Crossing (9 page)

It was a fruitful year and a bountiful harvest. Even the winter seemed benevolent. They had picturesque snows for Thanksgiving and Christmas and bright, brisk days for the New Year.

Becky and Zemira had been right. Becky was expecting, and though it was an easy winter in the valley, it was hard for her and Daniel. She was due in April and it seemed as if the baby—and the spring—would never come.

But the times of the seasons always come, and the spring of 1858 was glorious. The long days were delightfully warm and the nights refreshingly cool. Rain came just as and when it should. Even

Yancy didn’t mind working the fields; the days were so pleasant and the planting was easy.

Early in the evening of April 16, the family was gathered in the parlor. A small, comfortable fire crackled, and the last sweet rays of the sun shone strong through the large windows. Daniel and Yancy were playing checkers while Zemira and Becky quilted.

Becky had never before been a very good seamstress, but Zemira was very skilled. Once Becky had applied herself to quilting under Zemira’s expert teaching, she had come to enjoy it.

Leaning back, she rubbed her eyes then sat motionless for a few moments, her eyes closed.

Zemira eyed her shrewdly. Once, when Zemira was young, she had been the best midwife in the community. But after her second stillborn daughter, she had refused to ever consider it again. Still, the founts of knowledge of men and women run deep and are hard to ignore.

Rebecca lifted her head with a small smile. “Daniel?”

“Yes, dearest?”

“I think it’s time for you to go fetch Esther Raber.”

Daniel jumped up, knocking the straight chair he was sitting in halfway across the room.

This made Yancy jump up in alarm, and his chair fell over.

“Stop!” Becky said, holding up one hand and laughing. “It’s no emergency, you know. This little one has taken a sweet time coming, and for all we know it may be tomorrow or the next day before he or she decides to put in an appearance. It’s fine, Daniel.”

Zemira pursed her lips. “It’s a girl, Daniel. And I do think you might step lively to get Mrs. Raber.”

Daniel turned and bolted from the room, followed by Yancy.

“Just—wait! Don’t kill your silly selves!” Becky called after them. “Grandmother, why did you scare them like that? How do you know?”

“Normally I don’t say much about what’s between a mother and her child and God. But you’re precious to me, daughter, and I have to say that I think this little girl is going to be born before midnight, even though I see you’re in real early light pains. Anyway, why don’t we go on upstairs and get you fixed up in bed? And I’ll have everything ready by the time Esther gets here. All I can say is”— she grunted a little, helping Becky rise from the straight-backed bench—”that I hope that silly, loud, little Leah Raber doesn’t insist on following Yancy over here. I declare right here and now, I think she’d kidnap him and hold him prisoner if she thought it would make him marry her.”

“Can’t blame her,” Becky said, smiling. “He is a handsome young man.”

“Doesn’t excuse her. She’s like a little gnat, always buzzing around him. So, daughter, what are you going to name her?”

“I’m going to be cautious and wait until we see what it is, Grandmother, even though I have faith in you. And anyway, I think I will let Daniel make the final decision when he sees her.”

“Her?” Zemira repeated mischievously as they struggled up the stairs.

“Or him,” Becky added quickly then bent over with a sudden sharp pain. “All right, all right, her,” she whispered. Looking up at Zemira, she grinned. “Guess she’s going to take after me.”

It took about an hour for Daniel and Yancy to bring Esther back to the farm, and by that time Rebecca was already in hard labor, though it was perfectly natural and normal. After an examination, Esther, a kind, gentle woman with warm, dark eyes, came out into the hallway and said, “It looks like we’re going to have a baby soon, Daniel. Please go downstairs … and don’t worry. Both Becky and the baby look very, very good.”

“But how do you know? What do you mean? What—?”

Esther was kind, but she could be firm when she had to be, particularly with wayward daughters like Leah and distraught fathers-to-be like Daniel. “You must trust me,” she said firmly. “I know, and certainly Zemira knows. She was the best midwife in the community.”

“Huh?” Daniel said, bewildered.

“Never mind. Just go downstairs, stay calm, and wait.”

Yancy and his father went downstairs and waited, but they certainly were not calm. They paced in the parlor, they paced in the dining room, and finally they went out and paced on the veranda. The night was beautiful, with a full silver moon and a spangling of stars spanning the sky. They didn’t notice. The only thing they noticed was when they accidentally ran into each other, and then they muttered distractedly, “Uh, sorry.” They even ran into poor Hank a couple of times, who was sitting at the top of the steps, watching them blundering around with worried eyes.

In the still night, they heard a baby’s cry. It was eleven minutes to eleven.

Esther’s step sounded on the stairs, and they rushed into the house like mad bulls.

“Come on up,” she said, smiling widely. “They’re fine.”

They ran up the stairs and then, slowing down and almost tiptoeing, they went into the bedroom.

Rebecca sat up in bed. She looked tired, and her hair was dripping with sweat, but she smiled. “Look, Daniel! Just look! Isn’t she beautiful?”

“She … she? It’s a girl?” Daniel murmured, standing by the bed. “Thank the Lord! She’s—all right?” he asked Esther anxiously.

Zemira soundlessly came up to stand beside him. She beamed down at the baby. “She’s perfect, just perfect. She reminds me of—of—” She choked slightly, then finished in a low voice, “Of you, of course, Daniel. Of you.”

The baby was awake and seemed to stare right up at her father. She had reddish blond hair and light blue eyes, just like Daniel. Most babies just look like babies, but Yancy thought that she did indeed resemble Father.

Becky held her up for Daniel to hold. He took her as if she were the most precious thing in the world. “A little girl … a girl … Oh, thank you, wife.”

“Thank you, husband. So what shall we call her?”

“Well, we did talk about that. I know it’s kind of a mouthful, but I still like it. Callie Josephine? Callie after my grandmother and Josephine after your grandfather Joseph?”

“Callie Josephine it is,” Becky said, settling wearily back into her pillows. “What do you think about your new sister, Yancy?”

It gave Yancy a warm feeling for Becky to call the baby his sister instead of his half sister. Over the last two years he had come to love Becky, though he could never call her Mother. But this did give him a tie to the baby, for them to name her after his great-grandmother Callie. Grandmother had told him a lot about her mother. She had been a strong, loving woman.

Yancy answered, “Well, she’s—uh, little. And she’s all red. But she’s got pretty-colored hair, like Father’s.”

Becky laughed. “The red will go away, and she’ll have a beautiful complexion, just like her grandmother Zemira. And yes … “ she finished softly, “she is very much like her father.”

T
hree cadets scurried across the compound, headed for the classroom building. They were fifteen minutes late. They were students of Virginia Military Academy, better known as VMI. This institution was joined to Washington College in the small Virginia town of Lexington.

Sandy Owens, a tall, lanky boy of fifteen with hazel eyes and the sandy reddish hair that his nickname would indicate, led the three. Behind him was Charles Satterfield, a short, stocky fifteenyear-old with jet black hair and warm, brown eyes. Peyton Stevens, the third member of the group, was a handsome blond boy with china blue eyes and the look of aristocracy about him. He was sixteen but could have passed for eighteen. He wasn’t as flustered as the other two boys, knowing he wouldn’t be in a great deal of trouble since his father was a senator and had gotten him out of every trouble he had managed to get into.

Their awkward hurry was jarring with their splendid appearance. They wore the distinguished uniforms of the Virginia Military Institute, and with that uniform went the unbreakable rule that they be spotless and without fault. The cadets wore the gray tunic with tails. Finely embroidered “frogs”—so named for the three-lobed fleurs-de-lis—adorned the collar and the face of the tunics. At each frog was a button, a silver image of the seal of the state of Virginia. Their breeches were spotless white, and if they were not spotless, the cadet was immediately sent to the barracks to don acceptable pants. In formal dress, they wore snowy white crossbelts with a silver buckle. They proudly wore forage caps with thick silver cords around the brim.

The cadets’ finery particularly troubled Sandy Owens; he was something of a ladies’ man, and he despised his uniform getting spoiled. It was all too easy for the spotless white breeches to get soiled when riding, or in musket drill, or particularly in cannon drill. He avoided all contact with dirt and grime with great perseverance.

Charles, whom everyone affectionately called Chuckins, had a worried look on his face. He was a good-natured boy who took teasing very well, which was surprising considering he came from an extremely wealthy family. He showed no signs of the usually spoiled scion, however. Now he muttered nervously, “We’re going to catch it, Sandy! You know what old Tom Fool will do to us for being so late!”

Sandy grunted. “Whatever happens, you better not let Major Jackson hear you call him Tom Fool. He knows more than we think he knows. I don’t know who started calling him Tom Fool, but they’re crazy, ‘cause he ain’t no fool.”

“You’re right about that,” Peyton languidly agreed. He was breathing easily, and he kept his eye fixed on the great Gothic institute that rose before them. “They say that he ate those Mexicans alive during the war, with the artillery. He sure does know what he’s doing with artillery pieces.” In spite of his apparently languid and lazy appearance, Peyton Stevens dearly loved musket practice and artillery practice. He was very good with both rifles and cannons.

“We know, we know, his artillery class is the best,” Chuckins agreed, breathing hard because he had been trotting to keep up with Sandy and Peyton. “It’s just this natural and experimental philosophy class. He just recites it from memorization. Puts me to sleep every time, no matter how hard I pinch myself!”

“We have to stay awake, and we have to figure out a way to get into that classroom with a good excuse,” Peyton said. “Otherwise we’ll all get demerits.” Suddenly he stopped walking.

Then Sandy stopped and Chuckins ran into him.

“What we need is a good, sound alibi,” Peyton said thoughtfully. “What’s the biggest lie you can think of, Sandy?”

“Uh—my grandmother died?”

“Your grandmothers have died four or five times,” Peyton scoffed. “How about this? Chuckins, you ate too much dinner and it made you sick. Sandy and I had to take you to the infirmary.”

Perplexed, Chuckins asked, “But what would I be doing coming to class if I was sick?”

“You weren’t as sick as you thought,” Peyton answered smoothly. “And you’re so loyal to VMI that you insisted on coming to class, sick or not.”

“Hey, that might work!” Chuckins exclaimed, his hazel eyes fixed on the forbidding gray sandstone building looming up before them. “I think I feel my sickness coming back on. Maybe you better help me in.”

“That’s it, Chuckins,” Sandy said. “Here, Peyton, grab his arm. Poor boy is sicker than anybody knows.”

Slowing their pace, the three cadets moved toward the classroom building. As they did, Sandy Owens said, “You know, I feel sorry for Major Jackson.”

“Why would you feel sorry for him?” Peyton asked.

“You know he got married. Well, his first wife died along with his baby.”

“Yeah, but he got married again right away,” Peyton said. “He didn’t let any grass grow under his feet. That woman he married, Elinor Junkin, she’s the daughter of Dr. Junkin that was the president of Washington College. For sure she has money. I imagine she set up the Major pretty well.”

Sandy looked at him with surprise. “But Peyton, didn’t you hear? Last month Major and Mrs. Anna Jackson lost their baby. A little girl that they had named Mary Graham. She lived almost a month then died. I think maybe that’s why he’s been so much more stern this last month.”

Peyton looked repentant. “No, I hadn’t heard. That’s—hard. That’s hard for a man.”

They marched on silently, but they were young, and the tragedies of life had not yet become real for them.

As they neared the classroom building, Chuckins said weakly, “I’m feeling sicker, boys. Let’s go in.”

The three, moving more slowly, entered the building and trudged down the hall until they came to a door that led into the classroom. They tried the door—but it was sturdily locked. They weren’t too surprised, because Major Jackson often did this when he wasn’t in a very good mood.

Soon the man himself opened the door and stepped out into the hallway. “Yes, gentlemen? I believe you are—” He ostentatiously pulled a watch from his pocket and stared at it, then looked up. “You are eighteen minutes late.” He still wore his dusty major’s uniform from the Mexican War. He had grown a fine mustache and beard, and right now they bristled. His eyes were as cold and icy blue as the darkest winter midnight.