Bright's Passage: A Novel

by Josh Ritter

  33

  The Colonel arrived back at the train tracks near the coal depot where they had spent the night to find his sons squatted around a desultory fire, tearing at an unplucked chicken carcass. He eyed the two boys closely. Corwin glanced up dully, then returned to his meal. Duncan received his father’s gaze in his bottomless black eyes. After a moment the old man looked away, then turned to Corwin. “Report,” he commanded.

  “We found a chicken,” Corwin said, his mouth around a bone.

  “I can see that. Where?”

  Corwin ducked his head in the direction. “The barn. They got a bunch of them there if you want to go get one.”

  The Colonel sniffed at this. “I am not asking because I wish to pilfer a chicken. I have already taken my breakfast. I had steel-cut oats with peaches and cream.”

  Corwin’s fingers were sticky with down and chicken blood. “Peaches?” he asked. He wiped his index finger and thumb on his pant leg, but none of the grime came away.

  “Peaches in syrup, yes.”

  “I’ve never had a peach.”

  “It would be wasted on you.”

  “No, it wouldn’t!”

  “In any case, you will never have the chance. The two of you could never behave yourselves in such fine company as take their breakfast yonder. Now report,” he said again.

  Duncan watched his brother throw a chicken bone off into the weeds by the train track. “A man was there. We watched him through the trees. He had Henry Bright’s horse and he was brushing it and then he took it into the barn.”

  “How do you know for sure that it was the rogue’s horse?”

  “Because he also had his goat there on a rope. I know it was his goat. Corwin and I seen it once.”

  Corwin nodded at the memory, breathing through his mouth.

  The Colonel sighed in contentment over the peaches in his belly, no longer listening to the story. He looked for a while through the trees in the direction of the hotel. Then, as if a great notion had come into his mind, he turned back to his sons. “Would you like some peaches after all, Corwin?”

  “You know I do!” Corwin said.

  “Of course you do.” The Colonel smiled. He stooped to pick up the rifle and began walking down the tracks in the direction of the coal depot. Corwin jumped up and followed his father, leaving what was left of the wretched chicken body to blow forlornly in the morning breeze between the rails.

  Duncan looked at the fire gathering strength behind the trees. Then he stood and followed, rubbing the small of his back where it was sore from his relations and other kinds of people kicking him and throwing rocks at him.

  34

  When Bright woke again, the curtains were drawn wide and muted morning light suffused the room. A kind of woman entirely unknown to him sat slung across a burgundy divan.

  “You have been talking in your sleep,” she said. Her dark-yellow hair hung heavily about her face as if freshly forged. She looked at him amusedly.

  “What did I say?” he asked, his eyes roving about the room for the cook, Brigid. The carpets were thick and beige colored. At either end, body-length mirrors in japanned frames reflected back and forth upon each other.

  “Oh, all of your secrets are safe with me, H. Bright,” the woman said. She vaulted to her feet and came to stand at the head of his bed, shooting a hand toward him. “Amelia,” she said. “My last name is Choate, A. Choate. And you are H. Bright.”

  The bed squeaked as he took her hand.

  “There,” she said. “Formalities laid to rest. Now, just lie back and let me talk.” She leaned over him, peering closely at the rash on his face. “Cripes. They say the water here is healthful, so maybe you’ve come to the right place. I see you’ve noticed my ring. Ha. It’s black pearl. Not at all so rare as Lawrence would have me believe, but I don’t tell him this, of course, because all that kind of talk is so dull. Anyway, if he really is serious about marrying me this time, which I can’t help but think he is, then he’ll have to cough up for something much flashier soon enough. I’m talking diamonds, H. Not that I care. I don’t wear much jewelry. I’m wearing this at the moment only because he’s just given it to me. Now he’s out shooting birds with his ‘pals.’ ”

  She ran a hand through her hair. “I was invited to join them too, of course. I’m actually quite a good shot, but that would mean me spending more time with his ‘pals,’ and so I told him that I was going to head back upstairs to make the acquaintance of my war hero, H. Bright.” She regarded him with a cocked eyebrow. “Dear H., can’t you see that I’m trying to get it through your head that you haven’t introduced yourself to me yet? Your last name was easy, it’s written on your uniform. I was in school with an Alexandra Bright. We called her Flexy.”

  “My name is Henry,” he said. “Where is my boy at?”

  Amelia looked hard at him, as if he’d said something unexpectedly cruel. Then her face changed and she let out a small sigh. “Ah. Henry. I see. Then I hope that you won’t mind me calling you H. It’s not your fault, it’s just that a certain other Henry was the author of a disastrous chapter in my life, and the memory is a bit … fresh … yet.” She gave a short laugh and looked down at the bedspread.

  “Isn’t it funny, don’t you think, how at times one can’t escape a name? There was a year when it seemed that every new man that I met was named Albert, or Bertie, or Bert. Large-footed, husky dolts, to a one, but I couldn’t escape that name. There’s a riddle in it somehow, or perhaps it was my subconscious telling me that I needed to be with a strong, simple-minded, Teutonic sort.”

  “I knew a Bert,” he said. “In the War. Where’s my boy?” he asked her again.

  “Oh, H.! I’m sorry. I’m going on and on, and all the while the forest fire really is coming close. Well, I’m getting out,” she said. “Still, there’s a part of me wishes I could stay here and help fight it. Your boy. Yes. Your boy is being cared for by one of the cooks. He’ll break hearts for sure.” She tapped her ring finger on the wooden headboard and winked down at him. “Like you, H., like you.”

  “He’s all right?”

  “Of course he’s all right! He’s in the pink! The doctor has been in checking on you both. He’s from Baltimore. They say he’s the best there is in nem- … pom- … I don’t know, something-something-ology. Anyway, he said it was poison ivy.”

  There came a knock at the door. Amelia peered through the peephole and then swung the door open for Brigid to enter. “Ah! The soup! Just put it over there to cool, and you can come in and feed Mr. Bright when I’m through with him.”

  Brigid set the steaming bowl on a side table and stopped to readjust the covers at the bottom of the bed. Again Bright noticed the rough redness of her hands.

  “Thank you, thank you,” Amelia said, holding the door open for the departing girl.

  “Is my boy all right?” he asked loudly. The exhaustion and anxiety welled up plainly in his voice.

  Brigid turned back and nodded. “He’s fine.” There was a long pause as she stole a glance at Amelia and then back at Bright. “Try to rest now.” She turned again to leave. The smoke outside waved across the room at itself in the facing reflections of the japanned mirrors.

  “My horse and my goat?” he asked after her.

  “They’re both fine as well. We’ve kept them at the barn, but if the fire gets closer, Dennis will make sure they’re moved. Now, don’t worry. I’ll bring your boy up to say hello in just a little bit.”

  She let the door hang open a crack when she left the room. Amelia crossed the floor and pushed it firmly closed.

  “I like her,” she said, rapping her ring on the doorknob. “Now, tell me, H.” She walked across the room and stood at the foot of his bed. “What was it like?”

  “What was what like?”

  “Oh, don’t be like that. What was it like? The War? Come, now, no one gets to be my war hero unless they tell me what it was that they did in the War.”

  “The War?”

 
“All right,” she laughed. “I’m too proud to wheedle it out of you, H. My things are being packed while Lawrence is out shooting at quails or ducks or geese or whatever, but I’ll be back to say goodbye when he’s ready to go. When I get back, I expect at least one ripping good yarn. And see if you can work in that Patton fellow,” she added. “I think he is absolutely a man.”

  She put her hand on the knob, but she stood still and did not turn it. “My first husband went, you know,” she said, not looking at him. “He wasn’t actually my husband, not yet, but we were going to be married. He died. I was there with his family when the man came. He said that Henry—yes, that was his name, H., Henry: horrible, isn’t it?—had perished a hero. ‘Perished?’ I asked the man. ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘Perished.’ I asked him how and the man said that that was all he could tell me. He told me that he was loved by his men and that he had perished a hero. I said, ‘Well, of course he was loved by his men. Of course he perished a hero. How else could he have perished?’ ”

  She toed the plush silver carpet, her face impassive. “Lawrence didn’t go,” she said. “He has a trick shoulder, but keeping him out of the War is the only trick I’ve seen it do.” She opened the door. “I’m sorry,” she said. “I’m spilling my guts all over you.”

  Henry Bright had had guts spilled on him before, and he said nothing.

  35

  The fire pushed them all before it, eastward, through the hardwoods to the coal-company town. They carried everything they could with them: heirlooms and axes, tin washbasins and butter churns. Whatever couldn’t be carried by hand was lashed to livestock. There were a few spluttering automobiles, but mostly it was mules and doze-eyed oxen dragging wagons, horses carrying the infirm.

  Upon arriving in the coal-company town, the refugees found a prosperous place coming apart at its seams. The pale, frightened faces of children peeked out from the shadows behind screen doors. Men soaked their lawns and roofs with water in the hopes that the fire might not be able to catch hold. Women piled precious belongings in the street, torn between what could be taken and what would be left to burn.

  Rumors that had been gusting about on the dry wind could now be confirmed by the new arrivals. Fells Corner was gone. Its inhabitants had tried briefly to save it, but what had initially been a small blaze had quickly grown monstrous on great drafts of air and the summer heat. There had followed a chaotic period of making ready to leave, and by the time that they finally abandoned town, the fire was crowning and there was scarcely time for a last look back.

  After that it had come down to simply trying to stay ahead of the blaze. They traveled along the train tracks through cold-mouthed railroad tunnels and across the perilous high trestles that seemed to creak and sway with vertigo beneath them. Even as they crossed the final one, the stragglers had seen the flames licking at its stanchions, the rising odor of boiling pitch and creosote like burnt black licorice in their noses.

  The coal-company town, racked by a panic of its own, could offer no help or shelter to this smoke-stained group except to point them down the road toward the wide open lawn of the hotel. So they came through the hotel gates in ragged, stumbling clumps of humans, animals, and housewares, casting themselves upon the safety of the great green field, milling about like people awaking from a single shared nightmare.

  In the midst of this strange scene, no one took much notice of the three bedraggled men, hands and faces deeply stained with soot, who shambled out of the woods and onto the lawn toward the gushing fountain at the front of the hotel. Once there, the three did not get in line to wash their faces in the water but instead hung closely together. When at last the eldest, a graying man with a rifle slung over his back, did peel away from the other two, it was in order to address a young woman who wore the uniform of a cook. The young woman carried an infant hugged securely against her inside a white sling. She nodded at what the soot-covered man said before motioning him along toward a sandy-haired man who was directing another group of refugees into the hotel. A smile played itself across the old man’s blackened face as he bowed low to her, but the girl had already turned away and was now talking with someone else, her hand brushing absently at the birthmark on her temple.

  36

  When the auctioneer held up Bert’s stolen German pistol, the auction hall gasped. The bidding was higher than expected, but in the end a man from Lewisburg, a doctor, purchased it. With the money he made, Bright bought a black horse, about twenty years old with decent teeth, freshly shod hooves, and a back only slightly bowed considering the size of the farmer putting it up for sale. He slept soundly that night in the barn of the hardware-store man, with a full belly, four chickens, two goats, and the horse.

  It was raining the next morning as he and his band of animals began the trip homeward. He tied the chicken crates to the horse’s back and strung the goats in a caravan behind the horse. The goats were meddlesome creatures and the horse, bored, stupid, or both, didn’t resist them when they chose to go their own way. As a result, the big animal’s plodding hindquarters would gradually drift sideways toward whatever leafy green the little white goats had a taste for. A passerby would have wondered at the group: a skinny, uniformed young man leading a horse that seemed to be learning the difficult art of walking sideways in a steady downpour. Eventually Bright untied them from the horse and briefly tried pulling them down the road separately, holding their tethers in his free hand. In the end, though, he let them off their leads entirely and left them to follow him as he and his horse continued trudging down the muddy road.

  They stayed close at first, but as he passed the overgrown wagon-wheel tracks that were the turnoff to the Colonel’s house, the she-goat hung back to munch and nose the tall grass and nettles of the drive. After a hundred yards she had made no signs of rejoining the group. He pulled the horse to a halt and waited for her to emerge. When she did not, he retethered the billy goat and led his remaining animals down the road to stand once more at the turnoff. It was all very quiet, save for the quizzical clucking of the chickens and the raindrops against the leaves. He thought of how his mother always had her rifle with her when they passed the drive. He remembered how they used to meet Rachel here each morning before school and how Duncan had stood in this very spot on that terrible day of the rabbits and chickens. He wished briefly to have Bert’s gun back. When he could no longer help it, he let his mind linger on the French farmhouse and the things he had seen inside it.

  He began walking up the drive, pulling the animals behind him and clicking his tongue softly for the she-goat as he peered through the dripping foliage. There was nothing around the first bend but the rain and yet another bend. Around this second corner, the road softened into a wet marsh of cattails and devil’s walking stick and the house hove into view. The lawn was mangy gray, the brittle needles of grass grown high and spiky. A rust-colored stream ran along the far southern edge of the plot, and what few trees remained between the stream and the house seemed like overgrown twins of the grass. Their branches were hacked crudely away up to forty feet, past which point they spindled outward like finger bones. The wrought-iron balcony listed dangerously out of plumb, the ivy vines hanging thickly from it pulling it to the ground like some waxen green lion. It was here, beneath the balcony, that he saw Rachel. She was standing so motionless in the shadows that at first glance he had taken her for an off-white warping in the moldering clapboard. She was watching something that was happening in the mud-packed wasteland out of view on the other side of the house. He moved farther out onto the drive, hoping for a better angle in which to see the girl, and caught his breath on what he saw instead.

  Corwin had scooped up the she-goat in his cumbersome arms, and reedy, underfed Duncan stood close by, holding a clump of yellow grass under her nose. Her tail flicked and looped in the air like a distress flag.

  Rachel had noticed him now. He stared back at her, forgetting his goat and the Colonel’s sons. She was far too skinny. Around her waist the white dress hung
loosely, and her shoulders were scarcely wide enough to keep it from slipping off. Her collarbones were almost avian, painful to behold. When at last the moment passed and he looked over at the two men holding his goat, he thought of them standing above him in the darkness as he lay beneath Bert’s body in the ditch during the War.

  Together, the group formed a haphazard nativity scene in the rain-soaked yard.

  “That’s my goat,” he said. “I bought her in Fells Corner. At the auction there. There’s more like her if you want your own.”

  The goat began to squirm and kick its stony hooves against Corwin’s chest. “I want my goat back,” he said again. “Please.”

  Rachel looked once behind her into the recesses of the house and then at her brothers. “Give it back,” she said quietly. “Give it back. That’s Henry’s goat so don’t you be fiddling with it anymore.”

  Corwin gave his sister a cloying smile and set the goat on the ground with exaggerated care, as if it were a china dish. He backed away from the animal, extending his arms in invitation to Bright. Bright came forward to pick it up, but his eyes never left the two men. “Thank you,” he said. He held the goat tightly so that they would not see his hands shaking.

  “Henry?” Rachel tilted her head with the question. “Henry, where have you been?”

  He didn’t know what to say. Her face was so beautiful to him that she made her surroundings look all the more deplorable. “I went to the War,” he stammered. “I was in the War.” He stole a glance at Corwin and Duncan as he said it.

  “Did you get married there, Henry?” she asked. “I bet you did. I bet you got married there.”