The Whiskey Rebel

Joan Maycott

Spring 1791

The response to the whiskey tax was universal: We would not pay. The tax was foolish and ill-conceived, and sooner or later the politicians in Philadelphia must recognize that fact. When Tindall sent Hendry to our cabin to tell us that we owed a hundred and fifteen dollars, Andrew shook with rage, and Mr. Dalton, who owed an equal amount, was tempted to take his gun to Empire Hall that day, but Mr. Skye talked sense into both of them, or what we thought was sense at the time.

Another meeting was held at the church, and little was agreed upon but that this was more eastern indifference to the plight of men upon the border. They let Indians murder us and refused to send their soldiers, they allowed speculators to toy with our lives, and now we must pay them to do it. Anyone with a still-anyone who brought his grain to a still-would suffer from this tax. What was immediately clear was that the tax would drive smaller distillers out of business and the only benefits would go to wealthy men back east and large-scale distillers like Tindall, who had cash and could shoulder the tax. The excise had been promoted in Philadelphia as hurting none and benefiting all, but it benefited only the wealthy, and it did so upon the backs of the poor.

Amid all this, life went on. I continued to withhold from Andrew the news of my pregnancy, preferring to wait until my fourth month-a milestone I had never before reached. I worked on my book, kept the house, and prayed that the whiskey tax would somehow disappear. Two or three times I slipped onto Tindall property to help nurse Lactilla, who returned to health remarkably well. I felt not precisely guilt, but I believed that Tindall might not have been so quick to anger had I not been in the room. In a strange way, I believed he had shot her for my benefit. I said none of this to Lactilla. I brought her fresh cheeses and milk eggs, though she needed none, and cloth to change her bandages. She lay upon her bunk, her face a collection of red welts. She would smile at me and say, “Missus Maycott, you just nothing but goodness,” but I knew it was not true. I was not goodness at all. I was something else. I tended to Lactilla not because I thought myself responsible, but because I could not endure the thought of a world in which this poor creature must undergo such suffering without a commensurate response in kindness. It wasn’t goodness, it was a kind of rage, a burning need to do something before things slipped into a darkness from which none of us could ever emerge.

I was by myself, preparing a stew for our evening meal, when the dog began to bark excitedly. We kept it tied up near the entrance to the cabin, lest it run off, but the disadvantage to this system was that it could not prevent a stranger from entering. I heard the alarm, however, and prepared myself just as the door to the cabin swung hard inward, and there stood Tindall, flanked on either side by Hendry and Phineas.

Hendry observed my expression of surprise and disorder and laughed cruelly. “Looks like we caught her making us some dinner, don’t it?”

Tindall came in after him, clutching his fowling piece and grinning as well, and never had the two of them looked so much alike. Phineas closed the door and sat in the rocker by the window, his rifle stretched across his lap. He had not met my eye since entering.

Tindall strolled about the cabin with an arrogance only to be found in a man taking what is not his. He looked into the pot, he looked at the pantry. He peered at our bed and smirked.

“Where is your husband, Joan? He ought not to leave you alone like this.”

“It is Mrs. Maycott, and he is about the property. He will be home shortly. I shall inform him you called.”

“If he is to be home shortly, my dear, I’ll just make myself comfortable right here and wait awhile. You want to get comfortable, Hendry?”

“I believe I do. I take my comfort where I can get it.”

Something was different now. They were not here to bluster or to frighten but for something else. I dared not to consider what.

“I must ask you to leave now,” I managed.

“Well, that’s a funny thing,” Tindall said to me, lowering himself into a chair. “Your husband owes more than a hundred dollars, don’t you know.”

“Every man with a still in the four counties owes you now,” I said. “I have not heard anything yet of you trying to collect.”

“Your husband is a special case, making trouble with his new methods. Now, I’ve been so good as to apply some of his rent money to that debt, but then you know what happens? It means he hasn’t paid his rent. And if a man hasn’t paid his rent, then do you know what happens to the land he’s renting?”

“Get out,” I said again.

“No, that’s not right, Joan. That’s not it at all. The land goes back to the landlord, and that landlord has a right, some might even say a responsibility, to toss that man off his property so he might learn to be industrious. Do you know what happens to the land he’s renting?”

“Get out,” I said again.

Phineas continued to look out the window. “Bitch,” he said, without turning his head.

“An industrious man might have been clearing this land, doing something useful with his time, rather than making whiskey, which can’t make him money and can only bring him debt.”

I took several steps closer to him. “You think your money and your toadeaters are going to keep you safe if you stir the ire of the settlers here? These are rough men with nothing but their strength and pride and resentment, principally for you.”

Phineas did not move, did not turn, though he continued to mutter. Hendry took several steps toward me. I do not know what I thought he was going to do, but he appeared to me a monstrous face, the red skin under his scraggly beard glowing in the light of our fire, his eyes moist with excitement.

“This’s been coming,” he said. I could not react quickly enough to prevent it. He balled his fist and struck me directly in my belly. The pain hit me like a wall of water from a broken dam-it was vast and overpowering, and for a time I was lost in it. I fell to my hands and knees, gagged, vomited upon the floor. My bonnet fell off and hair fell about my face.

“Careful,” Tindall said. “We’ve spoken about your temper.”

The smell of my own vomit overwhelmed me. I gagged again, but nothing came forth. I had been expecting something terrible, yes, but not brutal unadorned violence. If they would do this, they would stop at nothing. Ugly lights danced before my eyes. “Please,” I gasped.

“What is it?” Tindall asked me. “You talk like a man, but you don’t know what pain and fear are. I reckon you’re finding out, though.”

“Please,” I said again. “I am with child.” This, I thought, could not but excite their mercy, or at least their pity. Tindall was a monster, but he could not be such a monster as to assault a woman with child.

“Ain’t that something?” Tindall asked. “Well, a woman with child won’t want another blow to her belly, I suppose. That would be what I imagine. Do you imagine that, Hendry?”

“I don’t know if I do,” he said, his foxlike face seeming to grow sharper. “But maybe.”

“Git her dress off,” Phineas said. “Git it unbuttoned, like you said.”

I pushed myself to my feet. I felt the heat of tears in my eyes, the sourness of my purging in my mouth. “What kind of devil are you?”

“I’m a devil from Virginia, my good lady, and I take what I want if I can. That is the true vision of America, the one I fought for. The principles of the Revolution have made me a king in Pittsburgh.”

“You go too far,” I said.

“I go where I like. Now, should I ask Hendry to strike you once more? Maybe we can do something about that troubling thing that grows within you.”

Involuntarily, I put my hands across my belly.

“Or,” said Tindall, “we can make a different arrangement. I’ll allow you and your husband to remain here, and I will make certain Hendry strikes you no more, but in return I must ask you show me some consideration. You know what I speak of, don’t you, Joan? Let us go from here, the two of us. We shall leave your husband in peace, let him tinker with his whiskey. I shall overlook his rent in arrears. I shall even wink at his whiskey tax for him this year.”

“Why?” I gasped, my voice low. I struggled to keep myself calm. “Why do you do this to me? Why me above others? I cannot believe that I alone have caught your eye. Why me and not another?”

“Because the others have already given me what I like,” he said, his voice cold. “You defy me. Your husband defies me. Your friends defy me. I cannot have it, and I won’t have it. All of you must taste what it means to defy me, and you shall be the first.”

“I would rather die,” I said, and I may have meant it.

“Oh, I don’t think so. In a moment or two, you will be imploring me to have you on the terms I mentioned. But if you vex me, if you are impertinent, I may have to alter the terms.”

I forced myself to stand erect, to thrust out my chin, to show him my pride and my anger. “Not on any terms.”

“I do like how she thrusts out her bosoms at me, but it shall not be enough. Hendry, would you please show this woman that I am not a man to be taken lightly.”

I put my hands inside my apron. “Please,” I said.

“I’ll have my turn too,” Hendry said. “When the colonel’s done, I’ll have my turn. And Phineas. He’s been waiting.”

“I been waiting,” he said, staring out the window.

Hendry had only taken three steps toward me when I pulled the trigger. I was not so foolish as to take out my gun. I was outnumbered and could not compete with their strength. Even with the firearm, my chances were not good. If I wished to live I needed to depend upon trickery. I fired through my apron, and the ball struck Hendry in his neck.

I could not imagine how Andrew had so calmly fired his pistol under the table at the braves. The weapon bucked wildly in my hand, jerking back and striking my hip almost hard enough that I feared I’d broken bone. Heat burst around my hand. My apron caught fire, but I patted it out quickly. I staggered two steps back and looked up and saw Hendry put his hand to his neck, slapping it as though a mosquito had landed upon him. Blood flowed heavily through his fingers, thick and almost black. “That ain’t right,” he said. Then he fell.

Tindall stared at me for a second. His expression was one of monstrous, impossible disbelief, as though the sun had sprouted legs and walked from the sky. His face went red, and he lifted his fowling piece, and I knew all too well he would not hesitate to use it.

I leaped into the air to take shelter behind our evening table. I hit the floor as the gun roared, and a rain of birdshot hit the wood, a sudden and nearly simultaneous series of wet, hard, smacking noises. Above me glass shattered, and whiskey trickled down. He had struck our only piece of porcelain, a flour jar, and the room was covered with shards and white powder. I was unharmed, but I knew I had not much time. We had both spent our weapons, and neither could take the time to reload. In a contest of strength, though he was an old man, Tindall would certainly best me.

Only then did I recall Phineas. More than half a minute had now passed since I’d struck Hendry. If Phineas were to fire upon me, surely he would have done so by now. I dared to peer out from behind my table, but I saw no one in the cabin but Tindall, and the door was open. Phineas had run off. It was hard to believe that a boy who would kill Indians in cold blood would flee from this, but perhaps the scene was too close to his own past. Perhaps, despite the hatred he felt toward me for knowing his heart, I still reminded him too much of the life he had lost, and he could neither go against Tindall nor strike out at me.

I could afford no time to sound the depths of the boy’s soul, however. I had to get away from Tindall before he reloaded, or came after me with a knife, or simply used his strength of body to overtake me. I lay but a few feet from our fireplace, and, having no other recourse, I reached into the fire and pulled out a burning branch. It was hot, but I grabbed an end as yet untouched by the fire. Gripping it tight, I pushed myself to my feet, using my free hand for leverage, and charged at Tindall. I suppose I must have been an unnatural figure, disheveled, blackened with powder, whitened by flour, red with anger, eyes wide with determined rage.

He maneuvered around me and made his way to the hearth. With two or three quick kicks he dislodged the logs, which spilled out and tumbled near our dining table. The flame from the logs began to lick at it, and I would have to act quickly to prevent the spread of fire.

It was what Tindall depended upon, because he used my moment of confusion to rush out the door.

I should have let him go. The cabin needed tending to, but I did not think of it. I had no reason to charge after him, and yet I did. I was so full of hatred for what he had done, what he had threatened to do, what he had made me do. The part of myself I knew as me, where my soul resided, retreated and shriveled. All that was left was a white-hot demon who yearned to do some unnamed, unknown, violence. At that moment, the thought of life, the thought of continuing to breathe upon an earth where Tindall still lived, was unsupportable. He ran to his horse and I chased him hard and fast, waving my burning branch and screaming I can hardly say what.

Coming down the path now was Andrew with Dalton and Skye, approaching from the path on the other side of the tree where Tindall had tied his horse. I saw them, though I did not think about what I saw, or I would have left Tindall to them. Little can I suppose what they must have made of this scene, Tindall running frantically, me chasing him with a club of fire.

Andrew came running to me. He did not care about Tindall, and he would have known that if there was violence to be done, Mr. Dalton should have been happy to do it. He only wanted to come to me, and if I had only wanted him, to be safe and in his arms, then all would have been different. I should have turned and dropped my weapon and gone to Andrew. Instead, I ignored him and continued toward Tindall. I had killed one man, and I wanted nothing more than to kill another. Phineas had said that the West would change me, and now I knew it had. I was so changed I did not even know myself.

Tindall reached his horse but did not mount. He looked and saw me, then looked past me. I was a crazed woman with a stick, he an officer beside his mount. He saw Andrew running, and that was another matter. He did not know that Andrew would not harm him, that he only wanted me, to make certain I was unharmed. Tindall might simply ride away. Instead, he took a pistol from his saddlebag and turned to Andrew.

I saw it happening, and I opened my mouth to call out, but I could make no noise. My voice betrayed me, though I know not what I should have shouted to make a difference.

Tindall fired the pistol at Andrew, discharging it at a distance of no more than ten feet. Andrew was thrown back and fell at once to the ground, striking hard and flat and with sudden force. He landed not like a living man but a lifeless weight.

I found my voice and let out a scream as I dropped my torch and rushed to Andrew, ignoring now the murderous Tindall. That Andrew was struck need not mean his end. He was young and strong and resilient. It is what I told myself, but it was all deceit. Even from a distance I saw the ball had struck his heart, and I believe he was dead before he fell. He lay there, eyes wide and lifeless. I reached him and knelt. I cradled his head in my arms, I stroked his hair, I called out to heaven, though heaven would not answer. I felt a heat upon my skin, and though I did not look up, I knew it was the cabin, awash in flames I had not troubled myself to extinguish.

Tindall knew he was in danger now, and he acted quickly. He climbed onto his horse and rode off. Dalton fired his rifle after him, but he had no clear shot. I hardly heard the crack of the weapon, the cries of anguish around me.

What did I lose that day? It pains me now to speak of it, for I lost everything. I lost my darling Andrew, who wanted only that I should live the life of my innermost desires. I lost his child, which died inside me, though I know not if it was from Hendry’s violence or from my shock at the events that unfolded. I lost my freedom, for Tindall put it about at once that I had murdered Hendry in cold blood and sought to murder the colonel too. And though it sounded trivial in my own ears, I lost my novel, taken by the flames that scorched my cabin. This too I lost-my innocence, for I had killed a man, and I could not regret doing so. Surely that made me into someone I was not before.

Everything I had desired and dreamed of and wanted in life was taken from me. Can it be wondered that I set myself against my enemies, and if my enemies were the first men in the nation itself, can I be blamed for seeking justice? The shape of that justice was not formed until later, and not formed alone, but even as I sat with my beloved husband’s body in my arms, the ghost of it was there, haunting me from the spectral realm of notions not yet conceived.