by Ron Rash
Chauncey paused as he passed the front desk.
“A student wrote something real nasty about you in one of the German books, Miss Yount,” he said, loud enough that everyone from the pretty student to the old fogey in the painting heard it.
The boys waited on the steps. They stood when Chauncey came out but there was a slouching insolence to their posture.
“Are we going to get to go home now?” Jack asked.
“Are we going to get to go home now, sir,” Chauncey said sharply.
Chapter Ten
A misty drizzle fell all morning. Fog tendriled out of the woods, slow wisps merging and unfurling across the cove floor. As the day wore on, the fog thickened. The hammer’s steady taps sounded farther and farther away. When Laurel walked to the springhouse to get milk, Hank and Walter were immersed in the whiteness. All she could see was the scarecrow, its arms raised above the swirling fog as if in rising water. She had clothed it in the tattered shirt and pants Walter had worn into the cove. The hammering stopped, probably to measure the strands for the next section, but as Laurel stared at the scarecrow she had the sensation that time had somehow unwoven and it was again last fall. Hank was still in Europe and Walter was nothing more than a figment her loneliness had fleshed out from a cross of wood and tattered cloth. Laurel thought of the silver flute, how she had held it in her hand, solid beyond any dream. The hammering began again but once back at the cabin she opened the case and pressed two fingers firm against the silver. But it won’t be here tomorrow, she thought.
Laurel fetched a jar of blackberries from the larder and cinnamon and sugar from her tins rack, made a pie, and placed it in the oven. The washtub was on the porch so she carried it to her room, poured in water from the kettle and the well. She undressed and scrunched herself into the tub. Like always, bathing was a soothing thing, so she lingered a minute, felt the water drip off her hair and down her back, took in the clean clear smell of the soap on her skin. After Laurel toweled herself dry, she got the blue-and-white gingham dress from the closet, its broad shoulders widened to help conceal the purple stain. She’d sewn the dress last fall for the night she and Jubel were to meet at the Ledfords’ barn. She tied the blue ribbon in her hair and sweetened her skin and breath with lilac and licorice root, rubbed cardinal flower petals on her neck though it seemed not to have had much of an effect.
Laurel turned to the mirror and it was like seeing herself for the first time in ever so long, because she was looking at her whole self, not just her face or hair but each part of her, slowly making her way down to her waist. With the birth stain covered, she could almost believe someone might find her pretty. She looked in the mirror a few more moments and then took the tub to the porch and emptied it, came back inside and finished making supper.
After a while she heard Hank and Walter on the porch and brought them towels. They took off their boots and unhitched their overalls to the waist, sharing a bucket of water thickened with Borax, then used Hank’s pocket comb to roach back their soggy hair. They stood by the hearth barefoot, patting water off their faces.
“Damn if don’t feel like I’ve been bobbing in water all day,” Hank said. “A drizzle like that damps a man deeper than a hard rain for sure, but we got that upper section finished.”
Hank threw a handful of kindling in the hearth and the fire leaped up as if startled.
“It’s a drearisome day like this that makes a fellow appreciate coming in to a warm fire and warm food,” Hank said. “And look at sister there, all spangled out in a pretty dress. There’s worser ends to a man’s day, don’t you reckon, Walter?”
Laurel’s face flushed, though she reckoned she should be used to it. Hank had been saying things like that the last two days, giving all sorts of compliments to her in front of Walter, everything from Laurel’s sewing to how bonny her hair was. Then last night, Hank had gone to bed early, leaving her and Walter alone on the porch. Needing Walter’s help so bad he’d even try to play Cupid to get him to stay on. Yet maybe it was more than just that, Laurel thought. Maybe Hank wanted for her what he had with Carolyn, and figured a man like Walter might be the best chance of her ever having it.
She set the bread basket on the table and she and the men sat down. As they ate, Laurel heard the ticking of Hank’s pocket watch, something she’d hardly made notice of before. But she heard it now, couldn’t make herself not hear it as Hank talked about all the farm improvements left to do. Every second was one less Walter would be here.
“I wish you weren’t going,” Hank said as Laurel served dessert. “It’s nice having steady help. If you could stay on a couple more months, we could get that pasture fenced and the well dug. I’ll even raise your pay to a dollar fifty a day. Plus I bet Laurel would keep making these pies. She never makes them when it’s just me around.”
Laurel blushed.
“I’ve made plenty of pies for you.”
“None this good though,” Hank said, holding up a piece on a fork.
“So you think we could change your mind?” Hank asked.
Walter smiled slightly but shook his head.
“I was afraid of that,” Hank said. “I guess life in New York is a little more lively than being in the back of beyond.”
“Would you play your flute for us tonight?” Laurel asked as they rose from the table. “We’ll not likely hear such pretty music in this cove again.”
“That would be nice,” Hank agreed.
They went out on the porch and she sat beside Walter. He raised the flute to his lips. At first Laurel thought he was just practicing, because the same few notes he started with kept repeating with just the smallest changes. Then it became clear that it was a song, the loneliest sort of song because the notes changed so little, like one bird calling and waiting for another to answer. It was as lonely a sound as she’d ever heard. Walter took the flute from his lips, held it before him as if to show that, once freed from his breath, the flute was silent as he was. Laurel lifted a kerchief from her dress pocket and dabbed her eyes. Hank too seemed stirred by the song. A sadness came over his face and he lowered his eyes. Walter shut the flute inside the case.
“If everyone could make sounds that beautiful, we’d never want to speak,” Laurel said. “We could just call to each other, let each other know we weren’t alone.”
“That’s a pretty thought, sister,” Hank said, “but I expect there’d still be plenty who’d rather use that silver to bash each other’s heads in.”
Hank rose from the railing and stretched his arms.
“It seems you’ve decided, but if you change your mind, we’d love to have you stay on, even if it’s just another week.”
“You could stay longer,” Laurel said after Hank went inside, “but I guess you need to get back to New York. Are there people waiting for you, besides the people you play music with? I mean like some kinfolks, or a sweetheart?”
Walter shook his head.
“I was always of a mind to leave here,” Laurel said. “My teacher Miss Calicut claimed I had enough smarts to go off somewhere like Asheville or Raleigh and be a teacher or secretary or most anything I’d want. But Daddy was sick and I didn’t have a choice but to stay. It’s like I’ve never had a single choice in my life. Most people get at least a few choices, don’t they?”
Walter nodded. Even though Hank had gone inside, it was like she could still hear the watch mark each passing moment.
“It’d be nice if you could talk but it’s ever so good just to have someone listen. What you say with your head nods is enough.” Laurel’s voice softened. “I’d not ever want more.”
Brashy words, she told herself, but at least you’ll have your say. You’ll not look back when he’s gone and wonder if there was the least chance you could have swayed him. If he gets up and goes inside right now, doesn’t listen to one word more, it’ll still be better than not having said it.
/> “They’s folks who won’t set foot in this cove. They think nothing good can happen here. I’d come to believe them. But you came here, and that’s been good. There’s been some good in it for you too, hasn’t there?”
When Walter nodded, Laurel left her chair. She stood in front of him and reached for his hands.
“Will you hold me for a minute? That way it’ll help me remember you were real, because once you leave it’ll be too easy to believe you weren’t.”
Laurel trembled as she placed her head against his chest, her arms tight around his waist. She stayed that way, feeling the sound of his heartbeat. He raised a hand and settled it on her shoulder. She lifted her lips, not sure if he’d let her kiss him. But he did, his lips meeting hers. Then he freed his hand from her shoulder and stepped back. Laurel led the way to his door with the lantern. Let it be enough, Laurel told herself. There’s been times you’d not believe you could have even this much.
Chapter Eleven
As black shallowed to gray in the cabin window, he thought of what Goritz had said about needing to suffer. Easier not to see Laurel, he had decided, so quietly dressed and made his way to the door by tentative steps and touches, the haversack on his shoulder. Outside, there was little light until the trail curled around the cliff face and the sky unsealed into a wide leveling dawn. At the trail notch, he passed under dangles of glass tied to a tree limb. He thought again of the hanged man.
Slidell met him on the porch.
“Didn’t expect you this early. I got to eat and then we can go. Come inside and I’ll fix you something too.”
Walter shook his head.
“All right, I’ll be out in a few minutes.”
As he waited on the steps, he thought how amazing it was that three years in New York had passed before he and the others were rounded up. They had been able to leave the harbor day or night and go wherever they pleased. They swam in the Hudson River in the summer and skated in Central Park in the fall. Because the crew still got paid, they could attend concerts and operas, enjoy good food and good drink. Some of his fellow musicians spent evenings on River Street, playing patriotic songs between rousing speeches. There was plenty of time to do such things because, for the musicians at least, they performed only an occasional fund-raiser. For those three years, the ship and its crew had been as safe there as any place in the world. IN HEAVEN, an onboard banner had proclaimed one October night.
It would be different now, but Goritz was surely still there, and willing to help him.
Slidell came out and they got in the wagon and left. The wagon bumped and jostled out of the yard and onto a path little wider than the wheels. The woods thickened and the blue sky disappeared. Walter checked his pocket and confirmed that he still had the note for the depot manager, only then realized he’d left the medallion. Better not to have it on him anyway. They were coming out of deep woods when Slidell spoke.
“Them you stayed with are good folks, and the way they been maligned, especially that girl, is a grievous sin, and once Hank’s married it’s going to make it all the harder. I wish she could find someone the way Hank has. Men ought to be lined up with all she’s got to offer, including her prettiness, though folks make her think it’s not so because of that birth stain. Don’t you think she’s pretty?”
Walter nodded because he was expected to, but also because it was true.
Slidell jostled the checkreins and looked straight ahead.
“Forgive an old man for speaking his mind, but I could tell the other night she’d taken a shine to you, seemed you’d taken a bit of a shine to her too. I was hoping you all might get to sparking and it change your mind about leaving.”
Leaving. He would be the one this time, remembering the English ocean liner that had harbored only meters from his own ship. There had been quite a bustle when the liner departed. All morning cars and carriages brought passengers and steamer trunks shipside. When the rain let up, he’d left his own ship and sat on the pier as the dockworkers untied the ropes tethering ship to shore. Tugboats arrived to nudge the liner into the Hudson as the last passengers boarded and the pier’s crowd waved handkerchiefs and hurled confetti. He had brought the flute but did not play until a young woman in a green silk dress, matching parasol in hand, paused on the gangplank and looked his way. She nodded at the flute, mouthed the word Brahms. He raised the silver to his lips and began the final movement of the First Symphony. The flute’s notes soared over the ruckus around them. The woman placed her free hand on the railing and let the parasol settle on her shoulder. She was young, probably no more than twenty, tall and slim, her long black hair accentuating her ivory-white skin. She nodded slightly, knowingly, as the song crested and then faded. The last of the voyagers came up the gangplank, passed first the woman and then a steward who checked off names. The steward came to escort her onto the deck but the woman remained where she was, as if the music might yet woo her back to shore.
The song ended and she smiled and spoke but again her words were lost in the confusion of other voices. He raised a hand to his ear and made his way toward the gangplank, not taking his eyes off her as she pointed him out to the steward and said something. She walked on up the gangplank as the steward walked down. Walter pushed through the riotous crowd until he and the steward were face-to-face. The young lady said that she hopes you will play for her again, perhaps when the ship makes its return voyage next month. The steward made his way back aboard as the ocean liner’s steam horn announced the voyage had begun. Walter had turned back into the mob then, searching for her among the passengers offering their farewells. As the water widened between them, he saw the parasol’s green rounding amid the jostling of Mephisto feathers and top hats. He watched until the parasol was just a dot of green and then not even that. The next day he went to the Cunard Line’s office and checked the ship’s return date. It was a week later when he had seen the headline LUSITANIA SUNK BY HUNS.
They came to a better-maintained road and Slidell tugged the left rein and the horse turned that way. The blue sky reappeared, wider and brighter than Walter had seen in two weeks. After so long its vastness was disconcerting. They passed cabins and houses and before much longer he saw a clock tower and brick and wood buildings huddled on a hilltop.
“That’s the college. It’s named Mars Hill too. It ain’t very big so I doubt you ever heard of it.”
Walter had heard of it but did not nod as the road leveled and then began its descent into the village. Slidell hitched the horse to a post in front of a café and pointed up the street.
“There’s the depot. I’m going over to the hardware store and after that I’ll be yonder in the Turkey Trot,” Slidell said, pointing to a low-slung building beyond the depot. “If you change your mind, I’ll be in town at least till noon.”
Walter nodded and stepped onto the boardwalk. He passed the café and a clothing store and then a barbershop, the white-smocked barber outside on a bench, his face obscured by a newspaper.
The barber lowered his paper.
“You need a haircut?”
Walter shook his head and went on. The boardwalk ended and train tracks lined the road edge, on them a freight train whose coal car was being filled. On the depot’s platform, two old men on a bench stared at a checkerboard. The redcap leaned against a post, cleaning the underside of his nails with a pocketknife. Walter stepped inside to buy his ticket. A woman with a child no more than four or five stood at the window, the depot master explaining a train’s arrival time. The child saw him and let go of his mother’s hand, walked over to a wanted poster tacked on the far wall. For a few moments Walter simply stared at the sketch of his own face. No scraggly beard appeared on the drawing, but his face was clearly recognizable. He felt not a constriction in his chest but a hollowness, as if his heart had simply evaporated. The child ran to his mother and tugged her hand. The woman spoke brusquely to the child, then turned back to the depot
master.
Head down, Walter went out the door. He stepped off the platform and to the building’s side where he was alone. He had no trouble feeling his heart now. It pumped frantically as he tried to contain his fear enough to decide what to do. The coal bin was almost full so the train would leave soon. To where he had no idea but surely far enough away that his face wouldn’t be on the depot wall. He walked head down past the linked boxcars until he found one with an open side door. He was about to dive in when a Pinkerton stepped from behind the caboose, billy club in hand. The guard smiled and tapped the wood against his palm.
The Pinkerton did not follow so at least he hadn’t been recognized. Walter walked rapidly up the boardwalk, fighting the impulse to break into a run. He raised his eyes only to make furtive glances for suspicious stares, more wanted posters, saw none. He passed the last storefront and settled himself behind the college’s marble arch. The railroad tracks glistened in the late-morning light. Thirty meters at most, but it was all open ground. The Pinkerton could be anywhere, at the depot or walking behind the caboose or on the train itself. He looked around for a metal rod or hefty stick, saw nothing.
The train gave two quick whistle blasts and the cut steel wheels made their first halting turns. Stay where you are and you’ll soon be hanging from this arch, he told himself, and patted the haversack to ensure that the flute case was there. A stack of railroad ties lay halfway between the marble arch and the tracks. If he got there unseen, the sprint to an open boxcar would be only two or three seconds. Walter hunched over and ran, flung himself down behind the ties. His gasped breaths sounded so loud he closed his mouth and breathed through his nose, taking in the acrid smell of creosote. He glanced toward the depot but didn’t see the Pinkerton. He peeked over the ties and saw the cowcatcher and then the engineer with an elbow propped on the windowsill. When the coal car passed, he glanced toward the depot a last time and rose, looked down the tracks for the first open boxcar.
