April Morning by Howard Fast Page B

like a sickness around my heart, and its accompaniment was the steady, increasing roll of the redcoat drums.
    The Reverend smiled and pointed to Jonathan Harrington, who whistled up the tune of “Come Swallow Your Bumpers,” a song that everyone was singing in Boston and through the country; but no one sang, not even the Reverend. Jonathan Harrington played on alone, but then he stopped playing as the redcoats came marching out of the lifting mist. Then we were silent and tight, tight as strings drawn to the snapping point, and my hands hurt as they gripped the gun. Many of the men half raised their guns and bent a little, but we boys looked at each other and licked our lips and tried to smile. And in front of our lines, Jonas Parker, my father, Simon Casper, and the Reverend moved closer together.
    When the British saw us, they were on the road past Buckman’s. First, there were three officers on horseback. Then two flag-bearers, one carrying the regimental flag and the other bearing the British colors. Then a corps of eight drums. Then rank after rank of the redcoats, stretching back on the road and into the curtain of mist, and emerging from the mist constantly, so that they appeared to be an endless force and an endless number. It was dreamlike and not very believable, and it caused me to turn and look at the houses around the common, to see whether all the rest of what we were, our mothers and sisters and brothers and grandparents, were watching the same thing we watched. My impression was that the houses had appeared by magic, for I could only remember looking around in the darkness and seeing nothing where now all the houses stood—and the houses were dead and silent, every shutter closed and bolted, every door and storm door closed and barred. Never before had I seen the houses like that, not in the worst cold or the worst storms.
    And the redcoats did not quicken their pace or slow it, but marched up the road with the same even pace, up to the edge of the common; and when they were there, one of the officers held up his arm—and the drums stopped and the soldiers stopped, the line of soldiers stretching all the way down the road and into the dissipating mist. They were about one hundred and fifty paces away from us.
    The three officers sat on their horses, studying us. The morning air was cold and clean and sharp, and I could see their faces and the faces of the redcoat soldiers behind them, the black bands of their knapsacks, the glitter of their buckles. Their coats were red as fire, but their light trousers were stained and dirty from the march.
    Then, one of the officers sang out to them, “Fix bayonets!” and all down the line, the bayonets sparkled in the morning sun, and we heard the ring of metal against metal as they were clamped onto the guns.
    One of the officers spurred his horse, and holding it at hard check, cantered onto the common with great style, rode past us and back in a circle to the others. He was smiling, but his smile was a sneer; and I looked then at my father, whose face was hard as rock—hard and gray with the stubble of morning beard upon it. I touched my own smooth cheeks, and when I glanced at the men near me, found myself amazed by the shadow of beard on their faces. I don’t know why I was amazed, but I was.
    Then another British officer—I discovered afterward that he was Major Pitcairn—called out orders: “Columns right!” and then, “By the left flank,” and, “Drums to the rear!” The drummers stood still and beat their drums, and the redcoats marched past them smartly, wheeling and parading across the common, while the three mounted officers spurred over the grass at a sharp canter, straight across our front and then back, reining in their prancing horses to face us. Meanwhile, the redcoats marched onto the common, the first company wheeling to face us when it was past our front of thirty-three men, the second