Shades of Gray (8 page)

A moment later, Aunt Ella was poring over the letter and the boys were in the attic. Will took the saber and the leather pouch from their nail on the wall. He slipped the drawstring of the pouch around his wrist and carefully drew the long,
curved blade from its scabbard. Even in the dim light of the attic, it gleamed.

Hank was properly awed. “They gave my pa a bayonet for on his musket, but he never had no sword. Your pa ever kill anybody with that there sword?” he asked as Will slid the saber back into its scabbard and hung it on the wall.

Will turned around. “Of course!” he said in surprise. “Didn't yours ever kill anybody with his bayonet?”

“Nah,” said Hank.

“Well, my father killed lots of Yankees with his saber and even more with his revolver.” As soon as the words were out, Will regretted their boastful tone. It didn't seem quite right to brag about how many men Papa'd killed. “Let me show you the buttons,” he said quickly, emptying the contents of the pouch onto the floor.

Hank dropped to his knees. “Look at 'em all!” he said, picking up a button embossed with an eagle and the letter
C
.

“That's a Yankee button,” said Will. “I found that one on the battlefield at Kernstown.” He thought of how he and his friend Matt had begged Charlie to take them along to look for battle souvenirs.

“If it's Yankee, how come it's got a
C
on it?”

“For ‘Cavalry,' ” Will explained, sorting through his collection. “See this one with the
I?
It's off a Yankee infantry officer's uniform.”

“How d'you know he was an officer?”

“ 'Cause except for the artillery, Yankee enlisted men just had the number of their regiment on their buttons,” Will said. Then, seeing Hank's scowl, he quickly added, “You'd know all this stuff, too, if there'd been any big battles near here.
And if you'd had a brother like Charlie to teach it to you.”

“A brother like Charlie,” Hank repeated slowly. “So Charlie Page
was
your brother!”

Will was devastated. How could he have been so stupid!

“Why'd you lie to us down at the pond that day?”

“I just didn't want to talk about it,” Will said through clenched teeth.

“So you sat there and listened to Amos tell the whole story and pretended you'd never heard it before?”

Will glared at Hank. “I don't want to talk about it now, either. Do you want to see the rest of these buttons, or not?” To his relief, Hank shrugged and picked up a button showing a woman warrior with her foot resting on a vanquished foe.

“Which side's this one from?”

Will was amazed that Hank didn't recognize the Virginia State Seal. “That's from a Virginia militia uniform. Lots of men that volunteered at the beginning of the war went in their militia uniforms. My father did.”

“Your pa
volunteered?
” Hank asked in disbelief.

“Of course! It was his duty!”

Hank quickly changed the subject. “Look at this,” he said, reaching into his pocket and drawing out an oval buckle. A bullet hole obliterated the first letter, but the other two—
VM
—could still be read.

Will took it. “A Yankee belt plate,” he said, imagining a Confederate sharpshooter fixing his sight on the glint of the volunteer militia man's shiny buckle. “Where'd you get this?”

“Tom, my brother, he swapped for it when they had a truce at the battleline. Cost him a pipe he'd carved from a laurel root.”

“Your brother swapped with a Yankee?” Will asked in disbelief.

“Shucks, he was just another farm boy. Gave Tom some bacon, too. First meat he'd had in weeks.”

Will handed back the buckle and swept the scattered buttons into a pile. He said stiffly, “My family never had anything to do with Yankees no matter how long we'd been without meat.”

“Why not?” Hank asked in surprise. “How could filling your belly with extra vittles help the enemy?”

Will put the last of the buttons into the pouch and tightened the drawstring. “It wouldn't have helped the enemy,” he said, “but it would have hurt us. It would have hurt our pride.”

Hank was quiet for a minute. “Pride's pretty important to you, ain't it?” he said at last.

Will stood up. “It's all I have left,” he said.

Hank got to his feet, too, and gave Will a long, calculating look. Then he turned to leave, saying over his shoulder, “I'll be watching for you down at the millpond, Will-yum Page.”

From the window, Will watched Hank cross the yard. For a while, he'd thought they might be friends. But that was before Hank found out he'd lied about Charlie. And before he'd acted like such a prig about Hank's brother and the Yankee soldier.

“I was surprised Hank Riley hung around so long after he handed over that letter,” Uncle Jed said that night at supper.

Will wished his uncle hadn't reminded him of Hank's visit. “He wanted to see the uniform buttons my friend Matt and I collected around Winchester. I showed him Papa's saber, too,” he explained.

Meg sighed. “I wish I could have seen all that.”

Will looked up in surprise. He hadn't thought a girl would be interested in such things. “I'll show them to you when we're through supper,” he said.

“Wouldn't mind seeing 'em myself,” said Uncle Jed.

So after the dishes had been washed and dried, Will brought down the pouch and saber. He drew the saber from its scabbard and laid it on the table, pretending he didn't see his uncle's outstretched hand. Uncle Jed picked it up and ran a finger along the finely sharpened blade. “Never saw one of these before,” he admitted.

Meg's eyes were wide. “Did your pa really kill men with that? It must be terrible to see the face of somebody you have to kill!” She shuddered.

Uncle Jed slid the saber back into its scabbard. “Yes, I guess it's easier to fire your musket at somebody that's wearing a different color uniform. Or just to aim your cannon in the general direction of the other side.”

Will felt a flood of anger sweep through him. “There's times a man can't take the easy way out,” he said, glaring at his uncle.

His uncle's dark eyes met his and held. “That's right, Will. A man has to do what he believes is right.”

Will looked away, confused. Did Uncle Jed really believe he'd done the right thing when he refused to fight? He was glad when Meg broke the strained silence.

“Can we see the buttons now?” she asked.

He emptied the pouch onto the table. “Each one is different,” he said. “I gave my friend Matt all my duplicates so he could swap 'em for ones he doesn't have.”

“Which ones are Yankee and which ones are Johnny Reb?” asked Meg, leaning forward.

How Will wished his cousin would say “Confederate”! He sorted the buttons into two piles, muttering under his breath as he worked: “Thirteenth Georgia . . . Seventh Maine . . . Ohio Volunteer Militia . . . Twenty-sixth Massachusetts. . . . ”

“And just think, a man probably died right where you found every one of those buttons,” Meg said when he had finished.

Will had never thought of it quite that way before. He wished his cousin hadn't said it.

“What I don't understand is,” she went on, “why you have so many more Yankee buttons. If so many more Yankees were killed, how could they win the war?”

“Easy,” said Uncle Jed, pushing his chair away from the table. “They had more men to waste.” The door slammed shut behind him.

Meg helped Will gather up the buttons and put them back in the pouch. “Thank you for showing me your collection,” she said politely when they had finished. Then she went up to her attic room and closed the door quietly behind her.

Will stared down at the leather pouch. “I think I'll get rid of these,” he said at last.

Aunt Ella reached over and laid her hand on his. “No, Will. Don't do that. That collection is part of your past, and you have little enough left to remember it by.”

Back in his room, Will whispered, “Aunt Ella's right. I don't have much to remember the past by.” His hand lingered on the saber as he hung the belt on its nail, then moved to the family Bible on the table beneath the window. Idly, he
turned to the family record pages. In the waning light he could just make out the last two entries in his mother's writing: Elizabeth Anne Page, born June 1, 1855, died August 18, 1864; Eleanor Jeanne Page, born July 3, 1857, died August 19, 1864. He flipped back to the page where he'd recorded his mother's death. Why? Why did she have to die?

The weight of the leather pouch made its drawstring cut into his wrist, and Will pulled it over his hand and tossed it onto the table. He thought of his cousin's words: “A man probably died right where you found every one of those buttons.” Had some other boy walked along the Middletown Road where his father's unit was ambushed and looked for buttons and belt plates to collect?

Will threw himself face down on his bed and relived the night three years before when he had learned of Papa's death. Lizzy had come upstairs to tell him and Charlie that their mother wanted to see them. In the parlor, a handsome blond cavalry officer rose and came to meet them. Mama was standing at the window, her back ramrod stiff and her hands clenched at her sides, so the young major introduced himself. And then, as gently as he could, he told them how Papa had fallen in battle.

Will had stared down at the man's dusty boots and tried not to listen to his words. All he remembered now was what the man had said as he left: “Your father was a brave soldier. He died facing the enemy.”

Rolling over onto his back, Will stared at the dark rectangle of the attic window. His father was brave. His father had faced the enemy, but Uncle Jed had run away from his own side—from the conscription teams that simply wanted him to meet
his responsibilities. “I can never respect a man who refused to fight for his country, no matter how good a man he seems to be in peacetime,” Will said aloud.

It was a long time before he fell asleep.

After the morning chores were done, Uncle Jed and Will set to work again on the fence repairs. Remembering his decision of the night before, Will maintained an awkward silence. Finally, to cover his discomfort, he began to whistle. It wasn't until he noticed the set of his uncle's mouth that he realized he'd been whistling “When Johnny Comes Marching Home.” In a flash, Will realized Uncle Jed thought he'd chosen that tune to provoke him! And then, with a strange feeling of excitement in his chest, he began to sing the words quietly under his breath, watching his uncle out of the corner of his eye.

The big man's hands continued to ease the rotting posts out of the ground and replace them with new ones. And before long, he began to hum along with Will!

Will began the last verse. He wasn't surprised his uncle didn't know the words the Southern soldiers had sung to the lively tune.

“
In eighteen hundred and sixty-five

(Hurrah, hurrah!)

We all thanked God we were alive
. . . . ”

His voice faltered, and he bit his lip.

Uncle Jed straightened up and looked across the pasture toward the mountains. “Too many men aren't alive anymore because of that war,” he said at last. “And that song doesn't
mention when Johnny came hobbling home on one leg and a crutch, or when he didn't come home at all and his family never knew where he was buried. You know where your pa's buried, lad?”

“Near where he fell,” Will answered grudgingly. Then, quoting the young major, he added, “He died facing the enemy.”

Turning toward Will, Uncle Jed said, “I've faced enemies, too—the enemies of us all. Hunger. Illness. Grief. And hatred. But I've never faced my own countrymen as enemies. A man isn't my enemy just 'cause he believes different than I do.”

Will looked at his uncle in amazement. It almost sounded as if he were criticizing Papa! “Papa's enemies weren't his own countrymen! His country was the Confederacy, and he was fighting alongside his Confederate countrymen against their Yankee enemies!”

“Your Pa did what he believed was right when he went to war. And I did what I believed was right when I didn't go.”

Will didn't know what to think. He bent to slide the chain lower on the rotting post. As his uncle rested his weight on the lever Will asked, “Would you go to war to protect your country against another country?”

“If it meant staying free, I would.”

“Well, my father's country was fighting against another country in order to stay free.”

Uncle Jed straightened up and lifted his worn straw hat to wipe the sweat off his forehead. “How do you figure that?”

“Well, Virginia and the other states seceded and formed the Confederacy so they could be free to make the laws that suited their own people.”

Uncle Jed grunted as he took a new post from Will and stood it upright in the hole. “So they could be free to keep other people as slaves, you mean. Free to buy and sell other people like livestock.”

Will squirmed uncomfortably. “They wanted each state to be free to decide whether to have slaves or not.”

“Looks to me like all the states that seceded had already decided to have them,” Uncle Jed observed.

Will didn't have any answer to that. Thinking fast, he said, “A lot of men who didn't own slaves fought in the war, you know. Like Hank's father and brother, and Mr. Jenkins' sons, and your other neighbors. Why would they have been in the war unless they were fighting for states' rights?”

Uncle Jed snorted. “Mr. Riley and Tom fought because the conscriptors got 'em. The Jenkins boys heard how Stonewall Jackson sent the Yankees packing at Manassas and joined the army to find adventure. The rest of 'em were fighting for Virginia.”