Across Five Aprils

Early on a warm April morning in 1861, Ellen Creighton and her son Jethro set out to plant potatoes in a field on their southern Illinois farm. Ellen breaks the soil with her hoe and Jethro drops potato cuttings into the dirt. Ellen is a plain, no-nonsense woman who works hard and has a strong Christian faith. She tends to spoil Jethro, the youngest of the 12 children she’s borne, both because he was born in the same year that three of her children died of sickness, and because she sees great promise in the nine-year-old boy.

Anxious thoughts consume Ellen as she and Jethro work; for his part, the boy can’t feel anxious with the scent of lilacs on the breeze, smoke rising from the kitchen fire as a sign of an excellent meal to come, and the sounds of Matthew Creighton, his father, and his brothers working in the next field.

Jethro looks up to see Shadrach Yale preparing to ride into Newton, the nearest town. Shadrach teaches at the local school, and ever since Ellen nursed him through typhoid fever two years before, he’s become an honorary family member. Matthew asked Shad to go to town for supplies, but the real reason for the trip lies in gathering news about the nation’s rising political tensions. As he says goodbye, Shad puts his hands on Ellen’s shoulders and tells her not to worry, but she bursts into tears.

Jethro finds Ellen’s somber mood depressing. The idea of imminent war excites him and other boys, including his brother Tom and cousin Eb. Fear of war, he thinks, shows womanly weakness. He tries to annoy her by repeating what he’s heard the other boys say, that war between the states would be a “breakfas’ spell,” over faster than it takes coffee to cool off enough to drink. Ellen retorts that she fears the day she might lose all her sons—except young Jethro—to the violence.

Squirming, Jethro changes the conversation to something he learned at school. For a long time, people believed that the sun, moon, and stars revolved around the Earth. But then a man named Copernicus—whose name Jethro can not only pronounce, but also spell, thanks to Shad’s lessons—discovered that the Earth orbits the sun. Some people took this news badly because, according to Jethro’s analysis, they wanted to believe that humans lived at the center of the universe because it made them feel important. Ellen feels pride in her son’s intelligence. But she soon lapses back into her worried musings about the looming war.

Jethro senses the precarity of the political situation, even if he doesn’t understand all the details. He knows a little bit about wars in general, at least those he’s learned about in school: the American Revolution, the Greco-Persian wars, the war between the English and Spanish. Still, he knows better than to try to convince Ellen about the excitement and glory of war, or to tell her that he anxiously looks forward to it, just like Tom and Eb. He recognizes that some men die in war but imagines them as “shadowy men from distant parts” rather than his own family and friends. 

It isn’t that Jethro doesn’t have an intimate acquaintance with loss, and his thoughts wander to the painful memory of his sister Mary’s death. Two years before, Mary went with her boyfriend to a county dance. A crowd of drunk “young toughs” crashed the party and harassed the dancers. Rob and Mary left, but Travis Burdow—a young man whose family has a reputation for criminality—followed them. When he shot wildly over the heads of their horses, the spooked animals bolted, overturning the wagon killing Mary. By the next afternoon, a lynch mob had gathered to go after Travis, but Matthew Creighton begged them to avoid further bloodshed.

Jethro doesn’t understand why Matt intervened. He trusts his father but finds his own sense of justice offended that Travis went unpunished. Suddenly he realizes that President Abraham Lincoln’s inaction offends his sense of justice in the same way. He wonders what gives either man the right to refuse to start the “great explosion” that practically everyone else wants. Perplexed, Jethro sighs deeply, attracting Ellen’s attention. She wants to know what’s wrong. Jethro asks if Abe Lincoln, like Matt, is so opposed to having blood on his hands that he’s afraid to let the war start. She pauses to explain that Lincoln stands at a crossroads between two “dark and fearsome” paths; she only hopes the Lord will guide his hands. After a moment, Ellen and Jethro resume their chores.

At noon, an exhausted and hungry Jethro trudges back toward the plain but comfortable pioneer’s cabin with Ellen. There, they find Jethro’s sister Jenny and sister-in-law Nancy putting the finishing touches on lunch. Jenny has picked some fresh lettuce greens just for Jethro, who’s been craving green food all through the long, dark winter months. Even after four years of marriage to Jethro’s brother John, Nancy remains withdrawn and aloof around the family.

Now that Jethro is helping the adults with planting, he gets to eat at the first sitting and drink a mug of hot coffee. His teenaged brother Tom and cousin Eb—who’s lived with the Creightons since his own parents died years before—sit across from Jethro. They don’t have much time for the youngest boy, but Jenny and Jethro’s favorite brother, Bill, certainly do. The neighbors consider Bill “peculiar” because, although he’s a strong and hardworking person, he also prefers reading to the hunting, wrestling, drinking, and rampaging that other young men in the county prefer. Jethro feels neutral about his brother John, the oldest still at the family homeplace. Nancy’s shyness, which strikes Jethro as unfriendliness, contributes to the distance between them.

Jenny and Nancy pour coffee and load the table with roasted meat, potatoes, and cornbread. John compliments Jenny on the meal, prompting Tom to tease her about how much nicer it would have been if Shad had stayed home. Eb predicts that Jenny will soon snag Shad as her husband. Matt stops the teasing with a quiet remark that Jenny—at 14—remains too young to be thinking of marriage yet. Bringing up Shad reminds everyone about the news he went to town for, and the conversation becomes stilted and strained under the looming shadow of war.

After the meal, Ellen and Jethro return to the fields. Planting is hard work, and by sundown, they are both exhausted. Jethro sits down on the dirt, relaxing as he watches the shadows lengthen. Soon they hear an approaching wagon. When the driver catches sight of Ellen and Jethro, he slows the team, asking in a teasing voice whether the family has fallen behind on planting their crops. It’s Ellen’s nephew, Wilse Graham. Some business brought him up to southern Illinois from Kentucky, and he arranged his trip to include a brief visit.