“Are you sure you won’t stay?” asked John yet again to the man who was gathering his meager belongings into a single canvas knapsack, absentmindedly brushing the long locks of his overgrown black hair out of his eyes.
“Come on, John. We’ve been over this a hundred times. It’s time for me to move on.”
“But Edward, I’ll make you a partner. You’ll share equally in the profits. Philadelphia is booming. The war is over, we won, and now there’s talk that the city will be the new federal capital. We’ll have more construction business than we’ll know what to do with. You could be a part of history here. We might even get to build the new Presidential Palace they’re talking about.”
Edward laughed. “You and your history. I don’t want to be a part of history. I want to forget the past, John. All it ever brought me was misery and heartache. I want a future. A different future, far from a big city and all the noise and…disease.” He looked out the single, small window of the room where he had lived for the past three years and sighed, the deep melancholy in his soul cracking the surface and exposing his pain again.
John Wilkins, a successful carpenter and lumberyard owner in Philadelphia, had purchased Edward Branson’s indenture contract from the captain of the ship “Hopewell” when she arrived from Ireland by way of England. He had given Edward the room under the attic eaves of his warehouse office. It was hot and humid in the summer and cold in the winter, but Edward had never complained. He had generally seemed grateful – and was – for the opportunities afforded him in the business.
John interrupted. “But you can’t say your time here with me was bad. I thought we got along well, and I’ve honored every word of our contract.”
Edward, holding up his hand, said, “Relax, John. You’re an honorable man, and yes, you’ve held up your end of the bargain admirably. I’ve spent my time serving here, and I’ve learned new skills in a trade I love, and for that, I thank you. But I don’t want to run a business, and fight with suppliers, and argue with workers’ unions, and all the rest. I want to smell fresh air, see the grasses growing, feel the breeze on my skin, and work the land. I hate the city, John. You know that.”
John sighed deeply. “Well, for what it’s worth, I know you started out with me as a…well, a servant, I guess. But I hope you know I truly considered you a partner. I would not have half the business I have now if it wasn’t for your skills and work management. I only hope I can hang on to it.”
Tucking away the last of his simple clothing in his bag, Edward looked up at John and smiled warmly at the man who had indeed treated him like a partner. Edward had been fortunate. Not every man or woman who signed away a part of their life for “free” passage to the New World could say the same. It had been hard work, but Edward was no stranger to hard work. Running a farm in Ireland was hard work, too. Losing it all…was even harder. He shook his head to drive away the sadness once again and reached to shake John’s hand.
“It’s been an honor to serve you, John. And I thank you…for everything,” he said, gripping John’s hand firmly.
“Where are you going again?” asked John.
“West, I think. There’s a stagecoach leaving this evening for Lancaster. I’ll figure it out from there.”
“You need anything? Money…what?” asked John, sincerely wanting to help the man he now considered his friend. Edward smiled.
“I’ve got all I need. I’ve saved as much as possible and I don’t need a lot for now. I’m just anxious to get moving. Thank you again, John. I’m truly grateful.” The two men nodded to each other, understanding their parting was inevitable, if not mutually desirable. John stepped aside and watched as Edward descended the wooden steps from his room into the warehouse proper and confidently strode across the concrete floor and out the main door into the noisy, dirty Philadelphia streets.
It was a warm afternoon for early May, and Edward tried his best to ignore the rising stench from the refuse and rot on the sidewalks. Here and there, the cobblestones trapped pockets of dirt, adding to the general mess of the city. The noise of metal horse hooves and iron-banded wooden wheels on the numerous carts and wagons clacking along on the cobblestones was maddening. During his service here, he had longed for the wide open expanses of quiet rural areas and had never truly felt alive until now, knowing he would soon be leaving the noisy, dirty city behind.
The stagecoach to Lancaster departed at the ungodly hour of 2:00 A.M. but Edward didn’t mind. The sooner he got out of the city and into the vast, open countryside, the better. Edward weighed the choice of spending part of the night at an inn or just staying up and waiting for the coach. Since he would rather not spend any coin on a room at this early stage of his journey, Edward decided to walk to the Indian Queen Tavern.
As one of the city’s prime establishments, the Indian Queen was a known gathering place and favored watering hole for government leaders and Philadelphia’s social elite. It also had the distinction of being located on Fourth Street directly across from the stagecoach terminus, making it the perfect place for Edward to dine on a hearty dinner and relax. Hopefully he would be allowed to sit in the main room until the stage departed. If not, at least he only had to walk across the street to await his ride.
After feasting on a rich stew ladled from the hanging pot over the fireplace – full of beef, turnips and carrots – and hot biscuits straight from the oven, Edward leaned back in his chair, his back to the wall, and looked around the dining area while finishing off his tankard of ale. The room was populated with people from all walks of life, brought together by the commonality of food and drink.
Dirty tradesmen lifted their drinks in loud banter, enjoying the end of the work day. Politicians and other gentlemen, some of them still wearing powdered white wigs, sat huddled at tables, discussing all manner of serious business over dinner and liquid refreshment. It was rumored that most of the political work of forging a new country out of 13 disparate colonies happened in pubs just like this one, all across Philadelphia. Since the Philadelphia Mutiny of ‘83, most of the national governing was transpiring elsewhere now, but there were rumors the new Congress would return to the city soon. Edward had no interest in politics. He just wanted to get on with his life, far away from wars, governments, and especially the city.
He called over the tavern keeper and inquired about staying there until the stagecoach arrived. “Lord, yes, Sir. I cater to the stagecoach travelers, so the door is always open. It can be a bit of bother at times but I do get extra custom from it and who of us can say no to extra money?” Edward smiled knowingly.
His stay arranged and dinner bill settled – a shilling – Edward awaited the stagecoach with increasing impatience. Now that he had severed his old indentured life, he was more than ready to move on with his new adventure. The hours moved slowly, the conversation in the tavern grew more boisterous and irritating, and by 1:30 A.M., Edward couldn’t help but step outside and mentally “will” the coach and its horses to appear in front of him and the other two male passengers waiting. A few minutes before 2:00, the coach could be seen in the moonlight, rolling down the street after leaving its first pickup point on Chestnut, a single candle-lit lantern swinging from a hook near the driver’s seat.
The brown four-in-hand, looking well-groomed and well-fed – obviously the company owner knew the value of keeping his horse teams well maintained – pulled up alongside the wooden walkway and the driver jumped down from the coach to assist the three waiting passengers. Edward handed him his knapsack and the driver placed it on top of the coach, then did the same with the other two passengers’ bags. One passenger was an “outside”, saving money by riding outside with the driver. Edward and the other man climbed up the front wheels of the coach and slipped under the leather curtain hanging from the canvas roof. Since there were no women passengers, Edward moved to sit on the last of three benches with his back braced against the coach wall, normally a position given to women as it was said to be the most comfortable. The only other passenger, a young blond-haired man of about 20 dressed in plain homespun cotton trousers and shirt, sat next to Edward on the last bench as well. The driver then closed the black leather curtains, climbed up to the driving position, and whip in hand, flicked the reins and the coach was off, bearing its human cargo on the first stage to Lancaster.
The young man sitting next to Edward promptly drifted off to sleep without introducing himself, something Edward found impossible to do with the constant noise of rattling coach wheels on the pavement and the snores of his riding companion. He spent the next several hours thinking about his plans for the future – or rather his total lack of any coherent plan at all.
His only real goal was to leave city life and return to country living. He had a skill now – carpentry – and he assumed that with westward immigration opening up at an ever increasing rate, surely there would be a demand for building and construction along the way. How far west he would go was yet to be determined.
It seemed like he was still trying to escape his life, not really live it. After his parents moved their small family from the chaos and chronic unemployment of Liverpool, England to the relative tranquility of County Mayo in northwest Ireland, Edward could not have been happier. His youth was spent exploring the green pastures and meandering streams nestled between countless rocky hillsides. As he grew up and eventually married, his life’s work consisted of caring for farm animals and learning to grow feed grains for the livestock. His father gradually gave control of the farm to Edward, and over the years he modestly expanded their land and livestock holdings. His family never had much, but they lived fairly comfortably and peacefully off the land, which provided their basic needs, and they bartered surplus grain and sheep wool with the few local merchants when necessary.
But then it was all lost in one long horrible, agonizing fall and winter. The land simply stopped producing crops. The strange relentless dark fog, which had descended upon Ireland for as far as the eye could see, blocked most of the necessary sunlight which the fields required to yield their fruit. In the end, with nothing to feed the livestock or themselves, sickness set in. Typhus spread across the land, wiping out whole families, and Edward’s was not one of those spared, taking first his parents, and then finally his lovely wife Adeline and their beautiful twelve year old daughter Molly. Edward was the only one to survive, and then only barely.
Nursed slowly back to health by a local merchant and his wife willing to share from their own meager rations of food, Edward eventually regained enough strength to begin helping the merchant rebuild his business the following season when the fog finally dissipated. It was told in the local pubs that a great mountain in Iceland across the sea to the west had exploded, pouring out ash and soot into the sky, covering nearly all of Ireland and large parts of Europe for months, claiming thousands of lives across the island nations and the continent as poverty and the resulting disease took their toll.
For Edward, staying in the place where he had lost everything became emotionally intolerable, so at 34 years of age, after finally selling his family’s farm to a surviving neighbor and gathering only what belongings he could carry on his back, he departed Ireland and returned to England. His goal – a new life in the New World.
Today he had officially completed his required indenture to John Wilkins, payment for his passage to that new life. A life Edward was finally ready to begin. His work for the past few years had been satisfying, and John had been both an honorable employer and a good friend in the end. But Edward had grown increasingly restless, and John’s frequent pressure for Edward to court various eligible ladies of Philadelphia’s society did not appeal to him at all. While he longed for companionship and love, he knew he would never find it in the arms of a woman born and bred into city life. He was a frontier man, through and through.
The rhythmic jostling of the coach eventually lulled Edward into a restless sleep of sorts, and when the coach made a brief stop at a small tavern alongside the turnpike, the passengers and driver shared a quick breakfast meal while the horses were tended to. The stagecoach was shortly on its way again, the smooth graveled road much quieter than the hard pavement of the city.
The driver had rolled up the leather curtains on the sides of the coach, and Edward looked out into the great pine forests on either side of the turnpike. The road, 24 feet wide in places, cut a swath through dense woods, generally following the valleys and streams at the foot of the Allegheny Mountains. There were more varieties of birds than he had ever seen before. He observed many other animals scurrying among the trees and along the river banks, as well. Beavers industriously building their dams, squirrels jumping from limb to limb, chasing one another in spring’s annual mating rituals. Edward smiled, thinking of his own pursuit of Adeline so many years ago. Of course, those thoughts always turned to despair and agony, and he shook his head and tried valiantly to keep his mind on his future, not his past.
His fellow passenger woke up long enough to share his total distaste for the wilderness. He apparently was reluctantly travelling to Downingtown, the halfway point to Lancaster, on behalf of his father’s blacksmith business, to procure a collection of horses for rent to Philadelphians in need of personal conveyance. His conversation consisted of a short diatribe on the ridiculousness of having to travel such a distance just to find a horse. Surely they must raise horses closer to town. Edward smiled and said nothing. Thankfully the sullen young man went back to sleep, finding no joy in his country experience thus far.
With only another brief stop to water and rest the horses around the noon hour, the stage coach continued on. Just before sundown, it arrived at its final destination for the evening, the Downing Mill Inn, a tavern built on the east side of Brandywine Creek. Two stable hands were waiting to take charge of the horses, and with some minimal assistance from the driver, the passengers disembarked. Edward noticed his young fellow passenger had taken a sudden interest in the two lads currently unhitching the team of horses.
Edward stretched his back and made a slow turn to take in his new surroundings. The driver had indicated they would spend the night here at the Inn and depart again at approximately 4 A.M., with assurances the innkeeper would knock on their doors to wake them up in time. The driver stressed there was a schedule to keep – he would not wait for stragglers. He then turned and entered the Inn, followed closely by the man who had spent the entire day riding next to him. In the distance, Edward saw his travelling companion now in the company of the stable hands, chatting and laughing good naturedly. Perhaps the young man’s journey was looking up, he thought.
Inside, the Inn was alive with a crowd of mostly workmen fresh out of the mills that lined Brandywine Creek in each direction, all seeking refreshment. Edward found a table off to one side and was soon served a delicious meal of wild turkey breast and assorted boiled vegetables, followed by a slice of cherry pie. By the time he had drained his third pint, Edward was tired of sitting and desired a walk around the small town before bed.
Outside, the warm air was filled with the sounds of insects and the fragrance of lilac bushes growing along the front of the Inn. Edward set off in the direction of the stables, a glow in one of the windows to guide him. He was feeling much better, the good food and drink having restored his general good mood. He was once again feeling anxious and excited to continue his journey westward towards a new life.
As he sauntered past the closed stable doors he thought he heard someone moaning in pain. He stopped to listen more closely, now certain that he was hearing someone groaning every few seconds. Fearing someone might be in injured or in real danger, he quietly made his way around the side of the stables and moved quickly in the darkness toward the back of the building, the moans getting louder as he moved cautiously through the weeds, one hand on the side of the wooden stable to guide him.
In the back, the light was brighter, and Edward could clearly hear moans and what sounded like subdued laughter coming from one of the stalls in the interior. Stepping very softly, hoping to avoid any creaking boards, the element of surprise being his only weapon, Edward stealthily moved along one wall down the main open pathway in the center of the stables until he was standing in a position to see into the stall itself.
What his eyes took in shocked him. The young man who had ridden in the coach alongside him for the day was now lying on his stomach across a hay bale, his breeches around his ankles. One of the stable lads, his own breeches completely missing, was humping the backside of the first, from whom the moans were coming. Just as Edward was about to shout out to stop the abuse, the young blond man from the coach turned his head so Edward could see his face, and to Edward’s surprise, he was clearly enjoying what was happening to him. Horrified, but unable to turn away, Edward watched mesmerized as the two men continued their rutting until it appeared they each had reached the shuddering peak of their own personal pleasure.
Fearing he would be seen, now that the young men were finished, Edward tiptoed quietly back to the entrance of the stable, finally exhaling the breath he had been holding tightly. Finding his way carefully back to the main street in the dark again, Edward tried to make sense of what he had just witnessed.
He had heard of buggery between men, of course. He had even heard the story back in Liverpool of two men caught in the act and made to stand in the public pillory for one hour while people pelted them with rotten food, dead animals, and rocks. One of the unfortunate men later died of an infection from his wounds.
But he had never before seen it with his own eyes, and he would have never considered the one being buggered would actually enjoy it. Yet clearly his former travelling companion had not only found pleasure in the act, it was likely he had pursued it with the stable lad. Edward was now faced with two questions. The first was should he report what he had seen to the local authorities, and thereby ruin, perhaps forever, the young men’s reputations? Or even worse, he could end up being indirectly responsible for their personal injury or death at the hands of a vengeful public, when their only “crime” was sexual relations, though of a most unusual kind.
The second question was even more distressing for Edward. Why on earth had he himself become physically excited while watching the two young men’s behavior? Was it simply the observance of someone receiving sexual pleasure with another person, something he himself had been denied for several years now? He knew he had never so much as thought about sexual activity with another man. His wife Adeline had been his only lover, and he had been quite satisfied with that part of his life. After her death, he had considered himself dead to a sexual relationship ever again, as he had no intention of re-marrying at this point in his life. And his own moral code, such as it was, made it impossible for him to seek physical comfort in the arms of a prostitute. He was not above self-pleasure on occasion, but he would have never admitted it out of sheer embarrassment, though he doubted he was the only unmarried man to do so.
In the end, he blamed the lateness of the hour and his own personal conviction that the young men had harmed no one, except perhaps themselves, so he did nothing. He returned to the Inn, received a key to a small room furnished with a single, one-person wire cot supporting a thin mattress and a tiny writing desk. The only light was from a wax candle standing on a flat stone.
Edward slept fitfully, his dreams plagued by a return to the images he had witnessed in the stables. He woke up nearly two hours before his impending departure, sweating, excited, and overwhelmed with frustration. Not knowing what else to do, Edward pleasured himself to relieve the sexual tension, and was finally able to sleep soundly until a loud knock woke him from yet another dream of the two naked young men, this time calling out to him from the stack of hay bales to join them.
After a warm breakfast of eggs and biscuits with gravy, washed down with hot tea, Edward was the first to climb into the stagecoach in the darkness and misty fog of the early morning. He was relieved his previous day’s companion was not to be seen in the group of travelers taking the coach to Lancaster. In all, six men of various ages and professions joined Edward for the day’s journey ahead. When the stagecoach lurched forward as the horses stepped into their yokes, Edward realized he had never learned the name of the young lad whose life had inexplicably changed his.
The journey to Lancaster was without incident or excitement. The other passengers amused themselves with conversation about their personal successes and achievements and how the coming new order of things would benefit their business interests. Edward listened only halfheartedly, nodding and acknowledging someone when spoken to, but politely declining to really enter into the conversations.
Frankly, he was bored. Bored with business and politics, bored with the banal banter of simple men with simple interests – namely themselves. The only thing on the journey that did not bore Edward was the scenery. He was fixated on the beauty and wonder of nature all around him, and as they rode deeper into the forests and along the occasional open rolling valley, he longed to start a new life, pulled from the very land itself, much as he had done in Ireland. There was something gratifying for him in living off the land. The challenge, the danger, the fight for survival which intrigued him and motivated him in a way city life and carpentry could not.
His mind also kept returning to the images of two young men in the throes of passion. What he had seen the night before was seared into his memory, like a brand on a new calf, and he knew it had awakened something in him he thought would be best kept hidden. It made him uncomfortable and uncertain, raising questions he never expected to have to face. As he had done so many times in his life, he chose to ignore it for now, and returned to dreaming about his immediate future.
After a brief stop along the turnpike for a midday meal and rest for the horses, the stagecoach arrived at Miller’s Tavern in Lancaster shortly after 5:00 P.M. Despite having done little but sit on his very sore rear end all day, Edward was tired. All he wanted now was a hot meal, some liquid refreshment, and a place to lay his exhausted body. Tomorrow he would begin to figure out the next steps for his new life.