Across Five Aprils (23 page)

“.... My boy wrote that it was like a picnic all the way. They et chicken and pork chops and yams every meal if they wanted ‘em; they hadn’t had grub like that in months. And they burned every fence and house and barn in sight; the railroads they bent up like hairpins—over two hundred miles of ’em.”

“.... A war ain’t won that leaves scars like this on folks who be our brothers.”

“.... Hev you heered of Andersonville Prison? Do you know what the Rebs have done in that black hole to their brothers?”

“Well, there’s Camp Douglas right here in Illinois—hev you heered the stories of
that
place?”

“It’s a terr’ble thing, it’s a pitiful thing, but it’s war. The sooner we make one great swoop, the sooner the sufferin’ is over fer all of us—South as well as North.”

“.... There be limits even in war. This was mean, mad destruction. This was war on babies and their mothers, on the sick and old and helpless.”

“.... And they brought it on themselves. They hev to pay the price.”

“Would their armies hev spared us if the tables had bin turned? Don’t believe it fer one minute!”

Word came that the Army of the Tennessee, after reaching Savannah, had turned north to join Grant; it was then that South Carolina knew the lash of a triumphant army drunk with the plundering of Georgia and enraged at the stubborn tenacity of the South in holding onto a cause that was already lost. In South Carolina the vast, undisciplined army could find another excuse for its excesses beyond the slogan, “This is War, and War is Hell.” The role of this state in bringing on the war served as a “just” excuse for atrocities that no thoughtful man could excuse.

“This is the nest where secesh was hatched,” the army shouted, and the proud possessions of a gracious life, the little homes of the poor, the cities, farms, and the frightened, desperate people were swept down before the fury of the Army of the Tennessee.

Ed Turner’s youngest boy, just eighteen and in the army only a few months, was in South Carolina. Ed brought the boy’s letter down for Matt to read. In it the boy told of the burning of Columbia, of how the soldiers laughed as a great wind fanned the flames, of the loot carried off, of mirrors and pianos smashed, and of intimate family treasures scattered to the winds by men who seemed to have gone mad.

Ed Turner’s hands trembled as he returned the letter to its envelope.

“What is this goin’ to do to an eighteen-year-old boy, Matt? Kin a lad come through weeks of this kind of actions without becomin’ a hardened man? Is human life goin’ to be forever cheap to him and decency somethin’ to mock at?”

“You and Mary hev lamed him right from wrong, Ed.”

“But they’re bein’ cheered on, Matt. Congress—the whole country—is happy with ‘em; these boys air goin’ to believe that they be heroes for lootin’ and burnin’, fer laughin’ at distress, fer smashin’ the helpless without pity. In some ways Sammy is more of a child than yore Jeth here; he goes with the crowd without thinkin’. Mary and me has had to guard aginst that way of his.”

Matt looked at his friend with troubled eyes; any words that he could think of seemed useless, worse than silence.

Ed got to his feet. “Well, it shorely will be over soon. It’s got to be over soon. The South can’t hold out much longer.”

That was what the papers were saying, too, along with the politicians and the men who congregated in little groups at the country stores. Surely it would be over soon. The South was starving, its railroads and seaports gone; Grant was only a few miles from Richmond; Thomas was in Tennessee; and Sherman was roaring up through South Carolina. Any week now, any day, any hour, the great terror that had gripped the land for four years would be over.

Eb wrote from Tennessee. He was with General Schofield’s army, and they were marching toward North Carolina to join Sherman when he reached there.

But the war went on. In Virginia more soldiers died each day in Grant’s army and in Lee’s because the South, even in its death throes, would not admit defeat, and the tragedy of these deaths was even greater when the hopes of homecoming and peace were just within realization.

Jethro had just turned thirteen in early 1865. He had grown tall during the years of the war, and although he was still slender, there was a taut look about his body, as if all his muscles had attained a fine precision in working together for the achievement of a needed strength. His face was becoming more angular and the great blue eyes of his early years were darkened by shifting lights of gray and green. Matt and Ellen noticed a change in him; he was gentle with them and with Nancy and her children, but there was a reserve about him that had grown steadily greater with the years. They watched him anxiously, wondering and sometimes fearing a little; he was so much like Bill, and Bill, the gentlest of all their sons, had walked out of their lives with a finality that cut like a knife. To lose Jethro would have been too much; unconsciously they clutched at him.

“It’s bin long sence you hev told me any of the old lessons Shad used to larn you, Jeth,” his mother remarked one morning, as she sat before the fire watching him pace aimlessly.

He took a handful of crumbs and tossed them out to the sparrows that hopped on crusted snowdrifts outside. When he came back he put his hand briefly on her shoulder.

“Seems sometimes that the old lessons are bein’ lost in the worry of new things happenin’ each day, Ma,” he said quietly. “Somehow I don’t have the heart for things that used to set me up so much.”

“What was on yore mind jest now, Jeth, while you was pacin’ back and for’ard?”

“I guess I was thinkin’ of some things Mr. Milton said the last time he spent the night with us, things about the war—and peace when it comes.”

“Do you want to tell me of ’em? I be proud to hear the things that air in yore mind.”

Jethro felt a wrench of pity at her little plea, but he stood before her silent and troubled.

“I can’t put it the way Mr. Milton does, Ma,” he explained after a while. “I can’t make you understand; some things he says I don’t quite understand, either. I just have a feelin’ for them, and I can’t form the thoughts into good words.”

Ellen nodded meekly. There were, indeed, many things that she could not understand. Most of Ross Milton’s talk was beyond her comprehension. But it was having Jethro talk to her that she wanted, not an understanding of Ross Milton’s words.

Jethro walked slowly out of the house. The look in his mother’s eyes troubled him; so did the things the editor had talked about on a recent night when he and Jethro sat before the fire in the cabin, after Matt’s weariness had forced him off to bed.

“Don’t expect peace to be a perfect pearl, Jeth,” Ross Milton had warned. “This is a land lying in destruction, physical and spiritual. If the twisted railroads and the burned cities and the fields covered with the bones of dead men— if that were all, we could soon rise out of the destruction. But the hate that burns in old scars, and the thirst for revenge that has distorted men until they should be in straitjackets rather than in high office—these are the things that may make peace a sorry thing....”

Jethro had not liked to hear the editor talk like that. To him peace had been a shining dream, with Shad and Jenny back home, with John more of a brother now and a hero in Jethro’s eyes, with Eb coming home in pride instead of degradation. No, of course, peace would not be a perfect pearl, not with young Tom never to return, not with the possibility of Bill’s return only the most shadowy and remote of chances. Still, peace would mean a glorious sense of relief; in all his years Jethro had heard either the talk of war’s imminence or its reality. He had wished that Ross Milton would not rip up his dream of peace.

He had said to the editor that night: “But we have the President, Mr. Milton. Don’t you remember the last of his speech a few weeks ago on Inauguration Day: ‘to bind up the nation’s wounds, to care for him who should have borne the battle’? Won’t the President do away with this hate and revenge that you’re tellin’ me about?”

Ross Milton had taken a brand from the fireplace carefully between his long fingers, and he waited until he had lighted his pipe before he answered Jethro’s question.

“My hope lies in Abraham Lincoln. He has four years before him and the power of a mighty office; if he can control the bigots, if he can allow the defeated their dignity and a chance to rise out of their despair—if he can do this, then maybe peace will not be a mockery.”

They had talked of the thirteenth amendment that night. It had been passed by Congress, and now it was up to the states; Illinois had already ratified it—Jethro felt proud that his state was the first to do so—and there was little doubt that three-fourths of the others would follow. Then slavery would be constitutionally abolished once and for all.

“It’s a great thing, isn’t it, Mr. Milton?”

“It’s a far star, Jeth; it’s a dim pinpoint of light in the darkness.”

Jethro had been provoked. “I don’t know why you talk like that,” he exclaimed.

The editor reached out and put his hand on Jethro’s knee. “Because, Jeth, after the thirteenth amendment has become a part of our Constitution and for years afterward—twenty-five, maybe fifty—there will be men and women with dark faces who will walk the length and width of this land in search of the bright promise the thirteenth amendment holds out to them.”

He turned with a sudden thrust of his crippled body to Jethro. “What’s going to happen to them, Jeth? What will become of men and women who have known nothing but servitude all the days of their lives? They are without experience, without education; they’ll be pawns in the hands of exploiters all over the nation. You watch this thing, Jeth, you watch the abolitionists who have ranted against the South; see if they extend the hand of friendship to the uneducated, unskilled men who will come north looking to them as to a savior. Look what has happened in our own armies; our soldiers have been angered by the dark man who has assumed they were his friends. Sure, the North has talked loudly against slavery. I have joined in that talk, but I tell you, all of us are getting a little quieter when the question comes up as to what we are to do about the products of slavery.”

Jethro tramped the frozen fields and thought of the things Ross Milton had said. He remembered the supper table that night in mid-April of 1861 and Wilse Graham’s angry voice exclaiming, “Would yore abolitionists git the crocodile tears sloshed out of their eyes so they could take the black man by the hand? Would they say, ‘We want you to come to our churches and yore children to come to our schools—why, we danged near fergit the difference in the colors of our skins because we air so almightly full of brotherly love!’ Would it be like that in yore northern cities, Cousin John?”

The waiting for word of peace went on. February passed, the bitterest cold of the year coming as usual in that month. Then March came, breaking the back of winter with warmth permeating the cold, and with the smell of spring drifting daily to tease hope and to give shy promise of a coming radiance.

Then, finally, the fifth April of the war arrived, and in southern Illinois it came in a burst of warmth and color that seemed prophetic to those who waited for word from Washington. That fifth April had moved only into its second week when the news came that the guns were silent, that the terms of peace had been signed by two tired men somewhere in Virginia at a place called Appomattox Court House.

 

Jethro
rode into Newton with Ed Turner and was allowed to spend the night with Ross Milton. By the time he reached the little county seat, the bunting was spread out by the yard, flags flew from almost every house, a long unused cannon boomed from the cliffs above the river. They had lifted the trapdoor in the roof of the jail, allowing the half-dozen delinquent citizens of the county to climb outside so their voices might add to the clamor. Men danced in the streets and embraced one another; some drank a continuous string of toasts to Lincoln, Grant, and a dozen others, until their bottles were empty and the compliments had to be started all over again with new purchases at one of the saloons. Others wept while they shouted; there was hardly a home in the county that had not felt the fiery lash of the war’s tongue.

The editor took Jethro to the restaurant for supper. This time the place was milling with people who had come into town to celebrate. Plump Mrs. Hiles was bustling about in a near-frenzy, but she took time to speak to Jethro and to lament his golden curls, which had straightened out into a slightly waving thatch of light brown hair combed neatly back of the ears.

“You ain’t as purty as you was three years ago, young Creighton,” she said brightly. “You’re gittin’ a little of the owl-look of yore friend Red Milton here.”

She clapped him on the back briefly and went on to her duties, knowing very well she had said a thing that pleased Matt Creighton’s youngest boy.

That night there was a great display of fireworks, and then the town’s band played while nearly a thousand voices joined in singing “The Battle Hymn of the Republic.” Jethro’s heart swelled in his breast. He thought suddenly of the tired face of the President.

“How I’d like to shake hands with him tonight,” he thought. He turned to look at Ross Milton, who stood beside him, balanced painfully upon his crutches. The editor’s eyes were fixed on something far away above the heads of the crowd, and Jethro noticed that tears were running down his cheeks.

At home the next day he tried to describe the details of the celebration to his parents and to Nancy, who listened with eyes as radiant as Jenny’s used to be when she received her first letters from Shadrach. The little boys had caught some of their mother’s happiness. “Do you remember him, Jeth?” they asked, with some awe of Jethro’s thirteen years. “Do you remember what our pa looks like?”