The Mostly True Adventures of Homer P. Figg (2 page)

First thing we hear is Squint yelling and cussing and demanding they find us.

One of the men tells him to shut his trap.

“If he’s only a boy, Leach, how’d he whip your fat carcass, eh?

Sure it wasn’t a hog throwed you to the mud?”

Minute or so later the same man comes up into the loft, thumping the floorboards with the tines of a pitchfork. “Come on out and face the music, boys. It’s that or get stabbed. On a count of one … two …”

At each count he thumps the pitchfork into the floorboards, making those sharp tines ring like a saber.
SWANG! SWANG!
Working closer to where we’re hiding, as deliberate as an army advancing.

“Three!”

Harold gives me a nudge and we both stand up, clotted with straws of hay.

The man with the pitchfork is Cornelius Witham, that trades in jugs of whiskey and keeps a shack up in the hills. I recognized him from his voice, the way he said “throwed.” Corny comes around on Saturday nights, leading an old packhorse strung with clay jugs. Squint won’t take anything stronger than cider, but he and Corny share a fondness for plug tobacco. They’ll sit on the porch of an evening, spitting and bragging on what they did when they were young. Corny is what they call a prodigious liar, meaning he’s got talent in that direction, and me and Harold would hide under the porch just so we could hear him lay waste to the truth.

Only time I ever heard Squint laugh was when Corny told this long, complicated tale about a worm he swallowed by accident, and how it came out both ends at the same time.

“’lo, Mr. Witham,” says Harold, picking the hay out of his hair.

“’lo, Harold. You boys sure stirred up old Squint this time.”

“Yes, sir, we did,” says Harold.

Unlike me, Harold never lied in his entire life. Which makes it all the more worse, what happened later, when they took us out to the yard. Squint’s there, of course, looking madder than a bolt of lightning, and Corny that marched us to our doom, and Mr. J. T. Marston, the county magistrate, and a skinny, hollow-eyed stranger in a blue uniform so crusted with mud he could have been rolling with the pigs like Squint.

Man in the muddy blue uniform, he reeks of whiskey. His eyes are shifting everywhere but at me and Harold, like he’s embarrassed for us, or maybe for himself. Mostly he studies the clay jug Corny must have given him, and seems disappointed to keep finding it empty.

“Harold Figg, you stand accused!” roars Squint, shaking his fists. “The boy tried to murder me! Put him in irons!”

“Oh, shut up, you old fool,” says J. T. Marston, who has a way of speaking quiet but forceful.

We know Mr. Marston from town because he owns most everything in Pine Swamp, including Marston’s Dry Goods Store, the Marston Boardinghouse, and Marston’s Livery. Folks say he owns the law, too, and that’s how he got himself named magistrate. Buy land or sell it, J. T. Marston takes his fee, or it won’t be made legal and put down on the county maps. Anything you want done in the law, or outside it, old J. T. will see to it so long as he gets his share of the proceeds.

Marston has got a skinny white beard down to his waist and eyes as black as buttons. He grins at us with all of his yellow teeth, the way a dog will grin just before it bites you, and then he says, “Harold Joseph Figg, you must now present yourself to the conscription of able-bodied men, and take your oath, according to the Enrollment Act of March 3, 1863.”

“Enrollment?” says Harold, straightening up. “But I’m not of age! I am but seventeen!”

“That’s a lie!” roars Squint. “I’ll swear on a Bible the boy is twenty!”

“So sworn,” says Marston with a wave of his hand, as if shooing away a troublesome fly. “Sergeant, you will now administer the oath.”

The stranger in the blue uniform isn’t paying attention and Marston has to speak to him sharply before he staggers over to Harold.

“Are you ready, son?” the stranger asks.

“This isn’t right,” says Harold, looking from the stranger to the magistrate. “I’m not of legal age. How can you do this, Uncle? Who will take care of Homer?”

“I’m his guardian,” snarls Squint. “I’ll take care of the little devil, you can be sure of that.”

“The oath, sergeant,” Marston insists.

When Harold shakes his head, the stranger unholsters his pistol and holds it loosely at his side. “Private, you must take the oath or be shot as a deserter. What shall it be?”

“You’d shoot a boy?” Harold asks in disbelief. “I am not of age, and I think you know it.”

For the first time the stranger looks my big brother right in the eye. “I have shot many boys,” he says. “One more will not signify. Now raise your right hand and swear to uphold the Constitution of the United States of America, and the laws of the state of Maine, and to obey your lawful superiors.”

Harold looks at me real sorrowful and shakes his head. “I’m sorry, Homer. Squint has got me this time. I must do as they say.”

My brother is made to swear on Squint’s Bible, and a moment later he’s conscripted into the Union Army, to serve for three years or until he’s dead, whichever comes first.

“Go with the sergeant,” Marston tells Harold. “He’ll sort you out.”

“What about me?” I pipe up. “Can’t I go, too? Swear me in, you villains!”

Corny laughs. “Villains, is it? Mighty big word for such a small boy. You get that out of one of your momma’s books, did you?”

“Don’t you dare speak of our mother!”

Corny shakes his head and grins. “Get back in the barn, son. Go hide under the hay until the war is over.”

“I want to go with Harold!”

“Hush now, little brother,” says Harold, giving me a quick embrace. “What’s done is done. I am sworn and can’t go back on my oath, no matter what.”

But I kick up a fuss and fly at Squinton with my fists, and when that doesn’t work I try to bite him like the rat he is.

“Cornelius! Put this brat in the root cellar!”

Corny takes hold and drags me squirming to the root cellar. The last I see of Harold, the stranger in the muddy blue uniform is marching him away barefoot, with a hickory stick on his shoulder. Apparently that’s how they do it when you’re sold to the army for a jug of whiskey and a lie.

I hope they give Harold a real rifle and a pair of boots. He’ll need the boots to make it home.

M
OST FOLKS KEEP FOOD
in a root cellar. Not Squinton Leach. There’s a stack of old beaver pelts that stinks to high Heaven, from when he failed to get his price and swore he’d let ’em rot, and did. Three wooden cases of empty Mason jars, now home to a world of bugs, and a five-gallon keg of cider that’s gone to vinegar. There’s some broken furniture that might have come from my mother’s place, but I can’t be sure because Squint never let us see it, and a pasteboard valise with a busted handle.

That’s it, unless you count rocks and dirt, which he has in abundance, just in case he ever gets hungry and wants to chaw on a chunk of shale or granite.

Food preys upon my thoughts because the last thing I ate was that hunk of stale bread that was supposed to go to the hogs, and started off this whole mess.

It’s all my fault. No question about it. If I hadn’t stolen from the hog slops, Harold wouldn’t have got took for the army, and it would still be the two of us against Squint, like always. I’d give anything to have him back, because the notion of being on my own scares me worse than spiders. All the bad things that have happened in this world, losing our parents and getting put up with Squint and such, Harold was always here, saying things would get right for us one day, and I always believed him.

He’s not been gone an hour, but I miss him something awful. Plus I know what happens in the war. The newspaper prints a list each week of local men lost in battle, or from sickness. Never says how they passed, exactly, just a few words like “met his Maker at Malvern Hill” or “expired of his wounds,” and mostly they don’t come home, but are buried where they die.

Harold is so true and brave and fearless that he’s bound to get himself killed.

Worried sick about what will happen to Harold, I lie in the corner feeling sorry for myself and for my big brother and for everything that’s ever made me sad. Thinking on the dead and moaning ghosts and such, and wishing I had something to eat so I could forget about being hungry and concentrate on better reasons to be miserable.

Then it dawns on me the ghosts aren’t ghosts at all, but voices coming from above. Squint and Cornelius Witham, bragging on what they’ve done.

I can hear them through the floorboards clear as day.

Corny’s going on and on, about how clever Squint is, and the money they both made selling Harold to the army.

“Lovely piece of theater, Squint,” says Corny. “How much did the judge take for his part in your little play? Thirty dollars? Maybe you mean thirty pieces of silver, eh?”

“Took his share like he always does,” says Squint. “Can’t be helped.”

“Let’s see, a two-dollar jug for Sergeant Harris, and twenty for me, for standing witness.”

“That was the price agreed,” says Squint, real stubborn.

“Which will leave you with a profit of two hundred dollars, near as I reckon. Once that wealthy pal of Marston’s pays to keep his precious son out of the army.”

“It’ll take me months to collect,” whines Squint. “Till then I’m out of pocket.”

“But you will collect, eventual,” Witham insists. “Not a bad turn of profit, for a fifty-dollar investment.”

“He’s my kin,” says Squint. “So I get the lion’s share. That’s only fair.”

Corny laughs and thumps his jug on the floor.

“Oh, Squint, you are a devil! Lucky for you the boy is so innocent. He’ll be under fire before he realizes he wasn’t sworn legal, and that the draft ain’t even gone into legal effect yet. That was mighty smart, saying he was twenty.”

“He could be twenty,” Squint whines. “Look at the size of him. And besides that, boys younger than him have volunteered. Younger boys have lied about their true age and enlisted. Why shouldn’t he?”

What they’re saying makes me mad enough to spit, if my throat wasn’t so dry. I heard the men at the dry-goods store talking about the new conscription law. According to the law, a rich man can hire a poor one to be his substitute, and die in his place if need be.

That’s what Squint done with Harold, sold him like a slave for two hundred and fifty dollars, even though he’s white and supposed to be free. Even though the draft ain’t even happened yet, not legal according to Corny. So the oath Harold took don’t count, because it came from a lie.

Soon as I hear that, I know what needs doing.

I have to run away from Pine Swamp, Maine, and Squinton Leach and his wretched farm, and find my brother and save him from the war, before it’s too late.

Y
OU WANT TO GET OUT OF
a locked-up root cellar, think like a mole.

While Squint and Corny are busy jawing, I take a spindle from a busted-up chair and start digging around the stonework. Don’t take long to loosen up a stone, and then use the spindle for a lever and pry it out of the foundation. The stone makes a pretty good thud when it hits the dirt floor, but Corny’s telling his story about the worm and Squint is laughing like a dog that swallowed its bark and they don’t hear nobody but themselves.

Then I’m digging with both hands, pulling away little rocks and clumps of earth. Clawing up through the dirt, quick as I can. Being mad at Squint and worried for Harold makes me dig faster.

The good thing about being small, I don’t need much room to get through, and no more than an hour passes before I pop up beside the house with a nose full of dirt and my eyes gleaming in the moonlight.

That’s exactly when Corny comes out the door, singing at the top of his lungs. I just have time to scoot behind a pile of stacked firewood and hunker down as he staggers into the yard.

“‘No longer delay, love, I’m waiting for thee!’” he bellows, “‘The moon in her beauty is beaming on me!’”

His voice is bad enough to crack the moon, but that doesn’t stop him. Smells bad, too, stinking of whiskey and filth — he’s that close. Drink has made him half blind, I guess, because he never sees me, but goes on his merry way, letting his boots find the ruts of the pathway home. Heading north, more or less, still singing about maidens and moonlight. Hard to know who’s leading who, Corny or his packhorse that knows the way home.