by Maria Hummel
There was no reply. Johnny Mulcane had already shambled away down the hill, his hatless head bowed, a small bald patch reflecting the muted sun.
“Bel,” Laurence called from a block’s distance. With arms folded and knees splayed back, he had the same impatient posture as the boy who long ago had told her not to run from the lost slave, as if he had lived through nothing since that moment, nothing at all. “Are you coming?”
Nodding, Bel looked back down the hill after Johnny Mulcane, but the hired man was gone; only his footprints remained, marring hers and Laurence’s, aiming in the opposite direction, each one holding a lake of shadow that would grow as the light faded.
* * *
When they finally entered the hardware store on Church Street, a ring of hardened slush had attached itself to the hem of Bel’s dress. In the remaining quarter mile to the store, she had magnanimously forgiven her cousin his oversight, and then proceeded to become annoyed with him again as her hip began to ache. She gave a loud sigh as they ducked into a shop filled with hammers, saws, nails, and paint. A yellow dust had settled over everything, and their entrance seemed to cause a disturbance in the back of the room. After an expressive clatter, a tall, lean man emerged, brushing his hands against a leather apron.
“Yes, sir,” he said to Laurence. His droopy eyes slid over them both. Everything about the man pointed downward—his long onion-colored nose, his sagging lips, the slope of his shoulders—and yet his voice was friendly and resonant. “Can I help you with something?”
Laurence looked suddenly baffled and picked up a saw, testing the blade against his palm. The teeth made small white marks where they pressed the skin.
“In the market for a saw, are you?” said the man. “I’ve got some better ones in the back.”
Her cousin set the tool down. “I’m actually calling to ask about a friend of mine. A friend of a friend,” he said with a trace of irony. The man showed no reaction to the password, although Bel studied him hard. Were they going to rescue another slave? “I mean,” Laurence continued, “I’m home on furlough from Virginia, and I had a friend who was treated very kindly by a man who might be a relative of yours.”
“Oh no,” said the proprietor. He backed up a few steps and held up his hands before letting them be dragged earthward like the rest of him. “You must mean Walt.”
“Walt Whitman,” Laurence said thoughtfully. “I think that was his name.”
“What do you want to know about him?” the man asked. His mouth screwed into a small red knob. “Did he borrow money from you?”
“No.” Laurence shook his head. “My friend knew Mr. Whitman’s sister lived in Allenton, so when he found out I was coming here, he asked me to be his messenger.”
The man appeared relieved. He leaned against one of his wooden shelves, letting his hand dangle in a box of nails. They made a small chinking sound as he stirred them with his fingers.
“My friend wanted someone to tell Mr. Whitman that he saved his life,” Laurence added softly.
“He ain’t still pretending to be a doctor at them hospitals, is he?” Alarm flooded the man’s gray eyes.
“No. With his words, I mean,” Laurence said. “He helped him to understand some things.”
The man righted himself, swaying in the dimness of the aisle. His motion stirred up another cloud of dust, and Bel sneezed. She was disappointed about the “friend of a friend” business and she allowed herself a small sniff. The noise seemed to waken the two men from their disjointed conversation.
“As I said,” the owner began. “I’ve got some better saws in back. If the lady will wait.”
“No.” Laurence glanced at Bel. “The lady is cold. I’ll come back some other time. Does Mr. Whitman ever visit you?”
The man’s lips tightened again before he replied. “Unannounced,” he said. “Without so much as a by-your-leave. But my wife will tell him what you said. She has a soft spot for him, you know.” He shrugged. “What women will put up with.”
Bel stared at the pool of slush and dust on the floor, her body quaking with a fresh shiver. “Laurence,” she said, aware suddenly that this conversation might drag on forever, prolonged by the man’s reticence and Laurence’s curiosity. She was exhausted, less by the exercise than by Laurence’s needy and difficult presence. She wanted to be alone. “I’d like to go home.”
“Of course. We need to go home.” Laurence reached out and shook hands with the man. “Thank you, sir,” he said, his starved cheeks folding back as he grinned.
“Don’t mention it,” said the man, with a shrug that settled his shoulders even lower than before.
Bel took Laurence’s arm and let him lead her out past the files and hammers, which suddenly reminded her of weapons—swords, axes—dulled beyond their original purpose by years and years of war.
Chapter Thirty-six
The remaining weeks in January passed at a furious pace. Two deep snowfalls drifted up the sides of trees and whitened the roads. Although he spoke little of his years at soldiering, Laurence came to Greenwood often, entering the house unannounced to steal Bel away for some long tramp through town. Her parents, eager to see their nephew come alive again, did not protest until Bel ruined several dresses and earned the great irritation of Mary, who was responsible for rescuing the damaged hems. After listening to the servant’s shrill keening over the laundry for the fifth day in a row, Faustina insisted the two cousins take some form of transportation when they went out. Consequently, on the last week of Laurence’s visit, Bel finally got escorted sleighing like the other wealthy girls with brothers or sweethearts back from the war.
The mild winter sun shone down as Laurence bundled Bel in the sled and plunked down beside her. Today, he had a hard and angry energy, like a penned horse waiting to be let out of his stall. Everything about him had grown since he arrived in Allenton: His hair and beard were longer, his cheeks full and pink. Even his narrow hips took up more of the seat than she expected, and she edged away to give him more room.
“Are we ready?” Laurence asked without looking at her.
“Ready,” echoed Bel.
For three weeks, they had confessed nothing about themselves, although they talked long about their parents and servants and the other young people of the neighborhood. That day, Bel was determined to tell Laurence of her distant, tremulous romance with the French tutor. As the seasons passed, her memory of Louis had faded, much as she tried to revive it by recalling their conversations in the library, by scouring the kind, remote letters he sent to the family for any hint of emotion. Bel no longer thought about him every day, although she wanted to. Surely Laurence, who once wrote that he had met and liked Louis, would be the one to encourage the affair to bloom.
As the sleigh coasted down the lane, Bel let the buffalo robe swallow her up to the chin. Ahead of them, the bay mare kicked up small white coins.
“Where shall we go?” asked Laurence.
“I don’t know,” Bel said, hoping they would end up at Battery Park, where the other sleighs gathered. “Not far. It’s supposed to snow later.”
“I could take you to meet one of my pards, a bully fellow named John Addison. He’s staying with his aunt on the south end of town,” Laurence offered, needlessly slapping the reins on the horse’s back. The sleigh skimmed faster down the street, and they passed a lost red scarf trailing in the snow. The shadows of the elms crossed over them.
“That’s far,” Bel said.
“You’re right. Besides, he’s such a hero, you might fall in love with him,” Laurence paused, and then added with a note of ownership, “And I couldn’t allow that.”
“Why not?” Bel demanded.
“Oh, I don’t know.” He forced a laugh. “You shouldn’t fall in love with a soldier. We’re a sorry, dishonest, murderous lot.”
“You don’t believe that.” Bel brushed a strand of hair back from her face and settled deeper in the buffalo robe. This new conveyance was much more pleasant than walking.
“You’re right,” Laurence said, peering behind them as if he suspected they were being followed. “I’ve met the best and the worst in men since I enlisted.”
The horse plodded steadily up the steep hill. Past the crest, farms stretched along the Winooski Valley, barns and rail fences stranded in snow-covered pastures. The city would be behind them in another mile, and the sharp air of the country would make their voices loud and consonant. Bel had not thought Laurence would take her in this direction, because the other young people always gathered at Battery Park in the winter. A track had been worn hard and slick there, and the men raced one another until their female companions lost their hats and emitted laughing shrieks of protest.
“Do you want to go back to Virginia?” Bel asked, hesitant.
“I have to go back,” Laurence replied quickly. “I reenlisted.”
“That’s not what I asked.”
“But I would give you the same answer, no matter how many times or ways you asked me,” he promised with weighty dolor. “Duty leaves little room for personal opinion.”
This statement seemed to close the argument. Bel knotted her hands beneath the buffalo robe and sighed. How could she bring up Louis Pacquette when Laurence was behaving like this? And yet she yearned to invoke the tutor’s name, to see him again in her mind’s eye, bending over a book, or standing on the ladder to the hayloft, holding a candle.
“Don’t worry,” Laurence said softly, almost as if he expected her not to listen. “I’ll never leave you.”
As they mounted the crest, the horse’s head sagged, making her mane spill forward. At the top, Laurence halted the sleigh. “Look back,” he commanded, pointing to the jagged rows of lumber buildings and houses winding up the flank of the hill. The few evergreens in Allenton shone like green banners in the colorless ruins of winter. Smoke bulged from a hundred chimneys, stalled by the cold. Bel glimpsed the other sleighs circling in the park.
“What do you see?” Laurence asked, his arm tightening around her. She squirmed a little.
“I think Mary Ruth’s brother is winning,” she said. “They’re the ones with the big blue sleigh. What do you see?”
A cloud of breath masked his mouth as he answered. “I see you as a young girl, standing on the rim of that very lake, and me watching another man catch you from falling.”
Bel stared at her lap. “I guess I didn’t understand what you were asking.”
“You used to understand me.”
“I used to worship you,” Bel said, her cheeks hot. “I’m not sure that’s the same thing.”
Suddenly, Laurence’s arm flexed again and his face was close to hers, faintly stubbled and rimmed by the omnipresent Union cap. She felt the cold pressure of his lips, the warm air that seeped through and touched her tongue, before she realized he was kissing her.
“Bel,” he whispered. His mouth tasted like lemon peel. “I know it’s wrong to fall in love with you, but—”
“Don’t!” she cried and fisted her hands against his neck, pushing him away. Laurence slid back, his eyebrows knitting together. He brushed his chest and sleeves as if dust had fallen on him.
“I’m sorry,” Bel said miserably, staring at the horse’s immobile tail. It seemed as if they had crested the hill hours, even years, before, and she couldn’t remember a word they had said on their way to the windy summit above Allenton. “I don’t feel that way about you. I couldn’t.”
“Is it because of him?” Laurence demanded. “That ugly tutor of yours?”
“No.” Suddenly, she saw Louis more clearly than she had for months, his brown eyes raised toward the winter light streaming through the library window.
“Because we’re cousins?” He turned to her. “Of course, I’ve thought about that, too, but I’m not asking—”
“Laurence,” said Bel, interrupting him. “It’s because of you.”
They sat there for another long moment—Bel facing forward into the rolling valley, the chalked blue rim of peaks beyond, Laurence’s spine twisted to allow him to look down over the city. She could feel the heat of his body beneath the buffalo robe, but he did not try to touch her again.
“I’m sorry,” she offered again.
“For what?” he asked in a low voice, his face in profile. The dark circles beneath his eyes made him look much older than twenty-one. He directed the horse in a full circle so that they aimed toward the lake. “Shall we go to the races?”
Before Bel had time to answer, he slapped the reins again, making the horse trot and then canter down the white lane. The sleigh began to gain momentum, barreling past the snow-drowned trees, the few houses like outposts on the hill, past rail fences leaning, heaved up by frost, past buried gardens and the rickety sprays that in spring would fill out to yellow forsythia.
“Stop,” she called out when she could find her voice. The sleigh was dangerously close on the heels of the running horse. Laurence’s expression did not change, although she saw him try to pull back on the reins. This had little effect. The mare had no desire to be run over by her passengers, and she careened sharply to the left, kicking into the hard snow that clung to the street’s edge. The sleigh wobbled and spun and Bel fell against her cousin. His bony elbow bruised her ribs.
As the horse continued her mad sprint, Laurence let the reins go with a little toss. Beyond the city, the lake shone a tawny gold, like the back of a deer, and Bel had the feeling she was riding straight into the center of its spine. There was a crunching sound as one of the sled’s runners swerved up the bank, tilting their conveyance to the opposite side. This time, Bel’s cousin fell on top of her and she punched wildly, not caring if she hurt him. Her knuckles skidded against the wool of his coat.
With a last lunge, the horse’s maneuvering wrenched the sleigh at a right angle to the street, where it stopped and began to tip, spilling its passengers with comedic slowness. Skidding to a halt, the horse turned her head to watch the damage she had caused. Laurence’s shoulder ground against Bel’s scalp as they crashed into the shadow cast by the sleigh and scrambled apart. She shoved a small pile of snow from her lap while Laurence cursed and thrashed around for his lost cap. He did not ask her if she was all right.
As she gripped the sleigh’s edge and stood slowly, Bel had the feeling they had lapsed into strangers again, like two people thrown together on a railroad car, partners of circumstance, not of blood. She saw the cap half-buried beside Laurence but did not point it out, watching him with pity as he groped in the snow. She could not imagine being him—always searching for something he could not find—and she wondered with sorrow how he had come to be that way, and what woman would love him truly if she didn’t.
A few spectators emerged from nearby houses, holding their heads low against the wind.
“Took a spill, did you?” a black-haired matron said with some satisfaction as Laurence restored his cap to its usual jaunty angle. “I sar it coming.” She nodded to another approaching onlooker, a man Bel recognized as the one who delivered their eggs every Wednesday. His appearance was highly suited to his profession, for he had a bald and oblong pate that shone in the summer as if it were glazed.
“Need some help, Mr. Lindsey?” the man said to Laurence. “Any bones broke?”
“We’re all right, sir,” Laurence said stiffly. “We just took a turn too fast.”
“I’ll say you did.” The black-haired matron, first to the scene, spoke with some authority to the other arrivals. She was standing in a pool of slush, but it did not seem to bother her.
“Let’s get this tipped back again,” the deliveryman advised. “Let’s get you back in the lane.”
Bel edged away as Laurence, the egg man, and a towheaded young boy gripped the sides of the sleigh and dragged it, creaking, from the snowbank, setting it back to its rightful position. The boy watched Laurence with undisguised awe.
“Faster than the railcar,” he said appreciatively, slapping the flank of the sleigh.
“Don’t
you even think of trying that again, young man,” the matron cautioned, looking to the clouds for reassurance. She had fleshy, immobile lips that moved out of time with her words.
“We won’t,” Bel assured her, irritated by the warning. More people were coming now, stamping down the lane to gawk at them. “It was an accident. He let go by accident.”
“Soldiers,” the egg man grunted in a friendly way. “You only got three weeks to impress the ladies and you try to squeeze it all in at once. Ain’t no use a’tall to try and stop him, Martha.” He nodded to the matron. “He’s going back to war soon.”
“I’m going to war, too,” said the boy, thrusting out his small chest. “As soon as I’m able.”
Laurence, who had been staring at the ground, now wheeled on the boy. “I hope to God it’s over before you’re able,” he said fervently. His feet squeaked as they spun in the snow. “I hope to God the war won’t wait for you.”
The boy’s mouth opened and shut, but he did not speak again. Laurence checked the traces on the horse and took the reins in his fist before climbing back in the sleigh. He offered his free hand to Bel. “Thank you,” she said to the onlookers, taking in their squinting, well-meaning faces and understanding for a moment Laurence’s dislike of other people’s kindness, for it came so close to pity. “We’re fine now.”
The sleigh lurched forward and a cold wind rose up, separating them from the others. As the distance grew, the onlookers’ faces went blank and featureless as a far-off hill. Only the young boy, smaller than the rest, was easy to pick out. His body was so still, he could have been a stone. Loneliness flooded her. The buffalo robe, stiff and snow-filled, lay across her ribs like something that had never been alive. They coursed down the street without speaking, and the sounds of the city overcame them: the ringing of the blacksmith’s hammer, a man skidding down icy steps, the thump of a maid beating dust from a rug with a paddle.
“I’d rather not go to the park anymore,” Bel said finally to the bitter air. She fixed her eyes on the approaching walls of the brick church, as if reading something there.
