Johnny Tremain Page 5

  He walked all over Boston, his hand thrust deep in his breeches pocket. Instinctively he wanted to tire himself out (which was easy in his weakened condition) so he could not think.

  When he came back, there was something queer about the silence of the kitchen. No one reproved him because he had disobeyed Mrs. Lapham. He knew they had been talking about him.

  Cilla, for one of the first times in her life, tried to be polite to him.

  'Oh, Johnny,' she whispered, 'I'm sorrier than I was ever sorry before.'

  Isannah said, 'Is it true, like Ma says, you'll be only good for picking rags?'

  Cilla turned on Isannah. 'You're crazy! Johnny isn't going to pick rags ... But oh, Johnny, it's so awful and I'm so sorry and...'

  Johnny's face was crimson. 'Will you stop talking about it!'

  Isannah went on—' Madge says it looks awful...'

  'If either of you girls,' he stormed, 'ever mention that I've even got a hand, I'll ... I'll ... just get on a ship and never come back. I'm not going to have you mucking about with your infernal cry-baby "Oh how dreadfuls." '

  So he went to the shop.

  He saw with anger that Dove was sitting at his bench, daring to use his tools. He had not been in the shop for a month. Of course it should be expected that Dove would use his bench—for a little while—just until he was back at it himself.

  Mr. Lapham had looked up from his work, blinked gently, shook his head and sighed. Dusty was making a terrific din in one corner.

  Johnny stood and watched Dove's clumsy work as long as he could in silence. At last he burst out.

  'Dove, don't hold your crimping iron like that...'

  Dove leaned back. His fat, white face grinned up at him with exaggerated innocence.

  'Thank you, Master Johnny. I know I'm not as good as you are. Won't you please to show me just how I should hold my crimping iron?'

  Johnny walked out of the shop by the door leading to the wharf. He'd never show anybody again how to hold a crimping iron. If you can't do, you had best shut up. He started to slam the door, thought better of it. If you can't do, you'd best not slam doors.

  So he strolled the length of the wharf. There was a big ship in from Jamaica. He idly watched porters rolling barrels of molasses out of its hold. A sailor was trying to sell an old lady a parrot. He saw John Hancock standing in a group of men. The sugar basin had never been delivered. When Mr. Lapham had discovered the evil that had gone on in his absence and the terrible punishment God had meted out to Johnny Tremain, he had ordered the whole thing melted down and he himself had gone over to Mr. Hancock, returned the cream pitcher, and merely said he had found it impossible to make a sugar basin. No explanation.

  The boy was accustomed to working from eight to twelve, sometimes fourteen hours in a day. He had no holidays, no Saturday afternoons. He had often imagined to himself the pleasure it would be just to stroll once down Hancock's Wharf, as he was strolling now. Nothing to do. His hands in his pockets. Other boys—friends of his—would look up from their work, envy his idleness. Here and there he did see a familiar face. He believed every one of them was talking about his burn—pitying him. There was not a boy on the wharf Johnny did not know. He had made friends with some and enemies of others, and had played or fought with all of them. He saw Saul and Dicer packing salt herrings in a tub; Andy, his leather thimble strapped to his palm, sewing a sail; Tom Drinker (the local bully) coopering a barrel. This was Johnny's world, but now he walked through it an alien. They knew what had happened. They did not envy Johnny's idleness. He saw one nudge another. They were whispering about him—daring to pity him. Dicer's master, the herring-pickler, yelled some kind remark to him, but Johnny did not answer. Seemingly in one month he had become a stranger, an outcast on Hancock's Wharf. He was maimed and they were whole.

  At the end of the wharf, under the derrick used for unloading the largaest ships, he stripped off his clothes and dove into the water. There was not another working boy in Boston who was out swimming in the middle of the afternoon. Only once or twice in a summer—on days of unendurable heat, teachers dismissed school, masters closed shops, and the boys ran down to the wharves to swim. Sometimes, like Mr. Lapham's boys, they swam secretly, silently, on Sunday afternoons, but usually only after dusk had fallen and the day's work was over.

  Johnny dove and swam. But it was curious to be alone. He did not like the feeling of being thus cut off from his normal life.

  Yet one thing gave him great pleasure. Once in the water, his bad hand was as good as the other. Swimming, he could forget it.

  5

  At first Mrs. Lapham tended to humor the 'poor boy.' As he preferred the birth and death room to the attic with Dove and Dusty, she had let him stay on. He had never in all his life slept in a bed alone—much less a whole room. He wanted to be alone.

  There was one trouble with his new quarters. When Mrs. Lapham came down to start breakfast, she always began by getting him up.

  'Get into your clothes—you lazy boy. Stop by at Deacon Parson's for a quart of milk. Get to the town pump.'

  Soon enough she was addressing him as a 'lazy good-for-nothing,' a 'lug-a-bed,' a 'worthless limb of Satan.' Such words poured out of her absent-mindedly, but never in the old days had she called Johnny such names.

  The boy least necessary in the shop had always done chores. Now both Dove and Dusty were more valuable than Johnny Tremain. Every morning he put on the heavy wooden yoke, trudged over to North Square for drinking water. Now for the first time he learned to handle a broom properly. He carried in charcoal for the annealing furnace in the shop and wood for the cooking hearth in the kitchen, and as he moved restlessly about doing (and often failing to do) this humble work, Cilla and Isannah watched him and said little. Never a single insult. He had made it clear to them he wanted to be left alone.

  Madge and Dorcas found innumerable small tasks for him, now he 'wasn't doing anything.' Once fat Madge made him sit before her, holding a skein of yarn from which she wound a ball. He was miserable with his crippled hand stretched out for all the world to see. When she mentioned it, he threw the yarn at her head and walked off.

  One day Mr. Lapham called to him and led him to a bench under the old willow behind the coal house. The old man had never once berated him for Sabbath-breaking, never reminded him how often he had pointed out that pride goeth before a fall.

  'My boy,' he said mildly, 'soon it will be September. Summer is over.' Johnny nodded. 'And I feel I must talk with you. When I signed for you, Johnny, there was a mutual contract between your mother and myself. She's dead, so the contract is now between you and me. I promised to feed and clothe you, keep you in good discipline, and as far as your capacity permitted to teach you the silversmith's arts and mysteries.... I ... I never had a boy so quick to teach, but ... And you promised to serve me diligently for seven years, to keep my secrets and my honor. You've done all that, Johnny. But ... but now ... I can't keep my contract with you. I can't teach a cripple-handed boy to be a silversmith.'

  Johnny said nothing.

  'Mrs. L. is right,' the old man went on.

  'You mean she wants you to get rid of me?'

  'Not exactly, but she does think it is an extravagance for a poor household to keep a boy just for chores. But I've told her'—there was an unexpected glint of determination in the groping old eyes—'I've told her as long as you wish you are to stay with us. I won't ever ... turn you out. I mind the time your mother came to my shop with you ... she was a sweet lady ... very genteel. She said your heart was fastened on being a silversmith. She said you was a bright boy—you always was that. Now, Johnny, it's for your own good I'm talking to you. You've got to learn another way of supporting yourself. I want you to go around, look about the shops, and find out a respectable trade where a bad hand won't matter too much. You're a bright boy, Johnny. Maybe a ropemaker or a cooper or a weaver could teach you his craft. That hand of yours will soon be strong enough, but will always be sort of doubled in on it
self.'

  Johnny started to look at his hand, but quickly thrust it back in his pocket.

  'You're right,' he said. 'I've got to go.'

  'I don't want you to feel hurried about leaving us, Johnny. You're just about earning your keep by the odd jobs you do, spite of what Mrs. L. says. You look about you quietly and find a trade to your fancy and a master you think you'd like. You can tell him from me I'll give the rest of your time away for nothing.'

  It was less than two months ago Mr. Revere was promising something extra for his time.

  'Mrs. L. doesn't like it the way you loiter off and go swimming; but you loiter and swim all you have a mind—just so you get the chores done and settle down real hard to finding yourself a new trade. And one more thing I have on my mind.'

  'Yes, sir.'

  'I want you to forgive Dove like a Christian.'

  'Forgive him? Why?'

  'Why, that when you asked for a crucible he handed you the old cracked one.'

  'You mean ... he did it on purpose?'

  'No, no, Johnny, he only meant to humiliate you. He tells me (Mrs. L. made me question him) that he was that offended by your Sabbath-breaking he thought it fitting that you should learn a lesson. I can't help but admit I'm encouraged with that much piety in one of my boys.'

  Johnny's voice sounded strangled. 'Mr. Lapham, I'm going to get him for that...'

  'Hush, hush, boy. I say, and Bible says, forgive. He was real repentant when he told me. Never meant to harm you. He was in tears.'

  'He's going to be in a lot more of those tears 'fore I'm done with him. That scabby, white louse, that hypocritical...'

  'Hold your tongue, boy. I thought misfortune had taught you patience.'

  'It has,' said Johnny. 'If I have to, I'll wait ten years to get that Dove.'

  But he quieted himself instantly and thanked his master for his kindness. As he walked past the shop, he saw Dove and Dusty hanging idly out of the shop window. They were looking for him.

  Dove said: 'Will Mr. Johnny Tremain be so kind as to fetch us drinking water? Mrs. Lapham says we are too valuable to leave our benches. She told us we were to send you.'

  Without a word he went to the back entry, put on the heavy yoke.

  Understandably, the sight ofJohnny wielding a broom, carrying charcoal, firewood, water, had not quickly lost its fascination for his erstwhile slaves. They were still hanging out of the window.

  'Look sharp, Johnny.'

  'Hey, boy, look sharp.'

  Giggles. A low whistle.

  Johnny said nothing.

  III. An Earth of Brass

  WEEKS wore on. September was ending. A large part of every day Johnny spent doing what he called 'looking for work.' He did not really want to follow any trade but his own. He looked down on soap-boilers, leather-dressers, ropemakers, and such. He did not begin his hunt along Hancock's Wharf and Fish Street, where he and his story were well known and the masters would have been apt to employ him from pity. He went to the far ends of Boston.

  Mr. Lapham had told him to stand about and watch the different artisans at their trades until he was sure it was work he could do. Then he was to address the master politely, explain about his bad hand, and ask to be taken on. But Johnny was too impatient, too unthinking and too scornful. He barged into shop after shop along the great wharves and up and down Cornhill and Orange, Ann, and Ship Streets, Dock Square, King and Queen Streets—'Did the master want another boy?'—keeping his hand hidden in his pocket.

  His quickness and address struck everyone favorably, and so an old clockmaker eagerly agreed to take him on—especially when he told him that he had already served Mr. Lapham two years.

  'But why, my boy, is Mr. Lapham ready to part with you, now that you must be of value to him?'

  'I've a bad hand.'

  'Let me see it.'

  He did not want to show his hand, but the masters always insisted. He would take it out of the pocket where he always kept it, with a flourish, display it to the sickening curiousity of the master, apprentices, journeymen, lady customers. After such an experience he would sometimes loiter and swim for the rest of the day. Sometimes he would grit his teeth and plunge headlong into the next shop.

  He rarely bothered to look at the signs over the door which indicated what work was done inside. A pair of scissors for a tailor, a gold lamb for a wool weaver, a basin for a barber, a painted wooden book for a bookbinder, a large swinging compass for an instrument-maker. Although more and more people were learning how to read, the artisans still had signs above their shops, not wishing to lose a possible patron merely because he happened to be illiterate.

  Having been told by one clockmaker he would not suit, Johnny walked in on two more and got the same answer.

  A butcher (his sign was a gilded ox skull) would have employed him, but the idea of slaughtering animals sickened him. He was a fine craftsman to the tips of his fingers—even to the tips of his maimed hand.

  Now he never came home for the hearty midday dinner. Mrs. Lapham, Madge, and Dorcas were always pointing out how much he ate and how little he did. He knew Mrs. Lapham was looking around for a grown-up silversmith who would come in as a partner for Grandpa, and she had said (looking straight at Johnny) she would not ask him to sleep in the attic with the two boys. He was to have the birth and death room. 'I declare,' she said one day, 'no business can be run with just a feeble old man and three of the most worthless boys in Boston—eating their heads off.'

  Seems she was negotiating with a Mr. Tweedie—newly arrived from Baltimore. He had arrived alone, but she must make sure he really was a bachelor or a widower. Obviously, whatever partner she found for her father-in-law must marry one of her 'poor fatherless girls.' The shop must stay in the family.

  So Johnny ate as little as he could, and did not come home at noon. But someone would usually slip a piece of hard bread, cheese, jerked beef, or salt fish and johnnycake in the pocket of his jacket as it hung on its hook. He knew it was Cilla, but he never spoke to her about it. His unhappiness was so great he felt himself completely cut off from the rest of the world.

  But sometimes, as he lay in the sun on Beacon Hill or Copp's Hill (among the graves), or curled himself upon a coil of rope along a wharf, eating the food she had managed to get for him, he would dream of the great things he would do for her—when he was man-grown. There were three things she longed for—a gold necklace; a gray pony with a basket cart; a little sailboat. He dreamed of himself as successful—rich. Never as the ditch-digger and ragpicker Mrs. Lapham was always suggesting to him.

  Some days there was no food in his pocket. Then he went hungry.

  On one such day, he was strolling up Salt Lane. Here about him and on Union Street were printing offices. It was noon, and all over Boston work had stopped and everyone, except himself, had either gone home for dinner or to one of the famous taverns. Above one tiny shop he saw a sign that attracted him. It was a little man in bright blue coat and red breeches, solemnly gazing at Salt Lane through a spyglass. So this was where the Boston Observer was published. The Laphams took no newspaper, but he had heard Mr. Lapham speak of the wicked Observer and how it was trying to stir up discontent in Boston, urging the people to revolt against the mild rule of England. The comical little painted man looked so genial, so ready to welcome anyone, that Johnny stepped in.

  He might have guessed he would waste his time. Of course the master would be off for dinner, but because he had liked the painted sign, he went in. He had not even stopped to consider whether or not a printer's work was something that he could do.

  He saw the squat, buglike printing press, the trays of type, the strings on which printed sheets were hung to dry like clothes on a line. On a workbench was a smaller press for notifications, proclamations, broadsides, trade cards. Everything smelled of printers' ink.

  A boy, larger than himself and probably a few years older, was standing at a counter talking with a stout marketwoman in a frayed red skirt. Her pig had stra
yed from her yard. She wished to advertise it. The boy wrote down what she said.

  'Lost—a spotted sow from Whitebread Alley,' the boy repeated.

  'She was the dearest pig,' said the woman—'would come for a whistle like a dog. My children taught her to play "dead pig." We don't ever think to eat her—only her increase. We called her Myra.'

  The boy did not write that down. He lifted his dark face, indolent dark eyes. The lashes flickered. He was interested.

  'Was she hard to teach, ma'am?'

  'Oh, no! Pigs are clever.'

  'I never knew that. How do they compare with dogs?'

  Then the old lady began to talk. She talked about pigs in general and her Myra in particular.

  The printer's boy, unruffled, unhurried, heard her through. He was tall and powerfully built. There was something a little sluggish in his casual movements, in his voice—almost as though he was saving himself for emergencies, not wasting himself on every casual encounter.

  The woman was delighted with so good a listener and his few intelligent questions. Johnny, standing at the door, forgot his own errand. He had no idea that either pigs or old market-women could be so interesting. It was the apprentice, standing at the counter in his leather apron and full white shirt, his thoughtful face framed in hair, black and straight as an Indian's, who had cast a spell over the old gossip and her subject.

  Although the boy had nodded casually as Johnny came in, he did not speak to him until after the woman was gone and he had set up the few lines of type. There was nothing rude about this seeming neglect. It was almost as if they were friends of long standing. The strange boy had none of the bustling smartness of the usual Boston apprentice. Johnny had seen enough of them in the last month, apprentices who knew what you wanted and that you would not suit, and you were out on the street again in three minutes.

  Having set the advertisement, the boy took a covered basket from under the counter, put it on a table, and drew up two stools.

  'Why don't you sit down?' he said, 'and eat. My master's wife—she's my aunt—always sends over more than I can manage.'