Charlotte swallowed, though her throat felt lined with thorns.
“I saw one malingering up on the third floor a few minutes ago. The tall girl with the dark skin.” She was all too happy to end this troubling conversation, and she couched her words in such a way as to avoid any hint of a connection with Ida April. For Charlotte knew now that Tillie at the very least suspected her. And like Ben Chandler, the mulatto woman seemed impervious to Charlotte’s charms.
Tillie started to leave the room but hesitated in the doorway. “’Fore you go upstairs, you might wanna check on things down by the stable. When I was fetchin’ these beans, I seen somethin’ comin’ down the road. I’d call it by another name, but I figure you might think it’s trouble.”
Charlotte glanced through the back window, but she saw nothing amiss. Still, apprehension fluttered inside her like a bat trapped in a barn. Was this only more of Alexander’s mischief, or had Tillie been prompted to send her outside for some other purpose?
Before she could leave, Tillie held out a plate for her. “Why don’t you take that boy out back a cookie? Cap’n Chandler brought ‘em in last night, said your neighbor lady made ‘em.”
Ignoring the offer, Charlotte spun on her heel and rushed outside. So Mrs. Martin had talked to Ben last night. Charlotte would give all she had to know how long the two had spoken and what words flowed between them.
And whether Ben could possibly be outside and speaking with Alexander now.
o0o
Ben might not be a drinker, but he had to admit that losing control felt far better than he’d imagined. Not that he had alcohol or morphine to blame for his impulsive act; instead he had been prompted by the memory of Alexander smiling, laughing, and by the pain he’d glimpsed this morning in the boy’s green eyes.
The sight of Alexander’s misery had once more prompted an avalanche of Ben’s emotions from the aftermath of his father’s death. At fifteen, he had been nine years older than Alexander, and even so, he had been so swallowed up by loss that he could not imagine a day when he might once more know pleasure. Remembering, Ben had been seized by the desire to gift Alexander with the perspective he had lacked.
He had picked the brindle female, who was striped in reddish brown and black. She was a bit smaller than the two male pups, but as he struggled to get her to the Randolph house, Ben realized the mastiff was still ridiculously huge – and proportionally dense - at least when it came to walking on a lead. Unfamiliar with the idea of the makeshift leash that Ben had looped around her neck, the puppy struggled against it. With his artificial leg and cane, Ben couldn’t carry the animal, so he ended up talking a half-grown boy driving a delivery wagon into giving the two of them a ride in the back.
Though the pup had sorely tried Ben’s patience, her enthusiastic kisses had him laughing as he tried to fight her off.
“I think she likes you,” the boy called back.
Ben grinned. “I haven’t been this popular with a female since . . . well, come to think of it, I’d better enjoy the attention while I have it.”
He thanked the driver and slid down from the wagon with the puppy bouncing merrily beside him. After recalling that he’d last seen Alexander playing near the stable, Ben called the child’s name.
Instead of Alexander, he saw Charlotte racing toward him from the direction of the house, her face so colorless that he wondered if she’d received even more bad news. She had lifted her skirts to a scandalous height, apparently so she could move more quickly without tripping. Under other circumstances, Ben would have enjoyed the view of her shapely ankles.
“What’s wrong?” he asked, scanning her for some sign of injury.
The puppy jerked at its tether, apparently believing Charlotte a new playmate. Ben staggered a step to keep from being pulled off of his feet.
Charlotte stopped and gaped at the mastiff. “This . . . this – what is this?” she finally asked.
Ben had the distinct impression she’d been focused on – and worried about - something very different. Could she have guessed that he had spoken with her neighbor?
Grateful for the distraction of the animal, he answered, “It’s a puppy. The man at the feed store was selling them. That’s where I found Alexander yesterday.”
“So you took it upon yourself to do what – buy it for him?”
The look on her face made him realize for the first time that, of course, he should have asked Charlotte. How could he explain to her how long it had been since he had felt the joy of being swept up in a notion? Had it been before he’d lost his leg, or before he lost his father? Ben thought back . . . and found, to his surprise, that he could never remember doing something so reckless -- or so exhilarating.
“That creature is no more a puppy than Polly is a caterpillar,” Charlotte insisted as she walked in a semi-circle around the straining animal to have a better look. “Why, it’s a good-sized pony, or at the very least, a wolf.”
“It’s – it’s a mastiff, a female. She, uh, she was the runt.”
Charlotte crossed her arms, though Ben noticed her expression looked less strained than it had when she’d rushed out here. “Did you give a moment’s thought to where someone might keep a dog like this?”
“There’s room in the stable.”
She leaned forward and raised an eyebrow. “I’m afraid that it might eat the horse.”
The pup gave a series of yips as it lunged toward Charlotte, its tail wagging wildly. Apparently, the sound alerted Alexander, who edged out of the stable door. The redness splotching his fair skin and the dampness clumping his lashes offered testimony that he’d been crying.
The boy’s eyes widened as he looked from the young mastiff to Ben to Charlotte. The pup tore loose from Ben’s grip, bowling over Alexander. He came up beaming and then squealed with laughter as the puppy licked away his tears.
Ben could not help grinning at the child’s transformation.
“I walked by the feed store a while ago, and this little lady said she’d like to stop by,” he said, glancing at Charlotte before he added, “just for a little visit.”
Charlotte’s attention remained fixed on boy and dog, and Ben saw moisture rimming her reddened eyes. Watching her, Ben realized that she needed to hear Alexander’s laughter the way spring crops needed gentle rains, the way a mother needed her child’s happiness. It was only then that he understood that he fully accepted Mrs. Martin’s story. At the same time, he recognized what Charlotte had given up by allowing her parents to claim Alexander as their own: the chance to hear him call her “Mama,” the opportunity to acknowledge to outsiders exactly what he meant to her. For a moment, Ben would swear he felt both her longing and her loss, and he felt another impulse, this to take her in his arms, to reassure her that the mistakes of her youth did not lessen her in his regard.
But like the puppy, that idea was a poor one.
“How long of a visit?” Alexander asked, his voice tensing. No doubt he was preparing to add a plea for five more minutes.
A smile warmed Charlotte’s face, and in the bright sunshine she looked more radiant than ever. She cast her gaze on Ben for a fleeting moment before returning her attention to her son.
“A forever visit, Alexander,” Charlotte told him. “Captain Chandler’s giving her to you.”
o0o
As Alexander raced up the second staircase, he stuck his crossed fingers into his right pocket. Charlotte had to let him sleep in the stable with his puppy! If Honeybee, as he’d named the pup on account of her stripes, was locked up by herself in the stable all night, she’d be sure to feel lonesome. As it was, she’d whined the whole time he was in the house rushing through his dinner.
Outside the open doorway of the nursery, he paused to try to brush the paw prints and loose grass off his shirt. Maybe if Charlotte saw he was being more responsible about his clothes, she’d let him sleep in the clean straw.
Before he went inside, he heard Charlotte crying. He could tell she was trying to stay
quiet, but he recognized her ragged gasps. He stood still for a moment, wondering why she would be weeping. His stomach flipped around on frogs’ legs, and he knew he’d forgotten something big.
Then it hit him – wham – like the day last month when Henry Dean had whacked him with a stick between the shoulders. Papa wasn’t coming home, not next week, not ever.
Chills began to crawl around the back of Alexander’s scalp as he realized what that meant. Papa would never again swing Alexander onto his broad shoulders. He would never tell funny stories about the day that Michael turned loose two dozen toads inside the pantry, or the time Charlotte, who was six like Alexander and ought to have known better, cut the lace off one of Mama’s skirts to dress up a kitten she once had. Alexander wondered how he could have forgotten even for a second that he would never see his papa, that a stinking, no-good Yankee had taken him away.
Yesterday, when Charlotte had explained that an angel came and carried Papa up to heaven, Alexander hadn’t understood at first. He’d asked a lot of questions before he’d figured out the angel rode in on a Yankee bullet and that Papa was dead really, stiff and cold the way a baby bird got when it fell out of its nest and the ants crawled on its body.
He started to cry then, hard, thinking about ants all over Papa. Charlotte must have heard him, for she came out, then picked him up and carried him inside. She sat with him on his bed and held him, but he pulled away to stare at her black dress.
“I don’t want – don’t want Honeybee,” he said, his breath hitching with his sobs. He thought about the pup’s bright eyes and the way it danced around him, and regret stabbed through him. But that didn’t change a thing, so he added, “I hate her!”
“Why? Is she a bad dog?” Charlotte asked, and she started checking his hands and face. “Did she bite you?”
Alexander shook his head, though he had felt the puppy’s needle teeth when they’d been playing. “It’s not that. She’s real nice, but I don’t want her. I don’t want nothin’ from a damn dirty Yankee. I don’t want nothin’ but my papa.”
He expected, even wanted Charlotte to punish him for using a bad word. It bothered him when she sighed tiredly instead.
“Papa isn’t coming back, no matter what. And hating all the Yankees isn’t going to help a bit. It will only make us sadder, Alexander.”
“But it’s their fault!”
His sister’s eyes closed, and her fingers rubbed her temples. A tear rolled down her cheek and curved around her mouth. “I’m not sure whose fault anything is anymore. The letter says that Papa accidentally came across a Union soldier. They surprised each other, and both fired."
“I hope that Yankee got killed, too!” Alexander shouted. If he said something bad enough, maybe she would yell at him, and that would make her forget to cry. Then he could pretend to get mad at her, and he’d stop crying, too.
Instead, her voice remained too calm and quiet. “They both died, and I’m not even sure they meant to shoot each other. Maybe they were both scared. Maybe they both wanted to get home.”
“You mean it was an accident?”
She opened her eyes, and he could see that she was really thinking. She shook her head. “I don’t know, and I don’t think I ever will. But I do know that war does terrible things to people, even decent people, and sometimes it makes them do bad things, too. That doesn’t mean that we should hate our enemies.”
“Doesn’t mean we oughta marry ‘em either.”
She looked hard at him but said nothing in reply.
“I heard you at the stable,” he continued. “I heard you say you’d marry him. Papa would be real mad. So would Michael.”
She rested both palms on his shoulders. “I am not marrying Delaney McMahon.”
“You’re not?”
She shook her head. “I swear it to you, Alexander. Remember how we’re playing that game to get the Yankees to go home?”
He nodded, though in truth he’d almost forgotten.
“Telling that fib to Lieutenant McMahon was just a part of it.”
“If I did it, you’d call it a big fat lie.”
She smiled. “Probably, but things are different for grown ups in a war.”
“It’s making you do bad things, too?”
“It is,” she admitted, “but that doesn’t mean that you should. And I think giving up your puppy would be a very bad thing.”
“But Captain Chandler got her for me to make me forget my papa.”
She hugged him tightly. “Captain Chandler gave her to you because he cares for you; that’s all. I won’t tell you what to do about Honeybee, Alexander. It’s an important choice, and I think you should make it. But before you decide, I want you to think about this: A Confederate soldier shot Ben Chandler and caused him to lose his leg. It hurts him every day, but the captain didn’t choose to hate us for it.”
“Why should he? We didn’t hurt him.”
“Did he hurt you? Or did he merely offer kindness?”
Alexander couldn’t think of one time when Captain Chandler had been even a little mean. He shook his head in answer. He really wanted Honeybee, but he still was not convinced.
“I could give her back and get one of Daisy’s puppies.”
“By this time, Aunt Lila and your cousins might have gone to Mississippi. They’d take the dogs along. We might not see them for a long time. I think Papa would want you to have Honeybee, to keep you from feeling lonesome.”
Alexander remembered his papa saying he deserved a dog. He thought, too, about the feel of the puppy’s silky ears, the way her wet tongue warmed his cheeks and how she snuggled up against him. He felt sure she would be sad if he sent her away.
“I suppose I’ll keep her,” he told Charlotte, “for Papa’s sake. But I still hate them bluebellies. They came down here and ruined everything.”
Charlotte didn’t answer for a long while. Instead, she gazed out the window, where the first few stars were glowing against the darkening sky.
When finally she spoke, her voice sounded strong and stubborn. “Then we’ll just have to find a way to make them go home faster.”
Alexander decided that Charlotte and Michael’s way wasn’t nearly quick enough. Maybe he would think of something to send them packing right away.
Six years old or not, he was still a Randolph, and he already had a good idea.
A lying tongue hateth those that are afflicted by it; and a flattering mouth worketh ruin.
-The Holy Bible,
Proverbs 26:28
CHAPTER ELEVEN
Tuesday, June 24, 1862
“I can’t prove it,” Colonel Gideon Williams said as he lowered himself into the chair closest to Charlotte, “but I’m certain Chandler’s protecting the general. It’s a dangerous game the captain’s playing.”
“What makes you believe that Captain Chandler is doing such a thing, or that he would need to?” Charlotte looked up from her knitting, then paused to brush aside the tendrils of hair that clung to her damp neck.
The side porch was cooler than the nursery, but late afternoon’s sunlight and humidity had combined to make even shaded spots oppressive. Before Colonel Williams had joined her, she had been trying to summon the energy to fill a tub in the backyard so Alexander could splash in the cool water. Now, however, she forced herself to strict attention. Though Gideon, who had told her he was thirty-seven, was older and supposedly wiser than Ben or either of the lieutenants, he was the least circumspect of all. Already, he had carelessly passed her a half dozen bits of gossip she’d thought useful enough to code and send along.
Gideon lowered his voice to a near-whisper. “Last week, General Branard sent out two different sets of orders to my headquarters. I could barely read the first, and what I did decipher made no sense whatsoever. Later that day, I received a second set. They were in a different hand, and they were as clear as window glass.”
That Gideon whispered did not surprise her. She’d overheard the general tell him a few days befo
re that he was only welcome here if he’d refrain from sharing “baseless rumors.” Charlotte hadn’t known what General Branard was referring to, but she’d noticed a decided chill between the two men. Yet Gideon made frequent visits, and he rarely missed the opportunity to speak with her.
Keeping her voice low as well, Charlotte asked, “Could it be the first set of orders was a draft?”
“That’s an excellent question,” the colonel countered, “but if you could see the difference, you would realize that more than the handwriting and a few stray errors had been altered. Besides, haven’t you noticed at meals the way the general drifts, the way he calls you Emma? I’m worried, very worried about him. Have you seen other evidence of deterioration of his mind?”
Not for the first time, she wondered why Gideon was discussing such things with her, even soliciting her advice. Where the lieutenants seemed to regard her as a pretty distraction without the slightest interest in what Delaney McMahon called “men’s matters,” Colonel Williams appeared to value her intelligence – at least in conversation. More tellingly, perhaps, she noticed how frequently his gaze drifted to her body’s curves. Was he merely using these conversations to subtly flatter her, or did he believe that she could offer information he was seeking? Did he wish her to serve him as a lover . . . or a spy?
The irony of the thought made her smile.
“You find my question humorous?” Gideon sounded uncharacteristically annoyed.
She dropped her gaze to her knitting. “My grandfather constantly confused my brother’s name with our male cousins’, even though they could hardly be more different. I was only thinking that no one in the family dared suggest senility.”
“Did your grandfather grow worse over time?”
She considered, then shook her head. “Sometimes he was a bit forgetful, but that was all. I think that’s the way with General Branard. Just a touch of absent-mindedness.”
He seemed to accept the answer, but he stared into space, his expression somber.
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