The Deserter

by Jane Langton

  But she and Seth were not only partners in a common enterprise. After all, they had grown up in the same town, their minds were stocked with the same recollections and they had the same views on matters small and large. And like all contented couples they shared a private language. Playfully Seth called Ida “the cynosure of all eyes,” and she teased him with noble names from Sir Walter Scott.

  And of course Concord was a celebrated village. Like all the rest of their fellow citizens, they revered Mr. Emerson and shared in the gossip about the other colorful citizens of the town—the philosophical farmers, Mr. Alcott and his daughters, Judge Hoar and his sister Elizabeth, Mrs. Thoreau and her boarders, not to mention her clever daughter and the famous eccentric son who had died last year.

  It was true that Seth was far more learned than Ida, because it had been he, not she, who had taken the cars to college in Cambridge. Ida envied him his Latin and Greek, but she herself was no ignorant country girl. In the public schools of Concord a forward girl like Ida Flint could pick up more than a scrappy education. And among her elders at home there was Yankee wit aplenty, pumped up with a new sort of yeasty exaltation.

  Therefore Seth did not have to temper his speech to the understanding of his young wife. They possessed in common the whole of the village and all the compacted and sifted wisdom of its people.

  Perhaps Mrs. Thoreau’s late and lamented son had not spoken extravagantly when he called the town of Concord “an earthly paradise.” It had not occurred to the newlywed pair to think of themselves as residents of the Garden of Eden, and yet perhaps it was so. And if Ida was Eve, Seth was certainly her Adam.

  This was the husband she was seeking, the one whom no temporary madness could ever change for long.

  THE BURIAL PARTY

  But of course she would not find him. The change to Seth Morgan was of a very different kind.

  As Ida lay asleep on the bed belonging to Lily LeBeau in the hotel beside the railroad in Baltimore, a burial detail on the battlefield of Gettysburg moved slowly among the bodies beside the Bushman barn. Stooping over the sad wreckages of once-living men, they tried with meticulous care to name them. Reaching into coat pockets, vest and trouser pockets, they removed the things to be sent home—a pipe, a watch, a pocketknife, a letter, a Bible. Sometimes a daguerreotype or a bloodstained photograph had to be tugged from the clutch of a dead hand.

  When two members of the burial party came to the body of Seth Morgan they found no coat and therefore no pockets. There was only a note pinned to the shirt, “PVT. OTIS PIKE.”

  The name was not on the embalming surgeon’s list of the officers and enlisted men whose bodies were to be preserved and sent elsewhere.

  The burial party could not wait. They lowered Seth into a trench among the other men of the Second Massachusetts Volunteer Infantry who had been killed while trying to recapture the rebel works on the lower slope of Culp’s Hill.

  Their bodies would lie there only a little while. Before long they would be exhumed, enclosed in wooden boxes and buried in the new cemetery set aside for the dead of the Battle of Gettysburg. At the time of its dedication, months from now, the two speakers would be illustrious.

  If only on that day their voices might be shovels to burrow into the earth, picks to smash the box lids, augurs to drill open the deaf ears. Then the dead of Gettysburg might hear the eloquent phrases about a nation conceived in liberty and dedicated to a certain noble proposition, they might then be sharply heedful of the stirring words about devotion and consecration and high resolve.

  Would they then be resigned, proud to have fallen in the Battle of Gettysburg? Perhaps they would, perhaps they would not.

  ANOTHER

  SKEDADDLE

  Lily minced no words. “Seth, you swine, why didn’t you tell me you’ve got a wife?”

  Otis looked at her in consternation. “Wife? I’ve got a wife?”

  “Well, for goodness sake, of course you’ve got a wife. She’s come all this way by herself, looking for you. And she’s—” Lily made a bulging shape in front of her skirt. “How could you abandon that sweet girl at a time like this?”

  Christ Almighty. To his horror Otis understood that it was Seth Morgan’s wife who was here in Baltimore, and she would take one look at him and scream and shriek and want to know what he had done with her beloved husband, and then the whole game would be up. “My God, you’ve seen her? You mean she’s here?”

  “She certainly is here. She’s in my room in that fleabag hotel. She’s crazy to see you.”

  Otis put his head in his hands, remembering the little case he had found in Seth’s pocket, with the pretty young girl inside it, Seth’s loving little wife, who had made him handkerchiefs with her own little hands. “Oh, for Christ’s sake, Lily, shut the door.”

  She slammed it so hard it shivered in its frame.

  The scarred surface of the table was dusty with face powder and cigar ash, but Otis, staring down, saw the theater on Holyoke Street, the jolly old theater that belonged to the Pudding. He saw Charley Mudge plunking his banjo and singing a witty song, then staggering and falling at Culp’s Hill. He saw Tom Robeson flounce across the stage in bonnet and false curls, then drop to the ground in that same godforsaken swale. He saw Henry Farrar prance onstage as Mr. Snoozle, then drag at a fallen horse in a hail of shot and shell. He saw Seth Morgan merrily intoning one of the best lines Otis had ever invented, then falling, his face smashed into a smear of blood.

  And then Otis saw the face of Noah Gobright. He looked up and said, “Lily, don’t bring her here.”

  Lily tore off her bonnet and unhooked her chemisette, staring at him reproachfully. “Why on earth not? The poor sweet thing.”

  “I didn’t tell you, Lily. I skedaddled.”

  She widened her eyes in mock horror as her skirt dropped to the floor. “Why, Seth, you naughty boy.”

  “No, no, you don’t understand. It was the fourth time. If they catch me, they’ll shoot me.” Otis stood up, the voice of Gobright ringing in his head, calling after him, Otis, Otis. “They’ll collect a firing squad and shoot me.”

  Lily was tying ribbons around her plump ankles and crisscrossing them up her legs. “But your wife won’t tell on you. Surely you’d be safe with your little wife?”

  “If I go home with my wife, they’ll find me. I can’t go home.”

  Swaths of rose-colored muslin swirled around Lily. “What a fool you are, Seth. Why don’t you change your name? If you’re so afraid of your wife, why do you still call yourself Seth Morgan?”

  What could he say? Keeping Seth’s name alive was a kind of painful tribute, a debt of guilt and honor—as if honor meant anything in this war, which of course it didn’t. They were always talking about glory and honor, the generals. “Oh, God, Lily, I killed someone.”

  “You killed someone? Well, for heaven’s sake, Seth”—Lily tied the ribbons under her knees—“isn’t that what you were there for, to kill as many Johnny Rebs as possible?”

  “It wasn’t a reb.”

  Lily’s face disappeared behind a powder puff, and she began fussing with her curls. Hairpins showered around her chair. Thoughtfully she said, “I know what you need, Seth, a new name, something striking. Adolfo—what about Adolfo?”

  Otis laughed. “No, not Adolfo.”

  She pinned her hair into a Grecian knot. “But, Adolfo dear, we’re forgetting your little wife. Any minute now she’s going to have a blessed event.”

  “Oh Christ.” Otis picked up his silk hat and stroked it, remembering uneasily the way it had been paid for. He had skedaddled from Gettysburg in the remnants of two uniforms—Seth’s grisly blood-drenched coat and his own trousers, grubby from two days of scrambling all over the shot-torn battlefield. After the dangerous encounter with Gobright, he had hotfooted it away down the pike as fast as he could run in the pouring rain. Then, miles away from Gettysburg, he had made a last inspection before tossing Seth’s coat away in a ditch. Thrusting his fingers into an insi
de pocket, he had come upon the wad of banknotes.

  What a piece of good luck! Next morning in his rented room in the Baltimore boardinghouse, he had swabbed the notes clean, the words blood money throbbing in his head.

  But blood money or not, he had to look like a gent before presenting himself to Miss Lily LeBeau. The new suit was only ready-made, but even so, it had been costly. He had also bought a gold fob and a chain for his watch.

  “Really, Seth,” said Lily, “I’ve got to tell her something.”

  Otis threw up his hands. “If she’s expecting, she shouldn’t be here. Tell her to go home.”

  There were shouts in the corridor. Jacko thumped on the door. “Oh, Seth,” urged Lily, “she’s so determined. She’s not going to leave without seeing you. How can you be so heartless?”

  Otis made up his mind. “If she won’t go, then it’s up to me.” He began pulling things down from the hooks on the wall. “I’m going to light out of here in a C-spring shay. There’s a train in half an hour. I’ll see you in Washington, Lilybelle.”

  The thump on the door was louder this time. Lily stood up tearfully to be embraced. “Oh, Seth,” she whimpered, “what shall I tell her?”

  “Tell her anything. I don’t give a damn.”

  When the curtain rose on the first act of The Marble Heart, Lily bounced onstage right on cue, and then as she trilled her plaintive song, she thought what she should tell poor Ida.

  Seth was gone, she would say. She had arrived at the theater and found him gone. His battle wound had flared up, that was what she would say. He was recovering somewhere in the country, away from the bad air and noise of the city. And then she would urge the dear child to leave at once and give birth to her adorable baby at home.

  Love on, sang Lily happily—

  —love on, calm thy fears!

  Time will bring happier hours!

  The eyes which coldly view thy tears

  Will warmly greet sweet flowers!

  Love on, love on, love on!

  PART XIII

  OUT OF THE DARK

  FAMILY ALBUM

  Home at last from their long triple journey to Gettysburg, Washington and Gettysburg again, Mary and Homer went straight to bed. But next morning, refreshed, they drove across town to see Gwen.

  “Did you visit Ebenezer?” she said, as they walked in the door with their arms full of loot.

  “Wait till you hear,” said Mary.

  “The man’s a nutcase,” said Homer.

  “Look what we’ve got.” Mary set everything down on the dining room table. “But most of this stuff comes from Gettysburg.”

  Patiently Gwen listened and looked at all the expensive relics they had bought in Bart’s antiquarian bookshop, the coat and the other things from his “Otis Pike collection,” including the small leather case with the photograph of a sober-looking young woman in a white-ribboned cap.

  “Oh, I remember her,” said Gwen. “But doesn’t she have a husband?”

  “Here,” said Mary. “Ebenezer stole it, but we got it back.” She opened the other little case, the one that had been tipped off the table and smashed under Ebenezer’s soup cans.

  Looking at the pictures beneath the cracked glass, Gwen recognized the husband and the wife. “Poor things,” she said, “but who are they? Flints or Morgans, I’ll bet, but which ones exacdy?”

  Mary looked at her and said slowly, “Isn’t there a—”

  “Family album!” cried Gwen. “Of course there’s a family album.”

  “I’ll bet Ebenezer grabbed it,” said Homer.

  “He did not. It wasn’t in the attic, it’s right here in this room. At least I hope it is.” Gwen went to the china cupboard. “I hope to God he didn’t find it.” She opened the glass door and peered past a teapot in the shape of a thatched cottage. “Oh, good, it’s still here.” She pulled the big book out carefully, rattling the teacups.

  It was a heavy volume bound in stamped leather. The spine was cracked, but a pair of brass latches were still fastened over the thick pages.

  Gently Gwen set it down on the table and undid the clasps.

  “I’d forgotten all about it,” said Mary. “It’s in terrible shape.”

  “I’m really ashamed,” said Gwen. “We should have taken better care of it.” She opened the front cover. The first page was headed with the words “Index to Portraits,” but it was not a list of portraits, it was a genealogical record.

  “I didn’t know you people had a family tree,” said Homer.

  “Oh, Gwen,” said Mary, “I’m ashamed too. We haven’t been keeping it up. Well, neither did Mother. She’s not in here, and neither is Father. Your marriage isn’t here, and neither is mine.”

  As an outsider, Homer felt no Morgan family guilt. “Look,” he said, pointing to the family tree. “The woman in the pictures must be up here at the top somewhere.”

  It took them an hour to determine who was who. Gwen and Mary pored over the faded names and figured out the lines of descent, and Homer copied them down.

  “It stops there.” Gwen ran her finger up the selected list in Homer’s notebook. “Here at the top Joseph Flint is called ‘Grandfather,’ so this whole thing must have been written by his granddaughter, Ida Flint, who married—” she ran her finger sideways, “Seth Morgan, and then somebody named Alexander Clock later on. I don’t remember any Clocks.”

  “Because they only had daughters,” said Homer. “One died, and the two surviving daughters married other people, so then there were no more Clocks.” He tapped the name of Seth Morgan. “Here he is, your great-great-grandfather, Ida’s ‘dear husband’—I mean, her first ‘dear husband.’”

  Mary looked at the name and felt a pang, remembering the blank page in the Harvard album for the class of 1860, the missing face of a young man deemed unworthy of his peers.

  Heartlessly Gwen said, “Seth Morgan, he’s the shameful one nobody ever talked about. What happened to him afterward? There’s no death date, but Ida married again, so maybe he died in the Civil War.”

  “Unless she was a bigamist,” said Homer.

  “Our great-great-grandmother?” Mary pretended to be shocked. She turned the page. “Let’s see what these people looked like.”

  Only a few of the pictures were accompanied by names. “Too bad,” said Homer. “The trouble is, everybody knew what Grand-paw and Aunt Milly looked like, so there was no need to write their names down.”

  The first two were daguerreotypes. They were dark, as though the old gentleman in a neck cloth and his wrinkled old wife were peering out of a closet.

  The next husband and wife had been taken after the daguerreotype era. These were cartes de visite, photographs on cards slipped into openings in the thick pages.

  “This one says ‘Father,’” said Gwen. “So I’ll bet he’s Bartholomew Flint.”

  “Ida’s father,” said Homer, “the one killed by a falling tree. So the woman must be his wife Eudocia, Ida’s mother.”

  “Oh wow,” said Mary, turning the page, “who’s this old sourpuss?”

  Gwen turned the book sideways. “There’s writing—wait a minute. It says ‘Mother Morgan.’”

  Homer flipped back to the family tree. “She must be Seth’s mother Augusta.”

  “I disown her,” said Gwen firmly.

  “So do I,” said Mary.

  “I’m sorry to inform you,” said Homer, “that you can’t disown an ancestor, good or bad. Without grumpy old Augusta you two wouldn’t be here at all. Who’s next?”

  Mary turned the page, and they all said at once, “There she is.”

  It was the young woman in the white-ribboned cap. “And she’s written her entire name under it.” said Gwen. “‘Ida Flint Morgan Clock.’ She’s the young woman in those two little cases.”

  “So which of her two husbands is with her in one of them?” said Homer. “Is it Seth?”

  “Maybe it’s her second husband, Alexander Clock.” Gwen turned the page to a pair of
children. On the left side a small boy looked out of the cardboard frame; on the right a baby lay on a pillow, its small hands folded on its breast.

  “Oh yes,” said Mary. “I remember the dead baby.”

  They studied Homer’s list again. “The little boy may be the son of Ida and Seth,” said Homer. “Horace Bartholomew Morgan.”

  “And the baby must be little Eudocia Mary,” said Homer, “the first child of Ida and Alexander Clock. See? She lived only a few months.”

  The last photograph was different from the rest.

  “I remember this,” said Mary. “It’s a bunch of men in uniform. Look, Homer, it’s labeled. It’s the Second Massachusetts”—she squinted at the date—“on May thirty-first, 1863.”

  “Not the whole regiment,” said Homer. “Probably just one company. See if Seth is there.”

  The faces were small, the photograph faded. Gwen ran for a magnifying glass.

  It was a happy-go-lucky group, jolly comrades gone a-soldiering. Rifles were stacked at one side, but some of the men were clowning for the camera. One of them lolled in the foreground, grinning because his ears were being tickled by feathers in the hands of a couple of boys kneeling behind him, obviously a pair of twins. The only sober face was that of the captain, who was looking gravely to one side, his hand on the pommel of his sword. Homer noted the sideburns, the look of tired intelligence.

  They bent over the picture, hunting for the young bearded face that lay under the cracked glass in the folding case, then shook their heads, agreeing that it wasn’t there.

  “May thirty-first, 1863,” said Homer. “It was after Antietam and Chancellorsville but before Gettysburg.”