The Copperhead

by Harold Frederic

  CHAPTER III

  ABSALOM

  Once, in the duck-season, as I lay hidden among the marsh-reeds withan older boy, a crow passed over us, flying low. Looking up at him, Irealized for the first time how beautiful a creature was this commonblack thief of ours--how splendid his strength and the sheen of hiscoat, how proudly graceful the sweep and curves of his great slowwings. The boy beside me fired, and in a flash what I had been admiringchanged--even as it stopped headlong in mid-air--into a hideous thing,an evil confusion of jumbled feathers. The awful swiftness of thattransition from beauty and power to hateful carrion haunted me for along time.

  I half expected that Abner Beech would crumple up in some suchdistressing way, all of a sudden, when I told him that his son Jeff wasin open rebellion, and intended to go off and enlist. It was incredibleto the senses that any member of the household should set at defiancethe patriarchal will of its head. But that the offence should come fromplacid, slow-witted, good-natured Jeff, and that it should involve theappearance of a Beech in a blue uniform--these things staggered theimagination. It was clear that something prodigious must happen.

  As it turned out, nothing happened at all. The farmer and his wifesat out on the veranda, as was their wont of a summer evening, rarelyexchanging a word, but getting a restful sort of satisfaction intogether surveying their barns and haystacks and the yellow-brownstretch of fields beyond.

  "Jeff says he's goin' to-night to Tecumseh, an' he's goin' to enlist,an' if you want him to run over to say good-by you're to let him knowthere."

  I leant upon my newly-acquired fish-pole for support, as I unburdenedmyself of these sinister tidings. The old pair looked at me incalm-eyed silence, as if I had related the most trivial of villageoccurrences. Neither moved a muscle nor uttered a sound, but justgazed, till it felt as if their eyes were burning holes into me.

  "That's what he said," I repeated, after a pause, to mitigate theembarrassment of that dumb steadfast stare.

  The mother it was who spoke at last. "You'd better go round and getyour supper," she said, quietly.

  The table was spread, as usual, in the big, low-ceilinged room whichduring the winter was used as a kitchen. What was unusual was todiscover a strange man seated alone in his shirt-sleeves at this table,eating his supper. As I took my chair, however, I saw that he was notaltogether a stranger. I recognized in him the little old Irishman whohad farmed Ezra Tracy's beaver-meadow the previous year on shares, anddone badly, and had since been hiring out for odd jobs at hoeing andhaying. He had lately lost his wife, I recalled now, and lived alonein a tumble-down old shanty beyond Parker's saw-mill. He had come tous in the spring, I remembered, when the brindled calf was born, tobeg a pail of what he called "basteings," and I speculated in my mindwhether it was this repellent mess that had killed his wife. Above allthese thoughts rose the impression that Abner must have decided to do aheap of ditching and wall-building, to have hired a new hand in thisotherwise slack season--and at this my back began to ache prophetically.

  "How are yeh!" the new-comer remarked, affably, as I sat down andreached for the bread. "An' did yeh see the boys march away? An' hadthey a drum wid 'em?"

  "What boys?" I asked, in blank ignorance as to what he was at.

  "I'm told there's a baker's dozen of 'em gone, more or less," hereplied. "Well, glory be to the Lord, 'tis an ill wind blows nobodygood. Here am I aitin' butter on my bread, an' cheese on top o' that."

  I should still have been in the dark, had not one of the hired girls,Janey Wilcox, come in from the butter-room, to ask me in turn much thesame thing, and to add the explanation that a whole lot of the youngmen of the neighborhood had privately arranged among themselves toenlist together as soon as the harvesting was over, and had this daygone off in a body. Among them, I learned now, were our two hired men,Warner Pitts and Ray Watkins. This, then, accounted for the presence ofthe Irishman.

  As a matter of fact, there had been no secrecy about the thing savewith the contingent which our household furnished, and that wasonly because of the fear which Abner Beech inspired. His son andhis servants alike preferred to hook it, rather than explain theirpatriotic impulses to him. But naturally enough, our farm-girls tookit for granted that all the others had gone in the same surreptitiousfashion, and this threw an air of fascinating mystery about the wholeoccurrence. They were deeply surprised that I should have been downpast the Corners, and even beyond the cheese-factory, and seen nothingof these extraordinary martial preparations; and I myself was ashamedof it.

  Opinions differed, I remember, as to the behavior of our two hired men."Till" Babcock and the Underwood girl defended them, but Janey took theother side, not without various unpleasant personal insinuations, andthe Irishman and I were outspoken in their condemnation. But nobodysaid a word about Jeff, though it was plain enough that everyone knew.

  Dusk fell while we still talked of these astounding events--my thoughtsmeantime dividing themselves between efforts to realize these neighborsof ours as soldiers on the tented field, and uneasy speculation as towhether I should at last get a bed to myself or be expected to sleepwith the Irishman.

  Janey Wilcox had taken the lamp into the living-room. She returned now,with an uplifted hand and a face covered over with lines of surprise.

  "You're to all of you come in," she whispered, impressively. "Abner'sgot the Bible down. We're goin' to have fam'ly prayers, or somethin'."

  With one accord we looked at the Irishman. The question had neverbefore arisen on our farm, but we all knew about other cases, in whichCatholic hands held aloof from the household's devotions. There wereeven stories of their refusal to eat meat on some one day of the week,but this we hardly brought ourselves to credit. Our surprise at thefact that domestic religious observances were to be resumed under theBeech roof-tree--where they had completely lapsed ever since the troubleat the church--was as nothing compared with our curiosity to see whatthe new-comer would do.

  What he did was to get up and come along with the rest of us, quite asa matter of course. I felt sure that he could not have understood whatwas going on.

  We filed into the living-room. The Beeches had come in and shut theveranda door, and "M'rye" was seated in her rocking-chair, in thedarkness beyond the bookcase. Her husband had the big book open beforehim on the table; the lamp-light threw the shadow of his long nose downinto the gray of his beard with a strange effect of fierceness. Hislips were tight-set and his shaggy brows drawn into a commanding frown,as he bent over the pages.

  Abner did not look up till we had taken our seats. Then he raised hiseyes toward the Irishman.

  "I don't know, Hurley," he said, in a grave, deep-booming voice,"whether you feel it right for you to join us--we bein' Protestants--"

  "Ah, it's all right, sir," replied Hurley, reassuringly, "I'll take noharm by it."

  A minute's silence followed upon this magnanimous declaration. ThenAbner, clearing his throat, began solemnly to read the story ofAbsalom's revolt. He had the knack, not uncommon in those primitiveclass-meeting days, of making his strong, low-pitched voice quaverand wail in the most tear-compelling fashion when he read from theOld Testament. You could hardly listen to him going through even thegenealogical tables of Chronicles dry-eyed. His Jeremiah and Ezekielwere equal to the funeral of a well-beloved relation.

  This night he read as I had never heard him read before. The whole grimstory of the son's treason and final misadventure, of the ferociousbattle in the wood of Ephraim, of Joab's savagery, and of the rivalrunners, made the air vibrate about us, and took possession of ourminds and kneaded them like dough, as we sat in the mute circle in theold living-room. From my chair I could see Hurley without turning myhead, and the spectacle of excitement he presented--bending forward withdropped jaw and wild, glistening gray eyes, a hand behind his ear tomiss no syllable of this strange new tale--only added to the effect itproduced on me.

  Then there came the terrible picture of the King's despair. I hadtrembled as we neared this part, foreseeing what he
art-wringinganguish Abner, in his present mood, would give to that cry of thestricken father--"O my son Absalom, my son, my son Absalom! Would God Ihad died for thee, O Absalom, my son, my son!" To my great surprise, hemade very little of it. The words came coldly, almost contemptuously,so that the listener could not but feel that David's lamentations wereout of place, and might better have been left unuttered.

  But now the farmer, leaping over into the next chapter, brought swart,stalwart, blood-stained Joab on the scene before us, and in an instantwe saw why the King's outburst of mourning had fallen so flat upon ourears. Abner Beech's voice rose and filled the room with its passionatefervor as he read out Joab's speech--wherein the King is roundly toldthat his son was a worthless fellow, and was killed not a bit too soon,and that for the father to thus publicly lament him is to put to shameall his household and his loyal friends and servants.

  While these sonorous words of protest against paternal weakness stillrang in the air, Abner abruptly closed the book with a snap. We lookedat him and at one another for a bewildered moment, and then "Till"Babcock stooped as if to kneel by her chair, but Janey nudged her, andwe all rose and made our way silently out again into the kitchen. Ithad been apparent enough that no spirit of prayer abode in the farmer'sbreast.

  "'Twas a fine bold sinsible man, that Job!" remarked Hurley to me, whenthe door was closed behind us, and the women had gone off to talk thescene over among themselves in the butter-room. "Would it be him thathad thim lean turkeys?"

  With some difficulty I made out his meaning. "Oh, no!" I exclaimed,"the man Abner read about was Jo-ab, not Job. They were quite differentpeople."

  "I thought as much," replied the Irishman. "'Twould not be in so granda man's nature to let his fowls go hungry. And do we be hearing suchtales every night?"

  "Maybe Abner'll keep on, now he's started again," I said. "We ain't hadany Bible-reading before since he had his row down at the church, andwe left off going."

  Hurley displayed such a lively interest in this matter that I went overit pretty fully, setting forth Abner's position and the intolerableprovocations which had been forced upon him. It took him a long time tograsp the idea that in Protestant gatherings not only the pastor spoke,but the class-leaders and all others who were conscious of a call mighthave their word as well, and that in this way even the lowliest andmeanest of the farmer's neighbors had been able to affront him in thechurch itself.

  "Too many cooks spoil the broth," was his comment upon this. "'Tis farbetter to hearken to one man only. If he's right, you're right. If he'swrong, why, thin, there ye have him in front of ye for protection."

  Bed-time came soon after, and Mrs. Beech appeared in her nightly roundof the house to see that the doors were all fastened. The candle shebore threw up a flaring yellow light upon her chin, but made the faceabove it by contrast still darker and more saturnine. She moved aboutin erect impassiveness, trying the bolts and the window catches, andwent away again, having said never a word. I had planned to ask her ifI might now have a bed to myself, but somehow my courage failed me, sostern and majestic was her aspect.

  I took the desired boon without asking, and dreamed of her as adarkling and relentless Joab in petticoats, slaying her own son Jeffas he hung by his hay-colored hair in one of the apple-trees of ourorchard.