My Brother Sam is Dead: Chapters 4–7

At first all I could hear was the heavy drum roll sound of hooves; then I began to hear voices of men shouting and the jingling of harness.

“What do you intend to do, run me through with that sword and leave my wife and child to fend for themselves?”

Because Redding had such a reputation for being a Tory town, the Rebels had decided to disarm it—at least disarm the Tories.

So I ran uphill and down, clambering over the stone and rail fences that divided the pastures.

He lunged at me, grabbing for the muzzle of the gun.

He cursed, and stuck his fingers in his mouth, and I could see he’d got a little gash from the bayonet clip when I jerked it out of his fingers.

Father said, “The Rebels are damn fools, how can they expect to beat the whole British army? They can win these skirmishes in the woods, but as soon as the British catch them in pitched battle they’ll be done for, and no good can come out of it but a lot of men dead.”

The British had the best uniforms and the shiny new guns, but there was something exciting about the Patriots—being underdogs and fighting off the mighty British army.

He’d been to Trinity College in Dublin, and he was a surveyor.

I liked ciphering all right, but I didn’t care much for spelling and studying the Bible and memorizing psalms.

“Oh Sam’s smarter than I am, sir,” I said, just to be modest.

“Still, it’s a shame to waste talent. I could make a surveyor out of him if he’d apply himself. Perhaps I might take him on as an apprentice in a year or two, once he’s learned to cipher.”

Father said that surveyors always knew about the good deals on land and could get rich speculating.

“I’d pay him a shilling.”

“If you don’t stop arguing with me, I’ll thrash you, Timmy.”

“It’s dangerous. You think that because you’re only a child they won’t hurt you, but they will. They’ve been killing children in this war. They don’t care. They’ll throw you in a prison ship and let you rot. You know what happens to people on those prison ships? They don’t last very long. Cholera gets them or consumption or something else, and they die. Tim, it isn’t worth it.”

In the spring the shad ran upriver to breed, but they couldn’t get past the milldam, and the pool was just swarming with them.

I felt sort of bad about it; it was lying, and lying was a sin, and so was going against your father. And even if it hadn’t been a sin I would have felt badly about it, because Father trusted me and I was being dishonorable.

I moved at a brisk pace. Despite the sun, the air was morning cool and fresh. It was nice weather for walking and I felt excited, not scared.

“All right, sulk,” she said. “Besides, I know you’re carrying a love letter for somebody.”

I ran up to the letter and picked it up. It was rumpled and dirty. All it said was, “If this message is received, we will know that the messenger is reliable.”

He said that his regiment had made a magnificent retreat, and the British were, lucky they’d got out of it alive, but it sounded the other way around to me.

A lot of times they were on very short rations, eating just hardtack and water day after day.

Father said no, she shouldn’t encourage Sam in his recalcitrance.

But Father didn’t feel that way. “The boy has to learn a lesson, he’s far too headstrong.”

But by that fall of 1776 I didn’t have much time for pondering over Sam or Mr. Heron.

He’d consult some almanacs, which usually disagreed, and he’d ask certain farmers who were supposed to be good judges of weather when they thought the snow would come.

All of that part of Westchester County, from the Connecticut border over to the Hudson River, had gotten to be a kind of no man’s land, with roving bands wandering around plundering people on the excuse that they were part of the war.

All of that part of Westchester County, from the Connecticut border over to the Hudson River, had gotten to be a kind of no man’s land, with roving bands wandering around plundering people on the excuse that they were part of the war.

There were six of them, and they were carrying weapons—mostly old muskets, but one or two of them had swords and pistols.

He grimaced and shook his head.

Others were edging out into the pastures alongside the road looking for forage.

He sat down on the ground while one of the men washed the cut on Father’s head with water from a leather canteen and bandaged it with Father’s own handkerchief.

We waited there again until they got us another escort to take us farther along the way, and we crossed over into New York, the first time I’d ever been in a colony besides Connecticut.