Read Online Bradbury, Ray - SSC 11 by The Machineries of Joy (v2.1) - Free Book Online Page B

himself on his way to his
first attack, compounded of remote but nonetheless firm and fiery family
devotion, flag-blown patriotism and cocksure immortality strengthened by the
touchstone of very real gunpowder, ramrod, minnieball and flint. But without
these last the boy felt his family move yet farther off away in the dark, as if
one of those great prairie-burning trains had chanted them away never to
return, leaving him with this drum which was worse than a toy in the game to be
played tomorrow or some day much too soon.
                   The boy turned on his side. A moth brushed his
face, but it was peach blossom. A peach blossom flicked him, but it was a moth.
Nothing stayed put. Nothing had a name. Nothing was as it once was.
                   If he lay very still, when the dawn came up
and the soldiers put on their bravery with their caps, perhaps they might go
away, the war with them, and not notice him lying small here, no more than a
toy himself.
                   “Well, by God, now," said a voice.
                   The boy shut up his eyes, to hide inside
himself, but it was too late. Someone, walking by in the night, stood over him.
                   "Well," said the voice quietly,
"here's a soldier crying before the fight. Good. Get it over. Won't be
time once it all «tarts."
                   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.
                   "Why, it's the drummer boy, isn't it?”
                  The boy nodded, not knowing if his nod was
seen. "Sir, is that you?" he said.
                   "I assume it is." The man's knees
cracked as he bent still closer.
                   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.
                   He could only be, and was, the General.
                   "What's your name, boy?" he asked.
                   "Joby," whispered the boy, starting
to sit up.
                   "All right, Joby, don't stir." A
hand pressed his chest gently, and the boy relaxed. "How long you been
with us, Joby?"
                   “Three weeks, sir."
                   "Run off from home or joined
legitimately, boy?"
                   Silence.
                   "Danm-fool question," said the
General. "Do you shave yet, boy? Even more of a danm-fool. There's your
cheek, fell right off the tree overhead. And the others here not much older.
Raw, raw, danm raw, the lot of you. You ready for tomorrow or the next day,
Joby?"
                   "I think so, sir."
                   "You want to cry some more, go on ahead.
I did the same last night."
                   ''You, sure?"
                   "God's 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."
                   "Yes, sir," said Joby.
                   The General must have taken out a cigar now,
for the dark was suddenly filled with the Indian smell of tobacco unlit as yet,
but chewed as the man thought what next to say.
                   "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 minnieball. Stand up, bare the breast,
ask