the Buffalo Soldier (2002)

by Bohjalian, Chris

  In her mind the girl had Terry's gray eyes, but otherwise looked like her.

  Her father glanced up from his grandchildren at the same moment that she found herself looking at him. He moved slowly these days and his back was stooped from his years with the cows--milking would always take a toll on a man's back, even when the task had been handed over to a mechanical pump and a hose--but when he was seated, as he was now, he was still a powerful figure. He actually had thicker hair, and more of it, than either of his sons, and his shoulders had remained broad.

  Your mother would have loved to have seen the kids in those outfits, he said to her, referring to the Tek vests the children were wearing. She would have thought they looked mighty cute.

  They do, Phoebe agreed. She wanted to ask him how he was feeling now that they were at Wallace and Veronica's. He had been depressed before they left the house, saddened by the reality that he was enduring a Christmas without his wife--her mother. He seemed better now, but it was hard to tell with her father.

  Mom would have worried they're too young to have snowmobiles, Wallace said.

  And she would have been right, Phoebe added, but she meant it good-naturedly and she kept her voice light.

  Those rigs? Nah. They're practically Matchbox cars, Wallace said. They're made for kids.

  From the kitchen everyone heard the oven timer, and Veronica stood, reaching reflexively for the dish towel that she must have brought with her and kept hidden in her lap like a handkerchief. That would be the pie, she said. Dinner's about five minutes away.

  Smells like apple pie, Phoebe said to her sister-in-law.

  Apple and sour cream. Even better. Veronica turned toward her children before leaving, and said to them, You two: Wash your hands, please.

  I need to-- Crystal started, but her father cut her off.

  You don't need to do anything, he said, except listen to your mother and wash your hands right this minute. Now go. Scoot. Chop-chop.

  Without taking their vests off, they started down the hallway to what Veronica referred to as the powder room, and Phoebe realized she was alone with her father and her brother, and this was probably about as good as it was going to get. If her other two siblings had been there, she decided, the moment would have been perfect for dropping her bombshell, but Scottie was with his wife's family in Massachusetts, and Mary was having her own Christmas celebration in Burlington. Still, the moment was good enough. She hadn't planned it this way, and she understood on some level that she might regret what she was about to do.

  Of course, that might have been exactly why she was doing it--because she might regret it, at least at first. What was it her old boss used to say? Breakthroughs begin with breakdowns. She'd tell her father and her brother her big news right now--perhaps begin by pointing out to them that she was drinking decaf coffee today instead of wine or eggnog or beer--which would give them a chance to get used to the idea long before the baby was born. This way they'd be there for her when she needed them most.

  Besides, if she told them on Christmas Day, they would have to be charitable.

  She opened her mouth and started to speak, but quickly stopped herself. She realized that she wanted Veronica present. Her sister-in-law would be an ally if she were among the small group that was told first; she would help ensure that the men were appropriately...supportive. And so she quickly decided that she would wait, after all, until they were finishing dinner, when her niece and nephew would have been excused to go play with their presents. Then she would tell her father and Wallace and Veronica.

  Her brother and her father were looking at her. What were you about to say, Phoebe? Wallace asked.

  I lost my train of thought, she said. Sorry.

  You get that from your mother, her father told her.

  If it's important, it will come back to you, her brother added.

  She sipped her coffee and smiled, and rested one open palm on her stomach.

  IT STRUCK HER as funny, but her mouth felt parched. The kids were gone from the table, and any moment now Veronica was going to stand up, start carting the dessert plates into the kitchen, and suggest that they all take their coffee into the living room. Despite the large water glass that she'd drained, her tongue felt like a massive dry sponge and her throat had grown raw. Almost out of desperation, therefore, she took the spoon--unused--and tapped it against the rim of the goblet, as if she were at a wedding or an anniversary party. If she didn't get their attention that very instant, the moment would pass and it would be weeks or months before she would tell them.

  The three other grown-ups in the room looked at her--Veronica actually paused while dabbing at her lips with her napkin, holding the linen there as if she were trying to clot the blood from a small cut--their eyebrows raised and their eyes wide. What, their faces asked, was Phoebe up to now? Her brother and her sister-in-law, she could see, were expecting...mirth.

  Well, she thought, this won't be mirth, but it will sure as hell give them something to talk about. Dad, too.

  You look like you have something important to announce, Wallace said, as his wife carefully pulled her napkin from her face, rolled it into a tube, and slid it through the pewter ring by her place mat.

  She nodded and reached across the table for his water glass because it was still half-full, and took a long swallow. Then she said, I do indeed have some news. Some good news.

  You have a boyfriend, Wallace said. Hallelujah! It's about time--

  No, I can't say that I do. I have something better.

  Her father folded his arms across his chest and leaned back in his chair. His face changed before her from one of expectation to one of annoyance. Suddenly, if only because he couldn't guess at the surprise and it wasn't as innocuous as a new boyfriend, he had grown wary. It was as if he knew this surprise, whatever it was, whatever she was about to say, was going to displease him. And that made her just a little bit angry, because he had no right to be displeased about anything she said or did. She'd come home before her mother had died and been with him ever since. She'd been working at the general store, for God's sake, to be with him. Given up a pretty good job, and something that at least resembled a social life.

  And that is? Wallace asked.

  She looked from her father to her brother and reined in her resentment. Maybe her father feared that she was about to announce she was leaving his house, and her return to Montpelier was imminent. Or maybe his face and his arms and his pose meant nothing. Absolutely nothing. For all she knew, he was sitting that way to stretch out his spine or relieve an ache in his back.

  I'd ask if you were sitting down, she said, giving herself one more brief second when the news was hers and hers alone, but of course you all are--which is probably good. So, here it is, Phoebe's Christmas Day bombshell. Guess what? I'm going to have a baby.

  There were a pair of lit candles on the table in glass holders, and in the absolute silence that followed her announcement the flames barely moved. Her family was quiet and the air was still, and the trim fires at the tips of the wax were as upright and straight as the slender candles below them. Finally Wallace spoke. Didn't you just tell us you don't have a boyfriend? he said, and his voice was so even that she couldn't tell what he was thinking.

  Nope, there's no boyfriend, she said.

  A fiance? he asked, and then his voice brightened just the tiniest bit. It was clear that in his opinion, a fiance was a whole lot better than a boyfriend when his sister had gotten herself knocked up.

  No, I don't have one of those either, she said, and out of the corner of her eye she caught the silver serving tray with the pieces of turkey her father had carved, and the combination of the meat and the subject matter at hand made her think of turkey basters--that was how that gay mother she knew in her office had gotten pregnant--and she feared she was going to have another attack of the giggles. She'd been having them all the time lately: uncontrollable, nearly hysterical fits of laughter, beginning almost two weeks earlier when she met Te
rry at the bakery in Montpelier.

  Then how? Wallace asked her.

  She knew he meant who or why, but his choice of words--How?, as if he were interested solely in the manner or the technique--put her over the edge, and she started to laugh.

  Don't worry, brother, I didn't use a turkey baster, she said, and she snorted in a manner so unattractive that the sound made her laugh even harder. She saw her father glance at her brother, and it was evident that he didn't have the slightest idea what she was talking about. She wasn't sure that her brother did, either. Both men looked confused, cautious, concerned. They actually looked a bit like Terry did when something would set her off, and her giggles would grow into nearly frenzied peals of laughter.

  Veronica's mouth was hanging open a tiny bit, but not in horror, it seemed, so much as in interest. She wanted to say something, but she was going to wait for her sister-in-law to regain her composure. Finally, with her hands folded into a teepee, her nails impeccable cuts of pink salmon, she said over the last, small ripples of Phoebe's chuckles, Do we know the father? Have we met him?

  She shook her head. Doubt it.

  Veronica nodded. Will we get to meet him...soon?

  I don't think so, because--

  Jesus Christ, Phoebe, do you even know who the hell the father is? her brother asked, unable or unwilling to conceal his incredulity and aggravation. Do you?

  Wallace, please, Veronica said. Of course Phoebe knows--

  Before her sister-in-law could finish speaking, however, her father stood up and angrily threw his napkin into his chair, snapping his wrist as if there were cow shit on it he had to get off. He shook his head and murmured, If your mother were alive...

  But he didn't finish the sentence, and then he left the dining room for the mudroom just off the front hall, where they heard him putting on his boots and his coat and opening the door to the street.

  "Having committed theft and murder upon government employees within the reservation and upon civilians outside it, the hostile factions within the Comanche tribe have given us no choice but to draw a line. In order that we may be able to distinguish between the hostile and friendly groups, henceforth all friendly Indians must set their camps east of the river, and only at points selected and approved by the Agent."

  GENERAL ORDER NO. 57,

  LIEUTENANT COLONEL KENNETH OATES,

  TENTH REGIMENT, UNITED STATES CAVALRY

  *

  Alfred

  The morning after Christmas was the first day of Kwanzaa, a holiday they seemed to talk about often in school--Cornish as well as Burlington--and one his teachers always presumed he understood. This was the first time, however, that he'd actually lived in a house that was acknowledging the celebration. Together he and Laura--Laura mostly, in truth--had produced a small Kwanzaa mat from, of all things, a plastic machine that was meant to make pot holders, and placed upon it the symbols from the book she had given him about the holiday: Seven candles in seven holders, each representing a particular value. A clay goblet she had bought from a potter at a pre-Christmas craft show. Three ears of dried corn from the supermarket she had saved through the fall, and a variety of squash from their garden that remained in the basement. Acorn. Butternut. Spaghetti.

  They built the display in the middle of the dining-room table, and Alfred liked the way you could see the Christmas tree he had picked out in the living room behind it. It looked like a mountain in the distance.

  That night, Laura had said, when Terry returned home from work, they would celebrate the first night of Kwanzaa--what Laura had called the ingathering.

  Ingathering? he asked as he flipped through the Kwanzaa book in search of the definition. It was only nine o'clock in the morning, but already Laura's parents were gone. They'd left before eight, hoping to be far to the south before the storm hit in earnest and the roads grew slick with snow. He had to admit, he was relieved they hadn't stayed longer, and he had the sense that Laura was, too. Laura's mother was wheezing constantly from the animal fur that suddenly he and Terry and especially Laura were discovering everywhere, and Laura's father was clearly uncomfortable with the drafts in the house. They both kept bringing up small homes, all charming, one or the other had seen for sale in Dedham and Newton and Wellesley. While the two women prepared dinner, the men--including Alfred--parked themselves in front of the television to watch a basketball game, and Alfred didn't believe any of them said a word.

  Laura centered one of the candles and then sat in the ladder-back chair beside him. She was still wearing her red flannel nightgown and he was still in the navy blue pajamas that Laura's parents had given him. Terry had left the house while the older couple were having their breakfast, and had already been at work for ninety minutes. I'm sure the book will explain it better, Laura said as she adjusted her headband, but I believe it has to do with building bonds between people and getting together. Family, maybe. Parents and children. She smiled and shrugged, and then added, You might say the ritual began yesterday with Christmas, though it's pretty evident that some parts of this family are more comfortable with the notion of gathering together than others.

  He reached for the acorn squash nearest him and held it in his hand like a softball. He'd never really grown anything in his life; he wasn't sure he had ever even worked in a garden. By the time he arrived here, Laura was already putting her vegetable garden to bed for the winter, and harvesting the final zucchini and squash. The gourd he was balancing that moment in his palm might have been among the very last vegetables she had brought into the house. He wondered if other kids--regular kids--gardened, and without thinking about whether this was a smart subject to broach, he asked Laura, Your girls like to garden?

  The smile instantly evaporated from her face and he regretted the question. Only a split second before it had seemed to him both an innocuous inquiry about a hobby and, perhaps, a safe way to begin to understand the children who had come before him and whose memory had such a hold on these grown-ups with whom he lived. A phrase Laura had just used echoed in his mind: parents and children. That was, she had said herself, a part of the ingathering. So why not bring up the girls? Wasn't it time?

  For a long moment she sat there, saying nothing, and quickly he focused his attention entirely on the page that was open in the book. The words, the English as well as the Swahili--umoja, ujima, ujamaa--became a blur, and he stared at the image of a slim wooden statue of an African man. Finally he heard a small noise from her mouth, a sound so soft it could have been made by one of the cats, and then she answered him.

  Hillary wasn't especially interested in gardening--not vegetables or flowers--but Megan was. A little bit. She didn't like the weeding and planting parts, but she liked to be out there with me sometimes. She'd look for wildlife. Chipmunks. Toads. Bluebirds. Come March or April, you'll see that we actually get a couple families of bluebirds in those birdhouses Terry put up in the side yard. She--and before you laugh at this, remember that she was younger than you are now--also liked to look for fairies. She claimed they lived under the largest leaves, like the ones on the pumpkin plants.

  As Laura spoke he glanced up from the book, and he saw that she was watching him. Her hands were perfectly still in her lap, and the corners of her mouth were upturned once again into a very slight grin.

  Megan didn't contribute a heck of a lot to the final harvest, she continued, but she was great fun to have with me. Always.

  Hillary, too?

  Hillary, too. But Hillary was usually on the same planet with the rest of us. That wasn't always true of Megan. Megan sometimes seemed to exist in her own little world. Megan-Ville, we used to call it. Especially when she'd be off on one of her searches for goblins or elves.

  What else did they like to do? Both girls?

  You mean when Megan wasn't pawing through the pumpkin patch in search of make-believe creatures?

  Uh-huh.

  Oh, I could go on for hours, Alfred. I could show you pictures, I could take you to the attic and
we could unpack cartons and cartons...their whole lives are up there. Well, not their whole lives. We gave a lot away. But we kept a lot, too. There are some things I couldn't part with, even if I couldn't bear to have them around where I could see them every day.

  Clothes and toys?

  Some. I know there's a box of Barbies up there, and the books I couldn't bring myself to give to the library. There's even a couple pieces of furniture. But mostly it's schoolwork and projects and the sorts of things they would do in art class. Things they drew or made with their own hands. Paintings. Little clay sculptures. Their stories and essays.

  But not their photos, he said, and he thought about the albums of pictures he'd studied in the den, and the one image he had taken for himself. They're not in the attic.

  No, not their photos. You've seen them?

  He nodded, and he could feel his face flushing with guilt.

  A day doesn't go by when I don't look at them, she said. I can't have them up on the kitchen refrigerator or in a frame in the bedroom--I just can't do it, I just can't run into them casually when I'm supposed to be doing something else--but I also can't last a day without seeing them. Visiting with them when I'm alone in the house.