Through Darkest America

Chapter Seven

Spring came early, after a winter that was more like a cold, bleak autumn than anything else. An old hand who worked for Howie’s father said Nature had a way of evening things out and was kind of making up for the bitter season of the year before, which was like two or three winters all bunched together.

For Howie, it meant you had to get outdoors and work when you ordinarily wouldn’t. Clear days when there was only a little snow in the air were extra blessings as far as Papa was concerned—days when you could get a head start on spring.

In a way, Howie didn’t mind. The things that used to be fun in winter didn’t matter now. All his life, cold weather had meant extra good smells in the kitchen, hot fruit pies on special days—and at night, huddling about the big fireplace while the chill wind howled outside. There’d be cider, then, spiced with herbs, and the whole family laughing and telling stories about one thing or another.

Only it wasn’t the same anymore. Since Carolee had been Chosen, the laughter had gone out of his mother. Her eyes didn’t smile—they seemed to be looking at something far away; and the special things she used to do weren’t so important.

Howie missed Carolee, too. She didn’t seem so much like a wart, now, and he mostly remembered good things. He thought about her often, having fun on Silver Island, and wondered if she knew the girl who had lain on the beach near naked. Probably she did. There were a lot of people there, but you’d get around to meeting everyone after a while.

The girl had been on his mind a lot since he’d seen her picture at Corners. At night, with the silence outside, he saw her just as she’d been, only she didn’t have anything at all on now. Sometimes he imagined touching her all over, and rubbing up against her—doing things that made him sweat and kick the covers aside, even with the chill outside. Then he’d have to stop the pain that filled his loins, though he didn’t like to do that often. Stock did it all the time, he knew—bucks and mares alike—but people weren’t supposed to. It didn’t much matter what animals did; they didn’t have a lot in their heads to begin with. But it wasn’t supposed to be good for people.

It was funny, he thought. How you saw things different. He could look at the girl on the beach and think about pulling off the little bit of clothes she had and doing all kinds of things to her. Once, though, it occurred to him that Carolee probably went swimming at that very same place, now. Was she wearing clothes like that? The idea horrified him. He wondered if the girl on the beach had a brother. Maybe he’d look at Carolee the same way. Would that be wrong, if he did? Did that make him, Howie, wrong? It was enough to make a person’s head ache—figuring out what was good and what wasn’t.

With the early thaw, news of the war came sooner than most people had expected. The mild winter had been good and bad for both sides, they said. It had let the army move against the rebels sooner, but it had also given Lathan a chance to broaden his holdings over good ground, since the earth wasn’t churned to mud this spring like it usually was. There was one thing certain, people said, there’d been plenty of chances for fighting and there were a lot of dead and wounded in both armies.

One day a traveler from Bluevale stopped for supper and told Papa there was trouble in town with the army, and likely to be more. After the terrible battles out west, many troopers had been sent back to rest up and lick their wounds.

“They’re hungry and most of ’em hurt,” the man said. “They got no will to fight Lathan anymore, but there’s plenty of mean in them still.”

And mean, he told them, meant brawling and burning, and a rape or two thrown in. It wasn’t so bad in the countryside, yet—but it would be, soon as the towns got too tough on the troopers.

There was other news, too, that set Papa’s jaw and turned his face beet red.

“A War Tax, or that’s what they’re callin’ it,” he grumbled. “You’re old enough to know what’s happening in the country and take some note of it,” he told Howie.

The traveler had gone his way and Papa sat with his big fists in his chin before the fire. There was still a chill in the air and wood coals glowed on the hearth.

“Thing is,” Papa explained, “it’s not what you call something that makes it what it is. You can pin a name on a nettle and call it a daisy, but that don’t make it one An’ you can call this tax business what you like—it’s the government getting too big for its britches is what it is.”

He told Howie that the troopers were going to have to have more food to keep fighting Lathan through spring, because the rebels had stripped the land out west and left nothing but stubble on the ground.

“And we have to give it to ’em?” Howie wanted to know.

“Appears that way for now.”

“Is it a lot? A lot of food?” Howie had visions of soldiers carrying off everything on the farm, leaving them with nothing at all to eat.

“It’s enough,” Papa muttered. “Enough. And do we have to?” He scratched his beard and looked at Howie. “That’s a yes and a no, boy, is what it is. Something that ain’t been clear settled. Might be the government’ll find they bit off more’n they can swallow ’fore it’s over.”

“What do you mean, Papa?”

“Just that anybody with good sense knows it’s got to stop sometime!” His fist hit the table so hard Howie jumped. “It ain’t just the war. It’s other things, too. Things that give a few folks too much say in other people’s business!”

Howie didn’t understand a lot about the government, or what it did. He knew there were people like the man who came every year at Choosing and talked about America. That was government and so was the army fighting Lathan. And there were real important people, like the president, who told everyone what to do. But all that was pretty far away. It didn’t have much to do with planting crops and tending stock. You couldn’t think a lot about things you couldn’t see—there were too many real things closer by. Only he guessed the government was going to be close enough to think about, now.

At the end of February the troopers started making their rounds of the farms and ranches in the county, and Howie recalled what Papa had said. It was true enough—a lot of people were thinking the government had bitten off more than it could swallow. They worked hard for what they got and didn’t take kindly to giving any part of it away for something like a War Tax.

At the Jeffers farm there was a fight between one of Lang Jeffers’ boys and a couple of troopers. One soldier got cut up pretty bad and they tried to take the boy in for trial. They didn’t get far with that—Lang made it clear the soldiers would have to take him and his other five sons too if they figured on taking one and he didn’t think that would be too easy to do. The soldiers were smart enough to see they could easily start their own war right there. They took what Jeffers would give them for the War Tax and went on their way.

There were similar incidents at other ranches. Word got around about what had happened at the Jeffers place and no one was too happy about it. The troopers soon realized they’d made a big mistake backing down once. They were being run off farms now before they got started. And no one was sending anything to the war they didn’t want to.

The officer in charge of the troopers was sent back to town and another took his place. The same night that happened Howie and Papa stood out on the porch and watched a red glow light the southern horizon.

“Jess Clayton’s place,” Papa said soberly. “Can’t be anywhere else.”

He didn’t say anything more, but he stood and watched the fire a long time, and after Howie went to bed he heard Papa and his mother talking. Around midnight, Papa took off walking toward the Claytons.

It was late morning before he came back, and sometime after that before he got around to telling what had happened. Jess Clayton’s house and barn were gone. Burned to the ground. Nearly everything he had had been taken off— food and stock alike. Enough to make up for what Clayton’s neighbors had held back, it was said. And if any others cared to argue about the War Tax—why, they’d get the same. The country had to come first, now. There was no time for greed and personal wants with good men starving and dying-in the west, while farmers stayed snug and happy back here.

That was what the new officer had told Jess Clayton’s wife and his boys, Papa said. And he’d told them all this while he made them stand and watch Clayton being hung from a big oak right on his own front yard, where he could see his home being put to the torch. Next to that, the worst thing was that the man who’d done all this was Colonel Jacob himself—who’d grown up right on the land with Jess Clayton and Papa and most of the others.