Coffins (6 page)

Although none of the merchant homes we passed were as large or imposing as that of the Coffins', many were very fine indeed, rivaling any to be found in Marblehead, Newburyport, or Portsmouth. One needn't have the eye of an architect or builder to note how the houses of White Harbor had been improved upon over time, adding filigrees of trim here and there, and fine entrances framed with classical columns. No doubt the increasing prosperity of the village was reflected in such numerous additions and adornments. The majority of the cedar-shingled rooftops were interrupted by sun-sparkled cupolas, and by the curious, fenced-in roof structures known as “widow's walks.” Jeb explained that by means of a hatch cut into the attic, a mariner's wife could stand almost upon the peak of her own roof and scan the horizon for sails, for ships, for the promise of a husband's safe return.

“A dangerous life, the sea,” I said.

“Indeed. Though far more dangerous for, say, the Gloucester fisherman than the White Harbor mariner. So many of those poor Gloucester lads who venture out in codfish boats never return. A single storm may drown them by the dozen. Whereas our village can sometimes go almost an entire year without losing a man. And never, to my certain knowledge, has a Coffin failed to return from a voyage.”

“Extraordinary,” I said.

Jeb thumped the brim of his tall hat with the knob of his cane. “Like all men we must die, of course, but apparently not at sea. I speak not from hubris, but from simple statement of fact. ‘Fear the sea, and it shall fear you.' My father's refrain. His prayer, one might say.”

I waited, expecting this to lead into the delicate subject of the Captain's condition, but Jeb lapsed into thoughtful silence for a time, and we walked amiably, if quietly, through the narrower streets of White Harbor, traversing an area where the houses were built close upon the cobbled roadway, with little space between. Many a doorpost advertised for boarders, and it became clear that while a few score of Harborites might be wealthy sea captains, another class of lesser beings dwelled in the shadows below the great merchant homes, living upon scraps left by the wealthy.

Soon enough the street widened on a rise above the harbor, and here the shops and commercial enterprises flourished. Many of the shops had been fixed up “fancy” and made to look as “rich” as the finer shops of Boston; indeed the sizable business district reeked of a prosperity rare in a small, coastal village town of barely three thousand souls. Evidently all the gold was not in California, but was to be found at sea, and extracted by ships and the men who sailed them.

“There are not just one, as you might expect, but two tailor shops catering exclusively to the trade,” Jeb informed me. “No ship's master would dream of departing this harbor without proper attire. Merchant sailors may not be uniformed like navy officers, and yet there is a kind of uniform, I assure you, and it does not come cheap.”

The “uniform” of a White Harbor shipmaster was not confined to dark blue wool, double-breasted jackets and pea coats, or brass buttons, or sturdy knee-high leather boots. He would be expected to drive a fine coach, supplied by Chase & Sons Livery, and dine upon silver plate, and drink from crystal goblets, and light his home with the finest lanterns and the most fragrant oils. I remarked that this was the kind of expectation our British brothers had of the royal class, and Jebediah agreed, although he made a joke of it. “Can you doubt that I was raised as a little prince, a tyrant to the servants?”

“I doubt it not. Except that you had not only the servants and merchants waiting upon you, but all of your brothers as well.” The remark, intended lightly, brought a clenched look to my friend's face, and I instantly attempted to apologize.

“No, no,” he said, his breath steaming in the chilly air. “You have it exactly right. What a fortunate boy I was! Lacking a mother, I had so many brothers willing to mother me. Five brothers,” he repeated softly. “Five of the best!”

It seemed that any reference to family brought him up sharp against the recent tragedy, for the six had been reduced to four, and that unfortunate pair were those two he had held in the closest affection. Sam'n'Zeke had been as much like male nursemaids as elder brothers, having raised and nurtured him deep within the protective Coffin bosom. To make matters worse, and extend the period of mourning, another of the Coffin brothers was yet at sea, returning from the Orient, unaware of the tragedy.

“Lucky Tom,” he said, speaking of the absent brother. “I so envy him his ignorance.”

Attempting to distract him from these sad ruminations, I pointed out an inn upon whose dining-room windows was etched a promise of “The Finest Coffees & Teas.” Jeb agreed, but insisted upon first purchasing a handful of Portland newspapers to, as he said, “soak up the java beans” as we drank.

It was well before noon but long after breakfast, so we had the dining room to ourselves, with the steaming beverage—
the best Brazilian beans!
—served by the proprietor himself, who bowed and scraped as if Jebediah really was of the aristocracy we'd joked about. “You'll give my best wishes to the Captain?” the innkeeper asked, rather plaintively, as he pulled nervously at the ends of his rat-brown mustache, and then attempted to put right his unbuttoned and none-too-clean collar.

“Yes, of course, I shall mention you to my father,” Jeb responded, cracking open a newspaper, effectively dismissing the poor man, who did not seem the least bit offended.

“Look here,” Jeb said, indicating a dispatch on the front page. “That humbug Lincoln has found his backbone at last. He's persuaded Buchanan to send a cutter to Charleston with orders to protect the customs revenue.”

The comment brought a smile to my lips, for scarcely three months before, Jeb had been a great enthusiast for the Republican candidate, believing that the man from Illinois embraced the abolitionist cause with a fervor similar to his own. Now, only a few months after he'd been elected, Lincoln was a “humbug” for not pledging to dispatch troops to the slave states, with orders to enforce all federal laws. Having stated that a nation half slave-owning, half free was a house divided against itself, and could not stand, Mr. Lincoln was now busy contemplating the prickly realities of a presidency he would not formally assume for another few days. The slave states had vowed to ratify their own confederacy if an abolitionist was elected, and the populace, knowing this, had nevertheless voted for one; but now, having done so, the whole nation seemed gripped with a kind of nervous hesitation, as if slowly awakening to the full meaning of their convictions. Several states had already passed formal resolutions of secession. Meanwhile Senator Douglas, whose loathing of Lincoln seemed palpable, had failed to forge yet another compromise that might somehow appeal to the anti-slavery faction and still keep the South from abandoning the ship of state. The South Carolina legislature had been the first to vote for secession, and many of the other slave states had followed, but what legal import did those votes have, in light of the Constitution, which made no provision for dissolving the union? At the moment it was only pique and hot air, and hostilities might still be avoided.

Knowing that an excess of coffee tended to stimulate my small friend, I did not rise to the “humbug” bait, but diverted his attention to a dispatch regarding shipment of arms to the South.

“‘As for the armament of the South,'” I read aloud, “‘it is intended to defend the whites against a servile insurrection. There has been so much said about the abolitionism of Lincoln and Hamlin, that the Negroes have become indoctrinated with the idea that they will be free on the fourth of March, when the new president takes the oath of office. It is to guard against a ‘rising' that Sharpe rifles and Colt revolvers, and Ame cutlasses, are being sent southward. These weapons have to be paid for in good funds, and the Yankees who take them receive kind treatment.'”

This brought me an owlish look from my companion. “I'm confident a man of your intelligence doesn't believe such poppycock,” he said.

I affected surprise. “You mean arms are not being shipped southward by greedy Yankees?”

“I mean nothing of the kind! We Yankees are known for our greed, and we're proud if it. But I have my own ‘dispatches' from the South, and they tell me there is, unfortunately, little to fear of a slave insurrection. The Southerners know this very well, having beaten and tortured the Negroes into submission for many generations. At the first sign of spirit or independence in a male Negro, he is whipped. At the second sign, he is castrated or hung. If the spirited Negro happens to be female, her children are taken and then she is sold to an even harsher master. No, the spirited Negro does not rise up if he wishes to live, he flees north! And it is to stop this fleeing, and to repel federal troops, that the South is arming itself. They have refused to allow any of the federal forts to be relieved. Soldiers at Pickens and Sumter cannot leave, for fear of being attacked by the populace.”

“But they have not been attacked, that's my point. So far it is nothing but Southern bluster.”

“Hardly. I'll give the Southerners this much: they know there must be war to settle the question, even if you—and your like—do not.”

“My like?” I said, somewhat disingenuously.

“All you Free Democrats,” he said dismissively, with an impatient wave of his hand. “Am I wrong to lump you in with them?”

He was not wrong. Fearing Lincoln's obstinacy, I had cast my vote for Senator Douglas, the Free Democrat candidate. Full-throated abolitionists like Jebediah believed that Free Democrats were somehow worse than the Pro-Slavery Democrats, for being opposed to slavery but lacking the will to abolish it by bloody means if necessary.

“Just because I voted for Douglas doesn't mean I'm in favor of slavery. You know I abhor the very idea. What I
am
in favor of is preserving the Union. And if Congress fails to find compromise, the South will carry through on its threats, which will leave us either divided or at war, or both.”

“Exactly my point,” was Jeb's happy reply. “War is inevitable.”

I could not contain a sigh of frustration. In the several years of our acquaintance, never once could it be said that I had prevailed in argument. My friend's belief in the cause was absolute, like the faith another might have in God, and he could not be “reasoned” out of it.

“Look here,” he said, giving his broadsheet another sharp snap. “A new gun has been invented by a Mr. L. Thomas, and is represented to be better than either the Armstrong or the Whitworth piece. It has a range of nearly six miles, with a shot of 170 pounds. Incredible! Mr. Lincoln may never have to leave Washington. He can make war from his front yard!”

Jebediah's expression was gleeful—the first I had seen since my visit—and I could not bring myself to puncture this most welcome elevation of mood. If gloating about the imminence of civil strife made him happy, so be it. I drank my coffee and tried to agree with everything he said, no matter how extreme. Therefore I found myself agreeing that all slave owners were, in effect, traitors, and should be dealt with as such. And that non-slave owners in slave states were complicit in the crime and subject to the same penalty. That after the situation had been “resolved,” as he put it, a Negro State should be founded, possibly several Negro States, and certainly a Negro Territory or two, and that any blacks wishing to be repatriated to Africa would be carried there as guests of the United States Navy, and given such implements as they required to farm the land.

In my compliancy I agreed that we must invade Cuba and force the end of slavery there, too, as the conditions on that island were even more abominable than those in the South. I may even have agreed to lead such an expedition, single-handed if necessary.

My reward was a hearty laugh from Jeb, and a slap on the back with the knob of his cane.

“Done!” he cried. “Admiral Bentwood you shall be, Liberator of Cuba and the World!”

Not long after leaving the inn we found ourselves treading uphill, on a course to intercept the soaring, sunlit spire that dominated the center of the village. Jeb grew more and more quiet with every step. We came to the Episcopal church. It was a neat, clapboard affair, white as a May cloud, but we did not enter. Through the open doors I saw rows of white benches dappled with light from the high-peaked windows, and beyond that, a tall lectern partially obscured by shadows.

“The Captain cannot abide Father Whipple,” Jeb explained, breaking the silence. “It's no fault of Whipple's, he's a decent fellow. But his predecessor, a certain Cornelius Remick, had unkind things to say about the family, in the form of a sermon shortly after that my mother passed away. My father connects the two events in his mind.”

“Ah,” said I, expecting my friend to reveal the topic of the offensive sermon, but he did not, and we continued on, taking a neatly bricked path into the adjacent cemetery.

Here, built as a miniature of the church, but without the spire, was the family mausoleum, made of finely pebbled granite. Because graves are difficult to excavate in the winter-months, there were many such aboveground crypts, inscribed with local names like Drake and Locke and Kilburn and Griswold, although none were so large or neatly appointed as this. Below the family name “COFFIN,” in smaller letters, was a second inscription, “SEAFARERS,” and the chiseled relief of a three-masted schooner under full sail. Beneath the schooner, the final inscription, in the old style: “To Heaven If The Wind Be Fair.”

In the center of the crypt was a plain, black-iron door, of a size that would require a man of my height to stoop, were I inclined to enter. Strangely enough, the door was partly open, revealing a shadowed interior as black and cold as the iron itself.

Although I am not inclined to superstition or morbidity, a chill came into my bones, and with it a kind of dread that could not be explained by a mere unlocked door. Perhaps it was the smell, for there was the hint of it even then, some yards away. Not the smell of corruption, I hasten to add, but something much more foul.