Read Online Bound by Sally Gunning - Free Book Online Page B

non-importation—and again Otis, who was well known to those present as a native of Barnstable, a town that Alice gathered lay somewhere to the west of Yarmouth.
    Alice listened to the pieces of talk, and after a time she found she could make something of it almost whole. A thing called the Sugar Act had upset all the colony, and although it was called the Sugar Act it seemed that rum was at the back of it, because one of the things the act would tax was the molasses used to make rum. James Otis came into the talk so often not only because he had once been neighbor to them but also because he had recently stood up at Boston town meeting and proposed non-importation of all unessential English goods in answer to the Act; this non-importation agreement seemed to be the focus of the present meeting. That much was easily gathered; the rest came more slowly, especially the sorting of the various opinions of Otis and the non-importation agreement. Alice heard one man’s “devil” answered with another’s “savior,” the words genius and mad out of a single mouth, mugs banged down and voices raised, as loud in agreement as in disagreement.
    “It’ll mean ruin,” Sears said.
    “It’ll mean tight times,” Thacher countered. “The ruin’ll come if we let them get away with it.”
    “I’m with Sears,” Myrick said. “I see naught but starvation in it.”
    “Over coffee and tea and a bit of sugar?” Winslow asked. “Come now, Myrick.”
    Hopkins said, “Now, now, we’re all Englishmen here. I think if we but make our position clear—”
    Cobb picked up the Boston Gazette , which Freeman had placed before them on the table, and slapped it down again. “Read our own legislature’s instructions for our agent to the Crown, right here in this paper; ’tis Otis’s work if I ever saw it. He says we admit to no right of Parliament to impose duties and taxes upon a people who are not represented in the House of Commons. He says if we are not represented we are slaves. How much clearer can we make it? And yet they pay no attention to our words. Full half of England’s trade is done with these colonies; if we shut that down, I promise you, they’ll pay attention.”
    “Perhaps a more peaceable means—” Hopkins ventured.
    “Peaceable! What’s not peaceable? I’m not asking for the king’s head on a block. But if you’d rather bend over and kiss their arse while they rifle your pockets—”
    “Well, no—”
    Alice took count: Cobb, Thacher, Winslow, and Freeman for, Sears and Myrick against, Hopkins to be persuaded any moment. If the table represented the whole, the non-importation agreement would go, but whether it went or not meant little to Alice. Yet she couldn’t help listen to the men’s urgent pleadings, and though some of the phrases were strung together fine enough, she felt in the other men the same thing she felt in herself—they waited for Freeman.
    Not until the jabber began to repeat itself did he speak. “Gentlemen, I take the measure of this room and I take heart. You all see the importance of this moment. You all speak to the necessary points. You all speak with reason. And I have no doubt, once we’ve garnered their attention with this non-importation agreement, reason will prevail in England. I need not tell a man in this room that I love my king as I love my father; nor do I doubt every man in this room feels as I do toward his sovereign. Now, as we all understand one another, the next step is to marshal our forces. Our peaceful forces. And one thing that became clear this past week in my discussion with Otis and some of the others at Boston is that our forces must include the women.”
    The table broke out again.
    “Women!”
    “What the devil?”
    “What women?”
    “Yours, gentlemen. All of them. If we can’t buy English tea or coffee it will be up to the women to brew up a substitution. If we can’t buy sugar the women must work the hives. And most important, if we can’t