Chapter Twenty Seven

THE FIRST SECTION:

Patrick carried his sore body down into the basement and shut the door behind him. He made sure that the door was closed completely before he sat down and picked up his whiskey. It felt like a lonely night to be drinking with two of his best friends missing, one permanently. But George and Michele felt the same way also, and that made Patrick feel a little more warmth with his aching body. Michele mentioned that Patrick was looking like an old man these days and suggested that he stop picking fights with so many of the constable’s men.

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“It does not lead to a healthy life later on,” he smirked. Patrick agreed and suggested that Michele find a way to not miss the action the next time around. George was less responsive, at least in humor. He was still wounded by the fact that his horse had died in the riots. His own tender body hardly made it easy to move his clams and mussels from the beach to the different markets around town. Together, the three were suffering all the effects that the riots were intended to have. Not only did they have the strength and wellbeing to fight back, but they also had to work even harder than before just to keep up with normal business. There simply was not enough time and effort that they could put into their lives to keep up. Revenge was a slight notion in their minds, and certainly not a realistic one.

But the question of Lewis bothered Patrick and the gang. Lewis still believed that his father had gone away for a while, looking for work perhaps and would be back someday. Patrick, nor anyone else, ever told Lewis that. Instead, he devised the story in his own mind and heart when he heard silence after asking where his father was. Patrick did not have the heart to tell him otherwise. Michele insisted that Lewis should know the truth and threatened to tell him if Patrick did not do it on his own. But Patrick resisted, saying that the boy was better off having hope and believing that his father would come back again someday.

“At least that way he’ll have something to work for, to look forward to,” Patrick said.

Michele, on the other hand, believed that Lewis would likely be resentful if his father never came home. “He’s dead Patrick,” Michele pleaded. “You saw him yourself. You lifted him from the rafters and we stuffed him into that box. He’s never coming home. The boy must know that.”

Silence fell upon the room as Patrick did not necessarily disagree. He believed that there was a truth in what Michele was saying, but he also believed that a good boy, whose father was killed, would likely turn into a very troubled child if he ever found out. Patrick admitted that he was not sure if the constable’s men actually hung David or if David had hung himself. He tended to believe it was the latter. But no young boy, none especially as quiet and naïve as Lewis was, would ever believe his father had taken his own life. Considering the trouble that David was given by the constable’s men, Lewis was probably going to believe that the thugs either hung him or pressured him to do so. A dead father becomes a victim in a boy’s mind and Lewis was too good of a boy to simply toss him out into the cruel and harsh world. Michele believed that he would swim to the surface and survive. They had all had tragedy in their lives, he was no different. But the consensus was that none of them had handled their own tragedies well, and as a result they were living the poor lives that they were, struggling to get by each day with no promise of the next day’s breaths of fresh air.

“We have a responsibility,” Patrick said, “an opportunity to make something right. I don’t want him to end up like the bullies that lived around the corner. That boy, Basil, he’s as bad of a boy as I have ever seen. His father taught him well. Look at us. We were given a promise twenty years ago of good jobs and healthy lives. Then we were lied to and when we argued back we were told to get back to work and keep our mouths shut. There was nothing we could do about it. They were too strong then, just like they are now.”

“And so we misbehaved,” Michele argued, “we fought back the way we knew how, by picking pockets, by not obeying the small rules, by making it unsafe to walk through Marnie at night. We found ways to make their lives as miserable as ours were. He’ll find a way to get through this Patrick.”

But Patrick continued to disagree, and the more they got into the discussion the more adamant he became about his stance. He noted that there was a problem with the actions that their generation took against the elite all those years ago. “Basil,” he clamored, “his father taught him to misbehave but never taught him why. So now Basil and those boys go around stealing and hurting people just because someone taught them to do so. They don’t know why they behave the way they do. You can’t say that they have turned out for the better because of the tiny rebellion we decided to have. If we told Lewis about his father, then we would have to tell him about all of this history here in Charlton. And like me, he would become very mad, angry. He would end up like the bullies, except he’d have a purpose, and we all know what can happen to someone with a chip on his shoulder. Just look at what happened to Christopher’s father.”

George sat up and asked what had happened to Christopher’s father. Patrick gave him the short story about how William II felt betrayed by the broken promises, and as a result tried to organize the town’s workers and residents so that they would be better represented in the next mayoral election. He managed to stir up enough interest to cause someone enough pain to order him jailed. There was not much they could jail him on, as he was a pretty clean man. He was hard working and well respected in the community. But some of his followers were not so respectable. They were ambitious and maybe had their hearts and minds in the proper place, but they still had a past. One of them was caught stealing goods off the ships he was supposed to be unloading, and two others were caught trying to sell the goods to traders outside of town. William II had nothing to do with that, but because he was the new political leader of the laborers and poor, and these men were engaged in planned thievery, they arrested and hung William II on any all corruption charges they could find. They hung the other men too.

“I don’t remember that,” George said. “When did that happen?”

“In 1802,” Patrick answered. “It was just after I had just arrived. William II gave me my start. I was almost hung along with him.”

“But you’re forgetting something about that story Patrick,” Michele snarled. “One of those other men you speak of was my father. I was young then too, and I saw him hung with the rest of them. They made it a point to have all the family there that day, even if we didn’t want to go.”

“Of course,” Patrick replied, “I knew that. I didn’t mean any disrespect to you Michele, but the difference is that you knew your father was guilty. You knew he was a crook. There wasn’t any anger in you because deep in your good heart you knew he was wrong. Besides, he wasn’t much of a father was he, beating your mother and you around all the time.”

“It wasn’t until years later that I knew he was guilty,” Michele retorted. “I had to deal with my father’s death all those years until then. I think I did just fine thank you very much.”

“Calm down Michele,” Patrick advised his good friend, “but your father was not a good one was he? David was a very kind and good father. He treated Lewis well. You might have been relieved that your father was now out of the way. I don’t think Lewis will feel the same way.”

Michele fell silent and took a sip of whiskey. Patrick knew that he was right that Lewis would react differently than Michele had. Their scenarios were completely different. Michele’s father died a crook and David died trying to uncover them. Patrick further explained that David was simply trying to do good, much like William II was trying to do.

“But what about Christopher then?” George asked. “He turned out alright. Never met a better father or a better friend. He saw his father hung too, and he knew his father was innocent.”

Patrick explained that Christopher was wildly angry about his father’s capture and punishment. He was young and caught up in his father’s passion. He wanted to kill every man involved to teach them how much they had hurt people and how wrong they were about his father. We tried to calm him down and keep the reins on him, but he was too reckless.

“I remember the day he extracted his revenge,” Patrick said. “Do you remember that old damn up river from here? Michele does. The river was a weak river then, not a lot of water passed by here into the sea. But the town had to build a new wood mill after the old one burnt down. But they wanted to build a stronger mill, one that was faster and could work harder during the day. So they built a dam that built up water behind it. During the day, when they were cutting planks they let the water over the damn. When they weren’t cutting, mostly at night, they let the water build up again. Mondays were the best days at that mill because they did not work on Sundays. And on Saturdays, men would go out and clam the mudflats while the water was being held back."

“That must have been good digging grounds,” George said. “I like to dig closer to where the river meets the sea. I just seem to have more luck there.”

“They were productive flats,” Patrick confirmed. “Especially since they were only worked on Saturdays. But every Sunday afternoon, after church, the mayor hosted a picnic down on the river’s banks. It was not an official picnic, as only his invited guests were allowed to come. His wife was really the one who put it all together. She was a great woman. She would go right down to the banks of the river and dig clams herself just for the picnic.”

Patrick continued to tell his friends how Christopher knew residents of the North End used to go there every Sunday afternoon. He also knew that they picnicked very close to where the river’s edge used to be before the dam went up. No one is sure how he obtained the gunpowder, but he laced a line of powder right up to the middle of the dam. Just as the picnic was beginning, he lit the fuse and blew the dam to pieces. The river was around the bend, so no one saw the explosion. They only heard it. But soon after they saw the smoke and several of them walked down to the river’s edge to watch the smoke rise above the trees. Before they knew what had happened, the entire reservoir cascaded around the river bend, flooded its sides and swept several of the guests out into the mudflats. It did not surprise George that the people who were swept into the flats got stuck in the mud.

“You can drown without there being any water,” George said. “I've seen men sink so deep they couldn’t get out if they tried. And it happens fast too.”

“That is exactly what happened to our Mayor Smith’s wife,” Patrick confirmed. “She got stuck in the mud and drowned.”

“Christopher was filled with guilt over what he had done,” Michele added. “I can still see it in his eyes today from time to time. I don’t think he’s stepped back to that side of town since.”

“If he has,” Patrick added, “he’s done it with his eyes closed and a heavy heart.” Patrick paused to let the story sink in. When he felt that both George and Michele realized the dangers that he was worried about he made a suggestion, “We made a promise to David that we would take care of him if he lost his job. Why don’t we find a way to keep that promise by taking in Lewis ourselves?”

“How would we do that?” Michele asked. “I haven’t any money and work is as it usually is. In fact, they know I’m a friend of Christopher’s. I can’t imagine myself being able to work down there for very much longer.”

“I have an idea,” Patrick continued. “Why don’t you help George and I sell and deal with the fishermen. You could buy the fish for me, and bring them to me first thing in the morning when the first round of boats comes in. Then you can go and pick up George’s crop for the day and sell it for him so that he can go back out to collect more crustaceans. Even I will try to sell some of them here in my shop. That will free up time for me to get more customers in, George to dig more and you will have a job too.”

“But where does Lewis come in?” Michele asked.

“He will be responsible for helping you to bring the fish to me, the crustaceans from George to you and help me clean up here at night. The boy will be so tired he’ll never get into trouble. He can stay with me, but we must all treat him as though he were our own son, as a promise to David, and make him one of us.”

“I think I could do that,” George said. “Could you do that Michele? It isn’t easy work and the pay is not reliable, but you’ll never have to worry about eating each day.”

Michele thought for a moment but agreed soon after that he could do this. He argued, however, Patrick’s final demand to continue to tell Lewis that his father had gone away. But Patrick insisted that this be the case.

“I don’t want Lewis to end up like Christopher,” he warned. “Enough has been lost already.”