The Buffalo Soldier (6 page)

SERGEANT GEORGE ROWE,

TENTH REGIMENT, UNITED STATES CAVALRY,

UNDATED LETTER TO HIS BROTHER

IN PHILADELPHIA

*

Alfred

In the night he heard Laura crying. He'd woken up, as he had most nights in this house where he just couldn't seem to get comfortable, and he'd heard her quiet sobs in the bedroom down the hall. At first he had thought he was hearing some wild animal outside the house--a coyote maybe--and then he imagined it was some local dog that had wandered away from the village. For a brief moment he had even wondered if he was hearing a ghost. One of those little girls, perhaps the one in whose bed he was sleeping and whose presence he was sure he sometimes felt.

But then he understood it was only Laura, and he grew embarrassed for her. Nevertheless, he climbed from his bed--astonished by how cold the wooden floor was on the soles of his feet--and tiptoed across his room to turn on the lamp on the bureau beside the window. He chose not to switch on the floor light near the bedroom door, because that one had a hundred-watt bulb in it and was much brighter: It would be more likely to toss a throw rug of light through the slit underneath the shut door, and alert Laura to the fact that he, too, was awake and had therefore heard her weeping. Then he jumped back into bed and pulled the quilt up over his shoulders.

He'd never before heard her cry, and he was sure it had something to do with her daughters. Her children. He wished he knew how to ask her to tell him about them--not because he thought she needed someone to talk to or because he believed he was capable of offering her comfort by listening, but simply because he was interested. How could he not be? When he was alone in his dark room at night, he had the sense that someone was with him--a sense that wouldn't go away until he'd turned a lamp on.

He realized he didn't even know what the girls had looked like: In no room in the house had he come across photos of them either hung on the walls or resting on bureaus.

Unfortunately, he couldn't imagine how to initiate a conversation about her children, or what he would do if she actually told him any details. And so all he knew for sure was that they had been twins and they had died in the flood some years earlier. But that was about it. He thought they might have been in the third or the fourth grade when they'd died--just a little younger than he was--but he wasn't positive.

He decided he would have liked to have known at the very least where they had been when they drowned, because it hadn't been on the Sheldons' property. That was clear. The house was too high on the hill, and there wasn't any water.

He assumed that they'd been at the river in the village. He'd been living up in Burlington at the time of the flood, but he remembered hearing that rivers all over this part of the state had poured over their banks. He guessed it was possible that they'd just been washed away. But he also knew that the people who had the dairy farm on the other side of the trees had a small pond, and he wondered if they had died there. Maybe the pond had stretched beyond its banks, and they'd fallen in and drowned.

He was also curious about where Laura and Terry had been at the time. Had they been close enough to try to save the girls--perhaps even seen them go under--or had the kids died alone with no one nearby?

Then again, it may not even have happened here. Maybe the girls had been at a friend's house in another town. Or at a grandparent's house.

Now, there was a thought: What would it be like to be a child who had grandparents as well as parents? Perhaps even two sets of grandparents?

No, he decided, it had happened here in Cornish. He had met Laura's parents and Terry's mother--it had been a pretty typical meet-the-foster-kid show, where everyone gathers at the foster parents' house and tries to be polite, but no one has the slightest idea what to say--and all those old people would have been a lot more screwed up if their grandchildren had died on their watch.

He realized he was thinking too much. Making too much up. The fact was, he hadn't a clue where the girls had died. It could have been anywhere.

He was glad for the woman that Terry was coming home the next day. She might not have been the happiest person on the planet, ever, but at least she didn't wake up in the night and start crying when Terry was home. Terry didn't respect him the way Laura did, of course, and he had a feeling the man didn't especially care for him. He didn't let him get away with nearly as much as Laura did. But it was still pretty clear that Laura was better off when he was there.

Alfred turned over the pillow and fluffed it. Maybe, he thought, when Terry was back he could figure out a way to ask him about the girls. He wasn't sure how--the subject would most likely make them both pretty uncomfortable--but at least it would give the two of them something to talk about for a couple of minutes. He might even be able to use that somehow with the man. Make him believe they were friends.

Outside his window, the clouds in the sky were breaking up and the moon was starting to appear. It would emerge for a couple of long seconds and make the clouds around it look like gray smoke. He thought it was full.

He considered going downstairs and seeing if one or both of the cats wanted to sleep in his bed. He'd had the idea before, but the animals seemed pretty set in their ways and he'd never tried bringing them upstairs to his room. They slept, as far as he knew, near the woodstove in the den, in what was actually a dog bed Laura had ordered by mail. Because they'd been together their whole lives, they slept almost in a single ball, so at first glance it was hard to tell where one cat ended and the other began.

He didn't go downstairs, however, because he knew Laura would hear him. Instead he remained under his quilt and tried to take comfort in the notion that he was warm and fed, and these two people--Laura and Terry--didn't seem to drink and had never once hit him. He glanced briefly around the room, surveying the unfamiliar toys and clothes that had been amassed for him by these grown-ups, and the new paper they'd put on the walls just before he arrived. It was yellow with thin blue and white stripes, and he had a feeling that if he peeled away a corner, he'd see something underneath that was flowery and pink. He knew this room had belonged to one of those girls--maybe even to both. It seemed big enough for two people.

But the house had a third bedroom that Terry and Laura called the guest bedroom, and that one had recently been redone, too. Maybe it had belonged to one of the twins.

For a moment he savored the fact that this was the second place in a row where he'd had his own room. Sometimes he couldn't believe his luck in that regard.

New wallpaper. What he guessed were new curtains. A new throw rug. These people were generous, no doubt about that.

Still, they'd had girls their whole lives and it was clear they weren't quite sure what to get a boy his age. Laura, anyway. But then, she always seemed to be the one who felt like opening up her wallet.

He hadn't told them he was too old for Legos, but he guessed they'd figured it out since he hadn't gone near the box they'd given him. Same with those odd plastic cars that you could twist and turn into robots and bugs and reptilian-looking monsters.

He decided a BB gun might have been fun: After all, Terry sure had his share of guns in that case down the hall. There were two rifles locked in there most of the time, the one with which he liked to hunt and the one that had belonged to his father that he never used. Only Terry's father's gun was in there right now, since Terry had brought his own rifle with him to deer camp.

And then there was Terry's sidearm. A 40-caliber Smith & Wesson Sig Sauer with a bullet in the chamber and twelve more in the magazine in the handle. Now, that was a cool-looking gun. He'd seen rifles before, but never a pistol. One time Terry took out the bullet and the magazine and let him hold it. They were having breakfast and Terry was in his uniform, and he took Alfred's request to see the gun seriously. Led him outside into the backyard, where he unsnapped his holster, pulled the magazine from the weapon, and worked the slide--locking it open and ejecting the chambered round into his hand.

This is not a toy, he had said, his voice even. It's a tool. About the most dangerous tool you'll ever see. Do you understand? He then handed him the unloaded gun.

Laura had been watching from the back door, and she got so upset that Alfred feared she might have a stroke right there in the kitchen. She couldn't believe what her husband had done--and neither could Alfred. Not then, and not now.

He wasn't sure what had surprised him more: the idea that Terry had let him touch his sidearm, or how much that sidearm had weighed. He hadn't realized a real pistol would be so heavy.

He thought some more about what sorts of things he really wanted, and decided that one of those pocket-size computer games would be nice. And, perhaps, a pair of in-line skates--though he wasn't going to ask for a pair of those. There was no place to use them out here. Same with a skateboard.

He'd had a chance to steal a skateboard that spring when he was living with the Patterson family in Burlington. He and Tien, both. They'd wandered into the shop on Cherry Street around ten-thirty in the morning, and the place was empty because every other kid in the city was in school--or supposed to be, anyway. They could hear the young guy with the tattoos and the tongue stud in the bathroom peeing, and he and Tien had the same thought at the same time. Grab boards and run. The guy would never know they'd been in the store. It might be days before he or the owner even realized two boards were gone.

But they hadn't taken anything. It was only when they were both back on Church Street with the cigarettes they'd bummed off the salesperson after he emerged from the bathroom that they even shared the fact with each other that they'd both considered swiping a skateboard.

A few times Alfred had taken packs of cigarettes and candy bars from stores, and the studs he'd worn in his ears were stolen--but it was that kid named Maurice who'd actually ripped them off the black canvas display rack when no one was looking, before deciding he didn't really like them. Once he and Digger had lifted a couple of videos from a shop in the mall, but he'd done that more to impress the older boy than because he wanted the movies. And for a while--three or four weeks, maybe--he'd taken dog food from the Hannaford's supermarket for that pathetic animal the Fletchers kept tied to a clothesline yet hardly ever bothered to feed.

He wasn't proud of the list, but he told himself it really wasn't all that long and he'd never been caught.

The truth was he'd never owned very much, or cared a whole lot for whatever he had. His CD player, maybe, and some of his CDs. But there was no future in things, because things didn't go with you.

Most things, anyway. You took what you could in a couple of plastic garbage bags and a suitcase--unlike a lot of kids, he actually had one--and that was pretty much the rule. He'd been with the Sheldons since Labor Day Weekend, and he didn't think he'd collected more than two or three things he'd take with him when he left. He'd take some of the new clothes, of course, but he'd leave behind the shirts and the pants he was getting too big for. He'd take his buffalo soldier cap, that was cool. And he'd take the football.

Was there anything else? Some food, maybe. Laura hadn't noticed, but in the back of his closet he'd been building up his small store of provisions. That was one of the first things you learned: Always have rations handy in case they move you out fast, because there's no telling what kind of food will be waiting for you at the next stop. So far he'd amassed Twinkies, canned peaches (along with one of the two can openers Laura had in a drawer that was positively overflowing with kitchen utensils), and four of those single-serve boxes of cereal. If you only took one or two things a week, the grown-ups rarely figured out that you were building up a stash.

Maybe, he decided, there would be more possessions he'd want after Christmas--especially if he asked Laura and Terry for one of those handheld computer games--and he figured there was a good chance he'd be here through the holidays if he kept out of trouble.

If. Like it was really up to him, and he had any say. Maybe if he wanted out, all he had to do was take another hike up to Burlington. Or give Terry some lip. But he knew he had no control if he actually wanted to stay. As soon as things changed or those two got tired of having a stranger under their roof, he'd be out the door.

He wondered if he would care when that happened (or how much); he wished he knew what he wanted.

He closed his eyes. With the light on in the bedroom and the assurance that he was completely alone, he figured he would fall back to sleep quickly, and he did.

ONCE WHEN HE was sitting on the stairs petting one of the cats, he and the creature quiet but for the animal's small purring, he had overheard Laura telling Terry that she was concerned about the effect his uniform might have on the boy. The sort of memories it might evoke.

Alfred had rolled his eyes, even though no one could see him.

You need to come with me, son.

Laura needn't have worried. Terry wore khaki and green. The uniforms that moved him around--that kept him on his toes on the street, that watched him warily when he'd walk from a store with stolen cigarettes or a stolen candy bar, that years and years ago now had appeared in his life when his mother first started to choose her rock and her men over him--had always been blue.

ALFRED'S BUS WAS small: The two columns of seats stretched back a mere four rows, and it actually looked more like a van than a school bus. Still, it could seat sixteen children, though he was one of only a dozen kids who were riding it this year. The bus made a big loop out by the Cousinos' and the cemetery, and, as Alfred knew well, there just weren't many houses in that direction. Moreover, he was the only kid on the bus beyond the third grade. Apparently if he'd been on the bus last year, there would have been three sixth-graders, but the group--two girls and a boy--were old enough now to attend the union high school in Durham.