The American: A Middle Western Legend Read Free Page A

now, and the things he had wanted once were nothing to the fires that began to consume him. It affected his work; he would pause in the middle of a job, slow down, do things wrong until complaints came back to the father:
    â€œThat boy of yours, his head is empty.”
    But the father didn’t beat him; it was understood that a beating would mean a struggle, and the struggle would have only one outcome. Instead, the father warned him:
    â€œThe neighbors call you a fool.”
    â€œThen I’m a fool.”
    â€œA halfwit, you hear me, a person with only part of his senses.”
    â€œAll right.”
    â€œThe shame is mine,” the father reminded him. “But you do your work, do you hear me?”
    In English, Pete answered, “I hear you, sure.”
    For a whole year Pete waited, bided his time, asked questions, gleaned information, became crafty and sly about the ways of warfare. To just go out and become a soldier was not so simple; it could be done, but it was a complicated procedure, and Pete learned that those who did it were fools. A smart man sold himself into the National Guard. Group by group, the militia were being called up as volunteers, and for every volunteer, the county paid a bonus of one hundred dollars. In this anti-war region, there was an active business done in substitutions, for a hundred dollars might be a fortune to one man, and yet to another nothing as compared with the hardships of war. Thus, when talk became current that the 48th Regiment of the National Guard was being formed, Pete hunted up a militiaman whose name had been given him. A litle talk, a signature on a piece of paper, and the deal was concluded whereby the boy became a soldier of the Republic and a hundred dollars richer all in one moment. Pete returned to his home, frightened, freed and bound at the same time, breathless with the wonder of what he had accomplished by his own will, his own forethought, his own planning, and wealthy by the hundred dollars he clutched in his hand. He returned home and told the father, “Well, I done it, I became a soldier,” and then found the old fear returning as anger flowed into his father’s face, mottling it, purpling it, making the muscles bulge and the veins stand out. Fear made him thrust out his clenched hand, and the greenbacks unbent themselves like a flower blooming, blossomed and fell to the floor, like a contrived scene in a bad play. And both he and his father stared at the money until the old man said:
    â€œWhere? How?”
    They were the bereaved, father and son, the world moving and changing, positions reversing, for here was more money in actual dollars than either of them had known, turning, curiously, their anger and resentment and fear into the blocked and tired emotions of the wholly frustrated. The father knew that his son would go away, and the son knew it too, although now, this moment, the father was no longer an enemy, no longer a dreadful foe, but only a work-tired, life-tired, aging peasant in a dirty shirt and dirty jeans. And the barefooted, sunburnt boy, shockhaired and ugly, was suddenly the father’s son, the firstborn, the lifeblood, and the only realization of immortality a man has or can hope for. The boy bent, gathered the money, and said simply:
    â€œBounty.”
    Then he gave it to his father, who took it, held it a moment, and counted it, counted it twice. One hundred dollars. He called the mother, who came, and then the brothers and sisters came.
    â€œA hundred dollars,” the father said.
    â€œA hundred dollars,” the others said.
    The mother sobbed, and the father muttered, knowing that his words sold his son into bondage, “You will need money to be a soldier.”
    â€œI need nothing,” Pete answered, speaking in his father’s tongue, taking victory and admitting defeat.
    â€œA hundred dollars,” the mother said, for her thoughts were so tumultuous that no other phrase could