by David Connor
“Jefferson Eaves! What are you doing up there?”
I turned to a grin just as gleeful, a face as beautiful and charming, and dark eyes that read love as they took in Jefferson up in the air. “Calvin! You’re Calvin, aren’t you?” I asked.
“I am,” he said, still focused on Jefferson. “I haven’t had the pleasure.”
“Goose, Goose Tucker.” I extended a hand.
“As in ‘Honk! Honk! Goose?’”
“As in.”
Calvin’s lashes were long. His nose was broad, his cheekbones sharp. His pouty, pink lips looked perfect for kissing, and the dimples on either side rivaled Mario Lopez’s. I had to remember. I had to.
“I’m so happy we finally get to meet.” We watched together as Jefferson crowd-surfed, like a raver in a mosh pit centuries in the future, passed from soldier to soldier down the line. “Jefferson has told me all about you,” I said.
“I’m at a loss, I’m afraid.” Calvin finally looked down at me and took my hand. “He has told me nothing of you.”
“Well, we just met. Sort of. I wandered away from my troop and ended up here.”
“I see,” Calvin said. “Jefferson and I have also been separated, separated for much too long. Making my way upriver has been a chore. If you’ll forgive me, all I wish to do is feel him against me to try and make up for lost time.”
“Of course.”
The moment Calvin and I were spotted was obvious. Jefferson’s eyes locked on the one he loved, and I was the proverbial fifth wheel.
“Down.” The word had come so quietly, I’d been forced to read it on Jefferson’s lips. This time, the revelers listened.
“Here he comes.” My sentence had fallen on deaf ears. Calvin was once again singularly focused as well.
Jefferson’s feet were never still. He’d started running toward us before his brogans even hit earth, bounding our way with an expression that changed from exuberance, to something that appeared overwhelming and caused him to sob.
“Precious Calvin.” Though quite a bit smaller, Jefferson picked him right up off the ground to twirl him around. It had taken several to raise Small Jefferson, but the emotion inside his soul gave his body the strength to do what he did on his own. “I thought I’d lost you forever.”
“It’s a torturous feeling.”
They studied one another’s faces after pulling apart, as if not quite certain the moment was real. The emotion was easy to recognize. I’d felt it just seconds earlier. After a pair of deep breaths and a kiss, either to test the idea or to prove it, the consensus seemed to be positive.
“But here you are,” Calvin said.
“Here I am.”
“Therefore, once again, I am whole.”
Following several more kisses between them, just for pleasure by all appearances, our entire command cheered. They cheered twice, in fact, once for Jefferson and Calvin, and once when Patrick swooped in and planted a kiss on me, bending me backwards, like the Unconditional Surrender statue commemorating V-J Day. It was yet another allusion that would go over everyone’s head, everyone’s but his. At least that was my assumption, as so many simultaneous thoughts crowded my mystified mind.
“You’re here,” I marveled, using my eyes and touch to take him in.
Wearing his Civil War army uniform, with his ginger beard, Patrick looked like a photo from my middle school history book. In black and white, he would have been a doppelganger for Ulysses Grant, himself. “Where else would I be?” he asked. “What else would I want to do but this?” He offered another kiss.
“So, you know who I am, then?”
“I’m not one to go around kissing strangers, even the handsomest ones.”
“How much did you retain, though? From earlier tonight? From our time?”
We took a moment to ourselves, away from the others, still jovial and boisterous. The smell of fallen leaves and the rustle of the many still hanging triggered memories of all the Indian summers I had lived through in New York, including the most recent back in October, when Patrick and I had first met.
“Well, all of it, I suppose,” he said. “The diary, the road trip, the tent, and the thunderstorm. The oak tree adventure last autumn, and the snow, the superhero costumes, and the ladder tonight. I recall many days in between, too, as I got to know how wonderful you are.”
“I think this is Heaven,” I told him. “Calvin and Jefferson are reunited. That means it has to be. I wonder, though, how did we get here, you and I?”
“I only know of one way,” Patrick said.
“There are likely ways we don’t know. We’ve been introduced to some rather strange, unfamiliar happenings since meeting Jefferson Eaves. This could be another one. That said, after all these weeks, my version of Heaven would probably include you.”
Patrick twisted his lips into a pout. “Probably?”
“Okay, definitely. If this is a big declaration of my feelings for you, so be it.”
“So be it.” He smiled. “I too declare. My idea of Heaven would include you as well.”
The smell and taste of smoke from his beard hit me when I put my mouth on his again. “Still, I assume we’re only here as observers,” I said. “Eventually, we’ll get back to Wilbur…Wilbur, Shell, and Rip…I think.” A deep breath calmed me once more. “This is more a vision than a visit. My vision. You’re probably only here because I brought you. I bet I control your every move, your every whim.”
Always expressive, Patrick’s brows, as orange as the dancing flames behind us that put the smokiness in his whiskers, met above his nose. He appeared quite skeptical. “You don’t say. Make me do something.”
“Kiss me again.”
He did. “Well, I’ll be!”
“Told you.”
The next thing I knew, a time jump had occurred, like in a television show from one season to another. “Whoa!”
“Yes.” Patrick agreed, looking as dumbfounded as I felt. “Whoa. What just happened here?”
Even as my own sense of normality was skewed, I was aware events were not happening in accordance with reality, at least not the earthly kind. Night passed in a literal blink, in the length of the briefest kiss. When I opened my eyes, a beautiful pink and golden sunrise greeted me, and we stood in a different place along the river, just the four of us, Jefferson and Calvin, Patrick and I.
“I think it’s suddenly another day.”
The smell of gunpowder that had permeated the air during combat was gone. So were the other soldiers, leaving only Jefferson, Calvin, Patrick, and myself.
“Is the Battle of Wauhatchie over?” I asked.
“Long ago,” Jefferson responded. “Are you stuck in time?” he asked with a grin.
“Am I?”
A look of concern spread across his face now as he touched my forehead. “Is there injury?”
“No.” I smiled and took his hand away, holding it in mine. “I don’t think so. But thank you for caring.”
Jefferson’s downturned mouth signified he wasn’t convinced. “The whole war is over. Our tour of duty has come to an end.”
“Oh. Yay!” I pulled him to me with one arm, wrapping the other around Calvin’s shoulder and forcing him closer as we walked. The feeling it gave me—being able to touch them—was wonderful.
As our journey forward continued, I held back, side by side with Patrick.
“When did the war end?” I asked him. He would know.
“Officially? Different historians put different dates to it. Springtime is the general consensus.”
“What year?”
“In 1865.”
The trees were leafed out and green, the grass, too, and thick. It could have been spring, I thought, or summer, or early fall. I knew twentieth and twenty-first century New York seasons, not 1800s Tennessee. “It’s all very ‘Beam me up, Scotty.’ We were there—the battle. Now, we’re here…wherever here is. Whenever here is.”
“Maybe it’s all very ‘Beam me up, Goosey,’” Patri
ck countered. “You’re in charge, remember? At least according to you.”
Did that make sense? “I’m not sure they realize this is Heaven, if, in fact, it is. I had been wondering about Calvin and Jefferson’s life after the war, though, what it could have been. Maybe I did create the jump from 1863 to 1865. Oh, the power.” Yet that’s where it ended, I had a feeling. Currently, I was following, not leading. We were about to relocate again. That much I gleaned from the bags we now carried, knapsacks I didn’t recall packing. We were going farther than several feet downriver, though we did take a pause there.
“This is it,” Jefferson said.
“The tree!” The breathy exclamation came from me.
The four of us stood around the already mighty oak that had come from the acorn planted as a symbol of love and devotion between two men.
“It’s grown so,” Calvin said in awe.
“Like our love,” Jefferson told him, “bigger and stronger each day throughout the years.”
The tree wasn’t stout in girth but was already taller than all of us.
“As difficult as it will be to pull ourselves away from the spot that honors our beginning, Jefferson misses his home in Massachusetts, and I know a better life might be possible for us up there,” Calvin explained. “I want you to be happy,” he said, his palm to Jefferson’s cheek.
“I want the same for you.”
“You make me happy. Wherever you go, I follow.”
From the river, we headed into town, to a train station there. The trek left my feet quite sore. We would head north by rail, along with two families Calvin introduced as the Porters and the Smalls, people he had known long before joining the Union army, long before he’d been freed. The Porters had five children in tow, the Smalls only one. They were all rather quiet, as if everything here was new and strange to them as well. Perhaps they’d just arrived in Heaven, or were visiting, like Patrick and I, or maybe the reason was entirely different.
The farther we got from the south, the more evident the season became. It was fall once again, the landscape now quite colorful outside the windows of our old-fashioned train car. The year we’d leapt to was indeed 1865, I discovered for certain, as other passengers around us discussed the somber state of a nation still mourning the loss of their president, Abraham Lincoln, assassinated in April. Calvin also fretted for the many slaves around the nation who were still not free, despite legal decree. “And what of those who are but have no means to live?” he asked.
Jefferson offered comfort. “I have no doubt you will work your entire life to make things better for all people,” he said.
Hand in hand with Patrick, though I peered through shimmying glass with wonder at the unfamiliar terrain speeding by, when I glanced at each member of the families across from me, I noticed something quite different. Their eyes held fear. The uprooting, the war, the recent government edicts that would forever change their existence, I was suddenly convinced everything happening was real for them.
“It must be scary to give up everything you’ve ever known with only hope to carry you,” I said. There was no way I could ever feel what they must have been.
“Something better for my kids,” Daniel Porter said, his Southern accent thick. “That’s the hope. That and a dream that someday the color of someone’s skin won’t matter.”
I wanted that dream to come true, too. “From where this country is to where it gets…” Emotion kept me from finishing my thought. The way all eight of them stared at me, as if my words meant anything, I had to wonder, how far had we gotten? How far had we slipped? What could I truthfully promise about the future of race relations from my privileged point of view without sounding like a history book? “Other people share your dream, people of all colors. One day at a time, one person at a time, it starts with love for another human being.” I offered my hand to the smallest one among us, a little girl named Charlotte, who was five years old. “I’ve always loved the name Charlotte,” I told her. “One of my favorite stories is about a spider with that name.”
“A spider! Eww.” Little Charlotte yanked her hand from mine. She drew in her whole body, curling up in her seat with repulsion.
“This was a special spider.” When Patrick offered a wink and a nod, I smiled and continued. “A good one. Charlotte could do spectacular things.”
I told the entire tale, with voices and shadow puppets against the train wall, offering acclaim to an author who hadn’t yet been born in the era I was visiting. In another thirty-some years, July of 1899, he would be, but not yet. Still, I had to give credit where credit was due.
“Charlotte’s words, her love for Wilbur, saved his life.”
“Like you all are doing for us,” Daniel said.
The lump in my throat caused my words to falter, as my version of the story ended differently from the original. “After the fair, Wilbur and Charlotte went back to the farm and lived happily ever after.” I didn’t have the heart to tell it any differently and knew, without internet and gadgets, there would be no quick and easy way for anyone to check, not for generations to come. With his large hand behind my head, Patrick drew me close to offer a smooch atop it. He approved.
“Just so you know, that kiss was my doing,” he whispered. “Not yours.”
The train pulled into the station in Massachusetts on a gray and drizzly Sunday afternoon days later. Our garb matched the barren landscape, already stripped of summer and autumnal splendor. Clothing wasn’t very colorful back then. Everything was beige and brown, now that we were out of uniform.
The trek to the Eaves’ home was long, rough, and damp, definitely hard on our feet. Somewhere along the line, our circumstances blurred, and the notion I had of visiting Heaven felt wrong. It now seemed as if we were living—Jefferson and Calvin, at least, and Calvin’s friends—continuing on in their imperfect state of being. Truthfully, I thought none of that at the time. It was simply an experience by then, and my feet hurt too badly to focus on anything other than that for a time. I did gather myself enough for a bit of self-reflection at one point, however. How dare I complain, albeit internally, about sore feet when every one of these people I walked with had been through actual strife my pampered twenty-first century ass couldn’t take, my modern mind even imagine?
The twelve of us, marching along like a small battalion, passed the time singing. Jefferson started us off with “Amazing Grace.” Though half of my traveling companions were off-key, their volume made up for pitch, as the joy that filled them knowing they were starting a new life rang out.
Charlotte’s mother’s name was Ruth. Her rendition of “The Battle Hymn of the Republic” was crisp, clean, and heartfelt. Each note that touched my ear also touched my heart. As her final refrain echoed off the mountains that surrounded us, the silver clouds parted to bathe her in golden light.
“Bless my other children,” she asked, looking up into its source, “our Charles and Polly. May they, too, find a better life.”
Charles and Polly were older, all of fourteen and fifteen years old, I learned. They had stayed behind in the south, determined to make their own way, separate from their parents.
As our journey continued, the smaller children began to tire. Noticing the trouble Ruth was having with Charlotte collapsing onto her hip, I offered to scoop the child up to ride on my back.
“Pretend I’m a horse.” I made the sound, my best impersonation, and bent over so Charlotte could climb aboard. Jefferson did the same for tiny Henry, George, and Henrietta Small’s only child. We galloped, Jefferson and I, neighing and whinnying, clucking our tongues to make the sounds of hooves, all to the delight of the children. Even the two bigger boys borne of Ruth and Daniel smiled. Moses and Lewis, not even teenagers, had been forced to grow up too quickly.
The farther we traveled, the more Daniel’s step began to falter. A streak of red appeared on the leg of his trousers, and the fabric there began to stick.
“You should see to that,” Ruth told him.
&nb
sp; “Don’t worry about me,” Daniel said. “When I cannot walk, the good Lord will carry me.”
It was his boys who helped him first, Moses and Lewis. Daniel leaned on them for support. Before their weariness even showed, Calvin and Patrick took their place, though, flanking Daniel to offer aid.
“I should look at that leg,” Patrick said, but Daniel wouldn’t hear of it.
“When we stop.” He shooed Patrick away. “Jefferson wants to see his family.”
I was engaging the children in a round of “Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star,” when we reached the final climb up a wheat-colored grassy hill to the township where the Eaves’ farm lay. Charlotte was shy at first. No matter what I did, she wouldn’t sing.
“I forgot the next word. Twinkle, twinkle little…little…Do you know?”
When I tried “Old MacDonald,” even though it wouldn’t be published for nearly another half a century, that did it. “What sound does a pig make?” She didn’t answer but did laugh hard when I showed her. “Oink, oink, oink, oink, oink!”
As the song went on, Charlotte came out of her shell even more. Eventually, she oinked, mooed, brayed, barked, and meowed after me. Her giggles were glorious, and the way she hugged me tighter as we sang made my heart grow, like the Grinch’s at the end of the holiday special. I considered telling that story next, or maybe performing the song. The tunes I’d brought with me from my time would have the others thinking I was a songwriting genius, as long as Patrick didn’t rat me out. I couldn’t give it up to the actual composers. I didn’t know who they were. I wondered if I’d remember to ask Siri, once back in my own time.
As we ventured on, Jefferson began to touch everything around us, brown stems that were once wildflowers, tall grass that would soon faint from frost, and prickly cedar fronds in hews of blueish green. “Everything is the same,” he said.
I stopped singing to hear if he’d say more. He didn’t, not until we climbed the steps to the large farmhouse some time later.
The screen door was open, no doubt to cool the kitchen that smelled like some sort of delicious stew. A woman inside had her back to us. The bow on her apron was perfectly tied midway down. Her hair, the same shade as Jefferson’s, except with streaks of gray, was up in a bun.
