Work is scarce when I return from New Orleans, so Father insists I stay at the farm and help tend the fields unless I’m out looking for paying work. When I do find a job, he continues his practice of taking my wages at the end of the day.
My step-sisters still live with Father and Mama, joined now by their new husbands, adding two more bodies. Elizabeth is married to Cousin Dennis Hanks. Mattie has wedded Dennis’ half-brother, Squire Hall.
These days, the tiny smoking hut for curing meat would feel less confining than the cabin. What’s more, I’ve gone from sleeping on a bed too short for my body to curling up under animal skins on the floor. When everyone’s up and about, there’s no straight path from one end of the cabin to the other.
Except for me, everybody belongs to someone else.
To avoid chores I trek into Gentryville, a couple miles away, to search for any work that pays a few cents an hour. Any job that will take me out from under Father’s roof is preferable. Crewing on a steamboat would be ideal, but my age is against me. Operators don’t want anyone who’s younger than twenty-one.
Often on my way to town, a little ditty comes to mind that reflects Father’s political views, which are shared by many of our neighbors. I’m not sure, though, that I agree with the sentiments any longer.
Let auld acquaintance be forgot
And never brought to mind.
May Jackson be our president
And Adams left behind.
Most days there’s no paid work to be had, so I linger at Jones’ General Store and peruse the only newspaper to be had for several miles. When customers are scarce, the proprietor—a pudgy, blue-eyed bookworm named William Jones—engages me in conversation about Shakespeare, great books, politics and events reported in the news. After a few weeks Jones hires me to clerk in his store on the rare occasion when business is brisk.
I begin staying late after the store closes, jawing with Jones and other young men about the week’s news. Stories about President Adams, The Abolitionist, grab my fancy. I become firmer in my belief that it’s Jackson who ought to be left behind. Four more years of Adams could bring an end to slavery, and every man would be paid for his labors. Schools would be built so children everywhere can learn to read, write, and cipher. We’d have new canals, bridges, and roads to speed commerce across our growing nation.
One autumn evening I yield to Mama’s plea to make it home for supper. During our meal Father looks up from his plate and rails against President Adams. “The ol’ crook is fixin’ to tax us poor folks and sell off public lands to pay for another of his pipe dreams.”
“What’s wrong with more canals and roads?” I say. “Seems sensible to me.”
“Rumor is ya been readin’ trash newspapers over at Gentryville. Wastin’ time and fillin’ yer head with dung.”
I roll my eyes. “Maybe you should learn to read. Broaden your horizons.”
“Too much nonsense rollin’ around in yer head jest makes ya stupider and—and lazy. What this country needs is a man like Jackson. Git rid of the bank. Let us ordinary folk live our lives. Stay outta our hair.”
I lean back on my stool. “He’ll keep slavery spreading, costing ordinary folks like us the chance to work for fair wages.”
“I’m agin’ slaves like any other good Primitive Baptist. Ain’t votin’ fer no head-in-the-clouds Whig. Give me a common sense Jackson man any day.”
“But Adams is against slavery, and Jackson’s a slaver. It’s men like Jackson who keep slavery going and hold back families like ours so we can’t get ahead.”
Father pounds his fist on the table. “I’m a Jackson man. No different from our neighbors. No different from my upbringin’. If’n ya had any respect fer yer upbringin’, ya’d be a Jackson man, too.”
“Next year there’ll be an election. Reckon we’ll find out then how the folks feel about progress.”
He glares at me. “Just so Adams don’t cheat Jackson outta it like he did last time.”
I get up from the table and start for the door, remembering a verse from the Proverbs in Mother’s Bible.
Answer not a fool according to his own folly, lest thou also be like unto him.
“Where ya goin’?” he grumbles.
“Out.”
The air is nippy as I study the western horizon on my two mile trek into Gentryville. Even without company, a thousand-plus mile flatboat trip down the Mississippi couldn’t be any lonelier than this place.
Jones’ store is sitting alone on the wood plank porch of his store when I arrive.
I point to the empty crates. “Where are the rest?”
He chuckles. “They only come to hear you spin yarns and tell jokes.”
I take the crate next to him and have a seat. “Doesn’t matter. All they want is entertainment.”
“Thought you like putting on a show.”
“Naw, storytelling just makes my isolation tolerable. It distracts me from the emptiness in here.” I lay my hand on my chest. “You’re my only true friend, the only one I find pleasure in talking with.”
We sit in silence for a long while—me staring into the horizon, him reading.
After a while I look at him. “What’re you reading?”
He closes the cover, using a finger to mark his place, and shows me the title.
“Ah … Hamlet.”
He peers over his spectacles. “Reminds me of you.”
How weary, stale, flat, and unprofitable seem to me all the uses of this world!
I shake my head.
He stands and starts inside the store. “Do you need anything?”
“Whiskey.”
“Thought you didn’t drink.”
I stand up, too. “Maybe it’s time I started.”
After we spend several hours drinking and talking Hamlet, I stumble home.
A few weeks later, everyone in the community—except the Lincolns—is invited to an infare celebrating the double wedding of two of the Grigsby’s sons, Reuben, Jr. and Charles. To feed my lingering resentment, I recruit one of the guests to help me pull off a prank.
During the wedding feast my co-conspirator sneaks upstairs and exchanges the beds which have been deliberately prepared for the two couples by the elder Mrs. Grigsby. When the celebrations are finished, and the bulk of the guests have drifted back to their homes, attendants escort the brides to their respective beds, which they at once identify by their familiar furnishings. Upon hearing the attendants’ word that the girls are ready to receive their husbands, Mrs. Grigsby directs her sons upstairs according to her earlier arrangement, one to the bed on the right and the other to the left.
As the family lounges downstairs, their ears peeled for the sounds of marital consummation, they’re accosted by a frantic commotion. Racing upstairs, they find the two boys in a pile on the floor as their brides sit wailing in their beds, covers drawn up to their chins. When the confusion is unraveled and the crying abates, the family stands ashamed over the egregious error.
Not content for the scandal to remain a secret among the Grigsbys, I write a satirical account of the matter in biblical style. My piece finds broad circulation in the community. The townspeople come to call my composition The Chronicles of Reuben. Some claim it is more widely read and memorized than the Bible.
Encouraged by folks’ reactions to my publication of the Chronicles, I heap injury upon insult with the following rhyme directed at another of the Grigsby boys, William, ridiculing his ineptitude in relations with the fairer sex.
I will tell you a joke about Joule and Mary
Tho’ it’s neither a joke nor a story.
For Reuben and Charles has married two girls
But Billy has married a boy.
The girls he had tried on every side
But none could he get to agree.
All was in vain, he went home again
And since that he is married to Natty.
William’s humiliation is so complete he insists we settle the score with our fists. When I point out the unfairness of such a contest and the unlikelihood of him prevailing against someone of my size and strength, he agrees to fight my step-brother John in my place.
Nearly all the young folks from Little Pigeon Creek show up at the designated site over in Warrick County. It’s outside our local constable’s jurisdiction and beyond the reach of any grand jury. Several boys hold me back from the fracas, but as John is getting himself thrashed, I break free and charge Grigsby. After throwing him off, I proclaim myself “the big buck at the lick,” only to draw the whole crowd into a general melee.