John Goodman
Northeastern Frontier (Modern-Day New Hampshire)
Two men walked shoulder-to-shoulder, thoughts rumbling in their minds like storm clouds. Together they trudged through the miserable doldrums of April, bombarded at all hours by ceaseless deluges of springtime rain. The drops soaked and chilled them, having little to defend against it but their tent, which was water-logged itself soon enough. Some nights, it beat hard down upon the canvas like the drum of a hundred hoofbeats. To them, though, victims and veterans, it played in their ears to the rhythm of war. Not the pristine and orderly marches of mother England’s infantry—no, it was an irregular tempo, the chaotic dance in the fields and forests of the New World. The thundering charge of a downhill ambush, the frantic mess of a hasty retreat. And though the rain was just percussion, the minds of these scarred men could not help but add their own macabre symphonies to it—screams and swords and gunfire.
A thought came to each to speak to one another, knowing that they both heard and thought and felt the same. Quickly dashed, though, by the silence of men too proud or scared to unravel themselves in that way. It wasn’t something you talked about. It was something you suffered quietly, buried inside you, and moved past until it reared its ugly head again. What these men were never told, however, is how often it would. How every spilled jar clattered like a gunshot, how every other dream was a nightmare. How it lurked like a stalking predator in the shadowed recesses of the mind, lashing out whenever it felt threatened. How it unearthed something ugly in them, clouding their judgments, making short-tempered husbands and angry fathers from mild-mannered men. How it would seep, then, to their wives, to their children, innocent that they were, that they should not bear this weight. That try so much as they did, good men that they were, to keep it inside themselves, that it was an impossible task, and that it shamed them so deeply to know it.
Only one conversation was shared between the two during the whole trip back to New England. One night, when the rains had stopped, the two had set out to roast two rabbits they had caught, the only hot meal they’d had in a week. As they sat maintaining their skewers over the fire, Isaac, whose eyes were heavy and dark, began to speak:
“What do you suppose heaven looks like?” He asked.
John was taken aback by the question. He opened his mouth to ask why Isaac had asked, or why he cared, but he stopped. These were questions borne from his instinct, but he had little use for their answer. So he thought a moment, taking his time, then answered.
“The Bible says—”
“I’m not asking the Bible, am I?”
John had nothing to say to that. He thought some more.
“I have never been very creative,” he admitted. “I picture it as a massive cloud, perhaps, or sometimes a field of splendid flowers. It’s warm and calm, and I spend each day with Christ and my loved ones who have made it there, too. I am always happy, and I never want for anything else.”
Isaac nodded, but he seemed unsatisfied by the answer. John wondered why. He had been acting unlike himself ever since their encounter with the Penobscots. Isaac was many things, but an introspective man was not one of them. When they were younger, he was headstrong, to a fault sometimes. He was the kind of man who fought first and asked questions later. Now that their fighting days were behind them, perhaps, the questions were all that remained.
“What about you?” John asked him. “What do you reckon it looks like?”
Isaac cracked his neck and gazed into the fire.
“When I was young,” he began. “My father would tell me about what his own childhood was like. His eyes would practically sparkle. The way he would talk about it, I was so jealous. The time before your people came. It was a simpler time. A happier time, to be sure. When I was a young man, when I heard the preacher teach of Christ and redemption and paradise, that’s what I pictured. A world of humble peace—no factories, no firearms. A world where I would wake up every day with a smile, where my worries would be small, trivial things, if I had any worries at all.”
“Surely it was not so idyllic.”
“I’m sure he embellished. But then again, I can’t know. The only life I’ve known is this one, and it’s a hard and confusing one. My worries are deep, existential things. And I carry many regrets.”
“About the war? About your allegiance?”
“Mmmm.”
Isaac took his stick from the fire and admired the dead thing roasted on it, like the thought of it disgusted him now.
“The Saunskwa visited with me,” he said. “She spoke to me. She will be a formidable leader, I think—very well spoken, very smart. Reminds me of Weetamoo. She has a habit of bringing things out of you, things you thought were gone. Things you tried to bury, I guess.”
“And?”
The man sighed.
“I don’t know. All I know is how angry I was, the rage for my brother. It blinded me, I think. But I was young then, and rage is all I had. Now I have the head of the man who killed him sitting in a jar on my mantle. It’s not a bad deal, that—how many others are afforded that vengeance?”
“But it troubles you now? After all these years?”
“Perhaps. I am getting old, John, and you will be too, soon. At our ages, what is there to do but look back? I have nothing but time to think, and to wonder. About how things could have gone. How things could be different.”
“Do you find it helpful? All worrying can bring you is pain. The past is done, the present here. The future is up to God.”
“That’s what worries me. If God, in his infinite love and mercy, has brought us all this, what does paradise look like to Him?”
Isaac took a bite, and the two stewed in his words. A scowl formed on his face, and he spat the meat out.
“It’s foul, this one,” he said, and he tossed the thing into the woods.
“You can have mine,” John offered.
“No.”
The man stood, and headed for the tent.
“I’m tired,” he muttered. “I’ll turn in early.”
“Isaac,” John said. He stopped for a moment.
“I think there is paradise in heaven,” he said, his words half for himself. “All the suffering and the confusion and the pain has a purpose. It’s so we know what they are, so we can know their absence once we reach the divine kingdom.”
Isaac made a noise. Between the crackle of the fire, John couldn’t tell if it was a grunt or a chuckle.
“Antoquan,” was all he said.
“Hm?”
“My name, once upon a time. It was Antoquan.”
***
The two parted ways silently on the road to Punkatest Pond, though John had promised to speak to Grace and arrange a meeting with Isaac’s son. After that, it would be up to them, and to her, though he often wondered if she cared to marry at all. She was a rather insular young woman, even childish. Would Isaac the younger even care to marry her? So many worries, he thought. Perhaps I am getting old.
Love this novel? Read it on Royal Road to ensure the author gets credit.
Upon his return to Boston, he went straight home. His report to the Governor and Increase Mather could wait—he had missed his family dearly, and besides, he was filthy from the travel.
Seeing his humble house again, the tension finally went from his shoulders. He was safe now. Better, he was home. He rapped his knuckle upon the door and waited. He was about to knock again when it opened, and there she was: his eldest daughter, Grace.
“You’re home!” She exclaimed, and hugged her father. She recoiled after a moment, though, her nose upturned.
“You stink,” she remarked.
“You would, too,” he returned. “Where’s your mother?”
“Out in the yard. I’ll go fetch her.”
He accompanied her through the house and out the back. Pleasance’s eyes gleamed when she saw her husband.
“Go fetch some water for a bath,” she told her eldest, then went to go kiss her husband. She hesitated.
“Maybe after the bath,” John said. Pleasance smiled.
“Thank the Lord you’re home,” she said. “Place has gone to pure madness.”
“Oh?”
“Mercy’s lost her mind, I think. It’s the teens. You remember when Grace was at that age.”
John nodded thoughtfully. Grace returned with two pails of water.
“Good dear,” her mother said. “Now go get your sister and get some supper ready.”
“She’ll not want to,” Grace protested.
“She will if she knows your father’s back. Now go.”
Her daughter did so. Pleasance poured the water into the bath, and John quickly took off his clothes and sat in the tub. Pleasance grabbed a brush and began to scrub him thoroughly.
“Well?” She asked him. “How was the trip to Indian country?”
“Not good,” he replied. “Almost died, actually.”
“I told you no good would come of it. You’ve got to tell that Mather you won’t be going on any more escapades like this, not at your age.”
“Isaac told me I’ll start turning into an old man in a few more years.”
“Verily. And a few years after I’ll be a crone, and we can grow old and crooked together. Won’t that be a blessing?”
John chuckled at that.
“But really,” Pleasance said. “No more of this. I can’t have you away that long again, and I can’t have you dying. Not until the girls are out on their own, at least. After that, do as you like.”
“Don’t worry. Tomorrow, I’ll tell the governor myself. This was my last errand. I’m officially retired.”
“Not that yet. We still have two little mouths to feed.”
“One soon. I may have found a match for Grace.”
“What? In Indian country?”
John grinned.
“Sort of. The trip wasn’t worthless after all.”
“It’d be more Mercy than Grace, you know. To marry an Indian. She’d do it just to spite me.”
“Oh, come. Would it be such a crime?”
Pleasance sighed. She had never quite seen eye to eye with her husband on this issue, one of the few points of contention in their marriage.
“As long as he’s with Christ, I suppose,” she said, though John knew this would not be the last conversation about it. If Grace ended up getting along with young Isaac, they’d be a good match, but Pleasance would be harder to convince, and there would be no wedding without her approval. Still, that was tomorrow’s worry. Today it was enough to be washed and fed. It was enough to be home.
***
The next day, John Goodman found his errand of debriefing a rather difficult one, given that the men he was meant to debrief to were both missing. The governor’s office, conspicuously empty, and half-answers from his attendant at the desk as to his whereabouts. Mather’s was even stranger—nowhere to be found. Cryptic replies from fellow administrators, even his family. Finally, John tried his last resort—an old mutual friend named Thomas Candy, who was also in John and Mather’s class at Harvard. When he asked about Mather, Thomas had the strangest response.
“What day is it?” He asked.
“What?” John replied. “Well… the eighteenth, I think.”
“Right,” Tom nodded. “He’s probably at the docks then. You should hurry if you want to catch him.”
John hurried. He ran as fast as he could to the docks. Once he arrived, he stopped for a moment, panting as he caught his breath. He whirled around, trying to find Mather. No sign of him. He took a few steps forward, wandering around. What in the world is going on?
A hand on his shoulder. John turned to see a man in a dark cloak and hood. The man took off the hood. It was him.
“Mather!” John exclaimed. “What are you doing here? What’s going on?”
“You’ve been away for a time, my Goodman,” Increase replied. “Things have changed. Things are in motion, and they’re moving fast.”
“Explain.”
The man hesitated a moment.
“I suppose your visit with the Penobscots was less than fruitful,” he remarked. “You’re wearing a terrific scowl on your face.”
“No, it didn’t,” John said through gritted teeth. “And you knew it wouldn’t. You and Andros both. You sent me into a death trap.”
“Not I. The whole thing was Andros’s idea. You know I have no great opinion that the Penobscots would be swayed to us anyway, and I certainly would never have sent Marley to deal with them. But I needed to go along with it.”
“Why? What have you done? And where is Andros?”
Mather grinned.
“Our friend has sailed to the Penobscot bay,” he said. “Apparently there’s a Frenchman there who’s been goading the poor savages to attack our frontier towns.”
John grimaced. He knew who this Frenchman was—he had met him, back in the aftermath of the mess with Gentle Wind. He said his name was Jean-Vincent d'Abbadie de Saint-Castin.
“So the war has begun,” John said gravely.
“Don’t call it that.” Mather waved two dismissive hands. “Let’s use a less depressing term—a foray or skirmish or something.”
“It’s a war, and your hands have blood on them. What the hell have you done?!”
“Watch your tongue. Blasphemy doesn’t suit you, Goodman. And it’s not a war, because it’s nothing compared to the one we’ve been fighting for years.”
A bell was rung on the pier nearby. Mather turned.
“That’s my cue,” he said.
“What? Where are you off to?”
“To good old Mother England. I’ve heard it’s quite miserable this time of year.”
John grabbed the man’s shoulder and stopped him.
“You aren’t leaving,” he said, his voice stern. “Not until I know what’s going on.”
Mather sighed.
“Andros is out plundering,” he said. “Which means he’s distracted. Don’t you think I know what I’m doing by now? Either he gets killed out there by some errant tomahawk, or, by the time he returns, I’ll be back from my own little excursion, and I shall have in my hands a most important treasure: our old charter, signed by the king himself.”
John frowned. So this was it. Mather’s master plan to return Puritan rule in New England. John was conflicted—he too, was tired of Andros’ popish rule, of Catholic influence in these good Puritan lands. But what was the cost? More bloodshed? More death? More nightmares, for the decades to come?
“It’s not worth it, Mather,” he said, shaking his head. “Not for this. Not like this.”
Mather smiled in the way he did, like a lizard, and he patted John on the shoulder. It felt condescending.
“It will be, my old friend,” Mather said, though John could not tell if either of those things were true. “Mark my words. It will be.”