The Road to Bunker Hill

“Not that way, child!” cried Granny warningly. “Lord o’ mercy, Sally Rose, take care!”

Sally Rose stood by the huge brick fireplace in the raftered kitchen and stared desperately about her. In her hands she held a hot iron kettle full of molten silver-gray lead. It was too heavy for her to hold any longer, and she saw no place to set it safely down. Kitty would have figured out ahead of time what she meant to do with it, but not Sally Rose.

“Let me help you,” cried Kitty, jumping up from her place at the heavy oak table where she had been preparing the bullet molds while Sally Rose heated the lead. She reached her cousin’s side a second too late. The kettle tilted dangerously and fell from Sally Rose’s loosened fingers, just missing the yellow flames beneath. It lay on its side at the edge of the wide hearth, its contents spilling out harmlessly in a gray film over the rosy old bricks, sinking into the cracks between them.

“I’m sorry, Gran,” said Sally Rose contritely.

Granny sniffed. “Sorrow butters no parsnips,” she retorted. “Well, it’s no use crying over spilt lead, I suppose. That’s one batch of bullets will do no harm to the British. But it’s a mercy you didn’t burn yourself or set the house afire.” She straightened her muslin cap and smoothed her plaid apron with thin, blue-veined hands.

Kitty let her glance rove out of the window, at the gooseberry bushes in the kitchen garden and the moist brown seedbeds where Timothy had been spading yesterday. His old hickory-handled spade still leaned against the garden wall. No telling when he would use it again. Timothy had taken his gun and gone to Cambridge, and it seemed like half the town had gone with him. Even boys not much older than herself, boys like Johnny Pettengall. She still didn’t know about Dick, but then, Dick didn’t have a gun, so he’d probably be down at the shipyard, just as he always was. She’d make some excuse to go by there, later in the day. She wondered about the strange lad from up the Merrimack. Maybe, since the war was in Massachusetts Colony, the New Hampshire men would think they had no call to go. Still, with his keen eyes and sharp jaw, he looked like he’d be wherever there was a fight going on. She heard Granny’s brisk voice calling her attention back to the kitchen.

“I suppose you’d better run down to the gunsmith’s, Kitty, and fetch me some more pig lead—all he can spare. Sally Rose, you and me’ll get the bake ovens going. Uncle Moses Chase came by here awhile back, and he says they’re gathering supplies to send by oxcart—enough to feed the lads for a few days: hams, flour, meal, salt fish and cooked victuals; lint and medicines, too, in case—who told you to take your apron off, Sally Rose?”

“Don’t you think I’d better go with Kitty?” asked Sally Rose eagerly. “Lead’s apt to be heavy, you know, and—”

“What she can’t carry, the shop will send after her, I don’t doubt,” replied Granny. “Sally Rose, you start yourself for the flour barrels. Take half rye and half cornmeal....”

Sally Rose pouted. Kitty knew she was pouting, although she did not look at her. She tied on her new chip hat with the velvet roses, and hastened through the garden, into the street.

“Kitty, take off that hat and put on your old serge hood!” Granny called after her. “It looks like there’ll be a shower any minute.” Kitty pretended not to hear her.

She walked down the hill into the town, past Mr. Dalton’s mansion house and the Wolfe Tavern. People still loitered about in little groups, but last night’s excitement seemed to have given place to a quieter mood, uneasiness, anxiety, perhaps fear. The shoemaker stood in front of his gabled shop, a wooden last in one hand and a strip of purple kid in the other, talking to a grizzled old man who peddled clams in Water Street.

“No, we’ve heard no more,” he was saying. “No more o’ the Concord Fight, or our lads that marched away. Whole colony’s up, though. Half Essex County’s gone, the stage driver says, and the men way out west beyond Boston are moving in from their side. Hope to squeeze the British in between.”

“Aye,” said the peddler. “The Hampshire lads has started across the river, too. Some by ferry, and some with smacks and dories, and they say there’ll be more. The word’s gone inland, way beyond Rockingham.”

“You mean they’re going to make cause with us and fight the King’s men?” asked the shoemaker, twisting the strip of purple kid in his hand.

The peddler nodded. “They’ve long been sworn to. And everywheres now, them as was undecided whether to go Whig or Tory has got to make up their minds. You’ll find things’ll be different, now blood’s been spilt.”

Kitty walked on, and the words echoed disturbingly in her head. The street sloped sharply down to the water, with shops along both sides—the milliner’s, the baker’s, the butcher’s—shutters down and doors wide open, just as on other days, but nobody seemed to be buying anything. Most of the shopkeepers, like the shoemaker, had joined the uneasy groups in the street outside.

The gunsmith’s shop was in a narrow lane behind the church, and when she reached it, she found its door tightly barred and a crude sign dangling from the latch. Gorn to Cambridj till further notiz, the sign said.

She stood there uncertainly for a moment, and looked about her. The soft gray sky seemed to match her own mood, uncertain whether to pour down rain or let the sun shine through. Between the houses she could see the waters of the river, a darker gray. Not all the men had followed the gunsmith’s example, for busy crews were working about the wharves and slips, hammers rang from the shipyards, and the tall chimneys of the distillery lifted their plumes of smoke, just as if it were an ordinary morning. Somehow the sight reassured her. She’d go and look for Dick, she thought, and make sure that he hadn’t run off with the Minutemen. Then she’d go home and tell Gran about the gunsmith, take off her hat, and get ready to help with the baking.

As she passed the sailors’ boardinghouse in Chandler’s Lane, she noticed Eben in the backyard chopping wood, and she called to him. He straightened up, looked at her for a minute, then put his ax down and came over to the board fence.

“What are you after, Kitty? ’Tisn’t no use looking for Dick,” he said.

“I don’t know that I was looking for Dick,” said Kitty tartly, chagrined because Eben had read her mind so plain. “But now that you speak of him, I don’t suppose he’s off for Cambridge, too?”

Eben nodded solemnly. “Ye-a, Dick’s gone.”

Kitty felt shocked in spite of herself. “But how could he? He doesn’t have a gun.”

“He’s got a tomahawk,” said Eben. “Tomahawk they took out o’ his great-grandmother’s head when the Indian tried to scalp her up in Haverhill in ’96.”

“Why, I know that old thing,” cried Kitty. “It’s duller’n a hoe. We played with it when we were children. Might as well try to fight with a warming pan!”

Eben shrugged. “Colonel told him to come along,” he said. “Told him there’d be men there was poorer armed, he didn’t doubt. Said the courage to go and the feet to get him there was all he’d really need.” Suddenly he fell silent. He looked down at his own bare feet and stubbed one great toe in the moist earth.

Kitty felt a little shaken. So Dick had gone off to fight the British. Dick, that she’d played with when they were toddlers and he lived in an adjoining house on High Street. How excited they had been, that day when they first found out they were big enough to scramble back and forth over the low fence. And now he had taken his old tomahawk and marched away, a man with other men! And she was left here to do Gran’s bidding, just as if she were still a little girl. But she did not feel like a little girl. She felt sad and tremulous and excited, as if she had the weight of the world on her shoulders, and still, a little happy in spite of it all. Maybe this was the feel of growing up. Maybe last night when they played hide-and-seek had really been their last night to be young, though they hadn’t known it then. Mostly, she thought, we never know when we do anything the last time.

She suddenly realized that a soft rain had begun to fall, cooling her checks and gathering mistily in her hair.

“Eb—en!” shouted a buxom woman from the back steps of the boardinghouse. “Take in my washing off the line! Step lively there!”

Eben muttered, and his face burned crimson as he walked away.

Kitty looked after him for a moment, and her heart stirred with quick sympathy. It must be hard for Eben to be left behind to do such humble chores while his friend had gone off to war and been accepted as a man. The soft drizzle turned into a downpour. She thought, belatedly and with some alarm, of the roses on her hat. She turned and hurried back to Market Square and up the hill, walking with her head bent because of the rain, trying to shield her finery with one lifted hand. So it was that she did not see him until they almost collided under the tavern sign that hung on a long pole high over the sloping street. Then she caught her breath and stepped back, and looked up into the eyes of Tom Trask, the logger from Derryfield.

He stood there, bareheaded in the rain, and he wore the same hunting shirt and moosehide breeches, but he was not smiling now, though his gray eyes lighted with recognition.

“Playing games on the dock tonight, Miss Kitty?” he asked her, and in spite of his sober face, his voice had a teasing note in it.

She smiled and shook the rain from her lashes. “How did you know my name was Kitty?” she asked him.

“Heard ’em call you that times enough—last night, I mean, whilst I was looking on.” His eyes smiled now, but his mouth remained a thin line. He seemed to be waiting for her answer.

“No,” she said. “We’re not often so silly, and besides, I doubt if the rain will stop. And even if it did—there are hardly enough of us left to play.”

He nodded. “I seen two o’ your friends marching off last night,” he said. “All our crew was asleep on the raft when the bells begun to go, but when we got into town and heard the news, ’twas no surprise. I was over to Johnny Stark’s sawmill just before I started down river, and he said he figured Boston had stood about all they could o’ the British, and the British had stood about all they could o’ Boston. Said he expected to be taking his gun down any day. Well, if he’s got the word, he’s likely there, him and the rest o’ the boys, and I aim to join them, only—”

Kitty could feel her hair turning dank and the raindrops thickening on her lashes. She thought of her sodden hat, and sighed inwardly, but she made no move to excuse herself and leave the stranger.

“—only I left my musket at home in Derryfield, and the gunsmiths here ain’t doing business today. Has any o’ your menfolk got a spare gun, Miss Kitty?”

She hesitated. He held out his lean hard hands with freckles on the backs of them. “I suppose I could use these on the varmints,” he muttered. “But powder and ball’s the quicker way.”

“There is a gun in the barn loft that belonged to my father,” she said slowly.

“You speak like your daddy’s dead,” he answered, not looking at her.

“Yes. He drowned in the river just below here, not long after I was born.”

“I don’t remember much o’ mine, either. Killed when we took Quebec in ’59. Shooting shoulder to shoulder with the British then we was, and now we’re shooting at ’em.” He shrugged his lean shoulders. “Well, I’d sure like to borrow your daddy’s gun, if your mother don’t object none to the idea.”

“My mother’s dead, too, and Granny would likely make a fuss, but I don’t think we’ll ask Granny.”

Kitty had finally made up her mind. “Come on,” she said, flicking her fingers lightly against his sleeve.

His fingers were not light when they gripped her arm. They were sure and steady. Together they walked up Fish Street and turned right to pass the Frog Pond and the new training green. He strode proudly along with his head up, but he did not talk to her. Instead he whistled a plaintive air she had never heard before.

When they got to Gran’s neat clapboarded house, she guided him through the front gate and along the garden path, half screened by lilac bushes growing thick and tall.

A small whitewashed barn stood at the rear of the property, but Granny kept no livestock any more, and the inside of it smelled clean and musty like an attic, with no scent of dung or hay. The loft had two tiny windows set high under the eaves, but no other light, and it took Kitty a few minutes before she could make out the old gun hanging on the wall between a moth-eaten lap robe and a long wooden fork for pitching hay.

“There it is,” she murmured, pointing, breathless and a little proud.

He strode forward and pulled down the short, thick-barreled gun. When he spoke she caught a note of dismay in his voice.

“An old blunderbuss,” he murmured. “An old blunderbuss! Looks like the one Adam must ha’ carried when they driv’ him out o’ Eden.” He peered into the flaring muzzle. “Might shoot, at that. Don’t believe I’ll try it in here.”

Groping around on a shelf, Kitty found an empty powder horn, which he took a little more gratefully.

“There’ll be powder enough where I’m going,” he told her, “and I better be getting there.”

The rain tapped steadily on the shingles overhead, but the tiny window that faced westward showed a streak of blue sky. Carrying the old blunderbuss carefully, he moved toward the ladder that led below. Uncertain what to do or say, Kitty stood and stared at him. He paused and turned toward her.

“I’ll take good care o’ this,” he said, “and I’ll see you get it back when I don’t need it any more.” He took a step in her direction. Suddenly her throat began to hurt, and she felt as if she were going to cry. He took another step. “I’ll make sure of it,” he said. “When I get to camp and can set down for a spell, I’ll cut your name and the town where you live—right here on the butt.” He tapped the end of the thick gun. “And then, maybe somebody else will send it home if I don’t—come back this way.”

He took her by the shoulders and kissed her quickly on the mouth.

She gulped and felt the tears slip down her cheeks. Under his hands her shoulders were shaking.

“But I aim to come back,” he said. He scrambled down the ladder and away. Like Dick, he had the courage to go and the feet to get him there, and she was left without so much as a window to wave him good-by from, and how could he put her name on the gun when he did not know her name?

It came to her suddenly that she had to run after him and tell him her name was Catherine Greenleaf. If he didn’t know it, he’d never be able to send her father’s gun back to her, and she wouldn’t want a stranger to keep her father’s gun. Dashing the tears away, she stumbled down the ladder and ran through the lilacs where she met him slowly coming back. He looked down at her and smiled.

“Come to my mind that a thing you do for luck, you must do three times,” he said. He bent and kissed her again. Then he turned and ran through the front gateway.

“Stop, thief!” yelled Granny, tapping furiously on the parlor windowpane. “That’s my son’s blunderbuss! Call the watch! Call the constable! Call the sheriff! Stop, thief, stop! Come back, come back!”