by Ron Carter
At nine-forty a.m., dressed in his Sunday finery, Billy opened the front door and walked into the brilliant sunlight of the still, warm Boston June morning. He held the front gate for Dorothy and Trudy, then took his place, his mother on his arm, Trudy following, as they joined the parade wending its way to the church. Oak and maple lined the streets and yards, and overhead branches cast delicate filigrees of sun and shade on all who passed. Restrained greetings echoed across the narrow cobblestone street, and women turned to whisper to husbands and point.
They rounded the corner and walked up the brick entry and through the double doors of the white, high-steepled church to sit in their usual place behind the Dunson bench. Sunlight streamed through stained-glass windows high on the east side of the austere chapel, casting a wild patchwork of color inside. Margaret Dunson led her family to their usual bench, and Dorothy and Billy and Trudy leaned forward to exchange quiet greetings.
“Matthew?” Billy whispered.
“Still at sea,” Margaret answered.
Billy touched Brigitte’s shoulder. “Captain Buchanan?”
Brigitte turned enough to look at him from the corners of her eyes. “Ask me after church.”
Silas’s nasal voice stopped the buzzing. “Our opening hymn is on page thirty-seven of your hymnals, ‘Now Thank We All Our God.’ ”
Billy quietly turned his head to study the vacant seats in the congregation. Ben Telford, captain in the militia, lost at Lexington. Joseph Warren, lost at Bunker’s Hill. John Dunson, lost near Charlestown. Matthew, gone to sea in the service of the colonies. Tom Sievers, gone with the militia. Andrew Thomas, Jedediah Prowse, Albert Samuels, Daniel Cullens—all gone to New York with the militia. Gone to the fighting. He turned back and finished the singing, slipped the hymnal into the rack, and waited for Silas to announce his sermon.
In his Boston twang the Reverend Silas Olmsted offered a short prayer, then droned, “Our sermon today is from the book of Joshua, that great leader of the Israelites.” He paused to open the cover of the huge Bible on his pulpit and peer through his spec-tacles, mouth pursed while he turned pages.
Without warning the tall double doors at the rear of the chapel burst open and everyone in the congregation started, then turned to peer. Silas jerked and then squinted into the rectangle of bright sunlight, unable to identify the silhouette of who had interrupted his Sunday services. Three men in militia uniforms had entered, and one marched down the polished hardwood of the center aisle, the sound of his clicking heels echoing slightly in the high-ceilinged chapel.
Silas’s head thrust forward in recognition. “Lemuel, is that you?”
“It’s me,” the voice boomed. “Reverend, sorry to interrupt this way, but I haven’t got much time, so I’ll need to get straight to it. I am under orders of General George Washington, and I have to deliver this same message to other congregations in Boston this morning.” On his shoulders were the gold epaulets of a general in the Massachusetts militia. He did not remove his hat with the gold braid trimming. He reached the podium and looked up at Silas. “May I talk?”
Silas stared down at him. “On what matter?”
“Here are my orders from General Washington.” He thrust a folded letter up to Silas, who straightened it on his pulpit and read it, then nodded. “Go ahead.”
The man turned, squared his shoulders, and spoke loudly. “For those of you who don’t know, I’m Lemuel Hosking. I’m a general in the Massachusetts militia, here under written orders of General George Washington.” He paused with the clear look of his own self-importance. “The general is in New York with the Continental army to defeat the regular troops of the Crown who are now gathering to crush us.” He waited to allow the congregation time to savor the word crush. “I am ordered to raise a company of men from Boston to march to New York to drive the British into the sea. I intend doing it. You men in this congregation who are fit are expected to do your duty.” He paced for a moment. “This war started right here in Boston. Brave men marched from here to Concord and Lexington, and to Breed’s Hill and Bunker Hill.”
Open murmuring and then talk broke out in the congregation, and Hosking allowed it to go unchecked for a minute, then raised his hands and it quieted. Dorothy glanced at Billy. He sat unmoving, eyes locked onto Hosking. Brigitte turned far enough to see his face, then straightened.
Hosking continued. “Some of those men gave their lives. It’s up to us to carry on so that their sacrifice will have meaning. My adjutant will set up a table at the Old North Church tomorrow. Arrange your affairs. Come sign your name any time before you march out under the command of Colonel Israel Thompson. We have a list of the things you will need for the march and the battle. You leave Wednesday morning at eight o’clock.”
He paused and gathered his thoughts, then turned to Silas. “Sorry I had to interrupt. Hope you understand.” Silas bobbed his head once. Hosking saluted him, turned on his heel, and marched rapidly back up the aisle and out into the brilliant June sunshine. The doors thumped shut. For a moment silence gripped the chapel, and then open talk erupted. Silas patiently removed his spectacles and cleaned them with a handkerchief while the talk ran on, then mounted them back on his nose and raised a hand for silence.
“You all heard the announcement. Those of you who wish to go with General Hosking, sign up at the North Church tomorrow or Tuesday. Now, let’s return to Joshua.”
Billy leaned forward, eyes downcast, as the message from General Hosking settled in. He was talking to me. Back to the fighting. His face blanched as the scene flashed once more in his brain and the deepest fear he had ever known came surging. Meriam’s Corner—crouched behind a stone wall with Matthew and John and Tom—leveling his musket—burying the sight in the midsection of a red-coated regular—jerking the trigger—the solid kick—watching the soldier buckle—the terror in his eyes as he died. The dead, accusing eyes! The horrible searing of his conscience—I have killed—sinned against God and man. And they had caught the redcoats again and again, and he had mechanically locked out all feeling as he loaded and fired and watched men die.
Sweat rose on his forehead, and he leaned back, moving his legs and arms, unable to sit still with the terrible torment inside. I cannot do it again!
Dorothy looked at him, saw his eyes, his white face, the sweat, and she sensed the pain that was destroying him. She did not move or speak. Silas moved on with his sermon, aware of the unrest in the congregation as they pondered and weighed the message Lemuel Hosking had delivered.
“And so it was that the great Jehovah chose Joshua to lead the children of Israel into the promised land.” Silas closed his Bible, raised his head, and announced, “We will join in our closing hymn.” The singing ended, and Silas bowed his head and pronounced the benediction on the service. With his loud “Amen” the sounds of chairs sliding and of benches creaking filled the chapel as the congregation rose and the undercurrent of talk began.
Billy stood and Dorothy touched his arm. “What’s wrong, son?”
Billy shook his head and gestured toward the door, when Brigitte turned and faced him squarely. “You’re white as a sheet and sweating! Your wounds again?”
“No, I’ll be all right. Just need to get outdoors for a few minutes.”
Margaret Dunson studied him with narrowed eyes. “It’s something else, isn’t it? What Lemuel said?” Billy locked eyes with her for a moment but said nothing as he started working his way out to the center aisle of the church. Margaret grasped his arm and stopped him. “Billy, will you tell me later?”
He looked her in the eye. She was his “second mother,” who knew him for the happy, carefree, outgoing boy he had been until they brought him home from Lexington in a two-wheeled hay cart, more dead than alive. He had never withheld a secret from her, or from Matthew or John or Brigitte. He nodded and kept moving. Margaret exchanged glances with Dorothy, then spoke to Brigitte. “Bring the twins. Caleb, give me your arm.”
With his mother on his arm and Trudy f
ollowing, Billy worked his way out the doors into the brilliant sunlight. He answered tersely when spoken to as he made his way through the milling congregation and down the brick walkway, and turned the corner. Only then did Dorothy slow him and speak quietly. “Is it being wounded again, or maybe being killed, or is it doing the killing?”
Billy stared downward as they continued walking. “The killing. I don’t think I could do it again.”
As they continued, Dorothy said, “It’s a terrible thing. We’ll talk later.”
Dorothy and Trudy set the steaming leg of mutton and vegetables on the table, and Billy came to sit silently at the head. Dorothy offered grace, and served portions on their plates. Billy picked at it but ate little. Trudy cleared the dirty dishes into a pan of hot, soapy water on the kitchen cupboard, while Dorothy put the remainders in covered bowls and walked out the back door, down the seven steps, and into the cool of the root cellar, where she placed the bowls on shelves.
A somber, gray sense of foreboding settled inside the house, and Dorothy sat down in the rocking chair with the Bible while Trudy went to her room. Billy moved nervously about, first to his room, then back to the parlor, where he read the titles of books on the bookshelf but selected none. He went out into the yard to wander about, looking first at the flower beds, then the green nubs of apples and apricots on the fruit trees; then he came back into the parlor. Dorothy watched and waited. With the sun settling behind the trees to the west, Billy sat down at the dinner table and stared unseeing at his hands as he slowly worked them one with the other.
Dorothy closed her Bible, rose from the rocker, and sat next to him. “Billy, you have to settle this thing.”
He raised tormented eyes. “Kill again? I can’t.”
“There are some things more sacred than mortal life.”
He shook his head. “I only know I can’t bear the thought of taking a man’s life again.” An involuntary shudder ran through him.
“Could you do it if it were the will of the Almighty?”
He looked at her for long moments, then dropped his eyes without answering.
“Could you do it if there were something more valuable than mortal life?”
Slowly he formed his answer. “I know what I felt when I was hit and took the bayonet. The pain was bad, but believing I was going to die was a feeling no man should have. I saw it in the eyes of men I shot, so close I heard them whine and beg for their mothers. No matter what, I don’t think I could do that to a man again. Taking the life of another human being is evil.” He shook his head, unable to say it more clearly.
As with all true mothers, in her heart Dorothy Weems felt the deep stab of her son’s fear, his pain, and more. She felt the sick dread that she had failed him. She had given everything that was in her to be both a mother and a father to him, but she had known all along that nature had intended a boy to have a father to teach him the male things a woman cannot. She buried her own anguish behind a calm exterior and continued. “I know. But are there times it’s necessary?”
“I only know it’s something I can’t do.”
“What do you think this trouble with England is about?”
“They say it’s because we are ungrateful. We say it’s for liberty. But no matter where the truth lies, the result is the same for me.”
“Did you talk with Matthew before he left to go fight on ships?”
“Yes.”
“What did he say about taking life?”
“He hated it.”
“But he went.”
“His father was killed by the British. He said he had to go.”
“Matthew? Revenge?” Deep surprise showed in her face.
“No, not revenge. He’s above that. He said he went to John’s grave the night they buried him, and a powerful feeling came to him that he had to go resist the British.”
“Even if he hated it?”
“Yes.”
“What do you think your father would say?”
“I don’t know. I can hardly remember him.”
Dorothy straightened, and for a long time they sat, him staring at his hands, her watching him while in her mind she groped for someone, something that could give him what he needed and that she could not give. She stood. “Maybe you should go talk with Silas.”
Billy raised weary eyes. “I don’t know what he could say.”
“Then go find out.”
Evening shadows were lengthening when Billy opened the doors to the church. His footsteps echoed in the deserted chapel as he strode down the hardwood center aisle and knocked at the door of the living quarters of Silas and Mattie Olmsted. The wizened little reverend with the large hawk nose swung the door open and for a moment stared. “Billy? Are you all right?”
“I need to talk with you. Do you have time?”
Silas pursed his mouth for a moment and lowered his face to peer over his wire-rimmed spectacles. “Done something wrong?”
“No.”
Silas stepped aside. “Come in.” He turned and called, “Mattie, I’ll have company for a while.” Billy heard a door close as Silas gestured to a chair in the small, sparsely furnished parlor. “Sit down.” Silas sat on a straight-backed chair and faced Billy, and waited expectantly.
Billy raised pleading eyes. “You heard Lemuel this morning. He said if you’re fit, you have a duty to go join General Washington. I’m healed in my body, but not inside. I can’t take another human life.”
Silas remained silent, studying Billy’s face and eyes, and Billy continued, forehead wrinkled with intensity as he selected his words. “I know the feeling of dying, and it’s something I can’t do to another human being.” He stared into Silas’s face, hoping.
“Did your mother send you?”
Billy nodded.
Silas’s eyes dropped for a moment. Then he stood, turned his back on Billy, and walked across the small room and back before he once again sat down. “You’re caught between a sense of duty and a fear of taking another man’s life? Is that it?”
“Yes.”
“Let’s get to the bottom of it,” Silas said, and lifted a battered, scarred Bible from the table beside his chair and opened it. “Exodus, chapter twenty, verse thirteen. ‘Thou shalt not kill.’ ” He watched while Billy nodded understanding. “Now let’s look at the book of Joshua. Chapter eight. Jehovah told Joshua to lift his spear against the city of Ai and take it. And Joshua did. Verse twenty-six. ‘For Joshua drew not his hand back, wherewith he stretched out the spear, until he had utterly destroyed all the inhabitants of Ai.’ ” Silas stopped, and for long moments Billy sat in silence before Silas continued. “Jehovah had Joshua kill every living soul in the city of Ai. What does that teach us?”
Billy spoke thoughtfully. “We can take life when Jehovah commands it. But Jehovah hasn’t commanded me to do it.”
“Let’s go on. War has always been and will always be, because at the bottom of everything is the eternal conflict between light and darkness, good and bad. There are but two champions. Jehovah for the light, Satan for the dark. It’s as simple as that, even in heaven. There was war in heaven, between—”
Billy jerked upright. “War in heaven?”
“You’ve heard my sermon on it before.”
“I thought it was fictional, not a real war. In heaven? In God’s presence?”
“Absolutely. The devil rose up to overthrow God, and there was war.”
“Shooting? Killing?”
“Let’s read it.” He thumbed to a worn page. “Book of Revelation, chapter twelve, verse seven. You read it.” He handed the book to Billy.
“ ‘And there was war in heaven: Michael and his angels fought against the dragon; and the dragon fought and his angels, and prevailed not; neither was their place found any more in heaven. And the great dragon was cast out, that old serpent, called the Devil, and Satan, which deceiveth the whole world: he was cast out into the earth, and his angels were cast out with him.’ ”
Billy raised his eyes. �
��That isn’t a myth? a parable?”
Silas shook his head. “Open warfare between the evil ones and the good ones. They were real individuals, not mythical. One was named Michael. How many others were in that war and who they were, I do not know. I only know it happened, and I know the battle they fought will go on forever, wherever there are those who worship darkness and those who worship light.”
Billy swallowed and locked eyes with Silas, mesmerized by thoughts so new he neither moved nor spoke, and Silas continued. “No good man ever took joy in war, but no good man ever failed to rise against evil when it threatened. At Bunker Hill, I saw good men—”
Billy’s head jerked forward and he blurted, “You were at Bunker Hill?”
“I was twenty feet from Joseph Warren when he fell. I wept, but I kept firing.”
“You killed men at Bunker Hill? you, a man of God?”
“I did.” Silas’s voice was strong, steady. Billy stared, incredulous, as Silas went on. “You were home with fever dreams and deliriums. I know because I visited you every day, but I doubt you knew I was there, or at Bunker Hill.”
“You gave your life to God. How could you kill another man?”
Silas remained silent until he knew Billy was ready, hanging on his every word, and then he spoke with quiet intensity. “I went to war against an eternal evil called tyranny, not against other men. If I could have found a way to fight tyranny without taking life, I would have done it. But there was no other way. The men I killed had become the champions of tyranny and were here to force it on me. I had no choice. They had to die or I had to yield my soul to tyranny.”
Billy shook his head violently. “They weren’t the champions of tyranny. They were soldiers, doing their duty. They were good men.”
Silas nodded. “Good men who had been deceived.”
“Deceived?” Billy’s eyes were wide.
“Deceived! It’s been happening since Adam and Eve. They thought they were right to be here, following king and God, but the hard truth is, they were here to force us to submit to the will of their Parliament in everything we did. That’s tyranny.”