Shades of Gray (2 page)

Aunt Ella led the way up the porch steps and into the house. After the bright afternoon sun, Will's eyes were slow to adjust to the dark interior, but he could see the big fireplace on one wall, the rocking chairs and trunklike chest arranged around it, and the large oak dining table near the front window. Through an open door on the other side of the room he saw a quilt-covered bed. He shut out the rising memories of the Winchester house and its large, bright, carpeted rooms filled with upholstered furniture. All that would be sold to pay Mama's debts. This was his home now.

Aunt Ella set her box on the table. Then she crossed the room, opened a narrow door, and started up the steep stairs to the attic. The low-ceilinged space had been partitioned into two sleeping rooms. She opened the door on the left and motioned Will to follow her inside.

In the dim light from the window at the gable end of the room, he saw the neatly made bed with its sunburst patterned quilt, a chest, one chair, and a small table. A kerosene lantern stood on the table.

When Aunt Ella saw his glance come to rest on the table, she explained, “Before the war, Sam did his studying there.”

“I'll do my studying there, too,” Will said, setting down
his carpetbags and taking the package from Meg.

Aunt Ella sighed. “There's been no school around here since the schoolmaster volunteered early in the war. The building's been boarded up ever since—you probably saw it there by the store when you drove in—and with times so hard I doubt there'll be money to hire a teacher this year.”

No school in the fall? Will could hardly imagine not having school! After the academy he'd attended had closed because of the war, he'd gone to the classes one of the pastors had held in his home.

The sound of a door opening broke the silence. “It's Pa!” cried Meg, running down the narrow stairway.

Aunt Ella rested her hand on Will's arm. “Come meet your Uncle Jed.”

His mouth went dry. In the flurry of meeting his cousin and aunt, he'd momentarily forgotten his dread of living in the same house with a traitor—or with a coward, rather, since his uncle hadn't actually helped the enemy.

What would a coward look like? Will wondered as he followed his aunt downstairs. Expecting to see a frail, stoop-shouldered excuse for a man, he was surprised to find a sturdy man with a broad chest and muscular arms listening to Meg's excited chatter.

“So this is our city cousin,” the man said, striding across the room. His high forehead and the dark, appraising eyes below his bushy brows were the only part of his face not covered by a luxuriant brown beard.

Will stared at his uncle's outstretched hand. He couldn't shake hands with a man who had refused to fight for the Southern cause! But he couldn't offend the head of the family
that was taking him in, either. Slowly, he raised his right hand and felt it engulfed in the man's strong grasp.

Then his uncle said, “There's two squirrels for you out in the kitchen, Ella.”

“I'll make a stew to go with the poke greens Meg cut along the road this afternoon,” Aunt Ella said, turning toward the door. “You can bring me some wood for the fire, Will.”

Glad to leave the house and his uncle, Will started for the woodshed. He gathered up an armload of split logs, choosing oak and locust to make the fire last.

His aunt smiled her thanks as he stacked the wood beside the stone fireplace that covered the north wall of the summer kitchen. “Now you can get me a potato from the cellar,” she said, fanning the small flame she had coaxed from the embers.

Lifting the trap door in the far corner, Will could barely make out a ladder that led into the pitch blackness below.

“The lantern's on the shelf behind you,” Aunt Ella said.

He raised the glass chimney, and his aunt touched the wick with a burning broom straw she'd lit at the fire. Then, carefully holding the lantern, he felt his way down the ladder. Will breathed in the earthy smell and savored the sudden coolness as his eyes passed over the shelves of empty canning jars and came to rest on the vegetable bins. He chose the largest of the wrinkled potatoes that covered the bottom of one bin and took it to his aunt.

“I'll split you some kindling now,” Will said.

He found a hatchet, chose a piece of pine wood, and seated himself on a stump outside the woodshed. As he began to splinter off strips of wood, Meg joined him.

“Didn't you have slaves to do that sort of work?” she asked.

Will couldn't tell whether she was being sarcastic or not, but he decided to give her the benefit of the doubt. “We had three slaves,” he said. “Callie was our cook, and Lizzy looked after the house. Fred did the outside work. He took care of our horses and split the wood and made the garden.”

“Did the army get your horses, too?” asked Meg.

“My father was in the cavalry, so he and Fred took the horses.”

Meg's eyes widened. “Did Fred go in the cavalry?”

“Fred went with my father, to look after him and the horses.”

“But I thought—”

Will interrupted her. “You thought all slaves wanted to run away from their cruel masters, didn't you?” he challenged.

She nodded, her eyes not leaving his face.

“Well, that was true on a lot of big plantations farther south, but some slaves were well treated and cared about their families.” Will shaved off more pine splinters. “Our Lizzy looked after Betsy and Eleanor when they were sick. She cried as hard as Mama did when they died.”

Tracing a curve in the dust with her bare toe, Meg said simply, “My little sister died, too.”

“You mean Beth?” Will said, looking up in surprise.

“She died during the war. After your mother started sending back Ma's letters without even opening them.” Meg's voice was cold, and her eyes narrowed.

Will frowned. He hadn't known about that! He got up and went to the woodshed for another log.

“How did Beth die?” he asked when he came back. “Did she catch diphtheria?”

Meg shook her head. “Rebel scouts took our cow, and without any milk, she sickened. Wasted away, Ma said.” She sighed. “I still miss her sometimes.” Then, as an afterthought, she added, “Bessie was such a good milk cow, it seemed a shame to turn her to beef.”

Will felt a wave of anger surge through him. “You should think of Nell and Bessie as your family's contribution to the war, since your father wouldn't fight,” he said in a voice that was deadly quiet.

Meg's hands tightened into fists. “Pa saw no need to go to war so that rich people could keep their slaves!” she said.

Will dropped the hatchet and stood up to face his adversary. “Don't you know anything? The war wasn't about slavery—it was about states' rights! People in the South were tired of being told what to do by a government hundreds of miles away in Washington. They wanted to live under laws made by their own state governments instead. The war was about states' rights, Meg.”

“They just said that so men who didn't own slaves would fight in it!” Meg shot back. “Anyway, people's rights are more important than states' rights, and Pa had the right to decide not to fight in the war!”

Will looked scornfully at his cousin. “If men had the right to decide whether or not to fight when their country's at war, there wouldn't be any armies,” he said.

Meg met his gaze. “I know of two armies we'd both have been a lot better off without,” she said. Then she turned and walked back to the house, her head held high.

Will muttered an oath he'd learned from a young officer who had been quartered in their house one of the times Winchester
was in Confederate hands. Then he scooped up an armload of kindling and headed for the summer kitchen.

Will was glad when the evening meal was over, even though he was still hungry. He knew he was stretching the family's meager food supply, and he was ill at ease in spite of his aunt's attempts to make him feel welcome.

He excused himself and climbed the stairs to his attic room. First he put his clothes in the chest and arranged the family Bible, his copybook with its few precious blank sheets, and his pen and ink bottle on the table under the window. Trying not to think about an autumn without school, he slipped his slate into the chest and tucked it under his clothes.

Will hesitated a moment, holding his small package of family photographs. Then, resolutely, he put them with his slate at the bottom of the chest. That done, he found a nail in the wall where he could hang his father's saber and the pouch of uniform buttons he'd collected from the battlefields and army camps near town. Then he threw himself across the bed.

He felt at ease with Aunt Ella and he guessed he'd learn to get along with Meg. Already they seemed almost like family, probably because they reminded him of Mama and Betsy. But he knew he'd never feel comfortable around his uncle. Imagine the son of a Confederate cavalry officer having to accept charity from such a man! He'd be courteous, and he'd help out all he could to make up for being an extra mouth to feed. But he'd never call him Uncle Jed. Never!

With that decided, Will flopped over on his stomach and fell into an exhausted sleep.

Will woke early and slipped downstairs and out onto the porch. Uncle Jed was coming back from the spring with two buckets of water. He set one inside the door of the summer kitchen and carried the other to the porch, where he filled a dishpan and began to wash his face. Will thought wistfully of the pitcher of hot water Lizzy had brought to his room each morning and poured into the porcelain bowl that stood on the small marble-topped table. He gave a start when his uncle turned to him and spoke.

“Not much reason to get up this early nowadays, with no stock to feed and water. But old habits die hard.” He dried his hands and went on. “I didn't take sides in that there rebellion, but I'll be doggoned if both sides didn't take me! It'll be a long time before this place recovers from the war.”

“It'll be a long time before
Virginia
recovers!” Will said.

The man nodded. “You've seen more of that than I have,” he agreed, “coming through the Valley like you did on your way here.”

It was Will's turn to nod as he thought of the spoiled fields and the blackened squares of earth where barns once stood, and of the occasional skeletal chimney rising from the charred ruins of a home.

“I saw you chopped some kindling for your aunt. Why don't you go on over and make the fire so she can start breakfast?”

Will headed for the kitchen, glad for an excuse to end the conversation.

Breakfast that morning was a thin gruel that didn't taste like anything Will had ever eaten.

“It's made from the buckwheat the Yankees didn't get,” Meg said. “Their foragers never found where Ma hid it.” She grinned at Will from across the table. “Ma put pillow slips on six sacks of grain and set them right on top of the feather pillows on the beds. When she tucked the quilts in, you couldn't tell they were there!”

“Six sacks wasn't much, but it's given us enough meal for gruel most mornings and pancakes now and then,” said Aunt Ella. “Meg grinds the grain in the coffee mill.”

Will spooned up the rest of the gruel. It was better than nothing, but he was still hungry. He wondered what they would have had for breakfast if his aunt hadn't been so clever.

Uncle Jed pushed himself away from the table. “I've set up a new trap line, Will, and I'm going out to check it now. I want you to come along so you can learn the way and take it over.”

Will got up and followed his uncle out the door, hoping that he'd be a quick learner.

Uncle Jed set a fast pace as they crossed the empty pasture to where the woods began. Ropes of honeysuckle wound their way up the straight trunks of the locust trees at the edge of the clearing, and wild grapevines as thick as Will's wrist hung from the chestnut trees beyond them.

The faint path they were following began to rise steeply, but Uncle Jed kept the same fast pace. Will was breathing hard, but he was determined to keep up. He'd show his uncle! He'd show him a town boy could get along in the country! Will felt a sense of relief when they reached the top of a narrow ridge, but his spirits fell when Uncle Jed immediately plunged downhill into a grassy hollow.

Finally they neared a small stream that tumbled over the rocks. “This here's the first trap,” said his uncle, barely pausing as he pointed to the small, rectangular box with the door at one end still held open.

“Wait,” Will gasped. “I—I need a drink.” Dropping to the ground, he lay on his stomach beside the stream and drank the icy water from his cupped hands. He was thirsty, but even more than the water, he needed an excuse to stop for a moment to slow his racing heart. But before he had satisfied his thirst, a rough hand on his shoulder hauled him to his feet.

“What are you trying to do, make yourself sick? Don't you know better than to drink so much at once when you're hot?”

Will jerked away from his uncle and glared up at him. The man's answering gaze was scornful, and Will was the first to look away.

“Don't pull a fool trick like that again,” his uncle said, turning to walk upstream.

Will followed a short distance behind, nursing his anger. He knew not to drink too much! He watched his uncle stop at intervals to check the other traps. By the time they reached the last empty trap, Will's legs ached, and he was so drenched with sweat that his shirt stuck to his back.

Uncle Jed shook his head. “It's a bad time of year for trapping,”
he said. “Rabbits don't show much interest in the bait now that there's so much else to eat. Fall and winter's the time to trap, and the pelts are worth more then, too. But when your family's hungry. . . . ” His voice trailed off. Then he turned to Will and said brusquely, “Well, now, let's see if you can find your way back.”