Editor’s Note: This is an ongoing series which runs each Thursday morning titled the Richland Chronicles Volume 5, by author Paul Lintern. It is set in the 1860s and tells the story of Richland County through the eyes of young people. This is the fifth in a series. Volume I was Amelia Changes Her Tune. Volume II was Isaac and Wolf Paw Find Their Home. Volume III was Autumn Keeps Her Secret. Volume IV was Mr. Gamble Starts a School.
“Papa, I’ve been practicing my bugle a lot. Can I play for you?” Jacob asked.
“May I play for you,” his father corrected.
“Well, okay, you can if you like, but I want to play for you,” Jacob said.
Papa chuckled a bit and just said, “Sure, show us what you can do.”
Jacob looked around.
“Is, uh, Captain Harker anywhere nearby?”
“The captain? Why in the world would you want him, and no, I am sure he is up at headquarters. Is there a reason…”
“No, Papa, I just thought…”
Anyway, here goes.
Jacob raised the bugle to his lips and played the best rendition of “Charge,” he had ever done. His brothers stopped him before he could finish two measures.
“Tarnation, Zaccheus! What are you doing, playing an alert like that? You’ll get the whole camp riled up, thinking Johnny Reb is running down Springmill at us or the like,” Phillip said.
“You don’t play that in a military camp any more than you yell ‘fire’ in a crowded theater,” Nathaniel added.
Papa laughed.
“You’d have the whole cavalry assembled in a minute, if we had our cavalry yet.”
Jacob felt flush.
“I, I didn’t mean to rile things up. I just wanted you to hear how well I play.”
Then he paused and looked at Phillip.
“And stop calling me Zaccheus!”
“Zaccheus was a wee little man who had to climb trees to see Jesus, like it says in the Bible. That fits you well, little brother,” Phillip smiled.
“I don’t like it,” Jacob mumbled.
“The bugling was very good,” Papa said.
“It was that,” Levi added. “Had everyone’s attention. Probably made Captain Harker pause from supper.”
“You think he would have liked it?” Jacob wondered.
“Why all the interest in the Captain?” Papa asked. “I don’t know, I just thought maybe he could, well, use me as a bugler.”
Don’t say that I’m too young.
“A bugler? Don’t you think 10 is a little young?” Nathaniel laughed.
“Sure, you could play standing under the wagons,” Levi added.
“Yeah, and maybe we could carry you in our knapsacks,” Phillip suggested.
“Son, you play well. You are a good bugler, for your age and for the amount of practice you’ve had. But, bugling is a man’s job in the army, just like artillery and flag carrying and cavalry and infantry. It is not for a 10-year-old, no matter how much you want it,” Papa said, with enough sympathy in his voice to tell Jacob that he was proud of him for wanting it, but expecting him to accept reality.
“Besides, little brother, buglers usually ride horses. You don’t like horses,” Phillip reminded him.
“They do?”
“Play while riding, that’s what they do,” he said.
I never thought of that.
“Well, then, could they use a drummer?”
Everyone laughed as loud as Jacob had heard for awhile. Lean back, slap the knee, deep-voiced guffaws from the men and big smiles with high-pitched twittering from Mama and Cassie. Jacob could only look at them and smile.
Guess I better not tell them I am serious.
“Look, Jacob, we have depleted the menfolk from our household quite enough,” Papa said. “We need to keep a contingency force back at the ranch, to protect the womenfolk and all.”
The brothers nodded their agreement.
“Grandpappy can’t hold down the fort on his own. He needs you to keep Mother occupied with worrying about your tree-climbing and whether you are getting your schoolwork done. Otherwise she will spend all of her time hiding his cigars and trying to get him to eat the foods she thinks are good for him,” Philip said.
Mother shot him a dart with her eyes.
“And baby sister will need you to let her practice her bossiness, so she can be a good wife in a few years,” Nathaniel added.
“I am not bossy,” Cassie blurted back. “You stop that right now, Nathaniel.”
Everyone laughed again.
“Son, you are one of my five favorite children,” Papa said, diplomatically and to the rolled eyes of the others. “Seriously, I am as proud of you as I am of all my children. You know it, and they know it.
“I feel doubly blessed that God gave us two at once, that you two know right from wrong, and that when you don’t, you know how to learn right from wrong.
“This war is in God’s time, which means that we are of the age that God will send us to fight it, and you are of the age that God will keep you home, to do what 10-year-olds are supposed to do.
“I suggest you be diligent about your studies, be mindful of your mother, be nice to each other, be attentive to Grandpappy, and keep your eyes open to whatever is happening here behind the lines, because the enemy is everywhere.
“It just might be you that saves Mansfield from the hands of the Sesesh.”
Jacob did not know whether his father was serious about those last words, but, ignoring the smiles of his brothers, he decided to dwell on them and consider that perhaps there was a mission here for him in Mansfield.
