Surrender at Orchard Rest (8 page)

“I’m sorry but I can’t,” said a female voice behind the door. “It was nice while it lasted, but now it’s done.”

The mattress creaked as someone rose.

“I think you’re being hasty. I think you’ll regret this,” said a low, urgent voice.

The mattress squeaked louder as someone heavier rose.

Somerset took a step away from the door. She’d always known deep down that their relationship wasn’t conventional, but with that knowledge confirmed under the roof where they all lived, Somerset’s cheeks blazed hot. Although she could not see them, she didn’t know where to look. It was as if she caught them in their state with no walls or doors between them.

“I regret coming back. I regret starting this up again.”

Fairlee sounded tired and sad.

“I think you should get back in bed and let me change your mind. There are plenty of hours left before the sun rises.”

“You’re ignoring the issue at hand. It’s why we never fix anything. It’s why we’re not married now. I’m leaving and it will be much longer than two years this time before I return. Don’t come to me, either. There aren’t enough places in Tuscaloosa for me to get away from you.”

She heard Joseph cross the room and say something in a tone so low she couldn’t make it out, but she knew from the inflection of his voice that it was obscene.

A resounding pop met her ears, and she knew Fairlee had slapped Joseph’s face. Then she heard the high-pitched stream of liquid as it cracked ice in a glass.

“You claim to worship me, but you idolize what is in that glass,” said Fairlee. “You said you would do anything to make things better. In your letters you begged me to come home and give this another try. You’ve been on your best behavior but you’ve had a drink in your hand the whole time I’ve been here.”

“If you spent time in Elmira, you’d need a drink in your hand, too.”

“Oh, everyone knows the Marshalls like their drink! Elmira doesn’t make you drink,” sneered Fairlee.

She threw the door open to trod out of the room.

Somerset got a brief view of Joseph tugging his trousers on while simultaneously reaching for Fairlee’s shoulder as she passed his nightstand. Fairlee’s face didn’t change when she found Somerset in the hall. She didn’t even bother to fasten her open basque.

“What happened to you, Somerset? Are you hurt?” she asked as she took in the sight of her torn robe and scratched arms and legs. She reached out and pulled a twig from Somerset’s hair.

“I didn’t mean to disturb you,” apologized Somerset. “I didn’t know you were here. I couldn’t hear my own thoughts in this house and went outside to think. I wound up falling, it was so dark out there. I didn’t mean to eavesdrop on you.”

“I can’t hear my thoughts, either. No, I’m not angry, Somerset. I’ll still write.”

Fairlee’s kiss on her cheek was brief and she didn’t look Somerset in the face.

“I can change!” called Joseph as he buttoned his trousers and stepped out of the room after her.

“You have changed—for the worse!” spat Fairlee. “You are a bitter, unfeeling man!”

She swept down the stairs with remarkable dignity for an unmarried woman caught in her lover’s bed.

Joseph put one hand over his eyes as if he could will the situation out of his head forever.

“Yes?” he asked when he opened his eyes and Somerset was still standing there.

“I think it’s time that we talked some more.”

Joseph put a bare arm around her shoulders and drew her into his room.

“Come inside, Somerset. I can’t win her back tonight anyway.”

***

Joseph gave Somerset his robe for warmth and put her in the chair by the window. He poured her a bracing drink, lit the second lamp, and searched to no avail for his shirt. He grabbed a rag from his bureau and mopped at all her oozing scratches. Then he found some salve for them without having to wake Tuck or Jim for it. He was so distracted that he became more mobile, and Somerset knew he would be miserable in the morning for all of the free movements he was making. Somerset wouldn’t believe anything unusual happened except for the rumpled unmade bed across the room. Each time she saw the sheets hanging from the foot of the bed, she took a swig of her drink and tried to keep her eyes trained on the window.

“What happened to you?” asked Joseph.

“I went to the cemetery tonight. I went on foot instead of taking a horse and I fell in the road a few times. I was in a hurry and wasn’t paying attention. I’m dirtier than I am hurt.”

Joseph refreshed his drink and dragged a chair over to hers.

“They were saying you were ill last night.”

“I’m not ill. I just let them think I am.”

“I’ve done that before. I’ll be doing that in the morning.”

“I didn’t know Fairlee was in here. I promise I wasn’t spying on you. I needed to talk to you about some difficult subjects—I still do—and she just happened to be in here.”

“Now I’m guessing you want to talk about me.”

“No. Yes. I need to talk about me, too, but I can’t pretend I didn’t just walk in on the scandal of Century Grove.”

Joseph’s smile was rueful.

“You’ve been through plenty, but you don’t know a scandal when you see it. Fairlee and I? All of that is old news. You found out tonight so it’s sensational to you. That is all.”

“How long have the two of you been doing this?”

“Always. Since before the war. I told you she was a feisty woman with opinions about everything. She just thinks differently about some matters than you do.”

“You were being crass to her, Joseph.”

“She was provoking me. She wants me to change. I don’t want to change, and I’m not going to, either. The argument that she and I had? It isn’t so different from any other we’ve had over the years. After I came home, the arguing became worse. She wants to improve everything, even matters that I hold are just fine. She wants me to talk about all the killing I did, the killing everyone else did. She wants me to blather about my miserable experience in Elmira. She wants me to stop drinking. It really is as simple as I don’t want to and so I won’t. So she went off in a pet. It seems dramatic to you, but I’m accustomed to that behavior from her. In a few months she’ll be writing again and in a few more months, she’ll be back in my bed.”

“You sound as though you’ve made up your mind that she’s only worth one thing,” observed Somerset.

“No, no,” protested Joseph. “I love her. I’m being blunt, though, by stating that we have a pattern. Falling into each other’s arms and then needing distance is a part of that pattern. I respect Fairlee and she respects me. Oh, don’t give me that look. It’s true. I wish you had married Eric before he died so you would understand. Mother has tried to make us all believe that love is acquiring a surname better than your own and that’s wrong. “

“No wonder you have no interest in Ivy.”

“She is beautiful, of course, in her own way, but in the end, I don’t want to be with someone who has no thought beyond being loved by me. She’s delicate and vulnerable. Ivy will always be genteel, decorous. I want to be with someone fully alive and in the moment—even if I have to suffer for it a little or, in my case, quite a bit.”

“You could get Fairlee in trouble. Then what?”

Joseph grinned.

“It wouldn’t be the worst scenario, sister. She would probably marry me if she wound up in trouble.”

Somerset digested the idea while she finished her drink.

“Enough about me.” Joseph gingerly rubbed his affected leg. “You said we needed to talk about a difficult subject. What sent you out into the cemetery at the witching hour?”

“I had a nightmare.”

“Did you? I seldom go visiting cemeteries at night after a nightmare. Why don’t you elaborate on this business?”

“I’ve tried to find new love, Joseph, but something is wrong there. The man I’ve fallen for is pulling away from me. He’s distant, aloof, and withdrawn. So I’ve been thinking about the first time I lost someone I care about.”

“Eric.”

“Yes, Eric. I went to see Eric. The pain I’ve lived with since losing him shattered me and I reassembled myself to move on. I think about the happy bright girl who was and can hardly reconcile her with this cautious, guarded woman who exists now. The point is that I’m full of doubts. It’s enough to make me wonder if I’m sabotaging my happiness because I have so many questions about and hold onto the past. I know you don’t do things you don’t want to do, but I need your help, Joseph. I need us to talk about Eric without you getting angry.”

Joseph stood and turned to the window with a set face. Somerset saw dread in it but also compassion.

“I’ll make a deal with you since you’ve been open-minded and accepting tonight about my intimate life, which you, no doubt, find appalling.”

“Yes?”

“We will talk tonight and I’ll answer your questions so long as you honor one condition.”

“What is it?”

“After our conversation, I want you to leave me alone about it, never speak of it again. I try to live in the present, Somerset. The girls, the liquor, drowning myself in manual labor—it all goes to serve a purpose. I don’t need to live in the past. I don’t want to think about the hundreds of people I’ve killed, and I don’t want to think about how I’ve lost someone I should have been able to save. I don’t need to think about rotting in Elmira or how I nearly died when someone clubbed me over the head or when a tree fell on me. You and Fairlee are more alike than you give yourself credit for, my dear. The only difference is that you aren’t pushing to change me for my health. You accept me warts and all. So, what will it be? If I talk to you tonight, will you leave me alone about it afterwards?”

“I’ll leave you alone about it forever, Joseph. Just answer my questions and don’t treat me like you think I’m a hysterical female.”

“Fair enough. You have a deal.”

Somerset settled back in her chair, tugging his robe around her and knotting the sash. She sought a conversational thread for an easy starting point. She didn’t want to begin with an idea that made him feel pressured from the start.

“We talked about this when you returned, but I want to revisit the story of what happened the day Eric died.”

“Go ahead.”

“I need to hear what happened, Joseph. I want a summary of the events when you all were ambushed.”

Joseph reached behind him on the console and grabbed a cigar. He lit it with expert knack and cracked the window behind him, exhaling smoke in its general direction.

“We were on a mission on the Chickamauga. We’d gotten some information through one of our spies that Rosencrans was constructing something monumental on the Chickamauga. Initially we scouted out the area and hoped to find high-ranking officials within shooting range. Assassinating a general for the enemy camp seemed thrilling to all of us and also a good way to demolish any battle plans for the enemy side.

“Needless to say, we didn’t find any generals, but we did run across some enemy scouts. They were familiarizing themselves well with the area and drawing up plans for a barricade. We thought they would be easy pickings. They weren’t, though. We lost them a humiliating number of times in the hills. Looking back I see it was part of the trap. Their appearances deceived us. As young and inexperienced as they were, as loud and uninhibited as they were, they should have been easy to kill. We didn’t know we were being set up.

“They were bait in an intelligent game, and we were being herded like mindless cattle. Those scouts would pop up at the base of a foothill and disappear again at the start of a bluff only to reappear again at a stream. It went on and on. It was the only time we were taken in by someone smarter than we were. We had grown arrogant and careless by that time, Somerset. We thought we were unstoppable. Although those men were no one important and their work was only of minimal importance in the long run, we refused to let them go. It would be easy to blame Theodore for continuing to track them because he was our leader, but we all wanted them dead. We imagined ourselves as foxes stalking rabbits, but it was actually the other way around.”

Joseph stood and reached for the decanter behind him. He thought better of it, and as if deciding he needed to be completely sober, he shook his head and returned it to its base.

“We got to a point where we split up far apart in order to get a better scope of view and a better chance of killing them. I think they planned that for us, too. Sawyer and I climbed a tree. Theodore went up on a ridge far above us all where he could see everyone. Eric stayed concealed on the ground. By all accounts we had them surrounded, and Eric was well within shooting distance. He gave his signal to Theodore, and by then Theodore had seen the other men so he cautioned Eric to wait. We couldn’t see what he saw and were confused. The two scouts started walking as if back to camp and they were coming right at Eric. Theodore was trying to figure out how to remedy the situation, how to take out the enemies before they could kill us. He kept ignoring Eric’s call and Eric wound up in a situation where it became kill or die. Eric and I killed the scouts cleanly, one shot each. Then there was shooting everywhere. There weren’t two men. There were five. One was up high with Theodore and two were in the trees facing the tree Sawyer and I were in. Theodore took care of the soldier on the ridge, but by then Eric was shot. Sawyer and I killed the troops in the trees. Sawyer was worse positioned on his branch than I was. When he fired his gun, the recoil knocked him to the ground. He was unconscious for a time although he was fine. I leapt to the ground and started running at Eric, and Theodore started descending from his post.

“I was sitting vigil with Eric when someone tried to kill me by hacking off the back of my skull with a rifle butt. It unnerves me to think he was so close to me that he couldn’t afford to make the noise to try to shoot. I guess it was lucky for me. By the time I was conscious again, Theodore and Sawyer were putting me on a makeshift stretcher, and it wasn’t long before I was back at Orchard Rest for a couple of months to recuperate.”

Joseph changed his mind and took the decanter from the console again. He didn’t bother with the glass. He swigged directly from the pretty cut-glass receptacle. Somerset held out her glass for more, and he refilled it, liquor sloshing to the brim.

“I don’t know who was behind the plot to take us out. There is a sixth man out there who knows more than I do, but I doubt he thinks much about it. Those days were war times and more went on than met the eye. He likely doesn’t remember our names. Someone was very familiar with our habits, the way we worked. I get some grim satisfaction that we were being plotted against and still managed to take out five men. I do pity those two young scouts. They probably thought they were going to come out of the situation unscathed and with promotions, but whoever cast them as bait knew they would wind up dead. It’s sad. Eric is lost forever and I nearly died. Theodore and Sawyer could have died, too. So much loss, all in the name of states’ rights, slavery, and a whole host of arguments that don’t help any of us now.

“The rest you know, Somerset. We’ve lived it together, more or less.”

Somerset drained her glass and watched the night breeze whip Blanche’s curtains into a frenzy. She knew the rest as thoroughly as most priests knew their catechisms. Things turned unfortunate in a hurry after the ambush and they had never really been able to reclaim lost ground.

Joseph spent two months in a hospital recovering from a head wound. He spent two months at Orchard Rest and then returned to the front, only to be captured and shipped to Elmira Prison. He’d starved and been disciplined in every way imaginable. Theodore and Sawyer waited for him in New York to accompany him home after his release.

Theodore was already a married man with a family. He returned to Charleston and ran a profitable indigo foundry. Somerset was never his pet after he married Amelia, but she seldom gave him much thought beyond her mother’s obsessive love for him. Helen and Theodore were members of a world she had never taken part in. Somerset did not know what it meant to be young and wealthy or to have every wish fulfilled all because of one’s name. She found it appropriate that she had grown close to Joseph and Victoria while her two oldest siblings were vague impressions of people, almost like characters in a novel.

Sawyer met her in Atlanta, sacrificing a furlough, when he passed her at the depot when he was slated to return home. He spent two weeks searching through the wounded with her, making sure she ate, and otherwise protecting her in a time when the town went into upheaval. They inquired at jails, searched cemeteries, and sorted through the dead on battlefields only to come up empty-handed. Somerset kissed him at a moment when her emotions were verging on the hysterical, but he was a gentleman about it and never brought it up again until years later when they fell in love.

Yes, she knew it all. The story he had told her before was as familiar to her as any nursery story she was told as a child because she never stopped replaying it in her mind. As the alcohol burned within her tender stomach, she felt her thoughts shifting and her tongue loosening.