Memphis Blues Again: Book I, Chapter 11.

Copyright © 2012 Bob R Bogle



Slicing its way down through the cottony cocoon webs of blissfully suspended consciousness, a reveille bugle's off-balanced warble beckoned him to come back, come back up through the mazeland of vision-crowded recumbency, past the sharp-edged shards of fractured dreams.

First he felt the only marginally diminished ache in his legs.  Having arrived with his fellow shufflers, stampers and plodders at their destination, yesterday's exercises had proven even more physically draining than the several days of precedent mindless marching.  Next he grew aware of his deep hunger, his muscles crying out for revitalization.

Opening his eyes to slits, he saw over the top of his thin quilt that the day was opening without a dawn.  Outside the high, narrow windows the early morning sky was black with rain that drummed hard and cold against the fragile roof.

All around him, likewise roused too soon from deep slumber brought on by excessive labor, the men in the dimly-lit barracks looked like evil bears clambering from their cots.  A few struck matches to light lamps.  They grumbled, swearing darkly because of the weather outside and the damp floor underfoot.  But they dressed quickly, and then for an hour they drilled under the drenching sheets of rain on a muddy parade ground before shuffling back inside en masse for breakfast, every one of them dripping in their seats with hair plastered down to their foreheads and soaked through to the skin.  It was quieter in the mess today than it had been the day before.  Uniformly dispirited at the prospect of drilling all day in the rain and mud, they focused while they could on their coffee, inhaling the steamy vapor rising from tin cups and trying to shake off the cold.

Joseph sat at a long bench between his brothers.  Neither of them wanted to talk this morning either.  Joseph was silently eating several strips of bacon he'd piled on his plate.  That was one good thing about the army, he thought.  They fed you well.  But that only reminded him of what the drill-major had said the day before yesterday when they'd arrived in camp.  Just off the long march from home, his new companions and he had been shoved into ranks out on the parade ground, none of them even knowing how to properly stand at attention.  Brodbeck had ridden his sorrel mare back and forth before them, looking them over, shaking his head in disgust.  Long, reddish whiskers hung down from his weathered yellow cheeks.  Joseph imagined he looked a little like the engravings of wild-eyed Nathaniel Lyon that he'd seen in the newspapers.

Already Lyon was more than a month dead, fallen at Wilson's Creek, and so many Iowa boys lost with him.  And what action was Frémont taking in St Louis?  None.

No, not none, Joseph corrected himself.  There were these regiments massing in Dubuque, and down in Davenport.  And elsewhere across the north.  That was action being taken, if somewhat belatedly, and that was a lot.  Slowly, perhaps, but steadily, a dark storm was gathering itself together, preparing to descend over that rebellious country:  Frémont's Department of the West.

They might feed us well, but that doesn't mean the army cares about us, he reminded himself.  That was the drill-major's message.  Brodbeck.  Best to keep that in mind.  The army's only bulking us up, toughening us up in advance of throwing us to the slaughter.

They arrived about noon on Thursday after marching sixty miles behind the rumps of the officers' horses, all the way from Fayette.  Captain Towner, and Lieutenants Neff and Tisdale, and Sergeant Gwin rode before them.  He remembered the heat of the sun and the tiny white puffs of clouds far away, and the small brown birds that flitted in the high prairie grass, and a few deer that watched them alertly from under the eaves of a distant copse of trees on the second day.  At night under the stars they heard the distant quailing voices of wolves.  The moon was in its first quarter and the September nights were still reasonably warm.  They were about sixty men, he the youngest, mostly farmers, marching in ranks to Dubuque.  More men would follow in the days to come.

His memory slipped back a few days before the march when they were in Fayette.  September fifth.  He'd never forget that date, he felt certain.

"Tell them you're seventeen, that you'll be eighteen in a month," Andy advised him on the ride to town.  But when they'd stepped up to the recruiter's desk, Joseph had looked the man directly in the eye and declared himself to be eighteen years old.

The recruiter looked him up and down skeptically.  Joseph knew the man doubted his claim because of the baby fat that remained in his face and his full lips.  His hair was thick, more like Bill's than Andy's, tending to part itself naturally in the middle.  With an attempt to convey deep conviction he tried to hold onto a serious expression, but he could tell it was no sale.  The recruiter turned an incredulous look on Andy and Bill.

"He's with you?"

"That's right," Andy affirmed.  At thirty Andy was the oldest.  Sometime in the last year he had grown a thick, curling beard, but his moustache was thin, and his eyes were pressed somewhat close together under brows that seemed to remain somewhat farther apart, all of it imparting an unlikely suggestion of maturity and wisdom to his features.  Under the recruiter's close scrutiny Andy glanced sideways at Bill, adding:  "He's our brother."

The recruiter looked down at the papers Andy and Bill had already signed.  "Garner."  He looked up at Joseph, and then back at Andy.  "He's not old enough."

"He's eighteen," Andy repeated.

"You'll vouch for him?"

"Yes," Andy said.  "We will."

"Eighteen, yes," Bill said, nodding.  Twenty-four year old Bill had thicker, wavier hair than either Andy or Joseph, and he too had grown a beard, but it was a sort of smart goatee with his cheeks clean-shaven, and his eyes were clear and the brows came somewhat close together so that he looked naturally honest and open, and with his lifelong history of jests and tale tales he could always get away with bending the truth better than his brothers could.

The recruiter scratched his chin.  He looked Joseph up and down again, trying to reach a decision.  He sighed.

"You're big enough, and you look strong enough.  Hope you know what you're getting yourself into."  He pushed the paper across to Joseph, who quickly signed it.  "Of course you don't."

Marching into Dubuque at last, Captain Towner left them standing in the street and went upstairs to the quartermaster's private offices.  The men looked the town over while they waited.  Joseph had never been to Dubuque before.  It was the biggest city he had ever seen, with brick buildings soaring up into the sky, and frenetic with men on horseback and ladies in carriages and barking dogs and children running down the streets.  Soon the quartermaster came down the rickety stairs with the captain to greet the men and give them a little welcoming speech.  Winslow was his name.  He seemed to Joseph a fine young Dane, an affable man with stylish mutton chops and a proud strut, prancing about in his fine blue coat.  Something in his manner immediately began erasing memories of the long walk and the dust and the unfavorable view of the officers' horses.  Winslow had the fine sensibilities to conduct them all to an elegant hotel only a few blocks away.  It was supplied with magnificent furniture and dark, polished furnishings in its parlors, and none of its regular guests or patrons appeared either surprised or affronted by this sudden invasion of road-dusty soldiers; indeed, many of the finely-attired men among their number bowed appreciatively to these new arrivals.  They passed into the grand ballroom, where the quartermaster won their undying gratitude by providing them with an excellent beefsteak dinner, the best by far that they'd had since leaving home.  Fine white linen and shining cutlery and chinaware graced the tables, paintings of garden scenes and wilderness jungles adorned the walls, and at the far end of the room artisans were still installing an enormous pale green fresco of Lady Liberty guiding white wagon trains across fields of golden grain into the West.  When the meal was concluded they went back outside and then, mounting his own horse and riding alongside Captain Towner, their host guided them to the camp, located an additional two miles north of town.  Along the way Joseph marveled to see numerous other companies of soldiers in the city streets, including a military band marching down Main Street with drums and fifes ablaze.  A proud, patriotic surge lifted his spirits.  There was a cause for the dusty march, he now remembered; before them lay glory and victory.

It was only about two o'clock in the afternoon when they arrived on the parade ground, where about five hundred men were marching in column while another band played at its head.  Officer Winslow guided them first to his quartermaster's shack where they were provided with preliminary supplies, kettles and pans and cups and utensils and the like, and some coffee and bread.  Then they continued on to the newly-erected barracks.  They were to be formally mustered in within the hour.

They were still settling into the barracks, Andy and Bill and he staking claim to a trio of cots that were clustered close together, when he heard someone calling his name from the open door:  "Private Joseph Garner!"  His heart thumped in his chest.  They're not going to let me go, he thought, exchanging glances with his brothers before crossing the room alone.  Somehow they found out I'm only sixteen.  He felt all their eyes on him as he went by.

Joseph was yanked back out of his reverie by his brother's voice.  "Maybe they'll cancel drill today," Bill grumbled to no one.

"Not a chance," Andy said, "not with Price advancing on the Missouri River.  They'll have us leaving for St Louis as soon as possible, you'll see.  In the meantime they'll squeeze in every moment of training they can. "

"No one ever accused the army of being the most efficient or farsighted organization in the world," Bill said.  "And anyway, how can they expect us to drill in the rain?  You can't see two feet ahead out there."

"You  think they cancel battles just because it rains a little?"

"It's not a little rain.  It's a lot of rain, and it doesn't look like it'll let up anytime soon."

Joseph was finishing his bacon when a very bright flash of light and a quick peal of thunder startled him, his gaze jerking reflexively up to the windows that ran just under the ceiling.  Lines of water trickled down the walls at the ends of the windows.  The mess was built exactly like the barracks, the same shabby design.  Lightning flashed and thunder boomed again, and he thought the black rain was coming down harder than before, fortifying Bill's argument.  He sat watching the rain through the high windows.  It reminded him of something.  What?  He remembered then how he used to sit at the window at Aunt Charlotte's house and watch the weather outside, the rain in the summer and the snow in the winter.  He remembered how beautifully it had snowed for Angelina's birthday -- how long ago?  He counted.  Nine months.  It seemed years ago.

Aunt Charlotte.  Foolish old woman, he thought, but she wasn't even that old.  In her mid-thirties was all.  She had forbidden anyone to talk about the coming war.  She had refused to accept there ever could be a war.  But the war had come anyway, even if the final crisis was delayed for a few months after the election.  South Carolina was gone before December was over, followed by a landslide of secessionist states in January.  Citadel cadets fired on The Star of the West, driving her from the Carolina coast ‑‑ had the name of a ship ever carried more symbolic weight?  With turmoil swirling throughout the land, the addition of Kansas as a free state was overlooked by just about everyone.  Overnight the darling Kansas Territory, everyone's favorite damsel in distress, had become tired old news.  Finally winter broke and then, with the inevitability of April showers, fireballs bloomed in the night over Charleston harbor.  President Lincoln's declaration of war followed swiftly.  War!  Henceforth only two parties:  patriots and traitors!  Years of talk, of heads shaking in disbelief over the inexplicable, reckless actions taken by their Southern cousins, abruptly came to an end.  The bonds were broken.  Real war had come.

Despite the steady drumbeat that had sounded throughout the winter, it was as if Joseph, along with everyone else in the country, was only slowly stirring from a long sleep.  They'd all been lost in a make-believe fantasy for a long time.  For years time had passed so slowly in Ben's and Aunt Charlotte's fine house, but now time began to speed up.  Everything was changing.

Those were not quiet days anywhere, not even in little Volga City.  Ben's long-anticipated homecoming became impossible.  He was required to spend longer stretches of time than ever before away in Ohio, on war business.  Everyone it seemed had additional new responsibilities.  No longer could Ben arrange for friends and family to visit and comfort Aunt Charlotte at home.  No one had time for such luxury anymore.  Aunt Charlotte's nervous energies, long choked back, were now beginning to break loose.  Her temper flared up more with each passing day.  She found herself left to her own devices as her old and familiar life crumbled and began giving way to the strange new world that was taking its place.  She depended on Joseph to take on more and more of the household chores and obligations, and she was quick to scold him when he did not respond promptly enough to her new demands.  He was always rushing about trying to help prepare for another of her parties, but as she disallowed any discussion of the dreadful war news at her fêtes, Joseph had noticed that fewer guests were attending these days, and the ones who did come tended to head for home before the sun had set.  It was a tiring cycle, caring for the animals, caring for the barn, maintaining the house, cleaning the house, preparing for parties, cleaning up after parties, and starting all over the following morning.  He had never had a lot of time to himself, and now he found to his dismay there was no time at all.  It all struck him as futile and absurd. 

No matter how it rankled, Aunt Charlotte could do nothing to arrest the war fever spreading across the land.  Talk about events unfolding across the country, or speculation about events that might unfold across the country, was ubiquitous.  Talk of liberty and freedom, of traitors and punishment and retribution, and of slavery and abolition, and of flags and patriotism prevailed everywhere one went.  "Hail, Columbia!" was on everyone's lips.  Who fought and bled in freedom's cause.  The headlines were on fire in the little newspapers printed in every town.  Ad hoc rallies were called in Farmersburg and in Littleport.  Parades and marching bands had been seen in the streets of Elkader, followed by speeches at the courthouse by Professor Kramer and AF Tipton and Lieutenant Leffingwell.  How everyone burned to teach the damned traitors a lesson.

Joseph longed to hear from his brothers.  What did Bill and John and Andy make of all this war talk?  But they never contacted him, which wasn't unusual.  He tried to soak up as much news as he could at Jeremiah's dry goods store or at the tack supplier's, drawing out his visits there as long as possible on the off-chance that he might accidentally overhear some strange tidbit of information.  At first it was only a matter of curiosity and the excitement of the day infecting his imagination, but as he heard more about the passionate speeches being delivered by small town mayors and dignitaries, and about the drills and parades taking place throughout the state, and then about the first volunteers stepping forward to sign their names in the recruiter's ledgers, he grew more restless.  Then came all the excitement General Lyon stirred up in St Louis, and him finally pushing the treasonous governor out of Missouri.  But the end of July brought word of the disaster of Bull Run, followed the next month by the crushing news of Lyon's death at Wilson's Creek.  Then Joseph found it was no longer mere curiosity, or excitement, that captivated his imagination.  He felt some other kind of unrest unfolding and expanding within himself, a desire to take some kind of action beyond keeping Aunt Charlotte's house in good order.  No longer simply hearing what others were saying, he was beginning to respond to what was being said.  It meant something to him personally, even if he couldn't say why.  He was beginning to formulate his own opinions about what was going on.

Angelina understood this although no one else did.  "You won't do anything foolish, will you," she asked him on the last afternoon when they were alone in the parlor and the sheet hung in the doorway.

"What do you mean?"

"You know what I mean."

"No I don't."  He felt exasperated, a little, sitting there in the chair.  She sighed then, kneeling down on the floor in front of him.  "The war," she said.

"What about it?"

"You can't go," she said.  "You said it yourself.  Remember?  You're not old enough."

"Who said I want to go to the war?"

"No one said it.  But anyway you can't go."

She was always that way, he thought now as he popped the last of the bacon into his mouth.  So smart.  She always knew what I was thinking before I did.

He would miss her, more than any of the rest of them.  He already did.  He thought how cheerful she was, and how bright her smile was with the dimples flashing at the corners of her mouth, her black hair hanging around her face, and her shining eyes.  But she was always secretly so serious, too, if you ever broke through that smiling picture book face she showed to the world.

"I can't stay here with her," he said.

"You'd leave me here with her?"

"That's different.  She's your mother."

An uproar from outside the mess called him back to the present again.  The men stopped drinking their coffee and looked around at each other.  What was it?  It had sounded like a cheer coming from the other mess hall located across the muddy lane.  Was it news from the war?  They started speculating among themselves.  The fighting in Missouri.  Had the traitors moved on Jefferson City, or even St Louis?  A few of them nearest the door stood up and walked over to look outside.

"What is it?" Joseph said.

"Who knows?" Bill said.  "Could be anything."

"Maybe we're shipping out," Andy said.

"Maybe the rebs surrendered.  Maybe the war's over," Bill said.  "I guess we'll find out soon enough."

The rebs surrendered? Joseph thought.  Surely not.  He didn't want to have to go back home.  Not yet.

Not ever.

Nothing happened for a few minutes.  Andy and Bill finished their coffee.  It was almost time to go back outside anyway.  They were just standing up from their seats at the table when the officer came in, water pouring from the wide brim of his hat.  The room instantly was plunged into silence, all eyes on the new arrival, who looked quickly around the room.

"I was sent by Adjutant Scott," the man said.  "I'm instructed to inform you men that, due to inclement weather, and the generosity of General Vandever, General Orders have been suspended for the day.  The regular drill schedule will resume on Monday.  That's all."

It was difficult to hear the last words of his announcement because of the cheer that went up in the room.

The three brothers soon decided to take advantage of the unforeseen interruption of their training and trek down the treacherous, muddy lane through the storm.  It was hard to see as they walked together all hunched forward against the rain that slanted down full and hard into their faces.  "Let's go have our portraits made in town," Bill had suggested.  "We can send them back home.  It'll help get the ladies off our backs for running off to fight."

Mary Jane, Bill's wife, was at home minding their four children, Cordelia, Bill Jr, Erastus, and little Ben, who was not even one year old yet.  Andy had left his two daughters home with Emily.  Joseph knew that neither Emily nor Mary Jane was very happy that their husbands had gone off to whip the traitors, but it was impossible to keep the men home during time of war.  It was the war fever, and anyway if they didn't enlist there was the threat of the draft looming, and that would be a disgraceful way to go.  Not that there was any chance Bill and Andy would have waited for the draft.  After Joseph had fled Aunt Charlotte and Volga City and come home to his brothers, he'd found them to be just as eager to enlist as he was.  Only John wanted nothing to do with the fighting, and he was staying home to oversee all the farms, which after all were located on adjoining tracks of land.  Together Emily and Mary Jane, along with John's wife, Jane, could look after all the children while Andy and Bill were gone away for the few months that the war would last.

"What was that hotel where we ate with the quartermaster?" Joseph said, shouting to try to be heard through the storm.

"The Peaslee House," Andy shouted back.

"Right.  Do you think we could have dinner there again?"

"We'll see.  Let's talk about it later."

Yes:  the Peaslee House, Joseph remembered.  That was what it was called.  He remembered  then what red-whiskered Brodbeck, the drill-major, had said after the mustering-in ceremony:  I hope you boys enjoyed your last supper at the Peaslee House, because your pampered life as civilians is over.  His words had seemed so ominous, only now, after only one single day of drilling on the practice field, Joseph supposed that maybe Brodbeck had spoken too soon, the storm having won them this reprieve.  Maybe the military life wasn't so terrible as the drill-major had made them believe.  S lugging forward through the mud, Joseph recalled how they'd been dressed down on the difference between civilians and soldiers, and on the sacred duty of the latter to die.

Do you know what a veteran is? Brodbeck had harangued them.  Civilians think veterans are soldiers who have seen long service and therefore deserve respect.  But civilians don't know anything about the army, or about their own country, for that matter.  A veteran is a disgusting old soldier who failed to properly die.  He lives on ingloriously after his brethren-soldiers have fallen dead all around him, and there's nothing praiseworthy about that.  When you go into battle, you'll watch some of these men who are standing around you right now dying of disease or gunshot wounds, or you'll see artillery rounds taking off their arms and legs and heads, or ripping out their hearts and lungs and guts, right in front of you.  You'll have their blood and guts and brains sprayed across your faces, and you'll learn the stink of the battlefield.  Then, if you survive that, as a veteran (he spat it out like a curse word) you'll carry with you a maddening guilt, because you watched them die while you came through unscathed.  That's a shameful way to live, as a veteran.  Even if civilians don't know it, you'll know it, and any soldier you meet will instantly know it about you, that you failed to do your duty, to die.  Nothing is more sickening to a soldier than to encounter a veteran who has never been seriously wounded.  Your wounds are the only proof you have that you did everything possible to try to die.  Your duty is to die, not to try to come through the fire still alive.  Your country does not want veterans, who are failed soldiers.  Veterans turn into helpless, pathetic old men who grow sickly and require pensions.  This Union does not want to be in the business of caring for you after the war.  Your country expects that you will do everything in your power to insure that you don't survive:  there is no other point for an army's existence but to be ground down while exterminating the enemy.  That's why you're here today.  We're going to teach you how to be professional soldiers.  How to properly die.

Joseph understood.  The purpose of an army was to be used up.  Any other outcome was uneconomical.

Ben should understand that, he thought.  Money and waste.  Ben of all people.  He remembered again when they were settling into the barracks and through the open doorway he heard his name being called:  "Private Joseph Garner!"  And all the room fell silent with the men looking curiously at him as he walked across the barracks with his heart drumming in his chest, and him thinking that he wasn't going to be able to go after all because somehow they had learned his true age.  And he felt their eyes watching him, boring into him as he made that walk and then stepped outside to find out what might be his fate.

And then he remembered again the last night at Aunt Charlotte's house.  There had been a party, but only a few people had come, and they had so disappointed her by all leaving so very early for home.  Afterwards the children had stretched a sheet across the doorway between the parlor and the hallway so they could play the shadow pantomime game.  He remembered how much fun they had had, and how the little girls had laughed.  Angelina was very good at the game but fat Sam was not.  His hand-animals always resembled nothing but knuckly blob-shadows projected onto the sheet in the flickering candlelight in the hall, even attempts to make something so simple as a bat or a butterfly.  Sarah and Lillie so enjoyed the game, though, and anyway it kept them distracted and away from Aunt Charlotte, who sat brooding alone in the darkness of the kitchen with no candle or lamp.  They had left the sheet hanging there when they went to bed, and there it remained all the next day because Aunt Charlotte stayed in bed with one of her headaches and no one bothered to take it down.  It was still there in the late afternoon when Angelina was talking to him about the war and about how he was not old enough to go fight in it.

He noticed an itinerant wind tugging and tossing through the trees that surrounded the muddy lane they walked down, but when the gusty bellows blew down the cleared roadway they were mostly at his back and only helped to push them forward.  Still, if the gusts kept up they would be turned walking headlong into the wind and rain later tonight on the way back to camp from town.  He wanted to believe that every step he took cut him off that much further from the past but he knew that wouldn't really be true until they finally boarded a steamer down on the riverfront docks that was bound to deliver them safely beyond the Iowa borders.  Until then anything might still happen to stymie his escape, even though he didn't think anything would happen, not now.  If something was going to stop him it would have happened yesterday when he emerged from the barracks alone, fearing he had been found out, and waiting for him outside the cool barracks in the hot sun, still astride the horse that Joseph himself had taken out of the barn the day he had fled, was flat-faced Ben, whose piggish, crooked eyes fixed immediately on him, burning with both anger and satisfaction at having caught him up.  Joseph imagined immediately how his half-brother must have got word from Aunt Charlotte and had had to cut his work short to return home to Volga City on account of a family emergency, to come in search of Joseph and try to prevent his doing anything so foolish as enlisting in the army and running away.

"This him?" said the clerk who had called Joseph's name -- "Private Joseph Garner!" -- a weasel-faced boy-man from the camp whom Joseph had never seen before.

Ben did not reply but only shifted his great turgid weight down out of the saddle, taking the reins in his hand and moving a few steps closer to where Joseph stood, never lowering his glowering gaze.  Joseph stiffened, and he didn't turn away from Ben, either, not even when, in his peripheral vision, he noticed the weasel boy-man shrug his shoulders and skulk away.

Like fighting cocks they stared at each other only a few feet apart, and through Joseph's mind flashed again the strange scene with Aunt Charlotte that afternoon when she had torn down the sheet and moved in screaming at them like a crazy woman.  How he had leapt up from the stuffed red velvet chair -- maybe the finest chair in the state of Iowa -- and Angelina, who had been kneeling before the chair with her hand on his knee, imploring him not to leave, was also surprised and startled and had leapt upward, too.  And Aunt Charlotte had ferociously flung Angelina aside back behind her and was pounding on Joseph's chest screaming at him to get out get out and leave now and never come back and more that Joseph didn't understand at all about him taking advantage of her hospitality after years and years of eating at their table and taking his share of their hard-earned money even in the hard times, and him not caring about any of it and now bringing his corruption into their house under their roof and get out get out and do not ever come back, with her clawing at him and Angelina a short distance away screaming and the sound somewhere in the house of the girls' running footsteps, and the hot, furious tears flowing out of Aunt Charlotte's maddened eyes.  So he gave Angelina one last look but Aunt Charlotte only renewed her attack and he hurried out the door to the barn and picked the best horse and set out immediately for his brothers' farms down past Strawberry Point in Fayette County.  It was well after dark when he arrived at Bill's house and told him what had happened, and the next day Bill rode back to Volga City on his own horse, walking Ben's horse on a long lead, and left it in their barn without talking to Aunt Charlotte or anyone else about it.  As it happened Bill and Andy were already getting ready to go up to Fayette to enlist, and when they'd heard his stories about life among the Broyles they were ready to have him come along with them, although John didn't think it was a good idea, but where else Bill asked could Joseph go?  Back to their crazy cousin's house?  And anyway Joseph wanted to enlist.  All these things and more passed through his mind as Ben and he stared each other down, and without ever looking away Ben eventually spoke in a tight, forced voice.

"Charlotte told me what you did."

"I don't know what I did, and I don't care."

"She saw you."

"I didn't do anything."

"Your shadow was on the sheet in the doorway.  You and Angelina.  She saw you."

"I don't know what you're talking about."

Ben didn't answer, but momentarily he tried a new tact.  "You can't enlist.  You can't go to the war.  You're too young.  You'll be killed."

"Maybe.  But still, I'm going."

"Why?"

"Maybe I have a duty to be killed."

"You need to grow up.  Where are Andy and Bill?"  Joseph did not answer him.  "Didn't they try to stop you?"

"They're my brothers.  They care what happens to me."

Ben licked his fat lips.  He still hadn't looked away from Joseph's eyes.  He said:  "Get your things.  We're going home."

"No."

"I could get your sergeant, or lieutenant, or whatever you call him, and tell them your real age.  You'd have to come with me."

"Then get them.  Even if you take me back to Volga City, I'll run away again."

Ben did not answer him.  He appeared to be struggling for something to say.

"Did Aunt Charlotte send you here?"

"No."

"Then why did you come?"

"Because I'm in charge of you."

"Not anymore."

"Joseph.  Listen.  The war is no place for a boy."

Joseph swore.

In a moment Ben said:  "You're not a man yet.  But I'm trying to treat you like a man.  I'm trying to help you, Joseph.  If you go ahead with this there'll be no turning back.  I won't be able to help you anymore."

"I don't want any of your help.  I never did."

He heard footsteps at his back, which he recognized.  Ben broke the stare then, looking up at the new arrivals.  "You two are just going to let him go get himself killed?"

"I think Little Joe can take care of himself," Andy said.  "And if he can't, he's got us to keep an eye on him."

"You're crazy," Ben said.

"There seems to be a certain amount of craziness in the family," Bill said.

"Listen," Ben said.  "Whatever you may think you know or understand, let me tell you this.  I don't want anything to happen to Joseph.  Do you understand me?  If you two are dumb enough to go off and get yourselves killed that's your business.  But you take care of Joseph."

"Glad to see you care so much about the family," Andy said, sounding bored.

Ben looked back at Joseph.  Slowly he lifted an arm.  He put his hand on Joseph's shoulder.

"You come back.  Do you understand?  Don't try to be a hero."

Now, walking in the wind and rain to have his portrait made in Dubuque, Joseph could still feel the weight of Ben's hand on his shoulder.  That was nothing that his half-brother had ever done before.  It had meant something more than anything Ben had said.  Joseph still thought that strange.  It hadn't changed anything, though.

He remembered the last thing he had said to Ben, who afterward nodded to Andy and Bill and got back on his horse and rode slowly out of the camp.

"I'll be back."