Hand to the Plow
By Ilene H. Kingsbury
Part V – Westward Once More
Synopsis: A Welsh widow on her way to the valleys of the mountains in 1864, with her family of five children, awaiting a train to take them westward, was faced with a momentous decision. Her father and mother and several of her brothers and sisters, not members of the Church, had already established themselves in Bradys Bend, Pennsylvania, only about twenty-five miles from the railroad. The widow and her family had long planned to visit them before traveling to the West to make a permanent home. However, the fear that, once reunited with her family, she might lack the courage to leave them, causes the widow to resume her journey West.
If the silence of dedication encased this Welsh unit trying to become something they had long dreamed of, that same quietude did not touch the rest of the travelers. Louder and louder became the buzzing in the hive station. As the voices shrilled, the bodies started on the move. The emigrant, now that victory was so sweet, found herself too tired to drag herself and young brood back to reality. She motioned to the older boys to see what the noise was about. They were happy to arise and walk about and stretch and talk aloud. They looked as relieved as she to have met the enemy and to have conquered. They began to hum a little tune together as they sauntered about, which was most Welsh of them. The song was “Men of Harlech,” an appropriate enough legendary air that told families afar off that one had been valiant.
The boys circulated back, in due time, to report that any time now a train would be coming down the tracks going in their general direction. How did they know that? Well, some boys had been stooping with their ears on the rails. As they had listened often in such a posture for several weeks now, they were experts in telling even the exact time the train would clang to a shuddering stop at the station. Long since they had mastered the direction from which it would come. Before the waiting families could move their property to the platform as preparation for getting aboard, the whistle was heard to warn them forlornly, as it lamented its way along the narrow tracks.
The previously well-ordered and undisturbed piles of boxes and bags were now shunted to the door. Almost no family needed to make two trips to carry all they owned from inside to outside. Each member took his share, deposited it, and stood guard. Just so as in the case of the emigrant’s possessions, each child bent to and lugged at his previously assigned bundles, ran arms through straps, hoisted great bulks upon shoulders, and staggered under untold weight. With bent backs and flexed muscles, they directed their paths over the timeworn doorsill and to the outer corner of the platform near the down end. This was a prearranged formation which worked as a clock. Showing pleasure, each child laid his burden in such a manner that in the blinking of an eye the whole lot of belongings was in exactly the same position and form as had been seen but a moment ago near the forge stove inside the station. Actually, the children loved these moments of lifting and carrying and heaving. They smiled and talked and played the game in great spirits.
The mother had her share of possibles, too: smaller bags and baskets, to be sure; but their value was not quite in the class of those carried by her offspring. We may hear more about their contents at a less hurried moment.
The islands of valuables about the outer station were not of permanent value, however. As soon as the train chugged into sight the surge to deposit these material objects within the box-like cars began. The little islands dissolved and became a part of small streams flowing into the cars. The ticket agent came to the door to see them off.
Well, he thought, there they go. Guess I should have told that Welsh lady more about the war and the Indians and the great rivers. She really should have gone to Bradys Bend. It would be safer there, even from the war. Guess she’ll have her own way like as not. Well, it won’t be anything like Wales. Maybe she won’t live to get West. Maybe she will never be heard from again. Well, I told her so, didn’t I?
As this was the third train the family had boarded since leaving their ship, the novelty of the travel was lost. It was just as noisy, just as dirty, as drafty, as inadequate to transport human beings, as crowded, as any other they had ridden in before.
The little family had decided that they would have more privacy if they could stay at the end of a car, so they made their way where they could have at least one end wall to enclose them. They shunted their luggage under the seats, all that would fit there, then piled the rest in tower-like arrangement with the hope that the jarring of starts and stops would not dislodge the bundles upon their heads.
The aisle through this little conveyance was so narrow that one was forced to sidestep through it. The seats were twin benched, facing each other — exact copies of church benches. Neither springs nor cushions were thought to be an adjunct to comfort. A solitary, swaying lantern of a make to accommodate either a candle or a cup of oil gave the only light after nightfall. The windows of the car were small, dirty, rattletrap squares, giving a distorted vision of the outside world. It did not pay to take too seriously a view that bulged and squeezed itself into an oddity of nature. Just move the head a bit and another effect could be achieved. If one was sensitive to light and color, this, with distortion, brought on car sickness. The prevention was never to look outside.
The family noticed all too late that they should have been on the opposite side of the car, for some carpenter-skilled passenger had, at a lengthy stop, built himself a sort of platform or bunk midway between seat and ceiling. This was now being occupied by numerous children who climbed aloft and sat there looking quite like chickens on a perch. When their parents threw them a blanket and a bundle or two to be used as pillows, they had a sleeper the whole traveling world could envy.
The emigrant’s oldest boy resolved to build such a second story in their little nook. If the train didn’t get underway immediately, he knew just the pile of lumber back at the station which could afford him his supply. A hammer and nails could be borrowed from the agent. He therefore left his family corner and struggled past the still embarking passengers and finally regained the platform. He ran to the agent to explain his plan, but was forced to about-face as word was wafted back with the ribbon of black smoke that the engine was ready to move. He dashed back to the car with his plan of construction still taking form. This was an objective which could be realized at the next stop, if not now.
He was scarcely seated in the family pew, as they laughingly called their cramped quarters, when a continuous ringing of a bell was heard as one of the many official signals that the train was about to roll. Other signs, either in noise or motion, quickly followed. The agent now took the part of starter of the rolling stock of his company and his self-importance had its greatest chance to renew itself. He filled his lungs, braced himself with thumbs in the armholes of his vest, opened his mouth and put forth a roar of command. Hi call was made of a series of words, all unintelligible, and seeming to lack and interpreter. He no doubt was the pattern for future masters of the art of train calling. But with or without his vehemence, the effect would have been the same. The passengers had received a call to go West long before he was an employee of any transportation system. The impetus was to move onward. The going was accelerated with each mile en route and showed no signs of running down as does a pendulum or a ball thrown in motion. Let us give the agent credit for at least being the color and essence of a very new mode of getting abut the earth.
Evidently every nose was counted, every owner surrounded by his worldly goods. Evidently nothing now could mar the journey which up to this time had been eventful and hazardous. The rumble of the wheels became as a sedative. The air became sickening. it would take more than the cracks beneath the doors and around the windows to ventilate the place. No wonder a broken window or two had not been replaced. Even cinders sweeping through them to the hair and lungs of the passengers were preferable to this close feeling.
Someone mentioned that, at almost any place along the line, the Rebel forces might commandeer the train and take it off to transport troops, or more likely, the Union soldiers would get there first and do the same thing for their cause. This rail company maintained that it was neutral in the great fight, and hoped thereby to preserve its regular business no matter how the wind blew in the conflict. Actually, it was at a constant disadvantage. Uncertainty was ever present. Unless something like decisive victory could be achieved quickly, the owners feared for their investment.
The striving engine hammered its way, and panted and spewed clouds of volcanic fire over its back in the best manner of dreadful dragons. The writhing, twisting motion of the cars never ceased. The couplings threatened to let go the precarious hold they had been designed to maintain, and with slackened or gathered speed, the antagonism between the parts of the whole continued. This multiple-sectioned monster remained a unit only because the teeth of one part tore at the tail of the next. Heads bobbed, jerked, snapped, and rolled. Heavy shoulders slumped, short legs dangled in jointless fashion, and whimperers were heard to complain and wheedle and threaten.
In this atmosphere it was an achievement for any mother to gain the ear of an infant either to issue commands or to enjoin to prayer. It was easy, then, to drift off on a memory jaunt, which in most cases made one homesick, or to recede within oneself to renew covenants or formulate stratagems. The emigrant indulged in a little of both, and got to the point of feeling a re-enforcement of courage and energy now that they were underway again, when she was interrupted by little Sannie demanding, ”I want something!”
The boys broke into a laugh at this most childish of all sentences. At least they always knew what it was they wanted. The mother brushed aside her thoughts in solitude and tried to lead the little girl into a statement of just what it was she wanted. A sea cake? No. A part of a peeled potato? No. Nothing to eat? No. A little sleep with head resting on the mothers lap or shoulders? No. A story? Yes, that was it. About nice, wonderful Uncle David who could sing better than anyone else in all Wales? Yes, yes.
This subject was an unfailing source of entertainment even to children who could sing all day long and never repeat themselves, for Uncle David was very romantic as well as talented. Of course it was a sort of sad, mysterious romance. In the first place. . . . But no one wanted that phase of Uncle David today. As there were other choices, one boy called out, ”The money story.” Yes, indeed. This event involved a piece of money which could not have purchased even the meanest item of food or clothing, yet, again, it was worth a bucketful of other near-alike pieces. The source of this valued bit of metal reached back to legendary times in Wales when singing first became the greatest of arts. Mothers prayed that the newly christened infant would be the most famous singer in all Wales. No other career beckoned or mattered to a Welshman after that idea had taken hold in the national heart.
For it was the heart of Wales that sang. Its heartbeat was set to music, its eye only focused on the hills and vales of its country to conjure up melodies of praise to God for their land and people. Other peoples trained their children in the arts and sciences, still others valued the efforts of the printed page or held physical prowess as a fetish. But Welshmen sang and lived for song. All else, one might say, interfered with singing. Labor in the mines for eighteen hours a day, at the wharves, in the fruitless valleys, the tragedies of deep shaft cave-ins — all fell behind one as the wake of a ship — all joy and sorrow, the sweat of the brow, the closing of the grave, the birth of sons and daughters, the courage — all were expressed in that minor key of melody which is not a dirge but an eternal hope over the strangeness of life and love and labor.
(To be continued)