Called Up

  Arduous Mayhem

  Not Mustered

  Out of Reach

  Pockets Bulging

  The Bear and the Compass

  Gone

  Alone

  Scavenge

  Consolidation

  New Room

  First Letter

  Writing a Letter

  Friend or Foe

  Milton and Morris

  Designing Destiny

  Dashing Kate

  Riders

  Skedaddle

  Ricochet

  Rematch

  Posters

  Stars and Stripes

  Ready

  The River

  Home Again

  In the Soup

  Battlefield

  Out of Sight

  Main

  Brothers

  On the Move

  In the Stars

  A wild howl tore through the night.

  Ike snapped awake.

  “Leon! Jim!” He thrashed his arms to roust his brothers, but the wide bed was empty.

  He scrambled to the window. The howling went on, rising and falling like a wounded beast.

  Steamboat.

  Ike tucked his nightshirt into a pair of pants, grabbed his slingshot, and slipped down the stairs and out the back door.

  All of Button Row was stirring. Father’s snores sputtered, then stopped. LouLou and Jane called for Mother. A pan clattered next door, and next door to that, babies cried while Aunt Betsy shushed.

  Barfoot whinnied in the lean-to. Ike ran to him and stroked his cheek. Across the alley, the Hinman dogs yowled along with the steamer whistle, and Mrs. Hinman hollered for Milton and Morris to just stay put.

  Boats didn’t arrive this late. They didn’t wail this long. In the faint light of the half-moon, Ike climbed on Barfoot’s back, urging him to gallop to the street, but Barfoot had only one gait.

  Neighbors called out to neighbors. The new family from Kentucky staggered onto their porch in nightclothes. Farther on, Mr. Box threw open his bedroom window and waved his rifle.

  “Have we been invaded, then?” he hollered.

  “Don’t know!” Ike shouted.

  At Seventh, a light flickered in the sanctuary window of Chatham Square Church.

  “Wait here,” Ike directed. He left Barfoot by the sycamore, dashed up the steps, and burst in.

  The gust from the opening door extinguished the lone candle, but not before Ike saw Reverend Woolley and a colored man turn toward him in surprise.

  “Isaac Button, what in tarnation?” thundered the Reverend. He relit the candle.

  Ike stared. Mr. Jenkins? At this church? “I thought Albirdie might be —”

  “My girl is in bed and so should you be. Get on, now.”

  “Yes, sir.” Ike turned and stumbled out the door, down the steps, and smack into Albirdie Woolley.

  “Come on,” she whispered, grabbing his hand and tugging him toward the street. “It’s something terrible or exciting or both.”

  Ike pulled away. “Where’s Barfoot?”

  “He’s probably on his way home. We’ll get there faster without him.”

  The steamer let loose one last long whistle. The silence it left was more urgent than its cry. Albirdie and Ike cut diagonally through yards and empty lots to the boardinghouse on Water Street, then picked their way down the slope to the shore, where a crowd was gathering.

  The butter-and-egg man lumbered alongside his son, Junior. A motley band of drunks staggered forward, singing “Pop! Goes the Weasel.” Ike and Albirdie darted around them. There stood Leon and Jim, hemmed in by Mr. Day, the grocer, and Mr. Day’s slow-moving brothers.

  “Why didn’t you wake me?” Ike demanded, but before Leon and Jim could answer, Albirdie ducked between the men, and Ike and his brothers followed.

  “Look!” she cried.

  “It’s the Jeannie Deans!” said Jim.

  The boat hovered like the ghost of an enormous wedding cake just offshore. Acrid smoke filled the air. A man on board was hollering as deckhands built a gangway.

  “What’s news?” people kept shouting, so that no one could hear him.

  “Quiet!” commanded the butter-and-egg man. The mob simmered, waiting.

  The man hollered again. This time his message was passed person to person, and a cheer went up.

  “The rebels are in Hannibal!” Leon shouted.

  “Iowa’s called up at last!” cried Jim.

  “Iowa!” Ike cheered with the rest. “Iowa! Iowa! Iowa!” he yelled until he was hoarse.

  Jim hooted and wrestled Leon to the ground. They sprang up and grabbed Ike and Albirdie and spun them around.

  “So long, Keokuk!” Leon called, sweeping his arm toward town.

  They followed as the throng marched up Main, dispersing to spread the news.

  “Good riddance, OK Bakery!” Jim hollered.

  “Been nice to know you, Hess Clothing!” Ike shouted. “Don’t forget me, Gate City Carriage!”

  Leon shoved Ike playfully. “What’re you good-bying for?” he said. “You’re eleven. You’re not going anywhere.”

  Ike stopped. The butter-and-egg man bumped into him, knocking him to the ground.

  “Apologies!” he boomed, pulling Ike to his feet and brushing him off. “Where’s my boy? Junior! Wait for your old pa, now. Junior!”

  Ike turned and ran to the shore. The steamer’s whistle echoed in his head. The last whiff of smoke hovered in the still air. He listened to the deckhands call back and forth as they tramped along the gangway.

  Leon was right.

  All these months of waiting for Lincoln’s call to the War Between the States, of watching men learn to be soldiers, parading up and down Main with rakes over their shoulders to stand in for rifles, of laughing at the surprise of soldiers from smaller towns who marveled at the splendor of Keokuk’s four-story buildings and the twenty-five-foot flag at Day Bros. Grocery. All these months, the excitement of war had enveloped Keokuk, like a grand game everyone was in on.

  And now his brothers would leave and take that excitement with them. His father and uncles and boy cousins, too.

  Ike loaded his slingshot, pulled back, and sent the stone soaring into the lightening sky.

  Albirdie came and stood by his side.

  “That was a waste of a good rock,” she said.

  “I should be going with them.”

  Albirdie plucked out a small stone from the river and handed it to Ike. “But you’re not,” she said. “And neither am I.”

  “Eleven is not too young for war,” Ike said to Barfoot, who swished his tail agreeably, then lumbered to the yard table and stuck his nose in an unattended pie. The family was milling about behind their attached houses, packing knapsacks and beginning their good-byes.

  “Perfect aim. Watch!” said Ike. He held up his slingshot and pivoted slowly, scoping a worthy target: Father and uncles under the oak, inspecting packs; Leon and Jim roughhousing with boy cousins, little girls playing tag around them; lean-to stable; a rickety two-wheeled wagon. No.

  “Perfect aim!” He continued revolving: strawberry bushes; green beans climbing tripod stakes; flowering sweet peas; rain barrel, full; woodpile, dwindling.

  “Perfect aim!” Three gray houses, paint peeling. One wide connecting porch, sagging. Aunties with armloads of folded shirts and pants banging in and out of two screen doors, while Mother leaned against a third, hankie to her eyes.

  And past that third door, the oak again. The men. And above their heads, a nest; a papery wasp nest dangling from the lowest branch. Inside, a buzzing army awaiting orders.

  Ike set his feet wide and drew back the stone.

  “Fire!” he cried, and everyone ducked.

  He released the missile.

  It sailed over the yard table, over Barfoot’s head, past brothers and sisters and cousins. Then it grazed Uncle Hugh’s head, smacked into the tree trunk, and dropped into an open knapsack. A lone wasp buzzed over the gathering before flying in an open window.

  “Enough nonsense, Isaac!” Father boomed. “Olive, we need another shirt over here for Jim.”

  Ike stuck his slingshot in his waistband and pulled Barfoot from the pie. “A breeze took it,” he muttered. “And perfect aim is not nonsense.” The swaybacked pony nickered and smeared his strawberry snout across Cousin Susannah’s back.

  “Barfoot,” she said, wiping his nose with her apron, then feeding him a lump of sugar. “You old fool.”

  “Gather ’round,” Uncle Hugh bellowed, his brothers Oscar and Dan joining him on the wide back porch. “Soldier sons, our dear wives, darling daughters.”

  “And Ike!” Ike hollered.

  “Hush!” said Father.

  “And Ike,” Ike mumbled to Barfoot.

  “An occasion such as this brings to mind all the great sojourns of the Button clan,” Uncle Hugh began. “We remember California’s rivers of gold, and subsequent successes there, affording the fineries we enjoy within them there walls.”

  Ike nudged Susannah. “California.”

  Susannah shrugged. “We all know it was Uncle Palmer, rest his long-gone soul, went to California and got the gold. And look at this dress. Finery? I think not.”

  Uncle Oscar gave his daughter Susannah a look. “There was the great traverse from the east,” he said. “The arduous trail of adventure and mayhem that brought the Button brothers to the banks of the Mississippi River and settlementation in Keokuk, Ioway.”



  “I could traverse arduous mayhem,” Ike whispered to Susannah.

  Susannah shook her head. “No you couldn’t. Besides, it was only Illinois, and Mother says they were stranded here because their horses were stolen and only Palmer had the fortitude to continue.”

  “Even so,” he said too loudly, “from the east!”

  “Quiet!” said Father.

  “And now,” Ike’s father continued, “on this momentous day of June, eighteenhundredandsixtyone, after weeks of drills and military activities within the gentle arms of our beloved city, we and our sons tomorrow depart these shores. We will venture south, on commission of Governor Kirkwood, to preserve the union of these United States for our children, and our children’s children, and so forth and so on, just as Lincoln has called us to do.”

  Soldier sons cheered, piling onto the porch and beating their drumsticks on the rail.

  Ike was surrounded by little girls clapping and squealing, while aunties bounced screaming babies. Mother sat at the yard table weeping while Susannah patted her back.

  “They could be maimed!” Mother wailed. “Or killed!”

  And up on the porch, the Button men. Not tall, but sturdy, and smartly dressed, with silky mustaches and hair sharply parted and greased. They stepped back and gathered their sons around them. The boys seemed to swell in size up there in front of the family. His family. His father and brothers. His uncles and cousins. Iowa First, Union army. Ike ached with pride. He should be on that porch, too.

  “To war, men!” Father declared.

  “To war!” Ike cried, starting toward them, but Mother nabbed his shirt and held him back.

  “A song! Lead us in a farewell song, Susannah!” Uncle Oscar said, beckoning her to the step.

  Susannah grabbed Ike’s arm.

  “ ‘America,’ ” she said to him. “Sing it slow and maybe they’ll be satisfied with just one.”

  Ike glanced over his shoulder at the men, then out at the women and girls.

  “My country, ’tis of thee,” they started, but on two different notes. They stopped and Susannah hummed a note to Ike and began again. She sang loud, he mouthed the words, and the family joined in, loud and off-key. Barfoot dipped his head and whinnied along.

  Ike lay awake between Leon and Jim, who were arguing loudly over the affections of dashing Kate from Kentucky. A mosquito buzzed overhead and Ike swatted at the air, then scratched at the bites on his ankle.

  “She intended that photograph for my pocket, and you looked the fool snatching it from her hand,” Leon said to Jim.

  “One look at your sour face and she would have run had I not been there to accept her sweet offering with the dignity of a departing hero,” said Jim.

  “Departing hero?” scoffed Leon. “Caught a lot of rebels with that drum, have you?”

  “Many as you,” said Jim.

  “Quietyou’llwakeyourmother!” came the voice of their father through the window. He and the uncles were at the yard table, talking in low voices.

  Leon and Jim went silent, but Jim reached over Ike and socked Leon. Leon smacked back. Ike sat up between them to block further attack.

  His brothers seemed older. They’d had their leaving baths, so the sweat and straw smell was washed off them, and Uncle Hugh had trimmed their hair. Jim had had to pack two of Father’s shirts because his shoulders popped the seams of his own. Leon had fuzz over his lip and his voice was deepening.

  Ike put his hand to his own lip. Smooth as the edge of a penny.

  “I want to go with you,” he said.

  “You’re not mustered,” said Leon.

  “The Jeannie Deans is big enough for one more man,” said Ike.

  “Man!” Jim laughed. “You’re not going, remember, because you’re eleven. Man!”

  Ike moved to the foot of the bed. “You’re not men, either,” he said. “You don’t even have guns. Drums. I could manage a drum as well as either of you.”

  “You didn’t seem too eager to manage a drum when we were waking up for drill at four and a half every morning,” said Leon.

  “But that was just here in Keokuk. Everyone said it would be over before you got called up.”

  “Everyone was wrong,” said Jim. “And you’re not trained.”

  “You can teach me,” said Ike.

  “You don’t have a drum,” said Leon.

  “I have drumsticks.”

  “Twigs,” said Jim. “Not actual drumsticks.”

  “What if you get lost?” said Ike. “I’m good with directions.”

  “How could we get lost?” said Leon. “We’ll be with the whole company.”

  “Besides,” said Jim, “the river goes south. Can’t get lost next to the river.”

  “Do you have a map?” said Ike. “Albirdie says in the South you can’t depend on the river.”

  “What does your girlfriend know about the South?” said Leon.

  “Albirdie is not my girlfriend. And she does know.”

  “She knows cheating is what she knows,” said Jim.

  Leon laughed. “Poor Jim. Bested by a twelve-year-old checkers fiend.”

  Jim kicked Ike aside and wedged Leon’s head into the crook of his elbow.

  “I could carry your drum,” said Ike, helping Leon pull free. “I could set up your tent.”

  “Forget it,” said Jim.

  “We got no say in it,” said Leon, clapping a mosquito between his palms. “You’re too young. You can’t go.”

  “But what if —”

  “Stop, Ike!” said Jim. “Let us enjoy our last night on a real bed.”

  “But I —”

  “Quietyou’llwakeMother,” Leon and Jim muttered. They rolled their backs away from Ike, and within a few lengthening breaths they were snoring.

  Ike stood on the bed, stepped over Jim, and jumped to the floor. He went to the window.

  Three cigar tips glowed in the dark. Bottles clinked. The familiar rhythm of the men’s nightly banter rose and fell. Ike rested his elbows on the sill and leaned out to listen.

  “. . . is nearly gone. All of it.”

  Ike breathed in the swirl of smoke that drifted up into the warm night, savoring the low rumble of the men’s voices. Gone? What’s gone?

  “The money was Palmer’s, anyhow. He would have wanted us to live well, all the trouble he went to.”

  “Living well’s done, brothers. Captain Hinman put a notice in today’s paper: You and each of you are hereby notified and such and so.”

  “Never mind Hinman. He just never had faith in the possibility. And he’s on the river more than home.”

  “Hinman won’t throw ’em out while we’re away. A fellow what’s defending his country, that’s a man people respect.”

  Throw them out? Them who?

  “He’s right. We’ll come back respectable and start up a proper business. Likely we’ve loafed long enough.”

  “Indeed. All this war talk has got me stirred up with ambition. This time I’ll get me a nice little shack and shod horses.”

  “I’m thinking a saloon. Button Bros. Fancy the business heroes bring in. I wonder how much it’d take. I wonder —”

  “Details, details. You boys sound like Palmer, all your I wonder this and What if that. Never letting up. It’s no use, I tell you.”

  “He’s right. It’s always turned out before.”

  “What I mean is, there’s no point in making plans. Losing Palmer was a curse upon us. There ain’t no way for a Button to distinguish hisself without Palmer.”

  “Palmer,” said Uncle Hugh. “Wily old Palmer. The lot of us mudheads, and him taking aim and firing true.”

  “Palmer,” said Uncle Oscar, laughing. “Truth is, we could use us a Palmer right now.”

  “Point us in the right direction,” said Father.

  “If he were going with us —”

  “I hear you, brother.”

  The men sighed.

  “Ah, Palmer!” The bottles clinked again and there was a long silence, followed by a single belch.

  Ike stood up and bumped his head on the window sash.

  “What was that?”

  “Just a noise. Calm yourself, man. There’s more than noises where we’re going.”

  “Enough of this talk. Big day tomorrow. Go on, brothers.”

  The men snuffed out their cigars and said their good-nights.

  Ike stood just inside the window until he heard the back door click shut.

  Ike waited until he heard his father tromp up the steps and close the door across the hall, then he went to his shelf and studied it in the moonlight:

 

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