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23 chapters
BringtheJubilee
BringtheJubilee
FARRAR, STRAUS and YOUNG, Inc. NEW YORK Copyright 1952 Fantasy House, Inc. Copyright 1953 Ward Moore All rights reserved. Manufactured in the U. S. A. Library of Congress catalog card number: 53-10417 BACK COVER MAP: BETTMANN ARCHIVE For TONY BOUCHER and MICK McCOMAS who liked this story It is always the puzzle of the nature of time that brings our thoughts to a standstill. And if time is so fundamental that an understanding of its true nature is for ever beyond our reach, then so also in all p
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1. LIFE IN THE TWENTY-SIX STATES
1. LIFE IN THE TWENTY-SIX STATES
Although I am writing this in the year 1877, I was not born until 1921. Neither the dates nor the tenses are error—let me explain: I was born, as I say, in 1921, but it was not until the early 1930’s, when I was about ten, that I began to understand what a peculiarly frustrate and disinherited world was about me. Perhaps my approach to realization was through the crayon portrait of Granpa Hodgins which hung, very solemnly, over the mantel. Granpa Hodgins after whom I was named, perhaps a little
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2. OF DECISIONS, MINIBILES, AND TINUGRAPHS
2. OF DECISIONS, MINIBILES, AND TINUGRAPHS
I thought I could do the walk of some eighty miles in four days, allowing time to swap work for food, supposing I found farmers or housewives agreeable to the exchange. June made it no hardship to sleep outdoors, and the old post road ran close enough to the Hudson for any bathing I might want to do. The dangers of the trip were part of the pattern of life in the United States in 1938. I didnt particularly fear being robbed by a roving gang for I was sure organized predators would disdain so obv
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3. A MEMBER OF THE GRAND ARMY
3. A MEMBER OF THE GRAND ARMY
I was recalled to consciousness by a smell. More accurately a cacophony of smells. I opened my eyes and shut them against the unbearable pain of light; I groaned at the equally unbearable pain in my skullbones. Feverishly and against my will I tried to identify the walloping odors around me. The stink of death and rottenness was thick. I knew there was an outhouse—many outhouses—nearby. The ground I lay on, where it was not stony, was damp with the water of endless dishwashings and launderings.
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4. TYSS
4. TYSS
He took me to a bookseller’s and stationery store on Astor Place with a printshop in the basement and the man to whom he introduced me was the owner, Roger Tyss. I spent almost six years there, and when I left neither the store nor its contents nor Tyss himself seemed to have changed or aged. I know books were sold and others bought to take their places on the shelves or to be piled towerwise on the floor. I helped cart in many rolls of sulphide paper and bottles of printers’ ink, and delivered
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5. OF WHIGS AND POPULISTS
5. OF WHIGS AND POPULISTS
A country defeated in a bitter war and divested of half its territory loses its drive and spirit and suffers a shock which is communicated to all its people. For generations its citizens brood over what has happened, preoccupied with the past and dreaming of a miraculous change, until time brings apathy or a reversal of history. The Grand Army, with its crude and brutal philosophy and methods, was pride’s answer to defeat. It was not the only answer; the two major political parties had others. T
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6. ENFANDIN
6. ENFANDIN
Tirzah’s question, “What good is your learning ever going to do you?” bothered me from time to time. Not that I was burdened by any vast amount of knowledge, but presumably I would get more—and then what? It was true I expected no rewards from reading except the pleasure it gave me, but the future, to use a topheavy word, could not be entirely disregarded. I could not see myself spending a lifetime in the bookstore. I was grateful to Tyss, despite his disdain of this emotion, for the opportuniti
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7. OF CONFEDERATE AGENTS IN 1942
7. OF CONFEDERATE AGENTS IN 1942
To anyone but the mooncalf I still was in the year of my majority it would have long since occurred with considerable force that Enfandin ought to be told of Tyss’s connection with the Negro-hating, anti-foreign Grand Army. And the thought once entertained, no matter how belatedly, would have been immediately translated into warning. For me it became a dilemma. If I exposed Tyss to Enfandin I would certainly be basely ungrateful to the man who had saved me from destitution and given me the oppor
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8. IN VIOLENT TIMES
8. IN VIOLENT TIMES
He gave me an address on Twenty-Sixth Street. “Sprovis is the name.” “All right,” I said as stolidly as I could. “Let them do the unloading. I see there’s a full feedbag in the van; that’ll be a good time to give it to the horse.” “Yes.” “They’ll load up another consignment and drive with you to the destination. Take the van back to the livery stable. Here’s money for your supper and carfare back here.” He thinks of everything, I reflected bitterly. Except that I don’t want to have anything to d
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9. BARBARA
9. BARBARA
For the next few days reading was pure pretense. I used the opened book to mask my privacy while I trembled not so much with fear as with horror. I had been brought up in a harsh enough world and murder was no novelty in New York; I had seen slain men before, but this was the first time I had been confronted with naked, merciless savagery. Though I believed Sprovis would have had no qualms about despatching an inconvenient witness if I had stayed on the van, I had no particular fear for my own s
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10. THE HOLDUP
10. THE HOLDUP
This time I didnt offer Tyss two weeks’ notice. “Well Hodgins, I made all the appropriate valedictory remarks on a previous occasion, so I’ll not repeat them, except to say the precision of the script is extraordinary.” It seemed to me he was saying in a roundabout way that everything was for the best. For the first time I saw Tyss as slightly pathetic rather than sinister; extreme pessimism and vulgar optimism evidently met, like his circular time. I smiled indulgently and thanked him sincerely
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11. OF HAGGERSHAVEN
11. OF HAGGERSHAVEN
I suppose—recalling the inexplicable scene with Little Aggie—I was less astonished by her frenzy than I might have been. Besides, her rage and misunderstanding were anticlimactic after the succession of excitements I had been through that day. Instead of amazement I felt only uneasiness and tired annoyance. Dorn steered Barbara out of the room with a combination of persuasion and gentle force disguised as solicitous soothing, leaving the girl and me alone. “Well,” I said, “well....” The large ey
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12. MORE OF HAGGERSHAVEN
12. MORE OF HAGGERSHAVEN
Among the fellows was an Oliver Midbin, a student of what he chose to call the new and revolutionary science of Emotional Pathology. Tall and thin, with an incongruous little potbelly like an enlarged and far-slipped adamsapple, he pounced on me as a ready-made and captive audience for his theories. “Now this case of pseudo-aphonia—” “He means the dumb girl,” explained Ace, aside. “Nonsense. Dumbness is not even the statement of a symptom, but a very imperfect description. Pseudo-aphonia. Purely
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13. TIME
13. TIME
“Hodge.” “Barbara?” “Is it really true youve never written your mother since you left home?” “Why should I write her? What could I say? Perhaps if my first plans had come to something, I might have. But to tell her I worked for six years for nothing would only confirm her opinion of my lack of gumption.” “I wonder if your ambitions in the end don’t amount to a wish to prove her wrong.” “Now you sound like Midbin,” I said, but I wasnt annoyed. I much preferred her present questions to those I’d h
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14. MIDBIN’S EXPERIMENT
14. MIDBIN’S EXPERIMENT
At the next meeting of the fellows Midbin asked an appropriation for experimental work and the help of haven members in the project. Since the extent of both requests was modest, their granting would ordinarily have been a formality. But Barbara asked politely if Dr Midbin wouldnt like to elaborate a little on the purposes of his experiment. I knew her manner was a danger signal. Nevertheless Midbin merely answered goodhumoredly that he proposed to test a theory of whether an emotionally induced
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15. GOOD YEARS
15. GOOD YEARS
And now I come to the period of my life which stands in such sharp contrast to what had gone before. Was it really eight years I spent at Haggershaven? The arithmetic is indisputable: I arrived in 1944 at the age of twenty-three; I left in 1952 at the age of thirty-one. Indisputable, but not quite believable; as with the happy countries which are supposed to have no history I find it hard to go over those eight years and divide them by remarkable events. They blended too smoothly, too contentedl
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16. OF VARIED SUBJECTS
16. OF VARIED SUBJECTS
“I can’t think of anything more futile,” said Kimi, “than to be an architect at this time in the United States.” Her husband grinned. “You forgot to add, ‘of Oriental extraction.’” Catty said, “Ive never understood. Of course I don’t remember too well, but it seems to me Spanish people don’t have the same racial fanaticism. Certainly the Portuguese, French and Dutch don’t. Even the English are not quite so certain of Anglo-Saxon superiority. Only the Americans, in the United States and the Confe
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17. HX-1
17. HX-1
I could not bring myself to follow the promptings of my conscience and Catty’s advice, nor could I use my notes as though Dr Polk’s letter had never come to shatter my complacency. As a consequence—without deliberately committing myself to abandon the book—I worked not at all, thus adding to my feelings of guilt and unworthiness. The tasks assigned by the fellows for the general welfare of the haven were not designed to take a major part of my time, and though I produced all sorts of revolutions
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18. THE WOMAN TEMPTED ME
18. THE WOMAN TEMPTED ME
Gently, Catty said, “Ive never understood why you cut yourself off from the past the way you have, Hodge.” “Ay? What do you mean?” “Well, youve not communicated with your father or mother since you left home, fourteen years ago. You say you had a dear friend in the man from Haiti, yet youve never tried to find out whether he lived or died.” “Oh, that way. I thought you meant ... something different.” By not taking advantage of Barbara’s offer I certainly was cutting myself off from the past. “Ye
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19. GETTYSBURG
19. GETTYSBURG
The barking of the dogs was frenzied, filled with the hoarse note indicating they had been raising the alarm for a long time without being heeded. I knew they must have been baying at the alien smells of soldiers for the past day, so I was not apprehensive that their scent of me would bring investigation. How Barbara and Ace had escaped detection on journeys which didnt coincide with abnormal events was beyond me; with such an unnerving racket in prospect I would either have given up the trips o
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20. BRING THE JUBILEE
20. BRING THE JUBILEE
A great battle in its first stages is as tentative, uncertain, and indefinite as a courtship just begun. At the beginning the ground was there for either side to take without protest; the other felt no surge of possessive jealousy. I walked unscathed along the Emmitsburg Road; on my left I knew there were Union forces concealed, on my right the Southrons maneuvered. In a few hours, to walk between the lines would mean instant death, but now the declaration had not been made, the vows had not bee
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21. FOR THE TIME BEING
21. FOR THE TIME BEING
I am writing this, as I said, in 1877. I am a healthy man of forty-five, no doubt with many years ahead of me. I might live to be a hundred, except for an illogical feeling that I must die before 1921. However, eighty-nine should be enough for anyone. So I have ample time to put my story down. Still, better to have it down and done with; should anything happen to me tomorrow it will be on paper. For what? As confession and apology? As an inverted substitute for the merciful amnesia which ought t
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About Ward Moore
About Ward Moore
On the battlefield at Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, there is a small hill called Little Round Top. One morning in July, 1863, the Confederate Army made the tactical error of not occupying this hill. It was a mistake that cost them victory in a battle which—in the view of many historians—was the turning point of the Civil War. In the ninety years since Gettysburg one question has never been far from the minds of most Southerners—and a good many Yankees, too: What if the battle had gone the other way,
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