The Root Cellar (23 page)

“We took the measure of each other and I reached out quick and grabbed him by the arm
that had the knife. He was quick and he made a pass at my face with that arm, even though I had a hold of it. I ducked away and tried to grab hold of the other arm, but he was too quick and he got a hold of my hair and he pulled. I kicked out and tripped him up, and over the fence we went, the both of us rolling in the nettles and grunting and panting and rolling over and over and over. And something in me that had been burning let loose on this black-eyed murderer, and I kicked and grabbed and punched and held on to that arm that kept coming up to my eyes, my throat, my ribs, it must have been a dozen times.

“Once he grabbed me by the throat with the other hand and I think he would have won, but we rolled down a little hill and into a creek. It surprised the both of us so much he lost his grip for a minute and he let go of my throat and the knife both at once. Now he was stronger than me though he was smaller, but I didn’t want to die, and when I got the upper hand I let him have it. I punched him in the gut and I blacked his eyes, both of ’em, and punched his nose until it poured blood over both of us. Then I pounded his head until he cried out. Then I sat on him and we glared at each other, him with his eyes blacker by the minute and me with the marks of his thumb on my neck.

“ ‘If y’all mean t’kill me, Yankee, get doin’ it,’ he said, and I looked him right in his black
rebel eyes and I could see they wasn’t but ordinary eyes, scared but brave too, and he wasn’t but a boy, probably younger than me. I reached over into the creek where the knife was laying and I picked it up. I looked at it and I looked at him. I couldn’t kill him like that, like slaughtering a chicken or a pig.

“I got up off him. ‘Get up,’ I told him and he did. I knew he was a rebel, he talked like one. But he didn’t have no uniform on. He had on a pair of britches might have been made for a giant, and they was tied on him with a string.

“ ‘You skedaddling?’ I asked him.

“He didn’t say nothing.

“ ‘Where you from?’

“ ‘Tennessee.’

“ ‘Is that where you’re going?’

“ ‘I dunno.’

“ ‘Wherever you’re going, you better get there and fast.’

“He ran. I listened to him crashing through the woods and I never moved until not only the sound of him was gone but the birds and the squirrels had stopped scolding and screaming about it. Then I doused my head good in the creek. I kept his knife—still have it—and I went back to camp feeling better about everything.

“It wasn’t long after that we moved into Richmond and the war was over. Our regiment was first into the city, just like Steve had said
right along it was going to be. It was the third of April, a Monday, not a day I’m likely to forget. We was camped outside the city the night before, and all that night the city burned. The rebs had fired her up, lit up the arsenal, and the whole city’d caught fire. When we marched in at eight o clock in the morning there wasn’t nothing but ruins right up to the capitol building.

“Like I said, our regiment was the first into the city, and it was us that put up the first flag, but it wasn’t our company and it wasn’t Steve, though by that time he didn’t much care. He was just glad to see it go up. We marched in right behind the company of coloreds that was first in. We marched straight to the prison where the Union soldiers was kept. We opened the doors and let them out; then we pulled down the rebel flag.

“Up went the Stars and Stripes and the fifer played ‘Glory Hallelujah,’ and our boys was cheering and shouting so loud you could barely hear the music. And I looked at Steve’s face. He was standing there, sort of leaning against me, looking at that flag and glowing like he’d seen an angel.

“And there was others the same, but not me.”

Will stopped. He looked at Susan and, for the first time during that whole, long recital, his voice broke. “Susan,” he said, “you was right. I stood
there in Richmond. The rebs had gone. The town was all but burned right out. The war was almost done. I looked up at the flag going up over the Libby Prison, and it wasn’t my flag. I listened to all them shouts and looked at all them joyful faces, and I knew that what you said back in the orchard at home before I took off was true. It wasn’t my war, Susan. It just wasn’t my war.”

Will put his face down into his hands, and there was such an air of utter despair about him that Rose, listening under her tree, wanted to get up and put her arms around him. But the story he had told had been for Susan and the despair he was wrapped in could only be broken by her. Instinctively Rose knew that and stayed where she was.

After a few moments, Will sighed deeply and sat up straight.

“That night old Abe come in to Richmond to see how things was and, I expect, to cheer us on. He was a strange-looking man, like a couple of scarecrows set above one another to make one awful tall thin man with a high silk hat on top, but his face was something wonderful and, you know, Susan, the preacher would likely say I was blaspheming but I thought to myself that if I could paint a picture of the face of God, that’s how I’d make it.

“He walked right by me, not just when we was standing on parade but afterwards, when I
was standing guard by the capitol building, and I couldn’t stop myself—I reached out and touched his arm. He never noticed but I felt a gladness in me. And then, not two weeks later, on Good Friday, he was shot in that theater by that crazy Booth. And you know, Susan, I felt as if the sun had got turned off. I never felt exactly like that even when my own pa died, and Pa was a good man.”

Will turned his worn cap slowly around in his hands. “There’s not much more to tell after that,” he said. “We stayed in Richmond about a week, guarding the miserable ruins, trying to make some kind of order of them, and all the while we were there Steve got sicker and sicker. It was like he’d just given up once the flag was up over Richmond. We wasn’t camped with our own company, God knows why. Things was just some mixed up and I don’t know when our boys left the city. To tell the truth, the heart had gone out of me. All I could think was I’d gone through all that hell and it hadn’t ever had nothing to do with me and worse, oh so much worse than that, if it hadn’t of been for me Steve wouldn’t have gone, not all by himself he wouldn’t, and I was so sick at heart I was like to die. So I cleared us out. I got us on a boat going down the river. There’s a song we used to sing that says Richmond is a hard road to travel, and all the way down the James River
and up along the bay and into Washington, sitting on that deck with Steve lying with his head on my knees, all I could think was, maybe it is, but it ain’t so easy coming back either.

“We’d passed through Washington on our way down from New York in November, and I remember what one of the boys said when he seen the White House. He said, ‘It sure don’t look much like a house I’d live in. I’d sure like to trade with old Abe a few days.’ We’d all laughed and had a good time. But when we come back, Steve and me, it was a different kind of feeling. He was somewhere else in his head pretty near all the time by then, and I just lived every day with this lump of fear at the bottom of my stomach. A captain from the New York 125th took us in charge and got us to the hospital. Steve never got no better. There was times he’d know me and sit up, his eyes sort of wild, and say over and over, ‘Promise me, Will, you promise me you’ll let me stay and get us into Richmond.’ Other times he’d be back playing ball in Oswego or calling out for Aunt Min. Once, just once, he sat straight up and looked at me as if he’d known right along what was going on, and he said, ‘Will, you ain’t going to let me die?’ and he grabbed me by the hand so hard all I could think to say was, ‘No, Steve, I ain’t,’ but of course there wasn’t nothing I could do about it and he died a week after that and
the last thing he said was, ‘Don’t leave me, Will. Promise!’ I don’t know how long we was there and I don’t know how long it’s been since then. We buried him out here at Arlington and, like I promised, I ain’t left him alone. I stayed for a time at that hospital where he died. Then there was this kind nurse that took herself over to the little place in Georgetown where all the dying fellows was and I figured I might as well go along. So I did.”

Will stopped at last. His face looked grim and very old. In the silence that followed his story, Rose realized that without having been aware of it she had been crying. Shakily, she wiped the tears from her face. But all she said was, “Let’s go home.”

I’m Not Coming Home

S
usan stood up, pulling Will with her. “That’s what we have to do now,” she said decisively. “We have to go home. Will, your ma’s going to be some glad to see you.”

“Susan, I ain’t going with you.”

“What?”

“I ain’t going with you.”

“What do you mean?”

“I promised. I promised Steve I’d stay by him.”

“Will, Steve’s dead.”

“And if I hadn’t have been so stupid he wouldn’t be.”

“Stupid? You mean because you promised you wouldn’t take him to the hospital?”

“I should have taken him no matter what he said.”

“But that don’t mean because you promised something and it turned out wrong you got to
keep another promise—especially when the person’s dead.”

“Yes, it does. That’s just what it does. Don’t you see, I was kind of in charge of Steve. He was younger than me, so I had to take care of him. And I let him die. The only thing I can do now for him is to keep my word to him.”

“Will, ain’t you had enough of the dead and dying? It ain’t like you. You was always a one to love the living things. Remember how it was you who found the first trilliums in the woods in spring? And knew where the lady’s slippers grew and wouldn’t tell no one but me for fear someone would spoil ’em? And you was the one to help your pa with the lambing even when you was real small. It’s them living things you belong to, Will. Steve’s gone, and it’s terrible sad, but there ain’t nothing you can do to bring him back though you sit here till you die at the age of a hundred or more. You’ll go crazy like your ma.”

“I ain’t coming with you, Susan.”

“Will, you have to come. Susan’s right about when people are dead. They’re just dead, and you can’t do anything about that. I know,” Rose said.

Will stared from Rose to Susan and back again. He stuffed his hands into his pants’ pockets and paced back and forth, swearing to himself. Then he started down the hill.

“I don’t want to talk about it,” he said harshly.

“Come on, we don’t need to stay here all day.”

In single file they walked toward the road. Out on the hillside there were fields of corn and pastures where cows and horses were grazing. In the distance the late sunlight made a fairytale palace of the gold dome of the Capitol building. It was quiet and beautiful, but none of them noticed. All three were thinking their own thoughts. They reached the road and, in silence, continued on toward the river, one behind the other like children playing follow-the-leader. Rose thought of the time she had told Susan about spending the money and Susan wouldn’t walk with her. In front of her, she heard a muffled sob. She quickened her step and caught up with Susan.

Susan’s head was down and tears were running down her cheeks and chin, and making little muddy rivers down the front of her dress.

“Have you been crying all this time?” whispered Rose. Susan nodded. The tears went on falling.

“Is it because Will won’t come? To think I worked a whole week for that hideous old gargoyle Peter Maas just so we could get here! I’m not giving up now! We’ll find a way yet.” Rose quickened her step and moved ahead to keep up with Will’s long, marching stride.

“Susan’s miserable,” she said.

Will said nothing. Rose put her hand on his arm. He shook it off.

“She’s crying,” Rose repeated. “We came all this way to get you. You can’t just say, ‘I ain’t coming,’ and let us go all the way back to Hawthorn Bay, Canada, without you. We had a very hard time getting here.”

No response.

“Will Morrissay, I think you must be the most stubborn person in all the world—” She stopped. Will was looking down at her, and behind his tired eyes Rose could see the pain of where he had been and what he had seen. It was almost like a physical blow. Her first instinct was to shield herself from it. Then she wanted to shield Will. She grabbed his hand. She wanted to cry the way Susan was crying for Will, for Steve and all those others, for the horror of war, which she didn’t understand but felt the deep sadness of. She trembled from the grief that welled up inside her. But she did not cry. She could not, because of the terror in the grip Will had on her hand. She understood about terror and she held on to him, willing herself to be as strong as he thought she was.

After a while Will realized he was holding Rose’s hand in a crushing grip, and he let go and walked on more easily. By and by Susan moved up beside him and they walked along the river
road, and through the streets to the hospital, three abreast, in unspoken companionship.

“I see you found him.” It was the same woman who had opened the door to them earlier in the day. “I’ll get Matron for you.”