CHAPTER IV
ANTIETAM
On all the other farms roundabout, this mid-August was a slack season.The hired men and boys did a little early fruit-picking, a littleberrying, a little stone-drawing, but for the most part they could beseen idling about the woods or along the river down below Juno Mills,with gun or fish-pole. Only upon the one farm whose turn it was thatweek to be visited by the itinerant threshing-machine, was any specialactivity visible.
It was well known, however, that we were not to get thethreshing-machine at all. How it was managed, I never understood.Perhaps the other farmers combined in some way to over-awe or persuadethe owners of the machine into refusing it to Abner Beech. More likelyhe scented the chance of a refusal and was too proud to put himself inits way by asking. At all events, we three--Abner, Hurley, and I--hadto manage the threshing ourselves, on the matched wood floor of thecarriage barn. All the fishing I did that year was in the prolific butunsubstantial waters of dreamland.
I did not work much, it is true, with the flail, but I lived all dayin an atmosphere choked with dust and chaff, my ears deafened withthe ceaseless whack! whack! of the hard wood clubs, bringing on freshshocks of grain, and acting as general helper.
By toiling late and early we got this task out of the way just when thecorn was ready to cut. This great job taxed all the energies of the twomen, the one cutting, the other stacking, as they went. My own share ofthe labor was to dig the potatoes and pick the eating-apples--a quiteportentous enough undertaking for a lad of twelve. All this kept mevery much to myself. There was no chance to talk during the day, andat night I was glad to drag my tired limbs off to bed before the girlshad fairly cleared the supper things away. A weekly newspaper--_TheWorld_--came regularly to the post-office at the Corners for us, but wewere so over-worked that often it lay there for weeks at a time, andeven when someone went after it, nobody but Abner cared to read it.
So far as I know, no word ever came from Jeff. His name was nevermentioned among us.
It was now past the middle of September. Except for the fall ploughingon fields that were to be put to grass under the grain in thespring--which would come much later--the getting in of the root crops,and the husking, our season's labors were pretty well behind us. Thewomen folk had toiled like slaves as well, taking almost all thechores about the cattle-barns off our shoulders, and carrying on thebutter-making without bothering us. Now that a good many cows weredrying up, it was their turn to take things easy, too. But the girls,instead of being glad at this, began to borrow unhappiness over thecertainty that there would be no husking-bees on the Beech farm.
One heard no other subject discussed now, as we sat of a night in thekitchen. Even when we foregathered in the living-room instead, theBabcock and the Underwood girl talked in ostentatiously low tones ofthe hardship of missing such opportunities for getting beaux, andhaving fun. They recalled to each other, with tones of longing, thisand that husking-bee of other years--now one held of a moonlight nightin the field itself, where the young men pulled the stacks down anddragged them to where the girls sat in a ring on big pumpkins, andmerriment, songs, and chorused laughter chased the happy hours along;now of a bee held in the late wintry weather, where the men went offto the barn by themselves and husked till they were tired, and thenwith warning whoops came back to where the girls were waiting for themin the warm, hospitable farm-house, and the frolic began, with ciderand apples and pumpkin-pies, and old Lem Hornbeck's fiddle to lead thedancing.
Alas! they shook their empty heads and mourned, there would be nomore of these delightful times! Nothing definite was ever said as tothe reason for our ostracism from the sports and social enjoymentsof the season. There was no need for that. We all knew too well thatit was Abner Beech's politics which made us outcasts, but even thesetwo complaining girls did not venture to say so in his hearing.Their talk, however, grew at last so persistently querulous that"M'rye" bluntly told them one night to "shut up about husking-bees,"following them out into the kitchen for that purpose, and speaking withunaccustomed acerbity. Thereafter we heard no more of their grumbling,but in a week or two "Till" Babcock left for her home over on the DutchRoad, and began circulating the report that we prayed every night forthe success of Jeff Davis.
It was on a day in the latter half of September, perhaps the 20th or21st--as nearly as I am able to make out from the records now--thatHurley and I started off with a double team and our big box-wagon, justafter breakfast, on a long day's journey. We were taking a heavy loadof potatoes in to market at Octavius, twelve miles distant; thence wewere to drive out an additional three miles to a cooper-shop and bringback as many butter-firkins as we could stack up behind us, not tomention a lot of groceries of which "M'rye" gave me a list.
It was a warm, sweet aired, hazy autumn day, with a dusky red sunsauntering idly about in the sky, too indolent to cast more than thedimmest and most casual suggestion of a shadow for anything or anybody.The Irishman sat round-backed and contented on the very high seatoverhanging the horses, his elbows on his knees, and a little blackpipe turned upside down in his mouth. He would suck satisfiedly at thisfor hours after the fire had gone out, until, my patience exhausted,I begged him to light it again. He seemed almost never to put any newtobacco into this pipe, and to this day it remains a twin-mystery to mewhy its contents neither burned themselves to nothing nor fell out.
We talked a good deal, in a desultory fashion, as the team ploddedtheir slow way into Octavius. Hurley told me, in answer to thequestions of a curious boy, many interesting and remarkable thingsabout the old country, as he always called it, and more particularlyabout his native part of it, which was on the sea-shore within sightof Skibbereen. He professed always to be filled with longing to goback, but at the same time guarded his tiny personal expenditure withthe greatest solicitude, in order to save money to help one of hisrelations to get away. Once, when I taxed him with this inconsistency,he explained that life in Ireland was the most delicious thing onearth, but you had to get off at a distance of some thousands of milesto really appreciate it.
Naturally there was considerable talk between us, as well, about AbnerBeech and his troubles. I don't know where I could have heard it, butwhen Hurley first came to us I at once took it for granted that thefact of his nationality made him a sympathizer with the views of ourhousehold. Perhaps I only jumped at this conclusion from the generalground that the few Irish who in those days found their way intothe farm-country were held rather at arms-length by the community,and must in the nature of things feel drawn to other outcasts. Atall events, I made no mistake. Hurley could not have well been morevehemently embittered against abolitionism and the war than Abnerwas, but he expressed his feelings with much greater vivacity andfluency of speech. It was surprising to see how much he knew aboutthe politics and political institutions of a strange country, and howexcited he grew about them when anyone would listen to him. But as hewas a small man, getting on in years, he did not dare air these viewsdown at the Corners. The result was that he and Abner were drivento commune together, and mutually inflamed each other's passionateprejudices--which was not at all needful.
When at last, shortly before noon, we drove into Octavius, I jumped offto fill one portion of the grocery errands, leaving Hurley to drive onwith the potatoes. We were to meet at the little village tavern fordinner.
He was feeding the horses in the hotel shed when I rejoined him anhour or so later. I came in, bursting with the importance of the newsI had picked up--scattered, incomplete, and even incoherent news, butof a most exciting sort. The awful battle of Antietam had happenedtwo or three days before, and nobody in all Octavius was talking orthinking of anything else. Both the Dearborn County regiments had beenin the thick of the fight, and I could see from afar, as I stood on theoutskirts of the throng in front of the post-office, some long stripsof paper posted up beside the door, which men said contained a list ofour local dead and wounded. It was hopeless, however, to attempt to getanywhere near this list, and nobody whom I qu
estioned, knew anythingabout the names of those young men who had marched away from our FourCorners. Someone did call out, though, that the telegraph had brokendown, or gone wrong, and that not half the news had come in as yet. Butthey were all so deeply stirred up, so fiercely pushing and hauling toget toward the door, that I could learn little else.
This was what I began to tell Hurley, with eager volubility, as soon asI got in under the shed. He went on with his back to me, impassivelymeasuring out the oats from the bag, and clearing aside the stale hayin the manger, the impatient horses rubbing at his shoulders with theirnoses the while. Then, as I was nearly done, he turned and came out tome, slapping the fodder-mess off his hands.
He had a big, fresh cut running transversely across his nose and cheek,and there were stains of blood in the gray stubble of beard on hischin. I saw too that his clothes looked as if he had been rolled onthe dusty road outside.
"Sure, then, I'm after hearin' the news myself," was all he said.
He drew out from beneath the wagon seat a bag of crackers and a hunk ofcheese, and, seating himself on an overturned barrel, began to eat. Bya gesture I was invited to share this meal, and did so, sitting besidehim. Something had happened, apparently, to prevent our having dinnerin the tavern.
I fairly yearned to ask him what this something was, and what was thematter with his face, but it did not seem quite the right thing todo, and presently he began mumbling, as much to himself as to me, along and broken discourse, from which I picked out that he had mingledwith a group of lusty young farmers in the market-place, asking forthe latest intelligence, and that while they were conversing in awholly amiable manner, one of them had suddenly knocked him down andkicked him, and that thereafter they had pursued him with curses andloud threats half-way to the tavern. This and much more he proclaimedbetween mouthfuls, speaking with great rapidity and in so much moremarked a brogue than usual, that I understood only a fraction of whathe said.
He professed entire innocence of offence in the affair, and eithercould not or would not tell what it was he had said to invite theblow. I dare say he did in truth richly provoke the violence heencountered, but at the time I regarded him as a martyr, and swelledwith indignation every time I looked at his nose.
I remained angry, indeed, long after he himself had altogetherrecovered his equanimity and whimsical good spirits. He waited outsideon the seat while I went in to pay for the baiting of the horses, andit was as well that he did, I fancy, because there were half a dozenbrawny farm-hands and villagers standing about the bar, who werelaughing in a stormy way over the episode of the "Copperhead Paddy" inthe market.
We drove away, however, without incident of any sort--sagaciouslyturning off the main street before we reached the post-office block,where the congregated crowd seemed larger than ever. There seemed tobe some fresh tidings, for several scattering outbursts of cheeringreached our ears after we could no longer see the throng; but, so farfrom stopping to inquire what it was, Hurley put whip to the horses,and we rattled smartly along out of the excited village into thetranquil, scythe-shorn country.
The cooper to whom we now went for our butter-firkins was a long-nosed,lean, and taciturn man, whom I think of always as with his apron tuckedup at the corner, and his spectacles on his forehead, close underthe edge of his square brown-paper cap. He had had word that we werecoming, and the firkins were ready for us. He helped us load them indead silence, and with a gloomy air.
Hurley desired the sound of his own voice. "Well, then, sir," he said,as our task neared completion, "'tis worth coming out of our waythese fifteen miles to lay eyes on such fine, grand firkins as thesesame--such an elegant shape on 'em, an' put together wid such nateness!"
"You could git 'em just as good at Hagadorn's," said the cooper,curtly, "within a mile of your place."
"Huh!" cried Hurley, with contempt, "Haggydorn is it? Faith, we'll nottouch him or his firkins ayether! Why, man, they're not fit to mentionthe same day wid yours. Ah, just look at the darlins, will ye, thatnate an' clane a Christian could ate from 'em!"
The cooper was blarney-proof. "Hagadorn's are every smitch as good!" herepeated, ungraciously.
The Irishman looked at him perplexedly, then shook his head as if theproblem were too much for him, and slowly clambered up to the seat.He had gathered up the lines, and we were ready to start, before anysuitable words came to his tongue.
"Well, then, sir," he said, "anything to be agreeable. If I hear a manspeaking a good word for your firkins, I'll dispute him."
"The firkins are well enough," growled the cooper at us, "an' they'remade to sell, but I ain't so almighty tickled about takin' Copperheadmoney for 'em that I want to clap my wings an' crow over it."
He turned scornfully on his heel at this, and we drove away. The newrevelation of our friendlessness depressed me, but Hurley did not seemto mind it at all. After a philosophic comparative remark about themanners of pigs run wild in a bog, he dismissed the affair from histhoughts altogether, and hummed cheerful words to melancholy tunes halfthe way home, what time he was not talking to the horses or tossingstray conversational fragments at me.
My own mind soon enough surrendered itself to harrowing speculationsabout the battle we had heard of. The war had been going on now, forover a year, but most of the fighting had been away off in Missouriand Tennessee, or on the lower Mississippi, and the reports had notpossessed for me any keen direct interest. The idea of men from ourown district--young men whom I had seen, perhaps fooled with, in thehayfield only ten weeks before--being in an actual storm of shot andshell, produced a faintness at the pit of my stomach. Both DearbornCounty regiments were in it, the crowd said. Then of course our menmust have been there--our hired men, and the Phillips boys, and ByronTruax, and his cousin Alonzo, and our Jeff! And if so many others hadbeen killed, why not they as well?
"Antietam" still has a power to arrest my eyes on the printed page,and disturb my ears in the hearing, possessed by no other battle name.It seems now as if the very word itself had a terrible meaning ofits own to me, when I first heard it that September afternoon--as ifI recognized it to be the label of some awful novelty, before I knewanything else. It had its fascination for Hurley, too, for presentlyI heard him crooning to himself, to one of his queer old Irish tunes,some doggerel lines which he had made up to rhyme with it--three lineswith "cheat 'em," "beat 'em," and "Antietam," and then his pet refrain,"Says the Shan van Vocht."
This levity jarred unpleasantly upon the mood into which I had workedmyself, and I turned to speak of it, but the sight of his bruised noseand cheek restrained me. He had suffered too much for the faith thatwas in him to be lightly questioned now. So I returned to my grislythoughts, which now all at once resolved themselves into a convictionthat Jeff had been killed outright. My fancy darted to meet thisnotion, and straightway pictured for me a fantastic battle-field bymoonlight, such as was depicted in Lossing's books, with overturnedcannon-wheels and dead horses in the foreground, and in the centre,conspicuous above all else, the inanimate form of Jeff Beech, with itsface coldly radiant in the moonshine.
"I guess I'll hop off and walk a spell," I said, under the suddenimpulse of this distressing visitation.
It was only when I was on the ground, trudging along by the side of thewagon, that I knew why I had got down. We were within a few rods of theCorners, where one road turned off to go to the post-office. "Perhapsit'd be a good idea for me to find out if they've heard anything more--Imean--anything about Jeff," I suggested. "I'll just look in and see, andthen I can cut home cross lots."
The Irishman nodded and drove on.
I hung behind, at the Corners, till the wagon had begun the ascent ofthe hill, and the looming bulk of the firkins made it impossible thatHurley could see which way I went. Then, without hesitation, I turnedinstead down the other road which led to "Jee" Hagadorn's.