Across Five Aprils (13 page)

Jenny and Jethro were cheerful as they made their plans for the afternoon: she, with the help of Ed Turner, would finish the planting in the field south of Walnut Hill; Jethro would go on with the plowing down at John’s place by himself. They ate with the hearty appetites of youth and health and accepted with satisfaction the few quiet words of praise that Matt had for them. That praise in itself was something new; Matt had always demanded hard work from his children—it was a duty imposed upon them by necessity and by a pioneer philosophy—and praise was neither given nor expected; now the necessity was greater than ever, but a changed man imposed the labor. The older children of the family would have been surprised and, according to their several natures, pleased or outraged by their father’s consideration of these two younger ones.

Israel Thomas brought the letter from Hidalgo while the family still sat at the table. Jethro ran out to the road to take it, to report his father’s improvement and the state of the farm work in general. Israel handed the letter over with a marked lack of enthusiasm.

“Hoped I’d be bringin’ yore pa a letter from young Tom,” he said sourly. “This here is prob‘ly nothin’ more than some sweet talk fer Jenny from the schoolmaster. Well, here ’tis—tell ‘er not to b’lieve mor’n half of what is writ in it.”

Jethro took the letter inside and handed it to Jenny with a big smile. It was addressed to her, of course, but that didn’t matter; he settled down happily to wait his turn at reading it.

There had been other letters from Shadrach since he left in February, but as if determined to obey Matt’s ultimatum of “no romance” with fifteen-year-old Jenny, the young soldier had addressed himself to the entire family. Spring, however, had reached a training camp outside Philadelphia, and it was as soft and gentle as the spring that had settled over southern Illinois; perhaps some mood of defiance for his future father-in-law had welled up in the heart of a lonely boy—at all events, this was a love letter, and it was all for Jenny.

When his sister left the table and ran off to her room with the letter, Jethro was irritated, but tolerant of her rights; however, when she returned, with flaming cheeks, and began to read a few excerpts from the closely written pages, he was dismayed. He wanted to study every line, every flourish of the beloved hand; he wanted desperately to know every word that had been traced by Shadrach’s pen.

Letters were so few, and on every other occasion that Jethro could remember, any letter received by one member of the family had been read and discussed by every other member. That was courtesy, common decency—whatever one wished to call it. And now came this one, as precious a letter as had ever been received, and there was Jenny reading a line here and there, pausing to blush and most obviously skip over an entire paragraph, sometimes flipping over a whole page without sharing a single word.

It was soon evident that she was not going to read Shadrach’s fervent hope aloud, and Jethro, full of hot anger toward her, was amazed that his parents were tranquil and undisturbed. They even glanced at one another and smiled a little. Jethro had no smiles—not in his heart or mind or his lips.

“I would as soon eat somethin’ wonderful good in front of her and jest offer her a crumb,” he thought bitterly.

He set his lips firmly together and got out of the room as soon as possible. It helped a little to have hard work facing him; he harnessed his team and rode away toward John’s place without glancing back to wave goodbye to Jenny. He was in no mood to be gracious to anyone, much less to Jenny.

His rage stayed with him for a while as he walked behind the horses, back and forth along the length of the field.

“She ain’t never bin selfish before,” he thought, as he rehearsed Jenny’s fall from his favor. Then remembering a lesson from Ross Milton’s book, which he and Jenny had been studying together when they had a little time, he tried fitting his angry thoughts into better English. “She’s never been selfish before,” he amended, and some of his anger was dissipated before the satisfaction of his new learning.

In the middle of the afternoon, Nancy came down to the field with her children and waited for Jethro in the shade of a big oak tree just inside the fencerow.

“We brought you a little somethin’ to lighten yore work, Jeth,” she said in her quiet way. She held in one hand a slice of freshly baked white bread spread with butter and in the other a stone jug filled with cold milk.

He threw the lines over a post and sat down in the shade of the tree. The children came and sat close to him; he had paid more attention to them lately, knowing that it pleased Nancy, and they had grown fond of him.

“They take you fer a man full growed, Jeth,” Nancy said, smiling. “I wouldn’t doubt but what they sense somethin’ of John about you.”

He took a long, appreciative drink from the milk jug. “This is real nice, Nancy,” he said, wiping his mouth and nodding to her. He was more at ease with her lately; she was beginning to seem more like one of the family.

Her eyes were big in her thin face. “Has there bin any letter up at yore place, Jeth?”

“Jest one—from Shad. Nobody gits to read it ‘cept Jenny.” His voice was curt.

Nancy watched his face thoughtfully. “He’s still in trainin’, I reckon. Him nor John wouldn’t be in the fightin’ yet, would they?”

“No, it’s too soon. It takes a spell to git the hang of soldierin’, I guess.”

He offered a bite of bread and butter to each of the children. It would be just as pleasing to him, he thought, if she questioned him no further about Shad’s letter.

He ate the rest of the white bread soberly and watched his two young nephews run a little way down the furrow, their small white feet pretty against the brown waves of freshly plowed earth that lay sleek and glistening in the sunlight. It was April again. April. Jethro liked the sound of the word. He thought how beautiful it would sound in poetry.

“Did ever you think how nice the word April sounds, Nancy?” he asked after a while.

She smiled a little. “It does hev a nice sound, Jeth. April’s allus bin my month, the month of my bornin‘, the month of my marryin’. But now—” she sighed and turned toward Jethro earnestly. “In yore studyin’ with Shad, did ever you hear of this place, Shiloh?”

He shook his head. “It’s no town, I guess. Jest a little church near Pittsburg Landing that got caught up in the midst of all the fightin’.” Nancy was like his mother, he thought; one couldn’t tempt her away from the sadness within her.

“I couldn’t sleep after I read the papers Jenny brought me. I kept thinkin’ of the two young boys—and Bill—and of John bein’ in battles later on. I thought the night was goin’ to go on ferever.” She broke off suddenly and sat looking out across the quiet field, her hands folded in her lap. “What do you s’pose it was like, Jeth?”

He shook his head. “It must ha’ seemed like the end of the world had come,” he said soberly.

“Fer thousands it had, hadn’t it?”

He nodded and felt ashamed that his anger over Shad’s letter had made him forget the battle and the thousands of boys lying on the ground at a place called Shiloh. Ed Turner had said, “You can’t expect to hear from the boys fer a while, Jeth. Think what a job it’s goin’ to be to clear the battle-ground.” Jethro pushed the thoughts back in his mind; he didn’t want to talk to Nancy about things like that.

He knew that it was time to be getting back to work, but when he started to get up Nancy stopped him with a quick gesture.

“Set a minute longer, Jeth. There’s somethin’ I feel bound to say to you.”

He looked at her with surprise. “What’s this thing that’s on yore mind?” he asked, settling back comfortably against the tree trunk and looking up at small segments of sky that appeared here and there through the canopy of green leaves.

Nancy hesitated, and when she finally spoke, her words came slowly as if she were feeling her way with caution.

“You mustn’t hold it aginst little Jenny that she keeps her letter to herself, Jeth. A letter is kind of a close thing; it’s somebody’s words that are writ only fer you. It’s like you’re bein’ unfair to someone you love if you let his words be read by others when he writ’em only fer you.”

Jethro frowned and stared at the blue patches above him without comment.

“Sometime you’ll know what I mean,” Nancy continued. “Likely there’s some little gal—maybe one not yet born—that will write to you some day, and every word she writes will be yores. You’ll feel that you can’t bring yoreself to share them words, because they won’t belong to anyone but you.”

Jethro shifted his position uneasily. He picked up a small stone and heaved it into the weeds in front of him.

“I doubt that,” he muttered. “I don’t care nothin’ about any girl.”

“When you was six, I guess you’d ha’ doubted that soon you’d be managin’ a team and plow by yoreself. I guess you’d ha’ doubted that by the time you was ten you’d be workin’ to put food in the mouths of yore brother’s little ’uns—ain’t that so, Jeth?”

“I reckon.”

She placed her hand on his knee for a second. “I’d best let you git to yore work and go back to my own,” she said. She called the children and got slowly to her feet.

“John used to want me to talk more to the folks around me. It was hard fer me to do it then; now, seems when I find someone to talk to, it’s all I kin do to make myself go back to the stillness.”

Jethro was exhausted that night. Jenny came out to the barnlot when she saw him dragging home with the tired team.

“Go eat yore supper, Jeth. I’ll unhitch and water the horses fer you.”

Jethro was not yet in any mood approaching perfect sweetness and light.

“Tendin’ a team is man’s work,” he said grimly. “I’ll do my own unhitchin’ and waterin’.”

“I’ve bin sharin’ a man’s work, don’t fergit that.” Jenny’s dark eyes flashed with quick anger, but they softened as she looked at his thin body, sagging with fatigue.

“No use in bein’ stubborn as a mule jest because it comes easy to you, Jeth.” She started undoing the traces and tossed her head at him.

“Go on up to the house, young man. I got in early and made a nice puddin’ fer yore supper. You’re lucky to have a sister that is one of the best cooks in the county—don’t ever think you’re not.”

Oh, she was in a gay mood, that Jenny. The words in Shad’s letter that no one else had a right to read must have been extra fine!

Jethro shrugged ungraciously and went up to wash himself at the big iron kettle beside the kitchen well. The cool water felt good; he splashed it behind his ears and on his face and neck. He remembered once when Tom and Eb were washing at the kettle, and they had splashed him with cold water when he came to watch them. He had cried then, being pretty young, and the big fellows had called him a baby. He remembered that he’d felt strange and lonesome when they teased him, but suddenly Bill was there, and Bill had said, “I don’t know whether it’s more babyish to cry or to tease a little feller.”

Tom had tried to make it up to Jethro later. It may have been the gift of an apple or the right to sit in front of the saddle that evening when they rode off on some errand—Jethro couldn’t quite remember—but whatever it was, Tom had been extra kind to him. He hoped they’d get a letter soon from somewhere down in Tennessee.

Jethro was not able to read the paper after supper that night. He was tired to the bone, and he climbed off to his bed in the loft as soon as he finished the pudding Jenny had made for him. He was sound asleep before the spring night was quite dark, but excessive fatigue, like excitement, was a forerunner of the nightmares that had plagued him for the past year.

It was not quite midnight when some frightening dream made him cry out, and now that Bill was no longer there to comfort him, it was Jenny who ran from her room to sit on his bed and speak comfortingly.

“Maybe you drove yoreself too hard today, Jeth. I guess you’ve made yoreself over-tired.”

“I’m all right,” he said after a minute. “You don’t hev to stay here; I’m awake now.”

“You air mad at me, ain’t you, Jeth?”

“I’m not mad at anybody. I’m jest sleepy,” he answered shortly.

“The reason I didn’t pass my letter around, Jeth—well, you know how Pa is—he thinks I’m so young and hadn’t ought to think about gittin’ married—and Shad said some things—”

“I don’t care about yore letter. I don’t want to read it.”

“But you kin, Jeth; I’ll let you read it. Nobody else, jest you.”

“No,” he said, turning his head away from her.