Here and Again

by Nicole R Dickson

  “G-good afternoon,” she replied hoarsely.

  “A cold afternoon,” he added.

  “It is cold. You lose your regiment?” She tried to smile. Her cheeks stung with tears.

  “Why, yes, I did.” His accent was very Virginian. Not from Richmond. Not from the coast. Ginger was very good at placing Virginia accents because Jesse had a talent for mimicking them. This man’s accent, though, was not one she had heard Jesse do. A tear escaped, rolling hot down her face.

  “Why are you crying?” the man asked, gently.

  Ginger looked away from him, shaking her head.

  “It’s personal,” she replied, wiping the tear as she slid her gaze across the river, searching for more roaming Civil War soldiers in the woods. The man chuckled. Ginger flicked her eyes back to him, unclear why what she had said was at all funny.

  “I apologize, but I have never cried a tear nor heard of one shed that was not personal,” he said with a little smile. She cocked her head and smiled a little in return. His eyes were the color of his hair and soft and he stood so still, as if he yet waited for her to answer.

  “My husband died,” she whispered.

  “I am sorry. Was it sudden?”

  Ginger took in a deep breath and looked up at the soft purple-white sky above her, trying not to feel her hurt. It didn’t work.

  “He was a soldier, like you,” she said, smiling back at him through her unwanted tears. “He died serving his country.”

  “It is an honorable death, then.”

  Ginger nodded quickly, pulling the sleeve of Jesse’s coat to her mouth. Sometimes she could just catch his scent within the flannel lining.

  “He’s in a better place,” the man continued.

  Ginger’s throat tightened.

  “You know? I don’t believe that,” Ginger whispered. “A better place for him would be here. Planting his fields and mending fences and picking apples for pie and teaching the kids to ride horses and caring for his grandmother, who cared for him. What better place? Where is this better place? I sure don’t see it!” Ginger froze; her voice had grown angry and her words tore the still air like the cawing crows that now lifted into the air from the branches above.

  “I’m sorry,” she said, shaking her head and covering her mouth. “I’m so sorry.”

  “It is all right,” he replied, quietly, almost formally.

  “Sorry,” she whispered.

  “It’s personal,” he said with a small smile.

  Ginger nodded, wiping her face with Jesse’s sleeve again.

  “I should go. Um . . . you wanna come in? Osbee’s probably made coffee by now and I can take you back to your regiment. I’m so sorry.”

  “We have already had forgiveness here. No need to apologize further. Who is Osbee?”

  “Oh, uh, Grandma.”

  He nodded. “And you? What is your name?”

  “Virginia.”

  The man smiled with a chuckle.

  Ginger shrugged. “I know. It’s your state,” she said.

  “No. It is my country,” the man corrected.

  “Oh, right,” Ginger replied. “Fighting for Old Dominion.” She knew those who had fought in the Civil War thought of Virginia as a country, a separate republic. So Jesse had said.

  “Virginia what?” he asked.

  Ginger’s heart lifted a bit from her grief. This was her favorite question when asked by someone from the state.

  “Virginia what?” the man pressed as he watched her face lighten.

  “Virginia Moon.” She grinned as a smile grew brighter on his face as well.

  “Virginia Moon. I love your name!”

  “Most people around here do,” she replied, her head heavy again with cold and tears. “Where’s your regiment? I’ll take you back.”

  “No need. They are a ways away and I have to take care of a couple of things on that side of the river.” He pointed to the woods of the state park. “But I thank you.”

  He turned and headed back across the river.

  “Careful. There’s snow on the tree,” she said, imagining that, if he fell in, it would be a visit to the emergency room for sure. That was one place she did not wish to go today.

  “I have waited a long time to cross this river. No slippery path shall take me down,” he replied with his back toward her. “You go and be warm.” The man stopped and turned back to face her. “And, Virginia Moon?”

  “Yes?”

  “A man is not dead if his dream yet lives. If his love lives.”

  Ginger gazed into his soft brown eyes, so far away. She swallowed hard.

  “Think on that.”

  She nodded, watching him turn and cross back to the other side of the river. He jumped off the fallen pine and climbed up toward the wall of trees.

  “Hey!” she yelled. “What’s your name?”

  “Samuel,” he whispered. “Samuel Ezra Annanais.”

  Then he climbed through the trees and disappeared into the brush.

  Chapter 2

  The Jesse Tree

  Ginger stood for a while, waiting to see if Samuel would return. There were several cultural struggles she had to wrestle with when she moved from the West Coast to the East and even more so when she arrived in the South. The greatest of these was this courtesy right here. Samuel had said to go in and be warm. If she was in Seattle, that meant exactly that: go in, be warm. In the East, and in particular the Southeast, it may mean exactly that or it may have just been said out of courtesy. The expectation, of course, would be that she wait for him and, together, they would go in. Together they would be warm. Her needs did not supersede his. Her comfort was gained only when they both had comfort. “Together,” in the South, wasn’t an adverb or an adjective; it was a noun and a verb. It was being and action—belonging. We are one together and so she waited.

  She looked up to the empty branches above her head and to the pale evening sky beyond. She leaned forward, peering south to see what, if anything, had changed around the river’s bend. She examined everywhere but the fallen ash. Yet, if Samuel was to return, he would cross upon it, and so her eyes turned ever to Jesse’s tree. The emptiness in her body was just like the earth there—a gaping wound left by a broken root. Shifting in the hollow cold with tears threatening again, she watched in her mind’s eye as the two solemn men climbed the drive, and she decided Samuel was not returning. Quickly, she stepped away from the river and headed to the house.

  The footprints she had made going down to the river were perfectly set in shape and form to her foot, and heavily she followed them back just to their right, measuring her stride as close as she could in order to create a second set of perfect footprints going in the opposite direction. It seemed to her that this was always how it had been with Jesse. He was going in one direction, she in another. But always they circled each other, being apart and then together—mostly apart. Together for them was not the Southern sense. It had part of that intense conformity from Jesse’s Virginia sensibilities, but from Ginger there was her Western independence and liberty. The depth of their differences should have made for great conflict. But that was not how it was. Instead, he planted her in Virginia’s soil where the roots of family obligation ran thick and many like the veins in an old man’s well-worked hands. In return, she helped him begin his own family—less Martin, more Barnes. Together they made a new home on old land where their faith in each other was so bright, it burned straight through the body and lit all the dark places of the soul. And Jesse had dark places. War creates them.

  She stopped, peering back to follow her footsteps coming and now going from Jesse’s tree and the great, dark hole at the water’s edge.

  •••

  Ginger rested her head against the ash, her eyes closed in the lazy afternoon weight of Shenandoah’s early fall. Henry’s head lay across her
thighs, his breath steady and even with sleep. The insects buzzed conversation about her head and as she rested, feeling the slight kick and roll beneath her belly button, she laid her hand there to soothe the child within. From out on the water, she could hear Jesse reading, his voice high and clear in imitation of a little English girl.

  “‘WHAT’S that thing?’ said Lucie—‘that’s not my pocket-handkin’.’” His voice changed to an old Englishwoman. “Oh no, if you please’m. That’s a little scarlet waistcoat belonging to Cock Robin.”

  The buzzing of an insect grew nearer Ginger’s ear and as she waved it away she realized Jesse had stopped. She opened her eyes. Following the rope that anchored him to the tree on which she rested, she found her husband lying prone across an inner tube floating in the river, with three-year-old Bea curled up on his chest, fast asleep. His nose was buried in the hair upon his daughter’s head and his eyes were as fast closed as hers.

  “She fell asleep? She never falls asleep to Mrs. Tiggy-Winkle,” Ginger said. “I guess you are just not a believable little English girl.”

  “I think I’m a better girl than I am a hedgehog.”

  They both laughed softly so as not to wake the sleeping children. Then all fell silent, except for the insects. They stared a long while at each other, the small smile on his lips matching the smile on hers.

  Jesse finally broke the silence. “What are we going to name that one?”

  “Well, we’re not calling it after any Civil War general,” Ginger said adamantly.

  “I think you need to reconsider that.”

  “I am not standing at the back door and calling, ‘Thomas Stonewall Jackson Martin, come in for dinner.’”

  Jesse snickered. “I wouldn’t name him that anyway.”

  “Okay, well, I’m not calling, ‘A. P. Hill Martin, your room needs to be picked up.’”

  Jesse let his head fall back on the inner tube and he stared up at the sky. From behind Ginger, Osbee called, “Jubal Early Martin, your daddy’s calling you!”

  Jesse laughed.

  “Exactly!” Ginger declared, turning her head and nodding to Osbee, who was away in the woods to the left, gleaning walnuts. Five-year-old Henry stirred on her lap. Jesse lifted his head, returning his gaze to Ginger.

  “Well, I won’t be back before it’s born, so you’ll have to name that little Thee-Me yourself.”

  “What if it’s a boy?” Ginger asked.

  “We’re doing this by gender?” Jesse’s eyebrows rose.

  “You named Henry. I named Bea,” Ginger replied.

  “Oh—I thought we were doing every other one. I did the first. You did the second.”

  “Oh.” Ginger giggled. “Hadn’t thought of it that way.”

  “Gender, huh? Hadn’t thought of it that way,” Jesse said and laid his head back upon the inner tube again.

  “Well, if it’s every other, then it’s your turn.”

  “I won’t be home and if it’s the last one, don’t you want to do it?”

  “We don’t know if it’s our last Thee-Me.”

  “I still won’t be here.”

  “Then we’ll wait.”

  Jesse lifted his head once more.

  “Wait?” he repeated.

  “Yep. I’ll simply give the name Martin, and then when you get home, we’ll see.”

  “Shouldn’t a baby have a name at birth?”

  “Why?”

  Jesse rubbed Bea’s head.

  “So it can be called?”

  “You’ll be back on leave, what, nine months after it’s born? We’ll just call it Martin or Thee-Me and we’ll wait.”

  “I don’t know, Ginger.”

  “We’ll wait.”

  They met each other’s eyes, yet now there was no smile. There was dark silence in the sudden rain of golden red leaves set loose by a stirring wind.

  I’ll be back, he mouthed.

  Ginger nodded. We’ll wait.

  •••

  Ginger wiped away a rogue tear.

  “No, Samuel.” She breathed.

  A very loud meow drew Ginger’s attention back toward the covered bridge and there Regard stood as a dark silhouette against the pale reflection of the violet sky upon the snow. Evening was pressing its shoulder on the day and the cat was hunkered down into a small, crouching ball, his fur puffed up in an effort to keep himself warm in the cold breeze that blew through the bridge.

  “You following me, cat?” she asked. With one backward glance to Jesse’s fallen tree, she scanned the other shore for Samuel just to be sure and headed toward the bridge.

  Regard stood up, waited for her, and when she passed him, he trotted quickly after.

  “And where will you go if we leave?”

  He didn’t answer, but ran on ahead, across the bridge toward the summer kitchen. Where would he go? Where would Beau go? And the horses? It would not be a day she’d like to live when she had to take her children away from their animals. Just the image of standing on the porch, kissing Osbee good-bye, and heading down the dirt drive to the asphalt never to return made her stomach churn. She even retched a little as she passed the summer kitchen. Following the cat up the back stairs, she opened the door to the sunroom and Regard bolted inside. She paused and gave a whistle at the barn. Beau stepped out, ears forward.

  “You cold?” she asked. The dog ran across the snowy yard and trotted up the stairs. Ginger stepped in behind him and stomped her icy feet on the slate floor as the screen door slammed shut.

  “Coffee’s ready,” Osbee said, poking her head out the kitchen door. Ginger could hear Henry arguing with Oliver over a pencil.

  “Jesse’s tree has fallen down,” Ginger whispered, pulling off her right boot.

  Several furrows rolled across the old woman’s forehead, and as soon as they appeared, they disappeared.

  “It was old,” Osbee replied. “Been there since before I was born.”

  The old woman stood in her cornflower apron, white cotton sweater, and pull-on jeans. Osbee was not one to go to the beautician to have her hair set every two or three weeks like so many other women her age. Her hair was long and gray, forming a single braid down the back. It was thick near the roots and thinner at the bottom and, at the moment, there was a red ribbon tied to it. It had not been there when Ginger left to pick the kids up from the bus stop, and when she saw the fraying piece of satin wrapped tightly around the braid, her stomach dropped to her left knee. It only stopped there because she still had on her boot. If she hadn’t, it would have hit the bottom of her foot for sure.

  “You get a letter?” Ginger inquired, shrugging out of Jesse’s coat.

  “A call.”

  “They coming tonight?”

  “Tomorrow morning. I was thinking of baking cookies. Oliver and Henry said they’d help. Bea—well, you know Bea.”

  With a deep breath, Ginger slid out of the left boot. Her stomach stayed in her knee. That was promising.

  “Need a new ribbon,” she said softly, touching the old woman’s braid. Osbee winked.

  Whenever her daughter came to visit after Henry’s death, Osbee tied a red ribbon onto the end of her braid. Once, Ginger asked why and Osbee’s answer was not at all what she had expected. The answer, to be kept like a secret, was that it matched the color of her underwear. The real question was why she always wore red underwear, so Osbee had prompted. Of course Ginger had to know and she asked the question, the answer to which was quite simple. Mary, Queen of Scots, wore red undergarments at her execution, and every time her daughter visited, Osbee felt like she was going to her execution. It was a way to protest—to defy her daughter and that husband of hers. So here was the red ribbon and Ginger knew a conflict was brewing and Osbee was going to protest. She was formulating a dissent. Dissent was a sensibility Ginger felt she’d brought to the farm f
rom Seattle.

  “Nothing lasts forever. Not even mountains and trees,” Osbee stated flatly. There was no emotion in her words, just as the pain of Jesse’s fallen tree had been but a fleeting crease across the old woman’s brow. So Southern. Ginger, however, had lived in Virginia long enough to know that, no matter how pleasant and normal the face and tone of a Southerner was, there were indeed deep emotions. Why there was all this hiding of them was yet a mystery to her.

  “You want me to stay?” Ginger asked, not for the first time.

  Osbee’s brown eyes, as deep and endless as her root, revealed nothing, answered nothing. She frowned then.

  “Why is that dirty dog in here?” Osbee asked, scowling at Beau. He sat promptly, hoping manners would get him through the kitchen door.

  “Regard came in,” Ginger replied, folding Jesse’s coat over her arm. She nodded to the dog, who quickly rose and shuffled by Osbee.

  “And?”

  “Seems unfair to leave the dog out when the cat is in.” Ginger cocked her head and followed Beau through the door. She tossed Jesse’s coat on the back of an empty kitchen chair.

  “Mom, Oliver stole my pencil,” Henry said.

  “Did not.”

  “That’s mine,” Henry said.

  “Doesn’t have your name on it,” Oliver replied. He said it exactly in the same voice Henry used when taunting Bea. Little boys learn so much from big boys, but it always seemed to Ginger they learned the worst things first.

  “Give Henry back his pencil and go get your own,” Ginger said to Oliver.

  “It’s mine, Mama!”

  “Oliver, your pencils always have teeth marks and you bite the eraser off. That pencil clearly has its eraser. Now give it back to your brother and go get your own.”

  Oliver slammed the pencil down so hard it bounced off the table and hit Bea on the chin.

  “Hey,” Bea said quietly. “Watch it.”

  The little girl rubbed her chin and went back to her homework. She didn’t even look up. Ginger pursed her lips and opened the refrigerator.

  “I wish I could run away,” Henry said.

  “Wouldn’t you be lonely?” Ginger asked as she surveyed the milk cartons for the open one.