Brookland (25 page)

“I'm turning all the rectifying over to you, beginning tomorrow”

“That isn't necessary. You've always said one day's feints can't ruin us.”

“If you do well enough,” he said, “I shall turn over the stillhouse also, and back down the line until the whole works is under your control.”

She sat down as well as she could on the pitched surface, crowding her legs up close to her chest, then pushed on his shoulder to force him to turn toward her. He did not look well even in the pinkish light shining in from across Manhattan. “This is senseless,” she said.

“One day, you shall have to run the manufactory without me.”

“When you're an old man.”

“I'm an old man now. I'm fifty-two years of age, and a number of the friends of my youth are long since in the soil. I want to make sure you're properly trained.”

“You've done that, these past dozen years.” As he did not respond, she asked, “What responsibilities will you turn over to Tem?”

“None, I think.” He smiled, and she could see one of his incisors had gone dark with rot. “Tem will never be your equal. She lacks discipline; she hasn't the knack for it.”

“I have six more years' experience than she. She will yet improve.”

He put his hand on the book she'd nearly forgotten she was still holding. “What's this?”

“I borrowed it of Cornelis.”

“He wouldn't be a bad match. He'll inherit this mill and the property.”

“But I'm not talking of marrying him. I'm returning a book.”

“Picked the feckless little Horsfield, didn't you? You'd have done better with Izzy. He's the heir to the farm, a valuable piece of land, and he'll make a good foreman, if you have need of him.”

Prue was uncertain how the conversation had taken this turn. “I'm not marrying anyone at present, and please don't call my friend feckless.”

“I'm sure you're right. He only seems so in comparison with his brother.” He patted the book's cover twice. “Return this to Cornelis, then, and we'll walk up together. I'm hungry for supper.”

She did as she was told, and did not tell Cornelis about the queer exchange with her father. “That's my girl,” her father said, when she returned to give him a hand off the roof onto the soggy bank. The light was fast descending; it would be winter soon enough. “You know I've always
felt you're the one most like me: the one with the head for business, and the one who loves a project.”

Prue felt a surge of pride tickle up her spine. Her father put his arm around her to warm her as they walked. Before she realized she was thinking it, she said, “I sometimes imagine you love Pearlie best.”

“Bah,” he said, “a man doesn't love one child more'n the next. Though I suppose he can keep a place in his heart for the one who carries on his trade.” He squeezed her toward him. “I do love Pearl differently. If you were a litter of kits, I'd coddle the one that was lame or runted, or blind in one eye. That's the one needs caring most. But it doesn't mean one loves it more or less.”

Over the course of that winter and spring, he absented himself from one aspect of the distillery's operation after the next, until at last, by the summer of 1795—when the United States Senate, to Prue's relief, at last ratified the treaty Mr. Jay had so skillfully brokered—Prue found herself in full command of the works, with generous help from Israel. This was the season in which yellow fever raged through New York, and Prue daily prayed it would not cross the water to Olympia or her slaves; and throughout the hot summer, only a few cases were reported in Brooklyn. Prue was twenty-three years old and uncertain of her abilities, but as her responsibilities increased, she rose to meet them, by dint of hard work, careful planning, and sleepless nights from which she rose wishing she could leave her mind in the kitchen when she went up to retire for the night.

One Wednesday evening during the harvest moon, Matty Winship went up to his Junto and did not return by the usual hour. Pearl had already scooped up her cat and gone to bed, and Abiah was asleep in her room off the kitchen, but Tem and Prue sat in the parlor trying to read the shipping news and watching the fire die down. “Must be quite a discussion,” Tem said. “Do you know what their subject was this week?”

Prue shook her head no. “He tells me nothing of it. I think he only goes because Mr. Horsfield thinks it's salutary.”

“Suppose he's drunk himself senseless.”

Prue could picture him sprawled across one of Joe Loosely's tables with his head on his arms. If her father had fallen thus into oblivion, she knew Joe would pile logs on the fire and wrap him in a blanket. “Should we go fetch him?”

Tem looked to the grandfather clock, which had recently wound through its ten o'clock chime. “It is late.”

“Come,” Prue said, and led her sister to the kitchen to put their boots back on.

The day had been one of the last of Indian summer, but the damp breeze off the river that night spoke November to the marrow of Prue's bones. The Ferry Road was quiet. The Livingston and Cortelyou chimneys were letting off only fine wisps of smoke, and no sound rose from the Winship or Schermerhorn slave quarters down by the river. The Liberty Tavern also sounded quiet as the sisters approached, though Prue could hear some men laughing, a distance up the turnpike. Joe and his wife were eating fish and chips in the barroom; they turned to the door when Tem and Prue entered. “Hello, girls,” Joe said. “It's late for you to be about. Annithing the matter?”

“We're looking for our father,” Tem said. Prue had immediately seen he wasn't there. “We thought the Junto might yet be in session.”

Annetje Loosely rose, wiping her hands on her apron. “No, that nonsense finished hours ago. Though they had a good book tonight—that British lady's
Vindication of the Rights of Woman
. Read it? I've not, but I hear it's sharp; of course, you girls already have some small bit of freedom, don't you? Well, I'm glad enough the men are discussing such things here in Breuckelen. I've some extra fish, if you'd like.”

From across the room Prue caught an expression of concern on Joe's broad face. “Was he drunk when he left?” she asked him.

“He'd had his fill. He hasn't been home, you say?”

“No. With whom did he leave? You look anxious, Joe.”

“Merely thoughtful.” He turned to his wife, as if she might help him remember. “They all left together, 's I recall. Your father, Horsfield, van Vechten, Luquer, De Bouton.”

Tem had both lips drawn between her teeth.

“I'll wager he's at the Twin Tankards,” Prue said.

“Or he went home with Israel,” Tem offered.

This seemed reasonable enough. “Or he's gone down to the works.”

Joe wiped his mouth and hung his napkin over the back of his chair. “I'll help you find 'im,” he said. “If he tumbled into a ditch, you'll need a man to get him on his feet again.”

The night was overcast, and Prue had not thought to peruse the sides
of the Ferry Road as they'd walked up; but she thought she would surely have sensed if her father were lying there. She tried to calm her heart, but it seemed it would jump until he was home safe.

Joe took his coat and escorted them out into the road. He would check the Twin Tankards while they knocked up Israel Horsfield. As Joe turned onto the pike, two drunken fellows came laughing and stumbling down toward the Ferry Road, both too slight to be Matty Winship. As they approached the crossroads, Prue saw it was young Jacob Boerum and one of his compatriots, returning no doubt from an evening's whoring at Tony Philpot's. “Lower your voice, there, Jake,” Joe said as he passed them. “All the neighborhood's asleep.”

“Exactly so, Mr. Loosely,” Boerum said, leaning into his friend. A moment later he burst into laughter.

Through the Horsfields' parlor window, Tem and Prue could see a fire burning down, but no one was in the room. Their breath fogged the old, warped panes. “I don't want to wake them,” Prue said. She had rather expected to see her father stretched out on the rug.

“I don't see we have any choice.”

Israel Horsfield answered the door with a candlestick in his hand. Its flame threw his angular features into sharp relief. His sons were quickly down the stairs behind him. “We're sorry to wake you,” Prue said, “but our father hasn't come home from the Junto. We thought you might have him here.”

“Prue?” Ben said, pushing past his father.

She reached out to touch his face, and he wrapped his fingers around her own.

“No,” Israel said. “No, we left together, but he turned off toward your house.”

“He isn't come,” Tem said.

“He should have been there more than an hour since.” Israel wiped his hand down his jaw as he thought. Prue's heart redoubled its thumping; her own worry was discomfiting enough, but it spooked her to see both Joe and Israel concerned. “Wake Maggie,” Israel told Isaiah, “and tell her we're going out to look for him.”

By the time they were all dressed, Joe had returned to report no sign of Matty Winship had been seen at the Twin Tankards. “He must be
down at the works,” Tem mused, though Prue had seldom known him to go there at night.

Isaiah lit two lanterns and gave one to Ben, and they led the small party down to the water, which was a dull black. The wind was fiercer, down beneath the bluffs, and blew both lanterns out almost immediately. As Isaiah took them to the shelter of the brewhouse to relight them, Israel said, “We shan't need them.” He cupped his hands around his mouth and shouted, “Matty! Hoy, Matty!” Some of the slaves began to stick their heads out from their quarters.

With the help of the slaves, they searched the entire manufactory in a quarter of an hour, and still no sign of him could be found. Prue could not stop shivering, and Ben stood with his arms around her on the hard-packed sand of the mill yard as they waited for the rest of the group to assemble. Israel and Joe were the last to join the group. “I don't know what to say,” Joe said, coming up behind Tem and placing his hand on her shoulder.

“Should we drag the river?” Israel asked.

Prue could not bear to think of this; and as if likewise unwilling to entertain the notion, Tem asked, “Why so?”

Joe drew her closer in to him. “In case he's drowned, gell.”

“I see no reason why Father should be in the river,” Tem said, angrily pulling away from him. “Far more likely he is stone drunk in one of our own fields.”

“She has a point,” Isaiah said.

“It's a dark night,” Joe said. “Better to drag in the morning.”

“He's certain to be found in one of our fields,” Tem repeated.

“We should comb the Remsens' and the Joralemons' as well,” Isaiah said. “And whoever finds him, shout out for all to hear.” He started toward the ravine, with the rest of the search party following behind him.

As they were walking up Joralemon's Lane, Pearl came running down it, and nearly ran headlong into Prue. Her hair was loose, whipping back toward Brooklyn in the stiff breeze. She could say nothing in such darkness. Prue took her by the shoulders and said, “Father hasn't come home. We're going to search the fields.”

Abiah also ran up, and said, “The commotion wakened us. We came as quickly as we could.”

“He is fine,” Tem said, but she was hurrying up the hill.

The various parties walked the fields for hours, during which Prue heard no sounds but the call of her father's name and the crackle of boots over dead maize stalks and trampled wheat. Only the late barley was yet to be mowed, and had to be searched more thoroughly. Had the clouds cleared, it would have been a three-quarters moon, but in the darkness that prevailed, Prue could hardly tell on whose land she was standing. She could hear the river far below her. “It's no use,” she said to Israel Horsfield when her party met up with his on the road.

Israel stamped his foot and turned as if he could see more in another direction. He said, “We'll simply have to try again in the morning.”

Ben added, “We'll keep watch with you tonight.”

Israel instructed one of the slaves, Actxon, to wait for other returning parties and send them home. As he and his sons walked with Abiah and the Winships back to their house, Tem said, “No doubt he is safe home by now, thumbing his nose at our worry.”

He was not, however. The fires had burned down, and Pearl and Abiah set to building them back up. Abiah put water on for tea, and Pearl slipped the dough that had been rising by the hearth into the oven adjoining the fireplace. No one spoke, and as the hour progressed, Prue heard the other search parties dispersing and heading home. She curled up on Ben's lap on the divan and tried to take comfort in the smell of his hair and skin. She believed she had sat listening the whole night, but shortly past dawn she awakened to find her head on Ben's bony shoulder, the house perfectly still. A hoarse shriek rose up off the river, soon followed by another. Prue knew this was what had roused her; and soon Ben stirred, as did Israel Horsfield, in her father's chair.

“What is that?” she asked. She had slept with her neck in an odd position, and a sharp pain shot down it.

The shriek gathered into a cry for help. Someone fired a gun twice, and the cry continued. The voice tickled around the edges of her recognition until at last Israel said, “That's Cornelis Luquer.”

The house smelled of the bread Pearl had baked. Prue rose from the divan and found one leg too full of pins and needles to support her.

The gun fired again, and Cornelis's shouts died down. As soon as she could walk, Prue went upstairs. Her sisters, who had also slept in their clothes, were rising from their bed; Pearl was tying her hair back into
a tail. When Prue opened her father's door, his sheets were not even disarrayed.