Young Writers Society

February, 1775 – Scotchtown Plantation, Beaverdam, Virginia.

Spirits of all elevated to some higher divine, into the black heavens, upon this clear night, comes the grace of a white-gold moon. In her dappled beauty spun, ever in perfect synchrony with the Heavenly Father, she comes to the sky as a mother comes to sing a soft lullaby to ease her children into a star-filled night, stoic, yes, the moon casts rays along a kneeling person.

“Sit beside me.”

Removing my coat, I search for fingernails that would otherwise embed themselves into the cloth's fibers. It was such a hassle plucking each one of Patrick’s jagged nails out of one of my outermost layers. The weave is taut and was the grandest worsted available, a gift from Father. The floor shows mainly thumbnails, which suffered the worst damage to the nervous week-long gnawing and chewing, especially at their corners. Using a shoe, I bury them under the dirt, unbutton my coat, and lay it next to him.

“Your apprenticeship ends next week.”

I cringe hearing those words.

“Hold my hand.”

I gave his left a comforting squeeze.

My mentor raises them to his lips and kisses the top of my knuckles.

“I love you, Nehemiah.”

“As do I.”

I look at him. As if the soul could bleed an ocean through the eyes, that was the enormity of Patrick’s grieving.

I reach over and dab Patrick’s lingering tears with a thumb.

“Hold me, dear boy.”

I wrap his arms around me and hold his breast against mine. Despite Patrick’s loose shirt clinging in sweaty spots, his breath rises and eddies in cold, wintry drafts. The brim of his bony nose causes me to grind my teeth so much that I twist his head to the side so it may lay flat instead. Such grief is perfectly understandable following the loss of a precious person. I recline enough to see a face. I gently grip his jaw in my thumb and forefinger, bringing it towards my lips, but before I can offer a small peck above his brows, he clasps my wrists firmly and yanks them down.

“Whatever was about to be done cannot precede. I would sob.”

“Sobbing is healing,” I retort.

“It hurts.“

“I can fetch the children for support.”

“They’re long, fast asleep. I have only you right now.”

“When Mother died, I ate not a morsel. Father said I looked obsolete, pale, skinny. Brother was killed months later.

“Please, Nehemiah, no more talk of death. I cannot handle morose storytelling.”

“But, I have experience with it.”

“Unless you want to witness screeching a violent outpouring of whining and wailing like earlier, that subject is null and void.”

“Patrick,” I say.

“Hm?”

“I love you.”

“You just want me to have a good sob, do you not? You are very well determined.”

“I think a good conversation about Miss Sarah would be wise. Nighttime will not last, and soon as we know, the slaves will stir at first light. No one should see her body. Surely,—“

“Point made. Allow time to think.”

“No. Speak spontaneously. In your bereavement—“

“All right! You talk too much.”

“You love me anyway,” I say.

“Again, there is much to ponder.”

I said no more. Often thoughtful, frequently lengthy, and always considered, I beg my dear mentor to examine options for a speedy reply. Two weeks earlier, Patrick developed peculiar quirks, such as sleeping with a secret plaything. One day, I wanted to do a kind favor for my adopted family. I thought fluffing everyone’s pillows was decent enough. Big, comfortable objects awaited them. When I lifted Patrick’s, a little lamb of many years that passed must have been a great source of comfort, tumbled backward. If it once looked white, the poor thing’s wooly coat is more of a sepia hue now. It was easy to see the toy was doted on. In between my fingers, there were coarse bumps. I looked, and in all capital blue cross-stitched letters, I discovered the toy had had a name. Below the lower part of the inside of the toy’s right leg, I read its name: LAMMY. For some, it was a ‘blanky,’ for others, an imaginary friend, and for Patrick, a stuffed lamby. At the time, whether to laugh or cringe at the absurd notion of a grown man cuddling a toy, I never could deduce an opinion. I swore he went daft.

“You must not go indeed you must not; the very thought of living without you so totally sinks my spirits that I am sure the reality would be more than I could bear . . .”

“The floor thanks its master for the kind words to it.”

Patrick snorts. “Dear Nehemiah, always the fool.”

“Best to be the fool than the, oh, never mind.”

“As you wish it. I cannot bear to look at my wife.”

“Then, do not.”

“Hold me as tight as possible.”

I tenderly push a few strands of matted hair out of Patrick’s eyes.

“You are not embracing me enough.”

To remedy his protest, I tug the shirt’s collar and guide him to my lap.

“Does this suffice?”

“Be generous.”

I consoled my mentor in a soft, cracked voice and suddenly felt grief and regret take me.

“I have examined myself and know I can better abandon friends, country, and everything than live without Sally. To be parted, I can not accept.”

I rub the nape of his neck, giving it a proper massage. Despite a good chill in the cellar tonight, I cringe, touching clammy, moist skin.

“My love, John and William wrote letters. They said I could not read them. I set them on your pillow. Martha said it would have made her too sad to compose a page for a most loving and excellent mother; I did not force our daughter. Nehemiah, I love you.”

“As do I,” I sniff.

I feel his forehead nestle deeper, nearer to my lap. Patrick’s body rises and then falls, taking in deeper breaths.

“For my part, I have told my passion; my eyes have spoken it, and my pen declared it; I have signed it, swore it, and subscribed it; my heart is full of you.”

There were minor movements. I halfheartedly glance down, watching my mentor curl up, bringing his knees tucked high underneath his arms.

In the evening of last week, after every hour, it seemed, Patrick combed debris and lint out of every scrap of clothing he found using a coarse handheld broom. And yet the garments before him could have scarcely been unpleasing to the most fastidious eye. The ritual was a testimony to his obsessive nature. Now, there he is, lying in filth.

“About how long since Miss Sarah died?”

Patrick sniffs. “A while, Nehemiah.”

“When I go home, how will you cope?”

There is a pause, and then, “I remember a thousand things that give me leave to tell you that my passion is so violent that it will give me cause to curse the existence of living in this very world without you.”

And so, Patrick infuses warmth, a kind of warmth privy to all members of the Henry family, and between parent and child, Father is disconnected. We share no closeness. Although, in truth, I am dead, and if I am dead, there is no logical reason for Father to demonstrate love to his last remaining son because, to him, I am air, invisible. Patrick’s tender-heartedness, oh, how I wish to remain at the Scotchtown Plantation indefinitely! I crave attention and sup it with gusto whenever there are opportunities to receive it.

“If you will be so just to my passion as to believe it sincere, tell me so, and make me happy, visit often. Indeed, my dearest angel, the whole happiness of my life depended on you. Adieu.”

“Damn you, Patrick.”

“Damn me, what?”

“I am beginning to cry now.”

“It happens.”

“Ya . . . Yes.”

“Nehemiah, I love you, truly, I do.”

“Stop it,” I say.

“Talk to me.“

I glance at the pallet with the corpse of Miss Sarah concealed under blankets.

“We must tend to your wife’s body.”

Sounds of cursing and sniveling enter my ears.

“It is all right. Shh. Shh,” I say, patting him.

My eyes grow hot, the tears welling so fast it is little use blinking them back. I wipe mucus dripping from my nostrils. Searching for where to wipe my dirty fingers, suffice it to say, since nothing was available, I smeared them on Patrick’s shirt sleeve. He made no complaints.

And another creature broke a specter of Patrick’s former self. He was no longer a disciplinarian or a strong, steady, reliant figure of strength I depended on. Now, there are writhing contortions of twisting and squirming movements. We are too fragile; we humans are like porcelain. Throw a stone, and our once beautiful, picturesque physique is shattered and shall never be the same.

I am fractured, too. Three people I loved are dead. And the last I could turn to for guidance and reassurance that everything will be fine is discarding me.

I hate to cry. I return to those rabbit holes of guilt and rip myself to pieces. Guilt is worse than grief. It is a terrible weight to carry. Loneliness is a burden, too. Both are an emptiness, a fitting marital union, because guilt starts as a wound and then loneliness punctures it, creating systemic organ failure. No balm or elixirs is potent enough to cure wounds. There is always the guilt reinforcing that at Mother’s deathbed, I should have said I loved her. I should have tried lifting the carriage’s wheel to free Brother. I watched every single last drop of blood exit. I could have done something.

Life is born. Life dies. What does it mean to live? To die?

“La . . . lad, why sa . . . sa . . . so silent?”

“Because.”

Patrick pulls himself up into a seated position, leans in, and licks a thumb; all the while, I am silently crying. He gingerly wipes each tear along my cheeks and eyes away. With a hand at the nape of my neck, he inclines his, pulling mine down until our foreheads touch.

“Worry not about my wife. Her body will be buried in secret before it begins decomposing. Tomorrow night.”

“There will be no ceremony?”

Patrick shook his head. “I will place her in an unmarked grave. It is the best solution possible for her protection. I must preserve honor. I cannot allow denigration.”

“You meant to say denigration of your honor, not hers,” I sniff.

Patrick pushes me off.

“Watch yourself.”

“No, I will not.”

“Nehemiah,” Patrick sighs, exasperated. “There have been whispers, murmurs, gossip about my wife. They think some Godforsaken evilness attacked, no, wormed itself under her flesh. They think the Evil One drank every ounce—“ A choked sob rises in Patrick’s throat. “My reputation would be a farce! Ruined! What if they force me to relinquish from the courtroom?”

“You are scheduled at the House of Burgesses soon,” I remind him. “Fear not.”

“I must go. Nothing less than a question of freedom or slavery, the subject ought to be the freedom of the debate.”

I blink. “What?”

“That snippet is memorized. I composed papers I plan to bring when I leave in March. I wrote them a fore-night ago. We ought, in correlation, that war is upon us sooner than we know. I must convince the assembly we are no longer to sit idle and let the storm pass.

“So, you are not tired of me?”

“No, my foolish son. There is no grudge against you. I hear the early birds chirping. Help my wife’s beloved dispose of the body until I can secretly bury her. No, you will not know the location, so do not bother asking. No one will know it, not my children, no one. The risk is too great if my bride is located.”

Something occurred to me.

“Patrick.”

“What is it?”

“Not once have you said Miss Sarah’s name.”

“Because.”

“Because,” I nod.

“I love you.”

“As do I.”

“For Heaven’s sake, say it.”

“I love you, Mister Henry,” I smirk.

“Idiot,” he snorts and then wipes his cheeks dry.

I lean in and kiss Patrick on his lips. After a few seconds, I wink at a very baffled man looking surprised. Astonished would be a better, more suitable description of Patrick’s expression.

Few words describe how intense platonic love is. The connection is an eternal love, one where the presence of one another is central to each person's well-being.

“We should all love each other more than ever.”

Patrick clears his throat. “Indeed.”

“Do you sleep with a toy lamb still?”

“Yes. I shan’t be surprised. You snoop. It is a most unfavorable trait.”

Ignoring the rude comment, I ask, “You are not embarrassed?”

“Why should I be? Lammy belonged to Martha. She insisted I have it.”

“But, the lamb was hidden.”

“To prevent nosy persons from knowing my personal business.”

“You are angry.”

“Annoyed.”

“Because I know the truth?”

“Look, my naive member of the Henry household, I know your nature by default is inquisitiveness. Sneaking about it will get you in serious trouble eventually. Have you discovered private letters while snooping about?”

“There’s more?”

“No.”

“They’re yours?”

“He who is reticent of his own business dislikes prying into letters for a purpose which may be led into falseness of poor assumptions and may also be privy into privacy. And no, you may not read them.”

“Oh.”

“Come, help me.”

I offer a hand and then yank Patrick’s wrist up. He staggers and trips, falling into my embrace as I catch the weight of his heavy body before Patrick collapses.

“Dang,” I squint, trying in vain to steady him.

“I could ever deserve— but Lord knows how much I cherish— it is a natural longing of the human heart to care for your children. As a father, there is a part to not wanting to leave, and the other half is knowing Virginia must represent. I must do so at the House of Burgess. I am torn in two.”

“Go ahead. Weep.” I let him rest his head upon my breast.

When Patrick pulls me into a more vigorous embrace, he bursts into a fit of mumbling indecipherably. Again came the sobs, more softly, ending in a sort of whispering speech. From the ordeal, out of breath, very cold, and wet right through, Patrick pushes gently back.

“Help move my wife to a place where I can store her remains and bur—.”

“I love you.”

“I love you too, Nehemiah.”

—

Patrick began sleeping on Sarah’s side in his bedchamber. When he retired late, he always slept well. One night, however, Patrick moved back to the cellar. He imagined his childhood sweetheart’s ever-thinning body taking up less space beneath the blankets.

The chair is nearby. It was a shift of maybe two feet from the chair to the old pallet whence Patrick attempted to lay in it. When he looked across at the space where he used to sit, his sense of loss was so acutely overwhelming he closed his eyes, but the imaginary spikes dug deeper. He remembered whether this would be the day the pain would worsen or the latter, saw her for dead.

Like the drunk whose world spun when they shut their eyes, his despair broke further through the wall that kept grief at bay, which allowed him to maintain the facade of, Patrick, you are coping so well.

What happened next?

Patrick moved upstairs again and slept at Sarah’s side of the bed: grief gone, solid walls of coping back in place.

With trial and error, he spent longer minutes laying in the cellar bed, like someone training for a beautiful, marvelous endeavor. Each time the darkness threatened to engulf him, Patrick returned to safety, moving back upstairs to familiar territory.