A Buss from Lafayette (5 page)

There seemed to be more than the usual crowd gathered in front of the shopkeeper, but I went straight up to him. I had an important question to ask.

I took a moment to summon my courage, then spoke up. “Excuse me, Mr. Towne. Can you tell me how much—”

“Sorry, m’girl. Cannot talk now,” the storekeeper said brusquely.

“But, sir, I only want to know—”

Mr. Towne, usually so friendly and easy-going, shushed me with a finger to his lips. “I must hear this fellow’s story!” he said.

Stamping my foot in frustration, I turned to see whose presence was interfering with the fulfillment of my plan. Among the familiar characters, I saw a tall, skinny stranger who looked to be nearly eighty years of age. He was wearing a rather moth-eaten old
uniform of buff and blue. His pure white hair was also in a bygone style, long—if a bit sparse in front—and tied behind with a black ribbon. He held a black tricorne decorated with a black and white cockade. Even through my irritation, I could see that the most interesting thing about the stranger was not his antiquated clothes, his overly long hair, or his three-cornered hat with its leather flower, but his excitement. He was about the most animated person, especially of his age, that I had ever seen.

I moved closer to the old gentleman. If I had to wait until he was done talking to get what I wanted from Mr. Towne, I might as well listen to what he had to say.

“You will never guess who I was mistook for yesterday!” he exclaimed. His merry eyes looked at each of us listeners in turn.

All of our guesses fell wide of the mark, from Mr. Towne’s boisterous, “President Adams?” to my softly spoken, “Old Father Christmas?”

“No, t’was for the Nation’s Guest!” the stranger declared, slapping his thigh.

“What? Someone thought you to be Lafayette? Are you jesting?” Mr. Towne spluttered.

The stranger went off into gales of laughter. “I am telling you the truth of it: folks in the hundreds—nay, the thousands—thought me to be Lafayette himself!”

He told us that he lived in Vermont and had traveled with friends to Boston to celebrate the fiftieth anniversary of the Battle of Bunker Hill. “I never saw such a sea of people in my life,” he added.

“A hundred thousand,” I said. “There were nearly a hundred thousand. That is what it said in the Concord
Patriot
.” I was blessed—or cursed, I sometimes thought—with an extremely good memory. Father sometimes teased me about it, calling me “the family sponge” because of how I retained nearly everything I heard or read. Besides, if I supplied what details I knew, we would not have to wait until the old gentleman found the words to speed his story along.

The stranger turned to look at me. “Very good, child,” he said. “You are correct. Nearly a hundred thousand. All to see ‘Our Marquis’ dedicate a memorial at Bunker Hill. He is the only general from either side of our War of Independence still living. But then, he was so very young when he joined our cause. A mere stripling! A good ten years younger than me.”

“Nineteen,” I said. “He was nineteen when he came to America.” I could not help it: if I had information inside my head, it simply spilled out at times like these, whether I wanted it to or not.

He complimented me for my interest in history and pointed out that his own grandchildren were not the least bit interested in the dusty old days. “And this
despite the fact that their own grandpa is a veteran of our War of Independence.”

I could feel my cheeks blushing as red as my hair, partly from embarrassment at being the center of attention and partly from the fact that I was not really that interested in the dusty old days. I just wanted this fellow to finish his story so I could buy my lead comb!

“But why did people think you were General Lafayette?” Mr. Towne asked.

The old gentleman explained that after the festivities, he had found that his friends, excited by the events of the day, had driven off and left him behind. After that, he had learned he had missed the last stagecoach heading north and had no means of returning home.

“Whatever did you do, sir?” I said quickly, trying to forestall questions from the elderly audience that would only slow down the man telling his story.

“Well, my girl, just then, what did I see but an open carriage—a most elegant barouche decorated with roses and flags, drawn by four horses. Both the driver and his passenger appeared to be uncommonly annoyed. It turned out the driver was Nathaniel Walker, who drives the regular stagecoach between Concord and Boston. His passenger was Mr. Amos Parker. That gentleman was officially representing the New Hampshire governor in welcoming Lafayette.”

Mr. Towne nodded. “Do go on with your story, sir.”

I soon learned the reason for Mr. Walker and Mr. Parker’s annoyance. Apparently, Walker was supposed to drive Lafayette and his party from Boston up to New Hampshire, but the Massachusetts Governor had insisted he and his aide and militia must escort the general all the way to the state line! The stagecoach driver had told all his friends on the way down to Boston that he would be driving Lafayette to Concord.

The old soldier concluded by saying that Walker had feared that everyone would think him a liar. “Instead, those infernal flatlanders had stolen his thunder!”

“I should think so, poor man!” one of the younger idlers put in, his face ruddy with indignation on Walker’s behalf, not to mention with aversion towards those miscreants from the state south of his own.

“Anyway, I told them of my predicament, and they cheerfully agreed to give me a ride as far as New Hampshire. And what a ride it turned out to be!”

C
HAPTER 8

“What happened, sir?” I asked the old soldier eagerly, surprised to find my interest in his story was starting to turn more genuine.

“Well, lass, we moved along at a right smart pace. But when we approached Malden, there was a great crowd assembled, with bells ringing, cannons firing, bands playing, and ladies strewing rose petals on the road. When we got close enough to hear that people were shouting ‘Welcome Lafayette,’ we realized that everyone believed
me
to be the Nation’s Guest!”

The listeners started to laugh heartily. This was the best tale anyone had told in Towne’s for years.

The veteran told how Mr. Parker had stood up to address the crowd, explaining that his fellow passenger was not General Lafayette, but a veteran of the Revolution who had been stranded in Boston. He also had assured them that the real Nation’s Guest would arrive very soon.

The old gentleman chuckled. “Then Mr. Parker said I was a worthy Revolutionary soldier and deserved three
cheers. The crowd cheered me, I stood up and saluted them, and we drove on.”

“Bravo, sir!” said Mr. Towne. “You must have really enjoyed that!”

The stranger agreed, but said he did not enjoy disappointing everyone, especially the small girls clutching posies of flowers at each place, waiting to present them to the real General Lafayette.

“Their little faces would look at me with such nervous excitement,” he said, “until Mr. Parker explained who I was. Then they would look away with big sighs. It was very hot, after all, and the poor things had been waiting a long time.”

I suddenly wished that I could be one of the girls to present flowers to Lafayette.
I suppose I am too old
, I thought.
But I would not be surprised if Hetty wangles a way to do it, though she is even older than I. It would be just like her!

The old veteran went on with his tale. “By the time we arrived at the New Hampshire border, Mr. Parker had spoken and I had saluted the waiting crowds more than twenty times! At each place he had to explain that I was not the man they had waited hours in the hot sun to honor.”

Mr. Towne handed a glass of Medford rum to the old veteran. “To wet your whistle,” he said with a nod.

The man bowed his thanks, took a few swallows,
wiped his mouth on his sleeve, and continued his story. “Well, meanwhile, Mr. Parker and I discovered for ourselves that the barouche was just the right height for leaning over to shake hands and kiss children. Though we did not shake many hands or kiss many children, once Mr. Parker had cleared things up,” he added with a rueful grin.

I would have shaken his hand
, I thought.
After all, he did fight in the Revolution, even though he was not the Nation’s Guest!

When Lafayette did finally arrive,” the stranger continued, “I was happy to see a little girl waiting there excitedly hand him her little bouquet of roses. She was so thrilled when the Nation’s Guest—the real Nation’s Guest—bussed her on the cheek.

It turned out that after Mr. Parker had introduced the “false” Lafayette to the real one, he had recounted how he had made speeches all the way from Boston explaining that his passenger was not Lafayette. The Nation’s Guest had roared with laughter, then said that perhaps Mr. Parker could alternate with him in speech-making the remainder of the route to Concord. “This was said in such a comical way that we all guffawed, for we all knew that no one could be a substitute for the famous man himself.”

This Lafayette fellow sounds as if he has an excellent sense of humor
, I thought,
and is not puffed up with his
own importance. He actually sounds like someone I would like.

Mr. Towne spoke up. “Yes, that does sounds like Lafayette, who was as good-humored as he was courageous. Or so I understand. A New Hampshire man who fought at the Battle of Brandywine told me how Lafayette rushed to help our General Sullivan’s troops when they were outflanked by the Lobsterbacks.”

“What are Lobsterbacks?” I asked.

Mr. Towne explained that this term referred to British soldiers, whom we Americans had called “Redcoats” or “Lobsterbacks” because of their scarlet uniforms.

Another question spilled out of me. “So Lafayette tried to help?”

The old veteran nodded and told us how Lafayette had rallied on the soldiers, even after he was wounded, and then helped keep the retreat orderly.

“It could easily have turned into a rout, with men just running wildly away. That saved many American lives,” he said.

Mr. Towne jumped back into the conversation, telling us how, after Lafayette had been wounded in the leg, he had shouted “Bone for America!” This had puzzled everyone, as the musket ball had not hit Lafayette’s bone, but had passed clean through his
leg. “Lafayette then explained that the word he had used was
bon
, which means good in French,” said Mr. Towne. “He had been saying ‘Good for America!’ Lafayette thought this misunderstanding so funny, he laughed aloud even while his leg was bleeding away, even though it must have pained him considerably! Now, I do not know if this story be true, but it is still a good yarn.”

Another in the crowd of attentive listeners told how Lafayette had been laid upon a dining-room table to have his wounded leg bandaged. When Washington and his aides had arrived, the young Frenchman had joked that they looked awfully hungry and he hoped no one would mistake him for dinner.

I laughed along with the men, then asked shyly: “I still do not understand why Lafayette is thought to be such a hero, sir. I heard he won no big battles.”

The veteran shrugged. “That is true enough, my girl, but he did very well when he was finally given men to command.”

I listened closely as the man explained that Lafayette’s actions at Brandywine had so impressed General Nathanael Greene that had he sent the young Frenchman on a reconnaissance mission commanding a few hundred men. Lafayette had led them on a surprise attack on some Hessians near Gloucester, in the Jerseys. Though outnumbered, it was said that
Lafayette and his men “fought like demons,” and it was not until the British commander, Cornwallis, sent out some grenadiers from the main camp that Lafayette withdrew.

The stranger took another gulp of the rum. “Greene said afterwards that Lafayette ‘seemed to search for danger.’ High praise indeed for such a young man in his first command.”

Mr. Towne explained that after that, Washington put Lafayette in command of a division, so he was no longer a major general without any troops.

I tried to imagine my brother or Dickon Weeks “fighting like demons” and “searching for danger.” After all, they were very close to the age Lafayette had been when he did those things. Although both Dickon and Joss were, of course, obliged by law to train as members of our town militia, I could not picture them in a real war. Indeed, I did not even want to think about such a thing.

Suddenly, we heard the loud sound of a horn, signaling the approach of the northbound stagecoach. We all went outside to see its arrival, a daily event that I never tired of watching whenever I could.