by Irene Hunt
Bill sat down on the ground beside him. “Did ever Ma tell you, Jeth, about when John and me was little and was goin’ to school fer the first time? At night I’d git a book and I’d say to Pa, ‘What air that word, Pa?’ and when he would tell me, I’d turn to John, jest a scant year older, and I’d say, ‘Did Pa call it right, Johnny?’ Ma and Pa used to laugh at that, but they was pleased to talk about it. They was always set up at John and me bein’ so close.”
“I know it.” Jethro’s words came from a tight throat. “What made you fight, Bill?”
“Hard feelin’s that have been buildin’ up fer weeks, hard feelin’s that fin‘ly come out in hard words.” He held his hand across his eyes for a minute and then spoke quickly. “I’m leavin’, Jeth; it ain’t that I want to, but it’s that I must. The day is comin’ when I’ve got to fight, and I won’t fight fer arrogance and big money aginst the southern farmer. I won’t do it. You tell Pa that. Tell him too, that I’m takin’ my brown mare—she’s mine, and I hev the right. Still, it will leave him short, so you tell him that I’m leavin’ money I made at the sawmill and at corn shuckin’; it’s inside the cover of his Bible. You tell him to take it and buy another horse.”
Jethro was crying unashamedly in the face of his grief. “Don’t go, Bill. Don’t do it,” he begged.
“Jeth ...”
“I don’t want you to go, Bill. I don’t think I kin stand it.”
“Listen to me, Jeth; you’re gittin to be a sizable boy. There’s goin’ to be a lot of things in the years ahead that you’ll have to stand. There’ll be things that tear you apart, but you’ll have to stand ‘em. You can’t count on cryin’ to make ’em right.”
The colors were beginning to fade on Walnut Hill. A light wind bent the dried grass and weeds. Jethro felt choked with grief, but he drew a sleeve across his eyes and tried to look at his brother without further weeping.
“Where will you go, Bill?”
“To Kaintuck. I’ll go to Wilse’s place first. From there—I don’t know.”
“Will you fight fer the Rebs?”
Bill hesitated a few seconds. “I’ve studied this thing, Jeth, and I’ve hurt over it. My heart ain’t in this war; I’ve told you that. And while I say that the right ain’t all on the side of the North, I know jest as well that it ain’t all on the side of the South either. But if I hev to fight, I reckon it will be fer the South.”
Jethro nodded. There were things you had to endure. After a while he asked, “Air you goin’ tonight, Bill?”
“Right away. I’ve had things packed in that holler tree fer a couple days. I’ve knowed that this was comin’ on, but I couldn’t make myself leave. Now I’m goin’. The little mare is saddled and tied down at the molasses press. I’ll go as fur as Newton tonight; in the morning I’ll take out early.”
He got to his feet. “There’s lots of things I want to say, but I reckon I best not talk.” Without looking at Jethro he laid his hand on the boy’s shoulder. “Git all the larnin’ you kin—and take keer of yoreself, Jeth,” he said and turned abruptly away.
“Take keer of yoreself, Bill,” Jethro called after him.
Across the prairies, through the woods, over the brown water of the creek, there was a sound of crying. Jethro ran to a tree and hid his face. He had heard his mother say that if you watch a loved one as he leaves you for a long journey, it’s like as not to be the last look at him that you’ll ever have.
4
Twice during the month of February in 1862 the bells rang in every city and town throughout the North, and the name Ulysses S. Grant first became familiar to Jethro.
The first real victory for the North had come with the fall of Fort Henry down in Tennessee, just a few miles south of the Kentucky line.
“God bless Grant,” people shouted over and over in a rising chant the day Jethro went to Newton with his father after the news of Fort Henry. Guns were fired, and people hugged one another in the streets. Here was something to make them proud, something to give them hope after the despairing stories of Bull Run and Ball’s Bluff and Wilson’s Creek.
Two weeks later came the news that Fort Donelson had also fallen to General Grant. Then people really went wild with joy.
“God bless old U. S. Grant,” they shrieked. “Bless old Unconditional Surrender Grant.” They laughed and cried, and nearly everybody thought that the war would be over in a matter of weeks.
“What do you think, Pa?” Jenny asked eagerly a few days later, as she put down the paper she had been reading aloud to the family. “Do you think it’s about over?”
Matt’s face was grim. “With the Army of the Potomac doin’ nothin’?” he asked. “Maybe my wits ain’t good; maybe I ain’t got the sense to grasp what it is they’re doin’, but I can’t see the end in sight. That general the papers had us believe was so fine—brilliant, they called him—what does he plan? What’s the matter with him?”
“General McClellan has had typhoid fever, Pa. You know how weak that left Shad. We mustn’t judge him too harsh.”
Matt nodded. “Maybe I misjudge the man, Jenny. God knows I hope that one of these days you kin say that yore pa was wrong about General McClellan.”
He reached for the week-old paper and read again the letter that was the great tonic and stimulant of the day:Hd Qrs. Army in the Field
Camp near Ft. Donelson, Feb. 16th
Gen S. B. Buckner,
Confed Army
Sir: yours of this date proposing Armistice, and
appointment of commissioners to settle terms of
Capitulation is just received. No terms except an
unconditional and immediate surrender can be
accepted. I propose to move immediately upon your
works.
I am, Sir: very respectfully
Your obt sevt.
U. S. Grant
Brig. Gen.
Matt read on farther down the page. “It says here that this General Buckner and Grant was comrades at West Point,” he remarked, without lifting his eyes from the paper.
“Yes,” Jethro heard his mother say softly to herself, “and my Bill and John was even closer than that—”
They were worried about Tom and Eb. It was likely that the two boys were with Grant’s army; the fighting, especially at Donelson, had been bitter. Some of the details of the battle neither Matt nor Jenny had read aloud to Ellen.
Finally one day Ed Turner brought them a letter from Tom. Ed looked pinched with cold after his long drive, but he wouldn’t stop for coffee.
“A fam’ly needs to be alone when one of these letters comes,” he said in answer to Ellen’s invitation. “I’d be pleased if you’d let me know what the boy has to say—later on when Matt has the time to drop over.”
Jenny had gone with her father to see about some stock, and Jethro was alone in the cabin with his mother. When Ed Turner was gone, she handed the letter to Jethro.
“My hands is shakin’, Son,” she said. They were, indeed, but both she and the boy knew that the real reason she was forced to hand the letter over was the fact that she could not read.
The envelope was crumpled and stained, the letter written in pencil in a round, childish hand. It was probably among the first three or four letters that young Tom had ever written.
Dere Fokes:
I take pencle in hand to let you no that Eb and me is alright.
I expect you no by now how we took Fort Henry down here. Mebby I oughtnt say we took it becus it was the ironclads that done it. Old admiral Foote had what it took and he give the rebs a dressin down but some of his iron-clads got hit hard. A boy I no was on the Essex and he was burned so bad he dide when that boat got nocked out of the fite.
Us boys didnt do much fitin at Fort Henry but at Donelson I can tell you we made up fer it. We had done a foolish thing on our way to Donelson and I will rite you about it. When we was marchin tord the fort the weather was like a hot april day back home. We was feelin set-up about Fort Henry and whe
n some of the boys got tard of carryin hevey blanket rolls they jest up and throwed em away. Then more and more of us acted like crazy fools and we throwed away hevey cotes and things to make our lodes a littel liter. As soon as we got to Donelson the wether turned cold as Billy Sideways and some of the boys that was sick or bad hurt they froze to deth in the snow. Things was awful bad with so many kilt and others froze. I felt sick when I looked at them and so I am not so proud about Donelson as mebby I ought to be. I miss yore good cookin Ma. You tell Jeth that bein a soljer aint so much.
yrs truley
Tom
Jethro noticed that his mother’s face was strangely twisted when he looked up from the letter; there was a look about her as if sorrow had been frozen in her face, a look he had not seen there before—not even on the day when he had come home from Walnut Hill to tell her that Bill had left. She stared at Jethro for a time without saying a word; then she got up and went into the pantry, closing the door behind her.
Jethro sat quietly beside the fireplace. There was no sound in the cabin except the crackling of the fire, and there was no feeling inside him except a great loneliness. He picked up Tom’s letter and read it again; then he smoothed it carefully and returned it to the envelope. It seemed strange that this scrap of paper had actually come from a battlefield, that Tom’s big hand had actually touched it. He tried to imagine what the ironclads looked like and how they had taken Fort Henry; how the guns must have roared in Donelson; whatever in the world had possessed Tom and the other soldiers when they threw away good winter coats and blankets.
The pantry door opened after a while, and his mother came back into the kitchen.
“Yore ma’s no comp’ny fer you this afternoon, Son.”
“That’s no matter, Ma.”
“Maybe it would be good fer you to go down and visit Shad fer a while,” she suggested after a pause. “You need a mite of change.”
He turned to her eagerly. “Could I, Ma?” he asked, half in disbelief that he had understood her.
“I want him to read Tom’s letter,” she said, taking up the envelope. “Maybe after Pa and Jenny has seen it, you could take it on to Shad.”
“Sure. Sure, Ma, I’d be proud to do it fer you.”
Ellen smiled wanly at his eagerness. “It’s terr’ble cold, but I reckon you could stay the night with him if he’s a mind to ask you; then you’d hev only one way to walk.”
“You’re doin’me a real big favor, Mis’ Creighton.”
“I allowed it would be, Jeth. Well, you and Shad hev a good visit tonight; ask him to come here for supper tomorrow. Him and little Jenny ain’t got many more evenin’s to be together.”
The prospect of a visit with Shadrach changed the color of the world around Jeth, and he rushed to get his chores done early. He stacked a high pile of wood outside the kitchen, where it could be reached quickly during the night. Out in the barn, he threw hay down from the loft and carried buckets of corn from the crib in preparation for the evening feeding of the stock. He was still working when Jenny came out to find him shortly after she and her father returned from their work. He noticed that her eyes were heavy with tears.
“You read Tom’s letter?” he asked.
She sat down on a mound of hay, and the tears started again. Jethro stood beside her without speaking.
After a while she looked up at him. “Ma says you’re goin’ to go up to Shad’s tonight.”
“Ma’s hevin’him here fer supper tomorrow night so’s you and him kin talk some,” he said, recognizing the envy in her look.
“Ma understands. She’d let me marry Shad before he leaves, but Pa won’t. He talked to me about it this afternoon. It was the same old story—”You’re too young to be married, Jenny; you’re jest a little girl.’ Oh, Jeth, it’s horrible to be so young. Why does there have to be a war to take Shad away from me before I’m of an age that Pa thinks is old enough fer marryin’?”
Jethro was sympathetic and terribly uncomfortable. He shifted from one foot to the other and touched her shoulder timidly. She put her hand over his for an instant and then got to her feet.
“I reckon I got precious little right to be cryin’ over my troubles.”
He knew she was thinking of Tom, away somewhere in Kentucky or Tennessee with Grant’s army. They didn’t speak again until they were nearly up to the kitchen door.
“I’ll help you git bundled up fer yore trip,” she said then, and added hurriedly, “remember to tell me everything he says, Jeth. Will you do that fer me?”
“I sure will,” he answered soberly. There was a time when he would have teased her, but not that evening. There was no time for lighthearted teasing about Shadrach Yale now that the winter term of school was over.
Inside the house, she helped him pull on two pairs of heavy knitted socks, which helped to fill out the pair of Tom’s old shoes he was wearing, and she buttoned a heavy sheepskin coat around him, tying the collar up around his ears with her own red woolen scarf.
Ellen drew a flat loaf of white bread from the ashes of the fireplace and wrapped it in a clean cloth.
“This will keep yore hands warm fer a part of the way, at least. It ain’t much of a gift to carry, but maybe the two of you will relish a little change from corn bread....”
He was patient. He knew that after a while they would let him go. There might be another adjustment of his collar, another gift for Shad, more admonitions about his “comp’ny manners,” but, finally, they would let him go. And they did—finally. He had to have his coat unbuttoned at the last minute and Tom’s letter pinned securely inside his shirt, but after that there seemed to be no other reason for detaining him—nothing to do but stand at the window watching as he plunged out into the cold late-afternoon for his visit.
The deep ruts in the road were frozen and glazed with ice; the wind had a clean sweep across the prairies, a sweep that sometimes seemed about to carry Jethro before it. Tears froze on his cheeks, and the cold pounded against his forehead as he trudged along, weighted by the heavy, oversized shoes and the many layers of clothing. It was bitter, but not beyond the ordinary; suffering at the mercy of the elements was accepted by Jethro as being quite as natural as the hunger for green vegetables and fresh fruit that was always with him during the winter. When one found comfort, he was grateful, but he was never such a fool as to expect a great deal of it. The hardships one endured had a purpose; his mother had been careful to make him aware of that.
The schoolhouse with the teacher’s log room adjoining it stood almost a mile from the Creighton cabin. It had been customary in years past for the schoolmaster to room and board with first one family and then another throughout the district, but young Yale had protested against the lack of privacy, and Matthew Creighton had been sympathetic.
“A man has the right to the dignity of his own fireside after a day’s work,” he said, and he had allowed his sons and Shadrach to cut down trees from his own land for the annex.
Shadrach Yale put down an armful of wood when he saw his guest approaching and came out to the road to meet him.
“You look half frozen, Jeth,” he said, and taking the boy’s hand ran with him up to the log annex. “Come on inside; I’ll have you thawed out in a minute or two.”
Shadrach’s long, narrow room was cheerful and attractive in spite of its roughness. A bright red and gold paisley cloth covered his homemade table and fell in full folds almost to the floor; there were a few braided rugs of warmly colored woolens scattered about, and on the mantel of the fireplace were candlesticks of heavy brass worn to a smooth satin finish. Opposite the fireplace were shelves made of logs split in half and nailed against the wall to hold the books that Shadrach had brought with him from college.
A guitar hung on the wall at the south end of the room, and at that end, too, there was a wide bed made up with several comforters which Ellen had loaned him from her own store of bedding. A cupboard of heavy walnut put together with wooden pegs stood near the fireplace and held
dishes, food, and cooking utensils. To Jethro the room seemed perfect, as beautiful as any man had a right to expect.
Shadrach helped him out of the sheepskin coat and put him in the armchair in front of the fireplace, where the flames struck at a great log and shot up in hot tongues now and then, as the fat from a roasting chicken dripped into the fire. The warmth, the smell of food and wood smoke, overpowered Jethro for a while, and he would have sat silent, drinking in content, if his obligations as a guest had not demanded more of him.
“Going to spend the night with me, Jeth?” Shadrach asked, removing the boy’s heavy shoes and chafing his feet with cheerful vigor.
“Ma allowed I could if you was of a mind to ask me.”
“I think she knew pretty well that I’d be of a mind to ask you.”
“She sent that loaf of white bread fer our supper; it’s fresh out of the ashes.”
“Good. I’m glad now that I had the sense to start a chicken roasting. Fresh bread and chicken should make a pretty good meal for a couple of hungry bachelors like us, eh?”
Jethro flushed with pleasure. Shad was like that. He was different. He had book learning and was almost twenty-one; still he could make a ten-year-old schoolboy feel proud as a man.
“How’s—Jenny?” Shadrach asked after a time.
“She was cryin’ a little. Pa’s been talkin’ to her about bein’ too young fer—”
“Marrying me, I know.” It was the schoolmaster’s turn to flush, and he looked stern, as he did sometimes in the classroom.