Nostalgia (45 page)

Summerfield is silent but soon finds himself shaking his head as he tries to ponder Walt’s remarks. He believes they cut to the heart of the matter, but he cannot quite bring himself wholly into the room after having allowed himself to slip back into the Wilderness—a consequence his instincts have warned against.

After another moment, Sarah stands and says, “I’m going to fetch us some lemonade after all,” and leaves hurriedly through the dining room.

Walt says, “She’s so lovely … and I’ve upset her. I didn’t mean to.”

Summerfield still says nothing, and so, after another pause, Walt whispers, “You told her you had malaria.”

Summerfield nods and then looks toward the gray windows. “I might take a stroll,” he says. “Get some air.”

“What, you mean now?”

“Only for a few minutes,” he says. “To the river and back.”

Walt looks puzzled, but then soon nods slowly. “I think I understand,” he says. “You mean to leave me alone with her.”

“If you don’t mind,” says Summerfield. “You see, I haven’t been able to … of course I have my voice … but I haven’t been able really to talk.”

“And you want me to explain you to her,” says Walt.

Summerfield gazes down at Walt’s cane for a moment, which rests at an angle against the sofa cushion between them; keeping his head lowered, he reaches for the cane and passes it handle first to Walt. “If you don’t mind,” he repeats softly.

Walt plants the tip of the cane on the floor, puts both hands atop the handle, and rocks it in a little circle round and round. He knits his brow, exaggeratedly, and draws his mouth into a straight line,
considering hard. At last—world-weary, a belle at a ball who has been too often asked to dance—he shrugs his shoulders and says, “I don’t mind.”

As Summerfield reaches the hall door, Walt adds, “But walk swiftly, will you? This won’t take me very long.”

A
T THE FOOT
of Remsen Street, he can see, looking southward, even above the trees of the private gardens, the tops of the grain silos at the Atlantic Docks. And before him spreads the panorama of the river and Buttermilk Channel, the stiff fringe of piers on Manhattan Island, the ribbonlike forests of ship masts on both shores (every kind of vessel docked), the tiers and casements of Fort Columbus and Castle Williams, and the blue-gray water, turbulent with currents, wind, crossings, and industry: clipper ships, whaleboats under oars, passenger ferries and wherries, lumps laden with anchors and chains, a handsome ketch in the foreground with a green star on its mizzen sail. In the distance, both north and south, a haze rises off the horizon, more violet than the water. On each side of the river, the tall chimneys of foundries and distilleries and the steeples of churches pierce the air, in which, near and far, seagulls inscribe their circles small and large, low and high, wings unmoving. An array of white parasols on the open stern deck of a ferryboat looks like flowers, a floating garden. All about, miniature people fish, boat, and swim; boys jump from and climb onto piers; antlike troops on Governors Island drill near a line of toy cannons; flags and pennants dot the spectacle with a variety of color; barges powered by a steam-tug slowly move their grain cargo toward the Narrows; a breeze rushes up the neat escarpment, carrying the scents of the river; and he thinks the scene is like a smart contraption with thousands of moving parts, enormous in size and complexity, and will continue long after he and everyone now alive has rotted back into the earth. He knows the bowels of Castle Williams hold Confederate prisoners, some of whom will die never having seen their loved ones again, others, luckier, exchanged for Union captives. This war will end, other wars will flare up to claim their own rosters of the dead, and the myriad of chimneys, like brick piles driven into and soaring
out of concrete, will go on belching fumes, silver smoke, and soot into the skies of new centuries. Pilots will pilot now-unknown crafts driven by now-unknown sources of power. At the Navy Yard, faster, stronger, more lethal war vessels will be conceived, built, and repaired. Wheels, brighter and sharper, will turn at unimaginable new purposes, pipes pump unimaginable vapors into and out of the boroughs, ship hulls rock with unimaginable stuff, storehouses store unimaginable wares. How, he wonders, could such a vision—laid out in splendor, implying so certain a succession, so certain a permanence—appear so aimless, its players and purveyors damned to make old mistakes in new ways? The answer, he understands, resides in his wretched state of mind, but he cannot seem to dismiss the outward truth of it. Numerous couples and parties of family or friends arrive at the foot of the street, lingering for a while where he lingers, viewing with awe what he views, departing before he departs; he can hear them talking to one another, a frivolous-sounding murmur that signals the stupidity of everything they have to say. To his right and just behind him, a man sits on the lower steps of a stoop and has been watching him. Now, apparently, he has decided to approach, and Summerfield steels himself for whatever bland or vexing business is in store. The man, small and drawn down by poor posture, comes and stands next to him; by way of introducing himself into his company, he lights a cigar, and Summerfield only hopes, hopes and prays, he won’t want to talk of the war.

“Have you heard?” the man soon says, touching his fingers to the brim of his hat. “Rebel troops moved into Maryland yesterday. They can’t be far from the capital now, and most of the Federals who would otherwise defend Washington have already been sent down Richmond way.”

Summerfield turns and looks into the man’s face, a splotched, swollen, weather-beaten visage, lined by too many years and too many brands of struggle; everything about him suggests that he’s alone in the world and lonely, the fabric of his suit shiny and worn, his shirt collar soiled yellow, a smattering of gray in his whiskers—perhaps a farmer or mechanic in his Sunday clothes, come to the city for the sights,
these
sights, the spectacle, the sweep, the great dubious prospect. The man’s news is exactly the wrong kind and awakens a vague fear
inside Summerfield’s belly. He returns his attention to the vista and notices high overhead a white disk behind the clouds, the sun on the brink of burning through. Something about the man’s tone suggested that his report didn’t spring from the usual vein of “war excitement” but that he wanted to relieve himself of a matter that really troubled him—and so Summerfield says, “Is there somebody … that is … do you have someone in harm’s way?”

The man presses his lips together and looks down at his shoes. “Not anymore I don’t,” he says. “Already lost both my boys.”

“I’m sorry,” Summerfield says.

“I’m glad their mother didn’t live to see it,” he says. “I have to admit I wish the same for myself more days than I care to count.”

After a pause, the man says, “Did you buy your way out?”

Because Summerfield doesn’t answer at once, the man adds, “It’s fine by me if you did. Believe me, I would’ve made no bones of it for my boys if I’d had the money.”

Summerfield, who cannot think how to begin to explain his situation to the man, only continues to gaze at the busy sparkling channel below. How can he explore with a stranger this limbo of invisible wounds, a drunken discharge on the battlefield with no corroborative document, the influence of friends in influential positions? He is mustered out, to be sure, and has been assured there’s nothing to worry about, but who knows how long he must wait for the proper forms and signatures? There is, after all, still a war to fight, a war to win.

“That’s okay,” says the man, evidently taking Summerfield’s silence as consent. “I don’t blame you a bit. My priest tells me I should be proud, and I guess I’m fairly up to the hub with pride … but I ask you … what’s that next to the flesh and blood of your own living breathing sons, brought into the world and raised up on love? A pretty sorry swap, if you ask me.”

“Yes, it is,” says Summerfield, and the man says, “Damn right it is.”

After a minute more, Summerfield apologizes and says he’s expected at home and has already stayed too long. He shakes the man’s hand and then takes his leave.

A few paces up Remsen Street he glances back: the man has moved alongside a nearby couple, is likely about to repeat the news of the rebel invasion of Maryland.

As he turns the corner, he can see, from a distance of two streets, a carriage in front of the house, Jeff already aboard, and Walt and Sarah standing at the top of the stoop. Jeff spots him from the same distance, points for the benefit of the two others, and then waves.

Just before Summerfield arrives at the steps, he sees Sarah kiss Walt on each cheek; she says good-bye and goes into the house, closing the door behind her.

“I’m sorry,” says Summerfield. “I stayed gone too long.”

Walt does not respond but makes his way, visibly fatigued, to the bottom step and onto the pavement. He tugs down the floppy brim of his hat, as if to make it tighter for the ride, and then, reaching into a side pocket of his coat, he says, “I’ve been keeping this for you.”

He passes into Summerfield’s hands an amber-colored base ball and adds, “Bachelors twenty-four, Twighoppers twenty-one.”

Summerfield—moved by the sight of the ball, and moved by Walt’s keeping and delivering it—thanks him. He brings it to his nose and smells a mix of grass, dirt, and horsehide. As he and Walt embrace, he whispers, “Walt … Walt, what am I to do?”

Walt releases him and smiles thoughtfully but only moves forward a few steps and gives Jeff’s blood-bay horse a couple of pats on the neck. When he comes back to Summerfield’s side, he says, “Give me a hand up, will you?”

Summerfield helps him aboard the carriage, which squeaks with the new weight. The horse lifts a front foot and clops it down again. Once settled next to Jeff, Walt leans toward Summerfield and says, “I’m not a doctor, only a poet and a soldier’s missionary. But I’m confident the best of physicians would approve my prescription for you: go and play base ball, dear boy. It’s what you were created to do. Go and play base ball.”

Jeff tips his hat to Summerfield and then clucks with his tongue and calls, “Hup-hup!”

Summerfield watches the carriage roll down the street, scattering
half a dozen panic-stricken chickens. The instant the carriage rounds the corner and disappears from view, the sun breaks through the clouds, casting shadows and blazing up the windows across the way.

Inside the house, Mrs. B’s cooking aromas have pervaded the hall. He opens the parlor door, hoping to find Sarah, but the room is empty. He starts up the stairs, hugely let down that, after Walt’s visit, she has only returned to her room, only returned to how things have been for the last six days. But on the landing, as he passes the library door, he hears her call out, “I’m in here.”

She sits in the window seat amid the pillows and lacy bobbing shadows. “I didn’t know you’d kept such illustrious company at the hospital,” she says. “What an interesting and peculiar fellow! Is that a base ball in your hand?”

“From a match we had at Brandy Station,” he answers. “When I landed at the hospital, it was about all I still had with me … it and the book you’d sent, the Dickens.”

He puts the ball into his own coat pocket and then moves to his father’s wing chair, which he turns toward Sarah, and sits down. From somewhere among the folds of her dress, she produces a fan and opens it, but only studies the painting on the silk skin—a painting of people by a lake playing music. He recognizes the fan as one of their mother’s favorites and recalls his being fascinated by it as a boy: a woman in the painting also holds a fan, which has a painting of people by a lake playing music.

Sarah turns it toward him and says, “Remember this?”

He can see that whatever Walt said to her, she has been softened by it.

“I do,” he says. “Tell me … what did you and Walt talk about?”

She closes the fan, lays it aside, takes a deep breath, and exhales. “He swore me to secrecy and told me his true feelings about Mr. Emerson,” she says.

“Was that all?” he asks.

“No,” she says, “he talked about Washington and the hospitals … Captain Gracie and Dr. Bliss.”

She stands and goes to the little table behind Summerfield’s chair. When he turns round, he sees that she has taken a newspaper from
the table and is now unfolding the leaves and spreading them flat on the carpet next to the desk. As she does this, she says, “And he talked at some length about the curative effects of love. He said love’s like truth, that no matter what form it takes, no matter how haplessly it’s expressed, one must try to see to the heart of it and forgive any of the ugly bits.”

She moves to the desk now and lifts the straight-backed chair, which she carries to the middle of the large square she has made on the floor with newspaper.

“Did he say anything specifically about me?” Summerfield asks.

She pauses, as if to think, still holding the chair up by the arms. “Oh, yes,” she says. “He told me you’d lost your voice and then found it again. He said your temporary muteness was the most beautiful silence he’d ever heard.”

She puts down the chair now. “And,” she says, “he said I should cut your hair.”

She turns again and takes from the desktop a scissors and a white-horn comb Summerfield recognizes from his father’s dressing table. She waves these at him and says, “Come, sit, please, and no argument.”

Once he’s seated in the chair, facing the library windows, she begins to work, and he experiences the covert pleasure of yielding to her. He recalls coming home after base ball some years ago, a tender purple knot on his forehead where he’d got smacked by a wayward bat, and yielding then to her applications of a cold wet cloth.

After a minute, he says, “Sarah … about last Monday—”

But she hushes him.

“We don’t have to talk about it,” she says. “Of course you’re right in what you’ve said about Thomas and me. I’m not sure what we’ll do. Unfortunately, we don’t have the advantage of a clean break … though I shouldn’t be surprised if he asks me to find another school.”

Summerfield brushes a shockingly long strand of hair from his lap.