Here and Again (19 page)

“Thank you, Henry.”

“I’m fine,” Jacob said.

She opened the door and repeated, “Thank you, Henry.”

Joshua Wheldon maneuvered the trailer around and backed it up the hill. After parking some twenty yards down the road, Ginger walked back home and climbed her drive, and when she reached the top of the hill, Mr. Wheldon opened the door of the trailer.

“Mornin’, ma’am,” he said.

“Good morning, Mr. Wheldon. I very much appreciate you bringing the cow.”

“That fence sure needs mending. Almost run over it.” He pulled the ramp down from the trailer.

She nodded, saying, “It’s never been built.”

“Posts are up.” He walked up the ramp. “Come ’ere, Ginger, my beauty.”

As the cow cleared the trailer door, a great rush of joy caught hold of Ginger. The cow was truly ginger-colored with soft, sensitive brown eyes that gazed around as she walked gently down the ramp.

“Ah, she’s beautiful,” Ginger said, a lump growing in her throat.

“She’s one in a million.”

Osbee, Jacob, and the children came out of the summer kitchen, smiling, mesmerized, as the cow sauntered toward them.

Bea put her left hand over her mouth and stepped forward, petting the cow’s nose with her right. “What’s her name?” she asked.

“Ginger,” Mr. Wheldon said.

Bea’s eyes popped wide and she flicked them over to her mother. There was a split second of silence and then Osbee and Oliver and Henry and Bea burst out laughing. Joshua Wheldon looked over to Jacob, who shrugged.

“My name is Ginger,” she said sullenly.

Then they laughed, too. Still snickering, all followed Mr. Wheldon with Ginger-cow toward the barn, every hand in the yard touching the soft, warm sides of her as if carrying a magical beast to its sacred home.

Suddenly, there was a sound. “
Neaaaaaaaaah
.”

Everyone turned around, and as Ginger’s eyes fell upon the open end of the trailer, the magic moment screeched to a sudden halt. Her smile disappeared. So did everyone else’s.

There, at the top of the ramp, was a three-and-a-half-foot dark gray billy goat with a little black beard and two nine-inch pointy horns. One eye had lashes of white, making it appear like it wore a monocle. It gazed slowly at the group with its copper caprine eyes as if devising some horrible end for each and every one of them.

Joshua Wheldon handed Oliver the cow’s tether and stepped forward. “Ya gotta take the good with the bad,” he said. “Unfortunately, ya got really bad here.” He untied the goat’s lead from the side of the trailer. “Ginger Martin, may I introduce you to Beelzebub the goat.”

It looked at her sideways with those copper caprine eyes, raising its lip in what appeared to be a wicked, wicked grin.

“Bubba for short,” he added.

July 2, 1862

Malvern Hill

Juliette, my love,

It is raining. The water stings my wounds. My body aches and my stomach hurts. Do not worry. I am but scraped—a tattering of flesh and fabric by ball and bayonet. I am hungry and tired. No deep wounds here and many of them on the mend.

I have been in the fight. As we made our way moving the length of the Shenandoah Valley in May, we marched in the shape of the letter “H”—two parallel lines with a transverse of the third, which is the road between Luray and New Market. Is it not true that opposite angles are equal? We marched and marched through mud and mountain, hill and haven. The more I marched, the more I fought and the more I fought, the more I could see as Jackson sees—precise, methodical, mathematical, cold. The arc of an angle, the ticking of time, and the opportune moment to move—victory assured.

We are not a cat. We are merely its paw, moving silently from one place to another and from nowhere, the claw unsheathes and we flail any before us. Then we recede and move again. Four hundred miles in a month we have marched and fought in this manner and for what? Always our paw is held hidden in the Shenandoah. The arm of the cat if but outstretched a little farther can scratch at Washington. In May, we were the cat to the Union’s mouse.

As I fought, all the while, I heard the bird and instead of the yell, I whistled
back. I am the butt of many a joke, but then so is our commander. So I whistle and in that Valley of Death, I have come to know this bird. It is the Child’s Eye. Remember your child’s eye? There was a time when every day was new—the first time the scent of honeysuckle hung upon a heavy summer mist. The wonder of a chicken squawking as it fled your child’s hand. The caprine gaze of a goaty eye as it chased you to the kitchen door. A great black sky sounding a thunderous clap as it tossed giant balls of water onto far fields of wheat and then broke open like darkened glass, shedding golden light across the horizon. The drops of water shone like millions of tiny diamonds in that light upon the golden sheaths. The Child’s Eye wakes up in this world that God made, knows as a child knows that we are part of God, explores and learns and helps and then falls soundly to sleep within the love of God.

So when walking the Valley of Death, I hear this bird and hear life exquisitely. I can see as Jackson sees, with a man’s eye. The precise movements of the muskets, the feinting of bayonets are but gears in the machine of war. But all the while I whistle and see so clearly with my Child’s Eye the sky as blue and the tiny grass under my feet. I see a man at the end of my bayonet, but cannot meet him Child Eye to Child Eye. His eyes are on mine and as I take his life from the beautiful world that God created in love, I know I have closed forever the possibility of seeing through his eyes. And as I battle, I pray those eyes open to a honeysuckle summer day with a black sky shuddering as it opens and sends a single finger of light dancing over great golden fields of wheat that shine like a million tiny diamonds. I pray he settles peacefully in the love of Elysium.

So I sit here in the rain, scratching this letter, aching from the battle and the day of digging graves upon Malvern Hill. I love my aches because I can see with my Child’s Eye. I am yet walking within the love of God even as I hunger. And just moments ago, someone said they heard Jackson, as he sat his horse above Port Republic, watching two lines converge to an acute angle, the arc of which exploded in war, saying, “He who cannot see the hand of God in this is blind, sir, blind.” It caused me to burst out laughing, the howl of which echoed across the fresh graves of the dead. The others looked at me with a sideways glance and so I have settled into this letter.
My love, I see with Jackson’s eyes the cold, mathematical precision of war. But this is the Eye of Man and it is the Hand of Man. It is what I hear that gives me pause. The bird sings, bringing me back to the joy of my Child’s Eye and I know, as this Hand of Man falls where it will, God sorrows. Utterly.

Your devoted,

Captain Samuel E. Annanais

Homeschooling

J
oshua Wheldon brought the goat off the trailer. Everyone backed away except Beau. He stood about as tall as Bubba and they eyed each other, taking full measure of size and strength. It was the goat that looked away first, at which point Beau’s tail, having frozen in place at the sight of Bubba, wagged slowly. Ginger wasn’t sure if they were friends, but she was quite sure Beau had made more peace with the goat than anyone else in the yard.

As Bubba and the cow were taken into the barn, Ginger did not follow. She stood separate and alone, watching the procession. Jacob Esch, who yet leaned upon Henry’s shoulder, began to speak to Bea and Oliver regarding the care and keeping of a cow. His voice was soft and sure, with a slight accent that betrayed his upbringing. He was not English. He was not a Yankee. He was Amish, no matter how lost Ginger knew him to be, and in that moment she realized that he would be staying. She gazed over as if waking from a warm dream and met Osbee’s eyes.

“Bea and I have cleared the room on top of the summer kitchen. Mostly it was the old lamps from the house. Their glass chimneys are now in the kitchen sink, soaking.”

“Probably need to go get fuel for them.”

“I think so. New wicks, also.”

“Osbee?”

“Yes, daughter?”

“Osbee, isn’t this . . . weird? People just showing up with what we need?”

The old woman chuckled. “No. It’s unbelievable.”

Ginger nodded, looking around in search of Samuel. He wasn’t there.

“I’ve got to clean the room over the summer kitchen. It’s dusty and the mattress up there needs to be unwrapped. Hasn’t been slept in since Jesse was a teenager.” Osbee grinned as she pulled her braid forward. There was no red ribbon any longer. “Should have sheets for it somewhere,” she continued as she walked to the sunroom stairs.

“We need anything else from the store?” Ginger inquired, following the old woman to the house.

“Not that I can think of,” Osbee replied, holding the door.

Ginger leaned into the sunroom, picked up her purse, and headed down the gravel drive toward her truck. As she walked, she took out her phone. Regard, who was lying on the fence rail at the end of the drive, yeowed as she passed. “Be right back,” she replied absently as she dialed her parents.

The line picked up. “The Ginger Moon,” her mother said in greeting.

“Yes, it is,” Ginger answered.

“Tim! It’s our daughter,” she yelled.

Another line clicked. “Ginny Moon! What’s up? The ghost settled now?”

Ginger opened her truck door. “Yes, I believe he is.” She smiled up at herself in the rearview mirror. Her eyes smiled back.

“Excellent!” her father replied brightly. “Any other spiritual matters we can help with?”

Ginger laughed a little, which was instantly returned with a louder laugh from both her parents on the other end of the line. It continued for a while and then faded softly into silence. Waiting.

“No, no. I just called to say—” She broke off unexpectedly. Why had she called? Her chest seized, tightening with longing and sadness. She let out a small cry as she comprehended her own purpose.

“To say you are staying there,” her mother finished.

Ginger didn’t answer. She closed her eyes in the rushing realization that she was not going home.

“You don’t have to come back here, Ginny, if your life is there,” her father said.

“I miss you,” Ginger whispered. “I miss your world.”

“Our world is everywhere. It’s your world. It’s right there to find. You just need to open your eyes and reach out your hand and invite it in.”

Her father was speaking again in his spiritual way but today his words made perfect sense. “I don’t know how.”

“Oh, I suspect you’ve already done it, Ginger. It’s why you are staying.”

“I’m staying for Osbee.”

“And Henry and Bea and Oliver. Yes?”

Ginger opened her eyes and looked down the road to its end.

“Sometimes, Ginger,” her mother said, “we look at the horizon and see the end. But you have to remember that’s only the end as far as we can see. If you move a little farther, closer to the horizon, it moves and there is more to see between you and the end.
Good and bad things between you and the end. But you gotta keep moving.”

“Gotta take the good with the bad,” Ginger said quietly.

“Yes, Ginger,” her mother replied.

“Why?”

“See, Monica, this call is spiritual.”

They all laughed. Ginger started the truck and put it in gear as she wiped her eyes.

“Remember, Ginger, bad happens. It’s the way of things. But always something good is made from the bad. It’s hard to see in the bad. But good will be made of all things. And you only know it’s good because there was bad.”

“Yin and yang, man,” her dad said. “That’s the whole point of that spiraling circle of black and white.”

Ginger drove slowly, watching Mr. Schaaf circle his field of winter wheat. He was not cutting it. He was not weeding it. What was he doing? Looking forward, she saw the road’s end. It did not back up. It ended.

“The road ends,” Ginger said.

“The road is made by humans, Ginny, my dear,” her dad replied. “The horizon is not.”

She sighed and came to a stop at the crossroad. Gazing up in the mirror, Ginger half expected to see Samuel there. He was notably missing. What was there was the thin line of asphalt she had come down with the Smoots’ farm at its terminus. Moments before, it had been where she began. Now it was at the end.

“I suppose,” she said, “it’s all about perspective.”

“Whose daughter is this?” her father exclaimed. “Monica? This strange young woman talking about perspective is calling us, imitating our sensible, practical daughter.”

Ginger didn’t need to see. She could hear her mother roll her
eyes. In the stillness on the line, Ginger thought that the phone was like the road. It began where she was and ended with her parents. To them, the phone line began where they were and ended with her.

“It’s me, Dad. I’m just starting to think about what you have been thinking about for a long while.”

“We ponder,” her dad said. “We don’t think.”

She rolled her eyes just like her mother.

“I wish I could see you guys,” Ginger whispered.

“Well, we could come out. You want us to come out?” her mother asked.

It was a lot of money to cross the country. Money they really didn’t have.

“She’s not answering,” her father said. “Does that mean no, Monica?”

“No, Tim. She’s thinking about money.”

She was about to ask how her mother knew such a thing, but felt as though she was floating on the line with her parents, on the road with the farm. She was a feather drifting and the wind that held her aloft enveloped her. It was a moment to do nothing. She held silent and still.

“She didn’t say no,” Tim said.

“No, she didn’t,” her mother affirmed.

“That must mean yes!”

“Sounds good to me,” her mother agreed. “We’ll call you with our flight info.”

“And remember, Ginny,” her father began.

“Hang up, Tim, before she says no.”

“Oh, good-bye, Ginny Moon.” There was a click.

“You’ll always be our Ginger Moon,” added her mother and without another word the line went dead.

The feather she was hit the ground as the line died and, startled, Ginger gazed at the phone. As she flicked on her blinker, there was a loud honk. She jumped in her seat and looked up. To her right, old Mr. Schaaf sat upon his tractor just opposite her. His face was still, frozen in a small frown of concern. She smiled and rolled down the window.

“You all right there, Ginger?” he asked, yelling over his engine.

“I’m fine. What are you doing?” she inquired, circling with her finger, motioning to his field.

“Planting alfalfa over the winter wheat. Time to plant.”

Ginger nodded. She thought a moment and added, “Do I have winter wheat?”

“Yes, we planted it. We’ll get to your fields—”

Ginger shook her head. “We’ll take care of it this year, Mr. Schaaf. Thanks!”

His face darkened again.

“We’ve fixed Henry’s Child and have a new plan,” she said, smiling as brightly as possible to allay Mr. Schaaf’s look of deep concern.

He nodded, his face barely shifting from his frown.

“Gotta get to the store,” she added and waved as she turned the corner.

She drove out of the fields and farms, beyond the hairpin curve of the Shenandoah. Pulling up to the hardware store, she parked and walked in. The benefit of not working on a weekday is that there are very few people out and about and help is readily at hand. She realized she had no idea what fuel to get and so she called Osbee and handed the phone to Dave, the hardware guy. She was then directed to purchase several bottles of Coleman lamp fuel and the new wicks, with which she left the store and headed back to the truck.

She approached her car door and as she was about to open it she peered at her ethereal reflection floating in the window. Her hair had grown out about an inch and a half since she’d last colored it, and the ginger color at the roots looked confused and a little frightened by the brassy, washed-out, dark brown tint of her curled ends. The longer she stared at herself, the clearer a view she had of how she had been walking around the world. She looked overworked. She looked overwhelmed. She looked tired. She looked as if she didn’t care how she looked. Inasmuch as Mr. Schaaf’s horn had caused her to jump, so did her next thought: her parents were coming.

“Mood hair?” she said to her curls. “Time for a cut.”

Quickly, she hopped in the truck and drove into downtown Woodstock. The main street in town was small, with period buildings from the 1910s through the 1950s lining the sidewalks. Woodstock had a long history, like many small Virginia towns, part of which was the sprawling growth of suburbs and houses covering farm fields and flowing streams on its outskirts. That sprawl was imposing its shoulder on the loop of the Shenandoah wherein Smoot’s farm still stood and threatened to push the five farmers there into the river with its weight. But they were stubborn people, the Smoots and their neighbors, and no one had sold. Not yet anyway.

After pulling into the back parking lot of the beauty salon, Ginger made her way through the cold, shady alley back onto Main Street. As expected, there was no one in the waiting area, so Ginger was immediately asked to sit in a chair and was thus forced to look at herself in the floor-to-ceiling mirror in front of her.

“So, what do we want?” the young woman with a beautiful blond French bun asked as she touched Ginger’s brown curls, pulling them this way and that.

Ginger wondered if the girl was as confused and frightened of what she was touching as her roots seemed to be. “Cut it off, please.”

“Beg pardon?” The girl held two handfuls of Ginger’s dark brown curls and stared at her in the reflection.

“I think I’d like to start fresh. So please just cut it all off.”

“You mean, cut off all the brown? Uh . . . it will be short.”

“That’s okay,” Ginger replied. Her eyes widened at her reflection. There she saw herself with a smile upon her face that she had not seen in so long. She took in a deep breath, the upturn of her lips retreating just a little. Smiling at Jesse had always been returned with such brightness. She had loved his face but truly had been enamored of it when she watched him look at her smiling. “Starting fresh, but keeping the root,” she said, winking at her own reflection as if it were Jesse who had done so.

A small crease between the young woman’s immaculately trimmed eyebrows belied a small concern with her customer’s decision. But the customer was always right, so shortly thereafter Ginger watched the brown curls fall to the floor and drift across the white tile on the gentle breeze that blew in under the beauty shop’s door. Slowly, methodically, the strawberry blond curls of Ginger’s birth sprung to life, relieved as they were from their dark burden. The hairstylist’s face brightened as she came to realize the nature of Ginger’s hair, and when she had finished, the young woman smiled greatly at her own masterpiece.

“Would you mind?” the stylist asked, holding out a thin red cloth headband.

Ginger laughed a little and nodded. Carefully, the headband was wrapped around Ginger’s short curls, pulling them gently back from her face.

Together, customer and stylist grinned at who they found in
the mirror. Ginger saw her natural self, her pale skin and soft freckles. Her long neck held her heart-shaped face. There was one longer curl remaining on the left side in the back, which the stylist wrapped around her finger and pulled forward.

“I love that curl,” the young woman said. “I think you luckily missed it in your last hair color.”

“You are leaving it?” Ginger asked.

“Yes! You look like a painting on the front of a Jane Austen book.”

They laughed.

The hairstylist pulled off the smock with a soft shake and took Ginger’s offered credit card.

“Maybe next time you feel like coloring your hair,” the young woman said, “you can come in.”

“So you can talk me out of it?”

The hairstylist blinked innocently, saying, “Not at all. Customer’s always right. Maybe we can just talk it over.”

Ginger signed the receipt, leaving more of a tip than she knew she could really afford.

“Will do,” Ginger said. “Thank you.”

The young woman opened the door. “You’re welcome.”

As Ginger stepped back into the world, it seemed to have become a warm spring day. She twirled her long curl as she turned left and then left again into the shadowed alley. She thought about Jesse’s eyes as they looked at her, wishing she could feel his gaze upon her again. Walking from the alley, she stopped. Behind her truck, across the parking lot and on the other side of the street, was a small field of grass that had obviously been some building at some time. Off center in the field, she saw a man in a butternut uniform seated on a chair. Leaning forward and squinting, she began to walk toward him.

“Samuel?” she whispered.

The closer she came, the more she could see. He was seated with his right shoulder toward her. He was smiling and laughed a little as he stared ahead. In his profile, she could see a knick on his right ear.