Nostalgia

by Dennis McFarland

  Jeff tips his hat to Summerfield and then clucks with his tongue and calls, “Hup-hup!”

  Summerfield watches the carriage roll down the street, scattering half a dozen panic-stricken chickens. The instant the carriage rounds the corner and disappears from view, the sun breaks through the clouds, casting shadows and blazing up the windows across the way.

  Inside the house, Mrs. B’s cooking aromas have pervaded the hall. He opens the parlor door, hoping to find Sarah, but the room is empty. He starts up the stairs, hugely let down that, after Walt’s visit, she has only returned to her room, only returned to how things have been for the last six days. But on the landing, as he passes the library door, he hears her call out, “I’m in here.”

  She sits in the window seat amid the pillows and lacy bobbing shadows. “I didn’t know you’d kept such illustrious company at the hospital,” she says. “What an interesting and peculiar fellow! Is that a base ball in your hand?”

  “From a match we had at Brandy Station,” he answers. “When I landed at the hospital, it was about all I still had with me … it and the book you’d sent, the Dickens.”

  He puts the ball into his own coat pocket and then moves to his father’s wing chair, which he turns toward Sarah, and sits down. From somewhere among the folds of her dress, she produces a fan and opens it, but only studies the painting on the silk skin—a painting of people by a lake playing music. He recognizes the fan as one of their mother’s favorites and recalls his being fascinated by it as a boy: a woman in the painting also holds a fan, which has a painting of people by a lake playing music.

  Sarah turns it toward him and says, “Remember this?”

  He can see that whatever Walt said to her, she has been softened by it.

  “I do,” he says. “Tell me … what did you and Walt talk about?”

  She closes the fan, lays it aside, takes a deep breath, and exhales. “He swore me to secrecy and told me his true feelings about Mr. Emerson,” she says.

  “Was that all?” he asks.

  “No,” she says, “he talked about Washington and the hospitals … Captain Gracie and Dr. Bliss.”

  She stands and goes to the little table behind Summerfield’s chair. When he turns round, he sees that she has taken a newspaper from the table and is now unfolding the leaves and spreading them flat on the carpet next to the desk. As she does this, she says, “And he talked at some length about the curative effects of love. He said love’s like truth, that no matter what form it takes, no matter how haplessly it’s expressed, one must try to see to the heart of it and forgive any of the ugly bits.”

  She moves to the desk now and lifts the straight-backed chair, which she carries to the middle of the large square she has made on the floor with newspaper.

  “Did he say anything specifically about me?” Summerfield asks.

  She pauses, as if to think, still holding the chair up by the arms. “Oh, yes,” she says. “He told me you’d lost your voice and then found it again. He said your temporary muteness was the most beautiful silence he’d ever heard.”

  She puts down the chair now. “And,” she says, “he said I should cut your hair.”

  She turns again and takes from the desktop a scissors and a white-horn comb Summerfield recognizes from his father’s dressing table. She waves these at him and says, “Come, sit, please, and no argument.”

  Once he’s seated in the chair, facing the library windows, she begins to work, and he experiences the covert pleasure of yielding to her. He recalls coming home after base ball some years ago, a tender purple knot on his forehead where he’d got smacked by a wayward bat, and yielding then to her applications of a cold wet cloth.

  After a minute, he says, “Sarah … about last Monday—”

  But she hushes him.

  “We don’t have to talk about it,” she says. “Of course you’re right in what you’ve said about Thomas and me. I’m not sure what we’ll do. Unfortunately, we don’t have the advantage of a clean break … though I shouldn’t be surprised if he asks me to find another school.”

  Summerfield brushes a shockingly long strand of hair from his lap.

  “Are you very disappointed?” he asks.

  “Yes,” she answers, “I am. But I’ve learned a thing or two about disappointment, and I think I’ll be all right. I might have been all right, too, if you hadn’t come home and I’d spent my life married to Thomas. He’s a decent man. We would have had some children, and when they grew old enough I would have told them about their wonderful uncle, whom they would never know. I would have told them about their sweet grandparents, whom they would never know. Thomas would make a good father … and I would do my very best not to harm any of them with my infinite sadness. But now … as things are … I must wait for something better. As you’ve mentioned, it’s what Mommy would want me to do. And who knows what will happen? We can’t foresee the future.”

  “No,” he says. “But I wonder if the future can see us?”

  She leans down to look into his face. “Whatever do you mean?”

  He shrugs his shoulders. “I don’t know what I mean,” he says, and this makes her laugh.

  She goes back to work with the comb and the scissors, and after another minute, she says, “But I’ll always be your sister, my own Summerfield. And I don’t intend ever to desert you.”

  The mystery of change progresses within him: having her for a sister, knowing she’ll not desert him, seem more than enough. Careful not to move his head, he casts his eyes down to the newspaper on the floor, now strewn with long black tresses in the shape of sickles, C’s, arches, X’s, and U’s. Near the middle of one column of print, he can read the bold words SPORTS AND PASTIMES.

  “And I shall never desert you,” he says. “Not ever again.”

  AS HAYES GOES to the bat in the first inning and walks the short distance from the players’ benches to the home base, the hundreds of spectators greet him with applause and cheers, an eager, amiable welcome-back. He sees, within the shade of the ball grounds’ big wooden shed, a wild fluttering of ladies’ handkerchiefs and a similar exuberant waving of arms and hats on the banks east and north outside the fences. It is a warm afternoon, late in July, and yesterday’s storm has left a few soggy spots on the grounds. A steady but not overly stiff breeze keeps the Union flags fluttering above the roof of the shed and likewise the several long colorful pennants atop the pagoda deep in the center field. Something about the unceasing motion of the flags and pennants, in combination with the noise of the crowd, feels unexpectedly worrisome to Hayes, as if they originate from hidden causes. And there’s an odd glow in the western sky—a gold glimmering inside the cavernous multitude of fair-weather clouds that have left only a few blue patches visible.

  Naturally, Hayes thinks himself rusty, but as a few practices have shown over the past two weeks, he fits back into the club well enough—the Eckford’s nine are altogether rusty. He is fifth in the order—the Eckford Club going first to the bat in the match against the Newarkers’ pitcher Buckley—and comes to the home base with two runners on the bases and two outs in the inning. The Eckfords’ second baseman, Wool (first in the order), made a good hit to the right field and gained the first base. Following him, the catcher, Manolt, went out on strikes after a frustrating time made tedious by umpire O’Brien’s failure to observe the sixth rule, allowing Buckley extreme latitude and refusing to call balls on a profusion of unfair deliveries. Next came first baseman Reach, who sent a rocket into the center field left of the pagoda, gaining for himself the second base and giving Wool his third.

  Fisher, the Eckfords’ short stop, came to the bat next. The first pitch from Buckley was a passed ball, and Wool seized the opportunity to run in; but the Newarkers’ catcher retrieved the stray quickly and, together with the third baseman, caught Wool between the bases; they exchanged the ball well, back and forth, narrowing the distance between themselves and closing in on Wool and, at last, colliding with the catcher and tumbling over hi
m, Wool was put out. (Riotous noise from the crowds.) During this lively affair, Reach was able to gain the third base for himself. Then, with the scorers recording the second out in the inning, Fisher batted a ball on the ground to his Jersey counterpart at the short stop position, who threw it to his own catcher, preventing Reach from going in but also allowing Fisher to gain the first base.

  Now, with Reach on the third base and Fisher on the first, Hayes braces the bat for a moment between his legs and adjusts the brim of his cap. He bends down and takes some dirt in one hand, rubs his palms together, and wipes the residue on his ball-suit trousers. He feels strong in his arms, the bat unusually light. He watches the first ball from Buckley, which rides up to the level of his chin. The second one comes in right where he wants it, and he strikes.

  There’s no doubt in his mind, no question of any kind. There’s only striking the ball, less a thing done than a thing surrendered to, body and soul. He can tell in an instant, he’s absolutely sure—from the location of the pitch, from how clearly he has seen it, from the ease and authority of his swing, from the deep resonant pop of the ball on the wood—that he has knocked it out of sight, that he has hit a home run, over the fence in left field.

  An explosion of cheers from all directions confirms it, and he drops the bat and starts down the path toward the first base. As he rounds the corner and trots along the path between first and second, he sees Reach and Fisher each go in. Then that gold glimmering in the western sky catches his eye.

  He has seen something like it before, but redder, and bound by darkness.

  Carefully he’d slid from between Swift and Rosamel where they slept together on the ground; he’d gathered his gear and silently stolen into the woods to find his bunkmate, the slain Leggett. The ringing in his ears, the day’s battle echo, had hardened to a yellow hiss. Some distance into the thicket, where a patch of ground still blazed, the flames suddenly leaped up a braid of vines and ignited the dead tree from which they dangled. The column of fire illumined the tangled forest, and at that same moment Hayes stumbled into a trench near a heap of dead soldiers. At the bottom of the heap a single pair of still-open eyes, rendered shiny by the flames, looked back at him. A rabbit darted into the trench and froze, trembling, and then scampered into the night. Hayes’s hands began to shake as he crawled out of the trench and deeper into the thicket. Soon he climbed over a dead horse, cold the dew-damp coat, and down into a shallow ravine. He passed through bristling shrubs, strewn blankets, weapons, and soldiers, some asleep, others dead. He felt guided by instinct, as he’d felt guided all day, and presently he came to the spot where earlier (so long ago) he’d seen Leggett felled by a tempest of musket balls. One had caught him in the mouth and exited at the back of his neck. Jets of blood pulsed from the wound into the earth, and Hayes pressed his hand there, trying in vain to stanch the flow. He’d had no choice then but to leave Leggett and strive to outlast the day’s battle. Now, finding the spot again, finding Leggett’s body right where he’d left it, he gazed for a moment into the vacant eyes and then looked around for a blanket.

  He brought two back to the body, spread one of them flat on the ground, rolled Leggett onto it, and covered him with the other, leaving only a portion of the blackened, mutilated face and one of Leggett’s hands exposed. Again he gazed into the eyes, observing how nothing of the man abided there. He touched Leggett’s hand, the lifeless cold of the flesh. A moderate breeze carried whiffs of campfires and burnt straw and a fragrance more raw, the scent of cooling night air. Soon he got to work with his own hands, digging a channel alongside Leggett’s body. As he worked he heard a distant rumble of artillery from the direction of the Catharpin Road and saw that the sky in that region glowed red above and behind the trees. When the channel was long and deep enough, he moved around to Leggett’s other side, where he sat on the ground.

  He held his chin in his hands and the night passed like a dark and slow-turning wheel: the rumble of artillery faded, as did the glow in the western sky; stars advanced glacially overhead and disappeared from view as new ones rose at the canopy’s eastern edge; and soon all was silent. He never spoke a word, nor whispered one. At first light, some minutes before the bugles sounded through the woods, he wrapped the blankets tight about Leggett, tucking them over the head and under the feet. Then, at last, he rolled his friend into the crude shoal grave, covered him with dirt and leaves and pine straw …

  A world without time, of smoke and chaos, strange voids, the obliterative din of musketry, fountains of flame and blood. An errant shell rolled into a hollow and bumped silent against the trunk of a hazel bush. On the Orange Plank Road, a clatter of ambulance wagons, the neighing and snorting of horses and mules …

  A butterfly landed next to a tiny pool of water in Billy Swift’s palm as he slept naked on the boulder by the spring. He was underage, only sixteen; now that he’d had an ample taste of war, he knew it wasn’t for him, he’d been rash to volunteer under false terms, made a bad mistake. He wanted to escape the Wilderness, get himself home to New York, and play ball, work to improve his batting and fielding—and Hayes had deterred him, persuaded him to see the folly of his muddled thinking. Bullied him back to walls of fire and rolling masses of pine-tar smoke and deafening artillery, slaughtered horses, clanging plunging swords and bayonets, muskets for cudgels, night for day, death-wails, and the sweet stench of burnt wool and human hair. In the charred slashing, Billy reached for Hayes, and when Hayes took the boy’s hand, the flesh slipped off the bone. Swift’s cartridge belt detonated, pop pop pop pop pop …

  He begged Hayes to shoot him, and so Hayes did, in the side of the head, put a ball into his brain. The day before, Swift had proposed the North and South settle their differences with a good match of base ball.

  Down near the third base, Hayes sees a colorfully clad organgrinder, and Walt, giving the slight man alms—surely a trick of the mind, as when the dead soldiers on the Wilderness floor rose up in unison and crawled a few feet forward. He hears Sarah’s voice—she says something about the streetlamps … she doesn’t like them, how they make quivering shadows on the windows and ceiling. He strives to imagine a future for himself, a province of organ-grinders and alms, music and charity, streetlamps and quivering shadows, progress and misgivings—and it all seems utterly impossible. He’s trying to peer too deeply, he thinks, and so he envisions himself as he might appear later this very day, after the match is over: he’ll go and find a young boy named Valentine Swift, who resides somewhere in Kings County; he’ll befriend the family and tell them what he knows of their lost son Billy; sparing them the horrors, he’ll tell them Billy died bravely on the battlefield, a good death, conscious, accepting the inevitable end, and begging for the moment to come hurriedly, which indeed it did; he’ll tell the young boy how Billy had spoken of him fondly and relayed his talent for base ball; he’ll invite the boy to a match, to a practice, and, if he’ll allow it, give him some lessons.

  Valentine Swift, the proximate future, what he can see so far.

  He turns the corner at the third base, gulping for air, as if his lungs have rejected their appointed task and mean to undo him. He can see his club mates, Reach and Fisher, who have waited at the home base all this very long time to greet him … but of course he’s not quite who they think he is.

  The noise of the crowd is like the sound of the ocean, storm-whetted swells breaking on rocks. When he gets all the way in, he drops to his hands and knees, humped over the base. Now, astonished, he recognizes the convulsions in his chest as weeping. The whole place (it seems to him, all of Williamsburgh) falls sharply silent—the ball players, the spectators, the ladies in the shed, even the rowdies on the banks outside the enclosure—and he recalls Dr. Speck’s saying, at the hospital, “… you are still the exceptional young man who can hush the crowd at the Union Grounds.”

  He has hushed them, and hushed them good. The portly Mr. O’Brien—well known as maddeningly variable at the umpire’s station—is first to come over
, leaving his folding stool and taking off his top hat. He crouches next to Hayes and lays a hand on Hayes’s back but says not a word. Next come Reach and Fisher, and next the Jersey catcher, and the pitcher, Buckley. Now, one by one, men from each club approach the home base and gather round him—those innermost stretching down a hand to touch him. Soon the cluster of ball players fully sheathes him, and he cannot seem to stop himself from weeping, though he’s trying his best to do it quietly. He’d not wept when his parents failed to return from Ireland, for that would have been getting off on the wrong foot—if he and his sister were to go it alone, after all, without father or mother, he thought it best not to start in tears. Neither had he wept on the battlefield in Virginia, nor lost in the forest, nor wept in the hospital or at Hicks Street.

  He’s back too soon, says one man softly.

  He’s not ready, says another.

  He’ll be all right, says a third.

  Through a watery film, he sees a single blade of grass growing from the dirt next to the base. A black ant climbs busily to the pointed tip of it and stands on four legs, evidently scouting what might be seen from such great height. As Hayes starts to get to his feet, blossoming open the huddle of men around him, he hears a mounting propulsive thunder overhead, a roar of turbines big as houses, that peaks and fades, crossing the sky at inconceivable speed, like some formidable airship, high above the clouds.

  Acknowledgments

  Fiction writers are often chagrined by how characters, given any kind of a decent chance, appear to evolve on their own terms; they refuse to bend to our will and turn out very different from how we conceived them. Never have I felt so controlled by a character as I did by Walt Whitman. Just as in real life he sought to manipulate his public image—writing and publishing celebrative reviews of his own work, becoming in his late years what a poet friend of mine calls “a caretaker of his past self”—his spirit, intent on being cast in the best possible light, seemed to elude my every effort to darken him. I cannot entirely account for this. I’ve concluded that Whitman, to the degree that his contemporaries misunderstood him, suffered the particular loneliness of artists who find themselves ahead of their times and the particular need to compensate for it.