This Old World

by Steve Wiegenstein

  Marie looked glum but had no reply. “He was here till a little while ago. When all the children ran out, he tagged along. Probably wherever they are. Look for Newton and Adam, and he’ll be there.”

  They left her with her schoolbooks and walked out into the noonday light. At Mercadier’s house, halfway down the village road, the crowd of villagers was waiting in the street for Flynn to emerge. Charlotte and Kathleen joined them. Sure enough, the boys were in a tight knot at the front of the crowd—Charlotte’s sons, Newton now seven and Adam almost three, and Angus between them at five.

  Charlotte went up to them. “I need to tell you something,” she said to Angus, taking his hand. “Walk over here with me.”

  She was about to lead him to a quieter spot, the doorway of the Wickmans’ house nearby, but before they could pull away from the throng, Michael Flynn emerged and stood on the Mercadiers’ step, dressed in some of Emile Mercadier’s castoffs. He was clean and his hair was wet, but his wild beard still stuck out from his face in all directions. He surveyed the crowd.

  “Is the war over?” someone called out.

  “Mine is,” Flynn said.

  “What have you heard?” Mercadier said.

  “Lee’s done. Johnston’s done.”

  “What about Smith?”

  “Smith I wouldn’t know about.” He stepped down into the circle of people toward Charlotte, who was still holding onto Angus’s hand. “This the boy?” His gaze was intent, his expression hard to read.

  Charlotte turned to the child. “Angus,” she said, “this is your father.”

  In an instant the child pulled free of her hand and darted off through the crowd like a sparrow through the forest. He rounded the corner of the house and was gone. They stood in awkward silence.

  “Well, come and eat,” Kathleen said into the empty moment. “This will take some time. Let’s go to the Temple, everyone.”

  “Temple?” Flynn said. “What the hell kind of place is this?”

  Charlotte followed, listening as Kathleen explained Daybreak to him—the community’s philosophy, the sharing of wealth, the weekly meetings, the pure democracy—all of which was true, at least in the abstract, although since the war had taken most of the men the abstract ideals of their social order had given way to the daily labors of survival. Hearing the pride in Kathleen’s voice reminded Charlotte of the reasons they came out here in the first place. They were going to remake the world one little village at a time, following James’s ideas of sharing, democracy, and social equality. So the dream had not taken shape in the last few years. Whose had? Flynn listened politely, but Charlotte could hear the skepticism in his questions.

  She hung back from the group, watching for Angus to reappear. He wouldn’t go far, not with all the hubbub going on. Nothing to eat at noontime but hoecakes anyway, so why hurry inside? Besides, Charlotte was feeling strange. She felt disembodied, not entirely real, as if she were merely walking through this world and not inhabiting it. She lingered in the street and watched everyone file in, then walked to a limestone slab that they had brought up from the river and placed on logs to make a bench beside the pump. She sat, feeling the warmth of the sun on her back and the cool of the stone underneath her.

  Sure enough, Angus appeared a few minutes later, sidling up beside Charlotte from behind. He leaned over her shoulder and rested his chin. Neither of them spoke for a while.

  “I don’t need a father,” Angus said eventually. “Josephine doesn’t have a father.”

  It was as if he instinctively found the most painful thing to say. Of course Marie’s little girl Josephine had a father, but it was Charlotte’s own husband, and they had never found a way to tell the children of this complication.

  “Well,” she said. “You have one, anyway. I don’t know anything about him, but he’s here.”

  “Don’t need him. Mother and I do just fine.”

  “Honey, we’ve talked about this before. Your real mother died, and Marie took you in. This man is the only real kin you’ve got, and you’re the only kin he’s got.” Angus did not reply. After a while, she added, “Let’s go in and eat. Everyone’s inside.”

  “He in there?” To her pause, he said, “Not hungry.”

  “Well, I am,” Charlotte said. “Hold my hand, and I’ll sit beside you.”

  They walked into the Temple, where the benches and tables were spread out on the main floor as they always were, with plates and utensils, and everyone eating in groups of six. Even with a war on and little food on the table, Charlotte had insisted that the community keep its tradition of common dining.

  Frances Wickman had gathered dandelion and dock in the morning, so they each had a small mess of boiled greens on their plates beside the cakes. The boys, who paid no attention to their food, were crowded around Flynn, peppering him with questions. But he had little to say, chewing on his hoecake with fatiguing deliberation.

  The Mercadier family, old Emile and his autumn bride Kathleen, and Emile’s daughter Marie, with her little Josephine clinging to her side, ate in silence at one table. Marie’s gaze burned at Flynn, but he ate as if oblivious. Angus pulled from Charlotte’s hand and squeezed between Marie and her father at the table, ducking his head to avoid being noticed. Charlotte served herself and sat down directly across from Flynn, scooting her sons apart to make room.

  “Mr. Flynn here fought in a lot of battles,” Newton told her.

  “I expect he did,” Charlotte said.

  “But he won’t tell us if he killed anybody.”

  “You boys need to leave this man alone. He’s trying to eat his food.”

  The children frowned but obeyed. They lingered at the table, swinging their feet, until Charlotte excused them and they scurried out the door.

  “Fine boys,” Flynn said.

  “Yes,” said Charlotte. “They and Angus make quite a trio.” She put down her fork. “Mr. Flynn, you should think long and hard before taking your son away from here. He has grown up here. He has friends and loved ones.”

  Flynn tipped his head to look at his son, squeezed in on his bench, while giving Charlotte a sideways glance. “I don’t discuss family matters with strangers,” he said.

  “Fair enough,” said Charlotte. “But let me tell you this. I remember when your group went through before the war. Must have been eighty of you, all headed for that settlement down south. But since Price came through, there has not been a single soul come up that road from the Irish colony. You take Angus down there, it’ll be the two of you alone. That settlement is gone.”

  “I said I don’t talk about family business!” Flynn shouted, half rising from the table. “I appreciate you people caring for my boy, and I’ll pay you. But I will do what I please.” He slammed his fork onto his tin plate and pushed back the bench. “I will wait outside.”

  In the silence that followed Flynn’s stormy departure, Angus began to cry. He clung to Marie’s side as Charlotte stood up, her face hot.

  “He has the law on his side, you know,” she said to the Mercadiers’ table. Kathleen nodded. Charlotte walked out to the landing in front of the doors, where Flynn waited on the slope below. Standing there, she could not help but remember Harp Webb lying on the very spot where she now stood, a bullet in his belly, and her rifle hot in her hands. She looked out across the fields to the river.

  “A final word, and this is not family business,” she said. “We had a rebel for a neighbor, owned a thousand acres south and across the river. Killed in the war. When the provost-marshal auctioned off his land, our community bought it up. If you don’t like what you find down south, I’ll sell you a forty or an eighty across the river, fine land but it’s uncleared. You don’t have to say yes or no, just know that it’s here. That young one has been with us since he was a baby, and it will break our hearts to see him go. So if you don’t find what you’re looking for down there, come back and be our neighbor.”

  She walked past him and did not look back. She did not want to witne
ss the tearful farewell, the crying, the whimpering, the arguments and recriminations. She went to her home and shut the door. About an hour later, she glanced out her window to the road south and saw Flynn walk past, knapsack and bedroll tied and trim, looking neither to left nor right, and Angus trudging ten feet behind him. Angus carried a sack which she knew had to contain a week’s worth of food, and he had a bundle of clothing tucked under his other arm.

  That night she wondered how far they had gotten. The next river they had to ford was the Black, twenty miles down; it would take them two days at least. Adam was too young to understand Angus was gone, probably for good, but Newton knew it; he was subdued and went to bed quietly. At least she could comfort herself that Flynn was experienced at making the best bed of rough terrain.

  Sometime in the middle of the night Charlotte heard the front door latch open and close. She sat up in bed with a start. Could Angus have run off and found his way back? It hardly seemed possible.

  For a moment she thought she might have dreamed the sound. But then there was the clump of shoes on the floor. A grown man, from the heaviness of the footfalls. Charlotte held still, her mind racing. Perhaps Flynn was not such an honest man as Kathleen Mercadier had thought. He’d have no luck finding anything of value here. But she had mentioned buying the land; perhaps he thought they had a stash of money.

  The footsteps stopped. Charlotte listened.

  She held herself still, barely breathing. For long minutes there was no sound. Flynn—or whoever—did not seem to be moving. For once Charlotte wished for a pistol.

  But she had no pistol, and after another minute she decided that she had had enough waiting. She stepped out of bed, put on her robe from its hook behind the door, and found the box of phosphorous matches she kept on the shelf. Usually she lit her lantern with a stick from the hearth, but this was no time to be spare. She lit the lantern, dropped the globe, braced herself, and stepped out into the front room.

  Just inside the door, fast asleep on the floor, his uniform caked with mud and his beard a woolly mat, still wearing his boots, lay her husband, James Turner, his head propped up on his pack, a sword and rifle laid on the floor beside him. Charlotte watched him for a moment in the lamplight. His face was thin and drawn beneath the thick fur of his beard.

  He was so changed, not just from the war, but from the passing of the years. She remembered the first time she had seen him, so big and magnetic, back in Kansas. He was broad and robust, irresistible, exuding confidence like a cloud. The man who lay on her floor now was gaunt and brown, and the only cloud that might rise from him was dust.

  She wanted to cry, to kiss him, to fall on his neck, to ask him how he had gotten home and what had happened to him since he had last written, to hear from his lips the story of how her father had died in battle. She wanted to show him his sons, the one he had never met and the one who would barely remember him. She wanted to bathe him and feed him with her own hands.

  But it could wait. She blew out the lantern and let him sleep.

  Chapter 2

  When Turner awoke, his boots were off and a small boy had pulled up a wooden chair next to his waist, watching him intently, his feet

  dangling. He was skinny and towheaded, with his hair cropped close to his scalp. Turner scooted himself to a sitting position against the wall. His legs felt heavy.

  “You sure do sleep a long time,” the boy said.

  Turner blinked. It was full morning outside, and leaf-shaded light came through the cabin’s window. “What time is it?” he said. The boy shrugged.

  “I caught a rabbit this morning,” said the boy. “We’re gonna to eat him tonight.”

  “That’s a good thing.”

  The boy shrugged again and hopped down from his chair. “Mama says I'm supposed to remember you,” he said. “Maybe I do.”

  “I remember you.”

  “Oh, yeah? What’s my name?”

  “Your name is Newton.”

  With a suspicious look, the boy walked to the door and lifted the latch. “I guess you’re my daddy after all,” he said. “Mama said to call her when you woke up.”

  “No!” Turner cried out, surprising them both with the vehemence of his voice. “I’m not fit,” he said, trying to cover. “I need to wash up and shave, anyway. People oughtn’t to see me looking like a vagabond.”

  Newton stayed at the door. He pursed his lips. “She saw you last night,” he said.

  “That she did. But in the broad light of day, I’d rather be more presentable.”

  Turner stood up and rubbed his face. It felt greasy. The train from St. Louis had arrived in Pilot Knob at three in the afternoon yesterday; he should have stayed the night there but couldn’t stand to wait. So he had started out walking, forded the St. Francis at Sebastian, and then cut through the woods, foolishly, forcing his way through underbrush in the dark of night. When he finally broke out of the forest into a pasture, he knew somehow that he was behind Krummrich’s old farm. The house and barn were burned; Charlotte had written him about the bushwhackers. But at least he knew where he was—on the road to Daybreak, five miles from home. There could be no stopping. He had no idea what time it was when he finally crossed the ford and reached his house, but the stars were bright and the moon was down.

  “Guess there’s water in the washbasin,” he said, more to break the silence than anything. He walked into the bedroom and stood at the dresser. His first thought when he looked in the mirror was old. His hair was still sandy, but his face had darkened; it was deep brown and thin, with discolorations across one cheek—powder burns, maybe. He looked like an old man. Perhaps he had become one without noticing. Newton followed him and stood in the doorway.

  “Razor’s in my pack,” Turner said. “Can you bring it?”

  A half hour later, he felt more like himself, and had a washbasin filled with whiskers and dirty water. He stepped out the back door and tossed it into the grass. “All right,” he said to Newton, who had watched him in silence the whole time. “You can go fetch your mother.”

  The boy dashed off, and Turner returned inside. He noticed for the first time that his Army coat had been hung from a peg on the inside wall and brushed down; she must have removed it along with his boots while he slept. His sword and rifle leaned against the corner.

  Turner felt ill at ease in the house, too dirty and rough to be within walls after so many years of camp cots and ground sleeping, unworthy of such cleanliness and order. He wanted to sit on the bed, but his clothes were too dirty, so he walked back into the front room and sat on a chair. And yet as uncomfortable as he felt, at least he was home.

  That face in the mirror, so haunted and haggard. Was it a face that anyone would want to see in the morning? The thought came to him that she might be just as beaten and worn, indeed probably was. The bright-eyed woman he had left behind—how much of that person remained? He could feel a hollow place inside himself where once a great well of enthusiasm and energy had bubbled. No reason to imagine she hadn’t been similarly damaged. Her letters through the years had been as observant as ever, but it was hard to know what wounds might lie beneath her calm words.

  She would want to know about her father. He had written her that he had been killed in battle, and that his death had been quick and painless, but she would want to know more. And what could he say that wouldn’t cause anguish? Nothing. He had been standing there with him, behind the lines outside of Auburn, Virginia, as he wrote out the day’s orders. They were backing up toward a railway, trying to keep the rebels from turning their flank. As always, they heard the rifle ball before they saw anything, the sucking hiss that, strangely, always frightened most when it was a single sound rather than the thousands that flew during battle. It whistled past Turner’s ear; Newton Carr was turned to him, a word half-begun, when the ball hit him in the eye, smashed halfway into his head, and dropped him dead to the ground.

  No sniper could have made that shot. They never learned whether it had come fro
m their side or the rebels. Turner had always suspected that it was one of their own, a man tamping his rifle musket, perhaps, or an accidental discharge while shouldering, but it could just as easily have been a rebel firing in the general direction of their lines, hoping for a lucky hit—quartermaster hunting, they called it. All Turner knew for sure was that at one moment they were in calm conversation and the next moment his father-in-law was dead at his feet with part of his head missing.

  What would he tell her? Nothing, preferably. This tale would serve no good. But he knew Charlotte—she would ask and ask, wanting to know everything. Well, she could just do without that.

  And Marie. He had kept thoughts of her out of his mind as much as possible during the long trip home. They would only confuse him further, and he felt confused enough already. But the moment was here, when he would have to unearth those thoughts and decide.

  The silence of the empty house was comforting. Sometimes after a battle he couldn’t hear for three or four days, communicating only through notes. That silence was oddly comforting as well. There were plenty of sounds he would just as soon not hear. A quiet, empty house was fine.

  So here he was, back in Daybreak. Now what? Pick up where they had left off? Husband, father, leader? It didn’t seem possible. It would be like becoming thirty-five again, and he wasn’t thirty-five any more.

  He didn’t feel like thinking about it. He just wanted to sit in the quiet. The deafness after a battle wasn’t really silence; it was a ringing roar that drowned out everything else. But this—this was true quiet. A good place to let his mind sit empty.

  He thought about the boy, his son. A foot and a half taller than when he had last seen him. All right. Seemed like a good enough boy. He had felt the boy’s curiosity this morning, the desire to see everything about him, to watch and ask. He wanted to hear about the war; boys always wanted to hear about the war. But he had managed the politeness not to pester him. That was good. His mother had raised him right. But what about the other one? What about Adam?