May the Road Rise Up to Meet You: A Novel (46 page)

HE HAD STAYED IN THE
only way he seemed to know how, not off on the fringes of the encampment with the rest of the press corps in warm, whiskey-filled cabins, but in the middle of it all, volunteering as an orderly right there in the hospital. The nightmares had grown more frequent for her as the exhaustion of those early days after the battle abated enough to allow such a thing as dreams, but each morning there he was, unharmed and wearing the brave exterior of a smile despite all that had been lost.

One late afternoon some days after the battle, he walked her out to the bluff along the river, playfully telling her to cover her eyes as he led her by the arm, and only when she opened them did she realize that it was Christmas Eve. He would later explain, when greatly pressed, that he had used the glass from his remaining photographic plates, chiseling at them with a nail to create the long shards, then affixing them to white thread and hanging them carefully from the branches of the evergreen shrub. The ribbons were torn from red and white cloth one of the supply sergeants had liberated from Fredericksburg before they
were chased back across the river. And the star was formed of branches he had woven together and affixed on top, accentuating it with shards of the glass as well. All of it, shimmering in the fading light of sunset and nestled in a thin blanket of snow, was the closest thing to Christmas she could imagine in such a haunted place as this.

Down below them the campfires were soon lit. The entire army was safely back across the river by then, and what remained of their spirits was poured into bittersweet strains of
God rest ye merry gentlemen, let nothing you dismay
and the like. And he lit the fire he had arranged, as they sat on the chairs he had set up beside the tree, sipping the watered-down coffee made more tolerable by the sugar he had somehow bartered for along with the cloth for the ribbons. And she knew then that she was stuck, that there’d be no escaping this love unscathed—short of yielding to it. Only somehow she didn’t seem to mind.

But there’s something different on this New Year’s Day, and it’s only in the late afternoon, while walking with Ethan along the rise beside the river, that they understand the magnitude of it. Every January 1 for the last eight or so, she had welcomed the New Year at Mrs. Carlisle’s, where they would toast to the coming year,
and may it bring an end to this abomination called slavery
, Mrs. Carlisle would say. And now, with Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation actually taking effect, the hopes of such a toast seemed real. Still, all along the river was the evidence of what a hollow document it was, freeing the slaves in the states of what seemed more and more like a foreign power—“like Ol’ Bobby Lee across the river isn’t going to have something to say about that,” Ethan says more candidly than usual. And when he doesn’t try to offer her a more optimistic outlook on the chances of Union victory, their walk turns silent but for the sound of scattered regiments preparing for the inevitable retreat back to Washington. She can tell that his thoughts return to the death of his friend Finny and so many more, and seeing the army ready to skulk away after yet another defeat is perhaps the worst sort of medicine of all.

“Let’s go back to the hospital,” she says. “It’s getting colder, I think.”

And he looks at her for a moment with the same frustration she saw the night she first met him at the gallery, a distant sort of gaze that doesn’t end at her eyes but drifts on through into the illimitable distance.

“It’s just difficult to see all the loss,” he begins, as if she had said something else entirely just seconds before. “All the loss with nothing to show for it—like there ought t’be some sort of reckoning, like Finny said—some sort of balancing it all out.”

She doesn’t have the words of comfort for him, just an arm to slip inside his, as they begin to walk back along a slightly different path, farther away from the river this time.

“It did bring
us
together,” she finally says after a while.

And he turns to her with the signs of a smile he struggles to hold back, becoming mischievous in the twist of that single moment.

“So I suppose I’ll have to speak to Mrs. Carlisle when we return to New York,” he says.

“About what?”

“Well, from all you’ve told me, I don’t imagine your father would be the one to offer permission.”

And now she knows precisely where he is headed, though true to form for the two of them, she will not swoon the way her sister might or most women would.

“Permission for what?”

“Well, to marry you … that is, if the dowry is acceptable,” he says.

“I am the only one who can grant
permission
for that,” she says, pulling her arm from his and jokingly bracing her fists along her hips.

What follows is a
negotiation
of sorts, her telling him that she is sure she will be a terrible cook and housekeeper, but will not employ servants in her house all the same, and
whichever
man she
chooses
to marry will just have to accept that. He replies that he will still fish as much as once or twice a week and whichever woman he marries must limit her complaints about the smell to the time between his return from such excursions and his ensuing bath. And there is plenty of
Oh, is that so?
and
Well, I will
 … thrown about amidst the building laughter, until they have seemed to whittle down their future lifetime together—with these as-yet-to-be-determined spouses—to such essential details as his future wife accompanying him to one baseball game for every time he took her to the ballet or the opera … or her future husband accepting the fact that she now intended to turn her attentions to the cause of women’s suffrage and how there would be meetings every week in the parlor—and
so on. Until, just as a deal seems somehow imminent and can be sealed with a kiss, once one of them actually proposes, she makes one more demand, framing it with such sincerity that there is no counterpoint being offered.

“I want to get married here and not in New York,” she says. “I don’t think my family would come to the wedding, and quite honestly, I don’t wish to give them the opportunity to decline … I …”

“I think Father Corby would do it,” he interjects, mentioning one of the Chaplains of the Irish Brigade, and bringing the smile back to her face. “I think my Mam and Aunt Em’d keel over on the spot if it wasn’t a Father that married us … myself and the future wife, that is.”

She smiles and has to agree with him.

“I think my mother might, too,” she says, and the negotiations seemingly draw to a close. “Now, if only there was
such
a man …”

“You know … I believe I’d be willing to give it a go.”

She steps back from him and looks him up and down, then curls one side of her mouth slightly and shrugs her shoulders a little before responding.

“Well—I
suppose
I would grant you permission …”

And finally the kiss to seal it—that which has seemed inevitable since the day they found each other again. The cold seems less of a foe than before, and they change their path now, walking to the edge of the fields perhaps a mile behind the hospital, strolling slowly, silently, with her arm draped inside his and her hand slipped inside his coat pocket. She knows it won’t always be like this.
How could it possibly?
But she had never imagined it could come so easily, or that she would surrender so readily.

No, surrender’s not the word for this
, she thinks,
this is more like an admission. Perhaps the most mature thing I have ever done. Nothing little girlish about this, no tantrum against the world—no blame, no refusal to fall, to be vulnerable. What joy just to consent to these gifts
.

And she looks up at him again with sentimental eyes that must seem foreign to Ethan, and wordlessly wonders for the first time how she has merited such a fate—until her thoughts are interrupted by the far-off strains of song from the edge of the field. They walk toward them as if by instinct and soon can make out the words, sung with the collective
mournful voice that seems the perfect accompaniment to this place, to this day, singing of all that has been lost and gained too:

There, perhaps thirty yards away from them now, is a small encampment of what must be slaves from Fredericksburg itself,
former
slaves now that it is the first day of a New Year of hope and now that they have crossed over the river to stake their claim to freedom. And Marcella cannot help but cry at the sight as she and Ethan stand in silence, watching and listening.

“Oh, if only Mrs. Carlisle and Catherine could be here to see this,” she says. And seeing the smile on Ethan’s face, she pulls his arm tighter and places her free hand against it.

“How’s
that
for something to show for it all?” she says.

And he allows himself an even broader smile.

“I believe that will do.”

That night, as she watches over the dimly lit recovery room while everyone but sentries and sinners are asleep for miles around, she finds time to write for the first time in all these harrowing weeks.

The night was the hardest time. He was haunted every day by the faces of the four men he’d killed. But when he closed his eyes at night it was Mary’s face he saw. As if she’d seen everything he’d done since he left. Like she’d just changed her mind about running off, but he’d changed his mind about what kind of man he was altogether. The sorrow in her expression, every night he saw her, told him how far away he was from her. More than just miles could ever accomplish. Like he’d betrayed her.

The morning after leaving Dunmore’s house began an endless stream of days. Blended together in anonymity. Up before first light, like he always was. Riding Albert Embry’s horse now. Still riding the horse of a man he’d killed, with guilt his constant companion.

The horse would graze on whatever it could find, and Micah would hunt some. Come back with mostly nothing. Then it was riding all day, dismounting for long stretches to lead the horse through the most difficult parts along the jagged spine of the Blue Ridge. Some days they might cover eight ten twelve miles. Others it might be just two. And
every afternoon, long before the sun disappeared over the western ridge of the mountains, he’d search for a cave. Some indentation in the mountains where he could build a small fire, not be worried it’d be seen for miles around.

Most nights he was forced to scrape out a place to sleep in a bed of snow covered over with pine branches. Some nights he was warmed by a fire. Every night he was haunted by memories. And he gauged his bearings by remembering the words to a song the slaves used to sing in the rice fields when he was a boy.
Follow the Drinking Gourd
, they sang. A coded name for what his Daddy said was the Big Dipper. Its end star was the North Star. Pointing the way to freedom. He could remember the first lines of it, and would repeat them over in his head from time to time.
When the sun come back, When the firs’ quail call, then the time is come, Follow the Drinking Gourd …

And in the aching solitude he felt at night, he’d often find a clearing and look up into the sky. Try to hear those childhood voices again. And the hopeful strains from the rice paddies of Carolina. ’Til all was inevitably silent, and he’d pick up a tree branch and bury one end of it in the snow. Angle the upper end toward his guide. Like the mountains themselves weren’t pointing the way.

It wasn’t long before he
had
to kill Albert Embry’s horse. It wasn’t about any hatred he still had inside for the man. Or even because he was near starving himself. But the horse was dying a little each day. Even though he’d stopped riding him altogether days ago. Even though he carried all the tools and his blanket on his own back. And left the saddle buried in the snow-covered brush miles back. He tried pulling him along for a whole day, trying to get him to keep up. But he was starving even more than Micah was. So he had to kill him. So he didn’t have to suffer anymore. The horse.

Then, in a late afternoon a few days after the kill, he came upon what looked like the tallest peak in the whole world. He was stronger now, thanks to the horsemeat. So he decided to climb the peak. There was a wooden sign set near the top,
Stony Man Mountain, approx
. 4000
ft
. And he figured it was as good a place as any to have it out with God. Once and for all. ’Cause God’s gotta answer for putting Mary in this world. Making something that precious in the first place. Then leaving
her locked up in fear ’cause of all the mess he’d made in the world to go right alongside everything precious.