As we wait for the fresh pot of coffee to finish brewing, I bring up the H flags, which leads us to an involved discussion about local history.
“It’s so creepy,” I tell him.
“What do you mean?”
“I know you’re a big Civil War buff,” I say. “So I guess you’ve always felt this connection to the past, but for me it was surreal to walk through town and see all these flags marking basic carnage. It really made me see this place in a different light.”
Alex beams approvingly at me, as if I’ve just signed on to join his church.
“That’s exactly it,” he says. “Most people don’t get it. But everything is built on what came before. And for us here in Hamilton, what came before—and not that long ago—changed the entire course of American history.
“People here take it for granted. They grew up with family stories of the war; it’s just a part of who they are. But as an outsider coming here, I can’t believe they don’t take better care of what they have.” Which is when he tells me about his secret: an unexcavated, almost totally unknown Civil War site.
“Can you imagine an entire Civil War Union Army headquarters all grown over, unexcavated? It’s not even marked with a National Register of Historic Places sign, and heck, any house built before 1950 can get that. When you walk there, you can practically hear the soldiers, smell the campfires.” His eyes blaze with the fierce joy I usually expect from religious converts and cult members.
“How do you know about it?” I ask.
“I’d heard people talk about it. It was built by the Confederates, then taken over by the Union Army. I knew it had to be near water and pretty close to town. So I started hiking in the general area by the river until I found it. It’s not like the locals don’t know it’s there. They do. They just don’t think it’s anything special.” He shakes his head in bafflement.
Alex tends to monopolize conversations and nearly always talks about the Civil War, but I enjoy chatting with him in the break room. He might be an odd duck, as Frank would say, but he’s always friendly and treats me as a fully legitimate reporter. The other three employees are much older than me and, aside from a genial “Good morning,” don’t waste too much time chatting. Sometimes there’s a high school intern lurking about, but every couple of months it’s a new kid, and this month’s kid bailed after a week. A new intern starts soon, and I wonder if we’ll get along or if it’ll be weird to have someone basically my age around who’s an intern while I’m a full-time employee.
“In all the time I’ve hiked there, I’ve never seen anyone else,” Alex says. “I’m writing up a grant proposal, going to see if I can’t get UT students to come excavate it.”
The coffee machine sputters, signaling the brewing process is complete. I wait as Alex pours himself a mug of the awful stuff. Even fresh, it tastes bitter and slightly burned. He douses it with creamer, then rips open two packets of sweetener, dumping them in for good measure.
“The fact that it’s abandoned and forgotten, that’s freaking incredible.” I’ve lost track of the conversation, and it takes me a moment to realize he’s still talking about the Union headquarters. Even for Alex, this has been a remarkably long exegesis. “It’s what every Civil War buff dreams of, to discover something like that. But it’s too important. It belongs on the National Register.”
A part of me wants to tell him that we already know all about the Civil War, that it’s not like we need to dig up clues to figure out who won or how they did it, but I don’t want to hurt his feelings.
“Next time you go, I’ll come with you,” I say. Though his excitement is a bit silly, there’s something about his description of the place that’s compelling. New in town with no friends, I’ll volunteer to tag along on just about anything.
“You’re a sweetheart, Miriam,” he says, smiling. Is he flirting with me? Ugh. I hope not. Hopefully he sees me as a surrogate kid sister. “If you want to go, then I’ll give you directions. It’s an amazing place, and the first time you go there, you really should go alone. It’s like”—he searches for the perfect word—“holy. Like it’s sacred.”
I break out in goose bumps at his careful choice of words.
He pulls out his reporter’s notebook and quickly scrawls directions, even sketching me a crude map. I admire his skills. I haven’t gotten the hang of fast note-taking, as my bumbling at the farmers’ market showed.
Alex rips out the page, but before he hands it over, he makes me swear not to excavate or remove anything I find: bullets, buttons, coins. Secret diaries of the commanding officer.
I promise.
“By the way,” I say casually. “Can you recommend a good doctor?”
He pauses in the act of taking a sip, lips comically pursed. “Are you okay?” He looks concerned, but I notice that he leans back a bit.
“Sure,” I say. “It’s nothing contagious. I just have a couple of questions.” I want to see someone soon, and the appointment with Frank’s doctor is still over a week away.
“I’ll ask around,” he says, and hustles out of the small room, suddenly anxious to get back to his computer. He doesn’t realize I can see him at his desk as he squirts his hands with antibacterial gel and pops a couple of vitamin C tablets. Trying not to feel insulted and plague-ish, I add “hypochondriac” to Alex’s list of quirks.
Four days later, it’s my birthday. Our birthday. The phone rings at 7:31 in the morning, the time Mo and I were born nineteen years ago.
“Happy birthday, darling,” my mom says, her crisp British accent lovely to hear.
“Thanks.” I rub my eyes, trying to wake up. My mother never has understood how anyone could sleep past dawn. She’d probably been up for hours. Seven-thirty-one, she’d always felt, was a decent enough time to call. Too bad she’s still early by about three hours.
“You have any special plans for today?”
“Actually, I do. I have the day off. I’m going to hike to an old Civil War site someone at work told me about.” And I’ll be getting an earlier start than I planned.
“That odd Alex fellow?” I’d described all my co-workers for her.
“He said it was really awesome. I have the day off, so I figured I’ll go exploring.”
“Sounds like a lovely birthday plan. Make sure you bring your cell phone with you. Have you talked with Mo yet?”
“I just woke up.”
“I haven’t been able to reach him. He’s been difficult to get hold of lately.” My mother is not a nudge. If she was complaining about it, that meant she hadn’t reached Mo in days of trying. This makes me very uneasy, but I shrug it off.
“You know Mo,” I say. “He probably forgot to charge his phone and he can’t figure out why no one’s calling him. Besides, it’s close to finals time, so he might have holed up in the library.” This would be very unlike him, but neither one of us says that.
“You’re probably right. Happy birthday again, my darling dearest. And make sure you call your brother, okay?”
After we hang up, I sit in bed, staring at my phone. Finally, with a deep sigh, I dial Mo’s number. It’s a bit early for him, but maybe that means he’ll be too groggy to think about dodging the phone.
The phone rings so many times I’m certain his voice mail will pick up, but eventually a bleary voice growls, “Wha’ the hell?”
“Happy birthday, brother,” I say in my chirpiest voice.
“Christ,” he says. There’s silence for a moment, and I can almost feel him pulling himself together. “What time is it?”
“Almost eight. In the morning, in case you’ve lost track.”
“Har, har. Some of us have to stay up late studying for school. Remember that? Professors? Papers? Final exams?”
“And some of us get up early for work,” I jab back.
That gets a laugh out of him. A slightly nasty chuckle that tells me his guilt trip is completely fabricated.
“So, have you had anything interesting happen lately?”
<
br /> “Work is good. My first piece came out, the one I e-mailed you about, and I have another interview set up—”
“Miriam,” he interrupts me. “Don’t shit with me. You know what I mean.”
“Don’t be rude,” I say. With Mo, I never know how he’s going to be on the phone. Sometimes he’s so chatty I have to spend fifteen minutes trying to extricate myself from the conversation. Other times he’s curt and unbearably rude, except that I know him well enough to know he doesn’t even realize it, he’s just too busy in his head.
“You’re not answering my question,” he says in a singsong voice.
“Fine. No. Nothing interesting has happened. Thank God.” I wince at my choice of words. I wouldn’t call my physical ailments interesting. Nasty, disturbing, painful, but not interesting. Besides, it’s clear this has become a business call for Mo, not a personal one. One celestial medium to another.
“Really?”
“Really. And you’re starting to piss me off,” I say.
“Because you don’t like keeping secrets from me,” he says in a reasonable voice. “And you’re keeping one right now. I can tell. I always know when you’re not telling me the truth.”
“Oh, shut up.” He might be able to tell when I’m leaving something out, but I can tell that he’s hiding something too. The hyper attitude, the aggressive questions. He’s covering, and it’s something I don’t want to know about. I immediately feel guilty for that uncharitable thought. He might not be up to anything bad.… I feel constricted by the twin weights of worry and fear. “Happy birthday, Mo, I have to go. Call Mom!”
“And many more…,” he sings in a wobbly, grating voice.
After a morning of errands, I pack a couple of protein bars, a bottle of water and a cell phone. Thus armed, I head out.
The woods start at the outskirts of Greenbrier Park. I walk past the playground, the baseball diamond and the grassy field. There’s a small wooden bridge over a brown creek, and I head there, following a path that grows narrower and shaggier as I hike away from the park. The bright sunshine fades, filtered through a green canopy of pine, maple, and oak trees. It’s a bit cooler in the shade, slightly damp with the loamy scent of soil, decomposing leaves and thriving colonies of large white mushrooms. At first rustling leaves and sudden bursts of gray blur startle me, but I get used to the squirrels.
Apart from slapping at the occasional mosquito, I don’t have much to keep my mind from straying as I hike. I’m not really a nature girl. Other than in my mom’s backyard full of cheery black-eyed Susans, purple echinacea and other butterfly-friendly flowers, I don’t spend much time outdoors. I should be enjoying myself, calmed by the lack of concrete, trash and noise pollution, but instead I’m antsy. I can’t shake the feeling that something isn’t right. I jump and twitch as I run into a spiderweb, and I shake my head uncomfortably, slapping at imaginary tickles that may or may not be a bloodsucking tick skittering down my shirt.
I worry about Mo, about what’s really going on with him and what I’m supposed to do about it. I want to stroll, savoring and reveling in “the beauty of nature” like everyone says you’re supposed to, but instead I find my legs moving faster and faster, hurtling along at something close to a run. I slap again at a tickle on my arm, this time killing a mosquito and leaving a bloody smear. Worrying about Mo is like trying to solve those impossible logic riddles, the ones with no right answer.
The path is narrow but fairly easy to follow. I lose it a couple of times, but Alex’s map and directions are remarkably accurate. If Alex hadn’t told me there was a destination to the path, I wouldn’t have followed it so far away from town. My heart beats disturbingly hard and fast.
Mo’s in my thoughts like a drumbeat of doom. His encounters cannot end well. His cocky attitude and his lifelong ability to scam and charm have blinded him to the real dangers of his situation.
My thighs are burning from the unusual exertion, and sweat beads and itches on my face and back. Alex said it was about a two-mile hike to the ruins. I’m certain I’ve gone farther than that and that I’ve probably missed it when I suddenly come to a clearing.
It’s startlingly bright and sunny after the woody gloom of the forest. If I didn’t know this was a Civil War site, I might have thought I’d discovered Indian burial mounds. The clearing, about the size of a baseball field, has undulating grassy hillocks that form a rough square. There are several outside the square, and five smaller ones inside it. The clearing is at the top of a natural slope, which makes tactical sense if you want to be able to see the enemy sneaking up on you. The creek for drinking and washing must be nearby, but I don’t see it.
I sip my water, waiting for my heartbeat to settle. I try to imagine the buildings that used to stand here, but other than the cleared square, which I take to be the main compound, I can’t tell what’s what. Barracks, maybe? There aren’t many hillocks, nor are they large enough to hold more than a hundred men or so. They had to keep their food, blankets and weapons somewhere. Storage facilities?
After walking the perimeter and clambering over the mounds, I sit on the grass, my back against a narrow tree, eat my second protein bar and drink the rest of my water. It’s peaceful here; my strange restlessness is gone and I’m happy to just watch a few pale yellow butterflies flit among the wildflowers. How odd that a headquarters from such a bloody war has turned into this peaceful, idyllic spot. I can’t hear any cars; I can’t see any power lines or litter. Some faint birdcalls and the wind rustling over the long grass and through the trees are the only sounds. There are no unhappy ghosts here. It’s simply lovely. There’s nothing to hurry back to, so I stretch out in the sunshine, suddenly at ease. I don’t have any cramps; I don’t have a headache. My legs feel loose and rubbery in a good way, and my breath slips in and out with ease.
I’ll figure something out with Mo, I promise myself. I close my eyes, feeling the sun smooth away any lingering tension.
At first the dream is ordinary, butterflies fluttering, but the butterflies gradually turn into something else.
I dream that angels are bustling around, rising up to the sky and back down like busy commuters. They are on a slanted ladder wide enough that some are ascending and some are descending in the organized chaos of a morning commute. The top of the ladder disappears into a misty, whirly bright glow that even in my dream hurts to look at, like the sun in the middle of summer. The closer the angels are to earth, the more solid their forms; the higher they are on the ladder, the more transparent and wraithlike they become, until they fade entirely, becoming part of that impossible blaze at the top.
Each angel holds a ghostly image that fades faster than they do. I can only make out the images near the ground. I recognize Mo and Tabitha, but there is another face that I’ve never seen before. Some of the angels glance over at me. I see myself lying on the ground, disheveled, against a large boulder.
I assume these are not archangels, since unlike with Raphael, I can bear to look at them—though it probably helps that this is a dream and they aren’t speaking to me. I know instantly what I’m looking at. These are angels, and this is Jacob’s Ladder. They’re busy with each other, a strange, beautiful murmur filling the air as they chat. As is the case with dreams, even though they are not speaking in English, I find their language perfectly understandable. I also find myself in the extraordinary position of eavesdropping on celestial conversations. They are talking about me. None of it is flattering.
“There is beauty in all of creation, but some have grace and some do not. Have you seen a more wretched creature?”
I hear a chuckle of agreement. They are beautiful, of course. They wear long, draping robes of different colors that float and glide like a dance. They each wear a sash knotted around their waists, the ends of which billow like capes behind the angels who are ascending. The ones descending have their sashes fluttering up as if in a strong breeze, though the afternoon air is warm and still. The branches of the surrounding trees strain toward t
hem, the leaves rippling in their direction; clouds swirl around the ladder.
“That pathetic little form would be difficult to work with, but she does not even try. Look at her hair, so dull and tangled. And short! How dare she change what the Almighty intended to be a flowing mane?”
I want to defend myself, to tell these creatures … what? There’s nothing for me to say. Their derision feels like physical blows. My sleeping form whimpers and curls into a tight ball. It hurts so much that I expect to see bruises blooming on my skin, hear bones cracking under the pressure. They have more in common with Raphael than I thought.
“And sleeping on a rock like a sloppy little slug. What do you expect? It was clear long ago that the Chosen were chosen badly.”
Someone hisses at that and the voice is silenced, chastened.
Then all the angels stiffen and straighten, looking at something above me. I can’t see what they’re looking at, but feel a powerful warmth spill over me. My tight muscles relax so suddenly it’s almost like a seizure. Nearly limp, I see my body flop sideways. I’m forced to agree with the angels. I look pathetic. Not graceful or lovely. Just a ragged, poorly made body of a young woman in baggy, unflattering clothes.
A deep, rough voice, loud yet soundless, speaks: “I WILL WATCH OVER YOU. I WILL PROTECT YOU AND GUARD YOU.”
How to describe the voice, except to say that it is a deep, lyrical compilation of every beautiful thought I have ever had, every moment of startling beauty. It is a rumbling bass older than the oldest rock on earth, and it is speaking to me. Each word forms a shield around me. Love floods into every pore. I am lovely and precious.
The angels, frozen and humbled, look at my sleeping form with carefully blank faces. A few bend their heads. One narrows her ice-clear eyes at me. And the one who disparaged the Chosen looks sick with fear and anger.
I wake up to see the sun settling between the trees, shining full on my face. I sit up slowly, stunned. Absentmindedly I flick off several ants that have crawled on my legs during my nap, though I’m careful not to injure them. I am as insignificant as an ant, maybe more so, to these angels. And perhaps what goes around comes around faster than you think.
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