I’m punching the dough, right, readying for my turn at the oven and I get to thinking. Talking. John’s at the table cleaning his musket, waiting on his lunch. Pushing the rod in and out. Our son Francis, good boy, out in the field. One son in the field working, one son behind our garden in a grave.
We have every right to that meal as they do, said I.
He said nothing.
Master Billington. Ye hear me?
He held the barrel up to the light. Blew. A puff of gunpowder on his moustache.
We don’t need what they are giving. I’ll walk on by that way, tip my hat, let Weston know I’m watching. Maybe hold my musket in my right hand. Scare him a bit.
John put on a growly bear of a face, but I knew he preferred to let the spiders find their way out of our house than smack them himself.
My sons, as I said, they liked to wander. Six months here, it was my youngest, Francis, that climbed the tallest tree at the top of the hill and spied with his great eyes a lake. He ran to tell Standish, sweet naive boy that he was, wanting to make the soldier proud of him. Standish called him a liar.
My son came home crying.
So I went to Standish.
I said, How dare you call my boy a liar.
Apologize, said I.
That scoundrel would not. I took my boy’s hand and marched out of the meetinghouse and past it.
I told my boy, Show me.
I could not climb as high as he, but I could ride a horse faster than any other woman. We took our neighbor’s horse—nay, borrowed, for I returned it—and rode two miles west.
Betwixt the trees, there it was. The smoothest, biggest lake I’d ever seen.
Francis Billington Sea, I said to him.
We whooped and called it across the water. There was no one to hear us, but the birds took flight. How proud I was of him.
We went back to Standish the next day. I told him I’d seen it with mine own eyes. I thought his eyes would fling from their sockets. Since my boy had found the lake, it had to be named Billington Sea.
I punched the dough harder. That Weston, that Standish, that Bradford. All of them disrespecting us so.
My husband made to leave with his gun.
Where you off to? I asked him.
An errand, he said.
An errand? I said. Only errand you’ve ever done without saying so is going off to find more liquor.
He snorted. I knew he was up to something, but whatever it was, it was his business, not mine.
Perhaps I should have called my son to follow him.