The Buffalo Soldier

by Chris Bohjalian

  It was the Monday after Christmas and he hadn’t heard from Schuyler Jackman or Joe Langford since school closed for the Christmas holiday. He’d spent part of Thursday with Tim and he’d thought there was a chance he might have heard from him at some point over the weekend, but Tim hadn’t called, either. He knew Tim was in town—he was pretty sure Schuyler and Joe were around, too, for that matter—and he didn’t believe his schoolmate had any cousins visiting who might be monopolizing his time.

  In truth, of course, he hadn’t taken the initiative and phoned any of the children he knew from his class, either. Once he’d come close to calling Tim, but it was a Sunday and Tim’s father might answer, and the two times he’d run into the man, he came away feeling bad about himself. The man worked for a bank up in Burlington, and the first time they’d met he was working on some kind of paperwork at the kitchen table, and Mr. Acker—tall, wiry, but, like Terry, in pretty good shape for a grown-up—quickly turned the documents over when he wandered into the room to get a drink of water. The other time, while waiting for Laura to pick him up to bring him home, Alfred noticed that Mr. Acker’s hunting rifle was gone from the cabinet in the front hall where it was usually kept. Deer season hadn’t begun yet, and, only mildly curious at best, he asked Tim where the gun was. The other boy grew uncomfortable and said something about his dad moving it whenever kids came over to play. He could tell instantly that Tim was lying: The boy’s father only removed the weapon when one certain kid came over to play, and that child was clearly the foster kid living up at the Sheldons. The black foster kid.

  He wanted to tell Tim to tell his father that he shouldn’t waste his time hiding his gun. If he wanted, he had an armory at his disposal: Terry was a state trooper, remember? But he’d kept his mouth shut, because it didn’t make sense at the time to anger the closest thing he had to a friend in this town.

  He told himself it was possible that Tim and the other boys had all gone snowboarding at one of the ski resorts today, and he’d hear from them tomorrow or the next day. If that was the case, it made sense that no one had called, because he didn’t have a snowboard and had never even been to a ski mountain. Besides, he was supposed to stick around this afternoon because Louise was going to drop by sometime around lunch. He hadn’t seen her since early November, and so she’d offered to take him into Durham or Middlebury for pizza. Maybe they’d even go to a movie. He’d said that was fine, though he didn’t really care. He knew that basically she just wanted some time alone with him so she could see how he was doing and what he thought of Terry and Laura. When she got to Cornish, he figured he’d see if she’d prefer doing what he really wanted, which was simply to have a grilled cheese and a cup of canned tomato soup with Laura, and then the two of them would go see the horse. They could have all the privacy they wanted in the Heberts’ barn while he groomed Mesa, and she could ask him all the questions she liked.

  He placed the photo album on the foot of his bed, clipped his CD player to his belt, and went to the closet to get his very own pictures. He’d almost shared them with Laura the day after Christmas, but decided he wasn’t quite ready yet. He wasn’t sure whether he should remind her that he’d once been friends with Tien, because then she’d remember the time he’d gotten so lonely and bored that he decided to thumb his way up to Burlington. That was stupid, and he thought of Sergeant Rowe’s rules for his men. Rule number two: Think. Use your head. Moreover, he knew that Laura despised Digger, and didn’t understand at all the way the older boy had looked out for him, or that he’d been able to trust Digger the way he could no adult. He imagined himself showing the pictures to Laura someday soon, however, and telling her all about the different kids—and, yes, grown-ups—he’d met and lived with in his life.

  His photo album was hidden in the back of his closet, with the food he had stored through the autumn and early winter, underneath a small pile of bedding and a quilt that Laura kept there. He hadn’t checked his cache in over two weeks, and he figured he should familiarize himself with what he had—just in case. He didn’t believe there were any plans to move him someplace else soon, but the fact that Louise was coming for one of her visits was a disturbing reminder of the itinerant nature of his life.

  And so he lined up the food in rows on the floor between the closet and the bed, squatted before it like a baseball catcher, and surveyed what was there. It took up as much space as a throw rug, and he was pleased with what he saw. He actually had more than he could ever get out of the house when the time came, so he began to prioritize what he would take. The small bags of popcorn, the packages of Twinkies, and the canned peaches were definitely keepers. The cereal, on the other hand, would stay here because he didn’t really like cereal dry and you could never be sure that the next house would have whole milk or even two percent. If you went to a place where the grown-ups were older, you had to expect skim, and he had never enjoyed that watery, tasteless, almost translucent blue milk.

  Suddenly he felt a hand on his shoulder and he jumped forward, falling to his knees on the wrapped sponge cakes and corn chips. He turned and saw Terry in his uniform—complete with his winter parka, campaign hat, and gloves—towering above him. He realized he hadn’t heard the door open because he was listening to his music.

  He reached up to take off his earphones, and as he did Terry bent over and ripped the cord from his hands—detaching it from the CD player on his belt—and flung the headset across the room. It bounced against the bureau with his riding helmet, and fell onto the floor beside the wastebasket.

  You want to tell me what you’re doing with all this? he asked, his voice angrier than Alfred had heard it since well before Halloween—since, he guessed, the day he’d wandered off at the orchard.

  He looked at the food and the few utensils he’d taken—a can opener, a spoon, a pretty dull knife—and wasn’t sure what he could say that might make this explicable or calm the man down. He tried to think, wondering what Terry would say if he explained that he always had a small stash—lots of kids did—just in case they moved you on without a whole lot of notice, and he was about to start talking when Terry spoke first.

  You were planning on leaving, weren’t you? You were planning to up and go. That’s it, isn’t it?

  No!

  You were going to run away again, weren’t you?

  Again? I—

  Do you have any idea how lucky you are? Do you have any idea how much Laura cares about you, or how hurt she’d be if you ran away?

  I wasn’t going to run away. I just—

  You just took enough food to keep your stomach from growling for four or five days. Empty your pockets.

  What?

  He quietly pushed the bedroom door shut so Laura couldn’t hear them, and then sat on the bed and faced him.

  I told you to empty your pockets, Terry said.

  There’s nothing in my pockets!

  Good, then you have nothing to hide.

  He considered standing perfectly still, wondering if Terry was mad enough to hit him. He’d never paddled him before, but there was always a first time.

  I can’t wait all morning, I have to get to work. You can either turn your pockets inside out or I can do it for you.

  He reached into his blue jeans and pulled out the white cotton pockets so Terry could see they were empty. Not even a used tissue or a piece of wrapped chewing gum.

  Thank you. Now turn around.

  He did, and then he felt Terry’s hands on his bottom and for a brief moment he feared the man was going to try and touch him there—he knew other kids, boys as well as girls, who regularly had to give it up for the men in their homes—but then he understood Terry was just making sure he had nothing in his back pockets, either.

  Now, I’m not about to tear apart your bedding because I don’t have the time, and I don’t want Laura to know about this. You understand? She would be devastated, and that woman does not need another disappointment. Not now, not ever. So I want you to look me in the eye and te
ll me: Have you taken any money?

  No, sir.

  Sir? Since when do you call me sir?

  He stood there and tried to figure out what he should say. After all, he’d only called him sir because he was trying to be respectful, he was trying to settle the man down.

  I call people sir, Terry said. I do that.

  He swallowed and blinked, because he had begun to fear he might cry. And he wouldn’t do that, not now, that was for sure. The worst thing was that he understood his eyes weren’t close to welling with tears because he was scared of Terry, or because the grown-up had misunderstood completely why he’d taken a little food. Rather, he realized with a pang that almost made him shudder, this might mean he wouldn’t get to stay here much longer. And unlike most places where he’d lived, here was a spot where—despite the quiet or his lack of friends or what people like Tim’s dad may have thought of him—he wouldn’t mind staying. He didn’t want to leave Laura or Paul or the horse.

  Still, he wouldn’t cry, he wouldn’t do it. He straightened his back and stood as tall as he could and looked Terry squarely in the eye.

  When a moment had passed and he hadn’t opened his mouth—Really, what was he supposed to say in response to Terry’s apparent outburst over the fact that he’d called him sir? What could he say?—Terry shook his head. You think you are one tough hombre, he said, and you can hide behind those tight lips of yours. Well, I promise you, young man, I am tougher. Now, I am going to trust that you are telling the truth and you haven’t taken one penny from Laura and me. Okay?

  Okay.

  I am not going to search this place. But when I come home from work, I will expect that every single crumb of food is back in the kitchen, and that Laura is not one tiny bit the wiser. You got that?

  Yes.

  Spoons and knives, too, please.

  Okay.

  And tonight, maybe, you and I will have a little talk. I honestly don’t know what it is that you think you want, but I’m telling you: You have found Shangri-la here. Right here. It doesn’t get any better than this, let me assure you, but it does get a lot worse. You know that, son, I know you do.

  Yes.

  The man pushed himself off the bed and picked the headset up off the floor. He handed it to him on his way to the bedroom door and then paused with his fingers on the knob. Now go on downstairs and eat your breakfast with Laura, he said. And do me one favor: Don’t bring that headset with you, okay? It’s just not polite.

  He then pounded quickly down the steps to the first floor, told Laura that he was off—his voice surprisingly normal, Alfred thought from the top of the stairs—and closed the front door behind him.

  “I didn’t want to go. You know that expression, the devil you know? And so I finally started to talk, and I told them I was only at the river to wash clothes. I guess that’s why they made me a laundress.”

  VERONICA ROWE (FORMERLY POPPING TREES),

  WPA INTERVIEW,

  MARCH 1938

  The Heberts

  She watched Paul place the black phone back in the cradle and then sit down in the chair in their library on his side of their massive partners desk. She stood before him with her arms crossed because she’d been listening—standing still in the frame of the doorway, watching him pace in the room as he spoke—and she had the sense from the half of the conversation she could hear that something had happened that involved the boy.

  So? she asked finally, when Paul didn’t immediately tell her what the phone call had been about.

  Without looking at her he said, So, I think Terry’s been working too hard.

  He did seem preoccupied on Christmas Eve.

  He didn’t seem preoccupied. He seemed angry. Edgy. Ticked off at the world.

  I was being kind. That was Terry just now?

  He nodded, his hands clasped behind his neck. He was wearing the heavy Irish fisherman’s sweater their daughter had given him for Christmas—a bulky gray cardigan—and he looked surprisingly elegant to her: the college professor once more. She had assumed he would be wearing the sweatshirt he’d bought at a seaside lobster shack that summer when they were in Maine. It had a cartoon on the front of a lobster in a leotard in the midst of a somersault, and was captioned with the words Lobster Roll. She’d seen him take it out of his armoire earlier that morning when she was lying in bed.

  It was.

  It sounded like he was calling about the boy. Has something happened?

  On their desk were frames with pictures of their children and grandchildren. He unfolded his arms and turned one so that it was at a better angle for him to see it, and then picked it up and held it in his hand. It was a photograph of their daughter on the day she graduated from college.

  I don’t know. But he thinks the boy might be planning to run away. Maybe use Mesa.

  Well, that would make him harder to find. Little black kid on a big horse in Vermont? No one would ever notice that.

  Terry thought the boy might believe he could cover more ground if he stole the horse. Go further.

  Why does he think Alfred wants to leave in the first place? Did the boy say something? Did they have a fight?

  He caught the boy getting ready to pack.

  Getting ready to pack: What does that mean?

  He said Alfred had been stealing things from them, and Terry walked in on him when he had the stuff laid out on his carpet.

  What kind of stuff? Clothing? Money? Food?

  I don’t know. I guess.

  That’s awful. Laura must be crushed.

  She doesn’t know. And Terry doesn’t want her to find out.

  She probably should know...

  Probably. But it’s not our place to tell her. The main thing is—the reason he called—Terry doesn’t want me to leave the boy alone with the horse. He doesn’t want Alfred grooming her, for instance, when I’m not around.

  Because he thinks they might take off...

  Right.

  That’s too bad.

  He returned the picture of their daughter to the desk, and she watched him rock back in his chair and stretch his legs before him. You know, he said, it would be if I took the idea seriously. But I don’t. Really, I don’t.

  You don’t think the boy’s going anywhere.

  Nope. Something else may be going on, but I don’t think Alfred has any plans to run away. After lunch he’s bringing some social worker over to see the horse, and I have absolutely no intention of baby-sitting the two of them. I trust him. I’m going to head up to Burlington and do some errands just like I’d planned.

  You’re not concerned.

  If I’m concerned about anyone, I’m concerned about Terry.

  Me, too.

  But, no, I’m not worried about Alfred, he said, and then shrugged. I don’t know, maybe I’ll talk to him—Alfred. See if there’s something he wants to bring up. But I doubt he will. There’s no quicker way to make that lad grow quiet than to bring up Terry or Laura.

  Behind her in the living room a log in the woodstove collapsed, and she looked around at the sound to make sure the fire was still under control. It was.

  I assume he was calling from work.

  He was. Abruptly he turned toward her, swiveling his whole body at the waist and sitting forward. You read about these foster kids—teenagers, really—who run away from their foster homes and get themselves into real trouble. You see their pictures in the newspaper, their faces on the TV news. They wind up as prostitutes in New York or Montreal. They wind up in jail for selling drugs. I imagine at one time that could have been Alfred in a couple more years, but we both know it won’t be now. At least it won’t be if Terry and Laura don’t screw this up. The kid is too...

  She stood there quietly, giving him a moment to frame his thought.

  He’s too smart and he’s too responsible. Here’s a ten-year-old kid who hasn’t once in the last month—not one time—tried to get out of his chores with the horse or even shown up late. How many other children could you say
that about?

  She nodded. She took pride in her own family, but when she thought back on the reality of the work their horses had demanded when Nick and Catherine and Andy were young, she knew that often it had taken a sizable effort on her part to get even one of them out to the barn once a day.

  If something’s going on over there, he said, motioning with his head and his shoulders toward the Sheldons’ house, I think it has a whole lot more to do with Terry than with Alfred. Really. I do.

  “In that they are children, even the one called Popping Trees, they pose no threat either to the company’s safety or to its morale. Perhaps I would think differently if the two smaller ones were boys who might grow into warriors, but the fact is they, too, are girls. It seems to me that if Colonel Grierson can bake Army bread for the Indians, we can perform this small act of kindness.”

  CAPTAIN ANDREW HITCHENS,

  TENTH REGIMENT, UNITED STATES CAVALRY,

  REPORT TO THE POST ADJUTANT,

  JUNE 19, 1876

  Alfred

  He saw that Louise was careful to keep her distance from the horse, especially after he’d suggested that she not stand behind the animal. He wondered if he had grown a bit in the seven weeks since he last saw her, because this woman—merely short in early November—now seemed tiny to him. Not slight, but squat. She wasn’t more than a couple of inches taller than he was, and he had never had the sense that he was tall for his age. She was a little plump and so her face was round and full, and this—along with her height—reinforced the idea in his mind that she was almost too young to have the job of a grown-up.

  Still, he respected her. She was smart and nice, and clearly very hip. Her hair was brown, but she did something to it to give it a reddish tint, and she even let it get a little spiky at the front. She claimed to listen to the same music that he did, and she dressed like one of the teenagers who hung out on the streets back in Burlington. A lot of leather and fake leather, and nice lines of silver in both ears.