The Year of Jubilo

by Bahr, Howard;

  “I hoped—I believe they are,” said Gawain.

  “My daughter thought you were dead. She grieved for you in her own way. I could tell, though she never spoke to me about it, has hardly spoken to me at all since the house burned—she blamed me for it, and rightly so perhaps, and for Lily—”

  Gawain started to protest, but the old man shook him silent. “Listen!” he said. “I never believed you were dead, not for a moment. God has taken so much from me, but I knew He wouldn’t take that. In return, I had to come to terms with what I perceived as your betrayal. Quid pro quo, sir—it is often thus when dealing with God. I allowed you—all of you—the honor I thought you’d lost with defeat. I had. to, you see, to preserve my own.”

  “Judge—,” began Gawain.

  “No,” the Judge went on. “I have been waiting for you, knowing you would come. You may deny God’s hand in it, but here you stand nevertheless—with your honor and your intentions. Do you really want to connect the two?”

  Gawain understood then. Quid pro quo. He almost laughed, so far had he come from his own expectations. He removed the Judge’s hand from his waistcoat, but held on to it, was surprised by the strength in it. “Yes,” he said.

  “Good,” said the Judge. “Then you will stand with me when I go to kill Solomon Gault.”

  STRIBLING FOUND THEM, ashe supposed he would, on a bench in the old kitchen garden: Morgan and the old man side by side, and the boy sitting on the ground with his knees drawn up. The old man was talking, telling a story, his hands clasping and unclasping in the lap of his nightshirt. The woman was listening, the boy was studying something in the grass. Stribling, standing in the garden gate, smoking quietly, listened himself for a moment to the old man’s disconnected tale about people Stribling had never known, getting into some mischief on a day long vanished from the earth. At one point the old man laughed, and Stribling found himself laughing too. When he did, the woman looked up, startled, and the boy jumped to his feet. Stribling snatched off his hat. “God bless all here,” he said.

  Morgan rose. “Why, Captain Stribling,” she said. Meanwhile, the old man had quieted.

  “Forgive me,” said Stribling. “I was only out for a stroll this mornin.” The woman laughed. “Do you often stroll through people’s gardens? Not that there’s any harm in it, I suppose. And don’t you ever stay in the guardhouse, or whatever they call it?”

  “I was set free before breakfast,” said Stribling. He waved his hand. “Thought I’d walk about the town, heard you all back here, knew your voice right away—”

  “You are a poor liar, Captain.”

  Stribling laughed then. “No, actually I’m real good at it, but only under pressure.”

  “I am glad you do not feel pressured now,” said Morgan. “Will you take some breakfast?”

  “Oh, I have eaten,” said Stribling. “However, there is something you could do for me—only a little kindness, won’t take a moment.”

  She eyed him suspiciously. “What is that, sir?”

  “Take a turn with me around front, where your father has Gawain Harper cornered on the porch.”

  Her eyes widened, and she clutched at the locket around her neck. “Good Lord, sir, do you mean it?” She turned quickly to the boy. “Alex, will you look after Cousin? See him to the house—through the back, mind. Will you do that? And go find Mama?”

  The boy nodded his head, looked at Stribling. “Are you a stranger?” he asked.

  “Pretty strange,” said Stribling, bowing. “And you are … ?”

  “I am Alex Rhea, ten years old on the third of Feb-wary,” said the boy. “That is my sister you are talkin to. She is a widow. Are you come courtin?”

  “Alex!” said the boy’s sister.

  Stribling shook his head gravely. “Would that I were,” he said, “but I am only the humble instrument of Providence.”

  Morgan smoothed her hair, her dress, looked toward the house, then back at Stribling. “My father,” she said. “And Gawain.”

  “He told me he came to see you,” said Stribling. “I am glad of it.”

  “Oh, yes,” she said. “In the middle of the night. I suppose he would’ve climbed a trellis or somethin, had I not been in the yard.”

  “Well, he has come again,” said Stribling. He held out his arm. “If we leave now, we can catch the closin arguments.”

  She took his arm then, and together they walked toward the house. “No hurry,” said Stribling. “Plenty of time—they’re just gettin wound up. What’re these little blue flowers here?”

  ONCE MORE GAWAIN Harper saw, in all its parts, the moment he was standing in. A pair of flickers were moving in a courtship dance in the yard. A wagon was passing on the cemetery road. Through the open door of the Carter house, he could hear voices—a child’s, a woman’s—the words lost to him. Judge Rhea was still watching, his eyes sharp and intent behind the spectacles, waiting. Gawain wished he could wait himself, rearrange all this to fit the shape he had carried so long in his head. But he understood that this moment, not some other, was the one prepared for him since the day Lily died. “If I stand with you, then,” he said at last, “you will allow me to call on Morgan?”

  “Plainly put,” said the Judge.

  Gawain shook his head. “You would make a pawn of her? Is that your notion of honor?”

  “Dammit, sir,” said the Judge.

  “You’ll give up this foolishness about Brazil?”

  “I didn’t say that. She will have to choose.”

  Gawain still held the old man’s hand. He let go of it now, stepped to the edge of the porch and looked out at the yard. The flickers darted upward, circled, lit again. “I could call on her anyway, Judge, with your permission or without. I could keep her from going—you know I could.”

  The old man laughed dryly. “Again, that would depend on Morgan, wouldn’t it?” he said.

  Now Gawain laughed. “I suppose it would,” he said. “Strange, though—” He turned, looked at the Judge. “You never gave her any such choices before. You sent a note, you recall.”

  “Yes,” said the old man. “That was so you would make a choice, and you did. Now you must make another because of it.”

  “What if it’s God’s will that I not choose?” said Gawain.

  “If that were so, sir, He would not have brought you here,” said the Judge. “But you are here, and I have asked it of you, and you will choose because you have to now. Your choice don’t come back to God or to Morgan, sir—never did. It comes back to honor.”

  Gawain threw up his hands. “Why me, Judge? Why anybody? If Gault killed … if he did that thing, then why—” Gawain stopped, knowing he was going toward a place he did not want to go. But the Judge finished the thought for him.

  “Why haven’t I confronted him before now? Is that what you want to know?”

  “Yes, sir,” said Gawain, looking away.

  The Judge removed his spectacles, folded them, pointed with them toward the square. “A good many out yonder would like to ask the same question,” he said. “The answer is quite simple, really. I am too old to face Solomon Gault alone, and I am afraid.”

  “You? Afraid?”

  “Does that surprise you?” asked the Judge. “Or does it merely offend your sense of chivalry?”

  “Maybe a little of both,” said Gawain. “She was your daughter.”

  “Yes,” said the Judge. “Yes, she was.”

  “But why me?” asked Gawain. “Why did you wait for me?”

  “Because of her,” said the Judge, and pointed again, this time toward the corner of the house. Gawain looked, saw Morgan and Stribling walking up along the box hedges. There was no time left now for thinking.

  “I will go with you, Judge,” said Gawain quickly, “but I won’t trade.”

  “Of course not,” said the Judge. “That’s what I meant about honor.”

  XIV

  “Honor!” said Morgan. “Is that what brought you here with your hat in your hand?�
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  “I came here to see your daddy,” said Gawain. “He brought up the question, I didn’t.”

  They were alone in the garden, Morgan on the bench, Gawain pacing up and down before her. She sat erect, her feet together, hands knotted in her lap. “Quit that walkin up and down,” she said. “You are makin me nervous.”

  Gawain stopped his pacing, jammed his hands in his pockets and rocked on his heels. “She was your sister,” he said. “I should think you’d be glad.”

  “Glad?” said Morgan. “Let me tell you something, sir. I have lain awake every night for a year now, wondering why Papa didn’t kill that arrogant, self-righteous ass. Then I would lie awake a little longer, thinkin of ways I could kill him myself. But this … this covenant, and I the surety, as if I were a hecatomb or a piece of good bottomland. My God.”

  “It ain’t like that,” said Gawain. “I can’t explain it. It is impossible to explain.”

  “Perhaps you should try,” said Morgan.

  Gawain came and sat beside her on the bench. “Look here,” he said, “I told your daddy I would not trade—”

  “Oh, that’s flattering,” said Morgan.

  “Hah!” said Gawain. He stood up and began to pace again. “You can’t have it every which way, Morgan. Your father demands some proof of me—I expected that, and you ought to be flattered. I just didn’t expect the thing to turn the way it did.”

  She was silent, watching him from the bench.

  “I have no job, no fortune, no prospects,” Gawain went on. “I went soldierin and look what happened. What else could I offer him, pray? At least he owns up to it—that he waited—that he—” Gawain stopped, waving his hands in frustration. “Do you have any idea how hard it was for him to wait, to raise not a hand, and everybody, includin his own daughter, wonderin why he didn’t—why he didn’t—”

  “Do the honorable thing?” said Morgan.

  “Yes.”

  “Well,” she said, “I am sure he suffered.”

  Gawain looked at her, sitting on the iron bench in the ruined, overgrown garden. When she spoke again, her voice was quiet and contained: “When my husband left for the gold fields, I was eighteen years old with a child buried in the graveyard yonder. I waited a year without a word from him, until one day a parcel came. When I opened it, a curl of hair fell out. It was white, and still had flakes of scalp in it, and it was pasted together with dried blood. Only when I read the letter did I understand whose hair it was. His was black when he left, you see. No doubt people will have told you that my husband’s wedding ring was among his effects.”

  She looked at Gawain, expecting a reply. “Yes,” said Gawain, suddenly ashamed by the knowledge, remembering how he’d told the story to Stribling. “Yes, I have heard that.”

  “Come,” she said then, and patted the bench beside her. Gawain sat, and she half-turned to face him, laying her hand on his sleeve. “There was a ring,” she said, “but it wasn’t the one I’d given him.” He started to speak, but she touched his lips with her fingers. “I said I would never wait for anybody again, but I did. I waited for you. When I believed at last that you were dead, I knew there wouldn’t even be a parcel this time. Please do not lecture me about waiting; I know all I ever want to know about it.”

  She dropped her hand, and Gawain took it with his own. The garden, with its overgrown wisteria, its fences covered in honeysuckle, its weedy patches where once flowers and herbs grew, lay warm in the morning sun. The wisteria was heavy with pendulous blooms; their odor was sweet, so strong it was almost visible, and bees swarmed among them. A pool, encumbered with vines, reflected the brightness of the sky like a sheet of old glass; from its shadows, now and then, ancient goldfish rose to gasp at the air, then sink again, their bronze backs glinting for an instant in the sunlight.

  ON THE WAY back to Aunt Vassar’s, Gawain and Stribling avoided the road and passed behind the old Academy through the woods. As they went along, Gawain told about the conversation with the Judge and the trouble with King Solomon Gault.

  “This man Gault,” said Stribling. “What’s he like?”

  “In the old times, I only knew him by reputation,” said Gawain. “During the war, he had one of these irregular cavalry outfits, like we had so much trouble with in Tennessee. He killed a friend of mine, a woman.” Gawain paused, not wanting to shape the words. “Morgan’s sister,” he said at last.

  “My God,” said Stribling. “Tell me.”

  So Gawain told about how Gault and his men had killed Lily Landers and hanged her no-account husband, and how the boy Willy had wandered off or been taken off, nobody knew which, only that he was gone. When Gawain was finished, Stribling shook his head in disgust. “He needs killin all right. Wonder the Judge ain’t done it by now.”

  “I don’t know, Harry,” said Gawain. “I guess he needs a second, and I am it. If he don’t do it at all, I am still it. I can’t let that go.”

  “Well,” said Stribling, “it’s a thing needs doin, all right. But the Judge is right—some things a man ought not to have to do alone.”

  They had paused in a place where the ground was covered in moss. Stribling knelt and brushed his fingers across the soft green carpet. “Seems to me you have got yourself in a fix,” he said.

  Gawain nodded. “Yes, I have. I thought I was finished killin people, but there ain’t a damn thing I can do about it. Anyway, there is Morgan.”

  “Yes,” said Stribling. “She is worth it.”

  “So was Lily, I reckon,” said Gawain.

  “Yes, of course she was.”

  They went on. In a little while, Stribling spotted a young possum in the fork of a tree, tail curling down, blinking in the light.

  “You ever eat one of those?” asked Stribling.

  “A time or two in the field, when pressed,” replied Gawain.

  “What do they taste like?”

  Gawain thought a moment. “Grease,” he said.

  So Stribling shot the possum with his pistol, and Gawain carried it home by its tail and gave it to Uncle Priam.

  “Now that’s a tender shoat,” old Priam said. “We’ll bake him in the ashes, be just right for Sunday dinner.”

  Later, they ate in the dining room, on the good dishes: new potatoes, watercress, some dandelion greens seasoned with fatback, a little broth from a boiled ham bone, and, in a stone pitcher, some good spring water. Old Frank Harper slumped in his chair at the head of the table, a napkin tucked in his shirt front; Stribling, as the guest, sat to his right. Aunt Vassar was at the other end, Gawain to her left. The doors and windows were open, and a good breeze, scented with grass and lantana, blew in and stirred the light curtains.

  Gawain told his aunt about the meeting with the Judge, leaving out the part about Solomon Gault and emphasizing the possibility that Morgan, at least, might be saved from Brazil.

  “Saved how?” asked his aunt, regarding him over her spectacles. “And what about that boy? What would he do without his sister?”

  “I do not have all that figured out yet,” said Gawain testily. “All I know is, I won’t have her goin off down there to eat coconuts and live in a hole in the ground. Anyway, the Judge said I might call on her.”

  “You’re turnin red, boy,” said Aunt Vassar. “Will you have some more potatoes?”

  They ate in silence for a while, then Aunt Vassar nodded at the old man. “Mister Harper don’t come down for dinner much,” she said. “I am glad he felt up to it today, you boys being home and all.”

  Old Harper picked up his fork and prodded among the greens on his plate. “There’s goats up in the house, Ellie,” he said. “One of em has shat on this plate.”

  No one spoke for a moment. Then Aunt Vassar lay down her fork. She put her hand on Gawain’s arm, but looked at Stribling. “Captain Stribling, we are grateful for that good possum,” she said.

  “I was only the instrument of Providence, Miss Vassar,” said Stribling. He was about to go on when old Harper jabbed him in the e
lbow with his fork. Stribling winced.

  “Who’re you!” shouted the old man. “What’re you about!”

  “Mister Harper—,” began Aunt Vassar, but Stribling held up his hand.

  “It’s all right,” he said. “I am glad to be in his company, and especially in yours. I look forward to the possum on Sunday—truth to tell, I never ate one. What do they taste like?”

  “Oh,” said the aunt, coloring slightly. “They are noble fare, sir. Noble.”

  Stribling nodded, went on with his meal.

  “Let me tell you a story, Aunt,” said Gawain. “One time Jack Bishop—you remember him?”

  “Oh, yes, poor boy,” said Aunt Vassar.

  “Goddamn goats all up in here,” said old Harper.

  Gawain took a drink of water. “One time Jack Bishop and I were foraging in the woods up in Tennessee? Came upon one of these country people camped out in a railroad cut, had a fire and a bird turnin on a green willow stick. Jack says to him—we were hungry, as usual—Jack says, ‘What you got on that stick?’ Fellow was cuttin up a onion, tears all down his face, he says, ‘Well, it’s a hawk.’”

  “Good heavens,” said Aunt Vassar.

  “Yep,” said Gawain. “Still had the beak on it, talons too.” He clawed his hands like talons. “Jack looked at him, said, ‘Well, good God.’ Fellow said, ‘You want some? It’s real good.’ Jack says, ‘Well, what’s it taste like?’” Gawain stopped, forked a mouthful of cress.

  “Well,” said Aunt Vassar after a moment, “what did the man say to that?”

  Gawain laughed. “Looked at Jack like he was a fool, said, ‘Oh, ’bout like a owl.’”

  Aunt Vassar looked blank for an instant, then her eyes widened and she began to laugh—carefully at first, as if laughing were an art she had neglected and now was taking up again. “An owl!” she said, and with the words her laughter grew until it was full accomplished. It was a good sound, the old woman laughing in the cool dining room, the breeze tinkling in the lamp pendants again, the smell of grass and summer. Gawain, watching his aunt, suddenly ached with recognition, as if time had reeled backward and touched on some vanished nooning they had known. He remembered the geese looking down on converging roads in the starlight, and all at once he could see them traveling in time: all them he knew and loved, and them he didn’t like much, and the myriad whose lives he would never know, each one with his carpet bag following time. He felt the quick tears come to his eyes, blinked them away before they could fall. “That’s a good story, ain’t it?” he tried to say, but his voice caught and betrayed him, and suddenly he was crying, silently, not much caring now, having come too far to be ashamed. He rose, pushed his chair back, and without saying more, fled out the door to the side gallery and was gone.