"Folks," Herb said with a flair developed from doing cooking demos at Williams-Sonoma in trendy Chelsea for non-cooking foodies, "we're going old old-school tonight but still turn out the fastest, tastiest dish. When you've got good stuff like this - step back, keep it simple, let it shine."
"Leave the shells with heads and tails on. Devein if a little shit and grit bothers you, with the point of a paring knife raked up the bottom side to flick out the gut."
With a platter of plenty to fill the spider he said, "brush with olive oil, both sides."
"Extra virgin for you, right?" Heath smiled slyly, simply to piss off his number one uncle.
"Does the Pope poop in the woods? Are bears Catholic?"
Now Heath's not the brightest bulb on anyone's Christmas tree, as noted, and had to wrestle with this rebus, his cheeks, buffeted by laughter, turning a deep shade of shrimp.
"Well yes, I guess. No! Bears poop in our woods, piles like elephants passed. The Pope's Catholic - virgin, extra oily virgin. Sorry, nothing but virgins for you Herb."
"Straight on hot spider. Shells keep from burning. Sprinkle sea salt. Grind pepper. Two minutes. Flip. S&P again. Two halves lemons on top for last minute. Done? Tips almost kiss tails. Done and done. Squeeze lemons and scarf."
By the time those were done a heavenly aroma hung in the air and round two was ready. "And repeat?" the Clam asked hopefully. "Sin can wait while shrimp are in on the tide. Hell, heaven can wait too."
"Simple sure, but they're also simply shrimp," Patience pointed out. "Back in the day, old-school as you say, all of the family's meals, and at the inn our guests' too, were prepared on the hearth by the women of the household fighting the heat and smoke."
"Cooking was an inescapable daily, all day chore, sunup to sundown in every season, carried out while at the same time caring for the kids, cleaning house, doing laundry and growing the kitchen garden. The fire might burn down to embers slumbering under a blanket of ash, but it never went out. It was the heart of the house that never stopped beating."
"Simple sure, but also simply shrimp," Patience pointed out. "Back in the day, old-school, all the family's meals, and at the inn our guests' too, were prepared on the hearth by the women of the house fighting heat and smoke."
"Cooking was an inescapable daily, all day chore, sunup to sundown in every season, carried out while cleaning house, doing laundry, caring for the kids and kitchen garden. The fire might burn down to embers beneath ashes but never went out, the heart of the house couldn't stop beating."
"How did women stand such a hard life? How did anyone? The men, the kids?" Shirley wondered. "They had nothing we totally take for granted nowadays - and couldn't live without for long. Stoves, washing machines, vacuum cleaners, electricity, running water, refrigerators, central heating, air conditioners, toilets."
"No packaged, canned or frozen foods, super markets, convenience stores or restaurants outside the keeping rooms of inns like ours. Everything from scratch, all made by hand at home." Herb added.
"No pizza?" Heath marveled.
"None, thank god," Herb replied, "it took the Mafia and the Pizza Connection to shove that down American's throats." He's one of the two people alive who hate pizza and the other disappeared into the witness protection program.
"Lots of clams, though," Sam assured him. "But never fried. Steamers, pies, chowders. Like that. At home stuff. No clam shacks. No fryolaters." Wow, that was disturbing intelligence. He never would have begun to make a living back then. Fried clams were his bread and butter, not to mention beer and gas money.
"They were tough old birds, those Puritans, the first Yankees," Fred agreed. "Luckily they were convinced God was on their side, lightening their loads, lifting their burdens." .
"God yes, but no TV's, radios, telephones, computers or i-Anythings," Patience said. "No muscle cars - or baseball either, Heath."
"In fact, no cars, trucks, engines, outboards and motors of any kind - or professional sports," Fred added.
"No bikinis," Sam dropped the bomb.
"No bikinis!" Wow, the weather was worsening. "No bikinis, pizza, Red Sox. GTO's, Xboxes, Tater Tots. No Warcraft, Halo, Simpsons?" Why did Americans stand for it? Was that why we fought the Revolution? You know when Lincoln crossed the Pontiac and copped all the cool stuff the under the redcoats' Christmas trees."
Clearly a key battle in American history and none of us had never heard of it! But why correct such a fertilely active imagination, fired by the lack of bikinis (although he rather liked it when bikinis came off), practically our national birthright? Save correction for the corrupt, let the innocents go.
"There were no real doctors, hospitals, understanding of disease or effective medicines. When you got really sick, beyond the curative powers of the housewife with her herbs, a well-meaning physician, perhaps also your pastor, might bleed you with his rusty lancet or leeches, dose you with toxic tinctures of mercury or prescribe a prophylactic diet of skunk cabbage. Some souls actually survived these supposed cures. If not, such was the mysterious will of Wonder-Working Providence. George Washington, for one, didn't - his doctor bled him to death."
Shirley, our mild but no-nonsense librarian and curator of the tiny town museum, is something of an expert on historical morbidity and mortality. Rowley offers a fertile field for this study. Fishing, farming, building, forestry and hunting have been the backbone of our economy since the beginning. All still the most dangerous of ways of wresting a living from mother earth. She knows the deadly, sometimes odd and outre, details and death agonies of most of our citizens who didn't die peacefully in their beds with smiles on their faces. Of which, sad to say, there are few.
Her tales, running the gamut from disasters at sea to witch burnings, have captivated both many bored, blase high school students, brought up on the endless slaughter served up by modern media, and our inn's visitors touring the museum's dimly lit catacomb. She really has a touch for making history come alive.
"What they had was a dangerous life of unremitting toil in a rather narrow, stern and unforgiving society," she summarized.
"Which feared and worshiped God, kept law and order, worked hard, stayed sober and demanded good manners," Fred countered, putting in a good word for the Puritans.
Humans are remarkably resilient and adaptable. Plus not missing all these mod-cons, many of which are cons much more than mod, they thought they were on the cutting edge of modernity and modern innovation. Which they were. For their time. So they made do. Just as we think we are and do, while future generations wait in the wings to laugh their asses off at our presumption and primitiveness, as their heirs will them in turn.
"Miracles?" Leander echoed. "It be miracles ye desire? As in ancient days when mighty Moses did part the blood Red Sea to set his people free to wander in the wilderness. Or our lord, a boat carpenter and a sailor himself, walked upon the waters and thence multiplied the fishes therefrom."
"Lads, we liveth in our own days of miracles. They be all around ye. I know of nothing but miracles."
"Consider our galleons lads. There's miracles for ye. Real enough to touch though. Swift enough to whisk ye around the world in a trice with her white clouds of sails. Exquisitely complex machines, carefully crafted, sprung from the mind of men, inspired of God. So strong and finely balanced, tuned to harness all the forces of nature to our will. So fit to rule the waves. In tune with the will of God."
"Girdling the entire globe as, my ofttimes captain, Drake did in three brief years, returning laden with the plundered ill-gotten gold of the Popish Spaniard, blessed be the miracle of our finely wrought armaments, encircling the earth in the service of our noble Elizabeth. Wonders of shipbuilding and seamanship. Ships and men with hearts of oak."
"Now we do commune with the Celestial Empire by celestial navigation, charts and compass. Impress the Slave Coast of Africa into our services. Trade for tea with the East Indies. Settle a New World across the Atlantic, perhaps one day to found a 'new' England in the land of fierce savages and storms."
"Lads, we still live in times of miracles!"
See, sometimes it all depends on one's perspective in time.
"But I wonder," Fred said "Are we really any better off today? The world's still a dangerous place. And it seems to get more dangerous every day. It's just that our risks and dangers are different from theirs. Bigger and scarier. Global - we get all the bad news at the speed of light now and deadly diseases spread at as fast as jets travel. The criminals get cleverer and more compassionless. The crazies are crazier and there's lots more of them. Our wars are more deadly than theirs ever were. Few fear God any more, and rather than beware fire, it seems the whole human race loves to play with it nowadays." Fred said."
"And those who play with fire will get burned," Shirley finished his melancholy musings. "I know something about playing with fire first hand."
Now I don't know if I mentioned it, but Shirley's family. Karen's 'almost family', but Shirley actually is family. And black, which I'm sure I didn't say, and the Morrises are white. Which I also didn't mention but you've probably gathered - being English, Puritans, sea captains and all, it sort of goes without saying. Obviously a tale waits in the wings, a dark stain in the family history.
Before the Revolution, slavery was legally and openly practiced worldwide including in the 'city on a hill' and our fair 'Commonwealth', populated by the 'salt of the earth' who saw themselves as the 'light of the world', especially chosen of God to set a shining example to the sinners and backsliders of all nations.
Not a lot, mind you. For the most part the ungodly machinery of black enslavement was kept well offshore, far away from the godly white beacon burning brightly in Boston with its 'purer air than elsewhere' as the divines flattered their congregations.
The stony New England soil and short growing season were unsuitable for large scale commercial agriculture such as practiced in the slave systems of the South and Caribbean. But the nouveau riche in booming Boston, Salem and North Shore towns often had 'their niggers', or among 'the quality', 'their Africans' to do 'their bidding', mainly their dirty work and drudgery.
So how did many of these 'riche' come by their 'riches'? In the Atlantic slave trade, or as the quality referred to it the 'African trade' when the fantastically lucrative dirty business unfortunately had to be referred to at all.
They were proud to be privateers, smugglers and blockade runners. These were patriotic professions and the basis of many other fortunes, but slaving was, well, slightly shameful at best and perhaps even smelled of sin at worst. In any case the whole business stank and was kept downwind well away from Boston which provided the capital, ships and crews to promote the trade. Out of sight and out of mind was their motto except for ciphers showing swelling balances in their counting house ledger books.
They were proud to be privateers, smugglers and blockade runners. These were patriotic professions and the basis of many other fortunes, but slaving was, well, slightly shameful at best and perhaps even smelled of sin at worst. In any case the whole business stank and was kept downwind well away from Boston which provided the capital, ships and crews to promote the trade. Out of sight and out of mind was their motto except for ciphers showing swelling balances in their counting house ledger books.
The Puritan faith, however, demanded constant self-scrutiny as to the state of one's soul, an unending ethical inventory of one's conscience. Therefore, as you might imagine, the subject of slavery was a constant source of moral conflict. These examinations and reflections were often recorded in journals, especially by the sea captains who accomplished the slaving voyages, seamen accustomed to keeping scrupulous logbooks. These other logs were their wrestlings with, their accountings to God; celestial navigation on deep spiritual seas.
Captain Hebron himself wondered. "Certain the Bible be peopled with slaves, but 'tis slavery truly sanctioned by Scripture, approved by almighty God? The Greeks and Romans we so admire of and would'st emulate, if not in points religious, did'st not their noble empires hold and traffic in slaves?"
"These fresh-wrought ideas on the march of 'natural laws' - all men created equal - which mayhap lead us to sever the 'slavery' to our Mother, seem they not to suggest enslavement wrong? But our best leaders in the colonies, are not many of their fortunes built on the backs of blacks? Their wealth not hewn out of howling wilderness by men of Africa? Would'st those worthies be such hypocrites? Doth they not doubt in the in-most meditations and dead reckonings in the sailing of their immortal souls? All in all, 'tis a most vexing quandary."
"For the Africans, they be men 'twouldst seem to me. But be they human? Black as night, black as sin, the cloak and cover the devil himself prefers. Not Christian, ignorant of our Lord, worshiping heathen idols and natural spirits. Possessed of no written language. Naked of garment. Most promiscuous as to sacred relations. By the balance, wouldst seem hardly human. Savages, as the Indians we did'st encounter when claiming these shores and must still needs struggle against, they proving vengeful and most unfit for profitable servitude upon our shores."
So he reconciled himself to his god and conscience, which were one and the same, conscience being the voice of God in the Puritan view, deciding that, "In the balance, I be boon and benefactor to these droves of Adam's degenerate seed. Forsooth, doing of good whilst doing well. Most satisfactorily well indeed."
Now, before you sneer - are not your own self-delusions and justifications built on the same shifting sands? Are we not all headed downhill on the same slippery slope of denial? Tell me then, who ain't a slave?
The profits to be made in the slave trade were simply too staggering to be ignored. Hebron's ship the 'Free Spirit' was in constant transit across the Atlantic to Africa and back to the Americas. He summarized the first voyage in his ledgers as follows.
"Boston to Africa: 8,220 gallons rum, 200 ingots African iron [used as native currency], divers trade sundries.
Gold Coast to Barbados: 55 slaves, 40 ounces gold dust, 900 pounds black pepper.
West Indies to Boston: 55 hogshead molasses, 5 hogsheads & 27 barrels sugar, 412.55 pounds sterling bills of exchange on Liverpool.
Deduct expenses incurred and one-sixth loss of live cargo on Middle Passage. 'Spirit' didst, with God's divers blessings, yield twenty-fold increase on capital of our brave company."
A 2,000 percent annual ('triangular' voyages such as this took about a year) return on investment? That would turn anyone's head. Even the riskiest and most lucrative current drug trade can't come close to matching such results, which were achieved with fairly low risk. Nothing ever has, and no doubt never will again, match the fantastic profits which the slavers based out of Boston easily enjoyed.
Africans, however, were never brought to Boston in large numbers. At most, enslaved and free, blacks made up less than 3% of its citizens. The centers of the slave system were far to the south where slaves made up 33% of the population. Boston's ships were simply the South's pimps, procurers and suppliers of helpless black flesh ripe for raping.
The few blacks shipped to the city were destined to slave as domestic servants, laborers or workers in small manufacturies. Sometimes they were chosen to customer specifications at the 'castles', or slave trading prison stations ringing the West African coast, but most desirably from populations who had undergone rigorous 'seasoning', or breaking in of body and spirit, in the West Indies where slaves made up to 90% of the populations.Africans, however, were never brought to Boston in large numbers. At most, enslaved and free, blacks made up less than 3% of its citizens. The centers of the slave system were far to the south where slaves made up 33% of the population. Boston's ships were simply the South's pimps, procurers and suppliers of helpless black flesh ripe for raping.
To wit, Hebron's wife Purslane, after many dark nights of the soul and prayerful consideration sought the discreet counsel of midwife Hepzibah, demanding and receiving tokens of deepest confidence, which this noble soul, who in her time had birthed most members of this town, never betrayed.
"Dame Hepzibah, if impaled longer on Hebron's perpetually stiff bowsprit, always ready to burst the brig of his britches, forsooth shall I perish. Have I not painfully birthed by the effusion his hot seed more than a dozen babes? Six still-borne, five called to the Lord in infancy, three dead before one score years. My remaining, Portia, a sweet child, put with Christian charity, but daft as the day be long."
"I can'st stand no more. Clear I am no brooding mare and, although dutiful wife, his hot lust, dead cert after a long celibate voyage, is blight on my life which soon'st must snuff my brief candle. Our marriage bed fills me now with nought but fear and disgust."
"Sister," Hebzibah began hesitantly, "I ken your deep dilemma and dire circumstance, of which I have oft suspect. Situations as yours be not unique, 'tho I can'st quote cases, my lips sealed by sacred vows of silence such as thee requesteth of me. But know ye be not alone, nor without keen sympathy of the Almighty."
"In desperate situations as this have I counseled husbands absolved of fidelity to the hot marriage bed that they might find cooling relief in arms of divers loose women more fit to such battlefronts. Harlots, strumpets, tramps and their ilk."
"Although, fully frank my dear, does not he trade in Blackamoors? Mighst not a tropically-fired piece of ebony Eve's flesh sate his mad appetites? Suitably situated in the shadows, of course. The shades of a bustling inn as maid tending to divers guests, or busy farm as a milkmaid to kine. Out of sight, out of mind, to put most plainly."
That afternoon Purslane penned a letter to Hebron, busy in Boston preparing 'Free Spirit' for a fresh venture to the Dark Continent, and dispatched it with the next rider transiting the Post Road outside the inn.
"My soul's earthly Captain,
Would'st thou, while on the wild shores of Afric, kindly acquire a comely and compliant lass, competent to service our guests' every needs? This mayhap would relieve my onerous responsibilities and lighten considerable burdens. Perhaps of nubile age so she may grow up knowing no other life but faithful service to us and prove amenable to Christian catechism.
Purslane Morris, your devoted wife."
Hebron read easily between her lines. Lines he'd been thinking along himself. He was weary of congress, rarely permitted, with a wife of bony pelvis who lay prone, unresponsive and dry as a sack of old potatoes beneath the practiced thrusts of a man in his prime still running with the unsated sap of youth.
"My dear," he replied, "I shall endeavor to fulfill the request in your letter to our mutual satisfaction." Which he did to the letter and their quite separate satisfactions.
Today we call this a win-win situation, but inevitably when two win, at least one other has to lose - and that one had better be strong enough for two. Talk about the triangle trade!
Clotel, or Chloe as she came to be called, was only twelve when she caught Hebron's discerning eye for flesh at a factory, or slave trading station, on the Guinea Coast. He was immediately captivated by her budding comeliness. "Mighst be ripe for plucking aft a year or two to mature."
Their early matings were marred by violence that Hebron, as Christian, found disturbing but needless necessary. Slavery simply was that way, its foundation built on shifting sands of violence supporting the manifold rotten structure.
No men or women in their minds, nor animals even, would surrender a brief earthly stay but their bodies be beaten into submission and spirits crushed. Violence alone made souls into slaves, conditioned by fears of god and master deeply impressed into their psyches. Willful fillies must be broken by repeated lashings of the crop and cock.
When she was fourteen Hebron began insinuating his infatuation and intent toward the child, which she resisted politely at first as absurd then quite positively as abhorrent. He saw she would need special persuasions, more correction than he could bring to bear with his solitary staff.
In the South it was said of blacks. "You can get close but not too high". Blacks might live close to their masters but they'd better know and keep their places.
In the North the motto went. "You can get high but not too close". Blacks might move up, even to freedom, but they'd better know and keep their distance.
Toward this end, and moreover to disguise his dark purpose, he built a small clapboard cabin in the apple orchard on the hill overlooking the ocean, looking back toward Africa, between the inn and farm. Abundant tree prunings fueled the fieldstone fireplace for heating and cooking. Later, when the dark family was freed and fled, it was used as a smokehouse until other forms of preservation became preferred. Preserved forever however seems to be the redolent scent of applewood smoke, still lingering in the air despite stripping the interior back to its bones.
