That same moment, they both began to hear the mechanical, hydraulic sound of an automatic garage door opening. Harris jumped up from the couch.
“You gotta go now.”
Taken by surprise, Dugan was slow to stand up.
“No, really man, hurry up. Let’s go.” When Dugan began to stand, Harris grabbed him by the shoulder and began steering him toward the room where the two of them had left their shoes. They heard the sound of a door opening upstairs.
“Hurry,” Harris pleaded.
Dugan heard a note of panic creeping into his voice. After stuffing his feet into his high-tops, he followed Harris to the door. Harris half opened it before looking down, embarrassed again.
“Look, I’m really sorry about this…” Dugan stopped him.
“It’s all right. And thanks for having me over. I really appreciate it.”
“Wait.” Harris ran back into the family room, snatched up Dugan’s forgotten copy of their report, ran to the door and handed it to Dugan. He opened the door all the way to usher Dugan out, but Dugan paused a moment and turned to Harris.
“Michael, listen to me. Everything’s gonna be okay. Just hang in there, all right? I think I might have a…a line on somethin’ that could help us, or at least let us know more about what’s going on.”
Harris began to shake uncontrollably. “You really gotta go now…”
A woman’s voice from upstairs said, “Michael?”
Dugan put out his hand. Harris stared at it for a moment before he took it. Dugan waited for Harris to look him in the eye.
“I’ll have you over my house sometime. You got an open invitation. And hang in there, too. Promise?”
Harris looked down again but nodded his head. Dugan squeezed his hand one more time before Harris finally succeeded in hustling him out the door.
3
Requiem for a bus driver
The small television set over the bar was tuned to the eleven o’clock news. The President was still recovering from the gunshot wound some nutjob had given him outside a hotel down in D.C. It was still touch and go for at least one of the other three men shot that day. There had been a report on the space shuttle Columbia, whose maiden voyage was scheduled for next week. But most of the local news segment was devoted to the weather. Dugan’s father watched the blow-dried weatherman on the Boston station report breathlessly on the storm. The massive low-pressure system was stuck over New England, and the rain was expected to continue for some time.
When Red Dugan heard the door open, he looked away from the TV and watched Vasconcelos, a regular who owned a radiator shop in town, make his way into the bar. He was dripping wet and soaked to the skin.
“Marden, your friggin’ bus is halfway out in the street. Almost hit it myself. It’s takin’ up four spaces, too. I had to park in bumfuck Egypt.”
Red poured him his usual shot and grabbed him a Bud from the case.
“What the frig you still doin’ with the bus?” Vasconcelos asked.
Marden put a lascivious leer on his face. “Some kinda che-ee-er-leadin’ competition out in Worcester. Dirty job, but someone’s gotta do it!”
He let out a loud guffaw. Dugan’s father turned back to the news.
Marden threw down ten bucks on a $9.60 tab. “Gotta be goin’ now anyhow.”
He stepped out the door into the early April rain, stumbling once or twice before looking down at his watch. He still had time left. He walked the two doors down and tripped again on his way into the Times Square Book and Video Emporium.
Marden spent a few minutes poking around. He glanced through the racked three-packs, before finally settling on a few that had the youngest looking girls on the cover. The magazines were marked-down and vacuum-sealed in plastic, so they were kind of a crapshoot. You could only see the covers, so you had to buy two or three of them just in case. He paid his seven bucks at the counter and tucked the brown paper bag under his arm before stumbling out of the shop.
When he got back on the bus, he threw the bag on the floor by his feet. Sitting down behind the wheel, he glanced at the floor and saw that in their smooth plastic wrapping, the magazines had slid halfway out of the bag. The one on top showed the head and bare shoulders of a young girl with pouty, blow-me lips. He remembered there had been a girl on the bus that night who looked a lot like the model on the cover, and he remembered exactly in which seat the girl had been riding.
Looking down at his watch again, he figured he had enough time to take a few minutes for himself and still get the bus back to the depot by midnight. He knew of a quiet place where he could slide the bus halfway into the woods for the few short minutes it would take.
* * *
Dugan turned his bleary eyes up to the clock radio and saw it was after midnight. For three nights in a row, he had been traveling with the Massachusetts Twelfth until he could no longer keep his eyes open. Daniels had been diligent about making an entry almost every day, although it was often simply a comment on the weather or a brief note about where the regiment was.
Sometimes, the entries were only a paragraph or two, and unlike Isaac Daniels, Dugan began to get the feeling there was not a lot to like about the Colonel.
* * *
July 10, 1861
Marching. Training. Shooting. If ever a group of men were so well taught in these deadly arts let them show themselves! I confess to the sin of pride, when I say to you that it is my brother who has become the finest shot in the regiment and has been honored as such with a decoration bestowed by the great Colonel himself.
I confess as well to having been negligent in the keeping of this journal, and for that I beg your forgiveness. Never has a man been so busy or more in need of sleep than I, during those hours that I might otherwise have dedicated to this journal. I shall endeavor to recommit myself to the effort.
We find ourselves tonight guarding the great Capital of our Nation, with rumors flying that it is tomorrow or the next day that we shall first set our feet onto the now despoiled ground of Virginia, whose infernal soil also houses the current seat of the rebellion. I shall not deign to use the sacred C word to describe Richmond, reserving the use of this word for our own beloved Capital, Washington D.C.
Before boarding the train at Hartford, we were given our regimental flag, and it is my cousin, young Timothy McNeil, who carries it proudly on a staff twice as big as he. But carry it he does, held high, as high as the confidence found among the men of Grantham and among the rest of our regiment.
I have become quite close to Mathew Chatham, he being near to me in age. We are now known as the “Chatham Regulars,” after the Colonel promoted our own Joshua Chatham to be Lieutenant in charge of our newly formed division.
July 25, 1861
Having been dispatched from Washington, we marched through Charleston to the garrison town of Harpers Ferry, and it was here that news reached us of the disaster at Manassas. There is not a man among us who does not froth with the bitterness of the defeat, or swear unholy vengeance upon those who have killed and wounded so many of our own. None among us will speak, except in hushed tones, of the rumor that hundreds of our brothers in blue were captured.
Rebels have been seen moving in and about the vicinity, and word has reached us that we shall soon leave this place to again stand guard at our nation’s Capital. May God have mercy on any man who tries to breach our ranks, because we shall show them none.
August 31, 1861
The regiment is now in a God-forsaken, unincorporated area of Maryland known as Darnestown, called by us (and not affectionately) Darn this town. There is much consternation among the troops as to why we have not yet been tested in the crucible of battle. Why have we not yet been allowed to partake in the holy vengeance that is rightfully ours?
The Colonel, good soldier that he is, attempts to keep our spirits high, and ensures that every man among us is well fed. He rides among our ranks constantly on his white horse to assure us of his fealty. When not meeting with his offi
cers or planning the details of the day, the Colonel seems to surround himself constantly with boys of my age or younger. He seems to have a great affinity for the younger men. How fortunate those boys whom he has chosen to be always in the presence of such a great man. What they must learn!
The Colonel himself, having dedicated his life to war and our beloved Grantham, has no sons of his own. Perhaps he sees in these boys the child he once was, or the children he might have had were he not so single minded. I have noticed recently that the Colonel has taken an interest in our cousin Thomas, the second of the McNeil twins, and our regiment’s drum boy.
As an aside, when I spoke to my brother James of perhaps attempting to become a part of the Colonel’s circle of young friends, he flared up in an unusual display of anger and loudly forbade me to ever again speak of this. He visited me later and apologized, telling me that he had sworn to my mother that he would protect me and keep me from harm and only wished that he and I stay close to each other always, and we embraced and shed some tears.
December 10, 1861
After leaving Darnestown in October to set up new encampment at Seneca Falls, we now find ourselves settling in to spend the winter here in Fredericksburg, Maryland. We have yet to see action, although there have been rumors of skirmishes among cavalry troops to our rear after we broke camp.
My brother and I received a letter from our mother, who complains of her difficulty in getting Jackson to perform any of his chores. I fear she is much too kind hearted in this regard, and my brother dictated a reply with the most severe instructions on how to handle the situation.
February 28, 1862 - Charlestown, VA
[No Diary Entry]
March 11, 1862
It is almost spring and we are in Winchester, VA. Rumors sweep the ranks of plans to push on toward Richmond, that den of snakes in the heart of the rebellion, and end this war once and for all. No army was ever better trained or equipped, and no group of men under arms was ever better motivated. That the drumbeat of Union victories rolls on, in Mississippi, in Tennessee, and along the shores of the Carolina coast, does surely reflect both the rightness of our cause and the Lord’s favor upon it.
* * *
Marden was on his knees, the half-open magazine to his right forgotten for the moment. His trousers and briefs were at his ankles while his head and face were plunged deeply into the hard green leather of the seat where the young girl had sat. Over the sound of his own heavy breathing and the machine gun clatter of heavy rain pounding on the orange rooftop, he didn’t hear the sound of the bus door opening.
He was oblivious to the soft, squeaking sounds made by the three pairs of filthy sneakers that approached his naked and winking backside. It was only as he was about to reach climax that he began to hear maniacal chortles come from behind. He thought for a brief moment that it might have been the sound of insane teenage laughter, but at the instant of his climax, he learned it was something else entirely.
4
The road-river
The rain that began to fall during the first week of April was now in its seventh day. Beneath the awning of the Korner store, wearing his father’s oversized yellow rain slicker and his own ill-fitting green boots, Dugan read that totals in some areas had already exceeded fifteen inches, causing the worst flooding in more than forty years. Harder rains were expected later that afternoon. Rivers had overflowed their banks up north in the Merrimac Valley, forcing hundreds to flee and seek shelter. Inspectors scrambled to review the more than three thousand dams scattered throughout the state, many of them in service for centuries. Before setting off into the deluge himself, Dugan made sure plastic bags securely and completely covered his precious newspaper cargo.
On the outer reaches of his route there was a slight dip in the road, hardly noticeable really, a downhill followed by a quick uphill. As he approached that section of road this morning, he slammed his brakes hard and stopped within five feet of something that hadn’t been there yesterday: a raging river that now rushed across the state highway.
Disoriented for a moment, he turned his head slowly to the left and then the right, seeking a source for the torrent. He noticed a sign on the right side of the road that read, “Blacks Brook.” The sign was in about three and a half feet of rushing water and listing perilously toward the road-river. It was a moment before Dugan made the connection.
In the three years that Dugan had every day passed down and then up this minor incline, he had seen that sign a thousand times before and paid it no attention, assuming it was just a historical marker of some sort. It was the kind of thing you saw all the time around here. Turning away from the sign, he looked again at the road-river, then back at his baskets.
There were three customers past the obstacle and two of them were stiffs. But his buddy Murph from the meat counter lived out there too, with his mother in a ramshackle old farmhouse that Dugan knew Murph had lived in his entire life. He looked down at his boots to confirm what he already knew: they reached only halfway to his knees. He tried to remember just how deep the gully really was, and thought he had certainly exaggerated in his mind how tall the sign was. He began pushing his bicycle down the hill and into the river.
* * *
Dugan had stayed up late over the past few nights following Isaac Daniels and the rest of the Grantham regulars into 1862. The regiment was frustrated repeatedly that year to find themselves constantly on the wrong side of the Potomac to see any real action. It seemed for a while that the Twelfth would spend the entire conflict just ahead or behind most of the major battles. That changed in September of 1862, when the Massachusetts Twelfth found themselves at a place called the Antietam Creek in Sharpsburg, Maryland.
On that beautiful late summer day, Isaac would fight at a place called Bloody Lane, and his beloved brother James would fight and die at a place they called the cornfield. Other men from the Twelfth killed that day were two of the Chathams, one of the McNeil cousins, and more than four thousand other men, from both sides, in the bloodiest day in the nation’s history.
In November 1862, Daniels received and transcribed the following letter into his journal from his late brother’s fiancée:
Dearest Isaac:
I cannot describe to you my depth of feeling when in receipt of your letters, since your news reached me of my own betrothed, your beloved brother James’ death. I tell you it is only by the grace of God and with the everlasting hope of another letter from you that I go on at all.
Now, Isaac, I fear it is I who must deliver suffering cloaked in the guise of ink on paper, and tell you that your Ma and brother Timothy are to be laid to rest this morning, brought down by the epidemic of influenza that has only now begun to abate in our town. Your man Jackson brought this sad news to our farm two days ago, along with his request that I inform you of this grief.
I tell you truly that the man had tears in his eyes, Isaac, and he swore to me on that day, before God, that he would care for your farm and property in the same manner as would your Ma, or your brother, or yourself.
And I pledge to you, Isaac, that I shall see to it that he makes good on his promise, and I shall see also that the good Reverend Jasperson says Christian words for the souls of your Ma and younger brother. I pray that you might take some small measure of comfort that they shall both be laid to rest for eternity next to your Pa.
Yours now and forever,
Agnes
By 1863, the Massachusetts Twelfth was entering its third year of battle. Dugan began to notice a certain war weariness and kind of maturity creep into Isaac’s writing. Daniels was now an eighteen-year-old battle hardened Second Lieutenant, much less enamored of both the Colonel and the army than he had been at the start of the war. After so much time had passed, after having lost so much, Daniels now seemed to just want the war to be over so that he could go home.
In the first week of May, the Colonel led them into battle at Chancellorsville, in Virginia. Having mostly survived the Union debacle there, in
early July the Twelfth found themselves encamped on the outskirts of a small town in Pennsylvania called Gettysburg.
* * *
Dugan pushed his bike out ahead of him, down the hill and into the water. The front wheel was only about halfway under when he began to feel the flowing stream attempt to yank it out of his hands. Gripping tight to the handlebars, he took his first tentative step into the river. Looking up and across to the other side, he saw with some trepidation that he had either misjudged the distance, or the river had grown as he stood there thinking on its banks. It looked to be about ten or twelve feet across now, flowing rapidly enough to create small whitecaps on the surface. In other places, he saw spinning whirlpools quickly come to life and then vanish. But he had already resigned himself to getting soaked, so he pushed his bike out ahead of him and continued on. For a moment, he contemplated removing his boots, but then figured what the hell.
He was only two feet from the edge when the water rushed over and into the tops of his boots, chilling his feet to the bone before a kind of numbness set in. Three feet in, the water rose above his knees, soaking his jeans and covering the pedals of his bike. Two more steps and the icy water crept over his groin, shriveling his testicles and sending them scurrying back into his body. The bike pulled even harder to the left now. He looked back to see that the baskets were completely underwater.
It was at about this halfway point, with the water just over his waist, that something grabbed his ankle and pulled him under.
* * *
By 1864, the march southward began in earnest. In the early spring of that year, the Twelfth saw most of their action in Georgia. They fought with General Sherman in the hills of Resaca, participated in the annihilation of Cassville, and then menaced the railroad in the swamps of Kolb’s farm. After being engaged in rear guard action during the Battle for Kennesaw Mountain, it was on the outskirts of Marietta, in late June, that Daniels began to record the following.
Applewood (Book 1) Page 14