7. What I Learned About Fighting

I couldn’t explain myself quickly or clearly enough. The way Anshel’s face went from curiosity to density as I stumbled through predictions of what Boniface Antony could do to us didn’t inspire me to be more fruitful in my debate, either. Moments before, I had accused Anshel of being a lunatic. Now he was thinking the same about me; the withering glint in his eyes told me so. He’d never say as much outright. He asked me why I believed Mr. B.

“I don’t have any reason not to believe Mr. B,” I replied, heartily concerned by Anshel’s inability to share my fear out of politeness, if not out of the solidarity usually seen among people connected to each other by blood. “He’s not a liar.”

“I’m not calling him a liar. The milk from his dairy had been stolen, yes? He was angry. Anger makes us say things we don’t mean. Mr. B wanted us to believe the worst about General Jackson because words are the only way he can get back at the soldiers.”

“Well, there’s more than words in the mound that Boniface Antony built on the parlor floor. If all we have to defend ourselves are words, we might as well find an excuse to go back out to the barn and run away. We’ll have a better chance of surviving the storm than of living through what happens when Mrs. Smithson’s darling boy starts pulling implements of death and destruction from the heap.”

“Better the mound is in here, where we can see it, than in the barn. We have to be watchful, Loydie. We mustn’t let Boniface Antony near it.”

“How?”

Anshel twirled a sidecurl around his finger, as thoughtfully distracted as my friend Suzie Sculthorpe the day she pulled her bodice out of the wash and saw it had shrunk into something fit for a doll.

“I know, I know,” he was saying, “I know, I know! We’ve got to make Boniface Antony forget about what he’s been sent out to do. We’ve got to make him forget about his orders.”

“He’s an officer! He didn’t get to be an officer for no good reason. He’s smart. He’s not likely to forget what his superiors tell him to do.”

“No, no, Loydie, we’re not going to make him forget his orders; we’re going to make him forget about them. There’s a difference. Listen, listen,” he interrupted as I intervened with a plea for common sense. “We read the papers, yes? We hear the talk around town. What is General Jackson known for? Surprise, yes? The surprise of attacking hard and fast. That’s what we’ll do with Boniface Antony. We’ll surprise him hard and fast.”

I had a vision of us jumping on the smallish fellow and then bringing him down and trussing him up like a hog. “I don’t know about that. We’re not trained to fight. We could get hurt.”

“Who’s talking about fighting?”

“You are.”

“I am?”

“You want to surprise him hard and fast.”

“I do! But I don’t mean we’re going to surprise him hard and fast with weapons. There are other ways of surprising people. I said we have to make him forget about his orders, yes? So, we make him forget about his orders by making him think about everything else except his orders. We do it so quickly, he won’t have time to remember what he’s forgetting.”

I confessed I had no idea how to do such a thing.

He shrugged. “We do what we always do: We live, and we live with simcha, with joy. You’ve never celebrated Shabbos, Loydie. Back in Glauchau, Shabbos is a celebration we look forward to week after week. We always have strangers for guests on Shabbos. We eat. We drink. We tell stories. The head of the house talks about that week’s Torah portion. Nobody wants the day to end. But the day does end, and when it’s time for everyone to part, strangers are no longer strangers. Nobody wants to leave, but everyone looks forward to being together again. God willing, Boniface Antony won’t want to leave, but when the day is over, he will leave wanting to come back.”

Anshel might have relied on happiness to defeat Boniface Antony’s evil intent, but I was a defenseless girl. Fire a pistol at me, and I was sure to fall. I decided to let Anshel deal with our murderous guest as he saw fit. I would deal with Boniface Antony as I myself saw fit. If required, I would kill him.

How, I couldn’t say. The mechanics of the deed abandoned me when I beheld the scene in the kitchen. Somehow, Mama, the deserter and Boniface Antony had arranged themselves in a collective pose that reminded me of illustrations in a ladies magazine. Mama stood beside the deserter, who was seated, with the frying pan in one hand and her other hand on the deserter’s shoulder. Together she and the deserter observed Boniface Antony, who, with both hands, held the little teacup at an angle that proclaimed he was draining the contents. The plate before him was empty, save for the crumbs and cutlery that betrayed the end of a minor feast. The expression on Mama’s face was one of tender disbelief. The deserter had his forefinger across his upper lip, as if holding down a smile. Boniface Antony’s face was obscured by the cup. His hands, the slightness of his frame and the length of his hair bespoke his youth.

“Son,” said the deserter, “was that your first meal of the day or of the month?”

I had the feeling that Boniface Antony wanted to ask for more coffee but restrained himself. “Sorry, sir. Everything tasted and smelled so good, my stomach thought it was back home.”

“Where is home?” Anshel’s tone struck me as a little too eager. If Boniface Antony perceived it as such, his reply was untroubled. Untroubled and at length. He went on for so long about the Smithsons of Richmond and their many homes throughout the state that Mama took a seat, the deserter’s eyes began to close, and I almost smothered myself choking back yawns. Anshel alone was undiluted by the recitation. He sat forward, leaning into the table, smiling, nodding, making enthusiastic noises. If this was his notion of attacking hard and fast, it wasn’t hard and it wasn’t fast.

Eventually the narrative dwindled into the stiff silence that plagues new acquaintances who have run out of things to say to each other. Mama asked me to help her clean up while the men retired to the drawing room for a smoke.

I was imparting what Anshel and I had discussed as calmly and quietly as I could, when we became aware of soft music. Someone was playing a Chopin nocturne. It was Boniface Antony. Anshel had failed to keep him away from the arsenal.