April Morning (9 page)

Father stopped at the edge of the common, and took hold of my arm. “Adam—” he began.

“Yes, sir?”

“I don't know how to say what I have got to say to you. I'm certain that nothing will happen. But something could happen, and you might have a heavy burden.”

I nodded.

Then Father put his arm around my shoulder and held me to him for a moment. It was as close as he had ever come to a gesture of real affection and it made him uneasy and he began to complain about the night air and how it always gave him catarrh. We started across the common, and the Reverend joined us.

“Adam,” he said to me, “I'm glad to see you with us. I have found that when adversity confronts them, the Cooper men stand firmly. God bless you.”

It was a thoughtful thing to say, and it made me feel better. I suppose that when someone like the Reverend really applies himself to his job, he gets into the habit of saying the right thing at the right time—something I was never good at. It made me regretful that I had no predilection for the cloth.

“Would you know the time, Reverend?” my father asked.

“Close to four o'clock, I think.”

The Reverend carried no gun or victuals, nor did he appear to be downcast. He put his arm through mine, and we walked toward the little cluster of men already gathered in the center of the common. At the same time, Cousin Simmons came from another direction, carrying an iron torch with a pitch cup at the top of it. He thrust this into the ground, and the flare of the pitch drove back the darkness and cast a circle of light upon the muster area. Already, at least two-score men were present, and others were coming by ones and twos from all directions. It had seemed to me that what with the nighttime and the distance some families were from the village, we would not muster more than fifty men, but it turned out that before dawn seventy men were on the common in the muster.

As we approached them, I noticed that they were standing around in clusters, shivering a little in the predawn chill, trying to be casual and make out that this kind of a nighttime call to arms and muster was an ordinary thing that a man might expect any night of the year. The older men were talking about everything and anything, and the younger men and the boys were listening; and those telling stories tried to make themselves out as men of the world and men of wide and varied experience, even though everyone had known everyone else for the best part of their lives and even though hardly anyone in the group had been much farther from home than Boston or Providence. Caleb Harrington was telling the story—which I had heard in one variation or another at least five times already—about the redcoat soldier who went into the Rumpot in Boston and ordered boiled pudding and cheese. There was a great deal of disdain among us concerning the wretched food the British seemed to enjoy and their lack of taste or discrimination when it came to food. This tavern-keeper in the story was a sturdy Committeeman, and he brought the soldier a maize pudding left over from the week before, and a cut of cheddar cheese his wife had been saving for the rattrap. Boston rats are known for their strong stomachs. Well, the redcoat took a bite of the pudding and swore some choice London oaths, and said he had never tasted the like of it. The tavernkeeper told him it was Indian pudding, and begged him to try the cheese. The redcoat took a bite of the cheese and turned purple, and the tavernkeeper said it was Indian cheese and calculated to take the hair off your head. The redcoat was in a real fury by now and calling Colonials a colorful assortment of names. Now the tavern-keeper palmed an old scalp he had been keeping, leaned over the soldier, and came back holding up the scalp which he placed on the table. That was the kind of a story it was, and I thought it lacked humor as well as other things, but it raised a great laugh out of the men there. Someone else started another story immediately.

I saw Jonathan Crisp and Abel Loring, and I wondered whether I looked as small and cold and uneasy as they did. I went over to them, and we exchanged greetings very seriously. Abel Loring had a British supply musket, with the bayonet stuck in his belt. He was a year older than I, but much smaller, and he grinned sheepishly as he showed me the bayonet.

“I don't know what to do with it,” he confessed.

“Can't you just see him sticking that into a redcoat belly?” Jonathan Crisp guffawed.

Abel Loring turned a shade whiter and admitted that the very thought of sticking it into anything made him want to throw up.

“He's done that already.”

I never had liked Jonathan Crisp.

“The trouble is,” said Abel, “that I'm afraid to sit down.”

“Why don't you just throw it away?”

“I can't do that. It's Committee property.”

Jonathan Crisp took out his pocket watch, a present from his rich uncle on his mother's side, who was a chandler in Boston. “Ten minutes to four,” he said, as if all the minutes in the hour were his own and exclusive possession.

Then the Cosden brothers came over to us, and I left them and walked over to where Father stood with Cousin Simmons, Jonas Parker, Samuel Hodley, Simon Casper and the Reverend. Simon Casper lived in Concord, but he had been on the long march to Quebec during the French War, and he had volunteered to help train the militia in our town. He had ridden over by night after the news reached him, and he had somehow found time to put on his old green army coat and his big cocked hat. He was the only one among us who had any semblance of a military appearance.

I stood a little distance away, still not completely certain that Father wouldn't change his mind. Either this was an unusually cold April night, or else any April night was provokingly cold when you went without sleep and spent your hours standing in a damp field. I pulled my jacket close and put my hands in my pockets, and when they closed around the bread, I suddenly felt starvation hungry and unable to endure another moment without eating.

We made good bread in our town. For one thing, the whole wheat berry was stone ground, not into fine flour but into a sort of meal. Mother kept a wooden sour tub, in which she mixed her dough and set it to rise. Every family had their own sour tub then, and that gave each bread its own character, each a little different from any other. Mother sweetened her bread with honey, salted it strongly for keeping, and mixed a wet dough. The finished loaf would be brown and heavy and damp inside, and would keep for ten days before it began to go dry and hard. I don't remember anything in all creation as good as that bread during the first few days after baking, and now I broke off small pieces and chewed them, holding my gun under my arm and hoping that no one would notice me.

As it turned out, there was no need for me to worry about Father recalling the unreliable elements of my character and deciding that I would do better home in bed than out here on the common, with a bird gun and my pockets full of bread. He had found a point of deep and constructive difference with Simon Casper. Simon Casper should have known that my father was bored to distraction with local argumentation.

For one thing, aside from the Reverend, there wasn't a man in town could stand up to Father and give and take properly in any dispute. Some of them, like Cousin Simmons, actually disliked arguments and attempted to avoid them whenever possible; others enjoyed a good dispute but were not equipped. And still others had been beaten to a mental pulp so often by Father that they avoided controversy with him the way a whipped dog avoids a fight. But Simon Casper hadn't been around enough for Father to take his measure properly, and when he suggested that the men stand ready with weapons at full cock, Father and the Reverend lined up shoulder to shoulder against him.

“There's nothing in the world more dangerous and uncertain than a cocked gun,” Father stated.

“It's a case of preparedness,” said Jonas Parker.

“For what?”

“For whatever's likely to happen,” Casper said.

“Whatever's likely to happen, or even unlikely to happen, is sure enough going to happen when you have a cocked gun in your hand.”

“The point is,” the Reverend put in, “that it mustn't happen.” He raised his voice somewhat, so that anyone within a dozen paces could hear him. “The British are coming. That's right. We have more certain information than before. Two hours ago, they were forming up their ranks on this side of the river. We don't know exactly how many, but it could be almost a thousand men. Whatever my own thoughts on this matter were, it doesn't matter now. We have decided to spell out our principles with our presence. We have done no misdeeds, only stood by certain rights and privileges that are granted to us by the Almighty God and the struggles of our fathers. We are required to be firm and calm—but not to die. Ours is a way of life, not of death.”

There were a good many “Amens,” and I don't mind saying that the Reverend's words cheered me enormously, but Simon Casper wasn't satisfied. He said that if you were going to fight, you had to make up your mind about it.

“We're not here to start a war,” Father said, “but to prevent one.”

“Then we ought to take to cover and close the shutters behind us.”

“All I'm asking,” Father said, “is to avoid accidents. I'm saying that we don't cock guns or handle triggers. We show ourselves here, plain, firm, and quiet. We talk. This is our village and our land.”

“You and I know that,” Casper said. “But do the British?”

“And you aim to teach them that with a few dozen men against a thousand?” Father said with quiet contempt. “Let me tell you something, Simon Casper.” He waved an arm at the dark shadows of houses around the common. “Those are our homes, and inside them are our wives and children. So move gently before you come here with a war. Move gently.”

He was disgusted with the man in the green coat. It was not even an argument. The Reverend drew him away, and I trailed after them. “Easier to let the devil out of the bottle,” the Reverend said, “than to persuade him back inside.”

“I hate fools. Blame the devil, Reverend, but I tell you that three-quarters of the misery of mankind is the result of plain damned foolishness.” He drew out his watch and tried to see the hands. “What do you make it, Reverend? I have lost me a day somewhere. This is Wednesday morning?”

“Wednesday morning.”

Father glanced at me briefly—as if to say something that he thought better of. In a low voice, the Reverend said to him:

“They were here tonight.”

“Who?”

“Sam Adams and John Hancock.”

“Oh, no,” Father said. “Now what in heaven's name were they doing here?”

The Reverend shrugged, the gesture saying better than words that these were two men with their own ways.

“Where were they?”

“At my house.”

“And now?”

“I didn't want them here,” the Reverend said bitterly. “Would you want them here, Moses?”

“We got our troubles here.”

“So it seemed to me. I can't understand any more how this started and the way it is building up. Who chose tonight? Ourselves? The devil? The British? No, I didn't want them here, and I told them to go to Burlington—”

“They left?”

“About an hour ago, Moses. They have their problems and we have ours.”

Some of ours were approaching. Jonas Parker came over, with Samuel Hodley and Cousin Simmons trailing behind. Cousin Simmons came to me and put an arm around my shoulder. “It's a long night, Adam,” he smiled.

“The longest.”

“Are you angry, Moses?” Jonas Parker asked.

“I get impatient with stupidity, not angry,” Father replied, but the other way around would have been fairer. He couldn't abide what he considered a stupid man, and he never stayed put long enough to qualify for impatience.

“No use calling this one stupid or that one smart. It's too late.”

“That's a fact,” the Reverend nodded.

“The point is,” Jonas Parker went on, “that we ought to decide who is going to do the talking—the Committee or the militia.”

“I thought you decided that,” my father said. “I've noticed that a man with a gun usually shortens his arguments.”

“That's no way to talk, Moses. You've got a gun and so has your son Adam.”

“And I pray to God I'll not have to use it.”

“As we all do,” the Reverend said soothingly. “I think you'll grant, Moses, that Jonas here raised the question of a spokesman himself.”

“That's fair enough,” Cousin Simmons added.

My father appeared mollified, and offered a compromise. He and the Reverend would talk for everyone.

“I'd hardly call that a compromise,” said Simon Casper, who had joined the group. “Why not one from the militia and one from the Committee?” Since he was a Concord man, it seemed to me that he was being a little pushy, and perhaps felt that he ought to be the spokesman for everyone. He was not a likable man. He made me nervous, and I think he made others nervous as well. But finally, they all settled on the Reverend. For one thing, he was unarmed, and would thus be in himself a physical proposal for a peaceful exchange. He would talk for the Committee, the town and the militia as well, since his congregation included practically everybody. I must say that I didn't envy him, having to stand out in front with no gun or way of defending himself, but he appeared to be relieved at the suggestion.

“There's only one thing that troubles me somewhat,” the Reverend said. “Suppose they see us out here, but just decide to ignore us and march on past us up the road. After all, it's plain enough, from all I hear, that they're interested in Concord, where the stores are. Well, what then?”

“By God, then we stop them!” Simon Casper declared.

“Oh, man, use the brains God gave you,” my father said, and Casper bristled and said he was sick and tired of listening to Moses Cooper's insults.