Across Five Aprils

by Irene Hunt

  The autumn months approached the end of the year in gloom. Fields of green corn turned yellow, and the leaves, withered during the frosty nights, rattled as if in protest as Jethro drove his wagon down the rows and piled it high with full golden ears.

  Antietam was over—a name for future history books, a battle at which men in later years, blessed with the advantage of hindsight, would wonder. Jethro, in his manhood, would learn of the incompetence, the blindness, and the ghastly waste of life that followed a lost opportunity; in the autumn of ’62 he only knew that Antietam seemed much like Shiloh—a Federal victory in which one was hard put to find a step toward final triumph and peace.

  The career of General McClellan was almost over, too; it would rise with another spurt later on, but that fall the papers blazed with the news that the President had relieved the general of his command, and the name that had outshone all others now plummeted into near-obscurity. Now another man dominated the headlines briefly—very briefly. The new name was that of Ambrose Burnside.

  In December Jethro looked for another river and another town in Shadrach’s atlas. The river was the Rappahannock in Virginia; the little town lying on the river was Fredericksburg.

  The stories of the battle were ones that brought despair to the North. Fredericksburg had been undertaken with little probability of success, the papers claimed; nothing could have been expected under the shabby plans—if, indeed, they were plans—other than appalling slaughter. But Burnside was a stubborn man, determined perhaps to show action and confidence where McClellan had shown hesitancy and uncertainty. Wave after wave of men were sent up the slopes of a chain of hills from the tops of which the entrenched Confederates mowed the Federals down until the ground was piled high with blue-clad bodies. Rumor was that this general, far back from the line of battle, had insisted that still more divisions be sent up the deadly hills, but that he was finally dissuaded by officers of lower rank and keener perception.

  Shadrach must have been at Fredericksburg; there could be little doubt of it. The family waited for days, during which Jethro’s waking thoughts were filled with foreboding and his dreams with troubled anxiety. Jenny went about her work silently, and although there was work enough to tire the healthiest of young bodies, she took to going for long walks alone through the wintry fields, as Bill had once done. There was nothing one could say to comfort her.

  Finally a letter came, word from Shadrach that he was safe. He wrote:It is unfortunate that congressmen and their ladies should have been deprived of this spectacle. There was drama here, I can tell them-thousands upon thousands of us crossing the Rappahannock with banners flying, drums rolling, and our instruments of death gleaming in the sunlight. They could have seen those thousands scrambling up the innocent-looking wooded hills and falling like toy soldiers brushed over by a child’s hand; thousands of young men whose dreams and hopes were snuffed out in a second and who will be remembered only as simple soldiers who fell in a cruel, futile battle directed by men who can hardly be called less than murderers. I should not like to live with Ambrose Burnside’s thoughts—though one wonders if his conscience is not protected by a thick covering of stubborn self-righteousness. Need I say that the men in the Army of the Potomac do not cheer General Burnside?

  In Tennessee there was a place called Stones River; John was there, and in the early days of 1863 he wrote to Nancy of what had happened in that battle. He wrote of a commander named Rosecrans (Old Rosy, the men called him) who had repulsed Van Dorn (the Van Dorn of Pea Ridge, Jethro thought) when the Confederates attempted to retake Corinth, and had later replaced Don Carlos Buell when Buell, too much the McClellan type of general, had been relieved of his command. John wrote of bitter cold and suffering that had finally ended with a victory of sorts when the Confederate General Bragg had left in full retreat, stopped short in his move toward Kentucky. Stones River was a victory, but there were thirteen thousand casualties, and John wrote wearily: “The sufferin and scenes of deth was sech as to make a mans hart hate war.”

  Fredericksburg and Stones River-the stories of these two battles filled the papers during the last days of 1862 and the early ones of 1863. Everyone was discouraged, and it looked as if the war might never be won; as if, indeed, the country that had been born in the travail of the Revolution and had been given direction during the days of 1787, when the Constitution came to life, might now be dissolved into two weak nations. Well, why not, soldiers were beginning to say. How much can men bear to keep together the nation their great-grandfathers had helped to create? They were losing faith—faith in their leaders and in the cause of union. In the late winter of 1862, the deserters began pouring back into Illinois. Thousands of young men had become disillusioned; this war was no “breakfas’ spell.”

  9

  The deserters came in droves. The Point Prospect campground south of Rose Hill was said to be swarming with soldiers who made forays on chicken coops, pigpens, and smokehouses where winter meat was hung. In the spring and summer, vegetable gardens, cornfields, and fruit orchards were robbed. No one dared to approach the camp. Even the U.S. agents from the cities upstate appeared to be in no hurry for a visit; it was known that the deserters carried their arms and that they were desperate. For a neighbor to have recognized a face among them might well have been sufficient reason for getting a bullet between the eyes; these men meant to take no chances with an informer.

  The stories varied; some said there were a hundred men at Point Prospect; others put the number at nearer five hundred. In the early months of ’63, the theft of food was their only crime against the community; by March, however, a killing took place.

  There was a man known as Hig Phillips down in the southern part of the county, and the story came out that he had hired a substitute to go to war for him. That in itself was not uncommon; many others in the county had taken advantage of this method of dodging the draft, which in the spring of ’63 included men from twenty up to the age of forty-five. Three hundred dollars was what it took; that was a lot of money, but once the substitute was found and the three hundred dollars paid, a man could sit back comfortably and yawn at the war news if he chose.

  There were men who were forced to take advantage of this system of substitute-hiring because of serious illness in the home or the dependency of motherless children. There was, however, no reason why Hig Phillips should have avoided the draft except that he was a lazy bachelor much favored by his mother, that he was fond of good food and a comfortable bed, and had been known to adhere to the opinion that fools could do the fighting while men of intelligence and property might take pleasure in the prospect of a long and easy life. He was not generally admired for these views, but that fact bothered him hardly at all.

  Hardly at all, that is, until one moonless night a band of young men visited him—men who knew what gangrenous wounds were like, what marches through cold rain or blistering heat meant, while hunger gnawed at their stomachs or weakness from typhus or dysentery brought agony to every step; men who had seen the dead piled high on smoking battlefields and had come to believe that the soldier of two years had done his share, that the burden should now fall upon other shoulders.

  Although there were many who held Hig Phillips in contempt, his murder was an act of lawlessness that terrorized the county. People realized that anything could be expected from a mob of undisciplined desperadoes. Nancy, who had thought of going back to her own place the following summer, now heeded Ellen’s advice and closed her house completely, bringing her stock up to Matt’s new barn and keeping her children in the comparative safety of their grandfather’s home. Jenny was no longer allowed to drive alone to Hidalgo for the mail; no one ventured far away from home after nightfall, and as in the days of the Wortman trouble the year before, no one ever went to bed with the full confidence of security. The fury of the abolitionists and the Copperheads was now taken over by the deserters.

  One night in February of ’63, as the family sat around the open fire, a wagon clattered
down the road from the north and stopped in front of the house. Opening the door, Jethro saw three young men jump down from the wagon and stride up to the porch.

  “Is this the home of Matthew Creighton?” one of them asked. Jethro noticed the crispness of the voice—an upstate voice, he thought.

  “Yes, sir, my father’s right here. Will you come indoors?”

  They came inside with a great clatter of heavy boots. Jenny stood, wide-eyed, beside her father’s chair; Nancy and Ellen held the small boys tightly in their arms. Matt tried to rise.

  “Stay seated, sir. We’re here to ask you a few questions.” The young man who spoke threw back his coat to show his uniform and insignia. “We are representatives of the Federal Registrars; we are charged with hunting down deserters from the United States Army.”

  “Will you take chairs, gentlemen?” Matt said evenly, but Jethro noticed the sudden paleness of his father’s face.

  “Thank you, no. We are here to inquire if this is the home of Ebenezer Carron, 17th Illinois Infantry, Army of Tennessee.”

  “It is. This has bin Eb’s home since he was a lad of ten or so.”

  “Have you seen him lately?”

  “Why, no. Him and my son Thomas left together for the Army in August of ’61. My own boy was kilt at Pittsburg Landing; we ain’t heered from Eb but once since then.”

  “You know the penalty for shielding a deserter from the United States Army?”

  “I do. Air you tellin’ me that Eb is a deserter?”

  “His commanding officer has reason to believe that he is and that he has been making his way toward this part of the state-we assume toward his home.”

  Matt lifted a shaking hand and covered his eyes. Jenny glanced at him anxiously and then suddenly blazed out at the questioner.

  “We haven’t seen Eb. He’s not here, and I’ll thank you not to worry my father with more of this talk. If you want to look through this house—”

  “We do, Miss-this house and all other buildings around here.”

  Jenny grasped the kerosene lamp with a firm hand. “Jeth, you come with me. We’ll show these soldiers through the house; they can hunt outside for themselves.”

  Her anger made Jenny a very grand lady, Jethro thought. He had never seen her more beautiful than she was that night, with her cheeks flaming and her eyes large and black with mixed anger and fear.

  The soldiers grinned a little among themselves and followed her and Jethro to the sleeping rooms in the loft, then down to the kitchen and pantry where Jenny took down the big key to the smokehouse and handed it to one of the men.

  “We lock the smokehouse these nights. It’s true there are deserters in these parts, and there’s thievin’ around everywhere. But we’re not shieldin’ anyone. Go look in the smokehouse for yourselves; go through the barn, the grainery, everywhere you think someone might be hidin’. After that I could say you’d best go down to the Point Prospect campground. The talk is that there are plenty of deserters there.”

  The Federal Registrars looked uncomfortable.

  “Yes, we’ve heard,” one of them muttered.

  Jenny nodded. “It is easier to come to a house and upset a sick old man and scared womenfolk. Nobody in this neighborhood thinks it’s healthy to go down to Point Prospect, but you sounded so brave just now-I thought you might want to do your duty down there.”

  The man who had done the questioning bowed mockingly before Jenny.

  “We’ll see to our duty, Miss, and if we find Ebenezer Carron on this place, we’ll take him back with us-and maybe you, too.” He turned toward Jethro. “Will you get a lantern, young man, and light us out back?”

  Jethro took down the lantern that hung on the outside wall of the kitchen and started down the path toward the barn. The Federal Registrars followed, laughing with one another. One of them fell into step with Jethro after a time.

  “Is that girl your sister?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Well, she’s quite a little beauty.”

  Jethro did not answer. His silence seemed to provoke the young man.

  “I said that your sister is quite a little beauty, did you hear me?”

  “She’s spoke fer,” Jethro answered shortly.

  The young man shrugged and called out to the others. “I’ve just come upon some very interesting information: the beautiful little spitfire up at the ancestral mansion is ‘spoke fer.’ ”

  They laughed a great deal over that, and exaggerating the southern Illinois drawl and the backwoods diction, they made considerable sport over the boy’s remark. Jethro felt his face burn with anger, but something new had been pointed up to him, something in the long process of learning to which he would be sensitive for the rest of his days. Until then he had not thought of his speech as being subject to ridicule.

  The soldiers searched the place thoroughly and then started back to their wagon. One of them spoke sternly to Jethro on the way.

  “If this man, Ebenezer Carron, turns up, you know what to do?”

  “No, sir.”

  “Then you’d better listen. You get word to the Office of the Federal Registrars in Chicago right away, telling them where the man is or expects to be. You fail to report him, and you and your family will be up to your necks in trouble. Do you understand?”

  Jethro nodded briefly. He was deeply antagonized by these men, but he knew they were simply carrying out a job assigned to them. Anyway, he was glad when the wagon carried them away—to the north. Evidently they were not going down to the deserters’ camp at Point Prospect, not that night anyway.

  There was an early spring that year. By the first of March the weather was warm, and the higher fields were dry enough for plowing. Jethro carried a rifle with him when he went down to John’s place to work; Ellen fretted a great deal about it, but Matt insisted. Jethro had learned how to handle a gun properly, and it was always possible that he might bring down some kind of wild game for the table, or that he would have need to defend himself against a desperate man.

  The field he plowed that day in early March was bordered on the east by dense woods, and Jethro became conscious that each time he approached the woods side of the field, the sharp, harsh call of a wild turkey would sound out with a strange kind of insistence-almost as if some stupid bird demanded that he stop and listen. Once when he halted his team and walked a little distance toward the woods, the calls came furiously, one after the other; then when he returned to his team and moved toward the west, they stopped until he had made the round of the field.

  After several repetitions of this pattern, Jethro tethered his team and, taking up his rifle, walked into the woods. His heart beat fast as he walked, and his slim, brown hand clutching the rifle was wet with sweat. Ed Turner was giving him a day’s help in the field across the road, but Jethro chose not to call him although he had a guilty feeling that he was taking a foolish and dangerous chance.

  He walked slowly and carefully, pausing now and then to listen. The calls stopped for a while, and he was half convinced that they had actually come from a wild bird; he made no move for a few minutes, and they began again, softer now and more certainly coming from the throat of a man.

  Jethro stood quite still. “Hello,” he called finally. “What is it you want of me?”

  There was no answer. Then the call came again, softly, insistently, from a clump of trees, one of which was a tremendous old oak-long since hollowed out, first by lightning and then by decay.

  Jethro walked closer, his gun raised, and after a minute, the human voice which he had been half expecting to hear called out to him.

  “Put yore gun down, Jeth; I ain’t aimin’ to hurt ye. I didn’t dast take the chancet of Ed Turner hearin’ me call to ye.”

  He thought joyfully of Bill at first. He shouldn’t have; almost every night he heard his parents talking of Eb and of what uncertainties they would face if he were really a deserter and if he should suddenly appear. But Jethro had forgotten Eb for the moment; the possibi
lity of Bill’s return was always a hope far back in his mind.

  “Who is it?” he asked again. “Come out and let me see your face.”

  Then a skeleton came out from among the trees. It was the skeleton of a Union soldier, though the uniform it wore was so ragged and filthy it was difficult to identify. The sunken cheeks were covered with a thin scattering of fuzz; the hair was lank and matted. It fell over the skeleton’s forehead and down into its eyes. The boy stared at it without speaking.

  “Jeth, you’ve growed past all believin’. I’ve bin watchin’ you from fur off, and I couldn’t git over it-how you’ve growed.”

  Then Jethro realized who it was. “Eb,” he exclaimed in a voice hardly above a whisper. “It’s Eb, ain’t it?”

  There was utter despair in the soldier’s voice.

  “Yes,” he said, “I reckon it’s Eb-what there’s left of him.”

  For a few seconds Jethro forgot the Federal Registrars and the fact that not only the word which preceded Eb, but his method of announcing himself gave credence to the suspicion that he was a deserter. But for those first few seconds Jethro could only remember that this was Eb, a part of the family, the boy who had been close to Tom, the soldier who would have more vivid stories to tell of the war than ever a newspaper would be able to publish. He held out his hand.

  “Eb, it’s good-it’s so good to see you. Pa and Ma will be—” he stopped suddenly. He noticed that Eb ignored his outstretched hand.

  “Yore pa and ma will be scairt-that’s what you mean, ain’t it? Scairt fer themselves and ashamed of me.” He paused for a second and then added defiantly, “I deserted, you know; I up and left Ol’ Abe’s Army of the United States.”