Here and Again (9 page)

“It seems important to y’all.” She snickered.

“It is,” he replied.

“You know, I once stood beside a door in Alexandria for five minutes straight, waiting for Jesse to go in before me.”

“We know,” Lorena said, chuckling.

“Then I gave up and went in. It was so uncomfortable.”

“But he never held it for you in Seattle,” Ed said.

“Almost never,” Ginger corrected. “He just couldn’t get past it.”

“If a man does not hold a door for a woman down here, it reflects on his mother,” Ed explained. “Or grandmother.”

“Yeah. Mrs. Schaaf, the farmer’s wife who lives just up the road from Smoot’s? She said the same after I waited for two men to come out of a coffee shop. They were on the inside and when we came to the door, the first one opened it. It felt so weird ’cause I would have to walk by his outstretched arm to go in, so I waited for him to come out. Mrs. Schaaf whispered in my ear, ‘Go in. The other one is watching.’”

Lorena laughed. “The one holding the door for you couldn’t do anything else but wait for you to enter or the man he was with would think poorly of him.”

“And poorly of his grandmother,” Ginger added.

“And his grandmother,” Ed agreed.

“Thank you,” she said. That was the proper thing to do and only then did Ed shut the door. She rolled down her window as
she engaged her engine. “Please come down Sunday. Osbee would like to meet you, I’m sure.”

“We’ll be there,” Lorena said.

Ginger shifted into reverse, backed up, and headed down the drive, the branches making now what seemed a bivouac upon the road.

She hummed the tune to
Mr. Rogers’ Neighborhood
and the lightness she had felt since leaving the hospital lifted slightly more. Henry’s Child would be running again and would have a proper home when she left.

“One down,” Ginger whispered. “Beau, Regard, Penny, and Christian to go.”

She flipped on her blinker and climbed back onto the asphalt.

“And Osbee,” she added to herself in the mirror.

As she said it, the weight that had been sitting in the passenger seat crawled back upon her lap as if for comfort. She rolled down her window further to smell Virginia’s winter night. It was heavy and dry and cold comfort.

July 22, 1861

Manassas

Dear Juliette,

The ringing of cannon is yet in my ears and the glaring flash of musket has burned my eyes. I have not slept nor can I sleep and though the dawn rises I cannot feel its warmth. I feel my brothers fall. And then—they fall again. I cannot rise.

We thought the fight would be small and on the far right flank, away from us. It came instead from our direct right and left. We stood upon a hill at the northeast corner of a house, watching the chaos of battle below rage across a stone bridge. It built and grew, a writhing, horrendous violence, and it was on all of our minds to leave as it crawled inexorably in our direction. We were losing, backing up toward our position. Yet we did not leave. We did not flinch. For there, upon his horse, was Jackson, that queersome professor of ours—so odd, so cold. The butt of so many jokes. He gazed over to us, his eyes shining blue, and though we knew he looked on us, we could feel he looked elsewhere, some far ethereal place. In that moment, the battle crashed upon us like a great wave coming upon a seawall. But it could not breach us.

I fired. All was smoke and screaming horses and men yelling and where I saw blue I fired. I could not see their faces, so as I fixed aim I said a prayer for in that sea of blue somewhere would be Zach and Jeb—the loving sons of the late Reverend, whose buttons now secured my coat. They chose Union and never did I want to see them at the end of my bayonet. A cannon boomed and I, along with my entire division, hit the
ground. The great blast tore a hole in the house next to us and, unbeknownst to us at the time, the invalid lady lying on her mattress within was blown to pieces. I stood, praying as I fixed my next target—praying that it wasn’t Zach or Jeb.

Then all went quiet, like the morning mist days before, and I heard my name—Samuel?
When I turned, I saw a shape in the cannon smoke. I shifted to see past the cloud, and in that second a minié ball nicked my left ear and killed Avery, who stood behind me. I watched the ball enter his eye and he fell. Jackson ordered us forward then, he told us to yell like furies, and I tried to scream, turning as ordered, advancing as I was taught to do, but all that came from my open mouth was a silent wail—the keening as my brothers fell around me—one and then another.

I could not tell when it ended. The dead lay about the field, the screaming wounded. There, in the distance, all those fine women and men who apparently had ridden out from Washington to see the battle flew away, tangling themselves in their retreating troops and random musket fire. What did they think to see? A play? A Shakespearean narrator with mighty voice, marking the hour and minute as a bloodless sword fight ensued? Fools.

My regiment is three quarters gone. One battle and we are decimated. Our president rode past us at dusk, thinking we were stragglers and speaking words to us as if to rally us. Finally someone told him it was us who held the line—the seawall that was not breached. He left us, riding toward Jackson, and as I looked, there was the moon, rising full—pale orange floating away on a glowing cloud. I stood, fixed upon its cool, soothing face, and wept, for I wish now to return home. To return and find you and live as all my friends, dead around me, will never live. I wept until the rain started, and though there was great elation at our victory all around, I could not notice anything but the moon covered by cloud, my friends’ absence, and the ache I have for you.

So here I have sat the night, what is left of our brigade to be enveloped in another. Some believe it is over, but I cannot see that. The blue sea has simply receded. Though they have lost this day, I know two officers yonder. They are in earnest.

I close with great pain. I have written here to empty myself to you but I am not empty. My mind reels with that voice—Samuel?
My life spared by a voice from a silent cloud of cannon smoke and because of it Avery is dead. It is a burden I do not know how yet to carry. Can you help, my love? Can I ask of you to hold this thing so I can be empty? I no longer know if such a thing can be asked of another. Nor do I think I would have you carry it—my love for you is such that I would have you free of burden. Such is duty and this duty is mine to carry. If I may instead ask of you, Juliette, your arms’ embrace beneath a pale orange summer moon one night, so lightness shall have hold of me within this weighty burden. Would you? I await that night.

Your devoted,

Samuel

Elysium

W
hen she arrived home, the Martins’ Mercedes was gone.

It was nine thirty and the snow covering the fields was pale but not bright in the moonless night. Ginger turned the car off, resting her head on the steering wheel for a moment. She was exhausted after twenty-two hours awake. Spent.

The warming weather in the valley during the day had melted the snow and now, with the temperature dropping, all was freezing to ice. She thought of nothing but the slippery asphalt and Osbee leaving the farm. In her mind, she saw images of Bea and Henry and Oliver seated in the back of the truck, weeping as they waved good-bye to their grandmother. They loved her parents and were very excited when they’d come to visit. But what was true, more true than Ginger wanted to admit, was what little Oliver had observed six months earlier as he and his siblings watched her parents’ airplane take off from Dulles: Only Grandma Osbee gives love. Everybody else gives gifts.

Ginger had cringed at the comment. But to her children, Jesse’s parents and her own must have seemed no more than old people bearing gifts—Santa Clauses or wise men making great journeys to deliver this doll or that game. Neither set visited more than twice a year and Jesse’s hadn’t been by in two. So she wasn’t unsurprised when she climbed out of her truck and found three brand-new bicycles leaning together on the porch for warmth.

“Merry Christmas,” she whispered, shutting her truck door. The reverberation of it caused several balls of snow to fall from the eave just to her right. She quickly dodged them and skipped up to the porch. She slipped her house key into the lock. All was dark and quiet within, except a couple of giggles from the second floor.

“Ginger?” Osbee’s voice floated down the stairs.

“It’s me.”

“If you want, dinner is in the fridge. Just put it in there. It’s probably still warm.”

She shut the door. Even though she hadn’t eaten in twenty-two hours, she was too tired to eat.

“Thanks, but I’m exhausted,” she said and climbed the stairs. Peering into her sons’ room, she found them seated together under Henry’s covers reading
Harry the Dirty Dog.
It was Henry’s favorite story when he was smaller and was one Oliver always picked because Henry always agreed to read it.

“Lights out,” she said, entering their room and kissing them both on the head.

“Awww,” Oliver whined.

“Two more pages and we’re done,” Henry said, scooting deeper into his covers. Oliver scrunched down next to him.

“Two more pages and lights out.”

“Yeah, yeah,” Oliver whispered and smiled up at her.

She rubbed his strawberry blond head and stepped back into
the hall. Opening Bea’s door, she found the room dark and still. Tripping over a globe and an open atlas, Ginger caught her balance on the bed.

“Mama?” Bea whispered.

“Sorry, Bea. I can’t see the stuff on your floor.” The light on Bea’s nightstand popped on. She sat straight up in bed and gazed wide-eyed at her mother. Ginger winced in the sudden light.

“What is it, Bea?”

“A ranger from the state park came by today.”

“Oh?” Ginger responded, sitting down on the little girl’s bed.

“Yeah. They need to come through our field to get the trees up from the river.”

Ginger looked at her daughter. Clearly she was bothered by something. “What’s worrying you, Little Bea?” She asked it just as Jesse had done and, in that instant, tried to swallow the words back. She knew the rule. Only Jesse was allowed to call her Little Bea. It was Bea’s rule.

“I asked him about Mr. Annanais.”

Ginger frowned and cocked her head. Bea hadn’t noticed Ginger’s infraction. That was odd. “What about him?”

“I asked the ranger what battle happened on the other side of the river and he said there was no battle.” Bea stared into her mother’s eyes intensely. Then she gazed at the window.

Ginger followed her eyes, her frown deepening. “Okay,” Ginger prompted.

“I said that a man in a Southern uniform came over to us yesterday and then the ranger asked if his coat had mismatching buttons.”

The world stopped turning. All Ginger could hear was her breath and Bea’s breath and the rising speed of her own heart.

“I didn’t answer the ranger, Mama,” Bea whispered.

“Mr. Annanais left, Bea,” Ginger said, quietly, keeping her own rising anxiety from her voice. Was Samuel a thief? A criminal? Ginger wished she had double-checked the doors downstairs to make sure they were locked. She cursed at herself as she touched Bea’s hair. “I think he’s a long ways off. Does the ranger think he’ll be back or something?”

“Mama?” Bea whispered again, reaching over and touching Ginger’s cheek.

“It’s okay, Bea.”

“He’s a ghost, Mama.” Bea said it so quietly that Ginger was sure she hadn’t heard it correctly over the terror pounding through her ears.

“A what?”

“A ghost. The ranger winked at me when he said it.” Bea looked down for a minute. “I don’t like that guy.”

“What do you mean, a ghost?” Images of Samuel flipped through her mind—standing on the fallen tree, his dark eyes by the barn, his odd behavior on the road at Oak Flat. Manassas? But—that wasn’t him at Manassas.

“I hid behind Grandma ’cause I didn’t like that ranger. He told Grandma the ghost helps people sometimes in the park. Sometimes people get lost and he helps them find their way out.”

Manassas . . . the musket . . . a turning profile. It wasn’t him; she was sure. She smiled.

“He’s just pulling your leg, Bea,” Ginger said. “Maybe that’s why you didn’t like him. Maybe you could tell he was just joking with you in that way adults do that you don’t like.”

Bea was a serious person. She meant business. Anytime any adult spoke to her in a childish way, especially in a joking fashion, she didn’t like them.

“He wasn’t joking.”

“You and I saw Mr. Annanais, Bea. And I saw him up near my work on the road.”

“You saw him again?” Bea’s eyebrows knit together.

Ginger giggled, trying to lighten her daughter’s mood. “Yes. He was going home to Laurel Creek, hitchhiking home. He’s not here and he’s no ghost.”

“You sure?” She was serious.

“Positive.”

“Where’s Laurel Creek?” Bea asked, pointing to her atlas.

Ginger shook her head with a chuckle, her heart slowing down, and her world lightened again. Having seen Samuel up in West Virginia had convinced her that he was no ghost nor was he anywhere near the farm. Thank heaven Samuel wasn’t a weirdo wandering around the state park. As tired as she was, that would have just pushed her over the edge.

“I think it must be in West Virginia because that’s where I was working.” Ginger reached down and pulled the atlas from the floor.

“Not Virginia.”

“West Virginia,” Ginger repeated, flipping to the index. She found West Virginia on page fifteen and Virginia on page twelve.

“Not even on the same page,” Ginger muttered, turning to page twelve.

“What?”

“The states. Look. Here’s Virginia and we are—” Ginger ran her finger down Highway 81 from Winchester, southwest and then directly east. “Here. Here we are.”

She batted the pages with her hand until she was on page fifteen.

“Let’s see. Laurel Creek. Where is Laurel Creek?” She followed the road from Oak Flat to Franklin and then south. She did not find Laurel Creek.

“He sure went way out of his way. Oh! Here, Bea.” Ginger held her finger on the tiny dot of Laurel Creek.

“That’s his home?”

“Yep. That’s where he said he was headed.”

Bea flipped the page back. “Not on the same page.”

“Nope. Page fifteen. We’re page twelve. So you just don’t worry, Bea. Mr. Annanais is not a ghost and he’s probably home with his family, watching TV or going to bed or reading atlases with his little girl.”

Bea gazed up at her mother, her eyes slits. Ginger leaned forward, placing her forehead on Bea’s forehead and grinned. Bea smiled too and lay back down in bed.

“I don’t like that ranger.”

“Well, you know who you like and who you don’t, Bea. Sometimes, though, people don’t know exactly who you are, so they make mistakes. Just meeting someone can be—awkward.”

“Don’t like people who wink.”

“All right, Bea.” Ginger flicked off the light, kissed her daughter on the cheek in the darkness, stood, and headed carefully back out the door.

“Mama?”

Ginger stopped as she entered the hall.

“Only Daddy calls me Little Bea.”

“I know. It . . . just popped out. Maybe because I thought you were worried and it would help you feel him and be comforted. I’m sorry.”

“It’s okay,” she replied.

Ginger stood still as if she had been handed a gift she had waited for all her life. “I love you, Little Bea,” Ginger said.

“I love you, too, Mama. And I love Daddy.”

“Me, too,” Ginger whispered.

Taking the handle of the door, Ginger closed it halfway and
walked into the bathroom. There she slipped out of her scrubs and, as she always did, hopped in the shower to wash the ER from her body. Anyone who works in an emergency room knows that there is nowhere with more germs on the planet. She knew showering when she got home wouldn’t do much to protect her from catching something that had come in the ER door, but she always felt better if she bathed after work. She put on her pajamas, which were exactly where she had left them the night before, brushed her teeth, tossed her scrubs into the hamper, turned off the light, and shuffled to her room. There she found Beau and Regard exactly where she had last seen them.

“You guys do anything today?” They both looked at her and yawned. Beau wagged his tail slightly, just so Ginger could see a little effort at happiness on her return, and then his head went back on top of his paws. Wiggling her legs past Regard, who wouldn’t move an inch from where he was lying, Ginger pulled the covers to her waist. She sat.

Looking past her curtains to the night sky, she saw the world was white and cold and still. Winter’s heaven was transparent, like a window looking out onto Elysium, and the stars were but shards of glass from a crystalline goblet dropped by some great hero who sat at Kronos’s table. Ginger half smiled, gazing up to the great fields of the dead. She lay down and as she closed her eyes a tear formed. Within it, she saw the reflection of a star falling from the sky above. It landed silently on her pillow.

•••

A
dim orange glow emanated from little Henry’s room, and as she passed by in the hallway she could hear Jesse’s voice whispering to him in the rhythmic manner that meant he was reciting. Ginger tiptoed into the room and stood next to the chair where Jesse sat with Henry on his chest.

“And our ghosts have been wandering in Elysium until we have
learned to love the shade. We have no objection to revisiting the light.” He stopped, tilting back and forth in the rocking chair, burying his nose in little Henry’s scarce hair.

“What’s Elysium?” he whispered to her. Ginger shrugged, her lip curling in anticipation of the comment that would now follow her silence.

“What kind of education you get over there in the West?” Jesse chuckled, kissing Henry’s head.

“What’re the islets of Langerhans?” she inquired.

He laid his cheek on Henry’s head and shrugged.

“What kinda education you get at that military institute?”

They smiled at each other.

“Henry Adams?” she added.

“Our son’s name is Henry Adams Martin,” he replied.

“No, what you were reciting?”

Jesse nodded and dropped his head lazily on the back of the chair as he looked at her.

“I reckon you never learned about sich,” Jesse whispered and buried his nose again in his little boy’s hair. He closed his eyes and Ginger knew, by the weight of the room, he was moving his mind, making adjustments inside himself to leave home—to leave the farm.

They were young in their military life together, as this was their first vacation home from life in Fort Lewis. Jesse had been so carefree, wandering around the barns and fields with his new son, showing him all his boyhood haunts. Now was the time to head back to North Carolina, and the army and Jesse was shifting internally to do so. She imagined this was what he always had to do when leaving his grandparents, even as a boy returning home after each summer. She quietly crossed the wooden floor and put her hand upon Jesse’s head.

“Not about sich or such,” she replied.

“Elysium is the afterlife. The Elysian Fields are where all heroes of virtue go.” He stood up.

“Heroes of virtue also come home and help their grandfathers in the cornfields.”

Jesse deposited Henry into his crib, covering the little baby up with a purple crocheted blanket. He made no remark to her little jest as he gazed out the window.

“The sky is so clear in winter,” he commented.

“It is,” she replied softly, walking to his side.

“I was thinking that the winter night sky is so transparent, so clear, it’s like we can see Elysium.”

Jesse looked down at her, his eyes so shadowed she couldn’t tell if they were open or closed.

He said, “Tonight, I think the stars look like glass broken on the table of Kronos.”

“Who’s Kronos?”

“The king of Elysium.”

She could see her husband smile. He pulled her into his arms, facing her forward to the window as he slid in behind her.

“The sky appears just so on the cold, moonless nights everywhere in the world,” he whispered in her ear.

“Everywhere? How do you know?”

“Because the Elysian Fields roll across the sky and the sky rolls everywhere.”

“I see,” Ginger said, shaking her head. “Can we go to bed or was there further edification for me tonight?”

“Shh. Listen. Wherever I am deployed, Ginger, remember—I send to you love across Kronos’s table.”