13 Hangmen (35 page)

Story:
This legendary left fielder for the Boston Red Sox never walked out of that series with the Tigers during his rookie season—which actually took place in Detroit, not Boston, in May of 1939. Nor would his doing so have ruined the career of number 27, Solomon Weinberg, because I made Solly up. In 1939, the Red Sox uniform numbers stopped at 26. (Note, however, that when you add 2 + 7, you get a 9….)

History:
Ted Williams
was
of Latino descent on his mother's side, though he wasn't ever allowed to talk about it to the press. Williams didn't get along at all with team manager Joe Cronin, who was by all accounts an unabashed racist. Cronin, who later became the general manager of the Red Sox, never traded for a single black player, and he refused to sign the young Willie Mays. But here's something for the weird-but-true category: Williams was, in fact, cryogenically frozen when he died, to
allow for the possibility of being brought back to life by future relatives. So I personally think he would have liked making a guest appearance in this book.

Story:
The spiral carved into Tony's pawcorance comes straight out of my imagination, though it is based on a number of spiral pictographs and petroglyphs found in ancient Native American ruins throughout North America. Working with modern tribes, anthropologists have guessed their meaning to be the universe, a portal to the spirit world, or the coiled nature of time—and many others. And I've totally made up the link between spirals, pawcorances, and vision quests.

History:
A word or three about pawcorances themselves: These mysterious stone markers have been found the entire length of the eastern seaboard. Their original purpose remains a mystery. It was actually Captain John Smith, settler of the Jamestown Colony in Virginia, not Myles Standish, settler of the Massachusetts Bay Colony, who described pawcorances in his memoirs. (I pulled a quick switcheroo because I thought the information coming from a Massachusettsian made my story spin a little tighter….) Smith asserted pawcorances were indeed stone markers and altars identifying places where the Algonquians had encountered spirits. According to Smith: “As
you travel past them, they [local tribesmen] will tell you the cause of their erection, wherein they instruct their children.” Algonquian tribes gave the pawcorances of New England their name. Some sources claim that
pawcorance
was also the word for a small bird—of unidentified species—sacred to the Algonquians. It was believed to be inhabited by ancestral spirits, since it only ever appeared at dusk and dawn to sing. I've made the pawcorance a mockingbird for this story; I like the fact that mockingbirds mimic the languages of many other animals. Speaking of Myles Standish—he was, in fact, invited to a welcome feast of boiled lobsters and roast cod by the Massachuset sachem Obbatinewat. I have no idea if they discussed pawcorances, since Standish didn't actually write a memoir titled
Of My Amazing Exploites in the New Worlde
.

Story:
The vision quest rituals I attribute to the Massachuset tribe—though based on a number of Algonquian traditions—are also made up. This is partly to protect Native American privacy. Many tribes prefer to reserve their cultural and religious practices for members of their own community. The Massachu-sets would certainly not link spirit encounters with the notion of time anomalies, as Hermann Minkowski (a real person) did in 1909 with his block universe theory (his honest-to-God
hypothesis). It is true, though, that there was no word for
time
in Algonquian until the arrival of Europeans in North America.

History:
Vision quests aren't, by the way, solely a North American practice. The ritual can actually be found in nearly every ancient culture on the planet. If you're interested in learning more about Native American practices, Google “Grandfather Stalking Wolf.” He was an Apache elder who traveled North and South America, distilling a wide range of rituals and philosophies—including the vision quest—to their most common roots.

Story:
No one by the name of Finn McGinley ever rented that derelict tank in the Purity Distilling Company's yard (a real molasses factory) or planned to make rum with what was stored in it. I based that part of Finn's tale on persistent rumors that Purity itself was trying to get rid of all evidence of rum making prior to the official effective date of Prohibition in 1920. What Purity
officially
made was industrial alcohol, which was then used in the production of munitions.

History:
The Great Molasses Flood itself
sounds
like a fake event, I agree, but it's totally true. It killed 21 and injured 150. It took volunteers 87,000 hours to clean some 2,300,000 gallons of molasses off cobblestone streets, buildings, and automobiles.
Boston Harbor was said to have run brown until summer. Local residents brought a class-action suit against Purity Distilling for the disaster. Purity tried to claim the tank was blown up by anarchists protesting the outcome of World War I. But it did ultimately pay over $6 million (by today's standards) in out-of-court settlements.

Story:
Honey-Fitz's spectacular arrest of Stevie Wallace at the Charter Street Bank never took place. (I bet, though, that Honey-Fitz would have loved the tale—especially the part about them blowing open the safe as a Christmas gift to the poor Irish in the neighborhood.) A well-known champion of multiculturalism many decades before such a word was envisioned, Honey-Fitz did love the North End, where he grew up. He considered all its inhabitants, regardless of their race, color, or creed, as his “dearos.” Here's a story that might actually be true: When Honey-Fitz finally convinced President Cleveland to veto an anti-immigration bill, his archenemy in Congress, Henry Cabot Lodge, was said to have shouted, “Impudent young man, do you think Jews or Italians have any right in this country?” and Honey-Fitz was said to have replied, “As much as your father or mine. It's only a difference of a few ships.” It's pure fiction, though, that Honey-Fitz (or his Red Sox fan club,
the Royal Rooters) headquartered in a North End bar. Honey-Fitz was, as Jack points out, a teetotaler.

History:
Honey-Fitz did indeed get reelected mayor in 1909 on a platform of reform. His gift of gab (known as Fitzblarney), and the fact that he sang “Sweet Adeline” at every campaign rally, certainly helped him to win—though no one knows who actually came up with
that
idea. Honey-Fitz did bring Irish mobsters Stevie and Frank Wallace under control with a few minor arrests. But it didn't put an end to their shenanigans. It just prompted them to change their mob's name from the Tailboard Thieves to the Gustin Gang and become Boston's premier bootleggers. (Others claim that that title went to John F. Kennedy's other grandfather, Joseph Kennedy.)

Story:
Though many threats were made against William Lloyd Garrison's life over his long and controversial career as an abolitionist, the assassination attempt at Boston's African Meeting House is pure fiction, as is his collection of $1,000 to buy the freedom of a one-eyed runaway slave named Jack.

History:
In 1839, Frederick Douglass did hear Garrison orate in Boston about the abolishment of slavery for the first time, causing Douglass to state: “No face and form ever
impressed me with such sentiments as did those of William Lloyd Garrison.” In 1841, Douglass went to hear Garrison again in Bristol and was unexpectedly asked to speak. Impressed, Garrison sang Douglass's praise in
The
Liberator
, which more or less launched Douglass's career.

Story:
Paul Revere never rang a handbell to rouse Minutemen to arms. Nor did he forge such a bell for royal governor Thomas Hutchinson—though he did indeed own a bell and cannon works. (I admit it: I also made up the part about Revere learning how to make unopenable locks by copying North End pirate designs.) I actually got the idea for the handbell from a couple of inaccurate illustrations of Revere's fabled Midnight Ride. Utterly missing from my story is the fact that Paul Revere Junior—a fine silversmith in his own right—held the shop together while Paul Revere, an excellent rider, delivered messages up and down the eastern seaboard for the Sons of Liberty.

History:
Revere didn't really become famous for his role in the American Revolution until 1860, when Henry Wadsworth Longfellow published a poem about the Midnight Ride in the
Boston Transcript
. There can be no doubt of Revere's patriotic commitment to American independence. He created one of the first (and most famous) engravings of the Boston Massacre. He
was indeed one of the Mohawks shouting “No taxation without representation!” at the Boston Tea Party. He even wrote his own detailed account of his Midnight Ride—which you can actually read online just like I did. (In it, in fact, you'll hear about the exploits of a Tory traitor and spy named Benjamin Church who served as inspiration for my totally fictitious characters Ian and Benedict Hagmann.) That Revere requested his own court-martial to clear his name of any wrongdoing in the Penobscot Expedition is a fact. What caused the Continental Army Command to dismiss the case before it ever came to trial is less clear, since military tribunal proceedings were, for the most part, oral and not well documented.

Story:
As you have no doubt guessed, I made up the fact that Sarah Pickles's great-great-great-plus grandmother Abigail was the real, true designer of the American flag. No one knows for sure who came up with the very first stars-and-stripes motif. Legend has it that George Washington handed seamstress Betsy Ross a pencil sketch of
his
idea—a circle of thirteen white stars in a blue field, resting on thirteen alternating red and white stripes. But there is no hard evidence that such an event ever took place. Truth is, many variations of the Stars and Stripes were in use during the American Revolution before the Second
Continental Congress adopted the horizontal (or quincuncial) version as the official U.S. flag on June 14, 1777.

History:
Though this official version of the flag has often been cited as the handiwork of Francis Hopkinson, there's no documented proof that he actually designed it. About all we know for sure is that Hopkinson billed Congress a quarter cask of public wine for having done so. But he was never paid.

Writing a book is a very solitary task. For me, that means sitting alone for about a year and a half, waiting for the words to come, with only my imagination to keep me company. But
making
a book—now, that's an entirely different story.
13 Hangmen
simply wouldn't exist without the help of dozens of generous and supertalented people. For providing me the time and space to sit alone: Timothy Horn, Chima, Michael Martinez, Beverly Donofrio, Nada Hermitage, the Corporation of Yaddo. For helping to shape early drafts and representing the final one: Albert Zuckerman at Writers House. For bringing this novel so beautifully to print at Abrams: Howard Reeves (editor extraordinaire), Jim Armstrong (top-notch managing editor), Maria Middleton (fabulous book designer), Jenna Pocius (conscientious editorial assistant), and Jason Wells (marketing genius). Special shout-outs go to Renée Cafiero (copy editor) and Rob Sternitzky (proofreader), who went above and beyond the call of duty to help me pin down all the facts and weave this story in and out of history.

ART CORRIVEAU holds an MFA in writing from the University of Michigan. His writing has received great reviews from
School Library Journal
,
Booklist
,
Kirkus Reviews
, and many others.
Booklist
praised his first middle-grade novel,
How I, Nicky Flynn, Finally Get a Life (and a Dog)
(retitled
How I Finally Got a Life and a Dog
in paperback) for its “vividly drawn” characters. He lives in Vermont.