Wilderness Run (24 page)

“I suspect they rot on the wharves in Alexandria, Papa.” Laurence said. “Or the sutlers steal them and try to sell 'em back to us.”

Just then, a waiter came, and Laurence allowed his father to order for them both, for George dined there often when he came to New York on business. The waiter, a turnip-headed fellow with a resoundingly artificial British accent, appeared relieved that he didn't have to speak with Laurence, whose hands were so tan and calloused, they looked like pottery instead of flesh.

“They don't understand it here, do they?” Laurence asked his father after the waiter had strutted off in a haze of cologne. George Lindsey sat back in his chair and began digging in his breast pocket.

“What do you mean, son?”

“What we're fighting for.” Laurence felt the back of his neck go hot.

“There's not many men left in New York who are willing to fight, no,” his father answered mildly, and offered him a cigar before lighting his own. Laurence took two and thrust them quickly into his coat. The cigars would be a valuable commodity when he got back to camp.

“Would you like another?” His father raised a shaggy eyebrow. “I have more.”

Laurence blushed and took one from his pocket. “Bad habit,” he said, lighting it. The smoke was sweet and thick. “We soldiers like to barter.”

“I'll send you a box,” his father promised.

“No, don't,” said Laurence. “The others don't like it when a fellow's got more than they do.”

“Like a promotion?”

“Exactly,” Laurence matched his father's ironic tone. “Anyway, what about you? Do you understand why I'm a soldier?”

“Laurence. You're my son. I think the hardest thing my father ever faced was understanding his two sons.” Behind the smoke, George's face had a silvery cast, like the bark of beech trees.

“Why? He wanted you to be rich, and you got rich, didn't you?” Laurence's voice rose with challenge.

His father puffed on the brown thumb of tobacco. “My father deeply loved horses, Morgans especially. He never wanted anything to replace them. He thought change would come with the railroad—things we wouldn't be able to stop,” he said, and Laurence saw his chin quiver. “You're too young to remember, but he died angry with me. I was the one who altered Allenton. And, according to him, I was the one who made the sheep farms fail.”

“That's what you said to me about the war, too,” Laurence countered. His father's residual guilt suddenly sounded like his own. “You said we wouldn't be able to halt what we started.”

“You haven't yet.” George Lindsey stabbed out his cigar.

“Isn't slavery the same thing?” Laurence demanded. His father looked around the dining room before leaning across the table, so close that Laurence could feel the heat emanating from his skin.

“No,” he said softly. “Slavery is worse than war. Slavery has no cause but greed, which the men involved call ‘business.' I would never countenance it in my house.”

“But in your country?” Laurence punched his own cigar into the ashtray.

“Laurence,” his father said thoughtfully, as if reconsidering the name of his only son. “You cannot save another person from suffering. But all my life, I have wanted to save you from it. And now you've rushed headlong into the worst suffering yet in our history, with thousands of sons lying on battlefields, unburied, while their fathers wait at home to hear the news.”

“They are buried.” He thought of Morey Aldridge's grave near Lee's Mills.

“Let me finish,” George Lindsey commanded. “Not a day went by that I wasn't certain I had lost you. And now I see that I have.”

“You haven't lost me.” Laurence shook his head, scowling. “I'm still here, with all my limbs, which is more than I can say for a lot of fellows.”

“But you're not the boy that left us. Your eyes”—he paused, peering at Laurence—“your eyes have measured everything in this room since we entered it, including the fact that I am older, and perhaps not worth fighting with anymore. You've started to read men, which you never did before.” He grunted. “A fine quality for a businessman to have, I might add.”

The waiter arrived with soup and set it neatly in front of Laurence. “And if I don't want to be a businessman?” he retorted, but his anger was fading.

“You may change your mind.” George lifted a spoonful of soup delicately to his lips. Perplexed by his father's new, agreeable nature, Laurence turned to his own bowl. The delicate flavors of cream, mushroom, and potato soon absorbed him so greatly, he forgot his confusion and concentrated on savoring each spoonful. When he glanced up again, he saw his father watching him with a bemused expression.

“You're beginning to look so much like your uncle Daniel,” the older man said, running his spoon along the inside of his bowl. Threads of soup clung to it.

“You think so?”

“You have his bearing, even his hair, I think, although yours is a little lighter.”

“But your eyes,” Laurence said.

“That's right, my eyes, and my father's eyes before me. The color of chocolate, your aunt Faustina used to say.” George Lindsey's spoon clattered into the empty bowl. Laurence watched him carefully, wanting to ask his father a thousand questions. Did he really approve of Lucia's and Anne's copperhead suitors? Was Bel all grown up now? Why had he had Johnny Mulcane carve a swan for Aunt Faustina, and why had she thrown it into the fire?

“What about Bel? Do you think she favors your uncle?” George said suddenly.

“I think she favors her mother more,” Laurence answered, his ears burning. Did his father suspect his feelings for his cousin? They sat back in silence as the waiter brought their second course, two round lamb chops for each of them and crusty white rolls that puffed from a basket in the center of the table.

“How is she?” Laurence said casually. He would act differently around her now, cool and distant. She was his cousin, after all. He tore open a roll and covered it with vigorous sweeps of butter.

“She's an odd girl, Laurence, always in the garden or reading in some secret corner of Greenwood,” his father said. “Truth is, I think your aunt and uncle keep her shut in too much. Your sisters were always out calling at Isabel's age.” He plucked his own roll from the basket, ripping it to expose the steaming white interior.

“She's never been like Lucia and Anne,” Laurence said. “She's probably not ready to let her happiness depend on what color bow will match her dress, or how she can convince her father to buy her the latest silk from Paris.”

“Don't you think I know that?” George Lindsey half-shouted, his mild exterior falling away, revealing the paterfamilias Laurence remembered from his youth, the man who would not be corrected. “I knew that the day your uncle told me she tried to save that unfortunate slave. I knew she was more like you.”

His confession startled Laurence. They had never spoken about the runaway. After he had recovered from the fever, his parents had wanted to protect him from the truth, from the story of Johnny Mulcane and the bullet he fired in the dim hayloft, and Uncle Daniel's reluctance to intercede after the act. It had become, he realized, a story they remembered about Isabel rather than himself, and he felt a surge of jealousy.

“I told her to do it,” he said. The stale, grassy smell of the runaway returned to him. He saw the man swinging Bel down to the ice. “She wasn't going to do it on her own. She was afraid of him.”

“I know,” said George, and Laurence thought he saw a spark of admiration in his father's eyes. It burned out as he continued. “But the trouble with raising girls to be like boys is that they don't grow up to be men. They grow up to be women. Your aunt and uncle think she's safe if they keep her at Greenwood, but it's not safe. She needs to be around other young people, or she'll end up—” He stopped and threw up his hands. “It doesn't matter,” he muttered.

“She'll end up what? An old maid? If that's her future, so be it,” Laurence said, for he didn't like the idea of his young cousin simpering to attract the attention of some ridiculous suitor. She was to find a husband late in life, if she found one at all. “There are worse fates. If she were a man, she could end up in the infantry like me,” he added bitterly.

George tugged at his beard. “There are worse fates.”

Laurence sat back and observed his father, deciding then that he was the kind who would be killed within a few hours of action. George Lindsey would fly out of the cover of woods, or over a rough earthwork with a roar, trying to end the war in a single charge.

“Anyway, she's only—what, sixteen?” Laurence said, pursuing the topic as he chewed his last bite of meat. The rich taste of animal blood made it difficult to speak. “It's hardly too late for her to find a beau.” Although for Bel, he decided, it would always be too early. He couldn't stand the thought of another man pawing her. “Aunt Faustina will help her,” he added.

“Will she?” George replied, sounding suddenly weary of the conversation. He glanced at Laurence's empty plate. “Are you still hungry?”

Laurence nodded, surprised. George Lindsey had never cared so deeply about matchmaking, and he used to scoff at the tribulations of his daughters. As if to deflect Laurence's impending inquiry, his father resumed talking about the latest development in the railroad industry—luxury transport that would carry passengers across the prairie and all the way to California.

Laurence could sense by his father's enthusiasm that the truth of the war had not really reached him, for how could velvet curtains, manicurists, and full baths on private cars excite him if he knew how easily his rails could be ruined forever, twisted up the trunks of trees? But he let his father cast the spell of a Pullman car around him; he let him explain the ornate tile above the sinks, the hand-carved compartments for ladies' shoes.

They left the hotel after his father had ordered a second plate of lamb chops for Laurence, coffee from a silver pitcher, and cherry pie for dessert, then walked back to Washington Square, lingering over the carved doorways and window casings, for George Lindsey had always envied his brother's easy knowledge of architecture. Their voices rose above the haze of streetlamps, mingling with the conversations of others on their balconies and in their upstairs rooms. Laurence had never noticed before the labyrinthine sound of the city, and he enjoyed how anonymous they were suddenly, not Union or secesh, not one regiment or another, members only of the company of humanity. Were he not still in his ragged uniform, he would have forgotten he was a soldier, just the son of a rich man, or even just a son.

Chapter Thirty-one

When Betsey Knox strolled into the Washington Square camp, the heads of every idle soldier twisted in her direction as if pushed by the same strong breeze. Smiling to herself with knowing amusement, she asked the closest blue-uniformed soldier for Sgt. John Addison. The request had hardly left her mouth before the young man scrambled off obediently in search of him.

Slouched against a nearby oak, Laurence knew Addison was at their tent, but he did not alter his position when he heard Betsey's high voice say his friend's name. He was taking in her doll-like perfection, every inch arranged to be noticed: the straw bonnet arched over her blond hair, the curl of lace at her throat, the useless fan she clasped in her right hand. Betsey caught his eye and he lifted his cap, a gesture to which she replied with a barely discernible nod.

When Addison arrived, Betsey hung back coyly and held out her gloved fingers to be kissed. With an air of utter devotion, Addison bent his head to her hand—and then pulled it sharply so that her arm wound around his back and they stood close.

“Why, you devil.” Betsey squirmed, raising one blue sleeve to adjust her hat back to its jaunty position.

“Ladies should never cuss,” Addison said, releasing her slowly.

“
Devil
ain't a cussword,” she said, making a moue.

“Isn't. Ladies should also never use improper grammar.”

“Aw, what do you know about ladies?” She chucked him on the chest with her fan.

“Not much, ma'am,” Addison confessed, taking her by the elbow and towing her away from the ring of onlookers. He stopped as he passed Laurence, who was still posed by the oak tree. “But my friend Laurence Lindsey, he's an expert.”

Betsey fixed her round brown gaze on Laurence, making his cheeks go hot. “Are you?” she asked, tilting her head to the angle of her hat.

“I suppose,” he mumbled.

“Well, in just about everything else, then,” said Addison, grinning. He hadn't looked so happy in months. “His pa got him educated in a Boston private school. He's the schoolmarm of us all.”

“You must be terribly smart,” Betsey said, not absorbing Addison's delicate insult.

“Not smart enough to find a lady like you,” Laurence answered with his courtliest bow. He still did not smile, but his eyes remained on hers.

“What do they teach you, then?” she teased. Her lips were the color of ripe apples.

“How to be an upright, self-reliant man—”

“Who don't have to work for a living,” said Addison. Ignoring Laurence's glare, he tugged Betsey's elbow. “Shall I show you the camp?” he asked, and she turned away reluctantly.

Laurence watched as the two of them began their promenade, and then he left the oak to return to his tent. September had covered the ground with orange leaves and he sat down to sketch them on the back of one of his mother's letters. He wanted to remember them when the army returned to Virginia; he wanted to memorize their outlines and dry, waxy smell, as they reminded him of home. So absorbed was he in the task of drawing the curl of a stem that he didn't notice when Addison and Betsey ended their stroll in front of him.