Here and Again

by Nicole R Dickson

  “That must be it,” she whispered to Beau, who stirred at her feet. Opening the top drawer of her nightstand, she pulled out the flashlight and flicked it on. The light struck the darkness of her room and as it did, she found buried at the bottom of the nightstand drawer, the edge of a small yellowing envelope. It had been several months since she had touched it.

  Reluctantly, she had emptied the contents of the closet and the drawers of Jesse’s things. It had taken her nine months, and even now several boxes of his clothing and papers remained in the attic. She just couldn’t see getting rid of him altogether. The one thing she had found and kept in her bedroom was this envelope. Pulling it out, she opened the end and let the key within slide onto the nightstand. It shined dully in the reflection of the flashlight, and with her index finger she moved it back and forth, flicking it gently to and fro and over and over. It was curious to her. She never remembered seeing it before his death nor did she recall Jesse ever mentioning it. But as she removed the last of his socks from his drawer, she had found buried beneath them this envelope with its small gold key. Searching through the entire house, she had looked for a lock that it would fit, but to no avail. It was a mystery like the gravel drive, and though she knew her husband intimately, she knew there was much she had not yet discovered about him. She was not done knowing him. In the last minutes of this dying March day, with its recollection of two men on her porch and becoming ash, she wished to have him here in bed next to her.

  “Come home,” she said.

  At that moment, the flashlight’s glare caused Ginger to gaze down at the yellowing envelope and there she found typed lettering appear through the paper. She’d never seen that before. Lifting the envelope, Ginger pressed on its edges and looked inside, where, at its very bottom, she found a tiny newspaper clipping.

  “Huh.” With her right index finger, she coaxed the small piece of paper out of the envelope:

  Needed: Good home for two draught horses. Please contact Ed Rogers at 540-555-7957

  “Ah! Christian and Penny,” Ginger said with a half smile. Jesse had never told her where he’d purchased the horses; he just pulled up one day, coming home from Fort Bragg, towing a horse trailer. She had laughed until tears rolled down her cheeks as she stood on the porch watching Osbee trot quickly down the steps, waving her hands wildly and telling him to take them back. She had no wish to have animals again. This was strictly a corn and hay farm. Ginger straightened on the edge of her bed, gazing from the little ad to the golden key.

  “Perhaps Mr. Rogers knows what the key is for,” she whispered to Regard. There was a hope. She’d been without any hope for a year and nine months, and now that she had a small granule of light, her hurt eased a little. Sliding the key and the ad back into the envelope, Ginger stood, dropped it into her handbag sitting on her desk, and tiptoed across the wooden floor of her bedroom to the hall. No matter how quietly she walked, the floor squeaked and Beau lifted his head, yawning.

  “Sorry,” she said softly as she stepped into the hall. “Go back to sleep.”

  Quietly, she crossed to the bathroom, shut the door, slipped into her scrubs, brushed her teeth, and twisted her dark brown, curly hair around her fingers and clipped it into place. Then she shuffled into Osbee’s room.

  “Osbee,” she whispered.

  “I don’t smell coffee,” the old woman replied as she sat up in bed.

  “No electricity. I’ll get tea from the fridge.”

  “What time you off?”

  “Two o’clock so I’ll be home just as the kids come back from school. When’re Mr. and Mrs. Martin coming?”

  “In the morning. Hope the electricity comes on before they get here.”

  Ginger sat down on the bed, pointing the flashlight at the floor. She could just make out Osbee’s red ribbon in the light.

  “Osbee.” She reached up and touched the ribbon. “Osbee—”

  “There’s no fighting this, my dear.” Osbee brushed Ginger’s cheek. “I’m not getting any younger.”

  “You are my fight,” Ginger replied.

  “Look, Ginger. It’s planting time again.”

  “I know.”

  “There’s no one to plant and we can’t keep asking everybody to pull for us.”

  “I know.”

  “And you can’t make enough money to keep this farm and the children—”

  “I have Jesse’s life insurance.”

  “That’s for the children. A final offering from their father, the last he can give for his dream of their future.”

  Ginger nodded, glancing out the window. There was no hint of a new morning. “But their home is here. This is all they know.”

  “I’ve learned over the years that children are so resilient. They’ll adjust. Lots to do and discover in a city. And you have your mom and dad, Ginger. You’ll have more help. Maybe one day you’ll meet a nice man. They need a father.”

  “They need their father,” Ginger whispered, her throat tightening.

  “He’s gone. Still here in our hearts, but he’s not returning.”

  Ginger looked at the old woman’s face. Her wrinkles looked deeper in the glare of the flashlight.

  “What will you do?”

  “No need to worry about me. You need to think about you and Henry and Bea and Oliver.”

  That was such a Southern thing to say. She could mean exactly what she was saying but she could mean just the opposite as well. Separate parts of Ginger wanted both to be true.

  “You come with me,” Ginger said.

  Osbee shook her head. “My home is here.”

  “If you sell the farm, what difference does it make? You come with me—to Seattle.”

  “What does an old Virginian woman need? What does a young Seattle woman need? You don’t need an old woman to care for.”

  “I’m a young Virginia woman now.”

  Osbee smiled and wrapped her thin arms around Ginger’s neck, pulling her into a hug. Though she was eighty-two years old, her arms were not frail. They were neither weak nor old. How long would she remain strong if she was taken from her home?

  “Come with me,” Ginger whispered into her lavender-scented ear.

  “I can’t and there is no fighting this, daughter. Things happen when they happen. You need to go.”

  Osbee released her and when she did Ginger felt like the ash she was, drifting away.

  “You need to get going. It’s an hour and a half to the hospital and the roads through the mountains will be ice.”

  “I love you, Osbee,” Ginger whispered as she stood.

  “I love you, too. Be careful driving.”

  As Ginger stepped out of Osbee’s room, she found Beau standing at attention, swaying sleepily to and fro.

  “Go lie down,” she whispered, patting his head as she passed. Carefully, she made her way down the stairs, listening to Beau’s clicking toenails make their way across her bedroom floor and back to the rug on which he had been sleeping. By the time she reached the bottom, all was quiet again upstairs. Opening the refrigerator door, Ginger found the breakfast Osbee always made for her in its usual brown paper sack. After pouring herself some tea, she grabbed the sack, put on Jesse’s coat, opened the back door, and made her way to the truck.

  The sky was clear and the stars were bright and thick, as there was no moon to outshine them. There also was no new snow, which was a relief. Because it had not warmed up too much the day before and there was no new snow, the ground would be less icy than usual on the trip from the farm to Franklin, West Virginia. Her road would take Ginger through the mountains and she disliked driving on the windy back roads when there was ice. She could imagine herself sliding off into a ravine and no one would find her for hours. It had happened before; not to her but to several cases she had seen in ERs across the states. That was the problem with specializing in emergency ro
om and trauma care. Every strange way of being injured or dying came through the door. Ignorance is bliss—the emergency room motto.

  Turning on the truck, she checked the battery on her cell phone in the lights of the dashboard. It was fully charged. She turned off the heater, as it was, at the moment, blowing cold air. Flipping on her lights, she crawled down the drive and, gazing to her left, found the pond an inky blot in the white snow.

  •••

  Ginger sat hunched over the fire, the pear tree branches dripping melted snow on her head as the bacon popped and hit her hand. She winced and looked over at her husband, whose gray gaze peered across the fire at her with a small smile on his face. To his left, seven-year-old Henry sat board straight with his ramrod resting between his shoulder and ear, greedily watching the bacon fry in the cast-iron pan. Five-year-old Bea was rolling the tip of her ramrod in the brightly glowing embers of the fire. Two-year-old Oliver sat within his father’s crossed legs, whimpering.

  “Oliver doesn’t like to camp,” Ginger stated.

  “We’re not camping, Mama,” Bea replied. “We’re learning to bivouac.”

  “In Washington, we call it camping and we usually do it in the summer on a mountain or island where there are tents and bathrooms and proper fire pits that won’t burn down an orchard.”

  Oliver moaned and then sank deeper into his father’s chest.

  “We’re here, Virginia, beneath the beautiful Virginia moon, to learn how to build shelter and cook something when shelter and food are scarce.”

  “What’s ‘scarce’?” Henry asked.

  “There’s not a lot of it around for people to use,” Ginger replied, pulling the six slices of bacon from the frying pan and placing them on a tin plate. “Your father is preparing you for another invasion from the North.”

  “You’re a Yankee, Mama,” Bea said.

  “She is not,” Jesse declared. “Who said that?”

  “Mr. Mitchell,” Bea replied quietly, her shoulders slumping as if she had caused great injury to her father. Jesse reached down and rubbed her back.

  “Oh. Well, it’s a common mistake, but your mother isn’t a Yankee. She’s from the West.”

  “Which side did they fight on?” Henry asked.

  “We didn’t. We had no side. That’s why camping for us is in warm tents with s’mores and salmon and guitars playing ‘Kumbaya.’”

  Jesse snickered.

  “We having s’mores?” Henry asked with hope.

  “We’re having sloosh,” Bea said.

  “S’mores can’t keep you strong and alive,” Jesse said. “Sloosh can.”

  “According to current medical knowledge, though, eating bacon-grease-soaked cornmeal will cause several health problems after prolonged use—namely high blood pressure, hardened arteries, stomach disorders, bowel probl—”

  “Thank you, Virginia, heart of my hearts. Please pour the cornmeal into the pan.”

  Ginger moved the pan on the fire and into the bacon grease she poured the cornmeal. It started to rain. Jesse and the children scooted back farther into the small shelter they had constructed before nightfall. They had gone out past the barn and fallow cornfields and picked up fallen branches and dead brush. After dragging debris across the fields and gravel drive, they built a little lean-to between two small volunteer pear trees close to the pond. It was where they were sleeping this evening. Ginger, on the other hand, sat across from them, out in the rain as she cooked. She pulled her hood over her head, stirring the cornmeal-grease mixture.

  “Did you know, Bea, that some of the officers in the war brought their wives and children along?” Jesse asked. Ginger glanced over to him and he winked at her. Her hood shifted as she shook her head. He chuckled.

  “I wouldn’t have been a wife. I would’ve been a soldier,” Bea said.

  “Girls didn’t fight back then,” Henry said with a sneer.

  “A couple did,” Jesse corrected.

  “Okay,” Ginger said. “It’s too hot for little hands, so your dad can make the snakes. Uh, have you washed your hands?” She looked at Jesse’s hands from beneath her hood. She couldn’t tell if they were dark because of shadow or dirt.

  “Soldiers don’t always have water to wash their hands,” he replied, smiling at her. She sighed and with a quiet curse under her breath pulled a small portion of the hot cornmeal-grease batter out of the pan, quickly moving it from hand to hand as she rolled out a snake. It was sticky and gritty and when she thought it was long enough, she held it out to Jesse for inspection.

  “Perfect!” he said. She pulled it quickly away from his outstretched hand.

  “Hold out your stick, Bea,” Ginger said. Bea pulled her ramrod out of the fire and Ginger leaned forward, wrapping the snake of cornmeal-grease batter around it.

  “It’s not a stick,” Bea said and then held her ramrod with the sloosh over the fire to cook.

  “Would you have gone with Daddy, Mama, if he was in the Civil War?”

  Ginger sat back, pulling another handful of batter from the pan, and replied, “Yes, Bea. I would have done. For no other reason than to keep him from getting sick because he wouldn’t wash his hands.”

  Henry giggled.

  A lump of snow from the branch above hit Ginger on the head, and then it slid into the frying pan. The snow on the hot bacon fat exploded like a gun, sending steam and hot grease in Ginger’s direction. Ginger flew backward and fell in the snow on her bottom, her hand held high, saving the sloosh within it from hitting the ground. Stunned, she looked over at her family, who sat wide-mouthed and wide-eyed.

  “You okay?” Jesse asked, shifting Oliver toward Henry.

  “Maybe, Bea, I would’ve stayed home,” she said, smiling.

  “I’d have never lasted if you had,” Jesse said. Sliding Oliver over to his brother, he stood up and walked toward her.

  “I saved the sloosh!” she declared as Jesse helped her up. Henry and Bea burst into applause. Oliver started to cry.

  “S’mores?” Jesse whispered in her ear as he brushed off her back.

  “No way! I just took a spill for this sloosh! What’d ya think? We give up when it’s hard?”

  Jesse looked at her and then kissed her cheek.

  “You go sit in the shelter,” he said, holding out his left hand. She gazed down. It was clean. Dropping the sloosh into his palm, she carefully made her way back to the fire.

  “Maybe, Bea, I’d go with him after all.”

  •••

  As she climbed northwest out of Harrisonburg toward West Virginia and the town of Franklin, Ginger wished she could have gone with him. She wished she would have been there in that street in Iraq. Did he call for her? If she had been there and she had answered, would he have found a way to stay? Could she have helped them piece him back together? But even as she thought it, she knew there was no saving him. He was gone the moment he stepped into the street. If he had died any other way, she would now be filled with so much anger. Sometimes she wished he had. Surely filling with anger was easier to bear than emptiness.

  “What’d ya think? We give up when it’s hard?” she whispered. Her own words echoed back to her in her icy mountain ascent with memories of sloosh and laughter and lying together, all five of them hungry and freezing in the snow as they survived a winter’s night with nothing but a bramble roof and each other for comfort and warmth. Ginger giggled watching herself slide whining Oliver next to his father for the night.

  “Sloosh,” she said. “Needed onion.”

  The road was curvy and white and it seemed to Ginger that the sky darkened. The cab of her truck became suddenly colder and she shivered, flipping the heater on full. Leaning forward, she took the turns slowly and at a steady speed. A sign for Oak Flat winked at her as her headlights flashed across it, and as she came around the next hairpin curve a person jumped off the
road just beyond the glare of her lights. Ginger slammed on the brakes, fishtailing slightly on the snowy road, and when she came to a stop, she looked just past the steady beam of her headlights. There stood Samuel Annanais and he looked stricken. Shaking her head slowly, Ginger put her truck in park and opened the door.

  “Samuel?”

  “Virginia Moon!”

  “Samuel, what are you doing out here?” She climbed out of the cab, staring at him in disbelief.

  “There’s a boy!”

  “A boy?”

  “Hurry. He’s down here!”

  Samuel motioned her to follow. Grabbing her flashlight, Ginger followed and there, in a small ravine, lay a teenage boy curled up near a deep root of a pine tree with half his face resting in a trickle of water. Sliding uneasily down into the steep ditch, Ginger touched his cheek. It was cold. Sticking her fingers into the neck of his coat, she found not only a pulse but heat.

  “Samuel, we need to get him to the hospital.”

  There was no answer. Ginger stood and looked around. Samuel was nowhere to be seen.

  “Samuel!” she yelled.

  “I think I see another!” he replied, his voice echoing from deep in the darkness of the wood.

  Ginger shook the boy. He stirred.

  “Hey. Hey. Wake up.”

  Opening his eyes, the boy blinked away from the flashlight.

  “I’m sick,” he said, his breath smelling of whiskey.

  “Yeah, no kidding.” Ginger coughed. “Come on.”

  With effort, she helped the boy to his feet and, struggling, dragged him up onto the road. There, he promptly threw up.

  “How much have you had?” she asked.

  “I dunno.” He retched. “I’m so tired.”

  “Don’t go to sleep. Hang on. Samuel!”

  “Coming.”

  Opening the back of her cab, she sat the boy down on her backseat.

  “Please don’t throw up in my truck.”

  “I don’t feel good.” He groaned and crawled farther inside, collapsing across the seat.