by Seneca Fox
Chapter XI
5:50 pm
Anna and I hopped in her truck and she drove toward her house. I was happy to be riding with her. Unlike the last few times we’d visited, we seemed to have found a new sense of common purpose – albeit rather unusual. When she drove out of the trees into the open valley the top of her home came into view. It was the same house I’d seen while I was walking earlier in the day.
The truck crested the hill, and Anna pointed and said, “There it is”. In many ways the house was typical of the weatherworn, two-story brick homes built in the mountains of Virginia during the 1800s. It was like a giant box with rows of windows on the first and second floors, symmetrically positioned across the front and along the side, each adorned with a pair of shutters. A porch extended from one side of the house to the other. Looking up, I immediately noticed the generous eaves that stuck out from the moderately pitched roof – well beyond the outer perimeter of the walls. The cornices were intricate, and both the main roof and the porch roof were finished with newly installed steel. There were two chimneys and two, perhaps more, flues extending beyond the top of each chimney. In the center of the roof was a short tower-like structure, a kind of parapet, with windows on all four sides.
The house alone was impressive, but the landscape, which was at once natural and well manicured, displayed what I recognized as trademark features of Anna’s mother, Elizabeth Foxharte. Large deciduous trees and several evergreens surrounded the house, and tall firs overhung the curved driveway. The mature trees, some with ivy crawling up their trunks, were trimmed high, leaving more than ample room for anyone to wander aimlessly beneath them. Dogwoods, some newly planted, were scattered about in bunches among the wide flowerbeds punctuated with hardy rhododendron and a few perennials that I could not name. It was far more attractive than I had imagined when Owen described it earlier, especially with the freshly painted outbuildings set a comfortable distance away from the house and the forested area that rose up onto the mountains towering in the background.
“It’s beautiful, Anna.”
She turned down the lane. The late afternoon sun, which was barely above the mountain, cast the long shadows of evergreens across the open field that stretched well out in front of the house. The fresh smell of fir drifted into the cab of the truck.
“Can you smell that?” Anna asked.
“Yes.”
“It is beautiful,” she added. I detected a hint of trepidation.
We sat quietly for a moment as she slowly drove the truck down the shaded drive. “Too bad your mom and dad aren’t home. It would be nice to see them.”
“They’d love to see you. Daddy asks about you all the time. I’m sure I can convince them to come see you in the morning.”
“I’d like that.”
Anna pulled the truck up in front of a large red barn. “Come on,” she said.
We got out and walked toward the barn. Horses were grazing nearby, enclosed in a freshly painted fence that disappeared into the distant woods. Anna opened the barn door and flipped the light switch. Several incandescent bulbs suspended from the rafters cast a warm yellow glow. The barn was unfinished on the inside – the supporting studs and beams were all exposed. Farm machinery was neatly placed around the hard-packed gravel floor – two tractors, a plow, a disc, a cultivator, a bush-hog, a wagon and a variety of other equipment. The machinery was perfectly painted.
“Most people leave that stuff outside,” I said pointing to the equipment.
“Not Daddy.”
“The Colonel,” I said.
“The clothes are over here.”
I followed Anna to a room in one corner of the barn. She opened the door, stuck her arm in and fumbled around for the light.
“It’s always so dark in here,” she said; “no window.” She found the switch and turned on the light. “One of the workers was napping in here one day when I walked in feeling for the light switch. I woke him and he jumped up and scared me to death. Ever since then, I turn on the light before I walk in.
“There they are,” she said, pointing to table standing against the wall. It was stacked high with an assortment of neatly folded clothing.
I stepped into the room and detected the faint smell of paint. We walked over and began rummaging through the clothes. Anna pulled out a pair of gray trousers. “Turn around,” she said. I turned my back to her and she held the trousers to my waist. “These might fit.” She laid them on the table.
I pulled out a gray jacket and tried it on.
“That fits perfect.”
“It’s heavy,” I said. It was made of wool. There were no lapels, but it had a row of dull gold buttons down the front. I rotated my forearm inward and looked at the sleeve. “What are all these stripes?” I asked.
“I don’t know, but you should take them off so you won’t attract too much attention. I have nail clippers in the truck – we can use those. There are boots and shoes under the table.”
I bent down and pulled out two pairs of boots. They were old and crusted with dirt. One even had a hole in the toe.
“I bet good boots were hard to find at the end of the war,” I said.
“Everything was hard to find. The North basically stripped the South of its natural resources, including men and boys.”
“Have you ever wondered what this country would be like if the South had won the war?” I asked.
“This country wouldn’t exist, but I prefer to let others do the speculating.” Anna pulled out another pair of boots and said, “Try these on, maybe they’ll fit.”
I sat back on the dirt floor and pulled off my boot. “Seems there’s no shortage of speculation,” I said.
“What do you mean?” Anna asked as she turned one of the other boots upside down and struck the bottom of it with her hand a few times.
“Oh, I don’t know,” I replied. “I’m just thinking about some of the books I saw today.”
Anna looked at me and asked, “What books?”
“In the sutlers’ village. I can’t remember any titles, but some suggested that the Civil War history we learned in school was biased, or incomplete, or something.”
“History books are biased and incomplete. That’s the nature of historical research. In the hands of amateurs, it’s down right dangerous.” Anna looked down and struck the bottom of the boot again. “I’ve seen some frightening spiders around here.” She turned the boot upright and blew in it a few times, then turned it upside down again and struck the heel. Satisfied that nothing was inside, she handed it to me. “So what other kind of books did you see?” she asked.
Recalling one title, I laughed and said, “The Idiot’s Guide to the Civil War.”
“You mean, The Complete Idiot’s Guide to the Civil War.”
“Ha-ha,” I responded and slid the boot over my foot while Anna checked for spiders in the other boot. “A little loose, but it will do for the night. Let me try that one.” The other boot fit loosely too. “I don’t suppose you have a cap?”
“I don’t see one here, but I think… ” She stopped in mid-sentence. “You look through the Union uniforms and I’ll be right back.”
I stood up and found a single Union jacket on the table. I tried it on. The cuffs fell about an inch below my wrist and the cropped tail hung well below my waist. I took it off and set it down. Neatly folded, on a shelf above the table, were an assortment of blankets and what appeared to be a Confederate battle flag. I pulled the flag from the pile and unfolded it. A moment later Anna returned. She was shaping the brim of a well-worn, sweat-stained Confederate cap. “I thought I remembered seeing Zeb wear this. It was hanging on the shifter knob….” She looked up and fixed her gaze on the flag, “Oh God; where did that come from?”
“It was here on the shelf.”
“That’s one I missed.”
“I still need a shirt,” I said.
“No shirt here, I’m afraid, but I’ll get one of Daddy’s old work shirts.”
&nbs
p; “The Colonel won’t mind?”
“Don’t worry, I know how to handle him.”
“Daddy’s little girl,” I teased.
“Come with me.”
I started to fold the flag, but Anna said, “Leave it, I’ll take care of it later.”
I tossed the flag on the table. We left the barn and walked toward the house. “So who’s Zeb?” I asked.
“Zeb’s sort of a caretaker – we had another man, but Daddy asked him to leave for some reason. He never did say why. Daddy used to work with Zeb. He was a few weeks away from re-enlisting, and I guess Daddy made him a good offer.” Anna hesitated then said, “He’s a strange guy, but Daddy trusts him.”
“What’s so strange about him?”
“He’s obviously well educated, but that’s more than I can say for some of the people he hangs out with. Personally, I think there’s more to Zeb than we all realize.”
“What does your mom think?” I asked.
“She trusts Daddy.”
“I trust your father,” I said, thinking out loud.
Anna and I walked into the house. “Look around while I get you a shirt, or if you want, I’ll give you the ten-cent tour when I come back down.” Anna left me standing in the kitchen.
The kitchen matched my expectations, completely remodeled with care for maintaining the historical integrity of the home. I strolled from the kitchen, through the dining room, the foyer and the living room. There was a fireplace in each room except the foyer. I was surprised that I recognized a few antiques; it gave me a familiar and comfortable feeling. I admired the heart pine floors and fine craftsmanship in the trim molding and stairway.
I walked to the back of the living room and into a library. One thing the Colonel and I had in common was a love for books. The Colonel had a collection of the Harvard Classics bound in leather that dated to the early twentieth century. He possessed other literary classics, some of which were first editions. Sometime ago, when I was expressing my admiration for his collection, he said, “Read all these and you won’t need a college education.”
I left the library and entered a hallway that led past a bathroom and back to the kitchen. Halfway down the hall I stopped and returned to the foyer, where I waited for Anna. A moment later she called out, “I’m coming.”
“No hurry. The house is amazing,” I said as I watched her walk down the stairs. “It reminds me of your other home.”
“I prefer the other home, especially in the winter. Nothing is more beautiful than a wet snowfall, with the pines around the shoreline laden with snow. I can still see the branches hanging low over the water’s edge.”
“Do you remember when we took the tractor out on the frozen creek?” I asked.
“Are you kidding? I still have the picture from the newspaper.”
“Really.”
“Yes,” she replied.
“That was a lot of fun, pulling people on sleds and ice skates behind the tractor. It took the entire width of the creek to turn the tractor around. Were you there when Old Man Graham separated his shoulder?”
“No, but I remember hearing about it.”
“Did I tell you how it happened?”
“No,” Anna said.
“He was on ice skates, and I was towing him behind the tractor on a long ski rope. He swung wide while we were turning. He must have been going thirty miles an hour. The ski rope caught on one of those huge oil drums we had out there for fires. He tried to lift the rope at the last second, but it hung and whipped him forward. He must have done ten somersaults before he came to a stop.”
“He was lucky he didn’t break his neck.”
“He was, but you should have seen it. When that drum tipped over, there were ashes and partially burned pieces of wood flying everywhere. Old Man Graham was a good sport about it. He just sat there on the ice and laughed for several minutes before we helped him up and took him to the doctor.”
“I’ll never forget that winter. It hasn’t been that cold since.”
I looked at Anna and smiled. “We had a lot of fun, didn’t we?”
Anna stood on the bottom of the step and handed me the top to a pair of long underwear. “This will have to do. I’ve seen some reenactors wearing long underwear tops.”
I took the shirt and said, “You surprise me a little, Anna.”
“I surprise you?”
“Yes, you seem to be more like your old self.”
“I guess I am now that Mom and Dad are better. But listen, we don’t have time for this conversation. If you’re going into that camp, there’re a few things you should understand.”
“Like what?”
“I’ve seen enough to know that some people are very serious about reenacting. It may be just a hobby for some, but for others it’s a religion; and, if you start talking too much or seem too curious they might throw you out of there.”
We walked through the dining room, into the kitchen, and out the same door we had entered. We jumped in the truck and Anna sped away. She opened the lid on the armrest, pulled out a pair of fingernail clippers and started again with her instructions, “Here, take these. Now listen, when you put those clothes on you’ll look the part. But you’re not a member of any regiment.”
“Regiment?”
“Yes, most reenactors are members of a regiment or a company or something. Daddy explained it all to me once, but I wasn’t very interested. The point is there aren’t many loners out there. And, some reenactors take on a different persona – they represent an actual Civil War soldier, often one of their ancestors.”
“Do you mean that I’m not supposed to be there unless I can verify that I had an ancestor who fought in the Civil War?”
Anna turned right at the end of her driveway, away from the battlefield, and said, “No, I don’t think it’s any kind of requirement. I’m sure there are plenty of people participating that don’t have a clue about their ancestors. Some arbitrarily choose a persona. Others don’t; they just show up.” Anna paused, “The point I’m trying to make is that if you have a persona you might find it easier to mingle, especially since you’re alone.”
“Where are you going?”
“Out into the valley, just for a minute. It’s pretty; I’d like you to see it. Besides, it will give you a chance to take off those stripes.”
“Okay,” I interjected, “How does Jedediah Beauregard sound?”
“As what?”
“My persona.”
“If that’s the best you can do,” she said as she rolled her eyes. “Seriously though, you should be prepared in case you get asked if you’re with a regiment.”
“If I do?”
“I don’t know – just say you haven’t joined a regiment yet. Of course that might prompt someone to try to recruit you.”
“If they do?”
“It’s not a problem. If that happens, who knows what you might learn?”
“I’m not sure what I can learn in one night, but I may as well go through with it, if I can’t hang out with you.”
Pulling threads from the stripes was a tedious job. I could have easily slid my knife between the stripes and the jacket fabric and taken them off in a few seconds. But my knife was in my backpack – which was in my tent – and I was too happy to be taking a relaxing ride with Anna. Between snipping the threads, I looked up and saw, as Anna promised, that Little Valley was indeed picturesque. The first thing I noticed was how Clear Creek, mostly lined with sycamores and the occasional locust, curved back and forth across flat pasture land that was covered with thick grass. The road crossed the creek in several places, each bridge recognizable by the guard rail and a slight rise in the road. A small white farmhouse and a dilapidated barn were nestled on a low ridge that paralleled the eastern mountains. Perhaps a hundred cattle were clustered near the base of the ridge. A farmer was driving his tractor away from a freshly turned plot of earth. His disc was raised well above the ground and dust clouds billowed behind the wheels.
I
absorbed the scene, and was reminded of the way I had become disengaged from the daily life of the working class while hiking week after week. When we started hiking, memories of the people I had seen and places I had visited were vivid. The knowledge that I would not see friends and acquaintances for months fostered warm relations before I left. One friend threw me a party, others gave gifts and everyone wished me well. These memories were easily accessed, even irrepressible, during the first days of hiking, but they had faded until the events of a few weeks earlier seemed distant and hard to distinguish from those that occurred years before. Eventually, I almost forgot about existence in the “workaday” world. Instead days were filled with endless walking, blisters and calluses, bug bites, extremes in weather and a general discomfort that eventually begins to feel normal. I watched the farmer driving his tractor, and thought about the friends I hadn’t seen since I boarded the plane to Atlanta.
Anna drove on quietly, her left hand resting lightly on the steering wheel and her right on the armrest between us. I wanted to take her hand, but didn’t. She glanced at me and said, “I guess we should get back.” I nodded. She downshifted and turned into the parking lot of a mom-and-pop convenience store. The name “White’s General Store” was painted on the sign in front. As she turned the truck around, I quickly read signs in the store window. Between a green and orange neon sign that said “Lotto” and a hand-painted poster advertising a two-piece fried chicken dinner with battered potato wedges and a large soft drink, was another sign that had “Confederate Memorabilia” stenciled on it – “20% off” was scribbled at the bottom. On one side of the door was a four-foot wooden statue of a Native American with a full headdress and a tomahawk in his hand. On the other side was a statue of a smallish, black man dressed in white knickers and a red shirt holding a lantern. Next to the male statue was another figure – a plump black woman in a blue dress with a white turban wrapped around her head and a white apron around her waist. As we pulled away from the front of the store, I looked up and saw a Confederate flag flying overhead.
Anna rolled back onto the road and accelerated. I noticed that the house across the street had a flagpole in the front yard. Atop the pole was another Confederate flag. “Wow,” I said without emphasis, “they sure like Rebels around here, don’t they?”
“You noticed.”
“Noticed. It’s like another world.”
“Another country.”
“If I didn’t know better I’d say you were trying to prove a point.”
“About what?”
“Don’t play innocent. We both know what you said about bigotry thriving in Virginia.”
“Did I say that?”
“Ah…”
“There are three or four more Confederate flags flying between here and Lynchburg. I didn’t take the local emphasis on the Civil War seriously when we first moved here.” Anna tightened her grip on the steering wheel. “But, the longer we live here... Newspaper articles about Civil War reenactments, historical pieces about someone’s ancestor or a house where who knows what Confederate general slept. And the flags – the flags are everywhere. One doesn’t have to live here long to realize that she’s stepped into an entirely different culture. And, you know, it might all be okay if it weren’t for the conversations I’ve overheard in places like that mom-and-pop back there. I’m living in the backyard of the final resting-place of the Confederate Army; and, I can’t tell you how many times I’ve wanted to say ‘get over it’.”
“What do your folks say about it?”
“Mom doesn’t like it. She said that for years she rarely thought about the inequities and ugliness that she witnessed in her childhood. She thought our generation had taken a big step forward. But, after we moved here, that changed. The flags, she says, are a constant reminder of the past.” Anna laughed and said, “Now she’s afraid that as she grows older and loses her mental ‘faculties’ the ugly phrases that she overheard as a child will slip out. Mom is one of least prejudiced people I know and the thought of degrading another person, even innocently, hurts her deeply.”
“And your Dad?”
“I don’t know. It’s like he’s moved on to another phase in life. I’m not sure he’s even noticed.” A few seconds later Anna added, “Given his military background he might have had a lot to say about it ten years ago.”
I quietly agreed and I let her continue.
“But, he changed after his surgery. Something happens to the soul when they stop your heart from beating for that long.” Anna sighed, “I don’t know anymore, Ian. Maybe the stress of taking care of Mom and Dad has something to do with my dislike for this place.”
“I’m sure it did.”
On the way back to the reenactment site I finished removing the stripes from the gray jacket. Anna pulled the truck up in front of Mr. Squires’ RV. She left the engine running, making it obvious that she was in a hurry, but as I sat there with my hand on the door handle I said, “I need to ask you something.”
She turned toward me and smiled, but she did not speak.
“Is there someone else?”
She looked at me as though she wished I hadn’t asked. “Someone else?” She sat there quietly, as if she was mentally rehearsing an answer.
“Yes Anna, another guy?”
“Well, yes and no.”
“What’s does that mean?”
“Well, I am having dinner with someone tonight. He’s picking me up to meet Mom and Dad, but I don’t know how serious it is.”
“You don’t know?”
Anna looked into my eyes and said, “Ian, he’s a nice guy. He was such a help to Mom and Dad.”
“Is he a doctor?”
“Therapist.”
“Oh. I see.”
“I’m not sure you do, but we’ll have to talk about it later.” Anna looked out the windshield. “How about you, Ian?”
“No one,” I said.
I opened the door and stepped out of the truck. The light of day was giving way to darkness. I turned and looked at Anna. “I’d forgotten how much I enjoy your company,” I said. She smiled and nodded as I closed the door. I stood there and watched her drive away, noticing for the first time the red-and-white temporary tags on the truck and two patches of glue residue on either side of the back window. I thought the residue might be from Confederate flag stickers and decided that the truck had to be the same one Max and I rode in when we came down from the mountain.
