3. What Transpired with the Soldier

I refused to let that man take what belonged to somebody else. The eggs were covered by towels and a loaf of snow, but they were still raw eggs. I had no doubt they would break, either while colliding with each other or while spilling onto the ground. I let go of the basket. Out poured the eggs.

The soldier dismounted, pulled the reins over the horse’s head and onto his arm, and approached us, touching his cap. “Don’t mean to frighten you, miss, but you’d better be more scared of what your ma will say about those eggs! Hold these, son.”

Anshel took the reins the soldier shoved into him. Finally, he dropped his side of the basket.

I fear I squealed as the soldier lifted me up and sat me sideways on the horse, which had stepped up beside us. He then held the stirrup out to Anshel. “Get up there.”

“What?”

“Get on the horse.”

“Where?”

“Behind your sister. She is your sister, isn’t she?”

Anshel stayed put, not at all cowed by the same nerves that made it seem I lacked the ability to breathe. “I can’t sit like that with a girl. It’s wrong.”

The soldier peered into Anshel’s face, which was almost hidden by the massive brim of a furry round hat, and then turned to me. Snow clotted his beard, turning him into a modern likeness of St. Nicholas. But the warm sentiments associated with that benign figure were blasted away by his eyes--hard, white-blue plaques that promised to make any attempt at neighborliness bounce off their owner like Minié balls hitting rocks. I wished Anshel for once would be less pig-headed and stay as close to me as possible, if only for safety’s sake. "Did you just tell me it's wrong to ride a horse with a girl?"

“He's not from around here. He’s from far away, from a little town in Germany.” I spoke with haste. For all I knew, Anshel was the first Chassid ever to visit western Virginia. He was certainly the first the locals had ever seen. I had no desire for the man to suspect he had come from the North to cause trouble.

The soldier took back the reins. “There’s no time for muleheads, boy. You don’t want to ride? Then walk. Lead the way.”

Anshel blinked. “Where are we going?”

“You tell me! It had better be close by. I’m not in the vein to stay here and act out a scene from the last lucid moments of the Donner party.”

“Donner …” Anshel’s mouth formed the name without a sound. Where he came from, “Donner” meant thunder. He had yet to learn about the people who started eating each other after getting stranded in a snowstorm out West.

The soldier stood at the horse’s left shoulder, closed his right hand around the reins below the horse’s chin and held the rest of the reins in his left hand. “Which way, miss?”

“The way you were heading, sir. That’s the way to our home.”

I grabbed the horse’s mane, ready for the lurch of a horse stepping off.

Anshel trotted ahead, blowing on his hands to keep them warm. With the road snowed out of sight, he relied on the trees to guide us back. Our house and the outbuildings stood amid the snow undisturbed. Not one shutter was closed. Clearly, I would have to close them myself. Mama was impervious to the storm.

Anshel accompanied the soldier into the barn so the man could dry and rest his horse. I went to the house. I heard the Schubert the instant I opened the back door. I figured the best way to get Mama’s attention was by closing the lid over the keyboard. “Mama, we have a visitor.”

She turned with the angry start of somebody rudely awakened. Already the snow that had caked my cape was sloughing off in icy gobs. A fistful plopped on the piano. Mama ran her hands along my arms, as if feeling me to confirm what she saw. “Elodie! What have you done? Where have you been?”

I told her about our visitor as quickly as I could. “He could use some towels. And something hot to drink.” I backed away, pulling at the ribbons that attached my bonnet to my head. Snow was plummeting off the brim and into my face. I had to see what I was doing.

“A soldier is in the barn?”

“Yes, Mama. I told you, he brought me—“

“The neighbors’ milk is in the barn! He’ll leave here and tell his friends. They’ll come and take it.”

Mama leaped up from the piano chair. Her hair hung loose; she still wore her dressing gown and thin house slippers. Her state of undress did not prevent her from pulling her cape from the hook near the door.

I begged her to stay indoors. Anshel was with the man.

“No, Lodie, Anshel is with a soldier who has doubtless been pillaging Mr. B’s milk. God knows what the man will do to the boy before he makes off with whatever he can.”

“But the milk is in heavy cans, Mama! And it’s storming. He can’t go far.”

I ran after her, ignoring the bonnet that flapped against my back, half-choked by a soggy ribbon whose knot I was unfit to loose.

When we arrived at the barn, the horse was untacked and in the crossties in the aisle. Its neck stretched low as the soldier groomed it with Daddy’s old brushes. Its eyes were closed. Anshel stood at its head, rubbing its nose.

The soldier had tossed his greatcoat over the side of a stall, so it was plain to see he wore the simple gray uniform of a private. He must have been a private for a long time. The jacket was ripped in some places and patched in others. There was a slightly darker material at the seat of the pants and around the knees.

Mama first accosted Anshel, who, I confess, was as comfortable with the soldier’s horse as if it were his own pet. “Go into the house.” My cousin complied without a word.

Next Mama turned on the soldier. Rather, she attempted to turn on him Enter the barn in the middle of the night without benefit of a lamp, and you always knew by smell, if not sound, what was there: hay, sheep, cows, and chickens that cackled and flitted around the henhouse at the far end of the fieldstone structure. That morning, the everyday fragrance was enhanced by the smell of wet leather, a wet horse and a wet man whose rough woolen uniform oozed the scent of black powder and pipe smoke. Mama came to a halt as if she had slammed into a tree. She later said she realized her cape was a poor excuse for a day dress. She felt like the only full-blown rose in the hothouse. The top of her cheekbones flamed. She lowered her eyes.

“’Morning, ma’am.”

The soldier nodded to Mama and straightened, fidgeting with the brush in both his hands. He glanced at the floor, then raised his eyes and settled on Mama’s face. He was a tall man, hewn like a carved bear and, doubtless, hardened by service for his cause. But his manner was shy. I could see the color bleeding from beneath his shrubby brown beard up through the scalp beneath his receding hairline.

“Sir, you’ll be wanting breakfast,” Mama said.

She left without waiting for a reply.

I followed her up the back staircase to her room. She closed the door and sat on the side of her bed, her head in her hands. Her arms shook. I thought she was weeping. After a moment she whispered, “Oh dear God,” and pressed her hands to her mouth. Her eyes were dry and her cheeks were now the color of dry dough. “The enemy has come to our home, Elodie.”

The news was no source of alarm for me. “Mama, this is Virginia. We’ve lived here among enemy since the war started two years ago. We socialize with the enemy. We buy goods from the enemy. But you know what? The enemy hasn’t harmed us. The soldiers may have taken milk from Mr. B, but they didn’t harm him. Nobody here would think of hurting anybody.”

Alas, I knew this was not entirely true, not when General Jackson was executing men for desertion.

Mama clasped her hands in her lap, thinking. A surge of wind and snow shook the window. She stood, set her cape on the back of the side chair she had brought up from the dining room to use as a bedside table for books and magazines.

“Please start the coffee, Lodie.”

I asked her if she would have some herself.

She promised to join us as soon as she was dressed––and she had hidden all the pictures of Daddy in his Federal captain's uniform.