My Brother Sam is Dead (8 page)

He glanced at me and then blew on his tea to cool it. “Because I said so.”

“That's no reason,” I said.

He stared at me. “If you don't stop arguing with me, I'll thrash you, Timmy.”

“I don't care,” I said. “If we're supposed to be Loyalists, we should help—”

He slammed his fist down on the table and then jerked his thumb toward his chest. “I'll manage the politics in this family,” he said.

“Father—”

“Timothy, goddamn it I'm going to—” And then he stopped, and I knew why. He'd shouted at Sam and Sam had run away. He was scared that if he shouted at me I'd run away, too. “Tim, please,” he
said calmly as he could. “It's dangerous. You think that because you're only a child they won't hurt you, but they will. They've been killing children in this war. They don't care. They'll throw you in a prison ship and let you rot. You know what happens to people on those prison ships? They don't last very long. Cholera gets them or consumption or something else, and they die. Tim, it isn't worth it.”

I knew he was right, that it wasn't worth taking the chance. I wanted to do it anyway. But there wasn't any use in arguing about it with Father.

Two weeks later I figured out how to do it. I was out on the road in front of the tavern trying to clean the mud and dirt off the boards we laid down there in the spring, when Jerry Sanford came up the road.

“Where are you going?” I said.

“The shad are running,” he said. He held out a coil of fishing line with hooks and weights attached. “Father said I could try my hand at it.”

“You're lucky. Look what I have to do.”

“Ask your father if you can go.”

“He won't let me. There's too much to do around the tavern.”

“Ask him.”

So I went inside to where he was holystoning the taproom table. “Father, Jerry Sanford is going after shad. Can I go?”

“You've got a lot of things to do here.”

“If we caught a lot we could salt them down.”

He thought about it. “All right, go. It would be a nice change to have some fish chowder.”

So we went back to Jerry's house and got another line and some hooks, and then walked down to the millstream, which was really the Aspetuck River. There was a dam there for the mill, and below the dam a couple of hundred yards was a large pool. In the spring the shad ran upriver to breed, but they couldn't get past the milldam, and the pool was just swarming with them. We caught dozens. We had a terrific time. Father was pleased. He really enjoyed fish chowder. But best of all, I had my excuse to get away.

M
Y BIGGEST PROBLEM WAS GETTING TO SEE MR.
H
ERON.
I
F
Father saw me talking to him, he'd be suspicious; and if he found out that it was me who started the conversation, he'd know right away what it was all about. But luckily two days later Mr. Heron came into the tavern to buy a small keg of rum. My father wasn't around, and Mother said, “Tim will bring it right over, Mr. Heron.”

So I slung the keg of rum over my shoulder and followed Mr. Heron up the road to his house, which was only a couple of hundred yards away from the tavern. We went around to the back, and I carried the keg into the kitchen and set it up on the rack. He reached into his pocket and handed me a penny.

“Thank you, sir,” I said.

“Have you thought anymore about studying surveying with me someday?”

“Well I haven't, sir. But I was thinking though that I might like to earn some money at that job you mentioned before.”

“Aha,” he said. “Your father changed his mind, did he?”

“Yes, sir,” I said. “He said it would be all right so long as he
didn't know anything about it. If I just went and didn't tell him anything, he said he wouldn't object.”

Mr. Heron put his hand on my arm and gave me a little squeeze. “That's a lie, isn't it, Timothy?”

I got hot and blushed. “I guess so, sir.”

He let go of my arm. “Your father doesn't change his mind very often nor very easily.”

I felt stupid and looked down at the ground. “Yes, sir,” I said. “I'd still like to go, though. Aren't we supposed to be loyal to the King?”

He stroked his chin. “Not everybody thinks so.”

“I do, though.” I didn't—I mean I didn't have any opinion either way—but I thought it would help if he believed that I was a strong Loyalist.

He smiled a kind of funny smile. “You've got your brother's spirit, haven't you?”

Being compared with Sam made me feel good. “I'm as brave as he is,” I said.

“I believe it,” he said. “Suppose I did let you run some errands for me. What would you tell your father?”

“I'd tell him I was shad fishing.”

“And come home with no fish?”

“I'd tell him they weren't running or something. You can't always expect to catch something.”

He rubbed his forehead, thinking. “All right. If you come up early tomorrow morning, I'll have something for you to do to earn a shilling or so.”

So that night I asked Father if I could go fishing again. And he said yes. I felt sort of bad about it; it was lying, and lying was a sin, and so was going against your father. And even if it hadn't been a sin I would have felt badly about it, because Father trusted me and I was being dishonorable. But I wanted some glory too much to be honorable, so Wednesday morning I got up way before the sun, when it was just beginning to get light, took my fishing line and hooks to make my excuse hold up, and walked down to Mr. Heron's house.

I was lucky. It was a good day. That time of year it could
easily have been pouring rain, and cold. But as the sun came up there were only streaks of clouds in the sky. The birds were singing and the wild flowers along the roadside were bright and gay. I felt excited in a good way, and as I walked along to Mr. Heron's I began to whistle “Yankee Doodle” before I remembered that I ought to keep quiet so people wouldn't notice where I was going.

When I got to Mr. Heron's house I went around back to the kitchen door, and started to knock, but I had hardly got my fist up when the door jerked open, and Mr. Heron grabbed me by the arm and pulled me in. We walked down a hall and into his study. It seemed awfully rich to me. There was a little stove there with a few coals glowing and a desk piled high with papers and a carpet on the floor, and some chests of drawers. He sat down at the desk, wrote something out on a piece of paper, and sealed it up. “Timothy, you'll have to move quickly. This message has to go to Fairfield. It will take you at least five hours to walk down there and five to walk back, and you'll have to be home before dark in order not to raise suspicions. Have you ever been to Fairfield?”

“A couple of times,” I said. “With Father and Sam to get rum.”

“Then you know where the dock is. Now listen carefully. Just before you get to the dock there's a road off to the left. Down the road about a mile there's a house with white siding and green trim. Knock there. Ask for Mr. Burr. And give him this letter. He'll give you a shilling. Right? Now repeat it back.”

I did so; then I tucked the letter down inside my shirt and left, slipping out the back way and through his pasture before I cut back onto the road. The sun was now up and was rising over the meadowland to the east. I judged it to be about seven o'clock. The sun wouldn't go down again until around seven at night, which gave me twelve hours—plenty of time if I walked along swiftly. In fact, if everything went well, I could easily be back by the middle of the afternoon, which might even give me time to catch a few shad to show Father. I hid the fishing tackle behind a stone wall just in case.

I moved at a brisk pace. Despite the sun, the air was morning cool and fresh. It was nice weather for walking and I felt excited, not
scared. I was worried about dropping the letter, though, and I kept touching it to make sure that it hadn't fallen out of my shirt. After a while I came to the place where the road from the Center runs into the Fairfield Road. I stopped for a minute to rest and to see if I couldn't find a better way to stow the letter so it would be safe. I was trying to find a way to hitch it under my belt when I heard somebody shout. I looked up. Betsy Read was coming down the road from the Center.

“Hello, Tim,” she said.

“Hello.”

She came up to me. “What're you doing here? What's that?”

Hastily I shoved the letter back into my shirt.

“Nothing,” I said.

“Well it isn't nothing,” she said. “It's a letter.” She smiled. “You've got a girlfriend.”

“No,” I said. “I have to go. I'm kind of in a hurry.”

“I'll walk with you,” she said. “Where are you going?”

It made me nervous having her walk along with me. She wasn't suspicious of anything, and I didn't think she would go down to the tavern and tell Father she'd seen me; but if she should happen accidentally to bump into him, she might say something. “I'm going fishing,” I said.

“Fishing? On the Fairfield Road?”

“There are shad in the millstream.”

“Well you're going in the wrong direction,” she said,

“Oh. Well I know that, I was up there already, but there weren't any shad so I'm going someplace else now.” I was blushing from telling so many lies. Lying is a sin.

“Don't you want to know where I'm going?” she said.

“Sure,” I said.

“I'm going down to Horseneck. Guess what doing.”

It was better to have her talk than me, because it saved me lying.

“I don't know. Shopping for cloth?”

“Guess again.”

Horseneck was down on Long Island Sound, too, but much
further south than Fairfield. I couldn't figure out what she might be doing there. “Visiting your cousins?”

“I don't have any cousins down there.”

“What then?”

“Seeing Sam,” she said.

I stopped dead in the road. “Sam? Is he in Horseneck?”

“I shouldn't tell you that. You're a Tory. Anyway he's not there anymore, they've gone someplace else.”

We weren't walking along anymore, but facing each other. I was all excited. “How do you know Sam's there?”

“Mr. Heron told me.”

“Mr. Heron? How does he know, he's a Tory?”

She frowned. “Well I know that, but he said that Sam was there with a commissary officer, scouting for beef.”

It didn't make any sense. Mr. Heron was supposed to be a Tory; he wasn't supposed to know where American commissary officers were. Suddenly I realized I was wasting time. “Where is he now?”

“I won't tell you. You're a Tory.”

“That's not fair, Betsy. He's my brother.”

“God, Tim, you tried to shoot him.”

I blushed. “Is Sam all right?”

“Yes, he was in battle—I guess I better not tell you about it.”

“You can tell me if it already happened, can't you?”

“I better not,” she said.

“Listen,” I said, “I better get going.”

We started walking. “Where are you off to in such a rush?” she said.

“If you won't tell me anything, I won't tell you, either.” I thought that was a pretty smart answer; it was like one of Sam's telling points.

“All right, sulk,” she said. “Besides, I know you're carrying a love letter for somebody.”

“You've just got love on your mind because of Sam,” I said. Something was puzzling me. “Betsy, how come Mr. Heron didn't tell me about Sam this morning?”

“Because you're a Tory.”

“But so is he,” I said.

She stopped. “What were you seeing Mr. Heron about this morning?”

I realized I'd made a bad mistake. “Oh I just happened to go by his house this morning and he was there.”

“There? Where?”

“He was standing in the yard.”

“Doing what?” she asked.

“How do I know what he was doing?”

“He wouldn't have been standing … the letter. Tim, you're lying. The letter. He gave you the letter to carry. Tim, where are you going with that letter?”

She was pretty excited and kind of bouncing around in front of me. “I have to go, Betsy.”

She jumped in my way. “Oh no you don't, not until you tell me about the letter.”

She was bigger than me, but not by much, and I figured that since I was a boy I could break away from her and run if she tried to stop me. “That's a private letter,” I said. “I can't tell you about it.”

“Oh no, Tim,” she shouted. “Give me that letter.”

“No,” I said. I tried to duck past her, but she jumped in front of me again.

“Tim,” she screamed. “You know what's in that letter? A spy report on Sam.”

That shocked me. “It can't be. Why would Mr. Heron make a spy report on Sam?”