All she could say for certain was that the English colonists seemed an unhygienic, scrabbling bunch. They died off at an alarming rate.
“Does that mean we’re going to see people dying?” asked Jonah.
“Possibly,” Ms. Hempel said. “But if anyone dies, remember that it’s a re-creation.”
“It will look real, though,” Jonah said. “Won’t it?”
It should, if Plimoth Plantation recreated death with the same devotion with which it clothed its inhabitants, bred their livestock, built their dark and smoky homes. Ms. Hempel had studied the brochure. Upon any day of the week, one could step back into the year 1627. Scores of thrifty colonists would mill about you, busy with their chores: cleaning muskets, plucking chickens. And when you asked them a question — Why did you come to America? Or, What is that there you’re growing? — the colonists would look up mildly from their labor, and offer you an off-the-cuff and fascinating answer. They might then introduce themselves: Captain Standish, Goody Billington, Governor Bradford. Each colonist’s accent was true to the English county from which he or she hailed. Even the swine were recreated: modern pigs, being too dainty, had been crossbred with a warthog; thus the hairy, truculent animals that now rooted about at the edges of the settlement. Ms. Hempel was very excited to see it all for herself, even though it did mean spending a long time on a bus.
“Ask lots of questions!” she yelled, trying to secure the seventh grade’s attention. The bus was luxurious, its seats high-backed and plush. Probably every kind of mischief was occurring, unseen. “You will get the most out of the experience that way!”
Ms. Hempel worried that her students might be overawed by the colonists, might spend the whole day staring at the strange pigs. So she had assembled a list of suggested questions, of the type that curious seventh graders might ask an English colonist. These she distributed as the kids came careening down the aisle of the bus, tangled up in their backpacks and clipboards and sweaters. Ms. Burnes waited outside to make sure they didn’t go anywhere.
Ms. Hempel stepped off the bus last. The air! It delighted her, it was brisk and wood-smoky; it smelled the way early music sounded: thin, feverish, slightly out of tune. Ms. Hempel hurried to the top of the path, flapping her hands to encourage the seventh graders, who tended to clot and clump and meander off into the distance; she touched their arms, she called to them, “Just a bit farther! Just over the crest of that hill!” And there it was: the settlement, the colonists, the sea. The blue sky, and the white smoke rising up in wispy streams. The roofs, gray and matted; the gardens, brown and stumpy; the roosters, red-crowned and wandering. The fort, with its cannons peeking out from under its eaves. The high, ragged fence, running along the perimeter of the settlement. Its purpose was to protect the colonists at night — to keep out the Spanish, or unfriendly Indians, or wild, hungry creatures of the forest.
“But you don’t sleep here, do you?” Jonah wanted to know. “After this place closes, you go home.”
The colonist scratched at his delicate beard. “Aye, I go home and sleep in my own bed. You can see it yonder,” he said, pointing at a gray roof. “And if you happen upon my wife, you tell her that I will be back for the midday meal.”
About ten or so seventh graders had another colonist surrounded. He was leaning jauntily upon an axe.
“What was the voyage over like?”
“What was your profession in England before you came here?”
“Did you come here for religious freedom or economic opportunity?”
“How do you feel about King Charles marrying a Catholic?”
“What is the literacy rate in the colony?”
They looked up from their sheets and stood braced for his answers, their clipboards jutting forward. Soon they would be free to climb on things and poke long, tough blades of grass into the animals’ pens. But the colonist, suddenly, had turned gruff. “I was a planter there, in England, and I am a planter here,” he said, before wielding his axe and letting it fall decisively into an upended log. The seventh graders moved away, in search of a more obliging colonist, and Ms. Hempel followed, whispering, “Have conversations with them.”
But some children needed no prompting. Peering into the dim interiors of the houses, Ms. Hempel saw Annie explaining, with many violent shakes of her pencil, why Indians ought not to be called savages; Daniel squatting beside the fireplace, examining the contents of a big, tarnished pot; Maria reaching out and stroking a woman’s dress, asking, Is it scratchy? Does it itch?
Jonah was looking around for the dying. He couldn’t even find a colonist who was feeling sick. He ran up to Ms. Hempel and told her this, rather pointedly.
“It isn’t winter yet,” Ms. Hempel said. “Come back a few months from now, and they’ll be dropping like flies.”
She drifted about the settlement blissfully. She ran her fingertips along the fence; she pressed her nose into the marigolds that hung drying from the ceilings. She asked, in every house she entered, what was cooking for supper. The seventh graders darted about her but they seemed, to her enchanted eye, nearly invisible: a school of silver minnows, and she, a great, stately carp. All she saw were the marigolds drying, and the bread rising in the wooden trestles, and the colonists calling to each other from their chores. Ms. Hempel surrendered, without protest.
“So where are all the kids?” Jonah was asking Governor Bradford. “Why aren’t there any kids around?”
“Why, the lambing season does not come until spring!” said Governor Bradford. “You will not find any kids before April.”
“Children,” Jonah said. “You know what I mean. There aren’t any children here. Because they’re all at school.”
“Nay, we have neither school nor schoolmaster here, but we hope for a schoolmaster soon to come from England.”
“Their real school,” Jonah said. “They can’t skip it. That’s why they aren’t here.”
“Have you not seen our children?” Governor Bradford asked. “Mine own son was here not a moment ago. He went to fetch wood for the fire. And Winslow’s two girls wished me a good afternoon, but a minute afore you spake to me. They were on their way to gather crab apples, it being the season to harvest them.”
“Very convenient,” said Jonah.
“If you do not see our young folk, it is because they must work. No one rests here,” said Governor Bradford, with finality.
How magnificent! Ms. Hempel rejoiced. How unperturbed he was, how convinced. Governor Bradford was unmistakably himself. Ms. Hempel aspired to such a performance. If only she, too, were a colonist. But why not? She could learn to do these things: to sew a jerkin, render fat into soap, and muck out a barn. She could say aye, and betwixt, and if the Lord wills it so. As she herded the seventh grade back onto the bus, and frowned at the little wooden muskets they had purchased at the gift shop, and reminded them to put their notes in a very safe place, she entertained the possibility. When she returned home, she would write a letter to the Plantation. Of course, she could not ask a colonist how she might join them; they would rebuff her, good-naturedly, just as Governor Bradford had done with Jonah. She must address her letter to the administration, who were probably tucked away somewhere behind the bluffs. Perhaps a whole network of cubicles and fluorescent lights stretched out beneath the settlement, hidden and labyrinthine. Her letter would be opened by one of these underground workers; a response would be posted; by next fall, she could be bending over, stoking a fire, and when the seventh grade came tumbling through, she would glance up; she would say, “My name is Alice Bradford, and aye, the voyage over was a dreadful one.”