journals was Roman history, had named his three boys after emperors, as if tempting the hand of fate toward greatness but perhaps merely bestowing on them greater prospects for failure. Mr. Cain was a taciturn and distant man, of narrow but certain vision and erect bearing, not hard-hearted so much as hardened by facts, someone who felt that emotions, at least the visible sort, were manifest signs of weakness in a man. A widower, he'd assumed as his job the sober one of dragging unwilling boys into the thorny realm of manhood, turning them into good farmers, loyal Virginians and southerners, fair masters, stolid husbands, and eventually, strict fathers themselves--more or less in that order. Cain being the eldest, it was naturally assumed he'd take over the farm when the time came. Yet it was TJ who was always more at home with the tools, not to mention the mind-set, of agrarian matters--more adept than Cain with plowshares and hayracks and scythes, more interested in talk of planting moons and the chance of rain, with the price of seed and tobacco and slaves. Even as a boy Cain had found all of that exceedingly tedious. On Sunday afternoons, when he was momentarily set free from chores, he especially loved to ride up to the top of a hill some miles behind his house, and there he'd sit under a big poplar tree and read a book he'd brought along, or just stare out over the hazy Blue Ridge to the west, wondering what lay beyond them. He'd always had a wanderlust in him, a sense of adventure that could hardly be bounded by the circumspect and mundane existence of a farmer.
It wasn't that he didn't love the South, for he did, with all his heart and soul; he loved its hills and mountains and woods, its slow-moving muddy rivers and tangled swamps, its deep swales and lush green lowlands, the vibrant insect ticking that filled a summer's night with life. He loved the land of the South as both home and country, and, too, as a way of thinking and being. He just never took to the notion of farming, of being tied down to a certain plot of earth, bound by dirt and growing seasons. He much preferred to fish and hunt, to scour the fields and woods behind their land, to ride a good horse across into the mountains to the west of their farm. He'd started hunting when he was eight, when his father gave him his grandfather's old Kentucky musket, the one he'd used in the Revolution. He could hardly raise the cumbersome thing then, but he soon learned to shoot it, to become an excellent marksman, to track game through the deepest hollows and thickest woods, to hunt deer and bear, wild boar and catamount, turkey and coon and possum. He was also a superb horseman, several times having won races at the county fair.
Cain and his brother had received a passable education. In addition to their mother's having read to them every night when she was alive, their country schoolmaster, the white-haired Mr. Tyler Beauregard, taught them enough Latin to read Cicero and Virgil, enough Shakespeare and Milton to smooth the rough edges of their rustic upbringing, enough Johnson and Dryden and Pope to have developed a critical ear for their native language. Before bed, Cain would read Scott's tales of medieval knights, Defoe's Robinson Crusoe, the adventures of Cooper's Natty Bumppo. He imagined a life filled with daring, one that was open to vast possibilities. After reading the accounts of Nelson at Trafalgar or the brave stand of those at the Alamo, he and his brother would act out scenes of heroism in the hayloft, falling finally amid a hail of imagined bullets and equally imagined glory. Cain could not have told you precisely what that other life would look like, except that it would be filled with gallant and noble deeds and that it would not follow the dull routine of a farmer.
When Cain and his brother were older, they'd sometimes accompany their father the sixty miles to the big city of Richmond, to sell cattle or tobacco or to buy supplies or to
It wasn't that he didn't love the South, for he did, with all his heart and soul; he loved its hills and mountains and woods, its slow-moving muddy rivers and tangled swamps, its deep swales and lush green lowlands, the vibrant insect ticking that filled a summer's night with life. He loved the land of the South as both home and country, and, too, as a way of thinking and being. He just never took to the notion of farming, of being tied down to a certain plot of earth, bound by dirt and growing seasons. He much preferred to fish and hunt, to scour the fields and woods behind their land, to ride a good horse across into the mountains to the west of their farm. He'd started hunting when he was eight, when his father gave him his grandfather's old Kentucky musket, the one he'd used in the Revolution. He could hardly raise the cumbersome thing then, but he soon learned to shoot it, to become an excellent marksman, to track game through the deepest hollows and thickest woods, to hunt deer and bear, wild boar and catamount, turkey and coon and possum. He was also a superb horseman, several times having won races at the county fair.
Cain and his brother had received a passable education. In addition to their mother's having read to them every night when she was alive, their country schoolmaster, the white-haired Mr. Tyler Beauregard, taught them enough Latin to read Cicero and Virgil, enough Shakespeare and Milton to smooth the rough edges of their rustic upbringing, enough Johnson and Dryden and Pope to have developed a critical ear for their native language. Before bed, Cain would read Scott's tales of medieval knights, Defoe's Robinson Crusoe, the adventures of Cooper's Natty Bumppo. He imagined a life filled with daring, one that was open to vast possibilities. After reading the accounts of Nelson at Trafalgar or the brave stand of those at the Alamo, he and his brother would act out scenes of heroism in the hayloft, falling finally amid a hail of imagined bullets and equally imagined glory. Cain could not have told you precisely what that other life would look like, except that it would be filled with gallant and noble deeds and that it would not follow the dull routine of a farmer.
When Cain and his brother were older, they'd sometimes accompany their father the sixty miles to the big city of Richmond, to sell cattle or tobacco or to buy supplies or to
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