April Morning (8 page)

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 asked 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 said 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.”

After Father walked out, I went over to Mother and kissed her on her cheek. She began to cry. I had never seen her cry before, and it had a bad effect on me. Granny took my hand and led me into the stormway.

“She'll be all right, Adam,” Granny said. “Right now, there's nothing either of you can do for the other. Are you afraid?”

I nodded.

“I'm glad you can say that you are. Heaven help men like Moses Cooper who can't say it. I think that everything's going to be all right. God bless you. You're a troublesome and provoking boy, but I love you a good deal.”

I squeezed her in my arms and kissed her, and finally I was crying too.

“Shame for those tears, Adam Cooper. Suppose the men see you?” She wiped my face with her apron, and then I went out to where Father was waiting in the herb garden.

The Morning

I
T HAD BECOME
darker. There was a ragged veil of clouds over the moon and the stars, and my father bulked large and formless. I became tense with the feeling that perhaps it had already happened, that the British army was upon us, and that I would be left out of it; but whether I was pleased or dismayed, I hardly know.

We went through the gate, and without a word to each other, we began to walk over to the common. I noticed now that in many of the houses the lights were out, leaving only the ruddy glow of the kitchen fire. It was colder. I shivered and drew my jacket together.

A subtle change had come over the village. A little while ago, the night had been full of sound, the high-pitched sound of boy's voices against the flatter sound of their elders, the sound of bells, the sound of a rush and clatter and commotion and nervous laughter, but now all that kind of sound was gone. You heard single voices. Mrs. Carter called out to her husband:

“Jed! You forgot your notebook!”

Why on earth he wanted his notebook with him in the pitch blackness of night, I don't know. From somewhere else in the darkness, I heard the Reverend's deep voice telling someone to trust in the Almighty Maker. I sympathized with whoever it was. I have never been able to work up a feeling of being properly looked after, and it was worse in this darkness.