The Buffalo Soldier (27 page)

SERGEANT GEORGE ROWE,

TENTH REGIMENT, UNITED STATES CAVALRY,

UNDATED LETTER TO HIS BROTHERIN PHILADELPHIA

*

The Heberts

A fine blue mist was emerging from the horse's nostrils as he ran his hands down the muscles--as wide as a tire, he thought--that lined Mesa's neck. She turned toward him, her ears pricked, and he slipped her a piece of carrot the size of his thumb. He decided she was happy. She liked him and she liked the boy, and she was warm and well-fed. It wasn't a bad life.

Beside him, Alfred was putting the shovel and the pitchfork back against the near wall in the barn. It was late Wednesday afternoon, and the winter sun had just about set. They would give Mesa her feed--a coarse mix tonight, so she'd eat a little more slowly and give her digestion a bit of a rest--and then they'd be done for the day. That social worker had watched Alfred ride and was now back across the street with Laura. He understood she was staying for dinner.

You know something? Alfred said, and he turned. He noted that sometimes Alfred used the same construction his female students had used when they wanted to tell him something: Begin the statement in the form of a needlessly deferential question. He wondered if it was because the boy was young or because he'd grown up the responsibility of so many adults who frequently didn't care about what he might have to say.

Yes?

In that book you gave me, it said the Indians used to get mad at the buffalo soldiers because they couldn't be scalped.

What?

They didn't have hair an Indian could grab, so they couldn't be scalped.

He tried to read the boy's face, but it was almost expressionless. If an Apache or a Comanche wanted a scalp, he said, I tend to doubt he'd be dissuaded by the difficulty posed by the length of a black soldier's hair.

I'm just telling you what the book said, Alfred went on. I can show you.

Oh, I don't doubt you--or the book.

It was written in a newspaper article.

Ah, I see. No doubt it was a white newspaper, he said, and he explained as best he could his belief that whoever had written the article must have been deeply threatened by the presence of the buffalo soldiers on the Great Plains, and this was a sarcastic dig at their expense.

Still, Alfred insisted, it couldn't have been easy to scalp them.

I don't imagine it was easy to scalp anybody.

Sometimes I wonder...

Yes?

Sometimes I wonder why the Indians and the buffalo soldiers didn't band together.

Against the white soldiers?

I guess.

He handed Alfred the two remaining carrots he had left in the pocket of his parka and watched him feed them to the horse. Mesa nuzzled the boy's palm and then chewed with great enthusiasm. Horses didn't really smile, but you could sometimes see how they felt in their eyes, and he thought Mesa's always brightened around the boy.

It's natural to wonder about that now. It really wasn't an issue then.

I just look at a man like Sergeant Rowe--

A buffalo soldier?

Uh-huh. I look at all he put up with, and I just don't get it.

Was he born a slave?

Yes.

He was used to much worse.

That doesn't make it right, the boy said.

No. I suppose it doesn't.

When the horse had finished chewing, she stretched her head out across the stall gate and started nosing against Alfred's stomach and chest in the hope that there might be a pocket there with more carrots.

That's all I have, girl, the boy murmured. Sorry.

He wasn't sure, but he had the sense that Alfred was bringing up the book in part because he didn't want to leave. He'd noticed before that when the child wanted to remain after he was done with his chores--which was usually perfectly fine--he'd bring up a variety of subjects: Why horses didn't eat meat. Why the mane always seemed to fall to the right side of the horse's neck. The regulation that a buffalo soldier couldn't weigh more than 155 pounds. He guessed Alfred was still hanging around because he was apprehensive about the fact that the social worker was at Terry and Laura's house that very moment, and would be staying for dinner. Clearly something was up, and the boy had to know it: It wasn't simply the idea that Louise was back for the second time in three days after having not set foot in Cornish in almost two months. It was the reality that she was back because of whatever had occurred between Terry and the boy early Monday.

He hadn't spoken to Terry since the trooper phoned him the other morning with his odd accusations about the child, and asked him not to allow Alfred to spend any time alone with the horse. He should have called him back, and he wished now that he had. Maybe he could have reassured him that Alfred had no plans to run away, and that the boy certainly wasn't a thief. But he'd been taken aback by the phone call, and he'd decided that Terry needed some distance from his fight with the boy before he could think reasonably.

And now, suddenly, it was late Wednesday afternoon. Early evening, almost.

Louise is a nice young woman, he said, standing beside Alfred and the horse. I like her.

Uh-huh.

You tired?

A little.

You seem a little tired today. You rode fine, I thought, but I could tell you were a bit tuckered. You do anything special this morning?

He shrugged.

Just hung out, huh?

The boy nodded silently, his eyes fixed firmly on the horse before him, and so Paul continued, This dinner tonight. You want me to be there?

How?

He thought for a moment. Getting himself invited would be easy, he could do it with any one of a number of small white lies: He could have Emily call Laura and say the furnace was on the fritz, and she would most certainly invite them over for dinner. He could ask Alfred for his gloves right that second, bring them by his house early that evening, and then act surprised when he saw the company. Maybe that wouldn't guarantee that he could hang around for supper, but he could certainly get in a few good words for the boy in front of Terry, and make dinner a bit easier on the lad. He and Emily could even, he realized, simply drop in bearing whatever it was that Emily had been baking that afternoon. Pumpkin bread, maybe.

That was an advantage to being old. Older, anyway. You could drop in on people without calling first, on the pretext that you were merely
visiting
and this was how people did it in the past.

He--he and Emily, he corrected himself--should probably just wander by, he finally decided. He didn't want to give Alfred the impression that he approved of lying, even if the lie was small and the cause was just. Still, he wanted Alfred to know that he would see him later on in the evening and so he said, Don't worry about how. You and I are friends and we're neighbors, and this is just what friends and neighbors do.

He could see Alfred was squinting, and he wondered if the boy was merely playing some game with himself--
How tightly can I close my eyes and still see? What does a horse's nostril look like when my eyes are open only a crack?
--or whether the kid was on the verge of tears and trying now to make absolutely certain that not a one ever crept down the side of his face.

"The girls got better and I went back to work in the laundry. I didn't go into town, and so the only women I saw were the wives of the white officers, the other laundresses, and the prostitutes. I really didn't have many friends."

VERONICA ROWE (FORMERLY POPPING TREES),

WPA INTERVIEW,

MARCH 1938

*

Terry

He could argue that this was either very good luck or very bad, though he had to admit he was more pleased by the news than he thought he should be. He certainly hadn't expected such a small piece of good fortune, but there it was, tangible despite the reality that for the moment it was nothing more than a string of words surfing through space on radio waves. He'd been in his cruiser about thirty seconds--he was barely beyond the parking lot beside the barracks--when the dispatcher radioed him with the news that there had been a B and E at a private residence in Salisbury. He was on his way home, but the night shift was already committed to a car accident on Route 74 and a very messy domestic affair in Starksboro, and since he was on the road and was a shift supervisor, he would need to fill the breach. It didn't sound like a big deal (oh, it would be big to the family who lived there, no doubt about that, but in the greater scheme of things it was hard to get worked up over a stolen CD player and TV set), but it meant that he wouldn't be home for dinner. He'd have to linger over the photographs of the stolen items, do a lot of dusting for prints. He'd need to settle the family down, which would certainly take some time since, after all, a stranger had been in their house and gone through their things, and then there would be plenty of paperwork to fill out.

He probably wouldn't get home much before eight. Make that eight-thirty. Maybe even eight forty-five if the family needed some major hand-holding, and he did the right thing and stayed.

No, not
maybe
eight forty-five.
Definitely
eight forty-five. Who was he kidding? For better or worse, this meant that by the time he walked in his house, the social worker would be gone for the night.

A last-minute stay of execution, he thought to himself, though not without a small pang of self-loathing.

IT WAS ACTUALLY nine o'clock by the time he got home. Laura and the boy were in the den watching a video Laura had rented for them at some point that day, and they were both dressed for bed. Alfred was lying on the floor in his pajamas and a sweatshirt, and Laura was on the couch in her nightgown and a bathrobe. Her hair was damp, she'd already showered.

The cats, he saw, were asleep by the woodstove.

He squatted briefly beside Alfred and patted the boy on his shoulder, and then collapsed on the couch beside Laura. He kissed her on her cheek, but she didn't offer him even a trace of a smile. He realized he was in for a pretty chilly night if only because he was so late, and he knew he deserved it. Still, the idea didn't bother him the way it would have once, and as he sat back against the pillows, he tried to understand why. Was it simply because he'd already had sex that day, so he didn't care whether he got lucky or not? No, of course not, he wasn't that driven by hormones and need. At least he hoped he wasn't. But if that wasn't it, then what was it? Was he really falling so completely out of love with this woman he'd married--this woman beside him right now--that he didn't give a damn that she was pissed at him? In some ways, that would actually be considerably worse.

The truth was, she'd been pretty cold to him for a couple of days now. He didn't believe Alfred had said anything to her about the conversation they had Monday morning--certainly he hadn't as of Monday night when he spent some time with the boy and made sure that every single canned peach and Twinkie was right back where it belonged--but he couldn't be sure.

He turned from the television to look at Laura, aware that he hadn't a clue what they were watching. He saw that Laura was already staring at him, and he tried to read exactly how angry she was by her face. Very, he decided, and he started to speak:

You should have seen the mess this nice family had waiting for them when they walked in their house tonight. Mom and two boys, coming straight home from hockey practice. The place was a disaster, it was like a tornado had gone through the living room, he said, hoping sympathy--for him, for the victims--might defuse the ticking bomb inside Laura. Real nice people, he went on. The Danyows. Got a dog from the shelter a couple years ago. You might even remember them if you saw their faces.

She nodded. Paul and Emily were here for dinner, she said, her voice so calm it was absolutely impenetrable. Louise, too. Of course.

Yeah, I'm real sorry I wasn't here. How come Paul and Emily were? he asked. He wasn't exactly sure why, but the idea that the Heberts had been in this house with Laura disturbed him. He wondered what Paul might have said to her about the run-in he and Alfred had had Monday morning, if anything, and whether the older man might have shared with Laura some inkling of what Terry now knew about the boy.

They just dropped by. So I invited them to stay.

He smiled. Good, good, he murmured, careful to keep his own voice steady. Then: So how was Louise?

She leaned forward on the couch and told Alfred that they didn't want to disturb him so they were going to go in the kitchen to talk--catch up on their days was how she put it--and the boy offered to pause the movie so she wouldn't miss anything.

No, you keep watching, she said to him. You can fill me in on what I miss.

She rose and Terry stood up to follow her, stepping carefully over the child on the floor. Suddenly he was exhausted, and he decided he wanted to be anywhere in the world that moment but where he was.

SHE SAT DOWN at her place at the kitchen table and folded her hands together on the dark wood. He started to sit down beside her, but he realized he would be better off if he remained on his feet--more alert, less vulnerable, in command--and so he opened the refrigerator and got out the container of milk and the makings for a sandwich. He wasn't hungry because he'd grabbed a hamburger and fries at the lone fast-food restaurant in Middlebury after leaving the Danyows, but Laura didn't need to know that. As far as she was concerned, he'd come straight home after leaving the burglary site.

It sounds like you and Alfred had a nice day today.

We had a fine day. Fine enough, anyway.

He stared at the mayonnaise he was spreading on the potato bread, his body facing her as a courtesy though his eyes were focused elsewhere.

Louise get to watch him ride?

Uh-huh.

Paul says he's good. That true?

I think so.

Were you and Paul there when Louise went to see him on the horse?

Paul was. I was here making dinner.

There was a slight edge to her response. It wasn't so much, he thought, that she felt put upon for making dinner, as she was annoyed that he hadn't gotten home on time.

I really am sorry that work intervened, he said as he started to layer the sliced turkey on the bread. What did you all talk about? What did Louise have to say about the lad?

Cut the lad crap. Please.

He looked up. Pardon me? he asked, stalling.

I said to stop calling him
lad.
It sounds condescending.

I don't mean it that way.

Then how do you mean it? You don't say it with even a teeny drop of affection.

He laid the knife down on the counter, careful not to drip mayonnaise on the Formica, and when he looked at her, he saw for just the briefest second the shape of Hillary's eyes--their absolute intensity--when his daughter would be holding a small bat in T-ball. Dribbling the soccer ball down the field. Fighting with Megan over...over anything. And while he understood their conversation was about Alfred, he didn't believe that the boy in the next room was in reality the issue. She was angry with him, and he recognized it was because for the last month, ever since Phoebe told him she was pregnant, things had been different between them. Tense. Everything between them had become a small annoyance.

No, that wasn't accurate. With the exception of November--those few weeks when he was trying to make things right after sleeping with Phoebe the first time--everything between them had been a small annoyance for two years. Two years and two months. Either she was a catatonic who couldn't get out of bed--and who could blame her!--or she was angry or...

And that was just her. He understood well his own desire to find any excuse imaginable to be anyplace but this house with its ghosts--exuberant banshees one moment, self-contained spirits the next, the shape of the eyes of this woman before him enough to bring them both back--of his dead daughters everywhere. Everywhere! She could take down the fucking photographs, they could box up the toys and books and cart them up to the attic, but you couldn't make them go away so you didn't miss them so much you just grew ornery and short with whoever was present.

Which, often enough, was going to be your wife. Even if some days she was delicate and easily hurt.

I asked you a question, she said. I'm waiting.

He tried to recapture what they were talking about, and he knew it had something to do with Alfred. The way he'd just called the boy
lad.

He closed his eyes for a brief second because he needed a moment without seeing even a trace of Hillary or Megan before opening his mouth, and then answered softly--the kid was, after all, only two rooms away in the den--Look. I'm sorry. I'm sorry for how I've behaved, I'm sorry for the fact I've been in a foul mood. You know that, right? I'm sorry, really I am. But you know what? It isn't working. I wish to God it was, but it--

It? What do you mean by it?

He held up his hands because he honestly wasn't sure, his palms open and flat. Everything. The boy. Us. This house--

This house? Suddenly you want to move, too?

Too?

Too. You said this house isn't working, either. Like Alfred. And us.

He wondered if he could finish this, and he didn't believe that he could. Not after the deaths of their daughters. But didn't marriages often crumble when a child passed away? Hadn't Laura herself read that in some article she'd come across about grieving, or been told it by some self-proclaimed expert on the subject? What, really, was he protecting her from by not telling her about Alfred and their exchange Monday morning, or about Phoebe and the fact that they were now linked by far more than a drink in a bar? What was he trying to preserve? Their marriage? It was over--or, he told himself, it should be, because he feared he might want another woman more than the woman he'd married, and didn't that say it all? And as for keeping it together for the kids, there were none! Not anymore! If he had a responsibility to any child, it was to the one Phoebe was carrying, not the boy watching TV in the den. That poor, troubled kid was already wrecked anyway, he was already well beyond anything a couple as beaten up as Terry and Laura Sheldon could offer.

She was waiting for him to resume speaking, and spoke herself only when it seemed clear to her that he couldn't decide what he was supposed to say next. You still think I'm a basket case, she said, and you don't want to live with one anymore. Well, I can't blame you. But you know what? I'm not going to lose that boy because of you. I don't know exactly what happened Monday morning, but--

What did Paul tell you?

I talked to Alfred, too, so--

See? That's what I mean. I asked the boy not to--

He told me because I confronted him. And the reason I confronted him was because of what you told Paul.

Well, then, here are the facts from the only grown-up witness who was present. Fact one: He had taken--

Food! He had taken some food! And if he'd been our biologic child or even our adopted child, you wouldn't have considered it stealing! Then you would have just seen it as a kid taking some food upstairs to his room. But because he's Alfred, it's something else! It's theft, it's--

He was planning to run away. Face it.

He was planning to do no such thing. I talked to Louise, and she--

She doesn't live here. How many times has she seen the kid in the last two or three months? Twice? Maybe three times counting tonight? She doesn't--

She does know him. And she knows the behavior. He was only doing what lots of kids in his situation do. He was getting ready in case he got moved again.

Here's the pattern, Laura: You steal something small. Then you steal something a little bigger. It's progressive. You just know he's taken dollar bills out of our wallets, you just know--

He has a job. He doesn't need to do that. If you had any involvement with him at all, you would have figured that out.

And there are--excuse me, were--there were guns in this house. It seems to me, I had--

I think you should leave.

What?

Go. Leave. I think you should leave, and we can talk in the morning.

Tomorrow's New Year's Eve, he said, unsure what he was driving at.

That's fine.

He was aware of a low rumble--a murmur, actually, just loud enough to muffle (though not quiet completely) the sounds all around him. He realized it was the sound of shock. He'd experienced it once before, when he was in the passenger seat of Henry Labarge's cruiser, when the man was driving him home from deer camp after dropping on him the bombshell that his daughters were dead. The engine, the radio, the occasional moments when Henry would open his mouth on the long drive back to Cornish and tell him something were all noises that had sounded to him like they were muted by a thin sheet of water. As if his ears were just below the surface in the bath.