The Hidden Light of Northern Fires

by Daren Wang

  Compson came to him soon after that. Harry was sitting on Zubrichs’ front porch smoking a pipe, listening to the train rattle out of the station when the commander climbed the steps like he’d been there a dozen times before.

  “I need your help,” he said.

  “I hope it’s something good,” Harry said. “I’m bored out of my noggin.”

  Compson smiled under his thin mustache.

  “There’s a man coming on the late train tomorrow,” he said. “The Yankee army will be looking for him. All you have to do is keep him here a while. No one will come looking for him out here, so you shouldn’t have any trouble. Bring him down to the Abigail after a week.”

  He gave Harry another envelope of bills.

  “Who is he?” Harry asked.

  “A man of honor, like yourself,” Compson said. “Hold him for a week. The army boys will have forgotten about him by then. Bring him down to the waterfront after.”

  The next night, the Confederate slid off the roof of the train as it took on water at the station. Harry beckoned him into the shadows from the lighted platform.

  His name was Ray, and he was long-bearded, bad smelling, and still wore the stained gray trousers with the black stripe of his Confederate uniform.

  “Nobody would guess who you are in a million years.” Harry snorted before leading him to the barn behind Zubrich’s parsonage and showing him the stack of discarded horse blankets and a mound of straw. He went into the kitchen and brought back the heel of a loaf of pumpernickel.

  Ray crawled under a blanket and started in on snoring quicker than Harry would have believed.

  In the morning, Harry went to Snyder’s General Store and bought a new pair of dungarees. He took the Reb down to the creek where he climbed into the sun-warmed waters and scrubbed himself and shaved off his beard. Harry burned the uniform.

  “I’ll take you down to the river in a week,” he said as he hacked at the man’s hair with a knife.

  Harry had brought some poles, and they spent the day pulling fat trout out of the creek.

  For dinner, Mrs. Zubrich set out a spread under the pear tree and Ray offered to say grace. Pastor Zubrich looked up in surprise as the boy reeled off a long verse from Colossians.

  “You didn’t tell me we had a Christian guest,” he said to Harry.

  “The Lord is my savior,” the Southerner said, and the pastor clapped him on the back.

  Harry found himself longing for a drink for the first time in months as the pastor and the rebel talked scripture for the rest of the meal.

  Eventually the conversation turned to Mary Willis.

  “This woman,” the pastor seethed. “She forgets that it is God’s commandment that man is the head of every woman. For that one, there is no one above her. Not her father. Not her godforsaken brother. Not God himself. She must be smitten. That woman needs to know her place.”

  Mrs. Zubrich just nodded her head.

  When they finished dinner, the pastor led the soldier into the living room to kneel and pray, but they were stopped by a knock on the door.

  Farmer Eels from down Town Line Road stood at the door, and he looked over the pastor’s shoulder and spoke in German.

  They talked for a few minutes, then Zubrich closed the door.

  “He needs a well dug, and came to hire out Harry here,” he said to Harry and Ray. “I signed you both up. Good money.”

  “I’m supposed to keep you hidden.” Harry laughed. “I can’t think of a better place to do that than in a hole in the ground.”

  “Sure,” Ray said with a shrug. “I wouldn’t mind making a few dollars.”

  They dug for the next five days, taking the well deep and wide and lining it with river rock. At the end of the fifth day, they collected their wages and Mrs. Zubrich cooked them steak dinners and served them at the table under the pear tree. He and Ray sat on the porch afterward, and the Southerner was rolling a cigarette when Katia walked by on her way to the station for the mail. She shrieked and ran to Harry, nearly knocking him out of his chair.

  “Ja,” she said. “I thought you’d gone with the rest of the fools. You are here!”

  She kissed him full on the lips, something he’d dreamed of many times but had never experienced.

  “Why you no come for me?” she demanded, kissing him again. “Why you let me worry so much?”

  Ray got her a chair. She asked Harry questions about what he’d been doing, and then finally he asked her about Nathan.

  She looked down at her hands.

  “The spirits,” she said. “They’ve come for him, but he will not go. All day long, he talks to his dead friends, sometimes in English and sometimes in Indian. They ask him to follow, but he does not go. He is not right. And Mary. All this is her fault. She’s the one that brought that bad man here. She is so hard. All the time, she complains that no one will work for her and she has to go find other men. And me, too. I would leave, except for poor Mr. Willis.”

  In the morning, Harry hitched up the wagon.

  “Hop in,” he said to the rebel. “They’re waiting downtown to get you over the river.”

  “Are you crazy?” Ray asked. “I’m not riding down there in broad daylight. They’ll have me in chains in no time.”

  “Look at you,” Harry said. “You look like every other hayseed in town. Just not so much with the ‘y’alls’ and the ‘ma’ams’ and the ‘sirs.’ Just keep your trap shut, in general. You’ll be fine.”

  In was a fine day and they rode into the city without incident.

  Compson was waiting on the deck of the Abigail when they arrived and Ray tipped the old worn cap that Mrs. Zubrich had given him.

  “Thanks, Harry,” he said, his voice low. “You come on down to Virginia anytime. Bring Katia. She’d be pretty in a hoop skirt.”

  Others came after that, sometimes in twos. Zubrich always found work for them while they were there, and Harry started to think the pastor was getting a cut, but he didn’t worry too much about it. The rebs got fed well, and Harry liked most of them just fine.

  One Sunday during services, the preacher demanded that the farmers’ wives help clothe the good Christian war refugees that were passing through town. Before long, the cabin had piles of worn overalls, patched and clean.

  Katia came and sat on the porch with him when she could. He’d never had so much money before, but there was nothing much to spend it on. He started thinking about buying his own place. Someplace with some apple trees, and a creek to fish.

  In the fall, Compson started making the payments in Confederate script instead of Union. Harry complained that no one in town would take it, but Compson agreed to double his wage.

  BLUE

  Leander’s head throbbed with each metallic taunt of reveille.

  He lurched off his cot and into the dull fog of the Maryland countryside. He scanned the eastern horizon for the sun, but all he saw was a monochrome gray over the wide field of white canvas.

  “There’s no sunrise,” he said, rubbing his face. “I swear if they’d just wait until sunrise to blow that damned horn, I’d be able to get enough sleep.”

  “Willis,” his tent-mate, Lieutenant Corbett, stage-whispered. He nodded his head down the line of uniformed junior officers standing at attention in front of their tents. “The colonel.”

  Leander snapped to attention, his suspenders still dangling from his waistband. The morning dew soaked through his woolen socks.

  Colonel Chapin strutted down the line. Leander could not understand how a man who lived in a field in the middle of nowhere could keep his uniform so crisp and blue when after just a few weeks, moths had already had their way with his own.

  An infantry man trailed the colonel. The officer extended his hand and the subordinate flipped through a sheaf of envelopes.

  “Looks like one from your uncle Henry,” he said to Corbett, passing it to him. “Send him my best wishes when you write back.”

  Chapin stopped in front of Leander and loo
ked up and down at his rumpled white tunic, mussed hair, and dangling suspenders. The colonel’s face, hidden behind a full beard, was inscrutable to Leander.

  “Lieutenant Willis,” he said. “Are you capable of doing anything other than trying my patience?”

  “Yes, sir,” Leander said.

  “Perhaps someday you could demonstrate your other skills,” Chapin replied. “But in the meantime, could you explain to me why your name continues to come across my desk nearly every day?”

  “I don’t know, sir.”

  “You see, I receive mail, also,” the colonel said. He put his hand out, and his aide handed him another envelope. “Here’s a letter from a Marshal Dwight Kidder. Does that name mean anything to you?”

  Leander furrowed his brow.

  “Yes, sir.”

  “You look surprised,” the colonel said. “I certainly was. Imagine reading the suggestion that one of my officers joined this fine army as a way to avoid the law. He weaved quite a tale. Fugitive slaves, dead bounty hunters, horse thievery. I’d like some answers myself.”

  Leander stood at attention and kept his eyes fixed on the dismal horizon. Chapin moved his face close enough that Leander could smell tobacco and coffee on his breath.

  “Why are you here, Willis?” he growled.

  “I joined to serve my country, sir,” Leander said.

  “Or did you join so that you could drink and gamble with the enlisted men?” Chapin asked back in a growl. “Because I have reports of you on that side of camp last night with a bottle and a deck of cards.”

  He paused.

  “Yet again.”

  Leander’s eyes landed on the black hairs growing from a mole at the colonel’s temple.

  “Are those stories true?” Chapin asked, his voice quiet. “Would you like to dispute them? Should I bring men that I trust and respect here to explain to me why they are lying about your nighttime activities?”

  “The stories are true, sir,” Leander said, grimacing. In fact, he’d lost the last of the money he’d made selling off Wilhelm’s horse the night before.

  “Do you know the penalty for an officer who fraternizes with enlisted men?” Chapin asked.

  “Court-martial, sir,” Leander said, the bottom dropping out of his stomach.

  “Very good, Lieutenant,” the colonel said. “I’m glad that you at least know the rules which you disregard.”

  Chapin backed up and pitched his voice for his officer corps to hear.

  “An army of saints would be the most useless thing in the world, but I do expect fighting men of discipline and character. And you, Lieutenant, have shown me neither. The federal government says that if a man brings two dozen recruits with him, he is awarded a commission. I say that’s a hell of a way to build an officer corps. Do you understand me, Lieutenant?”

  “Yes, sir,” Leander said.

  “It is the talk of many that this corps is oversubscribed,” he said. “By hook or by crook, we’ll get these numbers right. Some will be busted down to private, others will just fade away.

  “Payroll will at last be issued in three days. Before then, any of you may request a simple discharge. There are some I would be disappointed to see go and for others, I would be relieved,” he said, pulling his long dark beard and looking at Leander.

  “After that date, your exit from this army will not go so well. Particularly if it’s an involuntary removal. Am I clear?”

  “Yes, sir,” the gathered men said in unison.

  He turned away and moved toward the next group of tents.

  Leander’s shoulders slumped as he let out a long, slow exhale. He went back into the tent and plopped on his cot, his head in his hands.

  “Shit,” he said.

  “Did you really kill someone?” Corbett asked.

  “Shit,” Leander repeated, ignoring the question.

  “I told you not to go over there last night,” Corbett said.

  “I know, I know,” Leander said. “Another night of sitting around here hanging my laundry just wasn’t enough to hold my attention.”

  “I apologize if my company isn’t interesting enough for you,” Corbett said.

  Dan Corbett had been finishing up his time at divinity school when Sumter fell, and his degree earned him the second lieutenant’s brass bar. His talkative nature and complete lack of imagination left Leander praying for the early arrival of sleep most nights, even as the swarming mosquitos kept him swatting and awake.

  Leander fixed his suspenders and pulled on the rest of his uniform as the two men headed toward the officer’s mess.

  “What are you going to do when we’re through kicking these rebels back into line?” Leander asked.

  “I’m thinking about running for Congress,” Corbett said.

  “You’d be great,” Leander said enthusiastically, slapping him on the shoulder.

  Chapin had issued orders for extra drills, and Leander spent the day leading his company through its exercises with all the vigor he could muster with a court-martial and a hangover weighing on him. Despite their dirty looks, he kept his soldiers late and pushed them hard even as the sun fell below the Maryland tree line and a low-hanging bank of clouds rolled in.

  After supper, Corbett went to the canvas chapel to lead a prayer meeting, and Leander had the tent to himself. He felt jittery but tired at the same time. He knew that if he could just sit quietly, he could come up with a plan. He’d be able to concentrate after a good night’s sleep. He lay down on the cot and closed his eyes.

  The clouds of the afternoon had hardened into a thick dark cover, but they brought no relief from the heat, and sweat pooled under his tunic. The wind had shifted, and the smell of the latrines enshrouded the site while a half-dozen bands squawked, pounded, and sawed at each other across the encampment. Leander was certain that his tent was perfectly equidistant to each of them, and the din and smell tormented him, keeping him awake. He rolled over on the lumpy cot and buried his head under his pillow.

  As he did each night in bed, he thought of Isabel. It had been forever since he’d heard from her, and he hadn’t seen her since the day after his enlistment.

  He had tried to be good. He had tried to do what his father would want him to do. That’s why he’d joined the army and convinced his friends that they should, too.

  But now he wasn’t so sure. Katia had written and told him that his father wasn’t well. He wasn’t doing him any good camping in this field, but he knew he couldn’t go home. If he was with Isabel, he could help by trading and sending money.

  He knew his father wouldn’t approve, but his father was too old-fashioned sometimes. He’d tried to do things his father’s way, and it had gotten him to this damned tent. He’d been so hurt by Mary’s anger and the marshal’s betrayal, he’d tried too hard to make things right. He should be with Isabel. He’d made a mistake when he enlisted. He knew that now.

  After they’d signed the muster roll, he and Hans had found themselves the toast of the town at the Eagle Tavern where every politician in the city fought over the right to buy them drinks. They ended back at Whitney Place in the wee hours, and slept into the afternoon.

  Hans had teased him as he got dressed, but even hungover, Leander couldn’t hide his enthusiasm at seeing Isabel again. It had been three days, the longest they’d been apart. At the least she would have a bottle for him. He had had the last of his tonic while he’d ridden around Alden recruiting his friends, and his head was pounding and his hands shaking.

  He found her in the parlor lounging on the couch with a Celestial lady with a long cascade of perfect black hair. The stove had been stoked and the room was overly warm and close. They both wore thin silk robes, and by the way the fabric draped over their bodies, nothing else. A thin line of smoke rose from the bowl of the hookah, adding to the thick cloud that hovered in the room.

  The aroma drew him in, and he breathed deeply, the effect almost allowing him to ignore the way the strange woman’s inner thigh bared itself
as she shifted position on the couch. She stared at him as she put the embroidered hose to her lips.

  Isabel looked at him through hooded eyes and a languid moue.

  “Oh,” she said. “You’d been gone so long I thought you decided to stay on the farm and herd cows, or whatever it is you do back there.”

  “I’m a captain in the Union Army,” he blurted. “I’m off to Elmira for training tomorrow. Tonight’s my last in town. I thought we could do something exciting. Dinner? Dancing?”

  “Such timing,” Isabel said, bemused.

  The Celestial ran her finger across Isabel’s cheek, distracting Leander.

  “I suppose a send-off is in order,” Isabel said, then whispered in Chinese to her companion.

  The woman climbed to her feet and floated by Leander, smiling slyly.

  “Who’s that?” he asked.

  “I guess I should prepare for our big night,” Isabel said, ignoring the question. “I’ll get dressed.”

  She stood and went into her chamber, closing the door behind her.

  Leander sat on the couch and finished the smudge of opium left in the hookah before going to the cellar to find a bottle of tonic.

  Isabel took her time getting ready, but she emerged from her efforts dressed more plainly than he expected.

  They went to the dining room at the American Hotel, and he beamed with pride as his father’s friends streamed over to the table to congratulate him. He introduced each of them to Isabel, and she smiled at each of them wanly.

  “Don’t fret, sweetheart,” Millard Fillmore said. “This will all be over soon and he’ll be back home in your arms.”

  She nodded, and chewed her steak.

  She told him how she had already rented a rail car for her move back to New York and would be leaving the next week. He told her of the shooting at home, but assured her that his father would be okay.

  “I stopped to see him at the doctor’s, in between rounding up my friends,” he said. “I had to tell him what I was doing. I knew he’d be proud. He was confused about where he was, but I’m sure he’ll be better soon. I am doing all this for him, you know. I have to.”