Though Waters Roar

by Lynn Austin

  Grandma halted beside a tall, gaunt soldier who looked like the grim reaper in an army uniform. “Harriet, I’d like you to meet my brother, Franklin.”

  I thought she was joking. The tops of our heads barely reached to his armpits. He didn’t resemble Grandma Bebe in the least, and his startling white hair made him look old enough to be her father. But Franklin turned to her with a wide, warm smile that took twenty years off his age.

  “Hey, good to see you, Bebe.” He wrapped his arm around her neck and pulled her close, kissing the top of her head.

  “Franklin, this is Harriet—the granddaughter I’ve told you so much about.”

  “Pleased to meet you,” I said as we appraised each other. I wondered what she had been saying about me.

  “She looks just like you, Bebe, when you were her age.”

  “Stop it, Franklin. You’ll give the girl nightmares.” He laughed, and the sound reminded me of a car engine trying to turn over and start.

  The ceremony, once it finally began, would have been humorous if it hadn’t been so poignant. The pompous officials took turns posing for the news photographer, sucking in their paunches and gripping their lapels, their chins and jowls thrust forward. The mayor sputtered and flapped and tried not to curse after stepping backward into a mud puddle. He stammered his way through a flowery, incomprehensible speech. The next official accidentally dropped the memorial wreath facedown in the same mud puddle that the mayor had stepped in, and half of the flowers fell out of it. When he finally propped up the wreath on the metal stand, it looked as bedraggled and woebegone as the veterans.

  The bugler, who looked old enough to have fought in the Revolution, played a barely recognizable rendition of taps. Uncle Franklin closed his eyes while the commander of the local GAR post spoke about sacrifice and duty and freedom, and I wondered if he was dozing or reminiscing. I saw several old veterans wipe their eyes.

  After the minister pronounced the benediction, my uncle limped around the cemetery with the other old men, placing flags and GAR stars on various graves. He used an ebony cane with a silver handle, and moved very stiffly, lurching across the lumpy ground as if it pained him to move. The final grave, where he and Grandma lingered the longest, belonged to their brother Joseph.

  “What a pity,” Grandma murmured.

  “Joe deserved better,” Franklin sighed. I subtracted the dates on the grave marker while I waited. My great-uncle Joseph had died at the age of twenty—only two years older than my sister Alice was at that time.

  Afterward, Grandma and I drove across town to a leafy park, following Uncle Franklin and the other veterans. A Grand Army of the Republic reunion picnic was getting under way, and my great-uncle’s spirits brightened considerably as he beckoned to us. “Come on over here, ladies. Sadie and I saved you a place at our table.”

  Grandma halted, her arms crossed like an Indian chief. “Now, Franklin. There aren’t going to be any alcoholic beverages at this shindig, are there?”

  “No, ma’am,” he said with a grin. “Alcohol is strictly prohibited on village property—thanks to you and the other temperance gals.” I didn’t tell Grandma, but I saw some of the old soldiers—including Uncle Franklin—taking furtive sips from silver pocket flasks. The laughter grew louder as the afternoon progressed, the veterans’ steps more tentative as if the ground had begun to move like ocean waves.

  We sat at wooden picnic tables beneath tall pine trees, and the warm air that blew over us was scented with pine and woodsmoke. The ladies unpacked their picnic baskets and the feast began as everyone shared their bounty with one another. Uncle Franklin’s wife, Sadie, brought out pickles and potato salad and cold fried chicken. Someone sliced into a watermelon, and Grandma and I had one of our spitting contests to see who could make the seeds go the farthest. I never have been able to beat her.

  “How did you learn to spit so good?” I asked.

  “As a matter of fact, Franklin taught me.”

  He turned around when he heard his name. “What’d you say?”

  She held out a slice of watermelon. “Care to give it a try, Franklin? I’ll bet I can still beat you.”

  He laughed and lifted his hands in surrender. “Aw, you’re so full of spit and vinegar, Bebe, nobody can beat you.”

  Late in the afternoon, Uncle Franklin turned to me and pinched my cheek. “Say, there aren’t any woodpeckers hiding around here, are there?” he asked.

  “Um . . . I don’t know . . .”

  “Listen, Harriet, I’ll pay you two bits if you keep an eye out for them. They might come looking for me, you know.”

  “Woodpeckers? Are you pulling my leg, Uncle Franklin?”

  “No, no!” His laugh sounded more like a cough. “They’re not after your leg, they’re after mine.” He rapped his cane against his calf and it sounded like he had thumped it against the table leg. I thought it was a trick, but he grinned and pulled up his pant leg and thumped it again. “It’s made of wood, don’t you see?”

  I turned to my grandmother for confirmation, and she nodded. “If it weren’t for your uncle Franklin, you wouldn’t be here, Harriet.”

  “You mean at the picnic?”

  “No, here in this world! I’m talking about the fact that you’re alive, dear. It’s all thanks to Franklin and his wooden leg.”

  I had no idea what she meant, and her astounding statement raised a lot of questions in my overactive imagination. But someone announced that the ice cream was ready, and I was swept away in the melee of adults, talking and laughing and enjoying the reunion. Grandma didn’t have a chance to explain how Uncle Franklin and his wooden leg were responsible for my existence until the day ended and we were driving home in the car.

  “Why did you say that if it weren’t for Uncle Franklin, I wouldn’t be here?” I asked with a yawn. “And how did his leg get turned into wood?”

  “A minie ball shattered it just below the knee, and the army doctors had to cut it off with a hacksaw.”

  Grandma’s grisly description should have repulsed me, but it didn’t. I sat up straight, fascinated. “What’s a minie ball?”

  “It’s like a bullet—only bigger.” She made a circle the size of a nickel with her thumb and forefinger. “Once a minie ball rips through flesh and bone, there’s no saving that limb. It happened on April 2, 1865, during the Union breakthrough into Petersburg. By the time we received word that Franklin had been wounded, the war was over. General Lee had surrendered at Appomattox Courthouse on April ninth, one week after that fateful battle. A few days later, President Lincoln was dead.”

  “My goodness,” I murmured. I never paid much attention during history lessons, but this was my great-uncle we were talking about, a man I’d just met.

  Grandma gazed at the road ahead of us as she drove, her chin level with the top of the steering wheel. “For years I wondered why God couldn’t manage to keep Franklin safe for seven more days— seven days, Harriet! Especially after everything else my brothers had endured during the war.”

  “Did God ever give you a reason?” I remembered some of Grandma’s other stories, such as the time God had kept her safe while she helped the slaves escape.

  “Well, if God did have a reason, He never breathed a word of it to me.” She concentrated on her driving for a moment, changing gears as the car chugged uphill. A moment later we flew over the summit and started down again, leaving my stomach on the floorboards. “I’ve composed a long list of questions to ask God when I arrive in heaven,” Grandma continued. “It’s nearly as long as a book, by now—and the mystery of Franklin’s leg is high on that list.”

  Before I had a chance to remind her of my original question, she said, “And another thing I would very much like to ask is why I never grew into a properly proportioned woman. Look at me— I’m still built like a ten-year-old boy!”

  I rolled my eyes at her oft-said words. “You look fine to me, Grandma.”

  “No offense, dear, but you’re hardly one to judge. You’re
built like a ten-year-old boy, yourself—in case you haven’t noticed.”

  “Good! I don’t ever want to look like a woman! Or be one. Ever since Alice got all ‘girly,’ she’s been impossible to live with. That’s why I wanted to come with you today. It’s sickening the way her beaux gather around on our front porch every night like flies around a peach pie.”

  “Well, whether you want to become a woman or not is beside the point. Believe me, it will happen. Although if that war had gone on much longer, I might have completely forgotten that I’d been born a girl. My mother reminded me, just in time when—”

  “Wait a minute, Grandma. You still haven’t explained how Uncle Franklin was responsible for my existence.”

  “But that’s exactly what I’m about to tell you, Harriet, if you’d

  just stop interrupting and listen. . . .”

  The war ended for Bebe on the day that James and William arrived home. From then on, she never had to do their farm chores again. She had been helping her father smear axle grease on the wagon wheels when she looked up and saw her brothers hiking up the road toward home. She wiped her hands on an empty burlap sack and ran toward them, her oversized boots kicking up little clouds of dust. Her brothers laughed when they saw her.

  “I thought we left a little sister behind,” William exclaimed.

  “Where did this scruffy fellow come from?”

  “And what happened to little Bebe?” James asked.

  Indeed, what had happened? The war had not only changed her, but James and William, as well. The lanky, teasing boys who had marched away four years earlier were grown men now with creased faces and wooly beards. They had arrived unexpectedly, just before lunchtime, and Hannah quickly conscripted Bebe to help out in the kitchen.

  “Run upstairs and change into clean clothes, Beatrice. I’m going to prepare a proper feast for my boys, and I’ll need your help.”

  Bebe had never been as close to her older brothers as she was to Franklin, so she eagerly awaited his homecoming, too. The army had sent a letter with the news that he’d been wounded, then another one that said he was convalescing in a hospital in Philadelphia. As the weeks passed with still no sign of him, Bebe began to worry. Franklin wasn’t answering anyone’s letters. Hannah finally wrote directly to the hospital administrator for news.

  “I’m sorry to say that your son Franklin’s condition is showing no improvement,” one of the nurses wrote in reply. “He is very depressed about losing his leg and has very little appetite. As a result, he has become quite frail and his wound isn’t healing properly. Anything you could do to cheer him would help considerably.”

  “I’ve been praying about Franklin’s condition,” Hannah told Bebe a few days later, “and I believe God has told me what to do. Franklin needs a loved one to take care of him, and you are the best person to do that. I want you to visit him in Philadelphia and help him get well. Bring him home to us again.”

  “You want me to travel all that way? All alone? It’s more than one hundred miles from here.”

  “You won’t be alone. God will be with you.”

  Bebe bit her lip to avoid voicing her skepticism about having God for a traveling companion. It would only shock her mother. “What am I supposed to do once I get there?”

  “Cheer Franklin up, remind him of home, make him laugh.”

  “Why can’t you go, Mama?”

  “Someone has to cook for your father and the boys. Besides, I thought you would enjoy a break from the farm.”

  “I would, but . . .” Bebe had never gone anywhere alone in her life.

  On their next trip to town for market day, Hannah made all of the arrangements. Pastor Webster’s wife often visited her sister in Philadelphia, and she agreed to let Bebe travel there with her by train. Bebe would stay with Mrs. Webster’s sister and brother-in-law, the Yeagers, while she was there.

  When everything was arranged, Hannah took Bebe to Harrison’s General Store and picked out lace and yard goods and cotton thread. “We’re going to sew new under-sleeves for your Sunday dress,” Hannah explained, “and let out the bodice to accommodate your developing bosom.”

  “Shh! Mother!” Bebe whispered in embarrassment. But it was true. Her womanly figure finally had begun to sprout.

  “If we add a new ruffle on the skirt, it will cover up the worn hemline,” Hannah continued. “And I do believe you’ve grown an inch or two since we sewed that dress.”

  Their final purchase was a new pair of shoes, which were the most uncomfortable things Bebe had ever worn, especially after traipsing around in her brothers’ old boots for the past year.

  “I don’t understand all the fuss and bother with new clothes and shoes,” Bebe said that evening. She stood on a milking stool, trying to be patient while Hannah pinned up her hem. The full skirt felt bulky after wearing trousers for the past year, but thank goodness hoops had gone out of style. “What difference does it make what I look like? Franklin won’t care. He won’t even notice.”

  Hannah removed the pins from her mouth and stuck them in a pincushion. “Listen, Beatrice. Franklin and the other boys need to see something beautiful again and be reminded of the life that’s waiting for them back home. They’ve witnessed too much horror these past few years.”

  “But I can’t—”

  “You did the farm work, now you can do this.”

  Bebe wasn’t convinced.

  On the night before Bebe left for Philadelphia, her mother made her take a bath. Bebe tried to back out of the door when she saw Hannah preparing the tub. “You don’t need to bother with that, Mama, I can wash off in the river—”

  “Oh no, you don’t.” Hannah snagged Bebe’s arm and pulled her back into the room. “You need a proper bath in warm water. And you need to wash your hair. You can’t travel to Philadelphia with your hair in braids and smelling like manure and hay. You’re a young woman now, and a very pretty one. I’ll put some rose water in the tub.”

  “Rose water!” Bebe wrinkled her nose. “What for?”

  “So that you’ll smell nice.”

  Hannah scrubbed so hard Bebe thought all of her skin would come off. Her mother inspected her from head to toe as she helped her dry off. “We have to do something about the dirt beneath your fingernails.”

  Bebe stared at her hands. They hadn’t come clean. “I think the dirt has been there since the Rebels fired on Fort Sumter.”

  “Well, I have a pair of crocheted gloves you can borrow.”

  Hannah trimmed off the scraggly ends of Bebe’s hair and brushed it until it shone. It was long and dark and thick, with a natural wave in it. Hannah taught her how to part it down the middle and sweep it up on her head, securing it with the new hairpins and fancy tortoiseshell combs they had purchased in town.

  Early the next morning, Bebe put on her newly remade dress, fixed her hair, and packed her clothes and toiletries in a carpetbag. Hannah fetched the mirror that Henry and the boys used for shaving and held it up in front of her. “Look at yourself, Beatrice.”

  She didn’t recognize the person she saw in the mirror. She had transformed into a woman—at least on the outside—with a slender waist and a pretty face and thick, luxurious hair. If only she felt like a woman on the inside, too.

  “You look beautiful,” Hannah murmured.

  “I look so . . . different.”

  “Remember how life changed when the war started and the boys left? And how it changed again when Franklin had to leave? Life is like that, Beatrice—always changing, always flowing forward like a stream. Things never stay the same. And we have to move on and change, too.”

  Bebe glanced around at her familiar bedroom, then at her image in the mirror again. “What if I don’t want things to change?”

  “You can’t fight against the current. You’re no longer a little girl, Beatrice, you’re a grown woman. I married your father when I was just a little older than you are. And that’s what’s next for you—marriage and a home of your own.”

/>   She couldn’t imagine it. “But I don’t want to leave home.”

  “Nevertheless, you need to trust God and be prepared for wherever the river of life will take you next.”

  Bebe clutched her carpetbag and a basket of homemade baked goods for Franklin. She felt a mixture of excitement and fear as she began her journey and realized, as she hugged Hannah good-bye, that she had never been separated from her mother before. Panic made it difficult to breathe.

  “Mama, I—”

  “I’m counting on you to help Franklin get well.”

  “But I can’t…”

  “With God, all things are possible.”

  Bebe nodded and struggled to control her tears. She had longed to do something courageous and meaningful throughout the war, so maybe this was her opportunity. She would be brave for Franklin’s sake.

  “Don’t forget to attend to your appearance, dear. Look in a mirror once in a while and fix your hair. And keep your dress tidy.”

  Bebe made a face. “It still doesn’t feel right to wear a dress all day.”

  “I know. But you look lovely in one. Don’t be surprised if men start looking at you and tipping their hats. They take notice of pretty girls.”

  Bebe had never ridden on a train before, and when the monstrous thing finally arrived, rumbling into the station with its whistle shrieking, belching smoke and cinders, she walked toward it on trembling legs.

  “Ready?” Reverend Webster asked as he prepared to help her climb aboard. The locomotive hissed at her like an angry barn cat. Bebe nodded. The minister had recently preached on Jesus’ command to “fear not,” so she was embarrassed to admit her fear.

  The train chugged out of the station like an old man wheezing for air, but once it built up speed it traveled so fast Bebe feared it would fly right off the narrow rails. Scenery whipped past her window at a frantic rate. Any minute now, her heart would simply hammer itself to death. Surely there was a less frightening way to travel. She was wondering how long it would take her and Franklin to walk home from Philadelphia, when she remembered his missing leg.