Free April Morning by Howard Fast Page B

home, since, as I had pointed out before, there were things I had to do.
    â€œAll right, Adam,” she nodded.
    We walked to her house in silence. I didn’t go in with her. The way I felt, I couldn’t face the prospect of her mother and aunt. Then I went back to our house.
    The kitchen door was open. Standing in the stormway I heard Mother say, “I don’t care what your position was, Moses Cooper. I say you were wrong. There’s some kind of madness in all this, and I know that I can’t stop it or change it, but I can keep my son out of it. He’s just a boy.”
    â€œYesterday, he was a boy,” Father replied, his voice dull and troubled. “Tonight, he’s not.”
    â€œNow what kind of thing is that to say? That’s exactly the kind of a thing a man says. I don’t understand that kind of talk. A boy doesn’t turn into a man overnight. It takes learning and growing and hurting. And most of all, it takes time.”
    â€œSometimes,” Father said slowly, “we don’t have time.”
    â€œI’m sick and tired of this kind of talk. It’s been going on too long, Moses, and you know it. What are we here? We’re plain people. We live quietly, and we try to raise up our children properly and with a decent respect for God and man. We don’t kill and we don’t cheat. We don’t have a jail in our town, and we haven’t had a man in stocks since mid-winter. And now you tell me that we’re going to fight a British army. I never heard such nonsense. You know that I never objected to Committee work, for all the time it took you away from your home and family. It was proper and just, and I had no call to go objecting to it. But when you tell me that plain, ordinary village people, men and boys that we’ve known all our lives, are going to try to stop an army—well, then I can only say that you and all the rest of them have taken leave of their senses entirely.”
    â€œYou’re making too much of it, Sarah,” Father said. “I don’t believe there’s a British army coming—and even if they are coming, we’re not going to fight them. Sarah, we’re not going to commit suicide—and the British aren’t our enemies that way. I know what kind of trash they fill their ranks with, but the officers are educated men. They’re the same blood, and our language is common to us. Why, the last thing in the world that they want is bloodshed. We have a position and a principle, but it’s not worth sixpence if we don’t maintain it—and if they do come and see that we stand firm with some show of force, why, then they’ll respect us. That’s not the way to have bloodshed, but to avoid it.”
    â€œThen avoid it without Adam.”
    â€œHow can I? Sarah, how can I? If you had been there when he came into Buckman’s to sign for the muster— We had a line of folk. I didn’t know he was there. But I looked up, and there he was. He didn’t say anything. He just stood there and looked at me—and I tell you that his face said more than all the words that ever passed between us. If I had forbade him to sign that muster book then and there, I would have lost a son. Is that what you want? But I saw him there so tall and strong I could have wept. You can’t shelter him now. You can’t shield him. There comes a time, and this is that time—”
    I couldn’t Listen to any more. I went back outside, and then I came back in, whistling and making enough noise to let them know that I was coming. They were silent when I entered the kitchen. Granny was there, sitting in one corner, looking smaller and older than ever. When I came in, she shuffled to the hearth, and dipped me a bowl of cornmeal mush out of a pot cooking there.
    Someone had to say something, and I asked whether Levi had returned.
    â€œHe’s up in bed,” Father replied harshly.