A distant popping commenced, and we sat, our eyes trained toward the sound even though Boston was thirty miles away.
“Do you hear that?” I asked.
“Do I hear what?” Jerry grumbled. He didn’t like climbing near as much as I did and was ready to head back down. I clutched at his arm and shushed him. The sound came again, a faint rumbling, like thunder in the sky, but the air did not smell wet and the sun blazed hot overhead.
“It’s gonna rain, and we’re up here,” he whined again. “I’m hungry too. Let me have that apple.”
I mimicked the sound, popping the air between my lips, so faint, so far away, and suddenly I knew. “It’s cannon fire, Jerry. It’s a cannonade!”
“It is not! You’ve never heard cannons, Rob.”
I had begun to run, scrabbling up to the top so I could see even farther. Jerry wasn’t far behind. He knew I was right. We watched as smoke rose into the June sky.
“Do you think that’s coming from Boston?” he asked, awed.
“Yes. I do. It’s . . . happening.”
It was beginning. Not just a skirmish or a protest or throwing tea into the harbor. It wasn’t pamphlets and speeches and practice drills on town greens. It wasn’t even a skirmish in the woods. It was cannons. Warships. Thousands wounded. Hundreds killed.
It was war.
I slept in fits and starts for days afterward. One would think I’d seen the battle up close instead of from a green hill thirty miles away. The sounds of battle followed me into sleep and became mocking voices urging me to join the fight. I did not believe the dreams were from God. They were too much in my own mind and heart to give Him the blame or the glory.
But the boom and the bellow of warships and cannons had awakened something in me, and I wasn’t the only one. We were all caught up in the swell. That is what it felt like—a great, sweeping wave that carried us into the sea of revolution.
Every young man felt the beckoning, I think. I felt it too. More than anything, it was a call to adventure, to heroism, and no one wanted to miss out.
They were calling it a Pyrrhic victory for the Crown, which meant the objective was reached but great losses were taken in the process. The Americans had built a redoubt and other smaller fortifications on the hills overlooking the harbor on the Charlestown side. The British had far superior numbers in addition to gunships, and their men were ordered up the hill in a full-frontal assault. It wasn’t until after the third wave and many British deaths that the colonials, out of ammunition and powder, abandoned the redoubt and retreated down the other side of Breed’s Hill. British losses were over a thousand men dead or wounded, including one hundred officers. Colonial forces lost less than half that number, but among the fallen was Dr. Joseph Warren, one of the famous Sons of Liberty. Overnight, his name became a rallying cry.
Nathaniel, Benjamin, and Phineas left for Boston with a local regiment of one hundred men right after the battle at Breed’s Hill. Elizabeth’s husband, John, was already in Boston. He’d gathered a militia from Lenox after Lexington and Concord, and arrived, ready to serve, the following day. Elizabeth wrote of his fervor, and she seemed to share it, though she was under the assumption he would return in a few days’ time.
He didn’t. None of the men did. John Paterson was elected captain by his regiment and then made a colonel within days of their arrival.
Nathaniel left without an answer from me. He’d been right. Time had run out, and though I knew I did not love him and would not marry him when he came home, I was grateful I had not been forced to declare myself, one way or the other.
“It is better this way. You’re too young, and it wasn’t fair of me to speak,” he had conceded. “But I haven’t changed my mind, and I can wait for you to make up yours.”
“Will you write to us, Nathaniel?”
“I’m no good at that, Rob, but you must write to me.” His use of my nickname made me smile. I didn’t much care for Deborah on Nat’s lips. It felt like a corset pulled too tight.
“But I’ll be back before you know it,” he vowed.
“I’m not coming back until every redcoat has been booted out of Boston. And maybe not even then,” Phineas said, darting an apologetic look my way.
Benjamin simply gave me a smile and patted my shoulder, and the three of them left amid waves and tears.
General Washington took command of all colonial forces in July, and Jacob slipped off in August, telling Margaret, the girl he planned to marry, he would be back when the conflict was over.