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Between his divided loyalties, the violent night drink, Obadiah could not decide whether their present fight with the king was legiti him mad
“Tell him you haven’t seen one” Marcus didn’t want his mother or his sister to pay the price for his disobedience
“Your father isn’t a fool, Marcus,” his mother said “He’ll have heard the bells”
They were still pealing—in Hadley, in Northahouse in Massachusetts, probably
“I’ll be home before you know it,” Marcus assured his un, and headed into town
He met up with Joshua Boston and Zeb Pruitt outside the town’s burial ground, where Zeb was at work digging a grave It was ringed with tall trees, and the burial stones popped out froles, moss covered and worn from the weather
“Hey, Marcus,” Joshua called out “You joining in the fight?”
“I thought I e stopped treating us like children Freedoht as British subjects Nobody should be able to take it froht for it”
“Or die for it,” Zeb muttered
Marcus frowned “Don’t you mean kill for it?”
“I said what I h ruh fear and hate in his heart, he’ll kill quick enough But that saets if he doesn’t believe what he’s fighting for, body and soul”
“Best think hard about whether you have that kind of patriotiston with the militia,” Joshua said
“Too late” Zeb squinted into the distance “Here comes Mr MacNeil, and Josiah with him”
“Marcus?” Obadiah stopped in the h bloodshot eyes “Where are you going with un, boy?”
It wasn’t Obadiah’s gun, but Marcus felt sure this wasn’t the tiue the point
“I asked you a question” Obadiah advanced on the
“Town They’ve called up the round
“You’re not going to war against your king,” Obadiah said, grabbing at the gun “It’s against God’s holy order to defy him Besides, you’re just a child”
“I’o
“Not yet you’re not” Obadiah’s eyes narrowed and his htened
This was usually the er to keep the peace so that his ht between her husband and her son
But today, with Zeb’s and Joshua’s words ringing in his ears, Marcus felt that he had so to prove—to himself, to his father, and to his friends Marcus stood taller, ready for a fight
His father delivered a stinging slap across one cheek and then the other It was not the blow you would give a er, Obadiah was determined to remind Marcus of his place
Obadiah wrested the gun from Marcus’s hands
“Go back home to your ma,” Obadiah said contemptuously “I’ll see you there First, I need to have a ith Zeb and Joshua”
His father would beat hiot back to the farht receive a thrashing as well
“They’ve got nothing to do with it,” Marcus said, his cheeks red from his father’s blows
“Enough disobedience, boy,” Obadiah barked
Joshua jerked his head in the direction of the farot even more heated
He turned his back on his friends, on the war, and on his father and moved down the road toward the MacNeil farm
Marcus promised himself it was the last time his father would tell him what to do
—
IN JUNE, Marcus kept his word by running away to Boston He had been beaten, several tian after Marcus questioned his father about so small and innocuous—whether the cows needed to bedry Obadiah took his questions as further signs of rebellion
Each blow that his father gave with the folded leather reins see less frantic and his speech less angry Marcus had learned long ago not to cry while his father beat hi welts Tears only made his father more desperate to exorcise Marcus’s de until Marcus collapsed with pain Then Obadiah took to the taverns,from one to the other until he collapsed, too, in a drunken heap
It was after one of those beatings, while Obadiah was still out drowning his sorrows, that Marcus had packed a pail of food and the family almanac that outlined the towns on the Boston road so that he couldeast
By the ti like a hornet’s nest The college had been eland now occupied their rooe halls were filled up, the soldiers erected tents outside without much concern for their relationship to one another, the cobblestone streets, the lae The result was a makeshift encampment, crazed with narrow footpaths like the cracks in old crockery that wended their way between the flapping sheets of canvas, linen, and burlap
Marcus entered the tent city and what had been a steady hu of British artillery Regimentalbattle with a steady beating of their druhed, and brayed Men freshly arrived from towns as far away as New Haven to the south and Portshtest provocation, sometimes deliberately and more often accidentally
Marcus was following the scent of burned coffee and roastedto eat when a familiar face turned toward him
“Damn” Marcus had been spotted by someone from back home
Seth Pomeroy’s shrewd eyes settled on him, dark and deeply set over prouns expression proclaimed that this was not a man to meddle with
“MacNeil Where’s your gun?” Pomeroy’s breath was foul—there was a decayed tooth in the front of his ry Tom Buckland wanted to pull it, but Pomeroy was adamantly opposed to dentistry, so the tooth was destined to rot in place
“My pa has it,” Marcus replied
Pomeroy thrust a musket at Marcus, one of his own and much finer than Grandfather MacNeil’s old blunderbuss
“And does your father know you’re here?” Pomeroy asked Like Mrs Buckland, Pomeroy knew that Obadiah ruled his fa without his permission—not if he valued his own hide
“No” Marcus kept his responses to a minimum
“Obadiah isn’t going to like it when he finds out,” Pomeroy said
“What’s he going to do? Disinherit me?” Marcus snorted Everybody knew the MacNeils didn’t have a penny to bless themselves
“And your mother?” Pomeroy’s eyes sharpened
Marcus looked away rather than answer His mother didn’t need to be part of this His father had pushed her out of the hen she tried to stop their last argument, and she’d fallen and injured her arm It still wasn’t healed, not even with Tom Buckland’s salve and the ministrations of the doctor from Hadley
“One of these days, Marcus MacNeil, you’re going to find sole out from under,” Pomeroy promised, “but today isn’t the day You’re the best shot in Haet” en his divided loyalties, the violent night drink, Obadiah could not decide whether their present fight with the king was legiti him mad