The Buffalo Soldier (11 page)

Hey, Nicole said, and he knew instantly she was talking to him, you don't have to go.

I know.

Don't you like football?

He looked at the television set. It's okay, he answered.

We were going to go for a walk anyway, she went on. Weren't we, Russell? It's a gorgeous afternoon, and it won't be dark for at least another half-hour. Want to come with us?

Russell didn't say anything, but Alfred could see he was annoyed by his girlfriend's suggestion. He guessed Nicole was in her early twenties, a good five or six years younger than Russell. He knew she was a nurse at the local hospital, and he was pretty sure this was her very first job--real job, that is. That was a distinction that had seemed to matter to her when she talked about it at the dining-room table, and so he assumed she had had other jobs before going to nursing school.

Come with us, Nicole said. It will be fun.

He might have gone if Russell had felt like going for a walk, too, but it was clear even to Alfred that the man didn't want to. And so he said simply, No, thank you.

But then he wasn't sure what to do with himself, because he couldn't go outside now, not if this pair was going that way. It might make them mad that he hadn't been willing to go for a walk with them. He was considering the kitchen when Russell spoke.

You don't say much, do you? he asked.

Alfred knew from Russell's tone that he wasn't going to like where this conversation was headed. The girl was standing with the fingers of one hand draped lazily on Russell's shoulder, but the man was still collapsed on the couch with a leg dangling over the armrest.

I guess I don't, he admitted.

Russell, no ten-year-old kid says much, Nicole said, especially when he's in a weird house.

This is not a weird house.

Strange house, she said. Pardon me: Strange house.

There's a difference. I grew up in this house, you know, and there was nothing weird about it.

I know, she answered, and she sounded annoyed.

Me? he went on, and he stared straight at Alfred. I'm a big talker. That's my deal. I probably talk way too much. You think so?

I don't know.

Well, I do, Nicole said. And at the moment, at least, you're talking when we should be outside. I think you could use a little more air and a little less beer.

Russell let his leg drop to the floor, and his foot made a large stomping sound even though he'd taken his boots off when he arrived and was now wearing only heavy wool socks on his feet.

You want a cigarette?

Russell!

Come on, I wouldn't really give him one. But I bet he'd smoke one if I did. That right?

He shrugged, knowing he shouldn't tell this man the truth, but unsure he could pull off a convincing lie.

Seriously, son, you always this quiet?

I guess.

See, here's the thing: When a man doesn't talk, you don't know what he's thinking. And when you don't know what a man's thinking, you can't trust him. At least not completely. You follow?

Alfred looked at Russell and felt himself growing flushed.

I follow, he answered.

Russell reached for the open beer on the table beside him, and the little cloth doily--it had probably been white once but was now the color of oatmeal--stuck to the bottom of the can. The woman reached for the doily, but Russell misunderstood the gesture and thought she was trying to stop him from taking another sip of his beer.

Don't touch my beer, he snapped, whipping the can away from her, but then added, please. Please do not touch my beer when I am about to drink from it. Okay?

I wasn't going to touch your precious beer. I was only getting the coaster, she said. Okay? When she said
okay,
she was mimicking him.

So, Al...I can call you Al, right?

I like Alfred better, he said, and he tried not to fidget though he knew that he was.

Alfred's an old man's name. Al is the proper name for a tough kid like you, right? I mean, my God, Alfred makes you sound like somebody's servant. And it seems to me that would be the very last thing you'd want. Am I right? You are nobody's servant. No way. Right?

Russell, lay off him, okay? Just stop.

He looked toward Nicole and glowered for a long second, and then turned back to Alfred.

How do you like my brother? Pretty slick, huh? Especially when he's all dolled up in his uniform?

Alfred could see the woman was leaving. She had turned on her heels and was heading back across the front hall and into the dining room or, maybe, the kitchen.

I like him fine.

I do, too. Most of the time. What about Laura?

What about her?

You like her, too?

Sure.

She's pretty, isn't she?

Alfred knew now he needed to leave the room, too. There was no telling what Russell might say next. And so he started to walk past the man, careful to walk toward the far side of the couch, since Russell wouldn't dare lunge across the cushions for him.

He was wrong. Although the man never actually rose to his feet, he bounded across the sofa and stretched his free arm over the far side of the couch, and wrapped it around Alfred's waist. Alfred started to pull away--he was aware that the beer can was now on its side on one of the cushions, but he couldn't tell if there was enough left that some was spilling out onto the thick pillow--but Russell held him tight and looped his fingers through one of the belt loops on the side of his jeans.

I am sort of like your uncle, you know, he said. There's no call to be rude. I like you.

In the hallway Terry and Nicole were approaching, and then Alfred saw them both jog the final half-dozen steps into the room. Instantly Russell released him.

What the hell do you think you're doing, Russell? Terry asked, and he seemed to tower over his brother. What the hell do you think you're doing now?

Russell stood, but he was no bigger than Terry and he lacked the trooper's posture.

Oh, we were just talking. Getting to know each other.

Nicole looked down at the swirls on the carpet, and she seemed to be shaking her head just the tiniest bit. Then she noticed the beer can on the couch and grabbed it.

That's not what I hear, Terry said.

I don't know what you heard, but--

Or what I just saw.

Hey, you're no saint, either, Russell said, raising his voice, and for a split second Alfred thought the man was going to cry. But the second passed, and he realized that Russell's voice simply grew high when he got mad. You are no saint, he said again to his brother.

The other adults started streaming in slowly from the dining room and the kitchen, and congregated in the hallway behind Terry and Nicole. When Laura saw Alfred by the side of the couch--only feet from where the brothers looked like they might square off--she went to him and put her hands on his shoulders. Her hands were damp, and she was still wearing the red apron she had put on when she volunteered to tackle the greasy, cast-iron roasting pans.

I've never claimed to be a saint, Terry said, his voice even but clearly annoyed.

You always take that tone with me, Russell said.

Not always. Only when you've had too much to drink.

You are such a hypocrite! So smug and self-righteous! Well, I got news for you: I know what you were doing at deer camp! We all did, we all knew exactly where you went!

Alfred didn't dare turn around to look up at Laura. He wanted to, he wanted to desperately, but he didn't dare. He had a feeling if he did it would be a violation somehow, like the time he had heard her crying when Terry was gone, and he had made certain that she never knew he was awake that night. He wasn't sure what Russell had meant just now, but it was clear it involved something bad, something Laura knew nothing about. And he sensed that if he turned his head the slightest bit in Laura's direction, then she would know that he--and, therefore, every single person in the room--understood that Terry was hiding something from her.

And so instead he kept his eyes on Terry. The look on the man's face suggested he was merely disappointed in his younger brother--vexed by this adult man's childishness--but his hands were balled into fists. Everyone remained silent, frozen in place, until their mother emerged from the crowd of older people in the hallway and said, forcing a small, unsure laugh from her lips as she spoke, You two will never grow up, will you? You're having the same squabbles you had when you were children.

She patted Terry, and Alfred saw his fingers unclench. She was not a frail woman, but Alfred had overheard enough to know that she was neither as confident nor as hearty as she had been before her husband died. Her hair was curly and short, and dyed a blond that looked a bit like the camel's hair coat Laura sometimes wore. She was the only woman in the house who was wearing a dress.

Alfred, Laura said, why don't you join us in the kitchen? I could use some help drying the pans. There was an unfamiliar quiver in her voice: It wasn't the tremor he'd noticed the few times her daughters had come up, or the tiny shudder that gave her words a slight waffle when she was worried about him. It was an inflection he'd never heard from her before, but one that had peppered the sentences of a previous foster mother--a woman whose husband would disappear less than two months after Alfred had arrived at their apartment in the building by the bus station.

It was, he was quite sure, the sound of a person whose feelings have just been badly injured.

"There were no boulders on their side of the river, and no brush at all. And so they shot the horses and used them as cover. Then they fired at the soldiers until they had no bullets left."

VERONICA ROWE (FORMERLY POPPING TREES),

WPA INTERVIEW,

MARCH 1938

*

Phoebe

Of course she couldn't be pregnant. He'd worn a condom.

But they'd made love twice, and they hadn't showered in between. It was possible that...no, it wasn't possible. She didn't believe he'd ever been inside her without wearing a rubber.

She reminded herself that she was a grand total of five days late. Five days, that was it. No biggie. Surely she'd been five days late before in her life. In fact, she'd probably been that late often in high school. It was really only over the last two or three years, as she'd begun to near thirty, that she had become as regular as a navy clock.

Yet she kept replaying in her mind their time together in Rose's bed, trying to recall in minute and chronological detail exactly what they had done. And, unfortunately, each time she could find a moment when his penis might have grazed her vagina during foreplay, or when either of their hands might have moved too swiftly between his genitals and hers. Each time she could see in her head pearl-colored semen--real or imagined--on the outer edge of the condom.

Moreover, it was always possible that one of the rubbers had been defective. Maybe one had had a small tear.

Upstairs she heard her father turn off the television set in his bedroom, and in a second, she knew, she would hear him turn on the radio. Since her mother had died, he fell asleep listening to talk radio.

The farmhouse wasn't small, but sound carried through the small rooms, and usually you knew what everyone else was doing. When she was growing up, she had always heard her brothers talking before they fell asleep, and before her parents had sold the herd--when she was a small girl--she had always heard her father and oldest brother tiptoeing down the stairs at five in the morning for the first milking.

She realized that she hadn't comprehended a word in the magazine before her. She had merely been flipping the glossy pages, only vaguely aware of the photos and articles and the ads for lingerie, cigarettes, and perfume.

Outside the back door she heard her father's dog on the steps, and she rose from the table to let the animal in. She felt very tired when she stood up and decided that this, too, was proof that she was pregnant.

IN THE MORNING, she knew, she would open the small general store for Frank and Jeannine. She would arrive there a little before seven A.M., brew a couple pots of coffee, and chat with the regular customers--some of whom, of course, she'd known her whole life because she had gone to school with them or they were friends or acquaintances of her family. There would be fewer people than usual, however, because it was the day after Thanksgiving and some folks would have the day off. Moreover, with the schools closed she didn't expect she would see any of the moms who either dropped their kids off at the nearby bus stop in the morning or drove them to school.

She wondered briefly if her father had any plans for tomorrow, but she couldn't imagine he did. Most days he didn't go anywhere, and she really wasn't sure how he passed the time. In all fairness, he had gone hunting this year, but it didn't seem as if his heart was in it. Sometimes he went for drives, and sometimes he went as far as Littleton, New Hampshire, to visit her brother Wallace, the second oldest of the small brood. Wallace now sold insurance from a little office on Main Street. Twice that autumn he had even stayed overnight with Wallace and Veronica and the grandchildren.

Most days, however, he seemed to stay home.

Wallace and his family had been back in Vermont that day for Thanksgiving, and Phoebe thought that was nice. A couple of kids running around the house and the yard, some other adults in the dark farmhouse for a change.

Wallace and Veronica had both told her in the kitchen that they thought it was time for her to move back to Montpelier and resume crunching numbers for the state. Dad was doing fine now, they said, and it was clear that she had no life here: few friends, no boyfriend, and a job that could only be called inappropriate for a girl who had a two-year degree in accounting from a college in Burlington.

She'd smiled and agreed with them when they said she'd done her good deed.

She didn't tell them that sometimes she fantasized about leaving Vermont. Perhaps even New England. She had a roommate from college who'd moved all the way to Santa Fe when she married an engineer who was going to work at the lab in Los Alamos. Imagine, New Mexico. Endless blue skies, hot and dry summers. Something completely different from all that she knew. Shauna, her friend, had mailed her photographs of her family's townhouse, and of the glorious-looking day-care center where their toddler son spent most weekday mornings.

Still, she loved her father and it was hard for her to picture him alone in this house in the nights as well as the days. Here was a man who had lived in these rooms for decades with a wife, four kids, and--when the herd was at its biggest--a hired man. What would it be like for him to be so completely alone? Even the cows were long gone.

And what of her? Really, she'd just--well, maybe not
just,
but not even four months ago now--watched her mother die. Of all the siblings, she was the one who was there those last weeks, she was the one who helped her father adjust the oxygen prongs in her mother's nose and, near the end, administered the morphine. She was the one who heard her mother's occasional odd, incomprehensible murmurings when the painkillers kicked in, and listened in silence for signs of life from her grieving father. Yes, she had only done what many grown children did. But that didn't make it easy.

She rolled over in her bed--the very same bed in which she had slept as a child and a teenager--and inside her she felt something move. Intellectually she knew it was impossible. After all, even if she was pregnant (and she tried to reassure herself once again that she wasn't), it would be months before she would feel something move.

Assuming, of course, that she kept the baby.

She told herself she was thinking way too much: It didn't make sense to start weighing motherhood and abortion on some scale in her head. At least not yet.

She tried not to hear the low rumble of the men talking on the radio in her father's bedroom, but the noise was inescapable, and so, as she did some nights, she propped herself against the fluffiest pillow and tried listening carefully instead. Anything, she decided, was better than lying in your bed attempting to convince yourself that you weren't pregnant, when you knew in your heart that you were.

"We killed two warriors and sustained no casualties ourselves. Two other warriors drowned in the river when they tried to flee."