The Bold Frontier (43 page)

We waited perhaps ten minutes, Pa with his rifle, me with my heart thumping in my breast, certain I was enjoying my last summer on earth. Then a dust cloud rose above the next hill. My mouth was so dry I could barely croak.

“There they are.”

“How close?”

“Other side of the ridge.”

“God strengthen my arm and steady my hand.” He could have put on a robe and grown his beard long and passed for one of those Old Testament prophets full of rage for justice. My brother had taken a Confederate ball in his vitals at some little Virginia creek, and then—I learned this later, when my mother thought I could bear hearing it—Reb scouts had outraged his body with bayonets. Or so his commanding officer wrote.

“I’ve got to kill at least one for Toby,” Pa said as the tan cloud rolled down the hill like a cyclone. I remember his voice gentling then. “Scared?”

“Oh, Lord, yes, Pa.” He must have believed me, since he didn’t reprove me for speaking the Lord’s name in an irreverent way. He found my head and ruffled my hair, then appeared to gaze down the road, squinting his pale blind eyes. Lightning had set fire to the smithy one spring night in ‘59. Pa rushed inside to save his tools and two horses he was shoeing, and a blazing beam fell on top of him, right across his eyes—one bright glory and then perpetual dark. If not for Ma tutoring the children of some families in town, we’d have starved.

I saw the horsemen then; I have always supposed they were mounted scouts on the right wing of Heth’s division. Swords flashed like lightning inside the cloud. “I hear them,” Pa cried, for their hoofbeats sounded like drums. He laughed loudly.

A moment later, the Reb riders veered north and swept away, behind our property, out of sight.

“They’re gone,” I said, thinking we were saved. I guided Pa back to the house, joyful that I might live another summer.

Ma tried to take the rifle from him. He was mad with disappointment and wouldn’t let go. Lisbeth tugged at my sleeve.

“There’s a sojer out back. I think he fell off his horse, he’s all bloody.”

Little fool, she didn’t whisper softly enough. Pa heard. “What’s that? A soldier?”

My mother seldom showed anger, but she gave Lisbeth an eyeful of it then. “Jenny,” my father said, “take me to the soldier. This instant.”

She was a dutiful wife, my mother. She led Pa out past the jumbled black timbers of the smithy. He walked with his shoulders back, steel and death in his blind eyes again. Mother walked with her head bowed. I was a ways behind, with Lisbeth hanging onto my waist and mewing in an annoying way.

Then we heard him. Not a loud cry, but heart-wrenching all the same. Like an animal holed up with a broken paw.

I saw him sprawled in the tall weeds at the ruined corner of the smithy, a soldier in Confederate butternut, all covered with dirt and blood. The bloodiest was his left leg, where someone had shot him. He must have lost his horse, right enough, and maybe in all the dust and noise no comrade had seen him fall. You could hear him breathing.

“Aim the muzzle for me, Jenny,” Pa said, hoisting his rifle. “Aim at his head.”

The Reb was dazed but awake; he saw what my father intended. He tried to thrash backward into the tall weeds, but he was too weak. His eyes fixed on my father. They were big brown eyes, almost girlish. I don’t suppose he was eighteen yet.

“Damnation, woman, hurry up. I’m going to kill the bastard.” Behind me, Lisbeth was gasping; she was little but she knew that when Pa stooped to bad language, the sky was falling.

“Jerusha Lamb, you can’t,” Mother said with a keen look at me, then one at Lisbeth, which was wasted. “I must take care of this boy, he’s a Union boy. You can’t see him but I can, he’s wearing Union blue. He must have been chasing those others.”

Bees were buzzing. Up toward the Chambersburg Pike, cannon began to bang away, a big battle. I thought I’d wash away, so much fearful sweat was rolling down inside my shirt.

“Woman—woman, if—if you—” Pa was shaking. He loved my mother too much to accuse her of lying. But he knew how to discover the truth:

“Lisbeth? Daughter?”

Lisbeth’s eyes got huge with tears; she couldn’t lie to Pa. Knowing I might go to hell for it, I put my hand over her mouth and clamped her to my side and said, “She went back to the house, Pa, she’s a scairdy cat.”

My father held still a minute, then put his head back and gazed at the unseen sun and cried out, “Toby … Toby.”

He walked away into the weeds with his rifle, weeping; ashamed of being unmanned.

I never saw the Reb again. My mother insisted on tending him by herself, keeping him warm and well fed in a little lean-to she made from a blanket and sticks. In the morning he was gone.

“Oddest thing,” my mother said to me then. “His last name was Tobin. Toby—Tobin—isn’t that odd?”

The battle of Gettysburg ravaged the town and the land roundabout for three days. We mostly hid in the root cellar. After General Pickett’s doomed charge, thousands of men and boys mowed down as they marched through an open field, right into the Union guns, General Bob Lee retreated south and never came back. Many said he lost the war that July in Pennsylvania.

My father died two years later, never having received the payment he thought he was owed.

In 18 and 66, my mother got a letter from a Leverett Tobin of Wytheville, Virginia. He had survived the war, married his sweetheart after the surrender, and recently opened a hardware store. He praised my mother’s compassion that July day.

My mother gazed at the letter laid in her lap. Her face showed no joy; there isn’t any in war, or memories of war.

“Daniel,” she said, “I pray that when I come to judgment, God can forgive my untruths.”

“Mine too, Mama. But I think He will.” I put my hand over hers in a clumsy way. “Yes, I’m sure He will.”

“The Western; and How We Got It.” Copyright © 1982 by John Jakes. First published in slightly different form in
The Arbor House Treasury of Great Western Stories.

“Shootout at White Pass.” Copyright © 1991 by John Jakes.

“The Woman at Apache Wells.” Copyright © 1952 by New Publications, Inc. Copyright renewed © 1980 by John Jakes. First published in
Max Brand’s Western Magazine
as “Lobo Loot.”

“Hell on the High Iron.” Copyright © 1952 by Popular Publications, Inc. Copyright renewed © 1980 by John Jakes. First published in
Big-Book Western Magazine
as “The High-Iron Killer.”

“A Duel of Magicians.” Excerpt from
Heaven and Hell
(The North and South Trilogy, Volume III). Copyright © 1987 by John Jakes. Reprinted by permission of Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, Inc.

“Death Rides Here!” Copyright © 1953 by Popular Publications, Inc. Copyright renewed © 1981 by John Jakes. First published in
10-Story Western Magazine.

“The Winning of Poker Alice.” Copyright © 1952 by Stadium Publishing Corp. Copyright renewed © 1980 by John Jakes. First published in
Complete Western Book.

“To the Last Bullet.” Copyright © 1953 by Popular Publications, Inc. Copyright renewed © 1981 by John Jakes. First published in
New Western.

“Little Phil and the Daughter of Joy.” Copyright © 1989 by John Lee Gray. First published in
New Frontiers #1
under the pseudonym John Lee Gray.

“The Tinhorn Fills His Hand.” Copyright © 1953 by Recreational Reading, Inc. Copyright renewed © 1981 by John Jakes. First published in
10-Story Western Magazine.

“The Naked Gun.” Copyright © 1957 by Codel Publishing Co. Copyright renewed © 1985 by John Jakes. First published in
Short Stories.

“Dutchman.” Copyright © 1991 by John Jakes.

“Carolina Warpath.” Copyright © 1993 by John Jakes. First appeared in
In the Big Country.

“Snakehead.” Copyright © 1990 by John Lee Gray. First published in
New Frontiers #2
under the pseudonym John Lee Gray.

“Manitow and Ironhand.” Copyright © 1984 by John Jakes. Reprinted by permission of the author.

“Mercy at Gettysburg.” Copyright © 1994 by John Jakes. First published in the July 1, 1994, issue of USA
Today Weekend.

John Jakes is a bestselling author of historical fiction, science fiction, children’s books, and nonfiction. He is best known for his highly acclaimed eight-volume Kent Family Chronicles series, an American family saga that reaches from the Revolutionary War to 1890, and the North and South Trilogy, which follows two families from different regions during the American Civil War. His commitment to historical accuracy and evocative storytelling earned him the title “godfather of historical novelists” from the
Los Angeles Times
and led to his streak of sixteen consecutive
New York Times
bestsellers.

Born in Chicago in 1932, Jakes originally studied to be an actor, but he turned to writing professionally after selling his first short story for twenty-five dollars during his freshman year at Northwestern University. That check, Jakes later said, “changed the whole direction of my life.” He enrolled in DePauw University’s creative writing program shortly thereafter and graduated in 1953. The following year, he received his master’s degree in American literature from Ohio State University.  

While at DePauw, Jakes met Rachel Ann Payne, whom he married in 1951. After finishing his studies, Jakes worked as a copywriter for a large pharmaceutical company before transitioning to advertising, writing copy for several large firms, including Madison Avenue’s Dancer Fitzgerald Sample. At night, he continued to write fiction, publishing two hundred short stories and numerous mystery, western, and science fiction books. He turned to historical fiction, long an interest of his, in 1973 when he started work on
The Bastard
, the first novel of the Kent Family Chronicles. Jakes’s masterful hand at historical fiction catapulted
The Bastard
(1974) onto the bestseller list—with each subsequent book in the series matching
The Bastard
’s commercial success. Upon publication of the next three books in the series—
The Rebels
(1975),
The Seekers
(1975), and
The Furies
(1976)—Jakes became the first-ever writer to have three books on the
New York Times
bestseller list in a single year. The series has maintained its popularity, and there are currently more than fifty-five million copies of the Kent Family Chronicles in print worldwide.

Jakes followed the success of his first series with the North and South Trilogy, set before, during, and after the Civil War. The first volume,
North and South
, was published in 1982 and reaffirmed Jakes’s standing as a “master of the ancient art of story telling” (
The New York Times Book Review
). Following the lead of
North and South
, the other two books in the series,
Love and War
(1984) and
Heaven and Hell
(1987), were chart-topping bestsellers. The trilogy was also made into an ABC miniseries—a total of thirty hours of programming—starring Patrick Swayze. Produced by David L. Wolper for Warner Brothers
North and South
remains one of the highest-rated miniseries in television history.

The first three Kent Family Chronicles were also made into a television miniseries, produced by Universal Studios and aired on the Operation Prime Time network. Andrew Stevens starred as the patriarch of the fictional family. In one scene, Jakes himself appears as a scheming attorney sent to an untimely end by villain George Hamilton.

In addition to historical fiction, Jakes penned many works of science fiction, including the Brak the Barbarian series, published between 1968 and 1980. Following his success with the Kent Family Chronicles and the North and South Trilogy, Jakes continued writing historical fiction with the stand-alone novel
California Gold
and the Crown Family Saga (
Homeland
and its sequel,
American Dreams
).

Jakes remains active in the theater as an actor, director, and playwright. His adaptation of
A Christmas Carol
is widely produced by university and regional theaters, including the prestigious Alabama Shakespeare Festival and theaters as far away as Christchurch, New Zealand. He holds five honorary doctorates, the most recent of which is from his alma mater Ohio State University. He has filmed and recorded public service announcements for the American Library Association and hasreceived many other awards, including a dual Celebrity and Citizen’s Award from the White House Conference on Libraries and Information and the Cooper Medal from the Thomas Cooper Library at the University of South Carolina. Jakes is a member of the Authors Guild, the Dramatists Guild, the PEN American Center, and Writers Guild of America East. He also serves on the board of the Authors Guild Foundation.

Jakes and his wife have four children and eleven grandchildren. After living for thirty-two years on a South Carolina barrier island, they now reside in Sarasota, Florida, where Jakes has resumed his volunteer work on behalf of theaters and libraries while he continues writing.