April Morning (20 page)

Levi sat opposite me with hero-worshiping eyes. He had brought my fowling piece in from outside where I had dropped it, and cleaned it and polished it until the metal shone like silver. In his mind, too, I had departed from a childhood we once shared. No more battles between, us, no more threats or name-calling.

“Now he feels better,” one of the women said, with the triumphant satisfaction a woman can exhibit when she sees a man well fed. But I felt no better—only more tired, more hopeless, more defeated.

Ruth was there again, now. She stayed on the other side of the room and looked at me whenever she felt others would not notice. In the candlelight and the firelight, she was lovelier than I remembered. But I wanted to cry out to her, “Too quickly, too quickly! Can't you see what they're doing to me? Don't let them do it to you.” But she wanted it. Her eyes were the eyes of a woman, and whatever the future held, she would not be afraid of it.

When I had finished eating, Mother took me aside into the pantry and said to me, “Where is Father lying now?”

“In front of the pulpit with the other coffins. The Reverend covered them with black cloth.”

She nodded, and then was silent for a moment.

“Adam?”

“Yes, Mother.”

“If I don't appear just the same—I mean the way you think about me as your mother—today and even tomorrow, you understand—”

“I understand,” I said.

“I mean that all you went through today, so much—oh, my God, so much, and I can't even talk to you about it, or listen to your story about it. Do you understand?”

“Of course I understand, Mother.”

“In a little while—a few days.”

“I know, Mother.”

“Are you very tired now, Adam?”

“It's funny,” I said, “but I was more tired before.”

“That's good. I want you to take a package of candles over to the meetinghouse.”

“Mother, what for?”

“Take them there. I don't want him to lie in the darkness tonight.”

“But, Mother, the Reverend has candles. They're burning now. The place isn't dark.”

“Let these candles be for later.”

“All right,” I agreed. “I'll take them there, Mother.”

Granny sat at the kitchen table and made the long, green bayberry candles into a package. She had become an old lady. She had been my grandmother, but until tonight I had not thought of her as an old lady, withered and consumed; and it occurred to me that she had lost more than I lost. Nature rules wisely at times, and it's in the order of things that the parent dies before the child. Granny had lost too much.

“Adam dear,” she said to me, “tell the Reverend that if these tapers are lighted, they will burn until the dawn comes. They are extra thick. I never thought it when I dipped them. I never thought it at all.” I kissed her cheek, and the women fussed over her.

Before I left, I glanced around for Ruth, but she had gone. I went out through the herb garden, and just outside the gate, Ruth was waiting for me.

“What's that you're carrying, Adam?” she whispered.,

“Candles. Mother wants them at the meetinghouse, so Father won't lie in darkness.”

Ruth nodded. “Could you lay them down a moment?”

I placed them on the wayfarer's bench, and Ruth flung her arms around me and kissed me again and again. It was like I had never kissed her or embraced her before, her mouth so warm and soft, her body so tightly against me. “Oh, Adam—Adam,” she said, “when the news came that you were dead, my whole world died. Every bit of it. Nothing was left. My head was empty and my heart was empty, and I knew that I would grow old like Goody Hartman and become a skinny, dried-up old maid.”

I just couldn't see Ruth Simmons as a skinny, dried-up old maid. One of the things we had in common was an appetite, and at the Thanksgiving dinner, November past, the two of us had astounded the family, who declared that our performance was stunning, even for Massachusetts. But I was moved that she should feel that way.

“I love you so much, Adam. I'm not afraid to say it now. I want to.”

I guess I returned her feelings, even if I did take it somewhat more for granted. I couldn't think of myself as being married to anyone but Ruth Simmons—if only because there were so many things about myself that she just shrugged away and accepted, things I would have the devil's own time explaining to another girl. I also had a strong suspicion that Ruth would make life unbearable for any other girl I took up with. But such things as marriage had been comfortably in the future.

Ruth knew me well enough to reassure me, and told me that it was all right. “You don't think I want to be married at the age of fifteen?”

I knew that the Simmonses, men and women, were strong-minded, and I mentioned that.

“Adam Cooper, how you talk sometimes!”

“You want to walk over to the church with me?”

“Of course I do,” she said.

I picked up the candles, and we started toward the common, holding hands and walking very slowly. It was most comforting, and I couldn't help thinking how rewarding and pleasant it would be if we could be together all this night and the next night too. Then I thought of Ruth and the other women too—alone in the town through the length of this day, with the town and the children and everything else as their burden, and the dead men to lay out themselves, never knowing whether their men were alive or dead or would ever return to them. I spoke about it to Ruth, and how hard it must have been.

“It was harder for you, out with the battle,” she said.

“I'm not sure. A battle's a funny thing—this one, anyway. It wasn't like any battle I ever read about in books. It was terribly confused. No one seemed to know much about what was going on or what to do, except to shoot at the redcoats.”

“Did you, Adam?”

“Know what to do? No. Not a blessed bit.”

“I meant, did you shoot at the redcoats?”

“A few times, yes. I only had bird shot in my gun, so mostly they were out of my range.”

“Did you kill anyone?” she whispered.

“No. I hit some soldiers once, because I saw them jump and yell out with pain. But I don't think I killed anyone.”

“Did you want to, Adam?”

“Maybe once, but only for a little while. I don't hate anyone enough to want to kill him.”

“I'm glad you feel that way,” Ruth said. “I can't get used to thinking that we have to kill and fight now. I was upstairs at a window this morning when the redcoats fired. I saw one of them drive his bayonet into Jonas Parker's back when he was trying to run away.”

“You shouldn't have watched that.”

“But they could come back, couldn't they, Adam, and then it could happen all over again?”

I was silent for a while before I replied, “No. It couldn't happen all over again.”

“Why not?”

I shook my head.

“Why not, Adam?”

“Because it isn't the same any more,” I said finally. “We aren't the same. This morning, we knew that we wouldn't fight. But now we know that we must fight, and we're learning how.”

Crossing the common, we met the Reverend, and I told him how I was bringing the candles to the meetinghouse.

“By all means, bring them there and let them be lighted, if that will please your mother, Adam. I have the place lit and intended to keep it so all night; but if it brings her comfort to have more light there—then let it be so. For myself, I am on my way to see your mother now. I have so many calls to make. We are a town of sorrow and tragedy—and it happened too quickly.”

“She'll be pleased to see you, sir.”

“And Adam?”

“Sir?”

“Do you know about the muster?”

“I know about it, Reverend. My Cousin Simmons told me.”

“Well, Adam,” the Reverend said slowly, “I am not one of those who might regard you as a boy. You lived a man's life today and you did a man's work. But think about it, Adam. Think about it. Youth is too easily shamed into action. Pride is strong and potent, Adam—but let me only remind you that your first duty is to your mother. She needs you right now as she never needed you before. A week or a month from now, it might be different, but now she needs you, Adam.”

I nodded. “I have been thinking about it.”

“Good. And if I am not at your home when you return, Adam, God bless you and sleep well. And you too, Ruth.”

He left us, and when he was out of earshot, Ruth asked me what he meant.

“How do you mean?”

“He spoke about the muster. What did my father tell you?”

“I suppose you'll know tomorrow anyway. The British army was driven back into Boston, and the Board of Safety made the decision to besiege Boston. So they called a muster of all the Committees and a general mobilization of the militia. Not only here, Ruth, but everywhere in New England the Committees will send their men to fight at Boston.”

“And you'll go? Oh, no, Adam—you wouldn't!”

“I didn't say I'd go. Did I say I'd go?”

“You didn't say so—”

“Then why make such a fuss? I'm certainly not going tomorrow or the next day. But I don't know what's going to come, Ruth. I wish I did, but I just don't.”

We walked on to the meetinghouse, Ruth saying never a word more until we were there. The meetinghouse was well lighted, and there were still a good many people inside. Ruth hung back. “I don't want to go in there where the coffins are,” she whispered.

“You don't have to if you don't want to. But there's nothing to be afraid of. It's my father there and his friends. Is that anything to be afraid of?”

She went inside with me, then. It was very quiet inside the church now. The strangers had gone away, and those who remained were friends and relatives of the dead men. They sat here and there in the pews, mostly men and some boys, some of them with their Bibles open on their laps, but most of them sitting silently. I whispered a greeting to some of them and nodded at others, and then I lit our candles and put them in brackets, leaving half of them for later. Others must have had the same notion as Mother did, for there was a stack of unlit candles on the tract table—to which I added mine.

“I think we should stay for a while,” I said softly to Ruth. She nodded. We sat down in our family pew, and after a few minutes, Ruth began to cry. I thought she was entitled to that. I felt that there was no woman in our town who was not entitled to weep her fill after today.

Ruth dried her eyes. I could see that she was more relaxed and that she felt better. She was very tired now, and so was I.

We walked back across the common to the Simmons house, and at the door, Ruth said to me, “Adam, do you love me?”

I thought about it for a while before I answered. I had known Ruth Simmons all my life, and with a girl you know all your life, you are likely to take things for granted. About a year ago, we had been to Boston to visit some of Mother's relatives, and I met a fourth or a fifth cousin or something of that sort—a girl of sixteen with blue eyes and long yellow hair. I thought at the time that she was the most beautiful thing I had ever seen in all my life, and I fell madly in love with her, even though I never saw her again. My passion for her lasted five or six weeks, and then it kind of dwindled. I had never fallen in love with Ruth in just that way, but then neither had the feeling I had for her dwindled. It remained on a kind of even keel, except for moments like this, when I felt closer to her than to anyone in the world. So after thinking about it, I nodded, and said, Yes, I thought I loved her about as much as I would ever love any girl.

“I love you, Adam Cooper,” she told me. “I don't change easily. Even if this war lasts a whole lifetime, it won't change my feelings about you.”

“A lifetime's a long while.”

“I don't care.”

Then I kissed her and bid her good night.

Only the Simmons women still remained with Mother and Granny when I came home, and a short while after I arrived, they left. Levi was sound asleep. Like myself and so many others, he had missed the sleep of the night before. Mother and Granny were both of them exhausted, and I suggested that we all go to bed.

“I won't sleep,” Mother said.

“You will, Mother, because you must.”

“No, I won't sleep,” she said.

Granny took her upstairs. There were things that had to be done at night that Father usually did. I did them, and then I drew water from the well for the morning. Granny was back in the kitchen when I returned.

“Is Mother sleeping?”

“Sound asleep when her head touched the pillow,” Granny said.

“And you, Granny?”

“I need little sleep, Adam.”

“Then I'll be going along.”

“Yes—”

At the door, I paused and said to her, “Granny, I had Father only a while. Sometimes, I feel that I had him, the way you have a father and love him, only last night. You had him a long time.”

“He was your father but my child,” Granny said softly.

“I love you, Granny. You have me and you have Levi.”

“Do I, Adam?”

“Yes,”

“Do I, Adam? Do you think the news of the muster isn't all over the town? When will you be going away, Adam Cooper?”

“No one said I was going.”

“You may lie to others, Adam. But don't lie to me.”

“I'm not lying, Granny,” I protested. “I just haven't made up my mind about anything. I'm too tired to think about it anyway.”

“But you thought about it?”

“I suppose so, Granny.”

“Time will come, you'll go.”

“I guess you're right, Granny. A time will come and I'll go. There's no way out of it. But let's not talk about it tonight. Come upstairs with me, Granny.”

“No. Go ahead, Adam. I'll sit here a while and think. Plenty to think about, you know.”