My Brother Sam is Dead (2 page)

“That's not what they say in New Haven, sir,” Sam said. “They say that the whole colony of Massachusetts is ready to fight and if Massachusetts fights, Connecticut will fight, too.”

Finally my father lost his temper and slammed his hand down on the table, making the plates jump. “I will not have treason spoken in my house, Sam.”

“Father, that isn't treas—”

Father raised his hand, and for a moment I thought he was going to reach across the table and hit Sam. But instead he slammed it down on the table again. “In my house
I
will decide what constitutes treason. What have they been teaching you at college?”

Mr. Beach liked peace. “I don't think the people of Redding are anxious to fight, Sam,” he said.

Sam was nervous, but being Sam, he was bound to argue. “You get the wrong idea from Redding, sir. There's a lot more Tories in this part of Connecticut than in the rest of the colonies. In New Haven there aren't so many Loyalists and in some towns there aren't any at all.”

“Oh Sam,” Mr. Beach said, “I think you'll find that loyalty is a virtue everywhere. We've had these things before—that vicious nonsense of those madmen dressing up like Indians and throwing tea into Boston Harbor, as if wetting a few hundredweight of tea would stop the mightiest army on the face of the earth. These agitators can always manage to stir up the passions of the people for a week or so, but it never lasts. A month later everybody's forgotten it—except the wives and children of the men who've managed to get themselves killed.”

“Sir, it's worth dying to be free.”

That made Father shout. “Free? Free to do what, Sam? Free to mock your King? To shoot your neighbor? To make a mess of thousands of lives? Where have you been getting these ideas?”

“You don't understand, Father, you just don't understand. If they won't let us be free, we have to fight. Why should they get rich off our taxes back in England? They're 3000 miles away, how can they make laws for us? They have no idea of how things are here.”

It made me nervous to listen to Sam argue with Father. I could see that Mr. Beach wanted to quiet him down, too, before he and Father got into a real fight the way they sometimes did. “God meant man to obey. He meant children to obey their fathers, he meant men to obey their kings. As a subject of the Lord Our God I don't question His ways. As a subject of His Majesty, George the Third, should you question his ways? Answer me this, Sam—do you really think you know better than the King and those learned men in Parliament?”

“Some of those men in Parliament agree with me, sir.”

“Not many, Sam.”

“Edmund Burke.”

Father lost his temper again. He banged his hand down on the table once more. “Sam. There'll be no more talk on this tonight.”

He meant it, and Sam knew he meant it, too, so he shut up and the conversation turned to repairs Mr. Beach wanted to make to the church. I was glad, too. It scared me when Sam argued with the grownups like that. Of course Sam was that way, always shooting out whatever came into his mind and sometimes even getting hit by my father for it. Father hardly ever hit me, but he hit Sam dozens of times, mostly for arguing. Mother always said, “Sam isn't really rebellious, just too quick with his tongue. If he'd only learn to stop and think before he spoke.” But Sam couldn't seem to learn that. My mother hated it when Father hit Sam for speaking out, but there wasn't anything she could do about it, and anyway, she believed that Father was right, children ought to keep a civil tongue in their heads. I guess he
was
right, children are supposed to keep quiet and not say anything, even when they know the grownups are wrong, but sometimes it's hard. Sometimes I have trouble keeping quiet myself, although not near as much trouble as Sam.

Of course Sam was almost a grownup himself. He was sixteen; he'd been away at college for almost a year, so you couldn't really call him a child anymore. I guess that was part of the trouble; he thought he was a grownup, and he didn't want anybody to tell him what to do. Except, I could tell that he was still afraid of Father.

But to be honest, I wasn't sure if Sam was right about the fighting anyway. It sounded right when he said it—that we should be free and not have to take orders from people who were so far away, and all that. But I figured there had to be more to it than Sam knew about. Father had never gone to college the way Sam had, but still I was pretty sure that he knew more than Sam. Father was a grownup and maybe Sam thought he was a grownup, too, but as far as I was concerned he was just my brother. He couldn't scare you the way Father could.

Besides, it made me glad to have him come home, and I didn't want him to get into a big fight with Father and spoil it. I just wanted him to shut up until dinner was over and we could go up to the loft where we slept, and I could lie in the dark snuggled up next to him to keep warm and let him tell me stories about Yale and the pretty girls he knew in New Haven, and getting drunk with his friends and his triumphs in his debates. Sam was a triumphant sort of a person. He always had some victories to tell about whenever he came home from college. Mostly they were in debates where he scored a telling point over his enemy or whatever you call them. He would say, “And then I scored a telling point, Tim.” He'd explain to me what the telling point was, which I never understood, and then he'd say, “Tim, it was a great triumph, afterwards everybody crowded around me saying, ‘That was a telling point, Meeker, a telling point.'” Sam couldn't boast about his triumphs to Father or Mother or Mr. Beach or anybody like that, because boasting was pride and pride was a sin, but he could boast to me about them, because I didn't care whether it was pride or not, they were interesting. And I guess most of his boasts were true: he was always bringing home some book in Latin or Greek with an inscription saying he had won it for some telling point he had scored. Of course the inscriptions were usually in Greek which I couldn't read, but I believed him.

So anyway, I didn't want Sam to get into a fight with Father. It would spoil the fun, and besides if it were a bad enough fight, Sam might run away. He'd done that a few times after a fight with Father. Usually he just ran away to Tom Warrups' hut up behind Colonel Read's house. Tom Warrups was the last Indian we had in Redding. He was the grandson of a famous chief named Chief Chicken which is a funny name for a chief. He didn't mind having people sleep in his hut. It made a convenient place for Sam to run away to, because it was close enough so that he could come home without any trouble after he'd stop running away.

But Sam stayed pretty quiet during supper. The grownups didn't pay any attention to him, but I kept looking at him to admire his uniform and I could see that he was thinking about something. It worried me that it was something else for him to get into a fight with Father about. But finally supper was over with and he'd stayed quiet, and I figured he was safe. The grownups got up. “Sam, are you going to help me with the milking?” I asked.

“I can't, my uniform will get dirty.”

“Take it off, then.”

I could see he didn't want to do that. “My other clothes are still at Yale.”

“Borrow some from Father.”

“All right, all right,” he said. “Go on out to the barn. I'll come in a minute.”

I knew he'd stall as long as he could, but I went out anyway so as not to get into a fight with him myself. The barn is out behind the house. Actually the house is partly a store and partly a tavern, too. The main room is the taproom, with a huge stone fireplace, and barrels full of beer and whiskey and cider. There's the big table in the middle with benches down the sides, and then at the end opposite the fireplace, more barrels and bins full of things we sell to the farmers around Redding Center, and Redding Ridge, which is our part of the town. We sell things like cloth and needles and thread, and nails, knives and spoons, salt and flour, pots and pans, and some tools, although mainly if anyone wants tools they have to go to Fairfield for them.

Behind the taproom is the kitchen. There's an even bigger fireplace there; in fact it takes up one whole wall, and of course cupboards for storing food, and hams hanging from the ceiling and salted beef and salted fish in barrels, and honey in jars and wheat in sacks. And out through the kitchen door there's the muddy barnyard and back of that the barn. We have a cow named Old Pru, and a horse named Grey, and some chickens, ducks and geese; and the old sow and six young pigs. Sam and I used to look after the animals, but after he went to college I had to do it all by myself. I hate doing it, it's just a lot of work.

I went out. The barnyard was muddy from the April rain. I jogged across it, trying to find the least muddy spots, and went into the barn. Old Pru mooed at me; she was tired of waiting to be milked. I got down the wooden bucket from its hook and started to milk her. It's a boring job, and your hands get tired. I kept hoping Sam would come out, so I could talk to him without the grownups around. But he didn't come, so I began to daydream about being older and going to Yale with Sam and scoring some telling points myself and Sam being proud of me—even though I know that daydreams are sloth and sloth is a sin. And I got pretty far along in the daydream before Sam came in. He still had his uniform on.

“Are you going to help me with the animals?” I asked.

“I wasn't going to, but Mother said that idle hands make the Devil's work.”

“All right,” I said, “you can pitch down some hay.”

“I'll get my uniform dusty,” he said. He picked up a straw and leaned against the wall picking his teeth.

“I thought you were going to change.”

“I couldn't find anything else to wear,” he said.

“What a lot of swill. You just want to show off how famous you are.”

“Not at all, Tim, I'd have been pleased to help had I been able to find suitable clothes.”

I pointed Old Pru's teat at him and gave him a squirt. Milk splashed on the knee of his trousers.

“Damn,” he said, jumping back. “You little brat.” He wiped off his trousers.

“Help, then,” 1 said.

“All right. I'll collect the eggs. What on earth happened to this basket?”

I'd stepped on it once when I was mad. “It got broken,” I said.

“I can see that,” he said. “How did you manage to do that?”

“Old Pru stepped on it,” I said. “Just put some hay in the bottom.”

“God, can't you do anything right, Tim?”

“Don't curse,” I said. “It's a sin.”

He picked up the basket. “How am I supposed to collect eggs with a hole in the basket?”

“Stop complaining,” I said. “I have to do this every night while you're down at Yale scoring telling points and getting drunk with those girls.”

“You know I wouldn't do anything like that, Tim. Drunkenness is a sin.”

I giggled. “So is—what's that word for girls? Lasviciousness.”

“Lasciviousness, stupid, not lasviciousness. I have a new song about girls, but it's too
lasvicious
for you.”

“Please sing it to me,” I begged.

“No, you're too young.”

“No I'm not. Besides, if you don't sing it to me, I'll tell Father how many times you got drunk.”

“Ssshh, all right, I'll sing it later,” he said. “This basket is hopeless. Isn't there another one someplace?”

“There's a new one hanging up over there, but we're not supposed to use it.”

“Why not?” Sam said. “What can they do to me?”

I didn't like it when he talked like that. It bothered me. “Listen, Sam, why do you always have to get into a fight with Father?”

“Why does he always have to get into a fight with me?” Sam said. He had got some hay in the basket and was hunting eggs under the hen roost.

“That isn't fair. He pays for you to go to Yale and sends you money for books; you ought to be nicer to him. You knew he'd get into a rage when he saw you in that uniform.”

Sam stood there staring at me with the broken egg basket in his arms, and I knew he was trying to decide whether or not to tell me something. I had enough sense to keep still. Sam pretty usually blurts things out if you pretend you're not interested and don't beg to him to tell. I went on milking Old Pru.

Finally he said, “Suppose I told you I had to wear the uniform for a reason.”

That gave me a shiver. “I don't believe it,” I said. I did believe it, but the best way to get him to tell was not to get all excited.

“It's true, Tim. I'm going to fight the Lobsterbacks.”

That scared me, but it excited me, too. I wondered what it would be like to shoot somebody. Still I said, “I don't believe you, Sam.”

“Oh you'll believe it soon enough. Tomorrow I'm walking up to Wethersfield to meet my company. Then we're going up to Massachusetts to fight the Lobsterbacks.”

I believed him all right. “Won't you be scared?”

“Captain Arnold says it's all right to be scared; the true brave man is always scared. At least that's what the sergeant said he said.”

“You seem to be pretty proud of Captain Arnold.”

“Oh, he's a marvelous horseman, and brave, and doesn't take any nonsense from anybody. He'll lead us through the Lobsterbacks like a hot knife through butter.” He started collecting eggs again.

“You're really going to Massachusetts?” I asked. It seemed like a long way to me. “To Boston?”

“I don't know exactly. I think we're supposed to go to Lexington,” Sam said. An egg fell out through the bottom of the basket. “Damn it, Tim, why don't you fix this thing?”

“I did fix it, but it broke again.” I didn't say it was a month ago and I was too lazy to fix it again. Laziness was sloth and sloth was a sin. “Tell me about the war,” I said to change the subject.