Brookland (14 page)

The minister, from the same institution that had failed to convert Matthias Winship, never arrived. Word soon came from Boston that this Reverend Mr. Crowley had been thrown by a spooked horse only a week after receiving his calling, and had subsequently died of internal bleeding. On hearing the news, Roxana said, “It's a sign from the Laird. Now we'll never have to go.” But Prue felt a yearning for the church. She hoped it would be less grim than her grandfather's, which she remembered all these years later; but part of her thought, if she was as dire a sinner as she had always suspected herself, and as Pappy had called her, it might be best to learn how to amend her behavior.

Mr. Whitcombe apparently wrote back to Boston right away to request a replacement; and was informed, in due time, that a newly minted Reverend Mr. William Severn would arrive in Brooklyn as soon as he could tie up his father's estate. “More tragedy,” Roxana commented, shaking her head. “It's what churches bring.”

In November, while loafing out by the retaining wall with both her sisters, Prue chanced to hear Losee cry, “Over!”

She looked out to see him hunched over his oars and approaching his pier, with a gray-haired passenger and a number of crates sinking his boat low in the water. Tem was chewing on a sliver of birch bark, and Pearl was barefoot in the sloppy sand on the far side of the wall, her feet and lips pale blue, starting to search for mussels for their supper. They
both looked expectantly to Prue, as if it were hers to give permission to run up to the ferry.

“Give me the bucket,” she said. “Where are your shoes?”

Pearl lifted her hands in ignorance and slung the bucket, empty but for her neatly folded jersey, over one shoulder.

“If you aren't too cold, it'll be fine.”

Pearl nodded.

Tem and Prue were wearing their work britches; Prue assumed Pearl's bare blue feet would attract no more attention than this. She disliked taking her out in public when she did not have her slate at hand, but if they waited, the commotion would blow over without them. They went up along the Shore Road, Pearl's feet at first leaving damp half-moons of footprint.

Losee, meanwhile, was shouting for wheelbarrows and, when the Winship sisters arrived, was as red-faced as a steamed lobster. A couple of Joe Loosely's stable boys were standing by with the barrows almost dangling from their lazy hands.

“Next time, I'll charge you double fare for all that rotten detritus,” Losee was saying. “And you'll have to pay Loosely's boys, they don't work for free.
Godverdomme!”
A waiting passenger handed down a cup of water from the bucket. Losee said, “Thank you,” took a sip, and splashed the rest over his inflamed face. The passenger in the boat recoiled slightly, with an expression as if he had a dried pea in his shoe.

“With all due respect, sir, there will not be a next time,” he said. His overcoat was threadbare, and he was wrapped nearly to his knees in a patched russet muffler. “Had anyone bothered to tell me Brookland did not adjoin New York, I should not have betaken myself to the latter.”

“No one bothers to say what's common knowledge. Unload, boys.”

“He don' wanna pay,” said the smaller of them.

“I shall compensate you fairly.”

“A man can't take the stage to a place can only be reached by water,” Losee added.

A crowd was gathering, so the Winship sisters slipped up the open stairs to the dock. The children of the neighborhood had a sixth sense for unrest, and the end of the Ferry Road was clotted with young Luquers, van Suetendaels, Cortelyous, and Livingstons. Ben and Maggie
Horsfield clambered up the stairs right behind their friends; and a pod of speckled harbor seals heaved themselves onto the nearby black rocks, their whiskered faces glistening as if with interest as they wagged their heads.

“Where are we taking these?” the small boy said. He staggered under the weight of the first heavy crate.

“To the parsonage.”

Losee broke out in a grin. “The new minister, have we? I'm sorry, then, I was so taciturn while I rowed you over; but it's hard work, you know, hauling such a load.”

“Indeed. Careful with that, there are plates inside,” he said to the larger boy. The minister held out one hand to Losee and removed his hat briefly with the other. “I am William Severn. Am I to assume you are a member of my congregation?”

Losee shook with him but said, “No, sir. Reformed Dutch.”

“Ah.”

“You know, your church isn't finished.”

As Prue watched him, she could see he wasn't such an old man as at first she'd thought him. His hair had perhaps gone gray from some shock, but it framed a youthful face. He might have been handsome, if not for the undershot chin. “Are you certain?”

Losee hoisted himself out of the boat, and put a hand down for the minister. “Only one church going up. The house is done.”

The minister climbed up as if unaccustomed to boats. Losee, by contrast, always looked strange on dry land, so hunched and powerful were his shoulders and bowed his legs from decades in the confines of his dory.

Mr. Severn said, “I closed up my late father's home with all due haste to come serve the people of this town.”

Mrs. Tilley moved toward him from the edge of the crowd. “Reverend Mr. Severn,” she said, “I'm Adeline Tilley. I own the shop up on the turnpike.”

“Pleased to meet you,” he said, still looking cross.

“We're pleased you've arrived; and we are so sorry for the delay in the church.” She twisted her apron nervously in her hands. The plain Livingston daughters, Patience and Rachael, giggled; they were surely thinking, as Prue was, that Mrs. Tilley hoped to snare the young minister for
her daughter. “I don't know how, but we shall find a place for you to preach this Sunday.”

“That's kind of you,” he said. As he tried to step through the crowd toward her, the wheel of one of the barrows caught between the planks of the dock, and the two crates it carried pitched onto the ground. “Dammit!” cried the boy who'd been wheeling it. The crates' nailed tops burst open, and as if they'd spewed forth candy, the younger children all surged forward, shouting, to inspect what was spilling out—an assortment of books, plates, kitchen utensils, and smaller articles, all packed in wood shavings. Tem and Pearl were subsumed in the melee in an instant.

“Hey!” called Losee. “That's enough, you little rag pickers!” But they continued to dig and exclaim. Joe Loosely came outdoors to see what the commotion was, and leaned against the stone wall of his tavern to pack his pipe.

Ben approached Prue, with his hands guiltily in his pockets. “Both your sisters in there?” he asked.

She said, “Yes.”

“Mine is, too.”

“Where's Isaiah?”

Ben shrugged his shoulders. “You know him, he doesn't like a squabble.”

Prue glanced anxiously back toward the fray. “Do you think we should get them out?”

“Undoubtedly. But you know, Pearl never has any fun.”

Prue had never considered Pearl's plight thus, but immediately realized he was correct. “I suppose she can't cause much harm.”

Losee and Mrs. Tilley began pulling the kids away. “Who is this—Maggie Horsfield? You should be ashamed of yourself! Rummaging in the possessions of your new minister. Where's your—Ben! Take this child home.”

Maggie said, “Sorry, Mrs. Tilley,” with an inflection that suggested she called her something rude behind her back. Ben beckoned to Maggie, and she walked glumly out toward him.

Either her desertion spurred a more general one or the children had determined there was nothing titillating among Mr. Severn's household goods, for Losee and Mrs. Tilley at last succeeded in clearing them. Pearl's face lit up with a toothy grin. She stopped halfway back to pick a
splinter from her foot. “Serves you right,” Prue told her, but without much spirit. Pearl looked at her sister quizzically, aware of her equivocation. She pulled her bucket up over her arm again and pushed her wispy fringe back from her brow.

Mr. Severn's possessions were strewn as if an animal had rooted through them, the books and trinkets spilled alongside a trampled tablecloth, a lady's fan, a timeworn wooden bowl. Prue had not known the particulars of a life could look so sad as they did, tumbled on the dock of a foreign town. The minister was blinking as if to hold back tears, and Prue was suddenly ashamed of herself for allowing her sisters to behave as they had. Mr. Severn knelt uncomfortably, as if his knees pained him, and began to dust down his possessions and return them to their crates. Mrs. Tilley crouched just as clumsily; and even Losee, next to whom the new minister resembled a sapling, stooped to rectify the wrong, his face still rosy.

Prue expected the guilty children to run off, but they were as transfixed as she by the sight of three grown people working together so somberly. In the distillery, men grunted as they heaved loads, and shouted encouragement and taunts to one another; it was likewise with any labor she'd witnessed in the streets. These three worked in a silence that made the splashing of the day's calm river seem garrulous. One of the seals barked on the rocks, and others joined it in chorus. When the boxes were reloaded, with the boards that had so tenuously held them shut laid in alongside them, Joe walked down to his stable hands and said, “Take the minister's things up Buckbee's Alley. Be cautious of the ruts in the road, and unload as he asks into the house. You'll accept no gratuity for your service.”

“It is not the lads' fault,” Severn said.

Joe shook his large head. Prue was accustomed to seeing him drinking with her father; this dark expression was unusual but must have made clear to the new minister that Joe Loosely could be taken at his word. The crowd parted to let the wheelbarrows pass, and Mr. Severn wrapped his muffler tighter around his throat before following, his head bowed as if he could thus hide his blush. The boys steered up the paved center of the Ferry Road, and the rest of the neighborhood remained rooted to the dock. Prue caught Jens Luquer's eye, but he quickly turned away, engrossed
in the scratching of his nose, as he, too, ought to have been in the distillery. Patience Livingston, who spent her leisure time sewing homely garments for the poor, and who peered down her nose at children who wasted their free hours on pleasure, pulled her shawl up the back of her neck and ducked out toward the street. Ben said, “I'll take Mags home before she gets in trouble,” and, with a palm on her back, steered her toward their homestead.

Prue said good-bye to him; her sisters didn't acknowledge Maggie's departure. “Come,” she said, giving a tug to one of Tem's short braids. “The mash tuns are to be cleaned today, and Johanna will wonder what's become of Pearl's mussels.”

“Do I have to do it? My bones ache,” Tem said.

“You do. I'm sorry.”

She muttered, “I'm sure Johanna hasn't even noticed she's gone.”

Some of the Schermerhorns' workers were out on break from the ropewalk, and three of Mr. Remsen's slaves had his dinghy belly-up for repair on what was still called Butcher's Wharf, though Prue had never known a butcher to work there. She thought they had all surely seen the scuffle at the landing and were sending the Winship daughters their disapprobation. Pieter Schermerhorn opened the French door from his office to his balcony and stepped out for air; as if nothing unusual had happened, he waved to the girls as they approached.

“Hi, Mr. Schermerhorn,” Tem called out.

“Hello, Miss Temmy,” he replied. “Shouldn't you be at work?” He winked at them. “Where are Miss Pearl's shoes?”

“Don't know, sir,” Tem said, and began to giggle as soon as they'd passed him.

They all knew he envied their father; he was a bachelor, sharing the rope manufactory and his home with his widowed cousin, Wilhelmus, and between them they could not scrounge up even so much as a daughter or niece to whom to leave the thriving walk. At the distillery gate, Pearl pointed up toward their backyard privy and excused herself; Tem and Prue went to the brewhouse to find their father and finish their day's work. He and a dozen men were deep inside and bent over the first two mash tuns, scrubbing.

“Hi, Daddy,” Prue said.

He peered up from the great vat and wiped his sweaty cheek against his shoulder. “Long break,” he said, but he smiled at them. If he'd been indoors all that while, he wouldn't have heard of their adventure.

“We'll come in.”

“We're nearly done, miss,” said someone deep in the yawning tub.

Tem cried, “Woo-hoo!”

“Mind your manners, there. You've both done good work today. Go up and wash,” their father said. “See if your mother wants any help.”

Tem was watching Prue as they went outside, but Prue didn't want to risk saying anything. The fires were still roaring in the stilihouse. “Should we tell them about what happened?” Tem asked as they started toward the hill.

“I don't know yet.”

Pearl was down in the shallows, with her skirt drawn through her legs and tucked into her apron band. She was searching for mussels, and she beckoned frantically to her sisters. “We should help her,” Prue said.

“I don't want to pick mussels,” Tem said. “I'm exhausted.”

“Oh, come,” Prue said, and tried to lift her up, but Tem bore down and made herself heavy. Prue began tickling her, and kept tickling until she fell, yelping, on the hard-packed sand. Then Prue pulled Tem's boots off, and began running with them down toward the water. Tem quickly caught her, and brought her down; and when they'd tired themselves out, they helped Pearl with the mussels. Pearl looked annoyed by their antics, or perhaps, Prue thought, she was troubled by what she'd done that afternoon. If so, it would serve her right; on the theory her lot was difficult enough, their parents rarely scolded her, but Prue was glad if participation in a scavenging mob made a mark on her conscience.