Shades of Gray (14 page)

When he reached the fishing spot, Will realized that in his hurry to leave, he'd forgotten to bring bait. Glumly, he sprawled on the grassy bank, propped his elbows on the ground, and rested his chin in his hands. Less than one day of the Yankee soldier's “visit” had passed. How was he going to live through six more?

Maybe he should go back to Winchester right now, he thought as he watched the little eddies created by a partially submerged log. But even if he wrote to Doc Martin today, there was no way Doc could get the letter and come here before the Yankee's week was over. Will sighed. He'd just have to put up with him. When he did go back, though, there would be so much to tell Matt! He tried to imagine what his friend would say when he heard that Uncle Jed took in a Yankee soldier.

With a jolt, Will realized that Uncle Jed wasn't doing anything the people of Winchester hadn't done throughout the war. He remembered how his mother and the other women had fed the wounded soldiers who straggled through town for days after the battle at Sharpsburg, not caring in the least whether they were Confederate or Yankee. They were just young men in need of help.

Jim Woodley had certainly been in need of help when he arrived yesterday, Will thought, ashamed now that he'd wanted Uncle Jed to turn him away. Taking him in was the decent thing to do, he realized, and Uncle Jed was just about the most decent person he'd ever known—in spite of his refusal to fight for the South. Will figured that he had to accept the Yankee's presence, but that didn't mean he had to be friendly, the way the others were. He'd avoid the man whenever he could.

Will stared into the water. He wished Matt were there. “Maybe I could write to him,” he said aloud, thinking of the blank sheets of paper at the back of his copybook. But what would he say? Matt wouldn't be interested in hearing about Meg and Aunt Ella, and Will couldn't tell him much about his uncle without sounding disloyal. It would be hard to explain about the trap line or how he was helping to repair the fence, and he certainly didn't want to write about Hank. All that was left to say was that he missed Matt a lot and wished they could go fishing and swimming together the way they used to. That wouldn't be much of a letter.

Anyway, he thought, picking up his fishing rod and starting for home, if he was going to write to anyone, it should be Doc Martin. Why did he keep putting that off?

Will finished his supper quickly that evening and excused himself, saying that he needed to split some kindling. He knew the others would linger at the table, talking, and he wanted no part of that. While he was carrying the pine logs out of the woodshed, he heard the door slam and glanced toward the house. To his surprise, he saw Jim starting down the porch steps. Will sat with his back to the barn door so that he wouldn't have to speak to Jim as he went by. It seemed a long time before he heard the creaking sound that told him the Yankee had gone inside the barn. But then the door creaked again. Glancing behind him, Will saw Jim approaching, carrying a small, three-legged milking stool.

“Thought I'd keep you company for a while,” Jim said.

“I like being by myself,” Will said. With satisfaction, he saw Jim's face redden and his lips tighten. Methodically, Will began to splinter off strips of pine.

At last Jim spoke. “Virginia certainly is a beautiful state.”

“It was a lot more beautiful before the war. You should have seen the Shenandoah Valley before Sheridan ruined it.”

Jim drew a long breath. “I did see it, Will. My unit was with Sheridan in the Valley.”

Will felt the blood drain from his face. His hand tightened around the handle of the hatchet, and he jumped to his feet. His eyes, burning with hatred, met Jim's.

“Sit down, Will,” Jim said quietly. “I'm going to tell you about it.”

Feeling light-headed, Will stood uncertainly, looking down at the seated man. He didn't want to hear Jim's story, but there was something commanding in the Yankee's quiet voice. Will returned to his seat on the stump. “Go on, then,” he said coldly.

“We were there in September of sixty-four,” Jim began, “and our orders were to destroy the breadbasket of the Confederacy, to help bring an end to the war by making it impossible for Southern forces to get the food they needed to continue their fight.”

Will interrupted. “To make the Valley so desolate that a crow flying across it would have to carry its own provisions,” he said, paraphrasing General Sheridan's famous boast.

Jim went on as if he hadn't heard him. “We were told to drive off the livestock and destroy the crops, to burn the barns and mills—but not the houses—and to leave each farm with only enough food to last the family through the coming winter.”

Will had heard all this before. He put a bored expression on his face.

“We were told to pile bales of hay around the barns and then to light them,” Jim continued. “And we had to follow our orders. But the orders didn't say how close we had to pile those hay bales, or that we couldn't soak them with water before we threw a burning torch on them and went on to the next farm.”

“You—you did that?” Will asked in disbelief. “
Yankees
did that?”

Jim nodded. “Whatever my unit could spare without disobeying the letter of our orders, we spared. And I know for
a fact that when the mill at Edinburg was torched, Union officers quartered in town helped put out the fire.”

“Then how come the Valley looked like it did when I came through it two months ago?” Will challenged. “I didn't see any barns or mills, and there were plenty of houses that had been burned!” Well, some houses, anyway.

Jim sighed. “The spoiling of the Valley was one of the tragedies of the war. But you know, Will, I'm convinced that some of the destruction that was blamed on Sheridan's forces was done by bandits, especially in out-of-the-way places.”

“Do you really expect me to believe that?” The corners of Will's mouth curled down in disdain. “I'm not going to listen to any more of this!”

He stalked toward the house, leaving the hatchet and the logs scattered on the ground. A few minutes later he saw from his window that Jim had moved to the stump and was chopping the kindling while Meg sat across from him on the milking stool.

Will threw himself down on the bed. When the miller's helper told him how he'd helped burn that town in Pennsylvania, he'd seemed almost proud of what he'd done. But just now Jim Woodley had seemed sorry for his part in destroying the Valley. It didn't make any sense at all!

The next morning, Aunt Ella sent Meg and Will to the orchard to gather the apples that had fallen during the storm. They filled four baskets and dragged them back to the house on the slide.

After dinner Aunt Ella said, “This afternoon you children can peel and slice those windfall apples for drying.”

“I'll help them,” Jim said.

Will's face fell, but Meg was delighted. “Oh, good! You can tell us another one of your stories!”

They worked on the porch. Will cranked the apple parer and watched the long green strip of peel spiral off and drop, trying to ignore Jim's presence. But soon he was listening as raptly as Meg to the tale Jim told. Before he knew it, the afternoon was almost over, and Meg and Jim had cored and sliced enough apples to fill a washtub with the white crescents of fruit.

Meg sighed. “I don't see how you can make up such wonderful stories!” she said.

“I didn't make this one up, Meg. It's from a book by Charles Dickens.”

“Dickens! Why, I read
David Copperfield
,” Will said excitedly. “And every year Mama used to read us
A Christmas Carol
.”

“I enjoyed both of those. What else have you read, Will?”

Before he could answer, Uncle Jed came up the porch steps. “You'd better bury those peelings and cores at the edge of the garden so they don't attract bees,” he told Will, lifting the washtub and starting off to the springhouse.

Will frowned. “I didn't know you dried apples in the springhouse,” he said.

“You don't,” Meg said scornfully. “He's just storing them there overnight. Tomorrow we'll spread them out on the woodshed roof, and if it's good and hot, they'll be dry by evening.”

Will started for the garden with his bucket of peelings and one of cores, glad that his uncle had interrupted when he did.
It was one thing to listen to Jim's story while he was working, and quite another to sit and talk with him.

Early the next week, Jim announced at breakfast that he felt well enough to leave for home that day. Will's relief at this news was marred by Meg's evident dismay. “Don't you think you need to rest just one more day?” she asked wistfully.

“Hush, child,” Aunt Ella said. “Think of his family, looking for him to come back.”

“And his sweetheart,” added Will, watching the expected blush color Jim's face.

Aunt Ella and Meg hurried off to the kitchen to pack Jim a lunch, and Uncle Jed walked back to the barn with him to get his knapsack. Will saw that Jim's limp was almost gone.

When he came into the house at noon, Will noted with satisfaction that the table was set for four. And then he looked more closely. There was a book beside his plate. It looked like the one Jim had been reading that first morning in the barn.

“Did you see what Jim left for you?” Meg asked. “He said it's a good story.”

“Moby Dick,”
said Will, picking up the small, leather-bound book. With a pang, he thought of his mother sitting on the horsehair sofa in the parlor with Betsy leaning on one arm and Eleanor leaning on the other as she read aloud to them each evening. He and Charlie always sprawled on the rug with the checkerboard between them, pretending not to listen. . . .

Uncle Jed's voice brought Will back to the present. “Jim was sorry you weren't here to say good-bye.”

Will set the book on the table.

“It's bad manners not to wish a guest well when he leaves,” Uncle Jed continued. “You know that.”

Will raised his head and looked across the table at him. “I should have been here,” he admitted, meeting his uncle's gaze. But how could he have watched them telling Jim good-bye without being reminded of how hard it would be for him to leave for Winchester? He wasn't ready to think about that yet!

Will awoke to the sound of rain beating on the tin roof. He shivered a little as he pulled on his clothes.

At breakfast Uncle Jed announced, “It'll be too muddy to work tomorrow, so Will and I'll walk in to the store. We need to decide what to buy with that cash the twins sent.”

“We've used almost all the flour, and there's hardly any salt left,” Aunt Ella said. “And we need cornmeal. But be sure to save enough to buy the children shoes for winter.”

Shoes for winter! Will swallowed hard. He couldn't wait much longer to tell them he was leaving.

Uncle Jed looked out at the sheets of rain. “I think this is going to keep up all day. No use planning to do anything other than stay dry.”

Aunt Ella drew her shawl closer around her and said, “Yesterday I didn't think I'd ever be cool again, but today I wouldn't mind a fire. We could cook inside, too.”

“I'll bring in some wood and your soup pot,” Uncle Jed said.

The usually homey room seemed dreary, and Will hoped
the fire would brighten it, as well as take off the chill.

“What are we going to do all day?” Meg asked.

Her mother said, “I'll be quite happy to sit in front of the fire in my rocking chair and do a little needlework.”

“Do you play checkers?” Will asked hopefully.

Meg's face lit up. She ran to the chest near the fireplace and found a small tin box and an inch-thick wooden board with alternate squares charred black. At the table, she opened the box and poured out yellow and red kernels of corn. “Do you want to be red?” she asked.

Will nodded, and they began sorting out the kernels. He thought sadly of his father's inlaid marble board and his sets of carved ivory and ebony checkers and chessmen. How he hated to think of them being sold!

“You can go first, Meg,” he said.

“We'll take turns going first,” she said, making her move.

Will knew Meg would be offended if he let her win, but he didn't want to beat her too badly. He pretended not to see a jump he could have taken and was shocked when his cousin's next move set up a three-for-one trade. Too late, he realized that he faced a skilled opponent.

At least she hadn't let him win, Will thought as they set up the board again a few minutes later. He was so intent on the game that he hardly noticed his uncle building a fire in the giant fireplace or Aunt Ella wiping up the water he had tracked in. And he barely glanced up when Uncle Jed came out of the bedroom in dry clothes and sat down to watch them play. Will moved his last man onto Meg's king row, and she “crowned” it by adding a second red kernel to its square. Now they both
had two kings. This game, at least, would be a tie.

But five minutes later Will was trying to figure out how his cousin had beaten him again. “You're a good player, Meg,” he said grudgingly.

She grinned. “I used to watch Sam and Enos play.”

Will brushed a pile of kernels into his hand and poured them carefully into the tin box. He wished his uncle hadn't seen him beaten. Beaten by a ten-year-old. Beaten by a girl!

“I could show you how to get out of that trap she had you in, lad,” said Uncle Jed.

Will shook his head. “I've had enough checkers for now.”

“Will you play with me, then, Pa?” asked Meg.

“Not if you're going to beat me the way you beat your cousin.”

Meg giggled. “Oh, Pa, you know I never beat you!” she said.

Will went up to his room and stood at the window. Outside, everything was a watery gray blur. He glanced at his pen and copybook. He would write Doc Martin and ask him to come for him just before school started. That way he could help his uncle harvest the buckwheat and fill the woodshed before he left.