After 1865 the Deep South was a paradise for boys like me who love guns and other devices that explode. There were three of us who would go hunting for these monstrous things whenever we could escape our chores and schoolwork.

One boy was Jared, a strapping lad of almost six feet even when he was but 12. He was very strong and brave but not a towering intellect. Jared was white.

The other was Horatio, a colored boy and the son of Artemis who had been a slave on our farm and had stayed on as a hired hand, as he put it, “after freedom broke.” Horatio had my slight but wiry build. With the help of my grandmother, he had learned to read and was frankly more adept at it than I. And I could read very well.

We were the best of friends; we would put his life at risk to protect the others. But given the war we had just lived through, risking our lives did not seem exceptional. We knew fortune had shined on us, and none of us could imagine hardships worse than those we’d already witnessed.

On our hunts for artillery rounds we’d worked out a system. We would find a round and somehow muscle it out of the ground or rocks or a tree where it had lodged after being shot out of an artillery placement some great distance away.

We knew the round was unexploded because it had remained in one piece. Had it exploded it would have separated into hundreds of hurtling pieces of forged iron, any of which could fell a large horse. If any of our parents had known what we were up to, our punishments would have been swift and severe. Fortunately, they were ignorant of our activities. Ignorant, of course, until this particular day.

We were ambling through a large meadow west of the farm. Jared was yammering away about some girl at the school he and I attended. I believe her name was Josephina.

“She just don’t quit when I tell her to stop pestering me,” said Jared.

“What she pester you about?” asked Horatio who, because of his color, was not one of our schoolmates.

“All manner of things. How I comb my hair. How I always got mud or cow shit on my boots. How I don’t never do the lesson work I’m supposed to do. How I’m way too big and tall to be twelve and that I must be older and therefore should act more like a proper young gentleman than I do. Ain’t no end to it.”

Horatio and I chuckled and shook our heads. “And what’s so damn funny you two gotta laugh at the misery she puts on me? I don’t see no humor in it.”

Horatio offered, “She ain’t pestering you, boy. She sending you a message you don’t seem to comprehend.”

“That so? And what message would that be, mister know everything that’s worth knowing?”

“Clear as a bell to me, boss. She likes you. Probably even kinda smitten with you. Shows poor taste on her part, you ask me.”

“Well I don’t recall asking, Horatio.”

I was struggling to restrain my laughter when Horatio stopped short and pointed his finger at something directly in front of us. “That’s one right there or I’m a white man with blond hair.” Jared paced forward very slowly, his eyes fixed on the object in question. “You definitely still a colored boy ‘cause that is most definitely one. Just what the doctor ordered.”

As the three of us tightened our circle around the object, I could see Jared was right. Clearly an artillery round, more or less the size of a watermelon. It was half-way stuck in some dried up mud from a week old rain.

“Let’s yank her out,” Jared said.

“Don’t think we wanta be doing any yanking, Jared,” I said. “Slow and patient extraction is what’s called for here.”

“Fine, we’ll do that. Let’s just get the damnable thing outa that muck so we can get on with this.”

Extracting the round took some doing. It was firmly stuck in the mud, and it had no good points of purchase. Every time we thought we had a firm hold of it, our grasps would slip and we’d tumble back on our hind sides. Just as our frustration was about to boil, Jared roared, gave a mighty heave and the round popped out with a loud sucking sound.

“That’s good boss,” said Horatio. “That lil’ girlfriend of yours would be clapping, she see what you just done.”

“She ain’t my girlfriend and she would not like one bit what I done or what we ‘bout to do. She’d just heap more abuse on my bumpkin ass than she already has. So don’t go telling her nothing about this, either of you.”

I made a gesture as if I were locking my mouth with a key and then throwing it away.

“I ain’t partial to getting lynched so I don’t engage in idle chatter with white girls,” said Horatio.

“Since we got that settled, may we please get on with this ‘fore I get old and gray?”

The next step was to find a tall tree with thick but supple branches. There were many such in view. However, we were in the middle of a clearing some several hundred yards in diameter. That meant we had to lug the unwieldy round over to the tree.

Horatio said, “Looks like a job for one very strong individual. Jared, of the three of us, it would appear you the best candidate for such a task.”

“Well, it don’t appear that way to me. We’ll share the work. The first leg of the carrying goes to you.”

Seeing this disagreement could last a while, I bent over and, with great straining, hefted the round up to waist level and started half walking, half stumbling toward the edge of the clearing. After about seventy feet my strength was near expired. I yelled, “Give me some help here or I’m gonna drop it and get blown to the Promised Land!”

“No guarantees on any of us going to the Promised Land, Harry,” said Horatio. “Though, of the three of us, I suspect you the most likely to get there.”

Jared gave the giggling Horatio a hard shove and pulled the round away from me as if I were an infant holding a toy. With long and purposeful strides he hefted it over to a good looking tree and carefully laid it at the tree’s base.

The next step was preparing the round for detonation so the tree would be uprooted and none of us would be blown to bits in the process. To do this we had created a device that had two components – a strong rope about a hundred feet long and a straight crowbar weighing some eight pounds with a hook on one end.

Horatio tried to supervise Jared’s positioning of the round so its firing cap was pointed upward. I gave Horatio a withering look that said, “You are standing on thin ice and about to fall through into freezing water.”

He fell silent. But I had no expectation the silence would last for more than a minute or two.

Having positioned the round, Jared stood and said, “We need someone to climb up into the branches. Horatio …”

“Not me. I done it last time.”

“Well, guess what. You doing it this time, too. Now get your skinny ass up there ‘fore I kick it real hard so the climb will be easier on you.” Horatio grumbled a protest but scrambled up the tree with remarkable agility.

“Now just set still while me and Harry get this contraption rigged

up.”

Jared and I located a branch for suspending the crowbar with the rope so that it would drop ten feet or so straight onto the round with enough force to detonate it. Of course we needed to do this with great care ‘lest the crowbar fall too soon and abruptly end our lives. But the likelihood of our dying was minimal. Not because what we were doing wasn’t dangerous and foolhardy. It was most dangerous and foolhardy. The reason we were unlikely to be blown up was that our system rarely worked. Most of the rounds were duds. So for every ten rounds we found perhaps one or two that would explode. And that is an optimistic estimate.

Once Jared and I had satisfied ourselves that the crowbar was properly suspended over the round, we kept a tight hold on the rope and walked slowly to a large log where we could scrunch down and protect ourselves from flying shrapnel. Horatio, now far up into the branches of the tree, was growing impatient.

“You two got that bloody thing rigged up? I’m about to piss myself up here and at least one squirrel has shit on my head and several blue jays are swearing at me for trespassing on their territory.”

“We just about done, little man,” cried Jared. “Take a tight hold of a branch or two and brace yourself .”

The next step was for the falling crowbar to detonate the round. The explosion would uproot the tree, and the boy in the bushiest part of the tree (Horatio in this instance) would ride the tree to the ground. It was stupid but not quite as stupid as you might imagine. The thick and supple branches would provide a cushion for the falling tree, a sort of natural shock absorber if you will. The boy riding the tree down would experience a great thrill. He would usually shriek as if he were going to die. But his injuries would rarely be more than a few scrapes and bruises. At worst, a sprained wrist or ankle that would heal itself in several days’ time.

 Jared and I were now hunkered behind the log with Jared continuing to maintain a tight hold on the rope. He called out to Horatio, “I’m gonna count to three and let go of the rope. Probably won’t work, but if it does you’ll be in for a helluva ride.”

“I am aware of that, Jared. This ain’t my maiden voyage. Get on with the counting.”

At the count of three Jared released the rope and the crowbar fell hard on the round. We heard a loud clank but no explosion. After about thirty seconds Jared yelled out again, “Probably a dud. I’m gonna give her one more try. If that don’t work, we’ll pack it in and wait for another day.”

“Might as well,” Horatio yelled back, “all the shit I went through to get up here and hold my position.”

Jared pulled the crowbar back up and repeated his original steps. Again, no detonation. Jared wiped his brow and exhaled forcefully, “This here’s futility. Let’s get him down outa there ‘fore he soils hisself or gets attacked by them squirrels and nasty old jays.”

“Give it a bit more time just to be dead certain,” I said. “Then we’ll call him down.” A minute or two had passed when Horatio yelled out, “Gentleman, I’m coming down. This one wasn’t meant to be.”

“We agree. Bring your carcass down outa there. But do it slow and careful. These infernal things can be like girls – suddenly and violently changing their minds ‘bout what they gonna do.”

When Horatio had got half the way down, the round exploded. What happened is awful for me to describe. The tree jumped up, ripping itself away from its roots. Then it slowly toppled and hit the ground. Then it bounced up about three or four feet as all the trees we had blown up did. But Horatio did not shriek as the tree began to fall, nor did he stumble triumphantly from the branches on the ground, whooping and hollering with exhilaration. He made not a peep.

When Jared and I saw his body fly from the tree and land with a sickening thud some forty feet from the fallen oak, we knew he was unconscious or dead. As we raced to reach him, we prayed for the former but were near certain of the latter. When we got to him, his heaving chest and moans proved he was still alive, but the blood that covered most of him did not augur well for his survival.

Jared said nothing as he scooped up our friend and began running toward our farm. Horatio, like me, was not a strapping youth but he must have weighed a good 110 pounds, maybe more. But in Jared’s powerful arms he might as well have been a kitten or puppy. I scampered behind Jared trying to offer Horatio words of comfort. But all I heard was his moaning and labored breathing. As Jared chugged along his breathing was also labored, but he managed to shout back over his shoulder,

“Harry, save your words. We gonna need all the strength God give us and then some to save him.”

I do not know exactly how long it took us to reach the farm – perhaps 10 minutes, because that meadow was a mile or so from the house where I had been born and raised. Once the house was in sight, I began screaming, “Daddy! Daddy! We need your help! Horatio has been very badly hurt!” I had barely released the words when my mother and grandmother burst from the house with looks of horror.

“Jared, bring him in the kitchen. Mother, boil some water while I find some of Pearson’s medical supplies. Harry, take the sorrel and go find your father. He is out with Artemis, attending to patients.”

“Which patients, Mamma? Where will I find him?”

“I’m not sure. Figure that out by yourself. Just find him and get him back here before this poor child expires.”

I was about to say something else, but she stopped me with a stern face and a wave of a hand that dispatched me to the barn where our sorrel, Augustus, and a few other less healthy steeds were stabled. Since I was adept at bareback riding, I wasted no time with a saddle. I shoved a bit in the animal’s mouth and, holding the bridle, jumped aboard. Augustus was a remarkable beast who had an intelligence you may not understand if you do not like critters nor have you grown up around them. I leaned forward and whispered into his ear, “Augustus, we must find Daddy. Horatio’s life is hanging in the balance.”

The horse bolted from the barn out onto the road in front of the farm and headed west at a gallop. At this point I was more worried about staying astride him than I was over whether he had chosen the right direction to find my father. I pressed my knees as tightly as I could into his massive flanks and left plenty of slack in the reins. I suspect the concentration required to keep from falling off him smothered my worries over Horatio’s fate.

We seemed to be swallowing up the road as I scanned both sides of the route for my father’s buggy. Suddenly, there it was dead in front of us. Ginger was tethered to a split rail fence by the home of one of our neighbors whose last name now escapes me. Ginger looked up from her grazing as Augustus and I arrived. She sensed something was awry and began to whinny as I screamed for my father before as I dismounted. Several seconds later Artemis trotted out the front door and said, “What all has got you in such a dither, Master Harry? Your father is attending to a very sick woman and should not be disturbed.”

Now I was in a quandary. Should I tell Artemis that his youngest child had been gravely wounded and needed my father’s skilled attention immediately? Or should I simply insist that Daddy and he get back to the farm with great haste to deal with a problem more severe than the one they were attending to? Being a persuasive and persistent lad, I chose the latter. Not an honest choice, but I saw it as the kindest and most expedient.

When my father came out to see what the commotion was, I ran up to him and pulled his sleeve so I could whisper in his ear while Artemis was tending to Ginger. After I rapidly explained the situation, he nodded and said, “Yes, Harry. I agree with your decision not to tell Artemis. I will instruct him to stay here with our patient and do things he is more than skilled enough to do on his own. I want you to remain here and assist him. I will ride Augustus back to the farm.”

“But, Daddy, Augustus has no saddle.”

“And who taught you to ride bareback in the first place?”

“I apologize, sir. You are a more accomplished horseman than I.”

“Probably no longer true, Harry, but I shall manage. Now get inside with Artemis after I speak to him, and you do what needs doing in there.” After a few words to Artemis he was astride Augustus and off to the farm at great speed.

___

I am pleased to report that Horatio survived. (My father was a skilled physician who had received the most modern medical training of the time at Columbia University in the City of New York before the war.) With the exception of a left hand that the explosion had severed, Horatio was near good as new. After the stump had healed, my father fashioned a leather sleeve with a hook on it that Horatio could either wear or not, as pleasure and necessity dictated.

As far as the question of disciplinary measures is concerned, our parents were trapped between two poles. On the one hand, they were relieved and grateful that none of us had been killed and that Horatio, even without his left hand, would do just fine. On the other hand, they were most angry with what we had done and had been doing for so long without their knowledge. I know they wanted to mete out a harsh punishment. They did not do that. They certainly forbade us from any more such life-threatening activities. But, more importantly, what each of them did in their own way was tell us how much parents worry about the safety of their children and how devastated their lives would be if they were to lose us.