the Buffalo Soldier (2002)

by Bohjalian, Chris

  He bounced toward the wrought-iron entrance to the old portion of the cemetery, the sensation of riding always reminding him of the afternoon he'd gone swimming at North Beach in Burlington, and a rainstorm had rolled in and built whitecaps along the surface of the lake. He'd swum in those waves, and they'd carried him. This horse was like that.

  He watched Paul pull up the clasp that kept the heavy gates closed, and then push one of the waist-high doors forward. He was surprised by how much it squeaked in the cold, and so was the horse. She froze for a moment at the new sound, her ears pointing like arrowheads at the noise.

  Come on ahead, the man said to him.

  He drew back on the leather reins with his left hand, pushed his heels into Mesa's sides, and then watched in astonishment as the horse followed his lead. He'd been riding her daily for almost two weeks now, but he was still surprised that he could control an animal this big with such ease. Yet there as she turned were those great nostrils, the pewter-colored bit, and one of those massive, deep eyes. It was hard for Alfred to believe that anything could, as Paul put it, spook eyes such as those. It was difficult for him to imagine this big creature scared.

  Once they were inside the graveyard, Alfred halted the animal, moved slightly in his saddle, and motioned toward the Granger family's memorial and the massive hydrangea beside it. He didn't tell Paul that earlier that autumn he used to go there all the time, but he made sure the older man was aware of the monument. It was beautiful to look at, and through the tapestry of clawlike twigs he could see the spot where he'd once gone for half an hour or an hour at a time.

  Paul nodded at the sand-colored obelisk as big as a closet, and then said, The Sheldon plots are in the new section. Far side of the new section. Not a lot of landscaping yet, you'll see, but sunny. When there is sun. Guide her around the outer edge of the tombstones, okay? No sense in you two having to traverse an obstacle course.

  From high up on the horse the graveyard appeared very different. The lines of the markers looked more definite, more pronounced, even while the headstones that were on the verge of collapse--blackened fungus on aged marble, a rusted metal rebar support exposed like old bone through dead skin--grew more apparent. The columns of antique markers stretched to the end of the hill, not a single one younger than a century. He counted seven G.A.R. stars and guessed there were more.

  From atop Mesa, even a tremendous tombstone such as the Grangers' looked less like a marble skyscraper. In the distance he realized he could see the steeple for the church in the village, and the first cluster of houses on the far side of the Cousinos' dairy farm. The Sheldons' home remained invisible, however, because of the way it was nestled behind the near hill.

  As they approached the new section, the headstones grew more diverse in color and shape--there was black marble dappled with white, clusters of ivory granite, and a few markers that had the blush of old bricks--and nearby there were more likely to be signs of visitation. Fresh flowers. Plastic flowers, sometimes in a plastic vase. A photograph housed inside a block of glass. The quiescent brown grass flattened by footsteps or, in a few cases, the tire tracks of a truck or a car.

  Over there, Paul said, and he pointed to a section Alfred had never bothered to visit. Too new to be interesting. Not a single star or American flag in sight.

  They descended down a path with no markers on either side, and the horse moved carefully, as if she knew how easy it would be to slip among the patches of snow, baseball-sized rocks, and hard ground. Then they wandered down the wide, unpaved road--a pair of tire ruts actually, that were cut by the repeated passage of vehicles through the grass--that sliced the new section in two. They passed a fresh grave, the dirt and the flowers still moist, probably one of the last to be dug in the earth without the help of a backhoe till spring.

  Dorothy Cammin, Paul said. Nice woman. Had a nice service. Short.

  Was there a service for those girls? Alfred asked.

  The Sheldon girls? Of course.

  Kids come?

  Whole school, it seemed. The church was packed. They had to set up monitors in the basement and two of the Sunday-school classrooms so the overflow could watch it on TV. Can you imagine?

  He nodded as he rode. He could imagine that many people gathered together in a single spot, but he couldn't envision that many caring enough to come to a funeral. He figured if he drowned, there'd be a handful of people at his service at best--and he couldn't say for sure who any of them would be.

  Those arch shapes over there, Paul said. That's what you're looking for.

  He stared at them for a moment, and thought back on how easy it had been for him to verbalize the question once he'd decided to ask it. Yesterday afternoon, the two of them together in the barn. Paul had been rinsing the bit in a bucket of water, while he was sitting on the stool with the heavy saddle in his lap. Rubbing it down with the soft, chamois leather rag. The sound of Mesa, nosing in the new hay in the trough just behind them. And the words had come out in a quick stream, more casual in tone than in intent, but it didn't matter because Paul always seemed to listen carefully to every word that he said. He'd asked, very simply, where Terry and Laura's children were buried. Drying the bit, not looking up, Paul said if he wanted he could show him tomorrow. That was it. No big deal. They probably would have gone that very day, but the sun had just about set.

  He tapped his feet against Mesa's sides and turned the horse in toward the lengthy file with the graves, careful to keep her moving straight between the rows--rows that seemed, very suddenly, to be as thin as an escalator and every bit as difficult to traverse with a horse.

  After the funeral, a lot of the church came here, too, Paul was saying as he walked on the grass on the other side of the markers, his arms folded against his down jacket and his gloved hands buried deep in his underarms. The horse breathed out another wispy column of steam, and Alfred reached forward and softly patted the wide plate of her cheek. He sat up straight and commanded the animal to halt--with his words and by pulling back on the reins--because Paul had stopped walking. Then, with his usual great effort, he swung his right leg over the massif-sized back of the Morgan and jumped to the ground, pausing when he realized there was no place where he could hitch the horse.

  Here, Paul said, and he took the reins like a lead line and held them loosely. Almost immediately Mesa leaned over as if she thought she might start trying to pull clumps of frozen grass from the earth with her teeth, but Paul remembered the bit in her mouth and gently lifted up her head with his hands.

  Alfred studied the two graves before approaching them. They were identical but for the names of the girls. White as brand-new piano keys, and just as slick to the eye. On each was what he had assumed at first was a carving of a fairy but then realized was an angel. Wings extended like capes. Faceless but haloed. Floating.

  I know practically every person in this section, Paul said, and it sounded to Alfred as if this revelation disturbed him. Quickly Alfred glanced at the tombstones on either side of the Sheldon girls, checking the dates to see when these people were born and when they had died, and he saw they were old people who'd passed away within a few years of the twins.

  Finally he walked up to the headstones and then took off his gloves before kneeling to touch one. Hillary's. It was slippery and solid. Thick. The rock-hard ice that coated Lake Champlain by the middle of January. He glanced to his right at Megan's tombstone, and then crabbed over there to touch that one, too.

  I heard somewhere she was named after her grandmother.

  She was.

  Hillary, too?

  Hillary, too, Paul said. You would have liked them, I think. Assuming you can abide girls. I presume you do. When I was ten, I didn't. But I understand that things are different now.

  I liked Tien, he answered, unsure exactly what he meant when he used the word like. At the same time, he knew, he had enjoyed living in the same house with Isabel, but that had been very different from his affection for Tien. Isabel was older, an
d everything about her was sexual. Tien was just...Tien. A rail of a girl who would go where he went when they'd wander around Burlington, the two of them sometimes trailing Digger and sometimes not.

  Yes, things are different, Paul murmured. Childhood lasts about a month these days. My granddaughters outgrew their Barbies before second grade.

  When he looked at their monuments, he wished the months had been carved there as well as the years. He wanted to know exactly how old the twins were when they died, because months mattered greatly when you were nine--their age when they'd drowned.

  Their toys are all gone, Alfred told Paul. Barbies, whatever. I haven't seen a girls' toy in the whole house.

  I'm not surprised, Paul said.

  They act like twins?

  What do you mean? Did they act the same?

  I guess. I've never met any twins.

  The horse craned her long neck and stared for a moment up the hill at the trees, at a sound she must have heard there. A gust of wind rattling the leafless branches, maybe. Perhaps only the wind itself. The man thought about his response and then said, First of all, they weren't identical twins. You know that, right?

  Uh-huh.

  Not that identical twins act identically. Because of course they don't. And those two acted liked sisters. Not friends, sisters.

  Because they loved each other so much?

  Paul laughed briefly, but it was loud and enthusiastic. A human horse snort. Because they were happy to fight like hell with each other, he said, and because they knew exactly how to get under each other's skin. They were sisters, first, Alfred, twins, second. I don't know what Laura or Terry has told you, but trust me--

  They haven't told me a thing, Alfred said.

  No, I guess they wouldn't, Paul agreed, nodding, not those two. Then, as if he had never been interrupted, he continued, They were little girls, that's what they were, they were younger than you when they died. They did little-girl things. For reasons I'll never completely know, I always associated Hillary with her dad and Megan with her mom. I have this picture in my head of Hillary being carted everywhere on Terry's shoulders until she must have been in the second grade. But I'm sure he carried Megan that way, too. Maybe it's just the sports. Hillary loved baseball--even T-ball--and soccer, and Megan didn't. And Terry would help out with the coaching.

  I saw a photo, Alfred said.

  Sometimes they'd come over to our yard to go exploring. Especially in the barn. Terry and Laura have that little carriage barn, of course, but the girls seemed to like the size of our hay barn more. It's bigger, more to it. The loft alone made it more interesting to them.

  Alfred wandered behind the headstones and looked out at the hills that rolled up into the forest. This was the vista that would spread out before the girls if they could sit up and see the view. What were they looking for? he asked.

  Oh, lots of things. It would change. Leprechauns. Tomtens. Elves. Who knows? Some days they'd just play hide-and-seek in there. Once they brought over their stuffed animals and set up all these teddy bears and such in the hay from the Eisenhower administration.

  Eisenhower...

  A President from a long time ago. I just meant that the hay was very old. Not like the new stuff we're feeding Mesa.

  In the woods in the distance a group of blackbirds was lifting. Six, ten. A couple dozen. The geese were long south now, Alfred knew, even the ones that had to come down from Canada. He looked at the grass before him, intensely aware that he was within feet of the girls--or, at least, of their bodies. Beneath him was lawn, dirt, then the shiny wood and brass of their coffins. Their remains. Here they were. He was sleeping in the room that had once belonged to one of them, probably in that little girl's very bed.

  Suddenly he thought he might cry, a sensation he hadn't had in years, and only before, he believed, when he had hurt himself badly--or been badly hurt. But it took a lot of pain for him to cry, that he knew well: He'd barely flinched when Digger did his ears, or when he'd fallen off those rocks at the lake in Burlington, or when Mr. Patterson had whaled on him for taking cigarettes off his wife's nightstand. He watched the horse to take his mind off his proximity to the bodies, and allowed the moment to pass over him. In a minute he was fine. He was a buffalo soldier. He wasn't going to cry.

  He took the reins from Paul, inhaled, and climbed atop Mesa's back. He considered himself bigger and stronger when he was in the saddle, more in command. It wasn't simply the height the horse offered him, or the power of the animal beneath him. It wasn't even the pictures he had in his head of the proud cavalry troopers. It was the simple reality that he felt--and it was a feeling he rarely had--as if there was something important in his life that he controlled.

  Time to head home? Paul asked.

  He nodded, and they started back through the columns of graves.

  How did they die? he asked the man as they walked, his eyes focused before him on the hill they were approaching and soon would ascend.

  They drowned, Paul answered.

  I know that. I want to know how.

  The details.

  Uh-huh. I want to know everything you do, he said. He glanced to his side and saw that Paul hadn't been looking at him, either.

  Okay, the man said, and he nodded. Then he put his hands into the wide pockets of his parka, and as they walked home through the graveyard, he told the boy all that he could.

  "Rule number four: They are to obey orders, but they are to remember they belong to no one but themselves. There is a difference between a good soldier and a slave."

  SERGEANT GEORGE ROWE,

  TENTH REGIMENT, UNITED STATES CAVALRY,

  LETTER TO HIS BROTHER IN PHILADELPHIA,

  NOVEMBER 18, 1873

  *

  Laura

  Some businesses closed on Christmas Eve, but Laura knew animal shelters could not be among them. There were still cages to clean, quarantined cats to observe, dogs to feed and walk, and--if, somehow, there was time--a variety of animals in need of any momentary act of kindness.

  Consequently, Laura went to work on Christmas Eve, and got home a little later than usual because she'd had a small party for the employees and volunteers--dog walkers and fund-raisers mostly, but a pair of board members who had stopped by to help as well--who actually had to be at the shelter that day. It was close to four by the time she passed the Cousinos' silos, and the sun had almost set. She didn't expect Terry until somewhere between seven and seven-thirty. If everyone felt up to it, she was hoping they'd go to the midnight service at the church.

  When she neared her house, she saw instantly that something wasn't right. She would have expected no lights on at all if Alfred were still across the street tending to Mesa, or a single light on in the living room if he had finished early and gone home to watch television. Maybe a light on upstairs if he had gone to his bedroom. Though it was a Thursday, the schools were closed because it was the day before Christmas, and Alfred was supposed to have spent the morning with Tim Acker, and then the afternoon--as if it were just another weekday--with Paul and the horse.

  Instead, however, it looked like every single light on the first floor was on, including the outside porch light over the front doors. A part of her thought the house looked rather festive, as if she and Terry were having a holiday cocktail party or open house. Her parents were driving up from Boston tomorrow and spending the night, and she could only hope the house would look that nice to them. A gold ribbon was laced through the swag on the wreath on the front door, and it sparkled for a brief second when it was caught by her headlights as she turned into her driveway.

  Then she noticed that the electric candles in the windows hadn't been plugged in, however, and instantly the illusion of a party vanished. Moreover, Terry's cruiser wasn't here, and so her husband hadn't come home early to surprise her.

  She felt a pang of fear--any parent's natural instinct, but inflated beyond reason by the reality that she had lived through any parent's worst nightmare--and started figh
ting with her seat belt and her keys to escape the car. For a long second she forgot how to unbuckle the shoulder harness, and it felt to her like she was trapped. She heard herself swear once, just before the mechanism clicked and she was released.

  When she reached the front door, she found it was unlocked, and the house was quiet.

  Alfred, she called, Alfred?

  In here, someone said, but it wasn't the boy and it wasn't her husband. It was Paul Hebert. Without putting her bag down or taking off her boots, she ran through the kitchen and down the hallway into the den, toward the source of the voice, and there on the couch she saw the professor and Alfred--the child with what looked like a wadded dish towel against the far side of his forehead--watching, of all things, the Christmas Eve service from Saint Peter's Basilica on a French-Canadian television station. The cantor was singing in Latin just outside the cathedral, and she could tell from the waves of umbrellas that it was raining in Rome.

  Alfred? she said, and she half-sat and half-leaned on the arm of the couch beside him, and gently pulled away the towel. She realized the cloth was filled with ice cubes, and he offered her a small smile.

  It really doesn't hurt anymore, he said.

  Now watch this, Paul said, as if she hadn't just entered the room--or, perhaps, as if she'd been there all along. We're about to see the woman who's going to present the Mass in sign. See there, in that corner: That's her. Incredible, what this woman does. Incredible! Not only does this character speak Latin and French and Italian, but she's about to take all these different languages, translate them instantly in her head, and then present them in sign for the hearing impaired. Unbelievable!

  What happened? she asked.

  I fell off Mesa, Alfred said, a trace of an apology in his voice--as if he felt guilty, somehow, or feared he had done something wrong.

  My God, she murmured, trying not to panic and frighten the boy. So brave, she added quickly. Her mind began conjuring the worst: spinal injuries that would cripple the child for life, a concussion or brain injury that would become manifest any moment. She tried to remember the signs of a concussion, and the ones that came back to her were dizziness and nausea. She had a vague sense that she should look at his pupils, but she figured they would have to be dilated to the size of dimes before she could be sure anything was wrong.