The Buffalo Soldier

by Chris Bohjalian

  No, of course not. But it isn’t great. That doesn’t mean it couldn’t become great. It could. But it isn’t right now, that’s just how it is. And so if I don’t do this right, I could really screw things up. I guess that’s why I want to have us all together in one room so we can deal with this honestly, clear it up, and then—she tossed her hand over her shoulder, as if she were tossing a ball behind her back—put it behind us.

  This, she thought to herself, focusing on a single word in Louise’s last sentence, a euphemism for...what? For the fact that Terry believed Alfred was stealing from them and planned to run away? Or for the idea that the two of them, her husband and her foster child, didn’t get along? Either way, she had a sense that she shouldn’t share with Terry that she knew something had occurred that morning in Alfred’s room.

  He’s doing very well here, she said to Louise, hoping her voice didn’t sound too defensive. You know that, don’t you?

  Oh, yeah! My God, the kid’s going to school every day and getting B’s and C’s on his report card. That’s huge, Laura, that’s huge! And you have to trust me: Your husband isn’t the first foster father who thought his foster son was stealing from him. He might be the first who was wrong, but that’s another story. No, my hope here is to get through this and, you know, build on it. Make things even better.

  So you’re not going to take him away? she asked. The question was abrupt and unplanned, another reflex. It, too, was a chain of words she wished instantly she had never spoken, especially when Louise looked back at her—Louise’s eyes anxious and worried, just the tiniest bob to her head as if she thought this woman in whose kitchen she was sitting was as unstable as a two-legged chair someone had propped against a wall—and then leaned forward and patted her, an invalid once more, softly on her knee.

  There, there, that pat said, you really are fragile. There, there.

  AT DINNER THAT night she watched Terry carefully as he ate. He was quiet, and in the past that meant something god-awful had occurred and he needed to be allowed to eat and listen and relax in the normalcy of a dinner with his family. Tonight, however, she was quite sure he’d had a calm day, and his silence had more to do with his fight with Alfred than anything he’d seen on the roads or in some poor battered woman’s house. Consequently, she was unwilling to carry the load of their dinner conversation, and so she, too, ate without saying a word. The three of them sat as if they were strangers on stools at a diner, and she allowed the tension in the room to fester. Occasionally he glanced over at her—a further indication in her mind that his day indeed had been fine, and he was surprised that she wasn’t babbling on about her morning at the shelter or their afternoon visit from the social worker—his eyes wary, and he would touch his mustache with his fingers with a fastidiousness that annoyed her.

  Meanwhile, Alfred ate. He looked at neither of them, and he continued to eat until there was absolutely no trace that the plate before him had once held a large square of spinach lasagna and a piece of garlic bread. She asked the boy if he wanted more and encouraged him to have seconds: She didn’t want him to think her silence had anything to do with him or that she thought he had done something wrong. When she brought him his plate, refilled, she kissed him lightly on the top of his head.

  And then when dinner was through—when Alfred had finished the brownie she set before him for dessert—she reached for the boy’s hand and gave it a gentle squeeze and asked him if he’d like to be excused. He nodded and went upstairs, and she began to clear the dishes from the table. For a moment she was alone with Terry, and she realized she was hoping he would bring up their child. Tell her his version of what had occurred that morning. But he wasn’t about to, that was clear after a moment. And so she turned toward him from the spot by the dishwasher where she was standing and said—careful to make sure that although her voice might sound like many things to him, fragile would not be among them—You’re excused, too, you know.

  He wiped his mouth with his napkin and stood. You need any help here? he asked.

  She almost answered automatically, Do I ever?, but she restrained herself. She looked at the pan and the plates and the pots in which she had boiled the spinach and cooked the sauce, and said instead, Sure. You can have the honors tonight. Then she went upstairs to Alfred’s room to see if he wanted to watch television or play a game of Chinese checkers since there was no school the next day.

  “Both of the Indian girls had been coughing for days, and since Dr. McPherson was not going to visit them and Popping Trees was not about to visit the surgeon, Sergeant Rowe brought the children’s plight to my attention; I, in turn, delegated it to my wife, who, like many women, has always been knowledgeable when it comes to certain basic cures.”

  CAPTAIN ANDREW HITCHENS,

  TENTH REGIMENT, UNITED STATES CAVALRY,

  REPORT TO THE POST ADJUTANT,

  JULY 16, 1876

  Phoebe

  I nearly busted open some idiot’s head the day after Christmas, he was saying, that’s what I mean. I’m just not...focused. The guy was arrogant, but he didn’t deserve what he got.

  She rubbed her hand over the fur and muscle on his chest, massaging the tiny nipple there—the color of coffee, she thought, sweetened with cream—with the soft skin in her palm, and burrowed her head as deeply as she could into the small, comfortable valley just below his shoulder.

  You stopped him for speeding, she murmured simply. She was happy, and she wanted him to be happy, too. He overreacted, she continued, and then you did. It happens, it’s not that complicated. You shouldn’t be so hard on yourself.

  I shouldn’t have been so hard on him.

  He hit you.

  Still...and tonight I get to go home and have dinner with some social worker with so much silver and steel in her ears that she probably sets off metal detectors a mile away. What fun.

  A part of her didn’t want to ask about the boy because she didn’t want their last few moments together to be centered on his family or his life back in Cornish, but the part of her that would be a mother before another year passed simply couldn’t resist: She wondered—and, yes, worried—about this faceless child she’d never met. And so she closed her eyes and said, How is Alfred doing?

  Well, let’s see. I keep my hunting rifles in a solid-steel Treadlok gun vault that’s bolted to the floor. The key is hollow—nonduplicable. I keep the ammo locked in a separate sideboard in a separate room. Yet Monday night when I came home from work, I proceeded to remove what had been my father’s Savage 99 and my own Browning A-Bolt from the gun case, rounded up my three boxes of shells, and then on Tuesday I took everything with me back to the barracks in Middlebury. The guns, the ammo. The works. I’m storing it all there. Only weapons at home from now on are that Sig Sauer—and he pointed at the handgun in his holster that dangled off the side of the chair beside the motel room desk—and the Remington 870 I keep in the trunk of the cruiser. And I’m pretty sure the lad doesn’t even know the Remington exists. So I think that sums it up nicely, thank you very much. That is how little Alfred is doing.

  It’s that bad?

  I caught him planning to run away. The last thing the world needs is a runaway ten-year-old with a bad attitude and his foster father’s Browning A-Bolt at his side.

  I’m sorry. That’s not good, she said, and she watched her fingernails—Casino Red today—carve an invisible line up his chest and his neck. She watched the small goose bumps appear on his skin. Is that why his social worker is coming to your house tonight?

  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 mo
stly 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 wander 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 off
ered 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.