Heart of a Dove

by Abbie Williams

  Was he oversimplifying, or just much more optimistic than I had ever realized?

  Before I could respond, he went on, “But you asked about Grace.” He sighed and his gaze moved out to the distant horizon. He said gently, “She was the love of my life, Grace McAllister. I knew her from the time I was a boy. I tortured myself for so long after the War, figuring that I could have saved her if I had been there. But even Ellen Davis couldn’t manage to treat the typhoid that ravaged that winter, and she was known for her birthing skills, for her knowledge of herbs.”

  Ellen Davis, Sawyer’s mother.

  Just taking a breath hurt me as I thought of Sawyer telling me about her.

  Angus said, “Grace was striking. She was fair, blond as fresh-cut hay, but her eyes were brown. A soft brown. She was slim, like you, and there are movements you make that bring her to my mind.” He paused and looked back at me, his gray eyes soft with remembrance. He added, “She was delicate and soft-spoken. I loved her with all of my heart. For a time I felt as though my heart had been buried with her, there in the cemetery in Suttonville. But it was not, I have finally lived long enough to realize that.”

  Still I could not find words. I felt a seeping, self-preserving numbness overtaking me.

  “Lorie, my dear,” and he took my right hand carefully into his, folding my fingers against his palm. “I promise you I will love our child, and I will do everything I can to make you happy. It grieves me so to see the sadness in your eyes. I will take it away and make you smile, if you’ll give me the chance.”

  I swallowed and managed to nod, my throat thick with pain.

  “Tell me about yourself,” he invited, squeezing my fingers gently before releasing my hand. “Anything at all. I feel as though I know so little about your past. Let’s pretend I’ve come to call and we are seated in your family’s parlor, and that I have brought for you a bouquet of wild roses. Those would suit you well, I think.”

  I swallowed again and looked away, up and into the scattered clouds, the restless sky. I cleared my throat and said, “Gus, I wish I could tell you…” I paused, stumbling, trying to collect what I wanted to say, as though to deliver it to him as upon a silver tray.

  “Tell me what?” he asked softly.

  “How grateful I am that you found me,” I said, determined to speak without allowing the aching in my throat to rise up and obliterate my words, my self-control.

  “It was fate, I feel certain,” he said.

  “You have given me more than you’ll ever know, and I care for you greatly, I do, Gus, I do.” I gripped my hands in my lap and tried to breathe evenly.

  “I do know that, Lorie,” he said softly.

  I said, closing my eyes again, “You deserve more than…this…”

  “Lorie, you are more than I deserve, far more,” he said, his voice low and sincere. “You are already deeply in my heart. I know you can’t realize this, not yet, but you are.”

  No, please, no…

  No.

  Angus took my hand again. “Lorie, please. It’ll be all right, my dear. It will.”

  I held his hand and nodded.

  The day passed into a rainy evening, and Angus made our camp earlier than usual, setting up my tent and then the one he had been sharing with Sawyer. Through the rest of the afternoon I remained dry-eyed. Angus and I had talked, haltingly at first; it was so strange to be alone with him, without so much as Malcolm to add to the conversation. But now that evening was descending the misery within me came creeping and crawling, overriding all else. My tent was erect and Angus was watering the horses, and I went to the wagon to root out my bedding. The back of it was crowded with our belongings; I saw Boyd’s fiddle case and wondered when I would hear its music again, and if I would even be able to bear it.

  I moved aside a tin of brown sugar and a quilt, bound with twine, which I knew from Malcolm that his mother had pieced. I traced my fingers gently over the pattern, now faded, blues and pinks and greens. I had no trouble imagining Clairee Carter working over it, her long hair pinned up on the back of her head, her mischief-making boys crowding her for attention. The quilt slipped farther and as I grabbed for it, something else caught my attention. A cruel fist squeezed the blood from my heart. Clairee’s quilt had been sitting atop a small leather trunk, dark brown and bound with a single buckled strap. On the strap was carved one word: Davis.

  I gritted my teeth and still the pain came hurtling up and into existence. Before I realized what I was doing, I leaned and curled my fingers around the handles, working it side to side until I could manage to extract it from the wagon bed. Angus was yet at the river and so I lifted the trunk, small but heavy, and carried it, struggling, into my tent. I set it carefully to the ground and then knelt, tipping my forehead against it, pressing my lips to his name, carved into the leather as though with the tip of a knife. Tears fell from my eyes and wet the trunk, which I regarded as one would a pirate’s treasure pulled at long last from the depths of the sea, unutterably priceless. I ran my palms over its sides, hugging it to me. I did not question my actions as I hurried to lace closed the ties to my tent and then unbuckled Sawyer’s trunk.

  My heart shuddered violently as the lid opened soundlessly on its two hinges, revealing pieces of him. Letters. A gold watch on a long chain. A small leather bag, tied with a strip of blue material. Linen cloth edged in lace, perhaps a handkerchief. A small, hinged oval frame that looked almost exactly like the one which had contained the tintype of Deirdre’s beloved husband, Joshua. My hands shook too much to lift it until I concentrated all of my will. Once it was in my palms, I cradled it, breathed against it, smelling leather, before I dared to part the cover of the frame and look upon him.

  I couldn’t breathe past the pain as I beheld Sawyer at nineteen, clad in his Confederate Army uniform, standing tall and clutching his Enfield rifle, golden hair cropped short, just long enough to brush the sides of his forehead. He was boyishly lean and lanky, his cheekbones more sharply defined than ever, stern-faced for the long exposure of the camera. I painted in all of the colors of his skin, his lips, his hair and hawk eyes, youthfully daring and direct, looking out and into mine. I held the image of him against the shell of my heart.

  “Broken, Lorissa,” Mama whispered.

  Broken. Synonyms include: shattered, ruined, destroyed, crushed, defeated.

  “To never be whole again,” Mama concluded, and then her voice faded to nothing.

  I curled over the tintype, protecting it, holding it as though it was part of him. I imagined the night Sawyer had held my hand in both of his as we lay near the entrance to my tent.

  “Lorie, you need a hand?” Angus called then, heading up from the riverbank, and I sat straight with effort, my breath coming in short, jerking bursts.

  “No,” I managed to call back. I whispered, “No.”

  I looked again at him, at my Sawyer in this incarnation of himself, young and bold, a soldier off to glory on the battlefield. I traced my fingers over his face, his chest. I kissed the image of him and then let the two sides of the frame come together, unable to bear the ache of looking upon him. I set the frame upon my lap utmost care, and it was then that I noticed two more frames, sheltered beneath the linen. I drew out one of these and opened it, my eyebrows knitted together, before I understood that I was seeing one of his brothers.

  I saw at once the resemblance to Sawyer, the high cheekbones and beautifully-shaped jaw with its strong chin. This boy’s hair was darker, though; Sawyer had told me the twins were red-headed. Even in the tintype I could detect the mischievous glint in his eyes, the hint of good humor nudging his lips. Ethan, I was certain. His mouth was different than Sawyer’s, his nose dusted with freckles and his eyebrows thicker, but it was clearly Sawyer’s little brother. The third frame revealed Jeremiah, an identical twin to Ethan; I thought of Boyd telling me that Jere was softhearte
d, and I could see that in his eyes, just as the mischief seemed to leap from Ethan’s. Jere had been the baby, born after Ethan, and their deaths had nearly killed Sawyer. I knew he blamed himself, just as my father had for my own brothers’ deaths.

  How would Sawyer’s life be different, had these two lived? The twins had been born on the same day, and had died on the same day in 1863, robbed of life so young, the both of them, just like Jesse and Dalton. I imagined Sawyer dragging their bodies from the field at Murfreesboro, the valor and the horror of that. I knew how very much Sawyer loved them, how much he would give to restore them to earth. Sawyer loved with everything in him, and I had known that love long enough to realize that I could not live without it. I lay on my side against the grass near his trunk and called out to him in my mind, again unable to stop myself.

  Where are you? Where are you right now? Sawyer, I love you, I love you so. I won’t ever stop.

  When I closed my eyes it was worse, because I could see him against the backs of my eyelids, as clearly as though witnessing a series of images from a dream. There was a fire to push back the damp, encroaching darkness, burning in a campsite far to the north. Malcolm was there, and Boyd, both of them grim with worry. Sawyer was sitting, bent forward clutching his head, and he was sobbing. There was nothing to be said to comfort him, to calm him.

  Sawyer, no, no, no. Oh please, no, love. I’m so sorry, I’m so sorry.

  He was hurting and I could not be there. I had never felt so wretched, so helpless. I wrapped my arms around my own head, pain rippling all through my nerves, just as pleasure fired along them when he was near. Sharp and devastating, it swarmed my body and soul. I held the image of him in my mind, torturing myself, until another picture flowed over it, as water over a smooth, sandy creek bank. I could see Sawyer then, working horses in a split-rail corral, his hat in place and sleeves rolled back, holding a lead line and speaking to a young mare at the other end. In this picture he appeared content and I moved towards him, pining to touch him, to be near him. As I did he looked over and smiled sweetly, held me in his gaze.

  He said, “Lorie, come here, sweetheart,” and I heard his warm, deep voice as though he’d spoken in my ear.

  “Sawyer,” I moaned, and the image of him in the corral faded away.

  Lorie, he said back now, his pain colliding with mine, despite the miles upon miles separating our bodies. I could hear his deep voice, hoarse with agony. Lorie, I can’t hurt this much and live. I’m so sorry, I’m so sorry I left…I had no choice…

  Surely my heart was completely bled out, by now. I cried back, I need you, Sawyer, I can’t be without you, love. I’m so sorry too, you can’t know how sorry.

  You are mine, Lorie, no matter what, you will always be mine.

  And you are mine. Even if I can never touch you again, even if I am never allowed to be near you.

  I wanted to die. Even during my worst moments at Ginny’s, I had not longed so terribly for death as I did than in this moment, facing a future of being severed from him. Perhaps it was cowardly, surely it was selfish. No doubt I would truly be bound for hell for thoughts such as these, for continuing to feel so strongly for someone that I could never be with, from here on out.

  Malcolm wrapped his arms around Sawyer, at their campfire somewhere to the distant north of us; I could still see them plainly and I huddled around myself, aching. Sawyer caught the boy’s arms in his hands and wept as I had never seen, shuddering with its force. To the south and alone in my tent, I wrapped into my own arms and wept with him, irreparably broken now.

  - 20 -

  “We could never have won the War, not after ’sixty-three,” Angus said, alongside me on the wagon seat the following day, in response to my quiet question. “Though not for lack of spirit. You see, Lorie, we were so much better mounted than the Federals. Our boys were from farms and hollers, not cities. We could shoot, and ride. We had the advantage in so many ways, in the beginning. After years of fighting, though, I could no longer even begin to articulate why I’d left home in the first place. It was all gone by then, the idea of winning or losing, and everything worth fighting for was dust. I didn’t see any of the Suttonville boys after Gettysburg until we met up again in ’sixty-five, to go home. Lord, if you had known Sawyer or Boyd as boys, to see them at that point. It was heartbreaking. They were both shadows of themselves. They’d lost their brothers. After discharge, we rode home in almost complete silence.”

  Angus paused in his memory and looked up to the sky, a washed-out blue today after last night’s driving rain. He bit his bottom lip and sighed deeply, before adding, “When we returned, we found Suttonville much altered. None of us knew of the typhoid epidemic that had hit in February, and mail was so sketchy back then, none of us assumed that the lack of letters meant anything ominous.”

  “I’m so sorry,” I whispered, studying the sky too, the endless and ever-changing sky. I had one of Sawyer’s letters tucked beneath my shift in the waistband of my skirt, against my bare skin. He had written this particular one to his mother, telling her of his time between battles in late 1864. I imagined his hand moving over the paper and had traced my own fingertips over his words, the scrawling black ink recording his thoughts of what he was seeing and experiencing. Parts of it I had memorized by this morning.

  Mama, he’d written. If I could be home just now I wouldn’t ask for more in the world tonight. It’s near to the full moon and I can’t sleep at night for fear I may dream of Eth and Jere. When they come to me in my dreams, I forget that they are gone forever, that I will never again see them back home, if I am fortunate enough to return there myself. Pray for me, Mama. I need to know you are out there, keeping watch for me in your prayers.

  He had signed all of his letters, Your Loving Son.

  I thought of sitting near Sawyer the night we’d met the Spicers, and how he’d told me of watching the full moon. That was before we’d kissed, though I had been in his arms for a brief moment by then, when I’d crawled over him the first night he had been sleeping outside my tent. His letters strove to shred my soul even further, but I could not, would not, stop myself from reading them. There were but a few in his hand, as though he’d managed to save the partial contents of a bureau drawer, and a second bundle from Ellen to him; his father had added paragraphs in each, near the end. So loved, Sawyer had been so loved. For that I was grateful. I pressed my hand against the paper folded against my belly, gathering strength.

  “Tell me more of you, Lorie,” Angus invited. “I’ve not been letting you get in a word edgewise, as I’d chastised Malcolm.” He smiled so tenderly and asked, as he had numerous times already, “How are you feeling, my dear?”

  “Well,” I said, though even to my own ears I sounded breathless and the word was an obvious lie. I forced a smile, keeping my hand against Sawyer’s letter.

  “I’ve half a mind to stay for a time in town, near a doctor, until you’ve regained your strength. Lorie, you are yet so pale. I would that we were not on the trail when you feel thusly.”

  “I’ll be right as rain,” I said, with as much certainty as I could muster. I slept poorly, hardening my mind against the images of Sawyer to the north of me. Even now I could sense him, though my mind shied from the ripping pain that such thoughts occasioned. I slept with the picture of him clutched to my heart, waking drenched in sweat and with my hands yet clasped about the small oval frame. Exhaustion, perhaps self-preservation, prevented any dreams from shattering me, and before dawn I crept from my tent to return his trunk to the bed of the wagon, keeping out one letter and his tintype, which was now wrapped in my extra shift, tucked into my valise.

  “I care only for your well-being,” Angus said softly. “Our child will be born in the late winter, is that right?”

  I had unwittingly considered such, and determined mid-February as the time of birth. I said simply, “Yes.”

  He startl
ed me then, asking softly, “May I touch you, Lorie?”

  My eyes flashed to him; I knew that I must accept such touches from him, that when he was my husband I could no more deny him my body than I could prevent the sun from rising. I would be Lila again, presenting myself, feigning pleasure, keeping my soul hidden away in a dark corner.

  Perhaps in time…

  No, dear God, no.

  Trapped, flailing, at last I nodded. There was nothing but kindness and concern within his gray eyes. He would provide for me, and for our child, with every resource he had; the cold, sheeting rain of guilt slashed over me. Angus placed his palm against my stomach, gently, as though cupping what would become my rounded belly as the child grew. His hand was exactly against Sawyer’s letter tucked there, and prickles of discomfort skimmed along my flesh.

  “A boy,” he said with certainty, as though to coax a smile from me. “Or perhaps a girl with her mama’s beautiful eyes.”

  He patted me with utmost care, and the letter made a faint rustling noise. I curled my hand over his, desperate to displace it from this evidence of my continued devotion to another. Angus took my hand into his, smiling gently at me, and tucked it around his elbow. He bent and kissed my hair, and I thought of Sawyer doing the same. Another passage from his letter came to me as I watched Admiral and Juniper pulling the wagon.

  It is so quiet now, most of us sleeping already, and yet I sit awake. I am being wasteful, using a candle by which to write, when our supply is so limited. I cannot give over to sleep, not yet. I imagine what the fields look like just off the front porch at home, the ghost-mist lying low over the earth, the blue tint to the air. If I was brave, Mama, much more so than I imagine myself to be, I would run to the horses and I would ride Whistler home as fast as she could carry us, and I would never look back upon this place.