Cheryl Reavis (15 page)

“Did you make this?” he asked, for the sole purpose, she knew, of making her smile. He already had at least a notion of her domestic shortcomings.

“I pour it much better than I make it,” she said, smiling.

“Something to add to the list.”

“List?”

“The one with learning to build a fire on it.”

“Oh.
That
list. How...is the chaplain?” she asked, thinking it was a safe enough question.

“He’s sober and able to walk on his own two feet. He is likely to fall down at some point, but Castine is in charge of monitoring that.”

“I’ve been wondering...” she said, tentatively taking a sip of coffee. It wasn’t bad at all. She’d had much worse in some of Philadelphia’s best restaurants.

“About what?”

“About the day the chaplain came here to see you. I’ve been wondering what you were arguing about.”

“I had the impertinence to comment on his highly inebriated state. Men who already know they drink too much don’t like having the fact that they aren’t sober when they should be pointed out to them. It didn’t help that I was in the wrong army.”

“I see,” Kate said.

“Did you...know?” he asked quietly, and Kate looked at him, knowing full well that they were on a different topic now.

“Yes and no,” she said. “I knew about the woman, Nell. But I didn’t know until just recently that she and your Eleanor were one and the same.”

“Would you have told me about her?”

“No.”

“Why not? I’ve come to think of you as being straightforward.”

“Because I only knew some of the details and those were secondhand.”

“Do you know if they...drove her out of town? Mrs. Kinnard—did she make Eleanor leave?”

“Not that I know of. It helped a lot that she—”

“She what?”

“Max told me that Eleanor...made sure Maria got her earrings back. The ones you and Samuel gave her. The previous military commander had confiscated them as contraband of war.”

“And how did she do that?”

Kate looked at him directly. “I don’t know,” she said truthfully. “I think that her being shunned by the people here was more...self-imposed, at least where Maria was concerned. Maria didn’t—wouldn’t—cross the street to the other side if she saw her, and Eleanor wouldn’t let her sacrifice her own reputation to keep up their friendship. Thinking about it now, I seem to remember that the reason Max and Maria hired Warrie to help with the boys was because Eleanor asked them to—because the fire that killed the boys’ mother happened when Warrie was away from the house and she was taking it very hard. Eleanor didn’t want her mother to know that it was her idea.”

“Yet another broken thing that can’t be fixed,” Robert said, more to himself than to her.

“Are you ready?” Kate asked. “For tomorrow’s service.” She meant for Warrie’s interruption, but for all her straightforwardness, she couldn’t quite bring herself to say it.

“No. I expect it to be...difficult.”

“Because of Warrie Hansen?” she asked after all.

“No. Because I need to...speak to the congregation first—before I presume to speak to them about God.”

Kate looked at him thoughtfully.

“What?” he asked after a moment.

“Maria—and Valentina—say you were never...interested in religion.”

“I wasn’t. But when a man goes to war, it changes him. I’ve seen two things happen. He can either lose his faith or he can find it. I found mine.”

“Yes,” Kate said, because she believed him. She thought this must be the explanation for his being...comforting, despite his warrior-like intensity. She looked toward the windows. The bright moonlight was no longer in evidence. It was raining.

“I’ve been wondering something, as well,” he said.

“What is that?”

“I was wondering who wrote the letter Perkins gave you this evening.”

The remark took her completely by surprise, and after a moment, she decided there was no reason why she couldn’t tell him the same thing she’d told Valentina.

“A young friend of the family. He’s away at boarding school. His name is Harrison. Some people call him Harry.”

“But you don’t.”

Kate looked at him, wondering what had made him decide that.

“No,” she said. “I don’t. He’s always seemed like such an old soul to me, even when he was a little boy. Harry just didn’t fit.”

“So what does Harrison have to say about boarding school?”

“I don’t know. I haven’t had a chance to read his letter.”

“Read it now,” he said. “You won’t be interrupted.”

Kate could feel him looking at her. There was no reason why she couldn’t do that. She felt perfectly comfortable here—with him—despite her early reluctance. But she still hesitated until finally she removed the letter from her pocket, smoothing it carefully and leaning toward the lamp hanging over the table so that she could see it.

She had to force herself to read slowly, to make it last. She couldn’t keep from smiling at the familiar handwriting, but then—

She shuffled the pages to backtrack and started over, reading quickly now, straight through to the end. Then she sat there, holding the letter in her hands, trying to understand. After a moment she held it up to the lamp in an attempt to decipher crossed out words at the bottom of the last page.

“What’s wrong?” he asked

“I can’t tell what this last part is,” she said, hearing the tremor in her voice despite her determination to sound calm and in control.

“Maybe he didn’t mean for you to.”

“And that is why I need to see it. Something isn’t right with him. He said the same thing twice.”

“Boys sometimes lose track, I think.”

“Not this boy. But it’s not just the repetition. It’s what he said. He said that being there was good for his character and he would be strong when it was over, as strong as his brother was when he escaped from the prison here. And then a few paragraphs later, he wrote the same thing again, as if he’d forgotten—only I know he didn’t.” Kate stopped. She could feel him trying to understand her concern—and failing.

“John—his brother—wasn’t strong at all. He was half-starved and his mind was—if it hadn’t been for his love for the woman he married, I think he would have never recovered. Harrison knows that. This is not like him. It’s not like him at all,” she said.

“His is the photograph you carry in your book,” Robert said. It wasn’t a question.

“Yes.” She held up the letter again. “I think the last word is
me
.”

“May I?” Robert asked and she handed it to him. “The word before that would likely be
for
or
to
. Perhaps
with
.” He held it up to the light as she had done. “Three words,” he said. “Something ending in the letter
y
and then
for me.
I think I know what it is.”

“What?” Kate asked. “What is it?”

“I think it says, ‘Pray for me.’”

“Pray for me? Oh!” Kate got up from her chair and began to pace the room.

This! This is what it feels like to be a mother,
she thought wildly.
This is what it feels like to love your child and be able to do nothing to help him.

“He crossed it out—”

“Yes, but why?
Why?
That’s the question. Maybe he was afraid he’d said too much—because of what he wrote about John. It simply wasn’t true, and he knew I would realize it. John was in terrible shape when he came home. And maybe he—oh, I don’t know what to do!”

“What kind of school is he in?”

“A legacy school. All the Howe men went there—he’s not like the Howe men.”

“What kind of boy is he?”

Kate looked at him. “Quiet. Scholarly. Sensitive.”

“An old soul,” Robert said.

“Yes! I don’t know what to do!” she said again.

“Is there no one who might understand your concerns?”

“No,” she said. Then, “Yes. His...brother might.”

“Then you must let him know. Can you do that?”

“I could write to him. I can’t explain this in a telegram without making him think I’m—” She stopped and forced herself to take a deep breath. She was close to weeping and that wouldn’t help anything. “John lives here, but he and his family have been in Philadelphia for several months—some kind of family legal business that had to be dealt with—and then his mother fell ill. The letter would go out on the train tomorrow—yes. I’ll do that.” She took another deep breath. There was something she could do after all.

Robert stood and moved her chair around. “Sit down,” he said.

“No—I must write the letter.”

“I think it would be good if you—we—did what Harrison asked first.”

She looked at him blankly.

“I think we should pray for him.”

“I— Yes,” Kate decided immediately. No matter why the words had been marked out, Harrison had written them.

She sat down. Robert moved his chair facing hers and sat down as well.

“Give me your hands,” he said.

Kate hesitated, then she bowed her head and placed her hands in his outstretched ones, feeling their warmth and strength, seeing the scars. It was raining still; she could hear it beating against the kitchen windows. She took a wavering breath.

“Kate needs Your help, Lord,” he said quietly, and she looked up at him. This was not at all what she was expecting. There was none of the formality she was accustomed to. It was if he were speaking to someone there in the room.

Robert’s eyes were closed; she bowed her head again.

“She’s afraid for Harrison. You already know that, just as You are privy to his situation, while we are not. I know You are always with us, but if there is cause, if he’s in trouble, I ask that You help him to know that You are there.
Help
him. And help her—us—so we can be ready to do whatever we can for this boy who means so much to her.”

In spite of all she could do, Kate could feel a tear sliding down her cheek. She watched as it fell onto the back of his hand.

Chapter Ten

K
ate was late for church. Robert had all but relinquished his hope that she was coming when he saw her standing tentatively in the vestibule, as if she still hadn’t made up her mind as to whether or not she would attend this morning’s service. He thought she hadn’t slept because she looked so pale, so weary. He had no doubt that her letter to young Harrison’s brother had been written—he’d seen the lamp burning in her window late into the night. It was likely already in the mailbag, awaiting the next northbound train.

Kate waited until the ushers were taking up the collection before she came into the sanctuary. The Yankee major who had accosted her in the hallway was sitting next to the aisle midway down, and he watched her intently as she passed by him. Joe and Jake, who were sitting with Maria, did, as well.

“Kate!” one of the boys called, only it sounded more like “Cake!” She smiled at them and put her forefinger to her lips, a gesture both of them returned, grinning from ear to ear all the while.

The only vacant places were on the front pew, and Kate continued her way down the aisle to take a seat. Robert watched as she took a deep breath and then looked up at him. He gave her the barest of nods, and she returned it with such subtlety that he might have only imagined that she had.

She’s nothing like Eleanor
.

And yet she was. They both had this...fierce quality about them that was not in the least offensive and definitely to be admired.

Eleanor.

He had to believe what Mrs. Justice had told him, albeit without her actually saying the words that would have left no doubt in his mind as to what she meant. But the fact was, he didn’t. He couldn’t. Eleanor was...
Eleanor
—laughing, headstrong and defiant. She was his first love. Some part of him, no doubt, would always love her. He simply didn’t understand what could have made her become what people—Mrs. Justice—hinted she had become. What he did understand was that Eleanor would let the good people of this town think whatever they wanted to think, whether it was actually true or not, and enjoy the joke, no matter the consequences. He realized now that Warrie Hansen believed that he was the cause of her daughter’s supposed downfall, despite the fact that it was Eleanor who had ended their engagement. He could only suppose that she had never told her mother about the letter she’d written to him.

But no one knew better than he did how a person could do things they never thought they’d do and then find themselves trapped in the consequences with no way out—and never once understand how they had gotten there.

He gave a soft sigh.

Bewildered again, Lord.

He looked out over the congregation. This morning’s service was well attended, and he didn’t doubt that he was at least one of the reasons. It surprised him that his brother-in-law was here. Apparently he had delayed his departure, most likely for Maria’s sake if this church service proved too upsetting for her. Robert hoped that that would not be the case, but if it was, then he would be glad that Max was here.

Aside from his brother-in-law, the military was well represented—officers, mostly—and the decidedly openhearted Private Castine. He liked Castine—because he reminded him of Samuel.

He saw people he recognized from his childhood—Mrs. Kinnard and Valentina, Mrs. Russell and Mrs. Justice, of course, but many others, as well. How long ago it all seemed now. A number of his comrades had come. As boys he’d led them on more than one foray into what they all considered a lark and what Mrs. Kinnard considered the end of civilization as she knew it—the turning over of any number of residential privies. When they were young men, they had gone drinking and gambling together, and eventually, full of patriotism and pride, they had gone off to war.

And look at us now...

Until this day he had lost track of all of them.

The Reverend Lewis accepted the offering and blessed it; the choir sang the doxology. Mrs. Kinnard scowled at one of Max’s officers, who was openly staring at Valentina. Then Reverend Lewis said a few words of introduction, and suddenly it was time.

Robert rose to his feet and walked to the lectern, surprised that his hands didn’t shake. He felt the familiar restlessness, the kind he always had before a bare-knuckled fight in the ring, but he was not afraid.

He stood quietly looking down at the open Bible on the lectern. He could hear the creaking of the pews as people shifted in their seats. He could hear the whispers. Before he spoke, he wanted to give them enough time to look at him, to satisfy their curiosity about whether it was really Robert Markham standing up there and whether he did or didn’t look like himself.

“There’s Wah-but!” Jake called out, as if he’d only just that moment realized that his brand-new uncle was standing where the pastor normally stood. He had no doubt that Maria would put her finger to her lips just as Kate had done.

He looked up, first at Kate, and then slowly at the rest of the congregation. He didn’t see Warrie Hansen.

“What am I doing here?” he said, his voice strong. “I believe that is what everyone is wondering—including me.”

There was a ripple of laughter through the congregation. He waited until it subsided.

“I had a conversation with a friend last night. In this conversation, the fact that I was never known for my church attendance came up.”

He could see Mrs. Kinnard straighten up and sit taller as she concluded that the friend he referred to was she.

“I said the rumors were undeniably true,” he continued. “I didn’t go to church as I should have. As my mother wished. But I also said then that when a man has been to war, he is changed. I said that I had seen two things happen. Some men lose their faith, and some men find it. I am here today to tell you that I have found mine.

“My experience was nothing like Saul’s on the road to Damascus. It was more like Cleopas’s on the road to Emmaus. Cleopas and another disciple did not recognize the resurrected Jesus as He traveled along with them, I think, because they weren’t looking for Him.

“And so it was with me. I was not looking for Him. I was too lost in my own guilt and rage. I had failed the people I loved in the worst way possible. My brother, Samuel, was killed on the battlefield when I had promised my father to keep him safe. Samuel, with his poet’s heart, was the best of us hardened soldiers, you see—”

“Amen,” someone in the congregation said—a comrade who had been at Gettysburg.

“And yet it was he who died. It was beyond my understanding. All I knew was that I had broken my promise—”

“We all did, Rob,” another veteran said. “Not just you. We
all
did.”

Robert hesitated. It had never occurred to him that there might be men in the company who had felt the same sense of responsibility for Samuel that he had. He looked at the man who had spoken, and nodded, grateful for his candor.

“I was wounded, and it was many weeks before I knew where I was. My only strong memory of what had happened on the battlefield that day at Gettysburg was Samuel—alive and then dead. I know that there were men who pulled me to safety, but all of that is a blur.

“My wounds were such that I was thought to be dying as the army retreated back to Virginia. I’m told that when that was the case—when the ambulance wagon or whatever conveyance was being used—had a dying man in it, the driver would stop at a house along the way and ask the people who lived there if they would give the dying soldier a decent burial. A Maryland family—one that did not believe in war, but did believe in the parable of the Good Samaritan—took me in, with the intention of giving me whatever ease they could and then a place in their family cemetery. Living—dying—it didn’t matter to me—but it must have mattered to God. I tried to let go of this life, but He wouldn’t let me. When I became aware enough, I realized no one there knew my name. My identity had gotten lost in the battle and in that terrible retreat south. In my shame and in my rage at Samuel’s death, I didn’t tell them who I really was.” He paused to look at Maria, who was openly weeping now.

“I said there was no one they could write to. It was a way out, a way to escape from a thing I could not bear, and I took it. I took it and I
lived
it, until the day came when I couldn’t live it any longer.

“There is a church mission in New York City—in an often violent and unruly part of the city known as the Bowery. The mission is called Rising Hope, and it is their vocation to reach out to men like myself. The lost ones. The hopeless ones. The war-scarred ones who survived but know they don’t deserve it and can’t understand why.

“I was making my living by prizefighting there in the Bowery—illegal, bare-knuckle fights on the river barges beyond the reach of the law, where poor men and powerful men alike—and their women—came to gamble on my ability to beat another human being into the ground. I was good at this...trade, but I was not good at anything else. I knew that what I had become was despicable, but I didn’t stop.

“A man can live by the sword only so long, and then he will die by the sword. Men who had bet heavily on one of my opponents took exception to my ability to win, and they did their best to keep me from ever winning again.

“The churchmen from Rising Hope found me. They picked me up out of the gutter, and they took me in. They looked after me until I could look after myself. And all they asked in return was that while I was there, I try to help the men around me who were worse off than I was.

“And so I did. Little by little. I helped in the kitchen at first, because I couldn’t bear the company of others. And then one day I saw a man there who was trying to hide from his pain just as I had been trying to hide from mine. I
knew
what he was feeling—his despair and his anger—because I had felt the same. I was also coming to realize how pointless running away from it was. It was always there. Nothing took it away. Not drink. Not violence. Nothing.

“I spoke to him. Later, I spoke to another despairing man. Then another and another, until—

“It was like the hymn. I ‘was blind, but now I see.’ In reaching out to others, I found a way to live again. I had been on a long and terrible journey to get to that very place without even knowing it, and I thought I was alone every step of the way. But I wasn’t alone.
He
was there—and had been all along. He was on the battlefield when Samuel died. He was on the river barges and He was with me in the gutter. Only I couldn’t see Him because I wasn’t looking for Him. My awareness of His presence came so slowly that I barely noticed—but it was no less profound to me than Saul’s having been struck blind. Like Saul, I had been traveling this world with death in my heart until one day it was gone.

“I have asked God for His forgiveness for my many sins, and I believe I have received it. But before I can begin my new vocation, before I can presume to help others, I need to ask for your forgiveness as well. I want all of you to know—especially you, Maria—that I am truly sorry for the pain my weakness and my deception has caused you. And I want to thank those of you here who helped to take care of my family when I could not. I’m home now—truly home in body and in spirit—and it is my hope that I can begin to repay the debt I owe.

“For the time being, I will be staying in the summer kitchen—” he looked at Max “—on Colonel Woodard’s property. We have all suffered through a terrible war, and we must continue to help each other as best we can. I want you to know that my door will be open.

“Now I want to ask you to remember God’s words from a passage from the Book of Joel,” Robert said, knowing that for some present in the congregation, what he was about to quote would no doubt border on an act of sedition. He looked at Kate again before he read it. She was looking up at him and clutching her handkerchief. Had the sad tale of his past seven years affected her that much? No, he decided. He could hear the long wail of a train whistle approaching, and her letter was waiting.

“‘And I will restore to you the years that the locust hath eaten...’” he said, his voice once again strong. “‘And ye shall eat in plenty, and be satisfied, and praise the name of the Lord your God...and my people shall
never
be ashamed.’ May all of us recall these words and have hope.”

Robert stepped down from the lectern, but instead of taking his seat, he walked down the center aisle. He had said what he wanted to say, and he had every intention of leaving now, but men and women alike reached out to him as he passed. Some of the women were crying. Maria came out of the pew where she was sitting and embraced him. Joe and Jake grabbed him around his legs.

And Warrie Hansen stood in the vestibule.

He would have gone to her, but more and more people left their seats and crowded around him. He shook hands, accepted the pats on the back and received, with as much dignity as he could muster, the unrestrained hugs from people who still saw him as the boy they’d once known.

When he finally reached the vestibule, Warrie was no longer there. He could hear Reverend Lewis hurriedly end the service, which for all intents and purposes had already ended. Maria waited just outside the church doors with Joe and Jake chasing each other around and around and Robbie soundly asleep on her shoulder. He expected to see his brother-in-law as well, because the Bible passage from Joel must have sounded to him like a call for the South to rise again. But it hadn’t been that at all. He had wanted to encourage the people he’d known all his life to have hope and to let go of the past and build again on the ruins of the country they had loved.

Maria reached up to touch his cheek. “I’m very proud of you,” she said. “Father would have been, too.”

He nodded, but he was still trying to see if Warrie was somewhere in the crowd.

“Will you escort Kate and Mrs. Justice home?” she asked. “The children and I are going to wait with Max at the train station until he leaves.”

She was looking at him so hard.

“What is it?” he asked.

“It’s going to be better now,” she said. “For us both.”