the Buffalo Soldier (2002)

by Bohjalian, Chris

  No, I don't think so. She doesn't even know. No one knows but me and the boy. I guess she just wants to see us all together. One big happy family, he said, his voice awash in sarcasm. With his free hand he adjusted the pillow beneath his head.

  She saw in the midday light that poured through the drapes the silhouette of one of the motel housekeepers outside their window, pushing her cart with clean sheets and towels and spray bottles of disinfectant. This was a pretty nice motel: It catered mostly to the skiers who were visiting Stowe, and it was likely the young man behind the desk would be more than a little shocked when she checked out barely ninety minutes after checking in. She'd noticed this place--and its vacancy sign--as she drove into Waterbury, but she hadn't anticipated she'd be back here with Terry. They were only supposed to eat lunch. But the last two times they were together, they'd done little more than sit and talk with coffee and tea between them, and the whole idea that they were meeting now for no other reason than the fact that they wanted to see each other was too much. Suddenly it didn't seem so horribly wrong to backtrack up 100 to this motel and shed their clothes and allow themselves a little pleasure. It wasn't as if a person could get more pregnant. It wasn't as if anyone, ever, would have to know.

  I have some news, she murmured.

  Oh?

  I'm going to move back here.

  To central Vermont?

  Yup. Waterbury, maybe. Or Montpelier again. But, you know, this area.

  You told your father?

  No.

  He won't be happy.

  I know. But it could have been a lot worse from his standpoint. My family hasn't been hugely supportive of my pregnancy, and I was actually thinking about moving real far away.

  How far?

  New Mexico.

  New Mexico?

  Uh-huh. Santa Fe. One year when I was in college in Burlington I lived with a girl who moved out there. And she just loves it. Has a little family, says it's a great place for kids.

  You ever been out West?

  No, but I think that was a part of the attraction. It would be a complete change of scenery for me.

  Still, even Waterbury or Montpelier won't exactly please your father. I think he's going to miss you more than you realize.

  But the move will be good for me, and I think he'll understand that, too. Let's face it: When things have gotten to the point in the deep woods that I'm letting Smokey Bear pick me up, it's time to get my fanny back to civilization.

  He sighed and his chest rose. We can never make a habit of this, he said. You know that, right?

  Of course I do. I know you could get all too used to me.

  He squeezed her, pulling her body tightly against his, and he kissed her softly on her forehead. God, Phoebe, what am I doing? What are we doing?

  She wrapped her leg over his. We're having lunch, she murmured, happy in the warmth of his arms. That's all. Just having a little lunch.

  SHE WOULDN'T BE spending New Year's Eve alone, but she also wouldn't be with Terry Sheldon. A family in her father's church--her church, too, though other than Christmas Eve she hadn't been there since her mother's funeral in August--was having a party, and she knew she would go. She'd play Trivial Pursuit and Boggle and a card game called spoons, and if not for this image in her mind of Terry Sheldon in a nice sports coat or a sweater and khaki pants, she figured she would have a pretty good time. She liked games, and she liked the people who were having the party.

  But there was that picture in her head of Terry, and she realized days before New Year's Eve that it was going to cast a shadow upon her evening: She wanted to be spending the evening with him. This was most certainly something she shouldn't be thinking about, she decided, since it was most certainly something she couldn't have. Unfortunately, something was happening to her, that was clear. She was missing him only hours after they'd parted Wednesday afternoon, so much so that she drove on into Newport and went to the bar where they'd had their very first drink. She stood at the bar and chatted with the bartender--a guy who was actually a couple of years younger than she was--and drank a Diet Pepsi, and glanced back every so often at the table where she and Terry had sat drinking their first night together.

  It was funny, but she didn't miss beer. She feared that the urge to have one would be overpowering if she stepped inside the bar, but it wasn't. She attributed this to maternal wisdom and protectiveness, and decided that although she was a--and she actually found herself rolling her eyes when the words formed in her mind--home-wrecking slut, she probably wouldn't be a bad mom.

  "I don't think [George Rowe] felt guilty. My husband was his enemy. When we got to know each other, he said he'd only brought the Captain's wife to my children because he thought she would be able to make them stop coughing and the fort would be a quieter place. That was a joke, of course. White people didn't think he was very funny because he could be so angry around them, but he really was a very funny man."

  VERONICA ROWE (FORMERLY POPPING TREES),

  WPA INTERVIEW,

  MARCH 1938

  *

  Alfred

  It was a Wednesday but the school was still closed for Christmas break, and so he called Tim Acker around nine in the morning from the phone in the kitchen to see if he wanted to come over and see the horse. Alfred hadn't introduced Mesa to any of the boys in his class yet, but Paul had said he could, and he'd certainly told a few of them about her. Some, like Schuyler Jackman and Joe Langford, had expressed absolutely no interest, and he presumed at first that this was only because horses were not uncommon in this part of the state--there were two kids in the class whose families he knew owned at least one--but then he began to understand that it was actually because they viewed horses as a hobby for girls. Joe had gone out of his way to inform him that his older sister had taken riding lessons for years at an outdoor stable in Middlebury, and he had dreaded being dragged there by his mother when he was seven and eight years old--too young to stay home alone after school, and so he'd have to accompany his sister to her lessons. The problem--an opinion Joe made clear to Alfred in front of both Schuyler and Tim Acker--was that only girls were interested in horses, and so there was never a boy to be found at the stable. Lots of girls, no boys: a bad combination when you're eight.

  Alfred thought he might bring the book about the buffalo soldiers into school someday in January and show Joe the old black-and-white photographs of the black men on their horses. Nothing effeminate about them.

  Tim had displayed a little more enthusiasm at the idea of visiting the Morgan--not a lot, but at least he hadn't been negative--which was why he decided to call him first. His mom said he'd spent the night at a friend's house, however (Schuyler's? Alfred wondered. Joe Langford's?), and he probably wouldn't be home much before lunch. Unfortunately, that didn't do him any good because Louise was coming back for another visit in the afternoon, and the last thing he wanted was to have one of the kids in his class meet Louise. The whole idea that there was this person from the state who popped into his life every so often because he didn't have a real mom or dad just helped to set him even further apart.

  Briefly he considered calling somebody else, but he decided he didn't want to find out how big the sleepover was, or--worse--inadvertently phone the very house where it was occurring.

  He heard Laura coming down the stairs and he realized she'd ask him if he wanted a friend to come over or whether there was someone in town he wanted to see, and he knew he wouldn't be able to bear the look on her face when he said no to both questions. And so he decided it was a nice enough day outside that he might as well lie and ask her to drive him to Schuyler's house. He could probably walk around the village for a while--it wasn't Burlington, but he was an expert at killing time--and then walk back here after lunch. It would take some time, but that was the whole point, wasn't it? He'd tell Laura, of course, that Schuyler's mom had driven him home (he'd even use that word home and make everyone happy), and by then it would be early afternoon and he could wand
er across the street and visit Mesa himself. Get her all ready for when Louise got there, and he could show her just how well he could ride.

  "Custer may have been a good Indian fighter, but I wasn't vexed by his death. When we were at Fort Sill, our horses were the animals cast off by his illustrious Seventh Cavalry. I've also heard the rumor--as I am sure you have, too--that he was offered a lieutenant colonelcy in the Ninth just after the war, and turned it down because he wanted nothing to do with Negroes on horses."

  SERGEANT GEORGE ROWE,

  TENTH REGIMENT, UNITED STATES CAVALRY,

  UNDATED LETTER TO HIS BROTHERIN PHILADELPHIA

  *

  The Heberts

  A fine blue mist was emerging from the horse's nostrils as he ran his hands down the muscles--as wide as a tire, he thought--that lined Mesa's neck. She turned toward him, her ears pricked, and he slipped her a piece of carrot the size of his thumb. He decided she was happy. She liked him and she liked the boy, and she was warm and well-fed. It wasn't a bad life.

  Beside him, Alfred was putting the shovel and the pitchfork back against the near wall in the barn. It was late Wednesday afternoon, and the winter sun had just about set. They would give Mesa her feed--a coarse mix tonight, so she'd eat a little more slowly and give her digestion a bit of a rest--and then they'd be done for the day. That social worker had watched Alfred ride and was now back across the street with Laura. He understood she was staying for dinner.

  You know something? Alfred said, and he turned. He noted that sometimes Alfred used the same construction his female students had used when they wanted to tell him something: Begin the statement in the form of a needlessly deferential question. He wondered if it was because the boy was young or because he'd grown up the responsibility of so many adults who frequently didn't care about what he might have to say.

  Yes?

  In that book you gave me, it said the Indians used to get mad at the buffalo soldiers because they couldn't be scalped.

  What?

  They didn't have hair an Indian could grab, so they couldn't be scalped.

  He tried to read the boy's face, but it was almost expressionless. If an Apache or a Comanche wanted a scalp, he said, I tend to doubt he'd be dissuaded by the difficulty posed by the length of a black soldier's hair.

  I'm just telling you what the book said, Alfred went on. I can show you.

  Oh, I don't doubt you--or the book.

  It was written in a newspaper article.

  Ah, I see. No doubt it was a white newspaper, he said, and he explained as best he could his belief that whoever had written the article must have been deeply threatened by the presence of the buffalo soldiers on the Great Plains, and this was a sarcastic dig at their expense.

  Still, Alfred insisted, it couldn't have been easy to scalp them.

  I don't imagine it was easy to scalp anybody.

  Sometimes I wonder...

  Yes?

  Sometimes I wonder why the Indians and the buffalo soldiers didn't band together.

  Against the white soldiers?

  I guess.

  He handed Alfred the two remaining carrots he had left in the pocket of his parka and watched him feed them to the horse. Mesa nuzzled the boy's palm and then chewed with great enthusiasm. Horses didn't really smile, but you could sometimes see how they felt in their eyes, and he thought Mesa's always brightened around the boy.

  It's natural to wonder about that now. It really wasn't an issue then.

  I just look at a man like Sergeant Rowe--

  A buffalo soldier?

  Uh-huh. I look at all he put up with, and I just don't get it.

  Was he born a slave?

  Yes.

  He was used to much worse.

  That doesn't make it right, the boy said.

  No. I suppose it doesn't.

  When the horse had finished chewing, she stretched her head out across the stall gate and started nosing against Alfred's stomach and chest in the hope that there might be a pocket there with more carrots.

  That's all I have, girl, the boy murmured. Sorry.

  He wasn't sure, but he had the sense that Alfred was bringing up the book in part because he didn't want to leave. He'd noticed before that when the child wanted to remain after he was done with his chores--which was usually perfectly fine--he'd bring up a variety of subjects: Why horses didn't eat meat. Why the mane always seemed to fall to the right side of the horse's neck. The regulation that a buffalo soldier couldn't weigh more than 155 pounds. He guessed Alfred was still hanging around because he was apprehensive about the fact that the social worker was at Terry and Laura's house that very moment, and would be staying for dinner. Clearly something was up, and the boy had to know it: It wasn't simply the idea that Louise was back for the second time in three days after having not set foot in Cornish in almost two months. It was the reality that she was back because of whatever had occurred between Terry and the boy early Monday.

  He hadn't spoken to Terry since the trooper phoned him the other morning with his odd accusations about the child, and asked him not to allow Alfred to spend any time alone with the horse. He should have called him back, and he wished now that he had. Maybe he could have reassured him that Alfred had no plans to run away, and that the boy certainly wasn't a thief. But he'd been taken aback by the phone call, and he'd decided that Terry needed some distance from his fight with the boy before he could think reasonably.

  And now, suddenly, it was late Wednesday afternoon. Early evening, almost.

  Louise is a nice young woman, he said, standing beside Alfred and the horse. I like her.

  Uh-huh.

  You tired?

  A little.

  You seem a little tired today. You rode fine, I thought, but I could tell you were a bit tuckered. You do anything special this morning?

  He shrugged.

  Just hung out, huh?

  The boy nodded silently, his eyes fixed firmly on the horse before him, and so Paul continued, This dinner tonight. You want me to be there?

  How?

  He thought for a moment. Getting himself invited would be easy, he could do it with any one of a number of small white lies: He could have Emily call Laura and say the furnace was on the fritz, and she would most certainly invite them over for dinner. He could ask Alfred for his gloves right that second, bring them by his house early that evening, and then act surprised when he saw the company. Maybe that wouldn't guarantee that he could hang around for supper, but he could certainly get in a few good words for the boy in front of Terry, and make dinner a bit easier on the lad. He and Emily could even, he realized, simply drop in bearing whatever it was that Emily had been baking that afternoon. Pumpkin bread, maybe.

  That was an advantage to being old. Older, anyway. You could drop in on people without calling first, on the pretext that you were merely visiting and this was how people did it in the past.

  He--he and Emily, he corrected himself--should probably just wander by, he finally decided. He didn't want to give Alfred the impression that he approved of lying, even if the lie was small and the cause was just. Still, he wanted Alfred to know that he would see him later on in the evening and so he said, Don't worry about how. You and I are friends and we're neighbors, and this is just what friends and neighbors do.

  He could see Alfred was squinting, and he wondered if the boy was merely playing some game with himself--How tightly can I close my eyes and still see? What does a horse's nostril look like when my eyes are open only a crack?--or whether the kid was on the verge of tears and trying now to make absolutely certain that not a one ever crept down the side of his face.

  "The girls got better and I went back to work in the laundry. I didn't go into town, and so the only women I saw were the wives of the white officers, the other laundresses, and the prostitutes. I really didn't have many friends."

  VERONICA ROWE (FORMERLY POPPING TREES),

  WPA INTERVIEW,

  MARCH 1938

  *
r />   Terry

  He could argue that this was either very good luck or very bad, though he had to admit he was more pleased by the news than he thought he should be. He certainly hadn't expected such a small piece of good fortune, but there it was, tangible despite the reality that for the moment it was nothing more than a string of words surfing through space on radio waves. He'd been in his cruiser about thirty seconds--he was barely beyond the parking lot beside the barracks--when the dispatcher radioed him with the news that there had been a B and E at a private residence in Salisbury. He was on his way home, but the night shift was already committed to a car accident on Route 74 and a very messy domestic affair in Starksboro, and since he was on the road and was a shift supervisor, he would need to fill the breach. It didn't sound like a big deal (oh, it would be big to the family who lived there, no doubt about that, but in the greater scheme of things it was hard to get worked up over a stolen CD player and TV set), but it meant that he wouldn't be home for dinner. He'd have to linger over the photographs of the stolen items, do a lot of dusting for prints. He'd need to settle the family down, which would certainly take some time since, after all, a stranger had been in their house and gone through their things, and then there would be plenty of paperwork to fill out.

  He probably wouldn't get home much before eight. Make that eight-thirty. Maybe even eight forty-five if the family needed some major hand-holding, and he did the right thing and stayed.

  No, not maybe eight forty-five. Definitely eight forty-five. Who was he kidding? For better or worse, this meant that by the time he walked in his house, the social worker would be gone for the night.

  A last-minute stay of execution, he thought to himself, though not without a small pang of self-loathing.

  IT WAS ACTUALLY nine o'clock by the time he got home. Laura and the boy were in the den watching a video Laura had rented for them at some point that day, and they were both dressed for bed. Alfred was lying on the floor in his pajamas and a sweatshirt, and Laura was on the couch in her nightgown and a bathrobe. Her hair was damp, she'd already showered.