Free April Morning by Howard Fast

Adam?”
    â€œI do hope so.”
    â€œDo me a favor, Adam?”
    â€œAnything you say, Cousin Simmons.”
    â€œYour Cousin Ruth is out in all this commotion, and I don’t blame the girl with everything stood topsy-turvy. Do find her and bring her home after you sign the muster book.”
    â€œI’ll be pleased to, Cousin Simmons, but sure as the sunrise, I don’t know whether I’ll be signing that muster book. I just have my hopes and prayers.”
    â€œHe’s all bark and no bite. You should have learned that, Adam.”
    It’s slow learning about your own father, I thought, and I said a prayer like this: Oh, don’t let him do it to me in front of everyone standing here! Don’t let him look at me the way he does, like I was nothing but a chicken thief caught in the act, and tell me that I’m no account and not fit to stand in with the men! I couldn’t bear it now! I simply couldn’t!
    I was in the room now. There were at least six candles on the table where Father sat, with Jonas Parker on one side of him and Samuel Hodley on the other. Jonas Parker had the muster book out in front of him, and when someone came to sign it, he would push it toward him and make a serious and almost ceremonial thing of the entry. Father had the minutes book of the Committee, and when someone signed the muster book, Father entered the name and the salient facts in the records of the Committee. It appeared pointless to me for two separate sets of records to be kept like that, yet I knew that most of the men agreed that the civil and military aspects of the matter should be cleanly separated. Samuel Hodley was the emergency storekeeper, and it was up to him to determine whether the militiaman had enough powder and shot; and if not, to see that it was issued. When a man had signed in, Jonas Parker would tell him:
    â€œYou are now on call and assignment until you are officially released from duty with a release signed by one of us three. In other words, you are now a member in good standing, under orders and in discipline in this Committee of Defense and Correspondence. Go home and get your gun and powder and shot, a pound of bread and a water bottle. Muster on the common at four o’clock in the morning.”
    I don’t mean that he said that over and over, but enough times so that no one would fail to hear it. Even though I myself held to Samuel Hodley’s opinion, that this was all a great bother and disturbance over nothing at all, his words made me feel cold and desolate for a moment.
    I was in front of the table almost before I realized. “Name?” my father said briskly, in the official tone he used for Committee business—and then he looked up and saw me as I replied:
    â€œAdam Cooper.”
    His eyes fixed on me, and I felt that they were boring inside of me and reading every thought. For myself, I had the feeling that I was looking at my father for the very first time, not seeing him as I had always seen him in the vague wholeness of age and distance, but looking at the face of a surprisingly young man, his wide, brown face serious and intent upon me, his dark eyes shadowed in their inquiry, his broad full-lipped mouth tight and thoughtful. How was it, I wondered, that I had never noticed before what a strikingly handsome man he was? How was it that I had seen in him only the strength of his overbearance and not the thewed strength of those massive brown arms spread on the desk with the white shirt sleeves rolled high and carelessly? It was no wonder that men listened to him and heeded his words.
    The room was full of silence, and it stretched and stretched, and all the while my father never turned his eyes away from mine. What went through his mind I will never know, but I do know that time there became an eternity. At last, Father looked at Jonas Parker and nodded silently, and Parker pushed the muster book toward me. I bent over the table and signed