Beaudry's Ghost

by Carolan Ivey

  “You mean he’s not…”

  “Nope.”

  “And Lane and her beau, they’re not…”

  Taylor lifted her chin in indignation, but merriment sparkled in her tired eyes.

  “They’re in separate bedrooms,” she said defensively.

  “But…”

  She handed him his new clothes, absconded from the offending suitcase. “Put these on,” she said. “There’s a lot we need to talk about, and I have no intention of doing it with a naked man.”

  Chapter Nine

  Taylor upended Troy’s knapsack on the bed and sorted through the eclectic mix of items it produced. She should have cleaned it out before coming here, she mused, but there hadn’t been time. Now, realizing that she and Jared needed to move fast and light to keep ahead of Lt. Zach Harris and his troops, she had to decide what was essential for the next day or so, and what was extra weight.

  Quickly she discarded extra clothing, notebooks and a couple paperback books about the Civil War. Her fingers slowed when she came to a photograph of her and Troy at a dress ball, he resplendent in his grey uniform, she smiling and happy in a sky-blue gown. Reluctantly, she laid the photo in the discard pile, deciding not to risk it being lost or damaged. She scooped up a packet of folded papers and started to toss them aside, but something made her pause, look again, and unfold the sheets.

  She assumed they were only handouts and schedules from past re-enactments, but they turned out to be letters. Letters? To whom had Troy been writing? He’d never been much of a letter writer, that she knew of. She looked closer, rifling through the papers, and realized they were photocopies of various Civil War-era letters she had sent him over the years, as she had run across them in her work at the museum. Normally she passed the originals on to an expert at handling the often-tattered sheets of parchment. If he or she were someone she knew well, she would ask a copy be made for Troy.

  She had continued to ask. Even after she and Troy had stopped speaking. Old habits died hard.

  He had carried them around with him all this time. Why? To show others who might be interested? To help immerse himself in the re-enactments?

  The letter on top of the pile still had her sticky note attached to it, a few jaunty phrases jotted down, punctuated with a smiley face. Lifting the note with her thumb, she scanned the letter.

  Dear Mrs. Garrison …

  Her hands were trembling.

  Jared moved silently to the kitchen door and watched her as she sipped at a cup of steaming coffee. The cup shook so as she brought it to her pale lips, she had to set it down between samplings.

  She would show him no appreciation if he called attention to it.

  The coffee aroma made his mouth water. Back during the war, as a cavalryman, he and his fellow riders generally kept themselves relatively well supplied with whatever the good people of the countryside had to offer. Still, the longer he stayed in this borrowed body, the more acute felt the passage of time. And he truly felt as if he hadn’t eaten in a hundred years.

  He took a breath and walked into the kitchen. His mind’s eye had him walk right up to her, take the cup from her hand and drain the contents. Fortunately he retained enough grip on himself to walk past her to the counter, where an empty cup waited beside a clear glass pitcher, tucked neatly inside some kind of white contraption.

  War had done many things to him, but it had not stripped him of basic table manners. But if he had survived to the end of the war, his mother may have had to re-teach him a few lessons.

  The end of the war. How the devil had it ended, anyway?

  He sat down at the table and let the first swallow of coffee burn his mouth and throat.

  “Dig in,” she invited, gesturing to the odd assortment of food choices on the table. Then she quickly tucked her hands under her arms and leaned back in her chair. Crumbs and two apple cores by her coffee cup told him she had already indulged.

  He wasted no time.

  “Well,” she said critically, leaning to one side to examine his clothes, “they almost fit.”

  He didn’t let her comment slow his progress as he briefly examined the peanut butter jar, took a sniff, then slathered a dripping knife-full of it on a slice of bread.

  “Your cousin’s beau has a couple inches and few pounds on me,” he agreed a split second before half the slice disappeared into his mouth. Many minutes passed as he ate, comfortable for now with the silence between them. Presently, his stomach comfortable for the first time in recent memory, he sat back to sip at his coffee. Apparently Taylor had forgotten her comment that he had a lot to catch up on, for she continued to concentrate on the liquid in her cup. She wrapped her hands tightly around the cup, or clasped them together, or used them to spasmodically clench a battered old tobacco pipe he had first seen tucked in the brim of her hat on the beach. She stroked it like a talisman, reminding him of how, under stress, she twisted the buttons of her uniform. The sense of waiting grew stronger as he watched.

  She needed more rest, but he knew by her drawn expression that it would not come for a while. He glanced down and watched one of his thumbs twitch, ever so slightly. Remembering how his own hands shook after a battle, he was more than a little surprised to find his borrowed hands trembling the same way.

  “They say it takes years for it to subside.” He leaned forward to prop his elbows on the table. “If at all.”

  She looked up as if she’d forgotten he was there.

  “This.” He set down his cup and held up his hands before her face. The slight vibration drew surprise and compassion from her blank eyes.

  “Even after all this time,” she said softly, reaching for but not quite touching his fingers. “Even after more than a century.”

  “Apparently so.” He curved his hands around his cup to keep from reaching for her. Ever since she had willingly blanketed him with her body while he had wrestled with the pain in his leg, and since he had cradled her gently while she rested from her own wounds, his restless soul had been quiet. But now it stirred, even stronger than before. He hadn’t touched another living soul in more than a century, and here was a woman who not only could touch him, but also reach clear inside him.

  But she was afraid.

  And if she kept up her habit of reaching for him only to pull away at the last second, she might very well, before this was all over, drive him insane.

  She withdrew behind her coffee cup, again toying with the pipe.

  “Troy’s hands shook like that, after he came back from overseas,” she said quietly, then explained with a quick flip of her hand. “There was a war the U.S. got involved in over in the Middle East… I think you would have known the country as Persia.”

  He nodded, watching her pale face and nervous hands more than listening to her words. In the few minutes it had taken him to change clothes, something had driven her deep inside herself yet again. Afraid to touch. Afraid to look too close.

  “So there were other wars after…mine?”

  Her chuckle was dry. “We have been to war many, many times since. Too many, if you ask me. But never again has brother turned against brother. In all the wars since—two World Wars—”

  “World wars?” He whispered, horrified. Hadn’t anyone learned?

  “—Korea, Vietnam, Iraq—the Union has stayed together. Jared, are you all right? You’re pale as a… You’re pale.”

  His mind whirled. So much had happened since 1862. So much. The world had gone on without him. His family had lived on, and eventually died, without him. For a moment his losses weighed almost too heavy to bear.

  If only he had more time. More time to at least find out what had happened to his mother, his sister. See where they and maybe their descendants were buried. Then he pictured himself looking at his own grave and shuddered. Did he even have one? Or had what was left of his body been relegated to some anonymous trench on the beach?

  “Who won?” he asked, careful to keep his voice steady.

  “Hmm? Oh, we
did.”

  He shook his head, realizing she didn’t know which war he was referring to.

  “I mean, who won my war?”

  It took her a moment to connect. Then she flushed and smiled.

  “I took it for granted that you just knew. You and your Yankee arrogance,” she attempted to tease.

  He scowled. “Don’t keep me in suspense, woman.”

  “You did, of course. Lee surrendered—oh, he took over for Joe Johnston—and your final commander was General U.S. Grant. God, there’s so much you don’t know. So much I wish I had time to tell you. So much I want to ask you. It isn’t every day a re-enactor gets a chance to talk to the real thing,” she said. Her eyes, so blank when he had sat down with her, now showed a little spark.

  “How long…how long did it go on?”

  She spoke softly, but her words rolled over him like a heavy caisson. “It wasn’t over until April, 1865. The turning point was the battle at Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, the three bloodiest days of the war. Lee’s army was doing pretty well until then. After that,” she shrugged at the inevitability, “it was just a matter of time.”

  “That long.” He felt like he’d swallowed a hunk of hardtack whole, and had it stuck halfway down. He had seen so many die. Many thousands more had died while his own body had rotted on this island, while his own spirit searched uselessly for revenge against a man who had no doubt found a quick and bloody trip to the hereafter all by himself.

  He swore, dropped his head forward and buried his hands in his hair. Without looking up, he added, “Begging your pardon, ma’am.”

  He heard the sympathetic smile in her voice. “No need to apologize. If I were you, my language would probably be a lot worse. Actually, Jared, we all won that war. The South lost its Cause, but the nation came out of it whole. That’s the most important thing.”

  “Surprising words, coming from the defeated party.” He looked up and hid his strain behind another swallow of coffee.

  She shrugged. “I have ancestors on both sides of the conflict. Plus, I work for a museum—objectivity is part of my job. Re-enacting for the South is just a matter of personal preference for me. I don’t think Troy would have objected if I’d decided to re-enact for the Union. In fact, on more than one occasion he has…used to…put on a blue uniform and fight for the Union. He said it gave him a balanced perspective on things.” She managed a wry smile. “Most of all, I’d prefer not to disturb the ghosts of either side by declaring my preference for one Cause or the other.”

  The ghosts again. Often she had spoken lightly of them, but Jared sensed her real, underlying fear. He watched her hand move from the pipe to rest on a sheaf of papers folded neatly on the tabletop. She looked as if she was about to say something, but confusion crossed her face, and instead she closed her mouth and rubbed a hand over her eyes.

  Slowly he lowered his cup and watched as she unfolded the stack of papers, laid the top sheet in front of her and nervously smoothed the page flat on the table. A cold spot formed in the center of his chest as his eyes focused on the paper.

  “In my life, a lot of strange things have happened to me, but I think this is definitely the strangest,” she continued a moment later. “I told myself it had to be a coincidence, but the more I think about it, the more I realize that none of this, none of it, is a coincidence at all.” She paused and drew a deep breath. “Jared, what was your mother’s name?”

  He blinked. Why did she have this sudden need to talk about his family? God knew their souls would rest easier if he never again let their names fall from his disgraced tongue.

  “My mother’s name was Elizabeth.”

  She pressed her lips together and nodded. “What is it like for you? Being a ghost?”

  Another lightning change of subject. The cold spot in his chest became a hole. What was she building up to? He sat still and let his sketchy memory roll back over the years.

  “It has been hell. That is the only way I know to explain it. It is the loneliest way to be you can possibly imagine. It was like being in a glass cage. I was able to see out, sometimes I could even hear voices around me, but I was still completely alone. My only companions were my pain and my regrets.”

  “What kind of regrets?”

  He let the corner of his mouth rise. “What any normal person would regret who is taken from this earth too soon, I suppose.” She flinched, and he winced and added one more regret to the list. She didn’t need flip answers on the subject of death.

  “So is the legend true? Were you riding up and down the Outer Banks to find your missing limbs?” she probed on.

  “I don’t know, now. I thought it was the desire for revenge. All I know it was a journey without end. All I know is I couldn’t stop. I couldn’t rest, and I couldn’t stop the pain. I couldn’t speak to anyone I happened to see, or who saw me. I couldn’t…touch…” He fought the tightness in his throat for several moments, then pushed away from the table.

  He walked stiffly to the sliding glass door, leaned his palms on it and stared at his reflection in the night-blackened glass. He had to move away from her before he caved in to his need to touch her. The need grew stronger with every breath, with every twist of his gut when she looked at him. He had thought this need arose from going without a human touch for so long, and she happened to be convenient.

  But it dawned on him that their spiritual connection could not have been denied in any century.

  “Did you… Were you able to think about or even remember your family? Or anything about your past life?”

  “Why are you asking me this?”

  “Why are you avoiding the question?”

  He turned on her, his grip on his emotions slipping. “I was condemned to think of nothing but them, and how I had failed them, for more than a hundred years, Miss Taylor.” His voice stayed low, but only because the intensity of his words strangled it.

  “I left my place as the head of my family to go off and fight to preserve the Union. My younger brother died trying to follow me, after I had expressly forbidden him to sign up. Because I didn’t sell that blasted green-broke colt before I left in such a da…a damned hurry! And to top it all off, I went and got myself killed by Bloody Zachariah Harris, who made sure I not only died without honor, but left my mother and sister with no one to care for them. If only I could know what happened to them. If only I could…”

  Her face looked stricken, and he damned himself again. She had lost a brother of her own.

  “Your fault? On top of everything else, you think your brother’s death was your fault?”

  “Of course it was. That horse tossed him off a bridge, and no one ever found his body. Word didn’t even reach me in the Shenandoah Valley for weeks afterward. By then, it was too late to go home.” He let go a ragged breath. “I should have taken him with me. I could have kept him safe.” Just speaking about his grief widened the icy hole in his chest. He turned his back on her and tried to draw in enough air to fill it.

  Taylor rose and her reflection joined his in the glass as she approached, her eyes huge with compassion.

  “You could have gone home, Jared. Your mother would have forgiven you.” The conviction in her voice turned him toward her.

  “What?”

  “That’s what I meant when I said none of this was a coincidence.” She held up the sheet of paper, fingers clutched around it. “And I knew it for sure when you told me your mother’s name. It’s this letter, Jared. It came into my hands at the museum I work for in Knoxville, not long before my brother died. I sent him a copy and forced myself to forget about it. But I just found it again in Troy’s knapsack. And based on everything you’ve told me, I think it was written to your mother. After the war was over.”

  Without thought, Jared snatched the letter, then turned to spread the paper out on the cool, smooth glass of the sliding door, holding it flat with suddenly damp hands.

  Elizabeth Garrison?

  … remarryed since the war… coat belonged to you
r son… was captured… killed at Cape Hatteras during the Roanoke Island skirmish… events between capture and murder…

  Your son was no coward.

  Jared lost all feeling in his legs, and he sank slowly to a sitting position on the floor.

  “Are you all right?” Taylor whispered anxiously, her voice disembodied in the tunnel vision that focused only on the letter he still held flat against the window. For long minutes he read the letter over and over. Finally the words blurred and he let his head fall forward to rest against the glass.

  “Yes,” he said hoarsely. “Yes.”

  “Was I right? Is this your mother?”

  “It has to be.”

  “That’s what I thought, too,” she concluded.

  “But you’re wrong.” Jared pushed away from the glass and straightened, carefully folding the humiliatingly damp letter and holding it in his hands, afraid it might disappear. “I don’t see how she could ever have forgiven me my brother. What mother could have? I’ve never forgiven myself.”

  Taylor’s hands rested on his shoulders, though feather light, as if at any moment she would jump away. “Ethan’s death was an accident, Jared. He was just young and reckless, and he all he wanted was to go off and be just like his reckless big brother.”

  Jared was very sure his heart had stopped beating. Slowly he turned his head, and Taylor’s face went white as she let her arms fall away, got to her feet and backed away. Slowly, deliberately, he regained his feet and faced her.

  “I never told you his name.”

  It took her several moments for her to work her reply free. “Yes, you did,” she said, cutting him off with a gesture when he opened his mouth to disagree. “Trust me. You did.” She retreated behind one of the ladderback chairs by the kitchen table, gripping the spindles as if they would steer her around her blunder.

  And Jared now knew for certain that something did happen when she touched him. She was a witch, just like old Hattie Reynolds. With a touch, she could see into his soul. Inwardly he blanched. No wonder she always shied away from him, except in the direst of circumstances. There were some pretty dark places inside he’d rather not look at himself.