The Railroad War (7 page)

Twigs and small leaves brushed her, and moments later she felt her shoulder graze a hard place, but she scarcely felt any
of these things. And then she was sliding through soft wet dirt, and she thought of her dress—her fresh and summery daffodil-yellow
dress which would now be permanently soiled with indelible grass stains.

She glanced at Sam tumbling down behind her. She was glad that he, too, was in the same fix she was.

And then she was at the bottom, sitting in a shallow pool of muddy spring water. Sam Houston Hawken was on top of her, with
his arms and legs tangled in hers.

He groaned, gingerly extracting himself from her. “Spending time with you is more than an adventure. Are you all right?”

At that moment she realized that she could have pulled or broken something. She shook her head to clear it. Then she took
quick stock of herself. “I don’t think so,” she said. Her breast, she quickly realized, had started to sting from her burn,
but she ignored that as best she could.

He was free of her by now, but he was not yet standing. Instead he was sitting on the bank of the spring and staring at her—shaking
his head, his eyes sad and accusatory. Does he think I did it on purpose? she thought.

“I must look horrible,” she said. “Am I a wreck?”

“That pretty well sums it up,” he said.

“Well you’re not fashionable yourself, Cadet Hawken. Your trousers are torn and there’s mud on your face.”

“I can well imagine,” he said, rising to his feet and taking several deep breaths as he did. “Here, take my hand.” He leaned
over toward her, holding his hand out. She took it, and, pulling her to her feet, he helped her onto the bank.

“Now that you’ve caught your breath, tell me again whether you’re all right,” he said.

She took a few steps, then raised and lowered her arms a few times. “I’m fine,” she said in spite of her painful breast.

“Thank God,” he said, then raised his eyes to see how far the two of them had tumbled down. He shook his head in amazement
at their good fortune. “It’s a long way,” he said, still shaking his head.

“We’re just like Jack and Jill,” she said, smiling and tilting her head back.

He smiled along with her, to her relief, but it was a sober smile. “You’re right,” he said. “Jack and Jill, imagine that.”
He paused. “I wonder if
she
pushed him.”

Miranda decided not to pursue that thought. He looked at the sky, which was growing darker by the minute. “We should get back.
We’ll be in trouble enough as it is.”

She looked at him and at the sky. “All right,” she said. Then she stooped down and cleaned herself as best she could in the
spring. He stooped down beside her.

Sam was pensive and quiet as they returned to the hotel. The fall had darkened his mood and left him much less inclined to
be playful.

She imagined that his change in mood was due to apprehension about the consequences of their tumble. He must be worried about
what people would think about them when they appeared so messy and disheveled.

But when words at last returned to him, she learned that he wasn’t thinking about their appearance at all.

“I’m bothered,” he said. Her hand had found its way into his as they walked. Neither was especially conscious of their contact—it
simply felt right.

“Bothered?” she asked.

“Uh-huh,” he said. “We all are—Lam, Noah, and me. We’re all in for a fall. The whole country will be in it. Half will fall
one way, and the other half will fall the other. And the three of us…” He stopped.

“You’re suggesting,” she said softly, carefully, “that you may not fall with the South?” He looked away from her. “I don’t
know,” he said. “I truly don’t. I’m a Texan, and I love my home—don’t get me wrong about that—but I truly don’t know.”

“It doesn’t matter to me what you choose.”

They came over a rise. On the plain below them lay the Academy. She stopped and turned to face him, taking both of his hands
in hers.

“Will you dance with me often this evening?” she asked.

He laughed. “I won’t let another cadet touch you. You can bet on that. However, they might lock me in the guardhouse and you
in your hotel room for what we’ve just done.”

“No, they won’t. I won’t let them.”

“I’m glad you’re so sure.”

“Come on,” she said, her face shining. She started to move forward. Her step was brisk, happy. “I must change. I want to dance
with you.”

“And you will!”

Miranda Kemble had been in bed a long time, for the graduation ball had ended more than an hour and a half earlier. But she
was nowhere near sleep. Ariel was sleeping deeply next to her in the double bed, her arms flung across the pillow about her
head. Miranda wanted to recreate in her mind the lovely and exciting day she’d just lived through, even if that meant losing
sleep.

So she ran through the happenings of the day over and over, dwelling at length on the ones that especially moved her.

She continually let her thoughts turn to the ball itself. It had turned out to be every bit as dazzling and delightful as
she had expected, despite the grand battle between her mother and her father, which, it must be said, she had half expected;
the two of them loved to fight their wars in public. The ball was held outdoors. A dancing floor had been set up on a corner
on the plain under the stars, and it had been lit by Japanese lanterns strung out along the sides.

She had danced a hundred dances—a thousand dances! —with Sam Hawken, as he had promised. And she would have danced a million
dances with him, except that her mother intercepted him and took him aside for close to an hour. Then Miranda had danced with
a number of unmemorable boys—and Noah, when Ariel would give him up, and Uncle Ashbel, whom Miranda adored.

The grand battle had not erupted until near the end of the evening, her mother and father having a well-developed sense of
timing honed to a fine edge over years of experience.

Of course they had behaved horribly, and of course she was embarrassed—she had cried and cried. And of course she was angry.
Her father and mother had been divorced for years, so why did they still need to inflict pain on one another, and on their
children, and on everyone else nearby?

After they had more or less worn themselves out with their screams and their shouts, Lam had managed to put himself between
them. He had taken his father away in one direction, while the two sisters led their mother off in another.

The girls had to take Fanny to her room in the hotel, so Miranda barely had time to say good night to Sam Hawken, Noah, and
Uncle Ashbel. And Lam was nowhere to be seen—which was probably just as well. He was doubtless still with their father, who
was always impossible after one of his battles with their mother. But Miranda consoled herself that she would have time with
Sam over the next few days.

As these images played through Miranda’s mind, the door between her room and her mother’s opened a crack, and dim yellow light
glowed through. Then the door opened wider, and Fanny Shaw, in a dressing gown, tiptoed across the floor and kissed Ariel
on the forehead. Ariel stirred and mumbled something unintelligible. Then Fanny came around the bed and bent down to kiss
Miranda. She paused when she saw Miranda’s open eyes, but she finished the kiss. Then she whispered, “You’re awake, darling,
aren’t you?”

“Yes, Mother,” Miranda whispered back. She raised her head a little, unsure what she wanted to do. From her expression, she
could tell that her mother would like to talk, but Miranda herself did not know whether she wanted to talk to her mother.
Should I be angry at her? she wondered. Or should I forgive her? Or do I still want to be by myself and think about the day
I’ve just had?

Then she noticed in the dim light that there were tears on her mother’s face. And while Miranda didn’t want to let her mother
off the hook so easily, she melted nevertheless.

“I’m sorry for my outburst against your father,” Fanny said. Her voice had now risen above a whisper.

Miranda sat up. She would talk with her, she decided, but she didn’t want to wake her sister. She began to rise from the bed,
but her mother laid a restraining hand on her.

“No,” Fanny said, “stay where you are.”

“But Ariel,” Miranda said. “We’ll go to your room.”

“I’ll only be a moment.”

“All right,” Miranda said. She remained sitting while her mother sat down next to her. Miranda looked at Ariel again.

“Don’t worry about her,” Fanny said, wiping the tears from her face with the edge of the sheet. “Ariel will sleep through
doomsday.

“Your father and I…” Fanny said. But Miranda stopped her before she could continue.

“Don’t talk about Father,” she said with a hard edge in her voice. “I know what you will say about him. And I know what he
will say about you.”

“I’m sorry,” Fanny said, and then her quiet tears began again.

“But the tears aren’t for me.”

“They aren’t?” Miranda asked.

“They’re for you.” As Fanny said this, she placed her arm around Miranda.

“Why should you cry over me, Mother?” Miranda asked.

“I see you so little, my darling—a few months of the year during the summer, now and then at other times. And the last time
I was with you, you were a girl. But now you’ve grown. You’ve almost become a woman.

“And that makes me sad, darling, sad enough to cry.” She punctuated the statement with a tear. “But I’m proud of you as well.”

Miranda looked at her, waiting. She loved her mother very much, but she was not always sure whether her mother was being open
with her or acting.

“You’re becoming a fine young woman,” Fanny said.

“Thank you, Mother,” she said after concluding that her mother was truly moved. But she could tell that Fanny was leading
up to something, so she waited a little longer for her to come to the point.

Fanny’s face grew rapt and intense—she took on the look of a prophetess. This was not an act, Miranda knew. Her mother was
passionately serious when her face had that look.

“You like that boy, don’t you?” Fanny said. “Sam Houston Hawken?” She drew out his name slowly. “Yes, Mother.”

“I could tell. I’ve never seen you look at a man that way before.”

Miranda smiled, remembering.

“And I take it you will see him again?”

“Tomorrow.”

“Yes, of course, tomorrow,” Fanny said with a wave of her hand. “But not only tomorrow—after that?”

“I hope so, Mother.”

“Good,” Fanny said. “Do that. He’s a fine young man.”

“Really, Mother?” Miranda said. Somehow she had expected opposition from her mother as well as her father, simply because
her parents
always
opposed romance.

“Yes, absolutely,” Fanny said. “Even though he’s a strange one, perhaps a tad unpredictable…” She caught Miranda’s eye. “Your
father, you know, is quite predictable, but I just didn’t predict him correctly.”

“Don’t talk about Father, please, Mother.”

“All right,” she sighed. Then she turned her attention back to Sam Hawken. “I had quite a long talk with your Sam. I’ve decided
that he will become something. He has drive and brains, and beneath his hardness he is sensitive and tender. So, my darling,
write to him. See him when you’re able. I have good feelings about him—there is depth to that young man.”

At that, Miranda stopped breathing for a moment. Then she said, “I
do
want to see him again.”

“You are not a girl who allows barriers between yourself and your goals,” Fanny said softly.

Miranda gave her mother a wide, happy smile.

“Now,” Fanny said, “tell me how the burn is healing.”

“It stings a little,” Miranda said.

“Move into the light. I should examine it.”

“All right, Mother,” Miranda said. Unfastening the top buttons of her nightdress, she exposed the burned place.

When she saw it, Fanny sighed audibly and pressed her lips together, for it pained her to see her daughter hurt. But in a
moment she had pulled herself together.

“It’s not so raw looking as it was when I first saw it,” Fanny said, “despite your roll down the hill. That,” she added parenthetically,
“made an enormous impression on your Sam Hawken. But you will have an evil-looking scar, darling.” And then she smiled wickedly.
“That
will give you quite a tale to tell your husband.”

“Oh, Mother!” Miranda protested. But the wicked smile remained until Miranda softened, and she leaned over and touched her
lips to Fanny’s cheek. “I love you, Mother,” she whispered.

“Yes, darling, I know. And I, too, love you.”

Fanny Shaw rose, returned to her room, and shut the door. Soon Miranda was asleep.

She did see Sam Hawken several times over the next few days, twice alone. It was over seven years, however, before she saw
him again.

Lieutenant Tom Stetson had been waiting a long time before he caught sight of the man he was expecting. The man was tall and
lean, with unkempt sandy-red hair and a closely cropped beard. He was threading his way through the crush of people surrounding
the train dispatcher’s tent. He wore the uniform of a major in the Army of the Confederate States of America. The name on
his papers was Walter J. Rusk.

The lieutenant was standing on what was left of the station platform of what was left of the Jackson railway terminal, and
he was keeping an eye on his and the major’s horses. In the major’s saddlebags were a set of dispatches that had originated
in Texas and which were destined for Richmond. The major’s ostensible purpose had been to acquire space on a train out of
Jackson for himself and the lieutenant, and that was what had apparently taken him so long.

Some three months before, Union General William Tecumseh Sherman, during the course of General Ulysses S. Grant’s siege of
Vicksburg, had captured Jackson, the Mississippi capital, from General Joseph E. Johnston, the area commander of the armies
of the Western Confederacy. In the brief two days he had spent in Jackson, General Sherman had managed to demolish most of
what was militarily useful in the town: the arsenals, the penitentiary, the cotton factory, the Confederate Hotel, a government
foundry, a gun carriage establishment, and the railroads.