The Buffalo Soldier (36 page)

VERONICA ROWE (FORMERLY POPPING TREES),

WPA INTERVIEW,

MARCH 1938

*

Phoebe

She called up one more time from the phone in the hospital lobby, and when there still wasn't an answer in his room, she decided she had nothing to lose. He might not be there, but apparently neither Laura nor Alfred were, either. Perhaps he'd be back any minute from wherever it was they had taken him.

She wasn't sure exactly what she would say to him, and on the drive into Burlington--in, of all things, her father's truck since her Corolla was about to become scrap metal--she had tried out different formulations in her head. And while they all would end with the news that she was finally going to leave Vermont, she wasn't sure whether she should share with him her belief that she was leaving in part because the two of them had nearly died forty-eight hours earlier, and in her opinion one would have to be pretty damn irreligious not to view that as an omen of some kind of magnitude.

She exited the elevator and followed the blue line that was painted on the tile floor, passing the crowded nurses' station and a small display of paintings that were apparently produced by the children in the pediatric ward on another floor of the hospital, and glanced at the numbers of the rooms until she reached his. Then, almost secretively, she glanced through the doorway in the event that the woman who was his wife and the boy who had rescued him were there after all. They weren't, he was alone in his bed, both his arms incapacitated: His right arm was in a splint from his elbow to his wrist, and his left was in a sling. There was a second bed in the room, but it was empty.

You can come in, he said to her. If you're worried about meeting Laura and Alfred, they're in town getting ice cream.

They don't have ice cream here? she said from the door frame.

Oh, they do. But the flavors are unimpressive and the fat content is low. It's a tad too healthy to be real ice cream.

She wandered slowly into the room and was astonished at how frail and docile he looked in his ivory hospital gown in his bed. His face was swollen and bruised, and she stood for a moment at the foot, afraid suddenly to get too close--as if they barely knew each other and were mere acquaintances.

How did you know I was here? she asked.

The phone rang a couple of times, and by the time I was able to wriggle myself across the bed and reach it, whoever was calling had hung up. You might recall that was your m.o. back in December when you wanted to reach me. And then, of course, you were hovering just now right outside the door.

She smiled. How do you feel?

I have mighty good drugs in me. Very solid painkillers, thank you very much. He wrinkled his nose and then added, I won't be running the roads for a little while. But I'm alive, and that's a good feeling.

You look okay. Better than I would have expected from the news. They said your shoulder was shattered and you'd broken an arm.

This, he said, motioning with his chin toward his left, is a fracture of the proximal humerus. The ball in my shoulder was broken when the door crumpled in. And then over here we have mid-shaft fractures of the radius and the ulna. I probably broke these when my cruiser rolled over and I banged my arm into something.

They showed your car on TV.

Yeah, I was glad to see that even my old Impala got its fifteen seconds of fame. He said nothing for a long moment and she followed his eyes: She looked down at her wrists and saw that she was kneading nervously at the cuffs of her jacket. How long were you at the cottage before you figured out I wasn't going to join you? he asked finally.

I never got there.

He raised his gaze to her eyes and nodded, and she understood instantly that he had read more into her statement than she'd meant. I think you've made a wise decision, he said. Laura and I talked, and I--

No, there's more to it than that. I was in a car accident, too, she explained quickly, straining to keep her voice even as she started to describe for him what had occurred. She knew it wouldn't take long because she'd told the story so many times already, and she hoped his training as a trooper wouldn't lead him to ask more questions than, for example, her father or Wallace had asked. She didn't want to relive the moment with any more specifics than necessary.

When she was through, he asked only one: And the baby?

The baby's fine.

Thank God.

She looked out the window, noticing for the first time his view of the small mountain in the distance called Camel's Hump, and all her imaginings of how she would tell him she was leaving abruptly vanished. I'm going away, she said simply. I have an appointment with a travel agent at four-thirty, and I'm buying a plane ticket to Santa Fe.

One way?

Not yet. Round trip. I want to scout it out first. But yes, my plan is to move there in the spring. I'll stay with my friend from college who lives there. Shauna. I'll stay with her and her family until I find a place. They have an extra room. Then maybe I can get a job with the bean counters who work for the New Mexico government, and make myself some more friends before this baby arrives.

I won't meet this little baby, will I? he said, and she could see a sudden pang of despair flutter across his face like a twitch.

No, she told him, and she was surprised by the composure in her voice.

So, that's it. That's the sentence.

It's not a sentence, it's just--

It's fine, Phoebe. Really. I have a son. I have a family. Still, if you ever need anything, you'll let me know. Right?

Terry--

I mean it.

I'll be fine, she said, and then she repeated the words as much for herself as for him. I will be fine. And you?

Laura and I talked: I know what I want and I know what's right.

I hope they're the same.

They are. I should never have come on to you at the store. I should never have--

You don't have to say it.

I just want you to know I'm sorry. I'm very, very sorry, and I hope someday you'll forgive me. I want to make things right with Laura and Alfred, and--

I don't need to forgive you. I knew what I was doing then, I know what I'm doing now. The thing is...

Yes?

The thing is, you really won't ever hear from me again. I'm going to make a nice life for me and my child, and I won't want for anything, she said. Okay?

Oh, Phoebe, if I could--

Don't. I'm serious. I know what I want, too.

Then I'm happy, he said slowly.

And you and Laura? You think you'll be okay?

We'll get through this...I hope. I love her. I behaved miserably, but--

Oh, we both did.

She took a deep breath and leaned down on the metal molding along the top of the footboard. She decided her nervousness was shifting, transforming itself now into anticipation, and she allowed the ends of her lips to arc naturally into a smile. She considered blowing him a kiss, but she felt that would be flippant and dismissive, and she didn't want that. And so she pulled herself away from the end of the bedstead, went to his side for the first time since she had arrived in his room, and kissed him lightly. Then she stood back on her heels and left.

*

PART FOUR

Equitation

"When we walked down the street with our children, we might have looked strange to the white people who saw us: an Indian lady and her girls, and a handsome Negro and two boys. That's what we looked like. But we were a family and it worked."

VERONICA ROWE (FORMERLY POPPING TREES),

WPA INTERVIEW,

MARCH 1938

*

A stiff, cool wind--along with the turning leaves at the very tops of the sugar maples, an early harbinger of fall--was blowing in from the north, and Laura Sheldon stood just outside the ring and watched it blow Alfred's necktie away from his chest. The boy--taller now, only weeks away from seventh grade and the union high school six miles distant in Durham--tucked the necktie back inside his riding coat, checked the front button, and then climbed atop Mesa. The flat class was done and now he would jump, alone for the first time in the ring. Heather Barrett, the woman from the indoor ring who had metamorphosed from teacher to trainer in the year and a half they'd been together, motioned toward the jodhpur strap just below his knee and said something to Alfred that Laura couldn't quite hear, and then left him alone and marched toward the gate nearest her.

Overhead there were immense cotton-ball clouds, and when one would hide the sun, the air would grow chilly. Terry Sheldon stood beside her, and beside him stood the Heberts. Occasionally Emily would curl her cardigan--vertical red, white, and blue stripes, a sweater the woman chose, she said, because it seemed fitting for a horse show, though Laura thought it actually made her look a bit like an image from a World War I recruitment poster--tightly around her shoulders. When Heather joined them, the trainer leaned over the rail beside Laura and blew into her hands.

Cold? Laura asked her, surprised. There was a breeze today, but she wouldn't have thought that a woman as tough as Heather would be uncomfortable.

No, not at all. Just anxious.

You? Terry asked, and he, too, sounded a tad incredulous.

Oh, I get nervous for all my kids. I want them to do well--especially when it's their first show. I think my heart stops completely that moment any one of them approaches their very first jump in a competition.

Alfred admitted he had some butterflies at breakfast this morning, Laura said, and she recalled how he had told them that he was bringing his old buffalo soldier cap with him. Though he could no longer stretch it around his head, he viewed it as a good-luck charm, and right now it was tucked inside a pocket in his blazer.

Aren't you nervous? Heather asked her. You must be.

She smiled. A little.

Only a little?

Actually Terry was the one who didn't sleep a whole lot last night.

It's true, he admitted. Boy's first show, and all. So, yes, I have worried about him. I have worried about Mesa.

You like the braid? she asked Laura.

You mean on her tail?

Yup. One of the girls helped me do that. I thought Alfred was going to die.

It's very elegant.

I think so, too, Heather said, and then her voice grew more serious. Still, looks aren't everything. I really wish we could have had another couple weeks to work with her. I don't know her as well as I do the horses who board at the stable, I don't--

Mesa will comport herself just fine, thank you very much, Paul said, a slight rumble of indignation in his voice, and he pointed the bag of popcorn he was holding in the trainer's direction. None of you has a thing to worry about. That horse will do well, and the young man upon her will do even better.

The announcer called Alfred's number, and Laura watched him swing his horse around to the start of the course. The jumps looked huge to her this morning, though she knew in reality they were a mere eighteen inches high. She counted eight of them, and tried to guess where in the ring he would be expected to change direction.

Are we allowed to stay here, Emily asked, or should we take seats in the grandstand?

Oh, stay, definitely stay, Heather insisted. You might be on your feet, but the best seats are right here at the rail.

Russell's going to be late, Terry murmured, a slight ripple of annoyance in his voice, and Laura was going to tell him it was all right, it didn't matter, when she saw her brother-in-law strutting across the flattened grass in the field just beyond where he'd parked. He was ogling a pair of teenage girls in snug jeans and tight blouses, but he was present and that was what counted today.

She pointed out Russell to Terry, and he shook his head and called out, Mighty nice of you to make it on time!

Russell grinned, satisfied that he managed to keep his brother on edge, and yelled that he had been behind a hay wagon for miles.

She turned back to Alfred and saw him sit up straight in his saddle, his spine a line perfectly perpendicular to the dirt on the ground in the ring, and she saw his fingers open and close around the leather reins. Suddenly, in so many ways, he was a teenager: His chest and his shoulders were filling out, and his new riding boots were a man's size eight and a half. His riding jacket was a man's size thirty-six. And though Laura had not been oblivious to these changes throughout the summer--rather, she had been excruciatingly aware of them--in so many ways she still viewed him as a child who was fragile and small, and she would feel a twinge of unease whenever he was gone from her sight.

Under the small brim of his helmet she saw his eyes, and they were staring straight ahead at the first jump, a pair of horizontal white beams with a pot of gerbera daisies on either side.

Laura took her husband's hand in hers and they watched their son breathe. He squeezed the horse's sides with his legs and then started toward the jump at a canter, the drumbeat from the horse's hooves the only sound she could hear. He moved quickly away from her through the ring, his whole body starting forward with the big animal in two-point and then--the horse's legs extended before and behind her, a carousel pony but real, the immense thrust invisible to anyone but the boy on the creature's back--he was rising, rising, rising...

And aloft.