Lorraine Heath (2 page)

He waited what seemed a lifetime … and beyond.

He lowered his gaze to the soldiers standing before him, 8 wondering if they were waiting for him to look at them before they carried out their orders. But as he met the troubled gaze of each man, so each man lowered his rifle and studied his boots.

Oddly, he could remember clearly the color of each man’s eyes: brown, brown, blue, brown, green, blue.

The sergeant conferred with Captain Roberts. Then he escorted Clay back to his cell.

Later, Clay learned that his prayer, his concern for their souls and not his own, had touched the hearts of the soldiers and officers in attendance.

A simple prayer had saved his life and prolonged his misery. He had spent nine months shackled, serving time for his refusal to carry a rifle.

After his release, he had found one reason after another not to return to Cedar Grove. Until the war ended.

He had arrived home at Christmas and discovered that the only peace within his life resided within his conscience. Beyond that, the war had followed him home.

He watched a pale light float toward the barn. A streak of lightning outlined his two youngest brothers as they trudged toward their predawn chores. Entering the world on the same day, Joseph and Joshua were inseparable, and few people could tell them apart. They’d been but five when the Confederate Army had come for Clay. They were nearly ten now. Clay sometimes wondered if it wouldn’t have been kinder to stay away, as his other brother, Lucian, often suggested.

He closed the shutters and turned up the flame in the lantern on the bedside table. Self-consciously, he rubbed his bare chest as he picked his clothes off the chair and tossed them on the bed. As was his habit, he dressed carefully, taking time to button every button. He pulled on his socks before shoving his feet into his boots. Standing, he stomped his feet into place.

He’d turned the cheval glass so it faced the wall, saving himself the agony of confronting his reflection. He’d gained little weight in the three months since his return. He couldn’t get credit at the mercantile, so the meals he provided his family were dependent on the wild game in the nearby hills and the few assorted vegetables they grew in their small garden. He told his brothers things would improve once they harvested the crops in the fields. He had to believe those words in order to survive to the next day.

He’d learned that small trick during the war. Don’t think about tomorrow or what horrors it might hold, just cling to today.

He picked up the lantern and unbolted the door of his bedroom. He walked through the small living area where his family had long ago shared abundant meals and conversation, where a fire had burned in the hearth while his mother quilted as she wove tales to delight her children. His father would whittle, occasionally interrupting to add his own bit of thread to the story. Laughter had filled the room and smiles had been as abundant as the food.

Now, the room served as little more than a place to eat a somber meal in silence. He pulled his slicker off the hook by the door and stepped into the storm.

With his head bowed, he trudged toward the dilapidated barn. The entire farm needed repairs. His parents had passed away before the war ended. Lucian had managed to hold onto the farm and keep the twins from becoming wild. As a young man of sixteen, he had shouldered the responsibility without complaint.

Lucian’s complaints had only surfaced when Clay returned home to lift the burden from his brother’s shoulders. Their parents had dictated that they wanted the farm passed down to their eldest surviving son. Clay was the eldest, and he’d survived.

Walking into the barn, he inhaled the familiar scent of hay and livestock along with the disappointing smell of rotting wood. He couldn’t get credit at the lumber mill either.

He heard the tinny echo as the milk hit the galvanized pail. The sound didn’t have time to fade before another took its place. He knew his brothers sat, one on each side of the cow, working together as one. He’d noticed that their being twins had created a certain bond. Sometimes it seemed the brothers didn’t even have to voice their thoughts to each other.

“I know what you’re thinkin', and it ain’t gonna work.”

Clay slowed his steps at the sound of Josh’s voice.

“It might,” Joe shot back defiantly. “It would for sure if you pretended to be sick, too.”

“I don’t want to spend the whole day in bed. If this frog-chokin’ rain stops, I aim to go fishin'.”

“We’d just be sick till church was over.”

“Nah, Clay’d make us stay in bed all day just to make sure we wasn’t sick tomorrow. Ain’t worth it, Joe.”

“But I hate goin’ to church! I hate the way everybody looks at us.”

“They ain’t lookin’ at us. They’re lookin’ at Clay. ‘Sides, if you do catch ‘em lookin’ at you, you just gotta cross your eyes at ‘em, and they’ll look away.”

“Is that what you do?” Joe asked, disbelief resounding in his young voice.

“Heck fire, yeah! Sometimes, it’s even fun. Did it once to old Pruneface, and she started wobblin’ her head like a rooster that was tryin’ to decide whether or not it wanted to crow.”

“And did Widow Prudence crow?” Clay asked quietly.

Startled, both boys jerked back in unison, toppling off their respective stools, their legs flying out, kicking the bucket over and spilling milk over the straw.

“Oh, heck!” Josh cried as he picked up the bucket too late to save much of their effort.

Clay grabbed the stool the boy had vacated, moved it to the corner, sat, and drew his legs up so he could cross his arms over his thighs. “Joe, Josh, come here and sit down.”

With their brown eyes focused on him, the boys dropped before him. He resisted the urge to tussle their red hair. Living with his family often made him feel as though he lived with strangers. The boys accepted him because he was their brother. He’d mistakenly thought that was enough.

He continued to see them as they were the day he left, clutching their mother’s apron and crying. They hadn’t asked any questions that day because they’d been too young to understand what questions needed to be asked. They were older now, but they’d kept their questions and their doubts to themselves. He wondered if they feared the answers. Before he’d left, they’d loved him. He wanted desperately for them to love him again.

“I want you to tell me the truth because the truth never hurts as much as a lie.” He met each boy’s wide-eyed stare and waited until both boys nodded. “Does it embarrass you to be seen with me in church?”

The boys slid their gazes toward each other, communicating silently what each felt in his heart. Josh returned his gaze to Clay. “It don’t embarrass us none to be seen with you. We just don’t like the way people stare at us.”

“Do you know why they stare?”

‘"Cuz you’re a coward,” Joe said without hesitation.

Clay felt as though all six rifles had just fired into his heart. He bowed his head, clasping his hands together until they ached and the knuckles turned white. “Is that what you think?” he asked solemnly. “That I’m a coward? Or is it just what you’ve heard?”

“It’s what they say at school,” Josh told him.

“And what Lucian says,” Joe added.

“Is that what you say?” Clay asked.

“I tell ‘em it ain’t so,” Josh said.

Clay lifted his head, his gaze not reflecting the hope cautiously soaring within his heart. “Do you really say that?”

Slowly shaking his head. Josh screwed his mouth. “I don’t tell ‘em nothin'. Just let ‘em think what they want.”

A bullet slamming into his chest could not have hurt more. “Do you know what a coward is?” he asked.

“Someone that runs away.”

“Did I run?”

The boys exchanged troubled glances. “Did you?” Josh asked. “Did you run?” “No.”

“Then how come they think you’re a coward?” “Because I didn’t fight either.” “How come?”

Clay heaved a sigh. Knowing they would one day ask this question didn’t make it any easier to answer now. “It’s hard to explain, but my conscience wouldn’t let me.”

“What’s your conscience?”

“It’s a meeting place for the things your heart feels and the things your head knows. Then they decide what you should believe and how you should live in order to be happy.”

“But you never look happy, Clay,” Joe said.

He offered his brothers a somber smile and laid his palm over his heart. “I’m happy here because I believe—I know—what I did was right for me. I didn’t believe in slavery. I didn’t believe Texas had the right to secede. I didn’t believe we should fight the Northern states, and yet, I could not in all good conscience take up arms against the South, my home, and my friends. But more than that, I would not fight because I believe it’s a sin against God to kill another man.”

“They don’t say it’s a sin in church. They don’t think all those soldiers were sinnin'.”

“Different churches believe different things. We’ve only got one church in Cedar Grove, and I think it’s better to attend a church that doesn’t believe everything I do than not to go to church at all.”

“Were you the only one who believed all that?” Joe asked.

Clay shook his head. “No, there were others. One man had more courage than any man I ever knew. We talked about what we believed, and we promised each other we’d stand by our convictions no matter what.”

“What happened to him?”

Clay swallowed the lump in his throat that always formed when he thought of Will. “He got sick and died.”

“You oughta tell people you ain’t no coward,” Josh suggested.

“It’s not the kind of thing you can tell people. They’ll believe it only if you show them. That’s why, even though I hate the way people watch me when I go to church on Sunday morning, I still go. I didn’t do anything I’m ashamed of, and I won’t run from their opinions. Someday maybe they’ll understand.”

“What if they never do?” the twins asked in unison.

Clay sighed. He’d have a damn lonely life, but the loneliness should belong to him, not them. A man lived or died according to his decisions in life, and Clay had made his decision. The twins were old enough now to make their own decisions. “You don’t have to go to church with me this morning, and when the rain stops, you can go fishing.”

The boys looked at each other, their initial relief quickly giving way to family commitment. “Nah, we’ll go,” Josh said. “Won’t we, Joe?”

Squaring his small chin, Joe gave a quick nod.

Daring to ruffle their hair, he expected them to flinch at his touch. Instead they smiled. “Then I guess you’d better practice crossing your eyes before we leave.”

The twins laughed as only children can, with an innocence and joy, as they anticipated honing their skills.

Unfolding his body, Clay walked out of the stall, out of the barn, and back into the storm.

Sitting upon a raised dais to one side of the pulpit, Meg Warner pressed the keyboard. The haunting melody of the organ touched the church rafters, waltzed along the stained-glass windows where the sunlight cast a myriad of rainbows, and whispered across the congregation.

Meg knew every face. The old and weathered faces of the men, the aged faces of the women. Noticeably absent were the faces of the young men with whom she’d grown up. With pride, they’d ridden off to war. Never losing courage, they had been vanquished. They had marched into battle side by side, and Yankee guns had leveled them as though they were little more than wheat growing in a field.

Meg watched Lucian Holland wander down the aisle and ease onto the edge of a pew. An awkwardness had settled around Lucian when his brother returned, as though he no longer knew where he belonged.

She lifted her hands off the keys and folded them in her lap. A reverent silence filtered through the church as Reverend Baxter stepped up to the pulpit.

Meg gazed at her brother, Daniel. Like Lucian, he’d been too young to enlist when the war started. Almost seventeen now, he worked hard to fill his brothers’ boots—all three pairs. She could see her older brothers reflected in Daniel’s strong jaw, his thick black hair, and his deep blue eyes. His jaw tensed as the church door opened.

Balling her hands into fists, Meg slid her gaze toward the back of the church. Two boys wearing the same wary expression slipped into the last pew. Meg’s heart went out to the boys, dressed in trousers that were a shade too short. Then the door closed, and their oldest brother took his place beside them.

If Meg had been struck blind at that moment, she still could have told the world what Clayton Holland would do, for he’d done it every Sunday since he’d returned to Cedar Grove. He would bow his head as though in prayer. Then he would lift his gaze to the minister. His eyes would stray only when the twins fidgeted. And while he never took his eyes off the minister, so Meg never took her eyes off him.

It fueled her anger and hatred to watch him, to be reminded once a week that he lived and breathed while her dear husband and three brothers lay cold in their graves. They had fought valiantly and died bravely defending the honor of the Confederacy while Clayton Holland had bared the yellow streak racing down his back. She knew it was childish to think that one more man on that battlefield would have made a difference, but she resented Clay for turning his back on the South and being rewarded with his life.

Reverend Baxter’s words droned on with Meg paying scant attention to their meaning. Her thoughts darkened until they resembled the storm that had blown through in the early hours before dawn. The nightmares always came with the storms and lingered for days like the puddles after a rain.

With her dreams reverberating with the roar of guns and Kirk’s agonized screams, she would awaken bathed in sweat. She imagined that the last thing Kirk had heard before he died was the sound of rifle fire or the blast of a cannon, when he should have heard her voice reaffirming her love. The last thing he had felt was the hard ground when he should have felt her gentle touch comforting him. Hundreds of men had surrounded him, but without her at his side, he had faced death alone.

“Meg?”

She snapped her gaze up to Reverend Baxter’s. He bestowed upon her a congenial smile and nodded toward the organ. She transferred all her heart to the music as the congregation lifted its voice in song.