My Brother Sam is Dead

by James Lincoln Collier

  MY BIGGEST PROBLEM WAS GETTING TO SEE MR. HERON. IF Father saw me talking to him, he’d be suspicious; and if he found out that it was me who started the conversation, he’d know right away what it was all about. But luckily two days later Mr. Heron came into the tavern to buy a small keg of rum. My father wasn’t around, and Mother said, “Tim will bring it right over, Mr. Heron.”

  So I slung the keg of rum over my shoulder and followed Mr. Heron up the road to his house, which was only a couple of hundred yards away from the tavern. We went around to the back, and I carried the keg into the kitchen and set it up on the rack. He reached into his pocket and handed me a penny.

  “Thank you, sir,” I said.

  “Have you thought anymore about studying surveying with me someday?”

  “Well I haven’t, sir. But I was thinking though that I might like to earn some money at that job you mentioned before.”

  “Aha,” he said. “Your father changed his mind, did he?”

  “Yes, sir,” I said. “He said it would be all right so long as he didn’t know anything about it. If I just went and didn’t tell him anything, he said he wouldn’t object.”

  Mr. Heron put his hand on my arm and gave me a little squeeze. “That’s a lie, isn’t it, Timothy?”

  I got hot and blushed. “I guess so, sir.”

  He let go of my arm. “Your father doesn’t change his mind very often nor very easily.”

  I felt stupid and looked down at the ground. “Yes, sir,” I said. “I’d still like to go, though. Aren’t we supposed to be loyal to the King?”

  He stroked his chin. “Not everybody thinks so.”

  “I do, though.” I didn’t—I mean I didn’t have any opinion either way—but I thought it would help if he believed that I was a strong Loyalist.

  He smiled a kind of funny smile. “You’ve got your brother’s spirit, haven’t you?”

  Being compared with Sam made me feel good. “I’m as brave as he is,” I said.

  “I believe it,” he said. “Suppose I did let you run some errands for me. What would you tell your father?”

  “I’d tell him I was shad fishing.”

  “And come home with no fish?”

  “I’d tell him they weren’t running or something. You can’t always expect to catch something.”

  He rubbed his forehead, thinking. “All right. If you come up early tomorrow morning, I’ll have something for you to do to earn a shilling or so.”

  So that night I asked Father if I could go fishing again. And he said yes. I felt sort of bad about it; it was lying, and lying was a sin, and so was going against your father. And even if it hadn’t been a sin I would have felt badly about it, because Father trusted me and I was being dishonorable. But I wanted some glory too much to be honorable, so Wednesday morning I got up way before the sun, when it was just beginning to get light, took my fishing line and hooks to make my excuse hold up, and walked down to Mr. Heron’s house.

  I was lucky. It was a good day. That time of year it could easily have been pouring rain, and cold. But as the sun came up there were only streaks of clouds in the sky. The birds were singing and the wild flowers along the roadside were bright and gay. I felt excited in a good way, and as I walked along to Mr. Heron’s I began to whistle “Yankee Doodle” before I remembered that I ought to keep quiet so people wouldn’t notice where I was going.

  When I got to Mr. Heron’s house I went around back to the kitchen door, and started to knock, but I had hardly got my fist up when the door jerked open, and Mr. Heron grabbed me by the arm and pulled me in. We walked down a hall and into his study. It seemed awfully rich to me. There was a little stove there with a few coals glowing and a desk piled high with papers and a carpet on the floor, and some chests of drawers. He sat down at the desk, wrote something out on a piece of paper, and sealed it up. “Timothy, you’ll have to move quickly. This message has to go to Fairfield. It will take you at least five hours to walk down there and five to walk back, and you’ll have to be home before dark in order not to raise suspicions. Have you ever been to Fairfield?”

  “A couple of times,” I said. “With Father and Sam to get rum.”

  “Then you know where the dock is. Now listen carefully. Just before you get to the dock there’s a road off to the left. Down the road about a mile there’s a house with white siding and green trim. Knock there. Ask for Mr. Burr. And give him this letter. He’ll give you a shilling. Right? Now repeat it back.”

  I did so; then I tucked the letter down inside my shirt and left, slipping out the back way and through his pasture before I cut back onto the road. The sun was now up and was rising over the meadowland to the east. I judged it to be about seven o’clock. The sun wouldn’t go down again until around seven at night, which gave me twelve hours—plenty of time if I walked along swiftly. In fact, if everything went well, I could easily be back by the middle of the afternoon, which might even give me time to catch a few shad to show Father. I hid the fishing tackle behind a stone wall just in case.

  I moved at a brisk pace. Despite the sun, the air was morning cool and fresh. It was nice weather for walking and I felt excited, not scared. I was worried about dropping the letter, though, and I kept touching it to make sure that it hadn’t fallen out of my shirt. After a while I came to the place where the road from the Center runs into the Fairfield Road. I stopped for a minute to rest and to see if I couldn’t find a better way to stow the letter so it would be safe. I was trying to find a way to hitch it under my belt when I heard somebody shout. I looked up. Betsy Read was coming down the road from the Center.

  “Hello, Tim,” she said.

  “Hello.”

  She came up to me. “What’re you doing here? What’s that?”

  Hastily I shoved the letter back into my shirt.

  “Nothing,” I said.

  “Well it isn’t nothing,” she said. “It’s a letter.” She smiled. “You’ve got a girlfriend.”

  “No,” I said. “I have to go. I’m kind of in a hurry.”

  “I’ll walk with you,” she said. “Where are you going?”

  It made me nervous having her walk along with me. She wasn’t suspicious of anything, and I didn’t think she would go down to the tavern and tell Father she’d seen me; but if she should happen accidentally to bump into him, she might say something. “I’m going fishing,” I said.

  “Fishing? On the Fairfield Road?”

  “There are shad in the millstream.”

  “Well you’re going in the wrong direction,” she said,

  “Oh. Well I know that, I was up there already, but there weren’t any shad so I’m going someplace else now.” I was blushing from telling so many lies. Lying is a sin.

  “Don’t you want to know where I’m going?” she said.

  “Sure,” I said.

  “I’m going down to Horseneck. Guess what doing.”

  It was better to have her talk than me, because it saved me lying.

  “I don’t know. Shopping for cloth?”

  “Guess again.”

  Horseneck was down on Long Island Sound, too, but much further south than Fairfield. I couldn’t figure out what she might be doing there. “Visiting your cousins?”

  “I don’t have any cousins down there.”

  “What then?”

  “Seeing Sam,” she said.

  I stopped dead in the road. “Sam? Is he in Horseneck?”

  “I shouldn’t tell you that. You’re a Tory. Anyway he’s not there anymore, they’ve gone someplace else.”

  We weren’t walking along anymore, but facing each other. I was all excited. “How do you know Sam’s there?”

  “Mr. Heron told me.”

  “Mr. Heron? How does he know, he’s a Tory?”

  She frowned. “Well I know that, but he said that Sam was there with a commissary officer, scouting for beef.”

  It didn’t make any sense. Mr. Heron was supposed to be a Tory; he wasn’t supposed to know where American c
ommissary officers were. Suddenly I realized I was wasting time. “Where is he now?”

  “I won’t tell you. You’re a Tory.”

  “That’s not fair, Betsy. He’s my brother.”

  “God, Tim, you tried to shoot him.”

  I blushed. “Is Sam all right?”

  “Yes, he was in battle—I guess I better not tell you about it.”

  “You can tell me if it already happened, can’t you?”

  “I better not,” she said.

  “Listen,” I said, “I better get going.”

  We started walking. “Where are you off to in such a rush?” she said.

  “If you won’t tell me anything, I won’t tell you, either.” I thought that was a pretty smart answer; it was like one of Sam’s telling points.

  “All right, sulk,” she said. “Besides, I know you’re carrying a love letter for somebody.”

  “You’ve just got love on your mind because of Sam,” I said. Something was puzzling me. “Betsy, how come Mr. Heron didn’t tell me about Sam this morning?”

  “Because you’re a Tory.”

  “But so is he,” I said.

  She stopped. “What were you seeing Mr. Heron about this morning?”

  I realized I’d made a bad mistake. “Oh I just happened to go by his house this morning and he was there.”

  “There? Where?”

  “He was standing in the yard.”

  “Doing what?” she asked.

  “How do I know what he was doing?”

  “He wouldn’t have been standing … the letter. Tim, you’re lying. The letter. He gave you the letter to carry. Tim, where are you going with that letter?”

  She was pretty excited and kind of bouncing around in front of me. “I have to go, Betsy.”

  She jumped in my way. “Oh no you don’t, not until you tell me about the letter.”

  She was bigger than me, but not by much, and I figured that since I was a boy I could break away from her and run if she tried to stop me. “That’s a private letter,” I said. “I can’t tell you about it.”

  “Oh no, Tim,” she shouted. “Give me that letter.”

  “No,” I said. I tried to duck past her, but she jumped in front of me again.

  “Tim,” she screamed. “You know what’s in that letter? A spy report on Sam.”

  That shocked me. “It can’t be. Why would Mr. Heron make a spy report on Sam?”

  “Not on just Sam. Can’t you see? He found out about Sam and the commissary officer buying beef, and now he’s sending news to the Lobsterbacks so they’ll know where to find them and kill them and steal the cows. Give me that letter.”

  She snatched at my shirt, but I ducked back. “Don’t, Betsy. It’s Mr. Heron’s.”

  “Tim, you’re going to get Sam killed. They’ll set up an ambush for them and kill them all.”

  “No, no,” I said.

  “It’s true, Tim, figure it out. You can’t deliver that letter.”

  “I have to,” I said.

  She stood in front of me, kind of begging. “Tim, let’s open it and see. If there’s nothing important in it, then you can deliver it.”

  “I can’t break the seal, Betsy. It’s Mr. Heron’s letter. I could be put in jail for that.”

  “Tim, it’s your brother they’re going to kill. Just throw the letter away and say you lost it.”

  I didn’t know what to do. I felt awful—sick and scared. I didn’t say anything.

  “Tim, give me that letter.”

  “Betsy—”

  Then she jumped me. She caught me completely by surprise. She just leaped onto me and I fell down backwards and she was lying on top of me, trying to wrestle her hands down inside of my shirt. “Goddamn you, Betsy,” I shouted. I grabbed her by her hair and tried to pull her head back, but she jerked it away from me. I began kicking around with my feet trying to catch her someplace where it would hurt, but she kept wriggling from side to side on top of me and I couldn’t get in a good kick. I hit her on the back but in that position I couldn’t get much force. “Get off me, Betsy.”

  “Not until I get that letter,” she said. She jerked at my shirt, trying to pull it up. I grabbed at her hands and twisted my body underneath her to turn over so I would be on top, but she pushed her whole weight down on me, grunting. So I slammed her as hard as I could on the side of her head.

  “You little bastard,” she shouted. She let go of my shirt with one hand and slapped me as hard as she could across my face. My nose went numb and my eyes stung and tears began to come.

  “Damn you,” I shouted. I let go of her hand where she was clutching my shirt and grabbed her by the shoulders, trying to push her off me. She jerked my shirt up, grabbed the letter and jumped to her feet. Without rising I kicked out with my feet at her ankles. I got in a good one; she stumbled, but she didn’t fall. By the time I got up she was running down the Fairfield Road as hard as she could, opening the letter as she went. I started to run after her, and then she flung the letter over her shoulder onto the road and disappeared out of sight around the next bend. I ran up to the letter and picked it up. It was rumpled and dirty. All it said was, “If this message is received, we will know that the messenger is reliable.”

  THE SUMMER OF 1776 CAME AND WENT. I TRIED TO KEEP away from Mr. Heron. If I saw him coming into the tavern, I’d go out to clean the barn or down to the woodlot to do some chopping. But a few times he took me by surprise before I could get away. He never said anything about the letter at all. He’d just say, “Hello, Timothy,” or “It’s a fine day, isn’t it, Timothy?” and I’d say, “Yes, sir,” or something like that and get away as soon as I could. I couldn’t figure out what he thought about the whole thing, and finally I just forgot about it.

  The war went on. It didn’t seem to have much to do with us most of the time, aside from Sam being gone. Of course food was short, and other things, too. The men who still had their guns had trouble getting powder and shot. Cloth was getting scarce, and leather, because the Continental troops needed them for clothing and shoes. But nobody was really desperate.

  Sometimes we’d be reminded of the war when militiamen marched through. Or we might see a soldier who had been wounded or whose enlistment was up walking back to his home. But mostly the war stayed away from us.

  Twice we got letters from Sam. Or rather, Mother did. One came in August of that year and another one in September. The first one told about the fighting in New York. The Rebel troops had been beaten there, and the British had taken over the city, but the way Sam wrote about it, he made it seem like a glorious victory for the Rebels. He said that his regiment had made a magnificent retreat, and the British were lucky they’d got out of it alive, but it sounded the other way around to me. The second letter didn’t tell so much, except that they were encamped someplace in New Jersey and probably would stay there for the winter. He was living a hard life. A lot of times they were on very short rations, eating just hardtack and water day after day. They didn’t have proper clothing, either. Some of the men had no shoes and went barefoot: in cold weather they wrapped cloth around their feet to keep from freezing. I guess there wasn’t much glory in it a lot of the time, but Sam said that their spirits were high.

  Mother and Father had a fight over the letters. When the first one came Mother decided to answer it. Father said no, she shouldn’t encourage Sam in his recalcitrance. Mother argued with him, but he wouldn’t give in: let Sam feel our disapproval until he comes to his senses. But then when the second letter came she said she was going to write an answer regardless. They had an argument about it when I was supposed to be asleep. I kept hoping Mother would win. It made me sad to think of Sam writing letters and nobody writing back, although I guess Betsy Read would write back. But Father didn’t feel that way. “The boy has to learn a lesson, he’s far too headstrong.”

  “He isn’t a boy anymore,” Mother said.

  “He’s sixteen years old, that’s a boy, Susannah.”

  “He�
�s seventeen, Life. How old were you when you left home?”

  “That was different,” he growled. “There were eight of us, remember, too many mouths to feed as it was.”

  “Still, you went off at sixteen, Life.”

  “Sam’s too headstrong.”

  “And you’re not?”

  “I’m his father, I don’t have to be questioned on my behavior.”

  Mother laughed. “You hate having anyone tell you what to do, yet you expect Sam to let you order him around. I’m going to write to him, Life. He must surely be worried that we’re all right.”

  “I don’t want you to do it, Susannah.”

  “I know you don’t, Life. But I’m going to do it anyway.”

  I heard Father make a grunting sound, and then the door banged, and he stomped out to the barn. In the dark I clapped my hands. I was glad that Sam was going to get a letter.

  But by that fall of 1776 I didn’t have much time for pondering over Sam or Mr. Heron. Father was planning his usual trip to Verplancks Point, and this year for the first time I was going with him. It was pretty nearly forty miles. I’d never been on so long a trip in my life. Sam used to go to help Father, and after Sam went off to college Father got Tom Warrups to go with him. But Tom was busy, and so this time Father had to take me.

  Verplancks Point was on the Hudson River, just south of a town called Peekskill. Boats from New York City and Albany stopped there for trading. The idea of our trip was to drive cattle to Verplancks Point where we could sell them, and then use the money to buy supplies we needed for the tavern and the store—rum, cloth, pots and pans, needles and thread and all sorts of things. The traders brought these things up the river from New York and sold them to merchants at towns along the way, like Verplancks Point. And of course the merchants there wanted cattle to ship down to New York where there was a need for beef.

  In October Father began gathering cattle. Some he got from farmers who paid their bills to him with cattle every year. Some he just bought, knowing he could sell them at a profit. It would take us three days to drive the cattle over and three days to come back. On horseback you could ride it in a day, but we’d have not only the cattle but the wagon drawn by oxen with us. Going over we’d have a few pigs in the wagon; coming back we’d carry the things we bought in it.