Looking for Bethune Street

For five days, Alexander, Maisie, and Felix walked the streets of Boston, watching the British Redcoats march across the Boston Common and the colonists protest British rule. They read pamphlets pasted to tavern walls arguing for independence. Alexander’s excitement over the political situation combined with his burning desire to get to New York made Maisie believe even more that he was the person they were sent to find. But what did the coin mean? How would that affect his future?

Felix wasn’t so sure. In his grumpier, homesick moments, he worried that Maisie was following Alexander just because she had a crush on him. It was too easy for her to lose sight of more important things, like getting back home to Newport and seeing their mother again. “I am positive he’s the one,” she insisted when Felix told her they should just try to get back. “No one else has come forward, have they?” she said.

The Boston to New York stagecoach left twice a week and took seven days. Reluctantly, Alexander bought tickets for Maisie and Felix, too. Maisie had been right: He took pity on them, maybe because he had been orphaned and homeless himself. The ticket included lodging in taverns along the way. The best part of the stagecoach ride along the bumpy Post Road was those taverns where they stopped each night. The taverns all had big fireplaces with roaring fires burning in them, low ceilings, and long wooden tables. They always seemed to be crowded. Men drank beer and hard cider and passionately debated taxes and duties the British placed on items. Felix thought he could sit and listen to them all night as they explored the pros and cons of separating from British rule.

As he ate big slabs of homemade bread toasted with melted Havarti cheese or large wedges of pork pie, always followed by spice cake topped with cream, Felix wondered what life would have been like if the colonists had not fought the British. Listening to the debates swirling around him, he realized how close he came to being a British citizen. How close they all came to never having a United States at all.

Inside the stagecoach were heavy, scratchy blankets that Maisie and Felix huddled under. In all, the stagecoach held eight passengers, all of them grown men except for Maisie, Felix, and Alexander. The leaves had started to fall from the trees, and every night there was frost. The week on the road, though boring and uncomfortable, lulled her. Every now and then, she would sigh and tell Felix that she wished something exciting would happen, but overall she was content to stare out the window at the beautiful Connecticut landscape. And to sneak glances at Alexander Hamilton, who had become by now a full-fledged crush.

Sitting across from him in the stagecoach, she watched the ways his eyes shone when he talked to the other passengers. Even though he was thin and short, he had the confidence of someone as tall as a skyscraper. His energy and curiosity seemed endless. He wanted to know exactly where they were, what lay ahead, how the other people felt about British rule. He commented with such intelligence that Maisie fell under a spell listening to him.

When the stagecoach driver stuck his head in the carriage after a stop one morning and announced they would arrive on Manhattan Island by noon, Maisie grew sad that the journey was ending. Not that Alexander paid her much attention. She tried to add her opinion to the conversations, but she could see that he considered her a little girl. More than once she found herself wishing she were at least thirteen because it sounded so much better than twelve.

Felix was surprised how his sister hung on every word Alexander had to say about everything. When their old school held a mock presidential election, Maisie never cast her vote. Who cares? she’d said. It’s only make-believe! Now here she was asking questions about King George and trying to put in her two cents about it all. Felix sighed watching her watch Alexander. All they had to do was give him that coin, find Bethune Street, and then get back to Newport. He was more than ready for his own bed.

The stagecoach slowed as it entered Manhattan, and Felix peered out the window. This was Manhattan, but it did not look at all familiar. The streets were lined with trees, and a small brick church stood at the end of one. A large grassy area with an even larger flagpole in the middle reminded Felix of Boston Common, where they had watched John Hancock march in the parade last week. But he knew there was no such place in New York City.

He nudged his sister. “Where are we?” he whispered.

Maisie stared out the window, too, puzzled. “In Tribeca, I think.”

Tribeca was where city hall and the courthouse stood. And where their father’s studio used to be, off North Moore Street. It felt weird to be in Manhattan and not see any of these familiar landmarks.

The man sitting beside Alexander pointed out the window.

“That’s Liberty Pole,” he said, “sitting on Bowling Green. The Redcoats tried to blow her up a few years back, but she refused to go down. You heard of the Battle of Golden Hill?”

“No,” Maisie answered, even though he wasn’t talking to her.

The man ignored her and kept talking to Alexander. “The Sons of Liberty went at it in the wheat field up the street with a few dozen British soldiers. A lot of men were hurt that night,” he said sadly. “These are dangerous times, young man.”

The stagecoach came to a stop.

“Where to now?” Maisie asked Alexander.

He looked surprised. “Don’t you have family here?” he asked as he climbed down.

Maisie shook her head. “Our father is out of the country and our mother’s in Newport. Remember?”

Alexander studied Maisie and Felix for a moment. “I’ve been happy to help you both out,” he said. “And happy for the company. But I’m new here, and I have to forge my way alone.” He patted his breast pocket. “I have letters of recommendation from Reverend Knox and Mr. Kortright and Mr. Cruger. I can’t very well show up on their friends’ doorsteps with two children in tow.”

“I’m practically thirteen!” Maisie said.

Alexander smiled sympathetically. “Even so,” he said, “you two are on your own now.”

They watched him hoist his trunk and approach the ticket man.

“Could you direct me to this address?” he asked, holding out a piece of paper.

“Ah!” the man said. “Kortwright and Company. Come and I’ll point the way.”

Maisie and Felix stood, staring in disbelief as Alexander Hamilton walked around the corner and disappeared from their sight.

For a few minutes, they did not speak or move. Then Maisie turned to her brother, her eyes flashing with anger.

“Who needs Alexander Hamilton?” she said. “We’re New Yorkers. We can find Bethune Street without him.”

She didn’t wait for Felix to answer. Instead, she just started walking north, muttering, “I hate Alexander Hamilton. I hate him!”

As usual, Felix ran to catch up with her. The streets grew more crowded with men in powdered wigs and long coats. Felix tried to get his bearings, but nothing looked familiar at all. They passed John Street. Then William Street. The crowds thinned and soon the streets gave way to hills and trees.

“Maisie,” Felix said. “What if there isn’t a Bethune Street yet?”

She paused.

“There has to be,” she said.

But the tone in her voice let him know that she had the same worry as he did. No Bethune Street. No apartment. No Alexander Hamilton. Maybe no way back home.

Maisie stared at the Hudson River, which stretched out in front of her and Felix. She had decided that the best way to find Bethune Street wasn’t through the woods that covered what she knew as Chinatown and SoHo, but to walk west and follow the river. Their old apartment was on the corner of Bethune Street and Greenwich Street, two blocks from the Hudson River. If they followed the river north, Maisie felt certain she could figure out where Bethune Street was. Even though their actual apartment building wouldn’t be there, it would be exciting to see what was there instead.

The waterfront was busy with sailors and merchants, the harbor lined with ships. But as they headed north, once again the land became hilly and wooded and the crowds vanished.

“Maisie,” Felix said, “if there’s no Chinatown and no SoHo, I don’t think there’s going to be a Greenwich Village, either.”

He was tired of walking. Unlike the bike paths and walking paths that lined the river when they lived in New York, the banks of the Hudson River in 1772 were muddy and empty. Felix worried that Native Americans might live in these woods, and that they might not be too friendly to trespassers.

“But if we can find where it should be,” Maisie said, “then maybe we can travel forward enough years to be back where we want to be.”

Felix stopped walking and looked at his sister’s desperate face.

“Oh, Maisie,” he said, “is that what you’ve been thinking?”

Maisie nodded. “If we want it bad enough, I think it can work.”

“But what about the coin? And what about Alexander Hamilton?”

“I don’t know,” she admitted.

Slowly, they continued up the bank, climbing over rocks and pushing through ferns and low hanging tree limbs.

Finally Felix said, “I don’t want you to be disappointed, but I think we can’t go back unless we give that coin to Alexander. If we can find him again.”

“What if that coin got us to him, just so he could get us back here? Did you ever think of that?”

“It doesn’t make sense—” Felix began.

“Shhh,” Maisie said. “I’m counting.”

“Counting what?” Felix said.

“Well, twenty blocks is a mile, right?”

“Right,” Felix said.

“And it takes twenty minutes to walk twenty blocks, right?”

“I guess.”

“So I’m counting how many blocks we would have covered by now so that I can tell when we should head east.”

The river curved gently eastward. In the distance, Felix saw a canoe gliding upstream.

Maisie stopped abruptly.

“Impossible!” she said.

She walked back for a bit. Then returned to where Felix still stood. She walked ahead of him. Then again returned to him.

“What now?” he asked her.

Maisie looked like she might start to cry. She was positive they were in the right place. But there were no streets, no buildings. No nothing.

“Bethune Street,” she managed to say. “It’s underwater.”

$  $  $  $  $

“Landfill,” Maisie moaned miserably as they once again followed the Hudson River, this time south, back to where the stagecoach dropped them off. “They must have moved the river at some point and filled it in to make more streets.”

Felix didn’t reply. Now they had to walk back and try to find Alexander Hamilton, who had no interest in seeing them at all.

Maisie was busy making a new plan. She’d heard Alexander ask for directions to Kortwright and Company. They would go there and find him and beg him to help them . . . here was where her plan faltered. What exactly did they need him to do? Felix was probably right. They had to give him the coin.

Maisie walked even faster. The sooner they found Alexander and gave him the coin, the sooner they would be back in The Treasure Chest to try again.

“Okay,” Felix said. “Spill.”

“Spill what?”

“I know you’ve got some plan in mind.”

“Not a plan really. But I think if we give that coin to Alexander, we’ll end up back in The Treasure Chest—”

“And?”

“And then we can try again.”

Felix groaned. “Maisie—”

Maisie glared at him. “What?”

“Maybe we should stay home and just work on getting used to how things are now.”

“You sound like Mom,” she said.

“Well, maybe she’s right,” Felix said.

“No way! I want to go back to how things used to be. I don’t care if you come with me or not. But I want things back to normal.”

She didn’t wait for him to answer her. She practically ran off toward the tree-lined streets that lay up ahead.