April Morning

by Howard Fast

  It’s always fun to swing on the ropes and ring the bells, but to ring them in the middle of the night is so much of a treat that it’s downright sinful. I felt that way. I guess that to some extent I had stopped thinking, and I was carried away by the rich sound of the bells pealing across the countryside. Before we rang the bells, there might have been some farmers on the outskirts of town who were still claiming their honest hours of sleep, but when we finished, I will swear that the whole blessed county was up and awake.

  When we tired of the bells, Jonathan Crisp and Abel Loring, two boys who were a year or so older than I, came running up and told us that the militia were signing the muster book at Buckman’s place, across the common. They had both signed and were on their way to their homes for weapons. When we heard that, the fever took us, and we promptly abandoned the bells and made a rush toward Buckman’s to get our names onto the muster book. Halfway there, Ephriam Holt’s mother—he was no more than thirteen—collared him and dragged him back to their house. What she said to him doesn’t bear repeating, and while that was a matter between herself and her son entirely, I don’t approve of some other things she said to us.

  There was a crowd of men and boys, and a good many girls and women too outside of Buckman’s. The guest room of the tavern was lit up and packed with just about as many as it could hold, with the rest in front pressing to get in. I saw Levi squirming his way into the crowd, and I got hold of one arm and dragged him out.

  “Just where do you think you’re going?” I asked him.

  “I want to see the excitement, Adam.”

  “Don’t you know that if Father catches sight of you, you’ll get more excitement than you can bear? Does Mother know where you are?”

  “No. I sneaked out over the shed.”

  “Oh, that’s smart,” I told him. “That’s real smart. She’s just worried to distraction by now, that’s all—with you out in the middle of the night and no idea where you are.”

  “Everyone else is out, Adam.”

  “All I can say is you’d better get home and get home quick.”

  “What are you going to do, Adam?”

  “Sign the muster book,” I said, my mouth dry.

  Levi must have gone home then. At any rate he was gone, and moving with the press of people I found myself in the entrance to the guest room, or hostel room, as we sometimes called it, of Buckman’s. All around me were friends and neighbors, some of the men grinning when they caught my eye, but everyone warm and nervous and bound together by a thousand invisible threads, the way people become facing a great danger or excitement in common. It sometimes seems to me that we live inside of invisible shells, but just as much shells as the fat Maine lobsters inhabit; and only at a time like this do the shells melt away and the real people emerge.

  Cousin Simmons saw me, pushed over, squeezed my elbow, and said softly, “A boy went to bed and a man awakened, hey, Adam?”

  “I do hope so.”

  “Do me a favor, Adam?”

  “Anything you say, Cousin Simmons.”

  “Your Cousin Ruth is out in all this commotion, and I don’t blame the girl with everything stood topsy-turvy. Do find her and bring her home after you sign the muster book.”

  “I’ll be pleased to, Cousin Simmons, but sure as the sunrise, I don’t know whether I’ll be signing that muster book. I just have my hopes and prayers.”

  “He’s all bark and no bite. You should have learned that, Adam.”

  It’s slow learning about your own father, I thought, and I said a prayer like this: Oh, don’t let him do it to me in front of everyone standing here! Don’t let him look at me the way he does, like I was nothing but a chicken thief caught in the act, and tell me that I’m no account and not fit to stand in with the men! I couldn’t bear it now! I simply couldn’t!

  I was in the room now. There were at least six candles on the table where Father sat, with Jonas Parker on one side of him and Samuel Hodley on the other. Jonas Parker had the muster book out in front of him, and when someone came to sign it, he would push it toward him and make a serious and almost ceremonial thing of the entry. Father had the minutes book of the Committee, and when someone signed the muster book, Father entered the name and the salient facts in the records of the Committee. It appeared pointless to me for two separate sets of records to be kept like that, yet I knew that most of the men agreed that the civil and military aspects of the matter should be cleanly separated. Samuel Hodley was the emergency storekeeper, and it was up to him to determine whether the militiaman had enough powder and shot; and if not, to see that it was issued. When a man had signed in, Jonas Parker would tell him:

  “You are now on call and assignment until you are officially released from duty with a release signed by one of us three. In other words, you are now a member in good standing, under orders and in discipline in this Committee of Defense and Correspondence. Go home and get your gun and powder and shot, a pound of bread and a water bottle. Muster on the common at four o’clock in the morning.”

  I don’t mean that he said that over and over, but enough times so that no one would fail to hear it. Even though I myself held to Samuel Hodley’s opinion, that this was all a great bother and disturbance over nothing at all, his words made me feel cold and desolate for a moment.

  I was in front of the table almost before I realized. “Name?” my father said briskly, in the official tone he used for Committee business—and then he looked up and saw me as I replied:

  “Adam Cooper.”

  His eyes fixed on me, and I felt that they were boring inside of me and reading every thought. For myself, I had the feeling that I was looking at my father for the very first time, not seeing him as I had always seen him in the vague wholeness of age and distance, but looking at the face of a surprisingly young man, his wide, brown face serious and intent upon me, his dark eyes shadowed in their inquiry, his broad full-lipped mouth tight and thoughtful. How was it, I wondered, that I had never noticed before what a strikingly handsome man he was? How was it that I had seen in him only the strength of his overbearance and not the thewed strength of those massive brown arms spread on the desk with the white shirt sleeves rolled high and carelessly? It was no wonder that men listened to him and heeded his words.

  The room was full of silence, and it stretched and stretched, and all the while my father never turned his eyes away from mine. What went through his mind I will never know, but I do know that time there became an eternity. At last, Father looked at Jonas Parker and nodded silently, and Parker pushed the muster book toward me. I bent over the table and signed my name, my hand trembling, the letters all blurred and wiggly.

  “Powder and shot?” Hodley was asking me.

  “Yes, sir.”

  Then I pushed my way out of the room, having no other desire than to be away from everyone else and for a while alone.

  I walked around the common and back toward our house. By now, the town had begun to accept the fact that there would be no sleep for anyone tonight. Bells were tolling faintly from the directions of Lincoln and Menotomy, and all over the village there were voices, sharpened and increased, the way voices sound by night. There wasn’t a house without lights in it, and in the kitchens you could see where the blaze had been built under porridge and coffee. It was a great holiday for the boys, and they were running back and forth, and shouting to each other and feeling just as important as fate. They shouted at me, but the fact of it was that I didn’t feel like a boy any more.

  I came up to our house by the back gate, which opens off the lane into the herb garden. About a year ago, Mother had gotten me to build a bench by the gate, maintaining that no gate was worth its salt or had any excuse for being if it didn’t offer a resting place for a tired traveler. It wasn’t much of a bench, because I was no great shakes as a carpenter, and I remember spending a whole day fitting the legs into the pegholes, but it was something to sit on and sturdy enough.

  Ruth was sitting there now, and when I as
ked her what on earth she was doing, sitting there so calm and sedate in the middle of the night, she replied:

  “Waiting for you, if you must know, Adam Cooper.”

  “Well, I made a promise to your father.”

  “Did you?”

  “I said I would take you home.”

  “Really? Well, just in case you don’t know, Adam Cooper, I know where my home is and I am capable of getting there.”

  “My goodness, all I did was say that I would do something for Cousin Simmons because he was worried about you. That’s no reason to chop my head off.”

  “Oh, sit down here by me,” she said, “and don’t make such a fuss.”

  “I can’t sit down here with you, Ruth, and just spend time sitting like it was midday. I got a lot of things to do.”

  “Such as?”

  “Well—things to do. You know, things.” I sat down. I could see that she didn’t intend to be easily satisfied, and I might as well be resting. Suddenly, I realized that I was tired and sleepy, and that there was nothing in the world I’d enjoy better than to crawl back under the covers.

  “I saw you sign the muster book,” Ruth said.

  “Oh?”

  “I’m frightened, Adam.”

  “Of what?”

  “Don’t you know? I know you have to pretend to be brave and manly, and not frightened one little bit.”

  “I’m not frightened, just sleepy.”

  “I get to feeling,” she said, “that we’re all asleep still, and this is just a dream.”

  “Well, I’ll tell you what I think. I think it’s all commotion and excitement and that’s all. It doesn’t make one bit of sense that the British are coming up with a real army. I mean, what for? I mean, why on earth would they want to start a war?”

  “You always read about wars. But no one ever explains why a war starts. They just start. Suppose one starts tomorrow?”

  “Well, suppose it did.”

  “You could be killed.”

  “I do not intend to be killed. Of all things, Ruth Simmons— I think you’re the one who ought to go back into bed and sleep. Let me just tell you—”

  She didn’t let me finish. She threw her arms around me and kissed me, and then held onto me as if she were drowning and I was a providential piece of wood. I was like to choke, but it did not seem proper to break away from her, and I waited until she let go and then suggested that I walk her home, since, as I had pointed out before, there were things I had to do.

  “All right, Adam,” she nodded.

  We walked to her house in silence. I didn’t go in with her. The way I felt, I couldn’t face the prospect of her mother and aunt. Then I went back to our house.

  The kitchen door was open. Standing in the stormway I heard Mother say, “I don’t care what your position was, Moses Cooper. I say you were wrong. There’s some kind of madness in all this, and I know that I can’t stop it or change it, but I can keep my son out of it. He’s just a boy.”

  “Yesterday, he was a boy,” Father replied, his voice dull and troubled. “Tonight, he’s not.”

  “Now what kind of thing is that to say? That’s exactly the kind of a thing a man says. I don’t understand that kind of talk. A boy doesn’t turn into a man overnight. It takes learning and growing and hurting. And most of all, it takes time.”

  “Sometimes,” Father said slowly, “we don’t have time.”

  “I’m sick and tired of this kind of talk. It’s been going on too long, Moses, and you know it. What are we here? We’re plain people. We live quietly, and we try to raise up our children properly and with a decent respect for God and man. We don’t kill and we don’t cheat. We don’t have a jail in our town, and we haven’t had a man in stocks since mid-winter. And now you tell me that we’re going to fight a British army. I never heard such nonsense. You know that I never objected to Committee work, for all the time it took you away from your home and family. It was proper and just, and I had no call to go objecting to it. But when you tell me that plain, ordinary village people, men and boys that we’ve known all our lives, are going to try to stop an army—well, then I can only say that you and all the rest of them have taken leave of their senses entirely.”

  “You’re making too much of it, Sarah,” Father said. “I don’t believe there’s a British army coming—and even if they are coming, we’re not going to fight them. Sarah, we’re not going to commit suicide—and the British aren’t our enemies that way. I know what kind of trash they fill their ranks with, but the officers are educated men. They’re the same blood, and our language is common to us. Why, the last thing in the world that they want is bloodshed. We have a position and a principle, but it’s not worth sixpence if we don’t maintain it—and if they do come and see that we stand firm with some show of force, why, then they’ll respect us. That’s not the way to have bloodshed, but to avoid it.”

  “Then avoid it without Adam.”

  “How can I? Sarah, how can I? If you had been there when he came into Buckman’s to sign for the muster— We had a line of folk. I didn’t know he was there. But I looked up, and there he was. He didn’t say anything. He just stood there and looked at me—and I tell you that his face said more than all the words that ever passed between us. If I had forbade him to sign that muster book then and there, I would have lost a son. Is that what you want? But I saw him there so tall and strong I could have wept. You can’t shelter him now. You can’t shield him. There comes a time, and this is that time—”

  I couldn’t Listen to any more. I went back outside, and then I came back in, whistling and making enough noise to let them know that I was coming. They were silent when I entered the kitchen. Granny was there, sitting in one corner, looking smaller and older than ever. When I came in, she shuffled to the hearth, and dipped me a bowl of cornmeal mush out of a pot cooking there.

  Someone had to say something, and I asked whether Levi had returned.

  “He’s up in bed,” Father replied harshly. “Where were you?”

  “Let the boy eat,” Granny said, putting the bowl of mush on the table. “Do you want honey on it or butter, Adam?”

  Mother’s face was like stone. She sat in her chair with her hands clasped in her lap, and her blue eyes were like agates.

  “I’m not hungry, Granny. I can’t eat.”

  She spooned honey onto the cornmeal, telling me that when a body was foolish enough to stay awake all night, the best thing he could do was to eat and bolster his strength somewhat.

  “I just can’t eat, Granny.”

  “I asked you where you were,” Father said.

  “Cousin Simmons asked me to find Ruth and see her home.”

  “Did you?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “What are your intentions with Ruth, Adam?” he demanded—the last thing in the world I expected him to bring up tonight. “You’re old enough to sign the muster book, to drive your mother to distraction, to stand up with the men with a gun in your hand—then you’re old enough to stop being a boy with a girl and think of yourself as a man with a woman. Ruth Simmons is your second cousin once removed, so there’s nothing to stop you looking at her with serious eyes, but be damned if I want you playing games with her by nighttime!”

  I stared at him dumfounded and speechless, his tirade so unexpected, so uncalled for that I could not for the life of me either react to it or think of anything to say; It must have been the same case with Mother and Granny. The silence hung so heavy that I had to break it, move, do something, or burst into tears—the very last thing I wanted to do or could afford to do.

  I went to the hearth where my gun was, and picked it up. I was trembling all over, yet bad as I felt I recall thinking what a good job Levi had made of the cleaning. The gun shone. There was no oil-film on it, but it had the proper oil touch that a well-wiped tool should have. I held it in my hands, my back toward the others, and I heard Father get up and walk over to me.

  “Wrap a dry rag around the flint,” he s
aid hoarsely. “There’s moisture in the night air.”

  “Yes, sir,” I whispered. “I thought to do so.”

  He was alongside of me, but I couldn’t face him or look at him. “Is it loaded?”

  “No, sir.”

  “Load it up. I want to watch you.”

  I nodded and took my powder bottle and measured out the cap measure for the muzzle.

  “It’s not enough,” Father said harshly.

  “It’s the hunting measure.”

  “You’re not hunting.”

  My mouth was dry. “How much?” I asked.

  “Three times.”

  “It will kick like a mule.”

  “You can live with a bruised shoulder.”

  I added two more measures.

  “How many pellets?” he demanded.

  “Twenty.”

  “Do you count them?” he asked scornfully.

  “Yes, sir—I count them.”

  “You’ll stop to count pellets tomorrow? Is that it?”

  “No, sir. I wasn’t thinking.”

  “Then think!” he shouted. “Think! Use your head! Put your hand in the shot pouch and pull out a handful. Feel it in your hand.”

  I did so.

  “Now count them.”

  There were twenty-seven pellets. I managed to say that it was a large load, that it could break the breech.

  “Your breech isn’t rusty and it won’t break. Load them. Just remember what it feels like to count;”

  “Yes, sir,” I said.

  The gun was loaded. There were two loaves of bread on the table, each cut into three pieces, so that they would fit into our coat pockets. There were two water bottles. I stuffed the bread into my pockets, and slung a water bottle, a shot pouch, and a powder bottle over my neck. Father did the same. Mother and Granny sat there and never said a word.

  “We muster on the common,” Father said to them. “Close the shutters and stay inside until we return.” Mother didn’t move. Father shifted from foot to foot. Granny rose and went over to Father and pushed him to the door. “Go ahead now,” she said. “It’s no use standing here and making everybody fretful. Go out and wait there. I want to talk to Adam.”