The Mostly True Adventures of Homer P. Figg (20 page)

“Is it really you?” he asks, prodding my shoulder. “Is it really Homer Figg? They said a boy named Figg.”

At first I do not recognize him, so changed is he.

“It’s me, Webster B. Willow,” he says. “Formerly a clergyman. Formerly acting on behalf of your guardian, Mr. Brewster. Formerly robbed and abandoned by the beautiful Kate Nibbly and her so-called brother. Now enlisted for my sins as Private Willow of the Fifth Maine, and come to beg for your forgiveness in case I am killed in the fighting.”

He removes his forage cap and looks at the ground, as if ashamed to meet my eyes.

“It is I who was robbed and abandoned,” I remind him, sitting up.

He nods miserably. “You tried to warn me but I was a fool. Still am a fool, no doubt. Mr. Brewster trusted me to look after you and I failed to do so.”

“How long were you married?”

He shudders. “A few hours. Long enough to know I had been duped. Frank and Kate vanished as soon as we departed the ship. I searched for them on Park Avenue. Presented myself at the Nibbly mansion, like a fool, still hoping we had been separated by accident, and was told enough to glean the truth. Their real name, whatever it is, cannot be Nibbly.”

“How did you find me?” I ask, still a little groggy from sleep.

“Someone mentioned a boy named Figg, searching for his brother. To be truthful, I debated most of the night whether or not I should make myself known to you.”

“I still ain’t found Harold.”

Private Willow shifts uncomfortably and clears his skinny throat. “That’s the other thing I have to tell you. After I was mustered in New York, joining this regiment, I briefly met another new recruit named Harold Figg. We were on the same troop train for part of a journey. He looks a lot like you, but larger, of course — I recognized him at a glance.”

“You met my brother? Where is he? Did you say I was coming to get him?”

Private Willow shakes his head in misery. “I, um, I failed to confess to him my association with you. Out of shame and despair.”

“I don’t care about that!” I say, leaping to my feet. “Where’s Harold?”

Private Willow finally looks me in the eye. “He is with Colonel Chamberlain’s men. The Twentieth Maine. They are marching from Hanover and should be here in a few hours time.”

It takes a moment for me to understand what he’s saying. “So Harold wasn’t in Gettysburg yesterday when it all started? He ain’t been in the battle yet? He ain’t been wounded or killed?”

Private Willow puts on his forage cap and sets it straight. He shoulders his rifle and throws his narrow shoulders back, as if at attention. “I cannot say how your brother fares, young sir, but his regiment has not yet joined the battle. They must do so today. Today we all fight, every last man of us. The Johnny Rebs will do the same. Many thousands are sure to die.”

“Are you afraid?” I ask.

He hesitates. “Not as much as I was, having spoken to you. But mighty fearful just the same.”

I take Private Willow’s hand and give it a quick squeeze. “I have seen the elephant and you got nothing to be feared of,” I tell him.

That’s a lie, but I owed him one, and hopeful lies don’t count as bad.

T
HANKS TO
P
RIVATE
W
ILLOW
, when the 20th Maine Infantry Regiment comes marching into Gettysburg, I’m there at the Hanover Road, waiting to greet them.

They come along at a brisk march, three hundred and fifty men with a drum and fife keeping time as they kick up the dust. They’ve been on the road for hours and look tired but determined. Some raise cheers, anxious to join the fight.

Searching for my brother’s face among them, I’m thinking all of my adventures have been worth it because I got here in time to stop Harold dying in battle. Surely he will be amazed to see me, and want to know how his little brother beat him to the war.

“Harold!” I cry. “Harold Figg!”

There’s a fearsome-looking sergeant carrying the regiment flag, holding it high and proud. He tries to ignore me, but after the men are told to be “at ease,” he plants the flag in the ground and crosses his big arms and gives me a stern look. “What do you want, boy? Don’t you know this is a war? Go on home to your mother!”

“I want to see my brother, Harold Figg!” I insist. “He started out as a private but it’s certain he’s been promoted by now.”

The sergeant gets a look on his face like he’s swallowed a bad egg. He spits prodigiously and snarls, “Harold Figg, bah! He’s been promoted all right. Promoted to the rear!”

“Promoted to corporal? Or is it colonel?”

“He’s in irons, you young fool!” the sergeant roars. “Arrested and under guard! Now be off, afore the fighting starts! Away with you!”

Harold arrested? I assume the burly sergeant is having a joke at my expense. A bad, cruel joke. But when I go around to the back of the regiment, where some rickety wagons and a few horses have been brought up to join the fight, another soldier tells me that if I want to see Private Harold Figg I will have to parlay with the guards.

In one of the wagons, under guard of three armed soldiers, are five or six prisoners, each with a large, crude
M
chalked upon his blue uniform.

“
M
is for mutineer,” a guard tells me, showing me his piece of chalk. “That’s my idea. The
M
will be something to aim at if they try running away, ha-ha.”

The guard’s laughter is cruel, as if he thinks he’s made a funny joke and doesn’t care who it hurts.

One of the prisoners, a scurvy-looking fellow with a black eye, is my brother, Harold. When I call his name he covers his face and weeps.

A
LL MY LIFE,
I
NEVER KNEW
Harold to be scared or ashamed, and seeing him this way is like stepping backward off a cliff. Or discovering the world has gone inside out and upside down. I sit next to where he crouches in the wagon and try not to look at his black eye, or notice the sickly unwashed smell of him.

“Homer, what are you doing here?” he asks, his voice catching.

“Thought I’d take a stroll behind the barn and this is where I ended up.” I give him a playful nudge. “I come looking for you, silly! To tell you it was nothing but a trick, making you enlist in the army. Squint sold you for a substitute and kept the money. They fooled you into enlisting. It ain’t legal.”

Harold hangs his head. His voice is so small I have to lean in close. “Don’t matter now, Homer. I went and done it and will be court-martialed.”

“What happened?” I ask. “Did you run from the bullets? Did you run from the cannon? From men with bayonets?”

My brother shakes his head. Somewhere in all his sorrow there comes a slight chuckle. “Disobeyed my squad sergeant. I swear he’s worse than Squint.”

“Is that what happened to your eye?”

He nods. “At first I liked it, being in the regiment. The fine uniform and the drilling. Shooting rifles. Three good meals a day. Sleeping in tents. I even like the marching, and folks cheering as we went by. But I never did like the sergeant telling me what to do without so much as a ‘please’ or ‘thank you,’ and one day I told him so. When he objected I slung him down in the mud, just like I did to Squint. It got worse from there,” he adds. “He took it upon himself to make my life a misery. Said I was swamp trash not fit to serve.”

“So you ran away?”

“Didn’t get far, as you can see.”

“What will happen?”

“It doesn’t matter, little brother. I am disgraced. You must leave here and forget you ever knew me.”

“Don’t be stupid. That sergeant has knocked the sense right out of you.”

“I mean it, Homer. You need to get away from here! Whatever happened yesterday, whatever you might have seen, it’s nothing to what will happen today and tomorrow, and every day until one side or the other is defeated.”

“Couldn’t be worse than yesterday,” I tell him.

“Oh yes, it could! The Union has ninety thousand men and will use them all. The rebels a similar number. Can’t you hear the artillery pounding away? It has started already.”

“It ain’t fair,” I say.

“Fair doesn’t signify. I swore an oath and disobeyed. I must be punished.”

“Do they hang mutineers?”

“Sometimes. Mostly not. Likely they’ll send me to prison.”

Up to now I’ve been trying to act cheerful, pretending things ain’t so bad. But the prospect of Harold being sent off to prison in disgrace makes me gloomy and quiet. Probably they won’t let me go off to prison with him. I’ll have to visit, and smuggle in a saw so he can make his escape. Then we’ll run away, as far as we can get. As far as the Western Territories, maybe, where land is free and nobody cares what happened in the war. We’ll grow so much corn that we’ll get fat as ticks, and build us a fine house with a fireplace and windows and a proper privy. We’ll fish in mountain streams for trout as big as dogs, and someday we’ll sit in rockers on the porch and reminisce about the silly old days when the stupid rotten sergeant blacked his eye, and how we made our great escape. Maybe on horseback, or in a silk balloon, I ain’t decided which yet.

“It will be all right,” I tell him. “Our Dear Mother always said things work out for the best.”

Harold gives me a sorrowful look. “You were barely four years old when Mother passed. How can you know what she said, or what she believed?”

“I know because you told me.”

He nods to himself, as if he already knew what I would say. “I am sorry, Homer. I have let you down.”

“Don’t be silly. Squint sold you into the army. It ain’t your fault.”

“You don’t understand,” he says, sounding mournful. “I let it happen. I knew it was a sham, and could have said so before I joined the regiment. But I wanted to be shut of the farm, and our hard life. I wanted to breathe air that had never been dirtied by Squinton Leach.”

“Oh,” I say.

“There’s worse.” He hesitates, then takes a deep breath and continues. “For once in my life I wanted not to have to take care of you. Not to be your brother and your mother and your father all rolled into one. I wanted out, Homer. I saw my chance and took it.”

Poor Harold looks so miserable I can’t hardly stand it. Besides, the things he’s telling me don’t exactly come as a big surprise. I sort of knew it all along, that he wanted to get away from Squint, and not to always be having to look after his little brother.

I say, “It don’t matter because you don’t have to take care of me no more. It’s my turn to take care of you.”

Harold studies me and shakes his head and smiles a little. “How’d you get here, really? A boy your age that never left the farm?”

I’m about to tell him the story of my true adventures, and all the fun and sorrows I had along the way, when an officer starts shouting out commands.

“Men of the Twentieth Maine, move out! We are shifting to the left! Keep formation! Keep formation!”

The guards kick me out of the prisoner wagon, but chase me no farther than a few yards. It is easy enough to follow as the regiment picks up and moves, along with the rest of the brigade.

There are thousands of soldiers below the crest of the hill, awaiting orders. Men from Maine and New York, Pennsylvania and Vermont, Massachusetts and Connecticut, Michigan and Illinois, and just about everywhere in the Northern states. The sound of rifle and artillery fire coming from the other side of the ridge is more or less continuous, and the men seem eager to join the fight.

This is the day, they tell one another. Today we stand our ground. Today we turn the tables on Robert E. Lee. Today we win the war.

I feel like tugging on sleeves and saying don’t be in such a hurry, the bullets are faster than you. But I keep my mouth shut and my eyes on the prisoner wagon, trying to scheme up a plan to break Harold out of his confinement.

A little while later I see the wounded being carried back from the top of the hill, and it comes to me that maybe being a prisoner and mutineer ain’t such a bad thing to be. Nobody’s shooting at them. Could be worse.

Then worse himself comes charging up on a big gray horse. Colonel Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain, the young commander of the 20th Maine, all fitted out with his sword and pistols and his fancy big mustache, and his eyes glowing like he’s been to Heaven and seen the other side.