The Buffalo Soldier (35 page)

VERONICA ROWE (FORMERLY POPPING TREES),

WPA INTERVIEW,

MARCH 1938

*

Phoebe

Her skin, she saw in the rearview mirror, had an almost marmoreal whiteness, and the first thing she wondered was why the air bag hadn't inflated. The second, following within seconds, was how in the name of God she could be alive. She glanced again in the mirror and saw that the back of her car was a mass of spiked metal--the gold skin of her own Corolla, the black steel that must have sat beneath the backseats and between her exterior roof and the interior ceiling, and the navy blue shell of the car that had slammed into her vehicle and was pinning it now against a telephone pole.

The wind and the rain had seemed to have gotten louder, more vicious, but then she understood this was only because the back of her car was open and so the sound was no longer buffered by metal and glass. She realized she was cold, and she could see her breath.

She rolled her eyes to her left, and the other driver--a man, a heavyset fellow in a black-and-white woolen jacket with glasses that were askew on his face--was pushing open his own door. He wasn't more than a few yards from her because his car was entangled with hers, and then he was staggering to his feet in the snowbank. She could see his forehead was bleeding, a series of cherry spiderwebs that were pooling together just above those glasses, and for a long moment he stood right beside her, apparently oblivious to her presence. Before them another car was slowing, despite the ice on the road, and she saw its hazard lights starting to blink.

She watched the man press the palm of his hand against the congealing blood in his eyebrows, stare at his fingers for a moment, and then abruptly notice her. Instantly he went to her and pulled open her door--she was surprised at how easily he did it--and she felt the rain stinging her face.

Can you stand? he asked her. From that second car she saw another person approaching, a younger, smaller man with a mustache the color of hay.

She wanted to answer she could, of course, why couldn't she, but she was still so dumbstruck by the fact that she was alive that she was incapable of opening her mouth.

Are you hurt? he asked now, adjusting his glasses, and the other man--a boy, really, he was no more than a teenage boy--was jabbering about whether they should touch her: He was saying he had a cousin on the rescue squad, and he had heard somewhere that you're not supposed to move someone if you think there's a spine or neck injury.

She looked down at her belly and her legs, and then she held her arms before her as if she were sleepwalking. Actually, the only part of her that did hurt was her neck, but it was a soreness only, nothing that unduly concerned or alarmed her.

Maybe you shouldn't move, the man with the cuts on his forehead was saying. I've got a cell phone, I'll call for help.

She turned to talk to him, concluding that she really was uninjured and there was every reason to believe that her baby was, too. She wondered what would have happened if the front grill of her car had been involved and the air bag had exploded after all: She would probably be about the same as she was now, but her child? She couldn't believe the small creature would have survived that impact, and she felt herself shuddering.

You're shivering, the man said. I think there's a blanket in my trunk. Want me to go get it?

No, I think I'm okay, she said. She decided she would have a stiff neck, yes, and though she had perhaps come within inches of being killed--if the car of this man leaning in toward her now had slammed into the front seat of the Corolla instead of the back, if her own car had angled differently into the telephone pole, if the vehicle had flipped onto its side or been toppled over--the truth was that she was okay. She was going to be fine. She dangled her legs out the car and then started to stand, swaying for a brief moment, and allowed the two men to each take an arm and lead her to the teenager's car with its blinking red lights. There she sat in his backseat, looked out through the window at the spot where she had come so close to dying, and--much to her surprise--realized that her teeth had started to chatter.

"I had my baby, and two years later I had another. They were both boys. I raised our children and George worked with his brother. They built houses. That was our life together, and mostly it was very good."

VERONICA ROWE (FORMERLY POPPING TREES),

WPA INTERVIEW,

MARCH 1938

*

Alfred

He stood on an upended piece of asphalt the size of the cruiser's long hood, and though he didn't believe he had a chance--he could see the great creases in the metal along the side of the vehicle--he tried to open the door beside the man. Twice Terry shook his head and murmured that it wasn't locked, but Alfred knew he couldn't see where the roof of the car had collapsed onto the top of the door when the cruiser toppled into the ravine. The vehicle was not merely positioned like a rocket before liftoff, as if it were driving up an impossibly steep hill, it was flipped onto its roof. Still he pulled, struggling as much with the looking-glass nature of the angle as he did with the battered door, because already the water was lapping midway up the rear window and it was clear that he couldn't leave the man alone in the car. He could ride fast, but if the water kept rising, Terry would drown before he could return with help--assuming there was even a way for help to navigate the canyons in the road, which he didn't believe there was. How could the rescue vehicles in Cornish or Durham drive over those holes? The fact was they couldn't.

Finally he gave up and crabbed his way back up and over the front grill to the passenger side, and when he saw the way the shell had buckled--the door looked like the metal saucers some of the kids at the school used for sliding on the snow at recess--he tried pulling the handle only because there seemed little else he could do, and so he was surprised when the door gave just a bit. He tried again and this time it opened, and he was able to push it up into the air, the metal groaning above the water--both the water in the river and the water in the hole that was rolling in waves against the vehicle's exposed undercarriage--and there he held it open with his back.

Hello, Alfred, Terry murmured, his voice tired and weak, when he poked his head inside the car. The vehicle smelled of sweat, and it was almost as cold inside the cruiser as it was outside. I'd wave, he went on, but I can't really move my arms. I can move my fingers, but that's about it.

He saw Terry had managed to unclip his seat belt, but he'd been unable to draw the harness up and over his head and his shoulder, and the metal clip still rested in his lap. There was a ruby stain--a damp, viscous jellyfish--clinging to the right cuff of his jacket. He realized if the man's legs or his back were broken, too, there would be no way in the world he could help him.

He crawled inside and allowed the door to fall back against the frame, but he was careful to prevent it from clicking shut. Then he reached across the couch and lifted the belt over Terry's head, and though he tried to be gentle, the man winced. He saw a red mark on the trooper's forehead, just above his left eye. A bad bruise. Perhaps even a concussion.

I think my left shoulder's broken, he said softly, struggling for breath. And this arm--my right. The one that's been bleeding.

Can you walk?

I don't know. You alone?

He nodded.

How the hell did you get here?

I rode.

You rode. How 'bout that.

Terry, the water is--

The radio doesn't work, Terry said, cutting him off as if he hadn't heard him. I don't know if it's because the antenna's crushed or it's just this hollow we're in. Either way, I'm very glad for your company. I don't know how you found me, but it's nice to see--

We've got to move, Alfred told him. You've got to move. The water's getting higher, and I think it's going to come in the car.

Are you serious?

Yes, it's rising fast.

I think--

I know you're hurt, but we have to go now, he said, and he took Terry's right leg and lifted it over the ridge on the floor of the cruiser. When he looked at his hands, he saw there was blood on them, and Terry's green slacks weren't merely wet from the rain in which he'd been working throughout the day.

Don't worry, it's not from my leg, Terry said. It's from my arm. But my guess is the bleeding's stopped. I'd have bled out by now if it hadn't.

Can you slide over? Can you move your hips and slide?

I can, a bit. But feel free to pull, too. I think I'll need any help you can provide.

Okay, he agreed, and he put his arms around the man's waist and yanked him hard across the seat, and though Terry grimaced, he pulled him again, burying himself in the fabric that was wet with sweat and rainwater and blood. He tried not to jostle Terry's arms and shoulders, but he was aware that he was by the horrible way they flopped around his own shoulders like the rag-filled limbs of a Halloween straw man.

Terry groaned from the back of his throat, but Alfred didn't stop until he had pushed the door back open with his foot and was standing in the rain on the stones and the mangled remains of the pavement, with the trooper resting on his back at the very edge of the front couch. The man was shaking his head and shivering, and Alfred told him to crane his neck if he could and look down so he could see the water, within inches now of Alfred's boots, and the way whatever was blocking the current--ice, probably, but maybe there was a whole pile of collapsed asphalt and earth--was causing this hole to fill like a pond.

See it? he yelled over the sound of the storm. See it?

The man gazed at the water for a moment, and then back at Alfred.

Do you see it? he yelled again.

Terry bobbed his head.

I think it's coming in faster now than it was even a minute ago!

Then just go, little man--get out of here, move!

We've got--

Climb, go! I don't want you to drown in this hole!

We'll--

Go! Do as I say!

No!

Alfred, I won't argue with you about this. I--

I'm not leaving! he shouted, and he stared back at the trooper, unwavering. I'm not leaving without you, he said, his voice softer this time.

Terry closed his eyes for a brief second and then asked, Can you help me sit up? Maybe I can walk if you can help me up.

I can sit you up, he agreed, but it'll hurt.

I expect it will. But drowning would be no picnic, either.

And so although the man yelled once more, a short cry but loud, he reached under Terry's back and pulled him upright, and then watched as the trooper swung his legs over the side and out onto the wet ground, gasping with each exhalation. He held the door up and open like the hatchway into an attic so that Terry could duck underneath it and stand, and with the small, careful steps of a very old man start up the side of the ravine.

He let the cruiser's door fall shut and hiked up the slope behind him. He put his hand softly on the small of Terry's back, not so much pushing him as merely steadying him, and he wondered if he'd be able to get the man atop Mesa. He doubted it, but he guessed at this point it didn't really matter. He could find Terry a place in the nearby woods where there was some shelter from the rain, ride back to the village--ride into Durham, in fact, because that town was actually closer now--and let the grown-ups figure out the rest. He'd lead them back here if they wanted, but he was confident they would know what to do.

He imagined Laura was at the house by now since it was clear she hadn't taken this road home from the shelter, and he was glad he had left her a note.

Suddenly he was very, very tired, and the thought of drying off Mesa and bedding her down for the night was almost too much to bear.

"We didn't spend time with white people, and I never saw another Comanche. Once I was introduced to a woman who was a Hopi, but I had never met any of her people before. And a few blocks away there was a family of Arapaho Indians. But mostly we stayed with the Negroes. The white people didn't have any interest in us."

VERONICA ROWE (FORMERLY POPPING TREES),

WPA INTERVIEW,

MARCH 1938

*

Laura

YOUR LIFE IS
a mess,
she heard herself saying to Terry in her mind,
and you need to make some decisions.

Your life is a mess, but I still want you if...

Your life is a mess...

She watched her husband sleep, hours now from surgery and the railed gurney in which he had dozed in post-op, and listened to the wind outside the hospital window. It was no longer raining.

Soon after her daughters had died, someone in the bereavement group she'd gone to that one time told her that a child's death could be a real marriage breaker. The loss of two children, this woman suggested, could be especially destructive, particularly if she and Terry were the sort to grieve differently.

We were, she heard herself whisper now, we are, and she turned to see if Alfred had heard her. He hadn't. He, too, was asleep, curled up under a woolen blanket in the larger and more comfortable of the two cushioned chairs in the hospital room.

The hallway outside was quiet and dark. A patient in the next room had been watching TV, but now he'd turned the television set off for the night.

She watched his eyelids flicker and finalized her speech in her head:
It's really rather simple. I am going to adopt this little boy, and you can either be a part of our family or not. The case review is next week, it's up to you.

That, she decided, once and for all, was how she'd begin tomorrow when Terry was awake.

She stood up, hoping that whatever anesthetic- or analgesic-induced dream he was having was a respite from his pain and his memories and his guilt. She was about to wake Alfred so the two of them could go home when she saw Terry's lashes part and his eyes start to open. He looked up at her--unconsciously he was making a smacking sound with his mouth--and she went to him.

You're awake, she said softly, bending close.

He nodded.

It's very late, she added. Do you need anything?

He looked down at his arms, immobilized now after surgery, and shook his head. His eyes toured the room, landing for a long moment on Alfred, and then he stared up at her.

I'm sorry, he murmured, and when she sighed and said nothing, he repeated himself: I am so sorry. There was a slight shudder in his voice, and she wondered if it was due to exhaustion or the medication or the fact that he was still waking up.

We can talk in the morning, she told him.

I know I screwed up, and I just want you to know how sorry I am, he continued, his voice halting and broken. She placed her hands on either side of his face, and suddenly they were both silently crying.

"The men who fought the South--and the Southerners, too, of course--were always having reunions. Big parades every Memorial Day, it seemed. But not the Buffalos, I don't recall anyone organizing such a thing for them. Maybe we were too far east. It was only after the Great War ended that someone found him and asked him to ride in a car in a parade. He said sure, and he sat in this elegant open car with four Negroes even older than he was who had fought in Virginia with Ulysses S. Grant. It was cold and rainy and damp, and I teased him that he needed his gum blanket. He got sick--everyone was screaming, The flu, the flu!--but it wasn't the flu. It was only pneumonia. He was old, however, and so that's how he died."