Chapter 143: Please Excuse the Progress
The crowd outside the brothel had grown past all reason.
The sailors shuffled on their feet, grumbled under their breath, and laid bets on how much longer it’d be before somebody important enough came along to make them open that door wide enough for two people at once.
Meg had put some sort of limit on how many bodies the place could hold, and if the speed that limit filled meant anything, was that the entire crew had spent their days saving up more than money.
Anne stood by the door, prepared to crack a few skulls if folk forgot their manners. She caught his eye, gave a little nod that said she’d manage well enough, then turned back to a quarrel over who’d been standing there first.
James let them be and headed into town to see what weeks of hard work could build while a man wasn’t looking.
The streets leading from the crossroads into the heart of the town had widened considerably, and loose sand had given way to hard-packed earth beaten flat by wagons, boots, and steady traffic.
More timber houses stood in rows now, square-built with shingled roofs instead of rough shelters thrown together in a hurry, and some gardens filled the spaces between them, enough for a family to raise its own vegetables instead of hoping the storehouse still had something left. On the front of every house, shirts and dresses swayed from lines stretched between posts.
The whole place looked like folk expected to be here next month just as surely as they were today.
Closer to the harbor, the town changed. Instead of family homes there were large halls, plain but solid, built by Concordia’s own hands for whichever crews happened to be in port.
James had seen enough of Nassau to know what happened when sailors had nowhere decent to sleep. Every man he passed had a roof waiting for him once the day was done, and that said more about Concordia than any speech he could’ve made standing atop his rock.
He knew a few of the doors.
Cudjoe’s sat near the middle, looking no grander than the rest, though James could’ve picked out the muddy boot prints crossing that threshold without seeing them. Sawyer’s place stood a little farther along, and Hobbs had a modest house nearby, close enough that if a man came home bleeding, nobody would have far to carry him.
James slowed outside Sawyer’s place.
He heard the fellow nearby.
Sawyer stood around the side with one hand braced against a half-raised support beam, talking to it in a voice so calm a preacher might’ve envied it. "Now I know ye’re tired, but ye’ve got a little more in ye than ye think. Ye’ve stood through worse."
James leaned against the fence, grinning.
"Talkin’ sense into her, are ye?"
Sawyer didn’t bother to look at him.
"Beam’s feelin’ contrary today. Reckon she’s earned herself the right."
"And’s she listen?"
"Eventually."
He gave the timber one last pat.
"As everythin’ else round here."
James laughed and left him to his work. If the beam held after that speech, Sawyer might’ve found himself a second trade.
Farther on, women carried baskets from house to house while children chased chickens, each other, or whatever happened to be fastest.
There wasn’t any hurry to it. Just ordinary life carrying on with no mind to impress anybody, and James found himself watching longer than he’d meant to.
Off by one of the gardens he spotted Elena bent over a row of vegetables with a basket against her hip. She was too far away to shout at, and besides, there’d be time enough later. He let her be.
The streets parted open onto cleared ground beyond the last houses, where the fields he’d watched turning green from the Rose weeks before had grown taller still.
Corn and cane stood in neat rows, joined now by cassava and yams growing in soil that had been nothing but scrub the first time he’d crossed it. The farmers moved through the crops with the easy rhythm of people who knew their work.
"Mind the second row. That one’s cryin’ out for weedin’," one woman called.
The boy trailing after her with an empty sack muttered something sour enough to make her laugh before they both bent back to work.
Past the fields the trees gathered again, and tucked against their shade sat the hunting camp, with smoke drifting steadily from a smokehouse. Some hides stretched along one wall to dry, and enough cured meat hung beneath the roof to promise nobody here would go hungry once lean times came around again.
Hunting blinds stood near trees, and James remembered hearing old stories about wild hogs roaming Andros. He’d taken them for sailors’ talk at the time, but now, looking at that smokehouse, he figured the lads had gone looking and found the stories true enough.
He turned back toward town as his stomach reminded him it’d been waiting patiently all morning.
The tavern hardly resembled the cramped room he’d helped build with his own hands, it had grown into a large gathering house, and several smaller taverns had sprung up elsewhere besides. A man no longer had to march across the bay just to find something worth drinking.
The cookhouse beside it had changed just as much. The ovens worked steadily and great pots bubbled without anybody scrambling around in confusion, it was a far cry from the cheerful disaster he’d remembered from the place in the first weeks.
Whoever ran the place now had learned the business well enough without James standing over their shoulder.
He bought a cup and a plate from the woman at the nearest window. The bread was baked clean through this time instead of being half dough in the middle, and that alone felt like progress worth celebration.
He stood in the tavern’s shadow while he ate, watching the town go about its business.
Once the plate was empty, James headed back toward the crossroads, now empty as the morning crowd had long since wandered off to whatever jobs still waited on them. He climbed onto the Code’s stone again, his boots slipping into the worn places.
From up there the whole town spread beneath him.
There were houses and halls side by side, and further away green fields that stretched toward the forest. Nearby, on the trees, smoke drifted from the smokehouse while thicker smoke rose from the cookhouse. The crowd outside the brothel had shortened some, though it was still working its way through the front door one customer at a time.
Beyond it all lay the harbor, where four pirate ships and dozens of fishing boats lay docked.
James stood there awhile and took it all in.
He’d only been gone about six weeks. Looking over the town now, you’d think it hadn’t noticed he’d left.
This place hadn’t been built by one pair of hands. It belonged to every back that had bent over a timber log, every tree that had been cut, every choice made along the way.
Still, underneath all that work sat the one notion that had started the whole business, to claim a lonely stretch of coast because it felt right, and to trust some reefs and bay nobody else had cared enough to put on a chart.
James let out a slow breath and reached for the voice displays. The thing had never driven a nail, raised a wall, or hauled a log, but he was curious enough to hear what it made of a town that had managed perfectly well without its help.
The familiar shimmer appeared in the air before him.