Across Five Aprils

by Irene Hunt

  Jethro could only stare at his cousin; he could find no words.

  “Desertin’ ain’t a purty word to you, is it? Well, I done it—I don’t jest know why. We’d had another skirmish and there was dead boys that we had to bury the next day-and we’d bin licked agin. All at oncet I knowed I couldn’t stand it no longer, and I jest up and left. Oncet a man has left, he’s done fer. I’ve bin a long time gittin’ home, and now that I’m here, it ain’t no comfert.”

  “Eb, couldn’t you just come up to the house and see them for a few hours or so? Couldn’t you have a good meal and get cleaned up and tell the folks all you know about Tom?”

  “I cain’t. I could git‘em into awful trouble. Besides, they would prob’ly jest as soon not set eyes on the likes of me agin.”

  “But, Eb, if you can’t come up to the house, what did you come for?”

  Eb’s face showed quick anger. “I come because I couldn’t help myself, that’s why. You don’t know what it’s like-you that was allus the baby and the pet of the fam‘ly. There be things that air too terr’ble to talk about—and you want to see the fields where you used to be happy, you want to smell the good air of old Illinois so much that you fergit-you go crazy fer an hour or so—and then you don’t dare go back.”

  He shivered and leaned back against a tree trunk as if just talking had taken more strength than he had to spend.

  “Have you been down to the Point Prospect camp?” Jethro asked after a while.

  “A couple days. It’s worse than the war down there with fellers afraid and gittin’ meaner as they git more afraid. I didn’t come back to be with soldiers anyway. I’m sick of soldiers, livin’ and dead; I’m sick of all of ’em.” He threw himself down on a thick padding of dead leaves and motioned Jethro to do the same.

  “I want ye to tell me about ’em, Jeth—Uncle Matt and Aunt Ellen, Jenny ...”

  “You knew Pa had a heart attack; he’s not been himself since. Ma’s tolerable, and Jenny’s fine. We do the work of the farm together, Jenny and me.”

  “And John, Shad—where air they? They jined up, didn’t they?”

  “Yes, John’s in Tennessee under a general named Rosecrans. And Shad’s in the East with the Army of the Potomac. He was at Antietam Creek and Fredericksburg; you heard of them two battles, didn’t you?”

  “We hear precious little except what’s happenin’ in the part of the country we’re in. I’ve heered of Ol’ Abe kickin’ out that fine McClellan; it’s a pity he don’t kick out a passel of ’em out in the West.” Eb seemed absorbed in his angry thoughts for a while; then he looked up at Jethro again.

  “And Bill, did ever you hear from him?”

  “Not a word,” Jethro replied in a voice that was hardly audible.

  “I guess you took that hard. You was allus a pet of Bill’s.”

  “All of us took it hard.”

  “Yore pa wrote Tom and me about it. Tom tried to pretend he didn’t keer, but I know he did. He cried oncet-I wouldn’t tell that ’cept now it’s no matter.”

  “No,” Jethro agreed dully, “now it’s no matter.”

  Eb took a dry twig and broke it up into a dozen pieces, aimlessly.

  “How did you git the word about Tom?” he asked finally.

  “Dan Lawrence was home on sick leave. His pa brought him over; he told us all about it.”

  “I was at Pittsburg Landing too, but I didn’t know about Tom—not fer two or three days. I wanted to write, but somehow I couldn’t do it. Tom and me had bin in swimmin’ the day before the Rebs su’prised us; we was both of us in good spirits then, laughin’ and carryin’ on like we done in the old days back home. Somehow all the spirit in me has bin gone ever since. I could stand things as long as I had Tom along with me.”

  He ran his hand across his eyes as if to shut out a picture or a memory. “Tell me about little Jenny; is she still in love with Shad Yale?”

  “More than ever, I guess. She writes to him a lot; he sets great store by her letters.”

  “He ought to. A man needs a girl’s nice letters when he’s sufferin’ with the homesick. I wisht I’d had a girl like Jenny to write to me, but there ain’t many such as her, I reckon.”

  Jethro studied Eb’s sunken cheeks and dull eyes.

  “How do you manage to eat, Eb?”

  “I don’t do it reg‘lar, that’s shore. I live off the land-steal a little, shoot me a rabbit or squirrel and cook ’em over a low fire late at night. It ain’t good eatin’, but nothin’s good these days like it used to be.”

  Jethro’s insides twisted in sympathy. “Are you hungry now, Eb?”

  “I’m allus hungry. Ye git used to it after a while.”

  “Nancy fixed me some grub to bring to the field with me; I’ll go get it for you.”

  He ran to the fencerow where he had left two pieces of bread and the cuts from a particularly tender haunch of beef that Nancy had wrapped in a white cloth for him. Ordinarily he would have eaten the snack by midafternoon, but the wild-turkey calls had made him forget it. He returned to Eb minutes later with the food and a jug of water.

  They sat together in the shadows, while Eb ate with an appetite that was like a hungry animal’s.

  “Eb, I’ve got to tell you,” Jethro said quietly after a while. “The soldiers that call themselves the Federal Registrars was at the house lookin’ for you last month.”

  Eb seemed to shrink within himself. He looked at his hands carefully, as if he really cared about inspecting them, and his mouth worked in a strange, convulsive grimace. He wouldn’t look at Jethro when he finally spoke.

  “I was an awful fool-at least you got a chancet in battle-maybe it’s one in a hunderd, but it’s a chancet. This way, I got none. There’s no place on this earth fer me to go. Even the camps of deserters don’t want fellers as weak and sick as I am; they let me know that quick at Point Prospect. I’ll either freeze or starve-or be ketched. I’d give jest about anythin’ if I could walk back to my old outfit and pitch into the fightin’ agin. A soldier don’t have to feel ashamed.”

  Jethro sat for a while trying to think of some way out of the situation; it appeared more hopeless the more he thought. He was frightened-for the despairing man in front of him, for himself, and his family. When he finally spoke, he tried hard to sound reassuring, but the pounding of his heart made his voice shake.

  “Well, you stay here till we can think of somethin’, Eb. I’m goin’ to get you some quilts and things from Nancy’s place; I’ll bring you what grub I can lay hands on-I can always get eggs and a chicken for you. I think you’d best eat all you can and rest for a spell; we’ll think of what’s to be done when once you get a little stronger.”

  Eb looked up then. “You all but fool me into believin’ that somethin’ kin be done, Jeth, but I know better. You ner no one else kin help me now—not even Ol’ Abe hisself.”

  Ol’ Abe. Mr. Lincoln. Mr. President.

  “I ought to go back to work now, Eb.”

  “I guess so,” Eb looked at him with a suggestion of a smile. “I cain’t git used to it-you bein’ big enough to handle a team alone. You seem almost a man these days, Jeth; even yore hair ain’t quite as yaller and curly as it used to be.”

  Jethro turned away. “I’ll bring you a quilt from Nancy’s before I go in for the night,” he said shortly.

  He walked back to his waiting team; there was still time to plow a dozen furrows before sunset-and to think.

  He had faced sorrow when Bill left and fear the night Guy Wortman tried to pull him down from the wagon; he had felt a terrible emptiness the day Shadrach and John went away and deep anger the night he watched the barn burn at the hands of the county ruffians. But in his eleven years he had never been faced with the responsibility of making a fearful decision like the one confronting him.

  The authority of the law loomed big in his mind; he remembered, “You and your family will be in serious trouble.” Loyalty to his brother Tom and the many thousands who had fought to the last
ditch at Pittsburg Landing, at Antietam, Fredericksburg, and all the other places that were adding length to the long list—how could loyalty to these men be true if one were going to harbor and give comfort to a man who simply said, “I quit.”

  But, on the other hand, how did one feel at night if he awoke and remembered, “I’m the one that sent my cousin to his death.” Eb was not a hero, certainly-not now, anyway. People scorned the likes of Eb; sure, so did Jethro, and yet—

  “How do I know what I’d be like if I was sick and scared and hopeless; how does Ed Turner or Mr. Milton or any man know that ain’t been there? We got to remember that Eb has been in battles for two years; maybe he’s been a hero in them battles, and maybe to go on bein’ a hero in a war that has no end in sight is too much to ask.... Sure, deep down in me, I want Eb to get out, to leave me free of feelin’ that I’m doin’ wrong to give him grub, or takin’ the risk of keepin’ it a secret that he’s here. Yes, it would leave me free if he’d just move on-but no, it wouldn’t-I ain’t goin’ to be free when he moves on; I can’t set down to a table and forget that someone sick as Eb looks to be is livin’ off the land, that he’s livin’ scared like a wild animal that’s bein’ hunted.

  “But what’s it goin’ to be like if more and more soldiers quit and go into the woods and leave the fightin’ to them that won’t quit? What do you say to yourself when you remember that you fed and helped someone like Eb and maybe you get a letter from the East that Shad is killed and you see Jenny grievin’, or that John is killed and Nancy and her little boys is left all alone—how do you feel when things like that come up?

  “Of course, right now I could say to Pa ‘I leave it up to you’-and then what could he do? Why, he’d be caught in the same trap I’m in now; I’d wriggle out of it and leave the decidin’ to a sick old man; I’d put him in the spot where any way he decided would be bad-hurtful to a man’s conscience. No, there ain’t an answer that’s any plainer to an old man than it is to me. And what was it that man said the day of the barn-raisin’? ‘It’s good that you’re a boy and don’t have to worry yourself about this war.’ Why yes, no doubt about it, eleven-year-old boys ain’t got a thing to worry about; this year of 1863 is a fine, carefree time for eleven-year-old boys....”

  Jenny noticed his preoccupation at supper that night. She waited until the others were out of the kitchen, and she and Jethro were left alone.

  “What is it that’s on your mind, Jeth?”

  “Nothin’. Just tired.” He threw himself down in front of the fireplace and closed his eyes. He knew it would be hard to deceive his sister; there was a determination about Jenny.

  “You’d better tell me, Jeth. I’ll find out, you know.”

  “You don’t give me any worry; there’s nothin’ to find out.”

  “Jeth, have you had some news about Shad or John?”

  “No, how could I? You know what mail has come.”

  “You might ha’ talked to someone.”

  “Well, I ain’t. Not to anyone that knows a word about Shad or John.”

  She worked at her dishpan for a while in silence; then she walked over and poked him a little with the toe of her shoe.

  “There’s somethin’ Jeth. Nancy noticed it too. Now I want to know-is it somethin’ about Eb? Is he here with the deserters?”

  He turned his head away from her; he couldn’t remember when he had lied to Jenny, and he wasn’t sure that he could do it well.

  “Jenny, you vex me when I’m not feelin’ so well. Can’t I have an upset stummick without you firin’ a passel of questions at me?”

  She stood looking down at him thoughtfully for a while, and then an idea stemming from experience with older brothers suddenly struck her. She dropped down beside him and whispered her suspicion gleefully in his ear.

  “Jeth Creighton, have you been smokin’ on the sly? Is that what’s givin’ you an upset stummick?”

  He kept his eyes closed and did not answer, knowing his silence would confirm her guess. Jenny was triumphant.

  “That’s it! I know without your sayin’ it,” she crowed. “You look white, the way Tom and Eb did once when they tried it.”

  It was very simple to lie without words; he merely opened his eyes and grinned sheepishly at her.

  “I’m su‘prised you would be that silly, Jeth. With so much spring work to do, you don’t have the time to get sick over smokin’.” She shook her head. “How do you expect to keep goin’ when you didn’t more than touch your meal tonight?”

  He seized the opportunity to get some food for Eb without detection. “Would you fix me a little bread and meat and slip it up to my room later on, Jenny? I’ll likely feel better after a while, and I’m goin’ to be hungry when I do.”

  She sighed, but with a certain satisfaction. There was an adventurous streak in Jenny; she would have liked to try smoking herself if she had dared, and she was a little amused that her sober young brother had been tempted in this direction of most young males.

  Jethro lay awake in his room that night and wrestled with his problem. He wondered if, after all, it wouldn’t be better to ask his father’s advice, but he decided against that almost immediately and as firmly as he had rejected the idea that afternoon. He wondered about Ross Milton, but there was little chance to make a trip to Newton at this time of year. What about Ed Turner, staunch, levelheaded neighbor? No, Ed had two sons in the army; it wouldn’t do to lay this responsibility upon Ed’s shoulders. He thought of Eb’s words, “You ner no one else kin help me now-not even Ol’ Abe hisself.”

  Ol’ Abe. Mr. Lincoln. Mr. President. Not even Mr. Lincoln himself!

  Jethro turned restlessly in his bed. What if one put it up to Mr. Lincoln? What if one said, “I will abide by the word of him who is highest in this land”? But wasn’t that word already known? Wasn’t the word from the highest in the land just this: turn in deserters or there will be terrible trouble for you and your family?

  But Mr. Lincoln was a man who looked at problems from all sides. Mr. Lincoln was not a faraway man like General McClellan or Senator Sumner or Secretary of State Seward. Mr. Lincoln had plowed fields in Illinois; he had thought of the problems men came up against; he was not ready to say, “Everything on this side of the line is right, and everything on the other side is wrong.”

  But would one dare? A nobody, a boy on a southern Illinois farm—would he dare? Mr. Lincoln held the highest office in the land; what would he think? Would it vex him that a boy from southern Illinois could be so bold? And anyway, how could one say it? What manner of words could one use so as not to be too forward, too lacking in respect toward the President of the United States?

  Jeth realized he was not going to be able to go to sleep. There was a candle in his room; there was some ink and an old pen that Bill had sometimes used. There was also Ross Milton’s book-the book on English usage. Jethro got up in the quiet of the night, lighted his candle, opened Ross Milton’s book, and began to write on a piece of rough lined paper.

  The next morning he hid Jenny’s sandwiches inside his coat, and at the barn he picked up a few eggs from the nests up in the loft. He dug an apple out of the straw in the apple-cave; no one would question that—a boy needed something to munch on in midmorning. He would like to have taken some coffee beans—a man lying out in the woods all night needed a hot drink; but that item was one he would not take. Not for Eb, not even for Bill or Shad, would he have taken his mother’s coffee. He knew where there were good sassafras roots in the woods; maybe he would burn some brush in the fencerows and heat a little water for sassafras tea. He filched an old kettle and two lumps of sugar, just in case.

  Eb was feeling a little better that morning. The quilts Jethro had taken from Nancy’s house had made the long night more comfortable; he had washed himself in the creek and looked refreshed.

  “You’ve brung me a feast, Jeth,” he said gratefully.

  They sat together for a while and talked in low voices.

  “I’ll be gitti
n’ out in a day or so, Jeth. I caint hev you takin’ all this risk.”

  “If you could go back to the army, you would, wouldn’t you, Eb?”

  “You’re askin’ a man if he had a chancet to live, would he take it. But I’ve told you, Jeth-a deserter caint go back. I’ll be hunted the rest of my days-but the rest of my days ain’t goin’ to be too many.”

  Jethro said nothing, but as he plowed that morning he made up his mind to send the letter. It was a frightening thing to do, but if one did nothing-well, that was frightening too. He knew Eb was not really planning to leave-Eb was a lost and frightened boy, and there was nowhere else to go. For Jethro there was nothing to do but send the letter.

  The plowshares needed sharpening, Jethro told his father that noon. Hadn’t he better drive over to Hidalgo and get that work done? He’d pick up the mail, too, for themselves and for Ed Turner. Was that all right with his father?

  Matt seldom questioned Jethro’s decisions. The boy was doing a man’s work; he was due the dignity accorded to a man. Matt assented to the trip readily, and Jethro, with the letter in his pocket, drove off down the road, his heart pounding with excitement.

  In Hidalgo the old man who took care of the mail glanced sharply at Jethro when he noticed the inscription on the envelope. But he was a silent man with problems of his own; as long as a letter was properly stamped and addressed it was no affair of his. Privately he thought that some people were allowing their young ones to become a little forward, but that was their concern. He threw Jethro’s letter in a big bag that would be taken by wagon down to Olney that evening.

  The long wait for an answer was interminable. Jethro tossed at night and wondered: had he done an impudent thing, had he laid himself open to trouble, had he been a fool to think that a boy of his age might act without the advice of his elders? Sometimes he got up and walked about his narrow room, but that was bad, for Jenny would hear him. Once she came to his door, and she was crying.

  “Jeth—Jeth, what is it? What’s botherin’ you? Ain’t we good friends anymore, ain’t you goin’ to tell me?”