The Whiskey Rebels (28 page)

Mr. Skye nodded at me, and I took that as agreement, so I pushed forward. “Do all men desire women they neither know nor like? I understand attraction, being drawn to a face or a shape, but for women, I believe we must always engage in fancy with such an attraction. If we see a man we like, we imagine that he must be good and kind and brave or whatever thing it is we most treasure in a man. It seems to me men like Tindall and Hendry don’t trouble themselves with such fancies. They merely desire and wish to take. Are all men thus?”

Mr. Skye cleared his throat. “A man will always be drawn to a pretty woman, there can be no stopping that, but each man alone chooses how to shape that interest in accordance with his heart. If you will forgive a crude analogy, every hunter must have his dog, but when the dog is not hunting, some men will allow it to lie by the fire and feed it scraps from the table. Others will curse it and beat it if it so much as wanders where its master does not want it. Can you conclude from these two examples how men, taken as a whole, treat dogs? No, for though the desire to hunt with a dog may be near universal, the method of keeping the animal is different from one individual to another.”

“Do you mean that some men long for affection whereas other men yearn for conquest, and these are unrelated desires?”

“I think all men desire conquest of some sort, but the ideal differs from man to man. One might wish his affection returned. He has thus
conquered
the indifference a woman might feel toward him. Another prefers conquest in its basest form. In this, I think, women are different, which is only right. Men will yearn for any willing heart, so women must be the gatekeepers of desire in order to prevent a general anarchy.”

By now, I had pushed the subject as far as I dared, and as far as I wished to. I had made him uneasy, and I had made myself uneasy, but we had both persevered, and, if I was not mistaken, we had both enjoyed the challenge. And perhaps not coincidentally, he opened for me another bottle of wine and sent me home with half a dozen eggs.

W
inter at last relented, and in the spring of 1791 it seemed that, despite the despair we had known only a year before, life was a delight. Our cabin had become a home, with wooden floors and warm carpets, the walls papered with birch bark, covered with prints Andrew had himself framed. We had such material things as any Westerner might desire, and if we wanted something—food, tools, linens—we need only trade whiskey to get it. We had gone from being outsiders to occupying a pivotal place in the community, and there was hardly a man west of the Ohio Forks who did not know Andrew’s name. My pile of completed manuscript pages grew, and I believed that in a year’s time I should have the book that had been my life’s ambition.

Once the snows had melted and the paths were cleared, Andrew planned a trip to Pittsburgh. We had not been since the fall, but such visits were not particularly pleasant. The cooler weather offered a lessening in the scent of rot and decay, but the city grew even more filthy with soot and coal dust, and though we might ride into town well appointed, we should ride out looking like chimney sweeps. The city was populated by the worst of western rabble—rough trappers and traders, drunken Indians, lazy soldiers for whom a gun and a uniform gave them leave to confuse liberty and license. Even more, I loathed the wealthy of the town. They walked about in outdated eastern finery, pretending the streets were paved, the buildings made of stone, and that they were in Philadelphia, or even London, rather than the last outpost of civilization. All was dirt and muck and filth, coal dust that descended like black snow, rooting pigs, fluttering chickens, defecating cows. It seemed to me less an attempt at a city than a preview, for so many of its inhabitants, of Hell.

Andrew, nevertheless, needed supplies to experiment with new whiskey recipes, so I went with him. As we often had different tasks in town, we made a habit of tending to our separate business, and so we parted, planning to meet again outside a grocer’s. Andrew went in search of what his whiskey trade demanded of him. I went in search of a lawyer.

The man I wanted was Hugh Henry Brackenridge, a prominent figure in town, famous or infamous, depending upon who described him and upon his most recent case. I was interested to meet him for a number of reasons, not the least of which was that Skye had told me that he wrote a novel of his own, but there was more to it. I was fascinated by what I’d heard of him—principally his willingness to accept the causes of the penniless, from murderous Indians to squatters upon Tindall’s lands.

Brackenridge kept his office in a street not far from the crumbling remains of Fort Pitt. Outside his doorway, two shirtless men wrestled with a kind of drunken desperation that bordered on the amorous. They hardly noticed me as I slunk past to knock upon the lawyer’s door.

I was shown immediately into his office, furnished in the rustic western style, and found him to be a strange-looking fellow in his forties, graying and pointy, in respectable if somewhat rumpled clothing. He was perhaps the most birdlike man I’d ever seen.

“Mrs. Maycott!” he cried, as though we had long known each other. “My dear, dear Mrs. Maycott, how is it I may serve you? Here, have some biscuits.” He shoved a plate before me, then took one and popped it into his mouth. “You must tell me how I might be of use.” The food was not entirely chewed when he spoke, and bits flew out, but it seemed to me more charming—in the way of an exotic animal—than boorish.

He was not only birdlike in his appearance but in his manner. He spoke in a high voice, and was in his manner as nervous and twitchy as the creatures he resembled, flitting from here to there, jumping up at a moment’s notice, hardly able to speak of one topic before hopping to another.

“I am always eager to meet those who settle the lands hereabout. I don’t often meet the wives, you know. The husbands? Oh, yes, often the husbands. But the wives? No, not so often.”

For all his queerness, he did not make me uneasy. The world is full of unusual people, and though some may scorn them, I had ever believed that a bit of kindness would earn an enduring loyalty. “How is it you know me?” I asked.

“You gave your name when you called,” he said. “And your husband is quite famous for his whiskey. I have sampled it, and it is indeed something special. But please, sit, sit, sit.”

I did so and thanked him for the compliment he offered my husband. Then, wishing to move things forward, I explained to him my business, for true business I had—that of examining our lease, for I had concerns about our responsibilities and obligations. “There are not so many legal men in town,” I said, “and it is well reported that you alone will stand against Tindall.”

“He and I are not friends,” he said, “but neither are we enemies. I take upon myself causes that have merit, that is all. And it need not be the merit of the particular person at the center of the case. That is what people do not understand. I’ve been much criticized for taking the part of that Delaware Indian Mamachtaga—got himself drunk and killed a white man and that was all there was to it. With every ounce of will, I defended him, though it earned me many enemies among those who could not understand why I would stand with a murderous Indian over a white man.” He grinned at me and then, perhaps needing something in the way of punctuation, bit into another biscuit.

“But why did you defend him? Why anger your neighbors to defend a man you knew to be guilty of so terrible a crime?”

For an instant his features—the darting eyes, the flaring nostrils, the quavering lips—all settled. He was like a monument cast in stone as he met my gaze. “I did it because someone must, because even the guilty must be defended, or the system of law has no meaning. I did it, Mrs. Maycott, because I am a patriot, and if a man loves his country he must uphold the principles of that country even if doing so may make him uncomfortable in his own heart and odious to his neighbors. A patriot does not make the principles of his country conform to his own ideas.”

“You are a clever man, Mr. Brackenridge.”

“Too clever for my own good, if you must know the truth of it.” Perhaps dismayed by his own gravity, he offered me a curious smile and then ran a hand through his hair. “Now, let us look at your contract with Colonel Tindall. And never fear, I shall not tell him you came to see me. He would not like it, though I presume you know that.”

He took the document and sat at his desk, a glass of wine in one hand, his glasses slowly sliding down his nose like the slow melt of mountain snow in the encroaching spring. He traced each line with his finger and mumbled, like a clerk in a stage comedy, and I believe he did so consciously. Mr. Brackenridge was not only a quirky man, I decided, but a man who enjoyed his own quirkiness. He would nod, sip his wine, find his place, nod again, mumble, shake his head, point, wave his hand in a circle, and find his place again. In the end he looked up and discussed the parameters with me. It was much as I had expected, and the explanation was clear. When he was finished I felt my color reddening, and I turned away from him.

“There is another matter I would like to discuss,” I told him. “I hope it is not too personal.”

“Come, Mrs. Maycott, we are friends now, are we not? Not such great friends, I suppose. I would not, for example, lend you any great sum of money. Not that I expect you to ask. A small sum, perhaps. Yes, a small sum is not out of the question. A few dollars? Will that do?”

I laughed. “Sir, I have not asked you for money, and I do not intend to. You have done me a service, and it is I who owe you.”

“Oh, yes, of course.”

“It is something else. You see, I have heard that you are writing a novel.”

His face brightened, like that of a child upon the mention of sweets. “Most people consider the endeavor very silly, but then, this is Pittsburgh and hardly a center of letters. Yet, I do write a novel. Are you a lover of novels, Mrs. Maycott?”

“I am.” I looked away. “I am also, I hope, a writer of novels.”

“Oh, my dear, how exciting,” he said. He did not hesitate but took from his desk a large manuscript and began reading to me from his book,
Modern Chivalry.
It concerned the adventures of Farrago, a kind of American Don Quixote, with his faithful and hapless servant Teague. It was very, very funny, and I laughed several times, both at his quips and at his wonderful enlivened performance, for he spoke in the voices of his characters and even, as best he could with papers in his hand, acted out scenes as he read. It was also, I was relieved to see, nothing at all like what I was about. I wished to write something new. Mr. Brackenridge wished to write something old. My mind was put at ease.

“Perhaps you would care to share some of your book with me.”

I would not have asked him to look at it, but he offered, and I had come prepared with a fair copy of the first few chapters, some sixty pages written in my best hand. This was no whim, for paper was expensive, and it cost me much to spare these pages, and yet I knew I must have someone’s opinion, and someone who had no interest in pleasing me.

“I have not the time to wait while you read it, so I shall leave this with you, sir, trusting that you will show these pages to no one. But as you are a man of letters, I would value your impressions. Should I continue with my work or abandon it? I beg you will promise to tell me your true opinion and not stand upon politeness. When I come to town again in a month or two, I shall call upon you to hear your verdict, and you may return the pages.”

He agreed to my terms, and so I left. It was out of my hands, and I should have thought about it no more, except the next day, back in my own cabin, I heard the sound of approaching hooves as I prepared the evening meal. I went outside to see who came, and there, riding toward me, was the owlish Mr. Brackenridge.

He came down from his horse, reached into a saddlebag, and returned to me my pages. “It could not wait a month or two,” he said. “What you do is remarkable! New and important. I beg you to finish and finish quickly. The world needs novels such as this.”

P
erhaps a week after my meeting with Mr. Brackenridge, while I served an afternoon meal to Andrew, Mr. Dalton, and Mr. Skye, our dog began to bark wildly. This was followed by a violent knock at the door, and all three men took hold of their guns at once. It was the way men behaved in the West, though I thought it silly. A raiding party of savages would not knock before entering. Andrew nevertheless motioned me to the back of the cabin and stepped forward toward the door, which he opened slightly. Then he opened it the rest of the way.

Standing there, in the thin light of the late afternoon, the sun blindingly behind him, were Tindall’s men, Hendry and Phineas. Hendry grinned at Andrew and scratched at his scabby face while he dug at the dirt with his boot. In that light, his face looked not red, but blazing scarlet. “You done good for yourself.” He licked his lips as he studied the inside of the cabin.

“Good afternoon, Mr. Hendry, Phineas,” said Andrew.

Hendry pushed his way inside, and Phineas followed close behind. I’d not seen him in more than a year, and he’d grown since then, broader about the chest and shoulders, more stubble upon his face. Phineas had made the transition from being a brutal boy to a brutal man.

Andrew stood aside, ever mindful of the push and pull of violence. Men such as Hendry were wont to set traps, daring others to step into them. Andrew would not be so prompted. I presumed I could count on the same restraint from Mr. Skye, but I did not know about Mr. Dalton. Both men eyed the intruders and clutched their muskets but did not raise them.

“No one’s invited you in,” Mr. Skye said. “Mind your manners here.”

These were not men made to mind their manners, and they did not like that they should be asked to do so. Phineas spat on the floor, that his contempt might be better visible.

Hendry watched Skye’s face darken, and he responded with a grin. “I guess we can’t all be schoolteachers like you. We can’t all know about our p’s and q’s, but then, some of us are still men and don’t hide behind the skirts of an Irisher, so there it is. You have something to say to me, stand up, set down your piece, and say it like a man.”