A Girl Called Samson (19)

It makes me realize what a gift you are, dear Elizabeth. All these years you could have scolded me, shamed me, or simply chosen not to answer. Instead you have shared your life and your loves, your faith and your fortitude, and most of all your warm acceptance. Of all the gifts your uncle gave me, it has been correspondence with you that has most blessed my life. I will be forever in his debt.

I am, dear Elizabeth, with perfect regard, your most obedient and very humble servant,

Deborah Samson



Some men came home, straggling into town with their feet wrapped in rags and their clothing tattered, telling tales of terrible things. Their enlistment was up, and they’d seen enough. It was too much to ask a man with a family left destitute by his absence to continue on. But many men did.

News arrived in tatters too, bits and pieces of battles, rumors of glory and whispers of loss. And then one day a rider approached with a letter sealed with wax and addressed to Deacon and Mrs. Thomas. The rider did not smile or water his horse. He did not want to stay.

Nathaniel was dead. Killed in a battle near Brandywine Creek. A beautiful name for a terrible defeat.

A month later, the rider came again.

Elijah died in Germantown. Edward had died beside him.

The third time he came, the rider could not meet Mr. Thomas’s gaze, and the deacon handed the letter to me. “Which son?” he whispered. “Which one now?”

David, who had worried over his parents, had succumbed to his inoculation of smallpox in a Philadelphia hospital. I wondered if Daniel was with him, and prayed Nathaniel, Elijah, and Edward were there to greet him in the end. Pennsylvania had claimed them all.

We’d grown accustomed to their absence, and they were absent still, but now their absence was final. We tortured ourselves with thoughts of their suffering and didn’t know what to do with our own. We had no bodies to bury or cold hands to clasp. We had memories. A prickly kiss and a possibility. That was all Nathaniel had given me, and he would never be anything more. I would never have to refuse him or be tempted to accept his offer.

It would have been so easy to do. Had he come home and extended his hand, I think I would have taken it. It might not have been right, and I may not have loved him the way I suspected I was capable of loving. But I might have taken it.

One. Two. Three. Four. All in one fell swoop. We no longer believed there wouldn’t be five. Or six, or all. Loss is not spread equally. I have learned that lesson well. It is a lumpy porridge and a thin gruel, and fate does not consider the suffering of a mother and say, Perhaps I’ll spare her this time.

There were many times in our season of death when I sat upon my hill, surveyed the bit of the world I was allowed to see, and pleaded for God to rein fate in. Fate was cruel, but I did not believe God was.

But fate was not done, and God did not stop her.





6

THE EQUAL STATION

The day I turned eighteen, December 17, 1777, was like the day before it and the day after. I had waited for it since I’d been bound to the Thomases almost eight years prior, thinking that I would have plotted a course, a path that led to a life of my choosing, where no one could keep me and no one could control my steps. But freedom is not left or right, up or down. It exists in degrees.

A bird has more freedom than a horse. A dog has more freedom than a sheep, though it might depend on the value—or the lack of value—of the beast. A man has more freedom than a woman, but only a few men have any real freedom at all. Freedom takes health and money and even wisdom, and I had two of the three, but I had no more freedom the day I turned eighteen than I’d had before. In fact, I cried bitterly into my pillow and wished for a little more time.

“You must stay here, Deborah. You have earned a place with us for as long as you need, and I cannot bear the thought of you leaving,” Mrs. Thomas said, and I gratefully accepted the reprieve.

“I have nowhere else to go,” I said, and grieved anew that it was true.

Death had unmoored me. It didn’t help that my birthday fell in deep December, when the days were short and dark and the spring still so far away. I’d saved enough for a spinning wheel and a loom, and spent long hours at both, but I needed the sun on my face and had no outlet for the boundless energy that bubbled and spit during the dormancy of winter. I chopped more wood than we could use and cleared the entire barnyard of snow. Jerry complained that I made him look bad, but with his brothers gone, there was more work for everyone.

I received a letter from John Paterson. It was dated six months earlier. Before Sylvanus died, before David and Daniel left. Before. Before. Before. But that it arrived on my birthday, a day I had looked forward to for so many years and now mourned, seemed providential.

He’d been made a brigadier general. His name, rank, and Newburgh Encampment were written above the wax seal. He had received my letter about the declaration, though that seemed a lifetime ago. I wondered how long it had bounced through the inconsistent and beleaguered post to finally catch up to him. We’d received a letter from Nat, the only letter we’d ever received, after he was already gone. My zest for the conversation, in the face of all that had been lost, had waned considerably, but as I read, my passion was restored.

Elizabeth said John had been sent to Canada with four brigades and sent back again when the campaign was abandoned. His regiment had been ravaged by disease and exposure, and the six hundred men he’d left New York with had been whittled down to half that when he rejoined General Lee just in time for Fort Washington to be taken by the British and Lee to be taken prisoner and then branded a traitor. John Paterson should have been disconsolate, but the letter held not a word of complaint.