The Buffalo Soldier

by Chris Bohjalian

  Time to head home? Paul asked.

  He nodded, and they started back through the columns of graves.

  How did they die? he asked the man as they walked, his eyes focused before him on the hill they were approaching and soon would ascend.

  They drowned, Paul answered.

  I know that. I want to know how.

  The details.

  Uh-huh. I want to know everything you do, he said. He glanced to his side and saw that Paul hadn’t been looking at him, either.

  Okay, the man said, and he nodded. Then he put his hands into the wide pockets of his parka, and as they walked home through the graveyard, he told the boy all that he could.

  “Rule number four: They are to obey orders, but they are to remember they belong to no one but themselves. There is a difference between a good soldier and a slave.”

  SERGEANT GEORGE ROWE,

  TENTH REGIMENT, UNITED STATES CAVALRY,

  LETTER TO HIS BROTHER IN PHILADELPHIA,

  NOVEMBER 18, 1873

  Laura

  Some businesses closed on Christmas Eve, but Laura knew animal shelters could not be among them. There were still cages to clean, quarantined cats to observe, dogs to feed and walk, and—if, somehow, there was time—a variety of animals in need of any momentary act of kindness.

  Consequently, Laura went to work on Christmas Eve, and got home a little later than usual because she’d had a small party for the employees and volunteers—dog walkers and fund-raisers mostly, but a pair of board members who had stopped by to help as well—who actually had to be at the shelter that day. It was close to four by the time she passed the Cousinos’ silos, and the sun had almost set. She didn’t expect Terry until somewhere between seven and seven-thirty. If everyone felt up to it, she was hoping they’d go to the midnight service at the church.

  When she neared her house, she saw instantly that something wasn’t right. She would have expected no lights on at all if Alfred were still across the street tending to Mesa, or a single light on in the living room if he had finished early and gone home to watch television. Maybe a light on upstairs if he had gone to his bedroom. Though it was a Thursday, the schools were closed because it was the day before Christmas, and Alfred was supposed to have spent the morning with Tim Acker, and then the afternoon—as if it were just another weekday—with Paul and the horse.

  Instead, however, it looked like every single light on the first floor was on, including the outside porch light over the front doors. A part of her thought the house looked rather festive, as if she and Terry were having a holiday cocktail party or open house. Her parents were driving up from Boston tomorrow and spending the night, and she could only hope the house would look that nice to them. A gold ribbon was laced through the swag on the wreath on the front door, and it sparkled for a brief second when it was caught by her headlights as she turned into her driveway.

  Then she noticed that the electric candles in the windows hadn’t been plugged in, however, and instantly the illusion of a party vanished. Moreover, Terry’s cruiser wasn’t here, and so her husband hadn’t come home early to surprise her.

  She felt a pang of fear—any parent’s natural instinct, but inflated beyond reason by the reality that she had lived through any parent’s worst nightmare—and started fighting with her seat belt and her keys to escape the car. For a long second she forgot how to unbuckle the shoulder harness, and it felt to her like she was trapped. She heard herself swear once, just before the mechanism clicked and she was released.

  When she reached the front door, she found it was unlocked, and the house was quiet.

  Alfred, she called, Alfred?

  In here, someone said, but it wasn’t the boy and it wasn’t her husband. It was Paul Hebert. Without putting her bag down or taking off her boots, she ran through the kitchen and down the hallway into the den, toward the source of the voice, and there on the couch she saw the professor and Alfred—the child with what looked like a wadded dish towel against the far side of his forehead—watching, of all things, the Christmas Eve service from Saint Peter’s Basilica on a French-Canadian television station. The cantor was singing in Latin just outside the cathedral, and she could tell from the waves of umbrellas that it was raining in Rome.

  Alfred? she said, and she half-sat and half-leaned on the arm of the couch beside him, and gently pulled away the towel. She realized the cloth was filled with ice cubes, and he offered her a small smile.

  It really doesn’t hurt anymore, he said.

  Now watch this, Paul said, as if she hadn’t just entered the room—or, perhaps, as if she’d been there all along. We’re about to see the woman who’s going to present the Mass in sign. See there, in that corner: That’s her. Incredible, what this woman does. Incredible! Not only does this character speak Latin and French and Italian, but she’s about to take all these different languages, translate them instantly in her head, and then present them in sign for the hearing impaired. Unbelievable!

  What happened? she asked.

  I fell off Mesa, Alfred said, a trace of an apology in his voice—as if he felt guilty, somehow, or feared he had done something wrong.

  My God, she murmured, trying not to panic and frighten the boy. So brave, she added quickly. Her mind began conjuring the worst: spinal injuries that would cripple the child for life, a concussion or brain injury that would become manifest any moment. She tried to remember the signs of a concussion, and the ones that came back to her were dizziness and nausea. She had a vague sense that she should look at his pupils, but she figured they would have to be dilated to the size of dimes before she could be sure anything was wrong.

  How do you feel? she asked simply.

  Really, okay.

  You don’t feel a little woozy or queasy?

  Nope. My hand and my wrist hurt a lot more than my head.

  She noticed then the gauze that was held tight to the palm of his left hand by the white hospital tape they kept in a drawer in the bathroom on the first floor.

  Okay, the Pope is about to switch from the zucchetto to the miter. I hope they show it. You watching? If we had pomp like that in this country—

  Paul, how did this happen? she said, lifting Alfred’s arm and trying to imagine the cuts on the inside of his hand. She realized his wrist was swollen and bruised.

  The professor turned to her and shook his head. Well, as Alfred said, he fell off the horse.

  I understand that! she snapped.

  Forgive me. These are the salient details. We were near the Cousinos’, in a meadow maybe fifty yards in from the road. We were just out hacking, really, giving Mesa some exercise, and—who knows exactly how these things happen—one minute the boy was in the saddle, and the next he was on the ground.

  I thought you were just walking the horse, Laura said.

  A little trotting, Paul admitted.

  Since when?

  Monday.

  Go on, Laura said.

  There’s really nothing more to tell. Maybe Alfred encouraged Mesa at the exact moment she hit a patch of ice under the snow. Maybe the horse just slipped—it all took about a second, a second and a half—and your boy here went head over teacup. Or whatever that expression is.

  You should see my glove. It looks like an animal ripped it apart.

  The professor shook his head. It doesn’t look that bad. But it is pretty useless now.

  I think we should go to the doctor, she said.

  If it would make you feel better, Paul agreed. But we did call and speak to the nurse, and she didn’t see any cause for alarm. The boy doesn’t need stitches, and his wrist isn’t broken or sprained.

  How do you know that?

  Well, I don’t. At least not for a certainty. But the swelling isn’t huge and he can move it pretty well. Right?

  Right.

  And his head? Laura asked.

  The nurse said to keep ice on it for a bit. So far he doesn’t have any signs it’s going to be more serious than a goose egg.
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  Was he wearing his helmet? She didn’t like how angry she sounded, but she couldn’t help herself.

  I was, Alfred said, although the question had been directed at Paul.

  And you still conked your head?

  Might have been considerably more troublesome if he hadn’t had the helmet on, Paul said.

  When did this happen?

  About an hour ago.

  An hour! She thought to herself how an hour ago, the moment when Alfred had fallen from the horse, she was holding a plastic cup of punch in one hand, and a twelve-year-old terrier named Lucky in the other. Lucky had been brought in earlier that week after his elderly owner died and the woman’s only son proved allergic to dogs. He came with a red dog sweater the woman had knit, and he was wearing it that afternoon to the party.

  Laura, Paul said, and it was clear this word was going to be the first of a series of small, soothing waves, in the last hour we have walked the horse back up the hill and put her back in the paddock. We have spoken at length to the nurse at your doctor’s office, and taken the appropriate medical action. And we have polished off easily a dozen of those chocolate-chip cookies we found in the tin by the toaster.

  They’re good, Alfred added.

  On the television the announcer abruptly stopped speaking and the choir started to sing. Laura watched the boy and the man turn their attention from her to the screen, as if the spectacle before them were a football game.

  I always wanted to do a course on cultural pomp, Paul said. I love it. Not simply religious pomp, since religious pomp is all cultural, in my opinion. But, rather, all kinds of pomp. Religious pomp. Movie pomp. Rodeo pomp.

  Rodeo pomp? Alfred asked.

  You just fell off a horse. Depending upon the event and the severity of your fall, all kinds of wonderful ritual might have surrounded the moment had it occurred in a rodeo. Ever heard of a rodeo clown?

  No.

  They distract the animal, so a cowboy in the dirt can get out of the ring—or, if he’s out like a light, be extricated by somebody else from the ring.

  She started to say something—a rebuke or a chastisement, perhaps, a plea to behave like a responsible grown-up and a responsible fifth-grader and to listen to her words—but she stopped herself. She was afraid she would sound hysterical. Then she wondered if she should prohibit the child from climbing on top of that horse ever again, or at least until he had had some lessons. Real lessons. Not the teaching and ministrations of an old man who hadn’t ridden in eight or nine years himself.

  Instead, however, she found herself gazing for a long moment at the pair and she knew she wouldn’t do that. She couldn’t do that.

  When Paul saw her looking at him, he said, So, you plan on taking your coat off and staying through Christmas?

  She felt the corners of her mouth quivering, and then forming into a small smile. I have to go put sheets on the bed in the guest room, she said, and she stood. My parents are coming tomorrow. She glanced down once more at Alfred’s forehead and carefully pulled aside his hand with the towel full of ice. He was lucky, she decided when she looked at the small bump that had formed. It could have been worse, so very much worse.

  I didn’t know how you’d be feeling when you got home and saw the boy here had done a header off a horse, and so—if you want—you’re welcome to come over to our house for dinner, Paul said. I spoke to Emily, and it’s fine.

  That sounds very nice, she said, but Terry won’t be home until seven. She realized that she hadn’t set foot in the Heberts’ house since before the older couple had taken their Western road trip that autumn. She and Terry and Alfred had had ice cream there one night in early September, about a week and a half after the boy arrived in their lives. Likewise, as far as she could recall, Paul and Emily had only been here in her home one time since they’d returned, and that was when they dropped by unexpectedly with the gifts of what they called the bad-for-you food they’d bought on the road—St. Louis barbecue sauce, Santa Fe bean dip—and such odd trinkets as that cavalry cap Alfred seemed to like.

  In a way, of course, Laura understood that this was exactly how her relationship with the Heberts had been for over two years. Since her daughters had died. In truth, Paul and Emily had been here any number of times in the last twenty-five months, but in each case it was on an errand of mercy. Bringing flowers and food in the days and weeks after the flood. Bringing more food during the holidays in the two years that followed, cookies and cakes and homemade breads. Bringing the family souvenirs from their trips—T-shirts, gaudy dish towels, and the magnets that clung to their refrigerator.

  In that case, why don’t you go do the bed and then come watch the Vatican Mass with us, Paul said. We can all go over and join Emily for supper when it’s over.

  She considered the idea. On the shelf above Alfred she saw the black, red, and green Kwanzaa mat she had started to make with the boy, using the pot holder loom they’d found at the craft store. It was one square—perhaps an hour’s work—from completion. If she stayed with the two of them, she could probably finish the mat now.

  What’s with the hat? Alfred asked, referring to the Pope’s miter. Why is it shaped like that?

  A fine question. It goes back to pomp. Symbolism and pomp and the whole notion that in the ancient world heaven was a place in the sky, Paul began, clearly savoring the small classroom he had created for the boy. As he spoke, explaining to Alfred the meaning of the staff of Peter and the different liturgical vestments, that part of Laura that was a mother wanted nothing more than to stay and watch Alfred sitting so contentedly with this much older man.

  But the pair seemed exactly that: A pair. A duo. A couple of mates. They were complete without her right now, and she didn’t want to risk disturbing that chemistry—a sacrifice she was willing to make because she understood that this, too, was a part of being a mother. And so she lightly kissed the gauze in the palm of Alfred’s hand, and interrupted Paul to tell him that she was going to go across the street to help Emily make their dinner.

  WE WERE GOING to have a ham, Emily was saying, pausing briefly as she broke an egg into a bowl of creamed margarine. But I figured we’d have something more cheery after Alfred took that tumble.

  What if we weren’t coming? Laura asked. The two women were working side by side along the stretch of kitchen counter next to the sink. One by one Laura was dredging pork chops in a mixture of bread crumbs and shortening and milk, and then placing them on a cookie sheet. Eventually, when Terry returned home, the pork chops would be dropped in Emily’s two massive cast-iron skillets and browned.

  Cheery for Paul and me, in that case.

  At first Laura hadn’t understood why Emily deemed pork chops more cheerful than a ham, but then Emily had gotten down a blue denim loose-leaf binder from a bookshelf full of cookbooks and removed the lined sheet of paper with the handwritten recipe. This was Peggy Noe’s pork chop recipe, and Emily had gotten it from Peggy herself when she and her husband stopped for lunch that fall at Peggy’s Joplin, Missouri, eatery, the Ozark Café. It was the best pork chop recipe Emily had ever tried. Likewise, this was Peggy’s recipe for oatmeal and brown-sugar cake that Emily was preparing beside her.

  There were windows over the sink, and outside them the women could see the horse in her stall in the light from the barn. The door was still open. In a few minutes Paul and Alfred would be over to feed and bed the animal down for the night. The horse looked monstrously big to Laura, especially when she envisioned Alfred tumbling from the creature’s back to the ground.

  I know lots about cats and dogs, Laura said, but next to nothing about horses. Is Mesa as big as she looks—for a horse, that is?

  She’s a Morgan, not a draft horse. A Percheron or a Belgian would be a lot bigger. Stronger, stockier. Still, people ride those horses, too. But I know what you mean. An hour hasn’t gone by since Paul brought that animal home when I haven’t wondered if a year from now he’ll be flat on his back and out like a light, because he’s just
had both of his hips replaced.

  I had a very grim thought walking over here: What if Alfred had broken his arm when he fell?

  Emily was wearing a red apron with the words Pop Hicks’ Celebrity Diner written in white cursive letters across the front—another memento, no doubt, from their road trip that fall. She turned to Laura and said, Grim? A broken arm can be an annoyance and it can hurt, my dear, but I wouldn’t call such a thing grim. Not when you’re ten, anyway. Don’t think like that.

  I can’t help it. If he’d broken his arm, we would have taken him to the hospital right away, and SRS might have immediately assumed the worst. Child abuse. His evil foster parents had broken his arm.

  If he’d broken his arm, it wouldn’t have been you taking him to the emergency room. It would have been my vaguely capricious and mildly irresponsible husband.

  I’m not sure that would have been a whole lot better. Then SRS would have discovered that I’m allowing a ten-year-old boy to go horseback riding without any training or lessons when he comes home from school—and, today, while I was away at work.

  Paul is always with him.

  Paul’s a wonderful man. But he’s not exactly an Olympic equestrian. And if I lost Alfred because I’d allowed him to ride a horse...She allowed her sentence to trail off, because she wasn’t exactly sure how she wanted to finish it. She honestly didn’t know what she would do if Alfred was taken away from her.

  Do you want us to keep him off the horse, Laura? He could still work with the animal. Feed her, groom her. You know, take care of her.

  I’m not sure I could do that to Alfred. He loves riding her, that’s so clear.

  She had finished breading the pork chops, and so she rinsed what felt like plaster of Paris off her fingers. Maybe there’s a stable nearby where he could get some basic lessons, Laura continued. Do you think Paul’s feelings would be hurt?