#extreme length

[redken-blog1]

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[cavalrylad]

Ben, I know you've got no memory.... but I will help. ~ Samuel Tallmadge

Samuel had an expression of alarm written upon his face. He swallowed a thick lump rising to clog the back of his throat. His tired azure eyes swelled with tears. How couldn’t Ben remember after all they had been together. As children they had been practically been joined at the hip. Where Ben went, his shadow, Samuel followed. 

He peered into the pools of aquamarine, his gentle fingers coil around Ben’s arm. “Ben…. listen, I know you be really confused right now. But I’m Sammy. Your little brother… your shadow. Where you went I usually followed… and even know I still be following your footsteps.  I’m the better looking Tallmadge and you’re the smart one. We figured that out between us…” he softly offered. (mildly teasing about them having decided)

“Our dad, he is a Reverend. You know the scriptures and several languages thanks to him. Well,  I mean, you knew several languages. And you went to Yale with a man named Nathan Hale and I kept all of your letters. I’ve read them and re-read them daily…..time and time again until the next one would come. I know they be almost faded in some parts but  some of them I can nearly recite from heart if you’d like me to…one of these days.” He gently released his brother’s arm and reached over to his own saddle pack and pulled out a thick bundle of bound parchment. He slipped them into Ben’s hands. “If….if I can’t describe who you are….. to you, perhaps these will help…”

He then sat down before a rather clueless looking Ben and continued. “We hail from Setauket, Long Island, New York. We be friends with Abraham Woodhull, Selah Strong, Annie Smith-Strong, and Caleb Brewster. But Caleb, he be like our elder brother. He be just as worried about you as I be……” Samuel expressed.

“When we were kids, you let me sleep with you. We protected each other from the Monsters of the Sound and the night. You always knew just what to say in order to ease my nerves as well. When you got sick, I got sick. When you and Caleb got into trouble, I did too. We used to climb fences at Caleb’s uncle’s orchard, play apple-ball….. I always seemed to get the better of you two in that game because I was a much smaller and faster. But it never much matter who won so long as it ended in laughter rather than tears.” He cracked a smug smirk at the remark. 

Samuel also commented, “you saved me from the sick animal that I was almost bitten by. I thought it was a friendly doggie…. but it was a wild animal. You kept me from being trampled by the spooked horses that time we thought it be a good idea to play hide in seek in the middle of a thunderstorm. We once put a mouse in Beekman’s boot just to watch his reaction… and told him raisins were little mice droppings because he tried to feed us all horse-dung pies. And when Beekman pushed me and took my school books, you were right there to defend me. He might have been the terror of Setauket but you, me, and Caleb be his worthy opponents. You also broke up a fight between me and Beekman and because he gave me a bloodied nose, you gave him a black eye. Father was sooooo sore at us but you tried to argue Beekman, if he be as good a Christian as he claimed, ought to have turned the other cheek. That be one lecture I distinctly remember. I don’t think I had ever seen father get so red in the face and it must have taken him close to a whole hour to explain the truth behind the passage to the both of us. I don’t think it caught on much because the three of us continued to get into our fair share of scuffles,” Samuel chuckled. Boy, at those times things didn’t seem as nearly impressive or as humorous as they did now that he and Ben were nearly grown.  

“We used to play in the Sound. You saved me once when I followed you two in the water and I didn’t know how to swim too well at that point. You and Caleb took most of the summer to teach me how to properly swim….. so it would never happen again,” he fondly recalled. “You also made sure to keep your eye on me ever since then……. but now it be my turn to look after you, elder brother and I won’t take no for an answer.”

Samuel felt like he was rambling and ran a shaky hand through his own hair. “You be a Major in Washington’s camp, head of intelligence. You be working on a project with Caleb and given light of the circumstances Mrs Strong and Caleb have filled me in. So until you get your memory back, I be “temporary acting head of intel”. But between you and me I think Caleb likes working with you better…. than he likes working with me. Which makes your recovery all the more imperative” he adds with a smile. 

“I’ve probably bored you half to tears with my ramblings so I’ll let you have some quiet,” Samuel politely offered. 

“And…if….if y…you have any questions…. I be more than happy to try and answer them…. for you,” he adds. His brows knit slightly as he peered up at Benjamin. Samuel had hoped he hadn’t overwhelmed his elder brother.

It was a lot of information to try to absorb and sort through all at once, and every time the boy stopped he thought he had a moment only for the stream to pick right up again at a more furious pace. Certainly it sounded possible, and he wanted to interject, to ask for things to be repeated or clarified but the boy kept on going.When a bundle was deposited in his hands after his arm was released he picked it up. “These are all mine?” His own voice, and the similarity it had to...Samuel, surprised him. Benjamin turned the packet over in his hands, a little afraid to undo the ribbon to explore it, so he just tucked it against his side to look at later.

Major Benjamin Tallmadge he smiled a little. Except that currently he wasn’t because you can’t be the head of intelligence when you can’t even remember that’s your job. The smile faded, a bit put-out that he was useless now. Perhaps not entirely, or not for long....he hoped not for long. If this Samuel was his brother he sounded like a good one, someone that he liked. Well, did like automatically here and perhaps that was because they did know each other. The adventures sounded too specific and too wild to be made up on the spot. Benjamin smiled again, “I think I’ll have a lot of questions.”

When left to himself he stared at the bundle of letters until it was almost too dark to read them, and then waited longer. There was a desk with paper and so he sat and wrote his name, then supposed title, and repeated different variations of it all down the paper. Then opened the letters to read them. Each one set out carefully across the desk then the cot. He lit a lamp and kept reading, re-reading them and sometimes looking at the paper, at the way he’d signed his name. Despite the shakiness of his new handwriting it looked a match and that made him read the things even closer, wanting to understand every little nuance of what he’d said, what he’d thought. Who Samuel is and who Benjamin really is.

Camp was strange to say the least. Most of the soldiers didn’t seem quite certain how to treat him and that was fine as he didn’t know what to do with them either. Largely the first week was spent watching the boy and the bearded man with the loud voice who was introduced as Caleb one who’d adopted them both as part of his family. He observed, and every time something seemed even the tiniest bit familiar his mind snapped down on it and held on so it couldn’t slip away again. Every movement that Samuel made he compared to his own, every facial expression, rebuilding an image. And if he stared at the little mirror he found in his tent, searching for the similarities in their faces, trying out different expressions....some of them felt natural and others forced and that told him more.

Samuel didn’t say anything about the observation, but every day told him something more. The boy’s face looked like a lamp any time that he confirmed even the slightest thing. Commenting once that he thought the matching dapple horses looked rather smart, and Sam nearly jumping with excitement to say that “You picked them.” Or taking an interest in assisting with sorting through the piles of dispatches to be compiled and stopping on one signed as being Culper S-r, then handing to to Sam “I named him for you, didn’t I?”

That one had resulted in him being tackled nearly to the floor in a hug.

[bakuganboss]

My tape measure is clearly not amused.