Becoming Americans (71 page)

The summer continued with slow and satisfying work. Mathias Manning and the other small farmers of western Edgecombe planted little more than was needed for their own consumption. That little extra was used for trading. Much of Edgecombe's land was too weak for good tobacco, and the markets were too distant for most to transport excess corn or wheat. Some men drove their hogs or cattle to Virginia; some struggled with hogsheads of corn, or even of tobacco, but generally, the effort was not worth it. Few of the settlers had need of goods produced in the worldly community, having learned to become self-sufficient and desirous of few luxuries. The excess grain of Manning and his neighbors was traded to Duncan Lamon for his services in grinding their wheat or corn. The barrels and hogsheads Junior made were traded to friends who brought the family salt, fish, or, one time, a goodly length of black satin ribbon for Mary. No one needed for essentials. Anything that couldn't be bartered for was given away in the community of saved Christians; a community, despite the distances between individuals.

      Still, Believers came together for meetings when the pastor came, or they gathered for house-raisings or barn-raisings. They celebrated births and deaths with food and prayers. Junior had heard stories of his mother and father's youth, when there'd been regular gatherings for church, or court, or general musters for militia. He'd missed that himself, but as a new Christian, living among the Faithful, his life was filled with joy and daily expectation of great happiness to come, while thinking less of his present wants. He eagerly joined in family prayers and began to love his new family, forgetting his own.

      The baby was born in December and named Samuel, for Elizabeth Manning's father. After a wet and confining winter, with much disputing and plotting aimed at Junior by the Manning brothers, John and William, Mathias suggested that the community be called upon to build the young couple their own house. Stephen accepted smugly and quietly. He'd begun to think the Manning cabin was crowded too, very crowded.

      The next November, William was born, named for Mary's and Junior's Grandfather Manning.

      Mary lost a child the next year, but in 1750 she bore Stephen III, finally a son named for his father. Stephen had lost the intensity of feelings against his distant father, and lacked an argument to the curious. Solomon was born in 1751 and, to the joyous celebration of all, Mary, a longed for daughter, was born in 1752.

      The children were adored and pampered by their parents and their grandparents. They could do no wrong, and all the boys were singled-out by their father or uncles for separate time and instruction, with patience that the men had never known themselves. At church meetings, the children were comforted, not scolded, when they screamed in terror at the emotional and frightening conversions of new believers. Junior remembered being fed hard spirits to quiten him when he was a child, but a screaming Sam or crying Billy were spoken to as a young vessel of God. When Billy was recovered after running off down the road, Mary had only spanked him, in her tears, then Junior had stopped working to take the boy fishing. When he was a child, Junior had often disappeared, strolling aimlessly about the woods or down a path. His father had beaten him for leaving chores behind, not for concern about his safety.

      In the five years before the birth of little Mary, Junior had become more and more restless under the watchful and censorious eye of his father-in-law. Time was not his own, and Mathias Manning had a condemning word to say about most any detail or action of the young couple's life. He and Mary began escaping to the fields and woods to be alone and free to make love with the abandon that they excited in each other. At first, they'd suffered with remorse and guilt for their lust, for keeping their sinful excursions to themselves, and for failing to confess to them in public prayer. But their love was no sin, they decided, and held their passion closely to themselves. Junior did own up to other weaknesses of the spirit, but he had no more luck in controlling those than he did the weakness of the body. Evil thoughts about his brothers-in-law were other sins he usually held to himself.

      John and William Manning had married Pittman girls and lived in houses on the far reaches of the farm. Both couples remained childless, and jealousy of Junior replaced the old antagonisms. Junior had voiced his feelings about the brothers to John Tucker, saying he "didn't give a damn" for the Manning brothers, and he was glad to see them move. In fact, he wished they'd join the movement of some dissatisfied and disheartened further west toward the mountains. Tucker urged a Christian resolution to the conflict, and publicly revealed Junior's sentiments at a church meeting.

      Although there were apologies and prayers for forgiveness and forbearance, Junior left that meeting with new resentment. The community was too close, even though the members were so scattered. The family and community that Junior had prayed for as a child were suffocating him. He often prayed to God for guidance, but he missed the liberty he'd had as a child.

      In the weeks after the birth of his daughter, Mary, Junior's thinking was pulled more and more towards the worldly life. Base urges grabbed him, at times, and when a "kiss of fellowship" was shared at meeting or on visits, lately, his mind might turn to un-Godly thoughts. It had been four weeks since he'd been alone with his wife, and base thoughts drove him to seek distraction.

      He rode Manning's horse, Salvation, down the bed of the Little Sapony to where it joined the main stream and spread out into the large pocosin of the Sapony Swamp, then back between its banks before draining into the Tar River. It had taken Junior a fortnight of cutting and sawing that first year, pulling and digging like a slave, to clear the creek and straighten it a bit. Sometimes he'd used the chore as an excuse to get away from the noisy family. Sometimes Mary came with him to help pull out limbs that storms or age had thrown across the bed. That was when the lovers had first stripped and bathed in the clear water. The picture of her naked body burned his mind and he forced it away.

      Manning's part of the creek was clean, as was their neighbor, Pittman's, and Pittman's neighbor, Bryant's. As Salvation splashed down the creek, Junior's thought of the good times he'd had on the Roanoke as a boy. He and Tom had raced and brawled and bet at cockfights. Tom Biggs would never rest under the thumb of a father-in-law. Junior wondered why he remained so compliant.

      He stopped to drink from the jug of brandy he'd taken from Mother Manning's chest, admiring the red and burgundy leaves of black gums, and the hand-sized yellow leaves on poplars. The holly trees and pines were still green, but the other trees were turning. Two hard frosts had already hit, and he knew that winter would soon be back, locking him inside the cabin with Mary and the five children. He knew that by springtime she would be pregnant with another. Two squirrels argued in a yellow chestnut and he urged Salvation up the creek bank to the path that followed the river to Lamon's Ferry.

      Duncan Lamon was a short man with a massive upper body that he'd developed in his trade as ferryman. The river was no more than fifteen yards across at his crossing, but five years of pulling at the rope and tackle gave him arms and a chest that looked top-heavy above his short legs. Despite his size, it said that he had trouble with his tiny wife, a pretty, redheaded woman who was known to nurse her babies while riding back-and-forth on the boat across the river.

      Any traffic of goods and equipment heading north or south along the fall line of the province had to use Lamon's services. Some individuals did swim their horses over, and some others jumped into the muddy water and swam it themselves. Some crossed at a shallow ford five miles upstream, but Lamon's Ferry was the necessary crossing for commerce on the Halifax Road.

      As population in the colonies had pushed westward, Lamon's Ferry became an essential link in the movement of people and information. Lamon had been granted a license to operate a tavern for travelers and he'd constructed a gristmill made with stones taken from the rocky mount of the falls. He was a loquacious, sociable man who enjoyed the company—rough-edged or elegant— who passed through on travels, or dropped-in to have corn ground, or for a drink of his choice ales and spirits. Lamon had grown prosperous.

      Duncan Lamon had arrived in the early rush of Scotch Highlanders. After the rout of "Bonnie Prince Charlie" in 1745, the vanquished Scots flocked to America, and particularly to North Carolina. Cross Creek, on the upper Cape Fear, was their center, but those who didn't stop there pushed westward. A few, like Lamon, had gone a few miles further north, into the mostly English area. With the eager help of Governor Johnston, a loyal Scot himself, the Scots' industrious habits brought success to most.

      Lamon's tavern held three tables with benches and one sleeping room upstairs. Young bucks drank too much and clashed there, on occasions, but Lamon was usually man enough to eject the roughnecks. He couldn't stifle the cursing voices, though, for his clientele was made up of non-saved Episcopals, whose nature it was to fall to fighting amongst themselves in their sinning. That's what the Brethren called it, although most of the Believers had high regard for Duncan Lamon, himself. He was fair and he was honest in the weight of corn or meal he charged for grinding. He was a Presbyterian without a church, and friendly to the Baptists.

      Junior had gone to Lamon's complex of buildings with Father Manning for the last two years when Manning had had corn ground. He'd gone alone three other times, floating barrels down on a little flatboat made of five-foot boards laid over two small canoes. He'd never been into the tavern, itself, and for the first time he wondered, why?

      Lamon's Ferry became an escape for Junior from the confinement of the Brethren's boundaries. He fought the battles with his soul each time, but by the time he'd finished his first drink the fight was over. One barrel made for Lamon bought drinks for himself and friends.

      At times, when she was angry, Mary questioned if the time and effort Junior spent at Lamon's might be better spent in working for their own piece of land. She reminded him that Father Manning had allowed them five acres of cleared land to tend as theirs to earn the money. But, that would take forever, he'd tell her each time. He was waiting an occasion that would earn him the whole sum in one venture. When he sold barrels to travelers, they paid him in cash. Important folk crossed at Lamon's Ferry, he'd remind her. Where else could he have the chance to meet important people? It was there that he'd learned of the death of Governor Johnston and, several months later, of the appointment of Governor Dobbs. He heard details of the power struggle between the Reverend Mister Moir and Governor Dobbs. He heard complaints from other Granville District residents who passed through of growing discontent about the King's rough and grasping treatment of his colonial subjects, and of his support for Granville's thievery. It was at Lamon's that he could meet with John Tucker, recently become a constable, and learn of doings of the courthouse crowd and of local arrests planned by the sheriff. Twice, Junior rode with groups who'd gathered in Enfield to free friends who were jailed. That frightened Mary, but there were things outside the Brethren, he told her.

      On an afternoon of his sixth year of marriage, as he worked on a barrel at Lamon's, bent over, sweating from the summer sun and the fire that charred the inside of his work, John Manning rode up, he and the horse wet from swimming across the river. Junior took his barrel from the fire and stopped his work to re-tie his heavy hair behind his head.

      "Junior! You must come quickly." John gasped it out while halfway off the horse. "The birthing's not going well."

      Mary never had trouble giving birth. She was made for it, she always said.

      "But she's losing right smart of blood, the women say. You best hurry. Take my horse."

      Junior grabbed the reins from John and mounted, telling him to kill the fire and to go tell Lamon. He walked the horse into the low river and swam it across, then up the road, past the Pridgens' and the Bryants', following the worn path to the Little Sapony.

      Mary was the only good thing he'd ever had. His first happiness had come with her appearance at the door of his father's house. She gave him laughing, healthy children. She was a gift from God. And was He now taking her away from him in repayment for his sins? God would not be so cruel.

      His sons ran up at the sound of a fast horse. He tossed the reins to six-yearold Sam and ran into the house.

      Elizabeth Manning sat by the bed. John's wife stood by, holding large cloths that dripped with blood. Nora Hodges, the midwife, was at the foot of the blood-soaked bed, sliding fresh cloths under Mary. Elizabeth Manning and John's wife were crying.

      Junior noticed how hot it was inside the house. The fire was too high and the window was closed. He stepped to the bed and heard a baby crying. There was always a baby crying in this house.

      Mary was still, and very white. When he'd left her in the morning she was large and ruddy-faced. Now she was so small and white, he thought. He stood looking at her, refusing to speak.

      "It's another girl," the midwife said.

      Junior turned to her, and she raised a screaming little bundle for him to hold.

      Junior spent more time at Lamon's, after Mary's death. There were women on the farm to care for his children, and he needed to be away from the Mannings and the Believers. His work gave no reason for complaint from Mathias about contributing to family support, but he kept to himself. Still, his drifting from the Community of Believers brought condemnation from his in-laws and visits of concern from neighbors. His heart was closed to the imprecations of family and friends for confession of his willful pride and disbelief, but his heart was closed to God. He wanted his children to be raised within the values and prayers of the Baptist fellowship, but he found no worth or solace in a God that would punish him so severely for minor indiscretions. He ignored the judgment of old friends.