I WOKE IN the morning to the smell of spilled beer. I was in a lumpy bed, looking again at the cobwebs—no faces there now, only spiders. I dressed, all the while aware of the letter on the table that I’d written the night before. I felt an urge to tear it up, but I put the letter in my pocket and went downstairs. After porridge at the tavern, I walked to the mail depot and posted it to Long Eddy.
Coming out of the depot, I noticed a shop across the street—a shop that sold clothes for men. I went over and peered through the glass in the door but couldn’t get myself to turn the knob. I had bought clothes in a store only twice, each time in Albany with my mother and never as a man. How was it done? I stood in place like a statue, till I thought people might be looking. If they were, they saw me leave with a purposeful step as though remembering some errand. A minute down the street I stopped to scold myself—if I were to live as a man, there would be things more difficult than this.
I returned to the shop, stepped inside, and was greeted by the smell of brushed wool. It took a moment for my eyes to adjust, and as they did a young man appeared as though birthed by the clothes hanging nearby. His starched shirt was gathered gracefully above the elbow and his head was held high, as though he too were performing for some unseen audience. Might he be of service, he asked, making a sweeping gesture with his arm. I didn’t curtsy in return—just said I wanted to buy a few things. The man’s eyes traveled my body, while his face did its best to hide a grimace. Was I deserving of the clothes in his store?
The shopkeeper led me to some shelves off to the side, all the while speaking in an overly mannered way. “Would the gentleman like this? Would the gentleman prefer that?” I didn’t know what to say. I wanted to slap him.
My host sighed and gathered his patience. “Can you describe the occasion?”
Suddenly, a new truth came to me—I mustn’t hesitate when it comes to deceit. “Yes,” I said. “I’m going to visit my aunt in New York.”
With mere mention of the grand city, the man looked at me with new eyes. He took down a pair of smoke-gray britches and, from another shelf, a white shirt with a stiff collar. He handed them to me, and I went behind the curtain. When I came out, I stood before the mirror and looked at myself as I thought a man might.
As I continued to admire my new clothes, the shopkeeper fluttered about. His fingers brushed imagined dust off my shoulders. Then they went to my waist and began to wander, as though, perhaps, to assure a proper fit. I felt myself stiffen. Then his hand moved over my bottom! I nearly jumped. For a woman, this was a brash liberty; for a man, I didn’t know. In no position to make a fuss, I let the moment pass.
In less than an hour I came to own the britches, several shirts, and a pair of leather shoes. I had spent a good part of Granddad's money and might have given more thought to my shrinking purse, but I didn’t. Feeling cheerful—victorious even—I bade my nosey-hands friend good-bye and returned to the inn to collect my belongings. A short while later, dressed in my old clothes, the new ones in my bag, I set out for Honesdale, Pennsylvania, some fifty miles up what everybody was calling the ditch.
The barge canal ran along the east bank of the Delaware. The river was rushing with the spring rains, but the canal was calm and the towpath firm—good walking, the only dangers those left behind by the mules. I did my best to stride like a man, and it wasn’t hard, for I had done it often while hunting. The boats going in my direction were lightly loaded, but those coming the other way were filled to the brim with stone coal. As the canal had only one towpath, I was curious as to how they could pass without becoming tangled. But the etiquette was as formal as the moulinet, a dance figure we had learned at school. The boat heading for the Hudson, being burdened, moved to the far side, dropped its lines and let the lighter boat pass over, the maneuver so graceful that little time was lost by the ceding vessel and none at all by the favored one.
Midday, at a place called Monroe’s Lock, I bought some bread and cheese and found a sunny place to sit. After my meal, I reread the notice taken from the tavern:
TO ADVENTURERS!
OPPORTUNITIES IN HONESDALE!
The DELAWARE & HUDSON CANAL has opened a field for enterprise. The Subscriber offers for sale, on moderate terms, a number of lots in Honesdale. The titles are indisputable. In HONESDALE the Merchant meets his goods from New York; and there the Farmer finds a ready market for his Husbandry. The social amenities are good, and the churches are Presbyterian, Methodist, and Baptist. In each is a Sabbath School. Inquiries may be made at the office of the Subscriber, which is to be found at the Tavern in Honesdale bearing his name: Daniel Blandin
I had chosen the bill with no more thought than a page of the Bible selected by chance, yet I was obeying it with the same devotion. I was in need of a place to go, and I took this for my sign. Honesdale sounded like a town with promise, and I felt as though I knew someone there—Mr. Daniel Blandin. I folded the notice and put it away, my letter of introduction. Then, to keep myself company, I took out my violin and scraped some melodies, mostly sad ones. After several songs, a whiskered boatman appeared, bringing his mules to water. With him was a boy wearing overalls and a slouch hat.
“That’s a fine piece of fiddle playing,” said the man. “The name’s McAdams, Captain Jake McAdams. This here’s my driver, Little Nick.”
“Joseph Lobdell,” I said, rising to shake hands, as I had seen men do. I had chopped many a log on Basket Creek, so my hand was strong, but it was small. McAdams swallowed it in his sweaty paw but didn’t crush it. Our eyes met, and the captain appeared satisfied.
“Are you headed in or out?” I asked.
“Runnin’ light to Honesdale,” he said. “Be lucky to pay the feed.”
I nodded my sympathies, trying to speak no more than I had to. What words I did say, I roughed up in the back of my throat. When the captain learned I was going his way, he invited me to ride with him. A little later we stood on the deck of the Mary Ellen and watched the mules returned to the traces, the driver slipping the harnesses over their heads and tightening the buckles under their bellies. I was more or less doing the same with the unfamiliar belt around my waist, not quite able to find the place where it was comfortable yet would still keep my brother’s britches on my narrow hips.
Seated on a barrel nearby was a woman whose hips were anything but narrow—the captain’s wife, I thought. “That’s Martha, our cook,” said McAdams, speaking as if she were at a distance. I waited to greet her with a nod, but she didn’t turn or lift her face.
McAdams next motioned to a hatch and a steep ladder. Something told me not to go, but I didn’t know how to refuse without appearing strange. I took the ladder and watched as the sky became a small square, wondering with each step down if I were to be locked away and sold into bondage. My feet hit bottom in a dark room that smelled like vinegar. Nearby, I could see a table and a coal stove. Further on were two smaller rooms with bunks. A window high up provided a meager ration of light and air—a perfect prison.
The captain’s legs appeared on the ladder. When he got down, he turned and gave a satisfied nod. “This here’s where we all live. It can be cold and blowin’ a gale up top, but down here you’ll be snug and dry.”
I had to laugh at myself. I had read too many pirate stories as a girl. Still, I felt uneasy, and when we returned to the deck, I looked for a sheltered corner, vowing to sleep topside in any weather short of a blizzard.
As we got under way, the captain asked if I would play some tunes. I was happy to do most anything that wouldn’t require talking, so I unwrapped the violin and bowed the most cheerful melodies I knew: “Horse and the Moon,” “The Rusty Shuffle,” and “Lazy Ole Daisy.” The notes floated out into the afternoon, and for a while it seemed as though the land and the people on it were the ones in motion. The music brought smiles to those walking the towpath, and several waved or called out as we went by.
The captain liked the playing well enough, but once it was done, he was ready to talk. “You been on the ditch before?” he asked. I shook my head. “Well, she’s a hunert miles from Kingston to Honesdale. The Mary Ellen carries ninety tons and needs only five foot of water.” The captain then mentioned some recent trouble—the canal company had tried to lower the hauling fee. “Most the free owners like myself refused to carry,” he said, spitting overboard. “A bunch of us dressed like Indians jumped a company boat near Wurtsboro. Lit her on fire. You should’ve seen it when the flames reached the coal dust—blew like she was carrying gunpowder.”
I paid my fare that afternoon by giving the captain half an ear, making the occasional nod as he told his stories, all the while imagining conversations taking place at home. I had never been hunting for more than two days running. They would worry as it got dark—my letter wouldn’t arrive for another day. In the meantime, with his bad legs, Father couldn’t go looking for me, and I doubted my brother John would even bother.
A sudden silence from Captain McAdams interrupted my drift. His attention was forward, and I turned to see three piers of stone rising out of the river. It was a bridge of some kind, but not like one I’d ever seen. It had curved shapes and high walls, as though it were the guarded gateway to a lord’s castle. But there was no castle, only the bridge, lit up by a sun now low in the sky—forest and mountain on one side, forest and field on the other. And the two figures at the end, who might have been footmen with pikes, were, instead, old men with fishing poles. I looked back at the captain. “What is it?”
“Mr. Roebling’s Bridge,” he said proudly, “and we’re goin’ over it.”
I wasn’t sure I had heard him right, for I had never seen a bridge that carried one river of water over another. But when we got closer, I saw it was true, though I didn’t know how it was done. McAdams was bragging on how the bridge had to carry not only the barge and its tons of cargo but the weight of all the water needed to float that boat some thirty feet above the river. According to him, the whole thing was hanging by wire rope. I knew that couldn’t be true, but before I could think more on it, the towpath changed from dirt to oak plank, and the hooves echoed loudly as the mules pulled the boat out over the Delaware. By then I didn’t care if angels were holding it up, as I was seeing the bridge in a whole new way—one life of mine on the near shore, an entirely new one on the far.