Across Five Aprils: Chapters 7–9

Dan Lawrence was not yet twenty; he was still weak from his wounds and loss of blood, still under the cloud of a horror that only subsequent horrors could make him forget.

Men all over the county roared at the story Ross Milton embellished with cutting sarcasm and published in his weekly paper, a story that caused Wortman to be demoted, even by his own lieutenants, from the role of a swaggering desperado to that of an inept and ridiculous figure, whining in his misery.

There were stories of generals jealously eyeing one another, caring more for personal prestige than for defeating the Confederates; there were Pope and Sheridan, who blustered; there was Grant and the persistent stories of his heavy drinking.

Jethro read the news in dismay, and for the rest of the war there was always a fear within him that disappointment and disaster inevitably followed hope.

They will not believe that he has ever been anything but right; they revile the President when rumors of his impatience with their general get around.

The career of General McClellan was almost over, too; it would rise with another spurt later on, but that fall the papers blazed with the news that the President had relieved the general of his command, and the name that had outshone all others now plummeted into near obscurity.

Rumor was that this general, far back from the line of battle, had insisted that still more divisions be sent up the deadly hills, but that he was finally dissuaded by officers of lower rank and keener perception.

The family waited for days, during which Jethro’s waking thoughts were filled with foreboding and his dreams with troubled anxiety.

They could have seen those thousands scrambling up the innocent-looking wooded hills and falling like toy soldiers brushed over by a child’s hand; thousands of young men whose dreams and hopes were snuffed out in a second and who will be remembered only as simple soldiers who fell in a cruel, futile battle directed by men who can hardly be called less than murderers.

For a few seconds Jethro forgot the Federal Registrars and the fact that not only the word which preceded Eb, but his method of announcing himself gave credence to the suspicion that he was a deserter.

Matt assented to the trip readily, and Jethro, with the letter in his pocket, drove off down the road, his heart pounding with excitement.

The long wait for an answer was interminable.

Jethro tossed at night and wondered: had he done an impudent thing, had he laid himself open to trouble, had he been a fool to think that a boy of his age might act without the advice of his elders?

Eb’s often reiterated, “I’ll be goin’ on soon, Jeth; I won’t be a burden to you much longer,” became like the whippoorwill’s cry — always the same and never ending.

Jethro closed his ears to it, but the tensions within him mounted, and the necessity of providing for Eb’s needs in strictest secrecy became a task that seemed to grow in magnitude as the days went by.