The Mostly True Adventures of Homer P. Figg

by Rodman Philbrick

  “Night falls,” he warns. “If you wander in the wrong direction the pickets will shoot you. Can’t find your brother if you’re shot, can you?”

  “No, sir.”

  “Then join us for a little while,” he suggests. “Our cook is making soup in that big iron pot. A fine potato soup that we pretend is fish chowder. You can look for your brother tomorrow, at first light. If his company is within marching distance they’ll be on the move, coming our way. All companies have been summoned to Gettysburg. One way or another he’ll be in the fight. Tomorrow, son, that’s when you’ll find him.”

  I figure to have a little of that fine-smelling potato soup and then move along, keep looking. I settle down by the fire, spooning the soup out of a tin pan — tastes as good as it smells — and then another soldier gives me his ration of hardtack and shows me how to soak it in the soup and I eat that, too. Then when I’m about ready to set out again, dark or not, the regimental band decides to play, and it seems impolite to sneak away, especially with so many familiar Maine voices raised in song:

  The Union forever! Hurrah, boys, hurrah!

  Down with the traitors, up with the stars;

  While we rally ’round the flag, boys, rally once again,

  Shouting the battle cry of freedom!

  Later on, as my eyelids grow heavy, a young soldier with a fine high tenor sings “Just Before the Battle, Mother,” a sad song about a boy telling his Dear Mother not to worry, and that’s what carries me off to sleep, dreaming of mothers and brothers and sons.

  JUST BEFORE DAWN I AM awakened by a tall, skinny soldier who finds me sleeping near the smoldering campfire.

  “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.

  THANKS TO PRIVATE WILLOW, 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.

  ALL 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.

  “Men of the Twentieth, look to me! See that small hill?” He points with his sword. “We must hold that with our lives! It guards the left of the Union Army and cannot be allowed to fall into rebel hands! Every man! Every man on the double! Run for the hill and take position! Follow the flag! Quickly now!”

  He makes to wheel away and then thinks better of it. Instead he sidles up to the prisoners and shows them the flat of his sword, tapping it against his boot. “Gentlemen! Those willing to fight will get a good word from me. Obey your orders and I’ll do my best to get the charges dropped.”

  To my dismay, the prisoners stand as one, including my brother, Harold Figg, begging to be allowed to fight.

  The guards release them, and they dust away the M so cruelly chalked upon their uniforms. The prisoners and guards grab rifles and cartridge boxes and run for the hill, following the flag of the 20th Maine.

  All is confusion, but I manage to get to Harold just as he picks up a rifle.

  “Now’s our chance!” I say. “There’s no one to stop us! We can run for it! We’ll be miles away before they notice!”

  Harold looks at me like I got two heads. “I gave my word,” he says.

  “Words won’t stop the bullets!” I say as he wrenches himself loose from my grasp. “Words won’t keep the shells from exploding! Words won’t stop you getting killed and leaving me alone in this world!”

  He shoves me to the ground.

  “Stay there!” he orders me. “Crawl under the wagon and keep yourself safe. I will see you after the battle, Homer, after the fight is done.”

  Then he’s running up the hill, a rifle in one hand and a cartridge pouch in the other.

  “Harold, stop!”

  He won’t stop. He keeps on going, running toward the sound of gunfire.

  What choice do I have? I haven’t come all this way for nothing. So I follow my brother up the hill, into the fight, into the Battle of Gettysburg.

  THE TOP OF THE LITTLE HILL is strewn with rocks and
boulders and a few spindly trees. The men from the 20th Maine spread out along the ridge, quickly finding shelter among the rocks. From here they may fire down upon the enemy and still be afforded some small protection.

  They don’t have long to wait. Ten minutes after occupying the hill a full regiment of Alabama men attack from below, waving their regimental flag.

  Suddenly gray uniforms swarm among the rocks and into the open, surging upward with that terrible cry that is called a rebel yell. The ki-yi yip-yip of the rebel yell being partways an owl-like screech and partways a high-pitched yelp that makes your skin crawl if you happen to be on the receiving end.

  The bullets start flying before I can locate Harold or find a place to hide. Bullets spitting off rocks and scudding up the dirt and making little smacking noises as they hit skinny trees that are too small to hide behind.

  Everywhere I turn there are more bullets striking all around, like hornets swarming, snick-snick-snick.

  Finally Harold scoots out from behind his rock and drags me to safety. “What are you doing, you little fool? Do you want to be killed, is that it?” he asks, panting.

  “I want to go home.”

  Harold grunts, then takes aim between the rocks and fires his Springfield rifle. His leather cartridge pouch lies open at his side and he swings the rifle around, tears the paper cartridge in his teeth, rams it down the muzzle, swings the rifle back around, inserts the primer cap, and cocks the hammer — all as quick as you can count.

  Then he takes careful aim and fires and does it all over again.

  There are forty cartridges in his leather pouch, which means when he fires thirty-seven more times he’ll be out of ammunition. Figure twenty minutes or less, if he keeps up to speed.

  “Where are you going?” he cries.

  “To get more ammunition!”

  And that’s what I do, scampering down the back slope of the hill, out of the line of fire. I follow the others and locate the powder wagons, hoisting a wooden ammunition box that looks like a little casket and dragging it up to where Harold is still loading and firing his rifle, steady as a clock, a bullet fired every count of twenty.