The Railroad War (19 page)

“I think that I will feel better if someone is with him all the time,” Ash said, avoiding a direct answer to her question.
“I have invited Lam and your father to play cards for the rest of the afternoon. After that, we’ll see….”

“And what would you like me to do for him?”

“Give him all your love, Miranda. It’s what he feels he is most lacking.”

“I’ll do my best,” she sighed. She was more worried about her father than ever now. Ash’s confirmation of her own fears had
increased her anxieties about Pierce rather than alleviating them.

There was a sharp rap on the door sill, for Ash had left the door itself open when he’d entered the room. When Miranda looked
up to see who was there, she saw Lettia standing in the doorway. “What you two lookin’ so glum for?” Lettia said.

Miranda brightened automatically. “Uncle Ash and I haven’t seen one another in ever so long,” she said, covering up. She didn’t
want the servants aware of her worries. “It’s sad to be so long apart, don’t you think?”

“You been long away from us heah, too. Are you sad ‘bout that?”

“Very sad, Lettia,” she said. “And I’m delighted to be here.”

“That’s good, miss, ‘cause I missed you, too.”

“Well, I have a game of cards ahead of me,” Ash said. “I’d best be seeing to it.”

“I’ll see you at supper, Ash.”

“Until then,” he said, and left the room.

While Ash was making his exit, Lettia bent over into the hallway behind the door and picked up a pail of water. “I’ve brung
you some warm water to bathe with,” she said. “I speck you pretty hot and tired and sweaty after yo’ travlin.’ “

“Oh, I am, Lettia. Thank you.”

“Let me po’ it in the basin over there, and I’ll leave you with some nice dry towels, and den you can sponge yo’self off.”

“That will be divine.”

A few minutes later, after Lettia had poured the water, departed and shut the door behind her, Miranda stripped off her traveling
clothes and underthings and gave herself a leisurely and cooling sponge bath. She dried herself in front of the long mirror
next to the dressing table, and then brushed out her hair.

She hardly ever paid attention to the scar on her breast, but it caught her eye now. It was the one she’d received on the
train ride up the Hudson on the day before Lam graduated from the Military Academy—a most memorable day.

The scar began just beyond where the pink corona around her nipple shaded into white. It was three inches long and an inch
and a half across at its broadest, and diamond shaped—wide at the top, flat at the top and bottom. But to Miranda, the scar
was not a diamond; it was the wide bulbous smokestack of a railway locomotive.

Miranda let her fingers idly graze the scar, and while she did, she thought back over the trip up the Hudson and the golden
afternoon with Lam and his two friends.

Would they still be friends, she wondered, if they were here now? They’d seemed so close and inseparable then. But now? They’d
all moved down such different paths: Lam into the cavalry, Noah into the engineers…and Sam Hawken had remained in their enemy’s
army. He was, she’d heard, an aide to General Sherman.

Sam was the one Miranda recalled most vividly, the one who’d left her with the greatest emotional charge, and the one she’d
most like to meet again. But he was the one least likely to ever step into her life.

“Where is he?” she asked herself as she recalled their mad and wonderful tumble down the hillside together. “Where are you
now, Sam?”

She turned away from the mirror, slipped on a light shift, and threw herself onto the bed. She planned to nap until Dorcas
came around and told her to dress for supper.

But her nap was interrupted when she heard loud and violent shouting downstairs. She jerked her head up and listened, straining
to make out words. The clearest, loudest voice she recognized belonged to her father, and she could make out Lam’s, too. But
she couldn’t hear Ash. And she couldn’t tell what the shouting was all about.

What time is it? she wondered, glancing out the window. Outside, the sun was still bright. She couldn’t have slept for more
than an hour or so, she guessed.

And then, mobilizing herself, she rose from her bed, splashed some water on her face, and put on the clothes she’d planned
to wear for the evening.

Five minutes after the angry shouting woke her, she was in the study, where the men had set up their card game.

Her father was no longer there. He’d stormed outside while she was dressing. Ash was standing by a window when she entered
the room, and Lam was pouring himself a stiff glass of whiskey from a decanter on a sideboard. The card table was overturned,
and cards were strewn across the floor.

“What happened?” she asked. “Where is Father?”

Ash looked up and shook his head.

“Ash, tell me,” she demanded. Then she looked at her brother. “Lam?” But her brother didn’t return her look. “Ash?” she repeated.

“What do you think?” Ash sighed, indicating with an inclination of his head the wreckage of the card game.

“Stupid, suspicious, vindictive bastard,” Lam said.

“Father?” Miranda asked.

“Who else?” Lam said, drinking deeply from the glass. “Could there be anyone else around here who is stupid and suspicious?”

“Tell me what happened,” she said.

“That doesn’t matter,” Ash said before Lam could speak up.

“But I want to know,” she said.

“No, you don’t,” Lam said, realizing that his uncle was right in trying to keep a lid on the affair. “It’s best to forget
it.”

She glanced from one to the other, and seeing that they were both resolute, she gave in to them for the moment. “And where
are Ariel and Robbie?”

“Napping still, I imagine,” Lam said, taking another long, deep sip.

“Then I’ll go look for Father,” she said.

“You’d do better leaving him alone,” Lam said.

“No,” she insisted. “Somebody has to take care of him.”

“The vindictive bastard can’t—or won’t—take care of himself.”

“Why all this rage,” she asked, looking at Ash, “about a game of cards?”

When he did not answer, she turned and left the room. She walked through the parlor to the front hall and went out onto the
front lawn, where she scanned for signs of her father. He was nowhere to be seen.

“Miz Miranda!” It was Dorcas calling. She had undoubtedly been hovering near the study. “Miz Miranda! You shouldn’t be out
theah in the heat of the day widout a parasol or a hat. You come in right now an’ git somethin for yo hair an’ yo face, you
heah?”

“I’ll be all right, Dorcas,” Miranda said. “Don’t you worry.”

“Wid you pale skin, you gonna burn,” Dorcas went on, shaking her head with exasperation. But Miranda, ignoring her, set out
to find her father.

At which task she had no success. She searched for an hour and a half by which time the sun was sinking, and then gave up.
He could not have failed to hear her calls. If he’d wanted to respond to them, he could have.

As she walked through the plantation settlement and then along the paths through the marshes where the rice would normally
have been growing at this time of year, she couldn’t help but notice how run-down everything was. The deterioration depressed
her at least as much as the disappearance of her father.

She returned to the house, where she found Ash and Lam still in the study. Ash had by this time poured himself a whiskey,
and Lam was clearly working on his second—or fifth.

“I couldn’t find him,” she said when Ash looked at her.

“Best to leave him alone,” Ash said, “to cool off.”

“I thought you told me earlier this afternoon,” she snapped, bitter and frustrated at her inability to locate Pierce, “that
you thought somebody ought to stay with him all the time.”

Ash nodded. “That’s right,” he said. “I did say that. And I tried to go with him when he rushed out screaming at the top of
his voice. But he would have none of it, he told me. ‘I don’t want you or your concern,’ he said.” Ash shrugged. “So I let
him go.”

“I hope he falls in a canal and drowns,” Lam said.

“Lam!” Miranda barked. “Don’t you say such things!” And then she looked at Ash. “What
did
happen at that card game? It’s beginning to feel to me like there was a battle here bigger than Gettysburg.”

Ash’s lips widened into a grim smile. “One might take it that way,” he said. “But, truly, Miranda, it’s best to think nothing
of it. We played cards, and Pierce lost and there were accusations.”

“You weren’t placing wagers, were you?” she broke in.

“No,” Ash said, “not at all.”

“And all of a sudden,” Lam said, “out of nowhere, it seemed to me, Father raised himself up and struck me in the face and
screamed louder than ever.”

“I don’t see a mark,” Miranda said.

“I was across the table from him,” Lam said. “Too far to do me any damage. And then he flipped the card table over and screamed
some more.”

“And you didn’t provoke him?” Miranda asked.

“No,” Ash said. “He didn’t.”

“And that’s when he stormed out?” Miranda asked.

“Not quite,” Lam said. “There was more yelling, and he tried to reach me again with his fists, but Uncle Ash held him back.
Next he stormed out.”

Miranda’s shoulders sagged, and tears started forming in the corners of her eyes.

“Why?” she asked Ash. “Why do you think he did it—if neither of you provoked him?”

“I would have guessed because he was losing,” Ash said, “and it bothered him. He is
such
a child most of the time. But I don’t know, Miranda. There was something else, and I don’t know what it is.” Ash turned to
Lam, seeking his agreement.

“I’ve never seen him this way,” Lam said. “And I don’t like it.”

Miranda looked first at Lam and then at Ash. “All right,” she said, “the instant Father returns, tell me about it, unless
I see him first.”

She was beginning to fear that the trip to Kemble Island was a bad idea after all.

Pierce reappeared after sundown. There was still plenty of light then, however, more than enough for Miranda to see clearly
how destroyed he looked: He had fallen into a marsh that had once been a rice paddy, his clothes were caked with dirt and
slime, and his face was florid and unhealthily flushed. A film of bright sweat covered his flesh.

When Miranda approached to give him help, he waved her off irritably, the way he must have done when Ash had earlier tried
to go with him after he’d broken up the card game. When she persisted, he screamed, “Get away from me. I don’t want your help,
you hear? I don’t want you messin’ with me.”

“Daddy!” she said with pain in her voice. “What’s wrong with you?”

“Let me alone, I said.”

“But you’ve fallen into a ditch and you need help.”

“No, I do not need help,” he snapped. “I had a short dizzy spell from too much sun and heat, and I got dunked a little, but
I’ll deal with it.” He pivoted around to leave her, but then he stopped, twisted his face toward her, and added, “I’ll deal
with it my way.”

“Daddy!” she repeated more insistently.

“I said, you nosy little bitch, that I don’t want you fussin’ with me.” As he spoke, he approached her, balling his fist and
cocking his arm, evidently intending to strike her.

As he pushed nearer, Miranda backed away. “Father!” she cried out, alarmed.

He staggered a little. Then he pulled to a halt and gazed out of misted eyes—not really seeing her, she realized. It was as
though he were in a trance.

Has he gone crazy? she asked herself.

“I’ll see you at dinner,” he managed to say.

Miranda’s father put himself in order by dinnertime, as he promised, which lifted Miranda’s spirits a little. And she was
greatly relieved that all through the meal he didn’t break into another blind rage, though he was silent and sullen the entire
time.

The servants laid supper out half an hour after dark. They spread it on tables they’d carried outside onto the lawn, and it
was quite a glorious spread—a dozen of the freshest channel cats fried and buttery crisp, a haunch of pork roasted on a spit,
steamed shrimp and crabs, rice from their plantation, spinach, peas, string beans, and tomatoes from the garden, and wine
that Ashbel had carried all the way from France.

After supper the men retired to the study for cigars and brandy, and the two sisters chatted with one another and played with
Robbie on the veranda. At nine Ariel rose to put Robbie to bed. She would retire with him, she told Miranda. “I have to be
up when he gets up,” she said by way of explanation, “even though you must think I’m going to sleep terribly early. And I’m
just exhausted after all that traveling.”

Miranda came to her feet then, too, so as to give her sister and Robbie good-night kisses. She kissed Robbie first, and lifted
him up and gave him a big hug. After she put him down, she approached Ariel. “Before you go,” she said with a worried look,
“there’s something I want to ask you.”

“I know what it is,” Ariel said with a tight grimace. “You want to ask me about Father, don’t you?”

“That’s right. I don’t know what to do about him.”

“Does anyone?” Ariel said hopelessly. “He has been so baffling! Is he going insane, or is he ill or what?”

“That’s right,” Miranda shrugged. “Or what?”

Ariel gave Robbie a sidelong glance. She didn’t want him listening to this kind of talk. But Robbie, happily, seemed disinterested.
He had found a clan of june bugs that he could torment.

“Ash brought me a note from Mother,” Miranda said. “She sent you her love.”

Ariel smiled. “How is she?” she asked.

“From what little she said, she seems quite well. She’s playing Lady Macbeth. She adores that role.”

“Lady Macbeth, really?” Ariel said. “How very perfect for her, yet how far from her real-life role. It’s a shame she could
not put some of the steel in Father that Lady Macbeth put in the man she married.”

Miranda shrugged again. “It would have done little good. Father could not have been a king, even a criminal king like Macbeth.
Perhaps an ambassador or an envoy or even a chief minister—but never a king. I sometimes think that that was the chief difference
between Mother and Father. She is a leading player, and he is not and can never be.”