Drums in the Distance

I

THEY say that when you hear drums beating far off at first you find yourself only faintly disturbed, but if you must listen, and listen long enough, you will get up and march.

It was so with my mother.

Brother Giddy wrote to tell Father that he had been elected third lieutenant in the company his class had formed at the college. Father read the letter to us all at the dinner table. You could see he was very proud, and though his illness was then far advanced, and it was an effort for him to talk and often made him go off into a fit of coughing, he managed to speak loud enough for all of us to hear.

Giddy said a great deal about hoping to have the opportunity to fight for the honor of South Carolina, and a great deal more about how proud he was to be the son of a signer of the Articles. Father was almost at the end of the letter before he read, ‘And if it shall please you, sir,’ — I remember Giddy’s very words, — ‘could you let me have some money to entertain my fellow students who have so generously elected me to this honor, and to buy for my brother Joe a pair of breeches that he may not borrow those of my new uniform?’

We girls giggled and even black Frances started to grin. Mother had been listening with her eyes far away, but she fastened them now on Frances as though some sixth sense told her the girl might stop waving the peacock tail at the flies. Frances’s face straightened as quickly as a flag drops when the wind fails.

‘Mr. Trent,’ Mother turned to Father, ‘ have you sent Gideon the money?’

Father was coughing. ‘I sent him fifty dollars,’ he said, choking.

Mother said, ‘ Mr. Trent, is n’t that a great deal for you to give the boy for a frolic? You had better have bought him a colt that he could use when he comes home in the summer.’

Father was still coughing. ‘Bett,’ he whispered, ‘as a woman you would n’t appreciate a man’s obligations. Giddy is almost grown.’

Mother never argued with Father. Her lips closed tight together and she said not another word.

I remember thinking that she and Father must have forgotten all about Joe’s breeches. No one but me seemed to have wondered if they would be for a uniform, too. But Joe was so young. I came between Giddy and him.

Father at this time was a very sick man. In December he had been our county’s delegate to the convention at Charleston, where he had put his hand to the Articles of Secession. He had come home with not only a great patriotism for his state and a great ire against all Yankees, but a very bad cough deep in his chest of which he was never to be rid again.

No matter how Mother doctored him, the cough hung on until, by the time spring came, she would n’t even trust Dilly to boil the goose fat for his throat, but stood over the kettle herself.

‘Lyle,’ she said to me between shut teeth, ‘the pity is that he did n’t stay home on his own plantation where there’s plenty to please and occupy any man without his wasting himself on the state’s business!’

The spoon clashed against the side of the iron kettle. ‘Your brother Joe still at the college! The fields ready for the spring ploughing — and Gideon drilling in brass buttons! The Lord knows what nonsense next!’

Old Dilly shook her head and made a noise like ‘Tck— tck’ with pursed-up lips. But Mother gave her a look. My mother wanted no sympathy from a slave woman — nor any answer, either, unless she asked her a direct question.

II

Mother must have known for a long time, but I did n’t know till that very April day that Father was dying.

He lay propped up on pillows as he had lain almost since the day Giddy’s letter came. Mother sat beside him. My three little sisters and I stood close together just beyond the door.

We had been waiting so through the whole afternoon, when all at once, far down in our lower field, we heard the train whistle blow.

The train never blew as it crossed our field unless somebody was getting on or off at the plantation. We were expecting no one. It was Sunday, too, and the train did n’t run on Sundays. But the whistle blew and blew again and again, louder and nearer.

Father tried to raise his head and Mother looked at him with frightened eyes. ‘Bett, do you hear that? What is it?’

I heard it, too. Between the whistles came the faint sound of shouting and hurrahing.

Then I remembered. Some of the men and boys in the town had fired up the engine that morning and ridden it down to the county seat, where there was a telegraph machine, to get the news from Charleston.

Mother’s hand closed over Father’s. ‘Lyle!’ She spoke with a little catch in her breath. ‘Go tell Cooly to run see what ’t is.’

Frances was halfway up the stairs. She came running to meet me. ‘Mam,’ she panted, ‘down in Charl’son they kilt a thousand people. They done shot up the fort full of Yankees.’

We were almost in the doorway. They had all heard. Father held his wasted hands over his chest, his eyes on Mother’s face.

‘Oh,’ Mother said. ‘Oh — then they’ve done it! Mr. Trent, did you hear her? It must mean they attacked Fort Sumter. Will it mean more fighting?’

But Father was coughing again.

Our father died that night. My little sisters and the Negro women fell to crying. Mother locked herself in her room. And old Dilly had to come to me with the keys so that the dips might be given out to light him.

III

There was n’t time to send to the college for Giddy and Joe to come home for the funeral. But it could n’t have been more than a day or so afterward that Mother wrote to them to come home anyway.

We were at sixes and sevens on the plantation, Mother and we four girls with no white man but the ignorant overseer.

When the train whistle blew, most of the colored folk as well as the family gathered on the porch to greet the boys. But when Uncle Cooly stopped the carriage only Giddy stepped out. I don’t know why, but it surprised me to see him still in uniform. The darkies nudged one another. But I don’t think Mother even noticed.

‘And where’s Joe?’ she said.

‘Joe’s enlisted, Mother — the day war was declared. And, unlike me, he could n’t get a furlough. He tried.’

Mother caught her lower lip between her teeth. Mother never spoke hastily. After a second she said, ‘With his father barely cold in his grave, has your brother already forgotten the respect and duty he owes to his mother?’

She motioned Giddy to follow her and walked straight to the parlor door. We never used the parlor unless company came, but the key stayed in the lock that it might be ready whenever the occasion arose. We children, when we were smaller, used to slip in and rock in the rocking-chairs. We liked to feel our bare toes sink into the carpet. For we were not rich folk for all Father owned a hundred slaves, and the carpet in the parlor was the only carpet in our house.

Mother shut the door behind her and Giddy. I stood in the dark hall with Frances close by me. She made an excuse to hold a candle. We could hear Giddy’s voice loud and protesting, but not my mother’s.

‘Mother!’ Giddy shouted. ‘Mother, are you asking me to resign and come home? Are you asking me to do a thing like that?’

A pause.

‘If I do,’ his voice was lower, but it trembled, ‘if I do I’ll be disgraced forever. Everyone’s going. You don’t know what you ’re asking. I can’t do it.’

Time passed.

Giddy’s voice again — a boy’s voice, not a man’s. ‘Only a few weeks, Mother? Only till the crops are off? How long do you think it’s going to take us to whip the Yankees? Don’t you see there won’t be any war by the time the crops are off? I’m not going to be disgraced all the rest of my life.’ He was a little steadier now. ‘I am going. If not with your permission, then without it — as Joe went.’

And then at last I heard my mother. She did n’t speak loudly, but her words cut clearly through the paneling of the door. ‘My son, your father is in Heaven. Your brother Joe has run away from his responsibility. But you are the oldest son. Even though you feel no duty to me or to your sisters, you have a duty you cannot shirk to the hundred black souls who are dependent on you for their living. You will have to stay and take off the crops. There is no man of the family now but you, and these Negroes must be fed.’

Boots shuffled on the carpet. All at once I heard a sob. It was not like a boy’s, but torn and rasping, as a man’s sobs are torn from him.

I caught Frances’s shoulder. ‘Light me to my room,’ I said. ‘And be quick about it.’

She climbed the stairs slowly, looking back over her shoulder. As she turned back the bedclothes she glanced up at me sideways. A grin spread over her face. ‘ I reckon Mist’ Giddy ’ll stay if he ma say so.’

My hand stung as it smacked across her black face. It is the only time I remember ever striking a Negro.

She was right, of course.

Day after day Giddy rode about the fields on Father’s old horse, Silver Dollar. When you saw him from a distance, talking to the overseer or directing a gang of hands, except that he was so much younger and straighter it was almost like having Father back.

The plantation, like a little world of its own, revolved evenly. Mother was seeing to the weaving. She had seven women at work. ‘Lyle, if it’s true that it is going to be hard to get store cloth for the next few months, at least no man or woman or child on this plantation will suffer for lack of clothes.’ Of all the things we put up in the house, — preserves, candles, and soap, — Mother had the women make double quantity.

But no one spoke of the war outright in Mother’s or in Giddy’s presence. Even after Manassas, the little girls and I only whispered to one another of the glorious victory and how the cowardly Yankee shopkeepers had run almost back to Boston for fear of our Southern heroes.

No one dared speak of our brother Joe, either. Mother told us one day he was in training camp at Aiken. But afterward her lips closed tight together in a way they had come to have a habit of doing.

IV

And then late one afternoon the train blew again in our field. It wheezed to a stop as though someone were coming to the plantation. But no one got off. The engineer, Mike O’Neill, hailed Giddy, who was riding near. ‘They tell me, Gid,’ he called, ‘ that your young Joe is about to perish of the measles down there at Aiken.’

That was all. The train puffed on.

Next morning at sunup Giddy and Mother and I stood in the field waiting for it to come by on its way south.

There had never been any measles on our plantation. In a sparsely settled country such as ours we could keep our Negroes isolated from disease. Each of us knew, though none of us put it into words, that measles may go hard with country boys.

Giddy said to Mother, ’I’ll bring him home to-morrow, mam. You meet us with the carriage. If he’s better, I ’ll get Mike to blow just once. If he is n’t so well, Mike can blow again — that’ll be twice. And if he’s’ — Giddy looked away from us and finished quickly — ’he’ll have to blow three times, and you’ll know to bring the wagon.’

Mother pulled her cloak tighter about her. ‘Tell your brother I’m having red cherry pies baked for him to-morrow.’

V

From early afternoon the carriage stood hitched in the yard, and the wagon at one side of it. The horses and the mule switched their tails at the flies. Old Uncle Cooly sat on the carriage steps with the lines in his hand and told my little sisters long sleepy stories about rabbits and foxes and the chipmunks that live under the big stones in the pasture.

Mother was in the kitchen helping Dilly with the pies most of the morning. Now she came out on the porch in her black silk dress and her enameled brooch. She and I sat together and waited. It was strange to see Mother with her hands idle.

It was n’t long before we heard the train whistle. Mother jumped to her feet. Her hand caught at the porch rail. We waited breathless. But there was no further sound save the buzzing of the plantation.

Uncle Cooly whipped up the team. We clung to the sides of the carriage. Mother was laughing, calling directions to him, and trying to keep her balance, all at the same time, as we trotted across the rutted field and the heavy carriage careened from side to side.

The train had stopped. But, curiously enough, no one was getting off. Mike waved to us from the cab. He dropped a piece of paper that fluttered in the wind.

Uncle Cooly scrambled down, picked up the paper, and handed it to Mother.

‘It says Giddy’s not bringing Joe home till to-morrow, Lyle.’ She turned the paper over and over in her hands. Suddenly she looked much older. ‘That’s all it says, Lyle.’ But after a minute she threw back her head. ‘You’re all strong children, Lyle. Joe’s had hardly a sick day in his life. He’ll be all right.’

That night Mother sat up all night with a woman in the quarters who had a baby born. She rested in the morning and I did n’t see her until nearly train time.

‘Come, Lyle,’ she said, ‘let’s see if Joe’s pies are all right.’

We were standing by the open cupboard door when the whistle blew. There was no time even to look at each other before it blew again.

Mother gripped my arm. ‘Lyle, Joe’s worse!’

We were standing so together when it shrieked again.

I don’t know what I thought or felt. I looked at Mother with her hand cupped over her mouth the way my little sisters cupped theirs when they tried not to cry.

After a moment she said, ‘Lyle, tell Dan — tell Dan to follow us with the wagon.’

VI

It was pouring rain when we buried him that night. The lanterns flickered about the grave. The gravediggers struck rock. They chipped and tugged at it with their picks and shovels. The rain beat on the wooden box that held the coffin. The little girls cried softly into their handkerchiefs. But the Negroes moaned aloud and screamed out above the sound of the rain.

Giddy stood by Mother, tall and straight, with his mouth set. He and Joe had always paired off together. Mother’s shoulders and her mouth were as straight as his. After all, she was only seventeen years older than he.

VII

Giddy came to me in the hall at sunup next morning. He was in his shirt sleeves with his coat and a bundle in his arms. There was something different about him. I stared a second before I saw what it was. He was wearing his uniform breeches.

‘Lyle, she told me standing there by the grave, “Son, your father helped to start this war — and it killed him. It’s killed Joe.” She didn’t look at me, Lyle; she looked straight at the grave; but she said, “I reckon that now it’s started the Trents will have to see it through.” ’

‘Giddy, she wants you to go, too?’

‘Uh-huh.’

‘But, Giddy,’ my words seemed to tumble out, tripping each other, ‘what about the crops? Who’ll see that the niggers get enough to eat?’

‘Look out the window,’ he said.

Mother was out in the stable yard. She had on a riding skirt and a man’s coat, and she was climbing up on Father’s horse, Silver Dollar. There was only one thing like Mother. She had a bag tied round her waist and her knitting needles in her hand.

‘Is she going to boss the farm? Oh, Giddy, is n’t she even going to mourn Joe in the house awhile first?’

‘Lyle,’ Giddy said, ‘some day you’ll grow up, too. Good-bye, Lyle.’ He kissed my cheek. ‘It’s time for the train. I ’ll have ’em licked and be home by Christmas.’

I turned to the window again so he should n’t see me cry. Mother had ridden out into the field, where a gang of Negroes were at work. Silver Dollar stood quiet in the row and Mother’s hands were busy knitting a gray sock.

All at once I saw her start, saw her head jerk back.

Then I heard a long-drawn sound. Giddy’s train was whistling.