My Brother Sam is Dead

by James Lincoln Collier

  “Sam would never have done that.”

  He smacked his hand down on the desk. “Watch how you address me,” he snapped.

  I blushed. “I’m sorry, sir.”

  He put his hands behind his head and leaned back. “Do you want to know what General Putnam is thinking? It’s this. He’s thinking that he can’t win the war if he doesn’t keep the people on his side. He’s thinking that he can’t keep the people on his side if the troops are running amok among the civilian population—raping the women, stealing cattle, burning houses. He is determined to scare the wits out of the troops to keep them in line. And he’s thinking that it doesn’t matter very much who he executes to do it. So many men have died, so many mothers have wept, so many brothers and sisters have cried. He is thinking that in the long run if he executes somebody, he’ll shorten the war and save more lives. It doesn’t matter to him very much who he executes; one man’s agony is like another’s, one mother’s tears are no wetter than anybody else’s. And that’s why he’s going to have Sam shot.”

  “But Sam isn’t guilty, sir.”

  “The court-martial says he was.”

  “But they’re wrong.”

  He sat silent. I waited. Then he said, “Because I happen to believe you, I’m going to give you a letter to see General Putnam. But I am warning you right now that it won’t do a bit of good. The one thing Putnam cannot do at this point is show clemency. If he is going to make his point with the troops, he can’t start letting people off easily.”

  He took up a piece of paper, wrote something on it swiftly, folded it and sealed it, and addressed it to General Putnam. Then he gave it to me and I left, running.

  I ran most of the way out to the encampment over the packed snow. The sky was cloudy; there would be snow and more snow. I arrived at the gate, my breath rasping in my throat so hard I couldn’t speak. I handed my letter to the guard. He took it and he called over a soldier. “Take this boy to General Putnam,” he said.

  We walked up the encampment street past a long line of huts. They were identical, a hundred of them with plumes of bluish smoke rising like a forest into the air. Soldiers were everywhere, cutting wood, cleaning things, drilling. Then we came to a house, bigger than the huts, but made of the same kind of logs. The soldier handed my letter to the guard at the door. The guard took it inside and in about five minutes he came back. “Just wait,” he said.

  I waited for half an hour and then an hour and then two hours. Officers went in and out, and still I waited. I got hungry but I didn’t dare leave to go in search of something to eat. It became one in the afternoon, and then a soldier came out and brought me in.

  General Putnam was sitting behind a rough trestle table they’d set up for his desk. There were papers neatly arranged and ink bottles, pens, sand for blotting the ink, and a stack of maps. He was a big man of about sixty, with lots of white hair. He wore the Continental uniform of buff and blue. He did not look kind.

  “Meeker?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “All right, let’s have it.”

  He scared me. His voice was hard and his eyes flashed. But I told him the story exactly as it had happened and I finished by saying, “Sam wouldn’t steal our own cattle. He just wouldn’t. He’s been fighting for three years, he’s been a good soldier. And he didn’t do it, sir, I swear it. I know because—”

  “Enough,” he said. “My time’s valuable.” He took up a piece of paper and quickly wrote something on it. Then he said, “I’ll consider it. That’ll be all.”

  “Sir, can I see my brother?”

  He frowned at me. Then he shouted, “Sergeant, take this boy up to the stockade to see Sam Meeker. See that they stay six feet apart and pass nothing between them.”

  “Thank you, sir,” I said, and then I followed the guard out.

  The stockade was situated just at the bottom of the slope which dropped down into the encampment. It was a wooden hut like the others, but surrounded on all sides by a picket fence to give the prisoners a place outdoors to walk around in. Guards were posted at every corner. There were some small holes cut in the fence, each about a foot square. The guard put his face to one of the holes and shouted, “Meeker, you’ve got a visitor here.” Then he drew a line in the snow with his toe about six feet from the fence. “Stay behind that line,” he said.

  Sam’s face appeared at the hole. He was dirty and unshaven and his hair was uncombed. “Timmy,” he said.

  “How are you, Sam? “I said.

  “Oh I’m all right for a man about to die.”

  “Don’t give up hope,” I said. “I’ve just seen General Putnam. He said he’d consider your case.”

  “Is that right?” he said. “Really?”

  “He said he would.”

  “What did he actually say?” Sam said. “Does he believe I’m not guilty?”

  “I don’t know,” I said. “He didn’t say.”

  “You’re a good boy, Tim.”

  “Sam, how come they found you guilty?”

  “I guess I didn’t score enough telling points,” he said.

  “No, really.”

  “The other men lied. They knew they were in for it right from the moment I spotted them in the training ground. I only saw one of them at first, and I leveled the musket at him. But the other one was down on the ground in the shadows, gutting the cow, and he came up behind me and stuck his knife point against my back. So they got me. Then they bashed me around a little and took me in. Oh, they were smart. They had a story all worked out about hearing somebody shout ‘Stop thief,’ and seeing me driving the cattle across the training ground, and coming out to get me. And of course I wasn’t supposed to be at home, anyway. I was supposed to be on duty at the Betts’ house. So that went against me. And that was that.”

  “What else can we do, Sam?”

  “Pray, I guess. You’d better have Mother do that; the Lord is more likely to believe her than you, Tim.” He grinned. I grinned back; but I felt all sick inside.

  Then the guard said, “Time’s up, lad.”

  “I’ll try to get back to see you again, Sam,” I said.

  “Say hello to Betsy for me,” he said.

  “Yes.”

  “And Mother,” he said.

  “Yes,” I said. “And I’ll try to think up some more telling points for General Putnam, too.”

  He grinned. “You’re the best brother I’ve got, Tim.”

  I tried to grin back. “I better be.”

  “Come on you,” the guard said. So I waved good-bye, and left.

  THERE WAS NOTHING TO DO NOW BUT WAIT TO SEE WHAT General Putnam decided. So we waited. Betsy Read came down to the tavern a lot, and we talked over a lot of plans—escape plans and all that kind of thing. But none of them seemed very good. A week passed. And on Saturday, February 13th, Colonel Read came up from the encampment with the word that General Putnam had refused our plea for clemency.

  I began to cry. “It’s just so unfair, he fought for them for three years, and now they’re going to shoot him for nothing.”

  Colonel Read shook his head sadly. “I know, Tim,” he said. “I know. War is never fair. Who chooses which men get killed and which ones don’t?” He touched my shoulder. “You have to accept it now. Be brave, and help your mother to bear up. She needs somebody now.”

  But I didn’t feel brave nor like bearing up. All I felt was angry and bitter and ready to kill somebody. If I only knew who.

  Sunday’s church service seemed specially important so everybody could pray for the souls of the men who were going to die on Tuesday. Mother refused to go. Instead she sat calmly by the fire, sewing.

  “We’re required to go, Mother.”

  “I’m not going,” she said. “They can murder who they like, church who they like, but I’m not going. For me the war is over.”

  I went. But after a half an hour of sitting in the balcony where I’d sat beside Sam so many hundreds of times, I began to cry, and I walked out. Nobody t
ried to stop me. I guess they knew how I felt.

  We closed the tavern early that night. Nobody was there, anyway. I guess nobody wanted to be around us, it was too gloomy. “I would like to close the place forever,” Mother said. I noticed that she had stopped drinking rum, for it was already over and there wasn’t anything left to be nervous about.

  “It was Father’s tavern,” I said.

  “I won’t serve any more Continental officers,” she said. “Never again. Never.”

  I knew I wouldn’t be able to sleep that night, and I didn’t think Mother would either, so I threw some extra logs on the fire and pulled chairs up in front of it. “We’ve got to think of something, Mother.”

  “There’s nothing,” she said. “Let the dead bury the dead.”

  “He isn’t dead yet, Mother. He’s still alive.”

  “He’s dead, Tim,” she said. “He’s dead as your father is.”

  “No,” I said. I got up and took Father’s bayonet down from the wall over the mantlepiece. Then I went out into the kitchen, took the steel out of the rack and began to whet the bayonet. Mother didn’t get up, she didn’t say anything. I worked over the bayonet a good long time until I had an edge on it that would slice through a man like a hot nail going through butter. Then I went out to the taproom and put on my coat.

  Mother didn’t lift her eyes from the flames snapping over the logs. “Going to get yourself killed, son?”

  “I’m going to save my brother,” I said.

  “No, you’re not,” she said in a soft whispery kind of a voice. “No, you’re going to get yourself killed. Well you might as well. Let’s have it all done with at once. How does the old line go? Men must fight and women must weep, but you’ll get no more tears from me. I’ve done my weeping for this war.”

  I stared at her. Then I turned and went out the door, buttoning up my coat.

  There was plenty of moonlight. Shining on those fields of snow it was almost as bright as daylight. I didn’t dare walk along the road; you never knew who could be coming along. This meant that I had to work my way through woodlots and along hedgerows across the pastures, where the snow had not been packed as hard as it was on the road. Fortunately it had begun to pack of its own weight, so that my feet sunk in only a few inches with each step. But it was funny; nothing seemed to bother me. I didn’t feel tired or cold or worried. My head was sort of out of focus. I didn’t have any plan. I knew I ought to think of one, but I couldn’t really get my mind working. All I could do was just keep going on until I came to the encampment and then see what I did next.

  Finally I came to the line of trees that ran along the ridge at the top of the encampment. I dropped into a crouch and slipped from tree to tree. There weren’t many of them left: the soldiers had cut most of the wood for lumber and firewood. Then I came to the last tree, just over the edge of the ridge. I stopped and stared down. The ridge sloped down sharply for about a hundred yards. The line of huts ran along the bottom, with the muddy road alongside of them, and here and there a cannon or wagon standing. There were corrals for horses and livestock, but hardly any people. Light came out of the chinks and cracks in the buildings, making slashes and dots on the snow.

  The stockade was dead in front of me. I stared at it—the little hut just like the others was surrounded by that ten-foot-high fence. There was a guard standing at the corner of the stockade, but he didn’t seem to be too alert. I figured he’d be cold and thinking about getting warm and not keeping too close a watch around.

  I still hadn’t made any plan, but there didn’t seem to be many choices. About the only thing I could do was slip down there, kill the guard, open the gate and let the prisoners out. And if he spotted me first, I could try to fling the bayonet over the fence and hope that Sam could get himself out in the confusion. It wasn’t much of a plan, but it was the only one I could think of.

  The trees had been cut off the hillside between me and the stockade, but there were plenty of stumps and boulders scattered all over it, and I figured if I was careful, I could slip down from one to the next until I reached the bottom. Down there was an empty space of fifty feet or so between the last stump and the stockade. I’d just have to make a dash for it. I figured that the snow there was bound to be packed down pretty hard—not bad for running.

  I began to slip down the steep hillside from stump to boulder. I went mostly on hands and knees, getting pretty soaked in the snow. I kept an eye out on the guard. He didn’t seem to be looking around much.

  I was nearly at the bottom of the slope now, but I was still high enough on the hillside to see over the walls of the stockade. I stopped and stared. I couldn’t see anybody moving around. The prisoners were all inside the hut, staying warm, I figured, although I didn’t think they would be doing much sleeping. I wondered whether you cared about being warm if you knew you were going to die soon. I decided that you probably did.

  I glanced at the guard. He still wasn’t moving much, so I slipped the rest of the way down the hill behind some boulders, until I was at the edge of the open space of snow. The stockade was now only fifty feet away. I stared at the guard. He didn’t move for several moments. He was leaning on his musket with his head bent forward, and I suddenly realized that he was asleep. I took the bayonet out of my belt and clutched it tight in my hand. If Sam could kill people, so could I. I decided I would go for his throat if I could, so he wouldn’t make any noise. I raised up a little. My heart was pounding, my breath was shallow and my hand was shaking.

  Then I stood up and charged out from behind the boulder across the empty space of clear moonlight, my feet going crunch, crunch in the snow. The guard stirred. I drove my feet faster. He jerked his head up and stared at me, sort of dazed. I slammed forward. “Halt,” he shouted. He swept the musket up, the bayonet pointing straight at me, twenty feet away.

  I jerked to a stop. “Sam,” I shouted, and “Sam,” again as loud as I could. The guard lunged toward me. I lifted the bayonet and threw it into the air. It flashed in the moonlight, spinning lazily over and over and fell into the stockade. Then I turned and began racing as fast as I could across the snow for the safety of the boulders on the hillside. I had gone only three paces when the musket went off with a terrific roar. I felt something tug at my shoulder—no more than a tug—and I dashed onto the slope, and then began staggering upward, zigzagging from boulder to boulder to keep protection at my back. Behind me there was shouting and running and the sound of a horse being wheeled around. Another musket went off, and then another. I heard a ball smack into a stump somewhere near me. Now I was getting near the top. I struggled on, my breath rasping in my throat, and then I reached the trees at the top of the ridge and flung myself flat. They’d never get me now. They couldn’t gallop horses in the snow fields, and I was too far ahead for them to catch me on foot. I rolled over and looked down. Two or three soldiers were starting to struggle up the slope. There were men running everywhere, and horses being saddled, and officers shouting.

  I stared into the stockade. There was no action there, no people moving at all. Lying in the center of that square of snow, something shiny glistened in the moonlight. And I knew it had all been a waste. The prisoners weren’t in the stockade anymore. They’d been moved to someplace else. I clutched my shoulder where it was bleeding a little, and started for home, running all the way.

  Mother was asleep in her chair in front of the fire. Quietly I took off my shirt and looked at the wound. The ball had skipped right across the top of my left shoulder. A little chunk of flesh was gone. My arm felt numb, but nothing seemed to be broken. I washed the wound and dressed it, and then I hid the shirt with the bullet hole in it inside my mattress. I figured they might be able to guess who’d thrown that bayonet into the stockade, but nobody would be able to prove anything. I went to bed and fell asleep immediately.

  Mother refused to go to the execution. I went. I knew that Sam would want somebody there, and besides, somebody would have to claim the body. They had built a
gallows up on a hill to the west of the encampment. A crowd had gathered around it. I waited down the road until a troop of soldiers came by. First came the drummers playing a slow roll, and then the troops and then Sam and Edward Jones riding in a cart. Their hands were tied behind their backs, and around their necks there were ropes that were tied to the cart, too. Behind them were more soldiers. General Putnam was going to make sure the troops saw the execution as an example. “Sam,” I shouted as he went by.

  He looked around at me. His face was dead white but he managed to give me a grin—not much of a one, but a grin. Then they passed on by. I waited until the last of the troops had gone through, then I ran up to where the crowd was standing and began to push my way through. When people saw who it was they let me pass. I pushed my way up near the front of the crowd, but not all the way. I had a funny feeling that I wanted to be hidden. I didn’t want to stand out where people could see me.

  They had already gotten Edward Jones upon the platform of the gallows. They had put a sack over his head. The rope dangled from the gallows an arm above. A soldier slipped the noose over his head. My eyes were misty and I couldn’t see very well. Nathanial Bartlett, the Presbyterian minister, stepped up onto the scaffold and said a prayer. Then he stepped away. I looked down at the ground. There was a funny thump and the crowd gasped. I looked up. Jones was hanging down below the scaffold at the end of the rope. His feet almost touched the ground and they were sort of dancing around.

  I hadn’t seen Sam, but now they brought him out from somewhere in a bunch of soldiers. They sort of shoved him into the empty space in front of the gallows. He had a sack over his head, too, and I wondered what it was like to be inside of that—was it hot and did it itch? Mr. Bartlett came out and said another prayer over Sam. I tried to pray myself, but my mouth was dry and I couldn’t get the words out. They turned Sam sideways to the crowd. Three soldiers stepped in front of him and raised their muskets. They were so close the gun muzzles were almost touching Sam’s clothes. I heard myself scream, “Don’t shoot him, don’t shoot him,” and at that moment Sam slammed backwards as if he’d been knocked over by a mallet. I never heard the guns roar. He hit the ground on his belly and flopped over on his back. He wasn’t dead yet. He lay there shaking and thrashing about, his knees jerking up and down. They had shot him from so close that his clothes were on fire. He went on jerking with flames on his chest until another soldier shot him again. Then he stopped jerking.