Tamera Alexander - [Timber Ridge Reflections 01]

by From a Distance

  Daniel stared at her as another piece of who Elizabeth Westbrook was fell into place for him. And as another reminder of what he’d done during the war sliced through him. “Your father was a colonel in the Federal army?”

  She nodded. “Colonel Garrett Eisenhower Westbrook.”

  Disbelief stole through him, followed by confusion. “But he’s still alive.”

  She gave a tiny smile. “Yes, he is.”

  “So . . . he wasn’t on the battlefield that day.”

  Confusion slipped into her eyes. “He orchestrated the battle plans but was called to Washington the morning of the battle. Another colonel, a close friend of my father’s, Colonel Henry Jackson, took his pla—” Her frown smoothed. She blinked, then shook her head. “What was your assignment during the war? Were you an officer?”

  She said it with such hope. But Daniel saw it in her face. She knew. The threads were pulling taut inside her just as they had for him seconds ago.

  “I held the rank of captain . . . but served in a special unit. Our primary mission was to eliminate commanding Federal officers from the field before the start of battle. I was—”

  “A sharpshooter,” she whispered, looking as though she’d seen a ghost.

  “When they realized how well I could shoot, they sent me to Atlanta for more training. And they issued us each a Whitworth.”

  Her attention moved to the gun propped beside him. “So that means that . . . if my father had been there that day, you would have . . .” Her focus slid back to him.

  His jaw went rigid. “Yes,” he whispered. “I would have killed him.”

  “Did you ever miss, Daniel? Even once?”

  He was touched by her attempt to absolve him. “No, Elizabeth. I never missed.”

  She stared at him for the longest time, then lay down on her pallet. He wanted to talk to her, and for her to talk to him. When Josiah excused himself, whether by necessity or to give them time alone, Daniel moved over by her.

  He gently touched her shoulder, knowing she was still awake. “Elizabeth, look at me.”

  She shook her head. “I can’t. Not right now.”

  He smoothed the curls falling down her back and felt her body shake. “I’m sorry, Elizabeth. I’m so sorry. . . .”

  She slowly turned over. Tears stained her cheeks. “So am I. . . .”

  When he reached for her hand, she pulled away and curled onto her side again, away from him.

  “Please leave me alone, Daniel.”

  He reached for her again, then stopped himself, knowing it was useless. So much for the truth setting a person free.

  35

  Elizabeth saw him coming and rose from packing her satchel. The sternness in his expression didn’t bode well for another attempt at this conversation, but she had to try. He was hurting, and she knew full well that she was the cause. “Daniel, I’d appreciate the chance to speak if—”

  “We’re late getting on the trail.” He strode past her. “If you want to get to Mesa Verde today, I suggest we move out.”

  She stared at his back, having grown accustomed to seeing it over the past five weeks. What she wasn’t accustomed to was the wall between them—and that she’d been the one to lay the first brick only added to her frustration.

  He finished loading the packhorse, his movements sharp and defined, more like a soldier’s than the man she’d come to know.

  When he’d shared with them two nights ago about the war in Franklin and about being a sharpshooter, she’d been too shocked to respond, unnerved when considering what could have happened—what would have happened—had her father been on the battlefield that day. Unable to discuss it that night, she’d thought they would talk about it the next morning. But by then, the damage had been done.

  His silence was piercing and reeked of resentment. She felt as though she’d taken his trust and, in an effort to handle it more gently, had crushed it instead. But he couldn’t avoid her forever, and he was also right. They’d lost a week as she and Josiah had recuperated with the Ute, and her deadline to get the photographs of Mesa Verde to Wendell Goldberg was fast approaching.

  She also remembered what the butcher back in Timber Ridge had said about not pushing someone. It had worked for James McPherson with this same man; maybe it would work for her.

  She climbed into the saddle, and Josiah fell in line behind her. He also had been subdued since that night. Not sullen, like Daniel, nor evasive, just distant in his own way.

  The scenery was still breathtaking but had undergone a transformation. The mountains had grown flatter on their tops, trading their rugged peaks for mesas—tabletops. She could hardly wait to see Mesa Verde and hoped her equipment would be there waiting. But she preferred not to arrive with this tension between them.

  They stopped briefly for lunch and to water the horses. She sensed the men’s anticipation and guessed they were as excited about seeing the cliff dwellings as she was.

  By late afternoon, she was beginning to wonder if Daniel had miscalculated the distance. She checked her compass, then her map. It seemed as though they should be going more toward the south to get to the cliff dwellings, but she wasn’t about to question him.

  When the sun started its descent, disappointment set in. She’d so hoped to get there today. Daniel paused in front of her on a ridge. He didn’t say anything, just stared off to his right. She followed his line of vision, not seeing what he was—

  Her breath caught, but only for a second. She jumped from her horse and ran to the edge of the ridge, peering across the canyon. Her body tingled. Palaces, shadowed rooms carved directly into the mountainside, hundreds of feet from the canyon floor, glowed orange red in the setting sun. Remarkable . . .

  She framed the scene with her hands, as though she were looking through her lens, and could see it perfectly. She’d have to come back to this very spot to take a picture. This angle was perfect—and Daniel had known it would be.

  She turned to look at him. His gaze was fixed on her. She smiled, not expecting him to return it. He did, barely, but his eyes communicated a satisfaction all the same. It would take her time to win back his trust. But she would do it.

  Josiah took off his slouch hat and leaned forward in the saddle. “How’d them people do that, ma’am?”

  Laughing, she shared his wonder. “I have no idea, Josiah. I’m just so glad they did.”

  It was well after dark when they arrived in the nearby town, and the mercantile was already closed. When Daniel suggested they stay the night in the hotel, Elizabeth could’ve kissed him. She took a long, hot bath that evening, wrote a letter to her father to mail the following day, and awakened refreshed the next morning, ready to see if her equipment had arrived.

  Downstairs in the hotel lobby, Josiah was waiting, solemn-faced. “We gots some good news, ma’am, and some bad news.”

  Her excitement went flat. To have come all this way for nothing . . . “What is it?”

  “Good news is your equipment is in, Miz Westbrook. Bad news”—his grin broke through—“is I thinkin’ you ain’t gonna be totin’ your camera by yourself no more.”

  She followed him outside to find Daniel standing by a cart loaded with crates. Next to him, atop a tripod, was a camera whose lens was almost twice as big as her old one! She took the stairs in twos and ran a hand over the polished mahogany. “Did you do this, Daniel Ranslett?”

  He glanced at the cart. “I wish I could take credit for it, but I can’t. I think somebody’s just looking out for you . . . and that you were meant to be here taking pictures of this place, for whatever reason. Just like all the places on our way back to Timber Ridge.”

  She smiled, and then remembering her calculations from last evening, her enthusiasm tempered. “I thought about that last night. It’s already June. I’ll need at least a week to take pictures here. And I’m afraid that leaves little time for taking photographs on the way back, and there’s still no guarantee the pictures will make it to Washington by the end of A
ugust.”

  “That might be true. . . .” Daniel took off his hat and ran a hand through his hair. “If you didn’t take into account that I spoke with the mercantile owner this morning and the same freight company who delivered this shipment will be back through here in four days.” A subtle gleam lit his eyes. “They’ll pick up whatever you have ready and will take it on to the next town, where it’ll meet up with another freighter who’ll carry it on to a town with train service back east. So you’re guaranteed not to miss your deadline—if you can have your photographs ready in four days.”

  She closed the distance between them. “I can, and I’m giving you full credit for that.” She kissed him squarely on his freshly shaven cheek and saw his response, despite his attempt to hide it. “My reaction the other night hurt you, Daniel, and I’m sorry for that. Especially after everything you shared. It just . . . caught me so unaware. Imagining what would have happened to my father had he been there, and knowing what did happen to your brother because of my father’s leadership in planning that battle . . . I just needed time to sort through it all.”

  He nodded and took a step back. “That makes two of us.”

  The scene was perfect, the morning light pristine. Daniel had chosen this morning’s ridge with as much care as he’d chosen yesterday’s. Elizabeth started to remove the lens from the camera, then hesitated. President Lincoln’s familiar address came back to her without falter, no matter that she hadn’t uttered it in weeks. She thought about Josiah and Daniel standing behind her.

  Josiah stepped forward. “Somethin’ wrong with it, Miz Westbrook? You need me to get somethin’ for you, ma’am?”

  “No, nothing’s wrong. I’m just wondering . . . Have either of you heard the remarks President Lincoln gave at the battlefield at Gettysburg?”

  “No, ma’am. Can’t say that I have. But I sure ’preciate what that man done—God rest his soul. Not right what got done to him in return.”

  She looked at Daniel, who just shook his head.

  She returned her attention to the photograph and to the ancient palaces set within the frame of her lens, and carefully removed the lens cap. “ ‘Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth upon this continent a new nation . . .’ ”

  The words took on deeper meaning knowing they were listening. She could still hear Lincoln’s high, clarion tones in her memory.

  “ ‘We are met on a great battlefield of that war. We are met to dedicate a portion of it as the final resting place of those who here gave their lives that that nation might live. . . .

  “ ‘The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here, have consecrated it far above our poor power to add or detract. The world will little note nor long remember what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here.’ ”

  As she spoke, she pictured President Lincoln standing tall on that platform, two or three pages of manuscript in his left hand, and him glancing at them only once as he spoke. The image of a boy of nine rose inside her, one who shared Daniel’s green eyes and dark hair, and who wanted to be a man of honor like his older brother.

  “ ‘ . . . that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain; that the nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom, and that the government of the people, by the people, and for the people, shall not perish from the earth.’ ”

  Careful not to bump the camera, she reinserted the lens cap.

  Being in such a place, seeing such grandeur, was like a dream all over again—capturing images and sending them home to be published, images that could well garner her the position as the Chronicle’s next journalist and photographer. But the opportunity Wendell Goldberg had given her suddenly seemed wistful, somewhat emptied of its importance in light of her experiences in the past weeks. Especially since her interaction with Drayton Turner. She didn’t want to have anything to do with Turner’s kind of newspaper reporting, and the similarities between him and Goldberg were disturbing. Surely there was something more.

  They spent the day taking pictures—ten in all, and six turned out exceptionally well. Late afternoon found them back on the ridge Daniel had chosen the previous evening. All day long, Elizabeth had looked forward to capturing this particular perspective, at sunset, just as Daniel had shown it to her for the very first time.

  They camped in the canyon just below the dwellings. The summer day seemed to stretch forever, and after dinner, she leaned back, imagining what life had been like for the people who lived in the cliff dwellings. The wind whispered through the shadowed houses, encircling the ruins and carrying remnants of ancient voices from times long past.

  She stole looks at Daniel, wondering how she was going to get him alone to speak with him. But she would before they left Mesa Verde.

  Josiah poured himself another cup of coffee and refilled each of their cups. She had learned some about cooking in the past weeks, but after she’d made several attempts at coffee—and failed—Daniel volunteered to keep that responsibility. Josiah had seconded his offer far too quickly.

  “Was you there, Miz Westbrook? When Mr. Lincoln gave them words?”

  She nodded, blowing across her cup. “It was many years ago, but I remember it like it was yesterday.”

  “I got times like that in my life too. Where I can still see the faces and hear what’s bein’ said. Good as if I’s standing right there in it again.

  It was a fine talk by Mr. Lincoln, ma’am, and you give it well.”

  “Yes, ma’am, you did.” From across the fire, Daniel lifted his cup to her.

  She returned the gesture, hopeful.

  “You two been real kind to me.” Josiah’s hand dwarfed the tin cup. “Miz Westbrook, you give me a job when most wouldn’t. And Mr. Ranslett, sir, you got me to help when I’s beaten and then stayed by me when I’s sick.” He reached for something beside him. “There been days in my life when I thought God himself had turned His face cuz there was too much pain to abide, even for Him. And then others when I know that as sure as the sun’ll rise He’s with me.” He fingered the leather pouch. “Mr. Ranslett, you told us the other night that you held your little brother and saw the light dim in his eyes. . . .”

  Daniel’s expression was hard to read.

  “I know your meanin’, sir, but with all respects, I put to you that the light only dimmed from our side. You couldn’t see it, but it was there, in the distance, shinin’ for Benjamin. It rose inside him that day, full and rich, and he’s livin’ in it now, just like—” He stopped, his forehead bunched. “Just like my sweet wife, Belle.”

  36

  Belle and I married on a Tuesday in March. Last time I seen her was on a Saturday mornin’ in December.”

  Daniel watched Josiah through the fire. He’d suspected something like this, and had discussed the possibility with Elizabeth, but had prayed he was wrong. Intuition told him something else was coming and that it wasn’t good. From the concern in Elizabeth’s demeanor, she sensed it too.

  “I told you the other night, Mr. Ranslett, that I ain’t never lived in Franklin. I answered that way to spare your feelin’s at the time, sir.”

  “So you did live there.”

  “Not in Franklin, sir, but close. In Nashville. Mr. Stattam, man who owned me and Belle, he showed up one evenin’ in December as I’s walkin’ back to the shanties. He loaded me and five others in a wagon and took us off. Didn’t say nothin’ ’bout where we’s goin’, and we had kerchiefs tied round our eyes so we couldn’t see. Turns out, we’s taken to another plantation he owned, couple hours away. I tried gettin’ back to Belle once, and almost made it to Nashville when Mr. Stattam’s dogs catched up with me.” Hand on his thigh, he rubbed the side of his leg. “After the war, I went to look for Belle. That’s when I learnt that Mr. Stattam, he sold her to a man in Franklin not long after he moved me . . . cuz she was carryin’ a child.”

  His suspicions confirmed, shame poured through Daniel. He knew of owners who had forced themselves on female slaves,
and in light of knowing Josiah, the knowledge repulsed him now even more than it had back then. Stattam had been a partner to his stepfather, Nathaniel Thursmann, both men devoid of any shred of honor. “I knew Stattam.”

  Josiah nodded slowly. “I figured you might, sir.”

  “Do you remember the name of the man he sold Belle to?”

  “No, sir. I’s never told that. I’s only told she ended up in Franklin. I looked for her, but it didn’t do no good. Fella by the name of Carter had some lists he got from a white man who was tryin’ to help put families together. I went to him, but he didn’t have no Isabelle on his papers. No Belle either. Only the age of women when they was sold, and if they’s healthy or not. I looked all over Tennessee, down in Georgia, South Carolina, Mississippi. Everywhere I could think that she mighta gone. But no matter where I looked, she wasn’t there.”

  “Belle wrote the journal pages. . . .” Elizabeth’s voice was soft.

  Josiah nodded. “Yes, ma’am. I gots ’em after the war, from a woman who was friend to her after I’s taken away. She’s the one who told me ’bout Mr. Stattam sellin’ her.”

  With his boot, Daniel nudged a fallen log back into the flames. “So many of those deeds and records were destroyed in fires or lost when the Federals occupied the homes.” Not wanting to get Josiah’s hopes up, he was also curious. “Do you know if this man, Carter, used the plantation owners’ personal deed books to make his lists? Sometimes the names of slaves were listed in there instead of in the county ledger.”

  “I can’t know for sure, sir. He never did say.”

  Daniel started to press the matter but stopped. Chances of individual deed records still existing were slim.

  “Josiah . . .” Elizabeth’s eyes held a sheen. “A minute ago, you said, ‘Just like my sweet wife.’ What makes you think Belle passed on?”

  A sad smile touched his face. “I ain’t all the way sure that she has, ma’am. I just think she and I woulda found each other by now, if we’s both still here. She used to tell me that I’s her home, no matter where she went. She was my home too.” The flames from the fire reflected burnished gold on his skin. “She always will be.”