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@@ -2154,9 +2154,102 @@ Her father grunted. "I'm not making tar for the money Mr McPhail." "I make it for the ships." -McPhail glanced at Birdie. "Did you? Your father is a real piece of work young lady, did you know that? I make it for the ships." He stood and tossed the dreg of the coffee in the fire. "Do you make the coffee for the cup?" +"Do you?" McPhail glanced at Birdie, shaking his head. "Your father is a real piece of work young lady, did you know that? I make it for the ships." He stood and tossed the dregs of the coffee in the fire. "Do you make the coffee for the cup?" + +Her father smiled at her. "No, I made the cup for the coffee." + +McPhail climbed to the top of a dune. "Want to see your ship for the last time?" He called down. + +Birdie glanced at her father, he winked at her. No was all he said. + +"Well then, I'm going to find Captain Rogers and have him round up the men. Anyone around here have some horses we could purchase for the trip?" + +"There's a farm just after you get off the island, they have horses anyway." + +"Good. We'll be wanting half a dozen I imagine. Your daughter ride?" + +"No, she's spent most of her life at sea." + +"She'll ride in the wagon with me then." + +Her father glanced at her and she nodded. She'd have rather been on a horse with Papa, but the wagon might be more comfortable for a two day trip. She'd really rather have walked. At least they got to walk off the island. She saw Kadiatu and her mother when they passed near their house. McPhail seemed completely incurious about the trail that forked off the larger trail they were following off the island. Birdie noticed her father did not glance down it, but she could not help it. She saw them hidden back in the bushes. She knew the entire area would be watching. Word of the ship had no doubt spread inland. She wondered if they would see anyone at all. Most of the people in the low country relied on the money they earned smuggling goods for men like Jack Ratham to buy the things the soil would not grant them. Without the commerce from the sea, many would starve and the presence of a British warship was a threat to that commerce. Or at least it seemed like it might be, the whole countryside, the whole of the low country basin was watching to see what happened to Birdie and her father. + +Birdie, at that moment, could not have cared less what happened to the low country, she just wanted to run and hug Kadi and her mother and for just a moment, not worry about anything. But instead she forced herself to look away and she kept walking without saying a word. Instead she watched the way the oak leaves shimmered and danced in the wind and morning sunlight. + +It was nearing midday by the time they made it to the farm. It was the biggest house between Edisto and Charlestown, and owned by a man who had little tolerance for the British or anyone else who wanted to tell him what to do. He made it plain that he did not want to give any horses to McPhail or the soldiers. But McPhail kept upping the price until finally the man could not refuse. + +He gave them the worst of his herd and a sad little wagon that looked to Birdie like it would fall apart long before they reached Charlestown, but she climbed in the bed anyway, preferring it to sitting next to McPhail on the riding board. Anderson, who owned the farm, gave her father the best horse, which could plainly outrun the rest of them. McPhail said nothing, but Birdie could tell that he saw all these slights, and knew them for what they were. She felt bad for him for a minute, everyone was against him and what had he done to them? But then she reminded herself that he was arresting her father, and she decided however people treated him, that was a reflection of what he did in the world. You shall reap what you so was what Kadiatu's mother always said, which sounded good if you believed you were a good person, but how did you know? Kadiatu's mother said "well, you see what you reap. Does the world treat you kindly?" + +Birdie used two scraps of burlap sack left in the wagon to fashion a pillow and lay down on ther back to stare up at the sky and think. There was nothing better for thinking than the limitless view of the blue sky. The wagon lurched and shuddered across some dried mud ruts and onto the road. Birdie sat up and held on to the side until they found a grooves of the road. It would soft until they got out of the marshlands, then the road would turn hardpack, horrible and jarring. Birdie lay back to enjoy the sky while she could. + +Was it true was Kadiatu's mother said, you reap what you sow. It sounded nice and it seemed like something that might be true because it was so simple. Everyone new if you put corn in the ground, corn came up. No one ever put corn in the ground and ended up with squash, or beans. But was life itself the same? Birdie was suspicious of things grownups said that were hard for her to test. How did anyone know that you reaped what you sowed? What did her father sow to reap being arrested? + +He lived, she lived, on an island, and burned stumps to make tar for ships. They harmed no one. Or did they? She knew Anne and Jack robbed ships. She knew they captured the ships, took their cargo and sold it for their own profit. And she knew Jack and Anne used that money to pay her family to careen their ships and for the barrels of tar they had left with. Did that make what her father did wrong too? Was it too closely associated with Jack and Anne? What about the people in Charlestown who sold flour that ended up on the Revenge? Or salt pork? Or anything else, were they too pirates in some way? Responsible for what anyone they sold their goods too did once they had their goods? Was what Jack and Anne did wrong anyway? Hadn't the Spanish Galleons stole the gold from the people that lived on the main? Did that make what Jack and Anne did okay? Or did it make them further guilty? More blood on the money as her father always said about Spanish Gold and Silver. He refused to touch it, called it cursed, and said it would ruin the men that took it and kept it for themselves. He said it would sit in their storehouses and rot them from the inside, eat away at the souls of those whose livelihoods were built on it, and all those who came after them. It would fester like a lesion on the soul of the nation until the nation collapsed and disappeared and the gold returned to the earth from which it came. But then her father was prone to saying things like that. Birdie wasn't so sure. It seemed to her that the merchants got rather rich and didn't seem to rotting much. She'd said this to him once and he'd said, "you're not thinking long enough Birdie." + +For a long time she'd thought he meant she had not thought about it for long enough, but then one day when she'd mentioned it to Lulu and Henri, Henri, who had sat very quiet while she and Lulu talked about the morality of the pirates they were pretending to be, had said Birdie, he means you're not thinking long enough in time. She'd asked him what he meant and he just shrugged, "Papa always thinks about things way in the future. He wasn't saying they'll rot right now, he means the weight they have brought on themselves will be there forever. Or until the get rid of it." + +"Do you think that's true?" + +Henri cocked his head at her quizzically, "I just said it." + +"No, I mean do you think it's true that the money is cursed and curse will affect everyone forever?" + +"Papa says that." + +"But what do you think?" + +"I guess so? I know I don't want that gold." + +"Then what's the point of being a pirate?" + +Henri smiled. "Because it's fun." + +"What sort of pirate gives away their loot?" Asked Lulu. + +"Wed do," said Henri. + +"We're not pirates Henri," said Birdie. + +"No, I mean in the game." + +They had gone on with the game but Birdie had lost some of her enthusiasm for playing pirates after talking with Henri. What was the point of being a pirate if all you were doing was bringing some vague future ruin on yourself and your family? Anne seemed to do it just because it was fun. If she cared about whatever Revenge captured she never showed it. Birdie had never once heard her mention anything they'd captured. She had plenty of stories of attacking ships and even scary stories of boarding ships, but she had no stories about whatever was on those ships. Either she thought that was something Birdie wasn't interested in or she thought it was something Birdie shouldn't be interested in or she just didn't think about it. Was it wrong to robs someone if you just took what they had and gave it to someone else? + +Birdie also wondered why grownups were so concerned with gold and silver and money in the first place. So far as she could tell all you really needed was a little land to have a place to camp, some place to hunt, someplace to cook. Why did you need more than food and place to sleep anyway? Well, some things are nice. Some thing you need. She needed her knife, and her fishing net. And the gun her father was always promising her, but never actually getting her. And her horsehair brush, she loved her horsehair brush. And her ragdoll Jane. And her notebook. But that was it. All that fit in her sea chest. There was no need for anything else. + +Her reverie was interrupted when a dark cloud of pigeons filled the sky. The soldiers began shooting them down and tossing their bloody caresses in the wagon. "You know how to clean a pigeon young lady?" asked McPhail. Birdie shook her head. McPhail glanced at her father. "She can clean a hog if your men want to hunt something edible." + +McPhail chuckled, but the British soldiers crowded around her father menacingly. "We'll burn the feathers off tonight then. I am anxious to sample the local options." + +"I can see about getting a boar," her father offered. + +McPhail waved his hand, "too much work. We'll eat the birds and tomorrow evening I will dine with the governor in Charlestown while you enjoy moldy bread in jail." + +Her father leaned forward on the pommel of his saddle and looked at McPhail for a moment before he spoke. "You didn't stop in Charlestown before you came down here I presume." + +"I did not. Why?" + +"I don't know that the governor of Charlestown is going to be so pleased to see you." + +"Why is that? He's a good man by all accounts I have received." + +"Oh I don't know much about him as man, he may be a good man, he may not, but a good number of the people he depends upon to keep his city functioning may not particularly enjoy having a British warship in their harbor. It can be bad for some business." + +"Are you implying that the city of Charlestown is some kind of den of pirates like Nassau?" + +"No, not really, you might find a few more liberal privateers down at the harbor taverns, but whether or not the men are there, the ships come and good, the goods come and go. Or well, they do when there are not British warships in the harbor. And when the goods don't come, they don't go, and no one makes any money." + +"I was warned of this." + +"Of what?" + +"That the character of people who've been in the colonies degrades to the point that all they care about is commerce." + +Her father laughed. "Oh, I don't care about commerce at all. I like to sail, and fish, and hunt. In that order." + + + + -"No, I made the cup for the coffee." Her father smiled at her. |