April Morning by Howard Fast Page A

speechlessly, and Granny said that she might as well go downstairs and put up coffee, because it didn’t look like there’d be much sleep in this house for the rest of the night. Father went back to his room to finish dressing, and Mother went downstairs after Granny.
    I pulled on my shirt and trousers, and Levi wanted to know what I thought I was doing. Through the window, I could see lights in almost all of the houses by now. I told Levi that I had no intentions of missing whatever was going on out there.
    â€œThen I’m getting dressed too,” he said.
    â€œIt’s no business of mine what you do. But Mother will pin your ears back.”
    â€œNot if you don’t tell on me. I’ll go out the window and down over the shed. You going to tell on me, Adam?”
    â€œOh, believe me, you’re a fine one to talk about telling,” I said to him. “Every time I take a step, you’re there to play the rat. It would serve you right if I did tell.”
    â€œBut you won’t, will you, Adam?”
    â€œI won’t,” I admitted, “but I won’t lie either. If Mother asks me where you are, I’ll tell her.”
    â€œMaybe she won’t ask you,” Levi said hopefully.
    Father had just closed the door behind him when I got down to the kitchen, and Mother gave me one of her looks and said, “Well, I suppose it’s morning, I suppose the good Lord forgot to bring the sun up this once but you know better. And just where do you think you’re going, Adam Cooper?”
    â€œOnly over to the common, please, Mother.”
    â€œMarch right up to bed!”
    â€œMother,” I said, slowly and carefully, “you know that I never disobeyed you.”
    â€œI should think not!”
    â€œBut if you don’t let me go, I got to disobey you. Every house in the village is lit up and all the men are turning out for the common. You can’t make me stay here.”
    â€œYou’re not—”
    I think she was going to say that I was not a man, but Granny interrupted. It was the first time, as well as I could remember, that Granny had ever intruded into a discussion at odds between Mother and myself. She only said, quietly:
    â€œI think Adam’s right, Sarah. He ought to be there.”
    I imagine Mother was too shocked to reply. She nodded, and without allowing the matter to cool, I dashed out of the house and took off for the common. Middle of the night or not, the village was up and awake, and every man and boy in town was either already at the common or heading for it. When I reached there, a crowd had formed around the rider, packed around his horse about ten deep; and you could see from the way he sat on his saddle, proud as a king, that he was enjoying the attention. As far as we were concerned, he was the most important man in New England—important enough to make my father and Jonas Parker and the Reverend, the three of them at the horse’s head, wait until he had finished draining a mug of beer that someone had passed up to him. When he finished the beer, he wiped his mouth with his sleeve and indicated his willingness to continue. He was a young fellow, and I noticed what a handsome pair of black riding boots he sported.
    By then, I had wormed my way into the crowd. I had also gathered, from the talk around me, that he rode a warning express, that the British had marched out of Boston, and that a great army of them were headed this way, up from Charlestown to Cambridge and then on to Menotomy. I didn’t believe it—not at first. For months and months, the talk had been that the British would send a force into our townships and put an end to the militia drilling and the Committee organization, but they never did, and somehow we had accepted the fact that they never would, and that all the hot talk would simmer down and that there would be a meeting of minds, what my father called “an intelligent and equitable