Andersonville (103 page)

As Joe Jew was closing the case and sighing—as he always did, no matter how much people bought—there was a light thud. Some shiny black object rolled on the old carpet.

Wrong case, said Joe Jew. Now how did that get in here? He picked up the thing.

Instantly Merry Kinsman’s eyes were alight. Oh, please— Oh, Mr. Joe Jew. It’s a kind of fife!

No fife, said the peddler. No, little boy, they call this a penny whistle. But the price is a dime.

A tin whistle . . . actually it was not composed of tin: it was made of some heavier metal, perhaps lead. Probably made in the same mould with hundreds of others. . . . Ma! cried Meriwether Kinsman, dancing as he waved the thing in his hand.

You’ve got along thus far without a whistle, Merry. Guess you can get along still.

But, Ma,
look.
It’s just like a fife, cept—see—you blow in the end. It’s got six holes, like a fife. Look, Ma, they’re real close together! I can reach them with my fingers. I can’t reach the holes on Grandpa’s fife until I get growed.

The little boy, he loves the whistle, said Joe Jew, wheedling. It would be nice were you to buy it for him?

Can’t afford it.

Oh, Ma!

Can’t afford it, said the widow sternly. She ushered Joe Jew out of the house and went back to her oven. Merry collapsed on the step in tears.

Joe Jew clambered up into his driver’s seat with some difficulty, since he had been more or less crippled for years (some said that the pony ran away with him) and he clucked to brown Sadie. Wheels started to turn; then Joe Jew pulled on his reins and said Whoa. Little boy, you come here.

Merry ran to the edge of the road, wondering.

Tell your Mamma I would settle for apple turnovers.

Merry rushed shrieking through the cottage, then his heart sank into his bare feet as his mother informed him that her stock of apple turnovers was spoken for; he must carry the basket over to Mrs. Doctor Neely’s within the hour. But, she said, relenting, I would be willing to give him a sack of cinnamon buns. Last baking didn’t sell too well. She made a sack out of newspaper, because manufactured paper sacks were expensive, and Merry carried this poke filled with a dozen buns to the peddler.

Well, said Joe Jew, shrugging. A good apple turnover would be so much better; but I am next door to a beggar, so I cannot be a chooser, and no dinner did I have this noon. Nothing but work, work, work, peddle, peddle, peddle! He complained for a moment more; but he accepted the parcel of buns, and passed the wonderful whistle down to the boy. Merry did not even see him drive away, he did not realize that Joe Jew was gone. He stood graven, caressing the magic tube. He tried to remember what Mr. Abijah Parker had told him; he tried to remember how Mr. Parker’s fingers looked on the fife, how he held it. This was different; but it was the same, because there were six holes. And anyone who could learn to play on such a whistle could, Merry was sure, learn to play upon a fife. He sat again on the step, no longer in collapse. He remembered . . . six holes . . . all closed for the first note. Then lift this third finger of the right hand for the next note. Now—up with the second finger as well . . . now up with the first finger. Loose shrill notes crawled softly if uncertainly. Soon Merry was playing the scale. It would not be long . . . oh, mercy and delight . . . it didn’t sound like a fife: the music was thinner, more birdlike. But the same tunes could be played, and in the same way.

The next time he could win permission and beg a ride over to Crow Corners to sit at the feet of his idol, Merry was discomfited to find that Abijah Parker rather sniffed at the whistle. Oh, that’s not much, the veteran said. Sounds like a sparrow. I mind seeing a gypsy or something, playing such a little toot as this, time I was in Philadelphia. Walked right along the street, squeaking away on it. Had a tin cup hanging on his belt. I guess he expected folks to give him pennies; but I didn’t give him none; I couldn’t abide the infernal noise he was a-making.

Said Merry Kinsman shyly, I can learn the proper tunes. Then, when my hands get big enough to reach acrost the holes on Grandpa’s fife— Well, then I’d know the tunes, wouldn’t I, Uncle Bijah?

(Now they had grown to this intimacy.)

Well, maybe that makes sense. I guess you could. You know, I hadn’t come across no one else, except for drummers of course, who really cared about my fifing. Not for years and years, not till you come along. Now, set real quiet and I’ll play a six-eight for you—an easy one. Oh, Lassie, Art Thou Sleeping Yet?—I’ll teach you how.

Through the next hawking, eagling, rolling years he taught him. Oh, yes: The Raw Recruit. Oh, yes: The Huntsman Hornpipe. Oh, yes: Granny Will Your Dog Bite? It was as if rough shrilling voices of a hundred deerskin melodists had lain compressed within the tube which Merry Kinsman learned to play; only his weaving fingers might let them loose. When at eleven he was forced to servitude under Miller Adams, it was tragedy worse than the punishment he received in his grain sack episode, far worse than slaps or slavery . . . it was molten agony poured within his being . . . Mr. Adams would
not
tolerate his whistle at the mill. Mr. Adams told him to take that wretched thing home and never bring it back, or he’d fling it clean over the mill race into the Susquehanna. He said that only idle boys would sit around, blowing on a thing like that. (In fact, for Mr. Adams’s money, no one except idle folk make any music at all. He held fiddlers in especial scorn, and would not let his daughters go into any home where fiddling and jigging were permitted. Therefore, as so often occurs, both daughters managed to get into trouble, and had to be married; and neither was happy in her enforced matrimony.)

Merry was small for his age: a towhead whose hair deepened only slightly in color as he grew older. His eyes were large, solemn, gray as the river on a cloudy day; but his hands and feet were large out of proportion. He could play Grandpa’s fife instead of the tin whistle, by the time he was twelve.

Visits to Abijah Parker were few and far between. Winter time was the only chance usually; and it was a grave chore to get across those six miles through drifts. But Merry did go plodding. Once a storm struck when he was halfway home. Drifts were higher than his head, white hard salt of snow ripped and stung his eyes, worse than the dust of the mill might sting them. Merry Kinsman lost his way, he came near to perishing, he lost a mitten. The right side of his face froze, fingers were frozen on his right hand. It was with difficulty that he was thawed when at last he stumbled upon a house occupied by an old German couple. Still the thawing was not accomplished properly; Merry’s fingers swelled and grew discolored, one of them split open. It was thought later that the finger might have to be cut off, and what would that have done to his fifing? But the finger was saved, eventually Merry could use it. Few boys could have been as thankful for anything in the world, as was Meriwether Kinsman for this fortune.

When the war broke out (or, as Uncle Dan Ellis always put it, when the army broke out) Merry longed to go and serve as a fifer. He knew for a certainty that already, even at his tender age, he was a better fifer than might be found among musicians of an entire army corps. Uncle Bijah had said as much. But the Widow Kinsman was not well, she had dizzy spells, sometimes she had to sit down and rest her head upon the bread board. When Joe Jew came by that year, Mrs. Kinsman invested heavily in several remedies which the peddler offered and recommended with enthusiasm; but none of them seemed to help her a great deal.

Merry dreamed almost nightly of cannon fire, the long roll of drums. He dreamed of himself shrilling out garrison calls, winning applause and praise for his skill, as well as for his bravery in thundering battles. He dreamed . . . still he dared not run away and leave his mother. One benefit came, because he was old enough now, at thirteen, to take over a great many baker’s tasks: he was allowed to give up his work under the hated Adams.

Mr. Adams flew into rage. He said that Mrs. Kinsman still owed him money; he said that Merry hadn’t worked off all the debt as yet; he threatened to sue in a court of law, but nothing came of his bluster. Mr. Adams threatened also that he might refuse to sell any flour at all to Mrs. Kinsman. Merry thought that Adams would reconsider if he, Merry, came with cash in hand.

Good morning, Mr. Adams. I come for some white flour.

Oh. How much you want, Merry?

Two two-dollar sacks.

You won’t be able to carry them.

I brung the little wagon that I use when I’m peddling bread and stuff about town. I can haul it all right.

Well, let’s see the color of your money.

Carefully Merry counted hard-won dimes and half-dimes, quarter-dollars, broad pennies. He counted coins into Mr. Adams’s palm. He knew that the sum was correct, he had counted it at home.

Hain’t but three dollars ninety-eight that I can see.

Yes, sir, four dollars!

But the miller had to go through the pile three times before he admitted that the amount was correct. He took out his purse, dumped in the change, dropped the purse back into a deep pocket in the skirts of his white dusty coat. Now, he said, that’ll go on the debt your Ma still owes me.

Merry gaped. Oh, the man was so tall, so cruel, he was a giant. He could handle a sack of wheat as if it were a rag doll. He stood there in his grim adult state. He was rich: he owned a farm, he owned two houses in town. And Merry was poor, he was only thirteen, going on fourteen; and skinny.

You mean— He gulped again. You won’t give me my flour? Ma’s got to have it.

You tell your Ma I’ll sell her all the flour she wants, soon as she settles up with me. I figure she still owes me better than seven dollars. Money doesn’t grow on trees.

Indeed it did not, and no one knew that fact better than Merry Kinsman. His shocked voice rattled in remonstrance: Mr. Adams! You said you’d credit us a dollar a week, for the time I put in here. We figured it honest, and—leaving out the seasons when you was closed up, and that time you said you didn’t need me, you couldn’t use me for about five months—and leaving out the time I was sick with my hand— Well, Ma says the debt
is
paid. And more.

Seven dollars and thirty-five cents to go, said Mr. Adams.

Merry wondered what Uncle Bijah Parker would have done at the same age. Abijah had been only a few years older than Merry when he fought the redcoats. With clarity Merry Kinsman saw immediately just what Abijah Parker would have done. Merry walked steadily to the corner where stood Mr. Adams’s desk, closed up to keep out as much mill dust as possible; and he knew what stood in that corner behind the desk. Mr. Adams had a persistent fear of two enemies: a rat and a thief. The one would ruin his grain, the other might put a knife to his throat and make off with his money. Mr. Adams considered a loaded shotgun good insurance against either threat. Merry jerked the old tablecloth which hung over the weapon to protect it; flour flew in a cloud. When the cloud settled sufficiently, Mr. Adams was looking into the twin barrels of his own gun. Merry had cocked both hammers.

My little wagon’s just outside the door, said Merry.

You young devil. Put down that gun!

You’re just a highway robber, said Merry. I come to buy flour, you took my money and then said you wouldn’t give me no flour. That’s just plain robbery, and robbers ought to get shot. So you take two sacks of flour and put them on my little wagon your own self, or I’ll let go with both barrels.

You—you— You’re a murderer! You—

Tain’t murder to protect yourself against robbers. That’s what you always say. That’s why you keep this here shotgun loaded, and warned me not to touch it. Mr. Adams, you load that flour, or I’ll shoot you here and now.

There was no more dust floating. The miller could see clearly the boy’s cold gray gaze, see his finger close to the triggers. Sweating and gasping, Mr. Adams stumbled about the business of loading sacks on the homemade cart with its strong but sagging wheels.

Now, said Merry Kinsman, I’ve took the caps off both tumblers. That’s just so you won’t shoot me, Mr. Adams, and maybe claim I stole your flour.

The bearded miller looked down at the boy in utter terror. Never in his life had anyone ever pointed a gun at this man, and told him that he would be shot if he didn’t do thus and so; and sincerely he knew that the youth had been ready and willing to kill him.

What do you think the constable’ll say, when I tell him that you threatened me with my own gun?

He won’t say a thing, sir, cause you ain’t going to tell him. Of course Merry was correct again: he knew that Mr. Adams would not tell anything, could not tell anything. He knew that Mr. Adams would never try that trick again, for fear that Merry might kill him in some fashion afterward, whether Mr. Adams’s shotgun was put away safely or whether it wasn’t. Merry went home with the flour. He held his head up, held his gaze up, he thought the drums were rolling around and behind him. He could hear the scream of Abijah Parker’s fife, climbing to the last exultant cheer of Jefferson and Liberty.

One day in the summer of 1862, when Merry was fourteen, Mrs. Kinsman fell flat amid a shower of bread loaves. Merry had been up early to prepare the fire, and was out wielding a hay fork in Mr. McMurchie’s field. Thus he did not discover his mother; it remained for customers to do that when they came to the house. A little girl was sent running to the McMurchie place. . . .

The afternoon following his mother’s funeral, Merry Kinsman wandered near the warped wharves stretching out across mud flats as the river shrank to its late summer level. He would have liked to have gone fishing; he had even gone to the woodshed and examined a willow pole which he had not had time to ply in two years at least (because there was so little time for him to enjoy the sports of other boys). The fishing line wound about the dry willow was frayed in several places, as if mice had chewed it. So no fishing.

Merry’s grief for his mother’s departure was not so much grief as a shattering and displacement; and, as people have often mused, the sadness of death was not a sadness at reviewing a death, but a sadness at reviewing the misfortunes of a life. Merry’s emotions had stormed as he sat staring silently into space, not hearing prayers and the polite sniffling of neighbor women. His mother had had so little! She was stern . . . truly it was not her fault . . . poverty at times very nearly squeezed her into the shape of a termagant. She had looked longingly at pretty things offered in the cases of Joe Jew, she had not been able to buy them. Merry had seen her eyes brighten, as indeed his own eyes brightened, at seeing beautiful tight little rolls: purple thread, scarlet thread, thread of pea-green. And there were lengths of flowered new calico, itching to be sewn, itching to be made into frilled gay aprons. So must his mother have wished to wear happy aprons of bright-patterned calico, instead of workaday aprons made roughly from flour sacking. . . . There were those gleaming embroidery scissors, snapped temptingly by Joe Jew, and sun starred up from the steel surfaces as he snipped the scissors back and forth. They cost sixty cents, she could not buy them.