Chapter 41: Daughters

I reached the McB-- plantation on a bend in the James just about sunset, feeling very proud of myself since I was about halfway to Portsmouth. I had a good horse under me and had rearmed myself with the weapons I had used all during the Revoltuion, tools my hands knew well. Now if I could promote a hot meal and a warm woman for my bed, it would be an almost perfect day. Long and bloody, but almost perfect. On my way south I had given the Ranger camp a wide berth.

I left my horse with a young groom at the gate of the long stable and walked to the farm house's back door, carrying my rifle. A black woman sat on the back porch, smoking a pipe.

"Evenin'," I said, leaning my weapon against a post. "This the McB-- place?"

"You did see the sign?" she said in a kind of question, pointing toward the setting sun.

"Can't believe all you read," I told her.

"Uh huh, thas' true. McB--s live here. Who wants to know?"

"You the doorkeeper?" I asked.

"I'se the everything," she said.

"Oh, well, I was hoping to get something to eat and maybe a dry place to sleep."

"You was?"

"Um, and maybe some information, 'bout what them British soldiers are up to."

"What British? We ain't seen no British, jus' a bunch a'horse thieves in green coats. Is they British?"

"Probably," I said.

"Who you talking to out there, Dora?" asked a woman's voice from the back door. I could not see anyone in the interior gloom. It might have been a bit early for candles or lanterns, but it was getting dark fast.

"Stranger, Miz Sarah, looking for a free meal."

I stepped up on the porch, introduced myself and said that Charlotte B-- had suggested that I might find help at this home.

"Did she?" said the still-disembodied voice. "Lotty, my-my. Well, come in. Let me light a candle and get a look at you. You're a new one."

"I've been down in the Carolinas with General Greene," I said, wiping my feet on an old piece of carpeting and stepping into a small, back room, a plantation office or library I guessed. The woman brought a taper from the front of the house and lit two candles.

"Sit down," she said, pinching off her thin taper's flame. She was a mature woman, thirty-some, who looked as if she might have borne several children judging from the spread of her hips. "I'm Sarah McB--. My husband was with Greene and then Gates up north." She waved and swallowed. "He was killed near Saratoga in '77, on Freeman's farm. How is Miss B--?

"Oh fine, very well," I said.

"Dora," called Sarah McB--, "bring us some of that chicken and the loaf of bread and some butter. Do you drink whisky?" she asked me.

"Sometimes," I said, "with some water perhaps."

"Had some visitors recently who didn't drink anything; Baptists, Methodists, Quakers, I don't know what they were." She poured several inches of bourbon into two glasses and sat opposite me.

I sipped. It was first class drinking whisky. The black woman, still puffing her stubby pipe, arrived with the food, put it on the small table in the middle of the room, sliced some bread, sniffed and left to resume her seat on the back porch.

'She's been with this family a lot longer than I have," the woman said.

"Are all the men away?" I asked.

Mrs. McB-- studied me over her glass. "Why do you ask?" she said, a small tremor in her voice and some doubt in her eyes.

"I'm a scout, ma'm, under General Von Steuben, and I was looking for information about the Rangers and other British units down this way, lookin' for some help."

"Are you?" she said, finishing her drink and setting her glass down carefully. She pushed the platter of food toward me. "I've eaten," she said. "you must be careful who you talk to. The country is full of Tories and most of the men went off long ago to fight, back in '76 or even before, except for those loyal to the king. So if you find any men that are not really very young or very old, they are unlikely to be for independency."

"That sounds like good advice," I said, around a bite of chicken leg. "Have they bothered you much since Arnold arrived?"

"Some, we lost a few horses. They say that he's confiscating slaves down in the Tidewater, and we heard he caused a lot of damage in Richmond, back in January. We've haven't seen them often, once or twice, Simcoe's men I think."

"Can you suggest somebody that could show me around, help me keep from putting my foot wrong?"

"Well I could do it, but we've got this place to run. Old Mr. McB--'s, my late husband's father, he's dying. I've got four children; the oldest is ten, be eleven soon, and twenty-some slaves to look after."

"What are you growing these days?"

"Tobacco, of course, that's what we know, most of it pledged in fact, but we've got two barns full now and no room for more. We smuggled out several hogsheads a while back, year or so, but they've bottled up the mouth of the Chesapeake lately."

"Corn, wheat?"

"More every year and grazing too. Beef generally brings a good price from the army, but the money's not worth much. Takes a hundred dollars in paper to buy a pound of sugar if you can find any. Often there's no salt to be had."

She poured us both some more whisky and this time watered it a bit. I ate another piece of chicken and some bread and butter. "Charlotte mentioned a fellow called Cartwright and somebody named Brandon, no, it was Simmons, Bobby Simmons at the Brandon place, somewhere down the river a ways. Do you know either of them?"

"No, no, but Lotty knew a lot of young men. I was busy having babies when she started courting the swains and playin' belle of the ball. I'm a few years her senior as I'm sure you can see."

I wiped my hands on my britches and downed my drink. "Thank you for the chicken," I said. "It was very good."

"Thank Dora when you see her. Cookin's not one of my things."

"I will. And could you put me up for the night and think on some names of men who might be helpful in keeping an eye on Arnold and his men. I'm headed for Portsmouth to check up on the fortifications and such"

"Yes," she said, standing and smiling. "Yes to both. Come."

I followed her up the wide staircase, wondering. She led me into a large and airy room with windows on three sides. The sleigh bed was huge, dark wood and quilt covered. The room held two tall wardrobe cabinets, a linen press and several other large pieces of furniture including three chairs. She invited me to have a seat and disappeared across the hall.

"Hasn't been a man in that bed for some time," she said, returning and closing the door. "The children are all asleep. You want to give it a try?" She turned the key.

"You sober?" I asked.

She took a deep breath and nodded. "Thank you for asking. Many wouldn't have bothered. I had several horny men try to get in my bed jus' after we learned that my husband had been killed, mostly neighbors' son with a eye on the land."

I rocked slowly in the large, comfortable chair. Now the day was almost complete. It worried me a little, things going that well. She came and stood before me, holding out her hands. I pulled her down to my lap and wrapped my arms about her. She rested her head on my shoulder, and we rocked for a few minutes.

"How'd you lose the finger?" she asked, rubbing the old stump.

"Can hardly remember. Trenton, long time ago. Feller whacked it off out'a meanness."

"Have you been pokin' Lotty?" she asked, kissing my stubbly cheek.

"Gentlemen never tell," I said, kissing her dark hair, my hands linked at her hip.

"You a gentleman?"

"Hm," I said. "Don't think I've ever been asked that."

"Well?" She wiggled, getting more comfortable while I got more aroused.

"Sometimes. I learned good manners, but for the last five years, I ain't used 'em much. I've been too busy killing the King's soldiers."

She unbuttoned my shirt as far down as she could reach, rubbed my chest some, gnawed at my neck and then helped me pull off my boots and stockings. "You've killed a lot of people?"

"Yep, two today, and this was a nice day, a fine, soft day."

"Who were they?"

"Soldiers, a Ranger officer, likely a Virginia gentleman who tole me he'd never shot nobody, and a militia man, who probably wasn't but a backcountry rouser. I'm a soldier. We're in a war."

"How'd you kill them?"

"Shot 'em."

"Where?"

"In an old tavern up the road, 'tween here and Richmond."

"No, I mean where did you shoot them." She finished unbuttoning her bodice and pulled my hand inside to cover her plump breast. It was warm and firm.

"You really want to know?" I rubbed her thigh with my right hand while my left ruffled the top of her shift. Her whalebone stays were a barrier between us so I pulled loose the bow at the top of her laces.

"Yes, please, tell me." She pulled my head down and kissed my mouth, hard and long.

"First fellow, he jumped up, and I shot him right above his nose." I put my forefinger on her forehead and turned it quickly. "Right there. Other man, the officer, he was running for the door. I shot him in the back, high up," I pressed with my forefinger, "probably blew his heart to pieces. He only kicked two or three times 'fore he stopped. I 'spect he was only about twenty years old."

"Did you have to shoot them?" she asked, wriggling out of my arms and standing, pulling off her dress and shaking out her hair.

I stood and helped her unlace her stays. "Yes, I had to. There were five of them and just me. They'd a'killed me. Tried to yesterday in fact, same bunch." I pulled my shirt over my head.

She had brought one candle upstairs with her, and it stood on a small table by the bed. Now she looked at my chest and touched some of the scars. "Five of them," she said. "What happened to the others?"

"I set two of them loose to go get help for a wounded man. I shot him in the shoulder; probably broke it to pieces."

She was breathing fairly rapidly as I sat on the edge of her bed and pulled off my britches and then my drawers. I felt happy that I was fairly clean for a change. Missy had seen to that. She had gotten me more baths in the last month than I had the whole year before.

Sarah McB-- stood before me, and I slid my hands up her legs and lifted her shift off as she raised her arms, standing as I finished and kissing her, rubbing her strong back. She had some broken veins in her legs and stretch marks on her belly, but she was a firm, handsome, hard-working woman and her breasts stood up proudly. I held her for a minute or two, letting our bodies get acquainted. Then we slid into bed and used our hands and mouths to do more exploring.

"It's been a while," she said when we both were sure it was time. "No hurry is there?" I had heard that old song several times and almost always enjoyed the tune.

We did not hurry and enjoyed each other thoroughly and then again to the point of exhaustion. She muffled her cries in my flesh or the bed clothes. In the morning she woke me with a kiss, her leg over my knee, doing a bit of questing with her fingers, tickling my balls.

"Morning," she said. "I thought of some names."

"Did you? I hoped you were just thinking of me."

"Hm, such an prideful man you are." She stroked me. "But then you have a good bit to be proud of, don't you." She stroked it where it stood.

"Um," I said.

"After all you shot two, no three, of the Kings' men yesterday, and you may get some more today."

"Um hm," I said as I rolled over, plowing the dead man's fertile field once more. We served each other's needs again, faster and faster, until there was a knock at the door and a small voice crying "Mama." We separated, panting, aching.

At breakfast she introduced me to her children, a bright and handsome group, all lighter-haired than their mother. She made me a map, wrote out several names and gave me a letter of introduction to a Williamsburg lawyer. I thanked her, shook her older son's hand, thanked Dora for the good food and was on my way south again before nine o'clock.

The first name on her list, Booker Forest, proved to be a one-armed man who was about my age. He had the look of a soldier, the posture perhaps. He fed me and we talked for a while. He had lost his arm at Brandywine and since I had been on the edges of that battle, we exchanged memories. The doctors had cut off his arm in the same house where Lafayette was being treated for his wound. He could describe the shade tree out front and the smell of the place so well that I knew he had been there too. It made the old wound in my shoulder ache.

Mr. Forest had been married, but his wife and two young children died in a smallpox epidemic while he was in the army. He was eager to be of service, happy to be asked, and said that Arnold's and Simcoe's men had already visited his farm several times, leaving him without any riding or plow horses and burning his tobacco barn.

"I've still got a brace of oxen, good beasts but slow," he said as we walked through his orderly outbuildings.

"So you'll get a crop in?"

"With some help, hired hands or borrowed slaves. The British took my three field hands. Didn't free 'em, you understand, jus' took 'em, since I was labeled an enemy of the crown, thanks to my neighbors, bloody lot of Tories they are. Lord only knows where they'll end up, probably the Caribbean. I hear they took forty of Benjamin Harrison's best slaves, his prime hands, but then he was a signer of the Declaration, wasn't he."

"Wish I could stay and help you," I said, "but I don't think Cap'n Foster would appreciate it. Looks like good dirt."

"I've rigged a harness so I can plow with one arm, deep but not very straight." He smiled at me. "Oh oh, here comes company. You carrying anything you shouldn't?"

"Lot of cartridges and a Brown Bess that ain't mine," I said.

"Why'n't you go dump them in the straw, under the manure pile maybe, near the back of the barn, while I entertain these rascals."

Now I could see what he had spotted: three riders in green coming from the tree line, trotting across his stubbled field. I ducked behind the necessary and ran for the barn, hoping they had not seen us both at that distance. I grabbed my saddle bag off the stable partition, picked up the musket and placed them against the back wall and then forked some straw and rotted manure over them. Then I remembered my belt with the big bayonet and took that off and hid it too. I left the barn by the back door and walked to the outhouse, let that door slam and rejoined Booker Forest, hitching up my britches as if I had just been doing my business.

"And who the hell are you?" the Ranger sergeant asked me. He had climbed down from his horse and was standing with a thumb hooked in his waistcoat and a big pistol in is other hand while the men with him sat their mounts, looking patient and wary at the same time. All three horses looked healthy and well cared for.

I told him a name and said Mr. Forest was thinking of hiring me for the plowing and planting.

"Did 'e now? An' why ain't you in uniform?"

"Did my time," I said. "Maryland militia."

'You another damn, bloody rebel, are ya?" the sergeant demanded, poking me with his pistol and sounding very Tidewater in his speech. "Whole county's full of 'em, worse'n weevils. Or was you Eastern Shore?"

I shrugged and looked at my toes.

"We had orders to be on the lookout for a big farmer dressed like you," the sergeant said. "Where you been 'round here?"

"Other side a'the river," I said with a wave. "Just come across today."

"You men go have a look around," the sergeant said. "We'll be up at the house, 'avin' a drink an' a talk, won't we?" He took his pistol off half-cock and stuck it in his belt.

"Got nothin' left," Forest said. "Your men cleaned me out last week, took every jug. Less you want well water."

"Not pissin' likely. C'mon." The man led us to Forest's back door, said, "Siddown there," and went inside while we waited on the back stoop listening to him rummage around and break things. His two men came from the barn, one carrying a pair of chickens with their necks wrung, just as a big yellow dog ran from the back of the barn, barking and showing his teeth. The soldier with his hands free hefted his musket and shot the dog. It somersaulted and kicked a few times, making a bloody pool in the dirt, its head at an odd angle. Forest jumped to his feet, fist clenched at his side.

"What the hell was that?" the sergeant yelled from the back door before he saw the dog's body. "Lookit wha' I found," he cried, stepping out of the house with my rifle in his hands. "I think you's the one they was lookin' for, rebel, ain't ya?" He kicked at me, and I grabbed his foot and yanked. The back of his head hit the porch with a satisfying crack before he bounced in the dirt and dropped my rifle. I booted him in the side as Forest yelled something and dashed past me, straight at the soldier who had killed his dog and was busy reloading his weapon. I stomped on the sergeant's chest with my heel and then kicked him in the ballocks before I picked up my gun, cocked it, checked the pan and turned to see how Booker Forest was doing.

He had smashed into the soldier, knocked him down and was now sitting on his stomach and hitting him in the face with his fist. Reminded me of a fuller's mill - bam, bam, bam. The other man, looking astonished, had dropped the dead chickens and was sliding his musket off his shoulder when I shot him just above the ear, throwing him back several steps before he fell. a small, dark fountain pouring from his skull. Forest seemed to have his situation well in hand so I returned to the moaning sergeant who had turned on his side and was coughing up blood. I pulled his pistol from his belt, cocked the heavy thing and shot him in the back of the head. Those pistols were very accurate at that range. The shot set his hair afire, a foul smell.

The bloody-faced man Forest was still sitting on was moaning and mumbling, "please," and "please don't," his face a mess. I finished ramming down the load in his musket, slid the rod home, checked the priming and cocked it.

"You want to do it?" I asked Forest.

He stood and shook his head, rubbing his knuckles on his chest. "Go ahead," he said.

I jammed the muzzle of the musket into the man's mouth while he grasped the weapon with both hands and looked back and forth at both of us. "This is for killin' his dog," I said and pulled the trigger. He got to see the pan flash before the back of his head sprayed across the dirt and his body jerked once.

"What do you suggest?" I asked Forest, nodding at the sprawled bodies.

"River's less than a mile, and we've got horses now."

"I'll take care of it," I said. "You can likely sweep most of this blood away or cover it up. I had forgotten about this rifle in the house, sorry."

I went through the dead men's pockets, finding little, took their boots out of habit, tore the fancy badges from their jackets thinking they might be useful, got the pistol ammunition and ball mold, looped rope around their bare feet, tied two to one horse's stirrups and dragged the other behind the one I rode. By the time I reached the river and kicked what was left of them in, no one could have recognized any of them and their clothes were in shreds. I watched the bodies float away and led the riderless horse back to Booker Forest's small farm.