The Buffalo Soldier (17 page)

Imagine that--wanting a baby.

You know what I mean.

Certainly I do.

But if I do decide to become a mom--and it's true that I am leaning that way right this second--I want you to understand that you don't ever have to be involved in any way, shape, or form. I don't ever have to see you again, no one would ever have to know who the father was. You didn't ask for this--

Neither did you.

No, of course not. But it just might be something I want.

And if I wanted to be involved? What then? This is, after all, my son or daughter, too.

She washed down a bite of her scone with a long sip of her tea. Maybe that's why I phoned, she said. I don't know. But I do think it's the same part of me that might want this baby that led me to call you.

He nodded, and then said in a tone that was so controlled it was almost hurtful, Understand that involvement would never mean leaving my wife. Is that clear?

I don't expect you to leave her, she said, and she hoped she didn't sound defensive. She was surprised by how much his two short sentences had wounded her. I thought I'd made that clear.

She's fragile, he went on, his voice softening. This is a woman who lost both her children. You simply cannot know how awful something like that is until you've lived through it. That's a fact. It's been two years, and it's only now that she's beginning to come out of it.

I appreciate that, she said. And I know it hasn't been easy for you, either.

He took a deep breath that seemed to signal his agreement, but he didn't say a word.

So, my sense is, I should finish my scone and move on, she said. And I'm okay with that, Terry. Honest. I'm okay.

I didn't say I didn't want to see you again, he said, and he sounded slightly exasperated. I didn't say I wanted you and this baby out of my life. I simply said I'm not going to leave Laura, and I need for you to understand that.

Another one of those unattractive thoughts crossed her mind: In truth I am here because some maternal instinct inside me wants to do whatever I can to ensure that this baby has a father. I'm here because I want to make this man leave this bakery with me. Isn't that why I was so careful with my lipstick this morning, and why I spent so much time brushing my hair? Isn't that why I wore a skirt and a tight denim blouse with a few buttons I could leave undone?

Her tummy was still flat, and she knew it would remain so for at least another month or two.

I don't want you to do anything you don't want to do, she said. I want you to be happy. I want your wife to be happy. I want your foster kid to be happy.

Alfred. The boy's name is Alfred.

I'm sorry. Alfred. I want you all to be happy, that's all I meant.

Thank you.

And that's all I would want for this baby, too. I simply want it to be happy. To make other people happy, to have a good life. A joyful life. That's all. I don't know about the rest, I don't have any specifics.

He stretched his legs straight out to the side of the table and folded his arms across his chest, the bottom of his badge disappearing behind his balled fist. When do you think you'll know?

About what, the baby?

About whether you're going to keep it.

Well, you tell me, Terry: What do you want me to do? What would you prefer happened?

I'm going to give you an unfair answer--and understand that I know it's unfair. Okay?

She shrugged. She knew she'd asked her question more out of curiosity than anything else. She wanted to see how he'd respond.

I think you should keep it, he said. Sometimes...sometimes you don't know how precious something is to you until it's disappeared and you can't get it back.

She was surprised and moved by his answer. In some ways her life would have been easier if he'd said she should get an abortion. Then she could have told him, yes, she probably would, leave him at the bakery, and do whatever she liked.

Do you believe that even if it means I have to raise this child completely on my own? she asked.

Even then. But it won't come to that.

An absurd thought crossed her mind, and she started to giggle. Well, if you're not going to leave your wife, she said, then I just guess that means you're about to go Mormon on me!

He looked at her, momentarily perplexed, but then he understood the reference. I don't believe polygamy is legal even in Utah, he said. And it sure as hell isn't legal in Vermont.

A little commune action, then, she said, and she could tell that her giggles were going to grow. She tried to rein them in, but it was clear her emotions were beyond her control. We'll churn a little butter, we'll drink a little Chianti. Spend all kinds of time naked. There used to be hippie communes all over my corner of the Northeast Kingdom, you know--before I was born, of course, she added, but he couldn't possibly have understood the last part of her sentence because of the way her great gulps of laughter were swallowing her words. She was laughing loudly, embarrassingly loud, but she couldn't stop herself. People at the tables around them were starting to turn toward her, their faces transforming quickly from benign curiosity to concern when they saw the wrought-up, vaguely insane cast to her face. She felt her eyes starting to water and she wiped the sleeve of her shirt across her cheeks, shaking her head all the while. When she opened her eyes, she could see that Terry was red, and staring down into his empty glass plate. He'd brought his legs back in under the table.

I've never even met your wife, she said, and her voice, muddled by laughter and tears, sounded to her like a toddler's in the midst of a tantrum. What do you think, Terry, would we get along?

He looked up at her. Phoebe, come on.

Seriously, me and Laura? How would we do?

Phoebe...

She sniffed deeply, and a tiny squeal of a hiccup was the last sound that she made. Suddenly the place seemed eerily silent to her.

Let's get out of here, he said, his voice barely above a whisper.

Yup, let's, she agreed, and they stood up together, put on their coats, and started toward the bakery's front door. As they were walking through the small restaurant, she wondered where they would go once they were outside in the crisp December air, and she realized that she hadn't a clue.

"In addition, the detachment returned with three Indian children. Apparently, their father was among the marauders."

CAPTAIN ANDREW HITCHENS,

TENTH REGIMENT, UNITED STATES CAVALRY,

REPORT TO THE POST ADJUTANT,

MAY 11, 1876

*

Alfred

He awoke and tried hard to resist the urge to climb out from under the heavy quilt Terry's mother had made and switch on either the lamp by the window or the one by the door. It was quarter to twelve, and for a brief moment he thought that Terry or Laura might still be awake. The idea offered him comfort: He wasn't afraid in the dark when those two were reading or watching TV. But as he listened carefully, he decided the house was completely still and the grown-ups were sound asleep. He was alone.

No, he wasn't alone--and that was the problem. At least he didn't believe that he was. He opened his eyes, his body otherwise still, and scanned the bedroom. He was on his side, his back to the window, his vision the door and the closet and the desk. He half-expected to see there one--or both--of the girls. He half-expected one of the girls to ask him what he was doing in her bed.

But he saw no one there in the dark, and once again he shut his eyes. For a brief moment he imagined he was buffalo soldier George Rowe, half-asleep somewhere in West Texas, confident even though it was night and his detachment was far from its fort. Rowe was disciplined and sharp; he didn't care that he was an outsider. He'd won a medal. He was Alfred's favorite of the black men he'd met in the book.

In his mind, he traced the outlines of the boulders and scrub pine that might have surrounded Rowe's camp, and then slowly watched as those shapes were transformed into the more familiar contours of the furniture in his room and the objects that sat upon them. He burrowed into the closet, envisioning exactly what was there on the floor. His backpack. The photo album. Food.

He wondered if the girls were mad at him for stealing their picture, or whether they cared. Whether they knew.

When he opened his eyes again, he saw the half-circle silhouette made by his riding helmet, and for a split second he thought it was the head of a person crouching by the desk. It wasn't and he knew that, but the notion alone was so frightening that he pushed off the covers and lunged for the bureau with the light. For a long moment he stood there in the bright room, his fingers still within inches of the lamp shade. He was surprised that he hadn't bounded back into bed yet. Normally he would have by now.

Then he knew why. He was uneasy, still not completely convinced he was alone, and he needed to open the closet door and make absolutely sure that no one--no thing--was in there. And so he moved slowly across the wide wooden floorboards, a gunmetal gray, and then over the thick throw rug. He opened the door, pausing for just the barest second with his fingers on the knob, and sighed--he hadn't even realized until that moment that he'd been holding his breath--when he saw there was nothing to fear in the closet, either. Nothing. He reached in for his album, brought it back with him to bed, and flipped the pages until he reached the one with the photograph of the twin girls.

Without thinking about what he was doing, he ran his fingers over the plastic that protected their image from thumbprints and smears. What was it about them, he wondered, that once had made Terry and Laura so happy? They were pretty girls, but was that alone enough to make grown-ups smile? Maybe strangers. He'd seen the way rich strangers would smile at pretty kids all the time as they walked briskly in the mall or down Church Street in Burlington. He knew the way his teacher treated some kids in the class better than others. The handsome boys, the pretty girls. But parents probably weren't like that. Not real parents, anyway. Real parents probably wanted their kids to look good, but loved them regardless.

Of course, his mom had been a real parent, and she'd clearly been capable of not loving him--or, at least, of not loving him enough.

Adults, especially parents, were a code that he couldn't begin to decipher. And though Terry and Laura had indeed seemed happier lately, he realized he didn't understand why. He didn't think it had anything to do with him, mainly because he was spending so much time these days with Mesa and Paul--unless that was in fact the reason for their contentment: The foster kid was no longer underfoot, and was now less demanding. Less time-consuming. And so life had improved.

He didn't really believe that either, he decided. His first instinct had been the correct one. If the pair was more content these days, it had nothing to do with him.

Through the window on the east side of his room he could see the Heberts' house and he could see the barn where Mesa lived. He had never told Paul this, but he believed on some level that the horse liked him so much--and he liked the horse--because they were the same. They'd both been shuffled around, they'd both lived in a lot of places. When Ruth had decided to unburden herself of a horse, wasn't it Mesa she chose to unload? Yes, indeed. The truth was, Mesa had had a home before living with Ruth, and she'd have a home after Paul Hebert got too old to handle her. That's just how it was. She'd be sent somewhere else.

Outside he heard the wind press the storm window against its metal guides, a heavy click, and then the glass shuddered for a long second.

He wondered how well Paul had known the two girls, and whether there was anything he could share. Maybe he knew what made them so special. It would be a heck of a lot easier to ask him about them than either Terry or Laura, that was for sure.

He rolled onto his side--once more unwilling to leave his back to the door--and fell asleep with the light on and the album open to his picture of Hillary and Megan Sheldon.

A CANADIAN WIND had blown in overnight and it was freezing that afternoon, but there still wasn't much snow on the ground. You could see it in the far distance on the top of the mountain, and that snow glowed white against a cerulean blue sky. But not here. Here there was largely hoarfrost and ice, despite the fact that Christmas was only eight days away.

Alfred was careful to keep Mesa on the pavement or, once they left the road, on the long stretches of brown earth. Paul insisted on this. He told Alfred that he didn't want him to tumble off the horse if the animal momentarily lost her footing on one of the nearly invisible patches of black ice that veined the sides of the street--runoff a few days before, now slippery as slate and solid as stone--or that dotted the fields on both sides like miniature frozen ponds.

Heels down, the man was saying to him now as he walked briskly beside him and the horse. Ride on the balls of your feet. And relax a bit--let her bounce you up. If you're too tense, the animal will feel it and get spooked--or, worse, your back will hurt like hell in the morning.

He tugged at his ear where the chin strap for his helmet dug into the scar from the infection he'd had there that summer. Even wearing a glove, he could feel the shape of the skin, still slightly mottled both from the studs and the scarring, and he wished he'd remembered to bring along a piece of cotton as a cushion. He decided it was too bad he wasn't allowed to ride in his Tenth Cavalry cap. What better time was there to wear it than when he was atop this fine horse?

He bounced toward the wrought-iron entrance to the old portion of the cemetery, the sensation of riding always reminding him of the afternoon he'd gone swimming at North Beach in Burlington, and a rainstorm had rolled in and built whitecaps along the surface of the lake. He'd swum in those waves, and they'd carried him. This horse was like that.

He watched Paul pull up the clasp that kept the heavy gates closed, and then push one of the waist-high doors forward. He was surprised by how much it squeaked in the cold, and so was the horse. She froze for a moment at the new sound, her ears pointing like arrowheads at the noise.

Come on ahead, the man said to him.

He drew back on the leather reins with his left hand, pushed his heels into Mesa's sides, and then watched in astonishment as the horse followed his lead. He'd been riding her daily for almost two weeks now, but he was still surprised that he could control an animal this big with such ease. Yet there as she turned were those great nostrils, the pewter-colored bit, and one of those massive, deep eyes. It was hard for Alfred to believe that anything could, as Paul put it, spook eyes such as those. It was difficult for him to imagine this big creature scared.

Once they were inside the graveyard, Alfred halted the animal, moved slightly in his saddle, and motioned toward the Granger family's memorial and the massive hydrangea beside it. He didn't tell Paul that earlier that autumn he used to go there all the time, but he made sure the older man was aware of the monument. It was beautiful to look at, and through the tapestry of clawlike twigs he could see the spot where he'd once gone for half an hour or an hour at a time.

Paul nodded at the sand-colored obelisk as big as a closet, and then said, The Sheldon plots are in the new section. Far side of the new section. Not a lot of landscaping yet, you'll see, but sunny. When there is sun. Guide her around the outer edge of the tombstones, okay? No sense in you two having to traverse an obstacle course.

From high up on the horse the graveyard appeared very different. The lines of the markers looked more definite, more pronounced, even while the headstones that were on the verge of collapse--blackened fungus on aged marble, a rusted metal rebar support exposed like old bone through dead skin--grew more apparent. The columns of antique markers stretched to the end of the hill, not a single one younger than a century. He counted seven G.A.R. stars and guessed there were more.

From atop Mesa, even a tremendous tombstone such as the Grangers' looked less like a marble skyscraper. In the distance he realized he could see the steeple for the church in the village, and the first cluster of houses on the far side of the Cousinos' dairy farm. The Sheldons' home remained invisible, however, because of the way it was nestled behind the near hill.

As they approached the new section, the headstones grew more diverse in color and shape--there was black marble dappled with white, clusters of ivory granite, and a few markers that had the blush of old bricks--and nearby there were more likely to be signs of visitation. Fresh flowers. Plastic flowers, sometimes in a plastic vase. A photograph housed inside a block of glass. The quiescent brown grass flattened by footsteps or, in a few cases, the tire tracks of a truck or a car.

Over there, Paul said, and he pointed to a section Alfred had never bothered to visit. Too new to be interesting. Not a single star or American flag in sight.

They descended down a path with no markers on either side, and the horse moved carefully, as if she knew how easy it would be to slip among the patches of snow, baseball-sized rocks, and hard ground. Then they wandered down the wide, unpaved road--a pair of tire ruts actually, that were cut by the repeated passage of vehicles through the grass--that sliced the new section in two. They passed a fresh grave, the dirt and the flowers still moist, probably one of the last to be dug in the earth without the help of a backhoe till spring.

Dorothy Cammin, Paul said. Nice woman. Had a nice service. Short.

Was there a service for those girls? Alfred asked.

The Sheldon girls? Of course.

Kids come?

Whole school, it seemed. The church was packed. They had to set up monitors in the basement and two of the Sunday-school classrooms so the overflow could watch it on TV. Can you imagine?

He nodded as he rode. He could imagine that many people gathered together in a single spot, but he couldn't envision that many caring enough to come to a funeral. He figured if he drowned, there'd be a handful of people at his service at best--and he couldn't say for sure who any of them would be.

Those arch shapes over there, Paul said. That's what you're looking for.

He stared at them for a moment, and thought back on how easy it had been for him to verbalize the question once he'd decided to ask it. Yesterday afternoon, the two of them together in the barn. Paul had been rinsing the bit in a bucket of water, while he was sitting on the stool with the heavy saddle in his lap. Rubbing it down with the soft, chamois leather rag. The sound of Mesa, nosing in the new hay in the trough just behind them. And the words had come out in a quick stream, more casual in tone than in intent, but it didn't matter because Paul always seemed to listen carefully to every word that he said. He'd asked, very simply, where Terry and Laura's children were buried. Drying the bit, not looking up, Paul said if he wanted he could show him tomorrow. That was it. No big deal. They probably would have gone that very day, but the sun had just about set.

He tapped his feet against Mesa's sides and turned the horse in toward the lengthy file with the graves, careful to keep her moving straight between the rows--rows that seemed, very suddenly, to be as thin as an escalator and every bit as difficult to traverse with a horse.

After the funeral, a lot of the church came here, too, Paul was saying as he walked on the grass on the other side of the markers, his arms folded against his down jacket and his gloved hands buried deep in his underarms. The horse breathed out another wispy column of steam, and Alfred reached forward and softly patted the wide plate of her cheek. He sat up straight and commanded the animal to halt--with his words and by pulling back on the reins--because Paul had stopped walking. Then, with his usual great effort, he swung his right leg over the massif-sized back of the Morgan and jumped to the ground, pausing when he realized there was no place where he could hitch the horse.

Here, Paul said, and he took the reins like a lead line and held them loosely. Almost immediately Mesa leaned over as if she thought she might start trying to pull clumps of frozen grass from the earth with her teeth, but Paul remembered the bit in her mouth and gently lifted up her head with his hands.