A Girl Called Samson (115)

“Should is a funny thing. People talk an awful lot about the way things should be and not the way things are. You’re a woman, and that’s a reality you can’t argue out of.”

“I’m man enough.”

He laughed at that. “Yeah. I guess you are. I guess you were. But I don’t think you’ll fool people like you did before. Your female is spilling out all over now. You’re ripe.”

My shoulders sank. It was what I feared.

“The general is one of the best men I know. Why are you running away? And from him of all people?”

“I’m not running away!” I insisted. “I am not running away from him.”

“Then who are you running away from? And why do I feel like we had this conversation a long time ago?” He scratched his head.

“Because we did. We talked about being born free and dying free. Do you realize that you are one of the only people who truly know who I am?”

“You mean soldier Bonny?”

“Yes. I mean soldier Bonny.”

“Oh, lots of people know. They just don’t know what to make of it.”

“They don’t know Deborah Samson. They just think they do.”

“So you want the whole world to know her. Is that it?”

“I want the world to accept her.”

“Accept?” His sputtering became a great rolling laugh. And he kept laughing, throwing his head back and stamping his feet like he couldn’t get enough.

His response only made me angrier.

“You may leave now, Grippy,” I insisted, splitting another log and throwing it aside. “I am so very glad I have entertained you.”

He didn’t leave. He just kept chortling, rocking back and forth in my chair, watching me hack away at my anger.

“Oh, Bonny. That’s funny. That’s a funny one. ‘I want the world to accept her,’” he said, pitching his voice a little higher, mimicking me. “Well go on then, woman. Go chase acceptance. When you find it, let me know. ’Cause there’s a few African folk who’d really like to know where it is.” He laughed again and slowly rose from the chair as if he’d worn himself out with his merriment.

“Not me, though. I already found it. It’s right here.” He patted his chest. “Right here.”

John found me where Agrippa left me, still chopping wood, still wearing my breeches, still stewing in the emotional soup of my mother’s death and finding acceptance.

“At ease, soldier,” the general demanded.

I scoffed, but I stopped hacking and watched him walk toward me. Over the years, the ruddiness had continued to fade from his hair, starting at his temples and working its way back, but John Paterson was not greatly changed from the general who’d ridden onto the field at West Point to greet a batch of new recruits. My heart had stopped then, and it stopped again. Always. Every time.

He didn’t slow until he’d reached me, and when he did, he lifted my chin and pressed a kiss on my mouth that was neither polite nor perfunctory.

“Why are you chopping wood, Private Shurtliff? Mountains and mountains of wood?” He looked around at my piles. “Our children will think you are building an ark.”

“I am chopping wood because I can. I am good at it. And our children are not even here. John Jr. has gone into town and Betsy is at your mother’s.”

John’s daughters were grown and married, and at fourteen and twelve, John Jr. and Betsy had busy lives and interests of their own. John Jr. had grown so tall and handsome. He looked more like a Samson than a Paterson, though he was his father through and through, dependable, devoted, and good. He would care what others thought of me. It would bother him to hear them talk, but he would be leaving for Yale in the fall.

Betsy had John’s red hair and my fierce gaze, but she had no interest in books or school. She was a talented weaver and Mrs. Paterson had dedicated an entire room in her house to a loom, though we had one at Paterson House as well.

“That loom is yours, Mother,” Betsy always argued. “The one at Grandmother’s never gets used by anyone but me. And I am making you something. A surprise.”

“You have blistered your hands.” John took the axe from me and embedded it in the stump.

“They are too soft.” I turned and stomped into the barn. He followed me. I grabbed the pitchfork and began turning the straw. It didn’t need to be turned; I’d just freshened it that morning.

“Where did you find those breeches? Those are not mine. They fit you too well.”

“I made them. Are you scandalized?”

“No. But you don’t look like a boy in breeches any longer, Samson.”

“That is because you know better.”

His eyes narrowed and my pulse quickened. It was always thus between us. Even after two children and almost two decades. The hunger and the wanting had never faded, much to my surprise.

“You are not shaped like a man.”

“Then I shall have to fashion a paunch to wear under my shirt to give my waist a little girth,” I said, though the general’s waist was as flat and hard as the barn walls.

“Your waist will thicken soon enough if we continue like we have. My mother had me when she was your age.”

He was teasing me, but I stilled. I could not continue like we had. I could not. I had been pregnant five times and miscarried thrice, very early on. I had been determined to be as good at having children as I was at everything else, but it had turned out that I had no control or say in the matter, and I had not gotten pregnant in many years. But if John Paterson put another baby in my belly now, I would never be able to go. The thought brought me up short. I raised the pitchfork at my husband.