The Boston News-Letter, a paper of overt Loyalist sympathies, published a one paragraph account the day afterward: “Last Tuesday Night the Grenadier and Light Companies belonging to the several Regiments in this Town were ferryed in Long Boats from the Bottom of the Common over to Phips’s Farm in Cambridge, from whence they proceeded on their way to Concord where they arrived Yesterday: the First Brigade, commanded by Lord Piercy,” (‘Percy’ was his name. The errant spelling of the period was less of a problem than the erring fact) “with two pieces of Artillery, set off from here yesterday morning at Ten o’Clock as a Re-inforcement, which with the Grenadiers and Light Companies, made about eighteen Hundred Men. Upon the People’s having Notice of this Movement on Tuesday Night, alarm Guns were fired throughout the Country, and Expresses sent off to the different Towns, so that very early Yesterday Morning large Numbers were assembled from all Parts of the Country. A general Battle ensued, which from what we can learn, was supported with great Spirit on both sides, and continued until the King’s Troops retreated to Charlestown, which was after Sunset. The Reports concerning this unhappy Affair, and the Causes that concurred to bring on an Engagement, are so various that we are not able to collect any Thing consistent or regular, and cannot therefore with certainty give our Readers any further Account of this shocking Introduction to all the Miseries of a Civil War.”

On April 25th, with clearly different sympathies, the Salem Gazette reported: “Last Wednesday the 19th of April, the troops of his Britannick Majesty commenced hostilities upon the people of this province, attended with circumstances of cruelty not less brutal than what our venerable ancestors received from the vilest savages of the wilderness…”

By May 3rd, two weeks after those first ‘shots heard round the world,’ printer and publisher Isaiah Thomas, also a participant in the event, was reporting in the Massachusetts Spy, “Americans! Forever bear in mind the Battle of Lexington! Where British Troops unmolested and unprovoked wantonly, and in a most inhuman manner fired upon and killed a number of our countrymen, then robbed them of their provisions, ransacked, plundered and burnt their houses! Nor could the tears of defenseless women, some of whom were in the pains of childbirth, the cries of helpless babes, nor the prayers of old age, confined to beds and sickness, appease their thirst for blood! Or divert them from the DESIGN of MURDER and ROBBERY!”

It is in those last lines of Thomas’s appeal, alluding to defenseless women, childbirth, the cries of babes and the aged confined to beds and sickness that we have the first reporting of what had happened not in Lexington but at Menotomy.

My interest was clearly in that specific place mid-way on the larger map of events that day. I might have to understand the broader circumstance and thus investigate what had happened immediately before and after, but most important to me was what had happened in that part of West Cambridge then known as Menotomy. Because it was there that more British and Americans died during that long day than anywhere else, and it was there that a young woman and a boy were lost in the well of time.

The cause of all of this cannot be laid at the feet of William Legge (you entertain yourself as best you can when you are doing dry research), second Earl of Dartmouth and Secretary of State for the Colonies in England. Legge was the stepson of Lord North, the Prime Minister of Great Britain, and one of the most powerful human beings on the face of the Earth. It was he who gave the actual order to confront the rebellious colonists then draining the British Exchequer with their stubborn refusal to obey the Parliament and the King. But Legge was a reasonable man, founder of foundling hospitals, an opponent of slavery, and namesake to a college in the wilderness. There were many possible ways to accomplish his goal.

Certainly the Continental Congress meeting in Philadelphia against the Kings wishes, carried responsibility for much of the continuing tensions which might otherwise have faded with the seasons. Their demands denied the powers of Parliament and offered little compromise. But then, historically speaking, it was only a matter of time before the natural tendencies of the offspring who had often been required to take care of themselves would break with the tenuous bonds of the mother country.

The British soldiers—the Regulars as they were known—were following orders, as soldiers must do, without a morally compelling reason to refuse. Certainly they were acting within the purview of commonly understood authority. They were on British soil, and they had a right to protect themselves.

No, the responsibility for what happened that day must be laid at the feet of a single man. General Thomas Gage.

It is important to remember that Thomas Gage was not a stupid man. Quite the opposite. He was, however, a product of his age–a General manufactured by custom and class. He had earned his rank at the battles of Fortenay and Culloden. But as the grandson of a peer, it is a fact that he purchased his first military positions, as was the practice at the time. He had been wounded as a field commander during the French and Indian Wars, had lead the attack on Fort Ticonderoga in 1757, and succeeded by merit to the position of Commander in Chief of all British Forces in America.

Thomas Gage loved America. He had planned to retire here. He had married an American girl from New Jersey, Margaret Kemble, whom he loved dearly. They had five daughters and six sons. There is tragedy to be found in the story of this man whose greatest folly was to begin the American Revolution. His loss was in common with every farmer and shopkeeper and sailor who awoke on the morning of April 19, 1775, believing themselves to be British, and ended that day wondering what else they had become. At the end of that day, his dreams, his career, and his marriage, were in shambles.

I understood that fact, but I saw no direct connection between Thomas Gage and Mary Andrews. Her fate, and that of her family, had most certainly been altered by the orders of Thomas Gage to Francis Smith, John Pitcairn, and Hugh Percy. And her death was not the doing of those officers, only the circumstances that had made it possible.

Ensign Jeremy Lister who was with the Tenth Regiment of Foot reports clearly enough on the friction which had arisen between Provincials and Soldiers, “being in eminent danger every Evening of being insulted by the Inhabitants the worst Language was continually in our Ears often dirt thrown at us they went so far as to wound some officers with their Watch Crooks…who had nothing to lay to his charge only he was walking in the streets alone therefore thought him easy pray.”

On a Sunday in March, when a portion of the 43rd regiment was out on practice maneuvers, they happened to halt opposite a church for a few minutes to rest and “the Congregation imagined they was going to fire in to the Church or at least take them all prisoners, jump’d out of the Windows as fast as possible and was quite confused.”

“Things begun now to draw near a Crisis and we expected daily coming to blows,” Ensign Lister says, in his narrative, written seven years later, ‘..on the 18th of April in the Evening there was a detachment ordered under Armes to go on a secret expedition, under command of Lt. Col. Smith of our Regt the detachment consisted of Light-Infantry and Grenadiers of the Army…”

The Diary of Lieutenant John Barker of the King’s Own Regiment says they were ashore at Lechmere Point at 11 o’clock that night, the very same hour Paul Revere left over Charlestown neck. Lieutenant Colonel Smith of the tenth Regiment was in command, accompanied by Lieutenant Colonel Bernard of the Royal Welch Fusiliers, and Major Pitcairn of the Marines.

The regulars climbed from their long boats into waist deep water on the Cambridge side, traversed several tidal inlets and began their march about midnight.

They were already cold, and starting out tired for having missed a nights sleep. The wet leather of their boots must have made a frog-like chorus of their march in the moonlight for the first mile or two. That march was steady but not quick. They passed through Menotomy for the first time with only minor incident just before 3 AM.

Samuel Abbott Smith, in his short but generally accurate history ‘West Cambridge 1775’ notes: “The Committee of Safety on the day before (the eighteenth) had held their session at the Black Horse tavern in West Cambridge, kept by Wetherby, which stood near the site of the old almshouse.” Three members of that body, future “Vice-President Gerry and Cols. Lee and Orne, spent the night here, and arose from their beds to view the unwonted sight. They watched the soldiers passing by, till, as the centre was opposite, an officer and a file of men were detached to search the house. This movement gave them the hint of danger, and they hurried down stairs. Gerry in his perturbation being on the point of opening the door in their faces, when the landlord cried out to him, ‘For God’s sake don’t open that door!’ and led them to the back part of the house, whence they escaped into the corn-field before the officer had posted his guards about the doors. There was nothing to conceal them from view in the broad field but the corn-stubble which had been left the previous fall a foot or two high, and that was little protection in the bright moonlight. Gerry stumbled and fell, and called out to his friend, ‘Stop, Orne ; stop for me till I can get up; I have hurt myself!’ This suggested the idea, and they all threw themselves flat on the ground, and, concealed by the stubble, remained there half-clothed as they had left their beds, till the troops had passed on. Col. Lee never recovered from the effects of that midnight exposure; he died in less than a month from that night. The house was searched in vain…”

Further along the road, Henry Whittemore “was alert and came to the door to see what was stirring. A soldier, leaving the ranks, asked him for a drink of water; he refused, saying, ‘What are you out, at this time of night, for?’ As soon as they passed he at once began to warn the company, and at day-break they were formed on the common ready for active service.”

Not everyone was so concerned. “Though it was so long after midnight, some young men were busily engaged playing cards in a shop…and they did not leave their game till they were startled by the near approach of the British troops.” Seeing a “glimmer of a light through the shutter of the house, a soldier was sent to inquire. The wife replied that her “old man was sick, and she was making some herb tea.” The soldier was satisfied with the answer, and rejoined his comrades.” But the “old shoemaker and his wife had just been melting their pewter plates into bullets, and when startled by the loud knock at the door, the old man had thrown himself upon the bed, and his wife had upset the skillet of molten lead into the turf ashes before she unlocked the door.”

The stepson of the Prime Minister of Great Britain, Lord North, was not the only political power intimately involved in this day. William Legge, Lord Dartmouth had given orders which were unpopular with many, including Hugh Percy, 2nd Duke of Northumberland, the son-in-law of Lord Brute, perhaps the most powerful Whig in Parliament, and one of the wealthiest. Hugh Percy at 33 years old was an unhealthy and visibly ugly man who suffered from hereditary gout and poor eyesight—he was also a gentleman of impeccable manners, and a brave and excellent soldier beloved by his men. He had been in numerous battles before, and as Brigadier General and Colonel of the 5th regiment of Foot, it was his job to march on that April morning in relief of the beleaguered Smith.

From the beginning, Percy was against the Gage plan “for being petty and fraught with risks,” as one historian notes. It was thus inevitable that it should be Percy who would have to salvage the venture.

The British field officer was the unsung hero of that Empire. The glory so often went to the Navy. But it was Wellington who defeated Napoleon, not Nelson. And until the Old Men annihilated that special breed by tossing them against the machine guns in World War One, it was the British field officer who built and preserved the Empire. Losses on the world stage were few, given the far-flung nature of their exploits. A study of their failure in America would be a book on the inherent weakness of occupation, not of the soldier.

Opposing them was an unlikely network of rebels, relatively undisciplined, untrained, and ill-equipped. The stuff that legends are made of. But the myths of the American Revolution have never quite matched the reality. The reality was that much greater in every respect.

I was not interested in challenging those myths with my small story. I wanted a simpler focus on the death of this young woman and this boy, and the reasons their murder might have happened at that time and place. Clearly they were murdered. The ultimate crime. And the time and place offered a terrific circumstance. I was sure there must be a story to tell.

“It was then young flood, the Ship was winding, and the moon was Rising,” Paul Revere said.

I have long believed Revere to be the first American. Not the great Franklin, or Washington, or Jefferson. Revere. This forty-year old Apollo was more than a patriot. He called himself a ‘mechanic.’ He was a craftsman, a father and a husband. He was an entrepreneur and engineer. He was an engraver and artist. He was not a wordsmith, but a revolutionary. The spirit of the new-formed American character was in him.

Revere had ridden in his cause far beyond Concord, and more than once–to New York and Philadelphia. He had what was often called ‘native genius.’ He was capable of walking through the only gunpowder mill in the colonies, a closely held technology the British had banned in their effort to suppress rebellion, and comprehend what he saw without taking notes, and then remember enough to duplicate it again in nearby Canton—a resource the Revolution could not have done without, and a crucial bit of spying for the war to come.

I don’t believe I have ever been strong enough, even after boot camp, to make a four hundred mile ride over rough roads, but I can appreciate the misery of it. Always as brave as what was necessary to the moment, Revere was never heedless and seldom reckless. And until that night in April, he was an Englishman. Because he acted before the first shots were fired, and because he was present when those shots were fired, and because he fully accepted the consequence of his actions from that first moment, I believe he uniquely belongs to history.

The lights in the church tower are known to most. The wonderful Longfellow poem certainly made myth of it. And that there were others who rode in the night has always been known and is often retold, as if this somehow debunks the fact of Revere’s accomplishment. But because fine historians have detailed the adventure from start to finish, there is no need for me to recount his ride in full. What is most important to my own story is that Revere passed through Menotomy shortly before midnight. He had ridden many miles and had many more to go over dark roads made ugly by spring thaw and natural erosion. That he was a superb horseman is seldom noted, perhaps because it was assumed or else he would not have been given the task. But that he bravely paused at each house to call the warning is a better deed still. He was a hunted man. There were British officers on the road, put in place to stop him. His life was very immediately in danger, and stopping again and again did not make his chances of reaching Hancock and Adams in Lexington any easier. But he did this. And it was important to me that any house on his way would have been awake. The Andrews house was not directly on Revere’s route, but close enough to have been alerted shortly after his passing, when “alarm Guns were fired throughout the Country.” I believe Isaak Andrews and his family would have been awake, at least from that moment on. And certainly by the time the 700 British soldiers under Smith marched in the moonlight soon afterward.

When I was teaching high school history I used to spend a week on just this one day. The school would not give me a bus to take my classes out, so I walked them through it in the room and the hall. In fact, it was in the hall that I got into trouble with a math teacher, that last year before I quit. He objected to the popping of balloons. I explained the fact that we were not allowed to have guns—even fake guns. He wouldn’t listen. Math is a quiet and insidious subject.

In any case, even the worst schools teach a little about the confrontation, though they get the facts screwed. But what they tell is only what happened at Lexington and Concord. The battles of Menotomy is pretty much ignored outside of the town of Arlington itself.

Ensign Jeremy Lister wrote of the confrontation that morning, “it was at Lexington when we saw one of their companys drawn up in regular order Major Pitcairn of the Marines second in Command call’d to them to disperce, but their not seeming willing he desired us to mind our space which we did when they gave us a fire then run of to get behind a wall. We had one man wounded in our Compy in the Leg his name was Johnson also Major Pitcairns Horse who was shot in the Flank we return’d their Salute, and before we proceeded on our March from Lexington I believe we kill’d and Wounded either 7 or 8 men. We Marchd forward without further interruption till we arriv’d at Concord, tho large bodies of Men was collected together and with Armes yet as we approached they retired.”

Lieutenant John Barker says in his diary, “We met with no interruption till within a mile or two of the Town, where the Country People had occupied a hill which commanded the road; the Light Infantry were order’d away to the right and ascended the height in one line, upon which the Yankees quitted it without firing, [this was Rev. Emerson who was persuaded to change his mind about “if we die let us die here” by Eleazer Brooks of Lincoln] which they did likewise for one or two more successively. They then crossed the River beyond the Town.”

Provincial Capt. Amos Barrett led his company before the British playing their drums and fifes. It is important to remember that at this point there were only about 100 armed Provincials from Concord and Lincoln, in all.

Smith broke his troops defensively to cover his position and sent detachments forward to accomplish the objectives of his orders. Lister describes the defense at the Concord River: “I proposed destroying the Bridge, but before we got one plank of they got so near as to begin their Fire which was a very heavy one, tho. Our Compys was drawn up in order to fire Street firing, yet the weight of their fire was such that we was oblidg’d to give way then run with the greatest precipitance at this place there was 4 Men of the 4th Compy Killd who was afterwards scalp’d their Eye goug’s their Noses and Ears cut of, such barbarity exercis’d upon the Corps could scarcely be paralelld by the most uncivilized Savages.”

It is noteworthy that Lister remembers this detail of barbarity, which he did not witness because he had already withdrawn with ‘precipitance’, so much more clearly than the crucial events he actually participated in. The fog of war has always been the saving grace of the soldier with adrenaline pumping. The imagined cruelty of the enemy has always been the just cause of the warrior.

Lister notes specifically, “there was a good number Wounded amongst which was a Lt Hull 43rd through the Right Brest, of which with other Wounds recd that day he died three or four days after. L. Gould 4th and Lt Kelly 10th also Lt Sunderland a Voluntier Wounded…” These were comrades he knew personally. Lt. Gould and Lt. Barker were the only officers who were at the skirmish at Concord Bridge. Lister continued, “after we had got to Concord again my situation with the remains of the Compy was a most fatigueing one, being detached to watch the Motions of the Rebels, we was kept continually running from hill to hill as they changed their position…”

Re-gathering his forces before noon, Smith started his retreat to Boston. Lister says, “…the Rebels begun a brisk fire but at so great a distance it was without effect, but as they kept marching nearer when the Granadiers found them within shot they returned their fire just about that time I recd a shot through by Right Elbow joint which effectually disabled that Arme, it then became a general firing upon us from all quarters, from behind hedges and Walls we return’d the fir every opportunity.”

Low on ammunition and quickly being outnumbered by the gathering forces of rebels as word of the confrontation spread, Smith and his Regulars were happy to meet with re-enforcements under the command of Hugh Percy as they again reached Lexington just before 3 pm. It is there they stopped for a brief rest.

I believe it is important that most of the looting began in Lexington, during the retreat, and after Smith was wounded. It was there that Percy took command of the situation. Historian Frank Coburn, quoting from Historical Society Proceeding and the Journals of the Provincial Congress, cited the loses of individual property owners. Coburn believed “the wonton and needless destruction of property must have been by the express command,” as it occurred, “within a few rods of where Percy sat on his white horse.” I see no other interpretation. And if the mind-set of Percy’s soldiers had been turned to pillage and plunder, it might have encouraged other thoughts as well. “While Smith’s soldier’s were resting, some of those under Percy…wandered about that part of the village bent on mischief and pillage, not the kind usually indulged in by the average rowdy element in the army, but on a much larger and grander scale. Houses were looted and burned…together with such of their contents as could not be carried away…To him belongs the blame…for the killing of such helpless old men as Raymond, the summary removal of Hannah Adams and her infant from child-bed, for the killing of feeble minded William Marcy; for the killing of fourteen-year Edward Barbor. His entire march back to Charlestown was thickly dotted with just such incidents, unrelieved by any conspicuous merciful action, or by any deed of bravery. It was a masterful retreat, indeed, and it was a brutal one…”

It was a wonder to me that this fine officer and gentleman had allowed his soldiers to run rampant in that way. He must have had a purpose. But nothing of that was clear in any correspondence or testimony available on-line or in various databases.

Still, the Regulars were, “13 miles to Bunkers Hill, under continual fire from all Quarters as before…” Having been wounded, Lister was given a horse but it was then they were approaching Menotomy: “…When I had Road about two miles I found the Balls whistled so smartly about my Ears I thought it more prudent to dismount and as the Balls came thicker from one side or the other so I went from one side of the Horse to the other for some time when a Horse was shot dead close by me…”

Menotomy is forgotten because it was not where first blood was drawn for the great cause. This is part of the American obsession with firsts. First editions. First nights. First loves. But Menotomy must be remembered as part of that first day-long battle, when the gorge of blood replaced the choke of words in American throats.

That the brutality of the day was inconsistent was made clear by many small incidents. Samuel Smith notes: “A little girl, named Nabby Blackington, as they marched by, was watching her mother’s cow while she fed by the road-side; the cow took her way directly through the passing column, and the child, faithful to her trust, followed through the ranks bristling with bayonets. ‘We will not hurt the child,’ they said.”

Perhaps knowing that Percy had chosen to carry minimal supplies with him in order to move more quickly in relief of the earlier expedition, General Gage smartly made the decision to send a resupply of ammunition by wagon with military escort. But the rebels had torn up the planks on the bridges to impede just this sort of possibility and the wagon was delayed long enough to allow a small group of the ‘old guard’ to rally in ambush. These were men with military experience but not well enough to be moving quickly in pursuit of the main force of the British. Close by the First Parish Meetinghouse at the crossroads the British detachment was caught by surprise, the lead horse of the wagon shot, the several regulars killed or wounded. In desperation, others fled west along the shores of Spy Pond. There “they met an old woman named Mother Batherick, digging dandelions, to whom they surrendered themselves, asking her protection. She led them to the house of Capt. Ephraim Frost, where there was a party of our men, saying to her prisoners, as she gave them up. ‘If you ever live to get back, you tell King George that an old woman took’ six of his grenadiers prisoners.”

It is an interesting note that these may be counted the first British prisoners taken in the Revolutionary War.

Later, it was close by this place that the retreating Regulars, busily pillaging every house near to the main road, broke into the home of deacon Joseph Adams. This was an odd story. Adam’s wife was still there with five children hiding beneath her bed and a newborn infant, in her arms.

“A soldier opened the curtains and pointed his bayonet at her breast; she cried out for mercy, and another soldier who stood near, said, ‘We will not hurt the woman if she will go out of the house, but we will surely burn it.’ She threw a blanket over her, and with her infant in her arms, crawled to the corn-crib close by.” From beneath the bed the children “watched the feet of the soldiers moving about the room. Joel Adams, a boy of nine years old, curiosity getting the better of his fears, lifted up a corner of the valance, to get a better view… A soldier saw him, and said, ‘Why don’t you come out here?’ The boy answered, ‘You’ll kill me if I do.’ ‘No we won’t,’ the soldier replied, and the boy came out of his hiding-place, and followed them round.” His father, as church deacon, was responsible for keeping the silver communion service and as the soldier took this along with the family silver the boy yelled at them with indignation, ‘Don’t you touch them ‘ere things. Daddy ‘l lick you if you do.”

Poor lad. His father had failed to prepare for the return of the Regulars, and when they did, the deacon had fled, leaving them all behind, and was even then hiding in the barn while his helpless family faced the kindness of soldiers. When the enemy was gone, it was the children who were left to extinguish the fire using a pot of home-brewed beer and rain water from a barrel.

The Jason Russell house is on a small rise above the Concord road, with the mill brook further below. It still stands amidst the congestion of modern Arlington. And it was there that old Russell, feeling too infirm to flee to safety, had barricaded his gate and prepared to fight, saying ‘An Englishman’s house is his castle.’

Some Danvers and Woburn men, finding themselves flanked by the Regulars, had foolishly chosen the house as a place to make a stand as well. Shot and bayoneted, Mr. Russell died there in his doorway shortly before five o’clock that afternoon. Others died in rooms throughout the house where Mrs. Russell later found the blood ‘ankle deep.’ But several of the Woburn men had hidden in the basement and escaped.

One of the best stories took place on the Concord road close to this. There, old Samuel Whittemore lay in wait behind a stone wall for the return of the soldiers, the well-oiled pistols and muskets he had used in the wars with the French on the ground beside him. His spot was too close and he had been warned to take better cover, but refused. One thinks he might have chosen this better way to die after a long life. “He fired some half dozen shots at the enemy. He had just loaded his gun when he heard the wall rattle and saw five soldiers of the flank guard approaching shoulder to shoulder. Besides being eighty years old he was lame, and knew that it was no use to attempt to escape. With his musket he shot one of the soldiers, and, instantly drawing his pistol, fired at another. He aimed the second pistol and discharged it just as they fired at him; one of the soldiers was seen to clap his hand to his breast. As he fired the third time a ball struck him in the head, and he fell senseless. The soldiers beat him with their muskets, bayoneted him, and left him for dead. After the British had passed by, our people, finding that there was some life left in him, carried him to Cooper’s tavern, where the surgeon, Dr. Tufts of Medford, said it was useless to dress his wounds, for he could not live. He dressed the wounds however, and the old hero lived another eighteen years after this, dying in 1793 at the age of 98.”

The rebels continued to gather from all quarters as fighting had intensified through Menotomy. British ammunition was almost depleted. With the daylight nearly gone and faced with the more densely populated parts of Cambridge still ahead, Lord Percy was forced to make another crucial decision. Abruptly, he changed direction and moved his columns for the peninsula of Charlestown and the cover of the guns on British ships.

The great historian David Hackett Fischer, summed up that first day with a poignant clarity in his book Paul Revere’s Ride. With the provincial militias following close at the heels of the regulars, “on Boston’s Beacon Hill, crowds of spectators could see the muzzle-flashes twinkling like fireflies in the gathering darkness.”

This story got started last winter. I was out shoveling snow. There was at least ten inches on top of the four that had dropped the day before. The morning was as gray as stone and the snow was smelling sweet, like it does when it’s been snowing long enough to clean the air and the daylight hasn’t poked a finger into it yet. I figure it was about 6 am. No traffic. No sound but a street plow maybe two blocks over and the scrape of my own shovel. There was a light in Doddy Parker’s bedroom window and the yellow of it was brilliant inside the colorless hollow before dawn.

Up the street where the snowplows had made things passable I see a big fellow coming who walks like someone I know. He’s got his parka closed over his face and a spume of breath trailing him.

He says, “Hey John. Been looking for ya.”

It’s Ricky Haven’s voice. I say, “I haven’t moved for a week. What’s the problem?”

He says, “I got a story. Kind you’ll like.”

I’ve only done about twenty feet of Doddy’s driveway, but I could use the breather and I prop myself against the handle of my shovel.

“What’s up?”

Ricky shrugs, “I’m on my way to work. Gotta open for the boss. He’ll never get in from Concord with the snow and all. Can’t stop for long, but I’ve been meaning to tell you about this. You’ll like it.”

“So what’s it about?”

He pulls the opening in his parka apart a bit more so I can see he hasn’t shaved his fat cheeks.

He looks back and forth. “Why ya over here? I thought you lived in that place on Perkins.”

You have to be patient with Ricky. He works his own way. I tell him, “Doddy had another heart attack in November. He can’t do his own drive anymore. So tell me the story before I fall asleep here.”

Ricky pulls at the opening in his parka again. “You’ll like this. It’s great. It’s like one of those Halloween episodes they do every year on television cop shows. You know? Where the cop picks up the plastic skull from the leaves in the gutter and says, ‘Hey. This isn’t plastic! This is the real thing.’ And then they trace it back to a kid who’s been selling bones to all his friends and they get the kid to tell them where he got them and it turns out to be right in the kid’s basement. Only the kid lives next door to me and its Paulie Perry and I’m his godfather so I get to hear the whole deal and its great. He’s a good kid. He just did what anybody would do. It fell in his lap, you might say.”

“What did?”

Ricky takes a full breath and I get my hopes up that he might get it all out in one go. “Paulie can see right off that the bones are old, so he’s not stupid. He figures there wasn’t any murder going on or anything. These are real old bones. But Halloween is like two weeks away and he needs a little pocket money. There were like a hundred bones down there. More. All wrapped up in some kind of cloth behind the foundation. Paulie’s dad, Nick—you know Nick. He was the goalie who—“

“I know Nick. So what about Paulie.”

“So Nick had to pull some of the old granite blocks out of the foundation of his house to reset’em before winter. They get water in the basement. I get it too but not so bad. Nick’s been complaining about water in the basement since—“

“Ricky. You have to open up for your boss. Get to the punch line.”

“Yeah. Well. Paulie goes down there to see what’s going on when his dad ain’t around. You know. And he sees something odd in the dirt behind where the granite blocks were and digs at it with his finger. The way kids do. And it’s the edge of some kind of cloth. So he pulls at it and the dirt collapses and the bones fall out right into his lap. Scared the shit out of him. Really. Messed in his pants. He wouldn’t say it if it wasn’t true. A pile of bones right in his lap! If it was me I would’a had a heart attack. Right?”

“Right.”

“Cool as hell. Happened just before last Halloween. I’ve been meaning to tell you about it. It was in the papers so I figured you heard about it anyway but I know how you like all that historical stuff and I got some more dope on it after. Nick has been calling the people at Harvard every week.”

“Why Harvard?”

Ricky puts his hands up in the air like it was obvious. “Looking for a little cash back. You know. The bones have to be worth something. Right? They were on his property. Right? The cops gave the bones to some woman at Harvard to look at. A professor. Talks like she has a tooth that’s been taken out and the cotton is still in her jaw. Woman named Sawyer. It turns out the bones were from a woman and a guy. The professor came over and they dug out more of the dirt next to the foundation and they figure that there was an old well there. Nick’s house was built in the 1890’s. Just like mine. They dug a trench for the granite foundation back in 1890 and didn’t notice anything. But there was an old well there before. And that’s why he gets so much water. And now his problem is solved. They put in some pipes—“

“Ricky!”

“Yeah. So. She finally tells Nick a couple of weeks ago that the bones were from the Revolution. Some time like that. The professor says it looks like somebody dumped the bodies down the well and then a lot of gravel and other crap on top of that. And guess what? It was a murder after all. Both the man and the women were stabbed to death. By a bayonet. Like on the end of a gun. Just like my dad used in the war. A friggin bayonet. Both of them. I don’t know how they can tell something like that. Do you?”

“No.”

“So it was a murder after all. Only they won’t catch the murderer now. Right?”

“Right.”

“Cool, heh?”

“Yeah. Thanks for telling me.”

“Yeah. I thought you’d like that.”

“Thanks.”

“Later.”

“Later.”

So I know Becky Sawyer. Rebecca isn’t as pretty now as she was when we were in school, but she has style and she’s handsome enough. The stiff jaw came later. I think her first husband taught her that. I made a play back when, but I wasn’t her type then I guess. I’ve bumped into her a couple of times since. She’s divorced and remarried. She’s the first person to tell me I was stupid for wanting to teach high school history. She was right. I would have been better off at a college where you can keep your distance from the students and say anything you damn well please as long as you aren’t a Republican and you remember to use footnotes.

Anyway, that was then. This was now.

The next day I went down to Harvard. Rebecca is in a building right next to the museum there. In fact, that’s how we happened to bump into each other one other time. I like the Blaschka glass flowers at the museum there, as well as the other old displays. Stuffed animals. Whale bones. Polynesian boats. They remind me of being a kid. All the wonder. All the questions. Museums aren’t the same anymore. Everything is bright and shiny now. Just a lot of answers. But when I was growing up, museums were dark and gloomy. Full of questions.

I think that may be the reason I look at history the way I do.

Rebecca was in her office with a student so I sat down on a window ledge in the hall and read the book I had in my coat pocket until the kid comes out and I go in. Becky went wide-eyed. Let me tell you from the start that I know her second marriage isn’t going very well. She did a lot a smiling where I wasn’t being very funny.

The two best words in the French language are décolletage and lingerie. I have never seen Becky’s lingerie, but I had always been taken by her décolletage. She still made good use of it even in a blue wool suit.

She’s cut her hair short, of course. That’s the ‘independent woman’ thing to do. And she’s wearing glasses pretty much all the time now, but she took them off as I came in the door. Reflex I guess. She had them on again inside a minute. She asked me what I was up to. I hit the big items first and told her about my divorce. This made her shift in her seat. I swear. Then I told her I had quit teaching and was working in an office shuffling papers. This all happened before I started working security with Connie, remember. But still, that dampered the fires in her eyes a bit.

After the preliminaries I finally tell her about talking to Rickie and ask her about the bones. She sat up straight again for that and turns around in her chair. She’s got one of them right there on a shelf behind her in a box. The skull of the woman.

She pulled the skull out and held the jaw up to the top part and moves it like it’s talking. The teeth are missing at one side and she even does a Boris Karloff lisp that seems to fit. “You came over to ask about me, a woman who’s been dead for two hundred years, and here’s this beautiful creature, sitting right here, very much alive, who hasn’t heard a peep out of you in what? Eight years?”

This is Becky. She does a wicked Peter Lorre as well. I corrected her calculation. “Nine.”

She waited for more from me. I just smiled. I wasn’t interested in going back. Not then. I hadn’t met Des yet, and I was lonely enough for it, but I wasn’t ready to be going back for anything I’d left behind. I figured that was real history.

After a bit of uncomfortable silence she finally says, “So what can I do for you?”

“I was curious. That’s all. You know, I raised my kids in a house near Mass Ave in Arlington just over from where the British soldiers killed Jason Russell on his own doorstep. But I was full of all that kind of stuff from the first day I could read. When Rickie told me you were investigating the whole thing with the bodies in the well, I just got curious.”

She smiled. She nodded. She smiled again. I tried to guess what the thoughts were.

She says, “That’s you, John. Always curious. Well, I’m sorry to say, I’m not really investigating anything anymore. There’s nothing much left to investigate. It’s all just a lot of history now. Mary here—that’s her name by the way–Mary Andrews.” Becky fit the skull together again in her hand and held it from the bottom, turning it to face me. It had a questioning look to the eyes. “Mary lived in a house about forty feet from the well. There’s another house there now, right on the exact spot. But we’re pretty sure it’s her. She disappeared. On that very day: April 19th, 1775. She simply disappeared. The family wrote letters to everyone for miles who might know her, looking for her. They’d been separated in the rush to get away as the British outrider’s came through. But she never turned up. And she had a distinctive feature. She‘d lost a finger in a kitchen accident and that was mentioned in several of the letters as an identifying mark. The index finger on her right hand. And this poor woman had the same finger missing. So we think it was Mary. Killed, and dumped down the well.” Becky set the skull down carefully atop the papers on the desk in front of her. “And maybe more. Maybe worse. I wrote a paper about it for an academic magazine but they haven’t taken it. We found scraps of clothing. Buttons. A few bits of leather. The man was fully clothed when he was killed, but she was naked. Both were killed the same way. Direct thrust from the front. Ribs broken and clearly marked. So I tried to imagine what happened. I speculated that she’d been raped. There was a barn close by. We know that. She might even have been hiding there, foolish girl. As you know then, the British outriders who came through Menotomy that day were charged with clearing out snipers and making the way safe for the retreating soldiers who were coming back from Concord and Lexington. It was bloody all around. Officially there were only about 25 colonials killed in the area. Maybe 50 in total. But the records were poorly tallied. There was more than one missing person. We found that much right off.”

This was the stuff I had hoped for. This was the kind of thing that had been sitting in the back of my brain for years.

I told her, “I read the Fischer book, Paul Revere’s Ride. I’d like to read more about it.”

“A good book. But there isn’t enough written about that retreat. They say about 40 British troops died on the way, but I’m certain there were more. And the man killed with Mary was not a soldier. He was not even a man, I think. Probably just a big healthy farm boy. We don’t know his name. So many boys ran off to fight and some were never heard from again. And then there were so many indentures that were broken. The war was a good excuse for those who could get away from a bad indenture. He was clearly a farmer by his boots and his straps. He might even have come to the sound of her screaming and been killed by her assailant. Or assailants. There are accounts of gang rape at the time. Mostly in Boston, but they happened. Any soldiers caught at such things were often hung to keep discipline, so they would have hidden the body. Both bodies. And there were other things in the well. Even parts of a slaughtered pig and glass from a window. My guess is they tried to hide the evidence. And then the well was abandoned…Here…” She pulled the side drawer of her desk and fingered the files until she came up with a thin sheaf of paper. “Take this. It’s a copy of what I wrote.”

She was not leaving anything to chance. She wanted me to know she was interested. It made me hesitate just a bit before I took the copy.

I asked about the letters. She had found two of them at the New England Historical Society and they referred to even more being written. The family was distraught over what might have happened to the girl. Then, Becky ripped a page off a pad on her desk and wrote down some notes so that I could find the letters again if I went into the Historical Society looking for them. She did that first, and then she asked, “So why do you want to know about all this John? You have a purpose. I know you John. You always have a purpose.”

I shrugged a little to try to lighten the answer up a bit. But I was committed now to giving her a serious answer.

“I’m writing again.”

She waited for me to say more. I was just not ready with the answers.

Finally she said, “Good. Good. I told you that you ought to keep at that…Remember. What happened to that piece you were doing about the glass flowers and Leopold Blaschka and his son?”

I told her. There was no good in hiding anything. “I gave up. I got lost in it. I think I didn’t understand the father. I think he was just too European for me. That, and my high school German failed me.”

She ran her tongue over her bottom lip and took one of those long deep breaths meant to let you know she was thinking all kinds of serious thoughts. But then, she probably was.

“But at least you’re writing again.

“Yeah. You told me I should. And you told me a couple of other things. Remember?”

“No. I don’t. What did I tell you?”

“You told me not to write fiction. Remember that? ‘No novels.’ That was your advice. If I was going to have any standing as a historian, I should stay away from the fiction. But that’s all I’m up to now Becky. I’m writing stories again.”

She nodded, but the smile faded a bit more.

“I suppose it doesn’t matter now. Does it? You aren’t looking for a career at a university anymore, are you John.”

It was my turn to smile—anything to soften the truth. “Never was. That was all you. Not me. You wanted me to do that too, but it was never the thing for me.”

She sat back and looked every bit the professor I had first seen from the door earlier.

“History is so much more interesting than fiction John. You have to admit. Look at this woman. Look what we’ve found. That’s history!”

I gave the pause an extra half-second. I didn’t want to be arguing with her now.

“What you have here is just the bones Rebecca. All you found were the bones. The story you told me is fiction…Good, isn’t it? It’s the story that makes those old bones talk.”

She smiled with amusement then, as if there were something humorous to it all.

“Well then. Here we are again. Back at the old argument. Back in what? 1978 or thereabouts?” She looked at me as if I was supposed to say something but I knew it was better to keep my mouth shut. Then she says, “But I guess that’s history too, isn’t it?”

I could have accepted that without comment. But I didn’t.

“Yeah. I guess it is.” I held up the sheet of paper she had given me with the reference to the archive at the Historical Society. “But this is a story. This might be something to work with. And I like what you’ve imagined, Becky–what might have happened to Mary Andrews. Would you let me use that? I’ll even put in a footnote for you if you’ll let me use it.”

She took a breath. It wasn’t a hesitation. More as if she were relieved over something.

“Sure. It’s yours to use. But forget the footnote. My life has too many footnotes as it is.”

The story ended up being a bit longer than I had anticipated. A few thousand words grew to 40,000. The insurance office where I was shuffling papers was in the Pru and I was taking late lunches and running over to the Historical Society for an hour and a half or so every day. My boss didn’t like it but I was working late as well and they needed that too so I got away with it.

I was writing in the mornings, five to eight. Maybe a thousand words a day. I didn’t have a social life anyway so I just went to bed a little earlier. It only took a couple of months. I polished up the first draft by the end of April and then looked around for someone to read it.

My oldest daughter got first crack. Susie is a hardnosed critic. She doesn’t let me get by with much. But I was wondering if she’d recognize the character I had fashioned around poor Mary Andrews. People never see themselves the way others do. I was betting that she wouldn’t notice a thing.

She called me the next day after she got it.

“You didn’t have to kill me off, did you? Couldn’t you let me enjoy a little love affair without paying the ultimate price?”

So that was that. The important thing was that she liked it. Her sister Sarah read it next and wanted to know right off if I had chosen the name ‘Mary’ for the victim as a psychological replacement for their mother. I had to convince her that I had used the real name to give the story a little verisimilitude. Sarah is a detail person. She always suspects me of the worst when I start using long words to explain myself. She’s usually right.

At least I had a story. It wasn’t the first one I had written since the divorce, even though I was pretty sure it was the best. But I wanted to be sure I had the details right to a knowledgeable eye. I worked out a few kinks that Sarah had noticed and corrected some Eighteenth Century grammar. Then I sent the manuscript to Rebecca Sawyer. That was around May Day.

Of course, I understood that it was the end of the semester and that she might be busy. I waited. Around June 1st I called her office. Becky was gone. She was on an archeological dig in the Mohawk River valley near Utica. She would be gone for a least a month.

On July 3rd she called me.

No ‘hello, how arya, howse the kids.’ Her first words were, “Did you do more research on this before you went into your reverie of speculation?”

“A little bit.”

“How sure are you that the family were loyalists?”

“Positive. It’s even in those letters you found, but it’s only subtext.”

She let a moment of silence pass as an expression of doubt.

“It reads well. I like it.”

“Good.”

“Can we talk about it over dinner?”

“When?”

“Tomorrow.”

“Tomorrow is the 4th.”

“So it is. Do you have to play with firecrackers? Your kids are grown up, aren’t they?

I tell her, “Yeah. Tomorrow’s fine.”

She says, “Where would you like to go?”

I say, “How about Memorial Drive.” I say that because that’s where I was planning to go anyway.

She says, “Where’s that?” I suppose she thinks it’s the name of some kind of restaurant.

“I mean the street. On the Charles River.”

“You want to eat on the street?”

“Sure. There’ll be some great food along there. All the lunch wagons will be out. And we can watch the fireworks.”

She thought about that a moment.

“Can we talk? Will it be noisy?”

“It’ll be very noisy. But we can talk anyway. Come on. I haven’t gone to see the fireworks since before Sarah went away to college. And Matty won’t go with me anymore. You’ll like it. It’s great.”

I put the entire conversation down in my journal five minutes after I hung up the phone because I thought it was a little odd. This was a woman I had spoken to only once in the past nine years and that was six months before, and now she’s talking to me on the phone like we see each other every day. It worried me.

Rebecca lives in a time warp. She always has. It’s disconcerting. During the school year I suppose she has her benchmarks to keep track of things but other times she seems to forget about the cycles of the sun.

We only went out for a few months when we were in college. There were not many places to go in Amherst during the winter. Not in 1978. I remember we hung out at the bookstore a lot. Becky studied compulsively. I was trying to write my first version of the great American novel while getting credits for my degree in History. It didn’t make for a creative relationship and by the end of the semester she was gone as a volunteer on a dig in Virginia. We never made it as far as the dormitory.

When I bumped into Becky years later at the Natural History Museum at Harvard and she told me her life story up to that moment in under five minutes, I had some sympathy for her husband. We went over to Bartley’s for burgers that day. But I don’t remember the conversation. We were both unhappy with our marriages but I don’t think the subject came up. It was a hot day and I do remember her décolletage.

This July 4th was hot as well. The humidity would have made clothing optional if there were not so many cops along the way.

The sun hadn’t completely set when we started walking down the river from the Harvard Bridge. I figured that would give Becky time to rip my little story to historical shreds. Instead she seemed almost calm.

She said, “I feel like I’ve been doing this for too long…Another summer. More field work. August up at my parent’s old place on Isle Au Haut. Then another school year. Time passes very quickly when you aren’t paying attention.”

Those were the facts. Even I had noticed.

“Sometimes I think my kids grew up all in one summer.”

She laughed at that.

“It’s true. That’s it. When I look back on my childhood it feels like one long summer with barely any interruptions.”

“Sounds like a good childhood.”

“It was.”

Then she reached out and took my hand. Caught me by surprise.

Almost immediately she said, “So why haven’t you gotten married again.”

I looked out over the small boats on the Charles River all making their way down to get a good spot to see the show and wondered how I was going to move the conversation over to poor Mary Andrews before I lost the chance.

Rebecca said, “You don’t have to talk about it. I just wondered. I think I wanted to know if it was the opposite reasoning to what made me marry Leonard. My second husband.”

I mustered a voice, “What was that?”

She shrugged. “Loneliness. That’s all. A kind of compulsive loneliness. Like eating all the chocolates in the box. I can’t stand the loneliness. And now I feel it even with him in the room.”

Well that was that. I couldn’t argue. Mary Ellen and I spent the last years of our marriage that way. Of course, it meant the kids got a lot more attention, but it was a common enough thought at the time. Now, I had most of that pretty well buried. You keep busy. You write a story and make up something better. Read a book. Call one of the kids. Fix something. And here was Becky wanting to do a little archeology.

I told her my first thought on the matter. “I feel sick when I feel lonely. I don’t like it. But I’ve been in that room myself—with someone only a few feet away. That was worse. So I just keep busy.”

She squeezed my hand.

“What’s the answer for it? After seventy-five thousand years you’d think we’d have an answer for that.”

Too quickly I said, “We do.”

“What’s that?”

Then I had to say it. “Love.”

That stopped her in her tracks. Becky didn’t look up at me. She looked out at the water. She said, “Sex is so ephemeral,” and seemed ready to say something more but didn’t.

I had to correct the course of the conversation a little, “I didn’t say sex. I said love.”

She repeated, “Love,” but with a dubious tone.

So I told her a thought I had once.

“A few years ago, I read the autobiography of a nun, St. Teresa of Avila. She–.”

Becky suddenly let go of my hand and turned at me. In the twilight her frown seemed fierce.

“I didn’t know you were religious.”

Another correction. “I wish I was. But I’m not. Not that way. In fact I was reading about her to understand the nature of religious devotion. I knew somebody once–.” I stopped at that. There was no good it talking about that mistake.” But I mention her because St. Teresa said quite a bit about love. When she spoke about love it had nothing to do with sex. And in that strange way when you’re reading something totally at odds with your own experience it makes you take a different angle, it helped me understand something I only understood vaguely. Only as a father. And sometimes as a writer…I think it was what Bernini was trying to capture about Teresa in stone.”

That seemed to puzzle her. “You mean in Rome? I saw that once. I can’t quite remember it.”

I tried to explain it better. “It’s rather too grand. Framed by marble pillars and topped with that ornate cap of carved stone. But I had a little postcard I picked up in the shop there. Just the statue itself with the angel. The very idea of ecstasy. It made me examine my life looking for some moments of that. And I found them. But it had nothing to do with sex.”

“Really?”

“Really.”

Becky took my hand again. The muscles in her own hand felt harder now. There was a little sweat there.

“Love…Is that what ecstasy is?”

“I think so. It’s not by way of explanation or definition but more by comparison.” I hesitated then before I made my move. I didn’t hesitate long enough. I said, “I was trying to capture a little of that with Mary Andrews.”

She dropped my hand with a bit more emphasis.

“Ha! You just want to talk about your damned manuscript. That’s all this is…Ecstasy my foot! You’re trying to avoid the subject of the moment. That’s all you’re doing.”

“I was just trying to connect the two.”

“Sure you were. You were just scared to death I was going to go all stupid with you. That was it. Wasn’t it?”

“No. Maybe a little. I’m not sure that would be so bad.” Like a coward I fled my position on the battlefield and ran back toward the rear lines. I took her hand back. “Didn’t you ever feel that when you were a kid on Isle Au Haut? Islands do that. They can bring everything to a focus. No place to run. You’re all at once lonely and in heaven.”

The muscles in her hand relaxed a little.

“Yes. That’s right.”

I had pulled the island out of the hat. I’d only spent a few days of my life on an island and this was not a memory as much as a daydream.

For the next couple of hours I got her to talk about her childhood. She seemed to enjoy that. By the time we got on the subway at Kendall Square she seemed pretty much at ease. The problem was, she was giving me the eye. Her husband was away at his own family home in New Orleans. It seemed he spent all his time there now. And she had her own ideas for this evening. And there I was taking her home.

I didn’t get her to talk about the manuscript until we were having coffee the next morning. She launched into it all on her own.

“Let’s talk about your little reverie then. I liked it. It makes sense. I think you’re right about the British Regulars. They wouldn’t have tarried to rape a girl with a running battle going on. I don’t know why I let that idea even come into my thinking. Maybe just a modern prejudice about war. I like your idea of Mary coming back to an empty house. With her parents temporarily fled for their loyalist sympathies and her alone with no place else to go. She was the oldest. She must have had a boyfriend. It makes sense. The neighbor’s son is an obvious choice and he might well have come by to check on her. And I’m sorry I missed the fact that her father Izak Andrews had been married before and this was his second wife. Mary was the oldest child by quite a bit, wasn’t she. The other five children were not even in their teens. She must have been the child of the first wife. That would make her role doubly difficult in a small house. They would want her married. And then, if she were fond of a boy who did not share their loyalist sympathies, that would make matters even more difficult. I agree with all that. But I’m not sure of the indentured servant. Your Paul. Remember, this is not a casteless society. Not even like it was just a generation later. If the fellow who was killed and thrown in the well with Mary was indentured, then he had some value to his master. True? And he had no hope of supporting a family on his own. He would have had guarded feelings for the girl at best.”

I defended myself the easiest way I could. “But it could have happened. People fall in love for no good reason.”

A smile flitted across Becky’s face. “They do that.”

I fled that position again. “After the battle there would be more than a few British muskets left behind. And of course the rebels had few bayonets on their own weapons yet. If the father were to return under the cover of darkness and find his daughter in bed with his revolutionary neighbor’s son, his rage and pride might have been enough to make him kill her.” Becky frowned. I did not let her protest. “The neighbor’s son would run away. Jump from the window if he could. He wouldn’t believe that Mary was in danger of her own life…and that would leave the servant to defend her. Poor fellow. Too late. And having killed his daughter the father might worry he needed a scapegoat and certainly wanted to eliminate any witness to his act.

She raised both eyebrows critically. “Very messy.”

I shook that off. “Murders are seldom planned. The father acted in rage using the weapon he had found in the bushes along the way. Among his various jobs he had been a metal smith. I established that at the Historical Society. That and the fact that they moved away soon afterward. But he was running a tavern then. He certainly was strong enough. The second wife would come to his defense because he was the only source of security for her and her children. It was she who wrote those letters to their friends looking for their lost daughter. Not the father.” Becky’s eyes widened with recognition. I pursued that, “And you have to admit, they were cold. Even by eighteenth century standards they were coldly written. Like they were searching for a lost dog. But they needed some explanation for her disappearance, didn’t they? And with the servant missing as well, people would jump to their own conclusions, after the well was covered over.”

Becky smiled. I think I’d won her over.

“That was a good catch. The letters were very cold. I should have noticed that.”

“Anyway, it makes a good story.”

My dad was a ‘Sligo man.’ I was not sure what this meant other than the example he set himself, but we always believed it. He never put a foot in Sligo until he was seventy-four and then he was dead the next year. But his own dad was born in Sligo and we supposed it was an idea of what a man should be, and what we should be—a standard that my dad had grown up to believe in and he tried to pass on to us.

It just didn’t take with me.

My brother Teddy is probably as close to that standard as anyone left now, but not the whole package. Not that much at all, now that I think of it.

I remember the day I first stood eye to eye with my dad. I was just back from college, in my third year, and he came in the door from work.

The Fore River Shipyard was still open then and he was a foreman. An ‘outside man’. He was too big to work in close quarters. The day was cold and his cheeks were burned red with that and with the many swipes of the wool sleeve of his heavy coat against his nose—a bad habit my mother teased him over.

That would have been about Christmas, 1977.

I was on my way out already, having kissed my mother and washed my hands and face at her command. I had someone to see. Probably Connie, because he had not gone away to college himself.

Dad came up the back steps at a bound and I met him on the level at the top. And there we were, eye to eye.

No hello. Just a “Where you off to?”

I said, “Out.”

He said, “Did you see your mother yet?”

“Yes.”

“Then stay a moment and watch me take off my shoes.”

I probably heaved with impatience. That’s me.

He sat down on that stool at the back by the stove. Mom keeps a geranium there now, right on the stool, in a clay pot.

He bent low at the waist and untied his boots. Slowly. Waiting for me to speak first. Always giving me the chance. And me not taking it.

Then he sat straight. I had collapsed by then in a chair by the table.

“You’ve grown some.”

“Yes sir. Or you’ve started to shrink.”

That made him smile.

“Things are alright at school?”

“Alright.”

“They sent a note, you know.”

“Geeze.”

I had been skipping a required class. An English class taught by a woman who hated men and never lost an opportunity to make that clear. I was weary of Virginia Woolf and Gertrude Stein. I had tried to get into another class instead, but I had missed the chance.

I said, “I’ll make it up. I told the dean. Next semester.”

“Your mother was worried.”

“Yes sir.”

I fidgeted and heaved another great breath of impatience.

“You’ll be back for dinner?”

I said, “Yes, sir.” But I wasn’t. That was the cause of the ruckus later on.

I got back at nine. My dinner was on the table with a bowl over it. Fried pork chops. I could smell them.

Dad heard my knife and fork against the plate. He had the Herald still in his hand when he came to the doorway and stood there to watch me. Not a word. A Sligo man doesn’t do a lot of talking.

I stopped eating, of course. Finally self conscious at what I had done.

I said, “Sorry. I couldn’t catch a ride. We went down by Paragon Park. Connie had to leave early and suddenly I didn’t have a ride.”

“Park’s closed.”

“There’s a pizza place there.”

“You said you’d be home for dinner.”

“Just a slice and a coke. Just a hangout.”

“Connie went home to dinner. I called over. He answered.”

“You called! You called?” I was outraged. “I’m not a kid anymore.”

Dad’s face didn’t change.

“Not your body, anyway.”

I said, “That’s embarrassing.”

He offered a slight shrug. “Sure it was. I felt terrible. And for your mother too. But we’ll get over it.”

“God damn it!”

Of course I had said it without thought, yet it was exactly the wrong choice of words. A curse and an affront to God all in a piece.

He wanted to hit me just then. I could see it. But he knew his own anger and kept his fist on that. He wanted to shake me. He wanted to get through to the lout I was. And he had no way. He never hit me. Nor Teddy. And if we were beyond shame, then he had no hold on us. I imagine the frustration of it must have aged him where he stood.

I saw a breath come. It occurred to me that I hadn’t seen a breath since he came to the door. I remember the thought and a certain feeling of wonder at it.

I said, “I’m sorry.”

He answered, “Tell your mother. She’s the one you hurt.”

I got up then at long last and went in to see her. She was already crying. She was crying at what she heard. The tone of voice, not the words.

That might be one more reason I married Mary Ellen. She’ll cry at the tone of a voice. Words won’t do that trick.

Mom stayed in her chair, her back to the door, hands folded on her book. She looked up at me over her shoulder as I came through. There was the tear, at the edge of her eye that we all lived in dread of. She looked away.

She said, “I understand…You’re young.”

Long ago, ‘I was young.’

The all-purpose excuse. And when I did the same sort of thing so many times again through the years, what was the reason then? All the times I came home late because there was something ‘important’ to do. Or never showed up at all.

I can see Mary Ellen with her homework papers in two piles on her lap and me smelling of cigarettes and beer. Only she wouldn’t leave a plate for me on the table.

With English tests you have to be careful of the spelling. There is grammar. You have to read every word and catch some semblance of an idea purposely expressed as well. When I was teaching history, I just scanned the papers for key words: 1066, Alfred, William, Hastings–That’s an A. Next…Mary Ellen always thought it was unfair. I did the homework for my students in forty-five minutes. She took two hours. She was right. It was unfair to my students. That’s one reason I quit.

Mary Ellen asked, without looking up, “Where did you go?”

I said, “To Cleary’s, for a beer.”

She had a red pencil in her hand, but it didn’t move. “Sarah was looking for you.”

I said, “I’ll go talk to her.”

Mary Ellen never looked up. It was if she was ashamed to. As if my carelessness was somehow her fault. She said, “She’s asleep now.”

“Was it important?”

“Everything is important when you’re seven.”

Everything is important when you are thirty-seven. I just didn’t want to know it.

I should have been there. I remember thinking a Sligo man would have been there.

I just didn’t listen.

Teddy listens. He can sell cars faster than anyone you ever saw and do it all day long because he listens. I’ve been over to where he works in Norwell more than once and seen it. I’ve watched. He’s like Dad, the way he listens. The other salesmen talk.

Dad had a bad back. Sometimes he would even sit on his stool to eat his dinner, just to avoid the lower chairs. He said it was because he liked the warmth of the stove and he got chilly. But that was a small lie. One of the few. He had a bad back and he didn’t want anyone to know. It was an infirmity.

Often, he would come to the kitchen door and stand, with his forearm braced against the doorframe above his head, and he would listen to us talk. Listen to me talk. Listen to Mom. And he would never say a word unless he had to. That was a Sligo man.

I was just thinking, as I wrote this, that I have seen that posture on a man somewhere else. And it has just come to me. In the movies. Dad’s favorite movie star was John Wayne. His favorite movies were The Quiet Man, and The Searchers. He didn’t like TV all that much and didn’t go to the movies very often but Teddy won a prize his first year at the Ford Dealership. A VCR. And he gave it to Mom and Dad for Christmas. That would have been around 1984. Something like that. Mom loved it. She got to see all the movies she had missed. It was her toy. Dad would watch from the doorway, behind mom’s chair. With most movies he was gone by the second act and out under the light in the garage fixing something. But if she wanted him there beside her for the whole time, she could just play one of his favorites and he would hang there, as if suspended by that arm against the top of the doorframe. And now I realize that it was a pose that John Wayne often held. Only with dad, it was no pose. It kept his back straight.

I suppose he was ‘a quiet man’, then. But that does not stick to him the same way in my mind.

He was seldom unhappy. In fact, I would say he was generally a happy man, with a ready smile—a small smile at the edges. Never the wide grin. He was always self-deprecating. When something went wrong it was always his watch and he should have seen it coming.

The unhappiest time I recall was during a strike. He did not like his union. He called them thugs. But he liked his job. He did his job well, and when there was a strike he could not go to work and spent the days in the garage making a new molding or fixing some old thing ‘that would be better thrown away’ as my mother would say. During that time, Dad didn’t speak at all it seemed.

Only once in my memory did he raise his voice. I know it happened more often than that, but I can only remember once.

He took us fishing that day. We were out by Peddocks Island off the end Hull near where the tide rushes through. We had gone there many times. But this time some idiot in a big stink-pot cabin cruiser came roaring through the gut with too much speed and we could not get our little boat around fast enough. The wake from the stink-pot hit us broadside and the three of us were suddenly fighting for balance in that small awkward space. Teddy and I both thought it was a great treat. But I was the one who thought it smart to rock the boat even further, just for the ride. I was a great fan of the ‘Giant Coaster’ at Paragon Park. I stepped into the cradle of the motion. Only I was stupid with my timing. Dad had just righted himself. Now that I think of it, his back muscles must have wrenched to keep himself upright. His fishing rod flew into the air like a catapult.

“Jesus Christ God Almighty Damn.”

You don’t forget it when it’s said with enough emphasis to echo off Peddocks Island twice before it dies in the drone of the passing boats on a Sunday afternoon.

But when you are small–I mean eight or nine–a Sligo man is one who cuts his own lawn with a hand mower. He paints his own house. He washes his own car, (with your help). He wears boots more often than shoes.

I spoke at his funeral. I got the chance to say some of this then, and mentioned how I felt about our Sligo Man. Afterward, Mom came and took my arm. She has that way of bringing a moment with her. She watched my eyes to see if I was listening. And she said something I did not know.

“He only meant it as a disparagement of himself.”

I never knew that. I couldn’t speak with the realization. How do you address a lifetime of simple misunderstanding?

She said, “And his father had meant the same by it when he called himself that. It was just another one of his self-deprecating remarks. He would never brag on himself. You know that much.”

“I know that.” I should have known that.

She said, “To him it meant to be quiet in the face of troubles. To lay by and not speak up or bring notice to yourself. Your granddad left Ireland ashamed that he had never spoken against authority when the opportunity came or then against those who were willing to kill their neighbors for their beliefs. He did not feel he belonged in the company of those who had.”

I had never understood. I had misunderstood for all of my life.

And now, at 52, all of that is so far away. Another country on another continent.

And I do not want to be a Sligo man.

There were four feathers on the inside edge of the bar. Each of them were gray, black and iridescent in different ways. Pigeon feathers. They reminded me of a story. Not the Updike. The Mason. They weren’t white, but that’s just the way my mind works.

So I asked the bartender about them. He said some woman had been sitting there earlier and left them. He was going to keep them aside until closing just in case she came back.

She didn’t come back.

He was wiping things down for the last time and I folded my money on the tab and I asked him if he’d let me have them. He nodded.

I put them up into the edge of a picture frame I have in my room. The picture is a joke. My oldest daughter came by to visit one time and later she sends the picture to me because my room is so small. It’s the picture van Gogh did of his bedroom in Arles.

I have to admit, the chair and bed are just about the same. But I think my room is smaller.

I put the pigeon feathers up in a row across the bottom, evenly spaced. It gave that cockeyed picture a touch of whimsy it didn’t need, but it entertained me. There just wasn’t a lot like that in my life right then.

One week later–a true August night with the air baked still and the streets empty except for those of us who were too stupid to be gone–I was in the same bar. For the same reason. The job was killing me. I really needed a hard drink, but I usually settle for the beer. They have the local brews on tap and I sample them one by one. I can watch the ball game through to the end that way. There was no TV in my room. No air-conditioner for that matter.

Before I can order the bartender says to me. “You still have those feathers?”

I say “Yeah.”

He says, “Can I hav’em back? The woman came in the next day lookin’ for’em. I told her you come in sometimes on Fridays. She said she works late on Fridays, and could I get’em for her.”

This kind of put me off. Partly because he didn’t apologize for his mistake. Maybe just because I liked the look of them up there in the frame. But probably because I could tell this woman had some curb appeal. Most bartenders won’t make a lot of effort for just anyone. And I wasn’t even going to get to see her. And then too, possibly because I can get a little stupid sometimes.

There are at least six different bars between my office and the subway entrance. I had chosen this one for no particular reason. I did not feel any special attachment. The TV picture was nothing special.

So I said, “I don’t think so.”

He gives me a scowl. “Why not?”

I said, “I like them. I’ll keep them.”

He sets the empty glass in his hand down with a real knock. I guess he had picked it up for me in the first place.

I said, “See you later.”

Now I knew my reasons weren’t all that good, but that’s the way I felt about it. I get to do what people tell me to do all frigging daylong, five days a week. There was some little pleasure in saying no. Afterward, I felt bad for the bartender. He was just trying to get along, same as me. I wasn’t making his life any easier. But it was done.

The next Friday I’m in a bar about a block away. It’s the middle of the game and I’m into my third beer.

Someone taps me on the shoulder.

I knew it was the woman who left the feathers the instant I turned around. Women don’t tap me on the shoulder all that often, you know. Besides, I always wear the same cap my kids gave me for Christmas more than twelve years ago and I’m not a small guy.

She says, “Can I have my feathers back?”

I gave her a thorough look. I didn’t miss much that wasn’t covered.

Then I said, “No.”

“Why?”

“I like’em.”

“They’re not yours.”

“They are now.”

She tilted her head sideways at me. It was more a pose than anything. I could tell she wasn’t thinking a whole lot. She was angry…She was gorgeous.

She said, “What is it with some people? Why be an asshole?”

There are a lot of ways to answer something like that. Witty ways. Thoughtful ways. Humorous ways. Stupid ways.

I said, “Tell me why you want’em.”

She said, “None of your business.”

I said, “Okay then,” and turned back to the bar.

You know how it is with beautiful women. They get their way. They’re used to it. The smart ones even know how to play off other women who are less fortunate and jealous of their looks. They learn how to do that when they’re just out of diapers. My youngest daughter does it without a thought.

The woman stood there. I could feel her anger radiating in her body heat.

She says, “Why do you want them?”

Her question was right in my ear. I didn’t turn around. She hadn’t answered my own question. I could’ve demanded that she answer me first. But that didn’t seem the way to go.

I told her the truth, “They’re beautiful. They remind me of a story. They fill up the room with the story. I like that.”

She just stood there. Not a word. I waited and sipped my beer. The Red Sox gave up another run. Maybe a full minute passed.

Then she said, “You ought to trim the hair in your ears. It’s ridiculous.”

So that kind of broke the situation down. It gave a little perspective.

I said, “You want a beer? The Red Sox are getting their butts kicked.”

She hesitated. Then she sat down. I put my index finger up for the bartender.

She says, “What story? Updike?”

“No,” I tell her. The Four Feathers. A. E. W. Mason.”

She says, “I never read it.”

I look sideways at her. She has the profile. She’s going to get old someday but her nose will never hit her upper lip.

I said, “You haven’t been a sixteen year old boy with ambitions to wander in deserts, prove your courage, and fight for love.”

She glanced back. This wasn’t as sure a glance as I expected. She was worried about something.

“No. I never was.”

The bartender set down a glass of the same tawny ale I was drinking. She held it up, kind of looking through the color. She held the glass with her fingertips so her fingernails sort of bit the glass. Women do things like that to draw your attention. Makes you wonder about the feel of those nails on your skin.

I gladly interrupted the thought. I said, “It’s all in my head now, of course. You get to a certain age and it’s all in your head or it’s not. You can’t make it up anymore.” She was sitting there real quiet then. I expected some repartee. You know. Women just don’t sit down in bars with strangers without a few lines ready. But she didn’t say a word. For my part, I was well beyond most of that. I haven’t yet picked up a woman in a bar that I can remember. Not for lack of trying. They just don’t get excited when I start talking about Raymond Chandler or Joseph Conrad or whatever I’m reading at the time. And I’m not about to spin my wheels over some broad who probably can’t tell me why she likes Patrick O’Brian better than C.S. Forester. Women always like O’Brian better. At least that’s the way my daughters think. I’ve had that argument but I always like to hear them explain it.

Finally she says, “What do you do?”

Legitimate. Reasonable. But not what I expected for some reason. I expected her to get back to the damn feathers.

“Office work. Whatever they have.”

“Why?”

“Child-support.”

Now this covered a lot of ground without much explanation. There wasn’t really a story there anyway. Not worth telling. So I just left it.

She’s quiet again. I can’t tell what she’s thinking now, but I make up a scenario of possibilities. I decide she has it figured that I’m just a divorced loser with an attitude, who reads books to escape from the mundane reality that has him pinned to the boards. At least I hope she’s thinking that because it would mean she’s smart and it’ll save a lot of time talking about the ugly details.

She says, “Why don’t you teach?”

I had to think about that. It was an odd question under the circumstances. How much was I going to say?

“I taught for twelve years. I hated it. It’s not one of my talents.”

She says, “Why don’t you write, then? If you write your stories down, you wouldn’t have to steal other people’s feathers.”

She’s good. She’s thinking it through real quick. I had a friend who always said ‘those who can’t do, teach, and those who can’t teach, write.’

I tell her, “I did. But my stuff didn’t seem to hit on the right nerves. I write too slowly. It takes a lot of time and doesn’t pay the bills.” Now she knows enough. Now I want to know something about her. I ask, “Now you tell me this: why did you sit down?”

She sipped at her glass, nodded a bit, and licked some foam off her upper lip.

“Just curious. I wondered why you wanted those damn feathers.”

I gave that a nod. “So now you know. Talismans of lost time. Relics of religious wars. Symbols of self-made myths.”

She smiled. It was a real smile. At least I had humored her.

She said, “Maybe. Maybe you just wanted them because they were left behind and it made you wonder what their significance was in the mind of the woman that left them…You like imagining such things I’ll bet. And then you liked what you imagined and you didn’t want to lose it.” She looked at me. She knew she was right. She wasn’t looking for confirmation. “What was the story you imagined?”

This was more than self-assured, I thought. It was really smart. And it was begging me to ask why she had the feathers in the first place, all while placing the onus on me. My middle daughter does that kind of trick all the time. She’s gotten better at it since she started college.

Right then I was also wishing I was ten years younger and still had the balls left to make a decent play here. This was the kind of woman I could get serious about real quick. It makes you wonder about the perversity of life. Everything is timing, they say. I married a woman who taught high school English in the room next to where I was failing to teach history, just because we both liked the rice pudding in the cafeteria. She never wanted to do anything else. She’s a sweetheart, but she imagines grocery lists and color coordination and when to put the winter clothes away. I dragged her all over Eastern Europe after the Iron Curtain fell in 1991. She was miserable. She didn’t want any part of it. The streets were dirty. The sewers were backed up in Budapest. Who cares where the hell Dracula once lived? With the same money we could have bought an above ground pool for the back yard for the kids for Christ sake…All that’s in your head, and you have to find a simpler answer.

“Okay. I’ll tell you. And I’ll tell you first so you don’t think I put it together from the evidence that’s sitting right here beside me. But then you have to tell me the truth. Tell me why you want the feathers so bad. Don’t game the situation.” I took a deep breath for emphasis. She squinted at me. I think my preamble irritated her. Good women hate to be presumed upon. So I started in on it anyway, “I imagined you were a good ten or fifteen years younger. Early twenties. Not in love but wishing you were. A little lost. Full of pretense. Maybe the type who always wants things bigger than they are and has started to settle for second best. And you found the feathers over in the park on a bench. A kid had left them there. And it made you remember your own childhood and the dreams you had and the way you used to collect little things to mark the dreams, like bookmarks. And you realized you’d made a wrong turn. You were reminded of the person you wanted to be and that now you were forgetting about, what with all the demands from college and family. The feathers reminded you of your own promises to yourself.”

She sat back. The squint was gone.

She said, “Damn.”

I said, “Damn what?”

She blinked. “Damn you.”

I think I saw a little circle of light flash there in her eyes. She was very serious.

I said, “I’m sorry.”

It was all I could say. I wasn’t sure which part of what I had said hit the mark, but it was enough.

She sighed. Then she took a long drink on her glass. Nearly emptied it.

She turned to me all the way on the stool when she put her glass down. “I’m not that old.”

I shrugged. “I figured you’re about thirty five, thirty six. That’s a lot younger than me. Why are women so touchy about their ages. It’s no big deal.”

She said, “How old are you?”

I look every bit of it so I told her. “Fifty-two”

She nodded. “I turned forty last week. That was the day I got the feathers. I was sitting in the park, watching those kids. I don’t have any kids. You know? But I wanted them. And then time went by. It just flew. And there I was, forty years old and this little girl came right up to me where I was sitting. I heard her mother tell her they had to go home and she had to leave the feathers, but she came over and gave them to me instead. They were my only birthday present…And I wanted them back.”

A cut of the light told me definitely there was a tear there and she turned away then because she saw that I saw it.

I was done.

I said, “They’re yours. You can have the feathers back.”

But she shook her head. She said, “It’s too late. There’s another story now.”

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