A Girl Called Samson (15)

“If this was all the world you ever got to see . . . just the view from this hill, would that be enough?” I asked Jerry.

“I suppose. It’s a pretty good view.”

It was. It was a spectacular view, and the pressure in my lungs eased. Perhaps it would be all right if I never saw another.

“It’s beautiful. Looking at it, I can imagine what falling in love feels like.” The thought made my throat ache. I didn’t think I would ever feel that way about Nathaniel. I could admit that to myself now, with a little perspective.

Jeremiah scowled at me. “I don’t like it when you say stuff like that. You don’t sound like Rob.”

“What do I sound like?”

“You sound like a girl.”

“Well, I am one. And there is nothing else that makes me feel like this. Just look at it, Jerry.”

“I’m lookin’.”

“In some of my dreams I’m drowning,” I told him. “But in some of my dreams I can fly. I rise up over the earth and look down on fields and forest, on rivers that crisscross the land and waters that slap against the shore.”

“Do you have wings?”

“No. I just . . . rise up. The air doesn’t whoosh around me. It doesn’t take any effort at all. And I’m not afraid of falling. I see the farms and the trees and the sky. I sometimes fly all the way to Boston, following the road below me, though I’m moving much faster than a horse or even a bird. Then I see the ships in the harbor—sails of every height and size, and the air smells of brine and fish. I fly higher so I will not be seen. There is nothing to hide behind, and my skirts billow about me. I worry that someone will look up and see me floating there.”

“And see straight up your skirts.”

“Yes . . . and they will call me a witch and shoot me down with cannon fire. So I fly higher and faster, heading inland, though I’ve lost my sense of direction. I don’t recognize the land or hills below me. I fly one way and then the next, trying to find my way back here, to this hill where I started from, but I can’t.”

“Are you scared?”

“I wake up cold and terrified every time. And yet . . . I still want to fly.”

“I want to sail. Someday I’m going to go on a ship. I’ll catch whales. You can come with me if you want to. You can be my cook.”

“I don’t want to be your cook, Jeremiah.”

“Well, you can’t be the captain.”

I thought about that. “I could if I put my mind to it.”

“The sailors would throw you overboard. Nobody likes taking orders from a girl unless she’s his mother. That’s why Nat gets so mad at you. You’re always telling everyone what to do.”

“I don’t want to be in charge of anyone but myself.” That’s what I wanted most in the world, to be responsible for and to no one but myself. “But if you captain a ship someday, Jer, I wouldn’t mind going for a sail.”

A distant popping commenced, and we sat, our eyes trained toward the sound even though Boston was thirty miles away.

“Do you hear that?” I asked.

“Do I hear what?” Jerry grumbled. He didn’t like climbing near as much as I did and was ready to head back down. I clutched at his arm and shushed him. The sound came again, a faint rumbling, like thunder in the sky, but the air did not smell wet and the sun blazed hot overhead.

“It’s gonna rain, and we’re up here,” he whined again. “I’m hungry too. Let me have that apple.”

I mimicked the sound, popping the air between my lips, so faint, so far away, and suddenly I knew. “It’s cannon fire, Jerry. It’s a cannonade!”

“It is not! You’ve never heard cannons, Rob.”

I had begun to run, scrabbling up to the top so I could see even farther. Jerry wasn’t far behind. He knew I was right. We watched as smoke rose into the June sky.

“Do you think that’s coming from Boston?” he asked, awed.

“Yes. I do. It’s . . . happening.”

It was beginning. Not just a skirmish or a protest or throwing tea into the harbor. It wasn’t pamphlets and speeches and practice drills on town greens. It wasn’t even a skirmish in the woods. It was cannons. Warships. Thousands wounded. Hundreds killed.

It was war.



I slept in fits and starts for days afterward. One would think I’d seen the battle up close instead of from a green hill thirty miles away. The sounds of battle followed me into sleep and became mocking voices urging me to join the fight. I did not believe the dreams were from God. They were too much in my own mind and heart to give Him the blame or the glory.

But the boom and the bellow of warships and cannons had awakened something in me, and I wasn’t the only one. We were all caught up in the swell. That is what it felt like—a great, sweeping wave that carried us into the sea of revolution.

Every young man felt the beckoning, I think. I felt it too. More than anything, it was a call to adventure, to heroism, and no one wanted to miss out.

They were calling it a Pyrrhic victory for the Crown, which meant the objective was reached but great losses were taken in the process. The Americans had built a redoubt and other smaller fortifications on the hills overlooking the harbor on the Charlestown side. The British had far superior numbers in addition to gunships, and their men were ordered up the hill in a full-frontal assault. It wasn’t until after the third wave and many British deaths that the colonials, out of ammunition and powder, abandoned the redoubt and retreated down the other side of Breed’s Hill. British losses were over a thousand men dead or wounded, including one hundred officers. Colonial forces lost less than half that number, but among the fallen was Dr. Joseph Warren, one of the famous Sons of Liberty. Overnight, his name became a rallying cry.