My Brother Sam is Dead (20 page)

The trees had been cut off the hillside between me and the stockade, but there were plenty of stumps and boulders scattered all over it, and I figured if I was careful, I could slip down from one to the next until I reached the bottom. Down there was an empty space of fifty feet or so between the last stump and the stockade. I'd just have to make a dash for it. I figured that the snow there was bound to be packed down pretty hard—not bad for running.

I began to slip down the steep hillside from stump to boulder. I went mostly on hands and knees, getting pretty soaked in the snow. I kept an eye out on the guard. He didn't seem to be looking around much.

I was nearly at the bottom of the slope now, but I was still high enough on the hillside to see over the walls of the stockade. I stopped and stared. I couldn't see anybody moving around. The prisoners were all inside the hut, staying warm, I figured, although I didn't think they would be doing much sleeping. I wondered whether you cared about being warm if you knew you were going to die soon. I decided that you probably did.

I glanced at the guard. He still wasn't moving much, so I slipped the rest of the way down the hill behind some boulders, until I was at the edge of the open space of snow. The stockade was now only fifty feet away. I stared at the guard. He didn't move for several moments. He was leaning on his musket with his head bent forward, and I suddenly realized that he was asleep. I took the bayonet out of my belt and clutched it tight in my hand. If Sam could kill people, so could I. I decided I would go for his throat if I could, so he wouldn't make any noise. I raised up a little. My heart was pounding, my breath was shallow and my hand was shaking.

Then I stood up and charged out from behind the boulder across the empty space of clear moonlight, my feet going crunch, crunch in the snow. The guard stirred. I drove my feet faster. He jerked his head up and stared at me, sort of dazed. I slammed forward. “Halt,” he shouted. He swept the musket up, the bayonet pointing straight at me, twenty feet away.

I jerked to a stop. “Sam,” I shouted, and “Sam,” again as loud as I could. The guard lunged toward me. I lifted the bayonet and threw it into the air. It flashed in the moonlight, spinning lazily over and over and fell into the stockade. Then I turned and began racing as fast as I could across the snow for the safety of the boulders on the hillside. I had gone only three paces when the musket went off with a terrific roar. I felt something tug at my shoulder—no more than a tug—and I dashed onto the slope, and then began staggering upward, zigzagging from boulder to boulder to keep protection at my back. Behind me there was shouting and running and the sound of a horse being wheeled around. Another musket went off, and then another. I heard a ball smack into a stump somewhere near me. Now I was getting near the top. I struggled on, my breath rasping in my throat, and then I reached the trees at the top of the ridge and flung myself flat. They'd never get me now. They couldn't gallop horses in the snow fields, and I was too far ahead for them to catch me on foot. I rolled over and looked down. Two or three soldiers were starting to struggle up the slope. There were men running everywhere, and horses being saddled, and officers shouting.

I stared into the stockade. There was no action there, no people moving at all. Lying in the center of that square of snow, something shiny glistened in the moonlight. And I knew it had all been a waste. The prisoners weren't in the stockade anymore. They'd been moved to someplace else. I clutched my shoulder where it was bleeding a little, and started for home, running all the way.

Mother was asleep in her chair in front of the fire. Quietly I took off my shirt and looked at the wound. The ball had skipped right across the top of my left shoulder. A little chunk of flesh was gone. My arm felt numb, but nothing seemed to be broken. I washed the wound and dressed it, and then I hid the shirt with the bullet hole in it inside my mattress. I figured they might be able to guess who'd thrown that bayonet into the stockade, but nobody would be able to prove anything. I went to bed and fell asleep immediately.

Mother refused to go to the execution. I went. I knew that Sam would want somebody there, and besides, somebody would have to claim the body. They had built a gallows up on a hill to the west of the encampment. A crowd had gathered around it. I waited down the road until a troop of soldiers came by. First came the drummers playing a slow roll, and then the troops and then Sam and Edward Jones riding in a cart. Their hands were tied behind their backs, and around their necks there were ropes that were tied to the cart, too. Behind them were more soldiers. General Putnam was going to make sure the troops saw the execution as an example. “Sam,” I shouted as he went by.

He looked around at me. His face was dead white but he managed to give me a grin—not much of a one, but a grin. Then they passed on by. I waited until the last of the troops had gone through, then I ran up to where the crowd was standing and began to push my way through. When people saw who it was they let me pass. I pushed my way up near the front of the crowd, but not all the way. I had a funny feeling that I wanted to be hidden. I didn't want to stand out where people could see me.

They had already gotten Edward Jones upon the platform of the gallows. They had put a sack over his head. The rope dangled from the gallows an arm above. A soldier slipped the noose over his head. My eyes were misty and I couldn't see very well. Nathanial Bartlett, the Presbyterian minister, stepped up onto the scaffold and said a prayer. Then he stepped away. I looked down at the ground. There was a funny thump and the crowd gasped. I looked up. Jones was hanging down below the scaffold at the end of the rope. His feet almost touched the ground and they were sort of dancing around.

I hadn't seen Sam, but now they brought him out from somewhere in a bunch of soldiers. They sort of shoved him into the empty space in front of the gallows. He had a sack over his head, too, and I wondered what it was like to be inside of that—was it hot and did it itch? Mr. Bartlett came out and said another prayer over Sam. I tried to pray myself, but my mouth was dry and I couldn't get the words out. They turned Sam sideways to the crowd. Three soldiers stepped in front of him and raised their muskets. They were so close the gun muzzles were almost touching Sam's clothes. I heard myself scream, “Don't shoot him, don't shoot him,” and at that moment Sam slammed backwards as if he'd been knocked over by a mallet. I never heard the guns roar. He hit the ground on his belly and flopped over on his back. He wasn't dead yet. He lay there shaking and thrashing about, his knees jerking up and down. They had shot him from so close that his clothes were on fire. He went on jerking with flames on his chest until another soldier shot him again. Then he stopped jerking.

I
HAVE WRITTEN THIS STORY DOWN IN THE YEAR
1826
, ON THE
fiftieth anniversary of the founding of our nation, to commemorate the short life of my brother Samuel Meeker, who died forty-seven years ago in the service of his country. I am sixty-four. Although I hope to go on living in health for some time yet, the major portion of my own life is spent. It has been a happy life, and successful, for the most part.

I no longer live in Redding. After Sam's death I hated the place and wanted to go away; but the war went on for almost three more years, and while the fighting was on it was difficult to think of building a new life in another place.

For the first few months after Sam's death I was not able to do much more than my basic chores. But time heals wounds, and by the next fall I had become used to the ache in my heart, and I began to think about what I should do with my life. I started to make a study of calculating and surveying with Mr. Heron who was kind and didn't charge me for lessons. When the war finally ended Mother and I sold the tavern and moved out to Pennsylvania where new lands were opening up and surveyors were much in demand. After moving around a bit we finally settled in the town of Wilkes-Barre. We built a tavern there, and I began buying and selling land. With the profits from this activity I built a saw mill, and then a store to go along with the tavern, and then I joined with some other men to found a bank. I married and had children, and with work and God's will I prospered, so that I am able today to enjoy my children, my grandchildren, my orchards and my gardens in peace and comfort.

Mother never really got over Sam's death. She kept to her vow, and so long as the war went on she refused to serve Continental officers. I had to do it myself. She lived to a ripe old age and even at the end she would frequently speak of him in conversation or tell stories about his headstrong ways to my children. But she was tough in spirit, she survived to enjoy her grandchildren and her new life. She left her mark on the history of our country.

It will be, I am sure, a great history. Free of British domination, the nation has prospered and I along with it. Perhaps on some other anniversary of the United States somebody will read this and see what the cost has been. Father said, “In war the dead pay the debts of the living,” and they have paid us well. But somehow, even fifty years later, I keep thinking that there might have been another way, beside war, to achieve the same end.

H
ISTORIANS HAVE A GREAT MANY WAYS OF FINDING OUT
what happened in the past and why, but they cannot find out everything. In writing this book we have stuck to history as closely as we could, but of course we have had to make a good deal of it up. The town of Redding, Connecticut, is real, and existed in those days exactly as we have described it—at least insofar as we know. The house we have called the Meeker tavern is still there, at the southeast corner of the junction of Route 58 and Cross Highway. The church burned down and another was built on the site in1833. In the churchyard you can find the gravestones of various members of the Heron and Meeker families.

General Putnam's Redding encampment is now known as Putnam Park. A few huts have been rebuilt to show how they were in the old days, and if you ever go there, you can see the slope where somebody might have slipped down from stump to stump, although today it is overgrown with trees again.

Many of the people were real, too. General Israel Putnam was a famous American patriot, the tough-minded, loyal, brave kind of man we have described him as. Colonel Read was also a real person, and did the sort of things we had him do in this book. Tom Warrups was real, and really lived in a hut such as we have described up behind Colonel Read's house. Ned, the slave, was real, and he died exactly as we have described it. William Heron was a real but somewhat mysterious figure in history. It appears that he was working for the Americans as well as the British. At the least he must have been a double agent, but historians are not sure exactly what role he played in the war. Captain Betts, Daniel Starr, Amos Rogers, little Jerry Sanford, the minister John Beach—these, too, were real people. And they lived and died just as we have told it here.

Of course the exact things that we have had these people do and say in this book are fictitious. We have tried to make them act as we believe they would have acted under these circumstances, but we are only guessing.

What about the Meekers? There was a Meeker family in Redding, who owned the mill down by the Aspectuck River, where Jerry and Tim went fishing for shad. You can find the spot near where Meeker Hill crosses the river. But we don't know much more about the Meekers than that. Essentially, we have made them up—Tim, Sam, and their mother and father. Betsy Read, too, we made up. We have been as careful as we could to make sure that they did the kinds of things they would have done in those days. However, we have used modern language in telling the story. Partly this was to make the story easier to read; but mainly it is because nobody is really sure how people talked in those days.

What about the story itself? The main historical incidents are all real, except of course for the part the Meeker family played in them. Yale students did rush away to get weapons and join the war in 1775. The Rebels did come through Redding and collect people's weapons, because Redding really was a strong Tory town. The trip across to Verplancks Point was invented, but Verplancks Point was real—you can visit the town of Verplanck today—and people did make the sort of trip that the Meekers made. Furthermore, cow-boys such as we described were stealing cattle and robbing people. The British raid on Redding under General Tyron really happened just as we have told it. The Rebel messenger was shot, and the fighting at Daniel Starr's house, according to eye-witness reports, occurred in the way we described it, including the beheading of Ned. Moreover, Captain Betts, Mr. Rogers, Jerry Sanford and some others were later released, but Jerry Sanford died in a prison ship sometime afterwards.