The Buffalo Soldier

by Chris Bohjalian

  He wondered if the girls were mad at him for stealing their picture, or whether they cared. Whether they knew.

  When he opened his eyes again, he saw the half-circle silhouette made by his riding helmet, and for a split second he thought it was the head of a person crouching by the desk. It wasn’t and he knew that, but the notion alone was so frightening that he pushed off the covers and lunged for the bureau with the light. For a long moment he stood there in the bright room, his fingers still within inches of the lamp shade. He was surprised that he hadn’t bounded back into bed yet. Normally he would have by now.

  Then he knew why. He was uneasy, still not completely convinced he was alone, and he needed to open the closet door and make absolutely sure that no one—no thing—was in there. And so he moved slowly across the wide wooden floorboards, a gunmetal gray, and then over the thick throw rug. He opened the door, pausing for just the barest second with his fingers on the knob, and sighed—he hadn’t even realized until that moment that he’d been holding his breath—when he saw there was nothing to fear in the closet, either. Nothing. He reached in for his album, brought it back with him to bed, and flipped the pages until he reached the one with the photograph of the twin girls.

  Without thinking about what he was doing, he ran his fingers over the plastic that protected their image from thumbprints and smears. What was it about them, he wondered, that once had made Terry and Laura so happy? They were pretty girls, but was that alone enough to make grown-ups smile? Maybe strangers. He’d seen the way rich strangers would smile at pretty kids all the time as they walked briskly in the mall or down Church Street in Burlington. He knew the way his teacher treated some kids in the class better than others. The handsome boys, the pretty girls. But parents probably weren’t like that. Not real parents, anyway. Real parents probably wanted their kids to look good, but loved them regardless.

  Of course, his mom had been a real parent, and she’d clearly been capable of not loving him—or, at least, of not loving him enough.

  Adults, especially parents, were a code that he couldn’t begin to decipher. And though Terry and Laura had indeed seemed happier lately, he realized he didn’t understand why. He didn’t think it had anything to do with him, mainly because he was spending so much time these days with Mesa and Paul—unless that was in fact the reason for their contentment: The foster kid was no longer underfoot, and was now less demanding. Less time-consuming. And so life had improved.

  He didn’t really believe that either, he decided. His first instinct had been the correct one. If the pair was more content these days, it had nothing to do with him.

  Through the window on the east side of his room he could see the Heberts’ house and he could see the barn where Mesa lived. He had never told Paul this, but he believed on some level that the horse liked him so much—and he liked the horse—because they were the same. They’d both been shuffled around, they’d both lived in a lot of places. When Ruth had decided to unburden herself of a horse, wasn’t it Mesa she chose to unload? Yes, indeed. The truth was, Mesa had had a home before living with Ruth, and she’d have a home after Paul Hebert got too old to handle her. That’s just how it was. She’d be sent somewhere else.

  Outside he heard the wind press the storm window against its metal guides, a heavy click, and then the glass shuddered for a long second.

  He wondered how well Paul had known the two girls, and whether there was anything he could share. Maybe he knew what made them so special. It would be a heck of a lot easier to ask him about them than either Terry or Laura, that was for sure.

  He rolled onto his side—once more unwilling to leave his back to the door—and fell asleep with the light on and the album open to his picture of Hillary and Megan Sheldon.

  A CANADIAN WIND had blown in overnight and it was freezing that afternoon, but there still wasn’t much snow on the ground. You could see it in the far distance on the top of the mountain, and that snow glowed white against a cerulean blue sky. But not here. Here there was largely hoarfrost and ice, despite the fact that Christmas was only eight days away.

  Alfred was careful to keep Mesa on the pavement or, once they left the road, on the long stretches of brown earth. Paul insisted on this. He told Alfred that he didn’t want him to tumble off the horse if the animal momentarily lost her footing on one of the nearly invisible patches of black ice that veined the sides of the street—runoff a few days before, now slippery as slate and solid as stone—or that dotted the fields on both sides like miniature frozen ponds.

  Heels down, the man was saying to him now as he walked briskly beside him and the horse. Ride on the balls of your feet. And relax a bit—let her bounce you up. If you’re too tense, the animal will feel it and get spooked—or, worse, your back will hurt like hell in the morning.

  He tugged at his ear where the chin strap for his helmet dug into the scar from the infection he’d had there that summer. Even wearing a glove, he could feel the shape of the skin, still slightly mottled both from the studs and the scarring, and he wished he’d remembered to bring along a piece of cotton as a cushion. He decided it was too bad he wasn’t allowed to ride in his Tenth Cavalry cap. What better time was there to wear it than when he was atop this fine horse?

  He bounced toward the wrought-iron entrance to the old portion of the cemetery, the sensation of riding always reminding him of the afternoon he’d gone swimming at North Beach in Burlington, and a rainstorm had rolled in and built whitecaps along the surface of the lake. He’d swum in those waves, and they’d carried him. This horse was like that.

  He watched Paul pull up the clasp that kept the heavy gates closed, and then push one of the waist-high doors forward. He was surprised by how much it squeaked in the cold, and so was the horse. She froze for a moment at the new sound, her ears pointing like arrowheads at the noise.

  Come on ahead, the man said to him.

  He drew back on the leather reins with his left hand, pushed his heels into Mesa’s sides, and then watched in astonishment as the horse followed his lead. He’d been riding her daily for almost two weeks now, but he was still surprised that he could control an animal this big with such ease. Yet there as she turned were those great nostrils, the pewter-colored bit, and one of those massive, deep eyes. It was hard for Alfred to believe that anything could, as Paul put it, spook eyes such as those. It was difficult for him to imagine this big creature scared.

  Once they were inside the graveyard, Alfred halted the animal, moved slightly in his saddle, and motioned toward the Granger family’s memorial and the massive hydrangea beside it. He didn’t tell Paul that earlier that autumn he used to go there all the time, but he made sure the older man was aware of the monument. It was beautiful to look at, and through the tapestry of clawlike twigs he could see the spot where he’d once gone for half an hour or an hour at a time.

  Paul nodded at the sand-colored obelisk as big as a closet, and then said, The Sheldon plots are in the new section. Far side of the new section. Not a lot of landscaping yet, you’ll see, but sunny. When there is sun. Guide her around the outer edge of the tombstones, okay? No sense in you two having to traverse an obstacle course.

  From high up on the horse the graveyard appeared very different. The lines of the markers looked more definite, more pronounced, even while the headstones that were on the verge of collapse—blackened fungus on aged marble, a rusted metal rebar support exposed like old bone through dead skin—grew more apparent. The columns of antique markers stretched to the end of the hill, not a single one younger than a century. He counted seven G.A.R. stars and guessed there were more.

  From atop Mesa, even a tremendous tombstone such as the Grangers’ looked less like a marble skyscraper. In the distance he realized he could see the steeple for the church in the village, and the first cluster of houses on the far side of the Cousinos’ dairy farm. The Sheldons’ home remained invisible, however, because of the way it was nestled behind the near hill.

  As they approached
the new section, the headstones grew more diverse in color and shape—there was black marble dappled with white, clusters of ivory granite, and a few markers that had the blush of old bricks—and nearby there were more likely to be signs of visitation. Fresh flowers. Plastic flowers, sometimes in a plastic vase. A photograph housed inside a block of glass. The quiescent brown grass flattened by footsteps or, in a few cases, the tire tracks of a truck or a car.

  Over there, Paul said, and he pointed to a section Alfred had never bothered to visit. Too new to be interesting. Not a single star or American flag in sight.

  They descended down a path with no markers on either side, and the horse moved carefully, as if she knew how easy it would be to slip among the patches of snow, baseball-sized rocks, and hard ground. Then they wandered down the wide, unpaved road—a pair of tire ruts actually, that were cut by the repeated passage of vehicles through the grass—that sliced the new section in two. They passed a fresh grave, the dirt and the flowers still moist, probably one of the last to be dug in the earth without the help of a backhoe till spring.

  Dorothy Cammin, Paul said. Nice woman. Had a nice service. Short.

  Was there a service for those girls? Alfred asked.

  The Sheldon girls? Of course.

  Kids come?

  Whole school, it seemed. The church was packed. They had to set up monitors in the basement and two of the Sunday-school classrooms so the overflow could watch it on TV. Can you imagine?

  He nodded as he rode. He could imagine that many people gathered together in a single spot, but he couldn’t envision that many caring enough to come to a funeral. He figured if he drowned, there’d be a handful of people at his service at best—and he couldn’t say for sure who any of them would be.

  Those arch shapes over there, Paul said. That’s what you’re looking for.

  He stared at them for a moment, and thought back on how easy it had been for him to verbalize the question once he’d decided to ask it. Yesterday afternoon, the two of them together in the barn. Paul had been rinsing the bit in a bucket of water, while he was sitting on the stool with the heavy saddle in his lap. Rubbing it down with the soft, chamois leather rag. The sound of Mesa, nosing in the new hay in the trough just behind them. And the words had come out in a quick stream, more casual in tone than in intent, but it didn’t matter because Paul always seemed to listen carefully to every word that he said. He’d asked, very simply, where Terry and Laura’s children were buried. Drying the bit, not looking up, Paul said if he wanted he could show him tomorrow. That was it. No big deal. They probably would have gone that very day, but the sun had just about set.

  He tapped his feet against Mesa’s sides and turned the horse in toward the lengthy file with the graves, careful to keep her moving straight between the rows—rows that seemed, very suddenly, to be as thin as an escalator and every bit as difficult to traverse with a horse.

  After the funeral, a lot of the church came here, too, Paul was saying as he walked on the grass on the other side of the markers, his arms folded against his down jacket and his gloved hands buried deep in his underarms. The horse breathed out another wispy column of steam, and Alfred reached forward and softly patted the wide plate of her cheek. He sat up straight and commanded the animal to halt—with his words and by pulling back on the reins—because Paul had stopped walking. Then, with his usual great effort, he swung his right leg over the massif-sized back of the Morgan and jumped to the ground, pausing when he realized there was no place where he could hitch the horse.

  Here, Paul said, and he took the reins like a lead line and held them loosely. Almost immediately Mesa leaned over as if she thought she might start trying to pull clumps of frozen grass from the earth with her teeth, but Paul remembered the bit in her mouth and gently lifted up her head with his hands.

  Alfred studied the two graves before approaching them. They were identical but for the names of the girls. White as brand-new piano keys, and just as slick to the eye. On each was what he had assumed at first was a carving of a fairy but then realized was an angel. Wings extended like capes. Faceless but haloed. Floating.

  I know practically every person in this section, Paul said, and it sounded to Alfred as if this revelation disturbed him. Quickly Alfred glanced at the tombstones on either side of the Sheldon girls, checking the dates to see when these people were born and when they had died, and he saw they were old people who’d passed away within a few years of the twins.

  Finally he walked up to the headstones and then took off his gloves before kneeling to touch one. Hillary’s. It was slippery and solid. Thick. The rock-hard ice that coated Lake Champlain by the middle of January. He glanced to his right at Megan’s tombstone, and then crabbed over there to touch that one, too.

  I heard somewhere she was named after her grandmother.

  She was.

  Hillary, too?

  Hillary, too, Paul said. You would have liked them, I think. Assuming you can abide girls. I presume you do. When I was ten, I didn’t. But I understand that things are different now.

  I liked Tien, he answered, unsure exactly what he meant when he used the word like. At the same time, he knew, he had enjoyed living in the same house with Isabel, but that had been very different from his affection for Tien. Isabel was older, and everything about her was sexual. Tien was just...Tien. A rail of a girl who would go where he went when they’d wander around Burlington, the two of them sometimes trailing Digger and sometimes not.

  Yes, things are different, Paul murmured. Childhood lasts about a month these days. My granddaughters outgrew their Barbies before second grade.

  When he looked at their monuments, he wished the months had been carved there as well as the years. He wanted to know exactly how old the twins were when they died, because months mattered greatly when you were nine—their age when they’d drowned.

  Their toys are all gone, Alfred told Paul. Barbies, whatever. I haven’t seen a girls’ toy in the whole house.

  I’m not surprised, Paul said.

  They act like twins?

  What do you mean? Did they act the same?

  I guess. I’ve never met any twins.

  The horse craned her long neck and stared for a moment up the hill at the trees, at a sound she must have heard there. A gust of wind rattling the leafless branches, maybe. Perhaps only the wind itself. The man thought about his response and then said, First of all, they weren’t identical twins. You know that, right?

  Uh-huh.

  Not that identical twins act identically. Because of course they don’t. And those two acted liked sisters. Not friends, sisters.

  Because they loved each other so much?

  Paul laughed briefly, but it was loud and enthusiastic. A human horse snort. Because they were happy to fight like hell with each other, he said, and because they knew exactly how to get under each other’s skin. They were sisters, first, Alfred, twins, second. I don’t know what Laura or Terry has told you, but trust me—

  They haven’t told me a thing, Alfred said.

  No, I guess they wouldn’t, Paul agreed, nodding, not those two. Then, as if he had never been interrupted, he continued, They were little girls, that’s what they were, they were younger than you when they died. They did little-girl things. For reasons I’ll never completely know, I always associated Hillary with her dad and Megan with her mom. I have this picture in my head of Hillary being carted everywhere on Terry’s shoulders until she must have been in the second grade. But I’m sure he carried Megan that way, too. Maybe it’s just the sports. Hillary loved baseball—even T-ball—and soccer, and Megan didn’t. And Terry would help out with the coaching.

  I saw a photo, Alfred said.

  Sometimes they’d come over to our yard to go exploring. Especially in the barn. Terry and Laura have that little carriage barn, of course, but the girls seemed to like the size of our hay barn more. It’s bigger, more to it. The loft alone made it more interesting to them.

  Alfred wandered be
hind the headstones and looked out at the hills that rolled up into the forest. This was the vista that would spread out before the girls if they could sit up and see the view. What were they looking for? he asked.

  Oh, lots of things. It would change. Leprechauns. Tomtens. Elves. Who knows? Some days they’d just play hide-and-seek in there. Once they brought over their stuffed animals and set up all these teddy bears and such in the hay from the Eisenhower administration.

  Eisenhower...

  A President from a long time ago. I just meant that the hay was very old. Not like the new stuff we’re feeding Mesa.

  In the woods in the distance a group of blackbirds was lifting. Six, ten. A couple dozen. The geese were long south now, Alfred knew, even the ones that had to come down from Canada. He looked at the grass before him, intensely aware that he was within feet of the girls—or, at least, of their bodies. Beneath him was lawn, dirt, then the shiny wood and brass of their coffins. Their remains. Here they were. He was sleeping in the room that had once belonged to one of them, probably in that little girl’s very bed.

  Suddenly he thought he might cry, a sensation he hadn’t had in years, and only before, he believed, when he had hurt himself badly—or been badly hurt. But it took a lot of pain for him to cry, that he knew well: He’d barely flinched when Digger did his ears, or when he’d fallen off those rocks at the lake in Burlington, or when Mr. Patterson had whaled on him for taking cigarettes off his wife’s nightstand. He watched the horse to take his mind off his proximity to the bodies, and allowed the moment to pass over him. In a minute he was fine. He was a buffalo soldier. He wasn’t going to cry.

  He took the reins from Paul, inhaled, and climbed atop Mesa’s back. He considered himself bigger and stronger when he was in the saddle, more in command. It wasn’t simply the height the horse offered him, or the power of the animal beneath him. It wasn’t even the pictures he had in his head of the proud cavalry troopers. It was the simple reality that he felt—and it was a feeling he rarely had—as if there was something important in his life that he controlled.