Write On Edge: Crossing the Line Challenge

This week's Red Writing Hood gives us 450 words to write a fiction or creative non-fiction piece about a time someone crossed a line, legally or ethically. The prompt was inspired by laws similar to Florida's Stand Your Ground statute  and the ideas of vigilante justice and citizen's arrests. Frustrated with the justice system, private citizens are individually and collectively testing the waters of taking matters into their own hands. These laws, these groups have met with murmured words of approval and understanding, despite questionable methods and tragic circumstances.

I read this prompt and thought of the times when America was shaped, forged by citizens frustrated with the structure of a government that was failing to meet the demands of her people. We are a rebellious lot, deeply loyal to our convictions and our passion for freedom. In a letter to James Madison, Thomas Jefferson wrote "I hold it that a little rebellion now and then is a good thing, and as necessary in the political world as storms in the physical."

Sons of Liberty adopted several rebellion flags like this one represented. This one was known to be raised in opposition of the Stamp Act.

I give the following in response: A Little Rebellion

“This meeting can do nothing further to save this country,” Mr. Adams said, crestfallen. His pleas to allow cooler heads to prevail fell on deaf ears.

Thaddeus was swept from Old South in a tide of angry people. Sucking in a welcome blast of December air, he knew the chill could do nothing to curtail the frustrations of his fellow Bostonians. He shivered, not from the stirring icy wind, but from his own bitterness. The Sons of Liberty, most dressed as Mohawks, marched towards Griffin’s Wharf where the Dartmouth, Eleanor, and Beaver lay in wait.

His heart pounding, Thaddeus painted his face and joined their ranks, hatchet in hand. The civil unrest of mobs made him anxious of late. He was just thirteen when Christopher Seider, a German lad two years his junior, was killed by a heartless customs officer. Thaddeus remembered all too well the grizzly scene that followed on King Street when soldiers at the Customs House fired into the gathered crowd, killing three men instantly and inciting a riot. The scent of blood and saltwater lingered at the edge of his nightmares, waking him in a pool of sweat and tangled sheets time and again. This night he banished his fears with the hardened resolve of men twice his age. Governor Hutchinson would have no choice but deliver their message to Parliament. Townshend Acts violated the covenant between the crown and his majesty’s loyal subjects and the time for passive men was disremembered.

They reached the docks in a surprisingly orderly fashion. Thaddeus half-smiled at the familiar sight of the full-rigged ships bobbing in the harbor. The Dartmouth he remembered seeing regularly, as it belonged to a prominent whaling family with offices located nearby. The captain met their boarding party, his face sour and harried. He was caught between the naval blockade keeping the Dartmouth in the harbor and the Bostonians eager for the tea and its levy to disappear.

“Captain Hall, we wish to relieve you of one-hundred-fourteen tea-chests bearing the East India Company hallmark,” stated a demonstrator Thaddeus did not recognize. “Sons, remember, just the tea,” he instructed.

They filed aboard, eager to begin. As sounds of joyous whistles and splintering wood ricocheted about him, Thaddeus hesitated, examining the intricate pattern on the chest at his feet. It seemed impractical aboard the Quaker whaler. A pity to damage this, he thought.

“No time for doubts, Son,” another demonstrator urged him.

The image of Christopher Seider flashed into his mind. Setting his jaw, he smashed the chest’s lock with his hatchet. With the demonstrator’s aid, Thaddeus hoisted the chest righteously over the side and watched the dark tealeaves trickle unfettered to the lapping water below.