Shades of Gray (12 page)

Will followed his cousin, hoping she knew where she was going. He couldn't see any sign of a path through the dense woods, or any landmarks, either. Then he spotted a tree with a notch cut in the bark. Of course! The twins had blazed the way. He wouldn't have to worry about Meg getting them lost—or about not being able to find his way to the river when he went alone.

Finally they turned onto a narrow path that led them to a stream. “The best fishing spot's just a little way from here,” Meg said.

“This—this is the river?” Will asked.

“Of course it's the river! What did you expect?”

Will thought of the beautiful Shenandoah, winding its way through the Valley. “Something a little wider, I guess. At home, our
creeks
are bigger than this.”

Meg faced him angrily. “Everything was bigger and better back home, wasn't it? It's too bad somebody in wonderful Winchester didn't take you in when your ma died!”

“Mama left a letter saying she wanted me to come here,” Will said shortly.

“That doesn't make any sense at all! Why would she send you here after she'd been returning my ma's letters without even opening them?”

“I think it was Papa who returned those letters.”

“Then I'll bet it didn't matter to her whether Pa was in the war or not!” Meg said triumphantly. “And it shouldn't matter to you, either.”

Will looked away. “Maybe it shouldn't, but it does. Now, are you going to show me that fishing spot, or not?”

Meg led the way upstream along the riverbank. Will knew from the stiffness of her back how angry she was. He couldn't help wondering if she was right about Mama not caring that Uncle Jed hadn't fought for the South. He was so lost in thought that he almost bumped into Meg when she stopped abruptly.

“Well, look who's here!” said a mocking voice. There, coming toward them, were Hank and Patrick, each carrying a fish.

“Looks like you had good luck today,” Will said, eyeing the fish. “Where's Amos?”

“He's sick,” Patrick said. “Where's Charlie?”

“He's dead.” Will's voice was steady, but his pulse pounded as if he'd been running.

Meg gasped, and Hank turned to her. “ ‘My ma's got a cousin named Charles,' ” he mimicked, “ ‘but nobody calls him Charlie.' You little liar!”

“That wasn't a lie!” Meg said, moving closer to Will. “Ma does have a cousin named Charles!”

“That's twice she's lied now,” said Patrick.

“Yeah,” said Hank. “Don't you know what happens to little girls who tell lies?”

Will stepped forward. “Leave her alone, Hank.”

“You gonna make me?”

For once, Will didn't know what to say. He had to look out for Meg, but—His heart seemed to skip a beat when Hank stooped over to pick up a small piece of bark, placed it on his shoulder, and stared at him defiantly.

Will swallowed hard. He'd been dreading something like this ever since he met Hank and his friends. But at least it wouldn't be three against one. And he'd rather lose a fight than have Hank and Patrick—and Meg—think he was a coward. Accepting Hank's challenge, he knocked the chip off his shoulder. Warily, the two boys faced each other. Then Will lunged. But Hank was quicker than he, and Will found himself sprawled flat on the ground before he could land a blow.

“You tripped me!” he said, gasping for breath as he struggled to sit up. “Don't you know how to fight fair?”

“I know how to win!” Hank said boastfully, pushing him back to the ground with his foot.

Again Will tried to get up, and again Hank pushed him down. Rolling sideways, Will scrambled to his feet and stood facing his adversary. “You know what you are, Hank?” he said through clenched teeth. “You're a poor sport and—and a coward!”

Hank sprang on him like a cat. Will crashed to the ground again, this time with Hank on top of him, pummeling his face and chest as if he would never stop. Finally, Patrick pulled Hank away.

“Geez, Hank, you don't want to kill him, do you?”

Will struggled to sit up, but Hank broke away from Patrick. Placing his bare foot on Will's chest, Hank pushed him back
to the ground and stood glaring down at him. “Don't you ever call me a coward again, Will-yum Page! There ain't no cowards in
my
family.”

Will waited until Hank and Patrick picked up their fish and their poles and started down the path before he tried to sit up again. His head was swimming, and he could taste the blood from a badly split lip. Someday, somehow, he'd get even with Hank!

Meg knelt beside him, weeping. “It's my fault! It's all my fault!” She tried to wipe his face with her hanky, but he pushed her away.

“It didn't have anything to do with you, Meg,” he said, gingerly feeling his swollen lip.

“But—”

“Hank's been wanting to get the best of me ever since I came here. He didn't need much of an excuse to beat me up.” Will hauled himself to his feet, but his head swam so that he had to lean against a tree.

“Shall I get Pa?” Meg asked in a small voice.

“I can walk,” Will said. But he didn't object when Meg carried his fishing pole and the bait jar.

By the time they reached home, Will's eyes were almost swollen shut and his throbbing head felt about twice its normal size. Aunt Ella hurried to his side. “What happened? Was there an accident?”

Will started to shake his head, but decided against it. “I'm all right,” he said weakly.

Aunt Ella settled him in the rocking chair on the porch and began bathing his face with cool water while Meg told what had happened. Aunt Ella turned to her husband, who had
been listening intently. “Jed, this time Hank has gone too far. If you won't speak to Mr. Riley, I will.”

“You wouldn't be doing Will any favor if you did. Think how those boys would torment him if his auntie complained that Hank had beaten him up. I don't like it any better than you do, Ella, but this is something Will has to handle by himself.”

Turning to Will, Uncle Jed said, “From what Meg told us, Hank didn't do all this damage until you called him a coward. What did you do that for?”

Will hung his head. “I was angry at him for tripping me, and it was the worst thing I could think of to call him, in front of Meg.”

Uncle Jed stood up. “Well, maybe you've learned a lesson. Nobody wants to be called a coward—or thought one—when he's not.”

“Do you feel well enough to help Meg and me clear the weeds out of the graveyard this morning?” Aunt Ella asked after breakfast the next day. “Your uncle will walk the trap line for you.”

Will nodded. “I look a lot worse than I feel,” he said. His face was swollen and discolored by bruises in spite of the poultice Aunt Ella had made for him.

“Come on out and I'll show you how to sharpen the sickle, Will,” Uncle Jed said as Meg jumped up and began clearing the table, eager for a morning away from the house.

Soon the three of them were on their way. “I didn't know you had a graveyard,” Will said as they walked single file along an overgrown path that ran east from the fallow field.

“Beth's buried there, and Grandma and Grandpa Jones, and Pa's two brothers that died when they were young, and some cousins I never knew,” Meg explained.

A small fenced clearing lay on a knoll in the woods ahead, and Will could see several grave markers rising above the tall grass. “It looks like our work's cut out for us,” Aunt Ella said.

“Here's where Beth lies,” said Meg, dropping to her knees beside two closely placed slabs of fieldstone. “Someday we'll have a proper memorial stone, but for now. . . . ” Her voice faded away.

Will didn't know what to say, so he squatted down before the larger stone and traced the letters and numbers that had been scratched into its surface: B.J., 1859-1863.

Aunt Ella set down a basket of oval-leafed plants like the ones that covered the ground on the shady side of the house and knelt to pull the ragweed and sorrel from around her little daughter's grave. Her face was sad, but peaceful. Meg pointed out her grandparents' graves and those of the other relatives, but Will scarcely listened. He was watching Aunt Ella.

When Meg began to pull the weeds around the other graves, Will set to work cutting the grass between the stones and the split rail fence that enclosed the small graveyard. He wondered if the grass had grown up around the plain white stone where his father was buried near the Middletown Road.

He thought of the new graves in the Page family plot at the churchyard—Charlie's stone, with “Gone, But Not Forgotten” engraved across the bottom, and the two small white markers topped by carefully carved lambs above where his sisters lay. And Mama's grave, which he'd never seen. Before he'd left Winchester, Doc Martin had helped Will choose the
words for his mother's marker and had promised to meet with the stone carver at the marble and granite works in town—and to see that the stone was put in place when it was ready, too.

By midmorning, the work was finished. Will, Meg, and Aunt Ella stood back and admired the results of their efforts. “I'll carry water every day till that periwinkle you planted on Beth's grave takes root,” Meg promised her mother as they started back along the path. Then she turned to Will. “Did working in the graveyard make you think of your family and feel sad?” she asked.

Will thought for a moment. “It made me think about them, and about how much I miss them,” he said slowly, “but it didn't exactly make me feel sad. At least, not as sad as I was at first. I—I guess I've gotten used to their being gone. ‘Gone, but not forgotten,' like it says on Charlie's stone.”

His aunt asked, “What about the way Charlie died, Will? Are you able to accept that yet?”

Will waited for the pounding in his temples to begin, but all he felt was a sense of emptiness. “I guess I have, Aunt Ella,” he said with surprise. “It was a horrible way for him to die, but I guess I've accepted it.”

“It must be terrible for you when those boys taunt you about Charlie,” Aunt Ella said.

“It's terrible, all right. But it's better than being pitied like I was in Winchester, and each time they say something, it's a little easier for me to take it.”

Meg sighed. “I guess I shouldn't have said what I did that day at the pond when they asked if you knew a Charlie Page.”

“I'm glad you did, Meg. I wasn't ready to face up to them then.”

“Well, you sure faced up to Hank yesterday! If he hadn't tripped you, you'd have bloodied his nose for sure.”

If only he could have gotten in just one good punch! Will touched his swollen lip. Charlie had taught him to use his wits to avoid a fight if he could, but to strike first if a fight was inevitable. He'd failed on both counts yesterday.

Aunt Ella said, “I don't understand why you wanted to fight Hank when he's so much bigger than you are.”

“I didn't want to, Aunt Ella. But I had to, anyway.”

“Had to, Will?”

Will looked at his aunt in surprise. “He'd frightened Meg! And he'd challenged me, too! If I hadn't fought him, he'd have thought I was a coward.”

“A person thinking you're a coward doesn't make you one, Will,” Aunt Ella said quietly.

Will looked away. “Maybe not, but I'd have felt like one if I hadn't fought him. And that would be a lot worse than feeling bruised and swollen.”

Aunt Ella nodded. “I see,” she said slowly. “Believing as you do, I guess fighting him was your only choice.”

Believing as he did? Will frowned. Would he have had another choice if he believed differently?

Will was cutting the grass around the house. He swung the scythe in wide arcs, trying to maintain the easy, rhythmic movement he remembered from watching Fred. Meg sat on
the porch with her favorite of the half-grown chickens in her lap. “Someone's coming, Will,” she said.

Will straightened up, flexing his fingers to rest them from their tight grip on the tool's handle. Turning, he saw a tall, dark-haired man limping up the lane.

“Hey!” the man called, waving.

Will leaned his scythe against the fence and went to meet the stranger.

“I—I need a place to spend the night,” the man said. “A young fellow back at the store directed me here, but he didn't say it was so far.”

Under his tan, the man's skin had a grayish tint, and his eyes were sunken in his thin face, as if he'd been ill. Will wondered why the Rileys or the Browns hadn't put him up instead of sending him several miles farther on. Then the truth hit him. “You're a Yankee, aren't you?” His mouth felt dry as he spit out the words, realizing with surprise that it had been weeks since he'd thought of the hated Yankees.

The man's jaw tightened and he nodded. “Union cavalry. I was wounded just before the war ended, and now I'm finally on my way home. It's going to storm,” he said, gesturing toward the lowering clouds in the western sky, “so if I could just sleep in your barn tonight. . . . ” His voice faded and he swayed a little.

Meg spoke up. “Help him over to the shade while I get some water.”

The man swayed again, and Will automatically grasped his arm to steady him. He led him to the stump under the oak tree where he sat to split kindling.

Just as Meg came running back from the spring with the
water, Aunt Ella hurried over from the house. Will watched the man struggle to his feet, surprised that a Yankee would have good manners.

“Sit down, sit down!” commanded Aunt Ella.

The man sank back onto the stump. His hand shook as he reached for Meg's dipper.

“Will,” Aunt Ella said quickly, “go find your uncle. And you, Meg, bring me the butter from the springhouse.”

Aunt Ella disappeared into the kitchen, and his cousin hurried to get the butter. Will scowled. Imagine wasting their carefully hoarded round on a Yankee! Hands in his pockets and chin thrust out, he started toward the buckwheat field. His stomach lurched at the thought of the three biscuits that had been left over from dinner, thickly smeared with golden butter, disappearing into the Yankee's mouth.