My Brother Sam is Dead

by James Lincoln Collier

  Winter came and winter went, and the war went on in the same distant way. Oh, the effects of it were real—the rising prices, the shortage of everything, the news that so-and-so had been killed in some faraway battle. But all the things you think of as belonging to a war, the battles and cannons firing and marching troops and dead and wounded—we hadn’t seen any of it, except for the messengers and commissary officers who came by.

  It got to be the spring, 1777. The work went on, except that instead of cutting wood, cleaning the barn and pitching hay for the animals, I now spent my day digging and planting in our kitchen garden by the side of the house, so we’d have fresh vegetables for the tavern. And I was doing this one Saturday morning early toward the end of April—the 26th, to be exact—when I began hearing from a long way away a heavy muttering noise. It sounded a bit like thunder, but not exactly. It made me uneasy. I jammed the spade in the ground and went out front of the tavern to have a look up and down the road. The sound seemed to be coming from the southwest over behind the church somewhere, but there wasn’t anything to be seen. And then I saw Ned, Samuel Smith’s Negro, come running up the road. At the same moment Captain Betts popped out of his house next door. Captain Betts was in the Rebel militia. “What is it, Ned?” he shouted.

  “British troops, Captain,” Ned shouted. He ran on by.

  Captain Betts turned back in the doorway. “Jerry,” he shouted. “Quick, get Mr. Rogers here.” Jerry San-ford dashed past him through the door and up the road toward the Rogers’. Captain Betts continued to stand there for a moment more, listening.

  “What do you think they’re doing, Captain Betts?” I called.

  He looked grim. “It won’t be anything good. There are a lot of them.”

  “Is the militia going to try to stop them?”

  He scowled. “There aren’t enough Patriots in Redding to stop a pair of cows going through.” Then he went back into the house.

  I turned and went into the tavern. Mother was scouring some pots. “British troops coming,” I told her. “What do you think they’ll do?”

  “Drink and not pay for it,” she said. “That’s the rule with soldiers. Take the good pewter out to the barn and hide it in the hay.”

  I did it, and then I ran back around to the front to watch the soldiers come. Now I could see a fine shading of dust in the air out behind the church, rising slowly and drifting away. The noise grew louder. I watched, and all at once through the hedgerows I caught a glimpse of movement and things flashing. In a moment the vanguard appeared around the bend. There was a drummer boy banging away in front, and a standard bearer, and then a couple of officers on horseback, and then the marching men. On down the road toward me they came. It was a frightening thing to see. They just kept coming on and on as if nothing in the world could stop them.

  Now I could see cannons, each of them about twelve feet long and drawn by two horses. I figured they must be six-pounders, from what I’d read about it. Behind them were wagons full of boxes and bags—powder and balls and such, I figured. The dust rose up through everything, turning the red uniforms, the cannons, the wagons all a greyish brown. They marched past the tavern, pulled off onto the training ground, and broke formation. Mr. Rogers ran by with Jerry Sanford coming behind him as fast as they could. They dashed into Captain Betts’ house. I hoped they weren’t trying to get the trainband organized to fight the British. That was impossible: there were hundreds of Redcoats milling around on the training ground—maybe thousands, even.

  Most of the people in the village were standing in their yards, watching. The children kept clashing up the road to the training ground to get a closer look, until their mothers saw them and dragged them back home again. In the training ground the soldiers were settling down to eat breakfast, dumping their packs on the ground, and stacking their muskets into neat little tepees, four or five together. I kept hoping that some officers would come into the tavern for rum or beer or something to eat. I wanted to see them close up and listen to them talk. Oh, those troops were impressive-looking with all those belts and buckles and powder horns and bayonets and so forth dangling about their red uniforms. How could people like Sam expect to beat them?

  But the officers didn’t come into the tavern; instead, three or four of them rode up to Mr. Heron’s house. I saw Mr. Heron open the door to let them in and they disappeared. I guessed that Mr. Heron had known in advance that they were coming. Probably he had set out a big breakfast for them. It gave me a funny feeling to realize that while Mr. Heron was giving the British officers rum and beef, Captain Betts and Mr. Rogers were sitting in the Betts’ house a hundred yards away trying to figure out a way to kill them.

  I went on watching. Some of the bigger children had got away from their mothers and were standing at the edge of the training ground, looking at the soldiers. After a while the children began shouting questions at the men like had they ever killed anybody and weren’t they afraid of the Rebels and so forth. The soldiers joked back with the kids and after a while I walked over myself and listened.

  “Where are you headed for?” I asked one of the Redcoats.

  “If I knew I wouldn’t tell yer.” He had a funny accent.

  “Where are you from?” I asked.

  “Where are you from, lad?”

  “Right there.” I pointed to the tavern.

  “Well I’m from old Dublin,” he said. “And I wisht I was back there roight naow, ‘stead of marching through this bloomin’ place.”

  “What’s Ireland like?”

  “Oh, ‘tis a lovely place, all green and cool like—if you don’t mind a spot of rain. How is it yer not afroid of us, you tykes?”

  “We’re mostly Tories here.” Suddenly I realized that I was. Father’s capture had done that.

  “Ah,” he said.

  And I would have talked with him some more, but just then an officer came riding and shouted, “Get along you bloody Yankee scum. Back to your mothers.” He slapped his quirt on his leg and we all ran.

  I stood in our yard, watching. The officer shouted something to the soldiers. There was a scurrying around and then eight of them snatched up their guns, formed up into twos, and marched out behind the officer. He wheeled his horse about and trotted toward me. I jumped back and plunged for the tavern doorway. He galloped across our yard into the Betts’ yard, pulled the horse up, and shouted some more orders. The soldiers charged for the Betts’ door, bashed it open with the butt ends of their rifles, and slammed into the house. Five minutes later they came out again, pushing in front of them Captain Betts, Mr. Rogers, and Jerry Sanford. Jerry was dead white. He was trying not to cry, but the tears were squeezing out of his eyes and he kept wiping his face with his sleeve. The soldiers pushed the three of them onto the road, tied their hands behind their backs, and marched them onto the training ground through the troops. I knew now what the officers had gone up to Mr. Heron’s for: it wasn’t breakfast, it was to find out who the Rebel leaders were.

  Now my mother was standing in the doorway beside me. “The brutes,” she said. “What do they want with that little one? Can they think he’s dangerous?”

  “What are they going to do with them, Mother?”

  “God have mercy on them,” she said. “God have mercy on William Heron.”

  “They wouldn’t shoot Jerry, would they?”

  “War turns men into beasts. It’s cheaper to shoot a boy than to feed him.”

  “I don’t think they would, Mother. I don’t think they’d shoot Jerry.” It seemed unbelievable, but it made me go cold all the same.

  She shrugged. “Maybe not. Only the Lord knows about that. Come into the house before they take a fancy to you. Who knows what Mr. Heron’s told them about your brother.”

  “I’m all right, Mother.”

  “Come into the house, Timothy. I’ve lost two, I’m not losing another.”

  I went in. I was full of all kinds of funny feelings. At first when the troops had arrived, swaggering around so bold an
d gay, I had really admired them. But seeing them take Jerry Sanford off like that gave me a sick feeling in my stomach. I didn’t think they’d shoot him. I figured they’d taken him away just because he lived with Captain Betts and happened to be there when the soldiers had come. But still, maybe they would shoot him. Maybe they’d want to torture him for secrets or something—after all, he lived with one of the Rebel leaders and might know what their plans were or whether they had ammunition stored someplace.

  I stood at the window watching. Mother told me to get away from the window and go about my work, but I didn’t. I stayed there. Finally, about a half an hour later, the officers mounted their horses and began riding through the troops shouting orders. Within a couple of minutes the soldiers were formed up in the training ground ready to march. And just as they were about to start off there came the sound of a horse galloping. I dashed outside in time to see a horseman come over the rise of the road from the direction of Danbury. He was dressed in ordinary clothes, and I guessed that he was a Rebel messenger. Suddenly he spotted the British troops formed up on the training ground. He reined up and wheeled the horse around. Bending low, he kicked his heels into the horse and started to tear off back the way he’d come. There was a commotion in the British ranks, and a quick fusillade of shots. The man suddenly straightened up in the saddle and flung his arms out. His head jerked backwards, and he slid off the back of the horse and lay still in the dusty road. A British officer shouted, and the troops marched out. The rider’s horse was cantering off in a field, bucking. The troops marched past the body. None of them turned to look at him. Finally the last of the wagons disappeared around the bend, and I started running down the road toward the body, scared of what I might see. Other people came running up, too.

  The man was lying on his stomach with his face turned sideways. There was a tear in his shirt in the center of his back and blood was soaking through the cloth, but sweat was running off his pale face and he was breathing hard. “Pick him up and carry him to the tavern,” Mr. Read said. “Meeker, go up to Doctor Hobart’s house and tell him we’ve got a wounded man down here.”

  It was over two miles up to Dr. Hobart’s. For a moment I thought about saddling up a horse, but the British troops were marching ahead of me in the direction of Dr. Hobart’s, and I was afraid that if I came galloping by on a horse, they’d take me for a messenger and shoot me, too. On foot I could cut through the fields if I had to.

  I began running. Within five minutes I ran into a dusty haze kicked up by the troops, and I realized that they must be just ahead of me. I jumped to the side of the road, swung over the stone wall, and cut across the pasture to the next stone wall, which was bordered by a line of trees. I slid over this wall and began running along it, parallel to the road. I figured out I would run past the British troops and come out ahead of them before they reached Dr. Hobart’s house. It would take some running, though. The British column was a mile long.

  I ran on, stumbling through the pasture stubble and furrows of the plowed fields. And I had covered almost two miles when I heard shots—at first only one or two, but then a fusillade. I dropped flat behind the stone wall and then raised my head to stare around. I couldn’t see anything but the empty field that lay between me and the road. I slid over the stone wall and began to run crouched over toward the stone wall at the other side of the field which bordered the road. When I got to the wall, I flung myself flat and listened. The shooting was going on down the road a way. I took a chance and raised my head to look over the wall.

  The British column was disappearing around the bend, but a couple of dozen troops had stayed behind. They were kneeling on the road in a line firing at Captain Starr’s house across the road from them—on the other side from where I lay. From where I was hidden behind the stone wall I could look through the downstairs windows in the side of the house There were Rebels in there, firing back at the Redcoats. The way I figured it, the Rebels had hidden there and begun shooting at the British troops as they marched by. Through the windows I could see the Rebels moving around. I couldn’t recognize all of them, but I knew some. One was Captain Starr. Another was Samuel Smith’s Negro slave, Ned—the same one who’d first come running to report that the British were coming.

  As I watched, one of the British pitched over flat on the road The rest went on firing into the building, as if the bullets coming out at them didn’t matter. It was the way the British fought.

  Suddenly an officer shouted an order. The British troops rose, their bayonets flashing at the ends of their muskets. The officer raised his sword and charged toward the house, and troops ran after him. When they reached the door the officer stood aside while the soldiers battered the door with their muskets. Suddenly it crashed open, and the troops charged in. I heard somebody shout, “There are some damned blacks in here, what shall we do with them?”

  “Kill them,” the officer yelled. He charged through the door waving his sword. I could see Ned swivel away from the window where he crouched, attempting to swing his rifle around to get in a shot at the officer. But the officer was quicker. He slid his sword into Ned’s stomach, and then jerked it free. Ned staggered around, still raising his gun up for the shot. The sword flashed in a bright arc, the fastest thing I ever saw move. Ned’s head jumped off his body and popped into the air. I never saw it fall. I dropped down behind the stone wall and vomited all over myself. Then I got up and ran across the field and fell over the other stone wall. I lay there smelling my vomit and seeing Ned’s head jump into the air. It was a long time before I realized that I was soaked with cold sweat and crying. I knelt up and listened. The shooting had stopped. I remembered the man in the tavern. He was dying, too, and I didn’t want to have his death laid on me. I slipped along the hedgerow and when I was well past Starr’s house I came up the field and back onto the road. For a moment I looked. In the distance I could see the British troops milling around the house. They were carrying heavy objects into the house. I knew what they were, but I didn’t want to think about it. When the British had all the things in the house, they set the house on fire. I turned and ran down the road toward Dr. Hobart’s. I didn’t feel much like being a Tory anymore.

  DR. HOBART SADDLED UP AND RODE DOWN TO THE TAVERN, and I walked back slowly. There wasn’t any hurry now. Mostly I tried to put out of my mind what I’d seen. I went out to the barn and cleaned myself up as best I could, and then I went into the taproom. It was full of people who’d come to talk about the British raid.

  The wounded man was still alive. The ball had hit him high in his ribs and had stuck there without damaging him much. Dr. Hobart gave him a huge mug of rum, and when he’d drunk that down and it had had a chance to work, four men held the man down flat on a table while Dr. Hobart sliced open the wound and pulled the ball out with his forceps. “A couple of broken ribs,” he said, “but they’ll knit.” He bound the man tightly, and we propped him up with some comforters in front of the fire and gave him some more rum and something to eat. He was pretty drunk, but he told us his story.

  “They’re after the munitions stored in Danbury,” he said. “I came up here to warn the militia. We thought somebody might stop them. But I was too late.”

  Dr. Hobart shook his head. “A wasted errand,” he said. “The trainband is pretty thin here.”

  “I know,” the wounded man said. “But we were expecting some Continental troops. You’ve heard of General Benedict Arnold, I expect? He and General Silliman and some others have been chasing the British up from Compo in Fairfield. They were hoping somebody would slow them down until they could catch up. Although I don’t know what good it would do, they haven’t got the men to take on that bunch of Lobsterbacks.”

  I took a deep breath. Sam was with Benedict Arnold’s troops. Or at least he had been. “Sir, you mean General Arnold’s troops are coming through Redding?”

  “That was the plan. Of course you can’t ever tell what’s going to happen in war. Things change a lot.”

 
I knew it was foolish to believe that Sam might be with General Arnold’s troops, but when you want something bad enough you can’t stop yourself from hoping. I wondered if Mother remembered that Sam was with Arnold. I didn’t think she would. She wouldn’t have paid any attention to something like that.

  I went to the window and looked out. It had clouded over and was beginning to rain. A man was running across the training ground. In a moment I saw that it was Captain Betts. He came swiftly toward the tavern, opened the door and came in.

  “Stephen,” somebody said. “You escaped?”

  “They let some of us go,” he said.

  “How many?”

  “Nine. They let most of us go. They only kept three.”

  “Is Jerry Sanford all right, sir?”

  He shook his head. “They kept him. Don’t ask me why they kept a boy.”

  “They kept Jerry? What will they do with him, sir?”

  “I don’t know,” he said gruffly. “What’s happened here?”

  “They’ve gone off north toward Danbury,” somebody told him. “They burnt Starr’s house and killed some people there.”

  “Dan Starr? They killed Dan Starr?”

  “Yes.”

  Captain Betts looked grim and hard. “The bastards. We can still catch them. I’m going to get the trainband out. We’ll follow them through the fields and cut them down from behind the walls. Tim, go over and ring the church bell. Get cracking.”

  I didn’t want to get into it, but I had to obey. I started toward the door, but my mother grabbed my collar. “No, no,” she said. “Not my boy. You don’t involve anymore Meekers in this terrible war. Send your own child out to play soldier if you want, Stephen Betts, but no more of mine.”