The Winter Hero

by James Lincoln Collier

“Word will get out sooner or later that you’re here,” Mr. Bullock said. “But I doubt if anybody’ll come after you tonight. You’ll be all right sleeping in the house.” So we slept inside, Levi in his own bed and me and Tom in front of the fire on some sacking. I didn’t have any trouble getting to sleep.

  I felt a lot better in the morning. Mrs. Bullock fed us with a good hot breakfast of fried meat, cornmeal mush, and molasses. I tell you, right then, dry clothes and a good hot meal seemed about as close to heaven as you could get. We sat there eating away and Mr. Bullock asked us a lot of questions about the battle. Levi told him his story, which was that his gun had misfired and he’d run off a ways into the woods to clear it when the second batch of government troops arrived and drove us off. Then he told his father my story—how I’d run out of the woods and knocked the militiaman down with my musket.

  Mr. Bullock nodded. “That was very daring, Justin,” he said. “It makes you the big hero of the event.”

  I couldn’t believe what he was saying. “I wasn’t so brave, sir,” I said. “I ran when they started to charge.”

  He laughed. “Good Lord, boy, you risked your life going onto the road after that government man. If that fella had seen you coming, he’d have run you through.”

  I blushed. “I didn’t think of that. I was just scared he’d kill Peter.”

  “Stop being modest, Just,” Tom said. “Everybody saw what you did. I heard one man say that it was about the only brave thing he’d seen anybody do since the troubles began.”

  “That’s right,” Levi said. “You’ve got pretty near the only glory to come out of the whole thing.”

  It was so hard to believe. I’d been a hero at last without even realizing it. It had been almost an accident. I hadn’t meant to do anything glorious. I’d just done it to save Peter, and now everybody thought I was a hero. I wanted to think about it some more.

  But I couldn’t think about it just then, because we had to decide what to do next. I wanted to get back to Pelham as soon as possible, but it would have been foolhardy to leave right away. It was a better idea to wait around for a day or so to see how the land lay.

  In the afternoon, Mr. Bullock went up to the tavern and picked up the gossip. He told us, “Lincoln’s got men all over the place. You fellows killed a couple of government men, and one of the hostages got killed, too, although nobody knows who shot him. School teacher named Solomon Gleazen. They’ll be looking for anybody who was in the fight, at least for now. You’re going to have to keep yourselves pretty well hidden, in case they send somebody out looking for you. People in Lanesboro know that Levi was off with Shays, and the justices might send the sheriff around just to check. I think you ought to sleep in the barn tonight. If anybody shows up, somebody will slip out and warn you. You can hide up in the woodlot until it’s safe to come down.”

  So that was what we did. Around nine at night we went out to the barn and sat around talking for a while. Then we lay down to sleep. It seemed to me like I’d been sleeping in barns forever. It was pretty cold. There was a good wind blowing, and it cut through the cracks in the barn walls. It was hard getting to sleep. Finally Levi said, “Listen, I’ve got an idea. Let’s sleep in the potato hole. It’ll be warm as toast in there.”

  “Is there room?” Tom said.

  “I think so,” Levi said. “Anyway, it’s a perfect place to hide. Nobody would think of looking for us there.”

  We followed Levi outside. The potato hole was dug into the slope of a hill above the barn. It went in diagonally to make a kind of cave. A lot of farmers had potato holes like the Bullock’s. You stored things like apples and turnips and parsnips and of course potatoes in them in the winter. Being in a hole in the earth kept them the right temperature—not so warm that they’d rot, not so cold that they’d freeze.

  The cover was a big square made of oak planking. It was pretty heavy. We pulled it off and had a look. There was enough moon so we could see inside pretty well. The hole was filled with sacks of vegetables and things. There wasn’t much room left over. It would be nice and cozy, though, once our body heat warmed things up.

  “Slide in and try it, Tom,” Levi said.

  Tom slid in and scrunched down among the sacks. ‘There’s room for one more, but not for both of you,” he said.

  Levi looked at me. “I’ll choose you for it, Just,’’ he said.

  “You’d better take it, Levi. If the sheriff comes around he’ll know who you are, but he won’t recognize me. He’ll think I’m just some hired hand.” To be honest, that wasn’t my real reason for letting him have the potato hole. I was thinking that if I’d become a hero, I might as well go on acting like one.

  “We should choose,” Levi said.

  “That’s all right, I’ll sleep in the barn.” He shrugged and climbed down into the potato hole. They looked nice and cozy and warm down there, and I felt sort of sorry I wasn’t with them. I heaved the cover over them. “Can you fellows breathe all right in there?”

  “Sure,” Levi said. “There’s a few cracks between the planks.

  “Are you sure? You might suffocate down there.”

  “I can feel cold air coming in on my hand if I put it up to the cracks,” Levi said.

  “All right,” I said, and walked back to the barn. I snuggled down in the hay as best I could, but it took me a while to get to sleep. I kept thinking how cozy Tom and Levi must be. To get myself to sleep I began to think about being a hero and all that. What was a hero? Did it count if you didn’t mean to do something heroic, but just did it? What about if you ran away first and then came back and did something glorious? Would being a hero and a coward cancel each other out? And didn’t you have to be fighting for some glorious cause like God or liberty or something to be a hero? I mean, could you be heroic if you were just fighting against unfair taxes and laws that let rich men get the farms of poor men? I wanted to know. I wanted to know if I was really a hero or not. I mean, even if a lot of people called me a hero, did that really make me one? Maybe there weren’t any heroes, just ordinary people who were cowards sometimes and heroes sometimes and most of the time just ordinary people.

  Anyway, why did I worry about being a hero so much? Why did I want to be one? Maybe it would be better to forget about the whole hero problem and just go about my business like anybody else. I didn’t know the answers, and after a while I went to sleep.

  When I woke up, there was a vague light in the barn. It felt like it was morning, but it was pretty dark. I stood up and looked out through the cracks in the barn door and saw that it was snowing pretty hard. It had been snowing for several hours. There was a good six inches of fresh snow over the old crust. It must be true what the old-timers were saying—it was the coldest, snowiest winter in a hundred and fifty years.

  I stood there half awake, wondering if the snow had fallen through the cracks in the cover to the potato hole. It would have been pretty uncomfortable for Tom and Levi to have had snow trickling through all night. Then it occurred to me that the snow wouldn’t do that. The first few flakes might filter through the cracks, but then it would begin to pile up, covering everything, cracks, planks, and all. The next thing I thought was, would the snow block off the air from coming through the cracks? I began to feel uneasy. Of course, they hadn’t suffocated. There would certainly be enough air coming through somehow. Or if they began to suffocate, they would certainly wake up and push the cover open a crack to get more air. But did suffocating wake you up? Or could you suffocate in your sleep and die without even knowing it?

  I swung the barn door open and jumped outside. The fresh snow was soft and dry and I plowed through it easily, sliding my feet along the crust underneath so as not to break through. I kept telling myself not to worry, they would be all right. In a couple of minutes I reached the potato hole. It was covered with six inches of snow, but you could tell where it was because the snow was raised a few inches in a square over the plank cover.

  “Hey, Levi,” I shouted.
<
br />   There was no answer. Probably they couldn’t hear me because of the snow. Maybe they were still asleep because it was so dark in there. I dropped to my knees and brushed the snow off the planking with my hands. “Hey, Levi. Hey, Tom.”

  There was no answer. In a minute the plank cover was clear of snow. I heaved on it, shoving it back. Now the hole was open.

  They looked like they were asleep, all curled up together on the potato sacks, lying there so peaceful. But their eyes were open and they were staring straight ahead at nothing. I shrieked, “Oh my God,” and ran down to the house.

  They brought the bodies in and laid them out side by side on a trestle of planks and sawhorses. Then Mr. Bullock went out to the barn to make coffins. There would be a church service in a day or so, and then the burying. But I didn’t stay. I couldn’t. I was cold as death inside.

  Chapter Thirteen

  I WALKED ON HOME TO PELHAM BY THE shortest route, not skirting around towns or anything. I didn’t care if I got caught or jailed or even hanged or anything. I just wanted to get home. All the way home I kept seeing my two friends curled up together in that hole, their eyes staring out. I tried not to see them, but I couldn’t stop. The sight just kept coming up.

  It took me five days to get home, sleeping in barns along the way and begging food where I thought people might be friendly to the Regulators. A lot of them were. Even though we’d lost, and most of the people who’d fought had taken the oath of allegiance, lots were still angry at the government. There was even some talk about getting some more fighting going again. I wasn’t talking that way, though. I’d seen all the fighting I wanted to for along while.

  Of course, Molly fell all over me when I walked in the door. She’d had no idea where I’d been or whether I’d gotten killed, and she’d heard from Peter about me being a hero. “He said you saved his life. He said he was about to be stabbed with a bayonet and you ran out of the woods and knocked the man down.”

  “I wasn’t really being brave,” I said. “I was just scared for Peter.”

  “You’re just being modest,” she said. “I’m proud of you.”

  A week ago I’d have been happy to have her say that. But now, with that picture in my mind of those two fellows in the potato hole, it didn’t matter very much anymore that I’d been a hero. What difference did it make when my friends were dead? How could I feel good about it?

  “Where’s Peter now?” I said.

  “Northampton jail,” she said.

  “Jail?”

  “They took him prisoner after the battle. He tried to escape along the road and ran smack into a whole bunch of government men. They cornered him up against a tree with their bayonets and beat him down with their muskets.”

  “He should have run off into the woods the way everybody else did.”

  “Of course he should have. But you know Peter. He was trying to rally the men to make one more stand.”

  “It was hopeless by then,” I said.

  “Peter never thinks anything is hopeless. You remember the Forlorn Hope Squad.”

  “Yes,” I said. “What will happen to him now?”

  She shrugged. “There’s to be an indictment and then a trial, and of course he’ll be found guilty of treason. Then it’ll be up to the judge to pass sentence. There’s a lot of feeling around that everybody will be pardoned in the end. They’ve captured maybe sixty that were in the Sheffield fight. Nobody thinks they’ll dare hang them all. People figure that if the government hangs a lot of plain farmers just because they were in the Regulators, there’d be an even worse rebellion than before. People figure that the Governor won’t want to stir things up all over again, just when they’re beginning to calm down. They’ve won, what do they have to gain from raising the people’s feelings again?”

  “But has the Governor actually said he would pardon everybody?”

  “No,” she said. ‘They haven’t said anything yet. But they won’t—they’ll let us worry for a while first.”

  Actually, they hadn’t caught many Regulators, just the sixty they’d taken at Sheffield and a few others they’d captured here and there. They weren’t trying to catch anybody else. The rest of us had gotten away with it, whether we’d taken the oath or not. It didn’t seem fair. Why should these particular men have to suffer for what thousands of us had done? Even Daniel Shays and the other leaders were safe in Vermont. They weren’t going to get into any trouble.

  It was a pretty unhappy time for us. I kept having my memories of things: of the cannon fire at Springfield, of the race through the barnyard at Petersham, of the bayonet charge at Sheffield, and especially of Levi and Tom in the potato hole. I would dream about these things and wake up in a sweat at night, my heart going wild in my chest. One evening when I was out in the woodlot sawing wood, I suddenly fell down on my knees and burst into tears. I went on kneeling there and crying for a long time, and then I began to pray to God for Tom and Levi. After that the picture of them curled up in the potato hole got more dim and came to me less often, and I slept better.

  But still it was an unhappy time. There was Peter in jail, and nobody knowing what would happen, and a terrible hard winter still not over, and the work. I’d worked hard before, but never as hard as now, with no Peter around. I went from before sun-up until after dark, and sometimes worked by candlelight at night, husking dry corn until my head would just droop over and I’d fall asleep on the hearth. And then have to start all over again the next day.

  And of course we’d lost. But the funny thing about that was I didn’t care very much. I couldn’t figure that out. You’d have thought that after so much fighting and so much suffering it would feel awful to have it come to nothing. But the truth was, I didn’t care. I was just glad that it was over, and wished we could get back to normal.

  We had one big hope, though. On April 2nd there was going to be elections for a new General Court. It would be a chance for us to send our own sort of people to the government. We realized how stupid we’d been. Dozens of towns in our part of the state hadn’t bothered to send representatives to the General Court for a long time. It had always seemed to be too expensive to send a man all the way over to Boston and pay all his expenses for weeks at a time. It seemed to everybody that it would just mean more taxes. So we didn’t send anybody, and of course it ended up that we didn’t have any say in what laws were passed. We could see now that if we’d had more sense and sent people—not just us, but all the towns in our part of the state—we’d have had a mighty big vote in the General Court. Most people figured we would have been able to pass at least some of the laws we wanted. It seemed likely that we’d never have had to fight. And Tom and Levi wouldn’t be dead.

  Of course, there was a lot of electioneering going on. There was talk about who’d be best for the job, and who ought to stand for election, and a lot of men were putting themselves forward for it. Over in Amherst, Major Mattoon was going to stand. He’d been in the General Court before, and it was natural for him to try again. I just wished I could vote in Amherst so I could vote against him; but I was too young to vote anywhere. It was a funny thing, but he didn’t scare me the way he used to. After being through a bayonet charge, having somebody like him snap at you didn’t seem very much. I started dropping the Major off his name and calling him Mattoon when I talked about him.

  But important as the elections were, our main problem was Peter. All through March, Molly kept making trips over to Northampton to see him. I wanted to go, too, but I had to stay home and look after the little ones. Being as she was his wife, she had the right to go. She said they were treating Peter pretty well. The food was good, there were the other men to talk to, and she was allowed to bring him rum when she came to see him. And that awful winter was over. Spring came on and it was warm again—even in the jail. “But you know Peter,” she said. “He can hardly stand being locked up. He gets into a rage sometimes and stands there shaking the bars as if he were going to break them out.”

  Then t
he trial came. The charge in the indictment said that Peter and the others

  . . . with drums beating, fifes playing and with guns, pistols, bayonets, swords, clubs and divers other weapons . . . did assault, imprison, captivate, plunder, destroy, kill and murder divers of the leige subjects . . .

  They all pleaded not guilty, but the trial didn’t last very long. Seventeen were declared guilty. The rest were let off. Out of all the people they caught, they picked only the ones who had taken a really prominent part in the fighting. The government did not dare hang a whole lot of plain farmers for fear that they’d have a worse rebellion on their hands. Most people around Pelham said they wouldn’t even dare hang the seventeen they found guilty. Of course, Peter was one of the seventeen—with him riding out front on that big Brother at Springfield, and being involved in the killing at Sheffield and all, it just had to happen.

  Now the question was: What kind of sentence would the judge give the guilty ones? We could only wait and find out.

  Meanwhile, the elections were coming up. Being a woman, of course, Molly couldn’t vote. It put her in a rage almost like the ones Peter got in. “Why can’t I vote?” she would shout at me when we discussed it. “You’ll be able to vote in a few years, but I’ll never be able to vote. Do you think you’re smarter than I am?”

  “It’s not my fault, Molly,” I said. “If it was up to me, you could vote.”

  “Do you think you know more about who ought to run the government than I do? Why does some ignorant shoemaker who can hardly read have the right to vote when I can’t? I know more than most of the men around here.”

  That was true: She was smarter than a lot of men I knew. Lots of them could hardly read or write. “If it was up to me, you could vote, Molly.”

  She calmed down. “I know it, Just. It makes me mad is all. I can’t vote because I’m a woman, you can’t vote because you’re too young, Peter can’t vote because he’s in jail. With all the suffering this family has done for people’s rights, we don’t have a vote.”