Across Five Aprils

by Irene Hunt

  5

  Ellen lay in her bed, limp with the agony of a headache. It always happened when the supply of coffee ran out. Given a cup of strong, hot coffee, the pain would leave her almost immediately; lacking it, her suffering mounted by the hour until the pain became almost unbearable. Schooled to believe that self-indulgence of any kind was morally unacceptable, Ellen was deeply ashamed of her dependency upon coffee. She tried brewing drinks of roasted grain or roots, but her nervous system was not deceived by a beverage that resembled coffee only in appearance. She tried stretching out her supply by making a very weak drink, but she might as well have drunk nothing; the headaches were prevented only by coffee that was black with strength.

  In late March of 1862, coffee had reached the unheard of price of seventy cents a pound, and the papers predicted that it would rise even higher. Ellen was appalled at the expense.

  “This need fer coffee is an evil hold on me, Matt,” she told her husband on the morning after the last of the coffee grounds had been boiled until they were worthless. “I’m goin’ to suffer it out. I don’t want you to bring ary drop of it to me even if you git hold of some; my body’s jest got to learn.” She closed her eyes as the beginning pangs of her ordeal pounded at her temples.

  She could eat nothing all day. Matt sat beside her, pressing hot wet cloths onto her forehead. Jenny was sober as she went about her work, and Jethro roamed about the barn and woodlot with deep trouble hounding him.

  Toward evening Matt could stand it no longer. “Send the boy down to Nancy’s and ask fer the loan of a little coffee,” he told Jenny. “We can’t let yore ma lay here like this. Send word to Nancy that some of us will go to town to fetch coffee in the mornin’.”

  Jethro took off down the road as soon as Jenny told him of their father’s decision. He ran for a while, and the exercise helped to warm him in the damp rawness of the March evening. He was panting as he approached the little house set back in a clearing of the woods, indistinct among the shadows and the veils of fog that enveloped it.

  Nancy was out at the barnyard gate watching him as he came up to the house. “Air you carryin’ bad news, Jeth?”

  “Jest that Ma is bad with one of her headaches. I come to ask you fer the loan of a little coffee.” He put his shoulder to the heavy gate and helped her close it. “We’ll pay you back tomorrow when we go to town,” he added.

  She hung a milk bucket on the fence post and started toward the darkened house, where the two small boys stood at a window and stared outside.

  “I ain’t lighted up yit,” she said as they walked up the path together. “I don’t like to leave a lamp burnin’ when the little ’uns air alone inside. John warned me about that; he warned me always to be keerful of his boys.”

  In the kitchen she went immediately to her cupboard and took down a small bag of coffee.

  “I don’t use much of this now that John is gone. You tell yore ma that she is welcome to it, and give her my hopes that she will soon feel better.”

  “Seems this is the only medicine that will help her,” Jethro answered. He was shy and ill at ease with Nancy. “I thank you kindly fer the loan of it,” he added.

  The young children pressed close to their mother, and Jethro patted their heads awkwardly. Nancy fondled a hand of the younger one.

  “You must come down with Jenny and play with ‘em a little sometimes, Jeth. They’re lonesome with no pa to romp with ’em; we’re all lonesome hereabouts.” She walked with him out to the road. “Wouldn’t it be wonderful if we was to hear all of a sudden that the war was over, Jeth? Wouldn’t it be pure pleasure to hev things like they used to be, with John and Bill close brothers agin, Tom and Eb carryin’ on in their crazy boy ways, and Shad back a-teachin’ and lookin’ bashful at little Jenny?”

  Jethro had never heard her talk so much as she had in the few minutes he had been there. He looked up at her face, where some of the blond hair had escaped from the dark scarf she wore and lay against her cheeks. He wanted to say something kind and cheerful; but his tongue was tied, and he could only nod his head and hope that she felt his sympathy. When he was down the road a little distance, he turned to look back; she was standing where he’d left her with the rainy wind whipping at her skirt and the ends of her scarf.

  At home Jenny hurried to make a pot of steaming coffee; when it was done, Matt carried a cup of it to Ellen.

  “Drink it, Mother,” he told her. “Drink the coffee, and hev one hour of comfort before this day is over.”

  By the time the evening work was over, the coffee had worked its miracle, and Ellen got up from her bed, white and weak, but released from the pain that had tortured her all day. Jenny took a plate of warm food to her and she ate, slowly at first, then hungrily as she sat beside Matt at the fireplace. They talked together in low voices, as if they had been parted for a long while.

  After a time his father called to Jethro. “Jeth, we need coffee and a passel of other things from town. Do you think you could manage the team and do some chores fer us in Newton tomorrow?”

  It was fifteen miles to Newton; to cover that distance with a team, to do the chores and handle money—that was a man’s job. To be trusted with it was a huge satisfaction.

  “I know I kin do it, Pa. There’s nothin’ hard about it—jest keepin’ a level head and usin’ gumption.”

  His father smiled. “Anyway, you’ve got the words smooth on yore tongue. Well, you air ten now; I reckon that’s old enough to take on a sizable job.”

  His mother’s eyes were thoughtful as she looked up at him; Jethro was afraid that she might interfere, but she didn’t. “I’d be proud to do it fer you, Pa,” he said.

  “All right. Git to yore bed then. We’ll hev to be up by four to ready everything. I don’t allow to call you more than once.”

  They loaded the wagon in cold darkness the next morning. There were canvas sacks of corn—some to be ground for home use, some sold outright to pay for the coffee and sugar, nails, axe-handle, and tobacco that Jenny had written on a list. A few chickens lay in the wagon bed, too, their feet tied together. These Jethro was to trade for calico and thread for Jenny—and mittens for himself, if there was change due him.

  Ellen made him share her coffee that morning, a fragrant cup diluted with hot milk; Jenny cooked a kettle of corn-meal mush and made Jethro’s portion into pudding with a little sugar, ordinarily set aside for company meals, and a covering of rich cream. It was a good breakfast, and he felt warm and confident when he went outside again to the waiting team.

  Off in the early dawn, Jethro’s spirits climbed with the increased tempo of his team’s hoofbeats. He had fifteen miles to travel; master of his team, navigator of his route, he felt proud and exhilarated by his freedom and sense of adventure. The wind of the night before had subsided, and, though the cold was still sharp, it was more endurable. The horses liked it; they pranced a little during the first two miles, heartened by an extra-good breakfast and perhaps conscious of a light hand on the reins.

  People were moving about their morning chores in barn-yards or woodlots; inevitably they stood still, watching the approach of the wagon as it rattled down the road; invariably they waved a hand in greeting and stood watching for a long time after Jethro passed, as if trying to guess whose team it was and whose boy was out on the road at such an early hour.

  Three miles south of Rose Hill an old man waited at the side of the road for the wagon to approach and held up his hand as a signal for Jethro to stop.

  “Be you on yore way to Newton, young feller?”

  “Yes, sir,” Jethro answered, and added the neighborly courtesy he had often heard his father extend, “anything I kin do fer you in town?”

  “Yes, there is. I want ye to bring me ary newspaper ye kin lay yore hands on.” He limped out to the wagon and peered up at Jethro. “Well, now, ain’t ye kind of a young striplin’ to be drivin’ alone down to the big town?”

  “I’m ten,” Jethro answered coolly.

 
“I reckon ye ain’t mor’n that, anyway. Whose boy did ye say ye was?”

  “I’m Matt Creighton’s youngest boy.” He wondered how many times he had made that statement.

  “Matt Creighton’s boy, huh? Well! Yes, I know Matt—knowed him fer a tol’able time.” He laid both hands on the edge of the wagon bed. “Ye got some growed-up brothers in the war, ain’t ye?”

  “Yes, sir. Tom and Eb was with Grant at Donelson; we heered from Tom after the battle. Then there’s my oldest brother, John; he jest enlisted last month.”

  “And wasn’t there one of Matt’s boys that jined up with the Rebs? Seems like I heered of it—”

  Jethro hesitated. “We don’t know fer sure. Bill left last fall. He ain’t never sent us any word.”

  “I see.” The old man smirked a little and nodded as if at his own thoughts. “Well, it’s a sorry thing. Matt Creighton’s a good man, too.”

  Jethro suddenly felt hot with anger. “You want me to pick up a newspaper fer you, do you, mister?” he asked curtly, flicking the lines a little on the horses’ rumps.

  “Well, yes, I do, but ye don’t hev to be in sech a all-fired hurry. I want ye to tell me somethin’. Have ye heered yore folks talkin’ about a battle at this place called Pea Ridge?”

  “My sister and me has read considerable about it in the papers.”

  The old man leaned forward eagerly. “Well, look here, I want ye to tell me about it. I got a grandson under the command of some Dutchman named Sigel. Folks air tellin’ me that my boy must ha’ bin in this here Pea Ridge battle.”

  Jethro had read the account of Pea Ridge only days before. He had copied the map printed in the paper and had learned the names of commanders on both sides, as he followed the report. Jenny had studied it with him, and together they had mastered something of an understanding of the battle; they knew that it was a task Shadrach Yale would have set for them.

  “Yes, there was a general by the name of Sigel at Pea Ridge,” Jethro said, forgetting his anger a little in his interest in instructing the old man. “There was lots of talk about him in the papers. His boys like him; they say ‘I fights mit Sigel’ like it’s a thing they’re proud about.”

  “And this Pea Ridge place—wharabouts is it, boy, do ye happen to know?”

  “It’s in Arkansas, only a little way from the Missouri border.”

  “And was it Grant that led our fellers?”

  “No, sir, it was a general named Curtis. He was the big one, I think, and under him was Sigel and lots of other officers—one of’em by the name of Jefferson Davis.” Jethro laughed a little at the irony.

  “And how about t‘other side? It wasn’t Bobby Lee as led ’em?”

  “No, but there was a passel of Reb generals there; Van Dorn was one of ’em, and McCulloch, and Pike—he’s the one that had a band of Indians fightin’ fer him.”

  “Ye don’t mean to say it!”

  “That’s what the papers said.” Jethro searched his memory for more details of the newspaper accounts. “They claim that this battle clinches Missouri to our side same as Donelson clinched Kaintuck,” he added.

  The old man looked down at the muddy tracks made by the wagon wheels.

  “I don’t know if they’d write the names of boys that got kilt or hurt and put them in the papers—some folks say they don’t—but I allow to be on the lookout. May as well tell ye I cain’t read, but I know my own name in print, and the boy’s got my name. That’s why I try to send fer a paper whenever I see somebody drivin’ into town.”

  “I’ll bring you one fer sure.”

  “Boy like you able to read the war talk, huh?”

  “Yes, sir, middlin’ well.”

  “Wisht ye was around to read me the news. Little neighbor girl comes in now and then and reads to me. She’s got a quick, sassy way o’ readin’; I much doubt that she calls all the words right.” He struggled in the depths of his pocket for a coin. “Don’t ye fergit now—Jake Roscoe’s the name.”

  “I’ll not fergit.” Jethro started his team going; when he had gone a little way, he looked back and waved to the stooped figure at the roadside. The old man waved back timidly.

  The sun was beginning to warm the air a little as Jethro drove on, and it brightened the muddy, brown fields on either side of the road with something that looked like a half-promise of spring. There was a quality about the air which was different from that of the day before, a freshness, almost a hint of fragrance. It was something that gave heart to one who hated the cold dreariness of winter.

  A little distance from Roscoe’s place, the route led through a woods for a little more than two miles, and here the sun’s rays barely got through the great bare branches that overlapped and intertwined above the narrow road. Once when a deer dashed across the path, Jethro was hard put to calm his frightened team; once he caught the red flash of a foxtail as it disappeared in the tangle of low brush under which the last grimy remains of winter snow lay in desolate piles.

  Sometimes the wagon wheels sank deep in the mud of a low, wet spot along the road; now and then a wheel passed over a stone or a stump hidden by weeds or tangled vines, and the wagon with its load tilted precariously. Jethro maintained the stoic calm of the farm-bred boy as the wagon swayed; he kept his small, hunched frame in a position of untroubled assurance, whistling a little now and then to prove to himself that his nerves were as nearly iron-like as he wanted to believe they were.

  A quarter of a mile beyond the woods stretch, the road led past the Burdow place. The name, so closely associated with Mary’s death, was one that was never mentioned at home and was perhaps more evil to Jethro by the very fact that it was so carefully shunned. That morning as he looked at the sagging roofs of the house and barn, the general clutter of the ne’er-do-well in the barnyard, he felt a dread as if some evil lay close to the ground on its belly and peered out at him. The physical dangers of the road through the woods he could meet calmly, but his heart pounded as he looked toward the Burdow place, and he urged his team to a trot until they were well beyond it.

  It was nearly eleven o’clock when he drove into Newton, the weatherbeaten old county seat lying on the cliffs above the Embarrass River. In summer, soft skies, hundreds of full-leafed trees, and the winding river combined to give the little town an air of grace, a trace of charm that surmounted the basic ugliness; on that morning in late March when Jethro drove into town, there was no beauty in Newton to soften the view of muddy streets and the stark bleakness of bare trees and unpainted, boxlike cabins. But there were people moving up and down the wooden sidewalks, smoke rising from two or three hundred chimneys, and for a boy accustomed to the loneliness of an isolated farm, the gentle bustle of the place was exciting and full of wonder.

  The town was built around a square in the manner of midwestern county seats, with the jail dominating the center. This was a small log building without doors, where the occupants made their reluctant entrance by way of a trapdoor in the roof. On the four sides of the square surrounding the jail, there were two feed stores, a harness shop, two general stores, a newspaper office, and three saloons. There was a restaurant, too, where cooking was done over an iron stove instead of a fireplace; Jethro had eaten there once when he had come to town with Bill and Shadrach. It had been a wonderful experience, and he looked at the place wistfully as he passed. His father, of course, would never consider spending good money for the extravagance of eating in a restaurant, and Jenny had placed an apple in her brother’s pocket together with a slice of pork between two pieces of corn bread for his noon meal. Well, one did not quarrel with the food which he was blessed to receive, but one could not help sighing a little at the good things of life with which he was not blessed.

  Down on the river at the outskirts of town there was the mill, where Jethro drove first and bargained with the grain according to his father’s instructions. Later, at Gardiner’s general store, the chickens were weighed and exchanged for the calico and thread that Jenny wanted and mittens for h
imself; with the money from the corn he bought first the coffee, ten pounds of sleek, plump beans in a heavy canvas bag—then the sugar, nails, axe-handle, and tobacco. He watched Sam Gardiner bring out a can of coal oil for another customer and guard against the possibility of the oil’s splashing out by fixing a lump of gumdrop candy over the spout. The waste of such precious material cut Jethro like a knife. Maybe Sam Gardiner understood the look on the boy’s face; at all events he scooped up a handful of gum-drops and put them in the package with the other things.

  A half dozen men sat around the fireplace at one end of the store or leaned against the counters and cracker barrels. Jethro recognized Ross Milton, the red-haired editor of the county paper. Milton was crippled with arthritis, and his face had lines of suffering in it; but Jethro noticed that his voice was crisp and decisive, and that there was an air of assurance about him that set him apart from the other men.

  He was watching the editor curiously when suddenly the name “Burdow” struck his ears, and he realized that a silent, burly giant of a man on the outer edge of the circle was the father of Travis Burdow. The man looked as if he had lived in filth for a lifetime, and Jethro felt a loathing that was new to him. He tried not to look in Burdow’s direction, but time and again his eyes went back, even at the cost of a great unrest inside him.

  The men paid little attention to Jethro as he made his purchases; finally, though, one of them slapped the boy’s leg playfully with a folded newspaper when he approached the group for one of the items on his list.