The Railroad War (20 page)

“I suppose you’re right,” Ariel said.

“She asked me again to come to London,” Miranda said.

“And?”

“I’d go eagerly and instantly if it weren’t for my property. And for Father.”

“I know,” Ariel agreed. “But do stay with him. You will, won’t you? I can’t. I have my child and my husband. But Father needs
someone, and he has no one save you.”

“I know that.”

“Then I’m much relieved.”

“I wish I could say the same,’ Miranda said.

“Good night, darling. I simply must take the little beast to bed before he dismembers all the june bugs on Kemble Island.”

“That’s no great loss if he does, the ugly, sticky things. Aagghh,” she gagged and wrung her hands.

“Kiss me good night,” Ariel said.

The two sisters kissed tenderly, and then Ariel gathered up her son and carried him off to bed. He was kicking and crying
out as they went, but only feebly.

Once Ariel and Robbie were safely indoors, Miranda returned to her seat, planning to sit quietly in the dark and meditate
until the stinging insects drove her inside.

But when she reached her seat, she found her father sitting in the chair that Ariel had left.

“Oh!” Miranda said, startled. “How did you come out so quietly, Father? I didn’t hear you.”

“I decided to take a walk,” he said, his voice drained and weary. A half-smoked unlit cigar dangled from his mouth. “I left
from the back door. You and your sister were so busy with one another you didn’t pay attention to anything around you.”

“I guess not,” Miranda said, sinking into her chair. She looked at her father expectantly. She wanted to ask him how he felt
after the ordeal of the afternoon, but she decided she should not be the one to bring that up. So she waited, trying to look
concerned and receptive.

“I heard you and your sister talking,” he said finally, after a long silence.

“You did?” Miranda said in a neutral voice.

“So you’ve received a communication from your mother?”

“Yes.”

“I hear that she wants you with her.”

“Yes, Father, she asked me to come to England.”

“Why don’t you go?”

“I can’t,” she said. “I have my land to take care of, and…” She stopped.

“And me? Was that what you were about to say?”

“Yes.”

“I want you to go. I don’t need you, and I don’t want you.”

“Father,” Miranda sighed.

“It’s an illusion of yours, perpetrated by your all too fervent imagination, that you can do me the slightest bit of good.
I know you’d rather be in London with your mother,” he nearly snarled, “than enduring the sufferings of the nation that begat
you.”

“It’s not the sufferings of the nation that upset me. I’m worried about my father.”

He waved off her explanation with a flick of his hand. “I’ve been thinking.” He paused. “I have new plans.” He paused again.
“This place is underused, and it could be productive again. I could make it so.”

“Father, what a lovely idea. I couldn’t think of a more perfect task for you to perform.” She tried to catch his eye, but
had no luck. “But I wonder if you realize, dear, all the difficulties that would present. There’s no one to work the land,
for instance. And the Union squadron is based hardly five miles from here. They would never allow you to return.”

“You silly bitch,” he said with hard, cruel laughter in his voice, “do you know what you are saying beneath your kindness
and concern? You’re telling me you want me all to yourself. You want to own me the way your mother tried. I escaped her. I’ll
escape you.

“Go to your mother,” he went on. “I don’t want you with me any longer. It’s that simple.” His face was toward her now, and
his expression was painful to see, full of what Miranda took to be longing. In contrast with his harsh words, his eyes seemed
to tell her:
I need you!

Meanwhile, his bitter speech continued, “You’re a weight on my life,” he was saying. “Around my neck. You choke me, Miranda.
Go to your mother.”

Miranda was stung. He’d hurt her, and she was reeling. She so wanted to help him and care for him, and protect him. He couldn’t
really mean what he was saying! “I don’t understand,” she said. And truly she didn’t understand. His words said one thing,
but she read on his face a message that was completely different.

“How can I tell you more simply and directly that I want you out of my life, Miranda. What more is there to say?”

“But,” she said, then stopped herself, thinking it would be better not to object anymore for now. She lifted herself out of
her chair. “Good night, Father. I do love you, and I don’t want to leave you.”

“But you will,” he said, “if I have anything to say about it.”

“Let’s talk again some more tomorrow, shall we? I’m tired.”

“Good night, Miranda,” he said without looking at her.

Miranda went up to her room, but it was a long time before she found sleep.

The Kembles were subdued and quiet at breakfast the next morning. It was Sunday, but the hush was not on account of the day
of the Lord.

Miranda scarcely touched her food, even though what the slaves had set before them was better, fresher, and more abundant
than what she could obtain in Atlanta. There was crisp bacon, corn bread with butter and honey, eggs scrambled in the bacon
fat, and even tea. She couldn’t recall the last time she’d tasted real China tea.

The cause of their haunted mood had not appeared yet, but that did not diminish the sense of darkness and anxiety that had
descended on the family.

Robbie finished early and wandered off to play. He was a lusty eater; he didn’t dally over his food like other five-year-olds.

He’d brought from home a carved wooden horse on wheels that he adored—a model of a Trojan horse, though Robbie was too young
to recognize that provenance. It was more than a foot and a half high, and it had a trapdoor on hinges in its belly—the inside
of the horse was hollow. Robbie kept buttons and dead bugs in the space, and a feather from a gull and another feather, black
and glistening, from a crow.

He liked playing with his horse in the front entrance hall more than anywhere else in the house, for the room was empty of
furniture and the floor was bare of rugs. Thus he could send the horse racing for long distances without hindrance.

The Kembles, who were still at table, could hear the horse rumble across the floor and then bang into a wall.

Ariel volunteered to put a stop to the ruckus, but Uncle Ash told her not to worry about it. And when neither Lam nor Miranda
contradicted him, Ariel decided to leave well enough alone.

The noise continued for a time, but inexplicably it stopped. The moment the sounds ceased, Ariel raised her head from her
cup. It could have been no more than a second after that when they heard a great, heavy thud. Someone had fallen down the
front stairs.

A sudden chill gripped Miranda. She had no doubt who it was.

All four of the Kembles jumped up at once to see what was the matter. Lam leapt to his feet so quickly that he upended his
chair behind him. Miranda, though, paused long enough to set it right.

By the time she reached the hallway not more than a couple of seconds behind the three others, Robbie was shouting,
“Grampa! Grampa! Grampa fall down!”

Kemble House was large and sprawling, but by no means elegant or well designed. And the staircase, in keeping with everything
else, was not at all grand. It was steep and straight and utilitarian. A third of the way up the stairs Pierce Kemble lay
in a sprawl of arms and legs, head downward, unconscious. Saliva trickled from his half-open mouth, and blood had started
to seep down onto the wood. It was impossible to see, though, where on his body or head the wound was.

All feeling seemed to desert Miranda when she saw Pierce lying there. The shock of the sight was too great for her to bear,
but somehow, on instinct, she continued to move.

“Father!” she screamed, racing toward him.

Ariel was screaming the same thing, but Miranda didn’t hear her.

All of them save Robbie were making a dash for Pierce. They created a hopeless jam at the bottom of the stairs.

“Each of you!” Ash shouted, taking charge. “Back up! Ariel! Miranda! Lam! Move back!”

After several attempts at catching their attention, they obeyed him. And then he alone ascended the stairs to have a look
at his brother. He first felt for a pulse at Pierce’s neck. Finding it, he looked at the three waiting below and gave a quick
nod to show that their father was still alive.

“Thank God!” Miranda said to herself silently.

After feeling the pulse, Ash lifted an eyelid with his thumb and peered. When he finished, his look was grimmer.

“Grampa! Grampa fall down!”
Robbie was shouting. He’d been shouting all along, but Miranda had not until this moment heard him. Now, however, his screams
bored into her mind like a drill. It was hard to tell whether he was becoming hysterical or whether he was simply excited
and curious.

“Would you take him out of here, please, Ariel?” Lam said, surprisingly gentle.

“Yes, surely,” Ariel mumbled. Then in a single movement, she turned and swept Robbie into her arms.

“My horse!” he shouted, his voice charged with distress.

“Here,” Miranda said, reaching down and passing it to Ariel. “Can you handle the horse and Robbie both?” she asked.

“I do all the time,” Ariel said. Then she caught her sister’s eye. “Let me know…” she whispered.

“Yes. The instant I do I’ll come to you.”

Miranda returned to the foot of the stairs. While she and Ariel were tending to Robbie, Ash had lifted his brother up so that
his head was no longer dangling over a stair tread.

“What is the matter with him?” she asked Ash.

He took a long, deep breath before replying, “If I had a guess, I’d say apoplexy. And,” he paused, “it looks to be serious.
There’s a pulse, but it’s fluttery, and his breathing is shallow and weak.”

“Is he dying?” Lam asked, going directly to the point.

“Damned if I know,” Ash said in a voice that indicated he was convinced that his brother was close to death. “Come, help me
move him back to his bed.”

“Should we do that?” Lam asked. “Do you think it’s safe to move him?”

“We can’t leave him here on the stairs,” Ash said practically, “pretty near upside down. Come on. We can at least give him
the benefit of what comfort we can offer.”

Lam moved up the stairs, and Miranda followed him. For the first time she realized that her father had not changed out of
his sleeping clothes. He was still wearing his long linen nightshirt.

“Miranda,” Ash said, “you get back down the stairs. We won’t need you yet, not until after we’ve put him into his bed. You,
Lam, grab his shoulders. I’ll take his legs.”

Miranda backed away, complying.

“What do you think, Miz Miranda?” It was Dorcas speaking. She was flanked, as usual, by Lettia. Both of them had been standing
out of the way for some time, but Miranda hadn’t realized they were there. “You think he’s gonna be all right?”

“I don’t know, Dorcas,” Miranda said. “I sure wish I did.”

Struggling—more because of the confined space than because of the weight—Ash and Lam carried Pierce up to the landing, and
then, shifting him around so that he’d be easier to manage, they took him to his room.

When Ash let Miranda in to see her father, she saw that he was still unconscious and that he didn’t look at all good. His
hands were pale and clammy, but his cheeks, neck, and forehead were flushed. His color was unhealthy. His face looked overheated
and angry.

Miranda looked at Lam, then at Ash, then back to Lam. “I’ll sit with him,” she said.

“All right,” Ash said.

“Shall I stay, too?” Lam asked.

“No. One of us is enough.”

“All right,” Lam said, much relieved.

“But you can bring me some warm water in a basin. And some towels. He ought to be washed off.”

“All right. Anything else?”

“No. Just that.”

“Damned shame there’s no doctor,” Lam said.

Ash shook his head. “It doesn’t matter,” he said. “A doctor won’t help him any—though it might give some comfort to you or
your sister to have a doctor here.”

“You think he’s dying?”

Ash let his eyes drop, but didn’t answer.

“There have to be doctors over on Saint Simon’s, where the naval ships are,” Miranda said, trying to work up some measure
of hope. “We could at least send somebody over there to see, and maybe fetch one.”

No one responded, and she didn’t follow up on her suggestion.

Miranda spent the morning by her father’s bedside. She sat almost as unmoving as he, for she was filled with a foreboding,
pain, and guilt that paralyzed her. In her mind she believed she was the one person who was closest to Pierce Kemble, the
one person who understood him best, and so the one person who was most responsible for him.

And in her deepest heart she knew that he was near death.

Because of that, she replayed over and over the scene that had happened the night before on the porch. She was convinced that
it was the event that had triggered Pierce’s collapse. She blamed herself for not being more sensitive and gentle to him.
And she magnified her conflict with her father into a battle that was larger and that left more permanent scars than the one
between her father and Lam the previous afternoon.

How could I have allowed it to happen? she asked herself again and again. Why was I so unfeeling? How could I have let him
feel so alone and rejected?

She was determined now in his last moments not to reject him as she felt she had done the night before.

Sometime in the afternoon her father opened his eyes. He might have been that way for a while, for Miranda herself had been
dozing off. When she opened her eyes and saw her father staring at her, her body shook spasmodically, as though she’d had
an encounter with a spirit from another world. “Oh!” she cried. It was a strangled cry; her throat was so tightly clutched
that she had very little voice.