“You think Boniface Antony is going to kill us! I thought you thought he wasn’t out to kill civilians. You said Mr. B said what he said because he was mad at the soldiers for stealing the milk.”
“Yes, I did say that.”
“I believed you!”
“I believed me.”
“What changed your mind?”
“I couldn’t stop him from bringing his things into the cellar. I was afraid that, if I tried, he’d know we suspected him. He’d kill you and Tante Laurencia and the deserter once he was finished with me.”
“You said you’d protect us!”
“Yes, and I would do my best. But do I know how to stop a man? I’ve never killed a mad dog, let alone hit someone.”
“You might have stood up to him. Or to the deserter! If you ask me, that critter has no right telling people what to do on our premises. He doesn’t live here. Besides, he didn’t even know that we had a cellar. What if we didn’t?”
“It’s farbay, Loydie. Over. Done. Boniface Antony’s things are down there now. We can’t watch him if he sneaks away from us. We need to watch him before he sneaks away, and either try to keep him upstairs or think of a reason to go down there with him."
“And leave Mama with the deserter?”
Events were turning quicker than milk left in the summer sun, but, alas, I had no time to consider the flies swimming in it. Mama was calling for us to take the coverlets off our beds and bring them downstairs post haste.
Two men, civilians, sat in front of the fire, hugging themselves and leaning forward as if sharing secrets with the flames. Their teeth were chattering, and their cheeks were dabbed with little patches of red and blue. The older of the pair was in a brown plaid suit bigger and louder than any plaid I’d known to exist. The hems on the sleeves and trousers receded, as though the clothing had enjoyed a prior episode of shrinking. Each frozen parcel thanked Mama as she wrapped a coverlet around him. They looked up in gratitude, too, as the deserter, who had seen fit to raid the cupboard, poured coffee into cups from what I knew was the tea set Mama reserved for birthdays and other celebrations.
The man in plaid introduced himself as Ambrose Hodnett, and his companion as Lewis Groves. They were photographers working for the Richmond Dispatch, he said. Their wagon, horses and equipment had been stolen. “We had no choice but to walk until we could buy horses or until we reached Richmond ”
“Deserters.” Boniface Antony had the gravity of a governess who has successfully predicted the naughtiness of her charge. “Where did this unfortunate lapse in morals occur?”
Mr. Hodnett thought. “Maybe four, five miles from here, wasn’t it, Lew?”
Mr. Groves grunted. “More like ten.”
“You sure of that? We walked ten miles in a snowstorm?”
“We’re froze enough for ten.”
“Allow me to understand the situation, sir,” the deserter said. “Your wagon is a photographer’s studio on wheels, correct?”
“Indeed, it is, sir. You’ve got that right.”
“How was it possible for somebody to abscond with a photographer’s studio on wheels, and you not notice him doing so?”
“We stopped at a farm where the owner was said to offer refreshment. We came out, and the wagon was gone. We’re not sketch artists. We can’t take pictures of the war without cameras. We thought we’d head back to Richmond.”
“You’re traveling around a theater of war, and you don’t have a pass for safe conduct?”
The laugh had the appeal of splashing through puddles on a winter’s day. “Like I said, we’re lost. And we’re no longer in possession of our possessions. We’re strangers in a strange land, trusting that people will act like Christians and treat us right.”
Mama disregarded the bit about the Christians. It was an expression often pronounced by people who didn’t know any better. Mama never failed to help them know better, and to take delight in the learning. “I’ll fry some eggs for you,” she said. Without delay, the deserter upped and said he would go to the henhouse.
He tossed on one of the shawls we kept on a peg near the back door, but he forgot something to put the eggs in. I perceived a chance to speak with him, and dashed after him with a basket.
“Daddy!” I shouted before I was out the door. I wanted Anshel and Mama to know I was with the man. I hoped he would understand that everyone knew I was with him and not try anything untoward.
The henhouse was in the back of the barn, behind the empty boxes where the sheep and goats once lived. The deserter’s horse and Boniface’s horses were in the two front stalls, where Daddy had once lodged his own horses. I didn’t realize how small the deserter’s horse was until I saw it in close proximity to the beast Boniface had ridden onto the premises. Both animals whickered as I passed.
The deserter acknowledged me without looking up. “In truth, Miss Elodie, I don’t know if I want these eggs cooked for those two malcontents or thrown at them.”
Who was he calling malcontents, the photographers? I confess I backed up a step and almost ran to the house. “Why? They’ve been cruelly set upon.”
“Out of the mouths of babes,” the deserter said. He had turned a little away from me and his head was down as he inspected the nests, but it seemed to me that he was smiling as he spoke. And then his voice became louder and stern, as if he struggled to dispel his mirth.
“They had no business talking about their misadventure in front of you and your mother. If you ask me, the Good Lord saw fit to punish them on the spot for indulging in their natural urges. They’re lucky; He could have struck them dead. If I hear any more talk about refreshment, I’ll drive them out of the house. No decent Daddy would let a man recount that sort of thing in front of his wife and daughter.”
My real Daddy might not have approved of the tale, but I doubted he’d have driven anyone out of the house. The subject, though, gave me the chance to let my false daddy know how I felt about the situation. “I hope you don’t mind us all playacting to help you, sir, but I can’t believe myself when I call you Daddy. Could I please call you by your real name?”
He set one egg atop the other, fitting them with the care of a stonemason setting bricks. “This isn’t a big, working farm, Miss Elodie, so I’m of a mind to say your daddy wasn’t a farmer before the war.”
“He was a lawyer, sir. But we had a couple of horses, and we kept a few sheep and goats for wool and milk. Were you a lawyer, too, sir?” I added as the deserter’s eye brightened.
“My own daddy was a lawyer.”
“But what about you?”
“I was a teacher.”
“Of what”?
“Sunday school.”
The stress he placed upon the phrase reminded me that some people of his faith might not be pleased about being presented as someone of my own faith. I could barely hear myself asking him if my family had embarrassed him.
“Your father’s name is David,” he replied. “The Old Testament tells us that David was a great leader. While still a boy, he slew Goliath. Our Lord Jesus Christ was a descendant of David.”
“Then you’re not embarrassed?”
He had begun to open the barn door but closed it again, squinting against the tail of gritty snow that blew in. “Miss Elodie, we are the recipients of coincidence. Your father’s name is David. My name …”
I waited. There was something about the preamble that made me think he was going to come out with something grand in the Biblical style, like Jeroboam or Moses. But hardness shuttered his eye.
“My name is your father’s name,” he said, and opened the door, holding his kippah down against the wind.
Monday, January 24, 2011
Tuesday, January 18, 2011
8. What I Learned About Defeat
The pile of saddlebags and covered implements lurked in silhouette against the drapes like Vesuvius in the background of an awful play about the last days of Pompeii. But it was being caught in a transgression more minor than murder that turned the assassin’s face raw-meat red.
“Begging your pardon, Miss Elodie. It’s been ages since I had the benefit of hearing some beloved pieces. I simply could not resist.”
“It’s a tad out of tune,” I cautioned, though he must have perceived the overwhelming presence of the fact.
“Don’t trouble yourself over such a small matter. I do understand.” His compassion did not deter him from making a face when keys at the high end emulated the wavering pitch of a soprano past her prime.
Anshel snatched some books and sheet music from the piano lid. “Here! We have lots of music. What do you want? Beethoven? Mendelssohn? ‘Oft in the Stille Nacht?’”
“‘Stilly Night,’” I corrected. “‘Oft in the Stilly Night.’ ‘Stille Nacht’ is a Christmas song.’”
Boniface Antony coughed out a laugh. “Have you never heard of ‘Silent Night?’”
“He doesn’t celebrate Christmas,” I advised, though Anshel, I knew, was able to do so himself. “He’s an Israelite.”
“What’s he doing in Virginia?”
“My mother’s uncle in Germany sent him to help us with the farm after Daddy went to war.”
“I see.” Boniface Antony continued playing the Chopin. To tell the truth, he was out of practice and tended to play more cracks than keys. But he played with the kind of sense that turns a musician into a storyteller, making listeners cling to every word, wondering where they would go and what they would feel next. Somewhere around the middle, his concentration waned. Perhaps he was aware of Anshel standing between us and the heap of weaponry, leafing through a book of piano duets. Or perhaps something else was on his mind. “You’re mother’s an Israelite, too?”
“Yes.”
“And your father?”
“Yes.”
His questions were delivered with the spontaneity of tone that inhabits one stranger’s attempts to grow acquainted with another. What caught my attention was the fact that Boniface Antony had been in company for the better part of two hours when they came out of him. Was he so caught up in his mission to murder deserters that he never noticed Anshel’s sidecurls or the business with the kippah? I looked at Anshel, striving to shout at him, with my eyes, that his plan was a forlorn hope. Never would Boniface Antony be distracted from his mission. We were doomed.
“And you?”
Our incipient executioner was talking to me? “What about me?”
“You’re an Israelite, too?”
“Yes.”
“So I don’t suppose you would have any mammals of the porcine persuasion moping around your barn, would you? Dearie me, I was hoping for a nice side of bacon. Haven’t had a satisfying slab since … why, bless me, I don’t know how long it’s been! Do you know, Miss Elodie, I think my consternation deserves an airing. If you’ll be so good to indulge me …”
He aired that consternation by clobbering the keyboard with the opening chords of Beethoven’s Pathétique piano sonata. The instrument quaked beneath the blows, then shimmied and swayed as Boniface Antony ripped through the rest of the first movement. The assault was enough to drive the deserter pretending to be Daddy into the room with a very real display of displeasure.
“Ease up, son! Turn that piano into a lump of firewood, and I’ll turn you out into the storm.”
“I do apologize, sir.” Boniface Antony sat with his hands in his lap. The piano stopped shivering.
“An instrument as fragile as that deserves a lady’s hand.”
“Yes, yes, here, Loydie, play Mendelssohn. Here.”
Anshel opened a book of duets to an arrangement of the Swiss Song from Mendelssohn’s eleventh symphony for strings. I pulled a chair beside Boniface Antony, but Boniface Antony was not to join me in this performance. Heeding the summons for a lady’s hand, Mama took the bench. Boniface Antony stood at my side, eager to turn pages.
The deserter found his way amid the towers of books to an easy chair flanked by a side table and the empty bookcase. Anshel discreetly stationed himself between Boniface Antony and the mound.
There was no possibility of finishing the jaunty tune. Once again the porch was a platform for people on the outside trying to escape the storm.
Boniface Antony watched as Anshel peeked through the drapes.“Soldiers or civilians?”
“I can’t tell. The snow, it’s blowing too hard.”
“No matter. We can’t leave my things here.”
“Why not?” said the deserter.
“I don’t want anyone to see them.”
“We see them.”
“No, no, Mr. Sternbach. If the men out there are deserters, and if they see these things, they’ll grow afraid. They’ll try to overwhelm us.”
“You mean they’ll try to overwhelm you! They’ve no argument with us, son. This is our home. We were here first.” The glass in the door rattled as the blows reflected the growing desperation of the travelers. At least two men were shouting, demanding to know if anyone was home.
“Well, son, what are you going to do?”
“We’ve got to move my things.”
“So bring them out to the barn.”
“It’s too far. I can’t carry it all by myself.”
“Then put it in the cellar.”
“It’ll still take too long! I can’t do it all by myself.”
“It’s your stuff, son. You managed to get it all here by yourself. I’m certain you can convey it down a few steps all by yourself. Leave the visitors to me,” he said as Boniface Antony protested. “God forbid I get in the way of business between you and your superior officer.”
“Excuse me, Mr. Sternbach, but my business is with someone greater than my immediate superior officer. I was given this task by General Jackson himself. I daren’t fail.”
“I admire your initiative, Boniface, but General Jackson does not command this home.”
“Yes, sir. And sir?”
“Yes, Boniface?”
“It’s either Boniface Antony or B.A., never Boniface.”
“I’ll remember that, B.A.”
“Thank you.”
“‘B.A. The Boy Attilla.” The deserter muttered as the laden youth commenced the first of several descents by way of the stairs in the kitchen. “Who on God’s great earth had the dimness of intellect to make that child an officer?”
Now the people on the porch were pounding on the side of the house. I read a certain anguish in the deserter’s eyes. He must have been afraid to answer the door. But how could he not answer the door? He was the head of the house. How would it look if he left his wife to deal with strangers aching to escape the blizzard and perhaps fearing for their lives if they were denied shelter? He asked Anshel if the new arrivals had horses. They did. The animals would need shelter, too.
The deserter directed Anshel to go to the barn and make certain his horse was blanketed and his uniform was out of sight. When Anshel returned from the barn, he did not return to help us greet the latest guests. I happened to catch him tiptoing up the stairs that led from the passage at the back door.
I asked him where he was going.
“It’s time for mincha, mid-day prayers.”
“You have until close to three to say mincha, haven’t you?”
“I need to say it now.”
He didn’t look at me as he spoke. That, and his hurried manner, led me to suspect something was amiss. Had he found something or someone in the barn?
I followed him up the stairs, not stopping for breath as I asked one question after the other. He relented only when we reached his room. He leaned against the door as though anxiety and disbelief were mashing the energy out of him.
“We’ve made a mistake, Loydie,” he whispered. “We let Boniface Antony bring all those weapons into the cellar. I think he means to entice us down there, and to kill us, and to bury us. We’ll never be found. And nobody will ever know.”
“Begging your pardon, Miss Elodie. It’s been ages since I had the benefit of hearing some beloved pieces. I simply could not resist.”
“It’s a tad out of tune,” I cautioned, though he must have perceived the overwhelming presence of the fact.
“Don’t trouble yourself over such a small matter. I do understand.” His compassion did not deter him from making a face when keys at the high end emulated the wavering pitch of a soprano past her prime.
Anshel snatched some books and sheet music from the piano lid. “Here! We have lots of music. What do you want? Beethoven? Mendelssohn? ‘Oft in the Stille Nacht?’”
“‘Stilly Night,’” I corrected. “‘Oft in the Stilly Night.’ ‘Stille Nacht’ is a Christmas song.’”
Boniface Antony coughed out a laugh. “Have you never heard of ‘Silent Night?’”
“He doesn’t celebrate Christmas,” I advised, though Anshel, I knew, was able to do so himself. “He’s an Israelite.”
“What’s he doing in Virginia?”
“My mother’s uncle in Germany sent him to help us with the farm after Daddy went to war.”
“I see.” Boniface Antony continued playing the Chopin. To tell the truth, he was out of practice and tended to play more cracks than keys. But he played with the kind of sense that turns a musician into a storyteller, making listeners cling to every word, wondering where they would go and what they would feel next. Somewhere around the middle, his concentration waned. Perhaps he was aware of Anshel standing between us and the heap of weaponry, leafing through a book of piano duets. Or perhaps something else was on his mind. “You’re mother’s an Israelite, too?”
“Yes.”
“And your father?”
“Yes.”
His questions were delivered with the spontaneity of tone that inhabits one stranger’s attempts to grow acquainted with another. What caught my attention was the fact that Boniface Antony had been in company for the better part of two hours when they came out of him. Was he so caught up in his mission to murder deserters that he never noticed Anshel’s sidecurls or the business with the kippah? I looked at Anshel, striving to shout at him, with my eyes, that his plan was a forlorn hope. Never would Boniface Antony be distracted from his mission. We were doomed.
“And you?”
Our incipient executioner was talking to me? “What about me?”
“You’re an Israelite, too?”
“Yes.”
“So I don’t suppose you would have any mammals of the porcine persuasion moping around your barn, would you? Dearie me, I was hoping for a nice side of bacon. Haven’t had a satisfying slab since … why, bless me, I don’t know how long it’s been! Do you know, Miss Elodie, I think my consternation deserves an airing. If you’ll be so good to indulge me …”
He aired that consternation by clobbering the keyboard with the opening chords of Beethoven’s Pathétique piano sonata. The instrument quaked beneath the blows, then shimmied and swayed as Boniface Antony ripped through the rest of the first movement. The assault was enough to drive the deserter pretending to be Daddy into the room with a very real display of displeasure.
“Ease up, son! Turn that piano into a lump of firewood, and I’ll turn you out into the storm.”
“I do apologize, sir.” Boniface Antony sat with his hands in his lap. The piano stopped shivering.
“An instrument as fragile as that deserves a lady’s hand.”
“Yes, yes, here, Loydie, play Mendelssohn. Here.”
Anshel opened a book of duets to an arrangement of the Swiss Song from Mendelssohn’s eleventh symphony for strings. I pulled a chair beside Boniface Antony, but Boniface Antony was not to join me in this performance. Heeding the summons for a lady’s hand, Mama took the bench. Boniface Antony stood at my side, eager to turn pages.
The deserter found his way amid the towers of books to an easy chair flanked by a side table and the empty bookcase. Anshel discreetly stationed himself between Boniface Antony and the mound.
There was no possibility of finishing the jaunty tune. Once again the porch was a platform for people on the outside trying to escape the storm.
Boniface Antony watched as Anshel peeked through the drapes.“Soldiers or civilians?”
“I can’t tell. The snow, it’s blowing too hard.”
“No matter. We can’t leave my things here.”
“Why not?” said the deserter.
“I don’t want anyone to see them.”
“We see them.”
“No, no, Mr. Sternbach. If the men out there are deserters, and if they see these things, they’ll grow afraid. They’ll try to overwhelm us.”
“You mean they’ll try to overwhelm you! They’ve no argument with us, son. This is our home. We were here first.” The glass in the door rattled as the blows reflected the growing desperation of the travelers. At least two men were shouting, demanding to know if anyone was home.
“Well, son, what are you going to do?”
“We’ve got to move my things.”
“So bring them out to the barn.”
“It’s too far. I can’t carry it all by myself.”
“Then put it in the cellar.”
“It’ll still take too long! I can’t do it all by myself.”
“It’s your stuff, son. You managed to get it all here by yourself. I’m certain you can convey it down a few steps all by yourself. Leave the visitors to me,” he said as Boniface Antony protested. “God forbid I get in the way of business between you and your superior officer.”
“Excuse me, Mr. Sternbach, but my business is with someone greater than my immediate superior officer. I was given this task by General Jackson himself. I daren’t fail.”
“I admire your initiative, Boniface, but General Jackson does not command this home.”
“Yes, sir. And sir?”
“Yes, Boniface?”
“It’s either Boniface Antony or B.A., never Boniface.”
“I’ll remember that, B.A.”
“Thank you.”
“‘B.A. The Boy Attilla.” The deserter muttered as the laden youth commenced the first of several descents by way of the stairs in the kitchen. “Who on God’s great earth had the dimness of intellect to make that child an officer?”
Now the people on the porch were pounding on the side of the house. I read a certain anguish in the deserter’s eyes. He must have been afraid to answer the door. But how could he not answer the door? He was the head of the house. How would it look if he left his wife to deal with strangers aching to escape the blizzard and perhaps fearing for their lives if they were denied shelter? He asked Anshel if the new arrivals had horses. They did. The animals would need shelter, too.
The deserter directed Anshel to go to the barn and make certain his horse was blanketed and his uniform was out of sight. When Anshel returned from the barn, he did not return to help us greet the latest guests. I happened to catch him tiptoing up the stairs that led from the passage at the back door.
I asked him where he was going.
“It’s time for mincha, mid-day prayers.”
“You have until close to three to say mincha, haven’t you?”
“I need to say it now.”
He didn’t look at me as he spoke. That, and his hurried manner, led me to suspect something was amiss. Had he found something or someone in the barn?
I followed him up the stairs, not stopping for breath as I asked one question after the other. He relented only when we reached his room. He leaned against the door as though anxiety and disbelief were mashing the energy out of him.
“We’ve made a mistake, Loydie,” he whispered. “We let Boniface Antony bring all those weapons into the cellar. I think he means to entice us down there, and to kill us, and to bury us. We’ll never be found. And nobody will ever know.”
Monday, January 17, 2011
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.
“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.
Sunday, January 16, 2011
6. What Anshel Did To Us
“Imagination” was not the word that assailed me whenever I contemplated the being who was Anshel. Say “Anshel,” and without delay I would envision my cousin consulting a book of Jewish law to see what God decreed he could or could not do. He was so empty of creative urges that when “Onkel Dovid!” flew out of him, I expected to see my father, whose name was David but became “Dovid” in Yiddish, the blend of Hebrew and medieval German that Anshel spoke as easily as I spoke English.
I hadn’t seen Daddy since June of ’61, two months after the war started. He’d gone up north to New York and joined a regiment led by an old friend from Columbia College. In the beginning, he was able to get letters to us by way of an artist who followed the war for a popular magazine. The artist would put the letters in an envelope when he reached a Confederate state, then post them with a return address that he would make up and write himself. We never wrote back. Daddy had told us not to. He didn’t want our letters to be discovered if the artist was captured or killed in the South. After a while, Daddy’s letters stopped. We figured something had happened to the artist, not to Daddy, because if Daddy had died or been captured, somebody would have sent word. So, when Anshel cried “Onkel Dovid!” I turned, believing I would see him.
My belief lugged with it all the tinglings, thrills and throbbings that exert themselves in the sudden sighting of a loved one. For a moment those sensations hung like breath standing still on a frosty night. Then I realized the object of Anshel’s greeting was not my father but the deserter in the barn, concealed in the clothes Mama had brought out to him.
I suspected Anshel must dislike me to Biblical proportions to pull such a heartless trick on me. My fist would have become part of his shoulder had he not spun around me, chattering something about the wind blowing away his onkel’s kippah. I recovered my footing in time to see him plop his own kippah on the deserter’s head. “Here! Take mine!” (He was almost shouting.) “The head of the house should never be without his kippah. Not to worry, not to worry,” he continued, slapping the hat back atop the deserter’s head as the man tried to sweep it off, “It’s yours now. Tante Laurencia can make me a new one.”
Mama seemed not to have noticed my attempt to throttle her nephew. Nor did she appear to notice that she was now married to a stranger. She poured more fake coffee for Boniface Antony, who drank and chewed and as if he were penned into a world whose boundaries began and ended with the sustenance he ingested. In all fairness, I must say that he interrupted his feast to stand when the stranger appeared.
“Elodie,” Mama said. “Elodie, please help Anshel with his new kippah.”
Now?
“Yes, Elodie. Now. Help Anshel with his new kippah.”
She spoke as though I’d said, “Now?” though I was not aware of having made a peep. And why was she using my name so much? I knew who I was.
“Yes, yes, that’s a good idea, Loydie,” Anshel added. “Tante Laurencia is right. I need a new kippah. Get the tape measure. I’ll wait here with Tante Laurencia and Onkel Dovid. Sit, Onkel Dovid. Tante Laurencia will get you coffee.”
The deserter loomed over the chair that Anshel pulled away from the table for him. “I don’t know, Nephew. You and this young fellow here? You both look like you could eat a house between you. Maybe I should go and get more eggs.”
Boniface Antony spoke through a mouthful. “Not for me, sir. I’m so full of eggs, thanks to your wife’s hospitality, that I could grow feathers.”
“Feathers won’t protect you from this snow, son. I’ve never seen a storm like this in all my life. Whatever your officers sent you out to do, you won’t be able to do it until tomorrow, if not later.”
“As I told the missus, sir, I’m ordered to apprehend deserters. I was commissioned in this enterprise by General T.J. Jackson himself.”
“Is that so? Well, I’ll tell you, young man, that sounds to me like a mighty big responsibility. How many deserters do you think you’ll round up?”
“As many as come my way, sir.”
“You’re by yourself? How do you propose to bring these deserters back to camp?”
Boniface Antony fingered the delicate handle on the coffee cup. “Sir, I do not propose to bring any one of them back to camp. My orders are to apprehend them and dispatch them with speed.”
“Dispatch them to where?”
Boniface Antony swept glittering eyes over Mama and me. “I’d rather not say in the presence of the ladies, sir, but I do ask you to believe that the destination is the place, below ground, where all traitors must be consigned.”
“He means to execute them.” Mama’s offered the news with not the slightest touch of sensitivity.
“I see.” The deserter, my false Daddy, stirred his coffee, clanked the spoon on the rim of the cup. “General Jackson ordered you to shoot them?”
“Yes, sir.”
“And General Jackson ordered you to bury them?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Where?”
“Wherever they take their last breath, Mister … Forgive me, sir, I don’t believe I caught your name.”
“Sternbach.” Anshel and Mama spoke together. Anshel was louder.
“And you are willing to follow those orders?”
“Orders are orders, Mr. Sternbach.”
My false Daddy glowered, drawing his mouth so tight that it seemed to vanish in the safety of his beard.
I’d never known a man to receive a notice of his death while he was so acutely among the living. What would this man do? He was twice the size of Boniface Antony. I had no doubt he could reach across the table, grab the youth by the throat and squeeze him into the bosom of Abraham. Considering the tableau, with all its attendant sights and sounds, made me feel unwell, as if my breakfast couldn’t decide which way it wanted to go. I sought refuge by excusing myself to start sewing a new kippah for Anshel.
My sewing box was in the parlor, near the piano, but I wanted to go farther away from the impending scene of carnage. I went up to my room and fussed around the chest of drawers, pretending to look for muslin and thread I knew weren’t there. I found vast satisfaction in slamming shut the drawers, and opening others, repeating the futile search. I didn’t realize Anshel had followed me until I heard his voice. “Loydie! What are you doing?”
“I have to make a muslin to make sure the kippah fits.”
“Make a muslin? It’s a kippa, not a bodice. You take the measurement, you leave enough for the seam. Trust me. My mother’s uncle in Glauchau is a tailor. He taught me some things about making clothes.”
“I thought your mother’s uncle was a rabbi.”
“He is a rabbi.”
“And he’s a tailor?”
“He’s got to make a living. Why are you so angry?” Anshel steadied the oil lamp that rocked atop the bureau as the latest drawer to be rifled slid into place with an energetic push.
“I am not angry.”
“Yes, you are. You’d breathe fire, if you could.”
“Pay no mind to me. Go back to Mama. She shouldn’t be alone with those men.”
“But that officer, he’s got to believe the deserter is your father.”
“The deserter is not my father.”
“Do you want Boniface Antony to shoot him in front of us? Loydie, don’t you know the story of Amalek, and how he attacked innocent men, women and children as Moses led our people out of Mizrayim, the land you call Egypt? General Jackson is Amalek. He must be, to want to kill men who would risk death to leave the war and return home to their families. The Torah commands us to remember Amalek.”
“I don’t care about something that happened during Bible times. I care about what’s happening now, today, in my home. You’re a lunatic to say that rebel soldier is my father!”
“He is a man who would be murdered. It’s a mitzvah to save his life.”
“By saying he’s my father?”
“We’ve got to make Boniface Antony believe the deserter belongs here with us.”
“Not as my father! Mama asked him to come in here as part of the family, nothing more.”
“What was I supposed to call him? Wouldn’t it look funny if your mother lived with a man who wasn’t related to her?”
“You could have said he was her brother.”
“If she had a brother, he would be here, in my place. I’d still be over in Germany.”
As well you should be, I thought. Having nothing more to say, I grabbed a piece of the old petticoat that I’d ripped up to use as a dustcloth after the fabric had grown thin and frayed.
I had not yet reached the stairs when I remembered Mr. B telling us about General Jackson earlier in the day: “He’s killin’ his own men. And if he’s killin’ his own men, you know he’s gonna start killin’ civilians–if he’s not doin’ it already.”
Boniface Antony had been quick to proclaim his business on behalf of General Jackson. But what if Mr. B was right, and Boniface Antony was out to kill more than deserting soldiers?
What if he was out to kill us, as well?
I hadn’t seen Daddy since June of ’61, two months after the war started. He’d gone up north to New York and joined a regiment led by an old friend from Columbia College. In the beginning, he was able to get letters to us by way of an artist who followed the war for a popular magazine. The artist would put the letters in an envelope when he reached a Confederate state, then post them with a return address that he would make up and write himself. We never wrote back. Daddy had told us not to. He didn’t want our letters to be discovered if the artist was captured or killed in the South. After a while, Daddy’s letters stopped. We figured something had happened to the artist, not to Daddy, because if Daddy had died or been captured, somebody would have sent word. So, when Anshel cried “Onkel Dovid!” I turned, believing I would see him.
My belief lugged with it all the tinglings, thrills and throbbings that exert themselves in the sudden sighting of a loved one. For a moment those sensations hung like breath standing still on a frosty night. Then I realized the object of Anshel’s greeting was not my father but the deserter in the barn, concealed in the clothes Mama had brought out to him.
I suspected Anshel must dislike me to Biblical proportions to pull such a heartless trick on me. My fist would have become part of his shoulder had he not spun around me, chattering something about the wind blowing away his onkel’s kippah. I recovered my footing in time to see him plop his own kippah on the deserter’s head. “Here! Take mine!” (He was almost shouting.) “The head of the house should never be without his kippah. Not to worry, not to worry,” he continued, slapping the hat back atop the deserter’s head as the man tried to sweep it off, “It’s yours now. Tante Laurencia can make me a new one.”
Mama seemed not to have noticed my attempt to throttle her nephew. Nor did she appear to notice that she was now married to a stranger. She poured more fake coffee for Boniface Antony, who drank and chewed and as if he were penned into a world whose boundaries began and ended with the sustenance he ingested. In all fairness, I must say that he interrupted his feast to stand when the stranger appeared.
“Elodie,” Mama said. “Elodie, please help Anshel with his new kippah.”
Now?
“Yes, Elodie. Now. Help Anshel with his new kippah.”
She spoke as though I’d said, “Now?” though I was not aware of having made a peep. And why was she using my name so much? I knew who I was.
“Yes, yes, that’s a good idea, Loydie,” Anshel added. “Tante Laurencia is right. I need a new kippah. Get the tape measure. I’ll wait here with Tante Laurencia and Onkel Dovid. Sit, Onkel Dovid. Tante Laurencia will get you coffee.”
The deserter loomed over the chair that Anshel pulled away from the table for him. “I don’t know, Nephew. You and this young fellow here? You both look like you could eat a house between you. Maybe I should go and get more eggs.”
Boniface Antony spoke through a mouthful. “Not for me, sir. I’m so full of eggs, thanks to your wife’s hospitality, that I could grow feathers.”
“Feathers won’t protect you from this snow, son. I’ve never seen a storm like this in all my life. Whatever your officers sent you out to do, you won’t be able to do it until tomorrow, if not later.”
“As I told the missus, sir, I’m ordered to apprehend deserters. I was commissioned in this enterprise by General T.J. Jackson himself.”
“Is that so? Well, I’ll tell you, young man, that sounds to me like a mighty big responsibility. How many deserters do you think you’ll round up?”
“As many as come my way, sir.”
“You’re by yourself? How do you propose to bring these deserters back to camp?”
Boniface Antony fingered the delicate handle on the coffee cup. “Sir, I do not propose to bring any one of them back to camp. My orders are to apprehend them and dispatch them with speed.”
“Dispatch them to where?”
Boniface Antony swept glittering eyes over Mama and me. “I’d rather not say in the presence of the ladies, sir, but I do ask you to believe that the destination is the place, below ground, where all traitors must be consigned.”
“He means to execute them.” Mama’s offered the news with not the slightest touch of sensitivity.
“I see.” The deserter, my false Daddy, stirred his coffee, clanked the spoon on the rim of the cup. “General Jackson ordered you to shoot them?”
“Yes, sir.”
“And General Jackson ordered you to bury them?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Where?”
“Wherever they take their last breath, Mister … Forgive me, sir, I don’t believe I caught your name.”
“Sternbach.” Anshel and Mama spoke together. Anshel was louder.
“And you are willing to follow those orders?”
“Orders are orders, Mr. Sternbach.”
My false Daddy glowered, drawing his mouth so tight that it seemed to vanish in the safety of his beard.
I’d never known a man to receive a notice of his death while he was so acutely among the living. What would this man do? He was twice the size of Boniface Antony. I had no doubt he could reach across the table, grab the youth by the throat and squeeze him into the bosom of Abraham. Considering the tableau, with all its attendant sights and sounds, made me feel unwell, as if my breakfast couldn’t decide which way it wanted to go. I sought refuge by excusing myself to start sewing a new kippah for Anshel.
My sewing box was in the parlor, near the piano, but I wanted to go farther away from the impending scene of carnage. I went up to my room and fussed around the chest of drawers, pretending to look for muslin and thread I knew weren’t there. I found vast satisfaction in slamming shut the drawers, and opening others, repeating the futile search. I didn’t realize Anshel had followed me until I heard his voice. “Loydie! What are you doing?”
“I have to make a muslin to make sure the kippah fits.”
“Make a muslin? It’s a kippa, not a bodice. You take the measurement, you leave enough for the seam. Trust me. My mother’s uncle in Glauchau is a tailor. He taught me some things about making clothes.”
“I thought your mother’s uncle was a rabbi.”
“He is a rabbi.”
“And he’s a tailor?”
“He’s got to make a living. Why are you so angry?” Anshel steadied the oil lamp that rocked atop the bureau as the latest drawer to be rifled slid into place with an energetic push.
“I am not angry.”
“Yes, you are. You’d breathe fire, if you could.”
“Pay no mind to me. Go back to Mama. She shouldn’t be alone with those men.”
“But that officer, he’s got to believe the deserter is your father.”
“The deserter is not my father.”
“Do you want Boniface Antony to shoot him in front of us? Loydie, don’t you know the story of Amalek, and how he attacked innocent men, women and children as Moses led our people out of Mizrayim, the land you call Egypt? General Jackson is Amalek. He must be, to want to kill men who would risk death to leave the war and return home to their families. The Torah commands us to remember Amalek.”
“I don’t care about something that happened during Bible times. I care about what’s happening now, today, in my home. You’re a lunatic to say that rebel soldier is my father!”
“He is a man who would be murdered. It’s a mitzvah to save his life.”
“By saying he’s my father?”
“We’ve got to make Boniface Antony believe the deserter belongs here with us.”
“Not as my father! Mama asked him to come in here as part of the family, nothing more.”
“What was I supposed to call him? Wouldn’t it look funny if your mother lived with a man who wasn’t related to her?”
“You could have said he was her brother.”
“If she had a brother, he would be here, in my place. I’d still be over in Germany.”
As well you should be, I thought. Having nothing more to say, I grabbed a piece of the old petticoat that I’d ripped up to use as a dustcloth after the fabric had grown thin and frayed.
I had not yet reached the stairs when I remembered Mr. B telling us about General Jackson earlier in the day: “He’s killin’ his own men. And if he’s killin’ his own men, you know he’s gonna start killin’ civilians–if he’s not doin’ it already.”
Boniface Antony had been quick to proclaim his business on behalf of General Jackson. But what if Mr. B was right, and Boniface Antony was out to kill more than deserting soldiers?
What if he was out to kill us, as well?
Sunday, January 2, 2011
5. What Awaited Without
“I saw pistols on him, and saddlebags and coils of rope on his horse,” Anshel said as I tried not to issue sounds of female alarm against this new interference. “He’s a fully clad man of war. He might be looking for deserters.”
I thought of the man in the barn. If the man on the porch was out for deserters, and the man in the barn was a deserter, then reason hinted that the man on the porch, armed to his horse’s teeth, would prevail over the man in the barn, who might not have had any teeth of his own beneath his beard.
“We’ve got to let him in.” Anshel spoke with some urgency as the visitor rapped on the door with the insistence of someone who believes the homeowner is loitering in the bowels of the garret. “He knows we’re home. He must. The lamps are lighted, and there’s smoke coming from the chimney. Besides, if we don’t let him in, he might break down the door.”
“If we do let him in, we’ve got to keep him away from the barn,” I said.
“He’ll want to put the horse in the barn.”
“The deserter is in the barn.”
“No, Loydie, a man we think is a deserter is in the barn. He might not be a deserter, after all. We don’t know. We didn’t ask, and he didn’t say.”
Again, the visitor banged on the door. We could hear his boots as he walked along the porch, perhaps trying to peer in through an opening between the poorly drawn drapes.
Mama’s face went as dim as the expression in a portrait by an artist who can’t paint people. I knew what she was thinking: One interloper was enough. Two were a catastrophe. She couldn’t support it. She turned to Anshel. “Tell him to wait a minute. You can’t come to the door that fast.”
“Me?”
“He’ll think twice about doing mischief if he hears somebody other than a woman.”
Anshel shouted from where he stood. “Wait, wait! I can’t walk …”
I hoped the stranger was more convinced than I. At least acknowledgement by someone in the house seemed to stifle him. He returned to the door. Silence suggested he waited. We all supposed he wouldn’t wait very long. I hoped to push Mama into a decision by whining “Maaaaa!”
The aural excoriation moved her to advise me to be quiet and to direct Anshel to open the door. We would all greet the man, she instructed, so he would know he was outnumbered. Then Anshel himself would bring the visitor’s horse to the barn.
So Anshel opened the door. We tensed, anticipating a grizzled tree-trunk enhanced by a collection of hardware associated with his occupation. But rather than look up to encounter the visitor’s face, we had to look straight ahead, into the visage of a youth so pretty, I thought he was a girl in disguise. The long, luxurious hair beneath his snowy gray kepi was the color of clover honey; his eyes were as blue as the relieved sky after a vicious downpour.
Looking back, I think the fellow might have been thinking Anshel, too, was a girl, because of the sidecurls, which were the envy of any female who had ever struggled with a curling iron. After a moment in which youth and youth beheld each other with the kind of look that shrouds a pup upon first seeing itself in a mirror, the new arrival became aware of Mama and removed his hat with a crisp motion that could have been attained only through years of signaling respect for the gentler sex.
“Begging your pardon, ma’am. I’m lost in the storm. Your hearth led me here. I smelled it.”
Mama's smile was the one that bloomed whenever she encountered a small child or a small furry mammal. She swept aside her skirts as if she were wearing a moire ballgown instead of a calico, opened wide the door and welcomed the lost warrior to a place by the fire. Her nephew, she said, would be delighted to install our guest’s horse in the barn.
“That’s right kindly of you, sir,” the soldier said to Anshel. “First, however, allow me to relieve you of some of my necessities. I wouldn’t want you to trouble yourself to carry it all the way back here.”
“Some” of those items were two saddle bags; a roll of thick fabric we couldn’t tell was an extra greatcoat or a bedroll; a rather long musket; a rather short musket; rope; a shovel; an ax. He arranged it all in a clanking heap in the corner of the parlor, amid Mama’s towers of books.
Only then did he proceed to set himself in front of the fire and accept a cup of coffee. His name, he said, was Boniface Antony Smithson, of the Smithsons near Richmond. He was a cavalry lieutenant, scouting for deserters under orders of T.J. Jackson, Lieutenant General , Second Corps, the Army of Virginia. “It is my deepest desire that your home, the sole outpost of succor in the wasteland of this unnatural event, will attract the traitors as surely and swiftly as it had attracted your humble servant.”
It seemed to me that he spoke like a schoolboy trying to be a bad poet. Mama's mouth quivered. I wondered if she was amused or if she pitied the youth for his airs. “What will you do with the deserters if they come here?”
“What I’ve been ordered to do, of course: exact justice with speed and economy of measure."
“How many deserters do you expect to find?”
“A number sufficient to render my presence in such a purpose and at such a time as essential.”
“More than one, Lieutenant Smithson?”
“Many more than one, ma’am.”
“But you are by yourself. How will you bring all the deserters back to your encampment, or to General Jackson’s headquarters?”
“I’m not to bring them back, ma’am.”
“Surely, you can’t mean to imprison them indefinitely on the premises.”
“Oh no, ma’am. Rest assured, I shall burden you with not one living soul underfoot.”
“You should understand, Lieutenant, that I have no carriage or wagon, if you were hoping to borrow one.”
“No, ma’am. As I said, I’m not to bring back deserters.”
“What, then, do you mean to do with them?”
“They are a threat to our country, ma’am. My orders, therefore, are to exact justice with speed and economy of measure. These are desperate men,” Boniface Antony continued as the hints entrenched in his narrative sealed our lips with horror we dare not express if we dared to dwell upon the horror he implied. “I cannot convey to you the degree of danger you are in once they come under your roof.”
“I see,” said Mama, though she later confided that she truly could not see how a being so attractive should appear to relish the use of his person as an instrument of death and vengeance.
She asked the sapling officer if he would like some fried eggs. He agreed, so long as it did not pose an inconvenience for his gracious hostess.
“Not at all,” Mama said, and asked me to join her on the hunt for the freshest eggs. I could stay downstairs, if I wished, while she retrieved our warmest shawls from upstairs. Of course, I went with her, desiring to converse with her about this startling trick of fate. But she said nothing. She dug amid the armoire, and tossed over her arms not merely a heavy shawl, but Papa’s trousers, shirt, and waistcoat , which she concealed beneath the shawl until we were away from the house and hidden by the storm.
Exertion and the promise of all that could savage our house in the hours to come must have played upon her, for when we reached the barn, I and our deserter inside had to support her before she sank to the floor on her knees.
All the while, she pressed the pile of Papa’s clothing at the soldier, saying, “There’s a man sheltering in our house who would murder you, sir! These are my husband’s things. Put them on, I beg you, and come into our home as one of the family.”
It seemed to me the soldier’s eyes twinkled. “Now, who on God’s great earth would want to murder me?”
“A cavalryman. His name is Smithson, B.A. Smithson.”
“Confederate or Federal?”
“Confederate.”
“Begging your pardon, ma’am, but with a name like that, he don’t sound much like danger to a mouse, never mind to me!”
“He looks like an innocent babe, but believe me when I say he would eradicate you with a piece of the arsenal he’s unloaded in my parlor. Now please! Again, I beg you! There’s no time. My daughter and I are supposed to be getting eggs from the henhouse. He’s expecting us back without delay.”
Only the soldier’s assurance that he would indeed put on Papa’s suit gave Mama the strength to gather the eggs and return with me to the house.
We were watching Boniface Antony gorge himself with fried eggs when we heard someone at the back door, and Anshel cried, in greeting, “Onkel Dovid!”
With those two words, my cousin flung a fistful of my life against the wall and made me grovel among the scattered shards, bleeding, cut, and making believe that nothing had changed.
I thought of the man in the barn. If the man on the porch was out for deserters, and the man in the barn was a deserter, then reason hinted that the man on the porch, armed to his horse’s teeth, would prevail over the man in the barn, who might not have had any teeth of his own beneath his beard.
“We’ve got to let him in.” Anshel spoke with some urgency as the visitor rapped on the door with the insistence of someone who believes the homeowner is loitering in the bowels of the garret. “He knows we’re home. He must. The lamps are lighted, and there’s smoke coming from the chimney. Besides, if we don’t let him in, he might break down the door.”
“If we do let him in, we’ve got to keep him away from the barn,” I said.
“He’ll want to put the horse in the barn.”
“The deserter is in the barn.”
“No, Loydie, a man we think is a deserter is in the barn. He might not be a deserter, after all. We don’t know. We didn’t ask, and he didn’t say.”
Again, the visitor banged on the door. We could hear his boots as he walked along the porch, perhaps trying to peer in through an opening between the poorly drawn drapes.
Mama’s face went as dim as the expression in a portrait by an artist who can’t paint people. I knew what she was thinking: One interloper was enough. Two were a catastrophe. She couldn’t support it. She turned to Anshel. “Tell him to wait a minute. You can’t come to the door that fast.”
“Me?”
“He’ll think twice about doing mischief if he hears somebody other than a woman.”
Anshel shouted from where he stood. “Wait, wait! I can’t walk …”
I hoped the stranger was more convinced than I. At least acknowledgement by someone in the house seemed to stifle him. He returned to the door. Silence suggested he waited. We all supposed he wouldn’t wait very long. I hoped to push Mama into a decision by whining “Maaaaa!”
The aural excoriation moved her to advise me to be quiet and to direct Anshel to open the door. We would all greet the man, she instructed, so he would know he was outnumbered. Then Anshel himself would bring the visitor’s horse to the barn.
So Anshel opened the door. We tensed, anticipating a grizzled tree-trunk enhanced by a collection of hardware associated with his occupation. But rather than look up to encounter the visitor’s face, we had to look straight ahead, into the visage of a youth so pretty, I thought he was a girl in disguise. The long, luxurious hair beneath his snowy gray kepi was the color of clover honey; his eyes were as blue as the relieved sky after a vicious downpour.
Looking back, I think the fellow might have been thinking Anshel, too, was a girl, because of the sidecurls, which were the envy of any female who had ever struggled with a curling iron. After a moment in which youth and youth beheld each other with the kind of look that shrouds a pup upon first seeing itself in a mirror, the new arrival became aware of Mama and removed his hat with a crisp motion that could have been attained only through years of signaling respect for the gentler sex.
“Begging your pardon, ma’am. I’m lost in the storm. Your hearth led me here. I smelled it.”
Mama's smile was the one that bloomed whenever she encountered a small child or a small furry mammal. She swept aside her skirts as if she were wearing a moire ballgown instead of a calico, opened wide the door and welcomed the lost warrior to a place by the fire. Her nephew, she said, would be delighted to install our guest’s horse in the barn.
“That’s right kindly of you, sir,” the soldier said to Anshel. “First, however, allow me to relieve you of some of my necessities. I wouldn’t want you to trouble yourself to carry it all the way back here.”
“Some” of those items were two saddle bags; a roll of thick fabric we couldn’t tell was an extra greatcoat or a bedroll; a rather long musket; a rather short musket; rope; a shovel; an ax. He arranged it all in a clanking heap in the corner of the parlor, amid Mama’s towers of books.
Only then did he proceed to set himself in front of the fire and accept a cup of coffee. His name, he said, was Boniface Antony Smithson, of the Smithsons near Richmond. He was a cavalry lieutenant, scouting for deserters under orders of T.J. Jackson, Lieutenant General , Second Corps, the Army of Virginia. “It is my deepest desire that your home, the sole outpost of succor in the wasteland of this unnatural event, will attract the traitors as surely and swiftly as it had attracted your humble servant.”
It seemed to me that he spoke like a schoolboy trying to be a bad poet. Mama's mouth quivered. I wondered if she was amused or if she pitied the youth for his airs. “What will you do with the deserters if they come here?”
“What I’ve been ordered to do, of course: exact justice with speed and economy of measure."
“How many deserters do you expect to find?”
“A number sufficient to render my presence in such a purpose and at such a time as essential.”
“More than one, Lieutenant Smithson?”
“Many more than one, ma’am.”
“But you are by yourself. How will you bring all the deserters back to your encampment, or to General Jackson’s headquarters?”
“I’m not to bring them back, ma’am.”
“Surely, you can’t mean to imprison them indefinitely on the premises.”
“Oh no, ma’am. Rest assured, I shall burden you with not one living soul underfoot.”
“You should understand, Lieutenant, that I have no carriage or wagon, if you were hoping to borrow one.”
“No, ma’am. As I said, I’m not to bring back deserters.”
“What, then, do you mean to do with them?”
“They are a threat to our country, ma’am. My orders, therefore, are to exact justice with speed and economy of measure. These are desperate men,” Boniface Antony continued as the hints entrenched in his narrative sealed our lips with horror we dare not express if we dared to dwell upon the horror he implied. “I cannot convey to you the degree of danger you are in once they come under your roof.”
“I see,” said Mama, though she later confided that she truly could not see how a being so attractive should appear to relish the use of his person as an instrument of death and vengeance.
She asked the sapling officer if he would like some fried eggs. He agreed, so long as it did not pose an inconvenience for his gracious hostess.
“Not at all,” Mama said, and asked me to join her on the hunt for the freshest eggs. I could stay downstairs, if I wished, while she retrieved our warmest shawls from upstairs. Of course, I went with her, desiring to converse with her about this startling trick of fate. But she said nothing. She dug amid the armoire, and tossed over her arms not merely a heavy shawl, but Papa’s trousers, shirt, and waistcoat , which she concealed beneath the shawl until we were away from the house and hidden by the storm.
Exertion and the promise of all that could savage our house in the hours to come must have played upon her, for when we reached the barn, I and our deserter inside had to support her before she sank to the floor on her knees.
All the while, she pressed the pile of Papa’s clothing at the soldier, saying, “There’s a man sheltering in our house who would murder you, sir! These are my husband’s things. Put them on, I beg you, and come into our home as one of the family.”
It seemed to me the soldier’s eyes twinkled. “Now, who on God’s great earth would want to murder me?”
“A cavalryman. His name is Smithson, B.A. Smithson.”
“Confederate or Federal?”
“Confederate.”
“Begging your pardon, ma’am, but with a name like that, he don’t sound much like danger to a mouse, never mind to me!”
“He looks like an innocent babe, but believe me when I say he would eradicate you with a piece of the arsenal he’s unloaded in my parlor. Now please! Again, I beg you! There’s no time. My daughter and I are supposed to be getting eggs from the henhouse. He’s expecting us back without delay.”
Only the soldier’s assurance that he would indeed put on Papa’s suit gave Mama the strength to gather the eggs and return with me to the house.
We were watching Boniface Antony gorge himself with fried eggs when we heard someone at the back door, and Anshel cried, in greeting, “Onkel Dovid!”
With those two words, my cousin flung a fistful of my life against the wall and made me grovel among the scattered shards, bleeding, cut, and making believe that nothing had changed.
Saturday, January 1, 2011
4. What We Digested With the Coffee
Mama might have told me to start the coffee, but there wasn’t one coffee bean in the house. A mess of Union ships in the waters off Southern ports was making sure the Rebel states didn’t have the benefit of goods its citizens needed to live or fight, and that included coffee beans. So Mama and her friends invented the drink called coffee all over again by grinding roasted wheat and chicory into a gritty powder that they stuffed into little pouches of cheesecloth and steeped in a teapot. Sometimes Mama added fennel root, but the stuff still tasted the way burning leaves smelled. Not even a dose of molasses could ease the sense of conflagration, never mind convince us we were drinking coffee.
I often wondered if the Rebels running the war understood how they were making me and everybody else suffer. I lost count of the times I cursed them for trying to get their own way at our expense. Selfish, that’s what they were. Spoiled and selfish. I wished they all would die. That way, the war would end and Papa would come home. Life would go on as if there had never been a war.
I was setting the table when Mama came down. She had donned the faded blue calico she wore for doing chores, the one with the fraying hem. Her hair was clumped in a loose, gnarled knob at the base of her neck. Hearing that Anshel was still in his room, she called up to him through the ceiling. She had a lovely alto voice and had sung all the time before Papa left for the war. Though she had long forsaken that aspect of her fondness for music, she still had a certain strength of voice and could use it when she wished. She must have wished it a lot that morning, for before long my cousin appeared. “Yes, Tante Laurencia?”
“You were both very foolish to be with that man. He’s dangerous.”
“He’s worried about his horse, tante. We don’t have any hay. All we have is chicken feed.”
“It’s his fault that the horse is hungry. That’s what he gets for taking arms against his country. What are you doing?”
Anshel had poured a cup of coffee and was opening the back door. “He’s hungry too, tante. I’ll bring this to him now. It’s a mitzvah to feed the hungry.”
“It will be a mitzvah to get your throat cut,” Mama muttered as the storm closed upon her nephew and he was out of earshot. I reminded her that she had told the soldier he needed breakfast, and she began hacking slabs of bread off the loaf. I asked her if she thought the pieces were too thick to put in the toast pan.
“You can dunk them in your milk.”
“We’re having coffee, Mama, not milk.”
“Just eat it, Lodie.”
I didn’t wait for Anshel. I knew that, once he came in, he’d have to change into dry clothes, then wash his hands and mutter some prayers in Hebrew before he finally sat down and ate with us. I had less stomach for his religious spectacles than for the prospect of the enemy in our barn. I was on my third hunk of bread before he did indeed execute all I had expected. He sat across from me, bit into the bread, and began to talk.
“You know, tante, the soldier in the barn? I don’t think he’s dangerous. I had a good look at his uniform. He’s a private. An enlisted man. He has no pistol. He has no saddlebag. All he has is the horse.”
“He doesn’t need a pistol, not if he’s scouting for food.”
“But, tante, why would the army would send him out without a weapon? Wouldn’t he be ordered to shoot game to bring back to camp?”
“No. He’s not looking for game. He’s looking for healthy farm animals. He would be ordered to remember where he saw them. His officer would send out a foraging party to bring them back to camp. That reminds me, Anshel. Please count the chickens in the henhouse.” He put down his knife. “Not now. After breakfast.”
“Yes, tante. But may I ask you something? If you don’t trust the soldier in the barn, why not ask him into the house? You would at least know where he is and what he’s doing.”
Mama’s color up and ran out of her face. “Really, Anshel, there are two women in this house. Can you defend us against a man who might want to have his way with us?”
“Your uncle, my own father’s uncle, sent me here to help you when your husband went to war. Do you think he’d have sent me if I could not defend you?"
“That soldier is one, very big man.”
“And I’m a big boy, if not a very big boy. I’ve been protecting you. I will protect you in the worst way, if, God forbid, it should come to that. But I don’t think a man without a weapon and riding an underfed horse is looking for trouble. I think he’s running away from trouble. Think, tante!” Anshel urged as Mama started to argue. “He has no weapon and no extra clothing or provisions. What he does have is a hungry horse. Doesn’t that suggest he slipped away from his camp suddenly, on an urge and on the first horse he could find?”
“Why would he do such a thing? He’s a soldier.”
“Maybe he’s a soldier who no longer wants to be a soldier.”
“Maybe he’s a deserter,” I said, remembering our conversation with Mr. B.
Mama was doubtful. “Do you believe he’s a deserter, Lodie?”
I wanted to believe it. The soldier didn’t have to put me on that starving horse and bring me home. I sensed a certain kindness beneath the deed. “From what I hear, men are doing whatever they can to get away, even if it means being executed without a trial if they’re caught. I don’t think I want the man in our barn to get caught.”
Mama got that “nobody’s home” air about her eyes that suggested she was looking in at herself and not at us, and what she saw was not to her liking. “What do I do? What if I bring him in and he’s not a deserter but a criminal, and he turns on us? What if I keep him out in the barn and he really is a deserter, and he’s overcome by the cold or by hunger?”
Mama had a point, and I feared that contemplating the situation in depth would make me get that “nobody’s home” look about me, too.
Anshel, however, had no trouble with Mama’s dilemma. “All we have to do is ask the soldier into the house. If he refuses, then we know he’s a deserter. He probably means to leave as soon as the storm ends.”
“And if he accepts?”
“Then it’ll be good that you hid the pictures of Loydie’s father in his uniform.”
“If he accepts, we can’t keep him out.”
“Let’s see what he says before we worry.”
So the three of us bundled up against the storm and went back out to the barn. We brought bread and coffee, hoping that the food would encourage our visitor to stay where he was. He accepted the offering with thanks, and we returned to the house considerably more joyous than we had left it, for we were safe, and the deserter was safe.
Mama sat down at the piano and commenced to practice Schubert. I sat beside her, carding the wool. I thought she was making too much noise with the damper pedal. I looked up to see Anshel walking toward the piano. “A soldier is at the door,” he said.
“It’s not the man in the barn.”
I often wondered if the Rebels running the war understood how they were making me and everybody else suffer. I lost count of the times I cursed them for trying to get their own way at our expense. Selfish, that’s what they were. Spoiled and selfish. I wished they all would die. That way, the war would end and Papa would come home. Life would go on as if there had never been a war.
I was setting the table when Mama came down. She had donned the faded blue calico she wore for doing chores, the one with the fraying hem. Her hair was clumped in a loose, gnarled knob at the base of her neck. Hearing that Anshel was still in his room, she called up to him through the ceiling. She had a lovely alto voice and had sung all the time before Papa left for the war. Though she had long forsaken that aspect of her fondness for music, she still had a certain strength of voice and could use it when she wished. She must have wished it a lot that morning, for before long my cousin appeared. “Yes, Tante Laurencia?”
“You were both very foolish to be with that man. He’s dangerous.”
“He’s worried about his horse, tante. We don’t have any hay. All we have is chicken feed.”
“It’s his fault that the horse is hungry. That’s what he gets for taking arms against his country. What are you doing?”
Anshel had poured a cup of coffee and was opening the back door. “He’s hungry too, tante. I’ll bring this to him now. It’s a mitzvah to feed the hungry.”
“It will be a mitzvah to get your throat cut,” Mama muttered as the storm closed upon her nephew and he was out of earshot. I reminded her that she had told the soldier he needed breakfast, and she began hacking slabs of bread off the loaf. I asked her if she thought the pieces were too thick to put in the toast pan.
“You can dunk them in your milk.”
“We’re having coffee, Mama, not milk.”
“Just eat it, Lodie.”
I didn’t wait for Anshel. I knew that, once he came in, he’d have to change into dry clothes, then wash his hands and mutter some prayers in Hebrew before he finally sat down and ate with us. I had less stomach for his religious spectacles than for the prospect of the enemy in our barn. I was on my third hunk of bread before he did indeed execute all I had expected. He sat across from me, bit into the bread, and began to talk.
“You know, tante, the soldier in the barn? I don’t think he’s dangerous. I had a good look at his uniform. He’s a private. An enlisted man. He has no pistol. He has no saddlebag. All he has is the horse.”
“He doesn’t need a pistol, not if he’s scouting for food.”
“But, tante, why would the army would send him out without a weapon? Wouldn’t he be ordered to shoot game to bring back to camp?”
“No. He’s not looking for game. He’s looking for healthy farm animals. He would be ordered to remember where he saw them. His officer would send out a foraging party to bring them back to camp. That reminds me, Anshel. Please count the chickens in the henhouse.” He put down his knife. “Not now. After breakfast.”
“Yes, tante. But may I ask you something? If you don’t trust the soldier in the barn, why not ask him into the house? You would at least know where he is and what he’s doing.”
Mama’s color up and ran out of her face. “Really, Anshel, there are two women in this house. Can you defend us against a man who might want to have his way with us?”
“Your uncle, my own father’s uncle, sent me here to help you when your husband went to war. Do you think he’d have sent me if I could not defend you?"
“That soldier is one, very big man.”
“And I’m a big boy, if not a very big boy. I’ve been protecting you. I will protect you in the worst way, if, God forbid, it should come to that. But I don’t think a man without a weapon and riding an underfed horse is looking for trouble. I think he’s running away from trouble. Think, tante!” Anshel urged as Mama started to argue. “He has no weapon and no extra clothing or provisions. What he does have is a hungry horse. Doesn’t that suggest he slipped away from his camp suddenly, on an urge and on the first horse he could find?”
“Why would he do such a thing? He’s a soldier.”
“Maybe he’s a soldier who no longer wants to be a soldier.”
“Maybe he’s a deserter,” I said, remembering our conversation with Mr. B.
Mama was doubtful. “Do you believe he’s a deserter, Lodie?”
I wanted to believe it. The soldier didn’t have to put me on that starving horse and bring me home. I sensed a certain kindness beneath the deed. “From what I hear, men are doing whatever they can to get away, even if it means being executed without a trial if they’re caught. I don’t think I want the man in our barn to get caught.”
Mama got that “nobody’s home” air about her eyes that suggested she was looking in at herself and not at us, and what she saw was not to her liking. “What do I do? What if I bring him in and he’s not a deserter but a criminal, and he turns on us? What if I keep him out in the barn and he really is a deserter, and he’s overcome by the cold or by hunger?”
Mama had a point, and I feared that contemplating the situation in depth would make me get that “nobody’s home” look about me, too.
Anshel, however, had no trouble with Mama’s dilemma. “All we have to do is ask the soldier into the house. If he refuses, then we know he’s a deserter. He probably means to leave as soon as the storm ends.”
“And if he accepts?”
“Then it’ll be good that you hid the pictures of Loydie’s father in his uniform.”
“If he accepts, we can’t keep him out.”
“Let’s see what he says before we worry.”
So the three of us bundled up against the storm and went back out to the barn. We brought bread and coffee, hoping that the food would encourage our visitor to stay where he was. He accepted the offering with thanks, and we returned to the house considerably more joyous than we had left it, for we were safe, and the deserter was safe.
Mama sat down at the piano and commenced to practice Schubert. I sat beside her, carding the wool. I thought she was making too much noise with the damper pedal. I looked up to see Anshel walking toward the piano. “A soldier is at the door,” he said.
“It’s not the man in the barn.”
Saturday, May 23, 2009
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.
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.
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