The Buffalo Soldier

by Chris Bohjalian

  In the living room he heard Russell snoring and he shuddered. He wished he were home; he wished he were better with Alfred; he wished the roots that linked him to Phoebe Danvers were slender, their flowers incapable of efflorescence.

  In the morning, he presumed, he would feel better. But he wasn’t sure, and he pressed his face into his pillow and tried to find again that dream in his sleep where he was happy and his life wasn’t riddled by tragedy and mistake.

  “He had a brother in Philadelphia who was a carpenter. We didn’t have much money, but we decided someday we would use what we had and go east.”

  VERONICA ROWE (FORMERLY POPPING TREES),

  WPA INTERVIEW,

  MARCH 1938

  Laura

  At breakfast Alfred surprised her. Out of the blue the boy said, I’ll probably never know who my dad was, but I think I’ve found my great-great-great-grandfather.

  She lifted her eyes from her tea to try to read the child’s face. See if this was a setup for a punch line of some sort. She thought Alfred looked content, but there was nothing in his countenance to suggest that this was a joke.

  Go on, she said.

  I mean, it’s probably not true. But it could be.

  And that is?

  Sergeant George Rowe. I think we could be related.

  She nodded. Is this a hunch or something more? she asked. She understood why he might want to believe he was descended from the cavalry soldiers he’d grown interested in, but she didn’t see any link other than the fact that he was black. Moreover, she wondered if this notion might be a harbinger of a more profound wish: the desire to know who his father was, and where his mother was now.

  A little of both, he answered. It hit me the other day at the riding ring when Heather said I must have riding in my blood. Well, Sergeant Rowe was a great rider, too, and after he left the Army, he moved to Philadelphia. He had a brother there. He married a Comanche woman, and they settled down in the very same city where my mom was born ninety years later.

  I guess it’s possible, she said, though she knew the odds were infinitesimal.

  I know it sounds crazy when I say it out loud. But when I keep it to myself, it seems like it’s true.

  The world is filled with crazy things that are true, she said. Trust me, I know. Then she rested her hand on top of his, tenderly rubbing her thumb against the soft spot between his own thumb and forefinger, and looked him squarely in the eyes and asked, Do you want us to try and track down your mother? See how she’s doing? Maybe even see if we can discover who your father was? My feelings won’t be hurt if you want us to make an effort. It might be fun.

  He seemed to mull the idea over for a moment, before shaking his head. Maybe when I’m older, he answered, gazing down at their fingers, but not now. Right now...

  Go on.

  I want to stay here.

  Oh, Alfred, of course, she said reflexively, surprised and then moved—she felt a small, rapturous swell building inside her—by the honesty and affection in his short answer. I didn’t mean I would ever want you to leave.

  I like it here, he went on as if she hadn’t spoken, and I don’t need to know anything else.

  She slid her chair beside his and pulled his head to her chest. She squeezed him against her and smiled, and buried her face in the sweet smell of the shampoo that lingered in his hair.

  HER MOTHER STILL wrote her letters. They talked on the phone and on rare occasions her mother would send her an e-mail from the computer her father kept in his study, but her mother’s favorite way of communicating with her was to write long, handwritten letters every second or third week. Sometimes it was on hotel stationery and sometimes it began on one of the Humane Society note cards she received as thanks for the contributions that she, too, made to the organization, before continuing on white copy paper that she took from her husband’s computer printer. The letters were usually long and chatty, and filled with misspellings—an indication of neither her mother’s intelligence nor her education, but merely of her entitled disregard for convention. People (especially her daughter) knew what she meant, and she needn’t waste time, therefore, looking up words in the dictionary.

  Laura had no idea how many correspondents actually wrote back to her mother—or how often—but she didn’t believe there were many. She imagined her mother’s friends most likely responded by telephone, and in some cases via e-mail, which her father would then print out and deliver like a letter.

  In the mail today was one of those notes from her mother, and Laura discovered it in the mailbox when she came home from the animal shelter at almost the same moment that she saw Alfred emerge from the Heberts’ paddock on Mesa. She’d had an afternoon meeting today, and so Paul had met the boy at the bus stop. Now as she stood beside her car with her mail in her hands, Alfred rode across the street to her, the horse’s hooves rhythmic and loud on the pavement, and she noticed that the animal’s eyes were watching the exhaust from her idling car.

  Howdy, Alfred said to her, his common greeting this week when he was atop the big animal. His attempt at a cowpoke’s accent sounded more Southern than Western, but the very notion that he would offer such a playful acknowledgment thrilled her, and she blew a kiss up to him with her fingers.

  How was school? she asked.

  Okay.

  Only okay?

  She could see the shoulders of his parka move ever so slightly. She had scheduled a meeting for the next day with his teacher, hoping that in person she could convince the woman to do what she had failed to make her do over the phone: move Alfred from the math group that was bogged down in squared numbers and factors into the more advanced one that was exploring elementary geometry. She was concerned now that she’d pushed too hard on the phone, however, and so it was possible that the woman had been needlessly defensive around Alfred today—perhaps even hostile.

  Maybe better than okay. We had a video about Mount Everest. I liked that.

  How was Ms. Logan?

  Okay. Her crabby self to some kids, but not to me.

  And math?

  Boring.

  Well, that’s what Ms. Logan and I will talk about tomorrow. Have you eaten?

  Uh-huh. Paul and me—

  Paul and I.

  Paul and I had this peanut butter glop Emily made.

  I’m sure it wasn’t glop.

  No, it was glop. That’s what it was called. She said it was mostly peanut butter and cream cheese and Cool Whip. They got the recipe from some diner in Oklahoma.

  It actually sounds pretty tasty.

  It was kind of like pudding, but you knew it was bad for you.

  She saw Paul emerging from the barn with a toolbox and a couple of two-by-fours. What’s Paul working on?

  The outdoor manger. It’s a little low.

  Mesa’s complaining, is she?

  She doesn’t complain about anything, he said, and he stroked the animal along her shoulder.

  You have much homework tonight?

  Enough. I’ll be in in about an hour, I guess. Paul doesn’t think it will take long. That okay?

  That’s fine. I’ll go start dinner, she said, and she watched the boy almost effortlessly back the horse up a couple of feet, and then turn her around and ride across the road to the Heberts’. She climbed back into her car and tossed the pile of mail onto the passenger seat beside her, and noticed for the first time that in addition to catalogs and bills and a letter from her mother, there was a piece of correspondence from the SRS office in Middlebury. She knew instantly it would be from Louise, and she slit open the envelope with her fingernail to read it that moment.

  It was brief and to the point. It was almost time to schedule a case review, and she saw no reason to wait until the end of February—when Alfred would have been with them for a full six months. She wanted to know if there was a day that might work for her in the coming weeks.

  Laura told herself there was nothing alarming or threatening about the letter, and she shouldn’t read a
nything into it. She’d known this was coming since Alfred had come into their lives the Sunday of Labor Day weekend.

  Quickly she slid the SRS letter into her tote bag and then opened the note from her mother as well. She’d planned on reading it once she was inside and had taken her coat off, but she decided she would get it over with now, too. This way she could put the whole stack of mail in the den and not have to think about it until later, when dinner was made and cleaned up, and Alfred had bathed and gone to bed.

  The letter was short and not particularly newsy. Normally her mother would be sure to include her opinions on whatever ballet or show she’d seen most recently in Boston, and a reference to which books she’d just read. She’d have an observation about her father’s health (which, in her mother’s mind, was always fine, and the aches and pains that came with his age a mere sign of male hypochondria), and she might offer an anecdote she’d heard at a garden club meeting (and why, it seemed to her, Cornish, Vermont, could use such a club). Not this time. She got right to the point: She hadn’t stopped thinking about her daughter and son-in-law’s separation since Laura had called, and she was very sad for everyone involved—even the boy, who, both she and her father presumed, would now have to be placed in another foster home. Still, she held out hope for a reconciliation. If that wasn’t meant to be, however, and her daughter needed to start fresh someplace new, she could always come home. In the meantime, Laura should let them know if she needed money—and, if so, how much. They would, of course, give her whatever she needed to get back on her feet, because they couldn’t bear to think of her alone and worried about how she was going to make ends meet.

  She thought she should be angry, but she wasn’t. This was merely her mother being her mother: as oblivious as ever to what her daughter wanted to do with her life, and why. And so she simply drove the car up to the house, parked it in its usual spot by the small carriage barn, and then went inside to make dinner.

  SHE DECIDED SHE had to call Louise. She would imply that the main reason she was phoning was to offer some days and times when she was available for the case review, but then, once they were talking, she would see if there was a way to ask the caseworker what she was thinking—and whether the news that she and Terry were, at least for the moment, separated had had any bearing on the timing of Louise’s letter.

  She caught the woman when she was just about to leave for the day, and offered to call back in the morning.

  No, now’s fine, Louise said, and they both looked at their calendars and chose a day in the very first week in February when they would try to get everyone together.

  She scribbled a tentative time on a scrap piece of paper and then—hoping the question would sound casual when she actually gave voice to the words in her head—asked, Have you given any more thought to Terry’s and my situation?

  There was a quiet at the other end of the line, and for a brief moment she wished that she had stalled just a moment longer—found a more innocuous subject to discuss with Louise before getting to the issue that really mattered to her. It might have made her inquiry seem less urgent, and she sound less anguished. But then she stopped herself from thinking like that: This is my child, she thought, my boy, and I will be as urgent and worried as I want.

  I guess, Louise said finally. Why?

  I was wondering if it had anything to do with your scheduling the case review now.

  No. I mean, I wasn’t oblivious to it. But what’s your concern?

  I didn’t know if there was a connection—and I wanted to know.

  No.

  No connection?

  That’s right. Absolutely none. Even if the two of you wind up divorced, the reality is that single people adopt children all the time. I’m serious: all the time.

  Adopt, she said, murmuring the word carefully. Repeating it gave it tangibility.

  Yeah, adopt. I presume that hasn’t changed. I mean it hasn’t changed for me. For us.

  No, of course it hasn’t changed. I’m just...surprised. Pleasantly—no, euphorically—surprised.

  What, did you think that because—

  It doesn’t matter what I thought, she said, her voice almost giddy.

  Look, all I want to do at this point is bring in the adoption social worker. That’s the main thing I think we’ll be discussing at the case review. Okay? I would love for you and Terry to figure out how to solve your problems for a zillion reasons, of which young Alfred is only one. But the bottom line is that the plan hasn’t changed. We still want you to adopt Alfred, and I have to assume that’s still what you want, too. Right?

  More than you know, she said, and she had to swallow hard so she wouldn’t cry on the phone. I want that more than you know.

  “I can discourage a trooper from marrying, but in the end I cannot prevent it.”

  CAPTAIN ANDREW HITCHENS,

  TENTH REGIMENT, UNITED STATES CAVALRY,

  REPORT TO THE POST ADJUTANT,

  AUGUST 12, 1877

  Alfred

  A barn collapsed in Durham and killed thirty-five cows: The rain made the snow on the roof too heavy for the old beams, and the structure bowed and then broke.

  In Cornish, the custodian at the elementary school rounded up plastic buckets and left them stacked just outside the kindergarten classroom, the room with the art supplies, and the gym. Apparently at some point the ceilings in these rooms would start to leak because the melting snow on the roof would have to go somewhere, and eventually gravity would lead it inside the school.

  And Schuyler Jackman and Joe Langford both wondered at lunch in the multipurpose room how high the river would rise, and it was clear from their tones that this was a subject that disturbed them.

  Most of the grown-ups, however, including Alfred’s teacher and Paul, tried to talk about the rain and the warm spell as the natural January thaw. It happened every year right about now: There would be two or three days of warm weather and rain at the very end of the month, and most of the snow pack would disappear. This year it just happened to be both a little warmer and a little wetter, and there was a little more snow running off the hills to the east.

  Still, Alfred worried. It felt to him as if there had been mountains of snow in the five weeks since Christmas, and now it was pouring and there was still so much rain in the forecast. He wasn’t sure what he expected would happen, and when he was falling asleep that night, the rain drumming against the metal porch roof outside his window, he told himself he was only anxious because Laura was. And it was obvious why the rain and the water were so upsetting to her.

  WHEN HE CAME downstairs for breakfast the next morning, he heard Laura on the phone. The plastic red bowl in which she cleaned lettuce was on the kitchen counter next to the stove, and every half minute a tiny drop from a leak in the ceiling would fall into it.

  No, you don’t need to, Russell, really. It’s Terry’s responsibility. But you’re sweet to offer, she was saying, and she smiled at Alfred when she saw him. Look, I’ll call the barracks, she continued, and he can come up here when he’s done with his shift. That’ll be fine.

  A moment later she said good-bye and hung up, and after he had sat down at the table and poured milk into his cereal, he asked her what was Terry’s responsibility.

  She tossed a container of pudding into his lunch bag and a second paper napkin, and folded the top shut. The roof, she answered. Actually, the roofs. She motioned toward the bowl and the leak—he noticed there was a stain on the ceiling the size of a washcloth and the color of rust that hadn’t been there the day before—and went on, I don’t worry about them collapsing, but we need to get the snow off before the real rains come tonight. Otherwise a lot of that snow is going to wind up here in the kitchen and in my bedroom and in the den. That’s where the water trickles in when we have ice jams up there—except it isn’t always a trickle. Six or seven years ago it was practically a waterfall. We had to repaint and repaper the den.

  That was Russell just now?

  Uh-huh. He
spent last night at that camp with Terry, she answered, and then her tone lightened slightly. Poor Terry, I actually feel sorry for him. Russell quit his job earlier this month, and it seems at least once a week he’s dropped in on his older brother for a night or two. I think he likes that camp. I believe this is the third time he’s been out there.

  And he’s coming here now? he asked, the question a reflex he wished he could have avoided. He was afraid Laura would be able to see how little he wanted Russell up at their house.

  Oh, no. God, no. Don’t worry about that. The only reason I was even talking to Russell was that I’d missed Terry by a minute or two, he’d just left for work. And so Russell offered to stop by on his way home and shovel off the roofs, since, well, he no longer has a job to get to. It was actually a very sweet offer. But the roofs are Terry’s responsibility. And the truth is, I don’t want Russell here any more than you do.

  He spooned some of the cereal into his mouth and wondered if there was a way he could help. But he wasn’t sure he could even lift that metal extension ladder in the carriage barn off the ground, much less carry it through the snow, heavy and thick now with rainwater, to the side of the house. He thought he might ask Paul what he should do if the roof was still leaking when he got home from school, but then he remembered he couldn’t do that: The couple was off visiting their daughter in the southern part of the state and wouldn’t be back until tomorrow.

  WHEN THE BUS passed the Gale River on the way to school, there were massive sheets of broken ice crashing against the banks—some easily the size of the tops of pool tables and the flatbeds of pickup trucks—and the younger children in the bus were shouting, Cool. When the bus arrived at the school building, he saw the custodian was up on the roof over the kindergarten classroom, the ladder flush against the sharply pitched metal, using one hand to bang against ice with a small sledgehammer while gripping the ladder tightly with the other.