Lexington Chapter 6 and /

 Note: We see more about James's character and my research and how lucky I was with the help from the Minute  Man National Park rangers.

 

 

Chapter 6

Ely, England

Feb. 1773

 

“YOU SHOULDN’T DO that,” James took money from the raggedy pouch the old woman handed him. She had bought his last loaf of bread. “Someone could steal your money.”

 

“You won’t cheat me, Jamie.” Her unseeing eyes twinkled. “You were always an honest little boy.”

 

She smiled. He smiled, feeling her warmth. That was about the only warmth that day. The drizzle had stopped, leaving everything damp, including himself.

 

He looked inside the cottage. It was dark and dank without a fire. “Could I help you rebuild your fire?”

 

“Oh Jamie, that would be lovely.” The old woman stepped aside, allowing him into the room filled by a table, two chairs and a bed. The fireplace was large enough for a short person to stand inside. He noticed she had only one log to the right of the blackened hearth.

 

From the times he had played there as a boy with her late son, he knew wood was stored under the overhang outside of the house. “I’ll get you some more wood.”

 

As soon as he turned the corner outside the cottage, he stepped in a mud puddle with his left foot. There was a sucking sound as he pulled his foot out. Do a good deed and get paid in bad coin, he thought.

 

A log, more like a branchless tree, was stored under the overhang. No smaller pieces. He picked up the axe and hacked enough wood for that night’s and tomorrow’s fires. I’m a baker, not a caretaker, he thought, but tonight before I fall asleep, I don’t want to think of her cold and unable to cook.

 

After the fire caught, he said goodbye.

 

James knew he should head back to the bakery. Since his brother was always accusing James of being lazy and of taking too long to do anything, he might as well justify the attack.

 

William would want him to prepare for the next day’s baking. His wife would want to count the coins from the day’s sales. She would have cooked a simple supper. Most of the root vegetables remaining from last year’s harvest would be dried and tasteless. Potatoes might be seasoned with bacon if he were lucky.

 

Alice did her best. It would be a while before this year’s crops were on his dinner plate. It wasn’t anyone’s fault. The garden behind the bakery needed planting, but there was no point until the rains stopped. It was like this every spring. The inevitability made him wonder if when he was an old man, would it be exactly as it was now: get up, make the fire, mix bread, let the bread rise, punch bread, shape bread, bake bread, sell bread, see customers, get supplies, hope that the annual floods would not come as far as the bakery.

 

Bess created a change. She’d worked in the bakery but laughed at silly things, annoying his brother. Sometimes they went to the Noisy Rooster to drink a beer, listen to music and walk home holding hands before making love. He could tell her anything, his hurts, his pleasures.

 

Instead of going home, he walked toward the River Ouse. He found it impossible to avoid puddles leaving his feet wet and cold.

 

Although the drizzle had stopped, the air felt wet.

He passed the small houses where the eel farmers lived. The cylinder traps, made either of thin strips of wood or rope, were stacked outside the doors.

 

The river was not wide. In summer, on a rare hot day, he could swim across, not that he did it often from time and energy restraints. There was too much work producing and selling bread. He was lucky, he supposed, that his brother didn’t like walking through Ely to hawk their wares. It gave him a chance to talk to people and to find out village news. Even when people came into the bakery, William tended to be gruff with them. Alice was good at talking people into buying a bit more. Bess had been even better.

 

James had not wanted to be a baker. He had not wanted not to be a baker. It was what was. In his family as far back as anyone could remember and beyond, his family baked bread. James remembered his gran ruling the process after his grandfather died, although James never knew his grandfather.

 

Bess wasn’t from a baking family although once they were married, she had learned.

 

He’d known Bess from when his father bought flour from her family’s mill. She wasn’t like a lot of giggly girls. Instead, she challenged him constantly.

 

The first time was when they were about eight. His father and her father were loading the sacks of flour into his father’s wagon.

 

Two apple trees were behind the mill. “I bet I climb up faster than you can!” she’d taunted him.

 

“You can’t. You’re a girl.”

 

She did.

 

“You have the easier tree,” he said.

 

“Change trees.”

 

She beat him the second time.

 

He didn’t quite beat her swimming across the river. That usually ended in a tie. He should have been selling the bread, not leaving it on the ground while he swam. Somehow his father had always found out and went for the stick used to remind James not repeat the act.

Their marriage was something everyone expected.

 

Her death came as a shock. Bess had seemed indestructible — only she wasn’t. She had screamed for two days before their daughter came into the world with a cord wrapped around her neck. She didn’t, couldn’t, take a single breath.

 

If someone had asked James if he’d loved his wife, he probably would have said, “Of course.” She had been part of his life for almost forever. It wasn’t just the sex, which had been one of the best parts of their marriage. Now, nights, in their bed, the same bed he’d slept in as a child, he’d reach for her in his sleep only to wake to find himself alone.

 

He wanted to tell her how much he missed her, like he had told her everything else. William used to tease him about how much the couple chatted. Alice had said it wouldn’t hurt William to do a little more talking to her.

 

Customers had expressed their sympathies, saying he’d find someone else. James thought they were probably right even if it seemed unimaginable now.

 

Watching the water in the dwindling light, James thought once again how easy it would be to put some rocks in his pocket and walk into the river.

 

There had to be more to life than this. If not, why go on?

 

 

Chapter 7

Geneva, Switzerland

Argelès-sur-Mer, France

November

 

 

RANGER JIM AT the Minute Man National Park created a series of videos responding to questions about the period in general and the events around the April 1775 battle in particular. Dressed the way he would have had he lived in the time, he responded to my questions as well as others, although I tried not to hog the session.

 

For each session I arranged myself on my couch, the computer on my lap, Sherlock, my dog, by my side. I take notes.

 

Over the next few months, I will watch videos and podcasts, not just sponsored by the national park, but by different historians and authors. From their information, I was able to buy books that gave me enough information that on more than one night, I was so saturated with the history of the time and place that I would dream I was living in Boston in 1774.

 

My fear that I will not learn enough about the period to create an accurate depiction of the era is disappearing, but I must be careful not to get too cocky.