Brower, op. cit.
We found two little fellers holding hands couldn’t been more than fourteen fifteen apiece as if they had desided to pass through that dark portel together.
Gates, op. cit.
How miny more ded do you attend to make sir afore you is done? One minit there was our litle Nate on that bridge with a fishpole and ware is that boy now? And who is it called him hither, in that Notice he saw down to Orbys, wellsir, that was your name he saw upon it “Abaham Lincoln.”
In “Country Letters to President Lincoln,” compiled and edited by Josephine Banner and Evelyn Dressman, letter from Robert Hansworthy, Boonsboro, Maryland.
XLVIII.
He is just one.
And the weight of it about to kill me.
Have exported this grief. Some three thousand times. So far. To date. A mountain. Of boys. Someone’s boys. Must keep on with it. May not have the heart for it. One thing to pull the lever when blind to the result. But here lies one dear example of what I accomplish by the orders I— May not have the heart for it.
What to do. Call a halt? Toss down the loss-hole those three thousand? Sue for peace? Become great course-reversing fool, king of indecision, laughing-stock for the ages, waffling hick, slim Mr. Turnabout?
It is out of control. Who is doing it. Who caused it. Whose arrival on the scene began it.
What am I doing.
What am I doing here.
Everything nonsense now. Those mourners came up. Hands extended. Sons intact. Wearing on their faces enforced sadness-masks to hide any sign of their happiness, which—which went on. They could not hide how alive they yet were with it, with their happiness at the potential of their still-living sons. Until lately I was one of them. Strolling whistling through the slaughterhouse, averting my eyes from the carnage, able to laugh and dream and hope because it had not yet happened to me.
To us.
Trap. Horrible trap. At one’s birth it is sprung. Some last day must arrive. When you will need to get out of this body. Bad enough. Then we bring a baby here. The terms of the trap are compounded. That baby also must depart. All pleasures should be tainted by that knowledge. But hopeful dear us, we forget.
Lord, what is this? All of this walking about, trying, smiling, bowing, joking? This sitting-down-attable, pressing-of-shirts, tying-of-ties, shining-of-shoes, planning-of-trips, singing-of-songs-in-the-bath?
When he is to be left out here?
Is a person to nod, dance, reason, walk, discuss?
As before?
A parade passes. He can’t rise and join. Am I to run after it, take my place, lift knees high, wave a flag, blow a horn?
Was he dear or not?
Then let me be happy no more.
hans vollman
XLIX.
It was quite cold. (Being in the gentleman, we were, for the first time in— hans vollman
Ever so long.
roger bevins iii
Quite cold ourselves.) hans vollman
He sat, distraught and shivering, seeking about for any consolation.
He must either be in a happy place, or some null place by now.
Thought the gentleman.
In either case is no longer suffering.
Suffered so terribly at the end.
(The racking cough the trembling the vomiting the pathetic attempts to keep the mouth wiped with a shaky hand the way his panicked eyes would steal up and catch mine as if to say is there really nothing Papa you can do?)
And in his mind the gentleman stood (we stood with him) on a lonely plain, screaming at the top of our lungs.
Quiet then, and a great weariness.
All over now. He is either in joy or nothingness.
(So why grieve?
The worst of it, for him, is over.)
Because I loved him so and am in the habit of loving him and that love must take the form of fussing and worry and doing.
Only there is nothing left to do.
Free myself of this darkness as I can, remain useful, not go mad.
Think of him, when I do, as being in some bright place, free of suffering, resplendent in a new mode of being.
Thus thought the gentleman.
Thoughtfully combing a patch of grass with his hand.
roger bevins iii
L.
Sad.
roger bevins iii Very sad.
hans vollman Especially given what we knew.
roger bevins iii His boy was not “in some bright place, free of suffering.”
hans vollman No.
roger bevins iii
Not “resplendent in a new mode of being.”
hans vollman Au contraire.
roger bevins iii Above us, an errant breeze loosened many storm-broken branches.
hans vollman Which fell to the earth at various distances.
roger bevins iii As if the woods were full of newly roused creatures.
hans vollman I wonder, said Mr. Vollman.
And I knew what was coming.
roger bevins iii
LI.
We wished the lad to go, and thereby save himself. His father wished him to be “in some bright place, free of suffering, resplendent in a new mode of being.”