by Holly Bush
“I have to get Ben home. I have to see my family and see if I can repair the hurt I’ve done and lessen their disappointment. I have to, Annie. But now . . . Sweet Jesus,” he whispered. “I can’t leave you.”
“Of course you have to leave me. My life is here. You have to go home,” she said as she walked to him. “This was the most wonderful thing that has ever happened to me. I’ll treasure the memory of it and how you looked at me forever.”
She turned then and made her way down the ladder, hearing him call her name, barely able to hold back tears until she was outside in the cool of the evening.
It was drizzling rain the following morning but not hard enough to keep Matt from making the trip to Harrisonburg and boarding the train. If he missed it tomorrow, he’d have to wait a week to catch the next one, and he didn’t think he could manage another seven days of the emotional nonsense these last few days had been. Chester was hitched, and he’d put his saddlebags and clothes in the back in some oilcloth Annie had produced. Ben had been wearing her father’s clothes recently, even though Matt had told him he’d get him what he needed in town. She and Ben had hugged for several wordless minutes before she helped him up into the wagon’s seat and put his crutches in the back. She had wrapped two apples and biscuits and handed them with Matt’s filled canteen to Ben.
“Annie,” Matt said and shook his head. “I could never, ever repay you for what you’ve done. I still want . . . well, it’s too late for that. I’ve left my telegraph direction and mailing address if you need to get hold of me for any reason, and there are no reasons too small. I . . . I will always . . . remember you fondly. Good-bye, Annie.”
He leaned down and kissed her cheek. She was smiling and waving and promising to write. She was a poor actress, though, and they both knew it. He climbed onto the seat beside Ben and hawed Chester to move. He took one look back, right before the trees covered his vision of her. She was standing in the same spot, her hands over her mouth and tears or rain trailing down her face.
The rain died down not long after he’d set off. They only had an eight-mile trip according to the telegraph operator, and the road was an easy one, wide and clear with just some foothills to climb. They rode through Bridgewater, Matt pointing out the places he’d stopped in the town, although he took some side streets and was glad they’d started out before daybreak, hoping less folks knew that Annie was now alone.
“Didn’t go to the saloon?”
Matt shook his head and smiled. “No, I didn’t, old man. I haven’t had a drink since before we took our dunk in the river and you know it.”
Matt heard his name called at the corner of the main street as they headed out of town.
“Mister! Mister! You got a telegraph! Wait up.”
Matt jumped down from the wagon, pulling a coin from his pants as he did. “Much obliged,” he said and took the folded note from the man’s hand.
He pulled himself up, gave Chester’s reins to Ben, and opened the paper.
My dearest Matthew. Please bring Ben and yourself home safely to me. All my love, Mother.
“What’s it say?”
“She wants us both home safely.”
“Well, hell. Nobody wants that more than me,” Ben said with a chuckle. “I’m longing for my rooms and my bed and my pipe and some of Mabel’s cooking.”
Matt smiled at him. He wondered if his old room was still vacant and what things would be like when he got there. He rubbed the paper between his fingers for a time before putting it in his pocket. It was the first time he’d read his mother’s words in six years, and it felt like she was standing beside him, saying them to him, even knowing that some nameless man in Winchester had sent the telegram to this nameless man in Bridgewater. It didn’t matter. They were his mother’s words. How would he begin to explain where he’d been? He missed Annie with a gnawing ache.
The trip to Harrisonburg was uneventful. The day had turned warm after the morning showers, and while Ben was content under the beating sun, Matt had been hot and uncomfortable, that being his only complaint. The dirt road was packed tight, smooth, and wide, although he kept Chester to a walk while Ben stretched out in the back of the wagon. He didn’t move much faster even when Ben was beside him, trying to keep the rattling and the bumping around to a minimum. Toward the afternoon, Matt noticed Ben hanging on to the seat rail, his knuckles white.
“We’re almost there, I think,” Matt said. “That bridge up ahead leads into Harrisonburg.”
“I’m fine, son. Just keep us moving.”
Matt pulled up in front of the Harrisonburg Hotel near some livestock yards and the train depot. These must be the yards Annie said the neighbor would be bringing her hogs to to sell this fall. He wondered what she was doing right now. He jumped down from the wagon, tied Chester to a rail, and waited for Ben. The old man wasn’t moving very fast.
“You go on in and get us a room. I’m just going to rest a bit,” he said.
“Okay. Catch your breath.”
Matt went into the hotel, paid the clerk, and got a key. He knew Ben was exhausted already and trying not to show it; he didn’t want him sleeping alone. He went back out to the wagon.
“Got us a room on the first floor. Two beds. You ready to go inside?”
“In a minute.”
Matt waited and then stepped up on the wheel. He picked Ben up in one swift motion and headed to the door of the hotel. Ben was murmuring and fussing and hanging on to his hat.
“Don’t say one word, old man,” he said as he carried him to the door of their room and set him on his feet to lean against the wall. He opened the door, and Ben slowly hobbled in and sat down on the bed.
“I think I’ll rest a bit. It’s been a long day,” he said and lay down.
“Yes it has. I’m going over to the depot to see about tickets for tomorrow.”
“That’s fine, son,” Ben said softly as his eyes closed.
“I need two tickets to Winchester, and if you have any room in a first-class car, I want them. Will this train have a livestock car?”
The clerk in the string tie and vest nodded. “Yes to both questions. That’ll be three-quarter of a dollar for your tickets in first-class and another half-dollar for any animal going in the livestock car.”
Matt breathed a sigh of relief. He’d been worried about having to leave Chester at a stable here in Harrisonburg until he could get back on the train to get him. He didn’t trust others to care for him like he did and was thinking he’d just get himself and Ben home and have to turn around and board the train again. His mother wouldn’t be pleased, but after all was said and done, Chester had saved his and Ben’s life as well as being the smartest, toughest horse Matt had ever ridden. He deserved the very best care he could provide.
After Ben woke, the two of them went to the hotel dining room. Ben had cleaned himself up and had started to look a bit like the Ben Littleship who had barged into his hotel room all those months ago even if he was still weak and needed extra rest and one crutch. Matt had found a general store while Ben slept that was still open nearby and bought Ben clothes and boots and a new hat.
“I don’t like owing you. I’ll pay you as soon as we get to Paradise. All my paper money was in my saddlebags and is at the bottom of that river still strapped around Tramp’s rump. I had a couple gold pieces, too, in my pocket. I suspect they fell out somewhere along the way.”
“I have money. Still got plenty of gold pieces in my belt and some sewn inside Chester’s saddle. I’ll live, and if Mother ever heard that you felt obligated to pay me for some clothes after traipsing all over God’s acre looking for me, she’d never let you hear the end of it. Just take the clothes and shut your mouth, old man.”
Ben eyed him as if intending to argue and then chuckled. “My God, you remind me of Beauregard.”
“Was that supposed to be a compliment?” Matt asked and picked up his coffee.
“Stubborn. Bullheaded. Yeah, you’re mostly Beauregard with just a li
ttle bit of Miss Eleanor’s fine manners smoothing out the edges.”
“And I was too stubborn and bullheaded to square myself with him before I went off wandering, and now he’s dead.”
“There’s no denying any of that,” Ben said and stared across the table. “You ever wonder how I found you?”
“I suppose I wondered, but I guess I didn’t care all that much.”
Ben leaned back in his chair and waved an impatient hand his way. “Don’t go feeling sorry for yourself. You and I both did some growing up in that water.”
“I guess we did,” Matt said. “How did you find me?”
“Well, I figured if I was to have any chance of finding you, you’d have to be in Virginia or close by. I caught your trail in Kentucky on the roads coming north ’til I found you in Lexington.”
“Caught my trail?”
“Had a small portrait of you Miss Eleanor gave me and asked around at the saloons if they’d seen this big, stubborn man the ladies probably loved and the criminals stayed away from.”
Matt laughed. He couldn’t help himself. “They know me right away?”
“Yep, and generally knew from the barmaids which direction you’d rode off in when you left their beds for the last time.”
Annie spent the day pulling apart the mattress for her bed, stitching the ticking where necessary and sorting through new straw for the softest bunches as she did every year come fall. She added thick layers of new batting that she’d asked Madeline to get for her at the general store on top. She’d scrubbed every inch of the cabin with soapy water the day they left. What a silly thing to do, she’d thought later, as if she could remove their existence with a scrub brush and lye soap.
Her fences were fixed and her garden tended. Wood was stacked neatly for the winter, and her panty was stocked with plenty of provisions to get a single person through even a harsh winter. Her pigs would go to market in a few weeks, and she’d hopefully have a few more coins to stow away with the ones she kept in a pocket she’d sewn in the inside of her left boot. She figured if someone took her boots away she was going to die soon anyway and wouldn’t care if she was robbed of her life savings, including the gold pieces Matt had left her with his telegraph directions. She’d also cut a small slit between the outer leather and the inner lining of her right boot. She was just able to fit a small ivory-handled knife that she’d found with her mother’s things there.
She’d spent some time going through her mother’s boxes, which she’d never done as an adult. She’d opened the leather satchel a few times as a young girl just to touch and smell her mother’s things. Now, she read the letters her mother had received from her mother and father back in Tennessee begging her to come back there, and bring her husband if she wished, and most definitely bring her young daughter, that they’d always have a home with them there. How different would her life be if Momma had moved back to her family home? She might even still be alive if Daddy didn’t go with them, for there’d be no Teddy, but then her own life have been so bleak without her little brother’s smile and love. Time could not be turned back, though, and decisions made and questions left unanswered eventually set a course.
She was sitting on her porch reading a book of her mother’s and wondering where Matt and Ben were at that very minute when Madeline came racing through the near trees. She was breathing hard and bent over to catch her breath.
“What is it?” Annie asked in a panic. “What is it? Is it Tom? One of the children?”
Madeline straightened and looked her in the eye. “Gilly’s gone missing. Her mother don’t know where she’s at. And they’re talking about coming out here for you.”
Chapter 8
Matt and Ben ate breakfast at a busy restaurant across the street from the hotel. It was clear to Matt that Harrisonburg was a town still in the shadow of the war. Battles and skirmishes had raged around it and the courthouse had been used to imprison Union soldiers. Conversations at tables all around them focused on loved ones lost, which neighbors were Union sympathizers, and what were they going to do with all the freed slaves coming North. He was glad to be boarding the train shortly before noon. It wouldn’t travel much faster than twenty miles per hour, but he no longer wanted to be immersed in the war talk and culture that he’d clung to all those years since being released from the service.
Ben lay down for an hour or so, and Matt sat in a hotel lobby chair, watching the people come in and out of the hotel, wondering where they were going to or coming from. He wondered what Annie was doing and why it mattered to him. He had no answer other than to say it did matter. It did matter to him.
“How much did these tickets cost for this fancy train car?” Ben said when they were seated.
“Quit moaning. Did you want to sit your bony ass on a hard wooden bench for four hours or on this cushioned one?”
Ben chuckled. “You’re getting downright nasty. I imagine it’s cause we’re getting closer and closer to home. I’m getting happier with every chug of this train, and you’re getting sadder. What do you say to that?”
“I’m thinking I’ll need to rent a wagon from Wilkins’s Stables if it’s still there.”
“Old Theodore Wilkins is retired, but his daughter’s husband, Jasper Crawper, runs it now, or at least he did when I left town last spring. He’ll lend us a wagon. I wish I could get on a horse, but I don’t think I can.”
“Don’t worry about it. We’ll get a wagon and get home in time for dinner.”
“Get home,” Ben whispered and closed his eyes.
It wasn’t long until he was leaning against Matt’s shoulder, snoring softly, leaving him plenty of time to think. What was he going to say when he got there?
The train slowed down to a crawl as it approached the Winchester station. Matt looked out the window as town came into view and found it looked achingly familiar, as if there was a painted sign hanging from the sky saying “this is your home.” But as they got closer, he could see that details had changed. His great-aunt Brigid’s seamstress shop was now called Bessie’s Sewing, but hadn’t she been talking about selling even before he’d left home? He knew she was old then, probably seventy years old by now, and he wondered if she’d died while he was gone. He could have asked Ben. He hadn’t asked him much of anything about home, just the barest bit of information. Oh, he was a coward.
Ben had woken and was pointing out the window with a shaking finger at every landmark and store they passed before the train finally stopped with a steamed belch. They waited until all the other passengers departed, letting Ben take his time walking down the narrow aisle to where a porter stood to help him down the steps. Matt followed close behind carrying his saddlebags and the oilcloth sack. He handed the porter a coin and held on to Ben’s arm. The old man was exhausted even though he protested and said he’d be fine. Matt looked up when he heard his name.
It was Adam, his elder brother, calling to him. Matt wasn’t sure until that moment how it would feel to see them, his family that was, and whether youthful bonds would trump adult errors. But Adam was walking to him now with the familiar loose gait of a tall, active man, smiling, a rare thing to be seen, and Matt was certain that wherever his travels had taken him, and whatever sights he’d seen, nothing could compare with the gladness he felt right at that moment.
“Adam?”
His brother grabbed him around the shoulders, slapping his back and laughing. He hugged him back hard, smelling the scent of horses and home that his brother carried. Adam stepped away and looked at him.
“My God, Matt. I’ve missed you. I am so glad you’re here.”
Matt turned when he heard Ben sniffling beside him.
Adam turned his head. “Ben? Is that you?”
“It’s me, Adam,” he said, crying and shaking and leaning on Matt. “I thought I’d never see you again, boy.”
Adam put his arm around the old man and looked over his head at Matt, questions in his eyes.
“We’re going to need a wagon,
Adam, and my horse Chester is being unloaded right now, I can see. Will Wilkins’s have something we can use?”
“Sure, sure, Matt. Let me get over there and get something from Jasper. My horse can pull it and we’ll tie Chester to the rear.”
“Chester will be very glad to be on the tail end of a wagon, wouldn’t you say, Ben?” Matt asked.
Ben wiped his nose on his sleeve. “He sure will, son, he sure will,” he replied in a shaking voice.
“Let’s get you over to the stable while they’re unloading Chester,” Matt said and bent down to lift him.
“I don’t need carried,” Ben said but didn’t move to get out of his arms.
“Shut up, old man, or I’ll dunk you in another river,” he said.
Ben chuckled, and he went down the steps, his brother’s eyes on the pair of them the whole time. They got Ben settled in the back of a low wagon where Matt stowed his saddlebags and sack. He brought Chester down the steep incline near the steps, leading him by the bridle, and talking soft and low. He tied Chester to the back, promised a double ration of whatever the Morgans were getting and a clean stall that he could rest in for as long as he wanted.
He climbed up onto the seat beside his brother. “Did you just happen to be in town?”
Adam shook his head. “Mother’s been sending me every time the train is due to arrive from the south. I stand on the platform and wait until the last passenger is off. I didn’t one time and made the mistake of telling her so, and she nearly sent me back to town,” he said and looked at him. “She was worried I’d left you at the station. I almost left today, thinking everyone was off the train, and then I thought I recognized Ben and you behind him. Mother would’ve had my hide if I’d left early today.”
“I’ve worried her,” Matt said, eyes on the trail before him.
“You have. You’ve worried us all. But you’re here now, and I get the feeling that there’s some stories to tell.”