferson had been warned that his postmaster general, Gideon Granger, had possibly paid bribes. In the years following the War of 1812, the Monroe administration had been repeatedly implicated in fraud. First had come the news that corrupt middlemen were making huge sums at the expense of veterans. Then had come the scandal involving Richard Johnson, the chairman of the House Military Affairs Committee. Monroe himself was guilty of a profound conflict of interest.
In the administration of John Quincy Adams a treasury auditor had embezzled $7,000 to cover a bad gambling debt. In the Jackson administration the collector of the customs in New York had made off with $1 million, and then his successor, under Van Buren, had made off with some more. In the Taylor administration there had been the Galphin family controversy. For decades the Galphins had tried, and failed, to persuade the federal government to assume the debts owed them by the British from before the Revolution. After the Taylor administration agreed to pay, it was disclosed that Taylor's secretary of war, George Crawford, stood to personally benefit from the transaction. As the family's attorney he would receive one hundred thousand dollars in legal fees. The secretary of the treasury and the attorney general, who had both approved the settlement, insisted that they were unaware of Crawford's involvement, but Taylor wasn't sure and decided to dismiss his entire cabinet over the incident.*
In the Pierce administration the territorial governor of Kansas had secretly bought up some Indian land and then lobbied, unsuccessfully, to have the capital moved there, so he could cash in on the rise in land values. And then had come Buchanan, whose secretary of war had awarded two sweetheart military contracts to a pack of his predatory friends. Even the Lincoln administration had been implicated in money scandals. Lincoln had had to dismiss his secretary of war, Simon Cameron, for issuing supply contracts without competitive bidding, in express violation of the law. As a result of Cameron's sloppy practices the government had paid top dollar for shoddy blankets, tainted pork and beef, knapsacks that came unglued in the rain, uniforms that fell apart, and guns that blew the thumbs off the soldiers who fired them.*
In the Johnson administration, investigators had uncovered a plot to sell presidential pardons to ex-Confederates. Johnson himself was cleared of wrongdoing, but it was discovered that the person behind the scheme was his son's girlfriend, who sold the pardons for a hundred dollars apiece (fifty dollars down, fifty dollars on receipt of the pardon).
But all that was as nothing compared to what was to come during the Grant years.
The war had unleashed the latent economic strength of American capitalism, leading to the development of gigantic new enterprises (such as the transcontinental railroad) and encouraging a new way of thinking. While Americans had always been tempted by money and had indeed worshipped the almighty dollar, never before had there been the opportunities for making money that there were now. Before, government had been too small for many people to earn huge sums off it, legally or illegally. So had business. The few in the country who had earned giant fortunes had earned them, by and large, as Washington had, through land speculation. Just a relative handful had been able to enrich themselves through business wizardry, through the manipulation of money and goods. But now, suddenly, there seemed literally thousands of ways to make fortunes and thousands who were making them—and quickly.
As news of these vast new fortunes spread, many ordinary Americans began dreaming that they, too, could achieve great wealth. No longer would young men be satisfied with safe, stable jobs. Tens of thousands would now hunger after riches. James Garfield, an ordinary schoolteacher in Ohio at the time, would gamble twice with his hard-earned savings on investments in get-rich-quick schemes. The attitude seemed to be, _If Jay Gould could make himself rich, why not me?_ The very bigness of things seemed to invite such thinking. When enterprises were small, profits were small and uninspiring. Now that enterprises were big, profits were enormous and enticing. It was as if, as Vernon Louis Parrington put it, all America had become a "Great Barbecue" at which everyone wanted to feast.
It was not just the business types who wanted to cash in, but also the politicians and the bureaucrats. The more they heard about the big money being made in private enterprise, the more _they_ wanted to make big money. As a first step, members of Congress saw to it that their own salaries were increased. In Monroe's day a congressman was paid $6 a day; by Pierce's, $8. In 1855, under Buchanan, members had begun receiving an annual salary, $3,000, a substantial increase over what they had earned before, but all in all still a modest amount.
Then the war had come. In 1865 they increased their salaries to $5,000. And then, in 1873, in what came to be called the "Salary Grab," they increased it again, to $7,500, with the increase retroactive to 1871. The salaries of other officials were also dramatically increased at this time. From Washington to Johnson presidents had earned $25,000 annually. Grant's salary as president was doubled to $50,000. The salaries of the vice president, members of the cabinet, and justices of the Supreme Court were increased to $10,000. The increases for everybody but Grant would be rolled back in the wake of public outrage.* But for the determined there were other ways to cash in on America's newfound wealth—illegal ways.
Grant himself was not very interested in money. He lived simply. The son of an old American family of modest means, he was thrifty by nature; as a teenager working on his father's Ohio farm, he managed to save up a hundred dollars. But he was very ambitious. Although he received a meager education at a local village academy, he used family connections to win an appointment to West Point. There, despite his lack of adequate schooling, he succeeded in graduating in the middle of his class, excelling in mathematics and horsemanship. He then went into the army and fought in the Mexican War, where he was cited for bravery. Over the next ten years he remained in the army, moving from one western post to another, doing as he was told, and eventually becoming a captain. But because there were no wars to fight, opportunities to move ahead in the army were slim. Frustrated, Grant, thirty-one, decided to leave the army and to try to make his way as a civilian.
It was a terrible decision. Grant was simply unsuited to civilian life. Over the next seven years failure marked his every move. First he tried farming—and failed. Then, he became a real estate agent—and failed at that. Then he became a tax collector—and failed at _that._ Finally, broke and out of luck, he moved to Galena, Illinois, where his father had opened a modest little store. Grant became a clerk. It was said that he drank too much. Probably he did.
Then the Civil War came—and Grant's fortunes changed dramatically. Although he had trouble attracting attention at first—the War Department did not even bother to answer his letter requesting a commission—he quickly rose through the ranks. Volunteering to serve with an Illinois regiment, he was made a colonel, then, within two months, a brigadier general. In the early months of the war he showed great bravery, continuing to fight fearlessly in one battle even after his horse was shot out from under him. Eight months into his service he conceived a daring plan to launch a combined land and naval attack on two Confederate forts in Kentucky. The Union military commander in the region rejected the plan; Grant insisted on pushing for its approval. Finally the commander gave in to Grant's importuning. The plan worked perfectly. After a fierce battle, with the loss of two thousand lives on each side, the Confederates surrendered. Nearly fifteen thousand enemy soldiers were captured.
During the remaining years of the war, through his victories in Mississippi, Tennessee, and Virginia, Grant proved to be the ablest general the Union had, repeatedly winning against overwhelming odds. In many of his battles Grant faced the staggering loss of thousands of his soldiers. Each time he grimly fought on until he won. At the opening of the Wilderness Campaign in the spring of 1864, he sent a wire back to Washington that summed up his relentless approach: "I propose," he wrote, "to fight it out on this line if it takes all summer." On a single assault during this campaign, he lost more than seven thousand soldiers. Still he kept going. Lincoln, grateful that he finally had a commander who would fight—Gen. George McClellan, who had attended West Point with Grant, often had seemed unwilling to fight—praised him publicly, though some sharply condemned Grant as a butcher.
As president it wasn't his enemies whom Grant had to worry about. It was his friends. _He_ may not have been money mad, _they_ were. And as they dreamed up one crooked scheme after another to get rich, they repeatedly got him in trouble.
The first to be drawn into scandal was Abel Rathbone Corbin, Grant's brother-in-law. Fixing the mess Corbin created, however, was easy. Six months into Grant's first term, Corbin joined in an insidious plot with Jay Gould to corner the gold market. Corbin's role was to persuade the government to withhold its gold so the price would rise. For a time the government did withhold its gold, and the price did rise, sky high. Corbin received $25,000. Then Grant intervened, selling off enough federal gold to break Gould's control. End of story.
The second to get into trouble was Gen. Orville Babcock. Fixing the mess Babcock created proved almost impossible.
Babcock, a West Point graduate, had been in the army with Grant, serving with him in the difficult days of the Wilderness and Spottsylvania campaigns, among others. Grant subsequently had hired him in the White House to serve as his chief of staff (the position was formally known as secretary to the president). Babcock was a very energetic, very well-organized assistant, and Grant liked him immensely. Grant probably spent more time with Babcock than with any other member of his administration, and gave him an office right outside his own.
Babcock loved Grant, loved working with him in the White House, but Babcock, a newlywed, had a great love of money, too. And in 1869, just a year into the administration, he found a way to make much more money than was due him as Grant's assistant. It was through his friendship with John MacDonald, the supervisor of the Internal Revenue Service at St. Louis.
Though MacDonald was a snake of a man, very conniving, Babcock liked him and agreed to join him in a plot with midwestern liquor distillers to evade the government's steep taxes on whiskey. MacDonald promised that with Babcock's help the scheme could net millions in kickbacks from the distillers. Cheating on the whiskey tax had been widespread in the Midwest since the Lincoln administration, which had dramatically jacked up the tax to help pay for the war. But MacDonald's nefarious plan was fantastic, an utterly brazen swindle, and would, over time, come to involve literally hundreds of people. But for five years the conspirators managed to keep a lid on their activities and to keep raking in the boodle.
Eventually the authorities caught on to the loss in revenues and began an investigation. It was a very preliminary one, however, and when they reported to Grant they did not yet know of Babcock's involvement. Grant, unafraid at this point that the scandal could hurt him or his assistant, publicly announced that he wanted the officials to get to the bottom of the mess. "Let no guilty man escape," he said. The Whiskey Ring (as it came to be called) must be crushed!
Then he found out about Babcock.
Grant himself was very honest, and his honesty was not in question. But he found it hard to let the investigation go forward. He had trusted Babcock, had stood side by side with him in battle, had given him high positions in both the army and the White House. To let the government go after Babcock would seem disloyal. Worse, perhaps, a government probe would undoubtedly reflect badly on the administration, might sink it in public contempt, might sink Grant himself; already there were charges that some of the profits from the scam had gone into his reelection campaign. So Grant decided to do what no president before him ever had (but which several presidents afterward would). He tried to derail an official investigation: to obstruct justice.
He could not put a stop to the probe altogether. Things had gone too far for that. His own secretary of the treasury, Benjamin Bristow, was pressing hard for a thorough search for the truth. But Grant could sabotage the investigation, and that is precisely what he now proceeded to do by depriving the attorney general of the chief means of obtaining evidence against Babcock. He simply told the attorney general that in this case, unlike in any other federal investigation, no witness was to be given immunity in exchange for testimony.
Babcock was indicted anyway, in December 1875.
The trial began in February in the federal courthouse in St. Louis, and things immediately went badly for Babcock. Prosecutors, hobbled but not entirely crippled by Grant's order, presented so much hard evidence against the president's chief of staff that his attorneys decided not to dispute it. Instead, like all good defense lawyers with a weak case, they argued that the evidence shouldn't be admitted.
Babcock worried that he might be convicted, but acted confidently. He had some of the best attorneys money could buy. The Republican press was for him, daily running touching stories about the ordeal to which the government was subjecting his pregnant wife and children. Even the judge was for him, repeatedly ruling in favor of his lawyers' motions. (The judge apparently hoped to be appointed to the U.S. Supreme Court and thought Grant might just do so if he helped cover up the administration's fraud.)
But the question hanging over the trial from its inception was whether Grant would testify for Babcock and to that question there was for some time no answer. Babcock's attorneys repeatedly wired requests to the president to testify and repeatedly Grant put them off. Finally, when it appeared that Babcock, despite all of the favorable press he was receiving, despite the friendly rulings of the judge, despite the handcuffs the president had put on the prosecutors, might actually be convicted, then finally Grant decided he would testify. At an emergency meeting of the cabinet in Washington, he told his astonished listeners that he planned to take the very next train to St. Louis to appear as a personal witness on Babcock's behalf. The cabinet, objecting strenuously, forced Grant to back down. But the president insisted anyway on giving a deposition for the defense, which he did shortly afterward from the White House itself, sitting through more than five hours of questions.
Grant's deposition marked a turning point. The trial that had been going badly for Babcock suddenly began to go well for him. Grant didn't just testify in his deposition that Babcock was a fine fellow. He went further. He said that they were so close that if Babcock had done something wrong then he perforce would have known about it. And he knew nothing.
As expected, given what the president said—given that Babcock's conviction would be tantamount to the conviction of the president himself—the jury acquitted Babcock on all counts. That night he was given a hero's welcome by a crowd of four hundred, who stood in the cold Missouri winter to hear him give a celebratory speech lasting more than half an hour.
Grant was delighted with Babcock's acquittal and told him he could return to his old job in the White House. But when Babcock went back to his old desk right outside the president's door there was a huge public outcry.
Babcock would have to go. Even Grant finally saw that. The country didn't believe in Babcock's innocence. Too many other people implicated in the scandal had also been indicted for prosecutors to have made a mistake about his involvement. (Eventually 230 people would be indicted; 110 would be convicted, including four government officials.) But the president insisted on letting Babcock keep a second position he held as the superintendent of public buildings and grounds.
Grant would undoubtedly have handled the Babcock corruption scandal better if it had been the only scandal he faced, but it wasn't. Almost every month somebody or other associated with the administration was charged, indicted or implicated in scandal. The cabinet was especially rotten. _Four_ cabinet secretaries were implicated in one sorry scheme or another; three resigned.
Secretary of the Interior Columbus Delano resigned after it was disclosed that his son had taken bribes in awarding government land grants. (As many as eight hundred land grants were subsequently discovered to have been fraudulent.)
Treasury Secretary William Adams Richardson resigned after Congress learned that he had let a private contractor keep _half_ of the tax moneys he collected from delinquent taxpayers, earning an astonishing profit of two hundred thousand dollars. This was an especially grievous offense. Congress had authorized the secretary to hire a private agent to collect taxes from hard-to-find deadbeats; instead, the secretary had allowed the agent to collect the taxes owed the government by the railroads.
Secretary of War Robert Belknap resigned after it was learned that he had shaken down the franchise owners of Indian-trading posts for kickbacks amounting to tens of thousands of dollars. There was in this case, however, the suspicion that it was not the cabinet secretary himself who was guilty so much as his first and second wives. The first Mrs. Belknap apparently concocted the scheme, the payments going directly to her until her death. Then they went to her sister, a well-known spendthrift, who, curiously, became the second Mrs. Belknap.
The fourth cabinet official implicated in fraud was George Robeson, the secretary of the navy, who was suspected of receiving three hundred thousand dollars in kickbacks from a Philadelphia supplier, who'd also given him a house. The money was found in Robeson's bank account, but Grant let the secretary remain in office.
Shocking as all that was, it was just what went on in the cabinet. The rest of the Grant government was also suffused with corruption. It was as if greed, like a cancer, had simply taken over. The customs houses, always susceptible to corruption because of the vast sums that passed through the hands of the collectors, became more corrupt than ever. In New Orleans the collector of customs was convicted of malfeasance. In New York the assistant to the collector was implicated in bribery, and the collector himself implicated in fraud.
The federal courts, supposedly the bulwark against corruption, themselves became involved in corrupt practices, leading to the resignation of five federal judges. Overseas, the U.S. minister to Great Britain, Robert Schenck, allowed a British mining company to use his name to raise capital. When the secretary of state ordered Schenck to withdraw his support of the company he agreed to do so, but delayed long enough to give his friends time to sell their stock before the news broke and the stock declined.
Grant, reeling, even had to face the fact that both of his vice presidents were implicated in fraud. Schuyler Colfax, his first vice president, was a very typical politician, deal making, compromising, and appealingly friendly. An old pol, in short. Just what Grant wasn't. Which was good, because Grant was in need of someone who knew his way around politics, knew his way around Washington. Colfax, Speaker of the House, knew his way around as well as anybody. So in a way they were a good fit. But Colfax, too, it turned out, was corrupt. Like more than a dozen other members of Congress, he had gotten involved in the Crédit Mobilier scandal.
Crédit Mobilier was the creation of Oakes Ames, another congressman, and the last person in the world one would expect to become involved in financial hanky-panky. A member of a prominent Massachusetts family, Ames had plenty of money and owned a thriving construction business. But like many at the time he was greedy and wanted more than he had, and to get it was willing to do things no congressman had ever done before.
Crédit Mobilier itself was a shady operation. On paper its purpose was to help the Union Pacific build a main part of the transcontinental railroad. In reality it was little more than a dummy construction corporation through which the directors of the Union Pacific paid themselves inflated prices for the work that was done. Because they made a percentage from every mile of track that was built, the more the line cost, the more money they made. By using Crédit Mobilier as a middleman they could jack up the costs tremendously, giving themselves added hefty profits. But it wasn't Crédit Mobilier itself that got Ames, Colfax, and the others into trouble. It was Ames's decision to bribe key members of Congress in order to obtain their help in winning huge government subsidies.
What Ames did was to give the congressmen stock in the company along with the money to buy the stock. The money ostensibly was in the form of a loan. But nobody had to worry about paying it back; because the company was so hugely profitable, the loan could be paid back out of the dividends the stocks paid in a single year.
For a time it seemed to be a brilliant scheme. Some of the leading members of Congress took Ames's stock: Colfax, Henry Wilson (Grant's second vice president), James G. Blaine, and James Garfield. It was as if they were all members of a secret club, the Ames Club. And it was all very cozy, though only a little profitable, most members receiving just a few hundred dollars. But the scheme depended on the club's being secret, and one day it suddenly wasn't. The unmasking of the club came about as a result of a lawsuit filed against Crédit Mobilier by a disaffected partner who had been disturbed by rumors that Ames was sitting on a block of unsold stock. Actually Ames wasn't sitting on it at all: It was the stock that he was using to bribe members of Congress. But the partner, who didn't know this, thought he was being cheated somehow. Ames tried to straighten out the mess by telling the partner the truth about the secret stock in a series of seriously indiscreet letters (in one he named the members he had bribed). But by then the cat was out of the bag.
In the fall of 1872 the _New York Sun_ exposed the scam in a front-page story about Ames titled,THE KING OF THE FRAUDS. The subhead read: "How the Crédit Mobilier Bought Its Way into Congress." Schuyler Colfax, then in the final months of his term as vice president, at first claiming that he didn't know anything about Crédit Mobilier, insisted he was innocent. Then he suddenly "remembered" that one day he had received a thousand dollars in the mail and that he had used this money to buy some three thousand shares of stock in the company. Others had similarly lame excuses. Henry Wilson said the stock had gone to his wife, who'd received some $800 in dividends. On learning that the money was tainted, he said, he'd returned it. James Garfield admitted he'd received a dividend check for $329, but insisted he hadn't known Crédit Mobilier was connected with the building of the Union Pacific, an incredible claim.
Oakes Ames himself insisted all along he'd done nothing wrong, that all he was guilty of was helping his friends get in on a good deal. Two congressional investigations in 1873 uncovered all of the gritty, disturbing details, but in the end the House could bring itself to censor just Ames and one other legislator. All the others got off without even a reprimand.
Grant professed not to believe that the people in his government accused of wrongdoing, people he'd fought with in the war, smoked cigars with, gotten drunk with, were guilty. But it was impossible to believe they had all been framed and Grant really didn't. He simply couldn't get rid of everybody who was tainted. For he'd have to admit he had been grossly irresponsible in giving them all jobs. And that would make _him_ look bad. And it would weaken his grip on power. _Let the bastards get my friends, and they'll soon be thinking they can get me, too._ And Grant very much wanted to remain in power. After his first term he ran for a second. And then, after taking three years off, he ran for a third. (On his third try he lost, Americans by then tired of the Grant scandals.)
So Grant tolerated the corruption.
It was a dirty business. A man had to hold his nose to avoid smelling the stench. But for an old soldier like Grant, who had learned to live with the knowledge that he had sent tens of thousands of young men to their deaths, living with corruption was relatively easy.
The scandals were very much a product of Grant's own failings as a leader. But not entirely. They were, to a certain extent, the result of that vast new change that had overtaken the American economy. Grant, the first president to preside over an administration filled with people who wanted to use their government connections to become rich, stumbled badly in dealing with the corruption. But his reaction to the scandals was predictable. Determined to hang on to power he repeatedly agreed to look the other way when evidence of corruption was put in front of him. Other presidents would learn to do the very same thing. It would come to seem easier than making war on one's own friends. And by saving them, it would often seem, one could save oneself.
*Taylor never got the chance to rectify matters. Just at the time that he decided to dismiss the cabinet he died. As mentioned earlier, he passed away after eating a bowl of cherries and cream on a hot summer day.
*Cameron was a corrupt machine politician from Pennsylvania. He is credited with the saying: "An honest politician is one who when he is bought will stay bought."
*Grant's raise could not be rescinded. The Constitution forbids the salary of the president from being reduced during his term in office.
# 9. The Birth of Machine Politics
How the arrival of political machines corrupted politics, forcing Rutherford B. Hayes to tolerate massive vote fraud in order to gain power
* * *
_Down through the early 1860s the story of presidential ambition follows a simple narrative. It is, by and large, about what the presidents themselves are willing to do to gain power and to keep power. But beginning in the late 1860s, the story line changes. Now it is not only what they themselves are willing to do but what they are willing to let their supporters do. First, U. S. Grant lets his friends get away with fraud. Then, Rutherford B. Hayes lets his friends get away with stealing votes. The presidents pretend that they are not letting anybody get away with anything. But they are only pretending._
_That they know what their friends are up to and pretend they don't is the price they have to pay in this new world for their ambition. It is a steep price, measurable in the diminished respect they command as presidents. But they willingly pay it. For it is, at the moment, the price that has to be paid for the privilege of living in the White House._
* * *
The political parties had been established, in theory, to help average people express their will through the ballot box. But after the Civil War the parties became huge machines run by ruthless bosses. And the machines dominated politics, and very often nearly controlled things completely. In some states the only voices that mattered were the voices of the machine politicians. The most notorious of all the machines was Tammany Hall, which operated in New York City for a time with near impunity. There Boss Tweed had more power over things than the mayor. But there were many other machines. And they were nearly as powerful in their domain as the Tammany bosses were in theirs.
What made the machines powerful, in part, was the huge increase in the number of immigrants, whom the bosses found easy to manipulate. Give a foreigner help finding a job and he'd be ecstatically grateful—or at least grateful enough to vote for the candidates the bosses supported.
What also made the machines powerful was the growth in government payrolls that occurred in the aftermath of the war. At all levels—local, state, and federal—government payrolls simply exploded as government services expanded to keep pace with the increase in population, the growth of the cities, and the movement west.* In 1850, for instance, there had been just twenty-six thousand federal employees. By 1870, there were more than fifty thousand; by 1880, more than a hundred thousand. As the number of government employees ballooned so too did the power of the bosses. For it was the bosses who did the hiring. Furthermore, the more people they hired, the more money they could raise. For each employee was required to kick back between 2 and 6 percent of their salary. And that made the bosses even more powerful. (The bosses referred to the kickback as an "assessment," which made it sound almost like a tax. In a way, it was, for nearly every employee had to pay it.)
Along with the power came arrogance. Earlier generations of American politicians had on the whole been rather timid in their attempts to control elections. And living as they were in the shadow of the Founding Fathers, they were reluctant to tamper with things. The bosses seemed eager to control elections and confident that they could.
It wasn't just that they had a lot of money and power. It was also the war. For the bosses, as for people generally, the Founding Fathers were a distant memory, as was the Revolution.† The war that had meaning for them was the war _they_ had fought in, the Civil War, and the lesson of the Civil War was that victory goes to the side that is the most ruthless.
It had been a hard war, and it hardened the men who had fought it. They had done things they had never thought anyone would have to do: burn down whole cities; order tens of thousands of men to their deaths; destroy billions of dollars' worth of property. And it changed them—and it changed the country. Business was rougher and so was politics.
The bosses played politics roughest of all.
The candidates the parties put forward in the election in 1876 happened to dislike boss politics. Samuel Tilden, the Democratic nominee, had been a crusading reformer. As the governor of New York he had even gone against Tammany Hall, the Democrats' own machine, and bested it. Rutherford B. Hayes, the Republican nominee, had also been a reformer. Going into the election he issued a statement demanding civil service reform and an end to corruption.
But by 1876 the candidates almost didn't matter. It wasn't the candidates who ran the campaigns. It was the bosses. And the bosses in both parties decided that this year they would win even if they had to steal votes.
Rutherford B. Hayes, while personally honest, had always been eager to be a winner. But as a young man Rud, as he was known, had been more concerned with a rather simpler matter: finding himself. He even suffered a nervous breakdown as a teenager, roaming the rural hills of his native Ohio aimlessly for months.
He was extremely close to both his mother and his sister, and would write them long, loving letters whenever he was away. But the greatest influence on his life was his father, who had died two months before Rud was born. The stories his mother told about his father, the stories his relatives told, the stories neighbors told, led Rud to believe that his father had been nearly godlike, an inspirational figure. In fact the father had been more of a dreamer than a doer, a man who tried to become rich but who never quite succeeded. Although he made money running a whiskey distillery, his great ambition was to make a fortune as a land speculator, and he never did. Shortly after he got into the land business in Ohio, the boom ended and prices plummeted. The son didn't measure himself against the real father, however, but against the fictional, mythical man he'd always heard about. And that inspired him to reach higher and higher and higher.
A second great influence seems to have been an uncle, John Noyes, or, as he was often referred to, the Honorable John Noyes. It was the title that was critical. Uncle John had been a member of Congress. He, too, hadn't been all that the family pretended he was. While serving in Washington he had become an alcoholic. But Rud, once again, seems to have been inspired by the myth. And Uncle John seemed especially mythical. He had, after all, been a politician in far-off Washington, the center of power. And he had a title.
Rud began to figure himself out at Kenyon College, where he had the opportunity to get out from under his mother's influence. Then he went on to Harvard Law School. Harvard would seem to have been just the place for Hayes, for he was bright and inquisitive. But after Harvard he stalled. He settled in Lower Sandusky at the invitation of a relative and went absolutely nowhere for five long years, years he subsequently regarded as a complete waste.
His sister, Fanny, to whom he was very close, implored him to move to Columbus. Hayes, in a blow for independence, moved instead to Cincinnati. There he finally had a chance to prove himself and went all out. To ingratiate himself with the local establishment he aggressively joined five community booster groups. Then, in an extraordinary effort to build contacts with the leaders of the two main religious groups, he joined both the Episcopal and Presbyterian Churches, alternating his attendance from week to week. As if all that weren't enough, he began giving speeches, in order, he confided, to blow "my own trumpet." The world is a harsh place, Hayes noted, and to get ahead you have to "push, labor, shove."
When the war came he joined the Union army and suddenly found a place where he could excel. Although he never achieved national renown, he was appointed a major general after beating the Rebs on several obscure battlefields in the mountains of West Virginia.
There was an inevitability to his career in politics. With a Harvard law degree, a record as a war hero, and the example of Uncle John, he quickly came to the attention of the Ohio political establishment. Before he'd even been mustered out of the army, he was elected to Congress.
He accomplished nothing during his single term in the legislature. But because he was intelligent and dependable, party leaders liked him and ran him for governor. Given the party's predominance in Ohio, he won. When his two-year term was up they ran him again. Again he won.
All agreed he could have won a third term, but he chose not to try. Politics was tiring, he complained. To be elected governor of Ohio twice was enough. So he retired, returning to the full-time practice of law. But he couldn't quit. Six months after leaving he was back, again as a candidate for a seat in Congress. This time, however, he lost. Not because people disliked him but because Republicans all across the country were having a hard time living down the Grant scandals and an economic depression.
Following the election Hayes again took himself out of politics, declaring that he really was out, "definitely, absolutely, positively." But he simply could not _stay_ out. Once again, in 1874, he ran for governor. As he explained in his diary, "a third term would be a distinction—a feather I would like to wear." For no Ohioan had ever served a third term as governor. Despite a national trend against Republicans, Hayes won easily.
It was only natural that he would then decide to seek the presidential nomination in 1876. Ohio was a critical state. And as a three-time governor he could brag that he was in a position to win the state in the presidential election. In addition, despite his reformist leanings, he remained on good terms with the bosses.
Hayes pursued the nomination relentlessly but stealthily. Instead of announcing his candidacy early on, he decided to hold back to allow some of the more prominent Republicans to destroy each other in the months leading up to the convention. He even came out publicly in favor of one of the leaders of the reform wing of the party, Benjamin Bristow, Grant's crusading treasury secretary. Bristow didn't have a chance, but by coming to his aid Hayes would be helping to beef up the reform wing, which was where his own strength lay.
The most serious threat to his candidacy came from James G. Blaine, the former Speaker of the House, who at the time was the favorite of the party establishment. Blaine was far better known than Hayes, and with his connections to the bosses, far likelier to succeed. But Hayes proved to be the more adept politician. Made aware of some letters proving that the Union Pacific had paid Blaine $64,000 for some worthless railroad stocks while he was Speaker, Hayes secretly arranged to have the letters published in a New York newspaper.*Blaine's candidacy promptly died, the voters figuring he must have done something untoward in return for the railroad's generosity. Even though Blaine had the backing of the bosses, Hayes, not Blaine, would be the party's nominee,
It was a monumentally important presidential election. For it was the first the Democrats had a chance of winning in nearly a generation. Not only were the Republicans being blamed for the bad economy and Grant's scandals. They no longer controlled the South. Reconstruction was ending, and the South was turning solidly Democratic. Only three Southern states remained in Republican hands: Florida, South Carolina, and Louisiana. And all three of these states were about to be taken over by the Democrats.
The Republicans did what they could. As they had before and as they were to do again and again throughout the nineteenth century, they encouraged party speakers to wave the bloody flag to win votes.* A vote for the Democrats, Americans were told, was a vote for the Southerners who had brought on the worst war in our history. "Every State that seceded from the Union was a Democratic State," Robert Ingersoll, the Republican Party's most prominent speaker, told audiences. "Every ordinance of secession that was drawn was drawn by a Democrat." _Remember that!_
But on election day, November 8, it appeared that Samuel Tilden had won. Although it was premature to call the election on the basis of the reported popular vote—Tilden was just a quarter million votes ahead, out of more than eight million cast—the electoral college vote appeared to give the Democrats a landslide victory.
Based on the estimated popular vote, Tilden seemed to have received 203 electoral votes to Hayes's 166. When Tilden's state victories were shown on a map, it looked as if he had swept most of the country. Not only had he won every state in the Old South, he had also won the border states and even several states in the North. Of all the states worth winning the most important was New York; whoever won New York, Hayes had said many times, would win the election. And Tilden had won New York.
In a normal election that would have been that. Tilden would have gone on to the White House; Hayes would have stayed in Ohio. But this was not to be a normal election. The bosses of the Republican Party refused to let Hayes lose.
There was only one way to keep him from losing, and that was somehow to steal the election. So they decided to steal it.
It was not the Republican politicians who first realized how it could be stolen. It was the editors of the _New York Times_ , then an avowedly Republican organ. Sitting in their offices late on election night, they heard that the Democrats were not confident of having won Louisiana, South Carolina, and Florida, the three Southern states still headed by Republican governors installed under Reconstruction. The editors then did some quick arithmetic. These three Southern states had a total of 19 electoral votes. If those electoral votes could be taken from Tilden and given to Hayes—a real possibility since the states were under Republican control—Hayes could win the election by a single vote, 185 to 184. (166+19=185; 203–19=184) There was no proof that Hayes had won those states. Every indication was that he had lost them. But in Wednesday's morning edition, contrary to most of the other papers in the nation, the _Times_ announced that Hayes _had_ won both Louisiana and South Carolina, with Florida still in doubt.
Over at the Fifth Avenue Hotel, the chairman of the Republican Party and one of its leading bosses had gone to sleep convinced that Hayes had lost. In the morning an aide, accompanied by one of the editors of the _New York Times_ , persuaded the chairman that the Republicans could claim Hayes had won if the party took the three Southern states still in Republican hands. Within hours the chairman issued this bold statement: "Dispatches received at these headquarters report that Louisiana, Florida, South Carolina, Wisconsin, Oregon, Nevada and California have given Republican majorities. There is no reason to doubt the correctness of these reports and if confirmed the election of Hayes is assured by a majority of one in the Electoral College."
There was in fact _every_ reason to doubt that the Republicans had won Louisiana, Florida, and South Carolina. But these were the states they had to win. For these were the states that had the critical 19 electoral votes—19 votes that would decide whether the nineteenth president of the United States would be a Republican or a Democrat; 19 votes that would decide if things were to remain as they were and had been for years or would change. And, most important, 19 votes that would determine which party would be in power the next four years, and which was to control federal patronage.
But how to get them? Never in American history had the electoral votes of a single state been switched. And now not just one or two, but three states would have to be switched. And every electoral vote from these three states would have to go to Hayes. With just 166 votes from the other states, he needed all 19 to reach the winning number, 185. Tilden, on the other hand, needed just one of these contested votes to win.
The keys to victory were held by the three states' Republican governors, who controlled the returning boards that certified the election results. If the boards threw out the votes of white districts, which were overwhelmingly Democratic, leaving the elections to be decided by the black districts, which were overwhelmingly Republican, the Republicans could take the three states.* Of course thousands and thousands of white votes would have to be disqualified. But under the election laws passed during Reconstruction, the returning boards were authorized to invalidate the votes of an entire district if it could be proved that a single black person had been prevented from voting in the district. And blacks _had_ been prevented from voting—thousands of blacks. All three states had black majorities, and yet more whites voted. To be sure, lots of blacks didn't vote because they hadn't yet gotten into the habit of voting. But many, many blacks didn't because they weren't allowed to.
So, under pressure from the party bosses and out of a healthy imstinct for self-preservation, the returning boards began throwing out the votes of white Democratic voters, throwing them out by the thousands, often on the flimsiest of grounds. By the time the board in Louisiana was through, it had discarded more than thirteen thousand white votes. By early December three states that previously seemed to have gone for Tilden now were going for Hayes.
In effect both parties cheated. The Democrats, by stopping many blacks from voting, cheated first. Then the Republicans, trying to steal the election back, themselves cheated.
The members of Congress eventually had to decide which results to approve, the initial board returns or the amended ones. For months they haggled endlessly; finally, just two days before the inauguration, they hammered out a deal that made Hayes president.
Hayes watched what was done in his name—and said nothing. Not one word complaining about the process. In saying nothing he showed just how truly ambitious he was. Say nothing, and he could become president of the United States.
He himself did not steal any votes. But the bargain by which he became president severely hampered his free exercise of the powers of his office. In exchange for the presidency he had to sell out the two groups in Louisiana and South Carolina that had been the most loyal to the Republican party: carpetbaggers and blacks. He had to agree to let the Democrats take over the governments of the two states, forcing the carpetbaggers to flee. And he had to agree to withdraw the federal troops remaining in the states' capitals, troops on whom blacks had relied for protection. The Democrats in Louisiana promised in return to respect the constitutional rights of the blacks and to protect them from violence. But blacks soon after lost their right to vote in Louisiana as they had earlier lost their right to vote in other states taken over by Democrats. Shortly thereafter, more than thirty blacks in Louisiana were killed in clashes with whites.*
Hayes actually had always intended to withdraw the troops from the two states. But because he was forced to do so as part of the electoral bargain that put him in office, he was unable, when the Democrats took over the states, to use the possible return of the army to threaten the Democrats when they began to break their promise to protect blacks. He protested. His protests were ignored. And so Reconstruction came to its ignominious end.
Hayes always insisted that he had won the election fair and square. But if he did, his victory raises questions about the fairness of the elections held afterward in the South. For if it was right in 1876 to throw out the votes of whites in districts where blacks were prevented from voting, it should have been right to do so in the elections that took place subsequently. And yet this was not done. Hayes never once said it should be.*
As President Hayes initially fought the machine bosses in his own party, even insisting, over the objections of Senate leaders, on the seating of a cabinet dominated by reformers. At great risk to his standing in the party, he even challenged the boss of the bosses, New York senator Roscoe Conkling, who ran the biggest machine in the country. After a commission reported that the New York Custom House controlled by Conkling was rife with corruption, Hayes demanded that the place be cleaned up. When Chester Arthur, the head of the Custom House, refused to make real reforms, Hayes fired him.
Hayes even took on the explosive issue of assessments, the lifeblood of the machine. He issued an outright ban against them by executive order. This was a marvelous move, and it got everybody's attention, invigorating the reform movement as nothing before ever had. But it was theater, a bit of play acting. Hayes, it turned out, had no intention of banning assessments at all. In the off-year election of 1878 he expressly permitted them as long as they were "voluntary," which was as good as lifting the ban outright. For an assessment to be legal, all the party hack sent out to collect it had to tell an employee was that it was "voluntary." The employee, knowing who buttered his bread, then "volunteered" to pay.
Hayes really couldn't go further than he did in his little war on the machine. Go further, and he risked destroying the very party that had put him in power. For the party depended on assessments to survive. And he very much wanted the party to survive. Like millions of other Republicans who had fought in the war, he believed in the Republican Party—even if it was now beholden in so many ways to the bosses. Besides, destroy the party and he'd destroy his own administration. Without the party the administration would collapse.
Hayes did not run for reelection. The bosses had made him promise in 1876 not to run to give one of their own favorites a chance in 1880. After he left office he went back home to Ohio. There he remained a local celebrity of sorts. But history forgot him. He simply hadn't done anything worth remembering. Even his responsibility for the disreputable way he came to power didn't seem worth remembering: For he himself hadn't stolen votes. He'd just passively let them be stolen, enabling him to escape the notoriety that he probably deserved.
Like most of the presidents between Lincoln and McKinley, he was too weak to bother with, one of "the lost Americans," as Thomas Wolfe characterized them, "whose gravely vacant and bewhiskered faces mixed, melted, swam together.... Which had the whiskers, which the burnsides: which was which?" He was weak because the bosses wanted weak presidents. For the weak could be controlled. To win, therefore, a man perforce had to give up his principles, had to cave. Next to the power of the bosses, principles were nothing.
Vote stealing was not a new phenomenon in American history. Aaron Burr had tried to steal the election of 1800. And Andrew Jackson had claimed that the presidency _had_ been stolen from him in 1824. And there had been innumerable individual instances of vote stealing in nearly every presidential election since 1840, when Thurlow Weed, the boss of the Whigs in New York, reportedly bought votes to help elect Tippecanoe.* But in none of these elections, deplorable as the circumstances surrounding them were, was there anything comparable to what happened in 1876. It was the first election to be stolen outright.*
Once the bosses saw how easy it was to steal an election, they were encouraged to keep on doing it. So in 1880, just four years later, they stole another.
*More than half the people employed by the federal government worked for the post office. As the country moved west post offices had to be established in every community. See Bernard Weisberger, "What Made the Government Grow," American Heritage (Sept. 1997).
†The last veteran of the American Revolution died in 1867.
*These were the so-called Mulligan Letters, named after James Mulligan, one of Blaine's business partners. Mulligan found the letters in the office files and leaked them.
*"Waving the bloody shirt" was a reference to a stunt pulled by Republican senator Ben Butler; during the impeachment trial of President Andrew Johnson, Butler dramatically stood up and waved a shirt stained with blood.
*From Reconstruction to the New Deal, blacks in the South remained predominantly loyal to the Republican Party. In the states with black majorities they dominated the delegations sent to Republican national conventions. Republicans had to do very little to keep black support; the blacks had nowhere else to turn. When Teddy Roosevelt in 1906 unfairly cashiered an entire black regiment in Brownsville, Texas, after a few of its one hundred and sixty members became involved in a violent brawl, blacks nationwide expressed outrage; but at the next election, in 1908, they once again voted overwhelmingly Republican. Party bosses like Mark Hanna favored black delegations at the national conventions because they were easy to control and repeatedly turned back attempts to limit their voting power. (Under the rules then in effect a delegation's voting strength was determined solely by the population of the state; that meant that blacks from southern states cast as many votes at a convention as whites from similarly-sized northern states even though the southern states never went Republican in the general election. Today the Republican Party gives delegations from states that vote Republican greater representation at its conventions.) The southern delegations remained a powerful force in the Republican party for years. In 1912 they contributed to William Howard Tafit's convention triumph over Teddy Roosevelt. (Taft was able to control the southern delegations by seeing to it that they were dominated by federal officeholders he had appointed.)
*The bargain Hayes agreed to also required the Democrats to support government subsidies for the building of new railroad lines in the North. The Republicans, for their part, agreed to approve federal subsidies for internal improvement projects in the South.
*The outcome of most of those elections would not have been different if blacks had been permitted to vote. But in at least two elections-in 1884 and 1916-it probably would have. In these two elections-two stolen elections, in effect-blacks probably would have voted Republican in sufficient numbers to give the Republican candidates victory.
*Chester Arthur, one of Weed's protégés, was to remark that Weed in the 1850s resorted to the use of street-gang ruffians to "break up the lines" of voters hostile to the party's candidates. "On one occasion," recalled Arthur, "these ruffians were provided with awls, which they prodded into the flesh of the majority, thus dispersing them." At other times, he said, Weed simply stuffed the ballot boxes.
*In 1844 the Whigs are said to have raised twenty thousand dollars to buy votes in Philadelphia; the Democrats claimed to have intercepted a letter laying out the scheme. There were rumors that the Whigs in Boston had raised a hundred thousand dollars to buy votes there. (See Charles G. Sellers, James K. Polk: Continentalist [1966], p. 155.) In 1868 Tammany Hall Democrats in New York supposedly stole as many as fifty thousand votes in New York City, enough to win the state for Horatio Seymour; one man is said to have voted twenty-seven times. See Thomas C. Reeves, Gentleman Boss: The Life of Chester Alan Arthur (1975), p. 48; John Niven, Martin Van Buren (1983), p. 471.
# 10. The Story of Chester A. Arthur
How a party hack fired for corruption from his post as head of the New York Custom House tried to rehabilitate himself by becoming the vice president of the United States
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_In 1880 James Garfield is selected as the Republican nominee for president. An extremely talented man—he can simultaneously write Latin with one hand and Greek with the other—he is also extremely ambitious, too ambitious. To gain power he now oversees one of the dirtiest campaigns in American history, secretly condoning the stealing of votes in both Indiana and New York. To help finance campaign operations he cuts a corrupt deal with the railroads—the biggest special interest in the country—agreeing to give them the right to veto any of his appointments to the Supreme Court in exchange for tens of thousands of dollars in campaign contributions._
_But just three months after Garfield is inaugurated president, he is shot by a deranged nobody, Charles Guiteau. Two and half months later, Garfield is dead. Chester Alan Arthur, his vice president, is now president. It is a shocking turn of events. Nobody can believe Chet Arthur is president of the United States._
_It is no wonder they wonder._
* * *
If an ambitious man was after political power in nineteenth-century America there were plenty of places he could find it. But if he was after more, after wealth and position as well as power, real wealth and real power, there was only one place: the New York Custom House, where the government collected tariff revenues levied on three-fourths of the goods imported into the United States. Three officials ran the Custom House: the collector, the surveyor, and a naval officer. All three were powerful, but one was more powerful than the others and by a substantial margin: the collector. His was the job really ambitious men craved.
Of the thousands and thousands of posts available to those with political connections in the federal government, there was no other like it. For one thing, it paid more than any other job: more than fifty thousand dollars some years, more than the members of Congress made, more than the justices of the Supreme Court made, more even than the president himself made. For another, it came with immense patronage power. The person who held the collector's job had the power to give a thousand other people jobs, more jobs than were controlled by any other single individual in the entire federal bureaucracy, except the president. And that was not all.
Because employees had no recourse if one day the head of the Custom House decided to fire them, his control over them was nearly total, making them dependent on him in a way ordinary citizens in a democracy are seldom dependent on anybody. He could levy assessments on them for political contributions, forcing them to kick back to the party coffers between 2 and 4 percent of their annual salary, which brought in a huge amount of money, often as much as fifty thousand dollars. And he could make them work on behalf of machine-backed candidates at election time. And because he could raise huge campaign funds at a snap, and because he controlled an army of campaign workers, candidates for offices high and low became dependent on him, too.
With all that power, inevitably, came corruption, the corruption typical of nineteenth-century big-city political machines. Businessmen complained that the port charged them extortionist rates to store their goods in warehouses if the goods weren't immediately picked up from the docks after being unloaded. Government auditors charged that the place was overstaffed: A third of the work force may have been unneeded. Many who appeared on the payroll never even showed up for work; they got paid because somebody—the collector, one of his friends, or a political big shot—was owed a favor. The operation was so corrupt that many of the collectors were fired for fraud. The collector under Andrew Jackson—Samuel Swartwout—fled to Europe with his million-dollar boodle.
Many people in politics hungered for this lucrative, powerful, and corrupt post. Only one made it his life's ambition: Chester Arthur.
And that in a way was odd.
For it had seemed for a long time that all Chester Arthur was interested in was good causes, and one in particular: black rights. As a college student in the late 1840s he had championed abolitionism. Subsequently he had joined with Free-Soilers to help establish the Republican Party in New York State. As a young lawyer he had even helped win a lawsuit that brought about the end of segregated streetcars in New York City.
So it was odd for Chester Arthur to decide on a career as the holder of the most powerful and corrupt patronage post in the country—odd, but by the middle of the 1860s not unexpected.
By then Arthur had changed. The onetime idealist, son of a minister, had developed an insatiable appetite for power and wealth. He married a rich woman from Virginia. He moved into a two-story brownstone on a fashionable street in New York City. He hired servants. He ate lavish meals. He wore fine clothes.
His friends in the Republican Party were rich. He wanted to be rich like them. He even changed churches to be like them. Though he had been raised a Baptist, he now joined an Episcopal Church. His rich friends were Episcopalian.
And this man who had once upon a time devoted himself to social causes turned to another: improving the fortunes of the Republican machine. He became so devoted to the party that he started spending more evenings with political friends than with his family, not returning home until two or three in the morning. Soon he was spending all of his evenings with his political friends and none with his family. His wife eventually began to think of leaving him. (By 1880 she had decided she would, but then suddenly and unexpectedly, she fell ill and died.)
After the Civil War Arthur served in a variety of political jobs. But there was only one he really coveted: Custom House collector. Become the collector, even for just a few years, and he could earn enough money to become rich for life. And for years he lobbied for it.
The collector was appointed by the president, but it was not the president in the second half of the nineteenth century who ordinarily decided the matter. It was the party bosses in New York State. That meant the Republican Party bosses when Republican presidents were in office, and one boss in particular, Roscoe Conkling, the state's unctuous senior U.S. senator—the boss of bosses.
Arthur made it his business to know them all.
They were a querulous bunch. Conkling especially was egotistical and insufferable; highly intelligent, he grew impatient with people who were not. He could be withering in his scorn. One verbal jousting match on the floor of the U.S. Senate almost ended in a duel. "Let me be more specific," Conkling had shouted at one point in the course of a debate. "Should the member from Mississippi, except in the presence of the Senate, charge me, by intimation or otherwise, with falsehood, I would denounce him as a blackguard, as a coward, and a liar; and understanding what he said as I have, the rules and proprieties of the Senate are the only restraint upon me."
Arthur, his eye always focused on the ultimate prize, made it his business to get along with the bosses—Conkling included—Conkling especially. Even when they weren't on speaking terms with one another they spoke with Arthur, who was on good speaking terms with everybody. To achieve his ambition he had to submerge his own ego. Week after week, year after year, he did so, eventually earning a reputation as a man who went along to get along.
And that, given Arthur's ambition, was essential. For it meant, highest of compliments in his world, that Arthur was sound. If the bosses wanted something done, Arthur could be trusted to do it. And to do it even if the request was unseemly, even if it involved breaking the law.
The bosses had once made the mistake of installing a collector who was not sound, Moses Grinnell, who had declined to be as pliable as the bosses wanted. They had gotten rid of him quickly.
The bosses did not have to worry about Chester Arthur. "Mr. Arthur is a gentleman," Boss Thurlow Weed was to say of him fondly some years later. "I have known him for twenty-five years as Whig and Republican, and a more loyal party man and truer Republican cannot be found anywhere."
Soundness was especially valued by the bosses in the late 1860s and 1870s, when Arthur began campaigning for the Custom House position. For by then the stench of political corruption had become so pronounced that reformers were threatening to clean up the place; only a sound collector could be trusted to stop them.
Honest men had long held the Custom House in contempt. But they had lacked the facts needed to stir the public to action. Then, slowly, they had begun to accumulate the facts—damning facts. An investigation showed that the Custom House was run by incompetent political hacks for the benefit of the machine.
The fact of corruption became so obvious that eventually it was not only wild-eyed reformers who began pushing for change but prominent politicians, too. And the change they wanted was profound: the establishment of a professional civil service, composed of people who obtained their jobs by merit and then were allowed to keep them, irrespective of the party affiliation of those in power. In 1871 even President Grant, a beneficiary of the machine, felt compelled to join the effort, at least in name.
A presidential commission endorsed several reforms; Grant then ordered that they be implemented. Two reforms were especially dangerous to the continuing power of the bosses: One was the requirement that open positions go only to candidates who could meet certain competency qualifications, which could limit the ability of the bosses to hand out plum jobs to party workers, many of whom were barely literate. (One of the competency qualifications included the ability to read, write, and speak English.) The other reform that threatened the bosses was a ban on the practice of political assessments.
The bosses were afraid of reform but convinced that they could survive it if they put the right man in charge of the New York Custom House, the institution that sat like an industrial-strength engine in the center of their creaking political machine. Through clever manipulations a devious collector could get around the changes, making them so innocuous that nothing really changed at all.
But who?
At the end of 1871, after the incumbent was exposed as a swindler and forced out, that was the question that faced the bosses. The answer, all quickly agreed, was Arthur, dependable Chester Arthur. In November, President Grant named Arthur collector of the New York Custom House. At last Arthur had his dream job. He was forty-two years old.
The first task he faced was to find a way around those damn competency exams. If he couldn't hire who the bosses wanted hired they would be angry, and Arthur never wanted any of them angry with him. He wanted to remain the collector for a long, long time. It paid better than any other job he was ever likely to have. And it gave him entrée into the best homes in America.
A later generation of clubhouse politicians found that they could hire incompetent individuals simply by exempting the applicants from the civil service. But of course the difficulty with that approach was that it still limited the power of the bosses to hire who they wanted. They couldn't exempt everybody.
But they could rig the tests so that anybody they wanted passed could pass. And that is what Arthur now proceeded to do. As an initial step he installed three friends on the board established to administer the entrance exams. "Sound" men all, they could be counted on to rig the tests the way the party wanted. Next, he excluded from the board's proceedings anyone who took the reform cause seriously. This had been necessary because a reformer had started showing up at their meetings. Arthur simply told the man he couldn't attend.
Then he and his minions designed the test to be easy, so easy a grade-school student could answer them. Unfortunately, many of the applicants lacked even a grade-school education. But that did not pose much of a problem either. If they gave the wrong answer, they could still be passed.
"Into what three branches is the government of the United States divided?" To this question one applicant answered: "The army and navy." He was given a passing score of 70.0 and was hired. Another answered, "Publick stores, Navy Yard." He was given a score of 69.6. He was also passed and hired.
"By what process is a statute of the United States enacted?" To this question another applicant answered: "Never saw one erected and dont know the Process." Passed and hired.
More of a threat to the bosses than the entrance exams was the ban on assessments—if it were to be implemented. But it wasn't. In 1872, just as in years past, a party hack opened an office next to the Custom House at election time and collected the employees' kickbacks. Every one of the thousand people employed at the Custom House paid except for Silas Burt, an old friend of Arthur's, who had turned reformer. He flat out refused. This prompted an outburst from Arthur. "He said," Burt afterward recalled, "that every person who accepted a position under the government made a contract, as solemn in its implication as if plainly expressed, to give a part of his salary to sustain his party in power and that to repudiate such a contract was not only ingratitude but mean[n]ess." Burt still refused to pay.
Given the state of politics in 1872, Arthur would have been justified in firing Burt. But he didn't. Arthur believed in being loyal, even if that meant being loyal to a friend who had become a reformer. As time went on, though, the brooding conflict between Arthur and Burt grew wider and wider. One day Arthur, who never liked to express anger at anybody, got angry with Burt when the latter expressed concern about a corrupt official. "You are one of those goody-goody fellows," Arthur said scornfully, "who set up a high standard of morality that other people cannot reach."
The bosses had picked Arthur because they thought he could find a way to keep doing things the old way despite the new rules, despite the popular impulse to clean up the system and stop corruption. And he had. But then in 1873, he went too far.
The trouble began one day when the Custom House opened a case against an old respected importer named Phelps, Dodge, and Company. An informer was said to have reported that the company substantially undervalued a recent shipment, resulting in a huge loss to the government in tariff revenues. As a penalty Custom House officials decided to fine the firm a whopping $271,017. This was the largest fine that had ever been levied in such a case, but company officials were led to believe they were lucky. It was hinted that they could be made to pay a fine equal in amount to the value of the shipment: $1.7 million. So they paid up quickly.
Then they found out the truth. The local U.S. attorney revealed in a letter to the company that in fact only a part of the shipment had been undervalued, and a small part at that, a part worth less than $7,000, costing the government less than $2,000 in lost tariff revenue. Further, it seemed that another part of the shipment had actually been overvalued, more than offsetting the part that was undervalued. So the government, in effect, hadn't really lost any money at all. If anything, it had received more than it was owed.
Outraged, company founder William Dodge demanded an investigation. At a congressional hearing he testified that he had been bullied into settling the case. "We paid the money in ignorance of the fact of the amount we owed to the Government. We never had a bill of specifications; we have not got one to-day; we have got simply the list of the vessels on which the goods were imported." It sounded incredible. Dodge agreed that it was. "We settled, and this has become the biggest case on record. It is known the world over. We look back upon it and think as you gentlemen, think, no doubt, that we were fools."
How had it happened? Better yet, why? It was because of greed.
Under the law, an old law passed in the early days of the Republic, any fine or forfeiture received by the Custom House was split between the informer, the three top officials at the Custom House, and the government. The law was designed to encourage the collection of revenues. Its actual effect was to encourage officials to file bogus claims against good companies in the expectation that a substantial part of the money collected would go into the officials' own pockets. It was this law, known as the moieties law—a moiety is the part received in a settlement by the individual parties—that made the post of collector as lucrative as it was. Arthur's actual salary as collector was small: some six thousand dollars a year. But with the moieties he earned many times that amount, one year earning $56,000. From the Phelps, Dodge settlement alone Arthur received nearly $22,000.*
It was a scam. The testimony before Congress revealed that the Custom House officials knew, as the U.S. attorney had indicated in his letter to Phelps, Dodge, that the undervaluation involved a negligible amount, and knew in addition that part of the shipment had been overvalued, resulting in that net gain to the treasury. Nevertheless, they had decided to put the squeeze on the company because of the windfall in moieties that they themselves would receive.
The figure of $271,017 in fines had been arrived at arbitrarily. The officials had considered pressing for even more. Under the law, as they had hinted to Phelps, Dodge, they could technically have demanded an amount equal to the value of the shipment, or $1.7 million. At the key meeting where all this was discussed, Arthur had wanted to demand the full $1.7 million. But he had finally relented when others pointed out that Phelps, Dodge, would probably go to court to challenge the higher amount, and that in court the Custom House would probably lose; the facts would come tumbling out and the jury would side with the company.
The scandal involving Phelps, Dodge, resulted in the passage of a new law abolishing moieties. Because of the new law Arthur's income fell dramatically the next year. Instead of earning $56,000 he earned just $12,000.
But Arthur escaped public blame for the scandal. By denying early on that he knew anything about it he created the impression that underlings were responsible. A judge testified to the contrary at the congressional hearing, stating that Arthur had been present at that key meeting where the amount of the fine was determined. But by the time the judge testified the press had lost interest; only a few newspapers noted that Arthur was as deeply involved as anybody.
In 1875 President Grant, still beholden to the bosses, reappointed the bosses' hand-picked choice as collector: Arthur. By then Arthur had held the post for four full years, longer than any other collector in decades. But he would not get to keep it another four years. For in 1877 Grant was replaced by Rutherford B. Hayes and Hayes was committed to civil service reform. Like Grant, he, too, was indebted to the bosses and was elected with the money they raised from assessments. Unlike Grant, he actually seemed intent on seeing civil service reforms implemented even if that meant undermining the very people who had helped bring about his election.
Arthur tried to hang on; despite the salary decrease, he was still earning more money than he probably could otherwise and the position continued to give him power and respect. At times it seemed as if he just might succeed.
The great threat to his job was facts, facts that seemed often to be going against him now. One investigating body, known as the Jay Commission, found that the Custom House was overstaffed by at least 20 percent and that corruption was rife: businessmen testified that they had had to pay officials bribes to recover their merchandise; others confirmed that the Custom House was filled with people hired only because they were friends of the bosses. A second investigation demonstrated the corruption was widespread; when senators loyal to the bosses demanded to see the evidence for this, investigators obliged immediately by dropping a wheelbarrow full of documents off at the Senate door.
But Arthur was wily and found ways to get around the facts.
There are many techniques a wily politician can use to hang onto his job when pressure builds to give it up. Arthur seemed to try them all.
_If you can't fight them, join them._ When the Jay Commission reported that the Custom House was overstaffed, Arthur cleverly agreed; by agreeing he hoped to confuse the public and defuse the issue. But he denied the Custom House was overstaffed by 20 percent. He said that after a thorough investigation of his own he had found that maybe 12 percent of the work force could be cut. But certainly not more than that.
_Blackmail_. One of the chief charges against Arthur was that he had put people on the payroll at the behest of the bosses. This was undeniably true. But it so happened he had helped not just the bosses but President Hayes's own secretary of the treasury, John Sherman. At the very same time that Arthur was under attack for hiring the bosses' friends, Sherman had written Arthur to ask for help in hiring _his_ friends. Arthur let it be known that he would release these letters if the attacks on him continued.
_Stonewall._ President Hayes at first seemed willing to leave Arthur in place if Arthur agreed to cooperate with the reformers. When it became clear Arthur wouldn't, Hayes decided to fire him. But Arthur refused to go, and under the prevailing law Hayes lacked the power to order him to go. Month after month Arthur simply brazenly hung on. To counter charges that he was a scoundrel, Arthur revealed that the president had offered him a post as consul in Paris if he resigned; the implication was obvious: If he truly was a scoundrel, no offer would have been made.
Eventually he lost his fight. When Congress adjourned in the spring of 1879 Hayes, under the authority granted him in the Constitution, appointed an interim replacement. By the time Congress returned, the Senate, which had stood by Arthur for months at Conkling's insistence, finally relented. Arthur was out.
That should have been the end of Chester Alan Arthur. It certainly seemed as if it was. It wasn't. A year later Arthur was back, this time as the Republican Party's vice presidential candidate. It was the greatest resurrection in American political history as of that time and was to remain the greatest until Richard Nixon sprang back to life in 1968 after he, too, had been left for dead on the battlefield of politicians who once had stood high and then fallen.
How had it happened?
It came about entirely through Arthur's own determined efforts. No one else wanted him as vice president. No one had ever thought of Arthur as vice presidential material. But Arthur wanted to be vice president, and wanting it he made it happen.
Wanting the vice presidency was unusual. For Arthur didn't want it as a steppingstone to the presidency as others did, but for itself. The presidency didn't interest him. He felt, rightly, that he simply wasn't qualified for the office. Anyway, all he wanted the vice presidency could give him. And that was just one thing really: respect. After his humiliating dismissal as custom house collector respect was what Arthur now yearned for most deeply. Not money, not power, simple respect.
There were many offices that could give Arthur respect, but none were within his grasp. Only one office was: the vice presidency. And that was because of a fortuitous set of circumstances that happened to come about on the afternoon of a single day—Tuesday, June 8, 1880—the day the Republican Party met in convention to nominate James Garfield for president. And that day, quite on the spur of the moment, Arthur decided to go after the vice presidency once the opportunity presented itself That morning Arthur was a failed and discredited political boss. By the end of the day he was on the party's national ticket.
From the time Garfield was nominated it was clear the second position would go to a New Yorker as it had in 1876; New York, the most populous state, was critical to the Republicans. But as late as two that afternoon it had seemed likely the prize would go not to Arthur but to Levi Morton, a fellow New Yorker. Morton was Garfield's own choice, and Garfield had told him he could have the nomination if he wanted it.
Until this moment Arthur had expressed to no one any desire to be named to the national ticket. But then, because of a mix-up in the ranks of the Garfield forces, it suddenly seemed possible that he could be. Not knowing that Garfield had already decided on Morton, one of Garfield's managers told Roscoe Conkling that New York could name whoever it wanted.
It was then that Arthur struck. On hearing of the offer, he decided on the spot to go for the nomination and instantly began rounding up support in the delegation, which would meet just a few hours later to pick a candidate. Several New Yorkers immediately backed Arthur, including Boss Tom Murphy, who had served as Custom House Collector prior to Arthur. But one man's opinion mattered more than anyone else's—Roscoe Conkling's—and so Arthur went to him.
And Conkling told him no. Conkling was still smarting from the defeat of his own favorite candidate for president—Grant, who had lost to Garfield after the convention deadlocked—and at this point was so dejected he wanted to have nothing to do with Garfield.
"What, sir, you think of accepting?" Conkling asked.
"The office of the vice president," Arthur retorted, "is a greater honor than I ever dreamed of attaining. A barren nomination would be a great honor. In a calmer moment you will look at this differently."
"If you wish for my favor and respect," Conkling responded, "you will contemptuously decline it."
Arthur, who had long been regarded as Conkling's chief protégé. Arthur, who had never once before gone against Conkling. Arthur, who had in fact spent a lifetime doing what Conkling and the other big bosses had wanted him to. Suddenly this Arthur had to decide whether to be his own man, as he had never been before, or be Conkling's.
The impulse to accommodate Conkling ran strong in Arthur. He owed almost everything to the senator: His appointment as custom house collector. His wealth. His position in society.
At this moment of decision, however, Arthur did not hesitate. He wanted to be on that ticket. And he would be. And he would be on it with or without Conkling's support.
What suddenly became clear to people as they watched Arthur maneuver for power on this summer day was that he had long been misunderstood. He had not been subservient all the years he served the bosses because it was in his nature. He behaved in a servile manner because to get ahead he'd had to, and he'd been able to do so because his ambition was so powerful that he would subordinate even his ego to serve theirs. And now his ambition demanded that he behave differently, independently, even if that risked crossing the very man before whom he had been fawning for years.
"If you wish for my favor and respect," Conkling had warned him, "you will contemptuously decline it." But Arthur no longer was wishing for Conkling's favor and respect. He had a bigger wish.
That afternoon he campaigned for the votes of his fellow New Yorkers and won them. That evening he was named the Republican nominee for vice president of the United States.
It was to be another corrupt election. For the only way the Republicans could win was by stealing. Now that Reconstruction was over, the Democrats completely controlled the South, giving them at the outset of the contest 138 electoral votes. To win they needed just 47 more (138 + 47 = 185).
The likeliest place they could find them was in Indiana and New York, both of which had gone Democratic the last election. And that in fact was where the Democrats concentrated their efforts.
And that was just what the Republicans wanted. Because both states were nearly evenly divided between the parties, they were ripe for vote fraud. As the Republicans deduced, they could win the presidency by buying a relatively small number of votes in each state. In other words, an election in which millions cast their ballots could be decided by a few thousand stolen votes in Indiana and New York.
That fall the Republicans raised hundreds of thousands of dollars from Wall Street and assessments in their campaign to win the two prized states. How much was raised in all it's impossible to say. Stephen Dorsey, the secretary of the Republican National Committee, bragged that the party raised more than $400,000 for Indiana alone, although some historians say this was an exaggeration. But clearly a lot was spent; afterward party officials in New York would remember that in 1880 they were assessed at a higher rate than they had ever been before. Even judges had to pay. "Please let me know when and where to pay it over," one judge wrote Arthur, who personally handled the accounts of judges. "I am ready at any time."
However much was raised, it was never enough. Arthur, who served as the chairman of the Republican Party in New York State, kept imploring partisans to raise even more. "I am in serious trouble," Arthur complained to the campaign's chief fund-raiser, "if something is not done at once."
And what was all this money that was raised, raised for? Some undoubtedly went for legitimate functions, for banners, headquarters, newspaper ads, and so on. But a lot undoubtedly went for buying votes. The Democrats at one point intercepted a Republican telegram referring specifically to the buying of votes.
Ten million ballots were cast in the election. Garfield and Arthur won by a mere seven thousand. Four years earlier Indiana and New York had gone to the Democrats. This time they went to the Republicans, deciding the election.
It was obvious to reporters covering the campaign that it had been stolen. And it also was obvious that Garfield and Arthur must have known it was stolen, even if they hadn't been part of the stealing. But there was no hard evidence.
Then, on February 11, 1881, at a big Republican bash held at Delmonico's, the famous New York steak house, Arthur himself seemed to incriminate the party. He did not admit to fraud. But neither did he deny it. And in not denying it he seemed to confirm that there had been fraud.
"I don't think we had better go into the minute secrets of the campaign, so far as I know them," he began, "because I see the reporters are present, who are taking it all down; and while there is no harm talking about some things after the election is over you cannot tell what they may make of it, because the inauguration has not yet taken place.... If I should get to going about the secrets of the campaign, there is no saying what I might say to make trouble between now and the 4th of March."
What kind of trouble he did not say. But he did not have to. Everybody could guess. And then, as if he could not help himself, he began to talk about the campaign in Indiana. "The first great business of the [national] committee," he noted, "was to carry Indiana, and Mr. Dorsey was selected as the leader of the forlorn hope to carry Indiana." He added sarcastically, "That was a cheerful task." After the guests had stopped laughing, he went on: "Indiana was really, I suppose, a Democratic State. [But] it had always been put down in the book as a state that might be carried by close and careful and perfect organization and a great deal of—"
Of what? The obvious answer was money. But someone in the audience shouted "soap," and that prompted hysterical laughter. Everyone knew it wasn't soap that had won the election. It was bought votes. "I see the reporters here," Arthur again reminded himself, "and therefore I will simply say that everybody showed a great deal of interest in the occasion and distributed tracts and political documents all through the country." Again the audience began laughing. When they finally quieted down Arthur finished: "If it were not for the reporters I would tell you the truth, because I know you are intimate friends and devoted adherents to the Republican Party."
And then he sat down.
Until that dinner Arthur had always been discreet. But on that night, perhaps because he drank too much, perhaps because he was surrounded by friends, perhaps because he was simply feeling boastful and confident, he forgot to be discreet. He had not actually disclosed any secrets. But he had admitted that there were secrets. And that was damaging enough.
After Garfield died in September 1881 and Arthur suddenly became president, a cry could be heard around the country: _Chet Arthur, president of the United States! Good God._ Things had been bad enough with Grant, Hayes, and Garfield in office. The spoils system had gone wild. Even Hayes and Garfield, putative reformers, had had to bow in the end to the power of the bosses, giving in to demands for the continuation of assessments. For the bosses ruled. With Arthur in office... well, it was evident that Arthur, a boss himself, would also do what the bosses wanted.
The country was in for a surprise.
While Arthur did indeed fill his cabinet with machine politicians, he refused to knuckle under completely to the bosses, refused even to name Conkling secretary of state as Conkling demanded.* And then in 1883 Arthur came out in favor of genuine civil service reform, the Pendleton Act, which outlawed assessments and created a class of protected employees. The people demanded reform, and Arthur accommodated them, in part because it was politically wise to do so, in part because he genuinely wanted to. By then he wished to be remembered as more than a machine politician.†
He did not run for election when his term was up. He was too ill. Just a year after becoming president he had come down with Bright's disease, leaving him barely able to function some days. A year and a half after he left the White House, Bright's killed him.
Today, when Arthur is remembered it's usually in connection with his efforts on behalf on civil service reform. In 1997, in a story about the Pendleton Act, he was even praised on the front page of the _New York Times._ * But the rub is, Arthur seldom _is_ remembered. Like so many of the other bewhiskered presidents of the nineteenth century, he's become one of Wolfe's lost men of American history.
The system did not really change. The bosses were to hold on to their power well into the twentieth century, aspiring presidential candidates kowtowing to them for years and years.† And even after the bosses had finally gone, their legacy of ruthlessness and arrogance remained. Ever afterward politicians would seek to manipulate the system cunningly and sometimes illegally, if not by stealing elections outright, then by other means pioneered by the bosses.*
*It is worth noting that Arthur got to keep every penny of the money he earned. There was as yet no income tax.
*Arthur did offer to name Conkling to the Supreme Court. The Senate approved the nomination, but Conkling declined to accept it. It would have meant giving up his lucrative private law practice.
†It was not a great victory for reform, however. Assessments continued to be levied-and would be on into the next century. In the 1930s reformers were still complaining about them; it was learned that in several states employees of the Works Progress Administration were required to kick back 2 percent of their paychecks to the Democratic Party. And while some federal jobs were protected under the newly formed civil service, most were not, just 10 percent or so.
But it was a first step, and as the years went by, assessments declined, and more and more jobs were covered. Not because the politicians had suddenly been persuaded of the goodness of civil service reform. But because it was in their own interests. When the Republican lock on the presidency finally was broken, and the two parties began alternating control of the White House, the politicians in both parties realized that the only way they could assure the continuation in office of their own supporters was by getting them listed on the civil service rolls. The more the presidency changed parties, the more people were added to the rolls.
*The story ran after it was revealed that Vice President Al Gore had made campaign fund-raising phone calls from his office during the 1996 election. A provision of the Pendleton Act prohibits federal employees from soliciting campaign contributions on government property. Gore insisted that the law did not cover phone calls.
†Teddy Roosevelt was to owe his elevation to the vice presidency to New York Boss Tom Platt, who wanted to get Roosevelt out of New York. (Platt reassured party regulars that in the vice presidency Roosevelt could do no harm; of course, that was true only if he stayed in the vice presidency, which he did not. It was the worst political miscalculation of the century.) William Howard Taft was to owe his renomination as president in 1912 to the bosses, who were adamant about denying the nomination to Roosevelt, though he'd won all the primaries. Woodrow Wilson was to owe his elevation to the governorship of New Jersey to Boss James Smith (whom Wilson subsequently betrayed), and his elevation to the presidency to the bosses of Illinois and Indiana; at the Democratic national convention in 1912 Wilson won the nomination from Champ Clark by secretly bargaining for their support while publicly denouncing Clark for accepting the support of Tammany Hall. FDR was to owe his nomination as vice president in 1920 to the boss of Tammany Hall, whom he had nurtured for years and years, and his nomination as president for a third term in 1940 to a phalanx of urban bosses. Harry Truman was to owe his political career to Missouri boss Tom Pendergast, a crook who later went to jail. Hubert Humphrey was to owe his nomination as president to Chicago boss Richard Daley. Humphrey's nomination in 1968 would be the last, however, to be dictated by a boss. After that the media consultants took over.
*In 1888, after hearing that he had been elected, Benjamin Harrison was said to have commented, "Providence has given us the victory." That had provoked derisive laughs from Pennsylvania boss Matt Quay. "Think of the man," said Quay. "He ought to know that Providence hadn't a damn thing to do with it." But then Harrison was deliberately kept ignorant. Only the bosses would know what really went on, "how close a number of men were compelled to approach the gates of the penitentiary to make him president," as Quay observed.
Harrison was to get an idea of what had gone on, however, when he tried to form a government. "When I came into power," he later lamented to a small group of friends, among them Theodore Roosevelt, "I found that the party managers had taken it all to themselves. I could not [even] name my own cabinet."
In a rare display of independence-for both him and American politicians in general-Harrison boldly refused to appoint New York boss Platt as secretary of the treasury. Platt withdrew his support from the administration. Four years later Harrison lost New York-and the election.
# 11. The Arrival of the Immigrants
How the great flood of immigrants to the United States in the last quarter of the nineteenth century prompted Grover Cleveland to do what no president ever had: pander to immigrants as a means of keeping power
After Lincoln all of the presidents had been weak. None won in a landslide. None could control either his party or Congress. None could count on his party controlling Congress. None could claim a personal mandate. So they did as their predecessors had done in like situations: They compromised. And compromised. And compromised.
The public grew sick of its compromising presidents and became eager to find somebody—anybody, almost—in whom they could place their trust. It was a measure of their desperation that they finally turned, in 1884, to Grover Cleveland. For nobody really knew much about him.
Three years before his nomination he had been mayor of Buffalo. Then, after just a year as mayor, owing to a quirk in the politics of the day, the Democrats in New York State being without a leader, Cleveland suddenly was nominated governor. Just a year after _that_ , in the quickest rise of any politician in American history, he found himself president of the United States.
But what little people knew about Cleveland they liked. And what they knew was that he was a leader. A man willing to fight. And by 1884 they were desperate for a fighting leader again. Hayes, Garfield, Arthur—not one of them, whatever his virtues, had seemed like much of a leader, and not one of them had ever seemed like much of a fighter.
Cleveland's chief characteristic was his earnestness. The son of a minister, he had been raised to be earnest. Not perfect. Earnest. Sincere. Straightforward. A boy who did the chores his parents gave him because he was supposed to.
He was always interested in politics. Just after reaching his majority he joined the Democratic Party and immediately tried to ingratiate himself with the leaders by doing all the little chores _they_ wanted done. Whatever they wanted. If they needed an elderly voter to be escorted to the polls, Grover was there to help. If they needed banners put up, Grover put up the banners. It was boring work, but it was the kind of work you have to do to get ahead in local politics. And Grover very much wanted to get ahead. He was an extremely ambitious young man.
The extent of his political ambitions became evident in 1862, when at age twenty-five, after passing the bar, he lobbied to be named an assistant district attorney in Buffalo. Taking the post meant giving up a job in a private firm that was already earning him a thousand dollars a year. In the prosecutor's office he would make just five hundred. But Cleveland didn't worry about the loss in income. He wasn't interested in money or security. He wanted a career in politics. And as an assistant prosecutor he would be in a position to have such a career: to run for district attorney in a few years, and after that, a seat in Congress.
Just three years later, at twenty-eight, he ran for district attorney. And he worked very hard to win, giving speeches everywhere, day and night. And he won a great deal of attention, most of it positive, from people who were impressed with his earnestness. His earnestness, that quality he had inherited from his father, made him very appealing. For in the postwar political environment earnestness was in short supply, most men in politics feeling that they couldn't afford to be earnest. A man had to be willing to cut deals with the machines, and a man who did that had to be calculating, not earnest.
He was popular in the wards where he was known best, where his personality, his honesty, were known. But in the suburban parts of the district, where he was not well known, he found it very difficult to become popular. Giving speeches there didn't help because Cleveland's chief asset, his earnestness, was not a quality that came through in his speeches. He simply wasn't a very good speechmaker. He was the kind of man who impressed people by his actions, not his words. So he lost.
And the loss affected him profoundly. Shook him up. For the first time in his life he had faced a reversal of fortune.
The Cleveland who emerged from this ordeal was a vastly changed Cleveland. Where once he had seemed uninterested in security, he now seemed consumed by it. And for the next ten years his every step was geared toward achieving security. Financial security. He didn't want to become rich. Money per se never interested him. Well into his forties he lived in a modest one-room apartment. But he wanted the security that came with having money. So he devoted himself to earning money by working extremely hard as an attorney in private practice.
In the middle of this period of his life, he ran for sheriff of Erie County, serving three years. It was an extremely quirky move, and none of his friends could quite understand it. Most sheriffs were political hacks. But being sheriff met two of Cleveland's deepest needs. First, foremost, and most simply: It paid well. Because sheriffs were allowed to pocket substantial fees in payment for their work, he was able in three years to save tens of thousands of dollars, helping him win the financial independence he very much prized. Second, it brought him back into politics, his first great love, giving him the chance to meet people, make speeches, and become better known.
He made a good name as sheriff, displaying the earnestness that was so very much a part of who he was. When his office was given the responsibility of executing a man found guilty of murder, Cleveland personally conducted the hanging. To make somebody else assume the disagreeable responsibility, he decided, would be dishonorable, essentially dishonest. A little later another man was put on trial for murder. Cleveland felt the man was guilty but also felt strongly that he shouldn't be put to death because he was obviously deranged. Intervening in the case, Sheriff Cleveland asked the court to spare the man's life. But the man was sentenced to death anyway. Cleveland thereupon decided, once again, that he would personally carry out the execution. That would be the principled thing to do.
It was becoming clear to people that Cleveland was the kind of man who did what he felt he should do. And that made him a very strange bird in politics. Most people in politics at the time did what the bosses told them to do.
After leaving the sheriff's office, he returned to the full-time practice of the law, ever eager to accumulate enough money to achieve financial independence. Again, he worked very hard, usually putting in twelve-hour days, six days a week. Because he was very good at detailed legal work he was very successful. But it was plain to his friends that he didn't have his heart in his legal career. He worked hard at it simply to be able to obtain that financial security he craved. And no more. When lucrative posts began to be offered to him, jobs as the legal counsel to big corporations, he turned them down. He even turned down the opportunity to become the regional general counsel to the New York Central Railroad, a position that would have earned him fifteen thousand dollars more a year than he currently was making. He simply didn't need the extra fifteen thousand by then. For he finally had accumulated enough to be secure, about seventy-five thousand dollars, which in those days was a huge sum.
For Cleveland, having fulfilled one ambition, there remained yet one other that he hadn't. But as the years passed this ambition seemed as if it never would be—not as long as he remained the stubbornly earnest man he had been. For there simply didn't seem to be a place in politics for a man with Cleveland's conscience. In fact, if anything, politics seemed to be getting dirtier and dirtier. In 1881, the same year he turned down the job with the New York Central, the corrupt Republican machine that ran Buffalo put a corrupt city alderman up for mayor. That Grover Cleveland would ever find a place in such a world seemed unlikelier than ever.
It was just then that he got a lucky break. Because average people were revolted by the machine's mayoral candidate, they began clamoring for a candidate who was pure, clean, incorruptible. Cleveland was the obvious choice.
When the reformers came to him he at first put them off, leaving the impression he no longer was interested in politics. Actually, he remained very interested. But he was by now a very prudent man of forty-three, and it took him time to reach a decision. Within a week, however, he made up his mind. He'd run.
Because reform-minded Republicans were disgusted by the machine's choice for mayor they bolted and joined Cleveland's campaign. This guaranteed Cleveland the election.
He was a very courageous mayor, exactly the kind of leader people had hoped he'd be. Getting into one fight after another with the corrupt members of the city council, he dominated the headlines and attracted statewide attention. For here was something no one had seen in a while: a politician willing to take on the machine.
It was Cleveland at his best. Not Cleveland speaking, but Cleveland doing. Vetoing extravagant appropriations that kept the local machine going. Beating up on the bosses. Streamlining the government's operations.
Less than twelve months later he was elected governor.
Again he took on the machines, including the Democrats' own, Tammany Hall. Again he vetoed extravagant appropriations. And the people loved him. They even loved him after he vetoed an extremely popular bill cutting the fare on the elevated railway in New York City. While they wanted the cheaper fare, wanted it very much, they wanted an independent governor who did what he thought best even more. And Cleveland was sure he was doing what was best. The high fare people objected to was included in a contract made with the private company that ran the system. It couldn't be reduced without violating the contract, and under the Constitution all legal contracts are inviolate. So the fare had to remain where it was until the contract expired.
Again he made headlines, this time attracting nationwide attention. Within twelve months he was nominated to the presidency.
It was an extremely dirty race. The Republicans put up James G. Blaine, which prompted the Democrats to reopen the business about those damaging letters he'd written to the Union Pacific, which revealed that the railroad had paid him sixty-four thousand dollars for some worthless stocks. Cleveland was attacked for alleged licentiousness and drunkenness.
The most sensational charge of the campaign was leveled by a Buffalo newspaper, which claimed that Cleveland, a lifelong bachelor, was the father of an illegitimate child born to an impoverished woman of dubious morality. For a time it was all anybody talked about. When the news broke Cleveland was told by his advisers to deny the charge. Instead he publicly claimed that he was the father and even admitted he'd been paying child support.* People couldn't believe his honesty. Forced to choose between a politician who may have taken a bribe and falsely denied it, and a politician who was guilty of fornicating but who admitted it, millions swung behind the fornicator. But Blaine remained the favorite; as the former Speaker of the House he was much better known.
Then, just days before the election, at a public function in New York City, the Reverend Samuel D. Burchard referred to the Democrats as the party of "rum, Romanism, and rebellion," a crude appeal to upright rural Protestants who believed the stereotypes about Irish drinking. Furious, the Irish in the city rallied to Cleveland even though Tammany Hall had instructed them to vote for Blaine (Tammany hated Cleveland). That gave Cleveland New York and the election. (It was a very tight race; he won New York by just 1,047 votes.) *
It was an astonishing victory, not just because his path to power had been meteoric, but because of the way he had come to power. He hadn't stooped. Although politics had gotten terribly complicated, instead of maneuvering this way and that to gain advantage, Cleveland had stood ramrod straight and in doing so had won nationwide support. It was almost as if he were another George Washington. By being himself, his plain old incorruptible, earnest self, he gained in stature and became ever more popular. Instead of playing to the powers that be, the machines, he ignored them. The more he ignored them the stronger he got.
He was to play George Washington through most of his first term. Although he gave in to the bosses' demand for jobs, replacing forty thousand Republican postal workers with Democrats, he mainly remained stubbornly apolitical, doing what was right even if it cost him support. He even took on the veterans, one of the country's most powerful special-interest groups. When members of Congress began passing private bills allowing veterans with bogus claims to receive pensions they didn't deserve, Cleveland began vetoing the bills.
It was a particularly courageous move because he himself hadn't fought in the war. When his draft notice had come in 1863 he'd done what thousands of other middle-class Americans had. He'd hired a substitute, a Polish immigrant, to do his fighting for him, Cleveland paying the fellow a $150 fee. It was perfectly legal; anybody could get out of serving by getting a substitute. And Cleveland had the excuse of having to support his younger siblings. But it looked bad. And it complicated matters. A president who hadn't fought in the war could not hound those who had. But by focusing on the abusers of the system he succeeded in winning public support.
As the years rolled by Cleveland continued to play George Washington. At the end of his third year in office he even took on the high protective tariff, which nobody in American politics had touched for a quarter century. He got nowhere; Congress was too beholden to the special interests who prospered behind America's tall tariff walls. But at least he tried.
Then, as his first term was winding down and he was preparing to run again, Cleveland came face to face with the great force of immigration. He folded.
It had been fun all those years playing George Washington. But now there was an election to be won. And this time it couldn't be won simply by being a Washington. While the Washington image would be helpful, it wouldn't get Cleveland the support of the immigrants. And that year he desperately needed their support because the Republicans were making calculating moves to lock up the immigrant vote. So Cleveland decided to risk the Washington image he had been working hard all these years to perfect in order to play hardball politics—hardball immigration politics.
They had always been a factor. And they had always been controversial, always exploitable, both parties engaging in the exploitation, but differently. The Democrats (and before them, the Jeffersonians) sought to enlist the immigrants in their cause, naturalizing them, registering them, and then seeing to it that they voted the party line. James Polk's forces in the election of 1844 registered thousands in New York City; on the day of the election they registered 497, so many that the only way people could get in and out of the courthouse to sign the necessary documents was by climbing through the windows. James Buchanan's campaign in 1856 naturalized thousands in Philadelphia, most of them illegally. In the election of 1868 Democratic presidential candidate Horatio Seymour supposedly bought the votes of up to fifty thousand immigrants in New York City. (As a result he won the state, but still managed to lose to Grant.)
The Republicans (and before them the Whigs, and before _them_ , the Federalists) usually ran against the immigrants, against their perceived differentness, against their perceived power, against their willingness to work for lower wages. Always against. When the immigrants started voting Democratic, the Whigs came out against immigrants even getting the vote. As Henry Clay put it, "this constant manufacture of American citizens out of foreign emigrants" is a great "evil."
Sometimes the immigrants brought out the best in Americans. Usually they brought out the worst. It had been the fear of French immigrants in the 1790s—French revolutionary-loving immigrants supposedly—that had led to the passage of the Alien and Sedition Acts. It was the fear of Irish immigrants beginning in the 1840s that prompted widespread xenophobia and the creation of the Know-Nothings, whose whole appeal was to people's prejudices and fears. As early as 1844 the precursor of the Know-Nothings, the American Republicans, swept the city elections in New York. The following year they took control in Philadelphia. Passions inflamed, the nativists there then rioted, waging wholesale war on the city's newcomers.
But important as the immigrants had been through most of American politics in the nineteenth century they had not affected the outcome of a single presidential election. In the three elections in which they had played a prominent role, Polk's election in 1844, Buchanan's in 1856, and Seymour's in 1868, their votes had almost certainly not been decisive. But all that was to change after 1880. After that they would affect every presidential election.
In part their power was simply a function of their numbers. And their numbers were growing tremendously, faster than ever before, accounting for the most remakable cross-oceanic population shift that had ever occurred. In 1880 nearly 500,000 immigrants entered the country; in 1881, more than 650,000; in 1882 more than 750,000. So many immigrants poured in that in little more than a generation the foreign population of the country doubled, from three million in 1870 to nearly six million in 1900.
But it wasn't just that so many came but that so many came to one place, New York—and then stayed there. For that one state was so large, so important, possessing thirty-six electoral votes—more electoral votes than any other state—that it frequently decided presidential elections. Almost always if a candidate won New York he could be certain he won the election. Between 1880 and 1912 _every_ winning candidate won New York. So every candidate tried hard—very hard—to win New York. And to win New York they had to win over the immigrants and win over, specifically, the immigrants of New York City, who made up over half the city's population.
Because of New York the dynamics of American politics changed. Earlier in American history the Republicans and the Whigs had discovered that there was a big constituency in the country against immigrants (and Catholics) and the parties had played to it. Now they had to modify their approach drastically They simply had to abandon smear attacks on the immigrants of New York City. The last president who had attacked them had been Hayes and Hayes had lost there.
Hayes had tried a tricky approach. In the past the anti-immigrant, anti-Catholic politicians had always been "againers," against this, against that. Hayes's tack was much more subtle and devious. Instead of sounding a negative note, he sounded a positive one. He did this by coming out in favor of public schools. Of course, this was meant to be taken as an attack on the Catholics, who liked to run their own schools, and was understood as such, but it was a coded attack and had a veneer of respectability. Still the fact was Hayes had lost New York and hardly anybody afterwards could afford to. (Hayes had won the election, of course, but he had achieved victory through fraud.) By the end of the century both Democrats and Republicans would be printing tens of thousands of campaign pamphlets in Polish and German in an open appeal for immigrant votes.*
There yet remained one immigrant group the politicians could safely campaign against, and both parties did: the Chinese. Like the European immigrants in New York, the Chinese were often hated. Hated for supposedly taking the jobs of whites, hated for supposedly driving down the wages of railroad workers, hated mostly for just being _Chinese._ Throughout the West, where the Chinese mainly settled, there was a huge backlash against them. In 1885 some two hundred had been driven out of Tacoma, Washington, at gunpoint and forced to flee to Portland, Oregon, leaving the city of Tacoma without a single Chinese resident. The next day white vigilantes burned down what remained of the city's modest Chinese settlement. And what happened in Tacoma was repeated all over the West.
But because there were far fewer Chinese immigrants than European immigrants, the politicians felt free to exploit peoples' fears and prejudices. The politics of Chinese immigration was in fact almost exactly the reverse of the politics of European immigration. While the politicians discovered that they could _not_ attack the European immigrants (because it would cost them New York), they found that they almost _had_ to attack the Chinese (for it was the only way to win the West). And they did. In 1880 Garfield let loose with a broad swipe at the Chinese, comparing their emigration to an "invasion."
Because nothing was simple in American politics anymore, the politics of immigration became very complicated. It was not just that there was now a "good" immigrant group and a "bad" immigrant group, though that certainly made things difficult; a politician had to be sure that in making the case against the "bad" immigrants he wasn't somehow impugning, by implication, the "good" ones. A politician couldn't simply rail against all immigrants, he had to make distinctions, sometimes very fine ones. It was also that the politics of immigration was full of traps. A candidate had to worry about not only what he said about the immigrants, but what his opponent _said_ he said—or what his opponent said he _should_ have said on an occasion when he had said nothing, absolutely nothing! The Republicans had found themselves in trouble in 1884 not because of what they said about the immigrants, but because when Reverend Burchard popped off about "rum, Romanism, and rebellion," they said nothing. Because immigration was so emotional an issue immigrants could be easily manipulated into thinking that a candidate had slighted them when he hadn't intended to at all. So it was a very, very complicated business.*
How complicated was to be seen in the election of 1888, when Cleveland ran for reelection against Benjamin Harrison. Cleveland was already having problems because he had taken on the fight against the tariff, which had weakened his support in the business community. Then the Republican Senate, just two and half months before the election, robbed him of the one victory he'd had in foreign affairs. The senators voted down a treaty he'd signed with Canada (the Bayard-Chamberlain Treaty) that settled a long simmering dispute over fishing rights, a dispute that had become so heated the Canadians had begun seizing American sailing ships.
This put Cleveland in a desperate position. While only a few people gave a damn about the arcane fishing issues that lay behind the Canadian-American imbroglio, by rejecting the treaty the Republicans put Cleveland in the position of defending it, and that could be politically fatal. For he wouldn't simply be defending a fishing treaty, he would be defending a treaty made with Canada. Or more to the point, a treaty made with a country that was part of the British Empire. And in the late nineteenth century nothing could be more deadly to a politician running for national office than to do that. For the Irish hated the British, and the Irish were the key to winning New York, and New York was the key to winning the general election. (Cleveland had won the election in 1884, after all, only because at the last minute the Irish had shifted to his side in the wake of Reverend Burchard's slander.)
Now, in 1888, he needed their votes again. Desperate to get them, he inaugurated a new era in American presidential politics: He openly pandered for the immigrant vote in order to attract their support.
It was a new Grover Cleveland. The old Grover Cleveland never pandered. But the old Cleveland had never had to. In fact, the only way he could win was by not pandering. For pandering would seem at odds with the image he was selling of himself as a kind of reincarnated Washington. But now, on the eve of his reelection, the Republicans had forced him to confront the force of immigration. And in confronting it he had to face a fact about himself.
He really wasn't as much of a Washington as he had led people to believe. He was a politician. And a politician who very much wanted to avoid losing. Losing was what he had done as a young man of twenty-eight. And it had shaken his world. He did not want to lose again. To be sure, he no longer was the insecure person he had once been. He was now the president of the United States. And he had money in the bank. But losing now in a way would be even more devastating. For he had more to lose: the highest office in the land. And that seemed intolerable.
So he pandered, making sure to pander in a subtle enough way that he did not suddenly seem to be trading in his Washington image for another. For he still needed to be regarded as a Washington as well. This would be tricky but not impossible. The Washington image was so well established by now that Cleveland could make a number of political moves before people caught on to the change in his behavior.
It wasn't good for the country for Cleveland to be pandering. It undermined the presidency, cheapening it. And it politicized foreign policy. In effect, Cleveland was putting his own interests above the country's, showing just how deep his ambition to succeed really was.
The Republicans had expected Cleveland to defend the treaty. Instead, in his message to the Senate following its rejection, he took another tack. And it was brilliant, politically brilliant.
Instead of defending the treaty, which would have cost him greatly in the Irish community, he attacked Canada for the depredations on American shipping that had given rise to the treaty in the first place, which put him in the enviable position of attacking a member of the British Empire. Then he went on to demand that the Republicans give him extraordinary emergency powers to deal with the issue, including the right to suspend all trade with Canada. Cleveland explained that if he was to have any hope of curbing Canadian perfidy, he needed to be able to back up his tough talk with the threat of action.
Cleveland suspected that the Senate wouldn't give him the authority he demanded. And he didn't really want it. What he wanted was to be turned down. By turning him down the Republicans would make themselves look pro-British. And that would make Cleveland appear anti-British. And that would appeal to the Irish.
It was a simple political trap but the Republicans fell into it. Just as Cleveland had hoped, the Republicans, unwilling to let him start a trade war with Canada—a trade war that would appeal to American patriotism and redound to his credit—turned down his request for emergency powers. And just as he had hoped, this put him in good stead with the Irish. In the days following his message to the Senate he received hundreds of letters from Irish families congratulating him on his "devotion to old Erin."
Then there was yet another turn in the campaign, yet another flap involving immigration politics, this time to Cleveland's disadvantage. And it cost him the race.
Although he won more popular votes than Harrison, Harrison won more electoral votes, a freak occurrence so uncommon that the same situation has occurred just three times in all of American history (in 1824, 1876, and 1888).
It had been unlikely that Cleveland would win reelection. He had taken on the protective tariff lobby. He was a Democrat from New York running at a time when the country was electing Republicans from Ohio.* And he had barely won his first election to the presidency. Worse than all that, he was a Democratic president up for reelection. That put history against him: No Democrat had been reelected president of the United States since Andrew Jackson, and that had been fifty-six years earlier.
But in the end just one state stood between Cleveland and victory: his own, New York. And he lost New York because at the last moment one group thought to be leaning heavily his way turned against him: the Irish.
How had he lost the Irish vote? Just two weeks before the election the Republicans released a letter that Sir Lionel Sackville-West, the British ambassador to the United States, had written to Charles F. Murchison in September. Murchison, who described himself as a naturalized Englishman now living in California, had asked which candidate for president would be good for Great Britain. The ambassador indiscreetly suggested that that would be Grover Cleveland. And when that got out, the Irish swiftly abandoned Cleveland, probably contributing more than any other single factor to his defeat.
Grover Cleveland had come close to doing in 1888 what no other Democrat had done since 1832 and what no Democrat actually would do until 1916. And that was to win reelection. But he lost because of a dirty trick. The Englishman who wrote Sir Lionel Sackville-West was not really an Englishman at all. His real name was George Osgoodby. And he was a California Republican. Cleveland was done in by a Republican dirty trick—the first in American history to alter the outcome of an election.*
He took the loss well, though his friends thought he simply may have been putting up a brave front. It almost appeared that he was taking it too well—as if he were hiding his true feelings.
But he would be back. As he was leaving the White House to make way for Benjamin Harrison, his wife† remarked to a butler, _Don't change anything. We'll be back_. Cleveland already was plotting his return.
Four years later he was again selected as the Democrats' nominee for president. In a rematch with Harrison, Cleveland won, making him the first (and so far only) president to serve nonconsecutive terms.
*It is beyond question that Cleveland had an affair with the woman, but it is still unclear if he was the father of her child. While the mother claimed he was, and Cleveland provided child support, it is highly possible that he was simply covering for a married friend, who also had become involved with the woman.
*Excepting the three contests decided by the House (1800, 1824, 1876), the closest election in American history had been the election of 1796; the shift of a few hundred votes in New York would have made Jefferson president over Adams. In 1916 the shift of two thousand votes would have made Charles Evans Hughes president instead of Woodrow Wilson.
*The Republicans were to resume their attacks on immigrants in the late 1890s, when for the first time in American history more immigrants began arriving from southern Europe than northern Europe: Poles, Italians, Jews. The shift in the origin of the immigrants so inflamed public opinion that the Republicans adopted a proposal to restrict immigration severely. It cost them heavily in New York City, but was so overwhelmingly popular in the rest of the state that they were able to win New York in several presidential elections. To help shore up support in New York they frequently put a New Yorker on the ticket (most notably, Teddy Roosevelt). When Roosevelt became president he made numerous efforts to gain Catholic and Jewish support, and in 1904 became the first Republican president to win a majority of the Irish vote; in 1907 he named the first Jew to the cabinet (Oscar Straus, secretary of commerce and labor). Lewis Gould, The Presidency of Theodore Roosevelt (1991), pp. 140-41; 258-59.
*It was emotional for good reason. Most immigrants, the Irish in particular, faced terribly painful discrimination: social discrimination, job discrimination, housing discrimination. Signs hung in the windows of Boston shops bluntly warned: "No Irish Need Apply." In 1881 Oxford Professor Edward Freeman joked during a public lecture in the United States that "the best remedy for whatever is amiss in America would be if every Irishman should kill a Negro and be hanged for it." When Irish leaders objected, Freeman replied blandly that he had not intended to hurt anyone's feelings. It was a sign of the times that he believed he could get away with the "explanation."
*All the presidents elected between Andrew Johnson and Teddy Roosevelt came from Ohio except Cleveland. And all of them were Republican except Cleveland.
*Dirty tricks had been all but unknown in American politics. The first ones hadn't been played until 1844. And those were almost innocuous. One involved a newspaper story put out by the boss of the Whigs, Thurlow Weed, about a traveler named Roorback who on a visit down South supposedly came across some of Democrat James Polk's slaves cruelly branded with Polk's initials (a president could own slaves but he couldn't brand them like cattle-that was considered inhumane). Another involved an attempt by the Whigs to demoralize leading Democrats; to persuade the Democrats that the campaign was going badly the Whigs sent out a letter to that effect supposedly written by some high party muckety-muck. Still another involved the printing up of phony ballots; the ballots mixed up the names of Democratic and Whig electors, which was intended to confuse voters. All in all pretty tame stuff.
But then the war had come along, and then the bosses, and then the special interests, and then the immigrants. And the dirty tricks suddenly got much much rougher. In 1880 the editor of the Truth, a New York scandal sheet, published a letter Garfield had supposedly written to H. L. Morey, the head of the Employers Union of Lynn, Massachusetts, endorsing the right of a corporation to hire the cheapest labor available, including Chinese labor. Garfield had not written the letter. It was a forgery. But it threatened to undermine his candidacy in the West. See Charles G. Sellers, James K. Polk: Continentalist (1966), pp. 152-53; Allan Peskin, Garfield (1978), pp. 505-11.
†In his second year in office, he had married; more on her later.
# 12. The Media
How the revolution in mass communications forced Grover Cleveland to manipulate the media and lie about his health in an effort to maintain control
Lucky as Cleveland was to win reelection, his timing was terrible. Just a month before his inauguration a financial panic struck. The Philadelphia and Reading Railroad—one of the nation's leading lines—went bankrupt. Wall Street started on a steep decline. And the country's gold reserves began running dangerously low. As spring turned to summer, businesses began failing at an alarming rate. In Colorado half the industries in the state closed down. As the price of silver collapsed, mines shut down. In New York City, the financial powerhouse of the country, the banks all but stopped giving out cash. Even the rich found that the banks wouldn't give them their money. One fellow with twenty thousand dollars on deposit at a bank was told he would be allowed to withdraw just fifty dollars.
And then, at the height of the crisis, Cleveland found out that he had cancer.
Grover Cleveland had always enjoyed good health, despite his portly frame, despite the 250 pounds he carried on his five-foot eleven-inch body. But on Friday May 5, 1893, just a few months into his second term, he noticed a growth the size of a quarter on the roof of his mouth. A doctor who examined it thought it might be cancerous. A lab test subsequently confirmed that it was. And Cleveland was told it had to come out—and come out quickly before the cancer had a chance to spread.
No one knew what the reaction of the country would be to the news that the president was ill, but it could only contribute to the feeling that things were out of control. It had been just a little more than a decade since Garfield had died, and the last thing anyone wanted was to see another president die. It wouldn't just be the fact of death that could prove unsettling, but that Cleveland might suffer a long lingering death precisely as Garfield had, though for different reasons, of course.
Worse perhaps than the fear that the president might die—worse in Wall Street's eyes for sure—would be the fear that the vice president, Adlai Stevenson, would take over. Stevenson believed in a policy of soft money, believed, that is, in flooding the market with silver coins to inflate the currency and to help out debtors. The money men back East would be fearful of a Stevenson presidency, so fearful the markets would be likely to perform even worse than they already were, deepening the financial panic, maybe deepening it so much as to plunge the nation into a full-blown depression.
He never should have been put on the ticket with Cleveland. For Cleveland believed in hard money; one of his chief goals in his second administration was to dampen the fears of inflation. But it was _because_ Stevenson believed in soft money that he had been run with Cleveland. The Democrats needed Stevenson to win the West, where indebted farmers and the silver mine owners lived.
The Wall Street concerns were paramount. In the great new economy that was developing in the postwar period, Wall Street loomed large. If Wall Street did well, the economy usually did well. It wasn't as if they were directly linked. Sometimes when Wall Street was going gangbusters, the economy was in the doldrums. But there was a relationship there, and presidents had to be careful about Wall Street in a way that they had never had to be careful before about any economic entity.
In the old preindustrial days, presidents had had very little to do with the economy. Even the government as a whole had had very little impact. It could issue currency, set tariff schedules, run a budget surplus or deficit, and deposit government funds, but not much else. The economy pretty much ran by itself. Industrialism changed that, government becoming deeply involved in the economy, especially in the distribution of substantial subsidies to the railroads. During the Civil War the government virtually took over the economy. And that altered the relationship between the government and business, the president and business.
Even after the war ended, the relationship was never the same again. Now they were interdependent, the one affecting the other in myriad and complicated ways. One word from the president about silver or gold and stocks could take a dive or rise, investors gaining or losing millions. In a way they never had before, presidents now could affect Wall Street and business and in turn the economy as a whole. So they had to be much much more careful than ever before; they had to measure everything they did by its potential effect on business.
Cleveland now took all that into account and decided that he had no choice but to lie about his cancer. The operation to remove the cancer in his mouth would have to be secret, utterly secret, so secret as not even to become the subject of rumor, for even the rumor of illness could exacerbate the financial crisis. If anybody happened to ask about his health, they would have to be told a falsehood. They would have to be told that the president was well when in fact he was not.
Earnest Grover, sincere Grover, truth-telling Grover would have to lie. It was an incredible and ironic turn of events, considering Cleveland's reputation for honesty. But he felt he had no choice. He was desperate. Just as desperate as he had been when he'd pandered to the immigrants in 1888. Only then he had stooped to save himself. Now, he told himself, he was stooping to save the country. Doing his duty.
To be sure, there was a great deal of patriotism in his lying. Like Polk, he felt that lying was in the country's interest. Sometimes it is. Perhaps this was such an instance. But it would be naive to think that his decision to lie was only about patriotism. It was also about satisfying his great driving, ambitious need to remain in control of events. Tell the truth, and he'd lose control. Lie, and he had a chance of retaining control. So he lied.
The critical factor in his decision to lie was not the change that had taken place in the economy or the president's new role in it. It was another change, this one so obvious most people tended to overlook it. But it was profound. It was the change in the media and the way the media were beginning to cover the presidents. For the first time they were beginning to report on the state of the president's health. And because they were, presidents now felt compelled to lie when the news about their health adversely affected their ability to control things.
In the old days the presidents hadn't had to lie when they fell ill, because the papers rarely reported on their illnesses. Washington in his second year as president caught pneumonia and nearly died. The press largely ignored the story. Jefferson in his first administration suffered from nonstop diarrhea and during both terms faced recurrent bouts of dysentery, malarial fever, migraines, and backaches. The press never said a word. Madison suffered from bad nerves and anxiety and during the War of 1812 almost died from some kind of "bilious fever," probably dysentery. The press skipped that story as well.
And so it went. Jackson was especially prone to illness: abscesses, coughs, vomiting, stomach cramps, malarial fever, and possibly even lead poisoning. At the height of the bank war he collapsed and was confined to bed. Polk suffered from gallstones and diarrhea and worked himself to death. Pierce was an alcoholic. Buchanan was simply old and often feeble; at his inauguration, just prior to taking the oath, he had to take several shots of liquor to steady his nerves after he came down with some kind of unspecified illness, probably food poisoning. Lincoln, while physically strong, suffered from melancholia—depression. All in all a frightening record. Two presidents had even died after falling ill, as had four vice presidents.* And yet hardly a word was ever printed about the president's health. A line here, a line there, and that was usually all.
So what changed? Why did the presidents' health suddenly begin to assume importance? It was because they became celebrities.
Reporters had never really written about the presidents as celebrities. They had not even thought to write about them that way. Before the war— _the_ war—when presidents had gone on vacation reporters hadn't followed after them; the presidents had simply gotten on their horse or climbed into a carriage and ridden off. Jefferson spent months at Monticello without ever seeing a reporter. John Quincy Adams spent seven months at home in Massachusetts without ever seeing a reporter either; no editor had thought to send a reporter up to talk to the president about his extended vacation from the capital. Buchanan had gone home to his mansion in Pennsylvania and complained because he was a little lonely. Again, there were no reporters.
And then the war came. While Lincoln found that he still could travel about alone, reporters now became a presence in his life. The White House in a way even became an unofficial beat, reporters hungry for war news hanging around for a scoop (though the telegraph office was usually a better place to wait for one). But nobody yet thought to ask the president for an official newspaper interview. Newspapers didn't yet interview presidents; the presidential interview hadn't been invented.
But things were changing. In a way they hadn't been before, presidents were becoming bona fide celebrities. Not of course as they were to become in the twentieth century, but celebrities nonetheless. Everything about the presidents now seemed to be of concern. What kind of food they ate, what kind of clothes they wore, how they wore their hair. When Benjamin Harrison ran in 1888 the papers reported his shoe size (6½), his hat size (7½), the price of his shirts (twenty-seven dollars a dozen), and his favorite sports (fishing and baseball). What their wives were like was also of interest, the kind of clothes _they_ wore, the kind of food _they_ ate.
Even where the First Family vacationed became of interest. And when they went on vacation now a whole press contingent followed. When Cleveland went on vacation, which was usually to a place on Buzzards Bay in Cape Cod, reporters reported on his every movement. _Who_ came by to visit. How he relaxed. What he did all day.
And then he got married! To a twenty-four-year-old named Frances! A young woman whose guardian he had been since her birth! After a secret engagement! And the press went crazy. Every detail seemed momentous. _Marrying at his age? To a woman so young? To a woman he'd known since birth? And nobody knew a thing about it until the official announcement?_ Fascinating! When Cleveland and his new bride went on their honeymoon, the press followed, Cleveland complaining of the "newspaper nuisances."
It was a curious time for presidents suddenly to become celebrities. For the presidency itself had never been less powerful or less interesting. Hayes, Garfield, Arthur, Cleveland, Harrison—these were not terribly colorful, exciting people. But as the bourgeois middle class had grown, as average people had become concerned with status and had looked about them for models from whom they could take their social cues, they had quite naturally turned to the presidents.
A turning point of sorts was reached in 1887 when Mrs. Fanny Gillette and White House steward Hugo Ziemann put out _The White House Cookbook_ , a runaway bestseller, which included, in addition to the presidents' favorite recipes, all sorts of advice on correct social etiquette, very Victorian social etiquette: "A gentleman should not bow from a window to a lady, but if a lady recognizes him from a window, he should return the salutation." Or: "Cleanliness is the outward sign of inward purity. It is not to be supposed that a lady washes to become clean but simply to remain clean." Why such stuff was included in a work passed off as the White House cookbook was something of a mystery. But that the presidents were now linked in some way to such matters was telling.
Editors had quickly sized up the public's appetite for gossipy news about the presidents and begun to feed it. So great was the interest in the presidents that they could no longer go anywhere without reporters following them. Which in turn led to another development—the creation of the White House press corps.
Just yet the corps did not quite exist. For nobody covered the president full-time. One day a reporter might report on the president's activities, the next day on the secretary of state's. But inevitably, as things became more formalized and specialized, certain reporters began focusing on the president exclusively.
Presidents often liked the new attention they were receiving. It was flattering to be followed around all the time. It made them seem extra important. But the added coverage also came at a cost. Just as increased newspaper coverage of the Grant scandals had riled Grant, increased newspaper coverage of his successors' personal lives riled them. Not always, but on occasion and for the same reason: control.
The more the newspapers wrote the more control they had over the national agenda and the president's life, and the more control _they_ had, the less control _he_ had. And their agenda was quite different from his. They wanted to write about the things that sold newspapers. Often that would be innocuous stuff, but sometimes not. For what the newspapers liked most was the dramatic and the most dramatic news usually wasn't good news but bad news, and that usually wasn't the news the presidents wanted people reading.
Newspapers had been powerful for a good long time by now, since the late 1830s at least, when Benjamin Day, the publisher of the _New York Sun_ and the elder James Gordon Bennett, publisher of the _New York Herald_ , had invented the penny press, revolutionizing the business. Before Day and Bennett papers had sold at best a few thousand copies a day; by 1842 Bennett's _Herald_ was selling fifty thousand copies a day; by 1860, seventy-seven thousand.
But after the war, as Grant had discovered, the newspaper had become something more, almost a fourth branch of government, and more powerful in some ways than the other three branches of government. It wasn't just that the newspapers helped shape public opinion. It was something more than that. The newspapers defined the terms of the national debate about things. If they said something was a fact, it _was_ a fact. If they thought something wasn't a fact, it _wasn't._ Grant had felt that his friends had been railroaded. But the newspapers hadn't seen it that way. And the newspapers' view had prevailed over the president's. It wasn't just an opinion that the administration was corrupt. It was now considered a fact. The newspapers said it was corrupt and so it _was_ corrupt.
The press could not of its own authority pass laws or wage war. But it could help get laws passed, and it could help get wars started. (It was to have its war in 1898, when press baron William Randolph Hearst used his paper to whip up public support for an invasion of Cuba. When the artist Frederic Remington, sent to Cuba to produce pictures for Hearst of the looming war, sent word that "there will be no war" and things were quiet, Hearst wired back, "You furnish the pictures and I'll furnish the war." And he did.)
An early indication of the press's new power had come in 1872. That year the Democrats, searching for a candidate to run against the ever-popular Grant, nominated a journalist to be president, Horace Greeley, publisher of the _New York Tribune._ A first. The campaign, however, was a disaster. Greeley made a terrible candidate. He simply talked too much. And then tragedy struck. His wife became deathly ill and Greeley became despondent. "I disagree with you about death," he wrote to a friend who had expressed a fear of death. "I wish it came faster.... I wish she were to be laid in her grave next week, and I to follow her the week after." On October 30 his wife _did_ die. Five days later Greeley lost the election. Three weeks after that _he_ died.
It would be a long time before another newsman would be nominated for president,* but there was no stopping the increasing power of the press. As time went by it would grow more and more powerful.
Its power was evident in all sorts of ways, quirky ways. In 1875 Boss Tweed, the corrupt boss of New York's Tammany Hall, the most corrupt boss there probably ever was, had been accused of swindling the government out of millions of dollars and been arrested and held in Ludlow jail while awaiting trial. Then, to the everlasting embarrassment of the authorities, he had somehow managed to escape. The police looked everywhere but couldn't locate him. Then came word that he had been arrested in Cuba, a Spanish official spotting him after seeing a newspaper drawing of Tweed done by cartoonist Thomas Nast. As an isolated incident it was simply a delightful little story. An anecdote. Something to talk about over dinner. Which people did. But of course it was symptomatic of something larger. A change in the society. The rise of a newly powerful institution in American life.
The newspapers themselves did not quite knew what to do with their new power. There was no handbook to follow, no rules, nothing to help editors decide what could and couldn't be done. So the editors winged it. Tried everything. Had fun. One day James Gordon Bennett, Jr., who took over the _Herald_ from his father, even tried a hoax. Just to see what would happen he ran a front-page story claiming that the wild animals at the city zoo had escaped and were roaming loose: TERRIBLE SCENES OF MUTILATION, A SHOCKING CARNIVAL OF DEATH. Readers naturally became horrified and frightened and for hours they remained off the streets.*
Journalist Lincoln Steffens, by accident, made people think that the city of New York had been hit by a crime wave. Steffens began innocently enough. After finding out about a certain crime not reported in court papers, he ran a story about it and readers went wild. The other papers in town, relying solely on the courts as their source of crime news, missed it—were beaten, scooped. So Steffens leaned on his friends in the Police Department for more scoops and started running more and more crime stories. Suddenly it seemed as if the city had been overrun by criminals.
Teddy Roosevelt, the police commissioner, convened a secret meeting of the police board to find out what was happening. Told that crime was not up, that just the _reporting_ on crime was up, Roosevelt became angry, and called in Steffens, a friend, and asked him to please, please pull back on the crime coverage. Steffens did, ending the crime wave. But the newspapers continued to be sensationalistic. Sensationalism sold papers. A famed Indian fighter, William Travers, complained in 1891 that the papers killed more Indians than his troops. "Why, if we killed half as many Injuns as the newspapers do," he observed, "we'd be short of Injuns!"
Powerful as the newspapers were, presidents were powerful, too. While they could never gain back completely the control they lost over the national agenda once the newspapers became rich and powerful, they could gain back some of it by restricting the flow of information. Information was power, and the president ultimately had more information than the reporter, meaning that the president ultimately was in the more powerful position.
It wasn't really ethical for a president to play games with information; in theory a president should give everybody equal access. But in the new environment in which they were now operating, presidents couldn't afford to be particularly Ivory Soap pure. They _had_ to play games, had to exercise control. Of course, they didn't figure this out all at once. The situation was confusing. But slowly they did. By Cleveland's day they had mastered most of the techniques of control that are now so commonplace: playing one reporter off against another, leaking certain facts and not other facts, giving off-the-record interviews, sending up trial balloons. It was a fundamental turning point, almost the beginning of modern times. And once again it was desperation that drove them to behave as presidents before them never had.
They tried to keep tight control over as much information as possible, but they were especially fanatical about controlling information about one area of their lives in particular—even if they had to lie to do so. For this one area could often be critical. Most importantly, it was personal. It was news about their health.
It happened to be Chester Arthur who was the first to lie.
When he took office he seemed to be in perfect health. Just fifty-one years old, one of the youngest presidents, he had always been vigorous, always able to keep long hours, and was known for his stamina. But then he'd come down with Bright's, and he suddenly began feeling terrible. Not just a little terrible. A lot terrible. And not just once or twice a month, or once or twice a week, or once or twice a day. But all the time, every day of every week of every month. He found he had trouble getting up in the morning, didn't have an appetite, often felt depressed, and didn't want to work.
Arthur knew he was dying but he decided to keep the news secret. He thought if people knew it would undermine his ability to control the government. The only thing that anybody would talk about would be Chester Arthur's illness. Any chance he had of getting legislation passed, of putting his stamp on the presidency, would be lost. From the moment he disclosed his illness he would become a cipher, the connivers inevitably scrambling to fill the resulting vacuum. And Arthur very much wanted to control the administration, if only to prove that he could be more than a simple machine politician. Thus he felt he had no choice but to keep his illness secret. Open up, tell the truth, and the administration would suffer terribly. _He_ would suffer terribly. The country would suffer terribly. Just a year after losing one president people would begin worrying that they would lose a second.
Keeping an illness like his secret, however, wasn't easy. Not with all the news reporters now swarming over the White House. And, as it happened, a writer for the Associated Press managed somehow to find out about the illness almost immediately, just after the diagnosis was made, and sent out a report on the wire. It was full of specifics and seemed irrefutable. According to the story the surgeon general had made the diagnosis, and a New York specialist had confirmed it. But Arthur wasn't about to let a wire service story destroy his administration, so he sent out a close friend to deny that the story was accurate. The president _was_ sick, the friend related. But he had a mild case of malaria. Not Bright's disease.
Having decided to lie it was relatively easy to keep the lie going, because nobody had ever heard of a president lying about his health. It simply hadn't been done. So people discounted the AP story and figured the president had malaria. The only real danger was that Arthur would begin to look ill, which would inspire rumors. But for most of his term he was able to limit his public appearances and to conceal the deteriorating state of his health.
Near the end of his administration, however, he had a close call during a trip to Florida. It was one of many trips he took during his last year (which provoked a lot of discussion and criticism), all in an effort to find relief from his ailments. But on this trip he nearly died. In addition to kidney failure, the Bright's was leading to hypertension—high blood pressure—and one day it nearly stopped his heart cold. The secretary of the navy, who was traveling with Arthur, put out the word that the president was ill. But Arthur rallied and was able to travel home to New York, where he hid out in a hotel for a week while he recovered. When he finally returned to Washington reporters asked him about his health and Arthur brazenly lied. "I am feeling perfectly well, as well as ever in fact. I have not been sick at all." _Not at all?_ the reporters pressed. Well, Arthur admitted, he had suffered a "slight indisposition."
Arthur was able to keep the lie going by keeping the secret tightly held. Aside from his family, just one or two friends knew, and only one member of the cabinet, the secretary of state. He even declined to tell the man who was organizing his reelection drive. Arthur had no intention of running again. He was too deathly ill. But he let the poor devil keep working feverishly to reelect him right up to the Republican convention.*
It was possible, of course, that Arthur had lied not because circumstances made lying inevitable but because _he_ was simply a liar. But then a president known for telling the truth lied, too, when a few years later _he_ became ill. That seemed to settle the matter. Presidents felt it was their prerogative to lie about their health.
Cleveland's operation could not, of course, take place in a hospital. Too many people would have to be in on the conspiracy at a hospital—where the president would be likely to come into contact with dozens and dozens of nurses, orderlies, and doctors—for the silence to be maintained. So the operation would have to occur in a place hidden completely from public view. As it happened there was such a place—a yacht.
And so the charade began.
Friday night, June 30, 1893, after the last visitors had left the White House, the president took a train from Washington to Newark, New Jersey. Then he crossed the Hudson, boarded a horse-drawn carriage and arrived at Pier A, off the East River in New York City. There he boarded the _Oneida_ , a private yacht belonging to Commodore E. C. Benedict, a wealthy friend with whom he'd gone boating many times before.
Only a dozen or so people in the whole country knew what was planned for the _Oneida_ : Commodore Benedict, of course; the members of the ship's crew; a dentist; the five doctors who would perform the operation; the president's wife; a couple of friends; and one—and only one—officer of the federal government, Daniel Lamont, the secretary of war, who'd been with Cleveland since his days as governor of New York. At the doctors' insistence Lamont was to be present at the operation in case something went wrong.
That night Cleveland and the others relaxed on the deck of the ship, exchanging small talk and smoking cigars. (Even the president smoked.) They stayed up until midnight, even though Cleveland complained of fatigue.
Since his inauguration on March 4 he had contended not only with the crisis caused by the panic, but with the thousands of office seekers who descended on Washington after every election. One, a Mr. Nibge, had been hounding him day and night. "Oh, Dr. Keen, those office-seekers!" Cleveland burst out bitterly. "Those office-seekers! They haunt me in my dreams." Cleveland had been so beset by office seekers that he had recently issued an unprecedented order. On May 7, two days after he had discovered the cancerous patch in his mouth, he had announced that "the limitations placed upon human endurance oblige me to decline... all personal interviews with those seeking appointments to office, except as I on my own motion may especially invite them."*
And, of course, it wasn't just the panic or the office seekers that had worn Cleveland out, it was the diagnosis of cancer. Though he hadn't felt any ill effects from it, the diagnosis itself had been a severe strain. The president was a young man even by nineteenth-century standards. But his father had died young, at age forty-nine. Cleveland at the time of the operation was fifty-six and concerned that _he_ would die young, too.
Saturday morning the president had a light breakfast, including toast and coffee. Then he had two teeth pulled to give the surgeons room to cut into his jaw. Finally, the operation itself began. It was 1:24 P.M.
Cleveland, sedated with nitrous oxide and ether, lay in a chair located in the ship's saloon. The chair was anchored to the ship's mast, a tangible reminder that this was the unlikeliest of settings for an operation on the president of the United States. That morning one of the doctors had mentioned to the captain, "If you hit a rock, hit it good and hard, so that we'll all go to the bottom."
First the surgeons cut straight into his upper left jaw, separating the jaw from the cheekbone. As they started removing the upper front of the jaw they found the cancer, a "gelatinous mass." Working quickly, they cleared out the contaminated fragments. It was at this point that they could see that the cancer had gone further than they'd suspected, into the sinus cavity above the roof of the mouth. They took out the visibly cancerous sections, but Doctor Keen argued that the surgeons should remove the rest of the upper left jaw and continue cutting up past the sinus and into the bottom of the eye socket. But the other doctors decided that this would be unnecessary and stopped cutting, leaving the president's eye structure intact. At 1:55 P.M., after just about a half hour, the operation ended. Cleveland was given a shot of morphine and put to bed.
When he awoke he was in a feisty mood, obviously still haunted in his dreams by those damnable office seekers. "Who the hell are you?" he asked one of the doctors who happened to be standing over him at the time. "Erdmann," said the doctor, "from Chillicothe." "Oh," said Cleveland, "do you know Mr. Nibge there?" "Yes, he's the druggist." "Well," asked the president, "is he so poor that he needs a job from me?" "No," said Erdmann. "Then he won't get one," snapped Cleveland.
Obviously, the public should have been told about the operation. The risk of the portly president suffering a stroke had been so real that a specialist had been brought in to monitor his progress. But Cleveland wanted the operation kept secret, and it was.
For five days nobody outside the conspirators' circle even suspected that the president was ill. From Saturday, July 1, to Wednesday the fifth nobody but the conspirators knew that the president of the United States had been operated on for cancer. Nobody. Not the members of the cabinet (except Lamont, of course), not the members of Congress, not even the vice president. Nobody even suspected anything. People had been told the president was spending his July 4 vacation aboard the _Oneida,_ and they believed it. On July 5 the _Oneida_ dropped Cleveland off at his summer home in Buzzards Bay on Cape Cod. All was quiet.
Then on Thursday the president's personal physician, Dr. Joseph Bryant, who'd made the first diagnosis of cancer, held a press conference to declare that the president was recovering from a slight illness. The event was all part of the elaborate plan the conspirators had concocted to conceal the operation from the American public, but it went badly. Doctor Bryant said that Cleveland was suffering from "rheumatism and somewhat from his teeth." When pressed for details the doctor said that Cleveland's knee was lame, and that his left foot was swollen so greatly he had to wear a big shoe. He added that a dentist had extracted a bad tooth. But the reporters sensed something more serious was amiss and began asking penetrating questions. Finally one of them asked if the president had cancer.
Doctor Bryant was not used to lying, but at this moment there was no avoiding it. He told the reporters the president was absolutely free from cancer. He went on to deny specifically that the president had been operated on. Secretary of War Lamont, who was also present, insisted that the president was simply suffering from a sore tooth.
Neither Bryant nor Lamont, however, made very good liars. When the reporters retreated to their hotel to file their stories, half of them were convinced that the president was seriously ill and suspected he did have cancer. But the presidents' men, this day anyway, were lucky. For the sake of consistency the reporters decided it was necessary that they all take the same position on the president's health, and that position, they finally concluded, was that the president was recovering from rheumatism and a toothache. For now at least the conspiracy was holding.
As Cleveland recuperated he received dozens of visitors at his Cape Cod home. It was obvious to all of them that he was in great discomfort. His mouth was stuffed with cotton and he had trouble speaking. Under the circumstances it was difficult for Cleveland to keep completely silent about the operation, and he found that he couldn't. When Richard Olney, the attorney general, arrived Cleveland blurted out the secret and cried, "My God, Olney, they nearly killed me!" But the public remained in the dark. And it remained there through July and into August, even after he returned to the White House.
Then on August 29 the _Philadelphia Press_ told all. In a story rich in detail, Elisha Edwards reported that the president had cancer and that he had undergone a secret operation earlier in the summer to have it removed. Edwards had gotten the story from his family doctor, who in turn had gotten it from the dentist who had removed Cleveland's two teeth. It was entirely factual; the dentist, under the impression silence was no longer necessary since Cleveland seemed to have recovered, had confirmed the facts in an exclusive interview with Edwards.
But then a funny thing happened. The members of the conspiracy went on the offensive and denounced the story, one of the doctors afterwards remembering that he lied more at that time than he had in his whole life. And the story was forgotten. Completely forgotten—buried in a hail of lies. The American people had been fooled.
And to no end. It had been thought that lying would help keep the panic from turning into a depression. But in the end the panic became a depression anyway. All the lying was for naught.
Cleveland didn't make a very good liar. He lied only because he felt he had to. He didn't lie again.
Mostly he remained true to himself, putting the country's interests above his own and his parly's. And he was very impressive. He fought so hard for the repeal of the Sherman Silver Purchase Act, which required the government to buy millions of ounces of silver a month, that he put the very survival of the Democratic Party at risk. Both farmers and silver mine owners, two key groups in the party's coalition, supported the law; the farmers because it helped inflate the money supply, thereby reducing their debts; the silver mine owners because it helped make them rich. But when Cleveland realized that the law was bankrupting the country, dangerously depleting the government's gold supply (the government was required to buy the silver with gold), he demanded the law's repeal.
One day the Speaker of the House, Charles Crisp, came out to the White House to protest Cleveland's demand for a speedy vote. "Do you know what this means to me?" Crisp asked. "My people in Georgia are for silver. My political career will be ruined." "Mr. Speaker," retorted Cleveland, "what is your political future weighed in the balance against the fortunes of the country? Who are you and I compared with the welfare of the whole American people?" "Well," Crisp responded, "if you put it that way, I'll consent."
The law was repealed. But the Democrats, divided between hard and soft money factions, split in two, leaving the silverites and newly minted politicians, like William Jennings Bryan, in control. It would take the Democrats a generation to heal the rift and return to power.
But he wasn't always so tough, so true. Although he served during one of the most tempestuous periods of American history, when the struggle between labor and capital was intense, giving him numerous opportunities to demonstrate presidential leadership, he largely passed them all up. He let the trusts run wild. He let the special interests that controlled the Senate sabotage genuine tariff reform. He refused to fight for higher taxes on the rich.
It wasn't that he failed to see the great problems facing the country. He saw them and did nothing. But on two occasions he did pause and take notice. On the first occasion he assailed the corporations, declaring that they were "fast becoming the people's masters." On the second he attacked the trusts, assailing them for their "palpable evils." But both times he spoke when speaking plainly no longer posed a danger to his political career. He criticized the corporations in a message to Congress in December 1888—at the end of his first term, after he had lost to Harrison and was on his way out. He took on the trusts in December 1896—at the end of his second term, when he was no longer in a position to right the wrongs he had identified.
It wasn't that he was a political coward. There simply was only so much he could do, given the powerful forces arrayed against him. Had he done more he very likely would have destroyed the Democratic Party, not just split it in two.
Increasingly, as the country became more complex, presidents would often find themselves in situations like Cleveland's, situations in which they wanted to do good but simply couldn't. Desperate, they would cave in to the pressures. They really had no other choice. In trying to do what they thought they should, they would only succeed in destroying themselves. So they compromised. Again, and again, and again.
By the time he left office he was widely scorned. Among the groups that scorned him the most were reporters. Cleveland had manipulated them as no president before ever had, and they resented it. One of them, once Cleveland was safely out of office, went public with their complaints, pointing out in a national magazine all the detailed ways in which the president had used information to maintain his control over the news.
Cleveland came off terribly in the piece, but he had the last laugh. The reporters who covered him didn't find out for years about the secret operation. Not until 1917—nine years after Cleveland died, twenty years after his administration ended, twenty-four years after the operation—was the lie finally exposed, when Doctor Keen told all in the _Saturday Evening Post._
The reaction of the public to the news about the Cleveland lie was interesting. People read the story, talked about it, ohhed and ahhed about it, and then they forgot about it. It was as if the Cleveland lie had never been told. A president could lie about his health and get away with it.
The politicians didn't need the Cleveland example to figure that out, however. They'd already figured it out by themselves. In their shrewd way, based on years and years of experience dealing with people and politics, they had calculated that health was an area in which a president could lie. So they lied and lied and lied, telling more lies about their health than about anything else. It was almost as if they felt they had a right to lie about their health because, really, nobody should be asking them questions about it anyway. Their health was _their_ concern.
*The two presidents were William Henry Harrison and Zachary Taylor. The four vice presidents were George Clinton, Elbridge Gerry (both of whom served under Madison), William King (who served under Pierce), and Henry Wilson (who served under Grant).
*Warren Harding was a newspaper publisher; John Kennedy served as a war correspondent for the International News Service in 1945. He covered the Potsdam Conference and the founding of the United Nations.
*This was, as it happened, the second great newspaper hoax of the century. The first was Benjamin Day's front-page claim in 1835 in the Sun that life had been discovered on the moon by an astronomer using a giant telescope in South Africa. According to the newspaper the moon was inhabited by four- foot-tall batlike creatures. Some believed the story, some did not. But the hoax was wildly successful in attracting readers, nineteen thousand a day, then a world record.
*Coincidentally, Blight's disease struck two other prominent Americans. It took the lives of the first wives of both Theodore Roosevelt and Woodrow Wilson.
*The patronage burden was especially great for Cleveland because with his election the presidency had changed parties. He had followed a Republican.
# 13. World Power: I
How William McKinley caved in to the demand for a war with Spain but then went on aggressively to monopolize the control of foreign policy
* * *
_Through most of the nineteenth century the presidents were preoccupied mainly with domestic issues. Now they become deeply involved in foreign affairs, as the United States steps on the world stage, transforming itself into a true world power._
_Unlike many of the other great changes that took place previously, this one actually enhances executive power. Presidents find that in foreign affairs they can unilaterally commit the United States to vast undertakings, sometimes even involving the country in war._
_But there is a catch. To exercise power they often must resort to subterfuge and manipulation. Most important of all, they learn that to have a free hand they must find ways to exclude Congress from the decision-making process._
* * *
Compared to Cleveland, McKinley looked like a weakling. Almost anybody would have, Cleveland had been so tough and determined, so willing to act in defiance of public pressure. But McKinley seemed especially weak. He spoke softly. His hands were soft. His mien was soft. And he was very devoted to his wife, Ida, a chronic invalid subject to epileptic fits, and that made him look soft, too. When he served as governor of Ohio he arranged for himself and Ida to live in a hotel directly across from his office so he could be near her in the event of an emergency. Every day at three in the afternoon he'd stop what he was doing, go to the window, and wave to her. On those occasions when she suffered a fit in public, he'd carefully place a cloth napkin over her face to save her the humiliation of being stared at. He remained so devoted to his wife that Mark Hanna, his campaign manager, was to complain jokingly that McKinley "made it pretty hard for the rest of us husbands here in Washington."
He wasn't really soft at all. It was just that he appeared to be soft. That was one of his talents actually. He could push himself very hard and push himself ahead without anybody thinking he was working hard or working to get ahead.
He was born in Ohio, which already told you a lot about the man. Like other Ohioans, he came of people who moved west for opportunity. His father was a small-scale businessman. His mother was a devout Presbyterian; for many years she had high hopes that her boy William would grow up to be a preacher. McKinley had other ideas.
When the Civil War broke out he enlisted as a private. Within a year he was a mess sergeant, but he was unsatisfied with his position. At Antietam he quickly attracted attention by daringly driving a mule team loaded with hot food to the soldiers fighting on the front lines. McKinley thought he deserved a commission for his feat and was disappointed when one wasn't immediately offered. So he quietly went to the commander's brother-in-law and asked to see if it could be arranged that this obvious oversight be corrected. And it was. Shortly thereafter he managed to attract the notice of the commander himself, becoming an aide. McKinley had a sharp eye for people who were obviously going places. The commander was Rutherford B. Hayes.
After the war he returned to Ohio and studied law. At age twenty-four he opened his own law office, and then, just two years later, he was elected county prosecutor. Two years after that he married Ida, then a raving beauty, who also happened to be the daughter of one of the richest men in town. And three years after _that_ , in 1875, he helped Hayes win reelection as governor.
It was becoming obvious by now that McKinley had political ambitions, but it wasn't yet obvious just how ambitious he truly was. So far he hadn't had to demonstrate how far he was willing to go to fulfill his ambitions. His victories had come cheaply. But now they were to come at immense cost. He and Ida had already lost one child and now, in 1876, they lost another, Katie. A little while later Ida's mother died, and Ida began showing the symptoms of invalidism that were to dominate her life. McKinley, however, pushed on with his own plans for a political career. Five months after Katie died, he ran for Congress and was elected.
It appeared for a time that probably all he was going to be was a congressman, and for the next fourteen years that was all he was. But behind the scenes he was working aggressively to become a power in the Republican Party. In 1880, just four years after he was elected to Congress, he became the temporary chairman of the state party convention, then four years later, the permanent chairman.
By 1888 he had succeeded in becoming so powerful that people were beginning to think of him as presidential timber. At the national convention that year, some delegates even pushed for his nomination, but McKinley wisely protested that he wasn't running; he didn't have a chance anyway, and by taking himself out of contention he won the loyally of candidate John Sherman, whom McKinley was pledged to support.
His immediate ambition was to be elected Speaker of the House, and the following year he waged a fierce battle for the post. He lost, but he was given the chairmanship of the Ways and Means Committee, the most powerful committee in Congress. As chairman he was then able to champion the passage of a high protective tariff, which put him in good stead with the businessmen who controlled much of the party.
What was so fascinating about McKinley was that even as he was becoming a power in the party, nobody was becoming jealous of his power. He just wasn't the kind of man who inspired jealousy. So it seemed as if his way was clear to run for president. But he decided that he would have a better chance if he were first to be elected governor. As the governor of Ohio he would have instant credibility as a presidential candidate—Hayes had, after all, been governor of Ohio—and by winning election as governor he could demonstrate his vote-getting abilities. So in 1891 he ran, winning handily.
It would later be said that Mark Hanna made McKinley president. This was only half true. As the party boss of Ohio Hanna played a key role in McKinley's ascension, but it was McKinley who pushed McKinley first, McKinley who waffled on the issues so as to avoid alienating important blocs. If McKinley hadn't exercised extreme shrewdness in his handling of these issues in the early nineties, he never would have been considered suitable for the presidency in 1896, when Hanna's help finally proved to be critical.
To his credit McKinley demonstrated consistency on the tariff, even after the country seemed to reject a high tariff in the elections of 1892. But he waffled badly on the silver issue. In 1890 he supported the Sherman Silver Purchase Act. In 1891 in his race for governor he seemed to come out against silver. In 1893 he again reversed course and seemed to come out for silver. By 1896 nobody knew where he really stood, which was just what he wanted. By being ambidextrous on the issue, he could appeal to all corners of the party in his drive for the nomination.
After he won the nomination the party came out four-square for gold. For any other politician with McKinley's record the party's stand might have proved an embarrassment. After all, McKinley just three years earlier had seemed to be for silver. But McKinley was oleaginous. He could get away with a flip-flop. And he never publicly displayed the least discomfort about his obviously inconsistent positions. Inconsistency was inevitable in politics, he thought.
His inconsistencies, however, made him appear weak. Speaker Joe Cannon commented that McKinley had his ear so close to the ground that it was full of grasshoppers. But he wasn't weak in the sense that he could be pushed around or controlled. In his deliberate and steady path to the White House, he'd showed an iron will. In a way, by folding on the silver issue he was showing his strength. Or at least his ambitiousness, which was a kind of strength. Ambitious to the core, he wouldn't let anything get between him and the White House, not even principle. What McKinley truly wanted, McKinley usually got.
Two days before his inauguration McKinley had a brief conversation with Cleveland, one of those conversations leaders inevitably seem to have that afterward appear so tragically ironic. Cleveland frankly told McKinley that he'd left him a war to fight in Cuba. McKinley responded that he hoped he wouldn't have to go to war. His single greatest hope, he said, was to get through the next four years without one. Cleveland nodded in agreement.
McKinley hated war. He remembered the bodies piled up on the Civil War battlefields and didn't want to see those same kind of gruesome piles again, and certainly not on his watch. And he organized his cabinet as if he didn't expect to. To appease veterans he put in a political hack as secretary of war, Russell Alger, the head of the GAR—the Grand Army of the Republic. He put Ohio Senator John Sherman in as secretary of state, though Sherman at seventy-three was utterly feeble by then. (The Sherman appointment was part of a little old-fashioned political bargain. By putting Sherman in the cabinet McKinley opened up a place in the Senate for Ohioan Mark Hanna.)
Having selected his cabinet McKinley settled into his job and prepared to concentrate on economics. The country had been through hell the last four years; the Cleveland depression, the worst in American history, had demoralized people and McKinley wanted to focus on recovery. His first act was to convene a special session of Congress to enact a new tariff law. The Democrats had lowered the tariff (a little) just when the depression had hit. The Republicans wanted to raise it again. A high tariff, they claimed, would bring back good times. By July a new tariff had been passed; McKinley, pleased, headed off for vacation. If everything went as planned, the economy would come roaring back and he could take it easy.
As things turned out the economy did come back, the depression ending about as quickly as it had begun four years earlier, and McKinley and the Republicans reaped the rewards. Everything had worked out as planned.
But if McKinley felt that everything was in control it wasn't to remain so. The media, that great vast new powerful force in American history, was about to join with another, equally as powerful: imperialism. Together they would rock his presidency, forcing him to do what he did not want to do, which was go to war. Strong as he was when he wanted something, he wasn't strong enough to hang on to peace. So he caved. Cave, and he at least could remain somewhat in control of things. Defy the media, defy imperialism, and Congress would take control.
America as it neared the end of the century was a much more exciting, more vibrant, more cosmopolitan place than it had ever been before. The mixture of cultures, the growth of the media, the development of industry—all had worked marvelous changes in the country. But in one way it was very much like the old America. It was inward looking, self-absorbed, and ignorant—almost defiantly ignorant—of the world outside, the world across the Atlantic and the Pacific. Little attention was even paid to the countries on its own doorstep, Mexico, Santo Domingo, Colombia, Nicaragua, or even Cuba. Grant had tried to annex Santo Domingo; the Senate turned him down. Americans simply didn't want to be part of the outside world. They especially didn't want to do anything that might involve them in unnecessary conflicts with the European powers. Most of their ancestors after all had come to America to escape from Europe, to get away from history and start fresh. The expectation that one could create a new Eden had been a central part of the American dream. As a result no president had yet even dared venture abroad during his term of office. When Cleveland on a fishing expedition had gone past the three-mile limit, it was considered something of a dramatic moment; as far as anybody knew, no other sitting president had ever done so.
But by the 1890s Americans had become fascinated with the outside world, fascinated in particular with the Great Powers—England, France, Germany, and Russia—and what they were doing around the globe to increase their power. Americans were both repelled by the empire builders' conquests—the division of Africa into European spheres of influence, the division of China into European commercial zones—and yet also quite a bit jealous, millions wondering why the United States didn't have an empire. Slowly the idea became prevalent that the United States should.
Imperialism, however, wasn't one thing. To different people it meant different things. To businessmen with hopes of establishing new markets it meant profits. To jingoists it meant a chance to go to war. To the Teddy Roosevelts it was a way to project American power. To Christian missionaries it was an opportunity to redeem the world's oppressed classes. To others it was a way to get new land now that the American frontier had supposedly closed. So it was a complicated, contradictory thing. But common to all of the various meanings attached to it was a growing, fervent belief that it was America's destiny to take a leading role in world affairs, which itself grew out of a fervent belief in American nationalism.
Where all these feelings first crystallized was around the Sandwich Islands—Hawaii. Exotic Hawaii. Most Americans had never heard of the place and certainly couldn't find it on a map. But it sounded interesting, and annexing Hawaii would, people were told, extend U.S. influence deep into the Pacific. That was appealing. It instantly could turn the United States into a Pacific power.
Behind the high-flown imperialistic campaign was a small group with a profound self-interest in annexation: the sugar lobby. If Hawaii were made a part of the United States, the white American sugar planters who in the last generation had established gigantic sugar-growing operations on the islands would immediately become eligible for a federal subsidy worth millions.
But little was heard about the sugar lobby's pecuniary stake. What excited people was the imperialistic, nationalistic rhetoric. At the height of the campaign the islands' white planters overthrew Queen Liliuokalani, with the help of a rogue American minister, who on his own authority had deftly dispatched a small contingent of U.S. Marines to the scene at a critical moment. The planters then proclaimed Hawaii an independent republic and applied to Washington for annexation. The American minister wired the State Department, "The Hawaiian pear is now fully ripe, and this is the golden hour for the United States to pluck it."
The Harrison administration was fully behind the acquisition and in 1892 prepared to "pluck it," but just then Harrison was voted out of office, replaced by Cleveland. Cleveland, believing the queen had been cheated out of her kingdom by conniving businessmen, scotched the plans for annexation and repudiated the involvement of the American minister in the coup against the queen, which the Harrison administration had covered up.*
Hawaii would not become part of the United States—not yet, anyway. (It finally was to be annexed a few years later under McKinley's aegis.)
Cuba was a lot closer than Hawaii, ninety miles off Florida, and in the middle 1890s in the throes of a colonial rebellion against Spain. Cleveland watched what was happening on the island and for several years pressed Spain to settle the conflict. But he had other problems, the silver crisis, the tariff fight, the depression, and so mainly ignored what was going on. When he wrote up his final message to Congress, he included a sharp warning to Spain that the United States would not remain indifferent forever to the rebellion in Cuba, that with us peace was not a necessity, but then he had second thoughts and dropped the warning. McKinley could deal with Cuba; it would be his headache.
The imperialists very much wanted Cuba. Cuba was the key to the Caribbean. And the Caribbean was key to Central America. Which in turn was key to South America. The imperialists didn't want to take over all the Americas, but they very much wanted the United States to dominate; currently the European countries still exercised enormous influence, Germany and Great Britain in Venezuela, Spain in Cuba.
Imperialists were, however, in a somewhat awkward position. In Hawaii they had sided with the oligarchs against the indigenous people; now in Cuba they were siding _against_ the oligarchs and _with_ the indigenous people. No matter. The point was to expand American power. Anyway, they didn't really want to help the Cubans become independent, totally independent. They simply wanted the Spaniards thrown out. Then the United States could step in, exercise benign control over the island, perhaps making it a protectorate.
The Cuban colonial war was a journalists' dream. There were good guys and bad guys. And the press lords of the day, William Randolph Hearst and Joseph Pulitzer, made the most of the situation, competing daily to see who could come up with the most sensational evidence of Spanish tyranny.
It was practically a game, almost. You'd open the Pulitzer paper, and there'd be a story about some poor Cuban woman who'd been raped by a Spaniard. Then you'd turn to the Hearst paper and read how the Spanish authorities had decided to starve out the rebels holed up in this or that part of the island. It was exciting. Fun, almost. Bad news that curiously made you feel—not good, but alive! Most importantly, it was bad news that prompted an emotional response. While the reader picked up some facts from the papers the facts were incidental; what was key was the emotionalism, the outrage, the welling feeling that _something must be done._
Of course the situation in Cuba was actually horrific. The longer the war went on, the harsher the Spaniards became. Finally they adopted an atrocious policy, the creation of unsanitary concentration camps to hold tens of thousands of relocated rural peasants. This was supposedly done for the peasants' benefit so that they wouldn't become infected with the rebels' propaganda. But of course it was a terrible infringement of their liberties, and completely demoralizing, which only turned the Cuban people even further against the Spaniards. Which, naturally, became yet another day's story in the papers, which were becoming so sensationalistic that their coverage got a special name: yellow journalism, which became a byword for distorted, exploitive, distorted reporting. (The name was an allusion to "the Yellow Kid," a character in a cartoon that ran in Pulitzer's _New York World.)_
Both papers became so caught up in the story that they lost all pretense of objectivity. Hearst at one point even staged the daring rescue of an imprisoned young Cuban woman, Evangelina Cisneros, whom the paper had turned into a cause célèbre. Cisneros, the paper had repeatedly blared in front-page stories, had been jailed because she had declined the lustful advances of a depraved Spanish officer. When the authorities refused to free her, and American officials proved incapable of arranging her release, Hearst decided simply to do it himself. "It is," the paper bragged, "an illustration of the methods of new journalism."
Successful as Hearst and Pulitzer were in inflaming public opinion, they were not singularly responsible for bringing on the war with Spain. Americans by the millions wanted a war, wanted to project American power, wanted to flex their national muscles. So it was really the two forces that were drawing America into the war, the media _and_ imperialism.
Given the forces driving the country toward war not much was needed to trigger American participation, but then suddenly, in bewilderingly quick succession, there were not one but two triggering events that made war all but inevitable. First, in early February 1898 the papers got hold of a letter written by the Spanish minister to the United States, Dupuy De Lome, in which the minister referred to McKinley as a weak vacillating politician; the Hearst paper headlined the story: WORST INSULT T? THE UNITED STATES IN ITS HISTORY. Then, on February 15, the _Maine_ blew up, killing 264 people. A month later an American board of inquiry ruled that the explosion had been triggered by an exterior cause; Americans naturally leaped to the conclusion that the Spaniards were to blame.* McKinley asked Congress for an emergency defense appropriation of fifty million dollars and got it in two days. In April the United States and Spain went to war.
McKinley had not wanted war, had not expected war, and he had done everything he could to avoid it. For a full year he had worked secretly to put pressure on Spain to settle the issues giving rise to the war: to close the concentration camps, to end the policy of starving out the rebels, to give the Cubans autonomy, if not exactly total independence. Spain, for its part, had refused to make reforms. Pushed to give the Cubans autonomy, Spain had come up with a plan that left the real control of the island in the hands of a governor appointed by Madrid; both the Americans and the rebels had immediately grasped the emptiness of the gesture and rejected it. Spain had never even closed down the camps, though it promised to relax its control. It was apparent the Spanish didn't intended to reform; De Lome, in his infamous letter, had said as much. What Spain needed to do, he had counseled his superiors back in Madrid, was "to carry on a propaganda [campaign] among the Senators and others in opposition to the [Cuban rebels'] junta, and to try to win over the [Cuban] refugees."
It may not have mattered what the Spanish did. For the forces moving in the direction of war were simply greater than the forces summoned against them. Trying to stop the prowar forces was like trying to turn back nature. It simply couldn't be done. For there simply was no force in the society strong enough to resist the twin forces of media and imperialism—not even the presidency of the United States. McKinley repeatedly tried. Repeatedly he failed.
Not everybody in the country was prowar, of course. There were pockets of opposition to imperialism in every community. On Wall Street there was substantial opposition, many businessmen fearing that the war would possibly destabilize the economy, derailing the recovery and sabotaging profits. But more people were for war than against it, many millions more. Even Christian leaders. "You have no idea of the pressure on William from religious peoples," McKinley's brother complained.
So war came.
It was, of course, a turning point. Never before had a president seemed to be pushed into war the way McKinley had been. Before, presidents had taken the country into war because they believed it was the right thing to do, the necessary thing to do. And they had resisted calls for war when they felt war was not right or necessary, as Jefferson had resisted calls to answer British attacks on American shipping with war, as Lincoln had resisted calls to start an unprovoked war with Britain in order to divert attention from the slavery crisis. But McKinley had no real choice. As one irate senator explained in March, when McKinley seemed to be stalling for time, "[I]f he doesn't do something, Congress will exercise the power and declare war in spite of him. He'll get run over and the party with him!"
Unprepared for war, the country largely botched the effort at the outset. The army was put in the incapable hands of Gen. William Shafter, who was so fat and so sick he couldn't ride his own horse; to get around in Cuba he had to be carried on a wooden door turned sideways. The soldiers were put in the wrong uniforms, thick woolen uniforms instead of the light airy ones needed for fighting in tropical Cuba at the height of summer. Training camps were set up in parts of the South where there had recently been an outbreak of malaria. The canned beef used to feed the soldiers was often rancid. Because there weren't enough ships available to transport the soldiers to Cuba, several regiments, including Teddy Roosevelt's Rough Riders, fought with others to get passage. In the ensuing melee the Rough Riders had to leave their horses behind in Florida.
It was then that McKinley took control of the war effort himself. He saw that Secretary of War Alger was incompetent, so he bypassed him, establishing the White House, for the first time in history, as the operational brain of military administration. He enlarged the White House staff, had a half dozen telegraph lines routed directly into the building, and then made all the important military decisions himself. Not even Lincoln had ever taken such detailed control of the military.
McKinley even began taking control of the media. Discovering the great secret about the press—that it was far far easier to control reporters by keeping them close than by keeping them at a distance—he held them close so they could be watched over as they did their watching. He even gave reporters space in the White House to write their stories. It was just an old wooden table and some chairs located in a hallway, but it was reserved for them, a place where they could gather at any time of the day or night. He also began the practice of holding official White House briefings for the press. At ten o'clock every night, in time to meet the morning papers' early deadline, his private secretary, John Porter, would tell reporters what had happened during the day and then field their questions. Porter was, in effect, the first White House press secretary. Not surprisingly, McKinley got very very good press coverage.
Alger still caused trouble. At war's end most of the men in the army fell sick and nearly died from rampant malaria and Yellow Fever because Alger refused to bring them back quickly enough; it took a public circular from Roosevelt to draw attention to the problem, saving the army from near disaster. As it was, 5,000 died of disease; only 298 died in action.
The soldiers generally performed well despite adverse conditions, the Rough Riders especially (even without their horses). But only the navy could be said to have showed itself truly capable. Fortunately for both the army and the navy Spain was even less prepared for war than the United States. In three months it was over.
William McKinley, the gentle president who hadn't wanted war, who had in fact done all he could to avoid it, and who had looked weak in putting off war and then had looked weak in caving in to the demand for it, emerged from the conflict in a strangely powerful position. It wasn't just that he had led the country to victory, though that of course was part of it. The war had made the presidency count again in a way it hadn't since Lincoln. In the crisis Americans naturally had turned once again to their president for leadership. And McKinley had provided the leadership people craved. Once he had taken control of the levers of war, the military effort had gone more smoothly. Almost all the mistakes were due to Alger.
Imperialism had cost McKinley control of events, but the war had given him the opportunity to gain back control. By war's end he had become almost imperial in a shocking way. Although the war lasted just a brief time, it was long enough to give him a chance to exercise real power. Once he had it he refused to give it up. There simply was no turning back. McKinley would remain in charge, would keep power concentrated as much as possible in his own hands. Almost symbolically he refused to trim the White House staff back to prewar levels. Now that it had been expanded, it would stay expanded. The more people he had on the staff, the more power he had: He was the first president to figure that out.
It wasn't immediately apparent at the end of the war how much more powerful he had become. For he seemed the same, looked the same, talked the same way he always had. He was still silky smooth, so smooth he was said to have had the best relationship with Congress of any president ever. To help cement his relationship with Congress, he even included a few senators in the peace delegation sent to Paris to negotiate a formal end to the war—a shrewd and unprecedented gesture. (Significantly, he also included a journalist, Whitelaw Reid, a prominent Republican who had run for vice president with Harrison.)
But there really was a newly powerful McKinley, which became obvious when he submitted the peace treaty to the Senate for approval. Instead of waiting for the Senate to act, which could be dangerous given the opposition of a small but vocal crowd of anti-imperialists, he used all the powers at his command to get the treaty ratified quickly, bargaining jobs for votes, promising the fence sitters control of their state's patronage if they gave him their support, threatening others that they would lose patronage if they blocked him. And he kept up the pressure right up until the day of the vote, in February 1899. The final tally showed just how important it was that he had used his patronage power liberally: The treaty passed by one vote.
Even more telling than McKinley's decision to trade jobs for votes was his decision to have the vote taken in February at all. For in February the odds were less in favor of the treaty than they would be in March, when the term of a newly elected Senate was due to begin. In the lame-duck Senate in February the Republicans had a thirteen-seat majority; in the new Senate in March they would have a twenty-seven-seat majority. Getting the treaty past the Senate in March would be far far easier, but waiting until March entailed a substantial risk to McKinley's power.
To get a treaty in March out of the Senate he would have to call the new Senate into special session. Once convened, the Senate would probably remain in session for months and months. And that would mean that the senators could oversee the president's administration of the country's new colonial empire in Cuba, Puerto Rico, and the Philippines. By getting the lame-duck Senate to approve the treaty in February, McKinley ensured himself a free hand in the colonies. For, when the session ended in early March, the new Senate would not convene until December. Between March and December, McKinley would have supreme authority in the colonies under his power as commander in chief. What he wanted to get done would get done. Nobody would be in a position to challenge him. It was therefore very important to McKinley that he get the treaty through the old Senate. Get it through the Senate then and he could have what he always craved: real power.
In domestic affairs McKinley continued to behave very much as presidents had for decades. He was slow, methodical, and restrained. He had to be: He simply lacked the kind of power in domestic affairs that he had in foreign affairs. So it was almost as if there were two McKinleys. The weak and accommodating McKinley, and the strong and dominating one.
This was odd but not unexpected. For it was in foreign affairs, matters involving war and peace, that presidents had always taken the most liberties. It was in those matters that they _had_ to. In foreign affairs the government often had to act quickly, decisively, and with energy, and that gave the president an extraordinary incentive to assume vast powers. For only the president could act with dispatch; Congress by its very nature couldn't. Often Congress wasn't even in session. In even years it met for just four months, in odd years for six, seven, maybe eight months. Only the president, in effect, was in session year-round. Only he could respond to events as needed.
So it wasn't just McKinley who had a split personality—most presidents did. Even the strictest of the strict constructionists had felt compelled in foreign affairs to act boldly, sometimes almost recklessly, in the exercise of their powers. The most famous case, of course, was Jefferson's decision to strike a deal with Napoleon for the Louisiana Purchase. But there were many many others: John Tyler had secretly promised Texans that as soon as they signed a treaty of annexation with the United States he would, as commander in chief, personally guarantee the protection of their republic, even if that meant going to war with Mexico. He had, of course, no right to make any such commitment. (Congress alone under the Constitution has the right to make war, as Tyler himself had always admitted.) He especially had no right to guarantee the safety of a place that had as yet not been legally absorbed into the United States. Only Congress could annex Texas, and Congress had not yet done so for the very reason that annexation carried with it the clear risk of war. But Tyler felt he _had_ to act. Act, and the country would obtain a huge tract of land (and Tyler would get the credit). Do nothing, and Mexico might yet awake from its torpor and try to take Texas back. The danger of war was obviously very great. A year later, in 1846, the United States and Mexico actually went to war, when James Polk, acting on his own authority, infamously sent the army into an area long claimed by Mexico, in effect launching an invasion.
Even the weakest of presidents, Millard Fillmore and Franklin Pierce, had acted boldly in foreign affairs. Fillmore on his own authority had sent Commodore Matthew Perry to open up Japan and issued orders to use force if the Japanese showed disrespect. The mellow Pierce had sent a warship to Nicaragua to go after the residents of Greytown, whom he held responsible for an attack on the American minister to Central America. The president subsequently vigorously defended the commander's decision to level Greytown when the residents refused to apologize. And virtually all the presidents had used the military in police-style actions to go after pirates, smugglers, slave traders, and the like.
So there was plenty of precedent for McKinley's imperial pretensions in foreign affairs. But now he was to do what no president before him ever had, and that was to go to war abroad without congressional consent, without even consulting the leaders of Congress. McKinley hadn't gone power crazy, though he loved power. The fact was that imperialism had changed the world in which presidents operated. To succeed at imperialism a country had to react quickly to swiftly moving events. Delay, and other countries would take advantage of the opportunities created by events. So a president felt great pressure to go it alone, to act without first getting Congress's say-so. To take control of events, they had to.
When the United States conquered the Philippine Islands, it was unclear exactly what they were good for because nobody really had ever given them much thought. Thanks to Commodore George Dewey, they had just kind of dropped into our lap. About the only thing we were sure of was that we didn't want to give them up.
But by 1900 Americans had figured out what the Philippines were good for—business. Not because people thought they could make much money in the islands themselves, but because the islands could be used as the gateway to the place where one _could_ make a lot of money: China.
The big news coming out of China in 1900 was the Boxer Rebellion, and it was very frightening news. First came the report that the Boxers had massacred Christian missionaries, then that they had gone on a rampage killing any Westerners they could find. Then came news that the Boxers had taken control of Peking. And _then_ came reports that they had murdered all the foreigners in Peking. The reports did not happen to be true; while the Boxers had indeed taken over Peking, just a small number of foreigners (including two diplomats) had been killed. But what Americans read in their newspapers made the rebellion sound just horrible, the triumph of the barbarians. When the Western European powers announced that they were going to send in an international force to retake the city, Americans cheered. The barbarians would be taught a lesson.
The Europeans' interest in Peking was obvious. It was mostly their people, after all, who had supposedly been killed. And it was they who had the most to lose. They had all sorts of profitable concessions in China: railroads, ports, custom houses. So they would go in, of course.
What Americans should do, however, was not very clear. There weren't many Americans in Peking, and in all of China there weren't any American concessions. None. In the scramble to divide up China, the United States had been left behind. But there was a danger in standing on the sidelines. It would almost permanently guarantee that Americans would never obtain a foothold in China, almost guarantee that American business would be excluded from one of the world's burgeoning new marketplaces. The McKinley administration had recently taken the position that nobody should have concessions in China, that all foreign powers should be treated equally there, and that they should respect Chinese sovereignty. In the words of Secretary of State John Hay, China should be an Open Door. Which was a very idealistic policy at the same time that it was entirely self-serving, since it was in our interest to have a door opened that formerly had been closed to us. But the European powers hadn't been much impressed with the Open Door policy, and it was obvious that if they sent in an army to put down the Boxer Rebellion that they would demand even more concessions.
So as the news continued to come in from China—all of it very bad news—McKinley was under intense pressure to join the European force. And to do so quickly. It would do the United States no good to join the force after Peking had been retaken. To have a say in Chinese affairs the United States had to go in _with_ the force. McKinley was thus faced with a very modern problem, one that nearly every president since has faced. On the basis of obviously incomplete reports he had to decide whether to commit the country to international action that could very well end in war, and he had to decide so quickly—in a matter of days—that he could not even consult Congress (which was not in session). Complicating matters, as if they weren't already complicated enough, was the fact that this was an election year, a presidential election year. Mess this up, make the wrong decision, and perhaps the administration would be voted out of power. Make the right decision, and he had the chance to go to the voters in November as a real leader again, a man who'd made history a second time.
It was thus a very typically modern presidential dilemma, and McKinley went about deciding what to do in a very typically modern way. He assembled a small group of advisers in the White House and hashed out the problem, looking at it from every angle, without including the public in the discussion. An elite group would decide a matter of international war and peace.
On June 18, just five days after the first news story had come in that Peking had been taken over by the Boxers, he made his decision to intervene militarily. He issued an order to the navy commander in the Philippines to assemble a force "to act in concurrence with other powers so as to protect all American interests." There would later be arguments about the size of the detachment that was sent. Some accounts said 5,000 went, some 2,500. Either way, it was a substantial, impressive force.
The whole thing could have gone terribly badly. Trying to control events at home was often difficult enough, but trying to do so thousands and thousands of miles away—well, at first glance trying to do that almost seemed foolish. But the fact was a president could almost control events better thousands of miles away than right on his own doorstep. Because in foreign affairs he could act unilaterally. He could, in short, do what needed to be done without worrying overly much about the democratic process, which was always messy and unpredictable.
As it happened things did go just as McKinley had hoped they would. Although the Chinese government took the side of the rebels and declared war on the European powers and the United States, by the end of the summer the international force, numbering some twenty thousand, put down the rebellion and retook Peking. The United States, in consequence, was in a position to influence the way business was to be conducted in China. As McKinley boasted in a phone call to his secretary of war (probably one of the first times a president used a phone to communicate with a key adviser during an international crisis), "It seems to me we have been most fortunate in all our dealings with this most delicate question."
The hard part, it turned out, was not getting the U.S. military into China but getting it out. While McKinley had hoped to bring the men out fast, in time for the election, there were enormous pressures on him to keep them in. As Secretary of State Hay noted, if the troops were pulled out before a new order could be arranged "we shall be left out in the cold." Hay's hope was that the United States could use the troops as leverage to implement his Open Door policy. But now that the troops were in China, McKinley suddenly seemed less committed to the Open Door than he had been before. As Hay confessed to a friend, McKinley "seems to take the other view and to want a slice." In the end the president took a decidedly muddled course. He let Hay issue a second Open Door note, promising to respect the integrity of China, while also authorizing the navy to negotiate the acquisition of a military base. In September, just in time for the election, he pulled out most of the American troops, leaving only enough to keep up a presence. Two months later he was reelected in a landslide, the first Republican president to win reelection since Grant, a generation earlier.
It was McKinley who, under the pressure of imperialism, broke with past practice and sent American troops into a war zone without the authorization of Congress, but it was Teddy Roosevelt who would be remembered as the first imperial president. William McKinley was simply thought to be—dull. But it was McKinley's very dullness that made him interesting in a way. That such a dull, plodding politician acted so boldly was fascinating. Teddy was expected to be bold. But McKinley? It was almost a paradox—almost, but not really. For McKinley, while dull, was always ambitious. And like all ambitious presidents he wanted to control his destiny. Faced with the force of imperialism, the only way he could do that was by aggressively monopolizing the control of foreign policy.
The very week he was shot, the first week of September 1901, just six months after his second term began, McKinley took a walk along the bridge connecting the United States and Canada at Niagara Falls. He was very careful to make sure he did not go too far, however. In keeping with tradition, he did not want to become the first president of the United States to cross into a foreign country. So, well before he reached the Canadian side, he turned around and went back. He was, however, planning on taking several international trips. To Hawaii, Puerto Rico, and Cuba. He felt that visits to these places couldn't really be construed as foreign travel. And of course he was right. By the time he died, as a direct result of his presidency, these no longer really were foreign places. The American flag flew over all three.
And then in a blink there was Teddy.
*Cleveland refused, however, to help the queen return to power. Southerners in the Democratic Party wouldn't allow him to replace a white regime with, as it was put in those days, a "colored" one. The whites remained in control.
*What caused the Maine to blow up has never been answered definitively. Adm. Hyman Rickover, after a thorough investigation, reported in 1976 that the explosion was caused by a malfunction in the ship's own engines. Most experts agree.
# 14. World Power: II
How Teddy Roosevelt secretly became involved in a revolution in Panama to enhance his chances of winning election as president in his own right
Theodore Roosevelt had been a lucky child. Not because everything had gone right in his youth, though an awful lot of things _had_ gone right—son of a wealthy philanthropist, he had grown up in one of the toniest neighborhoods of New York and lived the life of a pampered, privately tutored, rich boy—but because something apparently had gone wrong. And ever after he had always felt he had to prove something. He had to be smarter than others, bolder than others, better educated than others—and, of course, physically braver than others—as if at the core he wasn't sure of himself, even though he gave the appearance of being very sure, cocky almost.
He had, of course, been very sick as a child. An asthmatic, he had had trouble simply breathing. As his father told him, in a famously Victorian way, "You have the mind, Theodore, but you have not the body." The realization that he lacked ordinary physical abilities profoundly affected his psychology. Like many sickly children he felt inferior, felt that there was something deeply wrong with him, something he had to fix, which would seem to explain why he was always busy fixing himself, improving himself, and telling others that _they_ should work on improving _themselves._
It was in college—Harvard, of course—that he came into his own. He gained weight, his asthmatic attacks eased and then virtually ceased altogether, and he became a pugilist. He positively loved fighting, each blow seemingly signifying his liberation from illness. But he almost loved it too much. It appeared as if he needed to prove to himself that he _really_ wasn't a sickly child anymore.
Some thought that he was trying to prove even more—that he was fearless, perhaps because he worried that his father had not been; during the Civil War his father had opted to hire a substitute.* And there may have been something to this. His whole life he was to put himself repeatedly in harm's way, as if to say to the world—to himself— _See, see, I'm tough, I can take it, Theodore Roosevelt can take it, Theodore Roosevelt is brave._ Soon after college he went out West to take on the cowboys in the Black Hills.
Whatever had gone wrong in his childhood, whatever it was that prompted him to want to prove himself over and over again, he became an astonishingly driven, astonishingly ambitious man. At twenty-four he ran for a seat in the New York state legislature. At twenty-eight he ran for mayor of New York City. At thirty-one he became a member of the United States Civil Service Commission. At thirty-seven he became president of the Police Commission of New York City. At thirty-nine he became assistant secretary of the navy. At forty he was elected governor of New York. At forty-two he was nominated to be vice president of the United States.
While he was nurturing his career as a politician he was pursuing numerous others. Unhappy with who he feared he really was—a skinny asthmatic rich kid—he had to become somebody else. But because he was never sure exactly who he should become he kept trying to be different somebodies, one day a boxer, the next a cowboy, then a historian, then an entomologist, then a naturalist, then an orator, then a writer, then a philanthropist, then a soldier—he loved soldiering. He said afterwards that his ride up San Juan Hill† through a hail of gunfire was the greatest day of his life. Because he was smart, very, very smart, and very, very talented, he was able—as no other man of his generation was—to excel in all of these roles. His history of the War of 1812, for instance, remains to this day a credible account. But he always gave the impression of being an overachiever.
Given the circumstances under which he became president—that he hadn't been elected, that he was just forty-three years old, the youngest president ever, that he lacked a mandate—he might have been expected to go slow and to stick with the McKinley program, at least at first. But that wasn't Teddy. Teddy wasn't a go-slow person. He was fast, full of get-up-and-go, the American boy wonder. So, when to his surprise he found himself president in the fall of 1901, he grasped the reins of power and charged ahead, just as he had in Cuba on San Juan Hill. "I want you to understand at the start," he told the press within days of McKinley's death, "I feel myself as much a constitutionally elected president... as McKinley was.... Due to the act of a madman, I am President and shall act in every word and deed precisely as if I and not McKinley had been the candidate for whom the electors cast the vote for President. I have no superstitions and no misgivings on that score. That should be understood."
And act he did.
In February 1902, just five months after becoming president, he filed an antitrust suit against the Northern Securities Company, the big railroad holding corporation formed by three of the titans of American business, James Hill, ?. H. Harriman, and J. P. Morgan. McKinley hadn't busted any trusts. TR would bust lots. Best of all he didn't have to ask anybody's permission. He could just do it. So he did it without consulting anybody except the attorney general, and he probably only told him because _he_ had to file the cases.
In May the coal miners went out on strike—and stayed out on strike. For months and months and months. If they stayed out on strike much longer the country would freeze during the coming winter. Already in many places coal was in short supply, and the price of course had skyrocketed. Teddy naturally got involved. He called labor and capital to a conference at the White House and told them they had to agree to a settlement. Had to. When the mine owners balked, Teddy told them if they didn't agree to arbitration he would simply send in the military and take over the mines. Legally he probably couldn't, but the threat succeeded in bringing the mine owners around.*
Again Teddy had acted boldly and again he had acted alone. It was beginning to seem as if he could do anything. And then a crisis arose in foreign policy. In Venezuela a tinhorn dictator had run up millions of dollars in debts. Great Britain and Germany, which were owed the money, decided to intervene. The British blockaded the coast and the Germans sent in troops. Roosevelt earlier in his administration had told the Europeans that they could "spank" the nations of Latin America, but he now changed his mind. He told them in no uncertain terms that they had to agree to arbitration. (It was beginning to seem that this was TR's answer to every problem.) Fortunately by then they had reached the same conclusion, but TR claimed privately that he had forced a settlement by threatening the kaiser. True or not, Teddy thought it was true. Again he had acted boldly, again he had acted alone.
Later in the year there was another international dispute, this time between the United States and Great Britain over the boundary of Alaska. Gold had been discovered in the Klondike region, and both countries were intent on staking a claim to the disputed land nearby. Roosevelt pressed Great Britain to turn the matter over to an arbitration commission stacked in favor of the United States, and the British agreed. The pattern had held. TR acting boldly and acting alone had succeeded.
For once a president actually seemed to _be_ in control of events. He even seemed to be able to control the media.
By then he was an old hand at media manipulation. As police commissioner he'd succeeded in getting Lincoln Steffens to stop his crime wave. Then, during the Spanish-American War he'd made arrangements to take film photographers with him to Cuba when he charged up San Juan Hill, garnering him brilliant coverage. But as president he excelled at media manipulation.
Reporters loved Teddy. Several went on to write adoring biographies of him. But they always had to keep in mind that _he_ loved _them_ only so long as they did what he wanted. There was an incident, right at the outset of his administration, in which this was made abundantly clear. It was at the White House, just after McKinley's funeral, when TR called the reporters together to have a heart-to-heart talk about media relations.
It was a strange time to be having such a conversation—an inappropriate time, really. But TR had something he wanted to say that he felt needed saying right away, that couldn't even wait a day. It was a warning, a threat: _If any of the reporters should at any time violate a confidence or publish news that the president thinks ought not to be published, he would be punished by having legitimate news withheld_ _from him._ The reporters objected. TR ignored them and ended the meeting.
It was not an idle threat. When reporters began printing unfavorable news about the administration, Teddy punished them just as he had promised. Then he went further. He singled out the worst offenders and barred them from the White House.
Teddy had a name for the reporters he barred. He called them members of the Ananias Club. Ananias was a liar who dropped dead when Peter rebuked him. The reporters TR rebuked did not die. But they were dead just the same—in his eyes anyway.
Teddy defined his presidency by his media personality, deducing that in the media age, personality counted even more than party. This last insight was brilliant, and it came at just the right moment. For parties just then were beginning their gradual decline in American history, weakened by corruption, civil service reform, and (soon) the establishment of primaries in a dozen states. A president could no longer rely solely on his party to control public opinion, to muster support for his programs, as presidents in the past had. Now a president had to rely on himself to a great degree, and the only way he could do that was by exploiting himself, exploiting his media personality.
Teddy himself was a natural. Always on. Always ready to do anything to give the boys in the press room (for whom _he_ built a special office) good copy. Nothing was off limits, it seemed, not even his family. The exploitation of his family was a great innovation. Nobody before him had even thought to exploit their family. But Teddy excelled at it, letting photographers swarm all over the mansion and the grounds to get good pictures of his family at play and work. His daughter, Alice, actually became something of a star. Like future presidents who were to use the media he often chafed at the reporters' intrusiveness at the same time that he was encouraging it. But he never cut off their access. They were simply too important. By giving them access, _he_ had access.
"Let me have free access to the channels of publicity," Roosevelt said at one point, "and I care not who makes my country's laws—or what the other fellow does." It was a startling, shocking boast, but it also happened to be accurate.
Teddy made such a colorful, inspiring president that almost everybody was sure he'd win the Republican nomination in 1904 and then, of course, the general election—almost everybody except Roosevelt himself, that is. No matter how hard he worked, no matter how successful he seemed to be, no matter how positive his press notices, Roosevelt seemed convinced that he was in terrible political trouble. Mark Hanna, still chairman of the party, refused to endorse him, and business seemed hostile.* So Teddy went to work on them both. He tried to coddle Hanna and he made peaceful overtures to business, easing his trust-busting campaign. He even invited J. P. Morgan to the White House.
He didn't exactly become conservative, but he became very prudent, almost too prudent. When people out West began screaming about the great threat Chinese immigration posed to their well-being, he agreed to make it even harder than it already was—and it was already very, very hard—for the Chinese to get through the door. There would be no Open Door policy for Chinese immigrants; not now, anyway, not with an election approaching.
His fears weren't exactly groundless. History seemed against him, after all. No vice president who had succeeded a fallen president had ever been elected on his own. And no vice president had been elected president since Martin Van Buren. While the vice presidency had once been a stepping stone for presidents it no longer was.
So 1904 was not a sure thing. And Roosevelt wanted it to be, _needed_ it to be. It wasn't any good being president only by virtue of an assassination. He had to be elected on his own. Had to prove that the years he had spent in the White House since the assassination had been deserved.
And, of course, he wanted not only to win. He wanted to win big.
There was, Roosevelt felt strongly, just one way to have a chance at winning big and that was to get started on the building of the Panama Canal. A president who could get the dirt flying on a canal that linked the Atlantic and Pacific would be unbeatable. Americans were clamoring for a canal.
Getting the right to build the canal across Panama was proving extremely difficult, however. Panama was then part of Colombia, and in August the Colombian Congress, dissatisfied with the ten million dollar offer he had made for the rights to the canal zone, turned him down.
Roosevelt was furious. He wasn't used to losing. And he had had such great luck thus far, getting everything he wanted, and getting it really without even having had to take any extraordinary measures. The most extreme thing he had felt compelled to do was to threaten to militarize the coalfields, and that had been just a threat.
But now apparently he _would_ have to take extraordinary measures. Would have to act really boldly—if he was to get the canal quickly. And that was the point. He had to get it done _now._ It wouldn't do to go back to the negotiating table with Colombia, for that would take time, probably a year or more, and even then there'd be no guarantee that Colombia and the United States could reach a settlement. Probably they could, but it wasn't guaranteed. There were no guarantees in international affairs. Things were often out of reach. And TR needed a guarantee. In 1904 he'd be up for election.
The problem therefore was time. There might not be enough time. By rejecting the treaty Roosevelt had negotiated, the Colombian Congress had left the United States back where it was in June 1902, more than a full year before, when talks with Colombia had first begun—which was nowhere. Only then the election of 1904 had seemed far in the future. Now the election was just fifteen months in the future. Fifteen short months. Roosevelt would have to do in the next fifteen months what he had been unable to do in the last seventeen.
A tall order. Even for TR.
All of August he sat and fumed. In September he continued fuming. _Those Colombians, they're dastardly, untrustworthy, undependable, criminal._ But then in October, finally, he got a break. It was the news that Panamanians were planning a revolution to divorce themselves from Colombia. Better yet, they wanted to strike a deal with the United States for a canal. Roosevelt might get his canal after all, and get it in time. There was, of course, no time to lose. Now the election was just thirteen months away.
But to get his canal Roosevelt would have to shade the truth a little. For the truth was, it really wasn't Panamanians at all who were behind the revolution. Yes, yes, they wanted to be free of Colombia. Over the years they had repeatedly tried to obtain their freedom (and over the years the United States had repeatedly helped Colombia stop them). But it was a Frenchman, Philippe Jean Bunau-Varilla, who was arranging things. From an apartment on the eleventh floor of the old Waldorf-Astoria in New York City he drafted a constitution, designed a flag, and generally took care of just about everything. He even personally selected the Panamanians he wanted to lead the revolution. It was all very bizarre, but it made sense if you understood the history.
In the late nineteenth century a French company had poured hundreds of millions of dollars into Panama in hopes of building an Isthmian canal, only the effort had ended in failure. A new company had been organized to take over the project but it, too, failed. Ever since, company officials, among them Bunau-Varilla, had been trying to get somebody, anybody, to take the equipment they had purchased off their hands so they could get something out of their costly misadventure in Central America. Initially they had wanted the full amount they had lost, but after the U.S. Congress declared that the United States would pay no more than forty million, they relented and agreed to the American terms.
Everything then had seemed settled. The Colombians would get ten million for giving the United States the right to build a canal. The French would get forty million for their equipment. But then in August, Colombia suddenly had turned Roosevelt down, meaning we wouldn't get our canal and the French wouldn't get their forty million. (Congress obviously would pay them the money only if the canal was to be built.)
Like Roosevelt, Bunau-Varilla had been under tremendous pressure to find a way to overcome the Colombian logjam. And then he found a way. Start a revolution! That was how he, a Frenchman, had come to be the mastermind behind a revolt in Panama.
It was an unlikely scenario, but by the fall of 1903 Bunau-Varilla had managed to pull almost all the pieces together to get a revolution going by about November. He had just one little problem. After independence was declared, he somehow had to be able to stop the Colombian military from crossing into Panama and crushing the revolt. On October 9 he went to the White House to see Roosevelt.
Roosevelt very much wanted to help, of course, but because of his position as president he couldn't come right out and say so. The White House couldn't be involved in planning a revolution in Panama, since Panama was then still a part of Colombia and we were at peace with Colombia and pledged by treaty to preserve the peace. Intervening would make us look as if we were willing to do anything to obtain our canal, just as the European powers in China had been willing to do just about anything to obtain their concessions, for which we Americans were always chastising them.
So TR couldn't come right out and tell Bunau-Varilla that the United States would help prevent the Colombians from interfering with the revolution. And he didn't. But then he didn't really need to. It was obvious that it was in the interest of the United States for the revolution to succeed, obvious that the U.S. government would use the navy to see to it that it did, obvious that the United States would agree to give the Panamanians the same financial deal previously offered to Colombia (namely, ten million dollars). So of course the United States would help. And as TR later said, Bunau-Varilla would have to have been "a very dull man had he been unable to make such a guess." Dull, indeed, considering that Roosevelt had his secretary of state tell Bunau-Varilla straight out that "orders have been given to naval forces on the Pacific to sail towards the Isthmus"—and that the ships would arrive by November 2.
Not being a dull man, in fact being a very smart, very alert, very energetic man, Bunau-Varilla then immediately relayed the information to his foot soldiers in Panama. On November 3, one day after the arrival of the U.S. warships, the Panamanians revolted. The Colombians attempted to put a stop to the revolt by shelling the city of Colón. The U.S. Navy prevented them.
On November 6, within one hour of receiving notice that a new regime had taken over in Panama, Roosevelt recognized it as the de facto government. A week later he gave it official recognition. Five days after that the United States signed a treaty with Bunau-Varilla, who had made himself Panama's first minister to the United States. Under the treaty we got the canal and the Panamanians got the ten million dollars that the Colombians had turned down as inadequate. (Meanwhile, the French got their forty million.)
What had seemed impossible just a few short months ago had been done. TR had gotten his canal. And he had gotten it with time to spare. In three months he had been able to do what he hadn't been able to in the previous seventeen.
Of course, it wasn't exactly ethical. The United States in effect had started a revolution in Panama. Without the help of our navy, without the strongly implied promise of ten million dollars, Panama would never have revolted. Roosevelt, under self-imposed pressure to secure Panama in time for his own election, had involved the United States in a gigantic international fraud, something no other president before him had ever done.
TR insisted while he was president that he had done nothing unethical in Panama, nothing untoward, even, and he kept to that line the rest of his life. But years later, during an address at the University of California, he was to brag that he was "interested in the Panama Canal because I started it. If I had followed conventional, conservative methods, I should have submitted a dignified state paper to the Congress and the debate would have been going on yet, but I took the canal zone and let Congress debate, and while the debate goes on the canal does also."
In the spring before the election TR grew morose, fell into a deep depression, and became utterly pessimistic about his chances in November. There were no grounds for pessimism, however. After all he _had_ gotten the canal going. And everybody else thought he was a shoe-in. But TR did not. And that was what mattered. _He_ thought he was in real trouble.
So he did what other presidents sometimes did when they thought they were in real trouble. He became desperate, and out of desperation he hatched an uncharacteristically underhanded plan. Convinced that what he needed to ensure victory was money, lots of money, to fund his campaign, he turned for financial help to the very corporations and businessmen he had been at war with the last three years. To make sure they gave—and gave big—he put his campaign in the charge of George Cortelyou, the very man who had been regulating business. (Cortelyou had been the first secretary of commerce and labor.)
The appointment smelled bad, and TR knew it. But the fact was he needed somebody in there who knew those corporate titans and knew how to put the squeeze on them. It was, as things turned out, an inspired decision. Cortelyou was a fabulously energetic fund-raiser. By November he had collected hundreds of thousands of dollars from big business: $250,000 from ?. H. Harriman, $150,000 from Standard Oil executives, $166,000 from U.S. Steel, $50,000 from Henry Clay Frick, and $150,000 from J. P. Morgan. The donations, of course, were made in secret, but word of them leaked out, causing a firestorm of criticism. TR's advice to Cortelyou: Launch "the most savage counterattack possible."
After the election Roosevelt renewed the crackdown on trusts that he had suspended as the campaign heated up. Businessmen were shocked. Felt betrayed. They'd bought the sonofabitch and then he hadn't stayed bought. As a vice president with Standard Oil subsequently testified before a congressional hearing, "Darkest Abyssinia never saw anything like the course of treatment we experienced at the hands of the administration following Mr. Roosevelt's election in 1904."
TR had had no intention of selling out to the giants of American business. He'd simply wanted their money—and he got it.
He won in a landslide. The greatest in American history up to that time. Fifty-eight percent of the popular vote. More votes than even McKinley.
There was just one thing about that landslide. It only made TR president, leaving Congress in charge of legislating, and TR found that inconvenient. As he exclaimed uncontrollably one day, "Sometimes I wish I could be president and Congress too." What upset him in the months after the election was that Congress wouldn't give him the authority to clean up a mess in Santo Domingo* that desperately needed cleaning up. Although it was a small country, an insignificant country really, the backside of Haiti, the government had run up enormous debts to Europeans. The Europeans in turn had threatened to take over the country until their debts were repaid. It seemed like Venezuela all over again. Only it wasn't. In Venezuela TR had recommended arbitration. This time he wanted the United States to intervene directly, to take over the country's custom houses. Then the United States could repay the Europeans and, not incidentally, the U.S. companies which were also owed money.
It was an unprecedented scheme, potentially very disagreeable and complex. If a revolution broke out, as was definitely possible, the United States would have to decide which side to support, involving us in yet another Latin American country's internal affairs. It would be Panama again, only this time we wouldn't be getting a canal. But TR felt that intervention was necessary. If we failed to do something, the European powers would. TR explained all this to Congress, but Congress didn't want to be involved and turned down his request for authority to intervene. Become involved in Santo Domingo? Why? Let it be, let it be. But TR could not simply let it be. He wanted action. So he took it. After obtaining Santo Domingo's approval, he ordered the navy to take over the custom houses.
TR had a theory about the presidency. He called it the Stewardship Theory. It was very simple. If a president felt he needed to take action in the public interest, he could, as the steward of the people, "unless such action was forbidden by the Constitution or by the laws." If Congress didn't like what he had done, it could always stop him by passing a law. Or impeaching him. But of course Congress was to do no such thing. Not in the wake of TR's resounding election victory. So nothing was done. For two years the United States administered the custom houses of Santo Domingo by presidential fiat. Then, finally, Congress approved a convention between the United States and Santo Domingo giving the president formal authority to intervene in the island country's financial arrangements. TR felt vindicated.
It had been a strange affair. Usually a president with a great personal following didn't have to abuse his powers. He could get done what he wanted done simply by appealing to popular opinion. That, anyway, was how things had usually worked in the past. But now things were different. For now a president was playing on the international stage. And there American popular opinion had little impact. What counted was raw power, military power. For a president to be able to control events, he had to be able to send in the navy or the army or the marines and to send them in quickly. Fail to act quickly, and others would act in his stead—and in their interests, not ours. So he had to act even if he lacked the requisite legal cover.
In his autobiography TR claimed that in his presidency, "I did not usurp power, but I did greatly broaden the use of executive power." But in the Santo Domingo affair at least, he did usurp power. After the Senate had expressly turned down his request to intervene in Santo Domingo, he had gone ahead and intervened anyway. He insisted it wasn't because he was power hungry but because intervention was necessary. But what was really going on was that he felt that in foreign affairs he should control things. And to obtain that control he was willing to do almost anything, even ignore Congress.
It had been TR's hope that he would have a great crisis while he was president, something perhaps on the order of the Civil War, a crisis that could show him to advantage, in which he could flex his muscles, really prove who he was and what he could do. But when the crisis finally came it was Woodrow Wilson who was in the White House. Teddy, on the sidelines, could watch but do nothing.
*His father always claimed that he chose not to fight because he had family on both sides of the conflict; his wife was raised in the South.
†Actually, Kettle Hill.
*When Harry Truman, in 1952, during the Korean War, seized the steel industry after the leading producers increased prices, the courts ruled that he had exceeded his power.
*Hanna had always opposed Roosevelt, hadn't even wanted him for vice president. When the convention in 1900 rallied round the Rough Rider, Hanna famously cried out, "Don't any of you realize that there's only one life between this madman and the White House?"
*It is now known as the Dominican Republic.
# 15. World Power: III
How Woodrow Wilson led the country into a war he claimed to be neutral about and then used scare tactics to persuade people to support the war and the peace
* * *
_TR is followed by his hand-picked successor, William Howard Taft. Taft remains largely faithful to Roosevelt's vision but alienates TR by declining to consult him. Annoyed and anxious to return to power, TR decides to challenge Taft for the Republican nomination. Party bosses rally behind Taft, leading Roosevelt to form a third party, splitting the Republican Party in two, guaranteeing the election of Democrat Woodrow Wilson._
* * *
Woodrow Wilson, "Tommy" in his youth, was the son of a Presbyterian minister and often reminded people of one himself. But his grand dream, from the time he was a student at Princeton, was to be a statesman. He told one friend he hoped to be a governor. He told another he wanted to be a senator. After graduating from Princeton he became a lawyer. "The profession I chose was politics," he explained. But "the profession I entered was the law. I entered the one because I thought it would lead to the other."
It was an excellent plan. For somebody else. Wilson, it turned out, couldn't bear the drudgery of lawyering, the studying of precedents, the filing of documents, the filling out of forms. He passed the bar in October 1882; in May 1883 he quit and decided to become a professor; a professor at least could spend his days working on ideas, and Wilson's imagination was always fired by ideas. Ideas could change the world. The following fall he entered Johns Hopkins University, eventually taking a degree in history.
He seems to have given up any hope that he might someday be elected to office. But he remained ambitious. In some ways he became more ambitious than ever. His new plan was to change the very way Americans governed themselves. Deeply influenced by the writings of British political scientists, he became convinced that the United States should adopt a parliamentary form of government. His first book, written while he was at Hopkins, explained that the switch was necessary because the way the government was currently organized, presidents couldn't lead; too many powerful committee chairmen in Congress prevented presidents from getting anything done. A radical notion, but at the time not an unreasonable one. Presidents in the 1880s, when the book appeared, _were_ prevented from leading by powerful chairmen.
The book made a big splash. Wilson went on to become one of the most successful professors of his generation. Two years at Bryn Mawr were followed by two years at Wesleyan, which in turn were followed by an appointment to Princeton. There he became the most popular teacher in the school's history, regularly drawing to his lectures crowds of three hundred students and more. When he wasn't preparing his lectures he was writing. In ten years he wrote nine books, including a five-volume history of the United States. Most of the histories weren't very good, but they got his name out to a wider public, gave him a platform for his views. He wasn't a senator or a governor, but he was becoming influential. He was even being asked to lecture before public audiences.
It was all very satisfying, but to a man with Wilson's great drive, not nearly satisfying enough. After devoting himself to developing a career as a man of ideas, he found that ideas alone didn't seem to accomplish much. A turning point came in the course of his battle with the university administration over a plan to establish courses in sociology. Wilson argued eloquently in favor of sociology, declaring that it was essential to the development of a modern society. The administration responded that sociology posed a threat to religion and turned Wilson down.
Convinced of the futility of pushing ideas when he lacked power, Wilson went after power, becoming at age forty-six the new president of Princeton, the first in the history of the school who wasn't a minister. His was the most explosive tenure of any president in the school's history. He fought to abolish the school's entrenched elite "eating clubs" on the grounds that they undermined the principle of equality. Next he fought to modernize the curriculum, establishing his much beloved sociology courses. He also managed to expand the school's staff, adding fifty professorships at one fell swoop.
Consumed by his work as an administrator, Wilson seems not to have given much thought to a political career. He was changing society by changing Princeton. But others, watching what he was doing at Princeton, were beginning to think of him as a possible political leader. George Harvey, a power in the Democratic Party, was the first to recognize Wilson's potential. In 1906, just four years after Wilson had taken over Princeton, Harvey began touting him as a presidential candidate. Harvey even had Wilson's face put on the cover of _Harpers Weekly_ , which Harvey controlled.
In light of Wilson's subsequent reputation as a blazing liberal, Harvey's attraction to the Princeton president was ironic. Harvey liked Wilson because he was under the impression that Wilson was a conservative. Wilson himself seems to have thought of himself that way, and his writings left that distinct impression. He opposed labor unions, supported industrial monopolies, scorned Populism, condemned William Jennings Bryan, publicly praised J. P. Morgan, and ridiculed Teddy Roosevelt. If anybody could be more conservative than he was it was hard to see how.
Harvey slowly built up support for Wilson in the national press and then, in 1910, succeeded in getting the Democratic boss of New Jersey, James Smith, Jr., to back Wilson for governor. Up to this point Wilson had watched Harvey's activities somewhat in amazement, without taking them very seriously. But now that Smith offered to support him for governor he began to rethink the direction of his career. He bit.
Harvey and Smith, however, knew not what they wrought. Wilson, the much-heralded conservative, turned out to be extremely liberal. Stumping for the governorship he endorsed the direct election of senators, backed government regulation of utilities, and even supported a crackdown on monopolistic trusts.
Boss Smith worried that he'd been snookered. Wilson argued that he had simply undergone a genuine transformation in his views. There was, however, an element of political calculation in Wilson's change. For even after it became clear that he now had a liberal agenda, he continued to exploit his connections with the bosses. As he made his way around the state he was accompanied by machine politicians, who helpfully informed him about the dynamics of the local races. Then, from the stage Wilson would denounce the bosses, going so far as to tell audiences he had no connections with them whatsoever—none. This even on occasions when Boss Smith was sitting in the audience directly in front of him.
Wilson was behaving as if he not only wanted to win but had to. And by now he actually did. For his presidency at Princeton was fast coming to a terrible conclusion. After eight years the trustees were tiring of Wilson and his fights, particularly a recent one over where to locate the new graduate school building. They were about to get rid of him.
He was, anyway, now deeply committed to politics. The more he talked the more he came to believe that he was finally fighting in the realm he should. He wasn't very good at the hail-fellow-well-met duties of the politician, but he was a superb speaker, as good as any the country had seen. And he had this magical ability to inspire people. In front of large groups, the bigger the better, he excelled. Directly as a result of his stirring performances, the Democrats swept to power in the state for the first time in a generation, putting Wilson in the governor's chair and Democrats in control of the lower house of the legislature. (The Republicans retained a slim majority in the senate.)
He proved to be a sensational governor. Totally devoted to politics, so devoted he complained he had no private life anymore, he rammed one bill after another through the legislature, putting in place the liberal agenda he had put before the voters, confirming Boss Smith's suspicions that Wilson really was a liberal. Over a six-month period he established direct primaries, effectively ending the boss's control of the presidential nominating process in the state; established a revamped and much more powerful public utility commission; and provided for workmen's compensation.
The bosses were appalled and declared war on him. But before they could exact their revenge Wilson, just a year after his election, was off and running for the Democratic nomination for president. At the Democratic Convention in 1912 the race came down to him and Champ Clark, the Speaker of the House of Representatives. Wilson won by branding Clark as the candidate of the bosses. The truth was that they both had the backing of various machines, without whose support winning the nomination was impossible. But Wilson succeeded in pulling the wool over the eyes of the delegates and ran off with the nomination.
That wasn't his only subterfuge. Wilson, who was fifty-six, had a history of serious health problems. As is now known, he had already suffered two strokes—his first at age forty—one of which resulted in blindness in his left eye. But this information was kept from the delegates and the public, as was the news that he suffered serious digestive ailments. Like Arthur and Cleveland before him, Wilson wasn't about to let his health get between him and the White House.
His first year as president, like his first year as governor, was, simply, spectacular. First he tackled the tariff, in three months winning a substantial reduction in the rates. Then he persuaded Congress to reform the banking system, providing for the establishment of the Federal Reserve. Then he went after the trusts. In his first year he called Congress into special session twice and addressed the members three times, a record. (Once was to deliver the State of the Union Address; it was the first time a president had delivered the address in person since John Adams.)
By his third year it wasn't domestic issues that preoccupied Wilson, however. It was the war that had broken out in 1914 in Europe, the so-called Great War. And it would be the war that would dominate the rest of his presidency.
Unlike TR, Wilson did not want a war in which to prove himself. And he certainly did not want world war. World war would change the United States, he predicted. It wouldn't be a little puny thing like the Spanish-American conflict. It would be all-consuming, terribly destructive of the American way of life, terribly destructive of civil liberties. And for the first few years of the war he worked hard to keep us out of it.
There was, however, no way actually to stay out. Not if the war lasted. The United States was too involved in the world by now to remain aloof from international affairs. Fifty years before, yes. Maybe even twenty-five years before. But not now. Now we had a colonial empire. Now Americans traveled routinely on the high seas. Now American farmers depended on sales to Europe to survive (and Europe depended on them). So although Wilson wanted to keep us out of war, he could not. As the war dragged on the United States found itself being pulled, against its will, into the conflict—and pulled in one direction. In the Allies' direction.
Wilson insisted that the United States was neutral, neutral in thought, neutral in deed. But the country wasn't, really. What the United States was was neutral in name. In truth Wilson wanted the Allies to triumph—and the foreign powers knew it. The British knew it, of course. When they illegally imposed an overly broad blockade on Germany, stopping ships on the high seas from proceeding to Germany, the Wilson administration barely managed to squeak out an objection, though the action contravened our rights as a neutral power under international law. And when they needed money to keep the war going—the Germans were blowing up so many British ships that Britain was going broke—the United States agreed to lend Britain billions. The Germans knew it, too. It wasn't just the loans, wasn't just Wilson's winking at the British blockade. It was Wilson's vigorous condemnation of German submarine warfare.
The Germans knew that it was upsetting, of course, that Americans were being killed on ships sunk by submarines. But there was an easy way the United States could solve the problem: Simply ban Americans from traveling on belligerent ships. Of course, this would have been a serious concession; as citizens of a neutral nation Americans had the right to travel however they pleased. But it would have been no greater a concession than had already been made to the British. And in fact many prominent Americans, among them Wilson's own secretary of state, William Jennings Bryan, actually advocated the passage of a law limiting the travel rights of Americans. But Wilson flat-out refused to support a ban, even after the sinking of the _Lusitania_ in 1915, which cost the lives of 128 Americans. Bryan became so furious as a result that he resigned.*
So the British knew. The Germans knew. Wilson knew. But the American people in general did not. And in 1916 they went ahead and reelected Wilson in the belief that he really was neutral. They knew the facts, naturally, knew them as well as anybody. But because Wilson kept insisting we were neutral, people overlooked the facts, let Wilson define reality in the face of the facts. Presidents still had that power. While some presidents recently had taken some liberties with the truth—everybody, for instance, knew that TR had been responsible for the revolution in Panama even if he didn't admit it—people still were inclined to believe a president.
And anyway, even if people doubted our neutrality, he _had_ kept us out of war. That was an incontrovertible fact. And that was the only fact that really mattered. American boys weren't being sent to fight and die in Europe's war. But things weren't exactly that simple. While the country was not then at war, Wilson had put us in a position where war was likely. War wasn't even his decision anymore: It was the Germans'. If they resumed submarine warfare—which they had stopped at American insistence—the United States was almost pledged to go to war against them. So the slogan Wilson ran on—He Kept Us Out of War—was misleading. At any moment American boys might have to fight. If the Germans desired, they could force the United States into the war right in the middle of the campaign, making a mockery of the slogan Wilson was running on. The peace president suddenly would be the war president.
Wilson himself was quite aware of the emptiness of the slogan, confessed to friends that it was empty, but he also knew it had great popular appeal, that it was what people wanted to hear, wanted to believe. And he very much wanted to be reelected. So he did what no president before him ever had. He ran on a peace platform while privately preparing for war.
Two months after the election, on January 31, 1917, Germany announced it was resuming submarine warfare. In March three United States ships were sunk. In April the United States went to war.
There were, of course, complicating factors. A telegram had been intercepted that proved that Germany was preparing to strike an alliance with Mexico in the event of war with the United States, which put the war in the American backyard, inflaming public opinion. But it was the resumption of the sub attacks that was the key.
The German sub campaign was wildly successful, sinking in February alone a quarter of all British ships at sea. And because it was successful, it was frightening to Americans, frightening because it was so deadly and frightening because there seemed no way to defend against it. If it were possible to distinguish between civilized and uncivilized weapons of war, the sub seemed uncivilized.
The British blockade in actuality was far far more costly in human life. Historians estimate that the blockade, by denying Germans the food and medicines they needed, cost tens of thousands of civilian lives—far, far more civilian lives than submarine warfare cost. Wilson, however, did not draw attention to the human cost of the blockade. To win the war he had to demonize the Germans, had to convince Americans that Germans were inhumane.
Three things were new about the war the United States was now fighting, new and shocking. The first was that it was being fought in Europe. No president had ever before been to Europe during his term in office, and now millions of Americans were being sent over there. The second was that it was being fought mainly by men who were forced to. In all other U.S. wars, save for the Civil War, the armed forces had relied on volunteers. And even in the Civil War whole regiments had been drawn from volunteers. In World War I the government relied on the draft. During the conflict twenty-four million were registered, three million drafted. The third was that it led to unprecedented violations of civil liberties (worse in some ways than had occurred even in the Civil War). And all three factors were related. Because the war was taking place in Europe, because Americans weren't fighting for turf at home but for an idea abroad (the idea, Wilson told them in his war message, was to "make the world safe for democracy"), the government wasn't sure it could count on people's support. Millions of Americans didn't want to have anything to do with Europe and certainly didn't want to send their boys over there to die. That was the reason it was necessary to institute a draft. And it was also the reason civil liberties were violated so infamously. The government simply wasn't confident that the country would rally behind the war effort. The possibility of mass dissent was enormous.* Wilson had been afraid of what the war would do to America and as things turned out he was right to be afraid. It wasn't just that the country would have to be put on a war footing, that the country would have to be militarized. It was that the country would have to be whipped into a frenzy—and in a frenzy people's civil liberties would be trampled. The forces unleashed would be so powerful that nobody, not even the president, could control them. It would be 1798 all over again, only worse.* For with the modern tools of propaganda at the government's disposal, people could be controlled far more effectively than they had been in the eighteenth century.
And yet it was all necessary. To win the war Wilson had to win the hearts and minds of the people. And to do that he had to take desperate measures. To make sure that Americans understood sufficiently the great threat they faced, he had to scare hell out of them, which he did through the Committee on Public Information, which issued millions of inflammatory pamphlets containing stories about German butchery and German militarism and the threat the Germans posed to civilization.
To make sure Americans got only one view of the war, he authorized the postmaster to censor the mails for radical literature. Only the truly subversive stuff was supposed to be removed, but the postmaster got carried away, even confiscating at one point a whole issue of the _Nation_ after the magazine published an editorial critical of labor leader Samuel Gompers, who was prowar. (Wilson in that one case overruled his postmaster, ending the confiscations of the magazine.) To stop radicals from giving speeches against the war, Wilson supported a law giving the government the right to jail anybody who said anything disruptive; the socialist Eugene V. Debs was given a ten-year sentence for saying that the United States was not a democracy.
The worst was the spying. Not the spying of German agents but the spying of Americans on Americans or Americans on aliens. This was carried out ostensibly by a private organization, the reactionary American Protective League, which quickly grew into a massive force of repression a quarter million strong. But it was actually in effect a branch of the government, Attorney General Mitchell Palmer using it as if it were his own private police force. Sometimes members even resorted to wiretapping. Wilson thought the group was "very dangerous" and disapproved of Palmer's decision to give it semiofficial status. But he never used his power to act against the league. Once the war had gotten underway and the propaganda machine had been put in place, it was a force unto itself. To gain control over the war effort Wilson had had to unleash a force over which he had little control.
It wasn't just the war that was responsible for the repression. It was also what the war had brought about, particularly in Russia. Americans had been genuinely frightened by the triumph of the Bolsheviks, frightened that communism might be coming to the United States, too. And they became very susceptible to anti-Communist hysteria, what was then known as the Red Scare. Of course, it was hard to know who was a Communist and who wasn't. Most didn't brag. But millions were sure they knew where to start—with the immigrants. So Palmer (preparing to make a run for the presidency) went after the immigrants, and in a spectacular series of raids lasting over a three-month period he rounded up four thousand of them, dragging them from their homes if need be, to cart them off to jail—and he did this without obtaining a single warrant. Some Americans protested, and one, Roger Baldwin, grew so incensed that he founded an organization to protect Americans from arbitrary government repression, the National Civil Liberties Union (later the American Civil Liberties Union). But there was no stopping the wave of abuse once it got going. It had to exhaust itself.
Once the United States became involved in the war the fortunes of the Allies shifted quickly. In little over a year it was over, giving Wilson the opportunity he had been waiting for, the opportunity to use the peace process to change the world. Wilson, the minister's son, would play minister to Europe, lifting the moral sights of the victors, so that in the new world that emerged countries would base their foreign policies on morality, not self-interest.
In the fall of 1919, after working for months and months in Europe on the Versailles Treaty, Wilson came home to try to sell it to the American people. He didn't very much like the treaty. It was full of compromises. The British, the French, the Italians, the Japanese—all had used the conference to advance their own territorial claims. So things hadn't turned out at all as he'd hoped. But he had gotten one thing: The League of Nations. And the League, he believed, could solve all the problems the treaty itself had left to fester. Over time the League could contribute to world peace. Over time it could help the oppressed obtain self-determination. So he decided to work very hard to get the American people to give their support to the treaty.
To win them over to the cause he arranged to go on a punishing tour of the country. But when he got out to speak to people, he sensed very quickly that they weren't with him: They were tired of the war, tired of Europe, just plain tired. So he did what he had done at the outset to get people's attention. He tried to scare hell out of them. Again. Only this time the enemy wasn't Germany, it was Russia, communist Russia. Playing on people's genuine fears of communist revolution, he compared the opponents of the treaty to the Bolsheviks. "Opposition," he intoned, "is the specialty of those who are Bolshevistically inclined."
It was ugly and it was dirty and, worst of all, it was for naught. Despite his exertions—exertions so great he suffered a collapse on the road and had to be rushed back to Washington, where he suffered a second collapse, this time a life-threatening stroke—the treaty went down to defeat.
History had spun out of his control.
Three Republican presidents followed Wilson: Warren Harding, Calvin Coolidge, Herbert Hoover. Each in his own way was ambitious.
Harding as a nineteen-year-old founded his own newspaper. Subsequently, notwithstanding his limited intellectual abilities, he shrewdly succeeded in getting himself elected to the Senate. He never planned on being president, but when the party bosses decided that he would make a golden candidate (whom they could control), he avidly accepted despite serious qualms about his own abilities.
Coolidge was more ambitious. That he'd even made a career in politics was proof. For he was extremely shy. As a boy he would run out the kitchen door anytime a stranger arrived.
Like Harding, he, too, never planned on being president. But the media turned him into a national star overnight. The Boston police, paid a paltry annual salary, had joined a union and in 1920 gone on strike. Coolidge, then governor of Massachusetts, bluntly declared that "there is no right to strike against the public safety by anybody, anywhere, any time." He quickly found himself, much to his satisfaction, on the Republican ticket as Harding's running mate.
Unlike Harding and Coolidge, Hoover was not a career politician. An orphan who pulled himself up by his own bootstraps, he became a skilled engineer and an amateur translator; in their spare time he and his wife translated into English a medieval Latin classic on mining. Venturing into business, he became wildly successful, becoming a millionaire by thirty. He got involved in government service during World War I, when he was appointed by Wilson to help feed the starving children of Belgium, which made him a hero. Harding subsequently appointed Hoover to the cabinet as secretary of commerce. Of the three presidents of the 1920s, he was the one who went after the presidency most aggressively. Highly self-confident, he was sure he could make a great president, and certainly a better president than either Harding or Coolidge.
In his 1928 race for the Republican nomination, a tough and difficult race, he had found out that Republican senator James Reed of Pennsylvania was planning to take to the road on a national speaking tour against him. Hoover had become alarmed, incensed, really, and had set out to crush Reed. Hiring a detective with money from his own pocket, Hoover apparently found damaging information against Reed—and blackmailed him with it. Reed abandoned his planned trip.
But ambitious as all three presidents were, they had very little ambition to shape history. Harding and Coolidge especially believed in letting things take their natural course. "Four-fifths of all our troubles in this life would disappear," Coolidge philosophized, "if we would only sit down and keep still."
Coolidge might have tried to do more as president than he did. As governor of Massachusetts, after all, he showed energy in ending the Boston police strike. But after succeeding Harding he faced a personal tragedy. His son was out playing on the White House tennis court one day when he stubbed his toe. He was not wearing socks, his foot became infected, and he became gravely ill with blood poisoning. It seemed almost ridiculous, but Coolidge and the doctors could do nothing to help. Just a few days later the boy died. The president went into mourning and never seemed to come out of it.
It seemed through most of the 1920s that presidents didn't _have_ to do much. The international scene was calm and the economy was prosperous. Both Harding and Coolidge expressly announced that there was no reason to do much of anything but get out of the people's way. Americans, tired of Wilsonianism, tired of the regimentation of war, welcomed the return to normalcy, as Harding called it.
The United States was changing, to be sure. But the changes seemed promising. Wall Street was booming. The skylines of the cities were being transformed, skyscrapers rising one after another after another. And consumers were finding that they could buy things on the installment plan, an innovation of the twenties, which rapidly improved people's standard of living.
The Harding scandals diminished people's respect for him; never before had two cabinet secretaries been indicted. But he was dead by the time the worst allegations surfaced, and Coolidge was honest. So the good times rolled on.
Then, of course, came the crash.
Hoover wasn't as bad as the Democrats were to make him out later. When the stock market crashed, he energetically tried to rally the country, holding numerous press conferences and meetings. It was at his urging that the Congress established the Reconstruction Finance Corporation, with a budget of two billion dollars, a phenomenal amount (the budget of the entire government then was just five billion). But he projected, despite himself, an image of do-nothingism. Cold in person, he came across cold on the airwaves and in newsreels. And after championing standpatism during the twenties he was in no position to begin arguing for change in the thirties. It simply seemed too inconsistent with who he was and what he had stood for—laissez-faire.
As long as the economy had done well, as long as the country had been content with standpatism, the Republicans had done well. Since their ambition was to do nothing, they could easily achieve their goal. But now Hoover was actually trying to do something. And not succeeding. And it made him extremely frustrated. And when Hoover wanted something and couldn't get it—or thought he might not get it for some reason—he cheated a little, as he had in 1928 in hiring a detective to investigate Senator Reed.
In 1932, in the middle of his campaign and again sensing defeat, he once again stooped—and in a way no president before him ever had: He lied about government statistics. He couldn't change history, couldn't change the fact that Wall Street had crashed and the country had slipped into a profound depression. But he could change the statistics that were being used against him with such devastating effect by the Democrats. It wouldn't change reality, but it could possibly, just possibly, fool people into thinking that things weren't quite as bad as they thought. That unemployment wasn't quite as bad as they thought. That the Hawley-Smoot Tariff wasn't quite as bad. (The tariff, passed in 1930, was being blamed for deepening the depression.) So he manipulated the numbers a little and passed them off as real.
The way he jiggled with the tariff numbers was fascinating. The criticism of Hawley-Smoot was that it set the rates too high, on average about 60 percent, the highest in American history. This number was arrived at by averaging all the tariffs imposed on all imported goods. Hoover, however, averaged in all of the so-called "free goods," on which no tariff at all was imposed. Calculated in this manner—as nobody else had ever calculated the tariff before—the Hawley-Smoot rate came out to about 16 percent. It was, of course, a sham number, totally indefensible, and wildly misleading. But Hoover stuck by it.
The Democrats had no trouble beating him, however. The times were against him. It didn't matter what numbers he used. The economy was terrible and people knew it.
On March 4, 1933, he and Franklin Roosevelt rode in the same car up Pennsylvania Avenue to attend Roosevelt's inauguration. FDR smiled and laughed and waved. Hoover sat rigidly still and mostly said nothing the entire way. Hoover didn't talk because he felt that FDR had betrayed the country in the previous month by refusing to work with the administration on a plan to save the banks. But what really was there to say anyway? He had lost, and FDR had won.
*In the 1930s FDR came to the conclusion that it would have been better for the American people if Bryan had remained. Like many Americans, Roosevelt had come to believe it was foolish to go to war to protect American neutrality. All the country should demand, he said, was that belligerents stay out of American territory. U.S. citizens, he said, should be prohibited from traveling on belligerent ships. Frank Freidel, Franklin D. Roosevelt (1990), p. 181.
*After the war, in one of the first scientific polls ever, more than 60 percent said that they thought the war had been a mistake. But probably more opposed the war after it was over than before because of the revelations that came out in the 1920s about war profiteering, the duplicity of our Allies, and the general disillusionment that followed the failure of the Senate to approve the Treaty of Versailles. See Hazel Erskine, "The Polls: Is War a Mistake?" Public Opinion Quarterly (1970), pp. 135-38.
*It was in 1798 that John Adams had so inflamed public opinion against the Jeffersonians that Congress passed the Alien and Sedition Acts.
# 16. FDR: The Great Depression
How FDR triumphed during the Great Depression through charm, talent, and deviousness, several times using the IRS to go after his political enemies
The United States was being reshaped by two great forces of history when FDR took over. The obvious one was the depression. The other was radio. Both had worked against Hoover. Both worked for FDR.
When Roosevelt first took the oath as president it wasn't clear exactly what kind of president he would make. Walter Lippman had famously charged in a devastating column during the campaign that FDR was a lightweight, "a pleasant man who, without any important qualifications for the office, would very much like to be President." But Roosevelt quickly proved Lippmann and all those of his ilk wrong, Lippmann himself becoming a huge Roosevelt fan. Indeed it almost came to seem as if FDR was made for the presidency, and made for it at this particular moment in history. And he was. He possessed the right political skills, the right mixture of ambition, self-confidence, authority, idealism, realism, imagination, and—and this cannot be overstated—the right voice.
Probably FDR would have done well without radio, but with it he was, simply, untouchable. It was his good fortune to come to national prominence just as radio was coming into its own. Until FDR radio had hardly been used by presidents. It had been regarded almost as a curiosity. Wilson had been the first president to broadcast over a radio and Harding had been the first to own one, but neither he, Coolidge, nor Hoover ever mastered the medium. Harding bloviated, which didn't work well on radio. (William Gibbs McAdoo, Wilson's treasury secretary, said Harding's "speeches left the impression of an army of pompous phrases moving over the landscape in search of an idea. Sometimes these meandering words would actually capture a struggling thought and bear it triumphantly, a prisoner in their midst, until it died of servitude and overwork.") Coolidge had a high nasal voice which was simply unsuitable. And Hoover came across the way he did in person, which was none too endearingly.
Roosevelt, however, was made for radio—his deep rich voice, conversational style, use of homely metaphors, and exquisite sense of timing. All this made his famous "fireside chats" deeply memorable. It required the president to be a bit of an actor, of course. You couldn't just read a speech into the microphone; you had to rehearse it like a play, had to hear how the words sounded, testing out the cadence, which bothered FDR's advisers, who resented the time he spent preparing. But the fact was that FDR _was_ an actor, loved acting, and was quite good at it. _There are two great actors in America_ , he told Orson Welles once. _You are the other one._
And when he got on the radio the United States was his, with sometimes as many as fifty million people tuning in to listen. And that gave him an enormous edge over everybody else. For in going to the people directly, talking with them in effect in their own homes, he could reach over the heads of Congress and over the heads of the newspaper publishers (the great majority of whom were Republicans). And that gave him the opportunity to shape the national debate. In time others would figure out how to use radio and try to join in the debate, reshaping it to _their_ ends, men like Father Coughlin, a hate-spewing right-wing antiSemite. But none would ever approach FDR's masterful use of the medium. He was so popular on the radio that industry executives implored him to go on the air more frequently. But FDR declined. He didn't want to wear people out, and he knew he could. In his twelve years in office he would deliver just thirty fireside chats.
The other great force was the depression. It broke Hoover. It made Roosevelt.
It was not, as is sometimes supposed, the nation's first real depression—there had been sixteen before. And in 1933, when FDR took power it was, as yet, far from the longest—the four great depressions of the nineteenth century had all lasted longer.* But of all of them this was easily the most frightening. A quarter of the people were unemployed. A third of the railroads were bankrupt. And nearly all the banks were closed. To many it seemed as if the country itself might go under. A friend told Roosevelt that if he was able to fix the economy he'd go down as the greatest president in American history. _And if I don't,_ FDR had retorted, _I'll be the last. 2_
The first hundred days were the most productive of his entire presidency—and the easiest. Not easiest relative to the hours he had to put in, though: He probably worked harder than he ever had in his entire life, frequently toiling until midnight and beyond. But easiest in the exercise of power. Because he had Democratic majorities in both houses and because things were bad, so bad that Hoover himself had confessed his last night in the White House that he was at the end of his "string," FDR was given a free hand, the Congress virtually abdicating its constitutional responsibility to make laws.
In those first hundred days it was Roosevelt who made the laws. His people drafted the bills and Congress passed them, the members often not even bothering to read them through. The first week there was the emergency banking bill, which allowed banks to borrow money from the Reconstruction Finance Corporation against their own stock, ending the banking crisis. The second week there was the economy bill, which cut pensions, business subsidies, and defense spending. By the end of March, his first month in office,† Congress had established the Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC) and the Public Works Administration (PWA) and somehow had found time to reform securities laws and provide for the sale of weak beer.‡ In April there was a bill to save farmers from mortgage foreclosures and a bill to establish the Tennessee Valley
Authority (TVA). In May Congress passed the Agricultural Adjustment Act (AAA), which rewarded farmers for plowing their crops under, a radical idea that people had a hard time understanding at a time when so many were starving. But they went along with it anyway; FDR said it was needed to limit production and that that would be good for the economy. In June, just as the Congress was wrapping things up, it established the National Recovery Administration (NRA), the most astonishing New Deal innovation of all: an agency that would work with business to establish industrial codes to prevent price wars.
FDR was a legend after those first hundred days, the man who could do anything and everything. And yet the reality was he really only had been all-powerful for the first two of the four months that the Congress was in session. By May he was having to compromise with both Republicans and Democrats. Republicans had forced him to shelve his plan to reorganize the railroads and had raised so many objections to the farm subsidy program, the AAA, that FDR had had to promise to appoint a Republican to implement it. Meanwhile Democrats had also grown increasingly difficult, demanding greater reforms than FDR was willing to support. He hadn't wanted legislation establishing federal bank insurance to protect depositors. The radicals in Congress had shoved it through anyway.
FDR hadn't squandered his powers. If anything he had exploited them brilliantly, demonstrating political skills no one had ever suspected he had. It was simply that it was impossible for anybody to maintain the control he had had those first few months. The paradox was that FDR himself had unwittingly undermined his own power by being so extraordinarily successful. The more confident people became that the economy would turn around and the more willing they were to dare to go back into the stock market, the less dire the crisis seemed. And as the perception grew that the crisis was receding, the necessity of following an all-powerful president seemed to recede as well. The dynamic had begun to shift in April, when the market suddenly regained 60 percent of its value, encouraging the hope that the worst was over. In fact, come summer the market would again go into a sharp decline, but the fear that had initially gripped the country—that "nameless, unreasoning, unjustified" fear—never returned. The emergency was over.
Roosevelt would never recover the dictatorial powers he had held those first few dramatic months, not even during World War II. Ever after he would face media criticism, partisan sniping, and intraparty squabbling, requiring him to fight to maintain his popularity, as other presidents had had to fight to maintain theirs.
But as Roosevelt came to understand, and understand so well, he did not need a crisis in order to govern successfully. All he needed was to keep alive the _memory_ of the crisis. People did not need to be fearful, they only had to remember that once they had been. That was enough to keep them in line, to keep the unwieldy New Deal coalition together: the farmers, blacks, southerners, union laborers, and liberals. Keep reminding them how bad times had been under Hoover and they would remain loyal New Dealers. As FDR would advise other Democrats, _Just keep running against Hoover. Whoever the Republicans put up, run against Hoover._ *
Moreover, the memory of the crisis gave him extraordinary freedom to reinvent the government, to give it vast new powers, more powers than anybody in American history had ever dreamed of giving to the government before except in times of war. In the past, as Roosevelt biographer Frank Freidel points out, the federal government had mainly been confined to the exercise of police powers and, when it had gone beyond that, to tax, spend, borrow, and regulate, it had usually done so gingerly. Now all that changed. Now the government acted boldly, intrusively in many ways, as officials began powerfully to direct the economy. And that helped FDR maintain his grip on the country.
In a way he was able to turn a negative, the Great Depression, into a positive, to bend this tremendous force to his own ends, an astonishing and almost unprecedented development. Usually in American history the great new forces had complicated governing. This force seemed to make governing easier. But that was because there had been a crisis. As Lincoln had discovered in the Civil War, in a crisis—a truly awful, terrible, fear-inspiring crisis—a capable president could rally people and accomplish great things as he could not in more normal times. A crisis made a president superpowerful, almost as powerful as George Washington.
The Great Depression, of course, was so great a force, that FDR could not end it—it was simply too vast, too deep, too powerful—World War II did. To end it he would have had to embrace budget deficits the likes of which nobody in world history had ever embraced before. And he and the public lacked the imagination to do that. He and they could barely understand the deficits in the billions that the New Deal was racking up. They could not grasp the reality of deficits in the tens of billions. And they certainly could not comprehend government budgets in the hundreds of billions. This was simply beyond people. And it was to remain beyond them until World War II changed their outlook. Then they would become used to these gigantic, nearly unfathomable figures. But only then.*
FDR, however, did not actually have to end the depression to remain popular, he only had to appear to be trying. And he had more than enough power at hand to do that. Anytime his popularity seemed to wane, as it did in the fall of 1933 as the economy slipped backward, all he had to do was spend more government money, set up more government programs. As Roosevelt aide Harry Hopkins was to remark, "We will spend and spend, tax and tax, and elect and elect." FDR couldn't spend like crazy, of course, and he didn't want to. To the end of his presidency he remained committed to balanced budgets and never himself became a Keynesian. To the end of his life he continued to believe that deficits are intrinsically bad. In many ways he was always his own worst enemy. Every time the economy picked up, he ordered the bureaucrats to cut back on spending, which inevitably brought about a slowdown in the economy, which in turn necessitated even bigger increases in spending. But he could always spend enough to keep hope alive.
If there were any doubts that FDR was connecting with people and doing so in a powerful way, the elections of 1934 laid those doubts to rest. Instead of losing seats as the party in power always had in midterm elections, the Democrats gained seats. When the new Congress assembled in 1935, three-fourths of the seats in both houses were held by Democrats, forming the greatest majority in history. Even FDR was astonished. And he immediately set out to exploit his new majority, setting in motion a second New Deal, sending up bills to establish the Social Security system, the Works Progress Administration (WPA), and finally the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB), which guaranteed labor's right to collective bargaining. Conservatives howled in protest, claimed the country was going to hell, Hoover crying that Roosevelt was socializing America, undermining American liberty. But FDR had the votes: The measures passed.
Despite the conservatives' noises, Roosevelt appeared to most Americans to be in control of things in 1935, but he was and he wasn't. While he dominated Congress as no president ever had save Jefferson and Wilson, he had plenty of reason to worry about his ability to maintain his dominance. While it had been fantastic to have the majorities he had, the very fact that they were so large made governing difficult. FDR afterward recalled that he had been so exhausted by the end of the session in 1935 that "I would have... gotten pleasure out of sticking pins into people and hurting them." The lesson of 1935 was that it was easier to keep control of the Democrats when they were smaller and when there was real opposition. You needed the opposition to keep your own forces in line.
None of the groups that made up the Democratic Party was as yet threatening to bolt, but the southern conservatives were antsy. While they loved the farm subsidies, there was the Eleanor Roosevelt problem: Eleanor was on a daring mission to bring blacks into the mainstream. Even though her efforts mainly affected blacks living in the North, helping blacks anywhere seemed wrong to southern whites, almost a challenge to their belief in white supremacy. And it made them suspicious. As the years went by they would become more and more suspicious, especially when the WPA began paying southern blacks raking leaves more than they could earn as farmhands. So FDR worried. For he needed both the blacks and the southern whites. He needed the blacks to win in several of the big northern cities where they were continuing to migrate in droves during the thirties, and he needed the southern whites to maintain his lock on the electoral college.
Looking back now, of course, it appears that FDR had nothing to worry about at all. But he didn't have the advantage we have. He didn't know then that he was going to be elected president four times, that he was going to get Democratic congresses throughout his years in office, that the people were going to stick with him. As president you just could never tell what might happen next. One minute you were on top of the world, and then... well, things changed and often they changed fast. _Just look what had happened to Wilson_ , FDR would frequently point out. Six years on top and then he lost the Congress and the country.
Going into 1935 FDR's most immediate worry was Huey Long, "the Kingfish," the great southern demagogue of demagogues, the dictator of Louisiana, who controlled the state legislature as no governor had ever controlled a state legislature before. Of all the politicians in the country who might challenge FDR, Long was probably the ablest. Born poor, he had been ruthless in climbing to power, willing to say anything, do anything, to build up his political machine. He was very smart, very brash, and very imaginative. As a young politician he had taken a minor post as a state public service commissioner and turned it into a platform for social justice, excoriating the utilities and oil companies in a blatant bid for the populist vote. Like FDR he was a great promiser; Long himself said that FDR was worried because he knew Long could outpromise him. And he did. FDR in 1932 had promised labor unemployment insurance, promised farmers he'd limit production, promised conservatives he'd balance the budget, and promised business he'd expand the Reconstruction Finance Corporation. Long in 1934 and 1935 was promising to guarantee every American family a minimum annual income of $2,500, which in the 1930s was a kingly sum (Long's slogan was "Every Man A King"). He planned on paying for the handout by steeply taxing the rich, in effect, doing what nobody in American history had ever done, actually redistributing the wealth of the country.
And Long was planning to run for president in 1936.
FDR was very frightened of Long. Long wasn't like a normal politician. He was a freak of history. A product of the crazy politics of Louisiana and of the desperate times of the 1930s. You could try to outmaneuver him as you would some other candidate, and FDR tried, moving left in 1935, to blunt the appeal of Long's redistribution plan. Abandoning caution, FDR embraced a proposal to raise the top bracket on personal income taxes from 59 to 75 percent. He also backed a plan to raise corporate income taxes from 13¾ to 16 percent.
But with a fellow like Long you had to do more, you had to destroy him—or he'd destroy you. So FDR decided to destroy Long. In late 1934 he had the Treasury Department begin a massive tax fraud investigation into Long's political machine. Fifty IRS agents were dispatched to Louisiana to dig up dirt on Long and his friends. It was a terrible abuse of federal power, and it was unprecedented. No other president in the seventy-two-year history of the IRS had ever dared use the agency against a political rival. But these were desperate times, and FDR was desperate to maintain control, desperate to make sure that a demagogue like Huey Long never gained power.*
Long tried to cut a deal with the administration, twice going to see the attorney general to get the investigation stopped. But FDR refused to negotiate. He wanted Long politically dead. And then suddenly Long _was_ dead, killed by an erstwhile supporter as he was walking down a hallway in the statehouse in Baton Rouge.
FDR's other great concern in 1935 was the Supreme Court. On May 27—"Black Monday" to New Dealers—the Court struck down the law establishing the NRA, which immediately led to massive price wars. Which in turn led to lower profits. Which in turn led to layoffs, wage cutbacks, and a longer workweek as companies tried to compensate for the reduction in their profits. Within weeks a million clerks were affected. Clerks who had been working forty-eight hours a week suddenly were told they had to work sixty or seventy hours—and for less pay.
Presidents of course had seen the Court go against them before. The Court had gone against Thomas Jefferson, Andrew Jackson, and Grover Cleveland. But never before had the Court's rulings been so critical to the daily well-being of Americans, for never before had the government been so involved in their lives. When the Court acted now to strike down a law it often was, in effect, taking food out of peoples' mouths. The stakes were simply enormous.
And increasingly now the Court was striking down laws: the Railroad Retirement Act; a law to limit wasteful practices in oil fields; a law allowing the Treasury Department to eliminate the requirement that it pay off government bonds in gold. The Court even knocked down New York state's minimum wage law, which truly shocked. New Dealers had always worried that the Court might not allow the federal government to regulate wages, but not allow a state to do so? If a state couldn't, then nobody could. The law of the jungle was to prevail. Then—and this was the final blow—the Court invalidated the funding mechanism of the AAA. The law had provided that farmers who took land out of production were to be paid a subsidy funded by a tax on food-processing companies. The Court ruled that the tax was not a tax at all, but was really a method of manipulating farmers, and therefore illegal.
FDR was frustrated by the Court's rulings—and alarmed by them. Frustrated because if the Court continued handing down these kinds of decisions the New Deal would be eviscerated and people would lose hope. Alarmed because all the New Deal really had going for it _was_ hope—he had been unable to end the depression after all—and if the hope vanished so would his chances to be reelected in 1936. Besides, by taking power as brazenly as he had, he had encouraged the idea that he could solve people's problems or at least ameliorate them. Before he had come along nobody had expected the president to help them if they lost their job. Presidents weren't held responsible for such things. Getting a job and keeping it was the individual's responsibility. But FDR had changed how people thought. Now they believed a president _was_ responsible.
During the campaign a woman came up to FDR with a note requesting his assistance. She explained that she and her co-workers at a local garment factory in New Bedford, Massachusetts, had been earning eleven dollars a week. But then their pay was cut to four dollars. "You," she said to Roosevelt, "you are the only man that can do anything about it." And yet of course he couldn't, not if the Court kept handing down these negative decisions. "These people think that I have the power to restore things like minimum wages and maximum hours and the elimination of child labor," FDR complained, "and, of course, I haven't got any power to do it."
FDR remained the odds-on favorite in the election. But he wasn't a surefire winner. The newspapers were hysterical in their opposition. Business hated him. And he wasn't running against Hoover this time, much as he might try to persuade people he was, he was running against Alf Landon, the governor of Kansas, and Landon was progressive. And Landon was raising a lot more campaign money than he was, fourteen million to FDR's nine million. The Gallup poll consistently showed FDR ahead nationwide in the popular vote, but it also showed that he could only count on the Rocky Mountain states for sure. Everywhere else his support was a little soft.
Of course, of course, this was Franklin Roosevelt who was running, the president who had helped elect the greatest majority in the history of Congress, the president after whom people were naming their children, the president whose picture could now be found hanging in people's homes right next to the pictures of Grandma and Grandpa and Jesus. But then again... you could never tell in politics. A winner could easily become a loser overnight. And there hadn't been too many winners in the presidential history of the Democratic Party. In the second half of the nineteenth century there had been only one, Cleveland, and he had lost his first try at reelection. So there was plenty of precedent for losing.
But if there was one thing FDR did not plan on doing, it was losing.
It was under these circumstances that FDR decided to do what so many other presidents had done, and that was to use his patronage powers to build up a huge political army, in effect using the federal payroll to fund his campaign. There was, however, a difference. FDR had by far more jobs to hand out than any other previous president—thousands and thousands more jobs, WPA jobs. Harry Hopkins, the head of the WPA, tried hard to keep politics out of the agency but as the election came closer and closer he found that he couldn't. While anybody, Democrat or Republican, could get on the relief rolls, in many states only Democrats in good standing could get the managerial jobs, the ones that paid well. The politicians saw to that.
After the election, which he won handily, with 60 percent of the popular vote, more than anybody else had ever gotten, FDR set out to reform the Supreme Court, the Court that had given him so much trouble, the Court that had jeopardized so much that he and the Congress had done. It was an interesting step to take, a sign both of his power and his powerlessness. Because of his victory and its size he was of course in an extremely powerful political position and feeling confident and cocky. But the very reason that the Court loomed large in his thinking was that for four years he had been unable to end the depression—and there seemed no reason to think he could end it anytime soon, which made the survival of the New Deal extremely important; people had to be able to hope the government could offer relief, reform, and recovery. Which meant that the Court couldn't be allowed to keep on declaring New Deal laws unconstitutional. The fact was that events were out of his control. He couldn't get the economy going, and he couldn't change the Court's mind about the New Deal.
Out of desperation, he came up with about the worst possible plan to gain control over the Court. It was so bad it was almost laughable. People had to hear it two and three times before they got it. _The justices are overworked_ , the president wrote in a message to Congress in early February 1937, _and need help._ So for every justice over the age of seventy he wanted the authority to appoint a new justice. As there were six justices over seventy, that meant six new justices.
People of course were appalled. It was one thing for FDR to reinvent the executive branch and dominate the legislative branch, quite another for him to tamper with the third branch. The Supreme Court was sacred. (Not for nothing did the new building just designed for the Court resemble a temple.) People indeed thought of the Court as a temple, thought of the justices as godlike—well, maybe not all of them. Willis Van Devanter, James McReynolds, these men did not seem so much like gods as devils. But people still did not approve of Roosevelt's plan. An attack on the independence of the judiciary smacked of fascism, just what the dictators in Europe were doing.
Worst of all, FDR wasn't straightforward about what he was up to. Everybody knew what he really wanted was to force the Court to approve the New Deal. But because he did not want to say so directly he came up with this harebrained idea about the justices needing help because they were old. FDR made much of the fact that it was essentially based on a plan that the now-seventy-five-year-old McReynolds had come up with when he was Wilson's attorney general a quarter century before (except that McReynolds's plan expressly excluded the Supreme Court). This was indeed an irony of sorts. But what impressed most Americans even more was the crudeness of FDR's power grab.
FDR worked hard to convince people he should have the power to name additional new justices. The opposition, however, worked harder. In July FDR asked his vice president, John Nance Garner, the former Speaker of the House, if he had a chance. _Do you want it with the bark_ _on or off, captain?_ Garner asked. _The rough way,_ Roosevelt answered. _All right, you're beat._ And he had been "beat" in the worst possible way: He couldn't even get the bill out of committee.
In the end it didn't matter, for the Court was already changing. In January, before FDR had announced his plan, one of the justices, Owen Roberts, had decided to switch sides, which gave the liberals on the Court a fighting chance to prevail. Then the chief justice, Charles Evans Hughes, switched to the liberal side, apparently fearful that the Court was in danger of being marginalized as it had been during Reconstruction. In March the Court upheld state minimum-wage laws. In April the Court upheld the act providing for the establishment of the NLRB. Then, out of the blue, crusty old Van Devanter retired, giving FDR the chance to make his first appointment to the Court, the Alabama liberal Hugo Black. And then, in May, the Court upheld the Social Security Act.
So the New Deal _would_ prevail. But FDR himself was damaged. Where once he had seemed invincible, now he didn't. It was almost the way it had been with Wilson. One minute you're up, the next you're down. Sure, he finally had the Court in his pocket, but now his enemies smelled blood and that made him vulnerable, almost human in people's eyes, ungodlike. The loss was intangible. You couldn't see it or touch it. But all FDR had had going for him anyway was the intangible emotion of hope. So the loss of invincibility counted. And it came at the worst possible time. For just then the economy was heading south again. By the fall the country was in a recession—the Roosevelt recession.*
It was a little ridiculous to be talking about a recession when the country had never really emerged from the depression, but it was particularly stinging.† The depression had been Hoover's fault. The recession was Roosevelt's. Because of his insistence on reining in government expenditures, the economy had again contracted. Ironically the new system of Social Security had contributed to the contraction. In its first year of operation, officials had collected two billion dollars—and paid out nothing. Not until the second year would people begin receiving checks. The effect of the contraction was devastating. By 1938 two and a half million more people were unemployed, rocketing the unemployment rate to 19 percent.
FDR's response was to fight harder than he ever had before for the New Deal—and to fight in a way he never had before. Throughout the thirties he had maintained his links with the party's conservative southern Democrats, refusing to break with them even though they repeatedly tried to block him in Congress. Now he decided to purge their leaders, to run them out of the party by defeating them in the upcoming primaries and conventions in 1938.
Like his move against the Supreme Court, this one was both a sign of his power and his powerlessness. He dared make the move because he felt that the people were still with him. But he was forced into it because the conservatives in Congress had effectively taken control of the national agenda. It was they who had sabotaged his Supreme Court plan, they who had forced him to face political humiliation, they who thwarted him at every turn. He had been particularly incensed at their attempts to hinder the passage of the Fair Labor Standards Act, which provided for the establishment of national wages and hours. He finally had gotten the bill through, but the conservatives had materially weakened it, insisting on delaying the forty-hour workweek until 1942 and the forty-cent minimum wage standard until 1945. (In the interim, lower standards were established.)
The papers called it the great Roosevelt purge, which made it sound demonic. They played it big, turning each race FDR intervened in into a front-page story, which FDR relished. He always loved a good fight. It boosted his spirits. But in nearly all the fights he took on, he lost. In the end he was able to crow about having gotten rid of just one crusty conservative, the head of the House Ways and Means Committee. The rest were able to hang on by playing the race card. (A large group of blacks and poor whites supported FDR, but in the South they were frequently prevented from voting because they couldn't pay the poll tax.)
FDR had been damaged again, and in the general election it showed. In 1934, defying history, his party had picked up seats in both houses. In 1938 the party lost seats in both houses: seventy in the House of Representatives, seven in the Senate.
The thing about FDR was that despite setbacks, he never gave up. He just never gave up. Once he had settled on a goal he'd let nothing get in his way. But he had this great gift. Although he was driven, he never let himself _look_ driven. What people saw in his face was confidence, the famous Roosevelt grin. And it concealed who he really was.
Franklin Delano Roosevelt. The name told you a lot. On both sides of the family, the Delanos and the Roosevelts, he came from money and privilege.
It was because he was a Roosevelt that he dreamed of being president. Cousin Teddy after all had been president.
Teddy was a big influence. Teddy smiled all the time—so would Franklin. Teddy ran for the state legislature in his twenties—so would Franklin. Teddy became assistant secretary of the navy—so would Franklin. Teddy ran for vice president at age forty-one—Franklin would run at age thirty-eight. In college Franklin broke with the Democrats to vote for Teddy and even joined the local Republican club. When he ran for the state legislature he asked Teddy for his approval. Even in marriage he managed to involve Teddy: Eleanor was Teddy's niece. (When Franklin asked for her hand in marriage he told her he had big plans. The naive Eleanor asked, "Why me? I am plain. I have little to bring you.") At their wedding Teddy, then president of the United States, gave away the bride.
But he was as much a Delano as a Roosevelt. It was because he was a Delano that he was able to struggle on in the face of adversity. Delanos knew how to keep going. Warren Delano, his grandfather, had managed to rebuild his fortune, not once, but several times. He'd lose it, start over, win it back, then lose it again, and start over again.
FDR hardly knew adversity for the first thirty-eight years of his life. It had all been up, up, up. Everything he strived for, he'd achieved: state legislator, assistant naval secretary, vice presidential nominee.
When he'd gotten into scrapes he showed he could get out of them. When he was running in 1920 for vice president, with James Cox, Republicans had questioned the willingness of Latin American countries to vote with the United States if the United States joined the League of Nations. During a speech FDR insisted they would, and then added, to prove that America's influence over Haiti was great, "The facts are that I wrote Haiti's constitution myself and, if I do say it, I think it a pretty good constitution." Actually, the facts were that he hadn't had anything to do with Haiti's constitution. He was lying. And the lying got him in trouble. Haiti was insulted, and the Republicans made a big deal about it. Pressed afterward to explain himself, FDR lied again, this time denying he'd made the statement in the first place. Politicians lie all the time, of course. FDR usually lied better, more artfully. The controversy blew over.
The Cox-Roosevelt ticket happened to lose to Harding and Coolidge. But FDR's aim wasn't to win—nobody thought the Democrats could take the White House in 1920—it was to get his name around.
He had been a success at everything, one would have to say, except his marriage. His marriage was a sham. A few years earlier FDR, bored with Eleanor and tired of her constant moralistic carping, had got himself a mistress on the side—her social secretary, Lucy Mercer. In 1918 Eleanor discovered a packet of their love letters, which for her was an enormous turning point, the end of naïveté. But FDR was only concerned about the possible political consequences. If Eleanor sued for divorce, his political career would be over. Fortunately, Eleanor would not sue if Franklin stopped seeing Lucy. He agreed, and his career went on as before. (He would, in fact, continue seeing Lucy; he would invite her to all four of his inaugurations. Later he would have an affair with _his_ social secretary.)
Then, in 1921, at age thirty-nine, FDR faced catastrophe. Polio. Now he would need to prove that he really was a Delano.
It struck during the summer when he was on vacation off the coast of Maine. At first he didn't know what it was and even managed to keep on with his activities. One day, despite the ache in his legs, he went out and helped fight a forest fire. But within two weeks he was totally immobilized.
His mother put pressure on him to give up politics and return to Hyde Park, where he could live out his life as a country squire. But Roosevelt ignored her. The year before he had run for vice president of the United States. Someday he would run for president. So he kept up with his political correspondence—not even at the beginning of the illness, when he was in the most pain, did he stop writing—and kept dreaming and working. It took him a year or so to be able to move a single toe, another year to get out of bed and move around, and it took a full seven years for him to learn how to walk again, though it wasn't really walking but more like shuffling. By resting one arm on the shoulder of one of his sons and leaning on a cane with the other, he could thrust himself forward, shifting his weight back and forth from one leg to the other. The legs were utterly withered; in a rare photo they look about as big around as a child's arm. But with the help of fourteen-pound steel braces he could stabilize himself well enough to stand.
Most Americans never realized he was a paraplegic. They didn't know because FDR made sure they didn't. Outside the family hardly anybody knew. When friends early on asked him what on earth had happened to him, he lied. Said he was suffering from a bit of lameness. Eventually the truth came out that he had polio. But FDR managed to leave the impression he had pretty much overcome it. The public never saw his braces; they were painted black to match his pants, which were cut long as a further precaution. And the public never saw him in a wheelchair: Photographers were forbidden to take his picture in one. There are just two pictures of FDR in a wheelchair; both were taken by a family member while he was at Hyde Park. Neither was ever distributed. It would be impossible today to do what FDR did then. The press now wouldn't put up with the strictures. But in the thirties, press people lived by a different code. When FDR shouted out, "No movies of me getting out the machine, boys," as he climbed out of his car, they obediently shut off their cameras.
By 1928 he was personally ready to run for office again, but the timing seemed terrible. The economy was booming, the Republicans reaping the political benefits. So when supporters talked up the possibility of his running for the party's presidential nomination he quickly objected. The nomination wouldn't be worth having in 1928. Instead, he supported the candidacy of A1 Smith, the incumbent governor of New York, and a very close friend.
Smith ran and won the nomination, which gave FDR a shot at the governor's chair. (Smith's term was up; he couldn't run for reelection as governor while also running for president.) Again FDR was reluctant because 1928 didn't seem to be a Democratic year. But after hesitating he finally changed his mind during the state Democratic convention and was nominated by acclamation.
In November he barely won. Out of the four million votes cast, he defeated his opponent by a mere twenty-five thousand. But his timing was excellent. The following year the market crashed, putting the Republicans on the defensive. In 1932, as governor of New York, FDR would be in a perfect position to run for the presidency.
He thought himself completely hidden. _No man knows me,_ he told his daughter Anna once. _Not even my own family._ But his actions repeatedly betrayed him. What he was was ambitious—deeply, deeply ambitious. He didn't fall into the presidency by accident. He worked for it for decades. He had been coy with Eleanor about his dreams, only admitting while he courted her that he expected to achieve something really big someday. But to a friend around the same time he came right out with it: He wanted to be president. He was barely twenty-one.
Going into 1939 Roosevelt began thinking about what he would do after his second term was up. His big plan was to establish a giant library at Hyde Park to house his presidential papers. Nobody before FDR had ever had a presidential library, but Roosevelt was very aware of history and knew that there would be great interest in his presidency. Before, there had been nothing like the Great Depression, nothing like the New Deal. And of course FDR wanted people to remember that. A library would help. He even got a cousin to begin going through his stuff.
So as the year began there was every indication that Roosevelt was going to return to private life; a year and a half earlier he'd told Jack Garner, his vice president, that he'd never again run for public office. FDR even began trying to line up a successor. He all but anointed Postmaster General Jim Farley, though he let several others think they might really get his support. (FDR was too cagey ever to let anybody know what he really would do.)
Nobody thought FDR himself would run again. No president had ever been elected to a third term, and none had ever made a serious try for one directly after their first two.* Since George Washington, Americans had considered two terms enough for any president.
The German invasion of Poland on September 1, 1939, changed everything.
*At the time of Roosevelt's inauguration the depression had gone on for forty-two months. The depression of 1815-21 had lasted seventy-one; that of 1837-43, seventy-two; that of 1873-78, sixty-six; and that of 1893-97, forty-eight. Richard Morris, ed., Encyclopedia of American History (1970), p. 536.
†FDR was inaugurated March 4, 1933; not until the next inauguration would presidents begin their terms in January.
‡The amendment to repeal Prohibition had been passed but not yet gone into effect. The law to allow the sale of weak beer (that is, beer with an alcoholic content of 3.2 percent) was a stop-gap measure.
*For a half century, Democrats were to continue running against him.
*The cost-some $560 billion-of World War II remains unbelievably expensive even by today's standards. (The Korean War cost $70 billion and Vietnam $121 billion.) Dictionary of American History (1976), p. 228.
*The first president to abuse the power of the IRS was apparently Hoover, who in 1931 ordered the agency to investigate the Navy League, an association of shipbuilders who'd begun criticizing the administration for cutbacks in the navy's shipbuilding budget. When FDR came to power the IRS went after Hoover's secretary of the treasury, millionaire Andrew Mellon. Years later Elmer Irey, the director of the Criminal Division of the IRS, wrote that "the Roosevelt Administration made me go after Andy Mellon." (He did not say if FDR personally was behind the probe.) The criminal case was eventually dismissed, but in civil court Mellon was found guilty of underpaying his taxes by half a million dollars. In 1940 the Treasury Department opened an investigation into the finances of Father Coughlin, the radio hate preacher. That same year FDR personally ordered an investigation of Rep. Hamilton Fish, a right-wing Republican isolationist who was allegedly consorting with Nazis. In 1944 FDR ordered the IRS to lay off Lyndon Johnson, then a Texas congressman, and Johnson's benefactor, Brown and Root, a gigantic Texas construction company; FDR needed the support of both to win Texas in the upcoming presidential election. (The state Democratic Party had been taken over by an anti-Roosevelt clique.) See David Burnham, A Law Unto Itself: The IRS and the Abuse of Power (1989), chap. 10.
*A recession, by definition, occurs when the economy contracts over a period of two quarters.
†The stock market had staged a recovery, downtown offices were being rented again, cars were being sold, and unemployment was down from the 1933 high, when twelve million were jobless. But nearly eight million remained unemployed, 14 percent. Historical Statistics of the United States (1975), part 1, p. 135.
* Grant campaigned for a third term three years after he had left the White House. TR, of course, let Taft succeed him after his first two terms and only then ran again (TR considered the three and a half years he served after McKinley died as his first term). Wilson made noises about running for a third term but never in fact did.
# 17. FDR: World War II
How FDR waged war without asking Congress to declare it
It had been the thing that the people of the old Allied countries feared the most during the late 1930s: a second European war. England and France had feared war so much that they had been willing to do anything to prevent it. It would be conveniently forgotten later, after Hitler turned out to be a megalomaniac, that both countries enthusiastically applauded British prime minister Neville Chamberlain's appeasement of Hitler at Munich in 1938.
But now war was a reality. Hitler was not going to be satisfied with Austria or Czechoslovakia, as the appeasers had claimed at Munich. He wanted it all, all of Europe, just as he had indicated in _Mein Kampf_ two decades earlier. And he was willing to go to war to get it. And that altered Americans' outlook—and FDR's.
The effect on the country was to give new vitality to the internationalists, who until then had almost had to hide how they felt. As the polls showed, Americans were resolutely isolationist. But now the internationalists could begin arguing openly that isolationism wouldn't protect the United States from war, that we had to begin building up our defenses, that there was a moral difference between Germany and Britain, and that in our own self-interest we would have to take Britain's side—again.
The effect on FDR was equally energizing. Ever since the debacle over the Supreme Court, he had been on the defensive, his administration seeming almost to drift, the New Deal running out of steam. But now he had a clear new crisis to handle—and he seemed to welcome it. It focused his energy again as nothing else had in some time.
World War II would bring many changes to the United States. The first was to give us our first third-term presidency, a momentous turning point. After Washington had turned down a third term, Americans had come to believe that all presidents should. So not even Jefferson or Jackson went for a third term, though each easily could have convinced himself—and the country—that it was his duty to do so. Democratic leaders were eager to see Roosevelt run again. He had loomed so large for so long that nobody else in the party seemed comparable and, most importantly, nobody else seemed likely to be able to win. But Americans generally were far far less willing to smash tradition, much as they loved FDR. A three-term president? It seemed a bit much.
FDR got the Democratic nomination easily enough—he never even formally announced he was a candidate; the first time Democrats were officially informed that he would be available to run again was at the Chicago convention—but it was far from clear that he would be able to win the election. And in fact the Gallup poll in August 1940 showed the Republican nominee, Wendell Willkie, was ahead—not by much, but ahead nonetheless. FDR would be in the race of his life.
At the outset there was a semblance of civility to the election campaign, Willkie and Roosevelt agreeing (through intermediaries) not to play politics with one of the hottest issues dividing the country: Roosevelt's deal with Winston Churchill in the late spring to trade American destroyers in exchange for British bases. But as the campaign moved forward there was enormous pressure on both sides to play politics with foreign policy, and Willkie reneged.
Willkie really had little choice but to exploit foreign policy. There weren't any other issues on which he could make a credible fight. Though he had fought the New Deal for years, he and the Republicans now had no alternative but to downplay their opposition (except when preaching to the Republican choir). The public had showed in election after election that it approved of the New Deal. So, inevitably, it was foreign policy about which Willkie and Roosevelt argued.
And that brought out the worst in both of them. Willkie, sensing Americans' resistance to involvement in yet another European war, came out as an isolationist, boldly proclaiming that he would never send American boys to fight Europe's wars. Which was blatantly political on three grounds. One, Willkie himself until then had been a bona fide internationalist, as much an internationalist as FDR, so claiming that he was really an isolationist was rather shameless. Two, no president could make the promise he was making and still sleep soundly at night. For there simply was no way to escape from Europe's wars anymore. The Great War had proven that. The world was getting smaller and smaller. And three, by conspicuously making the claim that he was _against_ sending American boys to fight over in Europe, he was implying that Roosevelt was _for_ sending them. As the campaign heated up, Willkie came right out and said so. Thus Willkie played politics with the issue, but so did FDR.
Although Roosevelt was convinced that the United States had to support Britain (as he had demonstrated in striking the destroyer/base deal), he now held that he was as opposed to getting involved in a new war in Europe as Willkie. Isolationism was simply too great a force to resist, he believed. In the summer of 1939 when he had asked Congress—a Democratic Congress—to repeal the neutrality laws so that the U.S. could side with Britain, he had been turned down (this was _after_ Munich, _after_ Charles Lindbergh had reported that Germany possessed more planes than the rest of Europe combined, _after_ Hitler had laughed in public at FDR's request that he promise not to invade any country for ten years). Not until November 1939, more than two months after Germany invaded Poland, did Congress finally revise the country's neutrality laws and endorse the sale of arms and weapons to the Allies. So he had to fudge his differences with Willkie, make people think both of them would keep America out of war. Only gingerly was he even willing to push for preparedness. When his army advisers told him a draft would be needed, he let Congress pass it without his open support. (The bill became law in September, in the middle of the election campaign.)
The need for preparedness was obvious. Troops were having to train with fake rifles made out of leftover wood, the artillery was a generation old, and there weren't any tanks. When FDR had traveled to upstate New York in August to watch soldiers training, the scene had had a surreal quality. Soldiers firing wooden guns at trucks covered in canvas tops with the word "TANK" written on them, a telephone pole stuck on top symbolizing the tank's barrel.
But FDR felt strongly that he couldn't get out in front of the people, not too far out in front, at least. And certainly not in an election year. It was an irresponsible position to take given the way events were going, and would hurt us immensely when war came; it would take the country more than two full years after Pearl Harbor to gear up for the invasion of Normandy And it was probably one of the most irresponsible positions any American president had taken in history. To know a war is coming and not prepare for it because you're in the middle of an election cycle? And yet it was also entirely understandable.
A leader _could_ only lead so far. And no president in the past had ever faced such a situation. None before had ever been in the position of facing a madman capable of plunging the whole world into war. Woodrow Wilson had probably been in the closest similar position. He knew during the election of 1916 that war with Germany was likely, given the way things were going. But the odds in favor of a second war with Germany in 1940 were far, far greater, as Roosevelt himself privately acknowledged.
War wasn't a certainly, of course. Nothing was ever certain. And FDR had some hope that if the United States built up its defense forces, Germany (and Japan, for that matter) might back down. But that was a forlorn hope, and since the United States was _not_ building up its forces—not building them up enough to wage war _and_ meet the armaments needs of the Allies—almost a foolish hope.*
Given what had already taken place, prudence dictated preparedness. Germany, in defiance of the Versailles treaty, had rearmed; forced a union with Austria; seized Czechoslovakia; made a nonaggression pact with its eastern neighbor Russia (in order to be able to focus on its western neighbors); overrun Poland; invaded Denmark and Norway; taken over Holland, Belgium, and Luxembourg; invaded France; driven British forces across the Channel after humiliatingly trapping them at Dunkirk, defeated France; and then launched the Battle of Britain, raining bombs down on London nightly.
Meanwhile Japan had also been on the move, making war on China and threatening war on the Dutch East Indies (Malaysia). And Italy had taken over Ethiopia. So there was more than enough reason in the fall of 1940 to believe that the United States would find itself drawn into war.
And yet FDR refused to tell the American people the truth. They didn't want to hear the truth. Because he wanted their votes, he gave them what they wanted: false hope that the United States could remain out of the war.
By the end of the campaign the contest had turned into a virtual street brawl, both sides playing dirty. Not in new ways, but in the same old ugly ways American politicians had been playing dirty for decades. Willkie's camp went after Roosevelt's boys, claiming they'd been given privileged command positions in the armed forces. (Roosevelt's son Elliott, for instance, had been made a captain in the air corps.) FDR, for his part, authorized a good old-fashioned smear campaign against Willkie.
Roosevelt had learned that the Republicans had got hold of letters that Henry Wallace, the Democrats' vice presidential candidate, had written to a mystic, which made Wallace look like a nut. Frightened that the letters might just discredit the entire Democratic ticket and put his campaign on the defensive, FDR privately threatened to sue the Republicans if they published the letters. In the event the letters somehow got out, Roosevelt told his advisers they should leak information about an affair that Willkie was having with a society woman. "Spread it as a word-of-mouth thing," he told his campaign staff in a conversation captured by a secret Oval Office tape machine. "We can't have any of our principal speakers refer to it, but the people down the line can get it out."
By election day FDR was back out in front—far out in front. He won by five million votes. It was, however, the smallest of his three presidential victories. (He had won by seven million in 1932, by eleven million in 1936.)
The election changed FDR's political position dramatically. It gave him the freedom to move the country in the direction of war without having to worry that his policy might lead to his electoral defeat. So he was in a much more powerful, much more comfortable place. Willkie, switching back to internationalism, even agreed to help out. But the president still could not simply plunge the nation into war. The army wasn't prepared and neither was the country. So FDR had to take baby steps toward war.
The most important of these steps was Lend-Lease, which he dreamed up while on vacation in the Caribbean in December, just prior to his inauguration. It was a bold plan, without precedent, daring really. Instead of selling the Allies an arsenal of weapons, the United States would loan them what was needed, the way neighbors loan each other a fire hose in an emergency. It was mildly deceptive, of course. As the Republican isolationists like Robert Taft pointed out, loaning weapons was like loaning chewing gum: "You don't want it back."* But it was a necessary deception. Britain was out of money, couldn't afford to buy weapons without a loan, and Americans refused to make a loan. (The Allies still hadn't paid back the loans from World War I, which annoyed Americans tremendously; Coolidge had won a lot of points in the twenties when he refused to forgive the loans. As he effectively had put it, "They hired the money, didn't they.")
If events had played into FDR's hands he wouldn't have needed to resort to deception, but the fact was that they did not. There was just one event that would have helped, and that was an event no president could welcome, an armed attack. So FDR just kept nudging people forward, toward a war they would have to fight even though they didn't want to.
Only the nudging didn't work. While Congress approved Lend-Lease, and the British began to get the arms and weapons they needed, going into the summer of 1941 they needed more. They needed American muscle. As Churchill told Roosevelt at a secret meeting off the coast of Newfoundland, Britain could not hold out on its own much longer.
FDR, pressed as he had never quite been pressed before, chose to act in a characteristically deceptive way. He would wage war without declaring it. For months he had refused Churchill's requests to allow American destroyers to accompany British convoys across the Atlantic. Too risky, FDR told Churchill, much too risky. For what would happen when a German sub approached? The destroyer would probably have to destroy it or risk being destroyed. But now, faced with the prospect that the British were indeed on the precipice, he changed policies, agreeing to allow the destroyers to begin patrolling. It was an astonishing decision, blatantly deceptive, wholly unprecedented. But as FDR would say later,
"I am perfectly willing to mislead and tell untruths if it will help win the war."
Unlike President Polk, who had created an incident hoping to provoke an attack which he could use to obtain a declaration of war, FDR was hoping to wage war without a declaration at all, a first in American history. Down the road, after the country had built up its defenses, he could openly ask for war, using as a justification any of the numerous incidents which were sure to take place on the open seas. But _he_ would have the option of deciding precisely when he chose to go to the Congress with a request for a declaration. In effect, he would gain control over a situation that until now he had been unable to control. A brilliant maneuver, though decidedly manipulative and undemocratic. (Hitler at any time might, of course, declare war on us, but military leaders believed he probably would not. He had his hands full already.)
The destroyer patrols began in August. By early September he had his first incident. The USS _Greer_ , traveling to Iceland, received a radio report from a British plane that a German sub was in the vicinity. The _Greer_ then located the sub and hounded it for nine hours. In accordance with orders, the Americans refused a British request to bomb the sub, but the British flew by and dropped several depth charges. The Germans, not knowing who had bombed them—the Americans or the British—fired a torpedo at the _Greer_ (but missed). In a fireside chat FDR promptly used the incident to rouse American ire, misleadingly telling his radio audience that the attack had been entirely unprovoked. He declined to ask for a declaration of war. He didn't want war just yet. He needed more time to prepare.
Over the next few months there would be several more incidents. In mid-October the _Kearny_ was attacked, with eleven deaths. In late October, the _Reuben James_ with more than a hundred. Still FDR refused to go to the country to demand war. He still wasn't ready. Still didn't feel the country was militarily ready, still not psychologically ready. Probably he was about the last person in the administration to feel this way (excepting notably Secretary of State Cordell Hull).
There are some who believe he might never have been willing to use an incident he himself had provoked to go to the Congress for a declaration of war. But then, suddenly, he no longer had to decide. The Japanese decided the issue for him at Pearl Harbor, sending much of the American Pacific fleet to the bottom of the ocean on that "day that will live in infamy." A few days later Hitler declared war against the United States.
The war greatly simplified things for FDR. As commander in chief he would be able to do just about everything he needed to do to win the war. Congress could continue to block him occasionally on domestic legislation—and did. In 1943 legislators would override his veto of an antilabor bill. In 1944 the Senate would reject his demand for an increase in Social Security taxes. But in foreign affairs power remained almost exclusively in his hands. A commander in chief could do as he pleased.
In the fall of 1942 FDR wanted to lower farm prices. They were simply too high, he felt. It was, ironically, the government that was keeping them high; the Price Act required the executive to maintain prices at an inflationary level. But he didn't want to wait for the Congress to act. The Congress would take too long. He wanted action now. So he went to the attorney general to ask if there wasn't something he could do. Sure, he was told. Under his war powers he could just repeal the law, repeal a law made by Congress—as commander in chief he could even do _that._
Still FDR was a little worried about going that far. That sounded extreme. So he asked Hugo Black for advice. Black by then was on the Supreme Court and shouldn't have agreed to give the president advice. He might someday have to rule on the matter. But it was war and the old rules didn't seem to be as important so he went ahead and gave the advice. Told the president that if he unilaterally repealed a law the courts would get involved and things would get ugly. Probably he'd lose.
But there was a way. He could tell Congress he intended to repeal the law by a certain date if he hadn't heard from legislators in the interim. It wasn't much of a concession, but the courts likely would look far more favorably on his action. For he would seem to be leaving the power to decide the issue with Congress. So on September 7 FDR gave Congress three weeks to pass a law basically saying that legislators wanted the old law they passed before to remain in effect. When they didn't act he used his war powers to lower farm prices. It was another unprecedented move, another rung up the ladder of the imperial presidency. But hardly anybody complained. This was after all war and FDR was the American leader in the war. And in a war a leader can do almost anything.
As the election of 1944 approached, he again had to take politics into consideration, which always limited his options. It meant he had to think about the effect of his policies on the groups that made up the Democratic majority. He wouldn't necessarily have to alter his policies, but he might have to keep them secret. Which is in fact just what he did at Teheran, where he met with Churchill and (for the first time) Stalin.
There Stalin revealed that he had territorial ambitions in the war, he wanted a chunk of Poland and the control of certain Baltic ports. FDR said he was perfectly willing to accommodate his friend Joe, but he had a favor to request. He wanted the concession kept secret for the time being. If the Poles in Chicago found out it would complicate his reelection efforts. Stalin said he understood. So they struck a deal and then kept quiet about it.
It wasn't right. Not right at all. Not respectful of democratic tradition. Not respectful of the war itself, which supposedly was being fought in the name of self-determination (as the Atlantic Charter said). But one always had to make compromises, and in wartime sometimes you had to make big compromises. Even in a war a president had to compromise.
FDR should not have run again in 1944. He was too ill. Or he should, at least, have leveled with the American people about the likelihood that he would die in office. But he refused to acknowledge he was ill, even to family members, though Eleanor said afterwards he knew—of course, _he knew._ Many days he could not get out of bed, so he just stayed in bed and worked there. The last year of his life he only rarely tried standing; the braces simply hurt too much now, they were too heavy and his muscles too weak.
But he insisted on running, wouldn't even consider not running. After three terms in office the fire that had roared in him his whole life, that had got him through polio and then through the ordeals of the Great Depression, still roared. Now that peace seemed so close he wanted to be there to enjoy it. Be there to see the war through to its end. Be a part of history, not just watch it from the sidelines. It was the power of the presidency that nourished him during these years, and surrendering that power was inconceivable. It was, after all, the only thing that kept people from seeing, when they looked into his cragged, weathered old face, the face of an old man. Instead, what they saw was the face of the president of the United States. FDR liked that.
The Republicans picked Thomas Dewey, a fiery prosecutor from New York, who ran a hard race. He ran harder than FDR. But FDR was—FDR. And by now there was very little doubt that the American people loved him. So Dewey really didn't have much of a chance.
Roosevelt hardly made an effort at all to campaign. It was enough to show people that he was leading the war effort. So he made a big show of being president, of being commander in chief. That would be far more effective than running around the country giving campaign speeches. As part of his strategy he made a trip during the summer of 1944 to Hawaii. It was to review the troops, reassure Americans he hadn't forgotten about the war in the Pacific, and to have his photograph taken with his Pacific commanders, particularly the charismatic pipe smoker, Douglas MacArthur. It was a barely concealed campaign stunt, and it annoyed MacArthur. "The humiliation of forcing me to leave my command," he complained bitterly afterward, "for a picture-taking junket." But it went over well with people, just as FDR had expected.
There was still the question of his health, though, which was appearing more fragile by the day; on the way back from Hawaii he had stopped at the naval shipyard in Bremerton in Washington State. Just moments into his speech before ten thousand sailors he suffered an angina attack and nearly crumpled over. It lasted fifteen minutes. Still FDR refused to stop talking, refused even to cut short his address, which was being carried by radio to a nationwide audience. So he kept on talking—and talking and talking, for a full thirty-five minutes.
To prove he was alive and well, to demonstrate his physical fitness, he arranged for several campaign appearances near election day. The first was to take him to New York City, where he would go on a fifty-mile swing around several of the boroughs in an open car on the morning of October 21. On any day this would have been a difficult journey for a man in FDR's condition. He was suffering now from hypertension, cardiac disease, a swollen heart, a chronic cough, and weight loss; he'd lost so much weight a friend said you could get your fist between his neck and his collar. And of course it was October and New York in October can be cold, sometimes very, very cold.
As it happened this October day was not only very, very cold, it was rainy and it was windy. At times the winds reached up to fifty miles an hour. But FDR wouldn't cancel and he couldn't very well ride around with the top up. That would raise enormous questions. So he went through with the ride, traveling in that open car with the cold and the rain and the wind beating against his tired old face for four long hours, though it damn well near killed him.
Woodrow Wilson's widow happened to be in attendance at his inauguration. She took one look at FDR and knew. "He looks exactly as my husband did when he went into his decline." Hearing this Frances Perkins, the secretary of labor (and the first woman cabinet officer), told her, "Don't say that to another soul. He has a great and terrible job to do and he's got to do it even if it kills him."
His death three months later, on the very eve of the war's end, shocked the country and his family. It seemed impossible that FDR had not been able to cheat death. He himself may have thought he could.
The presidents who came after lived in his shadow. It made governing for all of them more difficult. None could compare.
*In the spring of 1940 FDR had asked Congress to approve a five-billion- dollar increase in the defense budget and had called for the production of fifty thousand planes. But given Great Britain's needs, the increase was not nearly enough, as FDR knew. Worse, the Selective Service Act had been delayed so long that not until after the election would anybody be drafted. As late as the summer of 1941, just 128,000 men would be enrolled in military training. Army leaders such as George Marshall warned the president that the country was unprepared to fight even a one-ocean war, and certainly not a two-ocean war.
*And in fact few of the weapons ever were given back. Of fifty billion dollars in equipment loaned under Lend-Lease, just ten billion dollars came back at the end of the war. Clive Ponting, 1940 (1990); A. J. P. Taylor, Politicians, Socialism, and Historians (1982), pp. 230-35.
# 18. The Cold War
How the Cold War forced Harry Truman and Dwight Eisenhower to take new and extraordinary steps to gain power and to keep it
Harry Truman took over from FDR just as one world was ending and a new one beginning. No one had any confidence that he was up to the task. Not even Harry Truman.
His was the usual midwestern farm boy's story in a way. Raised on a small Missouri farm, he learned good sturdy values, became exceptionally responsible, and worked hard at whatever he was doing. And like many farm boys, he dreamed of getting away from the farm, moving to the city to escape.
But his story was different, too. Because he had poor eyesight, because he loved to read, because he wasn't physically imposing, he always felt different from his peers. And he _was_ different. His dreams were different. While he, like them, dreamed of opening a store or lighting out West to make a quick buck as a land speculator, he also dreamed of becoming a politician. As a boy he became fascinated by Woodrow Wilson. In his thirties he began expressing a desire to someday be elected governor or president. It was just in jest, he assured his friends. But it wasn't. He really dreamed of someday being elected governor, being elected president.
There didn't seem at the outset much chance of either of those developments taking place. For Truman wasn't a very self-confident young man. He was shy. He was reluctant to leave the family farm. And not until his father finally died, when Truman was thirty, did he dare. But his father's death was a turning point. The following year Truman campaigned to be named postmaster in Grandview, where the family farm was located. After winning the job he then got himself named a county road supervisor, where he oversaw the building of new roads. Two minor posts, but at least he finally was moving out of the family orbit. Over the next couple of years he was to try for every opportunity that came his way. One month he went down to Texas to see about buying some land. Another he considered becoming a homesteader in Montana. On still another occasion he became involved in a mining operation.
He never managed to turn any of these ventures into a successful career, but what was interesting about Truman was that he kept trying. There simply was no getting him down. He was driven. Somehow, some way, he was going to succeed.
There was a romantic reason for trying so hard. Truman had fallen in love with Bess Wallace, but when he had asked for her hand in marriage, she turned him down. Truman figured it was because he hadn't made anything of himself. So he kept on working at being a success and also kept working on Bess. Week in, week out, he'd trudge over to her place at 219 Delaware Street in Independence to court her.
He finally found a career at which he could excel in 1917, when he turned thirty-three: It was war. In the army he was given charge of a notoriously difficult regiment, Kansas City's Battery D, which already had gone through two captains. Truman quickly won over the two-hundred-man force and whipped them into shape.
He emerged from the army a far more self-confident person than he had been when he went in. His first step was to open a haberdashery with a friend. His second was to ask Bess again to marry him. Now that he had prospects, she did. It was a measure of both his love for her and his intense drive that he had kept asking. She had first turned him down in 1911. It was now 1919.
The haberdashery failed after two years when the economy slipped into a brief recession, loading Truman down with thousands of dollars in debts. But it was a fortuitous turn of events. It gave him the opportunity to get into politics. Just as the store was going bankrupt, a friend affiliated with the local machine came in one day to see if Truman wanted to run for county commissioner (formally, county judge). Truman immediately accepted.
Truman didn't really fit into the prevailing culture of local Missouri politics. He was honest, and politics was corrupt. But Truman wasn't so honest that he was unwilling to cooperate with the machine. As long as the machine didn't ask him to break the law, he and his friends in the machine got along fine. He was always willing to compromise his standards when it came to his political friends. You couldn't survive in Missouri politics if you didn't show a little moral flexibility. In Missouri the price of power was having friends who might one day end up in jail.
Boss Tom Pendergast could afford to let Truman be honest because he had another commissioner in his pocket who was willing to dole out corrupt contracts to the machine's friends. (Each of the county's three commissioners held a different portfolio.) But because Truman _was_ honest his political prospects weren't very bright. Pendergast didn't want Truman in any powerful positions. And for ten years Truman never had the opportunity to rise any higher in the government than county commissioner. His chance finally came in 1934, however, when Pendergast couldn't get any of his favorite politicians to run for a seat in the U.S. Senate. Five turned him down. Truman applied and was accepted. With the machine's backing, he won easily.
He spent the next decade in the Senate, but it wasn't until he was well into his sixth year, in 1941, that he finally came into his own as the powerful head of the Truman Committee. This was a committee, largely of Truman's own creation, whose job was to ferret out corrupt defense contracts. It was an ironic role for Truman. At the same time that he was vigorously exposing corruption in Washington, his old pals in Missouri, the same pals who got him elected, the same pals he was regularly helping with small favors—getting a boy into Annapolis, helping a company gain access to the bureaucracy—were busily stealing the local government blind. Recently, Boss Pendergast himself had been hauled into court for tax evasion. But Truman performed masterfully and honestly, eventually saving taxpayers, at least according to his own press statements, more than fifteen billion dollars.
In early 1944 he had the chance to be named Franklin Roosevelt's running mate. He passed. Being vice president seemed a quick path to nowhere. In the Senate he had power. Vice presidents then had no power. He'd just be another of Franklin Roosevelt's flunkies. He didn't realize that FDR was near death. He'd only seen FDR in person a few times. And nobody who knew of FDR's precarious physical condition bothered to inform Truman. Besides, Bess didn't approve of the idea of his getting onto the national ticket. Being vice president would put him—and the family—in the media spotlight.
Key party leaders pressured Truman repeatedly over the six month period leading up to the national convention to accept the post. For six months he begged off. Just a few days before the delegates were scheduled to vote on the nomination, FDR himself finally called. Until then FDR had left a confusing trail of signals as to who he wanted as a running mate in order not to alienate any of the leaders who were lobbying for the post. It had never been clear to Truman therefore that the president really wanted him. It seemed that it was just the bosses who wanted him. Now that he heard directly from Roosevelt, he immediately accepted. In 1944, at the height of the war, it was simply impossible to turn down a direct request by the president of the United States.
When FDR suddenly died in April 1945, just a few months into his fourth term, Harry turned to Eleanor to ask what he could do to help. _Mr. President_ , Eleanor replied, _its you who need the help now._ Harry confessed that he felt like the sun, the moon, and the stars had fallen on him. _If you've ever prayed for anybody, boys,_ he implored some reporters, _pray for me now._
At first he showed that he was obviously in over his head. While he had vast experience in domestic politics and knew domestic issues as well as anybody, he was ignorant of foreign affairs. FDR hadn't even bothered to tell him about the Manhattan Project. Compounding his difficulties, he was impulsive, overly prickly, obviously insecure. Tired and tense, he dashed off a letter to a music critic who had found fault with his daughter, Margaret's piano playing. Truman indecorously wrote that if he weren't president he'd punch the fellow in the nose.
Determined to prove he was up to the job, he bragged about his decisiveness, but he was often a little _too_ decisive. An undersecretary of state remembered bringing him fourteen separate questions that needed to be decided, most relating to serious matters. Truman took fifteen minutes to dispose of them all. As historian Daniel Yergin has pointed out, it was an example of decisiveness, but it meant that the president had disposed of each problem in sixty-four seconds and "64 seconds per problem is not necessarily the way Americans would want important matters decided."
In over his head or not, he had to make the big decisions. As he loved to say, the buck stopped with him. And there were many many big decisions to be made, some just awfully hard.
The first of these was whether to drop the bomb on Hiroshima. Truman afterward claimed he simply made the decision and that was that: _Never lost a single nights sleep over it._ But it was a complicated decision, morally complicated, strategically complicated. If—and it was a big if—the bomb worked, and if—and this too was a big if—it was a fact that _only_ the bomb would bring about a speedy end to the war, it was still morally unclear that the president should agree to use the weapon. It would after all destroy an entire city filled with civilians. Already during the war the Allies had firebombed many cities, including Dresden, which had cost the lives of hundreds of thousands of civilians, so the moral line had been crossed. But the decision to kill civilians still remained awful and difficult. And it wasn't even clear that the bomb was needed.
While some military advisers said it was and estimated that it would save the lives of tens of thousands of American GIs—the soldiers who probably would have to die in the series of battles needed to storm and take the Japanese home islands—these were after all just estimates. It was always possible, as a few maintained (and as the U.S. Strategic Bombing Survey was to conclude after the war), that the Japanese would be willing to surrender without making a last-ditch fight. There was some reason to believe that if the United States agreed in advance to retain the Japanese emperor, Hirohito, the Japanese might very well consent to a negotiated settlement (as diplomatic intermediaries were suggesting and as the United States itself concluded on the basis of intercepted Japanese messages in July, several weeks _before_ Hiroshima).
Of course a negotiated settlement was not what the country expected. FDR had promised that the United States would accept nothing less than unconditional surrender. But there was nothing to stop the United States from indicating through diplomatic back channels that it would agree to the retention of Hirohito, as in fact it subsequently agreed to do. And anyway, was honoring FDR's promise worth the lives of hundreds of thousands of Japanese civilians?
As Truman weighed these factors he also had to consider one other: that the bomb was needed not only to win the war against the Japanese but to intimidate the Soviets, who were already showing signs that they intended to make an aggressive grab for several of the countries of Eastern Europe. As Truman confessed in his diary on May 15, 1945, as he was making his decision, the bomb would be America's "master card" in the struggle with the Communists for dominance in the postwar world.
The bomb did what it was supposed to. Stopped the war and frightened the Communists. It also did one other thing: It transformed the presidency.
With the power of the bomb at his fingertips the president of the United States instantly became the most powerful person in the world, more powerful than anybody in human history had ever been. More powerful than the Founding Fathers had ever imagined that a president should be.
No one but a handful of scientists understood the bomb, knew how it worked or what it really was all about, but its power was undoubted. When Hiroshima was bombed, Truman, trying to make sense of it for the American people, said that the "bomb had more power than 20,000 tons of TNT... more than two thousand times the blast power of the British 'Grand Slam' which is the largest bomb ever used in the history of warfare."
It gave Truman enormous control over events, more control than probably any president had ever had over anything; what president had, after all, been able to end a world war instantly? But deciding whether to use it involved terribly difficult moral decisions, decisions no American president had ever been called on to make. In effect, it gave Truman the power to play God.
Most Americans were persuaded that Truman on this occasion played God well, but that he was playing God was dismaying. Presidents were supposed to make their decisions on the basis of an informed public debate. Here was an instance in which a president made a profoundly important decision without any public debate at all. Given the circumstances, it couldn't be avoided. But it showed just how vastly more complicated the world was becoming.
The second great decision of his presidency was what to do about the Soviet Union. This one too was complicated. It was quite clear by 1947, 1948 that the Soviets intended to use the presence of their army in Eastern Europe to control the governments there. Although in 1945 they had allowed free elections in several countries—in Hungary, Bulgaria, Czechoslovakia, and Austria—they subsequently began to clamp down and clamp down hard, imposing Communist governments and routing democrats, systematically killing off anti-Communist leaders. In 1947 the Soviets had subsequently made moves on Turkey and Greece, prompting Truman to issue his famous promise that the United States would come to the rescue of any European country threatened by Communist subversion—the Truman Doctrine. By 1948 the wartime alliance between the Soviets and the United States had completely broken down.
But it did not appear to most government analysts that war was likely; the Soviets simply did not seem strong enough to stage a war. That didn't mean that they wouldn't keep pushing their interests and pushing them hard, just short of war. As George F. Kennan, the State Department's senior policy-planning analyst, explained, the West could expect the Soviets to be extremely aggressive, to press and prod wherever they spotted weakness. To beat the Soviets at this game, Kennan said, the West—and the United States in particular—would have to vigorously contain the Soviets, which would probably engage the United States in a struggle that could last decades and decades.
Kennan privately had doubts that Americans could keep up the struggle; as he well knew democracies usually lose their focus after a short while. And anyway Americans by tradition weren't very interested in foreign policy. And they certainly had little interest in maintaining the kind of gigantic military establishment that would be needed for containment. As they had after World War I, they had pressed the Congress to demobilize and demobilize quickly as soon as the war ended, and Congress had, cutting back on the military budget and ending the draft. To be sure, because of what had happened after the First World War, Americans were willing to embrace the idea of collective security and enthusiastically backed the creation of the United Nations. But they remained deeply apprehensive about taking a leading role in world affairs, preferring to focus on things domestic: getting a good education via the GI Bill of Rights, getting a good job, moving to the suburbs.
So Truman faced a difficult task.
There really was only one way for Harry Truman to persuade Americans to take on the burden he felt they had to and that was to scare the hell out of them. To persuade them the commies were as bad as Nazis, worse even, because at least the Nazis didn't try to pretend they were your friends as Commies did. All around the world the Commies were telling people, average people, they were on _their_ side. The Commies put on such a convincing demonstration that even some Americans fell for their line and they did this even knowing, as by now people were beginning to know, how utterly ruthless Stalin was.
Truman wasn't the first president to feel he had to scare hell out of the country. Woodrow Wilson, after all, had felt _he_ had to after World War I in order to get the League of Nations approved. But Wilson had only needed to create a big-enough scare to get a single piece of legislation passed, legislation that was unlikely to affect people in any direct way. Truman, by contrast, needed to instill enough fear in Americans for them to approve a gigantic new commitment to internationalism, a commitment totally at odds with the country's deepest traditions. We wouldn't merely be joining an international debate club, as Wilson had wanted. We would be taking charge of the Free World's security, which would entail huge financial costs, and risk transforming the United States into a giant militaristic society.
FDR, to be sure, had had to confront the forces of isolationism, too. But he hadn't had to manufacture the threat the enemy posed. It was obvious. In Europe Hitler was taking over one country after another after another by military force. In Asia the Japanese were conquering huge parts of China by force.
Truman, by contrast, didn't have nearly so easy a task. For while the Soviets were clearly undermining the elected governments in Eastern Europe, they weren't conquering them in the blatant way Hitler had. And they certainly hadn't yet shown any interest in rolling tanks into France or dropping bombs on Great Britain.
Complicating matters, his poll numbers were terrible, just 35 percent of Americans approving of his presidency in the spring of 1948. And Congress was in the hands of the Republicans; in the off-year elections of 1946 they had swept out the Democrats in both houses, the first time in a generation that the Republicans had taken over.
So he had no clout. No capital to draw on. Hell, he hadn't even been elected to the job. His own mother-in-law felt he wasn't up to it and went around telling people so.
If Truman was going to succeed, he would really have to do a number on the country. It would be downright ugly, requiring the government, in effect, to practice the demonic arts of propaganda. To defeat the enemy we would have to become like him in a way.
But what choice did Truman have? As he saw it, none at all. Not if he were to remain in control of events. And he very much wanted to. Not just for the noble reason that he believed what he was doing was for the good of the country. And he very clearly believed it was. But for a personal political reason. In November he'd be up for election. Like Teddy Roosevelt before him, he very much wanted to win the presidency in his own right. Also like Teddy, he felt he needed to show that he was in charge and that he had accomplished something. Something big. Something to make people realize he wasn't a little man but a big one.
But how _do_ you scare hell out of the country? Truman decided that going all out was the only way to catch people's attention. So he went all out: Told the people that the country was facing a terrible, terrible crisis—maybe even facing war. "War" was the word to use, he knew. As White House adviser Clark Clifford had written to Truman in a long, influential memo the year before, in 1947, "the worse matters get, up to a fairly certain point—real danger of imminent war—the more is there a sense of crisis. In times of crisis, the American citizen tends to back up his president."
So there was to be a war scare. It came in March 1948, and it was totally contrived. There _was_ no threat of war and no evidence that the Soviets were planning on it. No evidence of dangerous Soviet troop movements. No evidence that the Soviets were even thinking of waging war. The only new developments were in Finland and Czechoslovakia, and neither was shocking.
Finland had signed an agreement with the Soviets that guaranteed its independence—if anything, a positive development. Of course, any agreement with the Soviets could be regarded as suspicious, but this one happened not to be; by signing, Finland was not indicating in any way that it was suddenly becoming a Soviet satellite (and few in the U.S. government thought that it was).
In Czechoslovakia the Soviets were taking over, but there was really little new in this. As the U.S. ambassador in Prague explained in cables to Washington, the Soviets were not suddenly beginning to exercise control over the country—they already _had_ de facto control of almost all of it: By the beginning of 1948 Soviet-backed Communists held nearly every portfolio in the government.
If there were to be a war, Gen. Lucius Clay, the U.S. commander of military forces in Europe and the military governor of Germany, was probably in the most vulnerable position in Europe. If the Soviets were willing to take substantial risks, they could overrun his forces quickly. If anyone was to be worried about war it should have been him. And he wasn't. On March 1 he wrote Sen. Henry Cabot Lodge, Jr., that things were peaceful: "I believe American personnel are as secure here [in Berlin] as they would be at home.... Probably no occupation force ever lived under as secure conditions and with greater freedom from serious incidents than do the American forces living in Germany."
Curiously, however, Clay wrote another letter (in the form of a telegram) that same day, which seemed to leave an entirely different impression. This letter was sent to Gen. Stephen Chamberlin, the director of army intelligence. "For many months, based on logical analysis," General Clay began, "I have felt and held that war was unlikely for at least ten years. Within the last few weeks, I have felt a subtle change in Soviet attitude which I cannot define but which now gives me a feeling that it may come with dramatic suddenness." He admitted that while he could not point to any data to support his belief, there was "a feeling of a new tenseness in every Soviet individual with whom we have official relations."
Clay was telling the truth in the first letter, lying in the second. He lied because he had been asked to lie, as he virtually admitted years later. In February, General Chamberlin had come to see him in Berlin. "He told me that the Army was having trouble getting the draft reinstituted, and they needed a strong message from me that they could use in congressional testimony. So I wrote out this cable. I sent it directly to Chamberlin and told him to use it as he saw fit."
Actually there was more to the affair than Clay knew. The military wanted more than the draft, it wanted the defense budget increased, wanted the airline industry saved (because of defense cutbacks the industry was in sharp decline, many companies on the verge of bankruptcy). And it wasn't just the military that was involved. So was the State Department. State wanted the pressure of the threat of war to force Congress to pass the Marshall Plan, which had been proposed in 1947 and still hadn't been approved.
President Truman had concerns of his own. In the fall he'd be up for election. And as of the moment he had little to go to the country to brag about. Inflation was getting bad. Strikes were rampant. And he still seemed to many Americans to be too small for the job he was in, too much like them. So he badly needed _something._ Something to rally people around the administration. And as Clark Clifford had explained in his memo, getting into a dogfight with the Commies could help. "There is considerable political advantage to the Administration," Clifford wrote, "in its battle with the Kremlin."
It was a dicey move, to ring the bell of war when there was no real risk of war. Ring it too loudly and you could, by raising Communist fears, actually bring on an actual war. And if the Congress and the country really began to believe that war was likely, they might conclude there wasn't enough money in the budget to finance the Marshall Plan _and_ the military so the Marshall Plan, Truman's pet project, would probably be cut back or scrapped completely.
And of course it was another of those morally sticky situations. While a lot of good reasons could be given to defend the war scare, it was in the end a ploy, an extremely manipulative ploy—and wholly unprecedented. Never before had a president rung the bell of war in the absence of war. It was, of course, an extremely effective way to take control of events. But once the administration had begun to ring the bell there was the danger that others would start ringing it, too, and then keep ringing it for their own reasons. And there might be no way to stop it from ringing. Even if war itself did not come about, other events associated with war might, such as the repression of civil liberties.
And soon civil liberties _were_ being repressed. The war scare could not be held solely responsible for the repression that was to come, for McCarthyism, for the hearings held by the House Un-American Activities Committee, for the Red-baiting that was to help Richard Nixon win a seat in the United States Senate in 1950. These were the result of the general Cold War crisis, not the war scare of 1948. In March 1947, one full year earlier, President Truman had signed the nation's first Loyalty Act, which authorized investigators to crack down on suspected subversives working for the federal government. But the war scare would contribute to the repression, further legitimize it.
The climax of the war scare came on Saint Patrick's Day, 1948, when President Truman addressed a joint session of Congress. To thunderous applause he demanded action to defend the United States from unnamed countries that, by their actions, had showed that they were utterly untrustworthy. The president did not say war was imminent; he didn't have to. Merely to address a joint session of Congress was to underline the seriousness of the situation. And of course the speech went over beautifully. By shrewdly wrapping himself in the flag, his cause became the American cause. To be against Truman was almost to be against the country.
Having raised the specter of war the administration quickly back-pedaled, fearful that the country might actually think war _was_ imminent. But officials handled things just right. By the end of the year the Selective Service System had been reinstituted, the military budget had been increased dramatically (the budget for airplane production alone upped by a third), and the Marshall Plan was approved. A stunning string of successes, especially given Truman's low standing in the polls and the general hostility of the Republican Congress to Truman and the Democrats.
In the fall Truman won his bid to be elected president in his own right. It wasn't only because of the war scare or even mainly because of it that he won. There were many many factors: the Cold War crisis atmosphere in general, Truman's feisty performance on the campaign trail, the willingness of the Democrats to run against Herbert Hoover yet again, the lackluster performance of the overconfident Republican candidate, Thomas Dewey. But the war scare helped.
Truman would face, in his remaining years in office, many crises. In 1949 the Soviets would explode their first atomic bomb, three years earlier than American experts had predicted, which was a shock, and led to a new round of Red-baiting. The government was not, as it happened, filled with spies, but there _were_ spies, and they did in fact help the Soviets steal America's technical plans for the bomb. Late in 1949 China turned Communist. Then in 1950 North Korea invaded South Korea.
As events crashed down on his head, one after another, like avalanches, Truman struggled to avoid being buried and was barely able to. The Soviets said history was on their side, and sometimes it almost seemed that it was. Which prompted Truman, as ambitious as ever to control events, to take extraordinary measures. To back the use of Mafia and Corsican thugs to break Communist-led strikes in France. To allow former Nazis into the United States to undertake rocket research. To wage war in Korea without first obtaining a declaration of war from Congress—all in all an astounding record, but from Truman's perspective, totally defensible.
The Cold War presidents who followed Harry Truman faced situations every bit as difficult as he did. They weren't the same situations. For the nature of the conflict with the Communists changed as people slowly realized that Communism wasn't monolithic, that the Soviets and the Chinese did not coordinate their military strategy, that both were often driven more by nationalism than ideology. And it particularly changed after the Soviets began building bombs at a rapid clip. Then the balance of power shifted considerably; once both sides had nuclear weapons, using them became unthinkable. If we tried to blow them up, they could blow us up, which in a way contributed to international stability. But the situations remained similar and drove presidents to use extraordinary means—just as Truman had—to gain control.
Dwight Eisenhower arrived on the national political stage a far more powerful figure than Truman did. He after all had orchestrated the victory in Europe, including the most sensational of all our battlefield victories, the invasion of Normandy. Even _he_ had to take extraordinary measures to gain control.
Like Truman, Ike was a midwestern farm boy. And like Truman, he flowered in the army, using appointment to West Point to work his way quickly up the military ladder. He didn't crush his competitors on the way up. He didn't need to. He was so bright, so quick, so easygoing, that his superiors naturally advanced him quickly, promoting Ike to captain. Then, however, his career stalled. Because there weren't any wars to fight, the army stopped handing out promotions. So Ike returned to school, enrolling in the Army General Staff School in Leavenworth, Kansas, to get the advantage of an advanced degree in the expectation that that might somehow help bring him attention. He graduated first in his class.
He then used his personal charm to secure a string of appointments with the most powerful officers in the army, early on becoming a top aide to Douglas Mac Arthur. (Ike's specialty: speech writing, which was ironic in light of his own celebrated inarticulateness. Actually, Ike could be highly articulate when he wanted to. It's just that it often suited his purposes to be inarticulate, as on occasions when he wanted to obfuscate his position.)
When the United States went to war against Hitler, George Marshall was expected to take over American operations in Europe. But Roosevelt insisted on keeping Marshall in Washington. And Marshall picked Ike.
It turned out to be one of the best decisions Marshall ever made. For Eisenhower not only had a strong strategic sense but enormous political skills. He alone among American commanders was capable of controlling the cocky British field marshal Bernard Montgomery. "I have his personal equation," Ike told Marshall, "and have no lack of confidence in my ability to handle him."
It was a measure of his enormous ambition that he was willing to put up with Montgomery's foolishness, his incessant squabbling. For Ike, despite his charming demeanor, had an enormous temper. Friends referred to it as a Bessemer furnace, one aide reporting that Ike blew up every fifteen minutes or so. But losing his temper with Montgomery would have been counterproductive, turning a potential ally into a certain enemy. So Ike simply made sure he never lost his temper with Montgomery.
After the war nearly everybody* wanted him to run for president, both the Democrats and the Republicans. Ike was deluded into thinking he might get both parties' support. When it became clear he wouldn't, he became a Republican, naively expecting in 1952 to be nominated by acclamation. Unfortunately, between him and his goal stood Robert Taft. And Taft was a huge presence in the party. Son of a president and a man who himself expected to be president. And a hero of the conservatives.
Ike took him on, portraying Taft to the world as a political dinosaur.
The general's most effective blow came as the convention was getting underway. Taft's people, worried that Taft didn't come across well on television, demanded that television coverage of the convention be limited. Ike let out a public wail that got the attention of the whole country. _Bob Taft,_ said the general who had defended freedom in Europe in World War II, _is limiting the freedom of Americans here at home. That isn't right. The cameras should be allowed in to broadcast everything so that the American people can see the candidates for themselves and decide who they favor._ It wasn't a fair attack. It overstated things. But Ike went with it.
During the high-pressure days that followed Ike authorized his managers to offer key Republicans the control of patronage in their states in exchange for their support. He even promised to name the governor of Pennsylvania to the cabinet if the governor helped firm up support in the state's delegation. Taft also played hard, also made patronage promises. But Ike played harder. Ike won.
The biggest headache Eisenhower faced in the general election was what to do about Joseph McCarthy, the Republican senator from Wisconsin. Ike detested McCarthy. In his diary, in an entry on March 13, 1951, he had noted that McCarthy reportedly was digging up "dirt with which to smear me if I run for president." But in 1952 McCarthy was at the height of his power, and Ike didn't want to alienate him. Nothing McCarthy did could get Ike to change his mind, not even when the senator took on George Marshall, questioning Marshall's patriotism. Ike let the attack on his mentor go unchallenged. A short time afterward Eisenhower even agreed to campaign with McCarthy. It was a morally offensive thing to do and disappointed a lot of people. But Ike wanted to win. If he had to hold hands with Joe McCarthy, he'd do _that_ to win.
The marvelous thing about Eisenhower was that he could get away with it because he had been a hero and because he had that great, winning smile. The hero status, the big grin, hid who he really was, hid his ambition, hid his drive. And yet it was his drive that was his most important quality.
Three months after he became president came a day on which he demonstrated his drive amply. It was Thursday, April 16, 1953, and Ike was in Georgia on a little golfing vacation. But he had to interrupt his respite to give a speech and appear at some events. It was to be a terribly trying day. First he had to fly up to Washington, then give his speech, then take part in a limousine caravan, then throw out the first ball at the season-opening game of the American League, then fly down to Charlotte, North Carolina, then make an eighty-mile drive to Salisbury to attend a county celebration and make another speech, then finally fly back to Georgia.
That morning, however, he woke up in terrible pain. Nothing the doctor did could relieve the pain. On the flight up north it got worse and worse. But Ike went through with his schedule pretending nothing was wrong, even though when he gave his first speech he had to hold the lectern to keep from falling over. At the end of the day, back in Georgia, he collapsed, his wife, Mamie worrying that he "really was sick—we were really concerned about him." She was right to be concerned. It turned out he'd probably suffered a heart attack that morning.
Why hadn't he simply stayed put once he'd realized he was ill? He had a variety of reasons. He didn't want people thinking he was too old to be president. He didn't want people speculating about his ability to finish his term. And he very much wanted to give that first speech. It was a big speech, to be broadcast live nationally, and he was going to use it to settle once and for all a nasty turf battle between himself and Secretary of State John Foster Dulles over the control and direction of the government's foreign policy. Ike wanted to commit the United States to a policy of world disarmament, negotiation, and peace, and Dulles did not. Just a few days earlier Ike had exploded in rage at Dulles's opposition. "All right, then," he had said. "If Mr. Dulles and all his sophisticated advisers really mean they can _not_ talk peace seriously, then I am in the wrong pew. For if it's _war_ we should be talking about, I _know_ the people to give me advice on that—and they're not in the State Department. Now either we cut out all this fooling around and make a serious bid for peace—or we forget the whole thing."
So he gave the speech and went on with all the other events as well. But he was wretched all day long. In his memoirs he recalled that that day was "one of the most miserable" of his entire life.
At the end of the day his press spokesman told the media that Ike was suffering from food poisoning. Nobody really knew what he was suffering from. The heart attack diagnosis wasn't made until years later. But the very fact that Ike sent out his spokesman to downplay his health problems was telling. Ike was perfectly willing to mislead people about his health if need be. In 1949 he'd suffered a heart attack and never revealed it; he knew it might very well prevent his being elected president.
He succeeded in quickly ending the Korean War, but the Cold War was a source of continuing crises. And just as Truman had, Ike stretched his presidential authority in an attempt to gain control over them, perhaps most spectacularly in 1958. That year, without congressional authorization, he rushed fourteen thousand marines to Lebanon to forestall a Communist takeover. Later, when Fidel Castro came to power in Cuba, the administration had the CIA consider ways to assassinate him.
* * *
_After Eisenhower come the presidents on our side of the line that divides American history, that imaginary and misleading line that supposedly divides the unambitious presidents from the ambitious ones. Because the media have so relentlessly worked over the ambitiousness of these leaders it is unnecessary to do so here. But it may be worthwhile to sketch in some of the larger forces at work in the society, which shaped the way these men exercised power._
_First and most important of these forces was, until the time of Bill Clinton, the Cold War._
* * *
John Kennedy was committed to fighting the Cold War ruthlessly. It was he who created the Green Berets in an attempt to deter the Communist revolutions then breaking out throughout the Third World. Repeatedly during his brief three years in office he resorted to whatever means he thought necessary to defeat Communism. In 1961 he secretly authorized a rogue force of Cuban exiles trained by the American military to invade Cuba and topple Fidel Castro. In 1962 he engaged in a high-stakes poker game with the Soviet Union in Cuba that could have ended in nuclear war; in the end he happened to choose the right policy, but for thirteen days, thirteen frightening days for those who knew what was going on, Kennedy played God as no president before him had ever had to, not even Truman, deciding on a policy that could have ended in nuclear holocaust without so much as a single town meeting to let people know how their fate was being decided. Like Truman, Kennedy played God well, it was generally believed, but who wanted a president playing God at all?
It wasn't always clear that the presidents themselves knew what their own administrations were up to, but that was part of the legacy of the Cold War. To win it the government had to become so big, the military-industrial complex so... complex, that presidents no longer could know all that was being done in their name. To this day it is still disputed whether Kennedy knew about the army and CIA assassination plots against Castro—the use of Mafia hit men, poison pens, even a poisoned scuba suit (which was to be given to Castro as a gift). Probably he knew something of these plans; recently declassified documents show that in the spring of 1962 his own Joint Chiefs of Staff endorsed as "suitable for planning purposes" a broad range of assassination schemes in addition to other "dirty tricks" intended to undermine the Cuban government. (One particularly heinous plot, nicknamed Operation Bingo, involved staging a fake attack on the American forces stationed at Guantanamo Bay to give the United States an excuse for launching a military assault on Havana.) It's likely that if he did not know, it was because he did not want to know. Presidents during the Cold War were careful to maintain "plausible deniability," so they wouldn't have to lie blatantly about their involvement in nefarious undertakings in the event that these ever became public.
Lyndon Johnson by nature was untroubled by lying. As his biographer Robert Caro has amply demonstrated, he almost enjoyed it, and he'd engaged in prevarication for decades; in college he'd been known as "Bullshit Johnson" because of his lies. If it suited his purposes, suited his ambitions, he lied. So he probably would have lied as president even without Vietnam. But Vietnam turned him into a master liar, the greatest liar in American presidential history. Unable to win the war, unable to say for sure it could be won, but damned eager to persuade Americans that he had adopted the right policy, the prudent policy, he began to lie about our prospects, and to lie so often and to such an extent that eventually no one knew when he was telling the truth.
When he and the military leaders proclaimed the Tet Offensive in 1968 a defeat for the Vietnamese Communists, even though the Vietcong had actually been able to penetrate Saigon's defenses and had even broken through to the American Embassy there, he lost all credibility. It might have been true, as some historians insist today, that Tet was a defeat for the Vietcong, but by then nobody could trust Lyndon Johnson to tell the truth even if he were telling it. The "credibility gap" was simply too vast to be bridged.
Just as Vietnam was a result of the Cold War, so was Watergate in a way. It wasn't that Vietnam and Watergate were inevitable. They weren't. To a very great extent they reflected the weaknesses of the particular men who happened to be serving as president at the time. Without a Johnson, there might not have been a Vietnam; without a Nixon, there almost certainly wouldn't have been a Watergate. But both disasters were directly linked to the Cold War. Without the Cold War neither Vietnam nor Watergate would have been possible.
Nixon, like Johnson, of course, was seriously flawed, a politician who always looked like a cartoonist's idea of a politician—shifty eyes, perspiring lip, insincere smile. An introvert in an extrovert's profession, but so ambitious to be president that he was willing to reinvent himself, to pretend to be an extrovert. He was who he was, calculating and shrewd and untrustworthy, willing to fire off the most sensational accusations if it would help his career: that Jerry Voorhis, his opponent in his first race for Congress, voted the Communist line; that Helen Gahagan Douglas, his opponent in his race for the Senate, was the "pink lady" of American politics; that Truman was a traitor to his party.
So Nixon was disposed to political deviltry. In a way, it was his deviltry that made him almost inevitable in the Cold War. He seemed to reflect all the evil that the war brought out in Americans, the snooping into people's private lives, the leveling of vicious smears, the mindless belief that America was always right and everybody else always wrong. Without the Cold War a Richard Nixon would have been impossible. He lived off people's fears, knew how to exploit them as no other politician in the era did save Joe McCarthy (who lacked Nixon's intelligence and restraint).
It was considered remarkable that he was able to stage a comeback after losing both the presidency and the governorship of California. But the times favored him. After Vietnam went sour and the country began to come apart, demonstrators taking over the universities and even in a way the White House itself, shouting so loud and so often— _Hey, hey, hey, LBJ, how many kids did you kill today_ —that Johnson, sitting in the Oval Office, could literally hear their chants, driving him nuts, Nixon suddenly became desirable, a symbol of harshness and order. He pretended to be smooth and almost soft, chattering endlessly about the need to bring the country together, but everybody knew what Nixon was: He was the man who would stop the nonsense, the tough son of a bitch who would throw the demonstrators in jail and take America back. Just as in the fifties he had been the respectable man's Joe McCarthy, in the sixties he was the respectable man's George Wallace.
The fact was the country _was_ falling apart. Nixon was right about that. It wasn't just Vietnam. It was also the civil rights movement, which inspired blacks to demand power, which put a further strain on the system. More than at any other time in American history save for the Civil War, things were out of control. Nixon was determined to retake the streets, to retake control of America, and to do it any way he could. Which led to the plan to break into the office of the psychiatrist of Daniel Ellsberg, the antiwar intellectual who leaked the Pentagon Papers to the _New York Times._ Which led to the creation of the Plumbers, who were needed to plug damaging leaks in the government. Which led to the plan to firebomb the Brookings Institution, a bastion of liberalism. By the third year of the administration Nixon was on the defensive, convinced that people were out to get him: the Jews in the IRS, the liberals in the media, the Harvards. Which led to the "enemies list."
Nixon's response to the events unfolding in the country was, of course, morally offensive. But it was, given who he was and what was happening, not altogether incomprehensible. And given his ambitious drive to keep power, it was as inevitable as anything in history ever is.
That Nixon's men, in the summer of 1972, would think nothing of ordering a break-in at the Democratic national headquarters at Watergate was, given all this, hardly surprising or shocking. It was almost the natural outgrowth of all that had gone before.
Two years later, as the Nixon administration began falling apart along with the country, people began wondering why he simply didn't write off the Watergate burglars, letting them twist slowly in the wind, in John Ehrlichman's choice phrase. The answer was simple. He couldn't without worrying that all the other crimes would become public, the crimes that had been inspired by Vietnam, inspired by the Cold War. For some of the very same people who were caught breaking into Watergate had been used in the break-in of Ellsberg's psychiatrist's office. And the high officials who had authorized the Watergate break-in earlier had authorized the Ellsberg break-in. And they were the same people who had considered firebombing the Brookings Institution. So it was all connected. If one or two people went down, the whole ship would sink.
So Nixon covered up and covered up and covered up some more.
He tried every trick in the book to hang onto power, even tried using television's great force to hang on as he had used it in 1952 in the "Checkers speech." But television no longer was his friend. As Lyndon Johnson had discovered, it could work against you as easily as it could work for you. While it made the president human, brought him closer to the people, it also shone an unrelenting spotlight on his weaknesses. Once upon a time a president's weaknesses could be hidden. Now they no longer could. Now because of all the lies and tricks and deceitfulness journalists no longer trusted presidents. And after the presidents lost the journalists, they lost the people, too.
Things did not necessarily have to turn out this way. If there had been no Cold War, no bomb. If governing hadn't gotten so damned complicated that presidents felt driven to take extraordinary measures to maintain American security. If the world had just remained the simple place it once had been—then there wouldn't have been a Vietnam, wouldn't have been a Watergate. Presidents, ambitious as they were, wouldn't have done some of the outrageous things they had done. But there _was_ a Cold War, there _was_ the bomb. And they did do those things. And the country was never the same again.
Once the Cold War ended, controlling things did become easier for presidents. But that didn't necessarily mean they stopped being manipulative. Politics is a school for scandal, each generation of politicians passing onto the next the tricks of the trade. Once a trick was learned it was never forgotten.
*Everybody, that is, except for his son and a brother. They were against his running. Ike ignored their objections.
# Conclusion
At the outset of our era there had been no warning of what was to come. As John Kennedy looked out over the crowd that gathered for his inauguration on that bright clear cold day in January 1961, summoning citizens to ask not what their country could do for them but what they could do for their country, Americans wondered in awe at their great good fortune in their selection of presidents. Then, in short order, Lyndon Johnson lied about the Vietnam War, Richard Nixon covered up Watergate, and Kennedy was posthumously exposed as a philandering liar who'd possibly used mob connections to achieve victory in Illinois.
They and their successors had an astonishingly rich variety of flaws. But one failing in particular seemed common to nearly all of them: They were too damn ambitious, too willing to do anything to gain power, to keep power, and to get things done. If they had to over-promise to win, they overpromised. If they had to lie, most of them lied. If they had to manipulate, they manipulated. Democrat, Republican, liberal, conservative—it didn't matter. They all seemed to behave about the same way. By the 1990s Americans were fed up.
Cynicism did not come naturally to Americans. Americans are believers. Even after Vietnam and Watergate they desperately wanted to continue believing. When Ronald Reagan promised he could cut taxes, increase defense spending, and balance the budget simultaneously, they believed. David Stockman, Reagan's own budget wizard, told people it couldn't be done. They still believed. In 1984, after four years of Reagan, the facts were in: It could not be done. Still believing, they reelected Reagan anyway. Four years after that they elected George Bush, who promised, "Read my lips. No new taxes"—and believed _him._
In the 1990s Americans stopped believing. It was a decisive turning point.
George Bush promised he wouldn't raise taxes. He raised them. Bill Clinton promised he would reform welfare without hurting the poor. He signed the Republican welfare bill even though his own people admitted it _would_ hurt the poor.* Bush and Clinton hadn't gone beyond the others. Lyndon Johnson and Richard Nixon had both told bigger lies. But a generation of lying—and getting caught at lying by the media—had finally taken its toll. The jig was up.
Clearly something had gone wrong, but what, exactly? Some pundits believed that the moral character of the presidents had declined. This, surprisingly, was the view of Richard Nixon, whose own character was so often questioned. "You know," he commented to his assistant Monica Crowley in 1993, "politics has really gone down the tubes since 1960, and frankly it's not much fun to watch. Maybe it's because the characters involved are weak on either the personal or political side—or both. I don't know I ran in '68 and '72, so I guess that applies to me too. It just seems that good candidates aren't running anymore. It's better not to run anyone at all than a turkey. The top offices in this country require better."
Others took a broader view of things. It wasn't the moral character of the presidents that was declining, it was society. America was becoming corrupt, the feeling of community dying. In its place a selfish individualism was taking hold. In ruthlessly pursuing their own individual ambitions, the presidents were merely reflecting the rampaging individualism of the society at large.
When the historians were asked whether there really was a decline, they almost always said that there wasn't, that you could find examples of presidential duplicity and manipulativeness going back to the first days of the Republic. On the op-ed pages they reminded Americans of their presidents' not-so-noble history: how John Adams had used the Alien and Sedition Acts to go after his political enemies; how James K. Polk had lied about the circumstances leading up to the Mexican War in order to fool the country into thinking the Mexicans had made an unprovoked attack; how Warren Harding had concealed malfeasance during the Teapot Dome scandal. All of which was true. And all of which pointed to ambitiousness as a continuing problem in American history. It seemed that some politicians had always been too ambitious for the country's good. If they wanted something badly enough, they lied or cheated to get it.
But the historians misled. Politics really _had_ changed. Things weren't about the same as always. They _had_ gotten worse. The fact was they had been getting worse all the time. If you looked carefully at American history you could see a clear pattern of decline. Instead of things getting better and better over time, as Americans liked to fantasize, they had gotten worse and worse, almost as if a reverse law of progress were in operation.
In the late 1790s presidents had begun playing politics with national security; in the early 1800s compromising their principles; in the 1820s bargaining for the presidency; in the 1830s packaging themselves like soap; in the 1840s lying; in the 1850s countenancing bribery; in the 1870s tolerating corruption; in the 1880s pandering to immigrants and stealing votes; in the 1890s manipulating the press; in the early 1900s exploiting their families; in the 1910s exploiting the fear of communism; in the 1930s abusing the Internal Revenue Service to go after their political enemies; in the 1940s creating war scares; in the 1950s regularly sending troops into war zones without congressional approval; in the 1960s plotting the assassination of foreign heads of state; in the 1970s concealing their own malfeasance; and in the 1980s manipulating public opinion through elaborately staged events for television.
To be sure, the pattern of decline wasn't relentlessly downward. Corrupt bosses no longer controlled the political process. Wall Street no longer dominated the parties. Vote stealing was now rare. And from time to time a truly moral figure had become president and conducted himself in a truly moral way, leading many to conclude that the moral tone of the presidency depended mainly on the character of the person who happened to be holding the office, a Nixon conducting himself badly, a Carter reasonably well. And to a certain extent, that had been the case.
But by focusing on the individual alone people had missed the underlying pattern of reverse progress evident in the way most presidents played politics—missed the fact that the system over time had become more and more politically promiscuous, ever more tolerant of a wider and wider range of unseemly presidential behavior.
What had driven politics downward? It wasn't that the character of the presidents had declined. It was more impersonal and complicated than that. It was history that was responsible, change—the stupendous transformation of the United States from the insignificant, small, largely rural, largely eastern-coastal country that once was, into the bulging colossus of fifty states in the throes of post-industrialism that had come to be. As the country became more complex, governing and politics also became more complex, making it harder for national politicians to acquire and maintain control.
It simply was harder to control a country of more than a quarter billion than one of four million, harder to control a nation made up of people of many backgrounds than those of mainly one, harder to control a nation that was urban than one that was rural. And the harder maintaining their control became, the more desperate presidents became, forcing them to take increasingly desperate measures to reassert their control.
First of the great changes to transform the nation was the birth of the two-party system. Then, in dizzying succession, came the suffrage explosion, manifest destiny, the crisis over slavery, industrial capitalism, machine politics, immigration, the revolution in mass communications, the arrival of the United States on the world stage, the Great Depression, the Cold War, the bomb, and television, among others. With each new change a new low was often reached, a threshold crossed that previous presidents wouldn't have dreamed of crossing, circumstances drawing them further and further away from the high standards set by George Washington.
We are taught to be suspicious of people who are ambitious for power. But without their ambition presidents could never face the forces of history head-on, wrestling with them for control, eventually adapting to them in certain ways, and sometimes modifying and influencing them. So ambition, while dangerous, is also essential.
We like to pretend that normal people should be elected president. People, that is, with a normal amount of ambition. But normal people don't have what it takes—that extraordinary drive to succeed.
*Dick Morris, Clinton's erstwhile media guru, told him if he signed the Republican welfare bill he'd win the 1996 election by fifteen points; if he refused, he'd lose by three. Hillary Clinton explained: "We have to do what we have to do, and hope our friends understand." Dick Morris, Behind the Oval Office (1997), p. 298.
# Notes
The pagination of this electronic edition does not match the edition from which it was created. To locate a specific passage, please use the search feature of your e-book reader.
The chapters on Washington, Jackson, and Lincoln reflect my own research over the years in their personal and official papers. I am particularly familiar with Old Hickory's correspondence; in the 1970s I spend a pleasant year working as a low-level assistant researcher on the Jackson Papers Project, located at the Hermitage in Nashville. It was my duty to try to decipher Jackson's handwriting, which was a bad as his spelling. The chapters on the other presidents are based mainly on scholarly biographies and histories written over the last half century. But I also found myself turning frequently to James D. Richardson's _Messages and Papers of the Presidents_ (1897–1917), an indispensable collection of the official papers of the presidents from Washington through Wilson. Of particular usefulness is the two-volume index, which amounts to an almanac of American history. Finally, I want to acknowledge the tremendous benefit I derived from reading the American Presidency Series published by the University Press of Kansas, which includes one-volume biographies of about two dozen presidents.
_Introduction_
. _Jeff C. Young, The Fathers of American Presidents (1997); Doris Faber, The Presidents' Mothers (1978); William J. Hampton, Our Presidents and Their Mothers (1922)._
. This conclusion is based on my own examination of the biographies of the presidents. See also Edward Pessen, _The Log Cabin Myth_ (1984), and Hugh Brogan and Charles Mosley, eds., _American Presidential Families_ (1993).
. In the off-year election of 1902, during the administration of Republican Teddy Roosevelt, the Republicans increased their majorities in both the House and the Senate, but the increase was due wholly to the admission of two new states.
_Prelude_
. _Forrest McDonald, The Presidency of George Washington (1974), p. 27._
. James Thomas Flexner, _George Washington and the New Nation_ (1970), pp. 212, 245, 268; Ralph Adams Brown, _The Presidency of John Adams_ (1975), p. 134.
. Noble E. Cunningham, Jr., _The Presidency of James Monroe_ (1996), pp. 22–23.
. _Flexner, George Washington and the New Nation, pp. 195–98, 203._
_Chapter 1. In the Garden of Eden_
1.James D. Richardson, ed., _Messages and Papers of the Presidents_ (1897–1917), vol. l, pp. 34–35.
2. _Bernhard Knollenberg, George Washington: The Virginia Period, 1732–1775 (1964), chap. 14._
3.Douglass Adair, _Fame and the Founding Fathers_ (1974), chap. 1.
4.Garry Wills, _Cincinnatus_ (1984), especially chap. 1.
5. _Forrest McDonald, The Presidency of George Washington (1974), pp. 82–88._
6.McDonald, _Washington, pp._ 177, 184.
7.All believed that parties were evil. But some, including Madison, believed it was impossible to do away with them altogether. See _Congressional Quarterly, Selecting the President_ (1996), p. 3.
8.On Washington's use of power see Wills, _Cincinnatus._
9.Carl Anthony, _First Ladies_ (1990), vol. 1, pp. 128, 147.
_Chapter 2. The Birth of the Two-Party System_
. Ralph Adams Brown, _The Presidency of John Adams_ (1975), pp. 14–19.
. Federalists, who had been tipped off to the contents of the XYZ correspondence, were eager to see it opened for public perusal. "We wish much for the papers if they can with propriety be made public," wrote Boston Federalist Jonathan Mason. "The Jacobins want them. And in the name of God let them be gratified; it is not the first time they have wished for the means of their destruction." Quoted in Page Smith, _John Adams_ (1962), vol. 2, p. 959.
. Brown, _Adams,_ pp. 157–58.
. James Morton Smith, _Freedom's Fetters_ (1956), p. 270; Brown, _Adams,_ pp. 123ff.
. Brown, _Adams,_ p. 199.
. Nathan Schachner, _Thomas Jefferson_ (1951), vol. 2, chap. 46; Merrill D. Peterson, _Thomas Jefferson and the New Nation_ (1970), pp. 651ff.
. Wilfred E. Binkley, _The Man in the White House_ (1958), pp. 100–101.
. Ibid., pp. 99–102.
. _C. Vann Woodward, ed., Responses of the Presidents to Charges of Misconduct (1974), pp. 39–40._
. Leonard Levy, _Jefferson and Civil Liberties_ (1963), chap. 3.
. Henry Adams, _History of the United States of America_ (1889–91), vol. 1, chap. 14; vol. 2, chap. 2.
. _Peterson, Thomas Jefferson and the New Nation, pp. 748–86._
. _Woodward, Responses of the Presidents, pp. 37–39._
. Irving G. Williams, _The Rise of the Vice Presidency_ (1956), chap. 4.
_Chapter 3. The Revolution in the Suffrage_
. Sam B. Smith, ed. _The Papers of Andrew Jackson_ (1980), vol. 1, p. 74.
. Thomas A. Bailey, _Presidential Greatness_ (1966), p. 163.
. Noble E. Cunningham, Jr., _The Presidency of James Monroe_ (1996), pp. 31–35.
. Andrew Jackson, letter to Willie Blount, January 25, 1812, National Archives, Washington D.C.; James Parton, _Life of Andrew Jackson_ , vol. 1, pp. 349–60.
. _Robert Remini, Andrew Jackson and the Course of American Freedom, 1822–1832 (1981), pp. 88–94; Samuel Flagg Bemis, John Quincy Adams and the Union (1956), vol. 2, p. 43._
. Bemis, _Adams_ , vol. 2, pp. 18–19; Albert Somit, "Andrew Jackson: Legend and Reality," _Tennessee Historical Quarterly_ (Dec. 1948), pp. 291–313; John William Ward, _Andrew Jackson: Symbol for an Age_ (1955), pp. 83–86; Irving G. Williams, _The Rise of the Vice Presidency_ (1956), p. 38.
. Lucius Wilmerding, Jr., _James Monroe: Public Claimant_ (1960), esp. pp. 82–84.
. _Bemis, Adams, vol. 2, p. 77; Remini, Jackson and the Course of American Freedom, p. 110._
. _Remini, Jackson and the Course of American Freedom, p. 132._
. _C. Vann Woodward, ed., Responses of the Presidents to Charges of Misconduct (1974), p. 58; Remini, Jackson and the Course of American Freedom, pp. 133–34; Bemis,_ Adams, _vol. 2, p. 141._
. _Remini, Jackson and the Course of American Freedom, p. 7._
. _Woodward, Responses of the Presidents, pp. 61–62._
. _Donald B. Cole, Martin Van Buren and the American Political System (1984)._
. _Williams, Rise of the Vice Presidency, p. 43._
. Cole, _Martin Van Buren_ , p. 353.
. Robert Allen Rutland, _The Presidency of James Madison_ (1990), pp. 134–35; Oliver Chitwood, _John Tyler_ (1939).
. Holman Hamilton, _White House Images and Reality_ (1958), p. 63.
. Gil Troy, _See How They Ran_ (1996), pp. 22–25.
_Chapter 4. Manifest Destiny_
1. _Charles G. Sellers, James K. Polk: Jacksonian (1957); Sellers, James K. Polk: Continentalist (1966); Thomas A. Bailey, Presidential Saints and Sinners (1981), pp. 64–68; Frederick Merk, Manifest Destiny and Mission in American History (1966); Albert K. Weinberg, Manifest Destiny (1935).
_
_Chapter 5. The Story of Franklin Pierce_
. This chapter is based mainly on Roy Franklin Nichols, _Franklin Pierce: Young Hickory of the Granite Hills_ (1958). I also consulted the Pierce Papers at the Library of Congress.
_Chapter 6. The Slavery Crisis_
. The main facts about Buchanan's life are drawn chiefly from: Philip S. Klein, _President James Buchanan_ (1962); George Ticknor Curtis, _Life of James Buchanan_ (1883), vols. 1 and 2.
. Charles G. Sellers, _James K. Polk: Continentalist_ (1966), p. 34.
. Elbert Smith, _The Presidency of James Buchanan_ (1975), chap. 4.
. These statistics are drawn from the charts published in Richard Morris, ed., _The Encyclopedia of American History_ (1970); Richard Hofstadter, _The Age of Reform_ (1956), p. 23.
. David E. Meerse, "Buchanan, Corruption and the Election of 1860," _Civil War History_ 12 (June 1960), pp. 116–31.
. Allan Nevins, _The Emergence of Lincoln_ (1950), vols. 1 and 2.
. _C. Vann Woodward, ed. Responses of the Presidents to Charges of Misconduct, (1974), p. 99._
. U.S. House, _Covode Investigation_ , H. Report No. 648, 35th Congress, 1st sess., June 16, 1860.
. On Polk, see Woodward, _Responses of the Presidents_ , pp. 83–84.
_Chapter 7. The Story of Abraham Lincoln_
. In preparing this chapter I have relied primarily on the source documents included in Roy Basler, ed., _The Collected Works of Abraham Lincoln_ (1953–55), especially vols. 1 and 2. I have also made extensive use of Benjamin Thomas, ed., _Lincoln: 1847–1853: Being the Day-by-Day Activities_ (1936). Three biographies proved essential: David Donald, _Lincoln_ (1995), Stephen Oates, _With Malice Toward None_ (1977), Benjamin Thomas, _Abraham Lincoln_ (1952). On Lincoln's early years as a boy and young politician I consulted Benjamin Thomas, _Lincoln's New Salem_ (1954), Donald Riddle, _Congressman Abraham Lincoln_ (1957), Paul Simon, _Lincoln's Preparation for Greatness_ (1965). On his life as a mature politician I consulted: Don Fehrenbacher, _Prelude to Greatness_ (1962), Harry Carman and Reinhard Luthin, _Lincoln and the Patronage_ (1943). Three books were helpful in dissecting the myths about Lincoln: Richard Current, _The Lincoln Nobody Knows_ (1958), Stephen Oates, _Abraham Lincoln: The Man Behind the Myths_ (1984), David Donald, _Lincoln Reconsidered_ (1961).
2.Arthur Schlesinger, Jr., _The Imperial Presidency_ (1974), p. 68.
_Chapter 8. The Birth of Industrial Capitalism_
. These statistics are drawn from the government's _Historical Statistics of the United States_ (1975), vols. 1 and 2.
. On the Monroe scandals see Robert Remini, _Andrew Jackson and the Course of American Freedom_ (1981), pp. 19, 399; on the rest see C. Vann Woodward, ed., _Responses of the Presidents to Charges of Misconduct_ (1974).
. Government salary statistics are conveniently listed in the index (under salaries) in James D. Richardson, ed., _Messages and Papers of the Presidents_ (1917).
. Michael Medved, _The Shadow Presidents_ (1979), pp. 39–52.
. Geoffrey Perret maintains that Grant disallowed grants of immunity because he saw no reason why the "small fry" should be allowed to go free. I believe this is a naive view. See Perret's _Ulysses S. Grant: Soldier and President_ (1997), chap. 30. For a more realistic view of Grant's role in the investigation, see William S. McFeely, _Grant: A Biography_ (1981), chap. 24. McFeely does not say what he believes Grant's motive was in withdrawing grants of immunity, but is convinced that in the affair Grant acted to protect Babcock.
After I finished writing this section of the book I happened to read Leonard Garment's _Crazy Rhythm_ (1997). On page 259 he explains that in 1973, when Richard Nixon was trying to undermine John Dean, John Ehrlichman suggested that Nixon should allow White House staffers to testify before the Watergate grand jury only on the condition that none would be eligible to receive immunity. Nixon immediately agreed. "If Dean did not have immunity," Garment writes, "Nixon and Ehrlichman reasoned, he would realize that sooner or later he faced criminal sanctions; his fate would then depend on Nixon's willingness to use presidential powers to lighten his sentence. Presumably Dean, frightened by this prospect, would be less likely to testify against Nixon to the grand jury."
Grant was not in the same position as Nixon. Grant wasn't worried that _his_ aide could implicate _him_ in a crime. But he was worried that Babcock's friends could implicate _him._ It was for that reason that Grant insisted that nobody receive immunity.
Dean, incidentally, testified in full without immunity anyway. When he found out from Garment that Nixon had personally insisted on eliminating immunity, "Dean reacted with a spasm of rage.... In short order he accelerated his conversations with the Watergate prosecutors and started spilling the beans."
. _Thomas C. Reeves, Gentleman Boss: The Life of Chester Alan Arthur (1975), pp. 51–56._
. Richard Hofstadter, _The American Political Tradition_ (1948), pp. 170–71.
. Allan Peskin, _Garfield_ (1978), pp. 362–63.
_Chapter 9. The Birth of Machine Politics_
. This chapter is mainly based on Harry Barnard, _Rutherford B. Hayes_ (1954); T. Harry Williams, ed., _Hayes: The Diary of a President: 1875–1881_ (1964); Claude Bowers, _The Tragic Era_ (1929); C. Vann Woodward, _Reunion and Reaction_ (1991).
_Chapter 10. The Story of Chester A. Arthur_
. This chapter is mainly based on Thomas C. Reeves, _Gentleman Boss: The Life of Chester Alan Arthur_ (1975); Leonard D. White, _The Republican Era: 1869–1901_ (1958), pp. 188–220.
_Chapter 11. The Arrival of the Immigrants_
. Allan Nevins, _Grover Cleveland_ (1932); James D. Richardson, ed., _Messages and Papers of the Presidents_ (1897–1917), pp. 5142–43.
. Charles G. Sellers, _James ?. Polk: Continentalist_ (1966), p. 158.
. Thomas A. Bailey, _Presidential Saints and Sinners_ (1981), pp. 269–70.
_Chapter 12. The Media_
. Allan Nevins, _Grover Cleveland_ (1932), pp. 523–48; Robert Ferrell, Ill- _Advised: Presidential Health and Public Trust_ (1992), pp. 3–11; Michael Medved, _The Shadow Presidents_ (1979), pp. 85–86; James D. Richardson, ed., _Messages and Papers of the Presidents_ (1897–1917), p. 5833.
. The following discussion of the media is based, in part, on James Pollard, _The Presidents and the Press_ (1947), and Edwin Emery and Michael Emery, _The Press and America_ (1984).
. Lewis L. Gould, _The Presidency of William McKinley_ (1980), chaps. 1, 3.
. Though the transformation was gradual, there actually was a specific date on which the change became official. It was April 24, 1897, the day the _Washington Star's_ William Price became the first designated White House reporter.
. Glyndon G. Van Deusen, _Horace Greeley_ (1953), p. 420.
. Albert Bigelow Paine, _Th. Nast: His Period and His Pictures_ (1904), pp. 318, 336.
. Lincoln Steffens, _The Autobiography of Lincoln Steffens_ (1931), pp. 285–91; Melville Landon, _Eli Perkins_ (1891), p. 24.
. David S. Barry, "News-Getting at the Capital," _Chautauquan Monthly_ 26 (Dec. 1897), pp. 282–86.
. _Thomas C. Reeves, Gentleman Boss: The Life of Chester Alan Arthur (1975), passim._
_Chapter 13. World Power: I_
. The facts about McKinley's life are mainly based on Margaret Leech, _In the Days of McKinley_ (1959).
. Albert K. Weinberg, _Manifest Destiny_ (1935); Theodore P. Greene, ed., _American Imperialism in 1898_ (1955).
. Allan Nevins, _Grover Cleveland_ (1932), chap. 30.
. Thomas A. Bailey, ed., _The American Spirit_ (2nd ed.; 1968), chap. 31.
. It used to be taught that Spain, on the eve of the war with the United States, had indeed given in to all of McKinley's demands. But historians now reject that viewpoint. See Lewis Gould, _The Presidency of William McKinley_ (1980); H. Wayne Morgan, _America's Road to Empire_ (1968).
. Arthur Schlesinger, Jr., _The Imperial Presidency_ (1974), chaps.1–4
_Chapter 14. World Power: II_
. David McCullough, _Mornings on Horseback_ (1981).
. _Edmund Morris, The Rise of Theodore Roosevelt (1979); Morton Keller, ed., Theodore Roosevelt: A Profile (1967); Henry Pringle, Theodore Roosevelt (1956)._
. _Lewis Gould, The Presidency of Theodore Roosevelt (1991)._
. Irving G. Williams, _The Rise of the Vice Presidency_ (1956), pp. 84–85.
. Gil Troy, _See How They Ran_ (1996), pp. 114, 121–22; Forrest McDonald, _The American Presidency_ (1994), p. 435; Gould, _Presidency of Theodore Roosevelt,_ pp. 20, 153–54.
_Chapter 15. World Power: III_
. The basic facts on Wilson's life are drawn from: August Heckscher, _Woodrow Wilson_ (1991); Kenneth Clements, _The Presidency of Woodrow Wilson_ (1992); Arthur S. Link, ed., _Woodrow Wilson: A Profile_ (1968); John A. Garraty, _Woodrow Wilson: A Great Life in Brief (_ 1956).
. David Kennedy, _Over Here_ (1980).
3. _Thomas A. Bailey, Woodrow Wilson and the Great Betrayal (1945)._
. Michael Medved, _The Shadow Presidents_ (1979), pp. 185–93.
. Robert Gilbert, _The Mortal Presidency_ (1992), chap. 2.
. Thomas A. Bailey, _Presidential Saints and Sinners_ (1981), pp. 203–4.
_Chapter 16. FDR: The Great Depression_
. David Halberstam, _The Powers That Be_ (1979), pp. 24–29.
. _Gene Smith, The Shattered Dream: Herbert Hoover and the Great Depression (1970)._
. The basic facts in this and the following chapter are drawn from Frank Freidel, _Franklin D. Roosevelt: A Rendezvous with Destiny_ (1990).
. T. Harry Williams, _Huey Long_ (1970).
. _Geoffrey Ward, Before the Trumpet: Young Franklin Roosevelt (1985)._
. _Robert Ferrell, Ill-Advised: Presidential Health and Public Trust (1992),_ p. 40.
_Chapter 17. FDR: World War II_
. Robert C. Butow, "The FDR Tapes," _American Heritage_ (Feb.-March 1982), pp. 18–19.
. _Robert Ferrell, Ill-Advised: Presidential Health and Public Trust (1992),_
p. 46.
. William Leuchtenburg, _In the Shadow of FDR_ (1983).
_Chapter 18. The Cold War_
. The facts in this chapter on Truman's background are mainly drawn from Alonzo Hamby, _Man of the People_ (1995).
. David McCullough, _Truman_ (1992); Daniel Yergin, "Harry Truman—Revived and Revised," _New York Times Magazine_ (Oct. 24, 1976), p. 83.
. _Frank Kofsky, Harry S. Truman and the War Scare of 1948: A Successful Campaign to Deceive the Nation (1995); Walter LaFeber, America, Russia and the Cold War (1985); Daniel Yergin, Shattered Peace: The Origins of the Cold War and the National Security State (1977). I should note that while I remain impressed with the facts in Kofsky's book, I do not share his perspective on the Cold War._
. Herbert Parmet, _Eisenhower and the American Crusades_ (1972), pp. 130–33; Fred Greenstein, _The Hidden-Hand Presidency_ (1982), chap. 5.
. Dwight Eisenhower, _Mandate for Change: 1953–55_ (1963), pp. 147–48; Robert Ferrell, _Ill-Advised: Presidential Health and Public Trust_ (1992), pp. 53–72; John Emmet Hughes, _The Ordeal of Power_ (1963), pp. 107–15; Parmet, _Eisenhower_ , p. 278; _New York Times_ (Apr. 17–22, 1953); Robert Gilbert, _The Mortal Presidency_ (1992). I should note that there is considerable disagreement about whether Ike actually had heart attacks in 1949 and 1953. Ike's physician always insisted that he did not, and for years no one rose to dispute him. Recently Ike's cardiologist in the White House, Dr. Tom Mattingly, reviewed Eisenhower's heart records and came to the conclusion that he probably had had a heart attack in 1949 and almost certainly did in 1953. Ferrell cites Mattingly approvingly, as does Gilbert, though Gilbert refers to the 1949 and 1953 episodes as "mystery" illnesses.
. _New York Times_ , November 19, 1997, p. A25.
. _Robert Caro, The Years of Lyndon Johnson: The Path to Power (1982), chap. 8._
. _Fawn Brodie, Richard Nixon: The Shaping of His Character (1981)._
_Conclusion_
. Monica Crowley, _Nixon Off the Record_ (1996), pp. 8–9.
# Index
The pagination of this electronic edition does not match the edition from which it was created. To locate a specific passage, please use the search feature of your e-book reader.
abolitionism, 132–35, 152, 196,
Adams, Abigail (wife of John Adams), xxviii, 17
Adams, Charles Francis, 23
Adams, Henry, 23
Adams, John Quincy, xiii, xiv, xvi, 23, 35,43–45,50, 76, 87, 171,228
Adams, John, xiii, xviii, xxvi, xxvii, 8, 16–24, 67, 280n, 336
ambition, 17–18,87
playing politics with national security, 18–20, 22, 277–78
Adams, Louisa (wife of John Quincy Adams), xvn Addison's disease, ? ?
Adet, Pierre, 18
African-Americans, 13, 60, 107, 140–41, 189n, 190–91, 196, 220n, 292, 299, 333
Alabama, 69, 102
Alaska, 263
alcoholism, 81–94, 174, 185
Alger, Russell, 245, 252
Alien and Sedition Acts, 19–21, 23, 218, 280n Alton, Illinois, 135–36
ambition, see presidents American Civil Liberties Union, 281
American Protective League, 280
American Revolution, xin, 2, 6, 42, 79, 83, 171, 183n Ames, Oakes, 179
Ananias Club, 264
Armstrong, Jack, 124–25
Arthur, Chester, xi, xiii, 12n, 191, 194–209, 229
ambition, 194–97, 205
attempts to save job as collector, 202–3
health, 233–35
runs for vice president, 203–8
Articles of Confederation, xxv, 6
assassinations, xxix, 259, 262, 265
assessments, 110, 167, 183, 191–92, 195, 198, 199, 206, 208n Astor, John Jacob, 47
Babcock, Orville, 175–78
Baker, Edward, 139, 143–47, 153, 161
Baldwin, Luther, 20
Baldwin, Roger, 281
Baltimore, 87, 92
Bank of the United States, 9, 35, 41, 54, 56, 63,66, 115, 170, 228
Battle of Bull Run, 166
Battle of Bunker Hill, 84
Battle of New Orleans, 61
Battle of the Thames, 62, 65
Bayard, James, 26–27
Bayard-Chamberlain Treaty, 221–22
Belknap, Robert, 178
Bennett, James Gordon, 230
Benton, Thomas Hart, 42, 56, 76
Biddle, Nicholas, 66, 170
Black Hawk War, 126, 148
Black, Hugo, 311
Black, Jeremiah, 111
Blaine, James G., 180, 186, 215–16
bomb, nuclear, xx, 318–20, 325–26, 330–31
Boston Massacre, 17
Boston, 6, 89, 159, 160, 193n, 220n, 282
Boxer Rebellion, 256
Breckenridge, John, 33
Brennan, William, xix Bright's disease, xv, 209, 233–34
Bristow, Benjamin, 176, 186
Brown, Aaron, 102–3
Brown, John, 105
Brownsville, Texas, 189n Bryan, William Jennings, 239, 274, 277
Buchanan, James, xiv, 76, 89–90, 95–120, 165, 171–72,217,218, 228
bribery investigation, 116–19
wedding plans, 97–100
Buena Vista, 76
Bunau-Varilla, Philippe Jean, 266–68
Burchard, Samuel, 215–16, 220, 221
Burr, Aaron, 24–28, 34, 35, 47, 60, 192
Burt, Silas, 199–200
Bush, George, xxi, 12n, 335
cabinet, xxvi, xxviii, 8, 30, 38, 48, 53–54,58, 62, 67, 72, 76, 171, 177, 178–79, 191,208,210n, 235,245–46, 282, 283, 313
Calhoun, John, 38, 53, 60, 135
California, 69, 71, 73, 74, 91n, 104, 188, 223,332
Callender, James, 14n, 31
Cameron, Simon, 172
Canada, 221–22, 259
Canada, 33
cancer, xv, 225, 236–41
Cannon, Joe, 245
cardiac disease, xv, 313, 329–30
Carter, Jimmy, xiii, xvi, 12n, Cartwright, Peter, 149
Cass, Lewis, 80, 87, 89–90
Castro, Fidel, 330–31
Catholics, 14
censure, 119
Chamberlin, Stephen, 323–24
Chicago, 115
China, 247, 256–58, 307, 322, 326
Chinese-Americans, 219–20, 224n, 265
Churchill, Winston, 305, 309, 312
civil liberties, see presidents Civil War, xin, 78, 165–68, 170, 174, 183–84, 185–86,216, 224n, 226, 228–29, 243,245,261, 279, 290
Clark, Champ, 209n, 275
Clay, Henry, 38, 43, 44, 48, 50, 56, 57, 62, 63, 64, 70, 77, 96, 104, 128, 135, 154, 156, 157,218
Clay, Lucius, 323–24
Cleveland, Grover, xiii, xvii, xviii, 168, 211–17, 221–24, 225–27, 229, 235–41, 242, 245, 248, 294, 296
ambition, 212–14, 227
health, 225–28, 235–41
Clifford, Clark, 322, 324
Clinton, Bill, xx, xxi, 336
Clinton, De Witt, 58
Clinton, George, 34–35, 60, 228n Cobb, Howell, 111, 112
Cold War, 320–37
Coleman, Ann, 97–100
Coleman, Robert, 97–98
Colfax, Schuyler, 179
Collector of New York Custom House, 55, 171, 178, 191, 194–203
Colombia, 246, 265–66
communism, 281, 319–21, 325–26, 330, 332
Compromise of 1850, 77, 90, 104
Congress of Panama, 49
Congress, relationship with presidents, xix, 7–8,21,23,26, 43,49, 56, 72, 75–76, 115, 168, 173, 180,
242, 246, 251,253,255,269, 270, 273, 288–89, 311, 325–26
Conkling, Roscoe, 191, 196–97, 204–5, 208
Constitution, 24–25, 29n, 33, 43, 46, 56, 119, 135, 173n, 295,297–98
Constitutional Convention, 17
Coolidge, Calvin, xvin, 282–83, 286, 301,309
Corbin, Abel Rathbone, 175
Cortelyou, George, 269
Coughlin, Father, 287, 294n court-packing plan, 297–98
Covode, John, 116–19
Cox, James, 300–301
Crawford, George, 171
Crawford, William, 38, 42, 50, 58
Crédit Mobilier, 179–80
Crisp, Charles, 239
Cuba, 231, 245–46, 248–52, 259, 263, 330,331
cynicism, 335–36
Daley, Richard, 209n Davis, Jefferson, 93
Davis, Varina, 93
Day, Benjamin, 230
Debs, Eugene, 280
Declaration of Independence, 104, 135
Delano family, 300
Delaware, 26
Delmonico's, 207
Democratic Party (including Democratic-Republican Party), 10, 17, 19–20, 29,41,50, 69–70,71, 75,87–91, 103, 106, 109–11, 113–15, 117, 128, 131,138, 142, 163, 184, 187, 208n, 223,239, 246, 289, 291,296, 322
demographic changes, 69, 108–9, 183, 217–20, 287–303
Dewey, George, 256
Dewey, Thomas, 312–13, 325
divorce, 50–51,301
Dominican Republic, 256, 270–71
Dorsey, Stephen, 206–7
Douglas, Stephen, 77, 89–90, 104, 113–16, 140–41, 163, 164, 165n Dred Scott case, 107
duels, 82
Dulles, John Foster, 329
Eaton, John, 53
Eaton, Peggy, 53
economy, U.S., 9, 39, 61, 69, 108, 110, 142, 170–71, 186, 226, 239, 246, 283–303, 316
Eisenhower, Dwight, xiii, xviii, xix, xxi, 12
ambition, 326–29
health, 328–30
elections, 1792, 9–10
1796, 18
1800, xviiin, 22, 192
1824, xviiin, 43,58, 192
1828,50–53
1836, 131
1840, 61–68, 103, 138–41, 192, 217
1844, 69–70, 103,218, 224n
1848, 157–61
1852, 86–93, 103
1856, 109–10,217,218
1864, 167
1868, 169,217,218
1876, xviiin, 184–93
1880, xviiin, 192, 193, 194, 204–8, 220, 224n
1884, xviiin, 191n, 211, 215–16, 220
1888, 221–24, 229, 243
1900, 258
1904, 264–66, 269–70
1916, 191n, 223
1920, 300–301
1932,284–86
1936, 293–96
1940, 305–8
1944,312–13,317–18
1948,324–26
1952, 327–28
elections, close, xviiin, 70, 206, 216, 216n, 223,302
electoral college, 10, 21, 24, 43, 60–61, 66, 187–91,218, 223,262, 292
elitism, 40–48
Ellsberg, Daniel, 333
Emancipation Proclamation, 166–67
Erie Canal, 58
Fairfax, Sally, 2
Federalist Party, xixn, 10, 17, 19–24, 37,41,44, 58, 96, 102,217
Fellows, Henry, 58
Fillmore, Millard, xi, xvi, xvii, 77, 109, 117, 255
First Ladies, xv, xvn, 13, 89–93, 229
Florida, 32n, 34, 69, 188–91, 234, 248, 252
Folsom, Frances, 229
forces of history, xxii, 10, 13–14, 16, 24, 34, 39–40, 45–47, 52, 69, 108–9, 170–73, 181, 182–84, 217–20, 226–27, 230–33, 246–49, 251,286–88, 306–07, 319–20, 322–26, 337–38
Ford, Gerald, 12n, Forney, John, 110, 111–12, 118
Fort Sumter, 165
Fowler, Isaac, 110
France, 7, 10, 18–19, 22, 32–34, 247, 281,304, 307
Free-Soil Party, 86, 196, freedom of the press, 31
Freeman, Edward, 220n Freidel, Frank, 290
Frémont, John, 109
French and Indian War (Seven Year's
War), 32
Gallatin, Albert, 27
Galphin family, 171
Garfield, James, xi, xiii, xiv, xviii, 12n, 172–73, 180, 194, 204, 220, 224n, 226, 229
Garner, John Nance, 297–98, 303
Garrison, William Lloyd, 133
Georgia, 30, 43n, 239, 329
Germany, 247, 248, 262–63, 277–279, 306, 307,310, 323
Gettysburg, 166
Gould, Jay, 175
Graff, Henry, 7
Granger, Gideon, 30, 171
Grant, U.S., xvi, xvii, xviii, 12, 167, 169, 173–81, 198, 202, 204, 217, 228n, 230, 231,246, 303n ambition, 169, 173–75
Great Britain, 7, 10, 11, 17, 22, 37, 38, 41,44, 69,71, 166, 179, 221–24, 247, 248, 251, 262–63, 276–78, 281,304, 306, 307, 309,310, 322
Great Depression, 284–85, 287–303
Greeley, Horace, 158, 231
Green, Duff, 52
Greer, 310
Guiteau, Charles, 194
Haiti, 20–21,33,300
Hamilton, Alexander, 4–6, 8–10, 14, 17, 23,27, 33
Hanks, Dennis, 122
Hanks, Nancy, 122
Hanna, Mark, 189n, 243, 244, 246, 265
Hardin, John, 144–47, 153
Harding, Florence, xvn, Harding, Warren, xiv, xvi, 23In, 282–83,286, 301,337
Harrison, Benjamin, 21 On, 221, 223, 229, 240
Harrison, William Henry, xi, xiv, xixn, 12,61–68, 87, 140–41, 156, 192, 228n, 248
Harvard, 45, 185, 260, 333
Harvey, George, 274
Hawaii, 247–48, 259,313
Hawley-Smoot, 284–85
Hay, John, 257, 258
Hayes, Rutherford ?., xiii, xvin, 12, 184–93,202, 203,219, 229, 243, 244
ambition, 184–87, 190
health, see presidents Hearst, William Randolph, 231, 249–50
Hemings, Sally, 14n, 31, 50
Herndon, William, 137, 138, 148, 151, 157
Hiroshima, 318–20
Hitler, Adolf, xx, 304, 310, 322, 327
Hollywood, 12n, homosexuality, 102–03
Hoover, Herbert, xiv, xvi, 282–85, 286, 290, 291, 294n, 295,298, 325
Hopkins, Harry, 291, 296
Hughes, Charles Evans, 191n, 298
Hull, Cordell, 310
Humphrey, Hubert, 209n Hundred Days, 288–89
Illinois, 69, 104, 108, 115, 121, 122, 133, 142, 152, 154, 157, 174, 209n immigrants, see presidents immigration, 108–10
impeachment, 39, 67, 107
imperialism, 246–59
Indiana, 65, 69, 108, 122, 194, 206–07, 209n Indians, 34, 38, 41, 42, 52, 59, 62, 126, 171, 178, 233
1. Industrial Revolution, 29, 97, 226
2. Ingersoll, Robert, 187
Internal Revenue Service, 175–76, 293–94, 294n, 333
Irish, 95, 109, 216, 217, 219n, 220n, 221–24
Italy, 281, 307
Jackson, Andrew, xiv, xvi, xxixn, 11, 38–62, 66, 70, 75,87, 112, 115, 129, 140, 192, 195,228,294
3. ambition, 38, 39
Jackson, Rachel, xv, 50–53, 91
James River, 65
Japan, 255,281,307,310,319, 322
Japanese-Americans, xxiii Jay Commission, 202–3
Jay Treaty, 11, 38
Jefferson, Thomas, xiv, xviii, 5, 8–10, 14n, 17,21–36, 49, 69, 76, 95, 104, 227–28, 251, 255, 294
Jews, 14, 219n Johnson, Andrew, xiv, xvi, 167, 169, 172, 223n Johnson, Lady Bird, xvn Johnson, Lyndon, xiv, xv, xvin, xx, 12n, 294n, 331–34, 335
Johnson, Richard, 59–61, 62n Jones, Paula Corbin, xx judiciary, 23
Kansas, 94, 104–8, 111–19, 171, 296, 327
Kansas-Nebraska Act, 105–08, 163
Kennan, George E, 320–21
Kennedy, John, xiv, xv, xviii, 12, 231n, 330–31,335
Kentucky, 21, 39, 44, 59, 96, 108, 122, 144, 154, 166n, 174
Keynesianism, 291
Kinderhook, 58n King Caucus, 40–44
King, William, 102–3, 228n Know-Nothings, xvii, 109, 111, 117, 164, 165,218
Korean War, 262n, 326, 330
L'Ouverture, Toussaint, 21, 33
Lamont, Daniel, 236, 238
Lancaster, 95, 96, 97
Landon, Alf, 296
Latin America, 49
Lawrence, Kansas, 105
League of Nations, 281, 300, 321
leaks, newspaper, 117–18, 233, 308
Lebanon, 330
Lecompton constitution, 112–19
Lend-Lease, 308–09
Lincoln, Abraham, xiv, xxiii, 11, 115, 119–68, 170, 172,228, 251, 290
ambition, 123–26, 128, 136–38, 143, 148–49, 152–54, 155–56, 162, 164
challenges Polk on Mexican War, 149–51, 154
health, 143
honesty, 149
lawyer, 128, 130, 131, 156, 163
poverty of, 122–24, 126, 130
quoted, xvii, xx, 124, 125, 126–27, 131, 136–37, 138, 139, 140, 143, 144, 148n, 149–50, 151, 153, 156, 157, 159–61, 162, 163, 164, 167, 167n runs for Congress, 143–47
slavery, 132–35, 141, 152, 161, 166–67, 251
state legislator, 130–34, 138
Lincoln, Mary Todd, 93n, 143, 154, 156
Lippmann, Walter, 286
Livingston, Robert, 9
Lodge, Henry Cabot, Jr., 323
log cabin, xin, 64–65, 67, 95, 98
Logan, Stephen, 158
Long, Huey, 293–94
Louisiana Purchase, 32–34, 69, 255
Louisiana, 32, 133, 188–91, 293
Lovejoy, Elijah, 135–36
luck, xi-xii, xxi, 14, Lusitania, 277
lying, see presidents Lyon, Matthew, 20
MacArthur, Douglas, 313, 327
MacDonald, John, 175
machine politics, 55, 59, 62, 83, 109, 172n, 182–93, 195, 196–98, 202, 205, 208, 209n, 214, 216, 316
Maclay, William, 7
Madison, Dolley, 13, 52–53, Madison, James, xiv, xxvii, 35, 37, 76, 228
Mafia, 326, 331
_Maine,_ 250
Maine, 69, 89, 301
marriages, see presidents Marshall Plan, 324–26
Marshall, George, 307n, 327–28
Maryland, 44, 111
Massachusetts, xxv, xxvii, 23, 89, 105, 110, 159, 179, 224n, 228, 282, 295
Matamoras, 72
McAdoo, William Gibbs, 287
McCarthyism, 325–26, 328
McClure, William, 342
McKinley, William, xiii, xiv, xxix, 12n, 168, 242–46, 250–59
ambition, 243–45, 259
McReynolds, James, 298
media, see presidents Mercer, Lucy, 301
Mexican War, xv, 83–85, 147–48, 150–51, 154, 174, 255, 337
Mexico, 69–73, 150, 246, 255
minimum wage, 295, 299
Mississippi, 32, 42, 69, 174, 197
Missouri Compromise, 95, 98, 99, 104, 105, 107, 163
Missouri, 44, 69, 108, 209n, 315–17
moieties, 201
Monroe, James, xiv, xixn, xxviii, 14n, 37,38, 47, 60, 69, 76, 171
Morey Letter, 224n Morris, Dick, 336n Morton, Levi, 204
Mulligan Letters, 186n, 215
Munich Agreement, 304, 306
Napoleon, 32–33, 136, 255
Nashville, 52
Nast, Thomas, 232
Natchez, 42
_Nation_ (magazine), 280
national conventions, 62, 69, 71, 87–91, 111, 157, 164, 189n, 235, 244, 275,305,317, 328
National Recovery Administration
(NRA), 289
navy, xxvi Nebraska, 104–08
Nero, 10
New England, 30, 37, 84, New Hampshire, 75–94
New Orleans, 32, 38, 61–62
New Salem, 121, 123, 126–31
New York City, xiv, xxviii, 6, 110, 183, 193n, 196,215,217,218–219, 225,232, 234, 235,260, 261, 266,313
_New York Times,_ 188, 209, 333
New York, xin, xiin, 5, 25, 35, 43n, 44,58, 59, 77, 108, 140, 184, 187, 192, 194, 196, 204, 206–07, 209n, 21 On, 211,216, 218, 221,223,224n, 261,302, 306,312
Newark, 20
Nicaragua, 246, 255
Nixon, Pat, xvn, Nixon, Richard, xiii, xv, xxi, 12n, 71, 325, 332–34, 336
nullification, 21, 54
Oates, Stephen, 159
off-year elections, xix, 21, 116, 191, 291,322
Ohio, xin, 44, 65, 66, 108, 173, 184, 186, 223,242, 243,244
okay, origin of, 58n Olney, Richard, 238w Open Door Policy, 257–58
Oregon, 69,71, 162, 188, 220
Overton, John, 39
Palmer, Mitchell, 280
Panama Canal, 265, 265–71, 277
Panic of 1819, 39
Paris, 47, 103, 203, 253
party system, 10, 16, 29, 37, 41, 50, 56, 57, 59, 182–83,264, 272
effect on morality, 57, 74–75
Pearl Harbor, 307, 310
Pekin Agreement, 146, 153
Pendergast, Tom, 209n, 317
Pendleton Act, 208–09
Pennsylvania, 5, 76, 95, 96, 108, 110, 111, 116, 117, 228, 283,328
pensions, 64, 65, 81, 216–17, 288
people power, 40–41, 46, 52, 54–56, 67, 70, 77, 95
Perkins, Frances, 313
Phelps, Dodge, and Company, 200–02
Philadelphia, 6, 20, 39, 100, 110, 178, 193n, 217, 218
Philippines, 254, 256
Pierce, Benjamin, 79, 83–84
Pierce, Franklin, xiv, xvi, 12, 75, 77–94, 114, 115, 171–72, 228n, 255
ambition, 79, 85
Pierce, Jane, xvn, 79–94
Pinckney, Charles Cotesworth, 17
Piatt, Tom, 209n, 210n polio, 301–2,312
Polk, James, ambition, 70–71
Polk, James, xvin, xxviii, 69–77, 83, 102, 114, 147, 149–50, 154, 217,218, 224n, 227, 228, 255, 310, 336
Porter, John, 252
Post Office, xxvi i, 30, 115, 128, 156, 183n, 280, 303
presidents, ambition, xii, xviii, xxi, xxii, 1–4, 12, 17–18, 37, 44–45, 53,58, 70–71,79, 85, 95–98, 101–2, 103–4,123–26, 128, 136–38, 143, 148–49, 152–54, 155–56, 162, 164, 169, 184–87, 194, 205, 212–15, 243–45, 259, 261–62, 272–76,300–303,315–18,333, 335–38
presidents, ambition ( _coni.)_
and change, 11,16, 23–24, 27, 36, 37, 40, 45–46, 49, 53, 63–64, 67, 74, 106, 111, 181, 221–22, 253, 283–84, 292, 338
and power, xiii-xiv, xvii, xviii, xxi, xxiii, 7–8, 12, 56, 104, 114, 135, 165–68, 170, 181, 192,211,233, 242, 253–54, 271,273,288, 290–91,297,311,312,317–20
as heroes, 12, 40, 56, 58, 61, 67, 75–76, 87, 156, 168, 169, 326–28
blackmail, 31–32, 283, 308
bribery, 34, 116–17, 179–80
broken promises, xxi, 85–86, 277, 335–36
bureaucracy, xix, 291
campaigning for the office, 63, 65–66
character, xxi, 336–38
civil liberties, 19–21, 23, 30–31, 166, 276, 279–80
compromise principles, 31, 33, 34, 63, 111,240, 245,312
control of the media, xx, xxvi, 8, 31, 50,51,52, 64, 75, 111–12, 117–18, 227–41, 246, 249–50, 252–53, 262, 263–64, 280, 302
controlling their image, xxi, xxvi, 6–7, 10, 13,61–65,67, 222, 302,313,332
desperation of, xxi, 10–11, 44, 51, 55, 61–62, 106–07, 109–10, 113, 119, 166–67, 176, 221–22, 227, 233, 234, 239–40, 254–57, 269, 280, 284–85, 293–94, 309–10, 322–26, 330, 333, 335–38
dirty tricks, 187, 223–24, 224n, 283
exploiting immigrants, 20–21, 217–24, 281
exploiting religion and race, xxi, 13–14, 140,216, 265
exploiting their families, xv, xxi, 13, 53, 77–94, 264, 301,317
George Washington as role model, 10–13, 18, 28,48,51,66, 75, 216–17, 221–22, 303,338
health, xv, xvin, xvii, xxvii, 42, 61, 71,94, 143, 225–41, 260, 276, 312–14,317, 328–30
idealism of, xiii-xiv, xxi, 2–3, 16–17, 29, 44, 196,212, 243, 272,281
keeping control of events, xx-xxi, 56, 59, 60, 67,71,74, 76–77, 106–7, 110–12, 119, 165–67, 223–24, 227, 230, 234, 240, 253, 255–58, 263, 271, 279–80, 282, 284–85, 289–90, 296, 309–11,320
lying, xxi, 34, 65,71–75, 89, 227–28, 234–41,284–85, 300–301, 310, 322–26, 331–32, 333–34
marriages, xiv, 1–2, 79–80, 97–103, 229,243, 300–301
party bosses, 55, 59, 62, 83, 109, 172n, 182–93, 195, 196–98, 202, 205,208, 209n,216, 272, 274–75,316–17
patronage, 26–29, 44, 55, 72, 114–15,236, 253,296, 328
playing politics with national security, xxi, 18–20, 22, 75–76, 251, 265–71,282, 305–7, 321–26
protection provided for, xxviii-xxix public's ignorance of, xii religiousness of, xiii-xiv, 84
reverse law of progress, 337–38
sacrifices, xv, 62, 77–94, 283
scandals campaign funds, 110, 117, 167, 194, 269
financial, 5–6, 14, 30, 47, 55, 115, 171–73, 175–81, 195–203
sexual, 2, 14n, 31, 50–53, 60, 102–3,215,301
smears, 17, 50–51, 66, 149, 308, 328, 332
speeches, 29, 66, 70–71, 83, 96, 127, 129, 131–32, 135–36, 139–41, 149–50, 155, 158–61,212
stealing votes, xxi, 13, 24–28, 43–44, 109–10, 187–93,205–8
titles, 17
tolerating corruption, xxi, 30, 37, 47, 55, 116, 169–70, 176–81
Princeton, 272, 273, 274
Pulitzer, Joseph, 249–50
Quay, Matthew, 21 On radio, 286–87
Randolph, Edmund, 9
Randolph, John, 30
Reagan, Ronald, xiii, 12n, 335
Reconstruction, 187, 188–91
Reed, James, 283, 284
Remington, Frederick, 231
Republican Party, xviii, 106, 164, 165, 187, 188, 192, 196, 206–7,217, 220, 244, 246, 289, 322
Reynolds Affair, 14
Richardson, William, 151
Rio Grande, 72
Rives, William, 59, 60
Roberts, Owen, 298
Roorback, 224
Roosevelt purge, 299
Roosevelt recession, 298–99
Roosevelt, Anna, 302
Roosevelt, Eleanor, xvn, 292, 300–301, 312,318
Roosevelt, Franklin, xiii, xiv, xv, xvii, xix, xx, xxiii, 11, 209n, 277n, 285,317,319
ambition, 300–03
health, 312–14, 317
lies, 309–10
repeals law passed by Congress, 311
smears, 308
Roosevelt, Theodore, ambition, 261–62
Roosevelt, Theodore, xiii, xiv, 11, 12, 189n, 209n, 219n, 223n, 232–33, 235n, 252, 258, 260–71, 274, 277, 300, 303n, 322
Russia, see Soviet Union Rutledge, Ann, 128
Sackville-West, Lionel, 223
Santo Domingo, see Dominican Republic scandals, see presidents Schlesinger, Arthur, Jr., xvi Scott, Winfield, 75–76, 85, 91, 157
seances, 93
sectionalism, 5, 104–20, 115, 119
Seminole War, 38,41, 54
Senate, 7
Seymour, Horatio, 193n, 217, 218
Shays's Rebellion, xxv Sherman, John, 116, 203, 244, 245–46
silver, 239, 245
slavery, 13, 29, 34, 42, 60, 84n, 86–87, 90, 94, 95, 104–20, 132–35, 152, 161, 166–67, 251
Slidell, John, 111
Smith, Al, 302
Smith, James, 209n, 274, 275
Social Security, 299, 311
South Carolina, xxix, 40, 54, 108, 111, 188–91
Soviet Union, 247, 281, 282, 319, 323–25, 330
Spain, 32, 34, 38, 248
Spanish-American War, 231, 245–46, 250–54, 256, 263
Speed, Joshua, 137, 149, 162
spoils system, see presidents Springfield, 131–32, 156, 163
Stalin, Joseph, 312
Stampp, Kenneth, 28
states' rights, 21, 23, 63, 67
Steffens, Lincoln, 232–33, 263
Stevenson, Adlai, (vice president), 226
Stewardship Theory, 270–71
Stewart, Jimmy, 1
Straus, Oscar, 219n strokes, xv, xvin, xvii, 237, 276, 282
Stuart, John Todd, 131, 139, 145
suffrage, expansion, 40, 140–41
sugar, 247–48
Sumner, Charles, 105
Supreme Court, xix, 83, 87, 107–09, 176–77, 194, 208, 294–98, 311
Swartwout, Samuel, 55, 195
Swift, W.C.N., 110
Tacoma, Washington, 219
Taft, Robert, xviii, 309, 327–28
Taft, William Howard, xiv, xix, 189n, 209n, 272, 303n Talleyrand, 18, 22, 33
Tammany Hall, 183–84, 193n, 209n, 215,216, 231
Taney, Roger, 107
tariff, 39, 54, 70, 170, 195, 200, 221, 223, 239, 244, 245, 246, 276, 284–85
taxes, 4, 170, 175–76, 178, 239, 290, 293,295,311,317, 336
Taylor, Margaret, xv, 91
Taylor, Zachary, xi, xvi, 12, 72, 75–77, 85, 87, 147, 150, 156–61, 171, 228n Tecumseh, 59, 62n television, 328, 333
Tennessee, 70, 102, 108, 167, 174
Texas, xv, 69, 70, 72, 108, 189n, 255, 294n, 316
Thomson, Charles, 1
Tilden, Samuel, 184, 187–88, 190
Tippecanoe, 63
Truman Doctrine, 320
Truman, Bess, xvn, 316, 317
Truman, Harry, xiii, xvin, xix, xx, 12n, 209n, 262n, 315–26, 332
ambition, 315–18
Mafia, 326
war scare, 321–26
trusts, 240, 262, 269, 276
Turner, Nat, 133
two-term tradition, 303n, 305
Tyler, John, xiv, xvi, 13, 63, 64, 66–67, 114, 170, 255
Tyler, Julia, 13
United Nations, 321
Van Buren, Martin, xiv, xvii, 43n, 44, 50, 54–55, 57–67, 70, 76, 140–41, 148n, 265
ambition, 58
Van Devanter, Willis, 297–98
Van Rensselaer, Stephen, 44
Vandalia, 132
Venezuela, 248, 262–63, 270
Versailles Treaty, 281–82, 307
Veterans, 216
veto, 56, 311
vice presidency, xiin, 17, 24–25, 34–35,46, 54–55,59–61,63, 71, 103, 167, 179, 180, 194, 203–08, 209n, 226, 228, 237, 253,261,265n, 300,301,308, 317–18
Vietnam, xii, xvi, xx, 331–34, 335
Virginia and Kentucky Resolutions, 21, 23
Virginia, xin, 5, 21, 43n, 59, 90, 108, 174
Walker, John, 32
Wall Street, 110, 170, 206, 226–27, 283, 284
Wallace, Henry, 308
War of 1812, xi, xxvii, 37, 38, 41, 47, 96, 261
Warren, Earl, xix Washington, George, xiv, xixn, xxiv, xxvi, xxviii, 1–15, 38, 66, 75, 98, 170, 172, 227
ambition, 1–4
health, xxvii Washington, Martha, xiv, 1–2, 13
Watergate, xii, 332–34, 335
Webster, Daniel, 38, 44, 54, 56, 62, 65, 135, 157, 162
Weed, Thurlow, 192, 197, 224n Wendell, Cornelius, 117
Whig Party (National Republican Party), 50, 57, 63–64, 67, 72, 73,75,91, 106, 110, 114, 128, 138, 139, 140, 142, 145, 152–53, 154, 157, 159–60, 163, 193n, 217, 224n White House Cookbook, 229
Wilkinson, James, 28n Willkie, Wendell, 305–06, 308
Wilmot Proviso, 90
Wilson, Henry, 180, 228n Wilson, Woodrow, xiii, xvin, xvii, xx, 209n, 235n, 286, 297, 307, 315, 321
ambition, 272–76
Wolfe, Thomas, 192
Woodbury, Levi, 83, 86, 87
Works Progress Administration, 208n, 296
World War I, xx, 276–82, 309, 316, 321
blockade, 278
draft, 279, 321
unpopularity, 279n World War II, xx, xxin, 12n, 290–91, 304
destroyer-base deal, 305–6
draft, 306, 307n
neutrality laws, 306
XYZ Affair, 18
Yale, 97
Yazoo land fraud, 30
Yellow Kid, 249
Yellowstone, 60
# Acknowledgments
If had to say who was most responsible for me writing this book I'd have to say it was my grandparents, particularly Bess and Nat. For the two of them, two poor Jewish immigrants who came over on the boat in the late nineteenth century, the only history that mattered was American history. And after FDR became president, it was the American presidents who mattered most. And because Bess and Nat loved the presidents, my mother loved the presidents. And I, too. As a child I wanted to learn everything I could about them. From the time I was a junior in high school a giant framed picture of George Washington hung over my bed.
My friends also contributed. Bill Rorabaugh suggested that I focus on ambition. Scott Rensberger, a superb storyteller, so impressed upon me the importance of storytelling that I decided to build the book around stories. Jackson biographer Robert Remini kindly reviewed several chapters, helping save me from several embarrassing mistakes. Debbie Home helped me think through the thousand and one knotty problems that cropped up during the years I worked on the book, patiently letting me talk on and on about them until finally things became clear.
Historian Bernie Weisberger, my college mentor, patiently went through the manuscript in detail, supplying me with page after page of helpful suggestions. When I finally went through them all, thinking that was the end of it, more arrived. And then, when I finished with those, pages and pages more. On the eve of a vacation in California he took the time to send me his final pages of notes.
Two editors worked with me on the book, each affecting it profoundly. Cynthia Barrett's genius is her ability to give an author just the right word of encouragement at just the right time. It was because of her kind praise that I agreed to take on what seemed like an overwhelmingly large topic. Simply put, without her help, there would have been no book.
Paul McCarthy, like Bernie, supplied me with reams of notes. Pages and pages of single-spaced, detailed notes. After critiquing a chapter as a whole, he would move on to critique each individual page, then each paragraph, then each sentence, then individual words. Often, he wasn't satisfied until he finally had got down to the nub, the syllable. Because of his thoroughness, because of his keen insights, this is a much better book than it otherwise would have been.
Most copy editors do not earn a mention in an author's acknowledgments. But Susan Llewellyn merits inclusion. Her work considerably improved this book.
Finally, I want to thank Bill McClure. For several years he has had to listen to me talk about the presidents, talk about them so much and so often that he now knows far more about the presidents than anybody should have to know except the historians. By helpfully reminding me that there is a world beyond the presidents, he saved me from the mistake of becoming obsessed with them (though I'm sure there were times when I did seem obsessed).
# Also by Richard Shenkman
_Legends, Lies & Cherished Myths of World History_
_"I Love Paul Revere, Whether He Rode or Not"_
_Legends, Lies and Cherished Myths of American History_
_One-Night Stands with American History (with Kurt Reiger)_
# Table of Presidents
1.| George Washington| 1789–1797| no party
---|---|---|---
2.| John Adams| 1797–1801| Federalist
3.| Thomas Jefferson| 1801–1809| Democratic- Republican
| | |
4.| James Madison| 1809–1817| Democratic- Republican
| | |
5.| James Monroe| 1817–1825| Democratic- Republican
| | |
6.| John Quincy Adams| 1825–1829| Democratic- Republican
| | |
7.| Andrew Jackson| 1829–1837| Democrat
8.| Martin Van Buren| 1837–1841| Democrat
9.| William Henry Harrison| 1841| Whig
10.| John Tyler| 1841–1845| Whig
11.| James K. Polk| 1845–1849| Democrat
12.| Zachary Taylor| 1849–1850| Whig
13.| Millard Fillmore| 1850–1853| Whig
14.| Franklin Pierce| 1853–1857| Democrat
15.| James Buchanan| 1857–1861| Democrat
16.| Abraham Lincoln| 1861–1865| Republican
17.| Andrew Johnson| 1865–1869| Democrat (ran as Republican)
| | |
18.| U. S. Grant| 1869–1877| Republican
19.| Rutherford B. Hayes| 1877–1881| Republican
20.| James A. Garfield| 1881| Republican
21.| Chester Arthur| 1881–1885| Republican
22.| Grover Cleveland| 1885–1889| Democrat
23.| Benjamin Harrison| 1889–1893| Republican
24.| Grover Cleveland| 1893–1897| Republican
25.| William McKinley| 1897–1901| Republican
26.| Theodore Roosevelt| 1901–1909| Republican
27.| William Howard Taft| 1909–1913| Republican
28.| Woodrow Wilson| 1913–1921| Democrat
29.| Warren Harding| 1921–1923| Republican
30.| Calvin Coolidge| 1923–1929| Republican
31.| Herbert Hoover| 1929–1933| Republican
32.| Franklin Roosevelt| 1933–1945| Democrat
33.| Harry Truman| 1945–1953| Democrat
34.| Dwight Eisenhower| 1953–1961| Republican
35.| John F. Kennedy| 1961–1963| Democrat
36.| Lyndon Johnson| 1963–1969| Democrat
37.| Richard Nixon| 1969–1974| Republican
38.| Gerald Ford| 1974–1977| Republican
39.| Jimmy Carter| 1977–1981| Democrat
40.| Ronald Reagan| 1981–1989| Republican
41.| George Bush| 1989–1993| Republican
42.| William Clinton| 1993–| Democrat
# Copyright
PRESIDENTIAL AMBITION. Copyright © 1999 by Richard Shenkman.
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, nontransferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.
Epub Edition © JUNE 2011 ISBN : 978-0-062-10580-6
FIRST EDITION
* * *
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Shenkman, Richard.
Presidential ambition: how the American presidents gained power, kept power, and got things done/Richard Shenkman.—1st edition.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 0-06-018373-X
1. Presidents—United States—History. 2. Ambition. 3. Executive power—United States—History. 4. United States—Politics and government. I. Title
E176.1.S56 1999
973—dc21 98-27045
* * *
99 00 01 02 03 RRD 10 987654321
About the Publisher
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{"url":"https:\/\/churchman.nl\/2015\/10\/14\/plotting-a-heat-map-table-in-matlab\/","text":"# Plotting a Heat Map Table in MATLAB\n\nA little while ago I found myself needing to plot a heat map table in MATLAB. Such a plot is a table where the cells have background colors; the colors depend on the value in the cell, e.g. a higher value could correspond with a warmer color. I found no existing function to do this easily, so I set out to create my own solution.\n\nThe code to plot a\u00a0heat map table can be found here.\n\nUsage is pretty simple. If you have a matrix $latex A$, just pass it into the function and it will do the rest! For example:\n\nA = zeros(7,7);\nfor i = 1:7\nfor j = 1:7\nA(i,j) = i+j-2;\nend\nend\ntabularHeatMap(A);\n\nThere are a number of options available. See the documentation in the code for more information about the options. To further adjust the generated figure, such as to add labels, proceed as you would with other plotting functions. For example:\n\nconfusion = crosstab(responses, correctAnswers);\nh = tabularHeatMap(confusion, 'Colormap', 'winter');\ntitle('Confusion Matrix');\nxlabel('Correct');\nylabel('Response');\nh.XAxisLocation = 'top';\nh.XTick = [1 2 3];\nh.XTickLabel = {'A', 'B', 'C'};\nh.YTick = [1 2 3];\nh.YTickLabel = {'A', 'B', 'C'};\n\n\nThis site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.","date":"2021-06-12 17:58:34","metadata":"{\"extraction_info\": {\"found_math\": true, \"script_math_tex\": 0, \"script_math_asciimath\": 0, \"math_annotations\": 0, \"math_alttext\": 0, \"mathml\": 0, \"mathjax_tag\": 0, \"mathjax_inline_tex\": 1, \"mathjax_display_tex\": 0, \"mathjax_asciimath\": 1, \"img_math\": 0, \"codecogs_latex\": 0, \"wp_latex\": 0, \"mimetex.cgi\": 0, \"\/images\/math\/codecogs\": 0, \"mathtex.cgi\": 0, \"katex\": 0, \"math-container\": 0, \"wp-katex-eq\": 0, \"align\": 0, \"equation\": 0, \"x-ck12\": 0, \"texerror\": 0, \"math_score\": 0.467162549495697, \"perplexity\": 1638.15205245884}, \"config\": {\"markdown_headings\": true, \"markdown_code\": true, \"boilerplate_config\": {\"ratio_threshold\": 0.18, \"absolute_threshold\": 10, \"end_threshold\": 15, \"enable\": false}, \"remove_buttons\": true, \"remove_image_figures\": true, \"remove_link_clusters\": true, \"table_config\": {\"min_rows\": 2, \"min_cols\": 3, \"format\": \"plain\"}, \"remove_chinese\": true, \"remove_edit_buttons\": true, \"extract_latex\": true}, \"warc_path\": \"s3:\/\/commoncrawl\/crawl-data\/CC-MAIN-2021-25\/segments\/1623487586239.2\/warc\/CC-MAIN-20210612162957-20210612192957-00192.warc.gz\"}"} | null | null |
Q: Error:java.lang.IllegalArgumentException: Empty file name Android I'am creating application which gets data from MySQL db. Few days ago I made few big changes one of them is that instead of multiple activity forms,I am using fragments and toolbar to switch between them. After that i noticed that i got this error:
02/com.example.kurpaest.kurpaest W/JNIHelp﹕ Discarding pending exception (java.lang.NullPointerException) to throw java/lang/IllegalArgumentException
09-12 14:50:53.180 15402-15402/com.example.kurpaest.kurpaest E/MSG﹕ **java.lang.IllegalArgumentException: Empty file name**
This error shows up when my top 5 places is returning null. But when I try to debug application it runs smoothly with out error or any kind problem.
My server is on my pc and i connect to it using IP address which is provided by ISP.
One more interesting thing is that this error shows up more often when wifi is used instead of mobile network.
One of my guesses is that servers configuration is incorrect and second part is that all tabs makes there own requests to server instead of one complete request.
In the doInBackground() method the app stops suddenly:
@Override
protected String doInBackground(String... params) {
handler.post(new Runnable() {
@Override
public void run() {
gps = new GpsTracker(context);
}
});
HashMap<String,String> param = new HashMap<String,String>();
//param.put("lat", String.valueOf(gps.getLatitude()));
// param.put("long", String.valueOf(gps.getLongitude()));
JSONObject json = jsonParser.makeHttpRequest(url_all_products,"GET",param);
try{
int success = json.getInt(TAG_SUCCESS);
switch(success){
case 1:
products = json.getJSONArray(TAG_LUNCH);
for(int i = 0;i<5;i++){
JSONObject c = products.getJSONObject(i);
String id = c.getString(TAG_ID);
String name =c.getString(TAG_NAME);
Log.d("MSG", name);
String picture ="images/"+c.getString(TAG_PICTURE)+".png";
Log.d("MSG", picture+"wasd");
String cost = c.getString(TAG_COST);
Log.d("MSG", cost);
String lat = c.getString(TAG_LAT);
String longi = c.getString(TAG_LONG);
Log.d("MSG", lat + longi);
String worktime = c.getString(TAG_WORKTIME);
**Log.d("MSG", worktime);**
String distance = calcDist(lat, longi);
lunchList[i][0] = id;
lunchList[i][1] = name;
lunchList[i][2] = picture;
lunchList[i][3] = cost;
lunchList[i][4] = worktime;
lunchList[i][5] = distance ;
gps.stopUsingGPS();
}
break;
case 2:
handler.post(new Runnable() {
@Override
public void run() {
notNetworkDialog.setTitle("Neizdevās izveidot savienojumu!");
notNetworkDialog
.setMessage("Neizdevās izveidot savienojumu ar datu serveri, serveris nav pieejams \n" +
"Mēģināt velreiz?")
.setCancelable(false)
.setPositiveButton("Jā", new DialogInterface.OnClickListener() {
@Override
public void onClick(DialogInterface dialog, int which) {
new LoadLunches().execute();
}
})
.setNegativeButton("Nē", new DialogInterface.OnClickListener() {
@Override
public void onClick(DialogInterface dialog, int which) {
((Activity)context).finish();
}
});
AlertDialog alertDialog = notNetworkDialog.create();
alertDialog.show();
}
});
break;
case 3:
handler.post(new Runnable() {
@Override
public void run() {
notNetworkDialog.setTitle("Neizdevās izveidot savienojumu!");
notNetworkDialog
.setMessage("Neizdevās izveidot savienojumu ar datu serveri, lūdzu pārliecinaties, ka tālrunis ir savienots ar internetu! \n" +
"Mēģināt velreiz?")
.setCancelable(false)
.setPositiveButton("Jā", new DialogInterface.OnClickListener() {
@Override
public void onClick(DialogInterface dialog, int which) {
new LoadLunches().execute();
}
})
.setNegativeButton("Nē", new DialogInterface.OnClickListener() {
@Override
public void onClick(DialogInterface dialog, int which) {
((Activity)context).finish();
}
});
AlertDialog alertDialog = notNetworkDialog.create();
alertDialog.show();
}
});
break;
case 0:
handler.post(new Runnable() {
@Override
public void run() {
notNetworkDialog.setTitle("Kļūda");
notNetworkDialog
.setMessage("Kļūme pieprasījuma! \n" +
"Mēģināt velreiz?")
.setCancelable(false)
.setPositiveButton("Jā", new DialogInterface.OnClickListener() {
@Override
public void onClick(DialogInterface dialog, int which) {
new LoadLunches().execute();
}
})
.setNegativeButton("Nē", new DialogInterface.OnClickListener() {
@Override
public void onClick(DialogInterface dialog, int which) {
((Activity)context).finish();
}
});
AlertDialog alertDialog = notNetworkDialog.create();
alertDialog.show();
}
});
break;
}
}catch(Exception e){
Log.d("MSG",e.toString());
}
return null;
}
Programs works till Log.d("MSG",worktime).
Then skips calculations and continues at these lines:
@Override
protected void onPostExecute(String s) {
super.onPostExecute(s);
pDialog.dismiss();
getActivity().runOnUiThread(new Runnable() {
@Override
public void run() {
lunchAdapter adapter = new lunchAdapter(getActivity(), lunchList, lunchid);
lv.setAdapter(adapter);
}
});
}
A: I didn't find real cause of such error in my case. Because i recived all data from my DB and further there is no any other files which name could be wrong or missing. So my workaround was quite simple.
getActivity().runOnUiThread(new Runnable() {
@Override
public void run() {
lunchAdapter adapter = new lunchAdapter(getActivity(), lunchList, lunchid);
lv.setAdapter(adapter);
}
});
i added new lines
getActivity().runOnUiThread(new Runnable() {
@Override
public void run() {
if(lunchlist==null){
new LoadLunches().execute();
}else{
lunchAdapter adapter = new lunchAdapter(getActivity(), lunchList, lunchid);
lv.setAdapter(adapter);
}
});
| {
"redpajama_set_name": "RedPajamaStackExchange"
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Правда и последствия () — американская лента 1997 года.
Сюжет
Рэймонд Лембек выходит из тюрьмы после отбывания срока за сбыт наркотиков. Его бывший босс дает ему незначительную работу на складе, он решает отомстить ему, похитив значительную сумму денег. Ограбление Рэймонд планирует с Маркусом Винсом и Кертисом Фрели. Во время совершения преступления они убивают агента Управления по борьбе с наркотиками, а сами сбегают в Лас-Вегас, чтобы избавиться от награбленного.
Примечания
Ссылки
Фильмы США 1997 года
Фильмы на английском языке
Фильмы-боевики США
Криминальные фильмы США
Фильмы-драмы США
Неонуар
Фильмы Кифера Сазерленда | {
"redpajama_set_name": "RedPajamaWikipedia"
} | 1,026 |
Q: How can I generalize diagram proving Mean Value Theorem to Generalized MVT, without assuming any function as a straight line? Calculus: The Language Of Change (2005)
by David W. Cohen, James M. Henle. pp. 827-829. The original colored in just blue. I annotated and added more colors.
I can't recall which page presents the Generalized Mean Value Theorem, and pls edit this if you do.
If $f$ and $g$ are continuous
on the closed interval $[a, b]$ and differentiable on the open interval $(a, b)$,
then $\exists$ a point $c ∈ (a, b)$ where
$[f(b) − f(a)]g'(c) = [g(b) − g(a)]f'(c)$.
If $g' \neq 0$ on $(a,b)$, then $
\frac{f'(c)}{g'(c)} = \frac{f(d)-f(c)}{g(d)-g(c)}$.
How can I generalize the diagram below for Generalized MVT without assuming $g(x) = x$ as the picture? Please don't just change the t-axis to $g(t)$ as I did here.
A: If you assume $g'(t)\ne 0$ in $(a,b)$ then either $g'>0$ or $g'<0$ in $(a,b).$ In either of these cases, the curve $(g(t),f(t))$ will always look like the graph of a first semester calculus example, something like $y=h(x), a'\le x \le b'.$ One $y$ for each $x,$ etc.
Consider now $g(t)=\cos t, f(t)=\sin t,$ $0\le t\le 3\pi/2.$ The curve traced out is $3/4$ of the unit circle, where we move counter-clockwise from $(1,0)$ to $(0,-1).$ That can't be fit into the $y=h(x)$ format, simply because for $-1<x<0$ there are two $y$-values for each $x.$ Note that here $g'(\pi)=0.$
What does the Cauchy MVT say about this example? It says there exists $c\in (0,3\pi/2)$ such that
$$(\sin(3\pi/2)-\sin 0)g'(c) = (\cos (3\pi/2)-\cos 0)f'(c).$$
I.e., $-\sin c= \cos c.$ That implies $c=3\pi/4.$
Here is something worthwhile to know: The equality
$$(f(b)-f(a))g'(c)=(g(b)-g(a))f'(c)$$
says exactly that the vector $(g(b)-g(a), f(b)-f(a))$ is a scalar multiple of the tangent vector $(g'(c),f'(c)).$
Let's apply this idea to the more interesting curve $(\cos(5\pi t),\cos (3\pi t)),$ $ 0\le t\le 1.$ Here is the curve traced out:
As $t$ increases from $0$ to $1,$ the curve starts at $(1,1)$ and moves down and to the left, swirls around a bit, and finally dives to its final destination at $(-1,-1).$ In this case the vector $(g(b)-g(a), f(b)-f(a)) = (-2,-2).$ How many values of $c$ will give a tangent vector that is a scalar multiple of $(-2,-2)?$ Looking at the curve, I would guess four such $c's.$ In other words, I see four points on the curve where the tangent line has slope $1.$ These would be be the $c$'s that figure into Cauchy's MVT.
| {
"redpajama_set_name": "RedPajamaStackExchange"
} | 8,579 |
package state
import (
"k8s.io/kubernetes/pkg/kubelet/cm/cpuset"
)
// ContainerCPUAssignments type used in cpu manager state
type ContainerCPUAssignments map[string]map[string]cpuset.CPUSet
// Clone returns a copy of ContainerCPUAssignments
func (as ContainerCPUAssignments) Clone() ContainerCPUAssignments {
ret := make(ContainerCPUAssignments)
for pod := range as {
ret[pod] = make(map[string]cpuset.CPUSet)
for container, cset := range as[pod] {
ret[pod][container] = cset
}
}
return ret
}
// Reader interface used to read current cpu/pod assignment state
type Reader interface {
GetCPUSet(podUID string, containerName string) (cpuset.CPUSet, bool)
GetDefaultCPUSet() cpuset.CPUSet
GetCPUSetOrDefault(podUID string, containerName string) cpuset.CPUSet
GetCPUAssignments() ContainerCPUAssignments
}
type writer interface {
SetCPUSet(podUID string, containerName string, cpuset cpuset.CPUSet)
SetDefaultCPUSet(cpuset cpuset.CPUSet)
SetCPUAssignments(ContainerCPUAssignments)
Delete(podUID string, containerName string)
ClearState()
}
// State interface provides methods for tracking and setting cpu/pod assignment
type State interface {
Reader
writer
}
| {
"redpajama_set_name": "RedPajamaGithub"
} | 4,622 |
Trace: • Hamiltonian Formalism
formalisms:hamiltonian_formalism
Hamiltonian Formalism
We are familiar with the fact that the choice of variables (coordinates) can make all the difference to the tractability of a problem in mechanics. For example, a lever can be modelled as a near infinity of atoms, or as a 'lever arm' with just one position coordinate (the angle, θ ) and the condition of 'rigidity'. We are inclined to think that the second version is an improvement over the first, but Hamilton realized that it is not always best to have the sparest, most economical description; sometimes even an increase in the number of coordinates can lead to greater insights. Specifically, Hamilton brought in a doubling of the number of coordinates in any mechanics problem. This was no mere doubling of the number of dimensions (as would be the case in going from, say, a class of 25 children to a class of 50 children) but a doubling in the 'dimensionality' of the problem (as in going from 'children' to 'boys' and 'girls'). This analogy is useful but too simple, it doesn't demonstrate Hamilton's further requirement - that the two kinds of variable must be dynamically related.
A short allegory will help to explain the different aims of Lagrangian Mechanics and Hamilton's Mechanics - and explain why we do bother. Imagine that we are keen on golf and want to improve our stroke. On Saturday, we are at the tee of hole number 18, we have selected our golf club, have an ample supply of identical golfballs, and proceed to hit 100 balls toward flag number 18. Exhausted, we walk over to the putting green and count up the number of balls we find there. The next day (Sunday) we again drive 100 balls, but just as we're about to walk to hole 18 it starts to rain and we head, instead, for the clubhouse, where tea and scones awaits us. Fortunately, our companion used his smartphone to take photographs of each drive, and the phone has been programmed (using Lagrange's Mechanics) to calculate the trajectory of a golfball, knowing the angle and speed at which it leaves the golf club, and so determine whether the given ball makes it to the putting green. One might think that there's not much to choose between the methods employed on Saturday and then on Sunday (apart from the fact that in one case we had need of a clever computing device) but there's a world of difference: on Saturday, we count the number of balls on the green after their arrival; on Sunday, we calculate the whole trajectory of a given ball and so we know whether the ball arrives, and when. We can say that Saturday's and Sunday's results occur in different 'spaces'. In the 'Sunday space', we can reconstruct the entire history of each and every golfball; in the 'Saturday space', we are happy to forego this detailed knowledge because we really just want to know what pro- portion of our drives do in fact make it to the putting green. We could also investigate other questions of a general nature, such as whether any golfballs at all will make it through a certain gap in the trees, and what overall difference the choice of golfclub makes, and so on. (If we need to know more about one specific ball or another, this more detailed knowledge can be reconstructed afterward, if we supply the appropriate extra data.)
This allegory nicely demonstrates the sorts of differences we find between phase space (the 'Saturday space') and configuration space (the 'Sunday space'). In phase space we obtain qualitative information, about more golfballs, all in one go - we obtain 'less from more'.
The Lazy Universe by Coopersmith
The Hamiltonian formalism describes mechanics by trajectories in phase space, while Lagrangian mechanics uses trajectories in configuration space.
The basic idea of the Hamiltonian formalism:
"One novel ingredient of the Hamiltonian scheme lies in the "variables" one uses in the description of a physical system. Up until now, the positions of particles were taken as primary, the velocities being simply the rate of change of position with respect to time. Recall (p.167) that in the specification of the initial state of a Newtonian system we needed the positions and the velocities of all particles in order that the subsequent behaviour be determinate. With the Hamiltonian formulation we must select the momenta of the particles rather than the velocities. (We noted on p. 165 that the momentum of a particle is just its velocity multiplied by its mass.) This might seem a small change in itself, but the important thing is that the position and momentum of each particle are to be treated as though they are independent quantities, more or less on an equal footing with one another. Thus one 'pretends', at first, that the momenta of the various particles have nothing to do with the rates of change of their respective position variables, but are just a separate set of variables, so we can imagine that they 'could' have been quite independent of the position motions. In the Hamiltonian formulation, we now have two sets of equations. One of these tells us how the momenta of the various particles are changing with time, and the other tells us how the positions are changing with time. In each case, the rates of change are determined by the various positions and momenta at that time. Roughly speaking, the first set of Hamilton's equations states Newton's crucial second law of motion (rate of change of momentum = force) while the second set of equations is telling us what the momenta actually are, in terms of the velocities (in effect, rate of change of position = momentum + mass). Recall that the laws of motion of Galilei-Newton were described in terms of accelerations, i.e. rates of change of rates of change of position (i.e. 'second order' equations). Now, we need only to talk about rates of change of things ("first order" equations) rather than rates of change of rates of change of things. All these equations are derived from just one important quantity: the Hamiltonian function H, which is the expression for the total energy of the system in terms of all the position and momentum variables. The Hamiltonian formulation provides a very elegant and symmetrical description of mechanics. Just to see what they look like, let us write down the equations here, even though many readers will not be familiar with the calculus notions required for a full understanding - which will not be needed here. All we really want to appreciate, as far as calculus is concerned, is that the 'dot' appearing on the left-hand side of each equation stands for rate of change with respect to time" (of momentum, in the first case, and position, in the second):
$$ \dot{p}_i = - \frac{\partial H}{\partial x_i}, \quad \dot{x}_i = \frac{\partial H}{\partial p_i} . $$
Here the index i is being used simply to distinguish all the different momentum coordinates $p_1, p_2, p_3, p_4,\ldots$ and all the different position coordinates $x_1, x_2, x_3, x_4,\ldots$. For n unconstrained particles we shall have 3n momentum coordinates and 3n position coordinates (one, each, for the three independent directions in space). The symbol $\partial$ refers to "partial differentiation" ("taking derivatives while holding all the other variables constant"=, and $H$ is the Hamiltonian function, as described above.
The coordinates $x_1, x_2, x_3, x_4,\ldots$ and $p_1, p_2, p_3, p_4,\ldots$ are actually allowed to be more general things than just ordinary Cartesian coordinates for particles (i.e. with the $x_i$'s being ordinary distances, measured off in three different directions at right angles). Some of the coordinates $x_i$'s could be angles, for example (in which case, the corresponding $p_i$'s would be angular momenta, cf. p. 166, rather than momenta), or some other completely general measure. Remarkably, the Hamiltonian equations still hold in exactly the same form. In fact, with suitable choices of H, Hamilton's equations still hold true for any system of classical equations whatever, not just for Newton's equations. In particular, this will be the case for the Maxwell(-Lorentz) theory that we shall be considering shortly. Hamilton's equations also hold true for special relativity. Even general relativity can, if due care is exercised, be subsumed into the Hamiltonian framework. Moreover, as we shall see later with Schrodinger's , equation (p. 288), this Hamiltonian framework provides the taking-off point for the equations of quantum mechanics. Such unity of form in the structure ,of dynamical equations, despite all the revolutionary changes that have occurred in physical theories over the past century or so, is truly remarkably!
page 174ff in "The Emperors new Mind" by R. Penrose
How to use the Hamiltonian formalism:
Set up the Lagrangian as usual, with some generalized coordinates \(q_i\).
Find the generalized momenta \(p_i = \partial \mathcal{L} / \partial \dot{q}_i\).
Solve for \(\dot{q}_i\) in terms of the \(p_i\) and \(q_i\).
Rewrite \(T\) and \(U\) in terms of \(q_i\) and \(p_i\).
Find \(\mathcal{H}\), as \(T+U\) if all the \(\partial q_i/\partial t = 0\), otherwise as \(\sum_i p_i \dot{q}_i - \mathcal{L}\)
Apply Hamilton's equations to get the equations of motion.
Once we have the equations of motion, we can look for equilibrium points, make phase-space portraits, solve for \(q_i(t)\) explicitly, etc.
This might just seem like a more elaborate way of getting the same results as the Lagrangian approach, and indeed for very simple problems we will get back exactly the same equations. Unfortunately, most of the advantages of the Hamiltonian are at a more formal level; when you're solving for the motion of a simple system, it doesn't really shine. There are a couple of exceptions where it is somewhat helpful to choose \(\mathcal{H}\) over \(\mathcal{L}\), which we'll go over (drawing "phase portraits" was one such case.) https://www.colorado.edu/physics/phys3210/phys3210_fa15/lecnotes.2015-11-16.Intro_to_Hamiltonian_Mechanics.html
Good Textbooks/Lecture Notes on the Hamiltonian formalism:
Classical Mechanics by John Taylor
David Tong: Lectures on Classical Dynamics, especially part 4 which deals specifically with the Hamiltonian formulation of classical mechanics.
Many good examples can be found at https://www.colorado.edu/physics/phys3210/phys3210_fa15/lecnotes.2015-11-18.Hamiltonian_Mechanics_continued.html
Relationship to the Lagrangian formalism
The Hamiltonian is defined as the Legendre transformation of the Lagrangian
$$H \equiv \sum_j {\dot q}_j p_j - L$$
Graphical Summary of Newtonian, Lagrangian, and Hamiltonian Formalism
For some concrete examples worked out in all three frameworks see Fun with Symmetry.
The geometry that underlies the physics of Hamilton and Lagrange's classical mechanics and classical field theory has long been identified: this is symplectic geometry [Arnold 89] and variational calculus on jet bundles [Anderson 89, Olver 93]. In these theories, configuration spaces of physical systems are differentiable manifolds, possibly infinite-dimensional, and the physical dynamics is all encoded by way of certain globally defined differential forms on these spaces. https://arxiv.org/abs/1601.05956
The basic idea of the Hamiltonian formalism in mathematical terms:
In the Lagrangian approach we focus on the position and velocity of a particle, and compute what the particle does starting from the Lagrangian $L(q, q˙)$, which is a function
$$ L: TQ \to \mathbb{R} $$
where the tangent bundle is the space of position-velocity pairs. But we're led to consider momentum
$$ p_i = \frac{\partial L}{\partial \dot{q}^i} $$
since the equations of motion tell us how it changes
$$ \frac{d p_i}{d t} = \frac{\partial L}{\partial q^i} .$$
In the Hamiltonian approach we focus on position and momentum, and compute what the particle does starting from the energy
$$ H= p_i \dot{q}^i -L(q,\dot{q}) $$
reinterpreted as a function of position and momentum, called the Hamiltonian
$$ H: T^* Q \to \mathbb{R} $$
where the cotangent bundle is the space of position-momentum pairs. In this approach, position and momentum will satisfy Hamilton's equations:
$$\dot{p}_i = - \frac{\partial H}{\partial q_i}, \quad \dot{q}_i = \frac{\partial H}{\partial p_i} ,$$
where the latter is the Euler–Lagrange equation
$$ \frac{d p_i}{d t} = \frac{\partial L}{\partial q^i} $$
in disguise (it has a minus sign since $H = p\dot{q} - L$).
page 53 in http://math.ucr.edu/home/baez/classical/texfiles/2005/book/classical.pdf
Recommended Resources to learn more about the Hamiltonian Formalism:
Mathematical Methods of Classical Mechanics by V. I. Arnold
Chapter 4 in http://math.ucr.edu/home/baez/classical/texfiles/2005/book/classical.pdf
The central conception of all modern theory in physics is the "Hamiltonian".
E. Schrödinger, The Hamilton postage stamp
In fact, with suitable choices of H, Hamilton's equations still hold true for any system of classical equations whatever, not just for Newton's equations. In particular, this will be the case for the Maxwell(-Lorentz) theory that we shall be considering shortly. Hamilton's equations also hold true for special relativity. Even general relativity can, if due care is exercised, be subsumed into the Hamiltonian framework. Moreover, as we shall see later with Schrodinger's equation (p. 288), this Hamiltonian framework provides the taking-off point for the equations of quantum mechanics. Such unity of form in the structure, of dynamical equations, despite all the revolutionary changes that have occurred in physical theories over the past century or so, is truly remarkably!
page 176 in "The Emperors new Mind" by R. Penrose
Hamiltonian Mechanics is geometry in phase space. […]
Lagrangian mechanics is contained in hamiltonian mechanics as a special case (the phase space in this case is the cotangent bundle of the configuration space, and the hamiltonian function is the Legendre transform of the lagrangian function).
The hamiltonian point of view allows us to solve completely a series of mechanical problems which do not yield solutions by other means (for example, the problem of attraction by two stationary centers and the problem of geodesics of the triaxial ellipsoid. The hamiltonian point of view has even greater value for the approximate methods of perturbation theory (celestial mechanics), for understanding the general character of motion in complicated mechanical systems (ergodic theory, statistical mechanics) and in connection with other areas of mathematical physics (optics, quantum mechanics, etc.)
Mathematical Methods of Classical Mechanics Vladimir Arnold
As Weinberg points in his QFT book, in the Hamiltonian formalism it is easier to check the unitarity of the theory because unitarity is directly related to evolution, while in the Lagrangian formalism the symmetries that mix space with time are more explicit. Therefore the Hamiltonian formalism is usually more convenient in non-relativistic and galilean quantum theories. In order for a theory to be Poincare invariant, the Lagrangian needs to be a Poincare scalar, what it is easy to see. The equivalent condition in the Hamiltonian formalism is that there is a Poincare algebra with the Hamiltonian as the zero component of the 4-momentum. This condition needs to be checked, as it is not elemental to see. Diego Mazón
See also the discussion on the question What's the point of Hamiltonian mechanics? at StackExchange
How is the Hamiltonian Formalism related to the Newtonian Formalism?
Recall that we derived Hamilton's equations for a particle moving in a force field $F = -dV/dx$ by writing down the equations of motion in the form $$ m \dot{x} = p , \quad \dot{p} = - \frac{\partial V}{\partial x} .$$ The observant reader will have noticed that these two equations are just one way to express Newton's second law. More generally for a system of N point-like particles moving in three-dimensional physical space, Newton's second law would be $$ m \dot{x_j} = p_j , \quad \dot{p}_j = - \frac{\partial V}{\partial x_j} .$$ The symplectic egg in classical and quantum mechanics by Maurice A. de Gosson
How is a Hamiltonian constructed from a Lagrangian with a Legendre transform
https://physics.stackexchange.com/questions/67765/how-is-a-hamiltonian-constructed-from-a-lagrangian-with-a-legendre-transform/67805#67805
The outstanding achievements of Lagrange are still not the last word in mechanics, and it was an Irish mathematical prodigy, William Rowan Hamilton, who, in the nineteenth century, took mechanics to its highest form. Hamilton was in awe of Lagrange, referring to him as a Shakespeare, and to the Mécanique analytique as a scientific poem; it was this work which attracted him to the topic of mechanics. Hamilton understood that even if the equations of motion were sometimes too difficult to solve one could nevertheless obtain important qualitative information - but only if one used the right choice of variables. His crucial advance was to discover what were the true, most telling, variables of mechanics. We are familiar with the fact that the choice of variables (coordinates) can make all the difference to the tractability of a problem in mechanics. For example, a lever can be modelled as a near infinity of atoms, or as a 'lever arm' with just one position coordinate (the angle, θ ) and the condition of 'rigidity'. We are inclined to think that the second version is an improvement over the first, but Hamilton realized that it is not always best to have the sparest, most economical description; sometimes even an increase in the number of coordinates can lead to greater insights
For a nice description of the History of the Hamiltonian formalism, see chapter 7 in "The Lazy Universe" by Coopersmith
formalisms/hamiltonian_formalism.txt · Last modified: 2020/12/26 23:47 by edi | {
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cask 'resolume-arena' do
version '5.1.3'
sha256 '8554e1ac9a011610c70e91552b46ddf30c12ad214ec1a892dbd6c1fef3035da6'
# d19j6z4lvv1vde.cloudfront.net was verified as official when first introduced to the cask
url "https://d19j6z4lvv1vde.cloudfront.net/Resolume_Arena_#{version.dots_to_underscores}_Installer.dmg"
name 'Resolume Arena'
homepage 'https://resolume.com/'
pkg "Resolume Arena #{version} Installer.pkg"
uninstall pkgutil: "com.resolume.pkg.ResolumeArena#{version.no_dots}",
delete: "/Applications/Resolume Arena #{version}"
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Junko Hoshino (born September 25, 1989) is a Japanese skier who competes in the freestyle skiing event of moguls. She represented Japan in the 2014 Winter Olympics, finishing 15th in women's moguls.
References
1989 births
Living people
Japanese female freestyle skiers
Olympic freestyle skiers of Japan
Freestyle skiers at the 2014 Winter Olympics
Freestyle skiers at the 2022 Winter Olympics
Sportspeople from Niigata Prefecture
People from Nagaoka, Niigata
21st-century Japanese women | {
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{"url":"https:\/\/electronics.stackexchange.com\/questions\/540071\/inverting-amplifier-not-applying-gain-to-bias-voltage\/540087","text":"# Inverting Amplifier Not Applying Gain to Bias Voltage\n\nI am simulating an inverting amplifier circuit (Page 3 in this app note) with LT spice. The amplifier has a gain of 10 V\/V and since I am using a single rail supply, I am applying a bias voltage at the non-inverting input of about 0.113 V.\n\nI expected the bias voltage to be amplified to about 1.25 V at the output but it looks like this is not the case.\n\nBelow are the amplifier circuit and simulation results. It is connected to a series of sallen-key filters not shown. The filter output rides on a 1.25 V bias which should be removed after passing through the 1uF coupling capacitor.\n\nThe output shows that that bias voltage does not get amplified and so the amplified signal clips at the negative swing (green plot). The blue plot is the output just after the coupling capacitor.\n\nWhen I increased the bias voltage to 1.25 V, the output had the correct bias voltage. This seems contrary to what's suggested in the application note. Am I missing something?\n\nEdit\n\nWhen I simulate a circuit like this, I get exactly what I expect. The only difference is that there is no coupling capacitor before the op-amp. Why does the removal of the capacitor cause such a difference?\n\n\u2022 Both inputs will \/ must be equal Dec 31 '20 at 4:26\n\u2022 Why do you expect the bias voltage to be amplified? If you look at this circuit as a non-inverting amplifier with V3 as the input source, what would you expect its gain to be? (hint: how does C10 affect the gain at DC?) Dec 31 '20 at 4:28\n\nThe Photon immediately identifies one problem -- the input capacitor will charge up to the average and effectively block any galvanic path for your gain-setting arrangement. So let's dispose of that, right away.\n\nIf you want to set a gain, you need to provide a DC gain-setting arrangement. This will be something like the following:\n\nsimulate this circuit \u2013 Schematic created using CircuitLab\n\n$$\\R_1\\$$ and $$\\R_2\\$$ can get your voltage gain, now. $$\\R_3\\$$ and $$\\R_4\\$$ can set your DC bias point. The input signal will be imposed upon that bias point and the voltage gain then applied.\n\nLet's assume your opamp can work with the single rail of $$\\+2.5\\:\\text{V}\\$$. Then we have the following:\n\nsimulate this circuit\n\nHere, we expect the output to be $$\\11\\times\\$$ the (-) node. Since we want that to be centered on $$\\\\frac12 V_\\text{CC}\\$$, this means the output should have an average of $$\\1.25\\:\\text{V}\\$$ and, by implication, the (-) node's average should be $$\\\\approx 113.64\\:\\text{mV}\\$$. That also should be the (+) node's average.\n\nIf we want the input impedance of both (-) and (+) to be similar, we probably should set $$\\R_4=47\\:\\text{k}\\Omega\\$$ and solve for $$\\R_3\\$$. This will find that $$\\R_3\\approx 987\\:\\text{k}\\Omega\\$$. Just set $$\\R_4=1\\:\\text{M}\\Omega\\$$ and that should be close enough.\n\nAssuming a decent rail-to-rail opamp, such as the LT1800, the resulting circuit is:\n\nsimulate this circuit\n\nRunning an LTspice simulation on the above we find:\n\nFrom this we can compute $$\\A_v=\\frac{765.23\\:\\text{mV}}{70.363\\:\\text{mV}}\\approx 10.88\\$$. (This is very close to the expected $$\\A_v\\approx 11\\$$.)\n\nLTspice also computes the average of the opamp output as $$\\1.2352\\:\\text{V}\\$$, which is very close to the desired $$\\1.25\\:\\text{V}\\$$. (The difference in large part due to the fact that we chose $$\\R_3=1\\:\\text{M}\\Omega\\$$ instead of $$\\R_3\\approx 987\\:\\text{k}\\Omega\\$$.)\n\nIn short, this all works okay if you approach things correctly and if you select opamp devices that can work within the desired voltage ranges.\n\n\u2022 Ok that makes sense thank you! Dec 31 '20 at 16:10\n\nWhen I simulate a circuit like this, I get exactly what I expect. The only difference is that there is no decoupling capacitor before the op-amp. Why does the removal of the capacitor cause such a difference?\n\nBecause with the capacitor, considering your 'V3' source as the input and considering the DC behavior, you have this circuit:\n\nsimulate this circuit \u2013 Schematic created using CircuitLab\n\nSo what is that circuit? It's a voltage follower with a gain of 1, exactly as you observed.\n\nWhen you add a 2nd resistor that can carry DC current from the op-amp's inverting input to ground, you increase the gain of the non-inverting amplifier above 1. The two resistors form a voltage divider, which reduces the gain in the feedback path, therefore increases the closed-loop gain of the circuit.\n\n\u2022 I suppose you meant the inverting input; that is why I have corrected the typo. But it does not matter, I think it would be very interesting and useful to find an intuitive explanation for why \"when you add a 2nd resistor that can carry DC current from the op-amp's inverting input to ground, you increase the gain of the non-inverting amplifier above 1.\" Jan 2 at 9:32\n\u2022 @Circuitfantasist, thanks for the catch. I've edited to add an explanation , but I guess \"intuitive\" is in the eye of the beholder. Jan 2 at 17:32\n\u2022 The Photon, I understand circuits by seeing in them similar situations from life. For me, a non-inverting amplifier is a \"disturbed follower\" which, in its quest to compensate for the disturbance, has become an amplifier. I suggest, if you are willing to spend some of your valuable time, to attend a related laboratory exercise with one of my best student groups, conducted in 2008. It follows the evolution of this circuit in the order: 'follower' -> 'disturbed follower' -> 'amplifier'. Jan 2 at 18:27\n\u2022 @Circuitfantasist, Different explanations will be intuitive for different people. The term \"disturbed follower\" means nothing to me, so I can't follow your explanation. On the other hand I have an understanding of how the inverting amplifier works that is perfectly intuitive for me. (Based on intuition learned over 20+ years working in the field). Jan 2 at 18:39\n\u2022 The Photon, I will not insist because the diversity of this world is its charm. We are different and complement each other. I will only express two more opinions at the end: 1) The explanation you added is not intuitive but formal since it is based on the Black's formula; it is very good for calculating the resistances but it does not explain why these resistors are put there. 2) The real challenge is to derive a common principle from many particular intuitive explanations of the same circuit... then it becomes philosophy.... Jan 3 at 9:18\n\n## Intuitive explanation\n\nUnderstanding. Apart from the detailed explanation of the specific circuit implementation accompanied by calculations, the real understanding requires something more - to see the basic idea behind it, how it is implemented in the specific case, where currents flow, what voltages across elements are and how they relate to each other. In doing so, we will get to the depths of the problem and not just glide across the surface\u2026 and we will be able to see the same basic idea in seemingly different applications. I will illustrate this for the specific circuit.\n\nBasic idea. The main OP's problem here is to understand the basic property of capacitors to keep up the voltage across themselves relatively constant when a small current flows through them. This property has two circuit applications that can be figurative named \"voltage shifting\" (coupling capacitors) and \"voltage fixing\" (decoupling capacitors).\n\n\"Voltage shifting\" is actually the well-known \"voltage biasing\" or simply \"biasing\", widely used in AC amplifiers. It is an extremely simple electrical idea that can be implemented even in the 19th century by a constant voltage source in series to the input variable voltage source. Their voltages are summed in a series manner so the input voltage is increased\/decreased (\"shifted up\/down\") with the constant voltage.\n\nImplementation. The problem of this arrangement is that the \"shifting\" voltage source is \"floating\" (as a rule, the input voltage source is grounded)... and there is no way to put part of the supply voltage in this place. The clever 20th century solution in AC amplifiers was to use a charged capacitor as such a \"shifting\" voltage source. It acts as a \"rechargeable battery\" which is constantly being charged and then discharged... and so its voltage is relatively constant.\n\nOperation. I have illustrated the operation of the most elementary bias circuit (the input part of the @jonk's circuit) in three steps. They are extracted from a Flash movie (see the animated gif version). The currents are visualized by full closed paths (loops) with proportional thickness (in green) and the voltages - by voltage bars with proportional height (in red). The current directions and voltage polarities are real. The input voltage EIN (VIN) is represented by a variable battery; the power supply is represented by a battery with a constant voltage E (VCC). The capacitance C1 is large enough so the voltage across it does not significantly change when the current flows through it.\n\n1. Zero input voltage. In the beginning, let's set the input voltage VIN to zero. As a result, the capacitor C1 is charged to VR2 (E\/2). The charging current flows through the path +E -> R1 -> C1 -> VIN -> -E (not shown in the picture). So the input voltage source should be \"galvanic\" (with a low DC resistance)... and you can think of it as of a piece of wire. At the end of the transition, there is no current flowing through it since two equal opposing voltages (VC1 = VR2) balance each other; VC1 is a copy of VR2. Theoretically, this process will never finish.\n\nNow let's consider the original OP's circuit (with capacitor C10) at zero input voltage VIN and applied positive bias voltage V3 to the non-inverting input. The op-amp senses the positive differential input voltage and because the negative feedback obliges it to make the voltage of the inverting input equal to V3 (the so-called \"golden rule\"), it begins increasing its output voltage until reaches the equilibrium. It should do it momentarily... but there is a problem - the capacitor slowly charges and the voltage across it slowly increases. So, in the beginning, the left end of R5 is grounded. The gain of this non-inverting amplifier is 11... and its output voltage reaches the positive supply rail. Eventually, the capacitor is charged to V3... the gain decreases to 1... the output voltage becomes equal to the voltage of the inverting input and V3... and the equilibrium is reached.\n\nIf OP wants the output voltage to be higher, they just needs to follow the advice of @The Photon and to plug another resistor between the inverting input and ground.\n\nWhy does the removal of the capacitor cause such a difference?\n\nThe \"job\" of the op-amp \"assigned\" to it by the negative feedback, is to maintain the voltage of the inverting input equal to the voltage of the non-inverting input. When we put a voltage divider between the output and the inverting input, we make it difficult (\"disturbing\") to the op-amp. It is forced to increase its output voltage to overcome this \"disturbance\"... and so it becomes an amplifier.\n\n2. Positive input voltage. Now let's change VIN up. The total voltage VIN + VC1 exceeds VR2 (the voltage bars represent it geometrically). EIN and C1 in series act as a composite voltage source that supplies R2 so a discharging current IC begins flowing through the capacitor and R2. VC1 does not change noticeably so the output voltage VOUT follows VIN up.\n\nIn the OP's original circuit, the discharging current flows through the path +VIN -> C10 -> R5 -> R12 -> op-amp output -> ground -> -VIN.\n\n3. Negative input voltage. Now let's change VIN down. The total voltage VC1 - VIN is less than VR2; so a charging current IC begins flowing through the capacitor. The charging current flows through the path +E -> R1 -> C1 -> VIN -> -E. As above, VC1 does not change noticeably so the output voltage VOUT follows VIN down.\n\nIn the OP's original circuit, the charging current flows through the path +Vcc -> op-amp output -> R12 -> R5 -> C10 -> VIN -> ground -> -Vcc.\n\nGeneralization. Let's generalize our observations. With the help of R1 and R2 (voltage divider), an imperfect voltage source (with a significant internal resistance) is built. The perfect input voltage source (with zero internal resistance) is connected through another perfect voltage source (the charged C1) to the imperfect voltage source. In this unequal struggle, the perfect source wins and imposes its voltage on the common output point.\n\nAnalogy. A shock absorber is an amazing mechanical analogy of the capacitor. I have illustrated the operation of the analogical arrangement - a shock absorber and two springs, in the same three steps as above. They are extracted from another Flash movie (see the animated gif version). I think the pictures speak for themselves and need no translation.\n\n1. Zero position.\n\n2. Pulling up.\n\n3. Pulling down.\n\nApplications. We can see this bias circuit in the input part of many AC transistor and op-amp amplifying circuits. Let's consider the two most typical of them:\n\n1. AC emitter follower.\n\n2. Op-amp follower.\n\n\u2022 Flash is dead, as of yesterday. Jan 1 at 17:01\n\u2022 @Elliot Alderson, Yes, I know... I was able to convert some of swf files from my site of circuit-fantasia.com to exe files... but with these things did not work... OK, I managed to convert them to animated gifs... Jan 1 at 19:59\n\u2022 You say you'll \"illustrate this for the specific circuit\" but you never explain the circuit OP asked about. Jan 2 at 16:43\n\u2022 @The Photon, Thanks for the response. The specific OP circuit is very well considered in other answers (including yours). I have a tendency to generalize and try to supplement what has been said with my answers. I think there is some benefit from this... if not so much for the OP who does not have the experience necessary for a deeper understanding circuits, then at least for the next visitors to the site. In my answers, I also share the resources I have created over the years in the hope that this will help someone else understand circuits like me... Jan 2 at 17:50\n\u2022 @The Photon, I have added exact explanations of the OP circuit (I have inserted them between the existing explanations). Now it is fully explained for the three possible states (VIN = 0, + and -) including the inital state when the capacitor charges. I don't think there is anything more to be desired. Of course, it would be good to illustrate these states with specially drawn circuit diagrams... but that takes a lot of work. BTW I would do it if there was interest... Jan 3 at 23:28","date":"2021-09-16 21:14:37","metadata":"{\"extraction_info\": {\"found_math\": true, \"script_math_tex\": 0, \"script_math_asciimath\": 0, \"math_annotations\": 0, \"math_alttext\": 0, \"mathml\": 0, \"mathjax_tag\": 0, \"mathjax_inline_tex\": 0, \"mathjax_display_tex\": 0, \"mathjax_asciimath\": 0, \"img_math\": 0, \"codecogs_latex\": 0, \"wp_latex\": 0, \"mimetex.cgi\": 0, \"\/images\/math\/codecogs\": 0, \"mathtex.cgi\": 0, \"katex\": 0, \"math-container\": 19, \"wp-katex-eq\": 0, \"align\": 0, \"equation\": 0, \"x-ck12\": 0, \"texerror\": 0, \"math_score\": 0.5834195613861084, \"perplexity\": 966.8596182745392}, \"config\": {\"markdown_headings\": true, \"markdown_code\": true, \"boilerplate_config\": {\"ratio_threshold\": 0.18, \"absolute_threshold\": 10, \"end_threshold\": 15, \"enable\": true}, \"remove_buttons\": true, \"remove_image_figures\": true, \"remove_link_clusters\": true, \"table_config\": {\"min_rows\": 2, \"min_cols\": 3, \"format\": \"plain\"}, \"remove_chinese\": true, \"remove_edit_buttons\": true, \"extract_latex\": true}, \"warc_path\": \"s3:\/\/commoncrawl\/crawl-data\/CC-MAIN-2021-39\/segments\/1631780053759.24\/warc\/CC-MAIN-20210916204111-20210916234111-00553.warc.gz\"}"} | null | null |
Q: Books for Tate's Thesis I'm recently reading 'Fourier Analysis on Number Fields ',by Dinakar Ramakrishnan, Robert J. Valenza.The book is aiming to explain Tate's thesis,which is of my current interests.But I've found numbers of mistake in the book,though the conclusions are right,and I'm not very comfortable with the writing style.So is there any relevant book on the same topics for reference?
A: You might find the following text useful:
http://www.math.mcgill.ca/darmon/theses/leahy/thesis.pdf
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SouthworldCulture November 2015Music. "Gospel Journey", the sound of wonder
If the title of Faada Freddy's first solo album, Gospel Journey, has to be taken as a promise, after listening at its eleven tracks one must admit that the Senegalese artist has more than kept his word.
The 40-year old founder of the rap crew Daara-J, leaving apart for a while his trademark hip-hop rhythms and his companions, just wanted – as he said – "to go towards something which would have brought me closer to gospel sound", but, in fact, he did slightly more than this. Gospel, obviously, is part of the rich texture of Abdou Fatha Seck's (the singer's real name) songs, but there are many more influences to be found in them, starting with the artists and sounds he's grown up with in Dakar, listening at the music his parents were fond of: spirituals, Motown soul, Marcus Miller, Nina Simone, Billie Holiday.
Their traces, many years later, can be found in Gospel journey, together with typical Senegalese chants, punk, folk and even Zulu choruses or New Zealand's haka. A choice that arises out of a very specific concept of what music and its purposes are but also out of the artist's own life. "All the peoples I've met with – he told a French magazine – left me something. That's what I want to share, with a common basis, which is pop music, meaning to me 'music of the people', uniting and inspiring all cultures. That's my goal, my reason for singing".
The desire of turning this musical variety into something new and concrete is one of the reasons that pushed Freddy to leave temporarily Daara-J (but the release of a new album is already scheduled) and record an album on his own, after having played guitar alongside renowned artists, including the US star Lenny Kravitz. "I tried to bring more voices in the Daara-J albums, but in hip-hop, this isn't easy. – he explained – My solo album allows me to use a larger palette, to perform freely in different styles, without limits, giving free reins to improvisation".
Improvisation is a key concept when coming to Faada Freddy's style. "Improvisation is always a part of it, and I want to keep it like this, for it means spontaneity", he once told an interviewer. However, he added "refining what we do, presenting it well is also important: it's like serving dressings alongside a well-made dish. That's the reason why I try, together with my band, to improve in everything, and to find new things in my voice, or to discover myself again and also to work with other musicians". This also explains – at least in part – why many of the eleven tracks of Gospel Journey are in fact cover of artists Freddy worked with or appreciated: Sia (who called the Senegalese performer's rendition of Little Black Sandals, the best cover of her song) Imany, Grace, Lonely Forest… But the same attention to details can be found in Fatha Seck's own compositions (such as Reality cuts me like a knife) or in Borom Bi, which already was a huge local success when it had been interpreted by the whole of Daara-J.
There is still another aspect of Freddy's command of musical techniques that makes the album worth mentioning – and listening: despite he can play a number of instruments, including guitar and drums, he uses none of them throughout the whole album. His body and voice alone serve to this purpose: the Senegalese artist, in fact, is skilled in the use of both "body percussions" and beatboxing (using the voice as an instrument) and the eleven songs are exclusively performed in this way. To the singer, this is above all the fulfilment of a dream of his childhood, when he was too poor to buy any musical instrument and so he made them out of anything or used his hands and body instead. "I've always dreamed of composing an a capella album – he recalls now – I realized that not everyone can play a musical instrument but anyone can beat on his chest. It's something you can pass on quickly, something I like and that makes me feel alive". The reasons for using the body as a musical instrument, however, go well beyond the musical side, the artist adds: "It recalls the simplicity and greatness of a human being, the importance of the body. Humanity, nowadays is brought up through a violence destroying this body, which, nevertheless, can give birth to all the wonders of the world". A concept which Gospel Journey manages to express at its best. (D.M.)
Southworld
Latin am.
The Pan-Amazon Synod. Dialogue and respect between the Church and the… | {
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Q: Use Spring Gateway and getting error: 'Access-Control-Allow-Origin' header contains multiple values '*, *', but only one is allowed I am using Spring Gateway framework and configured as follows.
gateway:
default-filters:
- DedupeResponseHeader=Access-Control-Allow-Origin
globalcors:
cors-configurations:
'[/**]':
allowedOrigins: "*"
allowedMethods: "*"
allowedHeaders: "*"
But when I try to execute a request on the gateway, I get the following error.
has been blocked by CORS policy: The 'Access-Control-Allow-Origin' header contains multiple values '*, *', but only one is allowed.
I do not understand how to configure the configuration to avoid this error
A: Try with this configuration:
spring:
cloud:
gateway:
default-filters:
- DedupeResponseHeader=Access-Control-Allow-Origin Access-Control-Allow-Credentials, RETAIN_UNIQUE
globalcors:
cors-configurations:
'[/**]':
allowed-origins: "*"
allowed-methods: "*"
allowed-headers: "*"
allow-credentials: true
A: In addition to Pablo's answer, make sure downstream services do not have cors configured because they will add their headers to the final response headers. Therefore you only configure cors for your gateway service and you can just close the ports to other services so they can only be accessed from within the server.
A: The error is similar to others questions on other stacks when sever side cors configuration is not in effect.
Assuming you are using spring 5. Have you tried to "Use applyPermitDefaultValues() to flip the initialization model to start with open defaults that permit all cross-origin requests for GET, HEAD, and POST requests." as stated in the docs:
https://docs.spring.io/spring-framework/docs/5.0.x/javadoc-api/org/springframework/web/cors/CorsConfiguration.html
Best regards.
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Q: how to pass topic name as parameter based on condition in logic app? In logic app I got json data from HTTP connector based on that i want to give topic name to Service Bus Connector to send message to specific Service Bus topic
Currently I'm directly using Condition Connector but instead of use multiple condition connector hwo can I pass topic name based on json value ?
Json data -
{"data":[{
"name" : "demo1",
"TableName" : "Table2"
},
{
"name" : "demo2",
"TableName" : "Table2"
}]}
In for-each connector I'm looping through data[]
So based on Table name I want to pass topic name to service bus which is there inside my for-loop.
[![-lo]
A: You can add another step in between using Condition -> and then check for the value of the table. Something like below,
| {
"redpajama_set_name": "RedPajamaStackExchange"
} | 9,808 |
Фармацевтическая промышленность — отрасль промышленности, связанная с исследованием, разработкой, массовым производством, изучением рынка и распределением лекарственных средств, преимущественно предназначенных для профилактики, облегчения и лечения болезней. Фармацевтические компании могут работать с дженериками или оригинальными (брендированными) препаратами. Они подчинены разнообразию законов и инструкций относительно патентования лекарственных средств, клинических и доклинических испытаний и особенностей маркетинга готовых к продаже продуктов.
История
Середина XIX века – 1945 год: от растений до первых синтетических препаратов
Современная фармацевтическая промышленность начала развиваться с местных аптекарей, которые в середине 1800-х годов расширили свою традиционную роль по распространению растительных препаратов, таких как морфин и хинин, до оптового производства и открытий, сделанных в результате прикладных исследований. Открытие лекарств из растений началось с выделения между 1803 и 1805 годами морфина – обезболивающего и вызывающего сон агента – из опиума немецким помощником аптекаря Фридрихом Сертюрнером, который назвал это соединение в честь греческого бога сновидений Морфея. К концу 1880-х годов немецкие производители красителей усовершенствовали очистку отдельных органических соединений от дёгтя и других минеральных источников, а также разработали элементарные методы органического химического синтеза. Развитие синтетических химических методов позволило ученым систематически изменять структуру химических веществ, а развитие новой науки фармакологии расширило их способность оценивать биологические эффекты этих структурных изменений.
Адреналин, норэпинефрин и амфетамин
К 1890-м годам было обнаружено глубокое влияние экстрактов надпочечников на многие различные типы тканей, что положило начало поискам как механизма передачи химических сигналов, так и попыткам использовать эти наблюдения для разработки новых лекарств. Повышение артериального давления и сосудосуживающее действие экстрактов надпочечников представляли особый интерес для хирургов в качестве кровоостанавливающих средств и для лечения шока, и ряд компаний разработали продукты на основе экстрактов надпочечников, содержащие различные степени чистоты активного вещества. В 1897 году американский биохимик Джон Джекоб Абель из Университета Джона Хопкинса определил действующее вещество как адреналин, который он выделил в нечистом состоянии как сульфатную соль. Промышленный химик Джокити Такамине позже разработал метод получения адреналина в чистом виде и передал лицензию на эту технологию компании «Parke-Davis». Компания «Parke-Davis» продавала адреналин под торговым наименованием «Адреналин». Инъекционный адреналин оказался особенно эффективным для лечения острых приступов астмы, и его ингаляционная версия продавалась в Соединенных Штатах до 2011 года. К 1929 году адреналин был разработан в виде ингалятора для лечения заложенности носа.
Несмотря на высокую эффективность, потребность в инъекции ограничивала использование адреналина и были начаты работы над созданием перорального лекарства. Структурно похожее соединение, эфедрин (на самом деле больше похожее на норадреналин) было обнаружено японскими химиками на заводе Ma Huang и продано фармацевтической компании «Eli Lilly and Company» в качестве перорального средства для лечения астмы. Следуя работе Генри Дейла и Джорджа Баргера из «Burroughs-Wellcome», американский химик и фармаколог Гордон Аллес синтезировал амфетамин и испытал его на пациентах с астмой в 1929 году. Доказано, что лекарство оказывает лишь умеренное противоастматическое действие, но вызывает ощущение возбуждения и сердцебиения. Амфетамин был разработан компанией «Smith, Kline & French» в качестве назального противозастойного средства под торговым названием Benzedrine Inhaler. Амфетамин в конечном итоге был разработан для лечения нарколепсии, постэнцефалитического паркинсонизма и повышения настроения при депрессии и других психиатрических показаниях. В 1937 году препарат получил одобрение «Американской медицинской ассоциации» (АМА) как новое и неофициальное средство для этих целей и оставался обычным средством от депрессии до разработки трициклических антидепрессантов в 1960-х годах.
Открытие и разработка барбитуратов
В 1903 году немецкий химик Эмиль Герман Фишер и врач Йозеф фон Меринг сделали открытие, согласно которому диэтилбарбитуровая кислота, образующаяся в результате реакции диэтилмалоновой кислоты, оксихлорида фосфора и мочевины, вызывает сон у собак. Открытие было запатентовано и лицензировано компанией «Bayer Pharmaceuticals», которая продавала это соединение под торговым названием Veronal в качестве снотворного, начиная с 1904 года. Систематические исследования влияния структурных изменений на эффективность и продолжительность действия привели к открытию фенобарбитала в компании Bayer Pharmaceuticals (в 1911 году) и открытие его мощного противоэпилептического действия (в 1912 году). Фенобарбитал был одним из наиболее широко используемых лекарств для лечения эпилепсии в течение 1970-х годов, а по состоянию на 2014 год остается в списке основных лекарств Всемирной организации здравоохранения. В 1950-е и 1960-е годы возросло понимание способности барбитуратов и амфетаминов вызывать привыкание и возможности злоупотребления, что привело к усилению ограничений на их использование и усилению государственного контроля над лицами, назначающими лекарства. Сегодня амфетамин в основном используется для лечения синдрома дефицита внимания, а фенобарбитал – при лечении эпилепсии.
Инсулин
Серия экспериментов, проведенных с конца 1800-х до начала 1900-х годов, показала, что диабет вызван отсутствием вещества, обычно вырабатываемого поджелудочной железой. В 1869 году немецкий -патофизиолог Оскар Минковский и Йозеф фон Меринг обнаружили, что диабет у собак может быть вызван хирургическим удалением поджелудочной железы. В 1921 году канадский профессор Фредерик Бантинг и его ученик Чарльз Бест повторили это исследование и обнаружили, что инъекции экстракта поджелудочной железы обращают вспять симптомы, вызванные удалением поджелудочной железы. Вскоре было продемонстрировано, что экстракт действует на людях, но развитие инсулинотерапии как рутинной медицинской процедуры было отложено из-за трудностей с получением материала в достаточном количестве и с воспроизводимой чистотой. Исследователи обратились за помощью к промышленным сотрудникам в «Eli Lilly and Company», основываясь на опыте компании в крупномасштабной очистке биологических материалов. Химик Джордж Б. Уолден из «Eli Lilly and Company» обнаружил, что тщательное регулирование pH экстракта позволяет производить относительно чистый сорт инсулина. Под давлением Университета Торонто и потенциальным патентным вызовом со стороны академических ученых, которые независимо разработали аналогичный метод очистки, было достигнуто соглашение о неисключительном производстве инсулина несколькими компаниями. До открытия и широкого распространения инсулинотерапии продолжительность жизни диабетиков составляла всего несколько месяцев.
Ранние антиинфекционные исследования: сальварсан, пронтозил, пенициллин и вакцины
Разработка лекарств для лечения инфекционных заболеваний была основным направлением ранних исследований и разработок; в 1900 году пневмония, туберкулез и диарея были тремя основными причинами смерти в Соединенных Штатах, а смертность в первый год жизни превышала 10%.
В 1911 году немецкий иммунолог Пауль Эрлих и химик Альфред Бертхайм из Института экспериментальной терапии в Берлине разработали первый синтетический противоинфекционный препарат арсфенамин. Препарат получил коммерческое название Salvarsan. Эрлих, отмечая как общую токсичность мышьяка, так и избирательное поглощение некоторых красителей бактериями, предположил, что содержащий мышьяк краситель с аналогичными свойствами избирательного поглощения может быть использован для лечения бактериальных инфекций. Арсфенамин был приготовлен в рамках кампании по синтезу ряда таких соединений, и было обнаружено, что он проявляет частично избирательную токсичность. Арсфенамин оказался первым эффективным лекарством от сифилиса, болезни, которая до того времени была неизлечимой и неумолимо приводила к серьезным кожным изъязвлениям, неврологическим повреждениям и смерти.
Подход Эрлиха к систематическому изменению химической структуры синтетических соединений и измерению воздействия этих изменений на биологическую активность широко применялся учеными-промышленниками, включая ученых из «Bayer AG» Йозефа Кларера, Фрица Мицша и Герхарда Домагка. Эта работа, также основанная на тестировании соединений, доступных в немецкой красильной промышленности, привела к разработке пронтозила, первого представителя класса сульфонамидных антибиотиков. По сравнению с арсфенамином, сульфаниламиды обладали более широким спектром активности и были гораздо менее токсичными, что делало их полезными при инфекциях, вызванных патогенами, такими как стрептококки. В 1939 году за это открытие Домагк получил Нобелевскую премию по медицине. Тем не менее, резкое снижение смертности от инфекционных заболеваний, имевшее место до Второй мировой войны, было в первую очередь результатом улучшения мер общественного здравоохранения, таких как чистая вода и менее тесное жилье, а влияние противоинфекционных препаратов и вакцины имели большое значение в основном после Второй мировой войны.
В 1928 году британский микробиолог Александр Флеминг обнаружил антибактериальные эффекты пенициллина, но его использование для лечения болезней человека потребовало разработки методов его крупномасштабного производства и очистки. Они были разработаны консорциумом фармацевтических компаний под руководством правительства США и Великобритании во время Второй мировой войны.
В течение этого периода произошел ранний прогресс в разработке вакцин, прежде всего в форме академических и финансируемых государством фундаментальных исследований, направленных на идентификацию патогенов, ответственных за распространенные инфекционные заболевания. В 1885 году французский химик и микробиолог Луи Пастер и бактериолог Пьер Поль Эмиль Ру создали первую вакцину против бешенства. Первые вакцины против дифтерии были произведены в 1914 году из смеси дифтерийного токсина и антитоксина (полученной из сыворотки привитого животного), но безопасность прививки была незначительной, и она не получила широкого распространения. В 1921 году в Соединенных Штатах было зарегистрировано 206,000 случаев дифтерии, в результате которых погибло 15,520 человек. В 1923 году параллельные усилия французского ветеринара и биолога Гастона Рамона из Института Пастера и британского иммунолога Александра Гленни из Wellcome Research Laboratories (позже входившего в «GlaxoSmithKline») привели к открытию того, что более безопасная вакцина может быть произведена путем обработки дифтерийного токсина формальдегидом. В 1944 году американский микробиолог Морис Хиллеман из «Squibb Pharmaceuticals» разработал первую вакцину против японского энцефалита. Позже Хиллеман перебрался в Merck & Co., Inc., где сыграл ключевую роль в разработке вакцин против кори, эпидемического паротита, ветряной оспы, краснухи, гепатита A, гепатита B и менингита.
Контроль над производством лекарств
До 20 века лекарства, как правило, производились небольшими производителями с незначительным регулирующим контролем над производством или заявлениями о безопасности и эффективности. Поскольку такие законы действительно существовали, их исполнение было слабым. В Соединенных Штатах усиление регулирования вакцин и других биологических препаратов было вызвано вспышками столбняка и смертями, вызванными распространением зараженной противооспенной вакцины и дифтерийного антитоксина. Закон о контроле над биологическими препаратами 1902 года требовал, чтобы федеральное правительство выдавало предварительное разрешение на каждое биологическое лекарство, а также на процесс и установку, производящую такие лекарства. За этим последовал в 1906 году Закон о чистых пищевых продуктах и лекарствах, который запрещал межгосударственное распространение фальсифицированных продуктов и лекарств с неправильным брендом. Лекарство считалось недействительным, если оно содержало алкоголь, морфин, опиум, кокаин или другие потенциально опасные или вызывающие привыкание наркотики, и если на его этикетке не указывалось количество или пропорция таких медикаментов. Попытки правительства использовать закон для преследования производителей за необоснованные заявления об эффективности были подорваны постановлением Верховного суда, ограничивающим правоохранительные полномочия федерального правительства случаями неправильной спецификации ингредиентов препарата.
В 1937 году более 100 человек умерли после приема «Эликсира сульфаниламида» производства S.E. Компания Massengill из Теннесси. Продукт был разработан на основе диэтиленгликоля, высокотоксичного растворителя, который в настоящее время широко используется в качестве антифриза. Согласно действовавшим в то время законам, судебное преследование производителя было возможно только на том основании, что продукт был назван «эликсиром», что буквально означало раствор в этаноле. В ответ на этот эпизод Конгресс США принял Федеральный закон о пищевых продуктах, лекарствах и косметических средствах 1938 года, который впервые требовал предпродажной демонстрации безопасности перед тем, как лекарство могло быть продано, и прямо запрещал ложные терапевтические заявления.
Послевоенный период (1945–1970 гг.)
Дальнейшие достижения в области противоинфекционных исследований
После Второй мировой войны произошел большой сдвиг в открытии новых классов антибактериальных препаратов, включая цефалоспорины (разработанные «Eli Lilly and Company» на основе плодотворных работ итальянского фармаколога Джузеппе Бротцу и британского биохимика Эдварда Абрахама), стрептомицин (обнаружены в ходе исследовательской программы, финансируемой компанией Merck & Co., Inc., в лаборатории Селмана Ваксмана), тетрациклины (обнаружены в Lederle Laboratories, теперь часть «Pfizer»), эритромицин (обнаружен в «Eli Lilly and Company») и их распространение на все более широкий спектр бактериальных патогенов. Стрептомицин, обнаруженный в ходе исследовательской программы, финансируемой компанией Merck & Co., Inc., в лаборатории Селмана Ваксмана в Рутгерсе в 1943 году, стал первым эффективным средством от туберкулеза. На момент открытия санатории для изоляции больных туберкулезом были повсеместной особенностью городов в развитых странах, причем 50% из них умирали в течение 5 лет после поступления.
В отчете Федеральной торговой комиссии, опубликованном в 1958 году, сделана попытка количественно оценить влияние разработки антибиотиков на здоровье населения США. В отчете установлено, что за период 1946–1955 гг. произошло снижение на 42% случаев заболеваний, при которых антибиотики были эффективны, и только в 20% случаев антибиотики были неэффективны. В отчете сделан вывод, что «похоже, что использование антибиотиков, ранняя диагностика и другие факторы ограничили распространение эпидемии и, следовательно, количество этих заболеваний». В исследовании дополнительно изучались показатели смертности от восьми распространенных заболеваний, для которых антибиотики предлагали эффективную терапию (сифилис, туберкулез, дизентерия, скарлатина, коклюш, менингококковые инфекции и пневмония), и было обнаружено снижение на 56% за тот же период. Среди них следует отметить снижение смертности от туберкулеза на 75%.
В течение 1940–1955 годов темпы снижения уровня смертности в США увеличились с 2% в год до 8% в год, а затем вернулись к историческому уровню 2% в год. Резкий спад в первые послевоенные годы был приписан быстрой разработке новых методов лечения и вакцин от инфекционных заболеваний, которые произошли в эти годы. Разработка вакцин продолжала ускоряться, и самым заметным достижением этого периода стала разработка американского вирусолога Джонаса Солка вакцины против полиомиелита в 1954 году при финансировании некоммерческого «Национального фонда детского паралича». Процесс вакцины никогда не был запатентован, а вместо этого был предоставлен фармацевтическим компаниям для производства в качестве недорогого дженерика. В 1960 году Морис Хиллеман идентифицировал вирус SV40, который, как позже было показано, вызывает опухоли у многих видов млекопитающих. Позже было установлено, что SV40 присутствовал в качестве контаминанта в партиях вакцины против полиомиелита, которую вводили 90% детей в Соединенных Штатах. Загрязнение, по-видимому, произошло как из исходного клеточного материала, так и из ткани обезьяны, используемой для производства. В 2004 году Национальный институт онкологии (США) объявил, что SV40 не связан с раком у людей.
Другие известные новые вакцины того периода включают: вакцины против кори (1962, Джон Франклин Эндерс из Boston Children's Hospital, позже усовершенствованные Морисом Хиллеманом), краснухи (1969, Хиллеман) и эпидемического паротита (1967, Хиллеман). Заболеваемость краснухой, синдромом врожденной краснухи, корью и эпидемическим паротитом в Соединенных Штатах сразу же после широкомасштабной вакцинации снизилась более чем на 95%. За первые 20 лет лицензированной вакцинации против кори в США было предотвращено примерно 52 миллиона случаев заболевания, 17 400 случаев умственной отсталости и 5200 случаев смерти.
Разработка и маркетинг антигипертензивных препаратов
Гипертония является фактором риска атеросклероза, сердечной недостаточности, коронарной недостаточности, инсульта, почечной недостаточности и заболеваний периферических артерий и является наиболее важным фактором риска сердечно-сосудистой заболеваемости и смертности в промышленно развитых странах. До 1940 года примерно 23% всех смертей среди людей старше 50 были связаны с гипертонией. В тяжелых случаях гипертонии лечили хирургическим путем.
В 1952 году исследователи из «Ciba» открыли первый доступный для приема внутрь сосудорасширяющий препарат – гидралазин. Основным недостатком монотерапии гидралазином было то, что она со временем теряла свою эффективность (тахифилаксия). В середине 1950-х годов Карл Х. Бейер, Джеймс М. Спраг, Джон Э. Баер и Фредерик К. Новелло из «Мерк и Ко, Инк.» открыли и разработали хлоротиазид, который остается наиболее широко используемым сегодня гипотензивным препаратом. Эта разработка была связана со значительным снижением уровня смертности среди людей с гипертонией. В 1975 году изобретатели хлоротиазида были награждены премией Ласкера в области общественного здравоохранения за «спасение бесчисленных тысяч жизней и облегчение страданий миллионов жертв гипертонии».
В обзоре «Кокрана» от 2009 года сделан вывод, что тиазидные гипотензивные препараты снижают риск смерти (RR 0,89), инсульта (RR 0,63), ишемической болезни сердца (RR 0,84) и сердечно-сосудистых событий (RR 0,70) у людей с высоким кровяным давлением. В последующие годы были разработаны другие классы гипотензивных препаратов, которые нашли широкое применение в комбинированной терапии, включая петлевые диуретики (Лазикс/Фуросемид, Hoechst AG, 1963), бета-адреноблокаторы (Imperial Chemical Industries, 1964) ингибиторы АПФ, и блокаторы рецепторов ангиотензина. Ингибиторы АПФ снижают риск нового начала заболевания почек [RR 0,71] и смерти [RR 0,84] у пациентов с диабетом, независимо от того, есть ли у них артериальная гипертензия.
Контрацептивы
До Второй мировой войны во многих странах контроль рождаемости был запрещен, а в Соединенных Штатах даже обсуждение методов контрацепции иногда приводило к судебному преследованию в соответствии с законами Комстока. Таким образом, история разработки оральных контрацептивов тесно связана с движением по контролю над рождаемостью и усилиями активистов Маргарет Сэнгер, Мэри Деннет и Эммы Голдман. На основе фундаментальных исследований, проведенных американским биологом Грегори Пинкусом, и методов синтеза прогестерона, разработанных американским химиком Карлом Джерасси из компании «Syntex» и Фрэнком Колтоном из «G.D. Searle, LLC» (дочерняя компания «Pfizer»), первый пероральный контрацептив, Enavid, был разработан «E.D. Searle and Co.» и одобрен Управлением по санитарному надзору за качеством пищевых продуктов и медикаментов (FDA) в 1960 году. Первоначальный состав содержал чрезмерно высокие дозы гормонов и вызывал серьезные побочные эффекты. Тем не менее, к 1962 году 1,2 миллиона американских женщин принимали противозачаточные таблетки, а к 1965 году их число увеличилось до 6,5 миллионов. Доступность удобной формы временных противозачаточных средств привела к кардинальным изменениям в социальных обычаях, включая расширение диапазона вариантов образа жизни, доступных для женщин, уменьшение зависимости женщин от мужчин в применении противозачаточных средств, поощрение откладывания брака и увеличение числа добрачного сожительства.
Талидомид и поправки Кефовера-Харриса
В США толчок к пересмотру Федерального закона о пищевых продуктах, лекарствах и косметических средствах возник в результате слушаний в Конгрессе, проведенных сенатором Эстесом Кефовером из Теннесси в 1959 году. Слушания охватили широкий круг вопросов политики, включая злоупотребления рекламой, сомнительную эффективность лекарств и необходимость более строгого регулирования отрасли. В то время как импульс к принятию нового законодательства временно не стал предметом расширенных дебатов, возникла новая трагедия, которая подчеркнула необходимость более всеобъемлющего регулирования и стала движущей силой для принятия новых законов.
12 сентября 1960 года компания Уильяма С. Меррелла из Цинциннати, подала заявку на новый лекарственный препарат Kevadon (Талидомид), седативное средство, которое продавалось в Европе с 1956 года. Медицинский сотрудник FDA, отвечающий за изучение соединения, Фрэнсис Келси, считала, что данные, подтверждающие безопасность талидомида, неполны. Фирма продолжала оказывать давление на Келси и FDA, чтобы те одобрили заявку до ноября 1961 года, когда лекарство было снято с немецкого рынка из-за его связи с серьезными врожденными аномалиями. Несколько тысяч новорожденных в Европе и других странах пострадали от тератогенного воздействия талидомида. Без одобрения FDA фирма распространила Kevadon среди более чем 1000 врачей под предлогом использования в исследовательских целях. В ходе этого «исследования» более 20 000 американцев получили талидомид, в том числе 624 беременных пациенток, и около 17 новорожденных пострадали от воздействия препарата.
Данная ситуация вокруг талидомида воскресила законопроект Кефовера об усилении регулирования лекарственных средств, который застопорился в Конгрессе, и 10 октября 1962 года вступила в силу поправка Кефовера-Харриса. Отныне производители должны были доказать FDA, что их лекарства были эффективными и безопасными, прежде чем они могли поступить на рынок США. FDA получило полномочия регулировать рекламу рецептурных лекарств и устанавливать надлежащую производственную практику. Закон требовал, чтобы все препараты, введенные в период с 1938 по 1962 год, были эффективными. Совместное исследование FDA и Национальной академии наук показало, что почти 40% этих продуктов оказались неэффективными. Аналогичное всестороннее исследование безрецептурных продуктов началось десять лет спустя.
1970–1980-е годы
Статины
В 1971 году японский биохимик Акира Эндо, работающий в фармацевтической компании «Sankyo», идентифицировал мевастатин (ML-236B), молекулу, продуцируемую грибом Penicillium citrinum, в качестве ингибитора HMG-CoA редуктазы, критический фермент, используемый организмом для производства холестерина. Испытания на животных показали очень хороший ингибирующий эффект, как и в клинических испытаниях, однако долгосрочное исследование на собаках выявило токсические эффекты при более высоких дозах, и в результате мевастатин начали считать слишком токсичным для использования человеком. Мевастатин никогда не продавался из-за его побочных эффектов в виде опухолей, разрушения мышц, а иногда и смерти лабораторных собак.
П. Рой Вагелос, главный научный сотрудник, а затем генеральный директор «Merck & Co.», проявил интерес и начиная с 1975 года совершил несколько поездок в Японию. К 1978 году компания «Merck & Co.» выделила ловастатин (мевинолин, MK803) из грибка Aspergillus terreus, который впервые был продан в 1987 году как Mevacor.
В апреле 1994 года были объявлены результаты Scandinavian Simvastatin Survival Study, спонсируемого компанией «Merck & Co.». Исследователи протестировали симвастатин, позже проданный «Merck & Co.» как Zocor, на 4444 пациентах с высоким уровнем холестерина и сердечными заболеваниями. Через пять лет исследование пришло к выводу, что у пациентов наблюдалось снижение уровня холестерина на 35%, а их шансы умереть от сердечного приступа снизились на 42%. В 1995 году Zocor и Mevacor заработали для «Merck & Co.» более $1 миллиарда. Эндо был награжден Японской премией 2006 года и премией Ласкера-Дебейки за клинические медицинские исследования в 2008 году
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Экономический аспект разработки новых лекарственных препаратов
На разработку оригинального лекарственного средства требуется большое время (до десятков лет) и большие финансовые затраты. Новое лекарственное средство проходит все предусмотренные законом процедуры, чтобы быть зарегистрированным, а затем его применение становится объектом контроля и изучения в рамках системы фармаконадзора. Фармацевтические компании всегда получают патенты на новые лекарственные препараты, их действующие вещества, комбинации этих веществ, технологии производства. Поэтому их конкуренты обычно не имеют возможности вывести на рынок препараты с теми же действующими веществами в течение определенного времени. Однако после истечения срока патентной защиты, а иногда и ранее, начинается производство дженериков (копий лекарственного препарата, разработанного много лет назад).
По разным данным, ведущие фармацевтические компании мира направляют на разработку новых лекарственных средств от 13 до 25% своего дохода. Только в 2019 году 10 ведущих мировых компаний потратили на разработки в области фармацевтики более $82 млрд.
При этом на фоне роста затрат компаний на разработку новых лекарственных средств c $20 млрд до $50 млрд с 2000 по 2010 год, число зарегистрированных новых препаратов в этот период снижалось. Компании могли себе позволить увеличивать расходы на исследования, поскольку в 1990-е годы получали прибыль от «лекарств-блокбастеров» (мировые продажи которых превышают $1 млрд), к примеру антикоагулянтов, а также от первого поколения биотехнологических препаратов (к примеру интерферонов). К росту затрат на исследования привело также усложнение и усиление надзора государственных регуляторов за производством дешевых дженериков. Средняя стоимость разработки одного лекарства составляет $2,6 млрд, среднее время разработки составляет 10 лет. При этом лишь менее 12% потенциальных лекарств, которые доходят до первой стадии клинических испытаний, получают свидетельства государственного регулятора.
Ведущие мировые компании
По состоянию на 2013 год ведущими фармацевтическими компаниями мира являлись (продажи, млрд долл.):
Pfizer (США) — 59,0
Novartis (Швейцария) — 56,7
Roche Holding (Швейцария) — 49,7
Merck & Co (США) — 47,3
Sanofi (Франция) — 46,1
GlaxoSmithKline (Великобритания) — 43,0
Abbott Laboratories (США) — 39,9
AstraZeneca (Великобритания / Швеция) — 28,6
Eli Lilly and Company (США) — 22,6
Sinopharm Group (Китай) — 21,5
Teva Pharmaceutical Industries (Израиль) — 20,9
Takeda Pharmaceutical (Япония) — 18,2
AbbVie (США) — 18,0
Bristol Myers Squibb (США) — 17,6
Otsuka Pharmaceutical (Япония) — 13,9
Novo Nordisk (Дания) — 13,8
Merck KGaA (Германия) — 13,8
Astellas Pharma (Япония) — 11,7
Daiichi Sankyo (Япония) — 11,3
По состоянию на 2013 год ведущими компаниями мира по распространению фармацевтических препаратов являлись (продажи, млрд долл.):
McKesson (США) — 123,5
Cardinal Health (США) — 104,8
AmerisourceBergen (США) — 80,6
Medipal Holdings (Япония) — 33,2
Alfresa Holdings (Япония) — 28,2
Suzuken (Япония) — 22,5
Toho Holdings (Япония) — 13,4
Российский фармацевтический рынок
На 2016 год российский фармацевтический рынок занимал 14-е место в мире с объемом 20 млрд долларов США. Объем импорта 8908 млн долларов США, экспорт российской фармацевтической промышленности 635 млн долларов США. По итогам 2018 года импортные лекарства заняли 70 % рынка в денежном виде и 40 % в упаковках. Первые места в рейтинге производителей в рублях сохранили за собой иностранные компании Sanofi, Novartis и Bayer. В топ-20 вошли три российских производителя: Отисифарм, Фармстандарт и Биокад.
Фармацевтическая промышленность России
В 2016 году объем производства лекарственных средств в России составил 286 млрд руб., медицинских изделий 52,8 млрд руб Доля наименований российских лекарственных препаратов в перечне жизненно необходимых и важнейших лекарственных препаратов на конец 2016 года составила 77 %.
Государственная поддержка
В России действует государственная программа «Развитие фармацевтической и медицинской промышленности на период до 2020 года и дальнейшую перспективу» Министерства промышленности и торговли. Программа определяет следующие задачи:
технологическое перевооружение фармацевтического производства;
импортозамещение лекарственных средств по номенклатуре жизненно необходимых и важнейших лекарственных препаратов;
вывод на рынок российской инновационной продукции;
увеличение экспорта фармацевтической промышленности;
улучшение кадрового обеспечения отрасли.
В 2019 году Минпромторг представил новый проект стратегии развития фармацевтической промышленности России до 2030 года. Документ предлагает продолжить концентрацию на соблюдении лекарственной безопасности страны. Рассматриваются несколько сценариев развития — от оптимистических с значительным увеличением экспорта до пессимистических с упором на импортозамещение жизненно-важных препаратов и медицинских изделий.
История
В Российской империи развитием производства медицинских изделий, заготовкой лекарственных растений и фармацевтической химией занимались преимущественно аптеки и аптечные сети. Первые сведения о системной заготовке лекарственных средств в России относятся к XVII, когда создается Аптекарский приказ. При Петре I лекарственные средства переходят в ведение Главной аптеки. В XIX веке известную сеть аптек и производственную базу для них построила семья обрусевших немцев Феррейнов. Также в конце XIX начале XX веков начинают появляться независимые фармацевтические компании, такие как химико-фармацевтическое предприятие Кёлера. Тем не менее фармацевтика в Российской империи была развита слабо, производились в основном галеновые препараты, существовала сильная зависимость от импорта синтетических препаратов. С началом Первой мировой войны импорт препаратов из Европы резко сократился.
В СССР фармацевтика стала одной из важнейших отраслей. Уже в 1920 году на базе предприятий Феррейнов образуется Научно-исследовательский химико-фармацевтический институт, фармацевтические заводы по всей стране объединяются под единым управлением Высшего совета народного хозяйства. Первоначальной задачей стало построение собственной химико-фармацевтической промышленности и воспроизведение импортных лекарственных средств. В довоенный период 1920-х и 1930-х был освоен выпуск почти всех известных в то время важных лекарственных средств. К 1990 году производилось свыше 4600 тонн антибиотиков и 4300 тонн витаминов.
Основные производители
Корпорации Фармстандарт, Верофарм.
Московский эндокринный завод
Мосхимфармпрепараты
Микроген
Национальная иммунобиологическая компания
Брынцалов
Акрихин
Дальхимфарм
Татхимфармпрепараты
Уралбиофарм
Биосинтез
Биохимик
Органика
Нижфарм (Stada)
Биокад
НПО Петровакс Фарм
Фармасинтез
Украинский фармацевтический рынок
В 2015 году на территории Украины работало 620 фармацевтических производителей. Основными центрами по производству лекарств являются Харьков, Киев и Одесса.
Фармак (Киев)
Артериум (Киев — Львов)
Дарница (Киев)
Юрия-Фарм
Здоровье
Киевский витаминный завод
Борщаговский ХФЗ (Киев)
Фарма-Старт
Лекхим
ИнтерХим
См. также
Фармацевтика
Биотехнология
Дженерик
Фармацевтическая химия
Примечания
Литература | {
"redpajama_set_name": "RedPajamaWikipedia"
} | 9,853 |
Looking for Top Custom RC Powerboat Builder\Company Help Appreciated.
Thread: Looking for Top Custom RC Powerboat Builder\Company Help Appreciated.
Looking For Help Choosing Top RC Fast-Boat Company,To Build\Supply Boat For me?
*Since starting my thread I have discovered a few more top companies and one in particularity "SWOOP RC BOATS" from what I have seen and read they seem to be amazing boats?
And yet another boat just discovered,that might fit the bil??
Amps Formula 357 SR1 54" Fiberglass or Carbon hull by WoodRC Boat Kits?Possibly more like a real boat than a sleak speed dart\Wedge ? if you follow me guys.?
I am actually English, but have lived in Norway for 16 + years.
MHZ (NOT SURE IF THEY ARE STILL IN BUSINESS*)?
I am aware the above are all different and offer different things,just impressed by their offerings and web pages. I am very sure they are not the only TOP-NOTCH COMPANIES and their will be other companies and individuals I missed . I just need some feedback on the above plus any others worth considering. Can be anywhere in the world.
Hope fellow members can help!
P.S The Large Font helps me as my eyesight is not the best,.
Last edited by powerboatman; 02-13-2019 at 10:22 AM.
The community here is extremely helpful, and I'm sure you will find what you are looking for.
There are some thing everyone will want to know, in order to make a decent recommendation.
Do you have any existing RC Equipment?
How big is the lake you have easy access to?
Really good to hear from you,I appreciate very much your comments.
1.The size of boat is flexible but 35" minimum?
Can you post a number, so people know?
Speed + Size = Costly.
Further, most nice systems from big manufactures won't come with a nice battery charger, or radio.
There are plenty of builders here that may be able to help you in your quest.
On the lake you have access to, is it sheltered, or is there a decent wind and waves?
This will help with hull and speed selection.
thats why I am pushing the boat out , and going for the best (within reason) for the Boat and accessories.
So lake is 60 meters long which is about 200 foot long? How wide is the lake? This could be a big limiting factor on how big and fast of a boat you want.
Oh okay that makes sense now LOL! I don't own any of the brands you mentioned but I did almost buy a Pro-Marine Twin MTR X-2. I wish I did now, I purchased a Zonda twin and the quality does not look anyway near as good as the Pro-Marine boats. The Zonda is 7 inches longer than the Pro-Marine but in the water I run it probably would have not made a difference.
Good of you to get back to me.
from the off I said to myself,must go for something top quality,as this is the first time I have being in the fortunate position of being able to afford a top quality Boat!The Pro Marine Boats look and sound good, but I am no expert, far from it, thats why I am on the forum asking for feedback. | {
"redpajama_set_name": "RedPajamaC4"
} | 6,584 |
Blog, data monetisation, mobile data usage, Nonstop retention®, Sweden
Rollover data: Solving Anders' problems?
2 October 2015 Fredrik Jungermann
This is Anders. Like any other Swede, he's a keen user of mobile data and likes to spend time making sure he gets as much data as possible for his money.
He frequently tethers his iPad or his Mac to his iPhone (yes, he is Swedish) to stream Netflix, HBO, Viasat and SVT Play when out and about. He's also more or less constantly on Spotify. This behaviour means that in a normal month he uses about 6 GB of mobile data, about twice the Swedish average.
But Anders is part of a family. And during their vacations, Anders' smartphone is used as a Wi-Fi hotspot not only by himself, but also by the rest of the family. This means that his annual mobile data consumption is unevenly distributed:
The first peak happens during the family's skiing week, the second during the month-long remote summer house vacation.
Anders noticed that Telia, as the first operator in Sweden, launched rollover data 1 October. When reading about it, Anders realised that this could potentially be good for him given the seasonal variations in the mobile data usage.
Telia's rollover data, Surfpott, is available for new and old consumer customers on the 12, 24 and 40 GB per month plans, but not for customers on the 0,5 and 4 GB plans. (All plans include unlimited voice and messaging). The unused data of previous month is saved into a savings account – with gigabyte as the currency. In Telia's implementation, unused data doesn't expire, but no more than 100 GB can be saved.
At tefficient, we consider rollover data an important element of Nonstop Retention: A savings account full of data will be hard to leave behind – which a customer needs to do if he/she churns. It's also considered fair to be able to keep data once paid for.
Anders knew he had to commit to Telia's 12 GB plan for 399 SEK per month to get the rollover. Given his normal usage of 6 GB, it's a bit high of course, but Anders' intention is to be able to save up data for the vacation periods.
And it proved to worked out very well:
If he starts the plan now, he has easily saved up enough unused data to manage the first (skiing vacation) peak of 15 GB. He simply takes the extra 3 GB from the savings account.
The summer holiday peak of 50 GB is managed as well: At this point in time, Anders would have 45 GB in his savings account but since his normal monthly allowance is 12 GB, he just needs to withdraw 38 GB.
All this to a cost of just 4788 SEK per year. Anders is happy: In order to reasonably match his peak usage, Anders is currently on Telia's 40 GB per month plan (which he during the summer vacation month still need to complement with two 5 GB top-ups of 199 SEK each) for a total cost of 7586 SEK per year. By introducing rollover data, Telia just lowered his mobile bill by 37%.
But before logging into "Mitt Telia" to downgrade his plan, Anders remembered having seen Tele2 advertising about more data for the money.
For almost the same money as Telia's 12 GB plan (which Anders would downgrade to), Tele2 would give 50 GB per month (still, of course, with unlimited voice and messaging). But without rollover. The 50 GB allowance would be sufficient even for that peak month, though.
Anders couldn't make his mind up. If he would have had a more evenly distributed data traffic, he could use up to 600 GB per year with Tele2 compared to just 144 GB with Telia – for the same money. On the other hand, he doesn't like the feeling of 44 GB being confiscated every normal month.
Sofie, Anders' wife, proposed that he should investigate if top-ups couldn't solve the peak months. And so he did.
If Anders would downgrade his plan with Telia yet a step, to 4 GB per month, he would first of all lose the rollover. Cost-wise, it wouldn't be good either since Anders would have to top-up every single month – since Telia's top-ups expire after 31 days. Consequently, this option would almost become as expensive as his original 40 GB plan. So for him, the 12 GB option with rollover would still be the best of what Telia offers.
When checking Tele2's top-up options, Anders found out that in contrast to Telia, Tele2's top-ups roll over – without limits or expiry. It didn't have an impact on his price calculation, but made Anders wonder why he couldn't have both.
But Sofie's hint was a good one: If instead relying on top-ups to cover the extra data need in the peak month, Anders could go with Tele2's 20 GB per month plan and save an additional 303 SEK per year on the previous Tele2 price: Tele2 won with 4473 SEK per year.
After much hesitation, Anders still favours Telia, though. Partly because the data allowance can be shared with other Telia SIMs in the family (only need to convince all kids to churn). Partly because Telia through Telia Familj gives a multi-user discount (again, they should churn). But mainly since with Telia, Anders could continue to have the discount on Spotify Family.
One of his kids then told him that 3 started to zero-rate Spotify in Sweden. Anders decided to do the maths on that one another day. Could 3 really be the best option? (He's now quietly wishing for Telenor not to come up with anything new).
Read more about Nonstop Retention – our take on how modern operators could keep customers loyal
Previous PostThe best Nordic 4G networks: Crowdsourced reality vs. marketed population coverageNext PostThe anti-guide: Six ways to make sure your customer churns | {
"redpajama_set_name": "RedPajamaCommonCrawl"
} | 2,458 |
Панделі Евандьєлі (1859 −1939) — албанський політичний діяч, двічі прем'єр-міністр Албанії. Він був першим ортодоксальним християнином, що очолив албанський уряд.
Народився у Корчі у 1859 році.
Примітки
Прем'єр-міністри Албанії | {
"redpajama_set_name": "RedPajamaWikipedia"
} | 5,026 |
The Vanishing of Ethan Carter (deutsch Das Verschwinden des Ethan Carter) ist ein Adventure-Computerspiel des polnischen Entwicklungsstudios The Astronauts, das am 26. September 2014 für Microsoft Windows veröffentlicht wurde. 2015 erschien die technisch verbesserte Neuauflage The Vanishing of Ethan Carter Redux für PlayStation 4 und Windows, Anfang 2018 auch für Xbox One. Seit 31. März 2016 ist auf Steam eine Virtual-Reality-Version für HTC Vive, Oculus Rift und Valve Index erhältlich.
Handlung
Paul Prospero, ein Detektiv mit übernatürlichen Fähigkeiten, erhält einen Brief des kleinen Jungen Ethan Carter, der wegen etwas Übernatürlichem beunruhigt ist. Der Brief führt den Detektiv in das fiktionale Red Creek Valley im US-amerikanischen Wisconsin, wo Ethans Familie lebt. Paul findet schnell heraus, dass Ethan ebenso wie alle anderen Bewohner des Ortes verschwunden ist, und untersucht deswegen das Red Creek Valley. Er findet heraus, dass Ethan ein Wesen namens "The Sleeper" ("Der Schläfer") freigesetzt hatte, das in Körper von Menschen fahren, sich diese gefügig machen konnte und sich gegen Ethans Familie wandte. Im weiteren Verlauf der Handlung nimmt die Geschichte eine drastische Wendung, als Prospero herausfindet, dass der Sleeper ebenso wie Prospero selbst nur in der Einbildung des Jungen Ethan existiert.
Spielprinzip und Technik
The Vanishing of Ethan Carter spielt in einer weitläufigen Spielwelt, in der sich der Spieler frei bewegen und sie nach Belieben erforschen kann. Die paranormalen Kräfte von Paul benutzt man, um zum Beispiel wichtige Objekte zu finden sowie die Mordgeschichten in die richtige Reihenfolge zu bringen. Die fotorealistisch anmutende Grafik des Spiels wurde durch den Einsatz der 3D-Technologie Photogrammetrie erreicht. The Vanishing of Ethan Carter wurde auf Basis der Unreal Engine 3 entwickelt, für die 2015 veröffentlichte Redux-Version wurde es in der Nachfolger-Generation Unreal Engine 4 neu aufgelegt.
Rezeption
The Vanishing of Ethan Carter erhielt fast ausschließlich positive Bewertungen. Die Rezensionsdatenbank Metacritic aggregiert 66 Rezensionen zu einem Mittelwert von 82. Julian Aidan von Hardcore Gamer gab dem Spiel aufgrund der guten Grafik und der spannenden Story 4 von 5 Punkten. Chip Online bezeichnete das Spiel als "atemberaubend schöner Thriller" und bei GameStar erhielt es mit 81 Punkten die Note Sehr Gut.
Weblinks
Einzelnachweise
Computerspiel 2014
Adventure
PlayStation-4-Spiel
Windows-Spiel
Science-Fiction-Computerspiel
Xbox-One-Spiel
Nintendo-Switch-Spiel
Virtual-Reality-Spiel | {
"redpajama_set_name": "RedPajamaWikipedia"
} | 4,656 |
\section{Proposed Approach}
\label{sec:approach}
To train large DBNs, we propose an approach that
supports distributed computation in neural networks.
At a high level, our approach consists of two steps: model parallelism (Section~\ref{sec:parallelism})
and model combination (Section~\ref{sec:combination}).
In the first model parallelism step, our approach
automatically parallelizes computation in each machine using all available resources,
and manages communication, synchronization and data transfer between machine.
In the second step, our approach supports four different ways to
combine results from each machine to form a unified DBN.
\subsection{Model Parallelism}
\label{sec:parallelism}
\begin{figure*}[!]
\centering
\includegraphics[scale=0.2000]{exampledbn}
\vspace*{-2.0ex}\caption {{\label{fig:exampledbn} An example of model parallelism of a 3-layer neural network on 2 machines. In this example, each machine randomly drops out a portion of
neurons and trains a separate DBN independently. Later, our approach combines
the trained DBNs using four methods described in Section~\ref{sec:combination}.
}}
\end{figure*}
Figure~\ref{fig:exampledbn} illustrates the model parallelism step on two machines.
It is worthy noting that the computational needs of training a DBN on one machine
depends on its connectivity structure, and random dropout can significantly
reduce the complexity of a DBN as well as the number of parameters: dropping out
50\% of neurons at each layer can lead to a reduction of 75\% of the parameters (connection weights). In general, given a dropout probability $p$, our approach permits model parallelism among at most $1/p^2$ machines, with each machine updating a disjoint portion of weight matrix.
This is fundamentally different from existing model parallelism approaches~\cite{Dean_NIPS12}.
For example, in the DistBelief~\cite{Dean_NIPS12} framework, a user needs to define the computation that takes place at each machine in each layer of the model, while our approach distributes the computation of training each DBN fully automatically to each machine.
In addition, for a framework like DistBelief~\cite{Dean_NIPS12},
the complexity of a DBN is not reduced; rather, a DBN is partitioned (as a graph)
into available machines, and each machine must communicate frequently
(with the parameter server) for updating weights. Therefore,
large models with
high computational demands might benefit from access to
more CPUs and memory at the beginning, but will be limited by
the bottleneck where communication costs dominate at some point.
By contrast, in our approach, DBNs produced by random dropout
tend to be more amenable to extensive distribution than fully-connected structures, given
their less complex structures and lower communication requirements. Doing so
will also help alleviate the bottleneck in which many machines are waiting for the single
slowest machine to finish a given phase of computation.
\subsection{Model Combination}
\label{sec:combination}
Our approach provides four ways to combine the trained DBN
from each machine:
\begin{enumerate}
\item Averaging weights of the trained DBN in each machine.
\item Majority voting of the predication result for test data using the trained DBN in each machine
(our implementation breaks possible cycles by arbitrarily ranking the predication results, but this did not occur in our experiments).
\item \textit{Synchronously} updating parameter weights \textit{during} DBN training in each machine.
\item \textit{Asynchronously} updating parameter weights \textit{during} DBN training in each machine.
\end{enumerate}
The first two ways for model combination are straightforward, and are omitted in this paper
for space reasons. We next describe how to update parameter weights (a)synchronously.
\begin{figure}[t]
\begin{algorithmic}[1]
\STATE compute $\Delta$$w$
\COMMENT{calculate the gradient}
\STATE fetch $w$ from the weight queue
\STATE $w'$ $\leftarrow$ $w$ - $\eta$$\Delta$$w$
\STATE push $w'$ to other machines' weight queues
\vspace{-2mm}
\end{algorithmic}
\caption{The asynchronous parameter updating algorithm in each machine on each training data. Each
machine has a weight queue receiving the updated parameters from other machines.
At the beginning, each machine has the same replica of parameters.
} \label{fig:asynch}
\end{figure}
Figure~\ref{fig:asynch} sketches the asynchronous parameter weight updating algorithm in each
machine on each training data. This lock-free asynchronous algorithm prevents each machine from waiting for others to
finish before proceeding to the next training data, while sacrificing the data consistency of
parameters -- it is possible that two machines are updating the same parameters simultaneously
without an explicit ordering. As a consequence, this asynchronous algorithm may introduce additional
stochasticity in training.
\begin{figure}[t]
\begin{algorithmic}[1]
\STATE compute $\Delta$$w$
\COMMENT{calculate the gradient}
\STATE fetch $w$ from the parameter server
\COMMENT{wait until all other machines finish updating $w$}
\STATE $w'$ $\leftarrow$ $w$ - $\eta$$\Delta$$w$
\STATE update $w'$ on the parameter server
\COMMENT{wait until all other machines finish updating $w'$}
\vspace{-2mm}
\end{algorithmic}
\caption{The sychronous parameter updating algorithm in each machine on each training data. Only the parameter serve stores all weights; each machine fetches the needed weights from the server before updating.
} \label{fig:synch}
\end{figure}
Figure~\ref{fig:synch} sketches the synchronous parameter weight updating algorithm in each
machine. In this algorithm, there is a central parameter server storing
weights of all parameters. At the end of each mini-batch (a set of training
data), each machine sends a request to the parameter server to fetch the needed
parameter weights. If other machines are updating the requested parameters, this machine
needs to wait until all machines finish their updates. Comparing to the asynchronous algorithm,
this algorithm eliminates possible data races and improves data consistency
of the same parameters, but introduces higher overhead.
\subsection{Implementation}
We implemented our approach in a prototype using Matlab and Python.
Our prototype uses the Theano~\cite{theano} library to
define, optimize, and evaluate mathematical expressions involving multi-dimensional arrays
efficiently. Specifically, our implementation uses Theano to
achieve significant speedup in data-intensive calculations by leveraging the transparent use of a GPU.
When combining the trained DBNs, our implementation uses inter-process communication (IPC)~\cite{Stevens:2003} to exchange data among multiple threads
in one or more processes. Our implementation is publicly available at: \url{http://deeplearning.googlecode.com}.
\section{Conclusion}
\label{sec:conclusion}
This paper proposes an approach to scale up deep belief networks (DBNs).
At the core of our approach is the use of \textit{random dropout} to
prevent co-adaptions on the training data for a DBN, reduce overfitting,
and enable DBN training to use the computational power of clusters in
a distributed environment. Empirically, our implementation
outperforms some state-of-the-art approaches~\cite{hinton:improving}, and promising nearly linear speedups. Furthermore, our approach allows parallel training of a DBN even when some gradients are
computationally intensive.
For future work, it would be interesting to compare our approach
with other approaches using different abstractions~\cite{Gonzalez+al:osdi2012, graphchi:osdi2012}.
For example, the PowerGraph~\cite{Gonzalez+al:osdi2012} abstraction exploits the internal
structure of graph programs to address the challenges of
computation on natural graphs. Thus, it may be possible to
adapt a similar random dropout idea to reduce memory consumption
and communications between processors. An investigation
into how to generalize this approach to
other structures and problems would enable even faster computation of machine learning problems.
\section{Evaluation}
\label{sec:evaluation}
\subsection{Details of dropout training on MINST dataset}\label{sec:details}
The architectures of a deep network (the number of layers and the number of hidden units in each layer) varies on different benchmark tasks. Our first step is to develop a prototype and evaluate its effectiveness on the MNIST handwritten digits dataset~\cite{Hinton:2006:FLA}, which consists of 28 $\times$ 28 digit images, - 60,000 for training and 10,000 for testing. The objective is to classify the digit images into their correct digit class. We experimented a neural network with size 784--500--500--2000--10, and pre-trained that network as a layer-wise Restricted Boltzmann Machine (RBM) for 50 epochs. Here one epoch means a pass through training data. During the pre-training phase, we employs a greedy Contrastive Divergence--1 learning algorithm. The learning rate is exponentially decaying, with initial value 10.0 and a decay rate 0.998 for each epoch of training. Weights were updated at the end of each mini-batch of size 100. Momentum is also used, with an initial value of 0.5, and a linear increasing rate of 0.001 over the first 490 epochs, after which it stays at 0.99. For the fine tuning using back-propagation with dropout for 200 epochs, we employed the stochastic gradient descent with mini-batches of size 100. We use the same dropout rates $p$ for all hidden units and $20\%$ dropout for input pixels. A constant learning rate 1.0 was used and there's no constraints imposed on the norms of weight vectors.
\subsection{Generalization Performance as a function of dropout probability}
In the original dropout~\cite{hinton:improving} article, Hinton et al claims that a better generalization performance can be achieved with various dropout probabilities. With implementation details shown in section~\ref{sec:details}, here we show how the test error rate varies as a function of dropout probability. As demonstrated in figure~\ref{fig:errorVSdropoutP}, dropout does decrease the test error rate by about 0.1\% (10 less misclassified examples in the test data set). Contrary to their claim, we found that the generation performance of dropout actually depends on the dropout probability. When the dropout probability is greater than 0.6, the test error rate increases significantly. Such inconsistency might be due to the much smaller training epochs (1,000 epochs used in Hinton's paper) used in our implementation.
\begin{figure}
\centering
\includegraphics[scale=0.3]{errorVSdropoutP.jpg}
\label{fig:errorVSdropoutP}
\caption{The test error rate on the {MNIST } for a variety of dropout probabilities. The input visible neurons also use 20\% dropout. The best previous published results for this task using DBN without dropout are 1.18\% (with RBM pre-training) and 1.6\% (without RBM pre-training ), using more than 1,000 epochs~\cite{hinton:improving}.}
\end{figure}
\subsection{Generalization Performance of our distributed algorithm}
Here we evaluate the generalization performance on the {MNIST } dataset using various algorithms to combine results from different machines, as listed in section~\ref{sec:combination},.
\begin{table}[h!]
\centering
\begin{tabular}[h!]{|c|c|c|c|c|c|}\hline
Algorithms & Sequential & Weight Averaging & Majority Vote & Synchronous Update & Asynchronous Update \\ \hline
Error Rate (\%) & 1.08 & 0.98 & 1.04 & 0.97 & 1.06 \\ \hline
\end{tabular}
\caption{Test error rate using different algorithms for 200 epochs of fine tuning. Weight averaging and majority vote algorithms collect final weights from $7$ independent runs of the standard dropout algorithms. Synchronous update and asynchronous update algorithms combine results from two processes after each input instance. Dropout rate is 50\% for all algorithms. }
\end{table}
Both weight averaging and synchronous update algorithms achieved notable improvement in the generalization performance. Surprisingly the majority vote method didn't reduce the test error rate by a large margin. The asynchronous update algorithm introduced additional noise in the weight updates by its lock free mechanism, thus its generalization performance was relatively the same as the sequential dropout algorithm. However, as exhibited in figure~\ref{fig:asyncUpdateVsTime}, the convergence rate for both synchronous and asynchronous update algorithms are faster than the
sequential dropout algorithm.
\begin{figure}
\centering
\includegraphics[scale=0.3]{asyncUpdateVsTime.jpg}
\caption{The test error rate on the {MNIST } as a function of number of epochs, using synchronous/asynchronous updates. }
\label{fig:asyncUpdateVsTime}
\end{figure}
\subsection{Limitations}
Our current evaluation was performed on a desktop with a Dual Core Intel E7400 processor, 3GB RAM, and a NVIDIA 8800GS graphics card. Pretraining/fine tuning are generally very time consumption on this machine. Due to time constraints, we were only able to evaluate our proposed algorithm on the relatively small {MNIST } dataset. However, we plan to further evaluate our algorithm on other speech and object recognition benchmark tasks such as the TIMIT Acoustic-Phonetic Continuous Speech Corpus~\cite{Mohamed12}, Reuters Corpus for news article topic recognition~\cite{Rose02thereuters}, and the ImageNet dataset of millions of labeled images in thousands of categories~\cite{Deng09imagenet:a}.
\section{Introduction}
\label{sec:problem}
Deep learning methods~\cite{Hinton:2006:FLA} aim to learn a multilayer
neural network that can extract the feature hierarchies of the input data, by maximizing the likelihood of its training data. Their promise largely lies in the potential to use vast amounts of unlabeled data to learn complex, highly nonlinear models with millions of parameters. In recent competitions, deep learning methods have shown adavantanges over nearest-neighbor based (shallow) methods such kernel methods~\cite{zhao2012fixed,scholkopf1998support} and ensemble methods~\cite{freund1997decision, Chen:ICML2013, Boosting15}.
In this paper, we consider a well-known machine learning model, deep belief networks (DBNs), that can learn hierarchical representations of their inputs. DBN has been applied to a number of machine learning applications, including speech recognition~\cite{Deng_Speech12}, visual object recognition~\cite{abs-1003-0358, wu2014learning} and text processing~\cite{Bengio:2003:NPL}, among others. In particular, DBN is especially well-suited to problems with high-dimensional inputs, over which it can infer rich models with many hidden layers. For example, when
applied to images, a DBN can easily have tens of millions of free parameters, and ideally, we would want to use millions of unlabeled training examples to richly cover the input space.
It has been demonstrated that increasing the scale of
deep learning, with respect to the number of training examples,
the number of model parameters, or both, can drastically improve ultimate classification accuracy~\cite{ICML2011Le_210}. Unfortunately, with most of the current algorithms, even training a moderate-sized DBN can take weeks using a conventional implementation on a single CPU~\cite{Raina:2009:LDU}. This is primarily due to the daunting computational requirements in DBN training --- a large number of parameters need to be trained on the available examples.
To address the DBN scalability problem, this paper proposes an approach to scale up large-scale deep belief networks (DBNs) by adapting
the idea of \textit{random dropout}. \textit{Random dropout},
proposed by Hinton et al.~\cite{hinton:improving}, was originally used to prevent complex co-adaptations on the
training data in a single processor. On each training case, each hidden unit is randomly omitted
from the network with a probability of 0.5, so a hidden unit cannot rely on other hidden units
being present. By doing so, many separate DBNs are trained and then applied independently to the test data
to reduce the predication bias of a single DBN.
Our approach extends the \textit{random dropout} idea to the distributed and parallel setting.
Rather than omitting a hidden unit with a probability of 0.5, our approach \textit{randomly}
drops out \textit{a portion of} hidden units on each processor on each training case. To
combine DBNs in each processor, our approach offers four different ways (Section~\ref{sec:combination}):
\begin{enumerate}
\item performing model averaging with all trained DBNs.
\item using majority vote over the predication result of each trained DBN for each test case.
\item (each processor) \textit{synchronously} updating its parameters \textit{after} fetching the needed
parameters from other processors.
\item (each processor) \textit{asynchronously} fetching the computed parameters from other processors and pushing
its computed parameters to other processors.
\end{enumerate}
As validated in our preliminary evaluation, by using random dropout, our approach outperforms the state-of-the-art~\cite{hinton:improving} DBN algorithms on the same data set, and have the potential to exhibit nearly linear speedup with its parallel implementation.
This paper makes the following contributions:
\begin{itemize}
\item \textbf{Approach.} We propose an approach to scale up deep
belief networks using random dropout~\cite{hinton:improving} on large
clusters (Section~\ref{sec:approach}).
\item \textbf{Implementation.} We implemented our approach in
an open-source prototype, which is publicly available at: \url{http://deeplearning.googlecode.com}
\item \textbf{Evaluation.} We applied our approach to the
{MNIST } dataset, and demonstrated its effectiveness (Section~\ref{sec:evaluation}).
\end{itemize}
\section{Related Work}
\label{sec:related}
Recently, many approaches have been developed to scale up machine learning algorithms within a machine (via multithreading) and across machines (via message passing)~\cite{Langford09slowlearners, Mann09efficientlarge-scale, McDonald:2010:DTS, NIPS2010_1162}. Much of the existing work focuses on linear, convex models, and takes distributed gradient computation as the first step. Some other approaches relax synchronization requirements, exploring delayed gradient updates for convex problems~\cite{Langford09slowlearners}, or exploring lock-less asynchronous stochastic gradient descent on shared-memory architectures (i.e. single machines)~\cite{Niu_NIPS11}.
Another way to scale up machine learning algorithms is to provide better abstractions and well-encapsulated computation tools. MapReduce~\cite{Dean:2008:MSD} and GraphLab~\cite{Gonzalez+al:osdi2012} are two notable examples.
However, MapReduce, originally designed for parallel data processing, has a number of limitations for training deep belief network~\cite{Gonzalez+al:osdi2012}. On the other hand, GraphLab~\cite{Gonzalez+al:osdi2012} was designed
for general \textit{unstructured} graph computations and does not exploit the computational effectiveness in a typical \textit{structured} graph as in a deep belief network. Thus, it is still unknown whether the abstraction of GraphLab can be used for training large-scale DBNs.
In the deep learning community, some work has been done to train relatively small models on a single machine~\cite{Hinton:2006:FLA}. In general, training a many-layer model is computationally intensive. Thus, full model parallelism as well as smart distributed optimization techniques is required. Recent years saw a surge of interest in scaling up the training and inference algorithms used for DBNs~\cite{Dean:2008:MSD, Raina:2009:LDU}
and in improving applicable optimization procedures~\cite{ICML2011Le_210}. Existing approaches primarily
fall into the following two categories.
Approaches in the first category use graphics processors (GPUs)~\cite{Raina:2009:LDU, abs-1003-0358, Dahl12context} to achieve significant
speedup for training moderate-sized DBNs. The use of GPUs has significantly reduced the computation time of matrix operations, which dominate most of the computation cost of deep learning algorithms. However, a known limitation
of such GPU-based approaches is that the speedup will be small when the model does not fit in GPU memory (typically less than a few gigabytes). Thus, to effectively leverage a GPU, researchers often reduce the model size and the parameter number to alleviate the impact of lacking enough GPU memory. While data and parameter reduction work well for small problems (e.g. acoustic
modeling for speech recognition~\cite{HintonDengSignal2012}), they are less attractive for realistic problems
with a large number of examples and dimensions (e.g., high-resolution images~\cite{Dean_NIPS12}).
Approaches in the second category use model parallelism to achieve scalability. For example, DistBelief~\cite{Dean_NIPS12} is a notable framework that enables model parallelism across machines (via message passing) , with the details of parallelism, synchronization and communication managed by the framework. Model parallelism under the DistBelief framework suffers a very large communication overhead due to the dense connections between layers of neurons. Data parallelism is also supported in DistBelief by using multiple replicas of a model to optimize a single objective. However, as pointed out by Hinton et al.~\cite{hinton:improving}, a large neural network, such as the one trained by DistBelief, can still perform poorly on held-out test data, if the relationship between the input and the correct output is complicated and the network has enough hidden units to model it accurately. In such cases, there will typically be many different
settings of the weights that can model the training set almost perfectly. Each of these weight vectors will make different predictions on held-out test data and
almost all of them will do worse on the test data than on
the training data because the feature detectors have been tuned to work well together on the training data but not on the test data.
Our approach is inspired by those above mentioned approaches,
and aims to address their limitations. With the goal of scaling up deep learning techniques to train very large DBNs, our approach combines the intrinsic parallelism in the ensemble learning algorithms, with the random dropout approach~\cite{hinton:improving} to improve generalization results of neural networks.
Using random dropout, our approach trains a separate DBN (much smaller than the original DBN) on an individual (graphical) processor in a large cluster, and then combines their results using four proposed methods.
Compared to existing approaches, our random dropout-based approach has several noticeable benefits. First, it becomes possible to train
a huge number of different networks in a reasonable time, since the number of parameters
to be trained on a single machine is much smaller than the original DBN. Second, our approach permits to
better use the modern GPU memory due to the reduced model size.
Third, data transferring between processors would incur less communication overhead.
| {
"redpajama_set_name": "RedPajamaArXiv"
} | 4,077 |
{"url":"https:\/\/faustlibraries.grame.fr\/libs\/delays\/","text":"# delays.lib\n\nThis library contains a collection of delay functions. Its official prefix is de.\n\n## Basic Delay Functions\n\n### (de.)delay\n\nSimple d samples delay where n is the maximum delay length as a number of samples. Unlike the @ delay operator, here the delay signal d is explicitly bounded to the interval [0..n]. The consequence is that delay will compile even if the interval of d can't be computed by the compiler. delay is a standard Faust function.\n\n#### Usage\n\n_ : delay(n,d) : _\n\n\nWhere:\n\n\u2022 n: the max delay length in samples\n\u2022 d: the delay length in samples (integer)\n\n### (de.)fdelay\n\nSimple d samples fractional delay based on 2 interpolated delay lines where n is the maximum delay length as a number of samples. fdelay is a standard Faust function.\n\n#### Usage\n\n_ : fdelay(n,d) : _\n\n\nWhere:\n\n\u2022 n: the max delay length in samples\n\u2022 d: the delay length in samples (float)\n\n### (de.)sdelay\n\ns(mooth)delay: a mono delay that doesn't click and doesn't transpose when the delay time is changed.\n\n#### Usage\n\n_ : sdelay(n,it,d) : _\n\n\nWhere :\n\n\u2022 n: the max delay length in samples\n\u2022 it: interpolation time (in samples), for example 1024\n\u2022 d: the delay length in samples (float)\n\n## Lagrange Interpolation\n\n### (de.)fdelaylti and (de.)fdelayltv\n\nFractional delay line using Lagrange interpolation.\n\n#### Usage\n\n_ : fdelaylt[i|v](N, n, d) : _\n\n\nWhere:\n\n\u2022 N=1,2,3,... is the order of the Lagrange interpolation polynomial (constant numerical expression)\n\u2022 n: the max delay length in samples\n\u2022 d: the delay length in samples\n\nfdelaylti is most efficient, but designed for constant\/slowly-varying delay. fdelayltv is more expensive and more robust when the delay varies rapidly.\n\nNote: the requested delay should not be less than (N-1)\/2.\n\n### (de.)fdelay[N]\n\nFor convenience, fdelay1, fdelay2, fdelay3, fdelay4, fdelay5 are also available where N is the order of the interpolation, built using fdelayltv.\n\n## Thiran Allpass Interpolation\n\nThiran Allpass Interpolation.\n\n### (de.)fdelay[N]a\n\nDelay lines interpolated using Thiran allpass interpolation.\n\n#### Usage\n\n_ : fdelay[N]a(n, d) : _\n\n\n(exactly like fdelay)\n\nWhere:\n\n\u2022 N=1,2,3, or 4 is the order of the Thiran interpolation filter (constant numerical expression), and the delay argument is at least N-1\/2. First-order: d at least 0.5, second-order: d at least 1.5, third-order: d at least 2.5, fourth-order: d at least 3.5.\n\u2022 n: the max delay length in samples\n\u2022 d: the delay length in samples\n\n#### Note\n\nThe interpolated delay should not be less than N-1\/2. (The allpass delay ranges from N-1\/2 to N+1\/2). This constraint can be alleviated by altering the code, but be aware that allpass filters approach zero delay by means of pole-zero cancellations.\n\nDelay arguments too small will produce an UNSTABLE allpass!\n\nBecause allpass interpolation is recursive, it is not as robust as Lagrange interpolation under time-varying conditions (you may hear clicks when changing the delay rapidly).","date":"2022-07-01 13:55:26","metadata":"{\"extraction_info\": {\"found_math\": true, \"script_math_tex\": 0, \"script_math_asciimath\": 0, \"math_annotations\": 0, \"math_alttext\": 0, \"mathml\": 0, \"mathjax_tag\": 0, \"mathjax_inline_tex\": 0, \"mathjax_display_tex\": 0, \"mathjax_asciimath\": 1, \"img_math\": 0, \"codecogs_latex\": 0, \"wp_latex\": 0, \"mimetex.cgi\": 0, \"\/images\/math\/codecogs\": 0, \"mathtex.cgi\": 0, \"katex\": 0, \"math-container\": 0, \"wp-katex-eq\": 0, \"align\": 0, \"equation\": 0, \"x-ck12\": 0, \"texerror\": 0, \"math_score\": 0.5554783344268799, \"perplexity\": 8951.041360100791}, \"config\": {\"markdown_headings\": true, \"markdown_code\": true, \"boilerplate_config\": {\"ratio_threshold\": 0.18, \"absolute_threshold\": 10, \"end_threshold\": 15, \"enable\": true}, \"remove_buttons\": true, \"remove_image_figures\": true, \"remove_link_clusters\": true, \"table_config\": {\"min_rows\": 2, \"min_cols\": 3, \"format\": \"plain\"}, \"remove_chinese\": true, \"remove_edit_buttons\": true, \"extract_latex\": true}, \"warc_path\": \"s3:\/\/commoncrawl\/crawl-data\/CC-MAIN-2022-27\/segments\/1656103941562.52\/warc\/CC-MAIN-20220701125452-20220701155452-00609.warc.gz\"}"} | null | null |
Armory upgrades mean better access, more space
By Heather Sauer, College of Design Communications
A view from the bleachers of the College of Design's reconfigured studios on the main floor of the Armory. Photo by Bob Elbert.
Call it Extreme Makeover: Armory Edition.
With the growth of the undergraduate industrial design program -- established with a class of 20 in 2010 and now accepting 36 new students annually -- the College of Design needed space in the Armory for an additional studio as well as increased capacity for group critiques.
"We saw opportunities to create greater efficiencies and put seven sections of architecture and landscape architecture into what formerly was six studio spaces while adding a studio for industrial design," said Michael Miller, the college's director of operations.
"We also enhanced the center critique space to accommodate 80 to 100 students, improved security and simplified access to the studios," he said.
The reconfigured space was designed by 19 architecture, landscape architecture and interior design students in Bruce Bassler's design-build studio last spring. The class finished three studios and the critique area during the semester; a contractor completed the remaining studios over the summer.
"The creative challenge for us was, how do you turn space for six studios into seven and expand the review space and not make all the studios smaller?" said Bassler, associate professor of architecture.
Finding efficiencies
By examining circulation patterns, students found they could eliminate the warren of aisles around the center as well as a redundant hallway along the south side of the studios in favor of a single central hallway to gain square footage and provide more efficient access into the studios.
Bassler said the class secured the support of other occupants affected by the project -- the ISU police and parking divisions and the three ROTC units housed in the Armory -- to incorporate the south hallway into the college's space.
"This allowed us to do studios the same size as before or even a little larger along with the larger review space. It's a minor miracle," he said. "And security is better because now we have one central hallway with only two entrances into the space whereas before we had nearly a dozen."
Rather than demolish and rebuild walls, students chose to move whole walls intact to new locations. Though a labor-intensive process, it saved time and allowed the class to reuse materials.
The most difficult aspect was the amount of electrical work to be done, Bassler said.
"Since we essentially moved every wall, that meant all electrical had to be relocated. The electrical contractor taught students how to calculate circuits and pull wires and oversaw the work so we could save a lot of money doing it ourselves."
Instead of a costly track-lighting system, students installed utility light fixtures in the existing cable system over the review space. They also laid carpet remnants in a pattern reminiscent of farm fields seen from the air.
"It's a far nicer space than it's ever been," Miller said. "The furniture, while not new, also has been refurbished -- we redid the desktops and installed new concrete tops and threaded-rod handles for the flat files so they're all usable again."
All studios were ready for students to start classes on Aug. 20. As part of one of the college's strategic initiatives, the project was funded primarily by the provost's office.
College of Design students have had studio space at the Armory since the mid-1990s. Studios for first-year students moved to the King Pavilion when it opened in 2009; third-year architecture and landscape architecture studios remained in the Armory. In 2010, after the industrial design program was approved, those students were assigned spaces in the Armory, too.
What you'll see and hear at the installation
Report to regents: Replace tuition set aside with state grant program
A guide to political activity on campus
University awards ceremony is Sept. 21
Wind energy degree approved by senate
Time for a flu shot
ISC courtyard plan will be shared at Sept. 19 meeting
Students to celebrate, lunch with the Leaths Thursday
Discrimination/harassment prevention training is free
Study Abroad Fair is Sept. 20
Lied Rec area to close Sept. 14
Medallion ceremony for Bergman is Sept. 21
Fine dining fall lineup announced
Beardshear-Hub sidewalk work begins Sept. 19
"Relationships Renewed" exhibit, Sept. 13
Julia Badenhope
Now you see it, now you don't
Stephens kicks off its 2012-13 Performing Arts Series Sept. 20 with a magical performance by the "Masters of Illusion."
U.S. News: Iowa State is No. 46 among top public national universities | {
"redpajama_set_name": "RedPajamaCommonCrawl"
} | 1,658 |
The Historia Croylandensis is a series of bound documents, allegedly from the 15th century, containing a fake history of the Benedictine abbey of Croyland in Lincolnshire, England.
The Historia Croylandensis contains a history of the Croyland Abbey dating back to the 9th century. It also contains basic letters which should prove the basic rights of the monastery.
The work is in reality a fake work created to win a lawsuit in 1413 for property rights. Together with the basic letters, the Croyland Abbey won the legal dispute with these documents.
Historically, Historia Croylandensis has long been considered a source of mediaeval lifestyle in England. Only in the 19th century was the work recognized as a forgery. It was noticeable that some monks were reported to be 140 years old. Furthermore, several had studied in Oxford, although the university was not founded in truth.
manuscripts
The original of the Historia Croylandensis is not known. There are several traditions. The fragmentary "British Library (BL) Cotton MS Ortho B xiij" (15th century) and "BL Arundel 178" (16th century).
References
Document forgeries | {
"redpajama_set_name": "RedPajamaWikipedia"
} | 1,087 |
Home MMA Stephen Thompson Speaks On Sitting Out For UFC Greenville
Stephen Thompson Speaks On Sitting Out For UFC Greenville
Fernando Quiles Jr.
Image Credit: Getty Images
The Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC) will be making its way to South Carolina, but a local favorite will not be competing on the card.
Stephen Thompson was born in Simpsonville, South Carolina. While it would seem to be a no brainer to have him on the UFC Greenville card, some things just don't pan out. Thompson is coming off the first knockout loss of his career to Anthony Pettis back in March and he wants more time to heal.
'Wonderboy' Talks Missing Out On UFC Greenville
Thompson admits that fighting at UFC Greenville would've been ideal, but his health comes first (via Greenville News):
"I can't wait to get back into the octagon. But Greenville – I'm not going to be able to do that and I really really wanted to."
Last month, Thompson told Bloody Elbow that he was shooting for an August return. UFC Greenville takes place on June 22. Thompson has gone 1-3-1 in his last five outings. He hasn't picked up a win since Nov. 2017. He has fallen to the seventh spot on the UFC welterweight rankings. Time will tell what's next for "Wonderboy," but he definitely will not be fighting in June.
Do you think Stephen Thompson should've been saved for the UFC Greenville card instead of fighting in March?
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Donald Cerrone is daring skeptics to keep doubting his ability to produce in big fights. Cerrone is due for... | {
"redpajama_set_name": "RedPajamaCommonCrawl"
} | 7,515 |
'use strict';
var url = require('url');
var Loans = require('./LoansService');
module.exports.getLoansPhone_number = function getLoansPhone_number (req, res, next) {
Loans.getLoansPhone_number(req.swagger.params, res, next);
};
module.exports.postLoansPhone_number = function postLoansPhone_number (req, res, next) {
Loans.postLoansPhone_number(req.swagger.params, res, next);
};
| {
"redpajama_set_name": "RedPajamaGithub"
} | 3,662 |
package leetcode;
import java.util.ArrayList;
import java.util.Arrays;
import java.util.Collections;
import java.util.HashMap;
import java.util.List;
import java.util.Map;
/**
* https://leetcode.com/problems/relative-ranks/
*/
public class Problem506 {
public String[] findRelativeRanks(int[] nums) {
int[] copy = Arrays.copyOf(nums, nums.length);
List<Integer> list = new ArrayList<>();
for (int i = 0; i < copy.length; i++) {
list.add(copy[i]);
}
Collections.sort(list, (a, b) -> Integer.compare(b, a));
Map<Integer, Integer> map = new HashMap<>();
for (int i = 0; i < list.size(); i++) {
map.put(list.get(i), i + 1);
}
String[] result = new String[nums.length];
for (int i = 0; i < nums.length; i++) {
int position = map.get(nums[i]);
if (position == 1) {
result[i] = "Gold Medal";
} else if (position == 2) {
result[i] = "Silver Medal";
} else if (position == 3) {
result[i] = "Bronze Medal";
} else {
result[i] = Integer.toString(position);
}
}
return result;
}
}
| {
"redpajama_set_name": "RedPajamaGithub"
} | 4,029 |
La sierra de Santa Ana es una sierra peninsular de poca longitud a lo largo de la costa del sur de California, en Estados Unidos. Se extiende a lo largo de unos 56 km al sureste de la cuenca de Los Ángeles, principalmente bordeando al condado de Orange y Riverside.
Geografía
La sierra comienza al norte de los cerros Chino, dirigiéndose al sureste de los cerros Puente. En su parte norte es cortada por el cañón de Santa Ana, por el que pasa el río de Santa Ana. Su cumbre más septentrional, de unos 928 metros de altitud es el pico Sierra. Desde aquí, las mayores cotas se alcanzan en el pico Pleasant de 1221 msnm, el pico Bedford y el pico Pelado. Los otros dos picachos de elevación importante son el Modjeska de 1 675 y el Santiago de unos 1734 msnm, son los cimas de la sierra. El Jorobado, ubicado a unos 32 km al este de Santa Ana se puede ver desde la mayor parte del sur de California, siendo el único punto de la sierra con suficiente altitud para tener nieve durante el invierno.
Al sur del Jorobado está el pico de Trabuco, el pico de Los Pinos, el pico de Elsinora, el pico de Sittón, el pico de Margarita, y la mesa Redonda, . La sierra termina abruptamente en el río de Santa Margarita.
En esta sierra se ubica el rancho de la familia Yorba, Rancho Lomas de Santiago y el Rancho Misión Vieja.
La sierra está formada, además por una sierra pequeña denominada sierra de Elsinora, que incluye a las montañas que se encuentran al oeste del Lago Elsinora y son la sección más baja de toda la sierra, siendo su punto más elevado el pico Elsinora.
Historia
Esta sierra toma su nombre en honor a las fiestas de Santa Ana, el 26 de julio de 1769, día en que la expedición de Gaspar de Portolá acampa en sus faldas. Cuando Portolá llegó a la sierra de Santa Ana, la región estaba poblada por tres grupos de indios americanos, lo Tongva al norte, los Juaneños y Luiseños en el sur.
Referencias
Enlaces externos
Sierras de California
Condado de Orange (California)
Condado de Riverside
Condado de San Diego | {
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\section{Introduction}
Observations of anisotropies in the Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB) have been fundamental to the development of our understanding of the formation and development of the Universe. Starting with the COBE satellite (Boggess et al., 1992) which provided the first detection of the intrinsic CMB temperature fluctuations, there have been a series of ground and space-based experiments that have measured these fluctuations to ever increasing precision and on an ever-widening range of angular scales (eg. Jaffe et al., 2001; Bennett et al., 2003). The most recent CMB experiment was the {\em Planck} mission, which has produced a map of the CMB temperatures fluctuations over the entire sky down to angular scales of $\sim$ 7 arcminutes (Fig. 1, Planck Collaboration, 2014a).
\begin{figure}
\includegraphics[width=15cm]{dx9_smica_cmb_bw.pdf}
\caption{The all sky CMB anisotropy map from {\em Planck} (Planck Collaboration, 2014a, ESA).}
\label{fig:cmb}
\end{figure}
CMB temperature fluctuations are the result of acoustic oscillations in the plasma of the early universe that were frozen into the background radiation when matter and radiation decoupled at the time of recombination. The statistics of the fluctuations are Gaussian with a typical relative amplitude of $\Delta T/T \sim 10^{-5}$ superimposed on the $T = 2.73$ K black body radiation.
The strength of fluctuations at different angular scales is given by their power spectrum (Fig. 2, Planck Collaboration, 2014a) which shows a clear peak on scales of $\sim$ 1 degree, which corresponds to the horizon scale at the time of recombination. The shape of the CMB power spectrum is a key tool in constraining cosmological models.
\begin{figure}
\includegraphics[width=15cm]{cmbtot_loglin_bw.pdf}
\caption{The CMB power spectrum derived from the {\em Planck} CMB map (Planck Collaboration, 2014a, ESA).}
\end{figure}
The traditional way that CMB fluctuations are visualised is to represent the CMB temperature range with a colour table - eg. red for the hottest scaling to blue for the coldest - and then to display these colours on a sheet of paper using one of the standard spherical projections, most often a Mollweide projection (see Fig. 1). Some attempts have been made to produce interactive computer graphics visualisations of the CMB as a sphere, which can then be rotated at random by a user, but all of the representations to date have relied upon vision as the key tool for representing the varying temperature of the CMB. In this paper we describe how an alternative approach to representing the CMB temperature fluctuations can be achieved by using a 3D printer to render the anisotropies as bumps and dips on the surface of a sphere. Presenting the CMB in a truly 3D form, that can be held in the hand and felt rather than viewed, has many potential benefits for teaching and outreach work, and is especially relevant for those with a visual disability. While 3D printers have previously been used to visualise mathematical functions (Aboufadel et al., 2013; Knill \& Slavkovsky, 2013) and the results of models of complex systems (Reiss et al., 2013), its use to represent astronomical observational data is new, and is potentially a novel way for researchers to represent and interrogate their data as well as to present it to students. 3D printing is also of use for outreach in that it allows those with impaired vision to better understand and appreciate the results of observational cosmology. It also permits everyone to use a different sense, that of touch, to appreciate the properties of the CMB.
This paper describes the use of 3D printers to represent cosmological observations in this way, but a similar approach can be applied to other astrophysical data sets, including, but not limited to, topographic maps of planets, observations and models of the surface and interior structures of stars, the distribution of stars in galaxies, and the distribution of galaxies and intergalactic gas within the large scale structure of the universe. This work can be regarded as a proof-of-concept demonstration for all of these other possibilities. Since it was the result of a final year undergraduate project at Imperial College London (S. Sato \& and A. Portela Fonseca were the students), this work also serves as a demonstration that this kind of project can play a strong pedagogical role, introducing students to real astronomical or cosmological datasets and to the techniques of 3D printing.
The rest of this paper is structured as follows. In Section 2 we describe the Planck dataset that was used as the starting point for our 3D printing. In Section 3 we discuss the capabilities and limitations of different 3D printing technologies for this work, while in Section 4 we describe how the Planck data were processed to make it appropriate for 3D printing. In Section 5 we describe and present the final products from this work. We draw our conclusions in Section 6.
\section{The {\em Planck} Data}
The {\em Planck} mission observed the entire sky at nine different frequencies, from 30GHz to 857GHz (Planck Collaboration, 2014a). This allowed various foregrounds from our own and other galaxies, including dust, synchrotron radiation and emission lines from CO, that would contaminate the 2.73K CMB emission, to be determined and removed (Planck Collaboration, 2014b). The CMB dipole anisotropy (Smoot et al., 1977), that results from our motion relative to the CMB frame, was also removed, allowing the primary CMB anisotropies to be determined. These anisotropies are of order $\Delta T/T \sim 10^{-5}$ in size.
The all-sky {\em Planck CMB} maps, as well as the individual frequency maps, component separation maps and more, are available online at \verb$http://pla.esac.esa.int/pla/$, where the all-sky maps are stored in HEALPix format\footnote{http://healpix.sourceforge.net/} (Gorski et al., 2005). This is a hierarchical equal area pixellation scheme for a sphere and is the the main data format used for astrophysical all-sky mapping projects like {\em Planck} and {\em WMAP}. HEALPix divides the sphere up into equal area pixels starting with twelve equal area curvilinear quadrilaterals and then, for higher resolutions, dividing these quadrilaterals into ever smaller sets of four smaller quadrilaterals (see Fig. 3 of Gorski et al. (2005)). A given HEALPix resolution is defined by the number of pixels each of the original quadrilaterals has on a side, going up by a factor of 2 at each resolution increase. The native HEALPix scale for the {\em Planck} maps is Nside=2048, corresponding to an angular resolution of each HEALPix pixel of $\sim$ 1.7 arcminutes, and a total number of pixels over the whole sky of 50,331,648.
\section{3D Printing}
3D printing is the term usually applied to a wide range of additive manufacturing techniques whereby a solid object is produced through the computer-controlled addition of material that is typically built up layer by layer. A wide range of materials can be used for 3D printing, ranging from sugar to titanium.
Two materials, and two 3D printing technologies, were used for this project. The first used polylactic acid (PLA), a biodegradable thermosoftening plastic. This is printed layer on layer by the {\em Ultimaker} 3D printer used here. PLA is a cheap printing material and as such was ideal for prototyping and testing the computer aided design (CAD) files developed for this project. The second material, used for the final coloured objects, was plaster, printed by a ZPrinter 650 machine. This printer works in a somewhat different way to the PLA printing machine. While the {\em Ultimaker} only lays down material that will be part of the final object, the ZPrinter operates by printing a binding fluid, which may include colouration, onto a preexisting layer of powder. The entire printing bed of the machine is covered in powder, one layer at a time, but only the material bound together by the printing head is retained in the final product. This means that the object being printed, no matter its shape, is supported throughout the printing process by the powder layers. In contrast, material printed by the {\em Ultimaker} must be self supporting. Since we aim to print a representation of the all-sky CMB as bumps on a sphere, a support structure must be added to the {\em Ultimaker} print to ensure that the bottom part of the sphere, where there is a large overhang, is not in danger of slumping.
Each printer requires an input file in its own specific format. For the {\em Ultimaker} a stereolithography (STL) file is the starting point. This is then processed through a slicing programme called \verb|Cura| which produces the GCode file used by the printer. The ZPrinter in contrast uses a Virtual Reality Modelling Language (VRML) file as input instead. This provides an alternative way of describing the object to be printed and adds the possibility of colouring the final product. In principle any colour scale can be produced, but for this project a 23 colour scale based on that used for all-sky CMB images in publications by the {\em Planck} consortium was used.
\section{From {\em Planck} Data to CAD Files}
A number of processing steps are needed to go from the initial nside=2048 HEALPix maps to the CAD files needed by each of the 3D printer types used. The first step involves using the HEALPix data to produce a representation of the CMB anisotropies as bumps on the surface of a sphere with the temperature anisotropies scaled by an appropriate amount so that they are large enough to be felt and seen. This spherical representation then has to be processed to produce appropriate input files for the relevant printers.
\subsection{HEALPix to a Sphere}
The original {\em Planck} maps are stored as HEALPix Nside = 2048 objects, corresponding to a resolution of $\sim$1.7 arcminutes and 50,331,648 pixels. The resulting 3D printer file that would be produced from this would be unmanageably large, and would include detail at a resolution finer than can easily be perceived even for a large diameter finally printed sphere - for a 10 cm diameter printed sphere the smallest scale features would be $\sim$50 $\mu$m across, roughly equivalent to the width of a human hair. Furthermore, most of the power in the CMB anisotropies is on scales of $\sim$ 1 degree (see Fig. 1). The CMB HEALPix maps were therefore degraded by a factor of sixteen to HEALPix Nside = 128 maps, corresponding to a pixel size of $\sim$ 0.46 degrees which is thus well matched to the scale at the peak of the CMB anisotropy power spectrum. The total number of HEALPix pixels at this resolution is a much more manageable 196608.
The input CAD files for the 3D printers used in this project consist of a mesh of triangles that make up the surface of the object being printed. Such a mesh can be generated from a list of Cartesian coordinates that lie on the surface of the object by software such as the \verb!MeshLab! system\footnote{http://meshlab.sourceforge.net/}. The next step in producing our 3D representation of the CMB is thus to use the Nside = 128 HEALPix map to produce a list of Cartesian coordinates lying on the surface of the object to be printed.
To do this, the $r, \theta, \phi$ polar coordinates of each HEALPix pixel were calculated. The $r$ coordinate was then modified on the basis of the CMB temperature anisotropy, scaled by a variable factor so that the structures on the surface representing them would be large enough to be discernible by touch or vision. The initial test printings were done using a 3 cm radius sphere, so the radius $r$ was scaled as follows:
\begin{equation}
r(\theta, \phi) = 3 + \left( n \times 1000 \times \Delta T(\theta, \phi) \right)
\end{equation}
where the eventual radial coordinate is in cm, $\Delta T(\theta, \phi)$ is the CMB anisotropy at the angular position ($\theta$, $\phi$) given by the HEALPix map, and $n$ is a scale factor that was tuned to produce the best effect. Values of 1, 2 and 3 were tested for $n$, with 2 being found to produce the most effective results. The list of $(r, \theta, \phi)$ coordinates generated in this way for the surface of the sphere were then converted to $(x,y,z)$ Cartesian coordinates to provide the input to the next stages of the process which convert this list of points into the meshes appropriate for each type of 3D printer.
\subsection{Making the Mesh}
The mesh, linking the points in the $(x,y,z)$ coordinate list and which is later used to produce the CAD files that will be printed, was generated using the \verb!MeshLab!\footnote{http://meshlab.sourceforge.net/} package. This takes the list of points, finds neighbouring points, and then generates a mesh made up of triangles that connect these points using a Poisson surface reconstruction algorithm (Kazhdan et al., 2006). The end result is the surface of the object that will be printed.
To produce the mesh from the input $(x,y,z)$ file,~\verb!MeshLab! uses a tree searching algorithm where the tree depth specifies the the level of detail in the final product. A variety of depths was tried with fourteen finally being selected for the $n=2$ model that was eventually used for printing. The object descriptions produced by \verb!MeshLab! are not guaranteed to be free of holes or degeneracies. Such flaws were identified and corrected using the \verb!NetFabb!\footnote{http://www.netfabb.com/basic.php} package. The final resulting object description was output to both STL and VRML files, which are appropriate for the {\em Ultimaker} and ZPrinter devices respectively.
\subsection{STL File Generation for the {\em Ultimaker}}
The {\em Ultimaker} printer uses the plastic PLA as its printing material, and prints by extruding this plastic onto the printing surface. An overhanging structure, such as the base of a sphere, will not be able to support itself when printed in this manner. The software \verb!Cura!\footnote{https://ultimaker.com/en/products/cura-software}, is used to further process the input STL files to slice the object into the thin layers that the machine will print. \verb!Cura! can also be used to generate support struts to prevent drooping. \verb!Cura! was also used to give the object a 20\% filled internal grid making the final plastic printed models less breakable. The eventual result of this process is a GCode file which can be input to the {\em Ultimaker}. Figure \ref{fig:ultimaker} shows an {\em Ultimaker} printer in the process of printing our 3D representation of the CMB, complete with \verb!Cura!-generated support structures and a base.
\begin{figure}
\includegraphics[width=15cm]{printing_bw2.pdf}
\caption{3D CMB model being printed by an {\em Ultimaker}. The brown material is the printed plastic, with the print head working above it. The spherical CMB model is supported by a number of vertical supports which can be removed after printing.}
\label{fig:ultimaker}
\end{figure}
\subsection{VRML File Generation for the ZPrinter}
The printing method for the ZPrinter, where layers of plaster are put down and the print head sprays a fluid that glues the powder together that will form the final object, has several advantages for the current work. Firstly the powder layers provide support during the printing process so no additional support struts are required. Secondly, ink-jet printer ink can be mixed with the fixing fluid so that the final object can be coloured. There are several disadvantages though. Firstly the feedstock for the ZPrinter is more expensive, so the final model is over 10 times the price of the plastic Ultimaker version, and secondly the powder is quite dense so the final model needs to be hollow and have a hole in the surface to allow the interior powder to escape. For these reasons the ZPrinter was only used for our final printed model, with a somewhat larger size than the original 3 cm radius plastic models.
The \verb!MeshLab!-produced mesh was rescaled by a factor of 5/3 using \verb!NetFabb! so that the final model will have a 5 cm radius and then hollowed out to have a shell that is at least 5mm thick. The \verb!Blender!\footnote{https://www.blender.org/} tool was then used to produce a cylindrical hole of diameter 10mm at the south galactic pole of the model. The final mesh was exported from \verb!NetFabb! as VRML, the file format used by the ZPrinter. Before this was done a colour value was defined for each vertex using a 23 colour scale modelled on the \verb!Commander! colour scheme used by the {\em Planck} consortium, where blue represents the coldest points and red the hottest. Figure \ref{fig:vrml} shows the full colour CMB model printed by the ZPrinter.
\begin{figure}
\includegraphics[width=15cm]{monochrome_bw2.pdf}
\caption{The final {\em Ultimaker} printed CMB model.}
\label{fig:ultimaker_cmb}
\end{figure}
\begin{figure}
\includegraphics[width=15cm]{colour_print2.pdf}
\caption{The final ZPrinter printed CMB model with colour.}
\label{fig:vrml}
\end{figure}
\section{Printed Universes}
Figures \ref{fig:ultimaker_cmb} and \ref{fig:vrml} show the final printed versions of the CMB models from the ZPrinter and {\em Ultimaker} respectively. As can be seen the structure of the CMB fluctuations on scales matching the first doppler peak are rendered as visible bumps and dips in the surface of the resulting sphere, while the colours of the ZPrinter version are similar to those of the {\em Planck} CMB map in Figure \ref{fig:cmb}. What is less easy to discern from an image is that these structures also produce a highly tactile surface, the features of which are readily appreciated by touch alone. The highest peaks and, even more easily, the deepest holes, are easily found. The famous `CMB cold spot' (Cruz et al., 2007), an unusually low temperature region in the CMB, first detected by {\em WMAP} and since confirmed by {\em Planck}, can be felt as a small but isolated depression.
These models, though, are not perfect, but they do represent a successful proof of concept for 3D printed representations of astronomical or, in this case, cosmological systems. Since we have restricted ourselves to an Nside=128 HEALPix resolution, much of the improved resolution from the {\em Planck} mission is lost. Nevertheless we retain the bulk of the CMB anisotropy power spectrum around the one degree scale. Detail is also lost through a number of approximations made during the construction of the mesh. These were necessitated by power and memory constraints on the machines used in the mesh construction. Alternative algorithms or a deeper tree search in the selection of neighbouring points, for example, might lead to improvements in the future.
\subsection{Availability of CAD Files}
The CAD files used to produce both the plastic (STL) and plaster (VRML) versions of the CMB are made available with this paper. They can be downloaded from \verb!http://dx.doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.60215! and are made available under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.
\section{Conclusions}
We have produced a solid 3D representation of the CMB temperature anisotropies using the {\em Planck} mission data and 3D printers. The CAD files that describe the printed objects were produced using a variety of tools, including \verb! MeshLab, Cura, Blender! and \verb!Netfabb! which produced a file in STL for printing on an {\em Ultimaker} machine, and in VRML, for printing on a ZPrinter machine. The final 3D printed objects capture the essence of the CMB anisotropies on angular scales of about 1 degree, matching the peak in the CMB anisotropy power spectrum. They can provide a non-visual appreciation of the CMB for both the sighted and unsighted. The CAD files used to produce these models are freely available for non-commercial use from \verb!http://dx.doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.60215!.
\ack
This paper is based on observations obtained with {\em Planck} (http://www.esa.int/{\em Planck}), an ESA science mission with instruments and contributions directly funded by ESA Member States, NASA, and Canada. This work used \verb!MeshLab!, a tool developed with the support of the 3D-CoForm project. The authors would like to thank the Imperial College Advanced Hackspace, the Imperial College Department of Design Engineering, Sam McKenney, Larissa Kunstel-Tabet, Meilin Sancho, Andrew Jaffe and Tim Evans for their help with this work. It was funded in part by STFC Grant Reference ST/K001051/1.
\References
\item Aboufadel, E, Krawczyk, S V, Sherman-Bennett, M 2013, arXiv:1308.3420
\item Bennett, C K, et al. 2003 {\it ApJS} {\bf 148} 1
\item Boggess, N W, et al., 1992 {\it ApJ} {\bf 397} 420
\item Cruz, M, et al., 2007 {\it ApJ} {\bf 655} 11
\item Gorski, K M, et al., 2005 {\it ApJ} {\bf 622} 759
\item Jaffe, A H, et al., 2001 {\it PhRvL} {\bf 86}, 3475
\item Kazhdan M, Bolitho M \& Hoppe H. Poisson surface reconstruction, Proceeding of the fourth Eurographics symposium on Geometry processing, editors Polthier K, Sheffer A, publisher Eurographics Association, 2006; Vol. 7
\item Knill, O, Slavkovsky, E, 2013, arXiv:1306.5599
\item Planck Collaboration, 2014a {\it A\&A} {\bf 571} 1
\item Planck Collaboration, 2014b {\it A\&A} {\bf 571} 12
\item Reiss, D S, Price, J J, Evans, T, 2013, {\it EPL} {\bf 104}, 48001
\item Smoot, G F, Gorenstein, M V, Muller, R A,, 1977, {\em PhRvL} {\bf 39} 898
\endrefs
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HomeSectionsFeatures
Is this the end for single-operator brokers?
by Kate McIntyre | 24 Jul 2020
In recent years, changing policy and compliance regulations have meant more paperwork and less time to do it. For the time-poor broker it has become a fine art to balance the nitty gritty admin work required to write a loan, while providing an exceptional level of customer service to a whole book of long-standing clients.
Then, there's the marketing side of things, as well as maintaining good referrer relationships, chasing new leads and keeping up to date with lender policy.
With best interests duty on the horizon, brokers will not only have to select the finance option that best meets the goals and objectives of their clients from a raft of different lender products, they will also need to document the process.
Which begs the question – is this the end for single-operator brokers?
A new normal of greater compliance
According to Mathew Crossley, senior finance specialist at Coronis, the days are certainly looking numbered.
"The level of compliance and policy is making it harder and harder for people to do things directly themselves."
"I think that the days of single operator offices are probably coming to an end."
In the new normal of greater compliance and policy change, Crossley says it will be essential to have bigger and better support networks.
"Being part of a bigger group to facilitate those needs is definitely really important."
He says those single operators who already have strong referral networks have a much better chance in the industry than those just starting out.
"We've got 20 brokers at Coronis now and we see a lot of people coming in that have tried to do it themselves."
"Trying to generate leads, process loans, get things approved, do marketing, run an office, all those bits and pieces – unless you are exceptional, it's just overwhelming trying to do all those bits."
The power of automation
Mortgage Choice CEO Susan Mitchell agrees that a strong support network can make all the difference; enabling solo brokers to operate with the option of expanding further down the track if they wish.
"In full-service brokerages that offer strong compliance and marketing support backed by a great technology offering it is possible to run a one-wo/man brokerage."
"We've seen this in the Mortgage Choice network and is a common starting place for many new business owners."
"This support also allows these individual brokers to grow their businesses and integrate staff when the time is right in their business journey."
Mitchell says the right tools are also essential – particularly ones that can automate administrative tasks to save a broker time.
"At Mortgage Choice our technology offering is built on the Mortgage Choice Broker Platform which is a broker's one-stop shop for loan origination. The platform allows brokers to submit a loan to a lender and track all the steps in between."
Integrated with its customer communication platform, the system also provides safeguards and steps to help brokers meet their compliance obligations.
As staying in touch with customers is an essential part of staying front of mind, Mortgage Choice also offers a marketing program for its brokers.
"Not only does our marketing support help create leads for our network, our centralised customer communications program MC Connect allows brokers to effortlessly communicate with their customers using an automated email communication program."
Mitchell says Mortgage Choice further supports its brokers by providing support staff in each state as well as a specialised lending centre and compliance team that can help them troubleshoot complex lending scenarios.
The value-add of a good aggregator
Specialist Finance Group aggregation manager Blake Buchanan says that it is still feasible to run a one-person brokerage in today's environment despite current trends shifting away from this.
"Whilst some might feel isolated and like they do not have the tools at their fingertips to accommodate the changes and variations to policy, they absolutely do."
"It takes a bit of research and sometimes either retraining or upskilling but there are definitely the technologies available in broker CRMs to not only work solely, but efficiently and compliantly as well."
He says SFG's system was ahead of its time when it came to navigating the pandemic.
"Our system was COVID ready in 2018 as it incorporated VOI through lender approved vendors, video conferencing, client portals and document repositories to name but a few features."
Time to review
He says, in his experience, brokers with established books have never been busier than they have been in the past few months.
"That all being said, there is a definite shift in how brokers are entering the market with less going at it alone and more opting to join established brokerages or partner with different financial services businesses."
In order to structure their businesses to thrive, brokers should take this opportunity to step back and review their systems and processes.
"Think about how your customers would feel dealing with you and these processes and then optimise it to make the client experience better and the process more efficient."
"Use your time wisely and research alternative systems with a focus on future proofing your business."
"You don't need to do this alone as this is one of the value-adds that aggregators offer."
He says brokers should take advantage of every area of their CRMs before choosing to outsource through an external company.
"Brokers should align themselves with the best CRM available and learn how it can help them and their business."
"Should you still need additional support, there are many options available for outsourcing but I would say to use someone reputable, familiar with your CRM, compliant and approved by your aggregator."
Delivering greater levels of professionalism
Buchanan says the future is looking bright for the industry.
"Use this time to work harder than ever for your customers, and I promise we will see an increase in broker market share, improved and streamlined policies and process that allow us to assist more clients more efficiently."
Crossley agrees that the industry is in for a better future, adding that BID will play a key role in this.
"I think there's definitely going to be a big improvement in the level of qualification and professionalism of the industry moving forward."
What ASIC's regulatory guidance on BID means for brokers
Automation will deliver better client outcomes, says Mortgage Choice CEO | {
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Q: wm_nccalcsize, win7 aero and opengl - creating custom window frame Is it possible to use the trick with overriding wm_nccalcsize to draw over entire window area with opengl?
I need to keep all aero features for windows (win 7 in this case), so i use (WS_POPUP | WS_SYSMENU | WS_MAXIMIZEBOX | WS_MINIMIZEBOX | WS_THICKFRAME) styles
It works fine for maximized mode, I can leave the border outside the screen by adjusting the Lparam.
But a regular window still has 8px borders around it, even though they are supposedly part of client rect (which I checked with GetClientRect()
Image: dark-grey border is visible
And this is all done before I init opengl context. So I dont know what's happening. Or if this even possible. Am I supposed to just create borderless and re-implement all aero features? (no way I'm doing that)
upd 2:
If I draw a rect with GDI right before I init Opengl context this is what i get:
a nice (0,0,200,200) rect, starting in the nonclient area
So it is opengl context issue. I saw in msdn docs, that opengl draws only in client area. And it still does that, ignoring that I extended the client rect to whole window. siiiigh.
A: The usual way to combine Aero with OpenGL is to set the window client area using the DWM API to zero. This allows you to draw to the whole window (including titlebar) using OpenGL. I have this test program to tinker with it as part of my wglarb wrapper:
https://github.com/datenwolf/wglarb/blob/master/test/layered.c
You may also be interested in my dwm_load wrapper, which allows to you call DWM functions without rigidly linking your program against DWM (which makes it incompatible with older Windows versions; you wouldn't believe how often I still get "must run on WinXP" as a feature requirement) https://github.com/datenwolf/dwm_load
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Games1631
Samsung Galaxy S22 Review: Great Size, Predictably Poor Battery Life
Tim February 24, 2022 @timotato 39
It's that time of year once again, when Samsung delivers its new line of flagship devices. It's an important time, as it's no shocker that Samsung far outsells all other Android OEMs, so chances are, if you're shopping for a new Android phone, you're thinking about these new Galaxy S phones.
The Galaxy S22 is the smallest option in the lineup, with the Galaxy S22 Ultra being the big dog. You can check out our Ultra review here. Despite its small size, Samsung was sure to pack plenty of great specs in this phone, as well as a camera system with updated features. The only issue is its main attraction — its size. Due to its small stature, Samsung was only able to jam a 3,700mAh battery in the phone, and as one could probably predict, it's not very good at providing long life. Can we use the phone long enough to test all of its sweet new features and use it as a daily driver? Let's find out.
This is our Galaxy S22 review.
Hardware and Size
After being Droid Life's resident big phone lover for the past few years, I've been ready for something that easily slides in and out of the pocket. That's exactly what the Galaxy S22 does, with its perfectly-held-in-one-hand body. The display size is 6.1-inches, which is still plenty of real estate to accomplish all of my main smartphone needs, such as scrolling Twitter, watching YouTube videos, dominating Candy Crush, playing Wordle, and taking pictures of my dogs.
Coupled with this great size are premium hardware materials and shaping that I'm really digging. Unlike some other phones from recent years, you can tell instantly that the S22 has that "oh, this is expensive" feeling, with cold metal being the first thing you feel when you lift the device. The compactness of the phone also offers a sturdy, little tank feeling when in hand. The front display is flat-flat, making for enjoyable Android gesture navigation. The backside is also what I'd describe as flat-flat, though, it doesn't sit flat due to the rear camera housing.
While some may knock the Galaxy S22 and S22+ for not having QHD displays, I'm perfectly content. For one, this phone's battery can't handle pushing that many pixels. Second, at this 6.1-inch size, 1080p is perfectly acceptable to my eyes and it will likely be fine for yours too. Beyond its resolution, colors pop off of the screen and thanks to that 120Hz max refresh rate, the display appears quite smooth for the most part.
Something to highlight, this is an extremely bright display, easily viewable in all sorts of lighting conditions. As a bonus, when you need the display dimmed, it turns into one of the dimmest displays I've ever seen. When I head to bed and enable Extra Dim and Eye Comfort Shield, there's no way the phone's display is going to blind you, even if your phone is the first thing you look at when you wake up in the morning. And thanks to there being an ultrasonic fingerprint reader and not an optical, I don't have to worry about the reader blinding me like it does on the Pixel 6 and Pixel 6 Pro. Thank goodness.
Samsung's One UI continues to get more polished, this time placed on top of Android 12. While it's still very much a custom skin, it's a really smooth experience, with plenty of added features that you won't find on other devices. Sure, there are plenty of things you'll have to enable and disable out of the box because the company loves throwing in so much stuff, but the act of setting up a new device from Samsung has gotten much better. I mean, they still have software buttons for navigation out of the box, but we'll let that slide I suppose. Most importantly, Samsung does take advantage of what makes Android 12 cool, which is theming. You can have your phone's color palette based on your chosen wallpaper, which will then apply itself to select Google apps and more. It's a very slick look. Samsung then also has its own theme engine still built-in, allowing you to choose custom icons, Always On Display images, and much more. In terms of customization, it's nearly perfect.
If I had to toss in a negative, Samsung's stock launcher is still suboptimal. When you swipe into the app drawer, it's paginated, which still makes zero sense to me. I've been using Nova Launcher since day 2 with the phone. Don't plan on changing back either.
Kellen brings this up in his Galaxy S22 Ultra review, but it's worth celebrating a bit more. Samsung is committing to 4 (four!) Android OS version updates for this phone and 5 years worth of security patches. In Android, that's pretty much unheard of, raising the bar for all other Android OEMs. Will they step up and match that? Considering the efforts we see from everyone besides Google in the update department, I'm going to have to assume that's a "no."
With its next-gen Snapdragon 8 Gen 1 chipset and 8GB RAM, this is a plenty snappy smartphone. I've been playing plenty of mobile games, mostly Candy Crush because I'm weirdly back on that time waster, and for the most part, this phone has been fantastic in the performance department. Diving in and out of apps is also plenty fast enough, with Android 12's recent apps view not really helping the matter, but it's still fine.
I'm always on the hunt for stutters and jank, but to be completely honest, I haven't come across much to complain about when performance is involved. The S22 is really quite snappy for a phone, with the fingerprint reader performing very quickly, followed up by quick app boot times.
On the backside of the Galaxy S22, there's a 50-megapixel main shooter with OIS, 12MP ultra wide camera, plus a 10MP telephoto camera with OIS. I must say, I've been pretty impressed with the level of detail that this camera can capture. While the shutter speed can leave a bit to be desired, the end results are usually pretty darn great. From the photos I've taken, colors look incredible, contrast levels are chef's kiss, and the software's exposure levels are spot on for the most part. Sure, a honking Space Zoom telephoto lens would be incredible, but folks will need to splurge for the S22 Ultra if they want that feature.
For software, Samsung includes all of the usual suspects. There's a Portrait Mode, Night Mode, Pro Video Mode, Single Take, Slow Motion, Hyperlapse, Director's View, plus Bixby Vision and AR Zone. There's no shortage of camera toys to play with. Director's View is one of the new features that Samsung is highlighting to potential buyers. With it, you can record videos and snap pics from multiple lenses simultaneously, as well as preview them in real time. I'm sure this is great for some certain use cases, but I didn't come across one in my testing period.
I'll go ahead and let my samples speak for themselves. There's a mixture of lenses, plus a few variations in resolution. Will you be able to spot the difference, even with WordPress's compression?
Coming in at a whopping 3,700mAh, the Galaxy S22 provides poor battery life. There's not really any other way to put it. I used the phone as I would any other and was consistently getting to about 7-8pm and looking for a charger. I even found myself limiting usage if I knew I wouldn't be around a charger for a little bit. That's no way to live. A phone's battery shouldn't dictate what you're doing, so in the case of the Galaxy S22, it was a pretty frustrating.
Thankfully, when you are getting low battery, plugging into a 25W+ charger can yield plenty hours of juice in about 15 to 20 minutes of charging. The phone supports up to 25W wired charging, as well as 15W wireless charging. You can even use Samsung's Wireless PowerShare on the S22, but I'm not entirely sure that's the best idea ever unless you're at home and plugged into the wall. I'm not kidding, the S22's battery will drain right before your eyes if you aren't careful.
My typical day is 7am to 11pm, and with the Galaxy S22, I was hanging on for dear life most of the time. You'll see that I was definitely going to town on some Candy Crush, but let's not act as if that's some processor-heavy game that requires a ton of computing power. The fact is, as long as the screen is on, no matter what you're doing on the phone, the battery is going to drain quickly.
WiFi Issue
I debated including this, but here we go anyway. It could be something with my own network, but I'm confident I ruled that out, as testing with a Galaxy S21 Ultra and Pixel 6 didn't yield the same results. A few mornings I would wake up and the Galaxy S22 had been disconnected from my WiFi network, with the settings stating that the phone would reconnect when the signal was strong enough. I would then toggle WiFi off and back on and everything would behave normally. Kellen has a theory that it may have to do with the hand-off between the 2.4GHz and 5GHz frequencies, but I can't confirm that either. All I know is, no one phone I've used does this and I can confirm that where it happens, in my bedroom, has great WiFi signal. So maybe it's me or maybe it's the phone, but that's been my life for the past two weeks.
Galaxy S22 starts at $799 for the base model. If you want more internal storage with a bump up to 256GB, it'll cost you extra, that is unless you took advantage of Samsung's pre-order offer that gave everyone a free storage upgrade. Given this is a Samsung flagship device, you'll find it for sale everywhere. You'll be able to purchase it on all the major carriers and you'll find it on shelves at all of your favorite tech retailers.
Do I think it's worth $799? It's pretty darn close, but the battery size is surely concerning. Everything else is perfect. However, there is the Galaxy S21 FE to consider, priced at $699. It's a very similar device, but will lack that premium feel in-hand. It's worth it to compare the two before you take the plunge.
Buy Galaxy S22
10 First Things to Do
If it's a small phone with a premium feel you're after, it's the Galaxy S22 you'll want. No doubt in my mind. The thing is, you need to know what you're getting yourself into, and for many, that could be an additional trip to the charger after work before you hit the town or go out for dinner. The battery life simply isn't good enough to keep up with the sort of demand many need from their smartphone these days. If you're an avid mobile gamer or constantly on social media, this phone is going to struggle to provide you with a full day of juice. In 2022, that has to be labeled as unacceptable.
If you're fine with the added stop at the wall outlet, it's a really fun phone. The size is so awesome, plus the camera system is more than enough to snap great shots. If we rated phones out of 10, which we don't, I'd give it a 7. If it had a good battery? Easily a 9.5 phone right here. That's how much I like it. I'm now trying to get my hands on a Galaxy S22+, as that phone may be the sweet spot of great hardware and battery size. Wish me luck.
Here's Another Look at Google's Pixel 7
Order Galaxy S22, Get Up to $100 of Google Play Credit | {
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\section{Introduction}
\begin{table*}
\begin{minipage}{180mm}
\begin{center}
\caption{X-ray detected submm sources.
Col.(1): Submm source name \citep{pope05,wall08}.
Col.(2): Redshift. The bold faced redshifts are spectroscopic, otherwise they
are photometric. Redshifts in italic are from IRS spectroscopy. Redshifts in
parentheses are estimated from IRAC colours, for those sources without optical counterparts. Optical photometric redshifts have {\tt ODDS} parameter $>0.9$ \citep{pope05}. IRAC photometric redshifts have an accuracy of $\sigma[\Delta z/(1+z)]\sim0.1$).
Col.(3): $i_{775}$ magnitude from {\it HST}/ACS imaging.
Col.(4): Flux-deboosted $850\,\mu$m flux density.
Col.(5): IR (8-1000$\mu$m) luminosity. $L_{\rm IR}$ is calculated from the rest frame
$L_{\rm 160}$ by scaling by the typical $L_{\rm 160}$-to-$L_{\rm IR}$ conversion from Table A2 of \citet{pope06}.
Col.(6): Radio luminosity.
Col.(7): {\it Chandra\/} name
Col.(8): {\it Chandra\/} RA.
Col.(9): {\it Chandra\/} Dec.
Col.(10): Positional offset between IRAC and {\it Chandra\/} position (arcsec), after correcting for a small (0.6 arcsec)
overall offset between the two coordinate frames.
X-ray data are from \citet{nandra05} and \citet{laird05}, all other data from
\citet{pope05,pope06,pope08}, \citet{wall08} and references therein. The redshift for GN10 is from \citet{daddi09}.
}
\label{sample}
\begin{tabular}{@{}lccccccccc@{}}
\hline
Name & $z$ & $i_{775}$ & $S_{\rm 850}$ & $L_{\rm IR}$ & $\log L_{\rm 1.4 GHz}$ & CXO & RA & DEC & Off \\
& & (AB) & (mJy) & ($10^{12}$L$_{\odot}$) & (W Hz$^{-1}$) & HDFN & (J2000) & (J2000) & (\arcsec) \\
(1) & (2) & (3) & (4) & (5) & (6) & (7) & (8) & (9) & (10) \\
\hline
GN01$^{*}$ &\bf{2.415} & 23.3 & $6.2 \pm 1.6$& 7.38 & 23.95 &J123606.6+621550 & 189.027800 & 62.263960& 0.337 \\
GN04$^{a,*}$ &\bf{2.578} & 26.2 & $4.9\pm0.7$ & 5.86 & 24.54 &J123616.0+621513 & 189.066940 & 62.253730& 0.426 \\
~~~~~~~$^{b}$ & & $>$28& & & &J123615.7+621515 & 189.065701 & 62.254219& 0.402 \\
GN06$^{*}$ & {\bfseries{\emph{2.00}}}& 27.4 & $7.5\pm 0.9$ & 8.73 & 24.59 &J123618.3+621550 & 189.076550 & 62.264060& 0.874 \\
GN10 &\bf{4.042} & $>$28& $11.3\pm1.6$ & 15.10 & 24.54 & J123633.3+621408 & 189.139150 & 62.235570 & 0.226 \\
GN12 &3.1 & 26.2 & $8.6\pm 1.4$ & 10.68 & 24.78 & J123646.0+621448 & 189.191770 & 62.246770 & 0.175 \\
GN13 &\bf{0.475} & 21.6 & $1.9\pm 0.4$ & 0.94 & 22.54 &J123649.6+621312 & 189.206970 & 62.220130& 0.165 \\
GN15 &\bf{2.743} & 24.3 & $3.7\pm 0.4$ & 4.48 & ... &J123655.7+621200 & 189.232470 & 62.200150& 0.079 \\
GN17 &{\bfseries{\emph{1.73}}} & 27.7 & $3.9\pm 0.7$ & 4.41 & 24.23 &J123701.5+621145 & 189.256610 & 62.196010 & 0.195 \\
GN19$^{*}$ &\bf{2.484} & 25.4 & $8.0\pm 3.1$ & 9.60 & 24.44 &J123707.1+621407 & 189.279970 & 62.235370& 0.246 \\
GN22$^{*}$ &\bf{2.509} & 24.6 & $10.5\pm4.3$ & 12.64 & 24.38 &J123606.8+621021 & 189.028380 & 62.172510& 0.187 \\
GN23 &(2.6) & $>$28& $4.9\pm 2.3$ & 5.97 & 24.14 &J123608.5+621434 & 189.035630 & 62.243010 & 0.157 \\
GN25$^{*}$ &\bf{1.013} & 22.8 & $3.2\pm 1.4$ & 2.98 & 23.63 &J123629.0+621045 & 189.121180 & 62.179280& 0.066 \\
GN26$^{*}$ &\bf{1.219} & 22.7 & $2.2\pm 0.8$ & 2.23 & 24.13 &J123634.4+621240 & 189.143590 & 62.211280& 0.240 \\
GN30 &\bf{1.355} & 22.7 & $1.8\pm 0.5$ & 1.87 & 23.25 &J123652.7+621353 & 189.219820 & 62.231660& 0.260 \\
GN39$^{b}$ &\bf{1.996} & 23.4 & $5.2\pm 2.4$ & 6.05 & 24.63 &J123711.3+621331 & 189.297150 & 62.225122 & 0.121 \\
~~~~~~~~$^{a,*}$ & \bf{1.992} & 24.9 & & & &J123712.0+621325 & 189.299835 & 62.223630 & 0.429 \\
GN40 &(2.6) &$>$28 &$10.7\pm 2.9$ & 12.92 & 25.39 &J123713.8+621826 & 189.307681 & 62.307152 & 0.074 \\
\hline
\end{tabular}
\end{center}
$^*$Included in the A05b sample. The redshift used for GN06 in A05b was 1.865.\\
$^a$Southern X-ray and IR counterpart.\\
$^b$Northern X-ray and IR counterpart.\\
\end{minipage}
\end{table*}
There has been vigorous debate about whether the most luminous galaxies, most of which have been discovered
through their far-infrared (FIR) emission (e.g.~\citealt{sanders96,rowan00})
are violent starbursts, or obscured active galactic nuclei (AGN), with the consensus appearing to be that both processes are important
(e.g.~\citealt{veilleux95,farrah02}). This fits in with the idea of a
`starburst-AGN connection' where accretion and star formation, both plausibly
triggered by mergers, occur coevally and play a complementary role in the
formation of galaxies (e.g.~\citealt{springel01,hopkins05}).
Highly luminous galaxies selected by their submm-emission have attracted particular attention. This is in large part due to the great observational progress afforded by the SCUBA instrument on the JCMT \citep{holland99}, which has vastly increased the number of known SMGs. While it is clear that submm-selected sources represent a diverse population (e.g.~\citealt{ivison00}), their nature has been the subject of intense study. These efforts stem from two key observations: firstly that if SMGs are dominated by star formation they are among the most powerful starbursts -- and most luminous sources -- in the Universe (e.g. \citealt{smail97,barger98,hughes98,lilly99}). Secondly, as these galaxies are reasonably numerous, they may contribute a significant, or even dominant contribution to the global star formation rate (e.g.~\citealt{blain99,chapman05,aretxaga07,wall08}). Additionally, whether or not SMGs are dominated by star formation or AGN processes, it seems clear that this sub-mm bright phase is a crucial one in the evolution and formation of the most massive galaxies.
Pivotal developments in our understanding of the submm population have recently been achieved thanks to deep optical and mid-infrared spectroscopic, and X-ray observations. \citet{chapman03,chapman05} have identified a large number of SMGs associated with optically faint radio sources in several different fields, following up the counterparts with deep Keck spectroscopy. These observations, in addition to providing the first significant sample of secure redshifts for SMGs, have shown that they occur at a median redshift $z \sim 2$. Recently, a few rare SMGs have been found out to $z\sim4-5$ \citep{capak08,daddi09} but the bulk of this population is still consistent with a median redshift of 2--3. This contrasts with some earlier predictions that the SMG population might be at extremely high redshifts.
Using the \citet{chapman05} source list of SMGs, Alexander at al. (2005a, hereafter A05a; 2005b hereafter A05b) have identified X-ray counterparts to a sample of 20 SMGs in the {\it Chandra\/}-Deep Field North (CDF-N) region, where ultradeep X-ray data are available. The \citet{chapman05} sample of SMGs that have spectroscopically identified, optically-faint radio counterparts is representative of approximately half of all SMGs. Based on the analysis of this sample A05a argued that the AGN fraction in SMGs is very high ($>38^{+12}_{-10}$ per cent), and hence that the intense star formation in SMGs is accompanied by coeval and near-continuous black hole growth. A05b presented a detailed spectral analysis of the X-ray detected submm galaxies, concluding that $75$ per cent of radio-selected, spectroscopically identified SMGs host AGN, and that the majority ($\sim 80$ per cent) of these are highly obscured, with column densities $>10^{23}$~cm$^{-2}$. Despite the apparently high AGN fraction, mid-IR spectroscopy of SMGs suggests that the AGN is generally not the dominant contributor to the bolometric luminosity \citep{valiante07,pope08,menendez09}, so the conclusion that they are vigorously forming stars still holds.
Overall, the above results argue that many of the most massive galaxies in the Universe undergo a period of intense star formation activity and black hole growth at moderate-to-high redshifts, which is deeply shrouded in gas and dust. This coeval mode of activity could plausibly result in the local correlations seen between black hole masses and bulge properties \citep{magorrian98,gebhardt00,ferrarese00}. A note of caution should be sounded, however, as the \citet{chapman03,chapman05} method of identifying SMGs, while apparently highly successful, could potentially suffer selection biases due to the requirement of radio emission, optical faintness and spectroscopic redshifts.
Pope et al. (2006; hereafter P06), have used a new reduction of the radio data in the CDF-N together with deep {\it Spitzer\/}
observations from the GOODS project to identify secure counterparts to a large number of high significance SCUBA $850\,\mu$m sources in the GOODS-N region of the CDF-N. The GOODS-N SCUBA survey is small and non-uniform but to date it remains the submm field with the most complete counterpart identification and deepest X-ray data. In this paper, we use the P06 sample to re-examine the X-ray emission of SMGs and in particular to assess the AGN fraction and X-ray spectral properties.
Throughout, a standard, flat $\Lambda$CDM cosmology with $\Omega_\Lambda = 0.7$ and H$_0 = 72$~km~s$^{-1}$~Mpc$^{-1}$ is assumed.
\section{Observations and data reduction}
\subsection{The {\it Spitzer}/submm sample}
The submm galaxies used in the work have been selected from the SCUBA Super-map of the GOODS-N region of the CDF-N. The SCUBA Super-map is composed of data observed in all SCUBA modes (photometry, jiggle mapping and scan mapping) and thus provides inhomogeneous coverage and depth across the GOODS-N field (see \citealt{borys03,pope05} and P06 for a full description of the Super-map and corresponding analysis). Taking into account the varying depth across the field P06 have presented a sample of 35 $850\,\mu$m selected sources in the GOODS-N region, and using radio and {\it Spitzer\/} data have identified highly reliable counterparts to 21 of these, with likely counterparts to an additional 12. An update and re-analysis of the SCUBA Super-map with additional observation in the fields resulted in two further $850\,\mu$m selected sources with highly reliable counterparts, and is described in the appendix of \citet{wall08}.
For this sample of 35 identified submm galaxies we therefore have accurate radio or {\it Spitzer\/} positions, which we can then use to unambiguously associate with X-ray counterparts. P06 have identified the optical counterparts to the SMGs where they are detected in the {\it HST\/} images \citep{giavalisco04}. They also assembled together all available redshift information, including the available spectroscopic redshifts, photometric redshifts for objects detected optically, and {\it Spitzer}-derived photometric redshifts for optically blank SMGs. There are three sources with only photometric redshifts and while there is some uncertainty in these, particularly in the {\it Spitzer}-derived redshifts, for our purposes small redshift errors of order $\Delta z$~$\sim$few tenths will have little effect on our conclusions. It should be noted that GN10 has recently been identified via CO line emission as being at $z=4.042$ \citep{daddi09}, considerably higher than the previous photometric redshift estimate of $z=2.3$, and we use the updated redshift value here. Nine of the SMGs in this sample have also been observed with the {\it Spitzer\/} IRS by \citet{pope08} to confirm their redshifts and determine the level of AGN contribution.
The basic properties of the SMGs with X-ray detections are given in Table~\ref{sample}.
\subsection{X-ray data and reduction}
In this paper we use the analysis of the 2-Ms {\it Chandra\/} ACIS-I observation of the CDF-N, which is the deepest X-ray exposure yet taken \citep{alexander03}. The analysis is described in detail in \citet{laird05}.
Briefly, after applying relatively standard screening procedures we created images and exposure maps in several bands, notably the full band (0.5--$7\,$keV), hard band (2--$7\,$keV) and soft band (0.5--$2\,$keV). The source detection algorithm described in \citet{nandra05} was then applied, which yields a similar, but slightly larger number of sources than used by \citet{alexander03}. The positions of X-ray sources in this catalogue were then correlated with those of the submm sources from P06. The positional offsets between the X-ray sources and the submm sources, after the removal of a small overall offset, are given in Table~\ref{sample}.
Spectra were extracted for all submm/X-ray associated sources using the methodology described in \citet{laird06}. {\small CIAO} v3.2.1 and {\small CALDB} v3.0.1 were used for the spectral extraction and {\small XSPEC} v11.3.1 software used for the spectral analysis. The energy range of all of the analysis was restricted to 0.5--$7\,$keV.
Because the CDF-N dataset has been taken in several different observing configurations and positions, spectra must be extracted separately from each observation, and we have then summed these together using the standard {\small FTOOLS} \citep{blackburn95} routines. Source counts were extracted from a circular region equal to the 95 per cent encircled energy fraction (EEF) of the {\it Chandra}\ point-spread function (PSF) at $2.5\,$keV. Local background regions were manually selected to avoid contamination by nearby X-ray sources. Typically, the background was extracted from three to four large regions surrounding the source. The effective area and response files were then combined, weighted by exposure, using the {\small FTOOLS} routines {\small ADDARF} and {\small ADDRMF}. As discussed by \citet{laird06} the first three {\it Chandra}\ observations were taken at a different focal plane temperature to the remainder of the observation. We therefore restricted our analysis to the 17 observations taken at a focal plane temperature of $-120$\degr C, reducing the total exposure of the spectra by 161.7~ks.
Because of the small number of counts in the individual spectra the spectral fitting was performed using a maximum likelihood method (C-statistic; \citealt{cash79}). This has the disadvantage that the goodness-of--fit cannot be easily assessed (but see \citealt{lucy00}). It is possible, however, to use the C-statistic to assess whether a particular model component is needed in a particular dataset and, more importantly, to assign confidence intervals to the parameters. All of the spectra analysed using the C-statistic were grouped into fixed width bins of 4 channels ($\sim700$~eV), which greatly improves the processing times in {\small XSPEC} without significant loss of information for these photon-starved spectra.
For GN04 and GN39, we identified two potential X-ray counterparts (see below). Spectra were extracted from each of the individual X-ray counterparts that are associated with the IRAC components of the sub-mm galaxies. For GN04, where the X-ray sources are only separated by 2.5 arcsec and therefore are not fully resolved by the {\it Chandra\/} PSF we extracted the spectra using a region smaller than the 95 per cent to minimise contamination by the neighbouring source.
\begin{figure}
\begin{center}
\includegraphics[width=75mm,angle=90]{fig1.eps}
\caption{2--$10\,$keV X-ray flux vs. $i_{775}$ magnitude (AB) for the X-ray
detected
submm galaxies (filled squares). Fluxes are calculated for the spectral fits using Model A (see section 3.2). Both of the optical/IR and X-ray counterparts to the SMG are plotted for GN04 and GN39, and are identified with open squares and circles, respectively. The filled circle shows the 2--$10\,$keV stacking result for the undetected SMGs. Not all of the SMGs in the stacked sample are detected in the optical, therefore the mean $i_{775}$ magnitude for the stacked sample is shown as a lower limit.
Diagonal lines indicate constant X-ray to optical flux ratios. The $i_{775}$ magnitudes were converted using $0$~mag$=1.405\times10^{-7} \rmn{erg~s}^{-1}\rmn{cm}^{-2}$.
}
\label{fxfopt}
\end{center}
\end{figure}
\section{RESULTS}
\subsection{X-ray and submm associations}
The most basic information is the fraction of submm sources associated with X-ray sources. Cross-correlation of the IRAC positions of the \citet{pope06} SMGs with the \citet{nandra05} X-ray source list gives a total of 16 matches within 1 arcsec. The probability that any of these are a random association is 0.13 per cent. There are 4 sources in the SMGs catalogue which have two IRAC/radio sources in the SCUBA error circle, both of which may contribute to the submm flux. Of these GN04, GN19 and GN39 have X-ray counterparts. In the case of GN19, the X-ray counterpart is clearly identified with the first counterpart listed by \citet{pope06}, i.e. the optically brighter source. In the cases of GN04 and GN39 there are X-ray counterparts for both of the radio sources. We therefore find an X-ray source detection fraction for submm-selected galaxies of $46\pm 8$~per cent, where the error bars are calculated for a binomial distribution.
All the detected submm sources are extremely weak in the X-ray, with 2--$10\,$keV fluxes ranging from ranging from $4 \times 10^{-17}$~erg cm$^{-2}$ s$^{-1}$ (close to the limit of the survey) to $2 \times 10^{-15}$~erg cm$^{-2}$ s$^{-1}$, still a factor $\sim 6$ below the break in the X-ray number counts (e.g.~\citealt{kim07,georgakakis08}) where most of the X-ray background is produced. The X-ray-to-optical flux ratios of the detected sources covers a wide range, with many showing properties in the ``normal'' range (expected for X-ray selected AGN), others relatively optically bright and two which are undetected even in the deep {\it HST\/} imaging ($I_{\rm AB}>28$). The $F_{\rm X}/F_{\rm opt}$ diagram (Fig. \ref{fxfopt}) is often used as a diagnostic tool to help in source classification (e.g.~\citealt{schmidt98,giacconi01,horn03}). In this case, given the extreme faintness of the sources in the X-ray, their wide redshift distribution, and the likelihood that many of the objects are heavily obscured by dust, these classifications are likely to have limited meaning. It is, however, clearly evident that SMGs are a heterogeneous class in terms of their X-ray to optical flux ratio.
\subsection{X-ray Spectral fitting}.
\begin{table*}
\begin{minipage}{180mm}
\begin{center}
\caption{X-ray spectral properties of submm galaxies. All errors correspond to the 90 per cent confidence level.
Col.(1): Submm source name.
Col.(2): Total (source+background) counts in the 0.5--$8\,$keV band.
Col.(3): Estimated background counts in source extraction region.
Col.(4): Hardness ratio (H-S)/(H+S) where H and S are the count rates in the HB
and SB, corrected to on-axis values.
Col.(5): Exposure-weighted off-axis angle.
Col.(6): Effective photon index for a fit with only Galactic absorption. Errors
Col.(7): Inferred intrinsic $N_{\rm H}$ from fits to Model A
{\small (WABS*ZWABS*(POWERLAW+PEXMON))} with fixed $\Gamma$=1.9 and pexmon normalisation
fixed to powerlaw normalisation).
Col.(8): Improvement in the C-statistic for Model A compared to a $\Gamma$=1.9
power-law spectrum with no intrinsic absorption (Model C).
Col.(9): Observed frame 2--$10\,$keV flux.
Col.(10): Log rest-frame 2--$10\,$keV luminosity (observed).
Col.(11):Log rest-frame 2--$10\,$keV luminosity (absorption corrected).
Col.(12): X-ray derived SFR, using the \citet{ranalli03} relation.
Col.(13): Source classification based on X-ray properties. `Amb' denotes sources where the X-ray emission could be from an AGN or star formation.
}
\label{fits}
\begin{tabular}{@{}lcrccccccccccc@{}}
\hline
Name & S & B & HR & OAA & $\Gamma$ & $N_{\rm H}$ & $\Delta$C-stat &$F_{\rm X}$ & $L_{\rm X, uncor}$ & $L_{\rm X, cor}$ & SFR$_{\rm X}$ &Class\\
& & & & arcmin & & $10^{22}$~cm$^{-2}$ & & erg cm$^{2}$ s$^{-1}$ & erg s$^{-1}$ & erg s$^{-1}$ & M$_{\sun}~\rmn{yr}^{-1}$\\
(1) & (2) & (3) & (4) & (5) & (6) & (7) & (8) & (9) &(10) &(11) &(12) &(13) \\
\hline
GN01 &373 & 95 & $-0.58$& 5.1 & 2.01$^{+ 0.22}_{- 0.25}$ & $<$2.2 & 0.0 & 1.24$\times10^{-15}$ & 43.62 & & & AGN\\
GN04$^{a}$ &98 & 8 & 0.65 & 3.8 &$-0.32^{+ 0.33}_{- 0.35}$ & 107.1$^{+30.7}_{-26.3}$ & 121.9 & 1.44$\times10^{-15}$ & 42.80 & 43.92 & & AGN \\
~~~~~~~~$^{b}$ &125 & 10 & 0.06 & 3.8 & 0.95$^{+ 0.28}_{- 0.26}$ & 15.8$^{+7.2}_{-5.5}$ & 30.7 & 7.66$\times10^{-16}$ & 43.18 & 43.52 & & \\
GN06 &105 & 58 & $-0.26$& 3.8 & 1.47$^{+ 0.87}_{- 0.69}$ & $<$7.4 & 0.0 & 1.44$\times10^{-16}$ & 42.43 & & 546 & SB\\
GN10 &34 & 19 & $-0.35$& 1.7 & 1.40$^{+ 1.46}_{- 1.36}$ & $<$70.8 & 0.7 & 7.35$\times10^{-17}$ & 42.58 & 42.93 & 1702 & Amb\\
GN12 &25 & 20 & $-9.99$& 0.7 & 2.76$^{+ 2.36}_{- 1.35}$ & $<$20.2 & 0.0 & 4.17$\times10^{-17}$ & 42.41 & & 510 & SB\\
GN13 &44 & 18 & $-1.00$& 1.0 & 2.42$^{+ 1.37}_{- 0.90}$ & $<$0.5 & 0.0 & 1.05$\times10^{-16}$ & 40.90 & & 16 & SB\\
GN15 &71 & 23 & $-0.42$& 2.3 & 1.85$^{+ 0.55}_{- 0.59}$ & $<$8.9 & 0.1 & 1.97$\times10^{-16}$ & 42.91 & & 1625 & Amb\\
GN17 &31 & 24 & $-1.00$& 2.9 & 4.12$^{+ 4.02}_{- 1.93}$ & $<$3.3 & 0.0 & 4.76$\times10^{-17}$ & 41.87 & & 149 & SB \\
GN19 &92 & 21 & 0.16 & 2.3 & 0.58$^{+ 0.31}_{- 0.42}$ & 32.6$^{+15.2}_{-13.8}$ & 34.9 & 7.38$\times10^{-16}$ & 42.96 & 43.50 & & AGN\\
GN22 &146 & 100 & 1.00 & 6.1 &$-0.33^{+ 0.82}_{- 0.98}$ & 81.0$^{+97.2}_{-42.2}$ & 15.1 & 6.29$\times10^{-16}$ & 42.58 & 43.51 & & AGN\\
GN23 &119 & 71& $-0.49$& 4.6 & 1.90$^{+ 1.16}_{- 0.76}$ & $<$4.6 & 0.0 & 1.79$\times10^{-16}$ & 42.74 & & 1106 & Amb\\
GN25 &202 & 35 & 0.31 & 4.0 & 0.50$^{+ 0.21}_{- 0.27}$ & 8.0$^{+2.6}_{-2.2}$ & 82.8 & 1.54$\times10^{-15}$ & 42.66 & 42.89 & & AGN \\
GN26 &65 & 23 & $-0.35$& 2.1 & 1.90$^{+ 0.60}_{- 0.63}$ & $<$2.1 & 0.0 & 1.74$\times10^{-16}$ & 42.07 & & 242 & SB\\
GN30 &32 & 17 & $-0.46$& 0.6 & 1.90$^{+ 2.11}_{- 0.98}$ & $<$3.9 & 0.0 & 7.17$\times10^{-17}$ & 41.79 & & 128 & SB\\
GN39$^{b}$ & 60 & 13 & 0.12 & 2.8 & 0.80$^{+ 0.46}_{- 0.51}$ & 9.40$^{+11.4}_{-5.9}$ & 8.7 & 3.20$\times10^{-16}$ & 42.63 & 42.88 & & AGN\\
~~~~~~~$^{a}$ & 48 & 15 & 1.00 & 2.9 &$-0.29^{+ 0.27}_{- 0.92}$ & 67.1$^{+41.75}_{-23.2}$ & 51.0 & 7.07$\times10^{-16}$ & 42.52 & 43.34 & & \\
GN40 &308 & 73 & $-0.27$& 5.3 & 1.24$^{+ 0.24}_{- 0.18}$ & 8.9$^{+3.6}_{-3.4}$ & 24.3 & 1.37$\times10^{-15}$ & 43.53 & 43.77 & & AGN\\
\hline
\end{tabular}
\end{center}
$^a$Spectrum of Southern X-ray source.\\
$^b$Spectrum of Northern X-ray source.\\
\end{minipage}
\end{table*}
\begin{figure}
\begin{center}
\includegraphics[width=75mm,angle=90]{fig2.eps}
\caption{Histogram of the effective photon-index of the SMGs, assuming no intrinsic absorption (see Table \ref{fits}). The distribution of photon-indices for this sample (grey shaded region) and the 17 sources with effective $\Gamma$ in Table 1 of A05b (hatched region) are shown. For GN04 and GN39 the photon-indices for both components are shown. The double hatched region shows the A05b photon-indices for the 8 sources common to both samples (as indicated in Table~\ref{sample}). Plotting the photon-indices for the common sources according to their values in Table \ref{fits} from this work shows a very similar, but not identical, distribution. Including (excluding) the 8 common sources, the K-S probability that the two samples are drawn from the same underlying galaxy distribution is 0.02 (0.005).}
\label{gamma_hist}
\end{center}
\end{figure}
To proceed further in our analysis of these objects requires a consideration of their spectra. The work of A05b has indicated that as a class SMGs can be heavily obscured, and some may even be Compton thick. If so, even a quantity as simple as the luminosity requires a careful consideration of the effects of absorption and hence the spectral shape. In particular, at the highest column densities, the AGN may only revealed in scattered light, with the spectrum dominated by Compton reflection. Direct fitting of such models to the spectrum can thus constrain the contribution even of heavily buried AGN which might be rendered otherwise invisible.
In the modelling of the spectra several different models are assumed. To characterise the spectra in the simplest manner all of the sources were first fitted by a Galactic absorption ($N_{\rm H}=1.5\times10^{20}$ cm$^{-2}$) plus power-law model ({\small WABS*POWERLAW} in {\small XSPEC}, Table~\ref{fits}, column 5) to determine the effective $\Gamma$. In order to characterise any intrinsic absorption we then fit the spectra with two different models. The first (Model A) comprises of an intrinsically absorbed power-law representing emission from an AGN. This characterizes transmission dominated spectra. The second model (Model B) is a neutral reflection model with an unabsorbed power-law representing the direct component and a reflection component with the same photon index as the direct component. This model characterizes reflection-dominated spectra, which are often exhibited by Compton thick sources.
Given the very low number of counts in all the objects, this is extremely challenging, and this forces us to make a number of assumptions during the modeling of the spectra. In particular, for the majority of these low--count observations it is not possible to constrain simultaneously both the power-law photon index, $\Gamma$, and the line of sight absorbing column, $N_{\rm H}$. For all models we therefore fixed the photon index in the power-law and reflection components at $\Gamma=1.9$. The neutral reflection model is represented by the {\tt pexmon} model of Nandra et al. (2007), which includes both continuum reflection \citep{magdziarz95} and the associated Fe line emission \citep{george91}. For this model we assumed a single power law illuminating spectrum, and the abundances were fixed at the solar value. The assumed inclination was 60$^{\circ}$ and the solid angle of the reflector $\Omega/2\pi$ was fixed to 1. The strength of the reflection is therefore parameterized by $A_{\rm ref}$, the normalization of the reflection component, with the ratio of this to the power law normalization, $A_{\rm pl}$ representing the reflection fraction $R$ (see Nandra et al. 2007 for details). Note that the values of the reflection fraction, $R$, could be overestimated in cases where the soft flux includes a significant contribution from star formation, rather than AGN scattered flux. This does not affect the derived maximum AGN luminosity, as this depends only on the reflection normalisation (as well as the assumed solid angle and inclination of the reflector). In model A, we include a reflection component with fixed $R=1$, which should be a reasonable representation for a type 1 (unabsorbed) AGN or a Compton-thin type 2. Model B has no intrinsic absorption, but $A_{\rm ref}$ is free, so the reflection component can dominate, appropriate for Compton thick, type 2 sources. The {\small XSPEC} representation of Model A is therefore {\small WABS*ZWABS(POWERLAW + PEXMON)}. The {\small XSPEC} representation of Model B is {\small WABS*(POWERLAW + PEXMON)}. Despite the additional component in model A compared to model B, they have the same number of free parameters because in model B the Compton reflection strength is allowed to vary. To help assess the improvement in the spectral fitting due to the intrinsic absorption (zwabs) or neutral reflection (pexmon) components we also fitted a simple Galactic absorption plus fixed $\Gamma=1.9$ model, {\small WABS*POWERLAW} in {\small XSPEC} (Model C). For each of the three models described above we determine the best fitting parameters to the data, as well at the C-statistic value for the fit.
The results of the fits for effective photon index and absorbed power-law (Model A) are shown in Table~\ref{fits}, including the C-stat comparison between Model A and Model C. The results of the fits to the reflection model (Model B) are given in Table~\ref{modelB}. A comparison of the C-statistic for the three models is given in Table~\ref{models}, along with the designated best fitting model. We adopt a threshold value of $\Delta C=5$ compared to model C. If the improvement in likelihood exceeds this value we adopted the more complex model (A or B) and choose between A and B based on which delivers the smaller C-statistic. The threshold C-value was determined using Monte Carlo simulations of power law spectra with typical signal-to-noise ratio and background. We performed 10,000 such simulations, fitting them with an absorbed power law (model A) and a reflection model (model B), and comparing the fits to model C . We find that in 1 per cent of the simulations $\Delta C$ exceeded 5.0 (2.4) for model A (model B). The presence of absorption or reflection can therefore be inferred at a minimum of 99 per cent confidence if $\Delta$C exceeds this value.
The distribution of effective photon index for the SMGs is shown in Fig.~\ref{gamma_hist}, and compared to that from A05b. It can be seen clearly that the SMGs in our sample have, on average, larger values of $\Gamma$ (indicating unobscured X-ray spectra) than those from A05. This is supported by results from the fits to Model A. As can be seen from Table~\ref{fits}, four of the X-ray detected submm galaxies have spectra consistent with large intrinsic absorption ($N_{\rm H}>10^{23}$ cm$^{-2}$: GN04, GN19, GN22 and GN39). A further two sources (GN25 and GN40) show signs of more moderate absorption in their spectra. The majority of the X-ray detected submm galaxies (10/16) are therefore consistent with no intrinsic absorption. The results of the Model A spectral fitting are consistent with the spectral fitting results from A05b for the sources common to both samples.
All 6 sources that show signs of absorption, and only those 6, also show large improvements (compared to model C) when fitted with model B, the neutral reflection model. Results from fits to this model are given in Table~\ref{modelB}. The reflection fractions range from $\sim 5$ (GN40), to being completely reflection dominated (GN22, GN39-Southern source). Comparing models A and B, (Table~\ref{models}), we find that in GN04 (Northern source), GN19 and GN39 (Northern source) the reflection dominated model gives a lower value of the C-statistic, with the other objects showing a better fit to the absorbed power law. Typically the difference between the two models is not large, however. Exceptions are GN04 (Southern source), GN25, GN39 (Southern source) and GN40 where the transmission model is better (all with $\Delta C>5$ compared to the other model). In GN04 and GN39, which each have two X-ray counterparts, each counterpart shows significant obscuration. However in each case the Southern source is best fit by the transmission model while the Northern source is marginally better fit by the reflection model.
Given the limited photon statistics in our spectra, it may not always be possible to identify Compton thick AGN purely on the basis of their X-ray spectral shape. This is especially so given that the X-ray emission can be heavily suppressed by large columns of gas. Thus, even relatively weak X-ray emitters which do not show evidence for absorption or reflection in the spectral fits could still harbour an AGN if it is very heavily obscured. It is possible to estimate the maximum contribution of a Compton-thick AGN to the data using model B, under the assumption that some fraction of the AGN light is viewed via Compton reflection. We adopt the simple assumption that the reflection component is seen without any obscuration, whence the normalization $A_{\rm ref}$ should represent the strength of the illuminating power law, even if that power law is completely obscured from view. As before we assume a slab geometry with an inclination of $60^{\circ}$ and a solid angle $\Omega/2\pi=1$, which are typical parameters, but strongly caution that this introduces uncertainty as the precise obscuring geometry is not known. The spectral fits in model B yield an estimate of $A_{\rm ref}$ and the value of the upper limit (calculated using $\Delta C=2.7$, corresponding to the 90 per cent confidence limit) in all cases, even if the reflection component does not improve the fit. Table~\ref{modelB} shows the best estimate of the intrinsic AGN luminosity derived using the best estimate of $A_{\rm ref}$, as long as it exceeds the observed luminosity. We also show the estimated maximum AGN luminosity based on the upper limit to $A_{\rm ref}$, i.e. the luminosity of the illuminating power law which would produce the maximum reflection component tolerated by the data. Again this is quoted only if it exceeds the observed luminosity, otherwise the latter is adopted.
\begin{table}
\begin{center}
\caption{Results from the spectral fitting using Model B. Errors correspond to the 90 per cent confidence level.
Col. (1): Submm source name.
Col. (2): Reflection parameter: the ratio of the normalisation parameter
between the reflected component to the direct component.
Col. (3): Improvement in the C-statistic for Model B compared to a $\Gamma$=1.9
power-law spectrum with no intrinsic absorption (Model C).
Col. (4): Directly viewed 2--$10\,$keV luminosity from best fit values to model.
Col. (5): Intrinsic 2--$10\,$keV luminosity of AGN from best fit parameter values
for Model B.
Col. (6): Maximum intrinsic 2--$10\,$keV luminosity of AGN from Model B spectral
fitting. All luminosities are in erg s$^{-1}$.
}
\label{modelB}
\begin{tabular}{@{}lccccc@{}}
\hline
ID & R &$\Delta$C-stat & log Lx&log Lx &log Lx \\
& & & obs. &intr. AGN&max AGN \\
(1) & (2) & (3) & (4) & (5) & (6) \\
\hline
GN01 & $<0.8$ & 0.1 & 43.6 & -- & 43.6 \\
GN04$^{a}$ & $>170$ & 113.8 & 42.9 & 44.1 & 44.2 \\
~~~~~~~~$^{b}$ & $17^{+5}_{-6}$ & 31.3 & 43.1 & 44.1 & 44.2 \\
GN06 & $<15.7$ & 0.8 & 42.5 & 43.1 & 43.6 \\
GN10 & $<16.4$ & 0.8 & 42.7 & 43.4 & 43.8 \\
GN12 & $<3.0$ & 0.0 & 42.4 & -- & 42.9 \\
GN13 & $<7.2$ & 0.0 & 40.9 & -- & 41.8 \\
GN15 & $<2.2$ & 0.0 & 43.0 & -- & 43.4 \\
GN17 & $<6.2$ & 0.0 & 41.9 & -- & 42.7 \\
GN19 & $103^{+21} _{-25}$ & 37.4 & 42.9 & 44.1 & 44.2 \\
GN22 & $>38$ & 12.8 & 42.6 & 43.8 & 44.0 \\
GN23 & $<4.3$ & 0.0 & 42.9 & -- & 43.5 \\
GN25 & $76^{+16}_{-18}$ & 77.6 & 42.7 & 43.8 & 43.9 \\
GN26 & $<5.9$ & 0.0 & 42.1 & -- & 42.9 \\
GN30 & $<10.5$ & 0.0 & 41.8 & -- & 42.8 \\
GN39$^{b}$ & $24^{+13}_{-13}$ & 11.2 & 42.6 & 43.6 & 43.8 \\
~~~~~~~~$^{a}$& $>140$ & 42.8 & 42.5 & 43.7 & 43.9 \\
GN40 & $3.9^{+2.1}_{-1.7}$ & 13.8 & 43.6 & 44.1 & 44.3 \\
\hline
\end{tabular}
\end{center}
$^a$Spectrum of Southern X-ray source.\\
$^b$Spectrum of Northern X-ray source.\\
\end{table}
\begin{table}
\begin{center}
\caption{C-statistic values for models A, B and C.
Model A: wabs*zwabs*(powerlaw+pexmon) with fixed $\Gamma$=1.9 and pexmon
normalisation fixed to powerlaw normalisation.
Model B: wabs*(powerlaw+pexmon) with fixed $\Gamma=1.9$.
Model C: wabs*powerlaw with fixed $\Gamma=1.9$.}
\label{models}
\begin{tabular}{@{}lcccc@{}}
\hline
ID & C-stat & C-stat&C-stat &Best-fit \\
& Model A&Model B&Model C&Model\\
\hline
GN01 & 22.4 & 21.7 & 21.8 & C\\
GN04$^{a}$ & 33.3 & 41.4 & 155.2 & A\\
~~~~~~~~$^{b}$ & 33.2 & 32.6 & 63.9 & B\\
GN06 & 40.4 & 39.6 & 40.4 & C\\
GN10 & 31.8 & 31.7 & 32.5 & C\\
GN12 & 35.1 & 35.0 & 35.1 & C\\
GN13 & 30.4 & 30.3 & 30.3 & C\\
GN15 & 28.1 & 28.2 & 28.2 & C\\
GN17 & 36.8 & 36.8 & 36.8 & C\\
GN19 & 32.9 & 30.4 & 67.8 & B\\
GN22 & 26.1 & 28.4 & 41.2 & A\\
GN23 & 40.4 & 40.3 & 40.3 & C\\
GN25 & 39.4 & 44.6 & 122.2 & A\\
GN26 & 19.6 & 19.6 & 19.6 & C\\
GN30 & 37.7 & 37.6 & 37.6 & C\\
GN39$^{b}$ & 43.9 & 41.4 & 52.6 & B\\
~~~~~~~$^{a}$ & 30.8 & 39.0 & 81.8 & A\\
GN40 & 32.1 & 42.6 & 56.4 & A\\
\hline
\end{tabular}
\end{center}
$^a$Spectrum of Southern X-ray source.\\
$^b$Spectrum of Northern X-ray source.\\
\end{table}
\subsection{Stacking of undetected SMGs}
Given the very high X-ray detection rate of the SMGs in the sample, it seems likely that the undetected sources do have significant X-ray emission that is below the detection limit of the CDF-N data. The mean properties of the undetected SMGs can therefore be constrained by stacking, which has proved very useful for other high redshift galaxy populations (e.g.~\citealt{brandt01,horn01,nandra02,laird05,laird06}).
We use a stacking procedure identical to that describe in \citet{laird05} and \citet{laird06}, which is similar to that used by \citet{nandra02}, and we include only a very brief outline here. Counts at the positions of the IRAC counterparts to the SMGs are extracted using a circular aperture and summed to find the total counts for the SMGs in the sample. These are then compared to the background counts, which are estimated from a source-masked image using randomly-shuffled positions that are 5--10 arcsec from the SMGs. The background estimate is repeated 1000 times. We use an aperture radius of 1.25 arcsec to extract the counts from the soft, hard and full bands. This empirically determined value was found to give the strongest signal for a sample of stacked Balmer Break galaxies in the same field \citep{laird05} and the SMGs in this work. 18 SMGs fall within 9 arcmin from the aimpoint of the {\it Chandra\/} observations and we include these in our stacking sample.
The results of the stacking are shown in Table~\ref{stacking}. The sample of SMGs is significantly detected in the soft, hard and full bands, however we strongly caution that the hard band signal is sensitive to the extraction radius used and the detection significance, $\sigma$, is only greater than 3 for an extraction radius of 1.25 arcsec. Fig.~\ref{counts_cell} shows the counts detected in each extraction cell in the soft and hard bands and demonstrates that the stacked signal is representative of the whole sample and is not dominated by a few sources. The fluxes are calculated assuming a spectrum with $\Gamma=1.9$ and Galactic absorption. The galaxies in the sample have redshifts ranging from 0.8 to 4.1 so to calculate the mean 2--$10\,$keV X-ray luminosity of the sample we use a weighted average method which assumes that each object in the stack is as intrinsically luminous. For every source in the sample we calculate the approximate fraction that it contributes to the flux by weighting by the ratio of the number of counts in the extraction cell for that object to the total number of counts detected for the sample. For each object we are then able to calculate an approximate luminosity. These are then averaged to get the mean L$_{\rmn X}$ (2--$10\,$keV) for the sample. In each band we convert to rest frame 2--$10\,$keV assuming $\Gamma=1.9$. The X-ray luminosity can be used to provide an estimate of the mean star formation rate (SFR) of the sample, under the assumption that the X-ray emission from the SMGs is dominated by star formation processes and not AGNs (e.g. \citealt{grimm03,ranalli03,persic04}). However it should be noted that the X-ray SFR calibration is subject to considerable uncertainty, and in galaxies with very high SFRs the X-ray emission may be significantly contaminated by an obscured AGN (e.g. \citealt{persic04}). Here we calculate the SFRs using the \citet{ranalli03} relation; using the \citet{persic04} relation, for example, would result in SFRs a factor of 5 lower.
Using the full band signal, we estimate an average star formation rate of $136\pm24$~M$_{\odot}$ yr$^{-1}$. Interestingly, the soft band stack implies a SFR $\sim 1.5$ times less than the full band, at the 1.5--2$\sigma$ level. This, and the detection of the stack in the hard band at all (which at the mean redshift of 2.1 corresponds to the 6--$20\,$keV rest frame), implies there may be significant contamination of the stacked signal by AGN. Alternatively, in these very gas and dust-rich environments, star forming X-rays could suffer significant obscuration. However, as noted above, the significance of the stacked hard band signal is highly sensitive to the extraction radius used and is only $>3\sigma$ for the radius used here (1.25 arcsec). Therefore we hesitate to draw any robust conclusions from this result.
\begin{table*}
\begin{minipage}{176mm}
\caption{Stacking results of undetected SMGs. All errors are 1$\sigma$ .
Col.(1): Observed-frame energy band.
Col.(2): Mean redshift.
Col.(3): Detection significance.
Col.(4): X-ray flux per galaxy. 0.5--$2\,$keV, 2--$10\,$keV and 0.5--$10\,$keV fluxes are given for soft, hard
and full bands, respectively.
Col.(5): 2--$10\,$keV X-ray luminosity per galaxy. Luminosities corrected to rest frame 2--$10\,$keV using $\Gamma=1.9$.
Col.(6): X-ray derived mean SFR, using the \citet{ranalli03} relation. Errors are statistical only.}
\label{stacking}
\begin{center}
\begin{tabular}{@{}lccccc@{}}
\hline
Band & $\langle z \rangle$ & $\sigma$ & F$_{\rmn{X}}$ & L$_{\rmn{X}}$ & SFR$_{\rmn{X}}$ \\
& & & ($10^{-17}~\rmn{erg~cm^{-2}~s^{-1}}$) & ($10^{41}~\rmn{erg~s^{-1}}$) & (${\rm M}_\odot\,{\rm yr}^{-1}$) \\
(1) & (2) & (3) & (4) & (5) & (6) \\
\hline
Soft & 2.1 & 7.84 &$1.06\pm0.20$ & $4.32\pm0.83$ & $86\pm17$ \\
Hard & 2.1 & 3.15 &$3.18\pm1.21$ & $8.22\pm3.13$ & $164\pm62$ \\
Full & 2.1 & 7.10 & $4.31\pm0.78$ &$6.81\pm1.23$ & $136\pm24$ \\
\hline
\end{tabular}
\end{center}
\end{minipage}
\end{table*}
\begin{figure}
\begin{center}
\includegraphics[width=125mm,angle=90]{fig3.eps}
\caption{
Counts distribution for the undetected SMGs in (a) the 0.5--$2\,$keV and (b) 2--$7\,$keV bands. The vertical dashed line denotes the mean background counts per extraction cell. }
\label{counts_cell}
\end{center}
\end{figure}
\section{Discussion}
We have presented a detailed analysis of the X-ray properties of submm-selected galaxies in the GOODS-N region. Using the 2-Ms {\it Chandra\/} exposure, and accurate positions for the SMGs from deep radio and {\it Spitzer\/} imaging, we have been able to characterise the X-ray emission of these sources and assess their AGN content. For directly detected sources, we have used the X-ray spectra to determine accurate luminosities and absorption properties. For the undetected sources, we have determined the average properties by stacking.
\subsection{Origin of the X-ray emission and AGN content of SMGs}
We find that the direct X-ray detection rate of submm-selected galaxies in the 2-Ms {\it Chandra\/} data is high, at $46 \pm 8$ per cent. The detected sources cover a wide range of redshifts, luminosities and X-ray-to-optical flux ratios. The X-ray detected SMGs are thus heterogeneous, much like the general SCUBA population (e.g.~\citealt{ivison00}). Comparing their X-ray luminosities with the FIR and radio luminosities (Fig.~\ref{lx}), we find that around half of the X-ray detected SMGs are consistent with the X-ray emission arising purely from stellar processes. Using X-ray luminosity as a proxy for SFR (Table~\ref{fits}), the X-ray derived SFRs for these galaxies reach at least $500$~M$_{\odot}$ yr$^{-1}$, and possibly $>$1000~M$_{\odot}$~yr$^{-1}$ in three extreme cases. GN10 (the highest redshift source in the sample) is the most extreme example, with an X-ray luminosity of almost $10^{43}$~erg s$^{-1}$ and star formation rate close of $\sim1700$~M$_{\odot}$ yr$^{-1}$. While extreme, X-ray derived SFRs are subject to considerable uncertainties, especially at large SFRs (e.g. \citealt{persic04,teng05}), and this is fully consistent with the large SFRs calculated from the FIR and polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbon (PAH) luminosities (P06, \citealt{pope08}).
Seven of the SMGs show X-ray luminosities well in excess of that expected from star formation, however, and these objects almost certainly host AGN. The number of unambiguous AGN in our sample is $20\pm 7$ per cent, rising to $29\pm8$ per cent if we include the three ambiguous cases which apparently have very high star formation rates. The AGN content of these submm-selected sources is certainly very high, but the data do not indicate that strong accretion activity is universal in SMGs. The very high X-ray detection rate of SMGs is likely to be partially due to their very high star formation rates. Furthermore, as we discuss below, at least some SMGs are likely to have their FIR flux powered by an AGN. It is therefore unclear at this point whether the strong overlap between the SMG and X-ray populations points towards a connection between intense star formation and accretion activity in these sources.
Our results can be compared with those of A05a, who found an even higher AGN fraction than we do, concluding that black holes in SMGs are growing near continuously during periods of intense star formation. The differing conclusions may seem surprising, as we have studied SMGs in the same region (GOODS/CDF-N) as analyzed by A05a, and are using essentially the same X-ray data. Indeed 6 (8) of the 16 X-ray detected SMGs studied here were also in the A05a (A05b) samples (Table~\ref{sample}). For the common sources, our classifcation of the origin of the X-ray emission agrees with A05a and A05b, and thus the main differences can be attributed to the selection and analysis of the submm samples.
The primary difference is that we are using purely submm-selected sources (predominantly from \citealt{pope05}), whereas A05a use a mixture of SMGs and optically faint radio sources with followup SCUBA photometry. The AGN fraction of SMGs found in this work ($20-29\pm7$ per cent, depending on the origin of the X-ray emission in the three ambiguous sources in Table~\ref{fits}) is consistent with the lower limit of the AGN fraction quoted by A05a ($>38^{+12}_{-10}$~per cent).
A05a assigned the AGN fraction as a lower limit because they were only able to assess the X-ray properties of SMGs with radio counterparts and spectroscopic redshifts. The SMGs which were radio-undetected in the A05a sample might have been X-ray sources (and hence AGN), but without accurate positions they were unable to tell. As noted by A05a themselves, the radio selection can cause a potential bias in favour of selecting AGN. Requiring a spectroscopic identification can cause a further bias, due to the availability of UV/optical lines in AGN spectra. Using a deeper radio map, and {\it Spitzer\/} data, we have good identifications and accurate positions for the vast majority of our SMGs, and we find that the high AGN fraction among spectroscopically identified, radio-detected submm galaxies fails to extend to the general SMG population. An additional difference worthy of note here is the submm significance threshold. \citet{pope05} applied a strict limit of $3.5\sigma$ to be considered, whereas many of the A05a SMGs have lower significance.
\begin{figure*}
\begin{center}
\includegraphics[width=55mm,angle=90]{fig4a.eps}
\hspace{1cm}
\includegraphics[width=55mm,angle=90]{fig4b.eps}
\caption{Rest-frame 2--$10\,$keV luminosity for the X-ray detected SMGs
against (left) FIR bolometric luminosity and (right)
rest-frame 1.4 GHz radio luminosity. The former are taken from \citet{pope06} and
the latter have been extrapolated from the observed 1.4 GHz fluxes
assuming a power law with $\alpha=-0.75$. The filled circles show the SMGs where the X-ray emission is consistent with that from purely stellar processes. The SMGs where the origin of the X-ray emission is either an AGN or ambiguous are shown as filled squares.
The X-ray luminosities are those calculated using Model A and have been corrected for intrinsic absorption where relevant (Table~\ref{fits}).
The filled triangles show the stacking result for the undetected SMGs. The
2--$10\,$keV luminosities have been calculated from the soft band stacking signal, which was the most significant. The right hand plot shows the mean X-ray luminosity for the 13 SMGs in the stack with radio detections.
The solid and dotted lines in both cases show the local relations for purely star forming galaxies from \citet{ranalli03}. The dashed line in the left plot shows the average X-ray to FIR ratio found for a sample of ultra-luminous infrared galaxies that are not dominated by AGN \citep{teng05}. For GN04 and GN39 the total FIR, radio and X-ray emission is plotted for these sources, as both components are expected to be contributing to the sub-mm flux.
The X-ray luminosities of most of the SMGs are consistent with this relation, but at high X-ray luminosities ($>10^{43}$~erg s$^{-1}$) there is a clear departure whereby the objects are dominated by an AGN in the X-ray.
}
\label{lx}
\end{center}
\end{figure*}
Our excellent positions have enabled us, for the first time, to perform a stacking analysis of the X-ray undetected submm population. We find a very clear soft band detection, and tentative evidence for hard band emission. The mean X-ray luminosity suggests an average star formation rate of $\sim 150$~M$_{\odot}$ yr$^{-1}$, with the full band delivering a higher star formation rate than the soft X-ray. Including the 9 SMGs from Table~\ref{fits} that are not classified as AGN dominated then the average X-ray derived SFR for the SMGs is $\sim 300$~M$_{\odot}$ yr$^{-1}$. This is considerably less than the mean SFR of $\sim 1200$~M$_{\odot}$ yr$^{-1}$ estimated from the FIR luminosity (P06). With the strong caveats that calibration of X-ray derived SFRs is uncertain (especially at high SFRs), that the stacked signal may be due to emission from obscured AGN, and that the SFRs from the FIR may be overestimated, there is thus some suggestion that the SMGs may host heavily obscured starbursts, with column densities exceeding $10^{22}$~cm$^{-2}$.
\subsection{Evidence for obscuration}
A05b presented an analysis of the X-ray spectra of the A05a sample, concluding that the majority of X-ray emitting SMGs are heavily obscured, supporting the interpretation of the X-ray emission being from an AGN. For our (small) sample of 7 SMGs that we classify as AGN we confirm this, and X-ray absorption appears to be an effective tool in discriminating between AGN and star forming SMGs. All but one (GN01) of the objects we identify as an AGN shows evidence for obscuration. The column densities in the others are of order $\sim 10^{23}$ cm$^{-2}$. Three sources are candidate Compton thick objects. GN04 (Northern counterpart), GN19 and GN39 (Northern counterpart) have large column densities ($\gtrsim10^{23}$~cm$^{-2}$) and are well fitted by the Compton reflection dominated model but the transmission model provides almost as good a fit. On the other hand, overall the X-ray detected sources in our sample show far less evidence for widespread X-ray absorption than was found by A05b. From the distributions of effective photon index (Fig.~\ref{gamma_hist}) it is clear that SMGs in our sample have, on average, larger values of $\Gamma$ than those in A05b. The K-S probability that the two samples are drawn from the same underlying galaxy distribution is 0.02. Excluding the 8 sources common to both samples, which are selected from the same galaxy population (see Table~\ref{sample} for details), the probability that the two samples are drawn from the same distribution is 0.005. We conclude that the majority ($\sim 60\pm12$ per cent) of X-ray emitting SMGs are unobscured, consistent with the interpretation that the X-ray emission is from stellar processes.
\subsection{Can AGN activity power the submm emission?}
Our X-ray spectral analysis can be used to estimate the possible contribution of an AGN to the submm emission. For unobscured or Compton thin AGN this is relatively straightforward, albeit subject to substantial uncertainty. In such cases the absorption-corrected X-ray luminosity in, say, the 2--$10\,$keV rest frame band, can be converted using a bolometric correction and compared to the FIR luminosity. The bolometric correction from 2--$10\,$keV has been discussed extensively in the literature (e.g.~\citealt{padovani88}; \citealt{elvis94}; \citealt{barger05}). There is a very wide range of bolometric corrections, and suggestions that it depends on luminosity (e.g.~\citealt{marconi04}; \citealt{hopkins07}) and/or Eddington ratio \citep{vasudevan07}. The `canonical' value of \citet{elvis94} is $\kappa_{2{-}10}=40$, but the range given by \citet{vasudevan09} covers approximately one order of magnitude $\kappa_{2{-}10}=15$--150. Adopting the \citet{elvis94} correction, we find that the bolometric luminosity is dominated ($>$ 50~per cent contribution) by an AGN in just one of the SMGs, that being GN04. If the upper end of the possible $\kappa_{2{-}10}$ is used then the bolometric luminosities of GN19 and GN39 might also be AGN dominated (Fig.~\ref{bol_lum}). Apparently, AGN make little contribution to the total submm power in the overall population.
On the other hand, one could hypothesise -- as has been argued by e.g.~A05b -- that many submm sources might harbour very heavily obscured, Compton thick AGN. Using our reflection model fits, it has been possible to estimate the AGN contribution to the luminosity even in sources where we find no evidence for AGN activity. The key point is that a luminous AGN should be revealed via a Compton scattered X-ray continuum, even when the direct continuum is obscured from view. Such a Compton reflection component, with accompanying intense iron K$\alpha$ line emission, is a defining characteristic of Compton thick AGN in the local Universe (e.g.~\citealt{reynolds94}; \citealt{matt00}). The lack of such a component in the majority of spectra in our sample limits the possible contribution of an AGN to the submm typically to between 1--10~per cent, assuming the \citet{elvis94} bolometric correction. The exceptions are the three objects noted above. Taking the estimates of the maximum possible contribution allowed by the spectral fits, and the most extreme bolometric correction, we find that GN25 and GN40 might also have as much as 50~per cent of their submm emission powered by the AGN (Fig.~\ref{bol_lum}). For Compton reflection dominated objects, such estimates are very uncertain, as the geometry of the reflecting medium (including the degree of self-obscuration) is not well known, and this will strongly affect the strength of the reflection signatures. Overall, however, we can conclude reasonably robustly that around 85~per cent of SMGs have their FIR emission dominated by star formation, whether or not an AGN is present.
An alternative way of diagnosing the presence of an AGN and its contribution to the FIR emission is via mid-IR spectroscopy. \citet{valiante07}, \citet{pope08} and \citet{menendez09} have analysed IR spectroscopy of more than 40 SMGs, a few of which overlap with the sample analysed here. These works showed that the bolometric luminosity of most SMGs is starburst dominated and that mid-IR dominant AGN in SMGs are rarely found: only 15--17 per cent of SMGs are dominated by an AGN in the mid-IR \citep{pope08,menendez09}. For the sources common to this sample, the mid-IR spectral diagnostics generally agree with the X-ray diagnostics. The exceptions being GN19 and GN39 which are both clear AGN from the X-ray but are starburst dominated based on their mid-IR spectral properties \citep{pope08}.
\begin{figure}
\begin{center}
\includegraphics[width=75mm,angle=90]{fig5.eps}
\caption{Rest-frame 2--$10\,$keV luminosity for the X-ray detected SMGs
against FIR bolometric luminosity. The FIR bolometric luminosities and the symbols are the same as in Fig.~\ref{lx}.
The lower values of the X-ray luminosities are our best estimate of the intrinsic luminosities for each source, calculated for the best-fitting model (Model A, B or C), as given in Table~\ref{models}. The upper values for the X-ray luminosities are the maximum intrinsic values allowed by the reflection model (Model B, Table~\ref{modelB}) and represent the maximum possible AGN contribution.The diagonal lines indicate an AGN-to-FIR bolometric luminosity ratio of 0.5 for 2-10 keV bolometric corrections of $\kappa_{2{-}10}=15, 40$~and $150$. For sources lying in the shaded region above the lines the total bolometric luminosity is AGN dominated ($> 50$ per cent contribution). The five AGN where the bolometric luminosity could be AGN dominated are identified.
}
\label{bol_lum}
\end{center}
\end{figure}
\section{Summary}
We have presented an estimate of the AGN fraction and X-ray spectral properties of submm-selected galaxies in the GOODS-N field, based on the deep (2--Ms) {\it Chandra\/} observation. While SMGs show a high X-ray detection fraction ($45\pm8$~per cent), and also AGN fraction ($20-29\pm7$~per cent), the latter is more modest compared to some previous estimates. Most X-ray detected SMGs have low X-ray luminosity and are unobscured, so are probably dominated by stellar emission in the X-ray. On the other hand, the (minority) AGN SMGs are obscured with moderate column densities, and we find three candidate Compton thick objects. We have estimated the AGN contribution to the bolometric luminosity and find only three objects in our sample in which accretion is the dominant power source. The X-ray spectra therefore indicate that star formation dominates the FIR emission in at least $\sim$85~per cent of the submm population, in agreement with mid-IR spectral diagnostics. Overall, we conclude that while intense, coeval star formation and intense accretion is undoubtedly present in some SMGs, this behaviour is far from universal, with only around 10--15~per cent of the population showing clear evidence for this mode of activity.
\section*{Acknowledgements}
We thank the anonymous referee for careful reading of the manuscript that has improved the quality of this paper.
ESL acknowledges the support of STFC. KN acknowledges the Leverhulme trust.
AP acknowledges support provided by NASA through the {\it Spitzer Space Telescope} Fellowship Program, through a contract issued by the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, California Institute of Technology under contract with NASA. DS acknowledges support from the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada.
| {
"redpajama_set_name": "RedPajamaArXiv"
} | 3,038 |
Q: try and catch with a prepared statement I have had a very hard time with this query and it was suggested to me to learn try and catch blocks to more easily figure out what is wrong. So this is my first attempt at it.
I am getting the error for my @stmt2 not being defined for my print_r($stmt2) line.
Notice: Undefined variable: stmt2
This is my attempt at the try catch. Am I doing anything wrong with it for this error to come up?
try {
$con = mysqli_connect("localhost", "", "", "");
if (mysqli_connect_errno()) {
throw new Exception("Connect failed: %s\n", mysqli_connect_error());
exit();
}
$cid = $_GET['cid'];
$tid = $_GET['tid'];
$userid = ( isset( $_SESSION['user'] ) ? $_SESSION['user'] : "" );
//Prepare
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mysqli_stmt_bind_param($stmt, "ii", $cid, $tid);
mysqli_stmt_execute($stmt);
/* fetch value */
mysqli_stmt_fetch($stmt);
if (!$stmt) {
throw new Exception($con->error);
}
}
$stmt->store_result();
$numrows = $stmt->num_rows;
if($numrows == 1){
echo "<table width='100%'>";
if ( $_SESSION['user'] ) {
echo "<tr><td colspan='2'><input type='submit' value='Add Reply' onclick=\"window.location =
'forum_post_reply.php?cid=".$cid."$tid=".$tid."'\"> <hr />";
} else {
echo "<tr><td colspan='2'><p>Please log in to add your reply</p><hr /></td></tr>";
}
/*}
catch (Exception $e)
{
//print_r($e);
echo "There has been an error with the $stmt block.";
}
print_r($stmt);
try {*/
foreach($stmt as $row) {
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if($stmt2 = mysqli_prepare($con, "SELECT * FROM forum_posts WHERE `category_id`=? AND `topic_id`=?")) {
//var_dump($stmt2);
mysqli_stmt_bind_param($stmt2, "ii", $cid, $tid);
mysqli_stmt_execute($stmt2);
}
while (mysqli_stmt_fetch($stmt)) {
echo "<tr><td valign='top' style='border: 1px solid #000000;'>
<div style='min-height: 125px;'>".$row['topic_title']."<br />
by ".$row2['post_creator']." - " .$row2['post_date']. "<hr />" . $row2['post_content'] ."</div></td>
<td width='200' valign='top' align='center' style='border: 1px solid #000000;'>User Info Here!</td></tr>
<tr><td colspan='2'><hr /></td></tr>";
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A: If you wanna track all the errors that happen in your code, you can use try, catch statements to handle them in proper way. Inside try block, you can put all your code or part of it. If something fails, it will generate an exception.
That exception also can be thrown by yourself using the next statement:
throw new Exception("I think something's failing");
Just after try block, you have to declare the catch block which will handle the exception, making it available to you. In the following example I will print the error message.
<?php
try {
/* all your code */
} catch (Exception $e) {
/* if something fails inside try block will be catched here */
print $e->getMessage();
}
You can find more about this here:
http://php.net/manual/en/language.exceptions.php
| {
"redpajama_set_name": "RedPajamaStackExchange"
} | 6,727 |
\section{Parabolic-elliptic Keller-Segel model}
\subsection*{Statement of the problem.}
We consider in this paper the following Cauchy problem in space dimensions $d\ge 3$
\begin{align}
u_t-\Delta u+\nabla\cdot(u\nabla v)&= 0,\ \ &x\in {\mathbb R}^d,\ t>0,\label{equ}\\
\Delta v+u &= 0,\ \ & x\in {\mathbb R}^d,\ t>0,\label{eqv}\\
u(x,0)&= u_0(x),\ \ &x\in {\mathbb R}^d.\label{ini}
\end{align}
One motivation to study this model comes from Mathematical Biology, where equations \rf{equ}--\rf{eqv} are a simplified Keller-Segel
system modeling chemotaxis, see e.g. \cite{B-AMSA,BCKSV,Lem}.
The unknown variables $u=u(x,t)$ and $v=v(x,t)$ denote the density of the population of microorganisms (e.g. swimming bacteria or slime mold), and the density of the chemical secreted by themselves that attracts them and makes them to aggregate, respectively.
Another important interpretation of system \rf{equ}--\rf{eqv} comes from Astrophysics, where the unknown function $u=u(x,t)$ is the density of gravitationally interacting massive particles in a cloud (of stars, nebulae, etc.), and $v=v(x,t)$ is the Newtonian potential (``mean field'') of the mass distribution $u$, see \cite{Cha,CSR,B-SM,B-AM,B-CM,BHN}.
In this work we supplement system \rf{equ}--\rf{eqv} with a nonnegative radial initial datum $u_0\ge 0$.
Thus, by the uniqueness the corresponding solution $u$ of problem \rf{equ}--\rf{eqv} is also nonnegative and radial as long as it exists.
It is well known that if the total mass $M$ is finite, it is conserved during the evolution
\be
M=\int_{\R^d}u_0(x)\dx=\int_{\R^d} u(x,t)\dx\ \ \ {\rm for\ all\ \ \ }t\in[0,T_{\rm max}).\label{M}
\ee
Further, we will also consider solutions with infinite mass like the famous Chandrasekhar steady state singular solution in \cite{Cha}
\be
u_C(x)=\frac{2(d-2)}{|x|^2}.\label{Ch}
\ee
This one-point singular solution plays a pivotal role in this work, because it allows to distinguish (in some sense) radial initial conditions of global-in-time solutions from initial data, where solutions cannot exist for all $t>0$.
Moreover, some of the results in this paper might be interpreted as diffusion-dominated dynamics strictly below $u_C$, see next section.
\subsection*{The $8\pi$-problem in the two-dimensional case}
Let us now describe previous results which motivated us to start this study and we limit ourselves to those publications, which are directly related.
We begin with the classical case of $d=2$ where mass $M=8\pi$ plays a crucial role.
Namely, if $u_0$ is a nonnegative measure of mass $M<8\pi$, then there exists a unique solution which is global-in-time, see {e.g.} \cite{BM,BDP,BZ}.
These results have been known previously for radially symmetric initial data, see \cite{BKLN1,BKLN2,B-BCP,BKZ} for recent presentations.
On the other hand, if $M>8\pi$, then this solution cannot be continued to a~global-in-time regular one, and a finite time blowup occurs, {cf.} \cite{B-CM,N1,K-O}, and \cite{BHN,B-BCP} for radially symmetric case. The radial blowup is accompanied by the concentration of mass equal to $8\pi$ at the origin, \cite{BDP,B-BCP}.
We have generalized this result in our recent work \cite{BKZ} by showing concentration of $8\pi$ for large mass solutions with sufficiently many symmetries.
\subsection*{Parabolic-elliptic model in higher dimensions}
Now, we discuss the case $d\geq 3$ in the Keller-Segel model.
It is well-known that problem \rf{equ}--\rf{ini} has a unique local-in-time mild solution $u\in {\mathcal C}([0,T); L^p(\R^d))$
for every $u_0\in L^p(\R^d)$ with $p>d/2$, see \cite{B-SM,K-JMAA,KS-IMUJ}. For solvability results in other functional spaces like weak Lebesgue (Marcinkiewicz), Morrey and Besov spaces, see also \cite{BB-SM,CPZ,I,K-JMAA,Lem}. In particular, previous works have dealt with the existence of global-in-time solutions with small data in critical spaces like $L^{d/2}(\R^d)$, $L^{d/2}_{\rm w}(\R^d)$, $M^{d/2}(\R^d)$, { i.e.}~those which are scale-invariant under the natural scaling, see {e.g.} \cite{B-SM,BB-SM,K-JMAA,Lem}
\begin{equation}\label{scal:0}
u_\lambda(x,t)=\lambda^2 u(\lambda x,\lambda^2 t)\ \ {\rm for\ each\ \ }\lambda>0.
\end{equation}
Blowing up solutions to the parabolic-elliptic model of chemotaxis in dimension $d\geq 3$ have been studied in e.g. \cite{B-CM,BHN,B-AMSA,GMS,MS1,MS2,BKZ-NHM}.
\subsection*{The Keller-Segel model with an anomalous diffusion}
Recently, the Keller-Segel model has been considered in a more general form
\begin{align}
u_t+(-\Delta)^{\alpha/2} u+\nabla\cdot(u\nabla v)&= 0,\ \ &x\in {\mathbb R}^d,\ t>0,\label{equ-a}\\
\Delta v+u &= 0,\ \ & x\in {\mathbb R}^d,\ t>0,\label{eqv-a}
\end{align}
with motivations stemming still from biology.
Here, the diffusion process is given by the fractional power of the Laplacian $(-\Delta)^{\alpha/2}$ with $\alpha\in(0,2)$, a nonlocal L\'evy type operator, as was in \cite{BCKZ,BKZ2} and \cite[Sec. 10]{Lem}.
Results in \cite{BKZ2}, with their proofs based on new comparison principles for nonlocal operators, are in a sense parallel to these on global as well as blowing up solutions in the present work.
In particular, the singular solution $u_C(x)={s(\alpha,d)}{|x|^{-\alpha}}$ in \cite[(2.1)]{BKZ2}, generalizing the Chandrasekhar solution \rf{Ch}, determines a kind of threshold between global-in-time and blowing up solutions.
\subsection*{Brief summary of results in this work.}
In view of the above mentioned results for $d=2$, a natural question can be posed in dimension $d\ge 3$:
{\it Does there exist a critical quantity $\ell=\ell(u_0)$ which decides whether a solution with $u_0$ as the initial datum is global-in-time or this blows up in a finite time?}
More precisely:
Do there exist constants $0<c(d)\le C(d)<\infty$ such that the assumption $\ell(u_0)<c(d)$ implies global-in-time existence of solution to problem \rf{equ}--\rf{eqv} while the condition $\ell(u_0)>C(d)$ leads to a finite time blowup of solution?
We will give a partial answer to that question for radially symmetric solutions
showing that the quantity $\ell=\ell(u_0)$ corresponds to the radial concentration defined in \rf{rconc} below --- and thus it is equivalent to the Morrey norm in the space $M^{d/2}(\R^d)$.
Similar results in the case $\alpha\in(1,2)$ are in \cite{BKZ2,BZ-2} and in a forthcoming book \cite{B-book}.
Our main results include:
global-in-time existence of radially symmetric solutions with initial data in the critical Morrey space $M^{d/2}(\R^d)$ whose initial conditions are uniformly below the singular solution $u_C$ in \rf{Ch} in an averaged sense in Theorem \ref{glo}, together with
convergence of solutions to $0$ as $t\to\infty$ in various norms.
The proof of the first result involves a pointwise argument, a~powerful tool used in different contexts such as free boundary problems and fluid dynamics, cf. also \cite{B-bl} for the case of a nonlinear heat equation.
A sufficient condition for the global-in-time existence is, in fact, an estimate of the Morrey space $M^{d/2}(\R^d)$ norm of the initial condition.
As a preliminary result on general (including sign-changing and not necessarily radial) solutions we will show the
local-in-time existence of solutions with initial data in Morrey spaces $M^{d/2}(\R^d)\cap M^p(\R^d)$, $p\in\left(\frac{d}{2},d\right)$ in Proposition \ref{lok-istn}.
The proof of this auxiliary result is based on the classical Fujita--Kato iterations procedure in suitably chosen spaces contained in the critical space $M^{d/2}(\R^d)$ which admit local singularities only in $M^p(\R^d)$ thus weaker than the critical one of $u_C$.
We recall in Appendix \ref{blo} some blowup criteria, in \ref{ss} and \ref{sss} --- some properties of nonnegative stationary radial solutions and nonnegative selfsimilar radial solutions.
\subsection*{Notation.}
The $L^p(\R^d)$ norm is denoted by $\|\, .\, \|_p$, $1\le p\le\infty$.
We use systematically the
homogeneous Morrey spaces $M^p(\R^d)$
of measurable functions on $\R^d$ which are defined by their norms
\be
|\!\!| u|\!\!|_{M^p}\equiv \sup_{R>0,\, x\in\R^d}R^{d(1/p-1)}
\int_{\{|y-x|<R\}}|u(y)|\dy<\infty\label{hMor}
\ee
with $M^1(\R^d)=L^1(\R^d)$ and $M^\infty(\R^d)=L^\infty(\R^d)$.
In the following, we shall also use
the {\it radial concentration} of a function $u=u(x)$ given by
\be
\xn u\xn
\equiv \sup_{R>0}R^{2-d}\int_{\{|y|<R\}}u(y)\dy \label{rconc}
\ee
which, in the case of radial functions, appears to be equivalent to the Morrey norm $M^{d/2}(\R^d)$, see \cite[Lemma 7.1]{BKZ2} as well as \cite[Lemma 3.1]{ADB}.
\section{Statement of the results} \label{ls}
Equation \rf{eqv} is not uniquely solved with respect to $v$.
Thus, in this work we always assume that
\be
\nabla v=\nabla E_d\ast u \label{fundsol}
\ee
with
$$
E_2(x)=\tfrac{1}{2\pi}\log\tfrac{1}{|x|}\qquad {\rm and}\qquad E_d(x)=\tfrac{1}{(d-2)\s_d}\tfrac{1}{|x|^{d-2}}\ \ {\rm for}\ \ d\ge 3.
$$
Here, the number
\be
\s_d=\frac{2\pi^{\frac{d}{2}}}{\Gamma\left(\frac{d}{2}\right)} \label{pole}
\ee
is the measure of the unit sphere ${\mathbb S}^{d-1}\subset \R^d$.
Consequently, we consider in fact the Cauchy problem for the nonlocal transport equation
\begin{align}\label{KS}
u_t-\Delta u+\nabla\cdot(u\nabla E_d\ast u)&= 0, &&x\in\R^d,\ ,\\
u(x,0)&=u_0(x), &&x\in\R^d.\nonumber
\end{align}
Let us first formulate the main result of this section on the global-in-time solutions to the nonlocal problem \rf{KS}.
\begin{theorem}[Global-in-time solutions]\label{glo}
Let $d\geq 3$.
Assume that a radially symmetric nonnegative initial condition $u_0\in M^{d/2}(\R^d)$ satisfies
\be\label{a1}
\xn u_0\xn\equiv\sup_{R>0}R^{2-d}\int_{\{|x|<R\}} u_0(x)\dx<2\s_d.
\ee
There exists $p\in \left(\frac{d}{2},d\right)$ such that if moreover $u_0\in M^p(\R^d)$ then the corresponding solution $u=u(x,t)$ of problem \rf{KS} exists in the space
\begin{equation*}
{\mathcal C}_w \Big( [0,T), M^{d/2}(\R^d) \cap M^p(\R^d) \Big)\cap \Big\{ u: (0,T) \to L^\infty (\R^d): t^{\frac{d}{2p}}\| u(t)\|_\infty <\infty \Big\}
\end{equation*}
for each $T>0$, is nonnegative, global-in-time, radial, and satisfies the bound
\begin{equation}\label{global_sol}
\xn u(t)\xn=\sup_{R>0}R^{2-d}\int_{\{|x|<R\}} u(x,t)\dx< 2\s_d\ \ {\rm for\ all}\ \ t>0.
\end{equation}
\end{theorem}
Theorem \ref{glo} is proved in the following way.
First, in Proposition \ref{lok-istn} we construct local-in-time solutions for arbitrary initial conditions (even sign changing and not necessarily radial) from $M^{d/2}(\R^d)\cap M^p(\R^d)$.
Such solutions for radial nonnegative data appear to be also radial, nonnegative and sufficiently regular.
Then, we derive a differential equation for the radial distribution function $M(r,t)=\int_{\{|x|<r\}}u(x,t)\dx$ and study its properties in Proposition \ref{maximum}.
Theorem \ref{glo} is proved at the end of Section \ref{sec:apriori}.
\begin{remark}
Notice that, by a direct calculation, we have
$$
2\s_d=R^{2-d}\int_{\{|x|<R\}}u_C(x)\dx\ \ \ {\rm for\ each}\ \ \ R>0.
$$
Hence, the assumption $\xn u_0\xn<2\s_d$ in Theorem \ref{glo} means that the initial datum $u_0$ is \underline{strictly} below $u_C$ in the sense of the radial concentrations, namely, we assume that for some $\varepsilon \in (0,1)$ we have
$$
R^{2-d}\int_{\{|x|<R\}}u_0(x)\dx<\varepsilon R^{2-d}\int_{\{|x|<R\}}u_C(x)\dx \ \ \ {\rm for\ each}\ \ \ R>0.
$$
By Theorem \ref{glo}, the corresponding solution exists for all $t\ge 0$ and stays below the singular steady state $u_C$ in this sense.
\end{remark}
\begin{remark}
In fact, we have identified
that the radial concentration \eqref{rconc}
decides whether a nonnegative, radially symmetric solution to problem \rf{equ}--\rf{ini} exists globally in time or it blows up in a finite time. More precisely, we have dichotomy
\begin{itemize}
\item if $\xn u_0 \xn <2\s_d$, then a solution is global-in-time by Theorem \ref{glo}, on the other hand
\item there exists a constant $C_d>0$ such that if $\xn u_0\xn >C_d$ then a solution cannot be global-in-time, see Appendix \ref{blo} below for corresponding blowup results.
\end{itemize}
\end{remark}
Obviously, the constant in the blowup criterion satisfies $C_d>2\s_d$. Below, we estimate the discrepancy between $C_d$ and $2\s_d$.
\begin{remark}\label{ess}
For each $T>0$, system \eqref{equ}--\eqref{eqv} has an explicit
{\em smooth}
blowing up solution which satisfies
\be
\int_{|x|\le r}u(x,t)\dx=\frac{4\s_d r^d}{r^2+2(d-2)(T-t)}
\qquad \text{for all}\quad t\in [0,T),
\label{bl-sol}
\ee
see \cite[(33)]{BCKSV} with a discussion in \cite{BZ-2}.
Here, the corresponding initial density is
$$
u_0(x)=4(d-2)\frac{|x|^2+2T}{(|x|^2+2(d-2)T)^2}$$
and it satisfies
$$ \xn u_0\xn=4\s_d=\lim_{r\to\infty}r^{2-d}\int_{|x|\le r}u(x,t)\dx=\xn u(t)\xn
\qquad \text{for all}\quad t\in [0,T).
$$
Notice that $u_0 \in M^{d/2}(\R^d) \cap L^\infty (\R^d) \subset M^{d/2}(\R^d) \cap M^p(\R^d)$ for $p\in \left(\frac{d}{2}, d\right)$. Since there exists a blowing up solution with the radial concentration equal to $4\sigma_d$ then, necessarily, we should have $C_d\geq 4\sigma_d$ in the blowup criterion in Theorem~\ref{blow}.
Papers \cite{BKZ,BKZ-NHM,BZ-2} contain estimates of this constant $C_d$ from above. Actually, the best bound $C_d<4\s_d\sqrt{\pi d} $ has been obtained in \cite{BZ-2}.
\end{remark}
In the case of an integrable initial datum, the global-in-time solution constructed in Theorem \ref{glo} decays in the following sense.
\begin{corollary}[Decay of radial concentration]\label{asy-z}
Under the assumptions of Theorem \ref{glo}, if additionally the initial condition satisfies $u_0\in L^1(\R^d)$, then
\be
\xn u(t)\xn=\sup_{R>0}R^{2-d}\int_{\{|x|<R\}}u(x,t)\dx\to 0\ \ \ {\rm as}\ \ \ t\to\infty.
\label{as-z}
\ee
\end{corollary}
\begin{corollary}[$L^q$-decay estimate] \label{cor:Lp:decay}
Under the assumptions of Theorem \ref{glo}, if the initial condition also satisfies $u_0\in L^1(\R^d)$, then
$$
\|u(t)\|_q\leq C(d,q,\mu) t^{-\frac{d}{2}\left(1-\frac{1}{q}\right)}\|u_0\|_1 \quad \text{for all}
\quad t>0.
$$
\end{corollary}
\begin{remark}\label{stationary}
For $d\ge 3$ problem \rf{equ}--\rf{eqv} has stationary solutions $U=U(x)$ and $\nabla V = \nabla E_d \ast U$ which satisfy
$$
\lim_{R\to\infty}R^{2-d}\int_{\{|x|\le R\}}U(x)\dx = 2\s_d,
$$
see Theorem \ref{oscillating} below.
They do not belong to $L^1(\R^d)$ and, of course, their radial concentrations are constant in time.
\end{remark}
\begin{remark}\label{selfsim}
For the initial condition $u_0(x) = \varepsilon |x|^{-2}$ with sufficiently small $\varepsilon >0$, problem \rf{equ}--\rf{ini} (or \rf{KS}) has selfsimilar solutions of the form
$$u(x,t)=\frac{1}{t}U\left(\frac{|x|}{\sqrt{t}}\right)$$
with a profile $U$, see Appendix \ref{sss}. Here, the radial concentration is also (as in Remark~\ref{stationary}) constant in time, because
\begin{equation*}
\begin{split}
\sup_{R>0}R^{2-d}\int_{\{|x|\le R\}}
\frac{1}{t}U\left(\frac{|x|}{\sqrt{t}}\right)\,{\rm d}x
=\sup_{R>0} \left(\frac{R}{\sqrt{t}}\right)^{2-d}
\int_{\left\{|x|\le \frac{R}{\sqrt{t}}\right\}}
U(|x|)\,{\rm d
}x=\xn U\xn .
\end{split}
\end{equation*}
The quantity $\xn U\xn$ is finite because $U \in {\mathcal C}^\infty (\R^d)$ and $|U(\varrho)|\le \frac{C}{|\varrho|^2}$ for large $\varrho$, see Appendix~\ref{sss}. Notice that the initial datum of such a selfsimilar solution satisfies $u_0 \in M^{d/2}(\R^d)\setminus M^p(\R^d)$ for each $p>\frac{d}{2}$ and $\xn u_0\xn = \varepsilon\frac{\s_d}{d-2}$.
\end{remark}
\section{Local-in-time solutions}
We begin by constructing a local-in-time {\em mild} solution of problem \rf{KS}, namely, a~function $u=u(x,t)$ satisfying the Duhamel formula
\be
u(t)={\rm e}^{t\Delta}u_0+ {\mathcal B}(u,u)(t).\label{Duh}
\ee
Here, the symbol ${\rm e}^{t\Delta}$ denotes the heat semigroup on $\R^d$, and the bilinear form ${\mathcal B}$ is defined by
\be
{\mathcal B}(u,w)(t)=\int_0^t \nabla {\rm e}^{(t-s)\Delta}(u\nabla E_d\ast w)(s)\ds.\label{B-form}
\ee
To deal with the integral equation \rf{Duh}, we recall that,
similarly to the action of the heat semigroup on $L^p$ spaces, for $1\le p\le q \le \infty$
the inequalities
\begin{align}
|\!\!| {\rm e}^{t\Delta}f|\!\!|_{M^{q}}&\le Ct^{-d(1/p-1/q)/2}|\!\!|f|\!\!|_{M^p} \label{polgrupa},\\
|\!\!| {\nabla \rm e}^{t\Delta}f|\!\!|_{M^{q}}&\le Ct^{-1/2-d(1/p-1/q)/2}|\!\!|f|\!\!|_{M^p} \label{polgrupa1}
\end{align}
hold, where for either $p=1$ or $q=\infty$ the above estimate involve the norms $\|\, .\,\|_1$ and $\|\, .\, \|_\infty$ norms, resp., (see \cite[Prop. 3.2]{G-M}).
We also recall from \cite[Prop. 3.1]{G-M} a version of Riesz potential estimates in the Morrey norms
\begin{equation}\label{Sob0}
|\!\!| \nabla E_d* u|\!\!|_{M^r} \leq C|\!\!| u|\!\!|_{M^p}\quad \text{with} \quad
\frac{1}{r} =\frac{1}{p}-\frac{1}{d}
\end{equation}
as well as an interpolation estimate
\be
\| \nabla E_d* u\|_\infty\le C|\!\!| u|\!\!|_{M^{p}}^\mu|\!\!| u|\!\!|_{M^r}^\nu\label{Sob}
\ee
with
$$1\le p<d<r\le\infty,\ \ {\rm and} \ \ \mu=\frac{\frac1d-\frac1r}{\frac1p-\frac1r},\ \ \nu=\frac{\frac1p-\frac1d}{\frac1p-\frac1r},\ \ {\rm so\ that}\ \ \mu+\nu=1.$$
\begin{proposition} \label{lok-istn}
Given $u_0\in M^{d/2}(\R^d)\cap M^p(\R^d)$ with $d\ge 2$ and $p\in\left(\frac{d}{2},d\right)$, there exist $T=T(u_0)>0$ and a unique local-in-time solution
\begin{equation}\label{X_T_space}
u\in {\mathcal X}_T = {\mathcal C}_{\rm w}\Big([0,T], M^{d/2}(\R^d)\cap M^p(\R^d)\Big)
\cap
{\mathcal Y}_T,
\end{equation}
where
$$
\mathcal{Y}_T = \Big\{u:(0,T)\to L^\infty(\R^d): \ \
\sup_{0<t\le T}t^{\frac{d}{2p}}\| u(t)\|_{\infty}<\infty\Big\}
$$
of problem \rf{equ}--\rf{ini}. This is a classical solution of this problem, namely, $u, u_t, \nabla u, D^2 u \in {\mathcal C}\left(\R^d \times (0,T)\right)$.
\end{proposition}
\begin{remark}\label{weak-conv}
Note that, in general, we have only weak convergence of ${\rm e}^{t\Delta}u_0$ to an initial datum $u_0\in M^p(\R^d)$ with $1< p <\infty$. Thus, we are obliged to consider weakly continuous ${\mathcal C}_{\rm w}\left([0,T], M^{d/2}(\R^d)\cap M^p(\R^d)\right)$ instead of norm continuous functions of time variable $t$ with values in a Morrey space.
\end{remark}
\begin{remark}\label{assumptions}
Note that $u_C\in M^{d/2}(\R^d)$ and $|\!\!|u_C|\!\!|_{M^{d/2}}=\xn u_C\xn=2\s_d$.
The second assumption $u_0\in M^p(\R^d)$, with $p>\frac{d}{2}$, is a kind of regularity assumption which rules out local singularities of strength $\frac{1}{|x|^2}$.
Indeed, $\un_{\{|x|<R\}}u_C\not\in M^p(\R^d)$ while $\un_{\{|x|>R\}}u_C\in M^p(\R^d)$ with $p>\frac{d}{2}$.
\end{remark}
\begin{remark}
In fact, if $u_0\in M^{d/2}(\R^d)$ is sufficiently small then the solution in Proposition~\ref{lok-istn} exists for all $t\in [0,\infty)$, see \cite[Thm. 1 B), C)]{Lem} with a proof involving homogeneous Morrey spaces of two indices.
\end{remark}
\begin{proof}[Proof of Proposition \ref{lok-istn}.]
We sketch the proof of this result noting that the reasonings are, in a sense, close to those in \cite[Prop. 1, Th. 1]{B-SM}. For $T>0$ and $p\in \left(\frac{d}{2}, d\right)$ consider an auxiliary space ${\mathcal X}_T$ defined in \rf{X_T_space}. We supplement the space ${\mathcal X}_T$ with the usual norm
\begin{equation*}
\| u\|_{{\mathcal X}_T} =\sup_{0\le t\le T} |\!\!| u(t) |\!\!|_{M^{d/2}}+ \sup_{0\le t\le T}|\!\!| u(t)|\!\!|_{M^p} + \sup_{0<t\le T}t^{\frac{d}{2p}}\| u(t)\|_{\infty}.
\end{equation*}
By estimates \rf{polgrupa},
we get ${\rm e}^{t\Delta}u_0\in{\mathcal X}_T$ whenever
$u_0\in M^{d/2}(\R^d) \cap M^p(\R^d)$. More precisely, we have
\be
\left\|{\rm e}^{t\Delta}u_0\right\|_{{\mathcal X}_T}\le C\Big(|\!\!| u_0|\!\!|_{M^{d/2}}+|\!\!| u_0|\!\!|_{M^p}\Big)\label{Xest}
\ee
holds with a constant $C$ {\em independent} of $T$.
To find solutions to equation \eqref{Duh}, it suffices to show that the bilinear form ${\mathcal B}$ in \rf{B-form} is continuous in the norm of the ${\mathcal X}_T$.
Let $u, w \in {\mathcal X}_T$ and $t \in [0, T]$. For $q\in\left\{\frac{d}{2},p\right\}$ we set $\nu = 1-\frac{q}{d} \in (0,1)$ and proceed in the following way using systematically inequalities \rf{polgrupa}--\rf{Sob}
\begin{align*}
|\!\!| {\mathcal B}(u,w)(t)|\!\!|_{M^q}&\le C\int_0^t(t-s)^{-\frac{1}{2}}|\!\!| u(s)\nabla E_d* w (s)|\!\!|_{M^q}\ds\\
&\le C\int_0^t(t-s)^{-\frac{1}{2}}|\!\!| u(s)|\!\!|_{M^q}\|\nabla E_d * w(s)\|_\infty\ds\\
&\le C\int_0^t(t-s)^{-\frac{1}{2}}|\!\!| u(s)|\!\!|_{M^q}|\!\!| w(s)|\!\!|_{M^q}^{1-\nu}\| w(t)\|_\infty^{\nu}\ds\\
&\le C\int_0^t(t-s)^{-\frac{1}{2}}s^{-\nu\frac{d}{2p}} |\!\!| u(s)|\!\!|_{M^q}|\!\!| w(s)|\!\!|_{M^q}^{1-\nu}\left(s^{\frac{d}{2p}}\| w(t)\|_\infty\right)^\nu\\
&\le CT^{\frac{1}{2}-\nu\frac{d}{2p}}\times \sup_{0\le s \le T}|\!\!| u(s)|\!\!|_{M^q}\times \sup_{0\le s\le T}|\!\!| w(s)|\!\!|_{M^q}^{1-\nu}\times \|w\|_{{\mathcal Y}_T}^\nu .
\end{align*}
Here, for $q=d/2$ we have $\frac{1}{2}-\nu\frac{d}{2q}=0$, while for $q=p>d/2$ we obtain $\frac{1}{2}-\nu\frac{d}{2p}>0$.
We deal with the last part of the norm $\| \cdot \|_{\mathcal{X}_T}$ analogously using inequalities \rf{polgrupa} and \rf{polgrupa1} with $r\in (d, \infty)$, $p\in \left(\frac{d}{2},d\right)$ satisfying $\frac{1}{r}=\frac{1}{p}-\frac{1}{d}$ in the following way
\begin{align}\label{L_infty}
t^\frac{d}{2p}\| {\mathcal B}(u,&w)(t)\|_\infty \le t^\frac{d}{2p} C\int_0^t (t-s)^{-\frac{1}{2}-\frac{d}{2r}}\| u(s)\|_\infty |\!\!|\nabla E_d* w (s)|\!\!|_{M^r} \ds\\ \nonumber
&\le Ct^\frac{d}{2p} \int_0^t (t-s)^{-\frac{1}{2}-\frac{d}{2r}}s^{-\frac{d}{2p}}\left(s^{\frac{d}{2p}}\| u(s)\|_\infty\right) |\!\!| w(s)|\!\!|_{M^p}\ds\\ \nonumber
&\le CT^{1-\frac{d}{2p}}\| u\|_{{\mathcal Y}_T}\times \sup_{0\le s\le T}|\!\!| w(s)|\!\!|_{M^p}\nonumber
\end{align}
because
\begin{equation*}
\frac{d}{2p}-\frac{1}{2}-\frac{d}{2r}-\frac{d}{2p}+1=1-\frac{d}{2p}>0.
\end{equation*}
Now, a construction of local-in-time solutions is completed by the Banach fixed point argument used in the same way as stated, e.g., in \cite[Thm. 1]{Lem}, \cite[Lemma 5.1]{BCKZ}, \cite[Proposition 1]{B-SM}.
This local-in-time solutions satisfies $u\in L^\infty \big((\delta, T), L^\infty (\R^d)\big)$ for each $\delta >0$. Moreover, by inequality \rf{Sob0} with $p\in\left(\frac{d}{2},d\right)$ and $r=\infty$ we have got $\nabla E_d * u \in L^\infty \big((\delta, T), L^\infty (\R^d)\big)$. Hence, a standard regularity argument for parabolic equations permits us to prove smoothness of $u = u(x,t)$.
\end{proof}
\section{A priori estimates and continuation of solutions}\label{sec:apriori}
Now, we are going to obtain {\em a~priori} estimates of a local-in-time solution in Proposition~\ref{lok-istn} using its radial distribution function
\be
M(r,t)=\int_{\{|x|<r\}}u(x,t)\dx\label{rdf}
\ee
which satisfies the equation
\be\label{mass}
\frac{\partial M}{\partial t}=M_{rr}-\frac{d-1}{r}M_r+\frac{1}{\sigma_d}r^{1-d}MM_r,
\ee
with $M(0,t)=0$, cf. e.g. \cite{BHN}.
Recall that the radial function $u=u(x)$ is related to $M(r)=\int_{\{|x|<r\}}u(x)\dx $ by the equality
\be
u(x)=\frac{1}{\sigma_d}r^{1-d}\frac{\partial}{\partial r}M(r),\label{u-rad}
\ee
satisfied for each $|x|=r$.
The estimate of the radial concentration $\xn u(t)\xn$ in Theorem \ref{glo} is a consequence of the following property of the function $M(r,t)$.
\begin{proposition}\label{maximum}
Let $d\ge 3$ and $p\in \left(\frac{d}{2}, d\right)$. Consider the nonnegative, sufficiently smooth, radial, local-in-time solution $u=u(x,t)$ on $[0,T]$ corresponding to a nonnegative radial initial datum $u_0 \in M^{d/2}(\R^d) \cap M^p(\R^d)$ (see Proposition \ref{lok-istn}).
Suppose that
\be
M_0(r)<\min\left\{ K\, r^{d-d/p},\eps 2\s_d\, r^{d-2}\right\}\equiv b(r)\ \ \textit{for all}\quad r>0,\label{M0}
\ee
for some $K>0$ and $\eps \in \left(0, \frac{d}{2p}\right)$ where $\frac{d}{2p}<1$. Then the solution $M$ of equation \rf{mass} with the initial condition $M_0$ satisfies the same bound
\be
M(r,t) = \int_{|x|<r} u(x,t) \dx <\min\left\{ K\, r^{d-d/p},\eps 2\s_d\, r^{d-2} \right\}\ \ \textit{for}\quad r>0\ \ \textit{and}\quad t >0.\label{Mt}
\ee
\end{proposition}
\begin{proof}
The proof of inequality \rf{Mt} is by contradiction.
Suppose that the function $M(r,t)$ hits the barrier $b(r)$ defined in \rf{M0} at some $(R_0,t_0)$ with $R_0>0$ and $t_0>0$ chosen as the least such moment $t>0$. The two parts of the graph of the barrier $b(r)$ meet at $r_\ast=\left(\frac{\eps 2\s_d}{K}\right)^{\frac{1}{2-d/p}}$. If $R_0\ge r_\ast$, then $z(r,t)=r^{2-d}M(r,t)$ hits the constant level $2\eps \s_d$ at $r=R_0$ and $t_0$. On the other hand, if $0<R_0< r_\ast$, then the function $\tilde z(r,t)=r^{d/p-d}M(r,t)$ hits the constant level $K$ at $r=R_0$ and $t_0$.
By a simple argument (see e.g. \cite[Thm. 2.4]{BKZ-NHM}), one may show that the function $z(r,t_0)$ attains its local maximum at $R_0$ where
\be \label{cond-max}
\frac{\p}{\p t}z(R_0,t_0)\ge 0, \quad z_r(R_0,t_0)=0,\quad z_{rr}(R_0,t_0)\le 0.
\ee
These relations hold true for $\tilde z$, as well.
Now, we use the equation for the function $z(r,t)=r^{2-d}M(r,t)$ which is obtained immediately from \rf{mass} and takes the form
\be
(r^{d-2}z)_t=(r^{d-2}z)_{rr}-\frac{d-1}{r}(r^{d-2}z)_r+\frac{1}{\sigma_d}r^{1-d}(r^{d-2}z)(r^{d-2}z)_r. \label{zz}
\ee
Applying relations \rf{cond-max} and the property of $(R_0,t_0)$ we have got
\begin{align*}
\frac{\p}{\p t}z(R_0,t_0)&= z_{rr}(R_0,t_0)-2\frac{d-2}{R_0^2}z(R_0,t_0)+\frac{d-2}{\sigma_dR_0^2}z^2(R_0,t_0) \\
&\le \frac{d-2}{\sigma_dR_0^2}z(R_0,t_0)(z(R_0,t_0)-2\sigma_d)\\
&=\frac{4(d-2)}{R_0^2}\s_d \eps (\eps-1) <0
\end{align*}
because $\eps <1$. This is a contradiction with the first relation in \rf{cond-max}.
In the case of the function $\tilde z$ (notice that $r^{d-d/p}\tilde z=M$), we consider the analogous equation
\be
(r^{d-d/p}\tilde z)_t=(r^{d-d/p}\tilde z)_{rr}-\frac{d-1}{r}(r^{d-d/p}\tilde z)_r+\frac{1}{\sigma_d}r^{1-d}(r^{d-d/p}\tilde z)(r^{d-d/p}\tilde z)_r,
\label{zzz}
\ee
also equivalent to equation \rf{mass}. We use this equation at the point $(R_0,t_0)$ and apply relations \rf{cond-max} with $z$ replaced by $\tilde z$ to obtain
\begin{align*}
\frac{\p}{\p t}\tilde z(R_0,t_0)&= \tilde z_{rr}(R_0,t_0)-\tfrac{d/p(d-d/p)}{R^2}\tilde z(R_0,t_0) +\tfrac{d-d/p}{\s_d}R_0^{-d/p}\tilde z^2(R_0,t_0)\\
&\le \tfrac{d-d/p}{\s_d R_0^2}\tilde z(R_0,t_0)\left(-\tfrac{d}{p}\s_d + R_0^{2-d/p}\tilde z(R_0,t_0)\right)\\
&=\tfrac{d-d/p}{\s_d R_0^2}K \left(-\tfrac{d}{p}\s_d + r_\ast^{2-d/p}K\right)\\
&=\tfrac{d-d/p}{R_0^2}K \left(-\tfrac{d}{p} + 2\eps \right) <0
\end{align*}
since $R_0<r_\ast = \left(\frac{\eps 2\s_d}{K}\right)^{\frac{1}{2-d/p}}$ and $2\eps<\frac{d}{p}$. This is again a contradiction with first relation in \rf{cond-max}.
\end{proof}
We are in a position to complete the proof of our main result.
\begin{proof}[Proof of Theorem \ref{glo}]
Let us first recall that in the case of each nonnegative radial function $v$ following inequalities hold true
\begin{equation}\label{v_Morey}
C |\!\!| v|\!\!|_{M_{p}} \le \sup_{R>0}R^{d(1/p-1)}\int_{\{|x|<R\}}v(x) \dx \le |\!\!|v|\!\!|_{M^{p}}
\end{equation}
with $p\in (1,d]$ and a number $C=C(p)\in (0,1)$, see \cite[Lemma 7.1]{BKZ2}.
Let $u$ be a local-in-time solution on $[0,T]$ constructed in Proposition \ref{lok-istn} corresponding to a nonnegative radial initial datum $u_0\in M^{d/2}(\R^d)\cap M^p (\R^d)$ with $p\in \left( \frac{d}{2},d\right)$. Obviously, the function $u=u(x,t)$ is nonnegative and radial. In order to continue this solution globally in time, it suffices to show an \textit{a priori} estimate $\|u\|_{{\mathcal X}_T} <\infty$ for each $T>0$.
First, using inequality \rf{v_Morey} we have got
\begin{equation*}
M_0(r) \le r^{d-d/p}|\!\!|u_0|\!\!|_{M^p} <Kr^{d-d/p} \quad \text{for all} \quad r>0
\end{equation*}
with an arbitrary number $K>|\!\!|u_0|\!\!|_{M^p}$. Because of assumption \rf{a1} there exists $\eps \in (0,1)$ such that
\begin{equation*}
\int_{\{|x|<r\}} u_0(x) \dx <2\eps \s_dr^{d-2} \quad \text{for all}\quad r>0.
\end{equation*}
Now, we choose $p\in \left(\frac{d}{2},d\right)$ so close to $\frac{d}{2}$ in order to have $\eps<\frac{d}{2p}$. Thus, by Proposition~\ref{maximum} and the first inequality in \rf{v_Morey} we obtain
\begin{equation*}
\sup_{0\le t<T}|\!\!| u(t) |\!\!|_{M^{d/2}} + \sup_{0\le t<T}|\!\!| u(t) |\!\!|_{M^p} <\infty .
\end{equation*}
Let us show an analogous estimate for the $L^\infty$-norm. Computing the $L^\infty$-norm of equation \rf{Duh} and following estimates in \rf{L_infty} with $p\in \left(\frac{d}{2},d\right)$ and $w=u$ we have
\begin{align*}
\|u(t)\|_{\infty} \le Ct^{-\frac{d}{2p}}|\!\!| u_0|\!\!|_{M^p}+C\sup_{0\le s<T}|\!\!| u(s)|\!\!|_{M^p}\int_0^t (t-s)^{-\frac{1}{2}-\frac{d}{2p}}\| u (s)\|_\infty \ds.
\end{align*}
Hence, by the singular Gronwall lemma \cite[Lemma 1.2.9]{CD} we obtain
\begin{equation*}
\sup_{0<t<T} t^{\frac{d}{2p}}\| u(t)\|_\infty <\infty .
\end{equation*}
By a standard continuation argument, the solution can be continued globally in time. The estimate \rf{global_sol} is an immediate consequence of Proposition \ref{maximum}.
\end{proof}
\section{Decay estimates}
Let us now show that our global-in-time finite mass solutions decay in time.
\begin{proof}[Proof of Corollary \ref{asy-z}]
It follows from Theorem \ref{glo} (in fact, from Proposition \ref{maximum}) that
\begin{equation}\label{M_est}
M(r,t) = \int_{|x|<r} u(x,t) \dx <2\s_d r^{d-2} \quad \text{and}\quad M(r,t) \le Kr^{d-d/p}.
\end{equation}
Moreover, this is a bounded function because of the conservation of mass
\begin{equation}\label{M_0}
M(r,t) \le \int_{\R^d} u(x,t) \dx = \int_{\R^d} u_0(x)\dx \equiv M_0\quad \text{for all}\quad t\ge 0.
\end{equation}
Obviously, we have $M_r(r,t) \ge 0$ for nonnegative $u(x,t)$. Thus, using equation \rf{mass} and the first inequality in \rf{M_est} we obtain
\begin{align}
\frac{\p M}{\p t}&\le M_{rr}-\frac{d-1}{r}M_r+\frac{2\s_d}{2\s_d r}M_r\nonumber\\
&= M_{rr}-\frac{d-3}{r}M_r\le M_{rr}\label{heat}
\end{align}
since $d\ge 3$. Using the comparison principle and assumptions of Proposition \ref{maximum} we obtain that $0\le M(r,t) \le m(r,t)$, where $m=m(r,t)$ is a solution of the following initial-boundary value problem for the heat equation on the half line
\begin{align}\label{1C}
m_t& =m_{rr}, &\quad & (r,t)\in (0,\infty)\times(0,T), \nonumber\\
m(0,t)&= 0 &\quad & {\rm for } \quad t\ge 0,\\
m(r,0)&= m_0(r) &\quad & {\rm for }\quad r>0\nonumber\\
\intertext{with}
0\le m_0(r)&\le \min\left\{Kr^{d-d/p},2\s_d r^{d-2}, M_0\right\}&\quad & {\rm for }\quad r> 0\nonumber.
\end{align}
As it is well known, the solution of the initial-boundary value problem \rf{1C} can be represented by the formula
\begin{equation}\label{1heat}
m(r,t)= \frac{1}{(4\pi t)^{1/2}}\int_0^{\infty }\left({\rm e}^{-(r-x)^2/(4t)}-{\rm e}^{-(r+x)^2/(4t)}\right)m_0(x)\dx.
\end{equation}
Our goal is to show that $\sup_{r>0}r^{2-d}m(r,t) \to 0$ as $t\to \infty$. To do it, let us fix $0<R_1<R_2<\infty$ with small $R_1$ and large $R_2$ to be determined later.
By the second inequality in \rf{M_est} we have
\begin{equation}\label{z1}
r^{2-d}m(r,t) \le K\, r^{2-d/p}\le KR_1^{2-d/p}\quad \text{for} \quad r\in(0,R_1)
\end{equation}
since $\frac{d}{p}\in(1,2)$. Next, by inequality \rf{M_0}, we get
\begin{equation}\label{z2}
r^{2-d}m(r,t) \le M_0 r^{2-d}\le M_0 R_2^{2-d}\quad \text{for}\quad r\in(R_2,\infty),
\end{equation}
since $d\ge 3$. Finally, using equation \rf{1heat} we obtain
\begin{align*}
m(r,t) &\le M_0 \frac{1}{(4\pi t)^{1/2}}\int_0^\infty\left({\rm e}^{-(r-y)^2/(4t)}-{\rm e}^{-(r+y)^2/(4t)}\right)\dy\\
&= M_0 \frac{1}{(4\pi t)^{1/2}}\int_{-r}^r{\rm e}^{-\rho^2/(4t)}\,{\rm d}\rho\\
&= M_0 \frac{1}{(4\pi)^{1/2}}\int_{-\frac{r}{\sqrt{t}}}^{\frac{r}{\sqrt{t}}}{\rm e}^{-\varrho^2/4}\,{\rm d}\varrho
\end{align*}
which imply
\begin{align}\label{z3}
\sup_{r\in[R_1,R_2]} r^{2-d}m(r,t) \le M_0R_1^{2-d}\frac{1}{(4\pi)^{1/2}}\frac{2R_2}{\sqrt{t}}.
\end{align}
Putting together inequalities \rf{z1}, \rf{z2}, \rf{z3}, we arrive at
\begin{equation*}
\limsup_{t\to\infty}\left( \sup_{r>0} r^{2-d}m(r,t)\right) \le KR_1^{2-d/p}+ M_0 R_2^{2-d}
\end{equation*}
and the right hand side can be done as small as we wish with a suitable choice of small $R_1$ and large $R_2$.
Therefore, $\lim_{t\to\infty}\sup_{r>0}r^{2-d}M(r,t) =0$ holds for every nonnegative, radial initial datum satisfying $u_0\in M^{d/2}(\R^d)\cap M^p(\R^d)\cap L^1(\R^d)$ and $\xn u_0\xn<2\s_d$.
\end{proof}
To obtain the $L^p$-decay of solutions stated in Corollary \ref{cor:Lp:decay}, we need a lemma which is an immediate consequence of the Gauss theorem.
\begin{lemma}[{\cite[Lemma 2.1]{BKZ} and \cite{BZ-2}}]\label{potential}
Let $u\in L^1_{\rm loc}(\R^d)$ be a radially symmetric function,
such that $v=E_d\ast u$ with $E_2(x)=-\frac1{2\pi}\log|x|$ and $E_d(x)=\frac1{(d-2)\sigma_d}|x|^{2-d}$ for $d\ge 3$, solves the Poisson equation $\Delta v+u=0$. Then the identity
$$
\nabla v(x)\cdot x=-\frac1{\sigma_d}|x|^{2-d}\int_{\{|y|\le |x|\}} u(y)\dy
$$
holds.
\end{lemma}
\begin{proof}[Proof of Corollary \ref{cor:Lp:decay}.]
Let $u=u(x,t)$ be a nonnegative, radial and sufficiently smooth solution of problem \rf{KS}. We multiply equation \rf{equ} by $u^{q-1}$ with some $q>1$ and after integrations by parts we obtain
\begin{align*}
\frac1q\frac{\rm d}{{\rm d}t}\int u^q\dx &=
-(q-1)\int|\nabla u|^2u^{q-2}\dx +(q-1)\int u\nabla v\cdot\nabla u\, u^{q-2}\dx \\
&=-4\frac{q-1}{q^2}\int|\nabla u^{q/2}|^2\dx +2\frac{q-1}{q}\int u^{q/2}\nabla v\cdot\nabla u^{q/2}\dx\\
&\le -4\frac{q-1}{q^2}\int|\nabla u^{q/2}|^2\dx +2\frac{q-1}{q}\int \frac{u^{q/2}}{|x|}|x\cdot \nabla v||\nabla u^{q/2}|\dx.
\end{align*}
In the last line, we have use the inequality $ |\nabla v |\leq |x|^{-1}|x\cdot \nabla v|$ valid for the radial function $v=v(x)$.
Using Lemma \ref{potential} we have
\begin{equation*}
|x\cdot \nabla v(x,t)|=\frac{1}{\s_d}r^{2-d}M(r,t).
\end{equation*}
Hence, recalling the Hardy inequality (see \cite{BEL})
\be
\frac{(d-2)^2}{4}\left\|\frac{f}{|x|}\right\|_2^2\le \|\nabla f\|_2^2\label{Ha}
\ee
we arrive at the estimate
\begin{equation}\label{q_estimate}
\frac{\rm d}{{\rm d}t}\|u\|^q_q \le -4\frac{q-1}{q}\|\nabla u^{q/2}\|_2^2 +2(q-1)\frac{2}{q-2}\frac{1}{\s_d}\sup_{r>0}r^{2-d}M(r,t)\|\nabla u^{q/2}\|_2^2
\end{equation}
for sufficiently large $t>0$. Since, by Corollary \ref{asy-z}, we have got $\sup_{r>0} r^{2-d}M(r,t)\to 0$ as $t\to \infty$, we obtain
\begin{equation}\label{mu_estimate}
\frac{\rm d}{{\rm d}t}\|u\|^q_q+\mu \|\nabla u^{q/2}\|_2^2\le 0
\quad \text{with a constant}\quad
\mu>0
\end{equation}
for sufficiently large $t>0$. Using the Gagliardo-Nirenberg inequality
\begin{equation*}
\|w\|_2^{2+s}\le C(d,p)\|\nabla w\|_2^2\|w\|_p^{s} \quad \text{for}\quad 1<p<2\quad \text{and} \quad C(d,p)>0,
\end{equation*}
where $s=\frac{4p}{d(2-p)}$ we obtain
\begin{align*}
\frac{\rm d}{{\rm d}t}\|u\|^q_q \le -\mu \|\nabla u^{q/2}\|_2^2 \le -C(d,p) \frac{\|u^{q/2}\|_2^{2+s}}{\|u^{q/2}\|_p^s}.
\end{align*}
We take here $p=\frac{2}{q}$ to get
\begin{align*}
\frac{\rm d}{{\rm d}t}\|u\|^q_q \le -C(d,p) \frac{\|u\|_q^{1+s/2}}{\|u_0\|_1^{qs/2}}.
\end{align*}
with $s=\frac{4}{d(q-1)}$ and $C(d,q, \mu)>0$,
since the mass conservation property for nonnegative solutions gives $\|u(t)\|_1= \|u_0\|_1$.
This leads to the differential inequality of the form
\begin{equation*}
f'(t) \le -C \|u_0\|_1^{-qs/2}f^{1+s/2}(t)
\end{equation*}
for the function $f(t)=\|u(t)\|^q_q$ and $C>0$, which finally gives an algebraic decay of the $L^q$-norm
\begin{equation*}
\|u(t)\|_q \le Ct^{-d/2(1-1/q)}\|u_0\|_1 \quad \text{for sufficiently large}\quad t>0.
\end{equation*}
\end{proof}
\begin{remark}[$L^q$-estimate] \label{cor:Lp}
The $L^q$-decay estimates from Corollary \ref{cor:Lp:decay} is obtained from the corresponding $L^q$-energy inequality \rf{mu_estimate} which can be also proved for nonintegrable initial data in higher dimensions. Indeed, coming back to estimate \rf{q_estimate} and using the estimate $r^{2-d}M(r,t)<2\s_d$ from Theorem \ref{glo} we obtain
\begin{equation*}
\frac{\rm d}{{\rm d}t}\|u\|^q_q+\mu \|\nabla u^{q/2} \|_2^2\le 0
\qquad
\text{with}\qquad \mu=4(q-1)\left(\tfrac1q-\tfrac{2}{d-2}\right)>0
\end{equation*}
for $d\ge 5$ and $1< q<\frac{d}{2}-1$.
\end{remark}
\bigskip
| {
"redpajama_set_name": "RedPajamaArXiv"
} | 3,299 |
\section{Introduction} \label{sec:intro}
Numerical simulations suggest two main channels for the formation of multiple stellar systems: disk fragmentation \citep[][]{adams89}, which produces secondaries through gravitational instability within a massive accretion disk, and turbulent fragmentation \citep[e.g.,][]{goodwin04, fisher04}, where turbulence in the original molecular core leads to multiple density enhancements, which independently collapse.
Binary systems formed by turbulence fragmentation are expected to have initial separations larger than 500 astronomical units (au), which corresponds to the rough boundary between the disk size and the molecular core scale \citep[e.g.,][]{offner10}, while disk fragmentation suggest the formation of compact ($<$ 500 au) binaries \citep[e.g.,][]{kratter10}.
However, dynamical evolution may quickly modify the separation, making that initially wide binaries migrate to separations $<$200 au in time spans of $\sim$0.1 Myr \citep[][]{offner10, offner16}. If substantial orbital evolution occurs during the main accretion phase, which lasts $\sim$0.5 Myr \citep[][]{dunham14}, then binary systems will end up much closer binary systems.
Theoretical works have addressed the formation of planets around single stars of different masses.
The core-accretion theory predicts that the formation of giant-mass planets scales with the mass of the central star; thus, it is expected that very few Jovian-mass planets are formed around low-mass stars \citep[e.g.,][]{laughlin04,kennedy08,mercer20}.
The core-accretion theory indicates that these planets would be formed in orbits far from the star, at several au. On the other hand, it is expected that disk fragmentation may also be able to form giant-mass planets around low-mass stars \citep[e.g.,][]{boss06}. In this case, the orbit of the planet is expected to be relatively closer to the star, from a few to several au.
Only a very small fraction of the detected extrasolar planets (less than 4\%) are known to be associated to stars in binary systems. This is probably, at least in part, due to strong observational biases. For instance, the radial velocity (RV) technique is in general limited to binary systems with separations larger than 2$''$, and the transit technique is limited to high inclination angles of the orbital plane of the planets and the binary systems \citep[e.g.,][and references therein]{marzari19}. In addition, the presence of a stellar companion has adverse effects on planet formation. It is possible that the stellar companion strongly influence both the formation of planets and their subsequent dynamical evolution. For example, the presence of a close stellar companion can tidally truncate the protoplanetary disk \citep[e.g.,][]{savonije94, kraus12}. Observational surveys have shown that, even when present, protoplanetary disks are on average less massive in tight binaries \citep[e.g.,][]{harris12}. In addition, the evolution of truncated disks under the action of viscous forces is faster and should produce more short-lived disks, with less time available for planet formation \citep[e.g.,][]{muller12}. This could particularly affect the formation of giant gaseous planets, which need to accrete vast amount of gas before the primordial disk disperses. There is observational evidence that suggests that the typical life time of protoplanetary disks in close binaries separated by $\leq$40 au is less than 1 Myr, as compared with the typical disk life time of 5$-$10 Myrs in single stars \citep[e.g.,][]{marzari19}. Furthermore, in the case of close binaries, there might not be enough mass left in the truncated disks to form jovian planets. Only a small fraction (about 15\%) of the planets associated with binaries have been found associated to binary systems with separations $\leq$40 au \citep[e.g.,][]{marzari19, fontanive21}, and according to the Catalogue of Exoplanets in Binary Systems \citep[][]{schwarz16}
only 7 planets are associated to M dwarf binary systems. The formation of planets in binary systems is not well understood. Current planetary formation models take into account only the formation of planets around single stars. To our knowledge, there are no theoretical models that take into account, for instance, the simultaneous formation of planetary and sub-stellar or stellar companions in a single protoplanetary disk, or the formation of planetary systems during the formation of a binary system through turbulent fragmentation.
A variety of mechanisms has been proposed to explain spin-orbit misalignment observed in several planetary systems. Dynamical interactions between stars and/or planets \citep[][]{nagasawa08} help explaining small and large differences in the inclination angle of close-in giant-planets. The chaotic star formation environment during the accretion phase \citep[][]{bate10} and perturbations from a stellar companion \citep[][]{thies11, batygin13, lai14} also help explaining large misalignment between the stellar spin and the planetary orbit.
Thus, studying the spins of individual members in binary systems (including sub-stellar and planetary companions) could reveal whether they were formed by disk fragmentation or turbulence fragmentation, as well as the origin of the spin-orbit misalignment \citep[e.g.,][]{offner16}.
To accomplish this, the three-dimensional (3D) orbital plane orientation of both, the binary system and the planetary companions would need to be known.
However, in most cases, not all angles of the orbital plane of the binary system and their planetary companions are known. In all known binary systems with planetary companions, the position angle of the line of nodes ($\Omega$) is unknown, and in several cases even the inclination angle of the orbits is also unknown.
Binaries formed within the same accretion disk are likely to have common angular momenta and, therefore, aligned stellar spins, whereas binaries formed via turbulent fragmentation are likely to possess independent angular momentum vectors and, thus, have randomly oriented spins. It is expected that the planets have orbital spins similar to the stellar spin of their host star. However, in the case of binary systems, the orientation and eccentricity of the planetary orbits are expected to be affected by the presence of the stellar companion.
Astrometry is the only technique capable of directly giving all three angles (longitude of the periastron $\omega$, position angle of the line of nodes $\Omega$, and the inclination angle $i$) of the orbital planes. In particular, radio interferometric astrometry, with milli-arc-second (mas) angular resolution and very high astrometric precision (usually better than 60 micro-arc-second ($\mu$as)), can be used to search for planetary companions associated to binary systems with wide orbits, as well as close binary systems with separations $\leq$50 au.
\subsection{GJ~896 binary system} \label{sec:bsys}
GJ~896AB (a.k.a. EQ Peg, BD+19~5116, J23318+199, HIP 116132) is a nearby low-mass M dwarf binary system with an estimated age of 950 Myr \citep[][]{parsamyan95}, at a distance of 6.25 pc, and a separation of 5.4 arcsec with a PA of 78$^\circ$ \citep[e.g.,][]{heintz84, liefke08, bower11, pearce20}. However, some observations also suggest that the age of this binary system is $\lesssim$ 100 Myr \citep[][]{riedel11, zuckerman13}. If this latter age is confirmed, these stars would be the closest pre-main-sequence stars known. This binary system is part of a quadruple system, where the other two stellar companions are further away from the main binary. Recent observations suggest that both stars have companions, but theirs orbits have not been characterized \citep[e.g.,][]{delfosse99, winters21}.
Both stars have been observed to have radio outbursts \citep[e.g.,][]{pallavicini85, jackson89, benz95, gagne98, crosley18a, crosley18b, villadsen19, davis20} and are flaring X-ray emitters \citep[e.g.,][]{robrade04, liefke08}.
GJ~896A has been detected at several epochs with the VLBA showing compact and variable flux emission \citep[][]{bower09, bower11}.
An early determination of the orbital motion of the binary GJ~896AB suggested an orbital period of about 359 yrs and a semi-major axis of 6.87 arcsec \citep[e.g.,][]{heintz84}.
More recent, and more accurate, relative astrometric fits indicate that the orbital parameters of this binary system are $P$ $\sim$234 yr, $a$ $\sim$ 5.3 arcsec, $i$ $\sim$ 126$^\circ$, $\Omega$ $\sim$ 77$^\circ$, $e$ $\sim$ 0.11 and $\omega$ $\sim$ 97$^\circ$ \citep[][]{mason01}. However, since the time baseline used for these orbital determinations is $\lesssim$34\% the estimated period, the orbital parameters were not well constrained.
The more massive star, GJ~896A, is an M3.5 star with an estimated mass of 0.39 M$_\odot$, a radius of 0.35 R$_\odot$, a rotation period of 1.061 days, and a rotational inclination angle of 60$^{\circ}$, while the less massive star, GJ~896B, is an M4.5 star with an estimated mass of 0.25 M$_\odot$, a radius of 0.25 R$_\odot$, a rotation period of 0.404 days, and a rotational inclination angle of about 60$^{\circ}$$\pm$20$^{\circ}$ \citep[e.g.,][]{delfosse99, morin08, davison15, pearce20}.
Here we present the discovery of a Jovian-mass planetary companion to the young close-by (6.25 pc away from the Sun) M3.5 dwarf GJ~896A, which is the more massive star in the low-mass M dwarf binary system GJ~896AB with a separation of about 31.6 au.
Section~\ref{sec:obs} describes the observations and data reduction. In Section~\ref{sec:procid} we present the methodology to fit the astrometric data. Section~\ref{sec:results} presents the results, including the fitted 3D orbital architecture of this system. The results are discussed in Section~\ref{sec:discusion} and our conclusions are given in Section~\ref{sec:conclusions}.
In Appendix~\ref{sec:flares} we discuss the possible contributions of the variability of the main star to the expected $``$jitter$"$ of the star, and in Appendix~\ref{sec:mcmc} we present the posterior sampling of the combined astrometric fit solution using an MCMC sampler.
\section{Observations and Data Reduction} \label{sec:obs}
We analyzed archival and new Very Long Baseline Array (VLBA) observations taken at 8.4~GHz toward the M dwarf binary system GJ~896AB. Observations of GJ~896A were carried out in fourteen epochs between March, 2006 and November, 2011 as part of the Radio Interferometric Planet (RIPL) survey and its precursor (\citealt{bower09,bower11}; program IDs: BB222 and BB240). New observations of the two stars GJ~896A and GJ~896B were obtained as part of our own program BC264 (PI: S.\ Curiel) in three epochs between August, 2020 and October, 2020. The RIPL observations recorded four 16-MHz frequency bands in dual-polarization mode. For the most recent observations, we recorded four 128-MHz frequency bands, also in dual polarization mode, using the new 4~Gbps recording rate of the VLBA. The observing sessions consisted of switching scans between the target and the phase reference calibrator, J2328+1929, spending about 1~min on the calibrator and 3~min on the target. Scans on secondary calibrators (J2334+2010, J2334+1843 and J2328+1956) were obtained every $\approx$30--60 min. In addition, fringe calibrators were observed occasionally during the sessions. For program BC264, additional 30-min blocks of calibrators, the so-called geodetic-like blocks, distributed over a wide range of elevations were included at the beginning and end of the observing run. The RIPL observations included the 100-m Green Bank Telescope added to the VLBA array.
In project BC264 the typical on source time is of 2 hours, spread over a full track of 3 hours, plus 1 hour for the two geodetic-like blocks. On the other hand, RIPL alternated between two targets in a 8 hours track, and no geodetic-like blocks were observed.
To determine the orbital motion of the binary system, we used archival relative astrometric measurements of GJ~896AB taken from the Washington Double Star Catalog \citep{mason01}, maintained by the US Naval Observatory. This data set includes a total of 73 measurements starting in the year 1941 until 2017. We discarded the data points from 1950 and 1952.66 since they largely deviate from the rest of the observations due to possible systematics.
The VLBA data were reduced with the Astronomical Imaging System \citep[AIPS;][]{greisen03}, following standard procedures for phase-referencing observations \citep{torres07,ortizleon17}.
First, corrections for the ionosphere dispersive delays were applied. We then corrected for post-correlation updates of the Earth orientation parameters. Corrections for the digital sampling effects of the correlator were also applied. The instrumental single-band delays caused by the VLBA electronics, as well as the bandpass shape corrections were determined from a single scan on a strong fringe calibrator and then applied to the data. Amplitude calibration was performed by using the gain curves and system temperature tables to derive the system equivalent flux density of each antenna. We then applied corrections to the phases for antenna parallactic angle effects. Multi-band delay solutions were obtained from the geodetic-like blocks, which were then applied to the data to correct for tropospheric and clock errors. The final step consisted of removing global frequency- and time-dependent residual phase errors obtained by fringe-fitting the phase calibrator data, assuming a point source model. In order to take into account the non-point-like structure of the calibrator, this final step was repeated using a self-calibrated image of the calibrator as a source model. Finally, the calibration tables were applied to the data and images of the stars were produced using the CLEAN algorithm. We used a pixel size of 50~$\mu$as and pure natural weighting. The synthesized beam of these images are, on average, $2.7\times 1.1$~mas, and the achieved rms noise levels are in the range between 11 and 130~$\mu$Jy~beam$^{-1}$ (Table \ref{tab_1}). The large range of sensitivities is expected because of the wide range in observing strategies.
The assumed position for the primary phase calibrator J2328+1929 during correlation changed between epochs due to multiple updates of the VLBA calibrator position catalogs. Thus, before deriving any calibration, the position of J2328+1929 was corrected to the value assumed in the observations of 2020, R.A.$=$23:28:24.874773 and Dec.$=$+19:29:58.03010. The assumed positions for the observations performed between 2006 and 2011 were taken from the correlator files available in the VLBA file
server at {http://www.vlba.nrao.edu/astro/VOBS/astronomy/}.
GJ~896A was detected in thirteen epochs of RIPL and in the three epochs of program BC264. GJ~896B was only detected in two epochs of BC264.
To obtain the positions of the centroid in the images of GJ~896A and B, we used the task {\tt MAXFIT} within AIPS, which gives the position of the pixel with the peak flux density. The position error is given by the astrometric uncertainty, $\theta_{\rm res}/(2\times {\rm S}/{\rm N})$, where $\theta_{\rm res}$ is the full width at half maximum (FWHM) size of the synthesized beam, and ${\rm S}/{\rm N}$ the signal-to-noise ratio of the source \citep{thompson17}. Furthermore, we quadratically added half of the pixel size to the position error.
In order to investigate the magnitude of systematic errors in our data, we obtain the positions of the secondary calibrator, J2334+2010, in all observed epochs. The rms variation of the secondary calibrator position is (0.14, 0.14)~mas. The angular separation of J2334+2010 relative to the main calibrator is $1\rlap.{^{\rm o}}6$, while the target to main calibrator separation is $0\rlap.{^{\rm o}}97$. The main calibrator, target and secondary calibrator are located in a nearly linear arrangement (see Fig.\ 1 in \citealt{bower11}). Since systematic errors in VLBI phase-referenced observations scale linearly with the source-calibrator separation \citep{pradel06,reid14}, we scale the derived rms value for J2334+2010 with the ratio of the separations from the target and J2334+2010 to the main calibrator. This yields a systematic error of (0.09, 0.08)~mas, which was added in quadrature to the position errors in each coordinate.
Table \ref{tab_1} summarizes the observed epochs, the positions, the associated uncertainties, and the integrated flux densities of GJ~896A and B.
Figure~\ref{fig_1} shows the intensity maps of both stars for one of the two epochs when both stars were detected with the VLBA.
The time of the observations (in Julian day) included in Table \ref{tab_1} corresponds to the average time of the time span of each observed epoch (typically of about 4 hours, including the geodetic-like blocks in BC264, and 8 hours in RIPL). The integrated flux densities were obtained by fitting the source brightness distribution with a Gaussian model.
\section{Fitting of the Astrometric Data.} \label{sec:procid}
We followed the same fitting procedure presented by \citet[][]{curiel19, curiel20}. We used two astrometric fitting methods: non-linear Least-squares algorithm \citep[][]{curiel19, curiel20} and the asexual genetic algorithm AGA \citep[][]{canto09, curiel11, curiel19, curiel20}.
Both fitting codes include iterative procedures that search for the best fitted solution in a wide range of posible values in the multi-dimensional space of parameters. These iterative procedures help the fitting codes not be trapped in a local minimum, and to find the global minimum. In addition, we fit the data using different initial conditions to confirm that the best fitted solution corresponds to the global minimum solution.
These algorithms can be used to fit absolute astrometric data (e.g., planetary systems), relative astrometric data (e.g., binary systems), and combined (absolute plus relative) astrometric data (e.g., a planetary companion associated to a star in a binary system). To fit the astrometric data, we model the barycentric two-dimensional position of the source as a function of time ($\alpha(t)$, $\delta(t)$), accounting for the (secular) effects of proper motions ($\mu_\alpha$, $\mu_\delta$), accelerations terms ($a_\alpha$, $a_\delta$) due to a possible undetected companion with very long orbital period, the (periodic) effect of the parallax $\Pi$, and the (Keplerian) gravitational perturbation induced on the host star by one or more companions, such as low-mass stars, substellar companions, or planets (mutual interactions between companions are not taken into account). We searched for the best possible model (a.k.a, the closest fit) for a discrete set of observed data points ($\alpha(i)$, $\delta(i)$). The fitted function has several adjustable parameters, whose values are obtained by minimizing a $''$merit function$''$, which measures the agreement between the observed data and the model function. We minimize the $\chi^{2}$ function to obtain the maximum-likelihood estimate of the model parameters that are being fitted \citep[e.g.,][]{curiel19, curiel20}.
We also use the recursive least-squares periodogram method with a circular orbit (RLSCP) presented by \citet[][]{curiel19, curiel20} to search for astrometric signals that indicate the presence of possible companions. We start the search by comparing the least-squares fit of the basic model (proper motions and parallax only) and a one-companion model (proper motions, parallax, and Keplerian orbit of a single companion). If a signal is found, and it is confirmed by the two astrometric fitting models, we remove this signal by comparing the least-squares fits of a one- and a two-companion model (proper motions, parallax, and Keplerian orbits of one and two companions, respectively), and so on.
The RLSCP periodogram follow a Fisher F$-$distribution with $k_{p} – k_{0}$ and $N_{obs} – k_{p}$ degrees of freedom, where $k_{p}$ and $k_{0}$ are the number of parameters that are fitted when the model includes a planetary companion and without a planetary companion, respectively. $N_{obs}$ is the number of observed epochs. Thus, an astrometric signal found in the periodogram indicates a high probability that a planetary companion is orbiting the star.
In addition, we also use the open-source package {\tt lmfit} \citep[][]{newville20}, which uses a non-linear least-squares minimization algorithm to search for the best fit of the observed data. This python package is based on the {\tt scipy.optimize} library \citep[][]{newville20}, and includes several classes of methods for curve fitting, including Levenberg-Marquardt minimization and emcee \citep[][]{foremanmackey13}. In addition, {\tt lmfit} includes methods to calculate confidence intervals for exploring minimization problems where the approximation of estimating parameter uncertainties from the covariance matrix is questionable.
\section{Results} \label{sec:results}
By combining our new data with the VLBA data from the archive \citep[][]{bower09,bower11}, we were able to search for sub-stellar companions associated to the main star GJ~896A in this binary system.
These multi-epoch astrometric observations covered about 5317 days (16.56 yr), with an observational cadence that varies during the time observed. The observations were not spread regularly over the 16.56 years, the gaps between observations ranged from weekly to monthly to 7 years (see Sec.~\ref{sec:obs}).
There are a total of 16 epochs in the analysis presented here. The time span and cadence of the observations are more than adequate to fit the proper motions and the parallax of this binary system, and to search for possible companions with orbital periods between several days and a few years.
In the following sections we present the resulting astrometric parameters for the fit with no companions (Sec.~\ref{sec:ssa}), a fit including a single (new planetary) companion (Sec.~\ref{sec:sca}), the fit of the relative astrometry of the binary (Sec.~\ref{sec:bsys}), a fit combining the absolute and relative astrometry (Sec.~\ref{sec:caf}), and finally a fit combining the absolute and relative astrometry plus a planetary companion (Sec.~\ref{sec:fcaf}).
\subsection{Single-source Astrometry } \label{sec:ssa}
First, both the least-squares and the AGA algorithms were used to fit the proper motions and the parallax of GJ~896A, without taking into account any possible companion. The results of the absolute astrometric fit are shown in column 1 of Table~\ref{tab_2} and Figure~\ref{fig_2}. We find that the residuals are quite large, and present an extended temporal trend that indicates the presence of a companion with an orbital period larger than the time span of the observations.
The recursive least-squares periodogram with a circular orbit (RLSCP) of the astrometric data (see Figure~\ref{fig_3}, top panel) shows a very strong signal that extent beyond the extend of the plot.
A blind search for the orbital period of the signal indicates that the orbital period of this astrometric signal could not be constrained.
This suggests that the signal may be due to a companion with an orbital period much larger than the time span of the observations ($\gg$ 16 yr). As we will see below (see Secs.~\ref{sec:caf} and \ref{sec:fcaf}), this long term signal is due to the gravitational interaction of GJ~896A with its very low-mass stellar companion GJ~896B. Since the orbital period of the binary system ($>$~200 yrs) is much larger than the time span of the VLBA observations ($\sim$16 yrs), the variation trend in the residuals can be taken into account by using accelerations terms in the astrometric fit.
The astrometric data was then fitted with the least-squares and AGA algorithms, including acceleration terms, which take into account the astrometric signature due to the low-mass stellar companion (single-source solution). The results of this single-source solution are shown in column 2 of Table~\ref{tab_2} and Figures~\ref{fig_4}a.
The astrometric solution shows that GJ~896A has proper motions of $\mu_\alpha$ = 574.171 $\pm$ 0.014 mas yr$^{-1}$ and $\mu_\delta$ = $-$60.333 $\pm$ 0.014 mas yr$^{-1}$. The fitted parallax is $\Pi$ = 160.027 $\pm$ 0.094 mas, which corresponds to a distance of 6.2489 $\pm$ 0.0037 pc. These values are similar to those obtained from the astrometric fit where no acceleration terms were taken into account.
The fitted acceleration terms are relatively large ($a_{\alpha}$ = 0.8893 $\pm$ 0.0034 mas yr$^{-2}$ and $a_{\delta}$ = 0.1402 $\pm$ 0.0035 mas yr$^{-2}$). We obtain now a better fit to the astrometric data, with smaller residuals (rms $\sim$ 0.24 mas in both R.A. and Dec.; see column 2 of Table~\ref{tab_2}). The total residuals (rms $\sim$ 0.34) are a factor of 25 smaller than those obtained with the astrometric fit without acceleration terms (rms $\sim$ 8.64).
However, the residuals are large compared to the mean noise present in the data (rms $\sim$0.11 and 0.10 mas for R.A. and Dec., respectively) and the astrometric precision expected with the VLBA ($<$70 $\mu$as). Below we investigate the possibility that these residuals are due to a planetary companion orbiting around GJ~896A.
\subsection{Single-companion Astrometry } \label{sec:sca}
We carried out a RLSCP of the astrometric data, including accelerations terms. The RLSCP shows now at least two significant peaks (see Figure~\ref{fig_3}, middle panel), the most prominent one with a period of about 280 days, and the weaker signal with a period of about 237 days. The stronger signal appears to be well constrained, with a false alarm probability (FAP) of about 0.90\%. This low FAP suggests that the main signal in the periodogram is real and due to the presence of a companion in a compact orbit.
We then used both the least-squares and AGA algorithms to fit the astrometric observations of GJ~896A, now including acceleration terms and a possible single companion in a compact orbit (single-companion solution). The solution of the fit is shown in column 3 of Table~\ref{tab_2} and Figures~\ref{fig_4}b and \ref{fig_5}. The fit of the astrometric data clearly improves when including a companion, as seen by the $\chi^{2}_{red}$. The $\chi^{2}_{red}$ is now a factor 2.4 smaller than that obtained with the single-source solution. Table~\ref{tab_2} and Figure~\ref{fig_4} show that the residuals of the single-companion solution (rms $\sim$0.14) are a factor of 1.7 smaller than in the case of the single-source solution (rms $\sim$0.24).
Column 3 in Table~\ref{tab_2} summarizes the best fit of the VLBA astrometric data, including this new companion in a compact orbit.
The single-companion solution shows that GJ~896A has proper motions of $\mu_\alpha$ = 574.142 $\pm$ 0.019 mas yr$^{-1}$ and $\mu_\delta$ = $-$60.354 $\pm$ 0.020 mas yr$^{-1}$. The fitted parallax is $\Pi$ = 159.83 $\pm$ 0.13 mas, which corresponds to a distance of 6.2565 $\pm$ 0.0051 pc.
The fitted acceleration terms are $a_{\alpha}$ = 0.8871 $\pm$ 0.0047 mas yr$^{-2}$ and $a_{\delta}$ = 0.1400 $\pm$ 0.0049 mas yr$^{-2}$.
These values are similar to those obtained from the single-source solution plus acceleration.
Figure~\ref{fig_5} shows the orbital motion of the star GJ~896A due to the gravitational pull of the companion.
The orbit of the main star around the barycenter has an orbital period $P$ = 281.56 $\pm$ 1.67 days, an eccentricity $e = 0.30 \pm 0.11$, a longitude of the periastron $\omega = 344.0^\circ \pm 13.1^\circ$, a position angle of the line of nodes $\Omega = 47.7^\circ \pm 12.1^\circ$, a semi-major axis $a_{A} = 0.52 \pm 0.11$ mas, and an inclination angle $i = 66.0^\circ \pm 15.0^\circ$, which indicates that the orbit is prograde ($i < 90^\circ$). The orbit of the star around the barycenter due to the companion is well constrained, which is consistent with the narrow signal observed in the periodogram (see Figure~\ref{fig_3}, middle panel). With this astrometric fit alone we can not estimate the mass of the companion. However, we used the estimated mass of the planetary system GJ~896A that we obtain below, using the full combined astrometric fit of this binary system (see Sec.~\ref{sec:fcaf}). Column 3 in Table~\ref{tab_2} summarizes the parameters of the new companion, here after GJ~896A$b$. We find that its mass is 0.00223 $\pm$ 0.00047 M$_\odot$, which is consistent with a planetary companion with a mass of 2.35 $\pm$ 0.49 M$_{J}$. The orbit of the planetary companion around the barycenter has a semi-major axis $a_{b}$ = 0.6352 $\pm$ 0.0018 au (or 101.53 $\pm$ 0.42 mas).
There is an ambiguity with the position angle of the line of nodes between $\Omega$ and $\Omega + 180^{\circ}$. This ambiguity can be solved by radial velocity (RV) observations. However, since this planetary companion has not been detected with RV observations, we will leave the fitted $\Omega$ angle in Table~\ref{tab_2}. We further discuss this ambiguity below (see section~\ref{sec:mutinc}).
The orbit of the planetary companion is well constrained. However, the rms of the residuals ($\sim$0.14 mas) are still large compared to the mean noise present in the data and the astrometric precision expected with the VLBA.
To investigate the possibility of a second possible planetary companion, we obtained a new RLSCP, including acceleration terms and a signal with a period of 281.6 days. The new RLSCP does not show a significant signal (see Figures~\ref{fig_3}, bottom panel).
We also carried out a blind search for a second planetary companion using the least-squares and AGA algorithms. We did not find a possible candidate. We will need further observations to investigate whether or not this source has more planetary companions.
\subsection{Binary-system Astrometry: Relative fit} \label{sec:bsys}
GJ~896AB is a visual binary that contains two M dwarf stars that has been observed in the optical and near infrared for more than 80 yr.
The Washington Double Star \citep[WDS,][]{mason01} Catalog provides separation and position angle measurements of this binary system spanning these decades and go back as far as 1941. Since the stellar companion GJ~896B was detected in two of our recent VLBA observations of this binary system, we include the separation and the position angle of these two epochs in the relative astrometric fit. We performed an astrometric fit to the relative astrometric measurements with both, the least-squares and the AGA algorithms (binary-system solution). Since the WDS catalog does not provide estimated error bars for most of the observed epochs, we applied a null weight to the astrometric fit, which translate into a uniform weight for all the observed epochs.
The results of the binary-system solution are presented in column 1 of Table~\ref{tab_3} and Figure~\ref{fig_6}. We find that the relative astrometric fit of this binary system is well constrained when assuming a circular orbit. When the eccentricity of the binary system is taken into account, the solution does not converge to a stable solution. The orbit of the low-mass stellar companion GJ~896B around the main star GJ~896A has an orbital period $P_{AB}$ = 96606.13 $\pm$ 2.24 days (264.5 yr), a position angle of the line of nodes $\Omega_{AB} = 79.7083^\circ \pm 0.0054^\circ$, a semi-major axis $a_{AB} = 5378.79 \pm 0.51$ mas, and an inclination angle $i_{AB} = 130.6592^\circ \pm 0.0087^\circ$, which indicates that the orbit of the stellar companion is retrograde ($i > 90^\circ$). Using the distance to the source that we obtain from the full combined astrometric fit (see Sec.~\ref{sec:fcaf}), we obtain that the mass and the semi-major axis of this binary system are $m_{AB}$ = 0.544304 M$_\odot$ and a$_{AB}$ = 33.64265 au, respectively.
As it was mentioned before, there is an ambiguity with the position angle of the line of nodes between $\Omega$ and $\Omega + 180^{\circ}$. In this case, the observed RV of the two M dwarfs can be used to find the correct angle.
From the GAIA catalog \citep[][]{lindegren18}, the observed mean radial velocity of GJ~896A is $-0.02 \pm 0.31$ km s$^{-1}$. The GAIA catalog does not contain the radial velocity of GJ~896B. However, recent RV observations of this source indicate that its RV is about 3.34 km s$^{-1}$ \citep[][]{morin08}. This means that GJ~896B is red shifted with respect to GJ~896A. Thus, the position angle of the line of nodes that is consistent with these RVs is $\Omega_{AB} = 259.7083^\circ \pm 0.0054^\circ$.
This correction to the position angle of the line of nodes is applied in all the astrometric fits presented in Table~\ref{tab_3}.
\subsection{Binary-system Astrometry: Combined Astrometric fit} \label{sec:caf}
The optical/infrared relative astrometry of the binary system GJ~896AB \citep[][]{mason01}, obtained in a time interval of about 80 yrs, was also combined with the absolute radio astrometry to simultaneously fit: the orbital motion of the two stars in GJ~896AB; the orbital motion of the planetary companion around GJ~896A (see Sec.~\ref{sec:fcaf}); and the parallax and proper motion of the entire system. However, since most of the relative astrometric observations do not have estimated errors, for the relative astrometry part we carried out a uniform weighted fit (without errors) of the observed data (73 epochs, including the two relative positions of GJ~896B obtained with the VLBA), while for the absolute astrometry of the VLBA observations of the main star GJ~896A (16 epochs) and the secondary star GJ~896B (2 epochs), we applied a weighted fit using the estimated error of the observed position at each epoch.
The results presented here and in Sec.~\ref{sec:fcaf} were obtained by fitting simultaneously the absolute astrometric observations of both stars, and the relative astrometry of this binary system.
The results are limited by: a) the lack of error bars of the relative astrometric data, b) the relative astrometric data covers about 35$\%$ of the orbital period of the binary system ($\sim$229.06 yrs; see Sec.~\ref{sec:fcaf}), and c) the absolute astrometry covers only a time span of about 16.56 yrs. Thus, all errors reported below are statistical only.
Fitting the proper motions and parallax of a binary system is complex due to the orbital motions of each component around the center of mass, especially since both stars have different masses ($m_{B}/m_{A} <$ 1). The proper motion and parallax of a binary system can be obtained with high precision when the orbital period of the system is small compared with the time span of the astrometric observations. In contrast, when the time span of the astrometric observations is small compared with the orbital period of the binary system, it is difficult to separate the orbital motion of each component and the proper motion of the system since both spatial movements are blended. The best way to separate both movements is to simultaneously fit the proper motions, the parallax, and the orbital motion of the binary system. Our combined astrometric fit includes all these components, and thus gives an accurate estimate of the proper motions and the parallax of this binary system.
We carried out a combined fit of the relative and absolute astrometric data and found that the astrometric fit improves substantially. The solution of the combined astrometric fit is similar to that obtained from the relative astrometric fit. However, using the combined astrometric fit, we are able to obtain the parallax and the proper motions of the binary system, as well as improved orbits of the two stars around the center of mass and the masses of the system and the individual stars.
The results of this combined fit are shown in Figures~\ref{fig_7}a and \ref{fig_8}a, and summarized in column 2 of Table~\ref{tab_3}.
Although, Figure~\ref{fig_8}a shows the full combined astrometric solution (including a planetary companion; see Sec~\ref{sec:fcaf}), the solution for the relative astrometric part of the binary system is basically the same as that obtained from the combined astrometric solution (see columns 2 and 3 of Table~\ref{tab_3}). Thus, we present only one figure showing both fits.
In contrast to the case of the relative astrometric fit (see~Sec.~\ref{sec:bsys}), we find here that the combined astrometric fit is well constrained when considering that the orbit of the binary system could be eccentric (e $\ge$ 0). The proper motions of the binary system are $\mu_\alpha$ = 571.515 $\pm$ 0.019 mas yr$^{-1}$ and $\mu_\delta$ = $-$37.750 $\pm$ 0.019 mas yr$^{-1}$. The parallax of the binary system is $\Pi$ = 159.98 $\pm$ 0.14 mas, which corresponds to a distance of 6.2506 $\pm$ 0.0055 pc. The orbit of the binary system has an orbital period $P_{AB}$ = 83665.80 $\pm$ 1.64 days (229.06 yr), a position angle of the line of nodes $\Omega_{AB} = 255.0891^\circ \pm 0.0028^\circ$, a semi-major axis of the binary system $a_{AB} = 5057.96 \pm 0.36$ mas, a semi-major axis of the main source $a_{AB}(A) = 1381.015 \pm 0.069$ mas, and an inclination angle $i_{AB} = 130.0664^\circ \pm 0.0085^\circ$.
The estimated mases of the binary system and the two components are $m_{AB}$ = 0.602253 $\pm$ 0.000020 M$_\odot$, $m_{AB}(A)$ = 0.43782 $\pm$ 0.00054 M$_\odot$, and $m_{AB}(B)$ = 0.16444 $\pm$ 0.00020 M$_\odot$, respectively. The semi-major axis of the binary system and the two stellar components are $a_{AB}$ = 31.615 $\pm$ 0.028, $a_{AB}(A)$ = 8.6322 $\pm$ 0.0075, and $a_{AB}(B)$ = 22.983 $\pm$ 0.020 au, respectively.
Column 2 of Table~\ref{tab_3} indicates that there is a relatively small improvement of about 17\% in the $\chi^{2}_{red}$. This is because the residuals of the relative data of the binary system are much larger that those of the absolute astrometry of the main star, and this dominates the residuals.
However, Table~\ref{tab_3} and Figure~\ref{fig_7} show that the residuals of the relative astrometric data of the binary system from the combined astrometric solution (rms $\sim$116.38 mas) are a factor of 1.3 smaller than in the case of the relative astrometry solution (rms $\sim$152.0 mas).
Thus, the combined astrometric solution is an improvement to the solution obtained from the pure relative astrometric fit.
In addition, the residuals of the absolute astrometric data of the main source GJ~896A (rms $\sim$ 0.27 and 0.47 mas for R.A. and Dec.) are large compared to the mean noise present in the data.
Comparing the residuals that were obtained from the single-source fit (see~Sec.~\ref{sec:ssa}) of the astrometric observations of the main star GJ~896A, including acceleration terms, and the residuals of the combined astrometric fit (see column 2 of Table~\ref{tab_2} and column 2 of Table~\ref{tab_3}, and Figures~\ref{fig_4} and \ref{fig_7}), we find that the rms of the residuals of the absolute astrometry are similar. In addition, we find that the temporal distribution of the residuals are also very similar. However, the residuals of the last three epochs from the combined astrometric fit are considerable larger that those obtained from the single-source plus acceleration fit.
We do not find an explanation for this discrepancy.
But, we notice that two out of these three epochs are the ones where the secondary star was detected, and the coordinates of this star were used in the fit of the relative astrometry of the binary system and in the absolute astrometry fit of the secondary star GJ~896B. Since the secondary star seems to be a close binary (see Secs.~\ref{sec:intro} and ~\ref{sec:pmot}) and it was only detected in two epochs, this probably affects the astrometric fit (see Figure~\ref{fig_7}). Further observations will be needed to improve the astrometric fit of this binary system.
As an independent check of the derived parameters, we performed a combined fit of the astrometric data with the {\tt lmfit} package \citep[][]{newville20}, which uses a non-linear least-squares minimization algorithm to search for the best fit of the observed data (see~Appendix~\ref{sec:mcmc} for further details). We find that the astrometric fit is well constrained, and that the solution and the residuals of the fit are in good agreement with those derived with the combined astrometric fit (see~Sec.~\ref{sec:caf}).
These results suggest that the main star may have at least one companion. Below we investigate further the possibility that these residuals are due to a planetary companion orbiting around the main star GJ~896A (as in the case of the single-companion fit, see Sec.~\ref{sec:sca}).
\subsection{Binary-system plus planet Astrometry: Full Combined Astrometric fit} \label{sec:fcaf}
We carried out a combined astrometric fit of the relative orbit of the binary and the absolute astrometric data of the main and the secondary stars, now including the orbital motion of a possible companion in a compact orbit (full combined astrometric fit), and found that the astrometric fit improves substantially. The results of this full combined astrometric fit are presented in Figures~\ref{fig_7}b, \ref{fig_8} and \ref{fig_9}. We find that the full combined astrometric fit is well constrained. Column 3 of Table~\ref{tab_3} summarizes the best fit parameters of the full combined astrometric fit.
By combining relative and absolute astrometric data of the binary system, we are able to obtain the full dynamical motion of the system, including the close companion.
From the best fit of the full combined astrometric data, we obtained proper motions $\mu_\alpha$ = 571.467$\pm$0.023 mas yr$^{-1}$ and $\mu_\delta$ = $-$37.715$\pm$0.023 mas yr$^{-1}$, and a parallax $\Pi$ = 159.88$\pm$0.17 mas for the binary system (see column 3 of Table~\ref{tab_3}). The estimated proper motions and parallax are very similar to those obtaned from the Combined astrometric fit. However, as expected, the proper motions differ from those obtained by GAIA for both stars GJ~896A and GJ~896B, which where obtained from independent linear fits of both stars \citep[][]{lindegren18}. The parallax, which corresponds to a distance of $d$ = 6.2545$\pm$0.0066 pc, is an improvement to that obtained by GAIA for both stars ($\Pi_{A}$ = 159.663$\pm$0.034 mas, and $\Pi_{B}$ = 159.908$\pm$0.051 mas). The parallax estimated by us is for the binary system, while GAIA's parallaxes are for the individual stars.
The part of the solution that corresponds to the astrometric fit of the binary system is very similar to that obtained from the combined astrometric fit (see columns 2 and 3 of Table~\ref{tab_3}). The fit of the binary system does not improve in this case.
However, the best full combined fit of the astrometric data indicates that the M3.5 dwarf GJ~896A has at least one planetary companion, GJ~896A$b$.
The orbit of the star around the barycenter, due to this planetary companion, has an orbital period $P_{Ab}$ = 284.39 $\pm$ 1.47 days, an eccentricity $e_{Ab} = 0.35 \pm 0.19$, a longitude of the periastron $\omega_{A} = 353.11^\circ \pm 11.81^\circ$, a position angle of the line of nodes $\Omega_{Ab} = 45.62^\circ \pm 9.60^\circ$, a semi-major axis $a_{A} = 0.51 \pm 0.15$ mas, and an inclination angle $i_{Ab} = 69.20^\circ \pm 25.61^\circ$, which indicates that the orbit is well constrained and prograde ($i_{Ab} < 90^\circ$).
However, the rms of the residuals ($\sim$0.21 and $\sim$0.45 mas in R.A and Dec., respectively) are still large compared to the mean noise present in the data ($\sim$0.15 mas) and the astrometric precision expected with the VLBA ($<$70 $\mu$as). This may explain the large errors of the orbital parameters. The large residuals may also indicate the presence of a second planetary companion. We carried out a blind search for a possible astrometric signal due a second planetary companion using the least-squares and the AGA algorithms, however, we did not find a candidate.
Using the fitted solution, we obtain the total mass of the system ($m_{AB}$ = 0.603410$\pm$0.000025 $M_{\odot}$), the masses of the two stars ($m_{AB}(A)$ = 0.43814$\pm$0.00065 $M_{\odot}$ and $m_{AB}(B)$ = 0.16527$\pm$0.00025 $M_{\odot}$). In addition, we find that the mass of the star GJ~896A is $m_{A}$ = 0.43599$\pm$0.00092 $M_{\odot}$, and that the mass of the planetary companion is $m_{b}$ = 0.00216$\pm$0.00064 $M_{\odot}$, which is consistent with being planetary in origin with an estimated mass of 2.26$\pm$0.57 $M_{J}$.
The semi-major axis of the orbit of the binary system is $a_{AB}$ = 31.635 $\pm$ 0.033 au. The semi-major axis of the two stars around the center of mass are $a_{AB}(A)$ = 8.6646 $\pm$ 0.0091 au and $a_{AB}(B)$ = 22.971 $\pm$ 0.024 au, and the semi-major axis of the orbit of the planetary companion is $a_{b}$ = 0.63965 $\pm$ 0.00067 au (or 102.27 $\pm$ 0.15 mas).
This is the first time that a planetary companion of one of the stars in a binary system has been found using the astrometry technique. The solution of the full combined astrometric fit of the planetary companion is similar to that obtained from the single-companion solution (see~Sec.~\ref{sec:sca} and Tables~\ref{tab_2} and \ref{tab_3}).
The fact that the astrometric signal appears in the periodogram of the absolute astrometric observations of GJ~896A, and in both, the single-companion astrometric fit and the full combined astrometric fit obtained, in both cases with two different algorithms (least-squares and AGA), supports the detection of an astrometric signal due to a companion. Furthermore, the similar astrometric fit solution obtained from the single-companion astrometric fit and the full combined astrometric fit further supports the planetary origin of the astrometric signal.
\section{Discussion} \label{sec:discusion}
\subsection{Proper Motions and Orbital Acceleration} \label{sec:pmot}
As mentioned before, the estimation of the proper motions of a binary system is complex due to the orbital motions of each component around the center of mass, specially when both stars have different masses ($m_{B}/m_{A} <$ 1) and the time span of the observations cover only a fraction of the orbital period of the binary system. In such a case, it is difficult to separate the orbital motion of each component and the proper motion of the system, both movements are blended. The best way to separate both movements is to simultaneously fit the proper motions, the parallax, and the orbital motion of the binary system. The full combined astrometric fit that we carried out (see Sec.~\ref{sec:fcaf}) includes all these components, and thus gives good estimates of the proper motion and the orbital motion of the binary system (see Table~\ref{tab_3}).
The full combined astrometric solution (see column 3 of Table~\ref{tab_3}) shows that the orbital motions of the two stars around the center of mass and of the planetary companion GJ~896A$b$ around the main star GJ~896A are well constrained. In addition, we found a similar solution for the orbital motion of the planetary companion using the full combined astrometric fit (see Sec.~\ref{sec:fcaf} and column 3 of Table~\ref{tab_3}) and the single-companion astrometric fit (see Sec.~\ref{sec:sca} and column 3 of Table~\ref{tab_2}). In the former case, the astrometric fit includes intrinsically the orbital motion of GJ~896A around the center of mass of the binary system, while in the latter case, the included acceleration terms take into account this orbital motion.
Tables~\ref{tab_2} and \ref{tab_3} show that the proper motions of the system obtained with the single-source, single-companion and the full combined astrometric fits differ significantly. Here we discuss the origin of this difference.
The single-source astrometric solution gives $\mu_\alpha$ = 576.707 mas yr$^{-1}$ and $\mu_\delta$ = $-$59.973 mas yr$^{-1}$ (see Sec.~\ref{sec:ssa} and column 1 of Table~\ref{tab_2}), where we include only the proper motions and the parallax to the absolute astrometric fit of the main star GJ~896A. Including acceleration terms (single-source plus acceleration astrometric solution), to take into account the orbital motion of the binary system, the estimated proper motions of the system are $\mu_\alpha$ = 574.171 mas yr$^{-1}$ and $\mu_\delta$ = $-$60.333 mas yr$^{-1}$ (see Sec.~\ref{sec:sca} and column 2 of Table~\ref{tab_2}).
On the other hand, from the full combined astrometric solution, the proper motions of the system are $\mu_\alpha$ = 571.467 mas yr$^{-1}$ and $\mu_\delta$ = $-$37.715 mas yr$^{-1}$ (see Sec.~\ref{sec:fcaf} and column 3 of Table~\ref{tab_3}).
The absolute astrometric solutions presented in Table~\ref{tab_2} show that by including the acceleration terms in the fit, we improve the estimated proper motions of the system, and that the inclusion of an astrometric signal due to a companion in the fit does not affect the estimation of the proper motions and the estimated acceleration terms.
Comparing the single-source and the full combined astrometric solutions, we find a significative difference in the estimated proper motions, particularly in the north-south direction ($\Delta\mu_\alpha$ = 5.24 mas yr$^{-1}$ and $\Delta\mu_\delta$ = $-$22.26 mas yr$^{-1}$).
This is consistent with the fact that the VLBA astrometric observations of GJ~896A were obtained when the source was crossing the ascending node of the binary orbit and mainly in the north-south direction (see discussion below, and Figures~\ref{fig_8} and \ref{fig_9}).
These results indicate that the orbital motion of GJ~896A around the center of mass of the system blends with the proper motions of the binary system, and in second order with the acceleration terms included in the absolute astrometric fit. Thus, we conclude that the best estimates of the proper motions of this binary system are those obtained with the full combined astrometric fit (see Table~\ref{tab_3}).
We can also obtain an estimation of the velocity on the plane of the sky of the center of mass $\mu(CM)$ of this binary system, as follows:
\begin{equation}
\mu_{\alpha}(A) = \mu_{\alpha}(CM) + v_{\alpha}(A), \\
\end{equation}
\begin{equation}
\mu_{\delta}(A) = \mu_{\delta}(CM) + v_{\delta}(A),
\end{equation}
\noindent
and
\begin{equation}
v_{\alpha}(A) = (2 \pi a_{A}/P_{AB}) \times sin(\theta_{rot}) \times cos(\phi),
\end{equation}
\begin{equation}
v_{\delta}(A) = (2 \pi a_{A}/P_{AB}) \times cos(\theta_{rot}) \times cos(\phi),
\end{equation}
\noindent
where $\mu_{\alpha}(A)$ and $\mu_{\delta}(A)$ are the observed proper motion of the main source GJ~896A (single-source solution; see column 1 of Table~\ref{tab_2}), $\mu_{\alpha}(CM)$ and $\mu_{\delta}(CM)$ are the proper motions of the center of mass of the binary system, $v_{\alpha}(A)$ and $v_{\delta}(A)$ are the projected rotational velocity of GJ~896A on its orbital motion around the center of mass, $a_{A}$ is semi-major axis of the orbital motion of GJ~896A around the center of mass, P$_{AB}$ is the orbital period of the binary system, $\theta_{rot}$ $\approx$ $\Omega_{AB} - 90^\circ$ is the position angle of the projected rotation velocity (tangential velocity) of GJ~896A around the center of mass of the system (see Figures~\ref{fig_8}b and \ref{fig_9}), $\phi = 180^{\circ} - i_{AB}$ is the complementary angle of the orbital plane of the binary system, and $ i_{AB}$ is the fitted inclination angle of the orbital plane of the binary system (see column 3 of Table~\ref{tab_3}). Using the fitted parameters presented in column 1 of Table~\ref{tab_2} and column 3 of Table~\ref{tab_3}, $\mu_{\alpha}(A)$ = 576.707 mas yr$^{-1}$ and $\mu_{\delta}(A)$ = $-$59.973 mas yr$^{-1}$ ($\mu_{A}$ = 579.8170 mas yr$^{-1}$ with PA = 95.94$^\circ$), we obtain $v_{\alpha}(A)$ = 6.2925 mas yr$^{-1}$ and $v_{\delta}(A)$ = $-$23.6355 mas yr$^{-1}$ ($v_{rot}$ = 24.4588 mas yr$^{-1}$ with PA = 165.09$^\circ$), and thus $\mu_{\alpha}(CM)$ = 570.4145 mas yr$^{-1}$ and $\mu_{\delta}(CM)$ = $-$36.3375 mas yr$^{-1}$ ($\mu(CM)$ = 571.5707 mas yr$^{-1}$ with PA = 93.65$^{\circ}$). We find that the estimated proper motions of the center of mass are very similar to those obtained with the full combined astrometric fit $\mu_{\alpha}$ = 571.467 mas yr$^{-1}$ and $\mu_{\delta}$ = $-$37.715 mas yr$^{-1}$ ($\mu$ = 572.72 mas yr$^{-1}$ with PA = 93.79$^\circ$; see Table~\ref{tab_3}). The difference in the estimated proper motions of the center of mass is about 1 mas yr$^{-1}$.
This further confirms that the full combined astrometric fit gives the best estimate for the proper motions of the center of mass of a binary system.
We can estimate the acceleration, $acc(A)$, of GJ~896A due to the gravitational pull of the low-mass stellar companion GJ~896B, as follows:
\begin{equation}
acc(A) = (2\pi/P_{AB})^{2} a_{A},
\end{equation}
\noindent
where $acc(A)$ is the mean acceleration of GJ~896A, $P_{AB}$ is the orbital period of the binary system, and $a_{A}$ is the semi-major axis of the orbital motion of GJ~896A around the center of mass. Using the full combined solution (see column 3 of Table~\ref{tab_3}), we obtain that $acc(A)$ $\simeq$ 1.04234 mas yr$^{-2}$. In the case of the single-companion solution (see column 3 of Table~\ref{tab_2}), the fitted acceleration terms are $a_\alpha$ = 0.8873 mas yr$^{-2}$ and $a_\delta$ = 0.1402 mas yr$^{-2}$ , and thus the acceleration of the main star in the plane of the sky is $acc(A)$ = $\sqrt{a_\alpha ^{2} + a_\delta^{2}}$ = 0.89831 mas yr$^{-2}$.
Thus, the estimated acceleration of GJ~896A due to GJ~896B is consistent with the acceleration found in the single-companion astrometric fit.
The acceleration $acc(A)$ obtained from the single-source astrometric fit of the VLBA data allows us to place a mass estimate for the stellar companion, $m_{B}$, using
\begin{equation}
\left(\frac{m_{B}}{M_\odot}\right) = 0.02533 \left(\frac{acc(A)}{AU yr^{-2}}\right) \left(\frac{a_{AB}}{AU}\right)^{2},
\end{equation}
\noindent
or
\begin{equation}
\left(\frac{m_{B}}{M_\odot}\right) = 0.29368 \left[\left(\frac{acc(A)}{AU yr^{-2}}\right) \left(\frac{a_{A}}{AU}\right)^{2} \left(\frac{M_{AB}}{M_\odot}\right)^{2} \right]^{1/3},
\end{equation}
\noindent
where $acc(A)$ = $\sqrt{a_{\alpha}^{2} + a_{\delta}^{2}}$ is the estimated acceleration needed to fit the absolute astrometric data (see column 3 of Table~\ref{tab_2}), $a_{AB}$ = $a_{A}$ + $a_{B}$ is the semi-major axis of the orbit of GJ~896B around GJ~896A, and m$_{AB}$ is the total mass of the binary system (see column 3 of Table~\ref{tab_3}).
From equation~7 we find that the estimated mass of the stellar companion GJ~896B is $m_{B}$ $\approx$ 0.15728 M$\odot$. This estimated mass is consistent with the mass of the stellar companion ($m_{B}$ = 0.16527 M$\odot$) obtained from the full combined astrometric fit (see column 3 of Table~\ref{tab_3}).
\subsection{Expected Radial Velocities} \label{sec:radvel}
The solution of the full combined astrometric fit can be used to estimate an expected induced maximum RV of the star due to the gravitational pull of a companion as follows \citep[e.g.,][]{canto09,curiel20}:
\begin{equation}
K =\left(\frac{2 \pi G}{T}\right)^{1/3} \frac{m_{c} sin(i)} {(M_{*} + m_{c})^{2/3}} \frac{1} {\sqrt{1 - e^{2}}},
\end{equation}
\noindent
where G is the gravitational constant, and $T$, $M_{*}$, $m_{c}$, and $e$ are the estimated orbital period, star and companion masses, and the eccentricity of the orbit of the companion. Using the full combined astrometric solution (see column 3 of Table~\ref{tab_3}),
the maximum RV of GJ~896A induced by the planetary companion GJ~896A$b$ is $K_{A}(b)$ $\sim$ 121 m s$^{-1}$, and the maximum RV induced by the stellar companion GJ~896B is $K_{A}(B)$ $\sim$ 867 m s$^{-1}$.
These RVs can in principle be observed with modern high-spectral resolution spectrographs.
The maximum radial velocity of both stars occurred in October 2013, when GJ~896A and GJ~896B passed through the ascending and descending nodes, respectively, of their orbits around the center of mass of the binary system (see Figure~\ref{fig_8}).
The RV signal due to GJ~896A$b$ can be measured with modern high-spectral resolution spectrographs on a time span shorter than one year.
Recent radial velocity observations of GJ~896A show a radial velocity variability of $\Delta V$ $\sim$ 175$\pm$37 m s$^{-1}$ \citep[e.g.,][]{gagne16}, which is consistent with the expected radial velocity of this source, induced by the planetary companion GJ~896A$b$. However, these observations were taken in just 7 epochs within a time span of about 4 years. Further observations will be needed to confirm whether the RV variability observed on GJ~896A is due to this planetary companion.
The RV signal of GJ~896A (and GJ~896B) due to the stellar companion will be difficult to measure due to the binary's very long orbital period of 229.06 yr. It will be very difficult to separate this signal from the systemic velocity $V_{0}$ of the binary system. However, we can use the observed mean RV of GJ~896A \citep[][]{lindegren18}, and the estimated maximum RV of this star due to its stellar companion to obtain a raw estimate of the systemic radial velocity of the binary system, as follows:
\begin{equation}
V_{obs}(A) = K_{A}(B) + V_{0},
\end{equation}
\noindent
where $V_{obs}$ is the observed radial velocity, $K_{A}(B)$ is the expected maximum RV of GJ~896A due to GJ~896B, and $V_{0}$ is the barycentric RV of the binary system. From the GAIA catalog, the observed radial velocity of GJ~896A is $V_{obs}(A)$ = $-$0.02$\pm$0.31 km s$^{-1}$ \citep[][]{lindegren18}. Since these RV observations of GJ~896A were take in a time span of about 2 years, the RV signal from GJ~896A$b$ is averaged out in this mean radial velocity. The reference epoch of the GAIA DR2 observations is J2015.5, which is close to orbital location where the radial velocity of GJ~896A is maximum and negative (see Figure~\ref{fig_8}).
Thus, $K_{A}(B)$ = $-$867 m s$^{-1}$, and the resulting barycentric RV of the binary system is $V_{0}$ $\sim$ 847 m s$^{-1}$.
A similar calculation can be carried out for GJ~896B. In this case, the observed RV is $V_{obs}(B)$ = 3340 m s$^{-1}$ \citep[][]{morin08}, which was obtained also close to the maximum RV of this star. The reference epoch of the RV observations is 2006.0, which is close to orbital location where the radial velocity of GJ~896B is maximum and positive (see Figure~\ref{fig_8}). We estimate that the maximum RV of GJ~896B induced by the main star GJ~896A is $K_{B}(A)$ $\sim$ 2299 m s$^{-1}$. Thus, in this case we obtain a barycenter RV of $V_{0}$ $\sim$ 1041 m s$^{-1}$. This barycentric RV is different to that obtained from the RV observation of GJ~896A (847 m s$^{-1}$). There is a difference of about 194 m s$^{-1}$. The RV measurements of GJ~896B were obtained in a time period of only a few days, and therefore, the observed RV would include the contribution due to possible companions associated to this M4.5 dwarf.
This suggests that GJ~896B may have at least one companion. Such radial velocity signature should be easily detected using modern high-spectral resolution spectrographs. Recent observations also suggest that the M4.5 dwarf GJ~896B may be an unresolved binary system \citep[][]{winters21}. Further observations will show whether this very low mass M dwarf star has a companion.
\subsection{Habitable zone and Snow Line}
A simple estimate of the habitable zone (HZ) can be obtained as follows. The inner and outer boundaries of the HZ around a star depends mainly on the stellar luminosity. Thus, combining the distance dependence of the HZ as function of the luminosity of the star and the mass-luminosity relation, the inner $a_{i}$ and outer $a_{o}$ radius of the HZ are:
\begin{equation}
a_{i} = \sqrt{ \left(\frac{L_\star}{L_\odot}\right) \frac{ 1}{ 1.1}},
~~~~~ a_{o} = \sqrt{ \left(\frac{L_\star}{L_\odot}\right) \frac{ 1}{ 0.53}}
\end{equation}
\noindent
\citep[e.g.,][]{selsis07, kopparapu13}, where $L_{\star}$ is the luminosity of the star in solar luminosities. In the case of M dwarfs with masses below 0.43 M$_\odot$, the mass-stellar luminosity relation can be approximated as:
\begin{equation}
\left(\frac{L_\star}{L_\odot}\right) = 0.23 \times \left(\frac{M_\star}{M_\odot}\right)^{2.3}
\end{equation}
\noindent
\citep[e.g.,][]{kuiper38, duric12}, where $M_{\star}$ is the mass of the star in solar masses. Using the estimated mass of GJ~896A ($m_{A}$ = 0.436 M$\odot$ ; see Table~\ref{tab_3}), the limits of the habitable zone around this M3.5 dwarf are $a_{i}$ $\sim$ 0.18 au and $a_{o}$ $\sim$ 0.26 au. This is considerably smaller than the semi-major axis of the orbit of the planetary companion GJ~896A$b$ ($a_{b}$ = 0.6397 au). Since the planetary companion is in an eccentric orbit ($e_{b}$ = 0.35), the minimum and maximum distance between the planet and the star are 0.42 and 0.86 au, respectively. Thus, the orbit of the planet lyes outside the habitable zone of this M3.5 dwarf star.
We can also estimate if the planetary companion GJ~896A$b$ is located inside the snow line, $a_{snow}$. The snow line is located at an approximate distance of \citep[e.g.,][]{kennedy08}
\begin{equation}
a_{snow} = 2.7 \left(\frac{M_\star}{M_\odot}\right)^{2}.
\end{equation}
\noindent
Using the estimated mass of GJ~896A, the snow line in this planetary system is located at a radius of $a_{snow}$ $\sim$ 0.51 au. Thus the estimated orbit of the planetary companion GJ~896A$b$ is located outside the snow line.
However, given the eccentricity of the orbit, the planet moves around the estimated snow line distance, but most of the time is located outside the snow line.
Recent results suggest that stars with a mass of about 0.4 $M_{\odot}$, such as GJ~896A, have a 1\% probability of having at least one Jovian planet \citep[e.g.,][]{kennedy08}. Even when the probability of having a Jovian planet is very low, the results presented here show that the main star GJ~896A in the M-dwarf binary system GJ~896AB has at least one Jupiter-like planet.
\subsection{Flux variability of the source.}
The radio continuum flux density of GJ~896A is clearly variable in time. Figure~\ref{fig_10} shows that the source goes through a large variability in short periods of time. The flux variability does not seem to have a clear pattern. The flux density of the source has changed in nearly two orders of magnitud during the last 16 years of the radio observations, with variations at scales of months and at scales of a few years. However, further observations will be required to find if the variability has a defined temporal period.
\subsection{Mutual Inclination Angle} \label{sec:mutinc}
Characterizing the full 3D orbital architecture of binary systems containing a planetary companion can aid to investigate the importance of the star-star and star-planet mutual interaction.
Combining relative and absolute astrometric data of the binary system, we are able to obtain the 3D orbital architecture of the system, including the planetary companion (see Figure~\ref{fig_9}).
Since the full combined astrometric fit (relative plus absolute astrometry) provides the inclination angle and the position angle of the line of nodes of the orbital planes of both the planetary companion GJ~896$b$ and the binary system GJ~896AB, we can directly measure the mutual inclination angle of this system.
A first approach would be to estimate the inclination difference ($\Delta i$) between the inclination angles of the orbital planes of the planet and the binary system, assuming that their position angle of the line of nodes is equal to 0$^{\circ}$. The inclination angles are measured with respect to the plane of the sky (such that $i$=0$^{\circ}$ corresponds to a face-on orbit, and it increases from the East toward the observer). Using the fitted inclination angles we obtain that $\Delta i =$ 60.9$^{\circ}$$\pm$22.5$^{\circ}$ (see Table~\ref{tab_3} and Figure~\ref{fig_9}), which is a very large difference.
The mutual inclination angle $\Phi$ between the two orbital planes can be determined through
\citep[e.g.,][]{kopal59, muterspaugh06}:
\begin{equation}
cos~\Phi = cos~i_{Ab} ~cos~i_{AB} + sin~i_{Ab} ~sin~i_{AB} ~cos(\Omega_{Ab} - \Omega_{AB}),
\end{equation}
\noindent
where $i_{Ab}$ and $i_{AB}$ are the orbital inclination angles, and $\Omega_{Ab}$ and $\Omega_{AB}$ are the position angles of the line of nodes. The position angle of the line of nodes is measured anti-clockwise from the North toward the ascending node.
Table~\ref{tab_3} contains the inclination angle and the position angle of the line of nodes for the planet GJ~896A$b$ and the binary system GJ~896AB.
There is an ambiguity in the position angles of the line of nodes ($\Omega$ or $\Omega$ + 180$^{\circ}$, where $\Omega$ is the fitted angle), which can be disentangled by RV measurements. For the orbital motion of the binary system, recent RV measurements of both stellar components show that GJ~896B is receding ($V_{obs}(B)$ = $+$3.34 km s$^{-1}$; \citet[][]{morin08}) and GJ~896A is approaching to us ($V_{obs}(A)$ = $-$0.02$\pm$0.31 km s$^{-1}$; \citet[][]{lindegren18}), thus the correct position angle of the line of nodes is $\Omega_{AB}$ = 255.09$^{\circ}$ ($\Omega_{AB}$ + 180$^{\circ}$) (see Table~\ref{tab_3}).
However, the planetary companion has no measured RV, so the fitted value of the position angle of the line of nodes of the orbital plane of GJ~896A$b$ could be either $\Omega_{Ab}$ = 45.6$^{\circ}$ or 225.6$^{\circ}$, the former is the fitted angle.
From these position angles we calculate a mutual inclination angle between the two orbital planes of $\Phi$ = 148$^\circ$ for the fitted $\Omega_{Ab}$, and $\Phi$ = 67$^\circ$ for the second possibility ($\Omega_{Ab}$ + 180$^{\circ}$).
Taking into account the long term stability of the system (see Sec.~\ref{sec:orbitstab}), we found that the former solution ($\Phi$ = 148$^\circ$) is stable in a very long period of time, while the latter solution ($\Phi$ = 67$^\circ$) is unstable in a short period of time.
This result indicates that there is a large mutual inclination angle of $\Phi$ = 148$^\circ$ between both orbital planes.
Recent observations suggest that the rotation axis of GJ~896A has an inclination angle of about 60$^{\circ}$$\pm$20$^{\circ}$ with respect to the line of sight \citep[][]{morin08}, and thus, an inclination angle of $i_{s}$ $\sim$ 210$^{\circ}$ with respect to the plane of the sky (see Figure~\ref{fig_9}). On the other hand, the inclination angle of the rotation axis of the orbital motion of GJ~896A$b$ is $i_{p}$ = 159.2$^{\circ}$$\pm$25.61$^{\circ}$ ($i_{b}$ + 90$^{\circ}$).
Thus these rotation planes have a difference in their inclination angles of $\Delta_{s-p}$ $\sim$ 51$^{\circ}$ (see Figure~\ref{fig_9}).
This indicates that the orbital motion of the planetary companion and the rotation plane of the star are far from being coplanar.
We can also compare the angle of the rotation axis of the host star GJ~896A and the inclination angle, $i_{bs}$, of the rotation axis of orbital motion of the binary system GJ~896AB. In this case the inclination angle is $i_{bs}$ = 220.065$^{\circ}$$\pm$0.010$^{\circ}$ ($i_{AB}$ + 90$^{\circ}$). Thus the rotation planes of the star GJ~896A and the binary system have a difference in their inclination angles of $\Delta i_{bs-s}$ $\sim$ 10$^{\circ}$.
In addition, the rotation axis of GJ~896B, with respect to the line of sight, is also about 60$^{\circ}$$\pm$20$^{\circ}$ \citep[][]{morin08}, which is basically the same as that of GJ~896A, and thus, the difference between the inclination angle of the rotation axis of GJ~896B, with respect of the plane of the sky, compared with the rotation axis of the binary system is the same as that found for the star GJ~896A ($\sim$ 10$^{\circ}$). Thus, this suggests that the rotation planes of both stars are nearly parallel to the orbital plane of the binary system ($\Delta i$ $\sim$ 10$^{\circ}$), while the orbital planes of the planet and the binary system have a mutual inclination angle of $\Phi$ $\simeq$ 148$^{\circ}$. However, having similar inclination angles does not necessarily imply alignment between the rotation axis of both stars since the position angles of the line of nodes are unknown. The rotation axis of the stars could be different, and thus, they could have larger and different mutual inclination angles with respect to the orbital plane of the binary system.
\subsection{Orbital Stability} \label{sec:orbitstab}
We applied direct N-body integrations to the full combined orbital solution obtained from the Keplerian orbits of the binary system GJ~896AB and the planetary companion GJ~896A$b$ (see Table~\ref{tab_3}). We integrated the orbits for at least 100 Myrs using the hybrid integrator in Mercury~6 \citep[][]{chambers99}, which uses a mixed-variable symplectic integrator \citep[][]{wisdom91} with a time step approximately equal to a hundredth ($\simeq 1/100$) of the Keplerian orbital period of the planetary companion. During close encounters, Mercury uses a Bulrich-Stoer integrator with an accuracy of $10^{-12}$. We identify an unstable system if: a) the two companions (the planetary companion and low-mass stellar companion) collide; b) the planet is accreted onto the star (astrocentric distance less than 0.003 au); and c) the planet is ejected from the system (astrocentric distance exceeds 200 au).
The integration time of 100 Myrs long exceeds the 10,000 binary periods that is considered as a stability criterion.
The simulation using the fitted Keplerian orbital parameters proved to be stable for at least 100 Myrs. However, the simulation of the alternative position angle of the line of nodes of the planetary orbit ($\Omega = \Omega_{Ab} + 180^{\circ}$) turned out to be unstable in very short times, the planet collided with the host star GJ~896A after a few tens of thousand years. In this case, the eccentricity of the planetary orbit increases rapidly due to the interaction between the stellar companion and the planet. After a few tens of thousand years the eccentricity reaches an extreme value of 1, and thus, the planet collides against the main star. This indicates that the fitted solution contains the correct angle of the line of nodes of the planetary orbit.
To complement our stability analysis, we also performed N-body long-term integrations using REBOUND \citep[][]{rein12}. We tested the combined orbital solutions using two different integrators: IAS15 \citep[][]{rein15} and Mercurius \citep[][]{rein19}. The first one is a 15th order high-precision non-symplectic integrator. The second one is a hybrid symplectic integrator. These two integrators allow us to corroborate the results obtained with Mercury 6. For both integrators, we integrate over 10,000 orbits of the binary system GJ~896AB using 20,000 points per orbital period (i.e., one sampling point every ~4 days). This allows us to monitor the changes in the orbital parameters of the planet GJ~896A$b$ with reliable accuracy. Both, the best-fit solution reported in Table~\ref{tab_3} and the complementary one with $\Omega$ = $\Omega_{Ab}$ + 180$^{\circ}$ were tested. Our results are in agreement with those obtained with Mercury 6. Our best-fit solution is stable over the whole integration time, while the alternative solution becomes unstable in a short period of time.
A detailed discussion about the 3D orbital stability of this binary system is out of the scope of this paper and it will be presented elsewhere.
\subsection{Binary System Formation and Stability} \label{sec:binaryform}
The present separation between the two stars ($\sim$31.64 au) in this binary system suggests that they were most likely formed in a massive accretion disk by disk fragmentation, and not by turbulent fragmentation of the original molecular core. Binary systems formed by turbulent fragmentation are expected to have separations of hundreds, or even thousands, of au, which better explain the formation of binary systems with wide orbits \citep[e.g.,][]{offner16}. On the other hand, in the case of disk fragmentation, the lower mass stellar companion is formed in the outer parts of the disk (probably at a distance of a few hundred au) and then, during the early evolution of the binary system, the stellar companion migrates inwards to a closer orbit \citep[e.g.,][]{tobin16}. The apparently similar spin angles of the two stars ($\sim$ 210$^{\circ}$), and the relatively small, but significant, difference between the spin axis of both stars and the rotation axis of the binary system ($\ga$ 10$^{\circ}$), are consistent with this formation mechanism.
Since we do not know the position angles of the line of nodes of the rotation plane of both stars, it is possible that the rotation planes are not coplanar, and thus, they probably have different mutual inclination angles with respect to the orbital plane of the binary system.
Either way, the difference in the inclination angle between the spin axis of the stars and the orbital axis of the binary system ($\ga$ 10$^\circ$) suggests that during the evolution of this binary system, the star-star interaction between both stars may have significantly changed the orientation of the rotation axes of both stars.
In addition, the large mutual inclination angle ($\Phi$ = 148$^\circ$) that we find between the orbital planes of the planetary companion GJ~896A$b$ and the binary system GJ~896AB indicates that something changed the orientation of the orbital plane of the planet, probably from initially being coplanar to be in a retrograde configuration at present time. The most likely origin of this large mutual inclination angle is the star-planet interaction, where the low mass stellar companion GJ~896B produces some important torque over the orbit of the planetary companion of GJ~896A.
Recent studies have shown that in the case of planet-planet interaction (planetary systems with at least one external Jovian planet), the mutual inclination angles are $\la$10$^{\circ}$ \citep[see, e.g.,][]{laughlin02}. In a few cases there is evidence of an inclination between the orbits of the planets of up to $\sim$40$^{\circ}$ \citep[see, e.g.,][]{mcarthur10, dawson14, mills17}. However, since these studies are based on planetary systems detected with the RV and/or transit techniques, they lack of information about the position angle of the line of nodes, and thus, the mutual inclination angles calculated this way are lower limits. In addition, according to the catalogue of Exoplanets in Binary Systems \citep[][]{schwarz16},
160 planets have been found associated with 111 binary systems, 79 of which are in S-type orbits \citep[i.e., the planet is orbiting one of the stars; see, also][]{marzari19}. Most of these planets were found using RV and transit techniques, and some of the other planets were found using other techniques, such as imaging and microlensing. In all of them, some of the orbital parameters are missing, in particular, the position angle of the line of nodes of the orbital plane has not being obtained, and in several cases, the inclination angle is also unknown.
This is the first time that the remarkable full 3D orbital architecture of a binary-planetary system has been determined.
\subsection{Planetary origin of the astrometric signal.}
The presence of a Jovian planet associated to the main star in a binary system, such as the one we present here, would produce secular perturbations on the lower mass stellar companion. Such interaction would produce long-term periodic variations in the orbital motion of the secondary (including the eccentricity and the inclination angle), as well as in the orbital parameters of the planetary companion.
Given the orbital period of about 229 yrs of this binary system, several decades of absolute and relative astrometric observations of the binary system are probably needed to fully constrain the orbital motion of the binary system.
As we have mentioned above, we are limited by the time span of the astrometric observations we present here (80 years for the relative astrometry and 16.6 yrs in the case of the absolute astrometry), which is much smaller than the orbital period of the binary system.
However, in the analysis we present here, we show that by combining the absolute astrometric observations of the primary and the secondary stars, as well as the relative astrometry of the binary system, in the astrometric fit, the orbital motion of the binary system and the planetary companion are well constrained.
We have found that the orbits of the binary system and the planetary companion are somewhat eccentric.
A similar astrometric signal due the planetary companion was found using different methods.
We obtained a similar astrometric signal using both the periodogram of the astrometric data, and the single-companion astrometric fits of the absolute astrometric data obtained with two different algorithms (least-squares and AGA). This indicates that the astrometric signal is real. The detection of a similar astrometric signal with the full combined astrometric fit (relative plus absolute astrometry) further support the detection of the astrometric signal.
In addition, we complemented the analysis of the astrometric observations with the non-linear least squares minimization package {\tt lmfit} \citep[][]{newville20}, finding a similar astrometric solution (see Appendix).
This strongly indicates that the astrometric signal is real. Furthermore, the fact that the astrometric solution from the different methods is similar indicates that the astrometric signal is consistent with the companion being planetary in origin.
A detailed study of the stability of the orbital motions in this system can give important information about the star-star and star-planet interactions. A detailed discussion about the 3D orbital stability of this binary system is out of the scope of this paper and it will be presented elsewhere.
The astrometric signal that we find is consistent with a planetary companion associated to the M3.5 Dwarf GJ~896A. However, this astrometric signal could be contaminated by the expected astrophysical $``$jitter$"$ added to the true source position due to stellar activity. It has been estimated that GJ~896A has a radius of $\sim$0.35 $R_\odot$ \citep[e.g.,][]{morin08, pearce20}. Thus, the radius of GJ~896A at a distance of 6.2567 pc is about 0.260 mas. This result indicates that the astrometric signal due to the planetary companion (0.51 mas) is about twice the radius of the host star. In addition, assuming that the radio emission originates within $\sim$0.194 stellar radius above the photosphere \citep[e.g.,][]{liefke08, crosley18a}, the size of the expected $``$jitter$"$ is about 0.31 mas.
However, the analysis that we carried out for the variability of the radio emission of the main star GJ~896A shows that the $``$flares$"$ seen in several of the observed epochs contribute only with less that 0.12 mas to the expected $``$jitter$"$ (see Appendix~\ref{sec:flares} and panels (d) in Figure~\ref{fig_flares}), compared to the expected 0.31 mas contribution to the $``$jitter$"$ that we have estimated here. Thus, the expected $``$jitter$"$ due to the variability of the star is about a factor of 4.3 smaller than the astrometric signal of 0.51 mas observed in GJ~896A (see Table~\ref{tab_3}).
This result supports the detection of the planetary companion GJ~896A$b$.
To further investigate the validity of the planetary astrometric signal, we have applied several statistical tests comparing the astrometric solutions obtained without and with a planetary companion (see Table~\ref{tab_2}). The solutions of the best astrometric fits show that when a planetary companion is not included the residuals of the fit have a rms scatter of 0.34 mas and a $\chi^2$ = 190.91, compared to a rms scatter of 0.20 mas and $\chi^2$ = 57.41 when the planetary companion is included in the fit. An F-test shows that the probability of the $\chi^2$ dropping that much (due to the inclusion of the planetary companion) is less than 4\% by mere fluctuations of noise. Using the Bayesian Information Criterion (BIC), we find that the inclusion of the planetary companion is preferred with a $\Delta$BIC = $-$109.24, this is a significant difference between our best fit model with the planetary companion and the one without it. Statistically, an absolute value of Delta BIC of more than ten implies that the model with the planetary companion better reproduces the data without overfitting it by including more free parameters in the model. Similar results were obtained using the Akaike Information Criterion (AIC) with a $\Delta$AIC = $-$119.50. We therefore conclude that there is a very high probability that the planetary companion GJ~896Ab is orbiting the main star GJ~896A.
The large proper motions of the binary system may also contribute to the expected $``$jitter$"$ of the star. The change in position of GJ~896A due to the proper motions of the binary system, $\Delta_{PM}(A)$ in mas, can be estimated by:
\begin{equation}
\Delta_{PM}(A) = \sqrt{\mu_\alpha^{2} + \mu_\delta^{2}} \times \left(\delta t / 8766\right),
\end{equation}
\noindent
where $\delta t$ is the time span of each observed epoch in hours (between 3 and 5 hours on source). Using the estimated proper motions of the binary system ($\mu$ = 572.71 mas yr$^{-1}$), we obtain that the maximum expected contribution to the $``$jitter$"$ by the proper motions of the system is $\Delta_{PM}(A)$ = 0.16 mas in a time span of 2.5 hours (half the observing time), which is about three times smaller than the observed astrometric signal. We also obtain that the contribution of the orbital motion of GJ~896A around the center of mass to the expected $``$jitter$"$ of the star (about 0.009 mas in a time span of 2.5 hours) is smaller than that estimated from the proper motions of the star. Adding in quadrature all these possible contributions, the total expected $``$jitter$"$ is about 0.2 mas, which is still about a factor of 2.6 smaller than the astrometric signal due to the planetary companion GJ~896A$b$. The highest contribution to the expected $``$jitter$"$ is that due to the proper motions of the star.
However, the astrometric signal is observed in both direction (R.A. and Dec.), while the proper motion of the star is basically in the east direction. In addition, the contribution of the proper motions of the star to the expected $``$jitter$"$ probably averages out when we integrate over the time span of the observations. In addition, given the synthesized beam of the images (about 2.7$\times$1.1 mas, in average), the magnitude of the proper motions is in fact too small to even affect the estimated size of the source. This suggests that the contribution of the proper motions to the expected $``$jitter$"$ is probably much smaller than we have estimated here. Thus, the expected $``$jitter$"$ that we estimate here is most likely an upper limit.
This further indicates that the astrometric signal is real, and planetary in origin.
\section{Conclusions and Final Remarks} \label{sec:conclusions}
The combined (relative plus absolute) fit of the astrometric observations of this binary system show that the main star GJ~896A has at least one planetary companion.
This is the first time that a planetary companion of one of the stars in a binary system has been found using the astrometry technique.
The astrometric solution indicates that the planetary companion has an orbital period of 284.39 $\pm$ 1.47 days, an estimated mass of 2.26 $\pm$ 0.57 M$_{J}$, a relatively eccentric orbit ($e_{Ab}$ = 0.35 $\pm$ 0.19), and a semi-major axis of $a_{b}$ = 0.63965 $\pm$ 0.00067 au (or 102.27 $\pm$ 0.15 mas). In addition, the full combined astrometric fit also shows that the binary system has an estimated orbital period of 83664.63 $\pm$ 1.98 days (or 229.06 yrs), and the two stars have estimated masses of $m_{AB}$ = 0.603410 $\pm$ 0.000025 $M_{\odot}$,
$m_{AB}(A)$ = 0.43814 $\pm$ 0.00065 $M_{\odot}$
and $m_{AB}(B)$ = 0.16527 $\pm$ 0.00025 $M_{\odot}$, respectively. The astrometric solution also indicates that the binary system and the stars have semi-major axis of $a_{AB}$ = 31.635 $\pm$ 0.033 au, $a_{AB}(A)$ = 8.6646 $\pm$ 0.0091 au and $a_{AB}(B)$ = 22.971 $\pm$ 0.024 au, respectively.
Thanks to the proximity of the binary system GJ~896AB, the Jovian-like planetary companion GJ~896A$b$ $-$ one of the nearest to Earth yet found $-$ is well suited for a detailed characterization (for example, direct imaging and spectroscopy) that could give important constrains on the nature and formation mechanisms of planetary companions in close binary systems.
Combining the relative and absolute astrometric observations, we have found the 3D orbital architecture of the binary system GJ~896AB and the planetary companion GJ~896A$b$.
We have performed long-term numerical integrations to test the stability of the orbital solution of this binary system, using both posible position angles of the line of nodes of the planetary companion. We find that only one solution is stable. The second solution of the Keplerian orbit, using $\Omega$ = $\Omega_{Ab}$ + 180$^{\circ}$, turns out to be unstable in very short timescales, the planetary companion collides with the host star GJ~896A after a few thousand years.
On the other hand, the fitted solution ($\Omega = \Omega_{Ab}$) proved stable for at least 100 Myrs. This indicates that the position angle of the line of nodes of both orbital planes are $\Omega_{AB}$ = 255.1$^{\circ}$ and $\Omega_{Ab}$ = 45.6$^{\circ}$, and their mutual inclination angle is $\Phi$ = 148$^\circ$.
This result is consistent with both orbits being retrograde.
This is the first time that the full 3D orbital architecture of a binary system with a planetary companion has been obtained using astrometric observations. This kind of results can not be achieved with other exoplanet methods. Astrometry gives important complementary information to other exoplanet detection techniques. In addition, high-angular resolution radio astrometry is becoming a powerful technique, capable of giving the full 3D orbital architecture of planetary systems and planetary systems in binary and multiple stellar system.
Our results demonstrate that astrometric observations have the potential to fully characterize the orbital motions of individual and multiple planetary systems, as well as the 3D orbital architecture of binary systems, and binary systems with planets associated to them.
The discovery of gaseous planets associated to low-mass stars poses a great challenge to all current planetary formation scenarios. For instance, core accretion models face serious problems to explain giant planets orbiting around M dwarfs with masses below 0.4 M$_\odot$ \citep[e.j.,][]{laughlin04,ida13,burn21}. In order to explain such planets, these models need to include extraordinary conditions, such as increasing the efficiency of core-accretion planet formation, using high mass protoplanetary disks, which are inconsistent with observational results, and/or slowing down (reducing) their migration speed.
It is not clear if gravitational instability of the protoplanetary disk \citep[e.j.,][]{mercer20,boss21} could more naturally produce giant planets around low-mass stars.
The formation of this kind of planetary systems through disk fragmentation also requires high-mass protoplanetary disks (with high accretion rate from an envelope).
Furthermore, the discovery of Jovian planets associated with low-mass binary systems, such as the one we have found, is even more challenging to current formation scenarios. Particularly, in the case of close binary systems with separation $<$40 au, where it is expected that the stellar companion would truncate the protoplanetary disk, Jovian planets will be very difficult to form.
Further theoretical models will be required to understand the formation of giant-mass planets, such as the one we found associated to the main star of the low-mass binary system GJ~896AB.
In addition, since most stars are in binary or multiple systems, our understanding of systems such as this one will be crucial to understand the phenomenon of planetary formation in general.
~~
~~
~~
\begin{acknowledgements}
\noindent
We are grateful to the anonymous referee for the useful comments and suggestions, which helped improve this paper.
We thank L. F. Rodr{\'\i}guez for valuable comments on an early version of the paper.
S.C. acknowledges support from UNAM, and CONACyT, M\'exico.
The authors acknowledge support from the UNAM-PAPIIT IN103318 and IN104521 grants.
The observations were carried out with the Very Long Baseline Array (VLBA), which is part of the National Radio Astronomy Observatory (NRAO). The NRAO is a facility of the National Science
Foundation operated under cooperative agreement by Associated Universities, Inc.
This research has made use of the Washington Double Star Catalog maintained at the U.S. Naval Observatory.
This research has made use of the Catalogue of Exoplanets in Binary Systems maintained by Richard Schwarz and \'A. Bazs\'o at {https://www.univie.ac.at/adg/schwarz/bincat$_{-}$binary.html}.
This publication makes use of the SIMBAD database operated at the CDS, Strasbourg, France.
This work has made use of data from the European Space Agency (ESA) mission Gaia ({https://www.cosmos.esa.int/gaia}), processed by the Gaia Data Processing and Analysis Consortium (DPAC, {https://www.cosmos.esa.int/web/gaia/dpac/consortium}). Funding for the DPAC has been provided by national institutions, in particular the institutions participating in the Gaia Multilateral Agreement.
\end{acknowledgements}
\vspace{5mm}
\facilities{VLBA}
\software{AIPS \citep[][]{greisen03},
astropy \citep{astropycol13,astropycol18},
corner\citep{foremanmackey16},
emcee \citep{foremanmackey13},
lmfit \citep[][]{newville20},
scipy \citep[][]{virtanen20},
matplotlib,\citep{hunter07},
numpy\citep{vanderwalt11}.
PyAstronomy\citep{czesla19}.
}
~~
~~
~~
{~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~{\bf ORCID iDs}}
Salvador Curiel {https:/orcid.org/0000-0003-4576-0436}
Gisela N. Ortiz-Le\'on {https:/orcid.org/0000-0002-2863-676X}
Amy J. Mioduszewski {https:/orcid.org/0000-0002-2564-3104}
Joel Sanchez-Bermudez {https:/orcid.org/0000-0002-9723-0421}
~~
~~
~~
\section{Introduction} \label{sec:intro}
Numerical simulations suggest two main channels for the formation of multiple stellar systems: disk fragmentation \citep[][]{adams89}, which produces secondaries through gravitational instability within a massive accretion disk, and turbulent fragmentation \citep[e.g.,][]{goodwin04, fisher04}, where turbulence in the original molecular core leads to multiple density enhancements, which independently collapse.
Binary systems formed by turbulence fragmentation are expected to have initial separations larger than 500 astronomical units (au), which corresponds to the rough boundary between the disk size and the molecular core scale \citep[e.g.,][]{offner10}, while disk fragmentation suggest the formation of compact ($<$ 500 au) binaries \citep[e.g.,][]{kratter10}.
However, dynamical evolution may quickly modify the separation, making that initially wide binaries migrate to separations $<$200 au in time spans of $\sim$0.1 Myr \citep[][]{offner10, offner16}. If substantial orbital evolution occurs during the main accretion phase, which lasts $\sim$0.5 Myr \citep[][]{dunham14}, then binary systems will end up much closer binary systems.
Theoretical works have addressed the formation of planets around single stars of different masses.
The core-accretion theory predicts that the formation of giant-mass planets scales with the mass of the central star; thus, it is expected that very few Jovian-mass planets are formed around low-mass stars \citep[e.g.,][]{laughlin04,kennedy08,mercer20}.
The core-accretion theory indicates that these planets would be formed in orbits far from the star, at several au. On the other hand, it is expected that disk fragmentation may also be able to form giant-mass planets around low-mass stars \citep[e.g.,][]{boss06}. In this case, the orbit of the planet is expected to be relatively closer to the star, from a few to several au.
Only a very small fraction of the detected extrasolar planets (less than 4\%) are known to be associated to stars in binary systems. This is probably, at least in part, due to strong observational biases. For instance, the radial velocity (RV) technique is in general limited to binary systems with separations larger than 2$''$, and the transit technique is limited to high inclination angles of the orbital plane of the planets and the binary systems \citep[e.g.,][and references therein]{marzari19}. In addition, the presence of a stellar companion has adverse effects on planet formation. It is possible that the stellar companion strongly influence both the formation of planets and their subsequent dynamical evolution. For example, the presence of a close stellar companion can tidally truncate the protoplanetary disk \citep[e.g.,][]{savonije94, kraus12}. Observational surveys have shown that, even when present, protoplanetary disks are on average less massive in tight binaries \citep[e.g.,][]{harris12}. In addition, the evolution of truncated disks under the action of viscous forces is faster and should produce more short-lived disks, with less time available for planet formation \citep[e.g.,][]{muller12}. This could particularly affect the formation of giant gaseous planets, which need to accrete vast amount of gas before the primordial disk disperses. There is observational evidence that suggests that the typical life time of protoplanetary disks in close binaries separated by $\leq$40 au is less than 1 Myr, as compared with the typical disk life time of 5$-$10 Myrs in single stars \citep[e.g.,][]{marzari19}. Furthermore, in the case of close binaries, there might not be enough mass left in the truncated disks to form jovian planets. Only a small fraction (about 15\%) of the planets associated with binaries have been found associated to binary systems with separations $\leq$40 au \citep[e.g.,][]{marzari19, fontanive21}, and according to the Catalogue of Exoplanets in Binary Systems \citep[][]{schwarz16}
only 7 planets are associated to M dwarf binary systems. The formation of planets in binary systems is not well understood. Current planetary formation models take into account only the formation of planets around single stars. To our knowledge, there are no theoretical models that take into account, for instance, the simultaneous formation of planetary and sub-stellar or stellar companions in a single protoplanetary disk, or the formation of planetary systems during the formation of a binary system through turbulent fragmentation.
A variety of mechanisms has been proposed to explain spin-orbit misalignment observed in several planetary systems. Dynamical interactions between stars and/or planets \citep[][]{nagasawa08} help explaining small and large differences in the inclination angle of close-in giant-planets. The chaotic star formation environment during the accretion phase \citep[][]{bate10} and perturbations from a stellar companion \citep[][]{thies11, batygin13, lai14} also help explaining large misalignment between the stellar spin and the planetary orbit.
Thus, studying the spins of individual members in binary systems (including sub-stellar and planetary companions) could reveal whether they were formed by disk fragmentation or turbulence fragmentation, as well as the origin of the spin-orbit misalignment \citep[e.g.,][]{offner16}.
To accomplish this, the three-dimensional (3-D) orbital plane orientation of both, the binary system and the planetary companions would need to be known.
However, in most cases, not all angles of the orbital plane of the binary system and their planetary companions are known. In all known binary systems with planetary companions, the position angle of the line of nodes ($\Omega$) is unknown, and in several cases even the inclination angle of the orbits is also unknown.
Binaries formed within the same accretion disk are likely to have common angular momenta and, therefore, aligned stellar spins, whereas binaries formed via turbulent fragmentation are likely to possess independent angular momentum vectors and, thus, have randomly oriented spins. It is expected that the planets have orbital spins similar to the stellar spin of their host star. However, in the case of binary systems, the orientation and eccentricity of the planetary orbits are expected to be affected by the presence of the stellar companion.
Astrometry is the only technique capable of directly giving all three angles (longitude of the periastron $\omega$, position angle of the line of nodes $\Omega$, and the inclination angle $i$) of the orbital planes. In particular, radio interferometric astrometry, with milli-arc-second (mas) angular resolution and very high astrometric precision (usually better than 60 micro-arc-second ($\mu$as)), can be used to search for planetary companions associated to binary systems with wide orbits, as well as close binary systems with separations $\leq$50 au.
\subsection{GJ~896 binary system} \label{sec:bsys}
GJ~896AB (a.k.a. EQ Peg, BD+19~5116, J23318+199, HIP 116132) is a nearby low-mass M dwarf binary system with an estimated age of 950 Myr \citep[][]{parsamyan95}, at a distance of 6.25 pc, and a separation of 5.4 arcsec with a PA of 78$^\circ$ \citep[e.g.,][]{heintz84, liefke08, bower11, pearce20}. However, some observations also suggest that the age of this binary system is $\lesssim$ 100 Myr \citep[][]{riedel11, zuckerman13}. If this latter age is confirmed, these stars would be the closest pre-main-sequence stars known. This binary system is part of a quadruple system, where the other two stellar companions are further away from the main binary. Recent observations suggest that both stars have companions, but theirs orbits have not been characterized \citep[e.g.,][]{delfosse99, winters21}.
Both stars have been observed to have radio outbursts \citep[e.g.,][]{pallavicini85, jackson89, benz95, gagne98, crosley18a, crosley18b, villadsen19, davis20} and are flaring X-ray emitters \citep[e.g.,][]{robrade04, liefke08}.
GJ~896A has been detected at several epochs with the VLBA showing compact and variable flux emission \citep[][]{bower09, bower11}.
An early determination of the orbital motion of the binary GJ~896AB suggested an orbital period of about 359 yrs and a semi-major axis of 6.87 arcsec \citep[e.g.,][]{heintz84}.
More recent, and more accurate, relative astrometric fits indicate that the orbital parameters of this binary system are $P$ $\sim$234 yr, $a$ $\sim$ 5.3 arcsec, $i$ $\sim$ 126$^\circ$, $\Omega$ $\sim$ 77$^\circ$, $e$ $\sim$ 0.11 and $\omega$ $\sim$ 97$^\circ$ \citep[][]{mason01}. However, since the time baseline used for these orbital determinations is $\lesssim$34\% the estimated period, the orbital parameters were not well constrained.
The more massive star, GJ~896A, is an M3.5 star with an estimated mass of 0.39 M$_\odot$, a radius of 0.35 R$_\odot$, a rotation period of 1.061 days, and a rotational inclination angle of 60$^{\circ}$, while the less massive star, GJ~896B, is an M4.5 star with an estimated mass of 0.25 M$_\odot$, a radius of 0.25 R$_\odot$, a rotation period of 0.404 days, and a rotational inclination angle of about 60$^{\circ}$$\pm$20$^{\circ}$ \citep[e.g.,][]{delfosse99, morin08, davison15, pearce20}.
Here we present the discovery of a Jovian-mass planetary companion to the young close-by (6.25 pc away from the Sun) M3.5 dwarf GJ~896A, which is the more massive star in the low-mass M dwarf binary system GJ~896AB with a separation of about 31.6 au.
Section~\ref{sec:obs} describes the observations and data reduction. In Section~\ref{sec:procid} we present the methodology to fit the astrometric data. Section~\ref{sec:results} presents the results, including the fitted 3-D orbital architecture of this system. The results are discussed in Section~\ref{sec:discusion} and our conclusions are given in Section~\ref{sec:conclusions}.
In Appendix~\ref{sec:flares} we discuss the possible contributions of the variability of the main star to the expected $``$jitter$"$ of the star, and in Appendix~\ref{sec:mcmc} we present the posterior sampling of the combined astrometric fit solution using an MCMC sampler.
\section{Observations and Data Reduction} \label{sec:obs}
We analyzed archival and new Very Long Baseline Array (VLBA) observations taken at 8.4~GHz toward the M dwarf binary system GJ~896AB. Observations of GJ~896A were carried out in fourteen epochs between March, 2006 and November, 2011 as part of the Radio Interferometric Planet (RIPL) survey and its precursor (\citealt{bower09,bower11}; program IDs: BB222 and BB240). New observations of the two stars GJ~896A and GJ~896B were obtained as part of our own program BC264 (PI: S.\ Curiel) in three epochs between August, 2020 and October, 2020. The RIPL observations recorded four 16-MHz frequency bands in dual-polarization mode. For the most recent observations, we recorded four 128-MHz frequency bands, also in dual polarization mode, using the new 4~Gbps recording rate of the VLBA. The observing sessions consisted of switching scans between the target and the phase reference calibrator, J2328+1929, spending about 1~min on the calibrator and 3~min on the target. Scans on secondary calibrators (J2334+2010, J2334+1843 and J2328+1956) were obtained every $\approx$30--60 min. In addition, fringe calibrators were observed occasionally during the sessions. For program BC264, additional 30-min blocks of calibrators, the so-called geodetic-like blocks, distributed over a wide range of elevations were included at the beginning and end of the observing run. The RIPL observations included the 100-m Green Bank Telescope added to the VLBA array.
In project BC264 the typical on source time is of 2 hours, spread over a full track of 3 hours, plus 1 hour for the two geodetic-like blocks. On the other hand, RIPL alternated between two targets in a 8 hours track, and no geodetic-like blocks were observed.
To determine the orbital motion of the binary system, we used archival relative astrometric measurements of GJ~896AB taken from the Washington Double Star Catalog \citep{mason01}, maintained by the US Naval Observatory. This data set includes a total of 73 measurements starting in the year 1941 until 2017. We discarded the data points from 1950 and 1952.66 since they largely deviate from the rest of the observations due to possible systematics.
The VLBA data were reduced with the Astronomical Imaging System \citep[AIPS;][]{greisen03}, following standard procedures for phase-referencing observations \citep{torres07,ortizleon17}.
First, corrections for the ionosphere dispersive delays were applied. We then corrected for post-correlation updates of the Earth orientation parameters. Corrections for the digital sampling effects of the correlator were also applied. The instrumental single-band delays caused by the VLBA electronics, as well as the bandpass shape corrections were determined from a single scan on a strong fringe calibrator and then applied to the data. Amplitude calibration was performed by using the gain curves and system temperature tables to derive the system equivalent flux density of each antenna. We then applied corrections to the phases for antenna parallactic angle effects. Multi-band delay solutions were obtained from the geodetic-like blocks, which were then applied to the data to correct for tropospheric and clock errors. The final step consisted of removing global frequency- and time-dependent residual phase errors obtained by fringe-fitting the phase calibrator data, assuming a point source model. In order to take into account the non-point-like structure of the calibrator, this final step was repeated using a self-calibrated image of the calibrator as a source model. Finally, the calibration tables were applied to the data and images of the stars were produced using the CLEAN algorithm. We used a pixel size of 50~$\mu$as and pure natural weighting. The synthesized beam of these images are, on average, $2.7\times 1.1$~mas, and the achieved rms noise levels are in the range between 11 and 130~$\mu$Jy~beam$^{-1}$ (Table \ref{tab_1}). The large range of sensitivities is expected because of the wide range in observing strategies.
The assumed position for the primary phase calibrator J2328+1929 during correlation changed between epochs due to multiple updates of the VLBA calibrator position catalogs. Thus, before deriving any calibration, the position of J2328+1929 was corrected to the value assumed in the observations of 2020, R.A.$=$23:28:24.874773 and Dec.$=$+19:29:58.03010. The assumed positions for the observations performed between 2006 and 2011 were taken from the correlator files available in the VLBA file
server at {http://www.vlba.nrao.edu/astro/VOBS/astronomy/}.
GJ~896A was detected in thirteen epochs of RIPL and in the three epochs of program BC264. GJ~896B was only detected in two epochs of BC264.
To obtain the positions of the centroid in the images of GJ~896A and B, we used the task {\tt MAXFIT} within AIPS, which gives the position of the pixel with the peak flux density. The position error is given by the astrometric uncertainty, $\theta_{\rm res}/(2\times {\rm S}/{\rm N})$, where $\theta_{\rm res}$ is the full width at half maximum (FWHM) size of the synthesized beam, and ${\rm S}/{\rm N}$ the signal-to-noise ratio of the source \citep{thompson17}. Furthermore, we quadratically added half of the pixel size to the position error.
In order to investigate the magnitude of systematic errors in our data, we obtain the positions of the secondary calibrator, J2334+2010, in all observed epochs. The rms variation of the secondary calibrator position is (0.14, 0.14)~mas. The angular separation of J2334+2010 relative to the main calibrator is $1\rlap.{^{\rm o}}6$, while the target to main calibrator separation is $0\rlap.{^{\rm o}}97$. The main calibrator, target and secondary calibrator are located in a nearly linear arrangement (see Fig.\ 1 in \citealt{bower11}). Since systematic errors in VLBI phase-referenced observations scale linearly with the source-calibrator separation \citep{pradel06,reid14}, we scale the derived rms value for J2334+2010 with the ratio of the separations from the target and J2334+2010 to the main calibrator. This yields a systematic error of (0.09, 0.08)~mas, which was added in quadrature to the position errors in each coordinate.
Table \ref{tab_1} summarizes the observed epochs, the positions, the associated uncertainties, and the integrated flux densities of GJ~896A and B.
Figure~\ref{fig_1} shows the intensity maps of both stars for one of the two epochs when both stars were detected with the VLBA.
The time of the observations (in Julian day) included in Table \ref{tab_1} corresponds to the average time of the time span of each observed epoch (typically of about 4 hours, including the geodetic-like blocks in BC264, and 8 hours in RIPL). The integrated flux densities were obtained by fitting the source brightness distribution with a Gaussian model.
\section{Fitting of the Astrometric Data.} \label{sec:procid}
We followed the same fitting procedure presented by \citet[][]{curiel19, curiel20}. We used two astrometric fitting methods: non-linear Least-squares algorithm \citep[][]{curiel19, curiel20} and the asexual genetic algorithm AGA \citep[][]{canto09, curiel11, curiel19, curiel20}.
Both fitting codes include iterative procedures that search for the best fitted solution in a wide range of posible values in the multi-dimensional space of parameters. These iterative procedures help the fitting codes not be trapped in a local minimum, and to find the global minimum. In addition, we fit the data using different initial conditions to confirm that the best fitted solution corresponds to the global minimum solution.
These algorithms can be used to fit absolute astrometric data (e.g., planetary systems), relative astrometric data (e.g., binary systems), and combined (absolute plus relative) astrometric data (e.g., a planetary companion associated to a star in a binary system). To fit the astrometric data, we model the barycentric two-dimensional position of the source as a function of time ($\alpha(t)$, $\delta(t)$), accounting for the (secular) effects of proper motions ($\mu_\alpha$, $\mu_\delta$), accelerations terms ($a_\alpha$, $a_\delta$) due to a possible undetected companion with very long orbital period, the (periodic) effect of the parallax $\Pi$, and the (Keplerian) gravitational perturbation induced on the host star by one or more companions, such as low-mass stars, substellar companions, or planets (mutual interactions between companions are not taken into account). We searched for the best possible model (a.k.a, the closest fit) for a discrete set of observed data points ($\alpha(i)$, $\delta(i)$). The fitted function has several adjustable parameters, whose values are obtained by minimizing a $''$merit function$''$, which measures the agreement between the observed data and the model function. We minimize the $\chi^{2}$ function to obtain the maximum-likelihood estimate of the model parameters that are being fitted \citep[e.g.,][]{curiel19, curiel20}.
We also use the recursive least-squares periodogram method with a circular orbit (RLSCP) presented by \citet[][]{curiel19, curiel20} to search for astrometric signals that indicate the presence of possible companions. We start the search by comparing the least-squares fit of the basic model (proper motions and parallax only) and a one-companion model (proper motions, parallax, and Keplerian orbit of a single companion). If a signal is found, and it is confirmed by the two astrometric fitting models, we remove this signal by comparing the least-squares fits of a one- and a two-companion model (proper motions, parallax, and Keplerian orbits of one and two companions, respectively), and so on.
The RLSCP periodogram follow a Fisher F$-$distribution with $k_{p} – k_{0}$ and $N_{obs} – k_{p}$ degrees of freedom, where $k_{p}$ and $k_{0}$ are the number of parameters that are fitted when the model includes a planetary companion and without a planetary companion, respectively. $N_{obs}$ is the number of observed epochs. Thus, an astrometric signal found in the periodogram indicates a high probability that a planetary companion is orbiting the star.
In addition, we also use the open-source package {\tt lmfit} \citep[][]{newville20}, which uses a non-linear least-squares minimization algorithm to search for the best fit of the observed data. This python package is based on the {\tt scipy.optimize} library \citep[][]{newville20}, and includes several classes of methods for curve fitting, including Levenberg-Marquardt minimization and emcee \citep[][]{foremanmackey13}. In addition, {\tt lmfit} includes methods to calculate confidence intervals for exploring minimization problems where the approximation of estimating parameter uncertainties from the covariance matrix is questionable.
\section{Results} \label{sec:results}
By combining our new data with the VLBA data from the archive \citep[][]{bower09,bower11}, we were able to search for sub-stellar companions associated to the main star GJ~896A in this binary system.
These multi-epoch astrometric observations covered about 5317 days (16.56 yr), with an observational cadence that varies during the time observed. The observations were not spread regularly over the 16.56 years, the gaps between observations ranged from weekly to monthly to 7 years (see Sec.~\ref{sec:obs}).
There are a total of 16 epochs in the analysis presented here. The time span and cadence of the observations are more than adequate to fit the proper motions and the parallax of this binary system, and to search for possible companions with orbital periods between several days and a few years.
In the following sections we present the resulting astrometric parameters for the fit with no companions (Sec.~\ref{sec:ssa}), a fit including a single (new planetary) companion (Sec.~\ref{sec:sca}), the fit of the relative astrometry of the binary (Sec.~\ref{sec:bsys}), a fit combining the absolute and relative astrometry (Sec.~\ref{sec:caf}), and finally a fit combining the absolute and relative astrometry plus a planetary companion (Sec.~\ref{sec:fcaf}).
\subsection{Single-source Astrometry } \label{sec:ssa}
First, both the least-squares and the AGA algorithms were used to fit the proper motions and the parallax of GJ~896A, without taking into account any possible companion. The results of the absolute astrometric fit are shown in column 1 of Table~\ref{tab_2} and Figure~\ref{fig_2}. We find that the residuals are quite large, and present an extended temporal trend that indicates the presence of a companion with an orbital period larger than the time span of the observations.
The recursive least-squares periodogram with a circular orbit (RLSCP) of the astrometric data (see Figure~\ref{fig_3}, top panel) shows a very strong signal that extent beyond the extend of the plot.
A blind search for the orbital period of the signal indicates that the orbital period of this astrometric signal could not be constrained.
This suggests that the signal may be due to a companion with an orbital period much larger than the time span of the observations ($\gg$ 16 yr). As we will see below (see Secs.~\ref{sec:caf} and \ref{sec:fcaf}), this long term signal is due to the gravitational interaction of GJ~896A with its very low-mass stellar companion GJ~896B. Since the orbital period of the binary system ($>$~200 yrs) is much larger than the time span of the VLBA observations ($\sim$16 yrs), the variation trend in the residuals can be taken into account by using accelerations terms in the astrometric fit.
The astrometric data was then fitted with the least-squares and AGA algorithms, including acceleration terms, which take into account the astrometric signature due to the low-mass stellar companion (single-source solution). The results of this single-source solution are shown in column 2 of Table~\ref{tab_2} and Figures~\ref{fig_4}a.
The astrometric solution shows that GJ~896A has proper motions of $\mu_\alpha$ = 574.171 $\pm$ 0.014 mas yr$^{-1}$ and $\mu_\delta$ = $-$60.333 $\pm$ 0.014 mas yr$^{-1}$. The fitted parallax is $\Pi$ = 160.027 $\pm$ 0.094 mas, which corresponds to a distance of 6.2489 $\pm$ 0.0037 pc. These values are similar to those obtained from the astrometric fit where no acceleration terms were taken into account.
The fitted acceleration terms are relatively large ($a_{\alpha}$ = 0.8893 $\pm$ 0.0034 mas yr$^{-2}$ and $a_{\delta}$ = 0.1402 $\pm$ 0.0035 mas yr$^{-2}$). We obtain now a better fit to the astrometric data, with smaller residuals (rms $\sim$ 0.24 mas in both R.A. and Dec.; see column 2 of Table~\ref{tab_2}). The total residuals (rms $\sim$ 0.34) are a factor of 25 smaller than those obtained with the astrometric fit without acceleration terms (rms $\sim$ 8.64).
However, the residuals are large compared to the mean noise present in the data (rms $\sim$0.11 and 0.10 mas for R.A. and Dec., respectively) and the astrometric precision expected with the VLBA ($<$70 $\mu$as). Below we investigate the possibility that these residuals are due to a planetary companion orbiting around GJ~896A.
\subsection{Single-companion Astrometry } \label{sec:sca}
We carried out a RLSCP of the astrometric data, including accelerations terms. The RLSCP shows now at least two significant peaks (see Figure~\ref{fig_3}, middle panel), the most prominent one with a period of about 280 days, and the weaker signal with a period of about 237 days. The stronger signal appears to be well constrained, with a false alarm probability (FAP) of about 0.90\%. This low FAP suggests that the main signal in the periodogram is real and due to the presence of a companion in a compact orbit.
We then used both the least-squares and AGA algorithms to fit the astrometric observations of GJ~896A, now including acceleration terms and a possible single companion in a compact orbit (single-companion solution). The solution of the fit is shown in column 3 of Table~\ref{tab_2} and Figures~\ref{fig_4}b and \ref{fig_5}. The fit of the astrometric data clearly improves when including a companion, as seen by the $\chi^{2}_{red}$. The $\chi^{2}_{red}$ is now a factor 2.4 smaller than that obtained with the single-source solution. Table~\ref{tab_2} and Figure~\ref{fig_4} show that the residuals of the single-companion solution (rms $\sim$0.14) are a factor of 1.7 smaller than in the case of the single-source solution (rms $\sim$0.24).
Column 3 in Table~\ref{tab_2} summarizes the best fit of the VLBA astrometric data, including this new companion in a compact orbit.
The single-companion solution shows that GJ~896A has proper motions of $\mu_\alpha$ = 574.142 $\pm$ 0.019 mas yr$^{-1}$ and $\mu_\delta$ = $-$60.354 $\pm$ 0.020 mas yr$^{-1}$. The fitted parallax is $\Pi$ = 159.83 $\pm$ 0.13 mas, which corresponds to a distance of 6.2565 $\pm$ 0.0051 pc.
The fitted acceleration terms are $a_{\alpha}$ = 0.8871 $\pm$ 0.0047 mas yr$^{-2}$ and $a_{\delta}$ = 0.1400 $\pm$ 0.0049 mas yr$^{-2}$.
These values are similar to those obtained from the single-source solution plus acceleration.
Figure~\ref{fig_5} shows the orbital motion of the star GJ~896A due to the gravitational pull of the companion.
The orbit of the main star around the barycenter has an orbital period $P$ = 281.56 $\pm$ 1.67 days, an eccentricity $e = 0.30 \pm 0.11$, a longitude of the periastron $\omega = 344.0^\circ \pm 13.1^\circ$, a position angle of the line of nodes $\Omega = 47.7^\circ \pm 12.1^\circ$, a semi-major axis $a_{A} = 0.52 \pm 0.11$ mas, and an inclination angle $i = 66.0^\circ \pm 15.0^\circ$, which indicates that the orbit is prograde ($i < 90^\circ$). The orbit of the star around the barycenter due to the companion is well constrained, which is consistent with the narrow signal observed in the periodogram (see Figure~\ref{fig_3}, middle panel). With this astrometric fit alone we can not estimate the mass of the companion. However, we used the estimated mass of the planetary system GJ~896A that we obtain below, using the full combined astrometric fit of this binary system (see Sec.~\ref{sec:fcaf}). Column 3 in Table~\ref{tab_2} summarizes the parameters of the new companion, here after GJ~896A$b$. We find that its mass is 0.00223 $\pm$ 0.00047 M$_\odot$, which is consistent with a planetary companion with a mass of 2.35 $\pm$ 0.49 M$_{J}$. The orbit of the planetary companion around the barycenter has a semi-major axis $a_{b}$ = 0.6352 $\pm$ 0.0018 au (or 101.53 $\pm$ 0.42 mas).
There is an ambiguity with the position angle of the line of nodes between $\Omega$ and $\Omega + 180^{\circ}$. This ambiguity can be solved by radial velocity (RV) observations. However, since this planetary companion has not been detected with RV observations, we will leave the fitted $\Omega$ angle in Table~\ref{tab_2}. We further discuss this ambiguity below (see section~\ref{sec:mutinc}).
The orbit of the planetary companion is well constrained. However, the rms of the residuals ($\sim$0.14 mas) are still large compared to the mean noise present in the data and the astrometric precision expected with the VLBA.
To investigate the possibility of a second possible planetary companion, we obtained a new RLSCP, including acceleration terms and a signal with a period of 281.6 days. The new RLSCP does not show a significant signal (see Figures~\ref{fig_3}, bottom panel).
We also carried out a blind search for a second planetary companion using the least-squares and AGA algorithms. We did not find a possible candidate. We will need further observations to investigate whether or not this source has more planetary companions.
\subsection{Binary-system Astrometry: Relative fit} \label{sec:bsys}
GJ~896AB is a visual binary that contains two M dwarf stars that has been observed in the optical and near infrared for more than 80 yr.
The Washington Double Star \citep[WDS,][]{mason01} Catalog provides separation and position angle measurements of this binary system spanning these decades and go back as far as 1941. Since the stellar companion GJ~896B was detected in two of our recent VLBA observations of this binary system, we include the separation and the position angle of these two epochs in the relative astrometric fit. We performed an astrometric fit to the relative astrometric measurements with both, the least-squares and the AGA algorithms (binary-system solution). Since the WDS catalog does not provide estimated error bars for most of the observed epochs, we applied a null weight to the astrometric fit, which translate into a uniform weight for all the observed epochs.
The results of the binary-system solution are presented in column 1 of Table~\ref{tab_3} and Figure~\ref{fig_6}. We find that the relative astrometric fit of this binary system is well constrained when assuming a circular orbit. When the eccentricity of the binary system is taken into account, the solution does not converge to a stable solution. The orbit of the low-mass stellar companion GJ~896B around the main star GJ~896A has an orbital period $P_{AB}$ = 96606.13 $\pm$ 2.24 days (264.5 yr), a position angle of the line of nodes $\Omega_{AB} = 79.7083^\circ \pm 0.0054^\circ$, a semi-major axis $a_{AB} = 5378.79 \pm 0.51$ mas, and an inclination angle $i_{AB} = 130.6592^\circ \pm 0.0087^\circ$, which indicates that the orbit of the stellar companion is retrograde ($i > 90^\circ$). Using the distance to the source that we obtain from the full combined astrometric fit (see Sec.~\ref{sec:fcaf}), we obtain that the mass and the semi-major axis of this binary system are $m_{AB}$ = 0.544304 M$_\odot$ and a$_{AB}$ = 33.64265 au, respectively.
As it was mentioned before, there is an ambiguity with the position angle of the line of nodes between $\Omega$ and $\Omega + 180^{\circ}$. In this case, the observed RV of the two M dwarfs can be used to find the correct angle.
From the GAIA catalog \citep[][]{lindegren18}, the observed mean radial velocity of GJ~896A is $-0.02 \pm 0.31$ km s$^{-1}$. The GAIA catalog does not contain the radial velocity of GJ~896B. However, recent RV observations of this source indicate that its RV is about 3.34 km s$^{-1}$ \citep[][]{morin08}. This means that GJ~896B is red shifted with respect to GJ~896A. Thus, the position angle of the line of nodes that is consistent with these RVs is $\Omega_{AB} = 259.7083^\circ \pm 0.0054^\circ$.
This correction to the position angle of the line of nodes is applied in all the astrometric fits presented in Table~\ref{tab_3}.
\subsection{Binary-system Astrometry: Combined Astrometric fit} \label{sec:caf}
The optical/infrared relative astrometry of the binary system GJ~896AB \citep[][]{mason01}, obtained in a time interval of about 80 yrs, was also combined with the absolute radio astrometry to simultaneously fit: the orbital motion of the two stars in GJ~896AB; the orbital motion of the planetary companion around GJ~896A (see Sec.~\ref{sec:fcaf}); and the parallax and proper motion of the entire system. However, since most of the relative astrometric observations do not have estimated errors, for the relative astrometry part we carried out a uniform weighted fit (without errors) of the observed data (73 epochs, including the two relative positions of GJ~896B obtained with the VLBA), while for the absolute astrometry of the VLBA observations of the main star GJ~896A (16 epochs) and the secondary star GJ~896B (2 epochs), we applied a weighted fit using the estimated error of the observed position at each epoch.
The results presented here and in Sec.~\ref{sec:fcaf} were obtained by fitting simultaneously the absolute astrometric observations of both stars, and the relative astrometry of this binary system.
The results are limited by: a) the lack of error bars of the relative astrometric data, b) the relative astrometric data covers about 35$\%$ of the orbital period of the binary system ($\sim$229.06 yrs; see Sec.~\ref{sec:fcaf}), and c) the absolute astrometry covers only a time span of about 16.56 yrs. Thus, all errors reported below are statistical only.
Fitting the proper motions and parallax of a binary system is complex due to the orbital motions of each component around the center of mass, especially since both stars have different masses ($m_{B}/m_{A} <$ 1). The proper motion and parallax of a binary system can be obtained with high precision when the orbital period of the system is small compared with the time span of the astrometric observations. In contrast, when the time span of the astrometric observations is small compared with the orbital period of the binary system, it is difficult to separate the orbital motion of each component and the proper motion of the system since both spatial movements are blended. The best way to separate both movements is to simultaneously fit the proper motions, the parallax, and the orbital motion of the binary system. Our combined astrometric fit includes all these components, and thus gives an accurate estimate of the proper motions and the parallax of this binary system.
We carried out a combined fit of the relative and absolute astrometric data and found that the astrometric fit improves substantially. The solution of the combined astrometric fit is similar to that obtained from the relative astrometric fit. However, using the combined astrometric fit, we are able to obtain the parallax and the proper motions of the binary system, as well as improved orbits of the two stars around the center of mass and the masses of the system and the individual stars.
The results of this combined fit are shown in Figures~\ref{fig_7}a and \ref{fig_8}a, and summarized in column 2 of Table~\ref{tab_3}.
Although, Figure~\ref{fig_8}a shows the full combined astrometric solution (including a planetary companion; see Sec~\ref{sec:fcaf}), the solution for the relative astrometric part of the binary system is basically the same as that obtained from the combined astrometric solution (see columns 2 and 3 of Table~\ref{tab_3}). Thus, we present only one figure showing both fits.
In contrast to the case of the relative astrometric fit (see~Sec.~\ref{sec:bsys}), we find here that the combined astrometric fit is well constrained when considering that the orbit of the binary system could be eccentric (e $\ge$ 0). The proper motions of the binary system are $\mu_\alpha$ = 571.515 $\pm$ 0.019 mas yr$^{-1}$ and $\mu_\delta$ = $-$37.750 $\pm$ 0.019 mas yr$^{-1}$. The parallax of the binary system is $\Pi$ = 159.98 $\pm$ 0.14 mas, which corresponds to a distance of 6.2506 $\pm$ 0.0055 pc. The orbit of the binary system has an orbital period $P_{AB}$ = 83665.80 $\pm$ 1.64 days (229.06 yr), a position angle of the line of nodes $\Omega_{AB} = 255.0891^\circ \pm 0.0028^\circ$, a semi-major axis of the binary system $a_{AB} = 5057.96 \pm 0.36$ mas, a semi-major axis of the main source $a_{AB}(A) = 1381.015 \pm 0.069$ mas, and an inclination angle $i_{AB} = 130.0664^\circ \pm 0.0085^\circ$.
The estimated mases of the binary system and the two components are $m_{AB}$ = 0.602253 $\pm$ 0.000020 M$_\odot$, $m_{AB}(A)$ = 0.43782 $\pm$ 0.00054 M$_\odot$, and $m_{AB}(B)$ = 0.16444 $\pm$ 0.00020 M$_\odot$, respectively. The semi-major axis of the binary system and the two stellar components are $a_{AB}$ = 31.615 $\pm$ 0.028, $a_{AB}(A)$ = 8.6322 $\pm$ 0.0075, and $a_{AB}(B)$ = 22.983 $\pm$ 0.020 au, respectively.
Column 2 of Table~\ref{tab_3} indicates that there is a relatively small improvement of about 17\% in the $\chi^{2}_{red}$. This is because the residuals of the relative data of the binary system are much larger that those of the absolute astrometry of the main star, and this dominates the residuals.
However, Table~\ref{tab_3} and Figure~\ref{fig_7} show that the residuals of the relative astrometric data of the binary system from the combined astrometric solution (rms $\sim$116.38 mas) are a factor of 1.3 smaller than in the case of the relative astrometry solution (rms $\sim$152.0 mas).
Thus, the combined astrometric solution is an improvement to the solution obtained from the pure relative astrometric fit.
In addition, the residuals of the absolute astrometric data of the main source GJ~896A (rms $\sim$ 0.27 and 0.47 mas for R.A. and Dec.) are large compared to the mean noise present in the data.
Comparing the residuals that were obtained from the single-source fit (see~Sec.~\ref{sec:ssa}) of the astrometric observations of the main star GJ~896A, including acceleration terms, and the residuals of the combined astrometric fit (see column 2 of Table~\ref{tab_2} and column 2 of Table~\ref{tab_3}, and Figures~\ref{fig_4} and \ref{fig_7}), we find that the rms of the residuals of the absolute astrometry are similar. In addition, we find that the temporal distribution of the residuals are also very similar. However, the residuals of the last three epochs from the combined astrometric fit are considerable larger that those obtained from the single-source plus acceleration fit.
We do not find an explanation for this discrepancy.
But, we notice that two out of these three epochs are the ones where the secondary star was detected, and the coordinates of this star were used in the fit of the relative astrometry of the binary system and in the absolute astrometry fit of the secondary star GJ~896B. Since the secondary star seems to be a close binary (see Secs.~\ref{sec:intro} and ~\ref{sec:pmot}) and it was only detected in two epochs, this probably affects the astrometric fit (see Figure~\ref{fig_7}). Further observations will be needed to improve the astrometric fit of this binary system.
As an independent check of the derived parameters, we performed a combined fit of the astrometric data with the {\tt lmfit} package \citep[][]{newville20}, which uses a non-linear least-squares minimization algorithm to search for the best fit of the observed data (see~Appendix~\ref{sec:mcmc} for further details). We find that the astrometric fit is well constrained, and that the solution and the residuals of the fit are in good agreement with those derived with the combined astrometric fit (see~Sec.~\ref{sec:caf}).
These results suggest that the main star may have at least one companion. Below we investigate further the possibility that these residuals are due to a planetary companion orbiting around the main star GJ~896A (as in the case of the single-companion fit, see Sec.~\ref{sec:sca}).
\subsection{Binary-system plus planet Astrometry: Full Combined Astrometric fit} \label{sec:fcaf}
We carried out a combined astrometric fit of the relative orbit of the binary and the absolute astrometric data of the main and the secondary stars, now including the orbital motion of a possible companion in a compact orbit (full combined astrometric fit), and found that the astrometric fit improves substantially. The results of this full combined astrometric fit are presented in Figures~\ref{fig_7}b, \ref{fig_8} and \ref{fig_9}. We find that the full combined astrometric fit is well constrained. Column 3 of Table~\ref{tab_3} summarizes the best fit parameters of the full combined astrometric fit.
By combining relative and absolute astrometric data of the binary system, we are able to obtain the full dynamical motion of the system, including the close companion.
From the best fit of the full combined astrometric data, we obtained proper motions $\mu_\alpha$ = 571.467$\pm$0.023 mas yr$^{-1}$ and $\mu_\delta$ = $-$37.715$\pm$0.023 mas yr$^{-1}$, and a parallax $\Pi$ = 159.88$\pm$0.17 mas for the binary system (see column 3 of Table~\ref{tab_3}). The estimated proper motions and parallax are very similar to those obtaned from the Combined astrometric fit. However, as expected, the proper motions differ from those obtained by GAIA for both stars GJ~896A and GJ~896B, which where obtained from independent linear fits of both stars \citep[][]{lindegren18}. The parallax, which corresponds to a distance of $d$ = 6.2545$\pm$0.0066 pc, is an improvement to that obtained by GAIA for both stars ($\Pi_{A}$ = 159.663$\pm$0.034 mas, and $\Pi_{B}$ = 159.908$\pm$0.051 mas). The parallax estimated by us is for the binary system, while GAIA's parallaxes are for the individual stars.
The part of the solution that corresponds to the astrometric fit of the binary system is very similar to that obtained from the combined astrometric fit (see columns 2 and 3 of Table~\ref{tab_3}). The fit of the binary system does not improve in this case.
However, the best full combined fit of the astrometric data indicates that the M3.5 dwarf GJ~896A has at least one planetary companion, GJ~896A$b$.
The orbit of the star around the barycenter, due to this planetary companion, has an orbital period $P_{Ab}$ = 284.39 $\pm$ 1.47 days, an eccentricity $e_{Ab} = 0.35 \pm 0.19$, a longitude of the periastron $\omega_{A} = 353.11^\circ \pm 11.81^\circ$, a position angle of the line of nodes $\Omega_{Ab} = 45.62^\circ \pm 9.60^\circ$, a semi-major axis $a_{A} = 0.51 \pm 0.15$ mas, and an inclination angle $i_{Ab} = 69.20^\circ \pm 25.61^\circ$, which indicates that the orbit is well constrained and prograde ($i_{Ab} < 90^\circ$).
However, the rms of the residuals ($\sim$0.21 and $\sim$0.45 mas in R.A and Dec., respectively) are still large compared to the mean noise present in the data ($\sim$0.15 mas) and the astrometric precision expected with the VLBA ($<$70 $\mu$as). This may explain the large errors of the orbital parameters. The large residuals may also indicate the presence of a second planetary companion. We carried out a blind search for a possible astrometric signal due a second planetary companion using the least-squares and the AGA algorithms, however, we did not find a candidate.
Using the fitted solution, we obtain the total mass of the system ($m_{AB}$ = 0.603410$\pm$0.000025 $M_{\odot}$), the masses of the two stars ($m_{AB}(A)$ = 0.43814$\pm$0.00065 $M_{\odot}$ and $m_{AB}(B)$ = 0.16527$\pm$0.00025 $M_{\odot}$). In addition, we find that the mass of the star GJ~896A is $m_{A}$ = 0.43599$\pm$0.00092 $M_{\odot}$, and that the mass of the planetary companion is $m_{b}$ = 0.00216$\pm$0.00064 $M_{\odot}$, which is consistent with being planetary in origin with an estimated mass of 2.26$\pm$0.57 $M_{J}$.
The semi-major axis of the orbit of the binary system is $a_{AB}$ = 31.635 $\pm$ 0.033 au. The semi-major axis of the two stars around the center of mass are $a_{AB}(A)$ = 8.6646 $\pm$ 0.0091 au and $a_{AB}(B)$ = 22.971 $\pm$ 0.024 au, and the semi-major axis of the orbit of the planetary companion is $a_{b}$ = 0.63965 $\pm$ 0.00067 au (or 102.27 $\pm$ 0.15 mas).
This is the first time that a planetary companion of one of the stars in a binary system has been found using the astrometry technique. The solution of the full combined astrometric fit of the planetary companion is similar to that obtained from the single-companion solution (see~Sec.~\ref{sec:sca} and Tables~\ref{tab_2} and \ref{tab_3}).
The fact that the astrometric signal appears in the periodogram of the absolute astrometric observations of GJ~896A, and in both, the single-companion astrometric fit and the full combined astrometric fit obtained, in both cases with two different algorithms (least-squares and AGA), supports the detection of an astrometric signal due to a companion. Furthermore, the similar astrometric fit solution obtained from the single-companion astrometric fit and the full combined astrometric fit further supports the planetary origin of the astrometric signal.
\section{Discussion} \label{sec:discusion}
\subsection{Proper Motions and Orbital Acceleration} \label{sec:pmot}
As mentioned before, the estimation of the proper motions of a binary system is complex due to the orbital motions of each component around the center of mass, specially when both stars have different masses ($m_{B}/m_{A} <$ 1) and the time span of the observations cover only a fraction of the orbital period of the binary system. In such a case, it is difficult to separate the orbital motion of each component and the proper motion of the system, both movements are blended. The best way to separate both movements is to simultaneously fit the proper motions, the parallax, and the orbital motion of the binary system. The full combined astrometric fit that we carried out (see Sec.~\ref{sec:fcaf}) includes all these components, and thus gives good estimates of the proper motion and the orbital motion of the binary system (see Table~\ref{tab_3}).
The full combined astrometric solution (see column 3 of Table~\ref{tab_3}) shows that the orbital motions of the two stars around the center of mass and of the planetary companion GJ~896A$b$ around the main star GJ~896A are well constrained. In addition, we found a similar solution for the orbital motion of the planetary companion using the full combined astrometric fit (see Sec.~\ref{sec:fcaf} and column 3 of Table~\ref{tab_3}) and the single-companion astrometric fit (see Sec.~\ref{sec:sca} and column 3 of Table~\ref{tab_2}). In the former case, the astrometric fit includes intrinsically the orbital motion of GJ~896A around the center of mass of the binary system, while in the latter case, the included acceleration terms take into account this orbital motion.
Tables~\ref{tab_2} and \ref{tab_3} show that the proper motions of the system obtained with the single-source, single-companion and the full combined astrometric fits differ significantly. Here we discuss the origin of this difference.
The single-source astrometric solution gives $\mu_\alpha$ = 576.707 mas yr$^{-1}$ and $\mu_\delta$ = $-$59.973 mas yr$^{-1}$ (see Sec.~\ref{sec:ssa} and column 1 of Table~\ref{tab_2}), where we include only the proper motions and the parallax to the absolute astrometric fit of the main star GJ~896A. Including acceleration terms (single-source plus acceleration astrometric solution), to take into account the orbital motion of the binary system, the estimated proper motions of the system are $\mu_\alpha$ = 574.171 mas yr$^{-1}$ and $\mu_\delta$ = $-$60.333 mas yr$^{-1}$ (see Sec.~\ref{sec:sca} and column 2 of Table~\ref{tab_2}).
On the other hand, from the full combined astrometric solution, the proper motions of the system are $\mu_\alpha$ = 571.467 mas yr$^{-1}$ and $\mu_\delta$ = $-$37.715 mas yr$^{-1}$ (see Sec.~\ref{sec:fcaf} and column 3 of Table~\ref{tab_3}).
The absolute astrometric solutions presented in Table~\ref{tab_2} show that by including the acceleration terms in the fit, we improve the estimated proper motions of the system, and that the inclusion of an astrometric signal due to a companion in the fit does not affect the estimation of the proper motions and the estimated acceleration terms.
Comparing the single-source and the full combined astrometric solutions, we find a significative difference in the estimated proper motions, particularly in the north-south direction ($\Delta\mu_\alpha$ = 5.24 mas yr$^{-1}$ and $\Delta\mu_\delta$ = $-$22.26 mas yr$^{-1}$).
This is consistent with the fact that the VLBA astrometric observations of GJ~896A were obtained when the source was crossing the ascending node of the binary orbit and mainly in the north-south direction (see discussion below, and Figures~\ref{fig_8} and \ref{fig_9}).
These results indicate that the orbital motion of GJ~896A around the center of mass of the system blends with the proper motions of the binary system, and in second order with the acceleration terms included in the absolute astrometric fit. Thus, we conclude that the best estimates of the proper motions of this binary system are those obtained with the full combined astrometric fit (see Table~\ref{tab_3}).
We can also obtain an estimation of the velocity on the plane of the sky of the center of mass $\mu(CM)$ of this binary system, as follows:
\begin{equation}
\mu_{\alpha}(A) = \mu_{\alpha}(CM) + v_{\alpha}(A), \\
\end{equation}
\begin{equation}
\mu_{\delta}(A) = \mu_{\delta}(CM) + v_{\delta}(A),
\end{equation}
\noindent
and
\begin{equation}
v_{\alpha}(A) = (2 \pi a_{A}/P_{AB}) \times sin(\theta_{rot}) \times cos(\phi),
\end{equation}
\begin{equation}
v_{\delta}(A) = (2 \pi a_{A}/P_{AB}) \times cos(\theta_{rot}) \times cos(\phi),
\end{equation}
\noindent
where $\mu_{\alpha}(A)$ and $\mu_{\delta}(A)$ are the observed proper motion of the main source GJ~896A (single-source solution; see column 1 of Table~\ref{tab_2}), $\mu_{\alpha}(CM)$ and $\mu_{\delta}(CM)$ are the proper motions of the center of mass of the binary system, $v_{\alpha}(A)$ and $v_{\delta}(A)$ are the projected rotational velocity of GJ~896A on its orbital motion around the center of mass, $a_{A}$ is semi-major axis of the orbital motion of GJ~896A around the center of mass, P$_{AB}$ is the orbital period of the binary system, $\theta_{rot}$ $\approx$ $\Omega_{AB} - 90^\circ$ is the position angle of the projected rotation velocity (tangential velocity) of GJ~896A around the center of mass of the system (see Figures~\ref{fig_8}b and \ref{fig_9}), $\phi = 180^{\circ} - i_{AB}$ is the complementary angle of the orbital plane of the binary system, and $ i_{AB}$ is the fitted inclination angle of the orbital plane of the binary system (see column 3 of Table~\ref{tab_3}). Using the fitted parameters presented in column 1 of Table~\ref{tab_2} and column 3 of Table~\ref{tab_3}, $\mu_{\alpha}(A)$ = 576.707 mas yr$^{-1}$ and $\mu_{\delta}(A)$ = $-$59.973 mas yr$^{-1}$ ($\mu_{A}$ = 579.8170 mas yr$^{-1}$ with PA = 95.94$^\circ$), we obtain $v_{\alpha}(A)$ = 6.2925 mas yr$^{-1}$ and $v_{\delta}(A)$ = $-$23.6355 mas yr$^{-1}$ ($v_{rot}$ = 24.4588 mas yr$^{-1}$ with PA = 165.09$^\circ$), and thus $\mu_{\alpha}(CM)$ = 570.4145 mas yr$^{-1}$ and $\mu_{\delta}(CM)$ = $-$36.3375 mas yr$^{-1}$ ($\mu(CM)$ = 571.5707 mas yr$^{-1}$ with PA = 93.65$^{\circ}$). We find that the estimated proper motions of the center of mass are very similar to those obtained with the full combined astrometric fit $\mu_{\alpha}$ = 571.467 mas yr$^{-1}$ and $\mu_{\delta}$ = $-$37.715 mas yr$^{-1}$ ($\mu$ = 572.72 mas yr$^{-1}$ with PA = 93.79$^\circ$; see Table~\ref{tab_3}). The difference in the estimated proper motions of the center of mass is about 1 mas yr$^{-1}$.
This further confirms that the full combined astrometric fit gives the best estimate for the proper motions of the center of mass of a binary system.
We can estimate the acceleration, $acc(A)$, of GJ~896A due to the gravitational pull of the low-mass stellar companion GJ~896B, as follows:
\begin{equation}
acc(A) = (2\pi/P_{AB})^{2} a_{A},
\end{equation}
\noindent
where $acc(A)$ is the mean acceleration of GJ~896A, $P_{AB}$ is the orbital period of the binary system, and $a_{A}$ is the semi-major axis of the orbital motion of GJ~896A around the center of mass. Using the full combined solution (see column 3 of Table~\ref{tab_3}), we obtain that $acc(A)$ $\simeq$ 1.04234 mas yr$^{-2}$. In the case of the single-companion solution (see column 3 of Table~\ref{tab_2}), the fitted acceleration terms are $a_\alpha$ = 0.8873 mas yr$^{-2}$ and $a_\delta$ = 0.1402 mas yr$^{-2}$ , and thus the acceleration of the main star in the plane of the sky is $acc(A)$ = $\sqrt{a_\alpha ^{2} + a_\delta^{2}}$ = 0.89831 mas yr$^{-2}$.
Thus, the estimated acceleration of GJ~896A due to GJ~896B is consistent with the acceleration found in the single-companion astrometric fit.
The acceleration $acc(A)$ obtained from the single-source astrometric fit of the VLBA data allows us to place a mass estimate for the stellar companion, $m_{B}$, using
\begin{equation}
\left(\frac{m_{B}}{M_\odot}\right) = 0.02533 \left(\frac{acc(A)}{AU yr^{-2}}\right) \left(\frac{a_{AB}}{AU}\right)^{2},
\end{equation}
\noindent
or
\begin{equation}
\left(\frac{m_{B}}{M_\odot}\right) = 0.29368 \left[\left(\frac{acc(A)}{AU yr^{-2}}\right) \left(\frac{a_{A}}{AU}\right)^{2} \left(\frac{M_{AB}}{M_\odot}\right)^{2} \right]^{1/3},
\end{equation}
\noindent
where $acc(A)$ = $\sqrt{a_{\alpha}^{2} + a_{\delta}^{2}}$ is the estimated acceleration needed to fit the absolute astrometric data (see column 3 of Table~\ref{tab_2}), $a_{AB}$ = $a_{A}$ + $a_{B}$ is the semi-major axis of the orbit of GJ~896B around GJ~896A, and m$_{AB}$ is the total mass of the binary system (see column 3 of Table~\ref{tab_3}).
From equation~7 we find that the estimated mass of the stellar companion GJ~896B is $m_{B}$ $\approx$ 0.15728 M$\odot$. This estimated mass is consistent with the mass of the stellar companion ($m_{B}$ = 0.16527 M$\odot$) obtained from the full combined astrometric fit (see column 3 of Table~\ref{tab_3}).
\subsection{Expected Radial Velocities} \label{sec:radvel}
The solution of the full combined astrometric fit can be used to estimate an expected induced maximum RV of the star due to the gravitational pull of a companion as follows \citep[e.g.,][]{canto09,curiel20}:
\begin{equation}
K =\left(\frac{2 \pi G}{T}\right)^{1/3} \frac{m_{c} sin(i)} {(M_{*} + m_{c})^{2/3}} \frac{1} {\sqrt{1 - e^{2}}},
\end{equation}
\noindent
where G is the gravitational constant, and $T$, $M_{*}$, $m_{c}$, and $e$ are the estimated orbital period, star and companion masses, and the eccentricity of the orbit of the companion. Using the full combined astrometric solution (see column 3 of Table~\ref{tab_3}),
the maximum RV of GJ~896A induced by the planetary companion GJ~896A$b$ is $K_{A}(b)$ $\sim$ 121 m s$^{-1}$, and the maximum RV induced by the stellar companion GJ~896B is $K_{A}(B)$ $\sim$ 867 m s$^{-1}$.
These RVs can in principle be observed with modern high-spectral resolution spectrographs.
The maximum radial velocity of both stars occurred in October 2013, when GJ~896A and GJ~896B passed through the ascending and descending nodes, respectively, of their orbits around the center of mass of the binary system (see Figure~\ref{fig_8}).
The RV signal due to GJ~896A$b$ can be measured with modern high-spectral resolution spectrographs on a time span shorter than one year.
Recent radial velocity observations of GJ~896A show a radial velocity variability of $\Delta V$ $\sim$ 175$\pm$37 m s$^{-1}$ \citep[e.g.,][]{gagne16}, which is consistent with the expected radial velocity of this source, induced by the planetary companion GJ~896A$b$. However, these observations were taken in just 7 epochs within a time span of about 4 years. Further observations will be needed to confirm whether the RV variability observed on GJ~896A is due to this planetary companion.
The RV signal of GJ~896A (and GJ~896B) due to the stellar companion will be difficult to measure due to the binary's very long orbital period of 229.06 yr. It will be very difficult to separate this signal from the systemic velocity $V_{0}$ of the binary system. However, we can use the observed mean RV of GJ~896A \citep[][]{lindegren18}, and the estimated maximum RV of this star due to its stellar companion to obtain a raw estimate of the systemic radial velocity of the binary system, as follows:
\begin{equation}
V_{obs}(A) = K_{A}(B) + V_{0},
\end{equation}
\noindent
where $V_{obs}$ is the observed radial velocity, $K_{A}(B)$ is the expected maximum RV of GJ~896A due to GJ~896B, and $V_{0}$ is the barycentric RV of the binary system. From the GAIA catalog, the observed radial velocity of GJ~896A is $V_{obs}(A)$ = $-$0.02$\pm$0.31 km s$^{-1}$ \citep[][]{lindegren18}. Since these RV observations of GJ~896A were take in a time span of about 2 years, the RV signal from GJ~896A$b$ is averaged out in this mean radial velocity. The reference epoch of the GAIA DR2 observations is J2015.5, which is close to orbital location where the radial velocity of GJ~896A is maximum and negative (see Figure~\ref{fig_8}).
Thus, $K_{A}(B)$ = $-$867 m s$^{-1}$, and the resulting barycentric RV of the binary system is $V_{0}$ $\sim$ 847 m s$^{-1}$.
A similar calculation can be carried out for GJ~896B. In this case, the observed RV is $V_{obs}(B)$ = 3340 m s$^{-1}$ \citep[][]{morin08}, which was obtained also close to the maximum RV of this star. The reference epoch of the RV observations is 2006.0, which is close to orbital location where the radial velocity of GJ~896B is maximum and positive (see Figure~\ref{fig_8}). We estimate that the maximum RV of GJ~896B induced by the main star GJ~896A is $K_{B}(A)$ $\sim$ 2299 m s$^{-1}$. Thus, in this case we obtain a barycenter RV of $V_{0}$ $\sim$ 1041 m s$^{-1}$. This barycentric RV is different to that obtained from the RV observation of GJ~896A (847 m s$^{-1}$). There is a difference of about 194 m s$^{-1}$. The RV measurements of GJ~896B were obtained in a time period of only a few days, and therefore, the observed RV would include the contribution due to possible companions associated to this M4.5 dwarf.
This suggests that GJ~896B may have at least one companion. Such radial velocity signature should be easily detected using modern high-spectral resolution spectrographs. Recent observations also suggest that the M4.5 dwarf GJ~896B may be an unresolved binary system \citep[][]{winters21}. Further observations will show whether this very low mass M dwarf star has a companion.
\subsection{Habitable zone and Snow Line}
A simple estimate of the habitable zone (HZ) can be obtained as follows. The inner and outer boundaries of the HZ around a star depends mainly on the stellar luminosity. Thus, combining the distance dependence of the HZ as function of the luminosity of the star and the mass-luminosity relation, the inner $a_{i}$ and outer $a_{o}$ radius of the HZ are:
\begin{equation}
a_{i} = \sqrt{ \left(\frac{L_\star}{L_\odot}\right) \frac{ 1}{ 1.1}},
~~~~~ a_{o} = \sqrt{ \left(\frac{L_\star}{L_\odot}\right) \frac{ 1}{ 0.53}}
\end{equation}
\noindent
\citep[e.g.,][]{selsis07, kopparapu13}, where $L_{\star}$ is the luminosity of the star in solar luminosities. In the case of M dwarfs with masses below 0.43 M$_\odot$, the mass-stellar luminosity relation can be approximated as:
\begin{equation}
\left(\frac{L_\star}{L_\odot}\right) = 0.23 \times \left(\frac{M_\star}{M_\odot}\right)^{2.3}
\end{equation}
\noindent
\citep[e.g.,][]{kuiper38, duric12}, where $M_{\star}$ is the mass of the star in solar masses. Using the estimated mass of GJ~896A ($m_{A}$ = 0.436 M$\odot$ ; see Table~\ref{tab_3}), the limits of the habitable zone around this M3.5 dwarf are $a_{i}$ $\sim$ 0.18 au and $a_{o}$ $\sim$ 0.26 au. This is considerably smaller than the semi-major axis of the orbit of the planetary companion GJ~896A$b$ ($a_{b}$ = 0.6397 au). Since the planetary companion is in an eccentric orbit ($e_{b}$ = 0.35), the minimum and maximum distance between the planet and the star are 0.42 and 0.86 au, respectively. Thus, the orbit of the planet lyes outside the habitable zone of this M3.5 dwarf star.
We can also estimate if the planetary companion GJ~896A$b$ is located inside the snow line, $a_{snow}$. The snow line is located at an approximate distance of \citep[e.g.,][]{kennedy08}
\begin{equation}
a_{snow} = 2.7 \left(\frac{M_\star}{M_\odot}\right)^{2}.
\end{equation}
\noindent
Using the estimated mass of GJ~896A, the snow line in this planetary system is located at a radius of $a_{snow}$ $\sim$ 0.51 au. Thus the estimated orbit of the planetary companion GJ~896A$b$ is located outside the snow line.
However, given the eccentricity of the orbit, the planet moves around the estimated snow line distance, but most of the time is located outside the snow line.
Recent results suggest that stars with a mass of about 0.4 $M_{\odot}$, such as GJ~896A, have a 1\% probability of having at least one Jovian planet \citep[e.g.,][]{kennedy08}. Even when the probability of having a Jovian planet is very low, the results presented here show that the main star GJ~896A in the M-dwarf binary system GJ~896AB has at least one Jupiter-like planet.
\subsection{Flux variability of the source.}
The radio continuum flux density of GJ~896A is clearly variable in time. Figure~\ref{fig_10} shows that the source goes through a large variability in short periods of time. The flux variability does not seem to have a clear pattern. The flux density of the source has changed in nearly two orders of magnitud during the last 16 years of the radio observations, with variations at scales of months and at scales of a few years. However, further observations will be required to find if the variability has a defined temporal period.
\subsection{Mutual Inclination Angle} \label{sec:mutinc}
Characterizing the full 3-D orbital architecture of binary systems containing a planetary companion can aid to investigate the importance of the star-star and star-planet mutual interaction.
Combining relative and absolute astrometric data of the binary system, we are able to obtain the 3-D orbital architecture of the system, including the planetary companion (see Figure~\ref{fig_9}).
Since the full combined astrometric fit (relative plus absolute astrometry) provides the inclination angle and the position angle of the line of nodes of the orbital planes of both the planetary companion GJ~896$b$ and the binary system GJ~896AB, we can directly measure the mutual inclination angle of this system.
A first approach would be to estimate the inclination difference ($\Delta i$) between the inclination angles of the orbital planes of the planet and the binary system, assuming that their position angle of the line of nodes is equal to 0$^{\circ}$. The inclination angles are measured with respect to the plane of the sky (such that $i$=0$^{\circ}$ corresponds to a face-on orbit, and it increases from the East toward the observer). Using the fitted inclination angles we obtain that $\Delta i =$ 60.9$^{\circ}$$\pm$22.5$^{\circ}$ (see Table~\ref{tab_3} and Figure~\ref{fig_9}), which is a very large difference.
The mutual inclination angle $\Phi$ between the two orbital planes can be determined through
\citep[e.g.,][]{kopal59, muterspaugh06}:
\begin{equation}
cos~\Phi = cos~i_{Ab} ~cos~i_{AB} + sin~i_{Ab} ~sin~i_{AB} ~cos(\Omega_{Ab} - \Omega_{AB}),
\end{equation}
\noindent
where $i_{Ab}$ and $i_{AB}$ are the orbital inclination angles, and $\Omega_{Ab}$ and $\Omega_{AB}$ are the position angles of the line of nodes. The position angle of the line of nodes is measured anti-clockwise from the North toward the ascending node.
Table~\ref{tab_3} contains the inclination angle and the position angle of the line of nodes for the planet GJ~896A$b$ and the binary system GJ~896AB.
There is an ambiguity in the position angles of the line of nodes ($\Omega$ or $\Omega$ + 180$^{\circ}$, where $\Omega$ is the fitted angle), which can be disentangled by RV measurements. For the orbital motion of the binary system, recent RV measurements of both stellar components show that GJ~896B is receding ($V_{obs}(B)$ = $+$3.34 km s$^{-1}$; \citet[][]{morin08}) and GJ~896A is approaching to us ($V_{obs}(A)$ = $-$0.02$\pm$0.31 km s$^{-1}$; \citet[][]{lindegren18}), thus the correct position angle of the line of nodes is $\Omega_{AB}$ = 255.09$^{\circ}$ ($\Omega_{AB}$ + 180$^{\circ}$) (see Table~\ref{tab_3}).
However, the planetary companion has no measured RV, so the fitted value of the position angle of the line of nodes of the orbital plane of GJ~896A$b$ could be either $\Omega_{Ab}$ = 45.6$^{\circ}$ or 225.6$^{\circ}$, the former is the fitted angle.
From these position angles we calculate a mutual inclination angle between the two orbital planes of $\Phi$ = 148$^\circ$ for the fitted $\Omega_{Ab}$, and $\Phi$ = 67$^\circ$ for the second possibility ($\Omega_{Ab}$ + 180$^{\circ}$).
Taking into account the long term stability of the system (see Sec.~\ref{sec:orbitstab}), we found that the former solution ($\Phi$ = 148$^\circ$) is stable in a very long period of time, while the latter solution ($\Phi$ = 67$^\circ$) is unstable in a short period of time.
This result indicates that there is a large mutual inclination angle of $\Phi$ = 148$^\circ$ between both orbital planes.
Recent observations suggest that the rotation axis of GJ~896A has an inclination angle of about 60$^{\circ}$$\pm$20$^{\circ}$ with respect to the line of sight \citep[][]{morin08}, and thus, an inclination angle of $i_{s}$ $\sim$ 210$^{\circ}$ with respect to the plane of the sky (see Figure~\ref{fig_9}). On the other hand, the inclination angle of the rotation axis of the orbital motion of GJ~896A$b$ is $i_{p}$ = 159.2$^{\circ}$$\pm$25.61$^{\circ}$ ($i_{b}$ + 90$^{\circ}$).
Thus these rotation planes have a difference in their inclination angles of $\Delta_{s-p}$ $\sim$ 51$^{\circ}$ (see Figure~\ref{fig_9}).
This indicates that the orbital motion of the planetary companion and the rotation plane of the star are far from being coplanar.
We can also compare the angle of the rotation axis of the host star GJ~896A and the inclination angle, $i_{bs}$, of the rotation axis of orbital motion of the binary system GJ~896AB. In this case the inclination angle is $i_{bs}$ = 220.065$^{\circ}$$\pm$0.010$^{\circ}$ ($i_{AB}$ + 90$^{\circ}$). Thus the rotation planes of the star GJ~896A and the binary system have a difference in their inclination angles of $\Delta i_{bs-s}$ $\sim$ 10$^{\circ}$.
In addition, the rotation axis of GJ~896B, with respect to the line of sight, is also about 60$^{\circ}$$\pm$20$^{\circ}$ \citep[][]{morin08}, which is basically the same as that of GJ~896A, and thus, the difference between the inclination angle of the rotation axis of GJ~896B, with respect of the plane of the sky, compared with the rotation axis of the binary system is the same as that found for the star GJ~896A ($\sim$ 10$^{\circ}$). Thus, this suggests that the rotation planes of both stars are nearly parallel to the orbital plane of the binary system ($\Delta i$ $\sim$ 10$^{\circ}$), while the orbital planes of the planet and the binary system have a mutual inclination angle of $\Phi$ $\simeq$ 148$^{\circ}$. However, having similar inclination angles does not necessarily imply alignment between the rotation axis of both stars since the position angles of the line of nodes are unknown. The rotation axis of the stars could be different, and thus, they could have larger and different mutual inclination angles with respect to the orbital plane of the binary system.
\subsection{Orbital Stability} \label{sec:orbitstab}
We applied direct N-body integrations to the full combined orbital solution obtained from the Keplerian orbits of the binary system GJ~896AB and the planetary companion GJ~896A$b$ (see Table~\ref{tab_3}). We integrated the orbits for at least 100 Myrs using the hybrid integrator in Mercury~6 \citep[][]{chambers99}, which uses a mixed-variable symplectic integrator \citep[][]{wisdom91} with a time step approximately equal to a hundredth ($\simeq 1/100$) of the Keplerian orbital period of the planetary companion. During close encounters, Mercury uses a Bulrich-Stoer integrator with an accuracy of $10^{-12}$. We identify an unstable system if: a) the two companions (the planetary companion and low-mass stellar companion) collide; b) the planet is accreted onto the star (astrocentric distance less than 0.003 au); and c) the planet is ejected from the system (astrocentric distance exceeds 200 au).
The integration time of 100 Myrs long exceeds the 10,000 binary periods that is considered as a stability criterion.
The simulation using the fitted Keplerian orbital parameters proved to be stable for at least 100 Myrs. However, the simulation of the alternative position angle of the line of nodes of the planetary orbit ($\Omega = \Omega_{Ab} + 180^{\circ}$) turned out to be unstable in very short times, the planet collided with the host star GJ~896A after a few tens of thousand years. In this case, the eccentricity of the planetary orbit increases rapidly due to the interaction between the stellar companion and the planet. After a few tens of thousand years the eccentricity reaches an extreme value of 1, and thus, the planet collides against the main star. This indicates that the fitted solution contains the correct angle of the line of nodes of the planetary orbit.
To complement our stability analysis, we also performed N-body long-term integrations using REBOUND \citep[][]{rein12}. We tested the combined orbital solutions using two different integrators: IAS15 \citep[][]{rein15} and Mercurius \citep[][]{rein19}. The first one is a 15th order high-precision non-symplectic integrator. The second one is a hybrid symplectic integrator. These two integrators allow us to corroborate the results obtained with Mercury 6. For both integrators, we integrate over 10,000 orbits of the binary system GJ~896AB using 20,000 points per orbital period (i.e., one sampling point every ~4 days). This allows us to monitor the changes in the orbital parameters of the planet GJ~896A$b$ with reliable accuracy. Both, the best-fit solution reported in Table~\ref{tab_3} and the complementary one with $\Omega$ = $\Omega_{Ab}$ + 180$^{\circ}$ were tested. Our results are in agreement with those obtained with Mercury 6. Our best-fit solution is stable over the whole integration time, while the alternative solution becomes unstable in a short period of time.
A detailed discussion about the 3D orbital stability of this binary system is out of the scope of this paper and it will be presented elsewhere.
\subsection{Binary System Formation and Stability} \label{sec:binaryform}
The present separation between the two stars ($\sim$31.64 au) in this binary system suggests that they were most likely formed in a massive accretion disk by disk fragmentation, and not by turbulent fragmentation of the original molecular core. Binary systems formed by turbulent fragmentation are expected to have separations of hundreds, or even thousands, of au, which better explain the formation of binary systems with wide orbits \citep[e.g.,][]{offner16}. On the other hand, in the case of disk fragmentation, the lower mass stellar companion is formed in the outer parts of the disk (probably at a distance of a few hundred au) and then, during the early evolution of the binary system, the stellar companion migrates inwards to a closer orbit \citep[e.g.,][]{tobin16}. The apparently similar spin angles of the two stars ($\sim$ 210$^{\circ}$), and the relatively small, but significant, difference between the spin axis of both stars and the rotation axis of the binary system ($\ga$ 10$^{\circ}$), are consistent with this formation mechanism.
Since we do not know the position angles of the line of nodes of the rotation plane of both stars, it is possible that the rotation planes are not coplanar, and thus, they probably have different mutual inclination angles with respect to the orbital plane of the binary system.
Either way, the difference in the inclination angle between the spin axis of the stars and the orbital axis of the binary system ($\ga$ 10$^\circ$) suggests that during the evolution of this binary system, the star-star interaction between both stars may have significantly changed the orientation of the rotation axes of both stars.
In addition, the large mutual inclination angle ($\Phi$ = 148$^\circ$) that we find between the orbital planes of the planetary companion GJ~896A$b$ and the binary system GJ~896AB indicates that something changed the orientation of the orbital plane of the planet, probably from initially being coplanar to be in a retrograde configuration at present time. The most likely origin of this large mutual inclination angle is the star-planet interaction, where the low mass stellar companion GJ~896B produces some important torque over the orbit of the planetary companion of GJ~896A.
Recent studies have shown that in the case of planet-planet interaction (planetary systems with at least one external Jovian planet), the mutual inclination angles are $\la$10$^{\circ}$ \citep[see, e.g.,][]{laughlin02}. In a few cases there is evidence of an inclination between the orbits of the planets of up to $\sim$40$^{\circ}$ \citep[see, e.g.,][]{mcarthur10, dawson14, mills17}. However, since these studies are based on planetary systems detected with the RV and/or transit techniques, they lack of information about the position angle of the line of nodes, and thus, the mutual inclination angles calculated this way are lower limits. In addition, according to the catalogue of Exoplanets in Binary Systems \citep[][]{schwarz16},
160 planets have been found associated with 111 binary systems, 79 of which are in S-type orbits \citep[i.e., the planet is orbiting one of the stars; see, also][]{marzari19}. Most of these planets were found using RV and transit techniques, and some of the other planets were found using other techniques, such as imaging and microlensing. In all of them, some of the orbital parameters are missing, in particular, the position angle of the line of nodes of the orbital plane has not being obtained, and in several cases, the inclination angle is also unknown.
This is the first time that the remarkable full 3-D orbital architecture of a binary-planetary system has been determined.
\subsection{Planetary origin of the astrometric signal.}
The presence of a Jovian planet associated to the main star in a binary system, such as the one we present here, would produce secular perturbations on the lower mass stellar companion. Such interaction would produce long-term periodic variations in the orbital motion of the secondary (including the eccentricity and the inclination angle), as well as in the orbital parameters of the planetary companion.
Given the orbital period of about 229 yrs of this binary system, several decades of absolute and relative astrometric observations of the binary system are probably needed to fully constrain the orbital motion of the binary system.
As we have mentioned above, we are limited by the time span of the astrometric observations we present here (80 years for the relative astrometry and 16.6 yrs in the case of the absolute astrometry), which is much smaller than the orbital period of the binary system.
However, in the analysis we present here, we show that by combining the absolute astrometric observations of the primary and the secondary stars, as well as the relative astrometry of the binary system, in the astrometric fit, the orbital motion of the binary system and the planetary companion are well constrained.
We have found that the orbits of the binary system and the planetary companion are somewhat eccentric.
A similar astrometric signal due the planetary companion was found using different methods.
We obtained a similar astrometric signal using both the periodogram of the astrometric data, and the single-companion astrometric fits of the absolute astrometric data obtained with two different algorithms (least-squares and AGA). This indicates that the astrometric signal is real. The detection of a similar astrometric signal with the full combined astrometric fit (relative plus absolute astrometry) further support the detection of the astrometric signal.
In addition, we complemented the analysis of the astrometric observations with the non-linear least squares minimization package {\tt lmfit} \citep[][]{newville20}, finding a similar astrometric solution (see Appendix).
This strongly indicates that the astrometric signal is real. Furthermore, the fact that the astrometric solution from the different methods is similar indicates that the astrometric signal is consistent with the companion being planetary in origin.
A detailed study of the stability of the orbital motions in this system can give important information about the star-star and star-planet interactions. A detailed discussion about the 3D orbital stability of this binary system is out of the scope of this paper and it will be presented elsewhere.
The astrometric signal that we find is consistent with a planetary companion associated to the M3.5 Dwarf GJ~896A. However, this astrometric signal could be contaminated by the expected astrophysical $``$jitter$"$ added to the true source position due to stellar activity. It has been estimated that GJ~896A has a radius of $\sim$0.35 $R_\odot$ \citep[e.g.,][]{morin08, pearce20}. Thus, the radius of GJ~896A at a distance of 6.2567 pc is about 0.260 mas. This result indicates that the astrometric signal due to the planetary companion (0.51 mas) is about twice the radius of the host star. In addition, assuming that the radio emission originates within $\sim$0.194 stellar radius above the photosphere \citep[e.g.,][]{liefke08, crosley18a}, the size of the expected $``$jitter$"$ is about 0.31 mas.
However, the analysis that we carried out for the variability of the radio emission of the main star GJ~896A shows that the $``$flares$"$ seen in several of the observed epochs contribute only with less that 0.12 mas to the expected $``$jitter$"$ (see Appendix~\ref{sec:flares} and panels (d) in Figure~\ref{fig_flares}), compared to the expected 0.31 mas contribution to the $``$jitter$"$ that we have estimated here. Thus, the expected $``$jitter$"$ due to the variability of the star is about a factor of 4.3 smaller than the astrometric signal of 0.51 mas observed in GJ~896A (see Table~\ref{tab_3}).
This result supports the detection of the planetary companion GJ~896A$b$.
To further investigate the validity of the planetary astrometric signal, we have applied several statistical tests comparing the astrometric solutions obtained without and with a planetary companion (see Table~\ref{tab_2}). The solutions of the best astrometric fits show that when a planetary companion is not included the residuals of the fit have a rms scatter of 0.34 mas and a $\chi^2$ = 190.91, compared to a rms scatter of 0.20 mas and $\chi^2$ = 57.41 when the planetary companion is included in the fit. An F-test shows that the probability of the $\chi^2$ dropping that much (due to the inclusion of the planetary companion) is less than 4\% by mere fluctuations of noise. Using the Bayesian Information Criterion (BIC), we find that the inclusion of the planetary companion is preferred with a $\Delta$BIC = $-$109.24, this is a significant difference between our best fit model with the planetary companion and the one without it. Statistically, an absolute value of Delta BIC of more than ten implies that the model with the planetary companion better reproduces the data without overfitting it by including more free parameters in the model. Similar results were obtained using the Akaike Information Criterion (AIC) with a $\Delta$AIC = $-$119.50. We therefore conclude that there is a very high probability that the planetary companion GJ~896Ab is orbiting the main star GJ~896A.
The large proper motions of the binary system may also contribute to the expected $``$jitter$"$ of the star. The change in position of GJ~896A due to the proper motions of the binary system, $\Delta_{PM}(A)$ in mas, can be estimated by:
\begin{equation}
\Delta_{PM}(A) = \sqrt{\mu_\alpha^{2} + \mu_\delta^{2}} \times \left(\delta t / 8766\right),
\end{equation}
\noindent
where $\delta t$ is the time span of each observed epoch in hours (between 3 and 5 hours on source). Using the estimated proper motions of the binary system ($\mu$ = 572.71 mas yr$^{-1}$), we obtain that the maximum expected contribution to the $``$jitter$"$ by the proper motions of the system is $\Delta_{PM}(A)$ = 0.16 mas in a time span of 2.5 hours (half the observing time), which is about three times smaller than the observed astrometric signal. We also obtain that the contribution of the orbital motion of GJ~896A around the center of mass to the expected $``$jitter$"$ of the star (about 0.009 mas in a time span of 2.5 hours) is smaller than that estimated from the proper motions of the star. Adding in quadrature all these possible contributions, the total expected $``$jitter$"$ is about 0.2 mas, which is still about a factor of 2.6 smaller than the astrometric signal due to the planetary companion GJ~896A$b$. The highest contribution to the expected $``$jitter$"$ is that due to the proper motions of the star.
However, the astrometric signal is observed in both direction (R.A. and Dec.), while the proper motion of the star is basically in the east direction. In addition, the contribution of the proper motions of the star to the expected $``$jitter$"$ probably averages out when we integrate over the time span of the observations. In addition, given the synthesized beam of the images (about 2.7$\times$1.1 mas, in average), the magnitude of the proper motions is in fact too small to even affect the estimated size of the source. This suggests that the contribution of the proper motions to the expected $``$jitter$"$ is probably much smaller than we have estimated here. Thus, the expected $``$jitter$"$ that we estimate here is most likely an upper limit.
This further indicates that the astrometric signal is real, and planetary in origin.
\section{Conclusions and Final Remarks} \label{sec:conclusions}
The combined (relative plus absolute) fit of the astrometric observations of this binary system show that the main star GJ~896A has at least one planetary companion.
This is the first time that a planetary companion of one of the stars in a binary system has been found using the astrometry technique.
The astrometric solution indicates that the planetary companion has an orbital period of 284.39 $\pm$ 1.47 days, an estimated mass of 2.26 $\pm$ 0.57 M$_{J}$, a relatively eccentric orbit ($e_{Ab}$ = 0.35 $\pm$ 0.19), and a semi-major axis of $a_{b}$ = 0.63965 $\pm$ 0.00067 au (or 102.27 $\pm$ 0.15 mas). In addition, the full combined astrometric fit also shows that the binary system has an estimated orbital period of 83664.63 $\pm$ 1.98 days (or 229.06 yrs), and the two stars have estimated masses of $m_{AB}$ = 0.603410 $\pm$ 0.000025 $M_{\odot}$,
$m_{AB}(A)$ = 0.43814 $\pm$ 0.00065 $M_{\odot}$
and $m_{AB}(B)$ = 0.16527 $\pm$ 0.00025 $M_{\odot}$, respectively. The astrometric solution also indicates that the binary system and the stars have semi-major axis of $a_{AB}$ = 31.635 $\pm$ 0.033 au, $a_{AB}(A)$ = 8.6646 $\pm$ 0.0091 au and $a_{AB}(B)$ = 22.971 $\pm$ 0.024 au, respectively.
Thanks to the proximity of the binary system GJ~896AB, the Jovian-like planetary companion GJ~896A$b$ $-$ one of the nearest to Earth yet found $-$ is well suited for a detailed characterization (for example, direct imaging and spectroscopy) that could give important constrains on the nature and formation mechanisms of planetary companions in close binary systems.
Combining the relative and absolute astrometric observations, we have found the 3-D orbital architecture of the binary system GJ~896AB and the planetary companion GJ~896A$b$.
We have performed long-term numerical integrations to test the stability of the orbital solution of this binary system, using both posible position angles of the line of nodes of the planetary companion. We find that only one solution is stable. The second solution of the Keplerian orbit, using $\Omega$ = $\Omega_{Ab}$ + 180$^{\circ}$, turns out to be unstable in very short timescales, the planetary companion collides with the host star GJ~896A after a few thousand years.
On the other hand, the fitted solution ($\Omega = \Omega_{Ab}$) proved stable for at least 100 Myrs. This indicates that the position angle of the line of nodes of both orbital planes are $\Omega_{AB}$ = 255.1$^{\circ}$ and $\Omega_{Ab}$ = 45.6$^{\circ}$, and their mutual inclination angle is $\Phi$ = 148$^\circ$.
This result is consistent with both orbits being retrograde.
This is the first time that the full 3-D orbital architecture of a binary system with a planetary companion has been obtained using astrometric observations. This kind of results can not be achieved with other exoplanet methods. Astrometry gives important complementary information to other exoplanet detection techniques. In addition, high-angular resolution radio astrometry is becoming a powerful technique, capable of giving the full 3-D orbital architecture of planetary systems and planetary systems in binary and multiple stellar system.
Our results demonstrate that astrometric observations have the potential to fully characterize the orbital motions of individual and multiple planetary systems, as well as the 3-D orbital architecture of binary systems, and binary systems with planets associated to them.
The discovery of gaseous planets associated to low-mass stars poses a great challenge to all current planetary formation scenarios. For instance, core accretion models face serious problems to explain giant planets orbiting around M dwarfs with masses below 0.4 M$_\odot$ \citep[e.j.,][]{laughlin04,ida13,burn21}. In order to explain such planets, these models need to include extraordinary conditions, such as increasing the efficiency of core-accretion planet formation, using high mass protoplanetary disks, which are inconsistent with observational results, and/or slowing down (reducing) their migration speed.
It is not clear if gravitational instability of the protoplanetary disk \citep[e.j.,][]{mercer20,boss21} could more naturally produce giant planets around low-mass stars.
The formation of this kind of planetary systems through disk fragmentation also requires high-mass protoplanetary disks (with high accretion rate from an envelope).
Furthermore, the discovery of Jovian planets associated with low-mass binary systems, such as the one we have found, is even more challenging to current formation scenarios. Particularly, in the case of close binary systems with separation $<$40 au, where it is expected that the stellar companion would truncate the protoplanetary disk, Jovian planets will be very difficult to form.
Further theoretical models will be required to understand the formation of giant-mass planets, such as the one we found associated to the main star of the low-mass binary system GJ~896AB.
In addition, since most stars are in binary or multiple systems, our understanding of systems such as this one will be crucial to understand the phenomenon of planetary formation in general.
~~
~~
~~
\begin{acknowledgements}
\noindent
We are grateful to the anonymous referee for the useful comments and suggestions, which helped improve this paper.
We thank L. F. Rodr{\'\i}guez for valuable comments on an early version of the paper.
S.C. acknowledges support from UNAM, and CONACyT, M\'exico.
The authors acknowledge support from the UNAM-PAPIIT IN103318 and IN104521 grants.
The observations were carried out with the Very Long Baseline Array (VLBA), which is part of the National Radio Astronomy Observatory (NRAO). The NRAO is a facility of the National Science
Foundation operated under cooperative agreement by Associated Universities, Inc.
This research has made use of the Washington Double Star Catalog maintained at the U.S. Naval Observatory.
This research has made use of the Catalogue of Exoplanets in Binary Systems maintained by Richard Schwarz and \'A. Bazs\'o at {https://www.univie.ac.at/adg/schwarz/bincat$_{-}$binary.html}.
This publication makes use of the SIMBAD database operated at the CDS, Strasbourg, France.
This work has made use of data from the European Space Agency (ESA) mission Gaia ({https://www.cosmos.esa.int/gaia}), processed by the Gaia Data Processing and Analysis Consortium (DPAC, {https://www.cosmos.esa.int/web/gaia/dpac/consortium}). Funding for the DPAC has been provided by national institutions, in particular the institutions participating in the Gaia Multilateral Agreement.
\end{acknowledgements}
\vspace{5mm}
\facilities{VLBA}
\software{AIPS \citep[][]{greisen03},
astropy \citep{astropycol13,astropycol18},
corner\citep{foremanmackey16},
emcee \citep{foremanmackey13},
lmfit \citep[][]{newville20},
scipy \citep[][]{virtanen20},
matplotlib,\citep{hunter07},
numpy\citep{vanderwalt11}.
PyAstronomy\citep{czesla19}.
}
~~
~~
~~
{~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~{\bf ORCID iDs}}
Salvador Curiel {https:/orcid.org/0000-0003-4576-0436}
Gisela N. Ortiz-Le\'on {https:/orcid.org/0000-0002-2863-676X}
Amy J. Mioduszewski {https:/orcid.org/0000-0002-2564-3104}
Joel Sanchez-Bermudez {https:/orcid.org/0000-0002-9723-0421}
~~
~~
~~
| {
"redpajama_set_name": "RedPajamaArXiv"
} | 9,351 |
A BUSINESS PARABLE
# HARPER'S
RULES
A RECRUITER'S GUIDE to FINDING a
DREAM JOB and the RIGHT RELATIONSHIP
DANNY CAHILL
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, organizations, places,
events, and incidents are either a product of the author's imagination or are used
fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is
entirely coincidental.
Published by Greenleaf Book Group Press
Austin, Texas
www.gbgpress.com
Copyright ©2011 Danny Cahill
All rights reserved.
No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted by
any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without
written permission from the publisher.
Distributed by Greenleaf Book Group LLC
For ordering information or special discounts for bulk purchases, please contact
Greenleaf Book Group LLC at PO Box 91869, Austin, TX 78709, 512.891.6100.
Design and composition by Greenleaf Book Group LLC and Bumpy Design
Cover design by Greenleaf Book Group LLC
Publisher's Cataloging-In-Publication Data
(Prepared by The Donohue Group, Inc.)
Cahill, Danny. Harper's rules : a recruiter's guide to finding a dream job and the right
relationship / Danny Cahill. -- 1st ed. p. ; cm.
"A business parable."
ISBN: 978-1-60832-133-9
1. Job hunting. 2. Employment interviewing. 3. Career development. 4. Interpersonal
relations. 5. Quality of work life. 6. Parables I. Title.
HF5382.7 .H37 2011
650.14 2010940053
Part of the Tree Neutral® program, which offsets the number of trees consumed in
the production and printing of this book by taking proactive steps, such as
planting trees in direct proportion to the number of trees used: www.treeneutral.com
Printed in the United States of America on acid-free paper
11 12 13 14 15 16 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
First Edition
## CONTENTS
Prologue
ONE Should You Leave or Stay?
TWO How to Resign from a Job or End a Relationship
THREE And Now the Counteroffer
FOUR Getting Back Out There—Résumés and Networking
FIVE The Truth about Résumés
SIX Networking, Job Boards, and Dating Online
SEVEN Prepping for Interviews and Dates
EIGHT Dating Is Like Interviewing . . . Only Harder
NINE The Follow-up Protocol to Interviews and Dates
TEN Other Offers and Playing the Field
ELEVEN Endgame—Final Interview Prep to Start Date
## PROLOGUE
Since my divorce two years ago, I have become good at resisting men, and I have always been good at resisting headhunters, so when you put the two together, a male head-hunter has no chance with me. I know why they call—I am a successful software sales rep with a massive network of clients, and I'm an attractive woman. They want to know if I am happy. Would I like to hear about a dream job? But I don't think much about happiness anymore. So I don't return their calls.
Except Harper Scott.
Harper placed me eight years ago when I was first learning how to sell software, and then again a few years later. He's been a successful headhunter for a long time. He seems to know everyone in my market space and everything that is going on. Harper is connected. But that's not why I return his calls.
"Casey, it's Harper. Do you really think you can get away with this shabby treatment? You don't send funny emails; you don't call. I am seriously considering starting a relationship with you just so I can break up with you and have you know my pain."
I giggled. I'm thirty-four. I thought I left giggling behind.
"We need to talk. Call me. Notice I am not leaving my number. If you don't still have it, all is lost."
I told myself to ignore his message. I've been at my job for just over a year, and calling Harper back would mean getting caught up with the drama of interviews and the inevitable subterfuge with my current boss. Why bother?
So I held out. For about four minutes. I got his voice mail, left a message, and a few minutes later his assistant called and said Harper wanted me to meet him at one o'clock at Max's Oyster House the following Tuesday.
As I got dressed on Tuesday morning, I convinced myself that I was trying to make a good impression on the CIO that I was doing a demo for that afternoon. But why was I reaching for the black, form-fitting cashmere sweater and the charcoal grey skirt that even I, as my backside's biggest critic, know hangs and clings in a flattering way? Why am I giving this account the full "I'm very corporate, very astute, and wicked hot" look? I pretended to recall my meeting with Harper as I put my hair up to expose my neck.
I sat in the restaurant for ten minutes before Harper showed. Nothing is more fiendishly calculated than his penchant for making everything seem uncalculated. He must be forty now, but could easily pass for younger. Flecks of grey accent his brown hair, and at six feet, he is still at fighting weight—shoulders broad, waist impossibly narrow. My friend Hannah once asked me what he looked like, and I said, "Big in the right places, small in the right places." She understood immediately.
Harper took his seat, folded his hands, placed them under his chin, and smiled at me. I looked him straight in the eyes, the same way I start any meeting, but I didn't know for the life of me why I was there.
"You're wondering why you're here. You're a busy person, you're not looking for a job, you're feeling vaguely guilty about meeting with a headhunter on company time. And yet, it's so good to see me. Am I right?"
"About everything except the 'it's so good to see you' part."
"I'm shattered."
"Bounce back, Harper. I agreed to see you because I'm in town rolling out a demo and because I was curious to see if you had gone to seed yet like most guys your age."
"And have I?"
"Not quite."
An impossibly cute, young waitress excused herself for interrupting, took our drink orders, and told us the specials. Harper asked her how she was doing, and then told her he was a headhunter and when she was ready to start a career she should look him up. I rolled my eyes as she walked away beaming.
"You're pathetic."
"Six degrees of separation," he shrugged. "My network is my lifeblood. You don't know who she knows."
"I'm ready for your pitch now, Harper. I Googled you this morning."
"Isn't that eerie? I Googled me this morning, too. Any new entries since 7 A.M.?"
Harper's ego could be a bit much, but then he redeemed himself. He took out his wallet and showed me the latest pictures of his daughter. I raved, because she really was fabulous.
"A teenager already. Has it been that long since you first recruited me?"
"Don't remind me."
He leaned back, and I could tell the icebreaking was over. He was here to qualify a prospect that could make him money. I would be well served to keep that in mind.
"So, here's what my research associate tells me. Nineteen months ago you're one of SAP's resident stars. Big territory, established key accounts, and overrides from three direct reports. W2 of over 330K. You leave and end up at an underfunded supply chain company where you'll be lucky to make 225. It doesn't add up, Casey."
"I'm not going on any interviews, Harper. I like my job."
"Were you sleeping with the boss?"
"What?! John was sixty-three, with yellow teeth and a unibrow."
"So then, what? It doesn't add up and you know it."
I promised myself I wouldn't share this. A solemn promise, made at my bathroom mirror just five hours ago, now wafting gently out the restaurant's open windows . . .
"I got divorced, okay? Don't look at me like that. It's not that shocking."
"No. What is shocking is that my research assistant missed it. I'd fire her, except that I'd be lost without her."
"It's no big deal. We had no kids; we both had careers. We evaluated, we made a choice, we negotiated and distributed our assets, and we moved on."
"Well, look at you and your stiff upper lip! Did you shake hands and say, 'Good luck?'"
"We did in fact shake hands. Then he said, 'Godspeed.'"
Harper leaned back. "He actually said the word 'Godspeed'? I've never been able to work that into a sentence. So you're fine? No residual sadness?"
"Nope."
Our waitress bought me some time by asking if we had any questions. Neither of us had really looked at the menu, so we both agreed to the halibut when she raved that it was "phenomenal." Harper clapped his menu shut. I reached over for my jacket, slipped my Blackberry out, and turned the power off.
"You turn thirty-five soon, right?" Harper said. "So if you're going to have a family, you need to pick one of the many guys I'm sure you're dating, shorten the engagement, and abandon all birth control."
"I'm not focused on that right now, Harper."
"There are guys, right? You're beautiful, you're smart, and you don't need their money."
His charms had run their course; I was now officially angry. I started gathering up my things.
"Have your research assistant delete me from your database when you get back to the office, Harper."
"Two minutes."
I looked at him with the half querying, half irritated expression I would use on Donald when he left wet clothes in the dryer.
"Give me two minutes," he said, "and this meeting will have been worthwhile for you, whether you eat or not."
As if on cue, the food came. I couldn't very well exit while Miss Teen America was warning me the plate was "super duper hot." I sat down.
He cut his food slowly and didn't look up while he spoke.
"Thank you, Casey. Answer me this, and remember, I only have two minutes, so don't overthink it. You traveled 85 percent of the time. He was home, a desk jockey. May I assume he cheated on you?"
Oh, what the hell . . .
"Yes. Apparently for a long time." I will not cry; I will not turn this arrogant head-hunter into Barbara Walters.
"And if one of your friends knew? If I knew? Would you have wanted to know?"
"Yes."
"You're sure? It's touchy. You reconcile and then the friend or friends who told you are the bad guys on the wrong team."
"So they said. They were wrong. They should have trusted that I would have never blamed them."
He nodded. "If you ever find out my wife is cheating, let me know."
"Right after I assure her nobody would blame her."
He smiled wanly and then emitted a slow, dense sigh.
"You're getting fired, Casey." He said it without looking at me. "Tynan is bringing in a new EVP, and he's going to clean house. Replacing the whole sales force, starting in six weeks. I'm sorry."
"How do you know?"
"I placed the new EVP. Tynan gave me the search four months ago."
"And you tell me now?"
"Ethically, I shouldn't be telling you at all. Look, Casey, your boss was going to get fired; someone was going to get that search. Any new EVP is going to bring in his own people. Because it's me, you are the only one in the sales force who knows. You have at least three or four months to prepare, plan, and find a job, and it will be better. Because I care."
I was twirling linguini drenched in pesto sauce with my fork. My stomach felt like it had jumped off a bridge. What was the point of trying to take another bite? I lowered my fork.
"Look, Casey, this is a good thing. You'll get out before they let you go; you've got a track record, leverage. In the long run, this is the best thing that could happen to you."
"Oh save it, Harper, really. Every time something bad happens to me, I am surrounded by people telling me it's the best thing that could have happened to me—none of whom, by the way, are personally affected. Donald falls in love with a co-worker's wife, a woman I introduced him to, and it's a good thing because he didn't love me, and now I can find someone who does. The fact that their affair humiliated me at work and made a cushy job untenable—a job that I had killed myself for over a decade to attain— was a good thing because at a new company there'd be no ghosts, no gossip.
"And now that I have picked myself off the floor and established myself, albeit at a crappy company, that, too, is being taken away, and you say it's the best thing for me. You know what? It's not. It's not good that I'm going to be out of a job; it's not good that I'm not dating, that I only go out to eat for business; it's not good that I am in sweats all weekend and am addicted to Court TV and high-glycemic foods. It is the exact opposite of good, Harper; can you let me have that for just a while? Is that too much to ask?"
"How is everything, you two?" said Miss Teen America.
"It's good," I said.
"No," Harper nearly bellowed, "it's not. It is the opposite of good, and we would just like to experience the food's opposite-of-goodness for a while. Is that too much to ask?" Miss Teen America withdrew, slightly dazed.
"You're an idiot, Harper."
"Yes, but an empathetic, listening idiot." He gave me the kind of smile that made me want to feel better for him, so that he'd keep smiling. My whole life has been spent doing whatever I need to do to keep men smiling.
"So now what?"
"You need to read my book," he said.
"You wrote a book?"
"Does that seem inconceivable?"
"On getting a job?"
"Writing a simple book on getting a job is not going to get me on Oprah's couch. It has a far more ambitious scope."
"What's it called?"
"It's called . . . I, uh, have decided to call it . . . Harper's Rules: The Recruiter's Guide to Finding a Dream Job and the Right Relationship."
"You've written no such book, have you, Harper?"
"I certainly have, and I find that comment insulting. Now, to clarify, I haven't written it in the sense of having actually committed words to paper in some structured, organized form."
"In what sense then, given that tiny distinction, would it qualify as a book?"
"Continued ridicule will take you right off the dedication page. You wanted to hear a pitch, here it comes: I've been a headhunter for twenty years. I interview, I evaluate, I dig deep because I need to know how people make decisions. If they don't accept the job, I don't get paid. And here's what I've learned:
"There is no difference between making decisions in your career path and making decisions in your romantic life.
"It's the most natural analogy in the world, and one every headhunter uses. We all know an interview is like a date; we seek attractive jobs using the same skills we use to find a mate; the best relationships come through referrals; giving notice feels like breaking up; and as you now know, getting fired feels like you've been cheated on. Get the premise, or do I go on?"
I found myself remembering previous interviews: how I sized up the staff members I met—how dull or funny they seemed, the office zeitgeist. It was like walking into a party.
"My book is meant for someone just like you," he said. "You are my target audience. Usually we're happy in our relationships but our career is in trouble, or we love our job but our home life is terrible, so we gravitate toward the positive reinforcement of one or the other. The problem gets exacerbated because a loved one or a boss feels ignored."
I put my napkin on the table and folded my hands in front of me. I would have liked nothing better than to shoot Harper down, but my thoughts flashed to evenings on the road, sitting at a Marriot bar with the other road warriors, and how quickly the conversation descended into the ingratitude of a spouse left at home or the unfair expectations of a CIO changing the specs on an order. Given enough alcohol, the talk steered toward the choice of covering each other, just for the night, in the threadbare blanket of a simple sexual encounter. I had never been seriously tempted, but I had felt truly sorry for many of them. Then, near the end with Donald, I had my own horror story. It wasn't that I didn't know marriages that worked, but I had to agree with Harper: not too many happy people. I conceded with a nod.
"My book's ambition is to point out how, if you understand the correct way to get a job and manage a career, the power of the analogous relationship between whom you love and what you do becomes synergistic and creates a new you: one who is whole— who is real. Wouldn't it be nice to wake up in the morning and not have to make a distinction between your life and who you pretend to be?"
"Is that how your life is, Harper?"
"This is about you. You need my book, Casey. You need a new career, and you need to stop living without love. The two can be done at one time."
"If you ever write the book."
"I believe I've just started."
CHAPTER ONE
## SHOULD YOU LEAVE
OR STAY?
Harper asked me if I was okay, and I told him I was fine, no worries. I went home and it felt like the day the divorce was final.
That day I sat at my dining room table without an idea in the world. I don't mean I didn't know where I wanted to live or if I wanted to remarry; I mean I didn't know if I should sit in the dining room or move to the couch, whether I should sleep, eat, or do laundry. Hannah said, "I know you, girl. You saw this coming at some level, and you've got a plan." But I didn't see it coming. And I didn't have a plan.
Today I took two Ambien, chased them with two Oreo cookies, some skim milk, and another Ambien, and opened my arms to oblivion.
In a couple of days I had decided Harper was just being Harper. I didn't think he was lying, but I decided he was taking a few facts, blowing them up, and making a lot of assumptions. My boss had certainly not been acting like he was in any trouble. And how did Harper know that if they did bring in some new honcho he was going to clean house? No, Harper was trying to make a sale and I was just his next placement, wrapped in empathy. And as for his imaginary book being the answer to my work and love problems? Please. Keep the day job, Harper. I went to the monthly staff meeting with the conviction that Harper was to be ignored. Enjoyed, perhaps, but ignored.
My CEO, Michael Tynan, was at the sales meeting; he never comes to sales meetings.
He sat with his arms folded across his chest, and when he interrupted my boss with a short declaration that he had a responsibility to reverse our sales forecasts sooner rather than later, I knew in an instant Harper was right. My boss was toast. We were all toast.
In the next four days, I did what any reasonable person in crisis would do—I blocked it out entirely. Every time I got a call, I was grateful it wasn't Harper. I needed some time to sort through everything, though I knew that was the complete opposite of what my therapist would tell me I should do.
"What would you do if you weren't afraid?" she would lean over and whisper, and I would catch a whiff of the cinnamon Tic Tacs she always chewed but never offered. ("I would ask you why you hoard something that costs less than two dollars and comes sixty to a package.") She was right to call me on it. When I found out about Donald's affair with Sasha, I not only avoided confronting him for a week, I held hands with him at the Met's Picasso exhibit for the first time since we started dating. I fear change even more than humiliation.
I would die before ever admitting this to him, but at times like these I miss Donald. He would stroke my hair while I whined and emoted. He would not try to fix me, but would just nod while I let it all out. Why can't I find the answers without someone touching my hair, and why doesn't it work when I touch it myself?
Sitting at home on a Friday evening, I suddenly realized I could trust Donald to tell me if what I decided to do sounded right. Immediately the idea of trusting Donald cracked me up, and my laughter reverberated through the empty house. My six-year-old Maine Coon, Starbucks, (so named because she turns up at every corner, and is bitter first thing in the morning) ran out of the room, skidding on the hardwood floor like a cartoon tabby.
Then I heard the faint chime of an email arriving, and during the commercial I checked it on my way to the fridge.
Harper Scott. Sent with "high importance." The subject line read:
Harper's Rules: The Recruiter's Guide to Finding a Dream Job and the Right Relationship, by Harper Scott.
My instinct said not to open this now. Not after having two and a half glasses of Kendall Jackson chardonnay that I washed down with eleven Fig Newtons and looking like a raccoon because I had rubbed my mascara the way I do when I'm stressed. My instincts told me I should read this after a good sleep, not when vulnerable.
I believe my instincts; I just tend to ignore them. I went to the living room and sat down to read.
The opening paragraphs were vintage Harper:
Author's Note: Now that you have bought this book, it makes no difference to me if you are trying to solve your relationship problems or your career issues; they are one and the same. You can't have a great relationship if you fail at your career, and the greatest job in the world is worthless without someone who can share the ups and downs with you. I have learned how to fix both simultaneously for my candidates and clients.
But first a disclaimer. This book will be useless if you are the type who whines and moans about what people or circumstances in your life have done to you, but who are actually not interested in change—the type who define themselves by their problems and will continue to do the things they already know don't work. If this sounds like you, please return the book and buy Dating for Dummies or What's My Parachute? For the rest of you, let's go. None of you are getting any younger.
Despite Harper's signature combination of callousness and acumen, I had to ask myself if I really wanted my life to change. Do I get some sort of pleasure out of being unhappy? No, I don't think I do. I was happiest when I was happy—I just couldn't sustain it. And right now at my job, all I'm trying to decide is whether I should cut and run or try to make it work.
HARPER'S RULES
Should You Leave or Stay?
It takes little thought and even less courage to leave a relationship that is miserable all the time. The problem for most of you reading this is that you're not miserable all the time; you're only miserable some of the time! Some of you will say, "but that's life" and decide to stick it out. Great; that's your call. But some of you will be haunted. In a life this short, isn't it possible to be happy nearly all the time—at work and home?
Misery isn't happiness's foe; "good enough" is.
So you need to decide. I will ask you the same questions I would if you were in my office and I was considering representing you to my corporate clients. After you do the homework I'm about to assign, if you decide to stay in your job or relationship, then take change off the table. Accept that, excluding some unforeseen change, you will be where you are for the rest of your life. It's okay to be done with seeking. Embrace it.
But stay away from me, just in case what you have is contagious.
Regardless of whether your primary concern is your personal relationship or your career, answer this diagnostic in terms of your job first, and then you'll see the same rules apply to your relationship. You can do it in reverse too, but it's my book, damn it! Do it my way first.
Time-to-Leave Diagnostic
Q1: Why did you buy this book?
Have you bought other books about changing jobs? When someone leaves your company, do you interrogate them to find out where they are going and why? Do you peruse job boards like Monster or Careerbuilder "just for fun?" How often? Do you get calls on your voice mail from headhunters? Do you return them? Do you find yourself unfocused at work? Have you reworked your résumé even though you're not actively looking?
BOTTOM LINE: if you're acting like you're leaving your job, you're leaving your job. It's just a matter of timing and opportunity. Sometimes we do the right things before we've figured out why they're right.
Q2: Can you pass the "if you were unemployed" test?
If you were unemployed and you had the chance to interview for the job you now have, would you? Or would you be more interested in seeing what else was out there?
BOTTOM LINE: If you are staying at your job just because you are already in it, you should leave. Inert objects stay inert, and so will your career. If fear of unemployment is the only reason you stay, you should leave. We all like easy, but it's not the same as fulfilling.
Q3: Was it ever what you really wanted?
If you made a compromise with yourself when you took your job, your chances of being satisfied by it are slight, regardless of how successful you become at it. Did you take it because you needed quick income? Did you get trapped by convenience? Or did you just make a bad judgment? Maybe your boss left or the company got bought, and the dream is no longer present but you are?
BOTTOM LINE: If none of the original reasons why you took the job are still valid, or you settled for less than you were meant to do, your dream will haunt you until you leave.
Q4: Can we write your eulogy right now?
If you stayed where you are for the rest of your career, are you okay with that? Can we write your eulogy? "She took a job in 2008 at age thirty-four and stayed there until she died at her desk in the fall of 2035?" Picture your tombstone with the two dates and the dash in between. Is that okay with you?
BOTTOM LINE: If you know your story is not yet written and at some point you will seek bigger things, you should leave now if an opportunity arises. (Make all big decisions in your life by considering your "eulogy Cliff's Notes": If the decision would merit mention in your eulogy, do it. If the decision is one you'd rather people not hear at your funeral, don't do it.)
Q5: Can you pass the Money Aside Test?
If you didn't have your bills and obligations and you weren't the primary income or the single parent, would you still do your job? Is the intrinsic value of the work or the spirit of your co-workers enough to sustain you if you didn't need an income?
BOTTOM LINE: Money is how adults keep score. It counts, but it doesn't keep us happy. If you wouldn't stay at your job if you could put money aside, then you shouldn't stay now.
Q6: How often do you laugh during the day?
Are you a living, breathing, hostile working environment? Do you make annoying, sighing sounds all day? Have your co-workers stopped asking "are you okay?" because they know the answer?
BOTTOM LINE: If you've stopped laughing, quit immediately. Longevity and success is tied to laughter. The average five-year-old laughs 500 times a day; the average thirty-five-year-old laughs fifteen times a day. We lose 485 laughs in thirty years—why? Your career is far too serious a matter to take seriously.
Q7: Do you believe what they tell you at work?
Has your boss or senior management violated your trust? Is there a pattern of being told one thing only to find you were part of the company "spin?" Did a disclosure you made in confidence show up in a press release?
BOTTOM LINE: Everyone lies. It's essential to a civilized society. But there are white lies and there are lies. If you have lost your basic trust in your boss or organization, then you've met an obstacle you cannot overcome. In life and work, love means no reservations.
Q8: Do you love the job but feel uncomfortable in the culture?
Is there a mismatch in the attitudes and values of the people who surround you? Is the way you dress or how you spend your free time making you feel like you don't fit? Do you ever think that if you could change the culture, the job would be great?
BOTTOM LINE: Cultures don't change. You assimilate or you leave. Relationships that work don't require change on a massive scale.
Q9: Are you staying because they "need you right now" and you "can't do that to your colleagues?" Are you disillusioned but held hostage by guilt?
BOTTOM LINE: Get over yourself. The company will not only survive but flourish with someone new who goes at the job happy and hard. If you're going through the motions, then get in motion—out the door.
Q10: Has your body already told you to leave, but you're hard of hearing?
Are you listless? Eating comfort carbs or not eating enough? Are you having trouble sleeping or sleeping too much? Have you lost interest—in everything? Are you self-medicating with drugs, alcohol, or sex? Does your lower back or neck ache every day? Is sarcasm your first line of defense? Are you aware how unattractive all these are? I don't like you already!
BOTTOM LINE: Pain is your body's way of demanding change, and you need to listen. The second you make the decision to leave, you will feel a lifting sensation, and you will start to come back to yourself.
Don't sit there and nod your head and move on! Answer these questions honestly, and you'll get an overarching feeling one way or another. Either your relationship is broken and you should make a change, or you should decide it's better than you thought and you will stay. Do the work and make the call.
I knew I should go to bed, but Harper had stirred things up and now I was wired. Tired, wired, and a little drunk—and I'm going to try and determine whether I should leave my job? Oh hell, why not? I couldn't get Harper's "diagnostics" out of my head, and I found myself drifting from my job back to my courting days with Donald, to that very sweet and false time every couple enjoys.
Was it ever what you wanted?
No, it wasn't. He wanted to take care of me. He seemed like such a good man, and after all the unreliable bad boys who had no aspirations beyond a good time, it seemed like I should be grateful. He wasn't threatened that I made more money than he did. He wasn't funny, but he thought I was funny, which seemed far more important. He was gentle with Starbucks and he not only cooked, he didn't hold it against me that I was helpless without a microwave. Most of all, he was my rock. Nothing could rattle him.
But I never believed it was forever. I would often imagine being with someone else who was spontaneous, who had a mind so fast I could barely keep up, who made me tingle when I touched him. I didn't want Donald to leave, but I didn't want him, either. When I turned thirty and he started to talk about kids, I would change the subject. I would set goals we had to reach before we got pregnant: pay our mortgage down, get the regional sales manager's job. I urged him to get his Master's degree. I was willing to make him seem inadequate so I could avoid the reality that he was not the love of my life.
And I never told him; only Hannah knew. When we were in the limousine going to the church on the day of my wedding, she popped champagne, poured us each a glass, and recited our secret toast: "Here's to Donald; he'll be a great first husband."
Can you pass the "if you were unemployed" test?
This one was easy. I was one of SAP's top producers. I was happy—apparently unlike Sasha, the wife of Kevin, our inside sales director; she began sleeping with Donald a few weeks after I introduced them at our company summer bash. I even told Donald to let her play on his side of the volleyball net. I still remember the look on her face when they high fived after a nasty spike. I think the affair started that instant, no matter when it was consummated. SAP was the big time, the Show. I'm in my prime but back in the minors.
So, you bet if I were unemployed I'd interview again.
And, I suddenly realized, if I hadn't married Donald and I had a chance to date him exclusively or date others as well, I would date others. I would not settle again.
Now I see what Harper is getting at. When you're deciding whether to stay at a job or in a relationship, it's the same qualifying procedure. I put on a pot of coffee.
If you're acting like you're leaving, you're leaving.
When Harper first recruited me, the first thing he said to me was, "I identified myself as a headhunter. Why did you return the call?"
"Come on, Harper, haven't you ever been tempted?"
"Personally or professionally?"
"Either." You want to flirt, bring it.
"Personally I'm tempted this very second," he said. "Professionally, never. I do what I'm meant to do. There is no variance between whom I show you and who I am. I make more money than I am able to spend, try though I may, so I am absolutely safe from someone like me."
"And at what point do you think you could get over yourself a little?"
"That's to be determined. Casey, you should have the same goal: to be unrecruitable. But you're not. There's something missing. You sense I could help, and you're right. I can."
"And yet, personally, you said you're tempted right now. What are we to make of that?"
"Only that you're fabulous."
"Apparently not fabulous enough."
"I love my wife. We have a deal, and I honor the terms. Mutual trust."
If you've lost basic trust . . . you've met an obstacle you cannot overcome.
It was suddenly so clear to me. I wanted to be in relationships where I could trust completely and safely: to live, as Harper said, without reservation. But in order to trust you must be trustworthy, and so far in my thirty-four years—well, thirty-five in four months and thirteen days—I couldn't say I had been. I'd been waiting for something better to come along without letting go of whatever stability I had at the time. It was wrong, and I have paid my dues. So why did I feel so loose, so light?
I stood up and paced the room. I wanted to go for a run; I suddenly wanted to kiss someone. I was flooded with hope, as if a syringe full of it were injected straight into my heart. I, having proudly refused alimony, was alone in the world save for a churlish cat. Despite these facts—or because of them—I felt completely in control and sorry for all human beings who were not me.
If you're acting like you're leaving a relationship, you're leaving the relationship.
I get it, Harper, and I now know what I need to do: I am going to quit my job without having a new one! Hurry up Monday, you're holding a good woman back!
CHAPTER TWO
## HOW TO RESIGN FROM A JOB
OR END A RELATIONSHIP
The following Monday I was heading into the office, eager for battle. How does your personal music know what is going on in your life? I remember sitting in a terminal in St. Louis listening to my iPod as I went through my mail. Just as I opened the papers Donald's lawyer had prepared, Bonnie Raitt's "I Can't Make You Love Me if You Don't" came on, and I cried so hard I had to hide in a stall in the ladies' room. Now, Bachman-Turner Overdrive's "Takin' Care of Business" was playing on the classic rock station while I was on my way to quit my job. Just to keep from jinxing it, I turned off the sound system.
The moment I sat at my desk, I took a deep breath and called my boss. I told him I needed to see him as soon as possible about a serious and sensitive matter that could not wait.
I decided to let Harper know. I opted for a text message. "I am giving my notice in less than an hour. I appreciated your email last night, sorry, your 'book.' Try not to gloat. FYI."
Three minutes later my direct line buzzed: Harper's number.
"Did you do it yet?"
"No, in a few minutes. Why?"
"Because you're not going to. That's why."
"Why not?"
"Because you'd be breaking one of the cardinal rules:
Harper's Rule: You don't quit a job until you have another job.
"It's like a commandment. How could you not know that?"
"Why didn't you put that in the chapter?"
"Because it's in the next chapter!"
"And why didn't you send it to me?"
"Because I haven't written it yet."
"Oh, for the love of God, Harper. He's going to be here any minute. I demanded the meeting; I told him it was serious and sensitive."
"Okay, no problem. There are many things you might need to talk to your boss about that are serious and sensitive. Tell him you need time off for elective surgery. Tell him you've decided to adopt a child and you may need to go to Guatemala . . ."
"Harper, your casual lying really scares me."
"But I'm making up lies for you to tell. And there's nothing casual about it."
"You told me I was marketable. Why would another company hold it against me that I'm unemployed?"
"Because that's how it works. Hold on. I'm driving in, and I'm going to pull over before I get killed. I can't shift and talk with my hands at the same time . . .
"Listen to me. You can't give notice. You'll lose all your leverage. It's not fair, but that's how it is. Companies believe good people are never out of a job. So if you're unemployed, then how good could you be? And the longer you're out, the worse it gets."
"So then what, Harper, I have to play a game? I have to live a lie in order to get a great job?"
"Now you've got it! And, by the way, doing it my way, you continue to get paid. Your way, you start living off savings."
I knew Harper was trying to look out for me, and I knew he was probably right. So how come so often doing the right thing can make you feel so crummy inside?
"What about your book, Harper? With your logic, no one should ever leave a marriage without having another partner to go to first. You are saying no one will want me now that I'm single and available, that I should have found someone else while I was still married because I was more attractive then."
"You want to play hardball, Casey? The answer is yes: We want what others have, not what they discard."
"I seduce the best people from companies and offer their direct competitors a chance to steal them away. That is the thrill of it, the magic. It's why they pay me. And yes, the principle holds for relationships. You can be mortified if you want, but the fact is: Most people don't have the courage to end a marriage—or a job—until they are motivated by the prospect of going to someone else."
"You should know this better than anyone. Donald sure did."
I felt a stinging in my scalp, the way you do when you first step into a really cold shower.
I've only seen Donald once since the divorce ended. It was by chance at a mall during Christmas time. We hugged stiffly, and as we pulled back, I noticed the Victoria's Secret bag, and he noticed me noticing and shrugged, and we both laughed so hard we had to sit on the bench outside of Banana Republic.
"I hate you, Harper Scott. I don't think we should speak again."
"That was a cheap shot. I'm sorry. I was just trying to keep you from making a mistake."
"I'm quitting my job this morning, Harper. End of story. I think your theory about relationships and jobs does in fact hold; you're just wrong as to how. I'm not going to deceive my company. I don't want to take their money when I'm no longer committed. And I don't want to work for any company that doesn't respect me for that. And if I am ever again in a relationship that stops working, I am going to be honest, make a break, and free myself to look for someone else. And any guy that doesn't respect me for that—I don't want him, either."
"Okay, I'm in," Harper said. "Take good notes because I'm about to dictate Part Two to you right now. Here's how to give notice and end a relationship. Ready?"
It was too late. My boss knocked once and then bounded right into my office. Harper was all over it in an instant. "Say goodbye and act like you're hanging up, but leave your speaker on."
He quietly told me to pay attention to the screen because he was going to walk me through this via instant messaging, and he suggested I keep my mouse within easy reach. He told me to relax and trust him. "Now hang up, Casey."
"Okay, well, I have to go now," I said, and managed to activate my speaker while hanging up my handset.
I suddenly felt like I was the flight attendant and both pilots were passed out; Harper was ground control assuring me that anyone could land a commercial airliner and that we were not all going to die.
Within a few moments, while my boss and I did the obligatory warm-up, Harper's first IM came across my screen:
HARPER'S RULES
How to Terminate a Relationship
Rule #1: Use direct, simple language.
Deliver the bad news within one sentence. Don't say "I think," don't say "I don't know how to say this," and definitely don't say "I want you to know this is hard for me and that it's not about you."
My boss was still going on about his daughter's award-winning crab cakes at the culinary institute she was attending when I blurted out, "I'm resigning. I'm sorry to interrupt, I'm sure they were fabulous crab cakes, but I want you to know I quit."
Rule #2: Realize this is not an exit interview.
This is not the time to tell him all that went wrong.
On cue, my boss said he was shocked. He asked why I had come to such a decision. I stammered something out about how much I appreciated his mentoring, but this was just a gut feeling I had. "Okay, that sucked. Do I need to script this for you? He is about to ask you what he can do to get you to stay. Here is what you tell him . . ."
As I was trying to read Harper's message, my boss said, "But your gut feeling must have come from somewhere. Is it about money? I have a lot of flexibility, Casey."
"Repeat this, word for word:"
There are two kinds of breakups: the kind where you don't really want to break up but you're trying to change someone's behavior, and the kind where you just want out. I just want out.
And out it came, word for word. It hit him hard. I realized he knew that the word was out, that Tynan had given up on him. "Far be it from me to try to change a woman's mind. I've had two wives and three daughters, and I haven't been able to do it yet. We'll miss you," he said, to which Harper replied, "Oh, gag me. Okay, you're doing great."
Rule #3: Never burn a bridge.
Offer two week's notice. Tell him you will work hard during that two weeks, and you will not disparage the company.
Rule #4: Ask for a written reference and a commitment to give you verbal references on demand.
My boss was more than happy to commit to the reference, and when he said he would tell any VPs of sales that they'd be "foolish not to hire you," I looked over at my screen: "Excellent. You're done. End this meeting. Don't let it go on because he'll try to dig for ways to get you to reconsider."
Sure enough, ten minutes later, my boss was still in his chair, but Harper bailed me out.
Rule #5: Offer to submit, just for documentation's purposes, a written letter of resignation.
When I made the offer, my boss nodded and then almost whispered, "Can I ask you one more question, Casey? Can I have the name of your headhunter?"
"He's a loser," Harper wrote. "Tell him you'll email the contact info, and I'll give you the name of another headhunter who is as big a loser. They'll love each other."
I placed my hand on my boss's hand and quietly and stoically said, "Of course. His name is Harper Scott."
CHAPTER THREE
## AND NOW THE
COUNTEROFFER
The morning after I quit my job, I could find no reason not to go to my gym.
I've been a member of Gold's Gym for three years, and each month they take one hundred and twenty-nine dollars from me, despite the fact that I don't go for months at a time. But I never quit the gym. Knowing they are taking my money every month regardless of my lack of presence is what gives me hope that someday I'll be able to sustain an interest long enough to make it a habit. So here I am again, everyone!
Ten minutes into my ride on the elliptical, my cell phone rang.
"Hi, Harper," I managed, my breath labored.
"Just because you're unemployed, you don't have to take my call during sex."
I explained where he had caught me. "I have two goals, Harper: get a job and lose weight. Of course if I don't get a job, I'll lose weight because I won't be able to buy food. What's up?"
"Tynan is going to ask you to have dinner, and then he's going to hit you with a counteroffer. Lots more money, probably your boss's job."
"So what do I do? I have to hear him out, right? I can't insult him and not go to dinner. I mean, I need him for a reference, too."
Harper laughed. "By tonight I will have sent you chapter three. It will walk you through how to handle the counteroffer."
My concentration was broken by Cute Guy, a Gold's employee, now on the glider next to me. He was pointing to the control panel.
"Sorry," Cute Guy said, "I know you're on the phone, but did you know your machine is off? You've been riding with no resistance." I could hear Harper crack up.
"Oh. Thanks. Would it do any good to pretend I knew that?" And Cute Guy flashed a really great, genuine smile.
"I can tell you're having a moment. You should have the pages by early evening."
"Okay, thanks," I said. "Does this make me your muse, Harper?"
"Not in the least. I've been thinking about this book forever."
When I got home, there was already an email from Harper:
Your homework assignment before you get tonight's chapter. Answer this question: "Did you ever consider going back to Donald?"
That could wait; it was only my first day unemployed, and you have to pace yourself.
I was about to fade into a nap when the phone rang. Tynan's secretary asked me to meet him the following evening at a restaurant that required a month's lead for a reservation. Suddenly I was wide awake, Harper's question seared into my brain.
Did you ever consider going back to Donald?
Yes, Harper, I did.
When you get divorced in your thirties, and there are no children, and you've only been together a half dozen years, you walk out of the courtroom thinking you may never see your former spouse ever again. You imagine one day reading in the obituaries that your ex has died, and the accompanying sidebar points out trenchantly how he never recovered emotionally from his failed marriage and that he died of heartbreak, penniless and alone, survived only by his ex, who lived a full and remarkable life and is now living in a beach house on the ocean, and I mean right on the ocean.
It was not in the plan to get a call from Donald four months after the divorce was final, especially since he was crying so hard it took me a moment to realize it was him. Big Gerry, as we all referred to his dad, had died that morning. Big Gerry was the kindest man I ever knew. He called me the night Donald moved out to tell me his son was a fool and that he loved me very much.
Donald said he was sorry to bother me but he thought I should know. Then he hung up. I drove to his condo, knocked twice, and opened the door, momentarily thinking this was inappropriate and that Sasha would be furious. I calmed him down and made him tea. I told him what I felt at the time, what I still feel: that all that was good and sweet and endearing about Big Gerry was true of Donald as well. I asked him if there were arrangements he wanted me to make. He said all he wanted was for me to stay a while. We made a meal, we opened wine, and we recounted stories to soothe the pain.
When he mentioned that Sasha was at a family reunion in Sacramento and wasn't coming back for the funeral, I nodded and agreed it was a long flight. And I spent the night. We went to separate bedrooms to play the dance out, but he knocked on the door within a few minutes, he walked toward the bed, and I opened my arms. I knew that I was helping him cheat on Sasha, but all I could think was that I deserved this after all I had been through.
When I woke up, I heard the familiar sound of ESPN's SportsCenter. When Donald moved out, my first act of independence was to get rid of the wall-mounted flat screen Sony in the bedroom and to promise myself to never again sleep with a man who watches sports before bed. And yet the sound was oddly comforting. Donald was already halfway through a bowl of oatmeal. He smiled and handed me a bowl of my own, along with a steaming cup of coffee. This was our morning ritual for our entire marriage. How did we get back here so easily?
"I cooked it. In a pan. No microwave."
"I'll alert the Food Channel."
We ate in silence. He kissed my shoulder. And then out it came.
"Let's stay together through the funeral. It's just a couple of days. I'll pack some stuff and follow you home. Okay?"
"You want to play house?" I asked. And he looked down, as Donald always did when he was gathering himself. And when he looked back up his eyes were wet. He shrugged. And my response came out of me from someplace deep inside, someplace I thought was gone.
"Okay."
Suddenly I realized the doorbell was ringing. I shook off the groggy nostalgia and found a manila envelope on the ground with a note from Harper.
"You absolutely cannot go to dinner with Tynan without reading what's inside."
I tore open the envelope and saw the cover page: "Harper's Rules: Why You Never Accept a Counteroffer."
But I wasn't ready for Harper's propaganda. I put it down on the dining room table and went upstairs. As I transferred a load of whites from washer to dryer, I found myself drifting back to the week of Big Gerry's funeral, my after-the-fact performance as Donald's wife.
The funeral itself was the easy part. I'm cool in a crisis; I think clearly under extreme pressure. As I brought drinks and plates of potato salad to various mourners, as I tipped the hearse driver because no one in the family remembered, I thought for a moment that the real problem in my life is not crisis management, but all that time in between crises, when none of my choices seem as sure or righteous. I realized that sitting in Big Gerry's living room on the day of his funeral was the most contentment I had felt in a long time.
That night we decided to forego cooking and drive into the city to get sushi. We drank way too much sake. Donald told me how much it surprised him to miss Starbucks and the way she would climb on his chest at night and suckle his neck. Donald started to slur his words a little.
"You want me to drive home?" I asked.
"Where is home, Casey?"
"Sorry—my house."
"I want it to be 'our house' again," he croaked. "Maybe this . . . is why he died. Maybe it was to get it through our thick skulls that we have to be together."
I touched his cheek. "He died because he died, Donny. It had nothing to do with us. And what about Sasha? You love Sasha. You threw your world away for her. You had to do that for a reason."
"Let's go home," he said. "We'll work it out."
We didn't last the night. When we walked in the house, Donald nearly let Starbucks out. This is one of my hot buttons and one of my few house rules. Starbucks has never gone outside. Neighbors warned us from day one that there were coyotes in the woods nearby. Donald closed the door just in time, and I tried to tell myself he was out of practice, but the thought occurred: nothing will change if we get back together. He will let Starbucks out one day and I will lose her, and it will be just punishment for not being strong enough to move on.
There were two voice mails on my machine when we got home. The first was Hannah inviting me to a farmer's market in New Milford on Saturday, and the second, to my surprise and Donald's shock, was Sasha.
"Hi, Casey, it's Sasha Kiernan. I'm sorry to bother you at home, but I've been trying to get in touch with Donald. I've talked to his mom, and she said you left together. This is weird for me to call you, but he hasn't called me back."
You'll never trust him again. You will live your life looking over your shoulder. You will never be able to love this man without reservation again.
"What is your actual status with Sasha?" I said.
"Technically, we're engaged."
"Technically?"
"She has a ring on her finger."
"If we got back together a year from now, all the things that drove us apart would return. You know that, right?"
"Maybe," he said. He looked away from me. It was time to wrap this up. I smiled at him, a big friendly smile.
"We don't love each other, Donny. We have a divorce decree that proves it. We love what we used to be for a short time, a long time ago. When we get scared, it's easier to go back to what we know."
I didn't know when or if I would ever see him again, but I felt at peace with either outcome. I had always heard change brought growth, that it was necessary. I never knew it could bring peace.
The flashback ended when I woke up and realized I had not only fallen asleep on my bed covered with laundry, but had drooled all over a pair of clean khakis. I felt rejuvenated by the memory, and I knew what I had to do. I called Tynan.
"Hi. I'm going to respect your time and avoid all the small talk. I'm not coming to dinner tomorrow night."
"Has something come up? We can reschedule."
"No, I am tragically available. But you don't want to have dinner with me. If you did, it would have happened sometime in the eighteen months I've been working for you. You want to convince me to stay and make me a counteroffer, but I don't want to waste your energy or time."
"I see. I'd appreciate you paying me the respect of hearing me out."
Spoken like a man used to getting what he wanted. And the way he said it made me feel unreasonable and feckless. But I knew it was a tactic and that a tactic was all it was.
"I'm not going to stay. Not if you make me VP of sales, not if you double my salary or fully vest my equity. Still want to pick up the check for a fancy dinner? If you do, I'm game; I've got nothing in the fridge."
He laughed, though I could tell he didn't want to. He got to where he was by knowing when to walk away. He said he admired my "spunk" and would try to find another guest for dinner.
When I hung up, I felt the same peace as when Donald drove off on the night of Big Gerry's funeral.
Later that night I walked by the dining room table, saw the envelope sent by Harper, and realized I hadn't read it.
HARPER'S RULES
Why You Should Never Accept a Counteroffer
1. Why did you have to resign in order to get the counteroffer? Why weren't you worth it before?
2. Where did the money come from? Is it your next raise early?
3. Your loyalty will always be in question.
4. Your company will exact revenge by promoting someone else.
5. The feelings that made you want to leave will return once the heat of the moment passes.
6. You will regret lacking the courage to make the change you knew was best for your career.
7. Once trust is broken, it cannot be repaired. Nothing will ever be the same.
Well, well, Harper my friend. Nothing personal, but I figured this all out by myself. Harper was right, though: counteroffers, be they from a self-involved CEO or a heartsick ex-husband, are the same dangerous proposition.
I suppose I should have called Harper to let him know my decision and to thank him for sending the manuscript, but I didn't want him taking credit for me coming to terms with things myself. So when he called the next night, I realized he probably thought I caved and went to dinner.
"Hi. Before you freak out, I didn't go to dinner with Tynan. I cancelled."
"First of all, I do not freak out. Ever. Second, I know you're not at dinner."
"How?"
"Because I'm at dinner with Tynan."
"Excuse me? Did he invite you to meet with me, and you never told me?"
"Chill, please. I would never not tell you something like that. What I would do, though, since you weren't good enough to tell me you cancelled, is show up so I could meet you in the parking lot and talk you out of it, or alternatively, walk you through your responses using sign language from across the room."
"I don't read sign language."
"Me either. I was pleased to see you weren't at his table. I'm proud of you."
"I worked through it. Thanks for your help. But now I feel terrible. He was by himself?"
"No, he's got a couple of lackeys here too. I realized you weren't coming, so I walked over, claimed to be sitting in the bar, and knew that he'd invite me. The appetizers were phenomenal, by the way."
"Is there any shame in your body?"
"Not a trace."
"I need to ask you something, Harper. I get all the reasoning behind the dangers of counteroffers, personal or professional. But isn't there ever a time when they work out?"
"Sure. I call them 'Preemptive Counteroffers.' Before leaving any job or person that you once really loved, you go to them preemptively, before quitting or separating, and you explain why you are unhappy, what you need changed. No threat, no blackmail. If they come back to you with an offer preemptively, then they have done so because they are sorry, and it's often right to stay. Make sense?"
"Yes. That's never happened to me in any sense, so I guess it's only right that I'm alone and unemployed."
"It's right for now, baby, but not for long. It's a simple rule:
"Relationships are to be enjoyed, not endured.
"I have to let you go; here come the entrees. My steak looks fantastic."
CHAPTER FOUR
## GETTING BACK OUT THERE—
RÉSUMÉS AND NETWORKING
I sat in a diner in Bridgeport that made Denny's look like a Ritz Carlton. It was 9 A.M., and I hurried into the place after making sure twice that my car was locked. I nursed three cups of coffee, but Harper never showed. I texted him, emailed him, and having had enough, I dialed his direct line.
"Where are you? Brunch this is not," I hissed.
"Sorry, going to be a no-show. You never sent me a new résumé, and I don't think you're ready," Harper said in a maddeningly calm voice.
"How am I not ready?"
"You still feel sorry for yourself."
"Harper, you have my old résumé. You know my background. Get me a job like the one I had, with a better company for more money. Do I have to tell you how this works?"
"Any headhunter can take you from one rut and put you in another rut. This is your chance to decide what you want, and to not settle."
For the seventh time in an hour, the waitress asked me if I was ready to order, and I succumbed to the pressure and asked for an egg white omelet with no cheese and no home fries. She gave me a look that said she had no respect for anyone who couldn't handle cheese.
"Hey, you know what, I'm not going to discuss this with you when you make me drive nearly an hour on the Merritt Parkway during rush hour to meet you at this sad excuse for a restaurant and then don't show." I lowered my voice and looked around. "Do you know what types of characters are here?"
"The characters, as you call them, are mostly hourly workers from Sikorsky Aircraft, the painting division. Probably not a woman in the place other than Chaz, who just took your order. All guys coming home from the midnight shift. The first shift started hours ago. They dip blades and vanes, after they've been milled and polished, into a vat of paint, and they hang them on hooks and roll them into ovens. When they open the doors to the ovens, a blast of heat hits them that makes them puke until they get used to it."
"How do you know all that?"
"I worked at that diner for four summers while I went to Yale. Look into the kitchen, Casey. You can see it from the counter. Tell me what you see."
There were two Hispanic men with bandanas on their foreheads. One of them had a ponytail. They were moving rapidly from the grill, jammed with small pools of eggs and link sausages and crackling bacon, to the toaster and to the fryer. One man sprinkled mushrooms into the pool of eggs. Their bodies and the frenetic tempo of their movements made them look young, but when one turned toward me to bring a plate to the counter, his brow was dripping with sweat, his eyes darkly circled. He might have been much older. For a second he paused and wiped his face with his apron, and I wondered if he would take off the white apron and walk out the door. But he didn't. He punched his friend playfully on the shoulder, grabbed a couple of eggs from the glass bowl near the grill, and started over.
Harper never said a word. I wanted to yell at him that if I can't ever feel sorry for myself because someone else in the world is suffering more than I am, I will never be able to feel sorry for myself, and who can live like that? But it was suddenly very clear: I have been so blessed and have become so spoiled.
"Okay, Harper, I get it."
My meal arrived, and suddenly I realized I was famished. I smiled broadly at Chaz and waved my fork in gratitude at one of my cooks. He put one hand on his stomach, one hand on his lower back, and bowed formally, grinning all the while.
"You never intended to meet me here this morning, did you, Harper?"
"No."
"You know, Harper, I always assumed you were a rich kid. I guess because of Yale."
"Look above the cash register, third picture down. The baseball player is Carl Yastrzemski of the Red Sox. The guy with his arm around him mugging in the picture is my dad. The kid between them is me."
I could see no trace of my Harper in the grainy, wide smile of the little boy. But I could see a lot of him in his father.
"Is he still alive?"
"Yastrzemski? Far as I know."
"I meant your dad."
"I know."
I waited. But there was no more.
"Well," I rallied, "it's a great picture. I'm glad to report that it's still here. And I guess I'm glad I'm here. Do you ever come back?"
"Breakfast yesterday, kiddo. The only way to safeguard where you're going is by not forgetting where you come from. You and I don't have real jobs, Casey. Look around you. Those people have real jobs."
He hung up, and I thought for a moment of all the motivational seminars I'd been to over the years. Robbins, Covey, Dr. Phil . . . I knew Harper would never go to a self-help seminar. He didn't need to; he had his diner.
But he also has his job and an income. I could run out of money, and I can't seem to face it. My money issues are exposing, well . . . my issues with money.
Salespeople know a lot about making money. But what I couldn't admit to Harper, what I have never admitted to anyone, is that I am terrible with money. I can muster no interest in my own finances, I understand almost nothing about taxes and investment strategies, and I willingly delegated all of these concerns to Donald. We had a silent pact: I never told anyone how little he earned in relation to me, and he never told anyone that I didn't balance the checkbook, had no concept of a budget, and had no idea exactly where our money was kept.
The divorce exposed me. When my lawyer handed me the financial disclosure form where Donald had listed various mutual funds, bonds, and 401(k) statements, I had no way of knowing if the totals were correct. Was this the right amount in the checking account? Was this CD for 15K that is only in his name a clandestine account or did I know about it? Did I want Donald to buy me out of the house and at what price? No clue. But I knew Donald would be fair.
I stood in the doorway of my den and looked at the mountain of papers on the desk. Before Donald became extinct, the office desk was Finance Central, and all our personal papers and records were in their various drawers. The day he moved out he walked me through the system like a tour guide at the Met, eager to see my gasps of awe. And now, nearly two years later, the papers and bills have revolted.
Please understand: my walk-in closet is organized by color, season, and designer. I could find you a presentation folder I used for a product I no longer sell for a company I no longer work for, and I could recite the notes by heart. I always thought this meant chaos had no place in my world for the things that matter, but it turns out just the opposite is true. I tolerate chaos in the things that matter most because then I can blame the chaos and ignore the fear that created it. Taking care of our money was something I didn't want to do and Donald did. But I would, often cruelly, make it clear to Donald that what I did was the heavy lifting—making the money—and he was an underachieving bean counter. Our friends all wonder how I cannot hate Donald when he left me for another woman in such a humiliating fashion. But they weren't there for the daily humiliations he endured. If someone were keeping score, it would still not even be close.
I decided to accept the fact that I might always be alone, that no one is coming to rescue me, that it was time to act. I plugged in the shredder, and started working my way through the pile. It was a joke.
I am unemployed; why do I need a housekeeper every two weeks? She's gone. I can clean my own house. (I can feel myself regretting this already . . . the deep clean in the toilets? Eww! How far the mighty fall.)
The $200 haircut from fabulous Simon that I drive all the way into the East Village for is on hold until I get a job.
Why do I still have a landline? I can live with just my cell phone. Of course sometimes the signal is weak . . . NO! Cancel the landline; we are taking order back in this damn house!
Starbucks can go without the high-priced organic food and just eat Fancy Feast like every other damn cat! On cue, she jumped on the table and rubbed her head against my face. Oh fine, you get your damn IAMS, but no landline!
For the first time in my adult life, I added up my monthly expenses. I have not only not cut down on my spending, but with my added time off, I have been doing more shopping. I have been in such denial.
I took a respite from my pile of gloom and went to Google. I put in the phrase: how much an unemployed person should have in savings. I had 14,000 results to choose from, and they all said the same thing: at least six months of living expenses.
Okay, if I am employed in the next two months, I will not have to break into CDs or (gulp) my 401(k). And I will cheerfully kill myself before asking my father for money, but I am squandering my severance, and the scary truth is, at first, I turned down the severance package. I told them I didn't need it.
Because I would be the primary money earner in our marriage, Donald offered to sign a prenuptial agreement. Gracious, right?
However, I am a romantic. To me, if you have a pre nup, you are saying the marriage will fail. I couldn't sign a pre nup and then stand before God and make vows about forever. I called Donald and said I wanted no part of a pre nup.
I took the same attitude with my career. To talk about severance was to admit failure before we attempted to succeed. Severance was as unromantic as alimony!
When I first worked with Harper, I told him I didn't approve of severance.
"Nonsense, baby girl. I will get you a severance, and you will take it cheerfully."
"I have certain principles, Harper, and you represent me."
"It's an idiotic principle, and I won't allow it."
"Do you have a pre nup, Harper?"
"Yes."
"Of course you do. Do you have a severance at work as well? Even though you keep telling me you are the top headhunter in creation, and everyone tries to hire you day and night?"
"That is an exaggeration, though slight, and you bet I have a severance, one much better than I can get for you."
"Why?"
He lowered his voice, and I could hear him almost grit his teeth.
"Because, Casey, I am not the person I was ten years ago, and I will not be the person I am now in ten years. And neither will my boss or my wife. I cannot predict circumstances or changes of heart, and for you to think you can makes you incredibly and unbearably arrogant. It is an insult to God."
"To God?! So the one time I ever hear you make a spiritual reference is when we are talking about separation agreements in a comp plan?"
"You want spiritual references? Meet me at St. Mary's on Farmington Ave at 7:30 this Sunday. Haven't missed a mass in years. You?"
That was a low blow. I was on airplanes all week. Of course, since I left my job I still continue to sleep in on Sundays. I had no idea how much fatigue not working can create. There is no rest for the unweary.
"Okay, here's spiritual: I think accepting a severance is bad karma, Harper. It makes me feel like I'm creating a bad end for myself. I know that sounds crazy to you."
"No. It sounds young." And then, for the first time, he called me by the nickname he would use in the years that have followed.
"Look, kiddo, things end." He sounded far away when he said it.
"Businesses go bankrupt, the fastest guy blows out a knee, the sweetest little boy becomes the meanest teenager, jobs get eliminated, you fall out of love, and parents and friends die. Things end, kiddo."
"Don't they preach cheery thoughts over at St. Mary's?"
"Severance is sacred. Non-negotiable."
"I can tell. Okay. I will defer to your judgment."
Now that I am living off my severance, thank God I listened. Not that I will ever admit that to Harper.
I opened the bottom right drawer of the big oak desk, and in my "Harper" file was his severance email from my first job. He was writing "Harper's Rules" even then.
HARPER'S RULES
Severance Made Simple
1. Duration. A standard severance is one week's pay for every year you served the company. If you leave in the first two years, for any reason, you automatically get two weeks' pay.
2. Vacation/Personal Time. You also receive monies equivalent to all the vacation time, personal days, and sick days you had accrued.
3. Health Benefits. Your health benefits stay intact and are paid by the company throughout the duration of the severance. After the severance has lapsed, you have the option of carrying your benefits yourself via a COBRA plan for eighteen additional months.
4. Still on Payroll. For purposes of outside inquiry, references, customers, or vendors, you are on the payroll. You will retain a voice mail and email account, and you will not be removed from the company website nor will any announcement be made of you leaving the company until the severance period is up.
5. References. The company will provide written references for future employers, to be reviewed and approved by the separated employee. (We may need to negotiate this if you leave in someone's bad graces or if you just plain do a bad job. My advice? Do neither. )
6. Outplacement services. The company will provide, at its expense, access to résumé writing services, printing services, phone and Internet, and admin support. This includes an office or workspace. Third-party outplacement service fees will be available at the employee's discretion, to a maximum of 10K.
7. Bonuses/incentives. All profit bonuses and/or performance bonuses that would have been paid in the calendar year of the severance period will be paid by the end of the severance period.
8. No Retro Payback. The employee will not be asked to return or reimburse any sign-on bonuses, merit bonus, or contest or incentive prizes, such as trips or meals. This includes relocation expenses at the time of hire.
9. Company car. The employee will have the option of buying the provided vehicle or returning it.
10. Equity. If equity earned is fully vested, the employee may cash out or may choose to stay an investor in the company.
11. Tuition. If the employee has begun classes under a tuition reimbursement program, the company will pay for the classes in full.
I had to smile at Harper's postscript. "PS: I know the company car is a Camry, and you wouldn't be caught dead driving one. Work with me here!"
I put the "Harper" file away and remembered how scared I used to be that Donald might find it. Harper flirted in email, and I wondered if any of the clippings I had printed out and attached had any of my replies included.
I felt guilty and a little dirty, though I had never even so much as touched Harper. Whenever he was on the phone, Donald would refer to him as "your buddy." There was never any other discussion of the matter until the very end, when my humiliation had become public, and I was asking Donald how he could sleep with another woman in our bed.
"Go ahead," Donald snarled, "make me out to be a monster. You can't make me feel any worse than I do, but take away the sex, and the only difference between Sasha and Harper is a matter of degree. It's the same intention."
Had we signed a divorce agreement during that period, I would have demanded things I really didn't care about just to hurt Donald. In fact, Connecticut has a ninety-day grace period after you file for divorce precisely to let everyone cool down. We were the better for it, but there is no such grace period at work. Companies should take a page from the dissolution of marriages and institute a "no fault" rule, where no one can quit or fire anyone for ninety days, until everyone has cooled down.
But Harper would say that is idealistic and not going to happen. In the meantime, we need severance agreements.
CHAPTER FIVE
## THE TRUTH ABOUT RÉSUMÉS
When you're unemployed you find out that the day, which was impossibly short for everything you were trying to cram into it before, actually creeps by. You start wondering why more housewives haven't written screenplays and what is taking so long to cure cancer. However, despite the increased amount of time, you still get almost nothing done.
So as I summoned the energy to sit down to write my résumé, with Harper's help, (after the diner visit, he anointed me as ready) the phone rang, and I remembered: telemarketing calls come in all day long. If you don't pick up, they don't leave messages, so I had no idea this was happening when I was working or when Donald and I were both gone all day. Lately a tenacious salesperson, one Peter Bonetti, had called every day at various times and had even left a couple of messages, but while I respected his salesmanship, I would just delete the message without listening to it. After all, I had a résumé to write.
HARPER'S RULES
Résumés
There are two kinds of candidates. The first kind has a great background that I can bring to market but has a terrible résumé. These candidates think it's impossible to fairly encapsulate their vast life's work in such a short form. They hate their résumés. The second kind has the opposite problem. They believe that had Moses an eleventh tablet, it would have been their résumé. When they first sit down, they take the sacred text from their briefcases, handling it like an ancient scroll or a treasure map. Often the first thing this type of candidate will say to me is, "So, what did you think of my résumé?" as if it were a grandchild or a protégé. This kind of candidate will turn down a tremendous job offer if they feel "it won't look good on my résumé." Such reasoning is the equivalent of a man saying he would be happy to marry his beloved, except it would look bad later to be referred to as someone's "ex-husband."
All of my fellow headhunters will be thrilled when the résumé, which is on the endangered species list, breathes its last. Technically, it is already extinct. Video résumés will be the standard. Some companies already offer the service.
But for now, and for the near term, you need a résumé. No résumé, no interview; you are removed from serious consideration because you're either a prima donna or not serious about making a move. It is one of the first red flags to a headhunter that you are a "shopper."
Understand: To date, I have never placed a résumé! But I have also never secured a first meeting for a real job at a major corporation without submitting a résumé, dossier, curriculum vitae, call it what you will. It's a must have. And it must be good! If it's not of a certain quality, make no mistake, they will discard you. Here's the truth about the "system" of reviewing résumés: Companies want to screen OUT, not screen IN. So if something small is wrong, you don't get the benefit of the doubt, you get screened. You lose. Got it?
So let's not let that happen.
Your résumé is an advertisement; it is not an affidavit.
We're not selling your memoir here. We're not going to include anything that's not true, but we're sure going to leave out some stuff that is.
Your résumé is a highlight film; it's SportsCenter, not the unedited game footage.
We have between five and fifteen seconds to catch your reader's attention before they either engage or pass. We're going to compress, assuming everyone you send your résumé to has Adult Attention Deficit Disorder.
If God had a résumé, it would be one page.
I know, I know: you've done so much, you have awards, you have honors, you have so many years of excellence. Wake up! Nobody reads the second page. Nobody cares about anything in your background older than ten years back (unless you're 25–35 years old). No one cares how you were formed; they care about what you bring to bear in the job they're trying to fill and whether you are qualified. Remember, the purpose of the résumé is to get an interview. Period.
Harper's cynical side, always present at the cellular level, seemed to metastasize when it came to résumés. But then I remembered cruising Monster yesterday just to get a look at some sample résumés and going brain dead within a few moments.
Besides, when Harper gets cynical, I sort of love him, the way you love to see gorillas stretch at the zoo. You want to hug them, even though you know they could crush you.
The phone rang. The name on the screen was Peter Bonetti. God bless you, buddy. Whoever you work for ought to promote you for sheer tenacity. I hit the END button on the second ring.
Don't overthink it.
Do it all in one sitting. It's one page, for crying out loud. It's your life; you are your own research. Don't waste days looking up dates and calling your old companies and friends to document details. While you're investigating, others are getting hired.
Don't start with your "career objective."
This says, "Hi, I'm an amateur." Unless you are a recent college grad, I don't care what you want; I care about what my company needs done. We'll talk about what you want at your second interview, when I'm trying to make you happy. Remember, what I really want is to screen you out. Don't make it easier for me.
A reverse chronology is the proper format.
Tell me who you work for now, in what capacity, and what your duties and functions are. Do this for the most recent decade. If you're old enough to have previous decades, you may summarize them, since no one really cares but you, and even you can't remember the "you" of your early résumé.
Bragging rights: your achievements and accomplishments.
This is critical. Tell me, in a quantitative way, about your performance in each job. Show me how you will make me money or save me money. I'm looking at the résumé of a guy I recently placed. Here's one of his entries:
WIREFORCE Inc. (Second largest manufacturer of wire-molded products in the U.S.) Director of Quality Assurance (2002–present)
Complete budgetary responsibility of a 15 million dollar Quality unit comprised of 127 people. This includes 45 engineers and 12 research scientists.
* Reduced failure rate 89 percent in first year
* Eliminated 2nd shift of inspection, saving 12 million dollars
* Won the auto industry's coveted QAA award
* Designed team innovations that reduced lead time by 122 percent
This guy is a pro. That's why I placed him and earned a commission of 43K. He doesn't spell out the details or worry about making sure you know exactly when all this happened. He doesn't stress over whether he's taking too much credit for things that obviously involved other people. He understood his résumé as an advertisement. You want more info? You want to know how he did it? Interview him!
Depending on your area of expertise, it may be perfectly acceptable to include the following in your "bragging rights":
* Patents
* Awards
* Education (If really impressive and recent. If you were a 4.0 at a state school and you're 40, let it go.)
* Rate of promotion
* Publications
* Design innovations
* Major clients sold or serviced (If it's a household name, use it. We all love branding.)
Affiliations and/or civic interests.
If you're committed to a career, you can demonstrate that by showing me associations and/or extra training and certification. It shows consistency of purpose. And if in your busy life you have found the time for charitable work or you are active in some civic way that shows you care about the world around you, go ahead and include it—briefly! As a small and petty person, I do not like to hire morally superior people. I admire you; I just don't see what we have in common.
Family and personal situation.
I know your family is the most important thing in the world to you. Mine is to me. It's a given. Givens don't get space on a one-page résumé. Don't tell me you have two "healthy beautiful daughters named Hazel and Greta and that you married your high school sweetheart." This is a résumé, not your acceptance speech for a lifetime achievement award. You could also be creating a negative. Maybe the job has travel, and they're going to assume you won't be available. Maybe the hiring authority's kids are the bane of his existence or she just got divorced. Wait until you read the situation in an interview, and then by all means, if needed, wax poetic about the wonders of family.
When all else fails, tell the truth.
Just because I said earlier your résumé is an advertisement, that is not a license to steal. It's been estimated that as much as 40 percent of what is on a résumé is exaggerated or is an outright untruth: you leave out short stays that didn't work out and merge your dates of employment to show continuity that inconveniently didn't take place; you figure you went to college for three years and did a lot of course work, so why not say you have a degree? You didn't head up the project, but you know your boss is no longer there, and who's to say now that it's so long ago, and hell, you could have headed up the project—you worked so damn hard on it . . .
Don't do it! If you lie in the résumé and are caught, nothing will save you. They will not hire you, or if they do and then find out you lied, they will fire you. And I will tell them to do so, since a) that means you lied to me, and b) my interest is in the next deal with this client, and I'm not sullying my reputation to save you.
Here's the saving grace about truth on résumés. Companies hire people who have been fired, people who flunk drug tests, and people who lost major accounts—but only if you come clean before the fact. Companies love to forgive; they do not tolerate being played for fools. Don't take the risk; it's just not worth it.
Now don't procrastinate. Go write your résumé before you read the next section. And don't freak out about how the damn thing looks. Don't use logos—the nipple rings of résumés—use a basic Roman font, use white or ivory colored paper, don't use anything smaller than 10-point type, and remember that less is more. Clutter is bad; white space is good. That's all you need to know. Now sit yourself down and write. It's your life. It should flow. It's the ultimate "me" time. Enjoy it. When you're done, you should be reading it and feeling, "I would totally hire me!"
If Harper asks me about his chapter on writing résumés, I am going to tell him it was inspiring and I cranked out a draft in twenty minutes. But by nature I buck the system, so I checked if my gym clothes passed the smell test and headed for my workout. But I was thinking of my résumé the entire fifteen-minute drive down the Merritt Parkway.
I had "bragging rights," as Harper calls them. I have a degree in marketing from a decent school, and while I'm not a programmer, I can fake the tech talk so well most CIOs try to recruit me. I'm attractive—not crazy, jaw-dropping attractive; I'm a child short of being a MILF—and in the prime of my career. Writing the résumé should be simple, given Harper's notes. So why did I have to do a spin class in order to buck up the courage? Was it because I not only had no husband or children to brag about, but because like a startup company's website, that part of my résumé would read "currently under construction"?
Spin classes are all about the instructor and the music. Today I got Eva, a Nazi born long after her time, who kept telling me to keep my butt down, thereby drawing attention to my butt, and who is fond of country and western tunes for the long climbs. I decided as I walked out that spin was not going to make the cut on my résumé's "personal interests" section.
On my way to the locker I saw Cute Guy walking toward me. This was entirely the wrong angle to look at his butt, but these are life's little burdens, and I settled for his face, which was, I now noticed, really amazing. Soft brown eyes; sharp, almost jutting jaw; and silly high cheekbones. But is he scowling at me? I smiled and said "Hi," and he dismissively rolled his eyes, said, "Right," and walked by me.
Whatever, buddy. Nice to know my beacon for psychos stays lit like the Olympic torch.
The workout didn't provide the attitude adjustment needed to revamp my résumé. I thought about Harper predicting that video résumés would soon be the accepted format and that the capabilities already exist. I did a Google search and found ProHire-View. The mechanics were simple. For a nominal yearly fee, you could record a video in lieu of the written résumé and attach it to a written profile. They would pretty it up and format it into a professional looking product that they would then send out for you. All you had to do was send them the URLs and job postings. If you had Windows Media and a webcam, you could record and attach within their site.
I decided that I had to try to differentiate myself through the coolest new technique, and it would help me "rough draft" some thoughts in my head. I got out my credit card, joined up, and read through the short tutorial. Hell, you sit in front of the screen and click RECORD—I think I can handle it.
I showered, did my hair and make-up, and dressed for cyber success. Seventy-five minutes and four auditioned outfits later, I sat down in front of my webcam, cleared my throat, and double-clicked on RECORD.
"Good morning."
I hit the STOP and REPLAY buttons. How the hell did I know what time they would be watching this, whoever they are?
"Hi, I'm Casey Matthews. I've attached my résumé in text format, but I wanted you to know something more about me through the wonders of video. As you can see, I've spent my eleven-year career in software sales, mostly in the financial services and supply chain space. In college I took several psychological tests, purely for vocational reasons, and I tested very high for sales. They turned out to be right: I was SAP's top Northeastern rep by the time I was twenty-seven. I took a New York City territory from zero to eight million dollars in fifteen months, opening accounts like Bank of America and Goldman Sachs. My ambition, after more sales seasoning and more years of record-setting production, would be sales management, and eventually marketing or strategy management. I look forward to speaking with you soon. My contact info is attached."
I hit STOP. What a bunch of crap! It's what they want to hear, and as I replayed it, I decided it wasn't half bad. That made me more upset. I hit RECORD again.
"Casey Matthews here, opting for honesty. I need a job. You have posted an opening. And there you have it. I quit my last job. I was doing well. I could have stayed. You don't believe me? I don't blame you. Who does that? At the time, I felt my life lacked meaning and that I was at a crossroads. Now my life lacks meaning and income, and I remain at the crossroads. But let's cut to the chase. Look at my résumé. I can sell. Call me in the next ninety minutes and I'll knock ten percent off my salary."
I hit STOP, played it back, and hit ERASE. I sat back on my couch and remembered going to the primary school where my sister teaches for Career Day. My niece Sheila was going to talk about her parents' jobs. Todd is an ophthalmologist. Sheila stood in front of the class and said, "My mommy helps little kids become smarter, and Daddy makes sure people can see the things they need to see." My heart didn't break, but there was a hairline fracture.
I sat up and hit RECORD.
"My name is Casey, and I'm a little lost. I'm a complete control freak, and yet I have never really had control. I truly believe love conquers all, and yet I can never summon the courage to fight for it. I sell because I want people, usually men, to like me, and then I resent them when I pull it off. I want to be smarter, but instead of reading I watch movies. I want to be patient and kinder, but everyone bores me except Harper, and the longer I am unemployed even he is wearing thin. I am so scared and so furious at myself for being weak enough to be scared. Thanks for your time."
I hit ERASE, sat at my desk, and tried to decide if crying would help. And then I heard the chirp of a text message.
I have an interview for you! Say goodbye and thanks to your host at the pity party and meet me at the Darien Country Club at 4 P.M. Dress like a golfer.
Harper, I never doubted you! Suddenly, almost magically, I was sick of being sick of myself. I sat down and wrote my résumé in twenty-five minutes. Now, how do you dress like a golfer?
CHAPTER SIX
## NETWORKING, JOB BOARDS,
AND DATING ONLINE
Harper read through my résumé in seven seconds, nodded, folded it in half, and stuffed it in his golf bag. I glared at him.
"What? I don't need your résumé. The rest of the world does."
"Then why did you make me crazy over it?"
"Because you need it to bring to interviews and attach to postings, and frankly, it kept you from bugging me. I have a job to do and a book to write. The life of an artist is exhausting."
He took out a micro recorder. He didn't look exhausted. I thought we were having lunch, but instead I had a pile of balls and some women's rental clubs. Harper had his director's chair, a glass of iced tea, and an umbrella to shade himself. For the fifth straight time, I swung back with the driver and hit the green rubber mat five inches behind the ball. I looked at Harper furiously, but he held his finger over his lips. He turned the recorder on and said, "Finding Your Own Job—High Touch and High Tech."
He looked at me and pressed PAUSE.
"What? I'll have my secretary transcribe it. Don't be so judgmental. Turn your left shoulder behind the ball, but don't lift your head."
I swung at the ball and this time hit it sideways into the wooden wall that bordered my station, and it bounced back at me. I shrieked and jumped out of the way. Harper sensed his imminent danger, took a club out of my bag, and motioned for me to move aside.
He set himself, waggled, and then made a long, languid pass at the ball. It was as if he wasn't trying to hit the ball; he just let the shot happen. The ball rocketed off the ground and went so high into the sky and so deep down the range that it went past all the markers. Harper put the club back in the bag without even waiting to see where the ball dropped.
"Look, Bagger Vance, what about the interview you said you had for me?"
"We're not here just to talk about your interview. I am going to teach you how you can get even more interviews without me by utilizing your network. People find their own jobs 86 percent of the time. Headhunters, Internet job sites, and career boards kill themselves for a small portion of the pie that would be smaller if people knew what they were doing. So I'm going to tell you and record it, so I get a chapter out of it. That's called a win/win."
"But there is an interview, right?"
"I have an interview for you. We just need to pick a day that matches everyone's schedule."
"But why golf? It can't be that much fun for you to see me make a fool of myself."
"It's not only not fun for me, it's excruciating. But necessary."
Harper looked behind me and smiled the smug smile of someone whose plan was being executed without flaw. An older man, immaculately dressed, was walking to the practice bunkers with a sand wedge and a small bucket of balls. Harper waved to him, and the man came over to us. They exchanged the obligatory male trash talking, and then Harper introduced me.
"This is Casey Matthews. Casey, Wallace Avery."
"So you're Casey? Harper didn't say you played golf."
"Well, it's been a while. Trying to get back into it."
"My advice would be not to bother. But then, you know what? Once in a great while, one of the little white suckers actually goes where you aimed it, and it's all worthwhile. Nice meeting you, Casey."
And he walked away. Nice guy. Had a charm about him, a breezy sort of confidence. He was downright sexy, and he had to be close to seventy. I have been alone way, way too long.
"Who is he, Harper?"
"He is the exec VP and a major stockholder in the software company you're interviewing with. InterAnnex Software."
"That's why we're here? You knew he'd be here this time of day?"
"He's late. I thought he'd be here two buckets ago. Let's go eat."
I used to think golfers sat in the grill rooms at their clubs in order to recount shots that everyone around the table already saw and to drink rather than go home to their families.
I still think so.
But as Harper and I had lunch and he positioned his micro recorder on the table, I understood what Harper was after by bringing me here. I recognized three of my old customers, presidents of banks I had sold enterprise-wide software to; two IT directors who had run seminars I had attended; and a couple of competitors of my old company. All in the same room, in good moods. Harper lured all of them over and introduced me. He never said I was looking for a job; he never even said what business I was in. None of them recognized me, even the customers I had met several times and relieved of millions of their company's dollars. When Harper found his opening and made it clear I was a client, "a former superstar at SAP," they gave me business cards and asked for my number.
I had done a month's worth of networking, and all I had to do was sit there and occasionally say things like, "So, who won all the skins and greenies and sandies?" My only gaffe occurred when my cell phone went off at the table. The golf course and grill room were the last refuge from otherwise constant connectivity. I looked down quickly at the number. Peter Bonetti again! How the hell did he get my cell phone? This geek has crossed over from tenacity to harassment. I powered down my cell as Harper cleared his throat and began his chapter.
"So what's the first lesson of finding your own job, Casey?"
"Uh, get a job as a cart girl?"
"Gee, I'm sorry, I thought you were unemployed and needed help. When is open mike night?"
"Okay, Harper, the first lesson, obviously, is you need to leverage your contacts before you send out résumés to people who know nothing about you."
Harper shook his head and leaned in. He really was passionate about this stuff, even after all these years. Was he this passionate at home, with his wife and daughter? He clicked the power button on the micro recorder without losing eye contact.
HARPER'S RULES
Finding Your Own Job—High Touch and High Tech.
The first lesson in finding your own job is understanding that high touch comes before high tech.
Tactic 1: Before you turn to the Internet postings or the Sunday classifieds, you put your personal supply chain on notice.
Everyone has a personal supply chain. We think of supply chains as things companies have when they want to schedule, distribute, track, and ship product. Walmart uses a vendor supply chain to make product and get it in the stores.
And that's true of every working professional on the planet. You have a supply chain of vendors who have a vested interest in your welfare. If you're like most professionals, you have a supply chain already in place. A travel agent? Personal trainer? Jeweler? Real estate agent? An accountant? A lawyer? A psychologist or therapist? Housekeeper? How about all of your doctors? Your dentist, your vet? The guy who set up your high-def TV?
Every one of these people should be alerted to your need for a job or a future relationship. Any one of these people could refer you to someone who knows someone who might be 'the someone' who could hire you or fix you up.
"Sorry to interrupt, Harper; I know you're making this up as you go along. But how does telling my housekeeper or the guy at Jiffy Lube help me get a job as a senior sales rep, to say nothing of how they would know the kind of person who is right for me to date?"
Harper sat back stiffly. "You, Casey Matthews, are a snob." He leaned in toward the recorder again.
Six degrees of separation doesn't discriminate. It knows no boundaries. It has no attitude. You don't know who people know. You think they don't have a sense of judgment because they have low incomes? You think their powers of observation are limited by their station in life?
"Okay, enough. I feel terrible about myself. I will contact my personal supply chain and let them know what my needs are. But it's hard."
"Sure, because you're proud. How's that working out for you? Let that go and you'll be surprised how much more help you'll get from people and how much more they'll like you."
I thought of all the nights since the divorce, and more nights since I have been unemployed, when the phone hasn't made a sound. I have made it a lifelong habit to convince those around me I have no needs; they all assume I'm okay. I instantly made a pact with myself to come clean with everyone in my personal supply chain as Harper continued.
"People want to help, but the power of word of mouth has to come from you. You have to be willing to ask the two questions that have made me wealthy: Can I ask you for some help? Who do you know?
Tactic 2: Call your professional references. Let them know that you are active in the job market and ask them if you can count on them for a recommendation.
Do this for all of your old jobs. These people could hire you back or recommend you for a position they know about.
It's wise to include colleagues as business references. Do you know why? Because they receive recruiting calls from headhunters like me! Seventy percent of the time they hear the headhunter out and even send a résumé out of sheer curiosity. But they don't take a new job; they flirt. They may even interview, but they turn down the eventual offer. They are the bane of any good headhunter's existence, but they are useful to you. If they have turned down an offer, they feel guilty and want to help the headhunter out. If they know you are looking or have your résumé in their email, you may get a position on the rebound.
Tactic 3: You need to be working with two headhunters that specialize in your niche, market space, or industry vertical.
Why two? Because no one headhunter has access to all the opportunities. But limit it to only two reputable firms.
Never shotgun your résumé to every headhunter posting you see online. Headhunters, especially those working at the contingency level—they only get a fee when the placement is made and the candidate has begun work—all have the same jobs. You'll dilute your own efforts and become persona non grata.
"So, Harper, you're saying I need to be working with another headhunter besides you?"
Harper clicked off the recorder and glared at me again.
"You're riding Secretariat, love. You don't need to get on the merry-go-round."
He reached over to click the recorder back on, but I had a question, so I placed my hand over his, and there was a weird moment where we both realized we were touching each other.
"Harper, I know you because you came after me a long time ago. But what about the people who are going to read your book who don't know who the connected headhunters are?"
He pressed the RECORD button.
Insider tip to find the best headhunters:
Call the VP of human resources at any of the companies that compete with your last place of employment. The amateur move is to ask them who they would recommend you work with as a search firm; headhunters call HR all the time. But the insider move is to ask them which headhunters they really hate. Who are the ones that try to circumvent them and go straight to the line managers? Who are the ones that have stolen their best people? The headhunters that the human resources people hate the most are the ones you want working for you.
"Okay, you ready? High touch before high tech, tactic four: the big one—the secret of how headhunters get jobs! Learn this skill and you'll never need me or Internet job postings or classified ads again!"
He looked so serious that I had to consider if Harper no longer being a necessary part of my life was something I wanted or not. Without me in job crisis, would he care enough to stay in touch? Before I could decide, Harper pulled out his vibrating Blackberry. He clicked, read for a few seconds, and then shook his head slowly. I have been in sales long enough to know he had just lost a deal.
"This clown is a director of marketing in Redwood City, making 160K. I got him an offer for 240K, but the commute is an hour longer. He's turning it down."
"Quality-of-life issue, right?" I offered.
"Nah, it's an excuse. He's scared." Harper signed the check and stood up. "I gotta go deal with this. You know, Casey, that's another way relationships and jobs are the same: If you love someone, you don't tell him he lives too far away so you can't see him anymore. You drive faster."
"Hold it, Harper. You can't make me keep my cell off while yours was on, promise an interview about which I still know nothing, tell me you're about to share the secret of finding a job, and then ditch me. What if you die on the Merritt Parkway on the way to your office? I won't get my interview, the secret will die with you, and I could be unemployed forever!"
"And . . . there'd be the tragedy of my demise."
"Oh, right. That too. Give me the PowerPoint version right now."
Harper sighed and sat down.
"Let's role-play it. You are the senior VP of sales and marketing at a major software company. Your goal is simple: drive revenue. You are sitting at your desk. The phone rings, and here I come: 'Casey, my name is Harper Scott. Have you heard of me? I'm a headhunter who focuses on your industry; I've built sales teams for your competitors: people like Jake Malcom at Intellivision and Bob Peters at Odeon Systems. I'm reaching out because I've recruited a killer, one of SAP's big stars: a woman personally responsible for scoring accounts like Amex and Deutsche Bank, sales of over 12 million dollars in two years. She is putting out feelers to make a move, and I wanted you to have a shot at talking to her. How did I do in getting your attention?'"
It was strange to realize that Harper had just pitched me to me—even stranger to realize I was impressed.
"That's what you do, Harper? That's how you get your work? I guess I thought it was more glamorous."
"Do I make smart calls to my network first? Sure. But I still do cold canvassing because it generates new work, keeps my skills sharp, and exposes new niches and trends in the marketplace. Basics, baby. For most headhunters, fifty calls each morning to start the day. It's called 'prime calling hours with an MPC.'"
"MPC?"
"That's you, kiddo. Most Placeable Candidate."
Tactic 4: How headhunters get their search assignments, and how you can cut out the middle man and do it for yourself.
Headhunters' Most Placeable Candidates are:
1. Most talented (verified by quantifiable track record)
2. Most available and motivated to take a job
3. Most skilled in presenting themselves physically (It's a shallow world; what can I say?)
4. Most flexible in the way of location and commute
5. Most reasonable in their compensation parameters
Once they have their list, they gather a list of companies who are most likely, based on your work history, to be interested in your background, and they pitch you by voice mail, live connects, and email, fifty times a day.
And that is Tactic Four. No headhunter should be more effective at doing this for you than you! A headhunter works with many different MPCs and many different search assignments at any one time; you only get a fraction of their attention and time. You just have to have the guts to make the call!
To make your own MPC call, follow these steps:
1. Generate a list of companies (competitors) that should have an interest in your background, based on your last five years of work history. You can use Internet tools as generic as Google or as specific as Hoovers, Broadlook, or Zoom Info.
2. Find the line manager you would report to. See if her profile or direct number is on the website before making the call.
3. As a backup, you can go to the human resources department . . . but only as a backup.
4. You will probably get a voice mail. You must leave a compelling message that is thirty seconds, tops! The goal is a call back, not applause.
5. Present your background in a highlight-film format. Three bullet points of accomplishments and achievements. Let them know you are reaching out to a few players you respect and would like to talk to them about their needs.
6. Keep the enthusiasm high and the vibe positive. You are not making this call out of need; you are exploring options!
7. When they call back, close on an interview. "When can we talk about this live?"
8. Don't discuss salary or anything of personal convenience on a phone interview or via email. An MPC's goal is to get an interview.
"That's it, Casey. A good MPC gets three interviews for every fifty calls made by an experienced headhunter. Your ratio should be better because no one has as much knowledge about you as you do, and no one has more at stake."
"But it seems so simple, Harper. Why wouldn't everyone do that for themselves before they called you?"
"Because they're afraid. The same reason we don't tell someone we love that we love them, even though we might ache to do so. What if they reject us?"
I had to look away. Harper clicked off his recorder and stood up. This writing session was over.
"Well, I'm not afraid. I'm a salesperson. I can make those calls."
"I know," Harper said, "and you should. Gotta go."
"What about the interview?"
"A little faith, please."
Harper moved past me, touched my shoulder briefly but not absently, and squeezed for a second.
Suddenly I felt another hand pat my shoulder. Is there a sign on my back that says, PAT HERE, I'M LONELY?
"So," Wallace Avery began, "it seems Harper has left us to our own devices. Sorry, did I startle you?"
"No, I'm sorry, just preoccupied. Backswing, downswing, straight left arm . . ."
He smiled. "Well, we need to schedule our meeting. How's ten on Friday? I'm in Stamford on Fridays, so I can save you the drive in to Manhattan. The Archer Building across from the Marriott."
"I look forward to it. Look at us, doing Harper's job for him."
"Well," Wallace shrugged, "I'm sure it's awkward for him."
I must have looked confused. "You know, don't you?" he said. "I'm not sure what you're referring to."
"We passed a corporate edict a year ago: no more headhunting fees. If we end up hiring you, Harper is not charging us."
Wallace could see he had made me uncomfortable but was not to be deterred by my burst of pride.
"He told me he's placed you twice, young lady, and I have paid him a small fortune over the years, so you and I have earned this, and we are going to meet Friday. Besides, we may hate you. Friday. Okay?"
"I'll be there."
"First test. Can you be trusted with a secret? I just talked out of school, and now you need to cover for me with Harper."
Halfway home, I decided I had to breach the confidentiality with Wallace and talk to Harper. Should I thank him? Should I rip into him and tell him I do not need charity and that if he was going to change the nature of our business relationship he should have included me in the decision? Harper's fee for someone on my level was around 40K! But what if he told Wallace Avery that I knew? It not only would cost me the job I had not yet interviewed for; how would I feel when Avery asked me why I broke his trust?
I once asked Harper if he could keep a secret because I wanted to tell him some juicy gossip I had heard about a major competitor's product. "No," he said solemnly, "I can't keep a secret. If you tell me I will tell everyone I know. Then I'll start cold calling."
I made a decision to respect Avery's wishes and keep Harper's pro bono work to myself.
I was pulling into my driveway, trying to figure out why this lovely gesture on Harper's part had somehow made me resentful of him, when my cell buzzed, and I saw the name and number of Peter Bonetti. I will eat this clown alive.
"Peter Bonetti, as I live and breathe." There was a pause. "Well?"
"Okay, give me a minute. I'm so used to your voice mail recording, I never considered you might actually pick up."
I sat back in my car seat in my driveway. This was going to be so much fun.
"Well, that's a rookie move, Peter. You are supposed to be prepared for a live connect every time you reach out to someone like me."
"You haven't made it easy. Didn't anyone ever teach you the basic courtesy of returning someone's call?"
Okay, this kid is going to die, and then I'm going after his family. "Are you joking? How many times have you called me? Ten, fifteen?"
"Six on your regular phone and three on your cell. Not that I'm tracking it."
"God, you really are a rookie, aren't you? How long have you been doing this?"
"You mean calling women I don't know and trying to get them to give me a few minutes before they reject me?"
"Exactly. How long?"
"About six months, I guess. I used to think I was pretty good at this. But I've been out of it for so long, guess I don't have my game back yet."
I knew guys like this. They get out of sales because they burn out, and then when they try to get back in, they've lost their nerve.
"Okay, rookie. I'm going to cut you a break and let you make your pitch. It's not going to work, but I'll let you practice. Go."
"I don't think so. Enough is enough. Thanks for taking my call. You really need to learn some manners."
"Give me your manager's name, Bonetti!"
"What? What are you talking about?"
"I want your manager's name."
"I don't have a manager. My boss is the owner, and you know him. I've seen you talk to him."
"Okay, stop trying to confuse me. Who is this owner?"
"Just make sure when you talk to him you admit that I have caught you staring at my ass. That you flirt with me. That you told Amanda at the front desk that I was hot, which is why I looked you up in the member's database and got your cell phone. That is against gym rules, so go ahead and get me fired. At least I won't have to see you anymore."
Oh my God! Peter Bonetti is Cute Guy! No wonder he gave me the stinkeye the last couple of times I saw him. I started to laugh. I wanted to tell him I had never listened to any of his messages, but when I tried, nothing came out but a snorting sound, and then I lost it and was laughing so hard I was crying. I couldn't remember the last time I had laughed so hard. Finally I calmed down enough to explain. At first I could tell he didn't believe me, but then he surrendered, and he started to laugh—a deep, savory laugh that I could tell he gave up easily under normal circumstances. To me it was a precious, vulnerable piece of me I dispensed with stinginess. I make men laugh; they don't make me laugh.
"I'm sorry, Peter. Really, I am. You know if you wore the polo shirt with the name tag that all the other gym employees wear instead of the tank tops you walk around in, I'd have known your name."
"I'm a personal trainer; those tank tops get me business."
"Right," I laughed.
"Can I make my pitch now?"
"Sure."
"I work at the gym as a personal trainer. I don't have a lot of money, although my client base is growing. I am thirty-two years old, and I was living with a girl for five years who pretty much broke my heart about six months ago. I'm really afraid of going through all that again but decided it was time to take a risk. You seemed, I don't know . . ."
"This is where you say, 'really, really hot.'"
"That too, sure, but you seemed like . . . you'd been there. Like you were trying to act okay."
"I am okay," I managed, finally.
"Okay. So I wanted to see if you wanted to do something in the area of a date of some sort."
"That's your pitch?"
"There it is."
"It's pretty weak, Peter. I have had classical sales training, and you are breaking all the rules. You are supposed to only present your best qualities, not your weaknesses, and then of course you didn't close me on a specific time. The correct method would be to ask an open ended question like, 'How's Saturday?'"
"Saturday's great. What time?"
Oh no, I'm feeling that flutter thing in my chest. I promised myself to never feel that again.
"I don't know, Peter, I just don't know if I can. I'm sorry."
"I understand."
"Oh for God's sake, that's an objection! You're supposed to overcome it. All right! Seven o'clock on Saturday. Hang up the phone now, Peter. A good salesman gets the order and gets off the phone."
An interview on Friday and a date on Saturday . . . Could things be starting to actually go my way? Dial down the hope, I told myself. It's the hope that gets you.
CHAPTER SEVEN
## PREPPING FOR
INTERVIEWS AND DATES
The next day I went running at Hubbard Park. I hate running outside, but I have a quandary: I need to lose two to five pounds in the three days before my interview and date, but the person I am dating works at the gym and would see me trying to overcompensate.
Just when I was trying to decide whether to do the mile loop again or head back home, a car pulled up and a young kid rolled down the window. Here we go. Boys and their turbo-testosterone. What can you do?
"Excuse me, ma'am," he said politely, "do you know where Webster's Bakery is?"
"Are you crazy? You stop me while I'm running and not only don't give me a 'hey, baby,' but when you saw me from behind, you thought, 'there's someone who knows where a bakery is?'"
"Sorry, ma'am."
He drove off and I felt the urge to memorize the license plate, but I didn't know whom I would report them to. Then I heard the laughter. I turned to square off with my next victim, and there was Harper on a park bench by the jogging trail.
He was wearing a houndstooth sport coat and a cashmere sweater over an oxford shirt, and had a Burberry trench coat folded in his lap. The cordovan loafers were so polished they looked like they had just been taken out of their shoebox for the first time.
"Hey, baby. How was that?"
"Tread lightly, funny man. What are you doing here, Harper?"
"You have an interview. It's my job to prep you for that interview, and everything I tell you will also apply to the date you told me you have on Saturday."
"Another book chapter."
"You're so cynical. We need to get you a job so you can go back to just being disgruntled."
"But how did you know I'd be here? I haven't run outside in months!"
"I didn't know. I was taking a chance you'd be home and was on your street when you ran by. Why aren't you at your gym—oh, never mind. Your date is with someone you met there, and you can't risk looking overanxious."
"Does your wife find your deductive powers as annoying as I do?"
He stood up. "Do you want to walk? I need to give you my chapter and then get to work."
It wasn't really a question; Harper started walking. I reminded him that I had always done well on interviews.
"That's nonsense," Harper said. "I track my ratios. Without a headhunter's professional prep, even excellent candidates get offers only forty percent of the time. With the prep, it's seventy percent. And how about dating; how are your ratios there?"
"I never tracked my dating ratios, Harper, seeing as how I'm not a psycho."
"You should. It's a numbers game. Why waste your time? Can I begin, or do you need to sit at the next bench and catch your breath?"
"No need to be snippy."
HARPER'S RULES
Prepping for Interviews and First Dates
Rule #1: Know your objective: to be asked back for a second interview or another date.
You may turn down that invitation, but you can't go into the interview/date with any thought other than getting them to want you. Sure, sometimes it's just a courtesy interview or a blind date and you find yourself woefully mismatched. In that case, just stand up, tell them you value their time as well as your own, but know instinctively this won't work. Thank them for their time and move on. But this scenario is rare.
Most of the time the first interview/date protocol makes it impossible to determine your interest level. Everyone is on their best behavior. As an unemployed/single person, you have a vested interest in giving them the benefit of the doubt. If your mindset is that you have one objective only—to get another meeting—you will be more aware of the most important dynamic in first interviews and dates: it's all about them!
Rule #2: It's all about them.
Meeting One is about their needs and desires. Your goal is to show them you are truly present and really listening while they are talking. On a first meeting, imagine you're their ghostwriter, helping them write their memoirs. We all love to talk about ourselves. If you make it your business to leave that date or that interview knowing 1) that you have actively asked them about their lives; and 2) that you have left them wanting to know more about your life, you will get asked if you are available for another meeting, and that is the only way of knowing the first interview or date was a success.
Rule #3: Never go on an interview or a date without having done your homework.
The more you know going into the meeting, the more power you have; and the more power you have, the more you control the outcome. We live in a search-engine world, and yet the majority of the people who walk into interviews have done zero research about the company or the person they are meeting. They walk into an office with a résumé, hand it over, and then sit back and allow themselves to be interrogated. This is all wrong. I instruct all my candidates to control the interview by showing, through a series of questions and statements, that they are knowledgeable, curious to learn more, and razor-sharp. These are all attractive traits, and we want to be with or work with people we find attractive.
So, never go on an interview without knowing:
* Company history
* Company products or service (and their value proposition in the market)
* Who the customers and/or end users are
* Size of company and number of employees
* Whether they are publicly or privately traded and if public, what the current stock value is
* Work history of the person(s) you are meeting
* The culture of the firm
* An understanding of and empathy for the short-term problems they are facing
And if you can, you need shock-and-awe information! Something they will be amazed you found out. Something that says "This one is different."
Now, you don't roll all this out at once; it's not a book report. You work it in. You let it develop organically.
Harper could read the look on my face. I'm a note person. Not having my Blackberry made me feel uncomfortable, but I couldn't bring myself to carry it in a pocket and have it bang against my thigh when I was only 500 yards from my house. If I really was so out of shape that I needed it to call 9-1-1 because I couldn't make it 500 yards back, I felt like I deserved to die.
Harper assured me that he was giving me the synopsis and that in the folder all of this was documented in a longer form.
I told him I already read the website of InterAnnex, the company he had set me up with, and had read the bio on their site of Wallace Avery. He shrugged. Okay, I wasn't looking for a shrug; I wanted approval. God, when will I stop needing approval? My therapist tells me it's key for my personal growth. But I know if I ever pull it off, I'll call her to tell her so she'll be proud of me.
"Let's take InterAnnex as a case study," he said. "I have taken the liberty of doing your homework for you, since I am using your interview in my book and paying you not one dime of future royalties. Now, InterAnnex is a software company in the social networking market vertical. When you go in to meet Wallace, unlike your competition, you will be able to tell him that you know they began in 2002, with only four employees as an instant messaging company, with a simple product. Then they built the Six Degrees Platform, mindful that Facebook was growing by leaps and bounds, and basically became a startup for a second time. In 2006 they were backed by Adobe Ventures to the tune of 50 million dollars. They are now thirty-one employees, mostly technicians, but with a 40 million dollar pipeline of referenceable customers.
"They have no sales force. That's where you come in. Fortune magazine calls social networking the first original form of marketing in a generation, and The Wall Street Journal says social networking is in its embryonic stages and will compete with nano-technology for the most important innovation of the twenty-first century. My search is for their first VP of sales."
I knew what Harper was doing, but I was getting excited anyway. I just wanted to be in my interview already. "What do you know about Wallace that isn't on the website?"
"You already know he's a golfer. But that's too easy. Wallace put his career on hold in early 1991, even though he was already a very successful marketing guy in the logistics space. You know why? Because his dad was in the military and fought in the Pacific. Two Purple Hearts. During Vietnam, Wallace didn't protest, he served. But no action. Stayed in the reserves after that, and when they needed logistics expertise in Kuwait and Iraq, Wallace asked for a leave of absence and off he went. He was fifty-two years old. He told me it wasn't a sense of duty as much as he felt he was still owed some action, so when he asks you why you want to start your sales career in a new product space you know nothing about . . ."
"I tell him sales still owes me some action. He'll know it came from you, Harper."
"We've never discussed it. I was holding it back for a special occasion. Besides, even if he did know it was from me, use it anyway. By the way, his daughter Sara did an internship for the same congressman you did, so even if you spent that summer sneaking out to get high in the Smithsonian restrooms, you might want to recall it fondly for Wallace."
We had reached my house, and I saw that Harper's Range Rover was parked two houses down from my driveway. Harper checked his watch and handed me the folder.
"Do you make house calls for everyone, Harper?"
"How well have you been listening? What have I left out?"
"Shock and awe; something that says I'm different. Well? Don't hold out on me now; I've postponed my shower and post–runner's high nap for you. Give."
"Cisco is going to buy them. Could be as much as 2 billion. As soon as they prove they have a sales model that works. Wallace is already rich; he is about to get silly rich."
"So if I get in now, will I get a piece of that?"
Harper took his index finger and shook it at me like we had just played hide and seek and he found me in the first place he looked.
"There is nothing hotter than an opportunistic, beautiful, sweaty, gross woman. Would I be sending you there if you couldn't get a piece of that?"
Harper pointed his keys at the Rover; lights went off and the latches opened on all four doors.
"Casey, two more things: One, everything we just went through should be applied to Peter Bonetti before this weekend; and two, start asking yourself how you will answer the question Wallace asks everyone: 'If you had this job, who would you sell to first?'"
"Wait. How would I know who to sell to first?"
"You do know. Trust yourself."
Trust myself. That's really good advice, and I plan on doing that one of these days.
As soon as I got back from the interview, I emailed Harper:
Harper,
I just got back from my interview with InterAnnex and Wallace Avery, and I thought these notes might help you in the unlikely event you ever get serious about your book. Don't bother to thank me. Splitting your publisher's advance will do.
Let me say, first of all: I. Nailed. It.
Second, I do not need your advice in choosing the appropriate look or clothes for an interview. I'm not saying you shouldn't advise others in your book; I'm saying you don't need to advise me in those areas, since I dress for every sales call I ever go on and because you are not a woman. When I awoke to your one-word text message, "Pants," I realized you have been married too long.
Did I mention? I. Nailed. It.
Let me walk you through some tips for your readers. No charge, by the way.
HARPER'S RULES
Addendum on Interviewing, written for Harper Scott by Casey Matthews
Rule #1: Dress for every interview.
Dress conservatively. Don't overdo jewelry or make-up or perfume or cologne, and wear formal business attire even if you know it's a casual work environment.
Rule #2: Get there early, but not "psycho" early.
Don't make the interviewer think you have nothing else to do all day! And when you arrive, make friends with the receptionist. Sometime you may need him or her to put your call through to your potential new boss.
Rule #3: Travel light.
Take your coat off and carry a light briefcase or valise. You don't want to ruin your cool by dragging your gear down hallways.
Rule #4: Be more awake than the rest of the humans that day.
If the consciousness level in the office is a 5 out of 10, you need to be a 7. (A 9 or 10 is over the top, and you'll wear out your welcome.) "If you don't have an enthusiasm that is contagious, whatever you do have is also contagious" is the first and best rule of communication.
Rule #5: Shake hands firmly but don't grit your teeth and arm wrestle.
Rule #6: No obvious or phony compliments.
And no matter how nice the building or office, say nothing. You expect him to have a nice office, and you want him hoping he's living up to your expectations.
Rule #7: No negatives.
Never bad-mouth a previous employer. It doesn't matter how unfair the situation was or how screwed over you were, you simply say it didn't work out. They will see you as someone who will be accountable.
Rule #8. Have fun!
It's not life or death. It's the one time you can brag legitimately!
You know what Harper? Now that I think about it, you should thank me.
I hit SEND and fell back into my post-interview afterglow. Why does everyone tout the grace of losers or the character building of being humbled? Winning works! Why do they try to tell us otherwise? I hit a home run on my interview. I still got it, big time; no one can keep me from savoring the moment.
Except Harper. He called immediately after reading my email. When someone changes the mode of communication, you know you got to them.
"Hi, Harper. I hope you don't mind that my portion of your book is actually written down."
"How did you handle the money discussion, Casey?"
There was an edge in his voice.
"What do you mean?"
"Did Wallace ask you how much money you wanted?"
"Yes. I told him I wanted a base of 200K and commission potential to double that. What? Did I screw up?"
"Actually, I did. I should have told you how to handle it. It's the first time I've sent you out as an unemployed person. I blew it. I blame the venue. The park. Your shorts. You need to wear longer shorts."
My afterglow was now extinguished. Harper Scott: Mr. Buzzkill.
"What should I have said?"
Harper sighed the way you sigh when you have spent years trying to change someone. "Okay, you want to write a chapter? Write what I say down and send it to me."
I flipped open my laptop.
"I'm not sure how I got downgraded to stenographer, but go!"
HARPER'S RULES
How to Handle The Compensation Discussion in an Interview
If you are on your first interview and the decision maker asks you how much money you desire, you've witnessed a very clear buying sign. Interviewing 101 says you don't discuss money on the first interview; you know it and they know it. If, knowing this rule, they can't keep from breaking it, it's because they already know at some level they want to hire you and now want to get to the bottom line.
But danger lurks! In my headhunting career, nothing has cost candidates more jobs or money than the wrong response when it comes to the money discussion in an interview.
Here is the age-old dynamic: they want to hire you at the lowest amount possible; you want to get the highest amount possible. Neither one of you wants to feel like you were taken advantage of, and neither one of you wants the other feeling like they were exploited. Both are deeply suspicious that the other is guilty of "fudging" the numbers. (The company says it couldn't possibly pay what you say you want for budgetary reasons, and you say you couldn't possibly accept less due to personal financial commitments.) There is gamesmanship in play here. It's not about money; it's about playing the game well.
"But this isn't a rug at a tag sale," you say, "this is a person's livelihood, a company's bottom line. This shouldn't be trivialized into some puerile notion of one-upmanship. Surely we're all beyond that when it comes to our career!"
Uh, that would be a "no."
Everything is a game, a negotiation. Whether it should be that way is not my concern; my job is to identify the game and win it, for me and my candidates.
Here's the risk: If you answer the seemingly innocent question, "What kind of money are you looking for?" and your answer is too high, the client might assume they can't get you and never make an offer.
If your answer is too low, the client will offer you less than they would have been willing to pay if pressure were properly applied. So the key is to stay neutral. This is wage war, and you are Switzerland.
Neutral Response When Asked About Money
"I am currently at X [your current salary], and looking at a number of opportunities. Right now I'm just interested in pursuing this job and learning more about your company. I'm sure if we get to the offer stage, you will make a fair offer."
Now you can't be trapped. You have established that they are not the only game in town and that others are competing for your talents. You have implied that a reasonable increase will be required without risking overkill.
(If they ask you where else you are interviewing, you may disclose the types of jobs but not the actual companies. Let them know you were asked to keep it confidential and that you are offering everyone the same courtesy.)
"I'm sorry to interrupt," I blurted, "but isn't that a little dicky, Harper? Uh, Harper?"
"I'm sorry, you threw me off. I've never heard the words, 'little dicky' and 'Harper' in the same sentence before."
"Can you hold on, Harper, while I throw up in my mouth?"
"You've tapped into the problem, Casey. An interview is, by design, a weak power dynamic for the candidate: one job, many candidates, and the decision maker is lord and master. Everything I'm telling you serves the larger purpose of shifting the power dynamic. You are there by choice; you want for nothing. It's the only way to play this."
"But that all changes when they make an offer, right?"
"Exactly. Once you've been selected as the person they want, the power dynamic shifts to you. Ready to type some more?"
"Shoot."
Neutral Response (Advanced Version)
Plead the Fifth if pressured. Some companies insist you give them a number. They will press you for a salary that you would find acceptable. The more they push, the harder it is to not yield because you don't want to make them mad. But once you give the number: a) it is hard to change that number, and b) you have lost the leverage of mystery. So, plead the Fifth:
"I can tell you feel strongly about getting an absolute number, and I respect that tremendously as strong leadership that appeals to me, but I just don't have that number finalized. I have other opportunities I need to consider. But I can tell you this (this will satisfy them and titillate, a nice combo): While money is a factor for all of us, and every opportunity I am looking at offers some kind of reasonable increase, my primary motivation is not money. I want to come to work every day with energy and purpose."
"So the message when you say 'some kind of reasonable increase,'" I interjected, "is, 'you will have to pay me more than I'm making to get me,' but at the same time you defuse the avarice stigma. Nice."
"Lucky for you I accept both sincere praise and patronizing flattery."
"Okay, let's get back to me. How can I modify this, considering I am unemployed? And what if I don't have 'other opportunities?'"
"As a temporarily unemployed person, you continue to go back to your last salary as the base number. As for whether or not you actually have other interviews scheduled, that is semantics; you will. Everyone has other opportunities, even if they haven't happened yet. You can still say you are considering them. Going online and reading postings is "considering." You need to be completely honest but not absolutely honest."
"Interesting distinction. Which one are you being right now, Harper?"
"I'm not saying it's how you run your whole life; I'm saying it makes no sense to tell a company you would never interview for any other job because you love them so much and would do anything to work for them. Would you tell someone you were in love with that they could treat you any way they want and you would stay with them no matter what?"
"If we allow for paraphrasing, I think I've said exactly that."
"And how did that work out?"
"Harper, all of this is well and good, but I already told Wallace I wanted a 200K base: 75K higher than the base I had and 200K higher than what I am making now."
"I'll fix it."
"How, without looking dishonest or avaricious?"
"People make new decisions when faced with new information. I presented you new information which makes those numbers no longer applicable, and Wallace will have to make a new decision."
"I love it when you talk spin."
"First I need to know how you left things with Wallace."
"We agreed to meet on the 17th at their Manhattan office at 9 A.M. He wants me to meet the other managing partners and get a product demo."
I knew this would please Harper. He has prepped me so many times for interviews that it has become reflexive for me to follow his Cardinal Rule of Ending Interviews.
Harper's Rule: Never leave an interview without closing on the next step in the process. Don't leave without a date and time for the next interview.
He even gave me a script and told me to memorize it so that it would sound spontaneous:
"Wallace, I appreciate how generous you've been with your time, and I'm impressed by you and the organization. Based on what you've shared with me and what I've done in my career, I think I can make an immediate and significant contribution and would like very much to pursue this. What's your schedule like?"
"You may not be going on the 17th," Harper said offhandedly. "I'll get back to you on that."
"That's your fix? Cancelling my only interview?"
"Yes, because the new information that requires you to change your compensation requirements is that you have two other companies who want to see you for similar positions, and you don't want to make any commitments without hearing everyone out, this being such a career watershed for you and all."
"But I don't have two other interviews! I don't want to bluff, Harper."
"I know, I wish you'd work on that. Don't worry, I have two other companies I want to send you to, and I will use this fact to make it clear to Wallace that he will have to up the ante to attract you."
I felt a pout coming on. I was not getting my way. That's never good for anyone near me. I am a world-class pout.
"Harper, I want that job! I am going on the 17th!"
"Casey, it's a strategy. You will get another meeting with Wallace. But we need to do it out of strength. And what if you don't get the offer? What if they hire someone else?"
"He loved me, Harper. We connected. I know he wants to hire me."
How could I explain this to rational, emotionally detached Harper? He is writing a book about the analogy of relationships to work, and he doesn't understand one of the most central parallels: I am a one-man woman.
I don't want any more interviews. I love Wallace, he loves me, and we are meant to be together. It already feels like cheating on him to go on other interviews.
"Harper, I just want this to be all over." Suddenly my throat hurt.
"I get it. You want to cut a deal with Wallace right now, go on your date with Peter Bonetti tomorrow, and wake up Monday morning with a new commute and a ring on your left hand."
"See, in my head it seemed hopeful and romantic. When you say it, it sounds crazy and pathetic."
"It is neither, but that's not how it works. Look, I want you to go to work for Wallace, but I want you to get the best possible deal because you'll be living with it a long time; and remember, I've got money at stake here, too! A little trust, please."
I was being tested. I wanted so much to take him down, to let him know I knew he wasn't charging Wallace a fee for me. "Funny you say that. Wallace asked me if I trusted you."
It was nice to see Harper, if not thrown, at least a little out of balance, if only for a moment.
"He did? I don't . . . why would he ask that? How did that come up?"
To be fair, he didn't specifically ask me if I trusted Harper. We were already an hour into the interview. Wallace asked pointed and savvy questions about the sales process, the nuances of the product mix, and the market realities that were in play in each of the verticals. It was a detailed and technical examination of my experience. And then, out of the blue, he said, "So who do you trust, Casey?"
I could think of several responses that would have satisfied him and served me well. But something about this kind and thoughtful man made me want to be straight with him. Being around Harper made you want to try harder, but being around Wallace Avery made you want to be better.
"I'm sorry to say no one comes to mind. I don't give up trust very easily, Wallace."
This seemed to sadden him. I could tell he genuinely wished what I had just said was not true. Then he gave me a smile that surely killed in his day.
"Well, perhaps I will make it a goal to become someone you trust. I would like that."
"Whoa, that is a lofty ambition, Wallace. But it's good to have goals, right?"
Wallace laughed and looked away. He was at that wonderful stage attractive older men get to where they are still skilled at flirting even though they are harmless. Why does our skin have to dry and fall and crease in order for us to get comfortable living in it?
"I would have thought," Wallace said, "given his largesse regarding his fee, that you would have said you trusted Harper."
"Harper has never given me a reason not to trust him."
"But that doesn't mean you do."
"Do you have some issue with Harper, Wallace?"
"Absolutely not. Dealt with him for years, always done right by me. He's just a really clever guy with access to a lot of sensitive company information. People more clever than me make me wary."
"For what it's worth, I think Harper knows where to draw the boundaries."
Wallace nodded vigorously. "Agreed. Anyway, with what he's been through recently, I've been impressed with how he's handled himself and how he's stayed focused on the job. A very disciplined guy."
What he's been through? Recently? What did he mean? Was Wallace implying Harper had to overcome something? Personal? Business? Wallace saw the same look on my face he saw in the grill room. He knew I had no idea what he was referring to.
"I see I'm talking out of school again. And I hate when people do that to me. So what say we get back on point? Casey, I can't get into the specifics right now, but the timing for whoever gets this position is pretty fortuitous. Some very big, very fundamental changes in capital and investment are happening behind the scenes, and that's all I can say."
He was clearly referring to the Cisco takeover. Harper mentioned a 2 billion dollar infusion. I knew enough to keep my mouth shut, but I need to work on my poker face.
"Something tells me you know what I'm referring to," Wallace said dryly. "Did our friend bring you up to speed?"
Time to ruin this whole deal or hit one out of the park. If I'm going down, I'm going to go down feeling good about myself.
"Wallace, with all due respect, if he did, I wouldn't tell you. He would have told me in confidence, and once someone tells me something in confidence then it's in the vault. If I violated that trust, how would you ever be able to trust me with information you want in the vault?"
"I wouldn't," Wallace said.
"So, maybe I'll make you trusting me a goal of mine, too."
"It's good to have goals. Casey, I would be pleased if you would come back to meet some of the key players on the board. Are you available on the 17th to come into Manhattan for the day?"
Something to hold back that says I'm different . . . Time to bring it.
"That depends, Wallace."
"On what?"
"Who do I get to sell to first?"
Wallace sat back. It didn't matter whether he realized at some level that Harper might have fed me his question, he still was used to asking it, and he still wanted to know my answer.
"Who would you want to sell to first?"
"There was a great quote in Slate magazine's technology section a few months ago. 'Everyone is intoxicated about how social networking is bringing about change, but no one is noticing that it is not making anyone a red cent.' That seemed a trenchant comment to me."
"I believe I wrote that article."
"I believe you did. And you're right. So here's what I think. We don't try to sell to consumers. We don't try to take down Facebook. We get Walmart or the NFL, or any large enterprise, and we tell them we will provide them with their own social network, a network of customers, vendors, and employees. Connect them to their own world and leave the outside world out. The way to make money in social networking is for the network to become an entity's primary way of marketing—a way to create its own culture."
Wallace nodded, and the hair stood up on the back of my neck. "So," he said, "we don't get into the ad revenue wars?"
"We are a fee-based service. The ads are intrinsic in the very idea of the network. We take both."
I threw my hair back and started to gather my things. Leave them wanting more. Harper said, "Leave an interview on your own terms."
"Anyway, just a thought," I said, standing up. "I don't want to waste your time coming back if my ideas are contrary to your plan. I'm sure you know best . . ."
". . . and then, Wallace said, 'Consider the 17th booked, consider me behind the concept, and consider me duly impressed with you . . .' I hear tapping, Harper. Are you actually emailing while I am sharing my conversation with your client?"
"Did he actually say he was behind the concept?"
"Verbatim. So you see? I have to go on the 17th."
"I'll do what I can and be back to you. You need to get ready for your date."
God! My date! I had spent so much energy being "on" for Wallace, and now dealing with the life-sucking force that is Harper, I just wanted to stay home and veg.
"Did you do your homework on him, Casey? Same principles, remember?"
"No, I did not. I thought I'd try an innovative method and have an actual conversation with him during the actual date."
"I figured, so I did it for you. There's something you need to know about this guy. Turns out—"
"Harper, stop. I will defer to your judgment on my livelihood. But just because I am divorced and you are married, just because you have a theory about work and love, I will not have you doing investigative work on the men I date."
"So you don't want to know?"
"Of course I want to know. But I am going to choose to not know. I am going to go on this date with an open mind, and I am not going to let you ruin that for me."
"For the record, it's really juicy stuff. I would want to know."
"Harper."
"What?"
I wanted to say something indignant. Or go the other way and be funny. But my throat was closing. My eyes were doing that stupid, welling-up thing.
"I'm lonely. You know?"
"Yeah. I do. Go on your date. I'll deal with Wallace. Enjoy yourself."
CHAPTER EIGHT
## DATING IS LIKE
INTERVIEWING . . .
ONLY HARDER
My burst of integrity with Harper lasted about two hours. I was so proud of myself for making the right, if utterly romantic choice, and not accepting Harper's intel on Peter's past, and then I got two text messages. One, from Harper, was heartening; he had spoken to Wallace, reworked the compensation expectations, and said I could plan on the 17th. The second text was from Peter.
"Exactly what is 'smart casual'?"
Sigh. In my experience with men, the correct answer to this is, "Not what you were thinking of wearing." But it was way too early in our relationship for honesty, so I answered that I was sure whatever he was thinking was fine.
His return text: "That's good, since I don't own a jacket. Are you wearing jeans?"
Harper always says that his clients decide within the first thirty to ninety seconds in an interview if they are going to hire you, and the rest of the entire interview process, even if it takes hours and several visits, is just filler, their way of reassuring themselves of the decision they had already unconsciously made. I remembered what I had written to Harper:
Dress up for the interview even if you know it's a casual work environment. It shows respect, confidence, and attitude. It covers your weaknesses.
I was deciding from a text, without even seeing what Peter was going to wear, that this was not going to work out.
So now that I knew I was wearing jeans, I chose a plain white silk blouse that buttoned in front and a tweed jacket that made me look hot in an academic way. Now, the tough call. On a first date, there is always the question of cleavage. I left the top two buttons unbuttoned in an attempt to punish Peter for his text messages, and then I looked to see if my breasts, not crazy large but full, and long a trademark advantage, had sagged. Breast implants have become so common nowadays that now I feel like a company who has lost its patent rights and is now competing with copycats and cheap imitators.
My Blackberry beeped. Peter again.
"Do you want me to pick you up?"
Oh no. I need to be able to bail if things go to hell in a hurry. I replied that I would meet him there.
Another beep.
"Is there parking on the street or do you have to pay the valet?"
I found myself wondering what I would do when the check came. I have made more money in a year than Peter will make in four or five as a personal trainer, so I should probably insist on paying, or at least pay half. And yet, I am resentful. I am. the. girl. I expect him to pay. Is that awful? Fine, I'm awful then, so why am I going?
Send a top candidate to a top company and they will love each other. Send a top candidate to a crummy company and the company will hate him/her. Send a crummy candidate to a crummy company and they love each other. People and companies are not created equal and must be matched accordingly.
I'm starting to think I am a top candidate and Peter is a crummy company.
So why don't I cancel? I need more ammunition.
Harper said he had information on Peter that I should know before I went on the date. I couldn't call Harper and ask him; I couldn't give him that satisfaction. But I could find out for myself.
What I love about Google is its fairness. If I were looking for a black dress for a party and I searched Google, and Jennifer Lopez, sitting in the presidential suite of the Palm Beach Ritz Carlton, put in the same search string, we would both get the same results.
I searched under Peter's full name. Then the gym . . . certified personal trainers . . . the government's "most wanted" list . . . registered sex offenders. In a momentary lapse of blind hope, I searched for Mensa membership. Then the blogs . . . Not a single entry having anything to do with Peter. Google sucks!
When I am stressed or fear an outcome, my mind drifts. When I couldn't find out anything about Peter, I started running Google searches on Harper. I found the usual stuff: his company's website propaganda, a Wall Street Journal interview Harper had done a year or so ago, his profile under the gaudy title of "40 under 40, The Top Corporate Headhunters in America."
Then I saw the search result from Connecticut Magazine. The Scott home was featured, well over a year ago, as one of "New England's finest homes." When I pulled up the link, there was a picture of Harper and his wife, Maggie. Even with the poor quality of the computer reproduction, she was exquisite. She is not only a size four after having a child, but she has curves and angles just where you are supposed to. She was too beautiful to hate.
I Googled Maggie. MBA from the University of Chicago . . . Columbia under-grad and law school—two graduate degrees! She worked as an immigration lawyer in the city for three years and gave it up to do social service work. She was named to MACY (the Mayor's Advisory Committee on Youth) in Manhattan. Okay, I take it back, nobody is too beautiful to hate. I'm going on my date.
I was about to exit my browser when I noticed one more entry about her MACY commitment, and that's when I saw it: "Margaret Carlson-Scott says new membership drive . . ."
It was the only entry where she had hyphenated her name. Now why would she do that? Why now? I went back over the other entries. Nope. No hyphen, just Maggie or Margaret Scott.
The only two times in my life I had to deal with the "to hyphenate or not to hyphenate" dilemma were 1) when I got married to Donald and 2) when I divorced him. For me, as a professional salesperson who was established in my niche, the decision was easy, since my maiden name was hard to pronounce and even harder to spell. I wanted my contacts to recognize me.
So why is Maggie suddenly using it? All I could think of was Wallace telling me Harper had "been through a lot" recently. I was instantly convinced that Harper was separated or divorced. For all I knew, Harper was the villain and she had caught him red handed. Maybe Harper is a terrible and distant dad.
No, no way. Harper softens visibly whenever he mentions Jess; she is his world. But how would I know? Harper puts a wall up; he makes you feel like you are on intimate terms, but it's a one-way street. He is intimate with you; you are never intimate with him.
Stop it, Casey. You have a date with a perfectly nice guy.
I used to make Donald promise me we would never become one of the married couples we would see in nice restaurants all the time. The scary ones were those who had simply become so tired of each other that conversation and entertainment were beside the point, which was to get out of the house and not have to cook.
But as I walked into the restaurant to meet Peter, I longed to be one of those couples. At least they didn't have butterflies in their stomachs, didn't stare at themselves in the mirror from every conceivable angle, didn't shave in long-neglected areas—just in case.
I saw him at the adjacent bar. He gave me a nervous smile and attempted a hapless sort of wave. I suddenly realized why I liked him. It wasn't the hard body or the full lips or the thick, black hair and olive skin—Peter was melancholy. But . . . after propping Donald up for so long, why did I want someone fragile?
Peter stood up and reached out his arms, signaling an embrace and sparing me the agony of choice, and whispered "so glad you're here" into my ear as he pulled back.
I pride myself on taking control at the beginning of a date with a witty remark or a wry observation, but I had nothing. I wondered if I had a goofy smile on my face. I have been many things to please men, but I draw the line at a goofy smile.
There were two glasses of wine at the bar.
"Cakebread Merlot. I'm not even going to pretend to know the year. But that's what you like, right?"
"Um, okay, yes. I do. How do you know that?"
"I notice you talk to Janet at the gym. She is tight with Nina, who teaches the Body Attack. She put me in touch with Hannah, who told me she has been your drinking buddy long enough to know and recommended Cakebread Merlot."
"Well, I hope she was buddy enough to tell you I'm not that particular, especially when it comes to dating."
"Oh." Peter became eight years old in an instant.
"No, I don't mean I'm not particular about who I date, I . . . Okay, let's go with this: I love the wine, Peter, and it was very thoughtful. Thanks."
"Cheers." He appeared to be back to his age and happy. I'm dating Tom Hanks in Big.
Just when I thought I would go off-script with Peter, he reached into his surprisingly high-quality black cashmere sports jacket, set off with jeans and grey pullover, held up his cell phone, and shut it off.
"Now that you're here, I have no need for this for the night."
This was a gallant gesture, a way of showing me I had his complete attention. But while I would never go into an interview with my cell phone on, this was a first date. And a cell phone is how a girl gets out of a disaster, the dating equivalent of pepper spray.
But Peter put his phone down on the bar, completing his gesture, and rested it near mine. I had to either match Peter or lose face. I decided to lose face. I have a good feeling about this guy, but I have been wrong before. (After all, he claimed he had no jacket!) I left my phone on.
If Harper was right about the symmetry between interviewing and dating, and since I had just killed on my interview, I merely needed to remember his rules for first meetings.
We all like to talk about ourselves.
Be truly present and really listening.
Don't bring up negatives, and don't talk about your ex (spouse or job).
This shouldn't be difficult. I knew little about Peter, so I thought I'd start with his family. But I never got the chance. Peter took a Budweiser-sized sip of Cakebread and launched in.
"You wouldn't be a rebound."
"Excuse me?"
"Well, I know everyone always says that rebounds never work out. And I did, full disclosure, go through a really horrible breakup, but the point is I have had a few dates since, and so, technically, this wouldn't be a rebound."
"Okay," I said, in the voice I used when the guy in Union Square tells me I need to prepare for Judgment Day.
"Although my friends, Hank and Debbie, they were like, total rebound, like they met two days after the people they broke up with moved out, and that was two years ago, and they have a baby and are completely happy, and so who knows, right? So rebounds don't scare me, and kids don't scare me either. Do you want kids?"
"Peter, when you turned off your phone, did you turn off your filter?"
"My filter?"
"Yes, you have to have a filter. You, in one fell swoop, broke every rule of what not to talk about on first dates. Maybe Harper's right; there really is a market out there."
"Who's Harper?"
"Doesn't matter. Peter, we don't even have our table yet. We should be deciding on tap water or sparkling, discussing food allergies. You can't ask me if I want kids."
"Okay," he said, nodding somberly. "I'm going to check on our table."
"Good."
He got halfway to the hostess and turned around. He stood in front of me for a moment and then placed his hand on my neck and kissed me. It was a really good kiss.
"I don't have food allergies," he said.
I shrugged. "I've got nothing against kids. In the abstract."
Know your objective. The objective is to be asked back for a second interview or for another date.
At that moment, I would have told you a second date was a lock, an engagement a foregone conclusion, and a twenty-fifth anniversary party thrown at the home of our most successful child a distinct possibility. But the rush I felt after Peter kissed me was about to be tempered. Hannah had suggested lunch for just this reason. "Even if he's got game, you can't expect him to have three hours of game!" she said. She was right. From the moment we sat down, we began to unravel.
At first I was tolerant. Peter asked me about my work and when I told him I was on severance, he had no clue what that meant. When I explained, he shook his head and said, "I'd be scared out of my mind if I was unemployed."
He isn't dumb, Casey. He's just not from your world, that's all.
But before I could change the subject, Peter told me the only other person he knew in sales was his friend Artie, who sold cars. Peter said he could never be "pushy or aggressive, trying to talk someone into paying for options they don't need and stuff. But hey," he said, "Artie makes good money."
I should have reached for the cell phone, but the ugly side of me was making her way from my brain to my lips.
"How much money does Artie make?"
"He said he made over a hundred grand one year. Not last year but one year."
"I've averaged between 220 and 350K a year for the last five years. I'm not pushy or manipulative. Ever hear of ROI?"
Peter sadly shook his head.
"Didn't think so." I needed to either stop talking or leave. The waitress rescued me by noticing our empty glasses.
"Would you like to order some wine?"
"Sure. We were having the Cakebread Merlot," Peter said.
"You might want to consider the Sonoma since you're having the lamb, or if you'd prefer, I can send over the sommelier."
"Okay," Peter said brightly, "we'll have the Sommelier. Is that a red?"
The waitress looked at me helplessly, and I said the Sonoma was fine. My sister would not be surprised by the evening so far. "When you date men with money, you try and compete with them, which turns them off," she says, "and when you date men who don't make a lot of money, you claim they're boring or not smart, when really you just don't respect them."
"I feel like I'm maybe trying too hard," Peter said. "Sorry."
Peter looked forlorn, so I tried to regroup.
"So let me tell you about the love of my life," I began, "my source of daily and unconditional love: Starbucks, my Maine Coon cat."
I have several stock Starbucks stories that are adorable even to the non–cat lover. Not many people realize how large Maine Coons can get (males up to twenty-eight pounds, females up to eighteen), how beautiful and regal they become, how affectionate and smart they are, and how long they live (up to twenty-four years if kept inside religiously). I started one of my stock, can't-miss, Starbucks-wins-in-the-end stories.
"I'm allergic to cats. Most of them, anyway. Dogs too. But I hear there are medications I could take."
Okay, check please. And I'll take the Sonoma to go. While I would have probably pretended my phone was on vibrate and claimed that I heard it go off, it actually did go off. I dug in my purse and told Peter I was sorry, but I had to take this.
"You don't even know who it is yet," he said brusquely.
True, and it was rude and obvious of me—and I didn't care. I pulled out the phone and had to fight not to smile. It was Harper.
"Hi," I said.
"Well, that answers that."
"What?"
"You picked up, which means you needed to be rescued."
I excused myself, held up a finger indicating I'd be just a wee bit, and wandered until I found an alcove between the ladies' room and the kitchen.
"Harper, I need to know what you found about Peter."
"Why? So you can use it as an excuse to end the evening?"
"Maybe. Give."
"Hmm, I don't think so. You made that call. Live with it."
"Harper, do not mess with me."
"Hold on, I need to write this down as I tell it to you. This is one of my rules that applies to both dating and interviewing."
HARPER'S RULE
Find a Graceful Way Out
If you find yourself in an interview or date where your gut tells you not to pursue, but you lack the courage to come clean—and so then create a graceful way out by justifying it with some logical, unimpeachable reason— you are being unfair to both yourself and the person or entity you are with.
"But Harper, he ordered the sommelier."
"I've met the sommelier there; he's very attractive. I hear he's married, though, note to Peter."
"It's not just that; we're different. I can see it already. As my headhunter, as a self-proclaimed believer that the rules of interviewing and dating are parallel, tell me: do people last longer in careers if they share a common set of sensibilities with their coworkers, or are they happier if they are opposite?"
"Opposites do attract," he said, "but it is strictly short term. It fades."
"Tell me what you learned about Peter so I can make an informed decision here."
"Okay, you win. Keep in mind I heard this from two sources and then verified it with someone official enough to know."
Peter tapped me on the shoulder, and I was so focused on trying to hear Harper amid the din of the restaurant, I whirled and gave him an angry look. He stepped back.
"I wasn't trying to interrupt you or anything," he said. "I was going in the men's room, right behind you, and they did bring the lamb a while ago, and well, it is kind of quiet at the table."
I mouthed the words "so sorry," held up the phone, and rolled my eyes.
"Look, I have to go," I said loudly, making a big show for Peter.
"Yes, the Silence of the Lambs. I heard, Clarice."
I decided to hit back as Peter entered the men's room.
"How is it you are calling me on a Saturday night? Where's your family?"
"Do you want to know what I know or don't you?" he said, his voice curt.
"Go."
"Peter's ex, not his wife but a woman he lived with for quite some time, filed a restraining order against him. He was ordered to stay 500 feet away from her at all times."
Peter came out of the men's room and walked toward me. He was approximately 495 feet closer than the person who knew him best petitioned the law to allow.
"Casey, did you hear me?" Harper said.
I flipped my cell shut.
I'm sure my therapist would have a field day with the fact that Harper's revelation made the rest of the dinner so much more fun. How do we expect to rid the world of evil when it adds so much energy and is so much less boring than good things? But we'll never know because I won't tell her. My main goal in therapy is to make her laugh. She laughs once, and I feel I'm making progress.
Suddenly Peter was fascinating to me. What did he do that justified a restraining order? Did he break things? Glassware? Jaws? This man needed to be restrained! I found this very sexy. After all, Donald had been restrained all the time; I needed to file an unleashing order on him. I couldn't take my eyes off Peter. I started to feel warm. I noticed that his plate was empty and mine had hardly been touched.
"So, how can you eat like this and drink wine and have the body from hell?" I asked.
He said he worked out three hours a day and I asked him why. He said it made him feel better.
Years earlier, when I asked Harper the same question, he said being strong made him feel strong and seem strong to others. It was a control thing with Harper. Peter's way seemed so much more pure.
The end of a date or an interview is always awkward. Will we ever see each other again? Are we being polite as we tell each other we enjoyed meeting each other, or have we connected in some real way? As we stood waiting for the valet to bring my car around, Peter broke the rules again.
HARPER'S RULE
Be Prepared for but Never Expect an Offer on the First Interview
If a company offers you the job after the first interview, it could be love at first sight, the timing is perfect, and you have found the ideal job. But more likely it is a warning sign that there is something wrong with the job and they want your commitment before you figure it out. The fact that they are willing to commit to you without knowing much about you should scare you. Tell them you are flattered but would like to come back and learn more about the opportunity. If this is unacceptable to them, walk away knowing you have dodged a bullet.
"Just so you know," he began, "as tentative and as lame as I was at having dinner in a place like this, that's how good I am at having sex."
"You must be really good at having sex, then."
"So," he began, his voice rising as he went, "is there still like, a three-date rule before having sex?"
I had a moment to gather myself because the valet brought the car around, and then he kissed me again. Slow as syrup.
"I am unaware of any set rules," I said. "Why don't you get your car and follow me?"
The moment Peter turned away, I took out my cell, scrolled to the last call, and pressed the SEND button.
"So when you say 'a restraining order,' can you be more specific?"
"Sure," Harper said calmly, "it's what I'm thinking about getting against you for next Saturday night."
"Come on, Harper, there is a broad spectrum. Did he take the lawn furniture because they used his credit card, or am I taking my life into my hands here?"
"Things have obviously improved since we last spoke."
"Gotta tell you, Harper, I don't read restraining order. He's a sweet, sweet guy with the tiniest little round butt."
"So what do you want from me? Permission?"
"I don't need your permission to do anything, Harper Scott."
"Then why are we on the phone?"
"He is without guile, Harper. It really is amazing. I didn't think such people existed. I am about to go home with a man without guile."
"So, a court looks at evidence and decides a woman's safety is at risk and legally restrains a man from coming near her, and you not only take him home, but judge him to be without guile. Quite a trick. Oh wait, can you trick someone and still be without guile?"
"You know what I think, Harper? I think she filed the restraining order to hurt him. I think by accusing him publicly of something he was incapable of, she thought he might stay."
"That's a nice theory. I hope for your sake you're right."
And the phone went dead. I walked over to Peter's car and he opened the door to get out, but I closed it and motioned for him to roll down the window. I leaned in and kissed him.
"I'm going to go home. By myself. I hope you call me. I hope we get to do something a little less stuffy. Thanks, I had a great night."
As I walked to my car, Peter called out to me. "Did I do something wrong?"
"Nope. But there are rules."
CHAPTER NINE
## THE FOLLOW-UP
PROTOCOL TO
INTERVIEWS AND DATES
They say when you are about to die—careening off the guardrail, let's say—that everything slows down. People who survive such things talk about their lives passing before their eyes.
Being unemployed is pretty much the same way, except you don't wake up surrounded by loved ones telling you how lucky you are. They either assume you are trying to get a job and shouldn't be bothered, or they think calling you is too risky in case unemployment is airborne.
By Tuesday, three days after my interview, and two days after my date: a) I had no call or correspondence from InterAnnex or Wallace Avery; b) I had no call, email, or text from Peter; c) I had nothing from Harper—no information, no book chapter, nothing.
As I walked back from my bill-stuffed mailbox, my cell phone went off.
She said her name was Leena, a "colleague" of Harper's, and he had asked her to follow up with me since he'd received "several" messages from me about the status with InterAnnex.
"Why isn't Harper calling me himself?"
"He is out of the office."
"Leena. Harper is connected to his PDA like it's a respirator."
"Ms. Matthews, I've been here four years, and I'm a senior associate; the information he wanted to pass on to you is standard protocol for us."
Translation: stop being a diva and let me help you get a job.
Leena next informed me that the information was also part of Mr. Scott's "publishing project."
"Do tell."
"Very well."
HARPER'S RULES FOR THANK-YOU NOTES
The first thing you should do is send a thank-you note to the primary decision maker. This note should be handwritten and should be sent direct mail.
1. It should be no more than two paragraphs.
2. It should be personal as well as professional.
3. It shouldn't be frivolous or cute.
4. It should never be a card.
5. If your handwriting is illegible, a printed Word document is fine as long as you sign the postscript and fold it neatly into the correct-sized envelope.
6. If you absolutely cannot handwrite a note, email is an acceptable backup.
7. You should also thank, in separate emails, anyone else you may have met.
8. Always end with a positive message about pursuing the position.
"If you would permit me, Ms. Matthews, here is an example for InterAnnex that you can feel free to use or modify:
Dear Mr. Wallace Avery:
I just wanted to take a moment to thank you for the time you spent with me on Friday. It was obvious to me why InterAnnex is such a successful company and why under your dynamic leadership it will continue to grow. I appreciated your candor, humor, and professionalism.
Having had some time to reflect, I feel my background and the duties and challenges you described are an excellent match, and I look forward to discussing this in more detail. Thanks for the gift of your time.
Sincerely,
"Ms. Matthews, did you get all that? Did I go too fast?"
"Amazingly, I managed to keep up. Do you know my background, Leena?"
"I haven't reviewed it specifically . . ."
"Do you really think I don't know that I am supposed to send a handwritten thank-you letter?"
"So you already sent one to Mr. Avery?"
"Well, no, actually . . . You know what, Leena? Why don't you tell Harper that I will deal directly with Mr. Avery from this point forward, and he can stay on his writing sabbatical, or wherever he is."
"That wouldn't be wise, Ms. Matthews. In fact, that is the next part of the protocol Mr. Scott asked me to review with you. Ready?"
HARPER'S RULE
We Want What Is Difficult to Get
Never contact the hiring authority after your first interview.
Even if you are not working through a headhunter, other than sending a thank-you note, any followup attempting to show interest in the job or to move the process faster only weakens your position.
Right, like all those voice mails from Peter trying to get me to go out with him. I finally go out with him and three days later he suddenly has reclaimed his dignity. Such is my effect on men.
This can be difficult, of course, and frustrating, especially if the company promised to get back to you by a certain time or date. But keep in mind, it is not necessarily a reflection of their interest in you, and you must not take it personally. You must trust they haven't forgotten you and the impact you made in the interview.
The next move is for you, in a separate communication from your thank-you note, to send three references with contact information to the person who interviewed you. Email is the preferred mode. You should also include a salary history.
Make sure you "preload" your references. Even though they may have told you when you left your previous company or companies that they would give you a positive reference, it is in your interest to call them and let them know you had a successful interview, give them the name of who would be calling to check your reference, and ask them without equivocation to recommend you for the position. Describe the position for them at length, forward them a link to the company's website, and ask them to peruse it before they get the call.
Okay, I need to do that. Damn, I'm starting to like Leena. She is a sharp kid and she knows her stuff.
"But, Leena, in my case, I assume Harper has already given my references to Wallace."
"Oh, yes. I see a note attached that says they were sent last week and that Mr. Avery wanted to call them personally himself."
"That's a good sign, right? Leena?"
"Not always. It could also mean he had some concern about you that he wanted to hear either confirmed or denied directly from your references."
Harper, I think your protégé here is going to do just fine. She is evil, and yet I like her.
"Well, Mr. Scott and Mr. Avery said I had a meeting on the 17th. Is that confirmed? Come on, Leena, give!"
"No. It is not."
No one has died, I told myself. Yet I could hardly breathe.
Had Harper taught Leena the "Take It Away"?
HARPER'S RULE
The "Take It Away"
If done correctly, the "Take It Away" will identify who has the upper hand. It must be succinct, matter-of-fact, and with no qualifiers. Deliver the "Take It Away" and get off the phone.
The "Take It Away" only works if you hang up. If you don't, you dilute the message and you lose. Done correctly, the "Take It Away" is jarring to recipients, making them realize they have waited too long or negotiated too hard, and now will lose what they suddenly realize they must have.
Harper would call me on this in a second. Here goes, Leena . . .
"Leena, I'm not comfortable. Mr. Avery said the 17th, and Harper knows my credentials are impeccable. If they can't commit to the date they asked me to reserve, I withdraw my candidacy. Please tell Harper."
And I hung up. I hope you're right, Harper.
I decided I was on a "Take it Away" roll. I went to the gym, after a very minor makeup prep of just over an hour.
I envisioned a saunter. The area where the personal trainers take their clients through their paces with things like Bosu balls and body bars is adjacent to the cardio area, and if he was in there torturing someone in the name of fitness, I would acknowledge him with my eyes but not smile, and then "saunter" by him.
My plan unraveled immediately. Peter was on his knees on one of the yoga mats and leaning back as if he were in a game of tug of war. But instead of a rope, he was pulling the leg of a woman lying on the mat below him. Then he pushed her bent leg back toward her chest, fully stretching her hamstring and exposing her glutes. Not a trace of cellulite. My saunter, which had begun so promisingly in the parking lot, came to a screeching halt.
I turned away, smiled as brightly at his slutty client as I could, and as I sat down on a LifeCycle, Leena's number flashed on my cell.
"Hi, Leena."
"Ms. Matthews, just wanted to get back to you. I couldn't get ahold of Mr. Scott, so I took it upon myself to call InterAnnex, speak to Mr. Avery directly, and formally withdraw you from consideration."
Damn! It backfired! Enjoy yourself, Casey, when you have to sign up for unemployment.
"You did?" I managed, meekly.
"Of course I didn't. I just had to get back at you for using the 'Take It Away' on me. By the time I realized you were using my own training on me, I had completely freaked out and called Mr. Scott."
"Leena, did you just punk me?"
"Maybe a little."
Okay, I love her. I started to laugh, which made her laugh, and the moment would have gone on a bit if Peter hadn't come around the corner.
"Uh, sorry, I'll talk to you when you're done."
"No you won't. I'm going to be a while, and then I'm going to work out. I'm going to tell you one of the great rules of business, but I've been convinced recently that the rules of life and love are no different. Here's the rule: 'Time Kills Deals.'"
I settled back on the LifeCycle and gave Leena my full attention.
"Whoa, that sounded cold," she said. "Can I ask?"
"A guy I went out with Friday. No contact since. Just ran into him."
"Ouch. But maybe something happened. Maybe he couldn't reach out. Maybe he had a family thing—"
"Leena, listen to me. 'Yes' is great. 'No' is fine. 'Maybe' doesn't work. Understand?"
"Um, hold on. Mr. Scott is on the other line. I'm going to conference him in."
"Casey," Harper said, "I hear you're abusing my staff."
"I didn't say that," Leena interjected.
"The 'Take It Away,' by the way, was well played."
Harper didn't sound right; he was slightly hoarse.
"Harper, I'll ask you what I asked Leena, who incidentally, is great: What is the concern Wallace Avery has about me that is jeopardizing me getting that job?"
"Who says there is one?"
"Leena, are you recording this call? I'm about to help your boss write one of his chapters. Ready, Harper?"
He sighed. I'd never heard him sound tired before.
HARPER'S RULES
Time Kills Deals
This theory is based on some simple notions:
When we truly want something we act.
The longer we wait the more "life variables" we allow.
There is no such thing as 'I don't have time' in the modern world.
"You want to do the honors on the first one, Casey?"
I was happy to jump in. I believed in it utterly. If I had waited passively for my customers to call back when they promised they would, I would never have made my quota, let alone become a top producer.
"Leena, you just found out you have a formal party to attend tonight. You go right to the mall because this is the only window of time you have to buy a black dress. A woman comes up to you in the store, sees you browsing and says, 'Can I help you?' What do you say?"
"I would say, 'No thanks, just looking.'"
"Right. And that would be a lie. You are, in fact, desperate to have a black dress as soon as possible. Why don't you admit your situation to the salesperson? Because resistance to being persuaded is a given. We push back, even when we want or need something."
"Every time I call people who have résumés on Monster," Leena said, "and tell them about a job, they tell me they're not sure they're really looking for a job, even though their résumé is on a job board."
"Every time I get asked out," I said, "I always say I'm busy for whatever night they first suggest, and I make them find a different night."
"Luckily," Harper said, "resistance is no match for desire. When we want something or someone, our senses begin to work sporadically. We think about the object of our desire. Our resistance reminds us to go slow, but all we can see are the possibilities.
"Leena, you and Mark bought a house recently, right?"
Leena is married? She sounds like she can't be more than twenty-four. And they have a house?
"When did you know you wanted the house?"
"Oh God, the first walk-through. Once I saw the chestnut floors, the wallpaper in the baby's room . . ."
And she has a baby? Mark Junior at twenty-four . . . I am a total loser.
"And even though you told the realtor you were going to think about it and look at some other options, you and Mark began crunching numbers in the car."
"Actually, I begged the realtor not to show it to anyone else until I had a chance to work on Mark."
"Your resistance was being told by your desire that 'Time Kills Deals.' And when did you make the offer?"
"Later that day."
"And did they accept it?"
"No. They counteroffered. After a long, excruciating day."
"One day is not long, but it seemed long because you wanted it. And how long before you countered successfully?"
"Oh, God," Leena laughed, "twenty minutes. Thirty years of payments decided in twenty minutes."
"You did nothing wrong. When we want something, we act."
Peter was at the juice bar counter munching on a Power Bar. If he wanted me, I wouldn't have had to humiliate myself and come to the gym to show him I wasn't interested. His natural resistance to being hurt would have been no match for his desire.
Harper was still going:
HARPER'S RULES
Time Kills Deals, Part Two
The longer we wait, the more life variables we allow. The excuses we all make seem harmless:
'I just want to think about it.'
'It's a big decision, so I want to be sure.'
'If it's the right thing to do, it will be right next week.'
It takes guts for us to see this for what it is: fear of change. In my career as a headhunter, as well as in my entire existence as a friend or colleague to people making relationship choices, the thing that is most astonishing to me is how often—
"—we continue to do the things and stay with the people we already know are wrong for us. Sorry, Harper. I've heard you say this before, and I get it now." He continued:
The real problem is when we feel we will make the change, but we just need some time 'to get used to the idea.' Let's look at the life variables that can occur while we're mustering the courage to act. Here's what happens in my office all the time. We get a candidate an offer that pays him twelve percent more than he currently makes. The benefits are better, with a better match on his 401(k). He goes in a controller, but the VP of finance is retiring in two years, so his promotional path is clear. What does he do when he gets his offer?
"You're saying even this guy says he wants to think about it?" Leena said.
"You say that now, Leena, but you've been out of school for less than two years. He has been with his company for ten years. His boss hired him; he admires the man and dreads disappointing him. He complains about the commute, but he has gotten used to having time to unwind after work before coming home and dealing with his young kids. He has friends at his job.
"And deep inside, despite all the obvious reasons why he should and probably will act, he is worried that he will be exposed as not being the excellent performer he has sold himself as, and he has nightmares about being called in two weeks into the job and being released for being an imposter."
"That is so sad," I lamented.
"An editor of Parade Magazine said the one question he could ask any celebrity, no matter how arrogant, that nails them instantly, was, 'What are you going to do when they figure out who you really are?'"
"But ultimately he takes the job, right?" Leena said.
"Perhaps. But he's rolling the dice with the life variables in the interim."
Harper was right about Leena: at twenty-four, life was black and white, and the people wallowing in grisaille seemed craven and sad.
I jumped in. "During the week he is mustering up his nerve, his own company could get wind that he has been interviewing and fire him on the spot. Now he has lost leverage to negotiate his offer higher, and his benefits won't pick up on the new job for ninety days: one health crisis away from potential financial ruin. Or he might get calls from companies he sent résumés to a month ago asking him to interview. Should he? Does he ask for more time? Maybe his wife has gotten used to their schedule the way it is, and she starts working on him to stay where he is and not take the risk. Meantime Harper here is calling every day. Don't deny it, Harper, you've done it to me!"
"I not only don't deny it, I take pride in it. It is my duty as the client's agent to get an answer. And that brings us to another life variable: me. Say you don't accept the job right away and I assume you are going to say no. That means I start sending other candidates in right now to protect the client and myself. Sometimes they're strong candidates, they cost less, or they're prepared to accept the job right away. And the client is tired of waiting for you."
Had Harper sent other candidates to Wallace? He wouldn't do that to me, would he? Unemployment, like loneliness, makes you paranoid.
"And it is not always that Machiavellian," he said. "Sometimes during your decision making, companies lose budget monies and impose hiring freezes. Most offers are accepted within forty-eight hours in successful deals in my firm."
I thought about the offers I had received over the years, and Harper was right. The jobs I took, I took immediately or within a day.
"Can you remember when Mark first told you he loved you, Leena?"
"Of course."
"How long before you responded?"
"Immediately. I felt the same way."
"But if you had told him you needed a week or so to consider your options and that you were confident, given your feelings, you probably would come back to him with an affirmation, how do you think that would have gone over?"
"I think I'd still be trying to write pithy wall postings on Facebook to every cute guy I knew."
"Right. So here's what we know: a company has interviewed a series of people and then selected you. They not only want you, but they want you to feel the same way about them. Every day you think about it, their feelings for you are diminished. Accept in a day and the emotion is matched and a career is launched. Accept in a week and they can't help but feel you took the job because your preferred options didn't work out. You 'ended up' with them.
"Offers are how companies say 'I love you,' and they need to hear it back. Have either of you ever said 'I love you' and not heard it back?"
"Yes," Leena said. "It was horrible."
"Me, too. And it sucked."
"Really? That was rhetorical. It's never happened to me. What is wrong with you two?"
My Blackberry buzzed, and the familiar red light started flashing—a text from Peter: "Are you going to be much longer? I have another client soon."
Is he joking? He is aware and respectful of his client's time but couldn't text, call, or email in three days?
Harper continued:
HARPER'S RULES
Time Kills Deals, Part Three
There is no such thing as 'I don't have time' in the modern world. Technology has stripped away many of the classic excuses, so when people cling stubbornly to them, they can cause frustration and even hostile action that both parties come to regret.
If you are like most people, you probably check your email twenty to twenty-five times a day. And you probably either read or write email or instant messages up to three hours of your day. And it's likely that at some point you've had a Blackberry or some other smart-phone to stay connected to the office or clients. And you obviously have voice mail, which you check after seeing the indicator light go on. How soon do you check your voice mail after seeing you have one?
"Five minutes? What if a client wanted to schedule an interview or something was wrong with Madison? That's my son, Casey."
Okay, everyone I know is having babies, and everyone is naming them after presidents. If I hear of one named Grover or Millard, I may renounce my citizenship.
The truth is, technology was supposed to free us up so that we would not have to be chained to the office in order to receive information. Instead we are imprisoned by it. We are petrified of missing anything. We are never not working.
For the first time in history, when asked, 'If you left your wallet and your cell phone at home, which would you go back for, if either?' the majority of people polled say they would only go back for the cell. We will go without money or proof of identity, but we won't go without our real sense of identity, our connection to the world.
Technology exposes the truth about time-killing deals. We can't say we don't have time, we can't say we didn't get that message, we can't say we're not in a place where we can respond. If we say those things, we are only delaying, and a delay is usually a 'no' on a deferment plan.
"So, Harper, you have been ducking me about Wallace Avery? You have bad news, and you haven't had the moxie to call and let me know. Right?"
Harper exhaled deeply. His voice seemed milky and distant.
It seemed I was about to lose my opportunity with InterAnnex, the only viable return to employment I had, and all I could feel was alarm at how tired and dazed Harper suddenly sounded.
"Nothing has been decided, so let's dial down the drama," he began. "But yes, some concerns have surfaced."
"I don't get it. What could surface?"
"He checked references, okay? Normal due diligence."
"Of course he did; I provided them. My references rock."
"One that you didn't provide apparently did not."
"Who?"
"I don't know. Casey, this happens. I will deal with it."
"How are you dealing with it, Harper? By sending in other candidates?"
I had gone too far; Leena felt she had to come to his defense.
"We haven't sent in even one other résumé, Ms. Matthews," she said.
"You don't know what it's like, neither one of you. You don't know what it's like to be alone and have everything unravel."
Harper laughed softly: a sad laugh—tired.
"I have to go, Casey," he said, and for a moment I thought his voice would crack. "I will get to the bottom of this, and we'll talk soon about the realities of reference checking."
"Okay. I thought everyone loved me. You'd think, given all the evidence to the contrary, I would know better." I could see Peter handing a towel and a plastic bottle of water to his client as a reward for her set of squats.
"Leena, can you give us a minute, please?"
"Sure. I'll speak to you soon. Hang in there."
I waited until I could assume she was gone. "Harper, I struggle daily with the question of just how good a person I am, but I am an excellent salesperson. I really am, and I just . . . I need you to know that. I don't care what someone said about me. I do care what you think about me."
"Casey, I love you to death, but if you weren't excellent at what you do, if I couldn't place you and make money off you, I wouldn't waste a moment of my time with you."
This outright lie made me laugh, which made him think I believed him, which made him happy.
"Are you okay, Harper? Give me credit for not asking until Leena was gone."
"I am perfection personified. Bye, Casey."
Who told Wallace something negative about me? An ex-boss? A colleague? It was so frustrating being judged without being able to defend myself.
I just wanted to go home. But as I retrieved my car keys from the rack, Peter yelled my name from down the hall. I could have kept going; I didn't.
"Were you just going to leave without even talking to me?"
"Yes."
"But I have a whole speech."
"Peter, look . . . no."
"Let me give you the Twitter version then, 140 characters or less."
"Go. I'm counting."
"I didn't call you because I didn't know if I should. Did you hear anything about me? Something bad?"
I nodded slowly. I owed him.
He smiled the way actors do at the Oscars at the precise moment it is announced they did not win, and yet the whole world is watching to see how gracefully they handle the pain.
"It's not fair, you know. People talk, but not to your face. I would have told you; it just didn't seem cool on the first date. As much as everyone talks about moving on, no one really lets you do it."
Had I judged Peter on a bad reference?
"Okay, you went over. But it was pretty good. I'd like to see you again."
Before he could hug or kiss me, I turned and actually sauntered out.
Harper made me join Facebook. I told him I didn't want to, that I was in touch with everyone I wanted to be in touch with, but he called me on it. Harper is the only man who calls me on things, at least the only man whom I continue to talk to after he calls me on things.
"By not joining, you are making a statement: You are too good for us."
"Okay, I'll join. But I'm putting a picture of Starbucks up on my main profile. And I'm not tagging photos and relentlessly informing friends of my most trivial daily events."
"As an unemployed person, it is irresponsible of you not to post your status and subtly request help."
And as I logged in, sure enough, I had a response to my status ("Casey is crazy busy interviewing, still looking for that perfect-fit senior sales role for a technology company").
It was from my old boss, Mike Ogilvy. He said hi, that he didn't know I was looking, and that he would ask around.
So Mike is off my list of suspects for whoever sabotaged my reference with Wallace Avery. I used the Find Friends function and, after taking a couple calming breaths, typed "Tyrus Conway."
Ty must be in his early sixties now. Facebook has truly become ubiquitous if Ty comes up. Seven years ago, he was part of the company's mentoring program: twice a month a senior rep would travel with a junior rep to offer critiques and shore up any product knowledge or salesmanship issues. Ty called me "honey," which I chalked up to a generational divide. But by the second meeting I had concerns: a hand on my backside guiding me through revolving doors; leaning in and whispering to me in a crowded elevator.
But the red flag vibe came after a couple of drinks while stranded at O'Hare. The ruddy face, the expansive mood, and the wide-open pores were obvious evidence that he had a drinking problem. Two hours later, when we got to the hotel, checked in, and walked to the elevators, he asked me what room I was in. I hesitated. His eyes narrowed and he dramatically put down his bags.
"Listen, young lady, you and I have to work together. I suppose you think every man in the world is trying to make a move on you. But I am fifty-six, married for thirty-four years to the mother of my children. No offense, you ain't worth losing her over. I asked which room you were in so that when our customer calls in the morning to schedule the demo, I could buzz your room. But just call me when you wake up."
I apologized and gave him my room number. But as soon as I had gotten settled in— and had called Donald to say good night and to have him put Starbuck's head close to the receiver's mouthpiece so that I could hear her purring—I had a tap at the door. I opened the door two inches and could smell the bourbon on Ty's breath.
I began my "go sleep it off" speech, but I didn't get four words in before he pushed open the door, grabbed me around my waist, pinned me against the wall, and began kissing my neck and face.
It's a blur now, but I remember, in no particular order, a simultaneous gouging of his face and kneeing of his groin. I remember screaming, and because the door was still open, it was just a few seconds before a kid named Ron, delivering room service two rooms down, had Ty pinned on the ground. By midnight the CEO was reassuring me that this would be dealt with through both legal and corporate channels. I only bristled once when he told me he was sure I had nothing to do with provoking the behavior. "You're damn right I didn't," I said. "I got served up to this joker, and I have rights, too!"
Ty never came back to work. I knew he was suspended, but I don't know if he eventually quit to spare himself the ignominy or if they fired him. Ty was not a bad person, just weak and ruined.
Was Ty Conway sabotaging my reference with Wallace?
Can anyone just say whatever they want about someone and because it's a "reference check" get away with it? Aren't there laws?
My answer came to me in the form of Facebook's instant messaging. I can't even bust Harper about being on Facebook when he should be working; networking is working for him. I told him I was confused about the ethics and legalities of reference checks. He responded that I should check my email. Apparently I had inspired another chapter for his book.
HARPER'S RULES
Reference Checks—What Are Your Rights?
On one end of the spectrum, one can check a reference and the report is absurdly positive: the subject walked on water; was not only the best worker/employee ever, but as a human being should have been canonized at the end of her first fiscal year. On the other end, if the reference is negative, it can be searing: the person was ineffective, inefficient, incompetent, and, from a personal perspective, whether the person was the Antichrist was openly and seriously discussed.
But is any of it true? What is the vested interest of the party making the statement? What bridge was burned, what transgression unforgiven? These questions are critical for a simple reason: hiring decisions are often made based on reference checks. And where is that grey line of slander or defamation? When does opinion become actionable? And how do we (companies, recruiters, candidates) protect ourselves?
Luckily for us, there are rules, rights, and laws.
The Fair Credit Reporting Act, (enacted in 1971 and amended in 1996 and 1998), governs the reference checking done by recruiting/search firms on behalf of specific and prospective employers. The purpose of the law is to ensure that those charged with the responsibility of checking references exercise this duty gravely: "with fairness, impartiality, and respect for the right to privacy." There are real teeth to this legislation. Willful failure creates a liability for the recruiter that could result in punitive damages. These damages, and associated court and attorney fees, will always be far greater than the fee the recruiter could earn by violating the law. No quality recruiter would take such a risk.
Your rights as a candidate:
1. Your recruiter must get your permission to check any reference.
2. Your recruiter must, upon request, accurately disclose the nature and substance of the information, but the source need not be disclosed.
(So you get to know what was said about you, but not who said it. This drives candidates crazy, but it allows for more candor and less fear of reprisal.)
3. You have the right to receive the reference content in writing within five business days.
4. The recruiting firm must keep these records for two years.
5. Some info, if obtained through a third-party reference-checking firm, may not be disclosed: e.g., bankruptcies if over fourteen years old, paid tax liens, and arrest records, if over seven years old.
I still didn't get it. I can find out what was said about me but not who said it? If I don't know who is trashing me, how do I know whom to confront, or failing that, whom to leave off my damn list of references? And if the recruiter can only call the references I provide, how did Wallace get a bad reference Harper doesn't know about? I was about to call Harper to get to the bottom of all of this when I saw he had provided an FAQ section.
REFERENCE CHECK FAQS
Q: Do companies really put any stock in references? Aren't they loaded? I am only going to give references I'm sure will say great things.
A: Novice headhunters are always shocked when they learn that more than seventy percent of the time, the reference tells the truth, even if it could hurt a candidate's chance of getting a job. This is as it should be. These references are bosses and hiring authorities themselves, and they take telling the truth on a reference as a matter of duty and honor.
Q: Does that mean my boss lied when he said he'd give a positive reference?
A: Absolutely not! It means an experienced headhunter or HR professional asked penetrating and difficult questions. Keep in mind many references are done at the end of the interviewing process when you have had several meetings and people have started to form opinions about you. So when your ex-boss is asked, "Does he have a temper issue when his authority is challenged?" and that is a matter of record in your work experience, he feels obliged to discuss it.
Q: I am going on a final interview, and I'm pretty sure they're going to make me an offer. I have 101 credits toward my bachelor's degree, but I never finished due to some family stuff I will spare you. But I went four years and did all the classes my major required and . . . well, here's the deal. On my résumé it says I have a BA degree. Will they check? Can they?
A: They can and usually do, and if you get caught, they will not hire you. Colleges and universities keep the strictest of records. (Their legal accreditation depends on it.)
Q: Do you have to have perfect references to get hired? I was immature at my first couple of jobs and made some bad choices. Is it going to follow me forever?
A: Here is what I tell all my candidates. Find me a bad reference. That's right! Because if you don't, the company will take your three "perfect" references and discount them. Here is what you must understand: companies are made up of humans making decisions. And these humans are flawed. They don't trust or believe references without negatives. Give me three excellent references and one "bad" (as long as the bad part is not morally reprehensible or occupationally egregious; I can't place a murderer just released from prison or an embezzler in a CFO's job) and companies will hire you. Give me just the three excellent references, and they feel they are not getting the whole story.
I remembered when Donald said it was time, about four months into our relationship, to become exclusive. I asked why, and he said, "You're perfect to me, Casey. I can't find anything about you I don't like." And the moment was horrible, because I lost respect for his judgment. Give me one negative; maybe then I'll believe you really love me.
The last FAQ could have been written about me and helped me see why Harper could not prevent, and did not cause, Wallace Avery's concern about me.
Q: I was told by someone on the inside at the company that I didn't get the job because of a bad reference, but my recruiter swears he submitted the rave references that I supplied him. What gives?
A: Your question has been the bane of my existence. The Fair Credit Reporting Act applies to third-party firms like me and your recruiter. The companies themselves are free to "network" and check with people they know who know you. Because you want the job and your recruiter makes money if you get the job, companies tend to believe the "networked reference" more than they do you or your recruiter. It is a flaw in the law, but it is also human nature.
So that's it. Wallace went beyond Harper, asked around about me, and found something. Now Harper is trying to backtrack for me.
I am a divorced woman who was publicly humiliated, and I still don't consider Donald an enemy. I think Donald is a really good guy who acted like a total idiot for too long. He openly cheated on me and ignored sacred vows, but I still think of him as the most decent and trustworthy guy I ever knew.
Just before I logged out, I saw that Facebook had listed Abby Taylor as a "friend suggestion." I always adored Abby, but she was one of the spoils of divorce; Donald got Abby. On a whim, I sent Abby an invite anyway. Starbucks distracted me for a second, and by the time I looked back on the screen Abby had already accepted me. I went to her page, looked at her photo, and saw her most recent status update: "Shopping for my friend Sasha's baby shower. Don't tell Joe, but it makes me want another baby. Someone slap me silly."
Donald wanted kids from day one and I held him off. Of course they were going to get pregnant. At some level I knew this would happen.
So why am I upset? I grabbed my cell phone and scrolled to Donald's number. It irritated me to no end that he was still "scrollable." I didn't know how to defriend someone on Facebook. Maybe there was no bad reference; maybe Wallace was just appalled that a young woman with a relatively high disposable income had no children. Maybe he just didn't want someone so self-absorbed on his sales team.
My cell phone vibrated. Harper. Thank God.
"Harper, I'm going to be thirty-five in three weeks. A lot of people die at seventy. I could be halfway through my life, I am middle-aged, and what have I got? I'll tell you what . . . Nothing!"
"I'm going to go out on a limb and guess that I caught you at a bad time. Casey, I got the name. Doria Colangelo."
My depression was instantly swept away in a cleansing rush of anger.
"Doria Colangelo. My God."
"According to the story she has told people that know Wallace, when you worked together at ParaSource, you knowingly sold an untested home health-care solution to a hospital alliance. She claims your error forced ParaSource to do a second rollout for free in order to avoid a lawsuit. She said you buried key data to close the deal. She's made it seem pretty ugly."
"That's what she said, huh?"
"Look, I know it's not true. I know there's the official and the unofficial version. Tell me what happened, I pass your version on to Wallace, he gives you the benefit of the doubt, and we get past this. Wallace likes you. So tell me."
Doria cut corners. She would show up late for software training sessions and as a result would routinely tell customers our product could do something it couldn't, forcing someone to do damage control. And she was a user; someone was always cutting and pasting a PowerPoint for her because she got home so late the night before that she had "ran out of runway." Somehow this was overlooked by management, and it infuriated the sales staff, especially the women who were older and not as willing to wear skirts way above the knee or shirts unbuttoned practically to the navel.
The coup de grâce came after Doria finished her second full quarter dead last among our sales team and was inexplicably added to the coveted health-care vertical. I was promoted to health care because I had been 140 percent of my goal for the year. I was thrilled because health care is where the money is in the twenty-first century. Every software company in its right mind was peddling software solutions to hospitals, clinics, and universities. And our technologists came up with an awesome one—a "have to have." In software sales, you want to be a "have to have", not a "nice to have."
"Nice to have" software is the home abdominal machine you ordered at 2 A.M. after inhaling a box of Oreos.
A "have to have" means your business couldn't run without it, or it saves you so much money you must buy it. Windows, Word, Quicken, Excel . . . the giants of the "have to haves." Every salesperson wants to sell the "have to haves," and we are no different in our dating lives. When I think of my marriage, Donald was my "nice to have," and I was his "have to have." Until I was not.
Our tech guys came up with a killer "have to have" app for our home health-care vertical. We all knew this product would rock. And then, one of our developers came up with the icing on the cake for the app: voice recognition. With this, we would completely bury the competition. We would be bulletproof.
Our tech team made it very clear that the product was ready for rollout and implementation, but that it would take six months to a year to have voice recognition fully functional.
Doria's casual relationship with the truth either didn't allow her to hear this part, or she chose to ignore it. A couple of months later, she called me and asked if I wanted to split a deal. She had a hospital alliance in Brattleboro very close to committing to a three-year, three-million-dollar deal on the new application, but she had to get past a final presentation to the chief technologists and the CFO. This was known to be my specialty. Doria said she would give me one third of the commission dollars if I went on the final meeting with her. This is found money, and as much as I was reluctant to partner up with someone known to be sloppy, mercurial, and untested, it made no financial sense not to do it.
I could tell the CFO loved Doria and wanted to make this happen. It could potentially save them a ton of money, so why not? Win-win, right?
And then the CFO made a request.
"And Doria, we decided we want the voice recognition built in, so you can implement that as well, right?"
I looked at Doria, but she kept her eyes focused on the CFO and, like all good liars, was not at all thrown.
"No worries. I'll take care of it."
Anticipating my ire, on the way home she told me she would call back and explain the voice recognition would be implemented as soon as it was available, but that it would not come with the package.
"You better spell that out, sister, and document it so they don't call you on it later."
And that was the end of it. It wasn't my deal.
Then my boss called me while I was on the road in D.C. saying he wanted to talk to me when I got back later in the week about the Brattleboro deal. He wouldn't elaborate. An hour later I got a call from Doria saying she needed to talk and would I have lunch with her? I said I was in D.C. and she said she knew I was, that I was at the Fairmont and she was in the lobby.
At lunch, Doria told me she was a mess and needed someone to talk to. Her brother, Austin, her mentor and hero, the person she loved the most in the world, was very sick. He had already had kidney cancer when he was a teenager, but they removed the kidney before it had spread. Now, a decade later, it was back. If he didn't receive a transplanted kidney quickly, he would be gone. She told me all this in fragments because she kept having to stop to cry and gather herself.
The doctors recommended everyone in the family be evaluated as possible donors. She said "of course," made the appointment, and pulled a no-show. She loved her brother more than anyone she had ever known. And yet she didn't want to give him her kidney. She didn't want to get cut into, she didn't want to be sick, she didn't want to live in fear of losing her one remaining kidney.
This was such an extraordinary display of vulnerability and honesty I was blown away. To have the courage to admit something so monstrously selfish showed a depth to Doria I didn't know existed. We held hands. We cried. We were a mess, make-up ruined, and when she asked if she could come to my room to freshen up, I didn't think anything of it. When we got to the room, she noticed my laptop and asked if she could log in to work and check on some things. I told her I was already connected and just to close me out and help herself. When I came out of the bedroom ready to go to my client, she closed the laptop quickly. Her mood had improved tremendously. Suddenly she was in a hurry.
Later that week I came in to meet my boss, T. J., a former top producer who had crossed over to management. I stopped at my desk, and there was a gift-wrapped bottle of Dom Perignon and a card from Doria. She wanted me to know the doctors had found a donor for Austin.
As soon as I sat down opposite T. J., he told me he wanted me to know he was disappointed in me, that I wasn't as clever as I thought.
I assured him I had no idea in hell what he was talking about.
"Casey, our profit on the Brattleboro rollout would be around 300K after taxes. But because you promised them a voice-recognition component we cannot currently provide, they want to cancel the implementation, and if we claim breach of contract, they will sue for—guess what?—about 300K."
"I never promised them any such thing. I was not the account manager who wrote up that deal and you know it. I made a cameo appearance to close the thing for a rookie."
He removed a document from a folder and placed it in front of me. It was a printout of an email from me to Doria. I looked at the time and date. I had to smile. Doria had sent it from my account in my hotel room at the Fairmont, written by her on my laptop. She wrote on my behalf that we had to find a way to get Geoff to okay the voice-recognition beta for Brattleboro, or find some way to buy time on the implementation, or the whole thing "was going to blow up in our faces."
I felt pure hate, a liquid current coursing through me. I calmly handed the document to my boss and told him I never wrote it.
"Who did?" he asked. I lifted my head and stared directly into his eyes.
"Did Doria have access to your email?"
I nodded.
"Can you prove it?"
"No, and I won't try. You know me, you know her. Make the call."
"What did you to do to her that would make her go this far?"
"Nothing. That's the beauty of it. In a way, I think she likes me a lot."
He exhaled deeply and sat back in his chair.
"I don't know why I gave up selling for management. You people exhaust me."
I got an email the next day saying management was "satisfied the misunderstanding was not of my making, and no permanent record would be in my file, nor action taken." Doria was gone within a month. I never thought I'd hear her name again.
"So," Harper said, "you've taken your Samuel Beckett pause to gather yourself. Now give me your side of the story so I can fight this with Wallace."
"You can tell Wallace it's not true. But that's all you can tell him."
"Casey, that won't be good enough."
"Where does it end, Harper? You can call it reference checking, and granted, employers need to know whom they are hiring. But I don't care what the law says, the system is flawed; it doesn't get at the truth. The truth is somewhere in the middle; that's where it lives. If that costs me the job, so be it. Bye, Harper."
It wasn't until after I hung up and started unloading my dishwasher that I realized I had plagiarized from Donald and what he said to me the day we passed the point of no return.
"Do you want to be with her?" I had asked.
"Yes."
"Then you don't love me."
"I do. The truth is in the middle; that's where it lives."
I dried my hands and reached for my phone. I knew he would recognize my number.
"Casey?"
"So I'm thinking Casey works as a girl's name or a boy's name, just in case you get a girl but want a boy and decide to use her name as a way to scar her for life."
"I was going to tell you," Donald said.
"No, you weren't."
"No, I wasn't. But I'm glad you know now."
"I'm really happy for you, Donny. You'll be a spectacular dad."
"God," he sighed, "I hope so."
"Remember the macaroni and cheese?" I said.
He had set the table with our best linens and our formal dishes; wine awaited me at the door. A sex setup normally, but Donald's plan was to formally ask me to begin trying to have a baby. He said it was time, that in order for love to be sustained, it had to be immersed in growth. It didn't work; I talked him off the ledge. Resigned, he brought out the macaroni and cheese.
"It was lame," I said. "I want you to know, if you had made better macaroni and cheese that night, we might have a five-year-old now. Live with that, Donald."
Donald cracked up. I knew that no one, not Sasha or, God forbid, anyone that comes after her, could make him laugh like I could.
"So, now that it doesn't matter, why didn't you want to have a family with me? Did you know we weren't going to make it even then?" he said.
A fair question, and since I called him, I guess I owed it to him to tell the truth, even though it remains in the middle.
"No, Donny, it was me. All I could think of then was what children would cost me. How would I be able to still be the top producer in the company? I didn't think I could handle the costs."
"I understand," he said.
"No, listen. What I wish someone had told me is that when they are your kids, you don't want to do the things you used to do. I'm so sorry I made you wait, Donny."
"When did you figure this out?" he asked.
"I can pinpoint the moment. When Sheila woke up and wouldn't eat breakfast until we went out and got the mail. We started walking up the driveway, and she reached out and took my hand. And the way her tiny little hand felt, it was only a hundred feet to the mailbox, I don't know, it just hit me. There was no way the day was going to get any better than this."
Donald politely waited until I had stopped crying, told me he had to go, and said he was glad that I had called.
"And Casey," he added, "it's not too late for you. Whenever you are ready, you will be an incredible mother."
How about that? After all that's happened, Donald is still willing to be my reference.
My cell buzzed; it was Harper. I was feeling so cleansed by my confession to Donald that even Harper couldn't ruin my mood.
"Harper, before you start in on me—you have never been divorced or unemployed. So you don't know how liberating it can feel, how nice it can be to not be a part of anything. It's a shame you will never know this simple and sweet feeling. I feel sort of sorry for you."
There was a dead pause. I thought we had lost the signal.
"I called Wallace Avery and told him exactly what you told me to tell him," he said, finally. "Now it's my turn, young lady. I need to know from here on out that you are going to do exactly what I tell you to do until you are drawing a paycheck."
"You are such a buzz-kill, Harper. Deal. Was Avery furious?"
"Oh yeah, but not at you. Turns out your old boss T. J. and Wallace are tight. So Wallace is furious at Doria and at me, for not knowing the story. You he loves. The blind loyalty, the principled stand, the rising above the mean-spiritedness—he was impressed."
"What about you, Harper? Were you impressed?"
"I thought you were being foolish and stubborn. Anyway, game on with InterAnnex. Wallace wants to set up a final interview, but he needs a couple of weeks so he can get to the Pacific Rim and set up some supply channels. That gives us a chance to send you out on more interviews."
"Harper, if Wallace wants to hire me, I don't want . . . okay, right, whatever you say. I'm in, boss."
"Good. And . . . I am aware of what feeling liberated is like."
Was he finally going to talk to me? Earlier the day before, when I told myself I would check Indeed.com for job postings, I went to Harper's website and found pics in the "About Us" section: the principals and their wives dancing, a group photo of all the attendees. Harper stood alone in every picture.
"You know when I feel liberated?" he said. "You land at the airport after a business trip. You take the valet shuttle to your car, and that's the moment. It is thrilling to be back in your car. You realize you love your car, and even though you are just minutes away from having been in a plane going 600 mph, it is now that you feel fast and loose and free.
"But it doesn't last long. And before you know it, you're home, and the feeling's gone." His voice was distant, muted, and sad.
CHAPTER TEN
## OTHER OFFERS
AND PLAYING THE FIELD
I knew I was supposed to keep expenses down to the absolute essentials, but I decided my massage therapist qualified.
"So how are things, chica?" Lucy asked. "Same old same old?"
"Things are good," I said, and it surprised me to realize that I wasn't lying. I have always had a built-in survival mechanism. I expect the worst possible outcome. Always. So when I get a punch to the solar plexus from life, it not only doesn't throw me, but I can legitimately say to myself, "Is that the worst of it? Is that all you got? That's not so bad."
And as Lucy did her magic, I took stock. My final interview with InterAnnex was back on; I still had a couple of months of severance; and since our showdown at the gym, Peter and I had gone out twice, and it was great. The second date was a totally safe daytripper. I went to his softball league playoff game and played the role of cool chick. I wore their team cap on backward, cheered loudly, and when a foul ball came into the stands, I caught it and threw it back to the umpire with confidence and skill. A couple of nights later, trying to show some range, Peter took me to a lecture series about the changing technological world order by New York Times guru Thomas Friedman. Peter was lost, but I so appreciated the sweet gesture. He had clients at 5 A.M. the next morning, so we brought separate cars, and other than a very well executed good night kiss, it was a pretty old-fashioned date. We both knew our next date meant we were about to cross over into intimacy. I couldn't wait.
In the waiting room was my entrepreneurial hero, Sophie Dunham, the owner of Drive-by Pet Sitting. She was a one-woman show. For fourteen dollars she would come to your house, feed your cat or dog, walk them or change a litter box, play with them with a wide variety of cool toys she brought with her, and leave you a report card evaluating the visit. She graded them for things like "fuzziness," "quality of tail thumping," and "enthusiasm for yarn." Sophie knew intuitively that people like me considered our pets our kids, and I often would sit Starbucks down when Donald and I would return from a weekend away and say gravely, "You couldn't have been a little fuzzier?" Sophie's husband had been transferred to Topeka, and although she made a very good living with Drive-by Pet Sitting, she could do it anywhere.
"Know anybody who wants to buy my business?" she said when I saw her. "Flex hours, you play with pets all day, and last year I made 125K."
I told Sophie I would think about it, gave her a hug and wished her well on her move to what she referred to as "godforsaken Topeka," and by the time I got to my car, I already envisioned my new life. I have always preferred animals to people; I prefer their company, their attitude, and their worldview. They are happy unless given a reason to feel bad. People are just the opposite.
Even I could live on 125K if I wasn't buying clothes and competing in the world of enterprise sales. This was my chance to take my life in a totally different direction! Where was it written that I had to stay on the same path? I was scrolling for Sophie's number in my Blackberry when I noticed two voice mails, Harper and an unknown number.
"Harper," I began, with no pretense of a greeting, "I'm sorry to do this to you, but I owe it to you to be totally upfront. I have decided to go into business for myself."
"No you haven't," he said, sounding almost bored.
"I haven't?"
"Three words. Bed and breakfast."
Damn. The last time Harper placed me I called him from a bed and breakfast in New Hampshire. I was on the wraparound front porch looking at an incredible view of the White Mountains. It was autumn, peak colors, I saw the FOR SALE sign, and called Harper to tell him I was buying the place.
"You don't want to own a bed and breakfast," he said. "You want to live in one."
He was right, and I knew it.
"So why did you call, Harper? I mean, besides to quash my dreams?"
"I have two other companies that need a senior sales rep in the Northeast, and they both want to talk to you. I'm having Leena send you the job descriptions. We'll get you in front of both of them before you go back to meet Wallace."
"I have to return another call, Harper." And I hung up. Quash my dreams, deal a deathblow to Park and Bark or whatever, and feel my wrath. I did have the unknown voice mail—at least I wasn't lying.
The voice wasn't familiar. He spoke quickly in the practiced, high-intensity inflection of the professional salesperson.
"Hi, Casey, it's Jamie Post. I have no idea if you remember me or our conversation. Anyway I don't want to get into this in voice mail; I will send you an email. But I'll take the mystery out of this for you. Bottom line, the word is out that you are available, and I wanted to talk to you about that. So call me or respond to my email. Thanks. Hope you're well. Jamie Post—555-334-4309."
Jamie Post? I'm great with faces, but names—not so much. I had to assume this was Harper's viral marketing paying off. I had put my obligatory posting on Facebook, done a mass email blast to all my contacts on LinkedIn, and had left a message or sent résumés to every VP of sales I knew or almost knew, using the scripted verbiage Harper had supplied. Guess this guy Post has something for me. I was about to Google him before I returned his call, but his promised email showed up in my Blackberry just as I was logging into my browser. At least he followed up. I respect that in any salesperson.
TO: CMatthews@Yahoo.com
FROM: JDPOST@Dresserindustries.com
SUBJECT: Remains to be seen!
Hi Casey,
I just left you a voice mail. You are young, and the young answer their email and text long before they check their voice mails. My daughter (don't pretend you recall), a 15-year-old force of nature, tells me to stop wasting my time leaving her voice mails. If I want to talk to her, text her. ("Really, Dad, dial in, enter a code, listen to a playback? Life is too short for voice mail.") So . . . okay, there is no segue that is not impossibly awkward here. I am the guy who you chatted with five years ago on the train from Norwalk to Grand Central. I hear through the grapevine, (There I go dating myself. I'm supposed to say "network." Well give me credit, I just stopped saying "rolodex.") that you are divorced. I was when we chatted and still am. I wondered if you'd consider having dinner with me this week sometime. Pick a day, I am all too available.
Warm Regards,
Jamie
PS . . . The guy on the train with the chalk-stripe suit and the umbrella trying desperately to get your attention away from the Times. Damn Maureen Dowd.
Jamie Post! I had a married woman's crush on him; I knew our relationship would end when the doors of the train opened at Grand Central. He was late thirties to early forties then, but already lots of silver in the thick wavy hair he would clearly never lose. His eyes kept darting over to me, waiting for me to put the paper down and give him a way in.
"Maureen Dowd, right?" he said after I chuckled out loud. "The piece on Bush channeling Brad Pitt in Troy?"
I nodded.
"She's cheerful, yet vicious. Kind of hot, too."
"I'm pretty sure she's single."
"She'd eat me alive."
"Not many men would admit that."
"Oh, I still have illusions. Maureen Dowd just isn't one of them. Actually that piece kind of made me sad. It's about our obsession with celebrity, right? When I was a little kid, Elvis died, and my dad cried. When I was a teenager John Lennon goes down, and my older brother flipped out. When my turn came with Kurt Cobain, I didn't feel anything but that he had made a stupid choice."
Okay, maybe this was his standard procedure for hitting on women in trains, but if it was, it worked. I was caught up.
"Don't you think that's a good thing," I asked, "that you care more about the people who are actually in your life?"
"I'm not sure. It makes me wonder if I'm just too hollow. You look like you're my ex-wife's age—"
Adroit. A nice touch . . .
"—Crying jags over Princess Diana? Calling in sick so you could watch the funeral?"
"No, I'm more like you. I felt terrible for the children, but to me the saddest thing was giving Elton John an excuse to plug another name into 'Goodbye Norma Jean.'"
"We could form a club!" he said when he stopped laughing. "We'll meet every time a celebrity dies and toast to the unknown loved ones we care nothing about."
"Sorry," I said. "No can do."
"Because of that ring on your finger?"
"Well that, and I don't qualify. JFK, Jr.? I was a basket case. He and I were going to end up together."
He laughed again, and his eyes made me wish Grand Central were farther away. "I'm Jamie Post, by the way."
An hour after I got Jamie's messages, I was sharing a smoothie with Hannah at the juice bar of the health food store less than two blocks from the gym. Even being this close to Peter and discussing another man made me feel awful, but since I called the emergency meeting, I had to let Hannah pick the place. She had to have a smoothie.
"So," she began, "Jamie Post would fall into Category One."
"He would?"
"The ones that got away. You regret it, you romanticize them out of proportion to what they were, you look them up online and stalk from afar. It's why I'm on Facebook. Go out with the guy."
"Hannah, I am dating Peter."
"A couple of times! There's been no sex."
"Sex is looming."
"Now you sound like Ben, then I come back from brushing my teeth and you're snoring."
"You're saying I go out with Jamie?"
"How can you not? You talked about that damn train ride for months."
"I did? I guess I did. What about Peter?"
"How do you know he's not seeing other people?"
"He would tell me."
Hannah rolled her eyes. "Okay, then tell him the truth. This guy resurfaced, you have feelings, you need to play this out, you don't have a commitment with Peter, you are being upfront and you hope he can appreciate it."
"Is that what you would do?"
"Honey, I would have slept with him on the train."
As I walked to my car the reality set in. If I really cared about Peter, I wouldn't want to see another man. Peter adores me. I don't really know Jamie. He is older than me, has a teenager, has been divorced a long time—there has to be a story behind that, right? I wondered all this aloud to Hannah before she took her last, annoying loud suck on her smoothie.
"Duh. Because he reminds you of Harper."
I tried to imagine Peter calling me and telling me some random girl from back in the day had reached out to him and since we were not yet "committed," he was going to see her and wanted to be upfront. I would be devastated. If I had any arts and crafts skills I would make a voodoo doll and spend the appointed evening poking it in the groin with a pin.
And yet, I was about to seriously consider thinking about planning on calling Jamie . . .
Suddenly I was in my driveway. I didn't remember taking my exit or making the turn on Boynton or crossing Chevas, but here I am. I started my day with a relaxing massage, and now my chest feels tight and my shoulders ache. I carry no house key because I have a garage door opener and never go in through the front door. I sat zoned out for a full minute before I realized the door had only raised two feet off the ground. I hit the remote about twelve times before giving up and going to the front entrance, lifting the welcome mat, and picking up my key. "You can't hide it in a planter or buy one of those fake rocks that hold keys?" my mother asks. No, I can't. It ruins the irony of a burglar getting access to everything I own by lifting a mat that promises WELCOME. I can live without valuables, but not without irony.
Before I could even get inside, I heard a man yell my name and come trotting across my yard. He was tall and rugged looking, the deep leathery tan of a guy who works outside for a living. He flashed a big smile and shook my hand. He informed me he was from the housing development association. He was sorry, this was the part of the job he hated, but there had been complaints from the neighbors about my lawn. He handed me a document, which he said was a "warning." He assured me it was just a formality.
"You're telling me that people complained because my lawn wasn't mowed?"
"Like I said, no worries. We get it mowed, we tear that up, it goes away."
"I just don't get it. Don't they have lives? I am busy. I live alone, I travel for a living."
"Oh, well, that makes it tough. Where do you work?"
"That is not relevant!" I said, in the Laura Linney–district attorney manner I adopt when I am embarrassed.
My cell going off saved him further ire he didn't deserve. It was Lucy. Did I forget to pay her for the massage? No, I remember leaving the cash under the little Buddha statue.
"Hey. Apollo was in here today. He just left."
Apollo is Steve Adamzyk, a male model, incredibly beautiful, and he is not gay. Lucy gets to manhandle him once a month and get paid for it.
"He asked for your number."
"What? What is going on here? Who opened this spigot? Did I unknowingly change perfume?"
"You smell great," Lawn Man said.
I waved my finger at him.
"Can I give him your number?" Lucy asked.
"I don't even know him. I see him in your lobby once in a while."
"You don't have to know him. Do I need to remind you that I see him naked, front and back? There is ample reason for you to take his call. So give him your number, right?"
"No. Yes . . . I need to think about it. I have to go. Wait, does he mow lawns?"
I hung up and looked out at my lawn. It looked like hell. Everything felt like it was slipping again, and Lawn Man could sense I was about to lose it in front of him.
"Listen, once a week I do the Randall's yard down the street," he said. "I could swing by and do your place in no time. No charge. Okay?"
"The Randalls are, like, 300 years old. Each. They can't do their own lawn. I can."
"You travel for a living; you're not around."
"I'm not working right now. I lied about that. I just suck."
"I do the Randall's day after tomorrow; I'll be here then. If you're home . . . well that would be nice. I'll say hello."
He smiled to let me know things would be all right. Then he took the "warning" out of my hands, tore it in half, and trotted back across my yard to his truck.
I went into my kitchen and realized that since I now had to come to terms with my expanding world of job opportunities and men—Apollo, Jamie, Peter, and Lawn Man—it was time to go through my snail mail, which had been piling up for weeks. And where was my welcome from Starbucks?
Wait, what is this registered letter from Lending Tree? I have no account with Lending Tree. I scanned the letter and began to feel panic. They were confirming my request for a 250K line of home equity credit, and they were making sure the 75K "instant" cash portion was being sent to the right address.
I called the customer service number provided and was on hold for ten excruciating minutes. In that time, I got an email from Harper attaching the registration tickets to the Mobile Media Marketing tradeshow he wanted me to attend at Lincoln Center next week, a text from Peter asking what time he should pick me up tonight, a text from Hannah asking what I had decided about Jamie, and a text from Jamie asking essentially the same thing.
The customer service rep picked up. I told her I had no interest in a loan, had never asked for one, and had never applied. She read back to me my social security number and my mother's maiden name. How the hell did they get that? Even my mother would be hard pressed to come up with her maiden name.
She said the loan had been applied for online. I couldn't believe this could be processed without a signature. She said when the income is as high as mine (was), there is enough equity in the house, and the request is below 300K, it can be done online as long as they have the PIN, the maiden name, and the social.
My identity had been stolen.
She was savvy and super sweet and she walked me through the procedure of killing this loan request, but she made it clear I had better move quickly. Things began to hover, darken, and close in around me. I'm not even sure if what I said next I actually said out loud.
"You want my identity? Take it. Maybe you can make it work."
Okay, whom could I call to deal with this financial crisis? If I called my dad I would risk the stent from his angioplasty caving in, if I called Peter it would take me twenty minutes to explain that Lending Tree was not a yoga pose. I wasn't about to call Harper. I tried my own CPA but got his machine. I had no choice: I had to call my sister Jill.
"I don't get it," she said. "Hold on, we're at swim practice. I told you to bring your goggles. What would you like me to do now if you left them home?"
"Look, if it's a bad time—"
"So you borrowed how much? 250K! Honey, did I not say you could not continue to spend as if you were working?"
"Okay, Jill, try to focus. I didn't borrow any amount. My identity has—"
"This comes at a really bad time. We have two mortgages on our place; we have the note on all the new equipment Todd needed to stay current. I'm not saying we don't want to help—"
"Jill! Save the 'doctors are not made of money' rant! My identity has been stolen."
I walked her through the chain of events. Finally she locked in.
"Okay, here's what you do the minute we hang up:
"Close all your accounts. You don't know what's been tampered with, so close everything. Call the bank and see if they attempted any charges or withdrawals. Your guys seemed like online pros trying to pull off bank fraud, so you're probably okay; they wouldn't have wanted you tipped off.
"Contact one of the three major credit bureaus (Equifax, Experian, or TransUnion; they talk to each other) and place a fraud alert. Then they won't be able to do it again.
"Request a copy of your credit report and review it and look for suspicious charges. You aren't responsible if you find them and report it.
"File a police report right away. They won't catch them, but you'll have less issues if you need to prove it happened."
"Wow. Okay. Thanks. You rock. How do you know all that? Was your identity stolen?"
"Oh God, no, I would never let that happen." She laughed.
"Okay, Jill, I didn't let it happen; it happened. It's not a sign of my universal ineptness or your superiority."
"I'm just saying when you're a mom, you are more aware of things."
"How do you do that? It's amazing. You make everything bad that happens to me about me not having a child."
"You know," Jill said, impersonating my mom dead-on, "you are Sheila's godmother and favorite aunt, and she had a birthday party last week, and even though you are not working and not traveling, you didn't show."
"What? Really?! I thought her birthday was next week."
"I didn't think you'd remember that. I lied. That was a total Mom move. Whoa. I'm sorry."
"It's okay. When I find out who has my identity, I'll see if they'll throw in yours for the hell of it."
After I went through Jill's list, I decided to be happy that I dodged this bullet and to become a better human being instantaneously. As proof of my new solicitude, I remembered to close the finicky garage door with the remote attached to the wall. All Starbucks needed was that one-foot opening and she'd be off on an adventure. My vet says there is no reason a cat ever has to go outside, but nobody ever seems to explain that to the cats.
I then remembered that I still hadn't paid Starbucks any attention amidst all the chaos I came home to, and I started my way up to the study where I knew she was sleeping on the nubby blanket I lay out for her on the corner futon.
My phone was vibrating before I could even get out of the kitchen. I checked the number. Peter.
"Hi, I'm sorry for not calling you back about tonight. I came home to some issues."
"I left three messages."
"I know that. I believe I just said I was sorry."
"I was at work, but I still found the time to call you. You can't find the time to call me back?"
"What is it you think I do all day, Peter?"
"No idea."
Peter, trust me; you don't want to do this. You are out of your depth. "Well, let's take today. Today I got a call from a bank telling me someone had stolen my identity and was trying to get 250K in my name, thereby ruining my credit, and so I have had to deal with that."
I decided to leave out the tiny matter of Jamie and the not-so-tiny matter of Apollo.
"250K! Holy crap!"
"Just to give you some sense of scale, Peter: 250K is the equivalent of you training clients all day every day and then multiplying that times forever."
"Look," he said slowly, "I know you have a big interview coming up and you are stressed—"
"Forget it. Look, let's take a pass on tonight."
"No, I'm coming over and we're going out. I'll be there at seven."
"No. I'm not up for it. I'm not trying to punish you, Peter. I just want to be alone."
"That's not fair, Casey. We had plans. I'm picking you up at seven."
"Not unless you want to keep your streak of consecutive restraining orders going."
"Wow. Okay, well, you win," Peter said softly. "I don't want to come over anymore."
I stood on the deck and tried to gather myself. Donald and I chose this house mostly because it backed up to a natural preserve of five hundred acres. We thought it was so great that no one could ever build behind us. Now I am making my isolation worse.
Regret was gnawing at me. Do I go out with Jamie now that I have freed up my evening, or is that a silly knee jerk to Peter?
I sent Harper a text that said simply, "I'm sorry to bother you, but I need another chapter. Now."
Harper called back just as I opened the door to the study and found that Starbucks was not asleep on her favorite blanket. This meant she was in one of her other hiding places. I asked Harper to hold for a second and called out to her in a falsetto voice that alternated her name with a fast, repeating smooching sound. Harper sighed, and it was rude, but I didn't feel like chasing her.
"Give me my chapter, Harper. Dating and interviewing. They are exhausting. How much is too much? Why shouldn't I play out the situation with Wallace and with Peter? And if they don't work out, then I'll start over. If that's wrong, I need to know why."
"Okay," he said. He still sounded tired.
HARPER'S RULE
Covering Jobs
All good headhunters 'cover' jobs. This means simply that every time headhunters accept a search assignment from a client, they send the client a short list of three to five excellent candidates in as fast a time frame as is possible given the parameters and complexity of the search. Studies show that if you 'cover' a job within a couple of weeks, the chances of a completed search are almost 100 percent.
Why?
1. There is a rhythm to hiring. If the clients interview every other day for a few weeks, the candidates stay centered in their minds, and the momentum continues. If too much time elapses, they can't remember the candidates as well.
2. Closeness of comparison. When you interview a candidate in close proximity to his competition, you do a better job of comparing strengths and weaknesses.
3. If you liked the first candidate, interviewing four others quickly makes you feel you didn't react emotionally to the first person you liked.
4. If you liked the first candidate, seeing others quickly allows you to have a choice without the fear of losing the first candidate.
5. If the hire is urgent because the work needs to be done, seeing a short list of strong candidates quickly comforts you that you didn't hire someone who is not right for the company long term just because you needed the work done.
While Harper was talking, I began to search for the hiding Starbucks. She was not in the bathtub in the master bathroom. She had to be on my pile of sweaters in the hall armoire.
"Are you saying, Harper, that if I date more than one person that I will do a better job of comparing? That proximity brings clarity? That I will feel that I made a more informed choice?"
"Yes, but it's deeper than that. You'll perform better too—date or interview. And do you know why? Because you will care less! Here is one of my cardinal rules of interviewing:
Candidates who interview like they don't need a job will almost always get the offer before candidates who interview like they do need a job.
"You want to get Wallace's job? A couple of interviews with other companies will only make you sharper, more comfortable with the flow. And you know what? That may come in handy, come offer time."
"Because I'll obviously have more leverage if I have two offers?"
"Sure, but not just that. You're missing the single most important reason why you should have multiple interviews and multiple dates:
The thing that can make a headhunter either deliriously happy or suicidal when a candidate calls back after an interview; the reason why the business is never dull; the most important rule of all: you never know.
"It's that simple. The interview you went on for the hell of it turns out to be an amazing opportunity. The company that seemed too far to drive to or that had too small a market share turns out to have a CEO you find awe-inspiring and visionary. Everyone you meet at the interview makes you feel like you've worked there for years, and even though it was never your intention, even though it was a throwaway, even though it didn't seem like a fit—"
"I end up taking a job that didn't seem right for me because I gave myself a choice."
"Exactly, and let's not forget one other thing: you have to look out for yourself. You don't have a job offer yet, and to my knowledge, no one has asked you for a commitment in a relationship. It could all disappear tomorrow. Choices protect you."
I could hear Hannah asking me how I knew for sure Peter wasn't seeing anyone else. According to Harper, he should be. "It feels cold, Harper, like I'd be misleading, whether it's a guy or a company. Someone gets hurt just so I can have a choice?"
"Choice is the core of free will. It's only when you truly have choices that you make the best decisions for yourself. And Casey, what is best for you is by definition best for whomever you'd be working for or trying to love. A sense of obligation fades, kiddo. You can't be with someone just because you wish you were the kind of person who could be with someone."
Was Harper talking about Peter or his own marriage? It applied to Peter, though. He was good and kind and wanted a family and would never hurt me. I wanted to want Peter. "So you're saying I should go on the interviews and date others?"
"I'm saying I cover jobs, and I never regret a thing."
"What if I end up taking another job besides InterAnnex? Won't you regret that?"
I made my way down to the basement, to the antique nine-foot pool table with leather mesh pockets in the center of the room. We bought it near the end of our marriage. No one has ever played pool on it, and now the emerald felt is covered in Maine Coon fur. I turned on the light, but she wasn't there.
I felt myself starting to panic. I had a sense that Harper felt he was saying something critical to our discussion, but I wasn't listening. I started throwing cushions around and opening drawers she couldn't possibly be in.
"No, I won't regret it if you take a job through some other means. Here's what you need to know about regret: we are fantastic at forgiving ourselves when we act and it turns out to have been the wrong call; we feel regret when we decide not to act at all. I acted—I sent you to a client. If it doesn't work out, I will forgive myself much more easily than I would if I chose to wait before sending you out and then found you took another job. Casey? Are you there?"
I was back in the living room looking under the sofa where I had already looked. I headed back to my bedroom to make sure Starbucks wasn't under the blankets or in the hamper. I tried to stay calm, and keeping Harper talking somehow felt like it would help.
"I'm listening, Harper. Didn't want to interrupt you while you were preaching."
I hadn't let her out. That I knew. I would never. Then I saw that I had closed the door to my walk-in closet, one of her favorite places. Mystery solved. My shoulders dropped and I could breathe. The poor thing has been in there for hours; she is going to be furious with me. But why didn't she cry out? She couldn't have been sleeping this whole time. I opened the door to free her—she wasn't there.
"So the bottom line, kiddo, is when I cover jobs and candidates cover themselves and give themselves choices, they are protecting themselves from what we call in my office the Sixth-Month Stretch."
She was gone! Oh my God, where is my baby? I felt my hands getting clammy and a buzzing in my ears.
"Harper, I . . . I don't . . ."
HARPER'S RULE
The Six-Month Stretch
In every job and every relationship, the initial six months is fundamentally false: you are on your best behavior. So much to learn about an office culture, its tempo, its system flow . . . nothing is redundant or boring. In the first six months of dating every story is being told for the first time, every place you go is the first time you have been there together, every move you make sexually is unknown and yields dividends.
It takes six months for you to realize those three moves were his only three moves. At work you now realize the job is kind of boring and reminds you of all the people you grew tired of at the job you left. When the Sixth Month Stretch comes, and it comes for us all in work and love, you will find it much easier to accept if you know you didn't settle. If you acted and made a true choice, you will never feel regret.
The garage door! It wouldn't open more than a foot. I meant to close it right away but then Lawn Man, the ID scare . . . oh God, that was hours ago. She has never been out more than a few minutes; she could be miles away. I screamed, flat-out, primal. I threw the phone down without even hanging up and ran outside, calling her name as I went.
You don't feel regret for things you did, Harper? Only for things you didn't do? Well, I just let my cat out. My world. A creature that is completely innocent and who loves me unconditionally has now been let down by me, as has every sentient being before her who has tried to love me. I did that, Harper, and you know what? I regret it already. So you go to hell. Oh, God, please let her be all right!
I had already rescued her once; I had to keep telling myself that.
Donald and I had walked through the aisles of cages at the Humane Society to make our choice. I noticed a cage tag that read, maine coon!!—the only tag with exclamation points. This one was what they called a "Russian Blue": deep grey, with white streaks under her chin and on all of her paws, as if she were wearing gloves to offset her outfit. One of the volunteers, no doubt trained to pounce when there was interest, told me how sad it was that nobody wanted a purebred Maine Coon just because she had a "funny eye." And now that she mentioned it, the cat's right eye was funny: watery and lighter than her other eye. The volunteer shrugged and said people just don't take damaged pets. We left, thirty minutes later, with the soon-to-be-named Starbucks in tow.
We began our life together with a rescue, I kept thinking, now so far from the house I could barely see it. It would only be right if it happened again. But the light was fading; it was getting chilly. Damn it, Starbucks, where are you?
Every salesperson knows the mantra: keep yourself in the mind of the customer. I tried to imagine what Starbucks would be thinking as she ventured into the woods for the first time. I had no idea and was wandering aimlessly. I yelled out to her over and over and tried to keep the panic out of my voice. The thing that scared me most were the coyotes. I yelled at Donald about them so much he would interrupt me, "I know, honey, you don't have to say it every time I open a damn door." But I was relentless. And why not? Nine cats in three years in our neighborhood killed by coyotes. We all told ourselves lies: "They come back days, sometimes weeks later. You hear those stories about pets making their way back home from cross country." Yeah, right.
It was nearly dark. I decided to go home, get a flashlight, and call everyone I knew to come and form a search party. Oh, God, if I lose her . . . I will have to kill myself. Is that unprecedented? Would I be judged insane? I'm just so tired of loss. I've been trying to tell myself I have only lost things that I didn't care enough about to save, things that I didn't really want, but it still hurts. So how can I be expected to survive if I lose the one thing left I do care about, the one creature I have no ambivalence about? There would be no bouncing back.
I heard a rustling in leaves about two hundred feet to my left. I saw something disappear behind the cluster of birch trees. Was she just playing because she knew once I brought her back in she wouldn't get this chance again? Doesn't she realize the torture I am enduring?
And then I heard them. Coyotes don't bark or growl. It's a long, meandering moan. Patient. Like an echo. I started to feel sick.
She was so stupid to trust me. Didn't she know? Hasn't she been paying attention? This is what I do. I am not to be counted on. I cannot sustain things like love or work. I let go. It's just that I don't always let the ones counting on me know I've let go. You screwed up, little girl; you should have stayed at the Humane Society and took your chances on someone else taking you by week's end. For the first time in my life, I wanted to die. Not for drama or attention, but for the cessation of despair. I felt myself surrender. I stopped calling her name and made my way toward the house as best I could.
I didn't feel shock when I came out of the woods and saw them on the deck steps. I distinctly remember the first feeling I had was how comfortable a scene it was, how right it seemed. He was stroking her back as she lay stretched out in his lap. I could hear her purr of bliss ten feet away. He smiled at me and looked up at the stars.
"Nice night," he said.
"Harper, can I please have my cat?"
He handed her over, which did not make her happy, and I nearly smothered her. I buried my face in her fur and cried, and Harper was gracious enough to look away and say nothing.
"How?"
"You mean how did I find her? You freaked and went running in the woods, right? But if they've never been out, they don't go far. She was in your neighbor's garden."
"I meant how did you know?" I asked, my voice normalizing.
"Well, right as I was working up to my chapter's denouement, you screamed her name and didn't come back on the line. Also, in an early draft of your résumé, under career objective you wrote, 'to never let my cat out.' It was pretty obvious."
"I'm going to feed her. She must be starving."
"I already did—the IAMS can on the counter."
We sat quietly for a few minutes. I rocked Starbucks. The night descended. A flicker of a family.
"Know what the worst part was? The thought that shamed me the most?"
"You thought about getting another cat. It had just happened, and yet there was a part of you that was already finding a way past it."
I nodded and then the tears came back, but this time in convulsions.
Even when we met for drinks to celebrate the two times Harper had placed me, we had never embraced. Now he put his arm around me and squeezed. He kissed the top of my head lightly, as you would a child, and whispered that it was all over; it was all okay.
"Sorry," I said. "I must seem like such an idiot to you. On so many levels. Such a drama queen."
"Can I ask you something, Casey, something I probably should have asked a long time ago?"
I decided not to trust my voice and what it might give away. I nodded as gently as I could. I wanted him to know it was safe. That I felt it too.
Headlights briefly enveloped us in a stage tableau.
"That would be Peter," I informed Harper.
Peter bounded out of his car, puffed his chest up, and starting pointing at Harper. I couldn't even find the energy to get concerned. I suppose if nothing else I should have worried about Harper's welfare, but I could tell he was equally unconcerned. He was, if anything, bemused.
"We had a date!"
"Which I broke, and I told you specifically not to come over."
"Well, I decided to come over anyway!"
"You have to remember," Harper offered, tapping me on the shoulder, "he's not good at showing restraint, unless you draw it up legally."
Peter's face fell.
"You told him? You told him the most personal thing that has ever happened to me?"
"Actually, I told her," Harper said. "Headhunter. It's kind of what I do."
"Peter, you've heard me talk about Harper Scott."
Peter leaned over the steps, bent down, and got in Harper's face. Harper looked up and smiled. There wasn't a hint of fear.
"Peter, the rooster act can, in certain circumstances, be very effective. Even attractive. But given what I'm doing here, this is not one of those times."
"What are you doing here?" Peter demanded.
"Starbucks got out," I said. "I was on the phone with Harper when I realized it. Harper came over and found her for me."
Peter ran his hands through his hair, a sign of frustration I once noticed at the gym when he had to tell a client for the tenth time how to do a triceps kickback.
"On the phone with him. We had a date, I called you three times, and you couldn't call me back, but his call you can take?"
Harper whistled out loud. "Seriously? You don't get this yet? You are only going to make it worse until you accept that this day, the whole day, is about the cat."
Peter looked at me. I shrugged, then nodded. Harper nodded. If Starbucks were awake, I'm sure she would have nodded.
Nobody said anything for what felt like forever. Then Peter got up and started for his car. He opened the door, then closed it and made a beeline back to me. He got down in a baseball catcher's crouch. His eyes were glassy.
"It's just that I want to be the guy who finds her for you. That's what I want."
"Now see," Harper said, pointing his keyless remote at his Porsche, a chirping followed by lights flashing and doors unlocking from one hundred feet away, "that wasn't so hard."
I handed Starbucks to Peter and told him to take her inside. I caught up with Harper just as he got to his car.
"Harper, you've been good to me, but today was next-level. I don't know what I would've done."
"You would have found her. I just facilitated."
"You never asked me the question you said you should have asked a long time ago."
He looked behind me in the general direction of the house and just shook his head. He got in his car and drove off.
Back inside, Peter was mixing newspaper with kindling in the fireplace. He kept his back to me as I sat on the couch.
"So that was Harper, huh? He's in good shape . . . for his age."
I laughed.
"You mad at me for coming over when you told me not to?"
"Yep."
"You need to know I'm going to lobby really hard to stay tonight."
"I know."
I smiled, lay back, and stared at the antique white mosaic ceiling tiles Donald and I had paid far too much for, and felt something unemployed and lonely people seldom get to feel: I felt safe.
A Trade Show (in Theory): A place a group of vendors congregate during an industry conference to brand themselves and sell to a target audience.
A Trade Show (in Reality): A place where candidates find jobs under the cover of education and networking.
Harper burst my bubble of safety Monday morning. He told me we were focused on getting the InterAnnex offer, but we could take nothing for granted. I still had to go to the Mobile Media Show at Lincoln Center, and I still had the TradeHarbor interview on Wednesday, the day before I was scheduled to meet with Wallace and his board members. I asked Harper why I needed to go to a trade show when I had two interviews—one a final— already scheduled.
"You need the practice. You've been out of the game. You need to dial into the energy, reacquaint yourself with the technology. Half of the companies from last year's show are out of business. You don't even have a damn iPhone. Don't tell me you know what's going on. Besides," Harper added, a sly lilt in his voice, "it will be a good test for you."
"And exactly what are we testing?"
"You'll see. And did you happen to notice who was in Booth #173 at the show, and if so, why haven't you complimented me on my nuanced plotting and economy of energy?"
Harper had sent me the layout of the exhibition hall, but I hadn't looked at it yet. It turned out TradeHarbor, the very company I was set to meet with, was exhibiting.
"And I happen to know that Mark Porter, the guy you are going to be interviewing with, will be at the booth. You get it?"
Sure I do. I introduce myself after visiting the booths near his, let him take a look at me engaging with the competition, gathering intel, looking fabulous and dialed-in, and with a little luck and showmanship, he gets the message that I have other job options, thereby increasing my leverage. Nicely played, Harper.
"Will InterAnnex be there?"
"No, they are keeping everything on lockdown until the buyout. But listen, trade shows are invaluable."
"So, why aren't you going?" I asked.
"Oh, I wouldn't be caught dead at one of those things. I'm not wandering around all day having pointless conversations."
The thing I miss most about the phones I grew up with is that there is nothing satisfying about hanging up on someone now. They just think they lost the signal. But I did it anyway.
As I drove down the West Side Highway, I had to confess I was excited to be back in business clothes and going to a tradeshow. Here are the rules: First, you drive in. Trade shows last all day; you want to be able to leave when you want. Second, comfortable shoes. Whoever said there is no such thing as dress flats never worked a trade show. Third, tons of extra business cards. You will run out after giving them to losers and then the one contact that has promise will write you off as unprofessional because you can't give him/her a card.
Maybe the practice will help my interviews because I'm oddly nervous, even though I am one of 3,500 attendees and technically don't have to actually do anything but schmooze. But I could feel I was getting closer to being back in the game. I missed it. As I got near the entrance, I removed my show pass and hung my badge around my neck as though it were an everyday necklace.
Within an hour of walking the aisles, I realized Harper, had he deigned to grace us with his presence, could have had another chapter.
Trade shows are like clubs: If you are alone and don't know anyone, you stand there with a phony smile frozen on your face, trying to reassure everyone that you picked this particular spot on the open floor to stand. You are not alone or lost, you are calibrating when and if you want to give up this extraordinary piece of commercial carpet. You can only fake this for so long and then you have to 1) check your cell for messages, 2) go to the bar, or 3) talk to someone.
A former colleague of mine, Dean, in any social circumstance, would say, "How you doing?" knowing it would get asked in return; his reply was always, "Living the dream." It was flawless; it made everyone smile, whether they took it literally and thought he was fresh off the fire walk at a Tony Robbins seminar or realized he meant it ironically.
I got some coffee, chose the paper cup option so I could go mobile, and strode up to the TradeHarbor booth. I told Mark Porter I recognized him from his website and that I was looking forward to the conversation Harper Scott had arranged for us. Then, before he could react, I made a beeline for the next booth. For a full thirty seconds, I was the only registrant out on the actual exhibit floor. By the time I got to the end of the first row, I looked behind me and here came the sheep, their courage now bucked up by my intrepid journey. It gave me hope that what I originally thought, lying in my bed as a teenager, still might be true: I was different—special somehow. All the ensuing evidence to the contrary notwithstanding, this morning I felt that I might still be proven right. In any event, I got this party started.
Within an hour, I had my game back. I knew just by hearing a few paragraphs of their pitch if a company was underfunded—stay away from them. I also could tell by asking some direct questions who was here to position themselves to be sold. Consolidation was what it was all about for some of these companies: they didn't want to get big; they wanted to get bought so they could get big on someone else's dime.
An hour later I stopped at a kiosk to see the day's event schedule. Standing right beside me was a young man on his cell whom I'm sure was in his late twenties but probably got carded routinely. He had managed to read my name badge without me catching him staring at my chest. "How are you, Ms. Matthews?"
"Living the dream," I said.
"You know," he started, as he began to walk with me without asking if he could, "I have a friend who says these things are like the dating scene."
My God, I thought. Is your friend named Harper? "I'm Marty Rankin, by the way."
He held out his badge as if to prove he was giving me the correct name. It read "Silver Patron" on the lower right hand corner of the badge. That meant he was not an attendee, but either a paying sponsor of some portion of the show or some other sort of honored guest or dignitary. He motioned to a table and pulled out a chair for me. His phone buzzed and he turned away to take the call. I speed-dialed Harper.
"Quick. Marty Rankin. What do you know?"
"Uh, what do you want to know? He owns a company called CallShare. He invented a piece of hardware that attaches to your phone and enables you to record the call as an email file. Eliminates standard phone monitoring equipment. He's a wunderkind, like twenty-four or something. I think CallShare was last valued at 300 million and Google is rumored to want them to incorporate it into the Google Voice suite, which means they'll be worth three times that. Why?"
"I'm having coffee with him right now."
"Why would he be at that show? That's not his market space!"
"Don't know."
"Casey, he's Spielberg! He's Gates messing with Windows; he's Bezos not being able to find a parking spot at the bookstore! He's ducked my calls a hundred times, and I wish he was a client. If he has a job in your world, you forget about me and Wallace and you take it. You hear me?"
I hear you, Harper. Thank you, and damn you for not letting me keep my illusion that you don't really care.
Marty sat back down, apologized for the interruption, poured the entire contents of four packages of Sweet'N Low into his coffee, and smiled at me.
"I'm in a love coma," he said.
"Beg pardon?"
"I met a girl in Thousand Oaks where I live about eight months ago. Now I have a hard time focusing on business, let alone anyone else. Sorry."
"If you're in a love coma and you don't want to be harassed about business, why does a guy who owns a hardware-dependent company like CallShare show up at a mobile media show?"
"I'm the keynote speaker tomorrow."
"Oh, well, that's cool."
"No," he shook his head like a Labrador come ashore, "I'm scared to death. Twelve hundred attendees, and I've never done a group bigger than our office staff before. So I figure if I make some friends and buy some coffee, I'll have at least a few people who won't boo or heckle."
"You picked the wrong girl. If you sucked, I would boo and heckle. I don't applaud for coffee."
"How about breakfast?"
"For pancakes I'm a seal. I clap and spin a ball on my nose."
The pressure and the whole façade faded quickly once Marty told me flat-out he had a great sales team, and that he was trying to find his next CFO. He didn't have a job for me, which meant we could actually talk. No sexual pull making things complicated. A wonder boy is still a boy. He was utterly gangly, the geek not yet indoctrinated into the real world of adults, but among them all the same. So instead, with the games over, we had a real conversation.
I asked him how a love coma felt. I told him my situation. I said I was in the early stages of dating a great guy, but that I hadn't had any other serious relationships after my marriage. I said I had an interview coming up with a great CEO, but I still felt unsettled. I wanted to be in love, too. What was it like?
Before he could answer, my phone went off, but it was Peter, and part of our new post-coital covenant was that I would take his calls. We made small talk, and I was reminded that it doesn't take long being alone to miss the comfort of being a couple.
And then he blew it.
"So," he said casually, as if he were asking me about the weekend weather, "I'm thinking after you get your job this week, you need to break it off with Harper Scott."
"What did you just say to me?"
"Don't get sore," Peter said timidly. "Why would you need him once you have the job, right?"
"Where is this coming from? What has randomly brought this on?"
"It's not random. I just . . . look, I'm going to come clean because I want us to be able to talk about this stuff. I went through your phone during the night, I saw the amount of text messages and emails and how far back they went, and I just . . ."
If Marty were not there, I think it's pretty fair to say I would have smashed the phone on the café floor. Instead, I neatly touched the red END CALL icon, gathered myself, and smiled at Marty.
"Early-Stage Dating Guy?" he asked.
"Right. Well, we clearly aren't in a coma, which is good because I would unplug him."
I was suddenly both furious and embarrassed that in the middle of the night, after we had strenuous-but-get-over-yourself-not-so-great-sex, Peter told me his version of the restraining order story. He was leaving, the fight was over, she threw his softball gear into the driveway, a ball rolled out of the bag toward him, he threw it against the brick edifice, it caught a corner and caromed sideways. Her face split, blood flowed, paramedics . . . restraining order. He was so, so sorry. And I believed every word when I should have been thinking, "He's got a bag of softballs with my name on them!"
"Let's change the subject, Marty."
A few minutes later we were saying goodbye. People walking by probably thought I was helping some intern. He would no doubt never know this kind of anonymity again, and I wondered how he would survive the next few years and the burden of absurdist wealth. When I tried to wish him well on his speech, he shrugged and asked about my interview. When I explained, his face widened.
"Wallace Avery? Oh that's too cool; he's an icon. I took a class from him."
Ooh! Information I might be able to use on my interview! My expression invited him to go on.
"It was a weekend gig in Cambridge, a symposium called 'Technology Startup Myths.' He blew us away. Two twelve-hour days and he had the most energy in the room."
I told Marty I would mention to Wallace that we spoke, and he said Wallace wouldn't remember him.
"There were like twelve of us. I never introduced myself or said a word. You can tell him this, though. He gave us a ton of corporate documents for free, and I remember our lawyers saying his non-compete was a thing of art. Airtight . . . You okay, Casey? Did I say something wrong?"
"No, no, you just reminded me of something I need to get done before the interview with Wallace. Multi-tasking, sorry. You're very cool. Good luck on the speech."
"You sure you can't fake being a CFO for me?"
I let him get about five paces, called out his name, and reached in my purse. I handed over the one business card I had.
"Harper Scott," he said, looking at it. "I think he's called me."
"He's the best, Marty. Really."
"You're the worst, Harper Scott."
"I'm sure I told you there was a non-compete."
"You didn't, because I would have told you that I wouldn't sign one."
"Why not?"
"Because they're inherently unfair. What if things don't work out?"
"Then you'll be unemployed. Oh wait, that's what you are now!"
"Harper, go to Wallace and tell him I need him to waive the non-compete or I'm not interviewing."
"No. Casey, listen to me. That will kill this deal. You're putting a gun to Wallace's head."
"Everyone knows non-competes don't hold up."
"That's not true. Mark Porter tell you that when you mugged him this morning?"
That was Harper's way of telling me he knew I had acted out. After leaving Marty, I marched over to the TradeHarbor booth and told Mark I was being courted by Inter-Annex. Did he want to do our interview right here and now? He said he was game, and we spent the next hour telling each other lies. Porter was a pure sales guy; all instinct and street smarts. He would never have the acumen of a Wallace. But he had no non-compete. Or was that a lie too?
"I would think you'd be pleased," I countered to Harper. "You sent me here to make things happen, and I have. He wants me to meet the CEO next week."
"You can get that job, but you don't want it. You want the InterAnnex job. You decided to make Wallace jealous by getting attention from TradeHarbor. You're better than that, Casey."
"Don't turn this into a tidy metaphor for your book. I am unemployed. I was told by someone other than my trusted headhunter that I will have to sign a non-compete, so I reacted by aggressively pursuing an alternative."
"Casey, there are perfectly good reasons why companies have non-compete agreements."
"Harper, I was married. I had the ultimate non-compete. You can't make someone stay when they want to leave. And you shouldn't be able to. You tell Wallace I said so."
"No. I want you to think about it. I want you to go home and chill and let me talk you through this before we kill this deal and you regret it."
"I gave Marty Rankin your name for a CFO search. You should call him."
"I know. He already called me. We're meeting. Thank you."
Of course Marty called Harper already. The most accomplished Type As are the quiet ones; while you are talking about what you're going to do, they're nearly done.
"I should have told you, Casey. I'm sorry."
I don't know if I would have even noticed the sign if I wasn't mad at Harper about the eleventh-hour non-compete issue now standing between me and the InterAnnex job. I was on my way toward the elevator bank when I saw it. The sign was a reminder of the lunchtime raffle benefiting MACY, the Mayor's Advisory Committee on Youth. The sign instructed us to visit the MACY booth near the atrium.
I couldn't imagine Harper's wife would be at the booth, but if they paid enough for the show, it probably meant someone from MACY got to introduce a portion of the program, and this might be something Maggie would be asked to do. I headed toward the atrium to get a look. But wait—what am I going to say if she is there? "I am a candidate your husband has placed several times and has known for years." Then again he has been to my house and, as Peter would attest, we are in contact nearly every day. I am also the chief muse of his ongoing attempt to write a book.
Maybe I would say all of this to Maggie and she would laugh, apologize, and then tell me that there were a dozen women like me in Harper's life at any given time.
I located a MACY volunteer and asked about Maggie.
"She isn't with MACY anymore."
"What do you mean?"
"Is there something I can help you with, Miss . . ."
I had taken my badge off and put it in my purse.
"I thought she ran the whole thing? She's all over your Web page."
"Is she still? Well, our IT budget is kind of limited."
I told her I was a friend of the family and that I had heard there was some incident.
"You must not be a very close friend of the family. She has been on a leave of absence for a month. Whom should I tell her showed so much genuine concern?"
No dear, we won't play it that way. Now you'll have to tell Maggie that the girl who was asking about her was younger, and you'll have to concede polished and even attractive, and while you'll reassure her I was not as skinny as you're sure I'd like to be, we both know she'll stop listening after the word younger. "Never mind," I said brightly.
Is this what Harper wanted to talk about the night he rescued Starbucks? If Peter hadn't pulled up, would we have spent the whole night talking? Would we have had the courage to cross the line and not go back? Would we then always regret spoiling that rare thing: a friendship between a man and a woman where no holds were barred, nothing was held back, nothing stored and bargained with later? Truth without consequence?
The entire walk to the parking garage I was in a daze. Has Maggie left Harper? And why? And even if she had, why would she have to quit MACY? And where was Jesse living? And how long has this been going on? Wallace said Harper had "a rough time of it." That implies months—years maybe. I felt angry. Here I was trusting Harper with my livelihood, with intimate knowledge of my relationship with Peter, and he trusted me with nothing. He took—he didn't give.
"Casey Matthews, right?!"
She was sitting on the bench in front of the attendant's booth, waiting for her car to be brought around. She still had on her badge from the show, but her name was covered by her coat lapel.
I got a moment's reprieve to remember who she was because the parking attendant asked for my ticket. She seemed to be about my age, but I couldn't tell. Her posture, her energy, her world-weary voice said older, but her skin was flawless and she had high, firm cheekbones. Who is her surgeon? I'm booking him now for when my time comes.
"I'm DiDi Cooper. We've met a few times, had lots of phone conversations."
"Oh, right," I said, recovering poorly. "Sorry, it's been a while. I recognized your voice but after seeing everyone at the show, I'm on networking overload."
She burst out laughing. It wasn't a nasty laugh. She was amused at how haplessly I was handling this situation.
This couldn't be DiDi Cooper. She was, and I assume still is, Harper's biggest competitor, and she positioned herself as a crass contrast: in your face; not educated but street smart. Her stock-in-trade was the outrageous remark, the inappropriate reference. She was the girl at the wedding who was smoking cigars outside with the boys. But in a lot of circles, especially at the C and V level, she was considered too lowbrow, too old school to trust with the upper echelon searches. Harper admired her tenacity and loathed her style. "Don't get me wrong," Harper would say to his clients, "she was great back in the day. A legend."
"Now why are you here, sweetie?" she said. "Rumor has it you are going to InterAnnex."
"It's not my first rodeo, DiDi. Until I have an offer in hand, I keep my options open, and that includes coming here."
"Of course," she said, impervious to implied insult, "goes without saying. Let me ask you this, if I had another opportunity that might be as appealing as InterAnnex, would you interview through me?"
God bless her. Relentless. If a neutron bomb was detonated in Manhattan right now, out of the wreckage would come DiDi, disheveled but not beaten, looking for survivors who might have business for her.
"I don't think so."
"Still one of Harper's girls. I get it. I love that man. Lost deals to him a million times, and my heart still breaks for him with all he's dealing with."
This was my chance. DiDi not only knew the whole story about Harper's personal life, but she would be only too glad to share it with me. But in the instant before I began to ask her to unravel the mystery, I remembered what Harper had said to me about going to the trade show.
"It will be a good test for you . . . you'll see."
He knew we would have to deal with the non-compete issue and that my problem with non-competes was visceral. Trust can't be achieved by signing a document, whether it is a marriage license or an employment agreement. It has to be real, it has to be earned, and it has to survive tests.
Donald's breach had done a lot of damage; I saw that now. The test was at the heart of Harper's book—as true of jobs as it was of relationships.
Harper's Rule: We have to continue to trust after being hurt by those we trusted.
When Harper wants me to know, he will tell me. If that's never, then I will have to accept that.
"DiDi, I really don't feel comfortable talking about Harper's personal life, or mine, or yours, for that matter. Take care."
"All right, honey. Listen, if things don't work out, I mean with Wallace, you tell our boy Harper you're going to give DiDi a shot. He's not afraid of a little competition, is he?"
In small doses, I could love DiDi Cooper. She is an unapologetic survivor. The longer I have been alone, the more I admire that. I don't know if she still has that gnawing, cold fear in the middle of the night that I have, telling me that I will be alone forever, that everything is passing me by, but if she does she has learned how to quell it and go back to sleep.
Several hours later, I was on the couch, wrapped in a blanket, sipping tea, and trying to convince myself to read the Alice Munro novel I had been nursing for over a month. I decided to check my Blackberry yet again before bed, and for a second I couldn't find my phone. I was about to tear the couch cushions off when I remembered I had stuck it in the back pocket of my jeans. I saw that while I was sitting on the phone, I had inadvertently dialed Jamie Post three times. Was this God's way of saying grow up and call the man back? But what was I going to say? That he was dodging a bullet by not getting involved with me? That yes, there was a spark, and I did feel some sort of connection on the train, but it wasn't real? It's real I don't do, at least not so much. Before I could decide how to handle Jamie, a red light signaling a new email flashed on my phone. Thank you, Harper. Distract me. I will call Jamie later. I promise.
HARPER'S RULE
Dealing with Non-Competes
There is a mythology about non-competes that I have to dispel for you. Like any myth, stories are passed on from one person to another, for years and generations, and everyone assumes it has now become truth, even though there is a conspicuous absence of evidence.
Let's start with the Big One, the one I hear all the time: "I can sign a non-compete because everyone knows they don't hold up."
Untrue. Believe me, as a headhunter who has lost countless deals because an ideal candidate has signed a non-compete, I wish it were true. But when you do the due diligence of researching the case law, here is what you find:
* Much of the time the company wins some relief or judgment.
* If you willingly signed the non-compete, you will be sued personally, and your new company will be sued as well (often resulting in them firing you rather than risking a lawsuit).
* You and your company will incur legal costs to defend yourselves. Depending on the case, this could range from 10–75k.
* It will take time and energy to defend, will cause resentment from your new employer, and will increase performance expectations.
* If you lose completely, you can't work for the new company, and you have to fight the old one. You'd better have money put away.
* Reference-wise you will be branded as someone who breaches contracts. Word gets around. You haven't just burned a bridge—you blew your bridge up.
But wait a minute! I remember a dozen times when someone went to work for a competitor after leaving a company known to have non-compete agreements. Ah, sorry Harper, should have kept reading . . .
The myth remains because sometimes a company chooses not to pursue because they don't think the candidate is a threat. Sometimes a small company doesn't have the resources or the legal budget to go to war. And sometimes they "plea bargain" and cut a deal.
But most of the time, when a non-compete is not pursued, it is far more human. We can all tell horrific stories of what happens when someone finds out a spouse has "broken the non-compete" and found another. But once in a while the pain is far greater. So they opt for dignity and grace. They say "go" and they ask for nothing. Their friends call them fools, but what they are really saying is, "If you don't want me anymore, then I will let go, because that's what someone who loves someone does." Clients with ironclad non-competes sometimes choose not to enforce them because they have broken hearts.
Was Harper speaking only from his experience as a headhunter? Or was this analogy about Maggie? Had she broken their non-compete? I told myself to snap out of it. I had a business judgment to make with Wallace Avery.
Enforceable? Yes, if the company follows the following tenets:
1. The duration is limited. Courts prefer six months, but for senior-level positions a year isn't uncommon.
2. The scope of the agreement is limited. Courts don't mind if you say someone can't work within fifty miles or work for a direct competitor, but if you say they can't work within 500 miles for any type of manufacturing concern, the courts will not enforce.
3. The relief sought is definitive. If your agreement says you owe 10K if you solicit customers you found while under the company's employ, courts will likely agree; if the relief is vague or exorbitant, courts will not enforce.
4. You have access to trade secrets that could damage a company's revenue stream or affect market share.
5. They don't seek injunctive relief. An injunction means you can't work for the new company until the non-compete issue is resolved. Contemporary courts are biased toward the "right to work." They don't like making anyone stay home.
Okay, Harper, I know companies have to protect themselves, and I have always understood that as a salesperson what I was being taught was essentially "intellectual property." But how do I keep them from exploiting me, using what they call "golden handcuffs?"
Non-competes are generally not enforceable:
1. If you are fired. Courts don't like to let companies have their cake and eat it too. If you let me go, I have to make a living and can usually go where I want.
2. If you signed the non-compete under duress. Non-competes are signed before you start working. If they make you sign a year or two later, it is implied that you will be let go if you don't sign, and that is duress.
3. If there is a material change in your compensation, job function, or ownership of the company.
4. If you are forced or asked to do anything illegal or unethical.
5. If your employment tenure was short. No one will hold up a non-compete when you were there six weeks.
As much as I found the idea of a non-compete distasteful, even un-American, I had to look at this in a more businesslike way. Non-competes aren't chains. I guess what bothered me was that I had Wallace on a pedestal, and this disappointed me. Why, if he was going to be such a phenomenal boss, would he need non-competes?
HARPER'S RULE
Motivations of Companies to Enforce
When I ask most general counsels or CEOs, they tell me non-competes send a message to those who remain. They need to know they will be sued and that management takes the non-compete seriously. But I find, like all business decisions, it is deeply personal. If you, as many do, leave an electronic trail after you leave that makes it clear you have been 1) interviewing for months, 2) talking about this to colleagues on staff, 3) dissing the company you are still collecting money from, 4) lying straight-faced about having some personal problem when you were in fact interviewing, and 5) looked your boss in the face when he asked why you seemed unfocused or distant and told him he was imagining things, and then give notice and go to a competitor, you have not just breached a non-compete; you have played someone for a fool. This is no longer about the reasonableness of restrictive covenant law; it's about misleading people who care about you. So they take the only action they can, a business action, and they tell their lawyer to commence a lawsuit.
Do I encourage my candidates to sign non-competes if they are part of my client company's standard process? Yes.
When I can't sleep, I need bad TV. The first channel I turned on was the local news, and the weather forecaster, an overexcited guy with an ill-fitting blue blazer and no tie (When did the local news go biz casual?) was exhorting us to go outside and check out "the rare blue moon in the sky tonight." It turns out a blue moon is not blue at all but just a really bright full moon. But I didn't move. There is, of course, no logical reason why a single person living alone can't go out and look at nature's gift of a blue moon. It's not a couple's thing. But I didn't leave the bed.
I called Harper. I looked over at the digital readout on the clock and it was after eleven. I expected to get his voice mail.
He sounded wide awake, the same Harper I get at the office.
"I called to say I read your chapter on non-competes. But I didn't have to. I pretty much knew after the trade show I would go along with it."
"Understood."
"Sorry to bother you so late."
"Not at all. I never miss a blue moon. They come once every 295 days."
"No wonder it's blue. I'm in bed."
"Well, get out of bed. Go to your window. Now would be good. Are you watching it?"
"Hmmm . . . okay, conceded. It's pretty awesome."
"Yes, it is."
"I like that we're both watching it at the same time. That we are seeing exactly the same thing."
"You and I always see the same thing; that's how we roll."
CHAPTER ELEVEN
## ENDGAME—
FINAL INTERVIEW PREP TO
START DATE
Tomorrow I have my final interview with InterAnnex. If all goes well, I could be employed by week's end. Whether it goes well or not, I will turn thirty-five by week's end. People are weird about birthdays. I remember Hannah freaking when we turned twenty-five; the idea of a quarter-century on the planet made her feel ancient. For me, up till now, I was aware of the significance of certain age milestones only because I was being teased or questioned; it didn't resonate. But today was different.
When the well-wishers started calling to wish me luck tomorrow—my dad, Hannah, Jill—I found my mind wandering. I asked Jill to hand the phone to my niece Sheila, knowing her worldview would not include suggesting I get some rest and "give them hell tomorrow."
"Let me ask you something everyone's asking me lately: how old are you now?"
"Almost seven."
"Ever wake up and think, geez, I'm practically to double digits, what have I done? What is it all for?"
"Sure."
And I cracked up. I just don't have it in me to dwell on my age. Time to focus on tomorrow. The one thing I'm sure of is thirty-five and working will feel better than thirty-five and unemployed. Time to begin my pre–final interview ritual—to get in the zone. No one can define it, but everyone knows what it is: time slows; you are unaware of distractions and able to focus completely. When you are in the zone, you can't lose.
Every top-notch salesperson has been in the zone. Your well-rehearsed script comes out as if you just thought of it. You handle every objection with poise, and you seamlessly integrate your energy, your product's benefits, and the needs of the client into a tight, cogent presentation. You feel charged with energy. You have no idea how much time you have been talking. You just know you are "on." And they love you.
There is such a thing as an interview zone, and it can be summoned! But you need to create a ritual so that the zone finds you. I have never failed to get an offer when I summon the zone!
Ritual #1: Assemble my look
I always wear the same outfit. Every woman executive knows there are certain rules: no pants suits, nothing too flamboyant (go with navy, black, or grey), closed-toe shoes with no more than two-and-a-half-inch heels, a silk or cotton blouse, and go easy on the make-up and jewelry. So, while some day early in my tenure at InterAnnex I might walk in with my Tahari deep lavender skirt and my hot pink and black blouse, tomorrow I need to summon the zone. So I carefully removed the dry cleaning plastic from my Armani Collezioni navy-with-white-pinstripe suit with the three-button jacket, notched collar, and pencil skirt. I laid it on my bed and chose a simple ivory silk blouse. This was too conservative a look for my favorite black Prada shoes, so I went with my Giuseppe Zanottis, mostly because they had never been worn. Part of the ritual is to lay the entire outfit out on the bed, visualize the power the look will imbue in me, and then rewrap it and do it all over again in the morning. I never try it on.
Ritual #2: Watch my movie
To summon the zone I have to watch Dumb and Dumber. The first time was an accident. I couldn't sleep the night before my first big final interview, the zone was nowhere in sight, and I wandered through cable and settled on this 1994 Jim Carrey comedy. Is it a great movie? Of course not, but I no longer need the whole movie, just the one scene that convinced me I could get a sales rep's job that I was obscenely under-qualified for nine months out of college. Jim Carrey confronts Lauren Holly with the burning question:. "What do you think the chances are of a guy like you and a girl like me ending up together?" She tells him they are not good. He asks for a percentage— one in a hundred? She looks him in the eye and says, "More like one out of a million."
"So you're telling me there's a chance!"
I search on YouTube, and the scene is there in its entirety. I have decided I am not violating my ritual if I watch the scene online and not on my DVD player. Even karma has to get with the times.
Ritual #3: Listen to my music
For me it's Barber's Adagio for Strings. My first interview ever was in Manhattan, and I drove a deathtrap of a LeBaron with 170,000 miles and moody brakes, so my mother insisted I drive her car instead. On the way in, I heard her CD with Barber's astonishing and thrilling piece. By its soaring end, I felt stronger and smarter: the music made me feel the interview was no longer the most important part of my day.
I got the CD out and put it on the kitchen counter near where I hang my car keys. I never listen to the piece unless I am en route to a final interview. I once ran out of an art gallery like it was a bomb scare because Barber's Adagio began to play.
Ritual #4: Go see Selma
Selma is a psychic. Laugh if you want; I was once cynical too.
I found Selma the day before an offer interview. I decided to kill time by going to a Bikram Yoga class. When I got to the little strip mall, I saw the sign for the yoga studio and a smaller sign that simply said PSYCHIC, NORMAL ROOM TEMPERATURE. I loved that. I found myself knocking on the door. A woman answered, and she looked absolutely luminous. Selma had on a black turtleneck and jeans; she looked like Carole King on the cover of my dad's favorite album, Tapestry. When I asked if she took walk-ins, she said, "There is no such thing."
And for ninety minutes she freaked me out. She knew things she couldn't possibly know. Within a few minutes she said she knew I had something big going on the next day, but I was not to worry, it would work out.
Selma puts me in the zone.
Ritual #5: Do my final check-in/prep call with Harper
In a world where you can find jobs posted on the Web and through social media sites like LinkedIn, it is not until you have had a few jobs that you realize even if you don't always need a headhunter at the front end, they are critical to securing the job on the back end. The final prep is different than the initial, generic prep. Now we drill down: who else is interviewing me? What are their biases or frames of reference? What concerns will I have to address? Harper tells me what they will ask and what I'm up against, and I get to rehearse, even role-play with Harper if I'm unsure what my response will be. You only have one shot at this job. No do-overs!
I got on the Merritt Parkway and headed toward Selma's, and en route I got two calls from Peter and one from Harper. I just didn't have the energy for Peter, and Harper could wait until later; you cannot mess with the order of the ritual. First Selma, then dinner, then a bath, then Harper's final prep! Don't these people read my memos?
I didn't overreact when I saw that the strip mall had been expanded and updated. The Yoga Center was now One-Stop Yoga Mart. I tried to stay calm and told myself that Selma would have some great stories about the renovation, but when I opened the door to go upstairs to her office, there was no upstairs. The receptionist said the "earthy crunchy" lady had left when the building was sold to the owner of the yoga studio.
How could Selma do this to me? My basic sensibility about business was affronted. If you are going to make a move, you let the clients know! I could feel the zone choosing the "unable to attend" response to my InterAnnex RSVP. I was a fool to let myself begin to hope. The hope is what gets you.
I drove home, I ran a tub of hot water, I added my favorite bath salts, and I used the Bat Signal: I texted Harper. He called me almost immediately.
I gave Harper the lowdown on my ritual, my zone prep, and Selma's disappearance. I told him I realized this must all sound silly to him.
"Absolutely not," he said, "except for the psychic. That is crap. She may be a lovely person, Casey, but she is a fraud."
"Hmmm, funny . . . When I told her about you, she called you my vocational guardian angel."
"I take it back; she's special. We have to find her."
"I can't go on the interview, Harper. It's all going to go wrong."
"We cannot cancel. Half the senior management team is flying in just to meet you."
"Harper, I believe in my ritual. I believe in the zone."
"Okay, well, time to drink a different Kool-Aid."
"You don't get it! You control your world. But it feels like nothing works for me the way it used to."
"Casey, you have to go on the interview."
"I know."
"Good, then suck it up, and let's prep. Do you have a Quest Diagnostics you can get to first thing in the morning? You need to do a blood draw and urine test."
This was not part of the usual final prep. I told Harper there was one near my gym, but I had never been there.
"Go there tomorrow. They open at seven. Don't eat anything after midnight."
"InterAnnex is doing a drug test?"
"Yes, but not just you. There is another candidate, a guy the venture capitalist knows, and they are testing both of you."
"Do you know anything about him?"
"Why do you hurt me? I know everything about him. Go to Quest and give them the InterAnnex address and sign over permission to send the results to Wallace."
"Okay."
"Casey, for the record, do you have anything you want to tell me where a drug test is concerned? Now's the time."
I suppose he had to ask. I wouldn't be the first unemployed person to take comfort in recreational drugs.
"Not unless they test for red wine." I wanted to know since when companies drug tested before an offer was made, but he was already beginning to launch into his checklist for the final prep. I knew this stuff by heart, but especially with Selma's apparent abduction by aliens, it wasn't time for another alteration in my ritual. I soaked in the water and listened to Harper's voice, telling me what I already knew and still needed to hear.
HARPER'S RULES FOR FINAL PREP, #1
Know who the players are. You will likely be meeting with people you have not seen on previous interviews. Google them, of course, but also go to the company website and read their bios, see if they are on LinkedIn or Facebook, or if they have a following on Twitter. Remember that they often have an agenda different than the person you will be working for or even the person running the company.
Dead on, Harper, I thought. In my case the problem is the money guy, John Sabia, their primary venture capitalist. Harper said he was an unusual guy, which was code for "he's not Wallace and probably won't like you." Sabia made a ton of money in gaming technology and later reality television, and has made 800 million dollars from his last three startups. He is pushing for the other candidate.
"All I'm going to tell you," Harper said, "is push back when you need to. He's got a big ego and is used to getting his way. I haven't met him, but I hear his midlife crisis is of epic proportions."
"Got it. I am going to assume Wallace hates this guy?"
"Yup. But not enough to not take his money, and nowhere near enough to tell him he wouldn't consider the other candidate over you."
HARPER'S RULES FOR FINAL PREP, #2
Corporate Carpe Diem: Go over your accomplishments and achievements and be prepared to document how there is a direct link between 1) where you have expertise and 2) their short-term problems.
Companies will go on poetically about their desire to build toward the future and hire talent that will complete this lofty vision, but in the end, in the overwhelming majority of employment situations, companies hire short-term solutions to short-term problems. They are focused on Now.
I'd already compiled a list of major accounts I opened with brand-new products. Startups burn cash and need revenue; it's no doubt the biggest reason InterAnnex wants me.
HARPER'S RULES FOR FINAL PREP, #3
Role-play concerns about your candidacy.
This is not the time to rationalize or make excuses or hope they don't come up; they will. Open the closet, look at the skeletons inside that make up your life, and be prepared to answer the obvious negatives. Remember, this is a final prep. They already like you, and they are already predisposed to believing whatever you tell them as long as it sounds and feels authentic.
"You," Harper said cautiously, "have two areas I see as possible exposure: 1) you left a job without a job, and 2) you have never managed a sales force. How do you plan on responding?"
I told Harper I planned on blaming him for leaving my job since his avaricious and wanton ways created the reduction in my sales force that left me exposed and cast aside.
"Tell me," Harper sighed, "when will you be over that? Is there a timeframe? Can we set a date?"
I reassured Harper that I would play it straight. I was asked to stay on my previous job by the CEO, and a counteroffer had been forthcoming. I could still be there, but I felt it was a matter of integrity not to be taking their money while I was interviewing.
"Nice. And item two?"
My response would be that in a startup there really is nothing to manage, that sales VP would be a title only for a year or two, and that I presumed if they wanted someone who was used to sitting in an office and directing in a hands-off, strategic way, that I wouldn't be sitting there. I also told Harper that I wanted to subtly point out that they needed new blood.
Harper suggested an improvement:
"You should hire me precisely because I am not a manager. I am a clean slate. I have no bad habits, no preconceived notions. I won't irritate you by always saying that whatever you want me to do is not what I did back in the day. I have been managed and know how it works, and you, Wallace, are a great manager, an icon. One of the reasons I want this job is to learn how to manage."
"Okay," I said, "I love that. I remember now why I made you part of my ritual."
HARPER'S RULE
Ending Interview with the Big Ask
Ask for the job at the end of the interview.
Don't leave this to chance. Companies want to know where you stand. And if they are torn between two candidates, one of the deciding factors is often who wants the job more. Their reasoning is simple: the one who wants the job more will work harder.
When a company offers a candidate a job, it is the corporate equivalent to telling someone you love them. There is only one appropriate response. Anything other than responding that you love them as well, which in this case means you want the job, creates doubt. Leaving the interview without declaring yourself is no different than responding to the person who just said I love you with 'thanks, I appreciate that.' They know what that means: you either don't love them, or more likely, you love someone else.
Here's exactly what to say when you ask for the job: 'I want to thank you for your time today, and before I leave I want to make it very clear that I want this position. I would like to ask if any of you have any concerns about my candidacy that I can answer before you make your decision.'
If they say 'no,' then you say: 'Then I just want to discuss timelines. I have another option that is going to press me for an answer.'
If they say 'yes,' you should field the concern, try to overcome it, and then ask, 'Does that satisfy your concern?' If they answer 'yes' to this, then say: 'Can I count on your support?'
No need to discuss numbers or start date unless they do. If they do, they have played their hand, and the job is yours. Ask to see the offer in writing, tell them you will start as soon as possible, and leave the meeting on your terms.
"Got it, Harper. When does the other candidate go in?"
"He was in today. I scheduled you last on purpose."
Harper's Rule: The candidate who interviews last usually gets the job.
"Hey, Harper, is this going to happen? Am I getting this job?"
But Harper is not Selma and wouldn't play. I knew what he would say: "You make things happen. Or you let them happen to you."
Even though my commute would be twenty minutes longer, I was thrilled that Inter-Annex had their headquarters on Grand Street in Soho. I have always worked in Mid-town, but I loved the Village and loved Wallace for still being cool enough to be there.
One of the signs of a quality company is when you have an interview and the receptionist has been prepped to receive you as a visiting dignitary. It shows they value talent. When I got to the front desk, the receptionist greeted me by name, asked if I wanted anything to drink, and generally made me welcome. I wasn't surprised, but I was gratified. As I expected, the first twenty minutes were spent with their human resources director. Thanks to Harper, I knew better than to take this lightly. "They don't have the power to hire you, but they have the power to derail your chances," he always said. The HR director ran me through the usual litany, verifying my work history, dates, and W2s. He mentioned they did a background check, and I took the opportunity to point out I had been to Quest this morning as directed. He could tell from my voice I was surprised that a drug test was being done before the fact. "We don't normally do it that way either, but Wallace said Mr. Scott insisted it was his firm's protocol." He shrugged as if to say it was too trivial for him to make a fuss over, but now I knew that Harper drove the preemptive drug test.
With HR in my camp, I was brought in to meet the board. It was a room that seemed designed more for defending a PhD thesis than as a conference room, but I suppose in essence that was what I was doing—defending my work. There was a podium and a side table set up opposite a long mahogany table, and Wallace and three gentlemen sat in overstuffed leather chairs. One chair was vacant.
Wallace explained to me that we were waiting—"not surprisingly," he said with an edge—for John Sabia. He offered me coffee, but I was already on sensory high alert, and when I add that to caffeine, I always have to pee. Not knowing how long I'd be stuck in there, I told him no, thanks.
A moment later, the door flew open and John Sabia practically jogged in. Sabia fist-bumped the CMO, CFO, and IT director, but Wallace stared him off. I judged him to be in his early 50s. His head was shaved, he had diamond-studded earrings in both ears, and he had a soul patch— heavily dyed black—under his chin. The tail of some sort of serpentine tattoo finished just above his clavicle. He wore a black Twisted Sister t-shirt, black jeans, and sneakers. His sinewy arms belied his potbelly. He was trying oh so hard to be hot. It wasn't working. Clearly, Sabia's midlife crisis offered a testament to the power of his money to prevent people from laughing at him to his face.
Malcolm Gladwell says we make decisions about others in a blink. Neither Sabia nor I even needed a blink. I kept hearing Harper's voice: "He's the money guy. You won't work for him, you'll hardly ever see him, and once you get his endorsement, you can spend all your leisure hours hating him. He is only relevant for the interview." The good news was that Wallace clearly loathed Sabia.
Wallace handed out a summary of notes he had made during my last interview, and he graciously added some of his own thoughts to my "unique strategy" and gave me full attribution. On paper, my musings seemed to be the fully fleshed-out work of a thought leader in the space, not the riffing of a relatively inexperienced executive.
Sabia balked. He said the guy they had in earlier worked in the social networking space currently and had done so his whole career. Why should they wait for me to come up to speed when he could hit the ground running?
I smiled brightly and said it was so refreshing to finally not be the "kid" in the interview process. Since social networking was nothing but dorm room dreams until 2003 and not a market factor until much later, if the other candidate had spent his whole career in social networking, he must be just out of school. And if he is qualified for this job, he must be "an amazing young tyke." Everyone laughed except Sabia.
The CMO, a cherub-faced guy named Harley with wiry salt-and-pepper hair, was eager for me to lay out my game plan. I enumerated what I considered the problems with the typical social networking business model and the inherent glass ceiling of "ad tolerance." Wallace broke in with studies and statistics to back me up that, of course, I had not researched. I concluded with my recommendations for marketing proprietary social-networking solutions tailored for the corporate clients who could most benefit from them.
Sabia pounced: Why hasn't this been done before? I didn't know. What would the first ninety days look like? I wasn't sure. How long before we would get our first sustained quarter of revenue? I shrugged.
"Meanwhile," he sighed with disgust, "I pour in money. A hope and a prayer."
The CFO, a guy named Vivek, reminded Sabia that just two months ago at their Montego Bay meeting, Sabia was bemoaning pouring his money into "just another social networking concern" and wanted a new marketing approach.
"I'm just saying my guy, highly recommended as you know, has got experience that, no offense, she doesn't have," Sabia countered. "He's doing it."
"He sits in London and directs a U.S. sales force," Vivek said. "He hasn't been in front of a customer in two years. How hands-on is that?"
Wallace interrupted to restore order. He was clearly embarrassed that they were talking about the family with a guest in the room. If this were The Godfather, he would have walked over and slapped "Santino" Sabia.
But Sabia didn't make his ridiculous fortune by caving in or by not getting his way. He conceded my idea had promise, but that didn't mean I would be the right steward. "Maybe we can hire you to work for the other candidate as sort of a VP-in-waiting," he suggested. After all, I had never managed a sales force.
"No, thanks." I said.
Wallace made it clear he saw no sales force beyond admin support in the first phase of the launch and that they needed someone who could sell now and manage later, not someone who used to sell but hasn't done so in years.
We were at an impasse. There was a full thirty seconds—an eternity in an interview— when we were all silent. I couldn't remember ever getting an offer when an interview came to a full stop like this. And then, wouldn't you know it, I was rescued. By Sabia.
"How old are you?" Sabia said.
I looked over at Wallace to see how to play this.
"You can't ask her that!" he said.
Sabia wanted to know why the hell not since it was his money that was providing, among other things, the conference room we were sitting in.
"Because it is against the law! How could you not know that?"
Sabia said this was the real world and he wasn't interested in legalese or games.
"Games?" Wallace said incredulously. "Let me tell you what you've just exposed us to. If we now hire your candidate, based on what you just asked, Ms. Matthews could sue us for age discrimination, depose all of us to prove what you said, and sue for all the money she would have made from us plus punitive emotional damages. A good lawyer would ask for somewhere around 50 million dollars as a starting point."
I couldn't help but think that suddenly the other candidate seemed like a great choice. But I decided to take the high road and secure my standing with Wallace and the others.
"Mr. Sabia," I began, "my résumé gives you the date I graduated college, and you can see I have had twelve years of work experience, so why would you ask a question you already know the answer to?"
He glared. "Straight up? Here it is. Without a strong sales force, this venture goes nowhere. This is mission-critical. You're of a certain age, and lady, I don't need you walking in here after you get the job and telling me you're pregnant and you quit."
Vivek covered his face with his hands. Harley apparently knew Wallace well, because he half rose out of his seat to see if he would have to restrain him. But Wallace didn't move; he just went cold—icy.
"That's enough. You've just broken another law," he said, his lips barely moving. "You and I are done. I can get funding without having to put up with your puerile nonsense. Casey, I'm sorry. This simply should not have happened."
It's not the first time pregnancy had come up during one of my job searches. I suppose I can take solace in the fact that, given my pending birthday, it might be the last. It was eight years ago, during my first big move with Harper after my rookie success. I had sailed through the interview process, was scheduled to go in for a "rubber stamp" meeting with my boss's boss, and while dressing to meet Donald's parents for dinner, I realized my breasts were sensitive to the touch of my bra, and they looked a little swollen to me. At dinner with Donald's parents, it suddenly hit me that I had not had my period in some time, though I couldn't say for sure how late it was. I barely got home without a full-out meltdown. If I was pregnant, was it going to cost me the job? Would they rescind the offer? Will they assume I will take maternity leave and not come back? Maybe I shouldn't tell them. Was that an awful thing to do? I sent Harper an email that said I was having an argument with a friend who might be pregnant, and I wanted him to settle it and tell us what legal responsibility she had to tell the company.
It took me half an hour to find the home pregnancy test under the sink amid the extra toilet paper and unused cleaning supplies. In the meantime, Harper called me back.
"Casey, were you asked on the interview if you were pregnant?"
"Could you at least have gone along with my pathetic story for a minute or two?"
"That is outrageous and against the law. I will call the CEO right now. The Pregnancy Act of 1978 is very clear. They can't ask you, and you don't have to tell. You can choose to tell them if you'd like, but you are under no obligation."
"No one asked me, Harper. That's not why I wanted to know."
"Oh . . . Got it."
"I'm not pregnant, as it turns out, which is an utter relief. I just didn't want to screw up my offer, and I sent you the email before I took the test and—"
"Casey, you okay?"
"Actually, why don't you go ahead and be sorry for me? Just in case?"
"You know," Harper attempted, "kids fully suck. Mine is on eBay as we speak."
"Save it, Harper . . ."
Wallace and the boys were waiting on me. Was I going to show outrage and leave to call my lawyer? Would I try to exploit the situation? What did Casey really want?— a question that has lingered for too long.
"Wallace, I appreciate your umbrage, which is called for, to be sure, but can I say a few words?"
They were in no position to be anything but a respectful audience.
"First of all, I don't want to sue for millions. I don't want to make money through lawyers because of some infantile behavior; I want to earn millions by doing what I do. So everyone can relax."
I moved over to Sabia and addressed him directly. I made eye contact and didn't relinquish it.
"Mr. Sabia, you and I will get along fine. You need someone who is not afraid to say something besides 'yes' to you, and you need someone who will occasionally call you on your nonsense, which I will do cheerfully. But that's not why I should be hired. You need me because I will obsess, I will drive revenue, and in so doing I will inspire a sales force and get you your investment back. You simply need to signify you understand that I am right by getting that smug look off your face and telling me you are sorry."
"Turns out I am," he said. "I was out of line."
"Forget it. You'll find I truly let things go. Know many women like that?"
A few minutes later Wallace escorted me to the lobby. He said he would never forget how I handled Sabia's ignorance and latent misogyny. He promised he would have an answer within a day or two, and he made it clear he wanted me to be his VP of sales.
"Sabia is going to fight you on this, isn't he?"
"The other guy did a similar venture for Jigsaw; he has some serious credentials. In a perfect world, Sabia would want you to work for the guy—as a way to get grounded."
"You mean a proving ground? Sorry, Wallace, I won't do that."
"So you said. Let me do my thing. Whatever happens, I think you're an extraordinary young woman."
"I appreciate that, Wallace, but that sounds very much like a consolation prize."
Wallace bit his lower lip and took a moment. I couldn't imagine what he was like at my age—insufferable, probably, in some sort of glorious way. Just my type.
"I'm seventy-one years old, Casey. I don't sell myself to anyone anymore, but for you, I'll say this: the next time I don't get what I want in a business deal will be the first time."
When Harper first placed me at Siebel Systems, along with the great training, the awesome branding, and the visionary management, I got to share a cubicle space with Drake. He looked a little like Gene Hackman, (think French Connection, not Royal Tenenbaums), and management was smart enough to realize his real value was passing on wisdom to aggressive young sales reps who saw the world in absolute terms. One day I asked him what was the biggest mistake he saw among rookies like me.
"You haven't committed yet to your career. Down deep you are waiting for a sign, for enough good things to happen to you to justify making a commitment. But it doesn't work that way. You have to commit first, and then, because you have committed, good things come to you."
I thought of him now. I decided to commit, in my mind and actions, to Wallace. He said he was going to get this done, and because I chose to believe him, good things would come.
The first proof of this epiphany would be the feedback I would get from Harper, and the sooner I heard from Harper the better my chances. I left him a text message saying I was anxious for his feedback and that I wanted to tell him about the craziness with Sabia.
I didn't hear back from Harper that evening and when I woke up, I reached over the alarm clock to my charging Blackberry and checked my messages. One was from Peter saying he hoped the interview went well and that at some point he would like to talk. I also had a Facebook invite from Jamie Post, who had now officially tried every form of communication. This one laid the guilt on thick. "Just do me a favor and let me know you're okay. I get that we're not going to date." I didn't want to call him back, but something was telling me not to let go.
By noon, I had left messages for Harper on his office voice mail, on email, and on his cell. At 1 P.M. I texted him to let him know that I assumed no news was bad news and that I was a big girl and could take it. At 2 P.M., starting to wonder if Donald's old scrip of Xanax might still be packed away somewhere, I went to the Jigsaw website, read the management profiles, and checked out my competition, a guy named Cameron. His education was better, he had been through startups, he had published several New York Times articles on the social networking phenomenon, and while it was never mentioned, let's face it, he was sporting a penis. That's unfair, I told myself. Wallace has hired many women executives.
The bell of my Blackberry rescued me from this self-absorbed rant. An email from Harper. "Casey: I got your multi-media barrage. You can stop now." This was a bad sign: bad news is easier to deliver in email. But I read on.
HARPER'S RULE
Waiting for the Offer
Waiting for an offer is the hardest part of the process. It makes candidates doubt their intentions. They begin to rethink. Their minds go to crazy places. This is very human and very dangerous!
The offer is the most important thing in your world. It is just one thing a corporation has to do. So you need to take a breath. There is no hidden meaning in the delay. I have made it perfectly clear to Wallace that every hour that goes by the more variables they are risking, like offers from other companies. I am exerting leverage. You have to trust me.
Right, trust again. The more people tell me I have to trust them the less I do. If someone were trustworthy, would they really have to tell me to trust them? Harper ended the email vaguely. "I won't be able to talk live, and I won't be able to check in via cell or text for a while. Not to be cryptic, but I have an issue I have to deal with. Wallace knows how to reach me when they have a decision, and I will check my email when I can. I'm on this. Try not to stress."
Now that I am officially thirty-five, I told myself, I needed to not overreact. It has been one day since my interview. It is a high-impact position with a startup company in a volatile market sector; there is nothing unusual going on here. And so what that Harper will be out of touch? He has a life beyond me, and I've known obliquely for some time there were issues he was dealing with, but I am sure he will still tend to InterAnnex like the consummate pro he is. I am not going to freak. I decided this was all a test of my ability to commit first and ask questions later.
I made a decision. I am a good decision maker. I don't mean I make good decisions—I often don't—but I am good at making decisions.
I decided I could wait all day and die a slow death, or I could use the time to expand the notion of "commit first; good things come as a result" to all areas of my life.
I never even got into the gym to tell Peter that if I had two lives, I'd be happy to risk one on him; that I loved that he was kind; that I got it that he only wanted to take care of me and be happy and safe; and that I wanted to want that too. But that I didn't. At least, not with him.
Nope. So many times we stress over things, and we never even have to face them. Or if we do, they are never as hard as we imagined they would be. As it turned out, the parking lot was packed, I had to park in the last row, and as soon as I got out of the car I saw them. They weren't kissing; they weren't even standing that close to each other. But a woman knows. They laughed. They lingered. And they looked amazing together. She had something I lacked. She turned her head to the side and I could see it: she wasn't angry—about anything. I not only wasn't jealous, I felt bad about holding them back.
I owed it to Peter to wait for her to leave. He was such a good man. I knew there would be days, years from now, when I was angry at my spouse for dealing me some injustice, when I would wonder why I let such a kind soul go without a fight. And as I approached him I remembered what Harper told me when I left my first company. I had just landed a big deal; I had a huge commission check coming my way. If I quit now, I'd forfeit it. I wanted the new job, I told him, but should I really leave the money behind?
Harper's Rule: All candidates of quality leave behind something in the job that is good and worthy; otherwise, they'd never move forward.
Peter dutifully asked me about my interview, and I withheld. It no longer mattered.
"Good, it was good. Thanks."
Peter took a breath, just like he does before he begins a set of shoulder presses. Gathering his strength. That is what I have been to this guy, resistance training. "So I know you're stressed about the job and the timing is not great, but like I said in my message, I think we should talk."
I slowly shook my head. "What I think works best is if I join another gym. Which means I probably won't join another gym, and then we don't feel awkward on a daily basis, and I get the bonus of blaming you when my butt gets squishy."
"I wish you liked me more, Casey."
"I like you plenty. That's not what this is about."
He was too sweaty to hug, but how do you not hug at a time like that? Besides, showering gave me something to do when I got home while waiting for Harper to call. Why do they call it "killing time?" Time was killing me.
When I checked in with Harper by email the next morning, I got an auto reply message for the first time in the near decade I've known him. It said he was unavailable, and if it was an emergency to call Leena. Now I was truly scared, but now for Harper more than me. For Harper, an auto reply message is like waving a white flag.
I grabbed my cell to call Leena but decided it was too early and called Jill instead. When I get stressed, I ask if I can play Rock Star Auntie and take Sheila off her hands for a few hours. Jill said there was a rock climbing party at the YMCA, and it would be great if I would take her.
Sheila thinks my sporty Audi is super cool. She played with the sound system joystick until a Pink song came on, and it was both hilarious and disturbing to hear her sing along with the lyrics: "I've never been this nasty . . ." She told me she loved the song, and a few minutes later she said she loved my car. And in the sudden demonic possession only a mother's influence can produce, I heard my mom say through my mouth that you aren't supposed to love things, only people.
At the "Y" I scored next-level cool points with Sheila by strapping on the rope and climbing the thirty-foot wall while the other adults watched with phony smiles on their faces. I had successfully gone nearly two hours without thinking about my job when I saw that Leena had tried to get me. I waited until snack time and found a corner spot where I could hear her.
"Mr. Scott got your message," she said in a rehearsed voice, "and he says he can't talk to you directly, but that we should know something today."
"Leena, you know my history with him. I'm worried about him."
I knew I was putting her in a tough position, but she was all I had.
"It's just bad timing," she sighed. "All I can tell you is the very big event in your life is coinciding with one in his life. He's doing the best he can. He's checked in with me and Mr. Avery twice today."
"Okay, then tell me this. Did they make an offer to Cameron? Is that what is really going on? They want Cameron first and I'm the backup?"
"Oh my God, that's not going to happen, I can promise you that."
"Why are you so sure?"
"Because we found out yesterday that you passed the drug test, but apparently Mr. Cameron did not."
Well, that explains why Harper insisted on the drug test. Once he found out Sabia had his own candidate, he went digging, discovered Cameron's potential "issue," and made the drug test protocol a part of his process, which forced them to have Cameron submit to a test as well. With the short notice he was unable to flush his system. Just in case Avery caved and agreed to hire Cameron, Harper made sure he had a failsafe way to stop it. I posed all of this to Leena.
"I don't think Harper—I mean, Mr. Scott—would want me to confirm or deny, but if I can speak off the record?"
"Please do."
"It's freaking brilliant, right? We all know you're the best candidate. Mr. Scott was just creating an insurance plan."
Sheila announced she would make me a deal. She would climb the wall faster than any boy, and I could feel free to count, as long as we got Dairy Queen on the way home. She seemed to understand that the ends justify the means; why was it so difficult for me to accept?
HARPER'S RULE
Receiving and Negotiating an Offer
An offer is two things: it is obviously an offer for work, but it is also a test of your enthusiasm. Remember, when a company makes an offer, it is the corporate equivalent of saying, "I love you." When you tell someone you love them, you don't want to hear, "Thanks a lot, I appreciate that, let me think about it for a few days, see it in writing and review my options, then I'll get back to you and hopefully say I love you, too."
I tell my clients to submit written or emailed offers for authorization, not consideration. By the time of an offer, they should be able to give an answer immediately: yes or no.
On the drive back to Jill's, InterAnnex human resources sent me an email. I tried to concentrate on Sheila. Time with her was precious, I kept telling myself. At the first stop sign, though, I decided that was crap, that Sheila was still a kid and at this rate might get a job before me. I asked her as sweetly as I could to give me a moment of quiet while I checked an important email. I opened it and saw that it was a formal offer from InterAnnex.
I went home and decided that I should print the offer. Somehow that made it seem more official. I didn't need Harper, even though he almost always negotiated the terms and conditions for me. It was my damn job and my damn life, right?
Dear Casey:
It is my great pleasure to formally invite you to join InterAnnex as the Vice President of Sales . . .
Wow. It happened. The Holy Grail. Vice President of Sales at thirty-five! (Okay, I cut it damn close, can I have my moment please?)
. . . your annualized base salary will be $250,000 USD. This will be reviewed annually . . .
Okay, that is SO much more than I expected! I want to call Hannah, and I am so excited I need to pee!
. . . you will be eligible for additional compensation . . . we will determine performance "gates," and once they have been exceeded, you will earn 2% of the total sale upon billing . . .
No waiting until the money comes in. Class move, Wallace.
. . . startups require ramp-up time, and in recognition of such, you will, upon execution of this contract, receive a sign-on bonus of $40,000 USD . . .
Shut up! Seriously, if I read this right, I sign this and FedEx it back and I get 40K tomorrow! Now I can't call Hannah and brag; the 40K is too much, she'll hate me, and I don't blame her. I'll just buy a new best friend.
I started to speed read.
Group insurance (includes life insurance, short- and long-term disability . . . you may contribute to a 401(k) and we will match 50 percent of the first 5 percent of pay . . . your main office will be in New York City, but as a VP you have flex time . . . you are eligible for twenty-five days of vacation in the first year and eight personal days . . .
And then the famous "airtight" Wallace Avery non-compete. I can't compete for eighteen months, can't solicit any of their clients, and can't recruit their employees. But other than the social networking space and its direct competitors, I am free. Fair enough.
This is so much fun! Why did I let Harper do this part? In fact, I think I want to be a headhunter and read unemployed people their offer letters all day. (Although I guess you also have to tell the runners-up they aren't getting a wonderful document like this. That would be awful. Okay, Harper can be the headhunter and I'll be the VP of sales.) Let's cut to the chase, sign this baby, and move on with my new life. I know Harper is a stickler about making sure it is an at-will agreement that either party can terminate at any time . . . Check, it's right there, in black and white. I suddenly felt none of my pens were worthy. I felt like I should have one of those pens presidents pull out when they are signing legislation they had to break arms and cut earmark deals to get through Congress.
And then, a surge of abject panic.
Where's the equity piece? Where's the part about me getting in on the act when they get bought out—the real money? I reread each page. Nothing about options, no language on grants, not even a purchase plan where I can devote some of my base pay to buy shares.
Nada. It's a rich comp plan for sure, but they can afford to be generous with the comp because I'm just a hired gun. They'll pay me 400–600K for the next two years, and then sell, and each board member will make millions. Whether the new company keeps me on board is a crap shoot.
What should I do? Should I email Wallace and politely ask him if the equity piece is coming in a separate attached document? Will that make him furious? Was I being ungrateful? My proposed salary of 400–600K is oh, about 400–600K more than I'm making right now. Should I sign it, do my job, and worry about it later? No, that is nonsense. It is standard for a VP of sales at a software startup to get an equity piece. I am being exploited.
Sorry Harper, I need you. I know you're involved with something heavy, but this is serious. The last line of my offer letter says I have to give an answer within twenty-four hours.
I left Harper a text and said I was in a Code Red—that Wallace had sent me an offer, but I have a deal breaker: no equity piece.
Harper's Rule: A deal breaker is a concern about a job, company, or boss so important to you that you would prefer to turn the job down rather than let it go unresolved.
So. Will I walk away if I don't get equity? Before I could decide, a text came in from Harper.
Harper's reply—"that's impossible"—reinforced what I knew at some level: that I was not creating drama. My phone buzzed.
"Harper, I know this is not a good time—"
"I'm going to call Wallace and get to the bottom of this, but you have to sit tight. I can't do it for another couple of hours; I just can't. Chill, okay?"
"Harper, I want to call him first. Not because I can't wait—or, well . . . not only because I can't wait, but if I'm going to be his go-to sales and marketing executive it has to start now. If I can't negotiate my own plan, why would he entrust me to negotiate with CEOs of large corporations?"
"Okay. You're right. Good luck."
I shut off my phone. I wasn't going to risk having this call dropped just as I was asking Wallace the hard questions. This was a landline call.
HARPER'S RULES
At offer time, keep in mind:
Companies will start low so they have room in case they need to increase your offer.
They will also start by telling you there will be only one offer.
They will ask you, as an unproven contributor, to wait to receive certain benefits or compensation perks "once you have established yourself." But you must negotiate everything you want now. Once you sign, you're just another employee. The chase is over, the game won.
Let me just say this and be done with it: Wallace took me to school. He was polite, even affable, and he was happy to discuss it. But the answer was no. There would be no equity. I now wish I hadn't, but I had to ask him why he changed his mind.
"Because I don't think you deserve it, not coming in the door. Casey, this is a career-changing VP's job that we both know on paper you are not ready for. I believe in you, and I'm willing to take a risk. But the other board members asked me to limit that risk by having you wait for equity until you have become a proven commodity. I had to agree with them."
"Carrot and stick? Wallace, I didn't think you were that old-school."
"Well, then you weren't taking a very good look. Old school got me here. My advice is to take the job. But you think about it and call me tomorrow. The offer stands."
And he was gone. I grabbed my cell and went outside and sat on my front steps. A gorgeous day . . . if you're working. I phoned Harper.
I was proud that I rolled it out to him while remaining completely composed. I told him I didn't know what to do, that I wasn't sure he should call Wallace. It would just look like I went running to Harper for help, which of course is what I was doing, and it might weaken my position further. What did he think?
"I don't know," Harper said.
Huh? Since when? This was his sweet spot, this was my über-headhunter, and in my hour of need he doesn't know? What the hell is going on?
"Harper, you are scaring me. Are you all right?"
"No, kiddo, I guess I'm not."
I don't know who will do my eulogy when I die, but whoever does it will say that for all my flaws, I loved my friends ferociously. For so long, I've wanted to show Harper that side of me, and now I had my chance. "Harper, where are you? Right now?"
"I'm home."
"Let me come to you."
"No. I won't be here long. I have to be someplace."
"Then pick a place."
And he gathered himself.
"Okay, I should be done by six. Greenbriars in Greenwich is close to where I'll be. Meet me there, we'll put a strategy together, and then I'll call Wallace."
"Harper, the hell with Wallace! I just want to see you."
After we hung up, I took all I had not to drive to his house. It wouldn't be the first time. I remember the night, early in the Harper Era. A garden-variety tiff between Donald and me that was so minor the offending issue escapes me now. I stormed out of the house and went for a drive. I knew Harper lived on Lincolnshire in Greenwich. It was a cul-de-sac with only four ridiculously huge houses, and Harper's car, back then a silver Maserati coupe, was in the circular driveway. I was about to return home to face Donald when there was a tapping on my window that startled me so much I screamed. A hulking man with a high-pitched voice that didn't match his physicality one bit asked me if he could help me. Yes, I thought, you could stop stalking me while I'm trying to get some stalking done here. He lived next door. I had to get out of there—what if he asks my name or worse, if Harper comes out of the house—my life would be over. I made up a lame excuse about this being the only place I got three bars on my cell and I needed to call home. As I turned around in the cul-de-sac, a light went on in one of the front rooms. Harper had Jess, she must have been six or seven then, in his arms. She was sound asleep. He was taking her upstairs. I don't know what I came to see, but this was not it. I went home, apologized to Donald, and initiated make-up sex with an intensity of which I am not proud.
I have always had trust issues with other women, and that includes the woman who barks out driving instructions from my GPS system. She is way too serious for my taste in general, but if she tells me to take a turn the wrong way down a one-way street, and I value my life enough not to comply, she gets shrill and keeps repeating that I have missed my turn and that I must go back. I decided I couldn't take a chance on bringing her in on the Greenbriars mission, so I went to MapQuest on my laptop and printed the directions.
An hour later, if I turned the radio down, I could almost hear the GPS lady laughing. I-95 was gridlocked. My Blackberry, resting comfortably on my passenger seat, vibrated as if in response to the car horn's mating calls. Jamie Post's name flashed across the screen. Well, I can't keep ducking him, and I certainly have nothing else to do at the moment. Might as well take my medicine and get this over with.
"Jamie, let me just say it. I butt-dialed you. I'm sorry."
"Okay. I don't know what that even means."
"It means the phone was in my back pocket, I didn't realize it was on, I pressed up against something, it dialed your number. I'm so sorry."
"Why, of all the numbers in your phone, was mine the one it dialed? Wouldn't you have had to scroll to it and consider calling, or maybe started calling, and then chose not to, in order for it to even be in a position where it could be . . . .what did you call it?"
"Butt-dialed. Ask your daughter, I'm not making it up. And yes, I almost called you."
"To say what?"
"Jamie, I am stuck on I-95, trying to get to a meeting that could well determine a lot of very big things in my life."
"Okay, so let me help. I'm an engineer. I've been trained in how to determine big things."
There was something about how he said it. I found myself telling him to weigh in. "How does one determine big decisions?"
"It's simple. All the information about a larger entity can be found in a smaller piece of the same entity. You already know what you need to know."
"Meaning stop trying to make a decision by looking at the big picture?"
"Exactly. Take the smallest possible picture, and you can extract everything you need to know about the big picture from what it tells you."
I brought Jamie up to speed on my job offer. Was he saying that in the smallest possible element I could find my answer? That I already know what I need to know?
"Yes. Just like you know everything you need to know about me from a train ride and a butt dial. Bye, Casey."
I spent the next hour trying to distract myself by changing lanes and jockeying for position. I tried not to think about what Jamie said. But I found myself scrolling, highlighting, and after a deep breath, pushing my green SEND button.
"Hi, Wallace. I decided I don't need until tomorrow. I thought we'd both rest easier if we just resolved this. I'm going to turn down the position."
"I'm sorry to hear that. Because of the equity?"
I know Harper might be mad at me for doing this, but if what he says about relationships and jobs is true, then I'm doing the right thing. Wallace and I are in the infatuation stage. We'll never feel this way about each other again. If he can't commit to me now, how can I believe he will do it later when the daily grind exposes us both to be imposters of a sort?
"Thanks for everything, Wallace. You know you're going to miss me, right?"
"Have you told Harper your decision?"
"Nope, on the way to meet him."
"Two percent."
"What?"
"I will give you two percent of the company's stock coming in the door. Fully vested. Day one. Cisco makes their move, you hit a home run along with the rest of us."
"Really? Oh my God, Wallace, I don't know what to say."
"I would start with accepting, follow that up with a heartfelt thank you, and finish up by telling me I'll never regret it. But who am I to tell you what to do?"
"You're my new boss, that's who. Thank you, Wallace."
I managed to get off I-95 and into a mini-mart for directions. They involved going back part of the way I had just come. Had I not gotten lost, I would have met Harper at the restaurant. I am convinced life is so much more about timing than it is intention.
I had to do a technically illegal U-turn to circumvent the underpass and begin to backtrack. If a cop was going to nab me, he would be parked in the commuter lot just before the entrance, so I did a full scan before I proceeded.
And there was Harper. His Porsche was in the middle of the commuter lot, and he was standing next to it. There was a Lincoln Navigator parked parallel to his car, and behind it a massive U-Haul truck. Maggie was talking to the driver of the U-Haul truck. I knew I should leave and wait at the restaurant for Harper, but I couldn't. Not until I knew he was all right. I pulled over just before the lot entrance and positioned my car behind a pickup truck. I was out of their sight line, but they were in mine.
Maggie and Harper spoke for a moment. He looked down and then away, and then she moved in as if to hug him, but he stiffened and she pulled back. She motioned behind him, and Jesse got out of Harper's car. She reached into the jump seat and took out a backpack.
This was the dreaded drop-off: a ritual performed in commuter lots on Friday nights all over the country. This early in the divorce, a neutral place is selected to minimize advantage and lack of convenience. It is designed to make the parting less emotional.
A woman I used to work with dreaded Fridays. Her kids were little; the youngest would scream bloody murder and beg her not to leave. The start of the longed-for weekend for the rest of us was the beginning of her nightmare.
Jess put her backpack down and fell into Harper's arms, exhausted. They spoke for a moment, he said something that made her laugh, and she went to the Lincoln—a brave girl trying to ease her dad's pain. I would find out later that Maggie had found a new home, she had primary custody, and she was taking Jess with her. Harper would see her only on weekends from now until she went to college. They had spent the whole day at Harper's house loading up the remnants deemed necessary for Jess and Maggie to feel whole at their new place. A home they had built and shared for fourteen years was now looted in the purest sense, and Harper had to head home to it. And while this day had been coming for a long time—almost two years I would later find out—it was here now.
The truck and Navigator drove off. Harper stood by his car, folded his arms, waited patiently for the SUV and the U-Haul to get their green light and enter the freeway, and then, when he was sure they were out of sight, put his hands on top of his head and began to cry violently. I thought he was going to get sick, but these were just the arid convulsions of utter grief.
I had waited so long to see some side of him that wasn't protected, but I wasn't prepared for the other extreme. I opened the door to go to him, but another commuter, using the lot for more conventional reasons, rushed to him and was trying to comfort him. Harper waved him off. He needed something besides comfort.
I texted him. I told him that I had taken matters into my own hands since he was such a slacker. I told him that Wallace and I had come to terms and that I was the new VP of sales for InterAnnex, had full equity, and that I was grateful for all he had done. I hit SEND.
A few seconds later he took his phone out of his windbreaker, read my message, and broke into that crazy wide smile I do so love. He did a tiny fist pump in the air, and then rubbed his eyes, first with the closed fist and then with his sleeve. He looked twelve years old.
When he looked up, I was almost twenty feet away. I could tell he didn't want me to see him like this. He waved his phone and started to congratulate me, but then he surrendered. He opened his arms and burst back into tears as I wrapped my arms around him and waited out the shaking, the halted breathing.
"Please don't tell me it's going to be okay," Harper managed. "I've been saying that to people for twenty years. And it's not true. It's not going to be okay."
I nodded and said nothing, and squeezed tighter. Some things do not happen for a reason, are not for the best, and do not give you perspective. Some things just suck.
I got to Greenbriars first and asked for a booth in the back, just to save Harper any further embarrassment. But it wasn't necessary. He was composed. But, for the first time I saw the face of his father that was in that picture at the diner. Harper would age after all. Harper would die.
"Confidentiality is a headhunter's lifeblood, Casey. You know that, right? I've been holding back on you, and there are things you deserve to know, but I can only go so far. The details are between Maggie and me."
This grave and wholly unnecessary pronouncement was interrupted by a waitress and two waiters bringing over a cake with candles in it. They sang the tune of "Happy Birthday," no doubt the extent of their play list, and substituted lame lyrics congratulating me on my new job. I glared at Harper. He shrugged.
"I thought we'd be celebrating because by now I would have made a brilliantly glib call to Wallace. Who knew you didn't need me?"
I blew out the candles, and the people near us clapped for me. I tipped my glass to them.
"Wallace was the lover," Harper mused. "He had no chance."
"What do you mean?" I asked.
"F. Scott Fitzgerald wrote that in every relationship there is a Lover and a Loved. One party loves the other more than the other party does. It's a dirty secret nobody admits to. Fitzgerald said you want to be the Loved, not the Lover. The Lover gets a broken heart, the Loved gets her heart's desire. You were the Loved."
And, it was clear to me, so was Maggie. The plot elements might change, the settings differ according to status, but it's all the same in the end. Harper began to sketch . . .
Apparently she met the man in Bloomberg's office; he was a promoter of tennis events, a nice guy, Harper conceded. Harper began to see the signs: the distancing, the brittle phone calls when Harper would call from the road, the slow cooling of ardor, the late nights out, with increasingly feeble justification. And that terrible period when you know but do not ask. You go to work, you concentrate on Jess. You tell yourself you'll write a book and help an old friend find a job.
Jamie was right—the smallest moment unveils the biggest picture. I loved Harper, but not in the way I thought. This crystal clear fact was astonishing to me. Then I did think of a question.
"So how did Wallace and DiDi Cooper and half of New York know you were going through a divorce? How did it go viral?"
"Oh. That. Well, early on, I was chasing rumors. I got some intel wrong and got it into my head that it was the mayor himself who was the paramour. I chose to address the matter while he was making a toast during a MACY meeting. It's kind of cloudy to me."
"That's fantastic. I would have given anything to be there."
"For the record, I would like to say I not only apologized but voted for the man."
Neither of us was hungry. We pushed our food around our plates.
"Why not tell me? Why the book?"
"I believe in the book; I've wanted to write it for a long time."
"But you were living it too. Why test it all out on me?"
"You're stronger than me, Casey."
"So now what?" Harper asked. "For the first time since we've known each other, we are both single. You now have a really good job, so I wouldn't be dating a loser."
I was going to start a rant about how much healing and grieving he still had to go through and how he needed time to be alone. But it felt completely flat and false. I just shook my head.
"Are you saying we're not going to even try? Casey, we're crazy about each other, you know that!"
And there it was. Right in front of me. I had landed my dream job and now my dream guy was mine for the taking. The perfect ending to Harper's book. And there was no way. The moments you wait the longest for are always a letdown.
"Harper, we're already exactly what we need to be for each other."
Harper braced himself. I could tell he was preparing his rebuttal. The waitress bought him time by dropping the check on the middle of the table. Harper waited until she left, smiled warmly at me, and for the first time in all the years we've known each other, he slid the check across to me.
Onboarding: The extended, proactive support process by which companies successfully transition executives into their new roles and organizations.
Wallace's onboarding process was professional and much appreciated. The way a company onboards you reinforces your feelings about your decision and fuels your desire to succeed.
He sent me a welcome package via FedEx, outlining how I could immediately enroll in the health and benefits plan. He sent out a press release to the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal, and he featured me on their website. He sent an IT guy to my house to deliver, load, and configure a company laptop. He set up lunch with my new executive assistant, a fiery redhead named Laney whom I love. He had a dinner in my honor at his home the Friday before I started.
Wallace was a class act. My job was well worth the risks of quitting my old job and being unemployed. Overcoming the fear of change has made me a stronger and better person.
In the first six months I exceeded my annual revenue goal. Cisco hasn't bought us yet, but if they don't, someone else will, and I will be one wealthy girl. And why not? Why not me?
The onboarding at home has also gone well. Thank God Harper finally started dating, because once he met Jamie they fell in love and began that guy thing of talking to each other and forgetting I was in the room. Politics, sports, nanotechnology . . . there was no stopping them. I knew I was completely over Harper when he got me aside one night when Jamie went to the bathroom and whispered, "You don't deserve him. Seriously, he could do better."
But now Harper and this hilarious girl Tia seem to be working out, and we are a team. Jess is the same age as Jamie's daughter Brea, and they text each other 500 times a day. I packed up Starbucks and moved in about a month ago. It was scary, but Jamie's cat of twelve years had died the year before, and he paid more attention to Starbucks than I did, and well, Jamie's house is awesome. There are no coyotes in the neighborhood.
Will we get married? I'm not even going there. Harper kids me about it all the time, of course, and I told him that he missed one of the ways in which jobs are like relationships. We get into ruts in both, but we forget that part of what we love is the rut: the routine, the sameness—knowing what you have. I'm going to enjoy my rut for as long as I can.
Harper published his book and dedicated it to his daughter Jess, and to me. He is back to full swagger again, and sometimes I miss the humble version. One morning Jamie and I were doing what people with a teenager do: playing chauffeur and heading to a lacrosse field. The commercial on the radio ended, and the host said, "And now we're here with Harper Scott, noted headhunter and the author of a new book called Harper's Rules that claims if you correctly learn how to find a job, you can also find true love."
Jamie got excited and told me and Brea to shut up—Harper was on the radio! We both rolled our eyes. Anything he was going to say, I told Jamie, I gave him. But the host asked Harper what he wished people would learn from his book, and I guess it's only fair to give him the last word, because it made me look at Jamie and smile.
HARPER'S FINAL RULE
If we used the language of work in our relationships, we'd have fewer problems and a lower divorce rate. We need to stop saying we "fell in love." Falling implies a misstep, a mistake. We would never say we fell into a job; we accept a job offer. We need to start saying, "I love you, I want to be with you, I accept your offer of love."
For now, and I hope forever, I accept Jamie's offer of love. And if it doesn't work out, well . . . I know a really good headhunter.
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Unarmed women on a small boat are now a threat to Israel's security?
October 6, 2016 at 10:10 am | Published in: Israel, Middle East, News, Palestine
First of all, our concern must be for the safety of the women on board the Zaytoun, which was intercepted in international waters by the Israeli navy yesterday. Israel, as we know, has a record of violence against civilian vessels, not only those trying to break the illegal siege of Gaza but also Palestinian's beleaguered fishermen.
We will all — the people of Palestine and their supporters around the world — breathe a sigh of relief if there are no injuries to report. The boat set out on a purely humanitarian mission — the symbolic breaking of the siege of Gaza.
More on the Women's boat to Gaza:
BREAKING: Israel stops Women's Boat to Gaza
Activists' plea for Norway to stop Israeli attack on flotilla
Women's boat set to break Gaza blockade today
It would be good to see the mainstream media, if it covers the story at all, go beyond Israel's claim that the boat and the women on board pose a threat to the state's national security. Such a claim, of course, is utter nonsense; is Israel so insecure that unarmed women on a small boat pose a threat?
Given Israel's record of attacks on civilians, much of the coverage has been focused on whether and how Israel will stop the boat in international waters. Anywhere else and this would be condemned as piracy, but Israel gets away with it.
The paradox is that Israel will continue to be lauded as "the only democracy in the Middle East" while continuing to treat international law with contempt. Those who resist, or try to end, Israel's military occupation of Palestine face opprobrium and accusations of terrorism.
It is high time that the world imposed sanctions on the villain of this piece, the Zionist state of Israel. Sanctions should not only cover goods originating in illegal settlements but also those from companies which profit from the occupation, wherever they are based. And supplies of arms and ammunition should also be stopped.
"The Women's Boat to Gaza" is seen at Israeli Naval Base in Ashdod Port after it seized by Israeli forces on International waters, on Ashdod, Israel on October 05, 2016.
International efforts like the Women's Boat to Gaza are entirely peaceful; there is nothing sinister or underhand in what they set out to do. In this case, women from around the world want to embrace their Palestinian sisters and children in solidarity with their struggle against injustice and oppression.
The immorality of the siege is clear to all reasonable and peace-loving people. As Gideon Levy once put it, it is the only case he knows of where sanctions are imposed on the occupied, not the occupier. Only the warmongers fear freedom.
Politicians in Europe and the Americas, Asia and Africa, and Oceania need to know that if they give political, material or military support to Israel and its occupation, the tide of public opinion is against them. That is why such efforts as the Women's Boat to Gaza are successful, even if they don't break the siege. In fearing a boat full of unarmed women, Israel has already lost the PR war; the credibility of its claims about "national security" has taken a further beating. The world knows that the siege of Gaza is immoral; now Israel and its politicians know it too.
This is the text of an open statement prepared by Palestine solidarity activists in Italy.
IsraelMiddle EastNewsPalestine | {
"redpajama_set_name": "RedPajamaCommonCrawl"
} | 6,187 |
<?php
namespace Tarampampam\LaravelDatabaseQueriesProfiler\Tests;
/**
* Class CommandsTest.
*/
class CommandsTest extends AbstractUnitTestCase
{
/**
* Test basic artisan commands execution.
*/
public function testCommandsExecution()
{
$this->prepareDatabase($this->app, true);
$commands_names = [
'profiler:counters',
'profiler:settings',
'profiler:top',
'profiler:clear',
];
foreach ($commands_names as $commands_name) {
$this->assertArtisanCommandExists($commands_name);
// Test execution method
$this->artisan($commands_name);
}
}
/**
* @param string $command_signature
*/
protected function assertArtisanCommandExists($command_signature)
{
$this->assertNotFalse(
$this->artisan($command_signature, ['--help']),
'Command does not return help message'
);
}
}
| {
"redpajama_set_name": "RedPajamaGithub"
} | 1,253 |
import dayjs from 'dayjs';
import get from 'lodash/get';
import set from 'lodash/set';
import type {
RequestTypes,
FetchData,
Action,
RequestReducer,
RequestReducerByKey,
RequestDucks,
RequestByKeyDucks,
} from './type';
import { config } from './config';
const FETCH = 'FETCH';
const INVALIDATE = 'INVALIDATE';
const CLEAR = 'CLEAR';
const INVALIDATE_ALL = 'INVALIDATE_ALL';
const CLEAR_ALL = 'CLEAR_ALL';
const RESET_PAGING = 'RESET_PAGING';
const REQUEST = 'REQUEST';
const SUCCESS = 'SUCCESS';
const FAILURE = 'FAILURE';
export const createRequestTypes = (base: string) =>
[
FETCH,
INVALIDATE,
CLEAR,
INVALIDATE_ALL,
CLEAR_ALL,
RESET_PAGING,
REQUEST,
SUCCESS,
FAILURE,
].reduce((acc, type) => {
acc[type] = `${base}_${type}`;
return acc;
}, {});
export const createAction = (type: string, payload?: any = {}) => ({
type,
...payload,
});
export const createNamePrefix = (moduleName: string, parentModuleName?: string) =>
parentModuleName ? `${parentModuleName}.${moduleName}` : `${moduleName}`;
export const createRequestActions = (requestTypes: RequestTypes) => ({
fetch: (params?: Object = {}) => createAction(requestTypes.FETCH, { params }),
invalidate: (params?: Object = {}) => createAction(requestTypes.INVALIDATE, { params }),
clear: (params?: Object = {}) => createAction(requestTypes.CLEAR, { params }),
invalidateAll: (params?: Object = {}) => createAction(requestTypes.INVALIDATE_ALL, { params }),
clearAll: (params?: Object = {}) => createAction(requestTypes.CLEAR_ALL, { params }),
resetPaging: (params?: Object = {}) => createAction(requestTypes.RESET_PAGING, { params }),
request: (params?: Object = {}) => createAction(requestTypes.REQUEST, { params }),
success: (payload?: any, params?: Object = {}) =>
createAction(requestTypes.SUCCESS, { payload, params }),
failure: (error?: any, params?: Object = {}) =>
createAction(requestTypes.FAILURE, { error, params }),
});
const requestInitialState = {
isFetching: false,
didInvalidate: false,
payload: undefined,
error: undefined,
refreshing: false,
};
const pagingInitialState = {
page: 0,
itemsEnd: false,
paginationFetched: undefined,
};
const pagingRequestInitialState = {
...requestInitialState,
...pagingInitialState,
};
export const createRequestReducer = ({
requestTypes,
initialState,
mapActionToPayload = action => action.payload,
options,
}: RequestReducer) => {
const paging = get(options, 'paging');
const finalInitialState =
initialState || (paging ? pagingRequestInitialState : requestInitialState);
return (state: FetchData = finalInitialState, action: Action) => {
switch (action.type) {
case requestTypes[INVALIDATE]:
return {
...state,
didInvalidate: true,
};
case requestTypes[CLEAR]:
case requestTypes[CLEAR_ALL]:
return {
...finalInitialState,
};
case requestTypes[RESET_PAGING]:
return {
...state,
...pagingInitialState,
};
case requestTypes[REQUEST]:
return {
...state,
isFetching: true,
refreshing: !!action.params.refreshing,
didInvalidate: false,
};
case requestTypes[SUCCESS]: {
const newState = {
...state,
isFetching: false,
refreshing: false,
didInvalidate: false,
lastUpdated: dayjs(),
error: undefined,
};
const payload = mapActionToPayload(action);
if (paging && action.params.page !== 0) {
newState.payload = [...newState.payload, ...payload];
} else {
newState.payload = payload;
}
if (paging) {
newState.page = action.params.page + 1;
newState.itemsEnd = !get(payload, 'length');
set(newState, `paginationFetched.${action.params.page}`, true);
}
return newState;
}
case requestTypes[FAILURE]:
return {
...state,
error: action.error,
isFetching: false,
refreshing: false,
};
default:
return state;
}
};
};
type ItemsByIdProps = {
types: Array<string>,
type: string,
mapItemToId: Function,
mapActionToPayload?: Function,
};
export const itemsById = ({
type,
types,
mapItemToId,
mapActionToPayload = action => action.payload,
}: ItemsByIdProps) => (state: any = {}, action: Action) => {
if (action.type === type || (types && types.indexOf(action.type) > -1)) {
return {
...state,
...mapActionToPayload(action).reduce((obj, item) => {
obj[mapItemToId(item)] = item;
return obj;
}, {}),
};
}
return state;
};
export const objectById = ({
type,
mapItemToId,
mapActionToPayload = action => action.payload,
}: {
type: string,
mapItemToId: Function,
mapActionToPayload?: Function,
}) => (state: any = {}, action: Action) => {
switch (action.type) {
case type:
return {
...state,
[mapItemToId(mapActionToPayload(action))]: mapActionToPayload(action),
};
default:
return state;
}
};
const getRequestKeys = (action, mapActionToKey) => {
let keys = mapActionToKey(action);
if (keys && keys.constructor !== Array) {
keys = [keys];
}
return keys;
};
export const createRequestReducerByKey = ({
requestTypes,
mapActionToKey,
mapActionToPayload = action => action.payload,
options,
}: RequestReducerByKey) => (state: any = {}, action: Action) => {
switch (action.type) {
case requestTypes[INVALIDATE_ALL]:
case requestTypes[CLEAR_ALL]:
return {};
case requestTypes[INVALIDATE]:
case requestTypes[CLEAR]:
case requestTypes[RESET_PAGING]:
case requestTypes[REQUEST]:
case requestTypes[SUCCESS]:
case requestTypes[FAILURE]: {
const keys = getRequestKeys(action, mapActionToKey);
return {
...state,
...keys.reduce((obj, key) => {
let payload;
if (action.payload !== undefined) {
payload = mapActionToPayload(action, key);
}
obj[key] = createRequestReducer({ requestTypes, options })(state[key], {
...action,
payload,
});
return obj;
}, {}),
};
}
default:
return state;
}
};
export const getSelector = (reducerName: string) => {
if (get(config, 'prefix')) {
return (state: any) => get(state, `${config.prefix}.${reducerName}`);
}
return (state: any) => get(state, `${reducerName}`);
};
// create request ducks
// {
// isFetching: true,
// payload: undefined,
// }
export const createRequestDucks = ({
moduleName,
reducerName,
mapActionToPayload,
parentModuleName,
options,
}: RequestDucks) => {
const requestTypes = createRequestTypes(`${moduleName}/${reducerName}`);
const requestActions = createRequestActions(requestTypes);
const reducer = createRequestReducer({
requestTypes,
mapActionToPayload,
options,
});
const modName = parentModuleName ? `${parentModuleName}.${moduleName}` : moduleName;
const selector = getSelector(`${modName}.${reducerName}`);
return {
requestTypes,
requestActions,
reducer,
selector,
reducerName,
};
};
// create request ducks with object structure group by key
// {
// 1: {
// isFetching: true,
// payload: undefined,
// }
// }
export const createRequestByKeyDucks = ({
moduleName,
reducerName,
mapActionToKey,
mapActionToPayload,
parentModuleName,
options,
}: RequestByKeyDucks) => {
const requestTypes = createRequestTypes(`${moduleName}/${reducerName}`);
const requestActions = createRequestActions(requestTypes);
const reducer = createRequestReducerByKey({
requestTypes,
mapActionToKey,
mapActionToPayload,
options,
});
const modName = parentModuleName ? `${parentModuleName}.${moduleName}` : moduleName;
const selector = getSelector(`${modName}.${reducerName}`);
return {
requestTypes,
requestActions,
reducer,
selector,
reducerName,
};
};
| {
"redpajama_set_name": "RedPajamaGithub"
} | 2,075 |
\section{Introduction}
Stochastic Games (SG) provide a natural extension of reinforcement learning~\cite{sutton1998reinforcement,mnih2015human,busoniu2010reinforcement,peters2010relative} to multiple agents, where adapting strategies in presence of humans or other agents is necessary~\cite{shapley1953stochastic,littman1994markov,littman2001friend}.
Current frameworks for stochastic games assume perfectly rational agents -- an assumption that is violated in a variety of real-world scenarios, e.g., human-robot interaction~\cite{goodrich2007human}, and pick-up and drop-off domains \cite{agussurja2012toward}. In the context of computer games, the main focus of this paper, such a problem of perfect rationality is even more amplified. Here, in fact, it is not desirable to design agents that seek optimal behaviour as this leads humans to become quickly uninterested when playing against adversarial agents that are impossible to defeat~\cite{hunicke2005case}. Hence, to design games with adaptable and balancing properties tailored to human-level performance, there is a need to extend state-of-the-art SG beyond optimality to allow for tuneable behaviour.
One method to produce tuneable behaviour in reinforcement learning is to introduce an adjustable Kullback-Leibler (KL) constraint between the agent's policy and a reference one. In particular, by increasingly strengthening this constraint we can obtain policies increasingly close to the reference policy, and vice versa. Bounding policy updates in such a manner has been previously introduced in literature under different names. Examples include KL control, relative entropy policy search~\cite{peters2010relative}, path integral control~\cite{kappen2005path,braun2011path}, information-theoretic bounded rationality~\cite{ortega2013thermodynamics}, information-theory of decisions and actions~\cite{tishby2011information,rubin2012trading}, and soft Q-learning~\cite{fox2016taming,haarnoja2017reinforcement}. Targeted problems using these methods are also wide-spread, e.g., tackling the overestimation problem in tabular Q-learning~\cite{fox2016taming} and in Deep Q-networks~\cite{leibfried2017information}, accounting for model misspecification~\cite{grau2016planning}, introducing safe policy updates in robot learning~\cite{schulman2015trust}, and inducing risk-sensitive control~\cite{vandenBroek:2010}.
\textbf{Contributions:} Though abundant in literature, previous works only consider single-agent problems and are not readily applicable to stochastic games, which consider more than one interacting entity. With game balancing as our motivation, we propose a novel formulation of SG where agents are subject to KL constraints. In particular, our formulation introduces two KL constraints, one for each agent, limiting the space of available policies, which, in turn, enables tuneable behaviour. We then introduce an online strategy that can be used for game-play balancing even in high-dimensional spaces through a neural network architecture.
In short, the contributions of this paper can be summarised as: (1) proving convergence of the two-player soft Q-learning to a fixed point through contractions; (2) generalising team and zero-sum games in a continuous fashion and showing a unique value; (3) demonstrating convergence to correct behaviour by tuning the KL constraints on a simplified grid-world scenario; (4) extending our method to handle high-dimensional spaces; and (5) inferring opponent's Lagrange multiplier by maximum-likelihood, and demonstrating game-balancing behaviour on the game of Pong.
\section{Background}\label{sec:Background}
\subsection{Reinforcement Learning}
In reinforcement learning (RL)~\cite{sutton1998reinforcement} an agent interacts with an unknown environment to determine an optimal policy that maximises total expected return. These problems are formalised as Markov decision processes (MDPs). Formally, an MDP is defined as the tuple $\left\langle \mathcal{S}, \mathcal{A}, \mathcal{T}, \mathcal{R}, \gamma\right\rangle$ where $\mathcal{S}$ is the state space, $\mathcal{A}$ the action space, and $\mathcal{T}: \mathcal{S}\times \mathcal{A} \times \mathcal{S} \rightarrow [0,1]$ denotes the state transition density. Namely, when being in state $\bm{s}_{t} \in \mathcal{S}$ and applying an action $\bm{a}_{t}\in \mathcal{A}$, the agent transitions to $\bm{s}_{t+1} \sim \mathcal{T}(\bm{s}_{t+1}|\bm{s}_{t},\bm{a}_{t})$. The reward function $\mathcal{R}:\mathcal{S} \times \mathcal{A} \rightarrow \mathbb{R}$ quantifies the agent's performance and $\gamma$ is the discount factor that trades off current and future rewards. The goal is to implement a policy that maximises total discounted rewards, i.e., $\pi^\star(\bm a|\bm s) = \mathop{\mathrm{argmax}}_\pi V^\pi(\bm s)$, where $V^{\pi}(\bm{s}) = \mathbb{E}\Big[\sum_{t=0}^{\infty}\gamma^{t}\mathcal{R}(\bm{s}_{t},\bm{a}_{t}) \Big]$
\subsection{Single Agent Soft Q-Learning}
A way to constrain the behaviour of an agent is to modify the feasibility set of allowable policies. This can be achieved by introducing a constraint, such as a KL between two policy distributions, to the reinforcement learning objective. Such an approach has been already used within single agent reinforcement learning. For example, soft Q-learning has been used to reduce the overestimation problem of standard Q-learning~\cite{fox2016taming} and for building flexible energy-based policies in continuous domains~\cite{haarnoja2017reinforcement}. Most of these approaches modify the standard objective of reinforcement learning to
\begin{align}&\max_{\pi} \mathbb{E}\Big[\sum_{t=0}^{\infty} \gamma^{t}\mathcal{R}(\bm{s}_{t},\bm{a}_{t}) \Big] \nonumber \\
&\text{s.t.} \ \ \sum_{t=0}^{\infty} \mathbb{E}\left[\gamma^{t}\text{KL}\left(\pi(\bm{a}_{t}|\bm{s}_{t})||\rho(\bm{a}_{t}|\bm{s}_{t})\right)\right] \le C, \label{eq:softQlearning}
\end{align}
where $C$ is the amount of bits (or nats if using the natural logarithm) measured by the KL divergence that the policy $\pi$ is allowed to deviate from a reference policy $\rho$. The expectation operation is over state-action trajectories.
To solve the above constrained problem, one typically introduces a Lagrange multiplier, $\beta$, and rewrites an equivalent unconstrained problem
\begin{align*}
\mathcal{V}^{\star}(\bm{s}) &= \max_{\pi} \mathbb{E}\bigg[\sum_{t=0}^{\infty} \gamma^t\bigg(\mathcal{R}(\bm{s}_{t},\bm{a}_{t})- \frac{1}{\beta}\log \frac{\pi(\bm{a}_{t}|\bm{s}_{t})}{\rho(\bm{a}_{t}|\bm{s}_{t})}\bigg)\bigg].
\end{align*}
To derive an algorithm for solving the above, one comes to recognise that $\mathcal{V}^{\star}(\bm{s})$ also satisfies a recursion similar to that introduced by the Bellman equations~\cite{puterman1994markov}. Additionally, the optimal policy can be written in closed form as
\begin{equation*}
\pi^{\star}(\bm{a}|\bm{s}) = \frac{\rho(\bm{a}|\bm{s}) e^{\beta \mathcal{Q}^{\star}(\bm{s},\bm{a})}}{\sum_{\bm{a} \in \mathcal{A}}\rho(\bm{a}|\bm{s})e^{\beta \mathcal{Q}^{\star}(\bm{s},\bm{a})}},
\end{equation*}
where $\mathcal{Q}^{\star}(\bm{s},\bm{a}) := \mathcal{R}(\bm{s},\bm{a}) + \sum_{\bm{s}^{\prime} \in \mathcal{S}} \mathcal{T}(\bm{s}^{\prime}|\bm{s},\bm{a}) \mathcal{V}^{\star}(\bm{s}^{\prime})$, and $\bm{s}^{\prime} \in \mathcal{S}$. Notice that the above represents a generalisation of standard RL settings, where $\beta \rightarrow \infty $ corresponds to a perfectly rational valuation ($\mathcal V_{\beta \rightarrow \infty}^\star (\bm s)=\max_\pi V^\pi(\bm s)$), while for $\beta \rightarrow 0 $ we recover the valuation under $\rho$ ($\mathcal V_{\beta \rightarrow 0}^\star (\bm s)=V^\rho(\bm s)$). Clearly, we can generate a continuum of policies between the reference and the perfectly rational policy that maximises the expected reward by tuning the choice of $\beta$ as detailed in~\cite{leibfried2017information}.
\subsection{Two-Player Stochastic Games}
In two-player stochastic games~\cite{shapley1953stochastic,littman1994markov}, two agents, that we denote as the player and the opponent, are interacting in an environment. Each agent executes a policy that we write as $\pi_{\text{pl}}$ and
$\pi_{\text{op}}$. At some time step $t$, the player chooses an action $\bm{a}^{\text{pl}}_{t} \sim \pi_{\text{pl}}\big(\bm{a}^{\text{pl}}_{t}|\bm{s}_{t}\big)$, while the opponent picks $\bm{a}^{\text{op}}_{t} \sim \pi_{\text{op}}\big(\bm{a}^{\text{op}}_{t}|\bm{s}_{t}\big)$. Accordingly, the environment transitions to a successor state $\bm{s}_{t+1} \sim \mathcal{T}_{\mathcal{G}}\big(\bm{s}_{t+1}|\bm{s}_{t},\bm{a}^{\text{pl}}_{t},\bm{a}^{\text{op}}_{t}\big)$, where $\mathcal{T}_{\mathcal{G}}$ denotes the joint transition model for the game. After transitioning to a new state, both agents receive a particular reward depending on the type of game considered. In team games, both the player and the opponent maximise the same reward function $\mathcal{R}_{\mathcal{G}}\big(\bm{s}_{t},\bm{a}^{\text{pl}}_{t},\bm{a}^{\text{op}}_{t}\big)$. For zero-sum games, the player seeks to maximise $\mathcal{R}_{\mathcal{G}}$, whereas the opponent seeks to find a minimum. We write the policy dependent value as $V^{\pi_{\text{pl}}\pi_{\text{op}}}(\bm s) := \mathbb E \big[ \sum_{t=0}^\infty \gamma^t \mathcal{R}_{\mathcal{G}}\big(\bm{s}_{t},\bm{a}^{\text{pl}}_{t},\bm{a}^{\text{op}}_{t}\big) \big]$ where, in contrast to the one-player setting, the expectation is over state and \emph{joint-action} trajectories.
In stochastic games it is common to assume perfect rationality for both agents i.e., in the case of a zero-sum game the player computes the optimal value of state $\bm s$ as $V^{\star\text{pl}}_{\text{zs}}(\bm s) = \max_{\pi_{\text{pl}}} \min_{\pi_{\text{op}}} V^{\pi_{\text{pl}}\pi_{\text{op}}}(\bm s)$, while the opponent as $V^{\star \text{op}}_{\text{zs}}(\bm s) = \min_{\pi_{\text{op}}} \max_{\pi_{\text{pl}}} V^{\pi_{\text{pl}}\pi_{\text{op}}}(\bm s)$. Similarly, in team games the optimal value for the player is $V^{\star \text{pl}}_{\text{tg}}(\bm s) = \max_{\pi_{\text{pl}}} \max_{\pi_{\text{op}}} V^{\pi_{\text{pl}}\pi_{\text{op}}}(\bm s)$ and for the opponent $V^{\star\text{op}}_{\text{tg}}(\bm s) = \max_{\pi_{\text{opp}}} \max_{\pi_{\text{pl}}} V^{\pi_{\text{pl}}\pi_{\text{op}}}(\bm s)$. Although it is straightforward to show that for team games $V^{\star \text{op}}_{\text{tg}}(\bm s) = V^{\star\text{pl}}_{\text{tg}}(\bm s) $, an important classic result in game theory -- the minimax theorem \cite{osborne1994course} -- states that for zero-sum games $V^{\star \text{op}}_{\text{zs}}(\bm s) = V^{\star \text{pl}}_{\text{zs}}(\bm s) $, i.e both team and zero sum games have a unique value.
Importantly, in complex games with large state-spaces the $\max$ and the $\min $ operations over all available policies are extremely difficult to compute. Humans and suboptimal agents seek to approximate these operations as best they can but never fully do so due to the lack of computational resources~\cite{ortega2016human}, approximations and introduced biases~\cite{lieder2012burn}.
This limits the applicability of SG when interacting with suboptimal entities, e.g., in computer games when competing against human players. We next provide the first extension, to the best of our knowledge, of soft Q-learning to SGs and show how our framework can be used within the context of balancing the game's difficulty.
\section{Two-Player Soft Q-Learning}\label{sec:two-player_stochastic_games_with_KL}
To enable soft Q-learning in two-player games we introduce two KL constraints that allow us to separately control the performance of both agents. In particular, we incorporate a constraint similar to \eqref{eq:softQlearning} into the objective function for each agent and apply the method of Lagrange multipliers
\begin{align}
\label{eq:policy_dependent_valueBR}
& \mathcal{V}^{\pi_{\text{pl}} \pi_{\text{op}}}(\bm s) = \mathbb{E}\bigg[\sum_{t=0}^{\infty} \gamma^{t} \bigg(\mathcal{R}_{\mathcal{G}}\Big(\bm{s}_{t},\bm{a}_{t}^{\text{pl}},\bm{a}_{t}^{\text{op}}\Big) \\ \nonumber
&-\frac{1}{\beta_{\text{pl}}} \log \frac{\pi_{\text{pl}}(\bm{a}_{t}^{\text{pl}}|\bm{s}_{t})}{\rho_{\text{pl}}(\bm{a}_{t}^{\text{pl}}|\bm{s}_{t})} - \frac{1}{\beta_{\text{op}}} \log \frac{\pi_{\text{op}}(\bm{a}_{t}^{\text{op}}|\bm{s}_{t})}{\rho_{\text{op}}(\bm{a}_{t}^{\text{op}}|\bm{s}_{t})}
\bigg)
\bigg],
\end{align}
where the expectation is over joint-action trajectories, $\frac{1}{\beta_{\text{pl}}} \log \frac{\pi_{\text{pl}}(\bm{a}_{t}^{\text{pl}}|\bm{s}_{t})}{\rho_{\text{pl}}(\bm{a}_{t}^{\text{pl}}|\bm{s}_{t})}$ is the information cost for the player (that turns into a KL divergence with the expectation operator), and $\frac{1}{\beta_{\text{op}}} \log \frac{\pi_{\text{op}}(\bm{a}_{t}^{\text{op}}|\bm{s}_{t})}{\rho_{\text{op}}(\bm{a}_{t}^{\text{op}}|\bm{s}_{t})}$ is the information cost for the opponent. The Lagrange multipliers $\beta_{\text{pl}}$ and $\beta_{\text{op}}$ are tuneable parameters that we can vary at will. The distributions $\rho_{\text{pl}}(\bm{a}_{t}^{\text{pl}}|\bm{s}_{t})$ and $\rho_{\text{op}}(\bm{a}_{t}^{\text{op}}|\bm{s}_{t})$ are the arbitrary reference policies that we assume to be uniform\footnote{Please note considering other reference policies is left as an interesting direction for future work.}. Using the above, the player and the opponent compute optimal soft-value of a state $\bm s$ using
\begin{align}
\label{eq:optimization_freeenergy_player}
&\mathcal{V}^{\star}_{\text{pl}}(\bm{s}) = \max_{\pi_{\text{pl}}} \mathop{\mathrm{ext}}_{\pi_{\text{op}}} \mathcal{V}^{\pi_{\text{pl}} \pi_{\text{op}}}(\bm s), \ \mathcal{V}^{\star}_{\text{op}}(\bm{s}) = \mathop{\mathrm{ext}}_{\pi_{\text{op}}} \max_{\pi_{\text{pl}}} \mathcal{V}^{\pi_{\text{pl}} \pi_{\text{op}}}(\bm s).
\end{align}
We define the extremum operator $\mathop{\mathrm{ext}}$ to correspond to a $\max$ in the case of positive $\beta_{\text{op}}$ and to a $\min$ in the case of negative $\beta_{\text{op}}$.
It is clear that this novel formulation of the optimisation problems in Equations~\eqref{eq:optimization_freeenergy_player} generalise to cover both zero-sum and team games depending on the choice of $\beta_{\text{op}}$. By fixing $\beta_{\text{pl}} \rightarrow \infty$ and setting $\beta_{\text{op}} \rightarrow -\infty$ or $\beta_{\text{op}} \rightarrow \infty$ we recover, respectively, a zero-sum or a team game with perfectly rational agents. For $\beta_{\text{op}} \rightarrow 0$ we derive a game by which the opponent simply employs policy $\rho_{\text{op}}$. For finite values of $\beta_{\text{op}}$, we obtain a continuum of opponents with bounded performance ranging from fully adversarial to fully collaborative including a random policy. It is important to note, as we will show later, that the analytical form of the optimal policies that solve \eqref{eq:optimization_freeenergy_player} are independent of the extremum operator and only depend on the parameters $\beta_{\text{pl}}$ and $\beta_{\text{op}}$.
\subsection{Unique Value for Two-Player Soft Q-Learning}
In this section we show that the equations in~\eqref{eq:optimization_freeenergy_player} are equivalent, $\mathcal V_{\text{pl}}^\star (\bm s) = \mathcal V_{\text{op}}^\star (\bm s)$, for any $\beta_\text{pl}$ and $\beta_\text{op}$, that is, our two player soft Q-learning exhibit a unique value.
We start by defining the free energy operator as
\begin{align}\label{eq:f}
f(\pi_{\text{pl}}&,\pi_{\text{op}},\bm{s}, \mathcal{V}) := \mathbb{E}_{\pi_{\text{pl}},\pi_{\text{op}}}\bigg[ \mathcal{R}_{\mathcal{G}}(\bm{s},\bm{a}^{\text{pl}},\bm{a}^{\text{op}}) + \gamma \mathbb{E}_{\mathcal{T}_{\mathcal{G}}}\left[\mathcal{V}(\bm s') \right] \nonumber \\
& -\frac{1}{\beta_{\text{pl}}} \log \frac{\pi_{\text{pl}}(\bm{a}^{\text{pl}}|\bm{s})}{\rho_{\text{pl}}(\bm{a}^{\text{pl}}|\bm{s})} -\frac{1}{\beta_{\text{opp}}} \log \frac{\pi_{\text{op}}(\bm{a}^{\text{op}}|\bm{s})}{\rho_{\text{op}}(\bm{a}^{\text{op}}|\bm{s})} \bigg]
\end{align}
for an arbitrary free energy vector $\mathcal V$.
Then the Bellman-like operators for both the player and the opponent can be expressed as:
\begin{align}
\label{Eq:Bla}
\mathcal B_{\text{pl}} \mathcal{V}(\bm s) &= \max_{\pi_{\text{pl}}} \mathop{\mathrm{ext}}_{\pi_{\text{op}}} f(\pi_{\text{pl}},\pi_{\text{op}},\bm{s},\mathcal{V}) \\\nonumber
\mathcal B_{\text{op}} \mathcal{V} (\bm s) &= \mathop{\mathrm{ext}}_{\pi_{\text{op}}} \max_{\pi_{\text{pl}}} f(\pi_{\text{pl}},\pi_{\text{op}},\bm{s},\mathcal{V}).
\end{align}
\textbf{Proof Sketch:} For proving our main results, summarised in Theorem~\ref{col:optimal_freeenergies_are_equal}, we commence by showing that the equations in~\eqref{eq:optimization_freeenergy_player} are equivalent. This is achieved by showing that the two operators in Equation~\eqref{Eq:Bla} are in fact equivalent, see Lemma~\ref{lem:equality_operators}. Proving these operators to be contractions converging to a unique fixed point (see Theorem~\ref{theo:contraction}), we conclude that $\mathcal V_{\text{pl}}^\star (\bm s) = \mathcal V_{\text{op}}^\star (\bm s)$ (see Appendix for proof details).
\begin{lemma}\label{lem:equality_operators}
For any $\beta_{\text{pl}} \in \mathbb R$ and $\beta_{\text{op}} \in \mathbb R$, and arbitrary free energy vector $\mathcal V$, then
$\mathcal B_{\text{pl}} \mathcal{V} (\bm s) = \mathcal B_{\text{op}} \mathcal{V}(\bm s)$.
\end{lemma}
Due to Lemma~\ref{lem:equality_operators}, we can define the generic operator $\mathcal B \mathcal{V}(\bm s):= \mathcal B_{\text{pl}} \mathcal{V} (\bm s) = \mathcal B_{\text{op}} \mathcal{V} (\bm s)$. Then, for this generic operator, we can prove the following.
\begin{theorem}[Contraction]\label{theo:contraction}
For $\beta_{\text{op}} \in \mathbb R$ and $\beta_{\text{pl}} \in \mathbb R$, the operator $\mathcal{B}$ is an $L_\infty$-norm contraction map $\| \mathcal{B} \mathcal{V} - \mathcal{B} \mathcal{\bar{V}} \|_\infty \le \gamma \| \mathcal{V} - \mathcal{\bar{V}} \|_\infty$, where $\mathcal{V}$ and $\mathcal{\bar{V}}$ are two arbitrary free energy vectors and $\gamma$ is the discount factor.
\end{theorem}
Note that our reward is policy dependent (in the information cost) and, therefore, Theorem~\ref{theo:contraction} is not a direct consequence of known results \cite{littman1996generalized}, which assume that these rewards are policy independent. Using the above and the Banach's fixed point theorem~\cite{puterman1994markov}, we obtain the following corollary.
\begin{corollary}[Unique fixed point]\label{col:unique_fixed_point}
The contraction mapping $\mathcal{B}$ exhibits a unique fixed-point $\mathcal{V}^{\star}$ such that $\mathcal{B}\mathcal{V}^{\star} = \mathcal{V}^{\star}$.
\end{corollary}
Due to Lemma~\ref{lem:equality_operators}, Theorem~\ref{theo:contraction} and Corollary~\ref{col:unique_fixed_point}, we arrive at the following.
\begin{corollary}\label{col:optimal_freeenergies_are_equal}
Two-player stochastic games with soft Q-learning have a unique value, i.e. $\mathcal V_{\text{pl}}^\star (s) = \mathcal V_{\text{op}}^\star (s)$.
\end{corollary}
\subsection{Bounded-Optimal Policies}
Corollary~\ref{col:optimal_freeenergies_are_equal} allows us to exploit the fact that there exists one unique value to generate the policies for both agents. With this in mind, we next design an algorithm (similar in spirit to standard Q-Learning) that acquires tuneable policies. We start by defining a state-action value function, in resemblance to the Q-function, as
\begin{align*}
\mathcal{Q}^{\star}(\bm{s},\bm{a}^{\text{pl}},\bm{a}^{\text{op}}) & := \mathcal{R}_{\mathcal{G}}(\bm{s}, \bm{a}^{\text{pl}},\bm{a}^{\text{op}}) + \gamma \mathbb E_{\mathcal{T}_{\mathcal{G}}} \left[ \mathcal{V}^{\star}(\bm{s}^{\prime})\right].
\end{align*}
For action selection, neither the player nor the opponent can directly use $\mathcal Q^\star$ as it depends on the action of the other agent, which is unknown a priori. Instead, it can be shown that agents must first compute the certainty equivalent by marginalising $\mathcal Q^\star$ as
\begin{align*}
&\mathcal{Q}^{\star}_{\text{pl}} (\bm{s}, \bm{a}^{\text{pl}}) := \frac{1}{\beta_{\text{op}}} \log \sum_{\bm{a}^{\text{op}}} \rho_{\text{op}}(\bm{a}^{\text{op}}|\bm{s}) \exp \left(\beta_{\text{op}} \mathcal{Q}^{\star}(\bm{s},\bm{a}^{\text{pl}},\bm{a}^{\text{op}}) \right)\\ \nonumber
&\mathcal{Q}^{\star}_{\text{op}} (\bm{s}, \bm{a}^{\text{op}}) := \frac{1}{\beta_{\text{pl}}} \log \sum_{\bm{a}^{\text{pl}}} \rho_{\text{pl}}(\bm{a}^{\text{pl}}|\bm{s}) \exp \left(\beta_{\text{pl}} \mathcal{Q}^{\star}(\bm{s},\bm{a}^{\text{pl}},\bm{a}^{\text{op}}) \right). \nonumber
\end{align*}
With these definitions and using standard variational calculus, we obtain optimal policies for both the player and the opponent as\footnote{Note that, if we assume that the action space has low cardinality, $\mathcal{Q}^{\star}_{\text{pl}} (\bm{s},\bm{a}^{\text{pl}})$ and $\mathcal{Q}^{\star}_{\text{op}} (\bm{s},\bm{a}^{\text{op}})$ can be computed exactly.
}
\begin{align}\label{eq:player_policy}
\pi^{\star}_{\text{pl}}(\bm{a}^{\text{pl}} |\bm{s}) &= \mathop{\mathrm{argmax}}_{\pi_{\text{pl}}} \mathop{\mathrm{ext}}_{\pi_{\text{op}}} f(\pi_{\text{pl}},\pi_{\text{op}},\bm{s},\mathcal{V}^\star)\nonumber \\
& = \frac{1}{Z_{\text{pl}}(\bm s)} \rho_{\text{pl}}(\bm{a}^{\text{pl}}|\bm{s})\exp\big(\beta_{\text{pl}} \mathcal{Q}^{\star}_{\text{pl}}(\bm{s},\bm{a}^{\text{pl}}) \big) \\ \nonumber
\pi^{\star}_{\text{op}}(\bm{a}^{\text{op}}|\bm{s}) &= \mathop{\mathrm{argext}}_{\pi_{\text{op}}} \max_{\pi_{\text{pl}}} f(\pi_{\text{pl}},\pi_{\text{op}},\bm{s},\mathcal{V}^\star) \nonumber \\
& = \frac{1}{Z_{\text{op}}(\bm s)} \rho_{\text{op}}(\bm{a}^{\text{op}}|\bm{s})\exp\Big( \beta_{\text{op}} \mathcal{Q}^{\star}_{\text{op}}(\bm{s},\bm{a}^{\text{op}})\Big), \nonumber
\end{align}
where $Z_{\text{pl}}(\bm s)$ and $Z_{\text{op}}(\bm s)$ are normalising functions which can be exactly computed when assuming small discrete action spaces.
Hence, $\mathcal V^\star (\bm s)$ can be expressed in closed form by incorporating the optimal policies in Equation~\eqref{eq:optimization_freeenergy_player} giving
\begin{equation}\label{eq:bounded_rational_value}
\mathcal V^\star(\bm s) = \frac{1}{\beta_{\text{pl}}} \log \sum_{\bm{a}^{\text{pl}}} \rho_{\text{pl}}(\bm{a}^{\text{pl}}|\bm{s}) \exp \left(\beta_{\text{pl}} \mathcal{Q}^{\star}_{\text{pl}} (\bm{s},\bm{a}^{\text{pl}}) \right).
\end{equation}
As summarised in Algorithm~\ref{Alg:tabular}, we learn $\mathcal{Q}^{\star}(\bm{s},\bm{a}^{\text{pl}},\bm{a}^{\text{op}})$ by applying the following recursion rule:
\begin{align}
&\mathcal{Q}_{k+1}(\bm{s},\bm{a}^{\text{pl}},\bm{a}^{\text{op}}) = \mathcal{Q}_{k}(\bm{s},\bm{a}^{\text{pl}},\bm{a}^{\text{op}}) \label{eq:q_update} \\
&+ \alpha \big(\mathcal{R}_{\mathcal{G}} (\bm{s},\bm{a}^{\text{pl}},\bm{a}^{\text{op}}) + \gamma \mathcal{V}_{k}(\bm{s}^{\prime}) - \mathcal{Q}_{k} (\bm{s},\bm{a}^{\text{pl}},\bm{a}^{\text{op}}) \big). \nonumber
\end{align}
Here, $\alpha$ is the learning rate, $k$ the learning step, and $\mathcal{V}_{k}(\bm{s}^{\prime})$ is computed as in Equation~\eqref{eq:bounded_rational_value} using the current $\mathcal Q_k$ estimate.
\begin{algorithm}\caption{Two-Player Soft Q-Learning}
\begin{algorithmic}[1]
\STATE Given $\rho_{\text{pl}}$, $\rho_{\text{op}}$, $\beta_{\text{pl}}$, $\beta_{\text{op}}$, $\mathcal A$, $\mathcal S$ and learning rate $\alpha$
\STATE $\mathcal{Q} (\bm s, \bm a^{\text{pl}}, \bm a^{\text{op}}) \gets 0$
\WHILE {not converged}
\STATE Collect transition $\big(\bm s_t, \bm a^{\text{pl}}_t, \bm a^{\text{op}}_t, \mathcal{R}_{\text{t}}, \bm{s'}_t \big) $, where $\bm{a}^{\text{pl}} \sim \pi_{\text{pl}}$, $\bm{a}^{\text{op}} \sim \pi_{\text{op}}$ and $\mathcal R_t$ is the reward at time $t$.
\STATE Update $\mathcal Q$ according to Equation~\eqref{eq:q_update}
\ENDWHILE
\STATE {\bf return} $\mathcal{Q} (\bm s, \bm a^{\text{pl}}, \bm a^{\text{op}})$
\end{algorithmic}
\label{Alg:tabular}
\end{algorithm}
\begin{figure*}[t]
\centering
\subfigure[High Rationality]{
\label{fig:HighRation}
\includegraphics[height=0.18\textwidth,width=0.35\textwidth, trim={0 0 0 0}]{exp2_high_beta1New.png}
}
\hfill\hspace{-5.0em}\hfill
\subfigure[Low Rationality]{
\label{fig:LowRation}
\includegraphics[height=0.18\textwidth,width=0.41\textwidth]{exp2_low_beta1New.png}
}
\hfill\hspace{-3.1em}
\subfigure[Broad Range]{
\label{fig:HeatMap}
\includegraphics[height=0.18\textwidth,width=0.20\textwidth]{exp2_matrix.png}
}
\hfill
\vspace{-1.2em}
\caption{Evolution of reward and Bellman error during training for different $\beta_\text{pl}$ and $ \beta_\text{op}$. We vary $\beta_\text{op}$ while fixing $\beta_\text{pl}=20$ in panels (a), and $\beta_\text{pl} = 5.0 $ in panels (b). The heat map in (c) visualises these rewards for a broader range of parameters. These results confirm that our approach can modulate performance.}
\vspace{-.6em}
\end{figure*}
\section{Real-World Considerations} \label{sec:real_world}
Two restrictions limit the applicability of our algorithm to real-world scenarios. First, Algorithm~\ref{Alg:tabular} implicitly assumes the knowledge of the opponent's parameter $\beta_{\text{op}}$. Obtaining $\beta_{\text{op}}$ in real-world settings can prove difficult. Second, our algorithm has been developed for low-dimensional state representations. Clearly, this restricts its applicability to high-dimensional states that are typical to computer games.
To overcome these issues, we next develop an online maximum likelihood procedure to infer $\beta_\text{op}$ from data gathered through the interaction with the opponent, and then generalise Algorithm~\ref{Alg:tabular} to high-dimensional representations by proposing a deep learning architecture.
\subsection{Estimating $\beta_\text{op}$ \& Game-Balancing}\label{Sec:ML}
Rather than assuming access to the opponents rationality parameter, we next devise a maximum likelihood estimate that allows the agent to infer (in an online fashion) about $\beta_{\text{op}}$ and consequently, about the real policy of the opponent (through Equation~\eqref{eq:player_policy}).
Contrary to current SG techniques that attempt to approximate the opponent's policy directly, our method allows to reason about the opponent by only approximating a one dimensional parameter, i.e., $\beta_{\text{op}}$ in Equation~\eqref{eq:player_policy}\footnote{Please note that similar to the previous section we assume the opponent's reference policy $\rho_\text{op}$ to be uniform. This, however, does not impose a strong restriction since having a uniform reference policy enables enough flexibility to model various degrees of the opponent's performances (see Section~\ref{Sec:Experiments}).
}. \\
\textbf{Estimating $\beta_{\text{op}}$:} We frame the problem of estimating $\beta_{\text{op}}$ as a one of online maximum likelihood estimation. Namely, we assume that the player interacts in $R$ rounds with the opponent. At each round, $j$, the player gathers a dataset of the form $\mathcal{D}^{(j)} = \left\{\bm{s}^{(j)}_{i},\bm{a}_{i}^{(j),\text{pl}},\bm{a}_{i}^{(j),\text{op}}\right\}_{i=1}^{m^{(j)}}$ with $m^{(j)}$ denoting the total number of sampled transitions during round $j$. Given $\mathcal{D}^{(j)}$, the agent estimates its knowledge of the opponent's model i.e., $\beta_{\text{op}}$ by solving the following problem\footnote{Please note that this problem can be easily solved using stochastic gradient descent.}
\begin{equation*}
\max_{\beta_{\text{op}}} \log \textrm{Pr}\left(\mathcal{D}^{(j)}\right) := \max_{\beta_{\text{op}}} \sum_{i=1}^{m^{(j)}} \log \pi_{\text{op}}^{\star}\left(\bm{a}_{i}^{(j),\text{op}}|\bm{s}_{i}^{(j)}\right),
\end{equation*}
where $\pi_{\text{op}}^{\star}\left(\bm{a}_{i}^{(j),\text{op}}|\bm{s}_{i}^{(j)}\right)$ is defined in Equation~\eqref{eq:player_policy}. As rounds progress, the agent should learn to improve its estimate of $\beta_{\text{op}}$. Such an improvement is quantified, in terms of regret\footnote{Regret is a standard notion to quantify the performance of an online learning algorithm. Regret measures the performance of the agent with respect to an adversary that has access to all information upfront. }, in the following theorem for both a fixed and a time-varying opponent.
\begin{theorem}
After $R$ rounds, the average static-regret for estimating $\beta_{\text{op}}$ vanishes as:
\begin{equation}
\label{EQ:Static}
\sum_{j=1}^{R} \mathcal{L}_{j}(\beta^{(j)}_{\text{op}}) - \min_{u} \Big[\sum_{j=1}^{R}\mathcal{L}_{j}(u) \Big] \approx \mathcal{O}(\sqrt{R})
\end{equation}
For a time-varying opponent, the dynamic regret bound dictates:
\begin{align*}
\sum_{j=1}^{R} \mathcal{L}_{j}(\beta^{(j)}_{\text{op}}) - \sum_{j=1}^{R}\min_{u_{j}}\mathcal{L}_{j}(u_{j}) &\approx \mathcal{O}\Bigg(\sqrt{R} \\
&\left(1 + \sum_{j=1}^{R-1}||u_{j+1}^{\star} - u_{j}^{\star}||_{2}^{2}\right)\Bigg),
\end{align*}
with $\mathcal{L}_{j}(\cdot)$ denoting the negative of the log-likelihood and $u_{j}^{\star} = \arg\min_{u} \mathcal{L}_{j}(u)$.
\end{theorem}
From the above theorem we conclude that against a fixed-opponent our method guarantees correct approximation of $\beta_{\text{op}}$. This is true since the average regret, $\mathcal{O}(\sqrt{R})/R$, vanishes as $R\rightarrow \infty$. When it comes to a dynamic opponent, however, it is clear that our bound depends on how the value of the opponents multiplier parameter (in other words its policy) vary with in terms of rounds. In case these variations are bounded in number, we can still guarantee vanishing regrets. If not, the regret bound can grow arbitrarily large since $\sum_{j=1}^{R-1}||u_{j+1}^{\star} - u_{j}^{\star}||_{2}^{2}$ can introduce a factor $R$.
\textbf{Game Balancing:} Now that we have a way to learn $\mathcal Q^\star$ and estimate $\beta_\text{op}$ simultaneously, we could balance the game using the estimate of $\beta_\text{op}$ to adjust the player's parameter $\beta_\text{pl}$. A simple heuristic that proved successful in our experiments was to simply set $\beta_{\text{pl}} = |\beta_\text{op} | + \Delta$, where $\Delta$ denotes an additional performance-level the player can achieve. Setting $\Delta = 0$ would correspond to agents with the same KL constraints, whereas setting $\Delta > 0$ would imply a stronger player with a softer KL constraint (see Section~\ref{Sec:ExpTwo}).
\subsection{Deep Two-Player Soft Q-Learning}\label{Sec:Deep}
When tackling higher dimensional problems, one has to rely on function approximators to estimate the Q-function, or in our case, the function $\mathcal{Q}(\bm{s},\bm{a}^{\text{pl}},\bm{a}^{\text{op}})$. We borrow two ideas from deep Q-networks~\cite{mnih2015human} that allow us to stabilise learning with high-dimensional representations for our SG setting. First, we use the notion of a replay memory to store the following transitions $(\bm{s},\bm{a}^{\text{pl}},\bm{a}^{\text{op}},\bm{s}^{\prime},\mathcal{R}_{\mathcal{G}}(\cdot))$ and, second, we use a target network denoted by $\mathcal{Q}(\bm{s},\bm{a}^{\text{pl}},\bm{a}^{\text{op}};\bm{\theta}_{i}^{-})$ to handle non-stationarity of the objective. We learn $\mathcal{Q}(\bm{s},\bm{a}^{\text{pl}},\bm{a}^{\text{op}};\bm{\theta}_{i})$, by using a neural network that receives $\bm s$ as input and outputs a matrix of $\mathcal Q$-values for each combination of the agents' actions. The loss function that we seek to minimise is $\mathcal{L}(\bm{\theta}_{i}) = \mathbb{E} \big[\left(\mathcal{R}_{\mathcal{G}}(\bm{s},\bm{a}^{\text{pl}},\bm{a}^{\text{op}})+ \gamma \mathcal{V}(\bm{s};\bm{\theta}_{i}^{-}) - \mathcal{Q}(\bm{s},\bm{a}^{\text{pl}},\bm{a}^{\text{op}};\bm{\theta}_{i})\right)^{2}
\big]$
with the expectation taken over the distribution of transitions sampled from the replay memory, and $\mathcal{V}(\bm{s};\bm{\theta}_{i}^{-})$ computed as in Equation~\eqref{eq:bounded_rational_value}. Clearly, the above optimisation problem is similar to standard DQNs with the difference that error is measured between \emph{soft Q-values}.
\section{Experiments}\label{Sec:Experiments}
We consider two cases in our experiments. The first assumes a low-dimensional setting, while the second targets the high-dimensional game of Pong. In both cases we consider full and no control of the opponent. Full control will allow us to validate our intuitions of tuneable behaviour, while the second sheds-the-light on the game balancing capabilities of Section~\ref{sec:real_world}.
\subsection{Low-dimensional Experiments}
\textbf{The Setup:} We validate Algorithm~\ref{Alg:tabular} on a 5 $\times$ 6 grid-world, where we consider two agents interacting. Each can choose an action from $\mathcal{A} = \{\text{left},\text{right},\text{up}, \text{down}, \text{pick-up}\}$. The first four actions are primitive movements, while the last corresponds to picking-up an object when possible. The reward of the first player is set to $-0.02$ for any movement and to $+1$ for picking up the object located in cell (2,6).
The setting described in this paper allows for a range of games that can be continuously varied between cooperative and defective games depending on the choice of $\beta_{\text{op}}$ -- a setting not allowed by any of the current techniques to stochastic games. In other words, the goal of the opponent, now, depends on the choice of $\beta_{\text{op}}$. Namely, for positive values of $\beta_{\text{op}}$, the opponent is collaborative, whereas for negative $\beta_{\text{op}}$ it is adversarial. $\beta_{\text{op}}$ values in between correspond to tuneable performance varying between the above two extremes.
We demonstrate adversarial behaviour by allowing agents to block each other either when trying to reach the same cell, or when attempting to transition to a cell previously occupied by the other agent. In such cases the respective agent remains in its current position. Given the determinism of the environment, a perfectly rational adversarial opponent can always impede the player to reach the goal. However, due to the KL constraints the opponent's policy becomes ``less'' aggressive, allowing the player to exploit the opponent's mistakes and arrive to the goal. For all experiments we used a high learning rate of $\alpha = 0.5$\footnote{A deterministic environment transitions allows for a large learning rate.}.
\textbf{Tuning the Player's Performance:} To validate tuneablity, we assess the performance of the player when reaching convergence while varying $\beta_{\text{pl}}$ and $\beta_{\text{op}}$. In the first set of experiments, we fixed $\beta_{\text{pl}} =20$ and varied $\beta_{\text{op}} = \{-20, -15, -10, -5, 0, 5, 10, 15, 20\}$. We expect that the player obtains high reward for collaborative opponents ($\beta_{\text{op}}>0$) or highly sub-optimal adversarial opponents ($\beta_{\text{op}} \approx 0$), and low rewards for strong adversarial opponents ($\beta_{\text{op}} \ll 0$). Indeed, the results shown in Figure~\ref{fig:HighRation} confirm these intuitions.
For a broader spectrum of analysis, we lower $\beta_{\text{pl}}$ from $20$ to $5$ and re-run the same experiments. Results in Figure~{\ref{fig:LowRation}} reaffirm the previous conclusions. Here, however, the player attains slightly lower rewards as $\beta_\text{pl}$ is decremented. Finally, in Figure~\ref{fig:HeatMap} we plot the reward attained after convergence for a broad range of parameter values. We clearly see the effect of the modulation in both parameters on the resultant reward. The best reward is achieved when both parameters have positive high values, and the least reward for the lowest values. \\
\textbf{Estimating $\beta_\text{op}$:}
The goal of these experiments is to evaluate the correctness of our maximum likelihood estimate (Section~\ref{Sec:ML}) of $\beta_{\text{op}}$. To conduct these experiments, we fixed $\beta_{\text{pl}} = 10$ and generated data with $\beta^{\star}_{\text{op}} = 5$ and $\beta^{\star}_{\text{op}} = -10$ that are unknown to the player. At each interaction with the environment, we updated $\mathcal{V}(\cdot)$ according to Algorithm~\ref{Alg:tabular} and $\beta_{\text{op}}$ using a gradient step in the maximum likelihood objective. Results reported in Figure~\ref{fig:exp4_learning_beta}, clearly demonstrate that our extension to estimate $\beta_{\text{op}}$ is successful\footnote{In the case where the opponent would have an arbitrary policy $\pi_a$ then $\beta_{\text{op}}$would converge to a value that attempts to make $\pi_{\text{op},\beta_{\text{op}}}$ as close as possible to $\pi_a$.}.
\subsection{High-dimensional Experiments}\label{Sec:ExpTwo}
We repeat the experiments above but now considering our deep learning architecture of Section~\ref{Sec:Deep} on the game of Pong.
\textbf{The Setup:}
We use the game Pong from the Roboschool package\footnote{https://github.com/openai/roboschool}. The state space is 13-dimensional i.e., x-y positions and x-y- velocities for both agents and the ball, and an additional dimension for time. We modified the action space to consist of $ |\mathcal A | = 9$ actions where the set corresponds to $\mathcal A = \left\lbrace \text{left}, \text{stay}, \text{right} \right\rbrace \times \left\lbrace \text{up}, \text{stay}, \text{down} \right\rbrace$. We also modified the reward function to make it compatible with zero-sum games in such a way that if the player scores, the reward $\mathcal R_{\mathcal G}$ is set to $+1$, whereas if the opponent scores, to $-1$. The networks that represent soft Q-values, $\mathcal{Q}(\bm{s},\bm{a}^{\text{pl}}, \bm{a}^{\text{op}})$, are multilayer perceptrons composed of two hidden layers, each with $100$ units, and an a matrix output layer composed of $| \mathcal A \times \mathcal A | = 81$ units ($9\times 9$ actions). Here, each unit denotes a particular combination of $\bm{a}^{\text{pl}} \in \mathcal A$ and $\bm{a}^{\text{op}} \in \mathcal A$. After each hidden layer, we introduce a ReLU non-linearity. We used a learning rate of $10^{-4}$, the ADAM optimizer, a batch size of $32$, and updated the target every $30000$ training steps. \\
\textbf{Tuning the Player's Performance:} In this experiment, we demonstrate successful tuneable performance. Figure~\ref{fig:PongOne} shows that for a highly adversarial opponent (i.e., $\beta_{\text{op}} = -50$) the player ($\beta_\text{pl} = 20$) acquired negative rewards, whereas for a weak opponent or even collaborative, the player obtained high reward. Game-play videos can be found at https://sites.google.com/site/submission3591/.
\begin{figure}[t]
\centering
\includegraphics[width = 0.95\columnwidth, height=3cm]{exp4_learning_betaNew.png}
\caption{Reward, Bellman error and $\beta_{\text{op}}$ estimate over episodes. We see that the maximum likelihood estimator is capable of discovering the correct value for the red ($\beta_\text{op}^\star = -10$) and blue ($\beta_\text{op}^\star = 5$) opponents, from three different initial estimates of $\beta_{\text{op}}$.}
\label{fig:exp4_learning_beta}
\end{figure}
\begin{figure}[t]
\centering
\includegraphics[scale=0.105]{pong_tuning.png}
\caption{Results on Pong showing player's ($\beta_\text{pl} = 20$) performance depending on $\beta_\text{op}$. We see that lower values of $\beta_{\text{op}}$ yield more aggressive opponents, depicting lower reward for the player.}
\label{fig:PongOne}
\end{figure}
\begin{figure}[h!]
\centering
\includegraphics[width=0.9\columnwidth]{game_balancing_v3.png}
\caption{Player's performance depending on our game balancing scheme (see Section~\ref{Sec:ML}). We see that without balancing, the (fixed) player is much stronger than the opponent, whereas we obtain different performances depending on the balance parameter $\Delta$. On the right, we show the parameter $\beta_\text{pl}$ adapted online through the current $\hat \beta_\text{op}$ estimate. }\vspace{-0.5cm}
\label{fig:PongTwo}
\end{figure}
\textbf{Estimating $\beta_\text{op}$ and game balancing:} Finally, we assess the performance of the maximum likelihood estimator applied to game balancing using neural networks. We pre-trained a policy for the opponent with parameters $\beta_{\text{pl}}^\star = 50.0$ and $\beta_{\text{op}} = -20.0$, thus the player being stronger than the opponent (see blue line in Figure~\ref{fig:PongTwo}). In Figure~\ref{fig:PongTwo}, we demonstrate game balancing using Section~\ref{Sec:ML}. In particular, we are able to vary the player's performance by adapting (online) $\beta_\text{pl}$. For instance, if we set $\beta_\text{pl}$ close to $\beta_\text{op}$ we observe that the player is as strong as the opponent attaining $0$ reward, see green line.
\section{Conclusion}
We extended two-player stochastic games to agents with KL constraints. We evaluated our method theoretically and empirically in both small and high-dimensional state spaces.
The most interesting direction for future work is to scale our method to a large number of interacting agents by extending the approach in~\cite{mguni2018}
\bibliographystyle{named}
| {
"redpajama_set_name": "RedPajamaArXiv"
} | 3,105 |
\subsection{Existing Backdoor Attacks}
\begin{figure}[!t]
\centering
\subfigure[]{
\label{fig:motivation_backdoor_attacks_a}
\includegraphics[width=0.95\linewidth]{figs/motivation_backdoor_attacks_a.pdf}}
\subfigure[]{
\label{fig:motivation_backdoor_attacks_b}
\includegraphics[width=0.95\linewidth]{figs/motivation_backdoor_attacks_b.pdf}}
\vspace{-1ex}
\caption{The poisoning images of existing backdoor attacks. (a) The example poisoning images from \badnet~\cite{gu2017badnets}, Blend~\cite{chen2017targeted}, TrojanNN~\cite{liu2018trojaning}, Clean Label~\cite{turner2018clean}, Dynamic Backdoor~\cite{salem2020dynamic}, \iab~\cite{nguyen2020input}, Latent Backdoor~\cite{yao2019latent}, and Composite Backdoor~\cite{lin2020composite}. Most of the images are directly copied from the original papers except for \badnet and \iab. As we can observe from the images, all these attacks are visually identifiable to a large extent. (b) The example poisoning images from \sig~\cite{barni2019new} and \refool~\cite{liu2020reflection}. Each column corresponds to one attack. Although the poisoning images are more natural, they are still detectable by humans due to their wave patterns in the background and the abnormal reflective phenomenon, respectively.}
\label{fig:motivation_backdoor_attacks}
\end{figure}
As a typical and pioneering backdoor attack, \badnet~\cite{gu2017badnets} proposes to poison some training data with predefined triggers (e.g., a square in Figure~\ref{fig:motivation_backdoor_attacks_a}) for a target label. Then, it changes the labels of the poisoning images to the target label, and trains the CNN model with the poisoning data. For a test input stamped with the trigger, no matter what the real label is, the trained model will predict the test input as the target label.
Later backdoor attacks mainly focus on making the attacks more effective against existing backdoor defenses. Typical strategies include generating different triggers for different inputs~\cite{salem2020dynamic,nguyen2020input} and reusing existing objects in the target label as triggers~\cite{lin2020composite}.
\hide{For example, Nguyen and Tran~\cite{nguyen2020input} propose an input-aware backdoor attack \iab via generating the triggers conditioned on the input image. They use an encoder-decoder architecture with an additional diversity loss to enforce different triggers for different images. Their experimental evaluations show that the proposed input-aware attack could fool the existing backdoor defenses including \nc~\cite{wang2019neural}, \strip~\cite{gao2019strip}, Fine-Pruning~\cite{liu2018fine}, and Mode Connectivity~\cite{zhao2020bridging}.}
Recently, several backdoor attacks pay special attention to the fidelity aspect, by dispersing the trigger to a much larger area~\cite{barni2019new,liu2020reflection}. Consequently, the triggers are thus less visible to humans (see Figure~\ref{fig:motivation_backdoor_attacks_b} for some examples) and less detectable to existing defenses.
For example,
The \sig~\cite{barni2019new} attack transfers the images with superimpose signals (e.g., a ramp signal or a sinusoidal signal), and triggers are contained in the varying background; the \refool~\cite{liu2020reflection} attack defines triggers resembling to the natural reflection phenomenon, and shows that it is resistant to several defenses including Fine-pruning~\cite{liu2018fine} and \nc~\cite{wang2019neural}.
{\em Limitations: the existing backdoor attacks are still largely visible and lack fidelity}.
While the existing backdoor attacks perform relatively well on the efficacy and specificity aspects, they tend to fall short in terms of satisfy the fidelity requirement. Some poisoning images of the above attacks are illustrated in Figure~\ref{fig:motivation_backdoor_attacks}. Figure~\ref{fig:motivation_backdoor_attacks_a} shows the poisoning images of the backdoor attacks whose triggers are concentrated in a small area. As we can see, all the triggers are visually identifiable to a large extent, making the poisoning data easily detectable by humans.
For \sig and \refool as shown in Figure~\ref{fig:motivation_backdoor_attacks_b}, although the triggers are dispersed to a larger area and thus more negligible compared to previous attacks, they are still generally detectable by humans (e.g., the wave pattern in the background or the abnormal reflective phenomenon). Based on the low fidelity results of existing backdoor attacks, we speculate that the fundamental reason lies in that they directly inject or search for triggers in the spatial domain of an image. Therefore,
the triggers usually need to be sufficiently prominent, and thus potentially visible, so as to make CNN models recognize and remember their features.
\subsection{Our Key Insight}
In this work, we propose to launch the backdoor attack in the frequency domain. Our key insights are as follows.
\begin{itemize}
\item {\em First, attacks in the frequency domain can result in poisoning images with high fidelity}. On the one hand, existing backdoor attacks have shown that dispersing the trigger to the entire image in the spatial domain could improve the image fidelity and make the trigger less visible and more robust against existing defenses. On the other hand, given an image, a small perturbation in its frequency domain usually corresponds to tiny perturbations of a relatively large area in the spatial domain.
\item {\em Second, triggers in the frequency domain are recognizable and learnable by CNNs}. To implant an effective backdoor, we need to ensure that the trigger is learnable and can be memorized by CNNs, especially considering the fact that the trigger energy from frequency domain is dispersed throughout the entire image. To this end, it was recently observed that CNNs can recognize and memorize the features in the frequency domain of images due to the convolution operator~\cite{yin2019fourier,xu2019training,xu2019frequency,wang2020high}.
\end{itemize}
Combining the above two insights together, we could inject a trigger (e.g., a small perturbation on a high frequency) from the frequency domain, which is nearly invisible in the spatial domain but still learnable by CNNs.
An example of our trigger is shown in Figure~\ref{fig:motivation_frequency2spatial}.
We can visually observe \hide{from Figure~\ref{fig:motivation_frequency2spatial} (and Figure~\ref{fig:motivation_backdoor_attacks_b} as well)} that the poisoning images by our method retain very high perceptual similarity to their original images. Additionally, we can observe from the first row of Figure~\ref{fig:motivation_frequency2spatial} that, the injected trigger is nearly invisible to humans.
To further show how the trigger looks like, we multiply each pixel value of the trigger by a factor and show the results in the second row of the figure. We can observe that the trigger is scattered over the entire image.
\begin{figure}[t]
\centering
\includegraphics[width=0.75\linewidth]{figs/frequency2spatial.pdf}
\caption{An illustration of the trigger of \tool. The trigger is scattered over the entire image and nearly negligible to the HVS. To better show how the trigger looks like, we multiply each pixel value of the trigger with a given factor in the second row.}
\label{fig:motivation_frequency2spatial}
\end{figure}
\begin{figure*}[t]
\centering
\includegraphics[width=0.85\linewidth]{figs/overview.pdf}
\vspace{-1ex}
\caption{The overview of the proposed backdoor attack \tool. After transforming the images to YUV channels and further to frequency domain, it places the trigger in the frequency domain and then transforms the images back to the spatial domain.}
\label{fig:design_pipeline}
\end{figure*}
\subsection{Threat Model}
We assume the adversary can access part of the training data. Such an assumption is the same with previous attacks~\cite{gu2017badnets,salem2020dynamic} and is practical when the training process is outsourced or the users have collected some training data from open repositories polluted by the adversary.
The adversary does not necessarily have the access to the parameters of the CNN model.
The adversary's goal is to make the backdoored model misclassify inputs that contain triggers to the target label, while behaving normally for benign inputs.
\subsection{Overview}
Figure~\ref{fig:design_pipeline} shows the poisoning process of the proposed backdoor attack \tool. Specifically, it consists of the following five steps.
{\em Step 1: color channel transform from RGB to YUV}. Given an input RGB image, we first convert it to YUV channels.
The reason is that YUV channels contain the bandwidth for chrominance components (i.e., UV channels) that are less sensitive to the HVS. Therefore, injecting triggers in the chrominance components could be more negligible to prevent human perception.
{\em Step 2: discrete cosine transform from spatial domain to frequency domain}.
We next transform the UV channels of the image from the spatial domain to the frequency domain via discrete cosine transform (DCT). Here, a small perturbation on the frequency domain may correspond to a large area in the spatial domain.
{\em Step 3: trigger generation in the frequency domain}. \tool chooses a {\em frequency band} with a fixed magnitude in the frequency domain to serve as the trigger.
In particular, we consider trigger generation strategies related to what frequency is the trigger placed on and what is the magnitude of the trigger.
{\em Step 4: inverse discrete cosine transform from frequency domain to spatial domain}. After the frequency trigger is generated, we apply inverse DCT to obtain the poisoning image in the spatial domain denoted by YUV channels.
{\em Step 5: color channel transform from YUV to RGB}. Finally, since CNN models are mainly trained on the RGB color space, we transform the YUV channels back to the RGB channels.
\hide{Finally, we follow the existing backdoor attacks by poisoning a small subset of images and changing the label of the poisoning images to the target label. We then use the modified training set to train the CNN model.}
Note that, once the trigger is defined in the frequency domain, it corresponds to fixed pixels (with fixed values) in the spatial domain. Therefore, we can use these pixels as the trigger to superimpose the original pixels to poison an image, without the need of repeatedly computing the above transforms. This means that our attack can be used in real-time scenarios. In the physical world, we can directly superimpose the trigger pixels into test images by, e.g., pasting a near-transparent film containing only trigger pixels.
\subsection{Color Channel Transform}
RGB is the most commonly used color space for computer screens and CNN models. The contributions of the three channels are equal to the visual perception of the image. In contrast, the YUV space divides a color image into luminance components (i.e., Y channel) and chrominance components (i.e., U and V channels), and human visual perception is less sensitive to the latter.
Therefore, although we can directly inject triggers in the RGB space, we choose to do so in the UV channels for better image fidelity. Additionally, perturbations in UV channels could affect all the three RGB channels, making CNNs trained on RGB channels easier to recognize their features. We will study different design choices here in the experimental evaluations. The transform equations are shown in the appendix (Appendix~\ref{app:yuv}) for completeness.
\begin{figure}[t]
\centering
\includegraphics[width=0.55\linewidth]{figs/frequency_map.pdf}
\caption{Frequency map of DCT. Each frequency band is indicated by the 2-D frequency index ($k_1, k_2$). The frequency goes from low to high along the diagonal direction from top left to bottom right.}
\label{fig:design_frequency_map}
\end{figure}
\subsection{Discrete Cosine Transform}
Given a channel that we aim to inject the trigger, we next transform the channel from spatial domain to frequency domain. In particular, we choose to use DCT which expresses an image as a set of cosine functions oscillating at different frequencies. Compared with discrete Fourier transform (DFT), DCT is better in terms of energy concentration and is widely used in processing images.
An example frequency map of DCT is shown in Figure~\ref{fig:design_frequency_map}, which contains $32 \times 32$ {frequency bands} transformed from an image of size $32 \times 32$.
After the image is transformed by DCT, most of its energy is concentrated in the low-frequency component (i.e., in the upper left corner of the frequency map indicated by dark brown), and the high-frequency component is in the bottom right corner (indicated by dark blue). We name the areas close to the white diagonal (from the bottom left to the top right) as the mid-frequency component.
In the following, we use {\em index $(k_1, k_2)$} to indicate the frequency band as shown in Figure~\ref{fig:design_frequency_map}.
In this work, we use the 2-D Type-II DCT transform~\cite{ahmed1974discrete} as follows,
\begin{eqnarray}\label{eq:DCT}
X(k_1, k_2) &=& \sum_{n_1=0}^{N_1-1}\sum_{n_2=0}^{N_2-1}x(n_1,n_2)c_1(n_1,k_1)c_2(n_2,k_2), \nonumber\\
c_i(n_i,k_i)&=& \widetilde{c}_i(k_i)\cos(\frac{\pi (2n_i+1)k_i}{2N_i}), \nonumber\\%\;\;\;\; 0 \leq n_i, k_i \leq N_i-1 i=1,2
\widetilde{c}_i(k_i) &=&
\begin{cases}
\frac{1}{\sqrt{N_i}}& k_i=0\\
\frac{2}{\sqrt{N_i}}& k_i \neq 0
\end{cases} \;\; i=1, 2,
\end{eqnarray}
which transforms the size $N_1 \times N_2$ input image in spatial domain to its frequency domain with the same size. Here, $(k_1, k_2)$ stands for the index as shown in Figure~\ref{fig:design_frequency_map}, $k_1/k_2 \in \{0, 1, \dots, N_1/N_2\}$, $X(k_1, k_2)$ is the frequency magnitude at $(k_1, k_2)$, and $x(n_1, n_2)$ is the pixel value in position $(n_1, n_2)$ of the image in spatial domain. To transform the image from frequency domain back to spatial domain, we can use the inverse DCT transform~\cite{rao2014discrete} whose equations are similar to Eq.~\eqref{eq:DCT} and thus omitted for brevity.
In practice, we divide the images into a set of disjoint {\em blocks} and perform DCT on each block. Blocks that are too large would make the computation time-consuming, and too small could cause serious distortion to the image. We set $N1 = N2 = 32$ in this work. For an image whose size is larger than $32 \times 32$, we poison all the blocks by default as this strategy still results in high-fidelity images. Other design choices such as choosing to poison smaller blocks or fewer blocks are shown in Appendix~\ref{app:moreexp}.
\subsection{Trigger Generation}\label{sec:trigger_generation}
Trigger generation involves the following two orthogonal dimensions, i.e., {\em trigger frequency} and {\em trigger magnitude}.
\eat{
\begin{figure}[t]
\begin{center}
\includegraphics[width=0.9\linewidth]{figs/design_strategy.pdf}
\end{center}
\caption{Trigger Frequency Placement Strategy}
\label{fig:design_strategy}
\end{figure}
}
\begin{figure*}[t]
\centering
\includegraphics[width=0.92\linewidth]{figs/design_attack_image2.pdf}
\vspace{-1ex}
\caption{Poisoning images by our \tool attack. Mix-frequency mixes triggers in both mid- and high-frequency components. We can observe that when the triggers reside in the high-frequency and mid-frequency components with moderate magnitude, the poisoning images are difficult to visually detect.
\label{fig:design_attack_image}
\end{figure*}
\hide{
{\em \underline{Trigger channel}}. As mentioned above, we choose to inject triggers into UV channels, and we will study other choices in the experimental evaluations. Intuitively, selecting more channels may make it easier for the CNN model to learn the trigger features and thus increase the attack success rate. In contrast, choosing fewer channels can improve the fidelity aspect.
{\em \underline{Trigger area}}. Given the channel, the next step is to choose the areas that we aim to inject the trigger. As mentioned above, we divide the image into $32 \times 32$ blocks and poison all the blocks by default as this strategy still results in high-fidelity images. Choosing to poison smaller blocks or fewer blocks would result in even higher fidelity. Some of the results are shown in Appendix~\ref{app:blocknum}.
}
{\em {Trigger frequency}}. First, we need to decide the specific frequency band that we aim to place the trigger on.
On the one hand, placing the trigger at higher frequency would make the poisoning image less sensitive to human perception, but such triggers could be erased by low-pass filters. On the other hand, triggers at lower frequency is robust against low-pass filters but could cause visual abnormalities if the trigger magnitude is too large. In this work, we choose a more robust {\em mix mode}, i.e., placing one trigger at mid frequency and one at high frequency for each block.
{\em {Trigger magnitude}}. In general, larger magnitude may be easier for CNNs to learn and also robust against some low-pass filters; however, it also comes at a risk of being detected by human perception or existing backdoor defenses. Smaller magnitude may bypass human perception and existing defenses, but being attenuated by the low-pass filters. We evaluate different choices in the experiment and choose a moderate magnitude depending on the specific datasets.
Figure~\ref{fig:design_attack_image} shows the poisoning images with different trigger frequencies and trigger magnitudes. All the images are stamped with triggers in UV channels of each block.
The original clean images are in the first column, and the rest columns contain the poisoning images. The fifth column stands for our default setting, with triggers in mix mode (indexed by $(15, 15)$ and $(31, 31)$) of magnitude 50.
We can observe that when the triggers reside in either mid-frequency or high-frequency bands with moderate magnitude (e.g., no more than 100), the poisoning images are perceptually similar to the corresponding clean images and difficult to visually detect.
\subsection{Experimental Setup}
\input{tables/eval_basic_experiment1}
\subsubsection{Tasks, Datasets, and Models}
We conduct experiments on several benchmark tasks/datasets,
with details described below and summarized in Table~\ref{table:eval_summary_of_dataset}.
\begin{itemize}
\item {\em Handwritten digit recognition on MNIST data}~\cite{lecun1998gradient}. The MNIST dataset contains 60,000 training samples and 10,000 test samples of handwritten digits (0 - 9). For this dataset, we train a CNN model with two convolutional layers and two fully-connected layers. The goal is to identify 10 handwritten digits from the grayscale images. Before sending the training data to the model for training, we made padding to resize the image from $28 \times 28$ to $32 \times 32$.
\item {\em Traffic sign recognition on GTSRB data}~\cite{stallkamp2011german}. GTSRB contains 43 different traffic signs simulating the application scenario of autonomous driving. There are 39,209 color training images and 12,630 test images. When processing the GTSRB dataset, we found that these images are very different in illumination. Thus, we followed the instructions\footnote{https://benchmark.ini.rub.de/gtsrb\_dataset.html\#Pre-calculated\_feature} and performed histogram equalization on these images in the HSV color space. We also adjusted these images to the same standard size.
\item {\em Object classification on CIFAR10 data}~\cite{krizhevsky2009learning}. The CIFAR10 dataset contains 60,000 color images of size $32 \times 32$ in 10 different classes. We split it into 50,000 training images and 10,000 test images. For both GTSRB and CIFAR10 images, since they are more complicated compared to the images in MNIST, we train a CNN with six convolutional layers and one fully-connected layer.
\item {\em Object classification on ImageNet data}~\cite{deng2009imagenet}. ImageNet is also an object classficiation dataset but with higher resolution. In particular, we randomly sampled 16 labels in the original ImageNet dataset, and then split the images into 20,567 training images and 1,315 test images.
\item {\em Face recognition on PubFig data}~\cite{krizhevsky2009learning}. PubFig is a real-world dataset consisting of face images of 200 persons collected from the Internet. We use the sampled subset of 60 persons from~\cite{liu2020reflection}. The dataset contains 5,274 training images and 800 test images. For both ImageNet and Pubfig, we resize all the images to size $224 \times 224 \times 3$ and train a ResNet50 model~\cite{he2016deep}.
\end{itemize}
\input{tables/eval_basic_experiment2}
\subsubsection{Evaluation Metrics}
For efficacy and specificity, we measure the {\em attack success rate (ASR)} and the {\em accuracy on benign data (BA)}, respectively. For fidelity, it is still an open problem to measure it. In this work, we mainly consider if human eyes are sensitive to the poisoning images and use metrics {\em peak signal-to-noise ratio (PSNR)}~\cite{huynh2008scope}, {\em structural similarity index (SSIM)}~\cite{wang2004image}, and {\em inception score (IS)}~\cite{salimans2016improved,barratt2018note}.
\begin{itemize}
\item {\em ASR}. ASR defines the percentage of samples in the test set that are incorrectly and successfully classified as the target label after being injected with a trigger. Higher ASR indicates better efficacy.
\item {\em BA}. BA is the accuracy of the backdoored model on the clean test set. If the BA score is close to the accuracy of the clean model on the test set, it means that such an attack has a high specificity.
\item {\em PSNR}. As the name suggests, PSNR measures the ratio between the maximum pixel value of an image and the mean squared error (between clean and poisoning images). A larger PSNR means that the perceptual difference between the two images is smaller.
\item {\em SSIM}. SSIM is an index to measure the similarity of two images. It is calculated based on the luminance and contrast of local patterns. A larger SSIM indicates that the poisoning images are of better quality.
\item {\em IS}. IS is a widely-used metric to measure the perceptual quality of images generated from GANs. \eat{It mainly considers two aspects, i.e., clarity and diversity of the generated images.} It uses features of the InceptionV3 network~\cite{szegedy2016rethinking} trained on ImageNet to mimic human visual perception. We compute the KL divergence between the features, and a smaller IS means better perceptual quality.
\end{itemize}
\subsubsection{Implementations}
For the proposed \tool attack, we implement it with two versions in both PyTorch and Tensorflow 2.0, and the code is available at our project website~\cite{ftrojan}. Our default settings are as follows. For trigger frequency, we place the trigger at frequency bands $(15,15)$ and $(31,31)$ where $(15,15)$ belongs to the mid-frequency component and $(31, 31)$ belongs to the high-frequency component. Based on the size of images, we set the trigger magnitude to 30 for MNIST, CIFAR10, GTSRB, and 50 for ImageNet, PubFig. The injection rate is fixed to 5\% for simplicity. We use the Adam optimizer with learning rate 0.0005 for MNIST and GTSRB, and the RMSprop optimizer with learning rate 0.001 for the rest datasets. The batch size is set to 64. In the following, we use \tool to denote the default setting unless otherwise stated. The target label is set to 8 for all the datasets.
All the experiments were carried out on a server equipped with 256GB RAM, one 20-core Intel i9-10900KF CPU at 3.70GHz and one NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3090 GPU.
\subsection{Attack Performance}
\subsubsection{Overall Performance}
We first evaluate different trigger generation strategies of the proposed \tool attack. The efficacy and specificity results are shown in Table~\ref{table:eval_basic_experiment1}, and the corresponding fidelity results are shown in Table~\ref{table:eval_basic_experiment2}.
For the variants in the table,
`UV', `YUV', and `RGB' indicate injected channels of the trigger,\footnote{The MNIST images are gray-scale and have only one channel. We exclude the results on MNIST in Table~\ref{table:eval_basic_experiment2} and directly inject the trigger into this channel for Table~\ref{table:eval_basic_experiment1}.} and `mid', 'high', and `mix' mean the trigger frequencies. Here, `mix' is our default setting as mentioned above, and frequency bands $(15, 15)$ and $(31, 31)$ are used for `mid' and `high', respectively.
There are several observations from the two tables. First, all the \tool variants are effective, namely, decreasing little on BA and having a high ASR. For example, on average, the default \tool (i.e., `UV+mix') can achieve 98.78\% ASR, while the BA decreases by only 0.56\%.
Second, comparing different trigger frequencies, we can observe that all the three choices are closely effective and trojaning at high frequency tends to have higher fidelity results in general.
Third, although as effective as the default \tool, injecting triggers into YUV channels instead of UV channels results in worse fidelity results as indicated by Table~\ref{table:eval_basic_experiment2} (the fifth row).
Fourth, injecting triggers at RGB channels is less effective than at UV channels, and it also results in lower fidelity (sixth row in Table~\ref{table:eval_basic_experiment2}). This is probably due to that the frequencies are more messy in RGB channels.
\begin{figure}[t]
\centering
\subfigure[GTSRB data]{
\label{fig:eval_performance_vs_IR_GTSRB}
\includegraphics[width=0.48\linewidth]{figs/eval_IR_GTSRB.pdf}}
\vspace{0.1in}
\subfigure[CIFAR10 data]{
\label{fig:eval_performance_vs_IR_CIFAR10}
\includegraphics[width=0.48\linewidth]{figs/eval_IR_CIFAR10.pdf}}
\vspace{-1ex}
\caption{Performance vs. injection rate. \tool can achieve a high ASR when the injection rate is around 0.1\% - 1\%. We fix it to 5\% in this work to ensure high ASR.}
\label{fig:eval_performance_vs_IR}
\end{figure}
\subsubsection{Performance versus Injection Rate}
We next evaluate the effectiveness of \tool when the injection rate of poisoning images in training data varies. We increase the injection rate from 0.01\% to 10\% and show the results in Figure~\ref{fig:eval_performance_vs_IR}. In the following, we mainly report results on GTSRB and CIFAR10 as training on these two datasets is more efficient.
We can observe from the figure that BA does not change significantly when the injection rate is in a wide range. Additionally, when the injection rate is no less than 1\%, \tool can achieve a high ASR for both datasets.
This experiment also shows that different datasets have different sensitivity to the injection rate. For example, injecting 0.1\% poisoning images could already achieve a high ASR on CIFAR10.
\input{tables/eval_frequency_position}
\input{tables/eval_comparison}
\subsubsection{Performance versus Trigger Frequency}
For trigger frequency, we study different frequency indices while keeping the other settings as default. Specifically, we place the trigger on several low-frequency (i.e., (4,4), (8,8), (8,16)), mid-frequency (i.e., (8, 20), (12, 12), (12, 16)), and high-frequency (i.e., (20, 20), (24, 24), (28, 28)) components, and the results are shown in Table~\ref{table:eval_frequency_position}. It can be seen that the backdoor attack is effective when the triggers are placed on mid- and high-frequency components. In this work, we choose a mix mode by default, i.e., triggering one mid-frequency index and one high-frequency index.
\begin{figure}[t]
\centering
\subfigure[GTSRB data]{
\label{fig:eval_magnitude_GTSRB}
\includegraphics[width=0.48\linewidth]{figs/eval_magnitude_GTSRB.pdf}}
\vspace{0.1in}
\subfigure[CIFAR10 data]{
\label{fig:eval_magnitude_CIFAR10}
\includegraphics[width=0.48\linewidth]{figs/eval_magnitude_CIFAR10.pdf}}
\vspace{-1ex}
\caption{Performance vs. trigger magnitude. \tool achieves a high ASR when the frequency magnitude is larger than a certain threshold. We fix the magnitude to 30 for GTSRB and CIFAR10.}
\label{fig:eval_magnitude}
\end{figure}
\subsubsection{Performance versus Trigger Magnitude}
We next explore the effectiveness of \tool w.r.t. the trigger magnitude. We vary the trigger magnitude from 1 to 50, and show the results on GTSRB and CIFAR10 in Figure~\ref{fig:eval_magnitude}.
We can observe that as long as the frequency magnitude is larger than a certain threshold, our backdoor attack will succeed with a high ASR.
Based on our experiments, the poisoning images will not cause identifiable visual abnormalities when the trigger magnitude is no more than 100 in mid- and high-frequency components (e.g., see the images in Figure~\ref{fig:design_attack_image}). To ensure high ASR and robustness against filtering methods such as Gaussian filters, we set trigger magnitude to $30-50$ for different datasets based on the size of the images.
\subsubsection{Comparisons with Existing Attacks}
Here, we compare \tool with existing backdoor attacks including \badnet~\cite{gu2017badnets}, \sig~\cite{barni2019new}, \refool~\cite{liu2020reflection}, and \iab~\cite{nguyen2020input}.
For \badnet, we implement it ourselves and add a $4 \times 4$ white block in the lower right corner as the trigger. For \refool, we use the implementation provided by the authors~\cite{Refool}. For \sig, we use the public implementation in the \nad repository~\cite{NADDefense}. For \iab, we also use its implementation from the authors~\cite{InputAware}.
Since \refool does not provide its implementations on MNIST and \iab does not provide its implementations on ImageNet and PubFig, we
still report the results on GTSRB and CIFAR10 as shown in Table~\ref{table:eval_comparison_experiment}.
We can first observe from the table that our \tool attack achieves higher ASR scores than the competitors on both datasets. The BA scores of \tool are also very close to those of the clean model.
Second, \tool outperforms the competitors for all the three fidelity metrics. Together with the visual results in Figure~\ref{fig:motivation_backdoor_attacks}, we can conclude that the proposed \tool attack is better than the competitors in the fidelity aspect.
\input{tables/eval_clean_label}
\subsubsection{Extending to Clean-Label Setting}
Our attack can also be extended to the clean-label setting, which means that it can directly insert a trigger without changing image labels to make a successful attack. For brevity, we perform the experiment on CIFAR10 and show the results in Table~\ref{tab:eval_clean_label}. Here, we keep the same default setting as the previous change-label setting, except
increasing the trigger magnitude from 30 to 50 as clean-label backdoor attack is more difficult to succeed~\cite{turner2018clean}.
Following~\cite{turner2018clean}, we conduct an adversarial transformation via projected gradient descent~\cite{madry2017towards} before poisoning the image.
The results show that \tool still achieves good efficacy, specificity, and fidelity results under the clean-label setting.
\eat{
\subsubsection{Attack Performance in Transfer Learning}
\input{tables/eval_transfer_learning}
\wt{this section should be removed}
In this experiment, we test if the backdoored model by our attack can mislead the prediction in the transfer learning setting. Specifically, we test if the knowledge of the backdoored ResNet50 model trained on ImageNet can be transferred to the classification task on the Intel Image Classification (IIC) dataset.\footnote{https://datahack.analyticsvidhya.com/} This IIC dataset has six categories, namely, buildings, forest, glacier, mountain, sea, and street. All these lables do not appear in the ImageNet data. There are 14034 images in the training set and 3000 images in the test set. The image size is resized to $224 \times 224$. During transfer learning, we only fine-tune the last layer, and the results are shown in Table~\ref{table:eval_transfer_learning}.
In the table, `clean accuracy' means using the clean model and `backdoored accuracy' means using the backdoored model to transfer knowledge. Observe that the classification accuracy significantly decreases for all the categories when transferring knowledge from the backdoored model.
}
\eat{
\subsubsection{Validation of Frequency Principle}
\begin{figure}[t]
\centering
\subfigure[GTSRB data]{
\label{fig:eval_frequency_principle_GTSRB}
\includegraphics[width=0.7\linewidth]{figs/eval_frequency_principle_GTSRB.pdf}}
\subfigure[CIFAR10 data]{
\label{fig:eval_frequency_principle_CIFAR10}
\includegraphics[width=0.7\linewidth]{figs/eval_frequency_principle_CIFAR10.pdf}}
\caption{The ASR curve against training epochs. CNNs need fewer training epochs to remember mid-frequency triggers than high-frequency triggers.}
\label{fig:eval_frequency_principle}
\end{figure}
\wt{Frequency Principle did not work for 32 x 32 scale, that high converged early than low. This Paragraph will be removed}
Frequency principle~\cite{xu2019frequency} reveals that, during the training process, CNNs not only learn the frequency-domain features but gradually learn them from low-frequency to high-frequency. In this experiment, we verify this principle by launching two backdoor attacks with one triggering at mid-frequency component (index $(4,2)$) and the other at high-frequency component (index $(7,7)$).
We deliberately reduce the learning rate to make the training process slower and clearer, and the results are shown in Figure~\ref{fig:eval_frequency_principle}. In the figures, we plot the ASR vs. training epochs on both GTSRB and CIFAR10.
We can observe that the mid-frequency trigger achieves a high ASR much earlier than the high-frequency trigger, indicating that CNNs indeed remember mid-frequency features earlier than high-frequency features.
Such results not only support the Frequency principle but also are of great significance to the future research of backdoor attacks and defenses on CNNs.
}
{\em In summary, the above results show that: 1) in the efficacy and specificity aspects, the proposed \tool achieves a high attack success rate without significantly degrading the classification accuracy on benign inputs; and 2) in the fidelity aspects, \tool produces images with higher fidelity and perceptual quality under three evaluation metrics compared to the existing backdoor attacks.}
\subsection{Evaluations against Defenses}
\subsubsection{\nc}
\input{tables/eval_defense_neuralcleanse}
\nc~\cite{wang2019neural} detects triggers via searching for a small region with a fixed trigger pattern. The basic idea is that, no matter what the input is, the existence of the trigger pattern will lead the model to predict a fixed label. Then, it compares the norms of each identified pattern to determine the abnormal index of the classifier. Abnormal index larger than 2 is considered to be a backdoored model. We use the \nc implementation provided by the authors~\cite{nc}, and the detection results are shown in Table~\ref{table:eval_defense_neuralcleanse}.
We can first observe that \tool can bypass \nc on GTSRB and CIFAR10. The reason is that, based on the design nature, \nc is effective when the trigger is relatively small and fixed. However, the injected trigger of \tool is dispersed over the entire image, and thus makes \nc less effective in such cases.
\subsubsection{\abs}
\input{tables/eval_defense_abs}
\abs~\cite{liu2019abs} is a defense technique that scans through each neuron to see if its stimulation substantially and unconditionally increases the prediction probability of a particular label. It then reverses the trigger based on the identified neurons, and uses the trigger to attack benign inputs. If the ASR of the reversed trigger (i.e., REASR) is high, ABS reports the model as being backdoored.
We use the implementation of ABS provided by the authors~\cite{ABS}, which provides a binary executable file to run on CIFAR10. Thus, we only report the results on CIFAR10 in Table~\ref{table:eval_defense_abs}.
We can observe that ABS cannot detect the backdoored model by our \tool attack.
The probable reason is as follows. ABS is effective in terms of identifying one neuron or a few neurons that are responsible for a target label. However, the injected trigger by \tool scatters over the entire image in the spatial domain, which may affect a large number of neurons.
\subsubsection{\strip}
\input{tables/eval_defense_strip}
\strip~\cite{gao2019strip} is an online inspection method working at inference stage. Its basic idea is that, if a given test image contains a trigger, superimposing the test image with clean images would result in a relatively lower classification entropy. Then, STRIP uses the entropy of the superimposed image to decide whether the test image contains a trigger.
We apply STRIP on the test inputs and the results are shown in Table~\ref{table:eval_defense_strip}. We implement STRIP ourselves. The key parameter of STRIP is the entropy boundary, and we search it within our best efforts. The boundary is set to 0.133 for GTSRB and 0.30 for CIFAR10. In the table, we report the false rejection rate (the probability that a benign input is regarded as a poisoning input) and false acceptance rate (the probability that a poisoning image is regarded as a benign input) as suggested by STRIP.
We can observe that STRIP yields a high false acceptance rate on both datasets, meaning that most of the poisoning images by \tool can bypass the detection of STRIP. For example, on CIFAR10 data, over three quarters of the poisoning images can bypass STRIP detection, and over 10\% clean images are misclassified as poisoning images.
The reason for the ineffectiveness of STRIP is that, when multiple images are superimposed in the spatial domain, the frequency domain of the superimposed image would change dramatically compared to the original test input. Consequently, the trigger would be ineffective after superimposition and thus cannot be detected by STRIP.
\subsubsection{\feb}
\input{tables/eval_defense_februus}
With the assumption that triggers are usually not in the center part of an image, \feb~\cite{doan2020februus} first identifies and removes the suspicious area in the image that contributes most to the label prediction using GradCAM~\cite{selvaraju2017grad}, and then uses GAN to restore the removed area. We use the implementation of \feb provided by the authors~\cite{Februus}, and keep the default parameter settings. The results are shown in Table~\ref{table:eval_defense_februus}.
It can be observed that after the images are sent to \feb for sanitization, although the ASR decreases by 15 - 25\%, the BA drops significantly by up to 75\%.
The reason that \feb's performance significantly degenerates against our \tool attack is as follows. The trigger of \tool is placed on the entire image in the spatial domain, making it difficult to spot the suspicious area (see Figure~\ref{fig:eval_gradcam} for examples). Additionally, when a relatively large area is removed (which is often the case of our attack), the restored image would introduce serious distortions, and thus make the training on such images less effective on the benign inputs.
\subsubsection{\nad}
\input{tables/eval_defense_nad}
\nad~\cite{li2021neural} utilizes a teacher network trained on a small set of clean data to guide the fine-tuning of the backdoored student network, so as to erase the effect of triggers. The teacher network shares the same architecture with the student network. During knowledge transfer from the teacher network to the student network, \nad requires the alignment of the intermediate-layer's attention. We use the implementation provided by the authors~\cite{NADDefense} and keep the default parameters. The results are shown in Table~\ref{table:eval_defense_nad}.\footnote{Here, for better reproducibility of the results, we use the same model in the \nad repository instead of our CNN models. Therefore, the BA scores in the table is slightly lower than the previous results.}
It can be observed from the table that after applying \nad, the ASR is still very high meaning that \nad is ineffective in terms of erasing the impact of our attack.
The possible reason is that the parameters of the backdoored model do not deviate significantly from those in the clean model, as our triggers are very small (in terms of pixel values) and dispersed across the entire image. Therefore, knowledge transferring from clean model may not help in such cases.
\subsubsection{Visual Capture by GradCAM }
\begin{figure}[t]
\begin{center}
\includegraphics[width=0.95\linewidth]{figs/eval_gradcam.pdf}
\end{center}
\vspace{-1ex}
\caption{The responsible region for prediction by GradCAM~\cite{selvaraju2017grad}. Our attack does not introduce unusual regions as existing spatial triggers.}
\label{fig:eval_gradcam}
\end{figure}
We next illustrate the reason of the ineffectiveness of existing defenses using GradCAM~\cite{selvaraju2017grad}. Specifically, we use GradCAM to capture the influential area in an image that is responsible for the prediction, and some examples are shown in Figure~\ref{fig:eval_gradcam}. Warmer colors indicate more influence. The first two rows and last two rows images are selected from ImageNet and PubFig, respectively.
We can observe that the warm areas of the poisoning images do not contain unusual regions as existing spatial triggers (see Appendix~\ref{app:moreexp} for some examples).
Additionally, the warm areas of poisoning images are similar to that of clean images, but generally covering a relatively larger area.
This breaks the underlying assumptions of existing defenses that rely on identifying a small, unusual region that significantly determines the prediction results.
\subsubsection{Adaptive Defense}
\begin{figure}[t]
\centering
\subfigure[GTSRB data]{
\label{fig:eval_anomaly_GTSRB}
\includegraphics[width=0.48\linewidth]{figs/eval_anomaly_GTSRB.pdf}}
\vspace{0.1in}
\subfigure[CIFAR10 data]{
\label{fig:eval_anomaly_CIFAR10}
\includegraphics[width=0.48\linewidth]{figs/eval_anomaly_CIFAR10.pdf}}
\vspace{-1ex}
\caption{Precision results of anomaly detection in frequency domain. The anomaly detection methods are ineffective in terms of identifying the poisoning images.}
\label{fig:eval_anomaly}
\end{figure}
Finally, we evaluate the effectiveness of \tool against adaptive defenses that directly operate on the frequency domain.
In particular, we consider two adaptive defenses, i.e., {\em anomaly detection} and {\em signal smoothing} in the frequency domain.
In the first defense, we project the images to their frequency domain, and obtain the frequency features via standard zero-mean normalization. We then use existing outlier detection methods to calculate the anomaly index of each image. We rank all the images according their anomaly indices in the descending order and calculate the proportion of poisoning samples that are ranked as the top-$K$ anomalies. The results are shown in Figure~\ref{fig:eval_anomaly}, in which we consider three anomaly detection methods IFOREST~\cite{liu2012isolation}, VAE~\cite{kingma2013auto}, and COPOD~\cite{li2020copod}. Note that the injection rate is fixed as 5\% in this experiment.
It is observed that across all the settings, the proportion of detected poisoning images count for about 5\% - 6\% of the top-$K$ samples, indicating that \tool cannot be detected by the outlier detection methods in frequency domain.
\input{tables/eval_defense_filter}
In the second adaptive defense, we consider three filters, i.e., Gaussian filter, Wiener filter, and BM3D~\cite{dabov2007image}, which are widely used in image denoising and restoration. We apply these filters to the training data before feeding them to the model. We evaluate these filters in a wide range of parameters and observe similar results. The results are shown in Table~\ref{table:eval_defense_filter}.
It is observed that although these filters are effective in terms of lowering the ASR, they also significantly degenerate the BA performance (e.g., from 4.33\% to 33.91\% absolute decrease). For Gaussian filter and Wiener filter, the minimum window size is $3 \times 3$, and larger $w$ leads to stronger smoothing. We observe that even with the minimum window size, the BA already significantly decreases (e.g., 17.40\% and 16.88\% absolute decreases for Gaussian filter and Wiener filter on CIFAR10). For BM3D, we vary the noise standard deviation parameter $\sigma$, with larger $\sigma$ indicating stronger smoothing. It is observed that even with $\sigma = 0.5$, the BA still significantly decreases. Overall, these results imply a fundamental accuracy-robustness trade-off for the above defenders.
\eat{
Finally, since \tool is launched in the frequency domain, we check if traditional signal processing techniques could erase the triggers injected by \tool. In particular, we evaluate two widely-used filters in image processing, i.e., Gaussian filter and ideal low-pass filter.
Gaussian filter is a linear smoothing filter. It is suitable for eliminating Gaussian noise and is widely used in image denoising. We set the window size to $5 \times 5$.
Low-pass filter passes low-frequency signals and attenuates high-frequency signals, and is widely-used in image compressing. An ideal low-pass filter can cut off all the high-frequency components (i.e., passing only the low- and mid-components that are in the upper triangle in Figure~\ref{fig:design_frequency_map}).
The results are shown in Table~\ref{table:eval_defense_filter}. We can observe that our \tool attack is still effective when all the images are filtered by both Gaussian filter and ideal low-pass filter. This is due to the fact that we also inject a mid-frequency trigger in the frequency domain.
}
{\em In summary, the above results show that our \tool attack can bypass or significantly degenerate the performance of the state-of-the-art defenses, as well as anomaly detection and signal smoothing techniques in the frequency domain. These results indicate that new defending techniques are still in demand to protect against our \tool attacks.}
\subsection{Backdoor Attacks}
Backdoor attacks are introduced by~\cite{gu2017badnets,chen2017targeted}, where triggers are injected into training data so that the trained model would mis-predict the backdoored instances/images as a target label.
Later, researchers pay more attention to robust backdoor attacks that could reduce the effectiveness of existing backdoor defenses.
Yao et al. ~\cite{yao2019latent} generate triggers whose information is stored in the early internal layers, and the generated triggers can transfer from the teacher network to the student network in the transfer learning scenario.
Saha et al. ~\cite{saha2020hidden} propose to hide the triggers at inference time, by searching for images close to the triggered images in the training data.
Shokri et al. ~\cite{shokri2020bypassing} add an additional regularization term to constrain the activation distributions between clean and backdoor inputs.
Lin et al. ~\cite{lin2020composite} reuse existing features/objects in the target label to serve as triggers.
He et al. ~\cite{he2021raba} make use the defense technique \nc~\cite{wang2019neural} to make their triggers more robust against defenses.
In contrast to the above static backdoor attacks, Salem et al. ~\cite{salem2020dynamic} propose a dynamic backdoor attack to automatically generate triggers with random patterns and positions for different images.
Eguyen et al. ~\cite{nguyen2020input} also study a dynamic backdoor attack by introducing a diversity loss to generate dynamic triggers conditioned on the input images.
For the above backdoor attacks, although their evaluations show that they can bypass some defenses such as \nc~\cite{wang2019neural} and STRIP~\cite{gao2019strip}, the generated triggers are still visually identifiable to a large extent
In existing work, Li et al. ~\cite{li2020invisible} propose invisible backdoor attacks using the least significant bit (LSB) substitution algorithm~\cite{cox2007digital} or $L_p$-norm regularization to make the triggers invisible to humans. However, these attacks sacrifice attack success rate for invisibility.
Some researchers focus on clean-label attacks, which do not poison the labels of training data~\cite{turner2018clean,barni2019new,zhao2020clean,liu2020reflection}.
For example, Turner et al. ~\cite{turner2018clean} introduce clean-label attack by further adding perturbations after the data has been poisoning, via GAN-based interpolation and bounded perturbation.
Liu et al. ~\cite{liu2020reflection} propose to hide the triggers as reflection in the images.
There also exist backdoor attacks that directly inject triggers into the trained networks without accessing the training data~\cite{liu2018trojaning,tang2020embarrassingly,costales2020live,pang2020tale}. In these attacks, the triggers can be inverted from the trained networks and then injected into the test images.
For example, TrojanNN~\cite{liu2018trojaning} identifies triggers that could maximize the activations of certain specific neurons, and retrains the model with generated images (both with and without triggers). Pang et al. ~\cite{pang2020tale} further study the connections between adversarial attacks and model poisoning attacks, leading to optimized version of TrojanNN against existing defenses.
However, the generated triggers of these attacks are still visually identifiable.
Different from all the existing backdoor attacks whose triggers are defined or generated in the spatial domain, we propose to attack through the frequency domain. Such attacks are highly effective and keep high perceptual quality of the poisoning images.
\subsection{Defenses against Backdoor Attacks}
Existing backdoor defenses can be roughly divided into three categories, i.e., {\em model inspection}, {\em trigger detection or erasion}, and {\em model tuning}.
Defenses in the first category focus on inspecting whether a given DNN has been backdoored~\cite{wang2019neural,liu2019abs,chen2019detecting,guo2019tabor,chen2019deepinspect,kolouri2020universal,huang2020one}.
For example, Neural Cleanse~\cite{wang2019neural} propose to identify the shortcuts (small perturbations) across different labels to decide whether a model is backdoored or not. If the model is backdoored, it further reverts the trigger from the identified perturbations, and propose mitigate the attacks based on the reverted trigger. DeepInspect~\cite{chen2019deepinspect} is similar to Neural Cleanse except that it does not require the access to training data and the model parameters. Instead, DeepInspect infers the training data via model inversion~\cite{yang2019mia}. ABS~\cite{liu2019abs} first identifies the neurons that substantially maximize the activation of a particular label, and then examines whether these neurons lead to a trigger.
Assuming that the given DNN has been backdoored, defenses in the second category mainly aim to detect whether an instance has been corrupted or how to erase the triggers in the input images~\cite{tran2018spectral,cohen2019certified,ma2019nic,udeshi2019model,gao2019strip,doan2020februus}.
For example, Tran et al. ~\cite{tran2018spectral} find that corrupted instances usually have a signature in the spectrum of the covariance of their features, and train a classify to detect such instances.
STRIP~\cite{gao2019strip} propose to add perturbations on the test image to check if it has a trigger, based on the intuition that trojaned images usually make the consistent prediction (i.e., the target label) even when various perturbations are added.
Februus~\cite{doan2020februus} first deletes the influential region in an image identified by GradCAM~\cite{selvaraju2017grad}, and then restores the image via GAN.
In the third category, the defenses still assume that the model has been backdoored and propose to directly mitigate the effect of the backdoor attacks by tuning the models~\cite{liu2018fine,zhao2020bridging,li2021neural}.
For example,
Fine-pruning~\cite{liu2018fine} prunes and fine-tunes the neurons that are potentially responsible for the backdoor attacks; however, it was observed that Fine-pruning could bring down the overall accuracy of the given model.
Zhao et al. ~\cite{zhao2020bridging} introduce mode connectivity~\cite{garipov2018loss} into backdoor mitigation, and found that the middle range of a path (in the loss landscapes) connecting two backdoored models provides robustness.
NAD~\cite{li2021neural} uses a teacher network trained on clean data to erase the triggers' effect in the backdoored student network via knowledge distillation.
\eat{
\subsection{Other Poisoning Attacks and Defenses}
Shafahi et al. ~\cite{shafahi2018poison} propose to generate adversarial samples to augment the training data, so that the re-trained model will make wrong predictions in the inference stage.
\subsection{Evasion Attacks and Defenses}
~\cite{shan2020gotta} propose to inject trapdoor into DNN models which is easy for attacks to find; therefore, attacks can be identified by based on their similarity to the injected trapdoor.
~\cite{adi2018turning}
~\cite{suciu2018does}.
~\cite{cohen2019certified}
adversarial attacks~\cite{szegedy2014intriguing,carlini2017towards}
This makes trained CNNs exploitable to a variety of attacks such as adversarial attack~\cite{carlini2017towards}, membership inference attack~\cite{shokri2017membership}, property inference attack~\cite{ganju2018property}, and model inversion attack~\cite{yang2019neural}.
}
\section{Evaluation Metrics}
Here, we provide the definitions of the three fidelity evaluation metrics for completeness.
PSNR is the ratio of the maximum possible power of a signal to the destructive noise power that affects its accuracy. It is defined as
\begin{equation}
PSNR = 10 \log_{10}(\frac{MAX_I^2}{MSE})
\end{equation}
where MSE is defined as
\begin{equation}
MSE = \frac{1}{mn}\sum_{i=0}^{m-1} \sum_{j=0}^{n-1}(x(i,j)-y(i,j))^{2}.
\end{equation}
In the equations, $x$ is the original image, $y$ is the poisoning image, $m$ and $n$ are the width and height of the image. $MAX_I$ is the maximum possible pixel value of the image (255 for 8-bit images).
SSIM is an index to measure the similarity of two images. It is calculated based on the luminance and contrast of local patterns. Given two images, x and y, let L(x, y), C(x, y), and S(x, y) be luminance, contrast, and structural measures defined as follows,
\begin{equation}
\begin{aligned}
L(x, y) &= \frac{\mu_x\mu_y+C_1}{\mu_x^2+\mu_y^2+C1} \\
C(x,y) &=\frac{2\sigma_x \sigma_y+ C_2}{\sigma_x^2 + \sigma_y^2+C_2} \\
S(x,y) &= \frac{\sigma_{xy}+C_3}{\sigma_x \sigma_y+C_3} \label{LCS}
\end{aligned}
\end{equation}
where $\mu_x$, $\sigma_x$, and $\sigma_{xy}$ are weighted mean, variance, and covariance, respectively, and $C_i$ 's are constants to prevent singularity. where $C_1 = (K_1L)^2$ and $L$ is the dynamic range of the pixel values (255 for 8-bit images), $K_1 = 0.01$;
$C_2 = (K_2L)^2$, $K_2 = 0.03$; $C_3 = C_2/2$. It should be noted that the above $x$ and $y$ are all calculated in the RGB space.
Then, the SSIM index is defined as
\begin{equation}
SSIM(x,y) = L(x,y)C(x,y)S(x,y).
\end{equation}
IS (inception score) is first proposed to measure the quality of images generated from GANs. It mainly considers two aspects, one is the clarity of generated images, and the other is the diversity of images. Here we mainly focus on the difference between images containing triggers and the original images. It uses features of the InceptionV3 network trained on ImageNet classification dataset to mimic human visual perception. Inputting two images into InceptionV3 will output two 1000-dimensional vectors representing the discrete probability distribution of their categories. For two visually similar images, the probability distributions of their categories are also similar. Given two images x and y, the computation of IS can be expressed as follows,
\begin{equation}
IS(x,y) = KL(\phi(x), \phi(y)) \nonumber
\end{equation}
\begin{equation}
KL(\phi(x), \phi(y)) = \sum_{i=1}^{N}\phi(x)_i\log \frac{\phi(x)_i}{\phi(y)_i}
\end{equation}
where $\phi(\cdot)$ represents the discrete probability distribution of the predicted labels of InceptionV3, and $KL(\cdot,\cdot)$ represents Kullback-Leibler divergence.
\section{RGB-YUV Transform}\label{app:yuv}
Pixels in RGB channels can be converted to and back from YUV channels with the linear transformations in Eq~\eqref{eq:RGB2YUV} and Eq.~\eqref{eq:YUV2RGB}, respectively. In the equations, (R, G, B) and (Y, U, V) stand for the channel values of a pixel in the RGB space and the YUV space, respectively.
\begin{eqnarray}\label{eq:RGB2YUV}
Y &=& 0.299*R + 0.587*G + 0.114*B, \nonumber\\
U &=& 0.596*R - 0.272*G - 0.321*B, \nonumber\\
V &=& 0.212*R - 0.523*G - 0.311*B,
\end{eqnarray}
\begin{eqnarray}\label{eq:YUV2RGB}
R &=& Y + 0.956*U + 0.620*V, \nonumber\\
G &=& Y - 0.272*U - 0.647*V, \nonumber\\
B &=& Y - 1.108*U - 1.705*V.
\end{eqnarray}
\hide{
\section{The Poisoning Algorithm}\label{app:algorithm}
\begin{algorithm}[h]
\SetKwInput{KwInput}{Input}
\SetKwInput{KwOutput}{Output}
\DontPrintSemicolon
\KwInput{X, Y, target\_label}
\KwOutput{X, Y}
\SetKwFunction{FMain}{Main}
\SetKwFunction{RGBYUV}{RGBYUV}
\SetKwFunction{YUVRGB}{YUVRGB}
\SetKwFunction{DCT}{DCT}
\SetKwFunction{IDCT}{IDCT}
\SetKwProg{Fn}{Function}{:}{}
\Fn{\FMain{$Dataset$}}{
X,Y = Sample(Dataset)\;
X = RGBYUV(X) \;
X = DCT(X) \;
X = InsertTrigger(X, [(15, 15), (32, 32)]) \;
X = IDCT(X) \;
X = YUVRGB(X) \;
Y = target\_label \;
Dataset = Dataset + {(X, Y)} \;
\KwRet Dataset \;
}
\end{algorithm}
}
\section{More Experimental Results}\label{app:moreexp}
Here, we provide more experimental results.
\input{tables/appendix_block_size}
\subsection{Performance versus Block Size}
The default block size is set to 32 $\times$ 32. Here, we test other choices include using 8 $\times$ 8 and 16 $\times$16 blocks. We apply the same trigger for each block for simplicity. For example, for block size 16 $\times$16, we divide a 32 $\times$ 32 image into four disjoint parts and place the same trigger on each part. Other settings are consistent with the default \tool. The results on CIFAR10 and GTSRB data are shown in Table~\ref{table:app_block_size}. As we can see from the table, different block sizes result in similar efficacy, specificity, and fidelity results.
\input{tables/appendix_block_number}
\subsection{Performance versus Number of Poisoned Blocks}
ImageNet and PubFig contain 224$\times$ 224 images, and our block size is set to 32 $\times$ 32. We divide the images into 49 disjoint 32 $\times$ 32 blocks, and it is possible to place triggers on a subset of the blocks.
Here, we conduct the experiments on such choices. In particular, we randomly select 4 block, 9 blocks, 16 blocks, 25 blocks, and 36 blocks to place the trigger, and the results are shown in Table~\ref{table:app_block_number}.
We can observe that when we poison no less than 9 blocks out of the 49 disjoint blocks, we could obtain an effective backdoor attack.
\subsection{Visual Capture of Existing Triggers by GradCAM}\label{app:gradcam2}
Here, we show some visual capture examples of existing backdoor attacks in Figure~\ref{fig:app_gradcam}. We can observe that these attacks introduce unusual regions related to their spatial triggers.
\begin{figure}[h]
\centering
\includegraphics[width=0.90\linewidth]{figs/eval_gradcam2.pdf}
\caption{The responsible regions for existing backdoor attacks. We can see that these attacks introduce unusual regions related to their spatial triggers.}
\label{fig:app_gradcam}
\end{figure}
\section{Introduction}
\input{001intro}
\section{Motivation}\label{sec:motivate}
\input{002motivation}
\section{Attack Design}\label{sec:design}
\input{003design}
\section{Evaluation}\label{sec:exp}
\input{004eval}
\section{Related Work}\label{sec:related}
\input{005related}
\section{Conclusion and Discussion}\label{sec:conclude}
In this paper, we propose a frequency-domain backdoor attack \tool. We explore the design space and show that trojaning at UV channels, and injecting mid- and high-frequency triggers in each block with medium magnitude can achieve high attack success rate without degrading the prediction accuracy on benign inputs. The poisoning images of \tool are also of higher perceptual quality compared with several existing backdoor attacks. In terms of defending against our backdoor attacks, we show that the proposed \tool can bypass or significantly degenerate the performance of existing defenses and adaptive defenses.
Currently, we evaluate our attack against CNNs only. How can it be extended to other models and how does it perform on other learning tasks such as natural language processing tasks are unclear. We plan to explore such direction in future work.
To defend against the proposed attacks, we also plan to design more robust defenses that go beyond the current assumption of backdoor attacks in the spatial domain.
\eat{
Ack:
We would like to thank Yingqi Liu and Shengwei An for help reproducing the evaluation of ABS defense and providing comments.}
\bibliographystyle{ref}
| {
"redpajama_set_name": "RedPajamaArXiv"
} | 7,578 |
\section{Introduction and main result} \label{sec:Intro-LS2020}
Inverse scattering problems appear in real-life phenomena and have applications in a wide range of fields such as
radar, sonar, fault detection in fiber optics, geophysical exploration, medical imaging and nondestructive testing. In this work, we study the inverse acoustic scattering problem of recovering a sound speed from fixed angle scattering measurements. Let $n\geq 2$ and $\theta\in {\mathbb{S}}^{n-1}$ be a fixed vector. Consider $\eta\in H^{s_0}(\mathbb{R}} \newcommand{\mathR}{\mathbb{R}^n)$ with {$s_0>0$ being large enough and} so that $1-\eta$ is compactly supported in $\Omega$ with $\Omega:=\left\{x\in \mathbb{R}} \newcommand{\mathR}{\mathbb{R}^n \, : \,|x|<1 \right\}$, i.e.
\begin{equation} \label{outside:ball}
\eta(x)=1, \quad |x|\geq 1 - \sigma,
\end{equation}
for a fixed number $\sigma \in (0,1)$.
We also assume that for some $M>1$
\begin{equation}\label{outside:ball_z}
M^{-1} \leq \eta(x) \leq M, \quad x\in \mathbb{R}} \newcommand{\mathR}{\mathbb{R}^n.
\end{equation}
Now consider a plane wave solution $\tilde{\mathcal{U}}$ to the wave equation
\begin{equation} \label{initial_eq_z_z}
(\eta(x) \, \partial_t^2 -\Delta) \tilde{\mathcal{U}}=0 \; \; \text{in}\; \mathbb{R}} \newcommand{\mathR}{\mathbb{R}^{n+1}, \qquad \tilde{\mathcal{U}}|_{\left\{t<-1\right\}} = \delta (t-x\cdot \theta).
\end{equation}
This model describes the propagation of scattered sound waves in an inhomogeneous medium (whose properties are described by the coefficient $\eta$) produced by the interaction of an incident plane wave of the form $\delta (t-x\cdot \theta)$ with the medium. If $c(x)$ is the sound speed in the medium then $\eta(x) = c(x)^{-2}$, but for simplicity we will refer to $\eta$ as the sound speed.
The aim of this paper is to prove that the sound speed $\eta$ is uniquely determined by boundary measurements of a solution to \eqref{initial_eq_z_z} corresponding to a fixed direction $\theta\in {\mathbb{S}}^{n-1}$.
To simplify computations, we assume that $\theta=e_n$, where $e_n$ stands for the $n$th vector of the standard basis in $\mathbb{R}} \newcommand{\mathR}{\mathbb{R}^n$.
For $x \in \mathbb{R}} \newcommand{\mathR}{\mathbb{R}^n$ we write $x = (y, z)$ with $y \in \mathbb{R}} \newcommand{\mathR}{\mathbb{R}^{n-1}$ and $z \in \mathbb{R}} \newcommand{\mathR}{\mathbb{R}$, thus $x\cdot \theta=z$.
From the mathematical viewpoint, for $T>1$, the measurements are encoded by the map
\begin{equation*}
\tilde{\mathcal A}: \eta \mapsto \tilde{\mathcal{U}}|_{\Sigma_T \cap \{t >z\}},
\end{equation*}
where $\tilde{\mathcal{U}}$ is the solution to \eqref{initial_eq_z_z} and $\Sigma_T$ stands for the lateral boundary of the space-time cylinder $\Omega\times (-T, T)$, that is
\[
\Sigma_T := \partial \Omega \times (-T, T).
\]
In Proposition \ref{prop:well_posedness_z_1} we prove that there is a unique solution $\tilde{\mathcal{U}}$ to \eqref{initial_eq_z_z} in a suitable Hilbert space so that the restriction on $\Sigma_T \cap \{t >z\}$, denoted by $\tilde{\mathcal{U}}|_{\Sigma_T \cap \{t > z\}}$, is well defined.
We restrict the measurements to $\{ t > z \}$ since the scattered wave vanishes when $t < z$.
In this framework, our first main result states that if $\tilde{\mathcal A}(\eta) = \tilde{\mathcal A}(1)$ where $\eta$ satisfies \eqref{outside:ball}--\eqref{outside:ball_z} and is close to $1$, then $\eta = 1$. Moreover, we also derive the corresponding quantification (stability estimate) with a modulus of continuity of H\"older type.
The space $H^{-k}((-T,T), H^{\alpha}(\mathbb{S}^{n-1}))$ below is defined as the dual space of $H^k_0((-T,T), H^{-\alpha}(\mathbb{S}^{n-1}))$.
\begin{Theorem}\label{th:main_result_z}
Let $n\geq 2$ and $M > 1$. Fix some $s_0\gg n/2+2$. There exist a small $\varrho>0$, $\mu=\mu(n)\in (0,1)$, $T = T(n) > 1$, $s_1 > s_0$, and $C >0$ such that
\[
\norm{\eta-1}_{H^{s_0}(\mathbb{R}} \newcommand{\mathR}{\mathbb{R}^n)}\leq C \norm{\tilde{\mathcal A}(\eta)- \tilde{\mathcal A}(1)}_{ H^{-5}((-T, T); H^{1/2}({\mathbb{S}}^{n-1}))|_{\{ t > z \}}}^{\mu},
\]
for all $\eta\in H^{s_0}(\mathbb{R}} \newcommand{\mathR}{\mathbb{R}^n)$ satisfying \eqref{outside:ball}--\eqref{outside:ball_z} and $\norm{\eta-1}_{H^{s_0}(\mathbb{R}} \newcommand{\mathR}{\mathbb{R}^n)}\leq \varrho$, $\norm{\eta}_{H^{s_1}(\mathbb{R}} \newcommand{\mathR}{\mathbb{R}^n)} \leq M$.
\end{Theorem}
Theorem \ref{th:main_result_z} is an instance of a fixed angle inverse scattering result, where one determines a sound speed from scattering measurements corresponding to a single incident plane wave.
There are several results of this type for determining a time-independent potential $q$ instead of a sound speed. The equation in this case is
\begin{equation} \label{initial_eq_z_z_z_1}
(\partial_t^2 -\Delta + q(x)) \mathcal{W}=0 \; \; \text{in}\; \mathbb{R}} \newcommand{\mathR}{\mathbb{R}^{n+1}, \qquad \mathcal{W}|_{\left\{t \ll 0 \right\}} = \delta (t-x\cdot \theta).
\end{equation}
One can alternatively work on the frequency side with the Schr\"odinger equation
\begin{equation*}
\left\{\begin{aligned}
& (-\Delta - k^2 + q(x)) u = 0 \ \text{in} \ {\mathR^n}, \\
& u \text{~is outgoing}.
\end{aligned}\right.
\end{equation*}
The fixed angle scattering problem consists of determining $q$ from the knowledge of $\mathcal{W}|_{\Sigma_T}$, or equivalently from the scattering amplitude $a_q(k, \theta, \omega)$ for all $k > 0$ and $\omega \in {\mathbb{S}}^{n-1}$. This equivalence is discussed in detail in \cite{RakeshSalo2}.
\smallskip
There are several known results related to recovering small or generic potentials and singularities from fixed angle measurements \cite{BarceloEtAl, BaylissLiMorawetz, Meronno_thesis, Ruiz, Stefanov_generic}.
In the recent works \cite{RakeshSalo2, RakeshSalo1} it was shown that a potential $q \in C^{\infty}_c(\mathbb{R}} \newcommand{\mathR}{\mathbb{R}^n)$ is uniquely determined by measurements corresponding to two incident plane waves from opposite directions $\theta = \pm \theta_0$, or just a single incident plane wave if $q$ satisfies some symmetry conditions.
This result was extended in \cite{MaSa20} to the case when $-\Delta$ is replaced by the Laplace-Beltrami operator $-\Delta_g$ in \eqref{initial_eq_z_z_z_1}, with $g$ being a known metric satisfying certain symmetry conditions.
Using similar ideas, in \cite{MePoSa20} the authors proved analogous results in the case of time-independent first order coefficients.
We also mention the recent work \cite{KR20}, which studies fixed angle scattering for time-dependent coefficients also in the case of first-order perturbations.
However, the problem of determining a general potential $q \in C^{\infty}_c(\mathbb{R}} \newcommand{\mathR}{\mathbb{R}^n)$ from fixed angle measurements remains open and so does the corresponding inverse backscattering problem (see \cite{RakeshUhlmann} for more information).
\smallskip
The purpose of the present article is to study the fixed angle problem for determining a sound speed $\eta$ instead of a potential $q$. The method in \cite{RakeshSalo2, RakeshSalo1}, which is based on Carleman estimates and reflection arguments, requires symmetry and appears to break down for most nonconstant sound speeds.
In this work we approach the problem for sound speeds by studying the linearized problem.
The main observation is that the linearization of the fixed angle inverse problem for a sound speed has similar features as the acoustic problem in thermo/photoacoustic tomography \cite{SU13multi}.
We then adapt the modified time-reversal method introduced in \cite{SU09} to our case and establish uniqueness, stability and reconstruction for the linearized problem at a constant sound speed.
This can be used to prove local uniqueness and stability for the nonlinear inverse problem as in \cite{SU12}, leading to Theorem \ref{th:main_result_z}.
\begin{Remark}
It is possible that the methods in this work can be extended to deal with the linearized problem at a general sound speed, and to obtain a counterpart of Theorem \ref{th:main_result_z} showing that $\norm{\eta_1-\eta_2} \leq C \norm{\tilde{\mathcal{A}}(\eta_1) - \tilde{\mathcal{A}}(\eta_2)}^{\mu}$ in suitable norms when both $\eta_1$ and $\eta_2$ are close to some fixed nonconstant sound speed. These questions are more involved and will be left to a future work.
\end{Remark}
We now describe our method in more detail. As mentioned above, the proof of Theorem \ref{th:main_result_z} reduces to studying the injectivity and stability properties of the linearization of the map $\widetilde{\mathcal{A}}$ at a constant sound speed and to using a general result in \cite{SU12}. Due to technical reasons, we consider a smoother initial value than the one in \eqref{initial_eq_z_z} and study instead the equation
\begin{equation} \label{initial_eq_z_z_z}
(\eta(x) \, \partial_t^2 -\Delta) {\mathcal{U}}=0 \; \; \text{in}\; \mathbb{R}} \newcommand{\mathR}{\mathbb{R}^{n+1}, \qquad {\mathcal{U}}|_{\left\{t<-1\right\}} = H_1 (t-z),
\end{equation}
where $H_1(s)= s$ when $s\geq 0$ and zero otherwise. We now consider the fixed angle inverse scattering problem associated with \eqref{initial_eq_z_z_z}, where the measurement operator is given by
\begin{equation*}
{\mathcal{A}}(\eta)= {\mathcal{U}}|_{\Sigma_T \cap \{ t > z \}}.
\end{equation*}
Since $\eta$ is time-independent, one has $\tilde{\mathcal{U}}=\partial_t^2 \hspace{0.5pt} {\mathcal{U}}$ and thus the fixed angle inverse scattering problems for $\mathcal{A}$ and $\tilde{\mathcal{A}}$ are equivalent.
The following result describes the precise function spaces involved (its proof is presented in Appendix \ref{appendix:stationary}).
\begin{Proposition}\label{prop:well_posedness_z_1}
Let $n\geq 2$, $T>1$ and $M> 1$. Fix some $s_0>n/2+2$. Let $\eta\in H^{s_0}(\mathbb{R}^n)$ be a function satisfying
\[
\norm{\eta}_{H^{s_0}(\mathbb{R}} \newcommand{\mathR}{\mathbb{R}^n)} \leq M, \quad M^{-1}\leq \eta(x)\leq M \quad \text{a.e in} \ \ \mathbb{R}} \newcommand{\mathR}{\mathbb{R}^n.
\]
There exists a unique solution ${\mathcal{U}}\in H^{-1}((-T, T); H^1(\mathbb{R}^n))$ to \eqref{initial_eq_z_z_z} with
\[
\norm{{\mathcal{U}}}_{H^{-1}((-T, T); H^1(\mathbb{R}^n))} \leq C(n, T,M).
\]
Moreover, $\tilde{\mathcal{U}}=\partial_t^2\hspace{0.5pt}\s {\mathcal{U}} \in H^{-3}((-T, T); H^1(\mathbb{R}^n))$ is the unique solution to \eqref{initial_eq_z_z}, and hence it satisfies
\begin{align*}
\norm{\tilde{\mathcal{U}}|_{\Sigma_T}}_{H^{-3}((-T, T); H^{1/2}({\mathbb{S}}^{n-1}))} & \lesssim \norm{\tilde{\mathcal{U}}}_{H^{-3}((-T, T); H^1(\mathbb{R}^n))} \\
&\lesssim \norm{\mathcal{U}}_{H^{-1}((-T, T); H^1(\mathbb{R}^n))} \leq C(n, T,M).
\end{align*}
\end{Proposition}
Since our approach involves a linearization argument,
we shall first study the Fr\'echet derivative of $\mathcal{A}$ at the constant $1$, denoted by $A_1$. It is proved in Section \ref{proof_main:result_z} that $A_1$ is given by
\begin{equation*}
A_1 (f) = U|_{\Sigma_T \cap \{ t > z \}},
\end{equation*}
where $U$ solves
\begin{equation} \label{eq:s1-LS2020_z}
(\partial_t^2 -\Delta)U = -f(x) \delta (t- z) \; \; \text{in}\; \mathbb{R}} \newcommand{\mathR}{\mathbb{R}^{n+1}, \qquad U|_{\left\{t<-1\right\}} = 0.
\end{equation}
By employing the progressive wave expansion method, one can further show that any solution to \eqref{eq:s1-LS2020_z} can be written as
\[
U(t,x)= u(t,x)H(t-z),
\]
where $H$ stands for the Heaviside function and $u$ is a $C^2$ function in the set $\{t\geq z \}$ solving the equation
\begin{equation} \label{eq:nu_1-LS2020_z_1_z_intro}
\left\{ \begin{aligned}
(\partial_t^2 -\Delta) u & = 0 & \text{in}\; \left\{ t> z\right\}, \\
(\partial_t + \partial_z) u & = -\frac{1}{2} f &\text{on } \left\{ t = z\right\}.
\end{aligned}\right.
\end{equation}
Thus the linearized inverse problem associated with $A_1$ amounts to determining the initial value $f(x)$ from the knowledge of $u|_{\Sigma_T \cap \{ t > z \}}$.
It is worth mentioning that the linearized problem above is similar to the acoustic problem in thermo/photoacoustic tomography. There one needs to recover an initial condition $g(x)$ from the boundary measurement $v|_{\partial \Omega \times (0,T)}$, where $v$ solves
\begin{equation*}
\left\{ \begin{aligned}
(\partial_t^2 -\Delta) v & = 0 & \text{in}\; \mathbb{R}} \newcommand{\mathR}{\mathbb{R}^n \times (0,T), \\
v & = g & \text{on}\; \left\{ t=0 \right\}, \\
\partial_t v &= 0 & \text{on}\; \left\{ t=0 \right\}.
\end{aligned}\right.
\end{equation*}
This problem was studied in detail in \cite{SU09}, also for general sound speeds, by using a modification of the time-reversal method.
Error estimates, reconstruction formulae and numerical implementations in case of non-trapping sound speeds were obtained earlier in \cite{HKN08} and \cite{Hri09} by using the time-reversal method.
For more details on thermo/photoacoustic tomography inverse problems we refer the readers to \cite{KK08,KK11,SU13multi,AKK17}
and the references therein.
We will adapt the modified time-reversal method to show uniqueness, stability and reconstruction for the inverse problem associated with \eqref{eq:nu_1-LS2020_z_1_z_intro}.
The main difference with previous results is that the initial data is given on the characteristic set $\{ t = z \}$ instead of the standard set $\{ t = 0 \}$. This creates various difficulties, and in order to overcome these we employ energy estimates in space-time domains that are adapted to this characteristic geometry.
The following result is the precise statement of uniqueness and stability in the linearized inverse problem with respect to suitable norms. We refer to Proposition \ref{prop:RF-LS2020} for a reconstruction formula involving a Neumann series.
Denote $\Gamma := (\Omega \times (-T,T)) \cap \{ t = z \}$.
\begin{Proposition} \label{est_linearized_z_2}
Let $s_0\gg n/2+2$, $M>1$ and $T>1$. There exists $C>0$ so that
\[
\norm{f}_{L^2(\Omega)}\leq C (\norm{A_1 f}_{H^1(\Sigma_T \cap \{ t > z \})} + \frac {T^{1/2}} {\sigma^{1/4}} \nrm[H^1(\Sigma_T \cap \Gamma)]{A_1 f} ),
\]
for $f \in {H}^{s_0}_{\ol{\Omega}}(\mathbb{R}^n)$ with $\supp f \in \{ x \in {\mathR^n} \,;\, |x| \leq 1 - \sigma \}$.
\end{Proposition}
We outline the method for proving Proposition \ref{est_linearized_z_2}. Instead of $A_1$, it is convenient to work with the closely related operator $A_1': F \mapsto u|_{\Sigma}$ where $u$ solves
\begin{equation} \label{eq:vL0-LS2020-intro0}
\left\{ \begin{aligned}
(\partial_t^2 -\Delta) u & = 0 & \text{in}\; \left\{ t> z\right\}, \\
u & = F &\text{on } \left\{ t = z\right\},
\end{aligned}\right.
\end{equation}
and $\Sigma := (\partial \Omega \times (-T,T)) \cap \{ t > z \}$.
Recall $\Gamma = (\Omega \times (-T,T)) \cap \{ t = z \}$. Define the space
\[
\mathcal{H} := \{ F \in H^1(\{t=z\}) \,:\, \mathrm{supp}(F) \subset \ol{\Gamma} \}
\]
equipped with the $H^1$-norm.
In Section \ref{subsec:B-LS2020} we actually use a slightly different definition of $\mathcal H$, see \eqref{eq:zc-LS2020} and \eqref{eq:zc2-LS2020}, but here for illustration purposes we prefer to keep the definition simple.
One would like to think of $A_1'$ as a bounded operator $\mathcal{H} \to H^1(\Sigma)$. In fact this holds in the standard case where the initial surface is $\{t=0\}$ instead of $\{t=z\}$ since the trace of $u$ is in $H^1$ \cite{BaoSymes, FinchRakesh}.
We are not aware of such a result for our slanted case, so we will work with smooth functions instead and use norm estimates with uniform bounds in the energy spaces.
After some natural derivations, uniqueness and stability for $A_1$ reduces to uniqueness and stability for $A_1'$. Now we use a time-reversal method as in \cite{SU09} and define an approximate inverse $B$ for $A_1'$ as the map $B: h \mapsto v|_{\Gamma}$, where $v$ solves the Dirichlet problem
\begin{equation} \label{eq:vL0-LS2020-intro}
\left\{\begin{aligned}
(\partial_t^2 -\Delta) v & = 0 && \text{in}\; Q_T \cap \{ t > z \}, \\
v & = h && \text{on } \Sigma, \\
v = \phi_0, \ v_t & = 0 && \text{in}\; Q_T \cap \{ t=T \}, \\
\Delta \phi_0 & = 0 && \text{~in~} \Omega, \quad \phi_0 = h(\cdot,T) \text{~on~} \partial \Omega,
\end{aligned}\right.
\end{equation}
with $Q_T = \Omega \times [-T,T]$. We prove that $B$ is a bounded operator $H^1(\Sigma) \to H^1(\Gamma)$. Note that in odd dimensions, the sharp Huygens' principle implies that any solution $u$ of \eqref{eq:vL0-LS2020-intro0} with $F \in \mathcal{H}$ satisfies $u(\,\cdot\,,T)|_{\ol{\Omega}} = 0$ for $T$ large enough. Hence letting $h = u|_{\Sigma}$ in \eqref{eq:vL0-LS2020-intro} implies that $v = u$ and hence $B A_1' F = F$, so that $B$ is an exact inverse of $A_1'$.
In even dimensions this is no longer true. Instead, we will show that $B$ is almost an inverse of $A_1' $ in the following parametrix sense
\[
B A_1' F = F - \tilde{K} F
\]
where $\tilde{K}$ is a bounded operator on $\mathcal{H}$ with norm strictly less than $1$ when $T$ is large enough. In \cite{SU09} this was done by using a unique continuation property for the wave equation, but in our case due to a technical issue we use local energy decay instead. This argument allows us to invert $A_1'$ by a Neumann series and prove Proposition \ref{est_linearized_z_2}.
This paper is structured as follows.
Section \ref{proof_main:result_z} is dedicated to proving Theorem \ref{th:main_result_z} under the assumption that Proposition \ref{est_linearized_z_2} related to linearized problem is known.
In Section \ref{sec:lima-LS2020} we study the basic properties of the linear map $A_1$. In Section \ref{sec:KK-LS2020} we prove Proposition \ref{est_linearized_z_2} as a consequence of a reconstruction formula stated in Proposition \ref{prop:RF-LS2020}.
In the Appendix we give some results on the well-posedness of the forward problem for wave equations in negative Sobolev spaces that are required in our arguments.
The results are stated with finite regularity assumptions on the coefficients, and the dependence of the constants in norm estimates on different quantities is explicitly specified.
\subsection*{Acknowledgements}
S.~M., L.~P-M.~and M.~S.~were supported by the Academy of Finland (Finnish Centre of Excellence in Inverse Modelling and Imaging, grant numbers 312121 and 309963), and M.S.\ was also supported by the European Research Council under Horizon 2020 (ERC CoG 770924).
\section{The nonlinear map. Proof of Theorem \ref{th:main_result_z}} \label{proof_main:result_z}
In this section we will prove Theorem~\ref{th:main_result_z} by using Propositions~\ref{prop:well_posedness_z_1}, \ref{est_linearized_z_2} and~\ref{prop:sol_smooth_1} as well as Lemma~\ref{lemma_u_dttu}. The proofs of these results will be given in later sections. We shall use the following abstract local uniqueness and stability result from~\cite[Theorem 2]{SU12}.
\begin{Proposition}\label{prop:StUh-LS2020}
Let $\mathcal{X}_j$, $\mathcal{Y}_j$ with $j=1,2,3$ be Banach spaces with $\mathcal{X}_3 \subset \mathcal{X}_1 \subset \mathcal{X}_2$ and $\mathcal{Y}_3 \subset \mathcal{Y}_2 \subset \mathcal{Y}_1$, such that the following interpolation estimates hold:
\begin{equation}\label{cond:first_z}
\norm{f}_{\mathcal{X}_1} \lesssim \norm{f}_{\mathcal{X}_2}^{\mu_1}\norm{f}_{\mathcal{X}_3}^{1-\mu_1}, \quad \norm{g}_{\mathcal{Y}_2} \lesssim \norm{g}_{\mathcal{Y}_1}^{\mu_2}\norm{g}_{\mathcal{Y}_3}^{1-\mu_2}, \qquad \mu_1, \mu_2 \in (0,1], \; \; \mu_1 \mu_2 >1/2.
\end{equation}
Let $\mathcal{A}: \mathcal{V}_1 \to \mathcal{Y}_1$ be a nonlinear map where $\mathcal{V}_1 \subset \mathcal{X}_1$ is an open subset of $ \mathcal{X}_1$. Consider $f_0\in \mathcal{V}_1$ and assume that
\begin{equation}\label{cond:second_z}
\mathcal{A}(f)= \mathcal{A}(f_0) + A_{f_0}(f-f_0) + R_{f_0}(f), \quad \norm{R_{f_0}(f)}_{\mathcal{Y}_1} \leq C(f_0) \norm{f-f_0}^2_{\mathcal{X}_1}
\end{equation}
holds for all $f$ in some neighbourhood of $f_0$ in $\mathcal{V}_1$. Here $A_{f_0}$ stands for the Fr\'echet derivative of $\mathcal{A}$ at $f_0$. In addition, suppose that
\begin{equation}\label{cond:third_z}
\norm{h}_{\mathcal{X}_2}\leq C \norm{A_{f_0} h}_{\mathcal{Y}_2}, \quad h\in \mathcal{X}_1
\end{equation}
and
\begin{equation}\label{cond:third_z:z}
\norm{A_{f_0} h}_{\mathcal{Y}_3}\leq C \norm{h}_{\mathcal{X}_3}, \quad h\in \mathcal{X}_3.
\end{equation}
Then for any $L>0$ there exists $\epsilon>0$, so that for any $f$ with
\begin{equation} \label{cond:f_bounds}
\norm{f-f_0}_{\mathcal{X}_1} \leq \epsilon, \quad \norm{f}_{\mathcal{X}_3}\leq L,
\end{equation}
one has the conditional stability estimate
\[
\norm{f-f_0}_{_{\mathcal{X}_1}}\leq CL^{2-\mu_1-\mu_2} \norm{\mathcal{A}(f)-\mathcal{A}(f_0)}^{\mu_1\mu_2}_{\mathcal{Y}_1}.
\]
In particular, if $\mathcal{A}(f)=\mathcal{A}(f_0)$ for some $f$ satisfying \eqref{cond:f_bounds}, then $f=f_0$.
\end{Proposition}
The task now is verifying that $\mathcal{A}$ and $A_1$ from Section \ref{sec:Intro-LS2020} satisfy all conditions of Proposition \ref{prop:StUh-LS2020} in appropriate Banach spaces. In fact we will change the setup slightly and write $\eta = 1 + f$, and $\mathcal{A}$ will be considered as the operator $f \mapsto \mathcal{U}|_{\Sigma_T \cap \{ t > z \}}$ (note that $\mathcal{U} = 0$ when $t < z$). Similarly, instead of $A_1$ we consider the operator $A_0:f \mapsto U|_{\Sigma_T \cap \{ t > z \}}$. In this setting, we will apply Proposition \ref{prop:StUh-LS2020} with $f_0 \equiv 0$.
We first introduce some useful notation. If $F \subset \mathbb{R}} \newcommand{\mathR}{\mathbb{R}^n$ is closed, define for any $s_0\in \mathbb{R}$ the set
\[
H^{s_0}_F(\mathbb{R}} \newcommand{\mathR}{\mathbb{R}^n) = \{ f \in H^{s_0}(\mathbb{R}} \newcommand{\mathR}{\mathbb{R}^n) \,:\, \supp(f) \subset F \}.
\]
We also write
\[
\Omega_{\sigma} = \{ x \in \mathbb{R}} \newcommand{\mathR}{\mathbb{R}^n \,:\, \abs{x} < 1-\sigma \}
\]
where $\sigma \in (0,1)$ is fixed as in \eqref{outside:ball}. Let $s_0>n/2 +2$ and $M>1$. The map $\mathcal{A}$ will be defined in the open subset
\[
\mathcal{V}_M^{s_0}(\mathbb{R}} \newcommand{\mathR}{\mathbb{R}^n) = \{ f \in H^{s_0}_{\ol{\Omega}_{\sigma}}(\mathbb{R}} \newcommand{\mathR}{\mathbb{R}^n) \,:\, M^{-1} < 1+f < M \}
\]
of $H^{s_0}_{\ol{\Omega}_{\sigma}}(\mathbb{R}} \newcommand{\mathR}{\mathbb{R}^n)$ as the map
\begin{equation}\label{A:linear-f}
\mathcal{A}: \mathcal{V}_M^{s_0}(\mathbb{R}} \newcommand{\mathR}{\mathbb{R}^n) \to H^{-1}((-T,T); H^{1/2}({\mathbb{S}}^{n-1}))|_{\{ t > z\}}, \ \ \mathcal{A}(f) = {\mathcal{U}}|_{\Sigma_T \cap \{ t > z \}}
\end{equation}
where $\eta = 1+f$. This is a well defined map by Proposition \ref{prop:well_posedness_z_1}. We will prove in Lemma \ref{lemma_a_coneone} that the linearization of $\mathcal{A}$ at $0$ is given by
\begin{equation}\label{A_0:linear}
A_0: H^{s_0}_{\ol{\Omega}_{\sigma}}(\mathbb{R}} \newcommand{\mathR}{\mathbb{R}^n) \to H^{-1}((-T,T); H^{1/2}({\mathbb{S}}^{n-1}))|_{\{ t > z \}}, \ \ A_0f = U|_{\Sigma_T \cap \{ t > z \}}
\end{equation}
where $U$ solves
\begin{equation} \label{eq:Ud-LS2020}
\left\{\begin{aligned}
& (\partial_t^2 -\Delta) U = -f(x)\, \delta(t - z) && \text{in}\; \mathbb{R}} \newcommand{\mathR}{\mathbb{R}^{n+1}, \\
& U|_{\left\{t<-1\right\}} = 0.
\end{aligned}\right.
\end{equation}
Let us verify one by one the conditions of Proposition \ref{prop:StUh-LS2020}.
\subsection*{Condition \texorpdfstring{\eqref{cond:second_z}}{(2.2)}}
We claim that the map $\mathcal{A}$, defined by \eqref{A:linear-f}, verifies the condition \eqref{cond:second_z} with
\[
\mathcal{X}_1= H^{s_0}_{\ol{\Omega}_{\sigma}}(\mathbb{R}} \newcommand{\mathR}{\mathbb{R}^n), \quad \mathcal{Y}_1=H^{-3}((-T,T); H^{1/2}({\mathbb{S}}^{n-1}))|_{\{ t > z \}}.
\]
Indeed, the proof is contained in the following result, where we write
\begin{align*}
\hat{\mathcal{A}}: \mathcal{V}_M^{s_0}(\mathbb{R}} \newcommand{\mathR}{\mathbb{R}^n) \to H^{-1}((-T,T); H^{1/2}({\mathbb{S}}^{n-1})), \ \ & \hat{\mathcal{A}}(f) = {\mathcal{U}}|_{\Sigma_T}, \\
\hat{A}_0: H^{s_0}_{\ol{\Omega}_{\sigma}}(\mathbb{R}} \newcommand{\mathR}{\mathbb{R}^n) \to H^{-1}((-T,T); H^{1/2}({\mathbb{S}}^{n-1})), \ \ &\hat{A}_0f = U|_{\Sigma_T}.
\end{align*}
Thus $\mathcal{A}$ and $A_0$ are the restrictions $\mathcal{A}(f) = \hat{\mathcal{A}}(f)|_{\{ t > z \}}$ and $A_0 f = \hat{A}_0 f|_{\{ t > z \}}$.
\begin{Lemma} \label{lemma_a_coneone}
Let $s_0\gg n/2 +2$, $M>1$ and $T>1$. The map $\hat{\mathcal{A}}$ is well defined
\[
\hat{\mathcal{A}}: \mathcal{V}_M^{s_0}(\mathbb{R}} \newcommand{\mathR}{\mathbb{R}^n) \subset H^{s_0}_{\ol{\Omega}_{\sigma}}(\mathbb{R}} \newcommand{\mathR}{\mathbb{R}^n) \to H^{-1}((-T,T); H^{1/2}({\mathbb{S}}^{n-1})).
\]
Moreover, it is $C^{1,1}$ near $0$ as a map $\mathcal{V}_M^{s_0}(\mathbb{R}} \newcommand{\mathR}{\mathbb{R}^n) \to H^{-3}((-T, T); H^{1/2}({\mathbb{S}}^{n-1}))$, so that
\begin{equation} \label{remainder_term_z_z_statement}
\norm{\hat{\mathcal{A}}(f)- \hat{\mathcal{A}}(0) - \hat{A}_0 (f)}_{H^{-3}((-T, T); H^{1/2}({\mathbb{S}}^{n-1}))} \lesssim \norm{f}_{H^{s_0}(\mathbb{R}} \newcommand{\mathR}{\mathbb{R}^n)}^2,
\end{equation}
for all $f\in \mathcal{V}_M^{s_0}(\mathbb{R}} \newcommand{\mathR}{\mathbb{R}^n)$ near the origin.
\end{Lemma}
\begin{proof}
The fact that $\hat{\mathcal{A}}$ maps $\mathcal{V}_M^{s_0}(\mathbb{R}} \newcommand{\mathR}{\mathbb{R}^n)$ to $H^{-1}((-T,T); H^{1/2}({\mathbb{S}}^{n-1}))$ is an immediate consequence of Proposition \ref{prop:well_posedness_z_1}. Let us move to prove the $C^{1,1}$ regularity near $0$. Fix $\eta=1+f$ with $f\in \mathcal{V}_M^{s_0}(\mathbb{R}} \newcommand{\mathR}{\mathbb{R}^n)$ near the origin. Let $\hat{A}_0 f = U|_{\Sigma_T}$ where $U$ is as in \eqref{eq:Ud-LS2020}, and let $\mathcal{R}$ be defined by
\[
\hat{\mathcal{A}}(f)= \hat{\mathcal{A}}(0) + \hat{A}_0 (f) + \mathcal{R}|_{\Sigma_T}, \quad \mathcal{R}|_{\Sigma_T}:=\hat{\mathcal{A}}(f)- \hat{\mathcal{A}}(0) - \hat{A}_0 (f).
\]
In order to prove \eqref{remainder_term_z_z_statement}, we will actually prove a stronger estimate
\begin{equation*}
\norm{\mathcal{R}|_{\Sigma_T}}_{H^{-3}((-T, T); H^{1/2}({\mathbb{S}}^{n-1}))} \lesssim \norm{f}_{L^{\infty}(\mathbb{R}} \newcommand{\mathR}{\mathbb{R}^n)}^2, \quad f\in H^{s_0}_{\ol{\Omega}}(\mathbb{R}} \newcommand{\mathR}{\mathbb{R}^n),
\end{equation*}
which trivially implies the required estimate by using Morrey's inequality since $s_0>n/2$. To do that, we first set
\begin{equation*
\hat{\mathcal{A}}(f)= \mathcal{U}|_{\Sigma_T}, \quad \hat{\mathcal{A}}(0)= \mathcal{U}_0|_{\Sigma_T}, \quad \hat{A}_0(f)=U|_{\Sigma_T},
\end{equation*}
where the distributions $\mathcal{U}$, $\mathcal{U}_0$ and $U$ satisfy
\begin{equation*}
\begin{aligned}
(\eta (x)\partial_t^2 -\Delta)\hspace{0.5pt}\mathcal{U}& =0, & \; \; \text{in}\; \mathbb{R}} \newcommand{\mathR}{\mathbb{R}^{n+1}, & \quad \mathcal{U}|_{\left\{t<-1\right\}} = H_1 (t-z),\\
(\partial_t^2 -\Delta)\hspace{0.5pt} \mathcal{U}_0& =0, & \; \; \text{in}\; \mathbb{R}} \newcommand{\mathR}{\mathbb{R}^{n+1}, & \quad \mathcal{U}_0|_{\left\{t<-1\right\}} = H_1 (t-z),\\
(\partial_t^2 -\Delta)U&=-f \, \delta(t-z), & \; \; \text{in}\; \mathbb{R}} \newcommand{\mathR}{\mathbb{R}^{n+1},& \quad U|_{\left\{t<-1\right\}} = 0.
\end{aligned}
\end{equation*}
By Proposition \ref{prop:well_posedness_z_1}, we deduce that $\mathcal{U} \in H^{-1}((-T,T); H^1(\mathbb{R}} \newcommand{\mathR}{\mathbb{R}^n))$. By uniqueness of distributional solutions, we have $\mathcal{U}_0(y,z,t)= H_1(t-z)$. Furthermore, Proposition \ref{prop:sol_smooth_1} ensures that $U\in H^{-1}((-T, T); L^2(\mathbb{R}} \newcommand{\mathR}{\mathbb{R}^n))$. On the other hand, a straightforward computation shows that $\mathcal{R}:= \mathcal{U}-\mathcal{U}_0-U$ satisfies in $\mathbb{R}^{n+1}$
\begin{equation} \label{eq:ineq_z}
(\partial_t^2- \Delta)\hspace{0.5pt}\mathcal{R}= -f\, \partial_t^2 ( \mathcal{U} - H_1), \qquad \mathcal{R}|_{\left\{t<-1\right\}} = 0.
\end{equation}
In addition, we also have in $\mathbb{R}^{n+1}$
\begin{equation}\label{eq:u-h_1_z}
(\partial_t^2- \Delta)(\mathcal{U} - H_1)= -f\hspace{0.5pt}\partial_t^2\hspace{0.5pt} \mathcal{U}, \qquad \mathcal{U} - H_1|_{\left\{t<-1\right\}} = 0.
\end{equation}
Note that the sources on the right of above equations belong to $H^{-3}((-T, T); L^2(\mathbb{R}} \newcommand{\mathR}{\mathbb{R}^n))$. Since $f = f(x)$ is independent of $t$, for all $\alpha\geq 0$ and any arbitrary $F\in H^{-\alpha}((-T, T); L^2(\mathbb{R}} \newcommand{\mathR}{\mathbb{R}^n))$ one has
\[
\left\| f\hspace{0.5pt} F \right\|_{H^{-\alpha}((-T, T); L^{2}(\mathbb{R}} \newcommand{\mathR}{\mathbb{R}^n))} \lesssim \norm{f}_{L^\infty(\mathbb{R}} \newcommand{\mathR}{\mathbb{R}^n)}\left\| F \right\|_{H^{-\alpha}((-T, T); L^{2}(\mathbb{R}} \newcommand{\mathR}{\mathbb{R}^n))}.
\]
We apply this inequality with $F=\partial_t^2 ( \mathcal{U} - H_1)\in H^{-3}((-T, T); L^2(\mathbb{R}} \newcommand{\mathR}{\mathbb{R}^n))$, see the source on the right hand side of \eqref{eq:ineq_z}. These facts combined with Lemma \ref{eq:forward_problem_z} give that
\begin{equation} \label{bound:remainder_term_z_1}
\left\|\mathcal{R}\right\|_{H^{-3}((-T, T); H^{1}(\mathbb{R}} \newcommand{\mathR}{\mathbb{R}^n))} \lesssim \norm{f}_{L^\infty(\mathbb{R}} \newcommand{\mathR}{\mathbb{R}^n)}\left\| \partial_t^2 ( \mathcal{U} - H_1)\right\|_{H^{-3}((-T, T); L^{2}(\mathbb{R}} \newcommand{\mathR}{\mathbb{R}^n))}.
\end{equation}
We bound the norm on the left with the help of \eqref{eq:u-h_1_z} and Lemma \ref{eq:forward_problem_z} as follows
\begin{align*}
\norm{\partial_t^2( \mathcal{U} - H_1)}_{H^{-3}((-T, T); L^{2}(\mathbb{R}} \newcommand{\mathR}{\mathbb{R}^n))}& \leq \norm{\partial_t^2( \mathcal{U} - H_1)}_{H^{-3}((-T, T); H^{1}(\mathbb{R}} \newcommand{\mathR}{\mathbb{R}^n))} \\
&\,\leq \norm{\mathcal{U} - H_1}_{H^{-1}((-T, T); H^{1}(\mathbb{R}} \newcommand{\mathR}{\mathbb{R}^n))}\\
& \, \lesssim \norm{ f\hspace{0.5pt}\s \partial_t^2\hspace{0.5pt} \mathcal{U}}_{H^{-1}((-T, T); L^{2}(\mathbb{R}} \newcommand{\mathR}{\mathbb{R}^n))} \\
& \, \lesssim \norm{f}_{L^\infty(\mathbb{R}} \newcommand{\mathR}{\mathbb{R}^n)} \left\| \partial_t^2 \hspace{0.5pt} \mathcal{U} \right\|_{H^{-1}((-T, T); L^{2}(\mathbb{R}} \newcommand{\mathR}{\mathbb{R}^n))}.
\end{align*}
This estimate combined with \eqref{bound:remainder_term_z_1} gives
\begin{equation} \label{eq:ret-LS2020}
\norm{\mathcal{R}}_{H^{-3}((-T, T); H^{1}(\mathbb{R}} \newcommand{\mathR}{\mathbb{R}^n))}
\lesssim \norm{f}_{L^\infty(\mathbb{R}} \newcommand{\mathR}{\mathbb{R}^n)}^2 \norm{\partial_t^2 \mathcal{U}}_{H^{-1}((-T, T); L^{2}(\mathbb{R}} \newcommand{\mathR}{\mathbb{R}^n))}.
\end{equation}
Finally, by using the trace theorem, \eqref{eq:ret-LS2020} gives the desired estimate for the remainder term $\mathcal{R}_{|_{\Sigma_T}}$.
This finishes the proof.
\end{proof}
\subsection*{Condition \texorpdfstring{\eqref{cond:third_z}}{(2.3)}}
By Proposition \ref{est_linearized_z_2}, whose proof is presented in Section \ref{sec:KK-LS2020}, we consider
\[
\mathcal{X}_2= L^2_{\ol{\Omega}_{\sigma}}(\mathbb{R}} \newcommand{\mathR}{\mathbb{R}^n), \quad \mathcal{Y}_2=H^{3/2}(\Sigma_T \cap \{ t > z \}).
\]
Now for any $f \in \mathcal{X}_1 = H^{s_0}_{\ol{\Omega}_{\sigma}}(\mathbb{R}} \newcommand{\mathR}{\mathbb{R}^n)$, Proposition \ref{est_linearized_z_2} and the trace theorem imply that
\[
\norm{f}_{\mathcal{X}_2} \leq C \norm{A_0 f}_{\mathcal{Y}_2}.
\]
Thus condition \eqref{cond:third_z} is satisfied.
\subsection*{Condition \texorpdfstring{\eqref{cond:first_z}}{(2.1)}}
We have to choose a pair of Banach spaces $\mathcal{X}_3 \subset \mathcal{X}_1$ and $\mathcal{Y}_3 \subset \mathcal{Y}_2$ so that for some $\mu_1, \mu_2\in (0,1)$ with $\mu_1\mu_2>1/2$ one has
\begin{equation}\label{inter:estimate_z_z}
\norm{f}_{H^{s_0}(\mathbb{R}} \newcommand{\mathR}{\mathbb{R}^n)} \lesssim \norm{f}_{L^2(\mathbb{R}} \newcommand{\mathR}{\mathbb{R}^n)}^{\mu_1}\norm{f}_{\mathcal{X}_3}^{1-\mu_1}, \quad f\in \mathcal{X}_3,
\end{equation}
and
\begin{equation} \label{int:spaces_z_1}
\norm{g}_{H^{3/2}(\Sigma_T \cap \{ t > z \})}\lesssim \norm{g}_{H^{-3}((-T,T); H^{1/2}({\mathbb{S}}^{n-1}))|_{\{t > z\}}}^{\mu_2}\norm{g}_{\mathcal{Y}_3}^{1-\mu_2}, \quad g\in \mathcal{Y}_3.
\end{equation}
Fix an arbitrary $\mu_1\in (0,1)$. Consider $s_1>s_0$ satisfying $s_0=0 (\mu_1) + s_1(1-\mu_1)$. A standard interpolation argument yields \eqref{inter:estimate_z_z} with
\[
\mathcal{X}_3= H^{s_1}_{\ol{\Omega}_{\sigma}}(\mathbb{R}} \newcommand{\mathR}{\mathbb{R}^n).
\]
On the other hand, if we fix $\mu_2 \in (0,1)$ and choose $s_2 > 3/2$ with $3/2 = (-3) (\mu_2) + s_2 (1-\mu_2)$, then interpolation gives that
\[
\norm{g}_{H^{3/2}(\Sigma_T \cap \{ t > z \})}\lesssim \norm{g}_{H^{-3}(\Sigma_T \cap \{ t > z \})}^{\mu_2} \norm{g}_{H^{s_2}(\Sigma_T \cap \{ t > z \})}^{1-\mu_2}.
\]
Thus choosing
\[
\mathcal{Y}_3= H^{s_2}(\Sigma_T \cap \{ t > z \})
\]
implies \eqref{int:spaces_z_1}. Note that we can make $\mu_1 \mu_2$ as close to $1$ as we want by choosing $s_1$ and $s_2$ large enough. Thus, the condition $\mu_1\mu_2>1/2$ is satisfied.
\subsection*{Condition \texorpdfstring{\eqref{cond:third_z:z}}{(2.4)}} We have to prove that
\[
\norm{U}_{H^{s_2}(\Sigma_T \cap \{ t > z \})} \lesssim \norm{f}_{H^{s_1}(\mathbb{R}} \newcommand{\mathR}{\mathbb{R}^n)}.
\]
Indeed, let us take $\alpha=s_2$ and $\beta=s_2+1/2$ in \eqref{cont:A_o_f}. For any fixed $N\in \mathbb{N}$, we consider $s_1, s_2>0$ so that
\begin{equation}\label{s_+op:m}
2N+ s_2 +5/2<s_1.
\end{equation}
Note that if we further increase $s_1$ in the line after \eqref{int:spaces_z_1}, then $\mu_1$ will increase closer to $1$ and we still have $\mu_1 \mu_2 > 1/2$.
Thus we may assume that \eqref{s_+op:m} holds, and by \eqref{cont:A_o_f} we get
\[
\norm{U}_{H^{s_2}(\Sigma_T \cap \{ t > z \})} \lesssim \norm{f}_{H^{2N+s_2+ 5/2}(\mathbb{R}} \newcommand{\mathR}{\mathbb{R}^n)} \leq \norm{f}_{H^{s_1}(\mathbb{R}} \newcommand{\mathR}{\mathbb{R}^n)}.
\]
Thus condition \eqref{cond:third_z:z} is also satisfied.\\
We are now in a position to apply Proposition \ref{prop:StUh-LS2020}: there exist $\mu\in (0,1)$, $C = C(L)>0$ and $\varrho>0$ small enough so that
\[
\norm{f}_{H^{s_0}(\mathbb{R}^n)} \leq C(L) \norm{\mathcal{A}(f) - \mathcal{A}(0)}_{H^{-3}((-T,T); H^{1/2}({\mathbb{S}}^{n-1}))|_{\{ t > z \}}}^{\mu}
\]
whenever $\norm{f}_{H^{s_0}(\mathbb{R}^n)} \leq \varrho$ and $\norm{f}_{H^{s_1}(\mathbb{R}^n)} \leq L$ for $f \in H^{s_1}_{\ol{\Omega}_{\sigma}}(\mathbb{R}} \newcommand{\mathR}{\mathbb{R}^n)$. If we recall that $\mathcal{A}(f) = \hat{\mathcal{A}}(f)|_{\{t > z \}}$ and $\tilde{\mathcal{A}}(1+f) = \partial_t^2 \hat{A}(f)$, Lemma \ref{lemma_u_dttu} applied with $k=-5$ implies that
\[
\norm{\eta-1}_{H^{s_0}(\mathbb{R}^n)} \leq C(L) \norm{\tilde{\mathcal{A}}(\eta) - \tilde{\mathcal{A}}(1)}_{H^{-5}((-T,T); H^{1/2}({\mathbb{S}}^{n-1}))|_{\{ t > z \}}}^{\mu}
\]
when $\norm{\eta-1}_{H^{s_0}(\mathbb{R}^n)} \leq \varrho$ and $\norm{\eta}_{H^{s_1}(\mathbb{R}^n)} \leq L$ for $f \in H^{s_1}_{\ol{\Omega}_{\sigma}}(\mathbb{R}} \newcommand{\mathR}{\mathbb{R}^n)$. This finishes the proof of Theorem \ref{th:main_result_z}.
\section{The linearized map} \label{sec:lima-LS2020}
We now concentrate on studying the main properties of the linearization at $0$ of the map $\mathcal{A}$ given in \eqref{A:linear-f}. Recall that this linearization is denoted by $A_0$ and it is given by \eqref{A_0:linear} and \eqref{eq:Ud-LS2020}. The existence and uniqueness of solutions to \eqref{eq:Ud-LS2020} is provided by the following result. Its proof is provided in the Appendix.
\begin{Proposition} \sl \label{prop:sol_smooth_1}
Let $s_0\gg n/2 +2$ and $T>1$. Consider $f \in H^{s_0}_{\ol{\Omega}}(\mathbb{R}^n)$.
There is a unique distributional solution $U(y,z,t)$ to \eqref{eq:Ud-LS2020}, and it is supported in the region $\{ t\geq z\}$.
In particular, one has
\begin{equation*}
U(y,z,t) = u(y,z,t)H(t-z),
\end{equation*}
where $u$ is a ${C^2}$ function in $\left\{ t\geq z \right\}$ satisfying the IVP \begin{equation} \label{eq:nu_1-LS2020_z_1_z}
\left\{ \begin{aligned}
(\partial_t^2 -\Delta) u & = 0 & \text{in}\; \left\{ t> z\right\}, \\
(\partial_t + \partial_z) u & = -\frac{1}{2} f &\text{on } \left\{ t = z\right\},\\
u|_{\left\{t<-1 \right\}}&=0.
\end{aligned}\right.
\end{equation}
In addition, given any $K\geq 3$ we may arrange that $u$ is $C^K$ in the set $\left\{ t\geq z \right\}$ by taking $s_0$ large enough. In particular, one always has $U \in H^{-1}((-T,T), L^2(\mathbb{R}} \newcommand{\mathR}{\mathbb{R}^n))$.
\end{Proposition}
Using standard ODE techniques, one has
\begin{equation} \label{eq:nu1z-LS2020-uF}
u(y,z,t)_{|_{t=z}}= -\frac{1}{2}\int_{-\infty}^0 f (y, s+z) ds:=F(y,z,z)
\end{equation}
It turns out that instead of \eqref{eq:nu_1-LS2020_z_1_z} it is more convenient to consider the characteristic initial value problem
\begin{equation} \label{eq:nu1z-LS2020}
\left\{\begin{aligned}
(\partial_t^2 -\Delta) u & = 0 && \text{in~} \{ t > z\}, \\
u & = F && \text{on~} \{ t = z\}.
\end{aligned}\right.
\end{equation}
We will apply this with $F$ given in \eqref{eq:nu1z-LS2020-uF}, so that the initial value $F(y,z,z)$ satisfies
\begin{equation*}
ZF(y,z,z) = -\frac{1}{2} f(y,z).
\end{equation*}
Here $Z$ is defined as $Z F(y,z,z) := \partial_s \big( F(y,s,s) \big) |_{s = z}$. Thanks to the chain rule, one can see that $Z:= \partial_t + \partial_z$.
\smallskip
As explained in Section \ref{proof_main:result_z}, the Fr\'echet derivative of $\mathcal{A}$ at $0$ is the map $A_0 \colon f \mapsto U|_{\Sigma_T \cap \{ t > z \}}$.
However, it is technically easier to study the map
\begin{equation} \label{eq:A1-LS2020}
A_0' \colon F \mapsto u|_{\Sigma_T \cap \{ t \geq z \}},
\end{equation}
where $u$ solves \eqref{eq:nu1z-LS2020}. The original map $A_0$ can be recovered by $A_0 f = E_0(A_0' F)$ where $F$ is defined in \eqref{eq:nu1z-LS2020-uF} and $E_0$ denotes extension by zero from $\Sigma_T \cap \{ t \geq z \}$ to $\Sigma_T$.
Therefore in the linearized part we mainly focus on the inverse problem for $A_0'$ instead of $A_0$.
We shall adapt the modified time-reversal method proposed in \cite{SU09} to study $A_0'$.
Denote
\begin{equation}\label{dif_sets_z}
\left\{\begin{aligned}
\Sigma & := \{(y,z,t) \,;\, z \leq t \leq T,\, (y,z) \in \partial \Omega \}, \\
\Sigma_- & := \{(y,z,t) \,;\, -1 \leq t \leq z,\, (y,z) \in \partial \Omega \}, \\
\Gamma & := \{(y,z,z) \,;\, (y,z) \in \Omega \}, \quad
\Gamma_T := \{(y,z,T) \,;\, (y,z) \in \Omega \}, \\
Q & := \Omega \times [-1,T], \\
\end{aligned}\right.
\end{equation}
In the time reversal procedure, we generate an approximate inverse for $A_0'$ as the map $h \mapsto v|_{\Gamma}$, where $v$ solves the problem
\[
(\partial_t^2 -\Delta) v = 0 \ \text{in} \ Q, \quad
v = h \ \text{on} \ \Sigma \cup \Sigma_-, \quad
v = v_0, \ v_t = v_1 \ \text{in} \ \Gamma_T,
\]
with prescribed boundary data $h$ and certain data $(v_0, v_1)$ at the final time $t = T$. For the time reversal argument it would be natural to work with energy spaces. However, it is not obvious that $h \in H^1(\Sigma)$ would imply $v|_{\Gamma} \in H^1(\Gamma)$. We will prove this fact by using energy estimates.
To that end, we first investigate an initial boundary value problem.
\subsection{An initial boundary value problem} \label{subsec:IBVP-LS2020}
For a function $h$, we adopt the following convention:
\begin{equation*}
h_t := \partial_t h, \quad
h_z := \partial_z h, \quad
h_y := \nabla_y h, \quad
h_x := (\nabla_y h, \partial_z h), \quad
h_\nu := \nu \cdot h_x,
\end{equation*}
where $\nu \in \mathbb S^{n-1}$ is a unit vector.
We define a seminorm $\nrm[\mathcal H]{\cdot}$ as follows,
\begin{equation} \label{eq:NN0-LS2020}
\nrm[\mathcal H]{h} = \big( \frac 1 {\sqrt 2} \int_\Gamma (|\nabla_y h|^2 + |h_z + h_t|^2) \dif S \big)^{\frac 1 2}.
\end{equation}
We introduce the following PDE,
\begin{equation} \label{eq:vL-LS2020}
\left\{\begin{aligned}
(\partial_t^2 -\Delta) v & = G && \text{in}\; Q, \\
v & = u && \text{on } \Sigma \cup \Sigma_-, \\
v = \phi_0, \ v_t & = \phi_1 && \text{in}\; \Gamma_T.
\end{aligned}\right.
\end{equation}
We have the following a priori estimate.
\begin{Proposition} \label{prop:Bdd2-LS2020}
Assume $v \in C^2(\overline{Q})$ solves \eqref{eq:vL-LS2020} with $\phi_0 \in H^1(\Omega)$, $\phi_1 \in L^2(\Omega)$, $G \in L^2(Q)$ and $u|_{\Sigma \cup \Sigma_{-}} \in H^1(\Sigma \cup \Sigma_{-})$.
For $T \geq 1$, we have
\begin{equation} \label{eq:vnf-LS2020}
\nrm[\mathcal H]{v}
\leq C( \nrm[L^2(\Omega)]{\nabla \phi_0} + \nrm[L^2(\Omega)]{\phi_1} + \nrm[L^2(Q)]{G} + \sqrt{n} e^{T/2} \nrm[H^1(\Sigma)]{v}).
\end{equation}
for some constant $C$ independent of $v$, $\phi_0$, $\phi_1$, $G$, $n$ and $T$.
\end{Proposition}
To prove Proposition \ref{prop:Bdd2-LS2020}, we do some preparations first.
Let us introduce the following notations:
\begin{equation*}
\left\{\begin{aligned}
\widetilde Q_\tau & := \{(y,z,t) \,;\, (y,z) \in \Omega,\, z \leq t \leq \tau \} \subset Q, \\
\widetilde \Sigma_\tau & := \{(y,z,t) \,;\, (y,z) \in \partial \Omega,\, z \leq t \leq \tau \} \subset \Sigma, \\
\widetilde \Gamma_\tau & := \{(y,z,\tau)\,;\, (y,z) \in \Omega \} \cap \widetilde Q_\tau,
\end{aligned}\right.
\end{equation*}
thus $\partial \widetilde Q_\tau = \widetilde \Gamma_\tau \cup \widetilde \Sigma_\tau \cup \Gamma$ for $\tau \geq 1$. Note also that when $-1 \leq \tau < 1$ the set $\widetilde \Gamma_\tau$ is a strict subset of $\Omega \times \{ \tau \}$.
To abbreviate, we denote $\square:= \partial^2_t- \Delta$.
\begin{Lemma} \label{lem:Bdd-LS2020}
Under the same assumptions as in Proposition \ref{prop:Bdd2-LS2020}, we have
\[
\nrm[\mathcal H]{v}^2
\leq C(\nrm[L^2(\Omega)]{\nabla \phi_0}^2 + \nrm[L^2(\Omega)]{\phi_1}^2 + e^T \nrm[L^2(Q)]{G}^2 + \nrm[L^2(\Sigma)]{v_t} \nrm[L^2(\Sigma)]{v_\nu})
\]
for some constant $C$ independent of $u$, $\phi_0$, $\phi_1$, $G$ and $T$.
\end{Lemma}
\begin{proof}
Integrating the identity
\begin{equation} \label{eq:rts-LS2020}
2 \Re \{\overline{v}_t \square v \}
= \Re \divr_{x,t} \big( -2 \overline{v}_t \nabla_x v, |v_t|^2 + |\nabla_x v|^2 \big)
\end{equation}
over $\widetilde Q_\tau$ when $\tau \geq 1$ and noticing that $\square v = G$ in $\widetilde Q_\tau$, we obtain that
\begin{equation}\label{eq:0g0-LS2020}
\begin{aligned}
\Re \int_{\widetilde Q_\tau} 2 \overline{v}_t G
&= \int_{\widetilde \Gamma_\tau} (|v_t|^2 + |\nabla_x v|^2) \dif S- 2 \Re \int_{\widetilde \Sigma_\tau} \overline{v}_t v_{\nu} \dif S\\
& \qquad - \frac 1 {\sqrt 2} \int_\Gamma (|\nabla_y v|^2 + |v_z + v_t|^2) \dif S
\end{aligned}
\end{equation}
Hence, \eqref{eq:0g0-LS2020} becomes
\begin{equation} \label{eq:0g02-LS2020}
\Re \int_{\widetilde Q_\tau} 2 \overline{v}_t G
= \int_{\widetilde \Gamma_\tau} (|v_t|^2 + |\nabla_x v|^2) \dif S - \frac 1 {\sqrt 2} \nrm[\mathcal H]{v}^2 - 2 \Re \int_{\widetilde \Sigma_\tau} \overline{v}_t v_{\nu} \dif S.
\end{equation}
We set
\begin{equation} \label{eq:0gh-LS2020}
e(\tau) := \int_{\widetilde \Gamma_\tau} (|\nabla_x v|^2 + |v_t|^2) \dif S.
\end{equation}
From \eqref{eq:0g02-LS2020} we deduce
\begin{align}
e(\tau)
& \leq \int_0^\tau e(s) \dif s + \int_{\widetilde Q_\tau} |G|^2 + \frac 1 {\sqrt 2} \nrm[\mathcal H]{v}^2 + 2 \int_{\widetilde \Sigma_\tau} |v_t v_{\nu}| \dif S, \nonumber
\end{align}
so the Gronwall's inequality gives
\begin{equation} \label{eq:0g12-LS2020}
e(\tau)
\leq e^\tau (\frac 1 {\sqrt 2} \nrm[\mathcal H]{v}^2 + \int_{\widetilde Q_\tau} |G|^2 + 2 \int_{\widetilde \Sigma_\tau} |v_t v_{\nu}| \dif S).
\end{equation}
From \eqref{eq:0g02-LS2020} we also obtain
\begin{align*}
& \ \frac 1 {\sqrt 2} \nrm[\mathcal H]{v}^2
= \int_{\widetilde \Gamma_\tau} (v_t^2 + |\nabla_x v|^2) \dif S - 2 \Re \int_{\widetilde \Sigma_\tau} \overline{v}_t v_{\nu} \dif S - \Re \int_{\widetilde Q_\tau} 2 \overline{v}_t G \nonumber \\
\leq & \ e(\tau) + 2[1 + \epsilon (e^\tau - 1)] \int_{\widetilde \Sigma_\tau} |v_t v_{\nu}| \dif S + [\frac 1 \epsilon + \epsilon (e^\tau - 1)] \int_{\widetilde Q_\tau} |G|^2 + \epsilon (e^\tau - 1) \frac 1 {\sqrt 2} \nrm[\mathcal H]{v}^2.
\end{align*}
By setting $\epsilon = [2(e^\tau - 1)]^{-1}>0$ and absorbing $\nrm[\mathcal H]{v}^2$ on the right hand side, we obtain
\begin{equation} \label{eq:0g03-LS2020}
\frac 1 {2 \sqrt 2} \nrm[\mathcal H]{v}^2
\leq e(\tau) + 3 \int_{\widetilde \Sigma_\tau} |v_t v_{\nu}| \dif S + 4e^\tau \int_{\widetilde Q_\tau} |G|^2.
\end{equation}
Now setting $\tau = T$ and noting that $v(\cdot,T) = \phi_0$ and $v_t(\cdot,T) = \phi_1$, \eqref{eq:0g03-LS2020} gives
\begin{equation*}
\nrm[\mathcal H]{v}^2
\leq C(\nrm[L^2(\Omega)]{\nabla \phi_0}^2 + \nrm[L^2(\Omega)]{\phi_1}^2 + \nrm[L^2(\Sigma)]{v_t} \nrm[L^2(\Sigma)]{v_\nu} + e^T \nrm[L^2(Q)]{G}^2),
\end{equation*}
for some constant $C$ independent of $T$.
We arrive at the conclusion.
\end{proof}
The norm $\nrm[L^2(\Sigma)]{v_\nu}$ can also be estimated.
Following \cite[Lemma 3.3]{RakeshSalo1}, we examine the quantity $(x \cdot \nabla v) \square v$ and use integration by parts.
\begin{Lemma} \label{lem:tdlv-LS2020}
Assume $v \in C^2(\ol{Q})$ solves \eqref{eq:vL-LS2020}
For $\tau \geq 1$, we have
\begin{equation*}
\nrm[L^2(\widetilde \Sigma_\tau)]{v_\nu}^2
\leq C ne^\tau (\nrm[L^2(\widetilde Q_\tau)]{G}^2 + \nrm[\mathcal H]{v}^2 + ne^{\tau} \nrm[H^1(\widetilde \Sigma_\tau)]{v}^2),
\end{equation*}
for some constant $C$ independent of $v$, $G$, $\tau$ and the dimension $n$.
\end{Lemma}
\begin{proof}
Integrating the identity
{\small \[
2 \Re (x \cdot \nabla \overline v) \square v = \Re \divr_{x,t} \big( x(|\nabla v|^2 - |v_t|^2) - 2(x\cdot \nabla \overline v) \nabla v, 2 (x\cdot \nabla \overline v) v_t \big) + n |v_t|^2 - (n-2)|\nabla v|^2
\]}
over $\widetilde Q_\tau$ and noticing that $\square v = G$ in $\widetilde Q_\tau$, similar to \eqref{eq:0g0-LS2020} we now have
\begin{align}
2 \int_{\widetilde \Sigma_\tau} |v_\nu|^2
& = \frac 1 {\sqrt 2} \int_\Gamma [z|\nabla \big( v \big)|^2 - 2\Re \{x\cdot \nabla \big( \overline v \big) \partial_z \big( v \big) \} ] + \Re \int_{\widetilde \Gamma_\tau} 2(x\cdot \nabla v) v_t \nonumber \\
& \quad - 2\Re \int_{\widetilde Q_\tau} (x \cdot \nabla \overline v) G + \int_{\widetilde \Sigma_\tau} (|v_\nu|^2 + \frac 1 2 \sum_{i \neq j}|\Omega_{ij} v|^2 - |v_t|^2) \nonumber \\
& \quad + \int_{\widetilde Q_\tau} (n|v_t|^2 - (n-2)|\nabla v|^2), \label{eq:ig0-LS2020}
\end{align}
where we used (see \cite[(1.19)]{RakeshSalo1}) the fact
\[
|\nabla \varphi(x)|^2 = |\varphi_\nu(x)|^2 + \frac 1 2 \sum_{i \neq j}|\Omega_{ij} \varphi(x)|^2, \quad \text{where} \quad |x| = 1, \ \Omega_{ij} = x_i \partial_j - x_j \partial_i.
\]
By moving the $v_\nu$-term on the RHS of \eqref{eq:ig0-LS2020} to the left, we further obtain
\begin{align}
\int_{\widetilde \Sigma_\tau} |v_\nu|^2
& \lesssim
\nrm[\mathcal H]{v}^2 + e(\tau) + \nrm[H^1(\widetilde \Sigma_\tau)]{v}^2 + n \int_0^\tau e(s) \dif s + n \int_{\widetilde Q_\tau} |G|^2, \label{eq:ig1-LS2020}
\end{align}
where $e(\tau)$ is defined in \eqref{eq:0gh-LS2020}.
Combining \eqref{eq:ig1-LS2020} and \eqref{eq:0g12-LS2020}, we have
\begin{align*}
\int_{\widetilde \Sigma_\tau} |v_\nu|^2
& \lesssim (n+1) e^\tau (\nrm[\mathcal H]{v}^2 + \int_{\widetilde Q_\tau} |G|^2 + \frac 1 \epsilon \nrm[\widetilde \Sigma_\tau]{v_t}^2 + \epsilon \nrm[\widetilde \Sigma_\tau]{v_\nu}^2) + \nrm[\mathcal H]{v}^2 + \nrm[H^1(\widetilde \Sigma_\tau)]{v}^2.
\end{align*}
Setting $\epsilon = [2C(n+1)e^\tau]^{-1}$ for some constant $C$ big enough, we have
\begin{equation*}
\int_{\widetilde \Sigma_\tau} |v_\nu|^2
\lesssim (n+1) e^\tau \int_{\widetilde Q_\tau} |G|^2 + ne^\tau \nrm[\mathcal H]{v}^2 + n^2 e^{2\tau} \nrm[H^1(\widetilde \Sigma_\tau)]{v}^2.
\end{equation*}
We arrive at the conclusion.
\end{proof}
Now we are ready to prove Proposition \ref{prop:Bdd2-LS2020}.
\begin{proof}[Proof of Proposition \ref{prop:Bdd2-LS2020}]
Combining Lemma \ref{lem:Bdd-LS2020} and Lemma \ref{lem:tdlv-LS2020}, we get
\begin{align*}
\nrm[\mathcal H]{v}^2
& \leq C(\nrm[L^2(\Omega)]{\nabla \phi_0}^2 + \nrm[L^2(\Omega)]{\phi_1}^2) + \epsilon C ne^T \nrm[L^2(Q)]{G}^2 + (\frac C {4\epsilon} + \epsilon C n^2e^{2T}) \nrm[H^1(\Sigma)]{v}^2 \nonumber \\
& \quad + \epsilon C n e^{T} \nrm[\mathcal H]{v}^2.
\end{align*}
By setting $\epsilon = (2C ne^{T})^{-1}$ and absorbing the $\nrm[\mathcal H]{v}^2$ term on the RHS by the LHS, we finally arrive at \eqref{eq:vnf-LS2020}.
The proof is complete.
\end{proof}
\subsection{The time reversal method}
Recall the notation from \eqref{dif_sets_z}. Given the data $\{u |_{\Sigma}\}$, we aim to construct an approximation of $F$ in \eqref{eq:nu1z-LS2020} by using a modified time-reversal method as in \cite{SU09}.
We define a function $v$ as the solution of the following system:
\begin{equation} \label{eq:vL0-LS2020}
\left\{\begin{aligned}
(\partial_t^2 -\Delta) v & = 0 && \text{in}\; Q, \\
v & = \tilde u && \text{on } \Sigma \cup \Sigma_-, \\
v = \phi_0, \ v_t & = 0 && \text{in}\; \Gamma_T, \\
\Delta \phi_0 & = 0 && \text{~in~} \Omega, \quad \phi_0 = u(\cdot,T) \text{~on~} \partial \Omega.
\end{aligned}\right.
\end{equation}
Here $\tilde{u}$ is a suitable extension of $u$ from $\Sigma$ to $\Sigma_-$ given in Lemma \ref{lem:vEx-LS2020} below. The choice of this extension will have no influence on the analysis in the rest of the paper.
However, as mentioned earlier, it is not obvious that $v|_\Gamma$ is in $H^1(\Gamma)$ if $u \in H^1(\Sigma)$.
Hence, we shall define
\begin{equation*}
v|_\Gamma := \lim_{\epsilon \to 0^+} v_\epsilon |_\Gamma
\end{equation*}
where $v_\epsilon$ solves
\begin{equation} \label{eq:vLe-LS2020}
\left\{\begin{aligned}
(\partial_t^2 -\Delta) v_\epsilon & = 0 && \text{in}\; Q, \\
v_\epsilon & = u_\epsilon && \text{on } \Sigma \cup \Sigma_-, \\
v_\epsilon = \phi_0, \ \partial_t v_\epsilon & = 0 && \text{in}\; \Gamma_T, \\
\Delta \phi_0 & = 0 && \text{~in~} \Omega, \quad \phi_0 = u_\epsilon(\cdot,T) \text{~on~} \partial \Omega.
\end{aligned}\right.
\end{equation}
Here $u_\epsilon$ is a modification of $u$ on the lateral boundary given in \eqref{eq:uep-LS2020} such that the compatibility requirements on $\partial \Gamma_T$ required by the existence of a smooth solution $v_{\varepsilon}$ (when $u|_{\Sigma}$ is smooth) are satisfied.
Then we know that $v_\epsilon \in C^2(\overline Q)$ by \cite[Remark 2.10]{llt1986non},
and hence Proposition \ref{prop:Bdd2-LS2020} can be applied to $v_\epsilon$ and the limit exists due to the estimate given in Proposition \ref{prop:Bdd2-LS2020}.
For convenience we reproduce \cite[Remark 2.10]{llt1986non} in the next lemma.
\begin{Lemma} \label{lem:LLT210-LS2020}
Let $\Phi$ be a solution of the system
\begin{equation*}
\left\{\begin{aligned}
(\partial_t^2 -\Delta) \Phi & = F && \text{in}\; \Omega \times [0,T], \\
\Phi & = g && \text{on } \Xi := \partial \Omega \times [0,T], \\
\Phi = \Phi_0, \ \Phi_t & = \Phi_1 && \text{in}\; \Omega \times \{t=0\},
\end{aligned}\right.
\end{equation*}
with $(F,g, \Phi_0, \Phi_1)$ satisfying the regularity assumptions ($m$ is a non-negative integer)
\begin{equation*}
\left\{\begin{aligned}
& F \in L^1(0,T; H^m(\Omega)), \ \frac {\mathrm{d}^m F} {\mathrm{d} t^m} \in L^1(0,T; L^2(\Omega)), \\
& \Phi_0 \in H^{m+1}(\Omega), \ \Phi_1 \in H^{m}(\Omega), \\
& g \in H^{m+1}(\Xi) := L^2(0,T; H^{m+1}(\Xi)) \cap H^{m+1}(0,T; L^2(\Xi))
\end{aligned}\right.
\end{equation*}
and satisfying all necessary compatibility conditions up to order $m$.
Then
\begin{equation*}
\Phi \in C([0,T]; H^{m+1}(\Omega)), \
\frac {\mathrm{d}^{(m+1)} \Phi} {\mathrm{d} t^{(m+1)}} \in C([0,T]; L^2(\Omega)), \ \text{and} \
\frac {\partial \Phi} {\partial \nu} \in H^m(\Xi).
\end{equation*}
\end{Lemma}
Note that in contrast with $u$ which is defined in the infinite half plane $\{(y,z,t) \,;\, t \geq z \}$, $v$ is only defined in the finite cylinder $\Omega \times [-1,T]$.
\begin{Lemma} \label{lem:vEx-LS2020}
If $u|_{\Sigma} \in C^K(\Sigma)$ where $K = \lceil n/2 \rceil + 2$, then there exists a unique solution $v \in C([-1,T]; H^1(\Omega))$ of the system \eqref{eq:vL0-LS2020}, and $v|_{\Gamma} \in H^1(\Gamma)$.
\end{Lemma}
\begin{proof}
We extend $u$ from $\Sigma$ to $\Sigma_-$ as follows.
Inspired by the Taylor's expansion,
we define the following extension of $u$,
\begin{equation*}
\tilde u(y,z,t) :=
\left\{\begin{aligned}
& u(y,z,t), && \text{~on~} \Sigma, \\
& \sum_{k = 0}^K (\partial_t^k u)(y,z,z) \cdot (t-z)^k / k!, && \text{~on~} \Sigma_-.
\end{aligned}\right.
\end{equation*}
Then $\tilde u \in C^K(\Sigma \cup \Sigma_-) \subset H^K(\Sigma \cup \Sigma_-)$. By the trace theorem $\tilde u|_{\partial \Omega \times \{T\}}$ is in $H^{K-\frac 1 2}(\partial \Omega \times \{T\})$, which implies that the harmonic function $\phi_0$ in \eqref{eq:vL0-LS2020} is in $H^K(\Gamma_T)$.
Now we construct a series of approximate Dirichlet boundary data $\{u_\epsilon\}_{\epsilon > 0}$ such that the compatibility conditions needed in Lemma \ref{lem:LLT210-LS2020} will be satisfied.
To that end, we fix a cutoff function $\chi_{0} \in C_c^\infty(\mathbb{R}} \newcommand{\mathR}{\mathbb{R})$ satisfying $\chi_0(t) = 1$ when $|t| \leq 1$ and $\chi_0(t) = 0$ when $|t| \geq 2$,
and we set
\begin{equation} \label{eq:uep-LS2020}
u_\epsilon(x,t)
:= \chi_0(\frac {T-t} \epsilon) \tilde u(x,T) + (1 - \chi_0(\frac {T-t} \epsilon))\tilde u(x,t).
\end{equation}
We see $u_\epsilon = \tilde u = u$ on $\Gamma_T$.
We denote the initial velocity of \eqref{eq:vLe-LS2020} as $\phi_1$, i.e.~$u_t = \phi_1 = 0$ in $\Gamma_T$.
The compatibility conditions for Lemma \ref{lem:LLT210-LS2020} up to the order $K$ are the following (cf.~e.g.~\cite[\S 7.2 (62)]{evans2010pde}):
\begin{equation} \label{eq:DPue-LS2020}
(\Delta^k \phi_0, \Delta^k \phi_1) = (\partial_t^{2k} u_\epsilon, \partial_t^{2k+1} u_\epsilon) \text{~on~} \Gamma_T, \quad \forall k: 0 \leq k \leq \Big \lfloor \frac K 2 \Big \rfloor.
\end{equation}
It can be checked that \eqref{eq:DPue-LS2020} is true, and this is simply because $\phi_0 = u_\epsilon(\cdot,T)$, $\Delta \phi_0 = 0$, $\phi_1 = 0$ and $\partial_t^j u_\epsilon(\cdot, T) = 0$ for $\forall j \geq 1$.
It is straightforward to check that
\begin{equation} \label{eq:ue1-LS2020}
\nrm[L^2(\Sigma)]{u - u_\epsilon} \to 0, \quad
\nrm[L^2(\Sigma)]{\nabla|_{\Sigma,x}(u - u_\epsilon)} \to 0, \quad \text{as~} \epsilon \to 0^+,
\end{equation}
where $\nabla|_{\Sigma,x}$ stands for the spacial component of the gradient on the manifold $\Sigma$.
We aim to make the sequence $\{u_\epsilon\}_{\epsilon > 0}$ converge to $u$ in $H^1(\Sigma)$.
According to \eqref{eq:ue1-LS2020}, it is left to show $\nrm[L^2(\Sigma)]{\partial_t(u - u_\epsilon)} \to 0$ as $\epsilon \to 0^+$.
One can compute
\begin{align*}
\partial_t (u_\epsilon - \tilde u)(x,t)
& = \frac 1 \epsilon \chi_0'(\frac {T-t} \epsilon) [\tilde u(x,t) - \tilde u(x,T)] + (1 - \chi_0(\frac {T-t} \epsilon)) \tilde u_t(x,t) - \tilde u_t(x,t) \\
& = \frac 1 \epsilon \chi_0'(\frac {T-t} \epsilon) [(t-T) \tilde u_t(x,T) + \mathcal O(|t-T|^2)] - \chi_0(\frac {T-t} \epsilon) \tilde u_t(x,t) \\
& = -\frac {T-t} \epsilon \chi_0'(\frac {T-t} \epsilon) [\tilde u_t(x,T) + \mathcal O(|t-T|)] - \chi_0(\frac {T-t} \epsilon) \tilde u_t(x,t).
\end{align*}
Note that $\frac {T-t} \epsilon \chi_0'(\frac {T-t} \epsilon) \to 0$ point-wise in $[0,T]$, and $\chi_0(\frac {T-t} \epsilon) \to 0$ point-wise in $[0,T)$ as $\epsilon \to 0^+$, so $\partial_t (u_\epsilon - \tilde u)(x,t) \to 0$ almost everywhere on $\overline \Sigma$, and hence
\begin{equation} \label{eq:ue2-LS2020}
\nrm[L^2(\Sigma)]{\partial_t(\tilde u - u_\epsilon)} \to 0, \quad \text{as~} \epsilon \to 0^+.
\end{equation}
Combining \eqref{eq:ue1-LS2020} with \eqref{eq:ue2-LS2020}, we arrive at
\begin{equation} \label{eq:ue-LS2020}
\nrm[H^1(\Sigma)]{\tilde u - u_\epsilon} \to 0, \quad \text{as~} \epsilon \to 0^+.
\end{equation}
The smoothness of $\tilde u$ implies $u_\epsilon \in C^K(\Sigma \cup \Sigma_-) \subset H^K(\Sigma \cup \Sigma_-)$.
For the system \eqref{eq:vLe-LS2020}, the prerequisites of Lemma \ref{lem:LLT210-LS2020} are all satisfied now, especially the compatibility requirements \eqref{eq:DPue-LS2020}, so we can conclude
\[
v_\epsilon \in C([-1,T]; H^K(\Omega)), \qquad \partial_t v_\epsilon \in C([-1,T]; H^{K-1}(\Omega)).
\]
By the Sobolev embedding theorem we know $H^K(\Omega) \subset C^2(\overline{\Omega})$ when $K - n/2 \geq 2$, so we set $K = \lceil n/2 \rceil + 2$, and thus
\begin{equation} \label{eq:vEx1-LS2020}
v_\epsilon \in C([-1,T]; C^2(\overline{\Omega})), \qquad \partial_t v_\epsilon \in C([-1,T]; C^1(\overline{\Omega})),
\end{equation}
so $\Delta v_\epsilon(\cdot,t) \in C(\ol{\Omega})$ for each $t$.
Therefore, the equation $(\partial_t^2 -\Delta) v_\epsilon = 0$ implies
\begin{equation} \label{eq:vEx2-LS2020}
\partial_t^2 v_\epsilon(x,t) \text{~is continuous w.r.t.~} t.
\end{equation}
By \eqref{eq:vEx1-LS2020} and \eqref{eq:vEx2-LS2020} we obtain $v_\epsilon \in C^2(\overline Q)$, thus $v_\epsilon$ is well-defined on the slanted plane $\Gamma$ and $v_\epsilon |_\Gamma \in H^1(\Gamma)$.
Finally, by Proposition \ref{prop:Bdd2-LS2020} and the convergence in \eqref{eq:ue-LS2020}, we see $\{ v_\epsilon |_\Gamma \}$ is a Cauchy sequence in $H^1(\Gamma)$,
so we can define $v|_\Gamma$ as the limit of $v_\epsilon|_\Gamma$, i.e.,
\[
v|_\Gamma := \lim_{\epsilon \to 0^+} v_\epsilon |_\Gamma,
\]
and the estimate in Proposition \ref{prop:Bdd2-LS2020} implies $v|_\Gamma \in H^1(\Gamma)$.
The proof is done.
\end{proof}
\begin{Remark} \label{rem:vEx-LS2020}
According to \eqref{eq:nu1z-LS2020} and \eqref{eq:vLe-LS2020} we see that an $F \in H^{s_0}_{\ol{\Omega}}(\mathbb{R}^n)$ produces a $u$ and a $v_\epsilon$.
By Proposition \ref{prop:sol_smooth_1} and Lemma \ref{lem:vEx-LS2020}, we can conclude there exists a large enough integer $s_0$ such that $u \in C^{\lceil n/2 \rceil + 2}$ and $v_\epsilon \in C^2$, respectively.
\end{Remark}
\subsection{The approximate inverse of \texorpdfstring{$A_0'$}{A0'}} \label{subsec:B-LS2020}
To introduce the approximate inverse $B$ of $A_0'$, we introduce some function spaces first.
Recall once more the notation given in \eqref{dif_sets_z}.
We wish to consider functions $F$ in $\{ t = z \}$ that satisfy $ZF = 0$ outside $\Gamma$, since this is true in \eqref{eq:nu1z-LS2020-uF} when $\supp(f) \subset \ol{\Omega}$.
Moreover, for technical reasons we need the following weighted $H^1$-norm of $F$ on $\partial \Gamma$ to be finite:
\begin{equation} \label{eq:Weim-LS2020}
\nrm[H_w^1(\partial \Gamma)]{F}
:= \big( \int_{\partial \Gamma} \frac 1 {\sqrt{1-|y|^4}} |\nabla_{\partial \Gamma} F(y,z_y,z_y)|^2 \dif S \big)^{1/2}, \quad z_y := \sqrt{1-|y|^2}.
\end{equation}
Therefore, we consider functions $h$ on $\{ t = z \}$ that satisfy the conditions:
\begin{equation} \label{eq:zc-LS2020}
\left\{\begin{aligned}
& \supp(h) \subset \{ (y,z,z) \,;\, \text{``}\abs{(y,z)} \leq 1\text{''}, \text{ or } \text{``}z \geq 0 \text{ and } |y| \leq 1\text{''} \}, \\
& Zh = 0 \text{~outside $\Gamma$}, \quad \text{and} \quad \nrm[H_w^1(\partial \Gamma)]{F} < +\infty.
\end{aligned}\right.
\end{equation}
The integral requirement above is to make sure the integrals in \eqref{eq:ETX-LS2020}-\eqref{eq:ted1-LS2020} are finite.
We define function spaces
\begin{equation} \label{eq:zc2-LS2020}
\left\{\begin{aligned}
\mathcal H' & := \{ h \in H^1_{\mathrm{loc}}(\{t = z \}) \,;\, h \text{~satisfies~} \eqref{eq:zc-LS2020} \}, \\
\mathcal H & := \{ h \in \mathcal H' \,;\, \supp h \subset \ol{\Gamma} \},
\end{aligned}\right.
\end{equation}
Recall the seminorm $\nrm[\mathcal H]{h}$ defined in \eqref{eq:NN0-LS2020},
\begin{equation*}
\nrm[\mathcal H]{h} = \big( \frac 1 {\sqrt 2} \int_\Gamma (|\nabla_y h|^2 + |h_z + h_t|^2) \dif S \big)^{\frac 1 2}.
\end{equation*}
Note that $Z = \partial_z + \partial_t$ is tangential to $\Gamma$, and hence $\nrm[\mathcal H]{h}$ corresponds to $\norm{\nabla_{\Gamma} h}_{L^2(\Gamma)}$.
Note also that by \eqref{eq:zc-LS2020} $\nrm[\mathcal H]{\,\cdot\,}$ is in fact a norm on $\mathcal H'$, so that $(\mathcal H', \nrm[\mathcal H]{\cdot})$ is a Banach space and $(\mathcal H, \nrm[\mathcal H]{\cdot})$ is a closed subspace.
Moreover, by Poincar\'e inequality, the norm $\norm{h}_{\mathcal H}$ is comparable to $\norm{h}_{H^1(\Gamma)}$ for $h \in \mathcal H$. We shall use these facts several times in the following computations.
By Lemma \ref{lem:vEx-LS2020} we can define an \emph{approximate inverse} $B$ of $A_0'$ as follows,
\begin{equation} \label{eq:B-LS2020}
\left\{\begin{aligned}
& B := \lim_{\epsilon \to 0^+} B_\epsilon, \ \text{where} \ B_\epsilon \colon C^K(\Sigma) \subset H^1(\Sigma) \to \mathcal H', \ \ u|_{\Sigma} \mapsto \tilde v_\epsilon, \\
& \tilde v_\epsilon \text{~is the zero extension of~} v_\epsilon |_{\Gamma} \text{~to~} \{t = z\} \text{~where $v_\epsilon$ solves \eqref{eq:vLe-LS2020}}.
\end{aligned}\right.
\end{equation}
From the proof of Lemma \ref{lem:vEx-LS2020} we see $v|_{\Gamma} := \lim_{\epsilon \to 0^+} v_\epsilon |_{\Gamma} \in H^1(\Gamma)$, and $\tilde v$ is the zero extension of $v$, so $\tilde v \in \mathcal H'$.
Note that the restriction of $u$ on $\{t = z\}$ belongs to $\mathcal H'$, so a solution of \eqref{eq:vL0-LS2020} will always have an extension in $\mathcal H'$.
The map $B$ shall be understood intuitively as a parametrix of $A_0'$, and $B A_0' F$ as an approximation of $F$ for any $F \in \mathcal H$ but not for $F \in \mathcal H'$.
We will prove below in Proposition \ref{prop:Bdd3-LS2020} that in fact $B: H^1(\Sigma) \to \mathcal H'$ is a bounded map.
\subsection{Boundedness of the approximate inverse}
\begin{Proposition} \label{prop:Bdd3-LS2020}
The map $B$ extends as a bounded operator from $H^1(\Sigma)$ to $\mathcal H'$, and for $T \geq 1$, we have
\begin{equation*}
\nrm[\mathcal H]{Bu}
\leq C e^{T/2} \nrm[H^1(\Sigma)]{u}
\end{equation*}
for some constant $C$ independent of $u$ and $T$.
\end{Proposition}
\begin{proof}
By density it is enough to prove the estimate when $u|_{\Sigma}$ is smooth. The equation \eqref{eq:vL0-LS2020} is a special case of \eqref{eq:vL-LS2020} when we choose $(\phi_0, \phi_1, G)$ according to
\begin{equation*}
\left\{\begin{aligned}
\Delta \phi_0 & = 0 \text{~in~} \Omega, & \phi_0 & = u(\cdot,T) \text{~on~} \partial \Omega, \\
\phi_1 & = 0 \text{~in~} \Omega, & G & = 0 \text{~in~} Q.
\end{aligned}\right.
\end{equation*}
Recall the definition of $B$ in \eqref{eq:B-LS2020} and the proof of Lemma \ref{lem:vEx-LS2020}.
From \eqref{eq:vnf-LS2020} we obtain
\[
\nrm[\mathcal H]{v_\epsilon}^2
\leq C( \nrm[L^2(\Omega)]{\nabla \phi_0}^2 + ne^{T} \nrm[H^1(\Sigma)]{v_\epsilon}^2),
\]
and by taking the limit $\epsilon \to 0^+$ it gives
\begin{align}
\nrm[\mathcal H]{v}^2
= \nrm[\mathcal H]{Bu}^2
& = C( \nrm[L^2(\Omega)]{\nabla \phi_0}^2 + ne^{T} \nrm[H^1(\Sigma)]{u}^2). \label{eq:unf-LS2020}
\end{align}
It remains to bound the $\nrm{\nabla \phi_0}$ term by $\nrm{u}$. Since $\phi_0$ is a harmonic function in $\Omega$ with Dirichlet data $u(\,\cdot\,, T)|_{\partial \Omega}$, so it follows from standard estimates for the Dirichlet problem and from the trace theorem on $\Sigma$ that
\[
\norm{\phi_0}_{H^1(\Omega)} \leq C \norm{u(\,\cdot\,, T)}_{H^{1/2}(\partial \Omega)} \leq C \norm{u}_{H^1(\Sigma)}.
\]
\begin{comment}
For the trace operator $u \in H^1(\widetilde \Gamma_T) \mapsto u|_{\partial \Omega} \in H^{1/2}(\widetilde \Gamma_T \cap \Sigma)$, there exists a bounded right inverse \cite[\S 3.3.3]{tr83th}, denoted as $\mathcal T$, such that
\[
\mathcal T \colon \varphi \in H^{1/2}(\partial \Omega) \ \mapsto \ \mathcal T \varphi \in H^1(\Omega), \text{~with~} (\mathcal T \varphi)|_{\partial \Omega} = \varphi.
\]
We denote the operator norm of $\mathcal T$ as $\nrm{\mathcal T}$.
For notational clearance we denote $f := u|_{\Gamma \cap \Sigma}$, then
\begin{equation} \label{eq:Lb1-LS2020}
\nrm[H^{1}(\Omega)]{\mathcal T f}
\leq \nrm{\mathcal T} \nrm[H^{1/2}(\Gamma \cap \Sigma)]{u}.
\end{equation}
Now \eqref{eq:vLin-LS2020} is equivalent to
\begin{equation*}
\left\{\begin{aligned}
-\Delta(\phi_0 - \mathcal T f) & = \Delta(\mathcal T f) && \text{~in~} \Omega, \\
\phi_0 - \mathcal T f & = 0 && \text{~on~} \partial \Omega.
\end{aligned}\right.
\end{equation*}
Standard elliptic estimates in PDE theory gives
\begin{equation} \label{eq:Lb2-LS2020}
\nrm[H^1(\Omega)]{\phi_0 - \mathcal T f}
\leq \nrm[H^{-1}(\Omega)]{\Delta(\mathcal T f)}
\lesssim \nrm[H^{1}(\Omega)]{\mathcal T f}.
\end{equation}
Combining the fact
\(
\nrm[H^1(\Omega)]{\phi_0 - \mathcal T f}
\geq \nrm[H^1(\Omega)]{\phi_0} - \nrm[H^1(\Omega)]{\mathcal T f}
\)
with \eqref{eq:Lb1-LS2020} and \eqref{eq:Lb2-LS2020}, we obtain
\begin{equation*}
\nrm[H^1(\Omega)]{\phi_0}
\lesssim \nrm{\mathcal T} \nrm[H^{1/2}(\Gamma \cap \Sigma)]{u},
\end{equation*}
\end{comment}
Then \eqref{eq:unf-LS2020} becomes
\begin{equation*}
\nrm[\mathcal H]{Bu}
\leq C( \nrm[H^{1}(\Sigma)]{u} + \sqrt{n} e^{T/2} \nrm[H^1(\Sigma)]{u}).
\end{equation*}
This is the required statement.
\end{proof}
Readers may note that the constant $e^{T/2}$ in Lemma \ref{lem:tdlv-LS2020}, Proposition \ref{prop:Bdd2-LS2020} and Proposition \ref{prop:Bdd3-LS2020} might not be optimal.
\section{The error operator} \label{sec:KK-LS2020}
In this section we recover the function $F$ in \eqref{eq:nu1z-LS2020} by employing an iterative algorithm, and the function space at the beginning of the algorithm is different from these in the rest of the algorithm.
We define
\[
\mathcal H_{\mathrm{init}} := \{ h \in H^1_{\mathrm{loc}}(\{t = z \}) \,;\, h \text{~satisfies~} \eqref{eq:zc-LS2020} \} \, \cap \, H_{\overline \Gamma}^{s_0} (\{t = z\}).
\]
Here $s_0$ shall be chosen large enough such that Proposition \ref{prop:sol_smooth_1} can be applied.
The subscript in $\mathcal H_{\mathrm{init}}$ stands for ``initial'', and $\mathcal H_{\mathrm{init}}$ is the function space at the beginning of the iteration.
Recall the operators $A_0'$ and $B_\epsilon$ defined in \eqref{eq:A1-LS2020} and \eqref{eq:B-LS2020}.
We wish to consider the operator $B A_0'$.
By
Proposition \ref{prop:sol_smooth_1}, we see that if $h \in \mathcal H_{\mathrm{init}}$, we have $A_0' h \in H^1(\Sigma)$, and moreover $h = A_0' h$ on $\partial \Gamma$.
And by \eqref{eq:vLe-LS2020}, \eqref{eq:uep-LS2020} and \eqref{eq:B-LS2020} we see $A_0' h = B A_0' h$ on $\partial \Gamma$.
Hence, one can conclude
\begin{equation} \label{eq:hcB1-LS2020}
h - B A_0' h = 0 \ \text{on} \ \partial \Gamma.
\end{equation}
By Proposition \ref{prop:Bdd3-LS2020} we have $B A_0' h \in \mathcal H'$, so,
\begin{equation} \label{eq:hcB2-LS2020}
h - B A_0' h \in \mathcal H'.
\end{equation}
Combining \eqref{eq:hcB1-LS2020} and \eqref{eq:hcB2-LS2020}, we can conclude
\begin{equation*}
\forall h \in \mathcal H_{\mathrm{init}} \ \Rightarrow \
h - B A_0' h \in \mathcal H.
\end{equation*}
Hence we can define an \emph{error operator} $K$ by the formula
\begin{equation} \label{eq:Kdef-LS2020}
K := \lim_{\epsilon \to 0^+} K_\epsilon, \quad \text{where} \quad
K_\epsilon \colon \mathcal H_{\mathrm{init}} \to \mathcal H, \ \ h \mapsto (I - B_\epsilon A_0') h.
\end{equation}
In the linearized inverse problem for \eqref{eq:A1-LS2020}, $K F$ indicates the difference between the original $F$ and the approximation $B(u|_\Sigma) = B A_0' F$.
For $F \in \mathcal{H}' \cap H^{s_0}(\{t=z\})$ with $\supp F \subset \supp \chi$, we have
\[
(I - K)F = B(A_0' F) = B(A_0' F) = B(u|_{\Sigma}).
\]
Note that $u|_{\Sigma}$, $B$ and $K$ are all known.
Hence one would expect to recover $F$ using the formula $(I - K)^{-1} B(u|_{\Sigma})$ provided that $I - K$ is invertible, which would hold in particular if the operator norm $\nrm{K}$ between suitable spaces is strictly less than $1$.
Instead of \eqref{eq:Kdef-LS2020}, it would be more convenient if the domain and image of $K$ are the same.
This is necessary, for instance, to perform a Neumann series argument.
This leads us to considering the restriction of $K$ to $\mathcal H$.
We denote the restriction as $\tilde K$, i.e.,
\begin{equation*}
\tilde K \colon \mathcal{H} \cap H^{s_0}(\{t=z\}) \to \mathcal H, \ \ h \mapsto \ (I - B A_0') h.
\end{equation*}
We will prove in Proposition \ref{prop:Kc-LS2020} that $\tilde K$ extends as a bounded operator $\mathcal{H} \to \mathcal{H}$ with norm strictly less than $1$ if $T$ is large enough.
Based on this, a reconstruction formula
\(
F = (I + \sum_{j \geq 0} \tilde K^j K) B (u|_{\Sigma})
\)
is given in \eqref{eq:FA-LS2020}.
After obtaining $F$, the $f$ can be recovered by $f = ZF$.
Based on this, a stability result is also given, see Proposition \ref{prop:RF-LS2020} for details.
An illustration of the recovering procedure of $F$ is given in Fig.~\ref{fig:1-LS2020}.
\begin{figure}[h]
\begin{tikzcd}
\mathcal H_{\mathrm{init}}
\arrow[r,"B A_0'"] &
\mathcal H',
\end{tikzcd} \
\begin{tikzcd}
\mathcal H_{\mathrm{init}}
\arrow[r,"K"] &
\mathcal H \arrow[r,"\tilde K"] &
\mathcal H \arrow[r,"\tilde K"] &
\cdots \arrow[r,"\tilde K"] &
\mathcal H \arrow[r,"\tilde K"] &
\cdots
\end{tikzcd}
\caption{An illustration of the recovering procedure.}
\label{fig:1-LS2020}
\end{figure}
To elaborate how the error operator $K$ works, we give an intuitive example.
Assume $F \in \mathcal H'$, $u$ and $v$ satisfy the following systems,
\begin{equation*}
\left\{\begin{aligned}
(\partial_t^2 -\Delta) u & = 0 \quad \text{in~} \{ t > z\} \\
u & = F \ \ \text{on~} \{ t = z\}
\end{aligned}\right.
,\quad
\left\{\begin{aligned}
(\partial_t^2 -\Delta) v & = 0 && \text{in}\; Q \\
v & = u && \text{on } \Sigma \cup \Sigma_- \\
v = \phi_0, \ v_t & = 0 && \text{in}\; \Gamma_T
\end{aligned}\right.
\end{equation*}
with
\begin{equation*}
\left\{\begin{aligned}
\Delta \phi_0 & = 0 && \text{in~} \Omega, \\
\phi_0 & = u(\cdot,T) && \text{on~} \partial \Omega.
\end{aligned}\right.
\end{equation*}
Then, by ignoring the regularity issues we could say $KF = (u - v)|_\Gamma$.
\subsection{The energy estimates}
For $\tau \in [0,T]$ and $h \in H^1({\mathR^n} \times \{t = \tau\})$, we define the energy $E(\tau,h)$ as follows
\begin{equation*}
E(\tau, h)
:= \int_{{\mathR^n}} (|\nabla_x h(x,\tau)|^2 + |h_t(x,\tau)|^2) \dif x.
\end{equation*}
We also define a functional $\nrm[\mathcal H_T]{h}$ as follows,
\begin{equation} \label{eq:HTh-LS2020}
\nrm[\mathcal H_T]{h}
:= \big( \int_{\Omega} (|\nabla_x h(x,T)|^2 + |h_t(x,T)|^2) \dif x \big)^{1/2}.
\end{equation}
The relations among $\nrm[\mathcal H]{\cdot}$, $\nrm[\mathcal H_T]{\cdot}$ and $E(T, \cdot)$ are described in the following lemmas.
\begin{Lemma} \label{lem:ne-LS2020}
Assume $u$ is $C^2(\overline Q)$ and $u$ and $v$ are associated to each other by means of \eqref{eq:vL0-LS2020},
and $u_\epsilon$ and $v_\epsilon$ are defined as in the proof of Lemma \ref{lem:vEx-LS2020}. Set $w_\epsilon:= u - v_\epsilon$.
Then we have
\[
\lim_{\epsilon \to 0^+} \nrm[\mathcal H]{w_\epsilon}
= \lim_{\epsilon \to 0^+} \nrm[\mathcal H_T]{w_\epsilon}.
\]
Moreover, we have
\[
\nrm[\mathcal H_T]{u}^2 = \nrm[\mathcal H_T]{u - \phi_0}^2 + \int_\Omega |\nabla \phi_0(x)|^2 \dif x.
\]
\end{Lemma}
\begin{proof}
According to the construction of $v_\epsilon$, we know $\omega_\epsilon \in C^2(\overline Q)$.
Moreover, $\omega_\epsilon$ satisfies
\begin{equation*}
\left\{\begin{aligned}
(\partial_t^2 -\Delta) \omega_\epsilon & = 0 && \text{in}\; Q, \\
v & = u - u_\epsilon && \text{on } \Sigma \cup \Sigma_-.
\end{aligned}\right.
\end{equation*}
Then according to \eqref{eq:0g0-LS2020} we have
\[
0
= \nrm[\mathcal H_T]{\omega_\epsilon}^2 - \nrm[\mathcal H]{\omega_\epsilon}^2 - 2 \Re \int_{\widetilde \Sigma_T} \partial_t \overline{\omega_\epsilon} \partial_\nu \omega_\epsilon \dif S,
\]
Note that $\omega_\epsilon \in C^2(\overline Q)$.
Combining this with Lemma \ref{lem:tdlv-LS2020}, we can compute
\begin{align}
\nrm[\mathcal H]{\omega_\epsilon}^2
& \leq \nrm[\mathcal H_T]{\omega_\epsilon}^2 + 2 \nrm[H^1(\Sigma)]{\omega_\epsilon} \nrm[L^2(\Sigma)]{\partial_\nu \omega_\epsilon} \nonumber \\
& \leq \nrm[\mathcal H_T]{\omega_\epsilon}^2 + C \nrm[H^1(\Sigma)]{\omega_\epsilon} (\nrm[\mathcal H]{\omega_\epsilon} + C \nrm[H^1(\Sigma)]{\omega_\epsilon}) \nonumber \\
& = \nrm[\mathcal H_T]{\omega_\epsilon}^2 + C \nrm[H^1(\Sigma)]{\omega_\epsilon} \nrm[\mathcal H]{\omega_\epsilon} + C^2 \nrm[H^1(\Sigma)]{\omega_\epsilon}^2 \nonumber \\
& = \nrm[\mathcal H_T]{\omega_\epsilon}^2 + 2C^2 \nrm[H^1(\Sigma)]{\omega_\epsilon}^2 + \frac 1 2 \nrm[\mathcal H]{\omega_\epsilon}^2 + C \nrm[H^1(\Sigma)]{\omega_\epsilon}^2.
\label{eq:we2-LS2020}
\end{align}
We have $\nrm[H^1(\Sigma)]{\omega_\epsilon} \to 0$ as $\epsilon \to 0^+$ due to \eqref{eq:ue-LS2020}.
And, the function $\omega_\epsilon~(:= u - v_\epsilon)$ is independent of $\epsilon$ on $\Gamma_T$ because $v_\epsilon$ is independent of $\epsilon$ on $\Gamma_T$, see \eqref{eq:uep-LS2020}.
Hence, \eqref{eq:we2-LS2020} implies $\nrm[\mathcal H]{\omega_\epsilon}$ is uniformly bounded when $\epsilon \to 0^+$.
Based on this fact, we re-compute \eqref{eq:we2-LS2020} in the following way with the help of Lemma \ref{lem:tdlv-LS2020},
\begin{align}
|\nrm[\mathcal H]{\omega_\epsilon}^2 - \nrm[\mathcal H_T]{\omega_\epsilon}^2|
\leq 2 \nrm[H^1(\Sigma)]{\omega_\epsilon} \nrm[L^2(\Sigma)]{\partial_\nu \omega_\epsilon}
\leq C \nrm[H^1(\Sigma)]{\omega_\epsilon} (\nrm[\mathcal H]{\omega_\epsilon} + C \nrm[H^1(\Sigma)]{\omega_\epsilon}). \label{eq:we21-LS2020}
\end{align}
By the boundedness of $\nrm[\mathcal H]{\omega_\epsilon}$ w.r.t.~$\epsilon$ as well as the fact that $\nrm[H^1(\Sigma)]{\omega_\epsilon} \to 0$ as $\epsilon \to 0^+$, we can conclude from \eqref{eq:we21-LS2020} that
\begin{align*}
\nrm[\mathcal H]{\omega_\epsilon} - \nrm[\mathcal H_T]{\omega_\epsilon} \to 0 \quad \text{as} \quad \epsilon \to 0^+.
\end{align*}
For the second claim, we have
\begin{align*}
\nrm[\mathcal H_T]{u - \phi_0}^2
& = \int_\Omega |\nabla_x \big( u(x,T) - \phi_0 \big)|^2 \dif x + \int_\Omega |u_t|^2 \dif x \\
& = \nrm[\mathcal H_T]{u}^2 - 2 \Re \int_\Omega \nabla_x \big( u \big) \cdot \nabla_x \overline{\phi_0} \dif x + \int_\Omega |\nabla_x \phi_0|^2 \dif x \\
& = \nrm[\mathcal H_T]{u}^2 - 2 \Re \int_\Omega \nabla_x \big( u - \phi_0 \big) \cdot \nabla_x \overline{\phi_0} \dif x - \int_\Omega |\nabla_x \phi_0|^2 \dif x \\
& = \nrm[\mathcal H_T]{u}^2 - 2 \Re \int_{\partial \Gamma_T} (u - \phi_0) \partial_\nu \overline{\phi_0} \dif x + 2 \Re \int_\Omega (u - \phi_0) \Delta \phi_0 \dif x \\
& \quad - \int_\Omega |\nabla_x \phi_0|^2 \dif x \\
& = \nrm[\mathcal H_T]{u}^2 - \int_\Omega |\nabla_x \phi_0|^2 \dif x.
\end{align*}
The last equal sign is due to $u - \phi_0 = 0$ on $\partial \Gamma_T$ and $\Delta \phi_0 = 0$.
The proof is complete.
\end{proof}
Recall the weighted norm given in \eqref{eq:Weim-LS2020}.
\begin{Lemma} \label{lem:EuT0-LS2020}
Assume $h$ satisfies $(\partial_t^2-\Delta) h = 0$ in $\{t \geq z\}$ with the restriction $h |_\Gamma$ satisfying $h|_\Gamma \in \mathcal H_{\mathrm{init}}$, then we have
\begin{equation*}
\nrm[\mathcal H_T]{h}^2 \leq E(T,h) \leq
\left\{\begin{aligned}
& \nrm[\mathcal H]{h}^2 + T \nrm[H_w^1(\partial \Gamma)]{h}^2, \text{~if~} h \in \mathcal H_{\mathrm{init}}, \\
& \nrm[\mathcal H]{h}^2, \text{~if~} h \in \mathcal H \cap H_{\overline \Gamma}^{s_0}(\{t = z\}).
\end{aligned}\right.
\end{equation*}
\end{Lemma}
\begin{proof}
By the definition of the energy and the norm, it is obvious that $\nrm[\mathcal H_T]{h}^2 \leq E(T,h)$.
Now we prove the second inequality.
Recall Remark \ref{rem:vEx-LS2020}.
Replacing the function $v$ in identity \eqref{eq:rts-LS2020} by $h$ and integrating the identity in the region
\[
\{ (y,z,t) \in \mathbb{R}} \newcommand{\mathR}{\mathbb{R}^{n+1} \,;\, y \in \mathbb{R}} \newcommand{\mathR}{\mathbb{R}^{n-1},\, z \leq t \leq T \},
\]
we can obtain
\begin{equation} \label{eq:ETh-LS2020}
E(T,h) = \frac 1 {\sqrt 2} \int_{\{t = z\}} (|\nabla_y h|^2 + |\partial_z \big( h(y,z,z) \big)|^2) \dif S.
\end{equation}
The computation is similar to what has been done in Section \ref{subsec:IBVP-LS2020}, so we omit the details here.
When $h|_\Gamma \in \mathcal H' \cap H_{\overline \Gamma}^{s_0}(\{t = z\})$, we know $h \in C^2(\{t \geq z\})$.
Moreover, $h \in \mathcal H'$ gives $\partial_z \big( h(y,z,z) \big) = 0$ outside $\Gamma$ and $\nabla_y h$ is constant along the curve $\gamma(z) := (y,z,z)$ for each $y$,
so \eqref{eq:ETh-LS2020} becomes
\begin{align}
E(T,h)
& = \frac 1 {\sqrt 2} \int_{\{t = z \,;\, t \leq T\}} (|\nabla_y h|^2 + |\partial_z \big( h(y,z,z) \big)|^2) \dif S \nonumber \\
& = \nrm[\mathcal H]{h}^2 + \frac 1 {\sqrt 2} \int_{\{t = z \,;\, t \leq T\} \backslash \Gamma} |\nabla_y \big( h(y, z_y, z_y) \big)|^2 \dif S \quad (\partial_z \big( h(y,z,z) \big) = 0) \nonumber \\
& = \nrm[\mathcal H]{h}^2 + \int_{\pi(\{t = z \,;\, t \leq T\} \backslash \Gamma)} \big| \nabla_y \big( h(y, z_y, z_y) \big) \big|^2 \dif y \dif z \nonumber \\
& \leq \nrm[\mathcal H]{h}^2 + T \int_{|y| \leq 1} |\nabla_y \big( h(y, z_y, z_y) \big)|^2 \dif y \nonumber \\
& = \nrm[\mathcal H]{h}^2 + T \int_{|y| \leq 1} \frac {1} {1-|y|^2} |\vec Xh(y, z_y, z_y)|^2 \dif y, \label{eq:ETX-LS2020}
\end{align}
where $z_y := \sqrt{1-|y|^2}$, $\pi \colon (x,t) \mapsto x$ is a projection map, and $\vec X$ is a vector of vector fields defined as
\[
\vec X := \sqrt{1-|y|^2} \nabla_y - y \partial_z - y \partial_t.
\]
The vector field $\vec X$ is tangential to $\partial \Gamma_+ := \partial \Gamma \cap \{(y,z,t) \,;\, z \geq 0 \}$.
To see this, we denote $S_1 := \{(y,z,t) \,;\, |(y,z)|^2 = 1 \}$ and $S_2 := \{(y,z,t) \,;\, t = z \}$.
Then $\partial \Gamma_+ = S_1 \cap S_2$, and $\vec X (|(y,z)|^2 - 1) = \vec X(t - z) = 0$ on $\partial \Gamma_+$.
Therefore, $\vec X$ is tangential to both $S_1$ and $S_2$ at $\partial \Gamma_+$, and hence tangential to $\partial \Gamma_+$.
Denote the volume form on $\partial \Gamma_+$ as $\mathrm{d} S$, then it can be checked that
\[
\frac {\sqrt{1 + |y|^2}} {\sqrt{1 - |y|^2}} \dif y = \dif S.
\]
Hence, \eqref{eq:ETX-LS2020} implies
\begin{equation} \label{eq:ted1-LS2020}
E(T,h)
\leq \nrm[\mathcal H]{h}^2 + T \int_{\partial \Gamma_+} \frac 1 {\sqrt{1-|y|^4}} |\vec Xh|^2 \dif S
\leq \nrm[\mathcal H]{h}^2 + T \nrm[H_w^1(\partial \Gamma)]{h}^2.
\end{equation}
Hence, when $h \in C^2 \cap \mathcal H$, we know $h = 0$ on $\partial \Gamma$, so $E(T,h) \leq \nrm[\mathcal H]{h}^2$.
The proof is done.
\end{proof}
\subsection{Boundedness of the error operators}
In the definition of $K$ and $\tilde K$, the two operators are defined on certain subsets of $\mathcal H'$ and $\mathcal H$, respectively.
As we mentioned earlier, their domain of definitions can be extended to the whole $\mathcal H'$ and $\mathcal H$.
To that end, we first show some boundedness result of $K$ and $\tilde K$ in certain dense subsets of their domain.
For simplicity we denote the operator norm of $\tilde K$ as $\nrm{\tilde K}$, i.e.,~$\nrm{\tilde K} = \nrm[\mathcal H \to \mathcal H]{\tilde K}$, and we also write
\[
\nrm{K} := \sup \Big\{ \frac {\nrm[\mathcal H]{Kh}} {\nrm[\mathcal H]{h} + \nrm[H_w^1(\partial \Gamma)]{h}} \,;\, h \in \mathcal H_{\mathrm{init}}, \, h\neq 0 \Big\}.
\]
\begin{Lemma} \label{lem:Kb-LS2020}
Let $\sigma \in (0,1)$ be as in \eqref{outside:ball}.
If $C>0$ is the constant from Lemma \ref{lem:EuT0-LS2020} and $s_0$ is determined as in Remark \ref{rem:vEx-LS2020}, then we have
\begin{alignat}{2}
\nrm[\mathcal{H}]{Kh} & \leq \nrm[\mathcal{H}]{h} + T^{1/2} \nrm[H_w^1(\partial \Gamma)]{h}, & \quad & h \in \mathcal H_{\mathrm{init}}, \label{eq:Ewue2-LS2020} \\
\nrm[\mathcal{H}]{\tilde Kh} & \leq \nrm[\mathcal{H}]{h}, && h \in \mathcal{H} \cap H_{\overline \Gamma}^{s_0}(\{t = z\}). \label{eq:Ewue-LS2020}
\end{alignat}
\end{Lemma}
\begin{proof}
For any function $h \in \mathcal H' \cap H_{\overline \Gamma}^{s_0}(\{t = z\})$, let $u$ be the solution of system \eqref{eq:nu1z-LS2020} driven by $h$ so that $u = h$ on $\Gamma$,
then according to Proposition \ref{prop:sol_smooth_1} we can conclude $u \in C^{\lceil n/2 \rceil + 2}$ in $\{t \geq z\}$.
Assume $v$ is associated to $u$ by \eqref{eq:vL0-LS2020},
and $u_\epsilon$ and $v_\epsilon$ are defined as in the proof of Lemma \ref{lem:vEx-LS2020},
and we denote $w_\epsilon = u - v_\epsilon$.
By \eqref{eq:Kdef-LS2020} we see
\[
K_\epsilon h
= w_\epsilon |_\Gamma
= h - v_\epsilon |_\Gamma
= \omega_\epsilon,
\]
so we have
\begin{equation*}
\nrm[\mathcal H]{Kh}^2
= \lim_{\epsilon \to 0 ^+} \nrm[\mathcal H]{K_\epsilon h}^2
= \lim_{\epsilon \to 0 ^+} \nrm[\mathcal H]{w_\epsilon}^2
= \lim_{\epsilon \to 0 ^+} \nrm[\mathcal{H}_T]{w_\epsilon}^2,
\end{equation*}
where the last equal sign is due to Lemma \ref{lem:ne-LS2020}.
Note that on $\Gamma_{T}$, $w_\epsilon = u - \phi_0$, which is independent of $\epsilon$, so $\nrm[\mathcal H]{Kh}^2
\leq \nrm[\mathcal H_T]{u - \phi_0}^2$.
Combining this with Lemma \ref{lem:ne-LS2020} and Lemma \ref{lem:EuT0-LS2020} we have
\begin{alignat}{2}
\nrm[\mathcal H]{Kh}^2
& \leq \nrm[\mathcal H_T]{u}^2 & \quad & \text{(by Lemma \ref{lem:ne-LS2020})} \nonumber \\
& \leq E(T,u)
\leq \nrm[\mathcal H]{u}^2 + T \nrm[H_w^1(\partial \Gamma)]{u}^2 && \text{(by Lemma \ref{lem:EuT0-LS2020})} \nonumber \\
& = \nrm[\mathcal H]{h}^2 + T \nrm[H_w^1(\partial \Gamma)]{h}^2. \nonumber
\end{alignat}
This is \eqref{eq:Ewue2-LS2020}.
When $h \in \mathcal H \cap H_{\overline \Gamma}^{s_0}(\{t = z\})$, we know $h |_{\partial \Gamma}= 0$, so similar to \eqref{eq:Ewue2-LS2020} we have
\begin{equation} \label{eq:Ewu2-LS2020}
\nrm[\mathcal H]{\tilde K h}^2
\leq \nrm[\mathcal H_T]{u}^2
\leq E(T,u)
\leq \nrm[\mathcal H]{u}^2
= \nrm[\mathcal H]{h}^2.
\end{equation}
This gives \eqref{eq:Ewue-LS2020}.
We arrive at the conclusion.
\end{proof}
We are ready to extend $\tilde K$ and to show its boundedness with norm strictly less than \nolinebreak[4] $1$.
\begin{Proposition} \label{prop:Kc-LS2020}
$\tilde K$ can be extended to $\mathcal{H}$, and it is a bounded linear operator $\mathcal{H} \to \mathcal{H}$ with $\nrm{\tilde K} < 1$.
\end{Proposition}
\begin{proof}
The linearity of $\tilde K$ can be easily seen from systems \eqref{eq:nu1z-LS2020} and \eqref{eq:vL-LS2020}.
Recall the $s_0$ in Remark \ref{rem:vEx-LS2020}.
It can be checked that $\mathcal{H} \cap H_{\overline \Gamma}^{s_0}(\{t = z\})$ is dense in $\mathcal{H}$.
Assume $h \in \mathcal H$, we choose a sequence $\{h_j\}_{j \geq 1}$ in $\mathcal{H} \cap H_{\overline \Gamma}^{s_0}(\{t = z\})$ such that $h_j \to h$ under the $\nrm[\mathcal H]{\cdot}$-norm.
By \eqref{eq:Ewue-LS2020} we know $\{ \tilde Kh_j \}_{j \geq 1}$ is a Cauchy sequence in $\mathcal H$, so $\lim_{j \to \infty} \tilde Kh_j$ exists and the limit is unique, and we define
\begin{equation}\label{k_tilde_z}
\tilde Kh := \lim_{j \to \infty} \tilde Kh_j.
\end{equation}
The norm estimate for $\nrm{\tilde K}$ in Lemma \ref{lem:Kb-LS2020} can be improved to $\nrm{\tilde K} < 1$ by using local energy decay.
Indeed, fix a constant $T_0 \in (1,T)$, then when $t > T_0$, \eqref{eq:nu1z-LS2020} gives
\begin{equation} \label{eq:nu2z-LS2020}
\left\{\begin{aligned}
(\partial_t^2 -\Delta) u & = 0 && \text{in~} {\mathR^n} \times [T_0, T], \\
u = u_0, \ u_t & = u_1 && \text{on~} \{ t = T_0\},
\end{aligned}\right.
\end{equation}
where $u_0(x) = u(x,T_0)$ and $u_1(x) = u_t(x,T_0)$.
By the local energy result in \cite{ike2005var} we see that when $t - T_0$ is large enough, we have
\begin{equation} \label{eq:leday-LS2020}
\nrm[{\mathcal H}_{t}]{u}^2 \leq \frac {\lambda E(T_0,u)} {t - C}, \ \forall t \colon \max \{T_0,C\} \leq t \leq T,
\end{equation}
for some real numbers $\lambda$ and $C$ independent of $u$ and $t$.
Here the $\mathcal H_t$-norm is defined by changing $T$ to $t$ in \eqref{eq:HTh-LS2020}.
The authors remind that originally the result in \cite{ike2005var} is for wave equations in an exterior domain with a bounded Dirichlet obstacle contained inside.
But the method in \cite{ike2005var} applies directly to the case where the obstacle is an empty set, i.e.~applies to the free upper space case, e.g.~\eqref{eq:nu2z-LS2020}.
See also \cite{tam1981potential, Vodev04}.
Now let $h \in \mathcal{H} \cap H_{\overline \Gamma}^{s_0}(\{t = z\})$ and let $u$ be associated with $h$ by \eqref{eq:nu1z-LS2020}.
By \eqref{eq:leday-LS2020} and Lemma \ref{lem:EuT0-LS2020}, when $T - T_0$ is large enough, we see that
\[
C \nrm[{\mathcal H}_T]{u}^2
\leq \lambda' E(T_0,u)
\leq \lambda' \nrm[\mathcal H]{u}^2
\]
of some constant $\lambda' < 1$, and the second equal sign is due to the tact that $h \in \mathcal H$.
Hence, the chain of inequalities \eqref{eq:Ewu2-LS2020} can be further improved: for $h \in \mathcal{H} \cap H_{\overline \Gamma}^{s_0}(\{t = z\})$ we have
\begin{equation*}
\nrm[\mathcal H]{\tilde Kh}^2
\leq C \nrm[\mathcal H_T]{u}^2
\leq \lambda' \nrm[\mathcal H]{u}^2
= \lambda' \nrm[\mathcal H]{h}^2.
\end{equation*}
Therefore, we can conclude $\nrm{\tilde K} < 1$.
The proof is complete.
\end{proof}
\begin{Remark}
We believe that the arguments in \cite[Proof of Theorem 1]{SU09} in proving $\nrm{\tilde K} < 1$ may not directly apply to our case.
This is mainly because ${\tilde K}$ is defined by a limit process, see \eqref{k_tilde_z}. In the limit, the condition $\nrm{\tilde K} < 1$ becomes $\nrm{\tilde K} \leq 1$.
Consequently, it is not possible to use a Neumann series argument to invert an operator of the form $I-\tilde K$.
See Section \ref{sec:ReLS-LS2020} for details.
\end{Remark}
\subsection{Reconstruction and stability result of the linearized sound speed} \label{sec:ReLS-LS2020}
By definition \eqref{eq:Kdef-LS2020} we have $(I - K)F = B A_0' F$.
Proposition \ref{prop:Kc-LS2020} says the operator norm of $\tilde K$ is less than $1$, so we can use Neumann series to recover $F$.
Before that, we need the following claim.
\begin{Claim} \label{clm:At-LS2020}
$(B A_0') K = K (B A_0').$
\end{Claim}
\begin{proof}
We have
\begin{align*}
(B A_0') K
& = (B A_0') (I - B A_0')
= B A_0' - (B A_0') (B A_0') \\
& = (I - B A_0') (B A_0')
= K (B A_0').
\end{align*}
The proof is done.
\end{proof}
\begin{Proposition} \label{prop:RF-LS2020}
Assume $F \in \mathcal H_{\mathrm{init}}$, and $f$ satisfies $ZF = f$. Let $u$ be the solution of the system \eqref{eq:nu1z-LS2020}.
Then
\begin{equation} \label{eq:RF1-LS2020}
F = (I + \sum_{j \geq 0} \tilde K^j K) B( u|_\Sigma), \quad
f = Z[(I + \sum_{j \geq 0} \tilde K^j K) B( u|_\Sigma)],
\end{equation}
Moreover, we have the stability
\begin{equation} \label{eq:RF2-LS2020}
\nrm[L^2(\Omega)]{f}
\leq \mathcal C (\nrm[H^1(\Sigma)]{A_0 f} + \frac {T^{1/2}} {\sigma^{1/4}} \norm{A_0 f}_{H^1(\partial \Gamma)} ),
\end{equation}
where $\mathcal C = C \sqrt{nT} e^{CT/2} [1 + \nrm{K} (1 - \nrm{\tilde K})^{-1}]$ and the constant $C$ is independent of $f$, $K$ and $T$.
\end{Proposition}
\begin{Remark}
Note that $\nrm[\mathcal H]{\tilde K^j K Bu} \leq \nrm{\tilde K}^j \nrm{K} \nrm[\mathcal H]{Bu} \lesssim \nrm{\tilde K}^j \nrm{K} \nrm[H^1(\Sigma)]{u}$ with $0 < \nrm{\tilde K} < 1$ by Proposition \ref{prop:Kc-LS2020}.
The last inequality sign is due to Proposition \ref{prop:Bdd3-LS2020}.
Hence the infinite sum in \eqref{eq:RF1-LS2020} converges.
\end{Remark}
\begin{proof}[Proof of Proposition \ref{prop:RF-LS2020}]
Note that \eqref{eq:Kdef-LS2020} gives the identity $I - K = B A_0'$, and $\tilde K$ is a restriction of $K$, so $I - \tilde K = B A_0'$ also holds when restricted to $\mathcal H$.
For $F \in \mathcal H_{\mathrm{init}}$, we denote $F_1 := (I - B A_0') F = KF$,
thus $F_1 \in \mathcal H$ and $(I - \tilde K) F_1 = B A_0' F_1$ because $I - \tilde K = B A_0'$ on $\mathcal H$,
so
\[
F_1 = (I - \tilde K)^{-1} B A_0' F_1 = (I - \tilde K)^{-1} B A_0' K F,
\]
and by Claim \ref{clm:At-LS2020} we obtain $F_1 = (I - \tilde K)^{-1} K B A_0' F$.
Because $F_1 = (I - B A_0') F$, we have $F - B A_0' F = (I - \tilde K)^{-1} K B A_0' F$, which finally gives
\begin{align}
F
& = [I + (I - \tilde K)^{-1} K] B A_0' F
= [I + (I - \tilde K)^{-1} K] B A_0' F \nonumber \\
& = (I + \sum_{j \geq 0} \tilde K^j K) B( u|_\Sigma). \label{eq:FA-LS2020}
\end{align}
Note that $K$, $\tilde K$, $B$ and $u|_\Sigma$ are known, thus $F$ can be recovered using \eqref{eq:FA-LS2020}.
The invertibility of $(I - \tilde K)$ is guaranteed by Proposition \ref{prop:Kc-LS2020}.
The image of $K$, i.e.~$\mathcal H$, falls into the domain of $(I - \tilde K)^{-1}$, so the RHS of \eqref{eq:FA-LS2020} is well-defined. The identity \eqref{eq:FA-LS2020} is an analogue of \cite[eq.~(11)]{SU09}.
Recall $f = ZF$, so finally we obtained \eqref{eq:RF1-LS2020}.
Combining Proposition \ref{prop:Bdd3-LS2020}, Lemma \ref{lem:Kb-LS2020} and the fact $\nrm{\tilde K} < 1$, we have
\begin{align*}
\nrm[\mathcal H]{F}
& = \nrm[\mathcal H]{(I + (I - \tilde K)^{-1} K) Bu}
\leq \nrm[\mathcal H]{Bu} + (1 - \nrm{\tilde K})^{-1} \nrm[\mathcal H]{K Bu} \\
& \leq C \nrm[\mathcal H]{Bu} + C (1 - \nrm{\tilde K})^{-1} \nrm{K} (\nrm[\mathcal H]{Bu} + \frac {T^{1/2}} {\sigma^{1/4}} \nrm[H^1(\partial \Gamma)]{Bu}) \\
& \leq C \big[ \nrm[\mathcal H]{Bu} + (1 - \nrm{\tilde K})^{-1} \nrm{K} (\nrm[\mathcal H]{Bu} + \frac {T^{1/2}} {\sigma^{1/4}} \nrm[H^1(\partial \Gamma)]{u}) \big] \\
& \leq C [1 + \nrm{K} (1 - \nrm{\tilde K})^{-1}] ( \nrm[\mathcal H]{Bu} + \frac {T^{1/2}} {\sigma^{1/4}} \nrm[H^1(\partial \Gamma)]{u} ) \\
& \leq C \sqrt{n} e^{T/2} [1 + \nrm{K} (1 - \nrm{\tilde K})^{-1}] ( \nrm[H^1(\Sigma)]{u} + \frac {T^{1/2}} {\sigma^{1/4}} \nrm[H^1(\partial \Gamma)]{u} ) .
%
\end{align*}
On the another side, the norm of $F$ satisfies (see \eqref{eq:NN0-LS2020})
\begin{align*}
\nrm[\mathcal H]{F}^2
& = \int_{\Omega} |\nabla_y F(y,z,z)|^2 + |Z F(y,z,z)|^2 \dif x
\geq \int_{\Omega} |Z F(y,z,z)|^2 \dif x \\
& = \int_{\Omega} |f(y,z)|^2 \dif x.
\end{align*}
Hence,
\begin{equation*}
\nrm[L^2(\Omega)]{f} \leq C \sqrt{n} e^{T/2} [1 + \nrm{K} (1 - \nrm{\tilde K})^{-1}] (\nrm[H^1(\Sigma)]{u} + \frac {T^{1/2}} {\sigma^{1/4}} \norm{u}_{H^1(\partial \Gamma)} ).
\end{equation*}
Recall $u |_\Sigma = A_0 f$.
The proof is done.
\end{proof}
\begin{Remark}
It is worth noting that, when the dimension is odd, and when the final time $T$ is large enough, by the Huygens' principle we know $u(\cdot, T)$ will be zero in $\Omega$ (see e.g.~\cite[\S 2. eq.~(31)]{evans2010pde}),
hence the final condition in \eqref{eq:vL0-LS2020} will be $v = 0$ and $v_t = 0$ in $\Gamma_T$, and this matches with the values of $u$ and $u_t$ in $\Gamma_T$ because they are all zero functions at time $T$.
In this case, the function $v$ will be exactly the same as $u$, and hence $\tilde K$ will be a zero map,
and so the reconstruction formula \eqref{eq:RF1-LS2020} can be simplified as
\begin{equation*}
F = (I + K) B( u|_\Sigma), \quad f = Z[(I + K) B( u|_\Sigma)].
\end{equation*}
However, in even dimensions we do not have such a conclusion.
\end{Remark}
| {
"redpajama_set_name": "RedPajamaArXiv"
} | 4,771 |
Call Of Duty 2(tm)
Linux Multiplayer Server Code
Version 1.3
Readme
Last update: 2006-06-14
=============================
!! IMPORTANT !!
Call of Duty 2(tm) Linux Server is NOT SUPPORTED by Activision(r) Customer
Support. Please do not call with any questions related to this free beta
product. There are other channels to aid you listed at the bottom of this
document.
===============================================
TABLE OF CONTENTS
1. Introduction
2. Upgrading to 1.3.
3. Installation From Scratch
4. Support Channels
5. FreeBSD Note
===============================================
1. Introduction
This document explains how to install the Call of Duty 2(tm) Linux server
version 1.3. Installation from scratch and upgrading an existing installation
are both covered.
Usage is very similar to Call of Duty(tm) and United Offensive(tm)... many
of the console commands, command lines, and cvars are identical, so if you
are comfortable maintaining dedicated servers for those games, you will find
this process familiar.
MOD USERS: PLEASE READ...
It is recommended that any user modifications that have been
installed to the Call of Duty 2(tm) directory be removed before
installing this package. These modifications are not supported
by Activision(r) and may not be compatible with some of the new
features that are included. When installing or upgrading a server,
if problems or unexpected behavior arise, your first step in
troubleshooting should be to do a clean install with the original
data files.
IF YOU HAVE A PROBLEM WITH "LIBSTDC++.SO.5" ...
(This is a frequent-enough problem to merit discussion in the introduction.)
If you are reading this, it's probably because you tried to start your Linux
server and saw this message:
./cod2_lnxded: error while loading shared libraries: libstdc++.so.5:
cannot open shared object file: No such file or directory
COD2 is a C++ program built with gcc 3.3.4, which means it needs a
system library specific to gcc 3.3. Older Linux systems won't have
this installed, and we're starting to see newer Linux distributions that
don't have this either, since they are supplying an incompatible
gcc 3.4 version. The good news is that you can drop the needed library
into your system without breaking anything else.
Here is the library you need, if your Linux distribution doesn't supply it:
http://icculus.org/updates/cod/gcc3-libs.tar.bz2
You want to unpack that somewhere that the dynamic linker will see it
(if you are sure it won't overwrite any files, you can even use /lib).
The brave can put it in the same directory as the game and run the server
like this:
LD_LIBRARY_PATH=$LD_LIBRARY_PATH:. ./cod2_lnxded
Now the server will start.
2. Upgrading to 1.3
Just stop the game server, replace cod2_lnxded, etc on your server with the
files included in this package, and restart the game server.
3. Installation From Scratch
- Get the retail Call of Duty 2(tm) disc(s) (there may be multiple discs
depending on what edition of the game you have obtained, or perhaps a
single DVD-ROM disc).
- Copy the contents of disc ones "Setup/Data" directory to wherever you
want to install the Call of Duty 2(tm) Linux server. There should be a
"localization.txt" file in the root of this directory, and a "Main"
Subdirectory. Each additional disc should be opened and the contents of
each "Data" folder should be copied over to the existing Main folder. When
you have copied everything, the final installation size is around 3.5
gigabytes.
- Alternately, you may install on Windows(r) and copy the installed game to
your Linux system, but many will opt to skip this step since the data
files are uncompressed and easily accessible on the discs. Final
installation size is around 3.5 gigabytes.
- Unpack this archive in the root of the newly-copied tree, so
"cod2_lnxded" is in the same directory as "localization.txt". Unlike the
original Call of Duty(tm), there are not seperate .so files like
"game.mp.i386.so", so don't be concerned when you don't see them.
- Now, run the server:
cd /where/i/copied/callofduty2
./cod2_lnxded
- When you see "--- Common Initialization Complete ---", the game
server has started, but you need to start a map before the server will
accept connections. At this point, type:
map mp_leningrad
("mp_leningrad" being a given map's name).
- Now you should see your server in the in-game browser. You will now want to
customize your server, but that is beyond the scope of this document.
4. Support Channels
There are a LOT of knobs you can tweak to customize and automate your server,
but it is beyond the scope of this documentation. Please refer to the
admin manuals for any Quake 3(tm) based Multiplayer game (including Quake 3
Arena(tm), Return to Castle Wolfenstein(tm), the original Call of Duty(tm)
and United Offensive(tm), etc) for specifics.
There is a mailing list for discussion and support of Linux servers for all
of the Call of Duty(tm) games and expansion packs. Hundreds of experienced
server admins and even some of the game's developers monitor this list, and
are eager to help with politely asked questions. Send a blank email to
cod-subscribe@icculus.org to get on the list, and list archives can be seen
at:
http://icculus.org/cgi-bin/ezmlm/ezmlm-cgi?38
Bug reports should NOT be sent to the list. We have a web-based
bugtracking system for this. If you don't report bugs there, we don't
promise to even be aware of them, let alone fix them! You can find the bug
tracker here:
https://bugzilla.icculus.org/
Also, http://callofduty.com/ and http://infinityward.com/ may direct you to
important information, documentation and current news about Call of Duty(tm)
titles.
5. FreeBSD users
This server is known to work on FreeBSD with the Linux binary compatibility
layer. If it doesn't, we consider it a bug and appreciate the report since we
won't necessarily be testing on FreeBSD ourselves. Please note that the
game server requires that you use at least the linux_base-8 package for
binary compatibility (it has a C++ runtime library we now need that previous
linux_base packages don't supply...alternately, see notes about libstdc++ in
this document's introduction if you can't or won't update linux_base).
// end of README.linux ...
| {
"redpajama_set_name": "RedPajamaGithub"
} | 80 |
{"url":"https:\/\/gmatclub.com\/forum\/if-z-is-a-positive-integer-is-z-1-2-an-integer-256068.html","text":"GMAT Changed on April 16th - Read about the latest changes here\n\n It is currently 26 Apr 2018, 17:48\n\n### GMAT Club Daily Prep\n\n#### Thank you for using the timer - this advanced tool can estimate your performance and suggest more practice questions. We have subscribed you to Daily Prep Questions via email.\n\nCustomized\nfor You\n\nwe will pick new questions that match your level based on your Timer History\n\nTrack\n\nevery week, we\u2019ll send you an estimated GMAT score based on your performance\n\nPractice\nPays\n\nwe will pick new questions that match your level based on your Timer History\n\n# Events & Promotions\n\n###### Events & Promotions in June\nOpen Detailed Calendar\n\n# If z is a positive integer, is z^(1\/2) an integer?\n\nAuthor Message\nTAGS:\n\n### Hide Tags\n\nMath Expert\nJoined: 02 Sep 2009\nPosts: 44655\nIf z is a positive integer, is z^(1\/2) an integer?\u00a0[#permalink]\n\n### Show Tags\n\n24 Dec 2017, 01:44\n00:00\n\nDifficulty:\n\n45% (medium)\n\nQuestion Stats:\n\n59% (01:13) correct 41% (01:09) wrong based on 50 sessions\n\n### HideShow timer Statistics\n\nIf z is a positive integer, is $$\\sqrt{z}$$ an integer?\n\n(1) $$\\sqrt{3z}$$ is an integer.\n(2) $$\\sqrt{4z}$$ is not an integer.\n[Reveal] Spoiler: OA\n\n_________________\nPS Forum Moderator\nJoined: 25 Feb 2013\nPosts: 1062\nLocation: India\nGPA: 3.82\nIf z is a positive integer, is z^(1\/2) an integer?\u00a0[#permalink]\n\n### Show Tags\n\n24 Dec 2017, 02:59\n1\nThis post was\nBOOKMARKED\nBunuel wrote:\nIf z is a positive integer, is $$\\sqrt{z}$$ an integer?\n\n(1) $$\\sqrt{3z}$$ is an integer.\n(2) $$\\sqrt{4z}$$ is not an integer.\n\nStatement 1: $$\\sqrt{3z}=Integer$$\n\n$$=>\\sqrt{z}=\\frac{Integer}{\\sqrt{3}}=>\\frac{Integer}{irrational}$$.\n\nThis will not be an integer. sufficient\n\nStatement 2: $$\\sqrt{4z}=non{ }integer=>2\\sqrt{z}=noninteger$$\n\n$$\\sqrt{z}=\\frac{noninteger}{2}=>\\frac{noninteger}{integer}$$. This will not be an integer. Sufficient\n\nOption D\nManager\nJoined: 05 Oct 2014\nPosts: 60\nLocation: India\nConcentration: General Management, Strategy\nGMAT 1: 580 Q41 V28\nGPA: 3.8\nWE: Project Management (Energy and Utilities)\nRe: If z is a positive integer, is z^(1\/2) an integer?\u00a0[#permalink]\n\n### Show Tags\n\n24 Dec 2017, 07:05\n1\nKUDOS\n1. says \u221a3z = I (I =Integer)\nThat is 3z must be square no to become \u221a3z Integer. For example, z = 3, 12 etc. SUFFICIENT\n2. \u221a4z is not an Integer\nFor that, \u221a4z must not be a square no. SUFFICIENT\nManager\nJoined: 24 Nov 2016\nPosts: 148\nRe: If z is a positive integer, is z^(1\/2) an integer?\u00a0[#permalink]\n\n### Show Tags\n\n24 Dec 2017, 16:00\n1\nKUDOS\n1\nThis post was\nBOOKMARKED\nBunuel wrote:\nIf z is a positive integer, is $$\\sqrt{z}$$ an integer?\n\n(1) $$\\sqrt{3z}$$ is an integer.\n(2) $$\\sqrt{4z}$$ is not an integer.\n\n$$\\sqrt{z}$$ will only be an integer if $$z$$ is a perfect square {4,9,16,25,36,49,etc...}.\n\n(1) $$\\sqrt{3z}$$ is an integer. Then, z must be a multiple of 3 multiplied by a perfect square, which makes z not a perfect square and $$\\sqrt{z}$$ not equal to an integer, sufficient.\n\n(2) $$\\sqrt{4z}$$ is not an integer. Then, z is not a perfect square, because if it was, then the $$\\sqrt{4z}$$ would be an integer, sufficient.\n\nRe: If z is a positive integer, is z^(1\/2) an integer? \u00a0 [#permalink] 24 Dec 2017, 16:00\nDisplay posts from previous: Sort by","date":"2018-04-27 00:48:39","metadata":"{\"extraction_info\": {\"found_math\": true, \"script_math_tex\": 0, \"script_math_asciimath\": 0, \"math_annotations\": 0, \"math_alttext\": 0, \"mathml\": 0, \"mathjax_tag\": 0, \"mathjax_inline_tex\": 0, \"mathjax_display_tex\": 1, \"mathjax_asciimath\": 0, \"img_math\": 0, \"codecogs_latex\": 0, \"wp_latex\": 0, \"mimetex.cgi\": 0, \"\/images\/math\/codecogs\": 0, \"mathtex.cgi\": 0, \"katex\": 0, \"math-container\": 0, \"wp-katex-eq\": 0, \"align\": 0, \"equation\": 0, \"x-ck12\": 0, \"texerror\": 0, \"math_score\": 0.7750169634819031, \"perplexity\": 4640.064475426324}, \"config\": {\"markdown_headings\": true, \"markdown_code\": true, \"boilerplate_config\": {\"ratio_threshold\": 0.18, \"absolute_threshold\": 10, \"end_threshold\": 15, \"enable\": true}, \"remove_buttons\": true, \"remove_image_figures\": true, \"remove_link_clusters\": true, \"table_config\": {\"min_rows\": 2, \"min_cols\": 3, \"format\": \"plain\"}, \"remove_chinese\": true, \"remove_edit_buttons\": true, \"extract_latex\": true}, \"warc_path\": \"s3:\/\/commoncrawl\/crawl-data\/CC-MAIN-2018-17\/segments\/1524125948738.65\/warc\/CC-MAIN-20180427002118-20180427022118-00268.warc.gz\"}"} | null | null |
{"url":"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Icosidodecahedron","text":"# Icosidodecahedron\n\nIcosidodecahedron\n\nType Archimedean solid\nUniform polyhedron\nElements F = 32, E = 60, V = 30 (\u03c7 = 2)\nFaces by sides 20{3}+12{5}\nSchl\u00e4fli symbols r{5,3}\nt1{5,3}\nWythoff symbol 2 | 3 5\nCoxeter diagram\nSymmetry group Ih, H3, [5,3], (*532), order 120\nRotation group I, [5,3]+, (532), order 60\nDihedral angle 142.62\u00b0\n${\\displaystyle \\cos ^{-1}\\left(-{\\sqrt {{\\frac {1}{15}}\\left(5+2{\\sqrt {5}}\\right)}}\\right)}$\nReferences U24, C28, W12\nProperties Semiregular convex quasiregular\n\nColored faces\n\n3.5.3.5\n(Vertex figure)\n\nRhombic triacontahedron\n(dual polyhedron)\n\nNet\n3D model of an icosidodecahedron\n\nIn geometry, an icosidodecahedron is a polyhedron with twenty (icosi) triangular faces and twelve (dodeca) pentagonal faces. An icosidodecahedron has 30 identical vertices, with two triangles and two pentagons meeting at each, and 60 identical edges, each separating a triangle from a pentagon. As such it is one of the Archimedean solids and more particularly, a quasiregular polyhedron.\n\n## Geometry\n\nAn icosidodecahedron has icosahedral symmetry, and its first stellation is the compound of a dodecahedron and its dual icosahedron, with the vertices of the icosidodecahedron located at the midpoints of the edges of either.\n\nIts dual polyhedron is the rhombic triacontahedron. An icosidodecahedron can be split along any of six planes to form a pair of pentagonal rotundae, which belong among the Johnson solids.\n\nThe icosidodecahedron can be considered a pentagonal gyrobirotunda, as a combination of two rotundae (compare pentagonal orthobirotunda, one of the Johnson solids). In this form its symmetry is D5d, [10,2+], (2*5), order 20.\n\nThe wire-frame figure of the icosidodecahedron consists of six flat regular decagons, meeting in pairs at each of the 30 vertices.\n\nThe icosidodecahedron has 6 central decagons. Projected into a sphere, they define 6 great circles. Buckminster Fuller used these 6 great circles, along with 15 and 10 others in two other polyhedra to define his 31 great circles of the spherical icosahedron.\n\n## Cartesian coordinates\n\nConvenient Cartesian coordinates for the vertices of an icosidodecahedron with unit edges are given by the even permutations of:[1]\n\n\u2022 (0, 0, \u00b1\u03c6)\n\u2022 1\/2, \u00b1\u03c6\/2, \u00b1\u03c62\/2)\n\nwhere \u03c6 is the golden ratio, 1 + 5\/2.\n\nThe long radius (center to vertex) of the icosidodecahedron is in the golden ratio to its edge length; thus its radius is \u03c6 if its edge length is 1, and its edge length is 1\/\u03c6 if its radius is 1. Only a few uniform polytopes have this property, including the four-dimensional 600-cell, the three-dimensional icosidodecahedron, and the two-dimensional decagon. (The icosidodecahedron is the equatorial cross section of the 600-cell, and the decagon is the equatorial cross section of the icosidodecahedron.) These radially golden polytopes can be constructed, with their radii, from golden triangles which meet at the center, each contributing two radii and an edge.\n\n## Orthogonal projections\n\nThe icosidodecahedron has four special orthogonal projections, centered on a vertex, an edge, a triangular face, and a pentagonal face. The last two correspond to the A2 and H2 Coxeter planes.\n\nOrthogonal projections\nCentered by Vertex Edge Face\nTriangle\nFace\nPentagon\nSolid\nWireframe\nProjective\nsymmetry\n[2] [2] [6] [10]\nDual\n\n## Surface area and volume\n\nThe surface area A and the volume V of the icosidodecahedron of edge length a are:\n\n{\\displaystyle {\\begin{aligned}A&=\\left(5{\\sqrt {3}}+3{\\sqrt {5}}{\\sqrt {3+4\\varphi }}\\right)a^{2}&&=\\left(5{\\sqrt {3}}+3{\\sqrt {25+10{\\sqrt {5}}}}\\right)a^{2}&&\\approx 29.3059828a^{2}\\\\V&={\\frac {14+17\\varphi }{3}}a^{3}&&={\\frac {45+17{\\sqrt {5}}}{6}}a^{3}&&\\approx 13.8355259a^{3}.\\end{aligned}}}\n\n## Spherical tiling\n\nThe 60 edges form 6 decagons corresponding to great circles in the spherical tiling.\n\nThe icosidodecahedron can also be represented as a spherical tiling, and projected onto the plane via a stereographic projection. This projection is conformal, preserving angles but not areas or lengths. Straight lines on the sphere are projected as circular arcs on the plane.\n\nOrthographic projection Stereographic projections Pentagon-centered Triangle-centered\n\n## Related polytopes\n\nThe icosidodecahedron is a rectified dodecahedron and also a rectified icosahedron, existing as the full-edge truncation between these regular solids.\n\nThe icosidodecahedron contains 12 pentagons of the dodecahedron and 20 triangles of the icosahedron:\n\nFamily of uniform icosahedral polyhedra\nSymmetry: [5,3], (*532) [5,3]+, (532)\n{5,3} t{5,3} r{5,3} t{3,5} {3,5} rr{5,3} tr{5,3} sr{5,3}\nDuals to uniform polyhedra\nV5.5.5 V3.10.10 V3.5.3.5 V5.6.6 V3.3.3.3.3 V3.4.5.4 V4.6.10 V3.3.3.3.5\n\nThe icosidodecahedron exists in a sequence of symmetries of quasiregular polyhedra and tilings with vertex configurations (3.n)2, progressing from tilings of the sphere to the Euclidean plane and into the hyperbolic plane. With orbifold notation symmetry of *n32 all of these tilings are wythoff construction within a fundamental domain of symmetry, with generator points at the right angle corner of the domain.[2][3]\n\n*n32 orbifold symmetries of quasiregular tilings: (3.n)2\n\nConstruction\nSpherical Euclidean Hyperbolic\n*332 *432 *532 *632 *732 *832... *\u221e32\nQuasiregular\nfigures\nVertex (3.3)2 (3.4)2 (3.5)2 (3.6)2 (3.7)2 (3.8)2 (3.\u221e)2\n*5n2 symmetry mutations of quasiregular tilings: (5.n)2\nSymmetry\n*5n2\n[n,5]\nSpherical Hyperbolic Paracompact Noncompact\n*352\n[3,5]\n*452\n[4,5]\n*552\n[5,5]\n*652\n[6,5]\n*752\n[7,5]\n*852\n[8,5]...\n*\u221e52\n[\u221e,5]\n\n[ni,5]\nFigures\nConfig. (5.3)2 (5.4)2 (5.5)2 (5.6)2 (5.7)2 (5.8)2 (5.\u221e)2 (5.ni)2\nRhombic\nfigures\nConfig. V(5.3)2 V(5.4)2 V(5.5)2 V(5.6)2 V(5.7)2 V(5.8)2 V(5.\u221e)2 V(5.\u221e)2\n\n### Dissection\n\nThe icosidodecahedron is related to the Johnson solid called a pentagonal orthobirotunda created by two pentagonal rotundae connected as mirror images. The icosidodecahedron can therefore be called a pentagonal gyrobirotunda with the gyration between top and bottom halves.\n\n(Dissection)\n Icosidodecahedron(pentagonal gyrobirotunda) Pentagonal orthobirotunda Pentagonal rotunda\n\n### Related polyhedra\n\nIcosidodecahedron in truncated cube\n\nThe truncated cube can be turned into an icosidodecahedron by dividing the octagons into two pentagons and two triangles. It has pyritohedral symmetry.\n\nEight uniform star polyhedra share the same vertex arrangement. Of these, two also share the same edge arrangement: the small icosihemidodecahedron (having the triangular faces in common), and the small dodecahemidodecahedron (having the pentagonal faces in common). The vertex arrangement is also shared with the compounds of five octahedra and of five tetrahemihexahedra.\n\n### Related polychora\n\nIn four-dimensional geometry the icosidodecahedron appears in the regular 600-cell as the equatorial slice that belongs to the vertex-first passage of the 600-cell through 3D space. In other words: the 30 vertices of the 600-cell which lie at arc distances of 90 degrees on its circumscribed hypersphere from a pair of opposite vertices, are the vertices of an icosidodecahedron. The wire frame figure of the 600-cell consists of 72 flat regular decagons. Six of these are the equatorial decagons to a pair of opposite vertices. They are precisely the six decagons which form the wire frame figure of the icosidodecahedron.\n\n## Icosidodecahedral graph\n\nIcosidodecahedral graph\n5-fold symmetry Schlegel diagram\nVertices30\nEdges60\nAutomorphisms120\nPropertiesQuartic graph, Hamiltonian, regular\nTable of graphs and parameters\n\nIn the mathematical field of graph theory, a icosidodecahedral graph is the graph of vertices and edges of the icosidodecahedron, one of the Archimedean solids. It has 30 vertices and 60 edges, and is a quartic graph Archimedean graph.[4]\n\n## Trivia\n\nIn Star Trek Universe, the Vulcan game of logic Kal-Toh has the goal to create a holographic icosidodecahedron.\n\nIn The Wrong Stars, book one of the Axiom series, by Tim Pratt, Elena has an icosidodecahedron machine on either side of her. [Paperback p 336]\n\nThe Hoberman sphere is an icosidodecahedron.\n\nIcosidodecahedra can be found in all eukaryotic cells, including human cells, as Sec13\/31 COPII coat-protein formations. [5]","date":"2022-10-05 14:28:05","metadata":"{\"extraction_info\": {\"found_math\": true, \"script_math_tex\": 0, \"script_math_asciimath\": 0, \"math_annotations\": 2, \"math_alttext\": 0, \"mathml\": 0, \"mathjax_tag\": 0, \"mathjax_inline_tex\": 0, \"mathjax_display_tex\": 0, \"mathjax_asciimath\": 0, \"img_math\": 0, \"codecogs_latex\": 0, \"wp_latex\": 0, \"mimetex.cgi\": 0, \"\/images\/math\/codecogs\": 0, \"mathtex.cgi\": 0, \"katex\": 0, \"math-container\": 0, \"wp-katex-eq\": 0, \"align\": 0, \"equation\": 0, \"x-ck12\": 0, \"texerror\": 0, \"math_score\": 0.7549017667770386, \"perplexity\": 5220.937700028753}, \"config\": {\"markdown_headings\": true, \"markdown_code\": true, \"boilerplate_config\": {\"ratio_threshold\": 0.3, \"absolute_threshold\": 10, \"end_threshold\": 15, \"enable\": true}, \"remove_buttons\": true, \"remove_image_figures\": true, \"remove_link_clusters\": true, \"table_config\": {\"min_rows\": 2, \"min_cols\": 3, \"format\": \"plain\"}, \"remove_chinese\": true, \"remove_edit_buttons\": true, \"extract_latex\": true}, \"warc_path\": \"s3:\/\/commoncrawl\/crawl-data\/CC-MAIN-2022-40\/segments\/1664030337631.84\/warc\/CC-MAIN-20221005140739-20221005170739-00695.warc.gz\"}"} | null | null |
Horne-bogen er et latinsk evangeliehåndskrift fra omkring år 1200-1225.
Udstyr og indhold
Bogens omslag er prydet med en krucifiksgruppe af hvalrostand, der ligeledes er fra 1200-tallets første halvdel, mens den øvrige udsmykning, emaljearbejder og halvædelsten først er påmonteret i begyndelsen af 1300-tallet.
Bogen, der består af 203 pergamentblade, indeholder de fire nytestamentlige evangelier med tilhørende lister, bl.a. konkordanstabeller, såkaldte kanontavler, der sammenstiller skriftsteder i evangelierne.
Bogen er illustreret med syv helsides miniaturer (foruden de fire evangelister ses Kristi korsfæstelse og Kristus tronende som verdens hersker, samt forrest i bogen et stifterbillede, hvor en mand og en kvinde som bogens givere knæler for en bispehelgen, sandsynligvis Sankt Nikolaj), fem ornamentsider og 14 ornamenterede kanontavler.
De rene tekstsider indledes med initialer, rigt udsmykkede forbogstaver i flere stærke farver. Farvevalget i illustrationerne er domineret af røde, blå, grønne og gule farver, men også mere pastelagtige lilla og brune farver indgår i billederne.
Historie
Bogen blev foræret til Horne Kirke på Fyn i 1656 af adelsparret Jørgen Brahe (1585-1661) og Anne Gyldenstierne (1596-1677) fra herregården Hvedholm, der ligger i Horne Sogn.
Malede våbenskjolde i bogen viser våbenskjolde for giverne og for bogens tidligere adelige ejere. Den første ejer, der nævnes, er den skånske adelsmand Oluf Rosensparre (1559-1624) på herresædet Skarholt, hvis forældre, Steen Jensen Rosensparre (1523-1565) og Mette Rosenkrantz (1533-1588), ejede det tidligere benediktinernonnekloster Bosjökloster i Skåne. Måske stammer håndskriftet fra dette kloster idet perikopelisten nævner den typisk nordiske helgenkonge Olav, og stifterbilledet viser som ovenfor nævnt sandsynligvis Skt. Nikolaj, som var dette klosters beskytter. Bogen lå i kirken indtil 1810, da lensgreve Preben Bille-Brahe til Hvedholm skænkede den til "Den kongelige Kommission for Oldsagers Opbevaring", forløberen for Nationalmuseet. Den viste side er indledningen til Lukasevangeliet.
Galleri
Kilder
Genstande i Nationalmuseet
Nordisk litteratur fra middelalderen | {
"redpajama_set_name": "RedPajamaWikipedia"
} | 3,320 |
\section{Introduction} \label{intro}
In the digital era, cryptography plays a central role in ensuring the security and privacy of communications, which are crucial for various fields ranging from personal data to critical infrastructure.
Cryptographic techniques are used throughout government and industry to authenticate the source and protect the confidentiality and integrity of information.
Existing cryptographic tools substantially use the concept of public-key cryptography.
It is a technique that enables entities to securely communicate on an insecure public network by solving the key distribution problem, and reliably verify their identities via digital signatures.
Public-key cryptography is also known as asymmetric cryptography since the parties of communications use two types of keys:
Public keys, which may be known to others, and private keys, which may never be known by any except its owner.
This is its important difference in compare with symmetric cryptography, which relies on the use of the only one secret key shared between the parties (however, the problem of key distribution for symmetric cryptography is challenging; see below).
In its turn, public-key cryptography forms a basis for a public key infrastructure (PKI), which is a set of roles, policies, hardware, software,
and procedures needed to establish compliance between real-world parties of communications (like people, manufacturers, or devices) and public keys.
Certificates are basic digital documents that state the correspondence between an entity and its public key~\cite{AdamsLloyd2002}.
PKI plays a crucial role in protecting many processes and, in particular, all phases of product development and distribution in production environments.
Security of public-key cryptography, which defines the security of PKIs, relies on the concept of NP problems, which have proof verifiable in polynomial time.
For example, multiplying two large prime numbers is computationally easy (at it is then easy to correct that multiplication of two prime numbers gives the correct integer number),
but finding the prime factors of a given product is hard --- it can take a conventional computer thousands years to solve for large numbers.
In terms of public-key cryptography, this means that the key distribution problem (signing documents and checking the signature using the public key) is computationally easy, whereas obtaining a private key with the known public key is computationally hard.
NP problems, such as integer factorization and discrete logarithm problems, are used in modern cryptosystems Rivest-Shamir-Adleman (RSA) cryptosystem~\cite{RSA1978} and Diffie-Hellman scheme~\cite{DH1976}, correspondingly.
Under the assumption that existing computers could not solve these mathematical tasks in a reasonable time, modern public-key cryptography techniques, such as RSA and Diffie-Hellman schemes, seem to be secure.
A new generation of computing devices, which use operate on the principles of quantum physics, so-called quantum computers, would allow solving various mathematical tasks much faster than their classical counterparts.
Examples of such tasks include NP problems, which are behind the security of mentioned above RSA and Diffie-Hellman schemes, with the use of quantum Shor's algorithm~\cite{Shor1997}.
In practice, this means that an adversary with a quantum computer will be able to obtain a private key from a corresponding public key.
Consequently, quantum computers with enough computing power (so-called quantum volume) would allow breaking popular and widely deployed tools for cryptographic protection.
Quantum computing also has an impact on symmetric cryptography since quantum Grover's algorithm~\cite{Grover1996} provides a quadratic speed-up in the brute force search, but this is not dramatic.
Thus, quantum computing poses a threat to currently used information security protocols based on PKI, in particular those used in the Transport Layer Security (TLS),
which is the security protocol behind the Hypertext Transfer Protocol Secure (HTTPS)~\cite{Digicert}.
However, not all existing security tools are vulnerable to attacks with quantum computers~\cite{Wallden2019,Bernstein2017}.
Currently, serious efforts are concentrated on developing quantum-resistant cryptographic tools and the strategy of their deployment to the currently existing infrastructure.
A number of cryptographic systems, which use these methods,
are considered as candidates in the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) Post-Quantum Cryptography Standardization and by European Telecommunications Standards Institute (ETSI).
The deployment of quantum-resistant solutions are of significant importance for many information systems.
Here we focus on large-scale production environments, where most of the security tools for protecting supply chains, distribution networks, financial management systems and communications,
and control systems are based on public key infrastructure (PKI)~\cite{AdamsLloyd2002,Landrock2006,Hoglund2020,Yong2006,Hanke2007}.
We use the typical structure of PKI of a production environment, which is provided by Bosch and presented below, as an example for analysis from the viewpoint of potential attacks with quantum computing.
To avoid major losses~\cite{Mosca2017}, companies and firms that substantially use PKI should pay attention to the quantum threat and create a post-quantum security strategy.
In this work, we consider the impact of the quantum threat on PKI, which is used for protecting production environments.
We analyze the security issues of the model of injecting the trusted certificate and provide security recommendations regarding the PKI from attacks with quantum computers.
Although real-world production environments are frequently considered as a subject of the analysis from the viewpoint of upcoming threats from quantum computing technologies,
our work (to the best of our knowledge) demonstrates the first detailed holistic consideration of strategic changes in PKI for providing post-quantum security.
We also discuss the applicability of post-quantum algorithms in the security systems for production environments.
Our paper is organized as follows.
In Sec.~\ref{sec:impact} we analyze an impact of quantum computers on modern cryptographic tools.
In Sec.~\ref{sec:analysis} we consider quantum security of state-of-the-art PKI model for a production environment.
In Sec.~\ref{sec:schemes} we discuss the applicability of post-quatnum algorithms.
In Sec.~\ref{sec:recommendations} we form security recommendations that are based on our analysis.
We conclude in Sec.~\ref{sec:conc}.
\section{Impact of quantum computers on cryptography}\label{sec:impact}
Here we briefly review the state-of-the-art in cryptoanalysis with the use of quantum computers (for a review, see Ref.~\cite{Mavroeidis2018}).
Then we consider existing options for protecting PKI in the post-quantum era.
\subsection{Quantum threat for cryptography}
\subsubsection{Symmetric cryptography.}
Cryptography implies various techniques, which can be divided into two large categories: symmetric (private-key cryptography) and asymmetric (public-key cryptography).
Symmetric cryptographic techniques use the same key for encryption and decryption processes.
Symmetric cryptography is fast, relatively easy to implement and operate, but it suffers from two main difficulties.
The first is the issue of the confidential key distribution between distinct parties.
Symmetric cryptography is still widespread among some organizations that use, for example, trusted couriers for the key distribution that is indeed complicated in the era of digital communications.
The second problem is the need to change keys quite frequently to reduce the probability of discovering keys by an attacker.
Therefore, symmetric cryptographic techniques are useful only under the condition of having an efficient method for distribution and changing keys.
Quantum computers have an impact on symmetric cryptographic primitives, but exponential speedups in their cryptanalysis are not expected.
Grover's algorithm would allow quantum computers a quadratic speedup in brute force search~\cite{Grover1996}.
Then the key management in terms of the key size and the key refresh time for such primitives needs to be reconsidered.
For example, AES-256 is considered quantum-secured with 128 bits of quantum security (in the view of quadratic speedup in brute force search).
\subsubsection{Public-key (asymmetric) cryptography.}
The situation differs for the currently deployed public-key (asymmetric) cryptography tools, which use a pair of public/private keys.
Public-key cryptographic primitives are mainly mathematical problems that are believed to be computationally hard.
They are used as the basis in popular cryptographic schemes such as RSA, Diffie-Hellman, ECDSA (Elliptic Curve Digital Signature Algorithm), etc~\cite{Wallden2019}.
However, quantum computers can solve the problems, which are behind the security of these primitives in polynomial time using Shor's algorithm~\cite{Shor1997}.
The question of the required resources from the side of quantum computers for factoring integers and computing discrete logarithms in finite fields with the use of Shor's algorithm~\cite{Shor1997}
is a subject of extended research activities~\cite{Shor1997,Griffiths1996,Zalka2006,Fowler2012,Ekera2017,GidneyFowler2019,Gidney2019}.
The one of latest result~\cite{Gidney2019} is the scheme that uses $3n+0.002n\lg{n}$ logical qubits (i.e. qubits wokring without errors), $0.3n^2+0.0005n^3\lg{n}$ Toffoli gates, and $500n^2+n^2\lg{n}$ measurement depth to factor $n$-bit RSA integers.
This means that 2048 bit RSA integers can be factorized in 8 hours using 20 million noisy qubits~\cite{Gidney2019}, whereas one of the largest existing gate-based quantum computers has about 53 noisy qubits~\cite{Martinis2019}.
Alternative proposal is to use a computing protocol with a multimode memory, which allows factoring 2048 RSA integers in 177 days with 13436 qubits~\cite{Gouzien2021}.
Thus, current quantum computers are far from being capable of executing Shor's algorithms for cryptographically relevant problem sizes~\cite{Gidney2019}.
There is an increasing interest in alternative schemes for quantum factoring, such as variational quantum factoring~\cite{Aspuru-Guzik2019}.
Variational quantum factoring is an alternative to Shor's algorithm, which employs established techniques to map the factoring problem to the ground state of an Ising Hamiltonian.
It starts by simplifying equations over Boolean variables in a preprocessing step to reduce the number of qubits needed for the Hamiltonian.
The examination of a more detailed analysis of the potential scalability of such an approach using realistic noisy intermediate-scale quantum devices is under investigation~\cite{Aspuru-Guzik2019}.
Thus, the existence of Shor's algorithm makes the corresponding public-key cryptography methods vulnerable.
Therefore, most of the existing and currently used primitives used in PKI should be replaced to guarantee security against quantum attacks.
In this case, it is not enough to reconsider the key size --- these algorithms should be replaced as soon as they are no longer secure.
\subsubsection{Store now -- decrypt later.}
One of the most important existing problems is related to the so-called "store now -- decrypt later" attack.
The idea is that the adversary is harvesting data in encrypted form, in the hope that quantum computing will help them to uncover valuable information from it in the future.
That is why for some particular applications dealing with long-term sensitive information, one should think about the priority replacement of cryptographic primitives on quantum-secured ones.
This fact is expressed in Mosca's theorem says, which states the following:
We need to start worrying about the impact of quantum computers when the amount of time that we wish our data to be secure for ($X$) is added to the time it will take for our computer systems to transition from classical to post-quantum
($Y$) is greater than the time it will take for quantum computers to start breaking existing quantum-susceptible encryption protocols ($Z$).
Importantly, this paradigm can be extended to the idea of cryptographic agility (crypto-agility),
which is the capacity for information security systems to switch on alternatives to the original encryption method or cryptographic primitive without significant change to system infrastructure.
In the terms of Mosca's theorem this requires to the minimization of the transition time to quantum resistant solutions.
\subsection{Quantum-resistant cryptography}
There are several ways to protect information infrastructure in the era of quantum computers, the so-called post-quantum era~\cite{Wallden2019}.
The crucial problems, which are typically solved using public-key cryptography primitives, are related to the key distribution problem and digital signatures.
There exist several practical ways of solving these problems in the post-quantum era.
\subsubsection{Quantum key distribution.}
The first is to replace public-key cryptography with quantum key distribution (QKD, also known as quantum cryptography), which is a hardware solution based on transmitting information using individual quantum objects~\cite{Gisin2002}.
The main advantage of this approach is that the security relies not on any computational assumptions but the laws of quantum physics.
The idea of QKD is that two legitimate users (Alice and Bob) have the pre-shared authentication key and the communication channel.
Then they establish a QKD protocol that allows them to obtain a raw quantum key, which contains some errors and some information about the key that is potentially known to the adversary.
In the QKD security proofs, it is assumed that all errors in raw quantum keys are due to eavesdropping~\cite{Gisin2002}.
Alice and Bob initiate the post-processing procedure using the authenticated public channel.
As a result, Alice and Bob have a key for applications, and it is proven to be information-theoretically secure against arbitrary attacks, including the quantum ones~\cite{Scarani2009}.
QKD-generated keys can be used for conventional symmetric encryption, such as AES, and used to frequently refresh keys.
Remarkable progress in the deployment of several quantum key distribution networks around the globe has been performed.
Various industry cases of QKD use, such as those in finance, telecommunications, and data center infrastructure, have been demonstrated~\cite{IDQ,QRate}.
The largest QKD network is by now deployed in China, which spans 4600 km and includes the link between the cities of Shanghai, Hefei, Jinan, and Beijing and a satellite link spanning 2600 km between two observatories~\cite{Pan2021}.
The operation of such QKD networks requires the use of trusted relay nodes because of the presence of optical losses in communication channels, limiting the distance for the realization of the QKD protocol.
At the current stage, QKD technology faces several challenges~\cite{Gisin2002},
which makes it best suitable for some domain-specific applications, such as the protection of highly-loaded communications links at a distance, which does not require the use of intermediate nodes~\cite{Lo2014,Lo2016}.
We note that the practical implementation of digital signatures based on quantum key distribution in the industrial environments seems to be quite complicated from the practical point of view.
\subsubsection{Post-quantum cryptography.}
An alternative way to guarantee the security of communications is to switch to a new type of public-key cryptosystems.
Fortunately, not all public-key cryptosystems are vulnerable to attacks with quantum computers~\cite{Bernstein2017}.
Several cryptosystems for key distribution and digital signature, which strive to remain secure under the assumption that the attacker has a large-scale quantum computer, have been suggested.
These schemes are in the scope of so-called post-quantum cryptography.
Post-quantum protocols are based on different mathematical approaches, such as
the shortest vector problem in a lattice~\cite{Regev2009, Hanrot2007, Micciancio2002},
learning with errors~\cite{Regev2010, Lyubashevsky2010, FrodoKEMSubmission, CRYSTALS-KYBERSubmission, Albrecht2015, Kirchner2015, Arora2011, Schnorr1994, Chen2011, NewHopeSubmission,DilithiumSubmission},
solving systems of multivariate quadratic equations over finite fields~\cite{Patarin1996,Faugere2003,Beullens2017,GeMSSSubmission,LUOVSubmission,RainbowSubmission},
finding isogenies between elliptic curves~\cite{Jao2011, Costello2017, Costello2016, Koziel2017, Steven1999, Delfs2016, Zhang2005, Tani2007},
decoding problems in an error-correcting code~\cite{Berlekamp1978, Alekhnovich2003, May2015, Becker2012, Bernstein2010, Drucker2020,RFC_XMSS,RFC_LMS},
security properties of cryptographic hash-functions~\cite{Buchmann2011, SPHINCS+Submission, Hulsing2016, Bernstein2019, Rogaway2004,Sphincs+Comment}, and other primitives~\cite{PICNICSubmission}.
\subsubsection{Hybrid quantum-secured cryptography.}
A useful strategy is the combination of different cryptographic techniques~\cite{Fedorov2017}.
For example, one can combine QKD with symmetric encryption or with post-quantum cryptography, where the latter can be used for various purposes (e.g. for authentication purposes in QKD protocol~\cite{Pan2020}).
In addition, a hybrid quantum-secured infrastructure may use QKD for protecting highly-loaded communications link at the distance,
which do not require the use of intermediate nodes, whereas end-users without direction connections can be protected by means of post-quantum cryptography.
\subsubsection{Standardization processes.}
Both quantum and post-quantum cryptography undergo active standardization processes.
In particular, standardization of the QKD technology is considered by several agencies, such as ETSI and ITU.
The standardization of the post-quantum cryptography currently is centered around the NIST initiative~\cite{NISTcomp},
which are intended to choose and standardize post-quantum algorithms for stateless digital signatures and key encapsulation mechanisms/public key encryption.
The process is similar to the previous hash function and AES NIST competitions.
Up to date, two rounds have already finished~\cite{StatusReport} and the third round is in progress.
The final third round should result in a choice of algorithms for standardization.
\section{Analysis of quantum security of state-of-the-art PKI model for a production environment} \label{sec:analysis}
PKI is a set of measures that are needed to use digital certificates and manage public-key encryption~\cite{AdamsLloyd2002,Landrock2006,Hoglund2020,Yong2006,Hanke2007}.
The main goal of PKI is to bind entities with public keys of asymmetric cryptosystems.
The binding is established with the use of certificates.
A certificate is a dataset that gives information about the entity and its public key. The certificate is signed by a trusted third party, whose public key is known.
The core idea of the PKI is to achieve the root of trust during all phases of the product development and distribution.
That is why it is important to implement the key hierarchy and protection of the data in rest to guarantee the PKI resistance against various possible threats.
Additionally, an efficient PKI model should contain mechanisms for the control of already enrolled certificates and keys in a way that allows revocating keys and detecting the compromise of the particular parts of the system.
On the basis of widely used assumptions we can separate the PKI tasks in the following way:
\begin{enumerate}
\item {\bf enrollment and provision} of new certificates;
\item {\bf authentication and verification} of involved parties and certificates;
\item {\bf revocation and detection} of compromised or expired certificates.
\end{enumerate}
Currently used PKI schemes are mostly based on non-quantum-resistant cryptographic mechanisms.
This section aims to analyze the state-of-the-art PKI model for formulating security recommendations.
In the underlying sections, we describe security aspects for each of the listed functional parts.
\subsection{PKI model for production environments}
Our further analysis is presented for a specific PKI model, which is used in production environments (we use the concrete scheme, which is provided by Bosch).
The diagram that described the existing scheme of the certificates enrollment is shown in Fig.~\ref{fig:scheme}.
The main functional goal of this scheme is to inject the trusted certificate into the final product.
In this particular case, the final product is a produced device.
\begin{figure}[t]
\centering
\includegraphics[width=1\textwidth]{fig1.pdf}
\vskip -4mm
\caption{PKI structure of a production environment.}
\label{fig:scheme}
\end{figure}
We use the following assumptions regarding the provided scheme.
\begin{enumerate}
\item The main certificate authority (CA, PKI Frontend) is considered to be trusted.
The compromise of the core CA may lead to the security breach in the PKI regardless of applied security countermeasures.
An alternative solution is to develop the PKI model that is based on the decentralized root of trust.
However, this topic is outside the context of the present paper as the decentralized PKI requires technologies similar to blockchains (whose cryptographic security is also a subject of research~\cite{Kiktenko2019,Fedorov2018}).
\item The perimeter of the production zone and service zones are trusted or at least contain mechanisms to notify other parties about derivations of planned activities (e.g. certificate enrollment) from expected behaviour.
Such behaviour may be caused by various reasons that include:
\begin{itemize}
\item unauthorized access to the system by the malicious or unauthorized actor;
\item malfunction of the system caused by environmental conditions, power supply, hardware or software issues;
\item infection of the system with malware.
\end{itemize}
The information regarding the current state of the production and service zones must be handled by the monitoring system, which may efficiently notify authorized parties.
Communication channels and threshold values used to detect the compromise must be aligned between parties during the development of the monitoring system.
As an example, it is not possible to share the information about the current state of the service zone using the same communication channel,
which is used for the communication with the production line as both of them (including the communication channel itself) may be compromised.
\item The used algorithms at the current stage are compliant against publicly available standards (e.g. NIST FIPS 140-2~\cite{NIST-FIPS-140-2}).
The misuse of cryptography modes and parameters may compromise the data in rest regardless of applied countermeasures.
\item The malicious actor may be one of the following:
\begin{itemize}
\item an external party aiming to compromise the confidentiality of data in transit to access the content of the firmware update and device configuration;
\item device manufacturers, which are not authorized to access proprietary information regarding the internal structure of the device and software;
for example, such a manufacturer may have physical access to one of the devices distributed in the market aiming to perform the reverse-engineering of the device to clone it and create a similar product;
\item a group of highly experienced specialists in the field of informational security aiming to compromise proprietary information about the production line, company, and products.
\end{itemize}
\end{enumerate}
As soon as we consider a specific example of the currently used scheme of relations between involved parties and the set of business requirements for this scheme,
we adjust our assumptions based on the provided scheme as follows.
\begin{enumerate}
\item All parties (manufacturer, maintainer, operator) may want to inject their own certificates, which are not related to a specific PKI model or associated with each other.
\item The device should be able to generate a certificate by itself.
\item All parties may use one of the following mechanisms to inject certificate:
\begin{enumerate}
\item the company frontend;
\item special application programming interface on the device itself;
\item directly uploads the certificate on the device using the device's API.
\end{enumerate}
\end{enumerate}
Some additional technical details are placed in Appendix A.
We note the following potential weaknesses in the provided scheme.
\begin{enumerate}
\item The public network is compromised and anyone can get access to transmitting data.
This situation includes eavesdropping and modification of data in transit. Moreover, in some cases, it may be possible to save communication data and decrypt it lately with access to the operable quantum computer.
\item The provided scheme does not cover the aspect of communications between parties.
\item The injection process takes place (in the scheme as is) without verification of the device/backend integrity.
The device integrity must be achieved through the hardware level isolation (virtualization) technologies and embedded in the protected memory shared with the backend private key and information regarding the device itself
(hardware identifies, device specifications).
The attestation process may be performed inside the isolated environment of the device to verify its integrity against embedded information.
Additionally, the device may integrate various tamper detection techniques, both software and hardware to verify its integrity.
The private key stored inside protected memory grants the trustworthiness of the attestation data.
The verification of the backend authenticity may be achieved through the verification of shared by the backend certificate within an isolated environment against embedded in the protected memory information.
\end{enumerate}
The manual injection of the certificate is considered to be a 'work around' and is not related to a unified structure provided by the PKI.
Then we build a proposed scheme based on assumption that injection of certificates took place using a company's frontend or the device API.
Moreover, the usage of the unified method of certificate injection allows describing each of the participants involved in the injection equally.
In other words, the relations between the manufacturer and the integrator are not taken in place as both of them are seen by the PKI as regular nodes.
\section{Security recommendations}\label{sec:recommendations}
Here we would like to summarize recommendations regarding the overall structure of the PKI with the focus on threats coming from quantum computing.
We recommend improving the scheme in a number of aspects.
First, one needs to take into account existing (non-quantum) attacks on PKI schemes.
Second, it is important to take into account possible risks, which are related to quantum threats.
These recommendations are a basis for the improvement of security aspects of the final holistic solution for PKI.
Our list of recommendations is as follows:
\begin{itemize}
\item Cryptography in place.
\begin{itemize}
\item CAs certificates and cryptography considered to be unified.
We assume that all parties sharing the same set of software development kits (SDKs) and software/hardware to perform required cryptography operations.
To achieve this, the first step is to enforce universal security requirements for the software.
\item Software should pass security evaluation and should be developed according to the Security Code Practice.
\item SDKs in this model are assumed to be unified.
Then it is possible to improve the security of cryptography operations.
For example, it is possible to embed the information regarding the current state of the service zone and used software in the certificate itself to ensure that the state of the CA is trusted.
Moreover, the time required for the migration of the architecture to the post-quantum era, in this case, is significantly reduced since one can use the unified mechanism of the software update and deployment.
\item We recommend using the X.509 format for the certificate.
This due to the fact that it supports an extensible scheme of embedded data.
It is possible to store multiple public keys from different algorithms in the same certificate.
For example, it is possible to embed in the signed certificate both keys RSA key and post-quantum Falcon key.
Such an approach allows both supporting existing standards in cryptography and ensuring post-quantum security.
However, the rollback protection mechanism must be implemented and enforced to mitigate downgrade attacks against the hybrid scheme.
\end{itemize}
\item Communications.
\begin{itemize}
\item Parties during the communication may operate in different time zones and conditions.
Then it is possible for one of the parties to be unavailable during the required time period.
A presumable solution for such a challenge is to use limited use certificates with a very short lifetime, which are signed with the private key of the CA.
\item Attacks with quantum computers are able to completely compromise the PKI model that is based on the usage of a set of algorithms, which are not resistant to quantum attacks.
The extensible scheme, which allows one to replaces signing algorithms on-a-fly requires significant changes in the manufacturing cycle (e.g. firmware verification, secure boot, certificates enrollment).
\item As an additional improvement, it is recommended to develop the PKI model with the possibility to extend a set of used algorithms with the support of post-quantum algorithms and to perform a regular evaluation of the implemented scheme.
It should be ensured that the scheme works in a crypto-agile manner.
\end{itemize}
\item Enrollment and provision of certificates.
\begin{itemize}
\item The enrollment process is the initial point of the PKI model, so it deserves additional attention before the process of certificate generation can be started.
As a consequence, the PKI model should include the trusted channel between parties, which allows parties to ensure their states and initializing the enrollment process.
\item We do not recommend using the same channel both for the exchange of certificates (cryptographic materials) and control signals.
\item We recommend using hardware-backed authentication methods for the critical parts of the enrollment process (e.g. confirmation of the signing of the second level certificate).
This can be done with the help of USB tokens or similar solutions.
\item It is possible also to improve the trustworthiness of CAs.
This can be done via using technologies that allow the device to bind between the key pair and the device itself (CA) without a possibility to expose the private key to an untrusted environment.
However, existing implementations only support a classic set of cryptographic operations and primitives such as AES256 or RSA.
It is required to develop special software for the trusted execution environment., which will support post-quantum algorithms.
\item Assume that the set of used cryptographic algorithms and protocols is unified.
Then the authentication of parties and verification processes are also unified.
This assumption is applicable to both the production line and the endpoint device itself.
It is important to keep in-line both software and certificates on both ends.
\item We recommend keeping in mind the following recommendations regarding key hierarchy.
\end{itemize}
\item Certificates revocation and compromise detection.
\begin{itemize}
\item If the enrollment in the device certificates (or CA itself) was compromised or expired, the functionality of the device should be limited.
The related system should be isolated from the device itself.
It is hard to achieve if the device is isolated from the public network.
For this type of device, it is important to enforce policies regarding the lifetime of certificates.
\item Revocation lists should be maintained and updated on a regular basis.
For offline devices, it can be delivered with firmware updates.
\item We recommend developing the PKI model in such a way that allows one to precisely revoke certificates for a specific set of devices.
For example, if the specific model of the device is compromised, the revocation of the certificate would not affect other products.
\end{itemize}
\end{itemize}
We place a more technical and detailed descriptions of these recommendations in Appendix B.
\section{Appropriate post-quantum cryptographic scheme}\label{sec:schemes}
Here we discuss the applicability of post-quantum algorithms, which depends on their parameters.
In particular, we present the results of collecting benchmarks for various post-quantum signature schemes, which can be used for deploying quantum-secured PKI.
We use (i) security and (ii) performance (time and key sizes) of the algorithms
All of the presented algorithms are currently in the third round of the NIST standardization process.
For this analysis, we take algorithms with classical security on the level of about 190 bits; see Table~\ref{tab:security}.
We note that all basic mathematical approaches used in post-quantum cryptography: multivariate cryptography, zero-knowledge proof systems, cryptographic hash functions, and lattices -- are presented.
For our tests of the algorithms with respect to time and memory consumptions, we use Intel(R) Core(TM) i5-6267U CPU @ 2.90GHz, see Table~\ref{tab:timememory}.
We note that the parameters can alternate as the security level changes.
Falcon and qTESLA demonstrate pretty good tradeoffs both in memory and time consumption.
However, for some special cases where one is interested in the smallest public keys size or signatures size, there are more preferable variants.
We also note that the basic mathematical approach and status of a security proof should also be considered.
\section{Conclusion}\label{sec:conc}
The impact of quantum computing is an important aspect that is analyzed account in the development of PKI systems to protect production environments.
We have analyzed the security issues of the model of injecting the trusted certificate and provide security recommendations regarding the PKI from attacks with quantum computers.
Although our main focus is on the attacks with quantum computing, we also discuss some security issues that are not related to the used cryptographic algorithms but are important for the overall security of the PKI.
Examples of such recommendation include:
\begin{itemize}
\item universal security requirements for the used software and SDKs;
\item choosing the format of certificates that support crypto-agility and hybrid schemes;
\item limited use certificates with a very short lifetime, which are signed with the private key of the CA;
\item the monitoring of the modern cryptography solutions concerning non-quantum attacks and to develop maintenance procedures used to migrate possible threats;
\item enforcing the mechanisms that allow one to revoke certificates for a specific set of devices.
\end{itemize}
The central recommendation is to realize the ability to use the hybrid cryptographic schemes~\cite{Fedorov2017} using currently standartized solutions and post-quantum solutions.
Importantly, the candidate for the post-quantum part should be chosen according to the requirements on the size of the communications and/or time.
We have also presented various benchmark post-quantum cryptographic primitives and discussed their applicability in the security systems for production environments.
\subsection*{List of abbreviations}
\smallskip
PKI -- public key infrastructure.
NP -- nondeterministic polynomial time.
RSA cryptosystem -- Rivest-Shamir-Adleman (RSA) cryptosystem.
TLS -- Transport Layer Security.
HTTPS -- Hypertext Transfer Protocol Secure.
ECDSA -- Elliptic Curve Digital Signature Algorithm.
NIST -- National Institute of Standards and Technology.
CA -- Certificate Authority.
SHA -- Secure Hash Algorithms.
AES -- Advanced Encryption Standard.
CSR -- Certificate Signing Request.
TPM -- Trusted Platform Module.
TEE -- Trusted Execution Environment.
SDK -- Software Development Kit.
\section*{Declarations}
\subsection*{Availability of supporting data}
The data that support the findings of this study are available from the corresponding author (A.K.F.) on reasonable request.
\subsection*{Competing interests}
Owing to the employments and consulting activities of S.E.Y., M.K., N.P., D.N., M.A., A.G., E.O.K., and A.K.F., they have financial interests in the commercial applications of quantum-secured cryptography.
\subsection*{Funding}
This work is supported by Bosch.
\subsection*{Authors' contributions}
All the authors contributed to the analysis of the data.
S.E.Y., M.K., N.P., D.N., and E.K. have prepared the set of recommendation.
D.N., M.A., and E.O.K. performed benchmarking post-quatnum algorithms.
A.K.F. and E.O.K. wrote the manuscript with significant contribution of all the authors.
A.K.F., A.G., and A.B. supervised the project.
\subsection*{Acknowledgements}
We thank Bosch for providing the PKI scheme.
| {
"redpajama_set_name": "RedPajamaArXiv"
} | 5,273 |
Q: How to differentiate CDF of Gamma Distribution to get back PDF? CDF of a gamma distribution ($X \sim \mathcal{G}(n, \lambda)$) looks like
$$F(x) = \frac{\Gamma_x(n)}{\Gamma(n)}$$
Where $\Gamma_x(n) = \int_0^x t^{n-1} e^{-t} \, dt$ the incomplete gamma function. Ok so far?
But how do I differentiate such an expression?
$$\frac{d}{dx} \frac{\int_0^x t^{n-1} e^{-t} \, dt}{\int_0^\infty t^{n-1} e^{-t} \, dt}$$
UPDATE
With help from @MhenniBenghorbal, I have gotten:
$$\frac{d}{dx} \frac{\int_0^x t^{n-1} e^{-t} \, dt}{\int_0^\infty t^{n-1} e^{-t} \, dt} = \frac{1}{\Gamma(n)} x^{n-1}e^{-\lambda t}$$
but then its missing the $\lambda^n$ term of the original PDF of a gamma distribution. How do I get that back? I must have overlooked something? But I can see where ...
A: Here is how you apply it
$$ \frac{d}{dx}\int_{0}^{x}t^{n-1}e^{-t}dt= x^{n-1}e^{-x}. $$
Note: In your case you the fundamental theorem of calculus is enough
Theorem: Let $f$ be a continuous real-valued function defined on a closed interval $[a, b]$. Let $F$ be the function defined, for all $x$ in $[a, b]$, by
$$F(x) = \int_a^x\!f(t)\, dt.$$
Then, $F$ is continuous on $[a, b]$, differentiable on the open interval (a, b), and
$$F'(x) = f(x)\,$$
for all $x$ in $(a, b)$.
A: This should be a comment but I don't have enough points. You are omitting the $\lambda$ term in your original expression, so it can't appear on his own. Your derivation works for the case where $\lambda$ is 1 (although it shouldn't appear in your final expression). Otherwise the CDF of the standard gamma is actually
$$\frac{\Gamma_{x\lambda}(a)}{\Gamma(a)}$$
In that case you cannot get the derivative wrt to $x$ using the fundamental theorem of calculus since the limit of integration will be $x\lambda$
| {
"redpajama_set_name": "RedPajamaStackExchange"
} | 3,794 |
LQ-optimal boundary control of infinite-dimensional systems with Yosida-type approximate boundary observation
Jérémy Dehaye, Joseph Winkin
Département de Mathématique
Institut Namurois des systèmes complexes
Résultats de recherche: Contribution à un journal/une revue › Article
A class of boundary control systems with boundary observation is considered, for which the unbounded operators often lead to technical difficulties. An extended model for this class of systems is described and analyzed, which involves no unbounded operator except for the dynamics generator. A method for the resolution of the LQ-optimal control problem for this model is described and the solution provides a stabilizing feedback for the nominal system with unbounded operators, in the sense that, in closed-loop, the state trajectories converge to zero exponentially fast. The model consists of an extended abstract differential equation whose state components are the boundary input, the state (up to an affine transformation) and a Yosida-type approximation of the output of the nominal system. It is shown that, under suitable conditions, the model is well-posed and, in particular, that the dynamics operator is the generator of a C0-semigroup. Moreover, the model is shown to be observable and to carry controllability, stabilizability and detectability properties from the nominal system. A general method of resolution based on the problem of spectral factorization of a multi-dimensional operator-valued spectral density is described in order to solve a LQ-optimal control problem for this model. It is expected that this approach will lead hopefully to a good trade-off between the cost of modeling and the efficiency of methods of resolution of control problems for such systems.
Pages (de - à)
Les DOIs
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.automatica.2015.12.033
Publié - 1 mai 2016
Empreinte digitale
Spectral density
Trajectories
Dehaye, J., & Winkin, J. (2016). LQ-optimal boundary control of infinite-dimensional systems with Yosida-type approximate boundary observation. Automatica, 67, 94-106. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.automatica.2015.12.033
Dehaye, Jérémy ; Winkin, Joseph. / LQ-optimal boundary control of infinite-dimensional systems with Yosida-type approximate boundary observation. Dans: Automatica. 2016 ; Vol 67. p. 94-106.
@article{d1e5e343b2d14e5bb4f1223a681abcc0,
title = "LQ-optimal boundary control of infinite-dimensional systems with Yosida-type approximate boundary observation",
abstract = "A class of boundary control systems with boundary observation is considered, for which the unbounded operators often lead to technical difficulties. An extended model for this class of systems is described and analyzed, which involves no unbounded operator except for the dynamics generator. A method for the resolution of the LQ-optimal control problem for this model is described and the solution provides a stabilizing feedback for the nominal system with unbounded operators, in the sense that, in closed-loop, the state trajectories converge to zero exponentially fast. The model consists of an extended abstract differential equation whose state components are the boundary input, the state (up to an affine transformation) and a Yosida-type approximation of the output of the nominal system. It is shown that, under suitable conditions, the model is well-posed and, in particular, that the dynamics operator is the generator of a C0-semigroup. Moreover, the model is shown to be observable and to carry controllability, stabilizability and detectability properties from the nominal system. A general method of resolution based on the problem of spectral factorization of a multi-dimensional operator-valued spectral density is described in order to solve a LQ-optimal control problem for this model. It is expected that this approach will lead hopefully to a good trade-off between the cost of modeling and the efficiency of methods of resolution of control problems for such systems.",
keywords = "Boundary, Control, Distributed-parameter systems, LQR control method, Modeling, Observation, Spectral factorization",
author = "J{\'e}r{\'e}my Dehaye and Joseph Winkin",
doi = "10.1016/j.automatica.2015.12.033",
pages = "94--106",
journal = "Automatica",
publisher = "Elsevier Limited",
Dehaye, J & Winkin, J 2016, 'LQ-optimal boundary control of infinite-dimensional systems with Yosida-type approximate boundary observation' Automatica, VOL. 67, p. 94-106. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.automatica.2015.12.033
LQ-optimal boundary control of infinite-dimensional systems with Yosida-type approximate boundary observation. / Dehaye, Jérémy; Winkin, Joseph.
Dans: Automatica, Vol 67, 01.05.2016, p. 94-106.
T1 - LQ-optimal boundary control of infinite-dimensional systems with Yosida-type approximate boundary observation
AU - Dehaye, Jérémy
AU - Winkin, Joseph
N2 - A class of boundary control systems with boundary observation is considered, for which the unbounded operators often lead to technical difficulties. An extended model for this class of systems is described and analyzed, which involves no unbounded operator except for the dynamics generator. A method for the resolution of the LQ-optimal control problem for this model is described and the solution provides a stabilizing feedback for the nominal system with unbounded operators, in the sense that, in closed-loop, the state trajectories converge to zero exponentially fast. The model consists of an extended abstract differential equation whose state components are the boundary input, the state (up to an affine transformation) and a Yosida-type approximation of the output of the nominal system. It is shown that, under suitable conditions, the model is well-posed and, in particular, that the dynamics operator is the generator of a C0-semigroup. Moreover, the model is shown to be observable and to carry controllability, stabilizability and detectability properties from the nominal system. A general method of resolution based on the problem of spectral factorization of a multi-dimensional operator-valued spectral density is described in order to solve a LQ-optimal control problem for this model. It is expected that this approach will lead hopefully to a good trade-off between the cost of modeling and the efficiency of methods of resolution of control problems for such systems.
AB - A class of boundary control systems with boundary observation is considered, for which the unbounded operators often lead to technical difficulties. An extended model for this class of systems is described and analyzed, which involves no unbounded operator except for the dynamics generator. A method for the resolution of the LQ-optimal control problem for this model is described and the solution provides a stabilizing feedback for the nominal system with unbounded operators, in the sense that, in closed-loop, the state trajectories converge to zero exponentially fast. The model consists of an extended abstract differential equation whose state components are the boundary input, the state (up to an affine transformation) and a Yosida-type approximation of the output of the nominal system. It is shown that, under suitable conditions, the model is well-posed and, in particular, that the dynamics operator is the generator of a C0-semigroup. Moreover, the model is shown to be observable and to carry controllability, stabilizability and detectability properties from the nominal system. A general method of resolution based on the problem of spectral factorization of a multi-dimensional operator-valued spectral density is described in order to solve a LQ-optimal control problem for this model. It is expected that this approach will lead hopefully to a good trade-off between the cost of modeling and the efficiency of methods of resolution of control problems for such systems.
KW - Boundary
KW - Control
KW - Distributed-parameter systems
KW - LQR control method
KW - Modeling
KW - Observation
KW - Spectral factorization
U2 - 10.1016/j.automatica.2015.12.033
DO - 10.1016/j.automatica.2015.12.033
JO - Automatica
JF - Automatica
Dehaye J, Winkin J. LQ-optimal boundary control of infinite-dimensional systems with Yosida-type approximate boundary observation. Automatica. 2016 mai 1;67:94-106. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.automatica.2015.12.033
10.1016/j.automatica.2015.12.033 | {
"redpajama_set_name": "RedPajamaCommonCrawl"
} | 3,964 |
BMInitialsPlaceholderView
=====
A view capable of drawing initials into a circle. Similar to what iMessage does when you are enaged in a group chat.
 | {
"redpajama_set_name": "RedPajamaGithub"
} | 2,487 |
/**
* Load rules
* @ndaidong
**/
module.exports = require('./.eslintrc.json');
| {
"redpajama_set_name": "RedPajamaGithub"
} | 7,348 |
Philocheras brucei is een garnalensoort uit de familie van de Crangonidae. De wetenschappelijke naam van de soort is voor het eerst geldig gepubliceerd in 2004 door Komai.
Crangonidae | {
"redpajama_set_name": "RedPajamaWikipedia"
} | 2,423 |
Q: Retrieving values from a txt file of a new line delimiter I'm trying to index each data separated by a new line break.
import cvs
with open('some_file.txt') as f:
data = f.read()
data = data.splitlines()
And I can read it as
print data[0]
>>> 0.00000e+00 1.39984e+23 8.08209e+22 1.34691e+23 7.94736e+07 3.54090e+21 1.61507e+04 0.00000e+00 4.36307e-01 2.53048e-02 1.17516e-03 5.58890e+03 5.06638e+00 0.00000e+00 4.53490e-02 5.94527e-01 4.49423e-01 5.40076e-02 8.84406e-01 1.44792e-05 2.13497e+04 3.38802e+06 3.38397e-04 3.66874e-01 2.09206e-01 3.59185e-01 45536941
print data[1]
>>> 1.00000e+00 1.46478e+23 8.85202e+22 1.07364e+23 5.65863e+07 3.16193e+21 3.11939e+03 0.00000e+00 9.08775e-01 2.01753e-02 9.82056e-04 7.68423e+03 8.29516e+00 0.00000e+00 1.26423e-01 1.68922e-02 9.82179e-01 4.30002e-02 1.21514e+00 2.93802e-06 2.44811e+06 4.00670e+06 2.71861e-05 3.79373e-01 2.31627e-01 2.82576e-01 48923553
print data[:2]
>>> [' 0.00000e+00 1.39984e+23 8.08209e+22 1.34691e+23 7.94736e+07 3.54090e+21 1.61507e+04 0.00000e+00 4.36307e-01 2.53048e-02 1.17516e-03 5.58890e+03 5.06638e+00 0.00000e+00 4.53490e-02 5.94527e-01 4.49423e-01 5.40076e-02 8.84406e-01 1.44792e-05 2.13497e+04 3.38802e+06 3.38397e-04 3.66874e-01 2.09206e-01 3.59185e-01 45536941', ' 1.00000e+00 1.46478e+23 8.85202e+22 1.07364e+23 5.65863e+07 3.16193e+21 3.11939e+03 0.00000e+00 9.08775e-01 2.01753e-02 9.82056e-04 7.68423e+03 8.29516e+00 0.00000e+00 1.26423e-01 1.68922e-02 9.82179e-01 4.30002e-02 1.21514e+00 2.93802e-06 2.44811e+06 4.00670e+06 2.71861e-05 3.79373e-01 2.31627e-01 2.82576e-01 48923553']
Each indexed value has a specific quantity I am wanting to index out. For example, data[0] is the 1st particle along with its values and its index number is indicated by data[0][0], positions x,y,z is indicated with data[0][1], data[0][2], and data[0][3] respectively, data[0][4] for its mass, and so on.
Similarly, you retrieve the same quantities from the 2nd particle data[1], the 3rd data[2], and so on through the entire list data[:].
My problem is that I cannot index into each of the particle values as nicely as
posx = data[:][1]
posy = data[:][2]
posz = data[:][3]
...
or split into each column.
posx = [float(row.split()[1]) for row in data]
posy = [float(row.split()[1]) for row in data]
posz = [float(row.split()[1]) for row in data]
given in the format that it is in.
If you would like to reproduce it, I have provided a dropbox link: https://www.dropbox.com/sh/6f0cy4gk8x1k0rm/AADser16cMI9Xhhw3lyP7vWaa?dl=0
A: Add this to your existing code:
NiceArr = []
for item in data:
NiceArr.append(item.split())
NiceArr will become an array containing arrays, and each inner array will contain the particle values.
You can retrieve each of the particle values the same way you are trying to use in your post.
| {
"redpajama_set_name": "RedPajamaStackExchange"
} | 6,727 |
Angela Tucker (I)
Producer | Director | Writer
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{"url":"https:\/\/www.scm.com\/doc\/ReaxFF\/gcmc_Code_Details.html","text":"Code Details\u00b6\n\nOverview\n\nThe GCMC code will perform niter (control_MC file option) Grand Canonical Monte Carlo trial moves, and accept or reject them based on the Energy produced by the ReaxFF minimization step of the trial geometry. The Monte Carlo algorithm will always accept a step if it results in a decrease of the energy, and accept steps that go up in energy with a probability. This section will give some details about how the code works.\n\nMC Moves (Insert\/Delete\/Move\/Volume)\n\nThe GCMC code currently supports 4 types of MC Moves: Insert, Delete, Move (displace), Volume change. The first three moves always change a whole \u201cmolecule\u201d of the system, as defined in the control_MC file (a molecule can of course contain only a single atom). Every MC iteration selects one MC Molecule Type from the defined molecules in control_MC at random, followed by a random MC Move (unless there are no molecules of the type in the system, in that case it will do an insert move).\n\nThe Insert and Displace (move) MC Moves will generate a random rotation and position for the molecule, and then check if the random positions are within the \u201cRminPl\u201d and \u201cRmaxPl\u201d boundaries (this means no atom in the molecule can be closer to any atom currently in the system than \u201cRminPl\u201d, and it should be within \u201cRmaxPl\u201d distance to an atom in the system). If the conditions are not satisfied, a new set of coordinates is generated and the code checks again. This is repeated a maximum number of \u201cnmctry\u201d times before stopping with an error.\n\nThe volume change is controlled by the \u201civlim\u201d variable in control_MC. The ivlim sets the volume change limit, and it should be a value between between 0 and 1. The new volume will be calculated like this: Vnew = (1+ivlim)*Vold.\n\nCalculating energies\n\nBecause the GCMC simulation adds and deletes atoms or molecules during the runtime, it cannot directly compare the ReaxFF energies for the MC acceptance criteria: inserting a molecule will usually lower the total energy of the system, causing the MC to always accept it, and always reject a deletion. To balance this out, the GCMC code calculates a \u201ccorrected\u201d MC energy to compare the trial reaxFF energy with, consisting of the previously accepted ReaxFF energy + the chemical potential (cmpot in control)MC) for the inserted molecule, or the ReaxFF energy - the chemical potential for the deleted molecule. The volume change energy is also corrected, using the following formula:\n\nE_MC_Corr = E_reaxff_last_accept - (Pressure * 0.1439 * (newV-oldV)) + ((1.0\/beta) * nInsertedMols * log(newVavail\/oldVavail))\n\nwhere newVavail and oldVavail are calculated from the MC available volume (see the section calculating volumes).\n\nCalculating volumes\n\nThe GCMC code can calculate the available volume in a couple of different ways, depending on the ivol setting in control_MC:\n\n\u2022 ivol = 0: volume = total volume - occupied volume - specified vacuum volume (vvacu)\n\u2022 ivol = 1: volume = total cell volume\n\u2022 ivol = 2: volume = specified accessible volume (vacc)\n\u2022 ivol = 3: volume = total cell volume - occupied volume\n\u2022 ivol = 4: volume = specified accessible volume (vacc) - occupied volume\n\nWhere the occupied volume is calculated by summing up the volumes of the atoms in the geo file that are not specified to be part of an MC type molecule. The volume of an atom is calculated using the average of the covalent atomic radius and the vd Waals radius of the atom, which are found in the reaxff forcefield file (ffield).\n\nthe vacc and vvacu options can be specified in the control_MC file to get a more accurate available volume.\n\nAcceptance criteria\n\nAn MC move is always accepted if the reaxff energy is lower than the corrected MC energy of the last accepted MC move, or if the energy increase is small enough. If the new energy is higher, the code generates a random number between 0 and 1, and accepts the move if the random number is bigger than:\n\nprob = preFactor * exp(-Beta*deltaE)\n\n\nWhere the prefactor is calculated (for insert and delete moves) using the deBroglie wavelength of the inserted molecules, the number of inserted molecules and the available MC volume of the system.","date":"2018-08-21 05:49:04","metadata":"{\"extraction_info\": {\"found_math\": true, \"script_math_tex\": 0, \"script_math_asciimath\": 0, \"math_annotations\": 0, \"math_alttext\": 0, \"mathml\": 0, \"mathjax_tag\": 0, \"mathjax_inline_tex\": 0, \"mathjax_display_tex\": 0, \"mathjax_asciimath\": 1, \"img_math\": 0, \"codecogs_latex\": 0, \"wp_latex\": 0, \"mimetex.cgi\": 0, \"\/images\/math\/codecogs\": 0, \"mathtex.cgi\": 0, \"katex\": 0, \"math-container\": 0, \"wp-katex-eq\": 0, \"align\": 0, \"equation\": 0, \"x-ck12\": 0, \"texerror\": 0, \"math_score\": 0.6405959129333496, \"perplexity\": 1562.8952605807415}, \"config\": {\"markdown_headings\": false, \"markdown_code\": true, \"boilerplate_config\": {\"ratio_threshold\": 0.18, \"absolute_threshold\": 10, \"end_threshold\": 15, \"enable\": true}, \"remove_buttons\": true, \"remove_image_figures\": true, \"remove_link_clusters\": true, \"table_config\": {\"min_rows\": 2, \"min_cols\": 3, \"format\": \"plain\"}, \"remove_chinese\": true, \"remove_edit_buttons\": true, \"extract_latex\": true}, \"warc_path\": \"s3:\/\/commoncrawl\/crawl-data\/CC-MAIN-2018-34\/segments\/1534221217970.87\/warc\/CC-MAIN-20180821053629-20180821073629-00100.warc.gz\"}"} | null | null |
Q: Could not load or parse web.xml in PrimeFaces 5.1 After I upgraded to PrimeFaces 5.1, I am getting the following exception when trying to load any PrimeFaces page:
[12/1/14 12:02:39:045 AST] 000001a3 ConfigContain E Could not load or parse web.xml
java.net.ConnectException: Connection timed out: connect
at java.net.PlainSocketImpl.doConnect(PlainSocketImpl.java:381)
at java.net.PlainSocketImpl.connectToAddress(PlainSocketImpl.java:243)
at java.net.PlainSocketImpl.connect(PlainSocketImpl.java:230)
at java.net.SocksSocketImpl.connect(SocksSocketImpl.java:377)
at java.net.Socket.connect(Socket.java:539)
at java.net.Socket.connect(Socket.java:488)
at sun.net.NetworkClient.doConnect(NetworkClient.java:175)
at sun.net.www.http.HttpClient.openServer(HttpClient.java:408)
at sun.net.www.http.HttpClient.openServer(HttpClient.java:543)
at sun.net.www.http.HttpClient.<init>(HttpClient.java:247)
at sun.net.www.http.HttpClient.New(HttpClient.java:320)
at sun.net.www.http.HttpClient.New(HttpClient.java:337)
at sun.net.www.protocol.http.HttpURLConnection.getNewHttpClient(HttpURLConnection.java:982)
at sun.net.www.protocol.http.HttpURLConnection.plainConnect(HttpURLConnection.java:923)
at sun.net.www.protocol.http.HttpURLConnection.connect(HttpURLConnection.java:848)
at sun.net.www.protocol.http.HttpURLConnection.getInputStream(HttpURLConnection.java:1184)
at org.apache.xerces.impl.XMLEntityManager.setupCurrentEntity(Unknown Source)
at org.apache.xerces.impl.XMLEntityManager.startEntity(Unknown Source)
at org.apache.xerces.impl.XMLEntityManager.startDTDEntity(Unknown Source)
at org.apache.xerces.impl.XMLDTDScannerImpl.setInputSource(Unknown Source)
at org.apache.xerces.impl.XMLDocumentScannerImpl$DTDDispatcher.dispatch(Unknown Source)
at org.apache.xerces.impl.XMLDocumentFragmentScannerImpl.scanDocument(Unknown Source)
at org.apache.xerces.parsers.XML11Configuration.parse(Unknown Source)
at org.apache.xerces.parsers.XML11Configuration.parse(Unknown Source)
at org.apache.xerces.parsers.XMLParser.parse(Unknown Source)
at org.apache.xerces.parsers.DOMParser.parse(Unknown Source)
at org.apache.xerces.jaxp.DocumentBuilderImpl.parse(Unknown Source)
at javax.xml.parsers.DocumentBuilder.parse(Unknown Source)
at org.primefaces.config.ConfigContainer.initConfigFromWebXml(ConfigContainer.java:262)
at org.primefaces.config.ConfigContainer.<init>(ConfigContainer.java:85)
at org.primefaces.context.DefaultApplicationContext.<init>(DefaultApplicationContext.java:35)
at org.primefaces.context.DefaultRequestContext.getApplicationContext(DefaultRequestContext.java:227)
at org.primefaces.metadata.transformer.MetadataTransformerExecutor.processEvent(MetadataTransformerExecutor.java:50)
at javax.faces.event.SystemEvent.processListener(SystemEvent.java:108)
at javax.faces.event.ComponentSystemEvent.processListener(ComponentSystemEvent.java:118)
at com.sun.faces.application.ApplicationImpl.processListeners(ApplicationImpl.java:2187)
at com.sun.faces.application.ApplicationImpl.invokeListenersFor(ApplicationImpl.java:2163)
at com.sun.faces.application.ApplicationImpl.publishEvent(ApplicationImpl.java:303)
at com.sun.faces.application.ApplicationImpl.publishEvent(ApplicationImpl.java:247)
at javax.faces.component.UIComponentBase.publishAfterViewEvents(UIComponentBase.java:2245)
at javax.faces.component.UIComponentBase.doPostAddProcessing(UIComponentBase.java:1927)
at javax.faces.component.UIComponentBase.setParent(UIComponentBase.java:447)
at javax.faces.component.UIComponentBase$ChildrenList.add(UIComponentBase.java:2668)
at javax.faces.component.UIComponentBase$ChildrenList.add(UIComponentBase.java:2651)
at javax.faces.webapp.UIComponentClassicTagBase.createChild(UIComponentClassicTagBase.java:509)
at javax.faces.webapp.UIComponentClassicTagBase.findComponent(UIComponentClassicTagBase.java:742)
at javax.faces.webapp.UIComponentClassicTagBase.doStartTag(UIComponentClassicTagBase.java:1309)
at com.ibm._jsp._GenericSearch._jspx_meth_ui_page_0(_GenericSearch.java:193)
at com.ibm._jsp._GenericSearch._jspx_meth_f_view_0(_GenericSearch.java:242)
at com.ibm._jsp._GenericSearch._jspService(_GenericSearch.java:84)
at com.ibm.ws.jsp.runtime.HttpJspBase.service(HttpJspBase.java:99)
at javax.servlet.http.HttpServlet.service(HttpServlet.java:668)
at com.ibm.ws.webcontainer.servlet.ServletWrapper.service(ServletWrapper.java:1214)
at com.ibm.ws.webcontainer.servlet.ServletWrapper.handleRequest(ServletWrapper.java:774)
at com.ibm.ws.webcontainer.servlet.ServletWrapper.handleRequest(ServletWrapper.java:456)
at com.ibm.ws.webcontainer.servlet.ServletWrapperImpl.handleRequest(ServletWrapperImpl.java:178)
at com.ibm.wsspi.webcontainer.servlet.GenericServletWrapper.handleRequest(GenericServletWrapper.java:122)
at com.ibm.ws.jsp.webcontainerext.AbstractJSPExtensionServletWrapper.handleRequest(AbstractJSPExtensionServletWrapper.java:205)
at com.ibm.ws.webcontainer.filter.WebAppFilterChain.invokeTarget(WebAppFilterChain.java:125)
at com.ibm.ws.webcontainer.filter.WebAppFilterChain.doFilter(WebAppFilterChain.java:77)
at com.ibm.ws.webcontainer.filter.WebAppFilterManager.doFilter(WebAppFilterManager.java:926)
at com.ibm.ws.webcontainer.filter.WebAppFilterManager.invokeFilters(WebAppFilterManager.java:1023)
at com.ibm.ws.webcontainer.webapp.WebAppRequestDispatcher.dispatch(WebAppRequestDispatcher.java:1384)
at com.ibm.ws.webcontainer.webapp.WebAppRequestDispatcher.include(WebAppRequestDispatcher.java:548)
at com.filenet.wcm.toolkit.server.base.WcmController.serverSideInclude(WcmController.java:5617)
at com.filenet.wcm.toolkit.server.base.WcmUiModule.serverSideInclude(WcmUiModule.java:602)
at com.filenet.wcm.toolkit.server.base.WcmUiModule.serverSideInclude(WcmUiModule.java:567)
at com.filenet.wcm.toolkit.server.base.WcmUiModule.renderJSP(WcmUiModule.java:669)
at com.filenet.wcm.toolkit.server.util.ui.WcmLayout.renderRegionItem(WcmLayout.java:87)
at com.filenet.wcm.toolkit.server.util.ui.WcmLayout.renderRegion(WcmLayout.java:68)
at com.filenet.wcm.apps.server.presentation.util.WorkplaceLayout.render(WorkplaceLayout.java:209)
at com.filenet.wcm.apps.server.ui.layout.WcmWorkplaceLayoutModule.renderLayout(WcmWorkplaceLayoutModule.java:265)
at com.filenet.wcm.toolkit.server.ui.WcmLayoutModule.render(WcmLayoutModule.java:78)
at com.filenet.wcm.toolkit.server.base.WcmUiModule.renderJSP(WcmUiModule.java:667)
at com.filenet.wcm.toolkit.server.util.WcmUi.render(WcmUi.java:91)
at com.filenet.wcm.toolkit.server.util.WcmUi.render(WcmUi.java:83)
at com.ibm._jsp._GenericSearch._jspService(_GenericSearch.java:126)
at com.ibm.ws.jsp.runtime.HttpJspBase.service(HttpJspBase.java:99)
at javax.servlet.http.HttpServlet.service(HttpServlet.java:668)
at com.ibm.ws.webcontainer.servlet.ServletWrapper.service(ServletWrapper.java:1214)
at com.ibm.ws.webcontainer.servlet.ServletWrapper.handleRequest(ServletWrapper.java:774)
at com.ibm.ws.webcontainer.servlet.ServletWrapper.handleRequest(ServletWrapper.java:456)
at com.ibm.ws.webcontainer.servlet.ServletWrapperImpl.handleRequest(ServletWrapperImpl.java:178)
at com.ibm.wsspi.webcontainer.servlet.GenericServletWrapper.handleRequest(GenericServletWrapper.java:122)
at com.ibm.ws.jsp.webcontainerext.AbstractJSPExtensionServletWrapper.handleRequest(AbstractJSPExtensionServletWrapper.java:205)
at com.ibm.ws.webcontainer.filter.WebAppFilterChain.invokeTarget(WebAppFilterChain.java:125)
at com.ibm.ws.webcontainer.filter.WebAppFilterChain.doFilter(WebAppFilterChain.java:77)
at com.ibm.ws.webcontainer.filter.WebAppFilterManager.doFilter(WebAppFilterManager.java:926)
at com.ibm.ws.webcontainer.filter.WebAppFilterManager.invokeFilters(WebAppFilterManager.java:1023)
at com.ibm.ws.webcontainer.webapp.WebAppRequestDispatcher.dispatch(WebAppRequestDispatcher.java:1384)
at com.ibm.ws.webcontainer.webapp.WebAppRequestDispatcher.include(WebAppRequestDispatcher.java:548)
at com.filenet.wcm.toolkit.server.base.WcmController.serverSideInclude(WcmController.java:5617)
at com.filenet.wcm.toolkit.server.base.WcmController.handleEvent(WcmController.java:3294)
at com.ibm._jsp._GenericSearch._jspService(_GenericSearch.java:172)
at com.ibm.ws.jsp.runtime.HttpJspBase.service(HttpJspBase.java:99)
at javax.servlet.http.HttpServlet.service(HttpServlet.java:668)
at com.ibm.ws.webcontainer.servlet.ServletWrapper.service(ServletWrapper.java:1214)
at com.ibm.ws.webcontainer.servlet.ServletWrapper.handleRequest(ServletWrapper.java:774)
at com.ibm.ws.webcontainer.servlet.ServletWrapper.handleRequest(ServletWrapper.java:456)
at com.ibm.ws.webcontainer.servlet.ServletWrapperImpl.handleRequest(ServletWrapperImpl.java:178)
at com.ibm.wsspi.webcontainer.servlet.GenericServletWrapper.handleRequest(GenericServletWrapper.java:122)
at com.ibm.ws.jsp.webcontainerext.AbstractJSPExtensionServletWrapper.handleRequest(AbstractJSPExtensionServletWrapper.java:205)
at com.ibm.ws.webcontainer.filter.WebAppFilterChain.invokeTarget(WebAppFilterChain.java:125)
at com.ibm.ws.webcontainer.filter.WebAppFilterChain.doFilter(WebAppFilterChain.java:77)
at com.ibm.ws.webcontainer.filter.WebAppFilterManager.doFilter(WebAppFilterManager.java:926)
at com.ibm.ws.webcontainer.filter.WebAppFilterManager.invokeFilters(WebAppFilterManager.java:1023)
at com.ibm.ws.webcontainer.webapp.WebAppRequestDispatcher.dispatch(WebAppRequestDispatcher.java:1384)
at com.ibm.ws.webcontainer.webapp.WebAppRequestDispatcher.forward(WebAppRequestDispatcher.java:193)
at com.sun.faces.context.ExternalContextImpl.dispatch(ExternalContextImpl.java:630)
at com.sun.faces.application.view.JspViewHandlingStrategy.executePageToBuildView(JspViewHandlingStrategy.java:363)
at com.sun.faces.application.view.JspViewHandlingStrategy.buildView(JspViewHandlingStrategy.java:153)
at com.sun.faces.lifecycle.RenderResponsePhase.execute(RenderResponsePhase.java:99)
at com.sun.faces.lifecycle.Phase.doPhase(Phase.java:101)
at com.sun.faces.lifecycle.LifecycleImpl.render(LifecycleImpl.java:219)
at javax.faces.webapp.FacesServlet.service(FacesServlet.java:647)
at com.ibm.ws.webcontainer.servlet.ServletWrapper.service(ServletWrapper.java:1214)
at com.ibm.ws.webcontainer.servlet.ServletWrapper.handleRequest(ServletWrapper.java:774)
at com.ibm.ws.webcontainer.servlet.ServletWrapper.handleRequest(ServletWrapper.java:456)
at com.ibm.ws.webcontainer.servlet.ServletWrapperImpl.handleRequest(ServletWrapperImpl.java:178)
at com.ibm.ws.webcontainer.filter.WebAppFilterChain.invokeTarget(WebAppFilterChain.java:125)
at com.ibm.ws.webcontainer.filter.WebAppFilterChain.doFilter(WebAppFilterChain.java:92)
at org.primefaces.webapp.filter.FileUploadFilter.doFilter(FileUploadFilter.java:105)
at com.ibm.ws.webcontainer.filter.FilterInstanceWrapper.doFilter(FilterInstanceWrapper.java:192)
at com.ibm.ws.webcontainer.filter.WebAppFilterChain.doFilter(WebAppFilterChain.java:89)
at com.filenet.ae.toolkit.server.servlet.filter.PostprocessorFilter.doFilter(PostprocessorFilter.java:38)
at com.ibm.ws.webcontainer.filter.FilterInstanceWrapper.doFilter(FilterInstanceWrapper.java:192)
at com.ibm.ws.webcontainer.filter.WebAppFilterChain.doFilter(WebAppFilterChain.java:89)
at com.filenet.ae.toolkit.server.servlet.filter.ContainerBasedFilter.doFilter(ContainerBasedFilter.java:218)
at com.ibm.ws.webcontainer.filter.FilterInstanceWrapper.doFilter(FilterInstanceWrapper.java:192)
at com.ibm.ws.webcontainer.filter.WebAppFilterChain.doFilter(WebAppFilterChain.java:89)
at com.filenet.ae.toolkit.server.servlet.filter.PreprocessorFilter.doFilter(PreprocessorFilter.java:91)
at com.ibm.ws.webcontainer.filter.FilterInstanceWrapper.doFilter(FilterInstanceWrapper.java:192)
at com.ibm.ws.webcontainer.filter.WebAppFilterChain.doFilter(WebAppFilterChain.java:89)
at com.filenet.ae.toolkit.server.servlet.filter.SecurityPluginFilter.doFilter(SecurityPluginFilter.java:164)
at com.ibm.ws.webcontainer.filter.FilterInstanceWrapper.doFilter(FilterInstanceWrapper.java:192)
at com.ibm.ws.webcontainer.filter.WebAppFilterChain.doFilter(WebAppFilterChain.java:89)
at com.filenet.ae.toolkit.server.servlet.filter.ThreadLocalCleanupFilter.doFilter(ThreadLocalCleanupFilter.java:50)
at com.ibm.ws.webcontainer.filter.FilterInstanceWrapper.doFilter(FilterInstanceWrapper.java:192)
at com.ibm.ws.webcontainer.filter.WebAppFilterChain.doFilter(WebAppFilterChain.java:89)
at com.dataserve.ecm.ui.CompitabilityFilter.doFilter(CompitabilityFilter.java:46)
at com.ibm.ws.webcontainer.filter.FilterInstanceWrapper.doFilter(FilterInstanceWrapper.java:192)
at com.ibm.ws.webcontainer.filter.WebAppFilterChain.doFilter(WebAppFilterChain.java:89)
at com.ibm.ws.webcontainer.filter.WebAppFilterManager.doFilter(WebAppFilterManager.java:926)
at com.ibm.ws.webcontainer.filter.WebAppFilterManager.invokeFilters(WebAppFilterManager.java:1023)
at com.ibm.ws.webcontainer.webapp.WebApp.handleRequest(WebApp.java:3703)
at com.ibm.ws.webcontainer.webapp.WebGroup.handleRequest(WebGroup.java:304)
at com.ibm.ws.webcontainer.WebContainer.handleRequest(WebContainer.java:962)
at com.ibm.ws.webcontainer.WSWebContainer.handleRequest(WSWebContainer.java:1662)
at com.ibm.ws.webcontainer.channel.WCChannelLink.ready(WCChannelLink.java:195)
at com.ibm.ws.http.channel.inbound.impl.HttpInboundLink.handleDiscrimination(HttpInboundLink.java:458)
at com.ibm.ws.http.channel.inbound.impl.HttpInboundLink.handleNewRequest(HttpInboundLink.java:522)
at com.ibm.ws.http.channel.inbound.impl.HttpInboundLink.processRequest(HttpInboundLink.java:311)
at com.ibm.ws.http.channel.inbound.impl.HttpICLReadCallback.complete(HttpICLReadCallback.java:87)
at com.ibm.ws.tcp.channel.impl.AioReadCompletionListener.futureCompleted(AioReadCompletionListener.java:165)
at com.ibm.io.async.AbstractAsyncFuture.invokeCallback(AbstractAsyncFuture.java:217)
at com.ibm.io.async.AsyncChannelFuture.fireCompletionActions(AsyncChannelFuture.java:161)
at com.ibm.io.async.AsyncFuture.completed(AsyncFuture.java:138)
at com.ibm.io.async.ResultHandler.complete(ResultHandler.java:204)
at com.ibm.io.async.ResultHandler.runEventProcessingLoop(ResultHandler.java:775)
at com.ibm.io.async.ResultHandler$2.run(ResultHandler.java:905)
at com.ibm.ws.util.ThreadPool$Worker.run(ThreadPool.java:1783)
Please advise why I am getting this exception and how to fix it.
A: The server is trying to download a DTD for web.xml. Most likely you have the DOCTYPE wrong. For Servlet 3.0 the file should start with:
<web-app id="WebApp_ID" xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance"
xmlns="http://java.sun.com/xml/ns/javaee"
xmlns:web="http://java.sun.com/xml/ns/javaee/web-app_2_5.xsd"
xsi:schemaLocation="http://java.sun.com/xml/ns/javaee http://java.sun.com/xml/ns/javaee/web-app_3_0.xsd"
version="3.0">
Older versions used DOCTYPE. Publish parts of your web.xml and what Servlet API version you are using if you need more help.
| {
"redpajama_set_name": "RedPajamaStackExchange"
} | 6,377 |
Q: jQuery Mobile: Difference Between and Many of the examples on jQuery Mobile use <a href="#" ...>...</a> for buttons instead of <button>...</button> for buttons that are NOT hyperlinks. Is there is good reason for this? Will you find differences in behavior or performance on certain platforms when using one over the other?
Thank you.
| {
"redpajama_set_name": "RedPajamaStackExchange"
} | 3,879 |
var mongoose = require('mongoose');
var Schema = mongoose.Schema;
var BatterSchema = new Schema({
playerID: {type: String},
yearID: {type: Number, required: true},
teamID: {type: String, required: true},
lgID: {type: String, required: true},
first_name: {type: String, required: true},
last_name: {type: String, required: true},
bats: {type: String},
'throws': {type: String},
G: {type: Number},
AB: {type: Number},
R: {type: Number},
H: {type: Number},
'2B': {type: Number},
'3B': {type: Number},
HR: {type: Number},
RBI: {type: Number},
SB: {type: Number},
CS: {type: Number},
BB: {type: Number},
SO: {type: Number},
IBB: {type: Number},
HBP: {type: Number},
SH: {type: Number},
SF: {type: Number},
GIDP: {type: Number},
created_at: { type: Date, default: Date.now },
updated_at: { type: Date, default: Date.now }
});
// CUSTOM METHODS
// =============================================================================
BatterSchema.statics.getObjectId = function getObjectId (q, cb) {
return this.where(q).exec(cb);
};
module.exports = mongoose.model('Batter', BatterSchema);
| {
"redpajama_set_name": "RedPajamaGithub"
} | 1,760 |
{"url":"https:\/\/www.circuitspedia.com\/logic-gate\/","text":"### LOGIC GATES\n\nLogic gates are the basic building elements of any digital systems or circuits. The name Logic gate is derived from the sense of the making decisions ability of such a device, and after making decisions it produce one output result. We \u00a0can say that Logic gates are the fundamental building blocks of any digital circuits or digital systems.\n\nThere are 3 basic Types of Logic gates \u2013 (1)-AND ,\u00a0 (2)-OR ,\u00a0 (3)-NOT\n\nBasically Logic gates are elementary electronic logic circuit that can make a variety of different types of circuits by interconnection of these three gates to \u00a0perform complex logically operations of any computer. This is called logic design. Logic gates made a number of electronic devices and other digital components. In practical application of logic gates we see in the form of different Ics.\u00a0 These Ics are in LSI (Large scale integration), VLSI (Very large scale integration ) and SSI (Small scale integration) . Input and Outputs of Logic gates in only two levels called TRUE and FALSE , or HIGH and LOW, or ON and OFF, or\u00a0 very popular 0 and 1.\n\nHigh (1 or TRUE or ON) means +5v\n\nLOW(0 or FALSE or OFF) means 0v (or -ve supply)\n\nThese 2 level logic also called Positive and Negative Logic.\n\n### AND GATE\n\nAND gate has two or more than two inputs and only one Output. In AND gate Output is High or 1 only when each input of it has in HIGH state. Means output is 1 if only all inputs are at 1 level. If any one input goes at 0 level then the\u00a0 output of AND gate becomes 0 .\n\nLogic Symbol\n\nInput Variables are represented by A,B,C\u2026\u2026 and the the output is written as X. In the Boolean expression it can be written as X=A.B.C\u2026\u2026. It Can be read as X is equal to A and B and C \u2026.or X is equal to A dot B dot C\u2026. or X is equal to ABC\u2026..\n\n### Realization of AND Gate-\n\nAND gate may be realized by the using of diode and transistors. If it made by using diodes then it called as DL(Diode Logic) and if using transistors it called as RTL (Resistor Transistor Logic)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 .\n\nIn the Diode Logic AND gate When the input A = +5v and input B is also +5v, in this case both diodes D1 and D2 are off (because of reverse mode). And therefore no current flows through resistor R. So no voltage drop occurs across R and voltage remain at the output is HIGH.\n\nWhen A=0, and B=0v or any one of A or B is 0v. Then the both diodes \u00a0or corresponding Diode D1 or D2 are ON and the circuit is act as short circuit. In this condition the output X=LOW or 0v.\n\n### RTL AND Gate circuit\n\nIn the RTL AND gate or transistor gate, When A=0v and B=0v. Then the transistors Q1 and Q2 are off but transistor Q3 remain in ON, and the voltage at\u00a0 output is LOW or 0v because of Q3 ON and current pass through Q3 and voltage is dropped through R.\n\nIf Any one of input A or B is high then Either Q1 or Either Q2 will off and then no voltage drop occurs at R. So Q3 Will remain in turn on and therefore output will LOW.\n\nIf input A and input B both are HIGH then both transistors Q1 and Q2 will turn on and current passes through these transistors between ground and +5v and voltage will LOW at the collector pin of T1 and at input of Q3 . So Q3 will off and no voltage drop at collector pin and output will HIGH.\u00a0 At HIGH condition the voltage at output is approx \u00a05v (X\u22485v).\n\n### OR gate-\n\nOR gate have also two or more than two inputs but only one output. The output is HIGH or 1 if even any one of input is 1. The output is o or LOW if all of its input is in LOW state or 0 . OR gate is defined as the device which output is o if any one of its input is 1.\n\n### Must read\u00a0\u00a0What is NOT gate\n\nThe Logic symbol for OR gate is +. The Boolean expression for the output can be written as X=A+B+C+\u2026\u2026 This is written as X is equal to A plus B plus C or it can also be read as \u00a0X is equal to A or B or C or \u2026.. .\n\n### Realization of OR gates can be made using Diodes(Diode Logic) or Transistors(RTL).\n\nIn the diode or gate, when both input A and B=0v or LOW , then both diodes D1 And D2 are OFF state because of reverse biasing. So No any current pass Through R and No voltage drop will occur . Then the output X=0v . If both input or any one of both input are +5v . Then the\u00a0 corresponding diode D1 or D2 is On or both diode D1 and D2 are ON and short circuit occur across them. Therefore the output X is approx to +5v. voltage drop across diode is +5v-0.7v= 4.3v . But this is treated as HIGH or 1.\n\nIn the Transistor (RTL) logic OR gate circuit, When both input A & B are 0v. Transistors Q1 and Q2 are OFF\u00a0 and Transistor Q3 is ON because of it get Base voltage through Resistor R1. So the output \u00a0voltage at Collector pin of Q3 go 0v by dropping of voltage with ground at R2 . If any one of any input A or B is HIGH or 1 then the\u00a0 corresponding transistors in ON state .\u00a0 So voltage at the collector of that transistor goes to 0v by voltage drop and there is no any Base voltage at the Q3 and no any voltage drop occurs at R2 therefor the output is HIGH OR 1.\n\n## The Universal Gates\n\nUniversal gates are defined as Which logic gates can implement any types logic gates . There are two universal\u00a0 gates NAND and NOR. Both NAND and NOR\u00a0 gates can perform all the three basic logic functions of AND, OR, NOT. \u00a0AOI (AND\/OR\/INVERT(NOT)) can be converted to NAND logic or NOR logic.\n\n## Types of Universal Gates\n\n### NAND Gate (NOT-AND)\n\nNAND gate is a combination of AND \u00a0gate and NOT gate. If the output of AND gate is Inverted then it is called NAND gate. NAND = NOT AND. When AND output is NOTed or Inverted then it is called\u00a0 NAND gate.\n\nThe output is 0 only if each inputs is 1 and output is 0 if any one of any input or all inputs are 0. Means when all inputs are 1 then output will 1 otherwise if different combination of input the output is 0.\u00a0The boolean expression of NAND gate is written as X=\n\n$\\overline{A.B.C}$\n\nThis is\u00a0 read as X=A.B.C\u2026.whole bar.\n\n#### Realization of NAND gate-\n\nA two input NAND gate can be realized\u00a0using Diode Transistor Logic. When the input A and B both are HIGH or +5v then both diodes are off and transistor get base voltage through R1 . So the transistor is ON and the output voltage at collector is 0v because of dropped voltage with ground. When Both input A and B are 0v then the both diode are in ON because of forward bias (here 0v means negative supply) . So Base voltage of transistor is 0v. So Transistor is in OFF and then the output is HIGH or approx +5v.\n\n### NOR Gate\n\nWhen the output of OR gate is NOTed or inverted then it is called NOR gate. NOR means NOT OR. NOR gate is the combination of an OR gate and a NOT gate. The output is 1 or HIGH\u00a0 when only the both input is 0 or LOW. Otherwise output is 0. The boolean expression for the NOR gate is expressed as given below This is read as X is equal to A plus B plus C plus .....whole bar.\n\n### Realization of NOR gate-\n\nTwo input RTL(Resistor transistor logic) NOT gate can be realized using two transistors and resistors. When Input A and B both are 0. A=0 and B=0. Then both transistors are OFF because no base voltage get. So no current flows through transistors and no voltage drop occurs. Therefore only current passes through R the output is HIGH.","date":"2019-03-26 06:03:18","metadata":"{\"extraction_info\": {\"found_math\": true, \"script_math_tex\": 0, \"script_math_asciimath\": 0, \"math_annotations\": 0, \"math_alttext\": 0, \"mathml\": 1, \"mathjax_tag\": 0, \"mathjax_inline_tex\": 0, \"mathjax_display_tex\": 0, \"mathjax_asciimath\": 0, \"img_math\": 0, \"codecogs_latex\": 0, \"wp_latex\": 0, \"mimetex.cgi\": 0, \"\/images\/math\/codecogs\": 0, \"mathtex.cgi\": 0, \"katex\": 0, \"math-container\": 0, \"wp-katex-eq\": 0, \"align\": 0, \"equation\": 0, \"x-ck12\": 0, \"texerror\": 0, \"math_score\": 0.5892994999885559, \"perplexity\": 1509.7510003213677}, \"config\": {\"markdown_headings\": true, \"markdown_code\": true, \"boilerplate_config\": {\"ratio_threshold\": 0.18, \"absolute_threshold\": 10, \"end_threshold\": 15, \"enable\": true}, \"remove_buttons\": true, \"remove_image_figures\": true, \"remove_link_clusters\": true, \"table_config\": {\"min_rows\": 2, \"min_cols\": 3, \"format\": \"plain\"}, \"remove_chinese\": true, \"remove_edit_buttons\": true, \"extract_latex\": true}, \"warc_path\": \"s3:\/\/commoncrawl\/crawl-data\/CC-MAIN-2019-13\/segments\/1552912204857.82\/warc\/CC-MAIN-20190326054828-20190326080828-00495.warc.gz\"}"} | null | null |
from __future__ import absolute_import
from flask.ext.script import Manager
from flask.ext.celery import install_commands as install_celery_commands
from FlaskEchoApp import create_app
from celery_views import CeleryEchoView
app = create_app()
manager = Manager(app)
install_celery_commands(manager)
# Register the modelview version of the echoer that offloads the task
# to a celery worker and supports teting the result of a celery worker
# (by id).
app.add_url_rule(
"/json_celery_class", view_func=CeleryEchoView.as_view("json_celery_class"))
if __name__ == "__main__":
# Note, this is a script wrapped around a flask server + celery
# This does require that you already have a RabbitMQ broker running.
# To start a celeryd (celery worker) use:
# "python manage_celery.py celeryd --loglevel=INFO"
# To start a flask server on localhost:5000 use:
# "python manage_celery.py runserver"
manager.run()
| {
"redpajama_set_name": "RedPajamaGithub"
} | 6,516 |
\section{Introduction}
The \emph{Gromov--Witten invariants} of a smooth projective variety $X$ are integrals over the moduli space of maps from algebraic curves to $X$. These invariants are a very rich object of research, where various branches of mathematics, including algebraic geometry, mathematical physics, topology, and combinatorics, interact in a beautiful manner. If $X$ is a point, then the moduli spaces of maps specialize to the moduli spaces ${\overline{\mathcal{M}}}_{g,n}$ of stable algebraic curves of genus $g$ with~$n$ marked points, and the Gromov--Witten invariants, often called the \emph{intersection numbers} in this case, are the integrals over ${\overline{\mathcal{M}}}_{g,n}$ of monomials in the first Chern classes of tautological line bundles over ${\overline{\mathcal{M}}}_{g,n}$. The exponent of the generatings series of intersection numbers, called now the \emph{Kontsevich--Witten (KW) tau-function}, was first described by Kontsevich~\cite{Kon92} as a certain tau-function of the KdV hierarchy (this was conjectured before by Witten~\cite{Wit91}), and Kontsevich also derived a beautiful matrix model for it. A more detailed description of the associated tau-function of the KdV hierarchy using the Sato Grassmannian can be found in~\cite{KS91} (see also~\cite{BJP15}). Virasoro constraints for the KW tau-function were derived in~\cite{DVV91} (see also~\cite{Wit92}). As a result of a huge amount of research during more than 30 years, there exist now a lot of ways to describe the KW tau-function, see, e.g., \cite{Oko02,Ale11,BDY16,Bur17,MM20}.
\medskip
In the case when the target variety is a smooth projective curve, the Gromov--Witten invariants are also well studied. The Gromov--Witten invariants of the complex projective line $\mathbb P^1$ were first descibed in~\cite{GP99} using localization. Virasoro constraints were derived in~\cite{Giv01}, a relation with Hurwitz numbers was obtained in~\cite{OP06c}, and integrable systems controlling the Gromov--Witten invariants were presented in~\cite{DZ04,OP06b}. Regarding other descriptions, see, e.g., \cite{DMNPS17,DYZ20,BR21}.
\medskip
The Gromov--Witten invariants of target curves of genus $h\ge 1$ were computed in~\cite{OP06a}. The stationary invariants are identified with Hurwitz numbers counting ramified coverings of a Riemann surface of genus $h$ that are branched over some number of fixed points with the ramification profiles given by the so-called \emph{completed cycles}. All the other Gromov--Witten invariants are determined starting from the stationary ones using Virasoro type constraints. For further results on the Gromov--Witten invariants of higher genus target curves, we refer a reader, e.g., to~\cite{Ros08,Zho20}.
\medskip
However, there is a certain gap in the understanding of the Gromov--Witten invariants of higher genus target curves. In~\cite[Section 0.1.6]{OP06b} the authors say the following: ``\emph{We do not know whether the Gromov--Witten theories of higher genus target curves are governed by integrable hierarchies}''. As far as we know, this aspect was never clarified in the literature, although it is strongly believed that the Gromov--Witten invariants of any target variety are controlled by an appropriate integrable system, and this is confirmed in a large class of cases (see, e.g.,~\cite{BPS12}).
\medskip
In this note, we focus on the case of an elliptic curve as a target variety. We solve the system of Virasoro type constraints given in~\cite{OP06a} and obtain an explicit formula (Theorem~\ref{main theorem}) for the full Gromov--Witten potential of the elliptic curve in terms of the stationary Gromov--Witten invariants. As a corollary, we show that the Gromov--Witten invariants of the elliptic curve are controlled by an integrable hierarchy, which is related to a simple dispersionless hierarchy by an explicit Miura transformation (Theorem~\ref{second theorem}). This clarifies the aspect of the Gromov--Witten theory of the elliptic curve pointed out by the authors of~\cite{OP06b}.
\medskip
\subsection*{Notation and conventions}
\begin{itemize}
\item We use the Einstein summation convention for repeated upper and lower Greek indices.
\smallskip
\item When it does not lead to a confusion, we use the symbol $*$ to indicate any value, in the appropriate range, of a sub- or superscript.
\smallskip
\item For a topological space $X$, we denote by $H_*(X)$ and $H^*(X)$, respectively, the homology and cohomology groups of $X$ with coefficients in $\mathbb C$.
\end{itemize}
\medskip
\subsection*{Acknowledgements}
The author has been funded within the framework of the HSE University Basic Research Program.
\medskip
\section{The Gromov--Witten potential of an elliptic curve}
Here, in Theorem~\ref{main theorem} we present an explicit formula for the full Gromov--Witten potential of an elliptic curve. Before that, let us recall very briefly basic facts about the Gromov--Witten invariants of an elliptic curve, referring a reader to~\cite{OP06a} for further details.
\medskip
Consider an elliptic curve $E$. Let us choose a basis $\gamma_1,\gamma_2,\gamma_3,\gamma_4\in H^*(E)$, where the class $\gamma_1\in\ H^0(E)$ is the unit, the classes $\gamma_2\in H^{1,0}(E)$ and $\gamma_3\in H^{0,1}(E)$ satisfy $\int_E\gamma_2\gamma_3=1$, and the class $\gamma_4\in H^2(E)$ is the Poincar\'e dual to a point.
\medskip
The moduli space ${\overline{\mathcal{M}}}_{g,n}(E,d)$ parameterizes connected, genus $g$, $n$-pointed stable maps $f\colon (C;x_1,\ldots,x_n)\to E$ with $f_*[C]=d[E]\in H_2(E,\mathbb Z)$. For each $1\le i\le n$, there is a complex line bundle $L_i$ over ${\overline{\mathcal{M}}}_{g,n}(E,d)$ given by the cotangent spaces to the $i$-th marked point in $C$, and we denote $\psi_i:=c_1(L_i)\in H^2({\overline{\mathcal{M}}}_{g,n}(E,d))$. For $1\le i\le n$, there is a map $\mathrm{ev}_i\colon{\overline{\mathcal{M}}}_{g,n}(E,d)\to E$ sending a stable map $f\colon (C;x_1,\ldots,x_n)\to E$ to the point $f(x_i)\in E$. The moduli space ${\overline{\mathcal{M}}}_{g,n}(E,d)$ is endowed with a \emph{virtual fundamental class} $[{\overline{\mathcal{M}}}_{g,n}(E,d)]^\mathrm{vir}\in H_{2(2g-2+n)}({\overline{\mathcal{M}}}_{g,n}(E,d),\mathbb Z)$.
\medskip
The \emph{Gromov--Witten invariants} of $E$ are the following integrals:
\begin{gather}\label{eq:GW invariants}
\left<\tau_{k_1}(\gamma_{\alpha_1})\ldots\tau_{k_n}(\gamma_{\alpha_n})\right>^E_{g,d}:=\int_{\left[{\overline{\mathcal{M}}}_{g,n}(E,d)\right]^\mathrm{vir}}\psi_1^{k_1}\mathrm{ev}_1^*(\gamma_{\alpha_1})\ldots\psi_n^{k_n}\mathrm{ev}_n^*(\gamma_{\alpha_n}),
\end{gather}
where $k_1,\ldots,k_n,d\ge 0$ and $1\le\alpha_1,\ldots,\alpha_n\le 4$. The Gromov--Witten invariants with $\alpha_1=\ldots=\alpha_n=4$ are called \emph{stationary}. The Gromov--Witten invariant~\eqref{eq:GW invariants} is zero unless
\begin{gather}\label{eq:dimension constraint}
\sum_{i=1}^n(k_i+q_{\alpha_i}-1)=2g-2,
\end{gather}
where $q_\alpha:=\frac{1}{2}\deg\gamma_\alpha$. If the subscript $g$ is omitted in the bracket notation $\left<\prod_i \tau_{k_1}(\gamma_{\alpha_i})\right>^E_{d}$, the genus is specified by the constraint~\eqref{eq:dimension constraint}. If the resulting genus is not an integer, the Gromov--Witten invariant is defined as vanishing.
\medskip
Note that in genus $0$ the Gromov--Witten invariant~\eqref{eq:GW invariants} is zero unless $d=0$. In the case $g=d=0$, the only nontrivial Gromov--Witten invariants (up to simultaneous permutations of the numbers $\alpha_1,\ldots,\alpha_n$ and the numbers $k_1,\ldots,k_n$) are
\begin{gather}\label{eq:correlators in genus 0}
\left<\tau_{k_1}(\gamma_4)\prod_{i=2}^n\tau_{k_i}(\gamma_1)\right>^E_{0,0}=\left<\tau_{k_1}(\gamma_2)\tau_{k_2}(\gamma_3)\prod_{i=3}^n\tau_{k_i}(\gamma_1)\right>^E_{0,0}=\frac{(n-3)!}{k_1!\ldots k_n!},\quad k_1+\ldots+k_n=n-3.
\end{gather}
\medskip
We introduce formal variables $\varepsilon,q$ and a two-parameter family of formal variables $t^\alpha_d, 1\le\alpha\le 4$, $d\ge 0$, where the variables $t^2_d,t^3_d$ are odd, and the variables $e,q,t^1_d,t^4_d$ are even, and consider the Gromov--Witten potential of $E$:
\begin{gather*}
\mathcal{F}(t^*_*,q,\varepsilon)=\sum_{g\ge 0}\varepsilon^{2g}\mathcal{F}_g(t^*_*,q):=\sum\frac{\varepsilon^{2g}}{n!}q^d t^{\alpha_1}_{d_1}\ldots t^{\alpha_n}_{d_n}\left<\tau_{d_1}(\gamma_{\alpha_1})\ldots\tau_{d_n}(\gamma_{\alpha_n})\right>^E_{g,d}.
\end{gather*}
\medskip
\begin{remark}
The Gromov--Witten potential of $E$ (and, more generally, of any target variety with nonvanishing odd cohomology) is often defined a little bit differently, where the monomial in front of the Gromov--Witten invariant $\left<\tau_{d_1}(\gamma_{\alpha_1})\ldots\tau_{d_n}(\gamma_{\alpha_n})\right>^E_{g,d}$ is replaced by $t^{\alpha_n}_{d_n}\ldots t^{\alpha_1}_{d_1}$. We follow the convention from the paper~\cite{OP06a}.
\end{remark}
\medskip
We introduce a $4\times 4$ matrix $\eta=(\eta_{\alpha\beta})$ by $\eta_{\alpha\beta}:=\int_E\gamma_\alpha\gamma_\beta$, and denote by $\eta^{\alpha\beta}$ the entries of the matrix $\eta^{-1}$, $\eta^{\alpha\mu}\eta_{\mu\beta}=\delta^\alpha_\beta$. We also introduce formal power series
$$
v^\alpha:=\eta^{\alpha\mu}\frac{{\partial}^2\mathcal{F}_0}{{\partial} t^\mu_0{\partial} t^1_0},\qquad v^\alpha_k:=\frac{{\partial}^k v^\alpha}{({\partial} t^1_0)^k},\qquad 1\le\alpha\le 4,\quad k\ge 0.
$$
\medskip
For any $n\ge 0$ and an $n$-tuple $\overline{d}=(d_1,\ldots,d_n)\in\mathbb Z_{\ge 0}^n$, denote
$$
C_{\overline{d}}(q):=\sum_{d\ge 0}\left<\prod_{i=1}^{n}\tau_{d_i}(\gamma_4)\right>^E_d q^d\in\mathbb C[[q]].
$$
For example~\cite[Section~5]{OP06c},
\begin{gather*}
C_{()}(q)=\sum_{n\ge 1}\frac{\sigma(n)}{n}q^n,\qquad C_{(2)}(q)=\frac{E_2^2}{2}+\frac{E_4}{12},\qquad C_{(1,1)}(q)=-\frac{8}{3} E_2^3 + \frac{2}{3} E_2E_4 + \frac{7}{180} E_6,
\end{gather*}
where $\sigma(n):=\sum_{d\mid n}d$ and
$$
E_k(q):=\frac{\zeta(1-k)}{2}+\sum_{n\ge 1}\left(\sum_{d\mid n}d^{k-1}\right)q^n,\quad k=2,4,6,
$$
is the standard notation for the \emph{Eisenstein series}. Note that if $d_i=0$ for some $i$, then
$$
C_{\overline{d}}(q)=q\frac{d}{d q}C_{(d_1,\ldots,\widehat{d_i},\ldots,d_n)}(q)-\frac{\delta_{n,1}}{24}.
$$
In~\cite{OP06c}, the authors derived a formula for the series $C_{\overline{d}}(q)$, which we recall in the appendix to our paper.
\medskip
For an integer $d\ge 0$, denote by $\mathcal{P}_d$ the set of all partitions of $d$. We denote by $l(\lambda)$ the length of $\lambda\in\mathcal{P}_d$ and denote $m_j(\lambda):=|\{1\le i\le l(\lambda)|\lambda_i=j\}|$, $j\ge 1$.
\medskip
\begin{theorem}\label{main theorem}
For any $g\ge 1$ we have
\begin{gather}\label{eq:main formula}
\mathcal{F}_g=\sum_{\lambda\in\mathcal{P}_{2g-2}}\frac{\prod_{i=1}^{l(\lambda)}v^4_{\lambda_i}}{\prod_{j\ge 1}m_j(\lambda)!}C_\lambda(q e^{v^4})-\frac{v^4}{24}\delta_{g,1}.
\end{gather}
\end{theorem}
\medskip
\begin{example}
We have
\begin{gather*}
\mathcal{F}_1=C_{()}(q e^{v^4})-\frac{v^4}{24},\qquad \mathcal{F}_2=v^4_2 C_{(2)}(qe^{v^4})+\frac{(v^4_1)^2}{2}C_{(1,1)}(qe^{v^4}).
\end{gather*}
\end{example}
\medskip
\begin{remark}\label{remark:about main formula}
By~\eqref{eq:correlators in genus 0}, $v^4_k|_{t^1_*=t^2_*=t^3_*=0}=t^4_k$, so formula~\eqref{eq:main formula} is obviously true if we substitute $t^1_*=t^2_*=t^3_*=t^4_0=0$, because after this substitution the right-hand side of~\eqref{eq:main formula} becomes
$$
\sum_{n\ge 0}\frac{1}{n!}\sum_{\substack{k_1,\ldots,k_n\ge 1\\\sum k_i=2g-2}}\sum_{d\ge 0}q^d\left<\prod_{i=1}^n\tau_{k_i}(\gamma_4)\right>^E_{g,d}\prod_{i=1}^n t^4_{k_i}.
$$
So formula~\eqref{eq:main formula} doesn't tell anything about the Gromov--Witten invariants
$$
\left<\prod_{i=1}^n\tau_{k_i}(\gamma_4)\right>^E_{g,d},\quad k_1,\ldots,k_n\ge 1,
$$
and should be understood as a way to reconstruct all the other Gromov--Witten invariants starting from them.
\end{remark}
\medskip
\begin{proof}[Proof of Theorem~\ref{main theorem}]
The divisor equation in Gromov--Witten theory~\cite{KM94} implies that
\begin{gather}\label{eq:divisor with operators}
\frac{{\partial}\mathcal{F}_g}{{\partial} t^4_0}=q\frac{{\partial}\mathcal{F}_g}{{\partial} q}+\sum_{n\ge 0}t^1_{n+1}\frac{{\partial}\mathcal{F}_g}{{\partial} t^4_n}+\delta_{g,0}\frac{(t^1_0)^2}{2}-\delta_{g,1}\frac{1}{24}.
\end{gather}
For $a\in\mathbb C$ and $b\in\mathbb Z_{\ge 0}$ let
$$
(a)_b:=
\begin{cases}
1,&\text{if $b=0$},\\
a(a+1)\ldots(a+b-1),&\text{if $b\ge 1$}.
\end{cases}
$$
Denote also $b_1=b_3:=0$ and $b_2=b_4:=1$. In~\cite{OP06a} the authors derived the following family of constraints for the potential $\mathcal{F}$:
\begin{gather}\label{eq:three Virasoro constraints}
L_k\exp(\mathcal{F})=D_k\exp(\mathcal{F})=\overline{D}_k\exp(\mathcal{F})=0,\quad k\ge -1,
\end{gather}
where
\begin{align*}
&L_k:=-(k+1)!\frac{{\partial}}{{\partial} t^1_{k+1}}+\sum_{m\ge 0}(b_\alpha+m)_{k+1}t^\alpha_m\frac{{\partial}}{{\partial} t^\alpha_{m+k}}+\delta_{k,-1}\eta_{\alpha\beta}\frac{t^\alpha_0 t^\beta_0}{2}, && k\ge -1,\\
&D_k:=-(k+1)!\frac{{\partial}}{{\partial} t^2_{k+1}}+\sum_{m\ge 0}\left((m)_{k+1}t^1_m\frac{{\partial}}{{\partial} t^2_{m+k}}+(m+1)_{k+1}t^3_m\frac{{\partial}}{{\partial} t^4_{m+k}}\right), && k\ge -1,\\
&\overline{D}_k:=-(k+1)!\frac{{\partial}}{{\partial} t^3_{k+1}}+\sum_{m\ge 0}\left((m)_{k+1}t^1_m\frac{{\partial}}{{\partial} t^3_{m+k}}-(m+1)_{k+1}t^2_m\frac{{\partial}}{{\partial} t^4_{m+k}}\right), && k\ge -1.
\end{align*}
\medskip
Introducing the operator $O:=\frac{{\partial}}{{\partial} t^4_0}-q\frac{{\partial}}{{\partial} q}-\sum_{n\ge 0}t^1_{n+1}\frac{{\partial}}{{\partial} t^4_n}$, we rewrite the constraint~\eqref{eq:divisor with operators} as
\begin{gather}\label{eq:divisor with operators-2}
O\mathcal{F}_g=\delta_{g,0}\frac{(t^1_0)^2}{2}-\frac{\delta_{g,1}}{24}.
\end{gather}
Note also that the constraints~\eqref{eq:three Virasoro constraints} can be equivalently written as
\begin{gather}\label{eq:three Virasoro constraints-2}
\widetilde{L}_k\mathcal{F}_g=-\delta_{k,-1}\delta_{g,0}\eta_{\alpha\beta}\frac{t^\alpha_0 t^\beta_0}{2},\qquad D_k\mathcal{F}_g=\overline{D}_k\mathcal{F}_g=0,\quad k\ge -1,
\end{gather}
where $\widetilde{L}_k:=L_k-\delta_{k,-1}\eta_{\alpha\beta}\frac{t^\alpha_0 t^\beta_0}{2}$.
\medskip
Clearly, the constraints~\eqref{eq:divisor with operators-2} and~\eqref{eq:three Virasoro constraints-2} uniquely determine the potential $\mathcal{F}_g$ starting from the part $\mathcal{F}_g|_{t^1_*=t^2_*=t^3_*=t^4_0=0}$.
Since in Remark~\ref{remark:about main formula} we explained that equation~\eqref{eq:main formula} is true if we substitute $t^1_*=t^2_*=t^3_*=t^4_0=0$, it remains to prove that following lemma.
\medskip
\begin{lemma}
{\ }
\begin{itemize}
\item[1.] The operators $\widetilde{L}_k$, $D_k$, and $\overline{D}_k$, $k\ge -1$, annihilate the right-hand side of~\eqref{eq:main formula}.
\smallskip
\item[2.] Applying the operator $O$ to the right-hand side of~\eqref{eq:main formula} gives $-\frac{\delta_{g,1}}{24}$.
\end{itemize}
\end{lemma}
\begin{proof}
1. Since the operators $\widetilde{L}_k$, $D_k$, and $\overline{D}_k$ are linear combinations of the operators $\frac{{\partial}}{{\partial} t^\alpha_a}$, it is sufficient to check that they annihilate the formal power series $v^4_d$ for all $d\ge 0$. This is obtained by applying the operator~$\frac{{\partial}^{d+2}}{({\partial} t^1_0)^{d+2}}$ to the equations in~\eqref{eq:three Virasoro constraints-2} with $g=0$ and using that the operator~$\frac{{\partial}}{{\partial} t^1_0}$ commutes with the operators $\widetilde{L}_k$, $D_k$, and $\overline{D}_k$.
\medskip
2. Since the operator $O$ is a linear combination of the operators $\frac{{\partial}}{{\partial} t^\alpha_a}$ and $\frac{{\partial}}{{\partial} q}$, and $O q=-q$, it is sufficient to check that $O v^4_d=\delta_{d,0}$. For this, as in Part 1, we apply $\frac{{\partial}^{d+2}}{({\partial} t^1_0)^{d+2}}$ to both sides of equation~\eqref{eq:divisor with operators-2} with $g=0$ and use that $[\frac{{\partial}}{{\partial} t^1_0},O]=0$.
\end{proof}
\end{proof}
\medskip
\section{Integrable systems associated to an elliptic curve}
In this section, we determine an integrable system controlling the Gromov--Witten invariants of an elliptic curve.
\medskip
The~\emph{topological recursion relations} in genus~$0$ (see, e.g.,~\cite{KM98}) are the following PDEs for the generating series of genus $0$ Gromov--Witten invariants of an elliptic curve $E$:
\begin{gather*}
\frac{{\partial}^3\mathcal{F}_0}{{\partial} t^{\alpha_1}_{d_1+1}{\partial} t^{\alpha_2}_{d_2}{\partial} t^{\alpha_3}_{d_3}}=
\eta^{\nu\mu}\frac{{\partial}^2\mathcal{F}_0}{{\partial} t^{\alpha_1}_{d_1}{\partial} t^{\mu}_0}\frac{{\partial}^3\mathcal{F}_0}{{\partial} t^\nu_0{\partial} t^{\alpha_2}_{d_2}{\partial} t^{\alpha_3}_{d_3}},\quad 1\le\alpha_1,\alpha_2,\alpha_3\le 4,\quad d_1,d_2,d_3\ge 0.
\end{gather*}
It implies that (see, e.g., \cite[Proposition~3]{BPS12})
$$
\frac{{\partial}^2\mathcal{F}_0}{{\partial} t^\alpha_a{\partial} t^\beta_b}=\left.\Omega_{\alpha,a;\beta,b}\right|_{t^\gamma_0=v^\gamma},\quad\text{where}\quad \Omega_{\alpha,a;\beta,b}=\Omega_{\alpha,a;\beta,b}(t^*_0):=\left.\frac{{\partial}^2\mathcal{F}_0}{{\partial} t^\alpha_a{\partial} t^\beta_b}\right|_{t^*_{\ge 1}=0}.
$$
We then denote
$$
P^\alpha_{\beta,b}:=\eta^{\alpha\mu}\frac{{\partial}^2\mathcal{F}_0}{{\partial} t^\beta_b{\partial} t^\mu_0}
$$
and using~\eqref{eq:correlators in genus 0} compute
\begin{align*}
&P^1_{1,b}=\frac{(v^1)^{b+1}}{(b+1)!}, && P^1_{2,b}=0, && P^1_{3,b}=0, && P^1_{4,b}=0,\\
&P^2_{1,b}=v^2\frac{(v^1)^b}{b!}, && P^2_{2,b}=\frac{(v^1)^{b+1}}{(b+1)!}, && P^2_{3,b}=0, && P^2_{4,b}=0,\\
&P^3_{1,b}=v^3\frac{(v^1)^b}{b!}, && P^3_{2,b}=0, && P^3_{3,b}=\frac{(v^1)^{b+1}}{(b+1)!}, && P^3_{4,b}=0,\\
&P^4_{1,b}=v^4\frac{(v^1)^b}{b!}+v^2 v^3\frac{(v^1)^{b-1}}{(b-1)!}, && P^4_{2,b}=v^3\frac{(v^1)^b}{b!}, && P^4_{3,b}=-v^2\frac{(v^1)^b}{b!}, && P^4_{4,b}=\frac{(v^1)^{b+1}}{(b+1)!}.
\end{align*}
We see that the functions $v^\alpha$ satisfy the system of evolutionary PDEs with one spatial variable:
\begin{gather}\label{eq:principal hierarchy}
\frac{{\partial} v^\alpha}{{\partial} t^\beta_b}={\partial}_x P^\alpha_{\beta,p},\quad 1\le\alpha,\beta\le 4,\quad b\ge 0,
\end{gather}
where we identify ${\partial}_x$ with $\frac{{\partial}}{{\partial} t^1_0}$.
\medskip
Let
$$
w^\alpha:=\eta^{\alpha\mu}\frac{{\partial}^2\mathcal{F}}{{\partial} t^\mu_0{\partial} t^1_0}.
$$
The above considerations together with Theorem~\ref{main theorem} imply the following result.
\medskip
\begin{theorem}\label{second theorem}
The functions $w^\alpha$ satisfy the system of evolutionary PDEs with one spatial variable that is obtained from the system~\eqref{eq:principal hierarchy} by the Miura transformation
$$
v^\alpha\mapsto w^\alpha=v^\alpha+\sum_{g\ge 1}\varepsilon^{2g}\eta^{\alpha\mu}\frac{{\partial}^2}{{\partial} t^\mu_0{\partial} t^1_0}\left(\sum_{\lambda\in\mathcal{P}_{2g-2}}\frac{\prod_{i=1}^{l(\lambda)}v^4_{\lambda_i}}{\prod_{j\ge 1}m_j(\lambda)!}C_\lambda(q e^{v^4})-\frac{v^4}{24}\delta_{g,1}\right).
$$
\end{theorem}
\medskip
\begin{remark}
The part of the system~\eqref{eq:principal hierarchy} given by the flows $\frac{{\partial}}{{\partial} t^\beta_b}$ with $\beta=1$ or $\beta=4$ can be restricted to the submanifold given by $v^2=v^3=0$. By~\cite[Proposition~10.1]{BDGR18}, the resulting system coincides with the DR hierarchy associated to the even part of the cohomological field theory corresponding to the elliptic curve. Therefore, Theorem~\ref{second theorem} proves the DR/DZ equivalence conjecture for the elliptic curve.
\end{remark}
\medskip
{ | {
"redpajama_set_name": "RedPajamaArXiv"
} | 3,265 |
package no.nordicsemi.android.nrfbeacon;
import android.app.Activity;
import android.content.Intent;
import android.os.Bundle;
import android.os.Handler;
public class SplashscreenActivity extends Activity {
/** Splash screen duration time in milliseconds */
private static final int DELAY = 1000;
@Override
protected void onCreate(final Bundle savedInstanceState) {
super.onCreate(savedInstanceState);
setContentView(R.layout.activity_splashscreen);
// Jump to MainActivity after DELAY milliseconds
new Handler().postDelayed(new Runnable() {
@Override
public void run() {
final Intent intent = new Intent(SplashscreenActivity.this, MainActivity.class);
intent.addFlags(Intent.FLAG_ACTIVITY_NO_ANIMATION);
intent.putExtra(MainActivity.OPENED_FROM_LAUNCHER, true);
startActivity(intent);
finish();
}
}, DELAY);
}
@Override
public void onBackPressed() {
// do nothing. Protect from exiting the application when splash screen is shown
}
}
| {
"redpajama_set_name": "RedPajamaGithub"
} | 7,684 |
Using trading systems can help you enjoy very many advantages. A significant reason why you should use a trading system is that it minimizes emotions. Eliminating emotions during trading can be easily achieved by using trading systems. When it comes to trading, this can be crucial. You will be able to follow the trading plan without any issues in this case. As long as you have met the required rules, you can always have the chance of trading online. When it comes to trading, in this case, you will not find yourself hesitating or doubting whether to trade or not. You can avoid overtrading by using trading systems.
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"redpajama_set_name": "RedPajamaC4"
} | 3,662 |
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The Referendum: It doesn't matter whether you vote… what matters is whether you're willing to resist
ireland / britain | economy | opinion / analysis Thursday May 03, 2012 17:45 by Gregor Kerr - WSM
Analysis of the forthcoming referendum in Ireland regarding austerity
The government parties are billing it as the 'Stability Treaty', the left opposition – most notably the United Left Alliance – are calling it the 'Austerity Treaty'. For the next few weeks we can expect the airwaves to be clogged with the pros and cons in the lead-up to the 31stMay referendum on the "Treaty on Stability, Coordination and Governance in the Economic and Monetary Union" to give it its official title.
But despite all that we will hear between now and the end of the month, does anyone seriously think that how we vote will make one whit of difference?
If the 'Austerity Treaty' is rejected, will the government accept that its policy of heaping more and more austerity and cuts on the shoulders of ordinary workers and the unemployed is wrong? Will they accept that the household tax, the water tax, the Universal Social Charge, the pension levy, pay cuts etc should be reversed and that instead a wealth and assets tax should be introduced?
On the other hand if the 'Stability Treaty' is accepted, can we expect a prolonged period of stability to follow? Will the all-powerful financial markets accept that they have got their pound of flesh, and will they signal their willingness to work for 'stability' and accept that the Irish taxpayer has no more to give?
Or will pigs fly?
You don't need to be much of a genius to work out that the last of the 3 scenarios is actually the more likely to occur.
All sides know that the result of this referendum will make little or no difference to anything.
On the government (and Fianna Fáil, IBEC etc.) side, they've already admitted that the result of the Irish vote is irrelevant as the treaty only needs to be ratified by 12 EU members states to proceed. But they are desperate to prove their credentials as 'good Europeans'. All the posters - 'For a Working Ireland - , 'Secure Ireland's Future -, 'For Investment, Stability, Recovery –' or Labour's basic 'It's about stability –' are predicated on "sending a positive signal to potential investors" (as IBEC's Danny McCoy put it).
It's a bit like 'Don't annoy the wolf and he mightn't attack us any more'. But we've spent the last 4 years appeasing the wolf of the financial markets – giving him everything he wants - and the reality is when we give him this bit of flesh, he's going to come back for even more. Those that are putting up the posters and trotting out the slogans know that they have just as much relevance as their infamous 'Lisbon: Vote Yes for Jobs' (remember those lovely posters??)
Nobody advocating a Yes vote has a single positive thing to say about this treaty. The best they can say is that things will be bad anyway but will be worse if we vote no. On just the second morning of campaigning Minister for Finance, Michael Noonan, has 'warned' that a No vote will result in a "dramatically more difficult budget". And as the campaign continues we can expect more of the same with dire threats that 'we' won't be able to 'return to the markets', won't 'have access to a second bailout' etc etc.
All of which ignores (deliberately) the fact that the Irish banking system was 'bailed out' (lent more money that the taxpayer was going to pay back) in order to save the European banking system. And if it's necessary to do that again, it'll be done again – it's a surefire bet.
We can expect over the next few weeks – especially because they know that their message of 'trust us and vote yes' is not going down too well with people – all sorts of threats and dire warnings from pro-treaty forces about not having money to pay social welfare, the ATMs drying up etc. etc. But none of it is true, it's an attempt to bully us into rolling over and taking more pain 'in the national interest' – except that those who benefit from 'the national interest' don't have to take any pain.
Bloody nose
When you see the range of forces lined up advocating a Yes, it's tempting to want to give them a bloody nose, to reject their sanctimonious lecturing about how we should 'do the right thing'. And that's exactly what we should do. But the question is – can we do that by casting a No vote.
Practically all of those advocating a No vote would agree with the contention that you can't defeat austerity by voting it down, that even delivering a majority No vote won't bring an end to the austerity agenda either here or in Europe. But they argue, as Paul Murphy Socialist Party MEP has done that a no vote will "strike a blow against the austerity policies of the Troika and European establishment." They contend that it is important to vote no because "A rejection of the Treaty by the Irish people would be a recognition that austerity is causing havoc across Europe and a powerful demand for a change of course." (Joe Higgins TD).
It is of course only fair to point out that the calls for a No vote (from most of the ULA at least) are almost always accompanied by the recognition that a No vote must be accompanied by "struggle in the streets and workplaces by workers across Europe…" (Paul Murphy again).
But a huge gap exists between the rhetoric of advocating 'struggle in the streets' and the ground on which the referendum debate is taking place. The opportunities for advocating struggle and fightback on RTE soundbites or on debates on TV3 are limited in the extreme. Even in written material most of the time is taken up with having to put forward detailed arguments about 'balanced budgets', 'structural deficits', and even whether or not 'we' would get a 'second bailout' if 'we' need one. The bit about needing 'struggle in the street' is lucky to get a one or two line tag on at the end.
The problem is that once socialists begin to engage in debate on this level, we are conceding that that is how politics is done – that it's all about engaging in nice debate and trying to win over the middle ground. And once people begin to participate in that debate the language used, the arguments put forward all become quite 'middle ground' as well. They have to in order to be allowed into the space that the media has dictated that the 'debate' is going to take place in.
Thus socialists find themselves being as milk-and-watery as the other side in the debate. Richard Boyd Barrett, ULA TD says in one piece, for example, that "…a No vote [is] a vote for prioritising job creation, public services and fairness ahead of bail-outs for banker and speculators…" It's a statement that's got no more credibility than the Fine Gael one that says a Yes vote will bring "investment, stability and recovery".
In reality the whole argument about this referendum can be summed up in two short sentences:-
A yes vote will be used by the government as a justification for austerity but a no vote will not be accepted by them as a rejection of austerity, austerity will continue whatever way we vote.
It doesn't matter how you vote… what matters is whether you're willing to resist their austerity.
The referendum cannot be divorced from the political circumstances and climate in which it takes place. Over the past couple of months, in communities right across Ireland the people in approximately a million households have delivered a resounding No to the austerity agenda by refusing to register for the household tax. When this household tax is followed by the water tax and the property tax, people will again deliver their judgement.
And that judgement will not be able to be ignored by the government or by the Troika. If we collectively refuse to pay the water tax and build a campaign to support each other, they can't enforce it on us. We can make if unenforceable and uncollectible and we can in the process build new strengths and solidarities in our communities.
Increasingly, as a result of the confidence gained through involvement in this important battle, people are beginning to realise that we don't have to accept the government's austerity agenda and that it is possible to organise to fight back.
This referendum is at best a distraction from that organising. Worse, there is a danger that some people will vote no and canvass for a no vote in the belief that it can have an impact. In the scenario where a majority No is delivered and the austerity agenda continues, those people could become disillusioned and instead of taking a further step towards questioning the way in which society is governed may instead decide that there is no point.
There is another inherent danger in giving the referendum any credence – and especially in referring to it as an 'austerity referendum'. If the government puts a huge gun to people's heads and its bullying and threatening succeeds in making a majority of people vote Yes, they will then be able to say 'We've had a referendum on austerity and the people have voted in favour of it.' It will embolden them to go on an even greater offensive and could again leave many people disillusioned.
There is an alternative for those who want to resist austerity and who want to bring about change. That alternative is to recognise the referendum for what it is – a no-win situation - and to refuse to engage with it. But instead to continue to organise opposition to the household tax, to the water tax, to social welfare cuts – to every aspect of the austerity agenda. And while engaged in organising that opposition to begin a conversation among ourselves about the way in which a society that we would be proud to hand on to our children and grandchildren should be run.
We need to re-forge a society where power and privilege is taken away from the elite and where community solidarity, equality and democracy are the watchwords. That's a huge task but one we're all well capable of taking on.
One thing's for sure – voting in the referendum isn't going to move us even a centimetre in the right direction. | {
"redpajama_set_name": "RedPajamaCommonCrawl"
} | 5,221 |
Vavis () war ein griechischer Sportschütze, der an den Olympischen Sommerspielen 1896 teilnahm. Er trat im Wettbewerb mit der Dienstpistole an, wo er nicht unter die ersten fünf kam. Genauere Ergebnisse sind nicht bekannt.
Siehe auch
Griechische Olympiamannschaft 1896
Weblinks
Olympiateilnehmer (Griechenland)
Teilnehmer der Olympischen Sommerspiele 1896
Sportschütze (Griechenland)
Grieche
Geboren im 19. Jahrhundert
Gestorben im 19. oder 20. Jahrhundert
Mann | {
"redpajama_set_name": "RedPajamaWikipedia"
} | 3,279 |
Q: Flutter awesome notifications cancel not working I am using awesome notifications in flutter. When ı create notifications with scheduled can't cancelling.I use "await AwesomeNotifications().cancelAllSchedules();" method but not working. Response is successful but not working anyway.
| {
"redpajama_set_name": "RedPajamaStackExchange"
} | 286 |
\section{Introduction.}
\paragraph{History and motivation} The purpose of this paper is to shed light
on Errett Bishop's results on analytic varieties and their volumes, these
statements listed as theorems \ref{bishop mapping}, \ref{bishop sequence} and
\ref{bishop}; these results were published in 1964 in an article called
\textit{Conditions for the Analycity of certain sets} (see \cite{Bishop}). But
the presentation of these results we show here comes from the 1966 Gabriel
Stolzenberg's book \textit{Volumes, Limits and Extensions of Analytic
Varieties} (see \cite{Stolzenberg}) which also was the catalyst for the
exploration of Chow's theorem via Bishop's results.\\
In 1949 Wei-Liang Chow published the paper \textit{On Compact Complex Analytic
Varieties}, which contains the proof of a long-conjectured result that gives a
deep link between analytic geometry and projective algebraic geometry. The
result, now known as \emph{Chow's theorem} states that every closed analytic
subvariety of the complex projective space $\ensuremath{\mathbb{CP}}^n$ is algebraic. The history
regarding this result is related to the development of important results
of analytic sets of the XX century. The original proof of Chow was done via
analytic simplexes, later in 1953 Reinhold Remmert, and Karl Stein proved
that the closure of a purely $k$-dimensional analytic set is also an analytic
set under conditions which, in particular, imply that the complex cone of a
projective subvariety is also an analytic set. This is crucial for the proof
given in most textbooks on these topics that do not utilize the techniques
developed by Jean-Pierre Serre in 1956 his famous paper \textit{G\'eometrie Alg\'ebrique et
G\'eom\'etrie Analytique} colloquially known as GAGA. The proof presented by us
does not reference the algebraic properties of the ring of germs of analytic
functions nor nor does it make reference to quasi-coherent sheaves, instead it is concerned
with local properties of varieties and the Hausdorff measure of said varieties respectively.\\
Inspired by this we show more results that link the theory of complex algebraic sets and
some well known theorems in complex analysis, see table (\ref{table_complex_analysis}). Furthermore
careful study of Bishop's results pointed us to apply them to foliations with compact
leaves on K\"ahler manifolds in a manner similar to Edwards, Millet and Sullivan in reference \cite{EMS}.
\paragraph{Analytic spaces} We begin with some basic definitions and
terminology; we denote the sheaf of holomorphic functions on $\ensuremath{\mathbb{C}^{n}}$ by $\ensuremath{\mathcal{H} }$
and for $U\subset\ensuremath{\mathbb{C}^{n}}$ an open subset, the ring of holomorphic functions on $U$
will be denoted by $\ensuremath{\mathcal{H} }(U),$ with the exception of $\ensuremath{\mathcal{H} }_n:=\ensuremath{\mathcal{H} }(\ensuremath{\mathbb{C}^{n}})$. Given
an open subset $U$ of $\ensuremath{\mathbb{C}^{n}}$ and a finite subset $\lbrace
f_1,\dots,f_k\rbrace\subset\ensuremath{\mathcal{H} }(U)$ we will denote the locus consisting of
points where all of these functions vanish by $$ V_U(f_1,\dots,f_k):=
\big\lbrace z\in U\,\big\vert\,f_1(z)= \dots=f_k(z)=0 \big\rbrace. $$
An \textit{\textbf{analytic subset}} of $\ensuremath{\mathbb{C}^{n}}$ is a locally ringed subset
$X\subset\ensuremath{\mathbb{C}^{n}}$ such that for every $x\in X$ there are a neighbourhood $U$ of
$x$ and a finite subset $\lbrace f_1,\dots,f_k\rbrace\subset\ensuremath{\mathcal{H} }(U)$ with
$X\cap U=V_U(f_1,\dots,f_k)$, together with the local ring $$ \ensuremath{\mathcal{H} }_X:=
\ensuremath{\mathcal{H} }_n/\mathcal{I}(X)\hspace*{0.1cm},\text{where}\hspace*{0.2cm}\mathcal{I}(X):=
\big\lbrace f\in\ensuremath{\mathcal{H} }_n\,\vert\,f\vert_{U\cap X}=0 \big\rbrace. $$
\begin{definition} An \textit{\textbf{analytic space}} $(X,\ensuremath{\mathcal{H} }_{X})$ is a
topological Hausdorff space $X$ together with a local ring structure
$\ensuremath{\mathcal{H} }_X$ that is locally isomorphic to an analytic subset of $\ensuremath{\mathbb{C}^{n}}$. We
call a neighborhood with its local isomorphism a \textit{chart}.
\end{definition}
\noindent An \textbf{\textit{analytic subspace}} of an analytic space
$(X,\ensuremath{\mathcal{H} }_{X})$ consist of a subset $Y\subset X$ such that for every $y\in Y$
there is a chart $(U,\varphi)$ around $y$ with $$ \varphi(Y\cap
U)=V_U(\varphi(\eta_1),\dots,\varphi(\eta_k)), $$
\noindent and $\lbrace\eta_1,\dots,\eta_k\rbrace\subset\ensuremath{\mathcal{H} }_{X}$, naturally we
have a local ring structure $(Y,\ensuremath{\mathcal{H} }_{Y})$ given by
$\ensuremath{\mathcal{H} }_Y:=\ensuremath{\mathcal{H} }_n/\mathcal{I}(Y)$, as before.\\
We denote \textit{complex projective space of dimension $n$} by $\ensuremath{\mathbb{CP}}^n$. It
is a complex manifold and therefore an analytic space with its usual affine
charts. Algebraic subsets on $\mathbb{C}^{n+1}$ are the vanishing points of a
finite number of polynomials in $\co[z_0,\dots ,z_n]$, note that using
projective coordinates, the set of vanishing points of homogeneous polynomials
are well defined on $\ensuremath{\mathbb{CP}}^n$. Analytic and algebraic subsets of $\ensuremath{\mathbb{CP}}^n$ are
going to be called \,\textit{\textbf{projective} analytic subsets} and
\textit{\textbf{projective} algebraic subsets} respectively.
\begin{theorem}[Chow] Every closed projective analytic subset is a projective
algebraic subset. \end{theorem}
In order to prove this statement, we proceed with some properties of volumes of
purely $k$-dimensional analytic subvarieties and their Hausdorff measures, then
we proceed to enunciate one of the key theorems for this proof, a result that
we call \textit{\textbf{Bishop's proper mapping theorem}}.
\subsection{Volumes of analytic sets and Wirtinger's inequality}
\paragraph{Kähler manifolds} Volumes and metrics have a natural relationship
that we are going to exploit throughout this article. In the context of complex
analytic spaces and manifolds, Kähler geometry is special for its interplay
between the metric and the associated volumes both for the whole manifold and
for its submanifolds. Related to this is the result due to Wirtinger that among
other things implies that Kähler submanifols of a Kähler manifolds minimize the
volumes of their respective homological class. This will be of crucial
importance when dealing with the volume function of the leaves on a compact
K\"ahler manifold in theorem \ref{kahlerEMS}.
\begin{definition} Let $M$ be a complex manifold with a complex structure
$J:TM\rightarrow TM$, an \textit{Hermitian metric} on $M$ is a family
real bilinear forms $\lbrace h_p\rbrace_p$ for all $p\in M$ where
$h_p:T_pM\times T_pM\rightarrow\co$, such that \begin{equation}
h_p(JX,JY)=h_p(X,Y)\hspace{0.3cm}\forall\lbrace X,Y\rbrace\subset
T_pM\hspace{0.3cm}\forall p\in M. \end{equation} We will also denote
$h(\cdot,\cdot)=\langle\cdot,\cdot\rangle$. We call a manifold with a Hermitian
metric a \textit{Hermitian manifold} \end{definition} We note that Riemannian
manifolds of even dimension $(M,g)$ with a complex structure $J$ have a natural
Hermit1an metric given by $$h(X,Y):=g(X,Y)+g(JX,JY).$$ All Hermitian manifolds
$(M,h)$ have an associated 2-form $\omega$ given by $\omega(X,Y)=\langle
JX,Y\rangle$ which is clearly antisymmetric since $J^2=-Id_M$.
\begin{definition} Let $(M,h)$ be a Hermitian manifold with Hermitian metric
$h$ and associated 2-form $\omega$, $h$ is a Kähler metric if
$$d\,\omega=0.$$ We call a manifold with a Kähler metric a
\textit{Kähler manifold} or a \textit{Kählerian manifold}, the
associated 2-form will be called a \textit{Kähler form} or a
\textit{Kähler symplectic form}.
\end{definition}
Being a Kähler has some strong topological restrictions, for example powers of the Kähler
form $\omega^k$ are non trivial representatives of cohomology classes on
$H^k(M ;\ensuremath{\mathbb R })$, meaning these groups are never trivial. More important
for our purposes is the fact that a complex submanifold of a Kähler
manifold is also K\"ahler.
\begin{definition} We say $N$ is a complex
submanifold of $M$ if $N$ is a complex manifold such that there
exist $f:N\rightarrow M$ a holomorphic isometric immersion for
some Hermitian metrics $h_N$ and $h_M$ of $N$ and $M$.
\end{definition} By our definition of submanifold it follows that every
complex submanifold of a Kähler manifold is also Kähler since the
clossedness of the 2-form follows from the compatibility of $J$ and the
derivative under the pullback $f^*$. Other consequences are the
following:
\begin{theorem} Any complex submanifold of a Kähler manifold
is a minimal submanifold.
\end{theorem}
\begin{theorem}[Wirtinger's Inequality] Let $M$ be a Kähler
manifold with Kähler form $\omega_M$ and let
$f:N\rightarrow M$ be a closed oriented immersion of an
oriented real manifold of real dimension $2k$. Let
$\omega=f^*\,\omega_M$, then \begin{equation}
\frac{\omega}{k!}\leq dVol_N\hspace{0.3cm}\text{where
}dVol_N\text{is the volume form of N,} \end{equation} and the
equality holds if and only if $N$ is a complex submanifold of
$M$.
\end{theorem}
\begin{corollary}\label{wirtinger} Let $N$
be a complex compact submanifold with boundary of a Kähler
manifold $M$, then $N$ is a volume minimizing submanifold in
its homology class $$H_{2k}(M,\partial N,\dbz),$$ meaning that
for any real submanifold $X$ of real dimension $2k$ and boundary
$\partial N$ homologous to $N$ has $$Vol_{2k}(N)\leq Vol_{2k}(X)$$
\end{corollary}
\paragraph{Volume forms} Let
$\omega=-Im\langle\cdot,\cdot\rangle$ where $\langle\cdot,\cdot\rangle$ is the
standard Kähler metric in $\ensuremath{\mathbb{C}^{n}}$ and let $M$ be a complex submanifold of $\ensuremath{\mathbb{C}^{n}}$
by Wirtinger's inequality, if $Vol_{2k}(M)$ is the volume of $M$ given by the
Riemannian structure $g=Re\langle\cdot,\cdot\rangle\vert_{M}$, then
\begin{equation}
Vol_{2k}(M)= \frac{1}{k!}\int_M \omega^k.
\end{equation} If
$X$ is a purely $k$ dimensional analytic subset of $\ensuremath{\mathbb{C}^{n}}$ and $\Sigma(X)$ is
its singular locus, then $M=X\setminus\Sigma(X)$ is a complex manifold and
since $\Sigma(X)$ is an analytic subset of $X$ of lesser dimension, $$
Vol_{2k}(X)= Vol_{2k}(X\setminus\Sigma(X))=
\frac{1}{k!}\int_{X\setminus\Sigma(X)} \omega^k= \int_{X} \omega^k. $$
\subsection{Hausdorff measure and Bishop's proper mapping theorem}
\paragraph{Hausdorff measure and metric} Besides the volumes of analytic sets,
we will study the Hausdorff measure of said sets in order to determine their dimension,
we denote the $\delta$-Hausdorff measure of a subset $S\subset\ensuremath{\mathbb{C}^{n}}$ by $\hd(S)$. Here we
list some of the most important properties of this measure for our purposes;
\begin{enumerate} \item[1.] If $\hd(S)<\infty$, and $\delta<\kappa$, then
$\ensuremath{\mathbf{H}_{\kappa}}(S)=0$.\\
\item[2.] If $f:X\rightarrow Y$ is a Lipschitz continuous function with
Lipschitz constant $\lambda$, then for any $\delta\in\ensuremath{\mathbb R }^{+}$ and
$S\subset X$, the following inequality holds $$
\hd(f(S))\leq\lambda^{\delta}\hd(S). $$
\item[3.]If $X=\ensuremath{\mathbb R }^{n}$ and $S$ is a smooth submanifold of dimension
$k\in\dbz^{+}$, then the volume of $S$ as a submanifold is related to
its Hausdorff measure by the formula $$ Vol_{k}(M)=
\alpha_k\ensuremath{\mathbf{H}}_k(S),\hspace*{0.3cm}\alpha_k= \frac{\pi^k}{\Gamma(k/2+1)},
$$
\noindent where $\Gamma(z)$ is the Euler's gamma function.
\end{enumerate}
Related to the Hausdorff measure is the Hausdorff metric defined for $K_1$
and $K_2$ compact subsets of a metric space $(X,d)$ as $$
d_H(K_1,K_2):= \max_{x\in K_1}\left\{d(x,K_2)\right\}+\max_{y\in K_2}\left\{d(y,K_1)\right\}, $$
\noindent the Hausdorff metric allows us to define a convenient
notion of convergence of closed subsets; let $\left\{S_n \right\}$ be any
sequence of closed subsets of $X$ then we say $S_n\rightarrow S$ for $S\subset
X$ closed if for every $K\subset X$ compact we have $$d_H(K\cap S_n,K\cap S)\rightarrow 0.$$
The first of Bishop's results that is very useful for understanding some of the analytical properties
of purely $k$-dimensional subvarieties is the following convergence theorem:
\begin{theorem}\label{bishop sequence}[Sequence theorem] Let $\lbrace
V_n\rbrace$ be a sequence of purely $k$-dimensional subvarieties of a
domain $\Omega\subset\ensuremath{\mathbb{C}^{n}}$ such that $V_n\rightarrow V$, with
$V\subset\Omega$ a closed subset, if $$ Vol_{2k}(V_n)\leq M
\hspace*{0.2cm}\forall n\in\ensuremath{\mathbb N }, $$ \noindent then for the Hausdorff
measure we have; $\ensuremath{\mathbf{H}}_{2k+1}(V)=0$, moreover $V$ is a purely
$k$-dimensional analytic subvariety of $\Omega$.
\end{theorem}
As direct application of this result, one can show the following very useful proposition
\begin{theorem}\label{bishop mapping}[Bishop's proper mapping theorem] Let
$\Omega\subset\ensuremath{\mathbb{C}^{n}}$ be a domain that contains $0$ and let
$S\subset\Omega$ be a closed subset, if $\ensuremath{\mathbf{H}}_{2k+1}(S)=0$, then there
is a suitable coordinate change of $\ensuremath{\mathbb{C}^{n}}$, $(z_1,\ldots,z_n)$ and
neighborhoods $\Omega_k\subset\co^k\times\lbrace0\rbrace$ and
$\Omega_{n-k}\subset\lbrace0\rbrace\times\co^{n-k}$, such that
$0\in\Omega_k\times\Omega_{n-k}\subset\Omega$ and the projection $$
\pi_k:S\cap\Omega_k\times\Omega_{n-k}\rightarrow\Omega_k\, ,\hspace{0.3cm}
\pi_k(z,w):=z, $$ \noindent is a proper map.
\end{theorem}
\begin{remark} \noindent This applied to purely $k$-dimensional analytic
subvarieties implies the regular coordinates theorem, meaning the proper
mapping is a finite sheeted analytic covering.
\end{remark}
\section{Consequences of the proper mapping theorem}
\noindent As mentioned, this result by Bishop can be used to prove many other important
results (see some of them in \cite{Stolzenberg}), and one of the most significant is the proof of
Remmert-Stein's theorem; this was generalized and proved by Bishop in
\cite{Bishop}.
\begin{theorem}\label{Rem-Stein}[Remmert-Stein] Let $\Omega\subset\ensuremath{\mathbb{C}^{n}}$ be an
open subset and $Y$ an analytic subset of $\Omega$ and let $X$ be an
analytic subset of $\Omega\setminus Y$. If $Y$ is of dimension at most
$k-1$ and $X$ is of pure dimension $k$, then the closure of $X$,
$\overline{X}\cap\Omega$ is an analytic subset of $\Omega$.
\end{theorem}
This is an essential step towards the proof of Chow's theorem if one is
trying to avoid using categorical methods of analytification and quasi-coherent
sheaves, this is because Remmert and Stein's result imply that the
$Cone(X)$ of an projective analytic subset of dimension
$k$ $X\subset\ensuremath{\mathbb{CP}}^n$ is an analytic subset of dimension $k+1$ in $\co^{n+1}$,
where the cone is defined by
\begin{equation}
Cone(X):=\pi^{-1}[X]\cup\lbrace0\rbrace,
\hspace{0.3cm}\pi:\co^{n+1}\setminus\lbrace 0\rbrace\rightarrow\ensuremath{\mathbb{CP}}^n.
\end{equation}
\noindent Here $\pi$ is the usual projection of
$\co^{n+1}\setminus\lbrace 0\rbrace$ onto the
projective space, so clearly $Cone(X)=\overline{\pi^{-1}[X]}$, and since $\pi$
in an analytic projection, $\pi^{-1}[X]$ is an analytic subset. The classical
proof uses the fact that the cone is invariant under homothetic transformations
to show that the ideal of locally defined holomorphic functions that vanish at the
cone has a countable basis, then evoke Hilbert's famous basis theorem
which proves that the ring of germs of holomophic functions is Noetherian. This shows
that $Cone(X)$ is in fact algebraic (see this proof in \cite{Chirka}), but the same result can
be proved without algebraic methods with an equally simple proof using only
the geometric and analytical tools that we have presented thus far. We start
the proof of Chow's theorem by citing another consequence of the proper mapping
theorem and we give a sketch of the proof.\\
\begin{theorem}\label{bishop}[Bishop]
Let $X$ be a purely $k$ dimensional
subvariety of $\ensuremath{\mathbb{C}^{n}}$ and let $B(R,0)$ be the standard ball in $\ensuremath{\mathbb{C}^{n}}$ of
radius $R$. Suppose there is a constant $C\in\ensuremath{\mathbb R }^{+}$ such that
\begin{equation}
Vol_{2k}(X\cap B(R,0))\leq CR^{2k} \hspace*{0.2cm}\forall\, R\in\ensuremath{\mathbb R }^{+},
\end{equation} then $X$ is algebraic.
\end{theorem}
\noindent\textbf{Sketch of the proof:} Let $\lbrace R_n\rbrace\subset\ensuremath{\mathbb R }^{+}$
be such that $R_n\rightarrow\infty$ and define $V_n$ as the image of $V\cap
B(0,R_n)$ by the homothety $z\longmapsto z/R_n$, then $\lbrace V_n\rbrace$ is a
sequence of analytic sets of the unit ball with $Vol_{2k}(V_n)<C$, and such
that $0\in\lim_{n\rightarrow\infty} V_n$. Then by the proper mapping theorem
there is a neighborhood of $0$, $\Delta=\Delta_k\times\Delta_{n-k}$ such that
the projection on the first factor $\pi_k$ is a $\sigma$-sheeted branched
covering for each $V_n\cap\Delta$, since $R_n\rightarrow\infty$ the balls
$B(0,R_n)$ cover the whole of $\co^{n+1}$ and we deduce that the projection
$\pi_k$ restricted to $V$ is a $\sigma$-sheeted branched covering. From this
let us construct a set of canonically defining functions for $V$; for each
$z\in\ensuremath{\mathbb{C}^{n}}$ we denote $$ \pi_k^{-1}[\pi_k(z)]\cap
V=\lbrace\alpha_1(z),\cdots,\alpha_{\sigma}(z)\rbrace, $$
\noindent and let $P_{\alpha}:\ensuremath{\mathbb{C}^{n}}\times\ensuremath{\mathbb{C}^{n}}\rightarrow\ensuremath{\mathbb{C}^{n}}$ be
\begin{equation}
P_{\alpha}(z,w):=\langle z-\alpha_1(z),w\rangle\cdots\langle z-\alpha_n(z),w\rangle,
\end{equation}
\noindent we observe that if $z\in V$, $P_\alpha(z,w)=0$, so for $z$ outside of
$V$ we can chose a $w$ such that $\langle z-\alpha_j(z),w\rangle\neq0$ for all
$j$. Now by expanding $P_{\alpha}$ in powers of $w$
\begin{equation}
P_{\alpha}(z,w)=\sum_{\vert\mu\vert\leq\sigma} \eta_{\mu}(z)w^{\mu}
\end{equation}
\noindent then, because $\pi_k$ is a branched covering, the functions
$\eta_{\mu}$ are analytic. By applying a homothecy for a suitable $R_n$, one
can prove using Cauchy's estimates that the functions $\eta_{\mu}$ are in fact
polynomials of degree at most $\sigma-\vert\mu\vert$ thereby proving the
theorem.
\begin{proof}[Chow's via Bishop] By Theorem, \ref{Rem-Stein} $Cone(X):=\overline{\pi^{-1}[X]}$
is an analytic set of $\co^{n+1}$, and if $X\subset\ensuremath{\mathbb{CP}}^n$ is of dimension $k$ (real dimension $2k$), then
$Cone(X)$ has dimension $k+1$. Now the mapping
$\pi:\ensuremath{\mathbb{S}}^{2k+1}\rightarrow\ensuremath{\mathbb{CP}}^n$ known as Hopf's Fibration, fibres
$\ensuremath{\mathbb{CP}}^n$ into circles, so by Fubini's theorem; $$
Vol_{2k+1}(Cone(X)\cap\ensuremath{\mathbb{S}}^{2n+1})= 2\pi\,Vol^{p}_{2k}(X):=A, $$
\noindent where $Vol^p$ is the projective volume, then $A$ is finite
since $X$ is compact. This means that the volume of the
intersection $Cone(X)\cap B(R,0)$ grows at most polynomially as
$R\rightarrow\infty$, since $Cone(X)$ is homothetic-invariant, using
polar coordinates $$ Vol_{2k+2}(Cone(X)\cap B(R,0))= \int_{(Cone(X)\cap
B(R,0)}dr\wedge\sigma_r, $$
\noindent where $\sigma_r$ is the $2k+1$ volume form of $S(0,r):=\lbrace\Vert
z\Vert=r\rbrace$, we can find a bound for the volume of $Cone(X)\cap B(R,0)$;
\begin{figure}[htb] \centering \def200pt} \input{cone.pdf_tex{200pt} \input{cone.pdf_tex}
\caption{Cone of $X$ having finite polynomially bounded volume.}
\label{fig:cone}
\end{figure}
$$ \int_{(Cone(X)\cap B(R,0))}dr\wedge\sigma_r=
\int^R_0 r^{2k+1}dr\,\int_{Cone(X)\cap\ensuremath{\mathbb{S}}^{2n+1}}\sigma_1=
\frac{A}{2k+1}R^{2k+2}, $$
\noindent so setting $C=\frac{A}{2k+1}$ by Theorem \ref{bishop} this means
$Cone(X)$ is algebraic and therefore $X$ is also algebraic. \end{proof}
\begin{remark} An immediate consequence of this is the following:
a purely $k$-dimensional analytic subset $X\subset\ensuremath{\mathbb{C}^{n}}$ is algebraic if
and only if it is contained after some unitary change of coordinates in
the union of a ball $B(R,0)$ and a cone $$
K:=\lbrace(z_1,z_2)\in\ensuremath{\mathbb{C}^{n}}\,\vert\,\Vert z_2\Vert<C\Vert
z_1\Vert\hspace{0.2cm} \textrm{with}\hspace{0.2cm}0 <
C\,,\,z_1\in\co^k\,,z_2\in\co^{n-k}\rbrace. $$
\end{remark}
\paragraph{Similarities with complex analysis} The following table shows the
similarities between the results shown here and others in the classical theory
of holomorphic functions of one variable. The last theorem in this table
(Montel's theorem) will be proved for holomorphic functions of several complex
variables using bishop's results.
\begin{table}[htbp]
\begin{center} \begin{itemize}\label{table_complex_analysis} \begin{tabular}{| m{5.5cm} | m{5.5cm} |} \hline
\begin{center} \vspace*{0.2cm} \underline{\textbf{One complex
variable}} \end{center} & \begin{center} \vspace*{0.2cm}
\underline{\textbf{Several complex variables}} \end{center} \\
\hline
\begin{center} \item[•] Liouville's theorem \end{center} & \begin{center}
\item[•] Bishop's theorem \end{center} \\ \hline $\vert f(z)\vert\leq C\,R^k$
for $\vert z\vert\leq R$ for all $R\in\ensuremath{\mathbb R }^{+}$ with $f$ entire and $k$
a positive integer, then $f$ is a polynomial & $Vol_{2k}(X\cap
B(R,0))\leq CR^{2k}$ for all $R\in\ensuremath{\mathbb R }^{+}$ with $X$ analytic
subvariety, implies $X$ is algebraic \\ \hline \begin{center} \item[•]
Riemann's extension theorem \end{center} & \begin{center} \item[•]
Bishop's generalization of Remmert-Stein's theorem \end{center} \\ \hline If
$f:(\Omega\setminus E)\subset\co\rightarrow\co$ is a holomorphic function and
$E$ is a compact subset of capacity $0$ then $f$ is extendible to a holomorphic
function on the whole region $\Omega$. & Let $U\subset\ensuremath{\mathbb{C}^{n}}$ be a bounded open
subset and let $B\subset U$ be closed with $X\subset U\setminus B$ a purely k
dimensional analytic subset such that $B\subset\overline{X}$. If $B$ has
capacity $0$ relative to the algebra of analytic functions on $X$ that are
continuously extendible to $\overline{X}$, and if it exists
$f:U\rightarrow\co^k$ proper on $B$ with $f(B)$ not an open connected subset of
$\co^k$, then $\overline{X}\cap U$ is an analytic subset of $U$ (see
\cite{Bishop}[theorem 4]).\\ \hline \begin{center} \item[•] Montel's
compactness theorem \end{center} & \begin{center} \item[•] Bishop's
sequences of analytic sets with bounded theorem \end{center} \\ \hline Let
$\lbrace\Gamma_i\rbrace$ be a sequence of graphs of uniformly bounded
holomophic functions $f_i:\Delta\rightarrow\co$ such that $\Gamma_i
\overset{d_H}\longrightarrow\Gamma$, with $\Gamma\subset\co^2$ a closed subset
and $\Delta$ the unit disk in $\co$, then $\Gamma$ is the graph of a
holomorphic function. & Let $\lbrace V_i\rbrace$ be a sequence of analytic
suvariety with uniformly bounded volume such that
$V_i\overset{d_H}\longrightarrow V$, then $V$ is an analytic subvariety
(\cite{Stolzenberg}[pp. 30]). \\ \hline \end{tabular} \end{itemize}
\end{center}
\end{table}
\section*{Proof of Montel's Theorem via Bishop}
\paragraph{Normal families} We now proceed to prove a generalization of
Montel's result of compact subsets of holomorphic functions on the unit disk.
First definitions, let $X$ be a metric space, we
denote by $C(X)$ the space of continuous functions from $X$ to $\co$, we say a
subset $F\subset C(X)$ is \textit{normal} if for any sequence $\lbrace
f_n\rbrace_{n\in\ensuremath{\mathbb N }}\subset F$ there is a subsequence $\lbrace
f_{n_k}\rbrace_{k\in\ensuremath{\mathbb N }}\subset F$ that is uniformly convergent. The open unit
ball on $\ensuremath{\mathbb{C}^{n}}$ will be denoted $B$ with its closure on $\ensuremath{\mathbb{C}^{n}}$ denoted by
$\overline{B}$. Let $$\mathcal{A}(B):=C(\overline{B})\cap\ensuremath{\mathcal{H} }(B),$$
\noindent be the Banach algebra of holomorphic functions in $B$ that are
continuous on $S:=\partial B$, then we will prove the following result:
\begin{theorem}[Montel's Theorem] Let $F\subset\mathcal{A}(B)$ a set of locally
bounded functions, i.e. for every $z\in B$ there exist an open
neighborhood $z\in\Omega\subset B$ such that $$\Vert
f|_{\Omega}\Vert_{\infty}=\sup\lbrace\vert
f\vert\,|\,z\in\Omega\rbrace\leq C_{\Omega},\hspace{0.2cm}\,\text{for
some }C\in\ensuremath{\mathbb R }^{+},$$
\noindent then $F$ is a normal set.
\end{theorem}
We are going to prove this by means of Bishop's results. First, we note that the graph of a holomorphic
function $f:B\rightarrow\co$ is an analytic subvariety of pure dimension $n$ on
$B\times\co$ since $\Gamma_{f}=V(w-f(z))$, where $\Gamma_{f}$ denotes the graph
of $f$, and \hbox{$z\in B,\, z=(z_1,\dots,z_n)$}, $w\in\co$, also if $\lbrace
f|_{\Omega}\rbrace$ are bounded for all $f\in F$, then
$Vol_{2n}(\Gamma_{f|_{\Omega}})$ have uniformly bounded volume as we shall see;
\begin{proof} Let $\epsilon\in(0,1)$ and we take
$B_{\epsilon}=\overline{B(1-\epsilon,0)}\subset B$, since
$B_{\epsilon}$ is a compact subset of $B$ we have that $F$ is uniformly
bounded in $B_{\epsilon}$, so let $C\in\ensuremath{\mathbb R }^{+}$ be a bound for $\vert
f(z)\vert$ for all $z\in B_{\epsilon}$ and $f\in F$, then by Cauchy's
integral formula for the open ball (see \citep{rudin} [Ch. 3]), if
$S_{\epsilon}:=\partial B_{\epsilon}$, then
\begin{equation}
f(z)=\int_{S_{\epsilon}} \frac{f(\zeta)}{(1-\langle
z,\zeta\rangle)^{n}}\,d\sigma(\zeta)\hspace{0.3cm}\,\forall z\in
B_{\epsilon}\setminus S_{\epsilon},
\end{equation}
\noindent where $\sigma$ is the usual Lebesgue measure in $S_{\epsilon}$. Taking the derivative with
respect to $z_j$ we obtain
\begin{equation}
\dfrac{\partial f}{\partial
z_j}(z)=\int_{S_{\epsilon}} \frac{f(\zeta)n\zeta_j}{(1-\langle
z,\zeta\rangle)^{n+1}}\,d\sigma(\zeta)\hspace{0.3cm}\,\forall z\in
B_{\epsilon}\setminus S_{\epsilon},
\end{equation}
\noindent therefore we have
the following bound for the partial derivatives of all $f\in F$ and $z\in
B_{\epsilon}\setminus S_{\epsilon}$,
\begin{equation}\label{bound derivative}
\vert\dfrac{\partial f}{\partial z_j}(z)\vert\leq C \frac{n
Vol_{2n-1}(S_{\epsilon})(1-\epsilon)}{(1+(1-\epsilon)^2)^{n+1}}.
\end{equation}
Now to use the sequence theorem \ref{bishop sequence}, we use
this constant bound of the derivatives to show that for a sequence of graphs of
functions $\lbrace f_n\rbrace_{n\in\ensuremath{\mathbb N }}$, the $2n$ dimensional volumes of
their graphs are uniformly bounded in $B_{\epsilon}$ by a constant
$M\in\ensuremath{\mathbb R }^{+}$ this is clear since the volume of $\Gamma_f$ is given by
\begin{equation}\label{graph volume}
Vol_{2n}(\Gamma_{f})=\int_{B_{\epsilon}}\vert\lambda(z)\vert\,dx_1\cdots dx_ndy_1\cdots dy_n,
\end{equation} \noindent where $z_j=x_j+iy_j$ and
$\lambda:B_{\epsilon}\rightarrow\ensuremath{\mathbb R }$ is given by the pullback of the
parametrization function $\varphi(z)=(z,f(z))$
$$\varphi^*\omega=\lambda(z)(dx_1\wedge dy_1)\wedge\cdots\wedge(dx_i\wedge
dy_n),$$ \noindent with $\omega$ the volume form of $\Gamma_f\subset
B\times\co$, a straight forward calculation shows \begin{equation}
\lambda(z)=1-2Re\big(\nabla f\big) + \Vert\nabla f\Vert^2,\hspace{0.2cm},
\end{equation} \noindent with $$\nabla f =\Big(\dfrac{\partial f}{\partial
z_1},\dots,\dfrac{\partial f}{\partial z_n}\Big),\hspace{0.3cm}Re\big(\nabla
f\big):=\sum_{j=1}^n Re\Big(\dfrac{\partial f}{\partial z_j}\Big).$$ Therefore
the volumes of all the graphs are uniformly bounded by (\ref{bound
derivative}) and (\ref{graph volume}), now the only thing left to show is the
convergence with respect to the Hausdorff metric of a sub-sequence of
$\lbrace\Gamma_{f_n}\rbrace$ in $B_{\epsilon}$. This follows immediately from
the fact that $\vert f(z)\vert$ is uniformly bounded in $B_{\epsilon}$ for all
$f\in F$, so the image of all $f_n$ are inside a compact set, therefore for
$z\in S_{\epsilon}$ there exist a convergent subsequence $\lbrace
f_{n_k}(z)\rbrace$ and by Cauchy's integral formula $\lbrace f_{n_k}(z)\rbrace$ converges uniformly on $B_{\epsilon}\setminus
S_{\epsilon}$, which means $\Gamma_{f_{n_k}}\rightarrow\Gamma_f$ with
$\Gamma_f\subset B_{\epsilon}\times\co$ and by theorem \ref{bishop sequence}
we know $\Gamma_f|_{B_{\epsilon}}$ is an analytic subvariety of pure complex
dimension $n$. Moreover it is clearly the graph of a holomorphic function
\hbox{$f:B_{\epsilon}\setminus S_{\epsilon}\rightarrow\co$} since at each fibre
$\lbrace z_0\rbrace\times\co$, the intersection of each graph
$\Gamma_{f_{n_k}}$ gives a unique point $(z_0,f_{n_k}(z_0))$ and if it was the
case that there were two distinct points $(z_0,w_1)$ and $(z_0,w_2)$ at the
intersection of $(\lbrace z_0\rbrace\times\co)\cap\Gamma_f$, then taking a
compact set $K$ containing $\lbrace f_{n_k}(z_0)\rbrace\cup\lbrace
w_1,w_2\rbrace$ Hausdorff convergence implies that the limit
of $\lbrace f_{n_k}(z_0)\rbrace$ would not be unique. Thus we have proved that
$\Gamma_f$ is the the graph of a holomorphic function in $B_{\epsilon}$ for all
$\epsilon\in(0,1)$, by analytic continuation we thus have $f$ is defined in $B$
and it is the limit of a subsequence. \end{proof}
\section*{Foliations on K\"ahler manifolds with all leaves compact}
\noindent In this final section we apply Bishop's sequence theorem
(Theorem \ref{bishop sequence}) to prove a version of Theorem 1 in \citep{EMS},
for the particular case of complex foliations on K\"ahler manifolds with all leaves compact. Finally we end with an example of such a foliation and calculate the volume function for its leaves.
\begin{theorem}\label{kahlerEMS} Let $M$ be a compact connected Kähler manifold
of complex dimension $n$ and $\mathfrak{F}$ a holomorphic foliation
with leaves of complex dimension $d<n$ and with all leaves compact,
then:
\begin{enumerate}
\item[1] The $2d$-dimensional volume (with
respect to the Kähler metric) of the leaves is uniformly
bounded.
\item[2] The quotient space $M/\mathfrak{F}$ is a complex orbifold, with singularities corresponding to leaves
with nontrivial holonomy (which by the first proposition is a finite group).
\end{enumerate}
\end{theorem}
\begin{proof} First, we prove the
continuity of the volume function $\nu:M\rightarrow\ensuremath{\mathbb R }^{+}$ given by
$z\mapsto Vol_{2d}(\mathcal{L}_z)$, for the set of generic leaves:
$$H_0=\lbrace x\in M\,\vert\,\mathcal{L}_x\text{ has zero holonomy}\rbrace,$$
where $\mathcal{L}_x$ denotes the leaf through $X$. We note here that the set $H_0$ is a dense
open set of $M$ (see \cite{EMT}). Let $\lbrace z_n\rbrace\subset H_0$ be a
sequence such that each $z_i$ is on a different leaf $\mathcal{L}_{z_i}$ of
$\mathfrak{F}$ and such that $z_n\rightarrow z\in H_0$, since all the leaves
are compact we have that $\mathcal{L}_{z_i}\rightarrow\mathcal{L}$ for the
Hausdorff metric, where $\mathcal{L}\subset M$ is a non-empty closed set. Now
let $\mathcal{L}_z$ be the leaf containing $z$, since $\mathcal{L}_z$ has zero
holonomy, by Reeb's stability theorem, there exists a tubular neighborhood of
$\mathcal{L}_z$, say $U$ which is biholomorphic to $\mathcal{L}_z\times D$
where $D\subset\co^{n-d}$ is an open disk (ball) and such that $U$ is a
saturated open subset of $M$ with every leaf of $U$ mapped biholomorphically to
the sets $\mathcal{L}_z\times\lbrace x \rbrace$, therefore every leaf in $U$ is
homologous to $\mathcal{L}_z$ and by Corollary \ref{wirtinger}, all leaves in
$U$ have the same volume, since $z\in U$ and $z_n\rightarrow z$ there is a
large enough positive integer $N$ such that all leaves $\mathcal{L}_{z_k}$ have
the same volume for $k>N$. Therefore by Theorem \ref{bishop sequence},
$\mathcal{L}$ is an analytic subvariety of $U$ of complex dimension $d$ with
it's volume equal to $\lim_{n\rightarrow\infty} Vol_{2d}(\mathcal{L}_{z_n})$. Since tangency to $\mathfrak{F}$ is defined locally
by the null space of $d$ holomorphic 1-forms, by Hausdorff convergence this tangency
is preserved on the limit so $\mathcal{L}$ is tangent to $\mathfrak{F}$ and therefore $\mathcal{L}=\mathcal{L}_z$. Now $\nu$
is not in general continuous but lower semicontinuous, the semicontinuity can
be proved by showing that the leaf space $M/\mathfrak{F}$ is Hausdorff
\citep{EMS}[p. 20], which we will prove, but more than that, the volume
function $\nu$ is in fact discretely lower-semicontinuous, meaning that for any
$n\in\dbz^+$, $z\in M$ and $\epsilon\in\ensuremath{\mathbb R }^+$, there is a small enough
neighborhood of $z$ such that
$$\nu(y)>n\,\nu(z)\hspace{0.2cm}\text{or}\hspace{0.2cm}\vert\nu(y)-k\,\nu(z)\vert<\epsilon\hspace{0.2cm}\text{for
some }\,k\in\lbrace 1,\cdots,n\rbrace.$$
We prove this fact locally. Given a tubular neighborhood of $\mathcal{L}_z$,
$W$ there is a bundle retraction $\rho: W\rightarrow\mathcal{L}_z$ with
$\rho^{-1}(x)$ homeomorphic to a disk, for every leaf $\mathcal{L}_y$, the
restriction
$\rho\vert_{W\cap\mathcal{L}_y}:(W\cap\mathcal{L}_y)\rightarrow\mathcal{L}_z$
is a codimension zero submersion, so if $y$ is sufficiently close to $z$, then
$\mathcal{L}_y\subset W$ and also is image under $\rho$ covers all of
$\mathcal{L}_z$ and is therefore by compactness a finitely sheeted covering
space of $\mathcal{L}_z$ with covering transformation
$\rho\vert_{\mathcal{L}_y}$ which proves the discrete lower-semicontinuity of
$\nu$ locally and therefore $\nu$ is locally bounded. We also note that the
previous proof is also true for $X\subset M$ a compact saturated set. With
this we proceed to show that the set where $\nu$ is not bounded, also known as
the ``bad set":
$$B:=\lbrace x\in M\,\vert\, \nu\,\text{is not bounded in a neighborhood of
}x\rbrace,$$
is a saturated compact set of codimension greater or equal to 2 (see \cite{Epstein} ). For
each $x\in B$ there exist a chart around $x$, $U\subset M$ such that
$\nu\vert_U$ is bounded, therefore given a convergent sequence in $U$,
$x_n\rightarrow x$, we have that their corresponding leaves in, $\lbrace
U\cap\mathcal{L}_n\rbrace$ (which we can suppose to be generic) converge to
$U\cap B$ by the fact that $B$ is a compact saturated set. Therefore since the
volume of $\lbrace U\cap\mathcal{L}_n\rbrace$ is uniformly bounded, by Theorem
\ref{bishop sequence}, he have that $U \cap B$ is an analytic subvariety of
complex dimension $d$, this means that $B$ is analytic set of $M$ with real
codimension at least 2, which means that $M\setminus B$ is a connected open
subset since $M$ is connected, then by discrete lower semicontiuity the volume is therefore bounded.
The second assertion follows easily from Reeb's stability theorem, since for
every leaf with null holonomy $\mathcal{L}$ we have an open laminated set $U$
biholomorphic to $\mathcal{L}_z\times D$ so locally $M/\mathfrak{F}$ is
homeomorphic to $D$, also $M/\mathfrak{F}$ is Hausdorff since every leaf is
compact so if $\mathcal{L}_1$ and $\mathcal{L}_2$ are two distinct leaves, then
there are $\lbrace\epsilon_1,\epsilon_2\rbrace\subset\ensuremath{\mathbb R }^+$ such that the sets
$$D_i:=\lbrace z\in M\,\vert\,
d_H(\mathcal{L}_i,z)<\epsilon_i\rbrace,\hspace{0.2cm} i\in\lbrace1,2\rbrace,$$
\noindent are disjoint, so intersecting with a laminated tubular neighborhood
of $\mathcal{L}_{i}$ we have that $M/\mathfrak{F}$ is Hausdorff. Finally if
$\mathcal{L}$ has holonomy, then by the boundedness of the volume function, the
holonomy group $H(\mathcal{L})$ is finite (see \citep{EMS}[p. 20]) and
$M/\mathfrak{F}$ is locally homeomorphic to $D/H(\mathcal{L})$ where
$\mathcal{L}$ has a tubular neighborhood homeomorphic to $\mathcal{L}\times
D$. \end{proof}
Now for an example of this phenomenon let $\Sigma$ be the complex Klein curve
i.e. $\Sigma$ is a compact Riemann surface of genus $3$ with a hyperbolic
structure given by the action from the discrete group of M\"obius
transformations
$$ \Gamma:=\Big \lbrace T\in\ensuremath{PSL(2,\mathbb Z) }\,\,\Big\vert\,\, T= \begin{pmatrix} a && b\\
c && d \end{pmatrix} \equiv \begin{pmatrix} 1 && 0\\ 0 && 1
\end{pmatrix} \mod 7 \Big\rbrace, $$ \noindent which means
$\Gamma/\ensuremath{\mathbb H^2}=\Sigma$, this group has as fundamental domain of a compact
hyperbolic 14-sided polygon (see \citep{klein}). Therefore
$\pi_1(\Sigma)\cong\Gamma$ is a compact hyperbolic Riemann surface, so
there exist a monomorphism
$$\varphi_7:\pi_1(\Sigma)\rightarrow\Gamma\subset\ensuremath{PSL(2,\mathbb R) }=Isom(\ensuremath{\mathbb H^2}).$$
Given this monomorphism we construct the suspension bundle
$E(\varphi_7)\rightarrow\Sigma$ (compare \citep{foliaciones} [pp. 24]) and its
associated foliation $\mathfrak{F}(\varphi_7)$ as the bundle on $\Sigma$ given
by the discrete action of $\Gamma$ on $\ensuremath{\mathbb H^2}\times\ensuremath{\mathbb H^2}$ namely
\begin{equation} T(z,w):=(T\,z,T\,^{-1}w)\hspace{0.2cm}\forall T\in\Gamma.
\end{equation}
The quotient of $\ensuremath{\mathbb H^2}\times\ensuremath{\mathbb H^2}$ by this action is clearly a compact complex
manifold by the fact that $\Gamma$ has a compact fundamental domain.
$E(\varphi_7)$ is a foliated space with leaves $\mathcal{L}_z$ given by the
images of $\lbrace \ensuremath{\mathbb H^2}\times \lbrace z\rbrace\,\vert\, z\in\ensuremath{\mathbb H^2}
\rbrace$ by the quotient map. The leaves of the foliation are transverse to the sections of the disk
bundle, moreover all of them are compact since all leaves are covered by $\Sigma$.
The tangent space of $E(\varphi_7)$ on a point $\overline{(z,w)}$ is isomorphic
to $T_z(\mathcal{L}_{z})\bigoplus T_w(\ensuremath{\mathbb H^2})$, also since $\Gamma$ acts via
isometries, then the quotient is a hyperbolic manifold with a K\"ahler metric
given by $h_{\mathcal{L}_z} \oplus h_{\ensuremath{\mathbb H^2}} $ where $h_{\mathcal{L}_z}$ is the
K\"ahler metric of the leaf through $z$.
The leaves isomorphic to $\Sigma$ have hyperbolic area equal to the area of the 14-sided polygon fundamental domain,
which is comprised of fourteen triangles with angle sum of $4/7\pi$ , therefore
the total area of the surface is $8\pi$ this also can be calculated by the fact
that $\Sigma$ is a genus $3$ surface, meaning that its Euler characteristic is
$\chi(\Sigma)=-4$, so by Gauss-Bonnet the area is as indicated. Now the group
of (orientation-preserving) isometries of $\Sigma$ is of order 168 we show that there is a characterization
of all its subgroups up to its conjugacy classes, in particular this characterization
shows that there aren't quotients of $\Sigma$ by any of its subgroups with characteristic $2$, this implies
that all leaves of $\mathfrak{F}(\varphi_7)$ are either $\Sigma$, a torus or the complex projective curve (sphere) see \cite{klein}.
The following is the list of all conjugacy classes for the subgroups of
orientation-preserving isometries
of $\Sigma$; this list is obtained by carefully studying the platonic tessellations of $\Sigma$.
\begin{itemize}
\item[Order 1] The identity class.
\item[Order 2] There are 21 classes of involutions.
\item[Order 3] The class of order 3 has 56 elements.
\item[Order 7] There are two classes of order 7 rotations each with 24 elements.
\item[Order 4] There are 42 classes of order 4 translations.
\end{itemize}
| {
"redpajama_set_name": "RedPajamaArXiv"
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Q: Install MySQL 5.5 in Ubuntu 11.10 I have been downloaded the DEB package of mysql 5.5.23.
Install MySQL by the command as follows:
sudo dpkg -i mysql-5.5.23-debian6.0-x86_64.deb
The result said that installed successfully.
But when I type the command:
sudo service mysql start
Or
mysql
It shows me that "mysql: unrecognized service" or "mysql: command not found".
Besides, I can't find MySQL files in "/usr/include" or "/usr/bin"
Please help me. Thx.
A: Because MySQL 5.5.x is not packaged, in repositories only exist 5.1.x
This worked for me:
http://www.rebojo.com/debian-installing-mysql/
A: Why not a simple command :
sudo apt-get install mysql-server
A: MySQL Download URL
https://dev.mysql.com/get/Downloads/MySQL-5.5/mysql-5.5.56-linux-glibc2.5-x86_64.tar.gz
Open the terminal and follow along:
*
*Uninstall any existing version of MySQL
sudo rm /var/lib/mysql/ -R
*Delete the MySQL profile
sudo rm /etc/mysql/ -R
*Automatically uninstall mysql
sudo apt-get autoremove mysql* --purge
sudo apt-get remove apparmor
*Download version 5.5.51 from MySQL site
wget https://dev.mysql.com/get/Downloads/MySQL-5.5/mysql-5.5.56-linux-glibc2.5-x86_64.tar.gz
*Add mysql user group
sudo groupadd mysql
*Add mysql (not the current user) to mysql user group
sudo useradd -g mysql mysql
*Extract it
sudo tar -xvf mysql-5.5.56-linux-glibc2.5-x86_64.tar.gz
*Move it to /usr/local
sudo mv mysql-5.5.56-linux-glibc2.5-x86_64 /usr/local/
*Create mysql folder in /usr/local by moving the untarred folder
cd /usr/local
sudo mv mysql-5.5.49-linux2.6-x86_64 mysql
*set MySql directory owner and user group
cd mysql
sudo chown -R mysql:mysql *
*Install the required lib package (works with 5.6 as well)
sudo apt-get install libaio1
*Execute mysql installation script
sudo scripts/mysql_install_db --user=mysql
*Set mysql directory owner from outside the mysql directory
sudo chown -R root .
*Set data directory owner from inside mysql directory
sudo chown -R mysql data
*Copy the mysql configuration file
sudo cp support-files/my-medium.cnf /etc/my.cnf
*Start mysql
sudo bin/mysqld_safe --user=mysql &
sudo cp support-files/mysql.server /etc/init.d/mysql.server
*Set root user password
sudo bin/mysqladmin -u root password '[your new password]'
*Add mysql path to the system
sudo ln -s /usr/local/mysql/bin/mysql /usr/local/bin/mysql
*Reboot!
*Start mysql server
sudo /etc/init.d/mysql.server start
*Stop mysql server
sudo /etc/init.d/mysql.server stop
*Check status of mysql
sudo /etc/init.d/mysql.server status
*Enable myql on startup
sudo update-rc.d -f mysql.server defaults
*Disable mysql on startup (Optional)
`sudo update-rc.d -f mysql.server remove`
*
*REBOOT!
*Now login using below command, start mysql server if it's not running already
mysql -u root -p
| {
"redpajama_set_name": "RedPajamaStackExchange"
} | 3,282 |
Do you know the types of master in artificial intelligence?
The technology continues to advance every day at an indescribable speed, so much so that more and more specialized Masters are emerging. One of the sectors that most interest is generating in our days is the Master in Artificial Intelligence.
Big organizations like Google, Apple, Microsoft are investing in this area of knowledge. From the need to train in this discipline is born the master of Emotional Intelligence also known as Articial Intelligent.
Today at Funway we explain what this type of master consists of and what types exist in Spain.
Do you want to know some reasons why it is a good idea to study a master?
If you want to specialize in a specific area and expand your knowledge, studying a master will be the best option. Today from Funway we give you some reasons why it is a success to study a Master.
There are to many reasons to study a Master. You will expand knowledge and you will have more access to the labor market.
Nowadays people are very prepared, few are those that conform to a university career. Most young people continue to expand their studies with masters, postgraduates, languages … Without doubt, studying a master's degree is a good option for further training and recycling. | {
"redpajama_set_name": "RedPajamaC4"
} | 4,030 |
Human-ities
A history of laughter – from Cicero to The Simpsons
June 27, 2014 June 29, 2014 Sebastian AlvarezLeave a comment
One of Enoch Powell's most famous quips was prompted by an encounter with the resident House of Commons barber: a notoriously chatty character, who enjoyed treating captive clients to his views on politics and the state of the world. When Powell went in for a trim, the barber asked the standard question: "How should I cut your hair, Sir?" "In silence," was Powell's instant riposte.
Even Powell's political enemies have usually admitted, a bit grudgingly, that this was a rather good joke. But what they haven't realised is that it has a history going back more than 2,000 years. Almost exactly the same gag features in a surviving Roman joke book: the Philogelos (or Laughter Lover), a collection of wisecracks probably compiled in the fourth or fifth century AD. As with most such collections, some of the jokes included were already decidedly old by the time they were anthologised. In fact, we can trace the "chatty barber" gag back to Archelaus, a fifth-century BC king of Macedon. The "how should I cut your hair?" question was standard even then. And Archelaus is supposed to have replied to his own garrulous barber, "In silence."
Presumably part of the fun for Powell (who was a better classicist than politician) was that he knew exactly how ancient the joke was. Whereas others admired what they believed to be his spontaneous quip, he must have been taking pleasure in the secret knowledge that he was merely repeating the age-old gag of an ancient Macedonian king, and one that may already have been prompting more groans than giggles when it was featured in the Roman Philogelos.
Read full article at The Guardian
Earthly/Geo/Astro · Public Space · Social/Politics · Technology · Videos
A Visual History of Satellites: The 'extended urbanization' of space.
Right now, there about 1,100 satellites whizzing above our heads performing various functions like observation, communication, and spying. There are roughly another 2,600 doing nothing, as they died or were turned off a long time ago.
How did each of these satellites get up there? And what nations are responsible for sending up the bulk of them?
The answers come in the form of this bewitching visualization of satellite launches from 1957 – the year Russia debuted Sputnik 1 – to the present day. (The animation starts at 2:10; be sure to watch in HD.) Launch sites pop up as yellow circles as the years roll by, sending rockets, represented as individual lines, flying into space with one or more satellites aboard.
Read Full article at CityLab
Human-ities · Science
How the brain creates visions of God
For most of recorded history, human beings situated the mind — and by extension the soul — not within the brain but within the heart. When preparing mummies for the afterlife, for instance, ancient Egyptian priests removed the heart in one piece and preserved it in a ceremonial jar; in contrast, they scraped out the brain through the nostrils with iron hooks, tossed it aside for animals, and filled the empty skull with sawdust or resin. (This wasn't a snarky commentary on their politicians, either—they considered everyone's brain useless.) Most Greek thinkers also elevated the heart to the body's summa. Aristotle pointed out that the heart had thick vessels to shunt messages around, whereas the brain had wispy, effete wires. The heart furthermore sat in the body's center, appropriate for a commander, while the brain sat in exile up top. The heart developed first in embryos, and it responded in sync with our emotions, pounding faster or slower, while the brain just sort of sat there. Ergo, the heart must house our highest faculties.
Meanwhile, though, some physicians had always had a different perspective on where the mind came from. They'd simply seen too many patients get beaned in the head and lose some higher faculty to think it all a coincidence. Doctors therefore began to promote a brain-centric view of human nature. And despite some heated debates over the centuries—especially about whether the brain had specialized regions or not—by the 1600s most learned men had enthroned the mind within the brain. A few brave scientists even began to search for that anatomical El Dorado: the exact seat of the soul within the brain.
Read full article written by Sam Kean at SALON.
Image above: Eugene Thirion's "Jeanne d'Arc" (1876)
Digital Media · Film/Video/New Media · Technology
The Illustrated History of Projection Mapping
October 22, 2013 Sebastian Alvarez1 Comment
While projection mapping has recently exploded into the conciousness of artists and advertisers everywhere, the history of projection mapping dates back longer than you may imagine.
If you try Googling for "Projection Mapping" you won't find anything older than 3 years. That is because projection mapping's older, academic name is "Spatial Augmented Reality". The field is also known as "video mapping", but projection mapping seems to be winning out in the United States.
For the purposes of this history, I'm only including work that considered projection onto an arbitrarily complex surfaces. Projection onto flat and cylindrical/spherical surfaces has a much older history and goes back to the invention of cinema.
Via Projection Mapping Central. See it HERE
Book-Text-Read-Zines · Philosophy · Social/Politics · Theory
Does Europe Exist?
The Hungarian philosopher Agnes Heller, in a chapter she contributed to a book published in 1992, stated with some confidence her view that there was no such thing as European culture. There was certainly, she wrote, Italian and German music, and Florentine and Venetian painting, "but there is no European music and no European painting".
It is true that the history of art and culture was not really Heller's field, but it would seem that those who, in the same year as she wrote her essay, framed the Maastricht Treaty, signalling the transition from European Community to European Union, at least partially agreed with her. The treaty was the first time the community had taken for itself significant powers in the cultural field. European cultures (note the plural), the relevant article stated, were to be understood as requiring "respect" – by which one understands freedom from too much supranational interference ("The Community shall contribute to the flowering of the cultures of the Member States, while respecting their national and regional diversity …"). At the same time however, the Community was to be entrusted with the task of "[b]ringing the common cultural heritage to the fore".
Excerpt from an essay written by Enda O'Doherty at DBR. Continue THERE
Human-ities · Philosophy · Technology
THE FUTURE OF LIBERAL EDUCATION
June 8, 2013 Sebastian AlvarezLeave a comment
Upon his retirement from Yale, Donald Kagan considers the future of liberal education in this farewell speech.
Donald Kagan, Sterling Professor of Classics and History at Yale University and recipient of the National Humanities Medal (2002), retired in May. In forty-four years at the University, Professor Kagan has served in such varied capacities as Dean of Yale College, Master of Timothy Dwight College, and Director of Athletics. He has been a prolific author as well as a celebrated teacher; his four-volume history of the Peloponnesian War is widely considered to be among the twentieth century's greatest works of classical scholarship. The following essay on liberal education is a revised version of the valedictory lecture he delivered on April 25 to a capacity audience in Sheffield-Sterling-Strathcona Hall, New Haven, Connecticut.
Donald Kagan: My subject is liberal education, and today more than ever the term requires definition, especially as to the questions: What is a liberal education and what it is for? From Cicero's artes liberales, to the attempts at common curricula in more recent times, to the chaotic cafeteria that passes for a curriculum in most American universities today, the concept has suffered from vagueness, confusion, and contradiction. From the beginning, the champions of a liberal education have thought of it as seeking at least four kinds of goals. One was as an end in itself, or at least as a way of achieving that contemplative life that Aristotle thought was the greatest happiness. Knowledge and the acts of acquiring and considering it were the ends of this education and good in themselves. A second was as a means of shaping the character, the style, the taste of a person—to make him good and better able to fit in well with and take his place in the society of others like him. A third was to prepare him for a useful career in the world, one appropriate to his status as a free man. For Cicero and Quintilian, this meant a career as an orator that would allow a man to protect the private interests of himself and his friends in the law courts and to advance the public interest in the assemblies, senate, and magistracies. The fourth was to contribute to the individual citizen's freedom in ancient society. Servants were ignorant and parochial, so free men must be learned and cosmopolitan; servants were ruled by others, so free men must take part in their own government; servants specialized to become competent at some specific and limited task, so free men must know something of everything and understand general principles without yielding to the narrowness of expertise. The Romans' recommended course of study was literature, history, philosophy, and rhetoric.
Continue at the New Criterion
Earthly/Geo/Astro · Human-ities · Social/Politics · Vital-Edible-Health
The Empire Pudding: A geo-economics lesson
April 15, 2013 Sebastian Alvarez1 Comment
From the BBC programme Hairy Bikers' Best of British, food historian Ivan Day recreates the famous pudding from the 1920s.
Human-ities · Social/Politics
The History of Debt
March 8, 2013 Sebastian AlvarezLeave a comment
Throughout its 5000 year history, debt has always involved institutions – whether Mesopotamian sacred kingship, Mosaic jubilees, Sharia or Canon Law – that place controls on debt's potentially catastrophic social consequences. It is only in the current era, writes anthropologist David Graeber, that we have begun to see the creation of the first effective planetary administrative system largely in order to protect the interests of creditors.
What follows is a fragment of a much larger project of research on debt and debt money in human history. The first and overwhelming conclusion of this project is that in studying economic history, we tend to systematically ignore the role of violence, the absolutely central role of war and slavery in creating and shaping the basic institutions of what we now call "the economy". What's more, origins matter. The violence may be invisible, but it remains inscribed in the very logic of our economic common sense, in the apparently self-evident nature of institutions that simply would never and could never exist outside of the monopoly of violence – but also, the systematic threat of violence – maintained by the contemporary state.
Excerpt from an article written by David Graeber at EuroZine. Continue HERE
Book-Text-Read-Zines · Digital Media · Education · Social/Politics
Good Faith Collaboration: The Culture of Wikipedia (History and Foundations of Information Science)
November 21, 2012 Sebastian AlvarezLeave a comment
Wikipedia, the online encyclopedia, is built by a community–a community of Wikipedians who are expected to "assume good faith" when interacting with one another. In Good Faith Collaboration, Joseph Reagle examines this unique collaborative culture.
Wikipedia, says Reagle, is not the first effort to create a freely shared, universal encyclopedia; its early twentieth-century ancestors include Paul Otlet's Universal Repository and H. G. Wells's proposal for a World Brain. Both these projects, like Wikipedia, were fuelled by new technology–which at the time included index cards and microfilm. What distinguishes Wikipedia from these and other more recent ventures is Wikipedia's good-faith collaborative culture, as seen not only in the writing and editing of articles but also in their discussion pages and edit histories. Keeping an open perspective on both knowledge claims and other contributors, Reagle argues, creates an extraordinary collaborative potential.
Wikipedia's style of collaborative production has been imitated, analyzed, and satirized. Despite the social unease over its implications for individual autonomy, institutional authority, and the character (and quality) of cultural products, Wikipedia's good-faith collaborative culture has brought us closer than ever to a realization of the century-old pursuit of a universal encyclopedia.
Foreword by Lawrence Lessig
Publisher MIT Press, 2010
History and Foundation of Information Science Series
Text via MITPress
Film/Video/New Media · Human-ities
HISTORY OF A NATURAL
September 27, 2012 September 29, 2012 Sebastian AlvarezLeave a comment
When David Attenborough joined the BBC, 60 years ago this September, Britain had only one television channel. Cameras had to be wound up like a clock and could only film live or in 20-second bursts. There was no way to capture sound and vision at the same time, or to broadcast from anywhere but the studio. Attenborough, like most people, did not own a television set; he thinks he had seen only one programme in his life. He had applied for a job in radio, as a talks producer, and been turned down, and it was only by chance that his CV was seen by a television executive, the head of factual broadcasting, Mary Adams. She gave him a chance—but when he first went in front of the camera, she said his teeth were too big.
By 1956, Attenborough had persuaded the BBC to let him try a new way of filming—from and of the natural world. With only a cameraman and animal expert for company, he would go off for months to remote lands in search of rare beasts. In Borneo, some days' walk from civilisation, he was on the trail of orangutan when he spied a man paddling up the river, wearing only a sarong and bearing a message tucked in a cleft stick. It was from the BBC, giving instructions on how to use their new toy: colour film. What started in a makeshift fashion with "Zoo Quest" matured over the decades into "Life on Earth", "The Private Life of Plants", "Life in Cold Blood", "Frozen Planet" and many more. With Attenborough, the phenomenon of natural-history film-making was born.
Excerpt from an article written by Samantha Weinberg at Intelligent Life. Continue HERE
Digital Media · Human-ities · Technology
The Accidental History of the @ Symbol
August 31, 2012 August 30, 2012 Sebastian AlvarezLeave a comment
Called the "snail" by Italians and the "monkey tail" by the Dutch, @ is the sine qua non of electronic communication, thanks to e-mail addresses and Twitter handles. @ has even been inducted into the permanent collection of the Museum of Modern Art, which cited its modern use as an example of "elegance, economy, intellectual transparency, and a sense of the possible future directions that are embedded in the arts of our time."
The origin of the symbol itself, one of the most graceful characters on the keyboard, is something of a mystery. One theory is that medieval monks, looking for shortcuts while copying manuscripts, converted the Latin word for "toward"—ad—to "a" with the back part of the "d" as a tail. Or it came from the French word for "at"—à—and scribes, striving for efficiency, swept the nib of the pen around the top and side. Or the symbol evolved from an abbreviation of "each at"—the "a" being encased by an "e." The first documented use was in 1536, in a letter by Francesco Lapi, a Florentine merchant, who used @ to denote units of wine called amphorae, which were shipped in large clay jars.
Excerpt of an article by William F. Allman, Smithsonian. Continue HERE
The history of Barbed Wire: From Cowboy Scourge to Prized Relic of the Old West
August 27, 2012 Sebastian AlvarezLeave a comment
Why would anyone pay $500 for a rusty piece of barbed wire? Well, if the 18-inch long specimen, or cut, is the only known example of the Thomas J. Barnes patent of 1907, some folks might pay even more than that. In fact, for collectors of barbed wire, or barbwire as it's also called, the past few years have been a veritable rust rush, as choice examples of rare wire that have been squirreled away for decades are entering the market.
This isn't the stuff you see today by the side of the road, although the design of barbed wire has not changed that much in more than 100 years. What gets barbed-wire collectors excited are scarce examples of wire manufactured from 1874 through the first decade of the 20th century, when barbed wire was a multi-million-dollar business and everyone wanted a piece of the action.
The market for wire was driven by the new demand for fencing. Railroads needed to secure their newly laid right-of-ways (the last spike was driven in the transcontinental railroad in 1869), while ranchers were compelled to keep their livestock within property lines rather than letting them graze on the open range, which was increasingly being converted to farmland.
Excerpt from a text by Ben Marks, Collectors Weekly. Continue HERE
Earthly/Geo/Astro · Eco/Adaptable · Human-ities · Social/Politics
Beyond 7 billion
An interesting series by the LA Times about population growth and its challenges. After remaining stable for most of human history, the world's population has exploded over the last two centuries. The boom is not over: The biggest generation in history is just entering its childbearing years. The coming wave will reshape the planet, and the impact will be greatest in the poorest, most unstable countries.
Is Mythology Like Facebook?
How can you tell if an ancient story is completely fictional or based on reality? One method, says a team of physicists, is to map out the social network of the characters and test whether it looks like a real social network. When they used that method for three ancient myths, they found that the characters have surprisingly realistic relationships.
Ancient stories are called myths for a reason. No one believes that Beowulf, the hero of the Anglo-Saxon epic, slew a talking monster named Grendel. Or that the Greek gods described in The Iliad actually appeared on Earth to intervene in the Trojan War. But historians and archaeologists agree that much of those ancient narratives was based on real people and events. The supernatural features of the narrative were then layered onto reality.
Excerpt of an article written by John Bohannon, Science NOW. Continue HERE
Art/Aesthetics · Human-ities · Podcast · Science · Technology
Arts, Humanities, and Complex Networks
Maximilian Schich, Isabel Meirelles, and Roger Malina discuss the contents and creation of the new article collection, Arts, Humanities, and Complex Networks, which explores the application of the science of complex networks to art history, archeology, visual arts, the art market, and other areas of cultural importance. Listen to Podcast HERE
Text and Image via MIT Press
Book-Text-Read-Zines · Human-ities · Philosophy · Social/Politics · Theory
Our complex, difficult & fragile enlightenments. Katerina Deligiorgi interviewed by Richard Marshall
3:AM Magazine: Katerina Deligiorgi is a top Hegelian philosopher. She is a top Kantian philosopher. She philosophizes on history, on art history, on creativity, on literature, on the Enlightenment and what it means today. And what it meant back in the day. And how it has things to say about education. She wonders about action and how we intend to do things. She wonders about morality and autonomy and has a podcast on the theoretical challenges from cosmetic neurology. She has written a cutting edge book on Kant and the Culture of Enlightenment, and edited a book on Hegel: Hegel: New Directions. She has a new book coming out in June, The Scope of Autonomy: Kant and the Morality of Freedom which will dazzle us. She hasn't burned her armchair like Josh Knobe, but is still a groove sensation.
Read Interview HERE
Post-Prozac Nation
April 23, 2012 April 23, 2012 Sebastian AlvarezLeave a comment
Few medicines, in the history of pharmaceuticals, have been greeted with as much exultation as a green-and-white pill containing 20 milligrams of fluoxetine hydrochloride — the chemical we know as Prozac. In her 1994 book "Prozac Nation," Elizabeth Wurtzel wrote of a nearly transcendental experience on the drug. Before she began treatment with antidepressants, she was living in "a computer program of total negativity . . . an absence of affect, absence of feeling, absence of response, absence of interest." She floated from one "suicidal reverie" to the next. Yet, just a few weeks after starting Prozac, her life was transformed. "One morning I woke up and really did want to live. . . . It was as if the miasma of depression had lifted off me, in the same way that the fog in San Francisco rises as the day wears on. Was it the Prozac? No doubt."
Like Wurtzel, millions of Americans embraced antidepressants. In 1988, a year after the Food and Drug Administration approved Prozac, 2,469,000 prescriptions for it were dispensed in America. By 2002, that number had risen to 33,320,000. By 2008, antidepressants were the third-most-common prescription drug taken in America.
Fast forward to 2012 and the same antidepressants that inspired such enthusiasm have become the new villains of modern psychopharmacology — overhyped, overprescribed chemicals, symptomatic of a pill-happy culture searching for quick fixes for complex mental problems. In "The Emperor's New Drugs," the psychologist Irving Kirsch asserted that antidepressants work no better than sugar pills and that the clinical effectiveness of the drugs is, largely, a myth. If the lodestone book of the 1990s was Peter Kramer's near-ecstatic testimonial, "Listening to Prozac," then the book of the 2000s is David Healy's "Let Them Eat Prozac: The Unhealthy Relationship Between the Pharmaceutical Industry and Depression."
Excerpt of an article written by SIDDHARTHA MUKHERJEE, NYT. Continue HERE
Reading Fanon in Palestine/Israel
The fiftieth anniversary of the death of revolutionary, writer and psychiatrist Frantz Fanon was commemorated this past December. In late February, the not-so-revolutionary judge Asher Grunis was elected President of the Israeli Supreme Court.
The fanfare that accompanied Grunis' inauguration was an opportunity to extol Israeli democracy by playing out the ritualized Supreme Court induction ceremony. Yet, there was a disquieting stink about the celebration. Mum among the lot of Hatikva-singing judges was Justice Salim Jubran, the Arab. His refusal to join the chorus likely stemmed from not identifying with the lyrics, "as long as in the heart, within, a Jewish soul still yearns…" His silence, however, prompted loud condemnation from the public and Israeli Knesset members, leading some to propose legislation that would impeach Jubran and effectively bar Arabs from serving on the bench.
This article reads Fanon's death anniversary and Grunis' appointment and inauguration ceremony against one another, as an opportunity to recycle Fanon's ideas to better situate the place of Palestinians, as a colonized people, within the imagination of Israeli law today. In particular, the article traces the outlines of Fanon's historico-racial schema in Israel/Palestine, emphasizing the legal experience of Palestinians from the Beersheba region, or the Naqab.
Excerpt of an article written by Nasser Rego for Jadaliyya. Continue HERE
Book-Text-Read-Zines · Human-ities · Science · Theory
A CULTURAL HISTORY OF PHYSICS
An excerpt from a new book by Karoly Simonyi.
by Freeman Dyson
A Cultural History of Physics is a grand monument to the life of its author. Karoly Simonyi was teacher first, scholar second, and scientist third. His book likewise has three components. First a text, describing the history of science over the last four thousand years in a rich context of philosophy, art and literature. Second, a collection of illustrations, many of them taken from Hungarian archives and museums unknown to Western readers, giving concrete reality to historical events.Third an anthology of quotations from writers in many languages, beginning with Aeschylus in "Prometheus Bound", describing how his hero brought knowledge and technical skills to mankind, and ending with Blaise Pascal in "Pensées", describing how our awareness of our bodies and minds remains an eternal mystery. Different readers will have different preferences. For me, the quotations are the most precious part of the book. Dip anywhere among these pages, and you will find a quotation that is surprising and illuminating.
I have a vivid memory of my one meeting with the author. I came with his son Charles Simonyi to visit him in his home in Budapest. He had an amazing collection of books that had survived centuries of turbulent history. Several of them had bullet holes from the various battles that were fought in the neighboring streets. Many of them were historically important relics from the early days of printing. He proudly showed me these treasures, and even more proudly showed me the German edition of A Cultural History of Physics, which he had recently translated from the Hungarian original. I had only a few minutes to explore the beauties of this work, but I recognized it at once as a unique and magnificent achievement. Now it is finally available in English, and we can enjoy it at our leisure.
Thank you, Charles, for making this happen.
KÁROLY SIMONYI was a Hungarian scholar-educator and physicist, whose lectures, and the trilogy of his great books The Foundations of Electrical Engineering, The Physics of Electronics and Electromagnetic Theory founded an international invisible college in electrical and electronic engineering.
FREEMAN DYSON is Professor of Physics, Institute for Advanced Study; Author, Many Colored Glass; The Scientist as Rebel; Essayist, New York Review of Books.
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Book-Text-Read-Zines · Social/Politics
The Art of Not Being Governed. An Anarchist History of Upland Southeast Asia
March 27, 2012 Sebastian Alvarez1 Comment
For two thousand years the disparate groups that now reside in Zomia (a mountainous region the size of Europe that consists of portions of seven Asian countries) have fled the projects of the organized state societies that surround them—slavery, conscription, taxes, corvée labor, epidemics, and warfare. This book, essentially an "anarchist history," is the first-ever examination of the huge literature on state-making whose author evaluates why people would deliberately and reactively remain stateless. Among the strategies employed by the people of Zomia to remain stateless are physical dispersion in rugged terrain; agricultural practices that enhance mobility; pliable ethnic identities; devotion to prophetic, millenarian leaders; and maintenance of a largely oral culture that allows them to reinvent their histories and genealogies as they move between and around states.
In accessible language, James Scott, recognized worldwide as an eminent authority in Southeast Asian, peasant, and agrarian studies, tells the story of the peoples of Zomia and their unlikely odyssey in search of self-determination. He redefines our views on Asian politics, history, demographics, and even our fundamental ideas about what constitutes civilization, and challenges us with a radically different approach to history that presents events from the perspective of stateless peoples and redefines state-making as a form of "internal colonialism." This new perspective requires a radical reevaluation of the civilizational narratives of the lowland states. Scott's work on Zomia represents a new way to think of area studies that will be applicable to other runaway, fugitive, and marooned communities, be they Gypsies, Cossacks, tribes fleeing slave raiders, Marsh Arabs, or San-Bushmen.
The author of several books including Seeing Like a State, James C. Scott is Sterling Professor of Political Science, professor of anthropology, and co-director of the Agrarian Studies Program, Yale University, and a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.
Review by Yale University Press
Digital Media · Film/Video/New Media · Human-ities · Motion Graphics
Amsterdam DNA
March 6, 2012 March 6, 2012 Sebastian Alvarez1 Comment
The Amsterdam Museum has opened an entire new department: Amsterdam DNA. This exhibition will take you on a three-dimensional 45-minute journey through our capital's history. The versatile story of the city is presented in seven intriguing films, which we created. Above you can see the second film: Revolt Against King and Church.
In close cooperation with the curators, we developed seven scripts of about two minutes each, which shed light on the most important elements from more than 1000 years of Amsterdam history. Typical core values of Amsterdam were used as the theme for the films: entrepreneurship, freethinking, creativity and citizenship.
Visual material was collected based on the scripts. International collections were used in addition to the collection of the Amsterdam Museum, which has resulted in a selection of international renown. When visual material was not available or suitable, we had to develop the content ourselves.
The challenge was to bring the masterpieces to life without affecting their identity, or rather, their soul. We chose to add an extra dimension by making the images three-dimensional. Another dimension, sound, was added to make the whole even more appealing. Lifelike sounds and soundtracks that fit the spirit of the age add luster to the scenes.
Next to the seven films we also produced a trailer and a video-wall of approximately seven by three meters, in which past en present blend.
Commissioned by: Amsterdam Museum
Agency: PlusOne
Direction: Martijn Hogenkamp
Production: Marcel Vrieswijk
Motion Design: Sander van Dijk
Lead 3D: Tim van der Wiel
3D: Noam Briner, Chris Rudz, Hans Willem Gijzel, Richard Lundström
Music: Lennert Busch
Sound Design: Mauricio d'Orey
Thanks to: Harold van Velsen
Client: Bianca Schrauwen, Joost van de Weerd, Norbert Middelkoop, Laura van Hasselt
Via Explore
Public Uses of History: Expectations and Ambiguities by Jacques Revel
February 20, 2012 February 19, 2012 Sebastian AlvarezLeave a comment
In 1876, the first issue of the Revue historique was published in Paris. The birth of the journal is commonly seen as a founding moment. History was now defined as a professional discipline, with explicit scientific and more precise methodological requirements, with specific and codified forms of training and a strong sense of academic community. There is nothing here that is specific to France: actually, the German model of historical erudition had inspired a number of national communities in Europe and outside Europe. On the occasion of the first issue of the new Revue, one of the directors, Gabriel Monod, a leading figure of the time, addressed future contributors. In his editorial, he recommended "avoiding contemporary controversies, addressing the subjects of their studies with the methodological rigor and absence of bias required by science, and not seeking arguments for or against any theory involved indirectly only." Monod then explained the insufficient progress of the discipline in France as resulting from "political and religious passions" which, "in the absence of scientific tradition" had not been curbed. Hence the utmost restraint was called for. A new time was open to science, method and objectivity after decades of tense, dense, and exhausting ideological conflicts on the French Revolution, the absolute monarchy and the conflicting relations between Church and State over centuries. Historians would better choose to cool their objects of study down and avoid contemporary topics. Distancing the past now was a pressing requirement.
Via Transformation of the Public Sphere
Film/Video/New Media · Performativity · Social/Politics
Iron Sky: Nazis on the Moon
February 19, 2012 Sebastian AlvarezLeave a comment
"Nazis on the moon" sounds like a punchline. But it's actually the premise of the most talked-about feature at this year's Berlin International Film Festival. The plot of Finnish entry "Iron Sky" revolves around "a group of Nazis who escape to the moon at the end of World War II to plan a new assault," according to BBC News. "Added to the farce is a US President with more than a passing resemblance to former Alaska governor Sarah Palin, and a navy cruiser called the USS George W Bush."
The most expensive film in Finnish history, "Iron Sky" has, according to BBCNews, "been hailed by some members of the international press as a sign that Germans are now at peace with their Nazi past." But some Germans felt less comfortable. "Although I heard that audiences were laughing out loud, in my screening… it wasn't like that," Kerstin Sopke of the Associated Press told the BBC.
The film's director, Timo Vuorensola, doesn't see it that way either. "No, I absolutely think that's not what's it about," he told The Arty Semite in an email.
I think that Germans have as a people moved away from the times, and have learned perhaps more than any other people in the world the horrors fascism brings, and know that history needs to be respected, but that the Germans living now (other than some very special cases) are not the ones who did the horrors. So they haven't gotten 'a peace with Nazi past,' as BBC strangely words it, but they've understood that the current German youth did not do the bad things, thus making it possible to approach the subject with other emotions than the well-known 'German guilt'. It's time now to make sure it will never happen again.
Written by Michael Kaminer, The Jewish Daily Forward. Continue HERE
On the Invention of Money – Notes on Sex, Adventure, Monomaniacal Sociopathy and the True Function of Economics
David Graeber: Let me begin by filling in some background on the current state of scholarly debate on this question, explain my own position, and show what an actual debate might have been like. First, the history:
1) Adam Smith first proposed in 'The Wealth of Nations' that as soon as a division of labor appeared in human society, some specializing in hunting, for instance, others making arrowheads, people would begin swapping goods with one another (6 arrowheads for a beaver pelt, for instance.) This habit, though, would logically lead to a problem economists have since dubbed the 'double coincidence of wants' problem—for exchange to be possible, both sides have to have something the other is willing to accept in trade. This was assumed to eventually lead to the people stockpiling items deemed likely to be generally desirable, which would thus become ever more desirable for that reason, and eventually, become money. Barter thus gave birth to money, and money, eventually, to credit.
2) 19th century economists such as Stanley Jevons and Carl Menger [1] kept the basic framework of Smith's argument, but developed hypothetical models of just how money might emerge from such a situation. All assumed that in all communities without money, economic life could only have taken the form of barter. Menger even spoke of members of such communities "taking their goods to market"—presuming marketplaces where a wide variety of products were available but they were simply swapped directly, in whatever way people felt advantageous.
3) Anthropologists gradually fanned out into the world and began directly observing how economies where money was not used (or anyway, not used for everyday transactions) actually worked. What they discovered was an at first bewildering variety of arrangements, ranging from competitive gift-giving to communal stockpiling to places where economic relations centered on neighbors trying to guess each other's dreams. What they never found was any place, anywhere, where economic relations between members of community took the form economists predicted: "I'll give you twenty chickens for that cow." Hence in the definitive anthropological work on the subject, Cambridge anthropology professor Caroline Humphrey concludes, "No example of a barter economy, pure and simple, has ever been described, let alone the emergence from it of money; all available ethnography suggests that there never has been such a thing."
Written by David Graeber from his book Debt: The First 5,000 Years. Continue the read at Naked Capitalism.
Book-Text-Read-Zines · Performativity · Photographics
Famous Photographers Pose With Their Most Iconic Images by Tim Mantoani
Jeff Widener holds his photo of Tank Man in Tienanmen Square from 1989.
Steve McCurry holds his 1984 photo of a young woman from Peshawar, Pakistan. "I looked for this girl for 17 years and finally found her in 2002. Her name is Sharbat Gula."
Neil Leifer holds his photo, Ali vs. Liston, which he took on May 25, 1965 in Lewiston, Maine.
The Tank Man of Tienanmen Square. Muhammad Ali standing over Sonny Liston in victory. The portrait of the Afghan Girl on the cover of National Geographic. Many of us can automatically recall these photos in our heads, but far fewer can name the photographers who took them. Even fewer know what those photographers look like.
Tim Mantoani hopes to change that by taking portraits of famous photographers holding their most iconic or favorite photos in his new book Behind Photographs: Archiving Photographic Legends. Mantoani has shot over 150 of these portraits in the last five years, most of which are contained in the book.
"I felt like there was kind of this void," says Mantoani. "There were all these anonymous photographers out there who have not been given enough credit."
At a time when everyone has a camera in their pocket and millions, if not billions of photos are flying around the internet each day, Mantoani wants to help people understand that iconic photos don't just happen. They are the product of people who devote their entire lives to photography. Giving these people a face, he says, helps do that.
Text and Photos cia Wired. See +++ HERE
Book-Text-Read-Zines · Human-ities · Social/Politics
The first sexual revolution: lust and liberty in the 18th century
January 21, 2012 Sebastian Alvarez2 Comments
We believe in sexual freedom. We take it for granted that consenting men and women have the right to do what they like with their bodies. Sex is everywhere in our culture. We love to think and talk about it; we devour news about celebrities' affairs; we produce and consume pornography on an unprecedented scale. We think it wrong that in other cultures its discussion is censured, people suffer for their sexual orientation, women are treated as second-class citizens, or adulterers are put to death.
Yet a few centuries ago, our own society was like this too. In the 1600s people were still being executed for adultery in England, Scotland and north America, and across Europe. Everywhere in the west, sex outside marriage was illegal, and the church, the state and ordinary people devoted huge efforts to hunting it down and punishing it. This was a central feature of Christian society, one that had grown steadily in importance since late antiquity. So how and when did our culture change so strikingly? Where does our current outlook come from? The answers lie in one of the great untold stories about the creation of our modern condition.
When I stumbled on the subject, more than a decade ago, I could not believe that such a huge transformation had not been properly understood. But the more I pursued it, the more amazing material I uncovered: the first sexual revolution can be traced in some of the greatest works of literature, art and philosophy ever produced – the novels of Henry Fielding and Jane Austen, the pictures of Reynolds and Hogarth, the writings of Adam Smith, David Hume and John Stuart Mill. And it was played out in the lives of tens of thousands of ordinary men and women, otherwise unnoticed by history, whose trials and punishments for illicit sex are preserved in unpublished judicial records. Most startling of all were my discoveries of private writings, such as the diary of the randy Dutch embassy clerk Lodewijk van der Saan, posted to London in the 1690s; the emotional letters sent to newspapers by countless hopeful and disappointed lovers; and the piles of manuscripts about sexual freedom composed by the great philosopher Jeremy Bentham but left unpublished, to this day, by his literary executors. Once noticed, the effects of this revolution in attitudes and behaviour can be seen everywhere when looking at the 18th, 19th and 20th centuries. It was one of the key shifts from the pre-modern to the modern world.
Written by Faramerz Dabhoiwala at The Guardian. Continue HERE
Book-Text-Read-Zines · Human-ities · Philosophy
A Philosophical Portrait: Walter Benjamin on the 120th Anniversary of his Birth
January 9, 2012 January 9, 2012 Sebastian Alvarez2 Comments
Gisèle Freund, Walter Benjamin in the Bibliothèque National, 1939
If 2012 is the year our world comes to an end, as doomsayers predict, that will provide additional employment for the angel of history, who observes the past and the wreckage of humanity as described by Walter Benjamin in his essay "On the Concept of History." But if the world and its inhabitants continue to exist, they will be able to observe, next July 15, the 120th anniversary of Benjamin's birth. His influence has only been growing in recent decades, and his writings are increasingly the inspiration for discussion and reconsideration.
The growing corpus of works about Benjamin is about to be augmented with the publication, in January, of a comprehensive study, "Walter Benjamin: A Philosophical Portrait," by Prof. Eli Friedlander (Harvard University Press ). Friedlander, head of the Philosophy Department at Tel Aviv University, discusses Benjamin's approaches to concepts such as history, mythology, language, beauty and truth. His aim is to tie together the threads of thought spun by the philosopher, who committed suicide in 1940.
"Many people," Friedlander says, "emphasize the enigmatic and enchanting aspect of Benjamin's writings. They present him, as Hannah Arendt did, as a kind of pearl fisherman retrieving precious treasures from the depths. But the amazement at that marvelous uniqueness is also a sure way to isolate him and avoid becoming seriously involved in his thought."
Friedlander's book revolves around the relationship between history and philosophy, which he elucidates through Benjamin's unfinished work "The Arcades Project." "Benjamin's thought is faithful to concrete historical content, so much so that it sometimes seems his writing lacks the recognizable form of philosophy," Friedlander observes. "Benjamin wrote philosophical history, or more accurately, wrote philosophy with historical materials whose ordering and arranging he worked on for years. The most salient expression of this commitment to concreteness is 'The Arcades Project,' which was intended to be a book consisting largely of quotations focusing on the arcades of Paris in the 19th century. After Benjamin's death, the material he had compiled remained divided into convolutes according to subjects such as 'modes of lighting,' 'iron construction' and 'the flaneur.' These are certainly not the typical subjects of philosophy."
Text By Avner Shapira in Ha'aretz. Continue HERE
"Walter Benjamin: A Philosophical Portrait" | {
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Shares rose on Monday after an investment deal raised hopes that wealthy foreign investors would come to the rescue of America's ailing investment firms.
Shares rose on Monday after a billion-dollar investment deal between Merrill Lynch and the Singapore government raised hopes that wealthy foreign investors would come to the rescue of America's ailing investment firms.
But investors were unimpressed with Merrill itself, as shares dropped 3 percent to $53.90 on worries that the company has more losses related to the subprime mortgage market to deal with.
Most major Wall Street firms recorded significant gains, with Goldman Sachs and Citigroup rising more than 2 percent.
The strong performance among financial stocks lifted most markets, driving the Dow Jones industrial average up 98.68 points, or 0.73 percent, to 13,549.33. A broader measure of the financial market, the Standard & Poor's 500-stock index, ticked up 11.99 points, or 0.81 percent, to 1,496.45. The Nasdaq composite rose 21.51 points, or 0.8 percent, to 2,713.50.
Christmas Eve is one of the lightest trading days of the year, and stock markets closed early at 1 p.m. Lower volume usually makes for more volatility, but analysts said Monday's gains were a sign that last week's bullishness had survived the weekend.
"Just because it's light trading doesn't mean that it's not a positive sign," said Larry Adam, chief investment strategist at Deutsche Bank.
The Dow's gains extended a 200-point rally from Friday, when an unexpectedly strong report on consumer spending led analysts to raise their estimates for fourth quarter growth. The Dow is now up 8.7 percent for the year, and the S. & P. 500 is up 5.5 percent.
Besides the traditional holiday optimism — the so-called Santa Rally — investors were cheered by news that Alcoa, the aluminum producer, was selling its packaging and consumer businesses to a company in New Zealand for $2.7 billion. Reynolds Wrap, the kitchen staple, will no longer be an American product, but the deal signaled that the sluggish acquisition market might be starting to recover. Shares of Alcoa rose 1.8 percent, to $37.01.
"Anytime the market sees deals being done right now, especially amid the credit turmoil, participants take that as a positive," said Todd Salamone, director for trading at Schaeffer's Investment Research.
Retail shares also rose as analysts hoped the weekend shopping rush would bolster year-end bottom lines. Analysts were concerned about flagging sales at department stores and other consumer outlets, but they now expect to see a modest improvement from last year. Shares of Nordstrom rose 3.8 percent, to $37.65; Macy's gained 1.8 percent and Target's struggling share price leaped 3.5 percent.
The consumer spending report on Friday eased fears of an imminent recession. The yield on Treasury bills rose for the fourth straight day, indicating a willingness to move away from the relative safety bets on government bonds. The yield on the benchmark 10-year Treasury bill ticked up to 4.21 percent from 4.17 percent on Friday and the price, which moves in the opposite direction from the yield, fell 11/32, to 100 9/32.
Crude oil futures gained 82 cents to settle at $94.13 a barrel. Oil rose nearly $3 in the last two trading days. | {
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# Dedication
To Michael
for kindling the flame
Ashes to ashes
# Contents
Cover
Dedication
Foreword
Hong Kong Sixes, October 1993
From Nuriootpa to Newsroom to New Zealand, February 1998
Australian Summer 1998–99
West Indies, April 1999
West Indies, April 1999 (II)
World Cup, England, May–June 1999
World Cup, England, May–June 1999 (II)
World Cup Aftermath, Australian Summers 1999–2002
Kenya Tri-series, August–September 2002
ICC Champions Trophy, Sri Lanka, September 2002
Tests in Sri Lanka and Sharjah, October 2002
Australian Summer 2002–03
West Indies, March–June 2003
Tri-nations Tournament, India, October–November 2003
Tri-nations Tournament, India, October–November 2003 (II)
Australian Summers 2003–05, New Zealand, February–April 2005
One-day Series, England, June–July 2005
Ashes Series, England, July–September 2005
Australian Summer 2005–06, One-day Tournament, New Zealand, December 2005, South Africa, February–April 2006
Bangladesh, April 2006
ICC Champions Trophy, India, October–November 2006 277 22 Ashes Series, Australia, November 2006–February 2007
Ashes Series, Australia, November 2006–February 2007
Picture section
Acknowledgements
About the Author
Copyright
# Foreword
Life on the road as an international sportsman is tough. 'Yeah, sure!' I hear the response, as you read the above line. 'Fame, fortune, business-class flights, five-star hotels...real tough!'
But I ask you to read those first four words again. Life on the road...it is tough.
Tough in any profession, at any level. If you travel enough — on the international cricket calendar that can be up to ten months of the year — you doubtless understand what I'm saying here.
Not whingeing, not complaining, simply stating that it's a gruelling schedule that presents a tremendous challenge to any athlete who embarks on such a journey.
But then again, let's be honest...there are undoubted benefits to be enjoyed. Huge contracts, lucrative commercial endorsements and, for some, a public profile that ensures they will never be left standing for too long in a queue whilst attempting to get a seat in the best restaurant in town.
However tough we players may think that travel and time away from loved ones is, we need only cast our minds to a group of committed men and women who share the same demanding schedules while deriving nowhere near the same pay or recognition as the players.
That group is the cricket journalists who report on matches the world over.
It's a diminishing group in this age of changing technology and budget cuts, as fewer and fewer news organisations send correspondents to anything other than tournaments that have the word 'Cup' in their title.
For as long as the game of cricket has been played internationally, there have been journos 'on the tour'.
Fortunately for me, and greatly beneficial to my being able to increase the number of people I call friends, I played in possibly the last era of professional cricket to have a full-blown media pack that regularly travelled for the entire duration of tours.
Always an intelligent collection of personalities, this group of odd bods and sometimes misfits would devour every ball of every match, analyse it, write or talk about it, and share their thoughts with the world in print, through the airwaves or on camera.
In times gone by, that discussion would often continue later into the evening, after play, over a drink or two with the players themselves. Not so much anymore.
I liked to get to know these guys when the chance arose, and I am better for the experience. I didn't always agree with their opinion or how they expressed it, but found my time at the top level a more fulfilling experience for having forged a few of those relationships.
Andrew Ramsey, or 'Rambo', as he was more affectionately known by the player group, recounts many of these shared adventures in this book, and I've no doubt all will enjoy his work.
Rambo was a highly respected member of the media corps that travelled regularly with the Australian team — a bloke you were always happy to talk to, either professionally or socially.
The journalist's is an extraordinary existence when on the road, and memorable tales have emerged from the many and varied situations they would get themselves into, and usually out of.
Often the press contingent would experience so much more than the players on a tour. As much as we tried to get out and about, the reality was that most of our time was spent training, in meetings at the hotel, playing at the stadium, on a bus to an airport, or travelling at 30,000 feet to the next destination.
For the journos it was often all that, plus more. Taking every chance to get off the beaten track and experience, taste, and live a different culture. Most times that was done out of interest, though sometimes it became a matter of survival!
For these guys, life on the road is truly tough. They don't do the job for the huge pay cheques, because for them they don't exist. Nor for the fame and public profile, for these rarely accompany the job either. And they certainly don't do it in an attempt to skip the restaurant line.
They do it because they love the game. The same reason, at the end of the day, that we did it as players.
Life on the road is tough. But as you are about to experience, it's bloody entertaining as well.
Adam Gilchrist
August, 2012
#
# Hong Kong Sixes, October 1993
Always remember you're not a player. You can bask in their reflected limelight. Share their lifestyle, their company and their secrets. Even meet their wives and girlfriends and be entrusted not to mention one in the presence of the other. But critics must never confuse themselves for cricketers.
This first rule of cricket journalism also happened to be the first one I broke. Having it bluntly pointed out less than a day into my inaugural overseas assignment was mildly embarrassing. Being set straight by Mark Waugh, while we shared an immigration queue at Hong Kong's Kai Tak Airport one Wednesday night in October 1993, was downright humiliating. Though not a total surprise.
The cursory research I'd undertaken prior to my maiden international tour revealed the younger Waugh twin did not suffer fools. And that he considered folly the unifying trait of the world's cricket media. He viewed press relations in the same way he handled mediocre spin bowling. With bored detachment ranging to blatant contempt. According to intelligence gleaned from more seasoned reporters, when it came to relations with journalists he was one of those who could put the 'prick' in prickly.
Up until that airport exchange, I felt I'd made a fairly seamless transition from suburban news reporter to globe-hopping cricket correspondent, even if my selection of in-flight reading material had screamed 'rookie error'. In an ill-considered attempt to understand what I was getting myself into, I had tracked down a copy of an unsanctioned, tell-all account of the Australian cricket team's 1991 tour of the West Indies. In the years since its publication, the book had partially lifted the veil on the life of touring cricketers, and exponentially raised the ire of the nation's cricket elite. It also caused an irreparable fracture in the relationship between the players and the journalists who shadowed them.
So by the time I stumbled on to the scene, the golden era of shared confidences and front-bar camaraderie had been replaced by suspicion and a 'them-versus-us' climate of mistrust. Consequently, it wasn't the smartest choice of airport reading. Having it in my possession would only confirm the players' misgivings that I was the enemy within. And unveiling it in transit would have the same effect as walking onto an El Al flight brandishing a copy of Mein Kampf. In my own defence, I was banking on being seated at the back of the plane while the cricketers enjoyed their customary luxury up front. Among the many divides between players and press, the business-class curtain has long been one of the least subtle. As such, I reasoned I would be able to skim through the offending text in economy-class anonymity, commit any relevant passages to memory, and abandon the evidence in my Row 50 seat pocket.
That ploy failed spectacularly because I was not part of a traditional overseas cricket tour. I had been plucked from professional obscurity to be the sole Australian reporter accompanying half a dozen of the nation's best cricketers, and their veteran coach, on an all-expenses-paid, long weekend to a location where you're more likely to find cricket on a menu than a suburban park.
Hoping to build on the success of their debut tournament a year earlier, organisers of the Hong Kong International Cricket Sixes had decided that greater media coverage would help their ambitious six-aside tournament gain exposure, if not credibility. To achieve this aim, the tournament's principal sponsor — a large Hong Kong-based airline — offered to fly a small number of cricket scribes from around the globe to experience their event and enjoy their hospitality.
Upon checking in, I learned the sponsor's generosity extended as far as business-class seating for members of the fourth estate. This was the sort of lavish treatment usually reserved for journalists of immense influence, or for travel writers. It also meant spending eight hours seated amid the playing group in territory that, if not outright hostile, was mildly unnerving. Especially for a young reporter already swimming in self-doubt and clutching only an incendiary book for moral support.
With feigned bravado, I took the first available opportunity to introduce myself to the captain — of the cricket team, not the aircraft. Although I doubt the response would have been any more underwhelmed had I burst through the cockpit door and announced to the flight crew that I constituted the Australian cricket press for the next seventy-two hours. Ian Healy, burdened with the national captaincy for the entire weekend, summoned his deep reserves of diplomacy when I told him who I was and why I was there.
'Oh, okay. Great to have you on board,' he smiled, with a sort of pained sincerity.
He then extended his battle-gnarled fingers and firmly shook my hand. Healy's day job was Australia's wicketkeeper, and he was part of a collective that earned its livelihood by stopping rock-hard projectiles, often hurled at high speed. You can spot the ex-'keepers at any past players' reunion. Their fingers resemble root ginger. Due to their unforgiving profession, they are also well versed at passing off a grimace as a grin.
'I didn't expect there'd even be a journo on this tour,' he said, smile firmly in place. 'So, you're with Australian Associated Press. Where exactly will your stories end up?'
I gave my oft-rehearsed spiel about how AAP copy was sent to most of Australia's metropolitan and regional newspapers, and that its broadcast scripts could be used for radio and television news bulletins. By this stage, the skipper's well-toned smile muscles must have been aching with fatigue.
'Okay, well it's good to meet you,' he said, as he edged back to his seat. 'And we'll catch up over the next few days.'
Then, to make sure I understood my role, he added: 'Not that I reckon there'll be too much worth writing about. This weekend's just a bit of fun.'
I withdrew to study my travel companions in closer detail, and the news hound in me was appalled by what I didn't see. The behaviour of these notoriously overpaid, overexposed sports stars was disgracefully impeccable. They could have been any bored, restless commuters, albeit in matching travel outfits. They dozed or flicked half-heartedly through magazines. They engaged in listless conversations or stared blankly at the tiny televisions blinking in their faces. Where were the indulgent acts of rock-star hedonism? Shouldn't they be spinning tales of past heroics to a coterie of enthralled groupies? Or trying to set a new Melbourne — Hong Kong beer-guzzling record?
Even their appearance was remarkably unremarkable. Unlike tennis players, cricketers don't sport one forearm demonstrably larger than the other. Their ears don't ooze like raspberry flummery, nor their necks bulge like baobab trunks as is the case with rugby front-rowers. And very few display the social graces of Australopithecus, which immediately distinguishes them from other football codes.
The striking exception to this uniform ordinariness was twenty-one-year-old Matthew Hayden. His shoulders were obviously on loan from an Olympic butterflyer. His chest filled out his white shirt to the point where it could almost accommodate Cinemascope movies. In a sport historically populated by tall, lean bowlers or short, nimble batsmen, Hayden had swaggered on to the international scene with the physique, and occasionally the technique, of a champion axeman.
Born and raised in rural Kingaroy, home to Australia's peanut-growing industry, Hayden's spirit was as lithe as his body was basalt. His love of life outdoors, especially surfing and fishing, was reflected in his approach to cricket. He lived to toil under the baking sun, often batting for days on end. True to character, he had also slipped out of the team travelling kit and into shorts and T-shirt as soon as the seatbelt warning lights dimmed.
Huddled into his seat's confines, he provided my in-flight entertainment when his lunch arrived. He set about transforming his miniature bread roll, paper-thin fillets of smoked salmon and various salad garnish items into a gourmet sandwich. The dexterity with which he sliced a cherry tomato, battling airline cutlery and a wobbly tray table, led me to ruminate he might have a future as a chef once his considerable cricket skills began to wane.
With the lunch items cleared, Hayden asleep, and fear of physical attack preventing me from pulling out my book, I shifted into the vacant window seat next to me and stared dolefully down at the lush, emerald landscape unfolding far below. I was just starting to drift off when a vaguely familiar voice snapped me from my torpor.
'Hard to believe that fifty years ago, our boys were fighting and dying in the jungles down there,' Australia's cricket coach, Bob Simpson, opined.
Given his sudden appearance in a seat that was technically assigned to me, I assumed this was not a rhetorical observation. I also surmised that the dense tropical canopy beneath must be Borneo. At almost thirty years my senior, and as Australia's serving Test captain at the time of my birth, Simpson had a knowledge of wartime geography far superior to mine.
'That puts cricket in a bit of perspective,' he added, as he leaned forward to share the view.
Simpson was widely regarded as one of the most gifted technical coaches in world cricket. He was famous for being able to spot flaws in a batsman's game simply by watching him bunt a few balls in the practice nets. Assessing the inherent weaknesses in a greenhorn reporter apprehensively tackling his first international assignment presented much less of a challenge.
As well as his formidable cricket credentials, Simpson was a shrewd politician. The rule book he employed when dealing with the press was more Machiavelli than Marylebone. He used our first unofficial chat to point out that the coming weekend was little more than a public relations exercise for his team.
'Some of these guys have been on the road pretty much non-stop — at home, in New Zealand, in England — since the start of the last Australian summer,' he said, finishing on an upward inflection for emphasis. 'That's almost a year ago. So while we'll be doing our best this weekend, I wouldn't be expecting us to dominate.'
He then leaned slightly further forward and gave an almost imperceptible nod, which I understood to mean we had just engaged in a briefing, rather than a greeting. In other words, there was to be no screaming 'Aussies Hit for Six at Sixes' headlines in the papers back home if results didn't measure up to expectations. Point made, he returned to his seat alongside Healy, which at least explained how he knew who, and what, I was.
My discomfort level was rising, exacerbated by my restless attempts to work out the reason for my unease. After all, these were mostly men of my age — late twenties or younger. By rights, I should have felt more at ease in their company than in that of the politicians, business leaders and academics I had regularly interviewed over five years as a journalist. But these guys were completely different. They were celebrities. They had capabilities beyond the rest of us. Members of a fraternity so exclusive that, despite being the life's ambition of countless Australian boys for more than a century, only 350 had gained admission. If they weren't aloof and unapproachable then, in my mind, they should have been.
Such was my level of anxiety, I was relieved when word came from the flight deck that we were preparing to land, even though it was well known that, in terms of accessibility, Kai Tak was not so much an airport as a Chinese box. Successfully putting a Boeing 747 down on a reclaimed runway jutting into Victoria Harbour through an approach ringed by hills and high-rise buildings meant pilots had to throw their aircraft around like two-stroke go-karts negotiating a tight chicane. To even attempt landing at Kai Tak, commercial pilots needed to have undertaken specialist training. Or so I had been reassured.
Rugged peaks, some more than 600 metres high, strayed frighteningly close to the tarmac's north. As we skimmed the bobbing lights on the harbour, we weaved among the lofty residential towers of western Kowloon until the sight of red and white warning billboards on the flank of a small hill signalled it was time for the pilot to swing into a fifty-degree starboard lurch. Passengers on the inside of the 'Checkerboard Turn' now found themselves staring directly into the lounge rooms of stoically oblivious families.
The aircraft was then violently righted back to almost horizontal, and those of us on the port side noticed we were barely fifty metres above the earth. I swear I could discern the brand name, not just the picture that was showing, on a television set one young couple impassively watched as we roared past their window. One final deft, upward flick of the port wing, and we met the ground. Engines screaming, we hurtled to a standstill on what appeared to be a bituminised jetty and then parked between a four-masted replica junk and a Panamax freighter.
It wasn't only the landing trauma that convinced me to stay seated while the team readied to disembark. I was in no hurry to join them. Our relationship was but hours old, yet I sensed we could already both benefit from some time apart. Unfortunately, that strategy didn't take into account the human traffic jam at passport control. It also exposed another deficiency in my pre-departure research.
I was unaware of the internal demarcation system that Australia's elite cricketers observed, whereby touring parties were split into two roughly even sub-groups. The cool, good-looking players and officials dubbed themselves 'Julios', in deference to suave Latino crooner and renowned ladies' man, Julio Iglesias. The rest were known as 'Nerds', as in...well, nerds.
I had unwittingly joined an immigration queue that included card-carrying 'Julios', Damien Martyn and Mark Waugh and, despite my stalling tactics, we were once again neighbours. Hell-bent on avoiding eye contact or small talk, I rummaged through my collection of travel documents, only to look up and find Mark Waugh glaring dismissively at me over his right shoulder. As he turned, he shifted his gaze to the carpet between my feet where the remainder of my self-esteem was about to land. We hadn't officially passed into Hong Kong, but I was made aware that a far more strict border had been illegally crossed.
'I reckon you're in the wrong line, buddy,' he monotoned, before turning back to an approving nod from his teammate.
There was no point in pleading a novice mistake. I had been caught red-handed. Sharing the players' business-class sanctuary could be explained away as an organisational oversight. Continuing the charade in public was plain impertinent. I needed to be reminded of my place, and my place was not on the Australian cricket team. My cheeks glowed crimson. Sweat began to form on my upper lip. This is not the recommended look when you're approaching a foreign nation's passport police, unless you're a devotee of the full body cavity search.
I hurriedly scooped up my belongings and stumbled blindly away from the source of ridicule, only to find the adjacent queue home to designated 'Nerds', Jamie Siddons and Tony Dodemaide. Blind panic set in. Doubled over, clutching a disarray of documents to my stomach, I scuttled across the arrivals hall searching for a line devoid of cricketers. I looked like a bank bandit fleeing with a heist of loose notes. Or a heroin smuggler nursing a gut full of rupturing condoms. I eventually took up a position, squatting and sweating, as the final member of the 'All Other Passport Holders' clique.
As I tried to rearrange my papers and my demeanour, I offered a silent prayer for my queue to suffer lengthy processing delays. Anything to put me further behind the cricket team as it disappeared into the Hong Kong night. To ensure that outcome, I waited for my suitcase to complete its third lap of the baggage carousel before I hauled it clear. Emerging from the final security scan, I scoured the crowd of reunited families and beckoning taxi drivers to find no trace of the Australian players. They had vanished into the throng. But further humiliation was heading my way.
A stern gentleman approached me, clad in crisply laundered white tunic, dark trousers complete with razor-sharp creases, and shoes that were just as black, but decidedly more lustrous, than my mood. He looked like a young Bruce Lee, from the days when he was busting criminals in the employ of the Green Hornet. Minus the leather mask. Most disturbingly, 'Kato' was armed with what appeared to be an elaborate white table tennis bat from which a couple of small bells dangled and which bore, in angry capital letters scrawled in black felt pen, my name and flight number.
It turned out that the same sponsor who had arranged for me to fly among the team also wanted me to share their hotel transfer. I felt nauseous. I tried to argue my case for independent transport, but Kato didn't care for the inviolable protocol that prevented journalists ever setting foot on the Australian team's bus. Along with the dressing room, it's a universally recognised safe haven. In the cricket universe, anyway. Media representatives are invited on to the bus about as often as women are asked to enter the Catholic priesthood. None of this helped crack Kato's stony countenance. He had a schedule to keep and I was keeping him from it.
He frog-marched me to the idling, twelve-seater minibus, and I dragged myself aboard to be greeted by seven sickeningly familiar faces. None of them tried to disguise their impatience, as they glared at the slowcoach boarding the team coach. My half-hour of deliberate dawdling must have seemed decidedly longer in the confines of the bus. As a result, the late-night air was heavy with resentment as we shared a wordless ride into the heart of Tsim Sha Shui.
By the time we reached the reclaimed swamp that had grown into the soaring commercial centre of the Kowloon Peninsula, the overworked air conditioners and ad-hoc wiring that dangled precariously from grimy apartment blocks lining the road from the airport had given way to a Manhattan-like skyline. The choked streets were bathed in neon and bordered by designer boutiques. With the bus becalmed in a gridlock of imported luxury cars, it was easy to forget we had arrived on the doorstep of the developing world.
That was until I noticed an ancient woman carrying a large swaddling of bulky possessions on her back, stop and gently lay her burden on the footpath. She then stepped down from the kerb, and positioned her bare feet on a metal grate that covered an entrance to a stormwater drain. In full view of the motionless traffic, she yanked down the pants of her coarse blue 'Mao suit' and, inconvenienced neither by her age nor by stage fright, dropped into a textbook Asian squat. Without so much as a glance around her, she unleashed a torrent of excrement that would have done a disgorging cement truck proud. Until that moment, I had no idea a forty-five-kilogram woman could pack a hundredweight of shit. When the flow finally stemmed, she simply hitched up her strides, repositioned her pack, and resumed her journey. The whole episode had taken less than two minutes. In that time, I was cured of any jet-lagged delusion we were stuck on Fifth Avenue. Or thoughts of an ocean swim.
Relief arrived for me soon after, when we finally reached the hotel. Mercifully, the tournament organisers had seen fit to house journalists and players in separate, if adjacent, accommodation. As the bus doors swung open, I hurtled down the stairs with all the intent of a liberated hostage. I was in a savage hurry to draw the curtain on day one of my career as a travelling cricket writer and to steel myself for the reception that awaited on day two. I knew from experience how quickly the professional relationship with top-flight sportspeople could turn from suspicion to odium.
Months earlier, I'd sought comment from the former Australian Test cricket great Rod Marsh, in his guise as head coach of the Australian Institute of Sport cricket academy in Adelaide. I phoned him at his home one June morning, in the wake of Australia's thumping Test win over England at Lord's, a victory orchestrated by opening batsman, and recent academy graduate, Michael Slater. The call's purpose was to establish how Marsh felt about his young academy alumni — Slater and Shane Warne — playing such pivotal roles in Australia's unfolding Ashes success. Initially, the former Test vice-captain was cautious about singing the praises of the young stars too loudly. He also wanted to paint their achievements against the backdrop of an English opposition that was modest at best, and plain inept more often. As the interview progressed, Marsh warmed to the latter theme.
'Take Michael Slater's innings,' he railed. 'Sure it was a good knock, but there's a lot of blokes in this country who would've given their right arms to bat against that England attack. Michael will probably admit he's made better thirties or forties in Sheffield Shield cricket than that 150 he made at Lord's.'
It was when he issued a pointed warning to aspiring Australian players against travelling to England to play county cricket in the misguided belief it would improve their skills that he outdid himself. Or undid himself.
'They go over there and face bowlers who are really just pie throwers, and they're not going to learn anything about the game.'
At that point, I placed a small asterisk in the margin of my notebook. Even a trainee cricket writer knows a headline when it happens along. The priceless quote became the hook for a story that created a stir on either side of cricket's oldest rivalry. Sent out to the world on the AAP sports wire, it was seized upon by the British press. Some supplemented the yarn with an equally spirited rebuttal from England's Test bowling coach, Geoff Arnold. Others took it upon themselves to phone Marsh directly and challenge his assertion. These calls were invariably placed in the small hours of the Australian morning, and were not especially well received.
Marsh then angrily claimed his words had been twisted out of context. In fact, he reckoned there had never been a context. He flatly denied ever using the term 'pie throwers'. Of course, journalists' propensity to engage in a bit of literary licence is as widely recognised as their dubious fashion sense. The craft is built on an ignoble tradition of tweaking the occasional quote to justify a headline, or simply to generate one in the first place. But at that stage of my fledgling career, I was neither creative nor canny enough to fabricate such a cracking description of England's hopeless seamers. Thus, a scar was born.
I had burned my first cricket contact even before I had become a proper cricket writer. For what it's worth, I stand by the authenticity and accuracy of that quote. Marsh similarly swears it's a concoction. As a consequence, he has since refused to speak to me, or acknowledge my presence. Except for the time, years later in England, when we crossed paths in the lobby of a Manchester hotel. He indicated our dispute might be best sorted out in the car park, an offer I politely declined.
It's safe to assume that the Kowloon Cricket Club has seen its fair share of, if not pie chuckers, then certainly dumpling dispensers. It was the quintessence of village cricket, albeit in a village under siege from a forest of concrete towers, the constant howl of lorries, buses and low-flying passenger jets, and air that carried the colour, odour and taste of diesel. In the countdown to the Dependent Territory's impending handover to the People's Republic of China, the KCC stood as an enduring symbol of the irreconcilable contrast between Hong Kong's genteel, imperial past, and its chaotic, dynamic future.
Vaguely heptagonal in shape, the club's playing field was immaculately maintained. One of its sides was dominated by a lavish art-deco influenced clubhouse that would not have looked out of place adjoining the eighteenth green at a New England country club. The Members lounge walls bore photographic tributes to the decidedly Anglo, and occasional Indian, heroes of glories past. They stared agelessly at the club's parade of daily regulars, who sipped European lager from dimpled pint mugs, or ice-laden cocktails, the condensation from which streamed down the sides of highballs in the clawing humidity and formed deep pools on the dark wooden bar. This tribute to the most English of games also incorporated a broad players' balcony that provided a sweeping view of the cricket ground, and the encroaching squalor.
The venue's intimate feel was enhanced by an array of corporate hospitality tents erected along its numerous edges for the six-a-side frolic. They helped ensure the cricket carried the air of a food and wine festival. The specially invited local and international guests occasionally looked up from the free fizz and tasting plates to try and make sense of what was happening out on the lawn. I sat perched on a plastic chair, wedged between the knee-high boundary fence and the brick wall of the curators' shed, earnestly trying to answer that same question. Even though the Hong Kong Sixes had secured the talents of superstars such as Sachin Tendulkar, Viv Richards, Javed Miandad and Aravinda de Silva, the matches carried only a passing resemblance to cricket as I knew it.
For a start, once the roles of bowler and wicketkeeper were assigned, the non-batting team was left with just four fielders. Consequently, boundaries were scored pretty much every time bat made contact with ball. It reminded me of the backyard games played with childhood friends, albeit with vastly superior skills and no hibiscus bush at short extra-cover. Even the synthetic pitch and iridescent orange stumps suggested 'Mudamuckla Thirds' rather than prestigious international cricket event.
Players mixed freely with all elements of the crowd between, and even during, the two-day roster that was stocked with forty-five-minute matches. Well, not quite all elements. As I skirted the field, seeking out feature interviews to try and justify, as well as announce, my presence, I noticed the Australians were strangely elusive. When they saw me approaching, wielding my dictaphone and a look of grim intent, they would smile apologetically before melting into the crowd.
Sadly, Australia's major media outlets showed a similar lack of appetite for my hourly radio scripts and detailed newspaper reports. Worse, my hope that a story of major global significance would erupt in front of me was proving disappointingly delusional. The only potentially newsworthy incident emerged when Pakistan's Inzamamul-Haq was prevented from fulfilling the tournament requirement that each member of the fielding team bowl an over apiece.
In the early stages of the weekend, Inzamam's bowling had shown the same economy of effort that was to distinguish the bulk of his career. To the extent that, in 2006, he famously couldn't be bothered leading his team back on to the field when captaining in a Test match against England. In Kowloon, he simply stood at the non-striker's end and tossed the ball, like a heavily sedated baseball pitcher, towards bemused batsmen. I noticed it was the same sort of nonchalant indifference he showed when throwing down vegetable pakoras between games. His unique bowling action provoked tittering on and off the field, but nobody seemed too concerned given the event's picnic nature.
However, as the tournament progressed towards the prize-money matches, rumblings surfaced that such a flagrant bending of the game's laws did little to enhance Hong Kong's hopes of securing a permanent berth on the world cricket calendar. It was therefore agreed that Inzamam would, in the final matches, play solely as a batsman and a fielder. Which meant he played only as a batsman, since he was as reluctant to chase and retrieve as he was to adopt a legal bowling action. My one hope of a story with international implications was accordingly snuffed out. My problem, I learned years later, was that I had been watching the cricket. Subsequent reports eventually surfaced of illegal bookmakers using the relaxed atmosphere at Kowloon to take their corrupt business proposals to some of cricket's biggest names.
By the time Sunday's grand final came around, my enthusiasm for the cause had dipped about as low as Inzamam's bowling arm. With England and Sri Lanka slugging it out for the title, any story I wrote about the climax would be little more than typing practice. Even the novelty of England eventually winning an international cricket trophy failed to generate interest back home. I also accepted I was not about to gain friendship, trust or even eye contact from the Australian team, and was therefore firmly of the view that my first international tour would also act as my cricket-writing swansong.
England's win did, however, provide cause for celebration among the pair of genuine Fleet Street cricket scribes who had also been shouted a weekend in the Orient. They generously included me in their knees-up, apparently mistaking the exclusivity of my role for seniority. That's how I learned the gulf that ran deep between players and the press did not likewise extend to professional rivalries within the cricket-writing fraternity.
In the spirit of journalistic camaraderie, we toasted England's resurgence as a global cricketing powerhouse at Hong Kong's famous Foreign Correspondents' Club. Throughout conflicts in Korea and Vietnam, it had heard a litany of war stories, and several more were recounted that evening. The sense of isolation and ostracism I had nursed over the preceding seventy-two hours gave way to warm encouragement, not solely because of the beer buzz, as my new friends regaled me with tales of press box intrigue, dressing room gossip, and glamorous globetrotting. My interest in cricket writing was being rekindled, pint by pint.
In a shameless attempt to bolster my own stocks, I told my one and only worthwhile cricket anecdote. Not the one where an opening batsman filleted a cocktail tomato. Rather, how my recent interview with Rod Marsh had given rise to a headline, and a hatred. As the story unwound, I noticed a grin growing across the face of the audience member who hadn't left the table to fetch more beer. Then, when I delivered the punchline, he swivelled in his chair and cackled to his mate at the bar: 'Hey Charlie, you won't believe it. He's the pie-chuckin' geezer.'
It was the moment I became a cricket journalist.
#
# From Nuriootpa to Newsroom to New Zealand, February 1998
It's tempting to assert I'd been embedded with the Australian team to Hong Kong in recognition of my shimmering journalistic talent. But that would also be a gross falsehood. The bald truth remains I was the spare body in the office with a free weekend when the sponsor's invitation arrived.
At the time, I was working as a general news reporter in a five-person AAP bureau in Adelaide. Given the paucity of staff proportionate to the demands of a round-the-clock news wire service, diversity was our office's stock in trade. Court reporting, state politics, business stories, police rounds and sports events were among the variety that ensured days were anything but routine. It also meant I possessed subject knowledge roughly as broad as Lake Eyre. And almost as deep, keeping in mind that the giant saltpan filled just four times in the twentieth century.
So while I could boast versatility, I was under no illusions as to my journalistic influence. The generalists in any newsroom might account for most of the legwork, but it's those who report specialist rounds that carry a public profile, earn the marginally bigger bucks, and get the overseas trips. It just happened that one of those specialists — AAP's national cricket correspondent — was nominally based in Adelaide when not trailing the Australian team around the globe. It was his name on the invitation when it lobbed but, having just returned from a four-month tour of England, he needed a weekend in south Asia watching a six-aside carnival in the same way an insomniac requires a triple-shot espresso as a nightcap. In fact, management withheld news of the prospective Kowloon commitment from him for fear he might consider self-harm.
Instead, our bureau chief ran a brief audit of potential substitutes, and I ticked all the necessary boxes. I held a valid passport, had no conflicting obligations, and maintained a passable knowledge of cricket. No sooner were the organisers notified of the switch than my first pangs of unease began to stir.
That was because, while my credentials as a cricket writer were decidedly shaky, they were considerably more robust than my expertise as a cricketer. Indeed, my playing skills were so limited that I pioneered a new category of 'all-rounder' during my time with the Nuriootpa Cricket Club in the Barossa Valley. My dual specialty was batting at number eleven, an honour bestowed only because cricket teams don't stretch to a number twelve, and fielding as far from the action as possible while remaining within the field of play. So adept was I at patrolling cricket's equivalent of the Mongolian steppes — deep fine leg — I was entrusted with that duty for the duration of every day we spent in the field. At both ends of the ground. Consequently, most of the runs I contributed over five years of senior cricket were my glacial gallops from one extremity of a parched oval to the other.
In spite of my glaring shortcomings, my place in the first XI was guaranteed by two unrelated but equally relevant factors. A small country town's lack of selection alternatives. And my quasi-official role as author of the cricket club's diary notes in the local weekly newspapers. I learned quickly that the pen was mightier than the slow-turning off-break. Writing granted me a status that my cricket would never deliver. So, despite only being able to converse with my teammates on the rare occasions we gathered to celebrate the fall of an opposition wicket, I stuck at the game that had been my passion from a very young age.
My earliest cricket memories remain the most vivid of a sport-obsessed, self-contained childhood. They took shape during the 1971–72 Australian season, when an all-stars World XI toured in place of a South African team for political reasons that I tried, but failed, to comprehend. During that sweltering summer, respite was provided by a small metallic electric fan that resembled the propeller housing from a miniature Messerschmitt, and stood alongside our equally antiquated television. The cooling breeze allowed me to focus my attention on the fuzzy images of white-clad cricketers against a grainy grey background.
The sight that both mesmerised and terrorised me was Dennis Lillee, loping in on his twenty-pace run-up, launching himself into a spring-loaded delivery stride, and directing his menace at hapless batsmen. The grace and controlled power of his bowling contrasted with his wildly exuberant celebrations whenever another one fell. His ferocious spell in Perth, which yielded eight of the world's best at a cost of just twenty-nine runs, screamed from the front page of the next day's newspaper, accompanied by a close-up photograph of Lillee, frozen as he prepared to unleash, with eyes narrowed at his prey and his right wrist cocked like a cobra alongside his chunky sideburns.
'This is how Lillee appears from 22 yards away, just before another thunderbolt arrives', the caption trilled.
When the day's heat dimmed, I would become Dennis Lillee. I charged up and down the backyard trying to replicate his idiosyncratic bowling style. So dedicated was I to this task, I wore a track of tiny, browning footmarks that spelled out its own Morse tale of delusion along the length of my father's cherished lawn. Over after over, I would charge in, right arm flapping at my side like a one-armed surfer paddling out beyond the break. Carefully synchronising the finale to avoid becoming ensnared in the drooping wire cables of the clothes line, I then launched myself skyward with the grace and athleticism of an emperor penguin heaving itself onto an Antarctic ice shelf. Finally, in an uncoordinated whirr of arms and legs, I would let loose a tennis ball that smacked into the whitewashed back wall of our house with all the force of a drop volley. I would then scowl at the brickwork, flick beads of imagined sweat from my forehead, and retrieve the ball in order to start the long trudge back to my bowling mark, beneath the low branches of the walnut tree. I would repeat this charade until nightfall. Or until my exasperated father switched on the sprinkler.
When it was too dark, too wet, or too obviously football season to indulge my backyard cricket fantasies, I immersed myself in the array of monthly Australian and English cricket magazines that my father on-passed. This was not great news for my schooling, as I devoted more time to studying England's Sunday League than I did to my grade three English homework. Each night, I would clamber into bed and await Dad's appearance to turn out the light. That was when I would badger him for stories about the great cricketers he had watched as a boy, for details of upcoming games we might attend, and for answers to troubling conundrums of the time, such as how a towelling hat with no brim could offer any protection from the sun. He never visibly tired of these inquisitions that were the high points of a young boy's day, and only partly a ruse to delay the onset of sleep.
During the winter of 1972, with Ian Chappell's team battling for the Ashes in the Old Dart, I bounded out of bed on many a frosty Barossa morning to excitedly pore over the details of the previous night's action. These had been fastidiously documented by my father in a miniature scorebook while I slept. I was fascinated by the notion of cricket being played through the dead of night, on the other side of the world, and equally impressed by Dad's dedication to staying awake into the wee hours, tuned to the BBC commentary and recording the details for my benefit.
One morning over breakfast, as I scoured obsessively through the previous night's happenings, I boldly announced to him that one day I too would travel to England as part of an Australian touring team. Displaying all the patient diplomacy of parenthood, he simply smiled and nodded. And doubtless offered up a silent prayer for the future of Australian cricket lest its playing stocks dwindle that low.
'What would be so good about that?' he inquired, ignoring the selection opportunities likely to beckon for an athletically challenged trundler who specialised in bowling at three-bedroom rental properties.
'I could go to the cricket every day,' I replied, after considered thought. 'And I'd get to see a lot of different places.'
Pausing only to light one of the succession of Wild Woodbines that — along with several 'steaming mugs of java', his romanticised description of cheap instant coffee — comprised his breakfast, he decided this conversation had run its useful course.
'You'd certainly see a lot of cricket grounds,' he said, before resuming his hiding place behind the thick, heavy type of the morning broadsheet.
As my junior cricket career developed, there was not the slightest suggestion this aspiration would be fulfilled. In fact, my playing prowess threatened to take me nowhere other than the outfield. Cutting my run-up by around ninety-eight per cent, a move that delivered no discernible loss of bowling speed, and bolstering my batting repertoire to include a leg glance as well as a forward defensive prod, somehow landed me the captaincy of the town's under-fourteen team. But from there, the career path led unfailingly downhill.
Elevation to senior ranks at age fifteen meant I was forced to face grown men who bowled at speeds that seemed not far short of Dennis Lillee, and who also shared the Australian team's propensity for sledging. In one of my first A-grade outings, our team was copping another of our painfully regular whippings. Set around 800 runs to win off our allocated sixty-five overs, our top-order batsmen dug deep in the face of overwhelming adversity to lift our score creditably close to triple figures. But by the time I made my nervous appearance at the very tip of an extended tail, the opposition bowlers and fielders justifiably felt they were only one on-target delivery from victory. I strode to the middle with all the conviction of a vertiginous tightrope walker, where I was met by teammate 'Ted' Lange who, being a year ahead of me at school, took on the role of senior partner. Ted's assessment of our predicament was blunt yet bright.
'I guess we just hang around for as long as we can,' he suggested with a shrug of his shoulders.
The sight of two barely pubescent tailenders placing a pointless value on their wickets became a red rag to a bully. During the first fifteen minutes of our obstinacy, we were the targets of constant, if benign, chirping from surrounding fielders.
'If ya get out now, I'll give you both a lift to the pub and shout yuz...a Coke,' one heavily moustachioed opponent grinned.
But as our defiance yielded a couple of tentative boundaries, the other mob's humour dissipated.
'It's getting late, so why don't you little cunts fuck off home to bed,' a paunchy fielder wheezed as he stalked past.
The other mob's star player, a former South Australian Sheffield Shield all-rounder and notoriously combative grade cricket curmudgeon, then took it upon himself to end our upstart resistance. He resorted to bowling over after over of 'donkey drops', cloud-seeding full tosses that lobbed in a steepling arc so as to fall almost vertically on the batsman from a huge height. Difficult to bowl, they were even harder to hit. The only foolproof way to negate them was to crouch over the stumps, as if vomiting out of a window. You then braced yourself for the inevitable thump between the shoulderblades, as a 160-gram leather-encased missile hurtled from the troposphere.
Ted and I decided against this tactic, partly because of its lack of aesthetic appeal, and partly because it seemed as far removed from the essence of cricket as bowling the bloody things in the first place. Instead, we swatted and swung, as if trying to sweep away raindrops before they reached the ground, until Ted eventually toppled his stumps in the process. Mission accomplished, our tormentor turned on his heel, snatched his cap from the umpire, and made a bee-line for his car.
Entire books have been penned about the rapier-like on-field repartee that's passed between cricketers down the years. Nobody I played against seemed to have read them. In the heat of battle, you copped plenty of abrasive character slurs, but rarely any Wildean wit. And the notion of cricket at any level being a bastion of fair play and gentlemanly fellowship has long been as much a quaint relic of the past as Dennis Lillee's facial hair. The Australian way has long been that winning takes precedence over all else.
That's why, when regularly criticised for their ugly on-field demeanour, indignant Australian teams point to the cricket culture in which they were raised. Their 'gamesmanship', or 'mental disintegration' as it became euphemistically known, was explained away as a product of the playing apprenticeship that all budding Australian cricketers served. The mantra was: 'Be as unpleasant as you want during playing hours, then slap the target of your invective on the back at day's end and remind them all's fair on the field of combat.' Unfortunately, over the decades, Australian teams have struggled to grasp that this philosophy isn't universally shared. And as the game outgrew rubber-spiked batting gloves and buckle-up pads, so too did rivals' preparedness to silently endure sustained, sometimes personal abuse that the perpetrators often dismissively scoffed should simply be washed away at day's end by a cold beer. Or a glass of Coke.
By the time I turned twenty-one, I was in possession of dual careers that offered equal futility. On summer weekends, it was fielding. On the days between, it was in the teller's box at a local savings bank, a job that saw about as much diurnal variation as a Beijing barber. Even though it provided enough money to regularly re-sole my cricket shoes, there was no hiding the fact that my interest leaned more towards words than numbers. And that my sporting talents were better suited to watching than playing. So in a reversal of accepted employment protocols — causing my long-suffering mother further angst — I quit my job and my cricket and set about applying to study journalism at university.
Two-thirds through my three-year Bachelor's degree, I was offered a cadetship with The Advertiser, Adelaide's metropolitan morning newspaper. Among my first chores on the cadet roster was a three-month stint in the sports department, collating pigeon-racing results and negotiating the vipers' nest that is mid-week ladies' bowls. But in observing my senior colleagues, I also realised that sports writing provided a guaranteed leave-pass from the office. In the days preceding blanket live television coverage of even the most trite sporting events, writing about sport could only be meaningfully carried out by attending sports venues.
This became a powerful drawcard, given that I had not entered journalism with a burning need to change the world. I just wanted to see it. And in the increasingly desk-bound culture of modern newspapers, sports writing offered a rare professional licence to work and live remotely. Very remotely, as it turned out. This enticement, married with my undimmed interest in cricket, became the thin thread that linked subsequent career moves to the wire service, and then to The Australian, the national daily broadsheet.
That's where my first genuine opportunity arose. And as with the brief Hong Kong excursion, it came through attrition, rather than acumen. Early in 1998, Australia's cricketers were in the midst of another sixteen-month, non-stop touring stint that had begun in India, then taken them around Australia, to South Africa, an Ashes campaign in England, followed by another Australian summer. A return bout in India loomed, but before then a four-match limited-overs series in New Zealand had been thoughtfully shoehorned into the schedule.
Even though Australia's selectors had acknowledged the issue of excessive player workload by introducing distinct teams for the Test and limited-overs formats, they had been unable to prevent a raft of battle-weary cricketers falling by the wayside throughout the course of a gruelling home season. Consequently, the squad that freshly installed limited-overs captain Stephen Waugh led to New Zealand contained the bare minimum of twelve players, and included off-spinner Gavin Robertson, who had been virtually hauled from Sydney grade cricket to make up the numbers. I was similarly plucked from obscurity to fill in for The Australian's chief cricket writer, Malcolm 'Big Mal' Conn, whose travel fatigue helped him form the sensible view that our newspaper should mirror the game's evolution by nurturing separate Test match and limited-overs correspondents. I happily volunteered my services as the one to follow the coloured-clothes version.
While the New Zealand assignment featured proper matches with eleven players per side competing on turf pitches, and covered by a press corps of greater than one, it was also distinguished by the calibre of players not taking part. Remaining in Australia to nurse ailments from the summer just gone, or nurse their pain at exclusion from the one-day squad just named, were Shane Warne, Glenn McGrath, Jason Gillespie, Mark Taylor and Ian Healy. The recast touring party did include Mark Waugh, who I studiously avoided as we made our way through an almost deserted Christchurch Airport on arrival. It proved a shrewd move, not because the 'Julios' once again had me in their cross-hairs. Rather, it enabled me to bypass a lengthy delay as the Australian batsman was instructed by New Zealand customs officials to remove grass and dirt residue from his cricket shoes lest they be a repository for caltrop. It wasn't the only additional baggage he was carrying. With Warne's late scratching, Mark Waugh had been installed as Australia's vice-captain.
On day one, to help acclimatise to the crisp, clear South Island climate, the entire touring party was invited by local cricket officials to a barbecue lunch and a round of golf at Christchurch's famous Shirley Links. As exclusive as it was impeccable, the Christchurch Golf Club offered the cricketers, as VIP guests, gratis use of its heavily tree-lined fairways and lovingly clipped greens. Journalists could also play, provided we each stumped up the $100 green fee. And waited half an hour after the players teed off, so as to eliminate any risk of the rival parties' paths crossing. We collectively agreed to forego the golf.
The reason the media was allowed to intrude in the first place was the staging of a low-key press conference under the eaves of the mock-Tudor clubhouse's pitched roof. Stephen Waugh immediately seized the opportunity to quash any speculative leadership aspirations his new deputy might be harbouring.
'I waited a long time to become captain of Australia,' he said, with the barest hint of a smile when asked if he might consider sitting out one of the upcoming matches to give his brother a go at the helm.
Undaunted, Mark ventured that he was ready for the challenge in the event that one of his twin's notoriously brittle hamstrings was to snap during the tournament. Quizzed further on the extent of his captaincy experience, Mark conceded it did not extend past junior ranks at the family's Sydney grade club, Bankstown.
'That was under-twelves, mate,' Stephen riposted. 'That should hold you in real good stead.'
As fate would have it, one of Stephen's hamstrings did give way as the result of a mid-pitch collision with an opponent. But it happened in the final match of the tour, which meant he remained true to his word. His brother's Australian captaincy aspirations were never realised.
Conscious not to cramp the players on or off the golf course, the four-man Australian press corps opted to take our complimentary lunch at an outdoor table bathed in gentle late-summer Cantabrian sunshine. Out of the blue, we were joined by the Australian captain, who approached bearing a plate groaning with sausages and salad. Under Stephen Waugh's stewardship, Australian cricket was embracing a new era. For starters, the players' partners had been invited to join the New Zealand sojourn, which represented a seismic shift away from more than a century of cricket tradition. It was a revolution that had been canvassed under Mark Taylor, but it seemed family-friendly tours were being formalised by his successor. There had been no prior warning, however, that the brave new world extended as far as voluntarily sharing a meal with the press.
Stephen explained that, from the outset of his captaincy, he wanted to cultivate a convivial working relationship with the cricket media. He lamented as unfair and inaccurate the press's stereotyping of him as taciturn and aloof. Over lunch, he also addressed his distaste for golf, his passion for photography, and a genuine curiosity about the discipline and demands of writing for daily newspapers. He considered himself something of a kindred spirit, due to the success of his recent series of published tour diaries. In turn, we were surprised to find the manuscripts for those books were churned out in long-hand. Australian cricket may have chosen him to lead it into the twenty-first century, but Stephen Waugh was a staunch traditionalist, and not about to embrace such trappings of modernity as the laptop computer.
Had our get-together taken place at tour's end rather than at its beginning, the chat would doubtless have centred on the issue that came to dog him across New Zealand, and then confound him throughout his six-year captaincy. That being idiot spectators who found entertainment in using cricketers as target practice. His views on player safety were well known prior to arriving in Christchurch, but events during the second match in Wellington set Stephen Waugh on a campaign that led him to challenge cricket's custodians, as well as law and order officials, to address a blight that was also to cause him heartburn in Australia, in England, and, most dramatically, in the West Indies.
Wellington's premier cricket venue, the Basin Reserve, is a grass-banked, English-style ground ringed by white pickets and plonked smack in the centre of one of the world's largest traffic islands. While the Windy City's commuters skirt the ground's perimeter, the icy breeze that howls off Wellington Harbour slices a path straight through the middle. Perhaps it was the biting wind that sent the local fans skittish as their team faced defeat for the second consecutive match of the mini-series. It was more likely the standard cocktail of beer and boorishness that accounted for the stupidity that began early on game day, and became more stupid as the afternoon progressed.
While batting, Mark Waugh was grabbed from behind by a pitch invader who vaulted onto the field and charged towards the middle in full view of 12,000 spectators, but who was apparently invisible to a dozen or more motionless security personnel. Worse followed when the Australians took to the field. Those lucky enough to be stationed close to the centre only copped abuse, although four golf balls did find their way to the pitch's edge. Mark Waugh, a far keener golfer than his brother, contemplated slipping them into his pocket, until closer inspection revealed the missiles were as damaged and useless as the folk who launched them. It was those Australians occupying the fielding outposts who bore the brunt. Food scraps, pieces of fruit, and any other available detritus was flung until the Basin Reserve surface resembled the aftermath of a trailer park tornado. Stuart Law heard a glass sauce bottle whistle past his head, about the same time as his career flashed before his eyes.
At the post-match media conference, Stephen Waugh unloaded on cricket officialdom for its unwillingness to acknowledge, let alone tackle, this straightforward workplace safety issue. In challenging authorities to make a stand before someone was badly hurt, he stressed the problem was more endemic to one-day cricket than to New Zealand. That's despite its South Island university city of Dunedin gaining infamy for an incident years earlier when Australian bowler Greg Matthews dodged a toilet seat flung from the bleachers. And while fielding in front of the notoriously raucous western stand at Auckland's Eden Park, Michael Bevan once felt a hefty thud on the ground nearby, and turned to find an intact, frozen flounder staring up at him.
By the eve of the final match in Auckland, the Wellington uprising remained the only story of significance to have emerged from the tour. Even that excited about as much interest from sports editors, preparing to welcome a new football season, as it did among cricket's ruling bodies. As was the case in Hong Kong, I had failed to announce my arrival as a serious cricket writer to the newspaper's decision-makers back in Sydney. There was little danger of my byline becoming a household name, even in my own home. Then, on the penultimate day, I received an early-morning phone call from my boss, a Northern Irishman whose deeply held, old-school newspaper ethics included a fierce loyalty to his staff working on the road. He was on the hunt for a back-page 'splash' for the weekend paper, that section's lead story regarded as pole position within the fraternity. Sports writers rate coverage on the back page as far more prestigious than the front.
'Mayut,' he began in his lilting Belfast brogue, 'I've harrd a whusper that Steve Waugh might be lookin' at playin' cricket in Oirland next yearr. Might be worth checkin' out.'
In light of the already absurdly overcrowded international playing schedule, I suspected it was not much more than gossip. But I respected the boss's judgement. Plus, it carried the prospect of a back page byline and that position's accompanying credit points. So I phoned the skipper in his room. These were, after all, the last days of cricket teams travelling without a dedicated media officer to act as the first and final point of obstruction for journalists chasing access to players.
Stephen Waugh's phone was diverted to the hotel switchboard operator, who helpfully, if indiscreetly, told me the Australian captain had blocked all incoming inquiries after a local breakfast radio host had woken him with a prank call some time prior to dawn. I hadn't even had a chance to run my rumour past him and already I had inadvertently stumbled across a possible yarn. I could already see the headline: 'Kiwis Declare Waugh as DJ Puts Aussies in Spin'.
Sensing my luck might finally be in, I bolted to the hotel lobby to see if any other similarly loose-lipped staff might know of the captain's whereabouts. As I jumped out of the lift, Stephen Waugh and his wife, Lynette, slipped quietly in. I furiously waved my left arm between the rapidly closing doors to impede their escape, and by the time I joined them and spent six floors scouring my pockets for a notebook and pen, Stephen was in no doubt that I was chasing an interview. His wife simply thought I was deranged.
Standing in the corridor outside his hotel room, he confirmed that the Irish Cricket Union had indeed approached him, and that he was seriously mulling over the offer.
'There are still a few things to consider, but I'll probably make a final decision next week,' he said.
That was all I needed to get me in the paper. I returned to my room, chuffed at unearthing a couple of passable stories in the space of fifteen minutes, while exerting little more effort than pressing the phone keypad and the lift call button.
My sports editor must have been equally impressed by my diligence at writing his story, which duly filled a hole on the back page. That's because, upon my return to Adelaide, he offered me a transfer to the paper's Melbourne office. Australia's self-proclaimed sporting capital, Melbourne is to the nation's sports hacks what Washington is to political junkies, and what London is to the sunlight averse. In addition, there was the possibility that I might be installed as the paper's auxiliary cricket correspondent. To oversee coverage of the Australian team when and where they donned the yellow pants. On sharing this news with a friend I was told, for the first of countless times over coming years, I had just scored the world's best job.
#
# Australian Summer 1998–99
'You're the Michael Bevan of journalism,' chortled one of my new colleagues, upon learning my specialty was to be fifty-over cricket.
'You'll probably never meet Mark Taylor...but you might get invited to Brendon Julian's wedding,' another chirped, highlighting the new selection policy that meant Australia's Test and one-day teams featured markedly different personnel.
Gone was the previously accepted wisdom that the nation's foremost eleven cricketers were the best choice for both long and short versions of the game. Come the end of the twentieth century, Australia fielded two distinct teams. Those deemed to be lacking flamboyance — Taylor, Healy, and Justin Langer — were deemed TMOs (Test Matches Only). Those whose talents resembled the local pub buffet — a little bit of everything, but nothing too elaborate, such as Julian, Shane Lee and Ian Harvey — were pigeon-holed as one-day specialists. And for their sins, were forced to appear in public clad head to toe in hectic yellow.
Those demarcation lines weren't so strictly enforced in my new office, so I was free to turn my hand to 'real cricket' issues, as required. And in the summer of 1998–99, there was no shortage of real stories. Players taking money from bookmakers. Players taking industrial and legal action. Players taking a tumble, on the field and in seedy nightclubs. There even emerged a most undignified class president-style national popularity contest between Stephen Waugh and Shane Warne to try and sway opinions on who should take over from Taylor as Australia's fortieth Test captain.
As a result, cricket became a favoured discussion topic at daily editorial conferences, even among those senior editors who knew little of the sport other than its strong following among readers, and therefore advertisers. 'National sport, national paper' was how one of the more intuitive executives once described the nexus between our paper and cricket. With the Australian Test team touring Pakistan, where many suspected the match-fixing scandal that was sullying cricket's reputation was rooted, the combination of international sport, celebrities, corruption and sex — the latter, in this case, referring to gender — were ingredients thought too spicy to be restricted to the sports pages. So no sooner had I arrived at work one Tuesday morning than I received a call from a features boss delivering an edict from the paper's editor, who had earlier pronounced that any journalist who could not research, draft and produce a decent full-page feature article in less than a day belonged, like hot-metal type and understatement, to a bygone newspaper era. And it was a full-page, 1,000-word feature for the next day's paper that was needed.
In true modern newspaper style, whereby the demand for immediate content took precedence over detailed research and quality writing, it was an idea constructed from reverse logic. The editor had burst into the morning conference having learned, to his undisguised amazement, that one of the most fearless inquisitors delving into the subcontinental bookmakers' affair was not only a highly respected Pakistani journalist, but also a woman. The article, therefore, became an adjunct to the image the boss had already decided would illustrate it.
'This is a great yarn,' he ranted, as the acolytes around the conference table nodded in sage agreement. 'A woman is showing the guts to take on the elitist, male world of cricket and expose the sport for what it is. So we need to get a photo of her. With her face covered by a veil. Only her smouldering, dark eyes showing. Steely with resolve. It'll be a great image.'
One of the more worldly among the coterie, aware that not all Pakistani women conformed to ultra-conservative traditional dress standards, summoned the courage to pipe up: 'but there's a good chance she might not even be in purdah.'
'I don't care where she is,' the boss exploded. 'I just want someone to track her down and get a photo.'
That someone was me and, over the ensuing hours, I exhausted my limited pool of cricket contacts to find the woman in question — Fareshteh Gati-Aslam, coordinating editor of Karachi's biggest-selling English-language newspaper, News on Sunday. As hard as I tried, I just could not make the truth fit the prefabricated premise of an oppressed Muslim woman engaged in a life-and-death struggle to expose the dark forces corrupting cricket, while at the same time battling the inequalities foisted upon women climbing the corporate ladder in an Islamic republic.
Given I was yet to set foot on the subcontinent, Fareshteh helpfully pointed out that female sports reporters in that part of the world largely enjoyed far greater acceptance and equality than many of their Australian women counterparts. She even agreed to pose for the freelance photographer we had commissioned for the much-awaited picture — in her sleeveless, saffron-coloured salwar kameez and matching dupatta, revealing more flesh than most of her Australian newsroom contemporaries would, and without a trace of headwear, Islamic or otherwise. I attributed the lack of recriminations when the story appeared next morning to a managerial attention span that rarely outlived the twenty-four-hour news cycle.
There are other occasions, however, when prescriptive is the only option. Like Boxing Day's traditional, mawkish front-page picture story extracted from the Australian team's annual players' Christmas luncheon. There was a time, I was assured, when this event crackled with the spirit of the season. A revealing snapshot of a cricketer's life outside the game. Confirmation they owned clothes other than creams and tracksuits. Family album glimpses of wives and girlfriends, in the days before they became a sideshow in their own right.
By the time I happened upon this ritual on Christmas morning, 1998, it had already begun its degeneration into just another contrived media opportunity. A handful of journalists mingled awkwardly as unimpressed waiters skulked around the edges of the inner-Melbourne hotel meeting room set aside for the charade. Even the free drinks added to my sense of unease. What was the etiquette for attending someone else's party at 11 a.m. on a Friday? Champagne would appear too celebratory. Beer a touch desperate. Mineral water a tad puritanical. I opted for adult, yet professional, and asked for a dry ginger ale. The young waiter scanned the selection of already opened bottles, snorted his contempt, and then dragged himself indignantly towards the kitchen, never to re-emerge.
The players with young children filed slowly into the room and self-consciously unwrapped specially provided gifts for the benefit of television crews that lurched from scene to scene in a tangle of cables and confected urgency in search of the cheesiest pictures to sit alongside vision of local church services, foreign backpackers at Bondi Beach, and grabs from the Queen's Message that perennially fill Christmas night TV news bulletins.
Several of the younger, childless players attempted to melt into the background with their ill-at-ease partners. Some declined to front at all. Michael Slater and his wife, Stephanie, wore matching headbands from which miniature pairs of felt-covered reindeer antlers waved, and were the only ones to actively court the cameras. The remainder of the gathering carried looks most often seen at an office farewell. The ones where people cling to the walls, push a slice of too-much-mock-cream sponge cake around a saucer, and anxiously await handover of the gift and plus-sized card so they can return to the refuge of their desks. We were all there for no reason other than we had to be and, accordingly, struggled with the pretence that we were partaking of a spontaneous outbreak of Yuletide celebration.
'It's just what you get used to, and for the past ten years this has been the reality of Christmas for our family,' Judi Taylor, wife of the incumbent Test captain, observed as she sipped orange juice, her eyes fixed on sons William and Jack, who were insistently whispering to their father. Doubtless unnerved by the intrusion of three camera crews jostling to get in their faces. 'People ask me if it's a nuisance to pack up the boys every year and have Christmas away from home in Sydney. But it's all they've known. They're just getting to that age where they're asking the question themselves. I tell them, "If Daddy's not working in Melbourne, it means he hasn't got a job. And that means he isn't earning any money for Christmas."'
She respectfully declined to speculate on whether that scenario might change next year. Taylor was expected to announce his retirement at the end of that summer's Ashes series, but his wife was far too media savvy to let any hint of his intentions slip to a journalist who kept peering over her shoulder towards the kitchen in the vain hope his soft drink might emerge.
Even when Taylor did stand down two weeks later, it only served to stoke greater conjecture as to who would fill his shoes. As the one-day team's leader, Stephen Waugh carried the favour of legitimate bookmakers. But when injury once again forced him to the sidelines during the limited-overs series that followed the Ashes, Warne seized the chance to push his case.
In keeping with his mesmeric bowling talents, there were times when Warne's life was utterly unfathomable. He had begun the summer of 1998–99 in a fog of self-doubt, publicly wondering whether his recovery from recent shoulder surgery would allow him to return to international cricket. While still completing his rehabilitation, it was revealed he had accepted $US5,000 from an illegal bookmaker in Sri Lanka four years earlier. Then, a month later, he was at his brilliant best, leading Australia to a one-day tournament victory and whipping his players into a frenzy of self-belief with his football-style captaincy built on inspirational on-field deeds. At one point, he even played the unlikely diplomat, emerging from the MCG change rooms like a pantomime hero clad in tracksuit pants, polo shirt, sandals and protective helmet to call for an end to another bout of missile throwing from drunken fans, which threatened to curtail a match against England. It was a symbolic moment. Warne revelled in the role of people's champion. The populist underdog.
However, Australia's cricket administrators did not share his love of a punt. And it would have taken a huge leap of faith to install him as their next Test captain, a position that stands alone on the Australian sporting landscape for its hybrid of statesman and sportsman. With the game already lurching from one crisis to the next, Warne was seen as simply too high risk. His ability to court off-field controversy countered his unquestioned talents with a cricket ball. Regular appearances in the tabloid gossip pages were not the look Australians wanted in their loftiest sporting office. Unless you could successfully show you had resolutely changed your ways, as Ricky Ponting later proved able to do.
Raw talent had seen Ponting hailed as the Australian game's future, even before he made his first Test appearance as a twenty-year-old. But the assumption that he would inevitably rise to the top job came into question at the height of that summer's captaincy debate when he was struck by a bouncer in Sydney. Not in the heat of battle, but in the swill of a Kings Cross nightclub. Ponting met the enforcer, a one-time rugby league professional, when he angrily objected to being refused another drink in the pre-dawn hours following a day-night match at the SCG. That's all Ponting can remember, with the bouncer's intervention and unconsciousness following one another in rapid succession.
Not even journalists frequent sordid nightspots at that hour of the morning, so the misdemeanour remained a carefully concealed secret for two days. But Australian cricket officials have no idea how close that story came to being splashed across the national broadsheet long before they chose to go public. Sadly, but not altogether surprisingly, the journalist into whose lap the yarn almost landed was similarly clueless. I was at the reception desk of our Sydney hotel at the same time the cricketers' bus was preparing to depart for the airport. Alongside me stood the Australian team manager on the house phone to a nameless member of the squad, who was still obviously holed up in his room.
'Well, quick as you can, mate, everyone's in the bus. And we're already supposed to be on the road,' the exasperated official muttered, eyes squeezed shut, his left elbow resting on the counter as he slowly massaged his temples with thumb and middle finger.
With just a waft of perspicacity, a tincture of curiosity, I could have established that something was seriously amiss. All it needed was for me to plant myself in a lobby chair opposite the bank of lifts and wait for the errant cricketer to appear. Even if the shabby demeanour of the youngest member of the Australian team didn't appear suspiciously out of place, the crescent-shaped purple bruise that was blossoming beneath his left eye would have provided at least one vital clue.
Instead, my finely honed journalistic instincts, coupled with my own urgent need to catch a morning flight, led me to conclude the manager was simply on the case of another tardy cricketer who had dallied too long over his morning toast and coffee. At no stage did it cross my inquiring mind that he was, instead, already piecing together a strategy to deal with a concussed, hungover, sleep-deprived batting prodigy whose immediate playing future was suddenly as clouded as his judgement. Well, it did occur to me. Two days later, when a chastened and battered Ponting was paraded before a media conference in Hobart to admit he suffered from an alcohol problem.
My need to nurture some meaningful contacts within the cricket team, and across the wider cricket world, thus became as painfully obvious as Ponting's shiner. Those who knew such things told me the only way to successfully and regularly break stories was to have at least one reliable source willing to pass on information from within the playing group, one at the selection table, and one inside the Australian Cricket Board Room. As things stood, I was hard pressed getting a nod of recognition from the team scorer.
The job was much simpler when political upheaval, personal spats and outbreaks of violence unfolded on the field of play in full view of everyone. For all of those to surface in the course of a single afternoon would have been unheard of until that fractious summer finally blew its lid on a typically stifling January day in Adelaide. Ross Emerson, an investigator with Western Australia's Ministry for Fair Trading who, in his spare time, also served as an international cricket umpire, sparked the mayhem when he publicly outed Sri Lanka's record-breaking off-spinner Muttiah Muralitharan as a chucker. For the next seventy-two hours, international cricket wobbled violently, and almost fell clean off its axis. It wasn't quite match-fixing, but it was a fairly serious case of muscle-flexing.
In judging that Muralitharan bent the rules by straightening his arm, Emerson triggered an unprecedented risk to cricket's governance. Sri Lankan captain Arjuna Ranatunga responded by threatening to take his team not just off the field that afternoon, but out of the country. Their match against England then stalled for a quarter of an hour while urgent peace talks took place boundary-side. Upon resumption, the match degenerated into an unedifying display of finger-pointing, name-calling and shoulder-charging. There was even an attempted head butt. Central to much of this unpleasantness was Ranatunga, which prompted his rival skipper, Alec Stewart, to famously scold from behind the stumps, 'Your conduct today has been appalling for a country's captain.'
Ranatunga duly faced five charges under the International Cricket Council's code of behaviour. They were to be heard at Adelaide Oval's administration offices two days after the match, which had already entered cricket folklore as the most bad-tempered and distasteful since England's Bodyline tactics had threatened to incite mob violence at the same venue sixty-five years earlier.
The passage of thirty-six hours had failed to quell inflamed nationalistic passions when the hearing convened. Several Sri Lankan supporters positioned themselves outside the Oval's entrance gates, and posed for photographers and camera crews as they shouted, sang and waved a large cardboard placard daubed with the words 'Free Arjuna, Hang Emerson'. As far as protests go, it would not have looked out of place at The Hague's International Criminal Court, rather than a response to a cricket umpire's call of 'no-ball'. But as events over ensuing days confirmed, this matter had evolved into far more than a regulation code of conduct hearing.
Adding to the melodrama was the mysterious decision to adjourn the Adelaide inquisition and have it reconvened the following evening in Perth, the site of Sri Lanka's next match. When that in-camera four-hour session subsequently wound up on a hot, still Thursday night, the story only became stranger. Instead of copping the six-match ban that most believed was the minimum penalty he deserved, Ranatunga emerged with a suspended sentence and a fine of seventy-five per cent of his match fee. Around $160. The verdict was delivered by ashen-faced match referee, South African Peter van der Merwe, who read a brief statement and took no questions, due to legal constraints.
The players and officials who had sat around for hours at the hearing before being dismissed without a word of evidence being heard made little attempt to hide their fury. I was similarly unimpressed. Not because of the verdict, but due to the conspicuous lack of detail as to how it was reached. Editors are notoriously intolerant of reporters telling them 'but that's all I could find out'. So on my return to our hotel, I was thrilled to be singled out by an Australian Cricket Board official who motioned frantically from a table in the foyer bar.
'What did you write about the hearing for tomorrow's paper?' he asked, as if shooting the evening Fremantle breeze. He showed no surprise when I told him my commentary was minimal, and I was not looking forward to the imminent call demanding a more substantial follow-up for the next day.
'There's a lot of people in world cricket who are seriously pissed off by the way this has played out,' he whispered, glancing furtively around. 'Nobody can comment about it publicly. But if you were to receive a full off-the-record briefing on what took place in that hearing room, there would be nothing to stop you from writing it. Someone who was present for the whole thing will be having a drink in the bar in a few minutes. Might be worth joining him.'
I tried to exude a George Smiley-esque air of insouciance as I sauntered to the bar and ordered a gin and tonic. But the sudden appearance of my informant set off a fit of anxiety that saw me snatch a glass of neat spirit and a bowl of rice crackers from the startled barman, and attract the attention of most patrons as I hustled to our rendezvous juggling a drink, notebook and dictaphone, leaving a trail of bar snacks in my wake.
Still angry from the night's events, the official overlooked my state of unpreparedness. He focused, instead, on the details of how the Sri Lankans had used the hearing's adjournment in Adelaide to engage a couple of well-heeled Melbourne lawyers, even though legal representatives had in the past been excluded from hearings that dealt with on-field indiscretions. That's because the guidelines that govern cricket are laws in name alone. If the wigged ones got involved, a restraint of trade would be lodged each time a batsman was incorrectly given out, and bowlers' appeals would echo all the way to the High Court.
The legal eagles zeroed in on van der Merwe's hopelessly compromised dual role as the case's prosecutor and adjudicator. They challenged, on a legal technicality, the legitimacy of damning umpires' reports that cited Ranatunga for intimidation, among other charges. And van der Merwe himself was accused of bias because of public comments he made earlier in the tournament when he had conceded Muralitharan possessed 'an unusual' bowling action. They argued the charges should be thrown out and threatened that, if they were pursued and Ranatunga was banned, the tour would be immediately abandoned.
But their trump card was the assertion that the ICC code of conduct, the manifesto to which every playing member of the Council — Sri Lanka included — had willingly subscribed, was legally flawed and would not survive a court challenge. In short, if Ranatunga was suspended, the matter would be before Australia's Federal Court within hours, and an injunction gained to ensure he could continue playing. Van der Merwe knew there was no point imposing a suspension because the code of conduct that Ranatunga was accused of breaching had been written by cricketers, for cricketers. It was a gentleman's agreement, not an enforceable contract and, as such, would collapse under court scrutiny. And once this cornerstone of the game's on-field disciplinary framework was demolished, other pillars that it unsteadily supported would also begin to crumble.
In the end, all the referee could do was make his muted point by imposing the maximum six-match ban but, like a condemned man shouting from the gallows 'justice will be done', he had no choice but to make a mockery of the process by suspending that sentence. Ranatunga had beaten the charges and, in doing so, exposed the archaic spirit of cricket for being as real and as contemporary as Jacob Marley.
With the mystery of the disappearing punishment neatly solved, I returned to my room around midnight and fired off a note to my sports editor in Sydney, to make sure he was aware that I had worked doggedly through the night chasing down every available detail. And that, thanks to investigative journalistic skills hitherto unknown to both of us, I would be filing, when I arose, a forensically assembled account of how Sri Lanka's captain had slipped the noose. I selectively omitted that all I had done to piece together this information was make sure the rattling of ice cubes didn't impinge on the audio quality of the interview.
Stephen Waugh was sitting at home, tuned into an episode of Sesame Street, when he received a phone call confirming he had been appointed as Australia's next Test captain. Around the same time, I was hunched over an ironing board in my Melbourne flat, trying to eradicate the creases embedded in much of my wardrobe following a summer of suitcase living, when I received similarly joyful news. Obviously impressed by my unravelling of the Ranatunga case, the boss wanted me to head to the West Indies at the end of Australia's four-Test series there, and assume the paper's coverage for the ensuing seven-match one-day tournament. And then follow the team through to England for its 1999 World Cup campaign. All up, three months on the road.
Waugh's promotion represented the hard-won achievement of a lifelong ambition. For me, being part of a cricket tour to the Caribbean and Great Britain was the realisation of a similarly cherished childhood dream. I danced an ungainly jig, punched the air in silent exultation, and snapped back to reality too late to prevent a dark scorch mark being seared into the sleeve of a white T-shirt. Images and words from formative years spent studying every available cricket publication came swirling back in such a violent cascade that I had to take a seat lest they knock me down.
The glossy black-and-white plates incorporated in hard-backed, serious cricket texts hidden away in cardboard cartons in my grandfather's woodworking shed. The smell of damp sawdust, and the delicate curls of wood shavings that crunched underfoot as I carefully lifted each musty volume from its resting place, and scanned the images, scattered like treasure amid the yellowing pages of unfathomable text. Of Lindwall and Harvey, Trueman and Cowdrey, with their heavy high-cut boots, long-sleeved cable-knit jumpers and quaintly captioned deeds ('Benaud turns to leg as England's slips cordon looks on'). All played out in front of ordered terraces of attentive spectators, clad in gabardine overcoats and smart fedoras at venues with mysteriously reverential names — Old Trafford, Trent Bridge, The Oval — that could not be found in any atlas.
The parade of monthly magazines that filled so many secluded schoolboy hours through the height of summer and the depths of winter. Their tales of rum-soaked spectators jammed into the heaving grandstands at Sabina Park and Bourda, with even larger crowds clustered around the adjoining market street stalls, and clinging to precarious vantage points beyond the perimeter fences. The giddy combination of romanticism and athleticism conveyed by action photographs of lissom cricketers bearing grandly baroque names — Vanburn Holder, Uton Dowe, Raphick Jumadeen.
Amid the tumble of dislodged memories, and the early pangs of doubt as to my ability to carry off such a mission, was a nagging need to share my news with someone. Not just someone, but with my dad. Surely making good my pre-pubescent threat to be part of an Australian cricket tour to the Old Dart would excite in him the same thrill and pride that coursed through me. But he had long stopped taking calls. Hounded by the dual demons of addiction and self-loathing, he had opted out of our shared future just weeks after I'd turned twenty-one. A lifetime of moments not yet shared atomised in a cloud of exhaust smoke and unanswered questions. The remnants folded neatly into a brown paper bag that I collected, along with a putrid Datsun sedan and a precisely measured length of garden hose, from the local police station one mid-winter Sunday morning. The light had been forever extinguished.
#
# West Indies, April 1999
In the Jet Age, it's not unreasonable to assume that if you travel virtually non-stop for forty-eight hours in vaguely one direction, you'll likely end up fairly close to where you started. Either that, or in the Caribbean. It's hard to imagine anywhere being as remote from somewhere else as the West Indies. But the benefit of long-hauling from Melbourne to Bangkok, to London Heathrow, to London Gatwick, to Barbados, and finally to Antigua was the opportunity to consider, at length, how I might best tackle the upcoming eighty-four-day assignment. And how to better survive the homeward leg.
Mild tranquillisers were the obvious answer to the latter. The puzzle of the former was not so simply solved. That was largely due to the conspicuous lack of pre-departure briefings, warnings or handy hints from my employer. Apart from repeatedly stressing the newspaper's significant financial outlay to have me cover two limited-overs cricket tournaments in opposite corners of the North Atlantic, the only direct input from my superiors was 'make sure you send an overnight news list outlining what you'll be writing for the next day, so we can take it into morning editorial conference'. In other words, this is how you can make life easier for us. In terms of information flow, it was a strictly one-way street.
Through contacts at the Australian Cricket Board, I had secured a list of the team's hotels and as much detail of the itinerary as could be planned, and passed them on to the newspaper's travel consultants. In return, head office sent me a reconditioned laptop days before departure, with assurances that it had been configured so I could file copy directly to the sports desk from anywhere in the world. Apart from that, not a single discussion on how to maximise returns from this exorbitant investment. No meetings to go through their expectations and demands. Even less dialogue about how best to overcome unexpected technology glitches, communications breakdowns, travel disruptions, or possible internment.
'Hope it all goes well. And don't forget to write,' was the knee-slapping advice from the newly appointed sports editor as I scurried about collecting vaccinations, visas and every configuration of electrical and phone plug adaptors known to humankind. The most useful intelligence, as ever, came from fellow cricket writers, many of them competitors who had undertaken tours for rival publications.
'Don't bother about the calendar because there's only two sorts of days on tour — playing days and non-playing days,' one advised.
'Make sure you don't become separated from the team, even if they change their travel plans at the last minute,' forewarned another. 'If you do and a big story breaks when you're not with them, just save yourself the grief that will follow by resigning on the spot.'
And most pragmatically, for filing 'live' stories documenting events that continue to unfold through the Australian night after the next morning's paper has gone to print, 'only write what you've seen, because historical facts can't change'. Even if it meant the copy people read next day was hours out of date, it was better than boldly predicting the future and rendering your publication an instant collectors' item. History best knows Boston's Christian Science Monitor for its plucky but unlucky 1912 headline 'Passengers Safely Moved and Steamer Titanic Taken in Tow' that appeared after the mighty liner had settled on the Atlantic floor.
In case we were unclear as to why so many made the epic trip to the Caribbean, it was spelled out in bold letters above V.C. Bird International Airport as we filed, zombie-like, across the tarmac. 'Welcome to Antigua, Home of 365 beaches — One for Every Day of the Year.' The marketing pitch even extended to the stamp banged into my passport by a bored immigration officer that cheerily proclaimed 'Antigua — The Beach is Just the Beginning'. This was not especially comforting news for those of us stricken with travel weariness who, after two sanity-sapping days of aircraft and airports, were praying to our respective gods that we had, in fact, reached the end.
Squinting into the harsh light of a cloudless afternoon, and sweating sourly into clothes that seemed so appropriate for the onset of a Melbourne autumn earlier in the week, I almost wept with relief when my battle-scarred brown suitcase made a belated appearance on the baggage trailer. It was a triumph not shared by my travelling companion and journalistic competitor for the coming three months, Robert 'Crash' Craddock. Although employed by the same media megapoly, Crash would be filing for rival daily metropolitan papers throughout Australia. In addition to being one of the world's foremost cricket writers, Crash was also one of nature's true gentlemen. Unfailingly good-natured and generous to a fault, he met the news of his misplaced luggage with admirable calm. Even allowing for his perpetually sunny Queensland disposition, I suspected this was more likely exhaustion than equanimity.
After an hour of waiting in vain hope for a sighting of the suitcase, we engaged the services of Marlon, a sinewy taxi driver whose appearance was as far removed from my preconception of a Caribbean cabbie as Crash's luggage was from BA Flight 2157. Instead of cut-off denim shorts, dreadlocks and tri-colour Rasta hat, he wore a crisply pressed sports shirt, fawn slacks and brown leather loafers. His huge grin revealed teeth that were emblematic of the West Indies itself. A disparate set of sovereign entities, loosely fitted together and, as became obvious when he worked over a wad of cinnamon-scented chewing gum, committed to pursuing their individual cause rather than the collective good. He could easily have eaten an apple through a tennis racquet.
My initial view of the West Indies from the back of Marlon's taxi became burned into my memory. Not because of any exotic beauty, but because I feared succumbing to sleep at that point might render me unconscious until the following Thursday. I studied, with eyes willed apart, through a window also fully opened to try and catch the recuperative nor'-easterly zipping in off Winthorpes Bay, the intermittent villages, scrubby, treeless hills and low-lying vegetation that gave the impression the biggest of the Leeward Islands was both unloved and uninspiring. But the signs pointing to its network of rugged coasts and protected coves, which once hosted slave traders and pirates, could have been lifted from Robert Louis Stevenson. Jolly Harbour. Runaway Bay. Betty's Hope. All that was missing was a hint of treasure, buried or otherwise.
I asked Marlon if the small, brightly coloured houses that flashed by, clustered in hamlets, were the retreats of Antigua's celebrity property owners, who supposedly included Giorgio Armani, Silvio Berlusconi and Oprah Winfrey. He laughed uproariously and told us we were unlikely to catch sight of any of the cashed-up, sun-seeking tourists — famous or not — while exploring the island's unremarkable interior. They stuck fast to their resorts and shoreside villas, and kept their gaze firmly fixed on the sea. Should the local tourist board wish to turn visitors' attention to what's on offer inland, they might consider a new slogan. Perhaps: 'Antigua — It's Behind You'.
As Marlon pulled into the driveway of our hilltop hotel, I was suddenly panicked into thinking I had somehow passed out long enough during the ride for him to have missed a turn-off and ferried us, instead, to the Greek islands. Whitewashed walls and a stone staircase that led to a line of bougainvillea-fringed rooms, the courtyard balconies of which looked out over an aquamarine sea which lapped half-heartedly at a stretch of bleached sand. A solitary thought consumed me as I stared, mesmerised, across Dickenson Bay. Sleep. But no amount of throat-clearing, impatient huffing or high-pitched wailing could summon a body to the reception desk. I had been forewarned about Caribbean efficiency.
'Most of their hotels offer twenty-four-hour room service,' Big Mal had once lamented. 'But sometimes it can take even longer.'
We eventually unearthed the staff, crowded into an otherwise empty dining room and gazing in mortal dread at a vintage television set. The squeals that accompanied our entrance were, thankfully, in response to the live telecast of the third Test in nearby Barbados, which had reached its critical juncture. These were the days when West Indians still expected their team to win cricket matches, largely because they could still call on the talents of match-winning cricketers. Two of those — Brian Lara and Courtney Walsh — were responsible for the break in service at the Trade Winds Hotel. The pair needed to find six runs to secure a West Indian victory. The Australians needed a wicket to achieve theirs. As Walsh was the least-credentialled batsman Test cricket had seen, the odds were with the tourists. But given the veneration afforded Lara's rare talents, providence sided with the locals.
Even for the terminally sleep-deprived, it was impossible not to get swept up in the emotion. A grey-haired gentleman in bib-and-brace denim overalls squeezed the hands of a member of the housekeeping staff as they nervously edged closer and closer to the screen. A young man with a clip-on bow tie covered his face with his hands as Jason Gillespie ran in to bowl, but then peeped through spread fingers at the moment of delivery. Each successful defensive push or studied leave was met with shrieks, flashing white grins, and heart-wrenching anxiety. I had not yet met any of these people, but I so wanted their team to triumph because it clearly meant everything to them. When Lara ended the suspense with a typically expansive boundary, the staff hugged, danced and cried. I would have joined in, but feared passing out amid the jubilation.
When I surfaced from my fifteen-hour nap, the hotel staff had resumed their duties and an influx of Australians, including the touring Test match press corps, were keeping them busy. Even though my tenure did not officially start until the final Test had ended, my colleague Malcolm Conn, whom I was relieving, suggested if I was in Antigua, I might as well be involved in the series decider. It was simply a matter of ensuring my freshly prepared laptop was match-ready. I may as well have been asked to find Crash's luggage.
The newspaper's computer experts, so intent on ensuring the machine was used only for work purposes that they had gone to the trouble of dismantling its Solitaire program, had also somehow missed the fact it was unable to transmit written material to Sydney from anywhere further afield than Perth. Its internal modem was incapable of holding an international telephone signal, and I could not dial into a local internet server because it had not been fitted with appropriate browser software — no doubt to prevent me trawling the worldwide web in search of online card games. I was essentially travelling with a five-kilogram electronic calculator. When I explained my predicament to Big Mal, he reassured me his machine had worked without a hitch during the first three Tests, and suggested I simply commandeer it at series end. Then he could escort my useless contraption back to where it had been built. A solution so seamless, it was bound to meet head office disapproval.
There was certainly no shortage of material to keep Big Mal, my paper's celebrated cricket columnist and press corps doyen Mike Coward, and me busy leading into the Antigua Test. And most of that fodder was provided by Shane Warne. Not only had he been overlooked for the captaincy, his effectiveness in Test cricket since returning from shoulder surgery was so blunted that his place in the starting XI was also uncertain. Rumours of a rift between Stephen Waugh and his deputy had surfaced so, in the absence of any verifiable evidence, the touring press decided to pool its expenses money and issue a dinner invitation to the Australian coach, Geoff Marsh, as well as the skipper and his lieutenant. The hope was that any existing tensions might spill into the public domain over a bite to eat and a couple of rum and colas.
Warne kept a conspicuous distance from his teammates as we assembled for pre-prandial drinks on the hotel's poolside terrace. For perhaps the only time in his career, he opted to mingle with journalists rather than his fellow celebrities. When it came time to be seated, Marsh and Waugh chose one end of the table for twenty that spanned the length of the portico, ceiling fan whirring ineffectively above them. Warne chose the opposite end, where the recent media arrivals and a couple of heavily sun-kissed photographers were seated. His unspoken hope was that talk at the shallow end would not extend to selection dilemmas for the upcoming Test.
Although facing the greatest on-field shake-up of his headline-studded Test career — he was dropped for the one and only time in Antigua — Warne was nothing if not pleasant, though clearly subdued, company that evening. The only time he spat it was when he bit into a dinner roll sprinkled with caraway. A mouthful of aniseed-infused bread was not what his notoriously unadventurous palate had anticipated. His green eyes bulged wide in horror, and his face contorted like a test pilot subjected to fifteen-plus g-forces. Opting not to discreetly swallow the morsel already in his mouth and avoid the remainder, he instead rasped up the barely chewed lump into a napkin. He then wrapped it hurriedly and frantically summoned a waiter.
'Dunno what they've put in that, pal,' he spluttered, handing over the parcel as if it contained an inexpertly wired bomb.
That was the end of Warne's dalliance with fine dining. He dismissed, out of hand, the menu's seafood delicacies, and instead suggested the chef might like to whip him up a bowl of spaghetti bolognaise. With a side of plain white bread. By contrast, Stephen Waugh's only concern was whether the press corps was indeed footing the entire bill. Upon learning that was the deal, he delighted in ordering a lobster entrée followed by a lobster main course. The Australian captain enjoyed getting one up on the media almost as much as he craved winning games of cricket.
The tiny Antigua Recreation Ground served as the spiritual home of Calypso cricket in the days when the West Indies were a world force. Its very location affirmed its non-denominational appeal — a short stroll from the sleepy commercial heart of St John's, past the imposing grey stone edifice of the nineteenth-century Anglican cathedral, skirting the official home and office of the Governor-General, and the last stop heading east before Her Majesty's Prison. Its amalgam of whitewashed concrete walls and bare steel and timber grandstands only highlighted the fact that the soul of a cricket ground can transcend the sum of its graceless parts. It held scarcely 10,000 people, but when fully packed it pulsed with a passion that left the world's mega-stadia looking decidedly soulless. It was like no other cricket venue on the planet — part open-air nightclub, part house of worship.
The prospect of the home team wresting back the Frank Worrell Trophy after being brutalised in the opening Test of the 1999 series meant the ground was beyond bursting for the decider. Even though it was Easter weekend in a traditionally God-fearing community, the party was in full swing along the narrow walkways separating the terraces from the perimeter walls before a ball was bowled. Heavy-set women sat on upturned milk crates, crouched over huge pots that bubbled with goat curry. Hotplates billowed aromatic smoke as the early morning jerk chicken or shark and bake customers queued. And the pick-up trucks that made the slow crawl to the heavy steel entrance gates on Factory Road unloaded groups of fans who lugged in enormous cooler boxes stacked with bottled beer, rum punch, and all manner of other grog that screamed 'late afternoon security problem'.
Reggae music blasted — at a volume that demanded its own health warning — from the soaring speaker stacks of 'Chickie's Disco', as much a landmark in the Double Decker Stand as Old Father Time perched above Lord's. In the sweaty catacombs under the elevated western concourses, staff dispensed cold drinks and lukewarm rotis, stopping only to strain for a glimpse of the players through the louvred windows above them that opened out at ground level. Almost to a person — hard-partying Australian tour groups and objective journalists included — the crowd buzzed with the expectation of another virtuoso performance from Lara, who had peeled off match-winning centuries in each of the previous two Tests. And none of us was left short-changed. The raw statistics of Lara's sublime second-day hundred, reached off just eighty-two balls, tell a suitably compelling tale. But the drama compacted into that 101-minute innings sustains the memory of all who lived it.
As Lara ambled on to the ground midway through Easter Sunday afternoon, his slightly knock-kneed gait giving him the misleading appearance of a small boy kitted out in too-big protective equipment, customers vacated the bars and food stalls to take up any spare vantage points. Many of the venue staff followed them. Despite being in the form of his life, Lara took a dozen deliveries to score his first runs. He should have been dismissed twice in the space of a single over having reached fourteen, but was spared by the ineptitude of Australia's fielders. Or perhaps they secretly also wanted to see him flaunt his genius one more time. Whatever the truth, they deserved thanks rather than ridicule. Because, for the next hour, Lara conducted a master class as ruthless as it was flawless. No matter how Australia's hapless bowlers attacked him, or where Stephen Waugh deployed his fielders, Lara simply hit the ball wherever he wanted, often times even further. In doing so, he lifted the congregation to the cusp of exalted delirium.
Lara's extravagant back-lift always gave the erroneous impression that he premeditated his strokes, or that he aimed a glory shot at every ball that came along. But like a matador's estoque beneath a billowing cape, the flourish helped to mask the menace. He would dip into a slight crouch as the bowler delivered, as if drawing reserves of power from the very pit of his being, then channel that power into the moment bat met ball. It was at that point of contact that he seemed to have at least three shots in his repertoire to achieve the optimum outcome. His ability to subtly transfer his body weight, flex his wrists and angle his blade at the last conceivable instant meant a delivery of full length around off stump could be stroked either through extra cover, squeezed through point, or deflected to third man depending on where the fielders weren't. On this day, once he got into his stride, every choice was unerring. It didn't define the outcome of the Test or the series, but it meant that, in a matter of a few days, my long-held expectations about the joys cricket journalism could deliver had been stunningly exceeded. It also provided something well worth writing home about. When it was my turn to use the laptop.
The Test series completed, those of us travelling with the one-day squad then made the short flight to the island nation of St Vincent, stopping-off point for the sailing haven of the Tobago Cays and site of the first of seven limited-overs internationals. At least it would have been a short hop, had it not been for the obligatory Caribbean airport hiccup that meant an eighty-minute flight was delayed by four hours, thereby ensuring our media contingent eventually landed in Kingstown around midnight. The thrill of working in enchanting locations was already being counter-balanced by the inescapable tedium involved in travelling to and from them.
St Vincent didn't occupy a place on the established Caribbean tourist trail for a number of reasons, one of those being because its hotel staff didn't keep the same flexible hours as local airlines. We were deposited at our final destination in bright moonlight, outside a securely locked front office, by an unhelpful taxi driver. Our frantic rattling of the glass doors finally roused a rifle-toting security guard, who hesitantly unshackled the door. We explained to him about our bookings, our delayed flight, and our need to get to our rooms so we could begin work. It may have been deep into snooze time in the Grenadines, but in Australia it was mid-afternoon and deadline loomed. Displaying the region's legendary commitment to customer service, he told us we'd have to wait until the hotel staff clocked on later in the morning before our rooms could be assigned. He had obviously been trained to guard against tourists trying to break in to steal half a night's sleep, and it was only a barrage of sustained and deliberate falsehoods about us being influential foreign travel writers happy to sabotage the hotel's global reputation that led to lights being turned on, a booking register produced, and room keys dispensed. We snatched them like gulls seizing discarded sandwich crusts, and bolted for the stairwell before he could cock the gun.
My heart sank when I flicked on the room light and noticed the ancient Bakelite telephone handset that dominated the corner desk, with its thick, pre-war cabling snugly tucked into the wall cavity behind a firmly fixed square of tin plate, whitewashed to match the plaster. It made my rudimentary technology appear positively futuristic. Figuring the guy with the gun was as likely to be an IT wizard as he was a tourism ambassador, I abandoned the urge to pick up the museum piece and summon help to access an alternative phone with a detachable line. Instead, I unpacked my Swiss Army knife and set to work, with the tenacity of a prison escapee, chipping into a wall that crumbled like desiccated feta. I finally unearthed a dust-encrusted phone plug that I cradled as if it were an artefact of archaeological significance, and then gently prised it apart to work out a means of making contact between my computer and the outside world.
Then, having thrashed out a hasty preview of the upcoming series opener, I sat in simmering fury as the machine stubbornly refused to connect to the Sydney mother ship. By this time it was past 2 a.m. Caribbean time, and I thought it would be therapeutic to share my rage with the newspaper's oxymoronic IT help desk. My reasoning that they couldn't make a dire situation any worse turned out to be badly skewed.
'What's the asset ID number on that laptop?' the technocrat asked, before my response led to an ominous silence.
'Where did you get this machine from?' he eventually hissed.
I explained in excruciating detail the uselessness of my original hardware, the generosity of my colleague, how he was returning the dud device back to its makers, and how grateful I was that somebody in the organisation was prepared to offer useful assistance so that I could perform my job. None of which made any impression.
'Well you're not authorised to have that machine,' the geek said, fairly bursting with that glee the professionally powerless gain from nobbling others. 'You'll have to return it to Sydney immediately, and we'll see what we can do about getting you set up with a replacement.'
As gently as I could, given the hour and my demeanour, I explained that our mutual employer was spending tens of thousands of dollars to send me away for three months on the understanding I would file stories for the newspaper every day of that assignment. Given the obvious inability of luggage items to find their way to the Caribbean when notionally travelling with a paying customer, I doubted that an unaccompanied laptop would safely make it from Australia before the current millennium ticked over. And it was an even-money bet it could be achieved within the parameters of the next.
'That's not our concern. We're simply looking after the company's assets. You're not authorised to continue using it and we need to recover it.'
Defeated by exhaustion and the obstinacy, I asked roughly how long it would take to commission, build and issue a replacement machine that fitted the cutting-edge specifications of the device staring at me from the dust-strewn floor. A week, maybe two, came the reply. The chill at the far end of the phone was starting to thaw now that I was playing the game on his terms. I reassured him I would have my laptop in the hands of an international courier later that day. Then I hung up, safe in the knowledge I would attempt no such manoeuvre, and that my laptop impasse was an issue I would now have to sort on my own, thereby adding IT consultant to a skills set that had recently grown to include travel agent, telecommunications repairman and excavator. Consequently, sleep — when it finally arrived — was punctuated by the first of what became a regular series of quasi-erotic dreams. The soundtrack to these visions was the high-pitched meshing of acoustic signals that pulsed through a dial-up modem — technology thankfully lost to the broadband generation — which then climaxed at the glorious moment the cacophony dramatically gave way to an electronic echo that announced a connection had been successfully established. I interpreted them as metaphysical proof that the phone line had become my lifeline.
Upon waking, I peered from my first-floor window to find my surrounds bore no resemblance to the miserable, unwelcoming place we had arrived at hours earlier. By daylight, our restored plantation house hotel offered sweeping views of the cobalt blue Caribbean Sea as it met the yellow-brown sands rimming Indian Bay. A stretch of lawn sloped away towards the tip of an undulating headland, where a swimming pool, surrounded by palm trees, sparkled invitingly. A terracotta patio soaked up the morning sun, flanked by a pristine white balustrade draped in pink and white frangipanis, and beyond them bobbed the masts of pleasure craft moored near the exclusive private retreat of Young Island. On my way to the breakfast room, where the newly painted wooden shutters were thrown open to reveal luxury yachts gliding by under full sail, I noted the reception desk was staffed by a couple of immaculately dressed young women who wielded nothing more sinister than staplers.
Crash was already ensconced, wolfing his way through his traditional morning meal. Keen to avoid dairy products, his daily serving of rice bubbles floated in a pool of pineapple juice. Or, failing that, water. The sight of several errant rice puff s on his chin suggested this morning's accompaniment was sticky nectar. His heavy-lidded appearance also told me he had encountered similar communications problems overnight.
'How did you go with the phone lines?' I asked, selfishly hoping I would not be met with news of unmitigated triumph.
'I got it through eventually,' came the tired reply. 'It's not too easy from here, is it?' he added, waving another spoonful of rice clusters in the vague direction of his mouth.
Despite the serenity of our surrounds, events of the preceding hours meant I soon turned the conversation to the shortcomings of the local travel industry, the technological hurdles I faced, the dubious diligence of the Australian-based company that had made our travel bookings. It then evolved to include my blunt assessment of the global media empire that employed us, and its belief that the more modern hotel that housed the cricket team and rival journalists was too lavish for its staff. Crash, who had experienced all these pitfalls many times over, just nodded sympathetically, while the only other patron in the breakfast room remained politely oblivious to my tired grumblings. When talk eventually turned to the upcoming game at the nearby Arnos Vale ground, and I grimly speculated about the adequacy of facilities at a venue that had hosted just eight international cricket matches over the past twenty years, our fellow guest hesitantly approached. His slim physique, deep suntan and outfit of dress shorts, freshly laundered polo shirt and boat shoes led me to surmise he was a successful American businessman who had taken early retirement to sail his days around the Cays. Once again, my incisive journalistic talent was exposed as unerringly flawed when he addressed us in a jovial, Sydney accent.
'You guys here for the cricket?' he asked, with a pep that indicated he had enjoyed a far more restful evening than either of us.
'That's right,' I replied, darkly. But he went on, unfazed, inquiring as to where we were from, how we were enjoying the West Indies, and what had led us to Kingstown. Upon learning we were cricket writers conscripted for all seven one-day internationals, his eyes widened.
'So you work for Rupert Murdoch? And he sends you off to places like this, to watch cricket for a living? How good is that? It's the best job in the world.'
I looked at my cereal-bespattered colleague, mentally flicked through a catalogue of the past twelve hours, and framed a short, pithy response that would be initially aimed at newspaper management, then broadened to take in global media magnates in general. But midway through my preparatory inhalation, our new friend interjected to take the wind from my sails. In the process, he possibly saved my career.
'Actually, I've got a bit of a media connection these days. My daughter just married your boss's son,' he announced, and checked our faces for any hint of recognition. All he got back was confused stares through dark-rimmed eyes, and a faint snap, crackle and pop as Crash distractedly stroked his chin.
'Lachlan Murdoch,' he pressed on through the silence. 'Do you guys know him?'
'So that would make you...' I began, my voice floating away on the ocean breeze.
'Patrick O'Hare,' he announced with a wide smile, offering his hand.
I mentally shredded my script, and moved seamlessly instead to: 'Oh, of course, yes. The marriage. Right. Lachlan and Sarah. How great. That's super.' Fearing my drowning man routine was about to drag him under as well, Crash leapt to our rescue.
'It's just terrific, Patrick, we're so happy for them. Are they still on their honeymoon?' he said, while I just sat and blinked.
'As a matter of fact, they are,' Patrick said, seemingly relieved that at least one globe-trotting writer could construct a coherent sentence. 'They spent some time in New York, and now they're doing a bit of sailing...out there somewhere.'
I looked past him as a huge yellow and orange spinnaker filled the window. Surely that couldn't be them, I wondered through fatigue and shock. And even if it was, surely my bitching couldn't have been audible on the deck of a passing yacht? Or, for that matter, in the far corner of the breakfast room?
'Well, if you're speaking with them, give them our best and tell them our tour's going really well,' Crash went on. 'I mean, how could it not be when we're being treated to places like this.' He waved his arm theatrically to indicate all that surrounded us.
'I'll do that, it's really good of you,' Patrick said, as he prepared to depart. 'And I'll keep an eye out for you at the ground on Sunday.'
As he made for the door, I stared blankly into my plate and made a mental note to confine any future steam releases and office bashing to the privacy of my own room. Or better still, my own thoughts.
Just as he disappeared into the day, Patrick O'Hare stopped and turned back to us, adding, without a hint of mischief, 'And good luck getting those bloody phones to work.'
#
# West Indies, April 1999 (II)
Guyana's status as international cricket's sole outpost on the South American mainland is explained by the nation's former colonial name, British Guiana. Before that it was claimed by the Dutch, but in more recent times it's been synonymous with the 1978 Jonestown massacre, when more than 900 American cultists lost their lives to history's most infamous drinks break. These distinct cultural and geographical identities also help explain why it's only through cricket that the West Indies appears to the world as a single family unit. And from the moment we landed at Georgetown's Cheddi Jagan International Airport, a former US military base hacked into dense vegetation on the bank of the vast, mud-coloured Demerara River, it was achingly clear that Guyana was the Caribbean's poor relation.
Having departed the neighbouring island of Trinidad in pre-dawn darkness, the hour-long road trip from the airport to our new digs provided a welcome eye-opener. Tumbledown timber houses, many barely supporting badly rusted roofs and with rotting shutters that gaped open to the world, fought a losing battle against the encroaching jungle. Perhaps it was a product of sleep deprivation, but it was difficult to picture Georgetown's neglected buildings and infrastructure as relics of a once-buoyant centre that had enjoyed significant economic clout, and even greater aesthetic appeal.
The literal high point of the capital's distinctive timber architecture was the remarkable St George's Cathedral, which — according to our enthusiastic driver — was consecrated more than a century earlier, and proclaimed by all Guyanese as the world's tallest wooden structure. Rising more than forty metres above the Demerara flood plain, it looked to have been lifted directly from an architect's model of some ambitious Amish metropolis. I wondered aloud about the wisdom of constructing, from timber, a building that provides a home for a liturgy of naked flames. Which led our cabbie to point out that fire remained a constant threat to Georgetown's major public buildings — equalled only by the ever-present menace of flood, given that the original Dutch settlement had been built, as was their way, up to a metre below sea level.
In more recent years, however, those twin hazards had been surpassed by the modern-day scourges of kidnapping and drug-related gun crime. The Land of Many Waters' network of major rivers, most of which flowed across Guyana's borders with Brazil, Venezuela and Surinam, had helped it establish a frightening reputation as an operational centre for drug-trafficking cartels that were scaling up from traditional marijuana distribution to the more lucrative cocaine and heroin end of the market. The inevitable spin-off enterprises from this commercial growth were gang crime, extortion and violent death. So it was with dire warnings of potential conflagration, inundation and mutilation ringing in our ears that we were deposited at our hotel, which our taxi driver laughingly referred to as 'the stockade'.
It was a surfeit of water, largely the result of early morning rain, that created concern when we arrived at Georgetown's historic Bourda Ground on the morning of game five of the limited-overs series. The venue where, seventy years earlier, the loose outfit of Caribbean nations recorded their first Test match win under the united West Indies' banner, had not seen much remedial work since. Its majestic timber players' pavilion contrasted starkly with the rank, toxin-filled drainage channel that oozed its way past the stadium, emitting the stench of a thousand decaying animals. Heavily armed police astride unflinching white horses patrolled the streets surrounding the ground, where crowd numbers had swelled despite the delayed start, as astute hawkers set up impromptu food and drink stalls.
By the time play got underway, more than three hours late, the crowd far exceeded the ageing facility's ability to accommodate them in anything resembling comfort. Or acceptable safety. In addition to the packed bleachers and terraces, hundreds of fans perched in trees lining nearby Regent Street, clambered atop advertising billboards and the wall between the cricket ground and adjacent football field, and packed five-deep onto the rickety roofs of grandstands that already appeared too unsteady to hold the hordes beneath. Even though entertainment, in the form of migraine-inducing dance music, had been pumping non-stop during the delay, most of the crowd had opted to spend those hours on the drink. It was a debacle waiting to happen, and it happened shortly before game's end.
A scoreboard error meant that the penultimate over of Australia's run chase was incorrectly flagged as the last, which led spectators still capable of mental arithmetic to deduce the West Indies had triumphed by five runs. And those still capable of standing to storm the field, and make off with a majority of the six stumps. The match eventually restarted, but with hundreds of partially crazed, fully boozed fans poised inside the fence, as if awaiting the starter's pistol at a steeplechase, ready to reinvade the instant a result arrived. With one ball remaining and night all but fallen, Australia needed four runs to win. Stephen Waugh and Shane Warne were batting. And that's when the craziness scaled new heights.
West Indian spinner Keith Arthurton bowled, Waugh heaved ambitiously, and succeeded only in dribbling the ball to deep mid-wicket where two outfielders lurked. The crowd knew from the moment ball left bat that it would not deliver the boundary needed to deny their heroes victory, and they swamped the field like water flooding into a stricken boat. Amid the crush, Waugh and Warne fought the tide to complete a symbolic, but ultimately pointless second run.
Suddenly, I noticed through the thickening chaos that Waugh, unsure as to the ball's location or even the whereabouts of the West Indian players, began urging Warne to tackle a third run. Competitive even in the face of a stampede, the Australian captain saw the pandemonium as an opportunity to at least escape the game with scores tied. So he put his head down and charged through the mob like a demented shopper defying the flow at the Boxing Day sales. What I could also see, but was unknown to the batsmen, was that Arthurton had received the ball and was about to complete the run-out to formalise his team's deserved win. But no sooner had he lunged towards the bowler's end stumps than a fleet-footed young man clad in T-shirt, canvas jeans and sneakers uprooted the entire wicket and hot-footed it through the throng. Memorabilia had apparently become as lucrative for some locals as narcotics.
At that point, Stephen Waugh was halfway down the pitch and still intent on making his ground at the non-striker's end to level the scores. A metre or so behind him, and closing quickly, loomed a mob of more than fifty people in frenzied pursuit. It was a scene plucked straight from the closing credits of The Benny Hill Show. As Waugh extended his right arm to ground his outstretched bat, he was side-swiped from the left by a spectator who tried to wrestle the willow from the skipper's grasp. Waugh suffered mild whiplash as a result of that collision, but kept hold of his property, if not his cool.
So shambolic was the entire episode that the final result remained in abeyance while the match referee, former England Test batsman Raman Subba Row, convened a hearing. His refusal to cede the match automatically to the West Indies further agitated the already feisty crowd, members of which aimed angry threats at Waugh as he made his way through the crush to attend the post-mortem.
'We'll be after you, and we're gonna get you,' one wild-eyed fan threatened.
That was enough for the Australian captain. At his ensuing media conference, he launched into a tirade against the idiocy of crowds, and the impotence of authorities. He also speculated aloud that perhaps cricket had become a professional gamble not worth taking.
'You're risking your life,' he seethed, as we crowded around to hear him above the rising din outside. 'It only takes one guy who's had plenty to drink to run out there with a knife, à la Monica Seles, and it's over for you. It's not over-dramatising it. I genuinely feared for my safety.'
In total darkness, at 7.20 p.m. — an hour and fifteen minutes after play stopped and stupidity took over — Subba Row declared the match a tie. When news reached the crowd, it exploded into jeers, chants and shouted threats of recriminations. As an obvious out-of-towner, I baulked at wading through the angry gang gathered behind the pavilion and, instead, walked as fast and unobtrusively as possible away from the ground in the hope of finding a taxi driver who cared more for a fare than the negotiated settlement of a cricket match.
A small, maroon sedan with heavily tinted windows pulled alongside as I edged my way down an unlit street, guided by the poisoned moat that reeked and gurgled to my right. I instinctively threw myself into the taxi's back seat, recognising that the front was occupied by an amplifier obviously on loan from Chickie's Antiguan noise fest. As the car picked up pace through the grid of deserted back streets, I realised, to my alarm, that I had not been saved by a private cab operator, but simply a young punk cruising for cash. A young punk who was either very drunk, in the grip of hallucinatory drugs, or suffering from a medical condition that caused him to bleed heavily from the eyeballs. His appearance was not enhanced by the rhythmic flashes that pulsed, in time to a deafening soundtrack, from a string of red and gold lights that snaked over the dashboard and around the windscreen.
Fearing I was to become the latest kidnapping or murder statistic, and unable to make myself heard above the brain-rattling drum and bass thudding from the rear speakers, I dived into my emergency cash stash, produced a $US20 note and summoned all my available energy to scream the name of my hotel. At that point he turned, his head bobbing to the tumult, and his face took on a crazed half-smile of recognition.
Five minutes later we 'nnnchk, nnnchk-ed' into the driveway of 'the stockade', and I disentangled myself from the sub-woofers just as a small white van pulled up behind us, and unloaded a group of equally harried-looking match officials. Despite my hearing loss, I was able to make out one of the panel announcing he was headed straight to the hotel bar for a much-needed drink. I fell into step behind him, aware from my Perth experience that brimming resentment coupled with the lip-loosening properties of hard liquor were likely to produce a news story or, failing that, some sorely needed perspective. Accepting my opportunistic offer of a double whisky to help settle his distress, Raman Subba Row reciprocated by launching into a stinging critique of international cricket in South America.
'It's sad for Georgetown, being such an historic venue, and also for West Indies' cricket,' he announced, in his cultured English tones. 'But if they can't run a match properly, then they can't run it. It's bloody ridiculous. I could see what was going to happen before they even started the final over. And the security people just sat around watching it, doing nothing to stop it.'
I only stopped note-taking long enough to ask if he needed a top-up. Even though it was well past 9 p.m. — approaching noon in the land of the deadline — and I faced at least six hours of transcribing and writing before my pre-dawn departure for the airport, I had a spring in my step as I set off through the lobby towards my room. Until a bespectacled man in a sweat-drenched patterned shirt called out from behind a counter bearing a sign that showed humour far drier than Georgetown's surrounds.
'Mister Rumzeeee, you headin' buck to you room?' the alleged Customer Services Manager asked with an earnestness that immediately had me on edge. When I nodded, he began shuffling the sheets of blank paper that lay in front of him.
'There's ummm, a problem wit you room.' A brutal silence followed. 'It's been...err, double-booked.'
'That's okay,' I said, with a dismissive wave. 'I'm on an early plane to Barbados in the morning, so I'll be leaving around 5 ;a.m. anyway. Then it's all yours.'
The ill-at-ease clerk searched the lobby's mildewed ceiling for his next line.
'No, sir. I'm meanin' it's been double-booked for too-night. Someone else already checked in there. So we had to move you tings out.'
I began to fear my hearing had been more severely damaged than I imagined.
'But it's okay. We got someone who's huppy to have you share his room too-night. So we taken the opportoonity to move you stuff in there.'
His bony index finger then traced the obviously redundant booking register and, without looking up, he announced, 'It's a Missah Craddock. Missah Robert Craddock. He's also from Australia.'
He peered up from the book, beaming. 'You know him?'
In trepidation, I made my way to Crash's room where the door was propped open by one of the metal hubcaps that pretends to keep room service meals tepid. From the corridor, I could see my hastily repacked suitcase lying open on a portable cot that had been squeezed between the wardrobe and an ancient air-conditioning unit. The items I had deposited in drawers, cupboards and bathroom shelves for safe-keeping spilled out of a plastic laundry bag that lay alongside.
'Hello, maaate,' Crash chirped as I pushed my way into the chaos, as if he had unexpectedly stumbled across a long-lost chum. He perched, in the Antigua souvenir T-shirt and board shorts that comprised his wardrobe in the continued absence of his luggage, on the proper bed with laptop on his thighs, and an armada of partially dismantled meals surrounding him.
'Make yourself at home. I ordered you some spaghetti bolognaise. I think it's here somewhere.' He searched half-heartedly beside the bed, before returning to his typing. His boundless bonhomie instantly helped defuse my frustration and self-pity.
'Don't think we would have got much sleep tonight anyway, Rams. That's the amazing thing about cricket. It just throws up big stories like this, without any warning.'
As I settled on to the saggy mattress that had become my makeshift office and home, I could only agree.
'But I don't reckon we'll be seeing another day like this for a while,' I boldly forecast, as I reached down for my notebook and plunged my hand into a plate of lukewarm pasta.
The phone call, when it arrived, came as a far greater shock than the events it interrupted. From the press box eyrie at Barbados's Kensington Oval and just days after escaping Guyana, I was surveying the latest outbreak of Caribbean churlishness that had brought the seventh and final one-day international of the increasingly brattish series to a halt. To show their distaste for a legitimate umpiring decision, a sizeable section of the 15,000-strong sell-out crowd lobbed bottles, fruit, half-eaten Johnny cakes and anything else within reach onto the playing field in another tiresome show of poor sportsmanship. Given the regularity of these public tantrums, I struggled to comprehend why an obscure Melbourne breakfast radio program would track me down for an eyewitness account of events to share with its handful of early morning listeners. Even more of a mystery was how.
That curiosity was shared by the unsuspecting soul who, on that sunny Sunday afternoon, answered the lone, unlisted telephone installed at the back of Kensington's media centre. Even though she dispensed desserts from the facility's makeshift kitchenette, Floriana was not a woman to be trifled with. Standing around 155 centimetres cubed, she was also distinctive for her ability to wheeze while remaining stock still. A low-pitched whistle accompanied each breath sucked through the sizeable gap between a pair of stunningly white, tusk-like front teeth. It was the whistling that betrayed her presence behind me as I peered through my binoculars at the rioters who had commandeered the game.
'You de man from de Osstrayan noospepper?' she inquired, before expelling a noise like a kettle on the bubble.
I nodded, at which point Floriana jerked her head towards the rear of the media box where a concrete walkway overlooked a car park's solitary tenant, an unoccupied police bus.
'Phone,' she snapped, before wheezing back to the servery.
I picked up the receiver not knowing who to expect, and was greeted by the excited voice of the radio show's producer, whose detective skills in finding the obscure phone number might have been better employed helping Interpol track wanted fugitives.
'What's goin' on over there?' he squawked. 'We're watching here on TV. Are they gunna have to call this one off?'
Trying to sound as off-hand as one can when nuzzling a brick wall while a major civic disturbance escalates on the other side, I was about to reveal I had not yet been able to work that out when he announced he was transferring me live-to-air to share my lack of insights with the show's host. Despite an acoustic echo that made the seven-second delay redundant, and the fact I could not see the playing field from the wall-mounted phone, I constructed a passable chronology of events that had prompted the ruckus.
The flashpoint arrived when local batting hero Sherwin Campbell crossed paths with Australia's taller and sturdier all-rounder Brendon Julian, while the West Indian attempted to scamper a single. The jockey-sized opener was sat on his bum mid-pitch as a result of the collision, and was duly run out. Campbell claimed his path had been deliberately impeded, in contravention of cricket's laws, and he shamelessly milked the moment by flinging his arm out and staring forlornly at the umpires to articulate his deep-seated sense of injustice. When it became clear his plea had moved neither the on-field officials nor the Australian captain, all of whom believed the contact to be accidental, his cause was taken up by the outraged mob.
The sight of the moping Campbell leaving the field, bat trailing behind him like Linus's blanket, egged them into action and their spirits took flight. Empty bottles of Mount Gay Rum, mainly. Although they were accompanied by a smattering of brandy and pre-mixed rum punch vessels, and even some soft-drink containers whose contents, from the general level of intoxication, had obviously been used as an alcohol mixer, rather than its substitute.
As the first projectiles thudded into the turf, the jaded Australian players formed a protective huddle near the pitch. With the bombardment becoming more sustained, Stephen Waugh opted to lead his men from the field. That was when it turned really ugly. A bottle thrown from the top deck of the Members stand flew dangerously close to Waugh's left ear. For the riot-weary Australians, their flight to London seven days hence could not depart soon enough.
With the crowd chanting 'Bring back, bring back, bring back my Campbell to me', the visitors slumped, disillusioned and dispirited, in their stifling dressing room. For forty-five minutes, the match was held to ransom as the two umpires and match referee Subba Row conferred as to the safest, not necessarily the most just, course of action. In a last-ditch bid to end the tomfoolery, officials persuaded local legend Sir Garfield Sobers, whose name adorned the VIP enclosure from where the most provocative missile had been launched, to make an appeal for calm. That was the point at which the least used phone in the eastern Caribbean had rung to life.
'What's Sobers going to tell them?' the radio host quizzed, assuming that the off-the-cuff service I was apparently providing extended to soothsaying.
'Er, I'm not exactly certain,' I fumbled. Even to such a select audience, it would not have reflected well on my professionalism to admit all I could see was a brick wall. So I resorted to subterfuge.
'To be honest, you've probably got more idea than me through your television pictures,' I boomed, in my best broadcast voice. 'That's because, after what happened in Guyana last week, the media has been warned to take every available safety precaution. As a result, we're all sheltering at the back of the press box. And I'm taking a big risk by venturing out to take your call. Lord knows how they'll react when an announcement's made, so I'm gunna have to dash off.'
With that, I hung up. Admiring my ingenuity and figuring it would also put paid to any further intrusive calls for freelance radio reports, I turned to head back to my desk and barrelled straight into Floriana's dodgem car bumpers. Hands on hips, head cocked quizzically, she fixed me with a look usually reserved for those miscreants who tucked into the lunchtime flying fish cutters without handing over their $5. Having overheard the end of my tale, she shook her chins disapprovingly. I eased guiltily past, advising her softly that I wasn't available to receive any more calls. And that the kettle appeared to be boiling.
In my absence, Sobers had informed the crowd that, during the lengthy interlude, the Australians had undergone a drastic change of heart and would allow Campbell to resume his innings. That was, I learned later, despite the match referee's belief there was nothing malicious or illegal in the Australians' actions, and that the West Indian batsman had been dismissed fairly, if not a little unluckily. Further soothing the crowd's temper, the home team's victory target was reduced because of time lost to the troubles.
So Campbell strode back to a hero's ovation and, in order to claim an immoral victory, the West Indies were set a perfunctory target, which they happily completed with three overs to spare. For their part, the Australians played out the final hour with all the zeal of forced labourers.
'The spirit of the game was gone,' Stephen Waugh later confessed.
Adding insult to misery, Campbell was named man of the match, and player of the tournament. Courtesy of the equally farcical tied result in Guyana, the teams were forced to share the tournament trophy with the seven-match series finishing 3 — 3. The crowd's hysteria had magically metamorphosed into euphoria, while the Australians were simply relieved there was no game eight.
I was starting to subscribe to the players' prevailing view that the stereotypical image of the West Indies as a collective of chillin', laidback cats who cared for little more than reefer and reggae was as fanciful as conspiracy theories that suggested Bob Marley was murdered by CIA operatives who jammed a length of carcinogenic copper wire into one of his boots. Evidence gathered over the previous week indicated that the Caribbean was, in truth, home to a lot of uptight, cantankerous types just itching for an excuse to chuck a drunken wobbly. Not just cranky, but litigious, as I soon learned.
Stephen Waugh was in no mood for diplomacy when he fronted the end-of-match media conference in a steamy annexe above the Kensington dressing sheds. The handful of glass louvres missing from windows that faced on to the choked street below ensured the celebratory whoops and songs from inebriates leaving the ground rang loudly in his ears. And suggestions from local journalists that the Australians had over-dramatised the afternoon's happenings got up his nose.
Waugh explained his decision to acquiesce and allow Campbell to continue batting was prompted by a thinly veiled threat. Prior to a meeting during the disruption with his rival captain Jimmy Adams and the match officials, Australia's team manager advised Waugh it might be best to get back out and play because 'the local Police Commissioner has told me that if we don't, they can't guarantee your safety'. Waugh was still shaken by the manhandling and the threats he copped in Guyana. And with his team due to spend the following seven days relaxing in Barbados before departing for England, the decision to let the crowd determine the match result was deemed prudent, even if it left a bitter residue.
'It was better than getting killed on the way home,' Waugh said, trying hard to raise a grin while at the same time airing his irritation. 'I don't think that's too dramatic.'
He might have held a dozen years' head start when it came to international cricket experience, but I was quickly coming to share the captain's weary view of cricket's very evident failings. This was not the same game I'd worshipped as a child, and as recently as the Antigua Test.
As a cricketer renowned for his coldly calculated methods, Stephen Waugh had few clues about how to keep a hotel room tidy. Unmitigated bedlam spilled from cupboards, drawers and kit bags that lay strewn around his Barbados beachside suite's barely visible floor. Bottle-green shirts and lemon-yellow pants were draped across most items of furniture. A pair of bright-gold batting pads stood to attention against a cane lounge chair, and next to them grew a pile of greying wool-blend cricket socks. It was a bedroom scene more befitting a lazy teenager, but I was not about to chide the captain for his domestic shortcomings. After all, Waugh had departed from accepted media protocol by inviting a couple of us to conduct an interview within his quarters at the team's hotel following the one-day series' undignified end.
Despite the lingering sour taste, the players had welcomed the week-long break that they planned to fill lazing poolside, hitting golf balls, or exploring the island on motorised scooters. Waugh, however, was spending this flawless afternoon seated at a desk that sprouted from the tangled undergrowth of garments. When Crash and I arrived, he was engaged in the modern cricketer's most repetitive chore, outside of travel and practising.
Waugh removed one sheet at a time from a stack of several hundred business-card-sized paper rectangles that sat in a pile on the desk, and scrawled his name in its centre with a felt-tip pen before transferring it to a similarly sized pile of completed slips. I asked where this heap of autographs was bound.
'Dunno, mate,' he answered, with a diffident shrug of his shoulders, which would have disillusioned any fan who believes their prized piece of memorabilia has been lovingly inscribed by their favourite player in a poignant act of dedication. 'Same place they all end up.'
If this was indicative of life in the inner sanctum of professional sport, I could understand why players fought so hard to keep it private. But as Crash and I rescued a couple of chairs from among the debris and posed our questions, he put the pen down, leaned back in his seat and, with hands clasped in his lap, reeled off a series of thoughtful answers. He had reached the end of a difficult debut tour as Test and one-day captain, and seemed almost grateful for a chance to debrief. Then, when the voice recorders were switched off and the notebooks closed, he added some even more revealing thoughts.
'I'm still new at this, and I'm learning more about relations with you media guys as we go along,' Waugh said, as he lifted himself from his chair and made a token attempt at clearing away some of the clutter. 'I'm happy to help you out with requests like this one, and I don't mind you coming to see me if there's something that you want to check, or clear up. But because of the nature of what we do, we can't be mates.'
'I want to treat all journalists equally while I'm captain,' he said, searching for the doorknob that was hidden beneath his yellow batting helmet, as our cue to leave. 'It's a professional relationship, and it can't be a friendship. I hope you don't have a problem with that?'
As we extricated ourselves from the mess, we indicated we not only understood, but agreed. I also ventured it was a symbiotic arrangement and that, if he wanted to clarify anything I had written or just share a few thoughts, I was always happy to listen. As he closed the door behind us, he wore the pained look of someone who had just been told the lamest of jokes. Next morning, our reclassified relationship entered unforeseen territory when I received a call in my hotel room from Tony Cozier, the unrivalled king of West Indian cricket journalists.
'Have you seen the local newspaper?' he asked, in his rolling Bajan accent. 'Man, you're being sued by the Commissioner of Police here in Barbados. You, and Steve Waugh.'
I bolted to the nearest grocery store to source a copy of Cozier's Barbados daily newspaper The Nation, which confirmed, in bold headlines, that the Commissioner had indeed issued an ex-parte writ against the Australian captain as well as The Australian's touring correspondent. As co-defendant in an unprecedented litigation, I had achieved in the Caribbean press what had eluded me at home for more than a month. My name was on the front page.
Studying the article, I learned that the official who had informed Australia's team manager of the possible ongoing threat to the players during the riot was not the Commissioner of Police. In fact, as the aggrieved official pointedly spelled out in his affidavit, he was not even present at Kensington Oval when the drama erupted. For that reason, he viewed the assertion that the Australians' safety could not be guaranteed as 'extremely damaging' to his reputation as a law enforcement officer, and that such a suggestion was likely to cause him 'irreparable harm'.
Rereading the story, I struggled to understand why I had been singled out as the sole media representative in the writ, given that all newspapers in Australia, the Caribbean and beyond had carried the offending quotes. I also failed to see how my words had so seriously damaged his standing, especially given my newspaper struggled to reach its handful of readers in outposts like Broome, let alone in Bridgetown. But what troubled me most was why he chose to specifically sue me, a penniless journalist, rather than the significantly more substantial global media empire that employed me.
The fact that it had barely ticked over to Saturday in Australia also meant there was no point phoning the paper's unmanned offices in search of legal advice. Instead, I checked with the Australian team manager, who assured me that, as yet, no formal papers had been served. He also expressed doubt that they would be before we all departed for London in thirty hours' time.
I stewed until late afternoon, when I received a call from Clarence at the hotel reception desk to tell me I had a visitor from the firm of Finditt, Grabbitt & Runn, or similar, awaiting me in the foyer. Immediately I regretted not paying closer attention to those complicated media law lectures I had dozed through at university. Somewhere, amid all that Latin legalese about habeas corpus, sub judice and quo vadis, I vaguely recalled hearing that writs had to be directly handed to a defendant to be valid. And that some shifty types attempted to circumvent being served by refusing to physically accept the document. A cunning strategy formed in my addled brain. If the writ courier could not formally present me with the paperwork, I would not, technically, be a party to the legal action. And in just over a day, I would be departing testy Barbados for the home of English law.
I became further emboldened when Clarence pointed out my visitor, a nervous-looking lad in his early twenties whose polyester-blend grey suit and ill-fitting shirt collar spelled 'legal firm intern'. Regardless of the fact he had attended law lectures far more recently than me, and doubtless paid closer attention, I was confident my crafty plan gave me the upper hand.
'I am instructed to deliver you this,' the young man announced and produced a carefully folded handful of parchment pages from within the right breast of his oversized jacket. As he extended his left arm and the incriminating documents towards me, I calmly took two steps backwards to stand behind a wire rack laden with postcard pictures of Barbados beaches. I then fixed my predator with what I felt was a combative glare but, on reflection, more likely suggested the passing of a kidney stone.
'Sir, this is for you,' he continued, lunging at me in a half-hearted fencing manoeuvre complete with papier rapier. Again I parried, darting behind the coffee table as Clarence shook his head in bewilderment. The lad looked confusedly at the cardigan-clad staff member whose greying hair lent him an air of wisdom. It also confirmed Clarence was too smart to get drawn into this absurdist pantomime.
'You on your own here, son,' he muttered.
A further attempt to fell me with the legal kryptonite failed when I vaulted over the table and stood behind a lounge chair, arms folded defiantly across my chest.
'This is dumb,' the lad mumbled as he looked at his huge digital watch that confirmed it was verging on pub time on a Friday afternoon. 'You want me to leave it here on the table?'
His willingness to merely deposit the writ in my vicinity completely threw me. Maybe I had imagined the university lecture that dealt with serving summonses? Perhaps it only applied to traffic infringement warrants? What if neither of us knew the law in this regard? As we stared at each other and my adversary nervously tapped the fold of papers against his left thigh, I succumbed to defeat and embarrassment.
'It's okay,' I said. 'I'll take them.'
As I held open the glass door to grant the lad his escape into the waiting weekend, I'm sure I heard Clarence exhale, 'Well praise the Lord.'
Not having been sued before, I was not entirely clued up on company policy or protocols. It was one of the topics that would doubtless have been covered in my pre-departure briefing, had there been one. I knew enough to be sure I must urgently contact my newspaper's in-house lawyer, but was also aware that any Australian solicitor worth their salt would just be stumbling home at 7 a.m. on a Saturday. And tracking him or her down would be tough from the other side of the world, without access to salient details such as their name. I suddenly wished I hadn't blown off the radio producer who seemed so adept at finding pretty much anyone.
Instead, I again turned to Australia's team manager who confirmed that the legal had landed there as well, and that the first-named defendant would be represented by a local Queen's Counsel, as recommended by Australia's High Commissioner in Barbados. He asked if I wanted to be part of the defence team's meeting, to be held at the Australian squad's hotel the following morning. He then pointed out that, according to the terms of the writ, both defendants were explicitly forbidden from mentioning the proceedings, or the events that led to them, in any public forum. Therefore, I need not bother quizzing the skipper for his on-the-record reaction.
Stephen Waugh, the team manager, and a regally dressed elderly gentleman clasping a silver-tipped cane sat gathered around a poolside table when I joined the Saturday morning conference. The QC outlined the available legal options and each provoked the same reaction from the Australian captain.
'This is bullshit,' Waugh steamed. 'It's a simple mistake. I thought the bloke that told us about the safety problem was the police chief. I'll say, "Sorry, wrong bloke." End of story.'
Waugh held the strident view that this sort of impasse was no different to disagreements between cricketers, and that it was best sorted out face-to-face. By clearing the air, shaking hands, and moving on. The QC quietly explained that, in criminal law at least, that approach would likely inflame more cases than it settled. Besides, this civil issue had already progressed beyond the point of being redressed by an apology. The official in question was apparently up for reelection sometime soon, and this case afforded him some useful pre-poll publicity. The team manager calmly suggested to his captain that seeing as the QC's expertise had been enlisted, it might be wise to hear his advice. I sat silently throughout, pondering whether my employer placed a similar value on my wellbeing and reputation as the Australian Cricket Board did on its skipper.
While the lawyer indicated an out-of-court settlement was the most likely outcome, the cricketer's major concern, which I shared, was unhindered passage out of Barbados to London, where a World Cup campaign awaited. The legal expert had already indicated any court proceedings would be conducted at glacial speed, and the prospect of any of us remaining in the Caribbean while they dragged on was mildly terrifying. The QC then advised he saw no problems in us clearing immigration that night, though his conviction faltered somewhat when he added it might be prudent to have the High Commissioner present 'just in case...' It all became too much for Waugh, who up and quit the meeting with a curt departing gesture.
'This is bullshit,' he fumed, as he stalked off.
Come Saturday evening, hours before we were due to depart for Gatwick, I finally established contact with my boss in Sydney to explain my predicament. Initially, he was more concerned about the stipulation in the writ that forbade me from commenting on the incident. He wondered how I could finally be gifted inside running on a cricket story of global interest, and yet be the only journalist on the planet expressly prevented from writing about it.
Eventually, he passed on the details of my bind to the paper's lawyer, who rang me shortly after as I packed in defiant hope of an imminent departure. I outlined the events leading up to the lawsuit, read him the relevant bits of the writ, and arranged to fax him all the accompanying documentation. When he asked if I had sought any local legal advice, I told him I had attended a preliminary briefing with a Bridgetown QC.
'Bloody hell,' he exploded down the phone. 'A Queen's Counsel. How much is that gunna cost us?'
Deeply touched by his commitment to my welfare, I explained that cost had not been discussed because I had not formally engaged the QC's services. I was merely an interested onlooker, invited out of courtesy because my name was on the writ. In multiple places. He sternly warned me about the ramifications of signing anything other than my hotel room account, and told me he would be in touch in coming days to provide further expert guidance. I still await that communiqué.
As we gathered at Barbados Airport, I made a point of maintaining visual contact with the skipper. I knew he was being accompanied everywhere by the High Commissioner, who seemed chuffed to have landed some sort of formal diplomatic role aside from bailing drunken Australian tourists out of the city watch-house, or its main hospital. In the absence of legal counsel, I resolved that, should another obstacle in a big suit try to prevent me boarding the flight, I would cling desperately to the ankle of my elected government's representative and scream diplomatic immunity. Or temporary insanity. But we cleared passport control without incident, the plane doors sealed shut and we left for London, relieved, and not a day too soon. Incongruously, it now seemed incumbent on England to restore the assignment's sunny appeal that had so unexpectedly clouded over in the Caribbean during the preceding couple of weeks.
Five years later, shortly after his final Test, I bumped into Stephen Waugh at a cricket function and took the chance to thank him for his good grace and cooperation during his tenure as skipper. I also passed on my gratitude for earning me the one and only defamation writ of my journalistic career.
'Me too. You reckon I've had one of those, before or since?' he shot back, not missing a beat.
I then asked him if he knew the outcome of that lawsuit, given I had heard precisely nothing since departing Barbados that May evening.
'Dunno, mate, I think it got settled,' he said. 'But I still reckon it was bullshit.'
#
# World Cup, England, May–June 1999
London in May sits almost as far from summer as it does from Australia. The late spring welcome it turned on seemed even chillier for those who had spent the preceding five weeks in T-shirts, shorts and beachside resorts. Which is why none of us was displeased to hustle straight from immigration into a media conference, warmed to near Trinidad temperature by the tungsten lights of a dozen television news crews, and the more than fifty journalists in attendance. Throughout the series in the Caribbean, media events rarely drew a quorum sufficient to fill a cricket team, let alone an airport meeting room. And this was barely dawn on a Sunday.
While the warmth was comforting, the turnout from Fleet Street's finest also delivered a jolting reminder as to the increased level of journalistic rivalry the World Cup was to provide. For each of the twelve competing teams, there would be at least five times as many competing media organisations. Less than an hour into the six-week assignment, the professional pressure I felt was rising at a rate inverse to the outside air temperature.
Still traumatised by the threat of possible incarceration in Barbados, I had not slept a jot on the overnight flight to Gatwick. My stress levels were further heightened by the urgent need to file an immediate report of the team's arrival press conference, a task only achievable when I tracked down a suitable telephone point near the airport's main food hall that served briefly as my office. The ten-hour time difference was another enemy that identified itself early. As were the travelling logistics involved in up to fifty days criss-crossing a single island. Not for Crash and me the luxury afforded the cricketers, who simply stumbled aboard an opulent coach that waited in readiness outside the arrivals hall to whisk them direct to the squad's inaugural Cup base in Cardiff. Nor the convenience afforded rival reporters who had arrived direct from Australia hours earlier, and collected keys for a shiny new hire car from an airport desk.
Instead, for the duration of our stay we had been granted unconditional use of a company vehicle that awaited our collection from News International's Wapping headquarters in east London. More than an hour in the opposite direction from where we were headed. It also meant that, having picked up the car, we had to navigate a path back through one of Europe's most congested cities while simultaneously battling fatigue, frostbite and chronic unfamiliarity. Added to this was a pressing need, upon arriving in Cardiff, to find, write and transmit a story covering day one of the World Cup campaign, before sleep could be entertained. And as we hauled our weary selves on and off a commuter train to Victoria Station, then in and out of a black cab to Wapping, we realised that despite having visited London several times previously, neither of us had been silly enough to attempt any mode of transport more demanding than the Tube.
Arriving among the renovated and the rundown warehouses that fronted the narrow streets of London's Docklands, we presented ourselves to the parking lot gatehouse looking more like leftovers from the Notting Hill Carnival than eminent employees from the Down Under branch. Crash blue-lipped and shivering in his by-now heavily trafficked beachwear. Me still carrying the haunted fear of a wanted fugitive.
The keeper of the cars surveyed us with a scepticism that led to phone calls being placed, credentials triple-checked and, finally, an envelope containing a solitary key on an orange plastic tag being ruefully handed over. The only clue as to our auto's whereabouts on the vast lot was its registration number. No details as to its model, make, colour or map coordinates. Our twenty-minute grid search involved much stooping and cussing, before I struck gold. Or iron pyrites, as it turned out. Our gleaming chariot was, in fact, a dust-encrusted middle-aged Volvo station wagon with a sticky clutch, an irreparably damaged spare wheel, and a conspicuously absent London A to Z. I was left in no doubt as to my place within the empire's pecking order.
Forever willing to pull more than his share of the workload, Crash cheerily volunteered to drive the first leg. He also casually mentioned he did not boast much experience with manual cars but, already lapsing into semi-consciousness as the insipid morning sun tried meekly to find a way through the low-level cloud, I happily acceded. As we roared out of the car park, Crash kindly advised me to catch some rest. I quickly realised he was joking.
Sunday traffic was noticeably sparse on the northern edge of the Thames, and we made jaunty progress along Victoria Embankment. A little too jaunty, I began to suspect, as Waterloo Bridge flashed past and the face of Big Ben grew rapidly larger in the windscreen. In a blur of navy blue, we hurtled past a scattering of buses, taxis and disapproving cyclists, with Crash flailing the gear stick like an agitated gardener trying to uproot an unwanted sapling.
'Um, any idea what the speed limit might be along here, mate?' I inquired with forced nonchalance, as we veered violently right onto Northumberland Avenue and the Volvo took the south-west bend of Trafalgar Square on two wheels. I fought competing urges to grip the dashboard and leap for safety.
'Umm, not really sure, mate,' Crash replied distractedly. 'But I'm sticking to sixty...to be on the safe side.'
'Ooh, okay,' I countered, pausing briefly to process that news and scan for police. 'You remember that, here in England, they still use miles? And miles per hour?'
In the instant he turned to face me, with eyes wider than the berth we had been granted by the city traffic, I glimpsed in the diminishing distance a large, instantly recognisable yellow-and-red advertising sign. I reasoned we were about to reach either a branch of an Anglo-Dutch oil franchise, or one of a chain of multinational drive-through hamburger outlets. Whatever it signified, it was somewhere we needed to stop. If that was possible.
'Pull in here,' I shrieked, a semitone shy of hysterical.
Crash fought the wheel with the intent of a sea captain trying to avoid a Newfoundland iceberg. We swung a fierce left off the roadway, over a kerb and squealed to a halt alongside a petrol bowser amid a plume of burned rubber and the stench of molten clutch. The car stalled. Beads of sweat glistened on the brow of driver and passenger, as if summer had suddenly arrived in SW1 with the same speed and lack of forewarning that we had.
'Umm, I'll take it from here,' I squeaked, lacking both conviction and facial colour.
The most striking element of the Australians' arrival in Cardiff was the absence of any hint that world cricket's showpiece tournament was about to emerge, blazing, from its four-year hiatus. That was largely due to the impending vote on Welsh independence which hogged the local headlines, and partly because of the weather that remained more suited to huddling on the terraces of Cardiff Arms Park than reclining in the open-air grandstands at Sophia Gardens, the city's community cricket ground plonked on the west bank of the River Taff. The Welsh skies remained as steadfastly bleak and threatening as the gangs of local girls shoehorned into tiny figure-gripping outfits that barely contained their bountiful enthusiasm, who hustled through the Trinity Street pedestrian strip on party nights. Which, as near as I could tell, was every night.
The only discernible glow of interest came when the Australians unveiled their World Cup playing uniform during their first full-team media function held in the contrastingly regal grounds of Cardiff Castle. Over the course of 2,000 years, the strategic stronghold has been occupied by a Roman garrison, Norman conquerors, local nobility, and even a nineteenth-century Gothic precursor to the modern theme park. But it's unlikely the historic landmark has seen a more conspicuous troupe of entertainers than the fifteen cricketers who posed for a memorabilia moment at the base of the castle's Norman keep.
The Australian playing strip was not just lurid, it was somehow luminescent. Like a canola crop blooming in front of the Tavern Stand at Lord's, the cricketers stood out crassly against the deep green of the castle's lush lawn. Even the peacocks that loitered behind the photographer must have felt the visitors' livery overtly ostentatious. And it wasn't only the colour that prompted incredulity. The material from which the clothes were fashioned appeared, as I reported to readers back home, to be some sort of 'high-sheen fabric to which nothing but ridicule is likely to stick'.
The space-age garb emitted glare but no heat. And with the British conditions making a mockery of the term 'warm-up games', the Australians shivered their way from Cardiff to Worcester to Taunton searching for form that had been last seen in the Caribbean sunshine. The only warmth they could generate came from the small chemical hand-warming sachets they secreted into the pockets of their garish gold pants. When brought into contact with the air, these little chemical companions released sufficient heat to at least keep blood circulating and fingers flexible. Questions regarding the wisdom of staging a cricket tournament so early in the fickle English summer were gaining validity, and the only rationale organisers could provide was that they wanted to prevent one-day cricket's equivalent of the Olympics directly clashing with the All-England tennis championships at Wimbledon, due to begin in late June.
Reasons for the Australians' lacklustre early showings were less obvious. Rumblings about a touring party that was neither competitive nor cohesive began to surface. Former England captain-turned-journalist Michael Atherton predicted that not only was Australia unable to win the World Cup, it was unlikely to make it to the second stage of the tournament, when the twelve-team competition was reduced by half. Pressure was then applied from my superiors to be the first Australian newspaper to deliver a similarly stinging appraisal of the team's chances. My plea for circumspection, that we should wait at least until the meaningful games began before trumpeting imminent failure, were reluctantly accepted. But it was only a temporary reprieve. In the super-competitive world of modern media, being first is regularly preferred to being right.
That expectation meant investing even greater vigilance in my routine morning scan of England's national daily papers. Given they numbered roughly a dozen, this was as much a physical exercise as a cerebral one. With Google yet to celebrate its first birthday, my search engine was the Volvo, which was backed up to the nearest WH Smith newsagent each day to load the stash. It added an extra element to every morning — the scramble to update stories sent to Australia just hours earlier, in the ambitious quest to leave no morsel of news, from all available sources, unreported. And those items would invariably surface when least welcome. On the morning that Australia's Cup campaign proper began against the well-concealed cricket might of Scotland, in the famous Civil War city of Worcester, I was slapped awake by the first copy I hauled from my mountainous pile of Sunday papers. Through his weekly column in The Sunday Times, Shane Warne had decided it was an opportune moment to launch an unprovoked tirade against Sri Lanka's captain, Arjuna Ranatunga, who, at the time, was with his team in nearby Northampton.
'I don't like him, and I'm not in a club of one,' Warne wrote with trademark tact, apropos of nothing other than spleen.
The handful of Australian players I canvassed over breakfast dismissed the rant as simply 'Warney being Warney'. The Australian Cricket Board took a less phlegmatic view, not sharing their employee's belief that truth should stand as an absolute defence. They demanded an explanation and immediately implemented new protocols to ensure all future players' columns were carefully vetted by senior ACB staff prior to publication. Thus, the practice of players receiving cash for no comment was formally sanctioned.
Not only is Worcester's New Road ground — on the banks of the Severn River with its chestnut trees and stately twelfth-century cathedral as a backdrop — one of the world's prettiest cricket venues, its fame extends well beyond its white picket boundary fence. When a conga line of members, in their tweed coats and corduroy slacks, stood with backs to the cricket midway through Australia's afternoon pursuit of Scotland's modest total, I assumed it was a silent protest at the favourites' sluggish batting progress. It was only when two English journalists, well versed in the rituals of the county cricket circuit, jumped out of their chairs and disentangled themselves from the tiny press box shouting 'cake's up' that the truth emerged.
Worcestershire County Cricket Club's greatest charm resides in its home-made afternoon teas, dispensed from the Ladies Pavilion accessed via a wooden staircase just beyond the deep mid-wicket boundary. These are the real deal — orange sponges, apple and walnut slices, citrus cake encased in thick lemon icing, scones both fruited and fruitless — dispensed by serious women who understand that plastic and polystyrene are no substitutes for crockery and bone china. Up until the late 1970s, women patrons were confined to watching cricket from the Ladies Pavilion and were denied access to the mock-Tudor Members building, which housed the club's gentlemen, as well as the players' dressing rooms and the bulk of the amenities. In a shrewd countermeasure, the ladies fought back by providing more than just desserts.
Nowadays, men wait anxiously on seat's edge for the three o'clock chimes that announce the arrival of delicacies far more appealing than cricket. When the Australian team returned to Worcester for a tour match during the 2005 Ashes series, I closely monitored the queue that started forming around 2.45 p.m. My reconnaissance revealed Australia's coach, John Buchanan, installed in a prime position near the front of the line and facing steadfastly away from the game, even though his batsmen were pushing their claims for Test selection in the middle at the time.
Scotland's score was reeled in, but with no great conviction. In his post-match media conference, Stephen Waugh was uncharacteristically critical of his team's effort, confirming his frustration was on the rise. His demeanour also lent vague credibility to rumours that a rift had arisen between him and Warne. Its genesis, supposedly, lay in Warne's exclusion from the Antigua Test. Nobody in the team would ratify this whisper, but there was a palpable undercurrent of unease that seemed to explain the less-than-inspiring effort against a Scottish team better equipped to combat the cold than Australia's bowling and batting. Waugh scotched such talk by pledging all would be redressed in the upcoming game against New Zealand, back in Cardiff. But heaping fuel on these embers of discontent was Ranatunga's rebuttal of Warne's outburst.
'Warne's attack is more about Warne and Australian culture than about me, and I think we all know where the Australians come from,' Ranatunga thundered in his own newspaper column. This slur on his nation's convict past further rankled the Australian captain, who by then had started to resemble a man carrying if not the world's, then certainly a share of the World Cup's problems.
That was the impression I gained when I arrived late to the hotel breakfast room in Cardiff next morning and noticed only one other solitary patron in the all but empty restaurant. Stephen Waugh was hunched over a bowl of cereal, studying the top copy on a heap of newspapers. I briefly considered turning around and heading straight back to my room. I knew well the etiquette that covered dining, and its proximity to players. Several times since arriving in Britain, colleagues and I had entered eateries for an evening meal only to be confronted by icy glares from a group of Australian cricketers already ensconced. The players automatically suspected journalists were trying to inveigle themselves within earshot or eye-line of their private discussions in the hope of landing some gossip. In reality, we were just aiming for a quick feed before returning to work. But it was not a battle worth waging, so we would invariably offer our apologies to the maître d' and retreat in search of alternative venues sans cricketers.
In the moment that I hesitated to consider whether to take breakfast or flee, Waugh lifted his eyes from the newspapers and offered a vague nod, which I returned. Niceties completed, I set off for a table in the farthest corner of the room to let him know I wanted to neither cramp his style, nor force his friendship.
'Sleep in, mate?' he inquired, smiling at his quip, which incorporated his favoured pastime of lampooning journalists' work ethic. I smiled back, lacking the energy to point out I had spent the past few hours updating the latest skirmish in the Austro-Ceylonese war.
As I walked past, he added: 'You can sit here if you want,' and gestured to the five vacant places at his table.
I interpreted this to mean he either had a quibble with something I'd written, or there was a wider issue he wanted to air. Stephen Waugh was not a man to engage in idle breakfast-table chit-chat. Well, not to a newspaper journalist anyway. Having accepted the offer, I decided I should take the opportunity to get on the front foot and tackle him about scuttlebutt of dressing-room divisions.
'Nah, mate, it's all bullshit,' he said between mouthfuls. 'It's a bloody rumour that Stumper's spreading to try and give 'em a leg up for Thursday.'
'Stumper' was former Australian Test wicketkeeper and Waugh's one-time New South Wales coach, Steve Rixon, who had gone on to coach New Zealand. I waited for him to expand further but was met with nothing more than the rhythmic crunch of cereal. Having scooped the bowl clean, he broached the issue that was really on his mind.
'Have you read Ranatunga's article?' he said, not awaiting a reply. 'It's bloody outrageous,' he continued, pushing his plate to one side and draining a glass of water. 'Imagine if I'd written something like that while we were in the West Indies. Havin' a go at them, talking about Caribbean culture and slavery. I'd be run out of the game...and rightly so. It's a bloody disgrace. How does he keep getting away with it?'
'Maybe he's not as scared of writs as you and me,' I ventured, not totally sure that humour was an appropriate response. Waugh tilted his head and the half-smirk returned. He pushed his chair out with a clatter, swept up the pile of papers and strode off.
'See you later, mate', he mumbled. Then he stopped, took a step back towards me and added: 'Don't write any of that.'
I raised the palm of my hand to show good faith. Our shared breakfast had been brief. Our moment of mutual trust even more fleeting.
Life didn't become any more straightforward for the Australian captain over subsequent days. The line-up that had misfired against Scotland in Worcester stalled utterly in the face of a New Zealand batting rampage. Australia's hopes of winning the prized trophy became less probable with every imperious strike that Kiwi all-rounder Chris Cairns launched against Shane Warne's bowling. A number of these cleared the long-on fence, as well as our makeshift press box, and splashed down in the shallow waters of the meandering Taff. As the sodden ball was retrieved and returned, Warne stood dumbstruck at the top of his bowling mark, wearing the look of someone who wanted to be somewhere else. In fairness, his mind probably was — in Melbourne, where his wife had given birth to their first son hours before the game began.
There were also members within the squad who felt the captain's strict players' midnight curfew for the tournament's duration, imposed because of what Waugh considered lapses of discipline in the Caribbean, was heavy-handed and inappropriate for grown men. For these reasons alone, it was an unhappy team that rode the M1 to Leeds in the wake of the New Zealand defeat, to prepare for their next match against one of the Cup favourites, Pakistan.
Headingley was clad in its traditional grey coat, with skies the colour and warmth of Yorkshire slate as the Australians battled to remain in the World Cup. Swaddled in every item of clothing I could wear without limiting my ability to type, I squeezed into my allocated seat in the press box, located incongruously between the players' viewing balcony and the historic venue's Members bar. The only details I could make out through the morning gloom were eleven brilliant yellow figures that trailed comet-like tails across the grass when they moved. The harder I strained to make sense of the picture, the darker it all became. I could not see how they could possibly play cricket in such dim light, largely because I was struggling to see anything at all.
Curiously, metres to my left where the Pakistan players sat on the balcony, the day seemed several lux lighter. It was only then I twigged that a thin film of black gauze had been stretched across the front window of the press box, which sat elevated only slightly above ground level. The screen's purpose was to prevent batsmen becoming distracted by movement among the media, directly behind the bowler's arm. Its effect was to prevent the media from detecting all but the most extravagant movement among the players. It was like watching television through the fine weave of a prawn net.
After straining my already heavy eyes for an hour, I surrendered my seat and moved to the 'overflow' media section — a line of bare desks in the equally sparse, open-air back rows of the Main Stand. Directly in front of the Yorkshire County Cricket Club bar, favoured by aged Leodensians, where the air was bitter by scent as well as feel. I reasoned hypothermia was a small price to pay for actually seeing what I was reporting on. But it meant my mood quickly grew as grim as the day.
That was reflected in the second-edition story I filed midway through the match. Another slipshod Australian bowling and fielding effort convinced me to abandon the iron-clad principle I'd been taught for writing 'live' copy. That is, pre-empting events that will take place after the presses rolled. As I battled exhaustion and exposure, prudence was tossed to the icy wind, which sliced across the ground from Kirkstall Lane and the aptly named Winter Shed.
'Australia's World Cup bid is essentially over,' I trumpeted, with a resolve fuelled by the countless cups of instant coffee I had nursed to keep my digits thawed.
'It is out of their hands, and has all but slipped through their fingers', I continued, employing a tortured metaphor that reflected my state of mind, but a premise that I believed would prove more or less correct. Hours later, that's how it panned out. Sort of. Australia's batsmen failed to overhaul their target, and a premature flight home now loomed barely a week away.
The only person not prepared to entertain that likelihood was Stephen Waugh, who stood defiant and bristling in the meat-keeper chill of the dour football change rooms that hosted his post-match meeting with the Australian media. The skipper cut a far more combative figure than had most of his teammates over the preceding seven hours. Hands plunged deep into his pockets, he didn't respond well to suggestions that Australia was about to be bumped out of the championship alongside other cricket lightweights Scotland, Bangladesh and Kenya.
'We just have to win our next seven games,' he retorted, displaying the bloody-mindedness for which he was renowned, and occasionally mocked. 'We're capable of doing that.'
Given his team's only meaningful victory of the past three weeks had come at the expense of a nation that could happily identify all variations of Glenfiddich but none of Glenn McGrath's, it seemed a laughably ambitious equation. Nonetheless, the captain's doggedness rattled me, as I harked back to what I had already written for the morning's paper. What if, unlike the Titanic, the campaign was not yet sunk? It wasn't only rival cricketers that Stephen Waugh was able to burden with self-doubt.
On returning to our hotel, and with the day finally abandoning any pretence of lustre, I spied a lone figure pacing the driveway. With his tracksuit collar upturned against the invasive northern cold, Shane Warne was sucking hard on a consolation cigarette. He had also endured a forgettable day. But while my impetuousness was confined to a few thousand newspapers, the failings in his efforts were broadcast to, and scrutinised by, the world. For that reason, I attempted to slip past him unnoticed. However, he looked up long enough to spot me as I slunk along the front wall. Warne's greeting extended no further than a fleeting raise of the eyebrows. In a clumsy attempt to bridge the awkwardness, I offered congratulations on the arrival of his son, Jackson.
'Seen any pictures yet?' I inquired, with forced familiarity.
'No, not yet,' Warne breathed, his words enshrouded in smoke. 'There's a problem with my email and I can't seem to open them.'
He took another deep drag, and I was about to bid him good evening when he unexpectedly continued.
'How do ya reckon I bowled today?' he asked.
I looked into his eyes and saw he genuinely sought a response. I dipped into my faltering mental archive, searching for any recollection of his unremarkable ten-over spell that had yielded fifty-odd runs and a wicket much earlier in the day.
'Um, okay, I thought,' I stumbled. 'I mean, not easy in those conditions. Cold day, seamers' pitch. And those Pakistanis really know how to handle spin bowling...' My assessment disappeared into the drizzle that was providing an appropriate full stop to the day.
Warne stood expectantly, cigarette poised near his recently repaired right shoulder. It was as much as I had to offer and, as a critique, it was neither insightful nor valuable. But it seemed to assuage him. In truth, the most gifted spin bowler of his time didn't really want a nobody from Nuriootpa technically deconstructing his current bowling form. He simply needed somebody, anybody, to articulate what he needed to hear. That he wasn't washed up. That traces of the old magic still flickered. And that he alone wasn't to blame for the team's dire predicament.
For all his bravado and cocksuredness, Warne was as prone to self-doubt as any of us when his world was not revolving as reliably as one of his leg breaks. His mood, his demeanour, his outlook on life were all enmeshed with his performance on the cricket field. He rose and fell on the quality of his bowling. But if he was turning to me for reassurance, then the immediate future did not bode well for him, or his team. Saving us both the embarrassment of more questions for which I had no answer, he took the cigarette from his mouth and scrunched it underfoot.
'Yeah, I thought they were coming out much better today as well,' he said, as if his personal fog, at least, was lifting. 'But it's gunna be pretty tough for us from here. Looks like we might both be back in Melbourne before we know it, mate.'
He headed indoors and I hung back in the damp to try and make sense of the exchange. I might have taken a gamble that afternoon by writing recklessly on what I had not yet seen, but I was fairly certain about what I'd just heard. Perhaps, after all, my pre-emptive World Cup obituary was not so wildly speculative.
#
# World Cup, England, May–June 1999 (II)
If, as the coaches' cliché goes, defeat is infinitely more instructive than triumph, then the Australians should have been chock full of knowledge after the opening week of the 1999 World Cup. Instead, they appeared as bereft of ideas as they were short of time. Just as worryingly, the mood within the team had shifted from steely to edgy. The few players who were performing looked askance at teammates who weren't. Those who were blatantly underachieving turned their insecurities inward. As the Australian public sought answers, the players' frustration was increasingly directed against those posing the questions. And nobody more graphically illustrated the shift than Adam Dale.
A journeyman seam bowler forced to wait until his thirtieth year to win national selection, Dale had a more balanced appreciation of sport's vicissitudes than many of his more naturally gifted teammates. Unaffected and unfussed, he had seen a World Cup dream he fought so hard to realise almost snatched away by the untimely bout of pneumonia he contracted in the Caribbean. The diligence and good humour he had shown in recovering his place meant there was widespread empathy to complement the prevailing wisdom that his nagging bowling style would succeed in English conditions.
Prior to Australia's tournament opener against Scotland, our touring press corps convened at the Eagle Vaults Tavern, a 'real' English pub that's operated in the heart of Worcester since the nineteenth century in a building dating back to the reign of Charles II. As we raised a final pint to our forthcoming escapade, we noticed our party's number had grown to include the unobtrusive bowler. Dale had taken himself out to an early-evening cinema screening of a new release rom-com, and was pleased to spy a few familiar faces through the pub window on his way back to the team hotel because he felt in need of a quick drink and a chat. Not many of world cricket's opening bowlers would voluntarily confess to hardened journalists that they had just teared up during a PG-rated movie. Which made it tough, even for the most flint-hearted among us, to publicly question his place in Australia's starting line-up after he captured a solitary wicket and uncharacteristically bled runs in the first two Cup games.
He was overlooked for the loss to Pakistan at Headingley and, upon reaching Chester-le-Street in County Durham for the next game, Dale was clearly of the mind that unkind media assessments were succeeding where pneumonia had failed. On the eve of the team's tournament-defining match against Bangladesh, as the Australians undertook their pre-training stretching exercises, a handful of travelling scribes wandered across the Riverside Stadium's expansive outfield to cast our inexpert eyes over the pitch. Catching sight of our collective, Dale drifted away from the playing group and barged towards the press pack. Even across such a vast distance, it was clear he bore little of the good humour we had enjoyed in Worcester. He sought out the member of our team whose copy had wounded him most deeply and began his own heated inquisition.
'What gives you the right to question my place in the team?' he demanded. 'I mean, have you ever played the game at this level?'
I thought of the standard refutation of this evergreen criticism taught to me by a wise older colleague during my cadet days. 'You don't need to have killed anyone to report on a murder.' But simply grateful that I'd been spared the outburst, I confined my attention to the strip of rolled dirt at our feet.
Dale was not the only squad member who believed the team's batting and bowling shortcomings stemmed directly from, as opposed to being accurately described by, words arranged on newsprint. That evening, on a break from my writing, I took a short stroll across the Elvet Bridge to the centre of Durham city, where I popped into a cheap and cheerful trattoria in search of a quick spaghetti supper. No sooner had the waiter donned that pitying look reserved for solo diners accompanied only by a paperback than I became aware of six pairs of eyes burning into me from the back of the room. A sizeable portion of the Australian cricket team made it silently, but abundantly, clear they did not want me seated anywhere nearby. I made it equally plain I got their message by seeking a table by the window. Of a curry house, in distant Silver Street.
In between biryani and DeLillo, I attempted to deconstruct why the world's best job had rapidly begun descending, day by day, into an unending chore. The boss might have been in another hemisphere, but there was no escape from the pressing weight of sourcing, producing and delivering a selection of daily newspaper stories. Forget rest days. Or even mental health days. There were, as warned, only playing days and non-playing days. And the toughest moment of each of them was prising open the laptop, at whatever time duty called, to be taunted by yet another blank page. After fifty consecutive days of filling three or four of those empty sheets at a time, my inspiration was badly overdrawn.
To compound my growing sense of isolation and subjugation, each subsequent Australian defeat saw the cricketers withdraw deeper into surliness, thereby increasing friction and reducing cooperation. This only served to further prick the interest of a newspaper industry that revels in conflict and failure, which in turn meant heightened competition between rival journalists previously united as travelling companions. And that had started to manifest itself in occasional bouts of secrecy, jealousy and paranoia.
Having mulled over these issues in brooding silence at dinner, I took a reflective evening walk along the banks of the River Wear and through the hushed grounds of Durham University to try and clear my clouded mind. I needed to unearth a means of reawakening my initial enthusiasm for the job that I had somehow misplaced between riots in the West Indies and the chill that had descended in England.
Slowly, it became clear that it was the constant heavy presence of the next deadline that had come to weigh most oppressively upon me. Opening my eyes each morning after too little sleep, knowing I was already under pressure to hit an edition just hours away. Then the next one, a few hours after that. I needed to find a definable point in each day where the job ended and reality began. It didn't reside in my endless blur of hotel rooms, which also served as my de facto offices. Likewise in the press boxes, the decrepit Volvo, or even at our touring media team's regular and thoroughly enjoyable collegiate dinners, because in all those places the conversation rarely strayed from cricket. And cricket, for so long my passion, had now come to represent work. The answer, as it came to me on a gentle Durham evening breeze, was to rediscover the world's best job by escaping from it every chance that arose.
Among the lengthening shadows cast by Durham's haunting Norman cathedral and the ghosts of scholars and powerbrokers dating back to the prince-bishops, I was awakened to the richness and diversity of experiences that were drifting distantly past while I rigidly fretted over the inanities of selection permutations, batting averages and telephone connections. I swore a silent oath that night that on subsequent tours I would make time to immerse myself more completely in my surrounds. To keep sight of the fact that cricket made for an interest, not a life. All predicated on the shaky assumption there would be other tours.
The salve for the cricketers' ills lay simply in winning. Seven games out of seven, as the captain had audaciously declared. The first of those was predictably ticked off against Bangladesh, not in a canter but at a furious gallop. Which led to a rematch with the West Indies and, more pointedly, with Brian Lara in Manchester.
Among the motivational methods the Australians had adopted to revive their campaign was to, in jargon let loose from a public-sector training seminar, give the players greater 'ownership' of the team's plans. More specifically, each member of the starting XI was assigned an individual opponent and asked to explain to their teammates pre-game how they would go about reducing their target man's impact. The job of quelling Lara, fresh from his routine dismemberment of Australia's bowlers in the Caribbean, was handed to Glenn McGrath. His strategy, revealed to an expectant Australian team meeting in their hotel not far from Old Trafford on match eve and subsequently leaked to the press, was as economical and incisive as McGrath's famously frugal bowling.
'Get him out,' he scrawled on a sheet of paper.
At face value, McGrath held little claim to the title he would rise to secure — cricket's most successful pace bowler. He boasted neither the raw speed of Dennis Lillee, nor the steepling bounce generated by Curtly Ambrose. His weaponry did not extend to the unplayable new-ball swing imparted by Richard Hadlee, nor an ability to somehow bend the old one like Wasim Akram. Where McGra excelled, however, over fourteen years of cricket's most attritional art, was in his unrivalled capacity to land the ball precisely where he wanted to. Over after over. Day after year.
Like most so-called champions, his talent was a gift fashioned from ambition and dedication, employing the universal tools of patience and repetition through a childhood of single-minded practice conducted on a rural property at Narromine, in north-western New South Wales. The McGrath academy was a home-made pitch scratched out of the rocks and dust behind his dad's machine shop. Having completed his daily chores, he would trundle in and bowl repeatedly at a forty-four-gallon oil drum positioned twenty-two yards away. He came to know the location of every pebble, every contour on that rudimentary strip. And not only did he understand exactly how the ball would behave upon striking the various grooves and the gravel, he could put it in such a place as to achieve his desired outcomes more often than not.
Their proud place in Trinidadian heritage aside, Brian Lara presented a far different proposition to a steel drum. But on a bitterly grey morning in one of Britain's dampest cities, it took McGrath just six deliveries to calibrate his radar against the world's pre-eminent left-hander. Then, with his seventh, he coaxed Lara to lean marginally forward by pitching on an immaculate length — full enough to commit the batsman to a stroke, but short enough to prevent him smothering any movement. And move it did. Sufficiently off the raised seam of the white Duke ball to deviate past the bat pushed speculatively towards it. Lara's back leg twitched instinctively into line as he anticipated contact that never occurred. Instead, the ball kissed the top of his off stump before skewing off to an elated slips cordon.
Having kicked the door to victory number two of seven ajar, the Australians then showed an unseemly lack of intent to amble through it. In a nakedly cynical, though entirely legitimate, attempt to lift the West Indies into the second stage of the tournament at the expense of the New Zealanders (who would carry points from their Cardiff victory through to the subsequent 'Super Sixes' round), the Australians understood their cause would be best served by labouring as long as possible over their pursuit of victory.
Which is why Stephen Waugh and Michael Bevan took the best part of twenty overs to accumulate the final twenty runs. After suffering through the inhospitable Manchester weather, the crowd was justifiably miffed by this artificial outcome, and showed their displeasure by booing, slow hand-clapping, and walking out en masse before the final run was scored — precisely how public displeasure should be aired. Had the game been played in the Caribbean, they would have rioted from the instant Lara's stumps were rattled.
The newspapers that had decried the Australians' lack of success in the tournament's initial stages immediately reacted to their most meritorious victory by complaining loudly about the evils of contrivance, some even floating the spectre of collusion. It served to stir greater antipathy between the press corps and Waugh's team, which now surmised it was not only expected to win, but should do so in a caring, sharing kind of way. But if the touring journalists were doggedly refusing to play cheerleader, at least the Australian public was rapidly getting on board.
Consecutive wins in the group stage meant back-to-back Super Sixes fixtures in London, where McGrath repeated his form of Manchester to destroy India's celebrated batting line-up at The Oval. Then Mark Waugh found form with a characteristically deft century to secure a hard-fought win over a Zimbabwean team neither overawed nor overshadowed by its historic first outing at Lord's.
During our welcome ten-day burst of semi-permanence in London, players from all World Cup squads were invited to a slap-up reception at Buckingham Palace. Members of the media were not. The Australian players emerged from Her Majesty's, not so much bowled over by the spread she laid on, but intrigued by the overt air of tension exuded by the South African entourage. Expectation clearly sat as comfortably with the tournament's outright favourites as egg and cress sandwiches. It also allowed a revealing glimpse into their fragile mindset, the sort of detail the Australian captain was known to exploit ruthlessly. And in the days leading into his team's return to Headingley to tackle South Africa on the same patch where the low ebb had been reached against Pakistan three weeks earlier, he didn't decline the gift. Whether prompted by obliging media questions or simply by addressing it unprompted, Stephen Waugh took every opportunity to point out there was no international cricket team Australia admired and respected more than South Africa. The sting in this tale was sharp, and toxic.
'That's why we get such great enjoyment out of beating them,' he taunted.
He was acutely aware that, player-for-player, South Africa fielded the most complete team in the game at that time. And that those same individuals had failed to win any major international cricket trophy in the eight years since their nation returned from sporting isolation, which carried with it a crushing weight of hope. Happily adding to that burden, Waugh also pointed out that his team always performed well against South Africa in matches that mattered.
'They know that, so this will be a pointer to who'll win the World Cup,' he said prior to the Headingley match. As a street fighter, Waugh knew the value in wielding any weapon that lay within reach.
Other, seemingly less plausible, items were added to the arsenal. At a team meeting on match eve, Shane Warne — not for the first or last time — prompted sniggers and muttering among his teammates when he presented his 'ownership' offering.
'If you're batting and Herschelle Gibbs takes a catch, then stand your ground,' Warne announced, before being forced to explain further by a room full of puzzled looks.
'He doesn't hold it,' he continued, becoming more insistent. 'He shows off, and flicks it straight up into the air.'
More eye-rolling ensued, but Warne went on to reveal that he had discussed this very issue with other international players and that on the West Indies' recent tour to South Africa Antiguan Ridley Jacobs went so far as to inquire of the umpires whether Gibbs had shown sufficient control over a catch, such was the fielder's enthusiasm to rid himself of the ball in the interests of showmanship. On that day, Gibbs blamed the mishap on a painkilling injection that had left him with no feeling in the middle finger of his right hand. He was to experience even greater discomfort at Headingley.
The danger with dishing out trash talk is that deeds will always have the final word. To that end, accusations of mental frailty seemed wrongly apportioned when Australia's bowlers let South Africa post a hefty 271, and then their top-order batsmen wilted in reply. The South Africans gathered in high spirits at the fall of the third wicket when, under thinning Yorkshire clouds and past the black-cloaked sight screen, Stephen Waugh all but gate-crashed the game, his normally brusque walk to the centre taking on additional urgency — as if he intended to individually put the entire opposition XI to the sword. Expecting a tense, introspective Australian skipper, given the circumstances, the South Africans were stunned when Waugh arrived, all gums blazing.
'I'm going after you today,' he goaded rival captain, Hansie Cronje, who had not even contemplated taking the ball himself at that stage.
'I want a piece of you,' he snarled at other South African bowlers, his demeanour fuelled by an overdose of adrenalin and a pathological disdain for defeat. Despite their unquestionable position of strength, Cronje's men suddenly felt under siege.
But the most memorable remark attributed to Stephen Waugh on that history-shaping afternoon was one he never made. Having faintly raised Australian hopes on the back of his own fighting half-century, Waugh flicked a ball off his pads and floated a waist-high catch to mid-wicket. Gibbs accepted the straightforward offering, but — as if reading from Warne's fantastic script — he inexplicably went to celebrate the decisive breakthrough by flicking the ball casually over his shoulder. Only this time, instead of launching skywards, the ball dribbled from his grasp and on to the Headingley turf.
As per the team talk, Waugh defiantly stood his ground. The crowd of more than 15,000 caught its breath. Cronje lodged a half-hearted, and ultimately futile, appeal, arguing that his fielder had actually controlled the ball. Unlike the Australian captain, it was summarily dismissed. It was then, as the South Africans silently moved through the field to begin the next over, that the greatest sledge never made was supposedly uttered.
Legend maintains Waugh deliberately placed himself in Gibbs's path, and heaped salt into an already gaping wound by growling, 'How does it feel to drop the World Cup?' With his team still requiring 120 runs from nineteen overs simply to remain in the tournament, it would have been a remark dripping with the sort of hubris that had just indelibly marked Gibbs's career. But the fact that Australia ultimately got there, with two deliveries to spare and Waugh unbeaten on 120, gave the fabrication lip-smacking appeal.
In truth, Waugh said something along the lines of 'That's going to cost your team today, Hersh', in keeping with the earlier lip he had dished out. But the more incendiary version was tailor-made for newspapers. Or, in this case, made up by them. Nobody has owned up to fathering the falsehood, just as there was a fraternal unwillingness to expose it as a fib. And for once, Waugh did not mind being misquoted. After all, he had just compiled what he long regarded as the best century of his career, under unimaginable pressure, against the world's best all-round bowling attack, on a lively Leeds track. And despite reeking of arrogance, the fake quote fitted the Australians' broader goal snugly. Especially when it was revealed that their semi-final opponent, four days later in Birmingham, would be South Africa.
The team's audacious run at the prize had snapped the Australian public, sports fans and otherwise, from their slumber. Television sets that had sat cold and unused during the wee hours of the Antipodean winter were suddenly being switched on and kept on until the approach of dawn when games in England reached their climax. The interest of newspaper editors had been similarly stirred, heralding the first of a string of all-night writing shifts after Headingley in a draining attempt to do justice to what was already being billed as 'Australia's most memorable one-day triumph'. It was a title that survived for all of ninety-six hours.
That night's labour through until daylight, in order to cover every conceivable angle of Australia's coup, meant there was bugger-all fresh material left to fill the insatiable demand leading into the next game. The listless, heavy-lidded eyes uniformly worn by the Australian press corps as we embarked on the two-hour drive down the M1 to Birmingham told their own story. The trip was completed in abject silence. Nobody was prepared to float an idea, or discuss a potential yarn lest it be snatched up, like a discarded jewel, by a competitor.
By the time we dragged ourselves along to Australian training the next day, so desperate was the quest for any line that might be spun into a story and draped beneath a headline that I buttonholed the team's consultant psychologist. He had been drafted into the squad early in the tournament when things weren't travelling so well, and had received coverage in some Australian papers after he was overheard chatting with Shane Warne, as they alighted the team bus, about their appointment later in the day. That exchange had then dubiously morphed into proof irrefutable that Warne was teetering on the edge of insanity, and that secure ties were being fitted to the sleeves of his tracksuit top.
In my similarly fragile state, I had hoped the shrink might detail the clinical tricks needed to rouse a team basking in the afterglow of their win, given they were tackling the selfsame opponent in the next encounter. Initially reluctant, he eventually agreed to a guarded chat, and we found a quiet spot on the periphery of training. No sooner had I turned on my voice recorder and framed my opening question than a giant paw loomed over my shoulder, snatched the machine from my hand and whisked it beyond my reach.
'Don't answer any questions about me,' Warne demanded of the perplexed psychologist. 'That's an invasion of privacy.'
Warne then took a couple of steps backwards and held the recording device above his head, like a parent who had successfully intervened in a playground dispute. He then stood silently, shifting his defiant glare from one dumbstruck onlooker to the other.
'Er, Shane, we weren't even talking about you,' the head doctor shot back. 'And even if I'm asked about individual players, I don't answer.'
If the leg-spinner was embarrassed, it didn't show. He silently handed back the machine, mumbled something about the trouble that would ensue if any of that exchange appeared in the newspaper, then turned to rejoin his teammates. The psychologist shrugged apologetically and trotted off after him. The interview never took place.
Increasingly desperate, I abandoned the Australians and resumed my search for a story inside Edgbaston's main stadium, having been drawn by a series of hammer blows that echoed chillingly across the vacant seats. Settling into what I hoped was the safety of the Eric Hollies Stand, I watched South Africa's coach, Bob Woolmer, who stood a quarter-way along one of the central pitches, and repeatedly threw badly scuffed off-white cricket balls at the feet of a batsman I recognised as Lance Klusener.
An Afrikaner as muscular as he was humourless, Klusener had emerged as the undisputed player of the World Cup. Over the previous month, he had brutalised every opposing bowling attack by wielding his hefty 3lb 2oz bat with the menace and effect of an executioner's axe. From my vantage point at extra deep mid-wicket, I counted seven consecutive strikes that sent attempted yorkers screaming over the fence. Each swing was accompanied by a distinctive 'crrrack...crrrack', not unlike the report from a .22 rifle. I made a note that should the semifinal come down to a shoot-out between Klusener and Australia's bowlers, I would back the bloke nicknamed 'Zulu'.
As the match unfolded, that scenario became more and more unlikely. The Australian batsmen again faltered early, but this time there was no miracle mid-innings rescue, or fielding faux pas to save them. Consequently, Stephen Waugh's team finished their innings at least twenty or thirty runs shy of a total that press box wisdom deemed satisfactory. As the Australians prepared to return to the field, lifting themselves to once more defy expectation and a buoyant opposition, it was Warne who again grasped their attention.
This time he served to confuse, rather than inspire. Curiously, he challenged his comrades to summon up a mighty collective effort because 'this might be the end for some of us'. For the benefit of anyone who might have missed the subtlety of his pre-emptive retirement announcement, he repeated it. Those who took the field with minds troubled by the leg-spinner's timing found no comfort in the cricket. The South African batsmen, led by a chastened Gibbs, began at a sprightly clip. Then Warne took the ball and history arrived.
With his eighth delivery, Warne defeated Gibbs with a leg break that would have held claim to 'ball of the century' had the spinner not already secured that honour with his inaugural Test delivery on English soil, six years earlier. This one appeared to be drifting harmlessly down leg side before it dipped alarmingly towards the batsman's left ankle, and compelled him to poke at it like someone trying to scotch a snake with an umbrella tip. Upon landing, the ball changed direction so fiercely that Gibbs had no option but to limply follow it with his bat. He was unable to catch it up before it clattered into his off stump. For the second time in as many matches, the South African stood stunned, unable to comprehend what had just taken place.
Warne simply exploded. Months of pent-up frustration, self-doubt, anger, humiliation and defeated ambition surged out of him as he pumped his fists furiously and exhorted his teammates to believe. The huddle that formed was part celebratory, part protective custody as the Australians tried to restrain the frenzied leggie lest he lose the plot he had just rewritten. When he repeated the sorcery to remove the other opener five balls later, Warne's reaction was even more bullish. He was back where he belonged — in the spotlight. And through sheer strength of character, reawakened belief in his ability, and an extraordinary capacity to deliver his unique skills amid the most demanding circumstances, he was dragging his team, and his country, into its warm glow.
The next three hours showcased the thrust and parry that only top-level sport can conjure. With deadline well and truly past, my privilege was to sit back and watch it unfold, jotting semi-regular notes to help jog my foggy recollections when typing much later in the evening. South Africa threatened to once more implode, then rallied to nose in front. Australia clawed back and panic gripped the South Africans yet again. Eventually, it boiled down to a basic equation. One over to bowl. Nine runs to win. No spare batsmen remaining. Klusener versus Australia.
Back home, millions of pyjama-clad night owls sat transfixed to their televisions, wide-eyed and white-knuckled even though it was closing in on 3 a.m. on a frosty mid-June Friday. But in the Edgbaston press box, despite the knife-edge drama approaching its denouement not 200 metres in front of me, I found myself battling to stay awake. The day had reached that gorgeous transition, the onset of an English summer evening, when the intensity of light drifts languidly from glare into gloaming. Filtered through the gossamer fog of a weak Midlands' heat haze, I was being warmed to the point of unconsciousness by the watery sun. Unable to face another cup of instant coffee, I yearned for fresh air to breathe some life into the stifling media enclosure. But as I had learned from seven weeks of professional confinement in equally airless hotel rooms, England's windows were rather like their pubs. Never open when they needed to be.
Having watched Klusener prepare for this very contingency, I also felt I had entered a dreamlike state of déjà vu. I fought to stave off any hazy preconception that our entire assignment was just minutes from completion. Because once my brain locked on to the prospect of imminent down time, I feared there was no chance of jump-starting it back into life should reality suddenly change. I focused, instead, on a simple truth. If Australia fluked a wicket, I soldiered on. If South Africa scored nine runs, I went to bed.
The dull throb I became aware of as Damien Fleming began the final over was not, as first suspected, a cry from my oxygen-deprived brain. It was Klusener, jaw squared, eyes narrowed, bludgeoning his enormous bat into the pitch. It sent an unmistakable message of intent, even before he sent the first two balls Fleming served up scorching to the boundary rope. Scores were level. The journey was all but over. And with our collective fate finally apparent, relief began to swamp fatigue.
I stole a glance at my Australian colleagues. They wore a uniform half-grin, half-scowl. The absence of obvious disappointment helped ease any guilt I wasn't feeling. Sure, Australian defeat heralded crushing disappointment for the players who had spent years preparing and planning. And it would unleash frustration, even desolation, among the thousands of Australians at the ground, and countless more tuned in around the world. But I remained determined to see the smaller picture. And Crash seemed to be thinking along similar lines.
'Whaddya think you'll do, Rams?' he asked vaguely, colouring in a small stick figure in the margin of his tattered scorebook, as the work benefits of a South Africa — Pakistan World Cup final began to crystallise. 'Do you reckon you'll go to London for the final?'
I half-heartedly suggested I probably would, safe in the knowledge the decision was not mine to make. Although, on further contemplation, there was no way I could see the newspaper stumping up for accommodation and travel costs for a final act that featured no Australian actors. In truth, I expected to be on the first plane home. Suddenly, Crash swivelled to face me and, betraying a level of excitement last seen when his long-lost suitcase was delivered to his hotel room in Cardiff, he frothed: 'You know what would be really great? A couple of quiet days in London before we leave. And we could take in a West End show. Maybe Phantom of the Opera!'
I didn't let on that I was already plotting a lengthy season of my own one-man production of Sleeping Beauty. But his mention of forward plans sent my brain spinning out of control. The sudden collapse of the retaining wall that had been successfully blocking out all thoughts of an Australian loss set free a torrent of urgent, competing thoughts.
An exhaustive wash-up of the semifinal would have to be written overnight, covering the usual angles — where the campaign went wrong, apportionment of blame, whose futures were now clouded etc., etc. If I was to return home immediately, I would also need to cancel my existing accommodation bookings in London, rebook airline tickets, and check the team's movements so our photographer could get the obligatory snaps of forlorn faces boarding the bus or the plane. Then again, if I had to return to London to catch the homeward flight, I might be asked to stay and cover the final. That would require revalidating my media accreditation, because press box seating at Lord's would be rightfully allocated to Pakistani, South African and English journalists. That, in turn, would impact on my ability to access a telephone line, thereby meaning I might not be able to file live copy from the ground, even if I was present. Oh, and for Christ's sake watch the game. Fleming's running into bowl.
What happened in the next ten seconds has been replayed enough times on YouTube, in highlights packages and on programs devoted to memorable sporting moments for me to retain an enduring image despite my acute brain fade. The footage etched into my subconscious shows Klusener winding up for another almighty blow, the ball dribbling off a hefty bottom edge just past the bowler's-end stumps, where it was scooped up by Mark Waugh. Klusener took off for the winning run. His batting partner, Allan Donald, responded, then opted to head back to the safety of his crease, dropping his bat in the process. Both batsmen were by now heading in the same direction. To ignominy and disaster. South Africa's reputation for choking in big games was assured for perpetuity in a single act that was part kamikaze, part comedy capers.
The match was a tie, but that remains a semantic detail. By dint of earlier results, Australia was through to the final, via a game still regarded as the benchmark against which all one-day cricket matches are measured. And in the space of one botched attempt at a single, my workload had quadrupled. One night without sleep had suddenly blown out to three, possibly four. Through glazed eyes I tried to focus on the Australian players as they leaped into each other's arms in celebration. The terraces erupted. Non-partisan journalists squealed like teenagers at a sleepover in response to the knife-edged drama. South African reporters sat silent, gutted and disbelieving. I searched my soul for any response at all. But amid the pandemonium, I was an empty shell.
I slumped back in my chair and turned slowly to my left to gauge Crash's reaction. He stared, drained of emotion, through the glass. Australia's World Cup dream remained alive. The unthinkable was now distinctly possible. The grand finale awaited. And in a spontaneous moment of mutually unrestrained jingoistic fervour, we muttered in chorus, 'Awww shit.'
#
# World Cup Aftermath, Australian Summers 1999–2002
Given the preceding week's drama and intrigue, there existed a nagging fear the World Cup's final might turn out to be a fizzer. As it happened, that was the only expectation the tournament showpiece met. Australia was ruthlessly flawless. Pakistan totally clueless. The game's saving grace was that it finished two hours ahead of schedule. Bad news for those who had forked out upwards of £100 to be there. Good news for those of us hoping to neatly wrap the result into Australian newspaper deadlines that had been stretched to 2 a.m. Sydney time to accommodate an event of such magnitude.
With the result apparent long before then, interest was provided by the game of whimsical chairs being played out on the Australian team balcony overlooking Lord's. Making the most of the telegraphed outcome, photographers trained their long lenses on the team's viewing platform where group scenes of elation would be far more expressive than any two-man celebration involving batting pair Darren Lehmann and Mark Waugh.
Front row centre sat the captain, in full batting gear and torn between wanting victory without any further setback and the tantalising chance to finish the job himself should a wicket fall. But next to him, inexplicably installed in position B for the upcoming memorabilia moment, was the team psychologist. While a case could be mounted to suggest he had performed vital work in mending the team's broken mindset after those difficult early weeks, his Cup statistics showed only that he had been caught in a scandal and run out of an interview without facing a question.
Prominent through his absence was Shane Warne, who had all but secured the trophy earlier in the day with another inspired bowling effort. He had opted to keep himself, for the time being, away from the intrusive gaze of the world's photo media, although his preference for the refuge of the dressing room was more likely to meet his regular need for cigarettes. But with the World Cup just a handful of runs out of reach, there was sudden movement on the balcony. Accompanied by a cloud of freshly exhaled smoke, Warne edged his way along the front row, and his counsellor did not need any of his professional skills to interpret the vice-captain's non-verbal message. His stint as seat warmer was over now that show time had arrived.
If Warne's timing was typically spot-on, then his ability to irritate also remained intact. In contravention of a team directive that everyone in public view was to don their full playing kit, to show solidarity as well as pictorial uniformity, Warne appeared in the dull light of a grey and chill London afternoon rugged up in his training tracksuit. Then, at the moment Lehmann nervelessly stroked the winning boundary and the balcony stood as one in triumph, Warne leaned so heavily into his captain to place himself squarely in centre frame, he almost caused Stephen Waugh to topple into the crowd. And it wasn't the leg-spinner's last bid to hog the spotlight that afternoon.
The world's cricket media waited patiently inside the Lord's Nursery Pavilion that doubled as home to the post-match press conference. Warne and Stephen Waugh took their places behind a laminated table with the gleaming trophy, like a gilded roll-on deodorant, occupying the space between them. It was then, to the apparent discomfort of his skipper and the surprise of assembled journalists, that Warne chose to purge himself of innumerable demons accumulated over the previous months. In doing so, he consciously ensured the next day's worldwide headlines would not dwell on his team's triumph, but rather on Warne's own speculation about his playing career.
'I'm going home to have a good think about what the future holds for me,' he announced to a synchronised raising of eyebrows. 'I don't go out and play cricket to try and prove the critics wrong. I go and play cricket because I love playing for my country. But it's been a pretty hectic six months, and a lot of things have happened in my life that I didn't expect. So over the next couple of weeks I'll be having a good chat about what's going on, and having a good think before I make a decision. Hopefully whatever the future holds, I'll be happy.'
That Warne, reaffirmed as a genius and a national hero with consecutive man-of-the-match honours in the World Cup's two most crucial games, should immediately veer from superstardom to self-pity provided another telling insight into his world view. Which was, essentially, that he was the world. Aggrieved by what he considered a lack of respect afforded his untrammelled talents when success briefly eluded him, he was making sure those who had doubted him, most notably his captain, endured the uncomfortable prospect of trying to win future games without him. It was his unyielding belief that every event under the sun should be evaluated in terms of the benefit or detriment it yielded Shane Warne that drove dressing rooms and committee rooms to distraction.
'Typical Warney,' one bleary-eyed teammate groaned when our paths crossed in the hotel lobby late on the morning after. 'Our theme of the whole tournament's been the importance of sticking together. That the team always trumps the individual. And what happens when we achieve what we set out to? It's all about how he feels, and what impact the whole journey's had on him. Like none of the rest of us have copped some stick, or made some sacrifices along the way. I'll tell you, some of the boys are spewing.'
Not as a result of over-celebrating, although the party had raged in the Australians' beloved visitors' dressing room at Lord's until well past dark and culminated in a nocturnal pilgrimage to the pitch where the team song was delivered with a gusto that would have drowned out any orchestra of 'drums, whistles, klaxons and fire rockets' that are expressly forbidden from the historic ground, as per a sign at the Grace Gates. The residents of St John's Wood are as intolerant of loud noise as one would expect from a suburb that sounds like a retirement village.
Then, around midnight, the festivities flowed from Lord's into the lobby of our posh Kensington hotel. Hunched over a full night of work in my room, I recognised the cacophony of drunken voices from the moment the team bus pulled up in the driveway, led by Tom Moody's expletive-laden battle cry that bounced off the foyer's polished marble floor.
As the party crashed its way up to the establishment's normally genteel mezzanine bar, I briefly contemplated slipping the yoke and joining the champions for a congratulatory glass. We had, after all, shared an arduous crusade, stretching back to Antigua and encompassing almost ninety days, more than twenty hotels, two riots, several near-death experiences and a lawsuit. But persuaded by a workload that acted as gaoler, I soon dismissed that thought. We may have jointly negotiated the triumphs and adversities of an ultimately successful campaign but, at day's end — which, in my case, remained several hours away — I was as much a part of the players' accomplishment as all the other sleep-deprived who had watched the glory unfold from their couches in Australia.
The inescapable conflict between our respective roles was laid bare when the phone jolted me from my coma at 7.30 the next morning, just hours after I had collapsed into bed. It was the Ideas Factory in Sydney, bursting with a fresh angle. Ending a twelve-year quest to reclaim one-day cricket's biggest prize was all very admirable, but news of Australia's win was already sixteen hours stale and would be positively fetid by the time the next paper hit the streets.
What wasn't so widely known was that the Waugh twins' paternal grandfather had died just hours after the winning runs were scored. Somehow, I was told, my newspaper had come into possession of a 'terrific photo of both of the Waugh boys, taken years ago with their grandpa'. It had been pencilled in for the front page but needed suitably poignant quotes from one or both of the bereaved brothers. Which was where I came in.
It wasn't only fatigue-induced delirium that churned my stomach when I twigged that I was being instructed to gatecrash their victory party and deliver a death knock. My immediate instinct was to flat-out refuse. Even through semi-consciousness, my mind recognised the words 'insensitive' and 'inappropriate'. But as was regularly pointed out, the people who made these decisions were also the ones who paid my salary. So I had no choice but to drag myself from hibernation, through the shower and back down to the lobby.
Attempts to contact either twin in their room were predictably fruitless. My only chance of jagging a quote or two rested on a chance encounter in the foyer, so I planted myself strategically on a sofa, between a pair of Armani-clad Yemeni businessmen. Through a fog of their cologne and my exhaustion, I spied an equally weary team manager who claimed to understand the urgency of my request, and honoured his pledge to phone me with a response inside the hour. In all likelihood, he composed it himself. The words were certainly sufficiently benign. But I was grateful beyond caring. Within ten minutes, the quotes were in the paper and I was back to bed.
The imperative to acquiesce to every dubious whim dreamed up on the Factory floor had always been silently inferred, but never definitively spelled out. Until the following year. In its oft-flouted wisdom, the paper decreed that the Sydney Olympic Games of 2000 were not, as the world believed, a sporting event. Rather, the newspaper brains trust maintained, it was a nation-defining, socio-political celebration that just happened to wear lycra. This must have come as a rude shock to the Australian Olympic Committee, which had spent numerous years and the GNP of many competing nations to win the planet's pre-eminent sporting competition only to learn they had, in reality, secured some sort of Davos Summit on steroids.
It was an even greater setback for the newspaper's dedicated sporting journalists, many of whom had spent their careers aspiring to this very opportunity, only to be told that coverage of such a watershed could not be trusted to mere sports hacks. The Olympics called for the specialist skills of political commentators, economics experts and incisive columnists, even though most of them freely admitted they could not tell a javelin from a J-curve. As a goodwill gesture, a handful of sports correspondents were hand-picked to fill cameo roles on the paper's 'Olympics team'. And when one of those chosen few had to unexpectedly surrender his berth, several months before the opening ceremony, I received a phone call that carried all the gravity of a royal decree.
'I'm ringing to inform you that you've been added to the paper's Olympics team,' the paper's Games tsar sermonised. 'You'll need to come to Sydney and spend a month here before they begin. During that period, we'll decide what role you'll play in the coverage.'
It wasn't the sort of offer that required deep consideration. Not in my case, anyway. So I offered profuse, obsequious thanks, and then politely declined. The Olympics had long struck me as an unsightly show of institutionalised flag-waving. And while I didn't want to appear ungrateful for the chance to be a part of the historic Aussie, Aussie, Aussie-a-thon, I also acknowledged that I was something of an oddity — a sports reporter whose passion for sport extended not much beyond cricket. It certainly had no intention of making the lonely trek to archery, rhythmic gymnastics or skeet shooting.
'I'm not sure you quite understand what's going on here,' came the response, with a disbelief verging on outrage. 'This is a big deal. It's an honour to be on the team, and knocking back this assignment could have serious implications for your career. I strongly advise you to think about your decision. Talk it over with anyone you have to and I'll call you again tomorrow.'
So I mulled over my original thought process, discussed it with nobody and, when the following day's call arrived, I rejected it again. Not to be obstreperous. I just reasoned that if it was such a prestigious reward, it would be better in the hands of someone who desperately wanted it. Better for that individual, and for the paper's coverage. I even imagined I might gain some professional kudos for my selflessness. Instead, I was seen as intractable, and possibly insane. It took just minutes for my sports editor to jump on the blower.
'What do you think you're doing?' he bellowed. 'This is not a job you knock back. Your card's already been marked. Not a smart move. I hope you know what you're doing.'
Perhaps not, but I had a clue about the sort of corporate repercussions I might be facing. Early in my Adelaide cadet years, an administrative error saw me receive written notification of an upgrade and salary rise I'd been verbally guaranteed, but was not yet technically entitled to receive. Whisked in to meet urgently with the editor, it was clearly explained the offer had been issued in error and would not be honoured. It was also very pointedly articulated that, should I choose to challenge this decision by enlisting union support or industrial law remedies, I stood a good chance of winning.
'But by doing so, you'll lose the goodwill of the company,' was the blunt threat.
For a budding print journalist, being ostracised from the organisation that operated the vast majority of the nation's newspapers represented a sizeable problem. So I shut up, copped the pay cut and, within weeks, was mysteriously offered an interstate bureau posting that came complete with not inconsequential remuneration and career benefits. I learned early that newspaper culture was a contradiction in terms. But turning down the Olympics was not the only accepted wisdom at which I was thumbing my nose. Despite the overwhelming historical evidence tendered by most of my peers and predecessors that the notions of 'touring cricket writer' and 'long-term relationship' were mutually exclusive, I was getting married. A week before the Olympics began.
Kindly recognising the pressure that lengthy overseas travel might exert on my new domestic arrangements, the Factory absented me from the national cricket team's subsequent visit to Sri Lanka. Then its trip to New Zealand. Both tours to South Africa. To England. And to Zimbabwe. In fact, the only time I was required to take my cricket writing skills back on the road was during the long, dry Australian season, when the political commentators, economic experts and incisive columnists were, coincidentally, on summer holidays and their collective absence left gaping holes in the paper.
Having successfully convinced itself, if not the nation, that the Olympics amounted to a nation-building exercise rather than a fortnight of pharmacologically enhanced sports, the newspaper also sought to capitalise on the swollen appetite for sports coverage they left behind. Consequently, in the Games' backdraft, the paper's decision-makers became tricked into believing every day should deliver stories of Olympian significance. And if events weren't sufficiently seismic to justify a full broadsheet page, or numerous think pieces from the in-house thinkers, then they would have to be confected.
That was the landscape in which Stephen Waugh's world champion one-day outfit found itself in the home summer of 2001–02. The annual limited-overs tri-series was up and running, but the Australians most definitely weren't. Outgunned by a motivated South Africa, and outfoxed by an innovative New Zealand, the home side lost three games in succession, which was more than enough to spark a national crisis in the otherwise barren news period that follows New Year. Sights were trained on the diminishing returns of the thirty-six-year-old Waugh twins, and I learned what the conference-room opinion shapers were discussing when I took a Friday-morning call, while queuing at a Sydney Airport coffee counter following another late-night end to an SCG one-dayer.
'I've got a great idea for the cover story on tomorrow's lift-out,' the sports editor enthused, as my instinctive reaction was fortuitously drowned by the background howl of milk being frothed. 'After last night's debacle, it's obvious the old guys have to go. Steve and Mark Waugh. Shane Warne. Michael Bevan. They're all past it. We need to be the first to call for a full clean-out. Bring in this Shane Watson. The young tyros. Generation next.'
I wondered whether demanding the heads of a majority of the talent that had secured a World Cup eighteen months earlier just so we could air that string of musty clichés was perhaps a little contrived. But having well learned a lesson, I offered nothing more obstructionist than 'okay'.
'I'm already getting the artwork done up,' the boss went on. 'The headline's going to be... "Sea Change".'
That's why it was known as the Ideas Factory. Your average lowbrow publishing enterprise could never aspire to the sort of creative wizardry that lifted the title from a popular television series of the day, and slapped it effortlessly above a tenuous, page-filling feature that called for a handful of veteran cricketers to be given the chop. I gestured to the barista to whack in an extra couple of shots.
'I know you're about to jump on a plane to Brisbane, but you've still got five or six hours to get that to us,' the boss ploughed on. 'You'll need to make a few calls, so I suggest you get cracking the minute you land. Be good to get a few voices of former players in there as well.'
'Voices' is the accepted euphemism for those all too freely available contacts who obediently echo whatever line a paper chooses to push. In this case, it referred to that group of ex-cricketers who jump at every opportunity to ridicule contemporary players who they believe carry half the old-timers' ability, but several hundred times their earning capacity. The more florid and outrageous the assessments from these partial observers, always recognisable by the descriptor 'former Aussie Test star [insert quote mule's name here] yesterday called for...', the more often their opinions are sought. This manufacturing method, known as the 'Phone Five Former Players and Get Them to Sack Someone' template, was once a tool reserved exclusively for slow news days. It's now as commonplace as it is inane.
That's because the trouble with routinely fabricating sensation to feed the short-term need of the daily news cycle — with loud-hailing every modest success as a 'dazzling triumph', with shrieking that every slight stumble plunges 'a dagger through the heart' — is that when something really extraordinary happens, there's no levers left to manipulate. Massive setbacks, stunning upsets, miracle victories, crushing losses now arrive with all the regularity and wonderment of lunch. Getting stories noticed requires stoking contrived conflict. Screeching the loudest. But when you run the scream-meter flat out seven days a week, people just tune out. Or go deaf. In trying to seize the attention of a market that can now scour a world's worth of alternative 'voices' with a couple of keystrokes, mainstream media has become the boy who cried werewolf.
The 'Sea Change' ran across the front of that weekend's sports lift-out and duly called for the Waugh brothers to be culled. Embracing the view that if you're going to kindle a flimsy argument you may as well ignite it with an absurdity, I also floated the notion that Warne should inherit the one-day captaincy. And while Matthew Hayden (age thirty), Andrew Symonds (twenty-six) and Darren Lehmann (almost thirty-two), weren't exactly 'the young tyros of generation next', they had been confirmed in my off-the-record chat with a selector as the most likely to win promotion should changes occur. Even fiction needs a passing nod to fact.
Predictably, Stephen Waugh's bunch of washed-up old farts comfortably accounted for South Africa in Brisbane the next day, and I approached his post-match press gathering with all the enthusiasm of someone prescribed an iced-water enema. It was obvious from the moment the skipper entered the claustrophobic storage-cum-media room beneath the 'Gabba's grandstands that he was spoiling for a fight. So I decided we should get it over and done with.
'Are you disappointed that some commentators questioned your place in the team coming into this game?' I asked, in a pathetic attempt to diffuse culpability. He narrowed his eyes and gave a dismissive snort.
'You should know, mate, you wrote it,' he shot back. A reasonable assessment, but not a quote I could use in the next day's paper. So I waded back in.
'Yes, but are you disappointed the issue was raised?' This time it was met with a painfully long silence.
'You should know, mate, you wrote it,' he said. Then more silence.
I knew this couldn't go on all night. I had a story to file and he had a bus to catch. So I tried again, and at the third go, as colleagues shifted uncomfortably in their chairs, he obviously felt he'd made his point.
'We're not used to losing three in a row, and obviously a lot of other people aren't either,' he sneered.
When it was over, he stormed from the room muttering something incomprehensible beneath his breath. I consoled myself with the knowledge that, as per our conversation in Barbados, we did not share a friendship to terminate. And that at least somebody was reading the paper. As I slunk out in his wake, I met the South African team's media manager who had taken in the event from a safe distance against the back wall.
'Glad that was you and not me,' she whispered sympathetically. 'That look of his could peel paint.'
By summer's end, the world champs had finished bottom of the tri-series ladder, missed the tournament's finals which cost Australian cricket a packet in gate takings, and the Waugh brothers' one-day international careers had been terminated. The ensuing 'sea change' saw Ricky Ponting inherit the limited-overs captaincy, with Adam Gilchrist installed as his wing man.
Shane Warne's aspirations to captain his country were officially dead. He had been stripped of the deputy leadership in the wake of another tawdry scandal involving a lady friend who was not his wife. The nation's cricket administrators had made it clear that vice was no longer a prerequisite for the vice-captaincy. It did not stop Warne taking a swipe at Gilchrist's appointment, confirming the uneasy personal relationship that percolated for years beneath the pair's productive on-field union. Warne caustically suggested his flamboyant character held far greater public appeal than Gilchrist's family-friendly nice-guy image.
'Australian cricket needs the Fonz, not Richie Cunningham,' Warne retorted, his reference to the dated sit-com spelling out his view that cool was a more valuable commodity than common sense. It also explained succinctly, although Warne remained oblivious, why the Australian Cricket Board had made its decision. The leg-spinner never did grasp that the game had moved on from the lager and larrikin days of the 1970s to an era when marketing wielded far greater influence than machismo.
Sea change had also swamped the national broadsheet. Newly promoted bums filled the high-backed managerial chairs. And two years after my Olympics boycott, I was asked to once more dust off the brown suitcase. Although I was under no illusions as to why.
#
# Kenya Tri-series, August–September 2002
Even Kenya Airways flight KQ-461 was unsure about going to Nairobi. As the Boeing 737 emerged from a shroud of thick cloud, granting its passengers a brief sight of the National Park that's separated from Jomo Kenyatta International Airport by a few strands of electrified wire, our pilot apparently decided this was not at all where he wanted to drop us. Instead, he throttled into a steep climb and we returned to the enveloping whiteness.
'Sorry about that, folks,' a distinctly English voice buzzed through the cabin. 'Just a slight change of plans to our approach. So we'll complete a circle and have another go. Should have you on the ground in around ten minutes.'
From my aisle seat, I craned forward in an attempt to see if the rethink was purely aeronautical, or the result of something more apposite — like herds of blue wildebeest straying onto the runway as part of their annual southward migration to the Serengeti grazing lands. But a 'slight change of plans' had been the recurrent theme running through our impending nine-week venture, which potentially spanned three continents, from well before we almost landed in the Cradle of Civilisation. It was therefore no great shock that our pilot seemed reluctant to put down in the Kenyan capital. After all, the fourteen members of Australia's one-day squad, its six support staff and the five-man touring press contingent were technically not supposed to be in Africa.
The triangular tournament to which we were all headed had been initiated to celebrate the golden jubilee of Pakistani cricket. It was 1952, four years before its formal birth as an independent republic, that the partitioned Muslim state first engaged its former master, India, in a Test match at Delhi. The neighbours' uneasy relationship has been on the slide ever since, so the Pakistan Cricket Board decided the next-best way to commemorate this important milestone was to lock horns with Australia in a series of one-day internationals and Test matches.
That plan unravelled faster than an iffy Rawalpindi rug, in the wake of the September 11 terrorist strikes. Even though the PCB wanted to push ahead with the series, grave concerns bubbled through the Australians' playing ranks. An even more influential pressure group — the players' wives and girlfriends — was far more trenchantly opposed. And all further debate was ended by a suicide bomber who, in May 2002, detonated a massive charge just fifty metres from the front doors of Karachi's Pearl Continental Hotel. Inside at the time was the New Zealand cricket team, due to begin a Test match against the host nation later that morning.
The bomb killed fourteen people, severely injured a further twenty-two, and blew the glass from all of the 300-room building's street-facing windows. It also destroyed the oft-peddled diplomatic line that international cricketers were somehow exempt from terrorist threats. Pakistan suddenly held less chance of hosting a gala jubilee bash than it did of unearthing Osama bin Laden.
Protracted discussions throughout the middle of that year failed to yield a mutually agreeable alternative venue. The obvious compromises — England and Australia — held limited financial appeal to the cash-strapped PCB, which hoped to flog the lucrative fixtures to a hefty subcontinental prime-time television audience. Pakistan's other left-field suggestion, an almost-completed cricket stadium in the Moroccan city of Tangier, was ruled out because it was in the Moroccan city of Tangier. With the entire proposal dangling in the balance, it was eventually decided the limited-overs component (which also included New Zealand) would be staged in Kenya. Details of the subsequent three Tests were not simultaneously inked in, but it seemed they might be played in Sri Lanka. Or even Sharjah, in the United Arab Emirates. Or split between the two.
This announcement, just weeks before the first game, could scarcely have been less reassuring if it had been penned on a slip of paper and waved skywards by Neville Chamberlain. Instead of insurgent-wracked Pakistan, we could all look forward to a fortnight in one of Africa's most notoriously dangerous cities, known among its own residents as 'Nairobbery'. And where, four years earlier, an al-Qaeda terror attack levelled the US Embassy in the city's heart at a cost of 213 lives. Not surprisingly, the bomb-shy Kiwis greeted this decision by immediately pulling out of the tournament altogether. They were replaced by the only other vaguely international-standard team prepared at such short notice to spend two weeks in Kenya — that being Kenya.
From Nairobi, our entourage would then head to the International Cricket Council's biennial cash-raising event the Champions Trophy tournament, being held in Colombo. Where the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam continued to wage a bloody civil war against the Sri Lankan Government, and which had resulted in almost 100,000 deaths over two decades. When that assignment was complete, we potentially faced three weeks of Test matches against Pakistan in the desert emirate of Sharjah, strategically located on the shores of the Persian Gulf and the Gulf of Oman, and a mere 1,400 kilometres from Baghdad, which global political wisdom accepted was ripe for a US-led invasion any day. And this configuration was deemed the safe option.
If first impressions count, then Nairobi quickly revealed itself to be innumerate. Even before reaching the passport police at Kenyatta Airport, we were confronted by a sign that confirmed all our preconceptions by warning, in large black letters, 'NO BRIBES SHOULD BE GIVEN OR ACCEPTED WHETHER DEMANDED OR NOT'.
At least passage to the city in a rusting matatu, which belched noxious blue smoke, was not encumbered by luggage. In another worrying portent, my belongings had been mislaid somewhere between my home and my destination. And while the cricketers' short ride into town was decidedly more grandiose, with fringed blinds drawn over the windows of the team bus to shield them from the realities of a poverty-ravaged city of around three million, which was also home to more than seventy disparate tribal groups, it was no more triumphal. The handful of curious onlookers gathered out front of the historic New Stanley Hotel when the players pulled up seemed decidedly unimpressed by the line of unsmiling white folk uniformly dressed in dark-blue polo shirts and fawn slacks, who shuffled silently into the lobby. The small crowd had clearly been hoping for real celebrities when the police motorcade swept in — Manchester United, the Brazilian national football team, or possibly Michael Jackson.
Cricket's lack of profile in Kenya did offer some benefits. The world's leading players were unlikely to be ambushed in a lift or harassed by insistent autograph hunters while tucking into the exquisite tomato and basil soup at the hotel's street side Thorn Tree Café. But that was where the freedom afforded by daily life in east Africa started and finished. Reg Dickason, the sharp-eyed ex-policeman and counter-terrorism expert retained by Australian cricket as its security advisor, delivered a no-nonsense safety briefing that left the players wondering if Pakistan really had represented such a risk.
The rules were as unambiguous as they were incontrovertible. Don't walk anywhere beyond the hotel after dark, and even in daylight hours, avoid leaving the hotel on your own. Advise members of team management of your movements at all times. Everywhere other than the hotel and the secured confines of the Gymkhana Ground, where matches and training were held, was deemed an unnecessary risk unless accompanied by a security officer, a police detail, or a death wish. No such life-saving advice was provided to the press pack before, during or after arriving. Our self-administered preparatory regimen consisted of a round of jabs from a travel doctor, the purchase of a reliable guide book, and perusal of the Australian Government's relevant travel advisory bulletins. The only warning from the office, albeit implied, was that mugging victims should obtain a tax-compliant receipt from their assailants to help in reconciling corporate expenses at tour's end.
An unexpected by-product of the involuntary curfew was the camaraderie, born of a shared predicament, that grew between the players and the press. Our evenings invariably began and ended around the Exchange Bar at the New Stanley, a dark-panelled room furnished with sumptuous leather chairs and a row of palm-leaf ceiling fans, which whirred constantly even though August evenings at 1,500 metres above sea level carried a distinct wintry chill.
Rather like cricket, our setting was a charming relic lifted straight from Kenya's colonial past. It was at the New Stanley that Hemingway had undergone a lengthy, and very public, recuperation to rid himself of the litany of ills he had bagged, seventy years earlier, while hunting beneath the snows of Kilimanjaro. The room that now housed the bar had also served as Nairobi's stock exchange for almost four decades. However, by 2002, the only commodities being traded on the floor were the bullish prostitutes who lurked in the dim recesses and announced their availability by rattling ice cubes in tumblers of tonic water.
The downside of such strict personal safety measures was their potential to render my Durham vow, to immerse myself fully in any new surrounds, about as meaningless as the tournament I was covering. So I decided that if I was not party to the cricketers' privileges, then I was in no way bound by their security restrictions. Having previously outwitted such eminent street bandits as the gypsy kids of Rome's Spanish Steps, the mustard-bottle-wielding tricksters of Buenos Aires, and Bangkok's limpet-like gemstone peddlers, I confidently told myself Nairobi held no fears. And that I would explore daily life in the capital to the fullest, work commitments permitting.
Fortunately for my personal welfare, the demands of journalism severely curtailed the joys of sightseeing. Not the punishing workload of my earlier overseas stints. My newspaper showed about as much interest in the tri-nations challenge as they did in pre-departure planning. The problem in Kenya was drumming up stories from the daunting lack of news. Not just an absence of revelation or intrigue, but days totally devoid of action, context, even movement. The tournament was proving as quixotic as its planning. Two established world cricket powers tackling a glorified club side through six preliminary matches in order to decide which pair would play in the grand final. Not even Pakistan could orchestrate an outcome other than the bleeding obvious.
The inequity of the premise was exposed in the Australians' opening game, when they plundered 332 from their fifty overs, then dispensed with their hapless opponents for less than a third of that total. And that was against Pakistan. Results threatened to be even more lopsided the following week when the world champions shaped up to Kenya. It was hardly surprising that half the Australian squad then opted to spend the intervening weekend at a luxury safari lodge, around 300 kilometres away in the Masai Mara National Reserve.
Even if seats on the team's charter flight had been offered to the press, there's no way the Ideas Factory would have sanctioned the trip. It was enough of an extravagance to be forking out for a fortnight in Africa on such a dubious exercise without suggesting the budget be extended to take in the indulgences of wildlife spotting. Keeping track of the team might be a fundamental touring rule, but only if it can be achieved without an additional splurge of company cash. However, with half the cricketers out of town and the other half safely holed up in their rooms watching US cable television, or kerbside poking down another bowl of soup, there was nothing to stop the intrepid among the press gang braving a closer look at our surrounds. Using our own funds, of course.
So a colleague and I signed up for a pseudo-safari to the nearby Lake Nakuru National Park, a trek that took us beyond Nairobi's Soviet-style concrete skyline and through the surrounding townships — acre upon acre of galvanised iron ghettos, where hope somehow found a foothold between the bare mud streets and the dingy shacks. That sobering landscape was soon replaced by breathtaking views from the rim of the Mau Escarpment, where the world dramatically dropped away to the floor of the Great Rift Valley. This vista alone was worth enduring the trauma inflicted by our impatient matatu driver, who believed the wrong side of the road was the right place for his van. Which meant the terrifying descent to the Valley floor was almost as memorable as the awe-inspiring glimpses it provided into the heart of Africa at each hairpin turn.
As we closed in on Nakuru's shimmering soda lake, it appeared to be buttressed by a wall fashioned from coconut ice. It then became clear the pink and white bank stretching to infinity was in fact hundreds of thousands of flamingos foraging among the algae treats that thrived in the warm shallows of the lake's perimeter. During our day trip, we were also able to tick off, from our African fauna checklist, black and white rhinoceros, giraffes, gazelles, monkeys and Danish backpackers, all in proliferation. The non-appearance of hippopotamus, as we interrupted the return journey for afternoon tea in the refined waterfront grounds of the Lake Navasha Country Club, left but one box unchecked. But having learned from my guide book that the 'river horse' was reputedly even more aggressive and dangerous than a Nairobi elephant-hair bracelet salesman, this was not an unwelcome omission. By the time we rolled back into Nairobi, I was secretly wishing our stay could be extended.
The playing group was eventually reunited, and the cricket resumed, but my desire to explore remained unsated. Nightly drinks provided an opportunity to swap intelligence on places to visit and avoid. Included among the travellers' tips were the inner-city Masai Market (fascinating but infuriating; best avoided if you suffered from tout aversion), the main produce market (take a deep breath before negotiating the fresh meat section, unless you possessed a cast-iron gag reflex), and the City Stalls near the Ring Road traffic island (not a visitor attraction; the only thing you were likely to get there was maimed). Handy hints on dining experiences, happy and sad, were also swapped over the Exchange Bar. One of those, we were assured by a couple of adventurous batsmen, offered a true taste of Africa.
In its early days, Carnivore restaurant carved a reputation for serving spit-roasted hunks of most animals that roamed Africa's interior. It pitched itself unashamedly at Western tourists who wanted to not only observe the continent's unique wildlife, but to sample a plateful of it as well. Sensibly, that charter was rewritten when someone realised most of the eatery's exotic game meat was being illegally killed and supplied, thereby threatening the very industry it was trying to cash in on.
By the time we arrived at the famous dark brick-and-timber dining barn, Carnivore's menu had been restricted to those animals that were legally farmed. But it was immediately obvious that its proud reputation as a joint-joint remained untouched. A fire pit replaced a bandstand as the restaurant's feature piece, and the cooking was conducted behind floor-to-ceiling windows that showcased a large circular parilla, ensuring everyone could see what was being tossed onto the griddle. Hovering around it were furiously sweating men wearing oversized straw boaters, heavy aprons and bow ties, who resembled forge workers masquerading as extras for a Swahili barbershop quartet.
We were seated on zebra-print chairs at a bare wooden table, the only adornment on which was a three-deck central carousel which contained assorted petri dishes of glutinous salad and, above them, a selection of mystery sauces. The top deck was reserved for a pyramid-shaped ornament bearing our table number, with a hole in the top from which a tiny white flag attached to a toothpick stood at attention. It was explained that until such time as we lowered the flag, counter-intuitively signalling our defeat, the meat would continue to arrive.
With that, one of the wandering minstrels appeared, wielding a traditional Masai sword onto which a roasted hindquarter of an unidentified beast had been threaded. Brandishing a machete, he sawed off a hefty slice for each of our group, then announced to nobody in particular, 'Hartebeest.' As he turned to leave, he glanced back to see four faces staring uncertainly at the wedge of light-grey flesh before us, and added, by way of translation, 'Antelope.' That ritual was then repeated with lamb, crocodile, pork, beef, zebra, chicken, ostrich and eland, as the best part of an hour passed in a haze of protein, smoke and Audubon roll call. The growing ache in my groaning stomach was part dyspepsia and part suspicion that each new offering differed little from the last. Dry, stringy meat is dry, stringy meat, regardless of which hoof it's harvested from. As a bowl of gazelle balls was thrust towards us, I made a desperate lunge for the flag.
Our group left the restaurant feeling slightly guilty and more than a little unwell. The air of collective biliousness we carried into the hotel foyer pricked the curiosity of a couple of players loitering near the safety of the reception desk. Our critique of Carnivore surmised that if its culinary appeal were to dwindle, it could always diversify as a torture camp for vegetarians.
'I've never really understood vegetarianism,' mused Glenn McGrath, who years later was to release his own book of barbecue recipes. 'I mean, if God didn't want us to eat animals, why did he make them out of meat?'
The next night we limited ourselves to the comparative humdrum of an Italian trattoria, just a few blocks from our hotel but still deep in the dark heart of Nairobi. A light meal enhanced by a couple of glasses of imported Lesotho lambrusco left us feeling sufficiently fortified to chance a walk back to our lodgings. Stepping out into the brisk, still night, we scanned the terrain along an apparently deserted Kaunda Street and stuck firmly to the footpath that ran opposite the menacingly dark Holy Family Cathedral and its concreted, consecrated grounds. Even though visibility was restricted due to the lack of street lighting and a smoky haze that had settled over the inner city, we soon distinguished half a dozen formless figures up ahead. The gang had materialised from somewhere under the cathedral's grey perimeter wall, and then noiselessly crossed the street to make steady progress towards us.
Our pace slowed. Hands were thrust deep into pockets, and the conversational pitch rose by a nervous half-octave. We countered by tacking to the blessed side of the street and the mob confirmed we were in its sights by mimicking the movement. Our group then came to a dead halt. Theirs continued to advance. The only available path to our hotel took us directly through their ranks. Our sole cause for hope lay in the fact that, as a collective, we appeared to be decidedly taller. And thanks to the previous night's meat frenzy, significantly heavier.
The reason for our physical superiority became clear when the leader of these brazen wezi, an eight-year-old boy huddled beneath a fraying blue blanket, strode up to us and thrust out a tiny pink palm, and then followed his Swahili greeting of 'Jambo' with the equally traditional request for cash. Bravely eyeing off his even younger cohorts, I hurled loose change of various currencies from my pocket onto the street and, while the crèche of criminals was busily scooping up the booty, we made a dash for the hotel, where we congratulated ourselves on our valour over a steadying tipple.
Any complacency about the brutal reality of Kenyan violence was excised the following morning when the Australian team bus and our dilapidated taxi were stopped at a traffic snarl near the Gymkhana Ground. A matatu with all its windows smashed stood abandoned in the middle of Muran'ga Road. Its dozen passengers and the driver sat trembling and bleeding on the roadside, awaiting the arrival of medical help to treat head and facial injuries of varying severity. Word filtered back that the van had been ambushed by agitated students hurling rocks in protest against Kenya's upcoming presidential election, due later in the year. The level of concern shown by the cricketers was significantly less than that exhibited by those of us forced to travel that road each day without a security detail. But the depth of feeling inflamed by local politics was noticeably absent at the cricket.
That was because the overwhelming majority of cricket fans in Nairobi came from the city's huge Wahindi, or Indian, community. Which meant they attended matches with the sole motivation of barracking for whichever team was playing against their bitter subcontinental rivals, Pakistan. They also showed a determined reluctance to watch games that involved the home team, probably because the Kenyans were never going to win anything bar the occasional coin toss. It was therefore slightly surreal that, of the tournament's three competing teams, it was the Australians who garnered the strongest crowd support. Not only was the Pakistan Cricket Board forced to stage its jubilee carnival 5,000 kilometres from Islamabad, it was hard pressed finding anyone prepared to turn up and yell for its team.
That lack of interest wasn't restricted to local fans or Australian newspapers. Nairobi's daily media carried barely a word about the event, which partly explained the anonymity the Australian players enjoyed in and around their hotel. The only issue to excite one strident commentator was the disgraceful lack of respect being afforded touring journalists by Kenyan cricket authorities. In a stinging editorial, a writer for the East Africa Standard lambasted officials for their failure to provide complimentary beer in the press box. Given that alcohol consumption during working hours was as much a part of modern journalism as typewriters and paid overtime, the column did not reflect the demands of a disgruntled Australian press corps. Indeed, our only request to the organisers was for the provision of a scorer so we could drop the occasional statistical nugget, such as a batsman's score, or the final margin, into our copy.
As it eventuated, both appeals were answered by the start of the second week. Not only did we arrive at the ground one morning to find a makeshift timber bar, complete with gleaming keg of Tusker beer, installed at the back of the press box, but a young man with a pristine scorebook and a year's supply of sharpened pencils was camped immediately in front of it. Unfortunately, in addition to being our scorer, he was also the only patron of the new boozer, and sadly lapsed into a lager-induced sleep during the third over after lunch.
Frittering away the days before the inexorable Australia — Pakistan final, we yanked all the usual chains to try and dislodge a story. In-depth profiles of new players such as Nathan Hauritz, who — until that point — were justifiably unknown, were prepared to a chorus of 'who cares?' from inside the newspaper and beyond. Inconsequential twaddle, such as Glenn McGrath trimming several paces from his run-up, was passed off as legitimate news. But it was the yarn splashed across one of Melbourne's Sunday papers that stood as the touring media's equivalent of lowering the white flag.
After the 'Phone Five Pensioners' charade, the next-most transparent admission of a story vacuum was an airing of Shane Warne's perennial declaration that he had perfected yet another 'mystery ball'. This was purely a publicity routine that nobody, least of all the famed leg-spinner, credited with any legitimacy. But journalists were happy to write it because it represented a win for both parties. Warne was able to sustain the nonsensical belief he could defy biomechanics and credibility by inventing new ways to make a cricket ball travel on a straight path. The zooter, the slider, the gazunder — all novel titles for a delivery squeezed from the front of his bowling hand and distinguished by its lack of spin. Newspapers similarly loved it because it filled column space and gave everyone a giggle whenever it was mentioned by gullible commentators. It was Australian cricket's equivalent of the April Fool's prank. And for days, in response to pointed queries from the Factory, I had to feign annoyance that my travelling companion, Martin Blake from Melbourne's The Age, had, in concert with Warne, played it before the rest of us thought of it.
A couple of nights before the final, I made the familiar trek to the Exchange Bar where I had arranged to meet Adam Gilchrist. The vice-captain was employed as a paid columnist for my paper, and had suggested we catch up for a meal before the next leg of our world adventure kicked off. He was standing among a group of his teammates when I arrived, so I opted for a quiet corner not tenanted by hookers until he was ready to break ranks. Before we could depart, he also had to report our intended movements to the security boss. Reg, in turn, wanted to know exactly where and how we were headed. I assured him the friendly trattoria I knew was no more than three minutes' walk from where we currently stood. He initially suggested he make the journey with us, but eventually seemed satisfied with the thoroughness of my scouting, and gave us the okay to tackle the short trip unsupervised. We had moved barely five steps when McGrath piped up from the bar.
'Hey, Gilly. You guys heading out somewhere for dinner?'
Upon learning we were bound for an Italian gourmet experience, the fast bowler quickly invited himself along. As did a number of his hungry teammates. Which explained how I came to nervously lead Gilchrist, McGrath, Jason Gillespie, Andrew Symonds, Shane Watson, Andy Bichel and Nathan Hauritz out through the front doors of the New Stanley and into the night.
As I wheeled the party hard right into Standard Street, I wondered briefly if I should have checked with Reg to make sure he harboured no upgraded qualms about me suddenly being entrusted with fifty per cent of the Australian touring party on the potentially lethal streets of Nairobi. But I pressed on and, despite the fact we were the only visible pedestrian presence on the inner-city strip at 8 p.m., there was no discernible concern among the group as we reached the intersection with Wabera Street. At least, not among the players. As tour leader, I found it mildly disconcerting that this was the corner that should have housed the promised land of pasta and pizza. Yet there was no trace of anything other than a couple of metal grilles that guarded darkened shop windows.
Must be the next corner, I convinced myself. By the time we reached that point, I was inwardly panicking. Not even the busted street lamps ventured this deep into town. The cracked concrete footpath had given way to bare dirt underfoot, and the reassuring chatter of the cricketers had petered out. I froze, accepting that leading half of my nation's cricket team toward an uncertain fate represented a far greater travesty than admitting I was lost.
'Umm, Rambo. Are we in the right place?' McGrath asked, employing a measure of equanimity that belied his unjust reputation as surly.
'It should be here, er, somewhere. Perhaps it's just...' My voice thinned to nothingness as I scanned the pitch black in every direction. 'I reckon we must have walked past it.'
I knew that not even I could have missed a brightly lit two-storey Italian restaurant occupying the corner of a major city intersection. But it bought me some time. And by that stage, my currency was trading pretty low. So we silently retraced our steps at a more urgent clip, and gathered outside the first premises we saw that offered an open door, an electric light, and a staff member. It was the sort of scurvy diner that would cause greasy spoons to sue for libel. As it was devoid of clients, it was also fair to assume it remained open out of blind hope rather than economic practicality.
McGrath couldn't resist. 'So this is it, eh? Looks nice.'
A heavy-set woman in a navy-blue cleaner's smock, who appeared to be deep frying lumps of offal in what smelled like formaldehyde, moved out from behind the barren shop's counter and motioned towards four uninhabited battle-scarred tables.
'You here to enn-joy the food or the view?' she snapped, hand resting at an awkward angle on an enormous hip that rose almost to her armpit.
Condemning the bowling component of the squad to amoebic dysentery was no more appealing than having them mugged in a dark alley. So I trawled the remainder of my dignity and bravely inquired as to the location of 'that lovely Italian trattoria I understood was in this vicinity?'
With arms now folded defiantly, the plainly insulted proprietress barked: 'And woss wrong wid diss place?'
As I grappled for a diplomatic response amid audible unrest on the footpath behind me, a deep voice caught both of us off guard.
'Honest, we'd love to. Unfortunately, we're meeting other friends at the Italian joint. But we'll definitely be back here tomorrow night. Absolutely. Reserve a table for ten of us.'
Cynics who believe all fast bowlers lack subtlety and smarts have never been hauled out of a tight spot by Jason Gillespie.
'Well I look forward to seein yoo wall then,' she replied, in a tone underpinned by a generous dollop of suspicion. 'You turned a block too soon comin' out of the hot-ell. The place you lookin' for is right ah-cross there,' she explained with a flourish of her hefty left arm, the tricep of which dangled pendulously downward like an over-subscribed hammock.
As one, we turned in the direction she was pointing and could just make out a well-lit, heavily populated restaurant. By the time the trattoria manager ushered us to a specially selected table upstairs, menus were distributed and the first bottle of Soave Classico ordered, my appetite had left me. I knew the dinner conversation would be far more relaxed if the journalist were removed. The trust that had built up in the hotel bar over the preceding fortnight had all but evaporated on the dark streets of Nairobi, and I felt my pariah status had been reconferred. So I proffered a lame excuse about sudden work commitments, checked to make sure the cricketers could safely find their way back to the hotel without my expertise, and made a hasty exit. By taxi, just to be safe.
The tournament final was then rained off before a result was reached. Nobody much cared, in Kenya or further afield. Even the helpful café owner didn't score her return booking. There were, apart from a handful of happy tour operators and a small gang of street kids, no winners from the entire Nairobi escapade.
#
# ICC Champions Trophy, Sri Lanka, September 2002
Not only did the Kenyan tournament fail to produce a victor, its soggy anti-climax also meant it finished similarly bereft of the one story the fortnight had promised. And with the next thirty-six hours destined to deliver travelling journalists nothing more than in-flight meals and waiting, the rumblings of disquiet from the Ideas Factory were clearly audible in east Africa.
Which was why, as rain tumbled on the deserted Gymkhana and hopes for a yarn that would tide me over a travel day and a half appeared just as bleak, I bailed up Pakistan's team manager who stood glum-faced outside his players' dressing room. The jubilee series had proved anything but, and during our chat he dejectedly confirmed that the schedule for the three celebratory Tests due to begin a month later was still not finalised. The games planned for Sharjah remained in the hands of a much higher authority than cricket administrators or God — the United States military. And if any further rescheduling was needed, the manager confided, the entire Test series might be staged in Sri Lanka. In terms of finalising any onward travel plans, it was not especially helpful news. But it at least delivered a story that bought me a day's grace.
Colombo's heat and humidity attached itself like clingwrap the moment I stepped out onto Bandaranaike Airport's tarmac. We had landed in vastly different climes, obvious not only by the sultry, sub-tropical weather. Heavily armed guards patrolled the terminal corridors and stood sentry at every doorway to ensure nobody except bona fide travellers and more security personnel gained access. The fortified guard post set up where the airport spur met the main Colombo Road, with its sandbagged look-out turrets and high-powered artillery, resembled a war-zone checkpoint. Which is precisely what it was. Barely a year earlier, the Tamil Tigers' feared Black Tiger suicide squad had stormed the airport, murdering seven people and destroying military and commercial aircraft. For all its malevolence, at least the threat of violence in Nairobi was reasonably discreet. In Colombo, guerrilla conflict was out and proud. But during the lengthy taxi ride to the hotel that would be home for the next month, maybe longer, it was my senses that bore the most brutal assault.
The highway into town was a crush of trucks, cars, motorised trishaws, motorcycles and foot traffic. Beside the road, every spare metre of space was filled by some sort of enterprise — auto repair shops, mobile phone sales centres, family-run cafés. Walls were covered in hypnotically sculpted, but utterly indecipherable, swirls of Sinhala script. And every doorway was adorned by seemingly aimless folk, most of them perched in the obligatory Asian squat. Bums balanced inches from the ground, arms folded around knees, staring blankly ahead as if waiting for a bus. To try and reduce the overload of noise, smog, heat and humidity, I shut my window and asked my taxi driver to crank up the wireless to compensate for his absent air conditioning. Just as I began to stop fretting about my missing suitcase and drifted into a doze, the lead story on the English-language station's noon bulletin jolted me fully awake.
'A report in The Australian newspaper this morning claims that all three upcoming Tests between Australia and Pakistan might be played here in Sri Lanka,' chattered an excited announcer, as if Colombo had just pipped Beijing to host the 2008 Olympics. Bad news travels fast but, in the days of instant global communication, no news can be just as speedy.
Doubts that lingered over the upcoming Tests also extended to the logic behind all of cricket's Test-playing nations, and a couple of also-rans, gathering in inter-monsoonal Colombo for a limited-overs tournament when they were to repeat the entire exercise less than six months later for the World Cup in southern Africa. At its genesis, four years earlier, the Champions Trophy was a noble concept aimed at raising funds for, and the profile of, developing cricket nations. But after the first couple of biennial championships in Bangladesh and Kenya, world cricket's officials judged the tournament had become far too valuable to be entrusted to the sorts of places it was designed to benefit. The penny had dropped that cities sorely in need of decent cricket infrastructure and facilities could not viably host major international games, because they lacked decent cricket infrastructure and facilities. So the Champions Trophy was to be farmed out among the game's existing powers and, not for the last time, Colombo was deemed the best compromise option.
Evidence that the Champions Trophy had devolved into nothing more than expedient television fodder to swell cricket's coffers could be found by simply perusing the playing schedule. The whole tournament offered just fifteen games of cricket across the best part of three weeks, with the most compelling of those preliminary matches programmed into the opening days to blatantly whip up instant viewer appeal. All it achieved was to render the second week about as suspenseful as a Zimbabwean election, with blockbuster games such as New Zealand v Bangladesh, and Pakistan v Holland ensuring global audiences switched off in droves.
The lack of cricket also meant another worrying dearth of news. The game's elite had landed in Colombo, but none of them were doing anything much, apart from shuffling glassy-eyed around the competing teams' hotel. To try and justify my existence, and the newspaper's investment, I offered to broaden my coverage by daubing colourful vignettes of life in the Sri Lankan capital to try and illustrate the Champions Trophy had a pulse, if not a point.
That proposed package included chronicling activity on the vibrant Galle Face Green parade ground, the town square for a town of around a million. All but vacant during the day's heat, come evening it seethed with promenading families, courting couples, children wrangling kites, teenagers playing cricket, and a brave few squealing as they waded ankle deep into the adjacent surf. It also served as an open-air market that dispensed grilled chicken, roasted nuts, ice cream, balloons and donkey rides.
I suggested reflective essays about the evening sippers who settled behind outdoor tables in the main garden of the dowager Galle Face Hotel and, over a few frosted glasses of Three Coins lager, watched the papaya-orange sun slowly disappear behind the fuzzy outline of India, which spanned the western horizon.
And to document the ritualised mayhem that was morning trading at the Pettah markets, or the ancient, bureaucratic rituals involved in sending an overseas parcel from the hilariously officious main hall of the city's General Post Office. All sketches that I found utterly fascinating as I became part of daily life in my new home. But all were impolitely refused by those in charge.
'If people want travelogues, they'll read the travel section,' came the gruff response. 'Just tell us about the cricket.'
However, the first probing cricket interview I scheduled quickly descended into such a farce it would have proved far more revealing, and certainly more productive, to have reviewed The Terrace buffet at the famous Mount Lavinia Hotel. In addition to his standing as one-day cricket's most effective batsman, Michael Bevan was also a legend throughout the game for being volatile and moody. And he had arrived in Sri Lanka in especially volcanic form. Word filtered out that, on the first night in Colombo, he phoned a startled member of team management in the morning's wee hours to demand a first-aid adhesive strip be sent to his room. The crisis was caused by the red standby light on the in-room television set that could not be extinguished, and whose glow prevented Bevan from achieving the total darkness he needed to sleep.
A few evenings later, one of the Australian team's sponsors held a celebratory barbecue for the players on the hotel's pool deck. A number of the cricketers attended begrudgingly, fulfilled their commercial obligations and then resumed their free time, leaving the party in the hands of grateful house guests and freeloading tourists. As the music cranked up and the sponsors' product slipped down, an irate Bevan suddenly reappeared and stormed the music desk, threatening to hurl the speaker stacks and the startled DJ into the deep end if he didn't appreciate that guests were trying to kip. Stumps were drawn forthwith.
So it was with trepidation that I awaited the batsman's appearance in the hotel lobby, and that unease grew when he declined to start our interview until the front bar barista delivered a suitably hot café au lait. He had slowly begun to thaw over a few introductory questions when a lone figure appeared, unannounced, at table's edge. It was tough to figure how we had not seen him earlier, given his gaudy green and orange checked seersucker shirt, grey woollen slacks and dust-encrusted rubber sandals that displayed a set of dust-encrusted toes. But we were not alone in failing to detect the moustachioed man, who the hotel's specially hired security staff had not pegged as a professional autograph hunter, even though he carried a meticulously drawn-up A4 page with rows of vacant boxes, each one assigned to a member of the Australian squad.
'Bewaaan,' he announced in a voice remarkably similar to a truck's air horn, as he thrust the document in front of the bewildered cricketer. He then stood proudly at attention, as if reporting in from a successfully completed espionage mission. Bevan studied the interloper's aquiline features, turned quizzically to me to gauge if this was part of the interview and, accepting my confused look as confirmation it wasn't, glanced over his left shoulder in the hope of locating a nearby staff member. Our new friend remained undaunted and unmoved.
'Bewaan,' he honked again. I wasn't sure if a famous 'Bevo attack' would make or destroy the planned story. All I knew was it couldn't be far away.
'Mate, I'm doing an interview. Just leave us alone,' Bevan said, the muscles in his strong jaw line clearly straining. 'I'll sign it for you when we're finished.'
He leaned further across the table as if to continue our chat. The shadow didn't budge.
'Bewaaaan,' the man trumpeted, edging his paper closer and threatening to up-end the cricketer's coffee in the process. That was when the drama climaxed. Bevan jumped to his feet. I followed his lead, but with far less intent. If a fight ensued, I was unsure whether to weigh in or call a photographer.
'Mate, I'm telling you now,' Bevan hissed. 'Leave us alone or I'm not signing anything.'
He spun towards the coffee counter, waved his arms agitatedly and demanded a security officer intervene forthwith. Moments later, uniformed guards attached themselves to each of the nuisance's arms, and he was led away still staring maniacally at the cricketer and clutching his clipboard. Sensing the curious crowd in the foyer might feel he had overreacted to an assailant packing nothing more lethal than a ballpoint, Bevan called contritely after him.
'Mate, I tried to be polite. I would have signed it later on,' he shouted, more for the benefit of the onlookers than the captive. 'But you guys just have to learn.'
As he reached the hotel's front doors, the unrepentant memorabilia man switched his plaintive gaze from one security guard to the other and, in a futile explanatory gesture, wailed simply: 'Bewaaan.' The batsman drained his coffee, the interview was terminated by mutual agreement, and my hunt for that day's story began afresh.
The fugitive was nowhere to be seen the following morning when I returned to conduct my first one-on-one interview with Ricky Ponting since his elevation to the national one-day captaincy. My first one-on-one interview with Ricky Ponting, full stop. I had never held a meaningful conversation with the new skipper, and knew little about him other than what his official biography, batting statistics and Australian cricket charge sheet revealed.
His appointment, ahead of Gilchrist, and even Warne, had come as something of a surprise. It was a decision founded on the certainty he offered for another decade or more, rather than the leadership skills he possessed. A strength of Australian cricket over preceding decades had been its stability and dependability at the top. Allan Border, Mark Taylor and Stephen Waugh could be relied on by selectors and supporters alike. Ponting had shown a willingness to curb his wayward off-field tendencies in a manner that Warne had not, and was therefore deemed the safest pair of hands. Gilchrist was thought to have enough on his plate, combining wicket keeping with match-changing batting exploits. It seemed Ponting's only glaring shortcoming as a captain was an almost complete absence of captaincy experience.
Recognised as a batting genius from almost the time he could bat, the boy from Mowbray — Launceston's working-class northern suburb, which boasts, instructively, sports grounds, a golf course, and a horse and greyhound track — progressed so swiftly through junior cricket that he was forever the youngest player in his team. He prematurely learned the ways of adults, but was never in a position to lead them. By the time the national job beckoned, his only captaincy experience was a couple of games in charge of the Tasmanian team, when State selectors belatedly realised they might have the next Australian skipper in their midst.
His decision-making acumen, therefore, developed by closely observing his mentors, Taylor and Waugh, as well as other ex-officio team leaders — Mark Waugh, Tom Moody, Warne, Gilchrist and McGrath. But the experiences of his first-class upbringing had also left an indelible mark. All those influential peers had enjoyed regular and sustained success in dominant teams at domestic and international level and, accordingly, adhered to a philosophy built around relentless attack. Keep blazing with the heavy artillery until the opposition inevitably crumbles. Ponting's Tasmania, however, had long been the poor sibling of Australian cricket, experiencing few individual or collective successes. And perennial disappointment breeds self-doubt and caution, not swagger and confidence. He was happy to unleash his big guns early, but if they failed to decide the battle, he preferred strategic withdrawal to continued bombardment.
'There are times in a game when partnerships might be developing and bowling changes have to be made, just to go on the negative side a bit more,' he confirmed during our lobby chat.
His penchant for retreating into all-out defence when the wheels looked set to wobble loose was to become the most criticised element of his captaincy. Especially as the ill-fated 2005 Ashes series unfolded. During our half-hour meeting, he also showed he had clearly come to the captaincy with no agenda other than to win games of cricket. He did not aspire to becoming a statesman or a crusader, as Taylor and Stephen Waugh before him. Instead, Ponting was dogged in his unwillingness to broach anything beyond the obvious and the necessary.
Attempts to coax him from his comfort zone were treated like the initial overs of a previously unseen bowler. Eyed cautiously, before being patted safely back. Across a squat wooden coffee table in a secured recess of the hotel lobby, I introduced the subject of his recent marriage to Rianna Cantor in an attempt to uncover a hint of his character. Even the fact that, following a decade of occasional lessons, he had recently sat and passed his driver's licence. All failed to turn up anything approaching an insight. Like so many trundlers before me, I learned there was no easy way through Ricky Ponting's defence.
'For all his swashbuckling as a batsman', I was compelled to write that evening, 'deep down beats the heart of an accountant'.
Chasing the one major international cricket trophy that had thus far eluded Australia, Ponting's men made an impeccable start to their Champions Trophy campaign with easy wins over New Zealand and Bangladesh. But having quickly earned a berth in the semifinals, the Australians suddenly faced a yawning eight-day gap in their playing schedule. The diabolical fixture meant a number of other teams were likewise lacking anything to do, and staring at more than a week in which to do it. So they went on holidays.
Half of India's squad made the short trip across the Gulf of Mannar for a few days at home. The Kiwis booked themselves into a quiet retreat in the Sri Lankan hillside, away from the heat and the hustle of Colombo's baking cityscape. And a majority of the Australians packed their bags and headed for a long weekend of snorkelling and beach volleyball in the tranquil honeymooners' island refuge of the Maldives. All smack in the middle of a major international sporting tournament. It was hard to envisage Pete Sampras sneaking away for a night or two in the Hamptons, having won his way past the round of sixteen at Flushing Meadows.
More remarkable was the missive that came from an Australian player announcing that a couple of seats were available on the team's charter flight to Malé, and that the press was welcome to come along if we could come up with the necessary cash. Initially, it appeared that traditional enmities had been cast aside. But it soon became clear the vacancies had been created by the late cancellation of several tightwad players who balked at the prohibitive cost, and that the olive branch was more a 'kiss and make up...the shortfall'. Thus, the offer was respectfully declined.
By the time the Australians took to the field for their semifinal against Sri Lanka, our party had been on the road for precisely a month. In that time, the players had managed six completed days of international cricket. That, and a glaring inability to handle Aravinda de Silva's friendly off-spin, explained why Ponting's team lost comfortably to the host nation, and thereby failed at its third attempt to win the Champions Trophy.
The tournament final, between neighbours Sri Lanka and India, generated a level of local hysteria that was as easy to foresee as each evening's spectacular pre-monsoonal rainstorms. Which made the fixturing of the showpiece as a day — night game even more nonsensical than the original tournament schedule. Any fool, save for the fools in charge of world cricket, could see that evening events held in Colombo in late September would be deluged. And so the final was abandoned due to flooding rain, eight minutes into India's run chase. It was rescheduled for the following day, in the same playing hours with the same result. This time, forty-five minutes into the evening innings. With the likelihood of history repeating itself until the dry season arrived, and after a month dawdling to a conclusion that never arrived, Sri Lanka and India were declared joint champions. Which, in turn, meant three of the past four overseas one-day tournaments I had witnessed had failed to deliver a victor.
Greater Colombo is divided into fifteen numbered precincts. Rather like Paris, but also rather not. And it was only after touring most of them with a taxi driver who spoke no English and cared even less for cricket that we understood that our destination, Paikiasothy Saravanamuttu Stadium, was as difficult to find as it was to pronounce. For more than an hour, the increasingly agitated Australian press corps was taken to a selection of half-baked playing fields, suburban parks and livestock holding pens, none of which bore the remotest resemblance to the sort of venue that would host the upcoming first Test against Pakistan. At every location, we asked if anyone among the curious crowds that gathered out of thick air knew of Paikiasothy Saravanamuttu Stadium, or could point us in the rough direction of where a Paikiasothy Saravanamuttu Stadium might hide. Until, eventually, some kind and wise soul cracked the code, laughing that everyone in Colombo knew where the clandestine ground was located, provided we used its 'good' name — P Sara.
As it turned out, P Sara was a quaint almost English-style cricket ground set among clutters of shanty-style dwellings that hugged the Cota Road train line, and sat in the shadow of Colombo's notorious Welikada maximum security prison. Its timeless scoreboard fought a losing battle against the aggressive deep-green ivy that clung to three of its sides, and behind it stood a regimented four-storey block of Air Force flats whose saving grace was their uninterrupted, front-door views of the cricket ground. Between the northern end sight screen and the perimeter fence lay a roped-off section of soil, on which grew several immaculate rows of lovingly tended lettuce and cucumber plants, as well as an array of local herbs. This plot was tended by a group of middle-aged women wrapped in brightly coloured saris who, when the game got underway, would emerge from the garden at the close of each session and innings to diligently sweep away the loose turf and dislodged dirt from around the batting creases with their stiff straw brooms. A local journalist explained they were the destitute wives of long-term inmates of the neighbouring gaol.
Along the ground's western flank ran a single-level grandstand, covered by a low roof of corrugated iron, which sloped towards the verdant outfield. The end of our harrowing ninety-minute taxi journey to training coincided with the Australian team's post-practice cool-down drill. And while their teammates packed up equipment and dragged gear to the welcome chill of the dressing rooms, Glenn McGrath and Jason Gillespie amused themselves in a crude derivation of real tennis.
They took up positions twenty or so metres apart, just inside the playing arena where the pavilion grandstand was separated from the turf by a thigh-high cyclone wire fence, and took it in turns to lob a cricket ball onto the overhanging roof where it would bounce haphazardly on the corrugations. They would then challenge one another to guess where it would roll off the roof line, with the added complication of catching it before it hit the ground. It was like watching a pair of ten-year-olds fighting summer holiday boredom. This pastime kept them occupied for fifteen minutes or more, and infuriated members of the support staff who were deployed to recover the practice balls that bobbled into the car park behind the grandstand. It also served to distract the normally vigilant rifle-toting security staff.
Taking advantage of their inattention, I jumped the fence and made for the centre of the ground to cast an eye over the Test pitch that had been freshly rolled and left to bake. Or more likely steam. I could no sooner read a cricket pitch than I could fathom Saqlain Mushtaq's doosra, but this was my first overseas Test match as the paper's solo correspondent, and I wanted to at least create the impression I knew what I was doing. And standing around, staring at strips of mowed and flattened grass has long been an accepted part of the serious cricket ritual. Like an obscure chapter of horticultural freemasonry, learned cricket folk endlessly analyse and debate the latent power of a twenty-two-yard stretch of shaved, rolled turf to dictate the march of history as if it's a living Rosetta Stone. To help me decipher the secrets of the P Sara deck, I felt it wise to tap into the expertise of the one man who stood between me and the wicket block. After all, Gillespie's bowling skills had already netted him almost 150 Test wickets more than I was going to claim.
'I'm not following you anywhere, not after Nairobi,' he replied, straight-faced, when I asked him if he would join me for a pitch viewing. Ignoring the cheap shot, which McGrath found hellishly funny, I reframed the question to gauge his informed thoughts on how the strip might behave come the start of play next morning.
'Dunno, mate, haven't even bothered looking at it,' he said candidly. 'I never look at it before a game. I mean, what do I know about grass? I just run in and bowl. If the deck's green, I pitch it up. If it's brown, I bang it in. Don't really need to know anything more than that. I've never quite got my head around this obsession with the pitch.'
So the venue was a state secret, the pitch an enigma, and the opposition, not atypically, was in disarray. Through a combination of injuries, lack of interest and internal politics, four of Pakistan's best players had opted not to be part of their nation's golden celebration. Furthermore, inconsistent performances in the preceding one-day tournaments had cost coach Mudassar Nazar his job, and many of the players donning Pakistan's baggy green cap for the first Test were barely known to cricket fans in their homeland, let alone in Sri Lanka. Little wonder there were more people crowded into the northern market garden than in the public grandstand when play began.
Those who did brave the draining humidity and held more than a passing familiarity with world cricket might well have wondered as to the identity of the lithe, suntanned Australian parked at first slip. In response to being overlooked for the one-day captaincy, Shane Warne had undergone a transformational exercise and weight loss program. Just as profound was the image make-over that accompanied his svelte new figure. He took to wearing a bandana when at training, and was happy to tell anyone who cared, as well as those of us who didn't, that he'd embraced the full-body wax. What's more, rumours had filtered through from Australia that he was poised to reinvent himself as a connoisseur of life's finer things by launching his own wine label. Given his culinary preferences extended little further than spaghetti, pizza and toasted cheese sandwiches, and that his preferred evening tipple was sickly melon liqueur mixed with lemonade, it was a difficult stunt to take seriously. Even by Warne's standards.
However, my Australian sources confirmed that not only had Warne discovered wine, but two reputable drops made by a family winery in Victoria's Riverina were to be launched under his name within weeks. It wasn't exactly a smoking gun leading to the instigators of world cricket's corruption, but it was a story nobody else had. And, as I discovered when I approached Warne in the lobby of the team hotel after the Test's opening day, he was keen for it to stay that way until the label's upcoming publicity launch back in Australia.
'I don't know where you heard that from, buddy,' he said, as he made his way to a waiting taxi in the hotel driveway. 'Might have your wires crossed there, I reckon.'
So I played the reporter's standard bluff, telling him I already had sufficient information to write the story regardless of whether he chose to take part or not. I threw in gratuitous details of the grape varieties in question — a chardonnay and a blend of cabernet, merlot and petit verdot — just to make sure I had his full attention. He sized me up as if I were a clueless tailender.
I then added that if it was going to be announced in the national newspaper, he might as well aim for as much coverage as possible. And the best chance of getting it near the front was for him to participate in a photograph. Having weighed the relative merits of this deal, he agreed to a brief interview, near the foyer door, while his driver waited patiently.
'I want people to judge the product, not the bloke whose name is on the label,' he explained, using lines lifted directly from the Shane Warne Collection's back labels. 'I'm not pretending to be a wine buff, but I enjoy a glass of wine. And I know the basics of why it tastes good to me, or why it doesn't. In the last twelve to eighteen months while I've been on the fitness kick, I've gone off beer and got on to the whites and reds.'
It was obvious Warne's epicurean epiphany was about as genuine as his most recent 'mystery ball'. But what the leg-spinner didn't know about 'woin', as his teammates unkindly claimed he called it, he certainly understood about publicity. And as he jumped into the waiting cab, we agreed to meet at P Sara an hour before play the next day for our photo.
Even for a journalist, phoning room service before 8 a.m. to order a bottle of white wine is a touch tragic. But in the absence of a sample of Warne's eponymous plonk, we needed a prop. And I guessed the world's leading sommeliers would be hard pressed to correctly identify a stand-in glass of South African gewürztraminer from a newspaper photograph.
Armed with laptop bag, wine bottle, glass, corkscrew and a photographer, I arrived at the ground as the Australians were beginning their morning warm-up. It was a ritual Warne vehemently opposed, which explained why he was its conspicuous absentee. As the players filed back towards the dressing room at session's end, I asked Brett Lee if he could check on Warne's availability. The fast bowler looked at me, at the opened bottle of wine I was gripping tightly, and smiled sympathetically. I couldn't bring myself to explain it was part of an important national news story and not a cry for help.
Minutes passed before the team manager appeared and reported the request had been logged, but that coach John Buchanan ruled it was not a good idea because Warne was the next batsman in if an early wicket fell. I protested that he was only required to pose, not swallow. But it was dismissed without consideration. The whole story looked bound for the spittoon until Warne made a fleeting appearance outside the rooms to complete his own preparatory exercise regime. A cigarette and a yawn. I signalled to him it was now or never for our snap.
'How long's it going to take?' he asked, looking nervously askance. I reassured him we had the optimum location in the grandstand worked out, the wine was poured, and all we needed was a leg-spinner to hold it. Two minutes, absolute maximum, I fudged.
He stubbed out the fag against the umpires' room wall and, looking every inch a male model in his plastic beach sandals and oversized training shirt that hung loosely over a pair of white lycra shorts, he padded gingerly to where we waited. He lifted the cheap hotel glass of nasty African wine up near his right cheek, smiled obligingly, and in the time it takes an SLR motor drive to fire off half a dozen frames, the job was done.
'That's it. Gotta go,' Warne said, slopping gewürztraminer on his shirt, and the concrete path where it met the morning sun and released a sickly sweet vapour.
'So what's the caption gunna say?' he asked distractedly as he walked past. It's not often that the world's best leggie tosses up such a generous gift.
'Probably something like "Australian leg-spinner Shane Warne prepares to bat on the second day of the first Test against Pakistan in Colombo",' I said, po-faced, as I emptied the remainder of the glass into a nearby bin.
Warne's green eyes opened wide, and he looked suddenly stricken. 'You bastard,' he wailed. 'After everything I've just done for you.'
#
# Tests in Sri Lanka and Sharjah, October 2002
The excess of spare time in Colombo was useful for more than sightseeing. On the days I wasn't exploring the coastal fort city of Galle, visiting the turtle hatchlings in Hikkaduwa, marvelling at the high-wire coconut collectors who traversed the network of aerial ropes along the Galle road, fawning over the glamorous 'Cashew Girls' of Cadjugama, mingling with the pachyderms at Pinnewala's elephant orphanage, or prostrating myself before Lord Buddha's holy molar at Kandy's Temple of the Tooth, there was the other staple of touring life — bureaucracy — to attend to.
When we departed for Kenya, none of us knew where our mystery tour would end. That meant I arrived in Sri Lanka clutching travel documents that granted me passage no further than Colombo. Once the final two Tests of the peripatetic series were confirmed for Sharjah, I passed on this information to my employers in the belief the appropriate onward arrangements would then be made. Instead, I learned the complexities of international airline ticketing meant it would, apparently, be easier if I took care of those contingencies from on the ground in Sri Lanka. Easier for them, anyway.
It all sounded so straightforward in theory. In practice, it made sense like integral calculus. A prolonged wait in an overcrowded airline office in central Colombo yielded nothing other than frustration. It was explained that, because the other components of my travel itinerary had been organised outside Sri Lanka, the best the airline could do was sell me a Colombo — Dubai return fare. This solved my professional dilemma, enabling me to at least cover the last two Tests. However, it did nothing to help me secure safe passage home. Appeals to the office to help find a resolution met with deafening uninterest.
'The company will pay for a ticket to Sharjah,' I was told, 'and then the remainder of the details can be worked out when you're there.'
It was the same glib response I had received to similar queries upon arriving in Sri Lanka a month earlier. A course of action that had, in that time, not delivered a single tangible result. My unease grew, aggravated by another two-hour stint in the simmering human soup of the airline office days later. I eventually emerged with a ticket to Dubai, and a foreboding as to how long I would be marooned there. For all of the Arabian Peninsula's doubtless appeal, it was not high on my preferred locations for indeterminate exile.
Incomplete travel arrangements were but one concern as I boarded the four-hour flight to the Middle East. It wasn't only ambient air temperatures that had been steadily climbing in the Persian Gulf. President George W. Bush had issued a direct challenge to the UN General Assembly that it should hold Iraq to its promise to disarm. Shortly after, the Bush Administration further toughened its stance and flagged a number of possible resolutions stretching as far as military intervention, and stressing that Saddam Hussein's regime would be given 'days and weeks, not months' to comply. Sri Lankan friends who knew a thing or two about war assured me I was flying from one combat zone into another.
I attempted to push aside the prospect of conflagration and to focus, instead, on the cricket. But when I checked into my sixth-floor hotel room in Sharjah and stood at the double window that faced west across the still waters of Khaled Lagoon, on which the occasional passing fishing dhow created the only obvious turbulence, I found myself staring directly down the Persian Gulf. Off in the heat haze, roughly the same distance that separated Adelaide from Melbourne, was the Iraqi coast.
Having spent childhood backyard summers toiling off my long run in the unrelenting sunshine and hot, dry winds funnelled into South Australia from the nation's desert interior, I was confident I could handle the Emirates' prevailing conditions. But the Arabian Peninsula takes the same approach to daytime temperatures as it does to urban construction — the higher the better. From the first step outside Dubai's refrigerated airport, I became aware that the heat didn't just suck out your breath. It scorched the cilia in your respiratory tract and drew a reflexive rasp from blistering lungs.
While lingering in the last moments of airport air conditioning before being initiated into the afternoon inferno, I sidled up to Stephen Waugh at the baggage carousel. If nothing else, it killed time until I made myself known to another baggage services staff member to talk lost luggage. It also allowed me to check his availability and interest for the interview I had planned to mark his upcoming milestone — 150 Test match appearances. As the only player other than Allan Border to reach this lofty mark in more than a century of international cricket, I reasoned it was an achievement of such significance that the Factory might relinquish its monopoly on ideas and accept my submission for a detailed testimonial. If the skipper agreed to participate.
'Yeah, mate, let me know when you want to do it,' Waugh said brusquely, without shifting his eyes from the conveyor belt. On the basis of that feeble commitment, my pitch for a feature story was accepted.
The opportunity to reconfirm our meeting did not arise until after the Australians' necessarily brief mid-afternoon training run on Test eve. The official verdict on conditions they would face the next day ranged from 'ridiculous' to unprintable, and the players were as drained of humour as they were bodily fluids as they prepared to hastily depart at session's end and return to the refuge of their hotel pool.
I took up a position in the barren corridor outside the dressing room door, the sweat engulfing me only partially due to the ferocious heat. My stress levels were peaking along with the mercury as it became clearer my chat with the skipper was becoming as likely as a cool change. That gnawing fear was confirmed by the Australian team manager who reported back, after yet another grovelling plea for my promised audience, that Waugh was in no mood to talk. Furthermore, the captain had thoughtfully suggested our get-together be rescheduled for an evening over the coming weekend, after play had finished. And days after the paper I had pledged to help fill had been printed.
As countless rivals knew well, Stephen Waugh was tough to budge once his single mind was set. But from where I was melting, he was not nearly as intimidating as an aggrieved sports editor who had sketched in a 1,000-word feature for the Saturday lift-out. I had no option but to toss dignity in the puddle forming at my feet, and forlornly threaten public pouting, sulking, even tears if the skipper reneged on our agreement. The official justifiably retorted that Waugh had completed his media obligations for the day when he held a fifteen-minute conference prior to training. Which, he pointedly observed, I had attended.
'But, but...he promised,' I blubbered, bottom-lip quivering like a short-changed five-year-old's on Christmas morning. To my amazement, and to almost bladder-emptying relief, the ploy worked.
'He said he'll do it for you,' the manager said sternly after another brief discussion with the captain behind closed doors. The first group of ruddy-faced players had already begun pushing past and hauling themselves aboard the bus that waited with motor running and fans blasting. 'But only because you reckon he made a deal. And only for five minutes. He's in the rooms.'
He motioned to the glass doors immediately behind him, and I charged headlong through the oncoming tide of lightly roasted players lest he suddenly change his mind.
Past the litter of adhesive strapping, piles of painkilling and salt tablets, massage benches, sopping towels, insulated tubs in which sports drinks would be mass mixed, makeshift plastic-lined ice baths, mounds of cricket equipment and a carpet of discarded water bottles. Then, hunched forward on a plastic chair in a dark corner, I found Stephen Waugh. Sitting in solitude beneath the hem of his candy-striped team blazer that hung from a bare hook on the white plaster wall. In his shorts, training shirt, thick woollen cricket socks and ever-present sponsor's cap, he was sweating like a defendant in a murder trial.
'The bus is ready to go,' I said by way of greeting, clumsily trying to lighten his mood that was as patently gloomy as his surrounds. 'You're gunna be unpopular.'
He looked briefly up at me and then back to the new, blue rubber grip he was diligently unrolling over the handle of one of his prized MRF bats.
'Nah, mate,' he said, implacably. 'They'll know why I've stayed behind. And if it goes longer than a few minutes, you'll be unpopular.' When it came to media relations, Waugh was strictly a front-foot player.
With half an eye on my watch, we rattled through most of the questions I had painstakingly prepared, and he fired off a series of answers that were nowhere near as rehearsed. Asked to nominate who he believed was best qualified to follow him as Test captain, he could easily have deflected such obvious speculation by pointing out that he had no say in choosing his replacement, or even when that handover would take place. But shirking wasn't in his nature.
'I think Ricky's got the stomach for the job,' he said, after pausing momentarily and studying the bat that twisted in his hands while he framed his words. 'You have to want this job, embrace it, and take it on because it's not always going to be easy. But he's a tough sort of character, and I think he can handle what it throws at you.'
He also articulated his plans for life after cricket: 'I won't stand back and wait for somebody to hand me a job.' His thoughts on reaching 150 Tests: 'The greatest thing about a longevity milestone is you've obviously got through and dealt with adversity, which says a lot about a sportsperson.' And the legacy of his tenure as captain: 'More people are watching Test match cricket now, which I think is a direct result of how Australian sides have played over the last few years. We've played very aggressively and gone all out to win...so if that's the legacy this Australian cricket side leaves, then I'd be very happy to say I was part of that.'
In six minutes and forty-eight seconds, he delivered more interesting material than many of his contemporaries managed in their entire careers. No sooner had I snapped off the voice recorder and thanked him for honouring his word, than he leaned the bat carefully against the wall, slung a grey day pack over his shoulder, and stalked off towards the idling bus.
'This weather's bullshit,' he muttered to nobody in particular, even though I was the only one there. 'Buggered if I know what we're doing here.' He lazily kicked at a ball of spent sticking plasters on the floor, and was gone.
The stomach and the steel extolled by the captain were called on from the moment he lost the coin toss the following morning and, to the undisguised irritation of his players, the Australians were forced to field in heat that would have cowed rattlesnakes. As early as our arrival in Colombo, team medical staff had expressed fears that mid-October in Sharjah could present a serious health threat. Constant daily temperatures well above forty degrees, coupled with ninety per cent humidity, meant players were likely to lose up to three kilograms of body weight through fluid loss over the course of a two-hour session.
On that Test's first day, a thermometer placed on the pitch during the lunch break showed forty-eight degrees. But so intent was Stephen Waugh on showing the Pakistanis that his team was mentally and physically stronger, he instructed his men to run between their fielding positions at every rotation of strike and each over's end. It was strategy ruthlessly lifted from Erwin Rommel's desert playbook, and likewise produced its share of casualties.
After bowling three overs, Andy Bichel, the raw-boned Queenslander who boasted commando-level fitness and endurance, became so disoriented he wandered, dazed, in the opposite direction to his assigned fielding location. Two overs later, he was helped to the dressing room and immediately placed on a saline drip. Brett Lee was mystified by the muddy pool that started to form on the popping crease soon after he began his stint with the ball. It turned out that sweat was being squeezed from his sodden socks, and out through a hole cut in the toe of his left boot to ease foot pressure as he hit his delivery stride. Having bowled his three overs, he strapped an ice vest under his shirt and, from then on, he and Glenn McGrath operated in one-over spells. And most of their teammates wore towelling collars stuffed with ice cubes around their necks, in a throwback to the wetted neckerchief sported by Douglas Jardine during the equally intemperate Bodyline summer of seventy years prior.
As an exercise in human endurance, it bordered on lunacy. But as a test of wills, it was a no-contest. Spooked by their superhuman opponents, it was the Pakistan batsmen who wilted. The team was bowled out for fifty-nine, in just over a session. It would have sent shockwaves of disbelief through the crowd, if one had bothered to show up. Even allowing for play beginning on traditional Muslim prayer Friday, the banks of red plastic seats radiating beneath towering Bedouin-style canopies sat tellingly vacant. But the Pakistani surrender had suitably fired the imagination of a more remote audience.
The working week was drawing to a close at the Ideas Factory, and the carpet strollers who gathered around the sports department's television were indulging in the celebrated journalistic tradition of knowing everything about everything, while exhibiting zero comprehension of what it is they manifestly don't know. Every workplace harbours folk like this. But, for some baffling reason, at newspapers they're taken seriously. And often promoted to middle management.
'We need an urgent piece on Warne's new mystery ball,' the boss shrieked down the line during the change of innings. 'The one he's getting all the wickets with. It's unplayable.'
I clawed at the hotel hand towel spread out next to the laptop, to reduce the risk of sweat dripping into my keyboard, and briefly contemplated knotting it around my throat.
'What mystery ball?' I replied, straining not to sound as steamed as I felt. 'There is no mystery ball. Who on earth told you that?'
'Nobody told us, we can see it for ourselves on the TV,' came the response. 'It's the one that The Sunday Age had a story on months ago. I'm sure you remember that.'
I flashed a look at Blakey that, had it translated into deed, would have seen me publicly beheaded at sunrise. As patiently as I could muster, while screwing the towel into a sopping sphere, I attempted to politely challenge the interpretation by a person sitting at a desk 12,000 kilometres away, of events that were unfolding on a cricket field a few hundred metres in front of me.
On a slow, dry, first-day pitch, I began, sounding like a preschool teacher beginning a fairytale, Warne understood he would be able to extract neither turn nor variable bounce. And so, he opted to bowl flatter, straighter and from close to the stumps. Instead of expelling needless energy ripping huge leg breaks that would only turn slowly and be easier to score off, he squeezed the ball from the front of his hand, imparting only backspin to ensure it stayed low upon bouncing.
This was, I explained, regulation fare by the great bowler's standards, but had netted him four wickets in next to no time because Pakistan's novice Test batsmen, like the folks around the TV in Sydney, had no clue what he was doing. Therefore, they propped speculatively forward in expectation of vicious spin that was never going to arrive, and simply stood there waiting to be adjudged leg before wicket. Upon finishing this dissertation, I found I was pinching the bridge of my nose so hard I had almost drawn blood.
'So there is no mystery ball,' I finished, exhausted. 'He's bowling straight breaks. And just for the record, that story out of Kenya was more spin than anything Warne's managed here. I'm guessing the only person stupid enough to fall for that is the same person who's providing expert commentary in the office.'
It was a rush of smart-arsedness I'd been fighting to tether, and one that I instantly regretted. Under normal circumstances, I would have quietly acquiesced, sworn under my breath, and set about typing up whatever banal request was issued. But these, from where I sat in the relative discomfort of an al fresco typing pool within a convection oven, were far from normal circumstances. The distressing heat was compounded by the nauseating effect of sickly sweet, but oddly satisfying, cardamom-infused tea that was steeped with condensed milk and dispensed ceaselessly to the meagre press corps by smiling Korean tea ladies. Throw in the fatigue born of a long and gruelling three-month assignment, and the angst created by its still-unresolved final act, and it led me to breach my own golden rule. To never give anyone in the office the impression I was at all fussed. In the silence that ensued, I draped the soaking towel over my head, just as a small, round-faced lady cheerily bowed and placed a steaming plastic cup beside my right elbow.
'It just so happens that person is the editor of the paper,' the boss eventually answered, in a voice usually reserved for 'and if you don't let me have it, I'll tell mum'. 'He requested it and wants it for page one.'
What ran across the front of the weekend edition next day made no mention of 'mystery deliveries', or Warne's supposed sorcery. Just an oblique reference to 'killer balls delivered from the front of the hand to mesmerise his inexperienced opponents'. And a small kicker, in bold type, pointing to an exclusive interview with Stephen Waugh somewhere much deeper in the paper. My obduracy, someone in the organisation let slip, had been noted. I devoted the remainder of prayer day to silent entreaties for the match, the series, and the tour to be over.
The Pakistanis, or the higher authority manipulating their fate, did their best to hasten the finish. Suggestions that their vapid first innings marked the low-point of the Islamic republic's fifty years in Test cricket were reevaluated next day when they were bowled out for fifty-three in less time than it takes to watch a Hollywood blockbuster. Anyone looking to blame the hostile conditions for such spinelessness was pointed towards Matthew Hayden who, in the period between Pakistan's twin humiliations, not only batted three hours longer than his eleven opponents managed across two innings, he outscored them by seven runs.
A Test victory achieved inside two days would normally unleash wild celebrations among players and press alike. But mitigating the joy of some unscheduled free time was the fact we were all stranded far from normality. We were in Sharjah. Where setting foot beyond the hotel was as enticing as climbing into a kiln. Where the only discernible shadow was that cast by the spectre of war. And where anyone contemplating a party faced being stoned before they could get stoned. It may be the third-largest city among the federation of fiefdoms, but Sharjah is to the United Arab Emirates what Jan was to the Brady Bunch. In contrast to its flashy and flirty nextdoor neighbour, Dubai, Sharjah's dowdy, conservative image was reflected in its pre-eminent features — stately mosques, spacious souks, a huge shipping port, and a sleepy waterfront development.
A place of commerce and contemplation, it takes seriously its reputation as the Emirates' cultural and education capital. It is also subject to strict Islamic law. Non-married couples are forbidden from meeting in public, and face the lash if found cohabiting. Anyone flashing too much flesh can be hauled off the street by police and questioned. And alcohol is strictly, expressly banned. Not really the sort of place you need to be stuck for a week between Tests. There's a finite number of ice-cold peach juices one can ingest to wash down the desert dust and quell the heat of Hades.
Conditions meant the Australians abandoned all notions of training before the final Test, restricting themselves to swimming, and organised tours. To Dubai's Burj Al Arab, the world's only seven-star hotel, and aboard the Australian warship HMAS Arunta which was part of the Persian Gulf blockade of Iraq. None of these outings included the press. Consequently, my dwindling reserves of energy and enthusiasm were channelled into restorative, explorative walks, strategically scheduled to avoid the heat of the day. Which meant roughly the hour either side of dawn and dusk.
For fear of being spot-seared when the sun's rays bore down from much above the horizontal, these hikes were restricted to localised attractions. The Blue Souk was the city's premier market and hideout for much of Sharjah's Arab population at any given hour. All outdoor construction and menial work was undertaken by imported, lowly paid labourers, mainly from Bangladesh. The Souk's high vaulted ceilings, spotless marble floors and industrial-strength air conditioning meant it offered respite to the privileged, as well as 600 or so shops dispensing reams of delicate fabrics, rivers of gold jewellery, prayer rugs and antiques, and, naturally, imported designer-label clothes, fragrances and cosmetics. Western morality might be a crime, but Western extravagance remains an essential status symbol.
Marginally further afield lay the fruit and vegetable souk, where trays piled with dates stood taller than the bearded men selling them. The fish souk was a gut-covered terrace along the wharf where the dhows tied up, and was best avoided once the sun took effect. And the bird souk was where majestic falcons occupied pride of place, alongside the elaborate accoutrements of their sport — leather hoods inlaid with intricate gold trimming, vellum gauntlets, swivel-topped wooden perches to which the birds of prey could be safely tethered in the evenings.
Falconry engenders infinitely greater interest and respect than does cricket throughout the Arab world, as reflected by the Emirates' founding father, Sheikh Zayed bin Sultan Al Nayhan, who philosophised: 'Falconry teaches endurance, strength, and patience.' Which explained why I was sorely tempted to buy one to help me negotiate the coming week. At least one of us then stood a plausible chance of flying home.
Despite my daily harassment of the newspaper's travel consultants and sympathetic administrative staff, come the start of the final Test I was none the wiser as to when, or how, I might get back to Melbourne. My feeling of isolation was heightened by another of Sharjah's draconian restrictions. Local internet servers allowed the transmission of emails, but access to web pages was blocked lest they inflame subversion, or loins. A couple of times, I dared to dial into a rogue server hosted in neighbouring Qatar, but fears as to the impact it might have on the company's phone bill, and potentially on my liberty, meant the risk far outweighed any benefit. Consequently, our window to the world was the CNN feed piped through the hotel room televisions.
'Heard any news about the war?' Adam Gilchrist asked sombrely one morning as our paths crossed en route to the breakfast room, a facility the media and players had shared until some of the cricketers complained about the press's proximity during their morning meal, at which point we were shunted off to a scungy buffet set up to cater for loudly dressed, loudly spoken Russian tourists.
'Last update I saw was that US Congress had authorised Bush to use force against Iraq,' I reported, trying to sound like the authority on world politics that I wasn't. 'But I'm pretty sure that's come from the same sources you're tuning into.'
'You're right,' he lamented. 'I think I'm watching too much CNN. And it's made me even more depressed. I'm not sure if things are especially bleak at the moment, or if the world's always in this shape but I'm just not aware of it because I don't usually have time to sit around watching twenty-four-hour news.'
Next day, our collective feelings of apprehension and vulnerability escalated immeasurably when suicide bombs tore apart two nightclubs at Bali's Kuta Beach. The non-stop CNN coverage focused largely on the implications of the al-Qaeda connection, and devoted scant attention to details of the eighty-eight Australians among the 202 lives lost. Nonetheless, it was instantly apparent that this event carried major implications, both at home and in the Gulf. Suddenly, history was on the gallop.
Conflict in Iraq was now touted as days away. The Australian Government ramped up its security warnings for its citizens in, or heading to, a long list of global hot spots. Politically, not meteorologically. The need to get out of Sharjah had become critical. My own sense of unease was exacerbated by sketchy reports of a potentially dire health crisis that was afflicting my wife at home. Rational fears that, should an invasion be launched, the cricketers would be whisked to safety and journalists left to fend for ourselves only added to the desperation of my travel inquiries. And if, as was likely, the final Test took as long to resolve as its predecessor, time to secure my escape was already running out.
All I needed was an airline ticket. I wasn't asking to be carried across south Asia in a sedan chair. But by Test eve, I had nothing other than windy assurances that travel arrangements would be taken care of. So in another act of imprudence, I fired off an angry email to my superiors, composed on a belly full of peach juice, which bluntly spelled out my disillusionment. I boldly suggested that if nobody in the organisation was able or inclined to organise my passage home, then I would be forced to turn up at Dubai Airport come Test's end and use my emergency-only issue corporate credit card to purchase any available one-way fare. Economy, business or celebrity class. I figured the only guaranteed way to elicit a response from a global media monolith was to use the language it understood above all else — money.
The fact there was a response awaiting me when I logged on next morning confirmed I had, indeed, struck a nerve. Unfortunately, it was a self-inflicted wound. The email from on high was as acerbic as it was self-explanatory.
'You may think you are the most important person in the world, but you are not,' it read. 'Our resources are stretched to the limit dealing with the horrific events in Bali. Not that you seem to care. You will be brought home when we are ready to do so and not before. Should you act on your threat to purchase an airfare using corporate funds, it will be viewed as a fraudulent transaction. The card will be confiscated, you will be required to reimburse the company for the expense incurred, and the appropriate action will be taken.'
I fumed with indignation, self-pity and panic. I felt abandoned as well as admonished. My job was apparently now in peril simply because I had sought, over the course of many weeks, to organise safe passage home from a work assignment to a selection of the world's foremost trouble spots. I was not so delusionally self-important to demand the newspaper abandon the biggest story of the decade in order to fly me across the globe. I merely wanted a travel agent to purchase an airline ticket on my behalf. Or provide me with the authority to do same. By that stage, I would have been more than happy to pay for it myself. What's more, the slight about my disregard for the Bali victims was unkind and uninformed. The atrocity was a significant reason for my urgent need to get home because the lack of information available in Sharjah meant I had no idea if the dead and injured included any of my relatives or friends. These issues were all addressed in a provocative reply I typed in a blind rage, then wisely opted not to send. Instead, I closed the laptop having reread the initial missive over and over, and prepared to head to the cricket.
The Test's predictable result was completed early on the fourth morning. The next day, I caught a cab to Dubai Airport where I handed over a sheet of telex paper I had received that morning that was decorated with sufficient booking numbers, airline codes and travel industry jargon to stump the code breakers at Bletchley Park. I had been assured, in an accompanying note from an apologetic travel agent, that it could be swapped for a valid plane ticket.
A day later, I returned to the same desk dragging my suitcase, and even less hope. But after forty-five minutes of negotiations, hollow threats and international phone calls, I was gifted a boarding pass to get me as far as Singapore, where I camped overnight, before finally slumping into a seat that was bound for Australia. As I touched down at Tullamarine, sixty days after arriving in Nairobi, I was again convinced that I had completed my final overseas cricket tour. And, at that point, nothing could have pleased me more.
#
# Australian Summer 2002–03
England's cricketers landed in Australia to begin preparations for the 2002–03 Ashes series while Stephen Waugh's men were still engaged in their Middle East campaign. The game's oldest rivalry stoked fires in many bellies, but none more fiercely than the media's. As well as tradition and folklore, the battle for the tiny terracotta urn lent itself to those trusty circulation-boosters, jingoism and hyperbole.
In the weeks leading into the opening Test in Brisbane, acres of newspaper space would be devoted to exhaustive reasons why this series could be different to the seven that had preceded it, most notably because England appeared to have unearthed a means to be competitive. Then, when that was revealed as a pipe dream, even more space was allocated to pour scorn on the Old Enemy because it was just as laughably poor as before. It was this yawning need for content that saw me included in the paper's starting line-up for the summer, just weeks after my acrimonious return from the Emirates. Even recriminations took a back seat to the Ashes.
The early signs for a close-fought series were promising. England emerged from all three of its first-class warm-up matches undefeated though, in fairness, none actually earned them a victory. And speculation arose that, for reasons of jet lag, sunstroke and shellshock, the Australians were likely to be off their game when hostilities began at the 'Gabba. But to nobody's genuine surprise, the Poms were whipped in the first Test, flogged harder in the second and reduced to a punchline for a routine of well-worn jokes in the third. The Ashes had been decided on summer's first official day and, as if anticipating the need to randomly throw some element of contest into the schedule, the Australian Cricket Board wasted no time getting stuck into the series that really mattered — the annual three-sided limited-overs tournament, featuring the much-awaited return of the litigious Sri Lankans.
Sneaking in five one-day internationals between the Perth and Boxing Day Tests might have appealed to those groups interested in gate takings and evening television ratings, but for the game's purists this was rather like plating up the petits fours just as diners were polishing off their entrée. Then, out of the blue, the tut-tutting of serious commentators was drowned out by the stifled whoops of daily journalists as a Christmas — New Year silly season that threatened to be denuded of meaning and news gifted a story that would sustain us to season's end and well past.
It arrived on a cool Sunday evening, a week or so shy of Christmas, with England on course for another shellacking. Shane Warne was nearing the end of a fruitful ten-over bowling spell when, reacting instinctively to a firmly hit straight drive, he flung himself to his right, bowling arm outstretched. As his full weight crashed on the pitch, the top of his humerus was violently forced upward, popping it clean out of the shoulder joint. A hush fell over the MCG as the local hero willed himself to sit up, cradling his right arm against his chest and grabbing at the damaged joint as his face contorted in agony. Even before he had been lifted on to a stretcher, I phoned the boss to flag that we might need to consider rejigging the front page for the second edition. Then, as four support staff and a couple of concerned teammates helped carry him from the field, I block deleted the words I had already composed, and furiously began work on the latest Warne episode.
Even I recognised this was more than a routine sports injury yarn, and not only because it involved the game's walking circus. In two months, the Australians would arrive in South Africa to defend their World Cup, and a mainstay of that campaign now faced a minimum of six weeks to recover. That was if, at thirty-three, and having already undergone one full reconstruction of the over-used joint, he was able to recover at all.
But Warne had worked hard to modify more than his palate over the previous year. After undertaking a fitness regime that saw him shed a dozen kilograms and trim ten centimetres from his waistline, he wasn't about to let a mere anterior dislocation fast-track him into retirement. Not only did he make good his promise to return to international cricket, he did it after just twenty-six days recuperating. And true to the soap opera plot that he often admitted doubled as his life's narrative, his comeback coincided with the start of the one-day finals, which offered the Australians one last chance to humiliate their historic foes.
He stood tanned, trim and revitalised at training on the day before the big comeback game in Sydney and, at session's end, he was one of four players approached in the SCG dressing room by officers from the Australian Drugs Sports Agency to provide a routine, random urine sample. Even then, all seemed well in Warne's world.
That afternoon, Warne fronted a prearranged media conference in a meeting room filled to bursting at the team hotel, and positively glowed through his announcement that, while he would be fit to spearhead Australia's bowling at the World Cup, the tournament would also serve as his swansong from limited-overs cricket. The decision, he explained, had been made to extend his longevity in Test matches. Minds were immediately cast back to the previous World Cup in London, where Warne had last floated the retirement scenario and successfully hijacked the spotlight by doing so. And just like last time, his news caught teammates on the hop.
Having reclaimed his rightful place in the nation's one-day team and on its newspapers' front pages, Warne departed the press call in exuberant spirits. So cheerful, in fact, he voiced no objection to a journalist tagging along with him later that evening to a promotion of his new wine label at Sydney's Watsons Bay Hotel. I was invited by a mate who was also the brand's public relations flack. And the leg-spinner, clearly chipper about the way the day's events had panned out, voiced no reservations when confronted by the 'leech' that lurked in the back seat of the event photographer's car as all four of us took off from The Rocks and into the night.
Under regular circumstances, Warne would rather break herb bread than share a confined space with a journalist. He wasn't quite as anti as Mark Waugh who, as the players' minibus edged past a group of press men following training at Adelaide Oval one afternoon, shouted loud enough at the driver for all of us to hear: 'Speed up and run them down. Bloody cricket nuffies.' Or Andrew Symonds who, when the team bus passed me as I waited for a taxi outside Bellerive Oval one evening, responded to a suggestion from one of his teammates that they stop and offer me a ride, given we were all staying at the same hotel, with a snarling: 'Piss off, he's a journalist.' To which one of the crew bravely suggested: 'Yeah, but he's one of the trustworthy ones.' Prompting Symonds to spit back: 'Maybe, but he's still got a fuckin' pen.' By contrast, the only baggage Warne was carrying when he jumped into the front passenger seat was the ham and pineapple pizza that had been freshly delivered to his room.
'You guys want some?' he asked breezily, in lieu of traditional pleasantries. 'Good,' he laughed when we all declined, ''cos I'm starving.'
He spent the twenty-five-minute drive through the eastern suburbs to South Head juggling dinner, running us through the log of calls and text messages he'd already received from wellwishers around the world, finalising a ghostwritten column that was to appear under his name in an English newspaper the next day, and, in the few spare minutes in between, making easy conversation with his fellow travellers.
'So how do you think today's announcement went down, Rambo?' he quizzed me, as he poked down the final slice. 'Thought I'd better give you guys something to write about,' he continued, turning to face me over his right shoulder, the oncoming headlights causing the grease on his chin to glisten. I smiled back, pretending to convey gratitude as a couple of pineapple chunks dislodged and fell thud, thud into the cardboard container.
The entourage that awaited in the hotel's function room was largely made up of wine and food connoisseurs, the sorts who ordinarily wore their reluctance to be impressed like a merit badge. But the hubbub died to hushed adulation when Warne, freshly towelled down by a paper napkin, made his entrance. Some gawked unashamedly. Others forcibly kept their eyes lowered until he had moved past, lest their stares appear too adoring. If Warne was intimidated by mingling with a group that understood far more about his new product than he did, he showed no outward sign.
For an hour or more he chatted and backslapped, posed for photographs and signed bottles that immediately became more valuable for their packaging than for their contents. Citing impending cricket commitments, and in keeping with the team's pre-match curfew, he departed at the civilised hour of 9 p.m. In transit and in situ, he had been relaxed, effusive and totally charming, which flew in the face of subsequent conspiracy theories that he knew all along he was harbouring a dark secret.
News that Warne had, on the basis of the urine sample collected that day, tested positive to a banned diuretic broke the day before Australia's opening World Cup outing in South Africa. His explanation — that he had innocently taken tablets recommended to him by his mother to help him appear leaner during his triumphant media conference — was dismissed by most as either laughably naive, or ham-fistedly devious. Others gloated that it was fitting that a man who so openly embraced style over substance should be brought down by vanity. And some took the remarkable speed of his rehabilitation from the shoulder injury, added it to the use of diuretics, and came up with a circumstantial sum that indicated a barefaced attempt to mask more sinister substances in his body. After all, that was the reason diuretics were explicitly banned by sporting organisations, including the International Olympic Committee. But it was the case tendered by Warne himself that was the most compelling.
As recent years had regularly borne witness, Warne was far less accomplished at masking his emotions than he was at disguising the apparently infinite array of deliveries in his bowling repertoire. It was easy to tell when he was on a biorhythmic upswing. He was gregarious, charismatic and craved attention — the bloke who impressed everyone at his Watsons Bay 'woin' event. When things weren't turning his way, he quickly became brooding, self-absorbed and withdrawn — the guy found skulking outside a hotel in Leeds, or confronting the team psychologist in Birmingham. If he had knowingly used illicit means to fast-track his recovery, the realisation that his career was in tatters would have hit him like a Lance Klusener cover drive the moment he was asked to pee in a bottle. Putting on a brave face in front of your captain and coach during a low spell at an Antiguan restaurant was admirable, but feigning the levels of enthusiasm and humour he managed to generate at a full-blown media conference and then an upmarket groupie gig required the sort of artifice only a gifted actor could hope to carry off. And anyone who endured the television chat show Warne was to host in retirement knew that his capabilities as an artiste were strictly confined to cricket.
Warne's reappearance in Australian one-day colours on the day after his Sydney soiree was typically fairytale. He bowled serviceably for all but one delivery of his ten-over spell. The exception, naturally, was the final ball that left the sell-out crowd hollering his genius, and his teammates shaking their heads. Though this time, in admiration.
His last offering was a perfectly looped leg break that lured England's Paul Collingwood out of his crease, as he scampered to meet the ball at its bounce. But the revolutions Warne imparted through his rebuilt shoulder meant it dipped sharply before the wide-eyed batsman could quite get there. Upon pitching, it then spun sharply away from the bat that had been thrust forward in desperate hope, and into the gloves of wicketkeeper Adam Gilchrist, who completed a straightforward stumping. The Australians went on to complete another emphatic win, built on a blistering Gilchrist innings.
Next morning, as I sat secreted in a back corner of the hotel breakfast room to appear not-so-intrusive to the small groups of Australian players spread out through the restaurant, I became aware of a figure looming over my muesli.
'Checked your emails this morning?' Gilchrist asked, his jaunty manner disguising an underlying weariness. I blamed Warne's recent bombshell and the previous night's late finish for my tardiness in doing so.
'No drama,' he said, almost apologetically. 'But when you do, you should find a column there from me.'
I looked confused, only because I had no recollection of asking for one. Or of the Factory telling me one was due. But unlike most other paid celebrity columnists, Gilchrist was known to enjoy, and take professional pride in, his writing.
'It suddenly came to me last night, just after that stumping off Warney's final ball, that this will be the last time that people in Australia see him performing like that in one-day cricket,' he continued, a wad of newspapers rolled tightly beneath his right arm. 'So I spent the rest of the innings mulling that over, and I thought it might make an interesting column. How Warney's single-handedly changed the way one-day cricket is played. That spinners no longer just tie up an end, they're now a real attacking weapon. And I've chucked in a few personal observations about how he's achieved that.
'Just because I could,' he said, self-deprecatingly.
Then, as he strode off, he added: 'It's the usual length, 750 words or so. When I got back here after the game last night, I was still pretty hyped and couldn't sleep. So I pulled out the laptop, knocked something together and sent it off to you. Let me know what you reckon. If you think it needs a bit more work, I can probably have a go at it this afternoon. Once we get to Melbourne.'
'If you're not careful, you'll give player columns a good name,' I called after him, only partly in jest.
I returned to my room shortly after to find that a missive from the vice-captain had indeed dropped in my inbox at 2.36 a.m. As expected, it ticked every box for an insider's column — lucid, relevant and insightful. Putting the reader in the player's shoes. I flicked it straight on to the boss, with not so much as a comma altered.
The other trait that set Gilchrist apart as a columnist was that his interest in newspapers extended beyond the considerable money they throw at such arrangements. He enjoyed exploring new ways of conveying the on-field experience in words. He was aware of the opportunities a regular presence in a national newspaper provided, and took that responsibility seriously. His perspicacity and professionalism added significantly to the paper's cricket coverage, and he indicated he was interested in pursuing a role in the print media beyond his playing days. So, when his contract lapsed later in the year, the Factory shrewdly chose not to renew it. In a triumph of marketing over merit, Ricky Ponting was signed as an occasional columnist instead.
#
# West Indies, March–June 2003
In the four years since I had snuck from the Caribbean under threat of lawsuit, the clement islands hadn't drifted any closer. Even though the route for Australia's 2003 tour took us the other way — through Los Angeles, New York, Trinidad and finally Guyana — it still soaked up two full days of air travel and associated waiting around. Not that I was grumbling. I had resolved to cultivate a disposition as sunny as the region's idyllic weather throughout the two-month tour, regardless of bureaucratic obstacles or empty bottles hurled my way.
The animosities of Sharjah, if not forgotten, had been glossed over in another round of managerial role shuffling. For my part, I had reignited my enthusiasm for international cricket assignments, aided in part by the harsh realisation that the alternative to touring life was life in the office. And in my case, that meant reporting on the eye-glazing winter rituals of Melbourne's suburban football. From the paper's perspective it was largely due to the series' scheduling, tacked on to Australia's successful World Cup defence. Which meant reporters who had tailed the team through an Ashes summer and then two months in South Africa had been granted a leave-pass from the West Indies so that they could reacquaint themselves with their lives. There was no such respite for the players who had been on the road since Kenya almost a year earlier. Consequently, they were not sharing my level of joviality when they landed in Guyana on a damp late-March morning.
Indeed, they made no attempt to hide their grumpiness. The fact they were able to return home after their triumph in Johannesburg barely long enough for a cursory street parade through Perth, and to pack their Test match whites, had given rise to bubbling discontent that their World Cup achievement had not been duly acknowledged, or properly celebrated.
Apart from heartfelt guarantees that my room booking would be honoured for the duration of our stay, nothing much had changed in Georgetown over intervening years. The heavy security presence pretty much everywhere was only partly due to the Gulf War that had finally kicked off in the days before we left Australia. Violent gang crime had become even more popular than before, to the extent that not long after our arrival a US diplomat was ambushed on the second tee of the city's Lusignan Golf Course by a group of gun-toting teenagers, who demanded $60 million Guyanese for his release. The street value of an international cricketer was thought to be considerably higher, so confinement once more became our mutual companion. I was therefore deputed, by the six-man travelling press corps, with coaxing Stephen Waugh — widely tipped to be undertaking his final overseas tour — to share dinner with us in the days prior to the first Test. Having been virtually impounded with the team since our arrival, most of our tour expenses were fully intact. And it was the lure of winkling some largesse from the media, rather than the media's lively company, that excited the skipper's interest when I encountered him on his way to an after-training swim.
'Yeah, that'd be good,' he said, without breaking stride. 'But it'd be best to invite the coach and the team manager as well. Just to keep everyone happy.'
Then, as I was about to negotiate the finer details, he added: 'We'll do it here, at the poolside restaurant. Tomorrow night. At eight o'clock.'
I was immediately reminded of a tale I'd heard years prior, when Waugh made a rare appearance for Bankstown in Sydney's grade competition. His rival skipper was a university student, nervous and excited about the prospect of meeting, and opposing, one of Test cricket's all-time greats. When they came together at pitch's edge for the coin toss, the novice extended his hand and introduced himself. Waugh shook it hurriedly, grunted 'G'day' and flicked a $1 bit skywards.
'Call,' he commanded, following the coin's flight.
'Heads,' stammered the intimidated youngster, unsure of how he'd so upset his hero before a ball had been bowled. It landed heads and, as the winner steeled himself to announce his intentions, Waugh barked, 'You can bat,' and bent to retrieve his investment. As the youngster stood dumbstruck, the Test captain jammed the dollar in his pocket and set off briskly, alone, towards the dressing sheds.
No sooner had they supped on the media's hospitality than the officials made their excuses and left. But Waugh stayed on for a couple of additional rum and colas, indicating he was either keen to inflate the bill or had a bone to pick. When the first round of drinks arrived, so too did the picking.
'One of the things that really shits me about the media is when you blokes write something and attribute it to "sources",' he said, directing his grievance at no particular party. 'Sources close to the team, or sources inside the Cricket Board. I reckon that's bullshit. If you're gonna say something, you should have the guts to put your name to it. Otherwise, journos could just make up anything, and say it's come from "sources".'
He leaned back, obviously spoiling for an argument. We, in turn, argued the legitimacy of anonymity in news reports. The value of whistleblowers. That some of the world's great injustices would never have been exposed if the informants had to be identified on the record. Like Watergate. Even Ranatunga-gate. Besides, journalists were bound by a code of ethics, so most would never simply manufacture quotes out of thin air in order to generate a headline. Tweak maybe. But blatant fabrication just couldn't be countenanced. This final assertion forced a derisive laugh, most notably from the skipper.
'Yeah right,' he snorted. 'All I'm saying is that we get scrutinised by you guys, and the public, for every little incident. Every word out of place. Whereas you can write whatever you want and hide behind "sources".'
'But aren't there issues that get under your skin?' I asked. 'That you'd like to speak out about but know you can't because of the job you hold?'
I only had to look into his uncompromising eyes to immediately know it was the wrong question. Or a reasonable question, just posed to the wrong person.
'Not that I can think of,' he said, draining his glass, and splintering an ice cube between his teeth. 'If I've got something to say, I'll back myself and put my name to it.'
The first Test began with the West Indies batting, but wickets in the first half-hour soon had the Australians in the ascendant. Then, without warning or explanation, the game stopped dead. Adam Gilchrist had hurled his bright orange wicketkeeping gloves onto the mottled turf, and bolted like a Jamaican sprinter for the dressing room. His confused teammates formed a huddle in the centre, unsure as to the reason for his departure, or the probability of his return. Playing cricket without a 'keeper is a bit like shooting pool on a dinner table. Not totally unfeasible, but unnecessarily time-consuming. After a few minutes of blank looks and anxious inquiries from players and officials alike, the vice-captain came bounding back through the gate and rejoined the game, revealing little apart from an occasional wince. He exchanged a few words with his captain, refitted his gauntlets, and the match continued.
It was later revealed that an impatient bout of gastric trouble was the cause of the unscheduled break. Team officials who had settled in for a quiet hour or two of newspaper reading prior to lunch told of the white flash that burst through the viewing and changing areas and hurtled into a vacant toilet cubicle, almost taking the ancient wooden door from its hinges. Racked by violent spasms, with hands clamped to his thighs and legs extended parallel to the floor, Gilchrist was reduced to a hapless vessel through which the bug furiously churned. Worried support staff gathered outside the bathroom entrance, unsure whether to summon a doctor, a plumber or a priest. The accompanying soundtrack was said to resemble the Flying Scotsman rumbling through a lake.
When it had passed, Gilchrist gathered what was left of his decorum and jogged ruefully back to the middle. He tried to paraphrase the reason for his absence to his captain, who simply folded his arms across his chest and sniffed: 'Mate, I've been playing Test cricket for seventeen years, and that's the first time I've ever seen a game stopped for a bloke to take a shit.'
Despite Guyana's own Shivnarine Chanderpaul thrashing the third-fastest century in Test history, the West Indies were confirmed as a relic of former glories by losing comfortably at Bourda. Then, with Chanderpaul a mysterious late scratching from the next Test — according to 'sources' because the West Indies Cricket Board declined to pay for his wife to accompany him on the 500-kilometre trip to Trinidad — another defeat loomed large. The holders of the Frank Worrell Trophy were effectively assured of retaining their prize after scarcely a week's cricket.
'We need you to compile a list of all the cricket trophies Australia now holds, including the Worrell, which'll be in the bag by the time the story runs on Friday,' the new boss, stealthily known around the office as the 'Bi-polar Bear' due to unpredictable mood swings, cackled as play drew to a close on day four in Trinidad.
'All of them. The Ashes. The World Cup. The one-day series they play for here in Australia every summer. To show they've won pretty much everything on offer in world cricket, but they're still only ranked number two Test team in the world. We'll do it up as a graphic and run it on the front page. It'll be bloody funny, I reckon.'
Graphics had become the new obsession for an industry fast losing ground to more visually appealing media. Not only did funky fact boxes and detailed diagrams give newspapers more of a web-page feel, they gave in-house artists something to design other than cartoons. What this graphic did not immediately explain, to me anyway, was its relevance to what was going on in the Caribbean. Or why it needed to be compiled by the person geographically situated furthest from the office. From most offices, in fact. But embracing my new-found sycophancy, I wholeheartedly agreed it was a terrific idea, and set about assembling the data upon return to my room, with its views across the sprawling Queen's Park Savannah.
After trawling the records at my disposal, phoning the Australian Cricket Board for an inventory of its Jolimont trophy cabinets, and executing a final cross-check to eradicate the sorts of errors that creep in at 3 a.m., I shunted the material to Sydney and collapsed into bed. Shortly after losing consciousness, the phone rang. I knew immediately from the cold, measured tones that the Bear had more than a sore head.
'That list you've sent is rubbish,' I was icily informed.
Trying frantically to find my toadying in the darkness, I mixed endless apologies with promises to make good the shortcomings as soon as I could work out where I was. And what they were.
'I asked for a list of the trophies they hold,' the voice continued. 'All of them. You've given me the ten or so major ones. I could have done that myself, off the top of my head. What about the bloody Standard Cup, or whatever they won in South Africa a year ago? That's not there.'
My mind raced. Every trophy ever won, and retained, by the Australian cricket team was not so much a list as an anthology. I thought of the meaningless tournaments played in places far removed from public interest. In Hong Kong, Kenya and New Zealand. And I wondered who in their right mind would keep track of those forgettable series' eventual winner, let alone what they collected for doing so. Not even the players involved bothered remembering that level of detail. But this was my new age of unquestioning compliance, no matter how puerile the request.
'I'm really sorry,' I stammered, trying not to sound too much like the verbal version of what Gilchrist had suffered in Guyana. 'I thought you were after just the main ones. The perpetual trophies and the major Test series. Misunderstanding on my part. All my fault. I'll get on to it straight away, and you should have a full list in half an hour or so. What's it there now? Around 5p.m.? That should give you plenty of time to get it in the paper.' Somewhere between Port-of-Spain and Surry Hills, my attempt to be obliging was translated into flippancy.
'Mate, you can stop being a smart arse,' I was told bluntly. 'I've asked you for a simple list, and you can't provide it. You just don't fuckin' get it, do you? If I want something done, I want it done properly. I don't make these requests for my own amusement. If you can't cut it, just let me know and I'll have no trouble finding someone who can.'
The phone clicked dead. As did another of my synapses that registered job satisfaction. I kicked the laptop back into life, hunted down as many of the omitted details as possible in the available time, and sent through a list so lengthy it would have required its own lift-out. I lay awake until sun-up, telling myself over and over this was, after all, the world's best job. By the time I left for the cricket ground, I almost believed it.
I arrived at Barbados Airport ahead of the third Test bearing all the fake bravado of a narcotics smuggler. In the absence of any formal notification that the earlier writ had been settled, my intention was to appear above suspicion by maintaining unrelenting eye contact with immigration officers. Unfortunately, this ploy caused the uniformed passport checker to visibly recoil in her seat, doubtless fearing I was bringing in some exotic strain of strabismus. The prospect of several weeks in the classic Caribbean — the swaying palms and bleached white sands of Barbados and Antigua, as opposed to the gang crime and ugly cityscapes of Guyana and Trinidad — had hauled me from my introspection. It should also have meant a corresponding lift in team morale but, instead, their funk seemed to deepen. Some players welcomed wives, children and parents to the wider touring party. Cricket Australia regularly shelled out for these sanctioned conjugal visits as part of their collective bargaining agreement with the cricketers. It was designed to ensure their relationships survived the long stints of enforced exile. Making the most of the similar compassionate breaks afforded long-absent journalists, I would illicitly squirrel away some of my tightly monitored expenses allowance to mail the occasional postcard home. But having the WAGs and their brood along also meant the playing group now split into two distinct groups — families enjoying a seaside holiday, and solitary men waiting around idly for the cricket to start.
Physical exhaustion was also draining spirits, especially among bowlers forced to labour on pitches so devoid of life that renowned deck-decoder Jason Gillespie noted they needed 'Viagra to get it up'. The ball, apparently. So Stephen Waugh decided to get publicly stuck into West Indies cricket officials for preparing such unresponsive surfaces, and then piled into the state of the game in the Caribbean in general, claiming his team's easy wins in the first three Tests felt disappointingly hollow due to the lack of fight from the other side. And everyone, friend and foe, had a crack at Brian Lara, who didn't even turn up to the ground for most of the third Test's third day, citing a mystery illness that happened to appear just hours after he'd been seen out on the town, celebrating his thirty-fourth birthday.
It seemed everywhere I turned, grumpiness radiated back. Desperate to sustain my own productivity, I threw myself into a punishing day-and-night work routine to prove, to whom I wasn't completely sure, that I was fully committed to the job. My respite came from the recuperative pleasures of Rockley Beach, where I would wade into the gently warmed soft-blue water until it wrapped around my shoulders like velvet. It had taken a full tour and a half, but I had finally found the Caribbean's magical appeal.
The only reason I was excited to leave Barbados was the news that, due to some sort of administrative oversight, I had been booked to travel the next leg, to Antigua, in business class. Adding to my sense of entitlement was the knowledge that there were not sufficient seats in the exalted section to accommodate the players and their assorted significant others. They were all to be herded into cattle class. So, although it was a flight of barely an hour, I revelled in the disdainful looks from the Australian players as they filed past me and through the curtain to their cheap seats on the other side. But we were no more than two minutes into our ascent when an opportunistic cricketer vaulted into the vacant berth next to me.
'Don't let them know I'm supposed to be sitting back there,' Brad Hogg whispered. 'And if the hosties ask, tell 'em I've been here right from the start.'
I suspected that even cabin crew on a notoriously inept Caribbean airline would eventually notice a seventeen per cent increase in the business-class passenger manifest. But until such time as that happened, I resigned myself to an hour of the sort of 'Hogg-isms' that kept his teammates endlessly amused and utterly perplexed.
Like the time the West Australian team bus skirted Royal Randwick racecourse en route to the Sydney Cricket Ground, and Hogg pondered aloud, 'Is that where they run the Melbourne Cup?' And the pit stop outside a diner on the verge of England's M1, during which Hogg dutifully ran around collecting all the rubbish lying on the floor of the team bus, before stuffing it into a garbage bin in the parking bay. The group was many kilometres down the motorway when it became clear one of the bags he had tossed contained a soiled Australian playing uniform from that day's game. He was even more crushed when he realised the lost laundry bag was his own.
However, there was something annoyingly endearing about the one-time postal deliveryman who grew up in wheat belt country around Narrogin, south of Perth. Sporting a haircut best described as military chic, and a boundless energy which matched his childlike curiosity, he was as harmless as he was guileless. What's more, Hogg was genuinely grateful for every opportunity that came his way, and never took for granted the fleeting fame of professional sport. Which is why he combined touring life with his ongoing attempts to complete a Bachelor of Business. As we began our descent into Antigua, conversation in row four had stalled and, instead, we both studied the in-flight monitors that showed 'Time to Destination: 0:22'. Hogg turned his attention from the screen to me and mused: 'So how long 'til we land?'
I looked at him, back to the television screen, then back at the cricketer, trying to figure if there was some prank I was missing.
'Umm, twenty-two minutes, I'd reckon,' I replied. 'Just going by the TV.' He chewed over this information and I waited for the gotcha moment.
'Yeah I know,' he said, mildly agitated. 'But don't forget we were late leaving Barbados.'
The harder I looked for the logic in his reasoning, the more disturbed I became. The rest of our journey passed in silence.
Come the final Test in Antigua, the irritation that had been brewing between the rival teams through the preceding month spilled into full, unedifying view. Lara became apoplectic when a couple of Australian fielders asked aloud if the drinks cart making its way towards the middle contained 'a couple of beers for Brian'. Glenn McGrath raised the temperature further when he engaged in a violent argument with opposing batsman Ramnaresh Sarwan, who the Australian had dissed, only to become incensed when the diminutive West Indian gave back even better than he got.
Then, with the West Indies closing in on a history-making victory, local hero Ridley Jacobs was wronged by an umpire, prompting the inevitable bottles, rubbish and hysterical abuse to rain down on the field, and on the touring press. Apparently, we needed to also cop our comeuppance for being arrogant, propaganda-peddling colonial apologists, and there was no shortage of angry people seated around our open-air press box to loudly make those points. It had taken until the Test series' penultimate day, but I was somewhat comforted to rediscover that old Caribbean bile, just as I had left it.
The unpleasantness that pervaded the Tests cooled like a Leeward Islands breeze the moment the seven-match limited-overs series rolled around. Mainly because, with the Test match specialists dispensed with, Australia's World Cup-winning one-day squad was able to reconvene its truncated celebrations. That priority was obvious from the morning we arrived at our hotel in Jamaica to start the coloured-clothing games.
Upon learning that our rooms would not be ready until at least mid-afternoon, several members of the press contingent sulked off to the poolside café to find out if the kitchen might be operational at such an impertinent hour. We were greeted by a pair of chirpy Australian fast bowlers perched atop towering stools at the bar, their disposition transformed by the contents of enormous cocktail glasses that wore garnish like a Carmen Miranda headdress.
'Pina colada,' one of them announced, nodding at the glasses before them, and taking a long drag on a straw poking from the undergrowth.
'Half price before noon,' the other added, drawing a huge grin from the under-employed barman. The fact that even the journalists agreed it was a bit too early in the day to hit the sauce confirmed that the mood among the playing group was quickly shifting from pissed off to simply pissed. After more than nine months on the road, the cricketers clearly believed it was time to retire to the bar.
The fact that the Australians won the first four one-day matches to add another anonymous trophy to that never-published list was as much a testament to their ability to switch on when required as it was an indictment of their opposition. The West Indian team that had been exposed as a divided, uninterested rabble in the Tests was even less engaged in the shorter form. And nobody better characterised that indifference than their skipper.
Preparing to depart the verdant, volcanic island of St Lucia for Trinidad after the third one-dayer, our plane, with its load of restless passengers, sat motionless on the tarmac for more than fifteen minutes awaiting the arrival of a last, tardy traveller. Brian Lara finally appeared, swaggering towards the rear in search of his seat. He was conspicuous, not so much by his belated entrance, but by his attire. Not for him the grey, green and maroon polo shirt and smart business trousers of his teammates, who had skipped town on an earlier flight. Lara was decked out in a white sleeveless T-shirt, boldly displaying the leopard's head tattoo on his right bicep, frayed jeans, black leather shoes, oversized sunglasses fixed firmly in place, and a thick gold chain around his neck. He looked like he might have walked straight out of a nightclub. Which he had. He stopped in the aisle immediately between my seat, and a pair of giggling young ladies. He smiled at them, looked at me, and zeroed in on the spare seat to my left.
'How you doin'?' he greeted me, while stuffing his shoulder satchel into the locker above my head.
'Hey, you mind movin' over so I can sit where you are?' I knew it wasn't my company he sought, so I happily agreed and we strapped ourselves in. 'That's good of you, man,' he said. 'By the way, I been meanin' to ask you for a while. How you enjoyin' this trip to de Wess Indies? It's been a long time on the road for your guys.'
Our conversation continued until we touched down in Port-of-Spain, albeit with regular interruptions as he flirted across the aisle. Our discussion was largely driven by Lara, who was suspiciously happy to voice opinions on any number of subjects. They included a brutal assessment of some of his teammates ('I mean, Marlon Samuels. Wass he ever achieved to be walkin' round so cool? I say to him, "Try losin' the shades and makin' some runs"). His passion for Trinidad's Rio-style pre-Lent mardi gras ('I don't care what the cricket schedule says, I got to be at home for Carnival'), to the stewardess from whom he ordered a couple of cans of local Trinidadian beer ('How old you reckon she is? I knew her when she was in her early twenties, if you know what I mean. And she's not lookin' any older now').
Lara nudged me in the ribs as she returned with his drinks, and he whispered something to her that rendered her wide-eyed as he handed over a fistful of faded red Trinidadian dollars. He then offered one of the beers to me.
'For you, man. Tanks for givin' up your seat. And welcome to Chrinidad,' he said, as the crack and hiss of freshly opened cans drew disapproving looks from all but the girls. As we sipped, Lara became increasingly philosophical.
'You know why I don't really trust journalists?' he asked rhetorically. ''Cos you guys always lookin' to dish some dirt. I don't mind bein' criticised for my cricket. Thass my job. But all the other stuff, the private stuff. Thass nobody's business but mine. I know what some of you media guys been getting' up to when you come to the Caribbean. And when you're on tour in other places. Why don't we read about that in the newspapers?'
I told him I agreed that the off-field proclivities he, and other cricketers, engaged in should ideally be overlooked by the press, as long as they didn't impact on players' ability to play cricket. For example, provided a birthday bash didn't stop a Test captain from turning up at the ground next day. And that he was absolutely right in suggesting media folk had no business in sanctimoniously imposing their convenient morality on how he, or others, chose to live. But I also pointed out, as diplomatically as possible given the circumstances, that he couldn't realistically expect the adulation and intrigue to switch off the moment he walked from the field.
After all, cricket afforded him a few privileges for which his adoring public forked out. The plot of land overlooking the Savannah, gifted to him by the Trinidad and Tobago Government for setting a couple of batting records in 1994, and on which his palatial home was built. Free travel on the national airline. The right to drive his luxury car in Port-of-Spain's highway lanes otherwise reserved for VIP vehicles. Receipt of his nation's highest honour, the Trinity Cross. By contrast, I ventured, journalists were just spectators with better seats. Witnesses to the news, but never accessories. The day that 30,000 people paid money to watch me type was the day I could expect public scrutiny of my private life. Which should allow me plenty of time to develop one. He mulled this over. Or possibly, behind his Stevie Wonder glasses, he had nodded off. Either way, I seized on the silence to pose one question before we hit the ground.
'So why are people here so uptight?' I asked, at which point he repositioned his glasses atop his head, revealing badly bloodshot eyes. 'Everywhere we go, people are cussing or harrumphing. Hotel staff are surly. Cab drivers always moaning. And at the cricket, as soon as things don't go their way, they start chucking stuff on to the field.'
The spirited defence I expected from the captain of the region's only unified entity didn't materialise. Instead, Lara tilted his head to one side and spoke more quietly and carefully than at any time during the trip.
'You know, thass because it means so much to them,' he said, leaning forward lest anyone overhear, his beer breath jolting me back in my seat.
'Cricket gives the West Indies its pride. When we were the best in the world, that gave West Indians something to hang on to. They can see that slippin' away. And I guess they see you, as an Australian journalist, as part of the group thass takin' from them something they really treasured. I would say, don't take it personally.' He sat back, reaffixed the shades and rested his index fingers either side of his chin.
'You want to see the real Caribbean?' he said, snapping back into character. 'I'm havin' a big party up at my house tomorrow night. Some of your guys comin' along. You know, Michael Clarke. Brett Lee. You should come too. I'll get an invitation to your hotel. You staying at the Hilton, right?'
Lara's parties ran a close second to Carnival as Trinidad's most famous tributes to hedonism. I tried to visualise the look on the cricketers' faces as I wandered through the heavy front door, and told him I would be delighted to come along, provided he cleared it with the other players first. The invitation I never expected never arrived. And the party, if it happened, wasn't mentioned by any of the Australians, or by its host.
By contrast, the bash to celebrate the World Cup win, the dual series' triumphs over the West Indies, and an imminent three-month break in the playing schedule was becoming increasingly public. Some of the Australian players had fallen so heavily off the wagon they were in danger of disappearing under the wheels. Leading into the final weekend of one-dayers on the Spice Island of Grenada, the tourists loitered aimlessly around the beachfront resort in search of ways to fill in their time. Training held no interest, especially after thieves posing as Trinidad baggage wranglers made off with a host of items including bats, shoes and sunglasses. Instead, the poolside bar offered much greater appeal.
The press watched the last few days unravel from what we thought was a safe distance. That was until, early one evening, a seriously inebriated Andrew Symonds stumbled towards the table where four of us sat, enjoying a quiet, non-intrusive dinner. Having lurched back from a toilet visit, Symonds was unable to locate the polystyrene holder he was using to prevent his beer getting warm. He walked directly to me, give or take a few lateral deviations, pointed a menacing finger, and snarled: 'Have you stolen my stubbie holder?'
Sensing this situation was potentially far more dangerous than its comic veneer suggested, I resisted the urge to laugh. And assured him I had not.
'Well someone has and I reckon it was you,' he continued, eyes glazed and body coursing with malice. 'If I find out that you did, and you've fuckin' lied to me, you're going in the pool. Remember that.' He stood there breathing heavily. And swaying.
Aware of the confrontation, one of his teammates shouted from the bar: 'Calm down, Roy. It's over here. Ya dropped it on your way to the dunny.' As he weighed up this development, we summoned the bill and then retreated to the safety of our rooms.
Even less impressed by the schoolies-style muck-up mentality that had taken hold was Australia's coach, John Buchanan. He racked his professorial brain to devise methods by which motivation could be recaptured and sustained for the final weekend. He devised a day of 'beach Olympics' that included clichéd bonding rituals, such as raft building and volleyball. He went so far as to factor in a journalists' team that would pit itself against the players and support staff. Standing on the other side of the net to a marauding Andrew Symonds did not strike me as a sensible use of my time, and I politely declined. That lack of interest was echoed by a majority of the touring party, cricketers included, and the idea was canned within a day of being floated.
So Buchanan suggested a more analytical exercise, and invited the media corps to make a formal presentation at the final team meeting where we would give frank assessments on where things had succeeded or failed during the nine-week campaign. He even urged us to make it a multimedia show, blissfully unaware that journalists are as familiar with complex computing tools such as PowerPoint and spreadsheets as they are with the phrase 'I honestly have no opinion on...'
Our media posse convened and agreed that there was nothing to gain, and much to lose, from such an exercise. Penning a daily critique of performances in a newspaper was one thing. Standing out front of the Australian team and suggesting to Ricky Ponting that he should not reach so hard for the ball early in his innings, or that Ian Harvey should find somewhere more private than a pool deck sun lounge to sleep off a big night was tantamount to professional suicide. We voted unanimously to give it a miss and the decision was relayed to Buchanan, who was clearly surprised.
'We're all in this, you know,' he said, showing the hurt of a job applicant being punted after the first interview. 'You guys are part of the touring party, and at times like this we all need to pull together.'
'That's the misconception, right there,' I pointed out, stopping him short. 'We're not part of the touring party. We travel together, we stay at the same places, we share a nationality. But there's a line of objectivity that has to separate us. If we cross that, we're nothing more than a paid cheer squad. And the brutal truth is, it's neither here nor there to any of us journalists whether you guys win or lose. Dealing with all of you is obviously easier when you win. But to be honest, it makes for much sexier newspaper copy when you don't. And when it comes down to it, we only ever barrack for the story.'
The coach shook his head in bewilderment, but resignedly opted not to pursue it further. He walked away looking as defeated as his team, which crashed to predictable losses in each of the last three games.
The mood at Grenada's Maurice Bishop Airport, as we prepared to head home, was more upbeat than at any stage over the preceding two months. That lasted until we all gathered at the tarmac's edge, excitedly clutching boarding passes, as our twin-engine plane warmed up. Then, from the head of the line, former Test batsman turned television commentator David Hookes swivelled to face the queue that snaked behind him through the terminal, and gave us a soul-destroying double thumbs-down signal.
'Not going anywhere,' he shouted above the roar. 'Fuel pissing out the front of an engine.' He then descended into crazed laughter that wasn't contagious.
For seven hours, we all sat slumped in the terminal while a replacement plane was summoned from the United States. Those who weren't prepared to prop at the bar either tried to sleep in hard-backed plastic chairs purpose-moulded for eight-year-olds, watched evangelical daytime TV programs, kicked a tennis ball around the corridors, or returned time and again to the three duty-free shops to mull over whether they needed another souvenir T-shirt or bottle of rum punch. Or, for most of the time, stared utterly miserable through the windows, across the shimmering runway.
The delay meant no hope of meeting our respective connections in Miami. Instead, we were shunted into an overnight stay in Puerto Rico while alternative arrangements were hastily made. Soon after arriving, the press corps set out on a fact-finding mission to unearth dinner, but as we passed by a small first-floor bar in our transit hotel, we were met by a beaming Darren Lehmann who insisted we join the small group of players who had opted for European beer and Cuban cigars to see them through to our pre-dawn departure. It was, he pointed out, a fitting end to a nine-month expedition that had gone awry at pretty much every turn.
'After all,' he hooted, extending both arms as if to welcome San Juan to the fold of dubious cricket venues visited along the way, 'we're all in this together.'
#
# Tri-nations Tournament, India, October–November 2003
The dead of night doesn't exist in India. No matter the hour you cruise its highways, streets and alleys, a constant parade of souls is on the move. Sepia versions of the dazzling colours that spill from the palette of daily Indian life. Bathed in the soft glow of sodium vapour lights, or rendered ghostly pale by the harsh glare of headlamps from trucks and buses that rumble unrelenting through the night. From wherever they emerge, bound for whatever destination calls them at such unsociable hours, these apparitions shuffle noiselessly among the carpet of sleeping bodies that stretch, like victims of some unseen cataclysm, along roadsides, through railway stations and across public parks.
It was this armada of the sleepless, more so than the suffocating midnight heat, that was my overwhelming first impression of India upon finally emerging from New Delhi's international airport. The frenetic crush of travel touts and cab drivers that encircled the exit forced me into a hasty retreat to the terminal's pre-paid taxi counter in the naive hope that being allocated a cab might reduce the harassment awaiting me on the outside. The month-long limited-overs tournament I had been despatched to cover might have been deemed so peripheral by Australian cricket that none of its top-line bowlers had bothered to make the trip. But there was no such diminution of interest among Indians. For cricket, or for a cab fare.
Unlike previous assignments, my maiden visit to the subcontinent was preceded by a detailed briefing from my superiors. Unfortunately, it didn't extend to useful details about living, working or moving about one of the world's more demanding and confronting environments. Rather, it dealt exclusively and pointedly with the flashpoint issue of reporters taking advantage of the company's apparent benevolence upon returning from lengthy stints on the road. It signalled the start of a crackdown on leave days that employees were granted in lieu of paid overtime when working erratic shifts. Management suspected the paper was being shortchanged because staff were claiming to have worked longer hours than was believable. Or certainly affordable.
It was explained to me, during a lengthy homily from the paper's principal bean counter, that cricket tours were widely known to be little more than extended vacations. According to someone who had never undertaken one, they basically consisted of occasional stints in luxurious air-conditioned press boxes eating laid-on gourmet grub, interspersed with lots of lazing around costly five-star hotel pools.
'Let's face it, on the days they're not playing cricket, you're only writing a few hundred words about hamstring injuries,' was the derisive summary from the penny pincher who held open contempt for sports assignments, which apparently sucked a disproportionate sum from the editorial budget.
I couldn't quite reconcile why the newspaper would make a commercial decision to enhance its cricket coverage by having a cricket writer accompany the cricket team on cricket tours, then bitch endlessly about how much it was costing. It was rather like firing a bullet into your own foot, then screaming for tighter gun control. But it was made abundantly clear that should I return from India clutching a belief that I was owed two days off for each full week spent on the road, as per standard working arrangements in most OECD countries, I was to think again.
'What you have to do is tote up the hours you spend actually working, and then we'll calculate how much lieu time you're entitled to,' I was instructed.
'So, does the term "actually working" cover time spent, say, in transit?' I asked, trying to strike a balance between militant and moronic. 'For example, do I record the fourteen-hour flight from Melbourne to Delhi as a day's work? Or in terms of a normal working day, would that be considered as two?' I continued, genuinely perplexed by the novel formula.
'Well, I think we'd see that as being worth probably half a day's work,' came the reply.
Even though I had comprehensively failed senior school physics, I vaguely recalled that black holes were the only known field into which time could irretrievably vanish. I was surprised to learn overseas reporting assignments were another.
'So, fourteen hours of travelling equates to roughly four hours of work?' I hesitated, hoping to convey the impression that it was me, rather than the person on the far end of the phone, who was barking mad.
'Well you're not really producing anything for the paper while you're sitting in a plane,' I was told. 'As far as the company's concerned, it's not exactly productive time. I mean, you can't claim the time you spend commuting from home to the office as working hours.'
I contemplated this logic and wondered if Brad Hogg had been appointed to the executive staff without my knowledge.
'But if I worked in New Delhi, I probably wouldn't choose to commute from Melbourne,' I countered meekly, before I gave up and hung up.
So just months after eventually returning to my life at home I headed to India unsure of what to expect, other than oppressive heat, crushing humanity, imminent illness, testing work conditions, crippling bureaucracy and, apparently, a need to compile a detailed time and motion dossier. I also felt strangely liberated by the knowledge that I had been informally sanctioned to devote any free time that arose to indulging my own interests. Provided no company funds or minutes were involved.
Having been warned that patience is invariably the first casualty of any Indian sojourn, I wasn't the least fazed when my suitcase failed to negotiate the Singapore stopover. This was, certainly for me, familiar territory, and I bounded up to the lost luggage desk with a chirpiness rarely seen by baggage services staff.
'No need for the identification chart,' I smiled, as the clerk dragged out a limp pad of carbon-impregnated incident reports and rummaged through a torn manila folder lifted from a middle drawer. 'I've done this a couple of times before. It's a number twenty-two, in brown. With wheels and a retractable handle.'
The woman smiled, obviously impressed that I was fluent in her lingo. That kinship did not translate into a more expeditious processing of my claim form, however, which was completed, authorised, stamped, walked across to the transport police desk, reauthorised, returned to baggage services, restamped, and then filed in a leather-bound ledger.
'We will call you at hotel when your bag arrives,' the supervisor announced, her pledge sealed with a brief head wobble. I cheerily asked when that might be.
'Maybe tonight. But probably not.' Another less authoritative wobble.
As I began my billable hours early next morning, a mandatory check with the Australian team's touring media manager revealed that while there had been no torn hamstrings during the night, a number of the players shared my lack of fresh clothes. Minutes later, there was a knock at my door.
'Thought this might come in handy,' the media man said, handing me a team-issue, navy-blue polo shirt strewn with sponsors' decals and still wrapped in its protective plastic sleeve.
'So you can blend in with the rest of the lost luggage brigade,' he added. 'Sorry that Cricket Australia doesn't do an underwear range.'
I thanked him sincerely for his thoughtfulness, and inquired whether his professional expertise had already been enlisted by the notoriously demanding and insistent Indian media.
'Had quite a few calls when we arrived, then they started again before dawn this morning,' he said, jadedly. 'But the biggest problem's going to be autograph hunters. Some players said there were people knocking on their doors during the night, and I've even had a couple myself. They don't want to accept that I'm not a player, no matter how rude I eventually get.'
When a call came shortly after lunch, alerting me to my suitcase's arrival, I swept through the lavish foyer, feeling both conspicuous and fraudulent in my team top. The face of the wiry young man who stood watch over my twenty-two brown with wheels and retractable handle lit up as I approached. He could not hide his excitement at meeting someone who, from waist to neck at least, was an Australian cricketer.
'Please sir, you will sign,' he beamed, as he thrust a slip of paper and a pen at me.
'No, no,' I smiled, waving away the writing material and reaching for the retractable bit. 'I'm not a cricket player.'
'Please sir. You sign for me,' he repeated, with greater urgency. It was met with a firmer rebuff, as I once more tried to reclaim my case.
His demeanour then shifted, as did his lean frame which he positioned between me and my belongings. His beaming smile was quickly disappearing.
'Sir, you must sign,' he growled, wrapping his sinewy fingers tightly around the bag's handle. 'This is release form, and I cannot give you the luggage until you have.'
I returned to my room, unpacked the case and shoved the gratis shirt in the bottom where I pledged it would remain, undisturbed, for the tour's remainder.
The political machinations that drive Indian cricket often carry more intrigue than the games its officials administer. While Test matches tended to stay anchored in cities with modern facilities, one-day internationals were doled out like sweets to compliant children in order to secure the votes of regional cricket officials around India's tempestuous board table. Which explained why Australia's opening game of the 2003 TVS Cup triangular tournament was scheduled for a transformed hockey stadium in the northern fort city of Gwalior. A regional centre located between the world's most famous monument to love in Agra and the site of the world's worst industrial catastrophe in Bhopal.
It was also, I learned as I checked into the charmlessly rustic Sita Manor Hotel in what could be most generously described as the unpretentious quarter of town, timed to coincide with the nation's annual Diwali celebrations. The hotel's austere lobby had been further stripped back to make space on its buffed floor for a mosaic of marigolds depicting the sun, with the path to the check-in desk bordered by tiny terracotta oil lamps. The Hindu Festival of Lights, due to reach its climax on the evening before the sold-out match, coupled with the arrival in town of India's living deity, Sachin Tendulkar, had excitement in the former Mughal stronghold near boiling point.
The bus carrying Australia's cricketers arrived at the much more salubrious hotel they shared with the Indian team, just metres from the Captain Roop Singh Stadium, and instantly triggered a surge from the hundreds of locals who had waited in the baking sun for a glimpse of anyone legitimately famous. To the shock of the tourists peering out through tinted windows as the bus came to a stop, the surging mob was at once set upon by dozens of khaki-clad police officers who laid into the defenceless crowd with their lathis (heavy bamboo canes). The Australians then filed out of the bus and skirted around the portable metal detector that sat half-erected and inoperable in the hotel doorway, avoiding all direct contact with the throng, which continued to press forward, lest that should incite them further and result in another bashing. The combined detail of police, private security guards and armed services personnel that camped in the hotel lobby, as well as the permanent crowd of onlookers beyond it, meant players from both sides again faced virtual incarceration.
No such encumbrances existed for the media pack, as the impending festival meant we had become almost invisible to staff at our hotel. Especially when it came to the provision of luxuries such as the advertised business facilities, meals and reliable electricity supply. Eventually, I decided the best chance of solving most of these dilemmas was to flag down one of the noisy rickshaws that sputtered remorselessly along Gandhi Road, just outside our front door, and use the cricket ground's amenities. That plan came unstuck when I arrived at Roop Singh to find organisation in its press box was marginally inferior to that at Sita Manor.
I abandoned all hope of working from the ground when I attempted to set up camp on the concrete desk space I had allocated myself and found I was being assisted by a solitary worker, part of the platoon of men that swarmed through the empty grandstands attentively doing what appeared, to my untrained eye, to be bugger-all. My helper, wearing nothing more than a knee-length dhoti tied around his waist, a white singlet and a pair of needle-nosed pliers, then set about twitching strands of live electrical wires plucked from the row of benches in front of me. All the time he did so, he stood barefooted in a puddle, several millimetres deep, of what had once been water. I frantically communicated, through the international languages of sign and panic, that this task could wait until match day. I did not share the view that filing stories for the sports section of a daily newspaper was a life and death vocation.
Come Diwali Saturday, the Australians trained early to avoid the worst of the sapping Madhya Pradesh heat. Once that was done, and in line with office instructions to clearly delineate work time from my time, I opted for the first available train to Agra, 120 kilometres up the line, to explore the Taj Mahal. While the process of buying a ticket required even more carbon paper, rubber stamping and head wobbling than the lost suitcase episode, it did not include helpful advice on where to position myself along the expanse of Platform 3 in order to readily find my reserved seat when the half-kilometre-long Lashkar Express groaned into Gwalior station.
As I scoured the twenty-five or more faded blue-and-white carriages for any identifiable markings that matched the details on my cloth-eared ticket, I was engulfed by a stampede of desperate travellers trying to climb aboard, by even more frantic passengers attempting to get off, and by a swarm of children with trays balanced atop their heads selling nuts, chai, fruit and sweets to those who remained aboard the train, able to do little else other than wave money through the metal grilles that doubled as windows.
I reasoned that by the time I deciphered which of the identical cars contained my seat, the service was likely to have chugged through Agra and be rattling its way to Delhi. So I adopted local custom, dropped my left shoulder, and barrelled through the nearest doorway as if locking down for a rugby scrum. It was difficult to tell who was more taken aback by what confronted them as the train eased out, having never really come to a complete stop. Me or my new companions.
Like most trapped in India's feudal caste system, I had ended up several classes below where I hoped to be. My ticket showed 'Air-Conditioned Chair Car'. My surroundings revealed just one of those three, and even then it was a 'car' in name alone. Its wooden bench seats were overstocked with the elderly and the very young. The more able-bodied lent against the dusty steel walls or sat squeezed into every available space on the filthy metal floor. The heat was brutal. The smell of slowly braising humanity even worse. There was more than a hundred people crammed into this fusty capsule, and every one of them had their eyes locked on the disoriented Western blow-in.
My decision to push through towards the next carriage was motivated more by need to find an air pocket than air conditioning. But all ventilation holes, as well as the gaping doorways between carriages, were occupied by startled families and groups of men whose faces depicted a mix of astonishment and dread, as if I was about to vomit on them. That may have happened had I not found a small bolthole among three men who stood sharing a bag of peanuts. They stared and crunched as I lolled against a wall, trying hopelessly to look blasé. After fifteen minutes holding that pose, I was compelled to keep walking when a young man with horrifically deformed legs and wielding a small straw broom pushed his way into our shared space and began sweeping discarded peanut husks into a hessian bag. As he did so, the litterers took it in turns to gleefully pelt him with pieces of shells and shards of nut. As much as I felt the urge to intervene on the untouchable's behalf, I sensed my involvement in a social structure I did not understand could only further lower his rock-bottom stocks. So I pushed deeper into the unknown.
Eventually, I reached a second-class sleeper cabin that provided no onward passage. As I inched my way past families huddled together on thin vinyl mattresses, I was approached by a boy aged no more than ten. He gently grabbed my wrist and alerted me to a vacant top bunk wedged against the carriage's rear wall, and not a metre below its ceiling. Soon, everyone in the vicinity was excitedly pointing to the nook and gesturing that it was mine. So, as the families below hurriedly rearranged their belongings and I succumbed to peering pressure, I slipped my right foot into a metal stirrup protruding from the bunk's nearest leg and swung myself belly first into the gap. The elegance of the manoeuvre, rather like a small plane touching down without functional landing gear, was compromised when I cracked my skull on an ancient metal fan welded to the bed head. I lay pinned in this position, attracting delighted crowds like I was a furry new zoo attraction, for almost an hour. I declined their kind offers of food and drink, not out of ingratitude, but because I could not figure a way, in my contorted state, of wriggling my hands close enough to my mouth to take on sustenance. But the warmth of their welcome and the overwhelming generosity of their spirit were obvious, even from my unnatural angle. I was tempted to continue the journey to Delhi with them until, upon nearing my destination, a group of them clambered up to extricate me and then gathered to bid me farewell, as if I was a treasured uncle.
Agra's Cantonment Station was even more overwhelming than sub-economy train travel. The tourist centre's touts are renowned as the most persistent in India. Which is a bit like being voted crankiest in the Caribbean. I had steeled myself to resist all offers of guided tours, a resolve that lasted all of three minutes when I tired of being chased, cornered and harangued like a teen heartthrob at a high school. A young man in jeans and a red T-shirt pushed to the front of the pack and got himself employed with his novel pitch: 'You know, the best way to get rid of all these pests is to hire one of us.'
I climbed into the back of his motorised rickshaw and we bounced off through Kaserat Bazaar's maze of streets, lined with souvenir stalls and artisans' workshops. Having travelled as deep into the tourism precinct as traffic was allowed, he deposited me a couple of blocks from the Taj Mahal ticket office and smiled conspiratorially when I asked how he could be found when I was ready to leave.
'Don't worry, I'll find you,' he smirked.
Once I ascertained that the entrance fee for tourists, including Agra Development Authority toll tax and Archeological Society of India levy, was roughly forty times that imposed on locals, and that my mobile phone had to be surrendered to an overweight wallah for apparent fear its ringing might disturb the serenity created by thousands of clicking cameras, I paused to consider which of the many dedicated entrance gates was set aside for befuddled Australians. That was when I felt a hefty nudge at my right hip. Expecting to find a clumsy pickpocket, I was instead confronted by the enormous face of an off-white Brahmin cow that poked its shiny black nose into my side. Before I had a chance to be properly startled, it nuzzled its snout in underneath my ribcage, and then effortlessly flicked its great head upwards. In the process, it took both my legs from under me and launched me briefly into the air, before I crashed down, right shoulder first, on to the dirt road.
As the dust cleared and I realised nothing other than my credibility had been damaged, I looked up to see my sacred attacker ambling towards a queue of several dozen local women, all clad in saris of varying hues and brightness, who found the whole performance side-splittingly funny. I couldn't help but laugh along with them, exhorting them to even greater hysterics. Even with my impostor's shirt safely stowed away, being the centre of attention everywhere I went was making me feel something like a cricketer.
It wasn't my Agra experience that left me decidedly fragile when I took my place in the freshly wired press box next afternoon. It had emerged during the night that my room at Sita Manor overlooked Gwalior's most popular Diwali cracker culvert, a concrete-lined laneway that amplified the rat-tat-tat-tat of penny bungers and tom thumbs to a level resembling a Baghdad shoot-out. And any thoughts that a few reflective hours at the cricket might help allay my shellshock were shelved the instant I set foot in the heaving, hysterical stadium.
The excitement that had rapidly built from the time the Australians' bus provoked a near insurrection at their hotel reached an ear-splitting crescendo when opening bowler Nathan Bracken let go the first delivery at India's Virender Sehwag. It scarcely dimmed two balls later when Sehwag was caught at slip, and then rose again to fever pitch when Australia's other new ball rookie, Brad Williams, began his spell to Tendulkar. This was unlike any comparable crowd noise I had experienced. Not the Melbourne Cricket Ground at opening bounce of an AFL grand final. Not the home straight at Flemington as the Melbourne Cup runners flashed to the finish post. Not even tour guides bellowing for business at Agra Station.
All those upswells at least contained definable beginnings and ends. They ebbed, in order to flow. In India, especially when Tendulkar is batting, there is a constant, unrelenting barrage of hollering. It's as if, by some remarkable act of orchestration, a Mexican wave of screaming has been devised. That when one over-hyped fan needs to stop shouting to suck in a lungful, the person next in line seamlessly fills the acoustic void. Delicate Australian reporters used to putting our heads down and typing in the regular quiet spells between incidents were left exhausted by the time the first drinks break was taken. The non-stop hysteria obscured the normal rhythms of the game. It was like trying to concentrate on a movie while wearing headphones that piped nothing but raucous white noise. And it only subsided below hair-pulling level after two and a half hours, when Tendulkar was finally dismissed for an even hundred. Had he carried his bat, I would have needed to be carried out.
It's difficult to comprehend the level of personal adulation Tendulkar is afforded among Indians until witnessed first-hand. Hundreds of millions compulsively follow the cricket, not to cheer the Indian team and hope their hero does well in the process. They focus exclusively on Sachin, and unashamedly expect his teammates not to hog his stage. During the Test matches against New Zealand that immediately preceded the TVS Cup, fans at the game in Mohali held up placards calling for V.V.S. Laxman to hurry up and reach his fighting rearguard century so he could immediately surrender his wicket and ensure India was forced to follow-on, and they could see Tendulkar bat in the second innings. When their wish was granted, and the Little Master was bowled for one, they packed up and left.
There was no such disenchantment in Gwalior, where Tendulkar crowned the Diwali celebrations and the crowd lingered to savour his team's victory. The garrison of security personnel deployed to ensure no fireworks were smuggled into the ground stood by impassively as spectators observed the Festival of Lights with cardboard placards helpfully handed out to wave in celebration of boundaries struck or wickets captured. As night fell, these were rolled into conical torches, held aloft and set ablaze. Shrouded by the miasma of smoke that settled on the breathless evening, and with hundreds of spectral fires glowing orange around the concrete terraces, the match took on the eerie feel of a pagan ritual.
A similar state of exultation had taken root in the press box. Initially, I attributed it to the elation that loitered in the wake of Tendulkar's century. But casting around, I realised the delirium was likely caused by more than 150 bodies that had incrementally squeezed into an enclosure designed to comfortably fit no more than fifty. Most of them appeared, by my newspaper's definition at least, to be non-working journalists. Indeed, some of them were barely functioning people. They stood, blocking the walkways, or perched on scarce desk space, intent only on attracting the attention of folks elsewhere in the crowd who needed to be impressed, or of harried staff enlisted to dispense occasional drinks and snacks to accredited reporters.
Shortly after the change of innings, a sweaty, seemingly mute young man pulled up a plastic stool to the spare corner of my allocated work space. He ignored my greeting and my mordant inquiry as to whether he had sufficient room. He was clearly not packing any of the usual tools of my trade — laptop, notebook, pen, weary cynicism. His only outward signs of animation came whenever a steward approached bearing food or drinks, and then he transformed into a frenzy of movement.
He grazed his way through pakoras, biscuits, two cups of sweet tea, a serving of dhal and a banana, and then snared a bottle of room-temperature cola from a distracted waiter, only to discover its crown seal firmly intact. He then attempted to prise the cap loose by clenching it between his upper and lower molars and biting down as he lifted the bottle haltingly towards horizontal. I shielded my eyes and flinched until I heard a horrible cracking and splintering, at which point he began furiously spitting what I expected to be chunks of enamel and bloodied gum onto my desk. Summoning the courage to look, I found he had, instead, coughed out the bottle top as well as half a dozen chunks of glass from the vessel's shattered neck.
'Where are you from?' I asked, unable to contain my curiosity.
'Agra,' he replied, positioning the soft-drink bottle carefully so he could swig with minimal risk of further facial disfiguration.
'Are you a journalist?' I continued, wildly hoping I might shame him into sitting under someone else's armpit.
'Rickshaw driver,' he said, only shifting his eyes from the game to swipe a passing wedge of cake. Then he belched softly.
I found it hard to imagine the cult of Sachin Tendulkar could boast a more fanatical chapter than Gwalior's until we reached the site of the next match against India — his hometown, known to the world as Bombay when he was born in 1973. The sound that shook an overstocked Wankhede Stadium when Tendulkar emerged to begin his team's innings was more frightening than pulsating. It carried the ungodly roar of a tropical cyclone. It seemed simply too big for the concrete and steel grandstands battling to contain it. It rattled the press box's grotty windows and left the unprepared visiting media feeling they sat next to a jet engine that had suddenly blasted into life. The deafeningly guttural chant of 'su-chiiin... SAH-CHIN' that somehow rose above the background racket continued long after his stumps were rattled by Michael Clarke's gentle left-arm spin, having scored sixty-eight.
Away from the ground, Sachin was impossible to escape. He gazed out from billboards. Smiled his way through merry television commercials. Beamed in newspaper display advertisements, and looked decidedly less comfortable in magazine paparazzi snaps. For someone who reputedly treasured whatever snatches of privacy he could steal, it seemed incongruous that he should lend his name and face to the marketing of motor scooters, soft drinks, English football, health drinks, sporting goods, mobile telephones, and even his own eponymous chain of restaurants. Although his genius was being hailed across India before he turned sixteen, when he figured in an unbeaten partnership of 664 during a major inter-school competition, it was unclear whether Tendulkar's decision to cash in on his divine status was a pragmatic acceptance of a life already severely compromised by his popularity, or whether the promotional campaigns had actively fuelled the worship.
While Tendulkar's cricket achievements since adolescence confirm that, unlike so many modern celebrities, he indeed possesses an extraordinary talent, what remains even more revelatory is the context in which that success has been earned. No other global superstar haunting any corridor of fame can claim to have triumphed so regularly, so completely, under such a crippling weight of expectation, over such an extended length of time. Apart from a tax irregularity relating to the importation of a gleaming red Ferrari bequeathed to him by Fiat when he equalled Bradman's record of twenty-nine Test centuries in 2002, and a couple of frustrated on-field outbursts, Tendulkar's image remains one of an exemplary citizen. No drunken scandals. No extracurricular stupidity. Every over-indulged footballer or hedonistic movie star should make a couple of twenty-two-yard dashes in Sachin's shoes before wailing about how the pressures of adulation or the trappings of eminence led them astray. It's in more fields than cricket that Tendulkar can be venerated as a paragon of the possible.
Perhaps the other reason for Tendulkar's omnipresence in the Indian media is to reassure the nation's billion-plus population that he remains alive and well. Cricket duties and advertisements aside, he is rarely sighted outside his home or hotel room. A visit to the shops or a dash to the reception desk would unleash pandemonium, so he remains holed-up. Throughout our month in India, the Australian players were similarly reluctant to brave the crowds that lurked beyond the security cordons. Unless there was a chance to make money.
The rewards for flogging merchandise in a nation where access to running water is often a secondary priority to cable television had become well known to Australia's cricketers. Or certainly to their agents, as a routine flick through India's seventy-five-plus TV channels revealed. There was Ricky Ponting, dressed in his yellow limited-overs clobber, hamming alongside a Bollywood-style support cast to peddle a brand of electrical goods. In another ad, he lent his name to a company that produces Scotch whisky.
Stephen Waugh's visage was used by a multinational insurance firm, as well as his Indian-based bat maker that was also the biggest tyre manufacturer in a nation with more than a hundred million registered vehicles. Brett Lee was the face of a range of upmarket watches. Late in the series, Adam Gilchrist devoted a long day in Kolkata to shooting a commercial for a brand of motor oil. And throughout the tour, Matthew Hayden and Michael Bevan acted as ambassadors for a mass-marketed Australian beer that was desperate to secure a foothold among savvy Indian swillers. It was the same product whose Colombo bash had been so unceremoniously curtailed by Bevan's tantrum, suggesting the purveyors, if not the beverage itself, carried no residual bitterness.
Increasingly, cricketers who continued to lament the privations of touring life on the subcontinent, and the lack of free time in their schedules, held no qualms about jetting off to India at the drop of a cheque. There, they could pocket the rewards of crass commercialism without fans back home realising they'd sold out. And given the sums involved, it wasn't a difficult decision to make. At the end of the arduous 2005 England tour, I met one of the most overworked players as we checked out of our London hotel.
'Bet you can't wait to get back home to the family,' I observed, sensing he shared my exhaustion. 'Are you on this afternoon's flight?'
'Nah, I'm stopping over in Mumbai,' he said, with not a hint of reservation.
'Must be a bloody good reason to add India to this itinerary,' I joked, as I signed off my room bill.
'For barely a day's work, there's 150,000 reasons my friend,' the cricketer smiled. 'And what's better, they're US reasons.'
#
# Tri-nations Tournament, India, October–November 2003 (II)
The Beatles never quite made it to Guwahati when they were ashram-hopping through India in the late '60s. In fact, not many foreign travellers do end up in the culturally and geographically distinct state of Assam. Not even those desperately trying to discover themselves, as well as the subcontinent, by straying as far as impractical from the established tourist trails.
If, as seemed initially feasible, the swarm of awestruck onlookers who crammed every available nook at Guwahati's dilapidated, isolated airstrip had hung around for thirty-five years patiently awaiting the Fab Four, they gave no demonstrable hint of feeling shortchanged when the Australian cricket team disembarked instead. In fact, they remained spookily reverent. While receptions for John, Paul, George and Ringo consisted of screaming and fainting, the terminal's unadorned corridors echoed with little more than the squelch of rubber-soled soles on buffed linoleum as Roy, Pup, George and Willo strode through.
Why Guwahati maintains a low profile, even among the global backpacker army, can be largely explained by its geography. Which is to say, it's not easily found — even for those of us privy to the resources of a media empire's travel consultants and a vastly more useful guide book. Australia's cricketers had been treated to a couple of days in the comparative luxury of Delhi to regroup after the tournament's frenetic first week or so, which had taken us from Delhi to Gwalior, back to Faridabad (in Delhi's outer northern suburbs), to Mumbai, and then finally to Pune, where a bout of tummy trouble had laid low several in the squad. India's five-star hotels do sumptuous better than most, so a couple of nights in Delhi's Taj Palace proved an essential tonic before tackling Guwahati, which every local warned us would provide the itinerary's sternest challenge. And while the players enjoyed their private fully catered viewing of the Melbourne Cup, I remained in my room scouring my rudimentary map of India in the futile hope of unearthing our destination.
'So where's our next stop?' asked Nathan Bracken, with a world-weariness that belied a one-day international career barely a dozen matches old, when we crossed paths in the lobby later that day.
'Some place called Guwahati,' I said, offering him a stick of the potentially habit-forming cardamom chewing gum I had discovered during a trawl through Mumbai's Crawford Market.
'Never heard of it. Is it far from here?' he continued, peering out through the hotel's front doors in the sanguine hope that it might, like Faridabad, be a mere bus ride away.
'No idea,' I replied. 'I can't even find it on the map.' He blinked several times in what I interpreted as astonishment but, in hindsight, was probably a reaction to the gum.
Our exchange was overheard by a well-dressed man nursing a brown leather satchel who sat alone, but attentively, on one of the foyer couches. He approached and respectfully introduced himself as a travel agent awaiting a client. He kindly offered to point out our next destination on a detailed map he extracted from the bag. Embarrassed but curious, I followed his index finger as it tracked a line from New Delhi, along the southern rim of the Himalayas, across Bangladesh's north-west and eventually settled on a spot next to the Brahmaputra River. Assam sat between Nepal to the west, Bhutan, China and Tibet to the north, Burma to the east, and Bangladesh, then the Bay of Bengal to the south. The only south Asian nation with which it didn't appear to share a border, as near as I could tell, was India.
'It's why many in Assam believe they should be a separate nation, and why they continue to fight for independence,' our learned friend assured us.
'Kind of like Perth, but with weapons,' I said, turning to Bracken, only to find he had learned enough and was already on his way to the lifts.
Our three-hour flight to India's eastern-most city yielded strikingly unhindered views of the Himalayan range, with Everest's peak clearly visible above a thick ribbon of cloud. The scene that unfolded beneath, as we descended to an airstrip set amid thick undergrowth, was not quite so breathtaking. The runway's lush green verges were littered with the rusting hulks of decommissioned military aircraft. Lokpriya Gopinath Bordoloi International Airport seemingly doubled as a scrap metal depot or it posed a more treacherous landing proposition than Kai Tak. Equally unnerving was the realisation that we were about to be deposited smack in the middle of nowhere, with only dense vegetation, flooded farmland and dead aircraft for company. Surely this was not our destination, I thought, and mentally kicked myself for not sharing my newly acquired travel intelligence with the flight crew.
The unnatural stillness of the airport was made even more surreal by the silently staring crowd that lined the corridors, dangled from mezzanine walkways, and pressed against the towering glass windows that opened on to an all-but deserted car park. Then, from nowhere, a small armada of taxis, all shapes but uniform size — diminutive — arrived to take those of us not permitted bus transport on a forty-five-minute drive through the sodden countryside and into the dirty, chaotic streets of central Guwahati.
The media's rundown guesthouse stood hardly a kilometre, yet a good fifteen-minute drive through the mire of motor and pedal traffic, from Nehru Stadium where Australia was due to play the tri-series' other team, New Zealand, two days later. The cloud of fine white dust that plumed from non-stop building work and settled on everything throughout our pension was certainly in no danger of being disturbed by lively staff. In contrast, the rival teams were billeted in the decidedly more grandiose, and fully completed, Landmark Hotel, which physically adjoined the cricket ground. While we were welcomed by indolent desk staff, the cricketers arrived to another silent vigil, this time from intrigued locals gathered twenty-deep around the hotel's locked gates.
Adam Gilchrist, who, despite being no stranger to India had been taken aback by the size of the airport welcoming committee, received an even ruder shock when he arrived in his room and rinsed off the day's travel under a lukewarm shower. With only a towel around his waist, he then threw back the heavy bedroom curtains to take in the view across the frontier city and down the vast river that stretched to the horizon like an inland sea. He had hoped to catch a final glimpse of the burnt-orange sun as it vanished into the heavy afternoon haze. Instead, he was met with the burning stare of 500 sets of eyes and a collective gasp that was audible through the single-glazing. The crowd may have remained steadfastly fixed for hours in the hope of spying an international cricketer in the flesh, but this was far more flesh than any had bargained on. The Australian vice-captain tore the shades closed, dressed in the near dark and settled in for another evening as a cricket fugitive. When he rose the next morning, he ensured he was adequately attired before again flinging aside the drapes to find that, rather than having returned to their homes, the congregation had grown noticeably.
'It was like that window scene from Monty Python's Life of Brian,' Gilchrist chuckled later that day. 'Except that none of them made a sound. They just stood there, and stared.'
It wasn't only the mute esteem in which they held cricketers that set the Assamese apart. Picking through the damp earthen back alleys that connected our building site to the barren cricket ground, we were treated to snapshots of basic, traditional Indian village life that somehow endured in a city of nigh on a million. The mud streets and intricate network of paths and crevices that linked them were bordered by tightly packed rows of cement, corrugated iron and plywood dwellings. Most were too tiny to contain the generations of families whose domestic life spilled onto the surrounding streets.
In the windowless front room of one such house, a man wielding a blowtorch scorched the hair from a boar that hung lifeless from the ceiling. On either side of the alley, timber boxes hardly bigger than footlockers and perched on rickety stilts threw open their street-front doors to reveal compact women stuffed into the back corners hawking a meagre assortment of fruits, nuts, floral garlands and household items. I thought it impolite to inquire if these miniature kiosks also served as their homes.
As I poked, completely enthralled, in and out of covered courtyards, and up and down musty paths, I was greeted with guarded curiosity by adults, and with wide-eyed enthusiasm by youngsters. By the time I reached the stadium, a group of more than twenty urchins had fallen into step behind me. Having connected white-skinned interloper with cricket ground and deduced travelling celebrity, the clamour for my autograph increased steadily in urgency, even though my fan club boasted not a shred of paper between them. Instead, they proffered the palms of their hands, bare arms and legs or, in the case of one enterprising lad, his younger brother's forehead.
The morning after the Australians' comfortable win secured them a berth in the tournament final in Kolkata, I spent a restless few hours strolling among Guwahati's endless stretches of fabric emporiums and tea merchants. My unease was not the result of being gawked, giggled and pointed at everywhere I turned. By then, I had become quite comfortable with my unwarranted fame. Rather, it sprang from the knowledge there was only one flight out of Assam that would get me safely to Bangalore for the next game. And the nightmarish traffic jam that was already beginning to clog the capital's streets became more impenetrable by the minute as my colleague, Jon Pierik, and I abandoned our ambling to wait nervously for the arrival of our pre-booked cab.
A small, badly dented minibus duly turned up, but had travelled no more than 500 metres through the mass before we became stuck. Our agitation was compounded by the Bollywood music that blasted from tinny speakers that swung from a length of thin wiring taped across the bus's rear window. As we crawled through the lunchtime snarl, I yelled to our driver that he was in line for a sizeable tip if he could get us to the airport in personal best time. And even more if he pulled the plug on the racket. He accepted the challenge, killed the music, beeped and bulldozed his way through the congestion and then, as clear road finally beckoned and he pushed the accelerator to the disintegrating floor, a single explosion, not unlike a concussion grenade, shook our seats, and our optimism. The reason he pumped the tabla drums 'n' sitar beats so loud was clearly to hide the fact his van was shot to bits.
We limped as far as a roadside market near Bhubneswari Mandir, barely a quarter of the way to the airport, then the vehicle's death rattle gave way to rigor mortis. As our driver repeatedly tried to kick over the lifeless ignition, a crowd quickly gathered and he shouted in Bengali at a man who immediately disappeared into a nearby laneway.
'Someone will come now to fix,' the driver explained, in a voice as unconvincing as it was unapologetic.
'Too late,' I yelled at him. 'We need another taxi...now!'
We extricated ourselves from the stricken vehicle, dragged our suitcases clear while the driver watched grumpily, and frantically tried to wave down any vehicle that looked vaguely capable of transporting two panicking journalists, with luggage, to a waiting flight. We also declined several requests for autographs. A battered black Ambassador taxi piloted by a grinning driver, whose completely bald head was similarly devoid of teeth, pulled up behind us. Our saviour leaped from his car, and immediately began a heated argument with our original cabbie.
'We don't have time for this,' I shouted, despite having no clue what 'this' related to.
As we stuffed ourselves and our possessions into the cab, it emerged that the spat was over non-payment of the minibus driver's fare. I explained to our new best friend that the stipend, plus bonus forfeited by his unreliable predecessor, would be his if we made our plane. He continued to flash his gummy smile, although he clearly understood not a single word.
We had driven barely five minutes, deep into tranquil countryside populated only by lumbering oxen and rice fields, when the ancient black car shuddered to a stop. This time we were sunk. No townsfolk gathered to gauge our predicament. The driver simply sat bolt upright and stared ahead. The only sign of a recent human presence was what appeared to be an abandoned chicken farm across the road. It had doubtless gone bust because the chickens had had to make their own way to market.
Shattered, we pulled our luggage from the latest inert vehicle and briefly debated what posed the least appalling option — walking the remaining ten kilometres to the airport and camping there until we could catch a flight anywhere. Or turning back for an indefinite stay in Guwahati. We were about to start trudging towards the former when I made an inspired rummage through the depths of my case to retrieve the one item that might deliver us a miracle. Almost instantly, a dark green military-model Jeep that was hurtling back towards town let fly a strident horn blast before it lurched into a high-speed U-turn and slid to a stop next to the dead cab. At no stage during this exercise did the Jeep's driver, or his teenage passenger, shift their gaze from my crumpled navy-blue Cricket Australia-issue shirt.
'Are you Australia cricket team?' the driver asked incredulously, his dark eyes eventually moving from the shirt to the pathetic scene around it.
'Yes we are,' I replied, trying to make myself look as strapping as possible. 'And we need to get to the airport right now. Our plane is about to leave.'
'I know,' the man shot back. 'The rest of team is there now. You must hurry. Come. I am security chief at this airport. I will take you.'
His young companion was instructed to load our baggage, and the senior man twisted around awkwardly and dusted down the back seat in readiness for his celebrated guests. As we climbed aboard, abandoned driver number two was seen to offer a brief head wobble before gently resting his forehead on the steering wheel.
The Jeep then bounced its way along the pockmarked airport road at an exhilaratingly illegal speed. Every few hundred metres, the driver would screw his head around to stare, and to unleash a Lotto-winner's smile. He broke from this routine only to bark an instruction at his offsider, who clawed helplessly at the glove box in front of him. The driver let out a strangled cry, ripped the keys from the Jeep's steering column, and tossed them casually towards the passenger seat. Our chauffeur turned and shot us a reassuring grin, while his sidekick unlocked the compartment and triumphantly produced a tattered black-bound notebook and a badly chewed ballpoint pen. He solemnly handed all three articles to the driver who, believing that eyes are as superfluous to the driving process as hands and keys, turned to face the rear seat.
'Please, I will be honoured if you could be signing your names for us,' he said deferentially.
With just minutes to make good our scheduled escape from Assam, I sought silent forgiveness for the deception I was about to perpetrate and, having searched my scrambled brain for a suitable doppelganger — vis-à-vis an unathletic middle-aged cricketer once able to bowl a bit of off-spin — I dashed off, with as much flourish as I could muster in the back of a buck-jumping Jeep: 'Thanks for all your help... Tim May.'
I passed the book to my colleague and then stole a glance at his contribution as I handed the artefact back to its ecstatic, and hopefully illiterate, owner. 'You saved our lives... Mark Waugh' had been scrawled on the facing page. Both men handled the book as if it were a first edition Mahabharata, once the Jeep had roared to a stop almost alongside the check-in desk. As we ran for the departure gate, it was being passed respectfully among a circle of uniformed officers who had swamped the proud security chief.
As is so often the way in India, the only result our fretting delivered was wasted energy. Our flight was delayed by more than an hour, which meant we missed our connection in Delhi and arrived in Bangalore after midnight. Working into the small hours over a story cobbled from interviews conducted mid-air, I wondered what the day's travel misadventures equated to in work time. That abstract query surfaced again when our subsequent flight to Kolkata required a 4 a.m. hotel check-out. But as we chugged through that city's early-morning commuter mayhem on arrival, my worry was eased by the remarkable daily ritual of an Indian metropolis waking up. Hardly an arm's length from our taxi, fully clad men and women took their morning ablutions in gutters and concrete troughs along the highway's edge. Whole communities huddled around camp stoves and open fires, oblivious to the traffic banked up alongside them. As our driver turned off the main route to tackle an ambitious short cut, a tall man who was totally naked save for a pair of makeshift sandals sprawled himself across our taxi's windscreen, almost emasculating himself on a wiper blade. His sudden appearance was far less expected than the mechanical hitch that left our cab lifeless when we reached the Royal Calcutta Turf Club. Given we could see our hotel in the near distance, we completed this aborted journey on foot.
West Bengal's capital, better known as Calcutta than Kolkata, unfortunately remains a Western by-word for slums and deprivation, though more recently for the uplifting work of its Albanian patron saint Mother Teresa. It is also palpably different to other Indian mega-cities. Not quite as dissimilar as Guwahati. But whereas Delhi is driven by politics, Mumbai is a centre of commerce and Bangalore the nation's silicone valley, Kolkata crackles with a passion and creativity befitting its reputation as an artistic and literary hub. It is also home to the most imposing stadium in all cricketdom.
My first viewing of Eden Gardens, ringed by a sprawling maidan, august public buildings which echo the city's past as British India's jewel, and the mighty Hooghly River whose ghats provide recreation, bathing and laundry facilities for thousands of Bengalis each day, came as the Australians trained on the eve of the sold-out final against India. Initially, I thought the celebrated stadium more cavernous than imperious. Apart from the colossal grandstand which housed the players' pavilion and a press box which resembled an elevated tram stop, most of the spectator space resided on gently undulating terraces which made the ground appear not so much a cauldron as an enormous saucer. It was only when I traversed those steps that I understood how it could feasibly hold up to 120,000 fans, the sort of attendance many locals, among them Kolkata's most beloved cricket son, Sourav Ganguly, expected for the Tuesday night final.
Each concrete plinth was divvied up by a series of white painted lines, uniformly spaced less than a metre apart, with each segment assigned a unique number. Indians, particularly those relegated to the cheap seats, are known as lean, lithe specimens. But even so, to squeeze the population of Hobart into such a tight configuration would require, at the very least, synchronised breathing. That explained where the huge crowd would be stacked. How they got there was revealed on the morning of the final as I negotiated a labyrinth of freshly erected bamboo cattle runs installed to funnel the hordes evenly and smoothly to the seventeen entrance gates dotting the perimeter. Those unable, or unwilling, to comprehend this system were assisted by the rows of lathi-wielding police, who coerced the confused into the appropriate chute by employing a sharp crack across the legs, or a jab into the ribs. The sheer volume of people stampeding towards the ground, raising columns of dust which hung lazily over the maidan, was mind-boggling. The collective noise they produced and maintained throughout seven and a half hours of cricket remained in my memory long after the ringing departed my ears.
Indian cricket supporters are unique in that they genuinely believe by being in the crowd, and by making their voice heard, they can alter a game's outcome. Unfortunately, those who wielded legitimate influence let the occasion get the better of them. Fielding first, the Indians dropped a remarkable nine catches in the course of fifty overs. Four of those were turfed by Laxman, who, on the same ground two years earlier, had inspired his nation's most famous Test match win over Australia by scoring an epic 281. That innings was consigned to an historical footnote through his butter-fingeredness during this energy-sapping Kolkata afternoon. And once Tendulkar was bowled for forty-five, the maidan again filled, this time with fans taking early leave, with a mere 70,000 or so staying behind to witness the Australians take their raucous victory celebration out onto the pitch. While the final proved a forgettable contest, the occasion lives as the most spine-tingling of my cricket-writing tenure. Though perhaps my recollections are tinged by the stunning young woman who materialised before me from the immense crowd as I made my way to the press box and, fully aware I was not a cricketer, welcomed me to Kolkata and wished me good fortune and good health for the remainder of my stay. I had not yet completed my first visit to India, and already I could not wait to return.
The Australians' victory party continued at the team hotel through the night and up until departure for the airport next afternoon. The excesses were clearly evident as the victors stumbled aboard our homeward flight. Their fellow travellers were seated and ready to go as they made their entrance with all the slick orchestration of a kindergarten concert. Far from affronted, the other passengers shared their good humour, if not their high spirits. As they stumbled through the cabin scouring lucklessly for overhead locker space, they posed for photos and scribbled indecipherable autographs. The only item that could not be stowed was a long, wooden case that Jimmy Maher wielded as if it were an assault rifle.
Having opened every locker down to row thirty without luck, and having slammed each one shut in mock outrage, Maher despairingly whined in his best north Queensland drawl: 'Can someone just make some room. We've gotta get this bloody great trophy back 'ome.' He then shook the TVS Cup, packed safely in its case, triumphantly in front of his face.
Had that stunt been pulled by a drunken player on Australian soil, the outrage would have been deafening. And instant. Talkback radio callers, serial letter writers, pious columnists. All would have fallen over themselves to lambast such boorish arrogance. In India, however, several obliging travellers jumped from their seats and began clearing space for the cargo. And when it was stored and the cricketer buckled in for his and everyone else's safety, most of the passengers, and even members of the cabin crew, erupted into a rousing round of applause.
#
# Australian Summers 2003–05, New Zealand, February–April 2005
The gentle hillock that rises above the sheltered port where ferries from Tasmania's east coast dock a dozen times a day is one of the few points on Bruny Island serviced by mobile phone signals. Local tourism authorities warn those who might become lost during a hike through the island's forests or along its steep cliffs that a mobile phone would prove as useful a survival tool as a solar-powered torch. Bruny Island is isolated technologically as well as geographically. And it was the tranquillity and seclusion offered by this wilderness retreat, which once provided safe mooring for James Cook and William Bligh, that made it the ideal antidote to the head spin of India. And perhaps the place to heal a relationship deeply and deservedly fractured by my having spent eight of the previous fifteen months in beds other than the matrimonial.
It also offered an environment in which to calmly evaluate my strategic error. Well, a couple of them really. But the most blatant stemmed from a clumsy attempt to challenge the paper's 'you're either working or you're shirking' edict as it applied to my month-long Indian mission. I tried to make it clear to my superiors that, on the subcontinent, you can chew up the best part of a mandated eight-hour day just trying to find a serviceable taxi. This, in turn, meant the log of hours I had accumulated and then presented on my return was laughable. At least, I found it funny. Though not for long.
By annotating every movement of the assignment, it wasn't difficult to see how a month away could tote up almost as many days of lieu time owed. Items like the 5.45 a.m. start for players and press when we had to beat Delhi traffic to make Faridabad in time for the game's start. A day that ended early next morning to ensure sufficient work was completed before embarking on the 1,400-kilometre trip to Mumbai. Or Bangalore's all-night gig, squeezed between the late finish to a daynighter and the pre-dawn departure for Kolkata. Even with a capacity for maths that matched my acumen for physics, I knew it didn't take many twenty-two-hour working days to spin the overtime meter into overdrive. On a tour that extended to twenty-eight days, included twelve separate flight legs, two long-haul train journeys, and took in seven matches in as many different Indian cities, the final ledger revealed I was about 150 hours in the red. On average, five extra hours per day. Not unheard of, in light of the task. But a number the Ideas Factory welcomed in the same way a vampire greets daybreak.
So I floated what I reasoned was a fair compromise. I offered to swap my twenty days of accumulated lieu time for a two-week sabbatical. A chance to regain my bearings and re-buttress my unravelling life against the next bout of looming stress — nine weeks on the road as the Australian summer itinerary wound on. I quickly sensed it had not been received in the same spirit of bipartisanship in which it had been extended. But by the time the recriminations began, I would be incommunicado. Or so I figured. It proved another skewed judgement.
As the toy-sized hire care's automatic transmission slipped back a gear or three to tackle the gentle incline of the Island's Main Road, the sudden chirruping of my dormant mobile phone all but drowned out the tiny engine. By the time we strained to a point high enough to lock on a signal, I was aware that six messages had been left over the preceding hour. All from the same person. None of them inquiring how the repair of my marriage was progressing. I got out of the car, clambered through a rusting fence in search of higher ground as I dialled, and was frantically trying to disentangle myself from barbed wire when the Bear's voice came clearly down the line from Sydney. The ugly three-corner rip in my shirt as I yanked myself clear was nothing compared to the verbal savaging I copped as I scrabbled upwards in search of the knoll's peak. I was in unknown terrain, but the diatribe was all too familiar.
'I don't know what you think you're playing at.' Blah, blah.
'I'm getting sick and tired of doing all the work and then covering your arse.' Yeah, yeah.
'If you can't be bothered doing the job, I'll have no trouble finding someone who will.' Sure, sure. But then an addendum that even by the tortured logic I expected, was a tad conspiratorial.
'I reckon you've planned this all along,' the Bear spat. 'You knew Steve Waugh was announcing his retirement today and you wanted to make sure you weren't here so you didn't have to cover it.'
Given that 'here' referred to Sydney and my regular place of employment and domicile was 1,000 kilometres away in Melbourne, I could not immediately figure why I would have needed such an elaborate work-avoidance ruse to ensure I missed the captain's farewell announcement. Even more puzzling was the suggestion that, having worked a month without a break amid the daily adversities of India to pose as a cricket writer, I would then willingly sit on the biggest — the only — scoop of my career by somehow stumbling across prior knowledge of Waugh's decision yet leaving it unwritten while I kicked back on an inaccessible island that afforded uninterrupted views of Antarctica. With the sou'-westerly howling in from Great Bay and the stream of accusations causing a dull ache in my frontal lobe, I began a hasty retreat back down the slope to the road. Salvation lay in the flickering unreliability of the phone signal.
'You're cracking up,' I shouted ambiguously into the wind, before the phone mercifully dropped out.
If the boss interpreted that parting message in the spirit it was delivered, then I was on a fast-track to more than one painful divorce during an Australian summer that ultimately veered from disagreeable to downright silly. It began with Stephen Waugh's carefully choreographed retirement announcement in my absence, which did not so much dominate the subsequent Test series against India as totally eclipse it. From the day of his press conference, his farewell appearances took on the fervour of a nationwide testimonial. This led to the palpable discomfort of teammates who felt the man who preached the importance of team above all else had suddenly abandoned the ensemble during the encore to grab adulation as a solo artist.
In fairness to Waugh, his brash tour promoter was the mass-circulating tabloid newspaper for which he wrote a regular column. The fact that it was not the paper I worked for added significantly to the summer's torment. Borrowing from the cricket team's jargon, 'ownership' of a story had become one of digital-age journalism's favoured buzz words. Making sure your news organisation's 'brand' was perceived as the most authoritative and reliable source for any given news event. It was made abundantly clear we had surrendered 'ownership' of Waugh's final summer, and top brass at the Ideas Factory were deeply unimpressed. Just as apparent was the expectation that the next major cricket story to happen along simply had to be ours. And I was the officer on the beat, albeit comatose in a Brisbane hotel room, when that story broke.
Queensland's summer sun was already burning bright, mocking the bedside clock that showed 6.15 a.m. when the phone cut short my recuperation from the previous night's match. A voice from home informed me that David Hookes, ex-Test batsman, commentator and jet engine troubleshooter, lay critically injured in a Melbourne hospital following an overnight assault. He would not, I was assured, survive the day. Even without the encumbrance of a sleep-deprived fog, this would have been difficult news to process. Hookes and I were hardly close friends, but I had enjoyed his company over dinner and in press boxes during several overseas tours. And as coach of Victoria's cricket team, he could be relied on for an inflammatory headline on a quiet day. As this day unfolded, and I was instructed to drum up as much shock and devastation as could be prised from his former teammates and colleagues, I was dogged by a heavy, energy-sapping sadness.
That was replaced, over ensuing days as the tour caravan moved on sombrely to Sydney, by a brooding contempt for my profession, and my role within it. Journalism saves its worst braggadocio for swaggering roughshod over grief and sensitivities in times of tragedy. It stems from a collective misanthropy that's cultivated to recognise only the story, and to deny any human emotion that might call into question the merits of its publication. The smug refusal to be shocked, embarrassed or wrong is proudly flaunted by hard-bitten journalists, who view any tiptoeing around those confronted by life-altering trauma as professional weakness.
For days after Hookes's death, I received regular phone calls from the news desk relaying a single, unflinching command from on high. It was the newspaper's obsession to secure an exclusive interview and eyewitness account from Darren Lehmann, the deceased's great friend who was present on the fateful night. Who phoned for an ambulance from the scene, and remained at his mate's bedside until life support was withdrawn. Who, in addition to being ill with shock and stricken by inconsolable grief, was also a key witness in an ongoing police investigation.
'You can come up with as many excuses as you want,' I was told when I tendered these as reasons why I felt subjecting Lehmann to a barrage of phone calls, and having photographers stake out his home, was as insensitive as it was counter-productive. 'But the editor wants this interview. It's a cricket story and you're the cricket writer.'
Employing that logic, the lunar landing could have been covered as a travel yarn. But I assured my masters I would devote my boundless energies to the task. In reality, I left a grovelling message on Lehmann's phone, expressing sympathy for his loss and apologies for our hectoring. If he felt he wanted to talk, I added with shameless hypocrisy, I was happy to listen. The message went deservedly unacknowledged.
Darren Lehmann told his story months later, in the appropriate forum: Melbourne's Magistrates' Court. My inability, some suggested reluctance, to secure that story led to more red ink being etched on my service record. Another similar act of subversion would surely be my last. But that was a peripheral concern as the summer of 2003–04 wound down, and Ricky Ponting led his first Test touring party overseas, to Sri Lanka, a series I kept tabs on from a distance, albeit with flickering interest. Circumstances at home had taken a decisive turn for the solitary, and my more urgent need had become replacing items lost in the dissolution. A chair. A bed. The functional keepsakes of a dignified life. As well as the wherewithal to enlist a lawyer other than an antediluvian Bridgetown QC.
Therefore, when an offer to contribute a monthly column for a national cricket magazine arrived unsolicited, and while I was dutifully taking a slab of leave to reduce the debt burden I was imposing on my newspaper, I snatched at it with all the haste of a man swamped by legal costs. As I optimistically explained down the phone to the Bear, whose imprimatur I needed before I could exercise my right to write, it involved the production of 'Where Are They Now?'-style feature articles, tracking down forgotten figures from Australian cricket's past. Not only did it offer a chance to boost my bank balance while promoting The Australian's masthead among a new cohort of readers, the fact that it required trawling through the past meant it would not compromise my fearless pursuit of daily news. I felt adequately prepared to debate the proposition's pros and cons with my boss. Being pinned to a wall, strafed with gunfire and stomped on caught me a fraction off guard.
'You...you...you just don't get it, do you?' the Bear stammered, so enraged he battled to translate his fury into monosyllables. 'You seriously expect me to let you do work for another publication in your spare time when you can't even do your own job anywhere near properly? I mean, our cricket coverage is a fuckin' disgrace. I could send a trained monkey to cover matches and he'd do it better. If it wasn't for my ideas, we wouldn't have anything in the paper at all.'
And on it went. Another vituperative rant that became more unpleasant with each utterance, and seemed to last considerably longer than the five minutes of real time it occupied. In terms of professional development, it was the nearest I came in twenty years of journalism to a performance review. It also raised almost as many issues as it addressed. Why had these heinous shortcomings been kept such a closely guarded secret all these months? Why was my gross ineptitude repeatedly rewarded with overseas tours and interstate assignments? Why had the paper repeatedly trumpeted the quality of its cricket coverage when, according to its overseer, it was a source of industry shame? What was I thinking by initiating this latest tirade in the first place? Absence of opportunity and a similar lack of will meant none of these thoughts were articulated. I just hung on to the receiver, and deflated.
'I wouldn't treat my worst enemy the way that you treat me,' began the final harangue. 'You need to have a bloody good think about where your career's going, 'cause I sure as hell will be.'
I slowly replaced the handset. I was fairly confident he had finished, and infinitely more certain that I was. As I canvassed my personal and professional options, a strange yearning for the camaraderie and autonomy of the cricket tour began to shine through the confusion. The players who had been so distrustful and dismissive when I first entered their world a decade earlier now took on the guise of extended family.
The redemptive properties of Brett Lee's ever-present smile which, whether genuine or not, conveyed the impression he was always pleased to see me. The schoolyard inanity of being forever tapped on the right shoulder, and spinning around to find a smirking Glenn McGrath scuttling away to the left. Learning of the latest variety of roses to bloom in Justin Langer's garden. The unreal world of cricket's roadshow had become my reality. The routines of travel provided a familiarity that the capriciousness of everyday life no longer did. Little wonder my domestic situation was a shambles. Away had become home. Home had become a transit lounge. And the prospect of being indefinitely stranded here, on my own, was suddenly terrifying.
That was why the airport gathering ahead of the Australian team's 2005 tour to New Zealand exuded something of a 'first day back at school after summer vacation' feel — the comfortingly familiar spiced by the nervous thrill of the uncharted. Eight months after it had been made clear 'touring cricket writer' was no longer included in my job description, the regime change that installed the paper's sixth sports editor in less than eight years led to it being reinstated. And with it came one final crack at making the world's best job live up to its billing.
Up until that point, I had begun to suspect my initial nostalgia for the cricket circuit was little more than misty-eyed romanticism brought on by emotional turmoil. That was until I bumped into a senior Australian player, out on an evening stroll with his wife, during the course of the 2004–05 summer. Following mutual pleasantries and general chit-chat, they generously offered me a stay at their beachside property which sat idle when cricket commitments choked their calendar.
'I've heard what's been happening, and I gather you could do with a few days' break,' I was told. 'And we'd be happy for you to use the place seeing as we can't.' Perhaps I had not imagined that, against all else, the cricket team now perversely stood as my one secure source of amity.
The first training session in New Zealand was conducted amid unusually steamy Auckland heat, in nets tucked away on playing fields behind the city's great rugby cathedral, Eden Park. The mid-February sun, coupled with knowledge that the tour opener was a light-hearted frolic framed within cricket's latest fad, the twenty-over format, meant the Australian pace bowlers left the donkey work to eager young local cricketers on loan to the touring party for the morning.
The concept of the 'net bowler' remains one of cricket's quaint anomalies. Despite it being a hugely lucrative professional sport, its best batsmen often hone their skills at practice by facing up to eager teenagers of varying ability. The teens' only payment is a bottle of sports drink, and perhaps a few happy snaps with their heroes at session's end. But it's as much a commercial necessity as a logistical one. No cricket association can afford to fly a full squad of auxiliary bowlers around the world to provide competitive training. Unfortunately, the whole exercise often proves as amateurish as it sounds — as the New Zealanders later showed when they set up an elaborate role play in the aftermath of their hefty first Test loss.
Their batsmen had been dumbfounded by Shane Warne, who landed the ball in craterous bowlers' footmarks on a worn pitch, from where it would bounce at unnatural angles or dribble along the ground. Preparing for the next encounter, the Kiwis' coaching staff took a trowel to practice pitches and excavated a series of replica potholes in roughly the places they would develop under match conditions. Then, they rounded up a handful of Wellington's most promising young leg-spinners and instructed them to bowl at the holes, while the cream of their nation's top order prepared to keep them at bay. After almost an hour, during which time not one of the lads was able to land a ball in the fake footmarks, the experiment was abandoned.
Weeks prior to this farce, the tour's inaugural training session in Auckland was equally unscientific, though decidedly more dangerous. As the roster of lads wheeled away at the relaxed Australian batsmen, tuning up for their introduction to Twenty20 cricket by slogging everything flung at them, one boy of barely fourteen put in such an effort to unsettle Damien Martyn that he entered his bowling follow-through almost doubled-over.
By the time he righted himself, Martyn had taken aim at the generous half-volley on offer, and blasted the hard white ball back at roughly the same trajectory, but three times the speed, towards its point of origin. For a half-second, the look on the young bowler's face registered the belated alarm of a grenade thrower who's held the bomb and hurled the pin. He raised both hands in a reflex protective gesture, but the sickening crack of leather on skull confirmed it was both late, and futile.
Players and support staff rushed to him as he lay prone on the grass, hands clasped to his bloodied face, moaning softly. As he was loaded into an ambulance, a huge, angry lump had already taken shape on his forehead, the distinctive stitch marks of a cricket ball seared crimson into the mauve welt. Before the lad was ferried to hospital for x-rays and brain scans, Martyn slipped him one of his cricket bats in an act of contrition and concern. The boy lay motionless on a stretcher, bat clasped to his chest like some sort of talisman. He returned to visit the team several days later, showing no ill feeling. Just a neat row of tiny replica stitch marks burned above his eyebrows.
Cricket's newest era formally arrived with the maiden Twenty20 International at Eden Park on a balmy mid-February evening in 2005. The gravitas of the moment was not lost on the participants. The New Zealanders had spent much of the summer cultivating porn-star moustaches and mutton-chop sideburns to fit with the event's 'back to the '80s' theme. They even donned the body-hugging beige uniforms that have haunted their country's sporting image since that era. The Australians appeared in a similarly gauche collection of body shirts, gold jewellery and towelling head bands. Ricky Ponting who, like most of his team, had no previous experience in the super-abbreviated form of the game, best summed up the occasion when asked if the thirty runs he plundered from a single over was a feat he had achieved previously.
'Probably not since primary school,' he replied, with disarming candour. 'I think it's difficult to play seriously.'
The novelty certainly won over the capacity crowd, which became so captivated by the non-stop action that they neglected to throw either missiles or abuse. But the usual drunken boorishness returned when the fifty-over stuff got underway in Wellington later that week. Australian fielders positioned near the boundary fence during the home team's evening innings bore the brunt from the terraces. Simon Katich almost wore a full cup of beer. Matthew Hayden was spat on. And, upon challenging one of the ineffective security officers stationed between the fence and the boundary rope to get off his collapsible stool and help clean up a pile of filth forming on the playing surface, Glenn McGrath was curtly told by the official to 'piss off'.
During the next match in Christchurch, I vacated the comparative civility of the press box and, for half an hour, joined the rabble that congregated in the open-air DB Draught Stand at the southern end of what rugby diehards still call Lancaster Park. The pleasantly warm Canterbury evening and the similarly tepid local liquor ensured the yobbo culture I hoped to observe was loud and proud by the time New Zealand's run chase began.
There are few other major sports in which the practitioners are subjected to the sort of sustained abuse that's routinely aimed at cricket's outfielders. Footballers might argue that they cop their share of sprays from the bleachers, but the perpetual movement of their game often helps remove them from the firing line. Cricket's stop-start nature means those fielding near the fence must literally stand and cop it. And it was Glenn McGrath's turn in the shooting gallery when he took up his station at third man for the opening over. The chanting was fairly standard stuff.
'McGrath's a wanker.' 'McGrath, you're a homo.' A drunken chorus bawling: 'Ooh, ahh Glenn McGrath... Fuck off Glenn McGrath.'
From there, it became plain sad. Men dressed in nuns' habits, inebriated teenage boys wearing nothing but football shorts and body paint, adolescent girls barely able to stand but still swigging Marlborough sauvignon blanc from small plastic bottles. All showcased their ingenuity, emboldened by the booze and egged on by the mob. McGrath mostly wore the abuse with resigned good humour. He smiled and raised his thumbs when they taunted him, politely refused their offers of alcohol, and even returned the blue plastic cigarette lighter hurled at him from two dozen rows back. But his demeanour hardened when he failed to hang on to a scorching top-edged catch that crashed into his raised hands and then ballooned over his head into the crowd.
'You fucked up, you fucked up,' they chanted, in a drone of spite and spittle. McGrath ignored them, cap jammed down hard, hands planted firmly on hips. Then someone lobbed a half-full 1.5-litre lemonade bottle at the defenceless fielder. A tennis ball flew just past his left shoulder. A near-full plastic beer bottle landed at his feet, spraying foam up his leg. He bent to pick it up, and pretended to drain its contents before tossing it on to the pile of debris he had begun assembling outside the boundary rope.
No employee should have to endure these workplace conditions. And no comparable international sport displays such a courteous tolerance for having its drawcards pelted and abused. It's difficult to imagine Tiger Woods swaying out of the path of an errant apple while lining up a putt. Or Roger Federer having to sidestep the discarded carcass of a barbecued chicken before firing a backhand winner. Perhaps officials could have enlisted Michael Kasprowicz's help in framing strategies to defuse these outbreaks of idiocy. Walking to his fielding position on the boundary in Wellington, he held his hands aloft, palms pointed at the baying horde in a gesture of appeasement.
'Hey. Hey. Hey,' the former Australian schoolboys rugby forward screamed over the howls of derision. 'If you're all abusing me at the same time, I can't make out what you're saying. So at least have the courtesy to put shit on me one at a time.' The morons found this a reasonable request, for a few minutes at least.
The guerrilla tactics did nothing to lift New Zealand's on-field fortunes. Defeat in the twenty-over game was followed by five more in the one-dayers. So lopsided were the contests, story prospects became bleak in the lead-up to the first Test in Christchurch. The sole issue of curiosity lay in whether Brett Lee, who had bowled at frightening pace in the white-ball games and sent one hapless Kiwi batsman to hospital with concussion, never to return to the one-day international arena, would win a recall to Test ranks after eighteen months on the outer.
Lee did his bit to enliven the plot, declaring that if he was overlooked again he would have to consider taking up off-spin. Or bowling left-handed. Come Test eve, all four rival members of the touring Australian press pack were stalking the team's hotel in the hunt for an inside whisper on whether the selectors would lean towards Lee or Kasprowicz. Even during our brief preparation of his pre-Test column, Ricky Ponting steadfastly refused to offer anything more definitive than 'We'll decide on the morning of the game'. Contact with other members of the squad yielded an apparently non-cooperative 'Can't help you, mate, but I'll be in touch if I hear something'.
It was late afternoon when I received a short text message from someone within the Australian camp. It read simply: 'Kasprowicz in, Lee out. But you didn't hear it from me.' At dinner that night, the four press men of the Antipodes gathered for an uneasy meal at a café on the banks of the River Avon. Each one of us feared the others had cracked the selection table's secrets. But nothing was spoken, lest anyone not in the know be tipped off. As New Zealand offered Australian journalists the cricket world's only positive time difference, there remained ample opportunity for an updated story to be hurriedly refiled to make final editions. And the solidarity of a shared professional burden only extends so far.
When the papers came out next day, three-quarters of us had it right. The dissenting voice who plumped for Lee cut a lonely, tortured figure in the press box on the Test's first morning, unable to take solace from the knowledge that all of us had occupied that chair at some stage, and would again in the future. Getting scooped remains one of daily journalism's few certainties.
Rather than dampening the clamour for Lee's return, his exclusion from the first Test only fuelled more intense speculation through the days before the second began in Wellington. It gained additional piquancy because of the prospect that, if he didn't play for Australia, he might be able to fly to Brisbane and turn out for New South Wales in the Sheffield Shield final. Given the sort of form he showed, and the work he had put in to regain fitness and purpose, it seemed nonsensical to have him sit idly by, filling the role of drinks waiter for the final two Tests.
The problem for Australia's selectors was that, even if he didn't make the starting XI, Lee was the only reserve bowler in the thirteen-man touring party. If one of the incumbent quicks was to drop down injured an hour before game time, he would be needed. Conversely, if he hung around in Wellington to see the Test start safely without him, he wouldn't arrive in Brisbane until four hours after the Shield final began, leaving his other team at a serious disadvantage.
A whisper then floated across the Tasman. The fast bowler's Sydney-based manager hinted that, by chartering a plane from Wellington as soon as Lee was free of any potential Test obligations, he could be at the 'Gabba and in a baggy blue cap by early afternoon. When this morsel reached the Ideas Factory, all sanity broke loose. The story was deemed so important it was earmarked for the paper's front page. Then, around 8 p.m. Wellington time, it was decided it also required an exclusive picture of the fast bowler, even though the newspaper's budget jugglers had ruled it too expensive to send a staff photographer on the tour. This request was delivered in the usual cheery manner by someone claiming to be 'Chief of Stuff', or suchlike, and who had obviously risen to those rarefied managerial heights that no longer supported conversational niceties.
'We need that photo of Lee within the next hour,' he blustered. 'Where is he right now?'
I explained that he was most likely having dinner somewhere in the city of around 200,000 people.
'Well, grab a photographer and get a photo of him at the restaurant.'
I cheerily pointed out that not only was I unaware where, or even if, he was dining outside the hotel, but should I somehow succeed in unearthing him we were missing someone who was able to frame and transmit a front-page quality picture of the fugitive. I was busy reassuring him I would engage a freelance snapper and set about tracking down the blond quick when my room phone rang. I asked the Chief if he minded holding and answered to a gobful from the newspaper's pictorial editor.
'Why the hell aren't you answering your mobile phone?' he roared. 'I've been trying to get you for the past five minutes and it's turned off. I had to go through the hotel switchboard. We need a photo of Brett Lee. Urgently.'
So I explained that my phone had been busy because that very same message was being relayed by someone who had just emerged from the very same editorial conference and who shared the very same Sydney office.
'Okay,' he said, without recant. 'But let me know as soon as the pic is in the can. They've drawn it in for the front page.' I then returned to the original call.
'Don't ever leave me hanging on the phone like that,' the Chief exploded. 'You reckon I've got nothing better to do at this time of night, with a bloody paper to put out.' And he hung up.
I shook my head, laughed out loud at this latest outbreak of slapstick officiousness, and then contacted agency photographer Hamish Blair, who was fortuitously travelling with the team. Further inquiries revealed Lee was indeed out at dinner with a group of teammates and would not be available for any media commitments until the following day. Self-preservation dictated I not pass that final tidbit on to my superiors. Instead, I joined Hamish in the lobby bar for a drink. Partly to share a chuckle over the newspaper's penchant for managerial hairy-chest thumping. But mainly because our best, indeed only, hope of jagging the picture was to ambush the subject as he returned to the hotel. No more than twenty minutes after we pulled up our refreshments, Lee led a group of four players through the front doors and showed little outward alarm as we dashed across the foyer to intercept him. I outlined the scenario, trying not to sound overly desperate.
'Not a problem, we can do it up in my room in a couple of minutes,' he said, breaking into that contagious grin. 'I'll even grab my guitar. Guess I should probably be strumming something bluesy, to fit with the story.' He showed a greater propensity to see through the hackneyed ways of newspapers than many people running newspapers.
Cricket Australia decided the next day that the charter flight idea was simply too complicated to be feasible. Then, as it turned out, the rain and thick fog that ensured the Test's opening day was abandoned without a ball bowled also grounded planes at Wellington Airport. Even if Lee had been cleared to leave, he would have been forced to stay. That hiatus allowed the Kiwis to escape the second Test with a draw. No such fortune was visited upon them in the final Test in Auckland, where Australia chased down a modest fourth-innings total in near darkness on the penultimate evening.
Over the course of six weeks in New Zealand, Ricky Ponting's team had not looked in remote danger of losing a match. No chink was exposed in its game plan. The Australians boasted the luxury of employing the world's most feared fast bowler of the day as a training weapon. And, as the players jetted out of Auckland a couple of days after Easter, they began a two-month holiday that would ensure they were rested, physically and mentally, for their upcoming Ashes defence in England — where they had not been defeated in a Test series for two decades. The crowning achievement of Ponting's already lustrous captaincy career sat plump and ready, waiting to be plucked.
#
# One-day Series, England, June–July 2005
The greatest Ashes series of modern times began in France — on a deep-green agrarian field, across which the distant echo of heroic deeds past stirred above the faint drumming of light rain. Australia's previous success in England, in 2001, had been kick-started by a wave of national pride and broader perspective awoken by a visit to Anzac Cove on Turkey's Gelibolu Peninsula, as Stephen Waugh's squad made its way to London. Four years later, Cricket Australia decided a train and bus ride to the Somme was more in keeping with its budget. When it came to a stand-off between culturally invaluable and commercially viable, a Gallipoli landing was ruled too high a price. Albeit ninety years too late.
The compromise was met with annoyance by a number of Ricky Ponting's men, although that eased when it was pointed out that the Australian War Memorial at Villers-Bretonneux was, in military terms, even more significant. The site of the cemetery, starkly laid out among rolling hills of what was, less than a century earlier, the world's killing grounds, was arrestingly tranquil. The helter-skelter that kicked off the team's hundred-day crusade through England, Wales and Scotland had been anything but. Landing at Heathrow at 5.30 a.m. on a depressingly dank Monday that suitably announced the onset of English summer, our advance party of three journalists and a photographer collected the rented Vauxhall station wagon that would be our travelling office until mid-September. Its first outing took us via the M25 and M20 to Ashford in Kent, recently voted Britain's fourth-best place to live, and the last embarkation point for the Eurostar train service before it disappeared beneath the English Channel.
The effects of our twenty-two-hour plane journey (worth six hours of office time) and a further three in a hire car (exchange rate unknown) had not lifted when we emerged early next morning from our motor inn — a refuge for travelling salesmen, who sat gloomy and alone at dinner and breakfast — to board the train to Lille. No sooner had we checked into the twelfth-best hotel on the Boulevard Louis Pasteur than we were herded on to a media bus that whisked us an hour down the A1, through Villers-Bretonneux to the War Memorial, where we finally caught up to the cricketers.
It might have been the leaden skies and persistent mizzle. Perhaps the melancholic aura of so much youthful promise laid waste. But it might also have been a measure of travel fatigue that led to our group's trance-like shambling among the hundreds of ghostly white headstones that jutted defiantly from the precisely trimmed grass, our hands plunged deep into pockets against the rustic French chill. It was too early in the day, and too soon after arrival, to comprehend how that scale of butchery could be wrought on a landscape of such serenity. Standing sentinel over the site, a village green without a village, towered a single sandstone crucifix. And a few hundred metres from the quiet road that terminates at Fouilloy, on the south bank of the Somme, stretches a length of wall on which the roll call of the sacrificed is etched — thousands upon thousands of men, most of them younger than the cricketers, and whose experience of the world beyond home started and finished with the mud and mutilation of the Western Front.
For the half-hour or so that we stepped softly through history, barely a sound was uttered. Until the morning silence was broken by the adenoidal prattle of a London-based television journalist, who seized his moment to perform a vital 'stand up' in front of his cameraman. In television, where journalism and narcissism collide most conspicuously, no story is considered properly told until it's been watermarked with the reporter's noggin. It's the quintessence of 'ownership'.
'This was the calm before the Ashes storm,' he resonated, in an affected baritone that could have startled the fallen. It certainly grabbed the attention of the living.
'An emotional tribute by Australia's cricket heroes to their countrymen who had also given their all,' he deadpanned down the lens. 'And for some, the strain was clearly showing.'
The camera then panned from the talking head to the head of Jason Gillespie, silently bowed and with lips pursed as he walked purposefully away from the graves towards the road. A picture worth several thousand words. None of which conveyed the truth. It had been hinted to the media that the fast bowler was the only member of the touring party thought to have a direct familial connection to the Memorial. That unconfirmed information, plus the cricketer's impromptu withdrawal, was sufficient to conveniently support the TV reporter's hypothesis that Gillespie had been 'moved to tears upon finding the name of a brave relative who fought and died in France'. I knew this would be the subject of the tour's first urgent phone call once that report was broadcast in Australia, so I launched a pre-emptive strike. After he returned to take his place at the wreath-laying ceremony, I checked with the laconic fast bowler if the reason for his temporary absence was as purported.
'Nah, I wasn't even really sure whose name I was looking for,' he said, obviously aghast at suggestions he had milked the moment. 'It was apparently one of my wife's distant relatives, but that's about as much as I know. I took off because it's bloody cold out here, and the only loo in this part of France is on our bus.'
Similarly, one of the few eateries open for business in provincial Picardie on a damp Tuesday was 'Restaurant Le Kangarou', where the team took lunch after touring the Franco-Australian war museum housed within Villers-Bretonneux's L'Ecole Victoria. The school derived its name from post-war rebuilding completed thanks to donations received from schoolchildren in Victoria, and to perpetuate the town's enduring gratitude, a sign hangs in transplanted, patriotic green and gold from the fascia overlooking the quadrangle exhorting: 'Do Not Forget Australia'. At the kangaroo café, the translation seemed to have been scrambled to 'Do Not Forget Australia's Cricketers (and officials travelling with them)'. Members of the media troupe were firmly and Frenchly rebuffed at the front door. Despite our hungry pleas to purchase as little as a baguette or a plate of pommes frites that we were happy to consume outside in the drizzle so as to spare the players' sensibilities and confidences, it was made pointedly clear the joint was hosting a private function. And the press was not on the guest list. Fortunately, the other enterprise in the village to recognise Tuesday lunch as a legitimate trading time was a Turkish doner and pide parlour. The owner was clearly delighted by the rush of unscheduled patrons, but diplomatically declined to say if his good humour was supplemented by a delicious historical irony.
By day three of our itinerary, we were feeling more like backpackers on a gap year spree than media professionals covering a major international sporting campaign. Having jumped another early train back to Kent to retrieve the hire car, we traversed England's south-east corner bound for our third home in as many nights — the south-coast holiday haven of Brighton. The only constant of the tour to date had been the glaring absence of cricket.
That was eventually rectified when the tourists turned out for a twenty-over game against an Invitational XI of past and present players, from England and abroad. An event that was lent a distinctly carnival air, as much by the format as by its setting. The peaceful forested grounds of Arundel Castle, with its playing field ringed by hospitality tents and lime trees, could easily have been prepared to host a jousting tournament, or a band of lyre-strumming minstrels. The cricket, when it got going, harked back to times not so distantly past. Australia's opening delivery of the tour, from Brett Lee, claimed the wicket of New Zealand's hapless captain, Stephen Fleming, only recently purged of the torment inflicted on his team at home. The Australians looked not to have skipped a beat despite their two-month estrangement from the game.
From West Sussex, we piloted the wagon to Leicester, in the middle of the Midlands, for another warm-up match and from there we retraced 150 miles to Southampton, a mere hop and skip from Arundel, for the next fixture forty-eight hours later. Whether the itinerary was fulfilling the hosts' apparent aim and making the cricketers giddy couldn't be empirically measured, mainly because insufficient cricket had been played at any of the stops to make an informed judgement. The first indication that the Australians were out of sorts surfaced eight days after we arrived, during a twenty-over twilight game against a contemporary England team at Southampton's Rose Bowl.
Ponting's men sauntered into the contest armed with the same sense of purpose they had taken into previous Twenty20 fixtures, minus the facial hair and fancy dress. Contrastingly, the home side threw itself at the opposition with all the purpose of a team that had not tasted global success in limited-overs cricket since the birth of limited-overs cricket. Overjoyed English fans lingered long after Steve Harmison claimed the final wicket, with the Australians one hundred short of their target, and their chants of 'Eeeeeasy, eeeeeasy' and 'You're not very good' drowned out the post-match presentations. Like an exuberant pup scolded for getting silly during a backyard game of fetch, the Australians seemed nonplussed by the speed with which a light-hearted romp had turned serious.
Their humour dimmed further after another loss, two days later, as Somerset thrashed the tourists' inadequate bowling to all parts of Taunton's County Ground, and some points beyond. Questions immediately began filtering through from the office in overnight emails and in early-morning phone calls. What's going on? How can a full-strength Australian team get beaten by a second-division county outfit? More inexplicably, how did they lose to England? I tried to stall the Factory's rising scepticism by pointing out that Australia's next opponent, at the start of a ten-match triangular one-day series, posed much less of a threat. In more than a hundred previous limited-overs internationals, Bangladesh had only twice defeated accepted Test-playing nations. And one of those was Pakistan in a game that elicited far more interest from anti-corruption investigators than learned cricket watchers.
The fact that the Australians' problems increased exponentially from this point can be directly attributed to Cardiff's celebrated nightlife. A year earlier, the Welsh capital's gleaming Millennium Stadium had hosted football's FA Cup Final between the imperious Manchester United and London scrappers Millwall. Both clubs were renowned and feared for their stridently militant fans and, in the days leading into the play-off, a concerned FA official reputedly rang a senior member of Cardiff's constabulary to ensure adequate security precautions were being taken. The officer seemed more than a little sceptical.
'Well, we'll do everything we can,' he lilted. 'But I'm not sure we can guarantee the supporters' safety.'
The football executive explained that it was more likely the hardcore fans who would pose the problem. But the policeman remained equally adamant that he was more in tune with the looming scenario than the Londoner.
'I hear what you're sayin', but we can offer no guarantees that some of the football fans won't get hurt. After all, in Cardiff, Fridee night is hens' night.' As it transpired, there was a handful of confirmed arrests in the city on Cup eve. All for fighting. All of them women. And it was the siren song of the parties raging hard in bars and clubs along St Mary's Street that proved irresistible to Andrew Symonds. That he chose to enthusiastically celebrate Shane Watson's twenty-fourth birthday beyond sun-up the following day could be construed as touching. The fact that Watson and his teammates had vacated the party not long after dusk due to impending work commitments against Bangladesh next morning meant it was also stunningly misguided.
The next his colleagues saw of Symonds after their celebratory dinner was en route to pre-game breakfast on that sunny Saturday morning. He stood out, and not only because he was still wearing his civilian garb of the previous night while they were uniformly kitted out in team warm-up gear. His pose, slumped against the back wall of a lift, also indicated he was not enjoying peak fitness. He changed into his training outfit and shovelled down a greasy breakfast, but while undergoing preliminary stretching exercises at the ground, the truth leaked out. Reeking of booze, Symonds propped his right leg on a wheelie bin to extend his hamstring and, to the bewilderment of those watching, remained utterly oblivious as the support symbolically rolled away from beneath him.
His name was hastily scratched from Australia's team sheet, the official explanation being that he had suffered a 'niggle' during the warm-up. Conspiracy theories then ran rampant through the Sophia Gardens press box when Ponting fronted international television at the coin toss to announce the problem had, in those few minutes, transmogrified into the flu. Word also emerged from the TV commentary team, where Darren Lehmann was filling a guest role, that the truth lay closer to Symonds being well and truly leathered.
Lehmann then confirmed that he had received a drunken call from the Queenslander around 3 a.m., urging him to come out and join the Welsh wildlife. The ex-player wisely demurred and advised Symonds to call it a night. That counsel was ignored. Other reports then surfaced that Symonds had been seen stumbling about outside our hotel around 6 a.m., just hours before game time. The official story from the dressing room suddenly changed again. The all-rounder was now being investigated for a breach of team rules.
Faced with the unfamiliar scenario of events spinning rapidly out of their control, the Australian brains trust showed a worrying, but ominously instructive, inability to think on their feet. Ponting stuck to his prefabricated plan upon winning the toss and, despite the morning's upheaval and a damp pitch rendered lively as it sweated under the Welsh sun, opted not to immediately unleash his bowlers on the under-qualified Bangladeshis. Instead, Australia's hastily recast line-up struggled with the bat and then, as the pitch flattened out in the heat, Bangladesh cashed in on lacklustre bowling and lamentable fielding. Unlikely cricket history was made with four balls to spare, and it wasn't only the late-afternoon rays beating into the makeshift media conference room that generated heat in the post-match post-mortem.
Despite the airless conditions, Ponting sat ashen-faced. He tried manfully to defend the morning's deceptions, as well as downplay their impact on the result, and grimly promised that Symonds' punishment would be delivered swiftly and decisively. He had no choice. His humiliated and riven team's next match waited barely twelve hours away, forty miles across the mouth of the Severn River, in Bristol.
When the first call from an incredulous boss arrived just before midnight in Gloucestershire, I was slogging through the third of a slated four stories. Two hours later, on the heels of that Sunday's morning editorial conference, details of the direction that the coverage was to take had been radically redefined. By 4.30 a.m., most of those alterations had been accommodated. And by 8.30a.m., I was staggering like an over-filled cricketer through the already festive crowd that milled about the bacon sandwich vans set up on the playing fields that abutted Bristol's County Ground. The three-and-a-half-month tour was but a fortnight old, and I was already fielding flashbacks to the final weeks of the World Cup six years earlier. The finish line was a distant haze, with more than a month to pass before the first of five Tests started. And the load of work began to press heavier when Ponting's team suffered an even heftier loss, to England, a day after the Bangladesh fiasco.
Unearthing and deciphering what was going so rapidly wrong became more taxing with each successive night of abbreviated sleep, and with every long-haul road trip. The six-hour journey diametrically across England from Bristol to Durham was a subdued affair in the media vehicle, and undoubtedly even more strained on board the Australians' luxury bus. Barbs and accusations had already been hurled within the dressing room and, as external criticism intensified, the players predictably embraced victim mode, turning swiftly against those who dared query their mettle. Plainly, it was the media's fault that their vaunted bowling attack had been abruptly rendered as ineffectual as an Indian taxi, and that one of their players had reported for duty as pissed as a cricketer.
Upon reaching Durham, both feuding factions were housed in the same Chester-le-Street hotel — a refurbished fourteenth-century fortress, whose reception desk was staffed by rosy-cheeked Geordie lasses clad shoulder to floor in heavy velvet gowns. It was as if we had wandered on to the set of a pre-Tudor period play, a mood enhanced by a popular local legend suggesting that Lumley Castle, built in the wake of the wars in neighbouring Scotland, was haunted. Not only had its first owner, Sir Ralph Lumley, been imprisoned and executed after being implicated in a plot to overthrow Henry IV, his wife was apparently slain by local priests and her body dumped in one of the property's wells. It was Lady Lily of Lumley's supposedly ghostly presence in the castle's labyrinth of stone corridors that lent an air of heightened paranoia to an already uneasy party. And in addition to medieval murder mystery, the besieged Australians found themselves central players in an episode of 'Carry-On Cricket'.
They were deemed ripe for ridicule, which was modern Fleet Street's gleeful specialty. On the day we arrived at the citadel, one of the national tabloids ran a mock-up photo of Australia's fast bowlers — McGrath, Gillespie, Lee and Kasprowicz — all clutching handbags. This prompted the appearance, at the next day's training session, of one of that paper's eager young reporters with photographer in tow, whose mission was to present a handbag to one of the pace-bowling quartet. McGrath genially declined, claiming the accessory did not match his shoes.
A day later, returning from another practice outing, I noticed a small van in our hotel car park that was unpacking an eclectic entourage, among them a scantily clad but heavily stacked young woman, a man dressed in what appeared to be a pantomime rodent's outfit, and another photographer. Sensing it was my national duty to flag the latest ambush, I phoned a warning through to the team bus that had just departed the cricket ground. The players were then discreetly deposited at one of the hotel's alternative entrances and the coach was empty when it pulled up out front.
Nonetheless, it was greeted by the page-three girl who excitedly threw off her bikini top to parade her journalistic credentials, while the rodent, revealing himself to be a cruelly disfigured kangaroo, provided accompaniment on what also masqueraded as a didgeridoo but was, in reality, a length of plastic downpipe. Although the whole sorry skit was played out in the absence of cricketers, the story ran regardless in next Sunday's edition — alongside an article about a Merseyside woman whose uncle had been recently eaten by cannibals. At least when peddling pretend news, the British press had the humility to dress it up in a rat suit and a string bikini.
Just when it seemed the entire episode could not plumb further silliness, word leaked into the British press from within Australia's inner sanctum that Shane Watson had become so scared by the Castle's paranormal inhabitant that he had vacated his room and taken up residence on the floor of Brett Lee's. It had not been an auspicious tour for Watson. Pilloried by the ground announcer at Arundel (Jason Gillespie in a cameo role) for his ankle-freezer yellow pants, he was also derided by The Australian's correspondent in the wake of the Taunton humiliation for being 'all blond tips and no iceberg'. And he had arrived in Durham touting a tour bowling average of 149, a number just as likely to rouse him, screaming, from his sleep as the presence of spooks. As a result, Watson reckoned he did not sleep at all for the four nights we were in Chester-le-Street, and so checked out of the Castle functioning rather like a touring journalist.
The frost that was deepening between players and press with each tabloid revelation meant I was apprehensive about the reception that awaited when, while exploring the castle one evening, I stumbled upon a library, with its raked ceiling almost reached by enormous glass-fronted bookcases, and which doubled as the guests' lounge. Secreted in a dark corner, like a pair of escapees from Hogwarts, sat McGrath and Gillespie, huddled over imported beers and deep in conversation. Sensing what I thought was a ghostly chill, I quickly turned to retreat. But not quickly enough.
'Hey, Rambo,' McGrath called in a most un-library tone, and then waved me to their table. He was obviously unaware that the press had become the enemy.
'You ever heard of this? Dizzy reckons the hours of sleep you get before midnight are worth twice as much as those after. So, if you go to sleep at ten, and you wake up at six next morning, you've had...' He shot a bewildered look at me then his drinking partner.
'The equivalent of ten hours,' Gillespie nodded, before leaning back in his hand-carved tub chair and taking a long drag of his beer. 'But if you went to bed at midnight and then got up at that time, you'd only feel like you'd had six,' he continued. 'Big difference.'
'You ever heard anything that stupid?' McGrath snorted. 'I mean, even for Dizzy...' The rest of his gibe remained unspoken.
'So, using that logic,' I said, not totally sure why I would buy into such a profound metaphysical discourse, 'if you went to sleep at 8 p.m., but got up at midnight, you should feel more rested than if you had a full seven-hour kip?'
McGrath gave me a thumbs up. Gillespie gave me a scowl. And, in a trice, changed the subject.
'Saw another one of those local newspaper reporters snooping around here earlier tonight,' he said, drawing a line under the previous exchange. 'A bloke wearing a sheet. With his face painted white. Looked like that Uncle Fester from The Addams Family.' He took another drink.
'So how do you know he was a journo?' McGrath asked, intent on scoring more points off his mate.
'He was carrying a notebook,' Gillespie countered. 'And a tape recorder. Came in here and looked more scared than scary when I asked him what he was doing. Then he told me he was dressed up like that 'cos he was on his way to a mate's bucks show. In a castle. On his own. I told him I was about to call security and he buggered off.'
'Bloody journos,' they muttered in chorus, as I slipped away.
After nearly three weeks of tracking the one-day series from England's bottom to top, from Manchester to Birmingham, from Canterbury to London, the tournament's final ended in a gripping, if ultimately unsatisfying, dead heat at Lord's. For all the Australians' internal upheaval, and despite all the external distractions, it seemed the English could be relied on to lapse into old habits when it mattered. Against Australia, that meant losing. But they were granted another crack, courtesy of a three-match limited-overs mini-series between the Ashes rivals that had been stuffed into the schedule prior to the five Tests.
The first of these was programmed for Leeds, with the next pair, and then the opening Test, in London. In a selfless act of corporate austerity, I suggested we jettison the hire car for a couple of weeks, thereby saving our employer the $100 per night it would cost to park the thing beneath our plush London hotel, located among Kensington High Street's designer boutiques and promenading celebrities. I reasoned that traversing the capital would be much simpler by taxi and, by taking a train to and from Yorkshire for the first one-dayer, we also afforded ourselves a chance to catch up on work, perhaps even some sleep, as opposed to a couple more days spent fighting the perils of the M1.
The journey north carried an air of celebration, not only because we could balance our laptops on real tables and enjoy proper local cuisine, like railway-issue bacon butties. The entire nation was aglow, basking in that day's news that London would host the 2012 Olympics. The next day brought spirits crashing with a savagery nobody foresaw. Certainly not those of us who had willingly foregone our independent transport.
It was as I reacquainted myself with the idiosyncrasies of Headingley's press box that the first reports of an incident on the London Underground filtered through. Initially, it was thought to be a fire. Then an explosion. By change of innings it was confirmed as a series of explosions. Aimed murderously at morning commuters, on packed trains and buses. More than fifty dead and a further 700 maimed.
Suddenly, cricket was an indulgence. The game continued, but it was incidental. London was once more a city under siege. It was also where our touring party was headed as soon as stumps were drawn. Or as soon as we could fathom a way to get there. Trains weren't running because Kings Cross Station was shut down. The hire car company simply laughed when I asked about the availability of rental vehicles in Leeds. Surely, I reasoned, the whole tour must now be in question. There was no way the Australian cricket team would voluntarily bus its way into the heart of a city that had, hours earlier, been the mark of an orchestrated terrorist hit aimed at civilian targets. If the same situation had erupted in India, Sri Lanka or Kenya, the squad would have quit the field and been on a plane home before sunset. But apparently, guerrilla warfare in a fair-skinned English-speaking country was far less threatening, and faith in the security capabilities of Western democracies inestimably higher.
So barely an hour after play finished at Headingley, it was to London we returned. Six of us, with luggage, crammed into a generous colleague's Peugeot sedan. Night had fallen by the time we cruised noiselessly through the capital's northern outskirts and then into its posh inner west turned eerie wild west. Desolate streets stood devoid of pedestrians. Traffic was sparse. A few people gathered outside a cinema, one of the few businesses, along with off-licences, that remained open. The shock was palpable. Fear of follow-up attacks lurked everywhere.
We checked into our London hotel with wariness supplanting our weariness. Players lingered in the foyer to workshop reports from home that wives and families who had been preparing to join the team were already reconsidering their plans. Rumours abounded that another blast would see the tour abandoned. This was subsequently refuted by Cricket Australia, but nobody could guarantee the itinerary would run its course.
A resolution to the suspense appeared nigh, one way or another when, in the days immediately after the attacks, a red double-decker bus was abandoned outside our hotel. The lobby was cleared and guests advised to return to their quarters and take refuge in their bathrooms. The normally crammed High Street was emptied of late-afternoon shoppers. From my third-floor room overlooking the street, I had an unnervingly clear view of the bus, on the occasions that I poked my head above the concrete windowsill. Fearing it might all end there, I placed an urgent phone call — to our photographer, who was on his way back to the hotel. I outlined the situation he was about to confront, and suggested it might be prudent to employ his long lens and capture a frame of the vehicle in question, for posterity. I then grabbed my laptop and passport, and retired to the loo.
Eventually, the driver, who had apparently left his bus to grab a drink at a watering hole across the road, was found and castigated. By that time, I had resumed my internal dialogue, begun in Sharjah, which queried the need to continually put myself in the path of peril. It seemed cricket writers found themselves in the globe's trouble spots almost as regularly as war correspondents. Poolside lounges and hamstring injuries, my arse.
Concerns were being simultaneously raised at the Ideas Factory. Not about any potential for physical or psychological harm. My employers' anxiety was sparked by news the hire car had been returned, which meant parking fees had been swapped for the apparently frivolous cost of London's black taxis.
'But the amount we're saving by not having the car garaged more than covers what I'm spending each day on cabs,' I explained to the chief bean counter.
'It still seems an expensive way to get around a city that's got one of the world's most efficient public transport systems,' I was upbraided. 'I don't see why you can't use the Tube.'
I closed my eyes and breathed deeply.
'That's a fair point,' I conceded. 'I'm sure that by the time the first Test starts at Lord's, they'll have removed all the bodies, relaid the tracks, rebuilt the stations, and the Circle Line will be up and running.'
The ensuing silence made me wonder if, for the first time in seven years, I had struck a nerve. But it was just the delay down the international phone line.
'Well, you could always walk those few kilometres,' came the response. 'Hyde Park's gorgeous at this time of a London summer.'
#
# Ashes Series, England, July–September 2005
The English Ashes summer that first entranced me as an eight-year-old had arrived, and with it came a constant phantom chirruping that followed me everywhere, crowding my thoughts and further impinging on already fragmented bouts of sleep. It was not a symptom of intensifying excitement. Nor was it a by-product of stress caused by having to compete against the two, sometimes three, journalists that rival Australian newspapers had sent to bolster their touring complement, given the surge of interest back home in the Australian team's misadventures. Rather it was a direct result of increasingly desperate measures to stave off the mental breakdown hurtling at me due to all of the above.
My coping tonic consisted of weekly Friday-night blow-outs, prescribed in the knowledge that the absence of a Sunday edition of my paper meant the welcome luxury of Saturday mornings and afternoons to recover before duty again called. And while my rationale for self-medicating with lashings of vodka mixed through a potent energy drink might have been commendable in intent, it was deeply physiologically flawed. The alcohol, I fuzzily reasoned, would numb my brain to the point that I could then catch sufficient deep sleep to offset the frenzied week just passed. The cocktail of caffeine, vitamins, sugars and whatever sort of synthetic speed gave the mixer its pep would then allow me to wake from my coma feeling alert and energised. Effectively, I was trying to sprint through waist-deep mud. Unimpressed at being told to slow down at the same time it was being fuelled to speed up, my body effectively gave up in disgust and I began to resemble a somnambulant corpse.
Which was my excuse why, on the weekend before the first Test, I spent five hours hypnotised by obscure 1980s tunes blasted by a DJ through an underground bunker that doubled as a Leicester nightclub. It was only when the music stopped and I could still hear Fairlight feedback screaming off the graffiti-pasted walls that I suspected I might also have picked up a dose of industrial deafness. It was two days before I could distinguish any sound above the incessant ringing, and almost a week until I could communicate without closed captioning. While their late-series rally to win the final pair of one-day internationals meant the Australian players' buoyancy had risen to match the level of media and public interest at home, I went into my first Test match at Lord's overwrought, under the weather, and hard of hearing.
It had taken forty-six days on British (and French) soil, but when Test cricket finally arrived it came clad in its familiar English uniform. Electric-white outfits, accessorised with woollen sweaters, contrasted starkly against shamrock-green lawn and rolling grey clouds that granted sufficient bursts of sun to raise hopes, if not temperatures. Queues stretched across the Nursery Ground lawns from vans dispensing strawberry-laden crêpes, Cornish pasties and proper coffee. At the opposite end of Lord's, MCC members in their egg yolk and ketchup ties took up their positions of privilege in front of the Long Room and unpacked picnic baskets stocked with smoked salmon, fresh figs and French bubbly. The pomp and expectation stood as a stark counter-point to the brash limited-overs fixtures that had soaked up the best part of two months.
Except that when play began at half ten, it did so with a pace and belligerence that reeked of one-day cricket. Steve Harmison's second delivery of the series smashed into the point of Justin Langer's right elbow. Soon after, he slammed another into the titanium grille of Ricky Ponting's protective helmet, twisting the metal bars inward and opening a crimson swoosh below the skipper's right eye from which blood dripped onto the pitch. England had emphatically announced it was up for a fight.
Come day's end, bathed in luscious mid-summer sunshine, the home team was batting. But not especially well. Seven of their number were already out, in addition to the ten Australians who had succumbed, and the powder-blue décor of Lord's space-age media centre, purpose chosen to exude a sense of calm, was doing little to quell the buzz of disbelief that coursed through the paid observers. With at least one exception. The seven hours I had spent splitting my attention between laptop screen, crazed notes, television replays and garbled phone conversations accounted for around ninety per cent of what, I was breathlessly reassured, was the best day's Test cricket in living memory.
Not that I could recall much. Like a battery hen propped on a cheap office chair, which barely fitted the narrow alley between steep tiers of slender work benches, I watched the players trudge away from me and into the historic stone Pavilion that evening, knowing their shift was over but mine was about to begin again. After-stumps media conferences loomed, followed by hours of transcription and typing before the first phone calls from the Factory started arriving around 1 a.m. To maintain lucidity through the night, I would slap my thighs and occasionally my cheeks, willing myself to keep going like a jockey closing on the winning post. Often I typed with one eye closed, to prevent the words drifting out of focus. Occasionally, I would succumb to sleep while writing, and awake some time later with my chin cradled in the upturned palm of my left hand. And so the cycle went. For the remainder of that game. For the rest of the tour. Occasionally the pace slackened to recognisable Test match speed, only to regain its kamikaze intent. Each remarkable moment cascading into the next.
Temporary relief arrived on the fourth Lord's evening when, despite a six-hour delay to cater for England's summer rain and daytime darkness, the Australians completed a thumping win. England's best punch, Adam Gilchrist assessed, had been thrown and duly absorbed. The way ahead appeared deceptively sunny. History, I foolishly believed, had recovered its course and the Ashes would be safe in Australia's keeping by the end of Test three. Public interest would correspondingly wane. And the final month of the tour could be spent regrouping, if not rehabilitating.
It wasn't only me who nurtured that rosy view. Rather than take part in a token tour match scheduled for Worcester between the first two Tests, Gilchrist took his family to Disneyland Paris. Damien Martyn was granted a leave-pass to nobody-knew-where. And the Lord's bowling heroes — Glenn McGrath, Shane Warne and Brett Lee — spent the Worcester stint signing autographs, posing for photographs, and sampling the famous cakes.
That sense of contentment turned on a single cricket ball, placed on the turf as part of a fielding drill before play began in the second Test at Edgbaston. During a light run to warm up for the warm-up, the Australians lazily flicked a rugby ball from one to another. It was as McGrath stretched to haul in a wide pass that his full body weight landed on the ball, turning his right ankle into a right angle, with the joint's ligaments stretched so far they almost ripped in half. The man whose nine wickets had effectively determined the Lord's result was removed, face drained of colour, from the playing arena aboard a golf cart. As his teammates silently feared, Australia's fortunes then disappeared into the medical room with him.
The hobbling of Australia's best pace bowler half an hour before start time might have provided ample fodder for early editions at home, but it didn't faze Ponting, who again pushed stubbornly ahead with his scripted plan to bowl when the coin fell in his favour. That decision, built on a belief that there was residual moisture in the pitch, drew a sharp rebuke from Warne, who saw it as a major tactical blunder. It was the first detectable hiss of discontent to seep from the tourists' dressing room in weeks.
By stumps, Ponting could justifiably point to the fact that his bowlers had captured all ten English wickets. That they fell for a tick over 400 runs probably vindicated his leg-spinner. It wasn't only McGrath's lower leg that had twisted beyond recognition. With no obvious warning, the Australians found themselves confronted by an opponent recast in their own image, as the frantic tempo of Lord's only stepped up in Birmingham.
When the fourth morning dawned, the transition was all but complete. The home nation converged on Edgbaston in ecstasy, and around radios and televisions as if awaiting a Churchillian pronouncement. Australia's three least-credentialled batsmen, statistically at least, needed to pilfer more than a hundred runs from an England bowling attack that had dismembered their opponents' top order twice in the space of a weekend. The result seemed as clear as the Midlands' summer morning, and my mood was correspondingly bright having laboured through the night to chronicle the remarkable volte-face. The first three stories completed and sent all canvassed Australia's stunning slide. The fourth, awaiting only confirmation of the final margin, dealt with England's resurgence.
Then, with a deadline ticking ever closer, Australia's tailenders snicked, poked and bravely swung within range of their unlikely target. There often comes a point, if compiling running copy from a live sporting event, when the unfolding reality diverges irreparably from any carefully prepared script. At those times, the journalist's conundrum is whether to sit tight in the belief that it's but an aberration, and that what once appeared likely will indeed come to pass. Or to concede you've got it horribly wrong and begin furiously rewriting. For me, on that loopy final morning at Edgbaston, that defining moment arrived around thirty minutes before I was to fill a gaping hole in the paper's second edition. When Brett Lee's three boundaries in a single over reduced Australia's goal to thirty-three runs, England's remained a solitary wicket. And there had also arisen the very real chance of another dead heat.
Whatever the result, it was destined to neatly intersect with deadline. So there was no choice but to prepare three stories of roughly equal lengths dealing with all plausible contingencies. Had there been time, I would also have panicked. Instead, I started frantically creating new documents, hurriedly copying and pasting words that could transcend any outcome, and madly fashioning new introductory sections that shrieked 'Australia Wins!' Or 'England Wins!' Or 'Nobody Wins!' Juggling more screens than a bashful fan dancer, the only time I shifted attention from the laptop was when the phone rang.
'Australia's gunna win this, it's one of the greatest Tests ever played,' I was told by someone on the Sydney news desk whose cricket nous was matched only by their gift for overstatement. 'We're gunna run it on the front page. So we'll need a twenty-five-centimetre write-off from you as soon as they hit the winning runs.'
I was now beyond stressed. The need for a separate, standalone article for the news section that complemented, but not duplicated, what would appear in the sports pages raised the degree of difficulty to a level beyond my impaired cognitive functions. Instead of managing three concurrent stories, I suddenly had six on the go. I allowed myself a whimper, a quick crack across the quadriceps, then got typing. The margin had narrowed to fifteen runs. An over later, it was whittled to six.
Two nations' attention then focused on a sward in the English Midlands. The final overs of perhaps the most famous Ashes encounter transfixed households. Entire suburbs. It lives on in the memory of everyone watching, whether adhered to television or sitting, in gut-churning tension, among the spellbound crowd. Everyone except journalists working to Australian deadlines. For the last half-hour, I saw not a single delivery, not a solitary run, nor even the tragi-triumphant final act when Michael Kasprowicz lost his wicket with Australia three runs shy of victory. Two runs short of a tie. When that moment of history was finally written, my sole concern was ensuring the right version of the appropriate story was sent to its correct destination. And that I had interpreted the scoreboard correctly.
The English, as a nation, were elated. The Australians understandably disappointed, but hardly shattered. Having been pummelled for two of the Test's four days, struggled for another, and relied on occasional batsmen to carry them within a lucky boundary of success at the end, they felt that they had almost stolen an undeserved win. Gathering that evening in the first-floor bar of their Birmingham hotel, they outwardly showed no greater distress than a tour group whose complimentary drink vouchers had been revoked. They were more concerned about the pair of barely covered young girls trying desperately to make their acquaintance, obviously as part of another clumsy sting from a tabloid paper that believed the rejuvenation of Test cricket in its homeland was not a sufficiently salacious story.
Sensing my growing frailty, generous colleagues back at the Factory took up the reporting cudgels during those hours, deep in the English night, when I snatched sleep like a man overboard clutches flotsam. But the toll was beginning to show, and when I turned up to a scheduled morning chat with Ricky Ponting in our Manchester hotel, two days before the third Test, he greeted me with a gratuitous recommendation that I get a decent night's sleep.
'If you blokes win this Test, that's how I'm celebrating,' I joked feebly, before running through the obvious reasons why that was unlikely. Brett Lee in hospital with blood poisoning. Gillespie so badly out of sorts there were fears he might poison himself. And McGrath still as legless as Andrew Symonds on a Welsh weekend.
'I wouldn't count out McGrath just yet,' Ponting said with a glint. 'I've just seen him. He's walking without a limp and he'll bowl at training this afternoon.'
That session was not due to start until the day's first deadline had elapsed, so I charged back to my room and dashed off a stridently equivocal story that stopped short of labelling McGrath's recovery a miracle more worthy of Lourdes than Lord's. Just in case he failed to break out of a limp at practice. The greater challenge was keeping this exclusive nugget from my colleagues as we gathered to watch the Australians' preparations from the Members Pavilion at Old Trafford. The satisfaction I felt at getting the captain's scoop on a couple of stretched ankle ligaments gave way to sleep-deprived paranoia as my friends, now recast as bitter rivals, began to sense a story was afoot — an inkling gained from the fast bowler's selfish decision to conduct his clandestine fitness examination smack in the middle of the Test match ground in bright Lancashire sunshine.
'It's just part of his ongoing rehab for the fourth or fifth Tests,' I misinformed those colleagues peering pensively through the window as McGrath began rolling his arm over from a standing start, then progressed to trotting three or four paces.
By the time he started jogging, I voiced my suspicions that Lord Lucan was concealed among the Old Trafford ground staff. And finally, as the wounded pace bowler sent down several deliveries at three-quarter pace off his full run-up, I announced I was in receipt of a coded bomb warning, and that we must all vacate the stadium immediately. None of my colleagues turned a hair. In all, my world exclusive lasted less than three hours.
Even with McGrath among their number, the Australians soon learned that the reversal of fortunes played out at Edgbaston was no fleeting anomaly. Come the opening day of the third Test, the tourists were not just outplayed. They were violently and repeatedly mugged. Gillespie's celebrated international career was effectively terminated, such was the hammering he copped, firstly from England's newly emboldened batsmen and then from the remorseless Manchester crowd. Michael Clarke aggravated the chronic back injury that remains a legacy of a misguided childhood spent trying to prove he was a fast bowler, which left him confined to his hotel bed for three days. Adam Gilchrist's contribution was so forgettable he rated it the undisputed low point of his international playing days. And when stumps were drawn on that first evening, McGrath was so drained by the demands of his rehabilitation and then his wicketless bowling stint that he fell asleep in the dressing room while applying ice to his injured ankle.
Even though it failed to produce a result, the third Test was the pivot on which the historic series ultimately turned. For the next three days, England was confident, skilled and surging. Australia timid, hapless and floundering. Another defeat loomed for the tourists when the fourth day ended, prompting hundreds of England fans to camp in the overnight cold to secure cut-price tickets available on the final morning. All 23,000 seats were filled when the final day's play began, with a further 10,000 or so disappointed folks turned away from locked gates. Thousands more were intercepted by authorities in the heart of Manchester and told not to bother boarding the Altrincham tram to Old Trafford.
That Australia finished the day still batting was due largely to Ponting's most dogged Test innings, and ultimately to the defiance of another pair of bowlers left once more to carry the batsmen. McGrath's return brought no impact with the ball but, for the only time in his career, he saved a Test with the bat.
The repeated failure of the batting group was but one fissure opening within the touring party. The intrusion of families into the team's culture was another. Traditionalists who believed that wives and kids were publicity props to be trotted out at the annual Christmas party felt their presence on tour diluted team unity. Some even muttered it was the distraction caused by keeping company with loved ones rather than teammates, as opposed to the technical inadequacies exposed by England's mastery of reverse swing bowling, that was to blame for Australia's compounding problems. Even more destructive was the suggestion of rifts among rival cliques of players' partners. The UN's foremost peace negotiators would run screaming from a brief to reconcile warring WAGs.
Also copping their share of scrutiny was the touring party's coaching staff — for their inability, interpreted broadly as unwillingness, to help those players whose form had left them. As questions began to stockpile, the support team, led by coach John Buchanan, was accused of being more adept at formulating excuses than answers. Tellingly, the accepted solution to these multiplying woes and cancerous whispers lay in the stubborn belief among the squad, and many of its more blinkered supporters, that Australia was simply the better team. And that it was only a matter of time before that was reflected in scorebooks.
The tetchiness within became public during preparations for the fourth Test in Nottingham. Hell-bent on launching a Test career, twenty-two-year-old fast bowler Shaun Tait unleashed himself on the under-prepared Trent Bridge practice pitches, and his teammates. Up until that time, Tait had struggled to find his place in a touring party of which he was the youngest member. A card-carrying Generation Y-er hanging with a group of thirty-plus family men, Tait was known to spend occasional evenings alone in the team bus where he indulged his passion for computer games.
On Test eve, Justin Langer was his first target, trapped at the far end of a practice net as Tait let loose a month of frustration and inactivity. In the space of a single over, the youngster dropped the normally unflappable opener to his knees with a lethal full-toss that rifled into the top of Langer's left thigh. He then spreadeagled the batsman's stumps with a late-swinging yorker and finally, straining every sinew, caught his teammate with a bouncing bomb that would have done the Dambusters proud, as it reared spitefully from the unpredictable surface and smacked the batsman flush on the right forearm. For Langer, already feeling the hurt of under-performance, it was the final indignity.
'For fuck's sake, mate,' he screamed, as the rest of the training session stopped and tuned in. 'Some of us are trying to prepare for a Test match.'
He bent to retrieve the bat he had flung to the turf in disgust.
'I'm not trying to pin you,' Tait shouted back, a picture of Adelaide Hills innocence that masked the truth — confirmed to us in an interview earlier in the tour — that he had little control over where the ball was headed as it left his hand.
Despite the ire he precipitated, Tait was drafted on the morning of the Test to replace his mentor and close mate Gillespie. A replacement was also needed for McGrath, who once again failed to make it through the pre-game warm-up. This time, the problem was his right elbow, which had become inflamed due to the minute changes to his bowling action brought about by his ankle injury. It was a thumbnail sketch of the entire campaign. A problem hastily papered over invariably reappeared, nastier and more debilitating, further down the track.
Over the course of five days at Trent Bridge, the problems that had been steadily mounting since Cardiff officially formed themselves into a crisis. The Australians' pig-headed refusal to contemplate remedial work led to the bowlers delivering an unforgivable twenty-five no-balls in a single innings. On-field plans were farmed out to committee, rather than implemented through decisive leadership. The glaring batting weaknesses exposed in the previous two Tests, but brushed aside at training sessions, were exploited again, seemingly surprising no one but the Australians. And when Ponting needlessly sacrificed his wicket to an unerring throw from a substitute fielder, the Launceston street-fighter within him slipped its restraints. The red mist that had brought him undone in a Kings Cross lager pit all those years ago then accompanied him back to the dressing room, lifting long enough for him to notice the face of England coach Duncan Fletcher leering over the players' balcony, mocking the Australian skipper's misjudgement. Ponting responded by letting fly a stream of abuse that initially shocked, but soon encouraged, the venerable Nottinghamshire members. For they knew, as did we all, that the ugly outburst signalled the moment that the Ashes effectively changed hands. The Australians, through their tortured captain, confirmed they were out of answers.
There remained one last hope to recover skills and solidarity before the final Test in London — another training exercise, dressed up as a two-day match against a group of eager youngsters posing as Essex's first XI. Sagging spirits were not lifted when we arrived at our shared accommodation, a soulless 1980s-vintage country club perched among the denuded hills outside Chelmsford, and surrounded by nothing but farm country that exhaled the rank breath of blood and bone. Either that, or the resort's effluent tanks had ruptured. Whatever the cause, it was emblematic of the Australians' predicament.
Powering through the lobby one evening, in an attempt to outrun the stench, I heard a familiar voice beckoning me from a corner table deep in the otherwise deserted lounge bar. Shane Warne was sharing a nightcap and a whine with fellow spinner Stuart MacGill. And one of them was keen to shoot the rancid breeze.
'Whadda ya make of all this?' Warne said, picking up his drink and leaning in across the table. 'This whole mess.'
The question was rendered rhetorical by his unwillingness to grant me right of reply.
'It's just horse shit, the whole thing,' he continued, replacing his drink on the bleached-pine tabletop and flicking his cigarette lighter from hand to hand. It then became clear he wasn't talking about our environs.
'We're stuck here in the middle of nowhere, playing a bullshit county game that's not doing anyone any good. We should be in London, having a few days' rest, and then hitting the practice nets for the biggest match of our careers. We need to be lean and hungry when we get to The Oval.
'Too many of our blokes just aren't pulling their weight. And the coach is the worst offender. I mean, what's he done to fix all these problems? Nothin' except leave cricket balls lying around during training drills and call a team meeting every twenty minutes. I'll tell ya now, there's a few blokes whose careers are on the line right here.' He lifted a cigarette from a packet on the table, then slipped outside to freshen the air. MacGill just continued to nod furiously in agreement.
Warne had every right to feel let down. He was the only Australian to emerge from the series with reputation intact, even enhanced. Leading wicket-taker, most accomplished batsman, sole source of inspiration and defiant counter-attack. All achieved against a backdrop of tawdry tabloid newspaper headlines and a disintegrating marriage.
Even before it got underway at The Oval, the decisive final Test bore an evangelical aura. In keeping with idiosyncratic English tradition, an event of such profound national significance demanded its own cheesy soundtrack. Curiously, the imminent return of the Ashes was assigned William Blake's spiritual call to arms 'Jerusalem', which had been set to music ninety years before the decider began on green and pleasant pasture in south London. It was sung with choral gusto before and after each day's play. At the beginning and end of every session. And it was even played on radio with a patriotic respect usually reserved for Sir Cliff Richard's annual Christmas ditty.
Fervour was also the only rational explanation for fans handing over £300 for a seat at the series climax. Regardless of who claimed the Ashes, Test cricket had already emerged as the undisputed winner. And true to my calling as a dispassionate journalist, I did not have to struggle to avoid being swept up in the excitement. Bloodshot eyes now fixed unflinchingly on the finish, I cared not so much who secured the urn just so long as somebody did. That party stepped forward late on the fifth Test's fifth day, when poor light brought a premature halt to play with no result pending. The home team's two — one series lead would stand. Which meant celebrations that stretched the length of the island were then uncorked. For all the symbolism and emotion attached to England's first Ashes success in a generation, there was something vaguely ridiculous about a dozen adult peers-in-waiting jumping up and down in unison, frosted in tickertape, in delirious worship of a trophy roughly the size of an eggcup.
The post-match media conference was packed and restless when Ponting strode in, and took his seat behind a large table buried under microphones, cables and dictaphones. In the awkward silence that habitually precedes the initial question of these events, an Australian radio news reporter decided that this was the time for hard-nosed journalists to take over from the compliant cricket media, and to pose the tough question.
'Ricky, you're the first Australian captain to lose the Ashes in England in twenty years. Are you going to resign?' he boomed.
I hurriedly rechecked my notes fearing that, amid my semi-conscious scribbling, I had imagined the preceding two months. When, but for the brush of a batting glove in Birmingham and the rearguard efforts of a couple of England tailenders in Nottingham, the Marylebone Cricket Club's sacred urn could have quite easily remained in Australia's name, if not its keeping. Ponting was initially perplexed, then annoyed.
'I don't know, mate, you tell me,' the captain shot back. 'You obviously know a lot about cricket.'
The tour had ended pretty much as it began. At the scene of a bitter ideological battle. For almost an hour after the seemingly endless media conferences, I propped myself, completely spent, against the doorway to the Australian dressing room. I knew that, given what had just been lost, there was no chance of gaining admission. But neither could I depart the ground and begin the tour's final stretch of writer's confinement until I had a column from the skipper in my keep. My hopes would lift fleetingly every time the wooden door swung open, but sink back when it yielded nothing more than team support staff stacking cricket bags in the corridor in preparation for the following day's homeward flight.
The brief glimpses I stole of the losers' camp revealed a picture not nearly as funereal as I expected. Some players sat quietly on wooden benches, the music and banter that announced the end of most Test matches noticeably absent. But with each passing luggage run, the atmosphere within seemed to warm. Several England opponents clutching bottled beer and beaming smiles filed in to share a drink and a chat, and were greeted warmly as they sought Australian autographs on various pieces of clothing and equipment. As priceless Ashes memorabilia, these would prove far more lucrative in seasons to come than any county testimonial year.
One of professional sport's dirty secrets is that the pain of losing usually hits supporters harder than players. The besotted fan delusionally believes their chosen team will succeed every time it takes the field. To entertain the alternative is a betrayal of their life's cause. But players readily accept the risk of losing is writ large in the contract of competing. As Justin Langer once philosophised, if the joy of triumph provides the game's greatest feeling, then the regret of losing must be next best. Because if you're not experiencing either of those, it means you've been reduced to nothing more consequential than a spectator.
During my catatonic wait, I tried to sketch out the series post-mortem I was to compile overnight by running the big moments, the defining contests, over in my mind. I drew a blank. I had seen so little live cricket between typing stints I may as well have been home in Melbourne. Or asleep. I made a mental note to buy a DVD box set of the 2005 Ashes series in order to catch up on the history I had missed while writing and rewriting it. That pledge will one day be redeemed.
Ponting eventually appeared, baggy green cap defiantly in place, hands jammed deep in his pockets. He indicated our meeting would be conducted in the corridor and, instead of offering any preliminary thoughts, he instead stared silently through a window that looked over remnants of the crowd being ushered through the heavy iron gates and into the Vauxhall gloaming, raucously 'Jerusaleming' their way to the nearest pub.
'So you gunna resign?' I asked, trying unconvincingly to channel the self-importance of a serious journalist. Ponting turned quickly, wearing a pained scowl, before recognising the gallows humour. If nothing else, it allowed us to establish eye contact.
'And ya reckon I'd announce that through my column?' he asked, through a grin that, until then, I suspected the plastic surgery he underwent after day one at Lord's had removed.
'As good a place as any,' I suggested. 'But maybe not tonight. I'd rather we go with the usual clichés, so I can get a head start on that sleep.'
#
# Australian Summer 2005–06, One-day Tournament, New Zealand, December 2005, South Africa, February–April 2006
Four weeks after that eternal English summer, Australia's cricketers waded straight back into a seven-month, non-stop playing roster that would drag them across three continents and a pair of neighbouring islands. But not everyone who was aboard the rickety Ashes bandwagon would be along for the ride. Come the start of the home series against the West Indies, Jason Gillespie, Damien Martyn and Michael Kasprowicz had been called to account for the failure in England. Within weeks, Simon Katich and Michael Clarke joined them in the selectors' bad books. Jettisoning half the team that had failed at Edgbaston satisfied those who called for heads to roll. But selectors are more forgiving than jilted fans, and all five would soon return to Test ranks.
In the meantime, the brave new faces of Australia's cricket future were unveiled, the most prominent of which belonged to a thirty-year-old who had already notched 10,000 first-class runs. In his first three Test innings, Michael Hussey progressed from single, to double, and then triple figures, his maiden century at Hobart's Bellerive Oval triggering from him unrestrained celebrations, even though it came against a West Indian attack that never quite mustered the intensity to be lacklustre. Hussey jumped and yelped, and was still bouncing like a cheap sports bra on a treadmill when the players, with a few journalists in tow, took their post-match victory celebration to a South Hobart pub. And when the hotel closed, the party made a short walk into the city, where Ricky Ponting knew of a late-night bar where you could safely get a drink without wearing a right hook.
I made the trek in a group of one, equidistant from the small cliques of players ahead and astern, when the gallop of footsteps from behind made me instinctively flinch. An incoherent shout echoed down the empty road at the same moment a hand clamped down on my left shoulder, and Hussey fell into loping stride alongside.
'Mate, this is what it's all about,' he beamed, draping his right arm around my neck as we lock-stepped down a slight incline. As I was to learn, after a few drinks Hussey became as tactile as a blind man in a fruit shop. And he'd definitely downed a few drinks.
'I don't reckon there could be a better feeling than this, no matter how long I play for. And I know we're supposed to treat you guys with suspicion, but you've been around it a lot longer than me. So I need to ask you a favour.
'If you ever notice I'm getting a bit full of myself, or you reckon I need to be knocked down a peg or two, you've got my absolute permission to tell me to pull my head in.'
He administered another backslap, then I twisted my neck beneath his elbow to try and gauge his sincerity. His blue eyes sparkled with excitement and perhaps a couple of excess beers. But no discernible ill will.
I thanked him for the offer and promised I would share with him any concerns I harboured about his performance or his temperament. After I'd written them in the paper.
'I knew it,' he roared, ruffling my hair before he bounded off to join the group in front. 'You guys really are a pack of bastards.'
The insertion into the Australian summer of a week's worth of one-day internationals in New Zealand was welcomed like a dose of croup by all affected parties. So underwhelmed was Adam Gilchrist that he sought, and was granted, leave of absence to better invest that time at home in Perth with his family. I understood his priorities. Even though I had no such ties, having spent barely ninety days of 2005 at home, a further seven nights away offered less appeal than it did purpose. But that level of apathy did not extend across the Tasman, where New Zealand officials expressed outrage that one of world cricket's great drawcards would not be on hand to get turnstiles clicking. So Cricket Australia backed down and Gilchrist's leave ticket was revoked. This meant I was nowhere near the least enthused of the touring party that boarded an Auckland-bound flight at Sydney Airport.
However, I would — despite it still being early in the Australian summer — have taken some beating for the title of most worn out. Which was why, moments after tumbling into my seat, I also fell into a deep and deeply unattractive sleep. Woken by the arrival of the food trolley, I also noticed the companion with whom I was notionally sharing dinner was a striking, willowy brunette. Travellers' luck usually dictated I was seated alongside a morbidly obese armrest thief or Brad Hogg. But in the first slice of genuinely good fortune since my hearing returned, my allocated partner was not only glamorous and dainty, but perfectly content to remain immersed in a novel. Probably because the miniature television dangling from the bulkhead before us was as lifeless as the food. When she was forced to put down her book in order to perform a post-mortem on her meal, I seized my chance to make an impression.
'You heading home or away?' I asked as casually as is possible when trying to manoeuvre a child-sized plastic fork towards one's mouth with both elbows super-glued to one's ribcage.
'Sorry?' she shot back, clearly surprised by this outbreak of neighbourliness.
'This trip,' I persisted, undaunted by a response colder than the cacciatore. 'Are you heading home, or away?'
'Oh,' she smiled wanly, her alabaster complexion lightly tinged by a mix of annoyance and alarm. 'I thought you asked if I watched Home and Away.'
Clearly worried she faced another couple of hours shackled next to a deranged narcolept with an unhealthy fascination for television soapies, she returned to her food. The low hum of jet engines covered a long silence.
'So...do you?' I asked eventually, reasoning there was nothing I could do to make me appear any more unhinged at that moment.
'Do I what?' she retorted, her face now radiating nothing but pain.
'Watch Home and Away?' I dangled my kiddie cutlery at eye level between us, partly for dramatic effect and partly in self-defence. But rather than reach for the stewardess call button, she smiled brightly and we began a conversation that continues, long after we touched down. Years of travelling had, at last, delivered something more permanent than passport stamps.
After the New Zealand hiatus, the home Test series against South Africa contained three matches, none of which the tourists won. The triangular one-day tournament that followed dragged on for more than a month, and produced the same winner. Just how those of us embarking, at summer's end, on a reciprocal six-week tour to South Africa would unearth story ideas from another nine internationals between the same two groups of cricketers would have caused considerable angst had there been time to dwell on it. But the months that followed New Year bore the unrelenting, fast-revolving door of airport shuttle runs, hotel check-ins and check-outs, cricket training and cricket matches. The simple chores of domesticity, like nurturing a new relationship and maintaining a home, were luxuries that living on the road did not support. Among the essential tasks squeezed out of my summer schedule was procurement of a travel visa for Bangladesh, where our tour was destined immediately after South Africa. It was an oversight that demanded redress as a matter of priority, once we checked into our opulent hotel in Johannesburg's showpiece shopping and tourist precinct of Sandton — an enclave carved from granite and glass that stood at least a world away from the true South Africa.
Bangladesh's sole consular outpost was located fifty kilometres from Johannesburg in the South African capital, and our only scheduled visit to Pretoria was set down for the upcoming Sunday. Diplomatic staff notoriously eschew work during working hours, so weekend access was not even worth inquiring about. My only choice was to abandon work commitments and spend hours camped at the embassy, or entrust my passport to a kindly Australian backpacker who sought to have similar paperwork finalised so he could join us on the subcontinent. To supplement my application, I also handed him an effusive official-looking letter of support from the paper's editor-in-chief who, in more than a decade of employ, I had never met, but who extolled my journalistic credentials in glowing words that read suspiciously like mine.
The trepidation I felt at surrendering my vital documents to a casual acquaintance about to board the Johannesburg — Pretoria train — notorious, even by the infamously violent city's standards, as a sure ticket to being mugged, shot, abducted, or the trifecta — was surpassed by my fear of running foul of Bangladeshi border guards upon landing in Dhaka six weeks later. The plucky courier returned safely intact at day's end, though the news he brought was not exclusively good. My visa stamp showed an issue date of 2004, already two years lapsed. And it granted me stay in Bangladesh for thirty days, provided it was presented at immigration by 23 May 2005. Roughly the same time I had been bound for the War Memorial at Villers-Bretonneux. There was no chance to rectify the errors before we left for Bangladesh, but Australian team members who had previously visited Dhaka assured me any discrepancies could be instantly sorted out at passport control with a strategically placed US greenback or two.
The opening week's events in South Africa bore the hallmarks of Ashes Mark II. A bowling machine set up for Australia's first training session at Wanderers' Stadium was rendered inoperable when a member of the ground staff disconnected its power supply in order to carry out some urgent vacuuming at the adjacent rugby club. Torrential afternoon storms on the High Veldt washed out another session and meant the tour-opening twenty-over game didn't finish until nigh on midnight. That made it a long day for the eight Australian players awoken before dawn by phone calls from hotel reception staff claiming to have anxious family members on the line. Fearing crises at home, the players agreed to take the calls only to find a local FM radio jock on the other end making, for reasons known only to him and his audience, poorly mimicked sheep noises.
Losses in the Twenty20 game and the opening pair of the five-match one-day series only heightened everyone's sense of unease and déjà vu. But a meritorious win in the third game at the coastal city of Port Elizabeth restored morale to the extent that the Australians cancelled their planned early flight to Durban next morning, and opted to travel at an hour more in tune with the effects of after-match celebrations. The press corps was not privy to such flexibility in our itinerary, and while it clearly contravened the touring tenet of never becoming separated from the team, time apart translated to blessed relief when we arrived at Durban's Elangeni Hotel. With its Indian Ocean frontage and a broad, sandy beach pounded by thunderous waves, it spelled 'seaside vacation'. If only for the few hours until the cricketers lobbed in, and work resumed.
That lure was partly tempered by the cheery desk staff who were only too keen to warn us about the local dangers, none of which were aquatic. Beware the half-kilometre walk across the desolate Hoy Park Sports fields to get to Kingsmead Cricket Ground, and avoid it completely come nightfall, they advised. Likewise the 'Golden Mile' section of Snell Parade, which ran past the hotel's front doors and was famous for its prostitutes and pimps, its muggers and addicts. Don't take anything more valuable than a towel if swimming, and even reconsider that accessory when strolling the wide, paved esplanade towards South Beach and Durban's seedy CBD. This counsel made such an impact that I packed nothing more than my swimmers and an old T-shirt when I braved the midday heat for a frolic in the rolling surf.
After battling the heavy swell for a full ten minutes, I slumped onto the sand to recover and became aware that the chunky African man clad in only navy-blue trunks and sprawled parallel to the breakers not fifty metres up the beach was taking considerably longer than me to regain his breath. If, indeed, he had any. From where I was collapsed, he appeared to be dead.
This layman's prognosis was proved correct when a pair of paramedics arrived, conferred as they leaned over his motionless frame, and then returned to their vehicle to retrieve the sort of silver reflecto-blanket used to wrap hypothermia sufferers, or large loaves of garlic bread. They stood guard over the lifeless figure for many minutes, talking intermittently into hand-held radios and then, convinced the corpse and its final vestige of dignity were secured, drove off leaving the package glinting in the afternoon sun. All but a few passers-by resisted the urge to lift a corner of the space-age shroud to confirm their morbid suspicions until, eventually, a couple of lethargic ambulance officers arrived and stretchered the deceased across the sand and into the back of their waiting station wagon. By that time, even the grey-headed gulls had lost interest.
I recounted this ghoulish tale to Damien Martyn and Brad Hogg, whom I encountered heading for a swim as I returned to the hotel. Their eyes widened, more so at the thought of sharing the beach with a stiff than the apparent lack of public concern for the loss of a human life in KwaZulu-Natal. Hogg looked especially disturbed.
'How did he die if he was on the beach? Was he murdered?' he asked, agog. I glanced briefly at Martyn, who simply rolled his eyes.
'Land sharks,' I replied, trying to stifle a grin.
'Land sharks? There's no such thing...is there?' Hogg said, turning beseechingly to his teammate, who made it immediately clear that the all-rounder was fighting this joust on his own.
'They're rare,' I went on, sensing the bait had been taken. 'You only get them on this stretch of the African coast. And they only come out of the sea for a few minutes at a time.'
'That's crap...isn't it?' Hogg said, desperately scanning our faces for a telltale smirk. But on cue, we had both turned and headed away from him in opposite directions. As I neared the road, I heard a distinctive Australian voice behind me urging: 'Well you can swim if you want, mate, but I'll just hang out in the beach café.'
The one-day series stood level at two games-all entering the final match in Johannesburg, where the steady momentum the Australians had built over the preceding week gave way to an avalanche. Not only did Ricky Ponting's team become the first to reach 400 runs in a fifty-over international, they set an unheard-of new mark of 434 that pretty much everyone expected would stand for years. As is history's way, it was obliterated within four hours.
In deference to this phenomenal output, the game was quickly dubbed 'the greatest one-dayer ever played', an accolade the scoresheet suggests is entirely fitting. The reality, from my press box seat on the fourth tier of the towering southern grandstand, was that it all became a bit of a yawn. A rock-hard pitch, flint-dry conditions, a reduced playing arena and even thinner atmosphere at altitude conspired to ensure that the ball flew laughable distances every time a batsman fearlessly thrust his front leg down the track and swung with impunity through, or across, the line. With the ball as likely to deviate off the straight as it was to be impeded by a fielder, the match had surrendered all pretence of a contest well before South Africa snuck home with a delivery to spare. From the outset, the bowlers were never part of the game. It was on this same inequitable premise that the Twenty20 concept was to conquer the cricket world.
In truth, the story didn't really require words, as it could be adequately told through a selection of numbers. Most compellingly the eighty-seven fours and twenty-seven sixes dotted throughout the day's hundred overs. This was fortunate because, for the first time in almost twenty years as a working journalist, I failed to hit a deadline. Even though I had spent hours trawling Sandton Mall for replacement cables, communications software and even a South African-issue mobile phone, it all counted for nothing when it most mattered. My new communications devices proved as useless as the Factory-issued hardware I had initially been sent abroad with. I then spent forty-five torturous minutes at the close of Australia's innings trying to get my words to Sydney using my locally sourced technology. History had been made but, as the second-edition presses rolled and I cussedly laid the blame at the foot of the tools I worked with and even for, it didn't make the paper. Once again I was unable to fathom why an organisation that spent such vast sums sending a reporter on a global assignment, as was regularly pointed out, would not make a commensurate investment in technology that allowed the reporter to adequately perform their principal task. Heated phone calls between me, the technicians and late-night sub-editors then bounced back and forth across the Indian Ocean. But the one I dreaded most didn't arrive until the morning's small hours, as my boss headed into the Sydney office to begin the day at morning conference.
'That was unbelievable last night,' cooed a voice that betrayed awe more than fury. 'We need to be all over it today. Reaction pieces from everyone we can get. Where that effort compares with others in one-day history. Details on how it was planned and executed. Graphics on how the day panned out...'
I confirmed that's what had occupied me since I returned, crestfallen, to my hotel where reliable wireless internet welcomed me. And then I braced myself for a bollocking that never arrived.
'That's great,' the voice enthused. 'I'll call you back after morning conference to let you know what else we'll need.'
'Oh, by the way,' came the final observation, as I visibly flinched. 'How close did South Africa get in their chase?'
Suddenly, I didn't feel quite so far from the pace.
The start of the Test series coincided neatly with the opening of the 2006 Commonwealth Games in Melbourne, which, in turn, meant reduced space and demand for cricket stories in the paper. It also meant the yoke was partially lifted, and the workday routine of strong coffee and room service club sandwiches was replaced by more rewarding ventures, such as a ferry ride across Table Bay to Robben Island, where visiting the site of Nelson Mandela's eighteen-year incarceration put any grievances I held about confined typing stints in swank hotel rooms into perspective. It also led, as the fluff y cumulus 'table cloth' draped itself over flat-topped Table Mountain during the return ride, to a recklessly ambitious pledge among a few misguided journalists to scale Cape Town's omnipresent attraction the next day.
The trek had been known to claim the lives of unfit, under-prepared hikers, and I comfortably fitted those criteria. Setting out from a roadside stop one-third of the way up the mountain's northern flank, the first half-hour was unmitigated agony, and from there it quickly got worse. The searing pain in my quivering thighs and knotted calves was useful only to mask the burning in my chest, and the worrying throb inside my skull — symptoms that forced me to stop every fifty steps or so and stand bent over, with hands on knees, pondering how long I would have to lay sprawled on the scree path before paramedics arrived to cover me in Alfoil.
Every time I righted myself, I could see my far more energetic colleagues fading further into Platteklip Gorge above me. I regretted that my exhaustive preparation for this stunt had not extended to purchasing a bottle of water. And when a couple of barely panting Dutch pensioners breezed past during one of my rehab stints, I contemplated asking them to tell my fellow trekkers that I had strategically withdrawn; I figured I could at least manage the descent, if only by falling. However, by the time I found sufficient breath to form a sentence, they too were disappearing into the rocky canyon, and the affront of being shown up by a pair of septuagenarians in wooden hiking shoes compelled me to push on. After almost two hours of vertical hell, I staggered onto the patio that surrounds the mountain-top café, badly in need of hydration and counselling. As I wobbled my way to the rear of the cafeteria queue, I received a wave and a smile from Michael Kasprowicz, contrastingly dapper in immaculate T-shirt, jeans and shades, camped at the front of the line. He, along with Brett Lee and Shaun Tait, had taken the cable-car to the top, allowing them to enjoy the panoramic view unimpeded by the shadow of death.
'You look like you need a drink, buddy,' Kasprowicz called, prompting the entire queue to turn and take note of the sweating, shaking, gibbering cardiac-seizure-in-waiting at the back. I could only nod, before collapsing onto one of the low stone walls that snake around the summit. Minutes later, Kasprowicz appeared, triumphantly brandishing a large glass of beer that he thrust into my tremulous hand. I accepted it, along with his logic that it represented a far more suitable match for my capabilities than did physical exertion.
In the days leading into the first Test in Cape Town, South Africa's coach, Mickey Arthur, asked the Newlands curator to prepare a seamer-friendly pitch for fear of what damage Shane Warne might inflict on his batsmen given a dry surface. The groundsman duly followed orders, and Stuart Clark, in his Test debut, accepted the gift by happily scything through the home team twice with his seamers to secure an Australian win inside three days. The Cape Town result was repeated at Durban, albeit in twice as much time. When South Africa's final wicket fell late on the fifth day at Kingsmead, every Australian fielder stood clustered around the batsman — partly to apply maximum pressure and hasten the end, but also because it was so close to dusk that the tourists remained mindful of the peril of being separated from a group anywhere in Durban after dark.
Johannesburg, site of the final Test, was no safer. Indeed, any jurisdiction that permits drivers to 'ignore a robot' — or drive unpenalised through a red traffic light, as the outside world knows it — if they feel their personal safety is legitimately in peril has admitted it's given up on solving its serious crime problem. And with the same two teams that had waged battle twenty times over the preceding four months preparing for the last stanza of a series already decided, inspiration among the touring press sat about as low as it was within South Africa's dressing room, where lament had quickly replaced the euphoria of the Wanderers' miracle. Record books were scoured for some sort of tenuous news hook on which to hang one final preview article and, thankfully, they showed Justin Langer was set to play his hundredth Test. Even better news for those of us needing help to frame a sentence, let alone a fresh idea, Langer had long been one of cricket's more thoughtful and engaging characters.
Over the course of a dozen years, from the time we shared our debut Test in vastly differing roles in a famous match against the West Indies in Adelaide, Langer seemed to be forever scrabbling to justify his place. If not to selectors and teammates then certainly to critics. Perhaps because, in a sport that unashamedly worships aesthetes and purists, Langer was a scrapper, as well as a contradiction. Committed to his trade beyond the point of obsession, he was also a fanatical pugilist, who lovingly tended his roses at home, and whose bent for philosophy as well as overt patriotism made him an oddball hybrid of Zen Buddhism and Rocky Balboa.
As Australia's 2005 Ashes campaign lurched fully into crisis in Nottingham, I was approached to pen an appraisal of what ailed the tourists, from an Australian perspective, for publication in the following morning's edition of The Times. The hastily drafted article outlined a raft of shortcomings in the Australians' preparation, in their acumen, and in their willingness to honestly self-critique. It concluded that the only area in which they had excelled was in blaming their failings on anyone, indeed everyone, bar themselves. The assessment was deliberately caustic, in the knowledge that few, if any, members of Ricky Ponting's team would read an English newspaper. Certainly not one as venerable as The Times. But on the final morning of the Test, I emerged from my hotel room bound for the breakfast room at the same moment the opening batsman in the adjoining room was headed for the team bus.
'Saw your piece in The Times this morning,' Langer said as he caught me up in the corridor. He glanced around furtively to satisfy himself nobody was peeking through partially opened doors, or eavesdropping near the lift well.
'Don't let anyone know I told you this — and if you do I'll deny it — but I agree. Absolutely. You got it spot on.' He patted me twice on the shoulder and then slipped into a waiting lift.
He was no less candid in the days before his hundredth Test, charting a way past the standard 'tell us your career highlight/lowlight/, most admired/disliked opponent' questions to articulate the toll a career in the uncompromising world of professional sport can take on an individual's character.
'Maybe ten or twelve years of international cricket makes you a bit hard,' he reflected, as he lounged on a two-seater settee in the Australians' team room at the Sandton hotel. 'To play a hundred Test matches you've got to be hard mentally, so you probably have a few less emotions and you sometimes feel it around your family and friends. I got so caught up in the outcomes, so fiercely determined to do well that I forgot about the most important thing, which was the relaxing.'
As it turned out, his milestone match was, if not his most forgettable, then certainly his least remembered. Cracked by a frightful blow on the back of the skull as he attempted to evade the first ball he faced, Langer withdrew from the field with severe concussion and spent most of the next three days in his hotel room with curtains drawn and watched over by his parents, who had flown from Perth expecting a quite different occasion. He returned to Wanderers on the final morning, when Australia's last two fit batsmen were at the crease, needing twenty runs for a clean-sweep win.
Under strict medical orders not to take the field again, Langer decided he could not, in good conscience, stand idly if groggily by and watch his team narrowly defeated without at least presenting himself for duty. And so, with his teammates transfixed as Lee and Kasprowicz once again edged their way towards unlikely success, Langer silently padded up and appeared at the rear of the dressing room, like Ned Kelly staggering out of the morning mist and gunsmoke that enshrouded the Glenrowan Inn. Like the outlaw's, his was a purely symbolic act. The win was achieved without him, and Ponting was saved the unpleasantness of physically restraining his close mate from risking his long-term health for the sake of a cricket game.
The final night in Johannesburg marked both the end of a slog and the impending dawn of an even tougher one. A month in Bangladesh, the final act in a production that had spanned the best part of a year, excited neither players nor media. So, to dull the thoughts of the workload ahead, those of us pushing on to the Islamic republic, accompanied by others in the touring media party preparing to head home, chose to hit the town. Or the township, as it transpired. Invited by a young United Cricket Board of South Africa employee to join his family for dinner at their Soweto home, we were treated like visiting celebrities and bestowed with gifts of grilled chicken, pasta, salads and homemade cakes, the likes of which one never sees on room service menus. Just as heart-warming were the tales of township life, and the front-row accounts of the transformation it had undergone in the decade or so since apartheid was dismantled.
Some of us had undertaken a package tour of Soweto earlier in our stay, which offered an airbrushed itinerary that incorporated sites pivotal in the 1976 uprising, as well as powerful monuments to the struggle — the Hector Pieterson Museum, the homes of Mandela and Desmond Tutu, and freshly painted community facilities. But we were curious to see more, so we rustled together a few rand and convinced our driver to take us deeper into the heart of Orlando East, one of the thirty or more settlements that made up the South-West Township. It revealed a starkly different picture. Galvanised iron shacks thrown together as tightly as any Indian slum. The skeletons of inner-spring mattresses that served as front fences. Tardis-like portaloos in communal yards as a nod to first-world amenities. Children, barefoot and sporting blinding smiles, played on the dirt streets. Adults stared watchfully from behind wrought ironwork that reinforced their homes' tiny front windows.
At an impromptu market, a man with a tomahawk hacked flesh from one of a collection of goats' heads, lifted fresh from a blood-soaked chopping block. A pile of other indeterminate body parts lay spread out on a plastic sheet stretched over the dusty ground awaiting the arrival of discerning customers. Nearby, under the protection of a tarpaulin stretched between the branches of a roadside tree, a barber plied his trade. Makeshift stalls dispensed the latest local harvest — ears of corn, ripe mangoes, fresh-cut and shallow-fried potato chips. The recurrent feature of most of these enduring scenes was the unbridled warmth and generosity exuded by almost everyone we met. It led us to question our own preconceptions, as well as Soweto's well-known reputation for violence and crime.
Our return visit, on the tour's final evening, yielded an even more revealing glimpse of the true South Africa. After dinner, we visited our young host's favourite bar, deep in a part of Soweto we could never hope to find again. Five of us, packed into his two-door SUV, pulled up outside the single-storey shop front, alongside a collection of sensible four-cylinder vehicles, which indicated a sagacious clientele. When we entered the front room, with its bare concrete floor, basic laminated tables and unadorned bar, the fifty or so patrons stared in stunned silence.
It provided a beginner's guide to how so many black South Africans might have felt for so long as outcasts in their own country. Like a scene from a Wild West saloon, conversation, music and time all stopped until the agitated bar manager bustled from behind the counter and guided us into a windowless back room that housed a handful of uncovered tables and a wall-mounted television showing a European football game. We were told it would be best for all if we stayed put until he gauged the regulars' mood. We remained in our private quarters for half an hour, the only interaction with the locals being occasional visits from the barman hauling a galvanised metal bucket filled with ice and stubbies of beer. Eventually, he poked his head through the doorway and told us it was okay to emerge.
Initially, we were treated with suspicion, and from a safe distance. But curiosity soon replaced misgiving, once word spread that we were Australians bearing nothing more provocative than an unhealthy interest in the obscure sport of cricket. The young crowd was far more interested in football, and the World Cup that was bound for southern Africa in four years' time. One bold young girl, who introduced herself as Patience, invited all of us to be special guests at the coming weekend's youth group prayer retreat. She found our excuse, that we would be in the Islamic Republic of Bangladesh, unconvincingly and unnecessarily elaborate.
We did, however, accept a welcome offer to head to a neighbourhood dance party, happening a few kilometres away in another unlabelled part of Soweto. The wisdom of a quartet of white faces wandering into a suburban street event post-midnight, where every other patron was the colour of the hour, was blithely glossed over until we reached a bank of trestle tables that led to the entrance gate. There, we confronted a sign hung between the lengths of cyclone wire enclosing a barely lit open space housing a stage, several drinks stalls, and a row of portable toilets. The banner read simply: 'This is a Community Event. Please Respect it by Leaving your Weapons at Home.'
The only way we could have been more conspicuous was if we chose to flaunt our Caucasian dance prowess. As it was, we simply stood around and got used to being stared at. The only people who approached us were inquisitive rather than hostile. Most merely smiled shyly. One or two even took discreet photos. By 4 a.m. we had seen enough precociously talented young local dancers and musicians to feel woefully inadequate as well as unmistakably alien, and we returned to our hotel through the deserted mean streets of central Johannesburg. During the trip, our host repeatedly reassured us we were safe in his car. But his nervous obsession with checking his mirrors, locking all doors, and staying as close as practical to the centre of main roads — while also pushing carefully through intersections where the robots glowed ruby — suggested his bravado was thoughtfully manufactured for our delicate peace of mind.
#
# Bangladesh, April 2006
Shane Warne had divested himself of his official travel blazer and corporate tie, and was stuffing them into the locker above his business-class seat as I hauled aboard our Dubai-bound flight.
'Looking forward to Bangladesh, Rambo?' he boomed, more to irritate his already grumpy teammates than pose a genuine query.
'I hear our hotel's a real cracker,' he continued as I squeezed past. 'More like a resort.'
Even though the Bangladesh itinerary had been pared to its absolute minimum — a couple of Tests, three one-dayers and nothing either side or in between — it still failed to register anything other than annoyance among most members of the touring party. Even my previous enthusiasm for the subcontinent had been tempered by tiredness and the knowledge that, as the final leg of a prolonged stint on the road, it would prove tough-going. So as the travelling Australian press contingent — myself and snapper Hamish Blair — settled into our seats set so far back as to be beneath the jet's tail fin, we immediately dispensed with another of the intractable rules of touring life. The one that decrees alcohol shouldn't be consumed beyond a tipple during work travel, even if your employer deems air miles are not to be mistaken for hard yards. Instead, we decided eight hours of gin and tonic was essential preparation for whatever awaited us in the Ganges — Brahmaputra delta. Shortly before our late-night arrival in the Emirate, we hazily decided to sneak in one final round. Our stewardess disagreed, suggesting we would be better served organising ourselves into some sort of condition for disembarkation. Besides, she added in a flat Australian accent, we had successfully drained the rear galley of gin.
'But we're on our way to Bangladesh,' Hamish slurred, in a pitch that hovered between desperate and plain drunk. She remained unmoved.
'For a month,' he added plaintively.
She looked, horror-struck, into his glazed eyes, then at me, before leaning forward to whisper: 'Oh you poor bastards, I'll grab a bottle from the front.'
With just fifteen minutes to make our connecting flight, and a further four hours of air travel in which to try and sober up, I fronted immigration at Dhaka's Zhia International Airport like someone who should be denied entry on appearance, irrespective of my paperwork's legitimacy. As the players were whisked to a waiting bus, I stood, exhausted, dishevelled and stinkingly hungover in the stifling arrivals queue otherwise made up of Arab, Russian and Indian businessmen, all dressed like models from a cut-price fashion catalogue.
I fingered the $US10 notes turning rapidly soggy in my pocket, and told myself anyone caught trying to sneak into Bangladesh using illegal documents was more likely to be subjected to psychological evaluation than imprisonment. That logic was abandoned when the moustachioed passport policeman scrutinising my bona fides summoned his supervisor. Despite invoking the name of the cricket team, producing my dog-eared letter of commendation, and adopting the haughty air, if not the outward look, of an influential first-world journalist, there was no way they were going to allow a solitary overseas visitor to sneak illegally into a country that millions would risk their last breath to leave.
Lengthy discussions among gangs of stony-faced uniformed men ensued, punctuated by even longer bursts of no activity whatsoever. I waited and sweated, slumped against a concrete wall, and eventually sprawled out on the floor. Unsure if deportation would land me at home in Melbourne, in Dubai, or back in South Africa, I resorted to the only viable stunt short of hostage taking. With laptop unpacked and a restive audience of Bengali bureaucrats watching on, I began animatedly hammering at the keyboard as if composing an urgent memo. A hastily convened conference followed, after which the most senior officer squatted next to me and cautiously inquired what on earth I was doing.
'Writing a story for my newspaper back in Australia,' I answered, as frostily as the sticky air would allow.
'Big newspaper. Many readers. All over the world. I'm writing that people should never come to Bangladesh. Visitors not welcome.' The fact he did not burst out laughing confirmed my hunch that none of my captors knew of my publication, much less its limited readership and influence. But my punt on them at least understanding the ramifications of adverse global media coverage paid off when my passport was returned without explanation and I was waved urgently through to where my suitcase, and Bangladesh, awaited.
In the back seat of a small sedan with busted suspension that proclaimed itself a taxi, I remained awake due to the driver's uncanny ability to hit potholes on the heavily pitted roadway whenever I began to doze, thereby slamming my head against the semi-opaque window, which was not quite dirty enough to block out affronting scenes of daily Dhaka life. People bathed in filthy waist-deep puddles. Steep roadside gutters, designed to cope with the regular flood surges, stood clogged with limbless beggars beseeching alms from passers-by. Children and mange-ridden dogs picked hungrily through piles of rotting debris, and entire communities huddled beneath sheets of plastic stretched over abandoned building sites. Not that anyone in the honking, formless traffic snarl gave a second glance. These were curiosities only to the unaccustomed eye.
Just taking it in required energy I simply couldn't summon. The lack of sleep, the excess of booze, the airport fracas and the subcontinent's overwhelming suffocation meant I couldn't wait to get to my hotel room. Until I got to my hotel room. The smell that assailed me on opening the door was mouldering cardboard with undertones of dank pet. I instantly regretted that my expansive list of pre-departure inoculations had not included kennel cough.
The view from the third floor told me that, even if the grime-coated windows could be forced open, any breeze they admitted would only compound my suffering. I looked out on a pair of deserted swimming pools, ringed by equally under-used banks of sun lounges. High-backed cane chairs and glass-topped tables sat carefully arranged but just as abandoned beneath a couple of concrete colonnades, the roofs of which hosted thriving plots of spindly weeds. Beyond the hotel's boundary, marked by a row of potted palms, lay a soupy black swamp.
Dhaka's main sporting venue, the Bangabandhu National Stadium, sat barely five kilometres from our hotel. It was also, during the Australian Test team's historic first visit, out of action because it was hosting the inaugural Asian Football Confederation Cup. The cricket was therefore scheduled for the revamped Narayanganj Osmani Stadium at Fatullah, twenty kilometres south of central Dhaka as the vulture flies. Unfortunately, travelling that distance through Bangladeshi traffic was as straightforward as walking diametrically across Place de l'Etoile. Trucks, buses, motorised and pedal rickshaws, and barefooted blokes hauling wooden carts all competed for precious little road space. And all of them, save for the brave foot traffic, did so with horns habitually blaring, as if honking would magically open up a hole in the mayhem.
To negotiate this twice-daily trauma, Hamish and I enlisted the services of Jalal, a wise and unflappable taxi driver of many years but considerably fewer words. Jalal also sported an auxiliary thumb, complete with nail, jutting from just below the bottom joint of the first digit on his right hand. In some cultures, this is considered extremely lucky. On the desperate streets of downtown Dhaka, where the full range of human disfigurement is forever in your face, it rated barely a sideways look.
No sooner would our vehicle stop at choked city intersections than it was besieged by harrowing figures that emerged from road's edge. Like Munch's discarded preliminary drafts for The Scream, they draped themselves across the car, scratched at the windows, and pushed their most ghastly deformities up against the glass in a despairing quest for cash. Australia's High Commissioner to Bangladesh subsequently explained that the most conspicuous of the beggars haunting Dhaka's main thoroughfares were manipulated by pimps who pocketed a bulk of any forthcoming charity. Not that it made the experience any less confronting.
We came to recognise the leads in this macabre cast. A man propped up by a set of bamboo crutches swung his malformed legs repeatedly against the passenger side doors. A skeletal woman draped in a black shroud tapped her yellowing talons on the window, then mimed pained eating motions. Her companion, of indeterminate age and gender with an enormous grey growth covering the place the left eye should have been, pressed the fleshy lump hard up against the glass while making a low, wailing sound. After several days of this routine, it became clear this person was blind and was led into the becalmed traffic by the emaciated woman. Throughout this gruesome pantomime, Jalal maintained a monastic silence, staring fixedly ahead and passing neither comment nor judgement.
Although an elevated bus and a police escort spared the players these glimpses of reality, their enthusiasm for the assignment was only dwindling further. Still suffering the effects of the taxing South African schedule and subsequent long-haul travel, their pre-Test training session was little more than a familiarisation visit and gave the impression that merely showing up would suffice for victory. Memories of Cardiff 2005 apparently endured for the home team only. The Australian squad's sole focus was the unprecedented five-month break that beckoned after Bangladesh.
Their unrest was heightened by the stringent security arrangements that turned the hotel into a virtual barracks, and left most of its guests feeling they were under house arrest. Armed police guarded all entrances, and bomb squads swept every approaching vehicle. A police command post was set up in the foyer, and everyone entering the lobby was subjected to airport-style screening. But none of those measures could stop an assailant already embedded. During the Australians' final pre-Test strategy meeting, the doors of their team room swung open and a young man in heavily starched housekeeping tunic barged in brandishing a covered silver serving dish. His eyes flashed about the room, bringing planning to a halt and paranoia to a spike.
'Mister Varraneh?' he said, his head twitching from one panic-etched face to the next. 'Mister Varraneh?' Only when he was challenged and disarmed by the team's security officer did it emerge he bore nothing more lethal than the toasted cheese sandwich Warne had forgotten he ordered an hour earlier.
More valid fears surfaced during the Test. Members of Bangladesh's elite armed response unit, heavily muscled young men clad in their distinctive livery of black combat gear and ebony bandanas, maintained an intimidating presence throughout the Fatullah Stadium. And during a quiet moment in the game, someone in the Australian dressing room noticed that one of the marksmen had lifted his high-powered rifle to his shoulder and was training it on an unidentified player in the middle. Amid wide-eyed terror, the security man again sprang into action, this time throwing himself at the would-be assassin and forcing him to drop his weapon. The indignant officer was then grilled, through an interpreter, as to his murderous intentions, only to reveal he had become so enthralled by the game that he employed the gun's telescopic sight to gain a clearer view.
Not all local law enforcement officers were so phlegmatic. The most hectic sections of Dhaka's hopelessly overpopulated road system were controlled by traffic police armed with, and not reluctant to use, whistles and thick cane lathis. The whistles alerted inattentive drivers to the perils of ignoring instructions. The lathis were that peril. Buses, trucks, family cars, rickshaws and bicycles — none were exempt from a violent crack across a rear panel, or a shoulderblade, if the traffic enforcer felt the urge.
It was the commuting that proved as draining as any element of the maddeningly long days. The early and rapid onset of subcontinental dusk meant play began at 9 a.m., which required a hotel departure before 7 a.m. An hour considered so unholy by the kitchen staff they obligingly packed little cardboard boxes of breakfast treats — sweet buns, hard-boiled eggs, peelable fruit and bottled water — for players, officials and press to eat while in transit. We always grabbed a couple of spares to share with our new friends, who eagerly awaited our arrival at various city intersections. The return journey was just as painstaking, though more productive because it was spent transcribing that evening's media conferences and filing story updates, through the South African phone that worked far more effectively in Dhaka traffic than anywhere in its country of purchase. If only other essentials were so reliable.
Electricity supplies were as capricious as expected in a resource-poor nation of 150 million that sits, like a flightless duck, in the middle of the world's largest river delta system. Power to the hotel would regularly snap off, then roar back into life just as the absence of air conditioning drove guests gasping out to the mosquito-ridden pool deck. But the darkness that greeted us after day three at Fatullah suggested a far more substantial black-out. Every window in the compound, save for the soft glow of candle light coming from the lobby, portrayed a depressing blackness. Front door security procedures stretched no further than a torch beam in the face of arrivals to ascertain if they were friend or faux. The Australians' mood, as gloomy as the spookily silent hotel due to their parlous position in the Test match, bordered on outright hostility when they were told that a limited room service menu was the only foreseeable dinner option. That was quickly ruled an unacceptable risk by the team physiotherapist, who graphically explained to all of us the dangers that lurked in eating unrefrigerated under-cooked Bangladeshi food.
After groping my way up the fusty stairwell, I stood at my window contemplating the glamour of touring life and watching a crowd of shadowy figures slowly assemble around the outdoor settings below. I discerned the telltale frames of several cricketers and, by the time I joined the gathering, disgruntlement at their predicament and their environment threatened to spill over into a full-scale mutiny. In truth, the only one of us with a legitimate grievance was Stuart MacGill, who had earlier received tragic news about a friend in Australia.
MacGill made little effort to hide his distaste for the blokey, boofhead culture that bonds male sporting outfits. Once, as twelfth man in a Test match outside Australia, he pointedly sat with his back to the game while reading a book. On a previous tour to the subcontinent, instead of baked beans and Vegemite, MacGill packed an emergency stash of olives, lavash bread and a nicely rounded Rhône Valley syrah, or suchlike. And he was virtually alone among international cricketers in often seeking out the company of journalists for a meal or a drink, believing they offered a fresh, if not especially incisive, take on the world.
On this night, as he shared a table in the dark with Hamish and me, the initial conversation centred on one of his pet subjects — 1980s pop music. I knew from a previous encounter in a Brisbane hotel that I was dangerously out of my league. On that occasion, I had foolishly reeled off a list of song titles dredged from the catacombs of my memory, and challenged him to name the even more obscure artists responsible for them. He dismissed each poser with the same gleeful disdain he showed for bogan rituals. The Icicle Works. Netherworld Dancing Toys. The Young Homebuyers. Cowed in defeat, I retreated to my hotel room where, minutes later, a text message lit up my phone.
'Nice try, but that's just a taste of what's in store,' MacGill taunted. 'You're in the big league now. And that was only ROUND ONE.'
Scarred by that experience, I shifted poolside talk to the shop that Hamish and I had found in Dhaka's most upmarket mall that sold freshly pirated DVDs for $US1 a copy, and the collective stash of duty-free grog we had stockpiled on our way out of Johannesburg, in case of emergency. We agreed that moment was now upon us, and promptly adjourned to Hamish's room to watch bootlegged movies on his long-life battery-run laptop. And to drown another challenging day in hard liquor mixed with room-temperature soft drinks.
Over the next six hours, the photographer and I knocked a sizeable dent in our jumbo bottle of Tanqueray Ten, while the leg-spinner performed an even more impressive demolition of his bourbon flagon. We barely noticed the electricity's return around 10 p.m., and when the wee hours arrived talk had turned to the Test, in which one of us would be playing a key role just a few hours later.
'I've written that Bangladesh is the only team that can win it from here,' I announced, with a conceit soaked in juniper juice. 'They're already 280 in front, got five second-innings wickets in hand, and only need to make another seventy or so then you blokes are stuffed. You've got no choice but to chase whatever target they set, 'cos if you play for a draw, you'll get pilloried by blokes like me. And if you go after the runs the way you batted in the first innings, you'll get bowled out.'
I mentally congratulated myself on prosecuting a case so adequately, given our level of inebriation.
'You're an idiot,' MacGill laughed, foreshadowing a rebuttal born more of unflappable self-belief than arrogance. 'We'll win this, and the stuff you've written will make you look like a goose. It's a psychological battle from here, and the Banglas will be thinking how well they've done to get into this position. That'll soon morph into a fear of squandering their big chance.
'You see, being in front is new to them, and you need mental strength to push home that sort of advantage. As soon as they start doubting their ability to pull it off, they'll fall over. It's like a staring contest. And we know what it takes to make the other mob blink.'
With that, he lurched off into the night, leaving me feeling more than a little queasy about what had already rolled off presses around Australia under my name. That thought continued to nag, even through throbbing head pain, as Jalal inched us towards Fatullah not much later in the morning. My only solace came from the knowledge that I did not have to bowl for my country, in draining humidity, at the crucial stage of a Test match.
As it turned out, neither did MacGill. The Bangladeshis more than blinked. They flat-out panicked and lost their final five wickets for twenty-four runs in less than an hour. That left the Australians almost two full days to score a touch over 300, against nervous bowlers and an opponent in shock at having meekly surrendered such an unassailable position. MacGill's forecast win arrived, for the loss of seven wickets, soon after lunch on the final day.
When I saw him in the lobby, as I queued to check out on Good Friday morning, he simply winked and kept walking. I was too tired to feel chastened, having worked through until 2 a.m. to have the full Test wash-up filed before our mid-morning flight to Chittagong, only to receive a 6.45 a.m. call from the boss suggesting we take an alternative tack. Which required most of it be rewritten. The bits that couldn't be finished in the back of Jalal's taxi were completed, fittingly given the quality of the product, in a foul public toilet while waiting to board a plane to Bangladesh's second-largest city.
Chittagong might be the gateway to the world's longest stretch of natural sandy beach, but the sub-Himalayan Riviera it ain't. Our drive into the centre of town from the airport, where a bold mural tells of the brutal revolutionary struggle that delivered an independent Bangladesh out of East Pakistan, carried us along the west bank of the Karnaphuli River, and past oil tankers anchored just metres from a sticky black shoreline. Wedged between the inky water and the narrow coastal road were makeshift huts, thrown together from whatever building scraps lay nearby — sheets of steel and corrugated iron, bamboo poles and palm fronds.
Amid the poverty and squalor, the Peninsula Hotel was an unexpected surprise, with its newly appointed rooms and even a hand-painted hard-boiled egg decorated in Easter patterns placed outside each guest's door. Although it was lunchtime, my only interest was sleep, and I flopped onto the bed just as a bolt of pain shot from the base of my spine to the bottom of my skull. It was accompanied by a sound something like a watermelon being lobbed on top of a wardrobe.
When feeling returned to my upper body, I peeled back the bedding to find a thin layer of coarse brown hair loosely woven into a mat, a few centimetres in thickness. Reception staff seemed suspiciously prepared when I phoned to report the theft of my mattress, and they cheerily guaranteed I would find the coconut fibre replacement just as comfortable. I abandoned all notions of a nap and opted instead for a stroll around my new neighbourhood. This was also cut short when I was accosted by a dirt-encased man wearing nothing but a pair of black flip-flops, several strands of high-tension wire around his throat, and a crazed grin. By evening, the sunset lent a gentle orange haze to the skyline. A muezzin's call to prayer wafted mellifluously across the city, and flickering specks of golden light stretched all the way out to the void that was the Bay of Bengal. At that moment, I could stand with eyes closed and imagine I was somewhere exotic and luxurious. Upon lying down, it was painfully clear I was still in Chittagong.
The port city of three million is best known as home to the world's biggest shipbreaking operation. Each year, 100,000-tonne foreign-registered steel giants are driven at full tilt onto a stretch of debris-strewn coast, where they are picked apart by crews of poorly paid, under-equipped workers. This enterprise, I was reliably told, remained strictly off-limits to prying foreigners following concerns raised by Amnesty International about unacceptable death tolls at the site, and the environmental damage it wrought. But Chittagong was soon to gain additional notoriety.
On the opening morning of the second Test, an elderly newspaper photographer from the Bengali daily Prothom Alo instructed his taxi driver to ferry him as close as possible to the ground's entrance gates, to lessen the distance he had to lug his heavy camera equipment. This apparently breached the Chittagong police's security protocols and, despite him waving valid media accreditation and an authorised parking permit, the photographer was thrown to the ground, kicked, punched and belted with the butt of a police rifle. Not surprisingly, his Bangladeshi press colleagues felt this treatment a touch heavy-handed and, as players from both teams completed their pre-match warm-ups to the teeth-gnashing strains of the national cricket anthem ('Bungladeeesh, Bungladeeesh, Bungla-deeeeeeesh'), the local media staged a protest sit-in alongside the Test pitch.
A truce was eventually brokered, and the match began ten minutes late. But when the still-aggrieved journalists and photographers confronted senior police during the lunch break and demanded the offending officers be stood down and an apology issued, all civility was abandoned. The armed and angry police laid siege to the defenceless media pack, and the grass between the press box and the boundary rope became the scene of a rolling brawl in which around fifty members of the fourth estate were hit with fists, boots, lathis and rifles. One television station employee suffered such severe head injuries he was carried unconscious from the field and flown to hospital in Dhaka, where he remained in an induced coma for days.
Fearing for their lives, the remaining local media representatives sprinted the length of the field and stormed the players' pavilion. Both teams, oblivious to the brutality at the far end, were taking lunch when the gang charged through the dining room and barricaded themselves into a small office that had been occupied by the match referee, Jeff Crowe. Calm was eventually restored, and play resumed. But the Bangladesh Sports Journalists Association voted to boycott all further coverage of the Test. And what should have been a triumphant celebration for Chittagong became a showpiece of international embarrassment.
The violent outburst that marred the next day was more arbitrary, but no less devastating. Shortly before lunch, the defiant silence of the all-but-empty press box was broken by a bellicose rumble from the north. The sky turned the colour of surrounding ditch water and the scattering of locals among the small crowd dashed for more substantial shelter minutes before a mini-typhoon unleashed itself on Chittagong's Divisional Stadium.
Blinding rain and squalls that blew in several directions at once turned the terrace shelters, lovingly built from bamboo scaffolding and topped by festive swathes of striped bunting, into twisted pieces of abstract sculpture. Metal name plates were torn from the flimsy scoreboard and flung like playing cards across the flooded outfield, while ground staff were tossed about like paratroopers caught in a jet stream as they tried to lay billowing protective covers over the pitch. The event itself lasted scarcely five minutes but put paid to the day's play. When we returned, under cloudless skies the following morning, no evidence of the destruction could be seen. The colourful canopies had been rebuilt. The scoreboard had been reassembled, in nearly correct configuration. And the pitch and outfield appeared as pristine as they were on day one. Bangladeshis' resilience and spirit, hewn from living in nature's tantrum room, regularly rises, shiningly, above the nation's ferment of deprivation and disadvantage.
These dual calamities were then rendered conventional by the bizarre event for which the second Test remains known. Sent out to protect Australia's true batsmen when a wicket fell late on the first evening, Jason Gillespie weathered the tempest to be unbeaten on twenty-eight after day two. At the close of the next day, he had posted an unprecedented and inconceivable century. And when Ponting declared his team's innings closed midway through day four, the man who described himself 'a walking defensive shot' was not out 201. It assured him a noteworthy place in cricket's voluminous records and at trivia nights as the only nightwatchman in 130 years of Test matches to score a double century.
'It's a fairytale really,' Gillespie reflected that evening, already foreseeing he would never again play for his country. 'Hansel and Gretel, and Dizzy's double-hundred are one and the same.'
Hope that the Test's final day, with Bangladesh four wickets down and 200 short of forcing Australia back to the crease, would be wrapped up clinically and without incident was doused before we left the hotel. As we waited for our commissioned driver, concierge staff told us no transport was available for anyone other than teams and to officials assigned police escorts because of a snap general strike across Chittagong. Nobody could adequately explain why it was called, other than to point out that they were a regular occurrence. And that no driver was prepared to flout the ban for fear of being attacked by militant gangs known to hurl rocks and bricks at any vehicles on the road, and drag occupants out for a savage beating.
Predictably, the impasse could only be broken with a large wad of local currency, production of which led to a brave chauffeur magically appearing in his dented van. Throughout the ten-kilometre drive along empty roads, as we all scoured side streets and doorways like an armoured car patrol in Baghdad's red zone, a managerial voice sneering 'cricket tours' and 'five-star hotel pools' floated back to me as a repressed memory. That taunt returned even louder as our driver bundled us out at the stadium and, as he prepared to speed off, assured us we had no chance of securing a ride back to the hotel at day's end.
After Australia duly achieved its clean sweep, media conferences were completed and the players were safely returned to our accommodation, I approached the affable but ineffectual Bangladesh Cricket Board media liaison officer who happily confirmed that those members of the press who had not bailed out of the game on day one needed to organise their own escape through the danger. I was about to rehash my airport threats about global coverage and international shame when it dawned on me that nothing I wrote or said could be more damning than what already seemed to plague Chittagong. So I slumped, more defeated than distraught, against the front tyre of the nicest vehicle at the ground and began transcribing interviews under the blazing sun while silently hoping for some benevolent soul to return to the car and offer me a lift. I was more excited than at any previous moment of our tour when the match umpires and referee appeared to claim the van that acted as my backrest. They laughed long at my plight but agreed to ferry me back through the combat zone. No sooner had I burst into the apparent safety of the hotel lobby than I ran into Michael Hussey, whose glass-overflowing positivism helped ease my truculence.
'You coming to tonight's party?' he asked, referring to the post-match players' celebration that had been foregone amid the haste to flee the stadium, and was to be reconvened around the hotel's rooftop swimming pool later in the afternoon. It was the equivalent of the dressing-room bash from which journalists were perennially and explicitly barred.
Wary that this was an unsanctioned invitation, I told him it was unlikely. But as I stewed over the uncomfortable prospect of yet another night propped on the plywood watching illegal movies, I decided to check the offer's authenticity. The team manager sounded surprised, but said he would run it past several senior players. An hour later, I received a call to say Australian cricket's equivalent of a papal conclave had returned a verdict, and I was in.
This was no lavish, long table dinner. Just a dozen blokes in cargo shorts, casual T-shirts, and, for the sentimental few, baggy green Test caps. They sat on plastic stackable chairs strewn around a small kidney-shaped pool that had been drained of water to reduce the mosquito problem and the potential for mishaps. The ambience blared through Warne's MP3 dock. INXS, Noiseworks, Hunters and Collectors. The overworked anthems of Australia's sporting monoculture. They drowned out the traffic noise from fifteen storeys below, and cans of Australian beer smuggled in courtesy of a shrewd sponsor spilled, with flagrant disregard for local sensitivities, from a couple of bright orange Eskies. I turned up with the remains of my duty-free gin to avoid later accusations that I stole the stars' grog.
Mindful of my probationary status, I occupied a seat on the periphery, quietly nattering to those unfussed by my presence about the past year that had carried us from England, to Australia, New Zealand, South Africa and, finally, a Chittagong rooftop. And about what might lie ahead. With no certified Test tours scheduled until early 2008, it was clear that a number were now contemplating the end of the road. Or, at least, the end of life on it. And so, as the sun went down and the music cranked up, the gathering took on the distinct whiff of a wake.
The old hands — Warne, Gilchrist, Hayden and MacGill — cast a wistful eye, like graduates taking one last look around the old campus. Those safe in the knowledge that their careers would roll on — Ponting, Hussey, Symonds and Clarke — backslapped and chiacked like mates in a front bar. Gillespie, his back aching from nine and a half hours spent hunched over a bat, stretched out contentedly on a chair and annoyed anyone who wandered past by introducing conversation with 'So, mate, how do you deal with nerves when you're getting close to a double hund...oh that's right, you've never been there.' And Brett Lee, who had earlier conceded he was bereft of petrol and 'only operating on fumes', had already retired to the bed he had fitted with extra foam padding and was living up to his claim that he could 'sleep for Australia' should it become a competitive pastime.
Slinking quietly into the background, and feeling almost as at home as the journalist, were those expected to carry the team's formidable legacy into the future. Phil Jaques and Dan Cullen had tasted Test cricket in Bangladesh, while Mitchell Johnson, James Hopes, Mark Cosgrove and Brett Dorey had recently arrived to help reinvigorate the one-day team. I studied them across the empty pool, noting their shy self-consciousness. They clearly felt they did not yet belong, and were intimidated by those who did. As the takeaway pizzas arrived, it was Warne who moved to bridge the disconnect.
'Do you know these blokes?' he said by way of introduction, having summoned me into the midst of the newcomers who were clearly underwhelmed by my arrival.
'You'll learn not to trust the press, but Rambo's one of the good guys,' Warne continued, offering me a slice of tepid pizza from a box made soggy by grease and humidity. 'Otherwise, we'd have chucked him in the pool by now.' He laughed as he wandered off to scavenge more supper.
I assumed his punchline was a joke, until it nearly became the fate of a couple of Australian tourists who snuck unnoticed into the group as the celebration neared its peak. Welcomed initially for bravely venturing to Chittagong in support of the cricket team, they overplayed their hand when one of them snatched a Test cap and brashly cavorted among the players. For one senior team member, it was a breach too far.
'You don't put one of those on your head unless you've been chosen to play Test cricket for Australia, pal,' he snarled, his eyes betraying a level of late-night testiness I was familiarly wary of.
'So take it off now. And fuck off out of here.' He then took a couple of halting steps towards the stunned travellers, who wisely departed with their admiration for their national cricket team demonstrably soured.
Shortly after, my cue to withdraw arrived when a couple of members of the touring party started hurling plastic chairs from the roof and into the night, where they clattered and bounced onto the private residences of outraged neighbours below. I figured that if I was not witness to this hooliganism then I was under no compulsion to report it. More a work minimisation strategy than a moral stance.
Reclined on my slab, I sifted back through the day, the tour and its underlying messages. Like the players eyeing imminent retirement, I had to accept that life on the road was starting to appear as unappealing as it was unsustainable. Changes to my circumstances meant the benefits of staying home now significantly outweighed the reasons for running away. The impending arrival of Australian cricket's new era also meant nurturing a fresh set of relationships, and cultivating access to a different group, most of whom I had never seen play and who, from a selfish media perspective, seemed neither interested nor interesting. Then again, that may have simply reflected my ebbing enthusiasm nearing the end of a gruelling, protracted stint.
But the most troubling realisation sprang from Warne's off-hand endorsement. Being rated 'one of the good guys' meant, bluntly, that I had failed in the job. Journalists who maintain the players' approval are surely those who pander to their celebrity. The ones who brush aside incidents like late-night furniture redistribution, and are unwilling to pose the tough questions. Reporters who hold them to account and write without fear in full knowledge that they're likely to front the subject of their scathing appraisals over breakfast don't win friends, but something far more estimable. Grudging respect. In the space of a minute, Warne had confirmed what had long bothered me. I was an uncritical critic. A writer, not a journalist. This cosiness was reaffirmed next morning when, following up a conversation from the previous night, I phoned the team manager to check if there was any chance of sneaking along with the Australians' sanctioned visit to the shipbreaking yards. Once again, I was told the okay of senior players was required. So I tracked down the vice-captain, who gave his blessing.
'But we'll be travelling on the team bus, and that's a whole different issue,' Gilchrist added. 'You'll need to check with Punter to make sure he's okay with that.'
Several touring journalists then gathered hopefully at the door of the bus awaiting Ponting's arrival. As he pushed through the crowd being loosely held back by security staff, I asked if we could follow him aboard. The request clearly caught him off guard but, after I pledged we would keep strictly to the back rows and out of listening range of his team, he agreed, albeit with a hesitation that suggested it defied his better judgement. After almost a decade of travelling alongside Australia's cricketers, I was allowed to travel with them in the holiest of holies. The final Rubicon had been crossed. The circle that began on a steamy Hong Kong evening had been completed.
Half an hour into our drive to Jahanabad on the city's north coast, the subtle change in wares being dispensed from roadside stalls confirmed we were close to our destination. Instead of nuts, rice and dry biscuits, vendors were flogging industrial ovens, emergency life boats, gleaming toilet bowls (BYO sewerage system) and even the occasional ship's compass and steering wheel.
The bus turned off the highway and eased down a dirt path, past a makeshift village, and pulled up at a padlocked, blue wrought-iron gate, behind which the maligned community gathered in excited anticipation, rather than defiant suspicion. The site's beaming commandant then guided us past crude workers' huts fashioned from asbestos sheets and canvas, and piles of rusting scrap iron artfully stacked as if by tsunami, out to a post-apocalyptic landscape that stretched across the tidal flats.
Standing sentry through the acrid smoke haze was the River Styx's abandoned merchant fleet. These once proud cape-sized citadels of the sea were being slowly wrenched apart by teams of men, some barely teenagers, armed with nothing more heavy duty than oxy-cutting gear and sturdy ropes. The objects of their potentially fatal labours lay scattered across the oil-stained mud. Lengths of double-hulled bulk carriers sliced up like meatloaf. Dismembered sections of bow, stern and propeller shaft listing forlornly in the sludge, excised and cast aside to allow access to the more valuable steel and other goodies within the ships' bellies. Line after line of desolate carcasses. Far from their registered homes in Panama, China and Russia, these beached hulks would wait stranded for months until they were stripped to their final rivet. Unlike loved ones who appear strangely diminished post-mortem, these massive structures seemed even more imposing in death.
Our host then invited us up to his office with its panoramic view out over the hellish operation. There, as he served a refreshing round of coconut water and his children posed for photographs with the cricketers, he told us that most of the inevitable on-site deaths were caused by falling debris, or by explosions tripped by workers oxy-cutting into live gas lines. A risk that a pay packet of around $US1 a day apparently justified.
The one-day series passed without incident, upset or highlight. Eager to finally experience a Bangladesh that extended past misery and exploitation, Hamish and I used a spare day back in the capital to explore Old Dhaka, where the city of twelve million people is at its most intense and intriguing. At Sadarghat, we hired a river taxi pilot to pole us out across the soot-grey waters of the Buriganga, and in among the rusting, recommissioned ferries that brought bananas, coconuts and watermelons from further up river. Then we lost ourselves, and hours, in the mazes of covered bazaars and the heaving peloton of cycle rickshaws, the only form of transport suited to the strangled, narrow streets, with its jangling accompaniment of a million bicycle bells arguing in unison. I was uplifted to leave Bangladesh with evocative, inspiring images of Old Dhaka and its thriving market quarter in memory's forefront. But, on balance, I was simply pleased to leave Bangladesh and return, at last, to a home I had hardly frequented since departing for England eleven months earlier.
#
# ICC Champions Trophy, India, October–November 2006
The Ashes summer of 2006–07 loomed as the most breathlessly awaited, persistently previewed cricket event since...well, since the previous Ashes series. But before avenging the hurt and the ignominy heaped on them while surrendering the urn in England, the Australians had an opportunity to claim the other major cricket prize conspicuously absent from Jolimont's glass display cases — the ICC Champions Trophy. Which is why most of the nation's best players tuned up for the biggest Test campaign of their careers by dawdling through a handful of one-day internationals spread over four yawning weeks in far-flung outposts across India.
October is a notoriously dire month for Australia's sports editors. The regional football codes have packed up and the footballers headed to sun-soaked resorts offshore to revel in their international anonymity. Cricket season has only just emerged from dormancy, and is not yet capable of generating sufficient news or interest to assume the column space left vacant by the winter sports. And coverage of the only other show in town — Melbourne's horse racing Spring Carnival — is hampered by the inability of its drawcards to speak.
So someone had to accompany the cricketers on their return to the subcontinent. If not in deference to the game's second-most important limited-overs tournament, then at least to provide exhaustive daily commentary on how Ricky Ponting's lads were shaping up for their Ashes quest. And as that someone once more packed his battered brown suitcase, I figured it would prove a defining experience. Despite the challenges posed by Bangladesh, I remained an unabashed fan of India — its culture, its chaos, and especially its people. The world's friendliest and most generous, bar none. And if a month there could not revive my waning want to pursue the life of a touring cricket writer, then the cause was lost.
Even though it was getting on for 3 a.m. when I arrived at my hotel in New Delhi's financial and commercial hub, Connaught Place, the wonderfully familiar trappings of India had turned out to welcome me. The impossible crush of taxi drivers outside the airport doors. Th at sharp, metallic tang of brackish water that catches your breath as it ponds, unseen, beneath cracked and crumbling footpaths. And, when I got to my room, I was greeted by the heady fragrance of industrial-strength cleaners infused with discreet undertones of naphthalene and ghee. There was also the potentially lethal bowl of complimentary fruit, strategically positioned to divert attention from the list of preposterous direct-dial telephone charges. And propped against it, a polite note on crisp white card from the duty manager advising guests to firmly close all windows and don button-down shirts, long pants and covered shoes if straying beyond the hotel's confines around dawn or dusk. Dengue fever was loose in the capital, and those were the infected mosquitoes' preferred dining hours.
The eccentricities that make India so endlessly fascinating continued to unfold before me like a vaudeville show when I set out next morning on the five-kilometre walk to where the cricketers were staying. I paused to watch a gentleman attempting to measure the distance between two apparently random points outside an office building using nothing more scientific than a thin strand of binding twine. Every time he secured one end beneath a discarded broken brick, and pulled the opposite end taut to secure an accurate reading, the affixed end would jolt loose and flail uselessly in the breeze. He would then reposition it beneath the brick and repeat the process, which produced the same result. What lifted the whole episode beyond absurd was the presence of half a dozen other quizzical bystanders, all watching intently with arms folded across chests or squatting patiently, with not a soul offering to help the exasperated surveyor by holding down one end of his string. No sooner had I resumed my amble than I was joined by a small girl, aged around seven or eight, wearing a tattered garment that had, at one stage in its difficult life, been a smart floral dress. She skipped along barefoot beside me, occasionally looking expectantly up through chocolate-brown eyes, while flashing a smile that revealed a set of perfectly aligned teeth. Having made me aware of her presence, she began her well-rehearsed street banter.
'Hello sir, can you help me?' Skip, skip, hop.
'Hello sir, can you help me?' Skip, skip, skip.
This continued almost the length of the block when, aware that her routine did not look like squeezing any cash from a hard-hearted tourist, she delved deeper into her repertoire. Dashing ahead, and turning to face me as my pace slowed, she clasped her hands in front of her waist. Without shifting her gaze from mine, she lifted her arms back over head, fingers still intertwined and, as they reached down beyond her hips, she crouched at the knees, rested both sets of knuckles on the footpath, and executed a little jump, at which point her conjoined hands passed beneath her feet. She then stood triumphantly to attention with her hands returned to their starting position, roughly where the waistband of her dress would have hung, had it not long ago perished.
'Now that's genuinely impressive,' I said, fishing a fifty rupee note from my pocket. Not understanding a word I'd said, she scrunched the magenta and grey bill bearing the Mahatma's kindly countenance into her grimy hand and skipped off along one of Delhi's wide, leafy boulevards before disappearing into the Saturday afternoon traffic.
Global media empires are not immune from the dwindling revenue streams that are inexorably driving newspapers the way of thylacines and watchable commercial television. It was therefore quite rightly deemed wasteful for a cricket reporter from a budget-challenged broadsheet to be enjoying the same $US500 a night residential comforts lavished on touring cricketers. However, the physical disconnect between me and the team also removed a vital capillary of information flow. No brief encounters outside the lift doors. No snippets of gossip in the breakfast room, or chance observations of indiscretions in the lobby. It meant interactions with players and coaching staff were restricted to breaks during training and scheduled media events that had become so scripted they were lucky to produce a usable quote, much less a pithy yarn. I also suspected that the physical separation, coupled with a typically cumbersome playing schedule — which meant the Australians were in India for almost two weeks before their first competitive match — might create a news vacuum the Ideas Factory would feel driven to fill. So it came as no great surprise when, shortly before dawn on our second morning in New Delhi, I was awoken by an urgent phone call from the boss.
The UK's Sunday Times was set to break a huge international story, I was assured, that demanded urgent and comprehensive reaction from Ricky Ponting, from the top echelons of Cricket Australia, and from anyone else in the touring party willing to contribute their thoughts. Barely conscious and groping for a light switch, I couldn't think of anyone likely to fit that final category at 6 a.m. And when further details of this 'world exclusive' were relayed down the phone, I became even more sceptical.
An anonymous informant claiming to be a family friend of one of the London Underground suicide bombers had revealed details of a plot to kill the Australian and England cricket teams by spreading sarin gas in their respective change rooms during the 2005 Edgbaston Test. The story included no credible corroboration from authorities or witnesses, and one of south Asia's leading terrorist experts quickly dismissed the claim's veracity. But on a slow October Sunday morning, when a front-page 'splash' was harder to come by than personal space on the subcontinent, those trifling concerns were happily ignored. And when I wondered aloud whether it had been, indeed, the world's most evil terrorist network rather than a hapless member of the Australian coaching staff that had masterminded planting a ball beneath McGrath's foot in the hour before that same Test began, I was told to get up, smarten up and start making phone calls.
Upon reaching Mumbai, where the Australians were to begin a full week's preparation ahead of their first tournament match against an as-yet-unknown opponent, I found myself even further removed from the players' accommodation. Which proved an unmitigated delight, with the walk that consumed almost an hour in the mornings on my way to conduct daily interviews, and even longer when returning to type them up, affording moments infinitely more captivating than the cricket clichés that awaited me at either end.
Heading north towards Colaba, I would negotiate wave after wave of colourfully clad reed-thin women effortlessly balancing water jugs, or sacks of fruit, rice or vegetables, atop their heads as they returned from nearby markets to the Ambedkar Nagar settlement, one of the many slums estimated to house up to half of Mumbai's eighteen million inhabitants. Occupying a square kilometre of marsh-fronted wasteland facing on to the Arabian Sea, and just a few hundred metres from my hotel, it was also suspected of being the source of a cholera outbreak reported on the day of our arrival.
My routine came also to include a morning wander past the trendy shops and bazaars of Shahid Bhagat Singh Road. Or the flotilla of flat-bottomed dories and sparsely stocked stalls at another slum colony opposite Bhadwar Park. Or, depending on the strength of my constitution, Mumbai's frantic Sassoon Docks fish market. The return leg would incorporate a more leisurely stroll. Among spirited cricket matches being fought out on the Oval Maidan, beneath the imposing stone edifice of the Bombay High Court, and through the Colaba Causeway street markets that flogged anything from digital cameras to antique gramophones. As engaging as these daily distractions were, they could not paper over the inescapable professional reality that nothing of interest was taking place. Not to a national newspaper, anyway. We were marooned in the middle of a cricket tournament that, from an Australian perspective at least, provided no cricket.
Consequently, the antithesis of news is what readers of the paper were served in the days counting down to the national team's first match in Mumbai. An absence of meaningful alternatives meant space was given to probing insights, which included career-shaping advice Nathan Bracken received from his mother-in-law, Lenore ('just relax and play cricket'), shortly after he had lost his Cricket Australia playing contract. Explosive revelations that Brett Lee had been offered a leading role in a Bollywood feature film by no lesser star than Amitabh Bachchan, and that the fast bowler was considering acting as a profession after cricket. Topping all was the dazzling explanation of the various aerodynamic factors at play to make a cricket ball reverse swing, courtesy of bowling coach Troy Cooley, who was credited with plotting the downfall of Australia's batting when he worked with England during the previous Ashes campaign.
According to the 1,030-word treatise that the paper ran in its entirety, it requires a bowler capable of generating speeds above 120 kilometres per hour while holding the ball's seam at an angle of around twenty degrees to the batsman and imparting backspin of roughly eleven revolutions per second. At which point the air flowing over the smooth side of the ball separates earlier due to a pressure imbalance, causing it to swing away from the shiny side. Or something like that. By the time it reached its inane conclusion, even its author had lost interest.
Australia's tournament eventually got underway in the genteel surrounds of Mumbai's historic Brabourne Stadium. The home of the esteemed Cricket Club of India, with its private tennis, swimming and yoga facilities, its forty-five art-deco influenced suites for paying guests, and its wide, airy porticoes opening directly on to a manicured playing surface that, on non-cricket days, hosted tall wicker chairs and afternoon tea settings that whispered 'last days of the Raj'. The Australians' opponents were the Champions Trophy holders, the West Indies, who had been forced to suffer the indignity of qualifying for the event's main draw by taking part in a pre-tournament tournament, alongside Sri Lanka, Zimbabwe and Bangladesh. A sort of 'best of the worst' appetiser, as only the ICC would consider serving up.
Then, after such a protracted preamble, an unexpected initial loss to Brian Lara's men in the opening game had all of us suddenly eyeing an early flight home, should the Australians fail in either of their two remaining group matches. Which meant the next game, against England in the famed Pink City of Jaipur, finally promised something worthwhile to write about. But events dictated it was something even more arresting than the impending Ashes that provided the material.
Casual conversations with usually imperturbable colleagues among the vast Indian press corps revealed a number of them weren't making the 1,200-kilometre trip from Mumbai to the Rajasthani capital because of security fears. This was a response to threats made by the Hindu nationalist group Shiv Sena to disrupt an earlier game in Jaipur, as well as the timing of the match between the Ashes rivals that was scheduled for Diwali Saturday. The clearly rattled press men pointed to the terrorist bombing of Mumbai's rail networks, just weeks prior to the tournament beginning, which had left almost 200 dead.
'Diwali's a fireworks festival, you know, and I can't imagine what sort of home-made devices and rockets might be smuggled into the ground for such a big game,' a veteran reporter for one of India's most influential newspapers told me as we left the post-match media conference at Brabourne.
'The Indian authorities carried out an investigation after the July bombings here, and one of their explicit findings was that all security agencies should be on the highest alert during Diwali. And Shiv Sena are already threatening to do something before the tournament's over. That's the reason I'll be watching your game safely on the television in my hotel room. And for what it's worth, I'd reconsider going to Jaipur at all if I was you.'
Having successfully outwitted dengue fever, cholera and terminal under-employment since arriving on the subcontinent, the Australians reasoned that a handful of extremists shouldn't pose too great a threat. And if the team was travelling, I was obliged to follow. Further mollification came with news that a tight security cordon would be thrown around Jaipur for the entire Diwali weekend. It included troopers from India's elite Central Industrial Security Force, normally charged with guarding installations such as nuclear power plants, supplemented by members of the battle-hardened elite internal security detail the Contingents of the Central Police Force, which was regularly involved in fighting insurgents at flashpoints including Kashmir. Even more reassuring was the International Cricket Council's contribution of $US700,000 to help bolster the tournament's security detail, and which extended to the deployment of 'spotters' at all stadium entrances to identify 'anti-nationals' likely to be more intent on sabotaging than supporting. I figured it couldn't be too hard to detect someone packing a laser-guided surface-to-air missile along with their sparklers, their cardboard placards and their supper, so it was to Jaipur I headed.
Besides, the threat of organised violence had become as much a part of an overseas cricket tour as collecting taxi receipts and filing lost luggage reports. Whether it was the furtive gangs of Nairobi, the ruthless suicide bombers of London's Underground, the thuggish brutality of Chittagong's police or the criminal negligence of Caribbean hotel operators, there weren't many places around the world where an outbreak of cricket wasn't accompanied by personal risk. So the prospect of a few over-muscled fireworks was not going to prevent me from using every spare minute of our three days in Jaipur to lap up its myriad, and spectacular, attractions.
I took the opportunity to wander through the historic commercial heart of Aatish Market and Tripolia Bazaar with their hawkish sellers and belligerent street monkeys. Past the awe-inspiring red sandstone façade of the Hawa Mahal, and even paid a flying visit to the imposing Amber Fort that rises spectacularly above the main highway to Delhi. Throughout all these ventures, the only time I legitimately feared for my safety was on the trip back to Jaipur from the fort when, approaching the Palace of Jal Mahal, which seems to magically levitate on the surface of Man Sagar Lake, my driver took both hands from the steering wheel, turned to present me with one of the ubiquitous feedback forms that anyone providing a public service in India is desperate to have completed, and narrowly avoided driving up the back end of an elephant that straddled both lanes as we rounded a bend. Eighteen months later, a series of nine bombs synchronised to detonate across Jaipur within fifteen minutes, and all strategically planted near historic monuments and across the old city's crowded markets to maximise their impact, killed sixty-three and injured more than 200.
Australia's comfortable win over England in Jaipur meant their hopes of snaring the Champions Trophy after four barren attempts were revived. But no sooner had the tournament belatedly burst into life than it slumped back into its torpor. We travelled further north, to under the shadow of the Himalayas, for a further eight days of waiting, this time in Chandigarh, before Australia's final group match against India at nearby Mohali. With its strictly planned Le Corbusier-designed arrangement of forty-six suburban sectors, and its network of public parks and wide avenues, Chandigarh stands as the Canberra of the Punjab. It certainly shared a similar love of bureaucracy. Upon clearing the airport, I squeezed into a rattling taxi and was told, as we turned on to the main road, that should I require use of the vehicle's air conditioning, I would incur an immediate technology levy of one hundred rupees.
Another week to fill between cricket outings taxed more than my ingenuity. The crazy work requirements of previous tours seemed almost preferable to lengthy, unproductive stints in far-off places. Despite carefully constructing daily perambulations from my lodgings in Sector 10 to the team's digs in Sector 17 so they traversed varied routes, the repetitive nothingness slowly sapped my energy and eroded my flickering motivation. I stretched work out to occupy as many excess hours as bearable and, in between, I wandered Leisure Valley's undulating copses of shrubs and woodland, or enjoyed the perfumed blooms and soothing water features of the city's celebrated Rose Garden. I half-heartedly planned day trips to nearby places of interest — Shimla's restorative Hill Station and Sikhism's Golden Temple at Amritsar. Even the theatrical daily ceremonies at the Wagah border with Pakistan. But all of them required extended separation from the cricket team, and I could not risk the one major story of the assignment exploding in my absence. As a result, each day trapped in Chandigarh bled aimlessly into the next. A mounting heaviness began to settle within. If I was to be marking time, I would rather be doing it with those whose company I craved.
In the years since Ricky Ponting had succeeded Adam Gilchrist as the newspaper's man on the inside, he had been cooperative and accessible when it came to preparing his occasional column, if not especially forthcoming. His most obvious limitation was a devout unwillingness to say anything but the obvious. Drafting the 750 or so words to appear under his name yielded no deeper insights than he would regularly reveal at media conferences. He answered any questions put to him honestly and in good humour. But not once in the time I acted as his ghost did he arrive for one of our brief meetings enthusing 'I've got a great idea for a column' or 'This is an issue that I really want to take a stance on'. The closest he came to floating a topic was in the days before a Test in Perth as we sat on the grandstand seats outside the players' dressing room at the WACA Ground. He had with him a new cricket bat, freshly arrived from his contracted supplier, and, as I non-expertly inspected the pristine blade, he launched into an animated dissertation about the science of bat selection.
'I pretty much know if it's a bat I'll want to use just by looking at the face,' Ponting said, as he relieved me of the unblemished lump of bleached willow like it was a sleeping infant.
'You see here,' he continued, tracing his right index finger along its smooth surface, from the splice almost to the toe. 'There's a faint pink strip running all the way down. The wood on the inside of that strip is a little bit softer, and so has a bit more give to it. It's almost like a springboard effect. So I always look for a bat that's got that pink grain running close to the outside edge. That way, it's got more flexibility in the middle of the blade.'
I looked at him as he ran his hirsute hands lightly across the tool of his trade, as if divining its latent power.
'We should do that as a column one day,' I ventured. 'How you go about selecting the perfect cricket bat. People like to read about that sort of insider stuff. It gives them a bit of a glimpse of what you guys do behind the scenes.'
'Nah,' he smiled mischievously. 'People'd think I was some sort of cricket tragic.'
It was the same smile he wore when he sat down across the table from me, café latte in hand, in the lobby restaurant of the Taj Chandigarh. Any hopes I held of the tour's news void being filled by a hard-hitting first-person account of what consumed the man about to embark on a career-defining Ashes campaign were snuffed out with his greeting.
'So, what have you got for me today?' he grinned, referring to the column he once more expected me to conceive, draft, edit and send.
My immediate reaction was that this might just be the time to explain to the skipper that perhaps it was his turn to start playing a few shots. That he needed to appreciate he was being paid more for a dozen or so columns each year than I drew in annual salary and, as a result, he should be coming to me with the occasional theme that he wanted to cover. He should also be made aware that other cricket folk with whom I had ghostwritten paid columns — Gilchrist, Sunil Gavaskar, Michael Slater, David Lloyd — all began the process with at least the kernel of an idea. Sometimes, as Gilchrist showed, significantly more. But this diatribe took shape in my head and went no further. He was, after all, the captain of Australia, whereas I was on the road to becoming an ex-cricket writer who knew from experience that little was gained by airing petty grievances.
So I trotted out half a dozen uninspired questions, he bunted back as many trite answers, and I returned to my hotel to manufacture it into another predictable space filler that enticed as many readers as it enlightened. When it was done, I forwarded a copy to Cricket Australia for their mandatory pre-publication approval, and another to Ponting's private email address for his consideration. His employer gave it a tick within half an hour, so I sent it directly to mine for typesetting. But, as was the case with all those that came before and after, Ponting remained inscrutably silent.
His team's victory over India at Mohali was celebrated with deserved vigour. The party among the press pack was less enthusiastic when it was confirmed that the result consigned Australia to a semifinal against New Zealand, three days later. In Mohali. Even the schedule now conspired to hold us hostage in Chandigarh. The day after the India match, desperate for any diversion to fill the cricketless days, I extended my wandering to include the mysterious Rock Garden that sprawls several square kilometres on the edge of Sector 1.
I was intrigued as much by the story of its genesis as I was by its attractions. The creation of a one-time public servant and self-taught sculptor Nek Chand, its display pieces were initially fashioned from discarded industrial and household items, and the entire project was so secretive it went undetected by neighbours and local authorities for almost twenty years — as large-scale theme parks being built next door are wont to do. When it was eventually discovered, many in Chandigarh demanded it be torn down. Now, it stands as the geometrically precise city's monument to laissez-faire.
Entering the Rock Garden is a bit like disappearing through the back of a cupboard into Narnia — a labyrinth of interconnected waterfalls, courtyards and display spaces, many of them populated by armies of tiny figures covered with mosaic tiles. There are Gaudiesque landscapes around which narrow earthen paths weave and switch back. Every bend reveals a new vista of Chand's strange world, made even more surreal on the dull, grey afternoon I visited by the ethereal presence of groups of Indian women in their stunningly coloured saris, floating from space to space and exchanging animated whispers.
After two hours exploring this parallel world, I arrived at its most extraordinary scene — a semi-circular cloister of grey stone walls into which were hewn a dozen symmetrically spaced arches. From hooks chiselled into the stone above each arch dangled a simple wooden swing, suspended by lengths of thick chain. And on each of these swings sat a pair of teenage girls, all dressed identically in flowing white salwar kameez and matching dupattas. Each wore their long black hair tied in a single plait which snaked down their back. In silence broken only by the straining creak of the chains, and the occasional flutter of fabric on the breeze, they swung back and forth in metronomic rhythm. As I stood, speechless, in the courtyard's centre, not one of them showed any hint of self-consciousness or curiosity. They just continued swinging, ever higher, legs outstretched and eyes fixed, alternately on the cobbled ground below or up at the solemn sky. I checked for cameras, fearing I had unwittingly wandered onto the set of a Greenaway movie.
A bench seat on a terrace that ringed the secret garden seemed purpose-sent for a bout of quiet contemplation. Against the hypnotic backdrop of this hushed retreat, I set myself to deconstructing how exactly the world's best job had all but lost its lustre. Like tracking down the faulty filament in a string of Christmas lights, I needed to identify which elements of 'working for a serious newspaper, travelling the world watching cricket' had broken down. Then it might simply be a matter of replacing the dud part, and the glow would return.
There was no doubt broadsheet journalism offered a freedom and diversity few careers could match, even at a newspaper that took little as seriously as itself. But the fact remains that news is a discretionary purchase product, little different to deodorant or Bran Flakes, and the challenge, increasingly, is finding ways to manufacture, package and sell it in profitable volumes. That's led to a fundamental shift in the way news is covered. No longer do editors convene late afternoon to sift through the events of the day and arrange them throughout a paper for maximum impact. Nowadays, the stories that generate most interest, that provoke the strongest responses, are instantly measured by the number of online hits they register. By knowing where readers' eyes and preferences are trained, editorial conferences have become the place where the day's stories are preemptively written. The modern reporters' task is then to assemble the words that justify the premise. Here's the headline, give me a story to fit beneath it. Increasingly, the tail wagged the dogma.
As for the travel component, there was no question it opened up new worlds. But it was equally clear it was not the real world. Hotel turn-down services, and those little grey airline breakfast sausages that, along with cockroaches, will alone survive nuclear holocaust, might embellish a fulfilling life, but can never replace it. And while packing a bag and leaving everyday behind might offer a quick fix to whatever ails, the hollow call of the road can also prove destructively convenient. There comes a time when the only hope for making things work at home is being there. Clearly, therefore, I was to rely on the game of cricket's magnetic appeal to restore my ardour for the job. Another knife-edged Ashes series might just save more than some players' careers.
Surprising nobody, the Australians breezed past New Zealand in the semifinal, which meant our group then travelled back to Mumbai, where it all began, for the final. At Brabourne Stadium. Against the West Indies. And precisely one month after we had gathered in India, during which time the Australian team had completed just four days of international cricket, the sport's global media gathered in the Cricket Club of India's sweltering open-air press box as Ricky Ponting chased another gilded piece of history.
Despite the West Indies' ballistic start which produced eighty runs in the first ten overs, they were bowled out for a limp 138. A heavy post-monsoonal downpour early in Australia's pursuit briefly raised the unnerving prospect of extending accommodation bookings and rescheduling flights. But the storm passed, and the Australians finally got their hands on the elusive prize late on what had become a pleasantly cool, still Mumbai evening. I worked through the night to properly document the occasion, and roused myself later in the morning to phone the Factory and make sure I was cleared for take-off.
'I thought you'd already be on the way home by now,' the boss said, by way of hello.
'Plane leaves tonight at 11,' I said. 'But I've got a thirteen-hour lay-over in Singapore, so I won't be back in Melbourne until Wednesday night. The price you pay for booking budget flights, I guess.'
'Bloody hell,' he spluttered. 'The Poms play their first tour match here on Friday and we need to crank up our coverage. How soon after you get home can you jump on a plane to Brisbane?'
#
# Ashes Series, Australia, November 2006–February 2007
It was when I piled soiled laundry into a calico bag bearing the Jaipur Sheraton logo, and tossed it into the corridor outside my bedroom door in Melbourne that I suspected the need to wean myself from life on the road had become critical. It sat there for several hours before it dawned that, during those rare stints at home, I was the housekeeping staff. That belief galvanised further when, before leaving for Brisbane, I was briefed on the latest budget-enforced squeeze on perks available to employees whose work took them out of the office and away from their daily lives. The edict decreed that hotel breakfast had been bracketed alongside bottled water from the in-room refrigerator and phone calls to loved ones as luxury items that a global media empire had no business recompensing. And so, my usual luggage stuffing routine extended to include a box of cereal, a plastic bowl and a spoon. Living out of a suitcase for months at a time was, in itself, a challenge. Eating from one was just demeaning.
The scene at the Australian squad's main training session ahead of the first Test confirmed we were entering the most anticipated summer since the invention of the bikini. Rather than a collection of pimply trundlers and cricket balls scattered like land mines awaiting some pyrrhic fielding drill, practice stretched out like a war game over Brisbane Grammar's sprawling playing fields. Centre wicket work for the fast bowlers and top-order batsmen. Specialist nets work for the spinners. A trestle table was laid at a ten-degree angle across the popping crease of one pitch, where a bowling machine fired balls regularly into its chipped surface, from which they skewed off as replicated gully catches to an eagerly waiting Matthew Hayden. At each station hovered a media pack, the equal of anything previously seen at an Australian rehearsal. Reporters, feature writers, broadcasters, camera crews, bloggers, hangers-on, and the pathologically nosey. All craning for some morsel that nobody else had noticed. And all left to make do with nothing more revelatory than the bleeding obvious. From the outset of the series, media outnumbered stories on a daily ratio of roughly fifty to one.
When it finally arrived, the opening act of the Ashes summer — played out before an expectant full house on a steamy Brisbane Thursday morning — proved as shambolic as it was symbolic. Backed by a soaring crescendo, England's Steve Harmison bounded in from the 'Gabba's Stanley Street end, arms and legs flailing like a freshly potted lobster, and speared the series' first delivery diagonally across the pitch. So far wide of Justin Langer's bat that it landed directly in the hands of Andrew Flintoff at second slip. A mix of gloating roars, agonised groans and hysterical laughter swamped the stadium. Harmison smiled sheepishly before turning to walk back for another go. Langer squinted into the sunlight to reassure himself he wasn't the victim of some elaborate hoax. And Flintoff nonchalantly flicked the hard lacquered ball to a nearby fielder and then stood, with hands on hips, whistling softly — like the perpetrator of a minor offence when the plod arrived. Nothing to see here, he silently pleaded. Sadly, from England's perspective, that remained the case for the next three months.
As many had feared, the summer suffered severely from 'New Year's Eve Paradox', whereby the amount of expectant energy invested is inversely proportional to the level of satisfaction derived. The other New Year's Eve truism is that, for a fleeting period — roughly ages sixteen to twenty-one — it tantalises as life's social highlight because it's when the whole world is out and going crazy. From then on, it is to be avoided at all costs because the whole world is out and going crazy. Using that logic, and having played a part in whipping up the frenzy that grew steadily over the months leading to that anti-climactic first minute, I immediately began pouring scorn on the one-sided contest, as if to prove that I had not, for a moment, been fooled by the all hype.
'It's all very admirable to bowl to your set field,' I sneered, by way of introduction to my first-day report.
'It's quite another thing to bowl at them.' From there, I became more jaundiced and condescending with every England failure. Which, in turn, mounted by the hour.
Trounced in Brisbane, the tourists were then ritually humiliated at their next outing in Adelaide. Not for the entire Test, but certainly when it mattered. After dominating the first four days, the English capitulation on the fifth carried an unmistakable whiff of Dhaka eight months earlier. England's batsmen needed only to stay put for a couple of sessions to secure a stalemate, but under the glare of a baking Adelaide sun and a ruthlessly driven opponent, they too blinked. Hard and often. Like the Bangladeshis, England's self-belief simply evaporated when the game was in the balance, and took months to reconstitute.
The Australians' diligent observation and evaluation of their quarry had paid dividends. During the long, empty pauses that punctuated the Champions Trophy in India, they studied England's matches and noticed that, as a captain of limited experience, Flintoff occasionally lost the plot. That his teammates in the field sometimes struggled to gain his attention as he became immersed in his own issues, and that his strategies were regularly found to be an over or three adrift of the match's pace. This fanatical zeal for success sprang directly from the Australians' previous loss in England. Personally and professionally affronted by their failures in that campaign, the core of Australia's senior cricketers pledged to settle for nothing less than utter demolition of their Ashes rival.
Anyone who did not share that commitment risked ostracism, as Damien Martyn found. Martyn had always struggled with the scrutiny that accompanied life as an international cricketer, and fought a long-running personal battle with the media that, he believed, existed solely to persecute him. A couple of modest scores leading into the final day in Adelaide meant he went to the wicket that afternoon demoted one place in the batting order, and with his team straining against the odds for a win, battling thoughts of self-doubt and self-destruction. His response was to bat like a man with no cares and even less responsibility. He faced four balls, charging feverishly at the third to launch it to the mid-off fence. The next, he leaned back lazily and aimed a backyard waft that lobbed straight to a catcher at point.
This was precisely what his teammates, through their infamous pre-series boot camp in Queensland's sub-tropical forests and their subsequent single-minded training exercises, had sought to eradicate. The elevation of personal needs above the team's demands. By opting to pull the easy oar and leave the hard work to others, rather than find a way through his mental clutter, Martyn had broken trust and lost respect. It was during the post-match celebrations, after Martyn had shared drinks with a couple of England players in the Australian dressing room, that Matthew Hayden decided he should point out a few home truths to his long-time mate. The next day, without consultation or explanation, Martyn walked away from cricket for good.
At least that development provided something other than England's conspicuous inadequacies to write about, heading into the third Test in Perth. But the Australians' woe was soon forgotten as the tourists were again hammered, and the Ashes were decided with the summer just eighteen days old. The prospect of filling vast swathes of newsprint across the Christmas — New Year silly season with coverage of what was now a sporting contest in concept only hung heavily over the media pack as we travelled back across the continent for Melbourne's Boxing Day Test. That was when Shane Warne, the Patron Saint of the Slow News Day, answered our collective prayers.
The media conference he called five days before the Test to confirm his retirement from international cricket at series' end was — unlike the ill-fated 'woin' that had disappeared without trace in the wake of the doping furore — vintage Warne. Regular Thursday afternoon television programming was suspended to accommodate a live feed of the event from the Melbourne Cricket Ground, introduced with suitable solemnity by a deadpan Richie Benaud, who reassured the nation that it was entering a time of celebration, rather than mourning.
The MCG's grand Members Dining Room was filled with row upon row of chairs, in anticipation of the sort of turnout normally seen at White House press briefings. By the time the show was due to start, all seats were filled and almost as many media folk were forced into standing-room places in the wings or behind a bank of television cameras. A Cricket Australia official gravely cautioned that questions relating to Warne's turbulent personal life were strictly off limits, and we all dutifully complied. Given this might be the last genuine news yarn of the summer, we couldn't risk having the talent clam up or storm out, as had happened at conferences past. But we needn't have worried. Warne took the best part of an hour to explain his ten-second announcement.
The storm of hagiography it unleashed in the next day's media was countered in many quarters by the rehashing of Warne's countless character flaws, irrespective of the censorship he had sought to impose. But the most compelling analysis came not from windy social commentators or outraged morals campaigners, but from the teammates and opponents who witnessed first-hand Warne taking cricket's most complex art to never-before-seen, or even foreseen, levels. As Ricky Ponting explained with trademark economy the following day, 'a lot of people don't realise how difficult it is to bowl leg spin'.
That was Warne's undisputed genius. More so than infatuating or infuriating the public. It was a talent built on a remarkably powerful right wrist, fingers that resembled a brace of uncooked pork sausages, and an ability to impart so much energy on the ball that it audibly hummed its way towards batsmen. More often than not, it also spun furiously on an axis that ensured it would land unerringly on its seam, thereby gaining maximum purchase off the pitch. But dealing with his spitting leg break, or wrong-un, or flipper, or slider, or zooter, or whatever new delivery Warne had dreamed up, was but one question in a searching exam for the world's batsmen.
The first challenge for those who faced up was to make sure they focused on playing the ball, not the legend. And Warne, who often understood his opponents' psychology far better than his own, knew how to make that distinction as difficult as possible. He would cultivate uncertainty by merely standing at the top of his run-up, staring at his prey and distractedly fizzing the ball from one giant mitt to the other, as if unsure of how to set about his task. But it was total bluff. Warne could manipulate batsmen around the crease like avatars in a video game. Switching the direction of his attack from around the wicket, to over the wicket. Close to the stumps. Wide of the crease. Spearing the ball in at the toes. Floating it invitingly wide. Every iteration meticulously planned and flawlessly executed to manoeuvre the batsman's stance and defence to a point where vulnerabilities opened up.
Having marshalled his fielders into position, like a pernickety interior designer fussing over throw cushions, to further heighten the sense of strangulation felt by batsmen, he would regularly begin his run-up only to suddenly stop, forcing another break in his opponent's concentration. A raised palm, similarly disingenuous to a tennis baseliner apologising for a net cord, a couple of waddled steps, and it would begin again. A mosey up to the crease, a grunt as the right arm imparted the wizardry, then just the ominous whirring of the ball that allowed it to drift appreciably in its arc, making it even trickier to nullify.
For batsmen who could withstand the staring and the waiting, who could discern and combat the variations, who could see a gap in the field and execute the appropriate stroke to exploit it, there still remained the mental battle that came with survival. The ceaseless chatter. The goading and the gamesmanship. All shamelessly designed to unsettle and unhinge. For some, such as England's Ian Bell in his first Ashes Test at Lord's in 2005, it eventually culminated in complete mental shutdown. Unsure whether to play or to leave, to defend or to score, to appear relaxed or watchful, to deny the close catchers or take a risk, Bell simply neglected to do anything other than look dumbfounded and then, when the ball thudded straight into his pads and the umpire's finger rose, crestfallen.
In addition to distilling some of Warne's press conference verbiage into bite-sized newspaper morsels, I was instructed to glean the captain's reflections in one of his columns. Ponting's agent warned me the skipper was otherwise occupied for the afternoon — attending signing sessions to promote the release of the latest in his series of Captain's Diaries, an even more lucrative outlet for his thoughts. But I tracked him to a central Melbourne bookshop, joined the queue as the lone fan not clutching a copy for inscription, and hoped — with deadline fast approaching — that he might find a few spare minutes in which I could earn him another fistful of cash. Conscious of not depriving paying customers of moments with their hero, I suggested via a shorthand conversation that we conduct our chat at signing session's end. When the last autograph was scrawled, the store manager whisked Ponting into a locked office, the door of which was guarded by a uniformed security guard who heard my entreaty for access and then advised me to scram. Midway through a pointless appeal to his compassion, I caught sight of Ponting being led to a waiting car on the other side of the shop's front window.
I dashed from the store, rapped on the passenger's-side glass as the vehicle pulled away from the kerb, and convinced the seemingly perplexed skipper that I should ride with him to his next appointment. Or at least as far as it took him to dictate a handful of thoughts about Warne into my voice recorder. Seven minutes later, I alighted from the car as it idled in late-afternoon gridlock, and frantically began searching for a cab that could get me back to my laptop so I could get his words into the paper.
With the Ashes won, those Australian players haunted by the 2005 disappointment felt a wrong had been righted, a burden lifted, and a new era beckoned. Following Martyn and Warne into retirement were coach John Buchanan, Justin Langer and Glenn McGrath, who pointedly refused Ponting's offer for him to bat at number three on the final day of the Sydney Test, with its accompanying chance to score the winning runs should one of the openers stumble in pursuit of their token victory target.
'I either bat at number one, or number eleven,' he told his chastened skipper.
Of all these announcements, it was Langer's farewell press conference that carried, for me, the greatest resonance. As blue collar as Warne's conference was grandiose, it was conducted in a windowless converted football change room beneath the SCG's Bradman Stand. There, Langer revealed the conflicting emotions that accompanied his eventual acceptance that he had, at age thirty-six, reached the end of his working life in a job he had coveted from the time he was old enough to nurture ambition.
'It's not just a game to me,' he explained, with a sincerity born of someone who had wrung every last drop from their God-given talent. 'It's been the vehicle for me to learn how to handle success, failure and criticism. How to fight back from adversity. I've learned about mateship and about leadership. And hopefully, I've forged a strong character.'
In the end, he revealed, he had become 'ground down' by incessant media speculation as to whether he merited a place in the team. Since being pole-axed in Johannesburg, those calls had broadened to incorporate his advancing years, the greying hue of Australian cricket, and the apparent need to infuse fresh blood into the Test team, even though a comparable replacement remained years in the future.
'I've endured it for a long time, and maybe I'd like to let that go as well, and put a smile back on my face,' he said.
As he strode back out into the sunlight to finalise preparations for his last Test, his words stayed with me, bouncing off the bunker's concrete walls like it was a Leicester nightclub. As part of the media pack at Mascot Airport a day earlier that had hounded Langer as if he were a hit-run driver outside a district court in the hope of securing a definitive statement on his playing future, I too had cause for introspection. If I were to apply the same harsh criteria to my own professional performance that I imposed on others, I must also surely be approaching my use-by date. My recent form had been patchy, if not downright poor. I'd not broken a story since...well, I'd plain not broken a story. The occasional embargo, at best. My enthusiasm had been similarly 'ground down' by those who passed judgement from comfortable detachment. And as my chosen profession rapidly evolved, I found myself regularly at odds with the new era's demands. I left the SCG that afternoon thinking perhaps I should pen a scathing article in which I called for my own sacking. It was also New Year's Day 2007, and I felt a resolution coming on.
Barely had the acclamation accompanying Australia's five — nil clean sweep dulled to a patriotic holler than the interminable limited-overs tri-series swung into life. A month of one-day internationals was preceded by a Twenty20 fixture that produced yet another crushing England loss, and a predictably contrived call from the Ideas Factory to turn another morning-conference thought bubble into a story of national importance. Or at least, one of importance to the national paper.
'I was watching that twenty-over game in the office last night, and it struck me that every time I looked up, somebody was hitting another six,' a member of the brains trust marvelled down the phone.
'So, we need a piece explaining why so many sixes are hit in modern cricket, especially in Twenty20 matches. With the games getting shorter, they seem to be belting the ball further.'
I tried to tactfully suggest that the answer to that query was contained in the question, but obediently vowed to get on the case as soon as I checked back into my own apartment. The thought of another reverse-swing-style physics lesson that examined cricket bat technology, shrinking playing field dimensions, and the complex relationship between needing to score at the fastest possible rate when facing fewer and fewer deliveries made my temples throb. But there was more to come.
As the summer loitered towards its uninspired finish, the only outcome less surprising than Australian victories was the regular outbreaks of spectator idiocy at one-day games — to the extent that cricket and law enforcement authorities conspired to outlaw the Mexican Wave from the Melbourne Cricket Ground. That sort of pronouncement was guaranteed to send blue-rinse tabloid current-affairs programs into apoplexy, railing about 'Fun Police', the 'Nanny State', and the infringement of Australians' civil right to behave like prized dickheads at international sporting events. All buttons the serious broadsheet was not averse to pushing. Fully occupied with the two first-edition stories I needed to file during the change of innings of another tawdry fifty-over encounter between Australia and New Zealand, the call from the Factory was not a welcome distraction.
'The editor wants a piece for the front about fans' reaction to the Mexican Wave ban,' the directive came, with its standard implied threat that it was a request from the very top. 'We've sent a photographer along to get some pics, so you'll need to get out among the crowd and conduct some vox pops.'
Vox pops were the tool newspapers employed, prior to the explosion of social media, to show a connectedness with their readers. They purported to capture the vibe of the street. Letters to the editor from the semi-literate. And a chore most first-year newspaper cadets considered undignified. So I opted for what any frazzled reporter with deadlines to hit and priorities to juggle might be driven to contemplate. I dismissively typed out a selection of fabricated quotes that addressed all the stereotyped opinions I knew the paper was after, attributed them to a set of equally bogus names, and filed them without a second thought. It was only next morning, when all 600 nonsense words appeared as sent on page three, that it dawned I had reached an irredeemable low.
After two decades as a journalist, I had finally subscribed to public perceptions of the profession, and published an unabashed lie. Not through malice, or to push an agenda. But simply because I was tired, under pressure, and fed up. Fed up with having to comply with meritless story ideas hatched in the office over a morning muffin. Fed up with an increasingly simplistic news agenda that recognised only two basic premises from which those ideas should be constructed — campaign or conflict. Fed up dealing with people who would sooner hold a grudge than a conversation. But above all, I'd grown heartily sick of the inconsequential, sardonic tripe I was churning out under my own name. Most dispiritingly, I had fallen for the modern media trap of masquerading opinion as news. Not informed or keenly sought opinion. Just spiteful, lazy sniping that revealed more about my own mindset than the events I was supposed to document.
Opinion has proliferated to become journalism's base commodity, freely traded between the news, business, sports and features pages. 'Opinion section' now describes the entire newspaper. Reporters employ opinion because it's easy. It requires minimal research, means conjecture and controversy can be stirred through otherwise banal events, and, by definition, can't be wrong. But like a gateway drug, it eventually leads to an incapability to write straight news. And from there, it's free-fall until you hit the blog — the pub conversation for those who are too socially inert to buy a round.
In trying to redress the slight of being 'one of the good guys', I had instead joined the snide brigade. By describing the sight of rotund Mark Cosgrove in Australian one-day colours as 'a slowly-melting mound of pistachio and zabaglione gelati', I had skipped fearless criticism and descended straight into character assassination. And when England's batsmen produced their most spineless performance of an insipid tour in the traditional Australia Day one-dayer at Adelaide Oval that summer, I launched an indignant rant that compensated for its total lack of perspective with a quadruple helping of hysteria.
'In the era of reality television and interactive audience polls, the time has surely come for England's cricketers to be voted off this island,' I fulminated in print.
'Yesterday's submission...stunk of a team that has as little pride as it does character, of a group of professional sportsmen as bereft of skills as they are drained of confidence, and of a collective that is counting the minutes until the first available flight home.
'In the interests of those spectators being tricked into handing over precious cash on the premise of being entertained...that flight is Virgin Atlantic VS201 and it departs Sydney for London at 3.50 p.m. today.'
I could, in grand journalistic tradition, have then claimed it was my stinging critique that jolted Andrew Flintoff 's team to inexplicably rally and win four of its next five games, including the best-of-three finals series against their Ashes foes in straight sets. But that would have overstated the newspaper's influence and papered over my deeply jaundiced mindset. As it turned out, the sudden radical departure from the summer's script didn't stop me shrieking from the sidelines. As rain threatened to prematurely end Australia's headlong charge towards defeat in the second final, thereby raising the prospect of yet another day of cricket being tacked on to the schedule, I trashed the last remaining rule of accepted sports journalism by openly barracking in the press box. For England. The possibility of them failing to win before the rain arrived drove me to the verge of tears. The trauma associated with sitting through another one-day game made it abundantly clear to me that all three elements of the world's best job description were irretrievably busted. Year-round and worldwide exposure to the game had finally cured me of my childhood obsession for cricket. As a result, I decided over the course of that evening that the end had come.
The storm cleared, mercy prevailed and, shortly before 11 p.m., England emerged triumphant. It was well after midnight when I departed an empty SCG, the wet bitumen roads of Moore Park reflecting bright moonlight as I hunted for a taxi that proved as elusive as that major global scoop I had unsuccessfully sought for a decade. I was in no doubt I would miss the camaraderie of the cricketers, most of whom, once the initial suspicion subsided, provided enjoyable company as well as moments of professional and personal support during a decade of shared ventures. Even tougher would be leaving behind the rapport built with a worldwide fraternity of cricket writers, in the main a thoroughly entertaining collective of incredibly diligent professionals with whom I shared so many memorable moments that transcended our ultimately meaningless competitive jousts. After all, few journalists reflect on the content of past stories, which provide currency for a day but are largely forgotten the next. However, memories of forged friendships and mutual experiences remain vivid for life. I also knew I would never again enjoy such a privileged lifestyle, one that carried me from the breathtaking vista above Guyana's Kaieteur Falls to the floor beneath the Tobago Cays' translucent waters. From dune bashing and a Bedouin feast in the Arabian Desert to an audience with Archbishop and Laureate Desmond Tutu. All loosely in the name of work.
It was, by any measure, an extraordinary job. On many occasions, perhaps even the world's best. But after more than sixty Test matches and a couple of hundred one-day internationals spread across twenty countries, the end-of-day taxi haul back to an empty hotel room was a novelty that had well and truly passed. What's more, in a matter of days Ricky Ponting's team would be in New Zealand, en route to the Caribbean where it would spend two months defending the World Cup. Regardless of the individuals in tow, the carnival relentlessly rolled on.
I filed my resignation by email and it was accepted without question. During the follow-up phone call — conducted in haste because the boss was required at an editorial conference to plan the next day's edition — it was agreed it would become effective from the following day. So I grasped the fleeting opportunity to launch into my carefully rehearsed valedictory speech.
'And I just want to say thanks to everyone there for the past ten years,' I began. 'It really has been a...'
But the line was already dead.
# Picture section
Stuart MacGill bowls to journalist Robert 'Crash' Craddock at a beach in Barbados during Australia's 1999 tour of the West Indies.
In the 'press box' during the 2000 West Indies tour match at Alice Springs: (L to R) Michael Horan (Herald Sun), Andrew Ramsey (The Australian), Michael Crutcher (Australian Associated Press), Mark Ray (Sydney Morning Herald).
Matthew Hayden appears unfazed by the presence of one of Africa's 'big five' while fielding on the boundary during the 2002 tri-series in Nairobi.
Adam Gilchrist interviewed by a local television reporter in Colombo during Australia's 2002 Test series against Pakistan.
Drinks cart on standby during the Australian team practice session prior to the first Colombo Test against Pakistan.
Australia batting against Pakistan in front of a virtually empty stadium during the 2002 Test series in Sharjah.
Adam Gilchrist provided with table, chair, wet towel and drinks during a break while batting in Sharjah's extreme heat.
The Australian media touring party in the Abu Dhabi desert during the 2002 Test series in Sharjah: (L to R) Michael Donaldson (Australian Associated Press), Martin Blake (The Age), Glenn Mitchell (ABC Radio), Mike Coward (The Australian), Andrew Ramsey (The Australian).
With the Frank Worrell Trophy following Australia's 2003 Test series victory in the West Indies: (L) Trevor Marshallsea (Sydney Morning Herald — complete with crutches) and (R) Andrew Ramsey (The Australian).
Capacity crowd at the world's largest cricket venue — Eden Gardens in Kolkata — during the TVS Cup tri-series tournament in India, 2003.
The Australian team training at Newlands Cricket Ground, Cape Town, during the 2006 one-day series in South Africa.
Brett Lee bowls to Andrew Symonds at a training session in Durban during Australia's 2006 tour of South Africa.
Michael Kasprowicz and Shaun Tait (back to camera), atop Table Mountain, Cape Town, during the 2006 South African tour.
At Dubai airport en route from Johannesburg to Dhaka in 2006: (L to R) Brett Lee, Stuart Clark, Stuart MacGill and Phil Pope (media manager).
Young boys playing cricket on a barren field in Dhaka during Australia's 2006 tour of Bangladesh.
Australian batsmen practise in the nets alongside a temporary spectator shelter prior to a Test match in Chittagong during the 2006 tour of Bangladesh.
Scoreboard attendants recover name plates dislodged by a violent storm in Chittagong.
Adam Gilchrist chats to the crowd during a rain delay in the Chittagong Test match.
Ricky Ponting at the Chittagong shipbreaking yards.
Filing an urgent update in front of an attentive crowd during Australia's 2006 tour of Bangladesh.
A cricket match on the Mumbai maidan during the 2006 ICC Champions Trophy tournament in India.
Traffic snarl in the heart of Old Dhaka, Bangladesh; and (below) a juice vendor at a market stall.
A resident of Soweto, South Africa.
The author as an aspiring (and delusional) cricketer in the backyard, aged twelve.
# Acknowledgements
Like so many of those compelling newspaper lifestyle columns, the idea for this text sprang from a Saturday-night dinner-party conversation. The fact that it took five years to progress from discussion to completion is due entirely to my tardiness. And if not for the belief and persistence of the idea's author — my agent, Jacinta di Mase — it would not have materialised at all.
Numerous others have played a significant role — knowingly or otherwise — in the preparation and production of this book. In addition to the players and team officials who allowed me to poke around their business on a daily basis, there were the infinitely patient sub-editors, who ensured my copy was mostly fit for publication, and a number of terrific news-and sports-desk colleagues, who helped countless days transcend the burden of impending deadline. I also owe a significant debt to many of my fellow cricket writers and photographers — from across Australia and around the world — who provided friendship, counsel and comic relief over many a lengthy assignment. In particular, I remain profoundly grateful to Mike Coward and Malcolm Conn, with whom I shared a decade of hugely rewarding summers. I remain in awe of their professionalism, talent and generosity, and treasure their friendship.
As a first-time author, I am thankful for the guidance and wisdom of everyone at ABC Books and HarperCollins — in particular, Helen Littleton for her enthusiasm and vision, and Mary Rennie and John Mapps for their expertise in refining the manuscript.
There is no doubt this project would not have progressed beyond a pre-dessert hypothetical if it weren't for the patience and understanding of everyone at home. I thank Tim, Jane and Abbie for excusing my habitual evening retreat to the keyboard, where I became immersed in bouts of isolationist typing, which seemed to stretch far longer than most of the events I was attempting to recapture. And nobody has been more instrumental in the entire process than Pam, whose love, support, kindness and proof-reading talents are embedded in every page.
Finally, I want to thank my sisters, Cathryn and Fiona, who suffered through my childhood delusions of cricketing adequacy and have been ever-willing to help reassemble the pieces at those times when adult ambitions proved equally illusory. Above all, I am indebted to my mother, Beverley, whose quiet courage and unwavering faith has for so long provided a source of inspiration as well as pride.
# About the Author
Born and raised in South Australia's famous wine-growing region the Barossa Valley, Andrew Ramsey began working life as a bank teller before realising he was far more comfortable with words than numbers. He worked as a daily newspaper journalist in Adelaide and Melbourne for twenty years, with the final decade spent as a touring cricket writer for The Australian, accompanying the Australian cricket team on numerous international tours. He has covered some of the most memorable series of the recent past, including Australia's famous 1999 World Cup win and the historic 2005 Ashes series in England, and has also found himself uncomfortably close to numerous crowd riots, bomb threats and travel disasters.
Andrew has also written about cricket for international publications, such as The Times, The Guardian and the Sunday Telegraph (UK), The Hindu, Hindustan Times and Mid Day (India), and Wisden Cricketers' Almanack. He has made semi-regular appearances on radio and television in Australia, England, and in the Caribbean. Since leaving journalism, he has worked as a political speech writer and at universities. He lives in Adelaide, South Australia.
# Copyright
| | The ABC 'Wave' device is a trademark of the
Australian Broadcasting Corporation and is used
under licence by HarperCollinsPublishers Australia.
---|---|---
First published in Australia in 2012
This edition published in 2012
by HarperCollinsPublishers Australia Pty Limited
ABN 36 009 913 517
www.harpercollins.com.au
Copyright © Andrew Ramsey 2012
The right of Andrew Ramsey to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright Amendment (Moral Rights) Act 2000.
This work is copyright. Apart from any use as permitted under the Copyright Act 1968, no part may be reproduced, copied, scanned, stored in a retrieval system, recorded, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the prior written permission of the publisher.
HarperCollinsPublishers
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National Library of Australia Cataloguing-in-Print data:
Ramsey, Andrew James.
The wrong line/Andrew James Ramsey.
ISBN 978 0 7333 3165 7 (pbk.)
ISBN 978 1 7430 9783 0 (epub)
Ramsey, Andrew James.
Cricket – Anecdotes.
Sportswriters – Australia – Biography.
Australian Broadcasting Corporation.
796.3580924
Cover design by Matt Stanton, HarperCollins Design Studio
Cover image: Caricature sculpture of Shane Warne by Anthony Chandler
Internal photographs © Andrew Ramsey
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{"url":"https:\/\/codeforces.com\/blog\/entry\/77128","text":"### kartik8800's blog\n\nBy\u00a0kartik8800, 6 months ago,\n\nHello Codeforces, In this blog I will try to write a well detailed editorial for the CSES Range Queries section. The motivation for this editorial comes from https:\/\/codeforces.com\/blog\/entry\/70018.\n\nQuoting icecuber \"I think CSES is a nice collection of important CP problems, and would like it to have editorials. Without editorials users will get stuck on problems, and give up without learning the solution. I think this slows down learning significantly compared to solving problems with editorials. Therefore, I encourage others who want to contribute, to write editorials for other sections of CSES.\"\n\nSo here I am writing an editorial for the range queries section.\n\nIf you find any error or maybe have a better solution to some problem please do share.\n\n# Range Sum Queries I\n\nGiven array is A[1..N], for each query of form (L,R) we need to output A[L] + A[L+1] + ... + A[R].\nDefine an array Prefix such that Prefix[i] = A[1] + A[2] + .. + A[i].\nPrefix[R] = A[1] + A[2] + ... + A[R] and Prefix[L-1] = A[1] + A[2] + ... + A[L-1].\nConsider Prefix[R] \u2014 Prefix[L-1] = (A[1] + A[2] + ... + A[R]) \u2014 (A[1] + A[2] + ... + A[L-1]) = (A[L] + A[L+1] + ... + A[R]).\n\nSo for every query simply output Prefix[R] \u2014 Prefix[L-1].\n\nHow Do I build the prefix Array.\n\nTime complexity : O(N) to build prefix array and O(1) per query.\n\n# Range Minimum Queries I\n\nTwo possible ways are as follows :\n1. Build a Range minimum query segment tree in O(N) time and answer each query in O(logN).\n2. Build a sparse table in O(NlogN) time and answer each query in O(1).\n\nCode for approach 1\n\nRefer https:\/\/codeforces.com\/blog\/entry\/71101 for my segment tree template.\n\n# Range Sum Queries II\n\nSo this one is a direct use of segment tree with point updates and I shall use my segtree template to answer this problem.\n\nCode\n\nBoth of these queries can be performed in logN time.\nOverall time complexity is O(N) for building segtree and QlogN for Q queries.\n\n# Range Minimum Queries II\n\nAgain a straightforward segment tree problem and I will use a similar code as I used for the previous problem. This is the same as RMQ1 except that here we also have point updates. Segment tree solution for RMQ1 and RMQ2 will be identical.\n\nCode\n\nBoth of these queries can be performed in logN time.\nOverall time complexity is O(N) for building segtree and QlogN for Q queries.\n\n# Range Xor Queries\n\nFor this problem we can maintain a segment tree where each node of the tree will store the xor-sum of the range of elements for which it is responsible.\nSo root of the tree stores : A[1]^A[2]^....^A[N].\n\nTo calculate the answer for a particular interior node of the tree we do :\nNODE_VAL = LEFT_CHILD_VAL ^ RIGHT_CHILD_VAL\nFor leaf nodes :\nNODE_VAL = A[x], where [x,x] is the range this leaf node is responsible for and if x > N then NODE_VAL = 0 as 0 is the identity for xor_sum.\n\nAgain with these observations we can use the same segtree template as follows :\n\nCode\n\nAC code : https:\/\/ideone.com\/mPhqas\n\n# Range Update Queries\n\nNice question which can be directly solved with a segment tree with lazy propagation but that is an overkill plus my segtree library does not support lazy propagation as of now.\n\nLet's define a few terms:\nSUM[i] = overall update done on the ith element till now\nInitially SUM[i] = 0 for all i as no updates have yet been performed, now we would like to track the updates happening so that our answer to a query 2 k can easily be v[k] + SUM[k] where v is the initial array.\n\nHow to efficiently maintain the SUM array? Let us build a range sum query segment tree on some array X which has all elements initialized to 0.\n\nDEFINE : RSQ[i] = X[1] + X[2] + .. + X[i] = rangeSumQuery(1,i)\n\nNow say we have a query which tells us to add u to all elements in the range [l,r] then if I perform a point update and make X[l] = X[l] + u think what happens to RSQ[i] for different values of i.\n\nRSQ[i] is unaffected for all i where i < l\nand RSQ[i] = RSQ[i] + u for all i >= l.\n\nEffectively we just did a range update on the abstract array RSQ and the range update is equivalent to adding u to all elements of array RSQ from l to N.\n\nBut we wanted the range update to be only for the range [l,r], so we should now do a range update in which we subtract u from [r+1,N] and this is the same as doing a point update to X[r+1] such that:\n\nX[r+1] = X[r+1] \u2014 u\n\nit must be easy to see the abstract array RSQ is nothing but the required SUM array.\n\nSo here is the algorithm :\n\n For every range update query (l,r,u): \u00a0point_update(l,current_val + u) \u00a0point_update(r+1,current_val \u2014 u) For every query -> value at pos idx: \u00a0print SUM[idx] + V[idx]\n\nAC code : https:\/\/ideone.com\/vBZpYx\nTime complexity per query is logN.\n\n# Forest Queries\n\nFor every query of the form (x1,y1,x2,y2) we need to answer the number of trees inside the rectangle described by the top left cell of rectangle (x1,y1) and the bottom right cell of rectangle (x2,y2).\n\nDefine : DP[i][j] as the number of trees in the rectangle described by (1,1) and (i,j).\n\nCan we use DP matrix to evaluate answers for every query?\n\nSpoiler\n\nOk, but how?\n\nSpoiler\n\nHow to build DP matrix?\nLet tree[i][j] = 1, if there is a tree at cell (i,j) else tree[i][j] = 0.\n\n DP[0][0] = DP[-1][0] = DP[0][-1] = 0 for i from 1 to N: \u00a0\u00a0 for j from 1 to N: \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0DP[i][j] = DP[i-1][j] + DP[i][j-1] \u2014 DP[i-1][j-1] + tree[i][j]\n\nTime complexity for build O(N*N) and time complexity per query is O(1).\nAC code : https:\/\/ideone.com\/5dGTfY\n\n# Hotel Queries\n\nObservation : For each group, we need to find the 1st hotel with enough vacancies and book rooms for the group in that hotel.\n\nBrute force : Start checking every hotel from left to right for the number of rooms it has. As soon as you find a hotel with enough rooms use required number of rooms in this hotel. Repeatedly do this till all groups have been assigned a hotel.\n\nHow to optimize?\n\nHow do I know if there is any hotel in the first x hotels which can be assigned to the current group?\n\nSpoiler\n\nAlgorithm :\n\n For each group gi with size si: \u00a0 Find the 1st hotel x such that vacancy(x) >= si. \u00a0\u00a0 Do point update : vacancy(x) = vacancy(x) \u2014 si. \u00a0\u00a0 Print x. \u00a0 If no valid x exists print 0.\n\nTime complexity is O(Mlog^2N), logN steps for the binarySearch and each step of the binary search uses the Range max query segment tree which works in logN time.\n\n# List Removals\n\nBrute force is quite simple if you simply simulate what is mentioned in the problem.\nLet us try to optimize. So whenever we are asked to delete some xth element of the list we need to first locate the xth element, print it and then delete it.\n\nHow can we make the above processes faster?\nLet us keep a boolean array PRESENT of size N and PRESENT[i] = 1 if the ith element of the list has not yet been deleted, 0 otherwise.\n\nNow let us say we have the query : delete the xth element of the list, then this means we are going to delete the element at the jth index of the initial list such that :\n\n1. PRESENT[j] = 1.\n2. sum of PRESENT[i] for all i from 1 to j = x.\n\nWhy above conditions are necessary and sufficient to locate the correct element?\nIf are we deleting the element it has to be present in the list currently and so PRESENT[j] should be 1.\nIf this element at index j(of the initial list) is the xth element of the list(current state of the list) then there are exactly x elements present in the list in range [1,j](of the initial list) and remaining j \u2014 x elements got deleted in some previous queries.\n\nHow do I find this j?\n\nSpoiler\n\nOk, elaborate.\n\nSpoiler\n\nHow do I find number of elements not yet deleted in the range [1,j]?\n\nHint : problem comes from range query section\n\nOnce you have found the correct j, you need to print it and also mark PRESENT[j] = 0 and make the required point update in the segment tree.\n\nTime complexity analysis is similar to previous problem.\n\nAC code : https:\/\/ideone.com\/anpuXy\n\n# Salary Queries\n\nOkay so, this seems a bit hard. Maybe if the max possible salary of the employees was limited to some smaller amount(instead of a billion) we might be able to solve it.\n\nSo try solving the problem under the constraint that p,a,b <= 10^7.\nNow the problem is much easier if I maintain the number of people with a given salary, let us define\nfreq[i] : number of employees with the salary i\nWe may now build a range sum query segment tree on this array and to answer a query we simply calculate the sum of the range [a,b].\n\nFor updating the salary of some employee from x to y, we do the point updates freq[x] -= 1 and freq[x] += 1 because now 1 less employee has salary x and 1 more employee has the salary y.\n\nBut the problem is not solved, since we needed to do this for max possible salary = 1billion, but now we know how to do it for 10^7.\n\nobservation\n\nSo lets group the salaries into 10^7 buckets and each bucket represent a range of 100 different contiguous salary values. The 0th bucket represents salaries from 1 to 100 and ith bucket represents the salaries from (i)*100 + 1 to (i+1)*100.\n\nThese buckets will store aggregated number of employees that have salaries in the given range represented by the bucket.\n\nNow for query [a,b] : all the buckets that are entirely in the range [a,b] their aggregate values should be taken and summed up and for the 2 partial buckets(or 1) not entirely included in the range [a,b] we shall do a brute force.\n\nSo build a segment tree over the buckets and calculate the sum over all completely included buckets in the range [a,b]. For remaining partially included buckets do a brute force(actually iterate over approx 100 possible values and choose to include those which are required by a particular query, refer code).\n\nA code will make this explanation much more clear.\n\nAC code : https:\/\/ideone.com\/zg97c8\n\nTime Complexity?\n\nother way to do it is using a dynamic segment tree in which you only build a node of the tree when it is needed.\n\n# Distinct Values Queries\n\nThis is a direct application of the MO's Algorithm. You may read more about MO's algorithm on https:\/\/blog.anudeep2011.com\/mos-algorithm\/\n\nThe brute force can be done by simply iterating from index a to b and maintaining number of distinct elements seen till now and a frequency array to indicate which elements and how many occurrences of those elements is present.\n\nFrequency[i] = count of occurences of i in the current range.\n\nNext we try to build the required ADD and REMOVE functions which help MO's algorithm to function properly.\nTo ADD a new element in the current range simply check if this element is already present(frequency > 0) and if it is present just increase its frequency else if its frequency was 0 then make it 1 and also increase the number of unique elements in the range.\nTo REMOVE an element from the current range, decrement its frequency by 1, if its frequency reaches 0 then decrease the number of distinct elements in the current range.\n\nAfter this sort the queries as described by MO's algorithm and you are done.\n\nTwist : We cannot use frequency array as value of individual element can go upto 10^9. So what I'll simply use an unordered_map?\n\nNo, unordered_map solution will time out due to high constant factor involved.\n\nHow to continue using the frequency array?\n\nTime complexity : O((N+Q)root(N))\n\nAC code : https:\/\/ideone.com\/RkC547\n\n# Subarray Sum Queries\n\nLet us try to keep track of the max sum subarray in a particular range [L,R]. If we were to build a segment tree in which each node of the tree stores max sum subarray of the range that the node is responsible for then the root keeps track of max sum subarray in the range [1,N].\nHowever for segment trees to be efficient we need to generate the answer of interior nodes of the tree using the answers\/information provided by the child nodes.\n\nNow let's try to generate the answer for some interior node P of the segment tree assuming that we already have the answers for the children of the node P.\n\nNode P is responsible for the range [l,r], its left child is responsible for the range [l,mid] and its right child is responsible for the range [mid+1,r].\n\nNow we need to find the sum of max sum subarray in the range [l,r].\nAssume you have all necessary information about the child nodes but if you have some information about a child node you also need to generate that piece of information for the parent node as well(since this node also has a parent which will use information given by P to generate it's answer).\n\nAgreed, now what info to keep for every node?\n\nSo to summarize, for every node which represents the range [l,r] we should store :\n1. sum of max sum subarray in the range [l,r].\n2. maximum possible sum of some prefix [l,x] (such value of x is chosen, such that l <= x <= r and sum of elements in range [l,x] is maximum possible.)\n3. maximum possible sum of some suffix [x,r].\n\nWe now know how to calculate sum of max sum subarray for some node using the above mentioned information about children nodes but as discussed we should also calculate prefix and suffix info for the parent also.\n\nHow to calculate prefix and suffix for parent node\n\nRefer the combine function in the code for more clarity.\nAC code : https:\/\/ideone.com\/MhVmBs\n\nTime complexity : logN per update.\n\n# Forest Queries II\n\nProblem is almost the same as Forest Queries but we also have point updates.\nI will discuss two approaches, one of them is quite efficient while the other one struggles to run in the time limit(passes if constant factor is low).\n\nApproach 1\n\nLet us do build the same DP matrix which we had built for the problem Forest Queries. If somehow we are able to keep our DP matrix consistent with the updates then our answer will be the same as before.\n\nANSWER TO QUERY (x1,y1,x2,y2) : DP[x2][y2] \u2014 DP[x1-1][y2] \u2014 DP[x2][y1-1] + DP[x1-1][y1-1]\n\nHow to efficiently track the updates that happen on some entry DP[i][j]?\n\nWhich entries of the DP matrix change if cell (i,j) is updated?\n\nAlright, so now I need to efficiently add or subtract 1 from all the matrix entries (x,y) where that x >= i and y >= j.\n\nSo how do we track these updates?\n\nTime complexity O(Q*N*logN)\nCode for fenwick tree is taken from : https:\/\/cp-algorithms.com\/data_structures\/fenwick.html\n\nApproach 2\nThis approach is more efficient and some might also find it easier to understand.\nIt uses a 2D Binary Indexed tree to achieve an overall time complexity of O(N^2 + Q*log^2(N)).\n\nNo surprises here. My solution will use the data structure and the technique related to that data structure which most would have already guessed after reading the problem statement. The important thing would be a thorough understanding of the concept and a neat implementation(I have tried to make it readable).\n\nwhat data structure, what technique?\n\nAlright so our segment tree needs to support the following operations :\n1. increase values in range [l,r] by x.\n2. set values in range [l,r] = x.\n3. return sum of values in range [l,r].\n\nThink about what information should we store per node of the tree, so that we are able to lazily update our nodes when a new update comes in and we are able to propagate the updates downward when needed.\n\nTo better understand lazy propagation, I recommend reading this : Super amazing theory in 1 comment (My implementation uses applyAggr and compose functions mentioned here).\n\nWhat info to store per node?\nHow do I find the actual Sum using these variables?\nHow do i propagate these updates downward?\n\nTime Complexity is logN per query.\nIf something is not explained or if something isn't clear feel free to ask but I recommend understanding lazy prop well before attempting the problem or reading the editorial.\nAC code : https:\/\/ideone.com\/8HQxMk\n\nPlease feel free to point out mistakes, suggest better\/alternate solutions and to contribute.\nI'd be glad to know if this helps :)\n\nP.S. Will add remaining problems in a few days.\n\nUPD : Editorial is almost complete with 2 problems left. 2nd last uses segment tree with lazy prop and I am guessing the last one uses some kind of persistent data structure, will add soon.\n\n\u2022 +181\n\n \u00bb 6 months ago, # | \u00a0 0 nice one thanks.if possible , can you please provide all the other links for cses editorials like these 2 by you and icecuber\n\u2022 \u00bb \u00bb 6 months ago, # ^ | \u00a0 0 I am unaware of any other editorial for CSES sections, if you or anyone knows about some section which is available share it and I'll add the link to them in this blog.\n\u2022 \u00bb \u00bb \u00bb 3 months ago, # ^ | \u00a0 0 CSES Dynamic Programming Editorial :) (https:\/\/codeforces.com\/blog\/entry\/70018)\n\u2022 \u00bb \u00bb \u00bb \u00bb 3 months ago, # ^ | \u00a0 0 Already mentioned in the blog\n \u00bb 6 months ago, # | \u00a0 +2 Nice, I'll come back here when I solve those problems.\n \u00bb 6 months ago, # | \u00a0 0 can you provide editorials for the graph section as well\n\u2022 \u00bb \u00bb 6 months ago, # ^ | \u00a0 0 I'll see to it, however there are a lot of problems in the graph section. Maybe sometime in the future I'll write an editorial on some of the selected problems from that section.\n \u00bb 6 months ago, # | \u2190 Rev. 9 \u2192 \u00a0 +3 Distinct values queries can also be done using segment tree (with sorted vector in each node) in $\\mathcal{O}(N\\log^2N)$.Let's say your original array is $A$. For each index $i$, you store the smallest index $j$ such that $A[i] = A[j]$ but $i < j$. Let the array of $j$ values be $B$. Build segment tree over $B$. For each query $[L,R]$, you just need to check how many values in each of the $\\mathcal{O}(\\log N)$ segments have value $> R$ via binary search.Of course, this only works if there are no updates. Also, MO's algorithm can be adapted to solve more difficult range query problems (e.g. range query for most frequent element can be done in $\\mathcal{O}(Q\\sqrt{N}$)).Upd: Here is my implementation of this solution.\n\u2022 \u00bb \u00bb 6 months ago, # ^ | \u00a0 0 Nice approach, I am guessing this should work. Do contribute the code if you get the time for that.\n\u2022 \u00bb \u00bb \u00bb 6 months ago, # ^ | \u2190 Rev. 9 \u2192 \u00a0 +8 Sure. I will implement it when I have time.I think I have one more approach. This time it has time complexity of $\\mathcal{O}(N\\log N)$. Sort the queries by left endpoint. For each index $i$, you store the smallest index $j$ such that $A[i]=A[j]$ But $i \u2022 \u00bb \u00bb 6 months ago, # ^ | \u2190 Rev. 2 \u2192 +8 We can also solve Distinct Value Queries using Persistent Segment Tree (Online) in O(NlogN). Code \u2014 https:\/\/pastebin.com\/WhkF5cCp \u2022 \u00bb \u00bb \u00bb 6 months ago, # ^ | \u2190 Rev. 8 \u2192 0 Ah yes we can. I think the approach is very similar to my first segment tree solution but we sort the values in$B$in ascending order and set the$i^{th}$index to$1$in the$j^{th}$version of the persistent segment tree for each$B[i]=j$. Thereafter, we just need to take the difference between sum of elements in$[L,R]$in the$(n+1)^{th}$and$R^{th}$version of the segment tree for query$[L,R]$.Even though this works, persistence is unnecessary. \u2022 \u00bb \u00bb 6 months ago, # ^ | 0 It can also be done using a persistent segment tree in$O(N log N + Q log N)$, here's how:Build a persistent segment tree like this: Traverse the array from left to right. For the element with index N, update its value in the ST to 1 and save its position using a bucket (you can use a map or coordinate compression, whichever you prefer). For the remaining elements, if it is the first appearance of the element, update its value in the ST to a 1. Otherwise, first update the value of the position where it last appeared to 0 and then update its value in the ST to a 1. Save the position of this element using a bucket. Example: For the array$[2, 3, 1, 3, 2]$, we will get the following STs:Element 5:$[0, 0, 0, 0, 1]$Element 4:$[0, 0, 0, 1, 1]$Element 3:$[0, 0, 1, 1, 1]$Element 2:$[0, 1, 1, 0, 1]$Element 1:$[1, 1, 1, 0, 0]$Note that since this is a persistent segment tree, you will have all different versions stored in memory.Now, to answer a query in the form$[a, b]$, we just have to do a \"sum\" query from$a$to$b$on the ST of element$a$. This works because, by construction, only one element for every value will have a 1, and this will be the leftmost one. If we have one or more elements in the range$[a, b]$with a certain value, the \"sum\" query will count only one of them. If we don't have any elements with a certain value, the \"sum\" query will not count them.Total time complexity:$O(N log N + Q log N)$, for the construction of the persistent ST and for every query.Total memory complexity:$O(N log N)$, because we are using a persistent segment tree. Implementation#include #include #include #include using namespace std; typedef long long ll; typedef pair pii; typedef vector vi; struct Node { int val; Node *lchild, *rchild; Node() { val = 0; lchild = nullptr; rchild = nullptr; } Node(int x) { val = x; lchild = nullptr; rchild = nullptr; } }; int N, Q; vi a; Node* build ( Node* node, int l = 1, int r = N ) { if ( node == nullptr ) node = new Node(); if ( l == r ) { node -> val = 0; return node; } int mid = (l + r) \/ 2; node -> lchild = build ( node -> lchild, l, mid ); node -> rchild = build ( node -> rchild, mid + 1, r ); node -> val = node -> lchild -> val + node -> rchild -> val; return node; } Node* upd ( int pos, int x, Node* node, int l = 1, int r = N ) { if ( pos < l || r < pos ) return node; if ( l == r ) { Node* tmp = new Node(x); return tmp; } int mid = (l + r) \/ 2; Node* tmp = new Node(); tmp -> lchild = upd ( pos, x, node -> lchild, l, mid ); tmp -> rchild = upd ( pos, x, node -> rchild, mid + 1, r ); tmp -> val = tmp -> lchild -> val + tmp -> rchild -> val; return tmp; } int qry ( int L, int R, Node* node, int l = 1, int r = N ) { if ( R < l || r < L ) return 0; if ( L <= l && r <= R ) return node -> val; int mid = (l + r) \/ 2; return qry ( L, R, node -> lchild, l, mid ) + qry ( L, R, node -> rchild, mid + 1, r ); } int main () { ios_base::sync_with_stdio ( 0 ); cin.tie ( 0 ); cin >> N >> Q; a.resize ( N + 1 ); for ( int i = 1; i <= N; i++ ) cin >> a[i]; map < int, int > freq; Node* roots[N + 1]; roots[N] = new Node(); roots[N] = build ( roots[N] ); roots[N] = upd ( N, 1, roots[N] ); freq[a[N]] = N; for ( int i = N - 1; i >= 1; i-- ) { roots[i] = roots[i + 1]; if ( freq[a[i]] != 0 ) roots[i] = upd ( freq[a[i]], 0, roots[i] ); roots[i] = upd ( i, 1, roots[i] ); freq[a[i]] = i; } int l, r; for ( int i = 0; i < Q; i++ ) { cin >> l >> r; cout << qry ( l, r, roots[l] ) << \"\\n\"; } return 0; } \u2022 \u00bb \u00bb \u00bb 6 months ago, # ^ | 0 Ok. This is the online version of my fenwick tree solution. \u2022 \u00bb \u00bb 6 weeks ago, # ^ | 0 Hey LanceTheDragonTrainer, can you explain this line: For each query [L, R], you just need to check how many values in each of the O(logN) segments have value > R via binary search.. Why do so? How does that will give us the correct answer for a query [L, R]? \u2022 \u00bb \u00bb \u00bb 5 weeks ago, # ^ | 0 Firstly, do you understand what are the values in the segment tree? \u2022 \u00bb \u00bb \u00bb \u00bb 5 weeks ago, # ^ | 0 Yes, that segment tree is also called merge sort tree and it stores sorted vector at each node. Sorted values for each segment. \u2022 \u00bb \u00bb \u00bb \u00bb \u00bb 5 weeks ago, # ^ | \u2190 Rev. 2 \u2192 0 Ok. What are the values in the array from which you would use to build the segment tree? Hint: You do not use the input array. You need to transform it. \u2022 \u00bb \u00bb \u00bb \u00bb \u00bb \u00bb 5 weeks ago, # ^ | 0 Hey I read your original comment, I'm repeating again. For each query [L,R], you just need to check how many values in each of the O(logN) segments have value >R. Why counting this value will ensure the correct answer. See I'm not getting this logic. \u2022 \u00bb \u00bb \u00bb \u00bb \u00bb \u00bb \u00bb 5 weeks ago, # ^ | \u2190 Rev. 3 \u2192 0 Ok. I think you didn't get my intention.In order to answer your question, you need to understand what is the array we used to build the segment tree.Say, our input array is: [2, 1, 4, 3, 3, 1, 2, 2].Our transformed array would be: [6, 5, 8, 4, 8, 8, 7, 8] assuming zero-based indexing. To understand how I got this array, read my original comment.Now build segment tree over the transformed array. \u2022 \u00bb \u00bb \u00bb \u00bb \u00bb \u00bb \u00bb \u00bb 5 weeks ago, # ^ | 0 Thanks, finally got it. I was not getting why a query on the B array will ensure the correct result for each [L, R]. Now I got it, all those numbers in [L, R] whose B[i] is greater than R is unique in this range. Pardon my stupidity. Thanks again. \u00bb 6 months ago, # | 0 loved it thanks a lot for your time \u2022 \u00bb \u00bb 6 months ago, # ^ | 0 glad to know you find this helpful. \u00bb 6 months ago, # | +3 Thank you so much kartik8800 You did a Greatjob! I Bookmarked this page!! \u2022 \u00bb \u00bb 6 months ago, # ^ | 0 I'm glad you liked it. thanks for the appreciation :) \u00bb 6 months ago, # | 0 for List Removals life can be easier with this data structure https:\/\/codeforces.com\/blog\/entry\/10355 \u2022 \u00bb \u00bb 6 months ago, # ^ | 0 have you implemented it using that? can you please share the code? \u2022 \u00bb \u00bb \u00bb 6 months ago, # ^ | 0 Spoiler#include #include #include #include using namespace std; using namespace __gnu_pbds; using namespace __gnu_cxx; #define mod 1000000007 \/* \/\\\/\\\/\\\/\\\/\\\/\\\/\\\/\\\/\\\/\\\/\\\/\\\/\\\/\\\/\\\/\\\/\\\/ *** Debugging Start *** \\\/\\\/\\\/\\\/\\\/\\\/\\\/\\\/\\\/\\\/\\\/\\\/\\\/\\\/\\\/\\\/\\\/\\\/\\\/\\\/\\\/\\\/\\\/\\\/\\\/\\\/\\\/ *\/ void __print(int x) {cerr << x;} void __print(long x) {cerr << x;} void __print(long long x) {cerr << x;} void __print(unsigned x) {cerr << x;} void __print(unsigned long x) {cerr << x;} void __print(unsigned long long x) {cerr << x;} void __print(float x) {cerr << x;} void __print(double x) {cerr << x;} void __print(long double x) {cerr << x;} void __print(char x) {cerr << '\\'' << x << '\\'';} void __print(const char *x) {cerr << '\\\"' << x << '\\\"';} void __print(const string &x) {cerr << '\\\"' << x << '\\\"';} void __print(bool x) {cerr << (x ? \"true\" : \"false\");} template void __print(const pair &x) {cerr << '{'; __print(x.first); cerr << ','; __print(x.second); cerr << '}';} template void __print(const T &x) {int f = 0; cerr << '{'; for (auto &i: x) cerr << (f++ ? \",\" : \"\"), __print(i); cerr << \"}\";} void _print() {cerr << \"]\\n\";} template void _print(T t, V... v) {__print(t); if (sizeof...(v)) cerr << \", \"; _print(v...);} #ifndef ONLINE_JUDGE #define debug(x...) cerr << \"[\" << #x << \"] = [\"; _print(x) #else #define debug(x...) #endif \/* \/\\\/\\\/\\\/\\\/\\\/\\\/\\\/\\\/\\\/\\\/\\\/\\\/\\\/\\\/\\\/\\\/\\\/ *** Debugging Ends *** \\\/\\\/\\\/\\\/\\\/\\\/\\\/\\\/\\\/\\\/\\\/\\\/\\\/\\\/\\\/\\\/\\\/\\\/\\\/\\\/\\\/\\\/\\\/\\\/\\\/\\\/\\\/ *\/ using namespace __gnu_pbds; template using ordered_set = tree, rb_tree_tag, tree_order_statistics_node_update>; \/\/\/ Some frequent usable functions #define int long long void add(int &a,int b){a+=b;if(a>mod)a-=mod;} void sub(int &a,int b){a-=b;if(a<0)a+=mod;} void mul(int &a, int b) {a=1ll * a * b % mod;} template T pow(T a,T b, long long m){T ans=1; while(b>0){ if(b%2==1) ans=(ans*a)%m; b\/=2; a=(a*a)%m; } return ans%m; } int powmod(int a,int b) {int res = 1;while(b){if(b&1){res = (res * a)%mod;}b= b\/2;a = (a*a)%mod;}return res;} int _ceil(int, int); int _floor(int a, int b) { return b < 0 ? _floor(-a, -b) : a < 0 ? -_ceil(-a, b) : a \/ b; } int _ceil(int a, int b) { return b < 0 ? _ceil(-a, -b) : a < 0 ? -_floor(-a, b) : (a + b - 1) \/ b; } \/\/ int gcd(int a, int b, int &x, int &y) {if (a == 0) {x = 0; y = 1;return b; \/\/ }int x1, y1;int d = gcd(b%a, a, x1, y1); x = y1 - (b \/ a) * x1;y = x1;return d;} \/\/ int find(int v){return v==parent[v]?v:parent[v] = find(parent[v]);} \/\/ void merge(int i,int j) \/\/ {i = find(i);j = find(j);if(i == j)return;parent[parent[i]] = parent[j];cmp--;} \/* \/\\\/\\\/\\\/\\\/\\\/\\\/\\\/\\\/\\\/\\\/\\\/\\\/\\\/\\\/\\\/\\\/\\\/ *** Directions in grids *** \\\/\\\/\\\/\\\/\\\/\\\/\\\/\\\/\\\/\\\/\\\/\\\/\\\/\\\/\\\/\\\/\\\/\\\/\\\/\\\/\\\/\\\/\\\/\\\/\\\/\\\/\\\/ *\/ \/\/ int dy[4] = {0,0,1,-1}, dx[4] = {1,-1,0,0}; \/\/ 4 Direction \/\/ int dx[] = {1,-1,0,0,1,1,-1,-1} , dy[] = {0,0,1,-1,1,-1,1,-1}; \/\/ 8 Direction \/\/ int dx[] = {1,-1,1,-1,2,2,-2,-2} , dy[] = {2,2,-2,-2,1,-1,1,-1}; \/\/ Knight moves \/\/ int dx[] = {2,-2,1,1,-1,-1} , dy[] = {0,0,1,-1,1,-1}; \/\/ Hexagonal Direction #pragma GCC target (\"avx2\") #pragma GCC optimization (\"O3\") #pragma GCC optimization (\"unroll-loops\") #define fast ios_base::sync_with_stdio(false);cin.tie(NULL);cout.tie(NULL) #define sp(a , x) cout << fixed << setprecision(a) << x << endl; #define endl \"\\n\" #define pb push_back #define pf push_front #define ub upper_bound #define lb lower_bound #define F first #define S second #define mset(a, b) memset(a, b, sizeof a) #define sz(x) ((int)(x.size())) #define sqr(x) ((x) * (x)) #define graph vector #define vi vector #define vvi vector> #define pi pair #define all(c) c.begin() , c.end() #define rep(i,a) for(int i=0;i=b;i--) #define iter(it,a) for(auto it=a.begin();it!=a.end();it++) #define PQP priority_queue, greater> #define PQI priority_queue, greater> #define dbg debug #define inf (int)1e16 const long double EPS = 0.0000000001; const long double PI = (acos(-1)); \/\/\/ define some data....... const int N = (int)3e6+6; void solve() { ropev; int n; cin >> n; rep(i,n){ int x; cin >> x; v.pb(x); } rep(i,n) { int id; cin >> id; cout<> test; int tc=1; while(test--) { \/\/cout<<\"Case \"< \u2022 \u00bb \u00bb \u00bb \u00bb 6 months ago, # ^ | 0 thanks a lot can you just explain me this data structure? i tried studying from the editorial but got nothing. it would be really nice of you \u2022 \u00bb \u00bb \u00bb \u00bb \u00bb 6 months ago, # ^ | 0 have you went through https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Rope_(data_structure) let me know if I can further clarify \u2022 \u00bb \u00bb \u00bb \u00bb \u00bb \u00bb 6 months ago, # ^ | 0 yes still couldn't understand \u2022 \u00bb \u00bb \u00bb \u00bb \u00bb \u00bb 6 months ago, # ^ | 0 and also why are you not using inserting \u00bb 6 months ago, # | +8 Hello just a doubt that how do i build my segment tree for this question : Range Update Queries like i will be using lazy propagation for the range updates, ADDEND to increase value in the range and getValue to get the value at the kth index. Can you please help. https:\/\/ideone.com\/h2Mo9u this is my segment tree template \u2022 \u00bb \u00bb 6 months ago, # ^ | \u2190 Rev. 2 \u2192 0 You don't need lazy prop for range sum updates and point queries. Instead of storing the array directly, store the differences between consecutive elements. Then each update can be expressed as two point updates at the ends of the interval, and each query is just a prefix sum query on the new array, which is easily solvable with a BIT or segment tree without lazy prop. \u2022 \u00bb \u00bb \u00bb 6 months ago, # ^ | +8 thank you for replying yeah i have solved this question using segment tree already similar to author one, but i wanted to see if range increment(addend in case of lazzy prop can be used) to solve this question however i am unable to do it. here is the link to my template can you please guide me on solving this using lazy prop ( i somehow want to use that addend function in my template) https:\/\/ideone.com\/h2Mo9u \u2022 \u00bb \u00bb \u00bb \u00bb 6 months ago, # ^ | 0 Yeah, of course you can solve it with range updates and point queries on a segment tree using lazy prop. If you are learning how to do this for the first time, I suggest reading this starting from page 245. Go through the implementation carefully and test your code along the way. It's also ok to look at other people's implementations of segment trees to get an idea of how it should work. \u2022 \u00bb \u00bb 6 months ago, # ^ | 0 This is possibly the best theory about lazy propagation that I have read till now : https:\/\/codeforces.com\/blog\/entry\/44478?#comment-290116 Give it a read, you might find implementing lazy propagation easier. \u00bb 6 months ago, # | \u2190 Rev. 3 \u2192 0 You can solve Salary Queries offline with binary search and bit. here's my code https:\/\/pastebin.com\/VG6JZaZt . \u2022 \u00bb \u00bb 6 months ago, # ^ | 0 Can u explain your approach, like if you are using binary search on answer then how are u managing to check for this value whether it can be answer or not? \u2022 \u00bb \u00bb \u00bb 6 months ago, # ^ | \u2190 Rev. 3 \u2192 0 We can add all the salaries that appear in the initial salaries array & in the queries to a vector ve. Updates: Let x be the salary of an employee we will get the index k of x in ve and add one to k in the BIT, we'll do the same thing to subtract the old salary of this employee from the BIT.Queries: we will get the indices of l and r in ve using bs and answer the queries from bit.time complexity : O(nlogn+qlogn) \u2022 \u00bb \u00bb \u00bb \u00bb 3 months ago, # ^ | +3 hi your solution works but i have no clue how. i mean why are there so many continue; ? and also why are you using visited every time? please help i really want learn from your solution \u2022 \u00bb \u00bb \u00bb \u00bb \u00bb 3 months ago, # ^ | +3 Upd: understood \u00bb 6 months ago, # | +3 Salary Queries can be solved for arbitrarily large values in the array using coord compression to get all values in the range$[1..N]$, then just use a BIT, segment tree, or whatever your favorite data structure is to solve it. The implementation is very messy, so I wouldn't recommend coding it, but it ends up taking$O(n\\log n+q\\log n)$. \u2022 \u00bb \u00bb 6 months ago, # ^ | 0 Seems reasonable but can you explain what happens when the salary of an employee gets updated?Let's say I did the coordinate compression on the salaries [2,6,8] and got [1,2,3]. Now the query says change 6 to 3, and 6 is mapped to 2, what do you change the compressed_number(2) to?Little confused on how you will work with updates. \u2022 \u00bb \u00bb \u00bb 6 months ago, # ^ | \u2190 Rev. 2 \u2192 +6 You have to take into account future updates when running the coord compression. For instance, append all future values to the array, compress it, and then remove them again. You would also do the same thing for both endpoints of all queries.So I guess the complexity is actually$O((n+q)\\log(n+q))$, this is basically the same thing though given the constraints. \u2022 \u00bb \u00bb \u00bb \u00bb 6 months ago, # ^ | 0 Ah, got it!Makes complete sense, thanks for sharing. \u2022 \u00bb \u00bb \u00bb \u00bb 5 months ago, # ^ | 0 That was my approach and it led me to TLE, I'm using a set and a map to compress, and a FenwickTree to perform queries later on. I haven't tried compressing with vectors + binary search, but I don't think it would make a difference, any help will be appreciated \u2022 \u00bb \u00bb \u00bb \u00bb \u00bb 5 months ago, # ^ | 0 Well apparently compressing with vectors + binary search is allowed to pass meanwhile set + maps isn't, since my code is AC now after that modification \u2022 \u00bb \u00bb \u00bb \u00bb \u00bb 5 months ago, # ^ | 0 I got AC while using a map for compression. Here's what I used: Codetemplate void compress(it start, it end) { typedef typename remove_reference::type T; map> m; for (it i = start; i != end; i++) m[*i].push_back(i); int t = 0; for (auto& [x, v] : m) { for (auto& i : v) *i = t; t++; } } \u2022 \u00bb \u00bb \u00bb \u00bb \u00bb \u00bb 5 months ago, # ^ | 0 Thanks \u00bb 6 months ago, # | 0 Anyone has any idea where to find editorial of String Algorithm section of CSES problemset? \u00bb 5 months ago, # | 0 please anyone give me HOTEL QUERIES problem solution. \u00bb 5 months ago, # | +5 xor queries can also be solved using$xor(l,r) = xor(xor(1,r), xor(1, l-1))\\$ right?\n\u2022 \u00bb \u00bb 5 months ago, # ^ | \u00a0 +3 sure it will work perfectly and in O(n) time. here is the AC code : https:\/\/ideone.com\/MuIx1L thanks for mentioning.\n \u00bb 5 months ago, # | \u00a0 0 Range Sum Queries I\/\/prefix sum array #include #define int long long #define endl '\\n' #define IOS ios::sync_with_stdio(0); cin.tie(0); cout.tie(0); using namespace std; int32_t main(){ IOS int n,m;cin>>n>>m; vectora(n+2); for(int i=1;i<=n;i++){ cin>>a[i];a[i]+=a[i-1]; } for(int i=1;i<=m;i++){ int l,r;cin>>l>>r; cout << a[r] - a[l-1] << endl; } } Range Minimum Queries I\/\/ sparse table #include #define int long long #define endl '\\n' #define IOS ios::sync_with_stdio(0); cin.tie(0); cout.tie(0); using namespace std; const int maxn = 2e5+10; vector>st(maxn,vector(21)); vectorlg(maxn); int32_t main(){ IOS lg[1]=0; for(int i=2;i>1]+1; } int n,m;cin>>n>>m; for(int i=1;i<=n;i++){ cin>>st[i][0]; } for(int i=n;i>=1;i--){ for(int j=1;i+(1<>l>>r; cout< #define int long long #define endl '\\n' #define IOS ios::sync_with_stdio(0); cin.tie(0); cout.tie(0); using namespace std; const int maxn = 2e5+10; vectort(maxn<<2),a(maxn); int n,m; void build(int rt,int l,int r){ if( l == r ){t[rt]=a[l];return;} int m=(l+r)>>1; build(rt<<1,l,m); build((rt<<1)+1,m+1,r); t[rt]=t[(rt<<1)]+t[(rt<<1)+1]; } void update(int rt,int l,int r,int pos,int new_val){ if(l==r){t[rt]=new_val;return;} int m=(l+r)>>1; if(pos<=m)update(rt<<1,l,m,pos,new_val); else update((rt<<1)+1,m+1,r,pos,new_val); t[rt]=t[(rt<<1)]+t[(rt<<1)+1]; } int query(int rt,int tl,int tr,int l,int r){ if( l > r )return 0; if( l == tl && r == tr )return t[rt]; int m=(tl+tr)>>1; return query(rt<<1,tl,m,l,min(r,m))+query((rt<<1)+1,m+1,tr,max(m+1,l),r); } int32_t main(){ IOS cin>>n>>m; for(int i=1;i<=n;i++){ cin>>a[i]; } build(1,1,n); for(int i=1;i<=m;i++){ int x,y,z;cin>>x>>y>>z; if(x==1)update(1,1,n,y,z); else cout< #define int long long #define endl '\\n' #define IOS ios::sync_with_stdio(0); cin.tie(0); cout.tie(0); using namespace std; const int maxn = 2e5+10; vectort(maxn<<2),a(maxn); int n,m; void build(int rt,int l,int r){ if( l == r ){t[rt]=a[l];return;} int m=(l+r)>>1; build(rt<<1,l,m); build((rt<<1)+1,m+1,r); t[rt]=min(t[(rt<<1)],t[(rt<<1)+1]); } void update(int rt,int l,int r,int pos,int new_val){ if(l==r){t[rt]=new_val;return;} int m=(l+r)>>1; if(pos<=m)update(rt<<1,l,m,pos,new_val); else update((rt<<1)+1,m+1,r,pos,new_val); t[rt]=min(t[(rt<<1)],t[(rt<<1)+1]); } int query(int rt,int tl,int tr,int l,int r){ if( l > r )return 1e15; if( l == tl && r == tr )return t[rt]; int m=(tl+tr)>>1; return min(query(rt<<1,tl,m,l,min(r,m)),query((rt<<1)+1,m+1,tr,max(m+1,l),r)); } int32_t main(){ IOS cin>>n>>m; for(int i=1;i<=n;i++){ cin>>a[i]; } build(1,1,n); for(int i=1;i<=m;i++){ int x,y,z;cin>>x>>y>>z; if(x==1)update(1,1,n,y,z); else cout< #define int long long #define endl '\\n' #define IOS ios::sync_with_stdio(0); cin.tie(0); cout.tie(0); using namespace std; const int maxn = 2e5+10; vectora(maxn); int n,m; int32_t main(){ IOS cin>>n>>m; for(int i=1;i<=n;i++){ cin>>a[i];a[i]^=a[i-1]; } for(int i=1;i<=m;i++){ int l,r;cin>>l>>r; cout<<(a[r]^a[l-1])< #define int long long #define endl '\\n' #define IOS ios::sync_with_stdio(0); cin.tie(0); cout.tie(0); using namespace std; const int maxn = 2e5+10; vectorlazy(maxn<<2),a(maxn); int n,m; void push(int r){ lazy[r<<1]+=lazy[r]; lazy[(r<<1)+1]+=lazy[r]; lazy[r]=0; } void update(int rt,int tl,int tr,int l,int r,int addend){ if(l>r)return; if(l==tl&&r==tr){lazy[rt]+=addend;return;} push(rt); update((rt<<1),tl,(tl+tr)>>1,l,min(r,(tl+tr)>>1),addend); update((rt<<1)+1,((tl+tr)>>1)+1,tr,max(l,((tl+tr)>>1)+1),r,addend); } int query(int rt,int tl,int tr,int pos){ if(tl==tr)return lazy[rt]; push(rt); if(pos<=((tl+tr)>>1))return query(rt<<1,tl,(tl+tr)>>1,pos); return query((rt<<1)+1,((tl+tr)>>1)+1,tr,pos); } int32_t main(){ IOS cin>>n>>m; for(int i=1;i<=n;i++){ int x;cin>>x;update(1,1,n,i,i,x); } for(int i=1;i<=m;i++){ int x;cin>>x; if(x==1){ int l,r,dx;cin>>l>>r>>dx; update(1,1,n,l,r,dx); }else{ int pos;cin>>pos; cout< #define int long long #define endl '\\n' #define IOS ios::sync_with_stdio(0); cin.tie(0); cout.tie(0); using namespace std; const int maxn = 1000+5; vector>dp(maxn,vector(maxn)); int32_t main(){ IOS int n,m;cin>>n>>m; for(int i=1;i<=n;i++){ string s;cin>>s; for(int j=1;j<=n;j++){ dp[i][j]=(s[j-1]=='*')+dp[i-1][j]+dp[i][j-1]-dp[i-1][j-1]; } } auto query=[&](int x1,int y1,int x2,int y2){ return dp[x2][y2]-dp[x2][y1-1]-dp[x1-1][y2]+dp[x1-1][y1-1]; }; for(int i=1;i<=m;i++){ int x1,y1,x2,y2;cin>>x1>>y1>>x2>>y2; cout< #define int long long #define endl '\\n' #define IOS ios::sync_with_stdio(0); cin.tie(0); cout.tie(0); using namespace std; const int maxn = 2e5+10; vectort(maxn<<2); int n,m; void update(int rt,int l,int r,int pos,int new_val){ if(l==r){t[rt]=new_val;return;} if(pos<=((l+r)>>1))update(rt<<1,l,(l+r)>>1,pos,new_val); else update((rt<<1)+1,((l+r)>>1)+1,r,pos,new_val); t[rt]=max(t[rt<<1],t[(rt<<1)+1]); } int query(int rt,int tl,int tr,int l,int r){ if(l>r)return -1e15; if(l==tl&&r==tr)return t[rt]; return max(query(rt<<1,tl,(tl+tr)>>1,l,min(r,(tl+tr)>>1)),query((rt<<1)+1,((tl+tr)>>1)+1,tr,max(l,((tl+tr)>>1)+1),r)); } int32_t main(){ IOS cin>>n>>m; for(int i=1;i<=n;i++){ int x;cin>>x;update(1,1,n,i,x); } for(int i=1;i<=m;i++){ int x;cin>>x; int l=1,r=n,pos=n+1; while(l<=r){ int m=(l+r)>>1; if( query(1,1,n,1,m) >= x ){ pos=min(pos,m); r=m-1; }else{ l=m+1; } } if(pos<=n){ cout< #define int long long #define endl '\\n' #define IOS ios::sync_with_stdio(0); cin.tie(0); cout.tie(0); using namespace std; const int maxn = 2e5+10; vectort(maxn<<2),a(maxn); int n; void update(int rt,int l,int r,int pos,int new_val){ if(l==r){t[rt]=new_val;return;} if(pos<=((l+r)>>1))update(rt<<1,l,(l+r)>>1,pos,new_val); else update((rt<<1)+1,((l+r)>>1)+1,r,pos,new_val); t[rt]=t[rt<<1]+t[(rt<<1)+1]; } int query(int rt,int tl,int tr,int l,int r){ if(l>r)return 0; if(l==tl&&r==tr)return t[rt]; return query(rt<<1,tl,(tl+tr)>>1,l,min(r,(tl+tr)>>1))+query((rt<<1)+1,((tl+tr)>>1)+1,tr,max(l,((tl+tr)>>1)+1),r); } int32_t main(){ IOS cin>>n; for(int i=1;i<=n;i++){ cin>>a[i];update(1,1,n,i,1); } for(int i=1;i<=n;i++){ int x;cin>>x; int l=1,r=n,pos=n; while(l<=r){ int m=(l+r)>>1; if(query(1,1,n,1,m)>=x){ pos=min(pos,m); r=m-1; }else{ l=m+1; } } cout< \/\/#define int long long #define endl '\\n' #define IOS ios::sync_with_stdio(0); cin.tie(0); cout.tie(0); using namespace std; int maxn = 1e6+10; vectorB(maxn); vectora(maxn); vectort(maxn),X(maxn),Y(maxn); vectormp; int n,m; void update(int i,int x){ i = lower_bound(mp.begin(),mp.end(),i)-mp.begin()+1; while( i <= maxn ){ B[i]+=x; i+=i&-i; } } int query(int i){ i = lower_bound(mp.begin(),mp.end(),i)-mp.begin()+1; int x=0; while( i > 0 ){ x+=B[i]; i-=i&-i; } return x; } int32_t main(){ IOS cin>>n>>m; for(int i=1;i<=n;i++){ cin>>a[i];mp.push_back(a[i]); } for(int i=1;i<=m;i++){ char c;cin>>c>>X[i]>>Y[i]; t[i]= c == '?' ? 1 : 0 ; mp.push_back(X[i]-1); mp.push_back(X[i]); mp.push_back(Y[i]); } sort(mp.begin(),mp.end()); mp.erase(unique(mp.begin(),mp.end()),mp.end()); maxn = mp.size()+1; for(int i=1;i<=n;i++){ update(a[i],1); } for(int i=1;i<=m;i++){ if(t[i]){ cout< #define int long long #define endl '\\n' #define IOS ios::sync_with_stdio(0); cin.tie(0); cout.tie(0); using namespace std; const int maxn = 2e5+10; vectora(maxn),t(maxn<<2),ts(maxn<<2),ls(maxn<<2),rs(maxn<<2); int n,m; void merge(int rt,int l,int r){ t[rt]=max({t[rt<<1],t[(rt<<1)+1],ts[rt<<1],ts[(rt<<1)+1],ts[rt<<1]+ts[(rt<<1)+1],ls[rt<<1],ls[(rt<<1)+1],rs[rt<<1],rs[(rt<<1)+1],ts[rt<<1]+ls[(rt<<1)+1],ts[(rt<<1)+1]+rs[rt<<1],rs[rt<<1]+ls[(rt<<1)+1]}); ls[rt]=max({ls[rt<<1],ts[rt<<1],ts[rt<<1]+ls[(rt<<1)+1],ts[rt<<1]+ts[(rt<<1)+1]}); rs[rt]=max({rs[(rt<<1)+1],ts[(rt<<1)+1],ts[(rt<<1)+1]+rs[(rt<<1)],ts[(rt<<1)]+ts[(rt<<1)+1]}); ts[rt]=ts[rt<<1]+ts[(rt<<1)+1]; } void build(int rt,int l,int r){ if(l==r){t[rt]=ts[rt]=ls[rt]=rs[rt]=a[l];return;} build(rt<<1,l,(l+r)>>1); build((rt<<1)+1,((l+r)>>1)+1,r); merge(rt,l,r); } void update(int rt,int l,int r,int pos,int val){ if(l==r){t[rt]=ts[rt]=ls[rt]=rs[rt]=val;return;} if(pos<=(l+r)>>1)update(rt<<1,l,(l+r)>>1,pos,val); else update((rt<<1)+1,((l+r)>>1)+1,r,pos,val); merge(rt,l,r); } int query(){ return t[1]; } int32_t main(){ IOS cin>>n>>m; for(int i=1;i<=n;i++){ cin>>a[i]; } build(1,1,n); for(int i=1;i<=m;i++){ int pos,val;cin>>pos>>val; update(1,1,n,pos,val); cout< \/\/#define int long long #define endl '\\n' #define IOS ios::sync_with_stdio(0); cin.tie(0); cout.tie(0); using namespace std; const int S = 448 , maxn = 2e5+5; struct box{ int l,r,i; bool operator <(const box other){ if( l\/S != other.l\/S )return l\/S < other.l\/S; return r < other.r; } }; vectora(maxn),ans(maxn),cnt(maxn); vectorq(maxn); vectormp; int n,m,tot=0; void insert(int x){ if( !cnt[x] )tot++; cnt[x]++; } void remove(int x){ cnt[x]--; if( !cnt[x] ){ tot--; } } int32_t main(){ IOS cin>>n>>m; for(int i=1;i<=n;i++){ cin>>a[i];mp.push_back(a[i]); } for(int i=1;i<=m;i++){ cin>>q[i].l>>q[i].r;q[i].i=i; } sort(q.begin()+1,q.begin()+m+1); sort(mp.begin(),mp.end()); mp.erase(unique(mp.begin(),mp.end()),mp.end()); for(int i=1;i<=n;i++){ a[i]=lower_bound(mp.begin(),mp.end(),a[i])-mp.begin()+1; } int l = 1 , r = 1; for(int i=1;i<=m;i++){ while( r <= q[i].r ){ insert(a[r++]); } while( l < q[i].l ){ remove(a[l++]); } while( l > q[i].l ){ insert(a[--l]); } while( r > q[i].r + 1){ remove(a[--r]); } ans[q[i].i]=tot; } for(int i=1;i<=m;i++){ cout< \/\/#define int long long #define endl '\\n' #define IOS ios::sync_with_stdio(0); cin.tie(0); cout.tie(0); using namespace std; const int maxn = 1000+5; vector>B(maxn,vector(maxn)); int n,m; void update(int x,int y,int val){ while( x <= n ){ int _y = y; while( _y <= n ){ B[x][_y]+=val; _y+=_y&-_y; } x+=x&-x; } } int query(int x,int y){ int s=0; while( x > 0 ){ int _y = y; while( _y > 0 ){ s+=B[x][_y]; _y-=_y&-_y; } x-=x&-x; } return s; } int32_t main(){ IOS cin>>n>>m; for(int i=1;i<=n;i++){ string s;cin>>s; for(int j=1;j<=n;j++){ if( s[j-1] =='*'){ update(i,j,1); } } } for(int i=1;i<=m;i++){ int t;cin>>t; if(t==1){ int x,y;cin>>x>>y; int q = query(x,y)-query(x-1,y)-query(x,y-1)+query(x-1,y-1); if( q )update(x,y,-1); else update(x,y,+1); }else{ int x1,y1,x2,y2;cin>>x1>>y1>>x2>>y2; cout< #define int long long #define endl '\\n' #define IOS ios::sync_with_stdio(0); cin.tie(0); cout.tie(0); using namespace std; const int maxn = 2e5+10; vectort(maxn<<2),lazy(maxn<<2),type(maxn<<2,2),a(maxn); int n,m; void push(int rt,int l,int r){ if( type[rt] == 2 )return; int m = (l+r)>>1; if( type[rt] ){ t[rt<<1]+=lazy[rt]*(m-l+1); lazy[rt<<1]+=lazy[rt]; t[(rt<<1)+1]+=lazy[rt]*(r-m); lazy[(rt<<1)+1]+=lazy[rt]; } else{ t[rt<<1]=lazy[rt]*(m-l+1); lazy[rt<<1]=lazy[rt]; t[(rt<<1)+1]=lazy[rt]*(r-m); lazy[(rt<<1)+1]=lazy[rt]; } type[rt<<1]=min(type[rt<<1],type[rt]); type[(rt<<1)+1]=min(type[(rt<<1)+1],type[rt]); lazy[rt]=0; type[rt]=2; } void build(int rt,int l,int r){ if(l==r){t[rt]=a[l];return;} build(rt<<1,l,(l+r)>>1); build((rt<<1)+1,((l+r)>>1)+1,r); t[rt]=t[rt<<1]+t[(rt<<1)+1]; } void update(int rt,int tl,int tr,int l,int r,int qt,int val){ if(l>r)return; if(tl==l&&tr==r){ if(qt){ t[rt]+=val*(tr-tl+1); lazy[rt]+=val; }else{ t[rt]=val*(tr-tl+1); lazy[rt]=val; } type[rt]=min(type[rt],qt); return; } push(rt,tl,tr); update(rt<<1,tl,(tl+tr)>>1,l,min(r,(tl+tr)>>1),qt,val); update((rt<<1)+1,((tl+tr)>>1)+1,tr,max(l,((tl+tr)>>1)+1),r,qt,val); t[rt]=t[rt<<1]+t[(rt<<1)+1]; } int query(int rt,int tl,int tr,int l,int r){ if(l>r)return 0; if(tl==l&&tr==r)return t[rt]; push(rt,tl,tr); int ans = query(rt<<1,tl,(tl+tr)>>1,l,min(r,(tl+tr)>>1))+query((rt<<1)+1,((tl+tr)>>1)+1,tr,max(((tl+tr)>>1)+1,l),r); t[rt]=t[rt<<1]+t[(rt<<1)+1]; return ans; } int32_t main(){ IOS cin>>n>>m; for(int i=1;i<=n;i++){ cin>>a[i]; } build(1,1,n); for(int i=1;i<=m;i++){ int qt;cin>>qt; if( qt == 1){ int l,r,dx;cin>>l>>r>>dx; update(1,1,n,l,r,1,dx); }else if(qt==2){ int l,r,x;cin>>l>>r>>x; update(1,1,n,l,r,0,x); }else{ int l,r;cin>>l>>r; cout<\n\u2022 \u00bb \u00bb 3 months ago, # ^ | \u2190 Rev. 3 \u2192 \u00a0 0 nvm got it\n \u00bb 5 months ago, # | \u2190 Rev. 3 \u2192 \u00a0 +5 Just mention that \"Distinct Values Queries\" problem have segment tree solution code#include #include #include #include using namespace std; #define N (1<<18) int tree[2*N]; void update(int k, int x) { k += N; tree[k] = x; for (k \/= 2; k >= 1; k \/= 2) { tree[k] = tree[2*k]+tree[2*k+1]; } } int getSum(int a, int b) { a += N; b += N; int s = 0; while (a <= b) { if (a%2 == 1) s += tree[a++]; if (b%2 == 0) s += tree[b--]; a \/= 2; b \/= 2; } return s; } int n, q; int x[200001]; map pos; int pred[200001]; int a[200001]; int b[200001]; vector> queries; int result[200001]; int main() { cin >> n >> q; for (int i = 1; i <= n; i++) { cin >> x[i]; pred[i] = pos[x[i]]; pos[x[i]] = i; } for (int i = 1; i <= q; i++) { cin >> a[i] >> b[i]; queries.push_back({b[i],i}); } sort(queries.begin(),queries.end()); int k = 0; for (int i = 0; i < q; i++) { while (k < queries[i].first) { k++; update(pred[k],1); } int u = queries[i].second; result[u] = b[u]-a[u]+1-getSum(a[u],b[u]); } for (int i = 1; i <= q; i++) { cout << result[i] << \"\\n\"; } } \n \u00bb 4 months ago, # | \u00a0 0 I tried solving the problem Salary Queries by the way that you have suggested. I used Fenwick Tree instead of a Segment Tree. I am getting TLE in it. However, when I tried running the inputs, the answers are coming out to be correct. Any suggestions on optimizing it? Here is the link to my code: https:\/\/ideone.com\/dtWevB\n\u2022 \u00bb \u00bb 4 months ago, # ^ | \u00a0 +3 on first look, I would say it is possible that your helper function is causing the TLE.Accessing an element of a map is O(logN) operation. so inside your helper you will access it 100 times -> 100*log(N), in my implementation I have eliminated this logN factor. and my helper takes 100 + logN.So might be the reason for TLE, try optimizing and let me know if it passes.\n\u2022 \u00bb \u00bb \u00bb 4 months ago, # ^ | \u00a0 0 So, do you mean to say that instead of creating a map of I should create a map of so that I can first access the map element in logN and then traverse the vector in 100 operations?\n\u2022 \u00bb \u00bb \u00bb \u00bb 4 months ago, # ^ | \u00a0 +3 Read the calc() method of my Implementation. I do one map access to get iterator corresponding to value lo. From there onwards I increment the iterator till the key being pointed by iterator is less than hi.Iterator increment is O(1) operation.\n\u2022 \u00bb \u00bb \u00bb \u00bb \u00bb 2 months ago, # ^ | \u00a0 0 I was also stuck with the same problem thought I might find something useful in the comments. I was stuck at it since yesterday 2 hours earlier I found my mistake but wasn't able to resolve it. So thanks a lot for your contribution.\n\u2022 \u00bb \u00bb \u00bb \u00bb 4 months ago, # ^ | \u00a0 +8 Doing this worked out for me. Thanks a lot for your help. This question really taught me a lot. Thanks again.\n\u2022 \u00bb \u00bb \u00bb \u00bb \u00bb 4 months ago, # ^ | \u00a0 +3 Glad to know, You're welcome :)\n\u2022 \u00bb \u00bb \u00bb \u00bb \u00bb \u00bb 3 months ago, # ^ | \u2190 Rev. 5 \u2192 \u00a0 0 nvm got it\n \u00bb 3 months ago, # | \u2190 Rev. 3 \u2192 \u00a0 +5 nvm got it\n \u00bb 3 months ago, # | \u00a0 0 Can somebody help me optimize my code for the problem Distinct Queries. I am using Mo's algorithm to solve it. The time complexity of which is O(n*sqrt(n)). However, I am getting TLE in it. The test cases provided by them are taking more than 20 seconds to run on my code. I have recently learned Mo's algorithm which is why I am unaware of various optimizations that can be done in it. Here is my link: TLE SOLUTION Thanks in advance.\n\u2022 \u00bb \u00bb 3 months ago, # ^ | \u00a0 +3 Not sure if it is NrootN, what about the map you are using?\n\u2022 \u00bb \u00bb \u00bb 3 months ago, # ^ | \u00a0 0 Sorry, I forgot to include the complexity for the map. So, the overall complexity is O(N*(Sqrt(N))*Log(N)). Can you suggest me a way to remove the map to store the frequencies of the elements. I am using map as the range of elements is 10^9. I would have used an array otherwise. But for the overall code, I am pretty sure that if there is no map then the complexity would be NrootN\n\u2022 \u00bb \u00bb \u00bb \u00bb 3 months ago, # ^ | \u00a0 +3 try reading the blog solution, defines exactly how to get rid of the map.\n\u2022 \u00bb \u00bb \u00bb \u00bb \u00bb 3 months ago, # ^ | \u00a0 +5 Thanks again. It worked by coordinate compression. The time changed from 20 seconds to 0.8 seconds as soon as I did that. Really appreciate your effort in helping others.\n \u00bb 3 months ago, # | \u00a0 0 Hotel queries can be done in O(mlogn).Instead of using binary search, we will descend the Segment Tree, starting at the root vertex, and moving each time to either the left or the right child, depending on which segment contains the vacancy greater than the required rooms. Codell get(ll val,ll v=1,ll tl=0,ll tr=n-1) { if(val>tree[v]) return -1; if(tl==tr) return tl; ll tm=(tl+tr)\/2; if(tree[2*v]>=val) return get(val,2*v,tl,tm); else return get(val,2*v+1,tm+1,tr); } \n \u00bb 7 weeks ago, # | \u2190 Rev. 3 \u2192 \u00a0 0 pdbs can solve few of the problems in the section. Btw, can anyone explain this solution by rainboy\n \u00bb 7 weeks ago, # | \u00a0 0 First of all thanks for the editorial. Really appreciate this. Hey if it's okay could you check out this code for the Polynomial Queries problem. I am using lazy propagation and the AP sum concept, but seems to be getting RE on the second sub task. Code#include #define int long long using namespace std; class SegTree { public: int sum, lb, rb, len; vector op; SegTree *left, *right; SegTree(int l, int r, int a[]) { lb = l, rb = r; if (l == r) { sum = a[l]; len = 1; } else { int mid = (l + r) \/ 2; left = new SegTree(l, mid, a); right = new SegTree(mid + 1, r, a); len = rb - lb + 1; refresh(); } } void refresh() { sum = left->sum + right->sum; } void propagate() { if (!op.empty()) { for (auto &i : op) { int last = (i + len - 1); sum += (len * (i + last)) \/ 2; if (lb != rb) { left->op.emplace_back(i); right->op.emplace_back(i + left->len); } } op.clear(); } } void update(int l, int r, int val) { propagate(); if (lb != rb) { left->propagate(), right->propagate(); refresh(); } if (l > rb || r < lb) return; else if (lb >= l and rb <= r) { op.emplace_back(val); propagate(); if (lb != rb) { left->propagate(), right->propagate(); refresh(); } } else { left->update(l, r, val); if (left->rb >= l) { int nVal = val + (left->rb - max(l, left->lb) + 1); right->update(l, r, nVal); } else right->update(l, r, val); refresh(); } } int query(int l, int r) { propagate(); if (lb != rb) { left->propagate(), right->propagate(); refresh(); } if (l > rb || r < lb) { return 0; } else if (lb >= l and rb <= r) { return sum; } else { return left->query(l, r) + right->query(l, r); } } }; int a[200005]; void solve() { int n, m; cin >> n >> m; for (int i = 0; i < n; i++) cin >> a[i]; auto tr = SegTree(0, n - 1, a); int t, l, r; while (m--) { cin >> t >> l >> r; if (t == 1) { tr.update(l - 1, r - 1, 1); } else { cout << tr.query(l - 1, r - 1) << '\\n'; } } } int32_t main() { ios_base::sync_with_stdio(false); cin.tie(nullptr); cout.tie(nullptr); solve(); return 0; } \n \u00bb 7 weeks ago, # | \u00a0 0 Thanks for sharing\n \u00bb 6 weeks ago, # | \u00a0 0 If somebody's interested in how to solve the last problem (Range Queries and Copies), this article was very helpful: https:\/\/www.geeksforgeeks.org\/persistent-segment-tree-set-1-introduction\/\n \u00bb 5 weeks ago, # | \u00a0 0 for salary queries if i maintain a node with two values min and max then also i can do same thing. I checked this it is giving right answer for short inputs but on submission it is giving rte. code is here: ll n,tsize; ll arr[1000000]; ll minsegtree[1000000]; ll maxsegtree[1000000];ll minimum(ll a, ll b){ return (ab)?a:b; }void update(ll ith, ll val, ll low, ll high, ll index) { if(low == high){ minsegtree[index] = maxsegtree[index]= val; return; } ll mid = (low + high)\/2; if(ith <= mid){ update(ith, val, low, mid, 2*index + 1); }else{ update(ith, val, mid+1, high, 2*index+ 2); } minsegtree[index] = minimum(minsegtree[2*index + 1], minsegtree[2*index + 2]); maxsegtree[index] = maximum(maxsegtree[2*index +1], maxsegtree[2*index + 2]); }ll countemps(ll lrange, ll hrange, ll low , ll high, ll index) { if(lrange > maxsegtree[index] || hrange < minsegtree[index]) return 0; if(minsegtree[index] >= lrange && maxsegtree[index] <= hrange){ if(high <= n-1) return (high - low + 1); else{ return (n-low); } } ll mid = (low + high)\/2; return countemps(lrange, hrange, low , mid , 2*index + 1) + countemps(lrange, hrange, mid + 1, high, 2*index + 2);}int main() { fastio; ll q; cin>>n>>q; for(int i=0;i>arr[i]; } tsize=1; while(tsize>ch; if(ch == '?'){ ll a,b; cin>>a>>b; cout<>k>>x; update(k-1,x, 0,temp-1,0); } } return 0; } can anyone check please? for sample test case it is giving right output.","date":"2020-10-31 22:09:18","metadata":"{\"extraction_info\": {\"found_math\": true, \"script_math_tex\": 0, \"script_math_asciimath\": 0, \"math_annotations\": 0, \"math_alttext\": 0, \"mathml\": 0, \"mathjax_tag\": 0, \"mathjax_inline_tex\": 2, \"mathjax_display_tex\": 0, \"mathjax_asciimath\": 1, \"img_math\": 0, \"codecogs_latex\": 0, \"wp_latex\": 0, \"mimetex.cgi\": 0, \"\/images\/math\/codecogs\": 0, \"mathtex.cgi\": 0, \"katex\": 0, \"math-container\": 0, \"wp-katex-eq\": 0, \"align\": 0, \"equation\": 0, \"x-ck12\": 0, \"texerror\": 0, \"math_score\": 0.202053502202034, \"perplexity\": 6496.63688099694}, \"config\": {\"markdown_headings\": true, \"markdown_code\": true, \"boilerplate_config\": {\"ratio_threshold\": 0.18, \"absolute_threshold\": 10, \"end_threshold\": 15, \"enable\": true}, \"remove_buttons\": true, \"remove_image_figures\": true, \"remove_link_clusters\": true, \"table_config\": {\"min_rows\": 2, \"min_cols\": 3, \"format\": \"plain\"}, \"remove_chinese\": true, \"remove_edit_buttons\": true, \"extract_latex\": true}, \"warc_path\": \"s3:\/\/commoncrawl\/crawl-data\/CC-MAIN-2020-45\/segments\/1603107922463.87\/warc\/CC-MAIN-20201031211812-20201101001812-00692.warc.gz\"}"} | null | null |
\section{Introduction}
The spin states (rotational periods and directions of the spin axes) and shapes of individual asteroids can be determined from photometric data by lighcurve inversion (Kaasalainen \& Lamberg \citeyear{2006InvPr..22..749K}, \v{D}urech et al. \citeyear{2015aste.book..183D} and references therein). For these methods, mainly dense photometric data are used, because they sample well the rotational period $P$. The preliminary estimate of $P$ can substantially reduce the computational time required for the determination of unique sidereal rotational period. Up to now, almost a thousand models have been derived using this method and most of them are stored in Database of Asteroids Models from Inversion Techniques (DAMIT; \v{D}urech et al. \citeyear{2010A&A...513A..46D}).
A different approach, suitable for photometric data sparse in time that are produced by all-sky surveys and consist typically of few measurements per night over $\sim10$ years, but not suitable for ordinary sparse lightcurve inversion (\v{D}urech et al. \citeyear{2005EM&P...97..179D}, \citeyear{2007IAUS..236..191D}), was described in \citet{2016A&A...596A..57C}. There, we used the mean brightness and its dispersion in individual apparitions to derive the ecliptical longitude and latitude of the spin axis and the shape elongation of asteroids from photometric data stored in the Lowell Observatory database (Bowell et al. \citeyear{2014M&PS...49...95B}). Even though the parameters could be determined for individual asteroids, the uncertainties are large and the results are supposed to be used in a statistical sense only. However, this model cannot be used for the photometric data from the Panoramic Survey Telescope \& Rapid Response System (Pan-STARRS), because there are not enough measurements covering long enough time intervals.
Another statistical study was done by \citet{2017A&A...601A.139N} using data from the WISE database\footnote{http://irsa.ipac.caltech.edu/Mission/wise.html}. These data also cannot be analyzed with the method from \citet{2016A&A...596A..57C}, however, \citet{2017A&A...601A.139N} developed a new model and described physical parameters for subpopulations of asteroids using distribution functions. This method is not meant to invert the shape and spin characteristics of individual lightcurves; the inversion works only on a population-scale, where we consider the shape and spin distributions of a large population. In \citet{2017A&A...601A.139N} as well as in this paper, we constructed cumulative distribution functions (CDFs) of the variation of brightness for selected groups of asteroids and studied the inverse problem. The parameters of the model are the shape elongation $b/a$ and the ecliptical latitude $\beta$ of the spin axis. The advantage of this method is that it can be used even if only few points and one apparition are available for an asteroid. A similar approach was used by \citet{2008Icar..196..135S} and \citet{2016MNRAS.459.2964M}.
While in \citet{2017A&A...601A.139N} we studied mainly the validity and accuracy of the method and practical applicability on astronomical databases, in this work, we applied the model on photometric data from Pan-STARRS1 and performed an analysis focusing on large subpopulations of asteroids using the Latitudes and Elongations of Asteroid Distributions Estimated Rapidly (LEADER) algorithm (Nortunen \& Kaasalainen, \citeyear{2017A&A..N}). The structure of this paper is as follows: In Sect. 2, we briefly describe the model; in Sect. 3, we describe the used data from Pan-STARRS1 sky survey; in Sect. 4, we test the accuracy of the determination of model parameters by simulations on synthetic data; in Sect. 5, we construct distributions of shape elongations $b/a$ and ecliptical latitudes $\beta$ of the spin axis for some subpopulations of asteroids and analyze the results and, in Sect. 6, we summarize the main results.
\section{Model}
In our model, we approximate the shape of an asteroid with a~simple, biaxial ellipsoid. We denote the semiaxes $a \ge b = c=1$, and we choose $b/a$ as the parameter that describes the shape elongation of an asteroid. We have $0 < b/a \le 1$, with a small $b/a$ presenting an elongated body, and $b/a = 1$ presenting a sphere. This shape approximation is very coarse, but with a high number of observations ($\propto 10^3$), it will portray statistical tendencies of a population accurately. For realistic shapes, the proportion of highly elongated values $b/a < 0.4$ is negligible, and for most shapes, $b/a > 0.5$. However, for completeness, we include all the values $0 < b/a \le 1$ in our grid; if the solved $b/a$ distribution contains an unusually high proportion of values below 0.4, it is usually an indicator of error in the solution, caused by noise and/or instabilities.
Our second parameter is the spin co-latitude $\beta$, defined as the ecliptic polar angle of the spin axis. The connection between $\beta$ and the aspect angle of the pole is explained in \citet{2017A&A...601A.139N}. In the ellipsoid model, the values of $\beta$ are fixed in the interval $[0, \pi/2]$. In other words, there is no way to distinguish whether the spin latitudes are above or below the ecliptic plane in our model. In our convention, $\beta = 0$ indicates that the spin direction is perpendicular to the ecliptic plane, while $\beta = \pi/2$ means the spin is in the ecliptic plane (it was this way in Nortunen et al. \citeyear{2017A&A...601A.139N}, but opposite in Cibulkov\'{a} et al. \citeyear{2016A&A...596A..57C}). We assume that most orbits are in the ecliptic plane.
Assuming we have the brightness intensities $L$ measured (with the data given by an asteroid database), we utilize the brightness variation $\eta$ as our observable:
\begin{equation}
\eta = \frac{\Delta (L^2)}{\langle L^2\rangle} .
\label{eq:eta}
\end{equation}
The squared intensities $L^2$ were used for the mean $\langle L^2\rangle$ and the variation $\Delta (L^2) := \sqrt{\langle(L^2-\langle L^2\rangle)^2\rangle}$ instead of the standard brightness $L$ in order to obtain more simple, closed-form formula for $\eta$. From \citet{2017A&A...601A.139N}, the amplitude $A$ can be directly computed from $\eta$:
\begin{equation}
A=\sqrt{1-\Big(\frac{1}{\sqrt{8}\eta}+\frac{1}{2}\Big)^{-1}} .
\label{eq:eta-A}
\end{equation}
Note that the amplitude $A$ is based on intensity here, not on magnitudes. With the amplitudes known, we can create their CDF, $C(A)$.
To solve the joint distribution for $b/a$ and $\beta$, we create a grid of bins $((b/a)_{\rm i}, \beta_{\rm j}) \in [0, 1] \, \times \, [0, \pi/2]$, where ${\rm i}=1$, $\ldots$, $k$ and ${\rm j}=1$, $\ldots$, $l$. Our goal is to determine the proportion of each bin. Now, the CDF can be written as a linear combination of other functions:
\begin{equation}
C(A) = \sum_{\rm i, j} w_{\rm ij} F_{\rm ij}(A) ,
\label{eq:series}
\end{equation}
where $F_{\rm ij}(A)$ are monotonously increasing basis functions derived by \citet{2017A&A...601A.139N}:
\begin{equation}
F_{\rm ij}(A)=\left\{\begin{array}{rc}
0, & A\le (b/a)_{\rm i}\\
\rule{0cm}{4.5ex}
\frac{\pi}{2}-\arccos\frac{\sqrt{A^2-(b/a)_{\rm i}^2}}{\sin\beta_{\rm j}\sqrt{1-(b/a)_{\rm i}^2}}\,,& (b/a)_{\rm i}<A<\mathcal{F}((b/a)_{\rm i}, \beta_{\rm j})\\
\rule{0cm}{4.5ex}
\frac{\pi}{2}, & A\ge\mathcal{F}((b/a)_{\rm i}, \beta_{\rm j}),
\end{array}\right.
\label{Fijeq}
\end{equation}
where $\mathcal{F}((b/a)_{\rm i}, \beta_{\rm j}) = \sqrt{\sin^2\beta_{\rm j}+(b/a)_{\rm i}^2\cos^2\beta_{\rm j}}$. Each basis function $F_{\rm ij}(A)$ describes the contribution made by objects in a given bin $((b/a)_{\rm i}, \beta_{\rm j})$ to the CDF $C(A)$. The weights $w_{\rm ij}$ are the occupation numbers of each bin $((b/a)_{\rm i}, \beta_{\rm j})$. We can write \eqref{eq:series} in an equivalent form,
\begin{equation}
Mw = C ,
\label{eq:lineq}
\end{equation}
where each column of the matrix $M$ contains a basis function $F_{\rm ij}(A)$, the vector $w$ contains the occupation numbers $w_{\rm ij}$ and the vector $C$ contains the CDF $C(A)$. For solving \eqref{eq:lineq}, we can use linear least squares methods in e.g. Matlab, along with regularization and a positivity constraint that $w_{\rm ij} \ge 0$. With the weights $w_{\rm ij}$ solved, we have the proportion of each bin $((b/a)_{\rm i}, \beta_{\rm j})$.
With the joint distribution for $b/a$ and $\beta$ obtained, we can compute the marginal DFs $f_{b/a}$ and $f_{\beta}$ for both parameters:
\begin{equation}
f_{(b/a)_{\rm i}} = \sum_{\rm j=1}^{l} w_{\rm ij} , \quad f_{\beta_{\rm j}} = \sum_{\rm i=1}^{k} w_{\rm ij} .
\label{eq:marginal}
\end{equation}
In addition, we can compute the CDFs for the marginal DFs. Let us denote the CDFs as $F_{b/a}$ and $F_{\beta}$. Now, assume we have obtained these CDFs for two subpopulations, $S_{1}$ and $S_{2}$ (the CDFs are denoted as $F_{b/a}(S_1)$, $F_{b/a}(S_2)$, $F_{\beta}(S_1)$ and $F_{\beta}(S_2)$), and we want to measure statistical differences of the populations. Some of such measures were used in \citet{2017A&A...601A.139N}:
\begin{equation}
D_{b/a}(S_{1},S_{2})=\alpha_{k}\,\lVert F_{b/a}(S_{1})-F_{b/a}(S_{2})\rVert\,_{k}\,,
\label{d_ba}
\end{equation}
\begin{equation}
D_{\beta}(S_{1},S_{2})=\alpha_{k}\,\lVert F_{\beta}(S_{1})-F_{\beta}(S_{2})\rVert\,_{k}\,,
\label{d_beta}
\end{equation}
where $k=1;2;\infty$ and $\alpha_{k}$ is a norm-based scaling factor: $\alpha_{1}=1/4$; $\alpha_{2}=1$ and $\alpha_{\infty}=2$. Each norm provides different kind of information about the statistical differences of the populations. The case $k=\infty$ corresponds with the Kolmogorov-Smirnov test (for details see Nortunen et al. \citeyear{2017A&A...601A.139N} or Nortunen \& Kaasalainen \citeyear{2017A&A..N}). As a general rule of thumb, two distributions can be considered significantly different statistically if $D \gtrsim 0.2$. However, a visual inspection on the marginal DF and CDF plots is also recommended for obtaining a better understanding of the statistical differences. The detailed description of the LEADER software can be found in \citet{2017A&A..N} and the software itself is available in DAMIT database\footnote{http://astro.troja.mff.cuni.cz/projects/asteroids3D/web.php}.
\section{Data}
The $1.8$-meter Pan-STARRS1 survey telescope (Hodapp et al. \citeyear{2004AN....325..636H}; Tonry et al. \citeyear{2012ApJ...750...99T}), build atop of Haleakala, Maui, started its 3-year science mission in May 2010. Photometric data were obtained in six optical and near-infrared filters ($g$, $r$, $i$, $z$, $y$ and $w$). Due to the distinct survey goals and patterns, most of the asteroids were observed in a wide-band $w$-filter ($\sim 400-700$ nm). We used the unpublished high-precision calibrated chip-stage photometry (Schlafly et al. \citeyear{2012ApJ...756..158S}) with photometric errors and selected detections of a good photometric quality. Only PSF-like and untrailed detections were considered. Our subset spanned from April 11, 2011 until May 19, 2012. In total, we had photometric data for 348 210 asteroids with about $20$ measurements for an asteroid on average. The second highest number of measurements is in the $i$-band, where we have data for 136 463 asteroids. Only the $w$-band data provided enough measurements for a reasonable application of our model. We shortly discuss results from the $i$-filter and compare them with results from the $w$-filter in Sect. \ref{i_filter}.
The typical time interval between two measurements in the $w$-band filter is $\sim17$ minutes (see Fig. \ref{hist_JD}). However, not all the data were applicable to our model. Our conditions on the data were the following:
\begin{enumerate}
\item The time interval between measurements is greater than 0.01 day ($\sim 14$ minutes). In the case of a shorter interval the rotational period would not be randomly sampled over one rotation of $\sim$hours, and in the case of a longer minimum interval we would lose a significant amount of data, as we can see from Fig. \ref{hist_JD}.
\item Then, we limited the solar phase angle $\alpha$ to be $\leq 20^\circ$. In the model we assume this angle to be close to zero, however, in the data, there are not enough measurements with $\alpha\sim0^{\circ}$, therefore, we have to choose some reasonable value (see also Fig. \ref{hist_phase_angle}). As described in \citet{2017A&A...601A.139N} (they used $\alpha\leq30^{\circ}$) the error caused by this condition is negligible.
\item Finally, we required at least five measurements satisfying previous conditions within 3 days to keep the geometry of observation sufficiently constant (this is the same condition as in Nortunen et al. \citeyear{2017A&A...601A.139N}).
\end{enumerate}
It is possible that for the same asteroid we had two (or even more) sets of measurements. In that case, each set was incorporated in the model.
\begin{figure}
\centering
\includegraphics[width=8cm]{hist_JD.eps}
\caption{The histogram of time intervals between measurements in the $w$-band filter from the Pan-STARRS1 survey.}
\label{hist_JD}
\end{figure}
\begin{figure}
\centering
\includegraphics[width=7cm]{hist_phase_angle.eps}
\caption{The histogram of the solar phase angle $\alpha$ for measurements in the $w$-filter.}
\label{hist_phase_angle}
\end{figure}
\section{Synthetic simulations for accuracy estimation}
\label{synth_sim}
Before we compute the solution of the inverse problem from Eq.~\eqref{eq:lineq} for any Pan-STARRS1 subpopulation, we should perform a thorough analysis on whether the method is reliable and accurate with the given database. To do this, we use synthetic data created according to the procedure described in \citet{2017A&A..N}. We chose a peak of the $(b/a, \beta)$ distribution. For each asteroid in the considered population we chose a shape model from DAMIT, with $|b/a_{\rm DAMIT}-b/a_{\rm wanted}|\leq0.075$. The rotation period was chosen randomly between 3 and 12 hours from a uniform distribution (we did not use rotation periods from DAMIT, as they could be biased). Next, we used the real Pan-STARRS1 geometries and times of observations and computed the synthetic brightness using a combination of Lommel–Seeliger and Lambert scattering laws. To simulate noise, we added a minor Gaussian perturbation $1-2\%$. Our aim was to find how well the solution distribution computed from Eq.~\eqref{eq:lineq} coincides with the known, synthetic distribution. For simplicity, we are interested in reconstructing the highest peak of the joint $(b/a, \beta)$ distribution. The peak is defined as the bin with the highest occupation numbers. If there are any obvious systematic errors in the computed solution, we may attempt to apply a posterior correction to the solution. Similar synthetic simulations were used by \citet{2017A&A...601A.139N} to estimate the accuracy of the method for the WISE database, and to create a ``deconvolution'' filter to the contour image of the solution.
\subsection{Number of bodies in a population}
We create 50 synthetic populations, each containing $N$ asteroids, and each population having a distinct, single peak chosen randomly. With each population, we plot the actual $(b/a, \beta)$ peak versus the computed $(b/a, \beta)$ peak to see how well they coincide. As for the populations, we set them to have from 100 to 5000 asteroids. This is so that we can evaluate how the accuracy of our method increases with a growing number of asteroids. The results from these simulations have been plotted on Fig.\ \ref{synth-100-5000-p} for $b/a$, and Fig.\ \ref{synth-100-5000-beta} for $\beta$.
\begin{figure}
\centering
\includegraphics[width=0.242\textwidth]{PS1-p-100-500}
\includegraphics[width=0.242\textwidth]{PS1-p-600-1000}
\includegraphics[width=0.242\textwidth]{PS1-p-2000-5000}
\caption{Synthetic simulations showing how the accuracy of our method improves for $b/a$ with a growing number of asteroids (from 100 to 5000). The plots have the real peak of the distribution plotted versus the computed peak. The black dashed line of the form ``$y=x$'' depicts the ideal situation when the actual and computed peaks are the same.}
\label{synth-100-5000-p}
\end{figure}
\begin{figure}
\centering
\includegraphics[width=0.242\textwidth]{PS1-beta-100-500}
\includegraphics[width=0.242\textwidth]{PS1-beta-600-1000}
\includegraphics[width=0.242\textwidth]{PS1-beta-2000-5000}
\caption{Synthetic simulations similar to Fig.\ \ref{synth-100-5000-p}, but for $\beta$.}
\label{synth-100-5000-beta}
\end{figure}
As we can see from the $b/a$ plots in the left column of Fig.~\ref{synth-100-5000-p}, the accuracy of the obtained $b/a$ distribution is improved substantially as the population size increases. There is always some overshoot and undershoot when $b/a \lesssim 0.4$, but this is a rare problem: with real data, we typically have $b/a \gtrsim 0.5$, so the peak of the distribution can also be expected to be above 0.5. With a population of less than 1000 asteroids, there is a slight overshoot when $b/a > 0.5$ (i.e. the solution suggests the shapes are slightly more spherical than what they actually are), but as the population size exceeds 1000 asteroids, the computation of the $b/a$ peak is very accurate when $b/a > 0.5$.
Unfortunately, much of the $\beta$ information is lost in the inversion done for the Pan-STARRS1 database, as seen on Fig.\ \ref{synth-100-5000-beta}. For a population of less than 500 asteroids, no actual information can be recovered. For 600--1000 bodies, there is a slight increase in accuracy, but overall, the solution is too noisy to provide accurate information on $\beta$. The improvement of the accuracy is noticeable for populations with 2000--5000 asteroids, and the method provides a rough estimate on where the peak is: when the $\beta$ peak is low (perpendicular to the ecliptic plane), the obtained solution also has a low $\beta$ peak, and respectively for a high $\beta$ peak (bodies in the ecliptic plane). With the Pan-STARRS1 database, our assumption about the majority of the orbits being in the ecliptic plane may not hold well, which considerably reduces the accuracy of the beta distribution. Due to the low accuracy of the $\beta$ solution, we recommend that caution is used when interpreting the computed $\beta$ distribution. At best, our method can provide a coarse approximation on where the $\beta$ peak is located.
In addition to determining the correct position of the peaks, we are interested in the overall shape of the joint distribution. It is a typical tendency that the computed distribution spreads too much, especially in $\beta$ direction, and the distribution has a heavy tail towards the spin directions in the ecliptic plane. To correct this error, we may apply a deconvolution filter to the computed distribution. In this post-solution correction, we introduce some dampening by reducing the occupation numbers of bins when moving further away from the highest peak, that is, the bin with the biggest occupation number. A similar method was used in \citet{2017A&A...601A.139N}. An example of a typical solution and the effects of deconvolution has been plotted in Fig.~\ref{synth-contour}. In the simulation, we used a single, fixed $(b/a, \beta)$ peak for a population of 10 000 asteroids, with the geometries from Pan-STARRS1 database. We note that we only reduced the spreading of the solved distribution in the post-solution correction; we did not shift the position of the $(b/a, \beta)$ peak.
\begin{figure}
\centering
\includegraphics[width=0.242\textwidth]{PS1-synth-fixed01}
\includegraphics[width=0.242\textwidth]{PS1-synth-fixed02}
\includegraphics[width=0.242\textwidth]{PS1-synth-fixed03}
\caption{Synthetic simulations using a fixed $(b/a, \beta)$ peak for a population of 10,000 asteroids. Top plot shows the actual $(b/a, \beta)$ distribution, middle shows the computed $(b/a, \beta)$ distribution, and bottom shows the middle solution with a deconvolution filter applied.}
\label{synth-contour}
\end{figure}
We emphasize that the accuracy of the solution has a strong dependence on the asteroid database used. Our method should never be used as a ``black box'' for a database. Instead, whenever we begin to utilize a new database, we should always test the validity of our method by using synthetic simulations. As the level and distribution of noise in the database is rarely known, the synthetic simulations are typically the only way to estimate the error of our method. For comparison, we performed similar synthetic simulations for WISE database in \citet{2017A&A..N}, and the results obtained from WISE and Pan-STARRS1 databases are considerably different.
\subsection{The influence of the rotation period.}
\label{influence_p}
Next, we studied how accurately we are able to reproduce the known $(b/a, \beta)$ distribution when we create synthetic data by using different rotation periods $P$. We chose the following intervals of~$P$: (i) $3-12$ hours; (ii) $12-24$ hours; and (iii) $24-96$ hours. The synthetic populations contained $2\,000$ asteroids each. The results are plotted in Fig. \ref{synth_rot_period}. Considering the $b/a$ distribution, for $P<12\,$h our method provides reliable results. For $P>12\,$h the solution prefers values of $b/a\sim 1$ (spheroidal bodies) and moreover, the solution becomes unstable for $b/a<0.6$. As to the $\beta$ distribution, for $3<P<12\,$h we can notice a correlation between actual and computed $\beta$, but for $P>12\,$h, the $\beta$ is too unstable to recover any accurate information about the distribution.
The fact, that our computed distributions of $b/a$ for slow rotators ($P>12\,$h) peak at $b/a\sim 1$ is probably due to the time distribution of Pan-STARRS1 measurements. For most asteroids, data were obtained during a single night, i.e., few hours. If the real $P$ is much longer, the data cover only a small fraction of the full lightcurve (showing the time evolution of brightness during the whole $P$). The changes of brightness are thus small and our model interprets them as belonging to a spheroidal asteroid. If we construct the distribution of $P$ from the Asteroid Lightcurve Database\footnote{http://www.minorplanet.info/lightcurvedatabase.html} (LCDB, Warner et al. \citeyear{2009Icar..202..134W}) for the asteroid included in Pan-STARRS1 database we found that most of the asteroids have $P\lesssim15\,$h. Nevertheless, we have to mention that the sample of objects in the LCDB database is biased and the number of slow rotators is underestimated since it is observationally difficult to determine long periods (Marciniak et al., \citeyear{2015P&SS..118..256M}; Szab\'{o} et al., \citeyear{2016A&A...596A..40S}).
\begin{figure}
\centering
\includegraphics[width=0.242\textwidth]{PS1-synth-per-p.eps}
\includegraphics[width=0.242\textwidth]{PS1-synth-per-beta.eps}
\caption{Synthetic simulations showing the accuracy of our method for different values of rotation period $P$. The black dashed line denotes the ideal situation.}
\label{synth_rot_period}
\end{figure}
\subsection{The influence of the orbit inclination.}
Finally, we tested the influence of the orbit inclination $\sin I$ on our solution since in the model we assume $\sin I=0$. When creating the synthetic data, we used Pan-STARRS1 geometries of $2\,000$ asteroids with $\sin I\leq0.2$, i.e. first population, and $2\,000$ asteroids with $\sin I>0.2$, i.e., second population. The resulting distributions of $b/a$ and $\beta$ are not statisticaly different for populations with small and high inclinations of orbits. For $b/a$, the computed peak corresponds with the actual peak, but for $\beta$, we can notice the same problem as in Fig. \ref{synth-100-5000-beta}, the model shifts the peak to middle values.
\section{Distributions of the ratio of axes $b/a$}
In this section, we first test how many asteroids have to be in a studied subpopulation to obtain reliable results, because typically we compare subpopulations that contain different numbers of asteroids. Then we will construct the distributions of shape elongation $b/a$ for various subpopulations of main-belt asteroids. Specifically asteroids with different diameters, different rotation periods, dynamical families, taxonomic classes and subpopulations of asteroids located in different parts of the main belt (as in Cibulkov\'{a} et al. \citeyear{2016A&A...596A..57C}). To compare the distributions, we calculated $D_{b/a}$ and $D_{\beta}$ according to Eqns. (\ref{d_ba}) and (\ref{d_beta}). The bins in the distributions of $b/a$ and $\beta$ are chosen randomly, hence, for each two subpopulations that were compared, we processed ten runs and obtained 10 values of $D_{b/a}$ and $D_{\beta}$, from which we calculated the mean values. For the distribution of $b/a$ we chose 14 bins from 0 to 1, however, because the shape elongation $b/a<0.25$ is improbable, there was only one bin from 0 to 0.25, then one bin from 0.25 to 0.4 and 12 bins from 0.4 to 1. For the distribution of $\beta$ we chose 20 bins from 0 to $\pi/2$, specifically, 15 bins for $\beta > 43.4^{\circ}$ and then always one bin in following intervals: $37.2^{\circ}-43.4^{\circ}$, $31^{\circ}-37.2^{\circ}$, $24.7^{\circ}-31^{\circ}$, $18.5^{\circ}-24.7^{\circ}$ and $0^{\circ}-18.5^{\circ}$ to consider that the distribution pole latitudes is uniform in $\sin\beta$.
\subsection{The effect of the number of asteroids in a subpopulation}
\label{test_numbers}
When comparing subpopulations with each other we have to take into account that they contain different numbers of asteroids. To find which population is large enough for stable results, we performed the following test: We used data for the Flora family and we randomly chose 100 of its members and ran our model ten times. We obtained ten distributions of $b/a$ and $\beta$ from which we calculated one mean distribution of $b/a$ and one for $\beta$. We repeated this for a sample of 200 randomly chosen asteroids, then 300, 400 etc., up to the sample of 2000 asteroids. All mean distributions of these subpopulations of Flora are shown in Figures \ref{n_flora} and \ref{n_flora2}. For the distribution of $b/a$ we can see that the results are stable from $\sim800$ asteroids in the subpopulation. However, for $\beta$ the results are much more unstable, the distributions are clearly different even in Fig. \ref{n_flora2} that contains populations with 1100 to 2000 asteroids. With growing number of bodies the peak of $\beta$ distribution is higher and the number of asteroids with $\beta\sim\pi/2$ decreases.
\begin{figure}
\centering
\includegraphics[width=\hsize]{distr_p_beta_flora.eps}
\caption{Distributions of $b/a$ and $\beta$ for Flora family constructed for growing number of asteroids that were included (from 100 to 1000).}
\label{n_flora}
\end{figure}
\begin{figure}
\centering
\includegraphics[width=\hsize]{distr_p_beta_flora2.eps}
\caption{The same as Fig. \ref{n_flora}, but for greater number of asteroids (from 1100 to 2000).}
\label{n_flora2}
\end{figure}
\subsection{Asteroids with different diameters}
First, we focused on groups of asteroids with different diameters $D$. For asteroids which have $D$ derived from the observations of WISE satellite, we used that value, for other asteroids we used diameters from AstOrb catalog. We divided asteroids into seven groups: with $D<3\,$km; $3-6\,$km; $6-9\,$km; $9-12\,$km; $12-15\,$km; $15-25\,$km; and $D>25\,$km; and compared them with each other. For $D<15\,$km we have in all five groups more than 1200 asteroids, however, there are only 990 asteroids with $15<D<25\,$km and only 223 bodies in the last group ($D>25\,$km), which is not enough for a reliable result. The distributions for three groups with the largest $D$ are shown in Fig. \ref{sizes1}. Although, it is in agreement with the findings of \citet{2016A&A...596A..57C} that the asteroids larger than $D>25\,$km are more often spheroidal, in our case it might be just an effect of the low number of asteroids in the last subpopulation.
The mean values of $D_{b/a}$ for distributions of $b/a$ for the three subpopulations with largest diameters are listed in Table~\ref{ks_ps}. The distributions of $b/a$ for groups of asteroids with $D<15\,$km are not statistically different from the group of asteroids with $15<D<25\,$km and have a maximum for $b/a\sim 0.8$. The average axial ratio $b/a$ from Pan-STARRS1 survey was also determined by \citet{2016MNRAS.459.2964M}. For asteroids with $D<8$ km they found the average $b/a$ to be 0.85, which is a little more spheroidal than our result. For $D<25\,$km, \citet{2016A&A...596A..57C} found the maximum of distribution of $b/a$ for $\sim0.63$, i.e., asteroids are more elongated, nevertheless, the possibility is there mentioned that the results could be influenced by the underestimated data noise, which causes shape estimates to be more elongated.
\begin{table}
\small
\centering
\begin{tabular}{cccc}
\hline
\hline
\rule{0cm}{2.5ex}
populations & $D_{b/a}(L^1)$ & $D_{b/a}(L^2)$ & $D_{b/a}(L^{\infty})$ \\
\hline
\rule{0cm}{2.5ex}%
$D= 15-25$ km; $>25$ km & 0.164 & 0.269 & 0.351\\
$D= 12-15$ km; $15-25$ km & 0.091 & 0.146 & 0.189\\
$P= 0-4$ h; $4-8$ h & 0.369 & 0.537 & 0.573\\
$P= 0-4$ h; $8-15$ h & 0.107 & 0.163 & 0.204\\
$P= 4-8$ h; $8-15$ h & 0.450 & 0.638 & 0.642\\
Flora; background & 0.087 & 0.159 & 0.244\\
Massalia; background & 0.294 & 0.462 & 0.554\\
Nysa Polana; background & 0.140 & 0.259 & 0.399\\
Vesta; background & 0.068 & 0.114 & 0.170\\
Phocaea; background & 0.175 & 0.274 & 0.367\\
Eunomia; background & 0.079 & 0.123 & 0.176\\
Gefion; background & 0.132 & 0.203 & 0.270\\
Maria; background & 0.078 & 0.129 & 0.186\\
Koronis; background & 0.142 & 0.244 & 0.367\\
Eos; background & 0.084 & 0.142 & 0.208\\
Hygiea; background & 0.098 & 0.163 & 0.218 \\
Themis; background & 0.134 & 0.243 & 0.342\\
Alauda; background & 0.144 & 0.219 & 0.250\\
C class; S class & 0.081 & 0.129 & 0.174\\
Massalia; background ($i$-filter) & 0.273 & 0.415 & 0.495\\
Phocaea; background ($i$-filter) & 0.212 & 0.291 & 0.333\\
$w$-filter; $i$-filter for Nysa Polana & 0.095 & 0.160 & 0.220\\
\hline
\end{tabular}
\vspace{2mm}
\caption{\footnotesize{The parameter $D_{b/a}$ for selected pairs of populations that were compared. The given values are the mean values from ten runs of our model.}}
\label{ks_ps}
\end{table}
\begin{figure}
\centering
\includegraphics[width=\hsize]{distr_p_beta_size.eps}
\caption{DFs and CDFs of $b/a$ and $\beta$ for asteroids with $12<D<15$ km (green lines), $15<D<25$ (blue lines) and $D>25$ km (red lines).}
\label{sizes1}
\end{figure}
We also tried to reconstruct the cumulative distributions of absolute rate of change in magnitude from work \citet{2016MNRAS.459.2964M}, who constructed distributions for asteroids with $1<D<8\,$km and divided them into groups $1-2\,$km, $2-3\,$km etc. to $7-8\,$km. They found that with decreasing diameter, the distributions show smaller change in magnitude. However, we could not find any differences between individual distributions (see Fig. \ref{eta_cumul} on the left). The possible explanation of this disagreement is that \citet{2016MNRAS.459.2964M} used only measurements with magnitude uncertainty $\leq 0.02$, however, we used all measurements, our only conditions were (i) the solar phase angle $\alpha<10^{\circ}$ (this is the same condition as in McNeill et al., \citeyear{2016MNRAS.459.2964M}) and (ii) pairs of measurements separated by time interval $10$ min $<\Delta t <20$ min. We constructed also cumulative distributions of brightness variation $\eta$ to see if there will be any differences, but as shown in Fig. \ref{eta_cumul} on the right, the $\eta$ distributions for groups of asteroids with different diameters are almost the same.
\begin{figure}
\centering
\includegraphics[width=\hsize]{diff_mag.eps}
\caption{Left: Cumulative distributions of absolute value of change in magnitude $|\Delta\rm{mag}|$ for groups of asteroids with different sizes. Right: Cumulative distributions of $\eta$ for groups of asteroids with different sizes.}
\label{eta_cumul}
\end{figure}
Then we focused on the distributions of $\beta$. As we can see in Fig. \ref{sizes1} on the right, they look different from results of e.g. \citet{2016A&A...596A..57C} or \citet{2011A&A...530A.134H}, where $\beta$ is clustered around 0 due to the Yarkovsky-O'Keefe-Radzievskii-Paddack (YORP) effect, that shifts $\beta$ near the pole of the ecliptic (e.g., Pravec \& Harris \citeyear{2000Icar..148...12P}, Rubincam \citeyear{2000Icar..148....2R}). Nevertheless, as explained in Sec. \ref{synth_sim} or \ref{test_numbers}, we found that the distribution of $\beta$ is considerably influenced by the number of asteroids in given subpopulation and becomes flatter with decreasing number of asteroids. In Fig. \ref{synth-100-5000-beta} we can also see that the model tends to shift the peak to the middle values. The results on $\beta$ are thus nor reliable and in the following tests we will only focus on the distributions of $b/a$.
Because the number of asteroids with $D>25$ km in data from Pan-STARRS1 is insignificant in comparison to the number of smaller asteroids (less than $1$\%), this dependence on diameter does not influence the results of the following tests.
\subsection{Different rotation periods}
According to their rotation periods $P$ provided by the LCDB database, we divided asteroids into three groups. To ensure that all groups are populous enough for stable results we chose the following intervals: (i) $P=0-4\,$h (1081 bodies); (ii) $4-8\,$h (1967 bodies); and (iii) $8-15\,$h (1071 bodies). We excluded asteroids with $P>15\,$h since our simulations with synthetic data showed the results are not reliable (see also Fig.~\ref{synth_rot_period}).
We compared populations with each other and plotted their distributions of $b/a$ in Fig. \ref{rot_period_real}. We can see that the fastest rotators ($P=0-4\,$h) are on average more spheroidal than the population with $P=4-8\,$h, but their $b/a$ distribution is not different from the third population with $P=8-15\,$h. The mean values of $D_{b/a}$ are listed in Table \ref{ks_ps}.
The critical rotation rate is, for the same density, dependent on the elongation (Pravec \& Harris \citeyear{2000Icar..148...12P}). The spheroidal bodies are thus able to rotate faster that the elongated ones, which is in accordance with our results for the first two populations. However, we were not able to explain why the third population, with $P=8-15\,$h, should contain more spheroidal asteroids than the population with $P=4-8\,$h. Therefore, using the LCDB database we constructed distributions of lightcurves amplitudes for the three above mentioned populations (see Fig. \ref{period_ampl}). Higher amplitudes correspond with larger elongations. The distributions of the first two groups are in accordance with the results from Pan-STARRS1 data, but for the third population ($P=8-15\,$h), we obtained similar distribution as for the population with $P=4-8\,$h.
\begin{figure}
\centering
\includegraphics[width=\hsize]{distr_p_period.eps}
\caption{DFs and CDFs of $b/a$ for asteroid populations with different rotation periods.}
\label{rot_period_real}
\end{figure}
\begin{figure}
\centering
\includegraphics[width=4.4cm]{hist_period_ampl.eps}
\includegraphics[width=4.3cm]{PS1-synth-per4815-p.eps}
\caption{Left: Distributions of lightcurves amplitudes from the LCDB database for different rotation periods $P$. Right: Synthetic simulations showing the accuracy of our method for two different intervals of rotation period $P$.}
\label{period_ampl}
\end{figure}
To explain this discrepancy we performed another test with synthetic data. We used the same setup as in Sec. \ref{influence_p}, where we studied the influence of the rotation period on the accuracy of the solution, but we chose populations with $P=4-8\,$h and $P=8-15\,$h. The resulting distributions of $b/a$ are shown in Fig. \ref{period_ampl}, on the right. We can see that for both populations, our model is not able to correctly reproduce peak $b/a\lesssim 0.6$, nevertheless such elongation peak is uncommon, most of the asteroids have $b/a>0.6$. Considering $0.8>b/a>0.6$, for the population with $P=8-15\,$h, our model provides slightly more spheroidal objects ($b/a\sim b/a_{\rm actual}+0.1$) and for the population with $P=4-8\,$h, it provides slightly more elongated objects ($b/a\sim b/a_{\rm actual}-0.05$). We can conclude that the difference between $b/a$ distributions for these two populations (shown in Fig. \ref{rot_period_real}) is due to the method bias that shifts their $b/a$ values $\sim 0.15$ apart.
\subsection{Period from estimated photometric slopes}
By this analysis we have learned that our distributions of $b/a$ for other asteroid populations can be strongly influenced by the appropriate period distributions. Unfortunately, our model does not provide the rotation period $P$ and the LCDB database contains $P$ for only $\sim 14\,000$ asteroids. That sample, divided into individual populations, is not large enough for a statistical purpose. Nevertheless, we noticed that $P$ could be formally calculated directly from photometric data if there are many measurements for an asteroid and if they are appropriately distributed in time. More precisely, we need pairs of measurements close in time and also a sufficient number of such pairs.
First we derive a general result for the time series of any signal $I$ that is of pure sinusoidal form of $n$th order only, augmented by the mean term $I_0$ (0th order):
\begin{equation}
I=I_0+\cos n\omega t
\label{sinusoid}
\end{equation}
(we can choose this form since the starting point is irrelevant), where $\omega$ is the rotation frequency. If the estimates of the time derivative ${\rm d}I/{\rm d}t$ are available (i.e., measurements of $I$ within a short time interval as with Pan-STARRS1), we can use these to estimate $\omega$ and hence the period $P=2\pi/\omega$ in a simple manner. Using the variation (standard deviation) $\Delta$ as defined with Eq. (1), with $I=L^2$, and computing the mean $\langle\vert {\rm d}I/{\rm d}t \vert\rangle$ from Eq. (\ref{sinusoid}) by integrating ${\rm d}I/{\rm d}t$ over the interval $[0,\pi/2]$, we directly obtain
\begin{equation}
P=4 n \sqrt{2} \Delta(I)/\langle\vert {\rm d}I/{\rm d}t \vert\rangle\,.
\label{period_eq}
\end{equation}
Since $I=L^2$ for an ellipsoid is of the pure $n=2$ double-sinusoidal form (Nortunen et al. \citeyear{2017A&A...601A.139N}), we can use Pan-STARRS1 slope estimates $\vert {\rm d}L^2/{\rm d}t \vert$ and their mean $\langle\vert {\rm d}L^2/{\rm d}t \vert\rangle$ to obtain the period with the aid of Eq. (\ref{period_eq}). However, for each asteroid this requires a number of slope estimates. The derivation ${\rm d}L^2/{\rm d}t$ can be approximately calculated from pairs of measurements close in time, but there is a lower limit due to the accuracy of data. We chose ${\rm d}t>10$ min to distinguish the change of brightness from data noise.
To verify if this relation can be used in practice, we performed a test on synthetic data created as follows: using the DAMIT models, the Hapke scattering model (Hapke \citeyear{1981JGR....86.4571H}; Hapke \citeyear{1993tres.book.....H}) with randomly chosen parameters and randomly chosen rotational period $P$ (uniformly distributed from 2 to $50\,$h), we calculated synthetic brightness that we assigned to $\sim 1000$ asteroids observed with Pan-STARRS1 (we left the geometry of observations unchanged), for which we had the largest number of measurements. From these new synthetic brightnesses we can calculate the period $P$ according to Eq. (\ref{period_eq}) that should approximate the synthetic $P$.
The derivative $\langle \lvert {\rm d}L^2/{\rm d}t\rvert\rangle$ was computed from pairs of measurement separated by time interval $10<\Delta t< 20$ min and we required at least 12 pairs (to calculate the mean value) within 5 days. The variation $\Delta L^2$ was also computed within 5 days. We tested synthetic data without any noise and also data with Gaussian noise of $2\%$. We compared the calculated $P$ with the synthetic one by computing the correlation coefficient: data with noise show no correlation (the coefficient is 0.19) and as we can see in Fig. \ref{period_synth} (blue points), there is a strong preference for low values of $P$. Interestingly enough, the bias is systematic and amounts to an underestimation factor of about 0.5 for the point fan. Apparently noise systematically increases the slope average from the pairwise slope estimates. The situation for data without noise is slightly better (coefficient 0.30) and if we consider only periods from interval 2 to 30 hours, the correlation coefficient is 0.65 (see also Fig. \ref{period_synth}). For periods under ten hours, the points are even more tightly clustered near the $x=y$ correlation line.
The possible reason for this bad correlation could be the insufficient number of measurements from which the mean values are calculated. Therefore, to each measurement we added two another, one 0.01 d ($14.4$ minutes) earlier and the second 0.01 d later. In total, we had three times more measurements for each asteroid. However, the resulting $P$ were not significantly different from the previous test, in the interval of $P$ from 2 to 30 hours, the correlation coefficient is $0.60$.
We also tested the relation (\ref{period_eq}) on real data from Pan-STARRS1 survey, however, there were only few asteroids for which we had required number of measurements (as described above) and at the same time also the information about the real rotational period from the LCDB Database. For these bodies we did not obtain a good agreement between the estimated and the real periods. Apparently the use of the period estimate Eq.\ (\ref{period_eq}) requires a large number of well-distributed slope pairs over a rotation cycle. Also, a low number of pairs exacerbates the effects of noise and deviations from the pure double-sinusoidal form. Estimates based on the derivative of a function are usually considerably more unstable than those based on the function itself. This approach is thus not applicable in practice and we are not able to correct $b/a$ distributions of other asteroid populations to have the same $P$ distributions.
\begin{figure}
\centering
\includegraphics[width=\hsize]{periods.eps}
\caption{The comparison of calculated and synthetic rotational period~$P$. The red points denote synthetic data without noise, the blue points synthetic data with noise 0.02.}
\label{period_synth}
\end{figure}
\subsection{Dynamical families}
Next, we compare distributions of dynamical families with their background. The family membership of asteroids was taken from \citet{2015aste.book..297N}. The background for a family is formed by asteroids from the same part of the main belt as the family (inner, middle, pristine, outer), which do not belong to any other family. We focused on 13 most populous families: Vesta, Massalia, Flora, Nysa Polana and Phocaea in the inner belt; Eunomia, Gefion and Maria in the middle belt; Koronis in the pristine belt; Themis, Eos, Hygiea and Alauda in the outer belt; see also Fig. \ref{5parts}. The typical number of asteroids (for which we have enough data) in a family is few thousands, for Vesta, Flora and Nysa Polana it is slightly more than ten thousands and for Phocaea and Alauda it is less than 1000 (the exact numbers are in Table \ref{ks_ps_n}). Unlike \citet{2016A&A...596A..57C}, who did not reveal any differences among families, we found that Massalia has a significantly different distribution of $b/a$ from its background, containing more elongated asteroids. Distributions are shown in Fig. \ref{massalia_phocaea} on the left. Significantly different are also cumulative distributions of brightness variation $\eta$ of Massalia and its background, which are shown in Fig. \ref{eta_mas_filters} on the left. Unfortunately, we cannot compare our distribution of $b/a$ for Massalia with the distribution from \citet{2017A&A...601A.139N} based on WISE data, because their sample contained insufficient number of bodies. The mean values of $D_{b/a}$ for all families are listed in Table~\ref{ks_ps}. The second largest difference between distribution of $b/a$ is for the Phocaea family and its background (see Fig. \ref{massalia_phocaea} on the right), nevertheless the value $D_{b/a}(L^1)=0.175$ is not high enough for a definite answer. We should note than for Phocaea we have only data for 812 asteroids, however, the small number of asteroids causes the population to be more spheroidal and, as we can see in Fig. \ref{massalia_phocaea} on the right, Phocaea, in comparison to its background, contains more elongated objects.
We have to remind that the difference between Massalia family and its background can be due to the different period distributions. To test this possibility we used the LCDB database and constructed distributions of $P$ for Massalia and its background. We found that Massalia really contains less objects with $P=0-4\,$h and more with $P=4-8\,$h than its background, which is in accordance with the family members being more elongated (compare with Fig. \ref{rot_period_real}). However, we have to emphasize that the distribution of $P$ for Massalia contains only 100 bodies and 420 bodies represent its background, which is not enough for a solid conclusion. For Phocaea family, we do not have enough determined periods to perform such test as for Massalia.
\begin{figure}
\centering
\includegraphics[width=9cm]{a_sinI_en.eps}
\caption{Four parts of the main asteroid belt defined according to the proper semimajor axis $a$ (we used proper values of $a$ and $I$ from Asteroids Dynamic Site; \citep{2003A&A...403.1165K}).}
\label{5parts}
\end{figure}
Our distributions of $b/a$ look different from the results of \citet{2008Icar..196..135S}, who determined distributions for eight families using data from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS), however they assumed a fixed value of spin axis latitude for all asteroids, which probably influenced the results. We also did not find any dependence of the distribution of $b/a$ on the age of family that they suggested.
\begin{figure}
\centering
\includegraphics[width=\hsize]{distr_p_mas_phoc.eps}
\caption{Left: DFs and CDFs of $b/a$ for Massalia family (blue lines) and its background (red lines). Right: The same for Phocaea family.}
\label{massalia_phocaea}
\end{figure}
\begin{figure}
\centering
\includegraphics[width=\hsize]{kumul_eta_mas.eps}
\caption{Left: Cumulative distributions of brightness variation $\eta$ for Massalia family and its background. Right: The same for Vesta family in filter $w$ and filter $i$.}
\label{eta_mas_filters}
\end{figure}
\begin{table}
\small
\centering
\begin{tabular}{ccccc}
\hline
\hline
\rule{0cm}{2.5ex}
family & $N_w$ & background$_w$ & $N_i$ & background$_i$ \\
\hline
\rule{0cm}{2.5ex}%
Flora & 11 291 & 11 029 & 4135 & 5316\\
Massalia & 4267 & 11 029 & 1032 & 5316\\
Nysa Polana & 14 741 & 11 029 & 4675 & 5316\\
Vesta & 11 895 & 11 029 & 4863 & 5316\\
Phocaea & 812 & 11 029 & 577 & 5316\\
Eunomia & 4126 & 12 069 & 2247 & 6728\\
Gefion & 2629 & 12 069 & 1203 & 6728\\
Maria & 2203 & 12 069 & 1243 & 6728\\
Koronis & 4845 & 1272 & 1881 & 775\\
Eos & 8237 & 6665 & 4272 & 4172\\
Hygiea & 4191 & 6665 & 1584 & 4172\\
Themis & 4181 & 6665 & 1588 & 4172\\
Alauda & 649 & 6665 & 489 & 4172\\
\hline
\end{tabular}
\vspace{2mm}
\caption{\footnotesize{The number of asteroids in individual families and corresponding backgrounds for which we have data from Pan-STARRS1 survey in filters $w$ and $i$.}}
\label{ks_ps_n}
\end{table}
\subsection{Taxonomic classes and different parts of the main belt}
We also compared the distributions of $b/a$ of the two most populated taxonomic classes: S that dominates in the inner mail belt, and C that dominates in the middle and outer belt. We assigned a~taxonomic class to asteroids according to the SDSS-based Asteroid Taxonomy (Hasselmann et al. \citeyear{2010A&A...510A..43C}, data are available on Planetary Data System\footnote{https://sbn.psi.edu/pds/resource/sdsstax.html}). For both classes we had data for $\sim10\,000$ asteroids. We did not find these two groups to have different distributions of the shape elongation $b/a$.
Finally, we compared groups of asteroids with different semimajor axes (inner, middle, pristine, outer) and with different inclinations of orbit. None of the subpopulations is significantly different from others.
\subsection{Comparison of results from filters w and i}
\label{i_filter}
We also analyzed Pan-STARRS1 data in the $i$-filter ($\sim700-800\,$nm, Tonry et al. \citeyear{2012ApJ...750...99T}) and compared the results with the $w$-filter. We had data for 136 463 asteroids and on average, there were $\sim10$ measurements for one asteroid. We focused only on taxonomic classes and dynamical families. There were not enough asteroids to study the dependence of the elongation of asteroids on the diameter (only few asteroids were in the two subpopulations with the largest $D$).
The number of asteroids in subpopulations containing the taxonomic class S was 6349 and for the taxonomic class C 5813. As in the $w$-filter, the difference between these two groups is insignificant. Then we focused on dynamical families. As in the $w$-filter, we found that Massalia family has a significantly different distribution of $b/a$ from its background. Moreover, also the result for Phocaea ($D_{b/a}(L^1)=0.212$) suggests that this family could have a different distribution of $b/a$ from its background. However, Fig.~\ref{phocaea_i_filter} does not show a significant difference.
\begin{figure}
\centering
\includegraphics[width=\hsize]{distr_p_mas_phoc_i.eps}
\caption{The same as in Fig. \ref{massalia_phocaea}, but in filter $i$.}
\label{phocaea_i_filter}
\end{figure}
To compare results from the filters $w$ and $i$ directly, we constructed distributions of $b/a$ for some families in both filters and calculated $D_{b/a}$. We did not find any significant differences between filters. As an example, distributions of Nysa Polana are shown in Fig. \ref{w_vs_i}. We also constructed cumulative distributions of the brightness variation $\eta$ for some families in both filters to check that there are no differences between filters before the inversion (see Fig. \ref{eta_mas_filters} on the right).
\begin{figure}
\centering
\includegraphics[width=\hsize]{distr_p_w_vs_i.eps}
\caption{DFs (left) and CDFs (right) of $b/a$ for Nysa Polana family in filter $i$ (blue lines) and filter $w$ (red lines).}
\label{w_vs_i}
\end{figure}
\section{Conclusions}
In this work, we analyzed photometric data from the Pan-STARRS1 survey using a statistical approach based on cumulative distribution functions. We applied the model and the software package LEADER from \citet{2017A&A...601A.139N} and \citet{2017A&A..N} that allows us to construct distribution functions of the shape elongation $b/a$ and the ecliptical latitude $\beta$ of the spin axis for some subpopulations of asteroids and compare them with each other. Limitations of this model are: (i) it does not provide the pole longitude and (ii) it provides only the combined distribution of the $\beta$ of both ecliptic hemispheres. Moreover, by testing on synthetic data we found that our model shifts the peak of the $\beta$ distribution to the middle values and is strongly influenced by the number of objects in studied subpopulations. Distribution of $\beta$ also appears to be highly sensitive to the used database. For the distribution of $b/a$ we found that the model provides stable results for numbers of objects higher than $\sim 800$. The test with synthetic data also revealed that our model provides reliable results only for asteroids with rotation periods $P\lesssim 12\,$h. This is due to the time distribution of measurements of Pan-STARRS1 survey and thus it is not a limitation of the method in general.
We analyzed mainly data in the wide $w$-band filter. The most populous subpopulations were studied also in the $i$-filter. The main results of this paper are as follows:
\begin{enumerate}
\item Groups of asteroids with diameter $D<25\,$km do not have significantly different distributions of $b/a$, the maximum of these distribution is for $b/a\simeq0.8$. The distribution for asteroids larger than 25 km suggests that these objects are more spheroidal in comparison with the smaller ones, nevertheless, the number of objects in this subpopulation is insufficient for a strong result.
\item By comparing distributions of $b/a$ for different intervals of rotation period $P$ we found, that the fastest rotators with $P=0-4\,$h are more spheroidal (the maximum is for $b/a\sim 0.75$) than the population with $P=4-8\,$h (the maximum is for $b/a\sim 0.6$).
\item We constructed distributions of $b/a$ for 13 most populous dynamical families. We revealed two families in the inner belt, Massalia and Phocaea, to be significantly different from their background. Both families have members that are more elongated than corresponding backgrounds. One possible explanation is that such result is due to the dependence of shape elongation on the rotation period.
\item By analyzing data in the $i$-filter we confirmed previous results and we did not found any significant differences between subpopulations studied in the $w$-filter in comparison with the $i$-filter.
\end{enumerate}
\begin{acknowledgements}
H. Cibulkov\'{a} and J. \v{D}urech were supported by the grant 15-04816S of the Czech Science Foundation. The research by H. Nortunen and M. Kaasalainen was supported by the Academy of Finland (Centre of Excellence in Inverse Problems), and H. N. was additionally supported by the grant of Jenny and Antti Wihuri Foundation. We would like to thank Matti Viikinkoski for valuable comments and feedback, as well as assistance with the software.
\end{acknowledgements}
\bibliographystyle{aa}
| {
"redpajama_set_name": "RedPajamaArXiv"
} | 8,773 |
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} | 9,308 |
\section{Introduction}\label{sec:intro}
Perturbative QCD predicts the ratio of multiplicities in quark and gluon jets to reach an asymptotic value $C_{\mathrm{A}}/C_{\mathrm{F}}=9/4$. At accessible energies, it is however found to be substantially lower, $\sim 1.5$ at $90\mathrm{GeV}$.\cite{OPAL} Instead of a method to establish the colour factor ratio, the average multiplicities are a simple and powerful probe of subleading corrections. Energy conservation effects on the multiplicity ratio have been studied\cite{Dremin+Ochs,qgjets} and results are in agreement with data.\cite{DELPHI}
As there is no colourless point source for gg events available at energies above onium resonances, the major way to study scale evolution of $N_{\mathrm{gg}}$ is via jets. However, event selection and jet definitions introduce a bias that needs to be well understood. That is the issue of this talk, with focus on $e^+e^-$ annihilation.
\section{Two-jet Events}\label{sec:2jet}
\begin{figure}[t]
\parbox{0.57\textwidth}{
\begin{center}
\epsfxsize=0.35\textwidth
\epsfbox{ktr.ps}
\end{center}
\caption{
In a two-jet event sample selected with a resolution scale $k_{\perp r}$, gluon momenta are constrained by $k_\perp < k_{\perp r}$, in addition to the kinematical limit $|k|<\sqrt s/2$ which corresponds approximately to the triangle $|y|<\frac12\ln(s/k_{\perp}^2)$
. The multiplicity in the forward cones of the jets (dark gray) is unbiased, while the multiplicity in the central region (light gray) is constrained by $k_{\perp r}$.\label{f:ktr}}
}
\hspace{0.04\textwidth}
\parbox{0.37\textwidth}{
\epsfxsize=0.36\textwidth
\epsfbox{talknqqratio.ps}
\caption{The ratio biased over unbiased multiplicity. The bias gives a correction larger than 10\% for $k_{\perp r} <20\mathrm{GeV}$. The MLLA prediction is in agreement with MC simulations using the Durham jet finder.
\label{f:Nqqbias}}
}
\end{figure}
We start to investigate the bias in the simple case of two-jet events selected with a jet clustering algorithm with a resolution scale $k_{\perp r}$. The situation is illustrated in Fig.~(\ref{f:ktr}), in the plane of logarithmic variables $\ln(k_\perp^2/\Lambda^2)$ and rapidity $y$. This coordinate system is well suited to illustrate the multiplicity formulae below, as the emission density of gluons is essentially flat in rapidity.
In a central rapidity range the upper constraint on subjet transverse momenta is $k_{\perp r}$, but in a forward cone of each jet the kinematical constraint is more restrictive.
Summing up the multiplicities in the forward cones and the central region, we get\cite{earlybias,qgjets}
\begin{equation}
N_{\mathrm{q\overline q}}(s,k_{\perp r}^2) = N_{\mathrm{q\overline q}}(\zeta k_{\perp r}^2)+\ln\left(\frac{s}{\zeta k_{\perp r}^2}\right)\left.\frac{\partial N_{\mathrm{q\overline q}}(Q^2)}{\partial\ln Q^2}\right|_{Q^2=\zeta k_{\perp r}^2},~~\zeta= e^{\frac32}. \label{e:Nqqbias}
\end{equation}
The scale shift factor $\zeta$ is a modified leading log (MLLA) correction to the leading order result $\zeta=1$.\cite{qgjets}
Fig.~(\ref{f:Nqqbias}) shows the ratio biased over unbiased multiplicities for different resolution scales $k_{\perp r}$ at fixed energy $\sqrt s=90\mathrm{GeV}$. To calculate the biased multiplicity in Eq.~(\ref{e:Nqqbias}) we have used a simple fit to \textsc{Ariadne}+\textsc{Jetset} MC\cite{MC} results for the unbiased $N_{\mathrm{q\overline q}}$.
As seen, the effect of the MLLA correction factor $\zeta$ is significant. The bias is in general important, being more than a 10\% effect for $k_{\perp r}<20\mathrm{GeV}$.
Also shown in Fig.~(\ref{f:Nqqbias}) are MC results with \textsc{Ariadne} and the Durham jet algorithm.\cite{durham}
\section{Three-jet Events}\label{sec:threejet}
\begin{figure}[t]
\begin{center}
\epsfxsize=0.98\textwidth
\epsfbox{qqg.ps}
\end{center}
\caption{The q\anti qg configuration. {\bf (a)} The emission density corresponds to two dipoles plus a colour suppressed correction here represented by a dipole spanned between the q and \anti q. {\bf (b)} The correction term can be approximated by a colour factor reduction $N_{\mathrm{c}}/2\rightarrow C_{\mathrm{F}}$ in the quark ends of the two dipoles attached to the gluon. {\bf (c)} In the logarithmic phase space variables, the two dipoles can be represented by the original q\anti q triangle plus a double sided fold. The magnitude of the $C_{\mathrm{F}}$ regions in the q and \anti q jets introduces a new scale, here called $\Sigma_{\mathrm{q\overline{q}}}$.
\label{f:qqg}}
\end{figure}
The multiplicity in gluon jets can be extracted from q\anti qg three-jet events.
If a three-jet event sample is selected with a fixed resolution $k_{\perp r}$, we get complicated scale dependences, and all jets are biased. It is therefore more suitable to perform iterative clustering until exactly three jets remain, and study the event as a function of the $k_{\perp \mathrm{g}}$ of the softest jet, presumably the gluon jet. In this approach the gluon jet is essentially unbiased, but the bias in the q and \anti q jets needs still to be considered.
The q\anti qg configuration is illustrated in Fig.~(\ref{f:qqg}).
The emission density of softer gluons corresponds to radiation from a qg- and a g\anti q colour dipole.\cite{leningrad?}
There is also a colour correction term, corresponding to a q\anti q dipole, whose contribution is weighted with the negative factor $-N_{\mathrm c}^{-2}$.
As apparent from the negative weight, this colour correction dipole is not an independent emitter. Instead it can be assumed to reduce the colour factor from $N_{\mathrm{c}}/2$ to $C_{\mathrm{F}}$ in the quark ends of the two other dipoles.
The magnitude of the $C_{\mathrm{F}}$ phase space regions can not be determined by perturbative QCD, since the notion of an infrared cut-off independently defined for each dipole does not apply to the colour correction term. This introduces an uncertainty of relative order $\frac 1{N^2_{\mathrm c}}\frac1{\ln s}$ to the total hadronic multiplicity\cite{qgjets} and hinders the possibility to fully determine corrections of relative order $1/\ln s$ from first principles.
The magnitude of the $C_{\mathrm{F}}$ regions in the q and \anti q jets introduces a new scale, here called $\Sigma_{\mathrm{q\overline{q}}}$.
Provided $\Sigma_{\mathrm{q\overline{q}}}$ is not much smaller than $s$, the total multiplicity for the three-jet event is\cite{letter}
\begin{equation}
N_{\mathrm{q\overline{q}g}} \approx N_{\mathrm{q\overline q}}(\Sigma_{\mathrm{q\overline{q}}},k_{\perp \mathrm{g}}^2)+\frac12N_{\mathrm{gg}}(k_{\perp \mathrm{g}}^2\frac s{\Sigma_{\mathrm{q\overline{q}}}}) \label{e:nqqg}.
\end{equation}
This equation shows the possibility to extract unbiased $N_{\mathrm{gg}}$ using three-jet event data. The importance of taking the bias on the q\anti q system into account is illustrated in Fig.~(\ref{f:ngg}). The result is sensitive also to the assumed value of $\zeta$ in Eq.~(\ref{e:Nqqbias}). Neglecting the MLLA corrections to the bias, by setting $\zeta=1$ in Eq.~(\ref{e:Nqqbias}), raises the prediction on $N_{\mathrm{gg}}$ by about two to three charged particles. This emphasizes the importance of confronting Eq.~(\ref{e:Nqqbias}) with data.
\begin{figure}[t]
\begin{center}
\epsfxsize=0.5\textwidth
\epsfbox{talknggbias.ps}
\end{center}
\caption{$N_{\mathrm{gg}}$ extracted from three-jet events with $\sqrt s=90\mathrm{GeV}$ and $\sqrt{\Sigma_{\mathrm{q\overline{q}}}}=60\mathrm{GeV}$. Neglecting the bias (dashed line) underestimates $N_{\mathrm{gg}}$ at low scales, as compared to the result when the bias is taken into account (solid line). \label{f:ngg}}
\end{figure}
Though the dependence on $\Sigma_{\mathrm{q\overline{q}}}$ is formally suppressed by $1/N_{\mathrm{c}}^2$, different $\Sigma_{\mathrm{q\overline{q}}}$ values implicitly correspond also to different recoil assumptions.
The recoil treatment when q\anti qg $\rightarrow$ q\anti qgg can in principle be constrained by comparisons with the four parton matrix element,\cite{4match} but an exact solution is beyond reach within a parton cascade formalism. This puts a limit on the accuracy in the analysis presented here.
The prediction on $N_{\mathrm{q\overline{q}g}}$ for the reasonable assumptions $\Sigma_{\mathrm{q\overline{q}}} = s_{\mathrm{q \overline q}}$ and $\Sigma_{\mathrm{q\overline{q}}} = s$
differ by about $\frac12$ charged particle when $\sqrt s = 90\mathrm{GeV}$ and $\sqrt {s_{\mathrm{q\overline{q}}}}=60\mathrm{GeV}$.\cite{letter}
\section{Individual Jets}\label{sec:jets}
The method described in the preceding section has the advantage that we need no explicit investigation of individual jets, but it may suffer from dependences on recoil assumptions. In this section we discuss the scale dependences in jets, and present a jet definition designed to give unbiased gluon jets. This gives an alternative way to observe the scale evolution of the unbiased $N_{\mathrm{gg}}$.
The properties of a jet depend on (at least) two scales. The maximum $k_\perp$ for subjets and the available rapidity range $Y_j$ (at some cut-off scale $\Lambda$) in the jet, which depends on the jet energy. The two scales are truly independent, and can not be combined into one single effective scale. As an example, each hemisphere of a two-jet event illustrated in Fig.~(\ref{f:ktr}) can be seen as a quark jet with transverse momentum scale $k_{\perp r}$ and a rapidity scale $\frac12\ln(s/\Lambda^2)$.
In general, $Y_j$ is not easily determined. Each jet can get multiplicity contributions from several dipoles, these dipoles are boosted away from their rest frame, and the opening angle of the jet need not be azimuthally symmetric.
\begin{figure}[t]
\parbox{0.36\textwidth}{
\epsfxsize=0.32\textwidth
\epsfbox{BoostCE.ps}
\caption{The ``Boost'' jet boundaries. The gluon jet is unbiased and the quark jets have well defined rapidity scales $Y_{\mathrm q}$. \label{f:BoostCE}}
}
\hspace{0.05\textwidth}
\parbox{0.57\textwidth}{
\begin{center}
\epsfxsize=0.44\textwidth
\epsfbox{talkNg.ps}
\end{center}
\caption{MC simulations with the Boost method. For fixed $k_{\perp \mathrm{g}}$ the charged multiplicity in the gluon jet is essentially independent of $y$ and in good agreement with MC simulations of $\frac12N_{\mathrm{gg}}$. \label{f:Ng}}
}
\end{figure}
In order to get better control of the $Y_j$ scale, we suggest a jet analysis in two steps
\begin{itemize}
\item Find jet {\em directions} using a $k_\perp$-based cluster algorithm.
\item Redefine jet {\em boundaries} to get well controlled $Y_j$ values.
\end{itemize}
With this approach it is possible to define jet regions as illustrated in Fig.~(\ref{f:BoostCE}).\cite{qgjets} This implies that we can study unbiased gluon jets and also quark jets with well defined rapidity scales
\begin{equation}
Y_{\mathrm{ q}(\mathrm{\overline{q}})} = \frac12\ln(s)\, +\!(\!-\!)\, y \label{e:Yqboost},
\end{equation}
where $y= \frac12\ln[(1-x_{\mathrm{\overline{q}}})/(1-x_{\mathrm q})]$ is the rapidity of the gluon jet.
The boundaries are defined in terms of a Lorentz boost which is described in detail elsewhere.\cite{qgjets}
Fig.~(\ref{f:Ng}) shows the results on $N_{\mathrm g}$ from MC simulations using this ``Boost'' method. The multiplicity is plotted as a function of $k_{\perp \mathrm{g}}$, but for each value of $k_{\perp \mathrm{g}}$ results for several values of $E_{\mathrm g}$ are shown. The crosses are mostly on top of each other, confirming that the method gives unbiased gluon jets depending on one scale only.
\begin{figure}[t]
\begin{center}
\epsfxsize=0.7\textwidth
\epsfbox{talkNqy.ps}
\end{center}
\caption{MC simulation of quark jets with the Boost definition (crosses). For fixed $k_{\perp \mathrm{g}}$, the $y$ dependence is linear and in agreement with Eq.~(\protect{\ref{e:Nqqbias}}) (solid line). \label{f:Nqy}}
\end{figure}
The Boost method enables also a study of the $Y_{\mathrm q}$ dependence of the biased multiplicity for fixed $k_{\perp \mathrm{g}}$, complementary to the study suggested in section~\ref{sec:2jet}, where the $k_{\perp r}$ dependence for fixed ``rapidity scale'' $\ln s$ is studied.
Fig.~(\ref{f:Nqy}) shows that MC results for the quark jets in the Boost method agree with the analytical expression in Eq.~(\ref{e:Nqqbias}).
\section{Summary}\label{sec:summary}
Event selection introduces bias on multiplicities in two-jet and three-jet events. An expression for this bias,\cite{qgjets} valid in the modified leading log approximation, awaits confrontation with data.
Taking the bias into account, the unbiased multiplicity $N_{\mathrm{gg}}$ can be extracted as $2(N_{\mathrm{q\overline{q}g}}-N_{\mathrm{q\overline q}}(s,k_{\perp \mathrm{g}}^2))$.\cite{letter}
In general, jets are biased, and their properties depend on two scales, transverse momentum and an available rapidity range.
Unbiased gluon jets where the two scales coincide can, however, be defined by the ``Boost'' boundary definitions.\cite{qgjets}
The Boost method also gives quark jets where both scales, though different, are well defined. An expected linear dependence on the rapidity scale is seen in MC simulations.
\section*{Acknowledgments}
I thank G\"osta Gustafson and Valery Khoze for a fruitful collaboration.
| {
"redpajama_set_name": "RedPajamaArXiv"
} | 9,607 |
Q: summarise daily value to weekly mean for each ids i have a dataframe with ids that contain values in seperate consecutive time periods now i want to create a column which is the weekly mean of daily data.
df
id date value
1 2018-1-12 3
1 2018-1-13 4
1 2018-1-14 5
1 2018-1-15 5
1 2018-1-16 3
1 2018-1-17 5
1 2018-1-18 5
1 2018-1-19 5
2 2017-1-14 8
.
.
.
12 2016-12-10 7
what i want my df to be is
df
id date value mean_week
1 2018-1-12 3 mean(7 consecutive days starting 2018-1-12 and id=1)
1 2018-1-13 4 mean(7 consecutive days starting 2018-1-12 and id=1)
1 2018-1-14 5 mean(7 consecutive days starting 2018-1-12 and id=1)
1 2018-1-15 5 mean(7 consecutive days starting 2018-1-12 and id=1)
1 2018-1-16 3 mean(7 consecutive days starting 2018-1-12 and id=1)
1 2018-1-17 5 mean(7 consecutive days starting 2018-1-12 and id=1)
1 2018-1-18 5 mean(7 consecutive days starting 2018-1-12 and id=1)
1 2018-1-19 5 NA(since there is no consecutive seven days)
2 2017-1-14 5 mean(7 consecutive days starting 2017-1-14 and id=2)
.
.
.
12 2016-12-10 7 NA(since there is no consecutive seven days)
i searched for a easy way but as of now i am doing it in loop way only.
A: Something like this, but I didn't understand about week start condition
library(tidyverse)
df=read.table(text="id date value
1 2018-1-12 3
1 2018-1-13 4
1 2018-1-14 5
1 2018-1-16 3
1 2018-1-17 5",header=T)
library(lubridate)
df%>%
mutate(week=isoweek(date))%>%
group_by(week,id)%>%
mutate(mean_week=mean(value,na.rm = T))
# A tibble: 5 x 5
# Groups: week, id [2]
id date value week mean_week
<int> <fct> <int> <dbl> <dbl>
1 1 2018-1-12 3 2. 4.
2 1 2018-1-13 4 2. 4.
3 1 2018-1-14 5 2. 4.
4 1 2018-1-16 3 3. 4.
5 1 2018-1-17 5 3. 4.
A: Summarise your data grouped by week. But use mutate() so every row gets the summarised value.
df <- data.frame(date = as.Date("2018-01-01")+1:100,
value = sample(1:10,size = 100,replace = TRUE))
require(dplyr)
require(lubridate)
df %>% mutate(week = week(date)) %>%
group_by(week) %>%
mutate(summary = paste(round(mean(value),1),"(",n()," consecutive days starting ",min(date),")"))
gives
date value week summary
<date> <int> <dbl> <chr>
1 2018-01-02 3 1 4.7 ( 6 consecutive days starting 2018-01-02 )
2 2018-01-03 6 1 4.7 ( 6 consecutive days starting 2018-01-02 )
3 2018-01-04 1 1 4.7 ( 6 consecutive days starting 2018-01-02 )
4 2018-01-05 1 1 4.7 ( 6 consecutive days starting 2018-01-02 )
5 2018-01-06 10 1 4.7 ( 6 consecutive days starting 2018-01-02 )
6 2018-01-07 7 1 4.7 ( 6 consecutive days starting 2018-01-02 )
7 2018-01-08 2 2 4 ( 7 consecutive days starting 2018-01-08 )
8 2018-01-09 2 2 4 ( 7 consecutive days starting 2018-01-08 )
9 2018-01-10 5 2 4 ( 7 consecutive days starting 2018-01-08 )
10 2018-01-11 7 2 4 ( 7 consecutive days starting 2018-01-08 )
| {
"redpajama_set_name": "RedPajamaStackExchange"
} | 9,148 |
{"url":"https:\/\/www.researchgate.net\/publication\/209266577_Wait_before_running_for_your_life_Defensive_tactics_of_spiny_mice_Acomys_cahirinus_in_evading_barn_owl_Tyto_alba_attack","text":"ArticlePDF Available\n\n# Wait before running for your life: Defensive tactics of spiny mice (Acomys cahirinus) in evading barn owl (Tyto alba) attack\n\nAuthors:\n\n## Abstract and Figures\n\nRaptor\u2013prey encounters were studied to evaluate the strategies and success rate of both predator attack and prey defense. We compared the success of barn owls in catching stationary simulated prey (food item) with that of moving prey (food item that was pulled in various directions). We also tracked real encounters between barn owls and spiny mice in a captive environment. It was found that owls had higher success in attacking stationary prey and that they seemed to attack the prey as soon as it became motionless. When attacked, only a few spiny mice remained immobile (freeze response) whereas most fled and usually avoided capture by the owls. It was also found that spiny mice displayed a preference to escape in those directions in which owls had demonstrated a lower success in catching the simulated prey. Escape initiation dichotomized to a short or long (but rarely intermediate) distance between the spiny mouse and the owl with more successful avoidance at short-distance (last-moment) escapes. The best predictor of escape success was the velocity of the spiny mouse, and the second best predictor was its flight initiation distance (FID). We present an update for Ydenberg and Dill\u2019s model for optimal FID in close encounters, suggesting that fleeing at the last moment is advantageous. However, a last-moment attempt to escape is also more risky with a split second differing between life and death, and is therefore appropriate mainly for agile prey under close-distance attack.\nContent may be subject to copyright.\nORIGINAL PAPER\nWait before running for your life: defensive tactics\nof spiny mice (Acomys cahirinus) in evading barn owl\n(Tyto alba) attack\nAmiyaal Ilany &David Eilam\nReceived: 27 February 2007 \/Revised: 22 October 2007 \/ Accepted: 24 October 2007 \/ Published online: 19 December 2007\n#Springer-Verlag 2007\nAbstract Raptorprey encounters were studied to evaluate\nthe strategies and success rate of both predator attack and\nprey defense. We compared the success of barn owls in\ncatching stationary simulated prey (food item) with that of\nmoving prey (food item that was pulled in various\ndirections). We also tracked real encounters between barn\nowls and spiny mice in a captive environment. It was found\nthat owls had higher success in attacking stationary prey\nand that they seemed to attack the prey as soon as it became\nmotionless. When attacked, only a few spiny mice\nremained immobile (freeze response) whereas most fled\nand usually avoided capture by the owls. It was also found\nthat spiny mice displayed a preference to escape in those\ndirections in which owls had demonstrated a lower success\nin catching the simulated prey. Escape initiation dichoto-\nmized to a short or long (but rarely intermediate) distance\nbetween the spiny mouse and the owl with more successful\navoidance at short-distance (last-moment) escapes. The best\npredictor of escape success was the velocity of the spiny\nmouse, and the second best predictor was its flight initiation\ndistance (FID). We present an update for Ydenberg and\nDills model for optimal FID in close encounters, suggest-\ning that fleeing at the last moment is advantageous.\nHowever, a last-moment attempt to escape is also more\nrisky with a split second differing between life and death,\nand is therefore appropriate mainly for agile prey under\nclose-distance attack.\nKeywords Flight initiation distance (FID) .Anti-predator\nbehavior .Predatorprey interactions .Predation risk\nIntroduction\nOn an evolutionary time scale, predatorprey encounters\nare an adaptive arms-race (Lima and Dill 1990) with each\nopponent attempting to optimize its skills, whether for\ncatching the prey or for evading the predator. On a real-\ntime scale, predatorprey encounter is a dynamic conflict\nin which a split-second decision can make a life or death\ndifference. Aerial raptors utilize various hunting strategies\n(Cresswell 1996), ranging from continuous active pursuit\nto perch and pounce ambush. Nocturnal owls perch\nmotionless, merging into the background with the camou-\nflage colors of their feathers, waiting to pounce; while in\nactive hunt on the wing, they fly silently by virtue of the\nunique structure of their wings and feathers, which\nsuppress the sound of airflow over the wings (Graham\n1934;ThorpeandGriffin1962). These offensive strate-\ngies are considered to be extremely efficient; for example,\nthe tawny owl (Strix aluco) is a primary predator, taking\n810 woodland mice per night (King 1985). Indeed, owl\npredation poses a significant threat for small mammals,\nespecially rodents that constitute a major food source for\nmany owl species (Mikkola 1983;MartinandBusby\n1990;Selaas1993;Tome1994; Jedrzejewski et al. 1993;\nJedrzejewski et al. 1996). Despite the numerous studies on\nowl predation, there is ambiguity regarding their rate of\nsuccess and their offensive strategies. For example, it was\nsuggested that once owls have initiated the final attack\nsequence, their success rate rarely falls below 90% (Curio\n1976). This raises the question of what is the final attack\nsequence. Furthermore, what were the preceding phases\nBehav Ecol Sociobiol (2008) 62:923933\nDOI 10.1007\/s00265-007-0516-x\nDO00516; No of Pages\nCommunicated by E. Korpim\u00e4kki\nA. Ilany :D. Eilam (*)\nDepartment of Zoology, Tel-Aviv University,\nRamat-Aviv 69978, Israel\ne-mail: eilam@post.tau.ac.il\nin the attack sequence, was the attack on moving or\nstationary prey, etc.?\nPrey species are capable of recognizing potential preda-\ntors and of producing a defensive strategy that is appropriate\nto the hunting strategy of that particular predator. Modulated\nby the strong selective pressure of predation, defensive\nbehaviors converge to three categories that cross the entire\nanimal kingdom: freezing, fleeing, and fighting (defensive\nattack). In freezing, the prey remains immobile to evade the\nattention of the predator (Desy et al. 1990; Hendrie and\nWeiss 1994; Hendrie et al. 1998; Ronkainen and Ylonen\n1994). In fleeing, the prey escapes to remove itself from the\nvicinity of the predator (Bolles 1970; Driver and Humphries\n1988; King 1985). In fighting (or defensive attack), the prey\npredation. Defensive fighting occurs only when the prey\nhas no possibility of freezing or fleeing and must face the\npredator. Freezing and fleeing have been described in a\nvariety of prey species, from hermit crab (Scarratt and Godin\n1992)todeer(Smith1991). For example, the white-tailed\ndeer (Odocoileus virginianus) typically flees flagging its tail\n(Smith 1991)whereasthejerboa(Jaculus jaculus, a small\nbipedal rodent) squats motionless, hiding its white ventral fur\nand exposing its yellowish dorsal fur to match the desert\nsand (Hendrie et al. 1998). Freezing or fleeing can be also\nobserved in the same individual animal under different\ncircumstances. For example, wood mice (Apodemous mys-\ntacinus) either freeze or leap when exposed to stoats\n(Mustela ermina)(Erlingeetal.1974) but scamper away\nwhen exposed to other predators (Bolles 1970;King1985).\nThe response also varies with age because young white-\ntailed deer tend to freeze when exposed to a predatory risk,\nwhereas adults typically flee (Smith 1991). Finally, freezing\nand fleeing may occur in succession in the same individual.\nFor example, robins (Erithacus rubecula) reacted to an\napproaching predator model by taking off toward the\nopposite side of the cage where they hovered against the\nwall for a short while before flying down to the floor and\nremaining motionless (Lind et al. 1999). These examples\ndemonstrate that freezing and fleeing are general forms of\ndefensive behavior across species and individuals. In discus-\nsing the question of when to freeze or flee (Eilam 2005), it\nwas suggested that freezing is efficient only if employed\nbefore the prey is spotted by the predator, otherwise the prey\nbecomes a stationary target, which is easy to catch. Thus, a\nclumsy prey that does not have access to a shelter would do\nbetter to alternate between freezing and fleeing rather than\njust freezing. In fleeing, the prey can move either directly\naway and maximize its distance from the predator, move\ntoward the predator to confine it to a single clash point, or\ndodge sideways to evade the attack (Eilam 2005). For\nexample, about 50% of sedge warblers (Acrocephalus\nschoenobaenus) responded to an attackingcardboard\nmodel of a merlin by darting sideways at an angle of almost\n90\u00b0 from the model (Kullberg et al. 2000). Prey can also run\nin a straight path that is efficient against slow or distant\npredators, or in a zigzag path that is efficient when a raptor is\nclose or fast (Furuichi 2002). Each one of these tactics\nchallenges the attacking raptor and its maneuvering abilities.\nThe distance between predator and prey at the moment the\nprey initiates flight (flight initiation distanceFID) has\nattracted attention in many studies. Ydenberg and Dill\n(1986) presented a model based on economic considerations\nin which FID for the prey should be at the point where the\ncost of staying becomes higher than the cost of fleeing. For\nexample, prey should flee when the risk from an approaching\npredator is higher than the revenue from a food patch. This\nhypothetical model has been supported by numerous studies.\nFor example, woodchucks (Marmota monax) fled late\n(shorter FID) when attacked closer to their burrows, reflecting\nthe lower risk (Bonenfant and Kramer 1996). Similarly, FID\nof Bonaire whiptail lizards (Cnemidophorus murinus)was\nlonger when predators approached faster, heading directly\ntowards them; FID was shorter when food was nearby,\nreflecting a higher cost of fleeing (Cooper et al. 2003). Male\n(shorter FID) while guarding their females compared with\nmales without females (Cooper 1999). Other studies have\nlinked FID with different parameters, not necessarily related\nto an approaching predator: 64 out of 68 species of Australian\nbirds fled earlier when the initial distance to the predator was\nlonger (Blumstein 2003). Other Australian birds have\nspecies-typical FID (Blumstein et al. 2003). Finally, marsu-\npials in islands with no predators had shorter FIDs than their\nconspecifics in the continent (Blumstein 2002).\nIn the present study of raptorprey encounters, we compared\nthe success of barn owls in catching stationary simulated prey\nwith that of catching simulated prey that moved in various\ndirections, and we tracked real encounters between barn owls\nand spiny mice in a captive environment. Specifically, we\ntested: (1) if owls have a preference to attack stationary or\nmoving prey, and which gives them a higher success rate; (2)\nwhat are the characteristics of owl attack in terms of timing,\nvelocity, and maneuverability; (3) what is the most effective\nFID in spiny mice, and how is it correlated with successful\nescape; and (4) which parameters of the encounters between\nbarn owls and spiny mice best predict a successful escape.\nMaterials and methods\nStudy animals\nBarn owl (Tyto alba) An efficient raptor that feeds mainly\non rodents. It uses sounds generated by prey movement to\nlocate its prey, aided by its sharp night-vision (Payne 1971;\n924 Behav Ecol Sociobiol (2008) 62:923933\nIlany and Eilam, personal observation). Barn owls then\nswoop down on the prey from a perch or on the wing,\ncatching it with their spiked talons, and killing it immedi-\nately. Eight barn owls that hatched at the research zoo of\nTel-Aviv University were hand-reared to adulthood (618\nmonths old) and used in the present study. Each barn owl\nwas kept individually in a 80 \u00d7 60 \u00d7 60 cm cage. These cages\nwere placed in a large aviary (6 \u00d7 6 \u00d7 4 m) where each owl\nwas released separately once a week for 24 h. Like the\nother zoo predators, owls were fed with freshly killed (and\nfrom time to time also live) chicks and mice (one mouse per\nnight per owl) obtained from surplus stock from the animal\nquarters and from chicken incubators. Thus, these captive\nbarn owls were accustomed to preying on live rodents. The\nowls were habituated to the presence of humans by being\nheld in hand for 15 min daily.\nCommon spiny mouse (Acomys cahirinus) Weighs 3844 g\nand is 11 cm long, plus a 10-cm tail. It is an agile rodent,\ncommon on rocky mountains where it shelters in crevices\n(Shkolnik 1971; Shargal et al. 2000). The high fecundity of\nspiny mice (early maturation, short weaning period,\nfrequent all-year-round breeding in captivity) and the\nextensive use of this species in other research projects had\nresulted in a surplus of these rodents at the Tel-Aviv\nUniversity research zoo, which we used in the present\nstudy. Several weeks before testing, spiny mice were\nhoused in groups of 510 in metal cages measuring 40 \u00d7\n70\u00d725 cm located outdoors in the zoo yard under natural\n(uncontrolled) temperature and light conditions. Overturned\nceramic pots and wooden boxes were placed in each cage to\nprovide shelter. Seeds and diced fresh vegetables were\nApparatus\nObservations took place in a 6\u00d74.5 \u00d7 3-m aviary. A wooden\nbox (0.3\u00d70.4\u00d7 0.5 m) was hung on one of the walls. The\nbox had two openings: one to the other side of the aviary\nwall, through which an owl could be placed in the box with\nno need for the experimenter to enter the aviary area; and\nanother opening into the aviary. The door to the aviary\ncould be opened silently from the outside by means of a\nrope. A wooden pole was installed inside the wooden box,\n10 cm above the floor where the owl could perch. From this\npoint, the owl could see most of the aviary area, except for\nthe zone just below the wooden box. For experiment 1 (see\nbelow), a pulley block was mounted outside the aviary, to\nwhich a 1.5-kg weight was connected. The weight was tied\nto a transparent fishing line hung from a hook above the\naviary center. From this hook, the string could be tied to a\nprey item; and by letting the weight fall to the ground, it\nwould pull the prey in the desired direction. An infrared-\nsensitive video camera (Ikegami ICD47E) that allows vivid\nshots in complete darkness was installed in the ceiling of\nthe aviary, visually encompassing the whole area of the\naviary floor. An IR light (Tracksys, IR LED Illuminator,\nUK) that emits light in a range invisible to owls and spiny\nmice followed the direction of the camera. The camera was\nconnected to another video camera (Sony DCR-HC85E)\nused for recording on DV cassettes.\nProcedures\nExperiment 1: timing, velocity, and maneuverability in owl\nattack\nBefore testing, the eight owls were trained for several\nweeks to receive their food in the center of the aviary, and\nonly then underwent the present study. Each of the owls\nwas placed in the wooden box for 2 min of habituation\nbefore the experimenter pulled the string that opened the\nbox to uncover the food item. As soon as the owl took-off\nfrom the perch to swoop down on the food item, which was\neither left stationary or pulled away via the transparent line\n(by letting the weight fall to the ground) in a direction that\nfollowed a random sequence of numbers between 0 and 4\nas generated by Microsoft Excel with each number in the\nsequence assigned to one pulling direction (four pulling\ndirections and one for stationary food item). Behavior was\nvideotaped, commencing at exposure of the food item and\ncontinuing until a successful catch was made. All owls\nwere tested 23 days\/week with all testing sessions taking\nplace in the afternoon, using the owls in a random order in\neach session. There was only one trial per day for each owl.\nIf an owl failed to swoop within 15 min, it was tested again\nonly on the next test day. Accordingly, we obtained 59\ntrials, 16 for stationary food item, 19 where the food item\nwas dragged toward the owl, 13 where the food item was\ndragged sideways, and 11 where it was dragged forward\n(directly away from the owl).\nExperiment 2: do the owls attack stationary or moving prey;\nwhich gives them a higher success rate; what is the most\neffective FID in spiny mice, and how is it correlated\nwith successful escape; and which parameters best predict\nasuccessfulescape\nTests (one per owl per night) took place between 6.00 P.M.\nand 9 P.M., at a light level of 0.1 lux, coming from street\nlights near the research zoosimilar to light level on full\nmoon nights. At the beginning of each test period, an\nexperimenter switched on the equipment, placed an owl in\nthe box while it was closed to the aviary, and released a\nspiny mouse into the enclosure. After 2 min of acclimation,\nBehav Ecol Sociobiol (2008) 62:923933 925\nthe box door was opened, allowing the owl to see into the\naviary area, and to launch an attack. The experimenter\nwaited either until attack was launched or until 15 min had\npassed if the owl did not launch an attack, and then stopped\nthe experiment and returned the animals to their cages. In\ntotal, we ran 54 trials.\nData acquisition\nTapes were digitized by connecting the Sony camera to a\ncomputer using a firewire cable. Microsoft Windows Movie\nMaker 2.0 created a .wmv file for each trial, saved in a 576\u00d7\n720 resolution, 25 frames per second. This software was also\nused for editing the films, cutting unneeded parts. We then\nprocessed the video clips using Adobe After Effects 6.0,using\nthe Vector Paint function to mark the owl and the spiny\nmouse in each frame. The owl was marked by a 10-pixel\ndiameter circle and the spiny mouse by a 5-pixel diameter\ncircle. These markings created a contrast against the white\nbackground, needed by the tracking software. Markings were\nadded to each video clip in the part containing the attack. The\n.avi files created by this software were converted to .mpg\nfiles needed by the tracking software using Mainconcept\nMPEG Encoder.Noldus Ethovision 3.1 was used to get the\nlocation of the owl and spiny mouse in every frame of the\nmovie. This software produced the coordinates of the\nanimals, calculated the movement velocities and distances,\nand created a graphic presentation of the routes of each\nanimal (Fig. 1). To measure the angles of escape relative to\nowl direction, we used the ImageJ software.\nBehavioral analysis\nA moment-by-moment analysis was carried out, starting\nwith the initiation of the attack by the owl and ending either\nwith the successful capture of the spiny mouse, with the\nowl landing on the aviary floor without catching the prey,\nor with the return of the owl to its perch without landing. In\nthis analysis, twelve parameters were scored:\n1. Location of spiny mouse at attack initiation:The\ncoordinates of the spiny mouses location at the\nmoment when the owl initiated its attack, leaving its\nperch.\n2. Attack timing: Whether the owl attacked the spiny\nmouse when it was mobile or stationary.\nFig. 1 Data acquisition in Ethovision 3.1 from a video clip with the\nowl and the spiny mouse marked with a large and a small black circle,\nrespectively. The bottom left panel provides the Xand Ycoordinates of\nthe animals for every frame. The top left panel provides the details of\nthe measured clip section, and the right bottom panel controls the\nvideo display\n926 Behav Ecol Sociobiol (2008) 62:923933\n3. Response of the rodent to capture attempt: For each\ncapture attempt, the response of the rodent was scored\nas moveor no move.\n4. Owl speed: The barn owl average speed for the whole\nattack, from leaving the perch until landing.\n5. Attack duration: The duration of the barn owl attack,\nfrom leaving the perch until landing.\n6. Location of owl landing: The coordinates of the barn\nowls location at the moment of landing on the aviary\nfloor, whether it caught the spiny mouse or not.\n7. Distance between owl landing location and initial\nspiny mouse position: The distance between the landing\nposition of the owl and the position of the spiny mouse\nwhen the attack began. Because the owl was initially\naiming at the initial spiny mouse position but had to\nmake adjustments to its path if the spiny mouse ran\naway, this parameter measures the magnitude of this\n8. Distance between owl landing location and spiny\nmouse location: The distance between the landing\nposition of the owl and the position of the spiny mouse\nwhen the owl landed. If the owl failed to catch the\nspiny mouse, this distance depicts the magnitude of the\nfailure.\n9. Catch: This parameter describes whether the barn owl\ncaught the spiny mouse or failed in its attack.\n10. FID: The distance between the owl and the spiny\nmouse at the moment the spiny mouse began to flee.\n11. Direction of flee: The angle between the owls\ntrajectory to the spiny mouse and the direction in\nwhich the spiny mouse ran, as measured when the\nflight began. If the spiny mouse changed its direction\nsubstantially during the flight (>20\u00b0), this angle was\nmeasured again.\n12. Speed of flee: The average speed of the spiny mouse\nduring its flight, from its beginning to its end when\nthe spiny mouse stopped moving.\nStatistics\nDifferences between different groups of spiny mice (i.e., those\nthat escaped early and those that escaped late) were tested\nusing t-test, unless noted otherwise. Transition of spiny mice\nbetween mobility and immobility when attacked was tested\nusing McNemars test. Differences between expected vs\nmeasured results were examined using \u03c7\n2\ntests. Differences\nbetween individual barn owl speeds were tested using one-\nway ANOVA. A logistic regression was used to examine\nwhich variables may best predict the success of an owl\nattack. The compared variables were the speed of the fleeing\nspiny mouse, owl speed, FID, escape direction, distance\nbetween initial spiny mouse position and location of owl\nlanding, locomoting or stationary spiny mouse, and identity\nof the individual owl.\nResults\nExperiment 1: owl success according to movement\ndirection of a simulated prey\nSuccess rate in owl attack The owls had full success in\ncatching stationary food items (simulated prey) that were\nnot pulled away (16 successful catches in 16 trails; 2 per\nowl). The owlssuccess in catching food items (simulated\nprey) that were pulled by a string varied with the direction\nof pulling. In 19 trials with a simulated prey dragged\ntoward the owls, there were 7 catches (37% success); in 13\ntrials with sideways drag direction, there were 3 catches\n(23% success); and in 11 trials with drag direction forward\n(directly away from the owl), there were 6 successful\ncatches (55% success). Owl speed did not differ between\nsuccess and failure (M=4.71, SD = 0.66 and M= 4.57, SD =\n1.13 ms\/s, respectively; t\n41\n=0.51; p=0.3); nor did the speed\nof the pulled food (M=1.53, SD=0.43 and M= 1.69, SD =\n0.35 m\/s; t\n41\n=1.3; p=0.11). This latter speed matched that\nof live rodents escaping from an owl, as detailed below in\nExperiment 2. In all, owl success was highest when\nsimulated prey was dragged straight ahead of it and lowest\nwhen it was dragged sideways.\nAdjustments in flight path When attacking the simulated\nprey, the owls displayed three patterns of response: (1)\ngiving up and turning on wing to return to the roost (23%\nof trials; all counted as failures); (2) landing on the spot\nwhere the food item had been located before pulling (7% of\ntrials; all counted as failures); and (3) adjusting their flight\npath in an attempt to catch the moving simulated prey (70%\nof trials; 53% of which were successful). When the food\nitem was pulled forward away from the owl, the owl\ntypically continued to fly forward in chase (Fig. 2a). When\nthe food item was pulled toward the owl, the adjustments\nrequired in the flight path were relatively minor, generally\ntaking the form of a shortcut in swooping down toward the\napproaching simulated prey (Fig. 2b). In sideways pulling,\nthe owl made a diagonal correction (Fig. 2c and d). The\nfollowing results are shown only for sideways and forward\ntrials where major adjustments were required because the\nflight paths had to be longer (no shortcut possible). Path\n22\n=4.8; p<0.0001)\nbetween successful attacks (n=9; forward and sideways\ntrials) where correction was of M=1.82, SD=0.41 m and\nfailed attacks (n=15) where correction was of M=0.90,\nSD=0.48 m. Thus, a larger adjustment in flight path\nBehav Ecol Sociobiol (2008) 62:923933 927\ncharacterized successful attacks, whereas failed attacks\nExperiment 2: encounters between barn owl and spiny\nmouse\nAttack on moving vs stationary spiny mouse\nWhen deciding to launch an attack, the owls could choose\nwhether to attack a stationary or a moving spiny mouse. In\n35 out of 54 observed attacks (64.8%), the spiny mouse\nwas stationary at the moment of the owls take-off for\nattack, while the remaining 19 attacks (35.2%) were on a\nmoving spiny mouse. This preference to attack stationary\nprey was significant (\u03c72\n1\u00bc4:74; p=0.029). Notably, 12 out\nof the 35 attacks on stationary spiny mice occurred\nimmediately (<1 s) after the prey had ceased to locomote.\nOf the 19 attacks on locomoting spiny mice, 7 (37%) were\nheading away from the owl, 7 (37%) were locomoting\nsideways in relation to the owl, and 5 (26%) were\nlocomoting toward the owl; all directions were measured\nat the moment the owl launched its attack (see the\nMaterials and methodssection).\nDuration and flight speed in attacking spiny mice\nDuration between an owls take-off for attack and its\nlanding either on the prey or on the cage floor (when\nmissing the prey) was M=1.13, SD = 0.60 s. Flight speed\nduring attacks was M=4.49, SD = 1.03 m\/s. There was no\nsignificant difference between attack speeds of the eight\nowls (one-way ANOVA; F\n7,45\n=1.2; p=0.31).\nThe distance between the owls landing point and the position\nof the spiny mouse at the moment of owl take-off describes\nthe actual adjustment in attack path. This distance was 0.57\u00b1\n0.61 m for successful attacks and 0.7 0.95 m for failed\nattacks. The distance between the owls landing point and the\nposition of the spiny mouse at the moment of landing\nassesses the magnitude of failure: in successful attacks it was\nzero, while in failed attacks it was 0.58\u00b10.47 m.\nRate of success in owl attack on fleeing vs stationary spiny\nmice\nOf the 35 attacks that the owls launched on stationary spiny\nmice, 19 spiny mice responded by fleeing, whereas the\nother 16 remained stationary. In addition to the 35 attacks\non stationary spiny mice, the owls also launched 19 attacks\non moving spiny mice. Of these, one responded by\nfreezing. Thus, after the initiation of the attack, 17 spiny\nmice were stationary whereas 37 were moving. Altogether,\nspiny mice fled from an attacking owl and did not freeze\n(McNemar test; \u03c7\n2\n=24.1; p<0.001). As shown in Table 1,\nowls had 100% success in catching stationary spiny mice,\nbut their success rate substantially declined to 22% in\nattacks on fleeing spiny mice. Altogether, their rate of\nsuccess was 46% of their attacks on fleeing and stationary\nspiny mice. The rodentsdecision whether to flee or not\ntogether with the owlsabsolute success in catching non-\nfleeing spiny mice indicates that the owlstotal rate of\nsuccess was primarily affected by the defensive response of\nTable 1 Number of attacks and rate of success in attacking fleeing\nand motionless spiny mice for each of the tested owls (rows 18) and\nfor all owls (bottom row)\nOwl Total attacks\n(% of success)\nAttacks on\nmotionless prey\n(100% success)\nAttacks on\nfleeing prey\n(% of success)\n1 3 (0) 0 3 (0)\n2 4 (25) 1 3 (0)\n3 7 (29) 2 5 (0)\n4 10 (40) 3 7 (14)\n5 8 (50) 3 5 20)\n6 7 (57) 2 5 (40)\n7 9 (67) 4 5 (40)\n8 6 (67) 2 4 (50)\nAll owls 54 (46) 17 (100) 37 (22)\n1\n1\n1\n1\n2\n2\n2\n2\na\nc\nb\nd\nFig. 2 Exemplary flight paths of owls in missed attacks in the\nsimulated prey experiment. In all four panels, the direction of owl\nflight is from right to left (). Point 1 indicates the location of the\nfood item when the owl launched its attack; point 2 indicates the\nlocation of the food item at owls touch-down. When food item was\npulled forward (a) the owl continued flying toward the prey, but\nmissed and landed before reaching it. In backward pulling (b), the owl\nlanded while the prey was behind it. In pulling to the left (c) and right\nof the owl (d), the owl took a curved path toward the prey\n928 Behav Ecol Sociobiol (2008) 62:923933\nthe spiny mice. Indeed, owl attack speed in successful\nattacks (4.72\u00b11.13 m\/s) was not significantly higher than in\nfailed attacks (4.30\u00b1 0.90 m\/s; t\n44\n=1.46; p=0.15).\nOwl attack: timing of escape response in spiny mice\nFigure 3a depicts the distribution of FID, which is the\ndistance between the attacking owl and the spiny mouse at\nthe moment that the spiny mouse begins to flee. As shown,\ninitiating escape occurred mainly at short or long FID, and\nonly 4 out of 37 attempted escapes occurred at the mid-\nrange FID. Twelve spiny mice fled when the owl was still\nrelatively distant; in fact, they seemed to flee as soon as the\nowl launched its attack. In contrast, 21 spiny mice waited\nfor the owl and fled at the last moment when the owl was in\ntheir immediate vicinity (less than 2 m). FID was not an\narbitrary outcome of the distance between the owl and\nspiny mouse at the beginning of the attack. This is shown in\nFig. 3b in which the FID is shown in relation to the initial\ndistance between owl and spiny mouse. As shown, FIDs\ndichotomized into two types: longer than 3 m and shorter\nthan 3 m. Correlating each group with the initial distance\nbetween the owl and spiny mouse revealed that FIDs longer\nthan 3 m were in significant correlation with the initial\ndistance (r\n2\n=0.864; p=0.0001; n=10). In contrast, FIDs\nshorter than 3 m were independent of the initial distance, as\nillustrated by the horizontal correlation line (r\n2\n<0.001; p=\n0.96; n=20). The latter result indicates that fleeing in the\nlast moment, when the owl was nearby, was not merely the\nresult of being attacked from a short initial distance. In\nother words, the spiny mouse was waiting for the owl to get\ncloser and fled only at the last moment. In contrast, spiny\nmice that were attacked from a relatively long initial\ndistance did not wait but fled immediately after launch of\nattack.\nEscape direction in relation to the approaching owl\nSpinymiceweremorelikelytofleetoasideways\ndirection. Although four fled toward the attacking owl\nat a range of \u00b145\u00b0 to the approaching owl and another\nfour fled at a range of \u00b145\u00b0 away from the approaching\nowl, 20 fled sideways at an angle of 45\u00b0 to 135\u00b0 in\nrelation to the direction of the approaching owl. This\npreference to flee sideways was significant (\u03c72\n2\u00bc7:07;\np=0.03). Another group of eight fleeing spiny mice were\nnot included in this count because they altered direction\nduring fleeing.\nWhat are the parameters that may predict a successful owl\nattack?\nLogistic regression was used to examine which variables\nmay best predict the success of an owl attack revealing that\nspiny mouse speed was the best predictor of owl success\n(95% fit): the lower the mouses speed, the higher the owls\nsuccess (odds=0.978; 95%CI between 0.967 and 0.99; p<\n0.001). Specifically, these results imply that with each spiny\nmouse speed increase of 1 cm\/s, the probability of being\ncaught declines to 0.978 of probability at the former speed.\nThe second best predictor was FID (odds=1.006; 95%CI\nbetween 1.001 and 1.012; p=0.018): the lower the FID, the\nlower the owls success. The other parameters were not\nsignificant in predicting owl success.\n0\n5\n10\n15\n20\n0-2 2-4 4-6\nDistance from the owl (m.)\nIncidence\nPredator-prey distance at the onset of attack (m.)\nFID: Predator-prey distance\nat the onset of fleeing (m.)\nr2 = 0.864\nr2 < 0.001\n0\n1\n2\n3\n4\n5\n6\n0246\na\nb\nFig. 3 a Frequency distribution of FID (distance between the owl and\nspiny mice at the onset of escape). bFID as a function of the initial\ndistance (distance between the owl and spiny mouse at the onset of\nattack). Closed symbols represent successful escape; open symbols\nrepresent successful attack. As shown, FID was usually short or long,\nbut not intermediate (a). In accordance, FID was plotted separately for\nmore than 3 m (squares) and for less than 3 m (diamonds). Trend-lines\nfor each of these data groups reveal that FIDs longer than 3 m were\ncorrelated with the initial distance, whereas trend-line of FIDs shorter\nthan 3 m was horizontal, indicating independence between FID and\nthe initial distance\nBehav Ecol Sociobiol (2008) 62:923933 929\nDiscussion\nSurprise attack: the owlsstrategy\nThe results of the logistic regression indicate that once an\nowl had launched its attack by swooping on the prey, it was\nprimarily the behavior of the spiny mouse that dictated the\nsuccess of the owl. In that sense, the owls offensive strategy\nwas based on surprising the prey before it could escape.\nflight path did not differ between failed and successful\nattacks. However, the owl (as a predator) was the initiator of\nthe attack, and by timing the attack could surprise the prey,\npreventing the exploitation of any defensive means. Indeed,\nsurprise attack is the most frequent type of attack in many\npredators (Kenward 1978;Cresswell1993;Cresswell1996).\nNevertheless, in taking the decision to attack, owls have to\nconsider two cardinal parameters: attack on a stationary or a\nmoving prey, and the timing of the attack.\nAttack on moving vs stationary prey\nBarn owls in the present experiment showed an apparent\npreference for attacking stationary prey. Moreover, tests\nwith simulated prey revealed 100% owl success in catching\nstationary food items compared with catching food items\nthat were being dragged away (simulated moving prey).\nThus, it seems that a prey can dramatically decrease\npredation risk by continuously locomoting when encoun-\ntering a barn owl. Freezing, on the other hand, eliminates\nthe auditory and visual cues that owls use in pinpointing\nprey (Mikkola 1983), and if a prey freezes before being\nspotted, the owl may not be able to locate it (Kaufman\n1974). However, upon noticing an owl, a prey might not\nknow whether it has already been spotted; and by freezing,\nit may turn into a stationary, easy to catch target (Edut and\nEilam 2004; Eilam 2005). Accordingly, it may be advan-\ntageous for a prey to alternate between freezing and fleeing,\ncombining disappearance through freezing with not being a\nstationary target if freezing fails (Edut and Eilam 2004).\nThe present results elucidate the dynamic nature of the\nencounter, revealing that barn owls optimize their offensive\nbehavior by attacking locomoting mice the moment these\nmice cease their locomotion. The owls thereby benefit from\nthe easier tracking of a moving prey combined with the\neasy catch of a stationary prey. However, the prey may cope\nwith this owl strategy by fleeing at the last moment, as\ndetailed below.\nFID, instant escape, and last-moment escape\nThe timing of attempted escape was previously studied in\nthe context of FID, which is the distance between predator\nand prey at which the prey starts to flee (Ydenberg and Dill\n1986; Dill and Houtman 1989; Bonenfant and Kramer\n1996; Kramer and Bonenfant 1997). FID was found to be\nboth species- and context-specific, ranging between two\nextremes: (1) fleeing as soon as a predator is noticed and (2)\nfleeing in the last moment (Ydenberg and Dill 1986; Dill and\nHoutman 1989;Dill1990; Bonenfant and Kramer 1996;\nKramer and Bonenfant 1997; Cooper 1999; Blumstein et al.\n2003; Cooper et al. 2003), which established the notion that\none cannot assume that a prey flees immediately upon\nnoticing a predator, but that it may notice the predator but\ndelay fleeing for some reason (economic gain). The present\nresults demonstrate that such a delayed attempt to escape\nmay also have a significant defensive value, limiting the\napproaching owls ability to maneuver and adjust to the\nroute of the escaping prey. Moreover, the present results,\nwhich were extracted from real encounters between barn\nowls and spiny mice, revealed a dichotomy of escape\nstrategies: (1) immediate flighta distant-dependent FID in\nwhich flight occurred when the predator was relatively\ndistant (more than 3 m in the present study), in correlation\nwith the initial distance between them; and (2) last-moment\nflighta distance-independent FID in which flight occurred\nwhen the predator was very close to the prey (less than 3 m\nin the present study), independently of the initial distance\nbetween them. Of these two strategies, in immediate flight,\nthe prey flees as soon as detecting the predator, presuming\nthat early flight will suffice for reaching a shelter or remove\nof the prey from its immediate vicinity. In a last-moment\nescape attempt, the prey flees only when the predator is\nvery close, as if waiting for the very final stage of the attack\n(typically a distance of less than 1 m in the present study),\nand then executes an agile escape. At that stage, the\npredator is at maximum swooping velocity with limited\nmaneuverability, generally requiring it to land and then\nlaunch a second attack. The delay to the second attack\nenables the prey either to reach shelter or to move further\naway from the predator.\nSpiny mice are nimble (Eilam 1997; Oron et al. 1998),\nliving and foraging in crevices and spaces between and\nunder boulders, spending only little of their time in the\nopen (Kronfeld-Schor and Dayan 1999). Thus, an escaping\nspiny mouse may quickly reach a shelter under rocks or\nboulders, out of the reach of owls, and this makes both\nimmediate flight and last-moment flight efficient. Indeed, a\nprevious study found that when attacked by a barn owl, the\nspiny mice fled; whereas a clumsier rodent species, the\nsocial vole (Microtus socialis), favored alternating between\nfreezing and fleeing (Edut and Eilam 2004). A similar\ndependence of defensive response on motor ability and\nhabitat structure was described in two deer species (Lingle\nand Pellis 2002). White-tailed deer (Odocoileus virginianus)\nthat inhabit forests and are fast runners tend to flee when\n930 Behav Ecol Sociobiol (2008) 62:923933\nencountering coyotes (Canis latrans), whereas mule deer\n(Odocoileus hemionus) that live in relatively open spaces\nand are moderate runners tend to freeze or hold their ground\nand fight the predator (Lingle and Pellis 2002). Their agility,\nspeed, and the availability of nearby shelters thus make the\ntwo escape strategies of spiny mice the more appropriate\nresponse to owl attack.\nThe present results elaborate on Ydenberg and Dills\nmodel, which presumes that early flight is always safer than\na later one (Ydenberg and Dill 1986). Indeed, this is the\ncase in any attempt to escape when a relatively long\ndistance exists between predator and prey. Moreover, this is\nthe range where the prey may still trade between predation\nrisk and other benefits, such as foraging. The possibility of\nthe prey to continue to forage or perform any behavior\nbeneficial to it other than flight is virtually nil at closer\ndistances, and this shorter range probably includes the\nentire distance available in the present study (6 m). At the\nlonger distances, FID and the initial distance between\nthe predator and prey upon launch of attack are still\nrelevant. In this situation, the prey will do better by fleeing\nas soon as it detects the predator. However, in attacks from a\nclose distance, the prey may do better by attempting a last-\nmoment escape. This model of FID is illustrated in Fig. 4.\nNotably, most studies dealing with FID could not test its\neffect on attack success; mostly because in those studies,\nthe simulated predator was a human approaching the prey\n(Kramer and Bonenfant 1997). Comparing the two different\ntactics of immediate flight and last-moment flight in the\npresent study revealed that spiny mice that fled later\n(shorter FID) were more successful in evading barn owls\n(85% vs 50% success in escaping). Thus, a shorter FID may\nintuitive prediction that fleeing earlier is better. This finding\nsupports our suggestion that an agile prey may be better off\ndelaying its attempt to escape until the last moment.\nNevertheless, considering the velocity of the attacking\nowl, a last-moment escape is risky with a split second\ndiffering between life and death. Therefore, this defense is\nprobably only appropriate for an agile prey responding to a\nnearby predator, especially when the prey does not have\nIs there a preferred direction of escape?\nThe present study replicated a previous study (Shifferman\nand Eilam 2004) on barn owls attacking a simulated prey\na food item that was tied to a transparent string and pulled\naway once the owl had launched its attack. As found in the\nearlier study, in this study too, owls had a higher rate of\nsuccess in catching a simulated prey that was dragged\ndirectly ahead of the direction of the attacking owl; lesser\nsuccess when the prey item was dragged toward the owl;\nand least success when it was dragged sideways. In addition\nto replicating the previous study (Shifferman and Eilam\n2004), the present study also challenged the results\nobtained with simulated prey by means of real encounters\nbetween barn owls and spiny mice. Specifically, we tested\nwhether escaping spiny mice favor fleeing sideways in\nrelation to the approaching owl, a direction from which the\nIndeed, the present results unequivocally demonstrate that\nspiny mice favor to flee sideways. Moreover, dodging\nsideways is a common defense in numerous prey species.\nFor example, this is a common defense in song birds (Lima\nattacked by a swooping raptor (Lind et al. 2002; Lind et al.\n2003). Ostriches (Struthio camelus) and rheas (Rhea\namericana) move sideways (Farina et al. 2005), as also\ndo Thompsons gazelles (Gazella thompsoni; Farina et al.\n2005). In escape maneuvering, eluding the predator\nsuccessfully depends on the velocity and the turning radius\nof the prey (Howland 1974).\nIn the present study, we reconfirmed that prey speed was\nthe main predictor of successful escape (the results from\nlogistic regression). While we did not measure the turning\nradius of escaping spiny mice, this was a minor factor\nconsidering that a spiny mouse is an 11-cm long rodent\nwhereas the owl is about 30 cm long with a wing span of\nmore than 70 cm. Thus, by moving quickly sideways, an\nescaping spiny mouse can impose on the owl an impossible\nmaneuver. Indeed, in many of the failed attacks, the owls\ntouched down and immediately took off again and turned\ntoward the escaping mouse (Shifferman and Eilam 2004).\nHowland (1974) suggested that sideways escape would be\nhighly efficient if made at the last moment when the\nFID (flight initiation distance)\nChances for successful escape\n1 \u2013 FID independent of the initial distance to predator (last moment escape)\n2 \u2013 FID dependent of the initial distance to predator and alternative benefits (inst ant escape)\n12\nFig. 4 A model for successful escape as a function of FID which\ncombines the last-moment escape (1) and instant escape (2). The\nvertical lines distinguish between the escapes. In instant escape, the\nchance of successful escape is lower when FID is shorter. In contrast,\nin last-moment escape, the chance for a successful escape is higher\nwhen FID is shorter, until a reversal point at which the predator is very\nclose and the chance of escape drops to zero\nBehav Ecol Sociobiol (2008) 62:923933 931\npredator might not be able to adjust its path. This is exactly\nwhat was found in spiny mice in their preference for a last-\nmoment escape attempt and in their preference to sideways\nescape. In the logistic regression, however, escape direction\ncould not significantly predict the success of the owl, unlike\nthe velocity of the spiny mouse and the FID, which were\nfound to be reliable predictors.\nConclusions\nSpiny mice under owl attack favor fleeing and by this, as\nrevealed in the present study, usually manage to evade the\nowl. Escape initiation dichotomize to a short or long (but\nrarely intermediate) distance between the spiny mouse and\nthe owl with higher success for the mouse attempting short-\ndistance (last-moment) escape. The best predictor of escape\nsuccess is the velocity of the spiny mouse and the second\nbest predictor is FID. While for the agile spiny mice, a high\nvelocity and a last-moment escape are the best strategies for\na successful escape, other strategies may better fit clumsier\nprey species.\nAcknowledgments We are grateful to Maoz Perlman and Yelena\nGolan for their help in the experimentation and analyses, to the\nzookeepers of the I. Meier Segals Garden for Zoological Research for\ntheir help in rearing the owls and rodents, and to Naomi Paz for\nediting the manuscript. This study was carried out under the\nregulations and approval of the Institutional Committee for Animal\nExperimentation (permit #L-05-059). 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Am Nat 138:190200\nThorpe WH, Griffin DR (1962) The lack of ultrasonic component in\nthe flight noise of owls compared with other birds. Ibis 104:256\n257\nTome D (1994) Diet composition of the long-eared owl in center\nSlovenia: seasonal variations in prey use. J Raptor Res 28:253\n258\nYdenberg RC, Dill LM (1986) The economics of fleeing from\nBehav Ecol Sociobiol (2008) 62:923933 933\n... Barn owls, for example, are well known for their acute night vision and their high auditory sensitivity, enabling high spatial resolution in sound localization of their prey even in complete darkness [ 64,65]. Their prey, however, have evolved to avoid owl predation using various strategies such as minimizing exposure in risky times and habitats [66] and adopting escape strategies during an active owl attack [67,68]. Controlled experiments in a closed arena revealed that owls tend to postpone their attack until their prey becomes motionless [68], and there is a high variation in capture duration (from first attack to a successful capture) ranging from 0.5 sec to 43 min [67]. ...\n... Their prey, however, have evolved to avoid owl predation using various strategies such as minimizing exposure in risky times and habitats [66] and adopting escape strategies during an active owl attack [67,68]. Controlled experiments in a closed arena revealed that owls tend to postpone their attack until their prey becomes motionless [68], and there is a high variation in capture duration (from first attack to a successful capture) ranging from 0.5 sec to 43 min [67]. Thus, as it is hard to catch highly apprehensive moving prey, adopting irreproducible (and thus unpredictable) movement tactics may prove beneficial for a predator, rather than committing to a single tactic or behavior. ...\nArticle\nFull-text available\nQuantifying and comparing patterns of dynamical ecological systems requires averaging over measurable quantities. For example, to infer variation in movement and behavior, metrics such as step length and velocity are averaged over large ensembles. Yet, in nonergodic systems, such averaging is inconsistent; thus, identifying ergodicity breaking is essential in ecology. Using rich, high-resolution, movement data sets (greater than 7\u00d7107 localizations) from 70 individuals and continuous-time random walk modeling, we find subdiffusive behavior and ergodicity breaking in the localized movement of three species of avian predators. Small-scale, within-patch movement was found to be qualitatively different, not inferrable and separated from large-scale interpatch movement. Local search is characterized by long, power-law-distributed waiting times with a diverging mean, giving rise to ergodicity breaking in the form of considerable variability uniquely observed at this scale. This implies that wild animal movement is scale specific, with no typical waiting time at the local scale.\n... Barn owls, for example, are well known for their acute night vision and their high auditory sensitivity enabling high spatial resolution in sound localization of their prey even in complete darkness (60,61). Their prey, however, have evolved to avoid owl predation using various strategies such as minimizing exposure in risky times and habitats (62) and adopting escape strategies during an active owl attack (63,64). Controlled experiments in a closed arena revealed that owls had higher success in catching stationary rather than moving prey, and they tended to postpone their attack until their prey became motionless (64). ...\n... Their prey, however, have evolved to avoid owl predation using various strategies such as minimizing exposure in risky times and habitats (62) and adopting escape strategies during an active owl attack (63,64). Controlled experiments in a closed arena revealed that owls had higher success in catching stationary rather than moving prey, and they tended to postpone their attack until their prey became motionless (64). Another experiment in the same settings revealed high variation in capture duration (from first attack to a successful capture) of spiny mice (Acomys cahirinus) and G\u00fcnther's voles (Microtus guentheri), ranging from 0.5 sec to 43 min (63). ...\nPreprint\nMovement tracks of wild animals frequently fit models of anomalous rather than simple diffusion, mostly reported as ergodic superdiffusive motion combining area-restricted search within a local patch and larger-scale commuting between patches, as highlighted by the L\\'evy walk paradigm. Since L\\'evy walks are scale invariant, superdiffusive motion is also expected within patches, yet investigation of such local movements has been precluded by the lack of accurate high-resolution data at this scale. Here, using rich high-resolution movement datasets ($>\\! 7 \\times 10^7$ localizations) from 70 individuals and continuous-time random walk modeling, we found subdiffusive behavior and ergodicity breaking in the localized movement of three species of avian predators. Small-scale, within-patch movement was qualitatively different, not inferrable and separated from large-scale inter-patch movement via a clear phase transition. Local search is characterized by long power-law-distributed waiting times with diverging mean, giving rise to ergodicity breaking in the form of considerable variability uniquely observed at this scale. This implies that wild animal movement is scale specific rather than scale free, with no typical waiting time at the local scale. Placing these findings in the context of the static-ambush to mobile-cruise foraging continuum, we verify predictions based on the hunting behavior of the study species and the constraints imposed by their prey.\n... Remaining stationary can also allow the prey to inspect the threat as it approaches (Dugatkin & Godin, 1992) and choose from a wider range of escape directions, making their trajectory less predictable (Wilson et al., 2018). This escape behaviour is especially effective if coupled with fleeing at the last moment from a less agile predator, as the predator is less able to change its heading in attack (Ilany & Eilam, 2008;Bulbert, Page, & Bernal, 2015). Such an ability to outmanoeurve may be successful at evading pursuit predators that are larger and less agile than bandicoots (Wilson et al., 2020). ...\nArticle\nFull-text available\nEscaping from predators is fundamental for the survival of any prey species. Australian fauna within the \u2018critical weight range\u2019 (CWR; 35 g\u20135.5 kg) are vulnerable to introduced eutherian predators. The absence of co\u2010evolution between native marsupials and these novel predators may suggest that their antipredator behaviour towards the hunting strategies of these predators is inappropriate or ineffective. We quantified the escape behaviour of eight CWR marsupial taxa (three quadrupedal bandicoots and five bipedal macropods) to determine if differences in how they escape from predators indicate their ability to respond appropriately and effectively to introduced predators. Animals were filmed escaping through a runway and 20 measures relating to their gait, speed and path characteristics were recorded. These were reduced to four dimensions using multidimensional scaling (MDS): MDS1 linear speed versus agility, MDS2 acceleration style, MDS3 reactivity and MDS4 gait characteristics. We found a strong link between the phylogenetic relatedness of species and their use of linear speed or agility when fleeing (phylogenetic heritability, h2 = 0.96). Bipedal macropod species used straight\u2010line, fast escapes, which may be suited to escape pursuit predators. The quadrupedal bandicoots had an overall slower escape but were more likely to use sudden changes of direction, which can be successful if pursued by a larger, less mobile predator or where there is sufficient vegetation cover to obstruct pursuit. Repeated exposure increased linear speed (MDS1) and hastened the timing of acceleration (MDS2). The phylogenetic signal for escape speed\/straightness suggests specific escape tactics may be constrained by morphology, although animals increased the intensity of their response after repeated exposure, suggesting training could enhance effective antipredator responses. We tested the escape behaviour in five bipedal macropod and three quadrupedal bandicoot species to document how they respond to a pursuit. Macropods used straight\u2010line, fast escapes, whilst the bandicoots were slower but more likely to use sudden changes of direction. The phylogenetic signal for escape speed\/straightness suggests escape tactics may be constrained by morphology, although animals increased the intensity of their response after repeated exposure, suggesting training could enhance effective antipredator responses.\n... We speculate that, similar to our study, the presence of a predator cue generated the \"uncooperative\" behavior of these females and that treatment effects may have been uncovered had these behaviors been scored explicitly. Data from pure predator-prey studies highlight how capable prey are in customizing evasive maneuvers in subtle ways such as freeze\/flee timing (Eilam 2005;Ilany and Eilam 2008;Nishiumi and Mori 2020), flight distance (Mart\u00edn et al. 2005;Nishiumi and Mori 2015), escape trajectory (Shifferman and Eilam 2004;reviewed in Domenici et al. 2011), and mirroring the risk magnitude (Helfman 1989;Acharya and McNeil 1998). We consider the same behavioral flexibility expressed when dealing with predators, while foraging may also apply to the process of mate choice. ...\nArticle\nFull-text available\nFemale mate choice is remarkably complex and has wide-ranging implications for the strength and direction of male trait evolution. Yet mating decisions can be fickle and inconsistent. Here, we explored predation risk as a source of variation in the effort a female is willing to invest in acquiring a preferred mate type (\u201cchoosiness\u201d). We did so by comparing phonotaxis behaviors of female eastern gray treefrogs (Hyla versicolor) across trials with and without simulated predators. We tested the behavioral adjustment hypothesis (mate choice is unchanged under predation threat, but mate searching behaviors are modified to reduce conspicuousness) against the mate choice flexibility hypothesis (mate choice becomes indiscriminate under predation threat). Additionally, effectiveness of evasive behaviors may depend on predator attack strategy, so we incorporated two simulated predator cues (bird model vs predatory ranid call). We found support for the behavioral adjustment hypothesis: choosiness was maintained in the presence of predators, but females reduced conspicuousness of mate searching locomotion. Females approached the conspecific male stimuli slower and more cautiously in both predator treatments. In the ranid frog call treatment (stationary cue), females adjusted movements away from predator location. Females also attempted escape more frequently when predator cues were present. We suggest that focusing exclusively on the final mate decision may overlook nuances in mating decisions and hamper our understanding of the remarkable complexity of mate choice. Significance statement The presence of predators is an inherent threat to survival. This leads to the general expectation that higher predation risk results in more indiscriminate mate choice decisions and, hence, a weakening of sexual selection. Yet, discriminating mate choice may be maintained if prudent prey change their approach behavior when detecting the presence of a predator. We conducted playback trials with female treefrogs to test whether their willingness to invest in obtaining a more attractive mate (quantified by \u201cchoosiness\u201d) differed depending on the presence and type of predation risk. We found that females adjusted their approach behavior in a way that should make them less conspicuous to predators, but that they did not compromise their mate choice decisions. Our results show that strong sexual selection by females\u2019 choice can be maintained in high predation environments.\n... Fleeing toward a predator may offer other benefits. Preys that flee toward approaching aerial predators are much more likely to survive than those that fled away from a predator (Shifferman and Eilam 2004;Ilanay and Eilam, 2008). By fleeing toward a predator, the relative speeds of the predator and prey are increased, decreasing the window of opportunity for a successful capture (Howland 1974). ...\nArticle\nFull-text available\nEscape theory has been exceptionally successful in conceptualizing and accurately predicting effects of numerous factors that affect predation risk and explaining variation in flight initiation distance (FID; predator\u2013prey distance when escape begins). Less explored is the relative orientation of an approaching predator, prey, and its eventual refuge. The relationship between an approaching threat and its refuge can be expressed as an angle we call the \u201cinterpath angle\u201d or \u201c\u03a6,\u201d which describes the angle between the paths of predator and prey to the prey\u2019s refuge and thus expresses the degree to which prey must run toward an approaching predator. In general, we might expect that prey would escape at greater distances if they must flee toward a predator to reach its burrow. The \u201crace for life\u201d model makes formal predictions about how \u03a6 should affect FID. We evaluated the model by studying escape decisions in yellow-bellied marmots Marmota flaviventer, a species which flees to burrows. We found support for some of the model\u2019s predictions, yet the relationship between \u03a6 and FID was less clear. Marmots may not assess \u03a6 in a continuous fashion; but we found that binning angle into 4 45\u00b0 bins explained a similar amount of variation as models that analyzed angle continuously. Future studies of \u03a6, especially those that focus on how different species perceive relative orientation, will likely enhance our understanding of its importance in flight decisions.\n... Alternatively, they might choose to flee (flight; Edut and Eilam 2003), relying on speed to access a refuge (e.g. spiny mice (Acomys cahirinus), Ilany and Eilam 2008). Finally, if they are unable to avoid or evade a predator, they might be forced to defend themselves (fight; Edut and Eilam 2003). ...\nArticle\nHabitat complexity reflects resource availability and predation pressure-both factors that influence behaviour. We investigated whether exploratory behaviour and activity varied in fawn-footed mosaic-tailed rats (Melomys cervinipes) from two habitats that were categorised differently based on vegetation. We conducted vegetation surveys to determine structural complexity and vegetation cover, confirming that an abandoned hoop-pine (Araucaria cunninghami) plantation forest was structurally less complex, with lower vegetation cover than a variable secondary rainforest. We then tested mosaic-tailed rats from both sites in four behavioural tests designed to assess exploratory and activity behaviours (open field, novel object, light-dark box, acoustic startle), predicting that rats from the less structurally complex habitat would be less exploratory, and show lower activity. Our results provide some evidence for a context-specific trade-off between exploratory behaviour and predation risk in rats from the abandoned hoop pine plantation, as rats were less active, and showed a freezing strategy in the light-dark box. We also found context-specific sex differences in behaviour in response to a novel object and sound. Our results suggest that small-scale variation in habitat structure and complexity, as well as sex differences, is associated with variation in behaviour, most likely through effects on resource availability and\/or predation risk.\n... For instance, the prey's escape strategy was not dependent on either the size of the pursuing predator or the complexity of the habitat. In reality, many animals adjust their escape strategies based on the identity and\/or performance capabilities of the pursuing predator (Bulbert et al., 2015;Eilam, 2005;Fichtel, 2007;Furuichi, 2002;Ilany & Eilam, 2008;Walther, 1969). Similarly, animals will often adopt different anti-predator behaviours and escape responses based on distance to cover, familiarity with the terrain, the predator's proximity and approach speed, how conspicuous the prey feels and in response to social behaviours (Clarke et al., 1993;Cooper, 1997Cooper, , 1998Cooper, , 2009Dill, 1990;Kramer & Bonenfant, 1997;Martin & L\u00f3pez, 1995;Quadros et al., 2019). ...\nArticle\nAnimals are responsive to predation risk, often seeking safer habitats at the cost of foraging rewards. Although previous research has examined how habitat features affect detection by predators, little is known about how the interaction of habitat features, sensory cues, and physical performance capabilities affect prey escape performance once detected. To investigate how specific habitat features affect predation risk, we developed an individual-based model of terrestrial predator-prey pursuits in habitats with programmable features. We ran simulations varying the relative performance capabilities of predator and prey as well as the availability and abundance of refuges and obstacles in the habitat. Prey were more likely to avoid detection in complex habitats containing a higher abundance of obstacles; however, if detected, prey escape probability was dependent on both the abundance of refuges and obstacles and the predator's relative performance capabilities. Our model accurately predicted the relative escape success for impala escaping from cheetah in open savanna versus acacia thicket habitat, though escape success was consistently underestimated. Our model provides a mechanistic explanation for the differential effects of habitat on survival for different predator-prey pairs. Its flexible nature means that our model can be refined to simulate specific systems and could have applications toward management programs for species threatened by habitat loss and predation.\nPreprint\nFull-text available\nSpiny mice ( Acomys cahirinus ) are an emerging animal model in studies measuring tissue regeneration, but decades of research on social dominance in other animals indicates the relationships animals form in their home-cage may affect phenotypic plasticity in tissue regeneration and glucocorticoids. Studies in baboons and mice, for example, indicate that subordinate ranked animals heal wounds slower than their dominant group-mates, and have increased levels of basal glucocorticoids. Recent studies in tissue regeneration with salamanders and zebrafish indicate that increased glucocorticoids can delay tissue regeneration, but whether this effect extends to Acomys is unknown, especially regarding their social dominance relationships. Here we report that most adult Acomys had a social dominance status, but many groups had unclear social stability, with more frequent huddling than fighting during their active cycle. We also found no sex differences in social dominance behavior, and that Acomys more frequently fled than froze when chased or approached. After a 4mm ear-pinna biopsy, we found that social stability significantly accounted for variability in time to close the ear-hole but adding age to the statistical model removed the effect of social stability. When investigating glucocorticoid blood levels, there were no significant effects of social dominance status or social stability. A transcriptional enhancer for StAR, Nr5a1 had a significant effect for the interaction of social dominance status and social stability. This effect, however, was not reflected in StAR and unclear groups mostly had unclear social statuses, so this effect should be considered with caution. This is the first study to investigate home-cage social dominance behaviors in Acomys since the 1970s or measure any associations with their ability to regenerate tissue. This provides a platform for further work on their social dominance and glucocorticoids and highlights the need to consider the role of aging in their ability to regenerate tissue.\nArticle\nFull-text available\nBody size is a key factor that influences antipredator behavior. For animals that rely on jumping to escape from predators, there is a theoretical trade-off between jump distance and acceleration as body size changes at both the inter- and intraspecific levels. Assuming geometric similarity, acceleration will decrease with increasing body size due to a smaller increase in muscle cross-sectional area than body mass. Smaller animals will likely have a similar jump distance as larger animals due to their shorter limbs and faster accelerations. Therefore, in order to maintain acceleration in a jump across different body sizes, hind limbs must be disproportionately bigger for larger animals. We explored this prediction using four species of kangaroo rats (Dipodomys spp.), a genus of bipedal rodent with similar morphology across a range of body sizes (40-150 g). Kangaroo rat jump performance was measured by simulating snake strikes to free-ranging individuals. Additionally, morphological measurements of hind limb muscles and segment lengths were obtained from thawed frozen specimens. Overall, jump acceleration was constant across body sizes and jump distance increased with increasing size. Additionally, kangaroo rat hind limb muscle mass and cross-sectional area scaled with positive allometry. Ankle extensor tendon cross-sectional area also scaled with positive allometry. Hind limb segment length scaled isometrically, with the exception of the metatarsals, which scaled with negative allometry. Overall, these findings support the hypothesis that kangaroo rat hind limbs are built to maintain jump acceleration rather than jump distance. Selective pressure from single-strike predators, such as snakes and owls, likely drives this relationship.\nArticle\nFull-text available\nThe hermit crab Pagurus acadianus (Benedict) possesses two major defences against mobile aquatic predators, viz., fleeing and refuging in its gastropod shell. When approached by a potential predator, a crab must choose to either continue its current activity (e.g., feeding), flee or hide in its shell. If a foraging crab flees when threatened, it must secondarily decide whether to carry its food item and, if so, how far to carry it whilst escaping. Alternatively, if the crab takes refuge in its shell, it must then decide how long to remain hidden and when to resume locomotory activity following emergence from the shell. Because these behavioural alternatives have associated costs (e.g., energy expenditure, predation risk, lost foraging opportunity), the crabs' decision as to which behaviour to adopt should be sensitive to the respective cost of each. We tested specific predictions of this general economic hypothesis of behavioural decision making by varying the weight of food items presented to crabs (= lost feeding opportunity cost, energetic cost of carry) and the amount of time the crabs were \"handled\" by a predator following \"capture\" (= predation risk). Most crabs tested fled from an approaching lobster predator model. Contrary to expectation, flight initiation distance was unaffected by the mass of the food item available to the foraging crabs. As predicted, however, the distances fleeing crabs carried individual food items varied inversely with the food's weight. Time spent hiding in the shell and latency to resume locomotion following a predator \"attack\" were relatively unaffected by the size of the food item available. As expected, the crabs' decision to emerge from their shell following a threat appeared sensitive to their perceived risk of predation, as evidence by an observed positive relationship between refuging time (in shell) and the duration of preceding handling of the crab by the predator. These findings are interpreted within the cost-benefit framework of behavioural decision making.\nArticle\nThe Lujanian megamammals (late Pleistocene of South America) show many palaeoautecological peculiarities. The present paper studies one of them, the locomotor habits of Macrauchenia patachonica Owen, through those morphological features related with its possible antipredation strategy. To avoid predation (especially by the sabre-tooth Smilodon Lund), this large litoptern seems to have been particularly adapted to swerving behaviour. This is suggested by the fact that its limb bones have indicators of higher transverse than anteroposterior strength (significantly so in the case of the femur), a feature which is also observed in modern swervers, and not so clearly in other fast running herbivores that do not use swerving so much.\nArticle\nFood availability and predation were manipulated to determine if these environmental factors influence the behaviour (aggression and movements) of prairie voles (Microtus ochrogaster) under field conditions. We tested two specific hypotheses: (1) that greater availability of high quality food reduces aggression and movement of voles, and (2) that exposure to predators reduces movement of voles. Mean densities increased and mean home range size decreased for populations with supplemental food. Voles raised with supplemental food did display less aggression toward one another, but we detected no effect of food on home-range size when comparing treatments for a given density. Thus food appeared to act indirectly on home-range size via the effect of food on population density. Voles with supplemental food did move less between trapping sessions, which may indicate less shifting of home ranges with greater availability of food. Exposure to predation did not affect aggression among voles, but it appeared to reduce home-range size, even after correcting for the effect of density. This reduced movement was probably a direct behavioural response of voles to the presence of predators. We conclude that factors extrinsic to the vole populations can influence behaviour directly or indirectly. Such interactions should be considered carefully when explaining the population dynamics of voles.\nArticle\n(1) A trained male goshawk was used to arrange attacks on single pigeons and flocks, at brassica feeding sites and elsewhere. Captured pigeons were compared with shot samples from the same sites, using dry weight of the pectoralis minor muscle as an index of condition. Attacks on pigeon flocks at brassica sites were more successful than when the birds were feeding on grasslands and stubbles, possibly because of variation in pigeon condition. (2) Attacks were more successful in the hour before sunset than in the four previous hours. Pre-roost crop filling may have made the pigeons more vulnerable in the last hour, and the hawk might have been trying harder to obtain food as dusk approached. (3) Attacks on single pigeons, and on birds in small flocks, were more successful than those on flocks of more than ten pigeons. This occurred partly because single birds were in poor condition and partly because the hawk achieved less surprise as flock size increased. The hawk may also have been (a) less likely to encounter weak pigeons, (b) more confused, and (c) `less confident' in attacks on large flocks than on small ones. (4) Unless the hawk surprised pigeons feeding in flocks it was usually outflown. Pigeons captured from flocks which did not fly until the hawk reached them were in relatively good condition, but selection for poor condition became more marked if the birds took off when the hawk was further away and it had to chase them. (5) The predation was selective, partly because single pigeons tended to be both worse in quality and more vulnerable to attack than birds in flocks, and partly because pigeons captured from flocks were below average in condition when the hawk did not achieve complete surprise. There was selection for diseased and defective pigeons, but not for those of one particular age or sex. Goshawk predation could also select for behaviour which delays crop filling until as late in the day as possible, and for flocking.","date":"2023-02-04 13:39:49","metadata":"{\"extraction_info\": {\"found_math\": true, \"script_math_tex\": 0, \"script_math_asciimath\": 0, \"math_annotations\": 0, \"math_alttext\": 0, \"mathml\": 0, \"mathjax_tag\": 0, \"mathjax_inline_tex\": 1, \"mathjax_display_tex\": 0, \"mathjax_asciimath\": 0, \"img_math\": 0, \"codecogs_latex\": 0, \"wp_latex\": 0, \"mimetex.cgi\": 0, \"\/images\/math\/codecogs\": 0, \"mathtex.cgi\": 0, \"katex\": 0, \"math-container\": 0, \"wp-katex-eq\": 0, \"align\": 0, \"equation\": 0, \"x-ck12\": 0, \"texerror\": 0, \"math_score\": 0.4741329848766327, \"perplexity\": 12959.808905514989}, \"config\": {\"markdown_headings\": true, \"markdown_code\": true, \"boilerplate_config\": {\"ratio_threshold\": 0.18, \"absolute_threshold\": 10, \"end_threshold\": 15, \"enable\": true}, \"remove_buttons\": true, \"remove_image_figures\": true, \"remove_link_clusters\": true, \"table_config\": {\"min_rows\": 2, \"min_cols\": 3, \"format\": \"plain\"}, \"remove_chinese\": true, \"remove_edit_buttons\": true, \"extract_latex\": true}, \"warc_path\": \"s3:\/\/commoncrawl\/crawl-data\/CC-MAIN-2023-06\/segments\/1674764500126.0\/warc\/CC-MAIN-20230204110651-20230204140651-00693.warc.gz\"}"} | null | null |
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Cabinet Sink cupboard. If your cabinet is not spacious, you may select this multipurpose household furniture. This small corner cupboard can be the cupboard and also cabinet sink. Choose along with which can pop up. You are able to add several other decorations like potted plants, a styled art or rug.
This Bathroom Ideas Unfinished Vanity Cabinet With Several the gallery form Unfinished Bathroom Vanity Cabinets. Hopefully you can find the best inspiration from our gallery here. | {
"redpajama_set_name": "RedPajamaC4"
} | 7,108 |
\section{Motivation}
Up to now there is no complete model which describes all facets of high-energy $pp$ interactions (elastic scattering, diffractive events, jet production etc.) on the same footing. We seek a model that not only describes pure soft high-energy low-$k_T$ data (via Pomeron exchange and Reggeon field theory), but which also extends into the large $k_T$ pQCD domain. Clearly to do this we shall need to introduce the {\it partonic} structure of the Pomeron.
What are the requirements of such a model? On the one hand, it should agree with the available soft high-energy $pp$ data, such as $\sigma_{\rm tot},~ d\sigma_{\rm el}/dt,~ d\sigma_{\rm SD}/dtdM^2,$ for $-t\lapproxeq 0.5 ~\rm GeV^2$. On the other hand, it should be in broad agreement with the known PDFs and diffractive PDFs for $x \lapproxeq 0.01$ and $Q^2
\sim 4 ~\rm GeV^2$, as well as with the data for the single-particle inclusive $p_T$-distribution for $p^2_T \lapproxeq 4 ~\rm GeV^2$. Moreover, the model should satisfy $s$-channel unitarity. That is, the known large absorptive effects should be accounted for in terms of multi-Pomeron $t$-channel exchanges. Indeed, an important ingredient of a model seeking to link up the hard and soft regimes, is the extrapolation of the {\it partonic} (gluon-ladder) structure of the bare QCD Pomeron ({\it including} the gluon $k_T$ dependence along the ladder), into the soft regime taking account of these absorptive corrections, which become large as we go to smaller $k_T$.
\section{Soft and hard Pomerons?}
Often people speak of `soft' and `hard' Pomerons, so let us recall what is meant by these terms. The `soft' Pomeron is a vacuum-exchange object which drives soft high-energy interactions \cite{bkk}. It is not a simple Regge pole, but a non-local object. The rising $\sigma_{\rm tot}$ with energy means that multi-Pomeron diagrams (with Regge cuts) are necessary to restore unitarity. Total and elastic cross sections can be described, in the limited energy range up to Tevatron energies, by an effective pole with trajectory $\alpha_{\rm eff}\simeq 1.08+0.25t$ \cite{dl}, but this simple effective form breaks down at LHC energies. The `hard' or QCD Pomeron is described by the sum of ladder diagrams of Reggeized gluons with, in leading log$1/x$ BFKL \cite{fil}, a singularity which is a cut, and not a pole (or, with running $\alpha_s$ and boundary conditions at low $k_t$, a series of poles), in the complex angular momentum plane. When higher-order effects are included, the intercept of the `hard' Pomeron stabilizes to $\Delta=\alpha_P(0)-1 \simeq 0.3$.
From the discussion above, it is clear that our model will be based on the assumption that there exists only one Pomeron, which makes a smooth transition between the hard and soft regimes \cite{kmrrev}. What is the evidence that the soft Pomeron in the soft regime emerges from an extrapolation of the {\it bare} hard Pomeron? First, there is no irregularity in the HERA data in the transition region, $Q^2 \sim 0.3-2~ \rm GeV^2$. Second, a small slope, $\alpha' < 0.05~\rm GeV^{-2}$, of the {\it bare} Pomeron trajectory is found in the global analyses of the soft high-energy $pp$ data, after accounting for absorptive corrections and secondary Reggeons \cite{KMRnns1,um}. So, since $\alpha' \sim 1/k_T^2$, the typical values of $k_T$ inside the bare hard Pomeron amplitude are relatively large. Furthermore, these global analyses of soft high-energy data find that the intercept of the bare Pomeron trajectory is $\Delta=\alpha_P(0)-1 \simeq 0.3$, close to that of the QCD Pomeron. Moreover, HERA data on vector meson electroproduction show a power-like behaviour with energy which smoothly interpolates between the `effective' {\it soft} value $\alpha_P(0)\sim 1.1$ at $Q^2 \sim 0$, and the {\it hard} value $\sim 1.3$ at large $Q^2$. In summary, the bare perturbative QCD Pomeron amplitude, with trajectory $\alpha_P \simeq 1.3+0t$, is subject to increasing absorptive effects as we go to smaller $k_T$, which allow it to yield the attributes of the soft Pomeron.
\section{Strategy}
We start with the ladder structure of the bare Pomeron amplitude, $\Omega_{ik}(y,{\bf k}_T,\bf{b})$. The $i,k$ subscripts denote the Good-Walker diffractive eigenstates, which allow for low-mass proton dissociation. The eigenstates are those combinations of $p,N^*,...$ which only undergo `elastic' scattering. Unitarity is imposed via a multichannel {\it eikonal}
\begin{equation}
{\rm Im}T_{ik}~=~1-{\rm exp}(-\Omega_{ik}/2).
\end{equation}
The bare amplitude, $\Omega$, satisfies an evolution equation in rapidity,
\begin{equation}
\frac{\partial \Omega(y,{\bf k}_T,\bf{b})}{\partial y}~=~\int d^2k'_T~K({\bf k}_T,{\bf k}'_T)~\Omega(y,{\bf k}'_T,{\bf b}),
\end{equation}
which generates the ladder structure by evolving from some input at $y=y_0$. At each step, ln$k_T^2$ and the impact parameter $\bf{b}$ can be changed, so, in principle, we have a three-variable integro-differential equation to solve. We use a simplified form of the kernel, $K$, which incorporates diffusion in ln$k_T^2$, and energy dependence $\Delta \sim 0.3$, as expected from BFKL. The $\bf{b}$ dependence during the evolution may be neglected, since it is proportional to the slope $\alpha'$, which is very small. Then the only $\bf{b}$ dependence comes from the input distribution.
The Multi-Pomeron contributions are included via absorptive factors of the form exp$(-\lambda\Omega_k/2)$, where $\lambda\Omega_k$ reflects the different opacity of the ``target'' $k$ felt by an intermediate parton, rather than the opacity $\Omega_k$ felt by the ``beam'' $i$. We expect $\lambda \sim 0.25$. If the rescattering involving intermediate partons is included (that is so-called {\it enhanced} rescattering), then the evolution up from $y=0$, or, to be precise, $y=y_0$ of the target, takes the form
\begin{equation}
\frac{\partial \Omega_k(y,{\bf k}_T)}{\partial y}~=~\int d^2k'_T~{\rm exp}(-\lambda(\Omega_k(y)+\Omega_i(y'))/2)~K({\bf k}_T,{\bf k}'_T)~\Omega_k(y,{\bf k}'_T).
\label{eq:3}
\end{equation}
Similarly the evolution down from the beam, $y'=Y-y$, is given by
\begin{equation}
\frac{\partial \Omega_i(y',{\bf k}_T)}{\partial y}~=~\int d^2k'_T~{\rm exp}(-\lambda(\Omega_i(y')+\Omega_k(y))/2)~K({\bf k}_T,{\bf k}'_T)~\Omega_i(y',{\bf k}'_T).
\label{eq:4}
\end{equation}
These two equations can be solved iteratively to give $\Omega_{ik}(y,{\bf k}_T,\bf{b})$, from which all observables can be calculated.
The aim is to study, in a semi-quantitative way, the main features of the soft and semi-hard interaction in terms of a realistic model with just a {\it few} physically-motivated parameters, and {\it not} to provide a many-parameter $\chi^2$-analysis of the data. In this way we hope that we can provide a better understanding of the physics which underlies the description of the data. Below we list a minimal set of parameters. There is basically one parameter (or sometimes two) that is mainly responsible for each phenomena:
\begin{itemize}
\item The kernel $K$ is given in terms of $\Delta$ and $d$; $\Delta=\alpha_P(0)-1$ specifies the intercept of the {\it bare} Pomeron trajectory, and $d$ controls the diffusion in ln$k_t$;
\item $\beta$ specifies the Pomeron-proton coupling;
\item $c_1$ and $c_2$ specify the proton radius and the corresponding form factor;
\item $\gamma_i$ specify the Good-Walker diffractive eigenstates, which are determined by low-mass diffractive
dissociation;
\item $\lambda$ which determines the strength of the triple- (and multi-) Pomeron couplings, which are constrained by data on high-mass diffractive dissociation;
\item $q_0$, the infrared cut-off, which together with $\beta $, controls the absolute value of the bare one-Pomeron exchange cross section;
\item $y_0$ which separates low- and high-mass diffraction.
\end{itemize}
Such an approach has been found to give a satisfactory description of soft high-energy $pp$ elastic and diffractive scattering data \cite{KMRnns1}. The absorptive effects are strong, and therefore we expect a relatively low $\sigma_{\rm tot}\sim 90$ mb at 14 TeV. However, here in (\ref{eq:3}) and (\ref{eq:4}), we include, for the first time, the ${\bf k}_T$ dependence of the opacity during the evolution, as well as the ${\bf b}$ dependence in the input distributions. We can therefore be more ambitious. We can now calculate the doubly-unintegrated gluon distribution. Integration over $\bf{b}$ and $k_T^2$ (up to $\mu^2$) then yields the gluon distribution $g(x,\mu^2)$ which is independently determined from global analyses of deep inelastic and related hard scattering data. Consistency between the two independent determinations for low $x$ and relatively low $Q^2$ is a tight constraint on the model. A similar comparison can be made for the diffractive gluon PDF. Moreover we can calculate the single-particle inclusive $p_T$-distribution and compare with data in the region $p_T^2 \lapproxeq 4~\rm GeV^2$.
\section{Discussion}
To achieve a simultaneous description of all of these soft and semi-hard phenomena is challenging. One ambiguity is that the form of the multi-Pomeron couplings is not known at present. The multi-Pomeron diagrams generated by the ``exp$(-\lambda\Omega/2)$'' absorptive factors in (\ref{eq:3}) and (\ref{eq:4}) correspond to $n \to m$ Pomeron couplings
\begin{equation}
g^n_m~=~ nm~\lambda^{n+m-2}~g_N/2,~~~~~~~~{\rm for}~~~~n+m\ge 3,
\label{eq:5}
\end{equation}
where $g_N$ is the Pomeron-proton coupling. These couplings are consistent with the conventional AGK cutting rules \cite{AGK} for the diagrams with triple-Pomeron vertices $(n+m=3)$; that is, for all the diagrams studied in the AGK paper, but are not consistent with the simplest generalisation of the AGK cutting rules for diagrams with vertices with $n+m >3$. Alternatively we could consider multi-Pomeron diagrams generated by absorptive factors ``$(1-{\rm exp}(-\lambda\Omega))/\lambda\Omega$'' in (\ref{eq:3}) and (\ref{eq:4}), which correspond to couplings of the form (\ref{eq:5}) but without the $nm$ factor. This leads to weaker absorption (with $\sigma_{\rm tot} \gapproxeq 100$ mb), but is consistent with the simplest extension of the AGK cutting rules. Hopefully, the constraints on the model will distinguish between these alternative $g^n_m$ forms.
The enhanced screening arising from both of these prescriptions is sufficient to restore unitarity during the evolution; eikonal screening gives just a little more absorption. That is, the multi-Pomeron contributions are summed up in the absorptive factor which is included in {\it each} emission vertex. This is a very powerful result. It means that a relatively low number of new gluons will be produced during the evolution, which will greatly facilitate a Monte Carlo realisation of the model.
A multi-Pomeron model has also been developed by Ostapchenko \cite{KPT}. It has a pure eikonal form for the multi-Pomeron couplings,
\begin{equation}
g^n_m=(r_{3P}/4\pi)\gamma_P^{n+m-3},
\label{eq:gnmo}
\end{equation}
with two parameters: $r_{3P}$ for the triple-Pomeron vertex and $\gamma_P$ to allow for the other vertices. In this case, for $r_{3P}/\gamma_P<\Delta$, the enhanced contribution inside a parton cascade is not strong enough to suppress the power growth of the bare Pomeron amplitude. Unitarity is only satisfied after eikonalization of the final amplitude. Unfortunately, the same $g^n_m$ are taken for the soft and hard components of the Pomeron. Thus the soft component screens the hard one, in contradiction to perturbative QCD. Moreover, the same PDFs are used for the proton-Pomeron and Pomeron-Pomeron interactions, which is probably why diffractive DIS is badly reproduced in Ref.~\cite{KPT}.
| {
"redpajama_set_name": "RedPajamaArXiv"
} | 4,622 |
Q: Shipping JRE 8 Early Access Releases I used jdk8 to compile my java program to use some latest feature.
Can JRE 8 be shipped before final release ?
Looks like JRE 8 is not available standalone.So can I ship JDK8 before it it's final release
A: JRE8 and JDK8 are currently in Early Adopter version (EA). It's license terms follow: http://www.oracle.com/technetwork/licenses/ea-license-152003.html
We grant You a revocable, nonexclusive, nontransferable, royalty-free and limited right to (a) use one (1) copy of the binary portions of the Programs and any Supplemental Programs for the sole purpose of internal non-production and non-commercial evaluation and testing of the Programs, including, developing no more than a single prototype of each of Your applications;
Now, of course, I'm no lawyer nor is this legal advice, but as this says, you can't ship a jre8 software (as that would include binary portions of jre8) to your production or commercial non-evaluation nor testing multiple non-prototypes of your application.
Additionally, you'd be subject to their Export Controls, found in the above address.
A: The GA is available as of March 18th:
http://www.oracle.com/technetwork/java/javase/downloads/index.html
| {
"redpajama_set_name": "RedPajamaStackExchange"
} | 3,122 |
« Former Drinker Biddle Partner Disbarred for Falsifying D.C. Bar Application | Main | Occupy D.C. Protesters Sue Over Arrests Outside Merrill Lynch Office »
D.C. Circuit Weighs U.S. Citizen's Torture Suit Against Rumsfeld
A federal appeals court in Washington is weighing whether an American contractor's torture suit against former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld can proceed.
The contractor, a U.S. citizen and Army veteran who had been providing Arabic translation services to the military in Iraq, sued Rumsfeld in Washington's federal district court. A trial judge in August refused to throw out the case, prompting the U.S. Justice Department to appeal.
An attorney for the plaintiff, who is identified in court papers only as John Doe, said today in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit that Congress has not barred civil actions by Americans who alleged torture while in U.S. military custody.
"If Congress wanted no actions, it would have said it," Michael Kanovitz of Chicago's Loevy & Loevy said in court. Congress, Kanovitz argued, anticipated such litigation when lawmakers fashioned an immunity defense for government officials.
A Justice Department lawyer, Henry Whitaker of the Civil Division appellate staff, asked the appeals court not to create a new cause of action. Whitaker said the plaintiff's U.S. citizenship has no bearing on the outcome of the case.
"The sensitivities that cry out in this case for deference to Congress" do not depend on the plaintiff's identity as a U.S. citizen, Whitaker said. "They depend on the context involved here, the issues the suit raises."
In court papers, DOJ lawyers said the courts should not play a role in this case to question the constitutionality of detention and interrogation policy.
D.C. Circuit Judge Thomas Griffith suggested the plaintiff's citizenship must account for something. "There's no way to distinguish between a person who has claimed to be tortured who is not a citizen and one who is?" the judge asked. "There's no difference between those two at all?"
A trial judge, Whitaker said, would be forced to examine detention policies—the creation, justification and application up and down the chain of command—if the suit is allowed to proceed. "Let's not forget that this is conduct that occurred in a foreign combat zone," Whitaker said in court.
The appellate panel, which also included Chief Judge David Sentelle and Judge Janice Rogers Brown, did not immediately rule today.
Washington's Katz, Marshall & Banks filed a friend-of-the-court brief on behalf of the nonprofit whistleblower advocate Project On Government Oversight in support of the plaintiff.
"Allowing a judicial remedy for citizens whose constitutional rights have been violated will create a strong deterrent for such behavior, and there is no reason to expect that the military will be called upon to defend cases of this nature frequently," the amicus brief said.
Jesselyn Radack of the Government Accountability Project, which advocates for whistleblowers, also represents the plaintiff. Kanovitz and Radack described the plaintiff in court papers as a "loyal American citizen who served his country courageously and honorably as a civilian during the war in Iraq."
The plaintiff, was detained for nine months, until August 2006, in a military prison in Baghdad, according to the suit. The complaint alleges that Rumsfeld and others were aware that interrogation techniques in play at the Guantanamo Bay facility in Cuba were also being used in Iraq.
Whitaker said in a letter last week to the appeals court that the plaintiff did not complain about alleged mistreatment before he filed suit. DOJ said "no contemporaneous or later criminal inquiry or investigation was conducted by the military or law enforcement officials."
Posted by Mike Scarcella on March 19, 2012 at 01:33 PM in Balancing Act, Crime and Punishment, Current Affairs, Justice Department, Legal Business, Politics and Government , Supreme Court , War on Terror | Permalink
Finally, days of reckoning may finally be upon the backs of the war mongrs who literally killed over 4000 American boys and girls and crippled tgens of thousands of others...for what? There is no intelligent answer to that question...just suffering.
Posted by: Bruce Nelson | March 20, 2012 at 01:37 PM
Henry Whittaker of the Dept. of Justice, remarks, "Let's not forget that this is conduct that occurred in a foreign combat zone." Whitaker invokes the absurd distinction that what is atrocious in one place need not be considered atrocious elsewhere. This idea makes a mockery of a fundamental rule of morality, (fundamental, at least to philosophers), that principles of conduct must be applied universally.
Posted by: Sidney Gendin | March 20, 2012 at 07:23 AM | {
"redpajama_set_name": "RedPajamaCommonCrawl"
} | 8,493 |
\section{Introduction}
An automorphism on a K3 surface is called symplectic if it leaves
invariant the nowhere vanishing holomorphic two form of the K3
surface. Nikulin was the first to study this kind of
automorphisms. One of the main properties of a finite group $G$ of
symplectic automorphisms on a K3 surface $X$ is that the
desingularization of the quotient $X/G$ is again a K3 surface. It
is a general fact (cf. \cite{Nikulin symplectic}, \cite{Whitcher})
that if $X$ is a K3 surface admitting a finite group $G$ as group
of symplectic automorphisms, the lattice
$\Omega_G:=(H^2(X,\mathbb{Z})^G)^{\perp}$ is primitively embedded in
$NS(X)$. Similarly, if $Y$ is a K3 surface obtained as
desingularization of $X/G$, there exists a lattice, called $M_G$,
(which contains the curves arising from the desingularization of
$X/G$) which is primitively embedded in
$NS(Y)$.\\
Here we analyze examples of elliptic K3 surfaces admitting
symplectic automorphisms preserving the elliptic fibration, and we
describe the
quotient surfaces.\\
In \cite{symplectic prime} and \cite{symplectic not prime}
elliptic fibrations on K3 surfaces are considered to analyze some
properties of the family of K3 surfaces admitting finite abelian
groups of symplectic automorphisms. In particular, if a K3 surface
$X$ admits an elliptic fibration $\mathcal{E}$ with a torsion
section $t$, it admits a symplectic automorphism $\sigma_t$, which
is the translation by the torsion section, and which acts as the
identity on the base of the fibration. This automorphism preserves
the fibration, hence, on the desingularization of the quotient
surface $X/\sigma_t$, there is an elliptic fibration, induced by
the one on $X$. In {\it Section \ref{section: elliptic K3 surface
and autmorphism induced by sections}}, Proposition \ref{prop: NS
MW with abelina group}, we give our main result about such
elliptic fibrations: if $\mathcal{E}$ is the generic elliptic
fibration admitting a certain group $G=\langle t\rangle$
(generated by a torsion section $t$) as Mordell--Weil group, then
the elliptic fibrations $\mathcal{E}/\sigma_t$ and $\mathcal{E}$
have isomorphic Mordell--Weil groups and the same type of singular
fibers. This implies that the N\'eron--Severi groups of the
surface $X$ and $\widetilde{X/\sigma_t}$ are isometric and we
determine them. Using the fact that $\widetilde{X/\sigma_t}$ is
obtained as quotient of a K3 surface by a group of symplectic
automorphisms, we show that its N\'eron--Severi group is isometric
to $U\oplus M_G$. In \cite{symplectic prime} and \cite{symplectic
not prime} the N\'eron--Severi group of $X$ (and hence the one of
$\widetilde{X/\sigma_t}$ since they are isometric) was described
considering its relation with the lattice $\Omega_G$, and in fact
$NS(X)$ was obtained as overlattice of finite index of
$U(n)\oplus \Omega_G$, where $n=|G|$.\\
The relation between the elliptic fibration with a certain torsion
section and the elliptic fibration obtained as quotient of this by
the automorphism induced by section can be analyzed in a more
general setting. In {\it Section \ref{section: quotient of
elliptic curves}} we recall that if $E$ is an elliptic curve
defined over a field $\mathbb{K}$ with a rational $n$-torsion
point $T_n$, and there is a primitive $n$-th root of unity in
$\mathbb{K}$, then the elliptic curve $E/\langle T_n\rangle$ has
again a rational $n$-torsion point. In the particular case of the
elliptic fibration with base $\mathbb{P}^1$ (analyzed in {\it
Section} \ref{section: automorphisms induced by sections}) this
implies that the quotient of the elliptic fibration with the
automorphism induced by an $n$-torsion section, is again an
elliptic fibration
with an $n$-torsion section.\\
Until now, we considered automorphisms of elliptic fibrations with
base $\mathbb{P}^1$ (and in particular on K3 surfaces) which act
trivially on the base. But, of course, it is possible to construct
also automorphisms of the elliptic fibrations which are induced by
automorphisms of the base of the fibrations. This kind of
automorphisms is interesting because they are related to base
changes of elliptic fibrations. In {\it Section \ref{section:
automorphisms induced by automorphisms of the basis}} we construct
elliptic fibrations with base $\mathbb{P}^1$ admitting certain
automorphisms acting also on the basis and we compute the equation
of the elliptic surface obtained as quotient of the elliptic
fibrations by these automorphisms. In {\it Section \ref{section:
automorphisms on the basis of the fibration and elliptic K3
surfaces}} we come back to the case of the K3 surfaces and we
consider the automorphisms constructed in Section \ref{section:
automorphisms induced by automorphisms of the basis}, which are
symplectic in the case of K3 surface. The main result of this part
is that we can construct elliptic fibrations such that the
N\'eron--Severi group is $U\oplus \Omega_G$ for certain abelian
groups $G$ (this is in certain sense the analogue of result of
Proposition \ref{prop: NS MW with abelina group}, where we
constructed surfaces with N\'eron--Severi $U\oplus M_G$).
Moreover, this construction gives a very nice interpretation of
the lattice $\Omega_G$, which appears in this situation as the
Mordell--Weil lattice of the fibration. As a consequence, we
proved that certain lattices found by Shioda in \cite{Shioda F5}
and \cite{Shioda F5n in generale} are isometric to the lattice
$\Omega_{\mathbb{Z}/n\mathbb{Z}}$ for $n=5,6$ computed in \cite{symplectic prime}
and
\cite{symplectic not prime}.\\
Moreover, considering automorphisms which come from the base of
the fibration, we can construct some dihedral groups of symplectic
automorphisms on K3 surface. Let $\mathcal{D}_n$ be the dihedral group of
order $2n$. By \cite{Xiao}, if $\mathcal{D}_n$ appears as group of
symplectic automorphisms of a K3 surface, then $n=3,4,5,6$. In
{\it Section \ref{section: a K3 surface with the dihedral group on
four elements as group of symplectic automorphisms}} a family of
elliptic K3 surfaces admitting the group $\mathcal{D}_4$ as group of
symplectic automorphisms is described. The automorphisms
generating $\mathcal{D}_4$ came from automorphisms of the base of the
fibration. The family considered here was described in
\cite{Kloosterman} to give an example of an elliptic K3 surface
with rank of Mordell--Weil group equal to 15. However in
\cite{Kloosterman} the Mordell--Weil lattice and the
N\'eron--Severi group of this fibration are not described. Here we
prove that the Mordell--Weil lattice has to be equal to
$\Omega_{\mathcal{D}_4}$ and, considering a special member of the family,
we compute explicitly this lattice and we prove that it is
isometric to a lattice described in \cite{EE8- lattices and
dihedral}. Moreover, (as in case of the abelian group $G$) we
prove that the N\'eron--Severi group has to
be isometric to $U\oplus \Omega_{\mathcal{D}_4}$. \\
In {\it Section \ref{section: dihedral groups of automorphisms on
elliptic fibration with torsion}} we consider examples of elliptic
K3 surfaces admitting the dihedral groups $\mathcal{D}_n$ as groups of
symplectic automorphisms. We consider both automorphisms which
come from automorphisms of the base, and which are induced by
torsion section, so in a certain sense we combine the
constructions considered before. The examples considered in this
section are used to prove an interesting phenomenon, which was
already described in \cite{dihedral 5} for the group of symplectic
automorphisms $\mathcal{D}_5$: let $H$ be a subgroup of $G$. If $G$
appears as group of symplectic automorphisms on a K3 surface, of
course so does $H$. For certain groups $H$ and $G$, if one
constructs the family of the K3 surfaces admitting $H$ as group of
symplectic automorphisms, one finds that all the members of this
family admit the group $G$ as group of symplectic automorphisms.
We prove that this happens for the pairs $(H,G)$ $(\mathbb{Z}/n\mathbb{Z},\mathcal{D}_n)$,
$n=5,6$, $(\mathbb{Z}/2\mathbb{Z}\times \mathbb{Z}/4\mathbb{Z},\mathbb{Z}/2\mathbb{Z}\times \mathcal{D}_4)$,
$(\mathbb{Z}/3\mathbb{Z}\times\mathbb{Z}/3\mathbb{Z},\frak{A}_{3,3})$. In particular this implies that
for each of these pairs $\Omega_H\simeq \Omega_G$. In {\it Section
}\ref{section: final remarks on finite groups of symplectic
automorphisms} we reconsider the problem analyzed in Section
\ref{section: dihedral groups of automorphisms on elliptic
fibration with torsion} in a more general setting. We consider
pairs of groups $(H,G)$ such that $H$ is a subgroup of $G$ and
such that the K3 surfaces admitting $H$ as group of symplectic
automorphisms admits in fact the group $G$ as groups of symplectic
automorphisms and we show that this property is equivalent to a
property related only to the lattices $\Omega_H$ and $\Omega_G$
(Proposition \ref{prop: pairs of group (H,G)}). We prove that
there are pairs $(H,G)$ with this property which are not among the
ones described in Section \ref{section: dihedral groups of
automorphisms on elliptic fibration with torsion}, but the ones
described in Section \ref{section: dihedral groups of
automorphisms on elliptic fibration with torsion} are the only
ones such that rk$\Omega_H$=16.\\
{\it I would like to thank Bert van Geemen for his invaluable
help, Jaap Top for useful discussions and Tetsuji Shioda for the
lectures he held in Milan, which aided me greatly in working on
this paper.}
\section{Background material}
Here we collect the main results on symplectic automorphisms on K3
surfaces and on elliptic fibrations on $\mathbb{P}^1$ which will
be useful in the following.
\subsection{Symplectic automorphisms on K3
surfaces.}\label{subsection: symplectic automorphisms on K3
surfaces}
\begin{defi} An automorphism $\sigma$ on a K3 surface $X$ is symplectic
if $\sigma^*$ acts as the identity on $H^{2,0}(X)$, that is
$\sigma^*(\omega_X)=\omega_X$, where $\omega_X$ is a nowhere
vanishing holomorphic two form on $X$.\\ Equivalently $\sigma$ is
symplectic if the isometry induced by $\sigma^*$ on the
transcendental lattice is the identity.
\end{defi}
Let $\sigma$ be an automorphism of finite order on a K3 surface.
The desingularization of $X/\sigma$ is a K3 surface if and only if
$\sigma$ is symplectic.\\
The main results about the finite abelian groups of symplectic
automorphisms on K3 surfaces were obtained by Nikulin in
\cite{Nikulin symplectic}. In particular he classifies these
groups and proves that the isometries induced on the second
cohomology group of the K3 surfaces, called $\Lambda_{K3}$, by a
finite abelian group of symplectic automorphisms on a K3 surface
are essentially unique (\cite[Definition 4.6, Theorem 4.7]{Nikulin
symplectic}). As a consequence of this theorem one obtains that if
a K3 surface $X$ admits a certain group $G$ as group of symplectic
automorphisms, then the lattice
$\Omega_G:=(\Lambda_{K3}^G)^{\perp}$, which is primitively
embedded in $NS(X)\subset H^2(X,\mathbb{Z})$ (cf. \cite{Nikulin
symplectic}, \cite{symplectic prime}, \cite{symplectic not
prime}), does not depend on $X$, but only on $G$. The lattices
$\Omega_G$ are computed in \cite{symplectic prime},
\cite{symplectic
not prime} for each possible finite abelian group $G$ of symplectic automorphisms on a K3 surface.\\
Hence, the main result about the finite abelian groups of
symplectic automorphisms is:
\begin{prop}{\rm (\cite{Nikulin symplectic}, \cite{symplectic prime}, \cite{symplectic not prime})}\label{prop: X has G as
symplectic group iff omegaG in NS(X)} Let $G$ be a finite abelian
group. A K3 surface $X$ admits $G$ as group of symplectic
automorphisms if and only if $\Omega_G$ is primitively embedded in
$NS(X)$.\end{prop} In \cite{Nikulin symplectic} the number and the
kind of the singularities of the quotient of a K3 surface by a
finite abelian group of symplectic automorphisms are classified.
If $X$ is a K3 surface admitting a finite abelian group of
symplectic automorphisms $G$, then $X/G$ has singularities of type
$A_l$. Hence in the desingularization $\widetilde{X/G}$ we obtain
some rational curves $M_i$ which are the exceptional curves of the
blow ups which desingularize the surface.
\begin{defi}\label{defi: MG}
Let $M_G$ be the minimal primitive sublattice of
$NS(\widetilde{X/G})$ containing the curves $M_j$ arising from the
resolution of the singularities of $X/G$. \end{defi} The lattice
$M_G$ contains some linear combinations of the $M_j$ with
rational, non integer, coefficients. For each finite abelian group
$G$ which can act symplectically on a K3 surface a description of
the lattice $M_G$ is given in
\cite[Section 7]{Nikulin symplectic}.\\
In \cite{mukai} and in \cite{Xiao} the finite (but not necessary
abelian) group of symplectic automorphisms are classified. In
\cite{Xiao} the singularities of the surface $X/G$ (where $G$ is a
finite group of symplectic automorphisms of $X$) are described.
Moreover the main result of \cite{Nikulin symplectic} (i.e. the
uniqueness of the isometry induced on the second cohomology group
by the finite abelian group of symplectic automorphisms) holds
also in the non abelian case, \cite{Whitcher}. Hence Proposition
\ref{prop: X has G as symplectic group iff omegaG in NS(X)} holds
also for finite groups $G$, not necessary abelian. The lattice
$\Omega_G$ has not yet been explicitly determined for each $G$.
\subsection{Elliptic fibration on $\mathbb{P}^1$.}\label{subsection:
elliptic fibreation on P^1}
\begin{defi} Let $X$ be a surface and $B$ a curve. An elliptic fibration $\mathcal{E}:X\rightarrow B$ on the surface $X$
is a fibration such that the generic fiber is a smooth curve of
genus one and such that a section $s:B\rightarrow X$ is fixed. We call
this section the zero section.
\end{defi}
We recall that every elliptic fibration can be regarded as an
elliptic curve over the function field of the basis. We will
assume $B\simeq \mathbb{P}^1$. Under this assumption each elliptic
fibration admits a minimal Weierstrass equation of the form
$$y^2=x^3+A(\tau,\sigma)x+B(\tau,\sigma),\ \ \ A(\tau,\sigma),\ B(\tau,\sigma)\in \C[\tau,\sigma]_{hom},\ \ \deg A(\tau,\sigma)=4m,\ \deg B(\tau,\sigma)=6m
$$
for a certain $m\in \mathbb{N}_{>0}$ and where there exists no a
polynomial $C(\tau,\sigma)$ such that
$C(\tau,\sigma)^4|A(\tau,\sigma)$ and
$C(\tau,\sigma)^6|B(\tau,\sigma)$.\\
We use the notation $A(\tau)$ and $B(\tau)$ to indicate the
polynomial $A(\tau,1)$ and $B(\tau,1)$.\\
If $m=1$, then $X$ is a rational surface, if $m=2$, $X$ is a K3
surface, if $m>2$ $X$ the Kodaira dimension of $X$, $k(X)$, is 1.
More in general $h^{2,0}(X)=dim H^{2,0}(X)=m-1$ (and a basis of
$H^{2,0}(X)$ is given by $\tau^idx/y\wedge d\tau$,
$i=0,\ldots,m-2$).\\
Hence in particular if $\deg A(\tau)\leq 4$ and $\deg B(\tau)\leq
6$, then the
surface $X$ is rational.\\
There are finitely many singular fibers. The possible singular
fibers on an elliptic fibration are described by Kodaira (cf. for
example \cite{miranda elliptic pisa}). In particular the fibers of
type $I_n$, $n>2$ are made up of $n$ rational curves meeting as a
polygon with $n$ edges. We will call $C_0$ the irreducible
component of a reducible fiber which meets the zero section. The
irreducible components of a fiber of type $I_n$ are called $C_i$
where $C_i\cdot C_{i+1}=1$ and $i\in\mathbb{Z}/n\mathbb{Z}$. Under the assumption
$C_0\cdot s=1$, these conditions identify the components
completely once the component $C_1$ is chosen, so these conditions
identify the components up to the transformation
$C_i\leftrightarrow C_{-i}$ for all $i\in\mathbb{Z}/n\mathbb{Z}$. The components
of a reducible fiber of type $I_n$ have multiplicity one, so a
section can intersect a fiber of
type $I_n$ in any component.\\
The set of the sections of an elliptic fibration form a group (the
Mordell--Weil group), with the group law which is induced by the
one on the fibers. Let $r$ be the rank of the Mordell--Weil group
(recall that if there are no sections of infinite order then
$r=0$) and $\rho=\rho(X)$ be the Picard number of the surface $X$
and $Red$ be the set $Red=\{v\in \mathbb{P}^1\,|\, F_v\mbox{ is
reducible}\}$. Then
$$\rho(X)=rk NS(X)=r+2+\sum_{v\in Red}(m_v-1)$$ (cfr. \cite[Section
7]{shioda on mordell-weil lattice}) where $m_v$ is the number of
irreducible components of the fiber $F_v$.
\begin{defi} The {\bf trivial lattice} $Tr_X$\index{Trivial lattice} (or $Tr$) of
an elliptic fibration on a surface $X$ is the lattice generated by
the class of the fiber, the class of the zero section and the
classes of the irreducible components of the reducible fibers
which do not intersect the zero section.\end{defi} The lattice
$Tr$ admits the hyperbolic plane $U$ as sublattice and its rank is
$rk (Tr)=2+\sum_{v\in Red}(m_v-1)$.
\begin{theorem}{\rm \cite[Theorem 1.3]{shioda on mordell-weil
lattice}} The Mordell--Weil group of the elliptic fibration on the
surface $X$ is isomorphic to the quotient $NS(X)/Tr=:E(K)$.
\end{theorem}
In Section 8 of \cite{shioda on mordell-weil lattice} a pairing on
$E(K)$ is defined. The value of this pairing on a section $P$
depends only on the intersection between the section $P$ and the
reducible fibers and between $P$ and the zero section. Now we
recall the definition and the properties
of this pairing.\\
Let $E(K)_{tor}$ be the set of the torsion elements in the group
$E(K)$.
\begin{lemma}\label{lemma: height pairing}{\rm \cite[Lemma 8.1, Lemma 8.2]{shioda on mordell-weil lattice}} For
any $P\in E(K)$ there exists a unique element $\phi(P)$ in
$NS(X)\otimes
\mathbb{Q}$ such that: \\
i) $\phi(P)\equiv (P)$ mod $Tr\otimes \mathbb{Q}$ (where $(P)$ is the class of $P$ modulo $Tr\otimes \mathbb{Q}$)\\
ii) $\phi(P)\perp Tr$.\\
The map $\phi:E(K)\rightarrow NS(X)\otimes \mathbb{Q}$ defined above is a group
homomorphism such that $Ker(\phi)=E(K)_{tor}.$
\end{lemma}
\begin{theorem}\label{theorem: height formula}{\rm \cite[Theorem 8.4]{shioda on mordell-weil
lattice}} For any $P,Q\in E(K)$ let $\langle
P,Q\rangle=-\phi(P)\cdot\phi(Q)$ (where $\cdot$ is induced on
$NS(X)\otimes\mathbb{Q}$ by the cup product). This defines a symmetric
bilinear pairing on $E(K)$, which induces the structure of a
positive definite lattice on
$E(K)/E(K)_{tor}$.\\
In particular if $P\in E(K)$, then $P$ is a torsion section if and
only if $\langle P,
P\rangle=0$.\\
For any $P,Q\in E(K)$ the pairing $\langle-,-\rangle$ is
$$
\begin{array}{lll}
\langle P, Q \rangle&=&\chi+P\cdot s+Q\cdot s-P\cdot Q-\sum_{v\in
Red}{\rm contr}_v(P,Q)\\
\langle P, P \rangle&=&2\chi+2(P\cdot s)-\sum_{v\in Red}{\rm
contr}_v(P)
\end{array}$$
where $\chi$ is the holomorphic Euler characteristic of the
surface and the rational numbers ${\rm contr}_v(P)$ and ${\rm
contr}_v(P,Q)$ are given in the table below
\begin{eqnarray}
\begin{array}{llllll}
&I_2&I_n&I_n^*&IV^*&III^*\\
{\rm contr}_v(P)&2/3&i(n-i)/n &\left\{\begin{array}{l} 1\mbox{ if
}
i=1\\1+n/4\mbox{ if } i=n-1\mbox{ or }i=n\end{array}\right.&4/3&3/2\\
{\rm contr}_v(P,Q)&1/3&i(n-j)/n &\left\{\begin{array}{l} 1/2\mbox{
if } i=1\\2+n/4\mbox{ if } i=n-1\mbox{ or
}i=n\end{array}\right.&2/3&-
\end{array}
\end{eqnarray}
where the numbering of the fibers is the one described before, $P$
and $Q$ meet the fiber in the component $C_i$ and $C_j$ and $i\leq
j$.\end{theorem} The pairing defined in the theorem is called the
\textbf{height pairing}. This pairing will be used to determine
the intersection of the torsion sections of the elliptic
fibrations with the irreducible components of the reducible
fibers.\\
The Mordell--Weil group equipped with the height pairing is called
Mordell--Weil lattice. We remark that if $rk(Tr)=2$ (i.e.\ there
are no reducible fibres and hence no torsion sections), the height
pairing on the Mordell--Weil group is the restriction of the cup
product on $NS(X)$ to $\phi(E(K))$. So, if $rk(Tr)=2$, the
Mordell--Weil lattice is the sublattice $\phi(E)$ of $NS(X)$.
\section{Quotient of elliptic curves by groups generated by torsion points}\label{section: quotient of elliptic curves} An
elliptic curve is a pair $(E,O)$, where $E$ is a cubic curve
defined over a field $\mathbb{K}$ and $O$ is a rational point on this
curve. We will assume $char\mathbb{K}\neq 2,3$. Each elliptic curve admits
an equation of the following form
$$y^2=f_3(x),\ \ \mbox{where }f_3(x)\in\mathbb{K}[x],\ \ deg(f_3)=3\mbox{
and }\Delta(f_3)\neq 0,$$ where $\Delta$ is the discriminant of a
polynomial $f$. The point $O=(0:1:0)$ with respect to the
projective coordinates $(x:y:z)$ is a point on the elliptic
curve.\\
We recall the following result:
\begin{prop}\label{prop: quotient curve has the same rational torsion} Assume that $\zeta_n\in \mathbb{K}$ is a primitive $n$-th root of
unity. Let $E_n$ be an elliptic curve, defined over the field
$\mathbb{K}$,
admitting an $n$-torsion rational point $Q$.\\
Then the elliptic curve $E_n/\langle Q\rangle$ has an $n$-torsion
rational point $R$. Moreover the elliptic curve $(E_n/\langle
Q\rangle)/\langle R\rangle$ is isomorphic to the curve
$E_n$.\end{prop} {\it Proof.~} Let us consider the group $E_n[n]=\{S\in
E_n(\overline{\mathbb{K}})\mbox{
such that }nS=0\}$.\\
For each $\sigma\in Gal(\overline{\mathbb{K}}/\mathbb{K})$ and $S\in E_n[n]$, also
$\sigma(S)\in E_n[n]$. So $Gal(\overline{\mathbb{K}}/\mathbb{K})$ acts on
$E_n[n]\simeq \mathbb{Z}/n\mathbb{Z}\times \mathbb{Z}/n\mathbb{Z}$. Thus we get an homomorphism
$\rho_n:Gal(\overline{\mathbb{K}}/\mathbb{K})\rightarrow Aut(E_n[n])\simeq
GL_2(\mathbb{Z}/n\mathbb{Z})$.\\
Let $Q$ and $\widetilde{R}$ be two generators of $E[n]$. By
hypothesis $Q$ is a rational point and so for each $\sigma\in
Gal(\overline{\mathbb{K}}/\mathbb{K})$, $\sigma(Q)=Q$. Hence
$\rho_n(\sigma)=\left[\begin{array}{rr}1&\alpha_{\sigma}\\0&\beta_{\sigma}\end{array}\right].$\\
Let $e_n:E_n[n]\times E_n[n]\rightarrow \mu_n=\{n\mbox{-th roots of
unity}\}$ be the Weil pairing. It induces an isomorphism $\wedge^2
E_n[n]\rightarrow \mu_n$. Since $\sigma$ acts on $E_n[n]$,
$\wedge^2(\sigma)$ acts on $\wedge^2 E_n[n]$. The map
$\wedge^2(\sigma)$ is the multiplication by $det(\rho_n(\sigma))$.
As $\zeta_n\in\mathbb{K}$, $det(\rho_n(\sigma))=1$. This implies that
$\beta_\sigma=1$ for each $\sigma\in Gal(\overline{\mathbb{K}}/\mathbb{K})$. So
$$\rho_n(\sigma)=\left[\begin{array}{cc}
1&\alpha_\sigma\\0&1\end{array}\right]\mbox{ and
}\sigma(\widetilde{R})=\alpha_{\sigma} Q+\widetilde{R} \mbox{ for each }\sigma\in
Gal(\overline{\mathbb{K}}/\mathbb{K}).$$ The morphism $$\phi:E_n\rightarrow E_n/\langle
Q\rangle$$ is defined over $\mathbb{K}$ and thus $R:=\phi(\widetilde{R})$
is a rational $n$-torsion point on $E/\langle Q\rangle$. The
composition $E_n\rightarrow E_n/\langle Q\rangle \rightarrow \left(E_n/\langle
Q\rangle\right)/\langle R\rangle$ is a multiplication by $n$ on
$E_n$.\hfill $\square$ \smallskip\par
For certain values of $n$ the curve $E_n$, which admits an
$n$-torsion rational point, the quotient map $\phi$ and of the
curve $E_n/\langle Q\rangle$ can be given explicitly. For $n=2$
these equations are very well known (see.\ e.\ g.\ \cite[Pag.
79]{Silverman tate rational points on elliptic curves}), for $n=3$
they can be found in \cite{Top elliptic three torsion}. As example
here we give a similar result for $n=4$.
\begin{prop}\label{prop: elliptic four torsion} The curve $E$ admits a 4-torsion rational point if and only if, up
to a change of coordinate, it admits an equation of the form
\begin{equation*}y^2=x(x^2+(e^2-2f)x+f^2).\end{equation*}
Let us assume that $E$ admits such an equation, then $Q=(f,ef)$ is
a 4-torsion rational point. Let $G=\langle Q\rangle$.\\
The curve $E/G$ has equation
\begin{equation*}\label{formula: quotient 4 torsion}y^2=x(x^2-2(e^2+4f)x+(e^2-4f)^2).\end{equation*} If $i\in\mathbb{K}$ with $i^2=-1$, then the equation becomes
$y^2=x(x^2+(h^2-2g)x+g^2)$\ with $g=4f-e^2$, $h=2ie.$ In
particular if $i\in \mathbb{K}$, $E/G$ admits a 4-torsion rational point,
which is the image of a
4-torsion point on $E(\bar{\mathbb{K}})$ not in $G$.\\
The quotient map is:
$$\phi(P)=\left\{\begin{array}{ll}\left(\frac{(f + x)^2y^2}{(f -
x)^2x^2},\frac{y(f+x)((f-x)^4-4e^2fx^2)}{x^2(f-x)^3}\right)&\mbox{
if }P=(x,y)\neq (0,0), (f,ef),
(f,-ef),O_E\\
O_{E/G}&\mbox{ if }P=(x,y)= (0,0), (f,ef),
(f,-ef),O_E\end{array}\right.$$
\end{prop}{\it Proof.~} The elliptic curve $E$ has
in particular a point of order two, so has an equation of the form
$y^2=x(x^2+ax+b)$ (see e.g.\ \cite[pag.\ 79]{Silverman tate
rational points on elliptic curves}). To determine $a$ and $b$ we
observe that a smooth elliptic curve of the fibration has a point
$Q$ of order four if $Q+Q=R=(0,0)$ which is the rational point of
order 2. Geometrically this means that the tangent to the elliptic
curve through $Q$ must intersect the curve exactly in the point
$R$. Taking $Q=(e,ef)$ the equation is
$$y^2=x(x^2+(e^2-2f)x+f^2).$$ To obtain the equation of the
quotient curve $E/G$, we will consider the quotient by the point
of order two $R$, and next the quotient by the image of $Q$ on the
curve $E/\langle R\rangle$. The point $R$ corresponds to $(0,0)$.
By \cite[pag.\ 79]{Silverman tate rational points on elliptic
curves} the curve $E/\langle R\rangle$ is
$$y^2=x(x^2-2(e^2-2f)x+((e^2-2f)^2-4f^2))$$
and so
$$\begin{array}{l}
y^2=x(x-e^2)(x-e^2+4f).
\end{array}$$
This curve has three 2-torsion rational points: $(0,0)$,
$(e^2,0)$, $(e^2-4f,0)$. The 4-torsion point $Q$ is mapped to the
point $\bar{Q}=(e^2,0)$ on $E/\langle R\rangle$, which is clearly
a 2-torsion point on $E/\langle R\rangle$. We consider a
transformation which sends $\bar{Q}$ to $(0,0)$. Under this
transformation the equation becomes
$$y^2=(x+e^2)x(x+4f).$$ Its quotient by the point $(0,0)$ (i.e. by
the point $\bar{Q}$) is
$$y^2=x(x^2-2(e^2+4f)x+(e^2-4f)^2)$$
If $i\in \mathbb{K}$, then the equation becomes
$$y^2=x(x^2+(h^2-2g)x+g^2)\ \ \mbox{ with }\ \ g=4f-e^2,\ h=2ie$$
which is the equation of an elliptic curve with a rational
4-torsion point $(g,gh)$.\\
To describe explicitly the map we have to consider the map given
in \cite[Pag. 79]{Silverman tate rational points on elliptic
curves}, to compose them with the translation $(x,y)\mapsto
(x-e^2,y)$ on $E/\langle R\rangle$, and to compose again with the
map given in \cite[Pag. 79]{Silverman tate rational points on
elliptic curves}.\hfill $\square$
\section{Automorphisms induced by sections}\label{section: automorphisms induced by sections}
Now we consider an elliptic fibration $\mathcal{E}:X\rightarrow
\mathbb{P}^1$. We will indicate with $\mathcal{E}$ also the
equation of the fibration viewed as elliptic curve over
$k(\mathbb{P}^1)$. If the equation is in the standard Weierstrass
form, we can assume that there is a zero section which is the map
$\tau\mapsto (0:1:0)$. The other sections of the elliptic
fibration $\mathcal{E}$, if any, induce automorphisms on $X$.
\begin{defi}\label{defi: autom.induced by
section} If $t$ is a section, then we call $\sigma_t$ the
automorphism defined as translation by $t$. It acts as the
identity on the basis of the fibration
$\mathbb{P}^1$.\\
The group $G=\langle \sigma_t\rangle$ is a group of automorphisms
of $X$ which preserves the elliptic fibration $\mathcal{E}$. Let
us consider the desingularization, $\widetilde{X/G}$, of the
quotient $X/G$. Since the elliptic fibration $\mathcal{E}$ is
preserved by $G$, $\widetilde{X/G}$ admits an elliptic fibration
induced by $\mathcal{E}$. We call it $\mathcal{E}/G$.
\end{defi}
The torsion sections of the fibration $\mathcal{E}:X\rightarrow
\mathbb{P}^1$ are torsion rational points of $\mathcal{E}$
considered as
an elliptic curve over the field $k(\mathbb{P}^1)$.\\
If the section $t$ is an $n$-torsion section, the automorphisms
$\sigma_t$ is of order $n$. In particular, if $G=tors
MW(\mathcal{E})$, then $G$ is a finite abelian group of
automorphisms on $X$.
\begin{rem}{\rm Let $t$ be a section of order $n$ on $X$.
If $X$ is a rational surface, then $2\leq n\leq 6$; if $X$ is a K3
surface, then $2\leq n\leq 8$. Indeed, if $t$ is a torsion
section, then the height formula computed on $t$ is zero (Theorem
\ref{theorem: height formula}). This implies that there are a
certain number and type of reducible fibers. The Picard number of
a rational (resp. K3) elliptic surface is 10 (resp. at most 20),
this gives a bound for the order of the possible torsion sections
on these surfaces.\hfill $\square$}
\end{rem} The following lemmas describe explicitly the action of
the automorphism $\sigma_t$ on the semistable reducible fibers of
the fibration. The case of instable fibers is similar, but is not
useful in the following.
\begin{lemma}{\rm \cite[Lemma 2.2]{symplectic not prime}}\label{rem: action of sigmat non-trivial other
C0} Let $t$ be an $n$-torsion section and $F_v$ be a reducible
fiber of type $I_d$ of the fibration and let us suppose that the
section $t$ meets the fiber $F_v$ in the component $C_i$.\\ Let
$r$ be the minimal number such that
$(\sigma_t)_{|F_v}^r(C_j)=C_j$, $\forall
j\in\mathbb{Z}/d\mathbb{Z}$.\\
If $\gcd(d,n)=1$ then $r=1$, $i=0$ and $\sigma_t(C_j)=C_j$, $\forall j\in\mathbb{Z}/d\mathbb{Z}$.\\
If $\gcd(d,n)\neq 1$ and $i=0$, then $r=1$ and $\sigma_t(C_j)=C_j$, $\forall j\in\mathbb{Z}/d\mathbb{Z}$.\\
If $\gcd(d,n)\neq 1$ and $i\neq 0$, then $r=d/\gcd(d,i)$,
$r|\gcd(d,n)$, and $\sigma_t(C_j)=C_{j+i}$.\end{lemma}
\begin{lemma}\label{lemma: singular fibers of the quotients} Let $\mathcal{E}$
be a fibration with a singular fiber $F_v$ of type $I_d$ and an
$n$-torsion section $t$ as in the previous lemma and let
$G=\langle \sigma_t\rangle$. Then the image of the fiber $F_v$ on
$\mathcal{E}/G$ is a fiber of type $I_{\frac{dn}{r^2}}$.
\end{lemma}
{\it Proof.~} The singular fiber $F_v/G$ has $\frac{d}{r}$ component
meeting as a polygon (because $(\sigma_t)_{|F_v}$ identifies each
component with $r$ other components). Since $\sigma_t^{r}$ fixes
the points of intersection of the components in $F_v$ (and hence
the stabilizer of each point is $\mathbb{Z}/\frac{n}{r}\mathbb{Z}$), each vertex
of the polygon $F_v/G$ is a singular point of type
$A_{\frac{n}{r}-1}$. So in $\widetilde{X/G}$ there is a tree of
$\frac{n}{r}-1$ rational curves over such a point. Hence the fiber
corresponding to $F_v$ on $\mathcal{E}/G$ is a polygon with
$\frac{d}{r}\cdot \frac{n}{r}$ edges, i.e. a fiber of type
$I_{\frac{dn}{r^2}}.$\hfill $\square$ \smallskip\par
\begin{prop}\label{prop: E and E/G same torsion, fibration} Let $\mathcal{E}_G$ be an elliptic fibration on $\mathbb{P}^1$
admitting either $G=\mathbb{Z}/m\mathbb{Z}$ or $G=\mathbb{Z}/m\mathbb{Z}\times \mathbb{Z}/n\mathbb{Z}$ as torsion
part of the Mordell--Weil group. Then $G\subset
tors(MW(\mathcal{E}_G/G))$.
\end{prop}
{\it Proof.~} This follows by Proposition \ref{prop: quotient curve has
the same rational torsion} and by the fact that $\zeta_n\in
k(\mathbb{P}^1)$ for each $n$.\hfill $\square$ \smallskip\par
The equations of elliptic fibrations $\mathcal{E}_G$ for
$G=\mathbb{Z}/n\mathbb{Z}$, $n=2,3,4,5,6,8$ are the ones given in \cite[Table
1]{symplectic not prime} with different degrees for the
polynomials with variable $\tau$. If $S$ is the surface admitting
the fibration $\mathcal{E}_G$ and $h^{2,0}(S)=m-1$, then the
degrees of the polynomial are obtained multiply the degrees given
in \cite{symplectic not prime} by $m/2$. If the number obtained is
not an integer, there exists no a surface $S$ such that
$h^{2,0}(S)=m-1$ and $S$ admits an elliptic fibration of with an
elliptic fibration with that group as torsion part of the
Mordell--Weil group. In particular the elliptic fibrations
$\mathcal{E}_G$ with $G\subset MW(\mathcal{E}_G)$ are
parameterized by the coefficients of the polynomials, and hence by
an irreducible variety.
\begin{prop}\label{prop: E and E/G same reducible fibers, general case} Let $\mathcal{E}_G$ be a generic elliptic fibration on $\mathbb{P}^1$
admitting $G=\mathbb{Z}/n\mathbb{Z}$, $n=2,3,4,5,6,8$ as torsion part of the
Mordell--Weil group (here generic means that the coefficients of
the polynomials in $\tau$ have been chosen generically). Then the
singular fibers of $\mathcal{E}_G$ and of $\mathcal{E}_G/G$ are of
the
same type.\\
Moreover $\mathcal{E}_G$ and $\mathcal{E}_G/G$ have isomorphic
N\'eron--Severi group.
\end{prop}
{\it Proof.~} The type of the singular fibers of an elliptic fibration can
be completely determined by the zeros of the polynomials
$A(\tau)$, $B(\tau)$ and $\Delta(\tau)$ and hence can be directly
computed by the equation on $\mathcal{E}_G$.\\
We will consider as example the case $n=6$, the others are very
similar. The singular fibers of an elliptic fibration with a
6-torsion section $t$ are $mI_6+mI_3+mI_2+mI_1$ where $\deg
k(\tau)=\deg l(\tau)=m$ with the notation of \cite{symplectic not
prime}. We deduce the intersection between the singular fibers and
the section $t$ by the height formula (cf. Theorem \ref{theorem:
height formula}). Indeed the only possibility to have a 6-torsion
section (and hence a section with height pairing equal to zero) is
that $t$ meets all the reducible fibers in the component $C_1$. By
Lemma \ref{lemma: singular fibers of the quotients}, this is
enough to describe the elliptic fibration $\mathcal{E}_G/G$ on
$\widetilde{X/\sigma_t}$. Indeed the fibers of type $I_6$ (resp.
$I_3$, $I_2$, $I_1$) on $X$ correspond to fibers of type $I_1$
(resp. $I_2$, $I_3$, $I_6$). Hence the elliptic fibration
$\mathcal{E}_G/G$
has as singular fibers $mI_6+mI_3+mI_2+mI_1$.\\
The N\'eron--Severi group of an elliptic fibration is generated by
the class of the fiber, the classes of the sections and the
classes of the reducible components of the reducible fibers. The
hypothesis on the generality of the elliptic fibration
$\mathcal{E}_G$ guarantees that
$MW(\mathcal{E}_G)=MW(\mathcal{E}_G/G)=G$. So $\mathcal{E}_G$ and
$\mathcal{E}_G/G$ have the ``same" sections, and the ``same"
singular fibers and hence they have the ``same" N\'eron--Severi
group.\hfill $\square$
\section{Elliptic K3 surfaces and automorphisms induced by
sections}\label{section: elliptic K3 surface and autmorphism
induced by sections}
In this section we focalize our attention on K3 surfaces.\\
The automorphisms $\sigma_t$ induced on an elliptic K3 surface $X$
by $n$-torsions section are symplectic. Indeed on $X$ we have the
nowhere vanishing holomorphic 2-form $dx/y\wedge d\tau$, where
$dx/y$ is a 1-form on the elliptic curve in the fiber. Since
$\sigma_t$ acts trivially on the base of the fibration and as a
translation on the fibers (hence fixing the 1-forms on it),
$dx/y\wedge d\tau$ is fixed by $\sigma_t$.
\begin{prop}\label{prop: NS MW with abelina group} Let $X_G$ be a K3 surface admitting the elliptic
fibration $\mathcal{E}$ with $tors(MW(\mathcal{E}))=G$. Then $G\subset tors(MW(\mathcal{E}/G))$.\\
Moreover, if ${X_G}$ is such that $\mathcal{E}$ is the generic
elliptic fibration with $tors(MW(\mathcal{E}))=G$, then
$NS({X_G})\simeq NS(\widetilde{{X_G}/G})\simeq U\oplus M_G$.
\end{prop}
{\it Proof.~} The fact that $G\subset tors(MW(\mathcal{E}))$ is
Proposition \ref{prop: E and E/G same torsion, fibration}.\\
The possible $G$ such that there exists an elliptic fibration
$\mathcal{E}$ on a K3 surface with $tors MW(\mathcal{E})=G$ are
$G=\mathbb{Z}/n\mathbb{Z}$, $2\leq n\leq 8$, $G=(\mathbb{Z}/n\mathbb{Z})^2$ with $n=2,3,4$,
$G=\mathbb{Z}/2\mathbb{Z}\times \mathbb{Z}/n\mathbb{Z}$ with $n=4,6$. For the group $\mathbb{Z}/n\mathbb{Z}$ with
$n=2,3,4,5,6,8$ the fact that in the generic case $NS(X_G)\simeq
NS(\widetilde{X_G/G})$ is consequence of Proposition \ref{prop: E
and E/G same reducible fibers, general case}. For the groups
$\mathbb{Z}/2\mathbb{Z}\times \mathbb{Z}/m\mathbb{Z}$ with $m=4,6$ the fact that in the generic
case $NS(X_G)\simeq NS(\widetilde{X_G/G})$ can be proved as in
Proposition \ref{prop: E and E/G same reducible fibers, general
case}, considering the equation given in \cite{symplectic not
prime}. The groups $(\mathbb{Z}/n\mathbb{Z})^2$ are the full $n$-torsion group of
the elliptic curve $\mathcal{E}$ (which is defined over
$k(\mathbb{P}^1)$). The quotient $E/E[n]$ corresponds to a
multiplication by $n$ on the curve, and hence gives an isomorphic
curve. This of course implies that
$NS(X_G)\simeq NS(\widetilde{X_G/G})$.\\
It remains the case $G=\mathbb{Z}/7\mathbb{Z}$. There exists only one possible
elliptic fibration admitting a 7-torsion section. By
\cite{shimada} this elliptic fibration has to admit 3 fibers of
type $I_7$ and 3 fibers of type $I_1$ and it has no sections of
infinte order (because its trivial lattice has rank 20 which is
the maximal possible Picard number for a K3 surface). By Lemma
\ref{lemma: singular fibers of the quotients}, $\mathcal{E}/G$
admits 3 fibers of type $I_7$ (corresponding to the fibers of type
$I_1$ on $\mathcal{E}$) and 3 fibers of type $I_1$ (corresponding
to the fibers of type $I_7$ on $\mathcal{E}$). Moreover, by
Proposition \ref{prop: E and E/G same torsion, fibration}, such an
elliptic fibration admits a 7-torsion section. Hence, as in
Proposition \ref{prop: E and E/G same reducible fibers, general
case}, $NS(X_G)\simeq
NS(\widetilde{X_G/G})$.\\
Let us prove that $NS(\widetilde{X_G/G})\simeq U\oplus M_G$ in the
case $G=\mathbb{Z}/5\mathbb{Z}$. The proof in the other cases is essentially the
same. In this case the trivial lattice is $U\oplus A_4^{\oplus
4}$. The singular fibers of this fibration are $4I_5+4I_1$. The
elliptic fibration $\mathcal{E}/G$ has $4I_1+4I_5$ as singular
fibers (cf. Lemma \ref{lemma: singular fibers of the quotients}).
In $\mathcal{E}/G$ the components ($C_i^{(j)}$, $i,j=1,\ldots,4$)
of the fibers $I_5$ which do not meet the zero section are the
rational curves arising by the resolution of the four
singularities of type $A_4$ on ${X_G}/G$ (cf. proof of Lemma
\ref{lemma: singular fibers of the quotients}). They are the
curves $M_i$ of Definition \ref{defi: MG} and hence by
\cite{Nikulin symplectic} the class
$$v=\frac{1}{5}\left[\sum_{i=1}^2
(4C_1^{(i)}+3C_2^{(i)}+2C_3^{(i)}+C_4^{(i)})+\sum_{j=3}^4
(3C_1^{(j)}+6C_2^{(j)}+4C_3^{(j)}+2C_4^{(j)})\right]$$ is a class
in $NS(\widetilde{{X_G}/G})$. The irreducible components which do
not intersect the zero section of the reducible fibers of elliptic
fibration $\mathcal{E}/G$ and the class $v$ generate the lattice
$M_G$. They are orthogonal to the class of the fiber (because they
are linear combinations of components of a fiber) and to the class
of the zero section, hence $NS(\widetilde{{X_G}/G})\hookleftarrow
U\oplus M_G$ with finite index. By definition $M_G$ is primitive
in $NS(\widetilde{{X_G}/G})$ and since $U$ is a unimodular lattice
there are no overlattice of $U\oplus M_G$ such that $M_G$ is
primitive in them. So $NS(\widetilde{{X_G}/G})\simeq U\oplus
M_G$.\hfill $\square$
\begin{rem}{\rm The class $v$ in the proof of the previous proposition generates a copy of
$\mathbb{Z}/5\mathbb{Z}$ in
$NS(\widetilde{{X_G}/G})/Tr_{\widetilde{{X_G}/G}}\simeq
MW(\widetilde{{X_G}/G})$ and this shows again that in
$\mathcal{E}/G$ there is a 5-torsion section (without using
Proposition \ref{prop: E and E/G same torsion, fibration}). The
class $t_1=s+2F-v$ is a class in $NS(\widetilde{{X_G}/G})$
corresponding to a 5-torsion section of the
fibration.\hfill $\square$}\end{rem} In case $G=\mathbb{Z}/2\mathbb{Z}$ Proposition
\ref{prop: NS MW with abelina group} was already proved in
\cite[Proposition 4.2]{bert Nikulin involutions}.\\
The K3 surfaces $X_G$ are examples of K3 surfaces which both admit
a finite abelian group $G$ of symlectic automorphisms and are, at
the same time, the desingularization of the quotient of a K3
surface by the same group of automorphisms. We observe that this
is not the case for a generic K3 surface with a symplectic group
of automorphisms, i.e. in general a K3 which admits a group $G$ as
finite abelian group of symplectic automorphisms cannot be
obtained as quotient of another K3 surface by the same group of
automorphisms.
\begin{rem}{\rm Since $\widetilde{X_G/G}$ admits an elliptic
fibration with $G$ as torsion part of the Mordell--Weil group, it
admits $G$ as group of symplectic automorphisms, hence we can
consider the surface $Z_G$, the desingularization of the quotient
of $\widetilde{X_G/G}$ by $G$. The surface $Z_G$ is isomorphic to
$X_G$ by the last statement in Proposition \ref{prop: quotient
curve has the same rational torsion}.\hfill $\square$}\end{rem}
\section{Automorphisms induced by automorphisms of the
basis.}\label{section: automorphisms induced by automorphisms of
the basis}
Until now we considered automorphisms which leave the base of the
elliptic fibration invariant. Now we consider automorphisms which
act also on the base of the fibration. Let us consider an
automorphism $\pi$ of $\mathbb{P}^1$. It induces the map
$\nu:(x,y,\tau)\mapsto (x,y,\pi(\tau))$. In general this is not an
automorphism of the fibration, (in general it does not preserve
the fibration), but under some conditions (which depend on $\pi$)
on the polynomials $A(\tau)$ and $B(\tau)$, it is.\\
A family of examples can be constructed considering the
automorphisms of $\mathbb{P}^1$ $\pi_n:\tau\mapsto \zeta_n\tau$,
where $\zeta_n$ is a primitive $n$-root of the unit. So
$\nu_n:(x,y,\tau)\mapsto (x,y,\zeta_n\tau)$.\\
Let $X$ be a surface with elliptic fibration $\mathcal{E}:
y^2=x^3+A(\tau)x+B(\tau)$.\\ If $A(\pi_n(\tau))=A(\tau)$ and
$B(\pi_n(\tau))=B(\tau)$, then $\nu_n$ is an automorphism of the
$X$. The conditions on $A(\tau)$ and $B(\tau)$ imply that,
$A(\tau)$ and $B(\tau)$ are actually polynomials in $\tau^n$, so
$A(\tau)=\sum_{i=0}^{l} a_i\tau^{in}$ and $B(\tau)=\sum_{i=0}^{h}
b_i\tau^{in}$ and $\deg A(\tau)=nl$, $\deg B(\tau)=nh$. The
automorphism $\nu_n$ fixes the two fibers on the point $\tau=0$
and $\tau=\infty$ (i.e. over the fixed points for $\pi$ on
$\mathbb{P}^1$). The quotient surface, $Y=X/\nu$, is smooth, and
admits an elliptic fibration with equation
$y^2=x^3+(\sum_{i=0}^{l} a_it^{i})x+\sum_{i=0}^{h} b_it^{i}.$\\
Conversely given $Y$, $X$ is obtained from $Y$ by the base change
$\tau\mapsto t=\tau^n$ (cf. \cite[VI.4]{miranda elliptic pisa}).
If the polynomials $A(\tau)=\sum_{i=0}^{l} a_i\tau^{in}$ and
$B(\tau)=\sum_{i=0}^{h} b_i\tau^{in}$ are such that there does not
exist a polynomial $C(\tau)$ such that $C(\tau)^4|A(\tau)$,
$C(\tau)^6|B(\tau)$, then the equation obtained by the base change
is the Weierstrass form of the elliptic fibration $\mathcal{E}$ on
the surface $X$. In fact we have the following commutative diagram
$$\begin{array}{ccl}X&\rightarrow &Y=X/\nu_n\\
\downarrow&&\downarrow\\
\mathbb{P}^1_{\tau}&\rightarrow&
\mathbb{P}^1_t=\mathbb{P}^1_{\tau}/\nu\end{array}$$ We observe
that the degree of the polynomials in $t$ of the elliptic
fibration on $X/\nu_n$ are $l$ and $h$ and the degree of the
corresponding polynomials in $\tau$ on $X$ are $nl$ and $nh$. If
$X$ for example is an elliptic K3 surface and $n=2$ (i.e. $4<2l<9$
and $6<2h<13$), then $Y=X/\nu_n$ is a rational elliptic surface
(because $l\leq 4$ and $h\leq 6$). Hence it is possible that the
Kodaira dimensions of $X$ and $X/\nu_n$ are not the same. In
particular if $X$ is a K3 surface, $X/\nu_n$ is not. In fact the
automorphisms $\nu_n$ do not fix the two holomorphic form
$dx/y\wedge d\tau$ on $X$ and hence they are not symplectic.\\
We now construct maps $\sigma_n$ which act on $\mathbb{P}^1$ as
$\pi_n$, but which act also on the fibers in such a way that one
obtains symplectic automorphisms if the surface $X$ is a K3
surface.
\begin{defi}\label{defi: automorphisms acting on the base}Let $\sigma_n$ be the map $\sigma_n: (x,y,\tau)\mapsto (\zeta_n^2x,\zeta_n^3 y,
\zeta_n \tau)$;\\
$\mu_2$ be the map $\mu_2:(x,y,\tau)\mapsto(x,y,\frac{1}{\tau})$
and \\$\varsigma_2$ be the map $\varsigma_2:
(x,y,\tau)\mapsto(\frac{x}{\tau^{4}},-\frac{y}{\tau^{6}},
\frac{1}{\tau}).$\end{defi}
\begin{prop}\label{prop: automorphisms fixing two form}
Let $\mathcal{E}_n$ be an elliptic fibration with minimal equation
$y^2=x^3+A(\tau)x+B(\tau)$. The map $\sigma_n$ is an automorphism
of the elliptic fibration $\mathcal{E}_n$ if and only if
\begin{equation}\label{formula: condition on A and B to have
symplectic base change}A(\tau)=\zeta_n^{-4} A(\zeta_n\tau)\mbox{
and }B(\tau)=\zeta_n^{-6} B(\zeta_n\tau).\end{equation} If
\eqref{formula: condition on A and B to have symplectic base
change} holds, then the elliptic fibration $\mathcal{E}_n$ has
equation: \begin{equation}\label{formula: equation with sigma
n}y^2=x^3+ \left(\sum_{i=-[\frac{4}{n}]}^h a_i\tau^{4+ni}\right)x
+\sum_{i=-[\frac{6}{n}]}^k b_i\tau^{6+ni}\end{equation} and the
elliptic fibration $\mathcal{E}_n/\sigma_n$ has equation:
$$Y^2=X^3+\left(\sum_{i=-[\frac{4}{n}]}^h
a_iT^{4+i}\right)X+\sum_{i=-[\frac{6}{n}]}^k b_iT^{6+i}.$$ In
particular by the minimality of the equation of $\mathcal{E}_n$ it
follows that $n\leq 6$.
\end{prop}
{\it Proof.~} Applying the map $\sigma_n$ to $\mathcal{E}_n$, one obtains
$y^2\zeta_n^6=x^3\zeta_n^6+A(\zeta_n\tau)x\zeta_n^2+B(\zeta_n\tau)$.
It is easy to check that it is again the equation of
$\mathcal{E}_n$ if and only if \eqref{formula: condition on A and
B to have symplectic base change} holds. The equation of the
quotient surface is computed by multiplying the equation of the
elliptic fibration $\mathcal{E}_n$ by $\tau^{6n-6}$ and
considering $X:=\tau^{2n-2}x$, $Y:=\tau^{3n-3}y$, $T:=\tau^n$ as
coordinates of the quotient. The condition on $n$ comes from the
fact that if $n\geq 6$, then $\tau^4|A(\tau)$ and
$\tau^6|B(\tau)$.\hfill $\square$
\begin{rem}\label{rem: sigma n and base change}{\rm The elliptic fibration $\mathcal{E}_n$ is obtained from the
elliptic fibration $\mathcal{E}_n/\sigma_n$ by a base change of
order $n$, $T\mapsto T^n$.\\
If $\mathcal{E}_n$ is a rational (resp. K3) surface,
$\mathcal{E}_n/\sigma_n$ is a rational (resp. K3) surface. This
follows from the comparison between the degree of the polynomials
in $\tau$ (resp. $T$) defining $\mathcal{E}_n$ (resp.
$\mathcal{E}_n/\sigma_n$).\\
If $\mathcal{E}_n$ has Kodaira dimension 1 it is possible that
$\mathcal{E}_n/\sigma_n$ has a lower Kodaira dimension, this
happens for example if $h=2$, $k=4$ and $n=3$ (in this case
$\mathcal{E}_n/\sigma_n$ is a K3 surface).\hfill $\square$}\end{rem} The
automorphisms $\mu_2$ and $\varsigma_2$ are essentially obtained
by $\nu_2$ and $\sigma_2$ with a change of coordinates on
$\mathbb{P}^1$.
\begin{prop}\label{prop: K3 admitting sigma2 and varsigma2}Let $\mathcal{E}$ be an elliptic fibration
$y^2=x^3+A(\tau)x+B(\tau)$ such that
\begin{equation}\label{formula: condition on A and B to have t in 1/t}A(\tau)=\tau^{4m}A(\frac{1}{\tau})\mbox{ and }B(\tau)=\tau^{6m}B(\frac{1}{\tau}).\end{equation}
Then $\mu_2$ and $\varsigma_2$ are automorphisms of the surface,\\
$A(\tau)=\sum_{i=0}^{2m}a_i(t^i+t^{4m-i})=t^{2m}\sum_{i=0}^{2m}a_i(t^{2m-i}+\frac{1}{t^{2m-i}})$
and \\
$B(\tau)=\sum_{j=0}^{3m}b_j(t^j+t^{6m-j})=t^{3m}\sum_{j=0}^{2m}b_j(t^{3m-j}+\frac{1}{t^{3m-j}})$.\\
The quotient elliptic fibrations are respectively:
$$\begin{array}{ccl}\mathcal{E}/\mu_2:&
Y^2=&X^3+X\sum_{i=0}^{2m}a_i\left(T^{2m-i}-\sum_{k=1}^{2m-i}\binom{2m-i}{k}T^{2m-i-2k}\right)+\\&&
+\sum_{j=0}^{3m}b_j\left(T^{3m-j}-\sum_{k=1}^{3m-j}\binom{3m-j}{k}T^{3m-j-2k}\right)\\
\mathcal{E}/\varsigma_2:&
\widetilde{Y}^2=&\widetilde{X}^3+\widetilde{X}(T^2-4)^2\sum_{i=0}^{2m}a_i\left(T^{2m-i}-\sum_{k=1}^{2m-i}\binom{2m-i}{k}T^{2m-i-2k}\right)+\\&&
+(T^2-4)^3\sum_{j=0}^{3m}b_j\left(T^{3m-j}-\sum_{k=1}^{3m-j}\binom{3m-j}{k}T^{3m-j-2k}\right).\end{array}$$
\end{prop}
{\it Proof.~} Under the conditions \eqref{formula: condition on A and B to
have t in 1/t} the equation of $\mathcal{E}$ is invariant under
$\mu_2$ and $\sigma_2$. The equation of the quotient surfaces are
computed setting $T=t+\frac{1}{t}$, $Y=y$, $X=x$,
$\widetilde{Y}=y\frac{(t+1)^3(t-1)^3}{t^6}$,
$\widetilde{X}=x\frac{(t+1)^2(t-1)^2}{t^4}$. We use the equalities
$t^n+\frac{1}{t^n}=T^n-\sum_{k=1}^n\binom{n}{k}T^{n-2k}$,
$\frac{t^2\pm t+1}{t^2}=T\pm1$, $\frac{(t\pm 1)^2}{t}=T\pm
2$.\hfill $\square$
\section{Automorphisms on the basis of the fibration and elliptic K3
surfaces}\label{section: automorphisms on the basis of the
fibration and elliptic K3 surfaces} In this section we consider
the automorphism $\sigma_n$, Definition \ref{defi: automorphisms
acting on the base}, acting on a K3 surface. In particular we saw
(Remark \ref{rem: sigma n and base change}) that the K3 surface
$X$ admitting $\sigma_n$ as automorphism is obtained by the K3
surface $\widetilde{X/\sigma_n}$ with a base change of order $n$.
These kind of base changes are considered for example in
\cite{Shioda on spehre packing}, \cite{Shioda F5}, \cite{Shioda
F5n in generale}, \cite{Kuwata}.
\begin{rem}\label{rem: sigma_n and varsigma 2 are symplectic}{\rm If $\mathcal{E}$ is an elliptic fibration on a K3 surface $X$ admitting $\sigma_n$ (resp.
$\varsigma_2$) as automorphism, then $\sigma_n$ (resp.
$\varsigma_2$) is a symplectic automorphism on $X$. Indeed the
nowhere vanishing 2-holomorphic form $dx/y\wedge d\tau$ on $X$ is
fixed by $\sigma_n^*$ (resp. $\varsigma_2^*$).}\end{rem}
\begin{prop}\label{prop: symplectic base change} Let $2\leq n\leq 6$ and let $X_n$ be a K3 surface which admits an
elliptic fibration $\mathcal{E}_n$ satisfying the condition
\eqref{formula: condition on A and B to have symplectic base
change}. Then for a generic choice of $a_i$ and
$b_i$:\begin{itemize}\item[i)] $X$ admits rank$(\Omega_{\mathbb{Z}/n\mathbb{Z}})$
independent sections of infinite order;\item[ii)] the
N\'eron--Severi group of $X_n$ is $NS(X_n)\simeq U\oplus
\Omega_{\mathbb{Z}/n\mathbb{Z}}$; \item[iii)] the Mordell--Weil lattice of the
fibration is
$MW(\mathcal{E}_n)\simeq\Omega_{\mathbb{Z}/n\mathbb{Z}}$.\end{itemize} Let
$X_{2,2}$ be a K3 surface which admits an elliptic fibration
$\mathcal{E}_{2,2}$ satisfying the conditions
$A(\tau)=A(-\tau)=\tau^8 A(\frac{1}{\tau})$,
$B(\tau)=B(-\tau)=\tau^{12} B(\frac{1}{\tau})$ (i.e. it satisfies
the conditions \eqref{formula: condition on A and B to have
symplectic base change} of Proposition \ref{prop: automorphisms
fixing two form} with $n=2$ and \eqref{formula: condition on A and
B to have t in 1/t} of Proposition \ref{prop: K3 admitting sigma2
and varsigma2}).\\ Then for a generic choice of $a_i$ and
$b_i$:\begin{itemize}\item[i')]$X_{2,2}$ admits 12 independent
sections of infinite order;\item[ii')] the N\'eron--Severi group
of $X_{2,2}$ is $NS(X_{2,2})\simeq U\oplus
\Omega_{(\mathbb{Z}/2\mathbb{Z})^2}$;\item[iii')] the Mordell--Weil lattice of the
fibration is
$MW(\mathcal{E}_{2,2})\simeq\Omega_{(\mathbb{Z}/2\mathbb{Z})^2}$.\end{itemize}
\end{prop}
{\it Proof.~} Let $p_n$ be the number of parameters in equation
\eqref{formula: condition on A and B to have symplectic base
change}, $m_n$ the moduli of the surface $X_n$ and $\rho_n$ the
Picard number of $X_n$. We can act on the equation satisfying the
condition \eqref{formula: condition on A and B to have symplectic
base change} with the map $(x,y,\tau)\mapsto (\lambda^2 x,
\lambda^3 y, \tau)$ (and then divide by $\lambda$), and we can act
with the automorphisms of $\mathbb{P}^1$ fixing 0 and $\infty$
(which are the points fixed by $\pi_n$). So we have a two
dimensional family of automorphisms acting on the equation of the
fibrations, hence $m_n=p_n-2$. For each $n$ we have:
\begin{eqnarray}\label{formula: mn and rkomegan}\begin{array}{r|c|c|c|c|cc}
n&2&3&4&5&6\\
\hline m_n&10&6&4&2&2\\
rk(\Omega_{\mathbb{Z}/n\mathbb{Z}})&8&12&14&16&16
\end{array}\end{eqnarray}
We recall that $\rho_n\leq 20-m_n$, by the construction of the moduli spaces of the polarized K3 surfaces.\\
By Proposition \ref{prop: automorphisms fixing two form} and
Remark \ref{rem: sigma_n and varsigma 2 are symplectic}, the K3
surface $X_n$ admits $\sigma_n$ as a symplectic automorphism of
order $n$. Hence $\Omega_{\mathbb{Z}/n\mathbb{Z}}$ is primitively embedded in
$NS(X_n)$ (cf. \cite{symplectic not prime}). The automorphism
$\sigma_n$ fixes the class of the zero section and the class of
the fiber. These two classes span a copy of the lattice $U$ in
$NS(X_n)$, so $U\hookrightarrow NS(X_n)^{\sigma_n}$. Since
$\Omega_{\mathbb{Z}/n\mathbb{Z}}=(NS(X_n)^{\sigma_n})^{\perp}$, $U\oplus
\Omega_{\mathbb{Z}/n\mathbb{Z}}\hookrightarrow NS(X_n)$, in particular $\rho_X\geq
2+rk\Omega_{\mathbb{Z}/n\mathbb{Z}}$. The rank of $U\oplus \Omega_{\mathbb{Z}/n\mathbb{Z}}$ is
equal to $20-m_n$ for each $n=2,\ldots, 6$ (cf. table
\eqref{formula: mn and rkomegan}), hence $\rho_X=20-m_n$ and the
inclusion $U\oplus \Omega_{\mathbb{Z}/n\mathbb{Z}}\hookrightarrow NS(X_n)$ has a
finite index. Since $\Omega_{\mathbb{Z}/n\mathbb{Z}}$ is primitively embedded in
$NS(X_n)$ and $U$ is a unimodular lattice, we have $NS(X_n)\simeq
U\oplus \Omega_{\mathbb{Z}/n\mathbb{Z}}$. For a generic choice of the parameters
$a_i$ and $b_i$ in the equation of $X_n$, the elliptic fibration
has no reducible fibers (if $n\neq 5$ the singular fibers are
$24I_1$, if $n=5$ the singular fibers are $2II+20I_1$), hence
$Tr_{\mathcal{E}_n}\simeq U$ and there are no torsion sections. In
particular the Mordell--Weil lattice of $\mathcal{E}_n$ is
isometric to the sublattice $\phi(E(K))\subset NS(X_n)$ (where
$\phi$ is defined in Lemma \ref{lemma: height pairing}) and
$\phi(E(K))\simeq U\oplus \Omega_{\mathbb{Z}/n\mathbb{Z}}/U\simeq
\Omega_{\mathbb{Z}/n\mathbb{Z}}$. More explicitly, if $F$ is the class of the
fiber and $s$ the class of the zero section, for each $r\in E(K)$
the map $\phi:E(K)\rightarrow NS(X)\otimes \mathbb{Q}$ sends $r$ to $r+(2-k)F-s\in
\Omega_{\mathbb{Z}/n\mathbb{Z}}\subset NS(X_n)$, where $r\cdot s=k$. The height
pairing computed on $\phi(E(K))$ coincides with the intersection
form on $NS(X_n)$ restricted to $\Omega_{\mathbb{Z}/n\mathbb{Z}}$. Hence the
Mordell--Weil lattice is isometric to $\Omega_{\mathbb{Z}/n\mathbb{Z}}$. In
particular this implies that there are rank$\Omega_{\mathbb{Z}/n\mathbb{Z}}$
independent sections of infinite order. The proof in case
$X_{2,2}$ is exactly the same.\hfill $\square$ \smallskip\par
Let $2\leq n\leq 6$ and let $Y_n$ be the desingularization of the
quotient $X_n/\sigma_n$. Then $X_n$ is obtained by a base change
of degree $n$ of $Y_n$. In the following table we give the
singular fibers of $Y_n$ in the points $\tau=0$ and $\tau=\infty$
and we describe the fibers on $\tau=0$, $\tau=\infty$ of $X_n$
(with $(X_n)_{\overline{\tau}}$ we denote the fiber of the
fibration on $X_n$ over the point $\overline{\tau}$.)
$$\begin{array}{r|c|c|c|c|cc}
n&2&3&4&5&6\\
\hline (Y_n)_0, (Y_n)_\infty&I_0^*&IV^*&III^*&II^*&II^*\\
(X_n)_0, (X_n)_\infty&y^2=x^3+ax+b&y^2=x^3+1&y^2=x^3+x&II&II\\
\end{array}$$
Since $\tau=0$ and $\tau=\infty$ are fixed points of the map
$\tau\mapsto \zeta_n\tau$, $\sigma_n$ acts as an automorphism of
the fibers $(X_n)_0$ and $(X_n)_\infty$. Indeed for $n=3,4$
$(X_n)_0$ and $(X_n)_\infty$ are exactly the elliptic curves
admitting an extra automorphism. The group law of the fiber of
type $II$ corresponds to the group $\C$.\\
In \cite{Shioda on spehre packing}, \cite{Shioda F5}, \cite{Shioda
F5n in generale} certain K3 surfaces $F^{(n)}(\alpha, \beta)$,
$n=1,\ldots, 6$ are analyzed. These are K3 surfaces admitting an
elliptic fibration with equation $y^2=x^3-3\alpha
x+(t^n+1/t^n-2\beta)$. It is clear that $F^{(n)}(\alpha, \beta)$
is obtained by a base change of order $n$ applied to
$F^{(1)}(\alpha,\beta)$. As in Remark \ref{rem: sigma n and base
change} this base change is related to the automorphism
$\sigma_n$, and in fact $F^{(1)}(\alpha,\beta)$ is the quotient of
$F^{(n)}(\alpha,\beta)$ by $\sigma_n$
(Definition \ref{defi: automorphisms acting on the base}).\\
The surfaces described in \cite{Shioda F5}, \cite{Shioda F5n in
generale}, \cite{Shioda on spehre packing}, \cite{Kuwata} are
particular members of the families described in Proposition
\ref{prop: symplectic base change}.\\
Let us consider the equation $\mathcal{E}_n$ given in
\eqref{formula: equation with sigma n} with $n=5$ (resp. $n=6$),
$h=0$, $k=1$. This is the equation of the family of K3 surface
$X_n$ in Proposition \ref{prop: symplectic base change}. Up to
projective transformations, the equation $\mathcal{E}_5$ (resp.
$\mathcal{E}_6$) becomes:
\begin{equation}\label{formula: equations e5 e6} \mathcal{E}_5:\ \
y^2=x^3+a\tau^4x+(\tau^{11}+b\tau^6+\tau^1)\ \ (\mbox{resp.
}\mathcal{E}_6:\ \
y^2=x^3+a'\tau^4x+(\tau^{12}+b'\tau^6+1))\end{equation}
\begin{rem}\label{rem: isometries Shioda lattices}{\rm The Mordell--Weil lattice of the generic
element of the family $F^{(n)}(\alpha,\beta)$ is computed in
\cite[Theorem 2.4]{Shioda F5n in generale}. For $n=5,6$ the family
described in \cite{Shioda F5n in generale} and the family
described in Proposition \ref{prop: symplectic base change} are
the same (this is clear considering the equation \eqref{formula:
equations e5 e6} of $\mathcal{E}_5$, $\mathcal{E}_6$), hence the
Mordell--Weil lattice $MW(F^{(n)}_{gen})$ of \cite[Theorem
2.4]{Shioda F5n in generale} is the lattice $\Omega_{\mathbb{Z}/n\mathbb{Z}}$, for
$n=5,6$. For $n<5$ the two dimensional family described in
\cite{Shioda F5n in generale} is a subfamily of the one described
in Proposition \ref{prop: symplectic base change}, and so the
Mordell--Weil lattices of these two families are not isometric
(moreover for $n< 5$ there are reducible fibers on
$F^{(n)}_{gen}$).\hfill $\square$}\end{rem}
In the following we will analyze some surfaces admitting a
dihedral group as group of symplectic automorphisms. This is based
on the following remark.
\begin{rem}\label{rem: sigman and varsigma2 generate Dhn}{\rm The maps $\sigma_n$ and $\varsigma_2$ generate the dihedral
group on $n$ elements $\mathcal{D}_n$. So if an elliptic K3 surface admits
both of them it admits the group $\mathcal{D}_n$ as group of symplectic
automorphism.\hfill $\square$}
\end{rem}
In the following we give an example of elliptic K3 surfaces
admitting both the automorphisms $\sigma_n$ and $\varsigma_2$.
Moreover we give a short proof of the fact that
$\Omega_{\mathbb{Z}/n\mathbb{Z}}\simeq \Omega_{\mathcal{D}_n}$ for $n=5,6$. The case $n=5$
is proved in \cite{dihedral 5}. In the Section \ref{section:
dihedral groups of automorphisms on elliptic fibration with
torsion} we will consider again these isometries. Another example
of elliptic K3 surfaces admitting both the automorphisms
$\varsigma_2$ and $\sigma_n$ is considered in Section
\ref{section: a K3 surface with the dihedral group on four
elements as group of symplectic automorphisms} where $n=4$.\\
The equation of the family of elliptic K3 surfaces admitting
$\sigma_n$ $n=5,6$ as automorphism is given in \eqref{formula:
equations e5 e6}. By Proposition \ref{prop: symplectic base
change} its N\'eron--Severi group is isometric to $U\oplus
\Omega_{\mathbb{Z}/n\mathbb{Z}}$ and its Mordell--Weil lattice is isometric to
$\Omega_{\mathbb{Z}/n\mathbb{Z}}$. The elliptic fibration \eqref{formula:
equations e5 e6} admits automatically also the automorphism
$\varsigma_2$ (Proposition \ref{prop: K3 admitting sigma2 and
varsigma2}). Both automorphisms $\sigma_n$ and $\varsigma_2$ act
as the identity on the class of the fiber and on the class of the
zero section and $\sigma_n$ acts non trivially on all the other
sections. As in Proposition \ref{prop: symplectic base change},
this implies that $MW(\mathcal{E})\simeq \Omega_{\mathcal{D}_n}$, but, by
Proposition \ref{prop: symplectic base change},
$MW(\mathcal{E})\simeq \Omega_{\mathbb{Z}/n\mathbb{Z}}$ and then we conclude that
$\Omega_{\mathbb{Z}/n\mathbb{Z}}\simeq \Omega_{\mathcal{D}_n}$ for $n=5,6$.
\section{The group $\mathcal{D}_4$ as group of symplectic
automorphisms.}\label{section: a K3 surface with the dihedral
group on four elements as group of symplectic automorphisms}
Here we give an example of a family of K3 surfaces admitting the
dihedral group on four elements, $\mathcal{D}_4$, as group of symplectic
automorphisms. These automorphisms are induced on elliptic K3
surfaces by the automorphisms $\sigma_4$, $\varsigma_2$
(Definition \ref{defi: automorphisms acting on the base}) hence
they are related to a base change of the fibration (Remark
\ref{rem:
sigma n and base change}).\\
In \cite{Kloosterman} the same family of elliptic K3 surfaces is
considered in order to construct an elliptic K3 surface with 15
independent sections of infinite order. Its construction is based
on two base changes (one of order 2 and one of order 4). We prove
that the family of elliptic K3 admitting $\mathcal{D}_4$ as group of
symplectic automorphisms that we consider is the same as the one
described in \cite{Kloosterman}. As in Proposition \ref{prop:
symplectic base change}, using the fact that these surfaces admit
a certain group of symplectic automorphisms, we give a description
of the N\'eron--Severi groups and of the Mordell--Weil lattices.
\begin{rem}\label{rem: K3 with dihedral group}{\rm The elliptic K3 surfaces invariant under $\sigma_4$ and
$\varsigma_2$ have equations:
\begin{equation}\label{formula: equation elliptic with
dihedral}\mathcal{E}:\ \ \
y^2=x^3+x(a\tau^8+b\tau^4+a)+(c\tau^{10}+d\tau^{6}+c\tau^2).\end{equation}
Such an equation depends on 4 parameters, but we can use the
transformation $(x,y)\mapsto (\lambda^2x, \lambda^3y)$ to put one
of this parameters equal to 1. Hence this family has are 3 moduli.
So the Picard number of the generic K3 surface with such an
elliptic fibration is at most 17. By Remark \ref{rem: sigman and
varsigma2 generate Dhn} each member of this family admits $\mathcal{D}_4$
as group of symplectic automorphisms.\\
Let $G=\langle\sigma_4,\varsigma_2\rangle$. Then the elliptic
fibration $\mathcal{E}/G$ has equation
$$\mathcal{E}/G:\ \ Y^2=X^3+X(T^2-4)^2(aT+b)+(T^2-4)^3(cT+d),$$
where $T=(t^4+1/t^4)$, $X=x(t^2+1/t^6)$, $Y=y(t-1/t^7)$.\\
For a generic choice of $a,b,c,d$ the elliptic fibration
$\mathcal{E}/G$ has $III^*+2I_0^*+3I_1$ as singular fibers and
does not admit sections of infinite order. Indeed the trivial
lattice of this fibration has rank 17 and thus the Picard number
is at least 17. Since the Picard number of two K3 surfaces are the
same if there exists a dominant rational map between them, the
Picard number of this surface and of the one with fibration
$\mathcal{E}$ is exactly 17.\hfill $\square$}\end{rem}
\begin{rem}\label{rem: kloosterman}{\rm The elliptic fibration $\mathcal{E}/G$ has the properties of the elliptic fibration
$\widetilde{\pi}:\widetilde{X}\rightarrow \mathbb{P}^1$ considered in
\cite[Table 2]{Kloosterman}. In particular these elliptic
fibrations coincide under the condition given in \cite[Proposition
3.2]{Kloosterman} that the rank of a certain twist (in
\cite[Construction 3.1]{Kloosterman}) is 0. This implies that the
elliptic fibration $\mathcal{E}$ is the one described in
\cite[Theorem 1.1]{Kloosterman} as elliptic K3 with Mordell--Weil
rank 15. Indeed this fibration is constructed by Kloosterman
performing two base changes on $\mathcal{E}/G$ (one of order 4 and
one of order 2), which correspond to the presence of the
symplectic automorphisms $\sigma_4$ and $\varsigma_2$ on
$\mathcal{E}$.\hfill $\square$}\end{rem}
In the following we construct an elliptic fibration (which is a
special member of the family $\mathcal{E}$ given in Remark
\ref{rem: K3 with dihedral group}) admitting $\mathcal{D}_4$ as group of
symplectic automorphisms and use it to determine the lattice
$\Omega_{\mathcal{D}_4}$. We will use the description of this lattice to
find the Mordell--Weil lattice and the N\'eron--Severi group of
the surface constructed in \cite{Kloosterman}.
\subsection{Kummer surface of the product of two elliptic curves}
Let us recall the construction of a Kummer surface $Km(A)$. Let
$A$ be an Abelian surface. Let $\iota_A:a\mapsto -a$. Hence
$\iota$ is an involution fixing the sixteen point of $A[2]=\{a\in
A\mbox{ such that }2a=0\}$. The quotient $A/\iota$ is a singular
surface with sixteen singularities of type $A_1$. Let us denote
with $Km(A)$ the desingularization of this surface. The surface
$Km(A)$ is a K3 surface, called Kummer surface of $A$. We have the
following commutative diagram:
$$
\begin{array}{rcl}
\iota\circlearrowright A&\stackrel{\beta}{\leftarrow}&\widetilde{A}\circlearrowleft\widetilde{\iota}\\
\pi\downarrow&&\downarrow\widetilde{\pi}\\
A/\iota&{\leftarrow}&Km(A)\simeq \widetilde{A}/\widetilde{\iota}
\end{array}
$$
$\beta$ is the blow up of $A$ in the points of $A[2]$,
$\widetilde{\iota}$ is the involution
induced by $\iota$ on $\widetilde{A}$, $\pi$ and $\widetilde{\pi}$ are the quotient maps.\\
Let $C$ and $D$ two elliptic curves with equation:
\begin{eqnarray}\label{equations elliptic curves}\begin{array}{ll}
C:\ v^2=u^3+Au+B\\
D:\ \nu^2=f(\tau)\ \ deg(f(\tau))=4,3.\end{array}
\end{eqnarray} Then (as in \cite{Kuwata}) we consider the equation
$f(\tau)y^2=x^3+Ax+B$, or, which is the same under the
transformation $y\mapsto y/f^2(\tau)$ and $x\mapsto x/f^3(\tau) $,
the equation
\begin{equation}\label{equation: kummer product elliptic curve}y^2=x^3+Af^2(\tau)x+Bf^3(\tau).\end{equation}
Let $f:\mathcal{E}\rightarrow\mathbb{P}^1$ be the elliptic fibration with
equation \eqref{equation: kummer product elliptic curve}.\\
The fibration $\mathcal{E}$ is an isotrivial fibration with fibers
isomorphic to $C$. Indeed under the change of coordinates
\begin{eqnarray}\label{equation: changes coordinate kummer product}\left\{\begin{array}{l}y=\nu^3v\\x=\nu^2
u.\end{array}\right.\end{eqnarray} the equation \eqref{equation:
kummer product elliptic curve} becomes
$\nu^6v^2=\nu^6u^3+Af^2(\tau)\nu^2u+Bf^3(\tau)$. Since
$\nu^2=f(\tau)$, we obtain that the fiber over each fixed
$\overline{\tau}$ has equation $\nu^6(v^2=u^3+Au+B$).\\
The equation \eqref{equation: kummer product elliptic curve} is
the equation of an elliptic fibration on the Kummer surface
$Km(C\times D)$. In fact let us consider the trivial elliptic
fibration $C\times D\rightarrow D$ defined over the Abelian surface
$C\times D$ and the map $\varphi: D\rightarrow \mathbb{P}^1$ defined as
$(\tau, \nu)\mapsto (\tau, -\nu)$. Then we have the following
commutative diagram:
\begin{eqnarray*}\begin{array}{cccl}\Phi:&C\times D&\stackrel{2:1}{\rightarrow}&\mathcal{E}\\
&\downarrow&&\downarrow f\\
\varphi:&D&\stackrel{2:1}{\rightarrow}&\mathbb{P}^1_{\tau}\end{array}\end{eqnarray*}
where the map $\Phi$ is induced by the map $\varphi$ and hence it
has degree 2. The explicit equation of $\Phi$ descends by
\eqref{equation: changes coordinate kummer product} and is $$\Phi:
((u,v),(\nu, \tau))\mapsto (x,y,\tau)=(\nu^2u, \nu^3v, \tau ).$$
The points $(p,q)=((u,v),(\tau, \nu))$, $(p',q')=((a,b),(\alpha,
\beta))\in C\times D$ are such that $\Phi(p,q)=\Phi(p',q')$ if and
only if either $p=p'$ and $q=q'$, or $u=a$, $v=-b$, $\tau=\alpha$,
$\nu=-\beta$. The maps $\iota_{C}:c\mapsto -c$, $\iota_D:d\mapsto
-d$ is represented in coordinates by
\begin{eqnarray*}\left\{\begin{array}{lll}(u,v)\mapsto (u,-v)&\mbox{ on the elliptic curve }&C\\
(\tau, \nu)\mapsto (\tau, -\nu)&\mbox{ on the elliptic curve
}&D\end{array}\right.\end{eqnarray*} Hence the map $\Phi$
identifies the point $(p,q)$ with $(-p,-q)$, so it coincides with
the map $\iota_{C\times D}:a\mapsto -a$ on the Abelian surface
$C\times D$. In particular, the desingularization of the quotient
$C\times D/\iota_{C\times D}$ is the surface $Km(C\times D)$ and
the singular elliptic fibration $\mathcal{E}$ induces an elliptic
fibration over $Km(C\times D)$.\\ With an abuse of notation we
will call $\mathcal{E}$ also the elliptic fibration over
$Km(C\times D)$.
\subsection{$Km(E_i\times E_i)$} From now on we assume that the two elliptic curves
$C$ and $D$ are $E_i$, i.e. they admit an automorphism of order 4
which is not a translation.
\begin{rem}\label{rem: equation Ei and automorphisms of order 4 }{\rm Since the elliptic curves $C\simeq D$ are isomorphic to
$E_i$, the equations \eqref{equations elliptic curves} can be
chosen on the following way
\begin{eqnarray*}\begin{array}{ll}
C:\ v^2=u^3+u\\
D:\ \nu^2=\tau^4-1\end{array}
\end{eqnarray*} where the
automorphisms of order 4 are $\varphi_{C}:(u,v)\mapsto (-u, iv)$
and $\varphi_{D}:(\tau, \nu)\mapsto (i\tau,\nu)$ respectively.
Hence the equation \eqref{equation: kummer product elliptic curve}
becomes \begin{equation}\label{equation: elliptic fibration
Km(Ei*Ei)}y^2=x^3+(\tau^4-1)^2x.\end{equation} The zero of the
group law on the curve $C$ (resp. $D$) has to be fixed by the map
$\iota_{C}$ (resp. $\iota_{D}$) hence we can assume that it is the
point at infinity (resp. the point
$(\tau,\nu)=(1,0)$).}\hfill $\square$\end{rem} We observe that this elliptic
fibration is a special member of the family described in Remark
\ref{rem: K3 with dihedral group}, indeed its equation is obtained
by equation \eqref{formula: equation elliptic with dihedral}
putting $a=1$, $b=-2$, $c=d=0$. Hence it admits the automorphisms
$\sigma_4$ and $\varsigma_2$ and so the group $\mathcal{D}_4$ is a group
of symplectic automorphisms on it. We now relate the automorphisms
$\sigma_4$ and $\varsigma_2$ with automorphisms of
order 4 on the elliptic curves $C$ and $D$.\\
The points of $C[2]$ are, in homogeneous coordinates,
$0_C=(0:1:0)$, $c_1=(0:0:1)$, $c_2=(i:0:1)$, $c_3=(-1:0:1)$. They
correspond to the image of the point $0_C=0$, $c_1=(1+i)/2$,
$c_2=1/2$, $c_3=i/2$ under the map $\eta: \C\rightarrow\C/\mathbb{Z}[i]=E_i$. They
can be identified with the points $0_C=(0,0)$, $c_1=(1,1)$,
$c_2=(1,0)$, $c_3=(0,1)$ under the identification of $C[2]$ with
$(\mathbb{Z}/2\mathbb{Z})^2$.\\
The points of $D[2]$ are the points fixed by the map $\iota_D$.
Hence they are $0_D=(1;0)$, $d_1=(i;0)$, $d_2=(-1;0)$,
$d_3=(-i;0)$. They are the image of the points $0_D=(0,0)$,
$d_1=i/2$, $d_2=(1+i)/2$, $d_3=1/2$ under $\eta$ and they can be
identified with the points $0_D=(0,0)$, $d_1=(0,1)$, $d_2=(1,0)$,
$d_3=(1,1)$ under the identification of $D[2]$ with
$(\mathbb{Z}/2\mathbb{Z})^2$.\\
The map $\varphi_C$ fixes the points $0_C$ and $c_1$ and switches
the point $c_2$ and $c_3$. On $\C$ it corresponds to $z_1\mapsto
iz_1$.\\
The map $\varphi_D$ acts in the following way: $0_D\mapsto
d_1\mapsto d_2\mapsto d_3$. On $\C$ it corresponds to $z_2\mapsto
iz_2+1/2$.\\
We will denote with $K_{e,f,g,h}$ the rational curve in
$Km(E_i\times E_i)$ which is the exceptional curve over the points
$p_{e,f,g,h}=(e,f)\times (g,h)\in (E_i\times E_i)[2]$.\\
Let $\Delta=\{(c,d)\in Km(E_i\times E_i)| c=d\}$ and
$\Gamma=\{(c,d)\in Km(E_i\times E_i)| c=\varphi_{E_i}(d)\}$ where
$\varphi_{E_i}$ is the automorphism of order four of $E_i$. They
correspond to two classes in N\'eron--Severi group.
\begin{rem}\label{rem: basis NS(C*D) coordinate}{\rm We identify $C$ with $ \mathbb{R}_{x_1,x_2}^2/\mathbb{Z}^2$
(i.e. the real coordinates of $ \mathbb{R}^2$ will be denoted by $x_1$ and
$x_2$), and $D$ with $ \mathbb{R}^2_{x_3,x_4}/\mathbb{Z}^2$. Since $dx_i\wedge
dx_j$, $i<j$ is a basis of $H^2(C\times D,\mathbb{Z})$, we can express the
classes $[C]$, $[D]$, $[\Gamma]$, $[\Delta]$ as linear combination
of $dx_i\wedge dx_j$. More precisely
$$\begin{array}{llllll} [C]&=&dx_3\wedge dx_4,\ &\left[\Gamma\right]&=&dx_1\wedge dx_2+ dx_3\wedge dx_4+ dx_1\wedge
dx_3+dx_2\wedge dx_4,\\ \left[D\right]&=&dx_1\wedge dx_2,\
&\left[\Delta\right]&=&dx_1\wedge dx_2+dx_3\wedge dx_4+dx_2\wedge
dx_3-dx_1\wedge dx_4.
\end{array}$$
This computation is done as in \cite[Remark
3.11]{alinikulin}.}\hfill $\square$\end{rem}
\begin{rem}\label{rem: divisible classes in Km(CD)}{\rm Let $\omega_{i,j}=\pi_*(\beta^*(dx_i\wedge dx_j))$. By Remark \ref{rem: basis NS(C*D) coordinate}, we
have
$$\begin{array}{llllll} \pi_*(\beta^*[C])&=&\omega_{3,4},&\pi_*(\beta^*[\Gamma])&=&\omega_{1,2}+ \omega_{3,4}+ \omega_{1,3}+\omega_{2,4},\\
\pi_*(\beta^*[D])&=&\omega_{1,2},&
\pi_*(\beta^*[\Delta])&=&\omega_{1,2}+\omega_{2,3}+\omega_{3,4}-\omega_{1,4}.
\end{array}$$
Hence:
$$\begin{array}{lll} \widetilde{C_0}:=\pi(\widetilde{C\times(0,0)})&=&\frac{1}{2}\left(\omega_{3,4}-\sum_{(a,b)\in (\mathbb{Z}/2\mathbb{Z})^2}K_{a,b,0,0}\right),\\
\widetilde{D_0}:=\pi(\widetilde{(0,0)\times D})&=&\frac{1}{2}\left(\omega_{1,2}-\sum_{(a,b)\in (\mathbb{Z}/2\mathbb{Z})^2}K_{0,0,a,b}\right),\\
\widetilde{\Gamma}:=\pi(\widetilde{\Gamma})&=&\frac{1}{2}\left(\omega_{1,2}+ \omega_{3,4}+ \omega_{1,3}+\omega_{2,4}-\sum_{(a,b)\in (\mathbb{Z}/2\mathbb{Z})^2}K_{a,b,b,a}\right),\\
\widetilde{\Delta}:=\pi(\widetilde{\Delta})&=&\frac{1}{2}\left(\omega_{1,2}+\omega_{2,3}+\omega_{3,4}-\omega_{1,4}-\sum_{(a,b)\in
(\mathbb{Z}/2\mathbb{Z})^2}K_{a,b,a,b}\right).
\end{array}$$
\hfill $\square$}
\end{rem}
We use the following convention: if $W$ is a vector subspace of
the affine space $(C\times D)[2]=(\mathbb{Z}/2\mathbb{Z})^4$, then $\bar{K}_W$ is
the class $\frac{1}{2}\sum_{a\in W}K_{a}$ and
$\hat{K}=\frac{1}{2}\sum_{a\in (\mathbb{Z}/2\mathbb{Z})^4}K_{a}=\bar{K}_{A[2]}$.
Moreover, $W_i=\{a=(a_1,a_2,a_3,a_4)\in A[2]\mbox{ such that
}a_i=0\}$, $i=1,2,3,4$.
\begin{prop}\label{prop: action of symplectic dihedral} Let $Km(C\times D)$ be the K3 surface admitting the elliptic fibration
$$y^2=x^3+(\tau^4-1)^2x.$$
A $\mathbb{Z}$-basis for $NS(Km(C\times D))$ is given by the classes:
$$\begin{array}{cccccccccc}
K_{0000},&K_{0001},&K_{0010},&K_{0100},&K_{1000},&K_{0011},&K_{0101},&K_{1001},&K_{0110},&K_{1010},\\
K_{1100},&\bar{K}_{W_4},&\bar{K}_{W_3},&\bar{K}_{W_2},&\bar{K}_{W_1},&\hat{K},&
\widetilde{C_0},& \widetilde{D_0},& \widetilde{\Delta},&
\widetilde{\Gamma}.
\end{array}$$
A $\mathbb{Z}$-basis for $T_{Km(C\times D)}$ is
$\omega_{1,4}+\omega_{2,3}$, $\omega_{1,3}-\omega_{2,4}.$ and $T_{Km(C\times D)}\simeq \langle 4\rangle^2$.\\
Let $\mathcal{D}_4=\langle \sigma_4, \varsigma_2\rangle$. The lattice
$NS(Km(C\times D))^{\mathcal{D}_4}$ is generated by the classes
$$\begin{array}{ccccc}
\bar{K}_{W_1} + \bar{K}_{W_2},& \omega_{3,4},& \widetilde{D_0},&
K_{0000} + K_{0001} + K_{0010} + K_{0011},& \hat{K}.
\end{array}$$
The lattice $\Omega_{\mathcal{D}_4}:=(H^2(Km(C\times
D))^{\mathcal{D}_4})^{\perp}=(NS(Km(C\times D))^{\mathcal{D}_4})^{\perp}$ is
generated by the classes
$$
\begin{array}{ccccc}
\widetilde{\Gamma}-2K_{0010} - \widetilde{C_0} - \widetilde{D_0},&
\widetilde{\Delta}-2K_{0010} - \widetilde{C_0} - \widetilde{D_0}
,&
K_{0001} - K_{0010},\\
K_{0000} - K_{0010},& \hat{K} - 2K_{0010} - 4K_{0100} -
2K_{1100},&
\bar{K}_{W_1}-2K_{0010} - 2K_{0100} ,\\
\bar{K}_{W_2}-2K_{0010} - 2K_{0100},&\bar{K}_{W_3} -K_{0010} -
2K_{0100} - K_{1100} ,&
\bar{K}_{W_4}-K_{0010} - 2K_{0100} - K_{1100},\\
K_{1000} -K_{0100} ,&
K_{1010} -K_{0100} ,& K_{0110} -K_{0100} ,\\
K_{1001} -K_{0100},&K_{0101} -K_{0100} ,& K_{0011} -K_{0010}.
\end{array}
$$
The lattice $\Omega_{\mathcal{D}_4}$ has rank 15, its discriminant is
$-1024$
and its discriminant group is $(\mathbb{Z}/4\mathbb{Z})^5$.\\
The lattice $H^2(Km(C\times D),\mathbb{Z})^{\mathcal{D}_4}$ is isometric to
$NS(Km(C\times D))^{\mathcal{D}_4}\oplus T_{Km(C\times D)}.$
\end{prop}
{\it Proof.~} The results on $NS(Km(C\times D))$ and $T_{Km(C\times D)}$
are trivial consequences of Remark \ref{rem: divisible classes in
Km(CD)}, of the description of the Kummer lattice given, for
example, in \cite[Chapter VIII, Section 5]{bpv}, \cite[Appendix
5]{Pjateckii Safarevic torelli theorem K3} and more in general of
the known description of the classes generating the second
cohomology group of a Kummer surface (see for example,
\cite{alinikulin}).\\
A direct computation on the coordinates $(x,y,\tau)$ shows that
the automorphism $\varphi_C^3\times \varphi_D$ induces the
automorphism $\sigma_4$ on $Km(C\times D)$. The automorphism
$\varphi_C^3\times \varphi_D$ acts on $C\times D$ as
$(z_1,z_2)\mapsto (-iz_1,iz_2+1)$. So the action of $\sigma_4$ on
the curves of the lattice $K$ (induced by the one of
$\varphi_C^2\times \varphi_D$ on $(C\times D)[2]$) is
$$\begin{array}{ccccccc||ccccccc}
K_{0,0,0,0}\!\!\!\!&\rightarrow \!\!\!\!&K_{0,0,0,1}\!\!\!\!&\rightarrow
\!\!\!\!&K_{0,0,1,1}\!\!\!\!&\rightarrow \!\!\!\!&K_{0,0,1,0}\ \!\!\!\!&
K_{0,1,0,0}\!\!\!\!&\rightarrow \!\!\!\!&K_{1,0,0,1}\!\!\!\!&\rightarrow \!\!\!\!&K_{0,1,1,1}\!\!\!\!&\rightarrow \!\!\!\!&K_{1,0,1,0}\\
K_{1,0,0,0}\!\!\!\!&\rightarrow \!\!\!\!&K_{0,1,0,1}\!\!\!\!&\rightarrow
\!\!\!\!&K_{1,0,1,1}\!\!\!\!&\rightarrow \!\!\!\!&K_{0,1,1,0}\
\!\!\!\!&K_{1,1,0,0}\!\!\!\!&\rightarrow \!\!\!\!&K_{1,1,0,1}\!\!\!\!&\rightarrow
\!\!\!\!&K_{1,1,1,1}\!\!\!\!&\rightarrow
\!\!\!\!&K_{1,1,1,0}.\end{array}$$ Since
$$\sigma_4(\omega_{1,2})=\omega_{1,2},\
\sigma_4(\omega_{1,3})=-\omega_{2,4},\
\sigma_4(\omega_{1,4})=\omega_{2,3},\
\sigma_4(\omega_{2,3})=\omega_{1,4},\
\sigma_4(\omega_{2,4})=-\omega_{1,3},\
\sigma_4(\omega_{3,4})=\omega_{3,4},$$ the classes
$\pi_*(\beta^*[C])$, $\pi_*(\beta^*[D])$ are fixed and
$$\begin{array}{ll}\sigma_4\left(\pi_*(\beta^*[\Delta])\right)=&-\pi_*(\beta^*[\Delta])+2\pi_*(\beta^*[C])+2\pi_*(\beta^*[D]),\\
\sigma_4\left(\pi_*(\beta^*[\Gamma])\right)=&-\pi_*(\beta^*[\Gamma])+2\pi_*(\beta^*[C])+2\pi_*(\beta^*[D]).\end{array}$$
Let $\psi_D$ be the automorphism, of the curve $D$,
$\psi_D:(\tau,\nu)\rightarrow (1/\tau,i\nu/\tau^2)$. The automorphism
$\varphi_C^3\times \psi_D$ induces on $Km(C\times D)$ the
automorphism $\varsigma_2$. We observe that $\varphi_C^3$ and
$\psi_D$ have order four respectively on $C$ and $D$. However
$\varphi_C^3\times \psi_D$ induces an automorphisms of order two
on $Km(C\times D)$, indeed $(\varphi_C^3\times
\psi_D)^2=\iota_C\times \iota_D$ which is the identity on
$Km(C\times D)$.\\ The automorphism $\psi_D$ of $D$ has order four
and fixes the points $0_D=(1,0)$ and $(-1,0)$. Hence it
corresponds to $z_2\mapsto iz_2$. So the automorphism
$\varsigma_2$ is induced by the automorphism $(z_1,z_2)\mapsto
(-iz_1,iz_2)$ on $C\times D$. The action of $\varsigma_2$ on the
curves of the Kummer lattice is
$$\begin{array}{ccccccccccc}
K_{0,0,0,1}&\leftrightarrow &K_{0,0,1,0};& &K_{0,1,0,0}&\leftrightarrow &K_{1,0,0,0};& &K_{0,1,0,1}&\leftrightarrow &K_{1,0,1,0};\\
K_{0,1,1,0}&\leftrightarrow
&K_{1,0,0,1};&&K_{0,1,1,1}&\leftrightarrow &K_{1,0,1,1};&
&K_{1,1,0,1}&\leftrightarrow &K_{1,1,1,0}\end{array}$$ and the
other classes of the Kummer lattice are fixed. The action of
$\varsigma_2$ on the classes $\pi_*(\beta^*[C])$,
$\pi_*(\beta^*[D])$, $\pi_*(\beta^*[\Delta])$,
$\pi_*(\beta^*[\Gamma])$ is the same as the action of
$\sigma_4$.\\
Since we described the action of $\sigma_4$ and $\varsigma_2$, it
is trivial to compute $\Omega_{\mathcal{D}_4}$ and its orthogonal in
$H^2(Km(C\times D),\mathbb{Z})$.\hfill $\square$
\begin{prop}\label{prop: NS and MW elliptic with dihedral}
Let $X$ be the generic elliptic K3 surface admitting the
automorphisms $\sigma_4$ and $\varsigma_2$, i.e. $X$ is the
generic K3 surface with equation \eqref{formula: equation elliptic
with dihedral}. Then $NS(X)\simeq U\oplus \Omega_{\mathcal{D}_4}$ and
$MW(X)\simeq \Omega_{\mathcal{D}_4}$.
\end{prop}
{\it Proof.~} In \cite{Whitcher} is proved that the action of a finite
group of symplectic automorphisms on the second cohomology group
of the K3 surface (and hence on $\Lambda_{K3}$) is essentially
unique (cf. \cite[Definition 4.6]{Nikulin symplectic}). Since the
action of $G$ on $H^2(X,\mathbb{Z})$ does not depend on $X$ up to
isometry, the lattice $(H^2(X,\mathbb{Z})^G)^{\perp}=:\Omega_G$ does not
depend on $X$. In particular this implies that if $G$ is a finite
group of symplectic automorphisms of a K3 surface $S$, the lattice
$\Omega_G$ is primitively embedded in $NS(S)$, indeed since $G$ is
symplectic $T_S\hookrightarrow H^2(S,\mathbb{Z})^G$ and hence
$NS(S)\hookleftarrow(H^2(S,\mathbb{Z})^G)^{\perp}$. In Proposition
\ref{prop: action of symplectic dihedral} we computed the lattice
$\Omega_{\mathcal{D}_4}$. It follows that $\Omega_{\mathcal{D}_4}\hookrightarrow
NS(X)$. The proposition follows as in the proof of Proposition
\ref{prop: symplectic base change}.\hfill $\square$
\begin{rem}{\rm Proposition \ref{prop: NS and MW elliptic with
dihedral} gives the N\'eron--Severi group and the Mordell--Weil
lattice of the elliptic K3 surface admitting 15 independent
sections described in \cite[Theorem 1.1]{Kloosterman} (cf. Reamrk
\ref{rem: kloosterman}).\hfill $\square$}\end{rem}
The paper \cite{EE8- lattices and dihedral} classifies lattices
which have dihedral groups $\mathcal{D}_n$ (for $n=2,3,4,5,6$) in the
group of the isometries and which have the properties:
\begin{itemize}\item the lattices are rootless (i.e. there are no elements of length $2$),
\item they are the sum of two copies of $E_8(2)$, \item there are
involutions in $\mathcal{D}_n$ acting as minus the identity on each copy
of $E_8(2)$.\end{itemize} In \cite[Section 5.2]{EE8- lattices and
dihedral} it is proved that there are three lattices satisfying
these properties and admitting $\mathcal{D}_4$ as group of isometries,
they are called $DIH_8(15)$, $DIH_8(16,DD4)$, $DIH_8(16,0)$.
\begin{rem}\label{rem: omegadh4 is isomteric to DIH8(16)}{\rm The lattice $DIH_8(15)$ described in \cite{EE8- lattices and
dihedral} is isometric to the lattice $\Omega_{\mathcal{D}_4}(-1)$.\\
{\it In fact } $\Omega_{\mathcal{D}_4}$ has no vectors of length $-2$ (this is a
property of all the lattices $\Omega_{G}$, cf. \cite[Lemma
4.2]{Nikulin symplectic}, \cite{Whitcher}). The two involutions
$\varsigma_2$ and $\varsigma_2 \sigma_4$ generate the group
$\mathcal{D}_4$ as group of isometries on $\Omega_{\mathcal{D}_4}$. Moreover they
act as minus identity on two copies of $E_8(-2)$ (because they are
both symplectic involutions, so they act as minus the identity on
$\Omega_{\mathbb{Z}/2\mathbb{Z}}$ and $\Omega_{\mathbb{Z}/2\mathbb{Z}}\simeq E_8(-2)$, cf.
\cite[Section 1.3]{bert Nikulin involutions}) and the sum of these
two copies of $E_8(-2)$ is $\Omega_{\mathcal{D}_4}$ (this follows from the
explicit computation on the action of $\varsigma_2$ and
$\varsigma_2\sigma_4$ on $\Omega_{\mathcal{D}_4}$), hence
$\Omega_{\mathcal{D}_4}(-1)$ is isometric to one of the lattices
$DIH_8(15)$, $DIH_8(16,DD4)$, $DIH_8(16,0)$. Since
$\Omega_{\mathcal{D}_4}$ has rank 15 and the lattices $DIH_8(15)$,
$DIH_8(16,DD4)$, $DIH_8(16,0)$ have rank 15, 16, 16 respectively,
$\Omega_{\mathcal{D}_4}(-1)\simeq DIH_8(15)$.\hfill $\square$}\end{rem}
\section{Dihedral groups of automorphisms on elliptic fibrations with
torsion.}\label{section: dihedral groups of automorphisms on
elliptic fibration with torsion} In \cite{dihedral 5} we proved
that if a K3 surface admits $G=\mathbb{Z}/5\mathbb{Z}$ as group of symplectic
automorphisms, then the same surface admits $\mathcal{D}_5$ as group of
symplectic automorphisms. Moreover it is proved that
$\Omega_{\mathbb{Z}/5\mathbb{Z}}$ is isometric to $\Omega_{\mathcal{D}_5}$. A similar
phenomenon happens also for other groups of symplectic
automorphisms. Here we will consider these other cases and we
reconsider the situation described in \cite{dihedral 5}.\\
We consider the following groups with their presentation:
$$\begin{array}{c}\mathcal{D}_5=\langle c,d| c^5=1,\ d^2=1, cd=dc^{-1} \rangle, \\
\mathcal{D}_6=\langle c,d| c^6=1,\ d^2=1, cd=dc^{-1}\rangle\\
\mathbb{Z}/2\mathbb{Z}\times \mathcal{D}_4=\langle c,d,e| c^2=1,\ d^2=1, e^4=1,\ ce=ec,\
cd=dc,\ ed=de^{-1}\rangle\\ J:=\langle c,d,e| c^2=1,\ d^3=1,
e^3=1,\ cd=d^{-1}c,\ ce=e^{-1}c\rangle.\end{array}$$ Let $G$ be
one of the following four groups: $\mathbb{Z}/n\mathbb{Z}$, $n=5,6$, $\mathbb{Z}/2\mathbb{Z}\times
\mathbb{Z}/4\mathbb{Z}$, $(\mathbb{Z}/3\mathbb{Z})^2$. In \cite{symplectic not prime} the equation
of the generic elliptic K3 surface $X_G$ admitting $G$ as torsion
part of Mordell--Weil group is given. For these groups the
equation of elliptic fibration $\mathcal{E}_G$ on $X_G$ depends on
the choice of two polynomials of degree 2. More precisely the
equation of $\mathcal{E}_G$ is of type
$$y^2=x^3+C(a,b)x^2+A(a,b)x+B(a,b)$$
where $a(\tau)=\widetilde{a}(\tau,1)$,
$b(\tau)=\widetilde{b}(\tau,1)$, $\widetilde{a}(\tau,\sigma)$,
$\widetilde{b}(\tau,\sigma)$ are two homogenous polynomials of
degree two in $\tau$, $\sigma$, and $A,B,C$ are homogenous
polynomials in $a,b$ of degree 4,6,2 respectively (cf.
\cite[Tables 1 and 2]{symplectic not prime}).
\begin{prop}\label{prop: XG admit also a dhiedral group of automorphisms} Let
$X_G$ be the K3 surface admitting the generic elliptic fibration
$\mathcal{E}_G$ such that $MW(\mathcal{E}_G)=G$. Let $G$ be one of
the four groups $\mathbb{Z}/n\mathbb{Z}$, $n=5,6$, $\mathbb{Z}/2\mathbb{Z}\times \mathbb{Z}/4\mathbb{Z}$,
$(\mathbb{Z}/3\mathbb{Z})^2$ and let $t_1$ be the a generator of $\mathbb{Z}/n\mathbb{Z}$,
$n=5,6$, of $\mathbb{Z}/4\mathbb{Z}$, of a copy of $\mathbb{Z}/3\mathbb{Z}$ respectively. Then
there exists a symplectic involution $\iota$ on $X_G$ and this
involution is such that $\mathcal{D}_m=\langle
\sigma_{t_1},\iota \rangle$ where $m$ is the order of $t_1$.\\
Moreover \begin{equation}\label{equation: isometries between
omegaG e altri omega}\Omega_{\mathbb{Z}/n\mathbb{Z}}\simeq \Omega_{\Omega_n}\mbox{
for }\ n=5,6,\ \ \ \ \Omega_{\mathbb{Z}/2\mathbb{Z}\times \mathbb{Z}/4\mathbb{Z}}\simeq
\Omega_{\mathbb{Z}/2\mathbb{Z}\times \mathcal{D}_4},\ \ \ \Omega_{\mathbb{Z}/3\mathbb{Z}\times
\mathbb{Z}/3\mathbb{Z}}\simeq \Omega_{J}.\end{equation}
\end{prop}
{\it Proof.~} First we will prove that the elliptic fibration
$\mathcal{E}_G$ admits a symplectic involution. To construct this
involution, we consider an automorphism on $\mathbb{P}^1$.\\
\textit{Step 1: construction of an involution on $\mathbb{P}^1$.}
Let $\widetilde{a}(\tau,\sigma)$, $\widetilde{b}(\tau,\sigma)$ be
two homogeneous polynomials of degree two. Let $\alpha_1$ and
$\alpha_2$ be the roots of $\widetilde{a}$ and $\beta_1$,
$\beta_2$ the ones of $\widetilde{b}$. There is an involution
$\theta$ of $\mathbb{P}^1$ such that $\theta(\alpha_1)=\alpha_2$
and $\theta(\beta_1)=\beta_2$. Indeed up to an isomorphism of
$\mathbb{P}^1$ one can always suppose that
$\widetilde{a}(\tau,\sigma)=\tau\sigma$ and
$\widetilde{b}(\tau,\sigma)=\lambda(\tau-\sigma)(\tau-\mu\sigma)$.
Hence the involution $\theta(\tau,\sigma)=(\mu \sigma,\tau)$ has
the required property. We note that on the affine coordinate
$\tau$ the action of $\theta$ is $\tau\mapsto \mu/\tau$.\\
\textit{Step 2: construction of a symplectic involution on $X_G$.}
The automorphism
$$\vartheta:(x,y,\tau)\mapsto
(\frac{\mu^2x}{\tau^4},-\frac{\mu^3y}{\tau^6},\frac{\mu}{\tau})=(\frac{\mu^2x}{\tau^4},-\frac{\mu^3y}{\tau^6},\theta(\tau))$$
is a symplectic automorphism of $X_G$. Indeed, $\mathcal{E}_G$ has
an equation of type:
$$y^2=x^3+C(a(\tau),b(\tau))x^2+A(a(\tau),b(\tau))x+B(a(\tau),b(\tau)).$$
Since $a(\theta(\tau))=\frac{\mu}{\tau^2}a(\tau)$ and
$b(\theta(\tau))=\frac{\mu}{\tau^2}b(\tau)$ it is clear that the
equation is invariant under $\vartheta$. Moreover, this
automorphism is symplectic, in fact $\vartheta^*(dx/y\wedge
d\tau)=dx/y\wedge d\tau$.\\
\textit{Step 3: description of the group $\langle
\sigma_{t_1},\iota\rangle$} Let $t_1$ be a section of order
$5,6,4,3$ if $G$ is $\mathbb{Z}/5\mathbb{Z}$, $\mathbb{Z}/6\mathbb{Z}$, $\mathbb{Z}/2\mathbb{Z}\times\mathbb{Z}/4\mathbb{Z}$,
$(\mathbb{Z}/3\mathbb{Z})^2$ respectively. Let $\iota=\sigma_{t_1}\circ\vartheta$,
then $\iota$ is a symplectic automorphism on $X_G$, because it is
composition of two symplectic automorphisms. Let $F_s$ be the
fiber over the point $s\in \mathbb{P}^1$. The fibers $F_{\tau}$
and $F_{\iota_{\mathbb{P}^1}(\tau)}$ are isomorphic and we chose
an isomorphism such that
$t_i(\tau)=t_i(\iota_{\mathbb{P}^1}(\tau))$ for each section
$t_i$, hence to each point $P_{\tau}\in F_{\tau}$ corresponds
uniquely a point $P_{\iota_{\mathbb{P}^1}(\tau)}\in
F_{\iota_{\mathbb{P}^1}(\tau)}$. The automorphism $\iota$ acts in
the following way $P_{\tau}\mapsto
-P_{\iota_{\mathbb{P}^1}(\tau)}+T_{\iota_{\mathbb{P}^1}(\tau)}$
where '$-$' is the operation on the elliptic curve and $T_{s}$ is
the intersection of the fiber $F_s$ with the section $t_1$. Its
clear that $\iota$ is an involution and its action on the section
is $\iota(t_i)=t_{-i+1}$. This involution, together with
$\sigma_{t_1}$, generates the dihedral group $\mathcal{D}_n$ if $t_1$ is
an $n$-torsion
section.\\
Moreover, if $G=\mathbb{Z}/2\mathbb{Z}/\times\mathbb{Z}/4\mathbb{Z}$ and $r$ is the 2-torsion
section such that $r\notin\langle t_1\rangle$, then
$\iota\sigma_r=\sigma_r\iota$ and hence
$\langle\sigma_r,\sigma_t,\iota\rangle=\mathbb{Z}/2\mathbb{Z}\times \mathcal{D}_4$.\\
If $G=(\mathbb{Z}/3\mathbb{Z})$ and $r$ is a 3-torsion section such that
$r\notin\langle t_1\rangle$, then
$\iota\sigma_r=\sigma_r^{-1}\iota$, hence
$\langle\sigma_r,\iota\rangle\simeq\langle\sigma_t,\iota\rangle=\mathcal{D}_3$
and $\langle\sigma_r,\sigma_t,\iota\rangle\simeq J$.\\
\textit{Step 4: proof of \eqref{equation: isometries between
omegaG e altri omega}.} The automorphism $\iota$ fixes the class
of the fiber on $\mathcal{E}_G$ and the sum of all the sections
(it clearly sends sections to sections). Since $\iota$ does not
fix the points of $\mathbb{P}^1$ corresponding to singular fibers
(this follows from the computation of the discriminant of the
elliptic fibration $\mathcal{E}_G$), there are no components of
the reducible fibers which are fixed by $\iota$. Hence
$$NS(X)^{\iota}\otimes \mathbb{Q}=\langle F,\sum_{t\in
MW(\mathcal{E}_G)}t\rangle\otimes \mathbb{Q}\ \ \mbox{ and so }\ \
(NS(X)^{\iota})^{\perp}=\langle F,\sum_{t\in
MW(\mathcal{E}_G)}t\rangle^{\perp}.$$ We recall that also
$NS(X)^{G}\otimes \mathbb{Q}=\langle F, \sum_{t\in
MW(\mathcal{E}_G)}t\rangle\otimes \mathbb{Q}$ (cf. \cite{symplectic
prime}, \cite{symplectic not prime}) and hence $$\Omega_G\simeq
(NS(X)^{G})^{\perp}\simeq \langle F, \sum_{t\in
MW(\mathcal{E}_G)}t\rangle^\perp.$$ Let $H=\langle \iota,
G\rangle$. Since $NS(X)^G\otimes \mathbb{Q}=NS(X)^{\iota}\otimes \mathbb{Q}$, we
have $NS(X)^H\otimes \mathbb{Q}=NS(X)^G\otimes \mathbb{Q}$ and so $$\Omega_H\simeq
(NS(X)^H)^{\perp}\simeq(NS(X)^G)^{\perp}\simeq \Omega_G.$$\hfill $\square$
\begin{rem}{\rm The group $J$ is isomorphic to the group
$\frak{A}_{3,3}$ described in \cite{mukai}. Indeed $J$ is a finite
group of symplectic automorphisms on a K3 surface. These groups
are listed by Xiao, \cite[Table 2]{Xiao}. The order of $J$ is 18
and there are only two groups in the Xiao's list with order 18.
One of them is $\mathbb{Z}/3\mathbb{Z}\times\mathcal{D}_3 $ but in $J$ there are no
elements of order 3 commuting with an involution, hence $H$ has to
be isomorphic to the other one, which is
$\frak{A}_{3,3}.$\hfill $\square$}\end{rem}
In \cite{dihedral 5} the case of the elliptic fibration
$\mathcal{E}_{\mathbb{Z}/5\mathbb{Z}}$ is analyzed. In this situation it is
possible to show that $E_8(-1)\oplus E_8(-1)\subset
NS(X_{\mathbb{Z}/5\mathbb{Z}})$. Hence one can define an involution which switches
these two copies of $E_8(-1)$ (by Definition this is a
Morrison--Nikulin involution, cf. \cite[Section 4.4]{bert Nikulin
involutions}). In the case $G=\mathbb{Z}/6\mathbb{Z}$ the situation is very
similar.\\ We will need the following trivial lemma and so we
recall that given a lattice $T$, the length $l(A_T)$ is is the
minimum number of generator of $A_T:=T^{\vee}/T$.
\begin{lemma}\label{lemma: condition on T=L(n)}
Let $n\in \mathbb{N}$ and $(T,b_T$) be a lattice such that: {\it i)}
rk$T=l(A_T)$;\\ {\it ii)} $T^{\vee}/T\simeq \bigoplus_i \mathbb{Z}/nd_i\mathbb{Z}$
and $\beta_i$
generate $\mathbb{Z}/nd_i\mathbb{Z}$ in $T^{\vee}/T$.\\
Let $L$ be the free $\mathbb{Z}$-module $L=\{x\in T\otimes \mathbb{Q}\mbox{ such
that }nx\in T\}$ and $b_L=n(b_{T\otimes\mathbb{Q}})_{|L}$ a bilinear form
defined on $L$.
Then $(L,b_L)$ is a lattice and $T\simeq L(n)$ if and only if $b_{T^\otimes \mathbb{Q}}(d_i\beta_i,d_j\beta_j)\in \frac{1}{n}\mathbb{Z}$.\\
Moreover $L$ is an even lattice if and only if
$b_{T\otimes\mathbb{Q}}(d_i\beta_i,d_i\beta_i)\in \frac{2}{n}\mathbb{Z}$.
\end{lemma}
\begin{prop}\label{prop: quotient of E by iota and Dhn} Let $G$ be
one of the following four groups: $\mathbb{Z}/n\mathbb{Z}$, $n=5,6$, $\mathbb{Z}/2\mathbb{Z}\times
\mathbb{Z}/4\mathbb{Z}$, $(\mathbb{Z}/3\mathbb{Z})^2$. Let $\mathcal{E}_{G}$ be the generic
elliptic fibration such that $MW(\mathcal{E}_{G})=G$. Then: the
involution $\iota$ (defined in proof of Proposition \ref{prop: XG
admit also a dhiedral group of automorphisms}) is a
Morrison--Nikulin involution for $G=\mathbb{Z}/n\mathbb{Z}$, $n=5,6$ and
$G=(\mathbb{Z}/3\mathbb{Z})^2$ and it is {\bf not} a Morrison--Nikulin involution
if $G=\mathbb{Z}/2\mathbb{Z}\times\mathbb{Z}/4\mathbb{Z}$.
\end{prop}
{\it Proof.~} {\it The case $G=\mathbb{Z}/n\mathbb{Z}$, $n=5,6$.} We consider only the
case $n=6$ because the other is very similar and in part it is
analyzed in \cite{dihedral 5}. The equation of
$\mathcal{E}_{\mathbb{Z}/6\mathbb{Z}}$ is given \cite[Table 1]{symplectic not
prime}. We recall that the reducible fibers of the fibration
$\mathcal{E}_{\mathbb{Z}/6\mathbb{Z}}$ are $2 I_6+2I_3+2I_2+2I_1$ (we will number
the reducible fibers assuming that the first two reducible fibers
are of type $I_6$, the third and the fourth are of type $I_3$, the
fifth and the sixth are of type $I_2$). Let $t_1$ be a 6-torsion
section, then $t_1\cdot C_{1}^{(j)}=1$ for all $j=1,\ldots, 6$ and
$t_1\cdot C_i^{(j)}=0$ if $i\neq 1$. Here we give two orthogonal
copies of $E_8(-1)$ which are contained in $NS(X_{\mathbb{Z}/6\mathbb{Z}})$:
\begin{eqnarray*
\begin{array}{ccccccccccccc}
C_2^{(3)}&-&C_0^{(3)}&-&s&-&C_0^{(1)}&-&C_5^{(1)}&-&C_4^{(1)}&-&C_3^{(1)}\\
& & & &\mid & & & & & & & &\\
& & & & C_0^{(5)} & & & & & & & &\\
\\
C_2^{(4)}&-&C_{1}^{(4)}&-&t_1&-&C_{1}^{(2)}&-&C_2^{(2)}&-&C_{3}^{(2)}&-&C_{4}^{(2)}\\
& & & &\mid & & & & & & & &\\
& & & & C_{1}^{(6)} & & & & & & & &
\end{array}
\end{eqnarray*}
There exists a Morrison--Nikulin involution, $\iota_{M}$, of the
surface which switches them (cf. \cite[Proposition
5.7]{morrison}). This involution switches the singular fibers of
the same type and acts on $MW(\mathcal{E}_{\mathbb{Z}/6\mathbb{Z}})$ sending
$s\leftrightarrow t_1$, $t_2\leftrightarrow t_5$,
$t_3\leftrightarrow t_5$ (this is deduced by the fact that
$t_i\cdot C_j^{(h)}=\iota_M(t_i)\cdot \iota_M(C_j^{(h)})$). We
observe that the action of $\iota_M$ on the sections is
$t_i\leftrightarrow t_{-i+1}$. Hence $\iota_M$ is the involution
defined in proof of Proposition \ref{prop: XG admit also a
dhiedral group of automorphisms}. In particular $\mathcal{D}_6=\langle
\iota_M,\sigma_6\rangle$.\\
{\it The case $G=(\mathbb{Z}/3\mathbb{Z})^2$.} The elliptic fibration
$\mathcal{E}_{(\mathbb{Z}/3\mathbb{Z})^2}$ has 8 fibers of type $I_3$ (cf.
\cite[Table 2]{symplectic not prime}). The transcendental lattice
of the surface $X_{(\mathbb{Z}/3\mathbb{Z})^2}$ is isometric to $U(3)\oplus U(3)$.
The automorphisms $\iota$ switches pairwise of fibers of type
$I_3$. On the quotient elliptic fibration this gives 4 fibers of
type $I_3$. Moreover the automorphism $\iota$ fixes two smooth
fibers, and on each of these fibers it has four fixed points. On
the quotient elliptic fibration $\mathcal{E}/\iota$ this gives two
fibers of type $I_0^*$. So the trivial lattice of the elliptic
fibration $\mathcal{E}/\iota$ is $U\oplus A_2^{\oplus 4}\oplus
D_4^{\oplus 2}$ and there are no sections of infinite order,
because
$rk(Tr_{\mathcal{E}/\iota})=rk(NS(\widetilde{X_{(\mathbb{Z}/3\mathbb{Z})^2}/\iota}))$.
The discriminant of the trivial lattice is $3^42^4$. By
\cite{shimada} the elliptic fibration $\mathcal{E}/\iota$ is such
that $tors(MW(\mathcal{E}_{(\mathbb{Z}/3\mathbb{Z})^2/\iota}))=\{1\}$. This
implies that $d(NS(\widetilde{X_{(\mathbb{Z}/3\mathbb{Z})^2}/\iota}))=3^42^4=6^4$.
Moreover it is easy to find the discriminant form of
$NS(\widetilde{X_{(\mathbb{Z}/3\mathbb{Z})^2}/\iota})$. The discriminant form of
the transcendental lattice is the opposite of the one of the
N\'eron--Severi group. Hence one can directly check that the
hypothesis of Lemma \ref{lemma: condition on T=L(n)} with $n=6$
are satisfied by $T_{\widetilde{X_{(\mathbb{Z}/3\mathbb{Z})^2}/\iota}}$, and so
there exist a lattice $L$ such that
$T_{\widetilde{X_{(\mathbb{Z}/3\mathbb{Z})^2}/\iota}}=L(6)$. The discriminant form
of $L$, computed by the one of
$T_{\widetilde{X_{(\mathbb{Z}/3\mathbb{Z})^2}/\iota}}$, is trivial, hence $L$ is a
unimodular lattices with signature $(2,2)$. This implies that
$L\simeq U\oplus U$ and so
$T_{\widetilde{X_{(\mathbb{Z}/3\mathbb{Z})^2}/\iota}}\simeq U(6)\oplus U(6)$.
Since $U(6)\oplus U(6)\simeq (T_{X_{(\mathbb{Z}/3\mathbb{Z})^2}})(2)$, the
involution $\iota$ is a Morrison--Nikulin involution (cf.
\cite[Theorems 5.7, 6.3]{morrison}).\\
{\it The case $G=\mathbb{Z}/2\mathbb{Z}\times \mathbb{Z}/4\mathbb{Z}$.} The elliptic fibration
$\mathcal{E}_{\mathbb{Z}/2\mathbb{Z}\times\mathbb{Z}/4\mathbb{Z}}$ has 4 fibers of type $I_4$ and
4 fibers of type $I_2$ (cf. \cite[Table 2]{symplectic not prime}).
The automorphisms $\iota$ switches two fibers of type $I_4$, two
other fibers of type $I_4$, two fibers of type $I_2$ and the
remaining two fibers of type $I_2$. Moreover it fixes two smooth
fibers and in particular four distinct points on each of these
fibers. As in case $G=(\mathbb{Z}/3\mathbb{Z})^2$ this gives the quotient elliptic
fibration. The trivial lattice of the elliptic fibration
$\mathcal{E}/\iota$ is $U\oplus A_1^{\oplus 2}\oplus A_3^{\oplus
2}\oplus D_4^{\oplus 2}$ and there are no sections of infinite
order. The discriminant of the trivial lattice is $2^{10}$. By
\cite{shimada} the elliptic fibration $\mathcal{E}/\iota$ is such
that
$tors(MW(\mathcal{E}_{\mathbb{Z}/2\mathbb{Z}\times\mathbb{Z}/4\mathbb{Z}}/\iota))=(\mathbb{Z}/2\mathbb{Z})^2$.
This implies that $d(NS(\widetilde{X/\iota}))=2^{10}/2^4=2^6$. We
observe that also $d(NS(X_{\mathbb{Z}/2\times\mathbb{Z}/4\mathbb{Z}}))=2^6$. In particular
this implies that $\iota$ is not a Morrison--Nikulin involution,
indeed, if $Y=\widetilde{X/i}$ with a Morrison--Nikulin involution
$i$, then $T_Y=T_X(2)$ (cf. \cite[Theorems 5.7, 6.3]{morrison}) so
in particular $d(NS(X))=2^{22-\rho(X)}d(NS(Y))$, where $\rho(X)$
is the Picard number of $X$.\hfill $\square$
\begin{prop}\label{prop: quotient of E by iota and Dhn} Let $G$, $\iota$ and $\mathcal{E}_{G}$ be as in Proposition \ref{prop: XG admit also a dhiedral group of automorphisms}. Let $K=\langle
G,\iota\rangle$. Then:
\begin{itemize} \item[i)] the
desingularization, $\widetilde{X_{G}/K}$, of the quotient
$X_{G}/K$ is such that $NS(\widetilde{X_{G}/K})\simeq
NS(\widetilde{X_G/\iota})$; \item[ii)] the desingularization of
the quotient $\widetilde{X_G/K}$ is such that
$NS(\widetilde{X_G/K})$ is an overlattice of index 4 of
$U(2)\oplus M_{K}$.\end{itemize} If $G=\mathbb{Z}/n\mathbb{Z}$, $n=5,6$, then
$T_{\widetilde{X_{G}/\iota}}\simeq T_{\widetilde{X_{G}/K}}\simeq
U(2)\oplus U(2n)$, if $G=(\mathbb{Z}/3\mathbb{Z})^2$, then
$T_{\widetilde{X_{G}/\iota}}\simeq T_{\widetilde{X_{G}/K}}\simeq
U(6)\oplus U(6).$
\end{prop}
{\it Proof.~} Here we consider the case $n=6$. The others are very
similar.\\
{\it Proof of i).} Let $\mathcal{E}/\iota$ be the quotient
elliptic fibration. The involution $\iota$ switches the two fibers
of type $I_6$, the two fibers of type $I_3$, the two fibers of
type $I_2$. On $\mathcal{E}/\iota$ these reducible fibers
correspond to one fiber of type $I_6$, one of type $I_3$, one of
type $I_2$. On the fibration $\mathcal{E}$, $\iota$ fixes two
smooth fibers. On these fibers $\iota$ fixes 4 points (the points
$P$ such that $2P=T$ where $T$ is the intersection of the fiber
with the section $t_1$). Hence these two fibers corresponds on
$\mathcal{E}/\iota$ to 2 fibers of type $I_0^*$. So the trivial
lattice of the fibration $\mathcal{E}/\iota$ is $U\oplus A_5\oplus
A_2\oplus A_1\oplus D_4^{\oplus 2}$. Choosing a numbering of the
fibers and of the irreducible components ($D_i^{(j)}$) of the
fibers we assume that the first fiber is of type $I_6$, the second
of type $I_3$, the third of type $I_2$, the fourth and the fifth
of type $I_0^*$ and $F\simeq
D_0^{(4)}+D_1^{(4)}+2D_2^{(4)}+D_3^{(4)}+D_4^{(4)}\simeq
D_0^{(5)}+D_1^{(5)}+2D_2^{(5)}+D_3^{(5)}+D_4^{(5)}$ where $F$ is
the class of the fiber and $'\simeq'$ is the linear equivalence of
divisors.\\ The elliptic fibrations with trivial lattice $U\oplus
A_5\oplus A_2\oplus A_1\oplus D_4^{\oplus 2}$ admit a 2-torsion
section $r$ (cf. \cite{shimada}) and up to a choice of numbering
of the components of the reducible fibers we can assume, by the
height formula, that the intersection numbers are:
$$r\cdot D_3^{(1)}=r\cdot D_0^{(2)}=r\cdot D_1^{(3)}=r\cdot D_1^{(4)}=r\cdot D_1^{(5)}=1$$
and the other intersections are zero.\\
Now let us consider the quotient $X/\mathcal{D}_6$. Under $\mathcal{D}_6$, the
orbit of the curve $C_0^{(1)}$ consists of all the curves
$C_i^{(j)}$, $i=0,\ldots,5$, $j=1,2$, so it is made up of all the
components of the two fibers of type $I_6$. Hence the image of
these two fibers on $X/\mathcal{D}_6$ is a nodal curve, where the node is
the image of the singular points of the two fibers of type $I_6$.
Analogously, the image of the two fibers of type $I_3$ is a nodal
curve. The node is the image of the singular points of these
fibers, and it is a singularity of type $A_1$ for the surface
$X/\mathcal{D}_6$. Indeed on $X$ the singular points of the fibers of type
$I_3$ are fixed by $\sigma_{t_1}^2$ and hence their stabilizer is
$\mathbb{Z}/2\mathbb{Z}$, this implies that the corresponding point on the
quotient is a singularity of type $A_1$. With the same argument,
one notices that the two fibers of type $I_2$ correspond on the
quotient to a nodal curve, whose node is a singular point for
$X/\mathcal{D}_6$ of type $A_2$ and the two fibers of type $I_1$
correspond on the quotient to a nodal curve, whose node is a
singular point for $X/\mathcal{D}_6$ of type $A_5$. Each of the two smooth
fibers fixed by $\iota$ correspond on the quotient to a rational
curves with 4 singularities of type $A_1$. Blowing up these
singularities we find the quotient elliptic fibration
$\mathcal{E}/\mathcal{D}_6$. Its singular fibers
are$I_1+I_2+I_3+I_6+2I_0^*$. The trivial lattice of this fibration
is $U\oplus A_1\oplus A_2\oplus A_5\oplus D_4^{\oplus 2}$. It has
a zero section (the image of the sections of $\mathcal{E}$), it
has no sections of infinite order (because it has Picard number
equal to 18, as the one of $X$ and its trivial lattice has rank
18) and has a 2-torsion section (\cite{shimada}).The singular
fibers of the $\mathcal{E}/\mathcal{D}_6$ are the same as the ones of
$\mathcal{E}/\iota$ and
$MW(\mathcal{E}/\mathcal{D}_6)=MW(\mathcal{E}/\iota)$. Moreover up to a
choice of the numbering on the components of the reducible fibers
one can assume that the intersection property of the 2-torsion
section on $\mathcal{E}/\mathcal{D}_6$ are the same as the one of the
2-torsion section of $\mathcal{E}/\iota$. The N\'eron--Severi
group of an elliptic surface is completed determined by its
singular fibers and by its sections and hence
$NS(\widetilde{X/\iota})\simeq NS(\widetilde{X/\mathcal{D}_6})$.\\
{\it Proof of ii).} Let us consider again the quotient
$\widetilde{X/\mathcal{D}_6}$. We will call the components of its
reducible fibers $B_i^{(j)}$ and we number the fibers assuming
that the first is of type $I_6$, the second of type $I_2$, the
third of type $I_3$ and the fourth and fifth of type $I_0^*$. By
the construction described above the components which do not
intersect the zero section of the fibers of type $I_6$, $I_3$,
$I_2$ arise from the desingularization of singular points of type
$A_5$, $A_2$, $A_1$ respectively on the quotient $X/\mathcal{D}_6$. So the
components $B_i^{(1)}$, $i=1,\dots ,5$, $B_j^{(2)}$, $j=2,3$ and
$B_1^{(3)}$ are curves in $M_{\mathcal{D}_6}$. The fibers of type $I_0^*$
on $\widetilde{X/\mathcal{D}_6}$ are obtained as desingularization of a
rational curve which has 4 singularity of type $A_1$, hence the
components $B_i^{(j)}$ of the fourth and fifth fibers which
resolve the singularity of type $A_1$ on the quotient $X/\mathcal{D}_6$
are $B_h^{(k)}$, $h=0,1,3,4$, $k=4,5$ and hence they are curves in
$M_{\mathcal{D}_6}$. The curves $B_i^{(1)}$, $i=1,\dots ,5$, $B_j^{(2)}$,
$j=2,3$, $B_1^{(3)}$, $B_h^{(k)}$, $h=0,1,3,4$, $k=4,5$ generates
the lattice $A_5\oplus A_2\oplus A_1^{\oplus 9}$ which is a
sublattice of $M_{\mathcal{D}_6}$. The lattice $M_{\mathcal{D}_6}$ is described in
\cite[Table 2, Lemma 2]{Xiao} as overlattice of $A_5\oplus
A_2\oplus A_1^{\oplus 9}$ obtained by adding two 2-divisible
classes and hence $A_5\oplus A_2\oplus A_1^{\oplus
9}\hookrightarrow M_{\mathcal{D}_6}$ is an inclusion with index 4. Indeed
the classes
$$\begin{array}{ll}v:=\frac{1}{2}(B_0^{(4)}+B_1^{(4)}+B_3^{(4)}+B_4^{(4)}+
B_0^{(5)}+B_1^{(5)}+B_3^{(5)}+B_4^{(5)})&\sim
(F+B_2^{(4)}+B_2^{(5)}),\\
w:=\frac{1}{2}\left(B_1^{(1)}+B_3^{(1)}+B_5^{(1)}+B_1^{(3)}+\sum_{j=4}^5\left(B_3^{(j)}+B_4^{(j)}\right)\right)&\sim
r-2F-s,\end{array}$$ where $r$ is the 2-torsion section of
$\mathcal{E}/\mathcal{D}_6$, are in $M_{\mathcal{D}_6}\subset NS(\widetilde{X/\mathcal{D}_6})$.\\
The orthogonal lattice to $M_{\mathcal{D}_6}$ in $NS(\widetilde{X/\mathcal{D}_6})$
is made up of the two classes $F$ and
$z:=-2s+B_1^{(4)}+2B_2^{(4)}+B_3^{(4)}+B_4^{(4)}+B_1^{(5)}+2B_2^{(5)}+B_3^{(5)}+B_4^{(5)}.$
They generate a lattice which is isometric to $U(2)$. Hence
$U(2)\oplus M_{\mathcal{D}_6}\hookrightarrow NS(\widetilde{X}/\mathcal{D}_6)$ with
a finite index. This index is $4=\left(d(U(2)\oplus
M_{\mathcal{D}_6})\right)/\left(d(NS(\widetilde{X}/\mathcal{D}_6)\right)$ and in
fact the classes
$$\begin{array}{lc}
z+B_1^{(4)}+B_3^{(4)}+B_4^{(4)}+B_1^{(5)}+B_3^{(5)}+B_4^{(5)}&\in
U(2)\oplus M_{\mathcal{D}_6}\\
F+B_0^{(4)}+B_1^{(4)}+B_3^{(4)}+B_4^{(4)}&\in U(2)\oplus
M_{\mathcal{D}_6}\end{array}$$ are divisible by 2 in
$NS(\widetilde{X}/\mathcal{D}_6)$.\\
Let $\nu$ be a Morrison--Nikulin involution on a K3 surface $S$.
Then $T_{\widetilde{S/\nu}}\simeq T_{S}(2)$ (cf. \cite[Theorems
5.7 and 6.3]{morrison})). The transcendental lattice of
$X_{\mathbb{Z}/n\mathbb{Z}}$ is computed in \cite{symplectic prime} and is
isometric to $U\oplus U(n)$. So
$T_{\widetilde{X_{\mathbb{Z}/n\mathbb{Z}}/\iota}}\simeq U(2)\oplus U(2n).$ Since
$NS(\widetilde{X/\iota})\simeq NS(\widetilde{X/K})$, the
discriminant form of $T_{\widetilde{X/\iota}}$ is isometric to the
one of $T_{\widetilde{X/K}}$. The lattice with such a discriminant
form is uniquely determined, up to isometry, indeed by Lemma
\ref{lemma: condition on T=L(n)} it is multiple of a certain
lattice which is uniquely determined by \cite[Corollary
1.13.3]{Nikulin bilinear}. Hence
$T_{\widetilde{X_{\mathbb{Z}/n\mathbb{Z}}/\iota}}\simeq
T_{\widetilde{X_{\mathbb{Z}/n\mathbb{Z}}/\mathcal{D}_6}}$. \hfill $\square$
\begin{rem}\label{rem: omegadh5 is isomteric to DIH10(16)}{\rm As in Remark \ref{rem: omegadh4 is isomteric to DIH8(16)}
one obtains that for $n=5,6$ the lattice $DIH_{2n}(16)$ described
in \cite{EE8- lattices and dihedral} is isometric to the lattice
$\Omega_{\mathcal{D}_n}(-1)$, and, by Remark \ref{rem: isometries Shioda
lattices}, they are both isometric to $MW(F^{(n)}_{gen})$,
described in \cite{Shioda F5n in generale}. The isometry
$\Omega_{\mathcal{D}_5}(-1)\simeq DIH_{10}(16)$ was proved also in
\cite{dihedral 5}.\hfill $\square$}\end{rem} In Proposition \ref{prop: NS MW
with abelina group} we exhibit K3 surfaces obtained as quotient of
other K3 surfaces $X$ with an abelian group $G$ of symplectic
automorphisms, such that $NS(X)\simeq U\oplus M_G$. In the case
$G=\mathcal{D}_5$, $\mathcal{D}_6$, $\frak{A}_{3,3}$, $\mathbb{Z}/2\mathbb{Z}\times \mathcal{D}_4$ this is not
possible, indeed there exists no K3 surfaces with N\'eron--Severi
group isometric to $U\oplus M_{G}$ for one of these group $G$.
\section{Final remarks on finite groups of symplectic
automorphisms.}\label{section: final remarks on finite groups of
symplectic automorphisms}
In Section \ref{section: dihedral groups of automorphisms on
elliptic fibration with torsion} we analyzed the following
property of a pair of finite groups $(H,G)$:
\begin{assumeP}\label{property P}
$\bullet$ $G$ acts symplectically on a K3 surface;\\
$\bullet$ $H$ is a subgroup of $G$;\\
$\bullet$ the K3 surfaces admitting $H$ as group of symplectic
automorphisms admits necessary the group $G$ as group of
symplectic automorphisms.\end{assumeP} In particular we analyzed
this property by a geometrical point of view, constructing
elliptic surfaces and using them to show that certain pairs
$(H,G)$ satisfy property \ref{property P}. Here we reconsider this
property from a point of view more related to the lattices.
\begin{prop}\label{prop: pairs of group (H,G)} A pair of groups $(H,G)$ satisfy property \ref{property P} if
and only if $H\subset G$ and rk$\Omega_H$=rk$\Omega_G$.\end{prop}
{\it Proof.~} If \ref{property P} holds, then $\Omega_H\subseteq\Omega_G$
(because $H\subset G$ and the K3 surfaces which admits $G$ as
group of symplectic automorphisms admits $H$ as group of
symplectic automorphisms), in particular
rk$\Omega_H\leq$rk$\Omega_G$. If $X$ is a generic algebraic K3
surface such that $H$ acts symplectically on $X$, then
$\rho(X)=1+rk\Omega_H$. If Property \ref{property P} holds, then
$\Omega_{K}\subset NS(X)$ (c.f. Proposition \ref{prop: X has G as
symplectic group iff omegaG in NS(X)}). Since $\Omega_G$ is
negative definite,
$rk\Omega_G\leq \rho(X)-1=rk\Omega_H$, hence rk$\Omega_H=$rk$\Omega_G$.\\
Viceversa if $H\subset G$, then $\Omega_H\subseteq \Omega_G$.
Since rk$\Omega_H$=rk$\Omega_G$, the inclusion
$\Omega_H\hookrightarrow \Omega_G$ has a finite index. As both
$\Omega_H$ and $\Omega_G$ are primitively embedded in the
N\'eron--Severi group of the surface the index of the inclusion
$\Omega_H\hookrightarrow \Omega_G$ is 1, which implies Property
\ref{property P}.\hfill $\square$ \smallskip\par We recall that for each group $G$ of
symplectic automorphisms on a K3 surface rk$\Omega_G$=rk$M_G$ and
rk$M_G$ is computed by \cite{Xiao}.
\begin{rem}{\rm There are no pairs $(H,G)$ with the property \ref{property P} and
rk$\Omega_G< 16$. Indeed from Xiao's list we deduce that
rk$\Omega_G\in\{8,12,14,15\}$. If $G$ is such that rk$\Omega_G=8$,
then $G=\mathbb{Z}/2\mathbb{Z}$. In the other case there is more then one group,
but there are no inclusions among them. For example the groups $G$
such that rk$\Omega_G$=12 are $\mathbb{Z}/3\mathbb{Z}$ and $(\mathbb{Z}/2\mathbb{Z})^2$, but of
course there are no inclusions between them, and hence it is not
possible to have a pair $(H,G)$ with the property \ref{property P}
and rk$\Omega_G$=12. The other cases are similar.}\hfill $\square$\end{rem}
\begin{rem}{\rm Let us assume rk$\Omega_G=16$. The only pairs of
groups $(H,G)$ satisfying the property \ref{property P} are
$(\mathbb{Z}/5\mathbb{Z},\mathcal{D}_5)$, $(\mathbb{Z}/6\mathbb{Z},\mathcal{D}_6)$, $(\mathbb{Z}/2\mathbb{Z}\times
\mathbb{Z}/4\mathbb{Z},\mathbb{Z}/2\mathbb{Z}\times \mathcal{D}_4)$, $((\mathbb{Z}/3\mathbb{Z})^2,\frak{A}_{3,3})$ (i.e. the
pairs studied in Section \ref{section: dihedral groups of
automorphisms on elliptic fibration with torsion}). This follows
by the list in \cite{Xiao}: the only groups $G$ such that
rk$\Omega_G=16$ are $\mathbb{Z}/5\mathbb{Z}$, $\mathcal{D}_5$, $\mathbb{Z}/6\mathbb{Z}$, $\mathcal{D}_6$,
$\mathbb{Z}/2\mathbb{Z}\times \mathbb{Z}/4\mathbb{Z}$, $\mathbb{Z}/2\mathbb{Z}\times \mathcal{D}_4$, $(\mathbb{Z}/3\mathbb{Z})^2$,
$\frak{A}_{3,3}$, $\frak{A}_4$. So one has only to check that all the
possible inclusions among these groups are those listed above. In
particular the group $\frak{A}_4$ is the only one which does not appear
in a pairs $(H,G)$.}\hfill $\square$
\end{rem}
\begin{rem}{\rm In Xiao's list there are 31 groups $G$ acting symplectically on a K3
surface such that rk$\Omega_G$=19. By \cite{mukai} there are 11
maximal groups acting symplectically on a K3 surface and for each
of them the rank of the associated lattice $\Omega$ is 19. Hence
there exist pairs $(H,G)$ such that $(H,G)$ satisfy the property
\ref{property P} and rk$\Omega_H$=19. It would be interesting to
find explicit examples to show this fact from a geometrical point
of view.}\hfill $\square$\end{rem}
| {
"redpajama_set_name": "RedPajamaArXiv"
} | 4,467 |
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