by Ralph Peters
An armless man with a massive beard knelt by the captain’s head, bending—no, tottering—down to whisper in his ear. With sidelong glances at me.
The captain looked at me harshly, almost hatefully, for a moment. Then his face smoothed over again.
“Doctor Tyrone? The men say you are riding my Buster.”
I failed to understand him. Theirs is a very foreign form of English.
“Buster,” he whispered. “My horse. The boys say you are riding my horse.”
I understood it then. I hastened to form excuses and explanations, but the captain reached out and closed a hand over my wrist before I could speak. He had lost his legs and more, but still had the grip of a man happiest out of doors.
I began to blather about finding the animal, but the young man did not let me finish a sentence.
“Buster loves his carrots, Doctor Tyrone.” Tears glazed his blue eyes and he let his head sink back on the ticking. He released my arm. “You feed that horse plenty of carrots, hear?”
The captain called out then, not loudly, but in a voice accustomed to command since childhood:
“Boys, I have asked the doctor to look after Buster. He has kindly obliged me.” But he sensed the men were still unhappy with the situation, so he continued, “We must be generous with our enemies. Doctor Tyrone here is going to need him a real, fine horse when we send him and all the rest of the Yankees skedaddlin’ back where they came from.”
The room was fiercely silent for a moment, then another voice said, “Damn right. Damn sure, you’re right, Cap’n.”
They all began to hoot, to shout and yelp. Next came that wild banshee call of theirs.
As I left that room of limbless men, they were singing a buoyant song about their flag. I fear this war will not end as soon as we might wish it done.
I am enclosing a list of books and a few banknotes. My dear friend, when next you pass through New York or Philadelphia, please inquire as to the availability of the titles. That is, of course, if you should find the time. Give preference to the medical works, especially those on vascular matters. Although I yearn to read of higher things, I am determined to make the most of my grisly profession. I will not accept that all this butchery should pass without an advance in knowledge.
Please think fondly of
Yr. Obt. Servt.
M. Tyrone
Surg. U.S.V.
SEVENTEEN
IT WAS A LOVELY COW.
That is what my host said. I am sure of it. Standing there, brushing the animal’s brown back, he looked my way and said, “So ’ne schöne Kuh, nit?”
I do not speak the German’s weighty tongue, but my acquaintance with Mrs. Schutzengel, followed by my convalescence in this country household, had quickened my ears sufficiently to follow a bit of talk here and a scrap of chatter there. Ah, the mysteries of language! How little truth there is in any tongue, despite our ceaseless appetite for speech! All words are shadows. Only faith brings light. The Welsh know words are weak, and thus we sing.
Anyway, twas clear the fellow was fond of his animals. His kind would rather talk of cows than kings. And bless such men, says Abel Jones, if the wish be not presumption.
I was walking again. If slowly. Head a bit dazed and unwilling. But we cannot give in to our weaknesses, and I was supported in the flesh as well as in the spirit. Herr Kempf, my host, had whittled a cane to help me on my way.
If only the snow would have left us! We were prisoners. Deep into March, the south wind held its breath. You know how April’s scouts ride out ahead, sneaking past the winter’s sentinels to wake the earth into bright rebellion. The first scents rise, of earth and wet and life. All is reborn beneath a strengthening sun, and hearts swell in a hymn of wordless praise. This year, the earth slept on and whiteness reigned. March would not move, as if the very calendar had frozen. The snow still blocked the course to the main road. I ached to leave, to go back to my duty and stop Kildare before the deed was done. But the drifts had set in hard and kept us pinned.
Work done, Herr Kempf turned from the cow and sighed. His smile faded and earnestness overtook him. He gestured that I should follow him. Toward the gloom at the back of the barn.
Now, that was a well-kept barn, I will tell you. Neat as the family household. The animals were groomed, their stalls showed cleaner than the inns the county round, and the harness racked on the walls gleamed with oiling. The plow sat polished and ready, and fresh grease squeezed from the hub of the wagon wheels. Your German will not starve from neglect of his business.
Twas cold in the barn, yet I was delighted to be up and about. The smell of hay and even of horse sweat reeked life, and the wind crying through the boards sang of my good fortune. I was alive, though other men had not intended that I remain so. It was lovely just to be.
Still, my joy was tempered by dread. The world beyond spared no time for idylls. I feared what might have happened in my absence. I thought of Nellie, too. And between, behind and above all other thoughts, reveries of my Mary Myfanwy and young John haunted me as no ghost ever could. If ghosts there be, which I will not believe.
What if my sweet beloved thought me dead? What had my wife been told? How had she felt on the day no letter from me arrived, with none to come thereafter? I wished I had bought her that damnable—pardon me—sewing machine.
Herr Kempf beckoned me along, for I was not yet quick. I scuttled down between the hay bales, learning the length of my new cane. Though it was morning, musty twilight reigned. Fairy dust drifted between the eaves.
“Ist ’ne gute Scheune, nit?” he asked.
I understood only that something or other was good.
A stack of crates and chests rose against the back wall of the barn. He began lifting them down. I moved to help him—for I felt my strength returning—but Herr Kempf waved me off.
“Sollst ruhen,” he said. “War fast ’nen Totschlag, dass Du bekommen hast.”
He seemed almost bad-tempered now, which was not the fellow’s nature. Twas as if he had been set to a task he longed to avoid.
I sat me down on a bench of hay, with the dust sweet in my nose.
At last, he reached the chest at the bottom of the stack. Before he opened it, the good man straightened himself and took a deep breath. Then he bent to lift the lid.
The container might have been full of serpents, the way he reached inside.
He lifted out my pistol, the Colt the boys from my old company had given me, with its fine engraving and embarrassing inscription. Now I do not love firearms, and might wish them gone from the world, but my heart swelled at the sight of that particular instrument. For we may think high thoughts all we want, but our sentiments will have their say.
He held the pistol out by the barrel. But he was not offering it to me. Only displaying it.
“Kommt nit ins Haus, die Waffe,” he said. “Verstehst?” He tried, for the first time, to speak in English to me: “No in unser house.” Shaking his head to make certain I understood.
I nodded. For I understood him better than he knew.
He stuffed the pistol back in its hiding place. If I had nursed any doubts, which I had not, they would have been vanquished by the sight of the weapon. The men who had attacked me had not bothered to search under my greatcoat, or even to pat along my sides. Thieves would have taken the pistol sure. My assailants had wanted to kill me only, and believed they had. But for the storm, they might have strung me up and given me the pitch cap.
Herr Kempf gestured toward the barn door. “Gehen wir, ja?”
I followed him back out. Into the sunshine. Twas bright enough to blind, and I stepped carefully. For even the best-tended barnyard remains a barnyard.
I was a steadier man than I had been the day before. And better I would be the next day, too. When a Welshman sets his mind on his improvement, stay out of his way.
That morning seemed to grace the world with confidence. The sky was a handsome blue. For the first time since my beating, the sun fell wa
rm upon my shoulders. I stopped and raised my face in exultation.
An icy drop from the barn roof struck my cheek.
The snow was melting.
Herr Kempf looked at me.
“Morgen gehen wir zur Hauptstrasse. Ich helfe dir.”
I did not understand a word he said. But his good wife come out just then, to take up the fresh-laid eggs.
She went by us at a perk, explaining:
“Tomorrow he helps you to the road.”
THE LADY OF THE HOUSE made a chicken dinner that last night. This was on a weeknight, mind, when so rare a bird was forbidden the family pot. The hen died in my honor. The Kempfs were good souls, teachers of kindness.
What was I to them? Despite my uniform, I might have been a criminal, or otherwise deserving of my fate. Yet, I woke up in their own bed. The money had not been taken from my pocket by my attackers, so I offered to pay for my board. Neither man nor wife would hear of it, for they lived in mercy’s dominion.
There is true religion, see. I speak not of Christian, Jew or Musselman, of Hindoo or the countless kinds of heathen. For did not Jesus look beyond the name? Tis kindness, not severity, that lets us gain a little peek at Heaven. Now you will say, “This Jones speaks like an infidel. Saved is saved, and damned is damned, and done.” But I will tell you: Those who would put harshness in religion are no Christians worthy of the name. Look at that young family, with poverty their neighbor and lifelong work their fate. Were they not better Christians than a prince? I say we must keep true religion from the grip of the old and bitter, and place it in the hands of those who love.
Father McCorkle did not err in all his judgments, I will give him that. He understood why Jesus loved the poor. Had he understood this world half so well as he understood our Lord, we would have all been spared a share of misery. But let that bide.
We sat and ate by the firelight, and snow broke from the roof. Thump after whumping thump of it come down, with drips and drops and drips between the avalanches. The night felt even warmer than the day. I imagined the ice breaking on the canal, and windblown waves on the lake, and boats and armed men sailing to do wrong.
We ate the bird stewed up with homemade noodles, graced with carrots and onions from the cellar. A bit of salt, and the Hausfrau had a dish that would have tempted Adam out of the Garden. Lovely puffs of biscuit sopped the leavings.
“There is good,” I told them between bites.
Afterward, we prayed on our knees by the fire. The little one lay solemn in the cradle and there was a heaviness upon my hosts. You might have thought they saw what lay before me. Yet, all I had told them was that I must reach the town as soon as possible.
We sat by the hearth thereafter, drinking hot water and honey pricked up with nutmeg and clove. The Germans have a way with winter things.
“I must thank you again,” I said, to liven the drowse into which we had sunk.
“Nein!” the woman said quickly. “The Herrgott you must thank. And the girl. Who is so strange. Without her, there is no finding of you.”
Of a sudden, I remembered that earlier conversation, that other mention of a girl. My head had been spinning and my thoughts disordered with the seriousness of the injury upon me. But now the words rushed back. I recalled assuming a daughter was involved. Yet, daughter there was none grown in the house.
I felt uneasy.
“What girl?” I asked. “How was she strange?”
The woman glanced at her husband, but did not ask him again. She had heard the story often enough.
She shrugged. “The girl . . . maybe she is a woman. Doch jung. Young. By the road, she is standing. Sehr komisch, hat sie ausgesehen. She is looking not all right. Not with the right clothings for the coldness.”
“Did he see her hair? Did the girl have red hair? Was she slender? A slender girl with red hair, was it?”
The woman asked her husband. He shook his head no.
That baffled me.
Herr Kempf read the befuddlement on my face and spoke to his wife. She weighed his comments for a moment, then said, “My husband does not understand these things still. He is only coming home. Im tiefen Schnee. All is snow. Then the woman is calling to him. With the hand only, not the talking. She is in the trouble, maybe, because so little clothings she has. He stops the wagon und is following after her. Then you are there. In the snow. With so much blood. Mein Mann looks up to ask the questions and—” the woman popped out a breath—“like this she is gone. In the snow und die Nacht. She must freeze, I am thinking. With her little clothings.”
A chill gripped my heart.
“But what did she look like?” I demanded. “How did she look?”
The woman asked her husband another question. As he replied, he bobbed his hands, palms up, in a gesture of incomprehension.
“He says,” Frau Kempf told me, “that he is not believing if he is not seeing. The girl has clothings like the Prinzessin of the Sultan, in the stories for the childrens. She is very beautiful, with the brown skin and her not many clothings.” The good wife looked at me. “Is this not strange?”
WE LEFT IN THE MORNING, with my pistol returned to me. You guess my thoughts, so I will not report them. I was a man with one eye on the future, the other focused on a quitless past.
The going was hard. Later, they told me I had brought the winter of the decade with me to Yates County. Brown with mud, the high fields wanted plows, but the swales hid deep in snow. Now, humility is a virtue ever in short supply, so I will tell you frankly of my shame. I am not tall—though height is not everything in a man—and still lacked something of my normal strength. I could not have made my way without my guide. He helped me through the drifts where I stuck fast.
Once, he carried me like a child.
I wonder sometimes what it must be like to be tall and comely. I would not be envious, but look you. It must be an easier thing to be born long of leg and conquering handsome—though life is hard enough for all, I know. But think how it must be to go through life admired at first glance, body formed to overcome all challenges.
Well, we must be content with what we are given. We know what we are made of, you and I. Isn’t it a miracle when someone loves us?
The day was not all trials. Birds sang. The melting went the faster for their songs.
The farm lay at the edge of the world, and it took us half the day to reach the main road. Herr Kempf stayed by me until a wagon come along headed south toward Penn Yan. A farmer fellow let me share his seat behind the horses. After helping me up and deflecting a last barrage of my thanks, my host strode off across the sodden fields.
The driver did not say much for a mile. Dour, he chewed tobacco, spitting off the side into the slush. When he did speak, it was to the horses, not to me:
“Damned foreigners are ruining this country.”
THE DAY WAS DYING when we reached Penn Yan—a town I was not meant to see alive. The sky had clouded over and the farmer grumbled. He said a storm was coming, but I did not mind at all. I welcomed the prospect of more snow now. For snow would block Kildare. Until I could determine where we stood, and send my telegrams, and arrange for the militia.
My hopes were dashed. The storm arrived, but snow did not come with it. Just as I climbed down by the parsonage, I felt a drop of rain. I did not reach the porch before the Lord’s artillery began to sound and bayonets of lightning cut the sky. The rain attacked as I slipped through the door.
It might have been the summer rains of India, the way the pellets come punching at the earth.
I heard sounds from the kitchen and rushed toward them. All were surprised. Myself at finding Mr. Douglass visiting, and the Noble Moor by my appearance alive. But Morris was the one who took the cake. The old expression never was more apt—the preacher looked as if he had seen a ghost. I fair thought he would take off at a run.
He began to stammer. “You . . . but . . . dead, you’re dead . . . we thought . . . my horse . . . no body . . . my horse, Priscilla came bac
k and—”
I had a hundred questions I longed to ask. But one question had place before all others.
“Have there been any messages for me?” I fear I was shouting. For the slowness of the journey had set me to brooding. “Any messages, man?”
“Messages? Messages?” The poor fellow acted as if I had spoken in an exotic tongue.
“Yes. Messages. For me. It may be urgent.”
He rose from his meager plate. “Yesterday . . . just yesterday . . . yes, yes . . . a message, a message!”
I nearly leapt upon him. “Where is it, man?”
“Where? Where?”
“Where’s the message?”
He shook his head. Leaden raindrops struck the roof and walls. “Don’t know . . . must think . . . you were dead . . . dead, you see . . . gone over Jordan . . . never thought . . .”
“On your desk, perhaps?” Mr. Douglass interposed. A boom of thunder followed on his words.
Mr. Morris looked as if he had been assaulted with yet another foreign term. “My desk? Desk? No, no. In the dustbin. Thrown away.” His alarm grew even more intense. “I do hope Mrs. James hasn’t emptied—”
“Where?” I shouted. “Which dustbin?”
Morris launched himself toward the next room. I followed, with Mr. Douglass trailing, caught up in the excitement.
“ . . . Dead . . .” Morris mumbled, “ . . . gone over Jordan . . . everybody thought . . . over Jordan, passed over Jordan . . .”
He reached for a paper-stuffed cylinder beside his desk.
I took it away from him, dumping its contents on the old Turkey carpet. As I rummaged through the scraps, I had to slap poor Morris’s fingers away. He only sought to help, but was a trouble.
The rain pounded at the windows. It come colder now. Sticking to the glass then sliding downward. Its sound was that of shots heard on a flank.
There it was! A sheet of schoolboy’s paper, folded up and sealed. Inscribed, “to majur jones.”
I tore it open.
if not ded hury Kildare leevs