A Girl Called Samson (30)

“You’d best be moving on, boy.” The woman named Dolly was back, wedged in beside me, but facing the bar as though she waited to speak to the barkeep.

“You don’t want a drink or a poke. That’s good,” she murmured, and once again I wasn’t sure if she was talking to me. “You’re too young for women or for soldiering. But you don’t want any part of that either.” She cocked her head toward the corner of the room. “Samson’s a mean one.”

“Samson?” I gasped.

She kept her eyes forward, and I couldn’t tell whether she was lying or if she was simply afraid.

“He doesn’t know whose side he’s on. Nobody can trust him. Plus, when you get out on the open sea, there’s nowhere to run, and no one will notice if you don’t come back to port.”

“His name is Samson?” I pressed, disbelieving, but she ignored that, speaking quickly.

“Go to Bellingham. The bounty is fair and recruits harder to come by. They’ll take you. I know the muster man; he’s a good sort. Tell him Dolly sent you.”

I took another coin from my pocket. I really couldn’t spare one, but I did anyway, sliding it across the bar to the woman. She tucked it between her breasts and moved away without a backward glance, and I did as I was advised.

But I could not leave without knowing.

The day was warm and my belly full, and I found a patch of grass where I could shrug off my pack and rest myself, watching the door of the Buzzard Inn and waiting for the man named Samson to appear.

I didn’t have to wait long. He strode out, his gait almost rolling, like he’d not adjusted to the land beneath his feet, or maybe he’d just had a drink too many.

I called out to him. “Jonathan Samson, is that you?”

He turned sharply, almost spinning around, and when he saw me and realized it was I who had spoken, he raised his hand to shield his eyes.

Had I not recognized myself in his face, I might not have believed it was him. My memories were faint and fraught with unhappiness. But he was the same tall, long-boned, fair-haired, hazel-eyed man, though his skin was weathered and his back slightly bent.

I stood up, needing my own height to steady me. I’d been warned away from him, but I was calm. Eerily so, the blood barely moving in my veins. I was not at all concerned that he would know me. He never had. He never would.

He looked at me with eyes like mine, eyes that didn’t know which color to be.

“Who are you? Are you Ephraim?” he asked. “You’re not Robert. Robert looked like a Bradford, not a Samson.”

I wore my musket across my back, and it wasn’t loaded, but he’d noted its presence. I’d said my piece and seen all I needed to see. I picked up my satchel and began walking in the opposite direction.

“Who are you, whelp?” he insisted again, angry, but he made no move to follow me.

“I am more a man than you’ll ever be,” I said, tossing the words over my shoulder. “I’ll tell Mother I saw you. She told us you were lost at sea.”

It was foolish of me. I was taunting him and endangering myself. I should have never engaged with him at all. I well knew the proverb about perverse tongues falling into mischief. I had proven it true time and again, and that day on the docks in New Bedford would come back to bite me.



I bought a journal and a traveler’s ink and quill set, just as I’d said I would, but I didn’t dare write as Deborah, in case it fell into the wrong hands, and I was careful to say nothing revelatory. Still, I addressed the entry the way I’d done for years, needing the comfort of my friend, even if she couldn’t answer me.

Dear Elizabeth,

I saw my father in New Bedford. I was warned away from him, though I had no intention of boarding his ship. I want to be a soldier, not a sailor. It seems he’s become a captain after all, but a woman in the tavern told me he’s “a bad one.”

She also told me to go north, to a place called Bellingham, though it’s fifty miles away. She said they were mustering troops and the bounty was good. I caught a ride for most of the first day and ate my fill of turnips, though I’ve never liked them much. The farmer was kind and his wife took one look at me and burst into tears. They lost their son in Germantown too.

I have so much to tell you, though I wonder if you already know. I like to think you are following along, an angel on my shoulder. I am alone, but I’m not lonesome. My heart is too full of hope for sadness. It’s like nothing I’ve felt before, and as Solomon says, my desire is a tree of life. I’ve nothing to do but walk, and my mind is strangely quiet, my restlessness appeased. People have been kind. They think me too young, but no one has stopped me, and I am seized by continual wonder in this new adventure. —RS

I did not speak of my identity or the specifics of my struggle. I did not write of my menses or the contraption I’d fashioned to bind my breasts. I wanted to. I wanted to document it all, but I dared not do it, and left my entries vague. It comforted me all the same, and when I signed RS at the bottom of each page, it did not feel like a lie.

The innkeeper’s warning, “They will’na take you,” haunted me all the way, but when I reached Bellingham, I was sent on to Uxbridge, where the numbers were low and recruits needed. The man behind the table did not challenge me in any way. He made me stand up to the measuring post and asked if I wanted to be a soldier. I said I did, most fervently so, and I was gratified that it was the truth.