Jeremy’s War 1812

Kids Can Press

Published by Kids Can Press, 2000

Text © 1991 John Ibbitson

Originally published by Maxwell Macmillan Canada as 1812: Jeremy and the General.

ISBN 978-1-894786-70-6 (ePub)

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the prior written permission of Kids Can Press Ltd. or, in case of photocopying or other reprographic copying, a license from The Canadian Copyright Licensing Agency (Access Copyright). For an Access Copyright license, visit www.accesscopyright.ca or call toll free to 1-800-893-5777.

This is a work of fiction and any resemblance of characters to persons living or dead is purely coincidental.

Kids Can Press acknowledges the support of the Ontario Arts Council, the Canada Council for the Arts and the Government of Canada, through the CBF, for our publishing activity.

www.kidscanpress.com

Cover illustration by Albert Slark

Canadian Cataloguing in Publication Data

Ibbitson, John

Jeremy’s war 1812

ISBN 978-1-55074-988-5

1. Canada – History – War of 1812 – Juvenile fiction. I. Title.

PS8567.B34E5 2000       jC813'.54       C00-930891-1

PZ7.I116Ei 2000

In memory of Grandma Boyd

and Grandma Ibbitson

1

They were expecting me to cry. I had seen tears in Uncle Will’s eyes and Aunt Amy had been crying since Tuesday.

I should have cried too. She was my mother. But I couldn’t.

Thou knowest, Lord, the secrets of our hearts ...

Mr. Morrison was no minister — his farm was up the road. But he knew the service and there wasn’t a minister for miles, so he said the words.

We therefore commit her body to the ground — earth to earth, ashes to ashes, dust to dust ... Dirt dribbled from his hand and rattled across the rough pine wood.

The women stepped away, took each other’s arms, and began the walk back to Uncle Will’s house. The rest of us reached for the spades that leaned against the elm. Uncle Will took my arm.

You don’t have to, son.

I want to.

No one spoke after that. We sank our shovels into the soft spring earth beside the grave and heaved the earth into the grave below. There were six of us, and it didn’t take long. I never noticed when the last of the coffin disappeared.

When it was finished I stood over the two graves for a moment — the fresh, new one of my mother, the old grey earth beside it where my father was buried — and pretended to say a prayer. The wind tugged at my coat, and a fine drizzle began to darken the earth. I turned away and joined the men walking across the field to the house.

Most of the farmers along Yonge Street still lived in the log cabins they’d built the year they cleared the land. Our log cabin hadn’t changed much in the fifteen years since I was born in it. But Uncle Will and Aunt Amy lived in a proper house, with two bedrooms and a stove inside and even lanterns at night. It was crowded now in the main room, but not too crowded to hold the dozen neighbours who stood uncomfortably and sipped on tea and tried not to show how long it had been since they’d tasted sugar cookies. People talked among themselves — about the late spring, the crops, the war we might have with the States, but not about death.

You’ll stay with us tonight, Jeremy. Aunt Amy dabbed a handkerchief across her eyes.

I think I’ll stay at the farm.

Oh no. She lowered her handkerchief. You can’t stay there all alone. Will … She pulled at his sleeve. Jeremy wants to go back to the farm. To his — to his parents’ farm. He mustn’t do that.

Wouldn’t you rather stay with us for a bit, son? Uncle Will offered. You know you’re welcome.

Someone has to feed the animals. And I want to be alone tonight. And I did.

Well, he’s fifteen, he can take care of himself. Uncle Will smiled. I’m sure he’ll manage.

I don’t know, I don’t know. Aunt Amy’s handkerchief fluttered about her face. It doesn’t seem right. But she began drifting toward the tray of cookies, which meant she’d given up.

I don’t blame you, son, said Uncle Will, as I pulled on my coat. I’d want to get away from all this, too. We’ve put cheese and some meat in the root cellar. Be sure you eat.

Thanks. I wanted to leave, but he stepped forward and took my arm. Uncle Will was a big man — tall and broad and heavy. He always stood close to other men when he talked to them, as though he wanted to remind them of his strength. I didn’t like it.

We have to go to Richmond Hill tomorrow, he said quietly. There are … some legal matters. Your mother gave Mr. Robinson the papers.

I nodded. Legal matters. I hadn’t thought about that. What were we going to do — about the farm, about me?

It was a muddy walk home. I wasn’t used to wearing shoes. Boots were what you needed for open fields in May. But I ignored the mud. There were things to consider.

What were we going to do about the farm? I couldn’t run it alone. And I didn’t want to run it. I hated the farm.

I stopped in the field. I hated the farm. It echoed inside me. I’d never known that before. Oh, I’d said it every day. I hate this farm, I’d say to myself, as I struggled with the hay for the cows, or spread the manure across the fields, or fought with a chicken for her egg. I hate this farm. It was like part of breathing.

But I’d never really known it until now. Known it absolutely. I hated the farm. I hated farming. I’d always hated it. So had my father.

My family came to Upper Canada in 1784, after the American colonies rebelled against England. My father and my Uncle Will were the sons of a farmer in New York. The two brothers stayed loyal to the King when rebellion came, and because they were loyal the Yankees threatened to put them in jail as traitors. So they left, both still in their teens, and came to Upper Canada. The Americans who came north after the war were called Loyalists, and they got grants of land.

I don’t know much about their first farm, but it must have been poor, because when the government began opening the land north of York for settlement, they sold the farm and took land on Yonge Street, about twenty miles north of the town.

They each had two hundred acres, side by side. But you’d have thought their farms were on opposite ends of the earth. My Uncle Will was born to farm. His crops ripened faster, his cows were fatter, his children were fatter too.

My father worked from dawn to dark and it never seemed to do any good. I heard someone whisper once that the only luck he ever had was getting mama as his wife.

He met her in York. She was the daughter of a miller, and people thought she was too good for him (I heard Aunt Amy say that once), but she married him anyway.

I don’t know if she knew what she was getting into. We lived in a one-room cabin. The stone fireplace gave us light and heat for food — and smoke to choke us until our eyes watered. She kept the house clean, and looked after the cow and the chickens and the pig while my father fought with the land and lost.

One day he was working in the field when suddenly he grabbed his chest and fell down and didn’t get up. That was seven years ago. I don’t have much of a memory of him. All I remember is a man sitting at the table at night, his face shadowy in the firelight, staring silently at his hands.

Mama should have given up the farm and gone back to York, but she stayed. This was where God had put her, she said. She worked from before the sun was up till after it set. She worked in the field and in the house and in the barn until the lines on her face seemed to deepen as you watched her. She didn’t talk much when she worked, and she never sang, but I sometimes heard her humming to herself, some song I didn’t know.

I worked too. At first there wasn’t much I was good for, except bringing in the eggs and sweeping the floor. But I was always big for my age — I had my Uncle Will’s shoulders, mama used to say — and by the time I was ten I was doing a man’s work.

Uncle Will would lend a hand when he could, or send his son Seth. We’d help each other with the harvest, mama working in the fields beside the men while Aunt Amy shook her head and muttered that it wasn’t right.

There was no school I could go to, so mama taught me to read and write and do sums. We had only the Bible to read, but we read it every night. I guess there wasn’t much laughter on the farm — mama didn’t think much of people who cackled like hens, as she said. But it was comfortable at night, the two of us together, me reading the Bible out loud, or writing out sentences with chalk on an old slate, mama correcting my mistakes.

I’d noticed her getting thinner, and she held her side sometimes and set her face against showing the pain, but she never said anything about it, and I never asked. Then last Thursday, we’d just finished getting the field ready for the spring planting when she leaned on her hoe and said she felt dizzy. I helped her to the house, then ran to get Aunt Amy. Mama lasted less than a week, getting weaker and weaker. She was hurting inside, but there was nothing we could do. By the end we were just hoping she’d stop being in pain.

So they were both gone now, buried on their own land, at the foot of a hill beneath an elm tree. And I was alone.

I stood in the yard between the house and the barn. The low grey clouds had created an early twilight. The tree beside the house creaked in the wind that curled around me and made me shiver. The drizzle had turned to rain, a thin, cutting rain that stung my cheeks. I turned away from the wind and rain and walked to the house.

Inside it was dark, and that was fine. I stoked the fire and pulled a chair up beside it, then wrapped a blanket around me and sat in the chair, waiting for the warmth from the fire to reach inside me. The grey light from the window outlined the shadow of the table. I looked at the table and thought of my mother and cried.

2

The light from the morning sun woke me. I uncurled myself from the chair and stretched stiffly. There were chores to do — the cow had to be milked, the chickens and the pig fed. I was still in my good clothes; the wool trousers scratched against my legs and I was anxious to get out of them. But Uncle Will had said we were going to Richmond Hill for some business, so I left them on.

I was just coming out of the barn with the milk when Uncle Will’s cart trundled down the twin ruts of our path, pulled by a dapple-grey mare Uncle Will owned and everybody envied.

Are you ready, son? He seemed impatient, restless.

Right there. I hurried to the root cellar with the milk, slopping half of it over the sides of the pail and some of it onto me. I ran to the house, where my cheese and bread sat waiting on the table. No matter how restless Uncle Will was I needed that cheese and bread — I hadn’t eaten properly in days.

It was the first good morning after a week of bitter weather. The air was moist and fresh, the rain from the night before glinting off the grass and fences in the cool May sun. I munched on my bread and breathed in the scented air. It seemed hard to believe there’d been a yesterday, with a funeral and rain and cold tears.