The Red Badge of Courage by Stephen Crane (i wanna iguana read aloud TXT) đ
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The Red Badge of Courage
Stephen Crane (1871-1900)
An Episode of the American Civil War
The cold passed reluctantly from the earth, and the retiring fogs revealed an army stretched out on the hills, resting. As the landscape changed from brown to green, the army awakened, and began to tremble with eagerness at the noise of rumors. It cast its eyes upon the roads, which were growing from long troughs of liquid mud to proper thoroughfares. A river, amber-tinted in the shadow of its banks, purled at the armyâs feet; and at night, when the stream had become of a sorrowful blackness, one could see across it the red, eyelike gleam of hostile camp-fires set in the low brows of distant hills.
Once a certain tall soldier developed virtues and went resolutely to wash a shirt. He came flying back from a brook waving his garment bannerlike. He was swelled with a tale he had heard from a reliable friend, who had heard it from a truthful cavalryman, who had heard it from his trustworthy brother, one of the orderlies at division headquarters. He adopted the important air of a herald in red and gold.
âWeâre goinâ tâ move tâmorrahâsure,â he said pompously to a group in the company street. âWeâre goinâ âway up the river, cut across, anâ come around in behint âem.â
To his attentive audience he drew a loud and elaborate plan of a very brilliant campaign. When he had finished, the blue-clothed men scattered into small arguing groups between the rows of squat brown huts. A negro teamster who had been dancing upon a cracker box with the hilarious encouragement of twoscore soldiers was deserted. He sat mournfully down. Smoke drifted lazily from a multitude of quaint chimneys.
âItâs a lie! thatâs all it isâa thunderinâ lie!â said another private loudly. His smooth face was flushed, and his hands were thrust sulkily into his trouserâs pockets. He took the matter as an affront to him. âI donât believe the derned old armyâs ever going to move. Weâre set. Iâve got ready to move eight times in the last two weeks, and we ainât moved yet.â
The tall soldier felT called upon to defend the truth of a rumor he himself had introduced. He and the loud one came near to fighting over it.
A corporal began to swear before the assemblage. He had just put a costly board floor in his house, he said. During the early spring he had refrained from adding extensively to the comfort of his environment because he had felt that the army might start on the march at any moment. Of late, however, he had been impressed that they were in a sort of eternal camp.
Many of the men engaged in a spirited debate. One outlined in a peculiarly lucid manner all the plans of the commanding general. He was opposed by men who advocated that there were other plans of campaign. They clamored at each other, numbers making futile bids for the popular attention. Meanwhile, the soldier who had fetched the rumor bustled about with much importance. He was continually assailed by questions.
âWhatâs up, Jim?â
âThâarmyâs goinâ tâ move.â
âAh, what yeh talkinâ about? How yeh know it is?â
âWell, yeh kin bâlieve me er not, jest as yeh like. I donât care a hang.â
There was much food for thought in the manner in which he replied. He came near to convincing them by disdaining to produce proofs. They grew much excited over it.
There was a youthful private who listened with eager ears to the words of the tall soldier and to the varied comments of his comrades. After receiving a fill of discussions concerning marches and attacks, he went to his hut and crawled through an intricate hole that served it as a door. He wished to be alone with some new thoughts that had lately come to him.
He lay down on a wide bunk that stretched across the end of the room. In the other end, cracker boxes were made to serve as furniture. They were grouped about the fireplace. A picture from an illustrated weekly was upon the log walls, and three rifles were paralleled on pegs. Equipments hung on handy projections, and some tin dishes lay upon a small pile of firewood. A folded tent was serving as a roof. The sunlight, without, beating upon it, made it glow a light yellow shade. A small window shot an oblique square of whiter light upon the cluttered floor. The smoke from the fire at times neglected the clay chimney and wreathed into the room, and this flimsy chimney of clay and sticks made endless threats to set ablaze the whole establishment.
The youth was in a little trance of astonishment. So they were at last going to fight. On the morrow, perhaps, there would be a battle, and he would be in it. For a time he was obliged to labor to make himself believe. He could not accept with assurance an omen that he was about to mingle in one of those great affairs of the earth.
He had, of course, dreamed of battles all his lifeâof vague and bloody conflicts that had thrilled him with their sweep and fire. In visions he had seen himself in many struggles. He had imagined peoples secure in the shadow of his eagle-eyed prowess. But awake he had regarded battles as crimson blotches on the pages of the past. He had put them as things of the bygone with his thought-images of heavy crowns and high castles. There was a portion of the worldâs history which he had regarded as the time of wars, but it, he thought, had been long gone over the horizon and had disappeared forever.
From his home his youthful eyes had looked upon the war in his own country with distrust. It must be some sort of a play affair. He had long despaired of witnessing a Greeklike struggle. Such would be no more, he had said. Men were better, or more timid. Secular and religious education had effaced the throat-grappling instinct, or else firm finance held in check the passions.
He had burned several times to enlist. Tales of great movements shook the land. They might not be distinctly Homeric, but there seemed to be much glory in them. He had read of marches, sieges, conflicts, and he had longed to see it all. His busy mind had drawn for him large pictures extravagant in color, lurid with breathless deeds.
But his mother had discouraged him. She had affected to look with some contempt upon the quality of his war ardor and patriotism. She could calmly seat herself and with no apparent difficulty give him many hundreds of reasons why he was of vastly more importance on the farm than on the field of battle. She had had certain ways of expression that told him that her statements on the subject came from a deep conviction. Moreover, on her side, was his belief that her ethical motive in the argument was impregnable.
At last, however, he had made firm rebellion against this yellow light thrown upon the color of his ambitions. The newspapers, the gossip of the village, his own picturings, had aroused him to an uncheckable degree. They were in truth fighting finely down there. Almost every day the newspaper printed accounts of a decisive victory.
One night, as he lay in bed, the winds had carried to him the clangoring of the church bell as some enthusiast jerked the rope frantically to tell the twisted news of a great battle. This voice of the people rejoicing in the night had made him shiver in a prolonged ecstasy of excitement. Later, he had gone down to his motherâs room and had spoken thus: âMa, Iâm going to enlist.â
âHenry, donât you be a fool,â his mother had replied. She had then covered her face with the quilt. There was an end to the matter for that night.
Nevertheless, the next morning he had gone to a town that was near his motherâs farm and had enlisted in a company that was forming there. When he had returned home his mother was milking the brindle cow. Four others stood waiting. âMa, Iâve enlisted,â he had said to her diffidently. There was a short silence. âThe Lordâs will be done, Henry,â she had finally replied, and had then continued to milk the brindle cow.
When he had stood in the doorway with his soldierâs clothes on his back, and with the light of excitement and expectancy in his eyes almost defeating the glow of regret for the home bonds, he had seen two tears leaving their trails on his motherâs scarred cheeks.
Still, she had disappointed him by saying nothing whatever about returning with his shield or on it. He had privately primed himself for a beautiful scene. He had prepared certain sentences which he thought could be used with touching effect. But her words destroyed his plans. She had doggedly peeled potatoes and addressed him as follows: âYou watch out, Henry, anâ take good care of yerself in this here fighting businessâyou watch, anâ take good care of yerself. Donât go a-thinkinâ you can lick the hull rebel army at the start, because yeh canât. Yer jest one little feller amongst a hull lot of others, and yehâve got to keep quiet anâ do what they tell yeh. I know how you are, Henry.
âIâve knet yeh eight pair of socks, Henry, and Iâve put in all yer best shirts, because I want my boy to be jest as warm and comfâable as anybody in the army. Whenever they get holes in âem, I want yeh to send âem right-away back to me, soâs I kin dern âem.
âAnâ allus be careful anâ choose yer compâny. Thereâs lots of bad men in the army, Henry. The army makes âem wild, and they like nothing better than the job of leading off a young feller like you, as ainât never been away from home much and has allus had a mother, anâ a-learning âem to drink and swear. Keep clear of them folks, Henry. I donât want yeh to ever do anything, Henry, that yeh would be âshamed to let me know about. Jest think as if I was a-watchinâ yeh. If yeh keep that in yer mind allus, I guess yehâll come out about right.
âYeh must allus remember yer father, too, child, anâ remember he never drunk a drop of licker in his life, and seldom swore a cross oath.
âI donât know what else to tell yeh, Henry, excepting that yeh must never do no shirking, child, on my account. If so be a time comes when yeh have to be kilt of do a mean thing, why, Henry, donât think of anything âcept whatâs right, because thereâs many a woman has to bear up âginst sech things these times, and the Lord âll take keer of us all.
âDonât forgit about the socks and the shirts, child; and Iâve put a cup of blackberry jam with yer bundle, because I know yeh like it above all things. Good-by, Henry. Watch out, and be a good boy.â
He had, of course, been impatient under the ordeal of this speech. It had not been quite what he expected, and he had borne it with an air of irritation. He departed feeling vague relief.
Still, when he had looked back
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