NI'S TALK WITH ABNER
It must have been a fortnight before we learned that Jeff Beech and
Byron Truax had been reported missing. I say “we,” but I do not know
when Abner Beech came to hear about it. One of the hired girls had seen
the farmer get up from his chair, with the newly arrived weekly _World_
in his hand, walk over to where his wife sat, and direct her attention
to a line of the print with his finger. Then, still in silence, he
had gone over to the bookcase, opened the drawer where he kept his
account-books, and locked the journal up therein.
We took it for granted that thus the elderly couple had learned the
news about their son. They said so little nowadays, either to each
other or to us, that we were driven to speculate upon their dumb-show,
and find meanings for ourselves in their glances and actions. No one of
us could imagine himself or herself venturing to mention Jeff's name
in their hearing.
Down at the Corners, though, and all about our district, people talked
of very little else. Antietam had given a bloody welcome to our little
group of warriors. Ray Watkins and Lon Truax had been killed outright,
and Ed Phillips was in the hospital, with the chances thought to be
against him. Warner Pitts, our other hired man, had been wounded in the
arm, but not seriously, and thereafter behaved with such conspicuous
valor that it was said he was to be promoted from being a sergeant
to a lieutenancy. All these things, however, paled in interest after
the first few days before the fascinating mystery of what had become
of Jeff and Byron. The loungers about the grocery-store evenings took
sides as to the definition of “missing.” Some said it meant being taken
prisoners; but it was known that at Antietam the Rebels made next to no
captives. Others held that “missing” soldiers were those who had been
shot, and who crawled off somewhere in the woods out of sight to die.
A lumberman from Juno Mills, who was up on a horse-trade, went so far
as to broach still a third theory, viz., that “missing” soldiers were
those who had run away under fire, and were ashamed to show their faces
again. But this malicious suggestion could not, of course, be seriously
considered.
Meanwhile, what little remained of the fall farm-work went on as if
nothing had happened. The root-crops were dug, the fodder got in, and
the late apples gathered. Abner had a cider-mill of his own, but we
sold a much larger share of our winter apples than usual. Less manure
was drawn out onto the fields than in other autumns, and it looked as
if there was to be little or no fall ploughing. Abner went about his
tasks in a heavy, spiritless way these days, doggedly enough, but with
none of his old-time vim. He no longer had pleasure even in abusing
Lincoln and the war with Hurley. Not Antietam itself could have broken
his nerve, but at least it silenced his tongue.
Warner Pitts came home on a furlough, with a fine new uniform,
shoulder-straps and sword, and his arm in a sling. I say “home,” but
the only roof he had ever slept under in these parts, was ours, and
now he stayed as a guest at Squire Avery's house, and never came near
our farm. He was a tall, brown-faced, sinewy fellow, with curly hair
and a pushing manner. Although he had been only a hired man he now cut
a great dash down at the Corners, with his shoulder-straps and his
officer's cape. It was said that he had declined several invitations
to husking-bees, and that when he left the service, at the end of
his time, he had a place ready for him in some city as a clerk in a
drygoods store—that is, of course, if he did not get to be colonel or
general. From time to time he was seen walking out through the dry,
rustling leaves with Squire Avery's oldest daughter.
This important military genius did not seem able, however, to throw
much light upon the whereabouts of the two “missing” boys. From what I
myself heard him say about the battle, and from what others reported
of his talk, it seems that in the very early morning Hooker's line—a
part of which consisted of Dearborn County men—moved forward through a
big cornfield, the stalks of which were much higher than the soldiers'
heads. When they came out, the rebels opened such a hideous fire of
cannon and musketry upon them from the woods close by, that those who
did not fall were glad to run back again into the corn for shelter.
Thus all became confusion, and the men were so mixed up that there
was no getting them together again. Some went one way, some another,
through the tall corn-rows, and Warner Pitts could not remember having
seen either Jeff or Byron at all after the march began. Parts of the
regiment formed again out on the road toward the Dunker church, but
other parts found themselves half a mile away among the fragments of a
Michigan regiment, and a good many more were left lying in the fatal
cornfield. Our boys had not been traced among the dead, but that did
not prove that they were alive. And so we were no wiser than before.
Warner Pitts only nodded in a distant way to me when he saw me first,
with a cool “Hello, youngster!” I expected that he would ask after
the folks at the farm which had been so long his home, but he turned
to talk with someone else, and said never a word. Once, some days
afterward, he called out as I passed him, “How's the old Copperhead?”
and the Avery girl who was with him laughed aloud, but I went on
without answering. He was already down in my black-books, in company
with pretty nearly every other human being roundabout.
This list of enemies was indeed so full that there were times when
I felt like crying over my isolation. It may be guessed, then, how
rejoiced I was one afternoon to see Ni Hagadorn squeeze his way through
our orchard-bars, and saunter across under the trees to where I was
at work sorting a heap of apples into barrels. I could have run to
meet him, so grateful was the sight of any friendly, boyish face. The
thought that perhaps after all he had not come to see me in particular,
and that possibly he brought some news about Jeff, only flashed across
my mind after I had smiled a broad welcome upon him, and he stood
leaning against a barrel munching the biggest russet he had been able
to pick out.
“Abner to home?” he asked, after a pause of neighborly silence. He
hadn't come to see me after all.
“He's around the barns somewhere,” I replied; adding, upon reflection,
“Have you heard something fresh?”
Ni shook his sorrel head, and buried his teeth deep into the apple.
“No, nothin',” he said, at last, with his mouth full, “only thought I'd
come up an' talk it over with Abner.”
The calm audacity of the proposition took my breath away. “He'll boot
you off'm the place if you try it,” I warned him.
But Ni did not scare easily. “Oh, no,” he said, with light confidence,
“me an' Abner's all right.”
As if to put this assurance to the test, the figure of the farmer was
at this moment visible, coming toward us down the orchard road. He was
in his shirt-sleeves, with the limp, discolored old broad-brimmed felt
hat he always wore pulled down over his eyes. Though he no longer held
his head so proudly erect as I could remember it, there were still
suggestions of great force and mastership in his broad shoulders and
big beard, and in the solid, long-gaited manner of his walk. He carried
a pitchfork in his hand.
“Hello, Abner?” said Ni, as the farmer came up and halted, surveying
each of us in turn with an impassive scrutiny.
“How 'r' ye!” returned Abner, with cold civility. I fancied he must
be surprised to see the son of his enemy here, calmly gnawing his way
through one of our apples, and acting as if the place belonged to him.
But he gave no signs of astonishment, and after some words of direction
to me concerning my work, started to move on again toward the barns.
Ni was not disposed to be thus cheated out of his conversation: “Seen
Warner Pitts since he's got back?” he called out, and at this the
farmer stopped and turned round. “You'd hardly know him now,” the
butcher's assistant went on, with cheerful briskness. “Why you'd think
he'd never hoofed it over ploughed land in all his life. He's got his
boots blacked up every day, an' his hair greased, an' a whole new suit
of broadcloth, with shoulder-straps an' brass buttons, an' a sword—he
brings it down to the Corners every evening, so't the boys at the store
can heft it—an' he's—”
“What do I care about all this?” broke in Abner. His voice was heavy,
with a growling ground-note, and his eyes threw out an angry light
under the shading hat-brim. “He can go to the devil, an' take his
sword with him, for all o' me!”
Hostile as was his tone, the farmer did not again turn on his heel.
Instead, he seemed to suspect that Ni had something more important to
say, and looked him steadfastly in the face.
“That's what I say, too,” replied Ni, lightly. “What's beat me is
how such a fellow as that got to be an officer right from the word
‘go!’—an' him the poorest shote in the whole lot. Now if it had a' ben
Spencer Phillips I could understand it—or Bi Truax, or—or your Jeff—”
The farmer raised his fork menacingly, with a wrathful gesture. “Shet
up!” he shouted; “shet up, I say! or I'll make ye!”
To my great amazement Ni was not at all affected by this demonstration.
He leaned smilingly against the barrel, and picked out another apple—a
spitzenberg this time.
“Now look a-here, Abner,” he said, argumentatively, “what's the good o'
gittin' mad? When I've had my say out, why, if you don't like it you
needn't, an' nobody's a cent the wuss off. Of course, if you come down
to hard-pan, it ain't none o' my business—”
“No,” interjected Abner, in grim assent, “it ain't none o' your
business!”
“But there is such a thing as being neighborly,” Ni went on,
undismayed, “an' meanin' things kindly, an' takin' 'em as they're
meant.”
“Yes, I know them kindly neighbors o' mine!” broke in the farmer with
acrid irony, “I've summered 'em an' I've wintered 'em, an' the Lord
deliver me from the whole caboodle of 'em! A meaner lot o' cusses never
cumbered this foot-stool!”
“It takes all sorts o' people to make up a world,” commented this
freckled and sandy-headed young philosopher, testing the crimson skin
of his apple with a tentative thumb-nail. “Now you ain't got anything
in particular agin me, have you?”
“Nothin' except your breed,” the farmer admitted. The frown with which
he had been regarding Ni had softened just the least bit in the world.
“That don't count,” said Ni, with easy confidence. “Why, what does
breed amount to, anyway? You ought to be the last man alive to lug
_that_ in—you, who've up an' soured on your own breed—your own son
Jeff!”
I looked to see Abner lift his fork again, and perhaps go even
further in his rage. Strangely enough, there crept into his sunburnt,
massive face, at the corners of the eyes and mouth, something like the
beginnings of a puzzled smile. “You're a cheeky little cuss, anyway!”
was his final comment. Then his expression hardened again. “Who put you
up to comin' here, an' talkin' like this to me?” he demanded, sternly.
“Nobody—hope to die!” protested Ni. “It's all my own spec. It riled
me to see you mopin' round up here all alone by yourself, not knowin'
what'd become of Jeff, an' makin' b'lieve to yourself you didn't care,
an' so givin' yourself away to the whole neighborhood.”
“Damn the neighborhood!” said Abner, fervently.
“Well, they talk about the same of you,” Ni proceeded with an air of
impartial candor. “But all that don't do you no good, an' don't do Jeff
no good!”
“He made his own bed, and he must lay on it,” said the farmer, with
dogged firmness.
“I ain't sayin' he mustn't,” remonstrated the other. “What I'm gittin'
at is that you'd feel easier in your mind if you knew where that bed
was—an' so'd M'rye!”
Abner lifted his head. “His mother feels jest as I do,” he said. “He
sneaked off behind our backs to jine Lincoln's nigger-worshippers, an'
levy war on fellow-countrymen o' his'n who'd done him no harm, an'
whatever happens to him it serves him right. I ain't much of a hand to
lug in Scripter to back up my argyments—like some folks you know of—but
my feelin' is: ‘Whoso taketh up the sword shall perish by the sword!’
An' so says his mother too!”
“Hm-m!” grunted Ni, with ostentatious incredulity. He bit into his
apple, and there ensued a momentary silence. Then, as soon as he was
able to speak, this astonishing boy said: “Guess I'll have a talk with
M'rye about that herself.”
The farmer's patience was running emptings. “No!” he said, severely,
“I forbid ye! Don't ye dare say a word to her about it. She don't want
to listen to ye—an' I don't know what's possessed _me_ to stand round
an' gab about my private affairs with you like this, either. I don't
bear ye no ill-will. If fathers can't help the kind o' sons they bring
up, why, still less can ye blame sons on account o' their fathers. But
it ain't a thing I want to talk about any more, either now or any other
time. That's all.”
Abner put the fork over his shoulder, as a sign that he was going, and
that the interview was at an end. But the persistent Ni had a last word
to offer—and he left his barrel and walked over to the farmer.
“See here,” he said, in more urgent tones than he had used before, “I'm
goin' South, an' I'm goin' to find Jeff if it takes a leg! I don't know
how much it'll cost—I've got a little of my own saved up—an' I thought
p'r'aps—p'r'aps you'd like to—”
After a moment's thought the farmer shook his head. “No,” he said,
gravely, almost reluctantly. “It's agin my principles. You know
me—Ni—you know I've never b'en a near man, let alone a mean man. An' ye
know, too, that if Je—if that boy had behaved half-way decent, there
ain't anything under the sun I wouldn't 'a' done for him. But this
thing—I'm obleeged to ye for offrin—but—No! it's agin my principles.
Still, I'm obleeged to ye. Fill your pockets with them spitzenbergs, if
they taste good to ye.”
With this Abner Beech turned and walked resolutely off.
Left alone with me, Ni threw away the half-eaten apple he had held in
his hand. “I don't want any of his dummed old spitzenbergs,” he said,
pushing his foot into the heap of fruit on the ground, in a meditative
way.
“Then you ain't agoin' South?” I queried.
“Yes I am!” he replied, with decision. “I can work my way somehow. Only
don't you whisper a word about it to any livin' soul, d'ye mind!”
* * * * *
Two or three days after that we heard that Ni Hagadorn had left for
unknown parts. Some said he had gone to enlist—it seems that, despite
his youth and small stature in my eyes, he would have been acceptable
to the enlistment standards of the day—but the major opinion was that
much dime-novel reading had inspired him with the notion of becoming a
trapper in the mystic Far West.
I alone possessed the secret of his disappearance—unless, indeed, his
sister knew—and no one will ever know what struggles I had to keep from
confiding it to Hurley.