And Feathered
Thirty-eight words. Huzzah!
“If these Brits try to talk, give them forty words, and not a penny more.”
—John Adams, 1765
“We have been humbugged, my dear Sir.”
—General John Burgoyne, British Army Officer, 1777
“My people,” I say. “My people!”
This is not what one would call an ideal scenario. This is not exactly, erm, my greatest position; then again, have I ever cared for idealness? Have I not thrived on a bit of chaos? God willing, God willing!
“Bring it on,” I say. “Give me all you’ve got!”
Were my words to ever initiate the opposite reaction, it is not now. This mob does not stop, no; this mob knocks and rocks and gnashes, tearing me out of my coat, and then my jacket.
“Hey!” I cry. “You aim to strip me naked? Won’t you leave a fellow his underpants?”
They do not dignify me with a response. They answer with froth. To say—spittle! It is a hungry crowd, I fear, no different from the most violent in the paper: the dirty riots of the Stamp Act, the siege on Governor Hutchinson. But to witness it up close? To watch these bloodsuckers come to life. It is frightening, brother! To face their gnashing mouths. Hands seeking blood.
A Bostonian raises his arm to ease the crowd. He kneels beside me with a hand jammed in my hair.
“Maybe we oughta let this Brit speak,” the daredevil says. The crowd hushes at this. Here, I look upon upside-down folk, and their crate of feathers behind them. Pearly white, like an angel’s fleece. From their vantage, my face must look a mess upon the cobbles, but still, I gather my expression into a respectable manner. Always, manners of great respect. “How many words we’d like to give ‘im?”
“Fifty!” A man cries.
A child, “Three!”
“How about we split it down the middle?” the rogue smirks. “I say we give ‘im thirty-eight.”
“Ay, ay!” they cry. For the game of it. “Thirty-eight words! Huzzah!”
The pot of tar comes jittering up the cobblestones, in a contraption I have not yet seen. (They are starting to wheel these things!) They are careful with it, shepherding it with young hands, and fathers saying, “Easy,” navigating the steaming jar of heat. It looks, I must admit, far worse than the feathers.
“So,” the rogue tells me. “Do your worst.”
“Yes,” I say.
“Thirty-seven words! Ha-ha!”
To this, I can only close my eyes. To this, I can only shut out the crowd, as they hee and haw at my person—me! But there is no way to stop the hearing of ears, my fellows, even as this colonist’s voice continues to resonate, “Tell me, Mr. Malcolm—how many sentences will you choose? Will you break it into five short ones and one long? Or perhaps you will give three long ones and two short? Won’t you tell us?”
I slit my eyes at him, “No.”
“Thirty-six words. Ha-ha!”
You have never seen a more self-satisfied crowd, foulness in all forms. Children hover their hands over the tar for heat.
“Perhaps,” the rogue says—who, I fear, has no limit of words—“he will take this chance to denounce his kingdom.”
Another man: “His Crown!”
A child: “Ha-ha!”
“Would you, Sir John Malcolm, care to denounce The Crown?”
I shake my head and look upon them with much wisdom and ferocity. I look upon the feathers—which we should be TAXING—and the tar—where do they get it???—and skewer them with unspoken glory. The fixed look of a man who is careful with his speech, who will be precise, who will shatter with wisdom.
“Why’s he not speaking?”
“I’m thinking,” I say.
Fixing them this look even as they say thirty-four, allowing them an expression of wrath, of justice, of righteousness, of speech, glutting up from my throat. But what am I to say?
“Is he mute?”
“I will take the feathers,” I say.
A silence, then. A dawning, near-gaping silence, as if they cannot believe what they’ve heard.
“The feathers?” the rogue says.
“Yes,” I say. “Why don’t you just feather me?”
“We plan to!”
“Twenty-two words left,” a man behind him cries. “Ha-ha!”
“And not the tar,” I say. Like it’s rather casual. Like we are brokering one great deal. Like we are friends hanging out on the great precipice of the colonies. Then, in a small, pinched voice: “How much tar do you have?”
“A vat’s worth!” the man cries.
Shrugging, I say, “Too little.”
“Too little?!” he roars. “Too little? Look upon it. Look upon that wheeling beast. We have brought it all this way!”
“Messy,” I say.
“Messy?!?” He roars again. “MESSY?”
“Messy,” I agree. “Feathers better.”
“Six words. Ha-ha!”
Here, he fixes me with a look of rapt concentration, as if he wants to understand. As if he is truly puzzled. Elsewhere, the crowd looks on in hushed astonishment. “You are saying we should just feather you,” he says, as if he has never heard such a proposition. “Why in God’s name would we do that?”
“Less messy,” I say.
“Four words!” the onlookers shout.
“You have four words to explain yourself,” the jackal says, slitting each through his teeth.
I shrug, “Tar hot.”
“That’s exactly right, the tar is hot! The tar is hot for you!”
Never have I had to think so sublimely. Never have I funneled all my intelligence to such a powder keg. For here, for here—my fate lies in less than a sentence. A phrase. Channel it, John, I think. Come on! I know I have the intelligence.
The rogue says, “You have earned yourself this tarring.”
“Disagree,” I say.
The rogue smirks and cries, “Disagree? He disagrees!” To which the crowd rabbles. “And you have one word. One!”
It is not every day a man is given one last word. Quite the bizarre circumstance, if you really think of it. And for what? Seizing a ship? Threatening to ‘sheath my sword in the bowels of anyone who threatened authority?’ Small peanuts, really. And I am left one sound?
I give it much thought. Much mulling.
Here I learn that God is good. For He strikes me like lightning.
I raise my hand.
“You’re ready?” the rogue says.
I nod.
“Well, what is it?”
I point to myself.
“He’s trying to get something across!” an errant man cries.
The rogue cocks his head. “You? The word is about you?”
Nod, again.
“The word you are going to say describes yourself?”
Yes.
“Speak it!”
All around, the mob’s voices rattle the cobblestones, begging for my word like one ground-stirring instrument. I look upon the crowd, fixing my hand beneath my chin, so that I am framed, like a pretty portrait. Then with my eyes upon them, with my intent fast and rapt, I bellow—
“AMERICAN!”
—and am adored for life.
* * *
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