The Buffalo Soldier

by Chris Bohjalian

  Can you walk?

  I don’t know. You alone?

  He nodded.

  How the hell did you get here?

  I rode.

  You rode. How ’bout that.

  Terry, the water is—

  The radio doesn’t work, Terry said, cutting him off as if he hadn’t heard him. I don’t know if it’s because the antenna’s crushed or it’s just this hollow we’re in. Either way, I’m very glad for your company. I don’t know how you found me, but it’s nice to see—

  We’ve got to move, Alfred told him. You’ve got to move. The water’s getting higher, and I think it’s going to come in the car.

  Are you serious?

  Yes, it’s rising fast.

  I think—

  I know you’re hurt, but we have to go now, he said, and he took Terry’s right leg and lifted it over the ridge on the floor of the cruiser. When he looked at his hands, he saw there was blood on them, and Terry’s green slacks weren’t merely wet from the rain in which he’d been working throughout the day.

  Don’t worry, it’s not from my leg, Terry said. It’s from my arm. But my guess is the bleeding’s stopped. I’d have bled out by now if it hadn’t.

  Can you slide over? Can you move your hips and slide?

  I can, a bit. But feel free to pull, too. I think I’ll need any help you can provide.

  Okay, he agreed, and he put his arms around the man’s waist and yanked him hard across the seat, and though Terry grimaced, he pulled him again, burying himself in the fabric that was wet with sweat and rainwater and blood. He tried not to jostle Terry’s arms and shoulders, but he was aware that he was by the horrible way they flopped around his own shoulders like the rag-filled limbs of a Halloween straw man.

  Terry groaned from the back of his throat, but Alfred didn’t stop until he had pushed the door back open with his foot and was standing in the rain on the stones and the mangled remains of the pavement, with the trooper resting on his back at the very edge of the front couch. The man was shaking his head and shivering, and Alfred told him to crane his neck if he could and look down so he could see the water, within inches now of Alfred’s boots, and the way whatever was blocking the current—ice, probably, but maybe there was a whole pile of collapsed asphalt and earth—was causing this hole to fill like a pond.

  See it? he yelled over the sound of the storm. See it?

  The man gazed at the water for a moment, and then back at Alfred.

  Do you see it? he yelled again.

  Terry bobbed his head.

  I think it’s coming in faster now than it was even a minute ago!

  Then just go, little man—get out of here, move!

  We’ve got—

  Climb, go! I don’t want you to drown in this hole!

  We’ll—

  Go! Do as I say!

  No!

  Alfred, I won’t argue with you about this. I—

  I’m not leaving! he shouted, and he stared back at the trooper, unwavering. I’m not leaving without you, he said, his voice softer this time.

  Terry closed his eyes for a brief second and then asked, Can you help me sit up? Maybe I can walk if you can help me up.

  I can sit you up, he agreed, but it’ll hurt.

  I expect it will. But drowning would be no picnic, either.

  And so although the man yelled once more, a short cry but loud, he reached under Terry’s back and pulled him upright, and then watched as the trooper swung his legs over the side and out onto the wet ground, gasping with each exhalation. He held the door up and open like the hatchway into an attic so that Terry could duck underneath it and stand, and with the small, careful steps of a very old man start up the side of the ravine.

  He let the cruiser’s door fall shut and hiked up the slope behind him. He put his hand softly on the small of Terry’s back, not so much pushing him as merely steadying him, and he wondered if he’d be able to get the man atop Mesa. He doubted it, but he guessed at this point it didn’t really matter. He could find Terry a place in the nearby woods where there was some shelter from the rain, ride back to the village—ride into Durham, in fact, because that town was actually closer now—and let the grown-ups figure out the rest. He’d lead them back here if they wanted, but he was confident they would know what to do.

  He imagined Laura was at the house by now since it was clear she hadn’t taken this road home from the shelter, and he was glad he had left her a note.

  Suddenly he was very, very tired, and the thought of drying off Mesa and bedding her down for the night was almost too much to bear.

  “We didn’t spend time with white people, and I never saw another Comanche. Once I was introduced to a woman who was a Hopi, but I had never met any of her people before. And a few blocks away there was a family of Arapaho Indians. But mostly we stayed with the Negroes. The white people didn’t have any interest in us.”

  VERONICA ROWE (FORMERLY POPPING TREES),

  WPA INTERVIEW,

  MARCH 1938

  Laura

  YOUR LIFE IS a mess, she heard herself saying to Terry in her mind, and you need to make some decisions.

  Your life is a mess, but I still want you if...

  Your life is a mess...

  She watched her husband sleep, hours now from surgery and the railed gurney in which he had dozed in post-op, and listened to the wind outside the hospital window. It was no longer raining.

  Soon after her daughters had died, someone in the bereavement group she’d gone to that one time told her that a child’s death could be a real marriage breaker. The loss of two children, this woman suggested, could be especially destructive, particularly if she and Terry were the sort to grieve differently.

  We were, she heard herself whisper now, we are, and she turned to see if Alfred had heard her. He hadn’t. He, too, was asleep, curled up under a woolen blanket in the larger and more comfortable of the two cushioned chairs in the hospital room.

  The hallway outside was quiet and dark. A patient in the next room had been watching TV, but now he’d turned the television set off for the night.

  She watched his eyelids flicker and finalized her speech in her head: It’s really rather simple. I am going to adopt this little boy, and you can either be a part of our family or not. The case review is next week, it’s up to you.

  That, she decided, once and for all, was how she’d begin tomorrow when Terry was awake.

  She stood up, hoping that whatever anesthetic- or analgesic-induced dream he was having was a respite from his pain and his memories and his guilt. She was about to wake Alfred so the two of them could go home when she saw Terry’s lashes part and his eyes start to open. He looked up at her—unconsciously he was making a smacking sound with his mouth—and she went to him.

  You’re awake, she said softly, bending close.

  He nodded.

  It’s very late, she added. Do you need anything?

  He looked down at his arms, immobilized now after surgery, and shook his head. His eyes toured the room, landing for a long moment on Alfred, and then he stared up at her.

  I’m sorry, he murmured, and when she sighed and said nothing, he repeated himself: I am so sorry. There was a slight shudder in his voice, and she wondered if it was due to exhaustion or the medication or the fact that he was still waking up.

  We can talk in the morning, she told him.

  I know I screwed up, and I just want you to know how sorry I am, he continued, his voice halting and broken. She placed her hands on either side of his face, and suddenly they were both silently crying.

  “The men who fought the South—and the Southerners, too, of course—were always having reunions. Big parades every Memorial Day, it seemed. But not the Buffalos, I don’t recall anyone organizing such a thing for them. Maybe we were too far east. It was only after the Great War ended that someone found him and asked him to ride in a car in a parade. He said sure, and he sat in this elegant open car with four Negroes even older than he was w
ho had fought in Virginia with Ulysses S. Grant. It was cold and rainy and damp, and I teased him that he needed his gum blanket. He got sick—everyone was screaming, The flu, the flu!—but it wasn’t the flu. It was only pneumonia. He was old, however, and so that’s how he died.”

  VERONICA ROWE (FORMERLY POPPING TREES),

  WPA INTERVIEW,

  MARCH 1938

  Phoebe

  She called up one more time from the phone in the hospital lobby, and when there still wasn’t an answer in his room, she decided she had nothing to lose. He might not be there, but apparently neither Laura nor Alfred were, either. Perhaps he’d be back any minute from wherever it was they had taken him.

  She wasn’t sure exactly what she would say to him, and on the drive into Burlington—in, of all things, her father’s truck since her Corolla was about to become scrap metal—she had tried out different formulations in her head. And while they all would end with the news that she was finally going to leave Vermont, she wasn’t sure whether she should share with him her belief that she was leaving in part because the two of them had nearly died forty-eight hours earlier, and in her opinion one would have to be pretty damn irreligious not to view that as an omen of some kind of magnitude.

  She exited the elevator and followed the blue line that was painted on the tile floor, passing the crowded nurses’ station and a small display of paintings that were apparently produced by the children in the pediatric ward on another floor of the hospital, and glanced at the numbers of the rooms until she reached his. Then, almost secretively, she glanced through the doorway in the event that the woman who was his wife and the boy who had rescued him were there after all. They weren’t, he was alone in his bed, both his arms incapacitated: His right arm was in a splint from his elbow to his wrist, and his left was in a sling. There was a second bed in the room, but it was empty.

  You can come in, he said to her. If you’re worried about meeting Laura and Alfred, they’re in town getting ice cream.

  They don’t have ice cream here? she said from the door frame.

  Oh, they do. But the flavors are unimpressive and the fat content is low. It’s a tad too healthy to be real ice cream.

  She wandered slowly into the room and was astonished at how frail and docile he looked in his ivory hospital gown in his bed. His face was swollen and bruised, and she stood for a moment at the foot, afraid suddenly to get too close—as if they barely knew each other and were mere acquaintances.

  How did you know I was here? she asked.

  The phone rang a couple of times, and by the time I was able to wriggle myself across the bed and reach it, whoever was calling had hung up. You might recall that was your m.o. back in December when you wanted to reach me. And then, of course, you were hovering just now right outside the door.

  She smiled. How do you feel?

  I have mighty good drugs in me. Very solid painkillers, thank you very much. He wrinkled his nose and then added, I won’t be running the roads for a little while. But I’m alive, and that’s a good feeling.

  You look okay. Better than I would have expected from the news. They said your shoulder was shattered and you’d broken an arm.

  This, he said, motioning with his chin toward his left, is a fracture of the proximal humerus. The ball in my shoulder was broken when the door crumpled in. And then over here we have mid-shaft fractures of the radius and the ulna. I probably broke these when my cruiser rolled over and I banged my arm into something.

  They showed your car on TV.

  Yeah, I was glad to see that even my old Impala got its fifteen seconds of fame. He said nothing for a long moment and she followed his eyes: She looked down at her wrists and saw that she was kneading nervously at the cuffs of her jacket. How long were you at the cottage before you figured out I wasn’t going to join you? he asked finally.

  I never got there.

  He raised his gaze to her eyes and nodded, and she understood instantly that he had read more into her statement than she’d meant. I think you’ve made a wise decision, he said. Laura and I talked, and I—

  No, there’s more to it than that. I was in a car accident, too, she explained quickly, straining to keep her voice even as she started to describe for him what had occurred. She knew it wouldn’t take long because she’d told the story so many times already, and she hoped his training as a trooper wouldn’t lead him to ask more questions than, for example, her father or Wallace had asked. She didn’t want to relive the moment with any more specifics than necessary.

  When she was through, he asked only one: And the baby?

  The baby’s fine.

  Thank God.

  She looked out the window, noticing for the first time his view of the small mountain in the distance called Camel’s Hump, and all her imaginings of how she would tell him she was leaving abruptly vanished. I’m going away, she said simply. I have an appointment with a travel agent at four-thirty, and I’m buying a plane ticket to Santa Fe.

  One way?

  Not yet. Round trip. I want to scout it out first. But yes, my plan is to move there in the spring. I’ll stay with my friend from college who lives there. Shauna. I’ll stay with her and her family until I find a place. They have an extra room. Then maybe I can get a job with the bean counters who work for the New Mexico government, and make myself some more friends before this baby arrives.

  I won’t meet this little baby, will I? he said, and she could see a sudden pang of despair flutter across his face like a twitch.

  No, she told him, and she was surprised by the composure in her voice.

  So, that’s it. That’s the sentence.

  It’s not a sentence, it’s just—

  It’s fine, Phoebe. Really. I have a son. I have a family. Still, if you ever need anything, you’ll let me know. Right?

  Terry—

  I mean it.

  I’ll be fine, she said, and then she repeated the words as much for herself as for him. I will be fine. And you?

  Laura and I talked: I know what I want and I know what’s right.

  I hope they’re the same.

  They are. I should never have come on to you at the store. I should never have—

  You don’t have to say it.

  I just want you to know I’m sorry. I’m very, very sorry, and I hope someday you’ll forgive me. I want to make things right with Laura and Alfred, and—

  I don’t need to forgive you. I knew what I was doing then, I know what I’m doing now. The thing is...

  Yes?

  The thing is, you really won’t ever hear from me again. I’m going to make a nice life for me and my child, and I won’t want for anything, she said. Okay?

  Oh, Phoebe, if I could—

  Don’t. I’m serious. I know what I want, too.

  Then I’m happy, he said slowly.

  And you and Laura? You think you’ll be okay?

  We’ll get through this...I hope. I love her. I behaved miserably, but—

  Oh, we both did.

  She took a deep breath and leaned down on the metal molding along the top of the footboard. She decided her nervousness was shifting, transforming itself now into anticipation, and she allowed the ends of her lips to arc naturally into a smile. She considered blowing him a kiss, but she felt that would be flippant and dismissive, and she didn’t want that. And so she pulled herself away from the end of the bedstead, went to his side for the first time since she had arrived in his room, and kissed him lightly. Then she stood back on her heels and left.

  PART FOUR

  Equitation

  “When we walked down the street with our children, we might have looked strange to the white people who saw us: an Indian lady and her girls, and a handsome Negro and two boys. That’s what we looked like. But we were a family and it worked.”

  VERONICA ROWE (FORMERLY POPPING TREES),

  WPA INTERVIEW,

  MARCH 1938

  A stiff, cool wind—along with the turning leaves at the very tops of the sug
ar maples, an early harbinger of fall—was blowing in from the north, and Laura Sheldon stood just outside the ring and watched it blow Alfred’s necktie away from his chest. The boy—taller now, only weeks away from seventh grade and the union high school six miles distant in Durham—tucked the necktie back inside his riding coat, checked the front button, and then climbed atop Mesa. The flat class was done and now he would jump, alone for the first time in the ring. Heather Barrett, the woman from the indoor ring who had metamorphosed from teacher to trainer in the year and a half they’d been together, motioned toward the jodhpur strap just below his knee and said something to Alfred that Laura couldn’t quite hear, and then left him alone and marched toward the gate nearest her.

  Overhead there were immense cotton-ball clouds, and when one would hide the sun, the air would grow chilly. Terry Sheldon stood beside her, and beside him stood the Heberts. Occasionally Emily would curl her cardigan—vertical red, white, and blue stripes, a sweater the woman chose, she said, because it seemed fitting for a horse show, though Laura thought it actually made her look a bit like an image from a World War I recruitment poster—tightly around her shoulders. When Heather joined them, the trainer leaned over the rail beside Laura and blew into her hands.

  Cold? Laura asked her, surprised. There was a breeze today, but she wouldn’t have thought that a woman as tough as Heather would be uncomfortable.

  No, not at all. Just anxious.

  You? Terry asked, and he, too, sounded a tad incredulous.

  Oh, I get nervous for all my kids. I want them to do well—especially when it’s their first show. I think my heart stops completely that moment any one of them approaches their very first jump in a competition.

  Alfred admitted he had some butterflies at breakfast this morning, Laura said, and she recalled how he had told them that he was bringing his old buffalo soldier cap with him. Though he could no longer stretch it around his head, he viewed it as a good-luck charm, and right now it was tucked inside a pocket in his blazer.