Page 51 - SpringBoard_ELA_Grade8_Flipbook

aCTIvITy 1.6
continued
The departure
my Notes
17 “Well,” said the voice quietly, “here’s a soldier crying before the fight. Good. Get it over. Won’t be time once it all starts.”
18 And the voice was about to move on when the boy, startled, touched the drum at his elbow. The man above, hearing this, stopped. The boy could feel his eyes, sense him slowly bending near. A hand must have come down out of the night, for there was a little rat-tat as the fingernails brushed and the man’s breath fanned his face.
19 “Why, it’s the drummer boy, isn’t it?”
20 The boy nodded not knowing if his nod was seen. “Sir, is that you?” he said.
21 “I assume it is.” The man’s knees cracked as he bent still closer.
22 He smelled as all fathers should smell, of salt sweat, ginger, tobacco, horse, and
boot leather, and the earth he walked upon. He had many eyes. No, not eyes—brass buttons that watched the boy.
23 He could only be, and was, the general.
24 “What’s your name, boy?” he asked.
25 “Joby,” whispered the boy, starting to sit up.
26 “All right Joby, don’t stir.” A hand pressed his chest gently and the boy relaxed.
“How long you been with us, Joby?”
27 “Three weeks, sir.”
28 “Run off from home or joined legitimately, boy?”
29 Silence.
30 “. . . Fool question,” said the general. “Do you shave yet, boy? Even more of a ... fool.
There’s your cheek, fell right off the tree overhead. And the others here not much older. Raw, raw, the lot of you. You ready for tomorrow or the next day, Joby?”
31 “I think so, sir.”
32 “You want to cry some more, go on ahead. I did the same last night.”
33 “You, sir?”
34 “It’s the truth. Thinking of everything ahead. Both sides figuring the other side will
just give up, and soon, and the war done in weeks, and us all home. Well, that’s not how it’s going to be. And maybe that’s why I cried.”
35 “Yes, sir,” said Joby.
36 The general must have taken out a cigar now, for the dark was suddenly filled with
the smell of tobacco unlit as yet, but chewed as the man thought what next to say.
37 “It’s going to be a crazy time,” said the general. “Counting both sides, there’s a hundred thousand men, give or take a few thousand out there tonight, not one as can spit a sparrow off a tree, or knows a horse clod from a Minié ball. Stand up, bare the breast, ask to be a target, thank them and sit down, that’s us, that’s them. We should turn tail and train four months, they should do the same. But here we are, taken with spring fever and thinking it blood lust, taking our sulfur with cannons instead of with molasses, as it should be, going to be a hero, going to live forever. And I can see all of
24 SpringBoard® English Language Arts Grade 8
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