Becoming Americans (69 page)

      "Those, my brethren, are not weary and heavy laden who can delight in the sinful diversions of life. Those wasters of precious time, the horse-racing and cock-fighting from whence no good ever came, unless abusing God Almighty's creatures and putting them to that use which He never designed them, can be called so. How miserable will your life be, when all your joys are over? Do you think there is one merry heart in hell? Now you are not weary of your diversions, nor are you heavy laden with your sins, but then you will be weary of your punishment."

      Stephen began to know what the preacher mean by weariness of sin. He was tired of his burden of sin. How evil his life had been!

      "They who delight in drinking wine to excess, and who are drunkards, what bitter draughts will they have instead of wine and ale? The heat of lust will be then also abated. They will wish that instead of sinning together, they had prayed together, had endeavored to convince each other of the evil of their sin, and how obnoxious they are to the wrath of God, and the necessity of being weary and heavy laden with a sense thereof. God will punish them for their offenses; he hath prepared those torments for his enemies; his continual anger will still be devouring of them; his breath of indignation will kindle the flame; his wrath will be a continual burden to their souls. Woe be to him who falls under the stroke of the Almighty!"

      Stephen's heart was pounding. A voice called out, "God I have sinned! I am a sinner! Save me Lord!" Nancy was crying, hiding her face in her hands. Hundreds of voices called out for God to save them. Stephen began to sweat, even though the sun had gone behind clouds and a cool breeze was blowing. He fell to his knees and cried in low whimpers. The burden of his sins was unbearable.

      "And God will punish them for their offenses: He hath prepared those torments for his enemies; his continual anger will still be devouring of them; his breath of indignation will kindle the flame; his wrath will be a continual burden to their souls. Woe be to him who fails under the stroke of the Almighty!"

      Nancy raised her hands to the sky in supplication.

      "I would not have you mistake me, and say, I am only preaching death and damnation to you; I am only showing you what will be the consequence of continuing in these sinful pleasures; and if the devil does not hurry you away with half a sermon, I shall show you how to avoid these dangers, which I now preach up as the effect of sin unrepented of."

      No one was hurrying away. Those who were not already convinced of their sins were showing signs of discomfort. The most skeptical sinners were captivated by the oratory of George Whitefield.

      "You may be said, my brethren, to be weary and heavy laden, when your sins are grievous unto you, and it is with grief and trouble you commit them. When you are obliged to cry out under the burden of your sins, and know not what to do for relief; when this is your case, you are weary of your sins. It does not consist in a weariness all of a sudden; no, it is the continual burden of your soul, it is your grief and concern that you cannot live without offending God, and sinning against Him; and these sins are so many and so great, that you fear they will not be forgiven."

      Stephen thought of his years of drunkenness, his years of neglecting his wife and son. His years of weariness in the swamp. He thought of his misspent youth and he remembered his rape of the young girl in Havana. He remembered his own defilement. He thought of the pain he'd given his mother. God had only begun His punishment with taking his slave and his farm. Everlasting fire awaited him. He sat on the ground in despair. His sins would not be forgiven.

      "I come to show you what is meant by coming to Christ. You must come in full dependence upon the Lord Jesus Christ, looking on him as the Lord who died to save sinners: Go to him, tell him you are lost, undone, miserable sinners, and that you deserve nothing but hell; and when you thus go to the Lord Jesus Christ, you will find him an able and a willing savior; he is pleased to see sinners coming to him in a sense of their own unworthiness; and when their case seems to be most dangerous, most distressed, then the Lord in his mercy steps in and gives you his grace; he puts his Spirit within you, takes away your heart of stone, and gives you a heart of flesh. Stand not out then against this Lord, but go unto him, not in your own strength, but in the strength of Jesus Christ."

      Stephen's was a heart of stone. His life had been loveless. Maybe he'd not truly loved his wife. He'd not treated her with love. His son was a stranger. He was weak and alone. He had forsaken the God of love and was truly unworthy of forgiveness.

      "Consider the exhortation Christ gives unto all of you, high and low, rich and poor, one with another, to come unto him that you may have rest. You shall find rest: Jesus Christ hath promised it. Here is a gracious invitation, and do not let a little rain hurry you away from the hearing of it; do but consider what the devil and damned spirits would give to have the offer of mercy, and to accept of Christ, that they may be delivered from the torments they labor under, and must do so forever; or, how pleasing would this rain be to them to cool their parched tongues; but they are denied both, while you have mercy offered to you; free and rich mercy to come to Christ; here is food for your souls, and the rain is to bring forth the fruits of the earth, as food for your bodies. Here is mercy upon mercy."

      Rain was coming down, but Stephen hadn't noticed until the preacher mentioned it.

      "What say you? Shall I tell my Master you will come unto him, and that you will accept him on his own terms? Come, come unto him. If your souls were not immortal, and you in danger of losing them, I would not thus speak unto you; but the love of your souls constrains me to speak: methinks this would constrain me to speak unto you forever. Come then by faith, and lay hold of the Lord Jesus; though he be in heaven, he now calleth thee. Come, all ye drunkards, swearers, Sabbath-breakers, adulterers, fornicators; come, all ye scoffers; harlots, thieves, and murderers, and Jesus Christ will save you; he will give you rest, if you are weary of your sins. O, for your life receive him, for fear he may never call you any more. Behold, the Bridegroom cometh; it may be this night the cry may be made. Now would you hear this, if you were sure to die before the morning light? God grant you may begin to live, that when the king of terrors shall come, you may have nothing to do but to commit your souls into the hands of a faithful redeemer. Now, to God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Ghost, be all honor, praises, dominion, and power, henceforth and for evermore. Amen. Amen."

      The cries and moans of thousands drowned out the sound of pouring rain. Sinners fell to the ground, shaking with the Holy Ghost. Hundreds knelt in the mud in prayer. Others trudged towards the stage hoping for salvation through the touch of the holy man. Those already saved comforted the new believers.

      Stephen held his wife as they both wept with joy. "As He did with Paul, Jesus has saved us on the road," he said.

The road that had taken his father northeast to the Nansemond took Junior and the Mannings southwest to the Tar. Here, they passed the night with relatives of Mistress Manning, Junior sleeping with the horses, and rose in darkness to resume their journey.

      A dozen houses and as many outbuildings and warehouses were clustered around the southern-shore landing at Howell's Ferry. A clutch of men stood by a fire, away from their horse carts and the river mist, waiting for a boat. Howell's Landing was the westernmost landing for large flatboats on the Tar River and, increasingly, traders brought nails, pins, luxuries and powder up from Bath Town on the Pampticoe River which, where it narrowed, became the Tar.

      From Howell's Ferry a path led them west another twenty miles to Lamon's Ferry, avoiding the several large creeks that entered the Tar River from the northwest, flowing in the same direction as most of the troublesome water barriers of the province. Within an hour's walk of Howell's Ferry, Junior noticed that the countryside was changing. Flat land—wooded or open—with pocosins or streams of different sizes, had been the only landscape Junior knew, but they'd crossed the fall line, that imaginary connection to the falls of tidewater rivers in Virginia and the Carolinas, and the ground began to rise and fall in gentle hills. Junior watched in fascination as the horse's harness loosened, and then tensed and tugged again on the upgrade. He ran ahead to climb a tree and look out. The sun was still low and threw deep shadows. The land looked soft, like a rumpled bed.

      By early afternoon, they had reached the ferry on the Tar. Lamon, a thicknecked man, pulled them back to the north bank.

      "Our creek, the Sapony, comes in about another mile up the river," Mister Manning said. "The falls are four or five miles down stream from here. You'll see it all in due time."

      They stayed that night with a family living by a westward fork off the Halifax Road that ran from Lamon's Ferry. Jonas Pridgen, their elderly host, was a thin man, suffering from the loss of all his teeth the past winter. His large, unwashed wife was as pregnant as Mary was, and very pleased with her condition. They, and four small children, shared an already settling log cabin with two nosy chickens.

      After two hours of prayers and a meal of corn bread, boiled side meat, and greens, the Mannings slept in the one rope bed, while Junior and the six Pridgens slept on the damp floor of the small log hut. Father Manning had been firm: the young people would repent their sin before God and the community and be wed before they could touch again.

      "This is like our first Virginia house," Elizabeth whispered to her husband.

      "Pray God reward these generous people," he answered, and closed his eyes for sleep.

      Manning's land was on both sides of the creek, and the north bank, where they arrived, was low and swampy. Two pigs rooted in the mud near the base of a beech tree, but Mathias and his sons, John and William, had hauled dirt for fill, and they'd laid a ten-foot-wide causeway of logs to the bridge they'd built across the creek.

      "The creek's about ten-foot wide. Shallow," Manning said, "but deep enough to float small loads. And the water's sweet."

      Mosquitoes pushed them faster over the causeway and bridge, through the pocosin to rising, cleared land. Stumps of large trees showed that the sons had been busy. The corn was tall and green, and a house was visible at the top of the gentle rise. The cabin was neater and more solid than many they'd passed.

      "Looks like a fine house, Mister Manning," Junior said.

      Mathias Manning stared at the boy. He still had a hard time being pleasant to the boy who'd defiled his daughter. His thoughts and feelings tested his Christian charity and forgiveness, and Mathias was troubled by the dislike he had for the unsaved youth.

      "It is a fine house. Was built by the Scotsman I bought these acres from. McElmore is his name. A Presbyterian believer."

      John and William Manning came running down to greet them, over the cut weeds that was a path. They stopped when they saw Junior and their pregnant sister.

      Stephen, Junior was not a welcomed member of his new family. Mary's father disliked him, and her brothers used and cursed him when their father wasn't there. Her mother, alone, treated him with kindness and she only with anticipation of a grandchild.

      Junior Williams had dishonored their sister and brought nothing to the family. Particularly, his status as an only child was cause for the Manning brothers' resentment. Junior brought no sisters to present as potential brides for them, and they were now left without a sister to entice suitors who had their own. The brothers worked him in the field and with the animals. They pelted him with clods of dirt, and they held his head down in the creek. He refused their temptations to fight, but pondered ways to torture them. After the night's meal, Junior was allowed to sit with Mary while oiling his cooper's tools, and on the first Sunday, after hours of prayer, he was allowed into the woods to look for fallen oak and ashe and hickory for making staves and hoops.

      A fortnight after they'd arrived, Mathias Manning returned from visiting neighbors with news that the preacher was returning.

      "You have until morning to cleanse you body and your spirit. We will see if this boy can be saved," Mathias said.

      Elizabeth stood behind her husband, her arms folded beneath her ample breasts, her round face smiling.

      "Brother Pittman and Sister Sarah prayed with me all morning about this situation," he said. "God is answering us by sending Preacher Parker."

      He turned to his daughter, unable to speak of the matter to the boy.

      "You'll be married—in the Christian way—if the preacher believes this boy is convinced of his wickedness and is touched by the Holy Spirit. Then he'll be baptized in the way Jesus was—dipped in the river. Then God will sanctify your union."

      Junior had been wet all over before. That was nothing to be afraid of. He was ready to do that. He wondered if he'd be touched by the Spirit. He doubted if the Manning brothers had been. If so, not very much. It would make the family happy, and make his life much easier. He knew he was sinful, but he'd never worried about it.

Reverend Parker was renewed with enthusiasm for God. He had recently arrived from a journey to Edenton to dispute with Corbin about stolen Granville grants, and had had the good fortune to be there when the great George Whitefield spoke to a crowd of thousands. The crowd had gathered in a field, Parker reported, standing in the rain for hours to receive the news of Jesus.