Across Five Aprils (4 page)

“It’s too early fer Shad to be gittin’ back from Newton,” Ellen said, rubbing her eyes. “Kin you make out whose team it is, Jeth?”

“Not anybody from right around here,” he answered. “Sure is a fine, high-steppin’ team though.”

They watched curiously as the wagon approached, the team obviously being checked as the driver saw Ellen and Jethro beside the fence. Then, as the wagon came to a stop beside them, a young man rose from the seat and swept off his hat.

“Ain’t you folks up here in Illinois a mite behind with yore crops this year, Aunt Ellen?” he called, his voice suggesting laughter.

Ellen’s face broke into a wide smile of recognition.

“Well, in the name of all that’s good—Wilse Graham, whatever brings you up from Kaintuck at this time of year?”

She climbed over the low rails and held out her arms to the young man, who had jumped down from the wagon.

“I had some dealin’s in these parts, Aunt Ellen; I figured it was worth an extry day of drivin’ to see all of you. Think you kin put me and my team up fer the night?”

Jethro could see the pleasure in his mother’s face. This Cousin Wilse Graham was her sister’s son; his visit would mean news of the Kentucky country where Ellen had been born, and of the relatives from whom she so seldom heard. As for Jethro, delight ran up his spine. He didn’t know Wilse Graham, but the man was “comp’ny”; that meant enough to set this day apart from the monotonous routine of many others.

It
was nearly dark by the time all the men were in from the fields and the evening chores done. Jethro lowered a tin bucket into the well at the edge of the barnlot and hauled up clear, cold water for the thirsty horses; then, when the chores were finished, he joined the men who were washing the dust from their faces at the big iron kettle that stood at the side of the well. The two older brothers and Wilse Graham talked as they splashed in the cold water, and Jethro could sense the pleasure they felt in seeing one another again after the lapse of several years.

In the kitchen, Jenny and Nancy hurried about getting the “comp’ny supper” ready. A couple of chickens had been dressed hastily and thrown into the pot; sweet potatoes were set to bake in the hot ashes, and dried apples were cooked in a syrup of wild honey and then topped with thick cream from one of the crocks in the springhouse. Nancy made a flat cake of white flour with a sprinkling of sugar on top, and Jenny pulled tender radishes and onions from her garden to give the taste of spring to their meal.

A coal-oil lamp was lighted and placed in the middle of the table when supper was at last ready; gold light filled the kitchen, pouring from the open fireplace and from the sparkling lamp chimney. Black shadows hung in the adjoining room where the bed had been spread with Ellen’s newest quilt and the pillows dressed in fresh covers in honor of the guest. Jethro was sensitive to color and contrast; the memory of the golden kitchen and the velvet shadows of the room beyond was firmly stamped in his mind.

At the table, the talk for a while was of family affairs; there had been a death of someone in Kentucky who was only a name to Jethro, but a name that brought a shadow to his mother’s face; there were reports of weddings and births, of tragedies, and now and then a happy note of good fortune. Then the conversation began to turn. Slowly and inevitably the troubles of the nation began to move into the crowded little kitchen.

“Will Kaintuck go secesh, Wilse?” Matthew Creighton asked finally, his eyes on his plate.

“Maybe, Uncle Matt, maybe it will. And how will southern Illinois feel about it in case that happens?”

No one answered. Wilse took a drink of water, and then setting the glass down, twirled it a few times between his thumb and fingers.

“It will come hard fer the river states if Missouri and Kaintuck join up with the Confederacy. Ol’ Mississipp’ won’t be the safest place fer north shippin’ down to the Gulf.”

“That’s true, Wilse. That’s in the minds of a lot of us,” Matthew said quietly. Bill’s eyes were fixed on the yellow light around the lamp chimney; John was studying his cousin’s face.

“As fer southern Illinois,” Wilse continued, “you folks air closer by a lot to the folks in Missouri and Kaintuck than you are to the bigwigs up in Chicago and northern Illinois. You’re southern folks down here.”

“We’re from Kaintuck as you well know, Wilse; our roots air in that state. I’d say that eighty percent of the folks in this part of the country count Missouri or Kaintuck or Tennessee as somehow bein’ their own. But this separation, Wilse, it won’t do. We’re a union; separate, we’re jest two weakened, puny pieces, each needin’ the other.”

“We was a weak and puny country eighty odd years ago when the great-granddaddy of us young’uns got mixed up in a rebel’s fight. Since then we’ve growed like weeds in the spring, and what’s happened? Well, I’ll tell you: a half of the country has growed rich, favored by Providence, but still jealous and fearful that the other half is apt to find good fortune too. Face it, Uncle Matt; the North has become arrogant toward the South. The high-tariff industrialists would sooner hev the South starve than give an inch that might cost them a penny.”

Then Ellen’s voice was heard, timid and a little tremulous; farm women didn’t enter often into man-talk of politics or national affairs.

“But what about the downtrodden people, Wilse? Ain’t slavery becomin’ more of a festerin’ hurt each year? Don’t we
hev
to make a move against it?”

“Yore own Ol’ Abe from this fair state of Illinois is talkin’ out of both sides of his mouth—fer the time bein’ anyway.” Wilse brought his hand down sharply on the table. “What the South wants is the right to live as it sees fit to live without interference. And it kin live! Do you think England won’t come breakin’ her neck to help the South in case of war? She ain’t goin’ to see her looms starve fer cotton because the northern industrialists see fit to butt in on a way of life that the South has found good. Believe me, Uncle Matt; the South kin fight fer years if need be—till this boy here is a man growed with boys of his own.”

Young Tom’s face was red with anger, but a warning look from his mother kept him quiet. From the far end of the table, however, John’s voice came, strained and a little unnatural.

“You hev hedged Ma’s question, Cousin Wilse. What about the right and wrong of one man ownin’ the body—and sometimes it looks as if the soul, too—of another man?”

Wilse hesitated a moment, his eyes on the plate of food, which he had barely touched during the last few minutes.

“I’ll say this to you, Cousin John,” he said finally. “I own a few slaves, and if I stood before my Maker alongside one of ’em, I’d hev no way to justify the fact that I was master and he was slave. But leavin’ that final reckonin’ fer the time, let me ask you this: ain’t there been slavery from the beginnin’ of history? Didn’t the men that we give honor to, the men that shaped up the Constitution of our country, didn’t they recognize slavery? Did they see it as a festerin’ hurt?”

“Some of ‘em did, I reckon,” John answered gravely. “I can’t help but believe that some of ’em must not ha’ been comf‘table with them words ‘a peculiar institution.’ ”

“Well then, I’ll ask you this: if tomorrow every slave in the South had his freedom and come up North, would yore abolitionists git the crocodile tears sloshed out of their eyes so they could take the black man by the hand? Would they say, ‘We’ll see that you git good-payin’ work fitted to what you’re able to do—we’ll see that you’re well housed and clothed—we want you to come to our churches and yore children to come to our schools—why, we danged near fergit the difference in the colors of our skins because we air so almighty full of brotherly love!’ Would it be like that in yore northern cities, Cousin John?”

“It ain’t like that fer the masses of white people in our northern cities—nor in the southern cities either. And yet, there ain’t a white man, lean-bellied and hopeless as so many of them are, that would change lots with a slave belongin’ to the kindest master in the South.”

Then Bill spoke for the first time, his eyes still on the yellow light of the lamp.

“Slavery, I hate. But it is with us, and them that should suffer fer the evil they brought to our shores air long dead. What I want us to answer in this year of 1861 is this, John: does the trouble over slavery come because men’s hearts is purer above the Mason-Dixon line? Or does slavery throw a shadder over greed and keep that greed from showin’ up quite so bare and ugly?”

Wilse Graham seemed to leap at Bill’s question. “You’re right, Cousin Bill. It’s greed, not slavery, that’s stirrin’ up this trouble. And as fer human goodness—men’s hearts is jest as black today as in the Roman times when they nailed slaves to crosses by the hunderd and left’em there to point up a lesson.”

Matt Creighton shook his head. “Human nature ain’t any better one side of a political line than on the other—we all know that—but human nature, the all-over picture of it, is better than it was a thousand—five hundred—even a hundred years ago. There is an awakenin’ inside us of human decency and responsibility. If I didn’t believe that, I wouldn’t grieve fer the children I’ve buried; I wouldn’t look for’ard to the manhood of this youngest one.”

Jethro felt as if he were bursting with the tumult inside him. The thought of war had given him a secret delight only a matter of hours before; it had meant something of the same kind of joy he had known while watching the young men race their horses up and down the road past the cabin on a Sunday afternoon; or it had meant the kind of excitement that was half-terror when, in the early days of the school term, he had watched Shadrach Yale fight a local bully who was trying to break up classes. Jethro had been half beside himself as he watched the young master feint and parry and finally knock his opponent flat on the frozen ground of the schoolyard. For weeks after that Jethro had practiced secretly at punching an old horsecollar, a sack of oats, anything, even the thin air. He had felt his face grow hot with fury as he battered at his imaginary assailant, and he had felt strong and satisfied afterward as if the fight had sparked some inner reservoir of well-being. War, he had thought, must give men that same feeling of strength and fulfillment. He had sympathized with Tom and Eb, and he had been angered at his father’s command for silence when they grew loud and vehement in their demands for war.

Suddenly he was deeply troubled. He groped toward an understanding of something that was far beyond the excitement of guns and shouting men; but he could not find words to define what he felt, and that lack left him in a turmoil of frustration. He wanted to weep, but one endured a lot before he disgraced himself in that way. He closed his eyes for a second and swayed a little on his chair.

Jenny was at his shoulder then, pouring more milk into the tin cup beside his plate, resting her hand firmly on his arm. He leaned against her for a second and was comforted.

Wilse Graham was speaking again when the din in Jethro’s ears had subsided enough for him to listen.

“... and fer every evil that you kin find fer me in the name of slavery, I’ll match you an evil in the name of industrialism. The South asks only to be left alone...”

“Only to be left alone to carry slavery into every new territory,” John interrupted harshly, “to spread the shame of this land till democracy gits to be a word that only hypocrites kin stomach.”

Bill turned toward his brother. “And must they have the John Browns and the William Lloyd Garrisons and the Charles Sumners fer teachers? We’re from the South, John; would we want men of their kind tellin’ us how we must live?”

John did not answer. The two brothers looked at one another steadily for long seconds; it was as if they had forgotten all the others at the table and that each was searching the other’s face with some pressing need. Tom and Eb squirmed uncomfortably; Wilse Graham crumbled a piece of bread.

Then Ellen spoke. Her voice was no longer tremulous; it carried the authoritative note sharpened by long years of mothering a large family.

“That will be enough, boys. There will be no more talk of war or the troubles leadin’ to war at this table tonight. The rest of our meal we will eat as a fam‘ly that respects one another and honors our comp’ny.”

Wilse Graham touched his aunt’s hand. “I ask yore pardon, Aunt Ellen. It’s been days that I’ve looked for‘ard to hevin’ a meal with you, and here I’ve lost myself in talk that gits me worked up and loud of voice. I didn’t mean fer this to happen; I didn’t, and that’s a fact.”

She smiled at him, gentleness replacing the stern expression in her eyes. “You air as welcome here and as much loved as when you was a lad, Wilse. I know that all of us is troubled, and our feelin’s air runnin’ high; but fer awhile here at the table, let’s steer away from hard talk.”

And so the conversation veered again, awkward and constrained for a while, but it skirted all reference to the troubles of the day. When they finished eating, they rose and went outside to sit in the dooryard where a soft breeze gave them comfort after the heat of the kitchen.

John and Nancy gathered up their two sleepy children and started home. Out on the open road John turned to call that he’d be back later to hear what news might be in the papers Shadrach would be bringing from town.

In the kitchen, Jenny patiently turned to the work of clearing up the supper dishes. Ellen would have helped her, but Bill took his mother by the shoulders and gently pushed her toward the door.

“You go along, Mis’ Creighton,” he said. “Git yoreself a little rest. I’ll give Jenny a hand tonight seein’ that she’s treated us all so fine today.”

Out in the dooryard the conversation continued to be mild. Exhausted, Jethro curled up beside his father and dove into a silent world of sleep. Matt Creighton smoothed the fair hair back from the boy’s forehead and, when the air took on a chill, covered him with an old jacket.