The Buffalo Soldier (23 page)

Good.

Don't you?

Yes, but I don't think you should worry about pleasing some twenty-five- or twenty-six-year-old social worker.

I want her to know Alfred's happy.

I think he is. I think you are.

She waited for Emily to add,
I think Terry is,
but Emily brought her mug to her lips and it became clear that this--
this
--was the reason she had brought her inside her house. It wasn't meant as a warning or--as Laura might have viewed it had she been feeling more despairing--an indictment. It was merely an observation. She considered adding that final sentence herself, because Terry certainly had seemed happy through most of November. Yes, he had been preoccupied over the last couple of weeks, but he was entitled. After all the two of them had endured, wasn't he allowed to be a bit moody?

Would you like more tea? Emily asked after a moment.

No, thanks. I think I'll go see how Alfred's doing.

I hope I didn't offend you, Laura. I'm so sorry if I did.

I'm not offended. You're concerned about my husband. I--

Abruptly she cut herself off, unwilling to finish the sentence. If she had, she realized, she would have said,
I am, too,
and she told herself once again that she had no reason to be. She reminded herself that he had every right--every right in the world--to be a bit temperamental, and the worst thing she could do was not grant him that prerogative.

"We stayed at the fort with the moacs and the brunettes--the buffalo soldiers--and I wouldn't speak at first, except to my children. I wouldn't even talk to the scouts who could speak my language. What would you expect? These people had fired the bullets that drove my husband into the river where he died."

VERONICA ROWE (FORMERLY POPPING TREES),

WPA INTERVIEW,

MARCH 1938

*

Phoebe

By Sunday afternoon the snow had stopped and the roads were cleared, and she went to the discount department store in Saint Johnsbury to look at baby clothing and cribs. She was playing, really, because it was still so very early, but she told herself the coming year was all about education and preparation, and it couldn't hurt to begin to familiarize herself with the latch mechanisms on cribs (learning, of course, which would be the easiest to operate with one hand), and to start thinking about the sorts of mobiles she would hang in the nursery (though where that nursery would be and what it would look like were still unknown and almost unimaginable). When an older woman in one of the store's blue smocks asked her if she needed any assistance, she grew slightly uncomfortable because she realized she was wearing neither a wedding band nor an engagement ring, but she didn't need any help and the salesperson didn't stay long.

When she left the store it was barely two o'clock, and the low winter sun was beginning to break through the clouds. There were even small patches of blue starting to appear in the west.

She knew that Terry's mother lived in this town, and she remembered that he'd mentioned she lived near the courthouse and the Fairbanks Museum. Church Street, she thought he had said. She pulled the map from the glove compartment of her tired little Corolla and found the street easily. If she could be sure that all the sidewalks had been shoveled by now, she would have walked there, but the city must have gotten sixteen or seventeen inches of snow altogether, and so she decided she'd be better off driving. She had no real plan--she didn't even know what color the house was--but this was the street on which the father of her child had grown up. The street the baby's grandmother lived on even now. Driving slowly down the road would be a bit like looking at cribs: innocuous fun that was also, in some way, educational. She'd learn a bit more about the background of the child inside her. Its roots, so to speak. She considered whether her behavior might also be viewed as a distant cousin of stalking, but she knew she was pretty harmless. In reality, she decided, she was just killing time on a Sunday afternoon.

She drove carefully around the trailer-sized drifts of snow in the parking lot and started up the hill toward the mannered section of the city. Since Terry had grown up near the courthouse and the museum, he'd probably lived in one of those stately Victorian behemoths. Some were more run-down than others, and some were downright ramshackle, but once they had all been very elegant.

Church Street looked a bit like a Christmas card from the 1940s, because everyone had pulled their cars into their driveways, garages, and little carriage barns so the plows could get through. The maples and hemlocks that lined the residential street were heavy with snow, further reinforcing in her mind the idea that the road was a place out of time. She noted that the two- and three-story houses sat close to the road and didn't have a whole lot of land, but some had wrought-iron fences and each seemed a bit like a private enclave. She saw that a few of the properties still carried themselves with the grandeur of their early days.

It was clear to her instantly which houses were most likely to have children, because those were the ones that already had snowmen and snow forts in the front or the side yards, and sleds, toboggans, or cross-country skis lined up along the porch.

She slowed when she heard children laughing, and she rolled down her window to listen. There, at the end of the street, a snowball fight was in progress, and there must have been eight or nine children involved, none older than eleven or twelve. In their parkas and hoods it was hard to tell which were the boys and which were the girls, but she had brothers and she guessed by the way the combatants were hurling the snow that most of the group was male.

She paused, her motor idling, the only car on the road. She envisioned Terry throwing snowballs on this street. Russell, too. Maybe in the very section where the small war was occurring right now. She imagined Russell surrounding a small rock of ice with snow, and then claiming innocence when he gave someone a black eye or bruised cheek. She imagined Terry trying to whip the lad into shape, and then just giving up.

There was one house in particular that showed no signs of small children and looked slightly weary: It was gray but the paint was peeling, and the clapboards along the porches were in desperate need of repair. She decided this was probably the home of a widow. Perhaps even Terry's mom. She parked her car against the sidewalk before it, pulling up smack against the snow that had been pushed off the road, and watched it for a long moment. She looked at the windows, trying to guess which was Terry's bedroom--assuming, of course, this was even the correct home--and she was surprised when a vision crept into her head: She was sitting on a sofa inside that house with her little baby in her lap, and placing the infant's minuscule fingers into its grandmother's hand. She wondered if she was concocting this fantasy--if she was on this street, in fact--because her own family had been so monumentally unsupportive on Christmas Day.

The door of the house opened and an older woman with curly sand-colored hair--dyed, she decided--ventured out onto the porch. She stood in her cardigan sweater, her arms wrapped around her chest, and seemed to be studying the car to see if she recognized it or knew the driver.

Her instinct was to slam the car into drive and pull away fast, but she didn't want to frighten the woman. Maybe this really was Terry's mom, maybe not. Either way, she didn't want to scare her. And so she left the motor running and climbed from the seat and called out, I'm looking for the best way back to the interstate. I think I've gotten a little lost.

The woman nodded and smiled, and started down the walk to the car.

WHEN SHE TOLD her ob-gyn she was pregnant, the woman made sure that Phoebe knew what to eat and how to take care of herself, but she said that she didn't really need to come in for an examination until she was a little further along. They scheduled an appointment for the middle of February, when she would be just about through the first trimester.

Though she figured she knew the basics--no more long-necks at the bar, plenty of spinach, lots of rest--she concluded that it couldn't hurt to do a little more research, and so on Monday afternoon after work she drove directly from the general store to a bookshop in Newport. There she picked out a pair of books that offered both practical advice and time lines that chronicled how the baby inside her would grow and her body would change.

Her father was still barely speaking to her, and so at dinner that night she told him she was seriously considering having the baby at home. In her bedroom. She wasn't, but she wanted to get a rise out of him, and she did. He picked up his plate with the beef stew she had made the day before after returning from Saint Johnsbury, and he went into the living room to eat his dinner in front of the television news.

In truth she might have had her baby at home if she had a husband and her very own house. But she had neither, and so in her mind a home birth wasn't an option.

When she was alone she reached into the shopping bag, opened one of her two books on the kitchen table, and started to read as she ate.

THE NEXT MORNING she threw up for the first time. Somehow she got to the general store and managed to open its doors and sell the first customers their coffee and cigarettes, but as soon as Frank arrived--about a quarter to eight that day--she disappeared into the small bathroom in the back of the shop. When she emerged she told Frank she wasn't feeling well and had to go home, and even in the dim light of the store in the dead of winter she must have looked green, because Frank asked her if she'd gotten a flu shot that autumn.

She tried to keep down the saltines she had placed in the front seat of her car for exactly this sort of emergency, but she hadn't a prayer and she threw up again on the road halfway back to her father's house. She kicked snow--brown now from car exhaust and the sand the plows sprinkled--onto the vomit before climbing back behind the driver's seat and soldiering on.

Mid-morning she felt a little better. A little less nauseous. But even in her bed with the door closed she could feel her father's contempt. He certainly didn't want her to get an abortion, but he couldn't understand how in the world she could have gotten herself into this situation in the first place.

On the nightstand by her bed was another letter from her college friend Shauna, her old roommate who had moved to Santa Fe. She reread the letter to take her mind off her father, and lost herself in her friend's pictures of the desert, Anasazi ruins, and her young son creating a soap bubble the size of a beanbag chair at the local children's museum.

She put the photos back in the envelope and found herself wishing that she'd never told Terry she was pregnant, because then she would not have seen him again. Each time they'd been together, she'd found herself more attracted to him--and this, she knew, was not a good thing. Not a good thing at all. What was it they'd said to each other on Christmas Eve, right after they discovered that they both liked to hike? She'd asked, half-kidding, Are we getting to know each other? and he'd answered, Yes, I think we are, and the realization had made them both sit quite still for a long quiet moment.

She hoped wherever he was that morning he was happy and well. She knew she shouldn't see him again, but that didn't stop her from thinking about him.

"Rule number five: They are to look white soldiers and white civilians in the eyes when they speak to them. They are to stand tall."

SERGEANT GEORGE ROWE,

TENTH REGIMENT, UNITED STATES CAVALRY,

LETTER TO HIS BROTHER IN PHILADELPHIA,

NOVEMBER 18, 1873

*

Alfred

He sat on the bed before breakfast with his headset over his ears and a new CD in the small player on the mattress beside him. He thumbed slowly through the pages of one of Terry and Laura's photo albums, and thought how different the bed felt to him now that he knew it had been Megan's and this room had once belonged to her. Hillary, Laura had said, had slept in the other room--the room that he heard referred to now as the guest room. They'd chosen this room for him, she'd added, because it was sunnier.

It was the Monday after Christmas and he hadn't heard from Schuyler Jackman or Joe Langford since school closed for the Christmas holiday. He'd spent part of Thursday with Tim and he'd thought there was a chance he might have heard from him at some point over the weekend, but Tim hadn't called, either. He knew Tim was in town--he was pretty sure Schuyler and Joe were around, too, for that matter--and he didn't believe his schoolmate had any cousins visiting who might be monopolizing his time.

In truth, of course, he hadn't taken the initiative and phoned any of the children he knew from his class, either. Once he'd come close to calling Tim, but it was a Sunday and Tim's father might answer, and the two times he'd run into the man, he came away feeling bad about himself. The man worked for a bank up in Burlington, and the first time they'd met he was working on some kind of paperwork at the kitchen table, and Mr. Acker--tall, wiry, but, like Terry, in pretty good shape for a grown-up--quickly turned the documents over when he wandered into the room to get a drink of water. The other time, while waiting for Laura to pick him up to bring him home, Alfred noticed that Mr. Acker's hunting rifle was gone from the cabinet in the front hall where it was usually kept. Deer season hadn't begun yet, and, only mildly curious at best, he asked Tim where the gun was. The other boy grew uncomfortable and said something about his dad moving it whenever kids came over to play. He could tell instantly that Tim was lying: The boy's father only removed the weapon when one certain kid came over to play, and that child was clearly the foster kid living up at the Sheldons. The black foster kid.

He wanted to tell Tim to tell his father that he shouldn't waste his time hiding his gun. If he wanted, he had an armory at his disposal: Terry was a state trooper, remember? But he'd kept his mouth shut, because it didn't make sense at the time to anger the closest thing he had to a friend in this town.

He told himself it was possible that Tim and the other boys had all gone snowboarding at one of the ski resorts today, and he'd hear from them tomorrow or the next day. If that was the case, it made sense that no one had called, because he didn't have a snowboard and had never even been to a ski mountain. Besides, he was supposed to stick around this afternoon because Louise was going to drop by sometime around lunch. He hadn't seen her since early November, and so she'd offered to take him into Durham or Middlebury for pizza. Maybe they'd even go to a movie. He'd said that was fine, though he didn't really care. He knew that basically she just wanted some time alone with him so she could see how he was doing and what he thought of Terry and Laura. When she got to Cornish, he figured he'd see if she'd prefer doing what he really wanted, which was simply to have a grilled cheese and a cup of canned tomato soup with Laura, and then the two of them would go see the horse. They could have all the privacy they wanted in the Heberts' barn while he groomed Mesa, and she could ask him all the questions she liked.

He placed the photo album on the foot of his bed, clipped his CD player to his belt, and went to the closet to get his very own pictures. He'd almost shared them with Laura the day after Christmas, but decided he wasn't quite ready yet. He wasn't sure whether he should remind her that he'd once been friends with Tien, because then she'd remember the time he'd gotten so lonely and bored that he decided to thumb his way up to Burlington. That was stupid, and he thought of Sergeant Rowe's rules for his men. Rule number two: Think. Use your head. Moreover, he knew that Laura despised Digger, and didn't understand at all the way the older boy had looked out for him, or that he'd been able to trust Digger the way he could no adult. He imagined himself showing the pictures to Laura someday soon, however, and telling her all about the different kids--and, yes, grown-ups--he'd met and lived with in his life.

His photo album was hidden in the back of his closet, with the food he had stored through the autumn and early winter, underneath a small pile of bedding and a quilt that Laura kept there. He hadn't checked his cache in over two weeks, and he figured he should familiarize himself with what he had--just in case. He didn't believe there were any plans to move him someplace else soon, but the fact that Louise was coming for one of her visits was a disturbing reminder of the itinerant nature of his life.

And so he lined up the food in rows on the floor between the closet and the bed, squatted before it like a baseball catcher, and surveyed what was there. It took up as much space as a throw rug, and he was pleased with what he saw. He actually had more than he could ever get out of the house when the time came, so he began to prioritize what he would take. The small bags of popcorn, the packages of Twinkies, and the canned peaches were definitely keepers. The cereal, on the other hand, would stay here because he didn't really like cereal dry and you could never be sure that the next house would have whole milk or even two percent. If you went to a place where the grown-ups were older, you had to expect skim, and he had never enjoyed that watery, tasteless, almost translucent blue milk.

Suddenly he felt a hand on his shoulder and he jumped forward, falling to his knees on the wrapped sponge cakes and corn chips. He turned and saw Terry in his uniform--complete with his winter parka, campaign hat, and gloves--towering above him. He realized he hadn't heard the door open because he was listening to his music.

He reached up to take off his earphones, and as he did Terry bent over and ripped the cord from his hands--detaching it from the CD player on his belt--and flung the headset across the room. It bounced against the bureau with his riding helmet, and fell onto the floor beside the wastebasket.

You want to tell me what you're doing with all this? he asked, his voice angrier than Alfred had heard it since well before Halloween--since, he guessed, the day he'd wandered off at the orchard.

He looked at the food and the few utensils he'd taken--a can opener, a spoon, a pretty dull knife--and wasn't sure what he could say that might make this explicable or calm the man down. He tried to think, wondering what Terry would say if he explained that he always had a small stash--lots of kids did--just in case they moved you on without a whole lot of notice, and he was about to start talking when Terry spoke first.

You were planning on leaving, weren't you? You were planning to up and go. That's it, isn't it?

No!

You were going to run away again, weren't you?

Again? I--

Do you have any idea how lucky you are? Do you have any idea how much Laura cares about you, or how hurt she'd be if you ran away?

I wasn't going to run away. I just--

You just took enough food to keep your stomach from growling for four or five days. Empty your pockets.

What?

He quietly pushed the bedroom door shut so Laura couldn't hear them, and then sat on the bed and faced him.

I told you to empty your pockets, Terry said.

There's nothing in my pockets!

Good, then you have nothing to hide.

He considered standing perfectly still, wondering if Terry was mad enough to hit him. He'd never paddled him before, but there was always a first time.

I can't wait all morning, I have to get to work. You can either turn your pockets inside out or I can do it for you.

He reached into his blue jeans and pulled out the white cotton pockets so Terry could see they were empty. Not even a used tissue or a piece of wrapped chewing gum.

Thank you. Now turn around.

He did, and then he felt Terry's hands on his bottom and for a brief moment he feared the man was going to try and touch him there--he knew other kids, boys as well as girls, who regularly had to give it up for the men in their homes--but then he understood Terry was just making sure he had nothing in his back pockets, either.

Now, I'm not about to tear apart your bedding because I don't have the time, and I don't want Laura to know about this. You understand? She would be devastated, and that woman does not need another disappointment. Not now, not ever. So I want you to look me in the eye and tell me: Have you taken any money?

No, sir.

Sir? Since when do you call me sir?

He stood there and tried to figure out what he should say. After all, he'd only called him sir because he was trying to be respectful, he was trying to settle the man down.

I call people
sir,
Terry said. I do that.

He swallowed and blinked, because he had begun to fear he might cry. And he wouldn't do that, not now, that was for sure. The worst thing was that he understood his eyes weren't close to welling with tears because he was scared of Terry, or because the grown-up had misunderstood completely why he'd taken a little food. Rather, he realized with a pang that almost made him shudder, this might mean he wouldn't get to stay here much longer. And unlike most places where he'd lived, here was a spot where--despite the quiet or his lack of friends or what people like Tim's dad may have thought of him--he wouldn't mind staying. He didn't want to leave Laura or Paul or the horse.

Still, he wouldn't cry, he wouldn't do it. He straightened his back and stood as tall as he could and looked Terry squarely in the eye.

When a moment had passed and he hadn't opened his mouth--Really, what was he supposed to say in response to Terry's apparent outburst over the fact that he'd called him
sir?
What
could
he say?--Terry shook his head. You think you are one tough hombre, he said, and you can hide behind those tight lips of yours. Well, I promise you, young man, I am tougher. Now, I am going to trust that you are telling the truth and you haven't taken one penny from Laura and me. Okay?

Okay.

I am not going to search this place. But when I come home from work, I will expect that every single crumb of food is back in the kitchen, and that Laura is not one tiny bit the wiser. You got that?

Yes.

Spoons and knives, too, please.

Okay.

And tonight, maybe, you and I will have a little talk. I honestly don't know what it is that you think you want, but I'm telling you: You have found Shangri-la here. Right here. It doesn't get any better than this, let me assure you, but it does get a lot worse. You know that, son, I know you do.

Yes.

The man pushed himself off the bed and picked the headset up off the floor. He handed it to him on his way to the bedroom door and then paused with his fingers on the knob. Now go on downstairs and eat your breakfast with Laura, he said. And do me one favor: Don't bring that headset with you, okay? It's just not polite.

He then pounded quickly down the steps to the first floor, told Laura that he was off--his voice surprisingly normal, Alfred thought from the top of the stairs--and closed the front door behind him.

"I didn't want to go. You know that expression, the devil you know? And so I finally started to talk, and I told them I was only at the river to wash clothes. I guess that's why they made me a laundress."