Samuel’s voice faltered. He shook his head, burying his face in his hands. He sat for a minute, trying to say something, but Ginger could only hear the cracking sound of words half spoken.
“Breathe, Samuel,” she said.
Shaking his face free of his hands, Samuel whispered, “I tore Jeb’s shirt apart for bandages. I laid him next to a tree as I crept down the steep embankment, thinking to fetch water. The farm on the other side was burning from Sheridan’s march, and as I cleared the wood I saw across the river a little boy in a Confederate cap waving to me. Behind him, as near to him as I am to you, Virginia, were three Union soldiers.”
His chest heaved as he gazed up to the ceiling, his voice finding itself and growing stronger.
“I tossed my cap on the small sprout of a tree next to me, hoping to hide my allegiance, and called to the little boy, telling him to take off the cap—to run. Then I heard three pops and felt fire in my belly and my chest and my shoulder and I fell back into darkness, crying out for the boy, who now would die, and for Jeb, who would now die because I had failed to complete the duty to him.”
Samuel’s shoulders shook and, though there was no sound, Ginger knew there to be a keening somewhere in eternity from the sound of his cry.
She stood and reached out, placing her hand upon his tousled hair. She did not feel it on her skin, but felt it just the same. “Lie back, Samuel.”
Obediently, he stretched his gaunt figure in the space once occupied by her husband.
“You are a good and honorable man, Samuel Ezra Annanais. Now rest. I’ll watch over things tonight.”
She returned to the desk, sat down, and as she went to put out the lantern she gazed once more at her reflection in the dark window. The lantern hissed a little as the mantles dimmed and then there was nothing but the sound of wind, the tapping of rain, and the creaking of a sleeping house.
Chapter 26
Through the Glass Darkly
Ginger drifted between dream and dawn. There was singing. Someone called her.
“Virginia Moon.”
Samuel?
Ginger started, lifting her head from the desk. The light was gray-purple and the morning chorus had begun.
“Samuel.”
Gazing out the window, Ginger found the world a shimmering of green seen though a thick, floating mist.
“I hear something I have not heard in a long while, Virginia Moon.” She heard Samuel’s voice but still did not see him.
“Mama! Mama!”
It was Henry on the stairs and Ginger flew from the desk, blowing past Samuel, who stood at the foot of her bed, and flung open the door. “Henry?”
“Oliver’s gone.”
Ginger looked down the hall as if she’d see him. Instead, she found Osbee in her bathrobe and her parents opening their bedroom door.
“What do you mean, gone?”
Jacob’s head popped around the bottom of the stairs. “Mrs. Martin. A bird woke me up. It sang and sang and as I lay there listening, I could not remember ever hearing a bird with that song. So I sat up to look out the window and found Oliver gone.”
“Bird?” Ginger’s heart fluttered.
“We locked the door when we went to bed and it was open when we got up.”
Ginger headed down the stairs.
“He took some cookies,” Henry said. “We’ve been calling him.”
“How do you know that?”
“’Cause his dirty shoe prints are in the kitchen by the cookie jar.”
“Maybe he’s feeding the chickens,” she muttered, reaching the bottom of the stairs and opening the front door. It was a cold spring morning. “Oliver!” she yelled.
“Eli went out to the chicken paddock.”
Ginger stepped out on the porch. “Oliver Wendell Holmes Martin! You get back to this house!”
A shape came trotting through the fog from the direction of the orchard.
“Oliver!”
It was Eli, and he ran up, winded. “He’s not with the chickens.”
“Damn it, Oliver,” she hissed, turning toward the dining room. The entire household was now on the staircase.
“Get your clothes on,” she ordered, irritated that Oliver had wandered off without telling anyone. “We’ve got to find Oliver.”
As she made her way into the kitchen, she heard stomping and banging above her head.
“See there.” Jacob pointed.
Following his finger, she spied on the floor near the counter by the cookie jar muddy, Oliver-sized shoe prints. She opened the door to the sunroom, following his tracks. Grabbing Jesse’s coat, she slipped into her boots and headed down the back porch stairs. She found Eli at the bottom.
“Did you look in the barn?” she asked.
“Nah. The footprints go toward the chickens.”
“Well, I’ll head out that way. You go check the barn. Maybe he doubled back or something.”
“They’re pretty recent,” Jacob said. “Not washed away by last night’s rain.”
“Oliver and those damn cookies. Should’ve locked the sunroom door,” Ginger said, following her son’s tracks toward the orchard. She wished there was less fog.
“We’d have nowhere to go to the bathroom if you did that,” Jacob said.
“That is the first thing we’re doing, Jacob. Putting a toilet in the summer kitchen.” Ginger stopped. She had been heading to the orchard as a matter of habit, but when she looked down, she found only Eli Beiler’s footprints.
“Wait,” she said, holding her hand up. “He didn’t come this way.”
“Mama?” Bea called from somewhere in the fog.
“Bea. Take Mom and go out to the fields. Tell Henry to take Dad down the road toward the Creeds’ farm.”
“Will do,” her dad’s voice sounded in the mist.
Ginger was ten yards from the summer house and found Oliver’s tracks had disappeared into a patch of grass.
“What about me?” Osbee asked.
“Go with Miriam onto the Schaafs’ land.”
She stepped onto the grass and walked through it.
“There’s no tracks on the grass, see?”
“Neeeeaaahhhh,” sounded from somewhere in the mist.
Ginger stopped. “Bubba? You better hope I don’t find that you scared him again, or it’s goat stew for supper. Oliver!”
“Virginia Moon.” Samuel was a butternut shape in the gray morning light.
“What is i—?”
“Shh.”
She looked back at Jacob, who shivered.
“Do you hear it?” Samuel asked.
“What?”
“The bird.”
“There’s a lot of birds, Samuel.”
Then there was the distinct sound of Oliver’s bird.
“Oliver!” Ginger yelled, stepping forward into the fog.
“Oliver?” Samuel asked, facing her.
“Yes.” Ginger cocked her head. “Oliver’s whistle.”
She saw, then, Samuel pucker his lips and from his ethereal body came Oliver’s bird.
“It’s you,” she whispered, reaching up to touch his mouth.
“It’s Oliver?” he replied. “Oh, my God! Oh, my God! I know where he is. I hear him! To the bridge.” Samuel disappeared.
“Samuel!” Ginger called, running through the grass. The bridge rose like a black, yawning mouth in the fog and she entered, her footsteps pounding its wooden planks. Her heart raced as she cleared it, now worried that Oliver had gone missing. Gazing down to where she had sunk ankle deep in snow nine days earlier, she found Oliver’s tracks deep in the mud.
“Oliver!” Ginger screamed as she sped up, flying toward Jesse’s tree. “Oliver!”
She tripped through the copse of woods and skidded to a halt in the mud. The Shenan
doah was swollen; the little sandy spot where the creek met the river was submerged. Jesse’s ash, which she had had the rangers move back to the bank after it had fallen, was now back in the river, having floated ten feet downstream. A single limb hooked around another ash root and was the only anchor the tree had holding it in place. Bobbing up and down in the water, its own roots were now center stream, jutting out of the river sharply.
“Oliver!” Ginger called, gazing up and down the riverbank.
“He’s there.”
Ginger looked up and found Samuel standing on the tree midway between the bank and the roots. His face was terrified as he pointed across the water.
“Hurry!” he yelled.
“No!” She flicked off her boots, ripped off her coat, and stepped onto the tree.
“Mrs. Martin! The water’s too cold!” Jacob’s voice was behind her but she didn’t respond.
“This way,” Samuel said.
The tree bobbed in the swollen river and so she got down on all fours to crawl its length. As she moved, she fixed upon Samuel’s tattered boots ahead of her. Branches tugged at her feet and twigs scraped her stomach and ribs.
“There—” Samuel pointed straight across the water, but the tree ended in its tangle of roots.
“He’s whistling. He’s weak. Hurry!”
Ginger slid into the water, frozen fingers clutching her chest, seizing her breath. She picked her way around the prickling roots and when she got to the end she found a small evergreen had fallen into the river with five feet of water rushing between its top and the roots of the ash. She watched Samuel jump easily across the space.
“You’ll have to swim it,” he said.
The water was a spring run, cold and speeding downstream. Tucking her feet behind her, Ginger hung on to a tiny root and then let go as she pushed against the ash. She was free in the river, reaching for the evergreen. She missed.
Tumbling in the frigid water, Ginger was grabbed by the river and pushed downstream. She was under and then above, the sound of burbled splashing and the deafness inside the river’s body silencing any call for help she might make. She was under again, kicking and rolling and in the confusion something hit her hand. Without a thought, her palm was filled with something and reflexively, as an infant wraps around an offered finger, she grabbed and pulled herself closer to it. Her face achieved the water’s surface and she took a deep breath as she pulled on the bare limb of a willow that hung in the water. Quickly, she grabbed another and then another, moving like a monkey swinging on branches, half submerged in the river, until she reached the bank. There she pulled herself up the steep shore by the willow’s roots and lay in the mud, gasping for air.
“Virginia! Hurry!”
Rolling over, she slid on the muddy bank as she crawled back toward the fallen evergreen. Gazing over the river, she now saw her entire family on the other side and she thought of her Jesse dream and Elysium.
“I’m on the wrong side,” she whispered, following Samuel up the embankment.
They reached the spot where the large pine that had straddled the Shenandoah to bring Samuel to the Smoots’ farm had once stood. The fallen tree left a gaping hole and, next to it, stood Samuel.
“He is in there.”
She gazed down and, ever so softly, she heard Oliver’s bird.
“Oliver!” she yelled and slid down into the hole. Loose soil gave way under her feet and she grabbed a root to stop herself from sliding uncontrollably down the steep incline. “Oliver?” she called, lowering herself carefully upon the ladder of roots. Her feet hit stone and, crouching down, she found that she had entered a small cavern. “Oliver?”
Sitting on her bottom, she scooted farther in. “It’s Mama. I’m here. Where are you, Oliver?”
Above her head, a whistle sounded. Below her, a whistle replied. It was to her right. Carefully, she slid farther down, and when she ducked her head to peer into a particularly narrow break in the rock to her right, she found Oliver lying on his back, staring up at her from beneath a Confederate cap.
“Oliver,” she whispered as she turned on her stomach and stretched her arms though the narrow space.
He whistled, his eyes tired and frightened and weeping. He was bleeding from his neck, a deep gash cutting his throat right across his larynx.
Ginger reached her hands underneath his shoulders. “I’ve gotcha now,” Ginger said. “Mama’s here.”
She inched him out, sliding him toward her as she rested his head in the space between her arms so as not to move his neck too much. Her back and arms burned with the effort, but she knew she needed to move slowly in case his spine had been compromised. Clearly he had fallen.
“Mrs. Martin?” It was Eli Beiler above.
“I found him,” she called. “We’re going to need something to pull him out straight—need to make a stretcher.”
“Got it covered, Ginny Moon,” called her dad.
She pulled Oliver free and as she did he pointed back into the crevice. He whistled again. A whistle came in reply.
“Samuel heard you,” Ginger said.
Oliver’s pajamas were soaking and his left boot was missing. She pulled off his pants and ripped them apart, creating a bandage around his throat.
“Your bird is Samuel,” she said as she felt around his chest and down his arms.
Nothing broken there.
He nodded slightly and whistled again, pointing back to the crevice.
“Don’t move your neck, Oliver.”
There was a sprinkling of soil from above and Ginger leaned over her son to cover him from the falling dirt.
“Ginny Moon?”
“Down here, Dad.”
She scooted over and her father slid down with a small stretcher made from tree debris and tied together with willow branches.
“Good job,” she said.
“Eli’s pretty handy,” he replied. “Hey, Oliver. We’re gonna get you out.”
The little boy pointed back to the hole as Ginger laid the small stretcher flat across the stone floor.
Tim asked, “That’s where you fell in?”
“Let’s slide him on,” Ginger said.
Oliver shook his head and whistled, motioning to the crevice.
“No moving your head, Oliver,” Ginger ordered. “Can you get your arms under his bottom, Dad?”
“Yup,” Tim said, slipping his arms beneath Oliver’s thighs.
“On count of three,” she said, returning her own arms under Oliver’s shoulders. “One, two, three.” They lifted Oliver onto the stretcher. “Okay. We need to secure him to it.”
“Ah! Need more willow branches!” Tim called back up the hole to Eli.
Oliver whistled again and pointed adamantly to the crevice, but Ginger and her father ignored him. Eli lowered a rope that Miriam had brought with her and, together, she and Eli lifted Oliver from the earth. Ginger climbed out next and then sat on the edge of the crevice, holding the rope for her father, who crawled out last. As she did so, she watched her mother and Osbee row across the river in a small inflatable boat.
“Where’d they get that?” Ginger mused as she knelt down beside Oliver. His pulse was strong and his pupils dilated and contracted as she shadowed them with her hand. Those were all good signs.
“From the springhouse,” Miriam replied. “Osbee said it belonged to your husband.”
Ginger reflected on this as she gazed down into her son’s eyes. She hadn’t ever been in the springhouse. The stream from the pond had stopped flowing and so its purpose ceased with the water. She had no idea it was used as storage.
Oliver shook his head and whistled a whisper of whistle.
“Please, Oliver, don’t move your head.” The wound on his larynx was deep and was even now preventing him from speaking. Ginger was worried that his voice would not recover if he
injured it any further. Tears started to pour from his eyes once more as he pointed to the hole. “You’re okay now,” Ginger said. “We’re going to lift you down to the boat. Oliver, stop moving your head.”
But he wouldn’t. He just kept trying to whistle and continued pointing to the hole. Ginger looked back to the black crevice and then returned her gaze to her boy.
“Is there something down there?”
Oliver gave a thumbs-up.
She frowned. Oliver tried whistling again but it was now just air passing between his lips.
“You want me to go back down there and get it?”
Oliver gave another thumbs-up.
Her father said, “I don’t think that’s a good idea.”
She turned her head, peering at once to her father, then to the hole, then to Osbee, who was nearly to the bank of the river, and finally back to Oliver. His neck was bleeding again as fresh blood shone crimson on his makeshift bandage.
“Dad, lower me down,” she said, standing. “Miriam, if that boat gets to this side while I’m down there, you and Eli carry Oliver to it.”
“I don’t think this—”
“Oliver needs me to go back down there,” Ginger said, holding the end of the rope out to her father.
Reluctantly, Tim grabbed it and, slowly this time, Ginger slid down the loose soil sides of the crevice and entered the shadowed darkness of the earth. Letting go of the rope, she crawled back across the rock, returning to Oliver’s prison.
Across the bloody stone from which she had just extricated her son, Ginger spotted something white. Squinting, she leaned forward and, as she did so, something white slid down. It was the bone of an arm and it lay across a butternut uniform—a uniform secured with mismatching buttons.
“Oh, my God.” She breathed. Samuel had said he had fallen after he was shot and so here he had died.
Samuel whistled a reply. The sound was now far and distant—floating away on the Shenandoah.
May 10, 1863
Guiney’s Station, Virginia
Dear Juliette,
Alas—Jackson is gone. A great victory is made and, with it, a devastating loss. We, Stonewall’s Brigade, must now follow another. Our commander, queersome yet brilliant, has died, shot by his own men as he audaciously sought to continue battle under a full moon. But even her light could not save him. All things shift to gray and white in her eye. What a man is and what he seems are one in the same in the full of her. But fear clouds a man’s vision, casts shadows in his mind, and there is no fault to lay at her pale feet. There is only love for her light and forgiveness for those who set their muskets to fire in the shadows.
Here and Again Page 31
