Adam said, “Just thinking.” And he was thinking with amazement, Why, I’m not afraid of my brother! I used to be scared to death of him, and I’m not any more. Wonder why not? Could it be the army? Or the chain gang? Could it be Father’s death? Maybe—but I don’t understand it. With the lack of fear, he knew he could say anything he wanted to, whereas before he had picked over his words to avoid trouble. It was a good feeling he had, almost as though he himself had been dead and resurrected.
They walked into the kitchen he remembered and didn’t remember. It seemed smaller and dingier. Adam said almost gaily, “Charles, I been listening. You want to tell me something and you’re walking around it like a terrier around a bush. You better tell before it bites you.”
Charles’ eyes sparked up with anger. He raised his head. His force was gone. He thought with desolation, I can’t lick him any more. I can’t.
Adam chuckled. “Maybe it’s wrong to feel good when our father’s just died, but you know, Charles, I never felt better in my whole life. I never felt as good. Spill it, Charles. Don’t let it chew on you.”
Charles asked, “Did you love our father?”
“I won’t answer you until I know what you’re getting at.”
“Did you or didn’t you?”
“What’s that got to do with you?”
“Tell me.”
The creative free boldness was all through Adam’s bones and brain. “All right, I’ll tell you. No. I didn’t. Sometimes he scared me. Sometimes—yes, sometimes I admired him, but most of the time I hated him. Now tell me why you want to know.”
Charles was looking down at his hands. “I don’t understand,” he said. “I just can’t get it through my head. He loved you more than anything in the world.”
“I don’t believe that.”
“You don’t have to. He liked everything you brought him. He didn’t like me. He didn’t like anything I gave him. Remember the present I gave him, the pocketknife? I cut and sold a load of wood to get that knife. Well, he didn’t even take it to Washington with him. It’s right in his bureau right now. And you gave him a pup. It didn’t cost you a thing. Well, I’ll show you a picture of that pup. It was at his funeral. A colonel was holding it—it was blind, couldn’t walk. They shot it after the funeral.”
Adam was puzzled at the fierceness of his brother’s tone. “I don’t see,” he said. “I don’t see what you’re getting at.”
“I loved him,” said Charles. And for the first time that Adam could remember, Charles began to cry. He put his head down in his arms and cried.
Adam was about to go to him when a little of the old fear came back. No, he thought, if I touched him he would try to kill me. He went to the open doorway and stood looking out, and he could hear his brother’s sniffling behind him.
It was not a pretty farm near the house—never had been. There was litter about it, an unkemptness, a rundownness, a lack of plan; no flowers, and bits of paper and scraps of wood scattered about on the ground. The house was not pretty either. It was a well-built shanty for shelter and cooking. It was a grim farm and a grim house, unloved and unloving. It was no home, no place to long for or to come back to. Suddenly Adam thought of his stepmother—as unloved as the farm, adequate, clean in her way, but no more wife than the farm was a home.
His brother’s sobbing had stopped. Adam turned. Charles was looking blankly straight ahead. Adam said, “Tell me about Mother.”
“She died. I wrote you.”
“Tell me about her.”
“I told you. She died. It’s so long ago. She wasn’t your mother.”
The smile Adam had once caught on her face flashed up in his mind. Her face was projected in front of him.
Charles’ voice came through the image and exploded it. “Will you tell me one thing—not quick—think before you tell me, and maybe don’t answer unless it’s true, your answer.”
Charles moved his lips to form the question in advance. “Do you think it would be possible for our father to be—dishonest?”
“What do you mean?”
“Isn’t that plain enough? I said it plain. There’s only one meaning to dishonest.”
“I don’t know,” said Adam. “I don’t know. No one ever said it. Look what he got to be. Stayed overnight in the White House. The Vice-President came to his funeral. Does that sound like a dishonest man? Come on, Charles,” he begged, “tell me what you’ve been wanting to tell me from the minute I got here.”
Charles wet his lips. The blood seemed to have gone out of him, and with it energy and all ferocity. His voice became a monotone. “Father made a will. Left everything equal to me and you.”
Adam laughed. “Well, we can always live on the farm. I guess we won’t starve.”
“It’s over a hundred thousand dollars,” the dull voice went on.
“You’re crazy. More like a hundred dollars. Where would he get it?”
“It’s no mistake. His salary with the G.A.R. was a hundred and thirty-five dollars a month. He paid his own room and board. He got five cents a mile and hotel expenses when he traveled.”
“Maybe he had it all the time and we never knew.”
“No, he didn’t have it all the time.”
“Well, why don’t we write to the G.A.R. and ask? Someone there might know.”
“I wouldn’t dare,” said Charles.
“Now look! Don’t go off half-cocked. There’s such a thing as speculation. Lots of men struck it rich. He knew big men. Maybe he got in on a good thing. Think of the men who went to the gold rush in California and came back rich.”
Charles’ face was desolate. His voice dropped so that Adam had to lean close to hear. It was as toneless as a report. “Our father went into the Union Army in June 1862. He had three months’ training here in this state. That makes it September. He marched south. October twelfth he was hit in the leg and sent to the hospital. He came home in January.”
“I don’t see what you’re getting at.”
Charles’ words were thin and sallow. “He was not at Chancellorsville. He was not at Gettysburg or the Wilderness or Richmond or Appomattox.”
“How do you know?”
“His discharge. It came down with his other papers.”
Adam sighed deeply. In his chest, like beating fists, was a surge of joy. He shook his head almost in disbelief.
Charles said, “How did he get away with it? How in hell did he get away with it? Nobody ever questioned it. Did you? Did I? Did my mother? Nobody did. Not even in Washington.”
Adam stood up. “What’s in the house to eat? I’m going to warm up something.”
“I killed a chicken last night. I’ll fry it if you can wait.”
“Anything quick?”
“Some salt pork and plenty of eggs.”
“I’ll have that,” said Adam.
They left the question lying there, walked mentally around it, stepped over it. Their words ignored it but their minds never left it. They wanted to talk about it and could not. Charles fried salt pork, warmed up a skillet of beans, fried eggs.
“I plowed the pasture,” he said. “Put it in rye.”
“How did it do?”
“Just fine, once I got the rocks out.” He touched his forehead. “I got this damn thing trying to pry out a stone.”
“You wrote about that,” Adam said. “Don’t know whether I told you your letters meant a lot to me.”
“You never wrote much what you were doing,” said Charles.
“I guess I didn’t want to think about it. It was pretty bad, most of it.”
“I read about the campaigns in the papers. Did you go on those?”
“Yes. I didn’t want to think about them. Still don’t.”
“Did you kill Injuns?”
“Yes, we killed Injuns.”
“I guess they’re real ornery.”
“I guess so.”
“You don’t have to talk about it if you don’t want to.”
“I don’t want to.”
They ate their dinner under the kerosene lamp. “We’d get more light if I would only get around to washing that lampshade.”
“I’ll do it,” said Adam. “It’s hard to think of everything.”
“It’s going to be fine having you back. How would you like to go to the inn after supper?”
“Well, we’ll see. Maybe I’d like just to sit awhile.”
“I didn’t write about it in a letter, but they’ve got girls at the inn. I didn’t know but you’d like to go in with me. They change every two weeks. I didn’t know but you’d like to look them over.”
“Girls?”
“Yes, they’re upstairs. Makes it pretty handy. And I thought you just coming home—”