T. Boyle - World's End

Through all that followed — through the patroon’s interminable speech of admonition and reconciliation, through the commis’ pointless pontifications and the schout’s terse and hushed testimony, Jeremias never uttered a word but for ja and nee. The man in the corner (who, as it turned out, was Oloffe’s only son and heir, Jongheer Stephanus Oloffe Rombout Van Wart, newly arrived from the University of Leyden to look after his interests in the face of his father’s declining health) helped himself to a clay pipe of Virginia tobacco and a glass of Portuguese wine, surveying the proceedings with the air of a man watching a pair of dung beetles struggle over a kernel of manure. He merely sat there, an ironic grin compressing his thin haughty lips, holding himself aloof from the whole business — until the moment his father spelled out the terms of Jeremias’ tenancy, that is. Then he came to life like a stalking beast.

“We will, in our, er, magnanimity,” the patroon intoned in a wheezy voice that bespoke ruined health and mismanaged appetites, “absorb unto ourselves the rents and damages accruing to your late, er, father’s tenancy in the unfortunate year of 1663. We, er, refer of course to rent in arrears, the pilferage and wanton slaughter of one, er, rutting boar and the careless usage of our livestock, which resulted in the untimely, er, demise of two milch cows and one piebald ox.”

The agent made as if to protest, but the patroon waved him silent with an impatient hand and continued. “We consider that the physical”—here he paused to suck in a great wheezing breath—“er, blemish that you’ve, er, received at the, er, hands of Joost Cats, is punishment enough for your trespass and willful, er, disregard for established law, and we will forego the levying of fines or remanding you to the, er, stocks, of which we have, er, none in any case.” Here the patroon’s voice had gone so hoarse as to carry no farther than the rasp of quill on parchment, and Jeremias had to lean forward to hear him. Coughing into his fist, the old man took a glass of port the commis held out to him and stared up at Jeremias out of bleary eyes. “Your rent shall be the same as your, er, father’s before you, payable in stuffs and in English pounds or seawant, as you prefer, and it will be, er, due—”

“Vader,” interjected a voice from the corner of the room, and all eyes turned toward the Jongheer, “I beg you to reconsider your judgment.”

The old man’s mouth groped at the air, and Jeremias thought of a tench flung up on the cobblestones in Schobbejacken so many years before. “Your rent,” the patroon began again, but faltered as his voice faded to a timbreless wheeze.

Young Van Wart was on his feet now, his hands spread wide in remonstrance. Jeremias stole a glance at him, then went back to studying the floorboards. The Jongheer had at some point placed atop his head an enormous, floppy-brimmed beaver hat with a two-foot plume, and it magnified his presence till he seemed to fill the entire corner of the room. “I respect your goodheartedness, vader,” he said, “and I agree that it will be to our benefit to settle a tenant at Nysen’s Roost, but is this the man — or boy, rather — to entrust with it? Hasn’t he already proven himself a criminal without respect for the law, the degenerate issue of a degenerate father?”

“Well, well, yes—” the patroon began, but his son cut him off. Regarding Jeremias with a look he might have reserved for the unhappy slug that had crawled one damp night into his glistening leathern shoe, Stephanus held up his palm and continued. “And is he capable of paying rent, this one-legged cripple in his filthy rags? Do you really think this, this … beggar can pay his debts, let alone feed himself and the tribe of naked half-breed savages he’s sired up there in the muck?”

Jeremias was beaten. He couldn’t respond, couldn’t even look young Van Wart in the eye. The gulf between them — he was well-built and youthful, this Jongheer, handsome as the portrait of the Savior hanging in the nave of the Schobbejacken church, powerful, wealthy, educated — was unbridgeable. What commis, schout and the beast of the pond couldn’t take from him with their accounts ledgers, rapiers and unforgiving jaws, the Jongheer had taken with a sneer and half a dozen stinging phrases. Jeremias hung his head. The utter contempt in the man’s voice — he might have been speaking of hogs or cattle — was a thing that would be with him for life.

In the end, though, commis and patroon prevailed, and Jeremias was taken on as tenant with a year’s grace so far as rent was concerned (and a warning that he would be driven off the property at the point of a sword if he was even a stiver short in his accounts at the end of that time), but for Jeremias it was no victory. No: he left the manor house in shame, his stomach rumbling, clothes filthy, the schout’s mark burning on his face and the Jongheer’s words charred into his heart. He didn’t look back. Not even when Neeltje came to the door of her father’s cottage to stand mute with her wet and glowing eyes and watch him as he limped up the road. Not even when at last she called out his name in a voice stung with hurt and incomprehension — not even then could he find it in himself to lift his eyes from the rutted road before him.

Taking stock of the situation the following morning, Jeremias understood that his options were limited. He’d just turned seventeen. He was short a leg and wore the brand of the outlaw on his face, his parents were dead, his sister’s mind was like a butterfly touched by the frost, and the gaping hungry mouth of his half-breed nephew haunted his dreams. What was he going to do — bring the patroon and his smirking son to their knees by starving himself to death in the winter woods? Wearily, painfully (the stump of his leg ached as if his father were taking the saw to it at that very moment), he pushed himself up from the damp straw pallet, took a mouthful of cornmeal, and went out to his chores. He finished hoeing up the weeds, split a cord and a half of wood to take the buzz of the Jongheer’s disdain out of his head, and decided, between two random and otherwise unremarkable strokes of the axe, to have his nephew christened in the church and admitted to the community as a Dutchman and free citizen of the Colony of New York.

When he came to Katrinchee with the idea, she looked down at her hands. Squagganeek sat on the floor, watching him with Harmanus’ eyes. “I thought we should name him after vader” Jeremias said.

Katrinchee wouldn’t hear of it. “The guilt,” she whispered, and her voice trailed off.

“Well, what about ‘Wouter’ then?”

She bit her lip and slowly shook her head from side to side.

Two days later, when Jeremias came in from the fields, his sister was smiling over a pan of rising dough. “I want to call him ‘Jeremias,’ ” she said. “Or how do the Englishers have it—‘Jeremy?’ ”

The surname was another story. On the one hand, the boy was a Van Brunt — just look at his eyes — but on the other, he wasn’t. And if he were to be christened a Van Brunt, who would the Dominie list as his father? They wrestled with the problem through a blistering afternoon and a mosquito-plagued night: in the morning they agreed that the boy should be named for his natural father, who was, after all, the son of a chieftain. It was only proper. Jeremias milked his cows, then sent for Dominie Van Schaik.

It was September before the Dominie actually made it out to the farm to perform the ceremony, but neither Katrinchee nor Jeremias was much bothered by the delay. Once they’d reached their decision, it was as if the thing had already been accomplished. Now they were legitimate. They’d weathered the worst, they’d been orphaned, deserted, evicted and shunned, and now they were members of the community once more, fully sanctioned in the eyes of God, man and patroon alike.