Seidel, Kathleen Gilles (16 page)

Jill blinked. "I beg your pardon?"

"You know, the movie. Phillip. How did he get out of the draft?"

So
Weary Hearts
was "the" movie, as if it were the only movie ever made. Jill liked that. These were her kind of people.

The clergyman was still talking. "He would have to have been exempted from conscription, wouldn't he?"

"I'm sorry. I don't know." Alice's upbringing had left Jill knowing more about the Cavaliers and the Roundheads than about the American Civil War. And during the hundreds of times she had watched Phillip agonize over not being in the army, she had never thought to wonder how he had legally avoided being drafted.

"I figure Stonewall could have exempted him," a woman in nurse's garb said. "The tough conscription law was passed in '62, and he didn't die until May of '63."

Suddenly a group of ten people were all talking about the movie, carrying on discussions that had obviously been going on since the day before.

"... no, no, you're wrong. Sheridan came through in August of '64 and..."

"... of course, people who started out with Ashby ended up at Appomattox. Rosser took over the Laurel Brigade, and he was there."

"That scene where Booth's at the campfire, that has to be Cold Spring. It can't be Mechanicsville, the sun's in the wrong place for Mechanicsville."

Jill listened, almost disbelieving. She couldn't imagine anyone loving the movie more than she did. Yet these people were looking at it as she never had, opening it up, pouring back into the script all the historical detail that had only been hinted at.

Doug had now joined the group. Jill moved close to him. "Does the movie stand up to this kind of analysis?"

"I don't think there's a mistake in it."

Jill had spoken softly, but Doug had not. The others overheard him.

"Of course, there isn't," one soldier announced. "Our Bix knew his stuff."

The nurse was nodding her head. "It's not like
Gone With the Wind
and that silly lamp."

Jill did not know anything about the position of the sun in the battles of Cold Spring and Mechanicsville. In fact, she didn't even know what state they were in. But she did know about the
Gone With the Wind
lamp, the one that a set designer had placed in Aunt Pitty-Pat's 1861 parlor even though such lamps hadn't been manufactured until the 1880's.

Suddenly everyone was now defending the virtues of their movie against
Gone With the Wind.
"Just because we didn't have enough money to hire Clark Gable or burn Atlanta."

This was said by someone who hadn't been born yet when the movie was made.

Jill flushed with pride. Her father had given the people of the Valley something they remembered. He might have left, but he had bestowed on them this movie, now a part of their heritage, a story through which they understood their history.

Jill listened to them talk and soon realized that one of the men was looking at her. He wasn't just eyeing her legs; he seemed to be alert for her attention. He was one of the beer-bellies Randy had spoken about. He had a twinkly Santa Claus look about him, even though he couldn't have been much over forty. Being in a very good mood, willing to meet anyone and everyone, Jill smiled at him. Encouraged, he hoisted himself up from the bale of hay he had been sitting on.

Doug noticed him as he was coming over. "Now, this is someone you'll want to meet. This is—"

"Don't waste your breath," the man interrupted. "Everyone knows who she is." He put out his hand. "Good afternoon, ma'am. I'm Don Pleasant, the star of this here movie everyone's talking about."

Jill felt the bones in her hand crumple in his hearty grip. "I'm sorry. I don't understand. Were you in
Weary Hearts?"

"Without me there wouldn't have been a story," he answered. "Doug here may look like the star, but he's just a period-style replica. I'm the genuine thing."

"Don played Mary Deas's baby," Doug explained.

"But the baby was a girl," Jill protested, then mentally kicked herself. What difference did the baby's sex make? There had been no on-screen diaper changes. "I'm sorry. I suppose people teased you about that endlessly when you were growing up."

The star of stage and screen grimaced. "I did suffer for that bit of miscasting, but apparently there weren't any newborn girls around whose mamas were stagestruck enough to put them under all those lights."

"But you probably weren't a newborn," Jill said. "No one ever casts newborns as newborns. They're too ugly. Usually movie newborns are two or three months old."

"February, March, April," Don counted. "Hey, you're right. I was just coming up on three months old. My God, not only was I playing a different sex, I was playing a different age. Why didn't I get an Oscar?"

"Blame it on Laurence Olivier. He made
Hamlet
that year."

"It was fixed. The voting was rigged, I know it."

"Do you want to hear something worse?" Jill went on. "You know Melanie's baby in
Gone With the Wind?"

"That ham? That upstart?"

"He grew up and married Raquel Welch."

"No. You're kidding!" Don slapped his forehead. "Raquel Welch? I don't believe it. Wait till I tell Molly. I could have had Raquel Welch, and instead I chose her."

"They did get divorced."

"Molly threatens that too, sometimes."

Jill felt a hand on her arm. It was Randy's. The last time Jill had seen him he had been in the company of two polyester ball gowns. "I don't know why you all are talking about Raquel Welch," he said. "It sounds like a good subject to me, but if I don't get Aunt Jill back to my dad this instant, I will be talking about such subjects in a very high voice."

Jill put her hand out to Don, saying that it had been nice to meet him.

"Same here." He smashed her fingers again and turned to Doug. "I really like her. You should try to keep her around."

"I don't think it's up to me," Doug answered. "But if it were—"

"Come on," Randy interrupted. "We've got to be in the lower meadow in five minutes."

People did seem to be organizing for the battle. The doctors and undertakers had closed up the displays of their equipment. Soldiers were straightening themselves into units. The spectators were streaming out of the encampment toward the meadow.

"My sister Taffy's bringing her new baby," Randy said as the three of them wove their way out of the encampment and through the orchard. "She doesn't want to stay the whole time since he's only a couple of weeks old, but she's determined to have you see him."

"Fine," Jill said... and then stopped.

A
couple of weeks old... newborns don't play newborns... February, March, April...

"What's wrong?" Randy asked. "Are we going too fast? Blame Doug. His legs are too long."

"No, no." Jill started to move again.

Don Pleasant had been born in February and was just coming up on three months when the company came to the Valley to do the first round of location shots in April.

But there had been no baby in the script supposedly shot then. Jill had read Bix's original treatment. The guilty love story had not been a part of its narrative. Phillip hadn't fallen in love with his brother's wife; they hadn't had the baby together. That had supposedly been one of Cass's brilliant additions filmed in August.

But by August Don would have been seven months old, pounds heavier, very obviously much too big to play a newborn. No, Don's scenes had been shot in April.

Except that the script filmed in April wouldn't have needed a baby.

So the script supposedly filmed in April hadn't been. There could be no question; there had indeed been a secret script. As simple as this was, it was absolute confirmation. That script might not have been a masterpiece—it might have been godawful—but it had existed and it had been filmed.

She had fallen a few steps behind Doug and Randy. She caught up and put her hand on Doug's arm, stopping him. He looked down, puzzled. It was, she knew, the first time they had touched.

"I have to talk to you." She kept her voice low.

"What about it? Is something wrong?"

"Don't you understand what Don said? About his birthday, what that—?"

"Come on, Ring," Randy ordered. "Hurry up."

Jill could already see Brad approaching them. She knew she had only another moment with Doug. "When can we talk? This is really important."

The first wave of family crested and broke around them. Dave's arm went around her, turning her away from Doug, and there were dozens of faces: Laurie, Carolyn and Brian, Taffy and the baby, Heather, Pete, Pete's girlfriend. She craned her neck around to see Randy pulling Doug back up to the encampment.

"But wait..." They hadn't set a place to meet. When was she going to see him? He was the one she wanted to see, not all of these people.

"Don't worry." She could hardly hear his voice over the noisy greetings of the family. "I'll be back."

She supposed that was the sort of thing soldiers always said.

CHAPTER 7

Carolyn was Brad's oldest daughter. She was in the yellow shirt. Her husband Brian was over by the cooler. Christa, in the straw hat, was the next oldest. Her husband was Ken. After Christa came Stacey in the—

"What do you call that color, Stace?" Dave, who was performing these introductions, called out.

"Melon," Stacey answered and wriggled her fingers at Jill, who wriggled hers back.

We'll all come out to meet her when she comes...

Doug had been wrong. They hadn't
all
come out to meet Jill. Dave's older boy was at college, and only two of Brad's four sons-in-law had appeared. Louise was home, preparing for the barbecue tomorrow: her apologies were ponderously passed along by Brad. But everyone else had come, and that was a lot of people—nine adults and more than a dozen children, ranging in age from Taffy's tiny baby to a budding pre-teen wearing a pair of horsehead earrings.

A pleasant chaos prevailed. Everyone was eating. People stretched across one another to reach the chips and stepped over legs and plates to get to the coolers. The watery-looking "tomato juice" served to the adults had been diluted by a generous splash of vodka, and this, too, added to the general liveliness.

They were an affluent, satisfied lot. The four daughters had married a doctor, two lawyers, and a United Airlines pilot. Civil War re-enactments were not their natural milieu; only a few of them had ever been to one before. Their picnics, Jill gathered from the sisters' chat about previous menus, were more often held before the Shenandoah Valley Music Festival or at steeplechase races. They all had traveled. Every child over four had been to DisneyWorld, and Jill heard talk about two-week European tours and Caribbean cruises. The children were in all kinds of activities: soccer and ballet, Brownies and piano lessons. The girl in the horsehead earrings had her own horse.

Jill sought this girl out. She was the oldest of the grandchildren; her name was Allison, and her horse's name was Belle Boyd. She was thrilled to learn that Jill had once had a horse, too.

"Do you still ride?" she asked.

"Sometimes. But you know how it is. If you don't do it every day, you lose your conditioning so fast."

Even at age ten Allison knew what Jill was talking about. "That's what I love about having Belle."

By now the Yankees had massed at the ridge atop a low hill. As the Confederates were gathering around the house and the orchard, Jill had a better view of the boys in blue. She felt sorry for them because they seemed so hopelessly outnumbered.

In reality, Brad told her, the Confederates had been outnumbered. The battle had been fought during the last year of the war, and the Confederates had been so desperate for men that they had emptied out the nearby military academy. Boys of fourteen and fifteen had died on this field. Each year the school commemorated their sacrifice with a roll call, a cadet replying after each name, "Dead on a field of honor."

Jill found this story more chilling than inspiring, but she supposed that was the lure of a re-enactment. It had all the fun of male bonding without the death. Indeed, during the first twenty minutes of the battle, despite all the smoke from the black-powder muskets and the booming cannons, Jill did not see a single soldier die.

Finally a Yankee fell, dropping dramatically behind his line. He did it immediately before a retreat, so the spectators were treated to the sight of the Federal troops moving back up the hill, stepping over his body without breaking ranks. After the army had passed, the fallen soldier stirred. He lifted his head and felt for his legs, needing to reassure himself that they were still there as apparently they no longer had feeling. Unable to rise, he began a dramatic climb up the hill, inching his way along by pulling himself with his forearms. He would stop, still unable to stand or sit, and on his elbow, would load his musket, shoot, then hitch himself up further. He spent the rest of the battle struggling his way up the hill.

"If you think about it, that's pretty grisly," said Carolyn-in-the-yellow-shirt. "I wonder if nineteenth-century medicine could have done anything for him."

Her husband Brian-over-by-the-cooler shook his head. "Probably not. They would have chopped his legs off and his family would have carried him around in a basket. Just keep reminding yourself that that guy's probably a data entry clerk for I.B.M. and is loving every instant of this."

Randy was among the Confederates who stormed the orchard fence. At least, that's what his sisters said. Jill couldn't distinguish him from the several hundred other Confederates clad in their ragged butternut. She scanned the charging ranks for a tall figure in grey, but couldn't find Doug in the first wave nor among those that followed. He must have already died. He had probably had the sense to expire up in the apple orchard where it was cooler.

As the battle drew to an end, the sisters began putting things back in the picnic baskets. Jill collected used plates and cups.

Brad came up to her, holding open a thirty-gallon trash bag. "May I discuss the evening's plans with you?"